Secular Confessions

[demigraf]

Like Mandy, my sister & I were actually pretty egged on by my parents to make "customizations" to our toys. Remember those monkeys with holes in their ears/mouths/noses that you could then stick their thumbs/toes into? My mom was pleased to find one with rearranged limbs (as in legs jutting out of arm sockets) after my sister and I performed a morbid bit of surgery on one of them with scissors and safety pins. Guess that got me started with my love of reconstruction early on in life. Oh, and we had a creepy life-sized Barbie head without a body that you could style with makeup and curlers. She looked really punk rock by the time we were done with her.

You guys are bringing back all kinds of memories of make-believe games my sister & I would play as kids. I remember getting a microcassette recorder one Xmas ("you'll want to remember all those story ideas that come into your head", said Mom). Anyway, my sister and I staged these mock presidential elections between my monkeys and recorded "interviews" with them. One was in cowboy get-up, the other in tennis gear. The latter spoke like Ricky Ricardo and hailed from the Republic of Cocarita before immigrating to our fictitious country. The cowboy talked like a cross between Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig. Even back then, it was a race between the populist of color and the elitist good 'ol boy who fought dirty to win the election. At one point, the cowboy confided to his interviewer that he planned to "kill that little Cocarita boy " if he won the election. What was even more fun was the fact that my sister didn't catch that part until we later played it all back. She was shocked and horrified, much to my delight. Hee!

Gwenn, I'll bet my hubby would love to read your dad's article. He was on a team that designed audiophile speakers. Share it?

[missychrissy]

My father "tinkered" (fixed everything) all the time and still does. I fixed my own boom box at 12 because I'd watched him so much. I've always given him credit (blame) that I ended up troubleshooting computers for a living. He brought one home and just let me wreck havoc on it.

[MashedUp]

I definitely feel there is a huge difference between purposely destroying toys and using them to foster your creativity. I would never punish my child for cutting her doll's hair. But, I'm very lenient on what my kids get in trouble for. DH is much stricter and we often have clashes because he'll come home and they are doing something and he'll stop them and I have to tell him that I've been letting them do that for 2 hours. My mom still has all my barbies from growing up and Macie will get them if she wants them when she's a little older. I'm a little bit excited about going through all of them again. She also pulled out some 25-30year old strawberry shortcake stuff recently and it still smelled!

Chrissy, I did a "mud run" in june. It was majorly intense. If I ever get in better shape, I'll do one with you!

[missychrissy]

Chrissy, I did a "mud run" in june. It was majorly intense. If I ever get in better shape, I'll do one with you!

Woo hoo!!

I have to say, my feeling of well being lasted till this morning after my run late yesterday afternoon. My shin hurt a wee bit. I'm regretting my choice to wear heels...they weren't bothering me this morning when I put them on. Ah well. I'm going to try to run in the evenings I don't have Conner with me. That will be Mondays & Wednesdays, and then I can run every Sunday after he goes home.

[Bridget]

My kids manipulate their toys all the time. As long as they are not being purposefully destructive, I am fine with them doing what they like.

Last night Kai was listening to Veggie Tales lullabies as usual. He is obsessed with them. He told me he wishes God was real because they you never have to be alone
Jeez, when is he even alone? I really want to find something different for him to listen to. Isn't there some Buddhist rock music somewhere? lol

[missychrissy]

Maybe he meant that in an abstract kind of way...he's smart and perhaps thought that there might be a time when he will be alone (as an adult?) and that's when he speculates he might desire God.

Somehow, I've managed to get Conner to the age of 5 without him really asking about God or Jesus. I remember when someone died I overheard Syd telling him about heaven. I wasn't exactly thrilled, but I let it slide and didn't interrupt their conversation. He never asked me about it. Honestly, I'm kinda weak about this because for their sake I do find comfort in them believing in heaven at a young age. I guess it's like believe in Santa for me. There will come a time when I'll tell him what I really believe. I know Syd knows so I was surprised she talked to Conner about heaven, but then again I also understand the desire to want to believe. Especially children.

[Ky'sMom]

I did it because I hated them and haircutting was fun. I wanted my Barbies to be ugly. I even had the Brooke Shields Barbie doll, which I hated the most for some reason. It took many years (into my adulthood actually) to separate her as a person from that horrid doll.

This is too funny Chrissy! I imagine you looking in disgust at Barbies lol!

I don't really care what my kids do with their toys. Ky would be in endless trouble if I punished him for destroying toys. He never means to but he is rough with toys, especially actions figures, which is why I have to buy him whole new sets for Christmas every year. It used to bother me, but really he just loves his toys and I like that he plays with them so much and gets a lot of use out of them.

I also cut my Barbie's hair when I was a girl and we used to make clothes for them out of socks and dye their hair with Kool-Aid packs (which my mom did used to get upset about because we were wasting Kool-Aid, not that we were messing up the dolls). We had a lot of free, older dolls that people gave to me, similar to Elle's Barbies. But my mom never cared what we did with our toys. I am a lot like her in that way. She felt kids were free to imagine and be creative when they were playing and as long as no one was hurt, or we weren't breaking each other's toys to torture each other, then everything was good.

She also encouraged us to take things apart and would buy us garbage sale junk to play with like vacuum cleaners and even toasters and other small electronics. She never knew until a few years ago that we burned up the garage with a toaster that my brother took apart and reassembled and left plugged up in the detached garage. We came home from school shopping when I was about 5 or 6 to the fire department at our house and all our neighbors sitting out being nosy and tell us our house burned up. The house was fine but the garage was destroyed. Luckily nothing was kept in it and we only used it as a "club house." My brother would have gotten a "whoppin" if she found out what he had done as she was always telling us not to plug things up in there because it was old and once it sparked when she plugged something up. So none of us (me or my friends who knew) told on my brother.

Erin

[3andMe]

I don't think there is anything I could have done as a kid to match the sheer destruction of property force that was my dad, who will back over stuff (bicycles, cats, etc) without looking, and who got kicked out of his first college for almost burning it down by hanging hundreds of candles from his dorm room ceiling, and who tried to build a fountain in the bedroom in one of their rental properties by creating a hole through the bathroom wall and laying pipes into the other room. I actually have a hard time finding a good balance between respect for property and maintaining it for long-term use and being too much of a reactionary against that that complete carelessness I was raised with. (And my poor 3-legged kitty.) My DH is surprised it took him so long to become enamoured with Buddhism, since it speaks so clearly to his lack of regard for worldly things.

Oh, and I also never had anything that was expensive or store-bought. My dolls were made from socks and had yarn hair, so they weren't as tempting to cut. I did cut my sister's hair once.

Bridget, have you ever tried listening to The Sippy Cups? They're slightly kiddified versions of rock music, without religion. I just did a brief search for Buddhist rock and a small spattering turned up but it seemed just as religious as Christian rock. Or I have an alternative lullabies CD that I enjoy, and Rockabye Baby Led Zeppelin. Did you ask him any more about not wanting to be alone?

[demigraf]

Saw The Sippy Cups play at Ashkenaz when Bodhi wasn't walking yet, L Danced with him in the Ergo. We should go the next time they play!

[missychrissy]

This is too funny Chrissy! I imagine you looking in disgust at Barbies lol!

She also encouraged us to take things apart and would buy us garbage sale junk to play with like vacuum cleaners and even toasters and other small electronics. She never knew until a few years ago that we burned up the garage with a toaster that my brother took apart and reassembled and left plugged up in the detached garage. We came home from school shopping when I was about 5 or 6 to the fire department at our house and all our neighbors sitting out being nosy and tell us our house burned up. The house was fine but the garage was destroyed. Luckily nothing was kept in it and we only used it as a "club house." My brother would have gotten a "whoppin" if she found out what he had done as she was always telling us not to plug things up in there because it was old and once it sparked when she plugged something up. So none of us (me or my friends who knew) told on my brother.

Erin

omg-I'd have DIED if we caught anything on fire!! As it is, we nearly did once with a reconfiguration of an EZ Bake oven. Oh, and licking paper and sticking it on a bare bulb to watch it steam. The stuff we used to do!

Ironically, I caught my shadow one time last summer when I was wearing my really high heals and I thought my silhouette closely resembled Barbie's. It made me laugh for 2 reasons-1) I hated her so much, then grow up to have a close body shape and 2) I wondered what those that say Barbie gives girls the wrong idea about body image would have thought if they'd have seen my shadow the way I did. You only need to be tall & wear heels!

[Suja]

I wouldn't give any child any toy that I overly care if they destroy. I do care if they do it deliberately.

We did a lot of stuff as kids that most of us here would probably frown upon. For instance, we decided that dodge ball was not that much fun if we didn't have serious incentive to dodge, so we put some stones and rocks in a piece of cloth and tied it around the ball, so it would hurt more. We used to make little fire pits outside, and "cook" stuff. One time, we tried to cook rice in coconut shell. That didn't work out too well. Nor did the time we tried to cook in a plastic container. So, we have set fire to stuff, but they were small fires and always outdoors.

Bridget, I have no idea what the Veggie Tales lullabies are like, but I just got a few CDs for Mira, and I am in love with this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s00_i07 It's a Smithsonian folk song collection for kids, and her voice is so beautiful and haunting.

[3andMe]

I have that CD too, and love it.

[Suja]

Oh, and I'm considering buying something from Putumayo, and if you're looking for relaxing music, something like this might work: http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-Worl...words=putamayo

[3andMe]

We are at the stage of potty training where S will go every time if I put him on the toilet, but will not indicate that he needs to go. I have not been able to spend a concentrated few days at home working on it, and I have been doing the slower, more relaxed version. Still, its a pain being out all day (like at the Cal Academy of Sciences on Friday, and at the Monterey Aquarium yesterday) and doing this, especially when there are long lines in the bathrooms. However, unless we get stuck where there is no bathroom for a long time, like in the rainforest exhibit, we've been able to get him to go in the bathroom vs in the pull-up (I'm not chancing cloth when we're out in public and I'm doing this gradually) every time. For 8-hour stretches.

Yesterday in the car ride I discovered he was completely sopping wet at one stop, from his chest down to his lap, shorts and car seat included. I was bewildered, and could not figure out how he could wet himself THAT much, including up that high. But after changing him and observing him some more, I realized he was drooling so profusely that he was making a river on his lap. He has 2 molars just recently in and 2 more coming in, and terrible breath. I hope that is all it is.

ETA: I absolutely loathe potty training. I find it completely exhausting. I hate having to stop and think about bathrooms all the time, and it's so difficult for the other kids when I'm by myself and have to pull everyone away from what they're doing to cram everyone into the bathroom (depending on where we are) for the frequent potty stops.

[Cosmosmom]

L I felt the same way with my puppy....OMG it felt like I was running her to the potty about every 15-30 minutes. And cleaning the floor multiple times a day with the natures miracle. And cleaning out her kennel/washing her blanket twice a day as I didn't always wake up fast enough at night. Potty training is definitely not fun.

Eh I am just probably more uptight than most of you all. Though of course things would be age appropiate. I was probably like 7 or 8 when I cut my one barbie's hair....and this was AFTER my mom told me not to do that. I was supposed to ask if I ever wanted to do that. So that is probably partially why I got into trouble.
I am ok with taking things apart....with permission. I would be willing to find an old laptop to do that too....but if kid did that to my good one, there would be trouble and some grounding going on.
I think that you can be creative without wrecking something (and to me coloring with markers on a doll is wrecking it). Want to change the makeup on the doll, I will find something that is washable. Want to color on stuff with markers, I will provide all sorts of craft stuff. My sister and I had all sorts of pretend stories when we were little and found lots of ways to be creative.

Probably not a shocker but I wasn't allowed to rip books or color in ones that weren't coloring books. I was told books are your friends. It is soooo hard for me when we are weeding the collection to throw books/journals away.

I think that tomorrow we are probably going to get fingerprinted. Than a doc appt to get our health forms signed that we are still healthy....both those are for the adoption agency. Than we will get to pick up the new van tomorrow. Excited about that but sad to say goodbye to my car as we both still like him, we just need more space for travel with the dogs and at some point baby.

[Suja]

L, maybe he's not ready yet? Given how vocal he is, I'm surprised he's not telling you when he has the urge. Does he tell you (accurately) if you ask him?

[3andMe]

As of two months ago, he was taking off his diapers by himself and going to the potty on his own. I did not jump into potty training then because I was not ready for it, with all the travelling and activities we were going to be doing this summer.

[AmeriBrit]

I've had to do a lot reading, ladies. You have been chatty lately. I've been busy with house stuff and last night, we treated ourselves to a childless night away out in Manchester. It was refreshing to do some clothes shopping and then eating out without the kids whining about everything, but I sure did miss my little guys. This morning, we got up at 8 and went and swam some laps in the pool, got in the jacuzzi and then enjoyed a buffet breakfast before coming home. Any how-back to reality now! DH is off work this week, so I'll probably not be on the internet as much....we'll be doing days out with the kids and also plan to do some decorating around the house....I'll still keep up with you ladies and I think of all y'all often.

I was never a barbie or even a doll fan. My sister did like barbies a little bit and she used to play with them with my cousins. They'd hate if I gate-crashed their barbie-playing sessions because I'd make my barbie a psycho who tried to steal their boyfriends, etc. (I was like 14 and they were 11....lol). When we got dolls, we'd cut their hair, draw on them and most of the time, we'd rip their heads off to use them for baseballs or a football. There were a lot of headless doll bodies around our house before our parents stopped buying them for us. LOL. My sister and I were tom boys who spent most of our time playing sports outside or exploring the woods. That movie Stand by Me is my all-time favorite film because it reminds me of my childhood. We did some crazy stuff back then; my parents were hardly ever around to supervise because they worked so much. My mom and dad think we had a pretty decent childhood because we got to eat every day and had a roof over our head. Both of them grew up dirt poor and went hungry a lot. My dad didn't live in a house until he was 11 because his family roamed around like gypsies for a good while. My mom lived in a shack with 10 brothers and sisters. I joke with her about her size (she is 5' tall and 90 pounds) and tell her that she's so small because she never got to the table quickly enough).

[missychrissy]

I think young me would have loved hanging out with young you Ash. At home, I played mostly with my Fisher Price little people and dolls, but we were frequently at my cousin's and that's where all my best memories occurred. We had a tire swing and their house was in a very, very small town (to this day, there isn't even 1 blinking light at any of the 4 intersections) so we were riding our bikes to the school playground (there is no park there) by ourselves at a very young age. Probably 6, definitely by 7. We explored the woods, swung on vines, skipped stones in a creek that ran through the woods maybe 300 yards behind their house. I don't remember ever being bored. We were always outside doing something.

[Bridget]

I don't remember ever being bored either. I used to pray to god to make the days last forever. Especially the last day of the weekend

[demigraf]

We suffered from boredom much of the time - a consequence of having overprotective, fearful, immigrant parents. If we ever complained about being bored, they made us practice the piano. Books were a good escape, but I think the fact that we were cooped in as kids has made me not much of a homebody today. I always want to get out of the house, get outside, get out of town, and if possible, get out of the country. I am probably oversensitive to Bodhi's boredom level as another result of my own upbringing.

[missychrissy]

I don't remember ever being bored either. I used to pray to god to make the days last forever. Especially the last day of the weekend

Hell, I still do that.

We suffered from boredom much of the time - a consequence of having overprotective, fearful, immigrant parents. If we ever complained about being bored, they made us practice the piano. Books were a good escape, but I think the fact that we were cooped in as kids has made me not much of a homebody today. I always want to get out of the house, get outside, get out of town, and if possible, get out of the country. I am probably oversensitive to Bodhi's boredom level as another result of my own upbringing.

I don't remember my girls ever complaining they were bored, but to hear them tell it they didn't do anything but sit and watch dust accumulate throughout their whole childhood! What's funny is we actually rammed the roads a lot back then. Gas was .89/gallon and it cost 8-10 bucks to fill up. We were broke, but we could afford gas. We'd take long joyrides, stop at random parks, and get 1-2 large subs from a local deli in an unfamiliar town. Such a rough life. Conner hasn't had that. He never says he's bored. I guess I'll find out in 10 years what he really thinks.

[Suja]

I wasn't a particularly sporty kid (part of that is because I'm an incredibly poor sport and do not play well with others), but I'm willing to bet that even I probably spent at least 10 times as much time outside as your average American kid. Practically every vacation and holidays were spent outside. We came home to eat and sleep, that was pretty much it. We used to climb on other people's trees and steal their gooseberries and tamarind, and play tag vertically (on trees). Heck, we even used to read sitting on trees.

I don't remember us having any toys. Never bored, never ran out of things to do. It was always the case that the vacations ended before our plans did.

[Gwenn]

You guys are bringing back all kinds of memories of make-believe games my sister & I would play as kids. I remember getting a microcassette recorder one Xmas ("you'll want to remember all those story ideas that come into your head", said Mom). Anyway, my sister and I staged these mock presidential elections between my monkeys and recorded "interviews" with them. One was in cowboy get-up, the other in tennis gear. The latter spoke like Ricky Ricardo and hailed from the Republic of Cocarita before immigrating to our fictitious country. The cowboy talked like a cross between Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig. Even back then, it was a race between the populist of color and the elitist good 'ol boy who fought dirty to win the election. At one point, the cowboy confided to his interviewer that he planned to "kill that little Cocarita boy " if he won the election. What was even more fun was the fact that my sister didn't catch that part until we later played it all back. She was shocked and horrified, much to my delight. Hee!

Gwenn, I'll bet my hubby would love to read your dad's article. He was on a team that designed audiophile speakers. Share it?

I had a tape recorder and my friend and I used to make fake newscasts. I remember I used to love saying, "Good evening, my name is [fake character]. The world blew up today..." in a totally deadpan voice. For some reason, it was the funniest thing in the world to me. My friend actually found one of our old tapes when we were college age and we had such a laugh listening to it. You would have fit right in with us - we could have reported on your campaign!

I'll have to ask my dad for the reference. I heard about it, but haven't seen it and don't know where he published. He's in Europe right now, but when he gets back I'll ask him about it. The one thing I do know, is that ARs are his absolute favorite speaker to the point where he can't stand anything else. To the point of obsession.

She also pulled out some 25-30year old strawberry shortcake stuff recently and it still smelled!

OMG! That stuff never dies!

[missychrissy]

I remember playing Ghost in the Graveyard (kinda like tag, but at night) till the wee hours of the morning. Heck, we were still playing that when I was in my late teens. I'd have my aunt watch Bobbie and we'd utilize the whole neighborhood. I wanna do that again! We'd also go tubing (ride down a creek on a tractor trailer inner tube). I've been trying to get my cousin to do that one again now with me. I'd take the girls down a creek, but not the river. 2 men have drowned in the last week in the river. I don't know if I'd even dare float down it...not without a life jacket, that's for sure.

Rich accidentally backed into someone yesterday. He didn't tell me about it and i found out he'd been in a fender bender when the insurance called to take his statement. I wasn't happy and immediately thought that he didn't tell me about it 'cause he'd been drinking or something. It wasn't that though (thankfully!). It was just a simple fender bender but the car he hit is an old rust-bucket with dents all over it. He said he couldn't tell for sure if he dented it at all, but he definitely scraped it. His bumper had a mark that he was able to wax off. Anyway, the people that he hit immediately acted like it was a federal case and by the way they behaved when they called 911 (I cannot believe they called 911, but they did!) the dispatcher actually thought Rich hit a PERSON so they sent all cars in the area as well as the ambulance and EMTs. I'm sure they're going to try and claim as much damage as possible was caused by his truck. They're the kind that are big, wear old, stained, torn clothing and do nothing but sit on their porch all day collecting benefits. They happened to be sitting on their porch and saw Rich scrub their car with his truck and came flying down the steps screaming and yelling about it. Talk about ridiculous! His truck is nice. I'm sure they think he has $ and they're going to get some, by god!

My car is nice too but when someone scrubbed it and left a mark I just looked at it and said not to worry about it. Most of it buffed out and I didn't see it as an issue. Stuff happens.

[Gwenn]

We used to play Ghost in the Graveyard in our actual church graveyard ... so much fun. We went to this old church that was build just after the American Revolution (burned down during the war and then rebuilt) and it had an old graveyard next door. I had so much fun playing there. Here we don't have old graveyards like that, just the city graveyard.

Good thing Rich wasn't drunk if they called 911.

Myles, I found that article of my dad's after a very interesting Google search. Found a bunch of family legend stuff, too! I would PM you the link but it's a PDF and I don't know how to link to a PDF. Someone help me?

[Ky'sMom]

I also was never bored in early childhood, not until I was around 10 when my mom got with my step dad and he wouldn't let us go play outside for some reason.

Suja, your description of playing outside all day is basically what my brother and I did from age 3 and up. My mom would let me stay outside from around 8 or 9 am until 9pm most days. Nine pm was bath/bed time for us. Our neighbors across the street had a cherry tree in their backyard so we spent most of the summer in that tree eating cherries and we also read books in there and tried to make a tree house. I am always astonished by the things my mom let us do when I was younger. I remember being 4 and finding a quarter and taking a journey to the corner store, which wasn't far away but was across a really busy street. Even though I grew up in a smaller city, Toledo has over 200K people in it and is one of the larger cities in Ohio so it was an urban environment and I had a lot of kids playing outside with me. I remember arguing with the storekeeper who was always trying to test my smarts in my mind and trying to steal my money lol! My friends, who were older would ask me to come with them because he always tried to short them nickels and dimes, which were good candy money back then. I remember buying a ten cent pepsi (8 oz) a little debbie snack cake for 10 cent and 5 tootsie rolls for my quarter and him telling me that I owed him 30 cents and me adding up my 25 cent junk food bananza and all the adults cracking up in the store and telling the store keeper (Mr. Petros) to stop trying to cheat me because he wasn't going to get over. I threatened to get my dad who had a reputation for being "crazy" (dad had a horrible temper back then) and Mr. Petros let me go with my stuff. I also remember riding bikes down alleys and sidewalks of that busy street without a helmet and going to McDonalds for breaks in the summer for ice cream (a cone was a quarter) and water and them trying to tell me that I had to pay 10 cents for a cup of water and me arguing I could go to Petros and get a pop for a dime and how they were trying to cheat me.

I can't imagine letting Elle ride around like I did and just be loose and free like that but I can imagine her arguing with people over money lol! She also is pretty good at counting money already and would probably be better if I let her spend it herself instead of just keep change in her heart bank (piggy bank shaped likea heart).

Chrissy, Rich's accident people sound worse than mine. I hope he took pictures of their car and video of them acting nuts. I did when I got in my accident with the ghetto people.

Erin

[demigraf]

Suja, I like the sounds of your childhood. I'm pretty jealous of anyone who got to spend a lot of their childhood free-range. My DH's life sounded idyllic as a kid - with 7 siblings and a neighborhood full of huge families and a giant woods to play in. We had a mountain in our backyard, but our property was surrounded by a fence. I pretty much only got to climb to the fence line and that was it.

Sure, Gwenn. Since the PDF is online, you can link to it as though it were a web page. Open the PDF in your browser window, and in the address field, where you'd normally see the URL - something like "http://americanpregnancy.org" - copy what's there and paste it here like it's any other web address. It'll look like this:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040ez.pdf

Even if it doesn't automatically change the address to a clickable hyperlink, anyone could copy and paste it into her own browser to view it. If you do want to manually make it a hyperlink, 1) paste the PDF address as text, 2) select it, 3) click the icon that looks like a globe with a chain in front of it, 4) paste the address into the pop up box and click OK.

ETA: This will work in a PM as well as on an open post in the forum.
Don't go to any trouble on my account, though, Gwenn. It does sound like you found some even more interesting things you want to read over.

I went to my physical therapist yesterday for the first time about my old torn shoulder injury. Not to bore you with details, but I am becoming self conscious about my posture. The PT zeroed in on the fact that both my shoulders roll forward (weak traps and rhomboid), and that could be contributing to the problems I'm having with the old rotator cuff injury. But it didn't stop there, I have a "sway back", or what one yoga teacher calls a "duck butt", so if you were to look at my side profile from the right, I'd be have a shape reminiscent of the letter S. He physically adjusted me to where I was standing up straight - shoulders back and down, tailbone tucked in - and it hurt! (I can't imagine what my spine would be like if I didn't do yoga 3x/week - probably much much worse.) I tend to just have tight chest muscles, and weak back/core muscles, I guess. So he gave me a bunch of exercises to strengthen the muscles that will help me correct my posture. As a side project, I'm trying to figure out if there's something I can do about overall muscle tightness throughout my body. It's weird, because in general, I'm pretty bendy and flexible, but it still seems like I'm ALWAYS sore. Maybe it's targeting specific muscles to strengthen. Maybe I need acupuncture. Maybe it's eliminating bad habits. Maybe it's something I can work with through my diet (e.g. there are spices/plants that help loosen muscles, like turmeric and burdock root). Anyway, that's my next project. That was definitely an overshare, but that's what I'm working on now.

It segues into a funny story anyway. So here I am, all self conscious of my posture, and in yoga class, there's a new male teacher - young, adorable. We get to the cobra pose. Very basic. You're not supposed to use your arm strength to push up into it; it's all supposed to be in the back.

Well, somehow - and I don't know if I would ever be able to duplicate this again - when we first lay down to get into position, I manage to lie on top of my boobs in such a way that I pinned them down. Any attempt to push up into cobra without the assistance of my arms ended up pushing them down toward my belly button, and I couldn't move forward in order to move up. I was stuck. So I ended up not achieving much lift off at all. The teacher saw me struggling to get up, and he said, "This is a good one for you to practice, Mylah. You can practice this every day, even at home."

A part of me felt embarrassed (he was right; some of the muscles involved are same ones I need to work on to correct my posture). Another part of me wanted to shout out, "No! You don't understand! It's not that I'm weak and inflexible, it's just that my boobs have turned into a Chinese trap somehow and the more I push off of them, the more I can't move!". But I didn't. I nodded and smiled weakly at him from my perch an inch off the ground. And then we did the second set of it, and I made sure I was high off my boobs that time.

More yoga stories... There was this one time a woman was in class - not my studio up here, but down in So. California - and it was really crowded. And she just had the worst gas. We go into a deep forward bend - "pfffffffftttt". Triangle pose - "fweeeee". People were starting to look at her, trying not to laugh, and she wasn't reacting at all. She was deep into meditation in her practice. Eagle pose - "brrrrrrrrrrttttt" Standing bow pulling pose - "toooooooottt". People were falling out of their balancing poses because she was making so much noise. It got to the point where the teacher had to walk over to her and whisper to her to go to the bathroom and relieve herself. The teacher was from one of the Carolinas and had a slight twang. "Wendy, I'm sorry, hun, but I'm gonna have to ask you to use the tol-let because you're distracting the others in class". Wendy nodded and silently slipped out of the room. A husband turned to his wife and said, "That's funny. How did her parents know to name her Windy?"

[missychrissy]

I would have died at the first toot, left immediately & never returned.

[AmeriBrit]

LOL...I love the yoga stories, Myles...tooting, especially! I have never been to one for the fear of letting one go in front of everyone; we were doing some exercises the other day at boot camp (DH now goes with me and we were both telling each other when we were holding one back and then when one had slipped out.) TMI, I know.