The frozen trek to yoga

Honestly, it’s been so cold that I find myself looking forward to hot flashes.

Oh sure winter teased us with a couple days of spring-like sunshine this week but the week prior to that, the smallest blizzard ever took place in my front yard. It’s not supposed to do this, I thought, as I ventured out and watched the flurries swirl around my legs like tiny white fairy house cats. I sang “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow … somewhere else.” A lot of people like snow. I find it to be the unnecessary freezing of perfectly good water. The snow storm lasted all of 15 minutes but that was enough, more than enough for me. I came back in and wished I didn’t have to leave again until April.

But for days after the snow, there was rain and more rain followed by a hard freeze and wind. This is just Mother Nature’s way of saying “up yours” to us for global warming I thought as I went out at 6:32 a.m. to turn my car on to defrost and warm up. I was bound and determined that no matter what obstacles Mother Earth was throwing in my path, I was going to get to yoga class.

I dressed in three pairs of leggings, two pairs of sock and fur-lined boots along with two long-sleeve T-shirts and a sweatshirt. Before leaving, I topped it all off with a hat, coat and gloves. I could barely move with all the bulk and my husband remarked I looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man only not as cheery and with

“girl parts.” Well for cryin’ out loud, if you can’t savor a bad mood on a freezing, gray winter morning before coffee then, when can you?

I became even less cheery when I got to the bottom of the driveway and couldn’t unlock the gate. Our local herd of 11 deer stood in statue stillness watching me try repeatedly to get the key into the lock. It was frozen solid. Huffing like Puff the Magic Dragon, I called for help. My beloved came to my rescue.

“No way to unlock the gate until it defrosts,” he said. “The only way out is across the pasture and out the back” The “back” is a rutted dirt access driveway. “Oh no,” said I, “not in the Honda.” “Oh yes,” said he, “in the Honda. Here we go.”

And away we went with him driving and me praying this little cross-country excursion wasn’t going to cost me the entire under carriage of my car. I wanted to scream “be careful!” and “watch out!” and “slow down!” and “stop!” but that just seemed ungrateful so I closed my eyes, tightened my grip on the door handle and thanked the powers that be there were not cattle or sheep to maneuver around.

We made it to the road and off I went as my beloved hoofed it back up the driveway, after climbing over the frozen locked gate. What a guy.

It was all good now or so I thought until I hit a patch of black ice and literally got turned around 180 degrees. It was scary but I got the car righted and went on my way again only, more slowly.

I needed to deliver three very large, empty cardboard boxes and a giant white trash bag stuffed to bulging with used empty plastic grocery bags to some folks I do volunteer work with before I went to yoga. I arrived at my destination with no more mishaps. After parking, I grabbed the stack of empty boxes in one hand and the bag of bags in the other and turned to walk the several hundred feet to my destination and that’s when it all went wrong, again.

I was mid step when a hurricane force gust of wind caught the boxes and the bag of bags. Suddenly my arms were up and my hands were above my head as the boxes acted like sails and the bag of bags turned into some sort of mutant not-so-hot air balloon. I should have just let go of both boxes and bags but, I didn’t. Instinct had me grip them with the intensity of someone hanging on for dear life. The wind caught and filled the boxes and the giant bag of bags and up, up, up I went. Both feet left the ground by several inches and back, back, back I flew. And then, the gust of wind was gone, gone, gone and down, down, down I went, on my butt breaking the ice on a frozen puddle.

It was painful. It was cold. It was wet. It was no small amount of embarrassing. It was irritatingly ridiculous.

Wet, bedraggled and bruised I arrived at yoga class and was grateful 50 minutes later to be lying prone in the corpse pose. And while I was laying there in savasana pretending to clear my mind and “go to my happy place” all I could think was I really, really, really miss hating the summer heat.