Turkey, Monsters, Drama!

Here's a photo of our Thanksgiving turkey, an organic, running-around turkey, the kind that puts a big dent in your pocketbook because you're paying for, I don't know, music and dance lessons for the turkey before it becomes your dinner. 'Cause it's all about quality of life for my comestibles, yo.



Look at the skin on that beauty. That's some Martha Stewart by way of Gwyneth Paltrow on Huffington Post action all up on that turkey. Tasty.

Monstahs!

And here is a trio of little monsters that I painted on one of Dave's bowls. They look a little washed out because I'm a bad photographer who can't take a picture of a subject that is less than three inches tall and also because they're done in underglaze, which is always a little washed out until it's fired. These will get another bisque firing then I'll decide what to do with them next.







And here's a story about some gym drama!

Gym Drama!

Sigh! Well, it wouldn’t be high school the gym without the drama, no? So here it is:

About a month ago, I was working out with my niece and Kelly Workout, and one of the trainers came over to us.

I like to call this particular trainer Screamy McScreamster because she is incredibly loud (louder than me even, which isn’t an easy thing to achieve) and she has this screechy kind of voice that reminds me of when high school girls meet each other, like, at the mall or something. But even if she were to suddenly show up at the gym with some sultry phone sex operator voice, Screamy still wouldn’t be one of my favorite people because in addition to the screaminess, she is incredibly nosy. Twice she’s offered me workout advice. I know you’re thinking, she’s a trainer, that’s her job. But here’s the thing: She ain't my trainer first of all, and second of all, lots of trainers work at the gym and she’s the only one who will interrupt my workout to try to give me advice. If you're not a gym denizen, let me tell you that that shit don't cut it gym-etiquette-wise. What’s worse is that a lot of times the advice she gives is useless and sometimes it's outright dangerous. None of that makes me like her any more.

And it's kind of a small thing by comparison, but it irks me that Screamy so obviously tries way too hard. I mean, she does stuff like work out in full makeup. And she often carries around a Venti coffee from Starbucks while working out with clients. (Yeah, she’s professional.) She also recently managed to hit the quad faux-fecta: Fake tan, fake nails, bleached and frosted hair, and teeth bleached so white that even in ordinary, non-black light, they glow eerily.

Picture that action in workout clothes heading straight for you at the gym. Eeuucchhh.

So the three of us--Kelly Workout, my niece and I--were taking turns on the leg press machine when Screamy came over to us. When she got up close I could see that her teased-up, bleached-blonde hair was kind of tangled and clumpy with some thick, waxy hair product. It looked like maybe she had taken a quick nap in a gutter.

By way of greeting, Screamy said to us, "Do you want to lose weight?”

I immediately said, “I don't,” and turned away from her. My niece just looked at Screamy all, like, WTF? Kelly Workout said, “Why?”

Screamy seemed kind of taken aback that we three fat chicks weren’t falling at her feet because she asked us the magic question did we want to be as skinny as her. Screamy paused, confused, then went ahead and launched into some long screamy spiel, some long, involved, screamy sales spiel that included chunks of her very own personal history. She was, all, "I HAD AN EATING DISORDER!" and "I WAS HOSPITALIZED!" and "OMG! ANOREXIA!!!" (And forgive me, but when she told us that she had had an eating disorder, I burst out laughing. I actually laughed in her leathery, fake-tanned, post-anorexic face. Because I'm a shitty person, yes, but you know what? Don’t come over with your leathery, fake-tanned skinny ass and expect me and my fat thighs to sympathize with you and your eating disorder, for fuck’s sake. Because if you do expect that? Then your real problem is not with your weight or with body image, but with your crippling lack of self-awareness.)

Anyway, Screamy stood there and screamy-ed at us for about five minutes and the real message--what she was trying to sell us--was some kind of program at the gym in which she was going to be talking about weight loss and nutrition.

Yes, as a matter of fact, my jaw did hit the floor after hearing how Screamy “Rexi” McScreamster was going to be teaching a class on how to eat right and lose weight.

After Screamy walked away, I was, like, “Whatever, Screamy,” and my niece was, like, “Psshhht. A-la!” But Kelly Workout? Kelly Workout was livid. The most she could get out about Screamy was a muttered, “Bitch, why don’t you comb your fucking hair?”

A couple of days later, Kelly was still worked up so she called the gym and complained to the gym owner about Screamy. Kelly has known the gym owner for a while (he used to come into a restaurant where she worked), so she had a nice long chat about Screamy’s craptastic selling skills.

That was about a month ago, and since then Screamy absolutely refuses to make eye contact with us. She won’t look at me. She won’t look at my niece. She won’t look at Kelly Workout. My niece is, all, good riddance to bad rubbish, but I feel kind of bad whenever someone has to go through the trouble of pretending that I don't exist, you know? Not only does that gives me way too much power over them, but it's also a big waste of their energy. (I wonder if it burns calories at least.)

Drama! Drama!