Tag Archives: Parenting

I took a shower in my bathing suit and I feel dirty.

Posted on July 17, 2013 | 14 comments

Sometimes you have to take a stand.  And today I decided that I am not an old, naked lady at the gym.  Well, not all of the time.

Sometimes I am.  But  today I had to make a split decision.

I am pro-naked.  I blame it on coming of age in a high school theatre dressing room but it really doesn’t matter where it started.  I am pro-body acceptance.  In my mind the more bodies that you see, real bodies, the less likely you are to hate on your own.  I work hard at not picking my body apart and ordinarily when I am given the opportunity to show someone else what an average middle aged woman’s body looks like I take it.

I am not yet one of the gals well beyond their middle years that stand in the locker room blowing their hair dry au naturale, chatting up my lady friends while they strap their aged bazooms in to their sensible nude brassieres.  But if I am honest with myself I know that I will be one of those ladies one day.

But not today.  Today I showered in my bathing suit.

“Hi!  Is Emily here?”  said the young girl in the shower across from mine.

I had just turned on the shower, still in my suit, as is customary.  I like to wash my hair and let the soap drip on my swimsuit, pull it off and rinse it out while I leave conditioner in my hair.  It’s an efficient system and one I recommend.  I digress.

Four words made me turn my back on my system. “Hi!  Is Emily here?”

“Nope, she isn’t here today, she’s at art camp this week.” I shampooed while we talked.  And before I knew it I was rinsing my hair and putting in the conditioner, still in my swim suit.

“Ok.  Maybe we will see you this afternoon.”

Umm…  you were about to see a whole lotta me, actually.  I’d already given them an eye full of an awful lot of tattoos they had previously not seen.  And I just wasn’t sure if I could in good conscience be “Emily’s Mom That We Saw Naked At The Gym” for the rest of the summer.

And now I am wrestling with that decision.  Did I miss my opportunity to let my freak flag fly in the form of a nudie shower in the community gym locker room?  Did I make the right choice?

“Mom, did you get totally naked in front of my friends?”

“Uh.  Yeah.  Because women shouldn’t be ashamed of their bodies.”

I didn’t want to have that conversation.  Not yet.

So, I showered in my bathing suit and now I feel dirty.

I am doing my part to rid my corner of the universe of body shame, I am.   I just can’t wrap my mind around chit chatting with my daughter’s  friends while I am stark naked.  Not yet.

But when I am 60 and they are 30? Game on.  Her gal pals will be leaving tennis club and they will roll their eyes as I head towards the showers “There goes Em’s mom. Grandma never wears clothes.”

“And she sings when she wears head phones.  She is ridiculous.”

For your viewing pleasure – these are some weird wall stickers in the yoga room at the gym.   So, what do you see?  Olives?  I used to see olives.

Wall stickers

But lately… all I see is boobs, everywhere I look.  Especially in the locker room.

Screen Shot 2013-07-17 at 8.36.28 PM

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Thousands of Push-ups and This Is What I Have to Show for It

Posted on June 22, 2013 | 14 comments

I should have been excited.

Lucy only has about a dozen words.  Four or five of them are new as of this week.  So many things get easier when your toddler can use words. You know what they want.  Water?  Sleep? Outside? Up?

I don’t know what I thought her first two word thought would be.  Love mama? More eat? Dog out?

She was sitting in my lap.  It was nearing her bedtime and I was trying to squeeze a few more minutes of chatter with an old friend  in to my evening.  She was scooping her hands in and out of my tanktop.  I knew what she was after but she was still happy. I kept talking.

She had her eyebrows squinched together like she does when something does not meet her approval.

“Boob.  Up!”

Sigh.  I hear you, little lady.  37 years old and two pregnancies –  this is as up as they get, girl.

Up

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Watch & Learn

Posted on May 3, 2013 | 11 comments

It was quiet.

I know better than to ignore the quiet.   Screaming.  Whining.  Yelling  Slamming.  Banging.  These are the sounds that say “Yep.  We’re all fine, Mom.” But quiet?

Quiet means you’d be smart to hightail into the room where your kids are playing and be prepared to freak out.

I was folding laundry in my bedroom.  Glamorous life, I know.  Lucy had been wandering back and forth between my bedroom and the living room making the “enh enh enh” sound that means “Pick me up and carry me around. There is nothing wrong with me but I am bored.” I had decided to tough it out.  I would just finish this last load, put it away and then I’d make up for not providing a challenging and age-appropriate activity for six minutes of the poor kid’s life.

But then it got quiet.

I made the foolish choice.  I folded like mad and decided to ride it out.  When I left my bedroom I had half a mind to just go straight to the kitchen for a Magic Eraser.  There was sure to be crayon on a wall.  I’d be grateful for crayon and not Sharpie.  Or maybe there would be a dumped over dog water bowl.

Much to my surprise my sweet girl was sitting quietly on the couch with the dog.  She pointed as soon as I saw her.

Goose & Fish

Her point was not at me.  It was at the television (which had been muted, so I didn’t realize it was even on.) She pointed.  And she didn’t move.  She sat like a stone and watched.

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You recognize the start of those happy trees, don’t you?  My sweet girl that doesn’t watch television because she is shy of 16 months old and I am afraid I will turn her brain in to oatmeal or, even worse, create a kid that is incapable of amusing herself without a screen, was watching TV.

But not just any TV.  She was watching Bob Ross.

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And I hope I didn’t ruin her because I sat down right next to her and said “Check this out. First he covers the whole canvas with Liquid White.  Watch and learn, kiddo. Watch. And. Learn.”

She was mesmerized. I can’t blame her.

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The Space to Breathe

Posted on April 11, 2013 | 4 comments

Some days are just like every other day. You wake. You go about your routine. You look at the clock and the time ticks by, sometimes quickly, sometimes painfully slowly, but the day carries on and before you know it you are brushing your teeth and preparing to climb in to bed and do it all again tomorrow.

Yesterday was an odd one. I did things I don’t normally do. Some of those things were very small but when I stepped back from the day and sized it up they all added up. And this morning, I feel different.

I sat down yesterday morning with a newspaper. I did not open my laptop and have coffee. I sat down with the paper. A real, live newspaper. I fear Chapel Hill News is suffering if they are delivering their paper for free to neighboring towns. I can’t count on this paper sticking around in printed form if they have resorted to giving it away but I will enjoy it while it lasts. A newspaper and a cup of coffee. That was unusual.

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Later in the morning I met a new friend and her son and we walked and talked. I was late. I am never late. I cancel if I am going to be late. I was late. That is unlike me. And I did not take a single picture. I did not check my phone. Also not typical behavior. We walked and talked.

She mentioned the paralyzing freedom of having every day be so full of options. I’d not considered that fully before. The lack of structure that can be present in the life of the mother who chooses to stay at home – it can have an almost crippling presence. “But you can do whatever you want,” a friend might note. Not really. Somedays I do not do a damn thing that is “what I want.” And yet daily I am overcome with gratitude. I am all at once living the life that I have chosen, that I am deeply grateful for, and not actually very free at all some days.

Later in the evening I did another thing I rarely do.

I stopped and had two beers at a local bar in town. “Have a seat,” said a gentleman as he slid over and offered me a bar stool. It had been so long I almost said “Oh, no, no.” I couldn’t possibly sit down. I didn’t have that kind of time. I would just stand, drink a beer, and hightail it home before Lucy woke up or MQD called or … or what? I turned in to a pumpkin?

I slid in to a barstool and I felt my shoulders get lower. I felt my back get longer. I was relaxed, in my element. It had been too long. A man introduced himself, “I am Jerry, by the way.”

I smiled. “The ByTheWays, I know a lot of your people, a friendly bunch you are. I meet a ByTheWay almost everywhere I go.” He paused. And then he smiled. I apologized for my flip remark. “I spent a decade behind the bar and I have a canned response to everything, I am sorry. I haven’t been out in so damn long that that is all that’s coming to me now. Forgive me?”

We chatted about kids and our quaint little downtown. The fellow to my left interrupted me, eventually. “What are you now? Just a housewife?” I felt myself stand up straighter. “Yep. And it is fucking awesome.” I could see that he was disappointed. I think he’d been trying to rile me up and I didn’t bite. I threw him a bone. “You? What are you? Just an asshole? A prick? What name do you prefer?” He seemed pleased with himself, he’d gotten under my skin.

I smiled again and let him down easy. “I’m sorry… but you have got to be kidding me. “Just a housewife?” Come on, man, it is the 21st century. Cut the little woman some slack.” I turned to Mr. ByTheWay and said “It was really nice to meet you.” I turned back to my right and said “And you, watch your mouth,” flashing him a million dollar smile.

20130411-122721.jpgI joined my girlfriends outside and laughed some more. We talked about our kids. It was easy. It was awkward for me to realize that I actually enjoyed sitting at a table with a bunch of women having easy conversation just as much if not more than the jocular and sometimes acidic back and forth of strangers at a bar. While outside a friend mentioned a tattoo I’ve had for years. A devil-woman, nursing her baby. I got it ages ago to symbolize the union between the hell-raiser I had been and the mother I was becoming. A timely reminder that I do not have to choose. The comfort I feel at a table of women does not negate the entertainment of a seat at the bar.

It is good to do the things that we do not usually do. Read the newspaper. Turn your phone off. Go ahead and be late. Stop for a beer.

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This morning I went outside to water the flowers and said “C’mon, Goose, we need to hurry up.” Hurry. Towards what? The next task? I stopped. I poured some water on her feet and she laughed. I took a picture of the snapdragons quickly and then I put my phone inside. We sat on the deck. I don’t know for how long.

If I am quiet in the coming weeks, do not be worried. I am going back to school.  I have enrolled in a self-taught, self-guided and intensive course on the Art of Relaxing. Wish me luck.

 

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Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting, Tattoos

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Do the Right Thing

Posted on March 4, 2013 | 36 comments

I had one of those moments today where I was forced to make a choice in a split second.  I had one of those moments when neither option is really what I want but the confines of time and the number of arms I have forces me to choose.  I did the “right thing.”  But it didn’t feel good. It did not feel good at all.  And my heart still hurts.

fisher&grover

I have told the story here before of how I fell in love with Fisher.  I have admitted that he sleeps in my bed with me. But I have never spoken of the way he tears my heart out of my chest every so often, mostly because I like to try and forget.

He will hop down from the bed and then be unable to move.  Or he will be in the midde of jumping up on to the couch and he will collapse.  A seizure, says the vet.  They do not happen often enough to establish any kind of pattern.  Blood work comes back fine.  No known cause.

His legs crumble beneath him.  He begins to pant and drool.  His eyes look deep in to mine as if he is frightened.  He doesn’t move.  It lasts for a minute, maybe two.  If I am alone with him I hold him in my arms and tell him that I love him and that he is okay, that he is safe.  If I am with MQD or my ex-husband I bawl and sob and say “Is he okay? Do you think he is okay?” repeatedly until I am kicked out of the room.  (I will wait here while you make a mental note – Kelly in a crisis, bad idea unless she is the only adult present.)

This afternoon marked the first time that Fish had an episode while I was alone with him.  Alone with him and Lucy.

Fish and Lucy like to look out the window in the afternoon and wait for the school bus. When it is warm they stand at the door.  When it is cold they stand and look over the back of the couch.  Today we were all snuggled on the couch, Fish with his feet over the back of the couch, Lucy Goose right next to him.  They were watching, waiting for the school bus.  They might have stayed just like that for the thirty minutes it would take for Emily to get home.  I considered reaching back behind me to grab my phone and take a picture of these two but I feared my movement would disrupt this quiet calm.  So, I just watched them.

And then his legs folded under him and he curled in to himself.  Lucy was quick to take advantage of this chance to climb on to his back.  And this was my moment.  My split-second “what the hell should I do now?” moment.  I wanted to take my sweet ten-year-old boy in my arms and hold him, shh-shh him and tell it was going to be okay.  He was scared, he is just an animal.

In that moment, though, we were all animals.  All three of us.  And I chose Lucy. I don’t think I should get a medal for having the presence of mind to grab Lucy and hold her away from my ailing dog.  Anyone with a pet knows that a good dog, even a great dog can be squirrelly when they are frightened.  I could pet his head.  I could shh-shh him but I could not hold him in my lap.  I could not hold him because I had this wild thing of a 13 month-old in my lap instead.  And my heart broke in to a million pieces.

20130304-194359.jpgThose big brown eyes.  The same eyes I fell so hard and fast for long before I became a mother they tore a hole straight through me.  “It’s okay, big boy.  I am right here.  I am just keeping Lucy Goosey safe, baby boy, keeping her from bugging you, okay?  But I am right here, I promise, I am right here.”

I must have told him in a thousand different ways that I wasn’t going anywhere and that I was just holding on to Lucy to keep her from bothering him.  But I knew even as the words were falling from my mouth that it was not completely true.  My big boy was hurting.  And I was protecting my baby.

It was the “right thing.”  But it did not feel good.  It did not feel good at all.

Minutes went by and his breathing steadied.  I sobbed the ugly tears on the phone and Fish calmed down.  So, eventually, did I. The school bus came at 2:37 and Fisher jumped off the couch like nothing was wrong.  Cautiously, I opened the door.  He’d either take a few steps and slow down and I would know that this time, this time was different, or he’d leap off the porch to cover his big girl with kisses.

He leapt off the porch.  I leaned against the door frame and watched those two run up the front hill, all zig-zag across the flower beds.  Lucy pressed her face against the storm door waiting for them to come up the front steps.  And just like that today was exactly the same as every other afternoon.

So help me, if these kids are not the death of me, this dog will be.

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Day 89: Primal Scream

Posted on February 26, 2013 | 10 comments

Day 89: Primal Scream – Get it out if your system. Go on. Let loose.

The way I understand things the primal scream is part of Arthur Janov’s primal therapy.  The theory states that neurosis is a product of repressed pain from childhood.  Releasing the primal scream greases the gears to eventually free the pain we have repressed, thereby processing it and integrating these painful childhood experiences into our adult selves.

Fundamental to Janov’s theory is the idea that we have three levels to our conscious and unconscious mind.  We have our survival mind.  We have our feeling mind.  And lastly we have our thinking mind.

I don’t think I would be a good candidate for Primal Therapy.  To begin with, I do not think there is any division between my feeling and thinking mind.  And second – I am just not big on screaming anymore.  Years ago I struggled with this.  Emily tried my patience.  I read Unconditional Parenting and I worked my ass off to stay committed to a path of gentle discipline.  But toddlers are wicked little creatures.  And I had so much anger in me.  So, I yelled.

Don't let the sweet face fool you. She was maddening.

Don’t let the sweet face fool you. She was maddening.

I did not yell all of the time.  But I yelled more than I wanted to. As my life straightened out and I let go of the anger that had been holding me back, I stopped yelling.  It didn’t hurt that Emily grew up a little and left the incendiary behavior of toddlerhood behind.

Today I let out a few screams for the sake of the challenge.

I guess it remains to be seen if I can blame all of my yelling on misplaced aggression and pain  or if it was really just the torturous toddler years taking their toll on me. As great as it may have felt today to let my primal self holler – it feels better to keep a lid on my volume.   I have every reason to believe that Lucy will drive me bonkers, too, over the next couple of years.  And if I survive her toddlerhood without going apeshit I will have a teenager right around the corner.    Here’s hoping my screaming ship has sailed. Breathe in.  Breathe out.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Parenting

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Transition

Posted on February 24, 2013 | 22 comments

20130223-233341.jpgThe final stage of active labor is transition. It is the most painful. I wept and moaned and cried during labor. But during transition? In transition I got quiet. I was scared. Scared and excited about what was surely going to happen next.

Transition is hard. Even when I am not preparing my body to deliver a baby I have been known to get quiet as I move my mind and body in to a new stage of life.

I have been quiet. And reflective. I think I am in transition.

I have been reading about the idea that we all reinvent ourselves every seven years. According to a lot of medical research all of the cells in your body are replaced every seven years. Granted, you do not wake up to a brand new body overnight. One cell at a time your body rejuvenates itself. And who I am today may actually be a different physical person than I was seven years ago. It stands to reason that I would feel different emotionally, spiritually.

Seven years ago I felt it happening. I was a new mother. My marriage was dissolving. I didn’t know what my future would look like but I could see small stretches of the path to get there. There were tears and glasses of wine and friendships forged and promises made. I moved my body hundreds of miles from my home. I got a new job. I made new friends. The change was slow and painful. I fought against it even though I knew my smile would be brighter when it was over. I held on to bitter moments because I thought they defined me. And perhaps because I wasn’t sure who I was going to be if I let them go.

It’s happening again. The quiet. The quiet that precipitates evolution.

Change is hard when you aren’t running from anything.

And so I run in place. Or around and around my neighborhood. But I still don’t know where I am going.

I have been home with the kids for a year. I don’t want to leave them.

I have been married for three years in April. I am still over the moon for my man.

I am putting down roots in my community. I don’t want to move.

I have been writing here for almost four years. I don’t want to stop.

I have a dozen drafts in my files. Half-written essays abut the girls and motherhood and fitness and my velour sweatsuits. But none of it speaks to me. If it doesn’t hold my attention it won’t hold yours.

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Change is paralyzing. Odd that growth makes me feel so frozen solid. As my mind races and my cells replace themselves I can’t seem to make a complete thought.

My big girl is reading chapter books and Tiger Beat magazine and painting her nails with her friends. My baby girl is eating a sandwich and chasing the dog in a itty bitty track suit. They are growing so fast. Days are moving so quickly and I can’t hold on tight enough. I am running short on the time needed to sit at the keyboard and write it all down. As soon as I sit down to finish a thought I no longer really feel that way anymore.

My girls are growing fast all of a sudden. And so am I.

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I don’t know what will become of my girls. But I know that no matter who they turn out to be they will be fine. Because they are loved. And I know that someday we will look back at pictures of their childhood and laugh and say “Of course! They couldn’t have become anyone else!”

And I know that days, weeks, months from now – when my transition is over – I will laugh and say “Of course, this is the path I have always been on.” But today? Today I am not really sure where I am going. But I know I will be fine. Because I am loved.

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Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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The Truth

Posted on February 6, 2013 | 45 comments

Believe it or not, I have secrets.  Well.  A secret.  Maybe.

I was pregnant with Emily before I farted in front of my ex-husband.  We had been together for almost nine years. I don’t suppose it changed how he felt about me.  Were it not for the day after Emily was born when I ran up the stairs with my arms over my head like Rocky Balboa crying out “Yes!!!! I did it and I did not bust my stitches!!” he might still believe that I do not, in fact, poop, at all.

Somehow even as “take me as I am” as I was in my twenties it was still important to me to be a girl that does not poop. You’re thinking that isn’t really something to be proud of? I guess it’s not.

But I can tell you what is. I have been pregnant for 81 weeks. Two vaginal births. I have gained and lost a total of more than 70 pounds. I have two beautiful children one of whom was just shy of ten pounds at birth. And I have never ever had a hemorrhoid. Never.

In my thirties I have been more relaxed.  I poop with the door open. My husband and I have no secrets. He would argue that he has no privacy but I prefer to think of it as no secrets.

But now? Now I think we might have a secret. But I’m not sure.

I might not be the woman he married anymore. I might not even be the woman I was just a few days ago. I might have a secret. I might have a hemorrhoid.

Do I find a support group? Am I forever a changed woman? Is something wrong with me that I am more upset about losing my title as The Woman That Never Had a Hemorrhoid than I am about actually maybe possibly having one?

This morning as I kissed my sweet husband good morning I could stand it no longer.   “I have to tell you something. This weekend I pooped a football and now I think I have a hemorrhoid.”

He knew I was embarrassed.  He didn’t laugh at me.  “Ok.  Did you buy Preparation H?”

I nodded.

“Are you using it?”  Dammit, he knows me too well.

I shook my head. “I’m in denial.”

“Use the cream and you never have to bring it up again.” Sweet man.  He was giving me an out.  He was going to let this be our secret.

“I might tell the Internet.”

“Ok.”

I don’t know what I want you to do with this information. I just can’t live a lie. I am not the woman I used to be. I don’t think.  I mean, I’m not really sure.   You didn’t think I was going to check, did you?  Sheesh.

Happy Kelly

Look. I am distracting you with a Wedding Dress Cartwheel. Let’s never speak of this again, ok?

 

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Inside a Paper Bag

Posted on February 5, 2013 | 26 comments

photo (4)As a teenager I looked through the big box of family photographs often.  Pictures from the late 1970s were in albums.  They had rounded corners and a vintage feel.  As time went by the pictures never made it in to an album.  They were in Kodak envelopes, labelled “Rehoboth Beach, 1982.”

Whether the pictures were in books or sorted in to piles there was one thing in common year after year.  There were pictures of us sleeping, a tiny Kelly with a  Snoopy in a rainbow bedroom, my brother in his Smurf sweatsuit curled up in my dad’s chair.  As a teenager I didn’t understand why there were so many of these pictures.  We were just sleeping.

My dad used to joke us when we were little,  “You’re good kids, when you’re asleep.”  As a parent I can certainly agree.  There is little more wonderful than a sleeping child, the frenetic energy of the afternoon exchanged for the slow and steady breath of night.

I spent a lot of time the last few days sitting on the edge of my bed just watching them – my girls, snuggled up asleep.  We’ve had five days of Ladies’ Nights.  We have had quick dinners and eaten dessert on a blanket in the living room.  We watched Footloose and Project Runway and we painted our nails.  These little sleeping beauties, they are my good kids – “when [they’re] asleep.”

I look at them and I wonder if they will have a childhood like I did.  They will ride their bikes, they will play in the creek.  They will have birthday parties in our back yard. We will have pizza at the pool.  I will take pictures of them while they sleep.  It will be the same.

They won’t have a TV Guide to circle their Saturday morning cartoon choices.  They won’t tie an index card with their name and address to a balloon and set it free, hoping against hope for a reply in the mail some day.  They will not likely ever have a teacher that calls their handouts “dittos.”    And unless I print some of these images their teenage selves might not roll their eyes at the numerous pictures of them sleeping.  Many things will be different.

When I was a little girl and I was waiting for the bus to come in the morning I would watch the sky. There is a moment when the sky goes from pink to tan right before the sun comes up, right before the school bus comes. I used to pretend that my whole neighborhood was inside a paper shopping bag.  This morning while Emily was putting her shoes on and Lucy was still asleep I stepped outside on to the deck and looked at the sky.  There was a paper bag all around me.

The sky turned from tan to sunlit before Em finished tying her shoes.  I need to remember to show my girls the paper bag that surrounds us.  I need to do it quickly while they still remember what a paper shopping bag looks like.  A few more years from now you might not ever see one at the store.  The only paper bag left will be the one that surrounds my neighborhood early in the morning.  Their childhood is different.  But it is the same.

photo 1

 

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Hey you guys!!!

Posted on January 26, 2013 | 32 comments

It’s not my best look. I call it “just rolled out of bed not even wearing my cute glasses wearing my favorite sweater and only two sips in to a cup of coffee” chic.

Photo on 1-26-13 at 8.09 AM #2

I just wanted to sit down this morning and say Hey you guys! Yesterday afternoon yours truly was Freshly Pressed and with that comes scads (gobs? hordes? what shall I call you?)  of new readers that deserve a little shout out.

It didn’t seem right to get all fancied up and try and be something I am not and dazzle you.  So. Here I am.  This is where I usually am.  In my chair with the kiddo on the boob.  This morning is cold so I am enjoying one of the four (four!) cowl neck scarves I have recently crocheted.  Yeah.  I am a woman that crochets, guys.  I don’t know how it happened.  Sometime this winter when I realized I had watched everything on my DVR and every single series on Hulu I decided I needed to find something else to do while Lucy slept in my lap.  So, yeah, I crochet.  And I am impatient.  Cowl neck scarf – the four hour project – we are pals.  Stick around and maybe I will send you one if your neck looks particularly cold.

I wish I had more time this morning but I am trying to get out the door.

You know when you do something that you kind of think is awesome but you aren’t sure if it is totally absurd.  You’re not embarrassed exactly, but you’re not sure if people that know you would think “Oh, that is strange.  You don’t really do that, do you?”  When I was fourteen I bought a hot pink swing dress and purple polka-dotted tights to wear to my boyfriend’s graduation.  (It was 1991, it was a hot look.) Previously I had been seen in my overalls.  Pretty much every day.  I thought the dress was cute.  I thought it was kind of adorably Molly Ringwald-ish, actually. But I wondered if it was “me.”

I don’t work hard to stay in my “me” box.  But I think we all have a type.  Not long ago I was horrified when I realized I had Mom-hair but I owned it.  In fact, I declared myself to be the Samue L. Jackson of Motherhood and decided that in spite of my hair I was a bad motherfucker.

So, I am yammering on because I am not sure I can admit this.  I like to work out.  It keeps me from being totally mental.  I run.  I actually love p90x.  I am not afraid of the weight room and I don’t really wear “cute outfits” to the gym.  I like to get sweaty.  But this morning I am going to do something I have been talking about doing forever.  And I might get hysterical and get kicked out but I am going for it.  I am going to Zumba, guys.   Zumba bills itself as a sexy Jazzercise.  Take a minute to chew on that.  Sexy.  Jazzercise.  I hope they serve margaritas.  I am going to need one.  Or four.

So, a big fat “hello” and “happy to meet you” and “what took you so long let’s be best friends!” to the new readers.  I gotta jet.  Get my sweat on.  Oh, and shake my moneymaker. Because apparently when I am not busy being a bad motherfucker or crocheting I go to Zumba.  Sigh.  The latter half of my third decade is going to be weird.  I can feel it.

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