It has been a lovely cozy day. I managed to make it to yoga this morning, only to be frustrated by my hamstrings, which refused to loosen. And wouldn�t you know it that this was the day she decides to throw hanumanasana (the splits � the front and back kind, not the side to side kind) at us. Needless to say, I did not get there. Ahimsa, always ahimsa. (Ahimsa=non-harming. In the context of yoga class, it means don�t push yourself too hard.)

Mr. Spy is vaguely worried that I�m going to become a hippie and run off and join a commune, so taken with yoga am I of late. It�s true, I�ve been thinking about it more. I borrowed a book from the studio called, Living Your Yoga, which is not at all the kind of book I tend to read. If it were Christian, it would be a daily devotional and you wouldn�t get me near it with a ten foot pole. But it actually was just the right thing for me to read this month, when I�ve been so stressed about so many things.

And then there�s the matter of the neti pot. It sits like a small white Aladdin�s lamp on my bathroom sink. It�s cute. AJ is fascinated by it. I bought the neti pot on Wednesday while into day four of the sinus headache from hell. I�ve always been a little weirded out by the notion of pouring saline into one nostril to watch it flow out the other, but I was desperate. It seems kind of like a hard core yogini thing to do, this twice a day habit. But here�s the thing � no amount of decongestant has ever improved my breathing this much. I still have a low grade sinus infection, but I�m functioning without drugs (I�m allergic to a lot of antibiotics, so I try hard not to take them) and I haven�t had a nosebleed in a week � unheard of for me in the winter. And it leaves me with the vague sensation that I have just swum in the ocean � a lovely feeling. Maybe it is a magic lamp after all.

After yoga, we managed to lounge around the house. It was cold and windy and promised snow. We read books. We ventured out briefly to buy AJ a pair of shoes and some takeout and then back to the womb. We made lunch while watching cooking shows on PBS. We played board games with AJ while watching Lawrence of Arabia. And then the snow began, gently at first and then harder. Now it is sleeting. I can hear the ice skittering against the windows and skylights. The snowplows come scraping by every half an hour or so. We have battened down the hatches and are in no particular hurry to venture forth.

AJ is in his bath, wreaking havoc on his toy boat. There is a storm at sea. It has taken on water and the Androgynous Sea Captain is going down with her ship. Meanwhile, a family of five and their cat and dog are floating lazily on the surface of the water, calmly coasting with the very waves that are destroying the seacraft. Perhaps, I think, it is all a matter of attitude. Perhaps ahimsa is not the worst way to live.

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