My wonderful ladies

I have been working a lot lately. Michele, the club manager and holder of most of the available hours left to get married. She will be back in three weeks. Her last day was Monday. I work on Monday nights with her but Michele left early to get ready to fly to St John's and marry her long time boyfriend. I am happy for her but I must say that working this many hours is hard on me physically and I still have two more weeks until Michele comes back and reclaims her hours. Actually, although I am VERY tired I am finding it rewarding on many levels.

My ladies are really wonderful people who are struggling with excess weight and trying to stay healthy. Many of them are teachers at the local schools and are highly intelligent. I mean, lets face it, high school math teachers are brilliant. There is always spirited conversation at my Curves. I make sure of it. It's my job to keep things rolling along and make sure the ladies are having fun.

The other day I was doing a double day which is when I work both morning and afternoon/evening shits. I have been doing quite a few of these lately but usually I am the afternoon/evening worker. The morning ladies are completely different people from the afternoon ladies. It's just a different crowd in the morning. It is mostly older retired people with a few early morning, before work exercisers. So anyway, as I was saying, I opened the club the other day at 7:00 am and there was a lady waiting for me to open. I opened up and let her in.

When she logged in the computer told me her name was Suzette. She was not anyone I recognized but I started to talk to her as I would any of our Curves clients. It didn't take me long to find out that this lady is a Pre-Med advisor at one of this area's premier med schools. In other words, she is the person that helps the college kids get their applications together to get into med schools. I told her about Kerry and her desire to get into a medical school, any medical school.

This wonderful lady is going to meet with my daughter, go over her resume and tell her how to get into med school. She is even willing to give the kid a letter of recommendation based on her favorable feelings toward me. This is an unbelievable stroke of luck for us. Kerry needs help putting her application together and here we have a professional person willing to help her do that. I feel very lucky to have met this wonderful woman.

Lori helped me with my homowner's insurance. When the insurance company raised my homeowner's insurance $1400 per year she advised me to get a specific inspection that saved me over half of the proposed increase. This same lady gave me wonderful advice about refinancing my house which is happening now. She has saved me so much money.

Carol works at our local Dillards. She is always the one who tells me about the 75% off sales on shoes and clothes. She is a New Yorker like me and we kibitz a lot. It's fun. I like her very much. She is a little piece of home.

Angela is a travel agent. She is helping me get Kerry a ticket to go to Cincinnati after her MCATs for a good price. Angela is a gorgeous, fun loving, partying, lovely lady with a big heart, She even brought her dog, Kona, to meet me after hearing so much about Rigby.

Gloria, dare I say it, met Paul. Yep, my Paul. Paul McCartney. She worked for Island Records in the 60's and 70's. She also turned down Mick Jagger for a date because he called her too late and she was sleeping. She met Cat Stevens, Elton John, Stevie Windwood and Ian Anderson among other huge stars. I always love to hear her stories. She lived my dream life. Actually, she was one of my most quiet ladies to start with. It was a challenge bringing her out but I was able to get her to start talking. OMG, was I glad?

These are just a few of the ladies that I have met at my Curves. Yeah, I work my ass off and don't make much money but boy, oh, boy, what fantastic benefits.

The more I work the more wonderful people I meet. I remember when I started this job I said to Juliana, my yoga teacher that I was upset because I wasn't making much money. She told me to be mindful and maybe there would be other benefits to this job. Once again, Juliana was right.