Golden Sneakers vs. Silver Fins

I am in the race of my life against an elderly woman at the local YMCA.

We have a family membership there, and I work out every Monday afternoon while the kids are at their art/music/play/doesitreallymatter? class.  I have just enough time to sweat out about thirty minutes on the elliptical before grabbing a shower and returning to pick J-dog and V-meister up. Generally speaking, my Monday afternoon drop-off/workout/pickup regimen is a well oiled machine.

Now it seems there is a senior aquatics class  - the Silver Fins - wrapping up right about the same time as I'm heading for the showers, of which there are only three.  And for the past few Mondays, I have had to wait in line for twenty minutes - sometimes more! - while the Silver Fins slooooooooooooowly rinse off.  It puts quite a wrench into my Monday afternoon schedule.

"This week," I told myself, "the game is gonna change."  So on Monday I cut my workout short by five minutes and, with the Chariots of Fire theme song playing in my head,  made my way towards the shower room like a bat out of hell.

Readers, I arrived in the nick of time, just as the first of the Silver Fins posse was inching around the corner.  Breathless and red-faced, I hopped into the center stall, did a quick victory shuffle, and turned the water on. 

But, soft! What hand through yonder shower curtain breaks?

"THAT YOU IN THERE, KAREN?" (One of the heftier, tattoed Silver Fins has violently ripped the curtain open and poked her permed head inside.)

Me, scrambling to draw curtain shut: "Nope! Not Karen! I'll be done in a minute, though, and thank you for respecting my privacy while I finish up!"

Silver Fin: "Oh, I didn't see you sneak in there, hon!  You know, I always take this stall because it's the roomiest.  The gals call it 'Gertie's* stall', heh heh, because it's mine.  You snuck in on me pretty good, there! Well, I guess I'll just sit here for a spell until you're done.  "

The remaining two showers in the room were empty, but Gertie pulled up a stool, planted herself directly in front of the stall I was in, and started humming.

Now, usually I'm in and out in five minutes, but you know I took a forty-five minute shower that day.

(Actually, I just stood under the stream doing a whole lotta nothin' since in my haste, I had forgotten to bring soap and shampoo.)

When, in my estimation an appropriate amount of time had elapsed, I turned the water off and, taking great pains to adjust my towel just so before exiting, waltzed out with head held high and never looked back.

Next week I'll have to truncate my workout by another five minutes to ensure that I cut Gertie off at the pass.  But it's a wash (a WASH!) in the end, on account of all the extra calories I plan to burn in the race.

*Probably her real name

Let Her Eat Stroganoff

Today I'm talking about food and how much I love to eat it.

The first thing I'd like to comment on is how unfair it is that, as a petite woman of a certain age, I can only eat about two calories a day without developing the figure of a Russian nesting doll.

I was playing with those weight loss calculation websites this morning, trying to figure out how many calories I can consume per day. Bad news, my peeps: no matter how you dice it, I'm allowed the daily caloric intake of a fruit fly.

Whenever I complain about this, everyone's all, "Oh, but you're little! You're not as hungry as the rest of us!" And then I lean over and bite their head off because Like hellz I'm not hungry, betches!

When the P-Dawg was a kid, his mom would occasionally buy him and his older brothers an Arby's "Five for Five" special for dinner. The problem was that there were only five roast beef sandwiches to split between three growing boys.

To hear my husband tell it, the Arby's bag would be placed on the table and then he and his brothers would basically have at it like a pack of starving wolves. The faster you were able to scarf down your sandwich, the better your chances of getting seconds and growing to adulthood.

P-Dawg cites this "every man for himself" upbringing as the reason why he continues to eat his meals as though someone is pointing a gun to his head.

Same goes for leftovers. Let's say I'm saving a piece of cake in the fridge and come to find, when I'm finally ready to partake, that the P-Dawg has eaten it.

He'll say, "It was sitting in there for three days! I didn't think you were ever going to eat it."

"I WAS TOTALLY GOING TO EAT IT TONIGHT, P-DAWG!!!"

Then I'll sulk for the rest of the evening, hijack the TV remote, and watch E! True Hollywood Story while blogging because that'll show him.

The same thing happens when we go to dinner at his mom's house and P-Dawg's brothers are there. Say my mother-in-law has made a bowl of tasty beef stroganoff. If, like me, you have the additional self-imposed responsibility of keeping the dinner conversation going and are therefore not quick to inhale your portion, well you can just forget about seconds, missy.

This used to happen to me over there all the time. I'd help myself to a dinky little lady's portion with a meat to noodles ratio of 1:4 and by the time I was ready for seconds, the brothers-in-Dawg would be sprawled all over the living room couches, digesting what was left of the meal.

I'd go home hungry every time until one day, I decided to change up the game. As soon as we finished saying grace, I yelled, "Carpe Diem!" and dove in, helping myself to a heaping plateful of stroganoff before anyone else could have at it. There were noodles spilling over the sides of my plate, but I didn't care because I was finally going to eat my fill.

The family was obviously shocked and appalled at my balls of brass, eyeing my overflowing plate as if to say, "Who does the little runt think she is, taking a man's portion of stroganoff??? But I felt completely justified, if only a little piggish, and I'll tell you something else: I ate the whole damn thing.

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I'd also like to confirm today what everyone probably already knows, which is that Guy Kawasaki rawks. Do you know that only about five minutes after I published this post, shamelessly asking him to list my blog on Alltop, Guy took a moment out of technology empire building to leave a comment saying I'm in? (Thank you!)

And even though Rimarama is dead last on the "Moms" page, I'm cool with it because Alltop puts their banner at the bottom.

And that makes me Number One.

I'm Not Complaining

I had posted this earlier today, and it just seemed so dang whiny that I took it down. But now that the P-Dawg is home from work and I've helped myself to a few glasses of vino, I'll be darned if it's not downright amusing.

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J-dog and V-meister have been at each other's throats from the moment they woke up this morning. It's one of those days when I'm just a toddler tantrum away from reverting back to my monkey roots.

That's right, I'm about to start flinging poop.

The day began with me running out of the shower, dripping wet, to disengage J-dog from the V-meister's headlock. By the time we got out of the house, it was practically twilight and the twenty or so hours I'd spent applying SPF 50 over every nook, cranny, and crevice of our pasty white selves had gone to waste.

Nonetheless, we headed to the splash park.

But when we finally arrived there and met up with V-meister's little friend, no one actually wanted to splash. The V-meister was requesting an early lunch, and the J-dog wanted only to climb in and out of my lap over and over again, mixing it up with an occasional full body slam for good measure.

After endless rounds of this, I set him down none too gently, and when he came in for his next approach, I totally blocked him with a tae-kwon-do move. Of course I'm not proud.

Once the kids were finished not splashing, not running under any fountains, and not eating their lovingly packed nutritional and environmentally friendly lunches, we walked over to the playground. We were only there ten minutes before I found the two of them locked in a death-grip in the middle of the crawl tunnel.

I marched up inside that play structure - fuming- but instead of giving each of them a nuggie as I was wont to do, I reprimanded and separated one from the other, the J-dog with his legs still cycling in mid-air like some caricature of an angry toddler.

Then, on my pissed off and humiliating descent from the jungle gym, I totally nailed my head on a metal beam and swore out loud in front of the V-meister's wide-eyed little friend, who had been watching the spectacle from the sidelines.

In between the stars that appeared before my eyes, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the J-dog putting gel beads that had fallen out of some kid's leaking diaper from the swirly slide right into his pie hole.

And then we left.

On the way home, the V-meister asked what was for lunch? but I simply cranked up the volume on our Lithuanian pop music CD and bopped along to the accordion/techno beat while taking deep breaths and counting to twenty in my head.

Now it's "nap time" and I've been sitting here on my living room couch listening to the J-dog attempting to bust out of his crib for the past forty-five minutes. It's funny, I don't remember tucking him in along with a hammer and crowbar! but by the sound of it, that is what he's employing.

There's also a dead rabbit in my backyard, and this makes me want to cry.

Rimarama Recommends: Melatonin

First of all, no deal on the house.

I'm more angry than depressed over it, actually. They strung us along way past the time that our offer expired and their agent kept stalling and not returning our agent's phone calls before finally giving us some bull$hit explanation and ultimately saying "no."

I have added their agent to my official Enemies List, which also includes all of the engineers from my old tech writing job, our wedding DJ, and Carmine the landscaper, who I once chased down with the Ramamobile to get him to cough up the eighty bucks he owed me.

Whatever. I don't even want their stupid house anymore.

My guess is that it will still be festering on the market two or three months from now, when the sellers find their dream home, and then, if I'm still available, I'll offer them five bucks for it. But I will attach that five spot to an invisible string and jerk it away at the last possible minute, just like my mom did to me on April Fool's Day back in '82.

Oh yes, my revenge will be sweet. (Dear Saint Joseph, don't pay no nevermind, I'm just talkin.')

Anyway, onward, ho!

Today's subject is melatonin.

You might be wondering how a person as high strung as I tend to be is getting even a wink of sleep, what with all the real estate and other, non blog approved craziness going on right now. And I'll tell you: I drink a fifth of Jack Daniels with my Amb1en tablet every single night while watching Poker TV.

I kid! Don't ever do that.

Actually, I have a new friend, and his name is Melatonin. I first met Melatonin about ten years ago. Our relationship ended badly when I failed to read the dosing information on his jacket.

The result of this foray into the nefarious underworld of non-FDA regulated herbal remedies was that I stayed up all night peeing day-glo yellow every ten minutes, became convinced that my kidneys were failing, and had a full blown panic attack which necessitated calling my at-the-time med student boyfriend, the P-Dawg, at three in the morning screaming, OMG, P-DAWG, I'M DYING, SHOULD I CALL 9-1-1 ???

But don't let this scare you away from the Melatonin.

For the past few nights, I've cranked up the old noise machine an extra decibel or two, curled up with my 500 hundred page hardback, The Secret History of the World, and taken a sub-lingual melatonin tablet that tastes just like an Altoid mint. And, even though my thoughts race faster than a hamster on a wheel, I've fallen peacefully asleep, dreamed super vivid, wacky dreams, and woken up feeling fresh as a daisy every morning.

And so I heartily recommend melatonin as the homeopathic remedy of the day.

P.S. Just an FYI: It's possible there may be some shark cartilage in those tablets. In case you were interested in trying it, you know, I thought I should tell you.

I'm a Four Year Old Trapped in a Peri-Menopausal Body

3/4 sleeve brown yoga t-shirt
linen capris
black clogs
amber earrings


Dear Internets,

I've been in a bit of a funk for the past few days, which is why I haven't posted. Strangely, I'm usually only motivated to write when I'm feeling buoyant. A blog post when I'm feeling down would look an awful lot like my high school diary, except I probably wouldn't write what I wore that day in the upper left corner.

Speaking of clothing, did you know that, when you are four years old, you are not permitted to wear an item of clothing that bears "Size 3T" on the tag? Any birdbrain (except yours truly) knows that this is folly and goes against all laws of reason.

If the item of clothing in question bearing the "3T" tag also happens to be white ("White is not my color, Mama! Pink is my color!!!"), well now, this results in a Level Four Meltdown accompanied by the Whining Cry of Maximum Irritation.

Which is worse even than the sound of nails on a chalkboard and makes me want to run around in circles with my hands over my ears screaming, "MynameisRima!Ican'thearyoumynameisRima!" And then jump out the window.

Except what I actually do is bring out ye old Drill Sergeant of Doom persona and raise my voice ever so slightly, much in the same way I imagine a banshee might. A PMSssing banshee on an empty stomach who has a vague sense of malaise about her life in general and has not yet had her morning cup of joe.

Oh, ya. I can act like a four year old any damn day of the week.

It is important to note, however that if a pink plastic Ikea spoon should happen to be proffered as a breakfast eating implement mere minutes after the white size 3T clothing debacle, it will be thrown across the breakfast table in in a fit of rage because what fool doesn't know by now that only the dark blue plastic Ikea spoon is fit to eat Cheerios with?

Again, that would be me.

P.S. I told my ob/gyn last time I saw her that my PMS is getting totally out of hand lately. She said, "Oh, yeh, well you're thirty-four. It's peri-menopause." ACK!

(MynameisRimamynameisRimaMynameisRima!)

Annette Bening, Will You Sell My House Today?

Today we had an open house for which NO ONE showed up because, among other things:

1. There were no signs in the neighborhood pointing to our open house.
2. The open house did not appear to be advertised in the newspaper.
3. The open house was not advertised online.

WTF, my peeps? Is my real estate lady smokin' dope, or does she really not want to sell this house?

I can handle no one showing up if a valiant attempt has been made to attract visitors. But I do not want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, turning the hut right-side up in preparation for a showing while two little childrenz follow me around undoing my every effort as I complete it for an imaginary open house which has been advertised exactly nowhere.

Yesterday, we had a showing scheduled during the J-dog's naptime, so we packed the kids up in the Ramamobile and drove around our dream 'hood scouting out new listings while the V-meister hummed merrily along to her favorite song on the Grease soundtrack (Why, this car is automatic, it's systematic, it's hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidromatic, why, it's grease lightning!) and the J-dog caught up with his beauty sleep.

But forty five minutes into our jaunt around the winding and hilly roads where we hope to find the home of our future nestled, the little J-dog woke up and puked a pint of partially digested strawberries into his lap.

"Crap! I told you somebody was going to yorp if you didn't take it easy around those curves, P-Dawg!!!!"

Sadly, it was a situation in which having been right didn't yield quite the feeling of satisfaction one would hope for.

We pulled into the nearest parking lot, where a howling J-dog was wiped down to the best of the P-Dawg's ability and changed into a set of clean clothes (which the ever prepared mutha keeps in the diaper bag at all times in case of just such an emergency).

Then we killed the remaining half hour before we could get back into our house by driving very slowly with the windows down and making as few turns as possible. Once home, we deposited the J-dog straight into the bathtub, and that is when the agent who had scheduled the showing arrived with her clients, half an hour late.

I completely understand how easy it can be to run late for a showing, but I almost burst a blood vessel upon being told that they couldn't get in earlier due to the storm door being locked, BECAUSE I KNOW THIS TO BE A BUNCH OF BULL SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS.

Freakin' storm door was not locked. NOT LOCKED!

Do you know how hard it was for me not to call her on her bluff about that stupid storm door? It took every ounce of self-restraint in me to bite my tongue and place the blame squarely on the V-meister, saying, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! My daughter must have turned the lock on our way out!", even though it is impossible to lock our storm door from the inside, Pinocchio!

So either this agent has a serious iron deficiency, or the line is something agents universally say when they are running late and don't want to admit it. Still, I would have appreciated a little honesty after driving my kid to puke all over himself in vain.

Bah. She showed the house while the entire family Rama huddled awkwardly in the bathroom, the V-meister occasionally shooting out into the hallway like a bat out of hell to let us know whether the coast was clear.

You know how they say that moving is one of life's biggest stresses? I hope that they are factoring the house showing part of the process heavily into the equation, because if it gets much harder, I could have a total nervous breakdown.

MamaGeek recently reminded me of that scene in American Beauty where Annette Bening stands, arms akimbo, in front of the patio doors of a house she is trying to sell, affirming, "I will sell this house today! I will sell this house today!" before stripping down to her bra and panties and going on a cleaning spree.

Dude. I need that realtor.