Shoes-off time

Jan. 2007:

At the doctor's office for my annual physical, I hear the routine "take a deep breath" and feel a cold stethoscope press in about halfway up my back. I breathe in. And breathe out.

"Your lungs sound great," says my doctor, laughing. "But your muscles are way too tense! You need to start doing yoga or something."

"Oh please, I'm not at all flexible," I thought. "Besides, I'm just naturally wound too tight. It's part of my charm."

Last week:

I need to take 3.5 days off or I will lose those vacation days when I hit my next anniversary in two weeks, so I decided to take Friday off. (Yes, this is the world's best problem to have.)

That said, I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. In my ten years as a working girl, I'm fairly certain I've never taken a day off "just because" - there was always a house project, guests coming to town, a big party to prepare for, travel, etc.

Trying to form some semblance of a plan - because that is what I do best - I checked out the gym schedule to figure out if I could get in a Friday afternoon workout while everyone else was toiling away at the office. There was no kickboxing, but there was a class called "Body Flow": a combination of yoga, pilates, and tai chi. Oh, what the heck, I thought. Doctor's orders.

So at noon on Friday, I changed into my gym clothes and headed out. (True to form, something at work set me off and made my blood start pumping just as I was walking out the door.)

I got to the gym with two minutes to spare, grabbed a yoga mat, and joined about a dozen housewives in the grown-up version of what my Grandma Marge calls "shoes-off time." What's better than working out in your bare feet?

We stretched. We breathed. We stood on our tip-toes for so long I thought maybe I had actually grown an inch. I wasn't able to think about work because I was using all of my concentration to keep myself from tipping over while standing on one foot. And then, with ten minutes left to go in class, the instructor tells us to lay on our backs and "find a position comfortable enough that you can stay there for the next several minutes."

Several minutes! I'm thinking. This is my kind of class! And then, immediately: What the heck am I going to do lying here for several minutes?

Well, let me just say it was wonderful.

By the time I left class, I felt completely intoxicated. (Seriously, I was worried that I shouldn't be driving.) The rest of the afternoon was marvelous: I finished a ridiculous amount of errands, took Lucy to the dog park, cleaned the kitchen, and felt fantastic. The knots in my back were gone, I didn't have this incessant urge to check my work email, and I wasn't tired. Who knew it was this fun to be so darned calm?

Though I am still planning. The next Body Flow class is on Tuesday night at 7:15. I'm already looking forward to it. And I'm dragging Janice with me!