I am thinking about getting a personal trainer. I've had them before and liked having the discipline of someone standing over me making me do another 5 crunches before I broke down and cried.

The problems I had with my earlier trainers were that they were very young; graduate students in fact, and I was working out at the University gym where I (the competitive creature that I am) started to try to match or outdo the people next to me. This resulted in some major surgery to my shoulder after I got a little too butch.
Now I can identify between pain as in oooh, muscle is overworked and pain as in, hmmm, that's a torn rotator cuff. Trust me when I say that isn't a lesson you want to learn first hand.

I've since changed my ways when it comes to gyms. I look for a gym that has women who wear matching outfits and makeup. I know that they aren't going to be doing anything that will cause me to compete to self injury. I won't go under the knife to look like they do. I won't starve myself to be as stringy-thin. It's safe for me there.

So today I interviewed a potential personal trainer. I like her. She's lean, but not stringy. She's not too young, and although blonde, it isn't bleached blonde and in a pony tail. She's from the hood and understands my world view. I told her I want to get leaner, fitter, more flexible and able to ride my bike twenty miles without collapsing.

She talked about women's bodies and their changing needs as they age. I wasn't even offended, because it was coming from a woman of a certain age her own self. What do you think? Keep on at my current gym, or go for the whip and chair of a personal trainer?

I thought it was going to be "Crazy Random Drunk Old Man On the Train" day. There were two different ones between home and the hospital. One sat near me, but left at the next stop, and the other got on a few stops later and plunked down next to another woman and proceeded to chat her up. I don't know how that happened. Most of the time, that's my lot in life. Crazy random guy? They'll sit next to me and fall in love.

The most amazing thing happened when I got off the train, though. I had someone thank me for holding the elevator door for them. Then, in the office elevator, another guy held the door for me. And was polite about it. And talked to me. I was two and two on the day at that point, and held my breath, waiting for the other shoe.

Another random crazy guy? No. The next elevator ride included yet another polite man who held the door and said hello.

I must be dreaming.

But I'm not. The new office? No windows? No air conditioning, either. At least, not yet. I'm dying in here. But I have my diploma up, some of my awards, and a piece done especially for me by the RLA.

The only person to comment on my reorganization was a secretary who seems to be suffering under the delusion that she outranks me, and/or that I actually care that she's giving me the nose in the air, sniffy puss-face.

"You were told not to get rid of the other desk."
"No, I was told not to cost the hospital any money getting rid of the other desk. And I didn't. I also didn't get rid of the desk, I merely reconfigured all of the pieces."

Neener neener neener.

Time to pretend to do some real work.

Okiedokie. I'm done weeping and rending my clothing. Well, I'm not, but it doesn't make for such a good read. Having come out of the shock and awe sadness of the past weekend, I am beginning to notice things like appallingly bad manners, bad style sense and stupidity disguised as management. Those are three separate things, although I do tend to notice a little bit of overlap now and then.
Bad Manners

For the last time, people: If you are standing in an elevator, and a total stranger is heading towards you, making eye contact all the way, the polite thing, the nice thing, the courteous and right thing to do is to hold the fucking door, not press the close door button. Not stand there next to the door or the door open button and let the door shut. What, it'll break your arm to hold a door? You might get to the next floor a nanosecond later than otherwise? Who cares? Hold the fucking door. It won't kill you to be polite. I, on the other hand, may cause your head to spontaneously combust through the sheer force of my will if you let that door close on me one more time.

And this is for the woman in the white lab coat at the Metrorail this morning: Hey! The people on the inside get off or out, then the people on the outside (that would have been you) get in. You don't strong arm your way into an elevator first, preventing the occupants from exiting. In any culture, that's just bad manners.

Bad Style Sense

Hey, Fab Five, do me a favor and take a minute to talk about the importance of clean, shiny shoes. You've taught men how to shave and open a bottle of wine, how about shining their shoes? Guy in cheap aftershave and the Armani suit sitting next to me on the train? It was all working (well, except for the cheap scent) but the shoes were scuffed and shineless. The heels were probably worn down, too. I didn't look. Men, (and women) shine your shoes. 'Nuff said.

Stupidity Disguised

The office move is back on. I am assigned a single office, but with two full desks in it. Not that there's another person going to sit at it, but the director who caved in to the Toxic Manager doesn't want to pay to have the furniture moved. The reason I have two desks and one person is because when the director split the rooms and told us all to play nice, the Boy Wonder and I were going to work in the same office. But Boy Wonder decided to be Boy Diva and copped an attitude, and moved down the hall to another set of offices (away from the rest of the team) where he could have his own space. My manager let him do it. The director let him do it. O.K. He has a private office now, and so do I, so could we get the extra desk out of my space and let me arrange the furniture so that I am not sitting in either the doorway or with my back to the door?

And the answer is: "No." I said, "well, that doesn't seem too equitable (grown-up, corporate speak for "That's not fair!") for everyone else to get what they want, when they want it, despite the repercussions to other team members, but I can't have a desk moved out." Too bad. The director refused the request.

So I did the only thing I could. I went to the new office and proceeded to draw a blueprint of how I want the furniture laid out and then told all the other workers in the three groups that all extra pieces of furniture are available to the first taker, but they have to move it themselves.

As all of us corporate drones know, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission.

And so ends another episode of WWRanting.

Bite me.

Thank you for your kind wishes and e-hugs. It helps.

Fafhrd passed easily into the next life, and I held him until he was gone. The girls at the vets office cried, too and even the vet got all sniffly. The RLA stayed with us, and kept sticking tissues under my nose.

I think I'm going to get an addition to the tattoo of an angel cat that I have on my shoulder. An orange-tipped star, under the cat. Small. Tasteful.

In other news, the weather here is magnificent. Limpid. Tropical. Ideal. And also, outside, where I am not.

But spring training has started, and I ask you, what else is needed for all to be right with the world?

Fafhrd is my flame-point siamese. He used to be so fat, I called him a siamoose. Now he is skin and bones. We have had a great weekend together. In twenty minutes, I will take him to the vet for his final visit. My vet will let me hold him as we open the door to the always-sunny meadow, where the mice are fat and slow.

This sucks. And the alternative sucks worse.

Thanks for listening.

I was nine or ten when my father's mother died. I remember that he was upset because he'd taken her a bathrobe to the hospital, and what ever color he'd taken, she'd preferred another. He was terribly upset because he felt that he should have known that she would have liked pink more than blue. Or blue more than pink. Whatever.

I think of that often, these days.

This morning I started out at the vet's trying to negotiate when we would put down my cat. Is it too soon? Is it too late? Is he suffering? Is there more I can do? My cat and my father are both dying of leukemia. What I would do for my cat the government will not let me do for my father.

I told my dad about the cat, and he said, don't let it suffer. I know what suffering is.

I ended my day with a phone call from my cousin, telling me that my father needs another transfusion, but refused it because it might have kept him from being home when my mother came back from her day of cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is the politically correct term for what you do with someone suffering from end-stage Alzheimer's Disease. It means that she spends her days doing flash cards so that she can remember her name, remember what two plus two is.

Years ago I saw a cartoon that I thought summed up my life. It was a solitary person sitting in an auditorium under a banner that said "Adult Children of Normal Parents." My brother, the therapist, doesn't agree. He says that what ever you grow up with is normal, even if it's not.

But he's wrong. They were normal. They loved us. They cared for us. They cared for their parents. We belonged to a country club and took summer vacations to a family home. They worked. Our mother cooked meals. Our father mowed the lawn. We were the archetypical 1950s family living in a small town. I grew up -- we grew up, in a Norman Rockwell painting. That is, if Norman Rockwell had painted Cisley, Alaska.

A couple of years ago I offered to bake a cake for my dad for his birthday. I asked him what his favorite cake was. He couldn't tell me. This is a man who has lived his entire life in the service of family. He hadn't a clue what his favorite was. I made an old-fashioned coconut cake. He loved it.

His birthday is coming around again. I have no idea what cake I'll bake for him this year. I have no doubt, however, that whatever comes out of my kitchen will be, for that day, his favorite.

There are no words to tell him how much I love him. There is no end to the pain I feel. Why don't they tell you how hard it is to lose a parent? Why don't they tell you that there is a hole that will never be filled?

I think because if we knew, none of us could go on. And yet, we must. I pour through my book of Bartlett's Quotations, looking for the verses I'll read at their funerals. For my mother, I have chosen Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." Do you know it? It's required reading in almost every English Lit class.

"Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

But for my father, I need something else. Something that will make clear what he is/was to me. For my father, I have chosen W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues."

"Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good."