FBS

One of the beautiful things about having children in school during the daylight hours is the freedom. Once the kids leave the casa, time is my oyster.

Generally, between 8:30-2:45, there is lots to get done. Now, I'm not saying I GET it done, just that there's a lot that I SHOULD be getting done...laundry, dishes, straightening/cleaning, budgeting, shopping, blah, blah, blah.

And that's all fine and well because it is what I signed up for when I accepted the "Homemaker" title.

But, lately, I've found myself slipping into the comfortable mode of spending half of my morning, three days/week, at the gym.

Before you go getting all impressed, let me add that about 45 minutes to an hour of that time is actually spent working out. The rest is in the dry sauna, chatting with my workout partner.

I love this time more than I can express. I realize that the other things on my list get shoved to the side so I can be a lot self-indulgent. And it also means that some of the time I am working into the wee hours of the night to get stuff accomplished that I could have done in the morning.

So I decided it was really time to revisit my to-do list and figure out how I can make this all work so I can actually attempt to get a decent amount of sleep instead of trying to survive on way too little.

But this week? The last of my "freedom" from the confines of a "scheduled" calendar? We've been kicking back in the dry sauna a little longer than usual. Soaking it in, if you will. The same way I will soak in a five pound bag of sugar via the sweets binge I'll go on the night before Mike and I do our next cleanse.

There was so much soaking going on that I had time to notice something I'd never seen before. That's when FBS entered my life for the first time.

See, the "seasoned"* ladies work out in the pool during the time we are at the gym. Most of the time they finish their class after we've left, so all we see of them are their cute little heads.

Today proved different. All but two of the ladies exited the pool while we were still sitting chatting in the heat. Many of them headed straight for the whirlpool, which sits right outside the sauna. And I had a perfect vantage point from which to watch them.

I noticed almost immediately that the two women who had on the same swimsuit and had lined up next to each other and were doing elderly high kicks** both had really flat butts. When they turned to move toward the whirlpool, they had large abdomens.

Interesting, I noted.

Then a gaggle of waddling senior ladies passed by the sauna. Flat butt? Check. Big tummy? Yup.

Oh.my.goodness. It was all of them! And these were the women who were actively exercising. I can only imagine what the passive, stationary ones must look like!

I pointed this out to my workout buddy, who was all "REALLY? I've never noticed that."

As we did a little more surveillance on our way out of the sauna/pool area, we were both shaking our heads in wonder. Specifically, I was thinking "Does gravity just take your butt down like that? Kind of like the hair on a man's head tends to migrate to his ears and nose when they get old?"

Neither of us was very excited at the prospect of losing our posterior padding. In fact, if the stupid StairMaster can somehow save my butt from falling down the back of my legs in 40 years, I'm going to seriously consider buying one of those things.

Flat Butt Syndrome? Not on my watch.



*Nice attempt at disguising that they are old.

**No joke. Just keep in mind that "high kicking" for a person in their 80's is about shin high. On a toddler's shin, that is.