Isn’t that just best worst picture ever? It came up on my Facebook newsfeed a few weeks ago (thanks, T! Luv u!) and I saved it to my computer, I don’t what for, but occasionally I stare at it and feel things. It came from the National Geographic website, it’s a king cobra and a reticulated python in a skirmish of survival. The python squeezes the cobra to death as the cobra chomps into the python a lethal injection of its venom. Well done, nature. If that’s not a metaphor for the political climate on your Facebook newsfeed and its battle of wits in any given comment section, I don’t know what is. Anyway, at first after I got over the initial horror of this spectacle, I then became disgusted the all the litter on the pathway. Humans are the foulest beasts and we should be very afraid of each other.

On that note, I’m back on the blog! I’ve accumulated a sufficient amount of anxiety to fuel the fire that drives me to spread my thoughts out on the internet. How would you measure anxiety? On a Richter scale? Mine is hovering around 3.0 -3.9 where shaking of indoor objects may be visible. I would like something to take ending in “pam” but I just might need to go back to yoga. Haha, don’t worry, I’m not going to do that. For many years, I went to Bikram yoga and sweated and near barfed in a room full of almost naked people forced to look at themselves in the mirror while doing the same fucking series of poses in complete unison and utter silence. Keep your toes in line. Do not breathe through your mouth. You know what, Choudhury?  There’s more than one way to swing a cat. But no, there isn’t apparently, it had to be just so. If I heard them say “squeeze like you’re a Japanese Ham Sandwich” one more time, I was going to implode all my hidden rage, disguised under a thin veil of faux serenity, and scream NAMASTE? NAMA-FUCKING-OUTA-HERE BITCHES. So after 6 years I stopped going and never looked back. I’m looking up on google what is a Japanese ham sandwich and urban dictionary has a whole other meaning for it and it doesn’t involve lettuce and tomato, but may or may not involve mayo.  I really hate yoga, it’s soooooo boring, Meditation shmeditation, like what for? I’m alone with my thoughts all day, I know my inside dialogue so well, it doesn’t scare me anymore and it’s certainly no longer interesting. I need interaction. Even though other people scare me.

So I went back to my gym. Baby steps, my friends. I rolled on a ball for 10 minutes, almost getting hit in the head by a big dude swinging a kettle bell, then I trotted over to the inversion machine and hung like a bat for another two minutes. I’ve been a member for 21 years and joined for the fitness but stayed for the beer. What kind of gym has beer, you ask. Well it’s not just a gym, it’s a racquet club. Oooh, you fancy lady, you say. Not really. It’s a basic facility in the feral section of town where the highway ends in the east end of Toronto. You have to have a four wheel drive to make it through into the parking lot. The people are a motley bunch of old and not so old people. The latest is an influx of families with toddler types. There must have been nothing on tv in 2014-15. Let me tell you, helicopter parenting is alive and well in these parts. The best part of the gym, aside from the beer taps, is the hot tub in the ladies’ change room. Its jets are majestic. Fingers and peen in fluid form. Problems include sometimes it’s out of order, and other times it’s filled with toddlers LEARNING TO SWIM IN IT, and a hovering mom standing in front of the knob that turns the jets on. There’s an actual pool for that sort of thing but no, it’s “too cold.” I used to wait for their precious still water sessions to be over but now I just barge in, flick the switch, fling my towel over the rail, and step in all nekky, swinging tiddies and whatnot. Children don’t scare me as long as they keep their comments to themselves.

When I first joined the gym, I was big into group fitness and coming every day because there was a daycare there for my own toddler situation and I got the Me Time that was scarce back then. Also I always had a gym crush. Gym crushes are healthy in the way in that they get you to the gym and putting forth your best Lululemon camel toe. The golden rule of a gym crush is never EVER talk to a gym crush. You must admire from afar even though your first instinct is to find out his name, what car he drives, where he lives, and zodiac sign. My first gym crush was a dude I aptly named Sweaty Man. He always wore a grey tshirt and blue shorts and he would go on the never ending staircase for a full 45 minutes and I would hang back on some reclining leg machine thingy and watch his tshirt get soaked in sweat. It was like watching paint dry but in reverse and instead of a wall, it was a burly dude who looked kind of like Channing Tatum. By the end of his sesh, he would make a giant puddle on the floor that he would bend over and clean it up with a towel. This was the best part of my day. After he would leave for the iron room, I would go to his machine and climb in his balmy after-aura. I could only last about 10 minutes on that machine but that’s equivalent to climbing 25 flights which more than I would do otherwise. I found out at one point he was a cop, not a beat cop but a special Spiderman type cop who had to scale buildings and things, which was kind of hot, right? The girl at the front desk looked up his membership and found out also he was a Taurus like me. Total deal breaker, two sets of horns makes for an awkward tango. Also he left the gym after a few months, I prolly scared the shit out of him.

Other gym crushes were less pheromonal but they still got me motivated to go and try new things. I even did tennis for a while. The outfits were also super fun but in reality, I hated tennis. I used to play round robins with these horrible wretched women who would hate playing with me because I was a novice. “Can she even see?” I overheard one say in the locker room. Yes, bitch, I can see your old as fuck tits are fake and they’ve hardened into two petrified spherules pointing down to your mid-century C-section scar. I am the venomous snake of animal kingdom. As it turns out, when I went to the optometrist, she told me I have difficulty judging distance which would definitely make me a bad tennis player. So there, cunty tennis ladies. But! I didn’t have a tennis crush per se, I had special Friday afternoon one -on-one stroke tutorials, if you will, with the tennis pro. This lasted some months and then I found out he was dating one of the swimming instructors who was like, half my age, which was cool but awkward. But! That whole experience unleashed the cougar in me and I haven’t looked back. Scroll back to 2015 blog posts if you dare, those were the days, my friend. *sighs, rips open a bag of Cheetos*

So! Have been lately thinking it might be time to settle down. Maybe? I’m not sure how things work. Can a person take this into their own hands or do they have to wait for lightening to strike? I’m looking through my ol’ trusty OkCupid dating site and all the age appropriate menfolk I find interesting live far away. Most of them have those types of profiles where they list in the negative, like the ubiquitous: NO DRAMA. Okay, here’s the thing: if you are trying to sell yourself and write stuff like “no drama” that means you have experienced so much drama that you must include it in your profile. And why have you experienced so much drama? RED FLAG! BECAUSE YOU ARE A MOTHERFUCKING GASLIGHTER! That means in all your relationships, you, sir, have been the one who pokes the sweet baby angel bear and manipulate the situation so she seems like the crazy one. I’ve seen that episode of Grey’s Anatomy with the dude from Glee on it. Swipe left, ladies. My daughter thinks I should make a more serious profile but I’m not even going to bother making it normal because what for? I’m a mermaid and they are the same pool of fish. One guy wrote on his list of wants was “hygiene”, wut?  Like what sewage system have you been deep sea diving in, sir? The internet is one scary place. Also I’ve been listening to a lot of serial killer podcasts and now every middle aged dude’s profile picture looks like Ed Gein’s mug shot. Sinister as fuck.

So that brings me back to the gym. One of my single g-friends thinks the gym is not the place to meet men which I vehemently disagree. Take those buds out of your ears, m’lady. Get out of that weird work out zone that has you staring into a monitor while you glide on the elliptical machine. Get off that useless pony and hit the mats and sit on one of those giant ass balls, bounce them titties and swivel your hips. Look around. Make eye contact. Smell the air. Pheromones are out there.  As I write this,  I’m here right now and for the past couple of hours I’ve been looking around and while there is currently one cute dude, seemingly NOT a brow-beaten father of a toddler, I have terrible gaydar. Let me describe him: He has one of those trim beards and fade hair cuts like from Hastings Barbershop (could be straight or gay) and is wearing a tight top with nipple protrusion and sleek pants with high water booty (gay and gay), I know he drives a Mazda hatchback thingy (straight?) what do you think? Never mind, he’s too young anyway, I have to get over that. Probably. Can’t lie. Don’t really want to though. But probably should. I will. No more young uns. Unless a full moon. Then I can haz 2.

Yesterday I saw a dude, who I had never seen before, he was maybe even older than me with slightly disheveled hair, and beard with silvers in it (ooof!  *does a Kiegel*). He had a crumpled, wizened but pleasant face, the kind that doesn’t knock you out at first but grows on you. Maybe his celebrity lookalike is an older Shia LaBeouf if you can imagine. You probably think gross, he’s a dirtball. I like that. MORE FOR ME. Hygiene or lack thereof is not my concern. Definite pheromones. No ring by the way, not that means anything but it’s more promising than if he had a ring on, right?  Key here is not to  elevate him into the status of a god-like gym crush otherwise I’ll be collecting DNA samples and licking them. So!  Game plan: Must be pro-active and approach with caution. Hopefully he is not a Taurus. He could very well be a reticulated python to my king cobra and then what? That would be so hot. Right?