Giant Dwarf vs. December

Well, yet again, we are nearing Christmas (aka my pre-birthday) and I am experiencing my yearly December meltdown.  Here's how this goes (every year):

Halloween happens.  I haven't gotten my shit together for that either so when it happens, I fill the pumpkin head with good fun-size candies and hope for trick-or-treaters.  They don't come.  We live in the what-can-only-be-considered slums of a very swanky city and our neighborhood gets no play when Halloween comes to town.

After Halloween, I start thinking about buying holiday gifts for family and friends and then I stop.  Thinking.  About anything.  Except whether or not I'm working on Thanksgiving and what my contribution to the potluck will be if I do have to work Thanksgiving.  If I'm not working, I'm planning on where the Spazz and I are going to celebrate Thanksgiving, as this is a "we have to be someplace" kind of holiday when we are not working.  And by "someplace," we don't mean our own home.

Around Thanksgiving, I start to think:  "I should really start making my gift list."  Yes, by now it's too late.  Recently, Chanukah has arrived way to early for my level of procrastination and so I start the holidays behind the 8-ball.  But, you see, Chanukah is not the only December deadline I have to deal with.

I grew up in a family of late-December Capricorns.  This is how it went:  first, my grandmother's birthday; then mine, then, all on the same day, my mother's, and both of my grandfathers'.  All within 8 days.  Not only that, there were several cousins with birthdays in this time frame.  This alone made December my hell month.  Then we get to add Chanukah and Christmas for all the people I know outside of my family.

When I married the Spazz, I added another December birthday (my mother-in-law) as well as a late Capricorn:  the Spazz himself.  In addition, I now have friends with kids born around this time and, since I know what it's like to have your birthday riding on the tail of Christmas, I make sure these kids get their birthday gifts as well.  And then there's my good buddy Mags, with the worst birthday of all, just a few days after New Year's.

I'm already exhausted.

This year was especially difficult with the passing of my grandmother (that first December birthday), just after Thanksgiving.  I could say that this impacted my December Downer Days, and it kind of did, but I'm still at the same level of frazzle as I am every year during this time.

Every December I feel like the world is closing in on me.  We send holiday cards, but we're never on time for that either.  Then we receive holiday cards from people not on our list and we have to hope that we have some left over to send.  Work is another freaking nightmare; back when I was the only one of my kind in the Emergency Department, there was no gift exchange.  Now there are 10 of us sharing an office and everyone gives gifts to everyone.  This is madness!  Earlier this year, one of my coworkers and I talked about setting up a Secret Santa project to prevent this rampant spend-fest, but, again, I completely forgot about it (I blame my coworker) and I just spent the last week worrying about what to get my coworkers.

They all have gifts.  My family does not.  And Chanukah was over 2 weeks ago.

So, I spend December shopping while listening to maddeningly terrible Christmas songs being piped into the stores.  My husband asks me daily what my plans are for my birthday, as do my parents (who visit every year for said birthday) and I cannot think of anything because my brain is swarming with gift lists, holiday card lists, thank you note lists, and too much fucking candy and cookies.  I have gift bags and tissue paper and ribbons strewn about my apartment.  And then I have to also worry about my parents' visit because my mom wants to visit every distant cousin we have in the LA area as well as my in-laws, but then my parents are only here for 2 days, and "have you thought about what you want to do for your birthday?"

And here's the kicker......Christmas happens, my birthday happens, New Year's happens, and then there's this weird kind of....silence.  The madness stops rather abruptly and I'm left with a tree that needs to be taken down, menorot that have to be cleaned, and the strange after-holiday deflation that I'm sure many people feel.

I'm also left with a ton of holiday cookies, candies and treats.

Giant Dwarf vs. the Gym

I have very complicated relationships with gyms.  It is rare that I don't step into a gym and instantly have a feeling of hatred and repulsion.  I'm not sure why, but let's look at the evidence (and there's a lot, so bear with me 'til you get to the end and you will be rewarded....I hope).

When I was a kid, there was gym class.  As the second smallest person in my class who was, at that time, very underweight (yeah, that ship sailed in 1981), gym was nothing short of torture.  I wasn't athletic, I didn't run, and I didn't do gymnastics (the only girl sport that our two male gym teachers respected).  I got confused learning the rules of games and was invariably one of the last people to be picked during the dreaded team-picking ritual that non-athletic children are subjected to.

I did dance though.  I took ballet, tap and jazz, two years of each at most while I was in elementary and middle schools.  But choreography was also a challenge for me.  I was so obsessed with getting the steps right that the fun of the whole class just got sucked right out.

During this time, my parents joined the JYC in Northeast Philly.  I took swim lessons there and played raquetball with my dad.  I think that was the extent of my gym usage there.  I liked racquetball, but I think my father preferred playing with adult opponents.  I can't imagine why.

My dad and I also tried jogging once.

ONCE.

We moved to Phoenix, and I took a ballet class for three months before I dislocated my knee at a jock party I shouldn't have gone to; thus began an almost 30-year history of repeated injuries to that knee that put another nail in the gym coffin for me.  (Good news:  I finally had surgery for this rogue knee five years ago.  The bad news:  now the rest of my body hurts for being forced to compensate for said knee during all those years.)

I went to college in Massachusetts at a school that touted it's state-of-the-art gymnasium; it was even part of the tour for this school full of egghead women.  I never stepped foot in there except for our first year, when we were required to pass a fire rope test.  (What's THAT?, you ask.  It was the one thing that intimidated all of the non-athletic girls who were hoping to avoid that gym for four years.)  Oh, and I think we also had to go there to sign up for our phone plans....back when you had to buy your own phone for your dorm room and open an account with New England Bell (I'm pretty sure I've lost all the millennials by now).

In any case, I did avoid the fancy state-of-the-art gym at college.  I did, however, take dance classes, which, in a strange turn of events, counted toward my theatre major and allowed me to graduate with more credits than I needed AND take only three classes the last semester of my senior year.  Interestingly enough, my second knee injury happened during that second senior semester....in dance class.

I graduated from college and was instantly poor, so joining a gym wasn't even a passing thought in my mind.  Paying rent and buying enough Lunchables and TopRamen to get me through the week were my priorities.

Eventually, though, in my late 20s, I joined the Berkeley YMCA.  I liked it.  I'm not sure why I terminated my membership but the only reason that would make any sense is because I STOPPED GOING.  Yeah, that's what tends to happen.

However, I did have one year (1997) when I was a bona fide Gym Rat.  Seriously.  I was working only three days a week and I had joined a gym in Emeryville called Every Woman's Gym.  I just looked it up....it's gone now, probably because rent is now at San Francisco rates in Emeryville (back in the '90s, Emeryville was kind of a dump so rents were cheap and businesses were catching on by the time I left the Bay Area).  In any case, I LOVED THAT PLACE.  I would hang out there for three hours at least, working out and then using the sauna and the shower.  It was awesome and I was in the best shape of my life.

I took some of the habits with me when I moved to LA and joined LA Woman on the Westside.  It was perfect because it was on the way to and from my internship and I got this sweet student rate that made the monthly payments only $15.  My first year was great, despite a bout of tinnea that I got from not changing out of my workout clothes fast enough (the showers were not as nice as Every Woman's Gym), but then my schedule got all janky and that was that.  I went intermittently.

LA Woman is now extinct (as is that ridiculously low monthly fee).  Since then, I've joined a few gyms, then cancelled my membership.  I've also worked with quite a few trainers, and my learned opinion about most of them is that they're full of shit (but not Chappell....she was/is the best ever trainer!  She just moved out of my area....).  My last gym was near work and, while I was okay there for a few years, the last year was horrible.  I literally would walk into that gym and seethe with hatred.  There was a bad vibe.  I don't know what it was, but I HATED being there and finally just terminated my membership.

I tried joining the YWCA, just around the corner from me, but I almost passed out during a Zumba for Seniors class, and the opportunities to work out on my own (i.e., machines) were limited to a tiny room with exactly one treadmill, one elliptical and one stationary bike (that didn't even work).  You had to get a key to use the room and it was so small, only one person could comfortably work out in there.  It wasn't working for me.

I went to take a look at my neighborhood 24-Hour Fitness facility.  That seething hatred thing?  It was immediate upon entry.  And the hard sell only made it worse.  The guy tried to make me sign up without even giving me a tour or giving me a trial pass.  I had to ask him for both, which he grudgingly gave me.  I already knew I hated this place though.  I used a couple of machines then snuck out as fast as I could.  24-Hour Fitness stalked me for the following 6 months.

Two things have happened recently that have increased the urgency of joining a gym.  I turned 40 (okay, not so recent, but I had this fantasy that my metabolism would return and then it didn't) and I married the Spazz.  As some of you know from a very old, past post, the Spazz is a champion eater.  And I have been heroically keeping up with him at the expense of my waistline and my overall self-esteem. (Full disclosure:  as I am writing this, I am eating a bowl of pickle-flavored popcorn which is completely addictive.)

When I look for a gym, there are certain requirements that have to be met:  be near my home (so I can go after work or on my days off) and not make me want to return to the location with artillery.  The YMCA has just successfully fulfilled those two requirements.

OHMYGOD I LOVE THIS PLACE.  Seriously.  First they gave me a tour with NO hard sell.  Thank you very much.  Then it had all this cool stuff:  a pool (!), basketball courts/gymnasium, lots of equipment (both aerobic and weight-training), classrooms, raquetball courts (it's ON, Dad!), a sauna and a steamroom, and a punching bag for my husband.  Oh, and the best part?  FREE PARKING.  And all for the cheapest gym price that I've seen in LA.

But the BESTEST part of all?  The people.  1)  It's more diverse than I expected, which is totally fun.  2)  I can wear whatever I want and no one judges me.  2a)  No one bugs me.  3)  There is a paucity of assholes (maybe that's 2b, but I think it's important enough to have it's own numeration).  4)  There's a bunch of Russians and Russians at the gym is a great spectator sport.  I don't know why, but they also make me feel at home in the locker room; maybe it's my Eastern European roots coming home to roost.

My new favorite person:  an big, elderly lady who wears a leopard print bathing suit and pearlescent bathing cap, web gloves and fins, and swims backstroke laps in the pool below the aerobic machines.  She topped the huge young man on the bike who was clearly suffering from some kind of Tourette's while pedaling furiously.  However, she may be unseated by the trannie who came in while I was on the elliptical.  I am in Gym Nirvana.

I am actually looking forward to going back to the gym.  I haven't had that feeling in a long time.  Now, can anyone direct me to a source for good, cheap exercise bras.  This is my new necessity.

Giant Dwarf vs. Max and Bettina

So I get this email from my sister-in-law:  "Do you think you can borrow a pack-and-play for our visit?"

A what?

What the fuck is that, really?  Without knowing, I went to the interweb and posted a Facebook plea to borrow said pack-and-play.  The responses fell into two categories:

1) "Of course you can borrow mine but I live at least 300 miles away from you."
2)  Instructions on how to MacGuyver a pack-and-play from various household items.

I still didn't know what it was and no one could give me one anyway.

I finally took the time to look it up on the Google machine and found that it is what we used to call, back in the old days, a "playpen."  More accurately, I guess it's a "portable playpen."  Whatever.  Pack-and-play clearly does not accurately describe the item so I don't know how I could have been expected to know what it was.  And yes, I tend to avoid baby showers.

Look, here's the deal.  My nephew, El Frijolito, is only 9 months old but, like all modern kiddles, he travels like a spoiled rock star, with tour bus-loads of baby items that I'm not going to pretend I understand.  And whenever I think of children and their accoutrements, I think of Max and Bettina.

It's one of my favorite Absolutely Fabulous episodes.  Eddy is all anxious because she remembers her friends as this:

They were minimalist and oh-so-judgemental back in the day.  When Eddy and Patsy go to visit their new über-chic apartment and bring a wine bottle, there is literally no place to put it.  Flash forward to the present time and Eddy is throwing away everything in her home in anticipation of their visit.  However, when Eddy opens the door upon their arrival, she sees something like this....

...entering her front door.  She's horrified that her once-minimalist friends are now weighed down with the sundry of modern parenting.  Max and Bettina are the quintessential helicopter parents (well, Bettina is) and they are trying to teach the baby advanced vocabulary while he is still an infant.  And the baby needs constant stimulation, hence the sherpa-like presentation of Max, bogged down by all of baby's accoutrements.

The day was saved by the Spazz's cousin, who drove 45 minutes to our apartment and dropped off her pack-and-play.  She also loaned us a baby seat chock full with little toys and a rocking-sleepy-chair (I have no idea what the official names of these products are, so here is a photo....please let me know if you know).

Look, I'm not going to pretend that I understand all this baby stuff.  I really don't understand babies.  Spazz and I are one of those childless-by-choice couples and we're both a little intimidated by tiny, crawling humans in our apartment.  But, I have to say, it was all worth it.  El Frijolito is freaking adorable and fun as all get out.

It would have been nice, however, if he had not chosen his visit with us to meet his developmental milestone of "stranger anxiety."  I will never regain my full hearing.

Giant Dwarf vs. the First Horseman of the Apocalypse

Pestilence.

The Beast we adopted is neither a white horse nor has any knowledge of scripture, but she has indeed brought a plague upon our house.  At first, she hated us, hid from us, attacked us; we disliked her enough to want to send her back to the people who gave her to us.  Her tiny little brain must have understood our desperate conversation with the original owner, because, all of sudden, she became.....sweet.  I'm sure, in her cat brain, she is realizing that she can kill us with kindness, but we fell for it anyway and decided to keep her.

So once she gets all loving and nice, and sleeps on our bed with us, and sits on our laps and snuggles agains us, what happens?  She brings in a flea infestation.  And I'm not talking a few fleas here and there.  I'm talking a full-fledged, Biblical-level scourge.  The kind where we pay an exorbitant amount to exterminate the buggers, only to have a reinfestation two weeks later with the spawn of the dead fleas.

Hundreds of dollars later, the Beast is fine.  There are no more fleas on her because we have given her pills to poison the f**kers.  But the eggs keep falling onto the carpet and hatch there and make us want to burn our own apartment down.

One of my friends asked me why I can't ask the landlord to replace the carpet with hardwood floor.

She has clearly never rented a rent-controlled apartment before.

The Spazz deserves a medal as the best soldier in this battle.  He has vacuumed the apartment dozens of times; we added more flea poison to the guest room (only to find out our houseguest is still being bitten).  We've done countless loads of laundry, washing bedding and clothing in the hopes that we kill them off.  We do daily carpet scans looking for those little pests, pressing our faces to the floor with flashlights in hand, ready to kill and vacuum some more.  Friends with pets sigh with condolences for our situation, but no one has a ready remedy.

Meanwhile, as I write this, the Beast is sitting behind me, shedding more flea eggs and plotting her next attack on our household.

Giant Dwarf vs. Internet Cafe

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Are you fucking kidding me?  Here’s how my day goes today:  I wake up early, do my stupid physical therapy exercises which are not providing much improvement, go to Physical Therapy where I’m given even more exercises which may have minimal effect and then I go home, put on some make-up so I don’t look like a total slacker and then head to lunch with a former intern who was in need of a bit of support.

THEN…..I muster up all my strength and resolve to change clothes again and get the hell out of the house so I can work on a stupid presentation on child abuse that I never wanted to do in the first place but I’m doing it because I need to do things that make me look good at my job.  My intention was to go to the library, where people really want to get work done (or at least stay out of the sun until the shelter re-opens for the night) but I forgot it is President’s Day (!!!!) so I packed up my computer in my backpack and walked to the closest café.  I like this café, it has good coffee, but it is littered with pretentious assholes like me working on their computers and never leaving their tables. 

I order my coffee and even find a table near an outlet, which is a total bonus since my laptop is considered elderly at only 5 years old and the battery dies after about 10 minutes of use.  I plug in, enter the password for the wifi and…..it doesn’t work.  I try multiple variations of the password, finally get on, but now there’s some other kind of trouble, the kind I can only diagnose with a degree in IT or if I were 8 years old.  I am so freakin’ annoyed because the only thing I can do right now is to create a Word document, so that is why I am writing a blog entry because I need to do SOMETHING while I have this massive laptop plugged in in front of me with a giant cup of café au lait right next to it.

So I tried to make the best of it and do the research from my phone instead.  But as I started doing my google search, in came rapid fire texts from my husband and my work supervisor.  Had my laptop internet connection worked, my phone would have been safely hidden in my bag, allowing me to ignore any incoming missive until I deigned to look at it on my own volition.   So now I can’t even research on the tiny internet screen next to my giant laptop screen because everyone feels the need to contact me just at this moment.

I’m done.  You may not enjoy this Giant Dwarf entry but I needed to vent.  Hope you at least liked the photo.  And to Café Bolivar, THANKS FOR NOTHING!

Or should I say....¡GRACIAS POR NADA!

Giant Dwarf and the Great Kindle Mystery

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I blame my work schedule.  Really, I do.  It’s because I don’t work the same days every week and I get all discombobulated and can’t remember which day it is on any given day.  It’s because I don’t have a normal 9-5, Monday through Friday schedule and therefore cannot be a creature of routine.  That’s why.

That’s why I can’t find my Kindle.

There are a lot of other things to blame on my schedule, but let’s focus on this one.  I last saw my Kindle on Sunday – Superbowl Sunday, to be exact – which was my last day of work before today.  I was eating lunch in the breakroom, sometime around 12:30 in the afternoon, a good THREE HOURS before the Superbowl.  As is my habit when I “dine alone,” I bring a book and in this case it was my Kindle Paperwhite 2013 (which I highly recommend).  I remember being horrified that there was pre- pre-Superbowl coverage on the TV in the breakroom, and I remember checking my smart phone for lord knows what on Facebook and I remember that I didn’t actually read my Kindle at all during lunch.

And that’s the last time I remember seeing it.  I was so distracted by my perceived meaninglessness of the pre- pre-Superbowl programming that I can’t remember what happened to the Kindle after that.

But I didn’t yet register that.  I had the next two days off and spent my valuable time running errands with the Spazz and taking the Beast to the vet.  I woke up extra early this morning and was still late getting out the door (okay, obviously I do have some routine….I am routinely leaving home later than I should for work).  I ran to get my Kindle from it’s place on my night table and IT WASN’T THERE!

I did a quick toss-up of areas in my home frequented by the Kindle, then hustled out the door.  As soon as I got to work, I asked my coworker (who was there with me on Sunday) whether she had seen my Kindle.  She had not.  Desperate to continue reading my Lena Dunham memoir, I composed an email to the entire Emergency Department staff, asking if they had seen my Kindle.

Yes, I felt like an asshole.  Most staff-wide emails about lost items are for finding misplaced stethoscopes.  I’m looking for a Kindle.

No bites all day.  I go home and ask Spazz if he’s seen it.  He remembers the last time he saw it being several days before my last sighting, so that’s no help.  But Spazz and I proceed to search the apartment again, and he even goes down to the garage to search my car.

At this point I think it is gone forever, so I load the Kindle app on my smart phone and open Dunham’s book.  I go to the kitchen to do some dishes and at one point I turn around, and there’s the Kindle on the kitchen counter.  Now, I know it wasn’t there ten minutes ago, so I look at Spazz.  He looks at me with a smile on his face.

“Where was it?”

He is super-amused and very self-satisfied.  “It was on your night table.” 

“No it wasn’t!  I looked.”

Spazz took me into our bedroom to show me exactly where he found it.  Rather than it’s usual place on the lower right corner, I had, for some unknown reason, placed it under some items in the upper left corner.  So I am a creature of routine after all…..I didn’t even think to look for it there.  We are talking about a maybe 18 square inch surface, by the way.

Email to the Emergency Department staff the following day:

“Kindle found.  Crisis averted.  Thank you.”

Giant Dwarf vs Punxsutawney Phil

Punxsutawney Phil Sees Shadow, Predicts Six More Weeks of Winter

Well, sometimes writer's block sets in and you have to take suggestions from your audience.  So thanks, JL, for throwing this one at me.  The fact is, I've had a fascination with Groundhog Day since I was a kid.  My father's birthday and Groundhog Day fall within a few days of each other so that piqued my interest.  Also, as an animal lover, I was entranced by a groundhog who could predict the weather.

I was always a logical kid, but I also loved ritual and the yearly showing of the enormous rodent was fun to me.  I never understood the idea of his shadow being the predictor since I always figured they'd brought him out in broad daylight and of course he'd see a shadow.  Which made me always suspect that the whole thing was just a fun way to tell you that you were going to freeze your ass off for the next six weeks, no matter what.

It wasn't lost on me, either, that the whole thing took place in Pennsylvania, in the same state I lived in, but in a whole other world.  I'm sure the last thing my parents wanted to do was take a 270 mile road trip in the middle of winter to watch a just-awakened groundhog tell us all what we already knew.  But the idea that it was happening in my home state was another source of pride for me.

So Punxsutawney Phil was dragged out of his hole again today and predicted another six weeks of winter.  This means nothing to me now in Southern California.  It was a gorgeous 70 degrees today, which we enjoyed by eating our breakfast on our porch at our bistro table.

The closest thing I have to a groundhog here in LA is a 13 pound black cat who predicted a certain chill in feline-human relations today by hiding behind the couch for 8 hours straight.