Little bit of Rizzo

I woke up late this morning, too late, I thought, to make it to Pilates in time to work out. In order to ease my guilt about missing Pilates and therefore throwing my parents' money away, again, I got dressed really fast and tried to sneak out of the house with Happy. My mother, however, caught me in the hall. She insisted that I could still make it to Pilates, that I would still make it, so I did.

There's an instructor there that I've been having trouble with. She has a way of jabbing me with her hand to correct me in an exercise, and repeating the same instruction again and again.

"Point your toes. Point your toes. Point your toes. Point your toes."

It makes me crazy. There's a kind of unwritten code (or maybe it is written, somewhere) for instructors at Pilates. If they see you struggling with an exercise, they give you advice. Then they move on to someone else. If you ask for help, they help, and then they move on to someone else. That way, you don't have any reason to feel defensive, you get valuable criticism, and you can get right back into your head.

This instructor, though, she breaks every rule in the code. She jabs with her hands, like I said, and her corrections are always negative. Not: "Claire, it helps to relax your shoulders here", for example, but: "Don't tighten your shoulders! You're doing it again! Don't tighten them! RELAX THEM!". Which is so relaxing, thank you. Can I go now?

There are exercises I've started skipping routinely now, because she always jumps on them and makes them hellishly demanding. Even if it's, like, bending over. So the other day, walking the dog with my mum, I mentioned the instructor and she immediately knew who I was talking about. She's had her own problems with this same person, but my mother, see, isn't like me. She can stand up for herself. So she'd told the woman her instruction wasn't working, and that had been that. Apparently, because I'm so shy and young and doe-eyed, et cetera, I've only been encouraging the jabbing and the needling.

Typically, even so, I wasn't about to go back to Pilates and tell the instructor I wouldn't be standing for anymore of her instruction, thank you. And equally typically, my mother mentioned it to a higher-up at Pilates this morning, thereby solving my problem without my having to lift a finger. After today's rushed work out, (the scary instructor doesn't work on Thursdays), Maureen, one of the lovely boss ladies at Pilates, took me aside and talked to me about it.

So now I'll be left in peace while I do my program, and the instructor will get feedback from Maureen, who repeatedly thanked me for bringing it to her attention, despite my pointing out that I hadn't, really, my mother had. But Maureen was great, and I feel better about it now.

I was in a really good mood when I got home, and banged through the door singing a song for the dog. Oh, it was nothing special, mind you. A little something I'd ripped off from Raffi:

O where is my Happy in the deep blue sea?
Where is my Happy in the deep blue sea?

Of course, when I reached the front hall, I ran into the computer guy (The Mac guy, Raoul. Not Richard), who'd been there the whole time. He told me, nicely, that he had fixed the wireless hub and that he'd be taking off now. I played it very cool. Told him I'd give my mother the message, and to "have a good one". Why do I tell people to have a good one? Why?

Upstairs, Happy was stuck in my room, riddled with excitement over the song and its implications of romping and hilarity. She was not disappointed.