January Resolution, Week 3

*****PHLEGMWATCH 2014 UPDATE****

Buckle up phlegm-watchers: we have an exciting update on my lung fungus! It appears to be... receding! Maybe it was the inhaler. Maybe it was the antibiotics. Perhaps it was the three bottles of cough syrup I drank. Or was it acupuncture? Nope, it was probably most definitely the antibiotics. Anyway, the percentage of my day spent coughing has gone from 85%, to a reasonable 10% (the science never stops on this blog.)

Has the upswing in my health meant that I'm closer to achieving my January resolution, and finding better living through yoga? Ha! No. I pulled some muscle (look at how in tune with my body I am!) around my ribs, and now it hurts every time I cough. Or bend forward. Or twist.

It was the excuse I have always been looking for to attend nothing but restorative yoga, which is like nap time for adults. Unfortunately, my yoga buddy didn't see it that way, and picked an Ashtanga class for us to attend at the Yonge and Eg studio I mentioned last week, Perfect Butt Land.

If you're not a citizen of Perfect Butt Land, let me say that Ashtanga is a dynamic style of yoga where you match your movement to your breath, flowing through vinyasas as part of a set series of postures. Unfortunately, something else needed to flow during that class, and so as I moved into navasana, I let a massive fart rip. The Yoga Ken next to me didn't even wobble in his posture.

All of which proves I should have paid more attention to the "Kundalini Yoga Meditation to Reverse Negative Attitude, Frustration & Depression" video I used as a meditation aid the day before. That night, my attitude swung right back to "negative" when the lady told me to "squeeze the anus." If I had only heeded her words. So, for the next (and final!) week of my January resolution: more squeezing of the anus!

Pillow Blog: Brief Descriptions of Three Nightmares I've Recently Had

Recent nightmares:

• I'm working in a Chapters Bookstore (this isn't the nighmarish part)... but I'm a bad employee. I'm perpetually late to work. The manager calls me out on this, and I try to convince him to let me keep my job, but he makes it clear that he thinks I'm stupid and fires me anyway
• I'm watching a movie in a theater. A fight breaks out, and spills over into the hallway outside. I try to go and break it up, but then one of the people fighting picks up the other one and THROWS HIM OVER THE BALCONY (you would think this would be the climax of the dream, but no.) The theater manager is giving refunds because of the murder and all, but when I ask for one he says "I don't want to give YOU one." I tell him I went out to stop the fight, but he smirks at me and says "I'm sure." No refund for Marty - just the gift of PTSD
• I need to file some form with the government. I recognize the girl working there from high school. She's singularly unhelpful, and when I try and play the high school buds card, she gives me what for. Apparently I was the WORST in high school, and now she's going to get some cold, bureaucratic revenge on me

Analysis: I have some issues. Also, I need to avoid movie theaters.

January Resolution Week 2

Last weekend it seemed like my cold/flu/whatever it was (I'll call it a lung fungus because... science) was starting to get better. I was a little congested on the weekend but full health seemed like it was a mere sleep away. Then I woke up on Tuesday morning and it seemed like somebody had mashed a hand mixer down my throat.

So, another week of trying to wake my immune system out of its stupor meant that the whole resolution thing achieved limited success.

Sure, I could have probably made it to a gentle class, or a restorative class, and spent most of my time laying down (I really, really love those classes.) However, you don't make friends by aggressively trying to hork up a pound of mucus during everyone's savasana. Also, I ended up going to a walk-in clinic hoping they could napalm the lung fungus, and I felt that was enough yoga. For it required me to practice the principles of unity, and mindfulness, and waiting for multiple hours in the dingiest of waiting rooms. 

After a regimen of antibiotics, inhaler, and hourly shots of Benylin Dry Cough (magic in a bottle), I felt like I could finally trudge to a class on Friday. A power yoga class, even. Downward dog, knee to the nose, step into a lunge, attempt a handstand... fall to the side, off the slippery rental mat. Sweat, sweat, and repeat. At least I only coughed once. The next day, I headed up to Yonge and Eglinton to try a new studio. If you're not in Toronto, I think that's technically Midtown, but it feels like Uptown. Downtown, they wait in line to buy tacos at Grand Electric. Uptown, they wait in line (and out the door) for the Pickle Barrel*. It was a surprisingly intense Hatha class, and my mat was behind a girl who had perfect skin, perfect hair and a perfect butt. At least resentment helps to focus the mind, and unite the breath to the body. 

*I witnessed this outside of the Yonge and Eg Silver City post-class. Yoga and a movie? Nah, dinner and a movie is still better.

Pillow Blog: Four Books I'm Ashamed to Have Never Finished Reading

1. Ulysses - James Joyce: I sometimes miss teenage Protagitron (let's call her Protagiteen.) Yes, Protagiteen was a seething mess of hormones and pretentions, but she had spirit. For example, Protagiteen purchased a hardcover edition of Ulysses from a used bookstore in high school, convinced she would not only finish this modernist masterpiece, but complete understand it. Eight years later, the bookmark remains on p. 288
2. To The Lighthouse: Another book added to the to-read list in high school, except this one was never even started. I blame the patriarchy for that. And my laziness.
3. Infinite Jest: I meant to read this last year. I bought a copy and everything. I convened a book club around this, partly as a joke (who would have a book club on Infinite Jest?), partly to make myself read more of it. It didn't work. The voice of my generation sits, silenced, on my bookshelf.
4. The Bible: But it's not like I'll get in trouble for skipping this one, right?
   *pits of hellfire open beneath feet*
   ... crap.

January Resolution Week 1

Did you read my blog, then wait on tenterhooks for what my first monthly resolution would be? I’m sure you did not, but in case you did… IT’S A CLEANSE.

Ha, not a chance.

I tried that once and ended it early, due to erotic dreams featuring hamburgers. However, my current monthly resolution is something equally cliched: a month of daily-ish yoga. Now, before you groan and picture another skinny white girl with a bouncy ponytail and a bouncy Lululemon-covered ass hustling off to class smoothie in hand, that’s… semi-accurate. I’m definitely white, and I own one item of Lululemon (but not the pants! My pants are a pair of $10 Old Navy legging specials!).

However, I am on the thicker side, and don’t take it all too seriously, so at least I’m subverting some expectations.

And I always go to class in the best of faith. It’s just that instead of concentrating on my breathing or my intentions, I tend to meditate on what I could be eating, if only class would end soon. Like: What kind of food? Where will I buy it? Oh crap, we’re moving into downward dog again. And exhale!

The instructors tell me to acknowledge the distraction and move on, but my mind still returns to sweet, seductive hamburgers. So why bother to go, if I can’t keep my mind off of meat? And let’s not ignore the uncomfortable layers of cultural appropriation and capitalism that have settled over yoga. Here I am, cutting off only the slice I want from a millenia-old tradition, and that piece only for my own benefit.

Because I’m going to yoga in the hopes it can teach me something about stillness. I’m a busy person. I talk fast and speak frantically, and I want to do a thousand things (even though I barely accomplish ten.) I’m also a person who can’t seem to keep my hungers in check. Like those vivid dreams of hamburgers I keep on talking about (I want a hamburger so badly right now and I’ve just been writing about them.) But I hunger for other things as well, and I would like to stop feeling so empty.

I don’t expect satisfaction in a month, and my yoga practice so far doesn’t indicate this is likely. I went to a class on January 1st, but my schedule since then has mostly involved YouTube videos. I’ve also decided to integrate days of rest, which has come in handy since I got sick. Even if I did have time for a class, I doubt the other students would appreciate me coughing loudly during shavasana. But once most of the viral/bacterial invaders are out of my bloodstream, expect me to be back. Thinking hungrily of cheeseburgers, once again.

Protagitron Still Has a Cold

The cold has stuck around for a second day, which means I have moved on to watching BBC miniseries while chain drinking NeoCitran. Currently, I would be watching Wives and Daughters (though North and South is obviously the money Gaskell, because Richard Armitage) except my Internet connection is being moody. So I am writing to you.

And I will write about how it is COLD AS BALLS out there. After work, I left to wait for my chariot, the Spadina streetcar, which promptly arrived whenever the fuck it wanted. It was probably only five minutes, but with the windchill it felt like an hour. The crowd of human fleshicles shuffled on, and so the car was already half-full at King and Spadina, which meant it had reached uncomfortable levels of body Tetris by Dundas. This, as any TTC rider knows, won't stop people from trying to ram their way in by sheer will and persistence. Well, not so much will as a stubborn insistence that if you get on the steps of the streetcar, your face butt-level with the last person who tried this, and refuse to move eventually a hole will open in the space-time continuum and they will have space.

Strangely enough, it even works sometime.

So I was all excited to climb over the stacked bodies at Willcocks for a sweet breath of freedom. My joy curdled, or rather froze, as the wind hit me again though. Dear God, I thought, why not leave all this for a career as a toasty and carefree Morlock?

Hopefully this post will shame me when I start complaining about the heat.

Protagitron Has a Cold

I have a cold. This isn't as exciting as when Frank Sinatra had a cold. Since it developed on the bus back from Guelph (my Mom's birthday meant I've double dipped on family time this month), the only other creatures you can ask for an opinion on me and my cold are my cats. And they would only say that I'm terribly cranky, then ask for food. 

It's an ache-y kind of cold (or flu?) The kind that feels like it's living deep in your joints and head. I want to curl around a cup of NeoCitran and sleep for seven days. Unfortunately, tomorrow is the first day of what will surely be the second busiest time of year chez job. Why? Because I work with professors, and so January is a bit like a mini-September, except the weather is worse and most of the instructors are much less prepared. 

And so I dragged my laundry to Toronto's seediest laundromat, because I didn't want to wallow in my own filth.

A similar movement will be repeated with my own body tomorrow. Oh well. There's always the consolation that any anger at any issues can be solved by letting out a feeble laugh over the phone. 

The Year of Living Realistically

Goodbye, 2013. Hello, 2014. The tradition on my blog is that I reflect on the past year's resolutions, and come up with a new batch for this year. However, my completion rate has declined from year to year, to the point where zero - absolutely zero - of my resolutions from 2013 were completed. 

So let's try not to set ourselves up for that kind of failure again this year. However, I can't do away with resolutions entirely - there's a masochistic part of me that loves setting ridiculous goals. So my new plan: one resolution a month. I have a month to succeed (or fail) then I can move on. With 12 opportunities, I hope we can at least bring the completion rate up to a stunning 8.33%. 

To 2014! And reasonable expectations!