Category Archives: Testosterone-y

Slow Boat to Nowhere

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The kitchen renovation was slated to begin at 11:00 this morning.  Yesterday, I frantically cleaned out all the bottom cupboards and removed things from the countertops, pausing only to wonder when I bought Gorilla Munch, as its best before date was over a year ago.  All items are now in big Rubbermaid containers and/or on my table and/or under my coffee table.  I was ready to go!  And…now it’s 11:30.  I received information that they will start this afternoon, which is fine, that makes the lunch rush much less awkward, but I feel a little lost.

In order to assuage my lost little girl feelings, I decided it was time for a field trip to the garden centre.  Stocking up on plants prior to the long weekend seemed like a good idea, although I certainly will not actually plant them yet as it is supposed to snow.  Good times, YYC.  Good times.  I had full intentions of only buying a few plants for my containers, but ended up with a cart that looked like this:

I was powerless to stop myself.  Right now they are all on the deck, just waiting to be covered up before the snow flies. 

I just credit myself for not purchasing one of the many beautiful bird houses on display.  I almost put a very lovely one in my cart, but then I remembered: my dog likes to kill birds!  Wheee!  Perhaps a bird house would be ill-advised.

Speaking of my murderous dog, I almost had an experience that would strain neighbour relations in a significant way.  These neighbours, a few doors down, have very pampered indoor cats, one of whom likes to escape a lot.  I was working downstairs and came up to fill my coffee cup for the fourth time when I noticed the cat – whose name is, and I am not making this up, Beeps – in the backyard.  Barkley was also in the backyard.  I bolted for the door, just in time as Barkley took the opportunity to pounce.  He was mere centimetres away from the not-so-bright cat, when I called and collared him.  As I shuffled him into the house, I noticed my neighbour, standing on the other side of the fence, looking completely unfazed.  “That was a bit close,” I said to her.  “Oh, no.” she smiled at me vacantly.  “They were just playing.  They’re friends!” 

Now, I am the first to admit I don’t know much about cats.  However.  I am aware of the saying “fighting like cats and dogs” and also I am aware that the cat is much, much smaller than my dog and is declawed.  If I have to bring a cat corpse over to my neighbour’s house one day, I am not going to be happy on a number of levels.  My friend suggested that should there be a cat corpse in my backyard, perhaps it should be BURIED in my backyard, in order to keep neighbourly relations.  Not a bad plan, although it makes me feel a little bit like I would be starring in a less-interesting version of Rear Window.

Perhaps I should have purchased one of these at the garden centre:

Animatronic owls! 

I just got off the phone with the plumber.  I am going to be without a working sink until FRIDAY.  Friday of the long weekend.  Anxiety is looming.  It feels like SO MUCH could go wrong.

I will take my mind off this.  Cute kid anecdote: my kids were playing Star Wars before school this morning, and the characters they were portraying were Anakin (Mark) and Luke (Jake).  Now, Anakin DID chop off Luke’s hand, but it was by accident and it was to save him because he was trapped.  Luke forgave him.  Then they went to Planet Hoth to go snowboarding!  Good times in Utopian Star Wars.

I felt I had to share this cute anecdote as I have been talking so much about my dog lately that I was starting to feel that I was portraying myself as a crazy dog lady.  Which…I might be.  Dammit.  I should have bought that owl.

Warning: Shinpads Will Not Prevent Injury From Getting Run Over By A Wayward Car On The Soccer Field

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The past few days have been unseasonably warm, record-breaking warm, and yet yesterday at 5:30 pm – one hour before the first soccer practice of the season – the sky grew black and the rain started to pour.  It was, as always, a festive start to the season.  The practice was held in the rain, the kids warm with exercise, and the parents standing grim-faced under a sea of umbrellas. 

You can probably expect nine weeks of weather-and-soccer-related complaints from me.

I did, however, get a smile out of the warning label on Mark’s new shinpads – shinpads that fit an eight year old boy.  “Warning: no shinpad can prevent all foreseeable injury.  Severe injury may still occur.  Dangerous play should be discouraged.”  Thank you, shinpads!  I appreciate the warning.  I will remember that even though Mark is wearing a shinpad, should he get stampeded by elephants on the soccer field, or should the soccer players decide to scrimmage with chainsaws, the shinpads will not prevent injury.  This is U8 community soccer.  I think he’ll be okay.

I just typed that and had a terribly ominous feeling that I just jinxed the entire season and that something terrible is going to happen.  Given the league’s penchant for never ever calling the game, no matter what awful weather, that terrible thing is probably lightening striking the field or concussions due to softball sized hail.  The shinpad people are right; no shinpad will protect a kid from a lightening strike.  Oh god, is there metal in those shinpads?  Maybe the shinpads will actually be a conductor for a lightening strike.  Why is THAT risk not listed on the package?

Now I’m getting all worked up. 

Also getting me worked up is that, in addition to our basement being repainted, my husband has decided to entirely rearrange it, including new shelving units, turning the office into storage space and the main area into a living room/workout area/office.  This is, as my good friend always says, a good problem to have, a problem of abundance, and it is a much needed improvement in our space usage.  However.  Right now we are at the stage of moving items around and purging items that things are going to be much, much worse before they get better.  The basement is currently a disaster of epic proportions.  It will get better, though, and when it does, I will post pictures, I promise. 

I was reading an article in Brain, Child about a family with four girls and one boy, the boy being the fourth, and not, as some might conjecture, the fifth.  It was an interesting read with regards to gender preferences and something I found relevant ever since I had Jake.  For years, I was questioned about if I was going to try for a girl, something I always found repellant in every way.  I always feel sorry for those kids who were the “wrong” gender (I’ve heard people say, about their own children, “He/she was supposed to be a girl/boy”, which is insensitive and also stupid) and I also think that having two boys is very cool and fun and I’m completely satisfied with my life as is.  I hadn’t heard that line of questioning for a while, since my youngest is in Grade One and after a while, people just stop asking.  But then the other day a salesman, of all people, asked if I was going to “go for a girl” and I was completely startled.  Let me tell you something, if I woke up tomorrow, pregnant: a) I would not be happy, and b) I would have a lot of explaining to do.  It wouldn’t matter if it was a girl or a boy, this would not be a cheerful prospect.  So when the salesman said that, I and my shrivelly, uninterested ovaries just looked askance at him.

I’m not really sure about his salesmanship.  What a strange tactic.  It’s even stranger than my “Puss in Boots” shoe-shopping adventure and my “Wow, you’re way cooler than my mom” pursuit of non-mom jeans, which is saying a lot. 

Math Geeks and Pi Day and Blowing Things Up

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It’s Pi Day, the day that math geeks everywhere celebrate the ability to measure properties of a circle.  Hooray for Pi Day!  I don’t mean to boast, but I am awesome at math.  Oh sure, I would be a little rusty these days, but back in the day I rocked the calculus world.  I remember taking my very first calculus class and knowing at the onset that I loved it and knew what I wanted to do with my life – which at the time had nothing to do with the housewife lifestyle that I now live – and after that, I concentrated on math and economics and statistics.  I worked in a male-dominated field in a male-dominated company; I was the sole woman in my work group, and in the larger group, I had few female colleagues.  I mention this because stereotypically, women tend not to pursue careers in the fields of math and science, although this is changing, slowly. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about gender roles and stereotypes lately.  It’s been the buzz all over the internet, ever since Lego came out with their Friends line.  As an aside, had the Friends line been available when I was a child, I would have been all over it.  Which brings me to my next point: although I am a math geek and although I spent my career creating models and running mathematical simulations and loving every minute of it, I am also very feminine.  I wear makeup, scented lotion, and jewelry every day.  I spend a lot of time thinking about clothes and my hair.  When I was a child, my clothes were not all pink – because back then, you wore what your mother said you were going to wear, and there were much fewer choices in the clothing department – but I wished they were.  My room was painted pink, my bedspread was pink, and my favourite toy was a dollhouse.  So.  Does my being a girly-girl preclude my being a math geek?  Of course not.

My boys’ toy preferences and interests were apparent from a very young age.  I was distraught that my nine month old son would fuss in his stroller when I wanted to take him for long walks, until I realized that he would be happy in his stroller when I walked alongside busy streets.  Watching the buses, cars, and trucks was enough to make him happy.  At age two, he could name all the major car manufacturers; when we walked past a vehicle he could identify the make and model.  A friend suggested the “Mighty Machines” videos, and my two sons would watch them over and over again.

My youngest son’s favourite “Mighty Machine” video was one about a demolition site.  His favourite game was re-enacting a demolition site, and his chubby, angelic-looking toddler self would build up piles of blocks and toys merely to knock it all down.  When he and his brother were 2 and 3, they would play dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs were not friends.  They killed each other.  They fought each other.  They would unite against the bad dinosaurs and there would be much carnage.  And later, I would see the two boys snuggled together on the couch, my younger son’s head resting on my older son’s shoulder, and they would ask to watch “Mighty Machines”.

The boys are now six and a half and almost eight.  The games they play almost always involve a battle of some kind, something blowing up, death, and destruction.  In discussing boys and their games, my friend Beck articulated something that I had been struggling to put into words; she said that a lot of traditional male play has to do with safely channeling male aggression, and that it also has to do with little boys grappling with the ideas of justice and helping the innocent.  This struck exactly the right note with me.  I once was having a friendly discussion with another mom, and when I joked about my children and their fascination with blowing things up, she told me to watch out, lest I have a “Columbine situation” on my hands.  You can imagine how that made me feel.

I recently read an article in which the author complained about her daughter and her love for pink clothing and princess accessories.  She had encouraged her sons to wear pink and play with dolls, but she disliked her daughter taking part in the same type of play.  She was, she said, more comfortable when her children challenged gender norms than when they conformed to them.  This upset me in a way I could not articulate, and I still can’t, really.  I cannot imagine how I would have felt, as a child, if the only play available to me was of a “male” variety, or even of a gender neutral one. 

My children play games that would seem to be violent.  They don’t have dolls and they don’t wear pink.  They have friends who are girls.  After school, in the playground, they play games where they spy on the bad guys and then shoot them.  They love stuffed animals.  The bad guys get body parts chopped off in their games.  They turn off the TV when a sad story comes on the news.  This morning they saw an itinerant bottle-picker digging through the recycling in our alley, and when I explained what he was doing, Mark teared up and Jake looked worried, at the thought of someone with no job and no home going through other people’s trash for money.

My boys are compassionate, empathetic, and kind AND they are attracted to violent games and toys.  This does not make them violent.  They know the difference between a game and real life.  When we attempt to force children into a particular role, when we insist that boys have dolls and girls have trucks, we do them a disservice.  The world has room for everyone: tomboy girls and boys who play Barbies, as well as girly-girls and boys who stab each other with pretend light sabres, and everything in between.  Children are not what they play with or wear, just as my penchant for pretty things does not take away from my ability to solve an equation.

It’s the least relevant day…of the year.

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It’s Groundhog Day, or, as I like to call it, the least relevant day of the year if you live where I do. I don’t care what’s happening in the rest of the world – six more weeks of winter would be an early spring; we’ve been having unseasonably mild weather which makes me a bit superstitious that it is going to be ALL WINTRY BLASTS ALL THE TIME come April and May.

But Groundhog Day – you will be happy to know – is not just a weird, made-up holiday like you may have assumed. It actually has roots in pagan European weather lore! Good times. Despite my previous feelings that Groundhog Day is the stupidest day of the year, which was largely based on weather bitterness which I am trying to overcome by finding within me an invincible summer, I now say hooray for the groundhog! The lowly groundhog, elevated to the status of having its very own day. It’s not everyday we celebrate a rodent. We should all be happy for the groundhog.

Today is also the day Sid Vicious died, which seems a bit of a “who-gives-a-shit” piece of information, but since he overdosed on heroin to be with his beloved crazy-ass Nancy, maybe he was somehow confusing Groundhog Day with Valentine’s Day. I mean, you do that much smack in your lifetime you probably have a hard time keeping up with the calendar, you know?

Many, many of our special days have roots in pagan rituals, but not – as you likely already know – St. Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine was a Christian martyr, and I’m a little fuzzy on the details as to how his day became synonymous with love and chocolates and those cheap incarcerated teddy bears that proclaim they are prisoners of love. In any event, I am very much looking forward to Valentine’s Day this year because my kids are at the hilarious stage when talking about anything romance related has them shrieking with disgust.  It’s quite amusing.  Their teacher started a heart-themed calendar for the month of February and it’s the Worst! Calendar! Ever!  The boys have taken to bringing home Geronimo Stilton books from the library, and we have been reading them at bedtime.  There was a chapter where a female mouse VERY CREEPILY goes after Geronimo in a romantic way, and the boys were actually screaming with horror.  It was kind of horrible, come to think of it.  If there had been a gender reversal – a male character going after a female one in the same manner – there would have certainly been an uproar about it.

But alas!  This is the way of the world, it seems.  Being a mother of boys makes one acutely aware of gender bias.  Take, for example, what used to be Boy Scouts but is now just Scouts, versus Girl Guides.  It’s okay for girls to be with only girls, but not okay for boys to be with only boys, is the take-away message I am receiving.

We’ve all heard about the uproar over the new Lego line that is aimed at girls.  Personally, I looked at that line and immediately coveted all the sets for myself.  They are CUTE.  I also covet one of those Maplelea dolls – I really like Taryn.  But anyway, I think we’re all aware of the uproar about Lego, how Lego is supposed to be gender neutral, etc., etc.  I do not agree.  I think that Lego is generally marketed to boys.  Girls do play with Lego, of course, just as boys play with dolls, but predominantly those items are gender-marketed.  Is this a bad thing?  I don’t know.  We don’t live in a gender neutral world, people.  I am not saying this is right or wrong, I am saying that this is reality.

But I digress.  I am simply amused that my boys have reached the stage where little hearts cause them to make retching noises, whereas I have reached the stage where Valentine’s Day evokes feelings of the craving variety, as in chocolate and wine.  Come to think of it, perhaps chocolate and wine should be the new way to celebrate Groundhog Day!  Yes!  Let’s celebrate the groundhog with a nice glass of Shiraz and a pile of frozen York patties, shall we?

The fashion police are coming.

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“Hey Mom!” Jake said, out of nowhere, “I’m sexy and I know it!”

I never quite know how to respond to such inappropriate statements. It’s like when two-year-old Mark told my mother that he had no money, so he couldn’t get no ho’s. Or when Jake informed my mother, in one afternoon, that a) he wasn’t going to be a chump, he was going to get a prenup, and b) “penis” was another word for “dink”. My poor mother. One would think that the solution to this problem would be for me to stop listening to such inappropriate music. Alas.

 


Also, have you actually listened to “I’m Sexy and I Know It”? It is one of the funniest songs I have ever heard. I mean really: “I work out!  I work out!”  I have no idea if this was meant to be ironic or not, but I kind of love it.



Speaking of being sexy and knowing it, I received my O Magazine the other day – do NOT judge me, we all have our vices – and there is a whole section on how to wear the new trends in denim.  Now, I have recently adopted jeggings as part of my wardrobe, which I had previously decried as a plague upon society, so I will tread lightly here.  Still, the first trend described was – wait for it – coloured denim.  Adam Glassman, I am deeply disappointed in you.  COLOURED DENIM.  The question posed was “What do I wear with the new pastel jeans?”  Here’s my answer: not applicable, since seafoam jeans are a travesty.  Some of you might raise your eyebrows in a what does she know, she lives in black and throws in charcoal for colour, but seriously.  It is not a good idea to don lilac and/or seafoam and/or peach pants of any fabric, unless you are in a retirement home and you are coordinating those with floral nylon blouses and plastic jewellery of the same colour family.  I may be biased, but I’m only trying to save others from the fate that I suffered in the early nineties, when I wore purple and/or forest green jeans to the bar, along with a black bodysuit – remember bodysuits? – and my spiral permed hair. 

Adam then goes on to recommend ways to wear coated jeans, which, for those of you not in the know, as I was prior to reading this magazine, coated jeans are a substitute for leather pants. 

Sorry, I needed to take a break for a minute, just from typing the words “leather pants”.  I don’t want to get into any rock star/ I am the Lizard King kind of discussion.  Let’s just agree that putting tight, super-shiny materials on your thighs is not a good idea, not if wearing flattering clothing is of importance.  We should have all learned this lesson in the eighties.  And even if you can pull off wearing leather pants, the question is, should you?  I mean, if you are lucky enough to be in the 1%, it is guaranteed that something else would look much better.  Just say no to leather pants or, apparently, coated jeans. 

This is not the first time I have been disappointed by Adam Glassman, nor, likely, will it be the last.  Remember a few years ago when he announced that the majority of shorts for women were hideous and unflattering and wearing them was akin to fashion suicide?  I privately agreed with this sentiment, but later he bowed under intense pressure from Oprah’s shorts-loving fans and amended his statement.  STICK WITH IT, ADAM, I thought.  I realize this is contrary to my hypocritical adoption of jeggings, but still.  Most shorts for women are hideous and unflattering.  It’s about time we realize this and demand better looking shorts for all women.  Power to the people!

All of which is to say: just say no.  Say no to coloured denim.  Say no to leather or leather-look pants.  And for the love of fashion, just say no to mix-and-match denim.

Give your mother a kiss or I’ll kick your teeth in.

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Happy Robbie Burns Day!  I was telling the boys about Robbie Burns Day today, explaining the celebratory nature – in a modified way – and about their Scottish ancestry.  Jake was getting more and more agitated and more and more defiant about it, when he burst out “We are not in Scotland, Mom!  We are in Canada.  WE ARE CANADIAN.”

Good point.  Also I have to admit the only thing I do on Robbie Burns Day is look up YouTube videos of Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer and walk around singing Bay City Rollers songs and Do You Think I’m Sexy in a Scottish accent.  I’m probably putting my ancestors to shame.  It’s not like I’m heading over to the Legion to eat haggis, get drunk on Scotch, and get into a brawl with someone from a different clan, like a good Scottish lassie. 

Haggis.  You have to hand it to the Scots, they have cornered the market on the world’s worst cuisine.  Scottish cuisine is the absolute bottom of the global barrel.  Second is probably Norweigan – and hey, I’m Scottish-Norweigan so I can really vouch for this.  Boiled potatoes!  Fish balls!  And I’m very sorry to offend all of you haggis and/or lutefisk fans, but what the hell?  Was everyone drunk and did those dishes really seem like a good idea at the time?  Someone very kindly mentioned to me recently that if I wanted, I could get vegetarian haggis, which honestly seems like the third-most-awful food item in the world. 

Do you ever wonder how kind of bizarre cultural things got their start?  Like, for example, bagpipes.  Actually, I can probably guess how bagpipe music got its start but it’s a grim picture so I won’t go there.  Do people honestly enjoy bagpipe music or is it one of those things that you intellectually think you should enjoy because of your ancestry, but emotionally and viscerally you loathe it?  Is it like the recorder – intellectually you realize that elementary aged children are taught the recorder because of its lightweight size and inexpensiveness, but the sound of it, my god, the sound of it.  There is nothing like being next door to a classroom full of recorder-playing fifth graders.  Did I mention that I’m starting to get ready for the next book fair, which is next door to the music room?  Alcoholic donations welcome.  Also?  Ear plugs.

Because of the melting streets and the filth on my windshield causing me to be actually unable to see out my windshield, which seems like a liability somehow, I washed the car today.  That is a MAN’S job, people.  Anyway, I manned up and took my filthy minivan to the carwash, and beside it an apartment complex is being erected (heh) and there was a giant, cavernous hole dug, filled with various heavy machinery.  It made me supremely nostalgic.  There was a time when I would walk my boys in their double stroller to construction sites, and they would sit there, fascinated, for HOURS on end.  Jake was one, and he would clap his little hands and say “Diggies!  Diggies!  Jake happy!  Happy!”  We spent our days that way, our endless unscheduled days, wandering around the neighbourhood looking at buses and machinery, and playing farm and blocks and trains, and now suddenly they are gone most of the day and when they are home they are involved in their own little lives that often do not involve me at all, and one day they are going to be bringing their recorders home to practice and suddenly I am wallowing in Robbie Burns Day melancholy.  Just like a good Scottish lassie.

Just settle the fuck down already, it’s just Pyjama Day.

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It’s Pyjama Day at the boys’ school today and – this may not seem significant to you, but it IS – Mark is wearing pyjamas!  Not once has Mark ever worn pyjamas on Pyjama Day.  He has always preferred to wear just regular clothes, despite the pyjama clad children everywhere.  His refusal to conform to Pyjama Day bothered me a bit when he was in preschool, then less and less with each year.  I figured, in my chillaxing way, that he as he grew he would become more interested in festively wearing nightwear to class, or if he didn’t, that was okay too.  I was pretty sure that somewhere out there were perfectly functional adults who also opted to wear jeans on Pyjama Day, so I was not too worried.  When he told me he was going to participate, I tried not to make a big deal about it.  This morning he was a bit concerned, telling me that he was worried about what the public would think – his “public”, upon further investigation, was discovered to be our neighbours.  He reassured himself that our neighbours probably would not laugh at his pyjama clad legs, and in any case, he was wearing snowpants.  In the car he fretted that no other children would be wearing pyjamas – what if it was just he and Jake? – but then we saw my friends’ children, all of them in Division Two, and all of them wearing pyjamas, and he was vastly reassured.

I have known parents to get upset if their children choose not to participate in an ostensibly fun activity at school – it’s FUN, we say, why don’t you TRY it?, just TRY IT. – but sometimes kids have reasons of their own, and what’s wrong with that?  Wearing your pyjamas to school is an odd concept, after all, and in any case, certain quirks can be outgrown.

All of which is to say, I really like my friend Nan’s plan for a parenting magazine section entitled “Just Settle The Fuck Down Already“, indicating that we cannot control every single facet of our children’s lives.  Once we all realize this, we will be much more at peace.  Not everything that happens to our children or every part of their personalities is a direct result of our actions.  We can all point to parents who, to all appearances and with all the available information, did everything right and yet their child’s life turned terribly, horribly wrong.  See also: Nancy Spungen.  We also can point to parents who adopted the “Feral Child” method of childrearing and yet produced functional adults who contribute to society.  See also: Jeannette Walls.  I’m not saying parenting doesn’t matter: of course it does.  This is not license to guzzle whiskey and smoke while pregnant or allow your toddler to watch TV for twelve hours a day or to feed your children nothing whatsoever other than Coke, Chicken McNuggets, and Pop Rocks.  I mean, that’s really going to fuck shit up.  Obviously we need to do the best job we can and use our brains and our instincts and reliable, researched information, and YET, we still cannot control and shape our children exactly to our specfications.  Nor should we want to.  They are little people, in their own right. 

I have a post on my mind right now that I want to write – not that Pyjama Day is not important stuff – but I’m just not ready.  I realize this is kind of like one of those vague Facebook statuses that people probably mean to be enigmatic but instead turn out kind of flaky.  You know what I mean.  Today was the worst (or, alternately, best) day ever!!!!! with no explanation to what happened, spurring questions and concern from all fronts.  Or an inspirational quote to show that there is drama going on in your life right now, but you are making peace with it.  Or – and this is my favourite – I’m going through my Facebook and deleting everyone who is not a true friend.  If you are NOT a true friend, GOODBYE.  Those always make me feel uncomfortable.  If you are going to unfriend me, I guess I would rather not it be part of your Facebook status, you know?  Not that I should talk.  I mean, my Facebook status today had to do with the fact that I’m wearing compression stockings and jeggings at the same time.  I’m melding the part of myself that wants to be stylish and hip with the part of myself that is next door to drinking hot water and lemon on a summer day.  WORLDS COLLIDING, OMG.  

I also really, really want to talk about the New York Times article about yoga and all the fallout from the yoga world and all that and throw Jim Fix and running into the mixture, but I have run out of time talking about PYJAMA DAY and so I will have to save that topic for next time.  In the meantime, I came across this “Shit Nobody Says” video over at Hilarity in Shoes’ blog, and I love it even more than the “Shit Vegans Say” one (is there HONEY in your bread?).  Maybe I should make my own video.  But I’m not sure what it would say.  My hands are cold.  Barkley is the cutest dog EVER, you should totally get a Labradoodle.  Please don’t fart at the dinner table.  The secret ingredient is love.  Mmm, cheese.  Please don’t talk about your penis at the dinner table.  I used to have a nice rack, now I’m totally deflated.  Chickpeas are awesome!  NO FARTING AT THE DINNER TABLE.  Inhale, exhale.  You have to use your breath.  Do not talk about poop at the dinner table.  Barkley want to go for a walk?  Walk?  Walk?  I think I’m going to have a glass of wine.  STOP TALKING AND FINISH YOUR DINNER.  NO.  NO MORE FARTING.  I made this kick ass stirfry.  Do you want to go to Costco with me?  I have a phobia about it.  Okay, just clear your plate and get started on your home reading.  Yes, it’s okay if you have to poop first.  Wash your hands.  Asana is only one PART of yoga.

There’s the foreshadowing – for the next post!  No, not the farting and pooping part.