If grinding your teeth doesn't cause dementia, drinking chlorine definitely will

Last night my mom and I went swimming. Not swimming like oh swimming is so fun look at my cute bathing suit let's lounge on the raft and sip from frosty glasses of fruity alcoholic beverages but swimming like kick your legs and move your arms and try not to swallow water until you feel like you're going to drown and call it exercise.

I've always loved the water, but I've never been on a swim team or anything. I can certainly hold my drink my own in the pool, but I never even officially learned the strokes you need to know to be considered a swimmer. I just observed the swimmers, then mimicked them.

When I was a lifeguard I used to give little kids swim lessons because of two words: big tips. Parents totally pay up when you're teaching their children stuff that could save their lives or make them the next Michael Phelps or something. And when you're in high school, a $10 tip is so bank. But teaching little kids to blow bubbles and kick their legs doesn't mean I'm on the swim team and if the parents tipped me extra because they thought I was, then who am I to correct? And if anyone asked, I was always totally truthful.

Mrs. mom: So are you on the swim team at school?
Me: Bitch, I'm the MVP.

I've always been more of a runner. But this winter, since I've decided not to spend extra money on a gym membership and hello Bossy's Daily Poverty Party, this totally counts, my mom and I have spent a fraction of a fraction of the cost of a gym membership and joined the pool at the public high school near her house otherwise known as Tina Fey's alma mater, where we have pledged to swim laps every week and walk around the halls pretending to be awkward teenage Tina Fey until we are politely yet sternly asked to leave the premises and marry me, Tina Fey?

Because while B gets his winter exercise by playing paddle tennis and wtf is paddle tennis, I get my winter exercise by complaining about how it's so cold and so dark and oh I should have run tonight but I think it's raining and are you gonna eat that? So this year I will keep my motivation high by bringing diversity to my workout routine in the form of drowning swimming.

Last night was our first night in the pool and we swam tried not to drown for one mile. One mile. And my mom, who was on the swim team a million years ago at one point in her life, was a bit more graceful than I was and I spent a lot of the time swallowing water and trying really hard not to blow snot into the water when I exhaled and I'm pretty sure I'm doing it wrong.

But after we finished I could barely walk and I was seriously craving a burrito so I guess I accomplished the whole exercise thing. And I just thought of a great new way to stay tough in the pool. Whenever my muscles are burning and I'm swallowing water and I think my eyes might be rolling into the back of my head, I'm just going to think about how this is way better than being someone's prison sex slave after having been purchased for thee packs of cigarettes and some prison wine and if I was, I'd have to be really fast and strong so I could stab them in the neck with my shank so I should just be thankful. You can also apply this motivational scenario to running, working, and household chores. And when my friend Conor showed me this book review from Amazon.com, it made us really thankful that we could read. Tweet