Today was meant to be my triumphant return to dance class.

I’ve always loved dancing - I danced in my teens, twenties, and thirties. But somewhere in between the pandemic, adrenal burnout, and peri-menopause, I hit a snag. So I’ve been working with a trainer for months to get strong enough to go back to dance class, after six years off.*

*This is what they mean when they say “use it or lose it”. When I was younger, no matter how out of shape I let myself get, all I had to do was sweat and suffer through the first few dance classes and I was fine. Now, in my late 40s, I had to train for months before I could even SET FOOT in a dance class.

Today was going to be the day.

I woke up this morning, my body said YES LET’S DO THIS THING and I got in my car at 7:50 am so I could waltz into the 9 am modern-yoga hybrid class that I use to love. My plan was to waltz out again and head to work feeling delightfully smug about my accomplished goal.

Alas.

Anyone who’s ever tried to commute anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area knows the pain of this next anecdote:

I stupidly believed google maps.

It said it would only take me an hour to get there. Like a naive rube who got here yesterday, I left with an hour and ten minutes, figuring I’d have just enough time to pay and dash into the bathroom before class started.

Instead, the drive took an hour and twenty minutes. About halfway through, my body stopped saying HELLZ YESS LET’S GO DANCE and started saying GET ME TO A PLACE WHERE I CAN PEE. NOW.

So instead of dance class, I went to McDonald’s for a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit (and their bathroom). Like a hero.

Instead of dance class, fast food. Instead of smugness, a general sense of rue and disbelief that I let myself be duped by Bay Area traffic. Again.

I will try again on Thursday morning. I will leave at 7:30 am. Like a hero.