The rich life.

I spent my weekend living as the other half do.  One of my dearest friends married a wealthy man who has, in the last five years gotten progressively more wealthy.  Now they are rich.

They live in a beautiful and enormous house in a gated community.  They also have a lake house – on a lake.   They have a hot tub, an outdoor kitchen and a dumpster for compost that gets picked up every week.  Sleeping in their perfectly decorated California-king sized guest room with my own bath and television I realized something; money makes life easier.  I don’t think I’ll ever have any, but man is having a glass of wine in a hot tub under the stars before bed an awesome way to end a day.   A friend of mine used to say she didn’t need to own a boat, but she wanted to know someone who did.  I think that’s how I feel about hot tubs. And giant couches, and pantry doors that turn a light on just by opening and fireplaces that are controlled by remote.  I don’t need any of my own, but having the luxury of using them once in a while sure is awesome.

I think the real lesson here is that I am happy to mooch off my amazingly generous and wonderful friends.  

Weep out the Toxins

There are very few things in my life that I find more cathartic than crying while I exercise.

As a rule, I avoid sad things.  I don’t watch dark movies. I don’t watch historical dramas.  I don’t read books about death, oppression, abuse, pain, divorce… take your pick.  I try really hard to avoid feeling sad.   I feel like there is enough sad in the world that I don’t need to seek it out in my recreational entertainment.  When I read or watch a movie I want to escape; I do it to feel better.   For the record, I understand the value of these books and movies, and respect people who enjoy them, but I do not.

I do, however, have a very depressing guilty pleasure in the tv show Grey’s Anatomy.  I just can’t stop myself.  I have sworn it off several times – the most recent being Sandra Oh’s departure (Christina Yang might be my favorite fictional character ever written), but week after week I tune in, and ball my eyes out. 

This morning at the gym was no exception.  On last night’s episode a barrage of depressing happenings, one after another, and I was balling like a stifled baby on the elliptical.  It should be mentioned here that I work out from 5:30-6:30 in the morning.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen other women in the gym at that time. 

One of the things I miss about my time in Florida is my gym.  It was huge and awesome – had killer classes, a ton of machines and new equipment.  It also featured a cinema room.   The cinema room was a huge movie theatre with treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes and stair machines.  The gym would play a movie on repeat for 24 hours and swap it out the next day.  It was awesome.  I once ran for almost 3 hours because I hadn’t seen Avatar in the theatres and wanted to stay til the end.   For the most part they played action or comedies – occasionally they’d show a horror movie, and one day (just once) they showed The Notebook.  No fewer than five dudes walked into the room, realized what was on the screen and turned around and walked out.  There was a woman in there with me that day and she ended up moving to the machine next to mine because, as she said “if we’re both gonna be crying, we might as well be near each other”.  I couldn’t agree more, lady. 

This morning while I wept with April Kepner as she held her dying baby in her arms, I did what I could to keep from audibly sobbing.  I am not a perfect person though and I definitely made the man grunt walking on the stair machine behind me very uncomfortable.  However, if I’m gonna cry while watching a sad show I’d rather do it working out than while laying on the couch.  There’s something so cleansing about it.  Work out the toxins and weep out the sad.  Not a bad way to start a Friday.