2006 Comes Rumbling In

You can have a happy new year or not, as you please. Don't think I am demanding it of you. I make few demands of my readers at any time of year. Just please don't eat margarine or worse yet, imitation margarine. Eat bravely and truly and authentically.

Of course, along with 80% of the populace, I have resolved to drop 10 pounds. Now that my time is more my own, I can create a gym schedule to my liking, with some classes and trying some of the jazzy new machines. Can't do those funny things where you aren't exactly running or cycling or walking but a weird combination of the above. They give me a permanent charlie horse in the left thigh. Can't do the ball, either. Makes me want to vomit when I lean back.

Let us discuss my winter sports career, which was pretty abysmal. I tried to learn to ice skate wearing a friend's brother's old hockey skates, which did not fit. The occasion was totally dreadful, i.e. late getting home in spite of my mother's imprecations, missing a girl scout function after the leader had bragged to everyone how reliable I always was, and being abandonned by my faster skating chums in mid-lake with the ice cracking under my buckling ankles. That was it. Major guilt, major trauma, didn't need no more of that shit.

Many moons later, I tried skiing. Because I thought I should, not because I really wanted to. You don't want to hear about my first chairlift ride anymore than I want to remember it, or waiting for the chairlift in the 10 degree with wind Illinois/Wisconsin winters. Actually I always preferred the rope tow. I had achieved a modest snowplow on the beginner's slope (never more), and was contentedly practicing same, when a pro ran out of the ski school, collared me, said they had been watching me and I was the most awkward looking, klutziest skier he had ever seen in his entire ski pro life, and he wanted to give me a few pointers on the spot. Made me feel really good. So good I never strapped on downhill skies again. I enjoyed cross country skiing for a few years. Almost had the hang of it when we moved and I never went out again and then my ski boots rotted.

Actually sports and me were never on terribly good terms. One tennis pro said I had the worst forehand he had ever seen, and whoever taught me should be banned from the profession. Once I hit the tennis ball into my own eye. Well, you get the idea.

I had a good time fencing and won the class night school tournament. Might have done well if I'd kept it up. Wonder if it's too late. Trying to skewer people with a pointy metal thing is actually fun.

It's awkward when your parents were both good athletes and you have somehow inherited the two left feet klutz genes. Could happen to anyone. At sixteen, I managed to pass Red Cross senior life saving, my only athletic triumph outside of fencing. I never did get the hang of going head first off the diving board, but my running belly flop was not too painful.

So when I go to the gym and stride along on the treadmill or lift some weights, this is a real triumph of optimism over experience. Haven't fallen off the treadmill yet. I did smash my finger with a weight and the nail turned black, but that was when I was adjusting the weights, not actually lifting.

I haven't fallen down since that hike last September. God, it's embarrassing when you go down so hard the ground shakes. I am not THAT heavy. At Burning Man I only fell off the bicycle twice. Well, maybe thrice.

Give me credit for trying. And it if pleases you to do so, make something of 2006. Hash, mincemeat, win an oscar. And if you play the game like I do, give it up.

On the other hand, I lift a wine glass with grace and charm and savoir faire.

Grapeshot