donutszenmom.com

Tuesday night is obedience class for Waylon. He’s doing well — sit, down, stay, come. All the classics. As per usual, the funny part is his antics while the teacher is talking and everyone — humans and dogs — stands around listening.

I wrote “humans and dogs,” but what I really like to think about as I stand there is the interaction between primates and canines. It’s utterly hilarious from that point of view. I think of all of us humans as chimps, or maybe as Koko the gorilla, and it’s so funny that we have these canines on strings, who we pick up and hold (if they’re small, like Ruby, the tiny, nervous Papillon), or shake their hands, or snuggle with, or try to make listen to us.

As I mentioned before, the classroom floor is polished concrete, so you can always see all of Waylon’s drool puddles. Here at the house, the tiles have a matt finish, so you don’t see the drool as clearly. What I’m discovering in class is that damn! he drools a LOT. And then he walks through the puddles and leaves foot prints. This would be gross, except he has the sweetest breath ever. Uh, maybe my outlandish love for him makes me biased?

Anyhow, old drooly lies around while the teacher talks & the other canines sit or fidget. He does his Army crawl when he sees something he wants to get closer to (e.g., sexy girl dogs). And last night, he discovered something new. He was lying there, then rolled over on his back, inviting me to rub his belly, which I did. Then he rolled the rest of the way over. Whoa! That made him closer to the teacher (who he loves). I could see the gears in his head turning. Sure enough, he rolled over again. Closer still! I gave his leash some slack, ’cause I wanted to see how far he’d take this. He executed four barrel rolls, leaving a little puddle at each stop. All of the primates people thought this behavior was hilarious.

***

Okay, I’ve been really struggling with my hair. I got it cut, then tried to grow it out, but finally gave up and chopped it off again yesterday. For Mysore practice, I’d been sporting absurd little pigtails that I kept moving around my head each day. Surely there was an optimal placement that would keep them out of the way during leg-behind-the-head poses? But no, apparently I rub my calf against the entire surface of my head when I do these poses. No place to put a pony- or pigtail.

Plus, I have to transition from post-yoga mess to corporate-acceptable before I head to the office, and the bedraggled just-washed mid-length hair wasn’t cutting it. So now it’s gone.

Only down side to all of this is my post-yoga ‘fro. Not my best look.

***

Did half-primary to pincha mayurasana today. Very nice. After utkatasana, though, as I was going into the bakasana transition, MM came over and stopped me.

“Instead of bakasana, just put your hands down, then lift up and press your feet up toward your butt,” he said.

In other words, just lift up to half handstand and then press back to chaturanga. Okay, no problem. Hey, would you mind turning off the gravity?

I mean, seriously?!

I do have to learn how to do this. I’m pretty sure part of my problem with it (aside from the earth’s gravitational field) is my disinclination to lean forward so that my shoulders are out past my hands. It just really feels scary and unstable to me.

If anyone out there has any words of wisdom on this, I’d be happy to hear.