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January 2, 2007

My New Year's Resolution

One I Won't Tell My Children About.

First, let me say how excited I am to be a guest at literarychicks.com. I visit daily, as these six women provide me the one-&-only aspect of office life I miss – chatting at the water cooler before getting down to work. Reading about Beth’s (totally warranted) unfaithfulness to her hair stylist, or Whitney’s locking herself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, gives me a sense of camaraderie and “you-go-girl” that’s missing from my otherwise pleasantly-lonely work as a writer.

And since it’s a new year and since Lani started it with her big ol’ copout of a resolution, I decided that I, too, would make only one resolution. I picked it because of a woman I know, whom I’ll call CLAUDETTE.

Claudette and I are inching our way, via one social obligation after another, toward what I hope will be a long-lasting friendship. This is Claudette: She exercises and takes her health seriously. Her clothes are well-chosen. She’s found her perfect hairstyle. She’s got a warm smile and smart eyes. She’s got a well-bred, down-home decency that I love. She’s a good conversationalist, and she’s raised three great (grown) kids with whom she’s very close. I won’t hazard a guess as to her age, but I will say she’s aging well.

Oh, and she’s petite. Like, size two petite.

Which is relevant only because it makes her next quality all the more surprising:

She’s an ass-kicker.

A glorious (slightly-bloodthirsty) ass-kicker.

Sometime in the past year, Claudette hired a personal trainer. In addition to cardio, she lifted weights and did push-ups and sit-ups and the like. All this was measured, as was her body-fat percentage and muscle mass. Tracked, plotted, charted…and posted.

As was the progress of other clients. As Claudette’s name moved higher on the list, it stopped being about toning, buffing, strengthening for her. It became a good old-fashioned ass-kicking contest.

Which she won.

Her workout partner? “I could kick his ass.”

The woman who approached Claudette as she was studying her ranking on the progress chart and mistook Claudette for a fellow-female, we’re-all-in-this-together comrade and muttered, Where’s my info? “I don’t know,” Claudette told her gleefully, “But I could kick your ass!”

And to me, after I admired her because I can’t do even five of those sissy pushups? “Well, I could kick your ass, too!”

Claudette is a gleeful, glorious ass-kicker.

I want to be one, too.

When I left the corporate world and entered the mom-of-young-children world, my aggressive side got lost, or put aside, or squelched. (Because we don’t push other children…and we share our toys…and we wait our turn…and if some snotty little kid treats us badly, we shrug and tell ourselves, That kid sure isn’t going to have many friends, now, is he???….all said in that la-dee-da tone.)

Well, I want it back, my aggressiveness.

In the months before my first pregnancy, I’d taken up racquetball and smashed my way around the court with gusto. It was fast and bruising and merciless…and I loved it. Then I got pregnant and Lani got pregnant and she suggested we take a Yoga For Pregnant Women class together. And while what happens in Rio Rancho stays in Rio Rancho, I will say that Lani back then was a candle-lighting, bubble-bath-taking, new-agey, Yanni-kind of a girl (Goodness, check him OUT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanni).

Lani loved the gentle stretching, the soft chanting, the spiritual visiting of our collective wombs. I clenched every muscle in my body to get through it. Quite the opposite of its purpose, that class raised my stress level exponentially. I so dreaded going that I quit after two sessions.

That’s the real me, a yoga-school dropout. And that’s OK.

This year, I resolve to embrace my aggressiveness. I will sign up for krav maga classes (military, hand-to-hand combat mixed with an aerobic workout – woo hoo!). One day, at yet another social function, I will run into Claudette and say (with a gleam in my eye), “Bring it on, girlfriend. Bring it on!”

Before I sign off, I’d like to invite you to visit my web site, www.laurafitzgerald.com, and enter my sweepstakes. If you win, you get to choose a year’s worth of books ($150 worth). How cool is that? And plus, if you don’t visit…well, I might just have to…you know….kick your ass.

Posted by Laura Fitzgerald at 6:00 AM | Comments (10)

Comments

Posted by: Lani at January 2, 2007 8:08 AM

Posted by: cindy at January 2, 2007 8:43 AM

Posted by: Whitney at January 2, 2007 10:48 AM

Posted by: Alesia Holliday at January 2, 2007 11:12 AM

Posted by: The LC Eileen at January 2, 2007 11:30 AM

Posted by: Beth at January 2, 2007 5:27 PM

Posted by: Michelle C at January 3, 2007 2:23 PM

Posted by: Dia at January 3, 2007 4:08 PM

Posted by: Barb at January 4, 2007 9:33 AM

Posted by: Jen at January 4, 2007 11:24 AM