Dance, Nails. Dance

Since leaving my well-heeled Flywheel allies last year, I’ve struggled to find a replacement spin studio that I liked. The three that I’ve tried have all been nice, but they’ve also felt girly. And I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that other than the fact that we performed movements that were silly. Think upper body hand-dancing and quick quasi-pushup things that I can only describe as the motion you’d make if you needed to accompany a very emphatic YESSSSSS sound. Why would you ever need to do that, I dunno, but we did it at least 5 different times during the session.

I guess I’m a boring cyclist – I want ugly hills, quick sprints and a motivating instructor with a playlist that makes me cry during the final breakaway because Florence Welch’s angelic voice comes in just as my RPM hits FIVE THOUSAND … or maybe 140 , it’s hard to see straight through the tears.

Tonight, though, I think I found my class. It had all the components I was looking for (hard and not cheerleader-y), and the best part was that 50 minutes into it, the instructor walked over to my bike to cheer a group of us on, realized that we unknowingly selected the corner of the room that didn’t get A/C, and said, “Holy shit, it’s 10 degrees hotter back here. See me after class, I’m gonna give you two something.”

And, because this guy was totally already awesome, he gave me a mixtape from the class.

Good spin instructor: Found!

• spinning
• spin
• fitness
• health

Since adopting Fleetwood in January, there have definitely been days when I was too sick, er, hungover to take the 7am monster out. And Ben has thankfully come to my rescue on those mornings (he does late night walks which I think is harder), but for the other days when I can manage my responsibilities, I’m up wayyyy before I’d like to be. So, because I don’t give two shits about how I look, I throw on whatever I can find – sometimes it’s from the hamper and completely covered in Golden Retriever fur – and take Dog out.

I do whatever I can to avoid engaging in mindless pre-coffee chatter with the humans, but it’s unavoidable. On any given morning, someone will approach me with their dog (off leash, of course) and tell me all about their pup’s medical history and how their buddy just simply had it the hardest. It goes without saying that it’s a wonderful thing to see people rescue animals and provide them with rich and full lives, but we don’t need to compete with each other to see which one of us is the better provider. LOOK AT OUR HANDS! We’re carrying bags of dog poop, I’m pretty sure we can just call it a draw. 

But there’s this elderly lady I see about once a week. She has a small white dog – a Shih Tzu, maybe – and she’s always really curious about Fleetwood and really forward with her opinions. Over the last few months, she has said things like, “You walk your dog too much,” and “She doesn’t need to wear that cone any longer.” I smile because she’s a nice old lady and her instructions – while forthcoming and speculative – feel motherly and considerate.

This morning, though, well she got real mom on me. It was 7am or 5am – who really can tell the difference – and she pointed at my clothes and in front of another pet owner said, “You just rolled out of bed. You slept in that.” I lied and said I hadn’t, but of course I did. 

Is taking your dog for a morning crap something we need to dress up for now?

• New Orleans Jazz Fest
• fashion

I have an alternating love-hate relationship with Jeffrey Campbell. I don’t need to state the obvious (designers can’t get copyright protection for items considered to be utilitarian so they lose moolah when people rip off their pieces [nothing new happening here]), so I’ll just say this: His price point feels unreasonably high for a batch of shoes that typically reeks of polyurethane and high-low skirts. And other retailers get called out on their copies all the time (Nasty Gal just removed its Givenchy Rottweiler lookalike from the site), so how does he always slide through? Jeff, tell us your secrets!

Now that my mini-rant is complete, let’s move on to the love part.

JC’s copy of Alexander Wang’s ankle-strap Liya is pretty damn good. It’s almost I-don’t-have-any-morals-I’m-buying-those-babies-anyway-judge-me-all-you-want good.

But don’t actually judge me. I’m weak.

Have you ever checked out dreammoods.com? I don’t recommend it.

Last night I dreamt that my right eye fell out. It was a result of a battle of some sort—I won, I’m sure of it—but it left me with a lot of pain in my right eye. Real, echoing pain. But Sleeping Me couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Then, I saw it lying there. My eyeball. It was under (?) the fireplace.

So this morning I curiously checked out the aforementioned website as they seemed to be the authority on decoding this sort of thing. It had the following to say: To dream that you have one eye indicates your refusal to accept another viewpoint. It suggests that you are one-sided in your ways of thinking.

This is wrong, obviously.

• dreams