Why God Didn't Invent Tai Chi Regalia

I'm sure by now we all are aware of the time a restorative yoga class taught me the rather awkward pose of Lady With Head in Toilet Bowl so you may understand why I have a little aversion to all-things-yoga.

Except the pants.

Really.  Have they ever invented a single piece of clothing better than these things?  Face it; these things are perfect.  If I were God, these pants are exactly what I would have sent Adam and Eve out of the garden wearing once they ate that forbidden fruit and realized they were naked.

Stretchy.  Elastic.  Comfy.  Wrinkle free.  Available at Walmart.  BLACK!  Hide everything.  Double as PJ's when you're lazy.  The simple act of wearing them makes people think you have just come from the gym.    The same will be true for leggings the second I lose those extra pounds that make me glad I'm not naked in the garden.

So even though I hate Downward Facing Dog, I love the apparel  in which I am forced to act like a sick canine against my will. 

Not so Tai Chi.

Yeah, this outfit may double as really, really, really big PJ's  (although the front closures look a bit difficile for the lazy girl in me) but just imagine what folks would think if you donned your tai chi pants to run to the grocery store.  And as much as I love the White Crane Spreads Its Wings move, I admit that I'd look like Crazy Woman Wears Big Sleepwear while doing it.

Would God ever contemplate sending you out of the garden wearing this regalia?  I think not.  Even the angels would have been laughing.

Singing Bowl Drop Out

Unlike my short romance with yoga, I wouldn't consider myself an actual Singing Bowl Drop Out - yet - but I failed to attend the meditation I had signed up for this morning.

Why?

In all honesty, I think I may be afraid because the experience itself was the very last thing I did before I was hospitalized.  In fact, I recall having a very real dizzy spell before entering the classroom.  The beginning of the dreaded illness.

Will it ever go away?  Will I ever stop thinking about and rehashing my close call?  Is it possible to stop worrying about the possibility of it happening again?

Yet I've come so far.  This is the very first week that I found myself beginning to feel better. . . to have a bit more energy and lose that hollow feeling inside of me.  To feel like my old self again  (not exactly like my old healthy self, but like the new normal that comes with Sjogren's.)

Time.  I suppose it will just take time.

 

Honor Thy Body

In my attempt to deal with the life change this autoimmunity has brought, I believe I may have at last discovered something.

My body doesn't hate me.

When first diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome, I became aware of the fact - I suppose every autoimmuner does at sometime - that the "fighter" cells in my body (meant to kill viruses and intruders) had turned upon my healthy tissue instead.  It felt somewhat akin to employing a security guard, only to have him turn his gun on you and hold you hostage instead.

I felt betrayed. unnatural, abnormal.

Yet in my second Tai Chi class, as I muttered something about "my stupid ankle" my instructor stopped the class to remind us that we need to be thankful for all our bodies do for us each day.  Thankful?  I should be thankful?

Let's give it time, my friends.  Time.

Yoga School Dropout . . .Part 2

Remember this post?   The one where I swore I would never again attempt to tackle yoga because it made my head spin?

Last time I check my head housed my brain.  Right?

Well maybe not. . .

 You see, I discovered the Center for Well Being recently opened by our local hospital.   And it seemed custom-made for me.   They offer classes and treatments for medically-challenged people - like moi.    And it's beautifully zen-like inside. . . spa music. . .water sounds. . . tai ch'i classes. . .Himalayan singing bowls. . . acupuncture and jin-shin-jyutsu. . .you name a type of complementary or alternative medicine - they offer it.

And I don't quite know where my head was, but when I saw they offered a class called restorative yoga, I decided to give it a try.  It was the restorative word that got me, really.  Couldn't be that much movement.  Could it?

But once again it was my head that was the problem.

I told the instructor before starting the class that I was prone to motion sickness and couldn't do the upside-down-topsy-turvey-doggy-froggy kind of stuff.   And she assured me that we would be lying on the floor the entire time.  But what she didn't tell me was that I would be rolling that head from side to side while lying there.

Now I don't want to upset you with the beastly details of what ensued after all that rolling.  Let it suffice to say that I now equate the word restorative with a distinct memory of hanging my head over the toilet in the serene and zen-like ladies room.

Yes, my friends, A Mom on Spin was the first individual in the history of womankind whose proclivity for vertigo caused her to lose her lunch in a restorative yoga class.

Proof positive that my brain was not housed in my head that day, but most-likely in the area that zen-like toilet was designed to seat instead!

Whoops I Did It Again

As if I didn't have enough trouble the last time a took a yoga class.  I did not heed my own warning, take my own advice, nor sing my yoga school drop out song.

No, I decided to attend a yoga class because it had one little convincing word in front of it.  RESTORATIVE.   And so I convinced myself that I would be fine in a RESTORATIVE yoga class - despite the fact that every joint and muscle in my body hurts, despite the fact that I have no energy, and despite the fact that I suffer from motion sickness.

I quickly found that words can be misleading.

Let's just take the first four letters of that word - REST.  Yes, REST is something I would like.  I didn't want to actually exercise; I wanted to REST.  But my proclivity for vertigo got in the way again and I ended up in the ladies REST room, where I certainly did not REST.

No, I suppose you could say that I continued the practice of RESTORATIVE yoga, only instead of a lady doing Downward Facing Dog, I ended up as Lady with Head in Toilet Bowl instead.

Never trust words.

Just wondering. . .

Dear He or She Who Knows Such Things by Virtue of Their Authority,


If having a bamboo plant in one's home is good luck, and one owns a black and white cat . . .who just may fancy herself a panda. . .  is it a fortuitous
sign when the cat nibbles on the bamboo and kills the plant?

Is the cat then the lucky sign?  

Or have I been bamboo-zled????

Just wondering. . .

A Tissue Lament

Oh Mr. Kleenex!  Why did you stop selling your designer tissues?

Why, instead of this elegant, subdued, and I-dare-say-oh-so-slighly-exotic tissue box, am I forced to blow my nose into a run-of-the-mill tissue?  From a box that matches neither my mood nor room decor? 

What will happen to my c'hi, Mr. Kleenex, when - in the middle of a good cry - I shed my tears onto a facial cloth pulled from the depths of a flowery tissue dispenser which looks like it was designed for housewives of the 1960's?

Let's face it. . . I need a good productive cry and it won't qualify as "good" as long as I'm consumed with worry about clashing decorative patterns.  Is the very item whose sole existence is to provide me comfort and solace destined always to fight with my draperies? 

Who wants to stare at gaudy flowers when they're at the height of their misery?  Is the box supposed to cheer the afflicted?  Lift sagging spirits from the doldrums?  Relieve swollen eyes and aching head by screaming bad taste?

Misery loves company, Mr. Kleenex.. .

Misery loves company.

So please send back my tissues to me. 

In utter haste.

 Like now. .  .

Penned a panic-stricken

and dejectable. . . 

Messing with my Ch'i

I made a silent promise that I would no longer blog about my daughters.  Nevertheless, I have just one question for you:

?????   WHEN IN SWEET JESUS' NAME ARE THOSE GIRLS GOING BACK TO SCHOOL  ????

Now, I know what you're thinking. . . What's wrong with that woman? Why can't she stand to have a couple of college-aged daughters home for the summer?  They appear to be lovely young women.  What could be so bad about having them around?

I'll tell you right now.

Simply put. . . the downside to having Ponzi and Trigger around for the summer is that They-mess-up-my-clean-feng-shui-house-and-spend-all-of-my-church-lady-money-requiring-oranic-only-foods-that-no-sane-person-on-the-face-of-God's-good-earth-has-ever-heard-of-much-less-ingested-and-neither-i-repeat-NEITHER-of-them-have-jobs-and-are-well-are. . .well. . . around. . .  for the summer.   THEY'RE IN MY HOUSE FOR THE SUMMER!!!

Yes, they're here. . . in my home. . .messing with my life energy.   And, in case you hadn't noticed, A Mom on Spin's ch'i is very delicato, my friends. . .very, VERY d-e-l-i-c-a-t-o. . .

Now I'm what you might call a minimalist (but don't go looking in my closet for confirmation of that little fact) and a bit of a neat freak too (a closet-peek would not confirm that claim either) and am doing my best to deal with a few recently-acquired food aversions (not my fault really. . .it's the mouse-a-phobic in me) so it upsets me terribly when, before I even leave the house in the morning, a certain daughter starts peeling raw onions, potatoes and leeks for a kidney cleanse (Mom? Just where is the organic garlic I asked you to get????) and I return home after a hard day of church-lady work only to discover that the pot which cooked said Slurry of Stinkiness is still sitting in my kitchen sink along with an assortment of other cups, dishes and cooking utensils . . .while 22 glasses of various shapes and sizes are scattered throughout the rest of the house ('Cause when you do a kidney cleanse, Mom, you're supposed to drink lots of water!) 

Now can I ask you:   WHY IN HEAVEN'S NAME IS IT CALLED A CLEANSE?   My house has never been so messy!!!

As if that weren't bad enough. . .


In the midst of all this disarray, stands Ponzi leaning over my laptop on the kitchen counter with every ingredient required to make some sort of coco-buck-nut-wheat bread spilling over it like the lava in molten volcano. . . except - of course - the aluminum-free baking powder which is oh-so-essential to the well-being of my daughters but I have not purchased.  Now, who knew the human body is not supposed to ingest aluminum (Go figure!) leaving me to unwittingly expose my family to the horrors of aluminum poisoning for decades by purchasing the wrong baking powder?

Should I now consider it a good thing that I haven't had the energy it takes to bake so much as a single cookie since 1992???

 I ask you. . .  What is a mother to do when she feels her ch'i draining right along with her bank account?

Someone please send a yin for that yang,
'cause I'm dying here. . . 

Burned by My Ch'i

Now I don't know about you, but I have spent a significant amount of time wondering about my Ch'i. . .  you know . . .my life's energy.

And I'm here to tell you that - in addition to being uniquely gifted with extremely bad Car-ma - my Ch'i is pretty messed up too.

Case in point. . .

The other night my old lady bladder woke me up some time around 2:00 a.m. and - not wanting to deprive Drip Dry of his beauty sleep -  I hobbled to my daughters' bathroom.   And I know that you will find this hard to believe, but I really wasn't on my game in the wee-hours of the morning like that and so I had a strange thought upon seeing Trigger's $130 Chi hair straightener plugged in and sitting on the counter.  And that strange thought was, Gee. . . I wonder if that blasted Trigger turned this thing off or whether she left it in the "on" position again like the gazillion times I've told her not to so that sucker is going to burn a hole in my bathroom countertop. . .

Now, upon reflection, it wasn't the thought that was so strange.  (The thought, my friends, was spot on. . .)

It was the action.

The action of picking that hair straightener up by placing each of the fingertips of my left hand on the 450 degree ceramic surface of the appliance!

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!  How could I do that?

It was my bad Ch'i, my friends.

My very, very bad Ch'i. . .

And did I mention I'm left-handed????

I Hate that Cat Messing with My Ch'i

Some might call this a random thought.

Others might call it pathetic drivel.

Yet I prefer to think of it as. . .oh, I don't know. . .  a profound pondering of the universe.

_____________________

If bamboo plants are traditionally supposed to bring their owners luck . . .

But the owners' cat eats your plant from top to bottom . . .



Does that mean that the owner is out of luck?

And what - pray tell - would it portend if the same cat were to get diarrhea after eating the plant?

I thought so. . .

WTFS? (What the Feng Shui?)

As you all know by now, I have a new blogging room.

Yes, it was supposed to be a meditation/prayer/writing/reading/study. . . but it has turned into nothing more than a feel-good blogging room.

Feel-good.

That's the operative word my friends.  Feel.  Good.  I instinctively feel good in the room.

And so I ask you. . .

Is there a reason the cleaning lady had to move my elephant in the room. . . or my bamboo plant. . .or my f'orchid (fake orchid)?  And what about my f'wicker chair?  Did it not belong with my antique desk?  Why did it have to go all f'cocked on a angle like that?  And let's not even talk about the throw rug . . .  It was purposely thrown there to cover Ponzi's old makeup stains and the burn marks her friends made when they forgot to turn off the Chi hair straightener.

Is someone thinking she can bring a whole new Ch'i into my room?

If she starts messing with my Holy Oils or my authentic JFK table (both lovingly lifted, my friends) I just may have to start the Kung Foo Fighting. . .