How to be aggressive and humble at the same time.

Yogi

Me

The concept of being shit at yoga is going to tweak a few nipples.  Because yoga is supposed to be non-judgemental, without failure, and all about you and your mat rather than what everyone else in the class is doing.  I can tell you what everyone else in the class is doing: they’re buying US$16 BILLION worth of yoga stuff per year. “Western” Yoga is booming, with participation in the US more than doubling in less than a decade.  Typing “yoga” into youtube will overwhelm you with young, flexible, well presented white women doing things that look fascinatingly impossible.

There are plenty of progress shots (there’s no “before and after” in yoga, my friends, it’s a JOURNEY) but they all start from a level of flexibility that most of us have not managed since we were four.  Look again at that picture of me.  Is that hand EVER going to touch that foot?  There’s estimated to be 300 million people worldwide sliding or stumbling their way towards savasana.  They’re surely not all as flexible as the 20-something vegan goddesses that rule the web.  Some of them must be a bit podgy and stiff and tired and wobbly too.

Yoga is about more than just you and the mat.  It’s also about pushing yourself, and feeling good within yourself, and getting to the point of not caring what others think about you and what you look like.  You will know I’ve found how to be truly humble when I start posting the videos of me arranging myself into and out of the poses I’m so shit at.

Yogi still taken from:

https://www.doyogawithme.com/content/flow-yoga-energize

Stats taken from:

https://www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016%20Yoga%20in%20America%20Study%20RESULTS.pdf

https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/iayt.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/bibliographies-members/stats.pdf

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Second Children are second class citizens

This is my 10 month old son, eating a chip.

“I’m only half-Scottish, so this feels only half-right”

If anyone had given my daughter a deep fried greasy bit of carb at 10 months I’d have knocked it out of her hand and given them a lecture, then gently handed her a piece of washed organic cucumber to nibble on.  This might be why she hates me now.

Kid number one we read all the manuals, ingested all the contrary information and distilled it into precious, personality-defining heirlooms of type-A angst.  Kid number two?  I’ve yet to mash a mix of homegrown vegetables through a strainer for him to spit out and rub in his hair.  I’ve yet to sit sobbing in a supermarket carpark because he’s not sleeping the right amount of hours in a day.  Occasionally I fish bits of dirt, craft supplies and floor-food from his gob and consider that parenting.

When I weaned his sister in a frantic late-30’s attempt to conceive again as quick as possible I felt so guilty I would drive across Glasgow to the posh whole foods shop to purchase organic formula expressed from actual archangels for my little cherub.

At least wee Bruce is still on the boob.  (Yes, we called him Bruce, which in Australia also marks him as a second class citizen.  The politest response I’ve had to his name is “Oh, is that a FAMILY name?”)

Luckily for him he’s not getting kicked off the nipple anytime soon, because I’m too lazy to deal with the 4am screaming tit-tantrums and more importantly, I’m dropping about a kilo a month.   Weird diets, exercise, calorie counting, we’ve all tried them, and deep down we know they’re all bullshit.  There’s only three things that will help you lose weight effectively:  Breastfeeding, amphetamines and youth.  (Don’t try all three at once.)   I’ve decided he can breastfeed forever, and I’m going to squeeze my boobs through the school fence bars for his lunchtime munch just so I can continue to eat what I like.

So he’s now not even a second class citizen, he’s just a weight loss technique.  Poor second child.

I’m shit at cutting my own hair.

I got sooo bored waiting for a kid to get off the toilet (No, YOU wipe it.  No YOU WIPE!) that I opened the drawer and took out the scissors.  Now I look like this:

I was hoping to infuse a joyous punk ethos but instead I have a head of rat-chewed frustration and a bathroom covered in hair.

I’m shit at baking

20 minutes to mix up a “poolish ferment” that promised to make my bread light and airy.

4 hours of doing other shit.

30 minutes of measuring, mixing and kneading and kneading and kneading and knuckling and kneeding.

90 minutes of doing other shit.

Oh, you beautiful, quivering yeasty organ of white carbo-wonder!

Another 30 minutes or so of shaping and smearing and lovingly rolling and I realise it’s now nearly midnight.  So into the fridge it goes, so it can prove slowly overnight and I can wow my family with my suddenly-signature Roast Peach and Pumpkin Spiced Scrolls for breakfast.

Roast Peach and Pumpkin with loadsa spices. Like the creamiest, tastiest turd ever.

Cannot be ARSED cooking these tonight.

 

OH FOR FUCKSAAAAAKE!!!  Fell at the last hurdle:

It took me more time to make these than it did to give birth to my son.  Might as well have left these buns in the oven for 9 months too.

 

 

I’m shit at doing kiddie hairdos.

 

I could just tell everyone proudly that she did it all by her three-year-old self.  But it was me, and she didn’t even wriggle.   The real crime was letting her leave the house like that.