Supporting a child's dreams—one small step at a time

It's 8:15 am and already we've had a dance party, built a railroad, ate some waffles and did yoga (albeit all on "toddler time"—about 10 minutes each). I got a little work-work done, too. I seriously don't know how it all happens, but that's the magic of living with a toddler.

As I was making coffee this morning and getting our waffles warmed up (Daddy had made them for us earlier before leaving for work), my little A was yelling out "Boot! Boot!" She was trying to put on some boots. We weren't going anywhere yet. It's not boot weather. But, she wanted those boots on. She's at a stage where she can kind of do it herself, but not quite, and so I heard her getting really frustrated the way she does. She let out the little angry scream-growl. "Boot! Boot!" She cried. So I went over and helped her get them on. Then she did a little dance. Mission accomplished.

It then occurred to me that we can help our kids achieve their "dreams" no matter how small, just by being around and helping them out a little. It doesn't have to be a big deal and it doesn't have to make sense. It especially doesn't have to make sense when they are toddlers. She really wanted those boots on and it made her happy to have them on. I only hope I can approach helping her achieve bigger things later in life with the simplicity of putting on some boots. And I hope I can be a support to what she wants, rather than imposing what I want.

Even the animals want to be near their babies!

I am still looking for the trailer that appears on one of my kid's videos for a late edition of the Dumbo movie that shows happier scenes of mama and baby elephant together. We always take a minute to watch the trailer and cuddle and I sing it to her. (I haven't been able to get her interested in watching the entire Dumbo movie yet.)

This clip here is so touching—it shows mama longing for her baby.

A flimsy case against breast-feeding

Just out this month in The Atlantic, The Case Against Breast-Feeding attempts to dismantle the science supporting the health benefits of breast-feeding, seemingly in an effort to justify some women's ambivalence. I want to be mad and get snarky, but I just can't. The author seems so angst-ridden and the article so all-over-the-map in it's structure, I just feel sorry for her. As I am always compelled to do, I will say that I think people should do what they need to do to make their lives work and if that means feeding the baby formula, then fine. I also don't want to make those women who want to breastfeed but for whatever reason cannot feel bad. That said, the "case" made by journalist Hanna Rosin—that breast-feeding may not be worth the dent it puts in women's freedom—is both weak and dangerous, if anybody takes it seriously.

I can agree with some of Rosin's observations, but not with the spirit of the article or her conclusions. Yes, people can chose what they want to chose for their lives, however, mis-information driven by malcontent such as that of Rosin's does nothing to elevate the way our society values children, families, and humanity itself. When you make a case against something so natural and so basic to humanity, the very feeding of our babies in the way we were meant to feed them, it seems to me you are throwing in your vote with the capital-driven, work-and-productivity-above-all-else camp. You are saying that things women inherently do are not as valuable as industry. You are devaluing women. How is this real feminism? Women should not have to match men in order to be respected.

Rosin breast-feeds. Dutifully. She doesn't really like it so much, though. She says, "It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way." Well, that's a huge assumption. I breast-feed on-demand and have made a significant financial contribution (30-35 percent) to my household for the past 21 months. I don't think my clients would say my work is not meaningful. Women make it work and should be applauded for their creativity and tenacity—especially those who have to deal with pumping. Women should be supported in their efforts to care for their children, not told that this care is not all that important, and therefore can be cast aside so they can get down to the real work of turning the wheels of industry.

Rosin claims the science supporting the benefits of breastfeeding is inconclusive, noting the dearth of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs). She seems unaware of the growing call among nutrition scientists to look beyond RCTs for evaluating nutrient benefits. Because poor nutrition can't ethically be controlled for—researchers can't deprive a group of study participants something good for them—the RCT is probably not the ideal model for nutrition research. Realistically, we have to rely heavily on epidemological data, that is, studies that track what people do over time and tease out similarities in an attempt to link habits to outcomes. Many of our public health initiatives, in fact, are based on epidemiological evidence, such as the message that fruits and vegetables are good for you, seen in the "5-a-day" campaign, or even the venerable food pyramid itself. Rosin, after presenting her interpretation of the body of scientific evidence, or lack thereof, on the benefits of breast-feeding, says, "Breast-feeding does not belong in the realm of facts and hard numbers; it is much too intimate and elemental." I'd have to agree with that, so why include all the analysis of the journal studies?

I will admit I am not all that interested in the science behind breast-feeding. To me, the fact that my body makes milk and my baby wants to drink it tells me that it's right. It feels good. It's cozy. It just makes sense. Yes, it's often a challenge for a new mom to get started. Yes, sometimes I am just not in the mood to have my now-toddler climbing on me and grabbing for "milkies". But, it's my calling right now. It was since my daughter's birth and it will be until we both decide it's time to move on. (I'm hoping that will be some time between age two and three.)

Rosin's interpretation of the science doesn't really wash for me. It seems like she had this idea in her head—let's discount the benefits of breast-feeding because it's a pain and it ties women down, yeah, that's a new idea—and she went and dug into the journals to support her predetermined notion.

Rosin is one mixed-up woman and I wish she could just let go. She says of breastfeeding, "It contains all of my awe about motherhood, and also my ambivalence. Right now, even part-time, it’s a strain. But I also know that this is probably my last chance to feel warm baby skin up against mine, and one day I will miss it." She is letting this thing she knows she will miss slip through her fingers because of her joyless brand of feminism.

She asks that we weigh the benefits of breast-feeding against all those things a woman must give up in order to do so. "Given what we know so far, it seems reasonable to put breast-feeding’s health benefits on the plus side of the ledger and other things—modesty, independence, career, sanity—on the minus side, and then tally them up and make a decision. "

For me, there's no decision. I just always thought I'd breastfeed, although I never gave it a whole lot of thought. I was surprised in my child birth class that such a big deal was made about breastfeeding, almost to ensure we new moms would do it. I think that's good, from a public health perspective, but to me, it was just assumed that a woman would breastfeed unless she just simply couldn't for very serious reasons. I know now I was a little out of the loop in terms of the difficulty some women have and the politics of it all.

I guess different women process these things differently—modesty, independence, career, sanity—because I just don't have issues with any of these. (Each could easily be the subject of a longer post!) Maybe because I am uninhibited, or because I have small breasts, or both, modesty is not a concern of mine when it comes to breast-feeding. I'll do it any time, anywhere. It's natural, it's me, it's my kid and it's my right. I don't lament any lack of independence, either. The way I see it, certainly the first year of my child's life, and now well into the second, it's kind of my job to put her first, and so, yeah, maybe I can't take off and be away from her for hours at a time. Maybe I'm not supposed to at this point in our lives. Career? I opted out of the office day-to-day in order to stay home with my daughter during her baby years. Other women, who I admire immensely, make it work by pumping (another issue worthy of much discussion). And as far as sanity goes, it's over-rated.

Commenters to the NY Times Motherlode blog had some really good posts...

More of my thoughts on breast-feeding...

A traditional mom?

I found out the other day that I am a traditional mom. How can a 21st century, independent communications consultant who is basically online on and off 16 hours a day be a traditional mom? Read on!

In "How She Really Does It", by Wendy Sachs (mentioned in my previous post), it talks about the guilt women have whether they need to go to work or choose to go to work and be away from their babies.

"In cultures where babies are always burrowed onto their mother's bosoms, moms are never made to feel guilty about leaving their kids behind to go to work because mother and child are literally connected at the hip...

...for centuries it has not been practical for mother and child to be attached all day long, every day...

In the United State, the combination of a rigid non-family focused workplace, children spaced close together, and a lack of familial support stresses perhaps our most intense primordial affiliation—the mother-child bond."

And here's where it gets really interesting, when Sachs cites anthropologist Helen Fisher who explains:

"Fifteen thousand years ago, you would never have two children under four years old. We were not built to have children so close together. For millions of years, the natural spacing was four years apart; the same thing is true in gorillas and chimpanzees and even greater in orangutans...The reason that the four-year birth spacing was maintained was because if you nurse a baby on demand, several times an hour, and sleep with a baby at night who keeps nursing, and combine that with a great deal of exercise and low body fat, you wouldn't conceive until you've really slowed down on the nursing. So a woman was only dealing with one child at a time, and the mother carried that child on her back while she did the gathering of vegetables; that's what she was expected to do. She left the older kids in camp in multi-age playgroups in an extremely secure, social environment with all of her relatives and friends. So there was no anxiety about daycare, and there was no anxiety about leaving the baby because she never left the baby since she was nursing around the clock. So she could do all of her basic jobs simultaneously and comfortably.

What we're lacking today is about fifteen other people around us to help care for the babies. We don't have the other adults, friends, relatives, other children, we have none of that. And women today often have more than one child under four years old, so no wonder we're suffering!"

So, we are talking Paleolithic-traditional here, not June Cleaver-traditional. I love the cave-mama characteristics I can benefit from. OK, so maybe I don't have extremely low body fat, but I did (and still do, though to a lesser extent) nurse around the clock and co-sleep. Basically, I have my little one around me all day while I am at home on the computer, aside from our daily trip to the gym, errands and outings (where she is mostly still right there with me). I still haven't had a regular period and my daughter is 20 months old, so old-school biology is working for me, for sure. (Interestingly, the prehistoric paradigm is also used in the popular book "Happiest Toddler on the Block", where author Harvey Karp, M.D., takes kids from being chimps to Neanderthals to little cavemen.)

I guess maybe biologically, we humans are still programmed to work a certain way that hasn't caught up with our technological advancement. Still, as evidenced by the way I managed caring for my baby (and now toddler) while working remotely over the Internet, technology can be a huge boon when it comes to staying close to our babies.

Let's call the whole thing off

It dawned on me today that I want to officially drop out of any discourse involving "Mommy Wars"...that debate between stay-at-home moms and go-to-work moms and anyone else with an opinion to spout off. I never really wanted to be in such a war, or on one side or another anyway, but just in case there was any confusion, here are my latest thoughts.

I recently read "How She Really Does It" by Wendy Sachs, where Sachs talks with a number of professional women about how they juggle motherhood with work. I enjoyed the book immensely—maybe for the wrong reasons. To be honest, it made me feel so lucky and it made me realize how easy I have it, being a work-at-home mom to one lovely daughter. Now, it's not always easy to be home all day with a toddler and try to get 3-5 hours of office work in as well...but, it beats having to feel guilty about leaving her—which I would. It beats having to worry about her all day. It beats being pissed off that I can't see her cute smiling face and hear her laugh whenever I want.

With my work, I do have deadlines, but for my day-to-day schedule, I can often work when I can, if my daughter is playing independently, work while she naps, or when my husband gets home from work and watches her. Or, I can always put off work til late night when she is in bed and my husband's in bed, too. My preferred time slot, other than naps, of 9-ish p.m. to 12 a.m. I just don't need that much sleep. I realize that this situation is somewhat unusual and I'd love to find a way to talk about it more and maybe encourage others to explore how they could set up a similar situation if they were interested, but I'm not sure of the best venue (continued blogging, book, gatherings?) or the finer points and details of my message.

I intend to either work more hours developing my own business or go back to a full time office job when my daughter is older—school age. But, the infant and toddler years at home are really special to me personally. That's more of a personal choice that makes me happy than anything I want to politicize or lord over anyone else.

Reading about the lives of other women made me feel like not arguing anymore—if I ever did. I don't know, I think I was just expressing an opinion, but now, somehow I want to soften it. The book made me feel compassionate. Whether or not these working women feel sad about leaving their young kids, I feel sad for them because of how *I* would have felt. But that's more about me than about them or anyone's kids. Even if they make a shitload more money than I do. I have enough. I feel like I don't need to judge or comment on anyone else's life choices. But, I can celebrate my own.

Bitchy Buddhist Mom

It happened in the frozen food aisle at Whole Foods. This woman was poring over some veggie burger packaging. I gave her a little time. She was standing there in the freezer doorway. Reading. I’m waiting. I’m holding my thirty-pound toddler in one arm, wanting to carry on with my quick blitz through to grab a few things. I scope it out. She is short. I am tall. I say “excuse me” and slink over toward the case, reaching up over her head. I grab my Amy’s Cheddar Burger box and she turns, finally ready to move out of the doorway. We touch. I quickly back away. “I’m so sorry.” I say, out of habit, politely, pleasantly. I’m not really so sorry.

“Couldn’t you have just waited?” She yaps.

“I said I was sorry. I said ‘excuse me’ and you just kept standing there.”

“I was going to move. You should have waited. You have that baby in your arms.”

“Look, I apologized. I am a kind person and I don’t need the lecture. I said I was sorry, for, uh, touching you. God forbid people touch each other.”

“I am kind too. I am a kindergarten teacher. You should have waited. You have that baby…”

She seemed to be implying that I had put my child in harm’s way by taking a chance at bumping into her, by reaching over her. She clearly had no idea what kind of people we were, me and my little bruiser. Being grazed by a five-foot-two woman would not cause me to drop my child. If I faltered, my little one would cling to me anyway. Was she kidding me? I was not impressed by her saying she was a teacher, either. In fact, I was turned off. It underscored her being overly…something. Fussy? Authoritarian? Protective? Preachy? There was something about her. She was little, like I said. Not unattractive. My mother’s age. She wore a snug fitting North Face ski jacket and had a wanna-be hip satchel bag, patchworky purple. She had nice wire frame glasses. She looked like someone who thought they were earthy, cool, crunchy, conscious. The fact that we were arguing in Whole Foods over veggie burgers made the exchange even more ridiculous. I, in my black on black workout gear would have looked New-York-tough or otherwise scary, were it not for the little one in my arms with her hot pink pants and flower-appliquéd winter jacket. I was half a foot taller than her so maybe I was scary. She seemed intent on making me feel like I was an unfit mother for risking my kid’s life and limb by reaching over to get the veggie burgers and get the heck out of the store in a timely manner.

“Good lord!” I huffed and went on my way. There was no “winning” this. She was clearly the moral superior in her own mind and I, after all, had committed my transgression because I was in a hurry, so why would I want to be further delayed like this?

I felt that nervous, shaky feeling I get whenever I have confrontations with strangers. (Yes, it has happened enough that I have a feeling that I know and recall.) I had to go to a different line than her because I did not want to be close to her. I wanted to keep shopping and kill time so we wouldn’t even have to be up at the checkouts at the same time, but, again, I didn’t want to waste any more time. I was in a hurry. So we both checked out.

I was burning a little inside. I still thought she was kind of a nut, but I wanted the upper hand. It is twisted, I know, but I wanted the upper hand of being the “good” person. I wanted to show her something. Maybe that you shouldn’t bark at people in a store. Maybe that it’s alright if people gently bump into one another. I don’t know. Additionally, I did sincerely not want to have this person running around the world with negativity related to me. So, I called out to her when we were exiting the store.

“Hey there,” I said. “I just want to say again, sorry.” She stopped and seemed a little bewildered, but got over it quickly. “This is a small community and you might be my kid’s teacher or something someday. I don’t want there to be any negativity.”

She looked at me a little strangely when I mentioned the possibility of her being my kid’s teacher one day, then spoke. “Oh, there’s no negativity. It’s not like that. I’m sorry too. Honestly, my first thought was just the baby.”

Again with the baby! Whatever. It turned out the reason for her initial reaction to my mention of her being my kid’s teacher was because she is a special ed teacher. Oh. Maybe that’s why she was so, uhm, sensitive to the potential of me dropping my kid or something, too? Worried I’d drop the kid and she’d hit her head and end up slow? I guess it could happen. I went on to learn she had taught at UCLA, too, writes children’s books and has a son who is a doctor. Somehow, everyone who has a son or daughter who is a doctor always manages to work this into the conversation within the first few minutes of meeting them!

She kept babbling on and on. I lost track. At this point, I had completely blown my goal of getting in and out of that store. My kid was squirming in my arms, I had to adjust the grocery bad and her weight. I just wanted to get out of there. I put the child down and was very careful to make sure she didn’t dash out into the parking lot or anything. I could sense this woman was worried about that too and felt like she almost thought I shouldn’t have put the child down.

“Well, you better go home.” She turned to my daughter. “I know if I was your mama, I’d want to just kiss you all day!” She said pleasantly enough, but still somehow seemingly trying to nudge a little bit about what kind of mom she was and what kind of mom I was. Why wasn’t I, at that moment, sitting there showering my baby with kisses? She then added, “You’re a good mom. You go home with that little one.”

OK. I will. Please do let me go now! I am not really one of those women with strong doubts about if I am a good mom. I mean, in moments of weakness or tiredness, I feel like I could have done better. I could have been more patient or whatever. But, ultimately, so far I am doing alright. I stay home with the child. I play with her. I read to her. We do art. We cook. We have dance parties. I breastfeed, still. I co-sleep. I try to give her a lot of latitude. Sometimes I’ve yelled, sometimes spanked a butt (this I regret), but I always feel guilty and pledge to do better. I am just a normal, good mom. She doesn’t know the half of it. I don’t need her approval!

“Yeah, we’re going to head home. Again, just wanted to say sorry because I don’t want to run into you in the neighborhood someday and have you be like, there’s that bitchy woman!” Was there really a neighborhood here in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Maybe I just wanted there to be.

“Oh no,” she said. “I wouldn’t think that.” She reached over and tugged my girl’s winter jacket down over her belly, which was a tiny bit exposed, as the jacket had ridden up. “Cover her up now, it is so cold out here!” She warned, walking off into the forty degree day. And we left, me and my little chick, to be the tough yet tender bitches that we are.

Firing my trainer

I realize now that I was paying for someone to pay attention to me. After my free orientation at the gym with this woman, I was somehow talked into signing up for three personal training sessions. She listened to me talk about myself and my weight loss woes. About not having time to work out as much as I used to before the baby. About how I used to be so in shape. She was a mom, too. Maybe old enough to be my mom, almost. She knew what it was like to breastfeed for an extended period of time and how that affected weight retention and energy levels. She said I should make time for myself. I decided to go ahead and buy the three sessions with her and she said she’d make up a little gift pack that she usually gives to people who buy the sessions for someone else and it could be my gift to myself. Cool. I thought it might be nice and maybe there’d be some candy or coupons or a granola bar or some cute little thing with it. She seemed to know where I was coming from. Sort of.

There were red flags that I should have noticed. Things that should have tipped me off to the fact that we would not be a good fit. Like when she asked me if I wanted her to call my husband and tell him to get me the training three-pack for a Christmas gift. Uhm, no. I buy my own things, with my own money, thank you very much. And my husband would totally be like WTF if some lady called him saying this! Then she was telling me she had this “network” of people who provide services, like Mary Kay ladies, hairdressers and such. Because women need to put themselves first and take care of themselves. Blah blah blah. Of course, we need to do these things, but I think there is way too much talk about it. Just do what you need to do. Don’t make a religion of it. Besides, I don’t do Mary Kay. I am an Aveda girl. She also wouldn’t go along with me when I was telling her how fat and out of shape I was. She was being way too gentle. I wanted someone who would kick my ass. She told me I needed to stretch and do yoga. I told her I tried yoga so many times and I knew it wasn’t for me, so she let that go. Pilates? No. Boring. I am a blast-it-out, power, endurance kind of person. I basically just wanted someone to push me a little and make sure I was using the machines with good form. Someone to pay attention to me, too. She seemed to do that, so I ignored the flags and I went for it.

So, I signed up for the three sessions and gave her a try. Sadly, on the day of our first session, things felt differently. She was five minutes late. To me, that’s bad. She didn’t have her glasses—or any kind of plan for me. And she had coffee breath. She seemed tired and harried. She said she was worn out from being in class all weekend. I asked her what she was going for. She answered, personal training certification. Oh. Should you already be…uhm…forget it. Never mind. I wanted to tell her we could do this some other time, but I hesitated.

She started putting me through the paces. I’d already done my cardio warm up. Most of it was pretty standard stuff. Squats. Lunges. She kind of stared into space while I did my reps. Then I did some bicep and tricep stuff on the pulleys after she’d scrambled around less than expertly trying to set them up. She didn’t seem like she knew how to use them any more than I did. Things really got wacky when she had me doing this crazy wood-chopper exercise on the cable machines. She demonstrated and I tried to copy but I couldn’t do it. I got the concept, but I admitted to her I am not the most coordinated person. She kept barking “wrong!” when I did them. I tried again. “Wrong!” She said. After a few tries, I was almost in tears.

“Here” she demonstrated again. “It’s like chopping wood. You have to move your body and come down like this. Like if you were chopping wood, you’d come into it here. Not here.” Whatever. I am a 36-year-old woman office worker living in the DC suburbs. What do I know about chopping wood? And I suspect this woman knew no more about chopping wood than I did.. I just didn’t’ like her vibe at all. I told her we should find something else to do. This move was just not working for me. She said I might have to do it a hundred times to get it right, but then it would be good. I told her I didn’t have time to do something a hundred times. I only have an hour or so a day to work out and so I have to make the most of it. Her yelling “wrong!” did not help, either, but I kept that bit to myself.

So, we carried on. “What do you want me to show you, then?” She asked. “Since you don’t like cables?” Well, I never said I didn’t like cables, just not those weird wood-chopper exercises. “Uhm, I don’t know. When I had a trainer before, he just had a basic program for me of straightforward moves on the basic machines.” Ah, yes, good old Monzeil, my old trainer from DC. Young, hot, black man. I am still not sure why the gym had assigned this woman to me.

When I first called to redeem my free orientation, the trainer coordinator was like, “OK, you will be with Jodi (named changed to protect identity). You will recognize her right away. She is really peppy. She will be the one with Christmas bows in her hair or antlers or bells or something. She has lots of spirit.”

Uh huh. Another red flag I should have noticed.

“OK.” I answered. “Uhm, I’ll come in at 8:30 and run for a half hour and then meet with her at 9:00”

“Alright. Jodi will be there early, I’m sure, if she hears you are going to be there at 8:30. That’s just the kind of person she is. Bright and early.” He said.

“OK. Well, don’t have her interrupt my run. I’ll just go to her when I’m done.” Ha! She was so not early! As I mentioned before, she was late.

Anyway, when the first session was finally over, we made our next appointment. I dreaded seeing her again. The next session went a little better. She seemed to listen to the bit about me wanting to maximize my results in the time I had, but misunderstood the hour I mentioned for a half hour. So, she created a half-hour workout for me. I like the workout actually, but she still said all kinds of off-the-wall stuff when she was actually paying attention to me and not staring into space or talking to the manager about equipment or giving some lady on the stairmaster pointers on her form. When she had me do squats she was like, “Squat like a Korean at the marketplace. You know how they squat. Those Asians can squat. They are just made differently.” And somehow taking a dump was also brought into play to illustrate the depth my squat needed to take. O-K. I’m not all chichi or easily offended, but I don’t need to hear sweeping racial generalizations or bathroom references from someone I hardly know in order to do a proper squat. Also, it wasn’t challenging enough. It was good, but I wanted something that would really push me. To her credit, she kept asking me if I was doing OK during the workout, and I was always, like, “yes”. I think I may look more out of shape than I actually am!

I knew I could not see her again for the last session, so I put it off til that time frame that seems so distant during Christmastime…after the New Year.

I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I didn’t want to complain. I mean, she didn’t really do anything wrong. She just was not right for me. She was a tad bit unprofessional, but nothing serious. Maybe she was not even a real trainer yet? Still. I don’t want to mess up anyone’s business. It was only $80. I could forget about it and move on. But, I was not going to subject myself to her again.

I put her off once when she saw me at the gym, doing crunches on the incline bench. She hollered at me, interrupting me as well as her own client who she was currently in session with. “When do you want to do your last session?!?!”

“Uhm, I’m going to have to call you. I, uh, don’t have my calendar with me.”

Then, she phoned at 6 pm (dinnertime) a few days later. “When are you going to the gym next?” My kid cried in the background. “Oooh, is somebody tired?”

No! Someone is just being the whiny toddler that they are and wanting my attention while I am both trying to cook dinner and get off the phone with you! I thought.

I said, “No…uhm….I’m gonna have to call you back. Now’s not a good time.”

I hung up. “That woman drives me crazy.” I said.

“Who?” My husband asked.

“Oh nobody…I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. Hopefully he would think it was a client or something. That’s the only reason I even answered the phone—thinking it might be a client or my mom. I never told him about the whole debacle. I know it was my money, but I don’t think he’d be thrilled about me spending it on a trainer, and now I was so regretful and embarrassed that I did because she was so lame.

I wondered how I would avoid forever making that last appointment. I knew I had to face it and be up front with her. So I wrote her a note and planned to leave it at the front desk for her. I told her thanks for giving me some new ideas for my work outs, but I am going to pass on the last session. My free time is just so precious and rare right now that I just want my time at the gym to be my refuge, just to go in and do what I do, get in the zone, etc. etc. etc. I pondered what she might think. Had she sensed my lack of enthusiasm about her, or was I sufficiently sunny and fake enough? Why was I faking for someone I was paying, anyway? Well, I was not going to make myself fake for another half hour that I’d paid for. If I wanted to sit it out, I would. I had wrestled with this for a while. I worried about hurting her feelings. I thought to myself, can’t you just sacrifice a half hour of your time to preserve this woman’s feelings? The answer was no.

I thought it would be the decent thing to do to follow up my note with a phone call. I didn’t want to be shady and I wanted to be able to look her in the eye and give a little wave if we ran into each other at the gym. So I called her and repeated my spiel from the note (which she had not yet received.)

She didn’t seem surprised. She reminded me that I had paid for the sessions. I told her I didn’t care. I’d sign off so she would get paid, but I didn’t want to do the last session. I just needed the time to myself. She said she understood completely. “You’re just like my daughter,” she said. “She works with kids all day and she just wants to veg out and be alone at the end of the day.” Hmmm. OK. This woman did not for one instance entertain the notion that something she did had done might have put me off. I guess I faked well enough. I was anticipating her maybe asking me if anything was wrong and me gently telling her some of the things I thought were strange, but reassuring her that maybe it was just me and she’d be a good fit for someone else. At the very least, I thought I might get the chance to tell her it’s probably not the best teaching technique to yell “wrong!” when someone is not getting their form right. But, alas, she “completely understood” where I was coming from. Right.

What I learned from all this is that I don’t think I like the idea of a personal trainer any more at all. I always thought I should get my husband a package for a gift so he could get some tips on new exercises or better form. He never seemed interested when I’d mention it though. I can understand why now. It is kind of awkward to have someone hovering over you, and for many people, myself now included, a workout is an escape. I like to just get on that treadmill, blast some of my favorite songs, get the heart rate and endorphins pumping and feel great. I did have a good stint with that fellow Monzeil, but that was a different time in my life. I will never pay for someone to pay attention to me again.