New Fitness Center

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 84, low 63)

The weather is about perfect. It’s not too hot that you can’t enjoy being outside, and it’s cool enough at night to sleep with the windows open.

It looks like things will be changing. Denis Phillips (our local super star weather man) is predicting that most of the country will be frigid by the third week of January. He is not sure about Florida yet.  Denis predicted a bad storm up on the east coast way before anyone else did.  (That was Sandy.)

 

Thanks to you all for some great suggestions on helping Mom’s friend Kathy.  I’m not sure what we can do because it’s so  hard to communicate with her.  Not only is there the hearing issue, but she gets kind of silly and can’t stay on the topic.  She tells us these things but when we try to help, she goes off on another subject.  I did try to contact her lawyer, but was unable to get a return call.  Her grandson doesn’t want her to have anything to do with my Mother so that may be the issue.    We spoke to one of the caregivers about the situation and before long another woman came in to ask if there was a problem.  She may have been the in-house advocate Marti spoke about in her comment yesterday.  She wasn’t a lot of help, but maybe we should try again.  I just feel so sad that she lost all control over her life.  Granted, she is elderly and needs a lot of care, but she should still be able to have some control over her money and her personal property.  She tells us the grandson took all of her credit cards and identification out of her purse.  She caught him going through it.  Unfortunately as far as her family members, the grandson was the best of the lot.

 

We finally got to go to our new fitness center yesterday.  It exceeded our expectations and it wasn’t too terribly crowded.  Most of the people there were geezers…like us.

It’s a huge building.  Downstairs are two large  indoor pools.  One is a therapy pool that they keep about 95 degrees.   The other is a big lap pool that they keep about 85.

Upstairs is the brand new state of the art fitness center. They have any, and all the machines you might want.  They have a spinning room as well as a room for classes.  Yes, Pam, they offer Zumba!

 

We have an appointment in a few weeks to be accessed by one of their fitness experts.  Unfortunately, time would not allow everyone to get the assessment prior to their opening, so we’re kind of on our own for the time being. 

We were each given a key fob that you insert in each machine.  It keeps track of each of your workouts,  a lot of information about what you did, distance, time, calories burned, etc and keeps track of each  day’s work out.

Once the assessment is done and their guidelines are programmed in, the fob will tell you you are supposed to do every day, which machines, how much weight and the number of reps.  Not sure I’ll be following their guidelines, but we’ll see.

Each aerobic machine is equipped with a Tv screen.  You can plug in your headphones and watch Tv,  surf the internet, play video games,  or listen to music.    It’s pretty cool.  At least it keeps you from getting bored.  I almost fell off (three times) the treadmill trying to change channels!

So after some cussing and grumbling trying to figure out how to get the key fobs and programmed with the correct weights, and get the machines working properly,  we got our workouts done and headed to the pool.  A little help from the staff would have been appreciated, but they are overwhelmed trying to sign up new members and get things going.  A little frustrating, but it’s the price you pay for joining a brand new gym.

We really enjoyed that 95 degree therapy pool. If only someone would have brought me a margarita, I would have been really really happy!