How My Exercise Pants Made Me Fat

The elastic waistband.
Number one enemy for those of us
chronically losing the Battle of the Bulge.
When Terry gifted me with my first pair of
sweat pants in 1987, I remembered thinking,
"Ew, purple. That's what my MOM and
OLD LADIES wear."
But, they were OH SO COMFORTABLE.
If you want to lose weight seriously,
you have to pitch any pants with
ELASTIC WAISTBANDS.
Not like I'm going to do that but I'm
great at telling OTHER people what to do.
Here are the other enemies of those of us
losing the Battle of the Bulge.
2.  Food that tastes good
3.  La-Z-Boy chairs
4.  La-Z-Boy Chairs with a heating pad
5.  Books
6.  Cars
7.  Any home made food, especially cookies
8.  Beds (When you're over sixty)
9. Jane Fonda, because after five minutes you've earn 10,000 calories
10. Overactive taste buds (my sister Pam's theory) 

Christmastime at the Nudie Spa

Well this was a bit awkward.
As I walked to my cubby in the main soaking room
there were about five dozen women in ONLY their birthday suits.
I hadn't seen that many naked women in one spot
since my Eckstein junior high PE class in 1971.
My fear of being the only old, well-rounded person at the day spa
evaporated instantly as I saw I had the most common shape.
We were a happy group of naked strangers ranging anywhere from
one hundred twenty to four hundred pounds!
My pal Mary was at her massage so I climbed in the hotest
jacuzzi pool and whispered "Hello" to my naked bench neighbor.
Amber proceeded to tell me her life story, in its entirety,
in ten minutes. I smiled and nodded and was happy my husband
had trained me to listen without EVER having the expectation
of getting a word in edgewise. She was delightful.
I saw it was time for my massage and dried off and
found the lounge area.
It was filled with a huge semi-circular couch of
robed, shower-capped women, reminding me of
sea lions draped on the docks at Edmonds ferry dock.
I requested a neck/shoulder/scalp massage and was
happily surprised that someone invented a scalp massage.
The rule of whispering was fairly well respected so when
my half hour was up I exited to the lounge area and
smiled and waved in giant motions with both hands
to Mary, who was sitting next to the Christmas tree.
Only it wasn't Mary and I did not have my glasses.
Everyone looked alike in their spa robes and shower caps!
Mary came from another room and found me and we
tried the salt room. The huge floor was salt covered with
a giant cloth with salt-filled pillows. The walls were
bricks of Himalayan salt bricks of golden colors with
lights shining gently through them from the back.
(So the sign said, but I swear I saw them on Home Depot.com)
It was lovely to lay down but embarrassing to have to
flip ourselves over to all fours to get back up again.
We were both hungry and had a delightful lunch
at the spa cafe wearing our robes and shower caps
with the rest of our nudie gang.
As we went back to the hot tub room, Mary whispered
to me, "Have you tried the mugworts splash?"
It sound like something from Harry Potter so I followed
her to a trough filled with what looked like
hot swamp water.  We poured it from big
wooden bowls over ourselves, then over each
other's backs and then went to soak again.
Relieved that the mugwort had not turned me into
Hermione Granger, we went home.

Driving Topless in the Magical Snow

Last night on his way to work Troy stopped and asked
for wool socks for Christmas.  (I had ALREADY SHOPPED)
I asked him what had happened to all the socks from last year
and he said he didn't know.
I woke up early and cruised in Girly Girl out to BotHell Freddies.
As I got out of the car, a few snowflakes started swirling in the air
and I felt cheerful and happy and full of Christmas spirit.
I bought Troy socks and came out of the store
and looked up in amazement at the sky.
Huge fluffy snowflakes were floating down.
They were light and airy and not the normal wet Seattle flakes.
I had been thinking I wanted to drive topless in the snow for weeks.
So I did.
As I cruised down Bothell-Everett highway at
forty miles per hour, snowflakes landed on my eyelashes.
It was so cold they didn't melt.
I had very heavy eyelashes and it felt like
bits of magic clinging to my face.
My chest filled with happiness from old
Christmas memories
brought on by the magical snowflakes
which were now stuck in my eyelashes.
This morning Teddy stopped on his way to work
and I asked him how his sock supply was.
He said it was great since he had all of his socks and his brothers. 

Kindergarten Best Friends 2016

I was walking down the hall at the end of my shift.
I saw the two little girls and said, "Hello."
The little black kindergarten girl was zipping up
the little Mexican girl into a puffy coat and said,
"I'm loaning Lupe my extra coat because
hers doesn't have a hood.
We are going to be friends when we are ninety-nine!"
 Lupe looked at her and said softly,
"And in heaven after that."

The Shelfless Library of Cascade K-8

I stared at the computer screen seeking the book
I was trying to upload to the LibraryWorld database.
"Mrs. Nixon! We've run out of room in the As!"
Not again, I thought to myself.
It was the first week of December and we STILL
didn't have shelves in our tiny library.
Well, we did have shelves for an hour
back in October. The sixteen shelves were
delivered after I had gone home for the day.
At our library meeting at headquarters the next morning,
the head librarian, Geneva Norton said to me,
"Too bad about your shelves."
To which I replied, "What shelves?"
She looked at me with compassion and said,
"They were delivered yesterday and they were
twenty-four inches deep instead of eighteen.
The principal sent them back, I'm sorry, I thought you knew."
No I didn't know.
Hard to miss what you've never had.
I got up from my circulation desk and went back
to where my eighth grade Journey kids were trying
to shelve books onto four rolling carts.
Four carts which had been our library since September.
I got down on my knees with Amanda and looked for
the few remaining Bs and pulled them out.
"There you go Amanda, just slide everything down a shelf."
I carried the dozen Bs to the other side of the cart
with all our fiction Bs and Cs and looked down sadly.
The cart was full.




and they were the wrong

The Christmas Tree Date

For twenty-eight  years Terry and I picked out our
Christmas trees together.
Last year I looked out the kitchen window
and saw a Christmas tree on the porch.
I was crushed he bought a tree without me.
I thought maybe he didn't love me anymore.
I told him I felt sad we didn't go together.
This Tuesday he came back from Grocery Outlet
and told me the trees were in and he had seen one he liked.
This morning we went to the store and I glanced at the trees,
removed the tag, and went to pay for it as he loaded it in the van.
 While we were driving home  he turned me and said,
"Honey, you just picked out the same tree I liked best on Tuesday."

Dancing With Sponge Bob on the MS Jewel

As I entered the dim Spinnaker cocktail lounge I
was assaulted by the noise of one thousand chattering kids.
My friend Coconut smiled and waved at me and
told me what to do. Our supervisor,  Josh, was already
down on the stage explaining to two thousand happy,
half-drunk parents all about our complimentary child care center.
We were cruising somewhere between NYC and the Bahamas
when next thing I know, it's pitch black and the spotlight
pops up on me at the top of the cavernous lounge and I hear Josh
announce, "And all the way from Seattle, Washington,
we have Ginger Snap!" The loud rock music started
back up again and I smiled and waved at the crowd,
danced my way down the carpeted stairs of the lounge
and joined Coconut, Abracadabra and Nunchuk on the
stage and started dancing with the rest of them.
The crowd was going wild with the loud music
and dancers on the stage and then everything
went black and quiet and I heard Josh say,
"And now, the moment you have been waiting for...
SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS!"
The stage lights came up and there was a deafening roar
and out came a dancing Sponge Bob to the loud rock music.
There were two of us youth staff dancing and waving
and smiling on either side of Mr. Pants and you'd think
Josh had introduced Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.
Sponge Bob is the rock star for the under ten set for sure.
The house lights came up and we scurried back up the
stairs and back to our youth center as kids lined up to
get their pictures taken by the ship photographer with
Sponge Bob.

I never did find out if Sponge Bob was Smile or Speedy!
Thanksgiving Eve 2011
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