View from the North 40: Skills in the art of avoidance

In support of this year’s presidential candidates, I’ve stopped listening to them and have pursued a few hobbies instead.

I’ve written about the yoga, and yes, it’s still reminding me that I have pursued a lifetime of poor fitness choices. The interesting thing about yoga is that it gives me enough physical exertion to burn off some agitation, but it also focuses on breathing, controlling your breathing, improving your breathing, using your breathing to improve your activities, that sort of thing. I have learned that I suck at breathing.

I kind of knew this, y’know, because I have no lung capacity, never have. Any contest between me and the other kids to see who could hold their breath the longest ended with me being the fastest loser. I remember seeing “Poseidon Adventure” in the movie theater when I was 7.

(Yes, my parents had questionable parenting skills to take me to a disaster movie when I was that young. They also took me to “Jaws” when I was 10. The theater was so packed that we had to split up to find seats, so as a grade-schooler I sat alone among strangers in the dark watching a terrifying shark turn the ocean into a blood bath. It was a spectacular parenting fail and one of my favorite childhood stories. But I digress.)

So I remember watching “Poseidon Adventure” and realizing that I would be doomed to drown on that sinking ship. But if yoga has taught me one thing, it’s that I’ve been slowly killing myself all my life because I don’t just have poor lung capacity, I breathe incorrectly. I naturally exhale when I’m supposed to be inhaling, and inhale on the exhale movement, but mostly, I hold my breath when I’m exerting myself. Apparently, muscles need oxygen to function properly. That explains a lot.

I have hope that I’ll learn to breathe sometime before I die because, no matter the outcome of the presidential election, I’ll still have the desire to ignore politics by doing something else.

I also started another something else to keep me occupied. My most recent activity is called washing dishes. I’m fairly decent at this — not professional caliber, mind you, but OK. I’ve just been working on it at home where I can start into it slowly, do a few a week. I don’t want to hurt myself with this new exercise. I would hate to pull a muscle scrubbing a water glass or something.

In the way that exercises can be categorized as aerobic or strength-training, I’m told this falls under the broad spectrum of household chores. It doesn’t sound like a fun exercise, but it’s oddly satisfying.

Apparently, my husband has been doing them for years, and I didn’t realize it.

He explained that this is not just a good time-filler, but also how dirty dishes have been transformed into clean dishes all these years. So much for my cleaning faerie theory, but, y’know, thank god — mystery solved! I’m truly blown away that he has been exercising this way all these years and I didn’t even know. I feel like I should be on a reality TV series called “The Secret Lives of Spouses,” or something.

I doubt I’ll ever build up his endurance for dish washing, but I’m all right with that. I still have the breathing challenge. Baby steps.

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I’ve been contemplating learning another skill called something like thoughtfulness, or kindness, something like that, but it sounds like it’s an advanced exercise in a discipline called life. I’ll think about it at [email protected].