Tuesdays & Me

Of all the days of the week, I have the most complicated relationship with Tuesday. It's a difficult day to pin down. It's not Monday, which everyone has an excuse to feel a bit down on. Instead, it comes in second. It's how February is to January - second best. (Side note: I've always been glad I was born in January and not February because if you're going to be born near the beginning of the year it's better to be born in the first month rather than the second.) The coming second to Monday reason aside, Tuesday, in the past, was never that great a day for me. A disproportionate amount of not so good events - getting dumped (twice! both times in high school and both times on a Tuesday!), getting some really bad news, forcing a conversation neither me nor the other person involved seemed to particularly want to have but which was necessary (pretty predictably it ended dramatically with me running out of the cafe where said conversation took place in tears) - occurred on Tuesdays.

But this fall, my feelings towards Tuesdays have drastically changed. Tuesday has become a day I actually look forward to! It has become, in fact, the new Sunday. Since I work on Sundays and don't work on Tuesdays I have adapted Sunday behaviour to Tuesdays. For example, I sleep in. Then when I do wake up/get up, I lounge around in my pajamas. (Around noon I will usually get dressed, but only in to sweat pants. No real clothes unless I have to go out.) I generally relax. A few weeks ago on a Tuesday I took a really nice and really long bath in the middle of the afternoon. As I was climbing in to the tub I felt a twinge of momentary guilt, a split second where I wondered "am I allowed to be doing this? It's a Tuesday afternoon! Shouldn't I be doing something else?" But then I quickly banished that thought and cheerfully accepted that yes, while most people I knew (and billions of others I didn't) were probably, at that exact moment, doing something productive or more Tuesday afternoon like, I wasn't and that was okay.

My new favourite thing about Tuesdays, besides deciding I now really like it after years of varying degrees of hatred, mistrust, and ambivalence, is how I've made Tuesday afternoons my kitchen time. I bring my laptop downstairs to the kitchen and listen to a podcast of This American Life (which A. got me listening to and which I thoroughly enjoy each week) while trying out something new. Today I made granola, because I just have not been able to find any here that I like. Yes I felt so crunchy and so "I belong in a co-op" that I almost couldn't stand it, but it was also a lot of fun. And the granola turned out great! So there it is, Tuesdays are now cool and me (and my kitchen, and sometimes my bath tub) couldn't be more pleased.

An Ode to Step

I recently read an article on how 2009 is the 20th anniversary of step aerobics. As a die-hard stepper ever since I started doing it last fall, the article made me think about why I love it and what's so cool about it. One step teacher interviewed declared: "Once you're a step fan you're always a step fan." And I whole-heartedly agree!
I like how it's set to music and how some of the moves include jumping jacks and how it involves a lot of energy and how stepping up and down is a natural movement and something most of us do on a very regular basis, if not everyday, and how, cheesy as this is, I actually find myself smiling while stepping.
What didn't become clear to me until after I came back to Toronto and had said goodbye to my Austin step classes and step teachers forever, is the importance of teachers in step. I had major friend crushes on the two step teachers I had in Austin. They were both young (early 20s), super friendly and super enthusiastic. The first couple of times I took their classes I was surprised and even a tiny bit taken aback by how many people spontaneously cheered during their classes. But after a few weeks, I got it. People cheered because the classes were so fun. And while I never did join in on the random cheers throughout the working (although I did always clap along with everyone else at the end) I became totally addicted to their classes. Tuesday and Thursday Step Express from 11:15-12 noon became highlights of my week. Both teachers - M. and C. - were totally encouraging and supportive and made you feel a. super glad that you had come to step class, and b. like you were a step superstar.
For most of the summer, I did a lot of step in my basement with a Kathy Smith Step DVD. (Scroll down for a picture!) I like Kathy Smith - her workout is good, she seems cool, she's friendly and encouraging, and she has a whole bunch of other steppers/teachers doing it with her who are fun to watch. But doing step alone in my basement somehow just isn't the same. It's still a great work out and I still feel like smiling but I miss having other people around. Though I still sometimes do the DVD I joined a gym here mostly so I could take step classes.
My new teacher is P. and he's male (a first for me in step) and while his work out is awesome, there's something missing. It's like, I want to have a friend crush on him but I just don't feel it. In so many aspects of my life I always want to connect with other people, and I like relationships of any kind better when I feel there's a genuine connection. Obviously some relationships have deeper connections than others and it's not as if I felt I connected on a deep level with either M. or C. But, we connected in a really good way on a step teacher- step student level. With P., though I haven't been taking his class for so long, I just don't see that happening yet. And he's also nowhere near as encouraging or as cool as M. or C. either. But for now, I'm just glad I have more options than my basement. I'm also still holding out hope that P.'s one of those people who get better and more open with time, and that one Tuesday night during his class, when I least expect it, he'll do something really cool that will propel him in to friend crush territory :)