What a Coincidence...

In his book, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, Dr. Deepak Chopra recommends meditating at least twice a day for 20 minutes.  He says that meditating can help us to tap into a higher source that unlocks our power to manifest our deepest desires.  As a result, we will start to notice small coincidences in our daily lives.

Pff!  Yeah right!  If I had that kind of time I’d spend it sleeping.

But before I throw the book onto the pile of other books I have no time to read, I decide to try something else.  Every day I take Buddha Baby on a 40 minute walk.  Maybe I could try “meditative walking.”

Meditative walking, I decide, is the combination of meditating while walking.  I’ll clear my mind, breathe, and stay in the present moment.  I’m pretty proud of myself for inventing the concept.  Killing two birds with one stone and all.  (I later Google it and find out it is already a term.  Wynona Judd even lost 60 pounds by doing it and talked about it on Oprah.)

I leave as soon as Buddha Baby has finished eating and is ready for his afternoon nap.  I’ve got the timing down to an actual science.  If I leave a fraction of a nanosecond sooner or later, I will end up sprinting home with a screaming baby.  Not very meditative.

The first part of the walk is positively fabulous.  I am completely Zen as I listen to the sound of the wind rustling through the trees.  The golden leaves are dancing to the ground all around me. 

I walk past a school and hear an ice-cream truck trolling through the neighborhood. Is there anything creepier than the sound of ice-cream truck music, I wonder?

Gently I release the thought.  Must stay focused.

“Waaahhh!”  Buddha Baby threatens.

Oh no.  Don’t do this to me now!

“Waaaaaaaaaahhhhh!” 

He is adamant.  No worries, I’ll put him to sleep and get back to my meditation.

Twenty minutes later, Buddha Baby is still crying.  Rise above the noise, I tell myself.  He’ll go to sleep eventually.  I feel my blood pressure steadily rising.

I pass an elderly fellow who gives me a sympathetic smirk and says something inaudible. 

Oh piss off, I think to myself, shooting him a reciprocal smile.

As I’m nearing the end of my walk, I see a woman approaching with a big yellow dog.  As we’re about to pass each other, I turn onto a path that leads into a park and then eventually takes me home. 

She turns onto the same path and we are walking side by side, her dog’s leash reaching far enough so that her dog is healing beside me, not her.  This is awkward.

I smile and walk faster. 

“Are you by chance Meditative Mom?”  She asks.

I tell her I am and she tells me she is Baby Gate’s sister.  I had forgotten she lives in the neighborhood too.

“What a coincidence!” she chimes.  They have the exact same chirpy voice.

We chat about the weather.  She seems nice.  I wonder why Baby Gate doesn’t spend more time with her.

“Not a very good baby is he?” Baby Gate’s Sister says with a laugh, obviously referring to the crying.

That explains it.

I sprint home with my bad baby, leaving Baby Gate’s Sister in the dust.

If this is what Deepak Chopra means by coincidence, I’d rather not meditate. 

Namaste,

Devil Dogs

I don’t know why people have dogs.  They’re loud, they smell, and they have worms.  (At least we found out ours do after Dog From Hell One puked up a pile of worms when I was pregnant.  I spent the rest of the day calling every doctor and veterinarian in the phonebook, asking if humans could get them too.  I was convinced I’d see worms on my next ultrasound.)

My dogs come by their names honestly.  Dog From Hell One loves to bark incessantly, waking up the baby several times a day, while Dog From Hell Two likes to pee on the couch when no one’s looking.

To make matters worse, Dog From Hell Two has morning sickness.  Yes, morning sickness.  She isn’t pregnant but according to the vet, her hormones are off balance and her body thinks she is.  She throws up at 9 a.m. every day.  Just another dog-related mess I’d rather not deal with.

We’ve talked about finding another home for them, but I just don’t have the heart.  I love animals almost as much as I love children.  (I once hit a squirrel while driving and cried for the next three days.)

We decided to get two puppies last year after our last dog died.  I was pregnant and emotional and figured that two adorable pups would fill my hormonal void.  “What are we going to do with two dogs when the baby comes?”  Practical Joe tried to reason with me, to my annoyance.  This was just one of the many examples when I foolishly overrode his sensible judgment.

Now we are stuck with two yappy mutts that tear our house apart.

Just the other day, I heard a knock at the door.  Buddha Baby was in the middle of a screaming fit so immediately I became annoyed with whoever was making me answer my door.

It was a neighbor lady.  I had never seen her before.  She was very short and had a huge muff of curly hair that seemed to be attacking her face.  

I was quickly informed that she had marched over to complain about my Dogs From Hell barking outside. 

“Are you aware that your dogs have been barking for a half an hour?” asked Hair Muff, her hair sticking to her mouth as she spoke.

Buddha Baby screamed even louder.  He was probably frightened by the hair.

“Yes, I am very aware.  Are you aware that my baby has been screaming for an hour and I have no idea what’s wrong?” (Besides your frightening hair, I wanted to say.)

“Yes I see that you have your hands full, but I’d hate to have to report you to the city.  Maybe you could bring your dogs inside.”

“Sure, I know they’re annoying. I’ll bring them inside.” 

Hair Muff stormed away.

Shit!  Why was I such a pushover?  I can never think of something good to say in the moment.  Of course, now I can think of a million things I wish I had said. (“Here’s the number for the city… and a stylist.”)

I guess it’s because deep down I just want everyone to like me.  I swear, if I were to be kidnapped, I’d be one of those people who falls in love with her abductor, simply because I wouldn’t want to have anybody be unhappy with me.

So step one on spiritual quest: Stop worrying about what other people think of me. 

Step two: Gain quiet time by putting Dogs From Hell outside as much as possible.  

Hair Muff can deal with the noise.

Namaste,

-MM

Goodbye to the Glorious 60… Almost.

Throughout my entire pregnancy I ate like a horse on steroids.  Right from the moment I peed on a stick to the moment my water broke (“do I have time for a McFlurry?”) I happily stuffed my face with anything that was put down in front of me. 

To make matters worse, for the last four months of my pregnancy I was on bed rest and aside from the obvious fact that lying on your ass all day will make you fat, I also managed to convince myself that if the baby was going to come early, I should eat as much as possible to make him nice and fat. 

For four straight months, I luxuriated in bed and ate every bon bon and cinnamon bun I could get my hands on.  Practical Joe would literally wake up in the middle of the night with candy wrappers stuck to his back.

In my anorexic years (age 14 to 16) this was my greatest fantasy, so I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to binge – and have an excuse for it! (“My body must really need the extra protein in all the Double Quarter Pounders I’ve been craving.”)

Well the baby didn’t come early and the only one who got fat was me.  I gained a whopping 60 pounds. I call it the Glorious 60, because by the very definition of the word, gaining it was glorious.

For some odd reason I thought that I’d be like Heidi Klum and drop the baby weight the instant I walked out of the hospital.  I had no reason for believing this.  I’m not by any stretch one of those women who we all hate for eating eight jars of Nutella a day and not gaining an ounce of weight (“I have a hyperactive thyroid,” they often complain).  I gain weight at the sight of food, so my beliefs were more like delusions.

Needless to say, I was disappointed to find that the weight didn’t fall off in the first months after Buddha Baby was born.  I was also disappointed to find that pregnancy weight doesn’t feel at all cuter than any other type of weight.

But yesterday, things started looking up.  I stepped on the scale (five months postpartum now) and I only have about seven pounds to go.  I say this not because I think you’ll be interested in that part, but because I wanted to share with you what worked for me. 

I used to track all the food I ate on random scraps of paper that would end up scattered about the house.  (Friends and family would find them and ask me why I was eating so many tablespoons of peanut butter in a day.  “That can’t be healthy,” they would warn.)  Now I track my strange food choices online and in complete privacy. 

I found an awesome website that’s free and helps you lose weight by telling you your daily caloric needs and adding up everything you’ve eaten in a day.  All you have to do is enter your height, current weight, age, and weekly weight loss goal (in the Calorie Goal section), and then enter each food item you eat in the day (in the section called MyPlate).  It also tracks your calories burned when you enter your daily exercise.  And it has on record things like, feeding your child, bathing your child, and driving your vehicle to work – just another reason why I love this website!

Check it out:

http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/

(Disclaimer: I feel like I should tell you that I am in no way professionally affiliated with this website.)

Let me know what you think!

Namaste,

One Hot Momma

Today I had a near death experience.  Or was it hot yoga?  I’m not sure.

In case you’re not familiar with it, hot yoga (or Bikram Yoga) is basically the practice of gathering in a room that is as hot as hell and contorting into various poses that make you feel like you’re going to have a heart attack.  The workout was 90 minutes long and by the end I was so drenched that it looked like I had jumped into a swimming pool. 

Oddly enough, I liked it.

When I first walked into the 105-degree room, despite the faint aroma of dirty feet, it actually seemed quite pleasant.  There were roughly 10 people lying about on mats.  They seemed relaxed and focused as they stared up at the ceiling in their sports bras and micro shorts.

“This doesn’t seem so bad…I’ve totally got this,” I told myself.

I lay down next to a man in a pair of shorts that were so tight he should have been arrested and quickly realized my first mistake.  I had worn a pair of long sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt.   It was the best I could come up with since I didn’t own any yoga apparel and wasn’t about to go anywhere in a sports bra.  I was sweltering already and we hadn’t even started, but it was better than showing off my baggy post-baby belly. 

“Who are these people and how do they have time to look this toned anyway?” I wondered.

The instructor entered the room and we began.  The first posture was a breathing exercise and I was already feeling as clumsy as ever.  The instructor came over and demonstrated the moves right beside me, but it didn’t help me to look like any less of a buffoon.

It was quite peaceful though without Buddha Baby there demanding my attention. 

“Just breathe and focus on yourself,” said the instructor.  I was melting into the floor and my muscles were on fire. It was then that I realized my second mistake.  As we lifted our feet to do Tree Pose I discovered a huge flap of dead skin about the size of India hanging from the bottom of my right foot.  Great.  I tried to remember the last time I had a pedicure, or even had the time to paint my toenails.  It was four months ago – before Buddha Baby was born.

I continued with the postures. 

“Now is the time to clear your mind and focus on your practice,” the instructor encouraged. Unfortunately, all I could think of was trying to hide India.  I wondered if I could quickly rip it off with no one noticing, but decided against it.   Just because I was a mom didn’t mean I had to lose ALL sense of shame and decency. 

“Now lift your right foot and point it towards the back wall.”  Shit.  “Flap, flap, flap,” was all I could think.   I was sure the person behind me was trying not to puke.

As the workout came to a close, the instructor led us through a final breathing exercise.  When we were finished she told us to have one final meditation on our mats and left the room, turning out the lights behind her.  The room went silent and I could only see a faint outline of Illegal Shorts deep in meditation, probably trying to dispel thoughts of his wenis falling off due to lack of circulation.

I frantically pawed for my stuff in the dark.  If there were one of those infrared cameras you would have seen a room full of people deep in peaceful meditation and one crazy lady frantically clamoring for her things in the corner.

“How was it?” the instructor asked as I was leaving the studio. 

“Fantastic!  Rejuvenating,” I lied.  I also managed to mention the fact that I was trying to lose the rest of my baby weight.  For some reason I feel compelled to tell everyone I come across (family, friends, the guy at the gas station) that I am trying to lose baby weight.  It’s silly but I need them to know that I’m not normally this fat. 

Although it was exhausting, I came away from hot yoga feeling great.  I think I’ll even go again… sans India. 

Namaste,
-MM