saturday night at my place!

Yesterday it occurred to me that what I’ve been thinking of as “becoming a better person” might actually just be “super single behavior”. Take my Saturday, for example.

Instead of celebrating Zoey and Kelli’s birthdays, I spent the entire day preparing for a 4:30 Bikram yoga class. My prep involved drinking 2.5 liters of water, making and eating potato latkes exactly four hours before class, and agonizing over whether or not I’d be able to stay in the room the entire time, which is supposed to be a beginner’s main goal.

There were plenty of things about Bikram that I didn’t like. For example, the fact that I couldn’t really do anything, and the fact that Kendall was next to me, contorted into ridiculous poses, while I lay on the floor simply trying to bring my heart rate down. I didn’t like the fact that my balance sucks, and that sometimes I mixed up my rights and lefts or was unable to figure out how exactly to grab my big toe without getting tangled up.

But while I watched the sweat roll down my shins (seriously? Sweating shins? I’m sure that’s never happened to me before), I also felt… emotional? Not in a crying way, but I did honestly feel like toxins were being expelled from my body and that I was going to emerge a cleaner detoxified and more complete person. That is, if I didn’t faint from the 105 degree temperature.

That feeling, or whatever it was, was enough to make me commit to going back for more. As I write this, I am again guzzling water in preparation for the 10am class that’s just around the corner from my apartment.

But back to my main concern… what I think of as me being awesome might strike others as this weird pathetic domesticity that befalls single women in their mid-to-late twenties. Because when I came home from Bikram (exhausted, ravenous), I got right to work and made French rolls from scratch, an Italian parsley and pumpkin seed pesto, and chopped up an avocado with baby tomatoes and onions for a salad, to be eaten with kale chips on the side.

I suppose if I had a cat, I would be even more worried about becoming an old maid. Yes, that’s the defining factor. If I crave companionship in the form of an animal, I will have ceased to be cool, and you should all be worried about me. Until then, I’ll consider it a pretty fabulous life.