Aya

I write to you tonight as I head towards a cabin on a Northern lake.  I am sharing this cake with you, my brilliant blog friends, and thank you for being so goddamn cool!

My siblings and I celebrate my birthday tomorrow.  I am breathing cool, clear air and ignoring my brother’s complaints about the smells of nature.  This is a picture of the lake we hope to enjoy over the next few days.

You dream but you don’t believe that it would happen for you. Not like it does for people in films, anyway. And when it does, you wonder what good fortunes you’ve exhausted but don’t really care. You’re here.

Tickets, he mumbles, after shooting us a dirty look. I jump up, he crouches down, they were here just a minute ago. Pockets turned inside out, backpacks sifted through. We can feel his hot breath on our necks.

I swear we paid the fare, I say, where the hell are they?

I’m so nervous, I begin to giggle. Hysterical, hiccupy giggles. We’re in the middle of nowhere on a train to New York.

He grimaces but can’t stop himself and starts to laugh too. Beads of sweat and some unintelligible apologies, some promises to call the credit card company for proof, we’re just stumped. Twenty two minutes later, we’re on a platform off the train and more than 2 hours away from our destination. Well, you know about the lemons that the world gives you and what you’re supposed to do with them. You fling them at the nearest train official.

We ran through the station, our backpacks swinging wildly. We hear shouts and hey hey hey from the guy to whom we’ve been handed.

Our next step was a neighbourhood Macy’s. My feet are frozen and his nose is red. We need warmth. So many lights, sounds and cotton (supposed to be snow) on the gigantic Christmas display.

We look at each other. Look at the display. We look at each other again.

We jump into the display and become tangled in the decoration. He throws a golden star at me. I throw baby Jesus at him. He is laughing so hard his asthma acts up. He is on the ground, struggling to breathe. This is my opportunity, I grab the biggest paper gnome and drop it squarely on his back. I love him but I gotta win one of these fights one of these days.

I raise my arms, 1 round, 1 TKO. We hear shouts and hey hey hey from a fat woman in a Santa suit. Time to bolt again. It’s now 3 a.m. and we have only 18 dollars for food after we pay for bus tickets. This has to last for at least 4 meals.

More later…

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My surprise dinner guest was this wonderful love from the recent past with whom I’ve had many an adventurous midnight run. So many memories.

We drove about 1.5 hrs to get to my favourite dance club after eating.  What I love most about this club is that they’re strict with enforcing the over 21 rule.  They also feature retro music from the ice age like the 70s and 80s along with the latest hippity hoppity tunes.  The retro tracks repel the 16 to 19 crowd sneaking in with fake IDs.  All memories of my afternoon dry heaving in the open seas (not 3 meters away from the dock) were gone in a flash.

We danced nonstop for hours.  The DJ got all my songs right. I gather all the bitching I do Friday nights about the demise of hip hop and soul is not falling on deaf ears.  They got my newer Mario and Ne-Yo tracks. I love Because of You.   I love Ne-Yo.  I don’t care if he’s a child, I will rob the cradle if I want to.

Like with Saturday clubbing, I was expecting (and got) the usual.  College kids who can’t hold their liquor yet imbibe, the odd black girl with a jurisdiction-wide ass rubbing up on everyone within a 2 meter radius and the usual suspects of seizing White dancers.  Didn’t care! I was a very happy partyer.  It’s been weeks since I had an evening of spectacular music and months since I was out with a group of friends, just kicking back.

JD is a very good friend since college and was the man holding a gun to the DJ’s head to play ALL of my favourites.  A thousand kisses and thank you, babe.  Some took some pretty cruel pics of him breaking (he can’t break) and I promised him that I will burn them all.  After I post on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and my company’s mailing list. Just kidding!

Ella and Yasmin were the awesome girls putting together all the arrangements, including busting some knees to coordinate the gift-giving (including doing the Aya will throw this out OR get 2 colours of that).

Thankfully, there were no presentations from a projector featuring moi either picking my nose at 3 or beating my younger brother half to death.  I’ve been to gatherings where friends collected some of those pics but I am of the opinion to leave that mess to family, they don’t respect you anyway.

We did have a wonderful toast and a round table reminiscing session on Tell us a time Aya verbally assaulted a service worker and accused them of being victims of today’s public school system.  Such assholes.  But I love them.  I mean it.

P.S. I was going to write about the best surprise of the evening and the dinner we had but I’m beginning to see doubles and if I stay awake longer than this, will get up, raid the fridge and hate myself in the morning. In 3 hours that is.  Will definitely write in a couple of days.

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The reference to 1999 in my previous post is an ode to Prince’s 1999 song (lyrics below). The year itself was a heady mix of travel and partying. Will post some other time about it.

Cuz they say 2000 zero zero party over, oops, out of time!

So 2night I’m gonna party like it’s 1999!

Okay so I partied on the weekend.

I had this plan to grab some coffee Friday night with a few friends then run home and wash my hair. That would have been the case had I not vegged in front of the TV afterwards with no energy to grab some ice cream from the fridge. I felt bone tired, groggy, barely hanging on to consciousness. WTF?

At 3.00 a.m., I woke up for no reason at all. Apparently I was too tired to even stay asleep. Called my brother on the West coast which is about 3 hours behind and managed to fall asleep again.

Saturday was a great deal better although weather wasn’t expected to play nice. Some rain showers and thunder were expected in the evening so a bunch of phone calls and the party was moved up from 6 to 4.

It was absolutely beautiful on deck. Cloudy and a bit dark, sure, but something about the water helps me calm down. I wanted to stay there forever.

Wasn’t so thrilled when the boat started moving. You see, when I said that I have a little seasickness issue, I was being modest. The moment the anchor was pulled in, the gentle winds became furious and had the boat tossing from side to side. We had a total of 67 minutes on a boat we had intended to party on till the wee hours of the night.

Did I spend those 67 minutes catching up with friends, sampling the shrimp salad and listening to Earth, Wind and Fire against my will? Noooooooo. There is no profanity profane enough to express my disappointment.

I spent the whole frickin’ time bent over a bucket, a cooler, a jug, anything with some depth. A good friend who is a newly minted doctor offers me some Xanax as he giggles. Before I could say fuck o–, I am heaving again.

The storm that came 1 hour after we got on the boat saved me from a few more hours of staring at the bottom of a pail while friends hovered around offering their prescribed (and illicit) drugs to help calm my angry stomach. Fucking junkies. I love ‘em but why a goddamn boat?

That was the worst part, things got so much better since we moved the party to my favourite soul hangout downtown. A beautiful dinner with a surprise invitee ended the very late night.

Will write more soon.

Update: So I finally found a dress for tomorrow, YAY. It is long, a little high-waist (for the 70s feel, ya’ know) and got all kinds of yummy accessories.

Love all your suggestions and love YOU. Lots of smoochy kisses _________________________________________________________________

I don’t care for boat parties but going to one this weekend. A friend is using my upcoming birthday as an early excuse to wear 70s dresses and silly hats, and listen to Earth, Wind and Fire.

Despite hating theme silliness, I look forward to a distracting and loud weekend. My work project is going to shit and I am practically the last woman standing with this client. Sigh.

I look back at my resolution to scale back work stress and have a realistic exit plan but I’ve just dug in deeper.

Anywho, folks, any ideas for an outfit????

I’m thinking something a little simple like this (a plain T and cargo pants):

Or more thematic like (not necessarily knit):

Guys and gals, it’s time to get off your fat asses (if you’re skinny, then your saggy asses)

and toughen your bodies. I’ve completely plateaued in weight loss and endurance but things are picking up again thanks to a new regimen.

Instead of knocking people down with your love handles or jiggling up and down at the beach, try doing a mix of exercises that you don’t need the gym or a trainer to do. Here’s the low-down: you do 6 different exercises with 20-30 second breaks, 6 complete rounds with 2 minutes of break between each round .

An example would be:

1. Running in place
2. Upper-cut jabs
3. Lunges.
4. Abdominal crunch
5. Push-ups
6. Sit-ups

You do 20 repetitions (reps) of number 1, take a 30 second break, another 20 reps of number 2, 30 second break, and so on.

When you’ve done all 6, take a 2 minute break, sip some water if you have to, fall unconscious if you’re completely out of shape, but begin at number 1 again and repeat this cycle 5 more times. Capisce?

To learn proper form for these (and any) exercises, google some sports sites and find out. If you’re completely out of shape and the only exercise you do is walking to the copying machine at work, take it easy.

Let’s GET off of our FAT asses. I mean that in the nicest way.

Need motivation?? I know I do.

These images are courtesy of Nike ads. May their models be stricken with flab and low metabolism .