Holiday Gift Guide #5: For Your Fitnessy Wife Who Can Squat Her Own Weight and Occasionally Wears Lacy Dresses

My attitude toward working out is that I want to eat a lot of cheese and butter, drink champagne and bourbon liberally, and not develop gout or die by the time I’m thirty-five. So I halfheartedly buy Groupons for barre classes and Bikram yoga, and I walk the dog to happy hour, and I call it good. Julie does not share this attitude. My wife is a fitnessy gal. She does the Crossfit. She loves yoga. She runs half marathons at a rapid pace. For fun. She’s also an avid consumer of knowledge, and gadgets, and other fitnessy products—and since she’s become a professional personal trainer, she keeps telling me that now it’s all a business expense.

So what do you get for a gal who wears her sports bra to a business meeting, and doesn’t need just need her work outfit to transition effortlessly from day to night, but from dead lifts to burger dates? Here are a few ideas. Sadly, bourbon and butter did not make the cut.

Fabletics is a subscription based clothing service that sends you new threads periodically—like Stitch Fix but for workout clothes. Julie likes the package that gives you a new top, bottoms, and a sports bra every month. She does warn that the sports bras are not the most supportive ones she’s ever worn, so your mileage may vary. ($25 to start)

Rogue Jump Ropes. Once upon a time, I was a college rugby player, and the most intimidating thing was when a girl stepped on the field in hot pink cleats, because you knew she had something to prove if she was going to tackle people in pink shoes—and she was probably going to prove it with your face. The badass fitnessy gal in your life can subtly put people on notice with some hot pink handles on her custom jump rope while she’s knocking out some double unders and her Muay Thai warm ups. ($42.95)

Bluetooth Wireless Headphones, because if she’s running for hours, she doesn’t need her hands getting tangled in her cords and ruining that nice endorphin rush she’s got going on. ($35)

For the most part, my fitnessy gal sticks to working out in the urban setting. Last year though, she decided to run a half marathon through Rocky Mountain National Park. While the event itself was safe and populated, training for it was isolated and a little more nerve wracking. I met some lady mountain bikers at the airport last week, and they recommended the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger as a handy safeguard for rugged workouts, where you might not be able to use your smartphone if you need some help. ($149.95)

This is my favorite kind of gift to get for someone you live with—something just for them… that can benefit you as well (shh). Julie extolls the benefits of her Foam Roller for sore muscles post-race or competition, but I think it works just swell when my back muscles are crying for help after I’ve been hunched over my sewing machine, or reading in one position for too long. ($45)

C9 Reversible Sports Bra or the Rebound Racer Bra. The Champion sports bras from Target are a go-to everyday favorite around here, but splurge-y lingerie is always a good gift idea, and a great sports bra totally counts. ($8.99 and $50)

If your world is anything like mine, at some point the fitnessy gal in your life is going to express interest in the Paleo diet. The Nom Nome Paleo book has some super tasty alternatives to the side of bison and steamed broccoli that I always envision when caveman cuisine comes up. ($20)

GU Chomps are one of my go-to stocking stuffers, because they remind me of candy. Or Gushers. The fitnessy gal can take them on a long run, or stash them in her backpack for a trail snack that won’t weigh down her backpack. ($31.75)

The Under Armour Storm Duffle is awesome for the fitnessy gal who might be teaching bootcamp in the morning, and trying to make it to her own kickboxing workout in the afternoon and needs to haul her gear for both. Tons of color options too! ($45)

Fit Radio. Any genre of music set to a heart rate increasing beat—fun for the fitnessy gal who likes Blake Shelton and Ellie Goulding (and didn’t even know she liked them simultaneously. Yet.). ($2.99 per month)

Feel The Beat Tank, by lucy. Supportive for yoga or barre class, cute enough that you can put some jeans and a scarf on and head straight to happy hour afterward. ($40.93)

Because even the fitnessy gal can’t always make it to the gym or a class, Reebok Kettlebells are a super-versatile option for working out at home. ($39.99)

Yoga Download. With classes you can download with your subscription, or longer, more involved classes you can purchase, this is especially great for holiday travel. ($10 per month)

Reconnecting With My Sister Through Wedding Planning

Karley is my younger sister. We’re almost two years apart, and we’re very different people. I’m bossy; she’s stubborn. I can be a nervous people pleaser; Karley doesn’t have time for any of that. She is sharp and funny. Sometimes I see kids and teenagers who struggle with authority, and I always think that these are the kids who are going to grow into my kind of people. Because some of the qualities we, or at least I, prize in adults—independence, irreverence, wit, a strong sense of self-advocacy—are not the qualities that make up a “good kid.” Karley has always had these qualities in droves. In her toast at our wedding, Karley talked about how when we were younger, she called me the Golden Child. Growing up I had good grades and friends who never caused any trouble, so I rarely did either. Karley had a more difficult time with school, and usually ended up just doing what she wanted and taking the consequences later. She felt like the bad seed. We were oil and water. When I moved out and went to college, the prevailing hypothesis in our family was that maybe we’d learn to get along now that we weren’t living under the same roof, but we’d probably never be close.

The big catalyst for a change in our relationship with each other happened when my sister announced an unexpected pregnancy. And then, eight years ago now, my nephew Holden was born. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that everything shifted after that. Of course it did for my sister, but our relationship shifted too. We had something that was such a source of joy for both of us, but something that we experienced totally differently at the same time. We didn’t have to relate only as siblings anymore—we could interact with each other from our relationships to Holden. My sister’s role in our family changed too; Karley is a very good mother, and Holden is our parents’ first and only grandchild. She was doing something well, and sharing something amazing with all of us, and, importantly for us, she was an expert in something I wasn’t. Since I didn’t live super close to the rest of my family, Karley started frequently texting me pictures and stories about my nephew, and slowly that turned into semi-regularly talking about other things: student loans, pets, online shopping, My Little Pony tattoos. I started to look forward to the opportunity to spend time with her when I visited my family.

No one was more excited than my sister when Julie and I got engaged. Karley has always loved weddings, maybe even more than I do. And planning my wedding gave us an opportunity to use our opposing strengths collaboratively. For instance, I had planned to travel to California to go wedding dress shopping with my family. When I called to confirm our appointment with the store before I left Colorado, the gal on the phone informed me that she couldn’t find my name in their book. I texted my mom and my sister, feeling disappointed and nervous. My mom, who often responds to challenges like I do, texted me back that I shouldn’t worry, that things would work out. Karley, however, called me immediately. “I’m calling them now,” she said, forcefully, “and they will find your appointment, and they will make this the best damn experience of your whole life, or they will have me to deal with.” They did, too. And I was so viscerally grateful to have my fierce sister on my side. We talked almost every day between my engagement and the wedding. Sometimes about wedding-related stuff, sometimes work, or family, or whether or not jellies make your feet sweat intolerably.

I know my sister loves me, and even likes me most of the time now, but when we were planning the wedding, I felt like she was proud of me in a way that I haven’t experienced before. I felt like someone she wanted to show off—a sister she thought others should be envious of.

Karley was a wonderful Maid of Honor. She spent the days leading up to the wedding carrying things to and from the car, gluing squares to our huppah, covering things in glitter. She kept me company in the alley behind our venue before Julie came to do our first look. The day after the wedding she helped me haul all of the leftover beer and wine back to the liquor store. Her and Holden’s flight back to California that night got cancelled, and they were briefly stranded, so they came back to our house and the four of us opened wedding presents and looked at photo booth pictures. We were all so tired, and so overwhelmed from the previous few days, and I was overall so glad to be done with the wedding. But I did keep thinking that I would miss the talking to my sister parts of wedding planning. I didn’t doubt our relationship anymore, but I would feel the loss of being such a point of focus for her, now that the wedding was over.

Unlike me, my sister isn’t one to spend her time looking backward. She’s already moved on to her/our next project. She texted me the other day, “I found a job for Julie in California!”

“Great,” I replied, working on something else, and texting on the fly, “Go tell Julie about it.”

“You guys need to get moving,” she texted back, “I need to live in the same state as my nieces and nephews!”

“You don’t have nieces and nephews,” I said.

“Well, you better get on that,” she replied.