A few thoughts on Yoga

One my yoga instructors told us that if we stand on our heads long enough, we could fight the effects of gravity. Well, harumph! It hasn’t worked for any of us.

Farts happen.

Another instructor starts her classes with an ohmmmmmm. OMG (ohmmmmmmygod)! Someone is always out of tune. I can’t ohmmmmmm. It is one thing to listen to a swarm of bees. It is another thing to be part of the swarm.

All the poses end in asana, or they have names that made sense to whoever named them. I kind of get the tree pose, but if you want to turn into a plant…good grief, isn’t it easier to just swallow a watermelon seed whole?

On macaroni necklaces
My favorite name is Mom. When your name is Mom, your kids give you macaroni necklaces. It might as well be a law. Wearing them is included in your job description. What preschool and K-3 teachers must think: Anything goes with macaroni.  And…if the red and green dye rub off on mom’s clothes…not my problem. And...if it doesn’t fit, not my problem…if it doesn’t fit because the kid uses his or her own head to measure the length…not my problem.

Have we ever seen Melania or Michelle wear a macaroni necklace?

About cats
How to catch a cat (any species):
METHOD 1
Step A: Open box.
Step B: Close box.
METHOD 2
Put out a laundry basket.
METHOD 3
Make a one-foot square on the floor with duct tape.

About the gym

What do you do when a naked person wants to shake your hand in the locker room?

About hotel room coffee

I hate those one-cup coffee makers with pre-filled coffee filters the size of teabags—the coffee makers that dispense coffee directly into your cup, so you don’t even have to pour. Cool.

My friend, Carl, told me coffee teabags contain nothing but instant coffee. If this is true, what remains inside the bag after you brew it? The stuff that feels like coffee grounds but could be sawdust. OMG…I hope Carl was wrong.

I have tried over and over to cut a little filter so I can use my own coffee in these stupid one-cup brewers. It has never worked, and I never learn. The hot water spurts out the filter tray, spitting my coffee grounds all over the coffee service tray, down dresser drawers, and onto the carpet. Sometimes the hot water and grounds splatter on me too. I almost always prefer grounds in my coffee and a mess to clean up over the room coffee. Good grief, it tastes like nothing; maybe Carl is right.

About naming pets and other animals

I used to band cowbirds. Funny, huh? We would trap some repeatedly and learned their quirky personalities. My assistants and I would name these birds. We called some ordinary names, like Pete, Harold, Louise, and Frank, but we named most birds with names you would never name your kids, like Red Snapper, Spike, Almond Joy, and Rastamon.

My husband never named the birds, but once he told a reporter he thought we named cowbirds after old boyfriends or something. Yeah, right. Like we had old boyfriends named Cool Jerk, Frankenstein, Roman Cacique, Mellow Yellow, and Lucky Charm.

Other researchers name their study animals too. Mammalogists have a widely accepted protocol whereby names of all individuals within the same clan all start with the same letter. We couldn’t do that because cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, just like cuckoos. The other birds raise the cowbird chicks, so who knows what clan they belong to.

Naming pets doesn’t really differ much from naming wild animals. You just pick a name that you think fits the personality.

My cat thinks her name is “Come on.”  Probably most pets in the United States think their name is “Come on.”  In Spanish-speaking countries, pets probably think their name is Venga-Venga.

But, why are so many dogs named Scooter?

My baggage

Why not start off this blog with my baggage? Then I can park it at the bottom of the page, where it belongs.

My father loved Dolly Parton more than his three wives. His most important wish in life was to be reincarnated as a voluptuous woman with a bosom of titanic proportions.

Really? This is my DNA?

My childhood experience was not even close to normal. I know, Barbara Kingsolver says all families are weird. Your family might be weird too, but I have to ask: were you ever forced to draw mummies when you were a little kid?

My mother’s idea of a fun-filled Saturday was to force me and my older brother and sister to walk ten miles to the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago with sketchbooks tucked under our tiny arms. OK, Google Earth just confirmed the walk spanned only three and a half blocks. We spent tortuous hours standing up in decomposed stuffiness, sketching mummies and pots. I nearly fainted every time we went there.

Her idea of good bedtime reading was The Iliad, The Odyssey, and assorted Greek mythology. I got lost from the beginning. She droned on and on and on about the Trojan War; it bored me to tears. Instead of listening, I picked at my mother’s worn-out quilt, jamming my little fingers into every hole I could find. She didn’t see me enlarging the holes in her quilt because she was too busy yammering on about Homer. At the time, my mother was enrolled at the University of Chicago as a major in the Greek classics. I think she was reading her homework to us toddlers. We should have received college credit, but I would have earned a strong D minus, if not an F, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

When I was a little kid, I was intimidated to a paralyzing degree by nearly everything, including my mother, my brother, my teachers, and strangers. I assumed all bats and dogs off leash had rabies. But Mrs. Murphy, the lunchroom supervisor, was the most intimidating of all. Fearing her was deeply engrained in the school culture. One day, I committed the crime we all feared most: I accidentally dropped my plate. It shattered like a 500-pound chandelier crashing to the floor. After that, you could have heard a pin drop. All eyes, including hers, turned to me. I stood frozen to the floor for ten seconds. Then I booked it. I never looked back. I booked it right out of the lunch room and across the school yard. I headed south, straight for South America, with warm pee dribbling down my legs. I didn’t get very far and hid behind an eight-foot square wall in the corner of the yard. I sobbed. This is where I hid almost every day in fear of myriad tricks and mean kids.

One day my mother served spaghetti and clam sauce for dinner. I baulked. She either didn’t get the memo that I don’t do bivalves, or she didn’t care. I had plans to play with a friend after dinner, but she wasn’t going to allow me to go unless I ate what might as well have been barf on my plate. When she wasn’t looking, I dumped the entire ball of writhing worms into the napkin on my lap. I had plans to flush the mess down the toilet. She was not amazed that I scarfed it down in 15 seconds while she happened to have her intimidating glare off of me. She sent me to bed, clicking her finger and pointing in the same move. To this day, I don’t do bivalves.

I wish I could have stood up to my mother and other intimidating people and animals the way my youngest daughter did. I truly admired how she stood up to what she viewed as her birth rights. She never seemed intimidated by anything. When she was three and didn’t get her way one day, she knew who was boss:

My daughter (think whiny with a squeaky voice): “Why not?”
My husband (four feet taller): “Because I’m the boss.”
My daughter (hands on hips looking up defiantly): “No, I’m the boss.”
My husband (with too much patience): “No, I’m the boss.”
My daughter (getting red in the face): “I’m the boss.”
My husband (with a little less patience): “No, I’m the boss.”
Me (rolling my eyes): “Really you two?”

 This is only a small part of my baggage. The way I saw my life, I had two choices: (1) develop a sense of humor for the absurdity of life, or (2) be a crankster forever. My friend, Nancy, closed off a recent email to me, “…keeping up humor, my friend, and loving the birds…” I responded back, “If I lose my love for birds, you can worry. If I lose my humor, just shoot me!”