Cure for the Monday blues

Oh my Monday.  Stay-at-home moms may not exactly do what others might consider ‘returning to work’ on Mondays, but dude we have Mondays too.  Big time.  I had a doozy. A tell your child to do something a zillion times Monday.  A baby didn’t sleep all night the night before Monday.  An I had a great lunch-date with a girlfriend but in the 25 short minutes it takes to pick the boys up from school I had already worked so hard to stay calm and sweet and not rip their fingernails off that I felt like shutting myself in my bedroom Monday.  A texting my husband at 6:55 PM and saying “please come rescue me” then walking out the door at 7:15 PM saying “I may not be back” sort of Monday.  The laundry pile has taken over the kitchen.  The bathroom smells like an outhouse.  I don’t have any clean underwear, and I couldn’t figure out what to give the baby who was hugging my leg screaming for dinner sort of Monday.  

Luckily there’s a cure:

Take 50 or so women of all different shapes and sizes, ages and abilities and place them in a church or a school hall, add a couple of cutie-pie hip hop divas and turn up the music very loud.  Zumba is absolutely, hands down one of the most surprisingly fun additions to my life in 2010. I plan to do a lot more of it in 2011. Especially because it’s the only cure I know for THAT kind of Monday.  

We all gather around 7:30 at the school. Moms from the playground and the checkout from the grocery store and the rest.  There’s thin ones.  Fat ones.  Young whippersnapperish teenager ones who bare their midrifs and older greying grandmotherish ones in cute matching sweat suits.  There’s women in fantastic shape and women with a little extra squish around their middles.  The teachers gather us up and work their magic and somehow no matter how bad you are at that arms-above-your-head swirling twisting thing or how difficult that crazy ‘pony step’ seems they make us all feel like sexy latin dancers anyway.  I can tell.  Because the women have started putting flowers in their hair.  No lie.  Big bright ones on their pony tail holders and hair clips.  Several of them having started wearing sequin-sparkly tank tops with their leggings too.  Why have a workout when you can have a dance party with all your girlfriends!  And we do bring our friends.  Women were there tonight with daughters and sisters and mothers.  We gather up and for 45 minutes straight we laugh and shimmy and boogy, and I love it.  I leave there in 100% better mood every time.  I feel girly and sexy and like I had a heck of a workout.  It’s the only ‘exercise’ I’ve ever done that makes me think “Oh no!  It’s over?  Come on!  Just a few more minutes!”  Can’t beat that for a Monday for sure!