Gym.

I could be homeless as long as I had a gym membership. I don't mean the carless kind of homeless, just the homeless homeless. You shower there, have something to do during your long hours of not working, can swipe energy bars from the display case, and drink all the fountain water you want. Just have to panhandle $24.99 a month to cover the membership, and you're golden. If I was homeless with a car and a gym membership I'd probably reach my goal weight too (doing nothing but eating weight loss bars, drinking water, and working out) and I'm fairly confident I'd have supermodel good looks if I didn't love food so much, so I could then get a job modeling, buy a house with my millions, and I wouldn't be homeless anymore. Homeless is another word that stops being a word the more times you look at it. If I look at it too long I want to start saying hom-ee-leess, like homilies, which I think is some kind of worship song. Dictionary says: sermon. Which is a word that looks like "salmon," but as if someone was saying "salmon" with with a mouth full of marbles. What a horrifying thought. I hope I never find myself with a mouth full of marbles. I choked on mouthwash the other day and I'm so shellshocked I haven't been able to gargle since.

My dad put me on his gym membership for the few months that we're here, and I forgot how much I love the gym. I really do. It's so clean and everybody is sweaty and everybody else looks just like you. I don't know where this image of gyms filled with perfect sweatless bodies came from - must be the west coast because here on the east coast (in Maryland at least) we all park our crabbin' boats at the pier (all MD establishments have piers), strip off our waders and Gordon's fisherman raincoats, drop our natty at the door and make our doughy asses move on treadmills while we cringe at each other's massive sweat stains on the weight equipment. It's great.

This gym is really big and clean and open. It's very, very new, has a pool, and fantastic locker rooms. Really classy, like deep mahogany wood locker doors and lovely tile backsplashes. No scales, though. Which is weird. Yesterday was my first time going and I looked everywhere for the scale, and on my way up to the front desk to ask where it was I passed the trainer desk and a regular old K-mart style bathroom scale on the floor. I puzzled at it and kept walking, but it turns out this is the only scale in the joint, in this wonderful new gym, a scale someone picked up at the store on a toilet paper run and brought to work, in the middle of the main floor.

Um, no.

There was a spin class going on when I got there this morning - people never look so miserable as the people taking a spin class. Some people swear by them, but whenever I see a spin class it's just a sea of misery. That said, there's something mesmerizing about them, and I want to try one. I think it's the spinning silver thingies. They are hypnotizing. They look like the future, when everybody is bioengineered to be the perfect weight and build and no one has to work out ever again. Ahh, the future. Fingers crossed it happens next Wednesday.

I want to be a yoga instructor. Mom and I went to yoga yesterday for the first time (we've gone before, but it was run by this enormously fat man in his attic so I don't count it) and the yoga instructor was toned and thin but not, like, overwhelming to us who are not toned and thin. I can see how she got that way, because after 15 seconds of kneeling on the ground in a dog pose with my left arm straight out and my right leg straight back I felt like my body was screaming at me. According to the yoga instructor, at that point I should have listened to my body, respected what it was saying and changed position, but come on. 15 seconds? My body will have to deal with it. I'm tired of it being a brat.

I really liked the yoga stretches. They felt really nice. I don't think I could do the hardcore yoga with the crazy poses or the hot yoga (EFF THAT, seriously) but the stretchy yoga, I'm in. Although I couldn't be an instructor because I don't have yoga toes. Every yoga instructor I've seen has had yoga toes, so it must be a thing. Yoga toes are thick and reedy, and the big toe is the longest. The tendons stand out a little and you can see the veins, but yoga toes and yoga feet are thick and heavy like they were carved out of wood, and no, they are not something you acquire by doing yoga. My feet will always be flat like pancakes and really smooth, and my big toe will never be longer than the toe next to it, which hangs out of peep-toe shoes and thus I hate peep-toe shoes. My other toes are kind of smallish and bent-y, like they don't know what they're supposed to be doing. "Yeah, we're here, but why?" Yoga toes are like frog toes, and each toe is straight and has a flat part that makes steady contact with the ground like a suction pad. Next time you're in yoga, check it out. The people who are really good have yoga toes.

So I could never be a yoga instructor. But I could be homeless, because I have a gym membership. And a car. And you can have any kind of toes to be homeless.