Nancy Rommelmann

P90X

So we're in our hotel room in Hollywood last Saturday morning. It's 8 AM. Din is heading out to get us some coffee, and I am engaging in one of my favorite hotel room activities: lying in bed and watching TV. And on the TV is an informercial, for some exercise DVDs called P90X. Din is watching me watch the informercial, which features people talking about how, in just 90 days...

"You're going to buy this," he says to me.

"Oh, yes I am," I say back.

"Before I get back with the coffee," he adds, as I reach for my phone.

In my defense, I have never before bought anything off the TV. But reader, I am out of shape. I was a marathoner for 10 years; a five-day-a-week fitness person for four years after that, but last November, following foot surgery, I stopped. I have done basically nothing for six months.

Until this morning. I did the first DVD. It was 50 minutes of push-ups and pull-ups, and 16 minutes of ab work. Is the host, Tony somebody, sort of odd looking, with a stretched effect around the eyes and hair that looks as though it's had a little help and a chipperness spiked with words like "shred!" and "bring it!"? Well, yes, but one sort of expects this, and I have to say, his delivery makes you feel as though you actually are in the room working out with his crew. And I only sort of wanted to vomit once.

Speaking of vomit: I will not be following the included diet program. Sorry, but pesto made from nonfat parmesan, white wine and lemon juice sounds like a good substitute for throw-up.

In an effort at accountability, starting stats: Weight: 139 - Chest: 36 1/2 - Waist: 29 (fatty) - Hips: 37

Will check in in a month.

Author Author

My work life has become completely about books: writing them, editing them, reviewing them (latest: A Covert Affair: The Adventures of Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS, by Jennet Conant), reading them (currently, Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, which is spectacular), and doing research for the next two books of my own.

There is also time to interview authors about their work, for instance, Molly O'Neill on her latest book, One Big Table, and what's wrong with $8 bunches of organic arugula tied with twine, and why she needed to get out of "the little girls' ghetto" where cookbook writers tend to be corralled. The interview posted today, on Culinate.com, and it is one of my favorite ever. All props to Molly, for being so smart and so tart.

And then there is the author elbow-rubbing, such as last night's, with John Sayles, before his reading at Powell's from his latest novel, A Moment in the Sun.

 

Sayles and Maggie Renzi are friends of my mom's. I told her yesterday, I would be going to the reading, and she insisted I introduce myself. I told her, mom, it's going to be mobbed; I am not going to bother them. And then I walked in and Sayles was standing right there, so I did, and he was very nice, and Maggie put her arms around me and said, "We've heard so much about you," and insisted a photo be taken of she and I, to post on the blog for the book and their latest film, AMIGO.

"Now you and John," Maggie said, and scooted us together, making me as you can see very happy, and prompting a woman in the audience to ask, "Are you one of the actresses in his movies?"

 

 

Two Year Anniversary of the Death of Eldon Smith, Age 4

Two years and 13 hours ago, Amanda Stott-Smith stood on the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon and dropped her two youngest children into the Willamette River. Trinity, age 7, essentially saved her own life by yelling so loud and for so long, many people who lived along the river stood on its banks yelling back, and one brave couple, David Haag and Cheryl Robb, motored their boat into the darkness and found her. Eldon was closeby, near enough that it is all but certain Trinity held on to her brother for the 40 minutes it took for her to be rescued. But Eldon had drowned. Readers know I have been writing about this incident since the day it occurred.

A friend who knew Eldon posted today on her Facebook page, "The [murder] of a child is like a stone cast into the stillness of a quiet pool; the concentric ripples of despair sweep out in all directions." You would be amazed, or perhaps you would not be, at the power this little boy's death exerts, the reaching out it inspires some to do, the deception others engage in, the secrets some confide, the same ones others lock away. It is not the nature of an event this potent and terrible to stay contained. What led Amanda to do what she did, and the price her children paid and continue to pay, inevitably will leak out.

Today I remember a boy I did not know but am getting to know, described by those who did as, "watchful," "a beauty"; "not rambunctious, very calm, very rules-oriented"; "a really sweet little kid" who nevertheless "scowled a lot. I said, you want an ice cream you’re going to have to give me a smile. And he flashed me the biggest most beautiful smile you ever saw in your life, just huge, just beaming. I gave him his ice cream. That was the last time I ever saw Eldon, and I’ll always see him like that."

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