Things my mom says...

I was leaning over my desk reaching for my pen when Chad asked me,
"What happened to your knee again? When was it you had surgery?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "What?" Turning around to face him.
"Knee surgery. When did you have it again?" He repeated.
"Knee surgery?" I was so confused.
"What makes you think I had knee surgery?  I fractured my patella in college, but I've never had knee surgery.  Why are you asking me this like its old news?"
"The scars. I see the scars on the back of your right knee."
"What?!"
"Babe, come here."
I went closer to him.
"These scars." He said as he pointed to scars on the back of my right knee.
Scars that I obviously couldn't see because they were on the back of my knee.
He grabbed my phone and took a picture of them for me.
I stared at them for a few seconds.  Without taking my eyes off the picture I raised my voice and said:
"Mooom, did I have knee surgery when I was young?"
My mom was in the next room and I went over to her and asked again,
"Did I have knee surgery and don't know about it somehow?"
"No.  Never." My mom said.
"Well then, look at the back of my knee, these look like scars."
After looking at them for a minute my mom looked at me and very seriously replied,
"That's just fat.  You know the marks that come when some one is fat? What's it called, I can't think right now"
"Really mom? The back of my knee is fat?"
"Cellulite!" She remembered.
"Cellulite? I have cellulite on the back of my knees??"
"Yes.  I'm sorry, but that's what it is."

Welcome to my home Bikram.

I started my at-home Bikram yoga practice this week.  Remember when I had that epiphany back in October? You can read all about it here.  
Don't focus on how it's taken 8 months for me to actually make it happen. There have been business trips, vacations, holidays, birthdays, lazy days…
Besides, I said DON'T focus on that.  

Instead, let's talk about my "studio" set up and mid-years resolution.  
I set it up in the bathroom, there's a little walkway between its entrance and the shower/toilet. It's a perfect area to enclose and get hot.  I just had to purchase two things: A humidifier, and a thermometer that gauges humidity levels and the room temperature.  Not a bad price, $50.33 total, just a fraction of what a month would cost anywhere else.
I already had a space heater, yoga mat/towels, and an audio version of the entire Bikram yoga class  taught by Mr. Bikram himself.  I was ready to start.  
The first day I attempted it, I only had one heater in there and the room was not getting hot enough.   I added another space heater and soon the humidity levels and the temperature were soaring.  As you can see above, the room got to 106*F!  Bikram studios are usually around 40% humidity and anywhere between 105-110* F.  My humidity levels were a little high, but I was ok with it.
I was sweating by the first posture, yay!  

I have completed a week in my "studio" and I couldn't be happier:  

• I have the flexibility to practice whenever I want
• There's no travel time (I do have to warm up the room for 30 minutes before, but at least I can do other things while its warming up)
• I can wear or not wear whatever I want  (I'm very content doing yoga in a sports bra and bikini bottoms in this heat and the comfort of my home)
• and I'm saving a couple hundred dollars each month

Of course there are some cons as well:

• I don't have a trained professional to push or assist me in any postures.
• I have to work that much harder to make sure I stay focused
• and I do have a teeny tiny fear that if I pass out for some reason (due to the heat, or if I fall over in a pose and hit my head on the sink, who knows?) by the time Chad finds me it may be too late-I'd be a goner. I have made him promise me he'll check on me if I'm not out in 93 minutes. 

If you wanted to practice in your home, here's my warning label: please please please make sure you've had plenty of training in an actual studio with real certified trainers first before you attempt to do it on your own.  Though it has been many years since my Bellingham yoga days, I went 4-5 days a week for two years.  That is the only reason I feel I can do this by myself.  
When I do Bikram, I tend to get a little obsessed (again, you can read all about it here), so you'll probably be seeing more posts about yoga, just a heads up. 

Gamble much?

I am not a huge basketball fan.  If I am in a place that has it on, I can appreciate the game and might even get into it, especially if its the finals.
With that being said, I made a very stupid STUPID bet last week.  I decided to make a bet with Chad's cousins on the Pacers vs Heat game.  They even let me pick the team I thought would win first.   After giving it a good 2 second thought, I chose the underdogs, the Pacers.  I didn't even know what their name was, I said: "Not the Heat."  This wasn't even the big championship finals, this was just the game deciding who was going to go to the championship from the east coast conference (is that a thing?).
I would like to tell you that I was bullied into this bet.  That they took advantage of my lack of sports knowledge.  But I really only have myself to blame.  We bet dinner at a restaurant that we have all been wanting to try.  Loser pays for the entire meal.

I lost.

Pacers 76 vs Heat 99

We went to dinner at Le Diplomate in DC last night, to pay my debt.  The food was good, the company was a little too "gloat-y" for my taste. They made it a point to get the most expensive appetizer, entree, and dessert on the menu.  Poor Chad, punished for my gambling, after all it's coming out of our joint bank account.  Again, I have no one but myself to blame.  I don't have a gambling problem, I enjoy the craps table, and maybe some scratchers now and then, but nothing serious.  It's not my vice.  Really.

Shrimp Salad and Dungeness crab for appetizers.  Jerks.

Oh man, that's a lot of money. Not to mention a nice tip on top of that.

NEVER AGAIN. So stupid.

At the end of the meal when they asked me who do I want to pick to bet on in the NBA Championship?
I should've laughed in their faces and said "No way Jose." Or something cheesy and innocent like that. Fool me once people!

But instead I replied: "Not the Heat".
And Chad just shook his head at me.
I sensed his disappointment.

Paintball, you suck.

Chad and I played paintball today.  Though neither of us really wanted to go, it was a belated 12th birthday celebration for my nephew Tarsus (on the left in the camo jacket) and he was really looking forward to having us there…or maybe they just needed an extra car for some of the kids because we somehow ended up with three of them. Three boys that we never met for a 3 hour round trip. (It's a good thing they were entertaining; I only had to tell them to stop hitting each other once. And one of them even offered to buy everyone in the car something off the dollar menu from McDonalds with his $8 if we swung by the drive-thru.  Score.)
When we first got to the Paintball Adventure Park, I was a little scared.  There were people in full camo gear, and their guns looked very real.  Some even had paintball machine guns.  Did they miss their calling in the military? Or perhaps weren't able to get in the military so they picked up paintball instead?  Luckily we didn't have to play with them since our group was big enough on our own.  
The problem with going with a bunch of little boys is that they are excited to shoot guns-at each other, at us, in the air, at the ground.  Anywhere.
We started the game and the kids went wild.  My gun stopped working after I fired once.  I tried to fix it with our guide, and got shot in the arm by some kid in the process.   
It hurt. A lot.
I wasn't even armed man.  I wasn't even armed. 
By the time the next game started, I had a new gun, but my mask started fogging up.  I couldn't see anything or anyone, I felt fear.  Rightfully so because I got shot again.  
It hurt. A lot.
And though I was out, I got shot AGAIN.  
I cursed.  A lot.  
Help me understand this.  Little paint pellets are fed into a gun, and you're encouraged to shoot them at people so it can burst all over their clothing and hurt like hell?
Why is this fun?  
Maybe if the shots felt like little bubbles when it made contact, then I'd be ok with it. 
While we were reloading the paintballs into our guns, all the kids couldn't wait to get back out to the field.  They loved it!  No one complained about how much the shots hurt, not even my older sister, and she likes to complain.  
I asked Chad if they hurt him.  He shrugged and said, 
"I mean, they stung..."
No.  They didn't just "sting" me.  It felt like it could've broken skin, in my eyes the yellow paint on my clothes might as well have been blood.  
Maybe I was a sissy.  Maybe I was being dramatic.  I wanted to try to call myself out and tell myself to toughen up, but I was distracted by my battle wounds on my injured arm.
I played one more game and found myself really scared that I would get hit in any, and all of my sensitive spots.  It was then that I decided that I was done.  Why am I subjecting myself to this?
After I got shot, again, I took my mask off, gave all the remaining paint pellets to the person closest to me and walked off the field. 
There was only one more game after that, and I watched it from the sidelines.
On the way home the kids kept saying things like:
"Next time…" or "When we come back…" or "That was soo fun!"
I'm glad they enjoyed themselves and the belated birthday celebration was a success, but Tarsus "next time" you're gonna need to find another ride because paintball, you suck.