Some weeks you feel like the best possible version of yourself, and others you put colorful-but-flavorless sprinkles on oatmeal and call it dinner.
This was one of the former.
Between the Santa Monica Pier, Universal Studios, a hike to the Hollywood Sign, a powerwalk to find the Beatles Stars and a Groundlings improv sketch comedy show, Alison and I won tourist bingo, short of an I <3 LA T-shirt. Even though I despise the banal phrase "only in L.A." I think it applies to chugging down chunks of undissolved-and-utterly-viscous bee pollen floating in a pseudo-holistic juice en route to a "yoga with ropes" lession taught by a male Russian ballet dancer who mocks the inherent weakness of femininity with condescending motivational phrases about pain being a "temporary inconvenience" and how none of us were ready to be a "circus du soleil associate."
Rounded out by cameo appearances from the ladies of the semi-annual supper club, an endless and effusive Persian progressive dinner, and a dance night worthy of Soul Train, it was atypically action-packed and left little time for self-loathing or remembering that I need to figure out how to do my taxes. [See also an epic Sunday funday of bicycling, drinks and dares along the beach with an as yet unnamed potential suitor.]
High enough on life and canyon dust [almost to the point of listening to some drippy folk song about dancing in the eye of hurricane], during the week I redoubled my efforts to expend the same amount of energy each day [and thus continue my reckless abandon of calorie counting] but it's far less charming, perhaps downright creepy, when you are an adult by yourself on the monkey bars at night. After my abject failure to climb a rope at the beach [and subsequent non-kinky rope burn on the dorsum of my foot], the smallest resolution began to creep into my mind. Nothing crazy like a back handspring [the main reason I quit ballet for gymnastics as a child/only ever successfully performing an aeriel cartwheel]. Or even a Dirty Dancing lift from the water. Just a simple pull up. A key component of the defunct Presidential Fit Test and source of embarrassment that I think with practice I may be able to finally achieve [ok all of it was embarrassing except for the sit-and-reach which I inexplicably excelled at due to my freakish ratio of arm to torso length]. Just one unassisted pull-up would be great. Currently I can hang heavily and stiff-armed like an unripe banana.
I also resolved to dabble into nonfiction and actually learn some of the fifth-grade level questions I missed on the online Jeopardy qualifying test, but somehow found myself walking home piled high with another armful of fluffy short stories and probably-not-award-winning novels. Even though I have worked to craft this semi-edgy surgeoness persona with a heavily black-is-always-the-new-black wadrobe, deep down I am still my sixth grade read-a-book-at-lunch-so-you-don't-have-to-admit-you-have-no-friends-to-sit-with loser self. But not in way that will help me win at trivia.
At least I've gotten over the other main fear of sixth grade - changing in the locker room. Yet another thing about being a doctor that I didn't count on: an almost daily public undressing in an awkwardly arranged small space with high cross-traffic and weird half-conversations from people who mistake me for other people while I have a shirt partly over my head. The shame I had as a teenager when everyone gawked over bras and who was or wasn't shaving their legs largely contributed to the ultra-dork status of staying in the marching band all four years of high school [despite lack of musical prowess and utter hatred of the sound of the clarinet], because it kept me out of gym class. [Thank you Texas for considering standing still in the heat of summer on black asphalt to be an athletic event.] Now, it's almost no big deal to be struggling to not twist an ankle while balancing on one shoe and juggling the contents of various scrub pockets, half-to-completely-exposed, and have multiple strangers eye me with the "you don't belong on this floor" look while one of two doors opens to outside onlookers. Hashtag adulting.
This was one of the former.
Between the Santa Monica Pier, Universal Studios, a hike to the Hollywood Sign, a powerwalk to find the Beatles Stars and a Groundlings improv sketch comedy show, Alison and I won tourist bingo, short of an I <3 LA T-shirt. Even though I despise the banal phrase "only in L.A." I think it applies to chugging down chunks of undissolved-and-utterly-viscous bee pollen floating in a pseudo-holistic juice en route to a "yoga with ropes" lession taught by a male Russian ballet dancer who mocks the inherent weakness of femininity with condescending motivational phrases about pain being a "temporary inconvenience" and how none of us were ready to be a "circus du soleil associate."
Rounded out by cameo appearances from the ladies of the semi-annual supper club, an endless and effusive Persian progressive dinner, and a dance night worthy of Soul Train, it was atypically action-packed and left little time for self-loathing or remembering that I need to figure out how to do my taxes. [See also an epic Sunday funday of bicycling, drinks and dares along the beach with an as yet unnamed potential suitor.]
High enough on life and canyon dust [almost to the point of listening to some drippy folk song about dancing in the eye of hurricane], during the week I redoubled my efforts to expend the same amount of energy each day [and thus continue my reckless abandon of calorie counting] but it's far less charming, perhaps downright creepy, when you are an adult by yourself on the monkey bars at night. After my abject failure to climb a rope at the beach [and subsequent non-kinky rope burn on the dorsum of my foot], the smallest resolution began to creep into my mind. Nothing crazy like a back handspring [the main reason I quit ballet for gymnastics as a child/only ever successfully performing an aeriel cartwheel]. Or even a Dirty Dancing lift from the water. Just a simple pull up. A key component of the defunct Presidential Fit Test and source of embarrassment that I think with practice I may be able to finally achieve [ok all of it was embarrassing except for the sit-and-reach which I inexplicably excelled at due to my freakish ratio of arm to torso length]. Just one unassisted pull-up would be great. Currently I can hang heavily and stiff-armed like an unripe banana.
I also resolved to dabble into nonfiction and actually learn some of the fifth-grade level questions I missed on the online Jeopardy qualifying test, but somehow found myself walking home piled high with another armful of fluffy short stories and probably-not-award-winning novels. Even though I have worked to craft this semi-edgy surgeoness persona with a heavily black-is-always-the-new-black wadrobe, deep down I am still my sixth grade read-a-book-at-lunch-so-you-don't-have-to-admit-you-have-no-friends-to-sit-with loser self. But not in way that will help me win at trivia.
At least I've gotten over the other main fear of sixth grade - changing in the locker room. Yet another thing about being a doctor that I didn't count on: an almost daily public undressing in an awkwardly arranged small space with high cross-traffic and weird half-conversations from people who mistake me for other people while I have a shirt partly over my head. The shame I had as a teenager when everyone gawked over bras and who was or wasn't shaving their legs largely contributed to the ultra-dork status of staying in the marching band all four years of high school [despite lack of musical prowess and utter hatred of the sound of the clarinet], because it kept me out of gym class. [Thank you Texas for considering standing still in the heat of summer on black asphalt to be an athletic event.] Now, it's almost no big deal to be struggling to not twist an ankle while balancing on one shoe and juggling the contents of various scrub pockets, half-to-completely-exposed, and have multiple strangers eye me with the "you don't belong on this floor" look while one of two doors opens to outside onlookers. Hashtag adulting.
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