Honk if you love packing
Well, well, well. If Laura didn’t tag me for the “Seven Random Things About You” meme. She has asked that I not “hate her” for doing this and I have promised only to hate her for a maximum of fifteen seconds. At which time the hate will revert to my former fondness and admiration for her and all will be forgiven.
In the meantime, I am facing the challenge of finding seven random things to tell you that I have not already revealed, being as I am rather free with random details about myself.
While I’m thinking, here’s the state of Nasser’s thank-you-for-driving-me-to-the-Bridal-Barn-in-the-rain-last-Friday socks:
Darn near finished! It’s hard to say who is more excited: me or Nasser.
And now, without further ado, the seven things, random or otherwise. These are in no way related to the Seven Pillows of Strength:
1. Even more than I imagined when we started this blog last June, I really enjoy blogging on a regular basis. So much so that I was actually somewhat surprised when Alex mentioned to me last night that he would prefer that I not post during the week of our wedding and (very brief) honeymoon.
I can’t imagine why he would feel this way, can you?
But you’ll get the full story when I get back. Don’t you worry.
2. For at least the past two years, I’ve been threatening to take up cross-stitch so that I could make my loyal and long-suffering psychologist/counselor/life coach a sampler that reads, “Home is where your mental health care professional is.”
3. Weight-lifting is practically a religious experience for me. I find it deeply meditative to do chest presses with a 25 pound barbell in each hand.
That said, I understand from my cursory examination of bridal magazines and women’s fitness magazines that other women are supposedly concerned about lifting relatively large amounts of weight because they are afraid of becoming “bulky.”
I do not fear the bulk. Every woman on the Bales side of my family, after which I take, becomes bulky in her upper body as she ages. The bulk is a given. The only open question is whether or not that bulk jiggles.
Big weights, no jiggle.
4. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I am a crazed drill sergeant when it comes to moving. This tendency is not ameliorated by the fact that I have moved five times in the last five years. On the contrary, if anything, I’ve become more fanatical and less tractable around this issue as I’ve perfected my moving skills.
Boxes I packed a week ago.
A couple of the boxes I packed yesterday. Move: June 15th.
Although I give lip-service to “understanding” and “appreciating” others’ lazy, disorganized, and immoral less structured way of moving house, the truth is that I believe that it is wrong and possibly dangerous.
5. Here is a photo of the boxes that Alex has packed:
Hey, wait just a minute, soldier! Is that wooden hand flipping me off? No, on second examination, I guess it isn’t.
It would be somewhat alarming to any self-respecting Packing Drill Sergeant to find the man that she was about to marry approaching a move in this fashion.
But then again, not quite as alarming as when Saul Bellow died and, as the literary maven of our household, I reported this to Alex, who replied, “Saul Bellow. Who’s he?”
We got through that. We’ll get through this.
6. I currently have forty-seven pairs of shoes.
7. I keep a black-and-white baby photo of myself hanging amongst the other family photos I have displayed in my office. The other pictures in the gallery include a baby photo of my grandmother, a photo of my grandmother holding my father when he was a baby, and a photo of the intern class of 1934 at Kansas City’s General Hospital in which my grandfather is in the front row, third man from the left.
My sister thinks it is in poor taste to display a baby photo of oneself. I disagree.
One more thing: Check this out. Make sure you listen to I Was Just Flipped Off By a Silver-Haired Old Lady with a “Honk if You Love Jesus” Sticker on the Bumper of Her Car. I heard this on the radio this weekend (while packing) and I wanted to share.
Back on Wednesday, when I’ll have some finished socks to show (Lord willing) and will be making a long-overdue return to Minnie…
May 21st, 2007 at 1:48 pm
The Saul Bellow story did cause me to gasp aloud, but I remind myself that we all have our own bizarre lacunae. As sophomores at Fair Harvard, a (to remain unnamed) friend & I took a poetry class with Helen Vendler. One day, in a lecture on Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, Vendler began by proposing we envision the funeral train that took Lincoln’s body back to Illinois after he was shot.
Upon hearing this, the friend–herself the child of not one but two Harvard PhDs–turned to me aghast and said,
[…wait for it…]
“Lincoln was shot???”
May 21st, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Great story, Kate! Yes, none of us can know everything.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:46 pm
God that drives me crazy. I’ve been working out for about 4 and a half years now and while I do not find chest presses to be personally meditative, I can dig your position there.
I cannot count the number of times I have been sweating along and heard some girl touring the gym saying to the sales dude – oh, no, not the free weight area, I don’t want to get big.
?!&%$##
Honey, for that you need TES*TOS*TER*ONE.
My favorite was the woman who stopped to watch me do lunges or squats or something and asked me if it really did any good. I said oh, yeah, its great for your ass. And she craned around to look at mine and SHOOK HER HEAD with a pained expression.
Honey. Please. I concede I got back, but my back is solid. Which is more than I can say for your judgmental ass.
Not to be misogynistic or anything. Oops.
Recently I have fallen in love with the swiss ball and core work using same. Fewer free weights. Less back pain. One million crunches. Hurts so good.
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:19 am
Alas, the only exercise I’ve ever found not to be A) mind-numbingly boring; B) painful (being born with bad knees, ankles and really fine-boned wrists does not make for resilience and good shock-absorption); C) just too damned much bother were: 1) dancing; 2) horizontal dancing [g]; and 3) horseback riding. Those are about the only exercise or athletic endeavors I’ve ever participated in willingly.
Although I perforce did a lot of *other* exercising when we were living on a farm. Loading and unloading 12 or so tons of 85-lb. bales of hay when you’re stocking up for winter, for instance, will definitely give you a full-body workout. Fencing pasture is another workout like you wouldn’t believe, especially the delightful wrassling with barbed wire. Chasing a horse who doesn’t wanna get caught around a 5-acre field – that’s in your aerobic category. But I never got that promised endorphin rush from any of those sustained exercises; it was all just hot, sweaty work, not something to be enjoyed. Except, of course, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. 😉
So I can’t get the thrill of most exercise, but hey, this is why we have variety in life, neh? Different strokes, etc., and so on. And re Juno’s comment, bulk up from *lifting*? Please. Ok, so I know from the hay-bucking example above, not from weights, but even 40 years ago I knew I wasn’t going to look like a weightlifter from doing that. Or cleaning stalls and such. I wonder what that woman would’ve said about riding. Heh. Really good for the thighs, that is, especially. 😉
Love the NPR link – I think my favorite was ‘I Married Up’!
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 am
Hey, I knew he was a famous author, I just hadn’t read any of his works!
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Women really must think a lot of themselves if they expect that their weight lifting would suddenly make them look like a body builder. I’m pretty sure it would just make me look tired 🙂
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
The link in NPR wasn’t working all that well, but here’s a recent favorite of mine: http://www.bradpaisley.com/site.php?content=music&em702=24604, go to site, click on media, then jukebox to listen to “Ticks”.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
For some reason I really like the word ‘bulky’. I had to schedule a ‘bulky item’ trash pickup recently and I really enjoyed making the little notation in my calendar and then calling the utility company and saying the word. I like to look at it and say it out loud. I also like to say ‘SPLA’ (a software related acronym), although it’s not nearly as much fun to look at as ‘bulky’.
Er, that’s my random fact about me.
I think I heard the same song on NPR this weekend – and yes, it was great. I wonder if the woman who flipped him off will ever hear the song and recognize herself.
I should lift weights to help reduce my lunch lady arms, but I hate lifting weights. I do swim though, which helps a bit, but I will probably never again be comfortable doing any expansive arm gestures while wearing short sleeves.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
If you would like to listen to “I Was Just Flipped Off by a Silver-Haired Old Lady”, I can provide you with a link for this. I am the webmaster for the Trailer Park Troubadours. Cheers