Could this town be any more wonderful? Today I discovered a city pool where, for city-pool admission, you can swim 50-meter laps, outdoors, all day long all summer long. So I did. For 45 minutes, it was sheer agony. This is just rust, I’ve learned many times over the years. I have a love/hate relationship with lap swimming. I love it up until I hate it, and then we have to break up until we can learn to love again. But we always do — after 45 minutes, I had 10 minutes of sheer bliss — and then there’s a day of rust, of learning to swim laps again. People watch the Olympics and think swimming is all about pushing just a little harder to get the gold at the end. It is not, at least not at our level. It’s about finding a hypnotic rhythm, of balancing the effort of reaching and stroking with the relaxation of stretching and gliding. When it finally comes, you can swim all day long, watching the black line go by and traveling to interesting places in your head. Swimming’s the only exercise I do where, at the end of a workout, I feel relaxed and loose and refreshed, rather than hot and sweaty and ready for a gallon of water, lunch and a long nap.
(You can tell swimming and I are dating again, can’t you? Wait until we break up — we fight over the time and effort involved, the goddamn special hair-care products required and how dry and itchy my skin gets. Not to mention the suits soaking in every sink in the house, so the chlorine eats them tomorrow instead of today.)
It’s hell on the hair color, though. I have an appointment for next week, but I could use one, like, now.
OK, I guess this means we’re officially out of anything, at all, to say. When you start discussing your workouts, you’re either Dr. Laura or a real blogger. I don’t know how ladies of leisure do it, and what’s more, how often they manage to convince you how busy they are, busy busy busy. Today I had a lunch scheduled with my academic adviser, a calendar block with some actual activities penciled in. I felt like a mental patient on the way to occupational therapy. An hour before I was supposed to leave, the phone rang. He was sick and had to cancel. So I read "Dog Soldiers" and went shoe-shopping, just like Carrie Bradshaw, another person with too much time on her hands.
Speaking of which, one of my TV-production friends said he watched "Sex and the City" last night, and noticed that all the actresses are lit from so far down, they seem to be wearing some sort of weird under-eye miracle makeup product. (Lighting from below shears a few years off the old puss.) Now this wouldn’t be a reason to get your knickers in a twist, except that this show has jumped so many sharks it belongs at Sea World. All the actresses do their sex scenes wearing bras now, I’ve noticed, even the gutsy, fearless Kim Cattrall. It used to be only Sarah Jessica Parker was modest that way, and I take it this means the other girls want what she gets, or else they just don’t have the sorts of boobs you want to show the whole cable-television audience anymore. I say it’s a toss-up, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because the show isn’t even funny anymore (except for Samantha’s explanation of tea-bagging; I think Cattrall is the only one who still realizes she’s playing on a show that’s supposed to be funny).
Ohhh-kay. First workouts, now television. Can Star Trek be far behind?
And speaking of bras (can I write a transition, or what?), I see that Anna Kournikova is pimping a sports bra, to be sold only on Amazon. There’s a picture on the wire of Jeff Bezos gawking at her like he simply can’t believe his luck, being allowed to stand next to such an amazing beauty, this goddess of the Caucasus, much less approve the photos in the ad campaign. Well, enjoy it while it lasts, Jeff, because I’ve got news for you — women don’t see anything special about Anna Kournikova, and guess who buys sports bras? Not the men who put her all over their websites every day.
But I’m a woman who believes the quest for the perfect sports bra is a worthy one, and so I went to Anna’s Shock Absorber web page to see what it had to offer. Ahem:
* Molded, lined cups with an inner support sling
* Shaped, padded comfort straps
* Adjustable crossover or straight strap-fastening options
* High-tech CoolMax® fabric
In other words, it has cups, straps you can adjust and a special fabric you can sweat in. That’s like saying a pair of shoes comes with "soles, to protect the bottoms of your feet; uppers, so that your feet are well-supported; and heels, to make walking more comfortable." They don’t even pretend she had a hand in its design, that she may have offered some valuable insight, based on her years of playing tennis in tight-fitting clothing before television cameras. No, it was designed for Anna Kournikova, not by her or with her.
Call me back when the Williams sisters endorse a sports bra. There are some girls who know what they’re looking for.
(If you’re looking for a great sports bra, I can’t say enough good things about the Moving Comfort Athena. I own two, and if Alan sticks them in the dryer again, he’s going in there with them.)
With that, another day crawls to a close. What will tomorrow bring? Can you stand it?