The first time I visited Chicago I was in my early 20s. A lovely, drunk Chicagoan took it upon herself to counsel me in a bar.
choose your color
“You’re cute,” she said. “But your nails just ruin it! You must get a manicure.”
Nothing like one woman’s criticism to motivate another woman to action.
I don’t get manicures every week. I get them when I can. When I must.
And I throw in a pedicure. Need it to exercise. How can I be expected to do yoga with unpolished toenails?
As you know, we recently relocated. Had some free time one Friday. So I’m thinking, I’m in Wichita, the largest city in Kansas. I’ll just pop in somewhere and have my nails done. No problem.
No appointment, no service was more like it.
“We’re booked until 4:30 p.m.,” said the first shop.
tools of the trade
“How about next week?” said the second.
“We don’t have time to do both,” said the third. “Manicure or pedicure?”
I have to choose? But I’ll be unbalanced. (Please hold all comments until the end.)
My free time was evaporating. Desperate, I tried one last shop.
“How long for a manicure-pedicure?”
The row of women paused their filling and filing to stare like I was from Mars.
“No, wait!” said one woman as I turned to leave. Must have been the owner.
“She can take you now.” The owner pointed across the room to a beautiful, young woman reading a magazine.
The young woman looked up and rolled her eyes. Red flag number one.
“No. No. No,” said the little voice inside me.
pedicure station
I sat down in the pedicure chair anyway. I needed to have my nails done.
As the young one began removing my old polish, I smiled and said, “I’m so glad you could take me today.”
She looked up and snarled. “You’re lucky you got in,” she said. “We usually only take appointments.”
The little voice inside me whipped around and wagged a finger. “No, you’re lucky I’m sitting in your chair, sister!”
In real life I was stunned silent. My feet literally in hot water. Better not to speak lest I lose a toe.
Forty-five minutes later, I had ravishing, plum toenails. They were shaped kind of weird, but they were all still there.
We moved to the manicurist station where the young one placed my hands in little dishes of water. Then she disappeared into the break room. For 10 minutes.
The skin on my fingers pruned and the little voice shrieked, “GET OUT!”
candy dish
Back in St. Louis at Ladue Nails I would have been done with all this in less than an hour. No coffee breaks allowed if you have a customer in the house.
Should I call her out of the break room? Pay the owner for the pedi and leave? Run screaming from the building?
Finally she reappeared, all smug and caffeinated.
“You know what?” I said. “I have to pick up my son from school. Let me pay for the pedicure and go.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” she said.
“You’ll listen to me next time?” said the little voice as we drove away.
Count on it.
Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you. Proverbs 2:11 NIV
Despite this experience, there are many fabulous salons in Wichita. For example, I found a terrific manicurist at a friendly salon that boasts of the best candy dish in town.
Nini, at Nails and Spa on Central near 127th, advises me to be on the safe side and always make an appointment.
A good week finds me at the Y two mornings for yoga and two for pilates.
I have four different instructors affectionately nicknamed to protect their identities: the Boomer, the Ballerina, the Brit, and Grace whom you may remember from Namaste.
buffalo as seen on Manchester
The Boomer is my intelligent, sandwich generation yoga instructor. In true Boomer fashion, she delivers a hefty dose of unsolicited, often humorous, expert advice every week.
Tells us how we should put our handbags in our grocery carts when shopping to preserve our shoulders. How we must strengthen our quads so we don’t end up in nursing homes, unable to take care of our own bathroom duties.
It’s a fun class. Really.
One morning, she said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: Vikings and temple dancers.”
We giggled. “Vikings are the people we hear above us in the weight room grunting and dropping dumbbells on the floor,” she said. “They like the taste of adrenaline. They want to lift, sweat, and pump iron.”
“Then there are those of us who are temple dancers,” she said. “We like to bend, stretch, and feel the gentle flood of endorphins.”
“It would be good for the Vikings to dance and the temple dancers to lift weights,” she said. “But we have our preferences. We start with our strengths.”
what a feeling as seen at Sears
My Y-appointed trainer wants me to go to the Body Blitz class. Add the Muscle Pump hour. Do something called CORE in all caps.
Says it will help me “burn” faster. Speed up my metabolism. Thinks yoga is all cardio and no resistance. I’m avoiding her for the time being.
I pine for chiseled arms like Linda Hamilton’s in Terminator, so I may add weights. Vanity, oh vanity. But my metabolism is fast enough already.
And there’s a lot of resistance in yoga and pilates. It’s nuanced. You push against your own body rather than a free weight or machine.
It’s like a dance with yourself. A temple dance of bending, stretching, and wonderful, glorious endorphins.
You did it: You changed wild lament
into whirling dance;
You ripped off my black mourning band
and decked me with wildflowers.
I’m about to burst with song;
I can’t keep quiet about You.
God, my God,
I can’t thank you enough. Psalm 30:11-12 The Message
Dancing with Myself by Nouvelle Vague. If you’re used to the Billy Idol version of this song, you’re in for a treat with Nouvelle Vague’s cover. Fantastique!
Disclaimer: In case it isn’t blatantly obvious to you, I’m not an authority in health or fitness. I write of my own experiences and impressions. Nothing here should be construed as health, fitness, or medical advice.
Recently Amy of Using Our Words blogged about the travails of grocery shopping with children. The corporate groan arose from parents.
She invited us to share our stories in the comments. I got a little carried away (hard to believe, I know), and wrote nearly a post about my best-worst grocery store excursion with my son. It’s one of my favorite early motherhood memories.
Why pass up the opportunity to post a perfectly good story? That would be like throwing away a perfectly good cereal box when my son can make a turtle house out of it. In the spirit of reduce, reuse, recycle, I’ll share it again here with you.
shell game
The story takes place in the Mexican food aisle of our local grocery store where I looking for a certain brand of taco shells or something, which of course I couldn’t find. My son was still very little. I’m not even sure he could walk yet, but boy, could he move.
He didn’t want to sit in the cart. He didn’t want me to hold him like a normal baby. He wanted to climb up as high as he could on Mt. Momma and cliff jump off my head.
Where are those cotton-picking taco shells?! Must get out of this store…
My son’s gymnastics were commonplace to me. Without thinking, I hoisted him up over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I held him firmly by his leg as he dangled down my back cooing with glee.
Finally I could study the shelves of processed Tex-Mex in peace. Ah, there were the shells I needed.
Then I felt it. The pressure of the heavy gaze of judgment.
I turned to see two older women frozen stiff, staring at me in horror. How could I hold my dear, sweet child in such peril?
My blood pressure spiked like a jalapeño’s heat. Without skipping a beat, I pulled my little one back from the brink of imaginary disaster and thrust him out toward the gawkers.
“Would you like to hold him?” I said. “Didn’t think so.” We grabbed our shells and away we went.
Adiós, señoras. Things aren’t always as they appear.
chip on my shoulder
The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 NLT
After an epic struggle, guest blogger Kristen Anderson Short has reached a decision. A decision women across this country and around the world face.
Pantyhose. The worst invention ever for women. I only wear them out of necessity in really cold weather.
Recently, I noticed a run in my hose. Had a board meeting that day, so at lunch I ran out to get a new pair of name brands in my size.
Back at the office, I tugged and tugged to pull them on. No matter how hard I pulled, I could not get the blasted things all the way up. Had I grown to five feet six inches, the height of my dreams?
Unfortunately, no. The new pantyhose were too short.
light sheer
My board meeting loomed. I had no choice but to go with it. Women, you know how uncomfortable that is. Men, you can guess.
Made it through the day and met some friends after work. But even two glasses of wine didn’t make the pantyhose feel any better.
I was ready to trash them when I had a change of heart. Why not save them as my emergency backup pair?
A few days later when another pair of hose ran, I reached for the emergency backup pair. Sure, they were too short, but I could fix them.
I stepped on their feet. I pulled and pulled and PULLED, stretching them as far as I could. It was a miracle. They went on and up no problem!
patterned & footless
Then I moved, and they ran faster than Flo Jo in the 1988 Olympics.
I’m not talking about a tiny run. My hose looked like I’d been dragged down the street behind a Harley. Like I’d been out all night partying with the band and forgot to go home before work to change.
With no other pair of hose, no tights, and no clean pants, I made the walk of shame into my office. The minute I got the chance, I hightailed it to the store to buy yet another pair of pantyhose.
(This is the fourth pair in the story in case you’ve lost count.)
Gingerly, I pulled them on. They ran before I made it out of the bathroom.
Once bitten, twice shy, I converted to tights that day and never looked back.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away. Ecclesiastes 3:1 & 6 NIV
Clear the stage for the bad boy hair band that looks remarkably tame by today’s standards. Great White, Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
guest blogger Kristen Anderson Short
The lovely Kristen Anderson Short and I went to high school together.
Kristen works as a housing and foreclosure counselor for a local government agency.
A single mom of two teenagers, she enjoys reading, talking politics, and finding the humor in everyday life—sans hose.
My seven-year-old son loves the water. Swim club seemed like the perfect extracurricular activity.
It was all good until his lesson was over and it was time to change into dry clothes.
He doesn’t want to go into the women’s locker room. He refuses to change in the bleachers while I hold up a towel.
No. He insists on going into the men’s locker room. Alone.
As every ounce of Momma Bear in me protests, I let him go all by himself.
“I’ll wait for you here by the door,” I say. He disappears into the abyss.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
Another pair of MOBs are standing nearby watching their sons’ swimming lessons. They look at me and nod.
“Mine doesn’t even have to change his clothes,” says the first. “He only has to put on his sweatpants over his swimsuit. And it still takes him a half an hour!”
“Well, mine came out telling me about all the friends he made in the locker room,” said the other. “I told him we don’t make friends in the locker room. That was the end of that. Now he changes in the bleachers.”
Friends in the locker room? Oh, dear.
four feet deep
“Honey,” I crack open the door. “You okay in there?”
I wait. No answer. Dare I go in?
Then I hear it. The unmistakable sound of two dozen slippery sea lions smacking the pavement. The high school boys’ swim team has finished their laps, and they’re headed my way.
The rushing stream of soaking wet, teenage boys flows through the locker room door. Panic ensues.
I imagine shouting, “Cover yourselves! Mom on the floor! I’m coming in!”
The thought of seeing a bunch of naked teenage boys is as appealing to me at 41 as it was at 16. I stop short of my raid.
I pace around outside the locker room, scanning the club for a responsible adult male to help. Where are the instructors when I need them?
A clean-cut boy who looks to be about 15 emerges from the locker room wrapped in a towel. Boldly, I approach.
“Excuse me,” I say. He looks at me. Deer in headlights.
my cub
“My little boy’s in the locker room. Yeah, and he’s been in there a long time. Could you go in and check on him? I’d go in myself, but that might be awkward.”
“Okay,” he says.
Towel boy scampers into the locker room. I wait. And wait. And wait.
The door opens and out bounces my cub. Unaided. Unharmed. Happy as a clam. And barefoot.
Where, oh where, are his shoes?
Yep.
“Cover yourselves! Mom on the floor! I’m coming in!”
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised. Job 1:21 NIV
Before January 2012 makes its final exit, there’s an anniversary to remember.
This month marks the 39th year since the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States.
The hair on the back of your neck is rising as you read this, isn’t it?
Some of you are tuning out. Others are mentally rushing to your battle stations. Ready to defend your position in this divisive fight.
Regardless of which side you’re on, abortion inhabits a tragic, tender place.
The numbers are staggering. No one seems to know the exact figure. Most estimates agree abortion has ended more than 54 million pregnancies in America since Roe v. Wade.
That’s a lot of abortions and a lot of women. The Guttmacher Institute reports about half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy, and nearly one-third will have an abortion, by age 45.
The stakes are high. Abort73.com estimates providers take in more than one billion dollars annually for abortion services. On top of that, pro-life and pro-choice groups raise millions of dollars each year to support their causes.
Commonplace. Clinical. But still not openly discussed.
When was the last time you heard Jane or Mary or Lana flippantly drop, “Yes, I had an abortion last week,” in passing at the grocery store? More likely that conversation is shrouded in secrecy and whisper if it happens at all.
We whisper because this is a delicate subject. Maybe, despite our rights and choices, we recognize abortion ends human life.
Feminist writer Naomi Wolf acknowledged this way back on October 16, 1995, in The New Republic. Click here to read a full repost. Wolf writes:
Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die.
Ayelet Waldman did. In her 2009 best-selling book “Bad Mother,” Waldman writes a chapter entitled “Rocketship,” the nickname she gave her unborn child.
Waldman painfully recounts how she knew she was killing her baby. But she thought it was worth it. Better to choose to end his life than risk giving birth to a child who tested positive for possible birth defects. Waldman writes:
Although I know that others feel differently, when I chose to have the abortion, I feel I chose to end my baby’s life. A baby, not a fetus. A life, not a vague potentiality. As guilty and miserable as I felt, the only way I could survive was to confront my responsibility. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him. (p.131)
Now we can carry out this choice in near-complete privacy. No accomplices but an inanimate pill. Clean and quiet, or so we think.
Enter Jennie Linn McCormack of Idaho. Sometime in December 2010 or January 2011—news reports vary—this unemployed, unmarried mother of three ended her pregnancy with RU-486, the abortion pill, her sister obtained online. Only McCormack didn’t realize how far along she was.
Frightened and confused, she put the corpse of her baby in a box and set it outside on her porch. The cold, winter air preserved the remains until they were discovered by authorities following a tip. A whisper.
An autopsy concluded the baby was between five and six months gestation.
Can you imagine the horror of facing the remains of your own child? Placing them in a box? Leaving them alone outside in the cold?
McCormack was arrested under a 1972 state law making it illegal for a woman to induce her own abortion. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence.
Meanwhile, McCormack’s been ostracized in her town. Can’t go out. Can’t work. Her private actions making her a pawn in the public battle to decide whose rights, whose life will be protected.
I’m not interested in condemning women who’ve had abortions. I’m not qualified to do so. We all sin, myself included. In Christ, there is the gift of forgiveness for you as much as there is for me and my transgressions. Take hold of it.
extinguished
Encroaching on your rights or privacy isn’t my concern either. I believe it’s most often in brave, lonely, silent moments of desperation you make a choice. You try to set things right in a tragic, tender place.
Yet we can’t turn a blind eye to the mass killing of a muted people. Little ones who have no means to defend themselves. Who have been blotted out of existence. Snuffed out like tiny match lights.
We are American citizens, born and unborn. Hold fire for a moment on this bloodied battlefield and listen. They are your countrymen. Hear them whisper.
How will we answer?
For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13 NIV
Dear Father, hear and bless Thy beasts and singing birds; And guard with tenderness Small things that have no words. —Anonymous
Back in the day, I casually practiced yoga. It was easy then.
The asanas, or poses, were akin to warmup stretches I’d done for years cheerleading. My body was young. My muscles were flexible. Life was good.
That was before I carried a child in my womb for nine months, gave birth to him, then proceeded to sacrifice my body in all manner of ways to raise him into the fine, young first grader he is today.
One can only run on the fumes of a good fitness history for so long. Years of stress, changes and parenting begin to show.
Junk in the trunk. Bowl full of jelly. A little waddle here or there.
So when we arrived in Wichita, our family joined the YMCA. The Ys here are impressive and affordable. We needed to get into shape. It was destiny.
bouquet
Went to my first yoga class last Friday.
I sweated. I stumbled. I noticed I how badly I need a pedicure.
I struggled to breathe as the instructor lead our class into the 30th chaturanga dandasana of the hour. Good push-ups gone bad.
When yoga instructors give the command to do some New Age visualization, feel the energy bands, look to the inner flame or whatever, I talk to God instead.
At one point last Friday, I feared I was going to meet Him.
The instructor was trying to kill me. A pencil-thin, pretzel-like assassin intent on carrying out yogini’s revenge. Downward, dog.
When the class was over, an older gentleman who had labored alongside me approached the instructor. “Great class,” he said. “I’m glad I got to see it.”
Then the woman behind me spoke up. “There’s a beginner’s class tomorrow morning,” she said. “We go slow and take it nice and easy. You’ll be with a bunch of other people who are learning.”
coming unrolled
A remedial class?!
Use it or or lose it. Reap what you sow. Law of the land. Ah, but there is another law at work.
The yin and yang? The swinging pendulum? The circle of life? Hardly.
Grace is at work.
Grace spoke Saturday morning in the company of beginners. “Hold this pose if you want and can. Or not if you don’t. This is the Y. We’re not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Easy does it. One step at a time.
We drop the ball. Wreck the train. Make a chocolate mess. Waddle here or there.
“Pick it up and try again,” says Grace. “I’ll help you.”
Namaste, Grace. Namaste.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 NIV
Namaste is a friendly greeting between people when they meet. Derived from Sanskrit, it literally means “bow me to you” translated as “I bow to you”… In other words, when one says “Namaste” to another it means “I salute or recognize your presence or existence in society and the universe.”wikipedia.org
Entrepreneur and dear friend Mike Greene found it “refreshing and honest.” Bull’s-eye.
Robin Prakken
And Robin Prakken, one of the kindest, most gracious people I know, loved this post from the get-go. Something about how it reminds her we must simply “take them off!”
Me too, Robin. Me too.
Mike and Robin both chose as their Reader’s Choice post:
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