Last weekend I was thinking that it’s time to break up with my couch, maybe not completely, but like Ross and Rachel did on “Friends” with an “understanding” and just “take a break.” I think I need to be on my own for a while and like see other furniture, but just casually for now. Like a park bench. Or a bar stool! Hey, ho, how’s this for smart modern living? A stool in one of those swim up bars in a pool in those all-inclusive resorts! Wait, maybe not. I’ve been to one of those once, and half naked, sunburnt, flabby, drunk, loud, freely urinating middle aged swingers groping each other is not the hot Bruce Weber pool party of my dreams. Who wants to watch Hulk Hogan’s sex tape? Not moi. So forget the pool stool, I need to sit somewhere else.

A horse. I just need to sit on top of a horse.

Apparently it turned to Spring on Sunday and my weekend was a bust. I did two gross things couchbound  that I’m not proud of: First, I hate watched the entire Will Arnett series “Flaked” on Netflix. Here is a synopsis: Will Arnett is a recovering alcoholic in Venice Beach who makes stools. Makes stools. For a living. Uh huh. On his own sweet time, he runs a sparse furniture shop with random junk in it but with one stool in the back. You never actually see him make a stool and I don’t think he even touched the one stool in any of the episodes. Is stool a metaphor for shit? I don’t know. He’s hardly even in the store and he mostly just rides a bicycle around the hood! He’s bored and has existential middle aged angst and he sneaks booze, so what. Oh! and he bangs hot babes in their early twenties. Yeah, he’s cute in those J Crew shorts but that bike, man, sorry, this isn’t Portland. The type of girls he gets work in trendy restaurants and wear outfits of see-through scraps and held up with little strings. These are the type of girls who come from hick towns in the midwest with their cow milking skills on point and really strong, hungry hand game, who, like generations of young hoes before them, are inspired by the legend of Lana Turner getting discovered in Schwabs Deli. And they know “getting discovered” is a thing that involves deep throating old, ugly dudes, but ones who drive luxury cars and can buy them shit. But no, he happens to get the girls who don’t care and love him for HIM, all two cents and two wheels. Ugh. I guess that is plausible because male privilege extends to the poor but it’s INFURIATING. Also! By Will Arnett’s estimation of female characterization, women over the ripe old age of say, 35, are problematically portrayed as a hardened, bitchy, turned lesbian ex-wife by Heather Graham. Yes, ex-wives are always turning into lesbians and their partners are always evil antagonists and if they had moustaches, they would be twirling them. And then the other old bitch in the show is Kirsty Alley, as a batshit crazy mom (but awesome) of his second banana sidekick roommate who he has issues with because of he perceives her free-wheeling sexuality as traumatizing. Fuck that shit. Grow up, dude.

I really cannot believe Will Arnett is Canadian. I’m so very disappointed as I DID love Arrested Development but I think I really hate him now and no, I didn’t watch Bojangle Horsetwat, I can’t possibly watch everything and I tried but I didn’t get it, whatevs. He’s dead to me.

Anyway, the second gross thing I did this spring weekend on my couch raft was that I made this disgusting cocktail out of beer and vodka. So, earlier in the week, Bob randomly brought over some Steigl tall boys that he “took” from his girlfriend. At first I was excited because he stole beer for lil ol’ me? The implications were endless: Were they some kind of symbolic offering? As in some kind of Robin Hood thing, like taking from the bitch to give to the whore? But then I saw they were “grapefruit beer” wtf? Basically shite wheat beer mixed with grapefruit juice in a can that no sane adult would drink or want cluttering their fridge. I really don’t understand society sometimes. Personally, if I’m going to drink a calorie, I need a buzz, and this shit has 2.5 % alcohol which means I may as well drink a pie. Why would I do that? And by the way, this is the idiocy of smoothies that y’all drink in the morning thinking it’s a good healthy thing but guess what? If you actually ate all that bulky sugary fruit and crap, you’d only be able to ingest half what you sucked back in a straw, and without all the chewing, tongue twirling, solid mass swallowing, you’re missing a crucial step for complete appetite satiety. When you gulp down things that have been puréed even if it was once solid, it’s way easier to over-consume, your body doesn’t think it ate, it thinks it just drank, which is like what babies on a tit and old people do with Ensure. Drinking should only be for water, coffee, or booze. So anyway, with this Steigl crap, I used it as a mix for vodka, drank myself sober while I watched that fucking Will Arnett show and got so riled, I actually showered afterwards. And now I’m done. Fuck you, couch. (But I’ll call you later, and we’ll hang when “Orange is the New Black” comes out).

werkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerkwerk……. Rihanna and Drake lol, that song tho.

Okay, so yeah, so rather than sit, or let’s face it, lay on couch, it’s time to hit the gym and I’ve been thinking a lot about my butt lately because why not transfer a middle-aged lady existential crisis into a body part? My ass, in yoga pants, is not bad but could be bubblier. And really, I want it to be big and sloppy to match the boobs but I’m not built that way.  Out of the yoga pants, disaster! Rash city, wtf. I didn’t even know about it until I took a belfie a couple of weeks ago and had to put it on extreme filter settings before it looked passable. I should never have sent it. Oy, oh well.

Go check yours now, I’ll wait. If you have ass-ne, I have the cure along with the million dollar idea that someone should market a butt skincare regime specifically for this problem. But here’s what for now: Go to the acne section of the drugstore, find something with salicylic acid and get something to exfoliate with like those gloves and wash your ass cheeks with that and then put cream on it. It seems to be working for me but zits can be tricky I know, you think you’ve got them beat and then they come back somewhere else. Thirty years later, lol.

I have been going to the same gym for almost twenty years and I’ve done it all, I tell you. I had an epiphany a couple of months ago. I have done personal training, step, spin, bootcamp, yoga, tennis, and fuck all that shit, I’m tired of other people telling me what to do. I need agency when it comes to my body. I google, I read the magazines, and I’ve seen the same people for twenty years and I’ve got case studies of all types to figure out what my own ass needs.

Recently, the gym underwent a huge renovation where everything  went from dark crannies, where people accidentally on purpose brushed into each other, to a big open concept warehouse-like setting where people couldn’t cheat anymore. At first I was, like, ugh this is awful, I can see clearly now and it is not pretty. You walk in and there’s a big hallway in the middle, on the right is all the cardio machines, and to the left are all the weights. In very back is a golf station taking up a third of the real estate so that 4 white men could be happy, the dance studio which has a serious feng shui problem with its strange hanging ropes, and the cycle studio which I think I might be done with because of my recent epiphany.

So when I look at everything in the bright light of the Best Buy, this is what I see: People who spend all their time on the cardio machines believing that they are burning fat are on a 45-minute elliptical ride to Delusionville. Cardio fatties, the whole lot of them. Even the ones on the treadmill who are not fat but sinewy, which is way worse, are the embodiment of misery and joint pain.

All the really hot people in the gym are to the left in the weight area. Case study: There’s a dude that I’ve seen for two decades who spends all his time in the weight, hoisting heavy weights, then sitting around, he never really breaks a sweat, he practically does his workouts in street clothes. He’s in his forties now but he looks exactly the same as he did in his twenties. His shoulders broad, his abs are steel, his butt could recite poetry, prolly. He’s built like Zeus. Sometimes he goes on a bike, but I think it’s just because he’s lonely and wants to watch tv. I never want to talk to him because I don’t want to know his story. It’s probably tragically boring.

In January, I got my favourite trainer to show me all the new equipment. He’s so cute and easy to talk to, I thought he was gay because he knew all the Kardashians in proper birth order but turns out he is just married. “I just want to keep the flies off the pie, maintain the junk placement and the solid parts for the next phase of my life” was my fitness goal, which he found delightfully refreshing as people are too fucking focussed on some ideal they will never be. His words. Listen to your body and what it wants to do when it’s not laying on the couch. Mine is mighty and bodacious and it needs to heave, push, pull, slam heavy shit while jiggling somewhat.

What about cardio? You ask incredulously, clutching your FitBit. Well guess what, if I do it fast, without resting and finger fucking my phone like my life is important (I leave it in the locker), I  get my heart rate up and break a sweat (I am not Zeus). I am also not one of those delicate ladies in Lululemon who think a 5 pound weight is going to cut it. And I strongly suspect that spinning is what gave a butt rash.

Also! Here’s an unpopular opinion: Yoga is bullshit, it actually feeds my anxiety, I don’t care what anyone says about that. Fuck being centred and all calm, using your own body weight for resistance, and wringing yourself out like a washcloth.  That makes no sense to me unless you’re in prison. I need to be scattered and looking around the room at other people, trying to make eye contact while grunting. Because that’s entertainment.