I Call My Kitchen The Egg. Doesn't Mean I Want To Act Like One.

Boy, what a night. This very blog was in doubt when the massive rains and winds that are hovering over B'field caused a lengthy power outage. I left for awhile, and when I came back, all was well again. But if it doesn't stop raining soon, I, along with the Poderosa, might be floating down the Betty Bet Bet Inspirational Highway to points east.

I mentioned briefly some time back that I, in doing some after-work activities here at the Pod, struck a few yoga poses. Yes, folks, I'm trying to enter the peaceful and zen-like world of yoga.

I found a book I'd bought some years ago, bought specifically for its title. It's called "Yoga For Wimps." I saw that book, figured, "Hey, no one's as big a wimp as I am," and figured it needed to come home with me. And it did, but it sat on the bottom shelf of a table in my living room for some three years, and if that doesn't speak to what a wimp I am, I don't know what does.

But lately I've been wanting a way to relax and stretch after my usual low-impact "march and huff and sweat" workout. "Yoga For Wimps" kept calling to me, and I unearthed it from that table ledge, and when I saw that the cover featured a bespectacled man holding a cup of coffee, I thought this might be exactly what I needed. I figured if I got good enough at my yoga poses, I could not only stretch and relax but also drink my coffee, possibly by holding the cup in my foot and bending it over my head.

So a few weeks ago after my workout I got the book, got in the floor, and opened it right up. And something struck me right off the bat. It isn't necessarily a book for wimps. This is because, well, from my estimation, wimps need to be told exactly what to do. "Hey, wimpy! Look. You start by doing this. You do it for twenty seconds, then you turn over and do it this way. And if you think you're man enough, then you can do this for 15 seconds, and after that, you'd better do this, and then this."

This book isn't like that at all. You open it up, and it's just pages and pages of normal people in different poses. There's no rhyme or reason to them, nothing that tells you where to start and how many to do at a time, or to start with these pages and then increase a page as you go on. Nope, it's do it yourself, do what you want, it's your life, you bought the book, do it as you please. Which is a nice philosophy, but if a person (like, uh, me) buys this book and doesn't know yoga from full-contact sumo wrestling, it's rather confusing.

So I decided what the hell, I'll start at the beginning. I opened it up and creased to the first pair of pages. There were six poses on those pages. The first I called, well, I called it something akin to "fucking impossible," because it was a man on his back, rolled up in a ball, with his knees on his chest. I couldn't hit that position if you put me in a trash compactor, but I gave it a go and got somewhere in the same county as he was, and so I laid there awhile like that and decided to soldier on.

The next couple of poses were fun and easy, one was pretending to be a table, just on your hands and knees, then moving onto the back again, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, ass in the air. I'd done three, well two and a half, poses, and I was feeling good. Till I went to the next pose.

The next pose, I call "The Egg." It's you, on your knees, all balled up, face touching the floor, hands pointing towards your feet. And folks, when you're all balled up like that on your knees with your hands at your feet instead of supporting you, your face not only touches the floor, it makes an imprint in the carpet. I didn't like The Egg at all, and there was a small point where I went away to a cosmic place, but not in a good way, in more of a, "Is this what death is like?" place.

The other poses involved sitting and leaning on a chair, so I was OK with those, and I'd completed my first two pages of yoga poses. I thought I was pretty damn special.

The next two pages were right up my alley. What I wanted from this yoga thing. They involved lying on the back, legs straight in the air, then making V's and O's and all other letters of the alphabet with the legs. They were nice and stretchy, and I was feeling rather relaxed and proud of myself, and after four pages and 11 poses, I called it a night.

And I stuck with those poses for about a week. Because the Wimp People didn't tell me whether I should or shouldn't.

Then I got adventurous and turned to another two pages. This is where your "easy household props" come into play. Yes, the Wimp People say their yoga is so simple (and wimpy) that you don't have to buy any special equipment. You use your chairs, your blankies, and your neckties. However, if you're a single woman you have no neckties to speak of, hopefully your father does, and mine did.

The first pose on the new pages had me just sitting up straight, butt on a blankie, with my legs spread in a V. It was nice. I liked that one. From that, you turn your waist this way and that, holding that position and stretching your waist. Then you grab a necktie and do a pose I like to call "Pulling Your Legs Right Off Your Body." In this, you take the tie, loop it around your foot, and pull your straight leg up until you can hear every bone in your 40-something body start to crack, and some muscles ripping as well. Then you change legs and do it again. From that pose you head to the "Oops, My Legs Are Off, I'd Better Push Them Back On" pose, which involves putting the necktie around both feet of your straightened legs and not lifting them, but pulling them towards you and therefore reattaching them to your hips.

The last pose on those pages is sitting in the floor, legs spread in a V again, up against a chair, your arms folded on the chair and your face resting on your arms. This has become lovingly known as the "Oh, God, What Have I Done" pose, but it's very comfortable, and provides several seconds to say a prayer that your newly pushed-in legs will remain attached to your body.

After doing now six fantabulous pages of yoga poses, I decided to up the ante and turn the page. In all poses, the woman was standing. I don't want to stand. To me, yoga is a floor sport. My flu was pretty much in mid-rage, too, and so I decided the last thing I needed was to stand up and start lifting body parts with a necktie. The possibility of hanging myself was just too great.

And so that's where it stands as we speak. I've pulled off and reattached my legs a good number of times, and apparently the chair-prayer is working because they've stayed on. The first knees-to-chest pose is getting better and I can hold it longer, but I'll never get The Egg. Seriously, I'm afraid I'm going to break my nose doing The Egg. So I've decided to ditch The Egg. These Wimpy Yoga People seem to be so blase about the whole deal, I doubt they'd even care, and I'm not telling them anyway.

I'm flying along on page 9. There are 100 pages in the book. Wimps don't want 100 pages of yoga poses. They want 9.

I'm thinking of tearing the other 91 pages out.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners! So, tell me all about your perfect car.
- Honorable Mention goes to LilyG, with her, "Nearing Kansas, oil, transmission is respectable." Very smart. Lily knows about being stuck in Kansas.
- Runner-Up goes to the DeepFatFriar, with his, "Nikita Khrushchev's old tank, iridescent red." Somehow I can see you in that, Friar.
- And this week's winner is the dishy Michelle, with her, "Needing kerosene only, terrific interior, romantic." For being able to work "kerosene" and "romantic" into the same sentence, I salute you.
- Thanks to all who played, you've all done very well!