vanity

A strange confluence of events has led me to contemplate aging with much greater frequency lately: preparing to attend a wedding and see old friends, and realizing that it's been almost ten years since I first stomped the grounds of Albuquerque; mainlining Season 3 of Sex and the City over a period of a few days; attending the actual wedding, and comparing the creamy, unlined complexions of 25-year-olds with my own sheet-creased face (and those creases stay in for an alarming length of time after waking up); and now, the ultimate horror, looking at endless photos of the events in the Facebook vortex. I suppose it's inevitable in this age, when even my two-year-old nephew insisted on taking digital photos at his brother's gymnastics show yesterday, that we'll be confronted with ever more images of ourselves. But as I pored over my pores and rued the power of Lucrecia's flash, I couldn't help but wonder: Is the digital revolution, which makes it impossible to avoid ultra-clear images of yourself at every turn, making it impossible not to be vain?

[That was a nod to Carrie Bradshaw's super annoying habit of asking that exact same question in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.]

So I don't know if I should blame the show's implicit ageism and obsession with appearance, the fact that I work with high schoolers and am immersed in youth culture, the internet, or my addiction to The Superficial, but I have been thinking a lot about adapting my life goals to include the following:

- Research an anti-aging diet, which will probably require me to quit drinking alcohol, drink two gallons of water a day, and eat things like kelp and acai berries instead of cupcakes for breakfast

- Start sleeping ten hours a day (instead of my current six) on a satin pillowcase

- Do whatever it takes to get my allergies under control, as I'm convinced they are the cause of my red eyes and perpetually chapped nostrils

- Find a gym and work out for two hours a day

Okay, I realize this (along with preposterously expensive cosmetics and the occasional "procedure") is the reality for many of my peers. It just hurts to realize that I either need to let go of my newfound vanity, or drastically change my lifestyle. Since I can't afford to have ass-fat injected into my face, I will need to either adopt the time-consuming DIY alternative, or accept the fact that I'll become a fat housecat instead of a cougar. Any bets on which one I'll choose?

exercise as a metaphor for life

Reading the comments on my last post, I realized that mixing "walk on water" with "walk through fire" goes further than just that lady on 48 Hours Mystery. One of my favorite songs from Body Pump is "Walk on Water," which goes:

I would walk on water
just to be with you
Walk on water
just to be with you...

You get the idea. I never questioned the logic, through the thousands of lunges that I've done to the strains of that over-dramatic dance track at the Club in Kona.

Which makes me think: I have been neglecting more than just this blog; I've been neglecting the trivial (to you, but to me they were my world) things like exercise, and crafting over-wrought dishes like vichyssoise along with over-wrought sentences.

*** News break: A contestant on The Biggest Loser just said, "I'm nineteen-years-young" as part of her plea for why she should win as the audience favorite. This fits nicely into my theme of bozos mixing metaphors and idioms in popular media. __ YEARS YOUNG ONLY WORKS IF YOU ARE OLD, YOU DIMWIT. ***

Back to my exercise metaphor. After scrutinizing various district documents about how they solved the budget crisis, I'm not sure if I was fired or laid off. Either way, I have decided that, since I was "reduced/eliminated/non-converted/substitute choice of Orwellian language that hides the fact that I was screwed over," I will now devote at least half the time I have routinely been devoting to lesson-planning to exercise instead. That works out to about two hours on weekdays, five to eight hours on weekends. I am going to so buff by the time school ends, it will blow your mind.

I forget how I was planning to work that into a metaphor for life. But, as history has shown, that doesn't matter. Planning leads to elimination. Exercise, leisure pursuits, and cooking are the only true paths to happiness, and those paths shall I take. I'm off to shop for new running shoes online. (A gym membership will have to wait until I get a cushy job through the stimulus dollars I'm still awaiting.)

I'm returning to this familiar (to me, anyway) pink page because I realized that I've been using my Facebook status updates as an outlet for thoughts that I may not want people like Ben's colleagues or my fourth grade nemesis to read. Also, I hate the thought of people blocking me from their news feed because they are sick of hearing about my latest complaints. Finally, I have so many things that I want to preserve for posterity, like my newfound love of homemade pickles.

They really do pep up any dish.

The tipping point was last night, as I watched 48 Hours Mystery (to the sound of Ben's grunts of disgust coming from the other room). The best friend of the murdered couple was trying to wax poetic about their supposed "story-book" romance (man meets woman 20 years his junior, man leaves wife, man and new woman fulfill lifelong dream of living on a yacht), and mixed her metaphors like nobody's business. Here are the gems I remember:

"He would have walked on water for her."

"It was like a fairy tale. He got down on his hands and knees and proposed."

It reminded me of when the parents of a young girl who was being treated for leukemia or something said on the news, "She's not out of the woodwork yet, but the doctors are very optimistic."

Long live my tradition of making fun of people who don't deserve it!