Two Big Shout Outs

First, go read this post especially if you're a woman. It gives you a whole new reason to love your vacuum.

Second, I opened my apartment door this afternoon and what should be lying on my doormat but a padded envelope from my friends, Big and Little. They sent me a mixed CD. The only other person to send me mixed CDs ever is Mr. JCCW himself, and I have to say, Big and Little's contribution is giving Mr. JCCW a run for his money. Tonight is definitely the first time I have ever heard a honky tonk version of "Gin and Juice." It Totally Rocks.

Don't believe me? Check out Snoop singing along with the Gourds version on YouTube. Want a copy? Let me know. I have nothing better to do. I'm shut in for The Blizzard.

Pink Ladies Trump Vegas

Pink Lady apples are maybe the Greatest Things in the Whole Wide World. Now I know that in a previous post I might have intimated that Other Apples were, in fact, greater, but that was before I came to appreciate the Pink Lady in all it's Great Pinkness.

First of all, they really are pink. No kidding. Pink and kind of greenish yellow, which may not sound too appetizing, but my favorite colors when I was 8 were totally pink and green (and my favorite animal was a unicorn) so I was Ridiculously Excited. Secondly, they're Always Crunchy. Always. Few things in life disappoint me more than a mealy apple. Thirdly, I Wasn't Allergic. This, admittedly, is a personal appeal since for the first 25 years of my life I was Allergic to all manner of fresh, uncooked fruit and some nuts, including almost all varieties of apple. I still cannot eat Red Delicious apples. I will not bore you with the details of what happens when I do, but suffice to say it's not particularly healthy. But the Pink Lady has never treated me wrong. Ever.

Apparently, there are a lot of people who feel this way. Apparently, I'm a little late to hop on the Pink Lady wagon. There are Pink Lady fan clubs out there, lurking on the Internet. There are T-shirts and recipe books and histories of the breed. In fact, I would tell you all of the history and such, but Judy here has already written a great article (plus a recipe) about it, so you can just check that out on your own.

Late though I am, I am devoted. Thursday night I even cheated on Beefy Gym Boyfriend for my Pink Ladies. Instead of going to the gym before settling in for my weekly Grey's Anatomy fix, I went to the grocery store. I needed change for laundry and since The Greatest Bank Ever is actually located inside my local grocery store, I figured I might as well restock the old apple drawer.

In a way, I was also cheating on my good friend, Fluff, the Amazing Medical Illustrator, but not so blatantly, since Fluff lives in Chicago. (Fluff is hitherto the only blog-mentioned friend who has had the forethought to choose her own blog-name. She's clever like that. You'll have to ask her for the full story sometime.) See, I joined the gym not just because of the Evil Desk Job-induced hips, but also because I made a deal with Fluff: this year, she and I are going to Exercise to Las Vegas.

This is a figurative goal, of course. We're aiming to rack up the miles from Chicago to Vegas through various forms of activity. Initially, Fluff was going to try exercising to Birmingham since that's where she's from, but when I said I was up for it, we decided to shoot for Vegas, you know, because it sounds a little more exotic. Fluff and I were housemates in college—we shared a bathroom. She was on the women's soccer team and she taught swimming lessons and lifeguarded in the summer. In other words, she was the antithesis of Sparky-the-Inactive. And then we both went to full-time grad programs, known more appropriately in some circles as 20+ Pound Programs. No longer were we fit and lithe as in the days of old. Me being me, I wrote a few essays about it. Fluff being Fluff, she joined a gym and started running. And this year, she launched the Exercise for Vegas plan. In her first week, she did something like 20 miles.

Clearly, I had to step things up a bit.

Because Fluff is a True Friend, she's invented ways for me to earn miles without actually doing strenuous physical activity. For example, if I drink my eight, 8 oz. servings of water in one day then I get a half-a-mile. 15 minutes of heavy lifting (like when I reorganized our basement storage unit) is worth a mile because it's hard and usually involves multiple trips up and down multiple flights of stairs. Spending 1 hour at the grocery store is worth half-a-mile because I'm walking and bending and stretching. Oh, and 15 minutes of stretching is worth half-a-mile, too, because it's good for your muscles and keeps you limber.

Still, she was racking up 20 to 25 miles a week with her running and cycling whereas my weekly all time high was about 5. (Have I mentioned that I am a Cupcake?) When she got the roller blades, I knew I was going to be in some serious trouble.

Right after I joined my new gym, I tried an exercise class and thought that I might just keel over right there. To my defense, it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Some of the Really Nice People who go to the church where I work and who have been members at the Biggest Little Gym Ever for years invited me. They said, “Oh, you should come to this class! It's all about strengthening your Core and the teacher is really wonderful.”

I had worked on my Core before. I had done yoga and a little bit of pilates. I knew how to stretch and balance and focus and I thought that sounded pretty good. I said I'd love to come. Class was at 6AM on Wednesday morning. I said I'd be there.

The thumping workout music started while I was stretching on my floor mat. This should have been a clue, but it was 6AM and I was Rather Groggy. Perhaps this was one of those hybrid classes that combines a little bit of cardio with more yoga toward the end. Not so, my friends. 45 minutes later my abs were screaming so loudly that they heard them in Green Bay. “Wasn't that great?” asked the Really Nice People with their Perfectly Neat Teeth smiling.

“Yeah,” I panted, prostrate on my floor mat. “Great.”

I checked the gym schedule when I got home. 6AM, Wednesday: Ab Blast. I actually attended a class called Ab Blast.

Two days later, I threw my back out. You know, because my Core hadn't fully recovered.

These days, I'm starting a little more slowly. I think my high for the week is now up to 10 or 12 miles, thanks my water and my stretching and the banks of treadmills and countless free weights at the Biggest Little Gym Ever. Fluff says that's okay. We'll still make it to Vegas by January 1, 2008. I'm not so sure, but I'm trying to do my part, pull my own weight, so to speak. Make her proud. And Beefy. I want to make Beefy proud, too, since he's so loyal.

Except on Thursday, when I went to the grocery store. I had to. I had eaten my last apple. I was out of spinach. And zuccini. And I figured I should pick up some mushrooms. Except for a few stalks of wilted celery, my produce drawer was gapingly empty and this would not do. Beefy and Fluff would just have to forgive me. I needed my Pink Ladies.

My Boyfriend's Back

Ever since I've gotten married, I've been collecting boyfriends. It's true. I used the plural because I've had more than one. Don't worry, Expat knows. Well, he knows about most of them.

My oldest and best boyfriend worked at the World's Greatest Music Store two blocks from my apartment on the edge of the edge of the hood. Quickwit the Sheet Music Clerk started flirting with me right away, telling me as he took my orders for extra copies of SATB anthems that he liked taking orders for me because that meant he would get to see me when I came back to pick them up, and that he would pine for me until then. He showed me fancy software I could use for my voice lessons, appreciated my random knowledge of 80s cartoon trivia (the name of the band that Gem had was the Holograms), and even let me come into the back room to listen to the latest track he'd mixed. Plus, Quickwit could find anything in the store; always a bonus when your boyfriends are helpful. He had a band and about a year into our music-purchase-driven relationship, he invited me and Expat (a very classy touch, I think, to acknowledge The Husband) to come and hear them play. But my Eccentric Mother was in town, visiting me for the first time ever since I'd left Alabama (four years ago), so I told him that I thought maybe—just maybe—it wasn't meant to be. He sighed, and nodded, and kept his bottom lip from quivering as best he could. “I understand.”

And then he moved to Atlanta.

Really, it was that Quickwit's Real Life Girlfriend had gotten into music grad school at UGA, so she and he and their two cats were making the big move together, but I learned my lesson: when one of your boyfriends invites you to hear his band, you go. Period. You may never get another chance.

But I wasn't completely faithful to Quickwit, I have to admit. There were others I saw on the side. I had two different Hardware Store Boyfriends at two different hardware stores—Young Paint Mixer and Old Key Cutter. There was Grocery Store Boyfriend who liked to ask me every time I checked out how I was planning to cook the meat I was buying or if the No Pudge Fudge brownies were really any good and which ones did I like the best. (Yes. They are the most amazing brownies ever. I like the chocolate raspberry.) And then there's Very Earnest Bank Boyfriend. Earnest helped me set up my checking accounts the very first week I moved to Madison. He wears salmon colored button down shirts and is going to school at the U. We were hot and heavy there for a while when I was working part time, but now that I've settled into the Evil Desk Job, we seem to see each other less and less. But these things happen.

My latest boyfriend might not even know that we're dating, but I think he does. He came with my new gym membership at the Biggest Little Gym Ever down the road from my house. I joined about a month ago because let's face it, since I stopped managing at the Curves (for Women) gym last May, I have been markedly sedentary at the Evil Desk Job. Oh, you can go ahead and tell me that I still look great, but as Shakira says, my hips don't lie.

Anyway. Beefy Gym Boyfriend is Big—Eat You For Lunch kind of Big—and he has tattoos. Not that tattoos say much about your toughness these days. I mean, I have a tattoo and I'm a Cupcake. It's more the size of his upper arms—the enormity of the tattoo canvas, if you will—and the fact that the tattoos are neatly set off by his stylish black wife beater. His upper arms are roughly the size of my lower thigh except unlike my lower thigh, you can tell that they're mostly muscle. On his left arm, he has a black outline of what seems to be a Native American woman. On his right, a dream catcher the size of a dessert plate, complete with dangling feathers and beads and the whole nine yards. Beefy doesn't appear particularly Native American himself—more like neo-Nazi skinhead with an impeccably shaved skull and a neatly kept goatee. Like someone you would see on WWE. Or maybe at a monster truck rally.

Beefy doesn't actually talk to me because he's much too focused—on the elliptical trainer. You might not think he was an elliptical trainer kind of guy just to look at him, but I know that in his heart of hearts, he is Deeply Committed to cardiovascular health. On the rare chance that all of the ellipticals are full, you can find him on one of the three ancient stair-steppers in the corner. Like I said, Deeply Committed.

The strange and perhaps somewhat disturbing thing about Beefy is that he is always at the gym at the exact same time as I am. Always. This is no easy task, since I am not yet a particularly regular gym-goer. I usually go in the afternoons except when I go in the mornings or after 9:00 at night. I'm there on the weekends, but only sometimes, and never on Mondays, except when I am. How he finds me, I'll never know. Maybe he's a stalker and he waits in the bushes outside until he sees me leave the house in my workout clothes or with my stylish Nature Conservancy canvas gym bag with the Ugly Bird on the side. Or maybe he lives at the gym. Like that kids book My Teacher Sleeps in School. That would explain the never-changing black-wife-beater-with-gray-bastketball-shorts outfit. Maybe he has the girl who works the font desk call him every time I walk in (this seems most unlikely since it hinges on the girl at the front desk actually knowing my name). Maybe he just has a sixth sense.

I'm going to the gym tomorrow night after work. Don't tell Beefy—let's see if he shows up on his own. If he does, maybe I'll finally work up the nerve to say something witty and memorable. Like Hi.

Little House on the Prairie, Anyone?

Signs your house is too cold:

1) The 2 sticks of butter that you set out on the counter at 7AM to use for making Practically Perfect Cookies were still too firm to cream with the sugar when you finally got around to it at 3PM. Clearly, when the instructions said "room temperature," they were thinking of someone else's room.

2) Your Chinese evergreen is turning brown.

3) Upon closer inspection, you discover that there is, in fact, a slight draft seeping between the frames of your windows and that the frost that you had originally thought was on the outside of the window is actually on the inside of the window. Your bedroom window, to be precise. Your bedroom windows, specifically.

Way too Laura Ingalls Wilder for me, thanks. Tonight, we'll be pulling out the Big Guns. Tonight, my hair drier and I will be doing a little shrink wrapping.

Bitter Cold Arctic Invasion

Dear God,

Thank you for making sure that Expat received job offers from universities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Please, God, let him sign with a school far, far removed from the Arctic Circle—a place with no snow removal budget, perhaps, where the phrase Bitter Arctic Cold Invasion would never be uttered on the nightly news. We do not need the sight of ice fishermen on Monona Bay to be happy. We do not have to walk on water in its solid state. We do not have to have White Christmases, or White Anything, for that matter. We don't ski or snowshoe; shoveling is not my favorite pastime.

Most Fair and Merciful God, if you see fit to place us in a Warmer, Friendlier Climate, I promise to strap on my toolbelt and once again take up my hammer and my speed square and the workplace-provided nail gun and volunteer at least twice a month at the local Habitat for Humanities site. I would even attempt roofing, despite my fear of gradual inclines 20 feet off the ground, and I would not get upset this time should the site manager accidentally fell a tree on top of my boombox. I would not complain about the Summer Monsoon Season and I would remember to smile when an Isolated Thunderstorm occurred in my yard instead of my neighbor's. I would plant Your favorite flowers—I would figure out what Your favorite flowers are—and I would tend them with great care. Better still, I would voluntarily plant flowers in other people's flower beds and tend them with great care, thus sharing my gardening prowess, given by You, that I might better my own little corner of the world.

Most of all, God, I would stop cursing the snow and ice and sleet and cease harboring ill will toward the meteorologists who coin phrases like Arctic Invasion. I would instead applaud their creativity; most people think of Invasions as things that only involve aliens from outer space or ground troops or foreign plant species. Those Weather Channel meteorologists are thinking outside the proverbial box. The should be congratulated. Instead, I am too cold—my Heart is Too Cold—to really notice.

I know that this is the part where I'm supposed to say something about not my will but Yours, but God, I'm trying to be realistic. Please. Hear my cry. Hear my call. Hear my chattering teeth. Have Mercy upon me and my poor, poor hypothermic soul. Move me, Lord! To a home in the sub tropics! Or at least see fit to send me a floor-length down parka and several more pairs of Cuddl Duds.

Thank you, God, for today and all days—especially those balmy ones in the mid- to upper-60s.

Yours even unto negative 30 (but hoping for something above freezing),

Sparky

PS: If You were trying to make all those “when Hell freezes over” promises come true for folks, You might want to reconsider. It's just a turn of phrase, you know—something we say down here as a bit of a joke. Sorry if You knew that one already, just trying to save You from a little Godly Embarrassment.