Normally, I don’t drink before a workout, but the whole point of this Friday stretch class was to combine happy hour with fitness. I’d had a “detox/retox” experience before, but never simultaneously!
As what often happens in this town, either nothing special is going on, or EVERYTHING happens during the same weekend. So, I took a half day off, running errands after lunch, swimming and THEN attending this exercise class with alcohol.
While waiting in a slow-moving line, I picked up a local community paper and on the monthly calendar, saw the event:
As usual, I scouted out my spot in the room once I entered. I like being as close to the front as possible. Not just to hear and see what posture the instructor will lead us into next, but also, I’ve developed an aversion to other people’s feet in all my years of doing Bikram yoga.
Next, I perused the selection of wines, which ranged from moscato (yuck) to a more palatable cabernet sauvignon. Tweety and I weren’t having any of the sweet (neither red nor white) or whites, which only left cab.
I nursed that one drink throughout the entire class, which definitely put me in the “lightweight” category. Other women truly embraced the happy hour aspect of the evening. The alcohol didn’t loosen me up, but the mood of the class was comparatively rowdier than usual.
As a matter of fact, humans consuming alcohol made for a livelier class than the stretch class I’d attended with four baby goats. Those kids occasionally bleated throughout the class. On the other hand, with each new posture, a choir of participants were very verbal about their experience.
Especially a woman behind me. She was hilarious. I’m not sure that was merely the effect of alcohol. At one point, she requested that we do the plow position again because she wanted to hook one of her legs around a pole to assist her.
After class, I met my sister and a friend at a restaurant that we’d never tried before. That was another reason I hadn’t refilled my wine glass. I’d wanted to order the hot honey mango margarita, but the restaurant was out. Instead I got a coconut margarita, which wasn’t as good as the one I make at home, but did have the added deliciousness of toasted sliced almonds on top.
I happily used the two cocktail straws as chopsticks to eat the almonds. At the end of dinner, when the server was at the table to help us settle the bill, I misfired with the cocktail straws, causing one to flip up over my head, flinging drink and almonds. No one at the table even saw that. They were all looking at their devices. I couldn’t believe it as I asked them if I had anything in my hair.
As I turned to see if anyone in the booth behind us was reacting to a straw projectile, I spied the straw in the seat between my friend and me. I’d like to credit/dedicate the foolishness of that moment to the spirit of the stretch and sip.