Moose in the Kitchen

My ass has been well and thoroughly booted. I’ve taken this bikram yoga class four days in a row now, and after each one I stagger out of the room, scarlet of face and dripping of body, and proceed to stare blankly at the row of lockers, wondering where I am and what exactly just happened. Why does it feel like I took a shower in my workout clothes? Why am I not still snoring peacefully under my feather duvet when the clock says it’s 7:30 in the morning? What alien life form co-opted my body and – instead of taking it to Maui for a beach-napping joy ride or performing rigorous yet necessary testing on the human nervous system -  dragged me to this place with skinny yawning people and inexplicable false humidity?

I’m more acclimated to the concept of exercising in sweltering heat now – the headaches have mercifully stopped and the exhaustion is waning. But I’m also forcibly restraining myself from eating everything in front of me. Not just the cheese and the delicious chicken taquitos, but the bark off easily accessible trees and that plywood shelf holding the jars of coffee next to me. In other words, I WANT TO EAT THE ENTIRE WORLD. I’m just not used to burning this many calories, probably because I’m not used to burning ANY calories.

Aside from feeling justified in consuming massive quantities of delicious, bread-y carbohydrates, another advantage of all this Dragging My Stagnant Carcass Out of Bed at 5:15 in Morning Nonsense is the feeling of satisfaction that comes from doing that something I told myself I would do. Rather than slowly suffocating under the weight of broken self-promises which, as we all know, are the easiest promises to break. Things gone undone create a hefty mental block, let me tell you. Since self-discipline is something I struggle with, I tend to get even more down on myself with each successive instance of “Yeah, that didn’t happen. At least not on this earthly plane. Maybe it happened in an alternate universe. Can I cross it off now?” (And by “struggle with” I mean “mentally thrash myself senseless.”) The manifesto of action items I’ve vowed to accomplish and then managed to talk myself out of, forget about, or otherwise ignore is like my own personal Vietnam Memorial. (A tasteless analogy but you take my point.) So saying I’m going to do something – even something as deceptively simple as Get Thee To a Yoga Class Each Morning – and then ACTUALLY DOING IT feels like I just won a Pulitzer for my book of jaunty limericks in the same week I won the Olympic Gold for my ice dance rendition of Ke$ha’s greatest hits.

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Oh, hey. Look about three inches to your right. See those awesome little icons? The ones that look all slick and professional? Yeah, I had nothing to do with them. Design maestro Jamie made those for me after asking something like, “Hey, where’s the subscribe button on your blog?” to which I replied, “Where’s the…what?” Anyway, I’m very excited to have my very own fancy, matching buttons. Thanks, Jamie!

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