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You totally wear this to work out, don’t you?
Kill Week continues at the ol’ corral. In good news, I’m considerably less crabbalicious today. Chalk it up to some sweet-ass working out and some talking about my mood with a good lady last night. Doesn’t that sound like a Barry White song or something? Don’t try and make sense of it, just go with the mood and let it seduce you like the dirty…Um, what was I talking about?

Uh, let’s talk about wardrobe, (OMG, what a cuuuute outfit!) because I’m feeling the deep and meaningful stuff today. First off, I want to YET AGAIN give props yet again to Nike for featuring real live athletes in the old catalog. I know I’m like the only person in the universe who can be continually pleased by an ad campaign they’ve been doing for about ten years now, but hey, sometimes I’m easily pacified. Read the rest of this entry »

I think all my posts for the next year or so should work “kill” into the title, just because it makes me sound so hard and all. I especially need that right now, what with the crabby spacey thing I’m working into the ground. It’s just darling, lemme tell you. Between that and the fact that my kid is home with me and I can only plug her into the TV for so long so I can blog, I’ll keep this one short and bitter. I mean sweet. Riiiiight.

So, there’s this WaPo article I read via Jezebel on weight and driver’s licenses. Of course, many of us laydees lie about our weight on that li’l DMV document, and apparently guys lie about their height. Which interested me in a way. See, when we look at why, the conclusion folks came to was that we all wish we were tall, thin supermodels. And women worry about being thin enough, while men want to be tall and imposing. But let’s look at the difference here. Can you change your height? Not likely, at least not without heels and some time on a stretching rack and some really bizarre post-puberty growth spurt. Can you change your weight?

Well, yeah. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifty dollars my kid sees this picture and says, “Oh mama, did you write about Julie? What did you say? Can I read it?”I have a little observation for you. You know how they say dogs can smell fear on you, so they attack when you are scared? Well, I swear children can sense PMS (I say sense, not smell, because smelling PMS sounds icky) and they also attack, with lots of whining and negotiation at precisely the moment when you wanna say, “Honey, do not try me right now, I have just this tiny thread I’m hanging onto and you are wielding some mighty big scissors there.” (PMS= Proof that “enormous, shlumpy, and full of the snarling and hissing” is in fact a feeling, no matter what the shrinks say.) I probably should be in a better mood, seeing as how Rachel is in town for Blogher and she stayed with me last night and made me laugh with her questions about whether jiu jitsu is like, a killing sport. And there’s some things I’m still very excited about on the horizon, all hush-hush but promising, oh yes my preeeciousss. However, yesterday we discovered that some fuckhead stole the catalytic converter off our truck—I sincerely hope it somehow manages to blow up in the thieves’ faces, causing them to experience the same feeling I got when I saw the repair bill of $350. I also missed two things I wanted to do badly yesterday—lunch with a friend and a workout—because of last-minute fucked-up-ness. And I need more sleep. And I can still hear my kid wailing about not being able to find her American Girl doll’s slippers. (Let me re-direct my frustration: Curse you, American Girl doll named Julie! You and your clothing carelessness! You are such a bitch!)

Classic sign of PMS, aside from wanting to call the girl’s reform school headmistress and request an intake assessment: Bad, bad, bad runs. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started this blog, I swore I would not do those, “Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, been busy” posts because that’s just not all that interesting to anyone except the blogger. (As opposed to my other neuroses, like how hard my workout was or how I had a bad run, which I am certain are just endlessly fascinating to all of you.) So instead I’ll do something and you can suss out the rest about the busy sorry blah blah.

And while I’m doing this, I want to make a solemn promise to you all. I swear I will never do a workout designed to get you to “release wind”, i.e. pass gas. Fart. Crack a stinker. Nevah evah.

I developed this oath after reading about some yoga stuff that’s focused on digestive health. Now, I get the benefit of this. It hurts to be holding on to something in the old gut. Read the rest of this entry »

If I’m gonna crucify myself, could somebody please nail me to this?
If I could choose two words to separate forever in a rancorous divorce with a restraining order and no visitation whatsoever, guess what I’d choose? “Bad” and “Eat”. As in, “I’ve been eating all this bad food” or worse, “I’m so bad for eating that.” (Please note an exception: that you could still use bad to describe a sub-par restaurant or something. I do live in Berkeley, where it is mandatory to be a foodie.)

I know I’ve written lots before about how we turn eating into a morality issue and all that, so much that it’s probably pointless to try and link you to any archives—just pick a past post at random. And we get taught to see our desire to eat things that have sugar or salt or monkey brains or whatever as some kind of weakness on our part, like just wanting is a sin. I fall into it too, and get uptight because say, hypothetically, I might be sort of stressed and grieving and therefore turning to the giant Costco bag of chocolate chips on a regular basis for snuggles. It is within the realm of possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

My sister often says that you know things are emotional because I get funnier. And generally that is true: I deal with high emotion and anything even remotely charged by making constant jokes about it. (By the way, I do want you all to know my sister is a bitch, because she won’t let me blog about developments in her personal life. “But there’s such a good story there!” I whine. “I don’t want my life to be a blog post,” she says firmly. “You understand that, right?” I pause and try for a moment to get what she means, and then realize I don’t AT ALL, that there’s a writer part of me and while I’m experiencing anything, I’m also just slightly conscious of whether or not it would make a good story. And I’d expose almost anything for the sake of a laugh, I think that’s obvious. However, I do try and be respectful of others in that regard because otherwise they get all mad and won’t talk to me. Which could make a good post though…Sigh. I’ll be good.)

Anyhow, the point is that it’s a testament to the impact y’all had on me that I haven’t been so to-myself-mostly hilarious lately. I’ve actually been so overwhelmed with feeling that the funny didn’t kick in, or maybe I just didn’t need it to deal, I dunno. I rallied a bit when I came to visit some of you at the IC, but it was in between welling up, and just when I’d think I’d made it through, one of you would come up and be so lovely, I’d mist up all over again. And so you know, if you were at the gym and I didn’t get to talk to you, please don’t take that as a reflection on anything but the fact that there’s been a tsunami of feelings for me and it makes me a little dizzy.

So I do need to follow up with a few things though. Read the rest of this entry »

You should just remember I’m completely leotarded.
First, a warning: This is the very hardest kind of thing to write about, only because I feel so much, and words get very inadequate. It’s hard to express the kind of deep and abiding love and sadness I feel without getting cliched and corny, so I’m asking for some grace if this veers off into some maudlin sentiment. I can tell you I am utterly sincere in my feelings. It’s just that when I’m bereft of my obnoxious humor and liberal use of the f-bomb, I don’t have many tools left.

So as many of you know, I’m no longer a trainer and evil force at the Ice Chamber. The simplest and truest answer for why it was time to go is that it was just time. The fact that it breaks my heart doesn’t change that. And I am so full of gratitude for everything I learned and gained from the IC, which was nothing short of life-changing. Not the least of which is the connection with all of you.

I keep thinking that people who have never met me or been to the IC must think, “It’s just a gym” or “It’s just a job.” Read the rest of this entry »

How can you expect me to do any decent cardio with a broken heart? I’m sorry I have nothing funny tonight. I just sort of dragged myself to the keyboard but I’m so profoundly sad and I will be able to post on workout bras and push ups and hoo-hoos soon, just not yet. There’s big changes in my life at this moment, and I know all will be well and good because it always is in the end, but in my wildest dreams I never quite imagined how utterly wrecked I’d be right now. I’ll come back and post tomorrow, but for now I just need to say I’m so devastatedly full of missing my gym people already. It hurts freakin’ BAD. I don’t mean to be cryptic, and I won’t be soon, but I had to put something here to say…fuck me, I don’t know, those of you I worked with have meant so much to me. So much more than you will ever know. And I’m so, so, so, sad.

Apparently it is feast or famine here at FF, but you’ll just have to forgive me for the post drought earlier. My head has been all over the place with life-y stuff and it makes it harder to keep the blog whipped into tip-top shape. But I never leave you for so long that you have to wonder if I’ve packed up and moved to Thailand to train as a pro kickboxer (though I’m sure there’s like a huge demand for whiny chicks in their mid-thirties who are looking to go pro in between writing about vageavage) so now I post like mad to demonstrate my contrition. I actually have a few things I can’t wait to cover, but nothing tops what I want to show you.

Here at FF there is a big home emphasis on being regular and getting enough fiber in the diet. While some will tell you bread is the devil because of the carbs, I know the truth: I’m the devil, and there can be only one Prince(ess) of Darkness, so bread gets a pass. Read the rest of this entry »

The comments on this post are completely awesome, both in the many interesting names suggested for the man-bits, and in the intro of a new term you will be seeing often here: vageavage. Let’s go to the latter first. Vageavage, as Tracy told us, is hoo hoo cleavage (aka camel toe, moose knuckle, etc.) Um, how much do I love this term? ALOT. Of course, workout pants and leggin’s are often real vageavage-showcasers. It’s the dilemma of the workout outfit: If it makes your legs and booty look hawt, but you end up with a very clearly defined hoo hoo, do you suck it up (hee hee) and work the vageavage, or do you opt for the less cooch-clingy but also less-appealing baggy pants? That seems like a personal decision, and one that no one can make for you but you. I will tell you I draw the line at pants that appear as though I stuffed a wad of kleenex down my unders, the result of the pants doing for the vageavage what a push up bra does for the cleavage. We all must have standards, y’know.

Now, on to the male machinery. I believe we should have a blog vote here for a companion term to the hoo hoo. You will be stuck with this term for a loooong time, so choose wisely now. Read the rest of this entry »