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!

The Time Grinch Who Stole Christmas

Hey hey hey, ho ho ho, it's Christmas time, and I almost missed it. Actually, if my office party hadn't been last week, I probably would have. I've been busy enough that the first cup of straight-up eggnog has yet to be consumed. 

Okay, there was an eggnog latte somewhere in November, back when I thought I would still have the time to buy a tree and decorate it. Please don't judge me. Occasionally I'll indulge in a ridiculous, expensive whipped cream and flavouring concoction from the 'bucks, like I own an Audi and send my kids to Mandarin class. 

I don't have an Audi. And my kids are really just one cat with boundary issues. 

Anyway, I need some Christmas spirit pronto. Obviously Christmas cards are no longer a possibility, but I think if I can cut some snowflakes while watching Die Hard, I'll be okay. 

The Indignity of Winter Biking

Putting aside the idiotic columnists and angry drivers, getting the Silver Bullet* on the road was one of the better decisions I made this year. As I coasted down hill after hill, free from TTC-induced psychosis, I thought the good times would never end.

And then summer turned to fall, which turned to the fetal winter we're having right now. Snow, slush, ice; all good reasons to stop biking for a bit. I also got a nasty cold in November. With phlegm clogging the bike's engine (ie my lungs) the Silver Bullet was locked up for a week, which stretched into two, and eventually became December. 

And what better month, I thought, to retire my bike for the season and buy a metropass? The city would once again be my oyster, or during rush hour, my sardine can. That lasted for about six days before the card was mysteriously misplaced around Bathurst station. It was kind of like taking $130 and gleefully tossing it out of the back window of the Bathurst bus. 

So it was time to put the saddle back on the steed. The first day wasn't so bad. Sure, my nose ran with rivers of snot, and my legs were as frozen as two fishsticks. My coworker, watching my approach, insisted that a Mercedes almost ran me over, but let's not dwell on that particular indignity. Instead, let's focus on the parade of shame that was this morning's commute. 

I knew it was going to be slushy out there, but I didn't realize how my fender-free tires would liberally spray me with the road's effluvia. Halfway through I regretted my decision to bike, as I opened my mouth to breathe (nose already plugged with cold-induced mucus) and tasted the salty bouquet of fresh road slush. Neither the road conditions, nor tidings of comfort and joy, deterred the drivers from crowding me as I lurched down Spadina. And yet, somehow, I managed to arrive at work (please see "artist"'s rendering, above), only to leave and almost instantaneously go airborne as high winds whipped my bike at the curb, and cardboard boxes and recycling bins at me. 

Which is why I don't understand people who hate cyclists. Save your anger for something else, because eventually the inanimate objects and meteorological events will take us out.

*So named because it is rusty and slow

A 6.0 for Effort

When I was young I decided that I wasn't a very athletic person, and so I decided to resign myself from any and all physical pursuits - volleyball, basketball, tug of war - and pursue a life of the mind.

Unfortunately, the life of the mind has proven as untrustworthy as my own coordination skills, but that's not the point.

No, the point is that yesterday, I strapped on a pair of skates like a good Canadian, and stepped on to the ice at Nathan Phillips square like a good Torontonian.

And then... I stopped.

Skate forward? NO FOR I WOULD SURELY DIE. My mental dialogue was something like "How do you move on skates? How do you MOVE? How how how?" The physics didn't seem to make any sense. Better to stay completely still and not rip a hole in the space/time continuum.

I tried to keep my balance while yelling at my friends that it didn't make any sense. I tried to reconcile the seeming impossibility of my current task (forward movement) with the fact that I used to be able to skate. I could never skate well, mind you, but I used to get around the rinks of Guelph in some way.

Before my brain melted out of my ears and I resolved this paradox by kicking off my skates and wandering to the hot dog cart for a hot dog, Dan held out his hand. I moved forward, like a child learning to walk. And thanks to my trusty personal human post, I ice-walked around the rink. But, damnit, at least I didn't fall.

Weekend Report

I don't know about you guys, but last week felt like a long limp towards an increasingly distant finish line. And so this weekend has been all about recovery, by which of course I mean "doing nothing but watching Scandal, only occasionally venturing forth to drink beer with friends."

Thus, not much to report. I did watch the Saturday night Habs/Leafs game at a Habs bar. I had to get the old Dryden t-shirt out of storage. Last year's strike really burned me on hockey, and I had maybe watched half of a game this season. But I'm glad I went. It might have been the wings, or maybe it was our 4-2 win, or maybe it was even the beer talking (it was totally the beer), but it was a lot of fun.

Now, I'm hoping for a more productive week. Because beer and addictive TV is great and all, but sometimes a girl's got goals.