Yoga Rules!

One of the reasons I like yoga so much is that they don't suck all the fun out of it by demanding you conform to a whole series of very specific rules all at once. It is a work in progress.

Can't touch your toes? No problem. You can bend your legs, just concentrate on keeping your spine long and straight. Use a block...or four if you want to. Can't go from downward dog to plank to lunge? Pick one and stick with it as long as you like. Something hurts? Stop doing it. Back off . Listen to your body (mine is usually telling me to go across the street to Dunkin Donuts). This activity was made for me, since I can generally only get my body to do one thing at a time.

When I was seven, my father got me a set of golf clubs and tried to teach me how to become Tiger Woods (I know. What was he thinking?).

It was three days of hiking thousands of acres, fording the raging waters of angry, storm-tossed lakes, fending off ferocious attacks by starved, blood-sucking mosquitoes the size of a mini-bus (okay, so it was a sunny summer day and a few hours at a chip and putt course, but it felt like three days of pure torture.). And there were a lot of rules.

"Hold the club like this," my father demonstrated eight thousand times. "Keep your head down, eye on the ball. Keep your arms straight and follow through on the swing. No, no. Straight arms, not bent."

Whoa. Too. Many. Things. At. One. Time. How about I just try to actually get the ball closer to the hole any way I can? Also, I may have been only seven, but even I knew that when you swing your arms from side to side, unless you are Gumby, one of your arms has to bend. And what's with the whole keeping an eye on the ball? I was only hitting it two feet at a time. How could I not keep my eye on it?

I still have the picture my mom took at the end of our golf "game". I am clutching my driver like I am playing "Whack-a-Mole" and looking like I'd rather be pretty much anywhere else while my father is weeping in the background, clutching the few tufts of hair he had left.

Years later, I got suckered into a softball game at work. It took my fellow teammates about ten seconds to realize they were actually the suckers. And so, between innings, they pulled me aside and tried to teach me the rules. They showed me how to hold the bat, how to stand, and how to run (in the unlikely event I actually managed to hit the ball.)

"Keep your elbows up, bat held high, straighten out your arm as you follow through. Keep your eye on the ball. Try not to kill yourself or anyone else with the bat."

Rules, rules, rules. Couldn't I just choose one of them to follow and maybe modify the rest? Like maybe I could hold the bat high and the pitcher could throw the ball directly at it, and then I could stroll to first base without breaking a sweat or a nail? It was hard to tell who was more relieved that I never played on the team again.

Not wanting to repeat these two experiences which scarred my delicate psyche for life, I turned to yoga.

Oh, they may tell you to pick up your leg and wrap it around your neck three times while bending over and touching your toes, but they don't actually expect you to do it.

With a simple shake of my head (well, perhaps there is a snort and a guffaw involved also), my instructor will adapt a pose that I would need some serious, heavy-duty muscle relaxants to get into and sixteen paramedics to get out of to something I am able to do, like lie down and gently roll my head from side to side. The best part is, nobody wants to do bodily harm to anyone else five minutes after starting.

Until my regular teacher was absent and Attila the Yogini substituted for her. After about five seconds, I found myself wishing yoga involved a bat or a club or even just a really sturdy stick.

"Sit on the blanket folded into a square, not a rectangle," she barked.

Okay, and the shape of the blanket matters because...?

"Sit dead center, not near the edge, and make sure the blanket is parallel to the wall which should be precisely perpendicular to your mat six inches from its base."

Or what? My chakras will collide with my chi? Is it bad karma to be seven inches from the wall, or slightly diagonal instead of at prefect right angles? I was beginning to have flashbacks to my first and only golf game.

"No, no, no," she snapped. "You're doing the pose all wrong. How do you expect to do a headstand if you don't get this pose right?"

Um. I don't. Shocking though it may be to you, I actually have zero interest in balancing on my head. Most days, I'm just happy to be able to balance on both feet.

"You must get your legs straight in downward dog and your heels on the ground, then lift one leg in the air along with the opposite hand. This will be your resting pose."

Resting pose? Exactly what have you got planned if I am resting hanging upside down while my hamstrings snap like the cables on an elevator in a horror movie right before it crashes?

This was so not what I had signed up for. Where was the acceptance of the fact that I have absolutely no talent or coordination and the understanding that I will never be able to balance on my pinkie while simultaneously forming the first three letters of the alphabet with the rest of my body?

Attila was definitely not getting the concept that I could only manage to concentrate on one body part at a time, and right now, I was concentrating on my hands wrapping around her neck.

Happily, the class ended before either one of us had a nervous breakdown, or met with a horrible accident, although it was pretty close. As I crawled to my car and drove home, the thought occurred to me that if I ever ended up with Attila as my regular instructor, I would definitely have to look around for a less challenging activity. I wondered if there is anything out there that is easier than a class where they consider breathing deeply a challenging enough activity.

All Things Considered, We Should Have Stayed at Motel 6

Last Friday, we went to New York City. Just a quick trip up on Friday afternoon to attend an event on Friday night, and back on Saturday morning. Not quick enough as it turned out.

Despite the rain and traffic , we got there with enough time to spare so that Tim could work up a good aggravation before dinner.

First of all, when we asked if the room had a refrigerator, they apparently thought we asked if the room was a refrigerator. Now I'm all for air-conditioning when it's ninety degrees outside, but when it's sixty? Call me crazy, but somehow, I think that you should at least consider switching over to heat, or at the very least turning the air off. A good rule of thumb would be: if the guests' fingers and toes are turning blue and they are calling room service to request parkas and hot water bottles, the room is probably TOO COLD!!!!!

Thinking this was a problem easily solved, we chipped our way through the block of ice encasing the control panel, and bumped it up to ninety...and the air just blew colder. Great, now we could become honorary members of the polar bear club. Finding the blower control, we explored those options as well while we still had some feeling in our limbs and at least a smidgen of fine motor skills left...and, impossibly, the air blew even colder!!! On the bright side though, by morning, we would be cryogenically preserved, and for just a fraction of the price Walt Disney paid.

Before frostbite could set in, we just shut the system down altogether, and ordered flannel PJs, thermal sheets and blankets, a book of matches, some graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows (why be cold and miserable? When life hands you a frozen lemon...make s'mores!).

Anxious to be warm again, or at least not colder than a block of ice, I went into the bathroom to change, so we could go downstairs to the event. Through the door, I could hear Tim muttering to himself, which is not usually a good sign. Sure enough, when I came out, he was squinting morosely at his computer.

"Bad news?" I enquired, then wanted to kick myself for opening that can of worms.

"The internet service isn't working, so I can't get online," he groused, "and, the light on the desk isn't working either, so I can't see a darn thing." (Okay, so he didn't actually say darn, but it was close, although there may have been one or two other four-letter words and colorful adjectives in there as well. I'm not sure because I was too busy trying to lock the room safe which kept beeping at me.

He interrupted his tirade when it became clear that something took precedence in my universe over him being able to get online.

"What are you trying to do?" he interrupted himself.

"Nothing. I can't get the safe to lock," I pressed the series of buttons once again as though it would make a difference, and got computerized groans and an error message in response.

"You're hopeless with mechanical things," he informed me with an air of superiority as he brushed me aside, "I'll do it."

Oh yeah, and you're so good at getting things to work. How's the whole online thing working out for you? Would you care for a flashlight to see it? I thought it, but I didn't say it.

"All you have to do is punch in four digits and hit 'lock'" he instructed me loftily.

Gee, now why didn't I think of that? I guess because I've never traveled before and seen one of those new-fangled contraptions. Go-ool-ly. Is that what they call tech-no-lo-gy? Too bad I can't read either, or I might have seen the directions printed right on the front. By the way, you manage to get the heat working?

Beep...beep...beep...beep. Rattle, rattle. Boop boo. Error.

I just smiled smugly.

"Clearly, it's broken," he defended his computer expertise.

No. Really? I guess that's just one more thing to add the the (growing) list then.

Not in the best of moods, we somehow made it through the rest of the evening and into the next morning without further incident. They did come and fix the safe, but not the internet or lamp, and although the heat never came on, at least we had stopped the cold air from actually blowing, so we considered it a victory to get one and a half out of four. Woo hoo!

I took the first shower in the morning, and while Tim tried to defrost himself with the hot water, I finished packing up. I heard the shower shut off, and then Tim laughing, which is not his usual reaction to being clean.

Almost afraid of the answer, I called out, "What?"

Choking back more laughter (which frankly had a slightly maniacal edge to it), he told me that it was a good thing that I had taken the first shower.

"Why?"

He opened the door to show me the knob to the hot water cradled in his hand.

"It just fell right off" he explained, shaking his head.

Before anything else could go wrong, we finished packing up and got out of disaster central.

"Did you have a good stay?" the guy at the reception desk asked Tim as we checked out.

"Yeah, Fine," realizing it was not this guy's fault, Tim decided to forgo the litany of complaints associated with our stay.

"Good," the clerk enthused.

Tim rolled his eyes and bit his tongue.

"Glad you had a great experience with us."

That was it. The magic word. The duck dropped. Tim couldn't keep it bottled up inside for another second.

"Great?" he fired back at the bewildered man who looked like he had pulled the tail of what he thought was a kitten only to realize too late that it was a lion. "Great? Yeah, it was great when the internet didn't work and there was no light in the room. And it was really great when the safe didn't work. It was super great that our room was so cold you could hang meat in it. But the greatest thing of all was when the hot water handle fell off in the shower this morning. I tried to be nice, but you just couldn't let it go. You couldn't accept 'fine'. No, you had to push it with 'great'!"

I don't think I've ever seen anybodies eyes grow that large that fast before. I'm guessing it was at that point that the man erased the word great from his vocabulary. I imagine him now enquiring of departing guests, "How was your stay? Adequate?"

It's A Long Way To Tipperary...And Twice As Far To Our Room

Despite my many travels, I had never been to Hawaii. It always seemed a little far to go just for some palm trees and a beach. But after a mere twelve hours in the air, we landed in paradise...and then found we were not done traveling.

Upon checking in to our hotel, we were escorted to our room on the fourth floor by the bellman who explained that since the hotel was built on a hill, we had actually checked in on the sixth floor and had to go down to get to our room

On the way, we passed the bar, one restaurant, the concierge, the lounge, shopping arcade, a real estate operation and the gym. I've been in towns that were smaller.

We made all the usual chit-chat: where are you from? How long are you staying? Let me tell you about the hotel, give you the unabridged history of Hawaii and explain, in detail, nuclear physics. And all that was just until we got to the elevator.

Once on the fourth floor, we started down the hallway toward our room which was apparently located somewhere on the opposite side of the island, or in Siberia. By the time we came to the next hallway, we had covered politics, religion, literature and conducted an in-depth analysis and comparison of Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum PI. Somewhere around the halfway mark, I began wondering when they had built the bridge over to California that we were apparently on.

At the end of the next hallway, our room was still nowhere to be seen and we had moved on to exchanging fondest childhood memories, complete medical histories and family trees going back to the Norman Conquest with the bellman, who was now our best friend since we had known him longer than pretty much anybody else we had ever met, including family members.

As we turned down the third (or was it fourth) hallway, I began looking for the complimentary shuttle bus or hoped that I could hail a passing cab or maybe even flag down an ambulance to see if they could administer some oxygen.

Meanwhile, Tim, who was bringing up the rear in our happy little parade, was looking like a very grumpy bear who had been prodded out of hibernation somewhere in about mid-January and muttering dire imprecations involving our travel agent, the woman at the check-in desk and me who was somehow to blame for the fact that he was developing a blister on his left foot and some kind of "-itis" in his knee/ankle/hip.

Finally, before we had to resort to the Donner party buffet special, we arrived at our room where we were given the grand tour and had our passports stamped.

Unfortunately, although we had checked in at breakfast, it was now dinnertime and the restaurants were all back on the other side of reception, two thousand or so miles away. Arming ourselves with packs of trail mix I had taken from the plane (which is what passes for a meal nowadays), we began the loooong trek back to civilization, leaving a trail of peanuts, pretzels and sesame sticks to help us find our way back.

And so it went for the next five days, except the whole being on a hill thing added to the degree of difficulty.

We found that if we stayed on the fourth floor, we eventually came to the spa after only a two hour hike where there was an exit to the top level of the three-level pool...after you walked down a flight of steps, took the path through the garden, marched over hill and dale and followed the yellow brick road.

Or, we could take the elevator that was only a one hour jaunt away to the first floor and come out by the kiddie pool and jungle gym. Then we just had to walk around the entire circumference of the seventy-two acre pool to get towels and a seat (I thought Texas was the state where everything was supposed to be big.).

And if we wanted to go to the beach? Hey, no problem. We just slipped into our hiking boots, packed a lunch and two snacks, headed out past the pool, the one restaurant, the ancient Hawaiian burial grounds, headed for the first star on the left and then went straight on till morning.

But the good news here was that the return trip was uphill all the way, so that by the time we got back to the room, our suits had dried completely and the thirty pounds of sand that clung to various body parts had done a fabulous job of exfoliating things that weren't ever meant to see a loofah and it had dried to the consistency of hardened concrete! Jackpot!

All in all, it really cut down on the number of trips we made back and forth. Hmmm. Forgot the sunscreen? Let's see...make the trip all the way back to the room or risk skin cancer and third degree burns. Wait a minute, I'm thinking. Yeah. I'm thinking that by the time I make the trip, the sun won't even be out anymore.

Dinner reservations at eight? Better head out from the beach somewhere around, oh say, noon After all, we'd have to leave the room by five just to make it to the lobby by 7:59.

The upside of it all though was that we got plenty of exercise without ever going to the gym. Not that we would have been able to get there anyway before coming back home once you factored in the travel time involved.

The Birds and the Bees

This year for vacation, Tim and I went to Hawaii. The island, the people, the beaches, I loved. The birds and the bees I could have done without.

First of all, there are like seven hundred million of those tiny, little sparrows per square inch, and they all want whatever you are eating. Since most of the restaurants there tend to be "open air", mealtime is like being an extra in a Hitchcock movie.

One of the first nights there, we noticed a mist being sprayed every couple of minutes from the trees above the restaurant. A cooling water vapor to help customers beat the heat? Nope. Insect spray to protect from mosquito bites? Uh uh. Grapeseed extract to keep the birds away. Who knew that birds hated grapes? Not the birds.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell them that they were supposed to be repelled by it because they pretty much soared right through the spray and flocked to the restaurant like K-Mart shoppers to a blue light special on toilet paper in aisle three.

From our first morning at breakfast where we decided to have the buffet, we had to guard every morsel that we put in out mouths from the birds. Leaving our unattended coffee on the table, we wandered off to graze. Fresh pineapple? Pineapple danish? Pineapple juice? Maybe the papaya or hey, pineapple/papaya juice? Decisions, decisions.

Returning to the table, we were greeted by fifteen dozen birds or so literally lining the table and chairs all eagerly peeping and craning their little birdy necks to see what yummy treat we had brought for them. While Tim grabbed his napkin and charged the table like a marine hitting the beach at Normandy, I anxiously peered into my coffee cup, hoping none of the little rascals had decided to use it as a hot tub, while simultaneously wondering if bird poop sinks or floats.

The following mornings, Tim kept requesting a table "in the back away from the birds." Yeah. Because the invisible force field running through the middle of the restaurant guaranteed they couldn't get past the first few rows of tables. Right.

I believe it was the third day where one persistent little fellow landed at our table and hopped over to me with a definite, "you gonna finish that muffin?" gleam in his eye.

Tim waved his Wall Street Journal at him. He flipped Tim off. Tim stood up and shook his napkin at him. The bird rose in the air, circled the table once, landed in exactly the same spot and favored Tim with a "Oh please. Did you think you could get rid of me that easily?" look.
Tim grabbed the newspaper again, and made a few matador-like moves before jabbing it at the bird like a sword. My hero. The bird laughed and edged closer to my plate.

Before Tim could go all Don Quixote on him though, the people next to us left, abandoning an entire half of a cinnamon roll which must have looked better than my muffin, or at least been easier pickings. I swear, though, that as I saw him rise into the air, he extended the middle toe of his foot toward Tim.

All in all, birds are so much cuter when they are animated and helping some mice make a ball gown.

As bad as they were though, they were nothing compared to the bees. They are definitely cuter when they are animated, not to mention a lot less painful.

About halfway through our trip, we had dinner at a romantic, candlelit restaurant on a beautiful, private beach overlooking the ocean. It was perfect, and I'm sure I would have really enjoyed it had I not spent a good portion of the time in too much pain to care about such trivial things as moonlight and roses.

Arriving early, we were escorted to the bar to wait for our table. No sooner had we sat down then I felt a little prickle on my back. Thinking it was the elastic gather from my dress, I reached back and gave it a tug only to feel a BIG prickle.

"I think I've been stung," I gasped to Tim.

"What? Where?" He could see nothing on the back of my dress.

The line of fire moving down my side convinced me I was right, and I headed for the nearest restroom. Fortunately, there only seemed to be one other person in a stall, so I eased the one side of my dress down to see and angry red mark with a wicked-looking stinger protruding from its center. So much for romance.

As I stood there trying in vain to reach it, the bee plopped out of my top and into the sink. I'm sure the older woman coming out of the stall was a bit disconcerted to find a half-dressed woman leaning over the sink yelling, "Die, you miserable cur! Die!", but all she said was, "You should get some Benadryl" before tottering off.

Well, and thanks for all your help. No, no. Don't worry about the stinger the size of a harpoon sticking out of my back, pumping poison through my system. Clearly, your third martini is calling you. I'll be fine.

Clutching my back which was now swelling up like the Elephant Man, I stumbled back out to the bar and begged Tim to order me a really large drink, because I was so not having him pull out the stinger without some anesthesia. The bartender offered to let us use the manager's office for the operation and gave us some gel to rub on the spot. I would rather had been offered a second martini.

It was the birds though that got the last laugh. On our final night there, we had dinner at a charming little restaurant in yet another beautiful, romantic setting. Afterwards, we strolled onto a bridge overlooking a koi pond and watched the fish lazily swim back and forth.

"Look," Tim said, "there's a perfect spider web stretching across the pond, glistening."

"Where?" I strained to see it (although why either one of us thought I wanted to see a giant spider web I'm still puzzling out.)

"Right there," He pointed.

Unable to see it from where I was standing, I crossed to the opposite side of him, leaned forward over the railing, and put my hands down in a nice, fresh pile of bird poop!

Yeah. Gotta love those birds and bees.