still i feel like there's a checklist that one could potentially use to gage exactly how far along the new yorkification process is coming. it varies for each person but here's mine:
-master the subway system and bitch about how awful it is even though it's the only thing we have and it's actually pretty efficient for a city of one trillion people.... check!
-hate on people from staten island even though i've never been there and only met two people from there and they were actually nice.... check!
-hate on people from new jersey based on blanket generalizations mostly gleaned from "jersey shore".... check!
-have your groceries delivered to your house because you absolutely cannot be bothered to lug 50 pounds of canned tomatoes yourself... check!
-have one or two (or 53) cockroach encounters... omg CHECK!
-eat out a lot and wax poetic about things like emulsions and amuse bouches... half a check (i do eat out a lot, but still not quite sure what an "emulsion" is... doesn't that just mean "foamy?" and how do you pronounce "amuse bouche"? i'd try, but don't want to embarass myself).
-drop $30 on dessert with a girlfriend and shrug, rationalizing that you've spent more than that...check (just last night, in fact. oops!)
-start addressing all spanish speaking people as "mami" or "papi" (strictly limited to WaHe and the Bronx) and speak in ebonics without realizing you are....to my chagrin, check!
last week i got to add another, if only temporary checkmark to my list: attending a NYC gym. i swear, the gym culture here boggles my mind. i can't remember a time in my life where i've lived in a place where so many people in such a small square area were so obsessed with working out. and of course there's a hierarchy depending on which gym you're a part of. crunch or nysc? run of the mill. ny racquet club? a little more baller. equinox? HELLA BALLER. it's a little silly, to be quite honest.
at any rate, last friday after a particularly horrific end to a clinical day in which my last patient embodied everything that i could possibly hate about seeing patients, a friend invited me to go to boxing/boot camp class at her gym with her with alluring promises about being able to punch things a lot. i was torn--on one hand, i really needed to punch something and neither my patients or my colleagues would be appropriate ever, but on the other hand, i remembered another girl who had gone with our friend who was much much MUCH more fit than i (me, of the haven't-seen-the-inside-of-a-gym-since-november-2009 unfit variety) who said she had her ass handed to her. how much more, then, would i suffer?
my inner rage won out and i found myself on the train to nysc (which, for "run of the mill" was actually pretty posh. we got free towels), slightly apprehensive but sort of excited. there was "warm up" which felt more like "full blown work out," shadow boxing with and without weights, and a sort of obstacle course that worked nearly every muscle group, including some that i forgot i had. i loved the high energy hip hop, censored of course (although a few or fifty f-bombs here and there would not have been out of place with my mood at the time), how pumped up the instructor was, how ripped the instructor was, and how everyone kind of did their own thing according to their ability. and i really liked punching the two punching bags and then the
instructor.
at the end of the day, i collapsed in a heap at home, unable to move and wondering how i was going to move patients if i could barely bend over to pick up garbage off the floor. but it felt GOOD. good to move my body, good to use muscles that i forgot i had, good to remember that running around like a crazy person at work does not equal exercise.
i'm not sure if i'd buy into the gym culture just yet though. at at least $80 a month, i feel like i could put that money towards things far more important. like therapy (should i ever come to grips with the fact that i probably really need it) or... another pair of adorable jcrew ballet flats. or baller dinner. but the fact remains that exercise hasn't felt this good in a long time and something needs to be done to counteract the day-nurse diet of entemann's donuts and pizza or my own personal diet of "pie for dinner with a side of ratatouille with orzo" (sounds gross, but don't freak--i eat them separately, duh).
plus, i really liked punching things, especially with lil wayne playing in the background.
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