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Does anyone else have this problem?
Every time I work out my shirt always moves backward so that the collar ends up choking me. I end up yanking on the front every few seconds or so, with the only effective solution being to tuck in my shirt. That’s not good because I don’t wanna give passerby on the trail a good showing of my butt going free-style! Well, I have a couple of theories about why this happens: The first is that any kind of rigorous movement interacts with the forces of gravity to create this rhythmic bouncing momentum that gives my boobs all sorts of unwieldy power - hell there might even by some g-forces acting there - that increases the friction against my shirt on the upswing and effectively causes it to move upward, much like the mechanism that feeds fabric through a sewing machine. My rear-end exhibits a similar phenomenon when subjected to activity associated with exercise so I figure it could also be the culprit, only it clutches on the downswing. Hmm…. Or perhaps the two are conspiring together against me. Sigh.
Suggestions?
Dave’s mom called this morning at 10am, just as we were heading out the door to the grocery store where we hoped to beat the crowds and get back home before noon so that the rest of the day could be spent in denial of our lives. Cris asked Dave if he was playing soccer, to which he responded by coming up with a plethora of good reasons why he isn’t playing. She was concerned and said she just wanted to see him involved in an activity that allowed him to forget all of his problems because she believes people need that. Dave says something about only having a year and a half left of this job, thus pushing one of my buttons. I chime in that I hate to wish time away, which is true. Dave and his mom continue talking and I just sit on the line, tuning out, thinking about how wishing away time troubles me, yet I always do it. Life seems too short. Something else in the conversation brings me back and I join it again.
Later, on the train I see a gaggle of ajumas (old women). One of them has the most outrageous hairstyle. She looked like that guy who’s always painting on PBS. What’s that guy’s name? Uh! I can’t remember. Was it Bob? You know: It’s the guy who makes painting seem really easy and he’s always painting "happy little creatures" and even if you never wanted to paint in your life, you stop and watch because he’s just incredible. Anyway, her hair looked just like his only it was dyed really light brown, which looked absolutely hideous. Ajuma, honey, get yourself a new hairdresser!
I wondered if all the perms in her life now made it impossible for her to do anything else with her hair because it was "permanently" dead from chemical overkill. My g-ma’s hair is like that and she’s never happy with it. This led me to think about the things you regret when you get old. Like, if you’d thrown a baseball wrong for too many years and ruined your elbow, had kids early or too late - something like that. And I thought of myself and how I’m reaching a point where I’m starting to think things like, "I wish I’d done that differently" and even though, in theory, I’ve got a lot of time to make changes, it’s still impossible to go back and re-do certain things. I’m new to this; this is a thing you get to know in your twenties.
I’m uneasy with it.
So I tried to think about how I have a lot of time to do what I want. That wishing away these years is not so horrible. Oh. Then I remembered the threat of impending terminal illness that hangs over my head like some evil curse. Cancer. I’m not going to go into how significant that little word is in my life. Not now, maybe not ever here. And then I felt the agony of what it must feel like to approach death with regret. That’s one of my gifts: imagining with realness. The horror of that! Then I thought that maybe when you reach a healthy old age, you’re not so fearful of it. Your body is a reminder of all that you lived and when it starts to fail you, and the people who inhabit your memories start to disappear from reality, maybe you become more accepting of that final stage of life - you realize it’s necessity. But right now, I imagine it with the love of life that is youth and it’s too painful for me and so I fret over having wished away any one minute even if that minute has seemed unbearable.
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