broken,â I lamented. âI was hoping to get a nip and tuck when the doctors had me under.â
âDoes this mean your kickball career is over?â Chris asked. âFor a second time?â
I wasnât sure what was worse. Being compared to a Botox-addicted bored housewife or having a career-ending injury crush my hopes and dreams for a second time. Didnât matter. Today was a new day, and a new day meant a new god. I sat in my desk chair, closed my eyes, and took a deep inhale, letting my abdominal cavity expand and lengthen. And then I got dizzy and almost passed out.
Iâm still learning here, people.
âOm â¦â
âOh no. Who are you worshipping today?â Laura asked.
âToday I shall pray to Ioun, the god of knowledge, skill, and prophecy.â
âGreat!â Laura said. âThen
you
can work on this presentation.â
âPowerPoint will not help me bridge my mental and emotional faculties,â I answered. âBut yoga will. Iâm taking a class tonight!â
âWhat the hell does yoga have to do with Ioun?â Chris asked. âShe wants you to seek and distribute knowledge. Educate yourself and others.â
âUm, what part of
class
did you not understand?â Look at me distributing knowledge already.
âIâm not sure thatâs entirely what she means, but go ahead. Knock yourself out,â he said, in an unfortunate choice of clichés. âOh no, wait. Donât do that. Have fun.â
âHa, ha. Very funny.â
Sadly, I sort of agreed with him. It would be nice to enroll in a Spanish class or finally learn how to knit or sit in on a lecture at the Seattle Art Museum. But yoga is the only class I could find that was available on such short notice. Just in case Chris was right and I failed to properly educate and enlighten, Iâd go to NPR.com and donate $25.
My neighborhood is riddled with yoga studios so I picked one closest to home. Okay, thatâs not why I picked it. It happens to be across the street from my favorite tap house. Bart is meeting me after class so I can deposit some delicious hoppy calories back into the old reservoir.
I havenât taken a yoga class since â¦Â well, ever. I tried to do one of those On Demand videos when I was feeling lazy about not going to the gym for three days but the teacher was so Zen I fell asleep in chair pose and only woke up because of the charley horse in my quad. I was a bit nervous about class until I walked into the studioâs lobby, which smelled like my old friend Phoebe. A woman behind the desk greeted me. Her long, lithe limbs were enshrouded in a black body suit. She looked like a vanilla bean.
âIs this the beginner yoga class?â I asked.
âIt is!â she said with so much glee I wondered if she thinks Iâm from Extreme Yoga Studio Make-Over Edition or something. âIs this your first time?â she asked, handing me a clipboard full of paperwork.
Sure that I will never muster that much glee in my own voice, I just nodded and started initialing things.
My future classmates didnât look very âbeginner.â Maybe itâs because they all had Klean Kanteen water bottles and were wearing those expensive yoga pants and matching tops that I pass over at T.J. Maxx in favorof the cheap cotton sweatpants and T-shirts I find around the office. Itâs not like Iâm going to a bar dressed like this. Bartâs bringing me a change of clothes.
Their clothes, on the other hand, you
could
go to happy hour in if you were the kind of person who enjoyed drinking half-price appletinis while showing your midriff.
I did not have my own yoga mat, so Vanilla Bean lent me one. Iâm instantly grossed out over the thought that my face is going to get pretty intimate with this rubber cesspool. I exfoliated for this? Why didnât I plunk down the $10 it probably costs to get a mat? Even if I used it only
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