1. Tonight was my first bit of exercise in over a year that was not in a yoga studio, or outside. Being back in a gym felt fine, although I had conveniently blocked from my memory the inevitable forced tv watching while on cardio equipment. I spent forty-five minutes on an arc trainer*, trying to work off whatever this mood is that I have been in for the past couple of weeks. I felt better afterward, in that sweaty workout kind of way. What was odd, though, was that I thought I had barely broken a sweat because I wasn’t sweating on every square inch of my body, like in a hot class. I was kind of surprised when I got to the locker room and realized I was drenched from the waist up. Good stuff.
2. I keep getting these reminders to ask for what I want, so I have been doing some asking lately, lots actually, about money, career, and all sorts of other stuff. Even Rumi says so:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
When I was looking for work after we moved back to Maryland in 2005, I remember my criteria: doesn’t compromise my ethics, and doesn’t require pantyhose. Behold, two years at Pangea, a vegan store where the dress code was, “Don’t wear a t-shirt that says ‘fuck you’ or anything if you’re out dealing with customers.” That was what Phil and Shari told me during my interview. They also asked me why I wanted to work there, but not in the normal job interview way. It was more, “What the hell is wrong with you that you want to work here?” Sigh. The universe really outdid itself on that one. If it weren’t so damn far away, I would still be working there, listening to Christmastime in Hell.
This time: lucrative, fulfilling, allows me to keep up with my other interests, and permits me to dress like a freak if I so choose.
3. Oh my god, Christmas. I am over it. As a kid I thought it would be neat to celebrate Christmas because it was such a big deal, and the presents were so much better. My friends would take home these big hauls of clothes and goodies and electronics, all the while envying my eight nights of presents, as if it were eight nights the scale of Christmas. The reality was that for me and most of my ilk, there was a big gift on the first night (like a sweater) and then seven nights of key chains and gelt. Then, on Christmas, when all my friends were getting new wardrobes and boom boxes, I was sitting around in sweatpants eating chinese food and watching rented movies with my parents.
I’ve been through at least a solid ten or eleven years of Christmas now, and with each year I miss Jewish Christmas more and more. Christmas feels weird to me. It is not my holiday, it doesn’t have any significance for me, and lately it seems like a big, expensive, consumerist pain in the butt. Depressing, too, this year, with everything going on in Scott’s family. We will be spending part of Christmas day visiting Scott’s father in the nursing home, which is depressing for us, but geometrically, exponentially, infinitely more depressing for Scott’s father, who is sixty-seven and can’t ever go home again. Actually, it is not depressing. It is horrifying.
So, I keep doing this, because it is important to Scott’s family, and I am a good person, and it is the right thing to do, and I am a supportive partner, and it is just one day out of the year for crying out loud, and I couldn’t live with myself otherwise, and it is my choice, and once everyone gets together we DO have a good time. And, I get sweaters. Still, part of me really wants to be at home celebrating my way, eating lo mein and watching one Woody Allen movie after another. (I would pick: Love and Death, Sleeper, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, Deconstructing Harry, and Annie Hall.)
Also, I may have just spent an hour and a half watching clips of Woody Allen movies.
*One of those cybex things. Five years of consistent gym going and I had no idea what those were called until I looked it up just a moment ago.
