Month: April 2011

Avid Bruxist Seeks Personal Shopper

I hate clothes shopping. I mean it—I loathe it. I despise it. Just thinking about it makes me put a hand to my forehead and stagger to my fainting couch. And it’s for one reason, and one reason only. Not really. It’s for every reason, but for one huge, major reason.

Pants.

Shirts, I can buy. I don’t love doing it, but it’s one of those chores that just makes life a little easier in the long run. Thinking about all the no-shirt-no-service establishments to which I’m given entrée makes buying shirts tolerable.

Shoes, fine. I have a hierarchy when it comes to shoes: comfort > cost > cuteness. I’ll pay a lot of money for a comfortable pair of shoes. Whether my feet look cute in them is the least important part of the formula. I dig clogs, and I dig flip-flops. You will never find me out on a Friday night in FMPs. Maybe if I lost half my body weight, but would you want to walk around with 170 pounds of pressure funneled into your smooshed-up toes? I thought not. Whatever, shoe shopping is not the problem.

Dresses are all right. I mean, how often do I have to buy a dress? And I can actually look cute in a dress…I just tried to find photographic evidence, but the only full-body shot I could come up with was this:

What am I doing, you ask? I was trying to do this adorable pose my friend Cat does, in which she indeed looks like a cat. I look less like a cat, and more like a dainty, flirtacious hippo.

You’ll have to take my word for it, I can look really cute in a dress. (Sidenote: that flowery, flowy dress up there, I bought that in, like, ’99. No shit. Wore it to my friend Dan’s wedding in October of last year. Probably gonna wear it to your wedding when you invite me.)

Of course, with dresses there’s the chub-rub issue. Chubby girls require

these

or

this

to avoid shredding the insides of their thighs when they walk. But again, how often do I wear a dress? I’m gonna go with twice a year. An average of two people I know get married every year.

Which brings me to pants. First of all, finding pants that fit my ghetto ass requires a tenacity usually found only in the honey badger. Second, remember the chub-rub? Well, that continues with pants, but fortunately, or un-, there’s fabric in between the frictional bodies. Fortunately, because there’s no angry rash. Unfortunately, because I will abrade the living shit out of the inner-thigh part of a pair of jeans. Seriously, if you were stranded on a desert island, you wouldn’t need matches or even two sticks to rub together. All you’d need is me, a pair of size-14 corduroys, and an up-tempo song on your iPod. I would start walking and blaze that motherfucker up.

Now about two years ago, I found a pair of jeans at Marshall’s—Donna Karan jeans (she’s a designer!)—and they fit, and even the social worker at my old school (female, straight, sort of uptight) said, “Wow, Amy, those jeans make your bottom look so cute!” I loved those jeans from the moment I bought them.

Well

shit.

Yep, that’s my fingers sticking through the gaping hole in my DKNYs. But I wasn’t done with those pantaloons yet. Who knew when the next time was that I’d find such a prize. I decided to patch that hole. What could it take? A little fabric, some thread, a little elbow grease.

I am a master seamstress.

Fuck. I have to go buy some pants.

Open WOD #2

On Saturday, whether you were registered for the CrossFit Games or not, you did Open WOD #2, which was:

15-minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of:

  • 9 dead-lifts (155 lbs. for men, 100 for women)
  • 12 hand-release push-ups (hand release at the bottom, to make sure your chest hits the floor, I guess)
  • 15 box jumps (24 in. for men, 20 for women)

I dead-lifted the 100 lbs. That part was easy. I’m built like a beast of burden, so lifts that are all legs, back, and haunches—no big whoop.

But I’m not gonna lie, after the first handful, I was all wormy on those push-ups.

The box jumps—you know, I wanted to do the WOD as prescribed, and I’ve jumped a twenty-five-inch box before even. But box jumps are actually pretty dangerous. If you’re doing 15 every round, and you’re tired, and you catch a toe on the edge, it could mean a whole lot of orthodontic work. I’m 35 and single. I figured a full set of dentures probably wouldn’t increase my odds.

So I jumped a 17″ box.

I ended up with six rounds, plus six dead-lifts. The bad-asses were getting eight and nine rounds (Rx, of course).

But there’s this one dude. He’s not a big dude. He’s a relatively small dude, in fact. Probably weighs 140 pounds. Dude did ELEVEN rounds and change.

I was counting and recording his rounds for him, and I really had to concentrate because I found myself just wanting to watch him move. He was all efficiency and strength and power and quickness.

I was totally inspired.