This morning, I attended my usual 10 am bikram yoga class. The instructor welcomed us to class and stated that we must have come to practice hot yoga in order to cool off! After completing yet another invigorating bikram class, I confirmed that today’s scorcher would top 100 degrees, the maximum temperature for bikram yoga. We’ve broken the 1925 record for the number of triple-digit days in one year.
As if going to bikram was not hot enough for me, I finished cleaning my apartment, got myself cleaned up and attended the Hot Sauce Festival. By the time I arrived, I was too hungry to wait in the long lines to sample the various hot sauces. Instead, I scanned the food vendor area, saw the shortest line and jumped in it. Fortunately, the vendor was an Ethiopian restaurant that I’d wanted to try since moving to Austin.
With my sampler plate of Ethiopian food and an electrolyte that scarcely suggested “lemonade,” I sat down in the shade, near the live music stage, to slowly begin my second major sweat of the day. I had impeccable timing since my friend’s band was setting up to play.
As best I could, I enjoyed the food, music and fact that I was not stressed out. I couldn’t help but think about the chronic droughts here in Austin. In order not to throw myself a pity party, I thought about the poor East coast, which first had an earthquake, followed by a hurricane and subsequent floods in some parts.
I called my parents, who live in the central part of North Carolina, to see how hurricane Irene was treating them. I became concerned when a recorded message informed me that the number I’d just dialed was no longer in service. That number had been in service since 1979 when my parents bought the house and was one of two land line numbers that I had committed to memory.
I called my mother’s cell. To my relief, the phone was not out of order due to any natural disaster, but rather my parents, who are both in their 70s, had finally got Dad his own cell and let go of the land line. Of course, I had to find all that out the hard way. The last time I’d spoken with them, they were just thinking about doing that. I did not think that in as little time as a week, they’d actually have followed through on the idea. I expected at least a month or two of hemming and hawing.
Mom told me that the hurricane just brought some rain their way, but nothing serious. As a matter of fact, the earthquake had been more dramatic, but not for her. She had recently undergone knee surgery and had been doped up on percocet. So when Dad asked her if she had seen things on the shelf shaking, she said, “Oh, I thought was just the percocet. I’ve been seeing things shake for a couple of days!”
And maintaining a good sense of humor is just one of the ways they’ve been married for 50 years.
As we ease into the school year, I can only hope that none of the collective natural disasters interferes with classes. I’m mildly concerned about water shortages. Just walking down the unair-conditioned hallways breaks me into a sweat. Too bad I cannot put down a yoga mat and do 90 minutes of bikram with the students.