a really good person

If I was a really good person, I would have come home from the office today and put on my yoga pants, then my ski pants, then my running shoes, then my gloves. I would have laced up and leashed the dog and headed out for a run, sticking to the middle of the streets where it's nearly clear, and then I would have come home and showered and headed back out to the university visiting writer's reading.

If I was a marginally decent person, I would have come home from the office today and put on my yoga pants, then force-flexed my way through the Pilates for Beginners DVD. I would have stretched and inhaled and exhaled. I would have rolled around on the living room rug, which stands in for my Pilates mat, and for the next few days every sneeze or cough or laugh would have clanged dully in what core muscles I have. Then I would have stir-fried up some kale as penance for not going to the university visiting writer's reading.

If I was a person who is sick to death of February and gray snow and the tire-treaded, icy mounds at every curb, I would have come home from the office today and pulled on a grad school hoodie. I would have heated up a huge plate of leftover enchiladas verdes, and I would have shoveled them into my mouth while reading Savage Love archives. Then I would have wrestled a little bit with a poem I'm working on--a love letter from Ernest Shackleton to Elephant Island, that godforsaken ice shithole--and when I finished I would compose a blog post and then talk myself out of attending any readings, therefore collecting lots of writing-reading bad karma points, guaranteeing that the next time I try to read my little poems anyplace in public, only two bored undergrads will show up. One will leave five minutes into it.

Oh yeah, and I would have flipped on Bones. And I would have cheered for myself when I managed to eat a big fat slice of carrot cake off a plate balanced on my sorry excuse for core muscles without dropping any crumbs onto my neck.

So basically I am a bad person.

*

The dog made us a Valentine on Saturday night:




Dogs love you, even if you are the sort of person who makes your students attend artistic events while you debate staying home and doing nothing. Psshaw! Like trying to follow the plot of Bones counts as "nothing."