Food & Creative Love

I’ve been going to the gym.

Let’s say that again: I’ve been going to the gym. Honestly, I can’t understand why I haven’t been receiving bouquets of congratulatory flowers for this, because it’s just that painful. I’d like tulips please, and in large bundles. I’ll take daisies if you’ve got ‘em. No roses!

I sincerely hope it’s worth it, you know, even if it’s just for my health. Oh sod it, I can’t say that with a straight face, I just can’t. Yes, yes, I’m a huge proponent of healthy living, and I don’t have major body image issues, but I’d be completely lying if I said that lately, I’ve been craving a leaner form.

I hate that fact, and I hate that I just said that. Like many other things, I feel like wanting to be thin is far too stereotypical for me to concern myself with, yet as I get closer to having kids, it weighs on my mind. While I’m not at my heaviest, I feel like I was somewhat rapidly deteriorating to the all-time foom-baba, foom-baba! weight of last January. And I think of adding pregnancy weight to this, and I just imagine…oh christ, I just imagine a giant, blob-like form slothing around the house like Grimace, a baby attached to my boob while my greasy hair hangs around my head in sad strings. Strangely, I would also be purple.

Given that I have tendencies towards laziness, and also am extremely resistent to change, I can’t help but think it would be a little easier to resist the transformation into a McDonald’s character if I had a six-pack going into it. That way, I would at least have had that body once – just once! – in my sad little size 10 life.

How is it that some people crave exercise and actually enjoy it, while others of us would rather sit on the couch and eat wasabi almonds while watching back-to-back episodes of Rockstar Supernova? (Did you think you’d get away without hearing about it? Absolutely not. I have decided/realized (duh!) that Ryan is most definitely Jewish. And that, my friends, is about the most attractive thing about any man in the universe, and a Jewish musician? Hotter than hot. At this point, you probably think that I am Jewish. And you would be wrong! I am not Jewish! But I am intensely attracted to all things Jewish, particularly Jewish men and also, stuffed cabbage and kugel and knish. Ooh ooh, and the sound of someone speaking Hebrew. Yes. I am way into that. Give me a man who speaks Hebrew and I will swoon. If Ryan spoke Hebrew to me and then sang “The Back of Your Car” then I would die of some sort of strange orgasmic explosion and And then we could sit together and have some meat knish, followed by sweet and sour cabbage and maybe some Ba Tempte pickles.)

Anyway, as I journey down the long road to killer abs and a smaller ass, err, healthy living, I can’t help but wonder: why, exactly, I wasn’t wearing a bikini and/or some sort of revealing clothing throughout the entire decade of my 20s? Why wasn’t I rocking half-shirts and miniskirts and oh, I don’t know, assless pants or something? Despite my perpetual self-loathing, I was skinny and kind of on the hot side (not so much anymore, and don’t argue with me, as I don’t think I’m hot anymore, so this isn’t as obnoxious as it sounds, and how about we end this caveat right now, because I am sounding stupid and should just go eat a knish and maybe some kugel). Oh, where was I? Right. I didn’t wear a bikini all the time because I thought I was too fat. For the love of God, I weighed 110 pounds sopping wet, and yet I can distinctly recall being 23 and putting on a bikini and grabbing hold of what I actually called “love handles” and refusing to leave the house. Oh oh oh, and my ass was too big.

God, I was so stupid sometimes. I was kind of hot! I was skinny! I should have been naked, like all the time.

* I married a Jewish guy, for those of you who didn’t know. It had to be that way.

**Rusted Root

24 comments August 29th, 2006