Pasta, Picnics, and Planks

Me: Isaac, I need to take a picture of you eating my gnocchi
(Isaac shakes his head and backs away)
Me: Come on, Zeke, it's good! It's homemade..and has yummy pesto on it, you'll love it! And it's green (mentally remembering that it's Eli, not Isaac, that loves green)!
Isaac (pouting): But Angie...I don't want to eat the gween stuff...
Me: OK, then can I just take a picture of you pretending to eat it?
Isaac (after a moment of thinking it over): Yeah..sho'!

I'm ashamed to admit the Isaac photo came about after numerous failed attempts of me trying to take a photo of myself eating the gnocchi. I just wanted the blog to have some more personal touches, so I thought I'd throw in a fun picture of me about to eat a gnoccho. Except that each photo I took was more frightening than anything else. The pictures reminded me of still shots of a hippo about to chomp down on an unassuming water buffalo. So I opted for the cute kid instead. Instant improvement!

Because last week felt like it lasted a month, I decided that my Saturday would be a day just for me. Even as I write that statement, I cringe a bit. There's always a smidge of entitlement that accompanies a statement like "I need me time". Or at least I feel that way. I guess it's because I'm not accountable to the responsibilities of a husband, children, or even my parents really. I feel that because I'm single I should be all the more proactive within my community because of my lack of entanglements. On the Saturday in question, however, I pretty much decided to kick the community to the curb. I spent the morning waltzing around Cowtown with my friend Scott. When I came home I made large, lethargic amounts of gnocchi with a homemade pea pesto sauce. Then I made a whole vat of coconut butternut brown rice with an accompanying pot of spicy collard greens and black eyed peas. After eating (just the gnocchi, the greens, beans, and rice were for dinner) I high-tailed it to a park, where I loafed about with a book under a willow tree. At one point I stopped reading and thought, "I am perfectly happy right now and it has nothing to do with food". This is pretty significant for me because usually my meals and emotions go hand-in-hand. In this one moment, however, I was able to find a wholly separate source of personal fulfillment. I was riding such an emotional high that I decided I'd go crazy and attend a yoga class at my gym. When you're feeling really good about yourself, yoga is an ideal way to physically connect with your inner spirit. Except when you have MY history of yoga, and then when you hear someone make that kind of statement, you usually roll your eyes and mentally tell them to go sell their crazy somewhere else.

When I lived in Portland, I joined an amazing 24-hour gym that had everything: pools, hot tubs, saunas, elliptical machines with TVs, and dozens of classes. And because it was open 24-7, I ran out of my usual excuses for not going. So on a Saturday morning not unlike the one I just enjoyed, I ate a nice breakfast, and went to my very first yoga class. My first yoga class which, as it turned out, looked like an open audition for Swan Lake. I had never seen so many ridiculously perfect female figures in my whole life. Their bodies were meant to wear form-fitting yoga pants and cute, snug tank tops. I, however, sauntered in with baggy gym shorts, hairy legs (this didn't bother me so much. I was in Portland, after all. They're pretty loosey goosey about body hair) and a sloppy t-shirt bearing a photo of the male leads from "The Godfather" on it. It also didn't help that most of the yoga goddesses were toting around diaper bags and strollers, a fact which I noted with a most un-yoga-like resentment. If anyone in that class looked as though they just had a ten pound baby ravage all their best body parts for nine months, it was me. Nevertheless I unrolled my sister's mat waaaaay in the back of the studio and was determined to nama-stay.

Fun fact about yoga: You shouldn't eat or drink anything for several hours before or after a class. A couple of lotuses and awkward pigeon positions later, I was feeling every bite of scrambled tofu that I had eaten that morning. The instructor kept saying, "This yoga workout is giving your organs a much-needed massage" while I kept thinking "Dear God, please don't let me be 'Fat Hairy Vomit Girl' in this yoga class..." But as I transitioned to downward dog, the tofu began to upward heave. Do you have any idea how hard it is to quickly (and quietly) make your way through three dozen mats full of yoga goddess freak of nature mothers doing tree poses? I was like a rhinoceros barreling through a forest of perfectly-bodied trees, to soothing background music of Enya. I just barely made it out the door before I shoved my head into the nearest trash can and released all of my inner piece...s. I never did go to another yoga class in Portland and yoga was quickly placed in that category of "Exercises That Only Skinny People Do (like Running, Spin and Pilates)"

But then last September I felt compelled to make exercising a habit and one of the first things I was given (well, lent, but I have little intention of giving it back yet...) was a copy of "The Biggest Loser Yoga Workout". It took me a very long time to muster up the motivation to give it a go, but then, wonder of wonders, it turned out to be an amazing workout video. While I despise the Biggest Loser show itself, I truly loved the yoga video. It actually had fat people on it bending, sweating, huffing, and puffing to Bob's firm but gentle, Southern-style instructions. It didn't even matter that I almost always fell over during the first three weeks of doing the DVD because I kept thinking "If those fatties can do this, then so can I". There's no question that that DVD, in conjunction with regular walking, helped me shave off my first fifteen pounds.

So with a renewed faith in yoga, last Saturday I went to my very first group yoga class since Vomitfest 2008. I braced myself for being the lone short, hairy, Italian with baggy clothes on amidst the Jersey-style collection of the yoga goddesses (they come with spray tan). What I did not prepare myself for was being half of the female population in that class. I was greeted warmly by six older gentleman in their late fifties to early sixties. One of them in particular, Jim, said "Wonderful, we have another girl! I hope you ladies don't mind if I just stick my mat in between you two! (Wink)" Jim was attired in a tie-dyed Rita's Italian Ice t-shirt and baggy jeans. I was slightly perplexed at the thought of this older man doing yoga poses in jeans, but my concerns were immediately rendered unnecessary. Within what I can only describe as a striptease second, the jeans were whipped off, leaving behind the tightest and shortest of spandex biker shorts. It took every ounce of newly acquired inner yoga strength to NOT shake with laughter at that very moment.

Fun Fact #2 about yoga: You shouldn't wear baggy shirts, especially when your entire class is doing all of their movements directly in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. After my first plank, I looked up to see most of my chest waving its salutations to anyone looking my way through the mirrors. From then on, I spent most of the class with my shirt collar yanked up and clenched between my teeth so as to avoid anymore National Geographic-worthy flashing. Jim, I found, was not nearly concerned with his body parts, which were quite clearly displayed through his skin-tight biker shorts. I wasn't trying to look, honest. Yoga is a lot like the game of Twister; sometimes you end up in positions where you're involuntarily looking upon random bits of another person. Jim breathed, bent, stretched, and twisted with the most astounding inner peace and personal confidence that I've ever seen in a man whose shorts could make Richard Simmons blush. At one point during the cool down, we were instructed to lie on our right side and only allow our minds to fixate on a single word (ideally it would be love, peace, God, hope). I was staring at the back of Jim's tye-dyed Rita's shirt thinking "Rita's....Rita's...heeeey, they have free water ice this Tuesday. That might be a loop-hole to my Lent(il) Project because technically I'm not buying any food. It would be free. Crap, I have to focus on one word. Hmm..Free. Free....water ice. Maybe I'll get mango..GAH! Focus! (Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeep) Was that...did one of the guys just fart? How the HECK can I focus now? I can't even stop shaking. Oh dear Lord in Heaven please don't let ME fart because I'm laughing too hard."

In the end, I managed to keep it together. And I think I will be returning to this class, after all. Aside from the lack of vomiting (always a plus) I actually felt happy and safe amongst the old guys. They were kind, welcoming, and incredibly focused (I didn't catch one of them gawking at my accidental peep show). Also, at the end of the day it's almost impossible to feel self-conscious when you're surrounded by old farts. Literally. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.