If you have nothing to blog about, let someone smarter and funnier than you blog, instead.
I would apologize for the gratuitous posting of a picture of Ryan half-clothed, but the thing is that I'm just not sorry.
I mean, take a good look.
...Yeah, you're welcome.
Have a great weekend, all. Check you Monday... maybe.
--UPDATE--
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I looked up from my second set of leg presses to see a mid-thirties man I'd never met standing over me at my feet, his mouth moving, but no words coming out. I looked quizzically at him, and he gestured to his head.
I touched mine, realizing my headphones were in, music blaring, which would account for the fact that this man was making zero sense to me. It still didn’t account, though, for him talking to me when I was clearly busy working out.
I jerked out an earbud and glared at him.
“Yeah?” I said, too loudly of course, due to the other bud still crammed in my right ear.
“Um, I was just wondering if I could hop on there for a quick set in between yours,” he asked. “I just have one more to do, and…”
I hadn’t realized I was hogging the machine in the near-empty gym, but apparently this whole sharing equipment thing was status quo for homeboy, so I nodded cautiously, standing. “Sure, no problem… but you might wanna—“
Before I could suggest wiping down the machine, as I had just completed a 3 mile run and was… glistening , we'll say, he was on his back, legs up, lying in my little sweatmarks, in the middle of his first squat.
I stretched while he finished, and when he got up, I was hit with a dilemma: Either I could lay down in my/his sweat and finish my last set, something I really didn't want to do, or I could walk across the gym floor to the nearest little sanitization station for a papertowel and some of that pink weird equipment spray, which might come off a little insulting, as this guy hadn't seemed to mind my sweat at all.
I paused for a moment, and then... fuck it. I layed back down on the machine and started pressing. I figured if he could do it, I could do it.
And then, four reps in, there he was again at the foot of my machine, mouth flopping.
I jerked up, plucking out an earbud again.
He leaned over and handed me a paper towel, already covered in the weird pink stuff. What the hell? I thought. Now he wants to clean the machine? “Uh, thanks?” I said, wishing he would just go away so I could resume my workout in peace. But instead of leaving, he stood there, expectantly.
He wanted me to wipe the machine down while he was there, when I was already in the middle of using it again.
Flustered and completely weirded out, I twisted around, wiping down the back of the seat, then the handles, and crumpling up the towel like There. Happy?
“Thanks for sharing,” he said, and reached out his hand.
“Sure,” I said, again willing him to vanish. But he continued to hold out his hand. I was totally perplexed, unable to think of anything else to do with it but shake it. So I did. Kinda a “Well, see you later,” shake, I thought.
But instead of shaking back, he kinda half-pumped and then let go, wiping his hand like I might have just given him some sort of disease.
“No, I meant I’d take the towel now,” he said, all uncomfortable, like I was some strange gym girl hitting on him when HE was the one who approached ME and then layed on MY sweaty machine and insisted on talking to me instead of just waiting 30 goddamn seconds for me to finish my set.
“Oh.” I said, ever-eloquent, fumbling for the crumpled, sweaty, pink-stuff covered paper towel. “Right.”
I am clearly a master of interpersonal communication; an example for all people interested in having non-awkward interactions with humanity; a veritable book of rules for those who want to go gracefully in this world amongst their fellow man.
God I hate it when strangers talk to me at the gym.
"I seriously don't understand how anyone ever ends up together," I said, shaking my head at a friend and his wife across the breakfast table.
They had just finished telling the "how we met" story, and let me tell you, it was epic:
At a party, boy meets and schmoozes girl. Girl remains aloof and chilly. Boy asks for phone number. Girl denies. One week later, they bump into each other again. Boy is hammered at a bar, drinking with the bartender. Girl is sober. Boy again asks for girl's number. Girl gives it to him, verbally. Boy belligerently swears to remember it. Girl leaves. Boy (surprise!) forgets number. A few days go by. Boy runs into mutual friend, who he asks for the girl's phone number. Friend gives him girl's work number. Boy calls girl at work, interrupting her while mispronouncing both her first and last names. Girl asks if she can call him back at a better time.
A few hours later, girl calls boy who has now been schmoozy, sloppy and forgetful around her, and possibly doesn’t even know her name. That is far more than three strikes, is it not? A few weeks later, they're inseparable. Now, they’re married (and adorable).
"I mean, you didn't even say her name right!" I rolled my eyes, thinking about all the poor schleps I'd dismissed for crimes far less eggregious.
“I know,” he chuckled, as his wife looked at him adoringly. “My success with women can only be attributed to my ability to be so ridiculously persistent that they finally give in and give me a shot.”
Ain’t that the truth, too? There is much to be said for the persistence of a man who simply will not take “no” for an answer.
Why is that “eye on the prize” approach so attractive? It should be interpreted as arrogant, but its effect is sometimes positively the opposite, compelling women to do exactly what these overeager types ask, as if we simply have no choice in the matter.
According to Webster, "persistence" is the quality of continuing steadily despite problems or obstacles. So is that it, then? Is it purely biological? Are we all ultimately seeking someone we know isn't going to give up only because we realize in life there will be obstacles to overcome that will seem monumental enough to make it feel like quitting is the best possible option? Is this our built in "stability-meter"?
Whatever it is, there’s just something about a man who thinks he wants you badly enough to treat pursuing you like it’s a full time job.
I have absolutely fallen for it before, against all my better judgment. But it’s not a surefire path to success -- if there’s no chance for a relationship’s survival, someone will ultimately snap out of it. In my case, it took about a month and a half before I realized I was somehow mysteriously dating a bi-curious man who only ate Jack in the Box chicken sandwiches, failed out of school twice and who had... wait for it... just pierced his tongue.
Two days after I saw the light and after the world's hottest and most exfoliating shower, it was over. But props to him for a strong, if manipulative and ultimately creepy, start.
By the time breakfast had wrapped up with my lovebird friends, I was thoroughly convinced that dating, love and marraige was just a game of chance that God invented one day to keep him entertained (okay, and ensure procreation) -- something like a bully with a magnifying glass on a sunny day might keep himself entertained by scorching ants on the asphalt between his dirty feet.
(Sorry, God. I hope we can still be friends. I'm just saying...)
Except the ants have tiny brains and get to burn to death. We just have to go on hideous date after hideous date, having the same exact conversations with different versions of the same exact people, all of whom likely find us as boring or crazy as we find them, until someday, almost against our will and certainly with no help from us, something is just... different. And then, maybe even all the things that would have otherwise mattered (hell, even the pronunciation of your name) just won't.
I hope that makes it all worth it in the end.
I like to think it might.
Legwarmers got a makeover this weekend. Why? Well, I wanted to go shopping, but am trying a new thing called "fiscal responsibility" so as to not have to live in an apartment with a cat for the rest of my life, so instead of buying completely essential things like clothes, shoes, an animatronic monkey head, a lifetime's supply of Otter Pops and tires for my car (all of which I otherwise likely would have purchased last weekend), I chose to wear my roommate's clothes, drive a car with dangerously bald tires (oh, and STILL no front license plate) and change the outfit of my... blog.
Happy Monday, all!
Today's word of the day is one I am going to seriously have trouble working into everyday language. It just sounds dirty. Or maybe that's just my mind. You be the judge:
fecund \FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.
For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two every three years -- eight boys and six girls in all.
-- Saul David, Prince of Pleasure
In her first novel she portrays a lush, fecund landscape palpable in its sultriness and excess.
-- Barbara Crossette, "Seeking Nirvana", New York Times, April 29, 2001
Miss Ozick can convert any skeptic to the cult of her shrewd and fecund imagination.
-- Edmund White, "Images of a Mind Thinking", New York Times, September 11, 1983
Fecund comes from Latin fecundus, "fruitful, prolific." The noun form is fecundity.
Since my recent surgery, I’ve been directed to cease and desist two things: sex and the gym.
Since I am having about as much of the first as a married woman (read: none), that didn’t concern me. And at the time, when told I’d have to take a few weeks off from the gym, I thought sweet! A mandatory break from working out! I’m going to get soooo good at T.V. watching and wine-drinking it is going to be unreal.
And I did. And it was good.
For about three days.
After which all I could think about was working out.
I was like a junkie craving a fix. I had dreams I was at the gym, mid-day yoga fantasies, and after dinner I started to have to drink, lest I get in the car and end up on a treadmill somewhere in south Seattle. And it got into my head in more ways than one. Not only could I not stop thinking about it, I started to feel like you could see the “hasn’t worked out in a week” on me. I couldn’t find a single thing in my closet that I felt like I looked good in.
I even started cheating a little… popping in to do quick 20-minute tune ups – nothing rigorous, but maybe a few lunges, some shoulder work - you know, just a little taste.
But at long last, the countdown is over. Last night I could hardly sleep, I was so excited. And now, sitting in the corner of my office like a beacon of crack-like exercise hope is my gym bag.
I’m not sure if I’m compensating for the lack of activity in other… um… areas of my life or if I’m just so elementary that the moment someone says I can’t do something it’s all I want to do, but I just don’t care. I’m going to the gym, dammit. And in all likelihood I won’t be able to walk tomorrow.
Wish me luck!
There I was again: paper slippers, all jewelry removed, in a sea-green gown with an open back and a hair net, jiggling my foot nervously as a doctor, for the second time this year, went through the pre-surgical pep-talk. This surgery, unlike the last, which was a shoulder repair, was necessary to go from a diagnosis of "possibly cancerous" to "we actually know something, and by the way, you're fine". In other words: not optional.
Like last time, though, I was buzzing with nerves.
"I see you're still under the mistaken impression that green is flattering on everyone," I said, trying too hard to be funny as I fingered the papery fashion faux pas that is the required wardrobe, pre-surgery.
"Yeah," my (adorable but married) doctor smiled, "but it is an appropriate springtime color, is it not?"
I nodded. Thank God he was playing along. All the ways I could die over the course of the next three hours ran through my mind, alongside a mental montage of all the ways one could possibly do it in a hospital waiting room*.
(*To be clear, the death fantasy was an actual fear and the sex fantasy was an attempt to distract me from the death fantasty. It didn't work, and neither were more than 1 percent likely. I know this because I read the disclaimers before I sign, and because I'm a prude.)
A nurse entered the room, holding a clipboard and pushing one of those funny coatrack-looking things with a baggie of liquid hanging from it... a bag that would soon be attached to my arm and wheeled with me into the metal room where they do the cutting.
"Okay," Dr. Death cleared his throat, taking the clipboard from Nurse BaggieofFluids (sorry, I couldn't come up with anything clever). "You have a driver picking you up, right?" he asked, snapping me back to reality.
"Oh, yeah," I said, a little glazed, still jiggling my foot like it was my job, curled up in a chair across the room. "My girlfriend. She'll be here at 2."
I saw Dr. and Nurse exchange these tiny glances -- you know, the ones you exchange just barely, in order to say "did you notice that, too? we'll talk later..." and suddenly it occurred to me that they thought, when I said "girlfriend", that I meant "girl I perform sexual acts with". In other words, while I was refering to one of my friends, who is female, they did the whole really quick "she's a lesbian" secret look at each other.
But by the time I noticed their little exchange, too much time had passed for me to smoothly say "my roommate..." or "we've been friends since childhood" or something to more accurately deliniate our relationship. And, by the way, I only cared a little at the time. Remember, I had death and sex fantasies to get to, not to mention a surgery.
Everything went smoothly. As usual, I woke up laughing about what awesome dreams I had. By the time I was recovered and in a secondary waiting room, I was halfway through a diet Pepsi. A little weak, definitely glazed over, but in pretty good shape.
My friend was shown into the room by a different nurse and a pharmacist -- both quite stern and humorless, neither big talkers. Everyone sat, and the nurse and drug lady rattled off, to my friend, a long list of things to watch for, be concerned about, and do in the 24 hours after surgery. They handed her a baggie of pain meds, antibiotics, etc. and gave her those instructions, too.
I mostly giggled.
They didn't really look at me the whole time, until they came to the last set of instructions before they wheeled me to the car:
"Don't, under any circumstances, drive or sign any legal documents today," said stern nurse lady. Immediately I started giggling again, because, like, what legal documents would I possibly sign immediately after surgery?
And then my friend thought of one. Always a comic, she quipped:
"Damnit! We were going to sign those divorce papers today."
"Oh, shit, that's right," I said, playing along, thinking we were so funny, putting on a little show for the nurses in the room, thinking they'd appreciate a chuckle, "sorry about that... I guess we'll have to do it next week, hon."
We both cracked up, waiting for a response -- something, anything agknowledging our joke -- from the nurses.
I blinked, looking around the room, and exchanging a "what the??" glance with my friend. It was like the Twilight Zone.
::silence::
The nurses had visibly stiffened, and were awkwardly putting things away, shuffling papers and bustling around, all quiet.
No more than three minutes later, I was in the car and we were out of there without so much as a "get well soon!"
In under four hours and four sentences (all completely misfired jokes), I managed to convince an entire surgery center I was a lesbian, and learned that makes people really, really uncomfortable.
...
Just another afternoon.
