Recipe for physical fitness.

Just a little something I cooked up today. Be forewarned: this recipe takes a ton of prep work, so please read the entire recipe before jumping in.

1. Realize you’re getting a bit roundish. Be dissatisfied with this development.
2. Listen to one of your coworkers talk about Jillian Michael’s 30-Day Shred, a 20-minute workout that promises to get participants all toned and buff and hot and stuff. Think you can manage 20 minutes a day. Look up the DVD on Amazon, realize it only costs $6.97, and place your order.
3. Wait several days. Eat many graham crackers with chocolate frosting while waiting for Amazon’s standard shipping. Wish you had shelled out for the faster shipping, then realize you are cheap and would never in a million years do that. Eat more graham crackers.
4. Rejoice when package from Amazon arrives. Open the mailer. Do not open the plastic covering the DVD.
5. Place shrink-wrapped DVD on your dining room table. Look at it occasionally when you eat. Do this for a week.
6. In the midst of this week, take a call from your Corporate Behemoth-sponsored health coach. Tell her that you’ve ordered your first-ever workout DVD. Let her congratulate you and heap piles of praise on you. Neglect to mention that during the actual phone call, you are preparing graham crackers with chocolate frosting.
7. Wake up this morning with determination. Walk the dogs, thinking the entire time about how you’re going to go home and jump into your fabulous new workout routine.
8. Arrive home. Get dogs settled. Spend 20 minutes opening the stickered and shrink-wrapped DVD.
9. Note that the DVD states you’ll need a yoga mat and handweights. Figure you can live without the handweights because the workout is probably going to kill you anyway. Imagine yourself as Amy Poehler weightlifting air in SNL’s recent 80’s workout video spoof.
10. Fetch your yoga mat from under your bed. Realize it is slightly discolored. Realize that Lil’ Frankfurter, who likes to lounge on said yoga mat under the bed, has peed on it. Hark back to when you moved out of your shithole apartment and found that Foxie Doxie had peed under the bed multiple times and you never knew it until you took the bed apart. Be amazed that you got your full deposit back.
11. Take yoga mat into bathroom and wash it in tub with some dishwashing soap. Realize that the urine has permanently stained and even corroded the yoga mat. Realize also that you routinely place your face on the mat in different yoga poses. Be amazed that in the course of two weeks, not one but two of your personal items have been relegated to the garage for outdoor and home-improvement use.
12. Think about going to Target to pick up a new yoga mat. Sit on couch to think about it.
13. Realize two hours later that you fell prey to the most luxurious of all Sunday vices, the couch nap. Decide Target is too busy Sunday midday.
14. Research yoga mats online. Discover Amazon hocks used yoga mats. Consider the amount of sweat that has poured onto your own yoga mat. Lose all faith in mankind.
15. Eat peanut butter toast. Watch reality TV.