The Health Benefits of a Brewfest

We came across a delightful new workout in August: The Microbrew & Music Festival. We highly recommend it. Alas, we know it seems at odds with our early morning bike rides and late evening runs. But it turned out to be the perfect complement to the many health benefits currently sought by these 30-something women.

So it began:

We collected our friends in our vehicles and set out into the night—without children of any size or shape. We immediately did what we won’t let them do: turned up the radio and waved to strangers at stoplights.

It was our warm-up. We were feeling stodgy and stiff from a summer of providing constant maid and chaperone services. But tonight was different. We looked good in our new workout clothes: dark denim blue jeans (so new that a millimeter of shrinkage hadn’t yet produced the muffin), cute blouses, accessories and, ensuring a month’s worth of chiropractic adjustments, high-heeled boots.

A feeling of well-being came over us. The casting off of our ratty, holey sweatpants gave a thrill much like that of matching Nike duds bought at the start of every diet.

We weren’t even at the Brewfest yet and our mental health was improving, our waistline muffin-free.

In a half-hour we were inside the gates. There were beer tents in full circle. It was the most nourishing thing we’d seen since school let out in June.

“How many drink tickets come with our armbands?” Immediately, we wanted to know how healthy we were going to get.

“Five.” Five seemed like a serious workout with the added bonus that we wouldn’t be sore in the morning.

We set out, with a healthy interest in a renovated bus occupied by a goateed man handing frothy beverages out one of the side passenger windows.

But we didn’t get far. We kept running into people we hadn’t seen all summer due to the strict confines of our maid and chaperone services. There were introductions, re-introductions and a fair amount of high-fiving. Our emotional health was climbing, and rapidly. We started to feel human again and, dare we say, on track to our fastest mile ever.

“What are you drinking?” As is customary, we compared training plans each time before moving on.

As we progressed ever closer to the bearded man, we noticed he was being assisted by a friend of ours… who works at a health club. More high-fiving. Proof that we were on to something.

In an hour, we were warmed up. We were shocked to see we’d used only one drink ticket. It appeared that a night of freedom, while trapped inside a fence, was invigorating with or without liquid sustenance. We secretly prided ourselves on our low intake of calories.

Next, we decided to hit the silent disco, highly recommended by the bus driver.
But it sounded ridiculous, didn’t it, to gather in a quiet room with people and work up a sweat?

Or just like a gym.

We donned the headsets and were immediately overcome with a groove unlike any found on the stations radioed into a treadmill headset. This was where the squats, lunges and salutes to the sun came in. The workout began in earnest. We hit our stride.

At last, when we couldn’t do another single heel-to-butt kick, we headed over to the outdoor concert for the cool down. We were coming into the finale and it felt good. There was a lot of hooting and hollering, like a finish line at a race. Our legs ached, we were drenched in sweat and we had blisters on every toe. If we’d had a timing chip on, we’d been taking the podium.

And, it was only 10 p.m. We still had time to stretch and hit the showers before heading to bed… for our regularly scheduled workout the very next morning.

May you find ways to enjoy a good workout, wherever it may be.

Back 2 School Shopping

Strike a pose.

I love back-to-school shopping. I have two boys who claim they hate it. But this year, something magical happened under the spell of loud music in a fitting room.

The day started when I gave the command: “Wear shorts and crocs, something easy to kick off.”

This is almost, but not quite, an invitation to the beach. The outfit signals fun in the sun while their eyes signal JC Penney’s coupons. They are confused but compliant, unsure of why this feels like a good time already.

We hit the mall. They are 9 and 11. At this age, the teenage life is perfect bait. We enter stores we’ve never tread for them before: American Eagle, Aéropostale, The Buckle.

I am greeted with deafening music at AE. I assume the position of middle-aged soccer mom and start relaying my requests to the 14-year-old gal running the show, shouting over the music I don’t understand.

“We want the exact outfit on the mannequin up front.”

See that? Genius.

I’ve learned to trust these teenagers. I know they’ve spent hours crafting that headless man in the window and added that necklace at the last minute despite the elder manager’s horror. It’s nothing I would ever put together, but I need only take their hard work, swallow my protests, find it in the smallest sizes made, and reconstruct it in their fitting rooms.

My son puts it on. It’s a red-striped shirt, streaked jeans and a denim shirt.

Whoa, hold up. There are darts on the front of the denim shirt. I step out of the dressing room.

“Is this a girl’s shirt?” I inquire of the woman-child outside the door.
Kendall, my 11-year-old son, howls MOM at me with his eyes.

“Well, is it?” I ask, shutting the door behind me. No reason to have a witness to what is clearly a fashion misstep by the young lady.

However, she assures me that it is not a girl’s shirt.

I re-enter the lair and face my assailant.

“What?” I hiss.

Kendall screeches as loudly as he quietly can: “Why would she bring me a girl’s shirt?”

“Because it has darts!” It’s his chance to come to his senses.

“What are darts?”

Forget it. I tell him the real reason: “I thought maybe she brought the shirt for me.”

Silence. Hands stop mid-air. Hair flutters to a standstill. His eyes pop out of his head and roll across the fitting-room floor.

It never occurred to him that his mother could shop in a store like this. I do some quick math and realize it’s been over 10 years since I’ve done so.

“What?” I hiss.

This time he knows better than to answer me.

He puts on the ensemble: he looks fabulous. Nelson, my 9-year-old son, scores a shirt that is only one size too big and looks hip too. They look cool. I am taken back to the gory and glory of middle school.

A sweet nostalgia comes over me until I realize:

• I’ve got sensible shoes on and want the bench in the fitting room for a rest.
• I’m no longer intimidated by the outrageous fashion sense of the fitting room attendant. I’m now so much older than her that it’s clear I’m someone’s mother and she’s someone’s daughter. We are no longer born in the same century.
• I’m sick of screaming over the music. And—here it is—I think about asking her to turn it down.

What have I become?

I immediately try to conclude our purchasing. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve just traveled from trendy mom to nerdy seventh grader to crusty senior in about 35 minutes.

But it’s too late. I see the boys have caught the rhythm. They are posing in the mirror in their new duds. They are dancing, they are laughing, they are cooperating. And they can’t hear a word I’m saying. Indeed, I’ve found the key to back-to-school shopping.