Do you know where I live? California, USA, specifically near the beach. There is a reason I live here, and that reason is not drum circles and artisan gin distilled from organic juniper berries and herbs served in hand blown glass asymmetric vessels shaped by the spotted, leathery hands of an old C-list punk rocker who drives a Prius.
Nope.
Actually, sometimes I forget why we live here and why we don't just move to Marfa, Texas or Joshua Tree, Desert or Naturita, Colorado. All have been thunk on and rejected due to The Beach. We live by the beach and the redwood trees and meadows all at the same time, and all last week, in the middle of January, everyone was trudging around complaining about the heat. Was SO HOT. Shorts and racerback tanks for those with cores of steel not protected by a generous helping of what appears to be that pizza dough you buy at Trader Joe's in a squishy plastic bag. Personally, for this reason, I kept a jacket on.
And then it went back to fairly normal January except with extra added ice. I go to a gym now, and in my 7am exercise class the chippy chirpy cheerleader guy who cheerfully assigns sadistic hippity hoppity kicky exercises for our cores sent us on multiple dashes as far a manicured bush across the parking lot through actual, snowy looking ice. There were only 4 of us in the class. The others were very young with 6-pack cores and when they passed me and I was all, "Hey, you guys are PASSING ME!" they didn't even bat an eye my way, just kept running through that ice as I huffed my way out to that damn bush.
The cheerleader guy greeted me every time I sprinted back into the building with a high five. He's like one of those greeters at the Gap who totally loves boyfriend fit jeans on you, oh-mah-gawd. He may have just been worried I was going to pass out before we got out the kettle balls.
Do you know kettle balls? Like ugly little handbags that feel like they are full of 50lbs of sand. Like carrying sandbags out to hold down your tunnel. All of them, all at once, crammed into an ugly little round purse that you are supposed to lift as high as your head if you want cores.
We had ice at agility practice and practicing with visible icicles seems weird and wrong. Definitely wrong for Otterpop, she of the gimpy leg instead worked on one of her funny tricks, which are funny to probably only to me and her, we are easily amused by each other. This one she races in and out of my legs while I Frankenstein walk around. Can be done with or without hula hoop.
Gustavo didn't seem too bothered by running across crunchy freezing grass, except for when he inexplicably ran away through an invisible-to-me hole in the fence when I put too much pressure on his independent 180's instead of letting him just play for a while. I caught him by walking back to the car, getting in and starting it up. This gave him a real nice panic attack and he couldn't find whatever little rat hole he escaped through to get back to the getaway car so he let me catch him right after that. Oh, Gustavo.
After that we had a great practice and worked on our tight decel turns. And the ice melted right when it was time to go home.
6 comments:
Luckily for you, you look good in hats so icy days are not a problem. Think of us Northerners who don't look so good with lids and have to wear them for 5 months. I may be in LA at the end of Feb....should I bring a hat or can I swim? (Canadians can be spotted all over the world by being spotted in waters at times when no one else would)
Jodi, nobody wears hats in LA. Or actually swims. There is surfing, or there is jogging down the surf line in cute bikinis. Board shorts work. Neon is in at the moment, or so I hear.
Sometimes a jacket is required. This maybe a different jacket than the kind they have in Canada. It probably doesn't involve down or a furry hood. Crochet, maybe.
Oh dear, is that the same hole in the corner of the field? I fixed it with about 5,000 zip ties and a couple of cinder blocks several weeks ago. Those pesky woodland creatures are a persistent bunch...l'll fix it again when I get home.
Aloha Kathleen!
This was a mysterious, instant escape from the upper field. To his credit, no cliff jumping. I have NO idea where he made his break, I did a search and no hole found. So this one is maybe really small and he can squeeze down to a size of a bug?
Oh, I bet Goo figured out he could squeeze under the "gate" part of the fence in that field. It is not as tight and close to the ground as the rest of the fence although it can be improved a lot by giving the posts a good shove into the ground.....
Oh, I bet Goo figured out he could squeeze under the "gate" part of the fence in that field. It is not as tight and close to the ground as the rest of the fence although it can be improved a lot by giving the posts a good shove into the ground.....
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