Not Your Average Yoga Class

Me today at work:

Pull out chair at desk . . . ow
Sit down . . . ow
Roll forward to reach my desk . . . double ow
Turn on computer . . . little ow
Realize I have a meeting in 10 minutes that is upstairs and in a different wing . . . oh shit ow

No I am not "hitting the gym" extra hard to get my bod summer/swimsuit/cruise ready (feel free to laugh). No, no. I am doing something more challenging. I am bringing my spirit and my physical wellness to a whole new level by melding the two together in the form of downward dog and other various animal poses (including fire hydrant (and no I am not lying, and it IS ok to laugh)).

I joined Sunstone Yoga recently, and for 60 or 90 minutes (depending on if you want the strenuous "stretching and alignment" to be super intense, but for a shorter period of time, or not as intense, but for a kick-ass period of time), you work your way through various yoga poses in a room heated to 98.6 F with 60% humidity. Basically, you are paying $$ to work out in conditions similar to the average early July-ish summer day in Texas. HOT!

Old yoga, for me, used to conjure up images of light stretching and maybe some humming for good measure. In the few classes that I took, I would easily get bored, thinking that I would rather be spending time doing cardio or that I should be doing something more productive like cleaning my house instead of pretending to enjoy touching my toes. However, with classes called Fire 90 and Metal, Sunstone Yoga isn't your average yoga class. It's intense. The poses are designed to stretch your body and crank up your heart rate, giving you an all over toning workout without having to deal with all the skin-fried boys grunting with satisfaction at themselves at the local gym. At the end of class, a powerful exhaustion comes over me as I lay in savasana, and I have to say that it is the most wonderful sense of completeness and serenity that I can comprehend. Words cannot describe it, but I imagine it is similar to a runner's high.

Yesterday I took a particularly difficult Wood class which has more pilates (read ab strengthening exercises) than the average yoga class. It was fantastic! I slept like a baby last night. And today I am feeling the pain pretty much everywhere (but in such a good way!)

I plan on getting everyone I know hooked on hot yoga becaue it is just that awesome!

I Helped Save Someone's Life on Friday

So last weekend, I decided to head south to H-town for my mom's best friend's 60th birthday party (don't judge . . . because those ladies can drink and make fools of themselves with the best of them). Anyway, since I was in town, I decided that a meet up with two of my girlfriends from college was in order. Originally, we were going to hit up a Greek or pizza place for dinner, then head to a bar around Rice Village, but due to me just being plain lazy and tired from driving from Dallas, I convinced them to come to me instead in the suburbs. And good thing I did!

Because . . .

Oh, first let me tell you that I got to Lupe Tortilla's Mexican restaurant early to put our names on the list and promptly headed to the bar for a pre-fajita margarita. There I encountered some veeerrry friendly bartenders who insisted on giving me the "tequila special" which consisted of extra shots of tequila in my 'rita followed by bottomless frozen margaritas-no salt. Once my friends arrived, I introduced them to my bartender favorito, who was an equal opportunity flirt, and he made sure we were all taken care of. Soon after, our table was ready and we spent the next couple of hours gossiping, eating, and drinking (c/o Julian the bartender). All of a sudden, we heard a commotion behind us . . . (and this is where the "because" leaves off).

We turned around, and saw a father attempting to give his son the Heimlich maneuver over and over. The son was obviously choking on something. Being the helpful person that I am, I immediately turned to my friend Laura, aka, Nurse Margarita, and said, "you're a nurse! (duh), go help him!" Then I turned to the mother and said "my friend's a nurse!" Anyway, Nurse Margarita shooed everyone away and began giving this kid, who was about a foot taller than she was, the Heimlich maneuver. Now, unlike TV, this wasn't just once or twice boom it's over, this was over and over, to the point where I was like, "wow, maybe I should call 911 because this kid is not going cough up whatever he is choking on." But, my Florence Nightingale made it happen and eventually a red and white dinner mint shot out of the boy's throat, and he was ok. I was very proud of my friend for doing all of the hard work and saving the kid's life, but I was also equally proud of myself for being too lazy to drive into Houston and for insisting that we stay local and go to THIS restaurant. I mean, what if I had decided on sushi instead? I guess we will never know.

Anyway, after that, Julian came over once more for a complementary refill and said that we had earned all of our extra drinks. Heck yeah we did!

I Am More Ghetto Than You Think

Last night, a few friends and I got together to celebrate my friend Mike's birthday (happy birthday Mike!). We basically sat around eating pizza and cake, drinking wine, and chatting about the most random things ever, including the evolution of ghetto speak. I don't know exactly how this subject was brought up. But I do know that I am more ghetto than you think.

Seriously! I was thinking about it, and I throw out more random rap song words in my every day vocabulary than you would imagine for a blonde, white, young professional. I mean, I call my mom "Shortie". She used to look at me blankly when I called her that, but now she understands that most likely, her name will be followed by "want a drank." As in, "Shortie want a drank?" And we usually follow this up with a couple of flutes of champagne topped with OJ. For money, I almost always prefer the use of "bone." As in, this cost me "ten bone." For something more expensive or for a bigger purchase, I may refer to money in "Gs" (even if "G" in my mind only stands for a couple of George Washingtons, or G Dubs, not actual "thousands of dollars" (which I most likely don't have). Example, "so, I went to Macy's this weekend and spent some Gs on a couple of new dresses." Oh and my day is totally made if I can incorporate the word "fitty" into it. As in "fitty cent" or "fitty bone." My car is sometimes referred to as my "ride." The gun I don't own, but would love to is always referred to as my 9, even if if it's not an actual Nine Mil.
The funny part is that these words are incorporated into my daily conversation as if they are normal conversation and are well understood by all the middle-age people that I work with. In fact, this lady at work told me that she was traveling to Detroit for work later than afternoon to meet with our customers. I immediately asked if she was packin'. She said, well yeah I'm packed. The plane leaves at 1pm! I was like, "No no. You misunderstand. Are you packin' as in bang bang, not 'I brought my nice work slacks'? Haven't you ever seen 8 Mile?" She laughed, but did I really need to explain myself for her to get it? A regular Gangster Joe would have got it the first time.

And speaking of Gangster Joe, the most legit way I know that I am more ghetto than you think is because for a while, a real life gangster/drug runner/man looking for love in the all the wrong places was text messaging me on a weekly basis. He called me Sydney and had met me in "da club." Houston I am guessing, just because he had an 832 number, as do I. He had a penchant for texting me details about his illegal activities and other ahem things. I tried to tell him I was not Sydney, but he didn't believe me and responded with a "Nawwwww." Poor sap didn't want to accept that his true luv from da club gave him a random person's phone number. Like my friend James said, he probably thought I was just playing hard to get. Eventually my lil' Thug realized I was playing impossible to get and quit texting me, but in my heart I know I'm legit and can pull off the discourse of street-seasoned ghetto heiress.

Yeah . . .Hi

So yeah . . . hi. Remember me? Nope. That's ok. I barely remembered I had this blog. And then when I did remember it, I held my head down in shame that I had not an interesting thing to write about. But, people kept bugging me to write about anything, so here I am.

Question for you: Do you know how long a foreign object can stay inside the stomach of a dog before finally coming out one end or the other?

Before answering, first, a little background. My dog Jackson, now almost two, has a taste for the finer fabrics in life . . . cotton, terry cloth, high-end wash rags, etc. So, last year, after $1K in tummy surgery, I banned cloth dog toys because Jackson enjoyed not only chewing these items up, but ingesting them as well. He has gotten by since then on tennis balls, ham bones, and large rubber toys.

Then, over Christmas this past year, he stayed at my aunt and uncle's house while I was shacked up at a hotel. Now, my aunt spoils her dog like a grandmother spoils a grandchild. Jackson received royal star treatment complete with sleep-overs on the bed (head on pillow I am sure), a bounty of toys, and a fellow cat and dog to run around with.

Things were going wonderfully when on Christmas Day, my cousin met me at the door to the house with, "So, ok, don't be mad, but (insert long pause) . . . Jackson ate one of Blue's craw fish toys (insert long pause) . . . but it wasn't really that big of a piece and I got most of it away from him. . . I really think he's going to be ok."

At that point visions of $ signs were dancing in my head, but I poured myself a mimosa and put on my mellow hat and said that I guess we'd just have to wait and see. Well, things actually turned out well because I had totally forgotten about it when a few weeks ago (yes, as in like 30 days after the incident), I woke up to find something gross on the rug by my front door. Like any good Mama, I got out the plastic gloves and unravelled the thing that had been hacked onto my carpet and discovered something red, cloth, and eerily crawfish-esque in appearance.

I looked at my dog in disbelief. Jackson had been harboring a hostage in his little tummy for a whole month. A WHOLE MONTH people!!! How does this happen? What was it doing all that time? And what the hell is that shit made of? I would have thought stomach acid or something would have broken it down, but no! I could have popped it in the wash and regifted for Xmas 2010! Of course, I'm not going to. . . but you get the picture.

A whole month! Gotta be some sort of record.