Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Fitness by Kathleen

The eclipse saved the day, lovely to see Americans gathering happily to do something other than celebrate their own poor sad endangered whiteness or to protest Nazis. I missed the eclipse here in Toronto - tried to look up mid-afternoon but without special glasses, saw no moon passing by. Apparently I could have looked at the sun through a colander. Next time. My American cousin Barbara, however, who has an undergraduate degree in astrophysics and spent her working life as a research scientist, was in Wyoming; her high school physics teacher had called a class reunion to watch the eclipse together there. Barbara was interviewed by CBS and appeared on national news for a whole 15 seconds! "Come with us next time," she wrote to me. I sure will - it'd be wonderful to watch the next eclipse with an astrophysicist who happens to be a very nice cousin.

Sam just sent me a text. "Everybody over the age of 5: Never look directly at an eclipse. Leader of the free world:..." And there's a picture of Trump, squinting up into the sun. While we're on the subject, how I wish the world would let the disgusting Steve Bannon crawl back under his rock. Now the press is quoting Breitbart at every turn. Giving these hideous guys a platform is how we got into this mess.

I had a treat yesterday morning. One of my dearest friends is Kate Trotter, lovely and talented actress and now psychologist-in-training. I've watched her daughter Kathleen from earliest childhood grow up to be an accomplished, lithe young woman, now the fitness columnist for the Globe, author of a book about fitness and personal trainer to the stars. I've been feeling achey and creaky, as if my poor body is losing ground, which it undoubtedly is, so I got in touch with Kathleen to ask for a fitness assessment. She went over my body, measuring my range of motion, watching for drooping shoulders and misaligned hips, pointing out that I favour one side, but mostly, she said I was pretty fit (for my age, she didn't say because she's much too nice.) She just sent me a detailed list of exercises I should do and will explain them on Thursday when I see her again. But this morning, I did the stretching exercises she'd assigned for me to do before getting out of bed - only five minutes or so, but I feel better already.

All this is especially necessary as I am doing nothing, I mean nothing, but sit and write and revise. I'm on a roll, want to finish this draft before the end of the month. Was supposed to go to a friend's glorious cottage this week and instead am sitting here fiddling with words - as Oscar Wilde said, I spend all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out again.

Heaven.

Eleven cucumbers growing, and here are the fading magnificent roses of late summer:

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