Who's a Slacker?

That would be me. I must admit I've felt like a slacker lately because, for a variety of legitimate reasons, I've missed yoga for two months.  And you’re wondering how I define legitimate, right? The story is that I attend lunchtime yoga on Mondays.  When I travel for work or vacation, Monday yoga is almost always out.  During September and October, I was on the road five out of eight weeks.  Combine that schedule with a pulled hamstring necessitating two physical therapy sessions a week, and you can see how yoga might go by the wayside.  It’s just hard to rationalize taking two hours away from work for physical therapy and then following it with a yoga session.

Though the hamstring issue hasn’t completely gone away, my prescription for physical therapy has, so I finally made it back to yoga this week. That’s why I have a heating pad under my leg as I sit here at my desk. At least, it’s cool enough in Atlanta these days to make the heating pad a pleasant experience.

 Because there’s a core group of us who’ve been taking yoga from the same instructor for many years, walking into class is like coming home.  Most of the folks in class don’t work full time but know that I do, so they supposed I’d been traveling for work.  One was worried that something had happened to me, but another gal wisely noted that since she was still seeing my column in the local paper, I was probably OK. It’s nice to be missed, and I missed all of them as well.  

We tend to be a bit chatty before class gets going, as that’s the only time we see each other. On occasion, a few of us have gone to grab a bite when class ended, but not often.  I may be the chattiest of us all, and that may be why I started thinking last year about having an afternoon holiday gathering for my yoga pals so we could have more time to get acquainted.  Somehow the idea never came to fruition, but I’m considering it again for this year. 

Most folks would begin thinking about dates and menus, but as a word nerd, my first thought is what to call the gathering. I considered a play on the Stephen Sondheim song The Ladies who Lunch,  famously sung by the late Elaine Stritch, maybe Women who Workout, but we do have one guy in our yoga class. Not to mention, that song is an ode to drinking and desperation. Ah well, if this idea is to become a reality, I’ve got to get into gear, or I’ll soon be feeling like a slacker about party planning as well as yoga.