TMI

I made the commitment to continue exercise boot camp, five mornings a week, four weeks on, one week off and so on. I did this despite having the muscle memory of a gnat–though they probably somehow learn; I looked up brain exercises for muscle memory and really couldn’t find any. Well they were all about exercising the brain and then I became really scared because what if my brain isn’t capable of learning anything new?

(Oh I never should have put myself through grad school in geriatric social work. Note to self: It was public policy you craved but you had to go for a program that granted licensing and you were all crazed on alternative living arrangements for when you turned 80 in 40 years. Something strange in that thinking that I don’t want to analyze.)

Greg the instructor is the first gym person who has ever tried to understand me and I so appreciate that. I don’t dare dream that I will actually be able to master much. That is strange as I have my various Academy Award speeches at the ready, my best selling money making book fantasies, and some that I’m not going to share.

This morning I couldn’t make it through all of boot camp. I became dizzy and it wasn’t even entirely or mostly the exercises. It was post nasal drip which made want to vomit though I didn’t.

I will be spending the weekend drowning myself in ginger tea. I buy it in New York as I love it and sometimes even make it fresh from ginger stalks that I freeze. I was going to make apple sauce with apple cider for the liquid and some fresh ginger or unsweetened dark chocolate cocoa, or both.

But if there’s one smell I hate it’s fresh apples. It’s made me ill my whole life. Yet apples cooked in any form is one of my favorite smells. That’s another thing I have never tried to analyze. It’s weird even for me. (Ended up making soda from my soda machine and adding ginger tea to it. Bubbly, tangy and no sugar or sugar substitute. Heaven.)

I wasn’t going to try to make latkes. I’m not a potato pancake kind of person. It’s not strange being in a place with few Jews for Chanukkah. When I was a kid it was a kid’s holiday, not one of the major holidays I have begun to know so well because I recount them to Bone each year. And because each high holiday has both its story and the story of how my family celebrated or cast our sins away or…..When you come from a family that wants to be traditionally Jewish in a strange way but one parent is an agnostic and the other an atheist and then they switch roles, holidays are a bit memorable.

I’m a believer. In something. Don’t know what yet and no all you great people of North Myrtle, I will go to your churches for the experience but I’m not convertible. My aunt describes herself as a Jewish Buddhist and maybe someday I will do the same. Though she’s been one for 30 years and somehow I can’t imagine at this stage of my life wanting to chant. But two months ago I couldn’t have imagined boot camp so…

Yesterday I looked for my menorah. It’s a Pia menorah. Frosted Lucite and I think beautiful. I found my salt lamps. The framed copy of my first cover story! (Thanks RW) There were five of six amazingly beautiful drinking glasses I bought at the most wonderful glass store on the Upper West Side, and a few other things that obviously aren’t as important to my life as I thought they were when I first got them. Except for the framed cover story of course. I didn’t find the menorah.

Since I didn’t find the menorah I can’t put up the Christmas lights I almost bought yesterday. I have a Pine Tree in front of my house that would be perfect. Oh maybe if I find a Star of David–in white as I can’t imagine using colored lights. I remember when they first began using all white lights around Madison Avenue and how both classy and majestic the aura around the streets became.

I love this time of year and in the most startling of all my admissions Christmas music is among my favorite. Good Christmas music, not “I saw mommy….”

But this week belongs to Adam Sandler