Among the Weight Lifters, and Other People & Places

Could I Drag a Big Tire Across a Floor?

I joined a new (to me) gym yesterday, only one block away.

I was frightened even to go in the door, as it caters to weight lifters---serious, competitive weight lifters. Humans whose muscles have the consistency of boards.

But I'd heard through the grapevine that this independent gym welcomes people with regular bodies from the neighborhood. 
And also that you can always get space on the lightweight machines because most every body is busy doing things like dragging tractor tires by metal chains across the AstroTurf floor in the basement to bother with what Arnold Schwarzenegger called "sissy workouts".

So I pumped up my bravery and went it to sign up for sissy workouts.
And the place really was welcoming. To begin with, the manager is a buff and affable woman who happily showed me around.

I told her––because the words formed in my mind so I said them––that I'd like to work up to dragging a tire across the floor, 
and she brightly said, 
"That's a great goal!"

It was clear she really thought it was a great goal, and entirely possible that I might hold it and even reach it.  
Isn't it funny how people are different?

But then, after all, me working up to dragging a Very Large Tire across a floor is possible, technically.
I mean, I'm older and fatter and outer of shape than I've ever been, but there's nothing fundamentally physically wrong with me.

So... watch this space.

It was fun to be there today. 
While the YW never played music, except for classes, here they  assume everyone likes Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll" and other thumping songs, and they play them. 
I do like that sort of music when I'm exercising, so that's all right.

Duck and Cover

"Reality" is a movable feast, eh?

Yesterday I went to Walgreens to buy hydrogen peroxide to soak for 48 hours a white ironstone sugar bowl I'm going to list on eBay.
I'd read that that removes the brown age-stains under the glaze, which this lovely piece has a lot of. (Twenty-four hours later, I can report it's working.)

While I was back in the pharmacy area, I hear a fight break out up by the cash register. Some guy was bellowing ugly accusations at some woman who'd accused him of shoplifting.

My first thought was, if he starts shooting, where should I go?
The floor?
Was there an emergency exit? (Not that I could see.)
I stayed far away until the guy left.

When I checked out, I said to the cashier, "Well, that was scary--I was wondering if I should hit the floor."

"Yeah," she said. "I don't think he had a gun, but we thought he was going to start swinging."

There you have Life in America these days--being relieved that you're going to get hit instead of shot...

I didn't even think much about it, except to think how adaptable we humans are to shifting realities. 

Bears to Come

I am going to make bears from scratch!!!
I signed up for a free community ed class---more like a weekly gathering--to "make bears and dolls for children in need."

The toys are given to the local Crisis Nursery---the place where the police or social workers take you if you're a little kid whose parents just got shot (or shot somebody) at Walgreens or something else that leaves you hiding behind the couch.
I believe you get this toy to keep, which...
Jeez. 
Can you even imagine? 
Maybe you can.

Materials are free too, but they said bring wool sweaters for felting, if you have them. I actually do have a couple brown sweaters, and also some leftover brown flannel from that baby toy I made for my friend's grandchild. Bears are brown, and lots of kids are too.

Anyway, doesn't that class seem tailor made for me?
The first meeting is at the end of January.

The Southwest Thrift Store Tour

And then. . . I'm going to Las Vegas!

The back story is, bink's mother is losing her short-term memory and also some of her decision making faculties. 
Recently she fell for some "You won a free cruise!" scam--a legal one that explains all the associated costs, but still a scam designed to snare exactly people like her, who don't track all that well.
Her mom had even sent in money to "reserve your place".

bink looked it up, and it sounds like if you actually show up at the dock, you spend 48 hours on a floating Motel 6 that hasn't been cleaned between sailings, eating (and paying for) Denny's–style food, and it can end up costing you more than if you bought and paid for a regular, non-"free" cruise.

I've known bink's mother for more than 30 years. While she's annoyed me as often as not, I was really angry that people would consciously DESIGN rip-offs to take advantage of her in her old age.

Also, I always remember an act of kindness on her part. The Easter after my mother killed herself, bink & her mom were going to meet me for lunch after my shift at my Catholic church job.

Ridiculously, I'd timed our get-together as if it were a normal Sunday. Of course everything at church goes way longer on Easter, and I assumed bink and her mom would've gone home by the time I got there, two hours late. (None of us had cell phones at this point, in 2003. (I still don't.))
But no, bink's mother had insisted they stay and wait for me, because of my mother.

That one kindness is like a perpetual carte blanche.
(That's the economy of kindness for you.)

So I said to bink, let's give your mom a REAL free trip. She loves Las Vegas, so we're taking her there for her 83rd birthday in February.

I've only been to LV once, for the 2008 Star Trek Convention, and I didn't see much of the place then. This time I want to leave the hotel and go find thrift stores.

Thrift stores are where the detritus of a culture washes up.
I'm curious what that will be in LV. I bet there are all the usual things that I find here---Happy Meal toys and Corning Ware casseroles without lids---but what else there might be?

Of course I especially hope there might be some local stuffed animals, but I suppose they'll mostly be the sane Beanie Baby crap as here.  But maybe at the Antique Malls there will be Mormon ones, whatever those might be.

Alongside deciding to take this trip, I decided not to go to London. 
To begin with, no one except bink could commit to joining me there for my birthday tea, for a lot of reasons, including that I don't have as big a pool of friends, family, and acquaintances as I had 17 years ago. Because they died, some of them, and because I worked freelance since 2001 and don't meet many new people, 
but also I am happier being solitary than I've ever been.
[See, Bears]

Then, I also started to feel nervous about that trip being right on the heels of the Texas Librarians Convention in Dallas, where I am going to be on a panel about nonfiction writing.
I've never done much public speaking--and none in a dozen years. The idea of coming in jet-lagged from London to talk [intelligently] to strangers started to appear like a bad one.

I could have cancelled the panel--they aren't paying me or anything. But while I've been to London more than a dozen times, I've never been to Dallas. I'm curious to see it--and they must have thrift stores.
This will be my springtime southwest thrift store tour! 

And somewhere in here I will start looking for a job.
I will be physically strong again, unless a tire falls on me, godforbid.