Pilates and Pelvi

Texas, in the fall, is a hard place to breathe. Once corn harvest starts, followed immediately by gin season, our air quality rivals that of Houston and Los Angeles for uncleanliness. We like to think that our pollution is of a more natural nature than theirs. It makes us feel more self-righteous, secure in the knowledge that the spring sandstorms will blast our air achingly clean again.

I was contemplating this during Pilates class this morning. We’re all overcome with rampaging sinus crud. Everyone is snorting and suffering. Several people brought piles of Kleenex that they put on the floor next to their mats. As we hung upside down, suspended like bats from our own pelvi*, the tissues quickly migrated from the new to the used piles.

I could feel my head swell and expand as the stuff that had settled in the back of my head drained to the top while I was upside down. I wondered how big my head would get before the snot started to push my eyeballs out of their sockets.

Then we stood up.

And I almost fell down. The fluid had shifted so completely that I had no equilibrium. I was not alone. We all staggered significantly before being able to stand upright unassisted.

I wiped the sweaty hair out of my mascaraless eyes and surveyed the other, similarly unmade-up, women around me. None of us would set foot out of our houses looking this bad, except under cover of darkness, to go to an exercise class with other equally unkempt people.

God, we’re horrific. Unwashed hair, blemished skin and chapped noses. I wonder if this is why there’s never been a man attend this class for more than one or two sessions?

One Sunday morning at church a total stranger – lovely woman – came up to me and reminded me we’d moved the start time for the Monday morning class from 6:00 a.m. to 5:45 a.m.

I had no idea who she was!

She introduced herself on Monday morning. I knew her then. The fact that she was able to recognize me in real life, clean and coiffed, was a little bit disconcerting. Do I generally look that much like the wretched leviathan that I am before showering? I hope not.

I’m hoping maybe she just recognized my nose.

*I know this is not really a word. But it’s so much more fun to say than pelvises. Bleh. Try it. Pelvi, pelvi, pelvi. Much, much better, don’t you think?