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Swimmingly

I went swimming this morning. My initial enthusiasm for the pool at my gym (here, and here to a lesser extent) has bottomed out to about 3-4 sessions a month, which suits me fine. Any more than that and my neck gets creaky, my hairdresser grows alarmed, and the tedium of the laps gnaws at me like a chore. Swimming laps is like twiddling your thumbs, except it’s twiddling your whole damn body.

So once a week, I suit up for an hour of slow freestyle and periodic backstroke sprints. Backstroke has always been my favorite stroke and it’s impossible for me to swim slowly. My arms move as effortless as wind turbines, my hands entering the water pinky-side first to minimize the impact and maximize the resistance as they drag under my body. I remember learning this technique from my first swim team coach circa age 8. “Don’t slap your hands into the water,” she chided me. She was constantly correcting my form, but this is one lesson that stuck and it instantly turned me into a backstroker.

I think I can usually tell if my fellow swimmers at the gym were on a swim team when they were young. Sure, most children learn how to swim, but do most children swim hundreds of laps a week — perfecting their form, gaining endurance, and acclimatizing to chlorine?

My fellow former swim team members and I, we don’t slacken the pace as we approach a wall. We stroke evenly, perpetually, with compact kicks and syncopated breathing, with stalwart splash-free strokes. The seconds don’t tick as fast as our arms. And we always have the energy for another lap — it’s there in a reservoir of mettle, evolved to stave off haranguing coaches. Our kicks come from the hips. We will hold our breath if you ask us. Our wake is as resolute as schooner, as lasting as a tide.

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By Meredith – August 4, 2010

Ma langue française!

Reading French is not that hard. After all, English is about 60 percent Latin, and French is pretty much vulgar Latin spoken with a sneer, so any English speaker with a robust vocabulary should be able to pick through a body of French text and get the main gist. For example:

Les pharmacies sont en rupture de stock de l’hépatite A vaccin fortement conseillé pour les séjours à l’étranger. En période de départs en vacances, ça tombe mal.

All you really need to understand is rupture de stock de l’hépatite A vaccin to understand that the rest means “if you’re taking a journey to a strange place, you’re screwed.”

I’ve found that reading about war and politics is much easier than reading about the arts. Unless you’re reading a feature story about Boy George called “Bitch Boy” (here), and then comprehension is eerily replete:

Qu’est-ce qu’une bitch ? Littéralement, une salope. Un substantif, usé jusqu’à la corde par une écrasante majorité de rappeurs américains subtils, pour désigner les femmes en général… Une insulte homophobe, aussi, que se sont réappropriée les insultés pour faire échec à la bêtise de l’ennemi. Fier d’être une bitch, comme le proclamait Sir Elton John, qui intitula un de ses albums The Bitch Is Back. Mais dans cette catégorie très particulière, où il faut bien le reconnaître, les Britanniques excellent, Boy George est jusqu’à nouvel ordre l’indétrônablequeen, la reine des abeilles des langues de pute.

Of course, the colloquialisms are impossible — I puzzled over Sois un peu un homme (“Be a little man?”) before Mr. P clarified it as “For once, be a man.” But the hardest thing is, of course, the verbs. Conjugating être (to be) is like doing math: Rote memorization, eschewing all eloquence, a doggerel rendering of foreign morphemes.

No, I’m a lover of language, of words, and when I read the French newspaper I busy myself with looking up all sorts of flourishing words that are essentially useless to the beginning speaker. Like foudroyant, which I instinctively know isn’t a common French word yet I still ache to decipher (“staggering.”) Like cicatrices (“scars”), rabaissant (“belittle”),  and essuyer (“to wipe.”) A lot of good those words will do me when I’m struggling to order 10 centimeters of terrine at the charcuterie.

Beautiful words, and I want to know them all, but right now they are floating in my head, unconnected, like a bag of flour that has been spilled on the floor. Now comes the exertion, to gather the mealy grains, to forge a dough like a boulanger kneading in the early-morning hours with my effort rolling down my arms in salty rivulets, giving the end result a taste of my sweat.

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By Meredith – August 2, 2010

Googles: Mail Bag Edition

Today I checked my web site statistics for the first time since April. Ironically, though my blogging attentiveness has reached record lows, the number of hits continues to mount, to the point where I’m cresting 500 unique hits per day. And though 85% of those visitors stay for 30 seconds or less (just about the amount of time necessary to ascertain the absence of porn), a full 7.5% of visitors stay for more than 30 minutes! Probably because they’ve fallen asleep!

Actually, at first my feelings were hurt that the vast majority of Interneteers who land here via search engines are falling-over-eager to leave. But a quick scan of their queries makes me realize that it’s my fault. I’m not doing anything to help these people in the quest for information. Perhaps if I target my content to what the public wants, I can continue to build my readership without having to resort to celebrity gossip, a food dairy, and/or peep show pics.

With that in mind, today I will be answering some recent REAL questions posited via search engine queries.

what time to get in line for rei garage sale?

Funny you should Google! Yesterday Mr. P and I went to the REI Garage Sale in Reading. It started at 10am and we got in line at 8:15am. Pretty proud of ourselves — only about 30 people were in front of us — but we still didn’t reach the backpacks or shoes fast enough to hoard dozens of items in a big pile like a bunch of greedy backwoods pirates. I ended up with a cute Prana summer dress for $9 (retails $65) and Mr. P got a random assortment of gear, including a $12 triathlon watch that fell off in the lake at this morning’s triathlon (there is usually a good reason why people return this stuff to the store).

what is the shed like at tanglewood?

It’s exactly what it sounds like — a shed! Only, instead of being an enclosed structure used to store tools, lawn mowers, and household explosives/poisons, its a big, open-air music venue where old rich white people go to see, be seen, and listen to Wagner.

my cholesterol is 0 is that healthy?

Once I was in France and saw my father-in-law taking some pills after dinner. He’s 72, but very healthy and fit, so I asked my husband what the pills are for. It turns out his doctor was concerned that his “good” HDL cholesterol is too high and his “bad” LDL cholesterol was too low! The man is a living French paradox. He inhales full-fat dairy products, meats, and wine on a daily basis and his biggest health problem is his HDL cholesterol is too high.

Now, I’m no doctor. But based on this, I’d venture to guess that you’re a fucking idiot. Your cholesterol is not 0.

what s a really pretentious adverb?

How about “platitudinously”?

i bought cheeries and they are cojoined. why is that?

I am sublimating the urge to poke fun at your spelling by focusing instead on your actual question, which is a good one. Why are cherries conjoined? The answer: Genetic engineering experiments! That’s right, you are eating Frankenfruit.

can i eat ice cream if my cholesterol is 201?

Going by conventional wisdom’s standards of 200 and above as “high” cholesterol, your cholesterol is 1 higher than normal. You are a ticking time bomb. Not only should you not eat ice cream, you should avoid cheese, butter, chocolate, meat, eggs, or any other animal-derived food. If your doctor hasn’t already, I hereby sentence you to a lifetime of soy dogs and tofutti.

armani idole is it good for a 20 yrs old?

Yeah, if she’s sort of slutty.

is fresh killed meat unhealthy?

Yes! Definitely, if you have a choice, opt for the meat that’s been dead for a really long time.

un baiser s il vous plaît any sex scenes?

Calm down. It’s a French movie. The French have sex scenes in their cracker commercials.

why wear googles swim

Why? Why? Because otherwise you’ll bathing your eyes in chlorine, and you probably won’t be able to see anything, and you’ll probably swim into a wall. (How ever did you manage to turn the computer on without hurting yourself?)

i went swimming in the ocean with my period and my blood became green?

I believe this means you’re half-mermaid.

how do you say 17 days until i go on my cruise i can not wait in french?

“Je suis une idiote américaine qui ne peut même pas parler correctement l’anglais.”

*******

That’s all the time I have for questions today! Here are some more Google search queries that were, lamentably, not phrased in interrogative form…

macys perfumes their bills
recent deaths from perfume samples
sexy pants
yoga breathing for swollen ankles
average income of a jagerette
pure protein adverb good
accompleshed poet
crystal methamphetamine sweat oil hair sore throat
green green days and green green eyes green sky and green green face
cinnabon and drug euphemism
heart made out of gum
male nudity netflix watch instantly
men with beautiful breasts
methacton sexy girls
smuggle cheese
computers internet blog
norm macdonald alcoholism is not a disease
jenna bush and mennonites
i hate your body i hate your face
my audi is rough passing third gear
my toenail is dead and nothing is underneath
peep show los angeles airport peep show
peep shows in cape cod
peep show onward christian soldiers
itchy bites on balls and butt
the beastie boys albums for pre teens
shows starring you
lil miss sunshine pageants in massachusetts
we reached the second traffic light and turned left adverb
stake your today
death of a middle manager
lobstering phrases
i been doing the spinning class at the gym 3 to 4 times a week i haven t seen any results it seems that mey legs are geeting bigger comments
french sneer
out of shape on the pemi loop
the brook that runs down mt. isolation
green hit my car
pharmacy exercises
wasabi altoids
plastic children at play signs shaped like children
pigeon are monogamist
windbreaker woman
please return because
poems about strangers
adverbial blood

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By Meredith – August 1, 2010

Yogina

Recently I was at a baby shower for a co-worker when the subject of bizarre baby names came up. Since a majority of the women have backgrounds in early education, there was no shortage of conversation fodder.

“I was scanning the class roster when I saw the name ‘Le–a.’ I thought it was a typo. So I call out, ‘Lea? Lea?’ And one girl goes, ‘Me? My name’s not ‘Lea.’ It’s ‘Ledasha.'”

“Spelled ‘T-y-j-u-a-n.’ Pronounced ‘Taiwan.'”

“Who can name a defenseless baby girl ‘Bud’, anyway?”

I mentioned that a girl I went to high school with named her baby Brie (and managed not to use the word ‘white trash’), but I just couldn’t compete. Until this afternoon, when I looked at my receipt from Walgreens and saw:

Yogina. Reminds me of yogurt, yoga, and…. umm… well of course there’s a big difference between “Yo-JI-Na” and “Yo-GEE-Na.” Sort of like how the capital of Saskatchewan is not pronounced “Regina” like the girl’s name, but “Regina” like rhymes with vagina. The previous company that I worked for did a lot of business in the middle Canadian provinces, and so people were constantly flying to Regina. “How was Regina?” is really impossible to ask with a titter.

A quick Google reveals that Yogina is a Sanskrit word meaning “sorceress” (here). The fact that the teenagerish woman who rang me up at Walgreens was white and fat leads me to believe that her mother was a Wiccan who had very high hopes that her daughter would excel in the arts of potions, spells, and assorted black magic.

And here’s Yogina, working at Walgreens, thanking me for allowing her to serve me today. No, thank you, Yogina.

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By Meredith – July 29, 2010

The Times It Is a-Cancelled

I cancelled my daily New York Times subscription. It was a bad habit, really, all that ink on all that paper. It was a burden, all those words and all that information. Every day… Read Me, Meredith. Read Me.

I mean, like I don’t have enough shit that I must concern myself, that I must also take mental ownership of all the shit that is happening in Iran, China, Afghanistan, Washington, the Gulf of Mexico, and Thailand (Oooo, I’m sick about what is happening in Thailand).

Every day it’s the same…. I hate to keep using this word, but the same shit. Politicians pontificating, fanatics subjugating, mongers mongering, idiots whining, people dying, children crying. Yes, the news is important in an abstract theoretical feel-good sense, but how does knowing the news positively impact my life? What motivates me to welcome the world’s problems and pestilence into my brain, so that I can strut around all informed and depressed and shit?

Besides, a cursory glance at my sparse postings as of late is evidence enough that, these days, time is a precious commodity. At the bare minimum, I have to work (8 1/2-9 hours), commute (~45 minutes), sleep (7-8 hours), cook and eat dinner with Mr. P (1 hour-90 minutes), and shower-groom-dress (~40 minutes). That gives me roughly 4 hours of free time to exercise/yoga, read, write, correspond with friends and family, maintain a semblance of a social life, play the viola, clean the house, do the laundry, and oh yes… learn the French language.

That last item has lately become a priority. After five years (!) of half-assedly devoting my attention to the rote memorization of acutely basic French, I suddenly feel a disquieting urgency to just learn the French language, already. I have indefinite access to a native Frenchman, and I’m still struggling to conjugate the imparfait? I still don’t know the French word for cupboards? For shame.

Something’s gotta give. I used to read the Times for 45 minutes every morning at the gym, either on a spinning bike or the stepmill. I was so proud of myself for multi-tasking, until the Times became an actual task. Ugh. The news…. again. For the past two weeks, I’ve been exercising while reading articles from Liberation, a left-leaning French newspaper that does not write with the same sort of inscrutable panache of Le Monde. Am I learning French? Am I exercising? Am I also sort of reading the news? Peut etre. Un peu. Ce n’est pas un malheur tragique mais un crime.

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By Meredith – July 27, 2010

Leech Lake

We were backpacking in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains, sweating our way up a pebbly pitch of the Bennett Street Trail, when the categorical scent of cigarette smoke wafted through the steamy forest and piqued our ex-smoker noses. Bizarre. Aside from the distant yapping of a dog, we hadn’t seen or heard any indication of other people. The cigarette smoke seemed like an ominous warning of some unseen evil, straight out of a horror movie.

The smoker turned out to be an older man in his late 40s-early 50s, resting just above the steep section of the trail at a four-way intersection. He had extinguished his cigarette before we saw him and was peeling off slices of a fat, dried sausage with a knife as we approached.

We exchanged friendly greetings. Mr. P took out the map and the man asked,” Are you headed to Sandwich Dome or the shelter?”

“The shelter,” Mr. P answered.

“That’s where I’m headed too. I think it’s that way,” the man said, pointing.

Mr. P verified this on the map and we continued on out way. “See you there” the man said.

I waited until we walked for 5 minutes and I said, “He was creepy. He looked exactly like the murderer from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Mr. P considered this. “Yes, he did a bit.”

“I bet if we said we were going to Sandwich Dome, he would have followed us there, too. I’m not going to be able to sleep if we have to sleep next to that guy,” I said.

“Maybe we can bum a cigarette from him before he murders us in our sleep,” Mr. P said.

We made it to the Flat Mountain Pond Shelter in about an hour. There were already four men on the shelter platform, so we decided to take a nearby established camping site with a fire pit. I busied myself collecting dry wood for an anti-bear-and-bug campfire as Mr. P set up the tent. About 10 minutes into our activities, the smoker came by. “Is there space on the shelter?” he asked. We told him it was too crowded for us, but probably enough space for him. After we set up camp…

Sticks

More Sticks

We headed to Flat Mountain Pond to wash off the day’s sweat with an evening swim. I removed my boots and socks while Mr. P stripped down to his boxer shorts. Yo-ow!

Time for a Bath, Perhaps

Suddenly the smoker sat down next to me on the beach. “There are leeches in this lake,” he told us. “You can see them.”

“Oh yeah?” Mr. P said, crestfallen. We recently watched Stand By Me (part of Mr. P’s American cultural education, as taught by me) and the leech scene in the swamp totally freaked him out. We peered into the clear lake water and observed a small, light-colored slug-like animal circling a rock.

“Okay, I’ll go in quickly for my bath,” Mr. P decided. I waded in up to my ankles while intently monitoring my feet. I dunked my bandanna and squeezed fresh water on my head several times.

“Creepy,” I said to the smoker. “The leeches. Thanks for the warning.”

“Sure,” he said. “You know, not all leeches will attach themselves to humans, but still.”

“Yeah,” I said, assenting my squeamishness towards exposure to blood-sucking parasites.

When Mr. P came ashore, I checked his body for leeches. I could have teased and pretended to pick one off, but the smoker was still on the shore, fiddling with a CamelBak. “All clear,” I told him, and we sat on the shore and stared at the lake with longing and peace. And we never saw him smoke another cigarette, leaving me to wonder if the mysterious smoker was still out in the woods, lighting up in between increments of elevation gain.

Leech Lake

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By Meredith – July 25, 2010

Cleaning the Trash

Before I throw away a sponge that has reached the end of its life — it’s tattering, smelly, and/or grimy — I will use that sponge to clean the dirtiest area of the house. Sometimes it’s under the hanging precipice of the refrigerator. Other times it is the narrow slot of tile behind and around the toilet. Once, and only once, it was the top of all the interior door and window frames. I will exhaust you, poor sponge, until all your pores are clogged with domestic detritus.

Tonight it was, shamefully, the trash can, which foments lustily in the summer heat with fish bones and melon rinds. No need to worry about cross-contamination. I gingerly grasped a particularly putrid sponge and set upon scrubbing away all of the random dried splatters, crumbs, and bits from the plastic white shell. When I finished, I unfurled a garbage bag into the hygienic receptacle and tossed the sponge into it. Like a sadistic murderer who made her victim dig their own grave.

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By Meredith – July 23, 2010

108 Push-ups

I was looking at the photos that Mr. P took during our day trip to P-town. “What’s that thing on my arm?” I asked, pointing to a shot of me on my beach towel, posing coquettishly. I looked closer and realized it was my arm, bulging against my upper back with a fold of blubber.  “Sweet Jesus! Something’s wrong with your camera! It totally… intensified my upper arm, like some sort of fish eye lens!”

Ah, the body thickens. So I hastened to my Yoga DVD collection and pulled out Shiva Rea’s Creative Core and Upper Body, which I bought last year in the midst of all-out Shiva Rea mania. I had been disappointed to discover that this 25-minute yoga routine is centered around 108 wide-leg prostration push-ups — like gym class, like the military, only before each of the 9 rounds of 12 push-ups, there’s a serene, smiley blissed-out blond yogini offering flaky motivational tips like “make a dedication in your heart.” I would like to dedicate this round of push-ups to all of the malnourished children in the world, for it is their twiggy physique that I secretly covet.

Still, a push-up is a push-up, and I loath calisthenics like I loath school cafeteria food. I took a Ultimate Total Body Pump Bootcamp class last month, and the instructor was an equipment minimalist who had us warm-up with squat thrusts. “Huh! I haven’t done squat thrusts since third grade!” I thought, fondly reminiscing about my elementary school gym teacher Ms. Kerr, who I now realize was a stereotypical gym teacher lesbian. Nostalgia quickly turned to pain, and about two squat thrusts, I wanted to puke. It wasn’t the squat so much as the thrust.

Despite my difficulties with any exercise that involve my own bodyweight, I try to do Shiva Rea’s push-up workout at least once a week. Because push-ups really will improve one’s yoga practice by giving them the ability to indefinitely hold Chaturanga Dandasana (aka Four Limbed Staff Pose, aka Low Pushup, aka I’m Only Pretending that My Stomach Isn’t On the Ground).

I know that spot-reducing is a myth and that push-ups, however yogic, will do little to counter my accumulating upper arms. But it can’t hurt to have a little bit of muscle definition supporting that droopy flap of flab. It makes me look just threatening enough to ward off any suppositions of sloth.

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By Meredith – July 21, 2010

Flight of the P-town Daytrippers

Sunday morning, as we dragged our sleep- and sweat-weary bodies to the 9am ferry from Boston to Provincetown for a long day of beaching and biking, I tried to lighten the “hurry up and wait” mood.

“There’s not another ferry to P-town until 1pm,” I said, though we were in no danger of missing ours. “You’d think that ferries would simply be swarming around P-town. Ferries, ferries, hundreds of ferries!” Mr. P showed no sign of understanding my double entredre about P-town ferry/fairy, but I persisted. When we arrived to find a long line of people waiting to board, I whispered, “You’d think most of these guys could fly to P-town.”

My humor is really too bad to be offensive, is it not? The fact is, Provincetown has become one of our favorite summer destinations in New England. And the ferries are only one reason why.

To begin, P-town is one of those marvelous bike-friendly places where truly only the idiots drive. The downtown strip of Commercial Street is total locomotory anarchy, with pedestrians darting on the sidewalks and street in every direction. Bicyclists freely mingle among them, and the tiny, congested streets force automobiles to inch slowly down the street. That’s right, guy in the hulking SUV with the Connecticut license plates — everyone thinks you’re a douche.

And just outside of town there’s some great beaches that are easily accessible by a bike trail. In fact, one popular beach doesn’t even have a parking lot. (It’s no mistake that this non-minivan friendly beach is reportedly the friendliest beaches on the Cape, wink wink.)

While the paved bike trail that snakes through the sand dunes is (duh) hilly and sandy, it doesn’t matter if you get all sweaty, because you are just steps away from clear 64 degree ocean water. Yes, it’s cold, yes, it takes steely nerves to submerge your head, but there isn’t anything more refreshing to your entire being than Cape Cod’s ocean beaches. It’s like air conditioning for the soul.

I’ve spent time all over Cape Cod — Falmouth, Harwich, Chatham, Yarmouth, Nantucket, Dennis, Wellfleet — and have found that the tourist pandering is either completely honkytonk or utterly snobby. P-town is not immune to either of these extremes, but overriding everything is its funky, anything-goes vibe. No town can take itself too seriously when a troupe of amateur Dame Edna impersonators sashays down the street at 5:30pm. It’s like this bizarre rainbow-tainted alternate universe, where hawkers stand on the street trying to lure patrons into their restaurants, bars, cabarets, and even spas with drippy innuendo (“$10 gets you a 10 minute chair massage from a big boy! Get a big boy massage!”) or just bawdy bombast (“Come watch beautiful naked boys singing!” calls a young man dressed only in boxer shorts that are strategically cinched to give the appearance that he is wearing a tiny white bath towel). The atmosphere is fun and frolicky — not exactly Sodom, but not exactly Nantucket, either.

Gay men and lesbians coexist in P-town, peacefully, but with striking contrast. At 6pm, we gulped down raw oysters and clams in one waterfront restaurant, sitting next a party of nine women all with close-cropped hair, jeans, and baggy button-down shirts. They scrutinized the menu in silence, and then joylessly ordered lemonade and plates of fried shellfish. Compared that to a table of extremely stylish men in tight colorful clothes, all of whom seemed to be chattering simultaneously as they sipped mixed drinks and picked at salads and shrimp cocktail.

Waterfront Raw Bar

I always feel a twinge of guilt for intruding on Provincetown’s rainbow utopia as a straight outsider — and, even worse, I bring along my gay-licious husband who garners more than a few appreciative glances. Sorry boys — he’s not gay, he’s just European. He does help us blend in among the hordes of likewise skinny, well-dressed and well-groomed men. As he waited in line at a Bank of America ATM, the man in front of him grew impatient towards the guy who was holding up the line. “What’s he doing, opening a freaking Roth IRA?” he hissed in a supremely bitchy simper.

White Strip Sunglass Tan Line… Red Stripe

Gotta love the P-town ferries. Because after all the biking, the hot-sand baking and cold-water swimming, the Happy Hour cocktails and raw bars, who has the energy to stay in P-town and take in the homotourism nightlife? The Beyonce impersonator, or the lesbian comedian, or the multimedia presentation about gay primates, or Hedda Lettuce reenacting Mommie Dearest all sound just great, but by 8:30pm, all I want to do is climb on the ferry and conk out on my husband’s shoulder as we plow through the Cape Cod Bay and back to our somber Bostonian reality.

P-town Pier

The P stands for Phallic

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By Meredith – July 19, 2010

Caméra Cachée

When Mr. P browsed the French Cultural Center’s Facebook photo album of last Friday’s Bastille Day street party, he spied a familiar derriere:

Oui, c’est moi with the red shawl and blue-and-white polka dot dress, waiting patiently for my sausage! Since I am in centered in the photo, I do not believe I’m flattering myself too much when I assume that I am the photographer’s intended subject — probably because I’m dressed so festively, and also because I’m buying sausages.

Thank goodness I look good in the picture. Otherwise, I would have to sue the photographer for booty defamation.

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By Meredith – July 16, 2010