Gym Class Heroes

I think the last time I learned ten new vocabulary words in one day, I was like three months old.  But after my friend M and I spent an hour with a trainer at the gym tonight, I’m speaking a whole new language.  I still speak the old one too though, and that’ll come in handy tomorrow when I have to ask one of my children to brush my teeth for me because I can’t move my arms.

M and I have been pretty serious about working out the last couple of months.  Or what I considered serious before tonight.  We were familiar with the machines and we spoke freely of sets and reps.  Who knew that was the tip of the iceberg?

Our new friend, J, offered to donate his services and help us take off the training wheels and learn how to do a "real" workout.  He offered on Monday night after we had spent the last hour doing what was apparently a make believe workout, that gave us imaginary soreness, and pretend perspiration. 

We met him tonight full of nervous excitement over what we would do and learn, but with a back-up plan of “If this gets too hard, one of us has to fake a serious injury and the other has to drive them immediately to the doctor.”

First up, the bench, the quintessential weightlifting experience.  But, despite my affinity for exercise and trying new things, I’d never been on it before.  The two of us going over into free weights land was a bit like teenagers sneaking into a nightclub with fake IDs.  We totally didn’t belong, but we tried to blend in.  Inasmuch as two confused giggling girls can blend in over there.

J explained good bench press form to us, showed us how it’s done, then took all of his weights off.  I bravely assumed the position and then looked up at my new trainer, wondering when he was going to add my weights.  He smiled and said, “Just try it with the bar.”  I smiled back, lifted the bar, then didn’t smile again for quite some time.  I don’t know how much the bar weighs, and maybe some of you do, but I’d like you to pretend you don’t, because I’m going to estimate it at seventy pounds right now and I need to believe that until my arms stop crying.

Not that they’re crying from just that.  Everything he made us do was extremely hard, and if we ever weren’t making an ugly this-is-killing-me face, he increased the weight and made it harder.  But he didn’t just torture us and give us seizures in our arms.  He also educated us.

He taught us the difference in compound and isometric exercises.  There’s a chance that my ninth grade biology teacher went over that, but I was too busy writing love letters to my boyfriend to notice.  J also taught us about drop sets and super sets.  Before today I was only familiar with twin sets and sunsets.  He explained what it means to go negative, and a few other terms that escape me because I’m in an ibuprofen induced haze.

But my favorite favorite favorite new word that I picked up tonight is “Diesel.”  M and I were telling him how we want to be fit and toned, but not scary looking like some of the women we see at the gym.  And he assured us that he wouldn’t let us get “too Diesel.”  As in Vin Diesel, the action star, an apparent gold standard for males who workout.

I’m a suburban housewife and mother of three that likes napping and frozen yogurt; I don’t think there’s a big risk of me getting too Diesel.  But, I do intend to make that name turned adjective a new staple of my vocabulary.  Like when the pool opens on Saturday and M and I are lounging by it, I will most definitely look over at my tiny friend and say, “Girl, you’re lookin’ Diesel!”

 

Butterfly C.S.I.

One of the girls got a butterfly garden for Christmas from her aunt.  I thought that seemed like a good gift; I like butterflies and gardens.  Know what I don’t like?  Worms.  Wanna know another word for a worm?  Caterpillars.

That’s how it came to be that my husband took over this gift/project of butterfly farming with the twins.  They ordered live caterpillars and they came in the mail.  I found that unsettling.  I don’t like that we can receive living creatures via post.  What if someone mails us live squirrels or bats or something?  I’ve been checking the mail incessantly, at least once a day, waiting on my school track assignment, so if something’s gonna come flying out of there, I’ll be the victim.

Anyway, all my husband really had to do was open the box and wait.  They came in a ventilated plastic container that had their food.  They crawled around and ate and eventually, as lots of exercise and food does to any of us, they got sleepy.  They made their chrysalis, which is not to be confused with cocoon, apparently, my second grader informed me, because chrysalis is for butterfly and cocoon is for moths.  There was some elementary science mumbo jumbo about pupa that I might’ve tuned out because I still had a dinner to make.

My husband’s one job was to transfer the chrysalises to the butterfly garden after a few days, but before they turned into butterflies.  Today, I was working on something at the computer and saw the plastic container sitting on the top of the desk with two very upset butterflies on life support.  I panicked, had a Silence of the Lambs flash of butterflies being pulled out of people’s throats, then called The Voice of Reason at work.

“What’s going on with the butterflies?  Are they supposed to be in the container still??!!!???”  He started working on some kind of self-defense to explain his oversight in court, but didn’t immediately tell me what to do.  Luckily, Reckless was prepared!  She ran like an ER doctor into surgery, to retrieve the butterfly garden.  We rushed outside, on the off chance they would be able to fly, and opened the plastic container.

One of the butterflies was either dead or catatonic and I didn’t know how to take his pulse to find out which, so I transferred the one showing signs of life first.  I got wrapped up in some kind of sticky spider web type thingy he was caught in and cringed.  (No, I don’t want to know what it really was, and no, I wasn’t totally “wrapped up”, like head to toe, it was just on two of my fingers.)

At the point that I rescued butterfly number one, the three remaining chrysalis started to shake.  And not a little, like it could’ve been a breeze blowing them.  This was more like the seismic activity of an earthquake.  And that’s when I noticed the blood!  I’m not kidding.  I don’t know if it was blood of the ones trying to be born, or the ones that hatched earlier in the day, but I really don’t think there was supposed to be BLOOD!  It kept getting more and more like Silence of the Lambs.

I moved the comatose butterfly, a.k.a. Butterfly 2, into the “garden” and then dropped the shaking bleeding mummy ones into the bottom.  I zipped it up and ran inside to wash my hands.  What had we done?  My family.  Did we order innocent butterflies to slaughter?  It’s still touch and go out there for who might survive.  Reckless, in her limited veterinary training, is working tirelessly to save them and Stretch is periodically going out to wipe Reckless’ brow and get updates for the family. 

My husband and I haven’t handled a fish or butterflies very well, so we definitely shouldn’t be trusted with a dog.  Actually, come to think of it, we probably shouldn’t have been trusted with three kids.

Ready for A Killing Rampage

I know you’re supposed to wash delicates by hand, but I had several pair of tights and hosiery piled up from me and the girls and I thought surely, I could do a tiny cold water delicate load in the washer with these and save myself some work.  Some people are just natural born corner cutters.  Well, it didn’t work out.  Now I have a knot situation that a group of trained sailors would tremble in the face of.

That’s not even the first laundry lesson I learned this year.  Which is strange because laundry is one of the housewife things I’ve always excelled at.  It’s not like hearing new tips on gardening, where I have to admit any tip would be a new tip. 

A couple of weeks ago, when my friend’s parents were in town, I was in a discussion with her and her mother about my friend's new Rolls Royce style washing machine.  It’s shiny and beautiful and way smarter than a fifth grader.  I can’t even look my own washer in the eye now that I’ve seen hers.  Her mom was telling me that when she used it, she accidentally set it to the super cold cycle, which she didn’t need to do because she “didn’t have bloodstains on her clothes.”  Huh?

The conversation moved forward without me.  I was stuck wondering if she misspoke and meant the super hot cycle.  If I ever don’t understand something, I ask questions.  Wait.  That’s a pretty outrageous lie.  Sorry.  If I ever don’t understand something that isn’t related to math, science, or computers, I ask questions.

“Why would you wash bloodstains in super cold water?” I asked her.  My friend and her mother looked at me like I asked “Why would you wash your hands?”  Whatever the answer was, it was supposed to be obvious.  I started quickly flipping through blood related files in my head….blood is thicker than water, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson, Blue Bloods comes on Friday nights at ten?.....A whole Thomas Jefferson quote, but nothing on bloodstains and cold water.

They explained that you’re supposed to get out bloodstains by washing in cold water.  I wondered how they knew that and I didn’t.  Their mothers were better than mine?  Sorry, Mom, but clearly I could’ve been going on messy killing sprees if you’d taught me the proper way to wash clothes! 

Or maybe they just read the stain remover bottles?  Not me.  I read novels and magazines and poetry, but rarely do I read directions.  I should, I guess, because if there’s valuable information like that on there, I need to know.  I’m responsible for Reckless’ laundry.  I threw out her entire outfit after her bike accident, and my husband’s shirt too.  I got mine clean after two washes, but maybe if I’d done the cold water trick, I’d be telling a different tale here.  Maybe it’d be more interesting than a silly blog about laundry lessons.

But hopefully you learned something.  Maybe you already knew not to put hosiery in the washing machine and to get blood stains out with cold water, but how many of you knew that Thomas Jefferson quote?  If you majored in English and minored in History you knew it, and you probably do laundry every day too instead of holding down a real job.

Life In The Slow Lane...

There’s this man, let’s call him Edward, because that’s what his name tag says, and he works at my Target, and I think he’s 114 years old.  When I’m in a hurry or the kids are with me and I don’t want to be trapped in the confines of a checkout with them for an eternity, I usually avoid his line like fractions.  And I’m not the only shopper with that mentality either, because sometimes I’ll be three deep in a line and someone will get in line behind me even though poor old Edward is standing there with a wide open checkout.  He’s a likeable guy, but most of us moms can’t be late for carpool line because we were making a Civil War veteran scan our Lunchables.

But when I’m not in a rush and I’m enjoying a nice serene shopping excursion without the kids, I always look for him.  Because one day, when we’ve established a little more of a relationship, I want to ask him why he’s working at Target.  It’s nice to know that even someone who saw the invention of the automobile, the airplane, the computer, and M&Ms appreciates the greatness that is a Super Target.  But he’s so old and frail and I hate to think about him being on his feet for so many hours.  And I worry that he might fall in with the wrong crowd, like the thugs that round up the carts in the parking lot.  (I’m stereotyping because of their big diamond earrings and baggy pants belted around their thighs, but it’s safe to say they aren’t rap stars or professional ball players, because they wouldn’t have to return carts at Target.)

I don’t think I’m exaggerating Edward’s age.  There are ninety year olds in my church that could definitely pass for his children.  Poor excuses for children if they’re making him work at Target to afford his prescriptions!  Not that I know that’s why he’s working there.  Maybe he just got out of prison himself and the state secured this grocery store job for him like they did Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption.  He potentially could’ve been sentenced to life and when he passed 110, they were like, “Okay, you win.”

I doubt that though.  He’s too nice.  And, for the record, incredibly good at his job.  He’s slow, but methodical about bagging the groceries and then telling me what’s in each one as he sets it on the counter for me, “I slid the Rice A Roni down in here by the Honey Nut Cheerios.”

He can barely lift the bags sometimes and I feel awful even letting him try, because he has bruised toothpicks for arms, but he’s old school where it’s a man’s duty to lift things for women.  So, I let him heft the milk jug and pray that it’s not the last thing he ever does.

It makes me sad to think that he’s most certainly a widower.  Bachelors don’t tend to live past 100.  And his old poker buddies have probably been buried for decades.  Again making him vulnerable for being jumped into that Cart Returner gang.

For whatever reason, I just really want to know why he’s working.  To cure boredom or bankruptcy?  Given his age, I need to get to the bottom of it soon.  I’m almost positive his answer will be one of those two things, but what if it’s something crazy like, “I had to get a second job because my girlfriend’s pregnant.”  Or, “I’m in deep with the Russian mafia and if I don’t come up with ten grand, they’re gonna break my legs.”  In that case, I’d have to point out that a strong wind could break his legs and maybe he should just stay home and rest.

*I know another Edward that’s super old, but he’s a vampire so he held up a lot better.

When I Grow Up....

When I was growing up, my role models were people like Wonder Woman and Denise Huxtable from the Cosby Show. I wanted to be both of them at different times. Wonder Woman was so pretty and strong and smart. Her accessories had magic powers, and that part is still very appealing to me. I could totally go for a bracelet that dissipated traffic or made my children stop fighting. I’d love a tiara that could have dinner ready in ten minutes. But at some point I stopped believing that would happen. (side note: I’d love any tiara; it doesn’t have to make dinner.)

I also had to give up hoping for a chance to be the cool, laid back, hippie child of a loving, well-educated, and affluent black couple in New York. My family is just never going to put on a big musical number on the staircase for my grandparents’ wedding anniversary.

As an adult, I’ve gravitated toward more realistic role models. I aspire to be as put together as the room mommies at school. At 34, organization is more coveted than tall red leather boots and a golden lasso of truth. (Again, not saying I wouldn’t wear the tall red leather boots.) And, as fun as it seemed to be Denise Huxtable, with her constantly changing hairstyles and boyfriends, her love of a directionless life and all that, I don’t do well managing even one hairstyle.

And being a free-spirit is harder to get by with after college. People expect you to pick up your children EXACTLY when school ends, not when you’re done counting the little blue flowers in the meadow where you’re soaking up sunshine. So, women who aren’t as easily distracted as me become super heroes in my mind too.

I don’t just have role models for myself either. I have couple role models for me and my husband. Couples that are older than us and still cool. The ones that continue to update their wardrobes and haven’t retired their sense of humor.

There’s one couple, in particular, that goes to our church, that I want us be. I’d admired them from a distance for awhile, and then I got to know them better and realized they were every bit as cool as I thought they were and then some. They’re witty and attractive, they’re kind and intelligent, they’re active and involved. A few months ago, I leaned over and whispered in my husband’s ear, “I wanna be them when we grow up.” He nodded his consent. He didn’t verbally answer because we really shouldn’t be talking while the teacher is during Sunday school class. That was just my Denise Huxtable coming out.

Now, let me just say that I’m not trying to imply that they’re way older than us. I have no clue how old they are. I just know that their children are grown so they must have some years on us. The point is that whatever their age, I want us to be them at their stage in life. We’re not them now, so we’ve got some work to do.

But the reason I brought all of this up (not that I need a reason for bringing things up), is that I got on here to check my blog and they are official followers! They’re kind of like rock stars in my mind, so I was/am very excited about that! Mrs. It Couple has spoken to me about my blog a couple times recently and let me know she’s enjoying it. It’s one of the reasons I know she has great taste.

I also really appreciate them taking the time to become “followers”. Not everyone does. Clearly. I could name names, but I won’t. I don’t mind entertaining you on the down low. Though, I can assure my readers who haven’t signed on that there’s no credit check and the blood sample you have to give is virtually painless.

Lost In Translation

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to come to terms with what things about me I can change and what I can’t. I was horribly out of shape for most of my twenties, but by my thirtieth birthday, I’d changed that. I not only adapted to a new healthy lifestyle, but I actually became addicted to it.

I’ve also made progress with computers and technology. Granted I’m still the most tech-inept person I know, but believe me I was way worse five years ago. I’m better with money and time management; my Valentine’s gift to my husband is that I’m sticking to our budget like glue. That may not sound romantic, but to him it’s like I hung the moon.

But some things I’m starting to realize are just part of who I am, and always will be. One is that I’m navigationally challenged to the point of it being a physical handicap. I could maybe…MAYBE, find north if I had a compass. Even then….?

Unless I’ve been somewhere at least seven or eight times, there’s a good chance I can’t find it. It doesn’t help to tell me where it is in location to somewhere else, because odds are, I don’t remember where that place, street, store is either. It especially doesn’t work if someone says that my destination is just south of…or west of… x, y, or z….because again, I don’t know those.

And don’t give me that whole the sun rises in the east and sets in the west crap because I’m never going anywhere at seven a.m. on a cloudless day. NEVER! And even if I determine east and west “from the sun”, I don’t know if I’m facing north or south in relation to it!

Last week, I went with the girls on a field trip to the children’s museum downtown. I’ve been downtown maybe a dozen times in the seven years we’ve lived in Raleigh, and was probably only driving on three of those occasions. So, I knew going into it that I should pay attention, i.e. don’t get caught up singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs or talk on my cell phone as I guessed my way through one way streets.

I did okay finding the museum, but then got completely turned around three hours later when I came out of the parking lot. I needed to return to the preschool to reclaim my girls, because they were riding back there on the bus, a wise choice given their mother’s total lack of an internal gps.

A few minutes after I left, I realized I’d probably never see the girls again. I made a literal and figurative wrong turn because I was headed into a part of town that was not ever going to end in a preschool.

I tried to call my husband, but he has this serious full-time job thing that often results in him being unavailable to act as On-star. So, next I called my friend J, who is a very navigationally capable woman. A woman who has lived here longer than me and confidently learned her way around downtown Raleigh.

Thank God she was home because if I didn’t get on the right track really soon, I was going to earn a starring role on a 48 Hours mystery. My choices would be to embrace a life of crime, possibly through being jumped into a gang, or to become statistic and headline of the six o’clock news.

My friend helped me and I escaped back to the suburbs, but, for the record, I’ve always understood why Hansel & Gretel needed to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home. I feel like I need to do that when I go out to get a jug of milk.

The other thing that I’ve been totally unsuccessful in changing about myself is my propensity for saying exactly what’s on my mind, the very instant I think it.

Case in point: this Sunday, in our Sunday school class, we were listening to a really great lesson that was both uplifting and challenging. Near the end of the discussion, the teacher used a football analogy, as an example of how people recall the same event with different details, like how the apostles recount Jesus’ time on earth with slight variations. Variations, not contradictions…it’s just that some of the things they saw him do stood out more to some of them than others.

Anyway, the analogy started like this, “Remember that sideline catch that the Giants had in the second half of the Super Bowl?” There were lots of nods, and, at the same time, everyone’s eyes turned to me, a well-known lifelong Giants fan. I guess I was completely beaming because the teacher said, “Wow, Heather, you look like you’re remembering your wedding day instead of the Super Bowl!”

That was NOT an appropriate time for the next words that came out of my mouth… “The Super Bowl was way better than my wedding day.” LET ME EXPLAIN! First of all, the couples in that class that know us the best laughed right along with us, because they know that neither my husband nor I enjoyed our wedding all that much. Luckily, you can have a good marriage, even if your wedding wasn’t what you had in mind.

And my husband, who is ever more tolerant of my missing filter, smiled at me, took my hand in his…with the whole class looking on…and said, “It was a really awesome catch!” Basically agreeing that we’d rather toast the Giants’ two recent Super Bowl wins on our anniversary than a stressful wedding day we had twelve years ago.

My mouth and my lack of direction are liabilities, but hopefully I’ll always have people around to get me out of the dangerous situations they both get me into on a regular basis. Because I’m pretty sure that if either of those things was going to change about me, there’d be some sign of that by now.

Just Take My Word For It....

I had this rogue notion to get my Mommy-act together one night last week and update the kids’ baby books. If I had known how far I’d fallen behind or the extent of the things I’d have to try and recall, I would’ve just watched TV, like the actual surviving-day-to-day Mommy that I am.

First up, Brainy. That one seemed promising because a great deal of it was filled out lovingly and methodically back when he was an only child for two and a half years. I even managed to keep up with it for about a year and a half after the twins came home. Because I didn’t leave the house back then. But suddenly, there are no height and weight recordings from his check-ups, though I’m certain he’s grown since he was four. No problem, I’ll call the pediatrician and get those. My goal is to do it before he turns nine.

Next, in an effort to crush my own spirit, I decided to do some work on the twins’ books, which I haven’t touched since they started walking. I recorded that accomplishment for them and have been chasing, wrangling, and peeling them off the ceiling ever since.

Their books start off like a good read, basic information about our family, where we live, the pregnancy, etc. The handwriting in theirs is markedly sloppier than my son’s. Everything I’ve done since August 22^nd of 2006 has been rushed. In the section I was supposed to list gifts, I put toys, clothes, diapers…whereas in my son’s book, I described the clothes and wrote out what toys exactly and from whom. I stopped recording the twins’ growth at age two, so I’m going to have to get a cheat sheet from the pediatrician for that too.

It was the next section is where it got sketchy. Where this blog started to write itself. It was the page of “firsts”. Again, I was recording things left and right until they started walking, then nothing. So, as my husband, mother, and I sat down in the family room that night, I had to rack my brain for things like “First dressed yourself”, “First went potty”, “First brushed your teeth”, “Drew a picture”, “Wrote the alphabet”, “Made a Friend”….Uh-oh, I don’t remember. How exact do these need to be? Can I ballpark it? Like, “Well, I know you were older than one and younger than six.”

I thought maybe my husband and mom could help me piece it together. But, actually, we couldn’t even always agree on what the question was asking. “Do they mean when we brushed her teeth or she brushed her teeth?” “She’s been friends with A for her whole life, but is that a friend I made for her?” “I think they mean when she made a friend by herself.” “A trip where? Like to Nana’s house, or a vacation?”

Okay, wait. One at a time. Stretch…“Dressed yourself”.... Do parents record a certain date. Like Wednesday, April 27^th? We agreed that she was probably three. Sometime that year? We also liked 3 as the answer to when she first drew a picture. We voted on four for her brushing her own teeth… “So, we’re going with four, right?” I asked, pen poised over the book. We exchanged glances, a silent agreement that these made up guesses would become fact in the baby annals. Nods. Done.

That’s when I decided to just fill the rest out with whatever seemed reasonable or appropriate. How will they know the difference? And it’s not a science exam; there’s more than one right answer. There’s only one “true” answer, but I don’t recall it, so que cera cera! Won’t they just be pleased that I took the time to fill it out? It’s very likely that Stretch DID get her first pair of shoes when she was ten months old, at Stride Rite. Stride Rite for sure. Ten months??? She wasn’t walking yet, but I don’t think I took her to church barefoot like a vagrant.

For her first haircut, which was when she was about four, I think….I was supposed to put in a before and after picture. Ooops! I could put in a newborn picture and one from this week. Technically, that’d be before and after.

The book has a place to fill in the address of her first pediatrician. Seriously! I mean, obviously I could look that up, but why? Will thirty-year-old Stretch ever need to know the address of her first pediatrician? Please tell me she’ll have more important things to fill her time with than doing a nostalgic drive by of her childhood doctor’s office. So, some things I’m skipping on principle!

I want to catch up on these books and then find some quiet corner of the attic for them to gather dust. The moments are happening now, and I don’t want to miss them because I’m caught up in recording them. I can just make up something realistic later and none of us will know the difference twenty years from now.

Just another helpful blog on short-cut parenting :)