Day 40 Endorphin Junkie
Several years ago, before a trip to Mexico, I decided to have my legs professionally waxed. I have nothing against shaving, but I’ve got a raised pigmented mole on my left shin that I tend to forget about. I’ve cut the top off that thing so many times, it now looks like a little brown target, which you’d think might help me remember, but doesn’t. I figured it would be nice to vacation without a bloody scab.
Well, that was a deeply enlightening spa experience I’m in no hurry to repeat, thank you very much. Lovely result, but that poor esthetician was dodging random kicks to the head and I’m pretty sure I was offering to sign a confession, any confession, by the end. Turns out I need to be in control of the pain myself.
So I do my own waxing. Now that I’ve reached the age when, as Janette Barber’s famous quote goes, “they’re not chin hairs, they’re stray eyebrows,” it’s a top-to-toe deal. “Your face feels so smooth and woman-like,” my husband tells me afterwards, with all sincerity.
And you know what hurts the most? (No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Hello, natural childbirth times three.) It’s the top of the feet. Oh, come on. I’m not the only one with periodic bouts of hobbit-foot. You know what I’m talking about. Or if you don’t you either should, or you will. Somehow the skin over the feet and ankles is so thin, it produces a spectacularly bright sort of pain when the hairs rip free.
But afterwards? It’s not just the smooth, exfoliated skin. It’s an endorphin rush, the body celebrating “I suffered, and I survived!”
I wonder if that’s not part of the draw of Bikram yoga, for me. I’ve never been one to do anything the easy way. Ten years of pregnancy and/or lactation. 14 years of homeschooling. 23 years, coming up, of marriage. In fact, if there’s a hard way, a long way, or a wrong way, I’ve probably taken it. (I chose to be a writer, after all. And not just any writer – for years, I wrote for pet magazines and church magazines. The two lowest-paying segments of the freelance market. Good job.)
But there is satisfaction in doing something really, really difficult. (I once wrote a piece on how to deal with masturbation in cats. It’s true. I’m not saying it was a good story, but it was assigned, I got the information, the interviews, and met my deadline. Thank goodness the editors saw reason and killed it before the issue went to print.)
There’s nothing like the sensation at the end of class, when I’m lying in Savasana – Corpse Pose – drenched with sweat, swimming in endorphins, limp, limber and loose.
I’ve suffered, I’ve pushed through, and I’ve survived. And I’m stronger for it.
Day 38 Recovery Cocktail
There comes a point in each Bikram yoga class when, in the words of my favourite blogger-commedienne Allie, of Hyperbole-and-a-Half, I’m so thirsty I’d “shank an infant for juice.” I’ve read her post on her experience running a marathon in Texas several times, and each time it makes me laugh more. I love the way this woman’s mind works.
But anyway. Yoga. I always make sure I’m well-hydrated before the class, and I usually drink a full bottle during, but still. By the time we’ve finished the balancing series and move on to the floor exercises, I’m feeling the heat, like a living thing, pressing down on me. My clothing feels like those warmed blankets they put on you in the hospital after surgery. Except hotter, really, really hot. And all I want is a breeze. Cool water. Ice. A meat-locker.
This past January, about a half-hour after my husband and arrived in Maui, I came down with a virus. I’d been fighting it valiantly in the weeks leading up to the trip, pounding down Vitamin C, guzzling water and green tea, doing yoga like mad. But I still spent the first few days in paradise alternately sleeping, resting, napping, dozing or, if I was feeling particularly energetic, reading. All the while coughing like a walrus.
And thirsty, so thirsty.
The first night, Ray trotted on down to the resort store, in search of something that might, if not cure me, at least cut down on the whinging. He came back armed with juice of several varieties, an array of Vitamin water flavours, various exorbitantly over-priced over-the-counter remedies, and ice. Then he started mixing and matching. My special vacation cocktail: OJ and Vit C water on the rocks, mmm, better than mai tais.
I kind of got hooked on the combo. Now I throw in some coconut water, which is said to be loaded with potassium — and has the flavour of dirty socks. Mixed with the others, however, it’s palatable enough.
Is my special recovery cocktail any more nutritious than plain old OJ? Don’t know.
Don’t really care, either. Honestly, sometimes the only thing that gets me through the last couple of postures is the knowledge that it’s waiting for me in my car.
Maybe it’s the association. Ray served me like my own personal cabana boy, while I languished on the couch, upset that I was sick on our vacation. And he reassured me that it didn’t matter if we did nothing the whole time, the main thing is that we were together. So I guzzled my recovery cocktails, rested, and a couple of days later, was back to normal.
Our Visa bill was a little higher on incidentals. But that feeling of being cared for? Priceless.
Day 37 Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… Reinvent?
When I was a kid, we lived by many rules, one of which was “use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.” Yes, we were environmentalists before it was cool. My people can stretch a dime, an onion, a teabag, a pair of jeans, like you wouldn’t believe. My mother sewed our clothes, patched holes, let down hems, and when the garments were truly unwearable, cut them into squares for quilts. And despite their deep distrust of all things artistic, Mennonites make quilts of breath-taking beauty.
Long-time tillers of the earth, we also take pride in growing and/or creating our own food. (Which leads to an aspect of stretching-the-jeans that isn’t so admirable.) I love to garden, but I’m married to a pave-paradise-put-up-a-tennis-court kind of guy with a deep distrust of things without UPC codes, so I mostly keep this to myself.
Crunchy-granola type things just excite me, though. I can’t help it. It’s in my genes.
I’ve been reading Katrina Kenison‘s memoir, The Gift of An Ordinary Day, recently, in which the author transplants her family from their comfortable urban home to a tumble-down rural saltbox, to live a “simpler” life. Their house is quickly deemed unliveable, however, and the project takes on a raze-and-rebuild complication, which she describes with guilt and mourning, as if it’s a kind of euthanasia. At the last second, however, they are able to salvage some of the 200-year old bones to incorporate into the new structure.
Perhaps because I spent a few formative years in a rehabbed school-house, I can understand this desire to “rescue” a building. (I’m a sucker for lost causes. Always have been. I once tried to save an abandoned, epileptic Pomeranian puppy, who turned out to be a nasty little land-shark. Sweetest, most adorable ball of fluff you’ve ever seen in your life – when he wasn’t convulsing or trying to take your hand off.)
So I was intrigued this morning to read in the Vancouver Sun about Barry Joneson. A self-described skid-row addict who dissolved after the death of his little boy, he now combines “social reconstruction” with his “deconstruction” project, in which houses slated for landfill are instead salvaged, and kids heading down a rough road are given a crowbar and a second chance. Talk about your reusing and recycling – and social justice too! This guy could be Mennonite!
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By the way, for those of you joining me recently, this day marks 37 consecutive days of Bikram yoga, my personal foray into fitness, personal growth, self-awareness and mid-life inner peace. 90 minutes every day in a room kept at a minimum temperature of 104 degrees, and 40% humidity. It’s hell on hamstrings, but that’s kind of the point.
I’ve reached a stage in my life where I need to change things up, body and mind. A rescue-and-reconstruction project on myself, you might say, and this is where I’m documenting the journey. Thanks for joining me.