����Are you sitting down?

����I have an irrefutable sign that the world as we know it is about to end, eh. For those of you who might be survivalists, it's time to grab the freeze dried food, the guns and ammo, and head for the bunker.

����For the rest of you, it's time to get your affairs in order.

����Why?

����I have joined a gym.

����I'll just give you a moment to let the enormity of this sink in.

����Those who know me well know that from May through October I am Gardening Woman, a super hero virtually welded to my shovel, wheelbarrow and compost pile. But from November through April, I become Sloth Woman, She Who Has Abs of Flab. By this time of year it ain't a pretty sight.

����When I was younger, Sloth Woman could spin three times and turn into Gardening Woman with nary a twinge, moving right into the rigours of moving piles of rocks, mountains of compost and hills of gravel. Those days are done.

����Last Spring Sloth Woman wept like a baby trying to become Gardening Woman. The house smelled like muscle linament--or as the spousal unit calls it The Anti-Aphrodisiac--for weeks.

����I have decided to actually prepare myself for gardening season this year. This is so completely out of character for me that I'm sure it's probably mentioned somewhere in the Book of Revelations as one of the signs that the end is nigh. ("And Marn shall doeth something sensible and prepareth her body for hard work, and it willeth Be So Wrong.")

����So anyhow, I went to the gym yesterday and a very nice woman called Babette made me sign many, many forms absolving them of all responsibility for my current state of insanity and anything I might do to myself on their premises.

����She measured, weighed, and even pinched me with calipers and then made me do some treadmill time so she could get a sense of my fitness level.

����I've never been to a gym, let alone on a treadmill before, and with my co-ordination level it's a feat for me to keep walking on the machine and NOT get rocketed off the end of the thing. Meanwhile, beside me, is a guy who has the incline on HIS treadmill set to "do you want sherpas with this?" level and is jogging briskly without breaking a sweat. Fine.

����The pitiful results in, Babette set up my fitness regime. We won't mention the sissy levels all the machines have to be set to for me. That would be just too sad.

����Nor will we mention the odd way I'm walking around today. Remember those cheesy old 1950's mummy movies? 'Member how the mummies used to walk around really, really stiffly without bending any joints?

����Um, yeah, that would be me.

����So let's see. I've begun a fitness regime so that when gardening season begins I won't hurt myself. Except now muscles I didn't even know I had now ache and I've got at least two months of new, improved pain until gardening season begins.

����Hey, wait a minute ...