You can bounce a quarter off these puppies.

Approaching the 4th anniversary of my 49th birthday I'm trying to look as good as I say I feel, for 49 of course. Thus my botox experience and having my lips done. Ahh lips. It started when someone sent me a photo from my junior high year book. I looked at it and thought to myself, "that girl has lips". Looking in the mirror I compared the "girl's" lips to mine now. I had none. Just a thin stretch of lip on top and bottom. Horrors!! So off to the dermatoligist's office to see about getting my lips back. "I dont want Angelina lips" I told her, thinking, well maybe I do but... and tra la, several hundred dollars and an hour later I had my junior high lips back again. "Kiss me" I told my husband when I got home. "You can bounce a quarter off these puppies!" I proclaimed happily. He declined, for the moment he said, till the swelling went down. I pouted prettily (I think). Ten days later I went back for my check up, still deleriously happy with my lips, and the dermatologist suggested I might want to get rid of that frown line. It really did clash with my pretty lips. So...several hundred dollars later I am frownless. It really is nice but I'm having to work on a deadly stare since I can't frown at people anymore who don't notice my lips.

Hot Yoga, The Sequel To The Sequel

Am I a glutton for punishment or what? I'm actually thinking of, maybe, perhaps, we'll see, going back there again. The scene of my greatest humiliations. The nightmarescape of my worst yoga clothing related fears. The...but I digress. Yes, I have been feeling better, more energy (had a bout with low magnesium and have been on prescription liquid magnesium, yuck) so a when a new friend asked if I wanted to go back to it I said no, not really, but that was in my head, my mouth apparently said sure we can go, I'll show you what to do.

I guess I can go back and pretend I'm new and have never been there before. They can't possibly recognize me after gaining 45 pounds altogether. I've dyed my hair red and I'll be wearing complete body covering yoga clothes. But the mirrors will still be there, all those mirrors. Walls and walls of them, everywhere you turn. You can't close your eyes because you should be watching the instructor, or the mirrors, and closing my eyes makes me lose my balance, and falling down flat on my face is bound to draw some kind of attention so thats out.

I could lie to the new friend and say I really never took hot yoga. That I was just trying to impress her with my deep knowledge of sweating techniques. But she's seen my key tag card that lets me just swipe in my info instead of signing in. Damn. Turns out the little peculiarity I had about eating insanely after each session and gaining weight was related to my ever lowering magnesium levels. Threw my electrolytes all out of whack and the hunger was my body telling me that something was wrong somewhere. So, maybe this time I might sweat off a little fat instead of adding to it. Maybe, but really I think the easiest idea is to ditch the new friend and cover all the mirrors in my house with colorful material to make them look like artsy wall hangings.