Nov
25
Thanksgiving week miscellaneous
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The kids are home from school until next Monday and my god, today has been a VERY long day. A while ago I posted something whiny on Twitter about the length of our Thanksgiving break and I got a response from someone, a new mom, who seemed a little … dismayed, I guess? that I was dreading the time off. Maybe she was staring down the grim barrel of the brutally endless-feeling newborn days and thinking, wait, this shit doesn’t get better? MULLIGAN. But I’m thinking most of you with school-age kids are with me on how a big shift in routine is just rough going, right? A school holiday isn’t like a weekend. It’s many consecutive hours in a row of children acting restless and obnoxious and generally making it really hard for me to do the crap I have to do because hi, I’m not on vacation. Plus JB’s parents are staying with us later this week so I feel like I’m caught in this ridiculous Möbius strip of trying to clean in preparation for visitors while the children systematically undo all of my efforts while adding a little extra clutter/dirt as they go.
In unrelated news I went through and organized my Stuff I Like page, which houses — wait for it — information about stuff I like. When I come across something I really feel like recommending, I post it on the sidebar for a while, then eventually move it to this page. Most items are things I bought from Amazon, and they include an affiliate link. I use any affiliate funds towards other things I buy from Amazon, which I sometimes recommend if they’re awesome enough. So basically it works like this:
I want to say I can hardly believe it’s almost Thanksgiving already, but I feel like I’ve been seeing Christmas decorations and trees shared on Instagram for at least two or three weeks now. Those must be fake trees, right? Because I’m pretty sure if I put one up in November I’d have a giant pile of brown needles by December 25th.
What are you doing for the holiday? JB’s brother and his wife are hosting the meal this year, and all I have to do is bring the rolls. No traveling! No cooking! NO DISHES.
Nov
23
If you have decided to take your first cycling class, let me pass on the very good advice I was given: wear padded shorts. You may hem and haw over the unpleasant thigh-sausage-casing effect of wearing bike shorts in public and you may feel like a complete idiot when you go waddling into the gym with what feels exactly like that Megalodon Post-Birth Hospital Maxi-Pad crammed between your legs, but after approximately 38 minutes on the stationary bike, you will be very very grateful. Because actually, it’s not about protecting your butt. Your butt, with its natural built-in padding, will be fine. When you’re a novice rider and you’re a female, it’s your, ah, undercarriage that starts to feel deeply traumatized after a while.
It’s your vagina, okay? If I were to show you on the doll where the bad bike hurt me, it would be right down there in my ladyparts.
Here are some other handy spinning class tips I can now share with you, based on my first-time experience earlier this week:
• If you are required to move the bikes from their storage area on the side of the room, don’t give yourself a goddamned hernia wrestling one across the floor. Instead of heroically dragging its heavy-ass metal frame a half-inch at a time as you sweat and gasp and wonder if maybe this is the actual workout part, take one second to observe how the other people are doing it. See those little round things at the bottom? Those are called WHEELS, shit-for-brains, and you’re supposed to tilt the bike so you can roll it.
• Speaking of observation, maybe don’t heave the bike into the middle of the room and stand there blinking, confused as to why everyone appears to be keeping their distance. Is it your shorts? Does everyone think you … had an accident? No. This particular class forms a circle, which you might have realized if you weren’t so busy moving an 800-lb bike in the dumbest way possible.
• If you want to retain any semblance of personal dignity whatsoever, don’t station yourself next to the sprightly silver-haired grandma who apparently spends every moment of her free time zipping up double black diamond bike trails, because during the one song that almost kills you, the one where the instructor tells everyone to increase the intensity to a lung-exploding level and keep it there during the annoying country singer’s endless — and I mean fucking endless — instrumental finale, she’ll turn to you and say, “My! Who sings this? Kenny Chesney? Why, his voice is just like a warm bath, isn’t it?” and you’ll be like HOW ARE YOU EVEN TALKING RIGHT NOW and STUPID KENNY CHESNEY AND HIS STUPID DIPPED-TOO-LOW HAT CAN GO STRAIGHT TO HELL and SERIOUSLY YOU ARE SEVENTY YEARS OLD WHY ARE YOU NOT STROKING OUT LIKE I AM.
• You go ahead and interpret “crank it to the right” however you want to. Maybe sometimes that means you just put your hand on the little make-it-shittier knob for a second but you don’t actually touch it. Because if you actually DO crank it to the right each and every time the instructor tells you to, your thigh muscles will literally burst into flames and incinerate your vagina-pads.
• Last but not least, if you climbed a set of stairs to get to class, do not assume your descent will be familiar in any way, unless you’re familiar with the sensation of your legs being replaced with bowls of half-set Jello. In fact, I recommend finding an elevator.
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