Homegoing

When I left for college, I didn’t so much leave as bolt, as if fired from the proverbial cannon. I was ready to go. In fact, I was considerably past ready to go. I had been sitting around, hearing reports from my friends who DIDN’T go to schools on the quarter system about the general awesomeness of college, for two entire weeks. Not to mention the fact that getting to college involved two solid days in the car with two increasingly grumpy parents, pulling a rather large UHaul trailer. It was not a sentimental experience.

I had a sleepless night before I moved in, and then exactly 30 seconds of wanting to cry when my mother told me that I could always call them at the hotel if I was sad, and then it was over. Like a bandaid. A big, exciting one with bright yellow streamers on a purple background that read “PARTY!” across the middle in neon green.

I didn’t think that I was going to particularly like being home for the summer this year, either. I thought it was a sort of necessary evil, something I would do for a lot of good daughter brownie points but not actually like. Oh boy was I wrong. I am way more wistful about taking off this time around than I was two years ago. I feel like I’m living in Goodnight Moon Mode.

“Goodbye, drive to work. Goodbye, dresser. Goodbye, room. Goodbye sky with stars. Goodbye, food in the refrigerator. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, pool. Goodbye, parents. Goodbye, home.”

The First Miracle of the Gym

Have you ever seen those commercials for gold conversion? You know, the “GOLD KIT” ones? They offer to send you a **FREE PADDED MAILER** so that you can send in your old jewelry, chains, metal, dental scrap and….wait, dental scrap? Did I hear that right? How many people are sitting around with old fillings made out of gold, thinking, “what shall I do with this dental scrap? A-HA, GOLD KIT! All these years, I thought I’d been saving this crap for sentimental reasons, but now that I know that it is valuable gold dental scrap, it all makes sense! Gold Kit is genius! When I asked my dentist for old gold caps, he looked at me like he thought I was some kind of tooth perv, but who’s laughing now? ME, SUCKERZ, MEEEE!!!!”

No, seriously, folks. Anyhow.

I know that I haven’t written here in about a month, but, um, I’m gonna go back to my go-to summer topic–gym antics.

Today, while I was minding my own business, ellipticalling (what IS the verb form of that? Running on the elliptical? Ellipticalling? Ellipsing?), sweating, and generally doing my best impression of an overcooked cranberry, I saw what I think may have to be declared the first wonder of the gym–the woman with the most enormous butt in the whole world. Now, let me assure you, I don’t generally go around the gym, assessing the ass sizes of the denizens thereof. This is not my usual distraction activity. However, this woman’s ass asked for it. It was in very real danger of needing its own zip code, and she had clothed it in perhaps the least attractive manner humanly possible. From the back, she looked like she was just wearing something black and inadvisably tight and shapeless, but from the front she had created a whole new frontier for ugly. From the waist up she was a normal, even pretty woman, but she had managed to ruin this, her most attractive region, by attiring it in an abomination of the word “spandex.” I hesitate even to share its hideousness with you here, for fear that I might traumatize you, but having started, I feel compelled to finish.

She wore a bright purple sports bra. I am all about the bright colored bras, but let me just continue here. Under this, she had added black full-length leggings, hoping, perhaps, to highlight the enormity of her calves, or maybe the bizzare hopping dance she was doing with her feet while lifting10lbs on the triceps machine.  Over this uncomfortably tight assembly, she added something I have never seen in the world of the gym–A tight, plunging neck jersey dress. Oh no, I kid you not, This thing was cut down to the waist and designed to magnify her ass at maximum capacity.  If you’re not reeling in horror, you clearly lack sufficient powers of imagination, cause kids, it was HORRIBLE. I almost fell off the pedals.

It was a gym danger zone…a car accident of an outfit. Even Rohan thought so. It was not, however, as great as the screaming runner woman, who I’ll get into sometime here. Cause she was a freaking miracle.