How To Get "Tunic" Arms

In our recent discussion of the hunt for tunics, many of you commiserated with my desire to stop sucking in my stomach. "Enough already," we said. "We just want to breathe as nature intended."

However, many of you also expressed concern over revealing your arms. I believe I have found a solution.

And, now that you have had a moment to reconstitute yourself from the puddle of laughter into which I threw you, so unceremoniously, let me confirm. Yes. That is a ShakeWeight.

Celebrated on infomercials, so beloved by Ellen DeGeneres that she has made it a recurrent meme on her afternoon television show, and rife with opportunity for bawdy jokes.

The ShakeWeight. And I bought one. And I use it. And I think it actually works.

Anticipating your next question, no. No, High WASPs do not generally recommend the acquisition of infomercial goods. But Sturdy Gals, known in their youth for sufficient strength to carry tables, celebrated for their biceps, and now mourning the loss of said musculature, are granted dispensation. We take Queen Victoria as our model, muster up our inner Grande Dame, and say under our collective breath, "We will if we want to."

Good triceps take one a long way down the quiet halls of aging. Do not go gently. ShakeWeight.

No compensation was received for this post. I thought about trying to make the links to Amazon the kind that give me $0.12 every time they are used, but I used up any brash I've got posting the link to SNL.

To Be This AND That

Sometimes our efforts to stretch, to take a risk, to be both this and that, leave us humbled. Humbled and muddy.

I have a pond in my backyard. I've always been the type to avoid home maintenance. It scares me. But it's never to late to learn, or so I hoped. In the last few years the pond had become more of a puddle. A home for wayward mosquito larvae. I was determined to get it back. To become a High WASP 52-year old former executive and a robust, hardy, no-nonsense woman capable of things like pond maintenance.

I bought plants. I put plants in the pond. Set them up on overturned plastic pot containers with gravel. This is what it looked like. Gracious living at its best. Make special note of that lovely purple-leafed plant in the background. You will want to remember what it looks like later.


The next morning I went outside. All the pots had fallen over. I set them up again. Overnight they fell down again. I set them up. Next morning, down.

I was determined. I called the nursery. They said try setting the plants on cinder blocks. Orchard Supply was out of the right size. I had to go to Egypt.


Not really. But that's how I felt. This is the garden materials supply store. The presence of heavy equipment made it clear I wasn't in Egypt. But didn't make me feel much safer. I was overwhelmed.

Still determined, I drove around in terror, startling at each very large bulldozer. I eventually convinced someone to help me load 7 cinderblocks into my car. To help me load 2 30 pounds bags of gravel into selfsame car.

I paid at the window. I drove home. I carried each cinderblock to the pond. I laid them this way and that way, lengthwise, sideways, stacked, alone. I spent an hour kneeling on pavers, up to my shoulder in stagnant pond water, dropping my glasses here and there, cursing, completely drunk with sun and the strength that remains in my upper body to this day.

I took a shower. I washed my hair. I basked in the glory of my competence and independence.

They Don't Make It Easy To Exercise On Exercise TV

They don't make it easy. The other day I got up early, as usual. That isn't the part that Exercise TV is to blame for. I decided not to take a walk. Not their fault either. I decided to do a couple of Exercise TV On Demand segments. My sister, my daughter and I are all fans. I decided to suffer and do cardio rather than the yoga video with the guy stretching in front of what looks like the Grand Canyon. Or the devastatingly fit women cardio sculpting in a canyon of aspens. I don't have any aspens in my living room. Still not their fault.

Less Is More Cardio makes use of boxing moves. Which means Miss Cindy has you do "boxing feet." Do you know what "boxing feet" are? That's when you put said feet apart wider than your hips and go tippy tap tippy tippy tap. Or, more realistically, thumpety thumpety thumpa thumpety. Let me just say this is noisy. Noisy enough, apparently, to wake a sleeping teenaged boy. Who will then emerge, in boxers, stand sleepy-eyed and aghast, and start to laugh at the sight of his mother in basketball shorts, and "boxing feet." He may even mimic the rhythm he has been hearing through the door, being a musical sort of fellow.

I persevere. If I stopped exercising every time I realize I look silly I'd long since have given it up. I move on to 10 Minute Pilates. Not only do I not have any aspens in my living room, I don't have a yoga mat. So I do floor exercises on a towel. A green towel covered in pink flamingos which we won at a school auction when said teenager was in 8th grade. As below.

Nicole Stewart starts leading me through the required 10 minutes of Pilates. Thank you Nicole. This makes me feel infinitely more competent and fit than "boxing feet." My sense is that since I do not have a boxing head, boxing hands, or a boxing stomach, it's not surprising that I don't have boxing feet.

I can do most of what she wants me to do. Unlike the "boxing feet." This video I don't have to speak to the way I spoke to the labor nurse when giving birth to said teenager. When the nice young woman said "Push through the pain!" I said, "YOU push through the pain! I'm just going to lie here!" I'm apt to make similar disrespectful comments to Exercise TV. It's OK. They can't hear me.

As I said, I can do most of what she wants me to do. Until we get to the advertising function. I understand the need for advertising. If they didn't advertise during these videos, I'd have to pay. I'm on board for this business model. Until, as I am lying flat on my back, counting out 100 repetitions of the arm lift pictured above. New Balance flashes their banner. The key phrase being, "Buy Now!"

Huh? How? Every part of my body which might be reasonably considered able to make a purchase is occupied.

Which causes me to argue with the television for the remaining 3 minutes of 10 Minute Pilates. Oh well. Perhaps it raised my pulse. Which is more than I can say for the laughing teenager.

Have a lovely weekend.

Images from the Exercise TV website