Saturday, December 18, 2010

"Mr. Kopp please come to the kids club. Mr. Kopp to the kids club."

Gina and I are gym rats. One of our first conversations when we met in college was about work out regiments (hot, right? It was followed up with a debate about who loves ice cream more. ... we have a lot of inner conflict going on). Anyway, I use my lunch breaks during the week and Gina will typically run before the yoga classes she teaches, but Saturdays are a bit of a mess because of time constraints. Typically I will do an early morning run with fat dog, and then Gina will leave when I get back so she can run before her class. Today we thought, since the girls are down to one nap a day and can usually wait until after noon to take it, we would go to the gym together and put them in the kids club. One nice thing about teaching is you get free kids club. So we dropped them off, Gina went off to her class and I climbed aboard the tread mill. Literally, just after I passed the second mile mark I hear the big brother voice come over the speakers "Mr. Kopp, please report to the kids club. Mr. Kopp, to the kids club." I had flashbacks to grade school and being summoned to the principals office (I wore a shirt that said "Shift Happens" a week after the Northridge quake. ... to my private Christian school. Surprisingly they weren't offended by the insensitivity to a catastrophic natural disaster, but were unamused with the implications of swear words). I flew off the tread mill and entered the kids club a sweaty mess to see Genevieve crying hysterically. "She's just really tired" said the attendant. First of all, everyone says this. ... all the time. My daughter has "sleepy eyes", that's just how she looks, but I'm not going to argue with the 12 year old in charge. I convince her to hold them for 5 minutes so I can just shower and I return to now two screaming babies. Gina has 40 minutes left on her class, it's raining outside and I've got to do something. I can't go home, because I'll have to turn right around to get Gina. I can't sit in the car because. ... well. ... that'll make them much less happy. I'm afraid they might fall asleep, but they haven't eaten lunch yet. What to do, what to do. So I left the gym and headed straight to McDonald's. ... that's like leaving church to hit up a bar. I figured I'd get some chicken nuggets and some milk and at least get them fed. Well, there is no left hand turn opportunities and a severe shortage of u-turn locations in this area so after a series of strategic lefts I came back to McDonald's to find a line down the street. By the way, nobody is fussy anymore. In fact, we seem to be quite amused at Daddy's frustration. It dawned on me that there was a Weinerschnitzle (hard word to spell) nearby, so I jumped out of line and headed back toward the gym. I found an empty drive-thru line, but apparently there was only one woman working the entire restaurant, and I have a feeling she was literally processing the hot dog meet herself from some swine she was hand raising in the back because it took her 20 minutes from taking my order until she was able to produce 6 mini corn dogs and a small fries (I asked for apple slices to which she replied "we don't serve fruit" - I questioned the fruit smoothie machine in the corner and she said it was from a can. ... awesome). So I got back to the gym parking lot 35 minutes later then sat my 6'2" self backwards on the center console of our 4Runner and fed my lovelies until Gina came out. The gym staff also forgot to tell her we would be waiting in the parking lot so she waited in line to pick up two kids from the kids club who weren't actually there. It was a fun Saturday morning. Not likely that we'll try to go to the gym at the same time for a while, but hey, this is how you learn, right?! Right?!

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