What Is the Opposite of “Idiot Savant?”

Maybe it’s because I’m old or just old-fashioned that I’ve  remained willfully ignorant of most technological advancements since, oh, say Google.  I e-mail, and I have a Facebook account, and as you know by now, I even ventured into the world of online dating for awhile.  But.  For the record, I am not interested in knowing which tattoo I should get or what my supernatural talent is.  I do not want to join the group “Give O. J. Simpson your Monopoly ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card.”  I do not want you to send me a margarita or a petunia plant for my Lil’ Green Patch. (And what is a Lil’ Green Patch??  I’m pretty sure I don’t have one.)  I’m not trying to be a wet blanket.  I simply don’t get it.  It’s not real.  Why can’t you just say hello instead of sending me a piece of flair? 

I’m definitely not a member of the Technorati.  I’ve been oblivious to Mixxing and Digging, and I’ve never stumbled upon Stumbleupon.  The one that baffles me the most, though, is Twitter.  The notion of assuming anyone – even my mother – would want to know that at some given moment I’ve just bought a pair of shoes, or my milk has gone bad, or some other equally inane thing strikes me as a bit creepy and narcissistic.  Even more confounding: people apparently do want to know. I’d be appreciative – and all ears – if someone would be kind enough to explain the appeal of it. 

I tell you all this by way of background information.   Until I started this one, blogging and its mechanics have been as foreign to me as Paris Hilton at  MENSA convention.  I’ve managed to figure out how to attach a picture to my post, and to create a link to another web site (although the link might manifest itself in any number of colors, over which I seem to have no control). That’s about as far as it goes.

I knew I was a novice, but I didn’t realize how bad the situation was until yesterday, when I spent some time navigating around WordPress.  I gaped over blogs designed as deftly as the most beautiful book pages.  I clicked on links that took me to recipes nested inside subcategories nested inside parent categories.  I gamboled through fields of HTML: widgets properly used, contact forms that actually contacted someone, photos appropriately located beside text they illustrated.  I came away with the sense that perhaps the blog needs a bit of spiffing up. 

I set myself to task.  I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive about the magnitude of my ignorance, but all the “How to Blog” articles I’ve read specifically mention how user-friendly WordPress is.  I am a smart person, I thought to myself.  I can do this.  Ha. 

Is there such a thing as an idiot-savant, but in reverse? If so, I’m it: as functionally literate as I choose to be at most things, with an inexplicable and profound deficit in the area of blog design.  My point is only that I hope my unadorned writing is sufficiently riveting to keep your attention for awhile, because I think it’s going to take me some time to figure out what in the world a metatag is.

Monday’s Workout

1) Ten minute warm-up on the recumbent bike

2) Squats with counterbalance: three sets x 20 reps per set

3) Alternating with overhead press: three sets x 20 reps per set, using 7.5-pound weights

4) Sit-ups with (12-pound!!) medicine ball: four sets x 20 reps per set

5) Alternating with floor press: four sets x 20 reps per set, using 10-pound weights

6) Lunges: two sets x length of the (very long) room

7) Alternating with upright rows: five sets x 20 reps per set, using a 15-pound bar

8 ) Leg press: three sets x 20 reps per set, lifting 75 pounds

9) Seated row: three sets x 15 reps per set, lifting 25 pounds

10) Alternating with assisted pull-ups: three sets x 10 reps per set

Back on the infernal bike for 20 more minutes of cardio.  I was sweating so hard my mascara ran.

The Pushmi-pullyu Effect

"Lord save us!" cried the duck. "How does it make up its mind?"

Do you remember the pushmi-pullyu?  He was the fabulous mythical beast that lived in the heart of the African jungle in Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Dr. Dolittle. What made the pushmi-pullyu remarkable was the fact that he had two heads, one facing in each direction.  The anomaly gave him a coveted status among hunters and menagerie keepers alike,  but it also often left him completely immobilized, with each head wanting to take off in the opposite direction.  I’ve been feeling the pushmi-pullyu effect myself these days (okay, not just these days), and it has made me wonder: why do we do fight ourselves so fiercely?  And am I the only one?

Here’s an example.  I’ve lately been questioning some long-held assumptions about what my life ought to look like, and it has led me to the conclusion that the ridiculous number of years I recently frittered away in law school were a grievous misdirection.  What I really want, as it turns out, is to pursue writing - in some capacity – as a career.  Once I realized it, I began researching the various options for obtaining a master’s degree in writing.  I sat down one recent afternoon to compile a list of schools that might fit the bill.  Just googling the subject, however, brought me to the brink of apoplexy.  Granted, it could have to do with the notion that I’ve spent obscene amounts of time and money on a degree I’ll likely never use; the idea of signing on for more school is less than palatable.  But that wasn’t really the proximate cause of my freak-out.  My escalating sense of panic went something like this: What if I couldn’t produce a book-length work by the end of the program?  What if I couldn’t get into a decent program?  What about the fact that even if I got into a decent graduate program and produced a book-length work by the end of it, it would guarantee nothing in terms of a successful writing career?  And I’d be in my mid-40′s and essentially just starting said career, and I’ll never be able to pay for Andrew to go to college at that rate.  What if I’m not as good as I think I am?  What if I never write anything worth a flip?  What if I move to another city and find out I can’t handle school and parenthood without having family around to help out?  What if there’s a terrorist attack on the campus, for pete’s sake?  And just like that, as much as I know I want to do whatever it takes to write, I have to navigate away from the web site because I’m kind of hyperventilating.  Push me.  Pull you.

Anyone who knows me well has heard me lament my defective marital status from time to time.  Of course I know being single isn’t a defect, but the reality is that I live in a community where the divorce rate is rather low, and where the gender roles are both traditional and divided.  That is, the  fathers go to work every day while the mothers volunteer, go to kickboxing classes, shop for Tory Burch shoes, and drive carpool but decidedly do not work.  Living in that community as a divorced mother feels a bit like being an amputee – as if something large, normal and really important is missing, without which I am incomplete.   Moreover, despite the disastrous results of wedded bliss the first time around, I think I’d like the companionship of someone who neither sheds his coat in the spring nor likes to talk about what body parts he can make farting noises with (of course, I’m well aware that a husband could potentially do both of these things).

The problem is that because divorces are relatively rare in my world, it’s quite a challenge to find reasonable men to go out with.  If you told me at, say, age 24 about some of the men my future self would date, I would have been buffaloed by the news.   I’ve been dumped by men I wouldn’t have accepted a first date with back then.  I went out with one man who felt threatened by my therapist, and several who spent the evening discussing their ex-wives.   One fellow I was set up with grilled me interrogation-style about my long-term goals, while another blind date drove a Caddy, wore a gold and diamond pinky ring, and called me bee-you-tee-ful.  Don’t ask me how I found such a gem here in the deep South, because I can’t fathom the answer.  I spent a bit of time (a bit too long) with a man who couldn’t manage to maintain a relationship for more than three months without feeling trapped, unless the woman didn’t like him back.  And my mother called one of my dates ”a little old man in a young man’s body.”  You get my point. 

So you’d think that if someone nice, intelligent and attractive came along, I’d be champing at the bit. 

I’ve had occasion in the last few weeks to meet a seemingly nice, intelligent and attractive man, quite by accident.  The circumstances are such that we run into each other on a regular basis, and each time, we have a lovely conversation.  I think the conversations have been facilitated by my oblivion to the fact that he appeared to be nice, intelligent, and attractive - simultaneously! - until he expressed some interest in me.  At that point, they acquired an ex post facto ominous pall; and I was overcome by an overwhelming urge to bolt.  I had hardly spoken to him long enough to know his last name, let alone whether I’d like to date him.  His apparent attraction to me alone made him suspect.  I immediately started looking for reasons I would never marry him (not that he had asked).  Why?  I want what I don’t want, and don’t want what I want.  Push.  Me.  Pull.  You.

I get it that my trepidation is Pavlovian, borne of the memory of painful judgment blunders in my near and distant past.  Some of them were capricious and quick, like ripping off a band-aid or jumping from a rooftop.  Others were a matter of omission.  They proliferated like a snowball gathering speed on its trip down a mountain, or like a loose thread that eventually unravels an entire sweater.  But the most troublesome of my bad decisions, and the reason I tend to second-guess myself into immobility, were the ones I couldn’t have known were wrong at the time. 

I remember the moment my ex-husband proposed…the “yes” that caught slightly in my throat before the huge, gleaming diamond drew me like a magpie’s treasure.  Were there red flags I could have seen - should have seen - that hinted at the treacherous path ahead of me?  Should a tendency to be secretive about passwords have been enough?  A persistent forgetfulness about certain subjects?  An occasional exaggeration or even fabrication, or a strange pop-up on a computer screen? If so, then perhaps it’s possible to have learned from my mistakes and grown to trust my judgment.  If not, I can’t help but have my sense of cosmic justice offended – but more importantly, how will I ever know if my decisions are the right ones?  In the meantime, I find myself paralyzed by the battle between the possibilities. 

So what’s a girl to do?  I think about my hope that this will be a year of growth.  And I’m struck by this irony: the very thing that I seek to leave behind – the old, bad decisions of my past – is what keeps me rooted to the same spot, living with the decisions ad infinitum.    I suppose there is a balance between leaping too quickly and not moving at all.  It doesn’t make sense to ignore my fears: those were the bad choices I made too quickly.  It doesn’t make sense to let them fester, either: those were the errors of omission.  I imagine that if I ever want to grow up, I’ll have to learn to visualize the ramifications with a keener eye, to give my inner voice the thoughfulness it deserves, and then dive in like a swan.

Things I’d Like to Write in My Match.com Profile (But I Don’t)

He’s older than my mother!

Clean your mirror!

A little too close to naked

Tempting, no?

Yippee-ki-yay!!

Now THAT’s a ‘stache!

No comment.

Ummm….

Just weird

For fun: dinning out and movies

He doesn’t look happy to be here!

What the…?

I’ll just…

…bet that…

…he thought…

…he was…

…being…

…original.

Photo gallery of men who have actually “winked” at me on Match.com

 

Post-marital dating has been interesting, to say the least.  Long gone are the days when one can just shimmy down to the local college bar and find a hottie who would like to ply her with drinks.  One resource to address the dearth of opportunities is the online dating website.  While I am no longer a member of Match.com, my profile is still posted so I do get ”winked” at on occasion.  Some of the men who wink at me seem perfectly lovely, while others simply need a little profile-tweaking and insight into the female psyche.  But there are some I just have to wonder about.  Here’s a list of helpful hints and suggestions to help all the single men out there maximize the online dating experience.

1) Unless you built it, I really don’t need to see a photo of your vehicle.  Same goes for your house.

2) I know you think you’re showing me something fantastic with that topless cell phone picture you took of yourself in the bathroom mirror, but why don’t you save that special something until after we’re dating?  Trust me, it’s better that way.

3) I’d also like to suggest that you shave the porn-stache you grew in the 1980′s.

4) To be truethful, even if you are a Honest Man, I wouldn’t like to enjoy fine dinning with you. Lol.

5) Let me guess: you’re looking for a partner in crime.  You also work hard and play hard, you live life to its fullest, you love to laugh, you’re happy staying in or going out, and you’re equally comfortable in blue jeans or a tux.  Did I miss anything?

6) You’ve aged quite gracefully, but I still won’t go on a date with you if you’re old enough to be my father.  I also won’t go if you’re young enough to be my son.  Why don’t you try “winking” at people your own age?

7) You mentioned that you don’t want to date any players or any nutcases.  But if I’m a player, I probably won’t tell you about it; and if I’m crazy, I probably don’t know it.

8 ) No, Billy Joe, you are NOT my Big Daddy, and I am not your Little Moma.

9) Surprisingly, most women will not be tempted by this: “I like woman with the good looking and someone like great sex.  And I like flirting and ecotic and wonderful evening.  And some one the like.” 

10) Don’t worry.  I’ll still think you’re very macho if you refrain from posting photos of yourself posing with the carcasses of animals you’ve killed.

11) What am I supposed to take away from this sentence: “I AM A HARDWORKING , SIMPLE GUY WHO CAN ALSO BE LAZY AND COMPLEX.”

12) I am open to dating people of other faiths. But since you just told me that Jesus comes first in your life and you want a woman who will raise your children to be good Christians, I’d like to suggest that you actually read my profile – particularly the part where I’ve written that I’m Jewish – before winking at me once again. And no, I’m not considering “Messianic Judaism.”

12) What is it with the Olive Garden?

A Flash in Japan

Are we having fun yet?

You may have known that last Wednesday was Cinco de Mayo, but I’ll bet you didn’t know it was Children’s Day in Japan. In honor of this festive occasion, my grandmother decided to take all the great-grandchildren (and their parents) to dinner at Benihana. It was quite an experience. Here’s the group we had in tow:

1) Nana: my 85-year-old grandmother, a Southern Jewish belle born in Belzoni, Mississippi (pronounced Bell-zone-ah for all you Yanks out there). She still works out, can probably outrun Andrew, vacations with her friends all over the world, and hands out $50 bills at Hanukkah time. She’s pretty hip for a grandmother. Nana is a bit distraught that I’m not married, and she’d like to set me up with pretty much any male who’s breathing and willing to go on a date with me. I appreciate her concern. She also tends to have bad karmic vibes in restaurants. It is an extraordinarily common event that Nana’s food comes out too hot, too cold, too sweet, too done, too rare, or just not to her liking. The matter is not helped by the fact that she considers her ideas about the way her food ought to be prepared superior to those of most chefs in most restaurants, culinary training be damned.

2) Me and Andrew

3) My cousin Daniel and his wife Meggan: Harvard- and Duke-educated, respectively, they live in a regentrified neighborhood in town with their two children.  Yuppie-come-latelies that they are, I’d say they’ve taken an enlightened and academic approach to child-rearing.  It would not surprise me at all if I found out that they pureed their own organic baby food, and I’m pretty sure that most of the toys in their house are designed to foster some kind of academic or emotional or psychological development. I don’t describe this as a bad thing in any way, and in fact, my approach to raising Andrew was similar until he reached a certain point in his jaded little life. If they haven’t already, Daniel and Meggan will find out soon enough that short of moving to some remote Mongolian outpost and living in a yurt, the ubiquity of caffeinated soda and Spongebob Squarepants will stymie the most vigilant of parents. (Or maybe if you live in a pineapple under the sea?)

4) Sadie: our four-year-old cousin and the daughter of Daniel and Meggan.  She is brilliant and adorably cute with a funny little Southern twang.  Daniel and Meggan send her to Junior Kindergarten at an elite all-girls’ school where the grosgrain-bow-and-smocked-dress-wearing kindergarteners tend to grow into lacrosse-playing-makeup-eschewing teenagers.  Despite the fact that her parents have equipped her dress-up trunk with doctors’ scrubs as well as tutus, Sadie has a hardcore penchant for the Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall fame.

5) Ben: one-year-old uberbaby of Meggan and Daniel.  We’re not really sure what he’s going to turn out like yet, but he’s got a precocious vocabulary (at least for a kid in diapers), and he’s a monster.

I picked up Nana and we headed to Benihana to meet Meggan and Daniel and the kids for dinner.  About fifteen minutes after our arrival, they staggered into the restaurant laden with children, camera, booster seat, and a diaper bag loaded with toys, crayons, baby wipes, baby food, extra clothes, and possibly a small water buffalo.  Meggan apologetically explained that Sadie fell asleep in the car since she is just giving up her nap.

We settled in and the waitress arrived to take our order.  All went well until it was Nana’s turn to order.  Here’s an abbreviated version of what transpired:

Nana:  ”Is the sauce on the mango shrimp sweet?”
Waitress: “Yes, it’s a little sweet.”
Nana: “I don’t like sweet.”  The waitress looks at me and shrugs as if I can resolve this conundrum.
Me: “Here’s a shrimp dish that’s not sweet.”
Nana: “I want the mango shrimp.”
Me: “But it’s sweet.”
Nana (frustrated): “I know, but I want the vegetables that come in the mango shrimp!”
Me: “Oh!” and then to the waitress, “Bring her the mango shrimp but leave off the mango sauce.”

The waitress is confounded by this, because then, of course, it won’t be mango shrimp at all.  She suggests the other shrimp dish, the one I had mentioned before.  I explain slowly and deliberately to the addled waitress that Nana wants the vegetables in the mango shrimp, that the other shrimp dish has different vegetables, but that she doesn’t want it sweet, so the chef can just make it like he makes the regular hibatchi dishes but using the ingredients of the mango shrimp dish. The waitress scribbles in her little pad while shaking her head dubiously. “Do you want steamed rice or fried rice?” she asks Nana. Nana replies with a firm and definite response. She wants fried rice.

The waitress moves on to me.  Being the conscientious health maven that I am, I order steamed salmon with steamed rice rather than what I would normally order, which is vegetables and chicken made heinously unhealthy by stir-frying it in a glob of butter about the size of my clenched fist. Nana, who is still quite worried about maintaining her girlish figure at 85, sees that I ordered steamed rice, and it provokes her to change her rice to steamed rice as well.

After some time, Carlos, the Japanese-style hibatchi chef, arrives to prepare our dinner.  I can tell he’s been in communication with our waitress, because he is clearly reluctant to even make eye contact with any of us.  He steels himself and starts doing wacky things with a spatula and an egg.  Sadie, perhaps the wisest of us all, sagely observes, “He’s fancy.”

The waitress appears with mine and Nana’s steamed rice.  I know we’re in trouble, because Nana looks longingly at the fried rice everyone else is getting as Carlos scoops it into the bowls rimming the table.  “That looks good,” she mutters.  Before I can stop her, she corners poor Carlos and asks him if he can make her rice fried rice instead of this offal she’s been served.  By this time, all the fried rice is accounted for in bowls, so he takes her rice, dumps it out onto the griddle, douses it with soy sauce and butter, and shovels it back into her bowl.  I surreptitiously peek at Meggan cutting up baby ravioli for Ben, and she rolls her eyes at me.  I’m pretty sure I respond with something between a grimace and a smile.

Beleaguered Carlos finishes cooking without any major mishaps and goes on his way.  About this time, the two younger children are starting to lose focus.  They’ve been sitting in chairs for some 30 minutes now, and they’re ready to move.  Before I know it, Meggan has removed from the bag a slew of paraphernalia to entertain the children.  Crayons and stuffed animals are strewn across the table, keeping Sadie engaged – but not Ben.  Meggan deposits him on the floor to demonstrate his newly acquired ability to walk, which predictably prompts the urge to take pictures.  Faster than you can say “poopy diaper,” she whips out the camera.

She decides it will be cute to take a picture of Andrew, Ben, and Sadie together.  Sadie sits gamely in the chair next to Andrew, but when Meggan tries to put him on Andrew’s lap, Ben’s not having any of it.  He writhes and cries, and I imagine that in his own little baby mind he’s trying to convey to us all that he’d like to get the hell out of here.  Getting all three kids to sit still and smile simultaneously (or at least not cry) is about as easy as keeping a litter of kittens in a box, and it’s obvious that Meggan is descending  into that same manic, don’t-let-this-baby-cry psychosis all parents have found themselves in from time to time, usually in a restaurant or grocery store.  She has a glazed smile on her face and is cheerily exhorting, “Say ‘giggle!’  Say ‘giggle!’” or maybe she’s just commanding the children to giggle, but whatever she’s doing, it’s not really working. 

I think Meggan manages to snap a picture or two before Andrew makes a gagging noise, shoves Ben off his lap, and informs us (and by “us” I mean all of us in the restaurant) that Ben has a dirty diaper.  Meggan scoops Ben up, sticks her nose right up to his diaper, and exclaims, “Wheewwww!!!  That is STINKY!!”  For some reason, she opts to let Ben enjoy the sensation for a bit and allow the noxious odor wafting from the diaper to make its way through the back half of the restaurant.  After the poop has marinated for about ten minutes, she smells it again as if to confirm its continuing potency.  Holding him aloft, shoves his fecund little bottom in my face, grinning, “Smell that!”  I reflexively recoil, because indeed, I have already smelled it from the far end of the table.  I surreptitiously peek at Nana, and she rolls her eyes at me.  I’m pretty sure I respond with something between a grimace and a smile.

Driving home after I’ve dropped Nana off, I start thinking about the evening.  I decide that I shouldn’t be too hard on either Meggan or Nana.  After all, I’ve definitely been in one of those places before, that one where the intensity of motherhood is still so powerful it quashes one’s sense of coolness, if not decorum.  And I’ll probably be in the other one day, that one where after all the years of orchestrating her life and the lives of her children, a person is forced to face the reality of her own diminishing autonomy. 

No matter what our individual experiences are, these things seem to be pretty universal.  I remember swearing I would never drive a minivan, and I never have.  But I can recall coming to the sudden realization that people were staring as I walked through the grocery store jabbering to Andrew about having green beans for dinner long before he could possibly answer.  I’m sure, too, that whatever ugly detritus is the byproduct of being in this midlife phase, I’m dragging it along unwittingly, like the psychological equivalent of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe.  My point is, we’d all like to think we’re not going to do exactly what the stereotypes and the odds tell us we will…but that’s exactly why they’re stereotypes in the first  place.  

My late great-grandmother had a persistent habit of emptying the sugar caddies from restaurants stealthily into her purse.  She’d occasionally pocket a couple of rolls as well.  She didn’t need these items, yet she persisted in taking them.  My mother used to tell me, “Shoot me if I ever do that.”  (She also used to tell me not to let her walk around the nursing home with chin hairs, but that’s another post.)  If I had to guess, I’d say that my great-grandmother was trying to regain some measure of control over something scary and inevitable, the same way my grandmother gets mad when people don’t understand what  she means about the mango shrimp.  I’d also guess that even if the form is different, that same emotional substance awaits both my mother and me, eventually, whether we like it or not.  I think the trick is to realize that because every bit of it - from indignant teenage angst all the way to old age – happens to all of us, we should find a way to embrace it and to have a bit of compassion for each other.

I’ve been pretty remiss about posting the workouts.  I’ll post Monday’s and Wednesday’s below.  Len was out of town today on a mini-vacation in Florida.

Monday’s Workout

Warm up for five minutes on the Arc Trainer.  After about a minute-and-a-half, I’m panting and I beg Len to please lower the intensity level.  With eyebrows raised, he lowers it from 25 to 24.

1) Squats with a counterbalance: 20 reps x three sets

2) Alternating with Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 10 reps with 7.5 pound weights x three sets

3) Traveling Lunges: 22 x three sets

4) Alternating with Chest Press: 12 reps with 7.5 pound weights x 3 sets

Then on the recumbent bike for 30 minutes

Wednesday’s Workout

Len informs me that despite my ongoing whining, he’s actually been making it harder and I’ve actually been making progress.  Today, he decides that in lieu of a separate half-hour of cardio, he’s going torture  work out with me for an entire hour doing exercises that will accomplish both the strength training and heart-rate raising elements of the workout at once.

1) Clean and throw with a 12-pound medicine ball: 15 reps x four sets (Not only is this exercise so strange that I was hard pressed to find a video, I looked like a complete klutz doing it)

2) Alternating with Modified Push-ups: 10 reps x four sets

3) Medicine Ball Slams: 15 reps x four sets

4) Alternating with Single Leg Deadlifts on Avirex pad with no weight: 15 reps on each leg x four sets

5) Reverse Crunches with Stability Ball: 20 reps x four sets

6) Alternating with Crunches with Stability Ball: 20 reps x four sets

Whew! That was a tough workout!

Where, Oh Where, Has My Karma Gone?

I’ve heard that positive energy begets positive energy, so you’d think that since I’m dedicating myself to turning over a healthy new leaf, weeks from hell might become fewer and farther between.  Nope.

The members of my family take perverse pride in winning a self-created annual contest we call “Idiot of the Year.”  In fact, the more times you are named the Idiot, the more prominent is your position of esteem in our admittedly strange clan.  In addition to the Idiot of the Year, once every ten years, there is an Idiot of the Decade.  My uncle Bert actually won Idiot of the Year, Decade, Century and Millenium in one fell swoop some time in the 1970′s by locking himself out of his house naked. 

Last year, my father made an unchallenged accession to the Idiot’s seat by driving his Mercedes into a large two-foot-deep puddle during a rainstorm on the way home from work.  His suit and his mood were ruined as he opened the door and water from the gutters of Union Avenue rushed into the erstwhile dry interior of his car.  As for the car itself, it had taken its last breath.  I tell you all this to underscore the profundity of my own idiocy.  You see, last Saturday in Memphis, there was a tremendous rainstorm.  You might have seen something about it on the national news, even.

Ignoring the faint wailing of tornado sirens in the distance, I had taken my son to a birthday party at the local miniature golf course-cum-lasertag-cum-video arcade. After all, it was barely sprinkling as I got in the car and headed blithely to Putt Putt. Once I got there, however, the rain began in earnest. Water careened off the roof of the building in solid sheets. Thunder growled like an angry bear, drowning out the electronic chorus of the video games. It seemed like the end of the world was coming – for about fifteen minutes. Then it stopped, so I got in my car to drive home and leave my son happily eating cupcakes at 10:30 in the morning.

Guess what happened next.

One could argue that the likelihood of a two-foot-deep puddle just sitting on a flat stretch of road, particularly when it’s not even raining any more, is remote. Apparently, though, that argument doesn’t hold water (no pun intended).  As I felt the tires of my car lift off the pavement slightly and tried in vain to get the engine to turn over, I recalled laughing long and hard at my sodden father and wondering what kind of moron wouldn’t see a lake in the middle of the street.  Now I know.  Payback, as they say, is hell.

Neither the roadside assistance operator, nor the nice policemen who pushed my car to the side of the road, nor the towtruck driver who arrived after an hour, mentioned the stupidity that driving headlong into a small pond necessitates.  Andrew, on the other hand, couldn’t stop talking about it - so I can only imagine what they were all thinking to themselves but too polite to say out loud.  Ah well, you can’t fool the neighbors.  At least I’ll be wearing the venerable crown of Idiocy when December rolls around.

I spent most of the day Monday dealing with insurance companies and rental car agencies, so there was just an abbreviated workout.  I won’t bother to post it, but here is the one from Wednesday:

Squats with counterbalance: as many as I could complete in one minute x three sets

Alternating with jumping jacks: as many as I could complete in 45 seconds x three sets

High pulls: 20 reps x four sets

Alternating with jumping jacks: as many as I could complete in 45 seconds x three sets

Bench squats: as many as I could complete in one minute x three sets

Alternating with (you guessed it) jumping jacks: as many as I could complete in 45 seconds x three sets

After this, it was back on the recumbent bike for 30 minutes of pedaling and watching “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” By the way, I’m apparently not.

Every Jar of Jam Has a Silver Lining

Here's the starting point. I'd like to note that I'm not quite as short as I appear in the picture; Len took merely took it from his rather lofty vantage point.

We have lift-off!  I finally trained with Len for the first time Wednesday, and let me tell you I’ve got aches in places I didn’t know I had muscles.  For you masochists who want to follow along, I’ll list the exercises we do in each workout session along with links (if I can find them) demonstrating them. 

 The Workout

1) Warm up for five minutes on the Arc Trainer, the evil cardio-spawn of a mating between an elliptical trainer and a stair stepper.  I notice as Len situates me on the machine that it faintly resembles what I’d imagine a Chinese torture device to look like.  The Arc Trainer is set at a resistance of 20 and an incline of 3 (whatever).

 2) Dumbbell Chest Press with legs on the Versaball using 7.5 pound dumbbells: 20 reps per set x four sets

3) Alternating with Reverse Crunches: 25 reps per set x four sets

4) Crunches with legs on the Versaball: 25 reps per set x four sets

5) Alternating with Planks, holding for as long as possible (I think we were holding out for 20 seconds)

4) Squats with a counterbalance: as many as I can complete in one minute x four sets

After this routine, Len put me on the recumbent bike for 30 minutes.  I was vehement and vocal about the fact that 30 minutes seems like a long time for a beginner, but Len informed me that we’ll be working up to an hour of cardio six days a week.  That shut me up.  After I got off the bike, my legs literally buckled underneath me as I was walking down the short flight of stairs to the lobby of the Jewish Community Center.

I was feeling mighty proud of myself all day Wednesday…but then Andrew and I went over to my friend Stephanie’s house after school.  Like me, Stephanie is a single mom with an only child and too many pets.  But, she’s way cooler than I am.  She recycles, she grows her own vegetables and herbs, she can cook her ass off, and she can pitch a tent.  She can bring home the bacon, so to speak, and fry it up in a pan.  I aspire to be her one day.

Anyway, I packed up Andrew and Maggie, our rescued lab mix, and headed over to Stephanie’s.  Our plan was that she and I could play together, Andrew and her son Elian could play together, and Maggie and Rex (her rescued lab mix) could play together and torture the neighborhood cats.  We had shooed the  boys out the door and cracked open a couple of Heinekens when Stephanie mentioned that she had bought blackberries and was planning to make jam.  We decided to make the jam right then and there. 

Unfortunately, we added the sugar before the pectin when the directions were to add the pectin before the sugar.  Apparently, this misstep fatally damaged the ability of the pectin to properly thicken the jam, so what we ended up with were eight mason jars filled with blackberry syrup.  Stephanie and I are both of the “glass-half-full” mindset, so we decided that the blackberry concoction, which by now we had firmly concluded would never be jam, would nevertheless be delicious over vanilla ice cream.

It wasn’t too hard to convince Andrew to stop at the grocery on the way home to pick up some vanilla ice cream and test our theory.  I had to check twice just to be sure.  As it turns out, we were right.  But health-wise, I think the day turned out to be a zero sum gain.

Thank You for the Germs

Well, friends, it looks like I might have to change the name of this blog to “A Couch Potato’s Guide to Turning 41.”  Friday was sick day #3 for my son.  By the late morning he seemed to be improving, although we were both approaching a state of catatonia from watching one too many Shrek sequels.

By Saturday, he was well enough to attend his drumline performance and baseball game.  Alas, it was only in theory, since the weather did crazy things and both were rained out.  I was doing a happy dance on the inside because I was finally going to be able to send the little bugger back to school and begin working out on Monday when….I noticed my throat felt a bit itchy.

Yep, you guessed it.  I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank my son for coughing his germy little cough right into my face.  Upon reflection, I can remember the moment it happened, as I tucked him sweetly into bed for the night.  Aren’t mothers supposed to be somehow magically protected when they’re taking care of sick children?

Needless to say, I didn’t get to work out Monday.  Again.  We’re going to try to make it happen tomorrow.  I’m still a bit scratchy, so I may not be at full capacity – but dammit, I’ll be there.