On The Town With Keely.

Have you ever injured yourself in a really embarrassing way? The kind of OW that you'd rather no one know about- yet that you CANNOT keep to yourself? Like, despite your shame at your own awkwardness, you really need someone to ask if you're all right? Except, when they do, their query is disproportionate to the amount of sympathy a body-ending pain like yours warrants? And when they ask, sighing, if there's anything they can DO, you respond that- No, you do not need an ambulance, but maybe, just maybe, an acknowledgment of the potential severity of the catastrophic near-miss that just occurred would make the death knell ring a little more softly. Maybe. Or perhaps a moment of silence would help.

No? Never happened to you? Me neither.

And now, in Costco news:

Things That I Have Seen-

An elderly woman elbow me in the neck for a spanikopita sample...

A guy fondly ask his friends- Remember when I ate ALL of your almonds?

A couple acknowledge to each other that they're "not really into the pot pie."

And a Dad rub his hands together and gleefully announce to his kids that "NOW we shop for pleasure."

Costco, as I have learned, is no place for the casual shopper nor the novice. You will be tread on and crunched down like gravel under the wheels of a semi. And forget asking for help- no one actually WORKS there- they're all "independent contractors" working for various spanikopita vendors.

But I still love it there. A ton. Because there's a kind of [American] fulfillment you can only get by finding a 3-ton box of granola bars. And I don't even LIKE granola bars!

The shoppers there are something else. While at her Costco in Boston, my sis Kate was badgered by an elderly man who wanted her opinion on various track suits. Her reply that she liked them all only aggravated him. There MUST be a winner! I think she pointed to one and apparently he went away. I don't know. He might still be there. In his workout-y finest.

And a tiny, not at all self-incriminating bit of advice? Skip the gelato. Sure, it's dollar gelato. But you know what dollar gelato tastes like? Gelato made for a dollar.

In other marketing news, I've recently noticed in Pilates (while face-planting in various ungraceful positions) that the mats at the studio boast the phrase "The Total Body Solution."

Which is questionable. Sure, it's A body solution. Quite a nice-ish one. But at the time all I could think in terms of body fitness totality:

Lipo.

But whatever. There's something to be said for working out and earning it.

And I absolutely think we should all continue to.

As soon as our bodies heal from the pelvis-cracking baby gate injury that we've recently incurred.

For example.