Exercise is Boring

I'm sitting at home, the West Wing is on, the stove is on and I'm cooking some pasta. I have just hung up a load of washing and there is a strong likelihood that after writing this blog I will vacuum the house. This is my Saturday afternoon.

My wife has gone to the hairdressers and I am home alone. This is why my day is full of structure yet will ultimately end with very little actually getting done. This is what I do. This is not what I had planned. I should be doing some exercise right now. That's what I said I would be doing right now. But here is the thing - exercise is boring.

My wife and I spent this morning rehearsing for our show. Trying to remember lines is almost as boring as exercise but we're getting there. If anything I'm proving to be the weak link, in my defense I'm actually very good at delivering lines once I've remembered them, unfortunately I'm not very good at remembering them. So what I thought I would do was use my afternoon wisely and do some exercise because as soon as my wife gets home I'm going to have to do more rehearsing.

Which brings me back to my initial point, exercise is boring. I always feel better after exercising but it's all about the motivation to start the exercise that trips me up. I was going to go for a swim, but I would have been equally happy to go for a run. Just doing some exercise would make me feel like I've achieved something with my day. But the motivation isn't there because the actual exercise itself is boring.

Any exercise that I do today would be by myself and exercising by yourself is boring. Sure I can listen to my iPod (I probably wouldn't listen to my iPod if I went for a swim), but if I wanted to listen to music I could do that on my sofa and eat Doritos whilst doing it. Listening to music does make it less boring but it doesn't completely mask the fact that exercise is still boring.

What I don't want to acknowledge is that I'm nervous. All guys get nervous when they're in my position. We don't like to admit it and we won't talk about it amongst friends down the pub but this, right here, is as tense as a man's life gets. It's my nerves that is causing my lack of motivation. But why am I nervous? Because my wife is at the hairdressers!!

When your wife goes to the hairdressers one of two things is going to happen. The first option is that she goes and has a haircut but you don't notice the difference. That is a problem, you need to notice. Not noticing is wrong and not an option. Men hate change but, Ladies, there needs to be enough of a change for us to notice so we can comment on how nice the hair looks. Commenting that the hair looks nice is also the only acceptable response by the way, don't even entertain the notion of saying that it doesn't look nice. If you are a man who is contemplating saying that your lady's hair doesn't look nice I have one word for you - DON'T. Given that I already know she's at the hairdressers, and actually drove her to the hairdressers myself, it seems unlikely that I won't remember that she went to the hairdressers. I need to remember. I must notice.

The second option is a tricky one. This is what I'm sure I'll be facing when my wife gets home this afternoon. This is where there is a sizable change to the hair, either in colour or in cut. It's the not knowing that causes the stress. After a couple of days I'll get used to whatever she has done, men are adaptable that way. But she said that she was going to go from blonde to brunette. That's a lot of change for a man (me) to deal with in one day.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what her hair looks like, my wife will always be beautiful to me. But if this haircut sucks my beautiful wife will be upset, and then I'm going to have to make her feel better. That will involve romantic gestures and a trip back to the hairdressers at a later date to 'fix it up'. Then I'll have a whole day of stress again next week. So next weekend will suck as well, all because the hairdresser fucked up. No man can deal with 2 weekends in a row of haircut stress. Do hairdressers know how important they are? Do they realise the ramifications of their mistakes?

So you see, I can't exercise today. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm going to start drinking. Maybe if I'm asleep when she comes home it'll buy me some time. I'll figure out a plan... after the next episode of the West Wing.

Note: The wife returned an hour after writing this blog and her hair looked very different. I can happily report that not only did I notice this change but my wife is also very excited about her new hair colour. This really was the best possible outcome for everyone (and when I say, "everyone" I mean, "me"). By the following day I was used to the new colour and, apart from a minor hiccup in the supermarket when I couldn't find her because I was still looking for a blonde, life has returned to normal.