Hmmm. I'm at BF's, reading and checking my email while he's hard at work on some files. Now he just got paged, so he left to attend to something having to do with a medical crisis. My dilemma is this: when he gets back to the apartment, how awful would it be for me to ask him to run out to the convenience store to get me some Tostitos? Inappropriate, right?
A window into my weekend
This afternoon my Alien landlady pointed out that our storm windows are not down. Any of them. So that meant two things: 1. That I had to feel like a complete moron, and 2. That I had to fight with every crappy window in the house in order to fix the problem. Our windows are my nemesis. Our place is very charming, but it's old. And where it shows its age is in the windows. They're made out of heavy cracked wood, and they're not afraid to give you a splinter the size of a matchstick for your trouble. None of the screens pull down or go back up easily, and some of the windows won't even open very far at all. Others of them get stuck open, so I have to grab on to the rim and hang from it, hoping that my entire body weight, suspended, will be enough to get the job done. Sometimes, believe it or not, it isn't. What kind of freak window can resist an adult person hanging off of it??? And I do mean literally hanging off of it, reminiscent of the elementary school Fitness Challenge arm hang. It's like they're superwindows.
My roommate came home as I was taking a screw driver to one of the safety latches the Alien had installed on the windows last summer. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked.
"Insulating our home. If you were wondering where all our money has been going this winter, the answer is literally out the windows." She looked at me blankly. "We forgot to put the storm windows down." No sign of comprehension. "The cold air is coming in through the windows."
J looked mildly interested but generally unconcerned. "Huh. I don't know anything about stuff like that - I don't do storm windows or whatever they are."
Now, I'm pretty sure the rules clearly stipulate that there can only be one princess per household. I've had that title cinched for years. Like, 30 of them. How did I get nominated as the default handywoman?
"You shouldn't hang off the windows like that, I think you could probably get hurt," J observed as she plunked down on the couch.
Important note to self: If you kill her, you'll get stuck with her share of the rent.
Railroad ties
It was the summer before our senior year in college. We spent our days working (sometimes). PS and N were the handymen for the apartment complex we lived in, and they painted, patched, and fixed. I was a secretary at a used car lot that my friend B's father owned - it was shady as hell and loads of fun. M taught music at a camp. I know other people were players in this piece, but their faces and names are hazy in my memory. Every weekend we would go to the beach to swim, lay around lazily by the ocean, and eat fried fish and frozen yogurt. Every night, we would just sort of be. There weren't many boundaries. And time passed on that way, until the leaves changed colors and the weather turned.
We would all grow up, get advanced degrees, careers, husbands and wives, mortgages. Little did we know at that point, but we'd eventually drift apart, drift back, marry one another, devastate each other. But that summer, we were our own little universe.
Some nights, we'd walk to the satellites in the fields behind the campus and climb up into a dish. We'd lie there, looking up at the sky, and talk about things that seemed so important then. As it turns out, most of those things we talked about were indeed very important, but what we thought about them years later would be very different than what we hypothesized about them under the stars.
Other nights, we'd walk down the country road past the university property line to the train tracks and follow them into the woods. There were no lights, so we'd stumble and feel our way along the railroad ties. We'd usually be under dressed for the New Hampshire nights - I remember always being so cold.
About a mile in, the tracks met a bridge. The bridge was supported by crossing metal beams, and it was an eerie white in the moonlight. We would sit in a line along the platform, waiting, and dangle our feet above the water. Local legend had it that there was a boxcar down below that had crashed off of the bridge years before, and if you came down just right, you would land on top of it, and probably break your neck.
When we heard the distant rumble of the train, we'd climb up onto the beams. They were different heights - some of us would climb all the way up to the top, some of us would stay closer to the bottom. As the lights of the train approached, we'd perch - ready. When the train came upon the bridge, the entire structure was alive with a violent humming and rattling. We'd hold on for as long as we could. Finally, when the jarring vibrations and the thunder of the train as it roared past us became too intense, we'd jump.
The water was always a cold shock. The swim to shore was quick, and we'd climb up the embankment dripping in our shorts and t-shirts, shivering. Laughing. We were always relieved that no one had discovered the boxcar. We were happy on those nights. The walk back to civilization was filled with warm and compassionate chatter - mellow after the river had taken some of our restless energy and kept it for herself.
I would never in a million years do something like that now. In hindsight, I can see how dangerous and irresponsible it was. How we could have been hurt, or killed. Of course I would never do that now. But I'll always remember that feeling, as you heard the rush of the oncoming train and felt its power, letting go at the last possible second and falling downward. You knew the water was going to hit you hard, or you it, but the impact seemed such a long way off.
Of all the gym joints in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine
So BF has to work for most of the upcoming weekend, and my thought was that this would be the perfect opportunity for me to spend some time at home, rent some movies, see some friends, and log in some quality, unhurried hours at Healthworks. And honestly, it's the uninterrupted gym time that I'm looking forward to the most. During the week, my gym time is squeezed in, but it's never without time constraints. If I'm in Boston for the weekend I usually workout with BF at the EC campus gym, which is fun because we get to workout together, but it's still not my gym. BF can't come to HW (gender restriction), so even if we're together in my neighborhood, I still rarely get to go to my gym both Saturday and Sunday - we're usually way too busy anyway (and yes, lying in bed snuggling, eating, napping, and reading until noon constitutes busy in my world).
So this opportunity is an anomaly, and I plan to make the most of it. But this morning I got an email announcing that it's Bring the Whole World to My Gym weekend. That's right: the infamous Healthworks Open House.
I hate to be snotty - I really do. But I'll tell it to you straight: gym rats hate open houses, promotional times involving free day passes or coupons, and post-New Year's Everybody Joins My Gym at Once peaks in membership. We like things how they normally are: we share the gym with the other steady gym-goers and settle into our routines.
After New Year's, it takes about 3 weeks for the Resolute to drop off the face of the earth (or the gym floor, in this case). It's a difficult 3 weeks, because they're in your way that whole time. They don't have a set routine, so they stand around - dawdling, chit chating, whining - and don't follow proper gym etiquette or procedure. And I know the gym is supposed to be for everyone. But let's face it - everyone is annoying. The showers are at capacity, you have to fight for a locker, and the likelihood of someone tapping you on the shoulder and asking you how much longer you'll be on the elliptical machine increases exponentially. And touching at the gym shouldn't happen. Tapping shouldn't happen. For the most part, talking shouldn't happen. (Okay, talking is allowed, I just got carried away there with the t words.) But the point is, it's maddening to share your space with people who you know won't be there come February. It's like when you're in the roped off lap lane at the pool doing sprints, and someone hops in to "take a nice little dip". You want to shout "This space is only for the people who mean it!"
I guess I shouldn't be so impatient. Now that I give it some thought, that's what people must think of me every summer when I hit the trails for the 2-3 warm months of the year and pretend to be a dedicated runner. I fade in when the sun shines, and fade back out when the chill hits the air. I can't hack running with year-round regularity - it's too intense (and too cold in the Northeast). So I suppose I should have sympathy for the seasonal gym member.
But I'd actually rather not. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to ignore how hypocritical I'm likely being right now and stick to my guns: Healthworks Open House Weekend sucks the big one.
Sandbox etiquette
I'm a wizard at candlepin bowling - who knew? Last night after I made Boyfriend my specialty chicken parm and we threw back a few glasses of wine, we decided to go bowling. At first, I totally sucked. Like nothing but gutter balls. So of course I got frustrated, while BF insisted that it's the idea of having fun that's important, not your final score. Yeah. Right. Only losers say that! Or boyfriends of losers, trying to appease their uncoordinated, spastic girlfriends. I can't help it - I'm a competitive person. While BF cheered me on in my suckage, I pouted and stamped my fancy bowling shoes. He bowled well (shocker), but it was really hard for me to get excited. I mean, I could handle him winning the game. But I wasn't even in the game!
We decided to play a second game, because I just couldn't let it lie. Then something bizarre happened! I got wicked hot! It was crazy. A total turnaround. With no apparent explanation as to what accounted for my late bloomer bowling prowess, I became an inspirational underdog story. And BF, in typical BF fashion, was thrilled with my success - he was completely encouraging even as I trounced him. Why? Because he's not a sore loser.
I think it took seeing someone lose like a normal person for me to realize that I'm a horrible loser. I might work on that a little. Because of course BF let it slide, and just seemed happy that I was having the time of my life at Sacco's Bowl Haven once my spasticity passed. But other people might not be so forgiving. No one likes to play with a bad loser - we all learned that on the elementary school playground. Well, apparently most of us learned that on the elementary school playground. Others of us learned it last night.
It always did take me a while to catch on to new concepts.
