Mirror Image

I’ve been doing a lot of pre-natal yoga while I’ve been pregnant. It has been incredibly helpful in loosening up the very tight muscles that come with pregnancy. It has also helped temporarily relieve my back pain from last year that made a happy reappearance through these pregnancy months. 

The best part of yoga is that it’s relaxing. I have always found it to be calming but never more so than now. Just holding positions and letting muscles stretch is soooooo nice. 

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling very energized during each class. Then I noticed something that wasn’t so apparent before. My belly!  It wasn’t as if it didn’t exist prior to my discovery; it just didn’t look so big. It kept haunting me during this particular class. I felt like this crazy rubbery creature that had three enormous bubbles on its body – my head, my belly and my butt. 

I  seriously wondered why this was bugging me so much and I realized that it had to do with the how the substitute teacher set up the class. Our regular instructor never made us face the mirrors. She must have somehow known that would be bothersome to very emotional women. She conducted class  so that we always faced the bare walls. However in this class, we were constantly looking at the mirrors. 

I’m not one who walks around in general peering at myself in any reflection. I don’t believe in doing that for a number of reasons:

1)      My hair usually looks a mess and I don’t like to be reminded of it. Ignorance is bliss for a reason.

2)      I usually look tired and don’t like to be reminded of it. Again bliss in ignorance.

3)      I think it’s vain to always look at oneself in a reflection. I like to accept myself for who I am and what I look like at the moment – an occasional glance is fine but I see many people fawning over themselves for minutes in a reflection. I think that behavior is unhealthy.

It was definitely disconcerting because I usually don’t feel bad about the way I look. Most people would probably say that I look like I never care. Generally speaking, I am very low maintenance.   It was the first time in recent memory where it really dug a hole in my brain. After it dawned on me that I wasn’t an enormous globe, I felt better.  I decided to continue to keep the mirror reflections to a minimum so that I wouldn’t judge myself or have a baby body moment. Now if I walk passed a mirror or reflection, I don’t feel as bad because I know this is just temporary.

Why Husbands Do What They Do

The title of this blog will probably give tons of married women hope but I wouldn’t invest too much into it. I am going to write about a couple incidents that have happened to my husband in my presence that now explain why he never listens to me. 

On our first trip to Paris together, my husband was meeting up with his best friend who lived there at the time. We also met said best friend’s girlfriend for the first time. The moment after we arrived we had lunch with both of them at a restaurant on the Champs Elysees. It was delicious and we overdid it. We took to walking the city afterwards so that we could digest our enormous meal and so that my husband could become acquainted with the sites as well. We made our way from the Champs Elysees all the way to the Latin Quarter. My husband spent most of the time talking and catching up with his best friend while I got to know the girlfriend. 

As we crossed over into the Latin Quarter from in front of Notre Dame, I called out to my husband to ask him a question. In trying to pay attention to me, he didn’t notice an enormous pile of doggie doo in the street so he stepped in it. This made me laugh for quite some time because he was very frustrated by this situation. The girlfriend mentioned that this was normal in Paris and was considered good luck. My husband didn’t really want to hear this. I kept laughing at the whole thing because I had been through this myself. I also had never seen my husband so upset in all the time we were married. But his upset behavior was more comical than scary. 

On another occasion my husband and his friend were walking in front of me while I was taking in the sites and enjoying myself. I called out to him again for some reason that I can’t remember now. He just narrowly missed stepping in another pile of puppy poo and again, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’m not about shadenfreude. It was more my husband’s facial expressions that made me crack up. They were so childlike in frustration and yet totally ridiculous that I couldn’t control my laughter.  My husband said at that time, “see what happens when I listen to you?” It should have been a warning but I never thought about it as anything other than a funny situation. 

Back in NYC, we had another encounter with canine excrement; this time he didn’t miss. Now that I think back on it, this explains a lot of why he never listens to me. If the consequence of listening to me is his shoes get soiled, then I know what he’d rather avoid. It took me a while to learn this important lesson but now I know. 

So married women out there, think really deeply on some kind of situations that created patterns when you tried to talk to your husband or get his attention. You may find yourself in the same situation as I am in now – a husband that refuses to listen to me because he’s afraid of getting smelly shoes.

Role Models

Growing up people always asked me who my role model was. At an early age I was obsessed with gymnastics so Mary Lou Retton was my idol. I wanted to be just like her with the short hair and the big smile bouncing all over the gym. 

As I grew older and literature and writing became my passion, I began to find inspiration from other writers. I really aspired to be like Joyce Carol Oates but there was no way I could keep up with her prolific writing so that kind of fell to the wayside. I still enjoy her writing but I don’t idolize it as much as I used to. I respect her imagination and the ability that she has to put out about 4 books  a year. But I know I can’t do that so I don’t bother. 

I also really liked Batgirl and Sabrina from Charlie’s Angels. They were smart girls who were pretty and led mysterious lives. So I looked up to them but as I got into my gymnastics phase, they went away like a passing fad. 

Now that I am older, I can’t say I have a role model. I find it very hard to admire people in the same way that I did as a kid. I don’t look up to them and want to be them as much as respect where they are and how they got there. 

Recently though I’ve begun to wonder what the point of having a role model is. With the news of Lance Armstrong’s decision to not pursue the doping charges, I kept thinking ‘what is the point of even admiring a person?’ Yes, we are all human and we make mistakes but people really thought the world of him. I even thought he was incredibly courageous in battling cancer and coming back to the cycling world and making such a big statement. I wasn’t as upset about the recent news but I know other people who were very influenced by him. With his doping charges along with some of the other winners of the Tour de France, I began to wonder what the point of the sport is anymore. 21 days of riding intensely insane routes only to be found taking some kind of endurance enhancing drug? What’s the point? 

I also thought about so many track and field stars who fly across the finish line only to be found taking steroids. How disappointing is that to some child who wants to do the same thing? They see their god striped of their medals and banned from the sport – what is the motivation to keep trying? I know you have to look within yourself for the inspiration and the drive but when everyone around you just wants to get a cut of the paycheck, how do you keep your integrity? 

It’s sad to me that the types of people I looked up to as a kid no longer mean anything to me. They’ve lost their value and meaning. And it’s sad that this younger generation really has no one to give them that energy to strive to be the greatest. No one but their inherent beings, which isn’t too bad when you think about it. It should always be about you making your own goals and attaining them. It’s just sad that role models don’t seem to exist anymore and that kids of today probably won’t look back as fondly on any particular person as I did when I was a kid. I guess it’s probably better since mine have all been forgotten and they can look towards something better to become the greatest.  

The Recommendation

I took a day off a few weeks ago to get some baby errands done. During my random tasks, I got a text message from my boss asking if I knew a certain someone because they had applied for a job on my team. This was quite a horrible flash from the past. My boss asked if I had any comments about the person.

As much as I wanted to be kind and think about karma, I couldn’t lie. I responded saying “I have nothing nice to say about” that particular person. So my boss said, we would talk when I was back in the office. I felt conflicted about being honest because I don’t want to keep anyone from getting a job. But I couldn’t lie and give this person a good recommendation when they didn’t do a single thing to deserve it. And in lying, if this person were hired, I’d be creating very real problems for my team.

Finally the moment of truth came and I spoke with my boss. I told her the background of how I knew this person and the reasons why I couldn’t give my blessing to his being hired. She was very open-minded and accepted all I had to say. I told her that I felt bad but I knew that adding him to the team would be detrimental as we would all have to pick up his slack (provided he hadn’t changed in the least since I worked with him). My feeling was that he definitely didn’t change much because I couldn’t understand why he would even mention that we worked together. I thought it was pretty clear how much I disliked him and thought he was a useless member of my former team. Goes to show you that some people can’t read other people at all.

When I mentioned all of this to a former co-worker and friend, he gave me kudos for being honest. He said it was the right thing to do because it was the truth. This guy in question  really made my life miserable for almost a year because he had no initiative, couldn’t figure anything out on his own or  even with many job aides and spoke badly about people behind their backs. I found that I had to work extra hours to fix his mistakes at probably half the salary. It made me very angry then and even thinking about it now, I seethe. 

On top of that, my boss had mentioned that someone we work with had worked with this person. And I reminded her of our feelings for  this work colleague and she said ‘You know, you are right!’ I am pretty sure this person is no longer in the running for the position. But it did put a damper on my spirits for a day or two to think that this person could be rearing his head back into my life.

Technology Glitches

Yesterday a good friend of mine sent me a comic about the pros and cons of the internet. It was pretty funny showing the double edged sword of almost all things on the internet, especially Facebook. As much as I love my computer, my blog, my ebook reader, email and my ipod, I find so much of the internet incredibly annoying. 

I can go on long tirades about Facebook and what a waste of time it is. I believe a lot of people are absolutely addicted to that site and they don’t see the harm it does. I very rarely visit the site and have become increasingly wary of the information I have out there. I don’t trust how quickly information about you can be gathered and used for any kind of means a person wants. I also get perturbed by the ridiculous status messages people put up at times. I don’t care if you go to the bathroom so why are you posting it up there for people to see? I just think people who are on there constantly posting don’t have much else to do.  Go take a walk around the block, go read a book, connect with people on a more personal level!

Even at work, I get frustrated with technology and I work with technology all day long. I’m tired of getting instant messaged when I am in the middle of important work. I don’t need more instant messages telling me what to do when I already know what I need to do. I also don’t like when people see that I am busy and yet they still send me stuff. My team wants us to be on instant messenger for ease of use and for easy access but it’s not easy in any way. I just get more work when I am on it and I’m getting plenty of work just by reading my emails and catering to my to-do list. 

I think what I find most disturbing about all these technology reminders and such is that they make people even more attention deficient. No one can focus on any one thing for longer than a few moments until some new piece of information comes up and replaces the prior thought.  I see it getting worse every day. The people who can’t put their smart phones down for a moment to have a conversation. Those who feel they need to have their phones as another organ to run their bodies. Sometimes it’s nice to just unplug and not have all these distractions – spend some time smelling the roses without checking if you got a text message from someone.  I wish there were some way everyone could just take a break from technology and appreciate the smaller things in life again.

The Kiddie Pool

I think this has been one of the worst summers on record. It may not necessarily have been the hottest summer but it has been very humid here in New York. It has made me a tad bit miserable. Being pregnant doesn’t make it any easier either. I find myself walking a few blocks and being so tired that I am out of commission the rest of the day. It might seem like a dream to some. But to me, it makes me feel useless. 

Usually I take comfort from the heat and humidity by going to Long Island and soaking in the pool. However, this year we decided not to fill it up for various reasons. Those reasons fail me now. It was not a good decision. However we made up for it by buying an inflatable kiddie pool. It is very small but I can put a chair in and sit submerged up to my tummy. I’ve used it a number of times already to just cool off.  I have enjoyed reading many books while sitting in the kiddie pool. It’s almost as good as the regular pool except that I can’t go for a swim.

What I also like about this kiddie pool is that it’s in the shade. It sits opposite one of my dogs’ secret hideaway. So while I sit in the pool, I can see her digging or napping or watching the birds from beneath her shrub. It is quite cute. Occasionally when I am not looking, she exits her secret lair and comes to visit me.  I always ask her where she’s come from because she’s surprised me. She doesn’t answer, of course, because it’s a secret. 

On one occasion I decided to talk to the baby from the pool. I read a little bit to her and then I told her about her two canine sisters. I explained what they looked like and what they usually do. Anyone looking at me from the outside would have thought I was insane but it seemed like just as good a time as any to let her in on the happenings and personalities of her future life. 

If it weren’t for this little pool, I am pretty sure I would have gone stir crazy by now. It has been a particularly grueling summer so I am happy to find a little relief in a PVC pond.

The Chase

My dogs bring me lots of happiness and cuddles. They cheer me up when they sense I am sad and like to be silly to make me laugh. They are very sweet. Occasionally though they can be troublemakers though.

This difficulty comes in giving them medicine. One of my dogs is fine with taking her pills to get better but the other one always seems 3 steps ahead of me. I used to be able to hide her medication in peanut butter until she caught on that the peanut butter was not crunchy style and whatever was in there didn’t taste too good. Hiding the pill in her food didn’t work because I’d ultimately find the remains of pills at the bottom of her dish.

Lately I’ve been sticking the medicine in “Laughing Cow” cheeses. This works on most days but sometimes it becomes a struggle. She decides she won’t take the cheese and I find myself chasing her around the apartment. From the kitchen through the living room and then to the bedroom and back through the living room and kitchen again. I try to lower myself to her level so that she will see that I am trying to appease her. She sniffs the cheese, turns her face and off she runs. This goes on for quite some time. My husband usually has to intervene and stick the cheese in her mouth. She then takes it but I don’t like this method because then she associates the cheese with something not pleasurable which makes the cycle continue again and again. I am of the non-forcing train of thought. 

This morning after a little morning run around the apartment, I decided to hide the pill in nutella. It was bad of me but really how can anyone or any animal resist nutella? It worked wonders. I probably won’t use this method every day but heck I know it works. I’ll just add it to my arsenal of pill feeding methods.

Bodies in Motion

I have been obsessed with the Olympics. I watched way too much coverage and now that it’s over I am happy so I can return to some other viewing. Every four years I am mesmerized by the feats that these athletes do.

I love the gymnastics. Having done it myself many years ago, I have an appreciation for how difficult it all is, especially that stinking balance beam. And I enjoy watching them doing all those skills, so much so that I hold my breath when all the risky tricks are happening. 

I often find myself watching sports that I never would watch. That’s also a great part about the Olympics – the sheer volume of sports that don’t get much airplay when it’s not Olympics time. I was really interesting in the fencing matches this time around. I don’t understand it at all but I like to observe and see if I can figure out the rules. And water polo, how hard is that sport? I’d probably drown if I had to tread water for that long while trying to get a ball into a goal. 

Swimming and track are fun to watch and easy to understand but of the two, I find swimming far more interesting. I love being in the pool and having learned all those strokes, I know how hard they can be. The track and field stuff is very interesting but because I’m not much of a runner, I don’t appreciate them as much. The 100m races always go by so quickly that I’m afraid to blink and honestly, the triple jump is weird to me. The longer races are breath taking to me because I can’t imagine ever running that long. My body just couldn’t do it. I can barely run to the corner without wanting to vomit. So the will and endurance for the long races always mystifies me. 

I love to watch the team sports although I think the beach volleyball ladies could wear more clothing. I wish there were more opportunities to see volleyball or field hockey because they are fairly easy to understand and interesting to watch. But then again, I am a big fan of soccer, a sport which many people think is super boring.

It was a great couple of weeks and I can’t wait for the Winter Olympics in 2014 to see more exciting tricks and bodily contortions and team sports.