Where can I buy motivation?

I'm going to start working out. I say this every summer before school starts. With the gyms that Ball State has I'll be able to get in the best shape of my life! I rarely make it a week before I quit.

I really want to do it this time. I'm not fat, I know, and I'm not trying to lose weight necessarily. I don't even have a scale in my house so I wouldn't know I had even if I did. I just want to be "tone" or "lean". There's a difference between being skinny and being in shape. I have fantastic genes. My hair almost always obeys me, except in unusual humidity. My nail beds are long and my nails are hard. I tan pretty well and my eyes have a good shape to them, even if they aren't the traditional shape of most white people and I have to put on my eye shadow a little bit differently. I eat whatever I want and my weight doesn't fluctuate. I'm spoiled. I know that I don't *need* to work out to look like I'm "supposed to look." I just want to be healthy. I want to get into the habit of working out so that when I get pregnant later on (very later on) in life, I won't have a hell of a time losing my baby weight. I want to work out so that when I get older and my metabolism slows down, I can still have pasta and rice pretty much every day. What's life without pasta? Nothing, that's what.

I want to keep on looking nice even after I have kids. I think it's a tragedy when women cut their hair super short and stop wearing makeup when they have kids. Ugh. I watched my cousin's 7 month old all day for two and a half weeks this summer. Yeah, I wasn't sure how to take a shower when no one else was home. What if she woke up from her nap while I was in the shower? Other than that I definitely had the ability to put some makeup on and brush my hair while she was up and about. Although my clothes had little spots of smashed green peas and I reeked of formula I still tried to look presentable. Maybe? Alright fine, I wore yoga pants pretty much everyday. I had no where to go! If I had errands to run or a husband, or any reason to look nice other than because I was watching music videos I would have. Really. I would have...

I'm also going to start working out. Yeah... It's totally going to happen this time. Totally.

Final Reading for my Creative Fiction Class. Dec '08

*The "I" in this story isn't me, I just wrote it in the first person because I liked how it felt that way. My friend in class an I had an idea that our final readings should be sort of deranged and should make the teacher want to recommend us to the counseling center. This is my attempt, and I'm pretty sure it worked.*

I had to go to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I had awoken before my alarm and lay staring at the clock until the red numbers exploded into noise. I can’t afford to keep my small apartment at a normal temperature. I sleep in sweats, a pair with a crotch that skims the knees. I shuffled to the shower that I’ve never had sex in and began my tired routine.
You know how sometimes you’ll be driving and you wonder what would happen if you twitched just enough to crash into oncoming traffic? The oncoming driver wouldn’t be wearing a seatbelt and would go through his windshield and land on mine, blood seeping in the splinters of safety glass. Our cars would collide and twist like metal fingers. Glass would shatter and fall like crystals, dancing on the asphalt as they searched for a resting place. My airbag would malfunction, my face crunching against the steering wheel, fracturing my skull and splitting the skin. A second car, trying to avoid the collision would hit the left side of my bumper, jerking my car and sending my temple into the driver’s side window knocking me unconscious and sending pulses of blood down my face. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks like that.
I stayed on my side of the road long enough to stop in at the only coffee shop on the way to the BMV. I was third in line. I handled all the merchandise and knick knacks on the way to the register. The barista’s expression when I ordered a plain black coffee made me contemplate whether I should fling it in his face when he handed it to me. Not everyone wants a half caf. Caramel latte with a mocha twist, Mr. Barista, so don’t look at me like I’m an idiot for liking my coffee to actually taste like fucking coffee. After taking my order he smiled and said he liked my shirt. I don’t know why, I was wearing an ugly grey sweater; I guess it’s a nice grey. I just looked at him and waited for my coffee as his smile slowly faded and he turned to the next customer. Some say my natural expression is off-putting. I grabbed my coffee from a peppy barista who’s too old to still be working at a coffee shop and much too old to wear her little hat backwards. It’s just pathetic really, people like that.
I finally made it to the BMV. The line ended at the door so I stood with my back to a draft. I didn’t bring a book, not that I would have read it standing up. I hate lines. It took twenty three minutes to get to the front of the line and explain the triviality that had brought me there. The woman who helped me was almost as bored as I was, monotone, she fit her situation, the weather, the time, everything except her clothes. She looked to be one of those people afraid to go from misses to women’s sizes. Her breasts shook while she wrote, her grubby fingers grasped the pen, dwarfing it. Her warbling double chin was covered in a soft down of hair. Answering her questions was made difficult by the disgust that was building up in the back of my throat. She asked if I was ok, I looked ill. I just took my papers and a pen and went to sit at the only empty seat at an available table.
I sat and breathed, trying to think of something else. The table was right below an analog clock with a loud second hand. I filled out my paper work and sat. There was a girl sitting to my right, reading a supermarket rag. She was chewing gum. Loudly. She was completely done up, big earrings, lots of makeup, lots of hairspray, lots of money. Three hookers had to die so she could look the way she did. I looked back to the metal table where I was sitting. I tried to find a pattern in the scratches on the stainless steel surface. That girl kept clicking her gum. I tried to read the magazine out of the corner of my eye. I could hear the spit swirl in her mouth as she chewed. I tried reading the only thing on the table, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Really? She blew a bubble. Can you ask a stranger to shut the fuck up with their gum? I just wanted to smash her face in. So I did.
I found myself with my hand tangled in her hair. My wrist rested in the hollow spot at the bottom of her head and my fingers wrapped around her skull like I was holding a basketball. She didn’t even have time to make a noise before I stood up a little and put every ounce of my strength and weight into slamming her face down into the table. I don’t even know what you’d call that noise. Like dropping a rotting melon onto a table. I breathed in deep, calming the surge of adrenaline I was enjoying. Her hands were clutching the magazine in her lap, her earrings were against the table, her hair splayed around my hand. Blood was beginning to pool. I pulled her head back. I looked closely, her nose had broken, it looked like a movie. It was flat, squashed, gone, she would never be on a coin. I broke one of her teeth, they were tilted in and twisted, one went through her lip, and there was a chip of one on the table, swimming in the beautiful crimson. Her eyes were partially open but were red; there was a stream of blood from her forehead dribbling into the corner of one of her baby blues; color contacts. It’s amazing how the life literally goes out of the eyes. A big strip of highlighted hair stuck to the blood when I had brought her head back up. I was still holding her skull. I used my other hand to put the hair back behind her ear. I didn’t know blood had a smell.
I’m glad I took everything in so fast. The few people who did look up at the noise immediately screamed, shrieked bloody murder actually. No one knew what to do. I didn’t look like a threat at the time, well besides holding a mutilated face over a pool of blood, I guess. I noticed I had indented the table a little bit. I didn’t think I was that strong. They had to remove my hand from her hair. The police took me and gave me my rights. The back seat of the squad car was more comfortable than I thought it would be. We passed by the coffee shop on our way to the station. I wondered if anyone else had gotten a plain black coffee since I had. I saw in my reflection in the window that I had some splattered blood on my face. Once we got to the police station they sat me in a chair next to two other people. I was in line again, for the third time that day. I was third in line for the second time that day. And so I waited again while the man next to me tapped his foot, for seventeen goddamn minutes.