Let's get physical.

You-know-who is paying the powers-that-be good money to be assigned things like this: "write a 100 word essay on Hippos." Well, she seems happy about it. I'm concerned as to how something so fat can swim. I meant the hippo, of course. Though T.O.C.E. finally started taking my hints about her chocolate-covered granola bar indulgences and joined a gym this week. She went to her first aerobics class and promptly passed out in front of the fecund young undergraduates. I try to stifle the chortles, but come on. I'm not made of wood, people. Uncle!

I have developed my own fitness regimen, involving lots of jumping, attacking, and whining. For some reason, this move to Iowa has granted me an increase of both the Vim and the Vigor.

The JUMPING is thanks in part to our new apartment's low-lying windows (since the place is sunk underground, when I sit on the sills I'm at grass-level) and also thanks to the trunk T.O.C.E. stuck at the foot of the bed. This allows me to leap, like a nimble gazelle, from the floor to the trunk, to the bed, to the windowsill, where, as I sit, my tail thrashes mightily at the chipmunks (also an act of fitness). I do this all of the day and all of the night. If T.O.C.E. is asleep in the bed, I just climb all over her. She loves it.

The ATTACKING is of T.O.C.E.'s feet under the quilt, and of my turtle, who always asks for it. It mocks me, which can never be tolerated.

The WHINING is new. It happens when I have grown bored of the JUMPING and ATTACKING, and do not feel up to going under the bed for my requisite siesta. I follow T.O.C.E. around the house, sniffing the furniture and making plaintive cries. When she tries to pick me up, I run away. A lark, I tell you!

Also, T.O.C.E. came home last night having lost a pie-eating contest. Last. Frigging. Place. The shame is almost too much to bear; first the conking out in Gym, now this. How could someone with her garish appetites ever come in last place of any eating contest? Could've been the 4 beers she drank prior to entering. Oh well-- I've stopped caring.