Another Promise

On to my next topic. The babe dad. What's that you ask? First of all, its Mr. Scobie. Yeah yeah yeah. This isn't a love post about him. Its a post about the fact that all the dads on the block have started exercising. The central activity is Monday night basketball. Pretty much all of them go as often as they can. Which is cool. But recently, they've each individually started working out. Not all of them. But Mr. Scobie is running regularly with another dad from up the street, who has lost weight. Another dad has been doing boot camp for 2 months and has lost some weight. That's 43% of the dads! And another one already worked out regularly. They are shaping up to be an in-shape crew.

So what's really going on on Monday nights? My hubs comes back from "the gym" pretty sweaty but there's more than one way to make a guy sweat. I briefly considered that there was a collaborative effort to conceal numerous affairs, but frankly that doesn't seem like its this crew's style. That leaves two other plausible explanations (I mean, they can't all be gay, right?): They want to look good for their wives, or they want to look good for eachother, on the basketball court. As pleased as all the wives surely are, I think the latter explanation is the more likely.

And here's the conundrum: The wives have no similar incentive to start working out for eachother. Which leaves us with the incentive of working out for ourselves or for our husbands. And since our husbands are working out for eachother, that won't get us out of bed at 5:45 to go running.

A Truth Universally Reviled

Excuse the formality of tonight's title. I finished reading Emma last night and the annoying circumlocutions of the 19th century are fixed in my brain until (insert your own corny Victorian weather reference here).

Here are the truths which I have previously reviled but am accepting, however tentatively, these days:

1. Once you have two babies, it does not matter how much weight you lose or how cute you once were, your body changes shape, occasionally in undesirable ways.
2. The only way to return a pregnancy-deformed body to a shadow of its prior cuteness is to exercise (NOTE: This is an as-yet untested maxim).
3. Exercise actually delivers on the other promises I have so ruefully ignored and rebuffed lo these 33 years.

So annoying. I joined the Y again though and went this morning. The Oakland Y is the world's greatest place to work out, because, in addition to the benefits of exercise that accrue from 25 minutes on an elliptical machine (if any; see 2 above), the other clientele cannot possibly make you feel bad. The blind, the halt and the lame. Is that the expression? As someone funnier than me once said, Everyone at the Oakland Y is there on doctor's orders. This has a twofold effect: (a) you look great and perfect by comparison and (b) you realize that if they can haul their medical scooters up the front steps, you can shut up and sweat.

Other truths, less universally reviled:

The White House is a warren of G-A-Y-ness. Yeah, you knew that. But if there's one thing to make it achingly clear, its a white tie dinner honoring the Queen. Have you seen the guest list? Both Josh Bolton and Stephen Hadley brought their moms, dude.

By the way, young Barbara Bush attended with Jay Blount. I don't know if she's seriously involved with this guy, but here he is rocking such a DeGrassi Jr. High look, it makes me think she brought him to honor the place in the British Commonwealth held by our neighbors to the North.*

Maybe the "gay" assessment of our national security advisor is a little half-cocked (har har). Maybe his wife is too down-to-earth for monarchy. If so, godspeed to her. Mrs. Hadley was all like, "take your mother, she'll love that crap."

*Here's how lame Canadians are: in voting on the Worst Canadian, the leading candidate may be a hockey team owner. Britain chose Jack the Ripper as the Worst Brit. Although maybe I shouldn't slag Canada for that. There are "certain quarters" where A-Rod would probably win Worst American.