Habit Forming

It's no secret that I love settling into a good routine, and here's my routine du jour, or, more specifically, my routine du Saturday. The blue-eyed boy and I each like to work out at 9:30 on Saturdays, at our respective gyms in Santa Monica, so we've figured out that carpooling is the best (eco-friendliest + most mutually motivating) way.

I take Hard Body Meltdown class, which totally rules and is generally butt kicking. (I'm currently trying to decide which is the hardest workout of the week: boxing on Wednesdays, or this one on Saturdays. And I think Saturday's class edges boxing by a nose, which is really saying a lot. Both tend to make my trusty Polar heart-rate monitor beep and flash frantically.) Nothing makes me feel better than starting out the weekend with a fine Hard Body Meltdown performance on a Saturday morning, which generally encourages me to drink less and get to bed earlier on Friday nights, which is probably a good thing. I feel very much in control of my life when I am sweating like a gavone doing repeaters with weights off a step supported by four risers and managing to survive. Perhaps, even, with decent form and a half-smile on my face.

The blue-eyed boy starts out with yoga, and then likes to work out for an additional 90 minutes at his gym, which brings us up to noon, and leaves me with an hour and a half to spend alone, fresh and pumped full of endorphins after my class. That's when I leave my gym, and walk out onto the Third Street Promenade for:

1) a walk through the farmer's market. I'm not a hippie-dippie-needs-organic-all-the-time type, but I do love the feeling of scooping up some blueberries that have been picked that very morning, which I will probably use later that day in our patented yogurt sundae (the best imaginable secret recipe, conceived by the blue-eyed boy in a moment of culinary genius, now a daily staple). I usually snag some fresh veggies too, and often some cut gerbera daisies, to deliver to my mom or a friend whose home or birthday party I am visiting later. Then I carry around my bright flowers wrapped in brown paper, peeking out of the top of my gym bag.

and some combination of the following:

2) a stop for coffee or iced coffee, which I always order as "medium in a large cup," even if it's at Starbucks, and they're supposed to require you to use that grande/venti jargon (but I can never remember which size corresponds to which). And this is not because I am cheap; I use the extra room for skim milk and I don't fill it up to the top, because I am prone to spillage rather more than is the average person.

3) a recon mission at Forever 21. I don't have to tell all the ladies out there about why this store rules from top to bottom, particularly in the summertime, when everything is colorful or shiny or woven or besequinned and is typically $9.80 or under. This particular Forever 21 is the brand-new Taj Mahal of Forever 21s, and has three floors, each with multiple areas grouped by...something, I'm not sure. Usually I get excited about all the dozens of things I'm going to buy, and then panic in the face of all the choices (all the available jams, you might say), and then I flee with nothing.

4) a phone call with AE. I tell her about my workout (she's one of the few, along with maybe only the blue-eyed boy, come to think of it, who seems to have limitless interest in hashing out the full-on details of any fitness experience) and we make some plans for the weekend, because we almost invariably see each other, and also invariably need to have our ancillary discussions that correspond to any group date. It's multidimensional, all-angles socializing, and anyway we seem to have inexhaustible things to say about most topics.

Then it's noon and I meet the blue-eyed boy back in front of my gym again. He is carrying his yoga mat, and I'm carrying my gerberas, and it's such a Los Angeles scene, that it might nauseate the average L.A.-disparaging person, although I never understand why there seem to be so many of those out there. Jealousy maybe? What's so wrong with us? It seems like we might just know how to live.