Day 36 Who’s the Handsomest Prince?
Randee of Bikram Yoga Abbotsford has just returned to teaching after having her second child, and lucky for me, she taught the 3:30 class today. She was nervous, she said, coming back, but she did a great job.
And I so needed it today!
You see, it’s grooming day for my dog and I do it myself. It’s a bit of a job. He’s a poodle, very masculine, self-aware and has more important things on his mind than superficialities like ear-wax, cling-ons and eye-goobers. Important as in squeaky toys and Western union money transfer squash balls.
I’m not a professional groomer, nor have I had any training, but I groom him myself because a) it’s an unpleasant job that can make groomers justifiably impatient, b) he’s an unpleasant subject and c) professional groomers have injured him worse than I ever have, probably because of a) and b).
I have to be in the right mood to tackle the job. I must remain in a Zen-like state, using my best deep breathing, perfectly aware of his incredibly fantastic personality off the grooming table, or I’m liable to bean him in the head with a brush.
Big-Poo (to differentiate him from Little-Poo, who as you might have gathered, is smaller) is a twitchy sort, very responsive to the vibes around him. If he looks out of sorts, and I express concern about it, he immediately adopts an air of deathly illness.
“What?” his look implores. “I look sick? Am I dying?? SAVE ME!!”
He plasters himself against my knees, quaking, until I feel him over and pronounce him well. Then he leaps up, shakes off his terminal terror and goes off to hunt down his squeaky.
For him, the grooming table might as well be a guillotine. He’s tense, uncooperative, resistant, jumpy, everything you really don’t want when you’ve got sharp instruments at hand. I’m sympathetic: after all, imagine someone scissoring around your short curlies. Well, he’s all short curlies.
I go slowly and he tolerates it, trusting me not to hurt him. This is the main reason I can’t let anyone else groom him: I know where all his scars and tender bits are. His flanks, where he’s been clipper-burned and cut, his shoulders where the coyote grabbed him, the side where he ran into a sharp stick, opening up a three-inch gash, chasing a ball of course.
He trusts me, but he still hates grooming.
Once the job’s done, he’s gorgeous, sweet-smelling — and I feel like I’ve spent the day shoeing Belgian draft-horses.
So 90 minutes in the hot room was exactly what I needed to get the kinks out.
But he’s so worth it!
Day 35 Dead by 9:30 am
I’m sitting in my car in the Surrey Guildford parking lot, enjoying an Americano misto and some sushi, re-reading Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. I promised to take my youngest daughter and her friend shopping, the capper to a girls’ weekend, and their stamina is about two hours longer than mine, and the Starbucks seats are darned uncomfortable.
Besides, it’s kind of fun watching cars come and go in the spots beside me. People jump, startled and a bit embarrassed when they notice me sitting motionless next to them, staring behind my sunglasses. Apparently not a lot of people sit in their cars in parking lots.
Anyway, due to the shopping trip, I did an early class today. Normally, I’m militant about not getting up early on Sundays, having spent, like Rhoda Janzen, much of my childhood in church. Enough that I figure I’ve earned lazy Sunday mornings for the rest of my life.
But today, I got up early. And the universe punished me for it.
Perhaps I was cocky yesterday. Maybe I got overly confident, flexing my yogic karma too much, so that it had to spring back, like a rubber band. Whatever it was, there was nothing rubber-like about my hamstrings; more like cold saltwater taffy, ready to shatter instead of pull.
The girls were chomping at the bit to go as soon as I staggered into the house, so I hustled in and out of the shower, knowing I’d have time to relax once they were set loose on the mall. My second-born daughter, with whom I suffered in the hot room this morning, asked me with sympathy, “Won’t it be great when you don’t have to drive kids around anymore?”
The truth is, I don’t really mind. My kids are so appreciative, I enjoy doing things for them. This is part of my problem these days – there’s less and less for me to do for them, and with them. And I miss it. (Not always, mind you, but we’re talking trends.) I enjoy their company and they seem comfortable in mine. They listen to my stories, they laugh at my jokes, they tell me about their lives, they ask me questions. And it’s not like they’re looking at their watches or texting someone while they’re doing it. They’re with me entirely, and I am cognizant of the rare treasure that this is.
I know how lucky I am.
And I’m so dreading the days when this easy camaraderie is over. I miss my oldest daughter so much some days, yet I wouldn’t hold her back from all her experiences in the past years at UBC for anything. I’m so happy for how she’s grown and changed, how much fun she’s having. But I still miss her.
I hope I’m not holding on too tightly, but I probably am. I know my girls worry about me, their crazy mother who feels everything so deeply, who’s compelled to obsess and analyze everything to death. It’s my job to worry about them, not the other way around. And I’m not that crazy.
So no, I don’t mind sitting in a mall parking lot. It’s perfectly comfortable – at least with the windows cracked to diffuse the faint but persistent yoga fug.
And after that, there’s spearmint and eucalyptus epsom salts for me at home, and an evening of Chuck with my youngest, who’s stuck here with me for at least another year, ha-ha!
And I’m going to enjoy it all thoroughly. While I can.
Day 34 Check-In Time
Well, finally, a day when all the postures seemed to just… flow. So, since I’m thinking about it, here’s where my body and I are at after 34 straight days of Bikram Yoga:
Postures: Pretty solid on all of them. They say that as some postures become easier, others become more difficult, and I’m definitely seeing this. But Standing Head-to-Knee remains my nemesis, still can’t lock that right knee for $&!#
Body parts: Right hip, still a little painful, but nothing like it was. And the noises are mostly gone! I never expected that. Arms: I think they’ve actually gotten bigger. Frick. I look like an East German Olympic swimmer. (A retired one, but still.) Butt: higher. Thighs: leaner. Belly: still jiggles but there’s a faint line of muscle under the flab that I haven’t seen before.
Weight: no change. Well, maybe a pound or two, but it’s hard to take those seriously until they’re joined by a few more.
Brain: clearer, a nice change from my usual fog. I’ve got a book proposal, possibly two, in the works and for the first time in a long time, I feel good about them. Like, I could actually write something meaningful, authentic, that could possibly be sufficiently entertaining to garner a commercial audience. (translation: a decent offer from a decent publisher.)
Heart/soul: as the aches and pains in my body lessen, I’m becoming more aware of the things that hurt on a deeper, more existential level, the losses and disappointments that rear their heads in midlife. Now, I’m fully aware that I live a comfortable upper-middle class life in the best country in the world. I’m aware of Libya and Japan. Terrifyingly aware. Death, destruction, pain, horror, it’s everywhere, on a macro-scale, as well as in the microcosm of each of our teeny-tiny lives. I don’t know what to do with it all somedays. “Life is pain, Highness,” as I quoted earlier.
I guess the upshot at this stage is that it feels good to be doing something hard. I’m so aware of the things I can’t do, or have forgotten or was never particularly good at in the first place. For instance, I’ll never be a Cirque du Soleil Flying Girl, like this:
Professional figure skater is out, as is veterinarian, nurse-midwife, and a host of other things I once aspired to. But what can I be, in the second half of my life? I simply don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of demand for middle-aged mystics who are good spellers and can bake bread. All I can say for certain is that I’m trying to face the stuff of life, without backing down, without chickening out.
And maybe one day, get my forehead. To. My. God. DAMN. KNEE!