...That Everyone Should Own a Hula Hoop.

Last Friday, when I was out dancing with my girlfriends.

We’d been talking about going for ages but never managed to coordinate our increasingly incompatible schedules … or motivate our increasingly sleep-deprived bodies. But Laura took the bull by the horns and got us all out and gussied up for a night on the town.

I can’t say it was the coolest bar in town – no velvet ropes,  no cover charge roughly equal to my first year of college tuition, and no waiting in line, shivering, while the bouncers leer at you and decide whether your boobs are big enough and your legs long enough to sufficiently up the “hot quotient” on the inside -– and the cute-guy pickins were awfully slim (the scant crowd there leaned decidedly Sapphic, and at least one of our bunch was propositioned by an adorable ‘40s-pin-up-looking brunette with a Marilyn Monroe figure and Betty Boop shoes). But it was, hands down, the most fun I’ve had in months!

For starters, when you’re at the not-cool bar, it means you pretty much have the dance floor all to yourself. There are no Night-at-the-Roxbury guido sandwiches to fight off; and if you’re sloshing your drink down your shirt, it’s not because some b*tch with a spray-tan and four-inch peep-hole stilettos is using you as her ballast –- it’s just, y’know, because the DJ has started spinning your favorite Katy Perry song and you kinda maybe got a lil’ too excited (whoops). You can also stage entire Broadway production numbers if you want to and, apologies to Mr. Fosse, we pretty much did. I seriously can’t remember the last time I let myself look like that much of an a**hole in public. Which is where the hula-hooping comes in.

See, when we got there, there was this woman. She was wearing a black mesh bustier and black skinny jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. She had short brown hair and dark, kohl-lined eyes. She was slender but not skinny, her fleshy hips spilling out over the top of her jeans, and a fine sheen of sweat set her shoulders and belly aglow. She was, in a word, smokin’.

But it wasn’t the way she looked that set her on fire. When we got there, she was in the middle of the floor, dancing all by herself. And I don’t mean she was standing there tapping her foot and bobbing her head while she sipped a Long Island iced tea and made eyes at Marilyn. I mean this woman was droppin’ like it was hot -– dipping, spinning, crawling (kind of gross, in retrospect, considering what that floor must have seen over the years), bumping, grinding. She was throwing moves we only practice at Stripper Workout class. And she didn't give a sh*t about what anyone else thought. It was amazing. I was in complete awe (and a little scared, too).

And then she got up on stage with a couple of hula hoops -– sparkly, lighted hula hoops that she spun and swirled like a ribbon around her lithe body -– and that was it. I had to see if I could do it, too.

I waited until after I saw her giving other folks a go, and when she stashed the hoops in the corner by the DJ’s booth, I scampered over, grabbed one, and scampered back to my friends. Then I planted my feet and gave it a whirl, swishing my hips around and around, the muscles in my midsection taut and burning. I remember having a huge smile on my face, although my friends would probably tell you that I was all furrowed brow and focused determination.

Whatever. I loved it.

Not to get too philosophical, but hula-hooping (do purists call it just “hooping”? I have so much to learn!) is a study in contradictions: it requires both groundedness and a liquid control of your body; it’s silly and it’s sexy; it takes very little effort to get the hoop going yet the smallest misstep will make it come crashing down, so you’ve got to pay attention (it’s an excellent opportunity practice what philosophers call “mindfulness” –- a deeply meditative state in which you are totally, completely present, aware of nothing but this very moment and the rhythm of your breath). It is also a hell of a workout and, once you get going, a hell of a lot of fun.

Seriously, you should try it. Go on. Target has 'em for like six bucks. (Yeah, that's right. Happy birthday to me!)

...That It's Good to Play Hooky Every Now and Then.

Yesterday.


I’ve been working ridiculous hours lately (three weeks in a row where the earliest I punched the "out" card was 11pm … and a week in the middle of that where the earliest was 3am - including one all-nighter), and the only time off I've had was a weekend jaunt to the East Coast to chase my niece and nephew around for three days. Fun, but scarcely relaxing or restorative.


I am, in a word, pooped. And I mentioned the can't-catch-my-breath-and-alarmingly-fast-beating-heart thing. I just ain't feelin' right.


So I decided that I needed a day to chill. And not like a weekend day, where ostensibly most of the rest of the country is also chilling. I mean like a bonus day, an unplanned, cracker-jack-surprise, take-care-of-myself day, with no other objective than to rest and rejuvenate. To sleep in, if my humming body will let me -- and to flop around in bed or on my couch and doze in fits and starts if won't. To maybe even go for a walk or a bike ride that doesn't feel like an item on my to-do list.


I feel guilty about this. I have a sneaking suspicion my boss is less than pleased with me. He's a workaholic, and has grown accustomed to my own workaholic ethic. I've been trying to set boundaries, which he says he respects, but there's something in the way he "jokes" about "missing our 9pm confabs" that makes me feel like my leaving after putting in an eight- or nine-hour day is somehow cutting out early -- like he's legitimately disappointed in me. And I have an aversion to disappointment like vampires do to sunlight -- I generally try to avoid it at all costs, even if it sometimes means I end up plowing headlong into some other destructive pattern.

On the plus side, I did it anyway. Lord knows I have the PTO. And you know what? It was totally worth it.

It wasn't exactly the day I'd planned -- I was picturing sunshine and lazy hours at the park with my Kindle and a good long bike ride on Bessie 2 -- but it was still exactly what I needed. I slept in til noon (sweet blessed sleep), practiced some deep meditative breathing ("practiced" being the operative word), got a pedi (french!), pit-stopped by the lab for a d-dimer blood test (my doc wants to rule out a blood clot as the cause of my breathing issues), and met a couple of  my favorite people for an impromptu dinner at our favorite pho place (oh, pho -- how I've missed you). Not even the rain could keep me down.

The best part? I didn't think about work once. Ok, wait -- that's not true. I thought about work exactly once. I'm running a virtual training tomorrow and needed to check in with the presenters. But after I did, I didn't think about work again.

Happy. :o)

...That I Should Start Writing Again.

Last night. Late. Whilst in the shower.

Some people do their best thinking on the commode; I do mine in the shower.

Maybe it's the vulnerability we inevitably experience in each of those scenarios –- in one, your pants are puddled around your ankles, effectively shackling you to you to your seat; in the other, you're completely, butt-a** naked (unless, y'know, you're Tobias Funke and possessed of a paralyzing and –- no disrespect to actual sufferers –- brilliantly, riotously funny gymnophobia). You are quite literally a captive to your situation in those moments, so what else is there to do but think?

Anyhoo, so I was in the shower, as I often am, and thinking, as I often do. And I just knew it was time to start writing again. Less, I think, because I have anything specific to say and more out of some fundamental need to be heard –- y'know, as something other than the echo of my own voice in my head.

See, I've had trouble catching my breath lately. I mean literally. It's like I've been laced into some invisible medieval corset and I can't seem to get my ribs to expand enough to make room for my lungs. I keep yawning, drawing in these huge gulps of air, but there's nowhere for the air to go, so it just hisses right back out. And then my heart starts beating faster, compensating for the work my lungs are failing to do, pumping furiously –- like a novice cyclist towing a covered wagon up a steep incline.

In other words I feel a bit … I don’t know -– constricted, weighed down. And one theory is that writing can be a useful tool for unburdening.

Soooo, I’ve started a(nother) blog. I know, I know –- how 2007 of me. But then, I’ve always been a bit behind the curve. Took me three years to finally squeeze my reluctant ass into a pair of skinny jeans. And even then I only rarely wear them in public. They’re just so … unforgiving. So unless you’re 5’10” and a buck twenty (I’m not), you better be really comfortable in your own skin (I’m getting there).

Consider this blog my skinny jeans, then. It took me a while to warm up to the idea, and I’m still not sure how much I really want anybody to see me in it. But maybe with just the right top and the perfect pair of kicks, I can rock the look.