I Is Flexible

I told myself I wouldn't pull another entry from my archives, considering I only have two archive entries left. Scratch that. After posting this, I will have one entry left. So sue me. It was 109 degrees today. Too hot to wear pants, let alone think. This is yet another entry from last year, during my first adventures in unemployment. Enjoy!

I’m not sure what’s worse. Just how bad daytime TV is, or the fact that I’m sitting here watching Kathy Lee and some token black lady who acts white talk about their weekends in the Hamptons.

I have now entered the profession of Full-Time Slacker.

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I have tried to avoid that. The day after I got sacked I got up (eventually) and began looking for both temporary and permanent employment. I called every Starbucks in the area and finally found one that was looking for hopefuls whose sole aspiration was to wear green aprons and make 90 Caramel Frappachinos for spoiled high schoolers. Bingo! Health insurance! Unfortunately the search for a second job yielded very little, unless I wanted to earn money convincing Orange County’s virgins and night owls to, "call this number to chat live with sexy singles!"

Which is why I now find myself on the couch almost daily watching badly dressed single moms trying to find their babydaddies, or even badlier dressed 14-year olds telling the world that they wanna have a baby and there ain’t nuthin they mama or nobody else can do ‘bout it.

Which brings a dilemma: go out and have a damn life but be tempted to spend money I don’t have, or stay in all day to the point that I start to creep out the neighbors? All I do at this point is go running and then to the gym, and there’s only so much of that I can do. But this is starting to get serious. I’m now weirder than our pot-smoking neighbor who plays rock at 4 in the morning and who we once found in the pool at 9:00 p.m. yelling about how Jesus was from Lebanon and that “those damn towelheads were all haters.”

I know! I’ll try that Bikram Yoga stuff my friend Therese is always raving about. Sure, I’m not allowed to wear socks and the room is set to 105 degrees, but it’s just stretching for ninety minutes! How hard can it possibly be?

Finding the place is easy enough. The receptionist greets me and I pay her the $29 for the 2-week intro package.

“Have you done hot yoga before?” She asks.

Actually, I had done yoga at some other place a few months before. It was a little dull and I felt I never quite fit in on account of the fact that I wasn’t Korean. Plus, after a few sessions of dancing around to “It’s Raining Men”, I decided to find a new yoga joint that was more yoga-ish.

The receptionist directs me to the exercise room and recommends that I find a spot to set my mat and towel down. The whole room feels like a hut in central Mexico in the dead of summer and smells like an 8th grade boy’s locker room after a game of flag football. Seriously, haven’t these people ever heard of air fresheners? All people do in here is sweat. You’d think they’d have the foresight to spray a little Febreeze now and then. To make matters worse, the whole room is lined with mirrors so I’ll be able to see myself try to put my knees around my neck.

People are beginning to trickle in for the last class of the day. I unwillingly take note of every midriff bared to reveal a perfectly taut tummy. I glance at myself in the mirror. There’s something wrong with these mirrors. Are they supposed to make you look squat and round? I almost expect to sprout hair on my feet and prance away to The Shire with Elijah Wood. Although if he shaved the gnarly facial hair that wouldn’t be so bad. And no foot hair. Ew.

The instructor walks in and of course she is tall and toned. She launches right into the class and now I’m grateful for the mirrors; without any instruction I have to look at the people next to me to know what pose to do next. There are a couple of exercises I am able to do well and others that I could do if I did away with that skeleton I am so keen on keeping. By the time class is over I look like I got locked out of my apartment during a sweaty rainstorm. I get in my car and immediately my body heat fogs up all my windows. I’m damp all over so I lean forward as I drive so I won’t soak into my upholstery. Note to self: bring a towel tomorrow.

This is how each of my days now progresses: I get up thinking I have something to do, when in reality all I do is run and then go sweat in a giant sauna for an hour and a half. I try to change it up, like riding my bike to my yoga class. It’s a few miles away so I consider it time well spent, until after three days my left shoulder starts to hurt and I realize I’m badly sunburned. Worse yet, with my variety of sports bras and tank tops over the last three days my back now looks like the lattice pattern on top of a pie. Plus, I have a mountain bike, which means the seat is as hard as a rock and my butt now feels like the jail snitch’s. And I hate carting the yoga mat around in my backpack, which isn’t big enough to carry it so I have this huge black tube hitting me awkwardly on the back of the head as I pedal. Driving is okay.

As the last few days of my intro package comes to an end, I realize I can stand longer in bow pose (balancing on one foot with the other being held up above your head. No, I never got that high up), I’m getting closer to the splits and I can kneel on the floor and then arch my back so that I’m almost lying down, staring at the back wall. Impressive! It makes up for the constant flow of hippies that come in wearing Crocs and drive away in their Toyota Priuses, the flatulent people who let ‘em rip and hope no one notices (newsflash: the room is dead quiet; we can HEAR you!), and that odd dude who thinks its ok to come to class in his Fruit Of the Looms.

I am flexible! I am pliable! I am…about to finish my yoga membership. Shit. Evil bastards! This was their plan all along! Draw me in by showing me the crazy contortionist crap I can do and then ask me to join for five times the amount I originally paid. I’m onto their diabolical plan now. Unfortunately for them, I was willing to shell out the $29 for the intro classes, but there is no more blood to squeeze out of this unemployed (albeit now flexible) turnip. And with that, my hot yoga days are over.