Feel No Shame For What You Are

I'm in the store again: Indigo Girls is playing. The memorial service for Anya's and Corinne's grandfather is in half an hour. My sisters have been red-eyed for days. My brother-in-law, leading candidate for this week's Most Valuable Player, called a little while ago to find out if I lay dead by the fused glass sculptures or if the store had burned to glowing cinders - but really tasteful ones you'd display proudly. In any case, I am not lying dead - I'm almost certain. If I were dead, would I be scanning my new exercise DVDs? If there's an afterlife in which I'm still short and round it's a vision that needs a little adjustment on the horizontal hold.

I'm just saying.

Other than Gilad, whom I love, I do better with virtual exercise instructors I despise for their fluffiness or inane comments. Denise Austin's video workouts used to make me spit with rage and taut like stretched rubber bands. This became very confusing when my perky young shrink reminded me of Denise Austin. If things were going well in therapy, I fattened up; when things went badly, my friends named my clearly visible abs for French philosophers: Jean Paul, Jean Claude... I was with the brain doctor so long discontinuing our business relationship was like a traumatic break up for both of us. Unfortunately, Denise Austin's Shrink Your Female Fat Zones uses a stability ball, which I learned to loathe in physical therapy, and I wonder if there's hidden meaning in her pink outfit.

Crunch Workout's Cardio Dance Blast! looks like fun. Instructor Marie Forleo annoys me with her faintly racist comments; the dance steps look simple enough that when I get up before 6 a.m. I might keep up before a first cup of coffee. The downside is the workout is 38 minutes. I'd have to pry myself out of bed ten minutes earlier than I already do. This seems like an afternoon regimen. Note: the support dancers are in several sizes and shapes. Unfortunately, the heavy girl is wearing ill-fitting low rise two-tone jeans, which means all of my pet peeves manifest in one pair of pants. I don't know how long I can keep from shouting about the wardrobe department. Upside: shouting is aerobic exercise.

The store has been very busy, by the way. Watching the 38 minute workout took three hours. Also: watching lovely young women in tight garments samba is hungry work. You would think I was underfed the way I am scarfing down the snacks. I just counted my fingers and yes, I still have ten.

My last recent acquisition is Crunch Workout's Cardio Salsa with Giselle Roque de Escobar. The program starts with pert Giselle shouting at - you know - you that you're going to have a great time and burn tons of calories with these salsa moves. We take a sudden turn toward the Telemundo when Giselle introduces the young, fit and strangely stoned-looking Latin drummer and the camera zooms at his delts. Zooms, I say! Zooms back! After that, the director gives you a moment to recover from your motion sickness before you start moving. I can't wait to try it. This is a 40 minute workout, so either I'd have to get up earlier or wait until I'm having one of those Carmen Miranda afternoons we don't discuss in front of the children.

What the hell, those are fun, too.

Note: dancers are once again wearing outfits that make no sense for their body types. There's a woman dancing directly behind Giselle in cropped low-rise jeans in a dingy blue-gray. Her belly is pale and though about three-quarters of the way through the workout it becomes apparent she's strong and toned, she's large and looks like a jiggly white backdrop. It's very distracting. I want to assault the person who insisted on the exercise pants with the droopy crotches. Please! If a group of women should look less dumpy and more caliente, this is that group.

It's been a busy afternoon but light for me. This is proof that I am merely fortunate. On a more serious note, Jazz and Georg lost gentle cat-friend Colin today. He was a sweet fellow with a patient nature, and his complex care would have been too much for lesser lights. Jazz and Georg gave him a good life, better than he would have had anywhere else, with anyone else.

I'm fine. Still, it seems like it was a tough day for the surviving.