Locker Room Etiquette

Ouch. It's been a good long while since I've given my bloggy any love. My life has been one big mashup of frantic apartment hunting during the month of March, even more frantic and chaotic moving, getting situated, work being busy, Emily being mentally and physically drained and now... Now I'm back on the Get My Ass in Shape horse.

Follow the insane thoughts of eight ladies who are Getting The Fuck Up on our Twitter stream #GTFU (because we're a bunch of dorks). We're doing this through Weight Watchers... Yes, I'm back, but it's more guidelines and keeping myself in check than totally reneging on the protein first mindset. It also helps that I have friends here supporting me. So, anyway, the point of that introduction is that I'm cross-posting something I wrote on my WW blog (mainly to keep too much crap from this main blog) that I would love everyone's input on.

Locker Room Etiquette (?)

So, five days later and I've officially worked out three days, yeah! Monday night, Wednesday morning and Friday morning. I have full plans on doing something involving exercise this weekend as well, so I am totally excited. Yes, getting up at 5 or 6am is not fun, but I know my body will be happy in the long run.

Buuut, having been in a locker room now after years since my last time around, I wonder if there is specific locker room etiquette in adulthood. The last time I was in a gym with a locker room was in college, which was just sort of a different animal. I can't say I've seen many bigger ladies at my current gym, but they're not all supermodels either, so I don't feel totally schlepy. Anyway, on the note of being bigger, well, the towels my gym provides are, on me, like a washcloth for a smaller woman. They're larger towels than I've seen in some gyms (my university one most certainly) but I still feel awkward. Basically, the towel can cover either my crotch, butt or boobs. Depending on how I grab it, I can sometimes cover the bottom half with a thigh hanging out.

No matter what, it makes for an awkward/clumsy walk from the locker to the shower. But here's the thing, I don't really care about people seeing my body. I'm not totally in love with it but I'm not painfully shy about showing it either. But at the same time, I don't want to be "that girl" in the locker room. And, er, I'm lazy - I don't want to carry my own towel or robe daily to the gym. Nope, not happening.

For the larger ladies, what do you do in the locker room? For the smaller ladies, do you pay any attention if you see some cellulite butt (mine) hanging out in the locker room? For everyone, is there formal etiquette for this kind of carp that I normally spend absolutely no time dwelling over)?

I'm exhausted...

"But Emily, it's Sunday, not Friday. You should be rested from the weekend!" my (sparse) audience says.

Except, yeah... This weekend has been just plain crazy.

Friday consisted of:
Work...busy, busy work. I didn't even eat lunch until 4pm.
Open house for apartments in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (that were both big fat NOs).
A random, last minute apartment showing in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn right after. I had emailed about a CL ad Friday morning before work. She responded with her phone number by 9am, I hadn't had time to call during the day (obviously). So, after the bummer apartments in Williamsburg, I called her. She was free in about 45 minutes. I made my way over there.
And I found an apartment that's pretty awesome. Yep.

Positives:
Two decent sized bedrooms that are similar in size
An actual living room
A small but good bathroom - with GOOD water pressure. the current tenant was there that night and she said she would miss the shower greatly.
$1395 (with 4/1/09 lease date) including heat and hot water.
Gas stove (an unspoken, small desire of Omar's)
third floor walk-up (hey, at least I can't avoid SOME exercise every day)
Negatives:
Kitchen in general is sort of small. not much cabinet or counter space, nor a dishwasher. But I've been so spoiled by my Astoria kitchen.
No backyard (well duh, third floor)
I think we'll have to buy A/C units for the place (not 100% sure on this).
Buying furniture for the place... but that was unavoidable...
Third floor walk-up (SUCKS for moving, but that's what paying movers is for, right?)

Oh, yeah, k, after seeing the apartment in Brooklyn? I ended up talking to my mom on the phone for about an hour (while still in Brooklyn). My cell phone died, cousins called - they were in town for a few days. So I made my way back to Astoria, which took about an hour.
Once I got home, I charged my phone for a few minutes, ate some chips and guacamole (yeah, that was dinner for the night) and headed out to try to meet up with cousins Basil and Maher.
It was already after midnight then, and I finally found them (I thought they were still at a bar on Steinway st, but they were back at Basil's sister Dena's apartment pre-gaming - she lives in Astoria too).
I completely forgot that "going out" with Basil means fucking GOING OUT. I had a drink at Dena's, and then Basil, Maher, Dena's hubby Tony and a cousin of Basil's who lives in NY, Nadine, and I went out. We went to three different [very Greek] clubs and then to a 24hr Greek restaurant.
It was 6-o-fucking-clock in the morning when I got home. I had been up for almost 24 hours. And I had three drinks and two shots. That's a helluva lot for me. Especially considering my dinner consisted of soy-flaxseed tortilla chips and guacamole.

Yeah, and then Saturday? I was up by 11:30am.
Talked with Omar about the apartment, and about the fact that if we want it, we basically needed to get Erin (the agent) the deposit TODAY. I wrangled his debit card from him before he went to lunch with the cousins, and then I chilled for a while.
Finally got up and moving, and had to attempt to figure out how to take out $1395 from an ATM. That was fun. I ended up draining my bank account because BB&T has a withdrawal limit. So I had $500 from Omar's account, and was lucky enough to have about $975 in my BoA account.
Erin was on Steinway, and we met up, filled out the paperwork (not the final stuff, just the "we're taking it off the market until we get your application and approve you or not.)
After that crazy running around, I decided to chill in Starbucks and read a book for a while (after talking with mom again). I really needed to veg out, and was hoping the house might be sort of quiet when I got home.
But, nah, Jennifer and Jessica were there, and Jennifer's friend Julie was on her way over. Jen cooked, and her and Julie hung out before going out. I got to veg out temporarily and then talked with Omar about the apartment when he finally got home.

And today...well, today has been vegging out, cooking, attempting to clean up, wanting to crawl into bed for about twelve hours. Yeah... I really, really can't shake this tiredness. And considering that this is just the beginning of moving, fuuuuck.

I swore I was going to make my bed tonight - I sent my sheets to the laundry like LAST weekend, and still haven't had time to make my bed. I've just been sleeping on the mattress with my blanket and comforter on top (which is fine with me but I feel a tad ghetto). Oh, and that same time I sent the sheets out, I sent out clothes. And they're still folded up in the hamper. Again, I swore I was going to get my room cleaned up this weekend, but the gods of time are working against me. So, yeah, um, good night...