Impulse Buying

So I'm in Safeway (buying much needed wine after this hellish week) and the whirling dervish is uncontrollably spinning away from me. I catch up with him, pinning him up against a magazine rack that is strategically placed at child's eye level, and I see Sheryl Crow staring back at me with her iron abs on the cover of Shape magazine. As I'm lecturing my son about coming when called and doing as I say, I am simultaneously (almost subconsciously) pulling the magazine off the rack (I'm a multi-tasker). We continue to the checkout with one bottle of wine and now one Shape magazine (something a little incongruous there) with a 43-year-old singer on the cover with less fat on her entire body than what is in my little finger. Anyway, the little sideline on the cover is "Sheryl Crow's Body Secrets" or some other such nonsense. I have no idea what compelled me to buy this thing, knowing full well that between the depressant of alcohol and the onslaught of perfect body images, I'll be in a deep depression by the time the night is through. At least I was inexplicably relieved to read that she "RUNS" at least an hour every day, and if she's not doing that, she's biking 40-55 miles with Lance the Adulterer. (I don't know what it is, but their whole relationship just ticks me off. Admittedly I do not know the details, but it just HAS to be wrong.)

Anyway, I find it refreshing when these celebrities are at least honest about the sacrifices and work they have to do to keep up these faultless bodies. I was reading in TV Guide one time about Kelly Ripa and how she doesn't really exercise. Yeah, right. Listen, you don't get that bony, defined chest by, as she put it, "pushing the kids in swings." Let me tell ya, I've done PLENTY of pushing swings, and my chest never ends up looking like I do 58 chest presses a day.

Back to the adulterer and his band whore. Sheryl's newly diamond-bedecked finger was prominently displayed on the cover. Do you notice how in interviews there's never mention of his kids? What is the deal anyway? Oh, but they're in love. I guess his previous wife just wasn't supportive enough, what with the cancer and all. Sheryl will stand by her man. Oh, wait. That was the FIRST wife. He's in remission now, right? Rough.