Friday 5 January 2018

Twice a day, every day.

There's nothing better than five victories for a rainy Friday morning. The world looks normal again, dim and soaked through, rich in petrichor. My favorite. It looks downright strange here when it's sunny or when it snows, for that matter. Like the words don't fit the picture. It's almost a relief when it rains again which I'd never thought I'd hear myself say.

So I wrote it down instead.

The five victories are small but mighty. The new single is beautiful. I had the laundry done and all of the bathrooms cleaned before nine this morning. Decapitated had all the charges dropped, mainly because their accuser had a previous incident in which she lied to law enforcement about being hit by a boyfriend, or so I read online this morning (don't even get me started about groupies and tour busses), I managed to bang out a full sixty percent of my biggest project yesterday alone, somehow, I don't how but I'm very happy with it, and I figured out what was hurting my gums so much on one side, after switching to a soft toothbrush and flossing like a madwoman, feeling like there was coconut? maybe from a chocolate but this morning I was like okay, this is it. I flossed very enthusiastically and a tiny piece of hull from popcorn came out of hiding. A piece of hull that doesn't break down and the last time I had popcorn was for Star Wars on Dec. 16.

That's three weeks. What the fuck. It didn't really start to bother me until about four days ago and I'm never having popcorn again. Ever. Henry can finish the last bit in the pantry. I'm not buying it, eating it or suffering it ever again. Not like it's good for us anyway.

Speaking of healthy things, people are always asking me if we have a home gym.

We used to, in castle times. It was mostly an unused room with an elliptical and a giant Weber (Nordic?) gym thing that you could do eighty million exercises on with pulleys and weights and stuff. I used it. Jake used it. The kids used it as a jungle gym. Ben used it to show us how dumb it actually was.

Then we gave it all away in favor of fresh air. Who needs to be inside when the coldest it ever gets here is minus ten?

So we go outside. The boys have endless means to get exercise. They shove each other. They swim back to shore after being thrown off the cliff. They stairclimb. They follow me around. They wrestle. They...uh...box. We run sometimes. Sex is a good means of exercise, bring your friends and everyone gets healthy, right? We also have house chores like raking leaves, chopping wood and hell if you've run out of easy things there's a unicycle in the garage that is incredibly difficult to ride and possibly a better core workout than anything else.

I must have had fifty emails asking me about resolutions this year, what I do to stay in shape (jesus, can't you READ?), if I plan to improve myself, etc. etc. and really this is where the popcorn comes in. I have a problem with sugar but also with popcorn because I'll eat popcorn to stay awake during movies because they're long and warm and it's dark and these are the perfect conditions for narcoleptic Bridget to pass out cold and miss everything.

But I don't eat healthy air-popped organic whatever, I'll take what PJ or Ben didn't want which is usually greasy, nuclear extra-buttered cardboard.

It's so delicious. I'll eat it until it's gone and then I get that bird-at-a-wedding feeling like I might explode.

So I'm going to do better in 2018, mostly because I didn't want to have to go to the dentist. I hate the dentist, and not because I'm afraid but because this dentist is a business based on profit instead of health and I resent that I have to research and question every little thing.
I should switch but what a pain. Actually I feel like I have to stay to guard the others against the same tactics they try on me. Long story. Anyway. It's a day of small victories and that's what's important.

(Really though, I'm trying hard not to laugh at the people who profess to be longtime readers who ask me how I stay in shape. You must have Black Mirror's Arkangel filters on your eyeballs, I guess.)

Wait! I forgot the weirdest victory of all. Which was finding out after wearing it for TWO whole years that my Cirque Du Soleil sweater has pockets.

Hallelujah.

Edit: Also I learned all these years when I've been chewing on pencils to get the weird shivery spark feeling in my head and to make the pencil ferrules flat as pancakes I was just acknowledging my future self who would get spoiled on Christmas 2017 with a fistful of Blackwing Palomino pencils, which have a distinct flattened ferrule already and are too expensive and beautiful to chew on anyway.  God I love these things and aren't you glad someone suggested I just dump the contents of my brain all over blogger today?

Yeah, I'm just killing time before dinner because someone said there might be chopsticks involved. HELL YEAH.