Body perfect

Wife joined me at the gym today.

Normally, I don't want to be bothered during my hour of power (more like my hour of sour - as in every muscle, yes ... even that one, rises up like a village of angry peasants without enough bread for the winter, sours in moods and works against me in hopes that I tumble head long down the gym steps that lead from the cardio level to the front door) but I welcomed Wife into my fortress of solitude to see that I just don't sit on the exercise bike for an hour and look at all the strippers coming in for their afternoon work outs before heading to the pole.

And you know what, I don't think Wife liked my regimen.

We started with sitting calf raises, and when I threw a 150 pounds in weight on her machine and told her to get to work - double time - she picked up a 10-pounder and whacked me in my swimming pool.

"OK," I squeak. "Maybe 20 pounds is your speed."

"Ya think, Muscle Boy?"

I let the sarcasm go and lead Wife over to the hamstring and quad machine. I go to town with her watching me make faces that porn stars have copyrighted since Adam told Eve "let's try it this way."

"You put a lot of weight on there, dear."

"Damn right, baby, daddy's got steakstrings, not hamstrings."

We finish up on the weights level with the ab machine. The user sits down, feet behind two pads, elbows resting on their own pads and hands grasping a pair of handles. It looks like a torture device in Count Tyrone Rugen's (the six-fingered mans) torture chamber. I pile on the weight for her - all five pounds of it - and let her get started. And then I tickle her armpits in mid-ab crunch.

"What are you doing?" She asks more angrily than I anticipated.

"What do you mean? I do this to all the ladies who work on these machines. It helps the muscles contract and work harder."

That answer didn't please her but she let it go. Instead she asked me to adjust straighten the weight stack then caught my hand underneath 40 pounds of steal. I think this was her punishment for me.

"Tickle, do ya?"

We closed out the Hour of Power with a brisk wog (half walk, half jog because you have to be a NASA scientist to figure out the treadmill machines).

"How does that feel Muscle Boy?" She asks with nary a hair misplaced.

"Uh-uh-uh ... fine," I gasp, holding onto the rails like was being dragged by a semi down Interstate 17 at 65 mph.

"Good, let's bump up your speed then. This is what we do when I work out and you're not around."

The ankle that Doogie Howser fixed is ready to unhinge and my shins feel like fresly fillet trout steaks, parting right off the leg bone. Twenty minutes in and I call it a day, whooped by Wife who is merrily walking along, appearing to enjoy my pain.

I set all that up to mention this: for those who don't know she's started working out at "bootcamp" for women. From what I have been told they do a lot of "push ups" (more like push ups for sissies. Seriously they put their knees to the ground and push up from there; that's like doing bicep curls without any weight [oh man, she's going to beat the living daylights out of me]) and climb something they call "the wall." There are other exercises involved, but I can hardly make out what she says when she comes home because most of its breathless groans of pain.

The best way to describe it is to let her describe it. So check out her blog at www.bootcampbody.blogspot.com.