cultivating my melting muffin stomach

There are many things I could be doing now...should be doing now.  Reworking a few more pages of my maybe-it-will-be-something-readable-maybe-not possible novel.  I could be taking my buttocks off this chair and trot myself out the door for a brisk walk.  BUT no.  I am sitting here sipping cold green tea. (Not because I chilled the tea in the refrigerator.  The tea is cold because it’s left over from this afternoon’s attempt at working on this latest draft of The B__ M, and no flies or other unwanted visitors had fallen into it, so I figured..."why not") Here I sit sipping my tea, nibbling my licorice _____?  What are these things called?  They are multi colored skinny licorice coated in a crisp candy enamel coating.  They’re from the Jellybelly factory and are delicious. You can find them on-line.  Sorry I don’t remember the name.  Don’t be fooled by other types candy coated licorice, as they are not nearly as good.  I can’t order them direct here in Canada, but luckily I was able to convince the owner of a new candy shop in town that these candies would make an excellent addition to her store, and off she sent her Dad to scamper across the border to pick up a large batch.  Which I promptly bought.  Yes, here I sit, the sky getting darker out of my window, blogging to whoever is out there reading this instead of doing something useful as well.

Exercise.  I liked how I threw that in, like I am a regular exercising junkie.  I used to be pretty good about exercising pretty regularly, but something happened this summer and somehow...I just stopped.  Oh I take a walk every now and then, but I haven’t set foot inside a regular exercise class since the second week in July!  Hmmm...maybe that’s it?  I went on this boat and there was this amazing Amazon woman teaching the yoga classes and I’m not a yoga person.  That doesn’t mean I don’t like yoga people, I do.  It’s just that well, personally, I find yoga incredibly difficult and painful and embarrassing because I’m always crashing onto the floor, losing my balance and everyone else is so good at it. 

So we were walking by the glass enclosed yoga studio and there were all of these people contorted into these really uncomfortable looking poses and I don’t know what I was thinking...but I said to my husband, “Hey, why don’t we take the Yoga class?” Mistake number one.  Mistake number two was letting my feet walk me around the corner and signing up for the next class.  Mistake number three was taking the class.  Mistake number four was listening to what instructor had to say.  Almost impossible not to actually.  If you are in her class you have no choice.  She stride around the room, adjusting peoples bodies and roaring out her opinions in a voice that would terrify the undead. She was actually quite funny and furious and kind.  All of these things mashed up into an amazing mixture seems to promise fun and sex and violence and and an amazing fit body if only you learn how.  All the injustices of the world just simmering below her skin, erupting now and then in a tirade against… Well, many things.  And yet with all this power and energy seeping out of every single one of her pores, there is the feeling of a fragile sort of vulnerablity, hurts and betrayals, a small girl who was badly wounded and it made me want to wrap her in my arms and give her a hug.  I didn’t of course because the sane part of me was too terrified.  But I stayed in that impossibly challenging class because there was something I really liked about her.  Even though, as I said before, yoga is not for me. 

I’m not saying this is why I haven’t exercised.  It’s not.  The classes actually were quite amazing.  For the first four days it was quite painful to walk, reach for food, laugh, remove or put on my clothes.  No, after her classes, I looked awesome.  Not as amazingly awesome as she did, but quite awesome for me.  I haven’t exercised because I have fallen off of the exercising wagon, and I am finding it impossible to get back on.  I tried (sort of) last night.  I challenged who ever I could coerce in to a ping-pong match.  This is no easy feat because when you play ping-pong with me you’d better wear a cup and a helmet because when I whack that ping-pong ball it rarely hits the table.  (I could go on and on about my lack of proffessional ping-pong skills, how I unintentional disarm my opponents, causing them to sink to the floor, clutching their bellies with laughter at my enthusiastic but ultimately unsuccessful attempts.  However I shan’t bore you with the details.  Just let it be said that in order for ping-pong to even approach a proper cardiovascular work out, one must be able to volley the ping-pong ball more than three times in a row.)

Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, September 17, 2007 in Chewing the Fat

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