I don’t hate the winter the way most of y’all do as I figured out how to shut up, strip the ego of any kind of fashion sense, and just ride it like a stallion.  I like the hermit lifestyle but sometimes I need to get out so I go to the gym and get on top of those whirlpool jets just to remind myself I am still alive.

The other day in my gym locker bay, these two women were talking and one was saying how she hated that her husband made them go south (Fabulous Turks and Caicos!) in January because when you get back here (Frozen Turds and Caca!) it’s so depressing and you have to go through major adjustment to acclimate back to the shite weather.  I got what she was saying, I have been on a tropical winter holiday or two and know the misery of which she speaks. You might as well just stick it out all winter and go away in April to get a head start on sun damage.  That is what you call smart hockey.

This other woman, however, was not having any of it and she started shrieking how she hated being cold and what an ingrate this other woman was, “I’m always so cold! Even in the summer I’m cold!  You should be happy to be able to go away!  First world problems, must be nice!”  And all the while she’s sashaying around the locker room stark naked, you can tell some kind tension is building up inside her because all two ounces of random flesh on her bony body is shivering in fear as she slaps on some body moisturizer that smells like the bottom an old purse where some hand lotion had leaked and then some spearmint gum got marinated.  And mens, don’t get excited about the visual of a screaming naked woman because the fluorescent lighting in the locker room made this woman look like Gollum with a blond bob.

But the rest of look like Sirens, so keep up the fantasy.

Meow.  That’s me, getting my hackles up.  Mostly I try and practise my Buddhist-ish dogma of modern living which is to let things go, don’t get attached, blah blah, but I am only a human with surging natural lady hormones that make me bitch with the best of them.

First world problems? I’m getting really tired of people not being able to voice their complaints about how they hate the interior colour of their Lexus without having their heads blown off by the mighty gale of farting whitey righteousness.  When was the last time you bought a goat over the internet for a village in Africa?  Shut up and do it here and let the rest of us use all the discontinued pennies to tile our powder rooms in copper splendour.

Mostly I don’t have time for that certain type of skinny bitch that is constantly complaining in a little girl voice: “I’m so cold!”  Because she wants you to say,”You’re so skinnaaaaay, girlfriend! Eat something!” To which she will respond: “Oh, I eat so much!  I just have a really high metabolism!”  Oh right. If her metabolism was so high, she would be hot, not cold. Hypothermic Hanna is that type of woman we all know, when it is the middle of July and it is one of those nights where you can’t sit inside and everyone in the neighbourhood is out on their porch steps drinking beer out of cans, she is huddled on an uphostered lawn chair drinking a glass of Chardonnay wearing some fat woman’s fat husband’s hoodie that she borrowed and she is just “swimming in it!” It is just “so huge!”  Tee hee!

And the menfolk lap this sort of behaviour up, quivering Chihuahua women make them feel mighty and masculine.  And it’s our own fault because we are constantly pointing out so-called fat asses on normal women. We made the skinny ideal happen, not them. We started buying fat reducing cream from a snake oil salesman who disguised himself as a doctor and coined the term “cellulite.”  There’s no such thing, cellulite is just textured fat that you can see on the skin! It’s got a fancy name because the guy was a Frenchman and they have to put an ostentatious spin on everything. They eat snails and other garden garbage.

If we didn’t become so obsessed about we’d save ourselves a lot of money and grief. If cellulite wasn’t a thing we had to point out to men to sabotage other women, they would never have noticed! If we had kept quiet, they’d be all like getting their dicks into the Rubenesque folds of fat flesh like they did back in the olden times and we all could have had our cake AND wieners. Science has proven men like a fatty!

The good news is that men can be brainwashed into believing anything is hot, it’s all about implementing an elaborate reward system involving basic culinary skills and all kinds ego stroking.  And blow jobs.  The bad news is that it’s probably going to more work than it’s worth to train an entire society of men so it might be just easier just to let Victoria’s Secret rule the world.  Sometimes we women are own worst enemies and my awareness of this does not stop me from having an irrational hate-on for the locker bitch who is just a victim of the vicious cycle that has evolved into modern Photoshop society.

Anyway, I don’t even know this woman’s name but I have seen her around for years.  She *bugs* me.  I have seen her a) wear one of those Canada Goose parkas in May b) run on the treadmill for a solid hour every day for past two years c) order a salad and a Perrier on half price wing night at one of those Firkin places downtown last fall.  It was one those random sightings of someone you know from the gym but they might not recognize you because you are usually naked with a towel turban on your head.  Of course she didn’t acknowledge me because her complete attention was on her salad, she was busy picking out walnuts and hiding the goat cheese under the napkin.  Meanwhile her husband, who was eating wings AND sweet potato fries while washing it all down with a pint like a normal person, was ignoring her because he was too busy texting on his Blackberry. Probably with some other woman who has visible cellulite, the forbidden fruit! Yes, that’s the spin we need to put on it!  Sexy, fleshy lumps, and bumps, rock it!

Back to the situation in the locker room, the Turks and Caicos woman was taken aback and started apologizing, “Oh didn’t mean to sound like a Real Housewife, just saying how tough it is to get back to this weather.”  I don’t know this woman personally either, but I know that she has three young kids, one of them she adopted from Mexico! She is saint! And she also drives a hybrid.

Hypothermic Hanna hissed something inaudible, Turks hissed back, and before you knew it:  CAT FIGHT!  Well that seemed to escalate quickly, there must have been a more interesting background story with these two but I didn’t know what it was, I was just grateful (and beyond thrilled! me likey the drama, it’s like real-life HBO) to be a witness and not a participant.  And no, they didn’t actually physically brawl but there were some harsh words and some locker door slamming.  One of those plastic puffy balls for exfoliating was thrown and hit Turks in the face and that’s about when it came to an end.  In the end, Turks held her own with much dignity, but surprisingly, I had a newfound respect for Hypothermic Hanna and her spectacular unbridled meltdown.  You know, you never know what path a person has been on, maybe she is crazy for a good reason.

So after I got dressed (really quickly, I was still wet in fact), Turks had taken off, I turned to Hypothermic Hanna who was slumped on a stool, still naked and rubbing herself with cream (Gollum! Stick with the proper visual, I am still a bitch after all), “I love the smell of your moisturizer, what is it?”

And she looked up actually seemed to be surprised that I was even there.

“Oh, it’s Aveda, it’s essential oils, it’s supposed to be calming.  I’m so sorry for that outburst.  She’s my sister, she makes me crazy. Her fucking perfect life, with her fucking perfect husband, and her fucking perfect kids in their fucking perfect house.”

Oh!  Well that all makes sense now!  Heavy emphasis on the f-bombs, bitter and beaten down, she is obviously the Fredo of the family!  The light was cast, and that was when I took her under my soft downy wing and after she got dressed, we went upstairs and had a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio (yes, the gym has a bar, why have you not joined?) and she told me all about her childhood and how her sister stole all the thunder and got all the good Barbies and she just had a one Midge whose hair she cut off in a rage.  Surprise.

It turns out her name is Kathleen, but when they were little, her sister couldn’t pronounce it so they called her Kat and it stuck. LOL.