Love letter to my Bikram instructors.

Well. It's been a while. But I must vent. And there is no better spot.

I love my yoga. Bikram to be exact. It's been 31/2 years since I discovered the benefits. As I've posted earlier, yoga has kept me out of the operating room, away from physical therapy, and off the toxic drugs that western medicine has developed to treat the symptom, not the cause.

That being said, I am increasingly disillusioned with the brand "bikram" as developed by the person Bikram. I can pinpoint exactly when my disciple-hood started to falter. I took class from the Boss himself at headquarters this fall. One tenant of yoga is to make sure to take class from your master at least once. I knew we were moving away from Los Angeles and I made it a priority to attend.

What a shitty class. Packed in like cattle for the slaughter, belittled for our shortcomings, (women) told to fuck our husbands more often if we wanted good lives, inconsistent dialog and timing of the standard poses, and the unrelenting fear that the master himself would find fault with anything going down on your own personal mat. I paid twenty dollars to sweat through ninety minutes of a miserable human proclaiming his godliness over a room full of star-struck drones.

I now understand a bit better the controversy within the yoga community surrounding Bikram. His offensive comments, narcissism and aura of entitlement overshadowed the good personality traits that must have initiated the fame and devotion that he now takes for granted. I sympathize with those studios trying to teach this hatha series outside his realm of tight control. I am now more likely to support those unauthorized "hot yoga" studios and this was all inspired by only one ninety minute class with Bikram at his unwelcoming, nondescript "world headquarters." Blech.

Anyway, I came away from that class with a bigger appreciation for my beloved local teachers. They took the good from Bikram's teachings and made it even better with their willingness to share the healing benefits of a series while leaving their egos at the door.

So to my dearly missed instructors from Bikram La Canada, Bikram Pasadena and Bikram El Cajon:

Thank you Rose for teaching my first class and inspiring me to come back the next day, scared and sore and lonely.

Thank you Hobie for teaching my second class and having the experience to step away from dialog to inspire a struggling new yogi.

Thank you Jeff for being tough enough to force me to be good to myself before your class.

Thank you Shannon for having to courage to step in front of your peers and learn to lead.

Thank you Carolyn and Nancy for making class a joyful experience.

Thank you Bernadette for inspiring me to be healthy and beautiful even in my fourth decade.

Thank you Ken for sharing your life's ups and downs with us during savasana. I miss the updates!

Thank you Ziggy and Dave for being funny, funny, funny, and oh so tough when I least expected it. You haven't lived until you can say you've laughed your way through half moon and come away uninjured...

Even as my respect for Bikram dwindles, I love you all for your dedication to your students and the series.

I'm scared as hell to step into a new studio here in NY and I hate practicing in the morning, but tomorrow I will head back to Bikram (the class, not the man) at 9:30 am and hope for the best. Wish me luck, I look forward to meeting the next inspiring teacher while desperately missing all my old favorites.

My soft heart.

I have a new respect for Animal Rescue workers. I know this now because I can't get the image of one bloody, fear-ridden and still fighting opossum out of my mind.

Last night I was happily heading out to my 8pm class when my car was slowed, then stopped by a horrific scene. I don't know how he got there, but there was a large opossum frozen in the middle of a fairly busy street. He was still on his feet, but there was a pool of blood underneath him, as well as a bloody mess about five feet away, probably the scene of the initial injury.

As my headlights brought into focus the fact that the thing in my path was a living animal, not trash, I was sure that he'd scuttle the rest of the way across the road and into the woods surrounding us. Not so, he was standing, but couldn't move any further. All he had left in him was his voice, which he used bravely in an attempt to ward off my approaching car.

I didn't know what to do, I eventually drove around him, there was already another car freaking out behind me about my unexplained stop and a jeep pulled over to the curb keeping an eye on him. I left the opossum to his fate, but I was filled with an awful sense of sorrow for my inability to help and his obvious..aliveness. I wished for him that terror and pain and fight weren't the last things he knew.

So I called my husband at home and asked him to call animal rescue, you know, the trucks that pick up all the dead skunks, and hoped for the best. Maybe they would get there in time, maybe there's an off hours emergency vet who operates on unsuccessful roadkill, maybe he wasn't all that injured, despite the gallons of blood...

So that's my fantasy. But my reality tells me that animal rescue, if they found the opossum, probably euthanized him on the spot, then tossed the body in the truck with all the other victims of the day.

So I hope to never do that job. At least EMT's get to race their bloody, screaming, alive messes to the hospital...

Advice. Sorry, can't help myself.

Nothing funny here. Just a reminder about something important. I like the words I used to describe yoga to my brother-in-law so I'm going to repeat them here.

For me, Bikram yoga has replaced the operating room, physical therapy, medication and the gym. I can't say enough good about it. A healthy spine and strong core are gifts to myself that I don't know how I lived without. A dark, scary time in my life a year and a half ago, when I was scheduled for three level fusion surgery of my cervical spine, has turned into something beneficial that touches all areas of my life, mental as well as physical.

I don't want to go on and on because, just like blabbering to a mother-to-be about your labor and early parenting experiences, the uninitiated have no frame of reference in which to process the information.

Try a class if there is one near you. Go to www.bikramyoga.com. The class finder link is on the left. If not, at least try a hatha yoga class, the therapeutic benefits may take longer without the aid of the heat, but the postures in Bikram yoga are based on hatha yoga.

Happy strengthening and stretching and sweating. The end.

Rain.

So I head out today for a certain "salon" appointment. I tend to put this one off because it, well, HURTS. Anyway. I arrive at my appointment after driving through dust/ash/mud slicked streets that are enjoying their first soaking rain in almost a year. Whee. It turns out that the crappy-ass neighborhood my salon has recently relocated to has a minor issue with storms. I didn't make much notice of the three major intersections I passed through that had police directing traffic until I show up for my appointment and find out there's been no power to the area since 9pm last night. Hmmm. New appointment for next Monday. Now I've got to psych myself up all over again.

Upside: I'm offered a free skin-care product for my inconvenience. Yay.

Then, I get on the freeway to return home. Oops. ALL lanes blocked, probably due to some unseen tragedy up the hill and around the curve. I'm starting to wonder about this much needed storm.

Upside: It's not my car that caused the back-up.

So finally I arrive home, it took about an hour to creep to the next exit and wind my way through side streets, ala Steve Martin's commute in "L.A. Story." I hit the driveway, push the gate opener and find one more casualty of the rain. Yup, gate won't open. My car's ass is hanging out into the street while I grapple with the oily, dirty pin so I can open the gate manually, and I slip and fall flat on my face into the dust/ash/mud stream coming off our property.

Upside: Power isn't out to the house, so hopefully we only need a fuse, or mabye a new transformer. And, I was already doing laundry...

So I'm still thinking maybe this run of bad luck is the storm's fault when I remember that it was yesterday that I discovered, before all this rain started, that my AMEX card showed six fraudulent charges.

Upside: Whoever stole my credit card info. was smart enough to use a fake phone number and email, but overlooked the fact that all the weird crap they ordered online was still being delivered to my address.

Anyway, now that I've documented my string of bad luck, I hope it will leave me alone for a while. And rain, I'm sorry I doubted you, keep it coming.

A half acre ain't gonna be enough..

There have been many creature funerals at our house. Everything from the cat who came before the kids to a praying mantis that was killed with kindness. The mice are buried on the wild back hill, the fish went, um, down the toilet, and the lizards have their own well-populated rocky area near the cactus.

Today I discovered a private burial site for something I didn't even know ranked it's own funeral.

My youngest daughter's favorite plaything all weekend was a balloon with a gobstopper inside. Who knows the appeal? All I remember is it watched TV and slept with her for several days. I'm sure that I've mentioned in the past that she's a combination of immature for her age and also very nurturing?

Anyway, unfortunately, on Monday after school, it met the end the way most balloons do. It popped unexpectedly, scared the shit out of all living things within range, and the gobstopper disappeared under the dusty recesses of some (yet to be identified) piece of furniture.

I saw her tear up, but how much sympathy can I muster for a balloon that just about stopped my heart? I breezed over her disappointment and got on with whatever important Mom thing (facebook) I was doing.

My sweet little thing handled it in her own way...there are now two new headstones in the yard with fresh flowers scatted in front of them. One for "ballooney" and one for "gobbey". They even post the day and year (month excluded) of their demise and a RIP rounds out the epitaph. How touching in a strange little girl sort of way...Love ya Mads.

And, yes, like my sister-in-law suggested, I may need a bigger yard soon.

My favorite season.

OK, so my spawn have returned to school.
Fourth day now to be exact.
I can run around accomplishing the mundane tasks of "wife and mom" without any input from the peanut gallery about when we should leave Costco or just how many errands is too many in one outing.
Big sigh of relief.
I can browse the net without someone reading over my shoulder and, today, I turned the car stereo WAY up and listened to a whole damn song without interruption.
Another whew.
One problem.
I keep making comments out loud, like maybe someone is listening.
Is it possible that I..gasp..miss them!
That's crazy!
Have they evolved enough from the needy hell that is baby and toddler that I now might actually LIKE having them around?
Oh, shit, I just looked at the time, I only have an hour left before school pick-up.
That's nowhere near enough physical and mental space for one day.
I take it all back, thank god for school.

Summer

As an adult, I still look forward to summer with the anticipation of FREEDOM that those months brought to me as a child. Not only did the responsibility of school fall away, but so did the need for boots, mittens, sweaters, umbrellas, heck, clothing in general.

We would get up in the morning, throw on a swimsuit, succumb to the dousing of "OFF" (I grew up in Minnesota) and head out on our bikes to dig melted tar out of the street, skateboard down the spiral freeway pedestrian ramps, and plan the dreaded "can my friend sleepover" ambush on our parent(s). Pushing around those fluid filled blisters on our shoulders on a drive back from the day at the lake in the scorching sun was unending entertainment.

Church camp on a leech-filled lake four hours outside the city was our idea of heaven. The kids ran free for a week while the parents drank themselves into a boozier state of "holier-than-thou". There was nothing better than passing the swimming test to get your ankle bracelet that allowed unquestioned access to the raft 100 yards out into the lake.

You all know where this is going....Now I am the parent, when in the hell did that happen? I am surprised every year by the massive amount of responsibility and reduction of free time that summer rains on me.

WTF? My new favorite month is September, and NOT because both my girls made their entrance into this world then, or because I got married in that month, big deal. Whatever the date school starts on the first Thursday after Labor Day is my ticket back to sanity, order, and bedtimes in the single digits. The anticipation of freedom that I used to feel as a child at the beginning of summer has now shifted to fall.

Now...all I have to do is make sure my kids never get a whiff of the added work, the explosion of mess and NEED that this wondrous time of year creates. I want them to remember me buzzed on the beach with my boring friends while they run free on their scooters and bikes and boogie boards. They don't need to know how much effort and time is needed to produce these carefree memories.

So far this summer we have traveled to Portugal and Spain, blown up our own illegal fireworks, culitvated zucchini, tomatoes and beans, made paper, hung out at Venice Beach, ridden mechanical bulls, created underwater videos in the pool, and there have been no trips to the ER. Still in the works are trips to see family in the Northwest and a week camping at the beach.

I'm gonna pat myself on the back for a great first five weeks and hope my children come away with some lasting memories of fun and freedom. I'll ask them twenty years from now just how great it was...