My body and I are not on speaking terms today.

Actually, that's not EXACTLY true. My body is yelling at me and waving its arms wildly. I am clenching my teeth and doing my best to ignore the throbbing ache it is sending through my legs and arms.

"You promised me this was the winter to begin Marn's Butt Farm," my body says. "What about the happy hours on the couch? The chocolate? Didn't we agree that we were going to prove that those Wide Load signs aren't just for farm equipment?"

This is just Day One of Back to the Gym. The thought that I have bought a year's membership and I'm going to have to listen to my body whine about it for the next 360 days or so is sapping my will to live.

There is some good news here. I haven't lost all my fitness by any means. The new trainer tested me out on the machines and found I was still at the level I was about six months into last year's Fitness Freak-Out. This is better than I thought.

Still, when I got on the leg press machine and I could only move 200 pounds, I really, really felt like a sissy girl. Gone are the legs o' steel, back are the thighs o' jello. I didn't even bother to venture back into the testosterone-soaked free weight area. The guys would have been all sneery.

I hate it when they sneer.

I like to think of myself as this mellow and non-competitive person, but it's totally not true. When something matters to me, I get freakishly competitive. And the thing about the gym is that it's very easy to let it turn into a competition because some of the guys are already doing that.

"Dude, I just benched 235," one will taunt.

"Dude, I just did 200 ab crunches," the other will reply.

I have to remember that it's just about getting myself strong and in good cardio-vascular shape and that there's no way that I can start throwing around the weights these guys do.

But I want to.

Intellectually I know that is insanely stupid. I mean, these are 20-something guys who have spent ages working out and are coming close to their peak years for strength. I am a 51-year-old woman of dubious fitness. Even in my 20's I would not have had enough upper body strength to compete with these guys. We wimmens just aren't constructed the same.

I know. You're as shocked by that last insight as I am.

So yeah, in my head I understand the situation. But emotionally ... well, deep in my heart I SO want to kick their butts. In my heart I want to be one of the dudes.

Oh be quiet.

A friend of mine once said to me that if you don't grow up by 50, you don't have to grow up at all.