peevish mama

Anyone who knows me knows I’m having a bit of a moment.  I generally exist on a relatively even keel, but these days, all bets are off.   (See last two entries for proof).  I was feeling so forlorn that I decided I would stay the hell off this blog until I had something positive to write about.  It’s simply boring to listen to someone rant all the time – just like it’s boring to see a slutty dresser in yet another slutty skirt.  But put a normally buttoned-up mama in a slutty skirt, and you’ll hear the heads swivel.  Va va voom!  

In any event, the solution to my pent up feelings of angst turned out to be rather simple: yoga.  I simply went to yoga.  Well, not simply.  I had to perform Nadia Comaneci-worthy scheduling gymnastics, but I stuck my landing:  I found a sitter and an hour and forty-five minutes before a swim meet in Wayzata to sneak away.  I love and adore yoga despite the fact that I am so bad at it – both mentally and physically.  I can’t focus and quiet my mind to save my life.  On the physical side, as far as I have been able to determine, there is a strength/flexibility yin yang to it all.  I list way to the strong side of things (although I don’t hold a candle to my friend Crackerjack, who is remarkably strong . . .) and I am highly inflexible.  I have further determined that it’s not my muscles that are tight, it’s my sinews – my tendons and ligaments, the way my joints are jointed – I’m kind of like the Tin Man.  This is why I started yoga about four years ago – I don’t want to end up like my grandmother who was about as hunched and stiff as the wooden cane she shuffled around with, but could lift a small car.  So I go to yoga when I can, and I try my hardest to open up all those tight areas on my body, to breathe into them so that I can reach into new space.  And in the process, I learn humility, patience, acceptance.  Or, at least I try.  But that’s not where I was going with all of this.  

What I was going to say is that washing my yoga mat is one of life’s pleasures for me.  I can’t imagine there are too many people who share this sentiment, but I have my reasons.  First of all, if I’m spraying down my yoga mat draped over my adirondack chair, it means I’m all blissed-out after having made it through a particularly sweaty and challenging class.  It also means it’s summer and I love summer.  It also means that now that I have the hose out, I get to water my herbs and flowers too and I love killing multiple birds with one stone.  Finally, and best of all, it means next time I go to yoga, my mat will not smell like cheesy biscuits.