Red Hat Society off Burnett Road

Today when I went to get my hair trimmed at Baldwin Beauty School around 9:30am, I was a little startled when I went to take my seat in the waiting area. All I could see were two rows of white and grey headed ladies waiting to firm up their wispy permanents or get their weekly wash-and-style. It kind of stressed me out for a minute as I sat down to bobbing heads chattering about coconut cream pie and dropping lines like "just leave that government alone and they'll fix it" in my periphery. After a minute though I realized that this was the group I fit into this year. That is, the at home during the day group with no kids to keep me from getting things done; and most importantly, I am in that women's league too cheap to pay more than $5 for a haircut. Yep. I suppose I belong to this old lady club for the time being.

Heck. I already drink Yogi Herbal Tea.

I am going on an all yoga fitness 10 day diet starting next Tuesday. There's this yoga studio close to my apartment that gives a promo offer of 10 days of yoga for $10. If any of you out there have every tried to take yoga classes at a studio, you can vouch that this is a pretty sweet offer. I am not entirely sure why I think this is going to be something I enjoy or can even do as I have only done yoga maybe four times in the last five or six years. And the times that I did go I had a feeling that was pretty comparable to the one or two awkward middle school dances I attended with my BFFs as a tween. Like yoga, the room was uncomfortably hot and humid with sweaty bodies. I was so terrible at doing what I was supposed to be doing that I was conspicuous. People told me no one was looking at me but since I was looking at everyone else I knew that was a lie. And I noticed that even the people that were "good" at this ridiculous activity looked very stupid, maybe even more so than I did.

So why is it that I am so excited about taking up this offer? It started when I got talking to our Relief Society yoga class instructor.* She is a very convincing lady about her yoga ways and I couldn't help but get pretty...well convinced. Yep. That's all it took really. I wish I could say I had more reasons why I have come to the irreconcilable conclusion that I must devote more of my mind, body and spirit to the yoga way; but that was all there was to it. What can I say? She was very convincing.

Now I have checked out books, read the wikipedia entry on the different forms of yoga, started watching DVDs and of course signed up for this class. I feel like this new "lifestyle" in which I am about to engage adds a pretty cool mystique to my very extroverted self. I can especially feel this mystique when I carry around my book Yoga: A Return to Wholeness. I feel downright esoteric actually. And I like that.

But still, I can't help but think it is going to be a really great thing to do this. Ten days of Yoga might even change my life. Well, at least a little. Also, it's nice to try something new. Get involved in a new community of people. Yoga followers come in throngs here in Austin. Maybe it's the hippy "keeping it weird" factor but I like to think it is something a little bit bigger than that. Can I qualify the word transcendental with a "kind of"? Either way, wish me luck. I will be going on a running and swimming fast for the next 2 weeks. I just thought I would let you know about all of this too, just in case you are wondering why I am wearing stretchy gaucho pants next month.


*Yes we have a RS yoga class that I inadvertantly started when I started the "Fitness" mini-enrichment group for walking and running. Which ironically, the walking and running group has been sturggling along since May and the yoga group has been immensely popular. Another reason this whole yoga thing seems sort of cosmic for me to be doing.

Mind your scripture reading...

I was just reading from the Bible Dictionary a few minutes ago about the definition of the word "Zion". There was a passage that reads: "Enoch built a city that was called Zion". And for a moment my mind misread the passage as: "Enoch built his city on Rock and Roll". I was quick to correct myself and tried to better focus my reading. Still, I can't help but think that the Enoch's story might be been even cooler than it already is had built his city Zion on Rock and Roll.