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every time I try to get into shape, something goes wrong and makes it impossible. Let me make this clear: Every time I get into shape, something breaks.
    Exercise, as you no doubt know, is a late arrival in the history of civilization. Until around 1910, people exercised all the time, but they didn’t think of it as exercise—they thought of it as life itself. They had to get from one place to the other, usually on foot, and harvest the crop, and wage war, and so on. But then the automobile was invented (not to mention the Sherman tank), and that pretty much led to what we have today—a country full of underexercised (and often overweight) people—and a parallel universe of overexercised (but not necessarily underweight) people. I myself swing between the two universes. I spend time getting into shape; then something breaks, and then I spend time recovering and not being in shape; then I recover and I get into shape; then something new breaks. So far, in the breakage department, I have managed the following: I pulled my lower back doing sit-ups; I threw out my right hip on the treadmill; I got shin splints from jogging; and I entirely destroyed my neck just from rolling over in bed. A few years ago, during a wild and committed period of exercise, I happened to be sent a tape of the movie Chicago, and I made the mistake of confusing it with an exercise video. It was, without question, the greatest exercise video I have ever worked out to. I could lift weights forever while watching it. For the first time in my exercising life, I was never bored. I could be Catherine Zeta-Jones, and then I could be Renée Zellweger. I pranced around the apartment waving my five-pound weights here and there and singing “All That Jazz.” I have never been happier exercising. But after three weeks, I woke up one morning in horrible pain and discovered I couldn’t move my arms. Millions of dollars in doctor’s fees later, it turned out that I had not one but two frozen shoulders, the result (naturally) of lifting too many weights for far too long. It took two years for these frozen shoulders to mostly thaw, and in the meantime, I had pretty much resigned myself to the prospect of never being able to scratch my own back (or zip up a dress). (Not that I wear dresses, but if I did.) But I am now exercising again. I have a trainer. I have my treadmill. I have my TV set over the treadmill. I exercise almost four hours a week, and I would rather be in Philadelphia (although not in labor).
    Skin
    In my bathroom there are many bottles. There are also many jars. Most of these bottles and jars contain products for the skin, although none of them contain something that is called, merely, “skin cream.” Instead they contain face cream, or hand lotion, or body lotion, or foot cream. Remember when we were young? There was only Nivea. Life was so simple. I know in my heart that all these labels on these bottles and jars are whimsical and arbitrary and designed to make vulnerable, pitiable women like me shell out astronomical sums of money for useless products; on the other hand, you will probably never see me using foot cream on my face, just in case.
    Here, for example, right next to the sink, is a bottle of something called StriVectin-SD. For exactly five minutes in 2004 StriVectin-SD was thought to be the Fountain of Youth. It instead turned out to be simply skin lotion, a bottle of which cost an arm and a leg. But meanwhile, for one brief shining moment, I believed it was the answer to everything. The woman who sold it to me at the cosmetics counter behaved as if she were slipping me a bottle of aged whiskey during Prohibition. It had just come in, she whispered. It was down in the basement. They couldn’t put it out on display, or it would be gone in a twinkling. Only certain customers were being allowed to have it.
    Now it sits on the bathroom counter, taking up space, alongside similar testaments to my gullibility—relics of the Retin-A years