A Little More About #4

My current favorites: #4 and Casey.

To anyone reading this who lives in my house: I am fickle regarding my favorites, and easily bought off with brownies. Homemade, no icing.

We’re coming up on #4’s fifth grade promotion. She started first grade when the kids came to live with us, so she’s the only one who has completed all grades (minus kindergarten) in the same elementary school.

I remember dropping her off at the school’s blacktop those first few weeks. I held #5 in my arms, watching while #3 and #2 ran off to their brand-new friends, but #4 lined up for class and just stood there crying without sound. It ripped my heart out and I couldn’t fix it. It lasted a few weeks; she quickly became our most social kid, much more interested in hanging out with her friends than in anything related to school, or responsibility.

She often balks at doing her chores when there’s a babysitter on. One night when she was in first grade, the sitter gave her the option: she could either do her chores or go to bed early. As in right now: two full hours before bedtime.

#4 gladly opted to go to bed.

In second grade, her class was assigned a biography project. It was supposed to be a big (relative to the second grade) research thing, culminating in a posterboard and a presentation where each student dressed as their subject. #4’s subject was Hillary Clinton, revealing a deep, subconscious need to piss her father off.

We didn’t know anything about the project, despite all of the notices regarding deadlines that were apparently sent home with her. Our first awareness of it came when we received a call from her teacher.

Teacher: The deadline for the biography project is rapidly approaching and she hasn’t turned in any of her materials.

Us: Uh, what biography project?

We had a talk with her that night. Found out she hadn’t even read the book yet. We asked her why she hadn’t done any of the work, why she hid the project from us.

#4: I didn’t feel like doing it.

Discounting her lies of omission, she is probably our most honest kid.

In the morning she doesn’t want to get up, is slow to get moving, can’t find anything to wear because it’s all wadded up on the floor of her closet or else in her bed, and finds any number of distractions as she is supposedly getting ready for school, many of which end with her forgetting homework or some other essential item for school, like pants. This is only on school mornings. Weekends she’s up before 7am. Yet as much as she complains about school, she practically runs there every day.

She can’t have nice things. She desperately wanted Uggs for about two years, not hung up on the name but fixated instead on how very comfy they are. Uggs are stupidly expensive, so I got her a slightly less expensive knockoff for Christmas in her favorite color. She was in love. But before Christmas vacation was over, she had projectile vomited on their lovely, untreated purple suede. From the top bunk.

She loses her shoes. What I mean by this is she will lose one of a pair, permanently, and this has happened more than once.

Any new pants she gets are immediately ripped; new shirts are instantly stained.

#3 got a pink Abercrombie sweatshirt once that she literally loved to pieces. Finally, it was so torn and stained that we had to throw it away.

#4 showed up wearing it a week later, expressing her belief that anything in the trash is fair game, and everything is appropriate to wear to school.

CC has said to her at the dinner table on numerous occasions, “You look homeless.”

Here’s the thing: In nearly every way, #4 is exactly like me. Exactly. I was like that as a kid and I haven’t changed all that much. How is it possible that this child, who shares none of my genes, has all of my train wreck characteristics? She didn’t learn them from me, she came with them. When we met, that chaotic, disorganized part of my soul that hates following through on anything and has a hard time finding a matching pair of socks looked out at her in recognition and said, Oh, hey! There’s two of us? Oh, dear.

#4 was being given a hard time at dinner tonight by #3 because she lost a headband that was loaned to her. Her defense?

#4: Don’t loan me things. It ends bad. (Looks up from plate) What? I speak the truth.

I know, sweetie. I know.

Not a Dry Heat

San Francisco, 2001, on the road with Aida.

Back when CC is just my boss and #5 doesn’t even exist yet.

CC tells me about this great yoga studio he’s been to here. He says they’re running a special and I should check it out.

I should mention that at this time in my life, I live on Jamba Juice, Powerbars, coffee and chocolate, and smoke a pack of non-filtered cigarettes a day. I do no exercise beyond loading our thirteen-truck show in and out and walking to work. Though in San Francisco the walking to work part does include dodging the homeless guys trying to pee on me, which counts for something.

The thing CC never mentions is that this is hot yoga. Bikram, to be exact, though at the time that means nothing to me.

What it means is ninety minutes in one hundred and five degree heat.

I walk into the studio of Funky Door Yoga and it’s so hot the floor burns my feet through my socks. Socks that I am promptly chastised for wearing by another student. Whatever. I’m so completely overwhelmed by everything: by what the teacher is saying, by the heat, by trying to contort my body while just trying to not pass out or puke that the ninety minutes passes surprisingly quickly.

Within six hours though, roughly the time between the class and when I go to work, every single muscle in my body is screaming. My earlobes hurt. I’m convinced I cracked a rib. I cannot feel several of my toes nor turn my head to the left.

That’s when CC tells me if I don’t go back the next day, I’ll be screwed, and will hurt like this for at least a week, more likely ten days. He’s good the way he times his imparting of choice information. I tell him he’s mixing the show tonight because I am pretty sure I’m not strong enough to push the faders on the sound board.

So I go back. The second class is harder. I spend more time face down on the mat. The ninety minutes does not pass quickly. I survive, I hurt less, I don’t make it back to yoga the rest of this stop.

On this tour, part of my job on the load-in is climbing up the sixteen-foot straight ladder to the service truss, plugging some stuff in, and climbing back down, about a million times. Every trip to the top I go to my knees and wait for the blackness to pass and try to catch my breath, listening to my sad, crispy lungs wheezing. Something has to change.

Fast forward to Dallas, about ten weeks later. I have decided to quit smoking. My brain isn’t working because of this, even though I’m using the patch. I desperately need something to do while not at work besides sit around my hotel room and Not Smoke. Enter Bikram Yoga Dallas. This time CC goes with me.

You sweat your ass off in these classes and put a towel on your mat to soak it up. I have to take the patch off because it won’t stay on. Any time my face gets close to my towel, whether due to the pose or due to me passing out, it smells so heavily of cigarettes that I want to smoke it.

I mean, I really want to smoke my towel. I want to roll around naked on it and suck all the sweat out of it and slice it into little strips with my knife, strips which I will then smoke, smoke, smoke, one right after the other, possibly more than one at a time.

Quitting stuff makes you crazy.

The rest of the tour we seek out Bikram wherever we can. A bunch of the other company members are seeking it out too. In Tulsa, the only class we can take that isn’t during work hours is at 6:30am, which is really damn early when you work nights. Also, rental cars in Tulsa are stupidly expensive. Perhaps they have slightly less tourism than, say, Florida. But I’m desperate. I get up early. I rent a car. We go. This is also the city in which I start eating bacon.

Here’s why Bikram works for me: This isn’t peaceful, blissed out, Om-type yoga. This is hard. This is badass instructors walking around screaming at you, “Lock your leg! LOCK YOUR LEG!!!!” until you lock your goddamn leg.

Once I quit smoking, there wasn’t anything left to smooth over how angry I was. I had no idea why I was angry, but there it was, and because I can’t drink or do drugs anymore either the only thing I knew to do was go sweat my ass off and try to lock my goddamn leg.

Bikram is a real guy and a few years ago took what some may call a less-than-yogic path with his franchise. He may have gotten a little ego-maniacal. He may have alienated some of his teachers, including some of his very first and most loyal. He’s human, just like the rest of us. His yoga still works for me.

Happy, peaceful yoga just makes me want to start strangling kittens, but stick me in a room where I can barely keep it together, and I walk out of there a different woman. I walk out of there peaceful.

Back in February, I got a call from the high school that something was wrong with #1. They were calling an ambulance. They needed me to be there.

My roadie training kicked in, where you try to stave down the panic and methodically process the next very most important thing. But the yoga. All these years of sweating my rage onto the mat and chasing after my breath. Somehow it made space in my brain between the thoughts. Space that led coherent thought to coherent thought. I grabbed every document I needed. I made sure I was wearing pants. I found chocolate. I put the pups in their crate, called CC on the way and was at the high school within four minutes of receiving that phone call. I showed up for #1 and stayed calm. Me, not panicking. Who’d have guessed that.

That’s why I keep coming back. How about you? What do you do to keep your head?

If you’d like to support a fellow blogger in her trek to quit smoking, check out Momfog. She’s got five kids, is quitting smoking, and makes these really cool cakes that I kind of want to fondle.