So, I have embarked on a (losing) journey to get in shape
for the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. I signed up for overly expensive Pilates
classes in the neighboring yuppie and pretentious studio. I religiously attend
them once a week only to witness perky senior citizens twist their bony limbs
like a pretzel while I try to mobilize my reluctant stomach muscles to lift my (apparently)
giant upper body, panting like a Doberman after a good run. Not pretty. Since
Pilates wasn’t cutting it, I decided to go further and signed up for full
membership at the local YMCA.
Have you ever been to a YMCA? Man, it is amazing in there!
They offer so much for so little and on top of that they provide free
babysitting while you work out! He-llo! I decided to try out Zumba since it
offered great movement, exercise and dancing skills, plus it is a Brazilian
thing. Made in Heaven especially for me. I showed up to my first class only to
find myself in the same room with more ladies of the wiry senior citizens
variety, one seriously tall gal in her twenties clad in a strange outfit of
purple sneakers and a t-shirt with no back that somehow was tied around her
neck, and one gangly Chinese boy. Our teacher was a petite Venezuelan lady who
would put the Energizer bunny to shame. She turned on some loud and overly
energetic salsa, and began to Zumba. For those who are not familiar with this particular
form of exercise – Zumba turned out to be a dynamic combo of a workout and overly
suggestive nightclub dancing. Half of the time we would be doing squats, and
the other – shimming our boobs and shaking our butts violently. The Asian kid
seemed to move most of the time to some internal tune of his own. I will tell you
one thing – no matter how much I work it, I can NEVER move my behind the way
that tiny Venezuelan lady can. And neither can any of the old ladies, frankly.
What is worse, there is a whole wall of mirrors in front of us, so that I
actually have to watch my own misery and inadequate flailing of limbs up and
down the room. I persevere.
Speaking of working out, it seems that the entire county of
Arlington is on the same quest as me. Sadly, most of them have taken it outside
the workout rooms and have flooded the streets of the area. Bloody runners,
they are EVERYWHERE like some sort of shapely, energetic and menacing gigantic
locusts that have invaded our quiet and boring neighborhood. The worst is that
they run at night, in the dark, ALWAYS clad in all black, which means that if you
are pensively driving through the back, less well lit streets, on your way to
the supermarket busy with pondering what to buy that has less calories, you are
bound to not see them as they come in seemingly from nowhere. Even worse, they
inevitably will be blasting some inane workout music in expensive
noise-isolating headphones thus not hearing your car that is happily humming
along on its way to Giant. Last night, as I was driving back from Pilates
around 7 pm, feeling rather good about myself and quite well disposed towards
the world in the enveloping Arlington darkness, I was startled by a ridiculously
well-shaped, tall female runner, who was also dragging 2 massive Collies along
for the run. As I was approaching an intersection with beautiful green traffic
lights, the fantastic specimen of female physique burst in from my left, not giving
the red light in front of her any respect, and without stopping for even one
second to see if there MIGHT be cars interested in utilizing the green light,
ran across the street followed by her bored dogs. I honked for good measure, at
which point, without stopping running, turned around, showed me the middle
finger and screamed a rather offensive suggestion for me to go do something,
frankly, physically impossible to myself. Really??
Life here is otherwise humming along. We go to Portuguese
classes every day, try to amuse ourselves by spending money on the weekends. We
hosted a Thanksgiving dinner last week when we had a visit from the Diplomat’s
sister and her family who live in California. For the dinner itself, we also
had invited the Diplomat’s pregnant cousin and her husband, and his aunt and
uncle. Not sure what I was drinking at the time, but I told the Diplomat to
procure a large bird this year – perhaps suffering from excitement that I had
not cooked turkey in the past 3 years, or perhaps suffering from partial dementia,
who knows. He delivered a 18-pound beast, which took about 6 hours to cook. In
my head, there were going to be 8 adults and 3 kids. What I really ignored was
the fact that Son eats 33 grams of turkey, the Diplomat’s family is largely vegetarian
(with the exception of the holidays but they clearly are not trained to eat
meat in unnecessarily large quantities like I am) and the pregnant cousin’s
stomach was half its size due to the residing child inside her. And then aunt
and uncle did not come. So there we were, 6 adults and 3 small kids and one
towering, impressive turkey, roasted to a crispy perfection. We ate 1/18th
of it that night. In the days that followed, I have been working those
leftovers every which way I could possibly imagine. I made turkey, brie and
cranberry chutney quesadillas, I made tremendous turkey soup, I made phenomenal
turkey potpie, I made pasta sauce and then ate some more turkey. I still have
some left in the fridge. I began feeling little turkey wings growing on my back….Next
year I am cooking an undernourished turkey from a developing country!
