M is a member of an exercise gym that wants to turn her into a machine.

It’s never been exactly, say, organic, since at the club women (who, on their lucky days, get to watch N gaze upon them lackadaisically from her car seat in the center of the circuit) plod, push, pull, and strain on a series of machines that each promise fewer flabbinesses in targeted areas.

However, the ladies in charge want to ramp it all up. For a “half-off” $25 setup fee, M can receive a technological, computerized device that makes each machine customize itself to her current level and presumably challenge her to go! go! at appropriate times.

She’s not sure yet if she’ll take the bait.

A new strategy has cut my commuter gas pump addiction by 40%.

Twice each week, I hitch a ride with a fellow congregant who lives nearby and travels past my school on the way to his. I pay him $3 per day (12.5 cents per mile), which is a bit less than I would put into my own gas tank each day, and he pays for the wear and tear on his car. I also get short walks in on either end of the ride, which makes my passengership less inconvenient for him.

I prefer to drive myself–it’s easier and I like to drive–but when I look at the 40% figure, I find carpooling rather irresistible.

Early this morning, after yesterday’s excited acquisition of yard-oriented electronics, I had a nightmare: Our neighbor got up early and, in a spirit of good neighborliness, mowed our lawn. I knew I should be grateful for his efforts, but really I was sorely disappointed that I wouldn’t get to use my new weed eater for a while.

Thankfully it was just a dream, and now our yard is nicely trimmed, thanks to my own labors.

As for yesterday’s rockin’ality, M had one comment for me as I headed out to school today: “Don’t drink coffee.”

Church usually wears me out. A little lunch in my belly sends me right into a Sunday afternoon recovery snooze. Today, “Marriage Sunday,” was no exception.

We were one of five couples celebrating a multiple-of-five-years anniversary this year, which meant we could speak for 5-7 minutes about marriage. I talked about our monthly dates as keeping us connected and having fun, M noted how we have worked through rough spots, and then we sang one of my songs, one about relational stick-to-it-iveness.

Other couples had fine things to say, as well, including the story of “the spaghetti incident of 1983,” when the new husband threw the pot of spaghetti out into the yard (she didn’t cook again for a month, until he apologized), the need for a “cat” in every marriage (Commitment, A…oops, I forget, and T…rats, I forget that one, too), and the advice not to speak of one’s spouse’s faults in public–issue forth praise only (this advice came from a couple married 50 years, from the husband, after he called their first year of marriage “the year of whipped cream,” since in that year she always masked dessert with plenty of it. I guess past faults now rectified are acceptable for public deprecation).

The song leader chimed in, too, announcing that Jesus didn’t have a cat and wasn’t married.

The service ended, finally, at nearly 12:30, and we all trooped downstairs for a potluck. Fortunately, there was a huge cake in honor of the married couples, because the rest of the desserts were all gone by the time I got to them, except for some delicious apple crisp. I had some of both.

We sat at the same table as did the music leader, who told us about a cross-over jazz musician’s use of the rhythm 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2 (and so on).

Anyway, as I scraped up the last of my apple crisp and what was nearly the last of my cake (I snitched a bite more on the way out), N woke up and promised to cry soon, so we high-tailed it home, where Hawthorne’s introduction to The Scarlett Letter failed miserably at keeping me awake.

On our walk this evening, we heard an odd sound. At first I thought it was a failing chain drive in the nearby park ranger’s Kubota RTV, since it seemed to correspond with the driver’s occasional acceleration spurts. But after he sputtered away, the sound continued. It sounded like a woodpecker having at a metal pole. Sure enough, soon we spied the little bird, at the top of a light pole, thrumming away.

“It must have a headache,” I said. “Some cure!”

But that little fellow hasn’t the only headache around.

Take the FAA, for example, and, for that matter, the airlines under its watchful eye, and, for that matter, all airline passengers, and, for that matter, anyone who has contact with an airline passenger. This week, in my largely uninformed view, after it was accused of being “too cozy with the airlines it oversees,” the FAA has by all appearances taken aggressive action to whip lax airlines into shape, prompting thousands of canceled flights. Somebody’s head doesn’t want to roll.

Then there’s the alternative fuel corn industry. As stated by my reliable source The Freakwenter, “The US political support for the production of corn ethanol … is being shot down by every study, news story, and respectable pundit.” That’s got to hurt.

And then there’s Charlie, of YouTube fame. But I guess his brother’s is more finger- than headache.

Today my head hurt less than it has for a while, although that’s not to say that it’s really been in pain.

The trouble is, on Sunday I finally figured that getting up at 5:25 every morning, to work out with my virtual trainer Maya (courtesy of McDonald’s), is ridiculous, since I usually don’t get to sleep until after 10:00, considering N’s patterns (or lack thereof). Instead, I would sleep in until 6:00 and just run or something after coming home from school, thereby still exercising every day.

The trouble was this: On Monday, I felt OK for most of the day, but very sick when I got home, so I took a very long nap and didn’t exercise. On Tuesday afternoon, after feeling somewhat OK all day, we walked around the nearby track a whole bunch of times (five), and so I got exercise. On Wednesday, I didn’t do anything, and felt groggy all day.

Last night I realized that the point of the grogginess was to get me to exercise at the beginning of each day, to get and keep myself going–and so this morning I cut loose even from Maya, and jogged. I hate jogging, but I felt great.

Some cure!

When I stepped up to the deli/bakery counter this evening, no one appeared to be behind it. From where I stood I peered into the nooks and crannies of the kitchen, past cooling rolls and empty stainless steel counters. No one.

I walked to the end of the counter, to the employee entryway, and craned my neck around a corner. “Can I help you?” She practically jumped out at me at the same time as her cell phone detached from her ear.

I placed my order, “Cut thin, please,” and she put on her gloves and grabbed the lunk of meat. “Is it still raining outside?” she smiled. “How’s this?”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Yes, it’s still raining.” I had just come from an unnecessary yet highly productive teacher work day, and because the store-made cake and cookie that I’d eaten at 10:30 (we’d been told to expect early morning muffins, so thank goodness I forgot and ate plenty of granola at breakfast) had long since worn off, I wasn’t exactly feeling too chatty.

“This meat is hard to cut into nice slices,” she said. “It’s lumpy.”

“I wonder why that is?”

“I’ll show you,” she said. Just then her cell phone went off like a carnival slot machine. “That’s my grocery list.”

While she finished cutting up the meat, I decided that after getting the meat, I would politely just walk away from the counter, instead of pursuing greater understanding of the lumpy meat. Just because. If I could get away, that is.

“Have a nice day,” she told me as she handed over the package, and I started off to the salad dressing department. But no sooner than I thought myself free, she called after me, “Oh, did you want me to show you about this meat?”

“Oh yes,” I said, turning back.

She held up the mass of pink cow butt. “It happens when lots of different people cut it. It doesn’t stay even,” she said.

“Oh my,” I said. “Thank you.”

This morning, to combat the jet-lag grogginess of springing forward, I brewed coffee. I never brew coffee for myself, and especially never never the full-strength, caffeinated, no-mamsy-pamsies-allowed house blend Cafe Salvador.

This is, in fact, relevant to what follows.

On the Friday, March 7 episode of Fresh Air, my hero Terry Gross interviewed two scientists who both discussed the creation of the world while asserting their respective atheist and Evangelical Christian perspectives. While I found both men thoroughly convincing, I thought it wouldn’t hurt for me to add my own thoughts to the fray, not about Genesis or evolution, but about the current trend of devolution that is happening here in the world. Let me ‘splain.

Some flukies argue that the Earth is a single organism called “Gaia” and that AIDS, cancer, and the like are this organism’s immune system in action. I haven’t researched this theory at all, really, but I have heard (and it makes sense to me) global warming assessed as Earth’s fever, to rid itself of us malevolent microbes of humanity.

This bucking humanity process could be a legitimate part of evolution. The complication, however, is that so is death stemming from poor eyesight, for example. After all, in the old days, a blind person probably wouldn’t have made it too far except as prey for fast-food-loving cannibals. Thank goodness that now I and many others can see quite clearly, if only through our glasses, which have enabled us to avoid succumbing to the vicious reality of natural selection.

And we’re weaker for it. Perhaps solely because of my glasses, which allow me to be gainfully employed, alert to many dangers, and intelligent looking (and therefore worthy of marital bliss), I can see vividly enough to procreate and pass along my imperfect vision through my imperfect genes. Add my personal miscontribution to the human race to every last imperfection preserved through human-created technology worldwide, and it becomes clear that the cumulative effect of human ingenuity is the perpetuation of continually weakening human DNA.

Of course this isn’t just about genetics. It’s also about, for example, environmental usurpation (Hey! Go live in the desert with air conditioning and a green lawn!), or the sharing of deep thoughts instead of sleeping.

Coffee, anyone?

Footnote: This post has been quoted by a money-making blogger!