kdiddy.org

(Awkward throat-clearing: I don’t do giveaways very often because I’m not a serious enough blogger to get a ton of pitches from companies. But when I do host one, I like it to be something that benefits a local Pittsburgh business. I also picture my usual Daria self being all “GIVEAWAY YAY PEPPINESS!” and that makes me feel weird. I have no idea what the point of this “disclaimer” is. I just felt the need to talk it out. Thanks for listening.)

So, if you’ve been reading for awhile, you’ll know that about two years ago I took some initiative and started working toward making myself physically healthy again. For years, and particularly when I started graduate school, my health was not a priority for me. I didn’t exercise and had really yucky eating habits which, if I’m being honest, I’ve always had even when I was “in shape.” But that’s a whole other post.

After finishing my MA, I realized that I had spent the last several years focusing on my brain and stuffing knowledge into it. And that was satisfying, but it came at the price of completely ignoring my body. I wanted to start focusing on my body, especially since I had entered my 30s and knew that taking care of myself was going to be more important than ever.

I started the Couch to 5k program and began paying more attention to the food that I was eating, how much, and when. I also took advantage of the fact that I worked on a university campus that offered fitness classes and started taking yoga and Pilates. I gravitated toward those because they were familiar to me. When I was a ballet dancer, Pilates became a big part of our routine. Dancers are obviously very strong, but there are often areas that are prone to weakness, particularly the abdominal and core muscles for women. Much like any physical structure, a body with a weak core won’t last very long. Pilates also worked on areas like the legs, feet, and back, which are overused and prone to injury. Just like how athletes cross-train, us dancers supplemented our ballet with Pilates to help us get stronger and avoid getting hurt.

Working on my core strength is even more essential for me if I want to avoid hurting my neck again. My posture was getting worse and worse because my core was getting weaker and weaker, so I’m more mindful than ever of getting those muscles in shape.

I’ve stuck with running, yoga, Pilates, and healthy eating (with plenty of indulgences, of course) for a little over two years now. I don’t know that I’m skinnier, but I’m definitely healthier. And I’d even dare say that I’m healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. By the way, if you’re at the site and can see my little Daily Mile widget on the left or if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that yesterday I ran six miles. So…yeah. Pretty proud of that.

A few weeks ago, the cool people at the Verve 360 Wellness Salon and Spa in downtown Pittsburgh found this humble little blog and commended me for my efforts toward fitness. They offered me the opportunity to come and take one of their Pilates classes and to give a free class to one of you lucky people, too. On Monday, I took them up on their offer.

Verve 360 is in a gorgeously renovated building downtown, with the salon on the first floor and the spa areas on the second. After checking in, I met Linda Williams, my instructor for the evening. After I got dressed, Linda took some time to find out what my experience and level of fitness was and learn about any injuries or physical difficulties that I had. She explained that we would be doing a Pilates chair class, which I had no clue about. She showed me their equipment, and I recognized the Cadillac, but hadn’t used in a number of years. The Pilates classes that I take at work are all on a mat on the floor, so this chair thing was totally new to me.

What was immediately wonderful about the class was that it was just me and two other people. Verve 360 keeps their classes small so that you are guaranteed personal attention. This is crucial for something like Pilates, because even though you can learn the basic movements and do them on your own, to get the maximum benefit you really need someone with a trained eye to tell you what adjustments you need to make.

Our class was an hour long and the exercises focused on all parts of our bodies, strengthening them while gaining a better understanding of how they all work together to create movement and balance. The chair, like most Pilates apparatuses, had springs so that you could adjust the tension and, therefore, the amount of work that your body had to do to complete a movement.

At one point, I had my feet planted on the bottom part of the chair and my hands on the seat and needed to lift the bottom half of my body up by engaging my core, butt, and leg muscles. Mentally, I didn’t know how I could do it, but I took Linda’s advice and stopped thinking about it. Then, with a grunt, I was pulling myself up in a way that didn’t seem possible just moments before.

Linda was able to keep an eye on me through each set of movements and let me know what to adjust (“Ribs in, shoulders down, legs turned out,”). It was so fantastic to have someone there to remind me of what I need to think about so that when I do Pilates on my own I can incorporate those adjustments into my practice.

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty evangelical about Pilates and would love for one of you to get to take a class at Verve 360. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete who would like a little extra personal attention or a total newbie to exercise, you will get so much out of this class. So, if you’re in Pittsburgh or the continental US and are planning on being in Pittsburgh some time soon, leave a comment saying why you’d like to try a Pilates class at Verve 360 (or just leave a comment, I’m not picky). You can earn an additional entry by tweeting about the giveaway and leaving a comment here letting me know that you did so. And you can earn even one more additional entry by sharing this giveaway on Facebook and leaving another comment here letting me know that you did that.

The winner will be chosen at random and announced next Thursday, July 5th. Good luck! And thanks to Verve 360 Pilates Pittsburgh for providing the prize!

(Disclaimer: I received a complementary Pilates class from Verve 360 in exchange for hosting this giveaway.)

The husband, kid, and I went down to DC two weekends ago for, literally, a day and a half to help the sister-in-law tie up some loose ends with her recent move. (We also had plenty of whirlwind fun things on the agenda to sorta celebrate our upcoming anniversary.) We needed to deposit her cats with her, take some stuff back to Pittsburgh with us, and grab a few things that required the use of a car. She needed a desk for her computer and had her eye on one at CB2. She explained that a tiny part of her reasoning of buying the desk from there is that she suspected that I had never been to a CB2. She was correct and I was curious to see the inside of one.

We made our way toward Georgetown, and I did a little bracing of my emotions, because any time I’ve been there I get kind of…insecure? anxious? about how many really wealthy people there are in one place. In Pittsburgh, we have concentrations of rich/wealthy people but I can tell that there is something more down-to-earth about them. Maybe it’s the addition of political power that drips from every tasteful storefront in Georgetown? I don’t know. All I know is that I feel tiny and poor when I’m there. But it’s cool, I’m not mad.

Anyway, now that I’ve laid bare my neuroses, I can get to my “point.”

While we were looking for a place to park near the waterfront, we drove past a few homeless people. This is also, sadly, nothing new to me. I see homeless people fairly often, and while it’s always thought-provoking (ie, how did I get here and he/she get there? there but for the grace of God, etc.), it’s not usually jarring. However, this time, something was a little, uh, unusual:

The days you inadvertently make eye contact with a dude while he’s taking a dump in the street always make for contemplative evenings. #fb

— kdiddy (@kdiddy) June 17, 2012

As my eyes moved across the landscape, I slowly began to put together what I was witnessing. A grown man, bent over, hands clasped, meaty bare thigh and buttock-side pressed against the brick wall.

This guy was taking a dump. And I was looking right at him.

He and I locked eyes for a moment and I was the first to look away, because I figured even if the guy was moving his bowels in the middle of a crowded urban area, he still deserved some privacy.

“That was awkward,” I said. “I made eye contact with that guy while he was pooping on the street.”

The husband said that I should have given him one of these:

After we parked, we made our way up to the center of Georgetown. We came upon a long, long line of people. But these weren’t the pooping guy’s contemporaries lining up for possibly the only meal they would get that day. No, these were people lining up to get cupcakes. Famous cupcakes. Cupcakes that are on TV. We continued on to our destination, settling the desk task and whatnot.

But the experience stuck with me. How often in life do you look someone in the eye while they’re pooping? The only other instance that I could think of would be when the baby was an actual baby. In my more sleep-deprived moments, I’m sure I thought, “You’re doing this to me on purpose. Stop pooping! No! No! Not all over the wall!” but of course I knew that that part of his mental and social development just hadn’t fully baked yet. This experience in Georgetown was a chance encounter between a somewhat privileged consumer and someone who, through various events and circumstances, had ended up literally taking a shit on the privileged.

I felt bad for the guy, of course, but also really admired the small statement that he was making. These are nice boot straps…for me to poop on.

As of yesterday, the husband and I have been married six years. Yesterday was also Father’s Day, and I thought about how lucky I was as a mother to already know going into our marriage what kind of a father he would be.

A few seconds after that picture was snapped, the baby grabbed my hand and kissed it and the hearts of everyone at or near our wedding exploded. The grounds keepers were a little annoyed. But it perfectly illustrated a point that I made during my vows (where “made” = “blubbered in a most undignified manner”): everything that is good in me and everything that is good in the husband is manifested in that perfect little boy. I didn’t think I could feel more loved at that moment, and then the baby, this weird little person that the husband and I created, took it over the top.

Of course, not one of the three of us is perfect. But I think we would all agree that there is some serious love that gets us through our less graceful moments.

I think about the husband a lot, sometimes when I’m pissed at him about something, or when some chore or task is weighing on my mind: “I need to remember to tell the husband to get x, y, and z and then we need to deal with [insert intimidating grown-up task here]…” But a lot of times I just kind of…daydream? About him and the baby and about how much I love them and how so thoroughly in love I am with my husband. And I feel really fortunate. Someone who was asking me about my wedding a few weeks ago positively marveled at the fact that we were still very much in love after six years. I was puzzled, since six years isn’t very long. But considering the various yucky turns our life together has taken, we could have very well taken it out on each other, instead of relying on each other for strength.

One of the scenes that I love most from any movie is the scene from Big Fish in which Ed sees Sandra for the first time and he describes how time stopped.

No relationship can really be boiled down to any cliche, but love at first sight is a cliche that I think deserves some unpacking. I don’t remember when I saw the husband for the first time ever, but there have definitely been moments since then where I saw him for the first time in a new way and fell in love with him again in such a way that required time to slow down for a second or two. “First sight” doesn’t have to be the first time you ever see someone and it doesn’t have to be just one occasion. For me, it means looking at him with eyes that I didn’t have yesterday and with a heart made stronger by certain experiences and wisdom that we wouldn’t have gained without each other.

As with most scenarios in life, I can compare this experience to an episode of Roseanne.

I don’t have what real estate listings refer to as a “chef’s kitchen.” It’s small and electrically challenged and downright ugly, but I’ve managed to outfit it as best I could. And I really grew as a cook and a baker in it, despite its severe limitations.

One of the “luxury” items that I have is a portable dishwasher that was handed down to us from the mother-in-law. It’s 20-some years old and not exactly attractive, but it did the job and saved me one bit of drudgery. And even though it tried to eat my toe, I loved the dishwasher for making it so that I had one less thing to do every day.

A few months ago, the dishwasher started leaking. We determined that while it was still washing dishes just fine, the door had started to disintegrate. I tried just stuffing towels underneath it, but the water was too much and would seep underneath our cheap plastic floor tiles, which started to disintegrate, too. I wanted to get another dishwasher, but new portable dishwashers are expensive and a few recent transaction failures on Craig’s List made me wary of going that route. So, I resigned myself to hand-washing the insane amount of dishes that three people accumulate every day.

It sucked, especially since I was the only one who actually did the dishes. (Yes, I know, I should be more forceful about making the husband and/or the baby help out and I am totally taken advantage of and a pushover and perpetuating bullshit gender roles of housework division. Thanks for lecturing patronizing reminding me.)

Finally, while having a particularly bad fit of, “This SUCKS! I’m not working all day AND cooking for everyone AND doing everyone’s dishes,” the other day, I gritted my teeth and got on Craig’s List again. And suddenly there it was: a practically new portable dishwasher for half the price of what they are in stores and being sold by a person right by our house. I sent an email to the seller to find out if it was still available, and when he responded that it was and did not ask to see my tits, like a previous Craig’s List user had, I thought that I just might have a good deal waiting for me.

Of course, there were ordeals to be had. Like trying to get money to pay for the thing. I went to my credit union yesterday to get money out of my savings, and then to the PNC on campus to deposit the check so that I could get cash out. This seemingly complicated process is why I have any savings whatsoever. It relies on my inherent laziness to keep my money in one place. Of course, the new-fangled ATMs wouldn’t accept the check and the old-fangled ATM on campus that still accepted deposits in envelopes just wasn’t turned on. I had to wait for the branch manager to return from lunch. When I told her my problem, she replied, “Oh, yeah, those credit union checks…the paper for those is too thin so the check feeder can’t read them.”

“Okay, so, can I give you this check and you can put my monies in my account?” I asked.

“No, you just have to wrinkle the check up first before putting it in the machine.”

“Well, obviously.” I replied.

I approached the ATM again and got to the prompt screen to insert the check. I looked at the bank lady and said, “Okay, so wrinkle it like this?” I asked, crumpling the check up in my fist, partially out of compliance, partially out of OMFG ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

“Ohh, no, not that much,” she replied. “Now you’re gonna need to flatten it out a bit.”

I glared at her and tried to come up with some burning remark about money changers and the Bible and damnation or something, before rubbing the check along the corner of the ATM. Finally, it accepted the check and I grabbed the wad of 20s in my sweaty fist.

The actual transaction went smoothly enough, with the only hiccups being getting the dishwasher down the seller’s immaculately landscaped front steps. Getting the old dishwasher out of our house was surprisingly emotional, especially since that thing tried to take off my other big toenail.

That night, there was one more obstacle: plugging the dishwasher in. The cord on the new machine was not long enough to reach behind the oven to the one outlet close enough to the sink. I began scrounging for an extension cord, only to discover that two of the three in our house are two-pronged. ARGH. I found another extension cord in some unused gardening equipment outside that was covered in mud. But finally finally got the damn thing up and running. After watching it closely, waiting for it to explode or eat my Fiestaware, I was elated to declare the dishwasher functional. Then I started dancing around my kitchen like in one of those 1950s appliance commercials.

With one batch of dishes successfully washed, I officially welcomed my new favorite family member:

(I officially have no shame with the IC Light Mango. I’ll just drink it and I don’t care how ridiculous it is.)

* * *The other big thing happening today is that it’s the baby’s last day of fourth grade.

While you’re processing that, and maybe you’ll have more success than I am, the new dishwasher and I are going to drink and cry together.

What is normally a joyous, raucous party anthem becomes a crippling tool of depression in the incorrect context.

It is not Friday night, there are no parties on any sides, reaching for a 40 would probably be inappropriate and/or grounds for dismissal.

I am not faded, so a trip to the shore is out. No honeys to be seen. I am not in my hood so I can’t speak to whether it feels good or not.

Kani thankfully went out style 20 years ago. Don’t know the status of the gang bangers and their intended drive-by, but hopefully today will end without a bomb threat. I do indeed need to get my groove on. Perhaps I can squeeze that in before payday on Friday.

I am not buzzed. (This is how we do it.) I have no knowledge of whether or not South Central still does it like nobody does. (This is how we do it.) I wouldn’t classify my neighbors as having much of any flavor. (This is how we do it.) Track, old school, something something. (This is how we do it.)

Waving my hands in the air from here to there might lead my co-workers to believe I am choking and in need of a Heimlich. I’m not sure if I fall into the category of O.G. Mack or wannabe player. I guess the hood’s been alright to me but now that I am an upper case G I had really hoped for more financial security.

Our perspectives are inherently different, as are our vehicles.

Tipping this coffee mug up, but keeping my hands by my side to prevent the aforementioned panic.

I am not buzzed. (This is how we do it.) I have no knowledge of whether or not South Central still does it like nobody does. (This is how we do it.) I wouldn’t classify my neighbors as having much of any flavor. (This is how we do it.) Track, old school, something something. (This is how we do it.)

As I mentioned in my last post, which was 3,000 weeks ago, we were in Detroit over Memorial Day weekend, as is our tradition. Again this year, we decided to forgo the actual music festival and just attend the related parties so that we would have more time, money, and energy to enjoy the city.

Aside from some initial uneasiness about having to stay at a new hotel and dealing with their particular quirks, we  had a lot of fun. We hit up some of our favorite eating spots, namely The Clique for breakfast every morning, Buddy’s for pizza, and Slows for barbecue. We also crossed two items off of our informal Detroit bucket list, which comprises a number of quintessential Detroit experiences that we had never managed to enjoy despite spending, cumulatively, over a month there over the years. For example, we had been there like 6 or 7 times before we managed to go to the Motown museum. One culinary experience that we kept failing at was trying out the city’s Coney Island dogs. This was pretty absurd since Coney dogs are de rigeur late-night food there and we’re always just getting our night started at 1 a.m. But the siren call of White Castle has always been too hard to ignore. But this year we finally made it to two of the 8 bazillion Coney restaurants in the metropolitan area and those happened to be the most famous/infamous establishments: American and Lafayette. We all agreed that we liked the dogs at American the best, but the the atmosphere and ambiance, if you will, at Lafayette was better.

Immediately prior to our Coney sampling was a trip on the People Mover which was pretty cool. We had never taken that anywhere because it’s sort of a dud of public transportation. But it offered very cool views of the city. Oh! It was also the setting for a wannabe-artsy self portrait:

Aside from eating, we went to parties each night, all of which were extremely fun and musically blissful. That weekend is where a lot of new music makes its debut of sorts, but DJs are DJs and so you’re bound to hear amazing classics from the 70s on up. Since Donna Summer had just passed, we heard “I Feel Love” at least 10 times, which I had no complaints about, particularly when someone played it at a lovely outdoor party. Someone on Friday night played, “I’m Gonna Get You.”

I had completely forgotten about that song. Suddenly hearing it plus drinking all of the gin and tonics made for quite the reaction from yours truly.

We also went to Soul Skate at Northland, which I was both excited and nervous about. I hadn’t been roller skating since before I hurt my neck and I was slightly terrified that I would either make a gigantic fool out of myself after being so out of practice or manage to hurt myself again. After all, Soul Skate is no joke:

I am pleased to report that I actually felt quite comfortable getting back in the rink and once I was confident enough in my footing I even danced a little! Nothing like what’s on the video, of course, but I was so happy that wasn’t totally starting over with skating.

The whole weekend was really fun, as always. The only low point was receiving a really awkward hug from a mute homeless man. Did not want.

Hmm. I started this post the other day and cannot remember what the “lifelong commitments” part was going to be about. So…I guess I’m out of whatever I had committed to? Right?

Also also wik: I wrote about E.T. on MamaPop the other day. Go read it, willya?