Hit by a Pitch

I hate to write about stuff that’s totally a downer or getting into girly-TMI territory (sorry, dudes), but once every three months or so, I get, like, the worst PMS ever. I’ll first notice it during that hectic part of the evening after I get home from the gym and Ben is making dinner and Soren is experiencing toddler witching hour and there are toys all over the place and the animals are all OMG you guys you guys you guys feed us now the end is near and I’m trying to at least take off my shoes and ignore the fact that I won’t be able to shower for a while (“not showering for days” is the biggest lie anybody will ever tell you about life with a child, but sometimes I at least don’t get to shower at the exact minute at which I’d like) and I just, like, kind of snap. I might say something even bitchier than the things I say about Tim Tebow or Philip Rivers on Twitter after I’ve been drinking, or I might feel a sudden burst of rage that seems to come from nowhere but then I realize oh yeah, PMS.

My mental train leaves the sudden-burst-of-rage station and spends the next few days chugging through regions that include “not quite totally depressed,” “hopeless,” “angry,” “torrential verbal outbursts,” “outright crazy,” “fat and bloated,” “couches and sweatpants only,” and “zitty.” I recognize when I’m in it, which is good, but that does little to make it suck any less.

The good news is I know it’s not all that bad because I’m able to function and I tend to, inexplicably, have really good workouts. And I know it’s only temporary.

hiding

The bad news is nothing really helps and you just have to wait it out. Well, honestly, weed helps, but it’s not something we have around. (I’ve seriously considered looking into getting medical marijuana just for this intermittent PMS.) In theory, keeping busy helps, but it’s hard to keep busy when your brain knows it needs to be busy but your body is just this doughy lump on the couch. In a feeble attempt to cheer myself up this weekend, I consumed large quantities of cheese bread dipped in ranch dressing and tried to implement an antler-wearing regime with respect to at least one of our small animals. This mostly failed. I don’t know why it’s so hard for these guys to understand that I really enjoy animals with antlers. I mean, just humor me for a few minutes, dudes.

We’re getting there.

sweatpants and antlers: good for what ails you

Here is every annoying thing anybody has ever said about the weather. I hope that, by consolidating everything here, we can avoid hearing anybody say any of this ever again.

• Hey, it’s snowing.
• Hey, it’s still snowing!
• I guess there’s a winter storm coming. I’m going to go buy some bread.
• People already bought all the bread.
• It’s cold out!
• I just checked in at a place where it’s really cold.
• We are snowed in.
• We are still snowed in.
• We are still snowed in!
• The snow is 27 feet deep.
• I’m digging out my car.
• I’m still digging out my car.
• I’m scraping ice off my car.
• I’m starting my car (I hope)!
• I can’t get my car out of the driveway.
• I’m driving my car down a hill that is covered in snow and ice.
• I’m stuck in a snowdrift.
• It’s the notorious snowpocalypse Mr. Snow Miser u can’t touch this shoveltime ice ice baby!
• Here is a picture of my house covered in 1 inch of snow.
• Here is a picture of my house covered in 2 inches of snow.
• Here is a picture of my house covered in 3 inches of snow.
• I just burned 87,000 calories shoveling snow.
• Oh my aching back! I just shoveled snow!
• I just shoveled for an hour.
• I just shoveled for two hours.
• I can shovel that driveway in one hour.
• I can shovel that driveway in 45 minutes.
• Shovel that driveway!
• I’m super stoked that I had “shovel a driveway” on my “30 Before 30″ list!
• I’m going outside.
• After I get outside, I will probably have to do some shoveling.
• After I get outside and do some shoveling, I will come back inside and tell the internet about my shoveling-related aches and pains.
• I shoveled a narrow tunnel that will allow me to leave my house and then come back to tell the internet what I good job I did shoveling a narrow tunnel that will allow me to leave my house for a minute.
• Shoveling snow is a great workout!
• I just shoveled not only my driveway but every driveway within a three-mile radius.
• We got mail!
• The snow has affected my life negatively in the following ways: [tearfully reads list handwritten on crumpled notebook paper]
• I plan to leave for work 6 hours early tomorrow.
• I’m not going to work tomorrow.
• I’m going to live in my office so I don’t have to leave for work 6 hours early tomorrow or worry about missing work, which is important because my work is so groundbreaking a missed day would result in chaos and tragedy. Please bring canned goods.
• I think summer’s finally over!
• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
• I am self-satisfied about the weather where I am, because it is not cold.
• Ahahaha I live in a place that’s warm enough for flip flops all year, suckas, and if I do enough gloating about it, you are free to ignore the 9,000 times I bitch about how fucking unbearably hot it is here all summer!
• It’s 70 degrees here. This is newsworthy because I control the weather.

For the record, I have seen some hilarious weather-related updates. My favorite involved a news chopper, a green jacket, a shovel, an alley, and a bottle of vodka. The @mayoremanuel tweets were, as always, brilliant:

• Carl the Intern built an igloo, and we’re all just laying around in here, fucking whiskied and exhausted. Stay fucking warm.
• Carl the Intern is designing a tunnel to get us the fuck out. “The key is that it doesn’t collapse in on itself while we’re inside.”
• Carl the Intern has emptied all the pork n beans onto the crawlspace floor and is welding the cans together into a fucking escape elevator.
• When he presented the plans to me and Axelrod, he said, “It’s pretty simple, really: We’re going to Chilean Miner this shit.”
• I get the pork n beans elevator, but I’m still a little unclear on how we’re actually digging the motherfucking escape tunnel.
• Axelrod just called in from a Teamster truck. “We’re going to go surf a plow on the lake. You in?” Fuck yes I’m in.
• The plan: We’re going to hit velocity on the Michigan Ave curve, launch into the water, and ride a motherfucking 18′ wave to victory.

That’s how it’s done.

Song: I’m Sorry That I Got Fat by Wesley Willis
_______
You always hear about how your body changes after you have a baby. It’s true. It just might not happen the way you expect.

What I’m about to discuss is kind of one of those non-problem problems. Non-problem problems include things like the following (please forgive me for plagiarizing myself a few times here):

• I once got a B+ in law school, but that’s totally okay because I got straight As every other semester!
• My trust fund check arrived a day late.
• I have so many awesome friends I simply cannot keep up with everyone!
• Most men I encounter want to have sex with me.
• I just can’t get along with other women because they are intimidated by my hotness.
• People always buy me free drinks because I’m so hot, but then I drink too much and feel hungover the next morning.
• I simply cannot wear all five engagement rings at the same time. Someone is going to be hurt every day.
• I just don’t know whether to spend the summer in France or on a whirlwind tour of somewhat obscure Asian countries.
• I’m on a budget, so I’ll have to buy the small Louis Vuitton bag and only half of my summer wardrobe will come from Anthropologie.
• I worry that it’s tacky to accept all the presents I’m about to receive.
• I cannot possibly respond to the thousands of emails I receive from my adoring fans who inundate me with questions, requests, and statements of true and undying love every day.

The very non-problemy part of my problem is the fact that I weigh 17 pounds less than I did when I got pregnant. That means I’m only three pounds away from my yay-woohoo-happy weight. This is awesome and a glowing testament to the power of running more and eating less.

It gets a little dicey when you account for the post-pregnancy body weirdness. The first problem is that I’m even more top-heavy than I used to be. And listen, I know “my boobs are so big” normally would qualify as a non-problem problem, but when you’re getting into triple-letter bra sizes, it’s not really a good thing unless you’re, like, Dolly Parton, and even then it’s questionable but at least you’re making a decent living.

If you have a decrease in weight and an increase in top-heaviness, it follows that you also have a decrease in, well, bottom-heaviness. Let’s be clear. I seriously have no ass whatsoever. I’ve never had hips or an ass, but now I have even less of an ass than I had before getting pregnant.

For practical purposes, this means I’ve been having a very hard time with pants. First, it was just that I lost weight so my pants were too big (total non-problem problem). So I bought a few new pairs of pants and had Ben dig around the attic to find my old boxes of “small pants,” which, for the record, I didn’t think I’d ever need again, oh happy surprise.

I’ve even been careful to incorporate into my wardrobe pants that are no-ass friendly. These include traditionally junior-oriented pants from places like American Eagle, Alloy (Does that still exist?), and Abercrombie (I know!) (as opposed to women-oriented pants from places like Ann Taylor, which make me look like a misguided MC Hammer wannabe). Old Navy used to work very well but now their pants seem to stretch and are an almost-guaranteed way for me to end up on America’s Funniest Home Videos (Does that still exist? I hope not.) when my pants fall down while I’m walking down the street with a cat on a scooter and 57 min pins, in totally a non-calculated way that just happened to be caught on tape.

The thing is that now, even traditionally junior-oriented pants designed for teenage girls are way too baggy in the ass and don’t stay up. I’m forever pulling up my pants, and it has to look ridiculous. Just the other day when I was dropping Soren off at school, I got out of the car, hiked my jacket up to my armpits, and gave my pants a good tug (you have to really get them up there when you’re about to carry a toddler across the parking lot and through the building), before realizing that a mom and kid were sitting in the SUV parked next to me and now they probably think I’m really, really creepy, because who does that.

Ben refers to the flat butt phenomenon as “Littleton ass,” Littleton being a suburb of Denver. So what he’s saying here is that I have mom butt. If you observe mom butt in its natural environment, you’ll notice that high-waisted pants make it look even more exceptionally flat.

This means that, unless I want to accentuate my flat-assedness, I can’t wear high-waisted pants. However, low-waisted pants fall off of me. I think the problem might be too much for a belt to help, because to hold my pants up, a belt would have to be tight enough to give me a nice muffin top, which isn’t an appealing option, either.

I fear that the only answer is for me to wear dresses or skirts all the time. Or suspenders.

Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured. –B.K.S. Iyengar

_______
The Criminal Minds team is called to Denver, where three women have been killed in the past month. Members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) arrive at the crime scene of the latest victim to find the body of a reasonably fit blond woman in her mid-30s, still wearing workout clothes and one expensive running shoe, on her living room floor. The body is wrapped in a yoga mat.

This is a case for the BAU because it appears the same unknown subject (unsub) killed all three women. All victims were found wearing workout clothes and one expensive athletic shoe and were wrapped in yoga mats.

The first victim was found in the living room of her home and the second was found in her kitchen. All victims were home alone when the unsub attacked. The crime scenes were tidy, the yoga mats were neatly wrapped and fastened around each body, and no weapons were found. The unsub takes a shoe from each victim as a souvenir. He clearly is organized. He is of average intelligence and is considered attractive and outgoing by the community, meaning that he can fit in to any neighborhood and move freely without suspicion. Although he craves human contact, he feels superior to others and knows that if they would only submit to his control and live their lives the way he dictates, they would be much happier, healthier, and fulfilled.

Aside from being reasonably fit blond women dressed in workout clothes, the victims had nothing in common. Even Penelope Garcia, with her quirky fashion, fuzzy pen, awesome glasses, and mad-crazy computer skills, can’t find a connection.

While the team delivers the profile to the local authorities, another body is found, just one day after the last murder. He’s escalating.

Garcia determines that, although the four victims didn’t know each other or frequent any of the same establishments, they all were regular gym-goers. She cross-checks lists of employees of all gyms in the downtown Denver area, focusing on front desk staff and cleaning crews. Nothing.

While going through the computer of the first victim, Garcia finds that she had a blog wherein she posted about a creepy personal trainer who bothered her. Subsequent posts revealed that, after quitting one gym because of the creepy personal trainer, the first victim went to a second gym, which she later quit because the creepy personal trainer started working there. Later, the creepy personal trainer taught a class at her office, then at her third gym. The posts don’t reveal the name of the creepy personal trainer, but Garcia knows he is the unsub. She uses her mad-crazy computer skills to piece together which gyms the first victim frequented, and then found the one personal trainer/fitness instructor who taught classes at all those gyms within the past several months. Why nobody from any of these gyms questioned why the creepy personal trainer had to work at every gym in downtown Denver was a mystery even the BAU wouldn’t be able to solve.

Garcia finds that the unsub is due to be teaching a yoga class at an upscale downtown gym in an hour. The team rushes to the location and finds him in the parking garage with a blond, ponytailed woman at knifepoint.

“I’ll – I’ll do yoga!” she says.

“Yoga is the answer!” the unsub yells. “You cannot do yoga.  Yoga is your natural state.  What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state. Why are you trying to deny your natural state?”

The woman screams. “I’ll do yoga!”

Derek Morgan steps in and talks to the unsub. “Yoga is important for living a well-adjusted life. When I was a child, I always wanted to do yoga but it was prohibited by my domineering father who believed the only worthwhile form of exercise was running 12 miles first thing in the morning.”

“Oh my gosh,” the unsub says, his hold on the knife weakening. “That is so terrible for you. I can sense that your flow is constricted.”

“Yes, my flow, it is constricted,” Derek Morgan says, a small tear forming in the corner of his left eye, reflecting the bright Colorado sun. “It took me a long time to recognize the importance of yoga for a balanced and healthful life.”

“Yes! Balanced and healthful! Yoga is so important!” The unsub drops the knife and lunges to get into a parparivrtta parsvakonasana pose. (I don’t know if that’s how you say it. As you might have gathered, I don’t do yoga.) Before he can extend his arm, Derek Morgan handcuffs him as the rescued victim cries and says, breathless, “He wanted me to do personal training sessions with him and go to his yoga class but I didn’t want to! He wouldn’t leave me alone after that and followed me out here, going on and on about how it would be beneficial to me. He was going to make me do yoga and then kill me!”

On the plane on the way home, the new random blond woman who apparently has become part of the BAU gazes wistfully out the window.

“What’s wrong?” Aaron Hotchner asks.

“I don’t particularly care for yoga, either, and sometimes there’s a personal trainer at my gym who talks to me when I don’t want to be bothered. Next time, I’m going to punch him in the face.”

Hotchner smiles a half-smile, as he is wont to do in an effort to appear benevolent, as well as exacting. “A punch to the face is the best way to deal with creepy personal trainers.”

I get it. It was just the whatever anniversary of John Lennon’s death. You can now get Beatles songs on iTunes. Apparently this means even people like me who hate the Beatles and never do anything to voluntarily expose themselves to anything related to the Beatles will frequently and annoyingly come into contact with the Beatles and/or John Lennon. Even the new Girl Talk, which is otherwise awesome and a glorious achievement in music the likes of which we have not seen since, like, Mozart, ends with a John Lennon song (“Imagine,” which I hate with such fiery hatey hate it’ll piss me off too much to even tell you how much I hate it).

I understand, on an objective level, that the Beatles made great contributions to rock & roll and music and blah blah whatever. That doesn’t make me like them. Seriously, what is this:

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
. . . .
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved

Um, duh?

Nothing makes a person feel more lonely than hating the Beatles. There are a few of us out there, as I just discovered by googling “I hate the Beatles”:

• The Beatles SUCK homepage
• I Hate the Beatles Facebook group
• Is It Normal? I hate the Beatles (This one says the Jonas Brothers are good. I think it’s a trap.)
• last.fm I Hate the Beatles group
• Experience Project: I Hate the Beatles

I’ll probably get hate mail for this, which is fine. I’ll be listening to the Stones, who are vastly superior to the Beatles in every way.