In Honor of His Majesty

A few weeks ago, Dorian and I purchased The 30 Day Shred DVD by Jillian Michaels. It’s become quite the fad, from what I understand. But rightly so! Holy monkey, if you’re not lugging around a little less heft after 30 days of this video, then yer doin’ it wrong! She pushes you ‘til “you think you’re gonna die”…and then pushes you some more. I, for one, LOVE that. I haven’t been this challenged in a workout in over a year!

Some days, Dorian and I do this video together. And, an aside: You know what Dorian looks like. Big, strong, tough man. Wanna-Be Thug? Yes, you know what he looks like. Picture Mr. Thug Man working out to a video comprised of 3 lean, sinewy women, in our tiny little living room. Got the picture? Are you smiling? I thought so.

Anyways, this video takes 25 minutes. And it will shove you down like a bully in a playground and steal your lunch money. If you’re not lying on the floor panting after every workout, you didn’t do what she was telling you to do. Now, to get you to this “shredded” state, there are a lot of basic moves…that just work. Moves like jumping jacks, jump rope, oblique twists, skaters, knee lifts, and butt kicks. The key thing to remember about all of these moves? They involve jumping. And we all know what jumping sounds like to the person in the apartment below you, don’t we?

So yesterday, immediately after I’d gotten home from work (around 5:30pm), we popped the DVD in and started the workout. We were about 3 minutes into it, just wrapping up the warm-ups (which involved a set of jumping jacks that last for about 30 seconds), and we hear an incredibly loud pounding on the ceiling below us. It sounded like someone was trying to beat their way through our floor. A very, very clear message that we were disturbing His Majesty, below. It startled us, obviously, especially because I do this work out every single day at this time. So we attributed the angry pounding to the fact that it was probably louder than normal with both of us together. Well, duh. So we went to opposite sides of the apartment for the jumping parts and stood near walls to accommodate for our mass. And not 2 minutes later (so only about 5 minutes of noise), we receive another admonishment for our ways. A proverbial middle finger, if you will.

Now, I’m sure the force of Dorian and I vigorously jumping up and down on your ceiling doesn’t exactly sound like waves lapping up on a beach. It probably sounds more along the lines of a herd of elephants, or a jack hammer drill, or kids running around on a playground or or! A roller coaster straight through your living room…oh! Or! Your world literally about to come crashing down around you. So I do understand that a monotonous thunder-thump straight above your head doesn’t exactly fill you with sunshine and daisy feelings for the people living above you. I truly sympathize with that because when Alisa and I were living together, the guy that lived above us was HORRIBLY loud. At. All. Times. It didn’t bother us to the point of frustration, however, until it was around 10:30pm and we needed to get some sleep. And he clearly didn’t get the Night-Time memo because he was still stomping around at 1am. One in the morning! THAT guy, deserved a wrathful banging on the ceiling (did your mind just go somewhere dirty? Well, mine did).

I think, when you live in an apartment (condo, multiple family environment, etc.) your anger level in regard to noise, needs to be in direct correlation with the time of day the offending noise is being made. So, in my very humble opinion, the guy below us is an absolute crotch sniffer for getting all up in arms-bang on our ceiling pissy about a 25 minute workout video…at 5:30pm. I’d even give more credit to his tantrum if it were around 8pm. But 5:30? You, Sir, are a prissy little man that either likes way too much sleep or assumes that the world’s noise level must cater to your every whim. And Dorian and I will prove to you…around 5:30pm this evening…that you are sorely mistaken. You’ll want to take this healthy dose of reality with a full glass of water. And have a nice day.