So, my sleep has been fucked up since I returned from Taiwan. I know, you’re saying, “How can you tell the difference?”, but I can. I was slowly inching towards a semi-regular sleep schedule before I left, and now, it’s crashing down around me again. I am taking more naps than anything else, to the delight of my cats. I don’t allow them into the bedroom with me because I am allergic, and it’s hard enough for me to sleep as it is. So, they love it when I take naps on the couch in the living room because then they can snooze with me.
However, I would like to tell one kitty, who shall remain nameless (cough, Shadow, cough), that his new habit of leaping off the arm of the couch onto the pillow on my face is NOT a soothing way to be woken up. Then, when said kitty (Shadow) pauses to groom himself while bearing his full weight on the pillow smushed squarely into my nose, that just adds insult to injury. And, no, it’s NOT funny to have the same kitty saunter down my neck, my boobs, my stomach, my lap, and my thighs before settling on my legs. Apparently, I am now a ramp and a walkway for Shadow.
Anyway, I had a four hour nap from midnight to four in the morning last night. Then I puttered around for a bit before deciding to do my exercise at around seven in the morning .
May I just say, I love my DVR. I love it with a passion that is slightly unseemly and more than a bit creepy. It’s the greatest invention since the dildo, and I mean that sincerely. I can record two programs at the same time. I record one program and watch another at the same time. I can start recording something and then start watching it ten minutes later as it’s still recording. I can watch a football game and then just rewind it (even if i’m not recording it) to review dubious calls. I can record up to eleven-billionty hours (not really. It just seems like it). I can record for more than six hours in one shot if I wish. In short, I love my DVR. I love it so much, I don’t watch any shows live any more, except sports.
I have five shows I record. Two of them are daily. I recorded all my shows while I was in Taiwan, so I have a backlog. I like to watch TV as I exercise, so it seemed like the perfect time to whittle away my saved recordings.
Back when I was obsessed with fitness and health, I looked up a ton of shit on the subject. Ninety percent of it was pure shit, but the other ten percent had merit. I was really looking to do things in a so-called healthy way that really pushed the limits of what was considered healthy. Believe me, there were many articles willing to help me do just that. One bit of advice that resonated with me, though, and was actually not harmful, was to find a form of exercise that you enjoyed in order to make it more palatable to you. For me, that made it easy. I love to dance (I took ballet, tap, and jazz lessons from the time I was two until I turned fourteen), and it’s a low-maintenance activity. I can pop in a CD on my boom box (yes, I’m old-school, bitchez), lace up my sneakers, and then just dance around my living room. Ozomatli is one of my fave bands to work out to because they are so lively.
I haven’t done any regular exercise in awhile, and I had forgotten how much my cats hate it when I work out. Why? Dunno. Probably because it means I am paying absolutely no attention to them. Raven, especially, can’t stand for that. When I am doing my toe-touches, he will yowl at me and demand to be pet. When I am on the floor doing crunches, he will sit on my stomach and snooze. When I did my version of the plank this morning (elbows-to hands on the ground, on my toes), I felt claws prickling my ass (it’s flat, and it makes a good seat, apparently. It’s a damn good thing it wasn’t on my back as I was only wearing a sports bra on top at this point) before I felt a nine-pound cat (Raven yet again) snuggle down on my ass and curl himself into a ball. Shadow, for the most part, just stares at me with death-laser eyes, trying to force me, through sheer will, to pet him.
So. Back to the shows I record. They are: Wheel of Fortune (I mute the sound and speed through all the talky bits and the commercials. Once I solve the puzzle, I fast-forward to the next segment. I can watch an ep in five minutes. I can’t stand Vanna, and Pat gives me the heeby-jeebies, but I love solving the puzzles and rooting for contestants to lose); Jeopardy (I have to watch with the sound on, obviously, but I still speed through all the talky bits and through Alex’s insufferable smirking); Numb3rs (I’ve watched since the inception, manly because Navi Rawat is teh hot. In latter seasons, Aya Sumika is awfully easy on the eyes, too–oh, and I like the math angle, and they have had Lou Diamond Phillips guest every season, but this is probably the last season I will watch); America’s Test Kitchen (just because I don’t cook, it doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch cooking shows. Plus, it’s nice to have some ideas of what I could make–if I ever actually cooked); Antique Roadshow (I love to see how something that looks like a piece of junk can be worth a bajillion dollars).
I would like to riff on the Roadshow for a minute. I love the show, and I find it fascinating to try to guess how much a piece is really worth, at auction value, doubled for insurance purposes. Plus, there are a few cuties on the show, including Suzanne Perrault, who is SO not my type at all. She’s a bit too Winona Ryderish for me (though Suzanne had longer hair when I first saw her), but something about her voice just gets me every time.
Back to the show. It slays me every time to listening to the appraiser go on about provenance and history and who did the piece. Somebody comes in with, say, a painting that looks like it was done by Grandma Moses. The appraiser talks about the style and the period and Grandma Moses’ life. S/he will say how this painting fits or doesn’t with Grandma Moses’ style. Then, the appraiser will finish up by saying, “If you can prove the painting was done by Grandma Moses, it’s worth eleven-billionty dollars. If you can prove her son did it (apparently, he painted, too), then it’s worth five and a half-billionty dollars. If you can’t prove either of them did it, then it’s worth two bucks.” It’s the same with furniture. “If this chair is an authentic British Chippendale chair, then it’s worth two billionty-dollars. If, instead, it’s an authentic American Chippendale chair, then you can double that figure.” Same damn piece of furniture, just different history. I could make some grand statement about context, but instead, I just want to say, it’s a big con game! Each thing is worth whatever a buyer decides it’s worth (yes, I know this is the essence of selling and buying) and that’s that. It just tickles my funny bone that a fake that is mistaken for an original is worth beaucoup bucks, until it’s discovered as a fake, and then it’s worth a cup of coffee. Maybe it’s just me. It probably is. I won’t stop watching, but it cracks me up every time to hear about the relative worth of a piece, based on provenance.
Back to working out. This morning was the first time I’ve done a full routine (meaning, aerobics, stretching, and lifting weights in one session) in quite some time. I pulled my hair into a high ponytail, laced up the sneakers, turned up Ozomatli, and started grooving. Raven immediately plunked his body in front of my feet, which meant that I had to dance around him. I have free-weights, and before I got ill, I was using mostly 25 lb dumbbells with an occasional 20 thrown into the mix. Now, however, I am back to mostly 20 lb dumbbells for most of my exercises. I don’t want to strain my muscles right from the start. Plus, I’ve taken to using my pedometer again. 10,000 steps a day is recommended. I decided to aim low and go for 5,000 steps a day. To my surprise, I was clocking in 7,500 the first few days. In the last two days, I’ve done 10,000 steps fairly easily. So, this week I’m making 10,000 the base. I also plucked up the nerve to take my measurements (chest, waist, hips) which I’ll check every week. I don’t do scales because that’s a fast trip to obsession for me.
So, I get really hot while I workout. Normally, I have layers on for that very reason. This morning, though, I didn’t. I whipped off my hoodie to bare (literally) my breasts, and then decided to go put on a sports bra. However, after another fifteen minutes, I was super hot, so I took off the sports bra and just finished up my session topless. In the summer, I will be down to spandex shorts and topless at points. I may have, once or twice, gone the full monty as well, but only with all the curtains closed.
I hate working out, but I love how I feel afterwards. In addition, I love to dance. It’s sexy, soothing, cleansing, liberating, and just a hell of a lot of fun. That’s it. No deeper thoughts for this entry. Just some silly, harmless fun.
P.S. The first video is Ozomatli’s La Gallina, quite possibly my favorite song by them. Imagine my disappointment when I realized the title meant The Rooster. Plus, the video is kind of creepy. The second video is for my niece. It’s an updated version, done by Cyndi herself. I couldn’t embed the original, so I’m linking to it, instead. Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Why is this for my niece? Because she prefers this version, and that just ain’t right. The third is of RuPaul’s Supermodel as a reminder to me that being hot is mostly about attitude and confidence.
Re: Antiques Roadshow: I know!! It’s a fascinating commentary on how we value objects, to what extent we’re able to take pleasure from a thing itself, and to what extent we have to have a story about it (provenance, monetary value, etc.). That can also come in other forms, like I value a particular pin more than I would otherwise because it was a gift from my grandmother, etc. But for something without that kind of *personal* story, it’s really interesting to me what kind of other stories we need to have in order to value a thing (or not).
Betsy, tell me about it. I mean, I know it’s the basis for supply and demand, but I can’t wrap my mind around how the story SO affects an antique’s value.
The pin: Agreed. I have kept every gift my niece has given me (and my nephews, but she has six years on them) because she is precious to me. So, yeah, I can see how sentimental value can play a part in the worth of an object. However, speaking purely for myself, I can’t see shelling out a gazillion dollars just because a piece is done by a master if I don’t actually like the piece.