Meet Gomez

Name: Gomez

Genesis of Name:

1. Wears dapper suit
2. Loves ladies' laps
3. Did not shit on self immediately upon arrival at MWK household; was therefore erroneously thought to be handsomer of two cats

Skills:

1. Spot-on impression of Cindy Crawford if Cindy Crawford were a wet rat

Enjoys:

1. Empty paper bags/boxes/suitcases/drawers/tupperware containers
2. Endlessly yowling for no reason (preferably in the middle of the night)

Perversion of Choice:

Meet Uncle Fester

Name: Uncle Fester

Genesis of name:

1. Immediately shat on self upon arrival at the MWK household (see "skills," below)
2. Is fatter of the two cats
3. Would probably look good with a bald head

Skills: Standing on one leg to poop:

Enjoys:

1. Laser light shows
2. Getting on highest apparatus in room and staring creepily into space
3. Women's hair products

Perversion of choice:

Since you asked

There's meh boys.

They are named after the Addams brothers and have perversions to match.

I let them know that the people of the Internet wanted to meet them so they are busily preparing their online profiles.

Blerrrrrrg

Image via (you KNOW my couch is cuter than that)

I was completely useless this weekend. It felt so good.

I would like to state for the record that there is nothing wrong with going to a really early dinner and then coming home to watch 6-7 episodes of True Blood without stopping. This is perfectly acceptable Friday Night Behavior and does not make one (and/or one's husband) lame at all.

Baby Blog's First Birthday

A friend posted this photo on my facebook wall. I have no idea where it is from (or why she posted it)

Dudes, I just noticed that today is my blogaversary.

I am feeling sorta down on this blog and was just working on a long, heartfelt piece about how I am not sure what I am doing with it - my insecurities (mainly around the stupid fucking name), how I never write about marriage (and I'm not sure that I even want to), and bla bla bla...

But fuck it, it's my Internet Birthday. I'm going to go drink the last beer in the fridge and watch The Golden Girls.

Quick update

Ricardo is adorable and small and unironically wears normal, run of the mill sweatpants. You know, like the kind your dorky best guy friend wore for a year too long in middle school. I think I might like him.

The manager didn't do much for me - I ended up getting $50 off the fees but for some reason she made me work with the same Dishonest Sales Guy to do that. This was lame because I was trying to be super conflict avoidance-y with him but probably also good for my general need to Grow a Pair.*

The only other thing that happened was that I began to fully understand that I look really different when I am in my workout clothes. As in: I am not one of those people who can wear a workout outfit and still be considered as a sexual entity. Every time I go to the gym I am (duh) wearing my standard workout gear: baggy soccer/lacrosse shorts and a baggy t-shirt, with my hair up and a workout headband holding my bangs back. Up until now I guess I knew it wasn't cute, but I didn't think it turned me into wallpaper.**

Then I went back to the gym to sign my new (sans fees) paperwork...and I happened to be dressed for happy hour. I was wearing dark denim skinny jeans tucked into the boots and a black sorta flowy t-shirt thing. My hair was down and curly and I had make-up on. As I walked into the gym one random fitness-employee-man (lets call them f-e-ms) basically fell over himself asking me if I was a member. Then as I waited in the lobby he and another f-e-m sorta milled around a lot being very obvious about scoping my shit. THEN when Dishonest Sales Guy came out to find me he didn't recognize me and when I went up to him the first thing he said was, "You look so...different!" The whole time we were writing up the new contract the two f-e-ms continued to mill around and stare at me. As I was leaving, Dishonest Salesman commented again on how different I looked. All I could say was, "Yea...it's amazing how much difference a shower makes."

I mean, WHAT? I should probably be offended or insulted or something - why in the world was he talking about how I look at all? Mostly, though, I am simultaneously a) amused at the intense confirmation of how not cute my workout attire is*** is and b) bizarrely flattered that fitness dudes think I am hot. Sorry, feminism.

*Of ovaries, as my mother would say.

**Also, I am there to EXERCISE. What else would I wear?

***I went home and told D all about it. He laughed fairly hard and said, (lovingly), "Yea...you really don't make an effort to look cute when you are working out. " He of course agrees that trying to look cute when exercising is totally stupid.

View from the Fremont Bridge

It is 12:45 in the afternoon on a Friday. I throw on a skirt and top, haul my bag over my shoulder and kiss D$ goodbye.

Outside it is 85 degrees with no humidity. I slip the mix CD C made me in college into the stereo. As I pull out of the parking spot the first song comes on, a song I had almost forgotten about, and a smile breaks across my face. I speed down the street, fingers drumming the steering wheel and head bopping. The sunroof is open and the windows are down.

I have no responsibilities today, nothing I have to do. As the car crests the Fremont Bridge I see Portland in all her splendor glitter below me on the banks of the Willamette River. I yell out loud with the sheer joy of this moment, of this drive, of this view.

I am out on my own in my city on my day off.

Sold down the river

So I did it - I signed up for the personal trainer thingy. Unfortunately I am now feeling bad about it because it did NOT go as planned.

Buoyed by all of your comments and encouragement I was planning on waltzing into that gym and saying, "Yes, please!" Unfortunately I forgot that the minute I enter the gym and have to actually talk to a Fitness Person I transform from "Competent and Assertive" into "Mute, Socially Awkward and Totally Unable to Advocate for Myself."

Here is what happened.

1. After saying I wanted to sign up, and after starting the paperwork I see on the screen (I am not told this, mind you) that there is a $99 processing fee. I start to balk but think: listen, you really want to do this. You can afford that. D$ will be annoyed but you are not D$ and it is okay. I say okay. I let them run my card and sign some stuff. Mr. Personal Trainer who I thought was not sketchy and who at this point I still like goes to print out my agreement.
2. Upon viewing my agreement I am find out that I just signed up for a year-long agreement. If I want to get out early I will owe 50% of the monthly fees I would have owed. My heart starts to sink, but I am an Mute and Socially Awkward phase and am unable to say, "Wait, you didn't tell me that!" Mr. Personal Trainer is sitting right there and he is so FRIENDLY. I don't want to accuse him of swindling me and I still want to like him because he is going to be the one working with me each month. Right? Right?
3. No. Again, after signing up to this program that has hidden fees and makes me commit for a year I find out, why NO, Mr. Personal Trainer will NOT be working with me. In fact they are going to assign me someone I have never met before and NO no female trainers are available for the time-frame I want.
4. The trainer they assign me is named RICARDO. Even as I sit there and feel bad about how I am getting swindled, I wonder if his being named RICARDO means that I am contractually obliged to have an affair with him.

What is weird is that I don't get mad, I don't protest, I just sort of make faces and very passively let it be known that I am not happy. I do tell Mr. Personal Trainer that I feel like I am being sold down the river but I say it sort of jokingly because he IS still being really nice to me, I will be seeing him at the gym all the time and I don't want to feel awkward EVERY time I see him for the rest of my exercise-filled life. Still, I hate how passive and push-over-y I am being.

Clearly some of this is my fault - I should have asked a few more questions before I jumped in. On the other hand, this gym is inhabited by money-grubbing jerks. Right now I am trying not to let my annoyance over the sign-up bullshit color my enthusiasm for starting a new workout regime. I do have three days to cancel if I want (Friday at midnight) but I don't think I will. I really do want someone to help me work out, and maybe it will be good practice to learn to be comfortable in Fitness Land and around Fitness People. The year-long commitment sort of gives me hives - do you have any idea how long that is??! - but I came to a decision this morning. If I hate it or don't need it after six months, guess what: I can still quit. I will be out a chunk of cash but it will be a sunk cost and I will do my best to not feel bad about it.

My first appointment with RICARDO is Friday morning and I plan on going in early to talk to the manager to tell her (read: complain) about my experience AND to make sure that Ricardo is going to do what I want him to do. Mainly: make me a work out program and then change it for me each month as I progress. If that is not the deal then I am going to cancel.

But, who knows? RICARDO could be awesome.

Scientists are both absent-minded and sort of stupid

MWK: So I was thinking of hanging that photo of us - the one from the wedding? - right there (points to spot in bedroom).

D$: What photo?

MWK: The one of the two of us, from the wedding. From the first dance.

D$: What?

MWK: The one that hung up in our living room in our old place?

D$: Silence

MWK (for some reason thinking that repeating herself will do the trick): The one of us from the wedding? We are dancing? It was hanging in the living room?

D$: I seriously don't have any idea what you are talking about.

MWK (now from another room): BAAAH! It is leaning on the wall by the fireplace. Go look at it.

(D$ obeys)

D$: We are dancing in that photo? It looks like we are smooching.*

MWK: Look at my arm!

D$ (walks into room where MWK is to inspect arm): Why do you want me to look at your arm?

MWK: IN THE PHOTO! LOOK AT MY ARM IN THE PHOTO! WE ARE CLEARLY DANCING!

D$: Oh! Uh...I believe you. But I really thought you wanted me to look at your arm just now.

* We are not smooching in the photo. But our heads are very close together. We may be just pre-smooch.

**I know the whole "heh-heh aren't men stupid" schtick gets very, very old, but this was too ridiculous not to share. I am not sure how D$ actually survives in the real world.

You can do side-bends or sit-ups

NOT what my fitness-guy looks like. I mean, look at this asshole.

Question:

Is it totally self-indulgent and stupid to pay $40 a month on top of my (to be fair, very reasonable) gym fee to have a nice and not scarily-muscular man act as my personal trainer once a month? He would make me a program that I could do three days a week and then one day a month he would do the program with me (and I hope, tell me what I needed to do next to avoid plateauing). I met him the other day for my "fitness assessment" wherein he a) made me think I might vomit from the exercises he did to gauge my health but b) did not make me feel bad about myself. I think this is a good sign.

Arguments for:

1. My schedule is so stupid that exercising is hard but when I don't exercise I feel bad physically and beat myself up emotionally.
2. Once I do get to the gym I honestly have no idea what to do and so end up running and making a feeble effort to lift weights without any knowledge of how to do so in order to actually get stronger.
3. This guy doesn't skeeve me out and might actually help me learn about how to exercise.
4. I really do want to feel better and healthier and like I am taking care of myself. I'm also pretty sure that this is not a time in my life when I will work in yoga or long runs outside or anything else that takes initiative and discipline and scheduling. I need something easy and thoughtless.
5. A little external pressure might help me actually go to the gym.

Arguments against:

1. It feels really indulgent. I can just make myself go to the gym three times a week. Really if I run half an hour and do a few weights I should be fine. I did this in the past and felt okay.
2. I worry that I am just giving into some ridiculous vanity-thing, or even worse am sliding into a very-ugly-American tendency to spend my money on selfish wrong-minded things like the shape of my triceps.
3. It is $40 a month! That I would be spending just on myself. When I could just save that money and, I dunno, have some willpower to exercise.
4. I hate gyms, and gym people. They terrify me with their perky attitudes and tendency to wear track pants everywhere.

Thoughts?

A little advice from D$

Listen. If you are ever kidnapped by an evil man who collects rare objects, and you happen to be kidnapped alongside an android with lightning-quick reflexes, and you use the number of the collector's safe, that you have memorized. to steal the collectors illegally-obtained body-destroying gun so that you and the android with the lighting-quick reflexes can try to escape...FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GIVE THE BODY-DESTROYING WEAPON TO THE ANDROID WITH THE LIGHTING-QUICK REFLEXES.

You all can thank me for this advice later.

Cue the waterworks

Seriously, someone: buy me a smart phone. Or a camera.

D and I arrived home to find this on our doorstep. It is from G and her new hubbie, to say congrats on the job* and on putting down roots in Portland.

It is so freaking unbelievable to have friends who always know just the perfect thing.

Incroyable, ma petite chou-chou. Incroyable.

*Turns out there are *totes* benefits to your friends finding your blog!