Z is for Zumba

And exactly 47 days late, I finish the ABC blog challenge.

Do I get a trophy for participating?

Z is for Zumba.

Not familiar with Zumba? It’s aerobics set to Latin-inspired dance music, and everything is a 3/6 count instead of a 4/8 count. And you spend a lot more time being encouraged to shake and shimmy various parts of your body.

The Things and I, in our quest to explore the Y, took a Zumba class. Before you lose your mind laughing at the mental image, please understand that this was a Zumba Gold class. (Should have been called “Silver,” which was the predominant hair color in the room.) Anyway, Zumba Gold is a bit slower, with more instruction, so you can get used to the beats and the moves.

The best thing I can say is: nobody fell down.

Thing 1 liked it. I suspect it’s related to our abiding obsession with the TV show So You Think You Can Dance.

Thing 2 hated it. About 15 minutes into the second class, she abandoned ship and went to the machine room next door and worked out on the treadmill and the spinning bike.

At our first class, the instructor had a fairly heavy accent, so she was a bit difficult to understand over the music. She stood mostly with her back to us, so we could more easily see what she was doing and follow along. This allowed me to notice that her butt was so tight and so small it looked like two grapefruit in the back of her tights. Bounce a quarter off it? I’m pretty sure it could repel bullets.

Zumba also incorporates more graceful and meaningful arm movements than regular old aerobics. It’s not hula or anything close, but you’re supposed to be flirty and sassy with your arms. This presents a difficulty for me, because I’m either gesturing wildly while I talk or gesturing wildly with a drink in my hand, or gesturing rudely at the other drivers who are getting in my way.

I don’t flirt with my arms. I thought that’s witty repartee and cleavage shirts were for.

We will continue on. Thing 2 has her eye on a spinning class, and I’m pretty sure she’ll kick my butt. We’re even talking about attempting step aerobics at the beginning of next month. I do not have a long and happy history with step class. Thing rug burns. Think tears. Think ripped black exercise tights and white underwear peeking out.

Maybe I should record my next attempt at working out, and then Z can be for Zany. Or Zoinks. Or Zzzz, since I’m likely to need a nap afterward.

 

Y is for YMCA!

Wow, where did the month of May go? One moment I was trying to finish up the ABC blogging challenge, and the next thing I knew, it was June!

Thing 1 successfully completed the 10th grade at the top of her class, and Thing 2 successfully graduated from the 8th grade. Beloved Husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage, and nobody was infected by a zombie bite. That pretty much captures May.

But now I can work on finishing the blog challenge. A day late and a dollar short, as my mom would say.

Y is for the YMCA, which I have once again pledged myself to. But this time I have reinforcements: I enrolled the whole family.

The Things and I were lamenting being out of shape. You probably heard the screams ringing through the earth’s atmosphere when I tried on my bathing suit for the first time this year and got a good look at my thighs. Since I don’t have enough money for plastic surgery, I have to either give up eating (not practical) or give up drinking (not going to happen) or get back into the exercise habit (hey, it could happen).

The Things decided the Y sounded like fun and they wanted to join along with me. Somehow, while standing in line to fill out the membership forms, a challenge was formed and flung. I have to go to any class they pick out, and they have to go to any class I pick out. The objective is to try every kind of class our Y has to offer.

Obviously, I’ve deluded myself into believing that I won’t fall to the floor, assume the fetal position and sob piteously –in front of my daughters. I’ll keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll be encouraging. I’ll give them helpful tips on form and etiquette.

I’ll try to keep up.

Yesterday we did our first water aerobics class together. It was fun. Both girls said, “We could do this again.” They also wanted to know what was the deal with the three older ladies who just bobbed around the pool at the back of the class, ignoring everything the instructor said.

Kinda stumped on that one. How do you explain that women of a certain age do not give a fuck? They want to float like jellyfish, gossip about their friends and pretend they’re getting some exercise. Sounds like me and some of my friends, if you added umbrella drinks.

But here’s where I differ from those women. Right now is high season for swimming lessons at the Y. There were some scheduling cross-ups, so a gentleman who was swimming laps was evicted from his lane for a dozen splashing tykes to learn not to pee in the pool.

Said gentleman very politely came over to our instructor and asked if he could share our space long enough to finish his swim. He only had 6 laps to go. Our instructor was very accommodating, and instructed us to give him room for his final laps.

The three bobbing women complained bitterly and loudly about this. He should have rescheduled his laps. The schedule should be corrected. NO ONE should be allowed to infringe in any manner upon the sacred sixty minutes of Sweat & Splash.

Some of you who know me are thinking, “But, MB, you love to bitch and complain. Especially if you are even vaguely justified.”

Let me explain. The lap-swimming gentleman in question was in his mid-30s, I’d guess. He looked like a swimmer, someone who swims laps on a regular basis. Not as tall as Michael Phelps, fine, but you see where I’m going with this? He was even wearing a Speedo, for Pete’s sake. I wanted to swim over to these women and hiss into their hairy little ears, “Shut up and enjoy the view, you idiots.”

In the end, he swam his laps, and then came over and individually thanked every single member of the class for letting him share our space. So nice to look at and exquisite manners.

I hope I never get so old I can’t enjoy that.

Today was our second day at the Y.  There were no men in Speedos, although a lovely gentleman in his 70s was chatting with Thing 2 during class. (Bonus points in water aerobics if you can chat without swallowing half the pool.) We did a lot more arm work today, and while I can type pretty easily, I’m almost sure I can’t lift my arms above my head. I think I might have to cut my t-shirt off if I want to remove it.

And lots of flutter kicks equal foot cramps.

I’m not sure what tomorrow’s schedule will bring, but I think it might give me the perfect ending for the alphabet.

X is for X-tremely personal questions

That’s right.

Say you had to apply a band-aid to some sensitive skin. The sort of skin that rarely sees light of day, much less adhesives. I’m not talking about the playground parts, but perhaps something in their vicinity. Think about it. I bet you’ve got plenty of sensitive spots you’ve never slapped a bandage onto. Pick one and think about it for just a moment.

So here’s the question. Would you apply the plainest, beige or clear bandage you could find? Or would you go all neon tie-dyed sparkle princess super hero?

You may assume that few people, if any, will see this bandage. Does that matter?

Your sensitive spot may or may not have hair follicles in the immediate vicinity. Are you going to rip that bandage off at the end of the day (these things need air, after all), or are you going to apply a warm compress or take a hot bath to soak it off? Or will you, as you are standing in an awkward position to even see the offending matter that needs bandaging, wonder why the heck you have hair growing there in first place? Did you even know you had hair there? Are you mildly surprised (or repulsed) to discover it? Are you blaming it on your age, certain that in the hot glow of youth you certainly didn’t have scraggly, wire bits growing in that particular spot.

Let us not even venture into the dark abyss that is called: skin tags.

For the sake of all that is good, we’ll assume the band-aid-wearing portion of the program didn’t last more than a day or two. Three at the most.

Now that you have an itchy, irritated red rash from the band-aid’s adhesive–because this is a spot that is not highly trafficked–how do you remove it? You can’t scrape it off with a fingernail. Soap and water in the shower is another nonstarter, unless you’re using a very stiff brush and don’t do that. This is sensitive skin, remember?

But you’ve got dark, dirty-looking band-aid scooge parentheses on your skin now. On the inflamed skin that you’ve irritated beyond the norm. This normally pallid, unremarkable flesh now looks like fire ants marched across it, clearing the way for some sort of nasty spider to bite you.

Keep in mind, this is not a part of your body where you’d want caustic chemicals of any sort. So put that bottle of nail polish remover right back where you got it. I know how you think. Nail polish remover can solve many untidy situations, but not this one.

And will you suffer this indignation in silence, or will you share it with the world?

W is for Weddings

Weddings are wonderful.

I almost always cry, but in a good way. Partially just to get Things 1 and 2 to roll their eyes. Partially because I remember my own wedding (which will be 20 years ago this May), and I remember the sense of excitement and anticipation. Partially in practice for when the Things get married, because I’ll probably be a sobbing puddle of emotional embarrassment from the moment the engagement is announced until the cake is cut at the reception.

We’ve got two family weddings coming up in the next few months, one on each side of the family. I love the celebration of family, the happiness, the optimism and the cake.

I have one standard piece of advice for couples getting married, and I’ll share it here. It’s very simple.

The wedding is about the two of you. Period. End of story.

It doesn’t matter what your: mother, sister, best friend, cousin, niece, nephew, brother, sister-in-law, future in-laws (or outlaws), coworkers, clerk at the bridal shop, clerk at the 7-11, minister, cat or second grade teacher think about your wedding plans.

This is you and one other person, building a new life together because you love each other. You want to share the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the Ben and Jerry’s.

The trappings don’t really matter. Religious ceremony or civil. Dress with a 20-foot lacy train or jeans and sneakers. Attendants, junior attendants, ring bearers and flower girls or the Justice of the Peace and his wife. A secluded beach at sunset or city hall. None of that is what matters.

The cold hard truth: YOU are the only one is going to remember what the table favors were the day after the wedding.

All those quaint traditions you simply must abide by? Nope. If you don’t like them, don’t do them. Ignore them, or make up your own. I had my brother walk me down the aisle (which he did in fine style, with his own singular piece of advice), but I totally balked at the idea of being “given away.” I was 29 years old, and the tradition of using your daughter as an item of commerce just didn’t sit well with me. So we skipped it.

The taking of the new last name is a biggie. Again, on the verge of spinsterhood, I didn’t see any reason to change my name. My husband-to-be said as long as I was marrying him, he didn’t care what last name I used. But on the morning of the wedding, after discussing this at least three times, my mother’s minister called me at my mother’s house.

Question one: He would normally introduce us as “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Loyall.” If I wasn’t taking Joe’s last name, how would he introduce us to the congregation? My response: I’m not changing my first name to Joseph or my last name to Loyall, so why don’t you just say I give to you the new couple? Oh, okay, he could do that.

Question two: If I wasn’t taking Joe’s last name, what would we name the children? My response: I’m not pregnant right now, so don’t worry about it. And then I hung up.

Because what the minister thought about what I called my hypothetical children wasn’t important. Not to the day, not to the marriage, not to my life.

When you say you’re getting married, people will crawl out of the woodwork to give you advice. Most of it is well-intentioned, which has nothing to do with whether it actually applies to you or not.

The day and the ceremony are about you and that one person who fills a spot you didn’t know was empty until you met them.

Don’t go into debt and don’t try to make everyone tangentially involved with the wedding happy.

Focus on what matters to the two of you, and let everything else go.

*********

Note one: My brother’s magnificent advice. At the rehearsal, after telling me he was pretty sure the minister was actually a siding salesman in disguise, my brother took my hand and tucked it through his arm. He said, “My job is to make sure we travel the aisle at a dignified pace. I can walk you down the aisle, or I can walk you up the aisle, no questions asked, but we’re going to do it at a dignified pace.”

Note two:  We hyphenated the Things last names. Don’t like it? Tough. Name your own kids whatever you want. And if you’re thinking “what will happen if one of the Things marries a man with a hyphenated last name, too?” Guess what? They’ll be adults! They get to make those decisions for themselves!

Note three:  To Ben and Caroline, and to Janet and Nelson, I hope you all find as much happiness in marriage as I have.

V is for Vampires

They’ve sort of taken over the letter “V,” haven’t they?

There are as many kinds of vampires as there are people who write about vampires. Everyone tweaks Bram Stoker’s Dracula to fit their own story, their own need.

So I’m going to elaborate on my personal definition of vampires.

1. Expert Martial Artists: No. Why should re-animating a corpse give it super agility, super strength or levels of coordination it never had in real life? Do you mean to tell me if Barney Fife was bitten by a vampire, he’d come back slick and stealthy like a ninja? I don’t think so. That’s the one place Buffy the Vampire (TV series) lost me. New vampires would awaken ready to karate chop some poor slayer.

2. Ability to Become Bats or Other Small Creatures of the Night: No. I can’t get beyond the conservation of mass. A 200-pound man cannot turn into a 3-ounce bat and fly away. Where did the rest of him go? An entire flock of bats, or a large animal like a wolf, maybe. Otherwise, there’s a large puddle of wobbly ectoplasm sitting around somewhere just waiting for someone to step in it. Yuck.

3. Aversion to Garlic: Nope. Why garlic and not onions? Why not turmeric or nutmeg? Why not a lactose intolerant vampire, or one who is gluten-free? What happens when a vegan becomes a vampire? What could he or she possibly eat?

4. Hypnotic Eyes: Heck, yeah! Look one in the eyes and be completely mesmerized.

5. Retractable Fangs: Yes. I don’t care what the mechanism for extending or retracting the fangs, but they have to be able to pass for human. And smile without shredding their bottom lip. And talk without lisping. A lisping vampire is not a scary vampire.

6. Sexy: No. Ugh, no. They’re dead. They have no body heat. Without their heart pumping blood, can they feel arousal? Can the males get an erection? And why does anyone want to sleep with a cold, dead body? Isn’t that called necrophilia? It sounds very unsanitary to me.

7. Lacking a Soul: Undecided. I’m completely torn on this issue. I can’t decide whether their initial death should render them soulless, or the fact that they’re about to be reborn as vampires means the soul is still intact. Did we even worry about their souls before Buffy? I mean, if they’re chomping on necks, sucking down blood like a hot, red Slurpee and killing people, does it matter if they have a soul?

8. The Satanic Connection: No. Because that would mean that atheists, who don’t believe in God or Satan, would be immune to vampires. Or they’d reawaken and roam the earth in search of, what, a good cup of coffee? But since these are my rules for my vampires, I’m putting my foot down. Following Satan has to be an individual’s decision, not something thrust upon them in the night like a sexually transmitted disease. “Oh, no, I slept with Johnny last night, and now I have a painful red rash on my nether regions and the urge to sacrifice a goat.”

9. Sensitive to Sunlight: Yes. There’s a reason why we’re scared of things that go bump in the night and not things that go bump in the bright, breezy sunshine at high noon. I haven’t worked out the mechanics of the sensitivity, but I have no qualms about bowing to this tradition.

10. Inability to Cross Moving Water: No. What are we, 16th century peasants? I can see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to cross a bridge like everyone else.

11. Glowing Eyes: Conditional. Yes, but only when the light hits them right, like animals by the side of the road. They don’t just glow red or green or yellow as soon as the sun goes down.

12. Eating Regular Food: No. With apologies to one of my favorite vampire authors, Mario Acevedo, just no. Their internal organs aren’t working like they used to. If they chewed and swallowed, the meal would just sit in their stomach and putrefy. Talk about bad breath–this would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. And think of the gas! I’m not sure they’d be able to pass gas, so they might just bloat and bloat and bloat until they exploded like seagulls who ate Alkaseltzer. (Which may be an urban legend–I’m not going to experiment and find out.) Drinking, on the other hand, I will allow. The plumbing for that is all down hill, so it should still work. Unless the planet loses gravity, and then we have bigger problems than whether vampires can still pee.

13. Impervious to Heat and Cold: Yes. I have no good reason. I just like the idea my vampire can walk barefoot through the snow. Or walk through a sultry summer night without sweating. Which means the vampire could just be a metaphor for menopause, but right now there’s hardly a subject on the planet I can’t bring around to menopause, given enough lead time.

14. Extraordinary Strength: Yes. But only if he’s not doing some Ninja shit with it. Again, I can’t explain the mechanics, it just feels right.

15. Stopped by Religious Artifacts (like crosses): Conditional. If the vampire isn’t inherently satanic, then it doesn’t make sense for religious icons to stop him. But if the religious icons were going to work, it would have to be any icon from any religion, and it would have to be wielded by a true believer. But I like to get all supernatural and evil and shit without getting into religion. I believe you can have good and evil, right and wrong, without deities directing you.

16. Inability to See Reflection in a Mirror: Yes. Because true misery is going through life without knowing if your hair is sticking up all funny on one side of your head, or whether you have a poppy-seed or wodge of spinach stuck between your teeth. And it just makes life that much more difficult.

17. Ability to Levitate: No. Why would they? If they want to bust into the bedroom of a sleeping virgin to drink her blood, let them scale the wall like everyone else.

18. Formal Wear and Capes: No. Come on. People wear cut-offs and flip-flops to the symphony. How is a vampire going to blend in if he’s wearing a cape and tuxedo to the Walmart? Plus his dry cleaning bills for the removal of blood stains would be astronomical, unless he took the precaution of having both his cape and his formal wear Scotchguarded. Can you even do that to a silk cape? Would it ruin the fabric or the way it flowed in the air behind him? And wouldn’t a cape be a huge pain in the ass? What if it got caught in a subway door? Or some homeless guy peed on it? It would trip him on the stairs and get stepped on in crowds.

19. Irresistable to the Opposite (or Same) Sex: No. Unless he’s using the hypnotic eyes. What about cold and dead is appealing? Cold, dead and gassy. I bet you won’t find that on Match.com.

No, I’m not planning to write a vampire novel. I’ve already written one. Whether or not it ever sees the light of day (ha! a pun!), I’ve given some thought to the parameters of a vampire’s existence. Oops, I forgot one thing.

20. Sparkly: No. Never.

U is for Urbanite

I grew up in a town without sidewalks. No stop lights. The post office closed because not enough people were using it. I remember, barely, when the county came through and painted lines on the road. Everyone had their own well for water, and there was no such thing as cable.

No library. No movie theater. No grocery store, drug store or doctor’s office.

Readers are now thinking either that I grew up on Mars, or I’m so old, I grew up in the early 1900s.Nope. My mom still lives in the house I grew up in, and good luck getting cell phone service there. It just doesn’t exist. Everybody still has well water, but they leapfrogged past cable and went straight to satellite dishes. I’m willing to bet the school bus drivers still know not only your name, but the name of your parents, your siblings, your cousins and your grandparents. Who you have a crush on, who has a crush on you, and what base you went to in your boyfriend’s car after the basketball game on Friday night.

There were definite advantages to growing up in the middle of nowhere. Acres of woods to roam through. A river in the backyard for swimming and tubing. Snowmobiling in the winter. Making maple syrup in the spring. The scent of falling leaves and wood smoke in the fall. The sense that everyone in the community was looking out for everyone else. The feeling that all the kids were safe, and the grownups were reasonably responsible.

I couldn’t get out fast enough.

Because the problem with these idyllic childhoods is that they aren’t.  Every problem you have in the big city? We have them, in some flavor, in rural America.

Alcohol. Ooh, baby, was that ever easy to get your hands on. Oceans of beer. Keg parties on stateland. The drinking age was 18 back then, sure, but how many high school sophomores or juniors are 18? There was always an older brother or cousin of somebody around who was willing to buy it, or store owners willing to look the other way or too tired to care. Rural economies are not booming, and a sale is a sale.

Drugs. OK, maybe we didn’t have ready access to or money for cocaine, but marijuana? Plentiful. You would have thought we were growing it in the hay fields. Not hard to find, not hard to procure.

So if you aren’t drinking or smoking, what do you do in a small town? Well, there’s always the opposite sex. Sometimes age-appropriate, sometimes older and predatory. Sometimes love, sometimes boredom, the old “sure, why not, we only get three channels on TV and one of them is the French station out of Canada.” Safe Sex hadn’t become a media campaign yet, nobody in school talked about birth control, so engaging in sex was a game of roulette, much like drinking too much at a kegger before driving home on snowy roads.

Once I moved to a city, it was all over. The sheer convenience, the noise, the lights, the smells, the crush of people whose entire family histories I did NOT know. And oh, the ability to reinvent myself. It’s hard to figure out who you are and what you want to be when you’re surrounded by people who have your niche all figured out for you, sometimes before you’re even born. It’s a relief not be judged by the actions of my siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, stepfamily or in-laws, all people I don’t have (and don’t want) control over.

There are many, many aspects of growing up in a small town that I’m thankful for. But don’t ask me to move back there. I’m a happy urbanite now. While I’ll always have that small town in my soul, it doesn’t own me.

T is for Terrible

Because I’m terribly behind in this “blog the alphabet in April” challenge.

But I will finish out the alphabet no matter what. I’ll be late, sure, but I will finish.

T could stand for tuckered out. Because that’s what I was when I came home from the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. After helping with some of the clean up and collecting Things 1 and 2 from the bookstore (where they volunteered all weekend), I drove home in a daze.

When we pulled into the driveway, I asked the Things if the neighbors had moved out, because their many cars weren’t filling their driveway and the street. “No, Mom. They just aren’t home right now.” Oh.

Apparently Thing 2 showed me her Youth Symphony portrait. I have no memory of seeing it. I asked her today why she hadn’t gotten one, and she and her father exchanged on of those looks. “She showed it to you on Sunday.” Oh.

As I normally do when I come home from a few days away, I made a cup of tea. You can’t have a really proper cup of tea if you aren’t in your own home with your own mugs and your own accoutrements. This despite the fact I had taken a box of PG Tips along to the conference to share in the Green Room.

While the water was boiling for tea, I shucked off the skirt, sweater and nice shoes and fumbled into my pajamas. It was approximately 4 p.m., and I’m certain if anyone had asked me anything more difficult than “Are you still breathing” I would have cried.

Tea drunk, aching feet propped up, I watched the telly. I think. I dozed off a lot until the Chinese food arrived for dinner. Like magic. Somewhere in there I drank a beer.

At 8 p.m., my husband woke me up from my drooling stupor on the couch and told me to go to bed. Normally I would have a witty retort of some sort, but I just mumbled “Okay” and stumbled up the stairs. Where I crashed onto the bed and slept without moving until 6:30 the next morning.

Monday was when I noticed that I couldn’t feel one of my toes. My feet still ached from wearing nice shoes all weekend, and I don’t even wear the really high heels. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Maybe I was coming down with a cold? I couldn’t get warm, but other than that, I had no symptoms.

Then the word came down from the eye doctor’s office. The new glasses were in, for me and the Things. I pulled on clothes, drove to the office, got all the glasses properly fitted and drove home. I promptly put my pajamas back on, wrapped up in a blankie and went back to the couch.

About 3:30 that afternoon I heard a very tiny “click,” and my brain came back online. Synapses reconnected and started firing again. I started reading email. I managed to procure dinner. (Yes, it was just pizza, but that’s a step up from cereal, isn’t it?)

Now we’re on Friday, and life is almost back to normal. I’m polishing my manuscript to send it to the agent who requested it. I finally emptied my luggage for the weekend and put away the suitcases. I recharged my laptop and my cell phone. I’ve made online forays back into the world.

I still can’t feel that toe, though.