EastGirlsWest

“Oh my god. I think I’m going to puke. Seriously, I need to stop.”

“It’s okay. Stop if you need to. It’s hard to sweat out France.”

I pedaled on the elliptical alone the other day. Angela was traveling back from Erie, and Tay was out gathering supplies for our New Year’s Eve party. Forgetting to charge my iPod ahead of time, I was left with only my thoughts for 40 minutes. And in the final hours of 2006, I found myself focused on what a new year means.

Of course, one of the first thoughts I had was about resolutions. Would I make any this year? Then I realized that I make the SAME damn resolution every year: to commit to exercising. This year, for the first time in my life, I’ve made it happen. Chalk one up to progress.

On Christmas Eve my family played a game. Twenty-six pieces of paper were put in a bowl, each with a year written on it starting with 1980 (the earliest Tay can remember). We took turns drawing, and then had to share something about the year we got. It could be a small moment or a huge event. Something funny, sad or meaningful. Something that would be a good story.

It was hard for us to remember really specific moments within a year. We all tended to focus on a big event, like “I moved to Boston”. Or in some cases it became a year in review: “I switched jobs, started skiing and went to Italy.” The small moments blend together, especially the older we get. Oddly, the farther back the year, the easier it was to remember and share a smaller moment. I guess that’s just how we remember our childhood - unwrapping a special gift on our birthday, what we wore on the first day of school, who we sat behind in third grade class. Not years, just little pictures.

I drew 1985, the year I started high school. The first thing I remembered was walking to high school for orientation day with my best friend Jessie. We were both nervous, but she made me laugh the whole way there. Jessie died in 1994. Even the happy memories often remind us of what we’ve lost. People we loved who are no longer in our lives. Olde acquaintance, be forgot. And I suppose each year after a loss is another milestone in the healing of our grief.

When 2001 was drawn, it was hard for any of us to recall anything except 9/11 that year. We knew exactly where we were, what we were doing, and who we called first. And for all of us, 2002 represented a time, after the election of You Know Who, when this country took a devastating turn. And as much as YKW likes to wish it so, I can’t imagine that a decade from now I’ll remember 2006 as the year Saddam Hussein was executed. Likely I will recall it as the year that the majority of Americans finally woke up to the inanity of this war and made their feelings known during mid-term elections.

Leaving Cape Cod the day after Christmas, I sat next to The Betrothed on the bus to Boston. As we watched the bare trees beside the highway move by in a blur, we reminisced about the past year. Vacations, good meals, house projects, career changes, health challenges…I was only halfway through reciting this list of things that defined our year when The Betrothed interrupted. He just looked at me and said “I love you.”

My eyes welled up, and he put his hand over mine, and I could feel his chin on the top of my head when I leaned into his shoulder. I knew I would never have to try to remember that moment, because it’s always there.

And I think that’s what he was trying to say. Our year, our 2006, wasn’t the list of events. It was us - living it together. The list of events will change, some years more than others. Life will be hard, and wonderful. Some things we will remember, and others we will forget.

So maybe the calendar change just marks a renewed commitment to keep moving, alongside all the people I love. On the bus, definitely on the elliptical, and on my increasingly strong two legs.

Happy New Year.

So last night, post-elliptical, Angela and I were lying on mats in the stretch area of the gym. She’s come up with a new combination of sit-ups that make me deeply unhappy. And as I’m panting through them, wondering if I might die right there and then in the middle of 24-Hour Fitness, she starts counting our reps out loud in an unusually perky tone.

Angela is many things: brilliant, gorgeous, funny, graceful. But perky? It’s not the Angela I know.

So anyway, she’s counting. And in our many, many months of going to the gym together I’ve never heard her do this. At least not in such a loud, happy voice. As I’m trying to reconcile all this in my mind, I suddenly hear her say, “Wow. All this counting is bringing me back to my aerobics days.”

I stop. Because I’m stunned, and also because I can’t possibly use my abdominal muscles to hold my legs and torso away from the floor for another second.

Thud. “What?”

“The counting. It’s reminding me of my aerobics days.”

I consider what this might mean. And then understand exactly what it DOES mean. “Oh my god. Were you an aerobics instructor?”

If you don’t know Angela, trust me on this one: it’s a shocking and hilarious piece of information. Not to mention that all this time, when I thought I was going to the gym with someone as equally exercise-challenged as myself, I’ve been panting on the elliptical next to a former aerobics instructor! I’m horrified.

So after another ab workout - which consists of me laughing so hard that is hurts - we resume our sit-ups. And now she’s really laying it on thick, barking counts at me like she’s Jamie Lee Curtis in “Perfect”. And even though I know she taught in the 90’s, and she swears she only wore shorts and a t-shirt, I now cannot stop picturing Angela in leg warmers.

Angela and I decided that the three sweetest words in the English language are “begin cool down.”

Also, we both have a HBO problem. There are three episodes of Deadwood left, and I’m already feeling the pain of withdrawl. Meanwhile, the only thing that got Angela through our workout was the promise of starting season two of The Wire last night. When I left her in the parking garage she was twitching in anticipation of her trip to the video store to rent the DVD’s. All this because she couldn’t possibly wait another 24 hours for it to show up On Demand. Season Four premieres on September 10th, and it can’t come soon enough.

And finally, according to Vanity Fair, Sofia Coppola is out there living the life we’d like to have. BFF with Wes Andersen? We’d like that. Fashion muse to Marc Jacobs? We volunteer. Then we’d have much more exciting weekends to discuss during Monday’s elliptical time, making the whole ordeal go by faster.

Begin cool down.

Okay, not really. More like From the Couch. But I was on the elliptical last night, and it was miserable because Angela wasn’t here. Angela left me for a weekend in Sedona with her family (the nerve!). So I went to gym alone, which I was dreading and whining about because it was so. freaking. hot. And then The Betrothed gently inquired, isn’t the gym is air conditioned? To which I explained that even though that is, technically, true…there is something about the overwhelming smell of sweat that hits me in the face when I walk in there, and the sense that my body is instantly coated with it, even before I begin generating my own perspiration, that psychologically makes it FEEL like the gym is not, in fact, air conditioned.

Have you experienced this at your gym? Or is it just ours because it’s located in a mall?

Bottom line: elliptical + insane heat + sweat fumes + no Angela = unhappy Jess

But now Angela has returned from an even hotter place than here, and we will be reunited in the cardio enterprise tomorrow night.

Oh, it’s so good to be back on the elliptical. Angela and I finally crawled back to the gym together - after my long absence and several days of trying to get ourselves there since my return. It was insanely hot here today, and we were NOT motivated to go sweat even more. But somehow we made it, and managed to converse while panting through 45 minutes of sheer workout hell. Today’s discussion included:

The determination that a certain evil, blonde, nasty, pointy, souless and bilious conservative pundit/author needs to just GO BACK TO THE SLUDGE PILE SHE CRAWLED OUT OF. I’m taking a cue from the wise Jason Kottke here and NOT mentioning her name. Because you know what? If we all just stop giving her the attention she seeks when making “controversial” statements, then she will not sell books. If she does not sell books, we will not have to see her vile face anywhere except FOX News, which we don’t watch anyway. Right?

Tonight she was on MSNBC, wearing an excessive amount of makeup, especially green eyeshadow. But all the facepaint in the world couldn’t camoflauge the fact that she has no soul, which led Angela to observe that she looked like some kind of ghoulish peacock. And then we wondered: who has sex with her?

Starbucks = Fat City. For some of us.

Let’s face it, we love us some coffee treats, and we’re okay with that. But there are many temptations in the mass-produced pastry case. In fact, while in the dreaded ‘backwards’ mode on our favorite machine, Angela revealed that she suspected a previous Starbucks muffin habit was what landed her on the damn elliptical in the first place.

Today I found myself at a Starbucks in Newport Beach, where three of the women in line ahead of me had clearly not eaten since the 90s. While I eyed the orange frosted cupcake, they all ordered their liquid, nonfat breakfast/lunch/dinner and sauntered out into the sun obscured by freakishly large sunglasses.

Potayto, potahto.

I heart Maureen Dowd so much. Today’s column (”Wag the Camel”) is one of her recent best:

Speaking before a mural of fluttering white doves, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that his scientists had concocted enriched uranium… The nuclear doves announcement was embarrassing for Mr. Bush, who had said on Monday that he was determined to prevent Iran from getting the know-how to enrich uranium. But the Persian logic cannot be faulted. If you pretend to have W.M.D., the U.S. may come and get you. Ask Saddam. If you really have W.M.D., you’re bulletproof. Ask Kim Jong Il.

I know, I know. I hate to toture you if you don’t subscribe to NYTimes Select and can’t read online (which I do). But here’s the thing - I really think The Dowd is worth the price of admission. And when Frank Rich finally returns from book leave? Bonus.

Also, now would be a good time for my RAVE about the NYTimes online redesign launched last week. I have to admit, I wasn’t this enthusiastic the first 20 minutes into navigating through the new look. But that was just the shock. The fear of change. The nerves of a woman so settled into her morning ritual that having to actually open my eyes all the way and put some minimal effort into locating the Most Emailed Stories was too much. But now? I can see that a better NYT is the way to a better me. Really.

Read a much more eloquent toast to the improved NYT.com here.

Now, looping back to Maureen Dowd: Angela and I go to the gym together on Mondays and Wednesdays. We spend 40 minutes side by side on the elliptical…which is sometimes a challenge, because we go right after work and it’s crowded. We dart among the scores of machines, scouting for two empty ones next to each other. Sometimes we spot a pair, but then realize there’s another couple across the room vying for the same synched-up exercise session. Then we have to make the mad dash…

HUGE digression. Maureen. So, once we score the equipment, we obviously talk while ellipsing. Hence, a new topic I’d like to introduce called “From the Elliptical” (Angela’s idea). On Monday Angela mentioned that she’d seen a picture somewhere (Vanity Fair?) of Maureen Dowd, Bill Maher and Aaron Sorkin all sitting together at a post-Oscar party. Around minute 23, we decided that in terms of compelling and hilarious conversation, it probably couldn’t get much better than being seated at that table with that threesome.

There’s always a TV tuned to CNN while we’re on the elliptical, which has caused Angela to observe on more than one occasion that Nancy Grace looks like a drag queen.