The Joys of Living at Home

     Last week, I finally started feeling well enough to start exercising again.  As you may know, I've had a bad run with sinus infections and mono, so a boost in energy came as a wonderful sign as summer begins.
     My workout regime is very, well, routine.  I stretch out on the yoga mat, punch and dance around with my beefy 2 pound weights, ride the stationary bike, and end with ab work and more stretching.  Nothing crazy.  I went down stairs to prep the room, and decided to put my headphones on while I was still upstairs.
     Blasting music is the best part of exercising.  I love getting pumped up.  I have a tendency to get way too caught up in them sick beats and end up singing along or trying to scream and bike.  I'm sure I've alarmed the mail man a time or two.
     As I unfurled the yoga mat, I could no longer suppress the urge to sing along with slow motion Adele.  Her smooth, deep, remixed voice rang in my ears as whatever I sounded like rang out through the basement.  Thank the sweet babby jeebus for noise cancelling headphones.

      Even though the room was ready for me to get my sweat on, I was still caught up in my jams, so I stayed down and danced around and dropped my already androgynous voice as low as she could go and belted out the rest of the song.

     When I exited the room, to my horror, I noticed a pile of unfamiliar shoes.  I was so embarrassed it felt like all my internal organs just dropped to my feet.  I indignantly stormed upstairs to get water and hide my shame until it was safe to return to my workout.  I ran into my mum on the way to the kitchen and unloaded my indignation at my brother's insensitivity to the rest of the house on her.  My brother often has friends over in the nerd lair and does not warn anyone, but they stay locked away in that room, so no problems usually arise.  My mum was just as surprised as I was to hear that he had friends over especially because they were making no noise.
     Still recovering from my traumatizing antics, my mum coaxed me to to go back down and finish my workout, despite my aversion to returning to the scene of the incident.  The door to the nerd lair was open a crack, uncharacteristic of a room with bros in it.  My mum came down to see what was really going on, lo and behold, no one else was here.
     My brother's shoes are usually obvious because my brother is a giant and he wears a 13, or a 14, or some other monstrous size.  However, his friends are pretty tall too.  This shoe pile looked deceptively small.  The angle of the shoes played an optical illusion on me.  Yes, I was tricked by inanimate objects.

     So I continued on with my work out, fuelled by the remnants of rage and shame, the emotions needed to motivate many great decisions.