Tuesday, April 16, 2013

OLD • OVERWHELMED • VEGETARIAN • YOGI

• Yoga’s been my first-line exercise for nigh on nine years. Never in my yoga life did I imagine that I’d long for Bikram’s triangle pose. That pose extra sucks. I hate it. (Actually, I hate all 26 postures when I’m in The Room. But Bikram Yoga’s like crack; I can’t help but show up again and again.) Because I want my bum hip to heal, I’m babying it. That means no triangle pose. So while the other 35 people in the room do triangle, I just stand there, perspiring and heaving. I’m jealous of all those sweaty humans. I want to do triangle! I want my thighs to shake. I want to fuse my shoulder and chin. But more than that I want to heal fast. So I refrain.

• I wish I had come up with this instead of hearing it on one of my food shows—“Powdered sugar is what comes out of God’s nose after a night of partying.

• Here’s something I like about myself: for the most part, I’m not a weak woman. I’m newly divorced (for how long are you “newly” divorced?) and damaged in fresh and thrilling ways. But I am not the kind of woman who disintegrates without a husband. I like living alone. At first, I was a little afraid of it—in some ways I still am—but I’m not incomplete without an arbitrary man in the house. I do divorced okay. (Wait until you heard how I do dating. That’ll make your head spin.)

• Work’s sorta intense right now. There’s much going on all at once. I’ll get everything handled, but, truth be told, I’m a edging on overwhelmed. Overwhelmed doesn’t look good on me. That is, if you end up seeing it. I'm pretty good at hiding that kind of thing.

• I’m what I call an Emotional Vegetarian. I didn’t give up meat for ethical or health reasons. I gave it up ‘cause I believe animals have thoughts and I can’t eat things that think. My Sophie’s what did it. Her definite personality changed how I felt about animals at large. An example: Because she just had a lot of dental work done in her crummy little mouth, Soph had to eat soft food for a couple weeks. Dear Reader, if you haven’t opened a can of soft food in a while, you might be surprised to discover that it looks exactly like people food. Shredded chicken, pasta, carrots, peas. My beast was over the moon. And the other day I went to her bowl and found something most charming: the little dog had eaten around the peas. She’d licked the bowl clean except for twenty-some-odd peas. As a pretty damned persnickety eater myself, it was sort of a proud moment.

My favorite ice cream(s): Häagen-Dazs Caramel Cone, Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, any and all pink peppermint ice creams, and, if if I'm needing a fat-day ice cream substitute, Häagen-Dazs Lemon Sorbet is more than satisfactory.

• When you get divorced you divide up the friends. At least you do when there was an affair and people have to pick sides. In my case, the only friends I had to surrender were my West Wing friends. If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know that I love The West Wing. Not a little. A helluva lot. Josh, Donna, Toby, CJ, Leo, Sam—they were my pals, and I lost them in the divorce. See, it wasn’t just my show, it was our show; it was honestly a significant bonding element in our relationship. We loved and learned from it together. I can’t watch that show anymore. I trashed the elaborate boxed set of all seven seasons. And then I trashed the backup set too.

• I tend to get more depressed than usual 'round this time of year. I turn 31 next week. Nothing quite like a birthday to make you feel like an unproductive failure at life. 

3 comments:

Audrey said...

AHH! Just started watching West Wing last month. So good. I'm an Aaron Sorkin junkie, but it took me a while to realize he wrote WW, too! I'm sorry you lost them in the divorce. Just let me know if you ever want me to say Hi for you. :-)

Megan said...

Audrey, if you're a Sorkinite you'll like the first three seasons the best. At least I think it was the first three. He didn't write after that. It's all still fantastic, but the first part is the most exhilarating. So much to laugh at! So much to learn. Love my people for me. Tell 'em they're missed.

Carina said...

Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is the world's best ice cream. I'm just glad someone else out there knows it.