You’ll get a real post later, but I just wanted to share that Jillian Michaels (my new favorite love/hate relationship) will be at the iVillage offices on Monday answering questions and making everyone do push-ups. Okay, maybe she won’t make them do push-ups, but that’s what I imagine her doing. Regardless, this is awesome.

If you want to submit a question for the no-nonsense shredding trainer, go here. I’m going to have put some serious thought into mine, because I don’t suppose, “Will you come live at my house and make me freakin’ hot?” counts as a reasonable question.

If you’re lookin’ for an update, I’m on Day 8, and really digging it. I’ve dropped that extra pound, lost three more and my shoulders are starting to look like they used to before I fell in love with Lazy McTelevision. Sayonara, Lazy. I was way too good for you, anyway.

All it took was one little photo Krissa posted to her flickr with the caption that read, “Oh look, I survived again!” And a week later and I’m drinking the same Kool Aid.  The same aching shoulder, can’t walk downstairs, breathless, sweaty Kool Aid.

And I love it.

“Did I tell you I’ve been doing the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred workout?” Jamie and I were waiting for the lights to go down at a Sunday matinee showing of The Duchess, and my thighs were still a little twitchy from my earlier 20-mintue ass-kicking.

“How funny! I just got mine today! I kept reading about it on all these Twitters…”

So. This thing. It is popular. Sort of like the snap bracelet craze that went around my junior high school. But if the soreness of my mucles is any indication, this fad will actually get me more than some useless accessories and an after school detention. What? I dare you to ignore that snappy zebra print beauty during a supremely dry lecture on the color wheel. Yeah, yeah. Red and green make brown. I GET it.

At any rate, I’m on day five, and I’m proud to report that I can make it ALL the way through the push-ups without bleeding from my eyes and ears. People, before Wednesday, I did not know I was incapable of doing push-ups. But Jillian Michaels, she made me confront that ugly truth and a few more like it. And she made me gain a pound. Which I’m hoping that’s a temporary glitch, because one does not bleed from the eyes and not expect her bathroom scale to reward her handsomely.

Are you playing along at home? If you are, I want to know what day you are on and how awesomely hot this program has made you. Because I’m staring down day six having already run four miles at the ungodly hour of 5:45, and been told in bold, black digital numbers that none of this effort is doing jack. And I want jack! Tell me I’ll get jack!

Yeah, yeah. I’m needy. I get that, too.

On Monday morning, the stress hit me like The Bus that Couldn’t Slow Down*. Money stress. A great deal of money stress. And after all my careful planning (and only buying ONE of the twenty-dollar, ridiculously cute pairs of shoes I fell hopelessly in love with at Target the day before), I felt betrayed. I wanted to stab the Universe in the eye. I made sacrifices! I turned off my AC! I’m trying here, Universe! Doesn’t that count for something?

But you know how it goes. You argue with the Universe and that spot in your shoulder starts to hurt. Then your jaw starts to ache from having it set so tight in defiance. And by the end of the day, you’re scrunched down in your office chair as close to reclined as you can get and still earn a paycheck and you haven’t cried yet but damn it, you’re close.  And by you, I mean me.

So I made an appointment for a massage. Both my mom and my best girl cleverly gifted me with hour-long massages for my birthday (me? stress out easy? pshaw) and I’d been saving them for the right time. Like, the day after the marathon relay. Or, the day when it turns out I have to empty my entire savings account and use the money that I’d been saving for a new mattress that won’t ruin my back for something far, far less gratifying. I’m getting tense again just thinking about it. Serenity now. Okay. I feel better. Let’s continue.

In the “Serenity Room” at the chain massage joint, I was finally feeling a little relaxed and, astoundingly, thinking less about money and more about… falling water. I’ve always felt those miniature waterfall machines were a little cheesy, but that baby got me to stop seeing dollar signs emblazoned in neon green on the insides of my eyelids. I considered getting one for my apartment. And hiding it when company comes.

“Miss Hunter?”

“Mmm hmm?” I answered without opening my eyes. Surely he didn’t need eye contact for whatever transaction we were about to have.

“I see you’ve marked ‘Swedish Massage’ on your form. But your appointment is with Andrew. His specialty is deep tissue.”

I considered this for a second, eyes still closed. Deep tissue would probably be good for me. Detox, and all. So I consented.

“So, full body, firm massage. Great. Andrew will be right with you.”

I mmm hmmmed him again. Moments later, Andrew was right with me and that’s when all serenity ceased. Over the next sixty minutes, Andrew beat the ever-loving crap out of me. I won’t say I didn’t like it. Because I did. I got some perverse pleasure out of having an elbow driven into my upper back and feeling the electrical shocks down in my toes. But I don’t have to tell you that, perverse pleasure aside, the experience was not at all relaxing. The tears in my eyes were not that of sweet release, they were from pain.

The next morning, as I was fumbling my way out of running clothes to hop into the shower, I caught my reflection in the mirror and did a double take. What the hell? It looked like a dime sized mole had sprouted up on my lower back. On closer inspection, I discovered it was a bruise (one of many that would show up over the next couple days), by far darker than any I’d ever seen on my ghostly white flesh. I pressed it. It hurt. I pressed it again, just to be masochistic. And then I thought about how, when I was a kid and I complained of any kind of injury (say on my right knee) my father would offer to punch me in the left. “It’ll make you forget about the other one!”  Which is really all Andrew did. I haven’t worried about money in days because I’ve been too preoccupied counting bruises.

The one on my left thigh is particularly attractive.

* Fact: Any day I get to reference Homer Simpson is a good day.

I am a full day behind in everything. Like, today is my little sister’s birthday. I thought it was tomorrow. YESTERDAY was a freelance deadline. I thought it was today. You can see how that might make life just a little bit messy. I’m going to spend the morning playing catch up and trying very, very hard not to short out my last remaining neurons, but first! First, I am going to share with you the shortlist of Things that are Bugging Me Right Now:

In April, I filed an extension for my 2007 New York State taxes. Which makes them due in… oh, 20 days or so. Have I thought about them since April? Nooooo. I’ve been whiling away the summer like a damn grasshopper when I should have been playing the ant. Sorry, Aesop. My reading comprehension isn’t the best.

Shooties.  Really, fashion? REALLY?

Polar bears have resorted to cannibalism. I can’t even read the news story because the headline gives me a stomach ache.

People I know and love are proudly Facebooking their support to “Protect Marriage.” Protecting marriage from what, exactly? The gays? You are not protecting marriage, people. You are protecting bigotry. This upsets me. A lot.

People who cough all over their hands and then press a zillion buttons on the copy machine. Thanks, dude.

I think maybe I need a hug and some cheese and a couple hours on the couch with Season 2 of Magnum PI. And maybe two more hugs.
 

What’s your favorite word for [the male genitalia]?

Obviously he didn’t phrase it so politely. Let’s fill in the brackets, shall we? In our very first conversation, Tanner, a sports announcer and a man who by all indications had designs on dating me, asked what my favorite word for penis was. And he used the see-oh-see-kay word. On a first date. With a stranger. My response? A whole lot of blinking. I mean, you have to be famous to get Punk’d, and Totally Hidden Video was a family show (no dirty c-words there), so what the hell was going on? Rushing to his own defense, Tanner explained that the line was from a Maxim quiz, which I can only guess was created to determine my level of “coolness” and “dateability.” And all my blinking had just relegated me to the category of Undateable Prude. I wanted to roll up that magazine and give him a good hard smack in the nuts.

Who talks to girls like that? And prudish, I’m not. I can be pretty irreverent. Okay, crass. I can be really, really crass. On more than one inappropriate occasion I have used the see-oh-see-kay word without hesitation or apology. But, dammit, not with a fella I wanted to date!

At least, not until he’d bought me dinner.