Yoga and Tulips

When I was a fairly limber 20-year-old, I took a yoga class at Waikato Hospital.

Side note: I was working in the cancer registry of the hospital at the time, with a girl named Raewynn.

This is the lovely Waikato Hospital.


What is a cancer registry, you ask?
I think it was a pity job.
Pity for me and for my boss.
Our boss was Arthur Nisbet, an ex-military type who should probably have retired.
Raewynn and I sat in a little office that was underneath the nurses' quarters.
I used to sneak up to the nurses' kitchen and eat their fresh white bread smothered with butter and this divine raspberry-apple jam.
Arthur was just down the hall.
I don't know what Arthur did all day, but Raewynn and I entered (by hand, of course, because this was a hundred years ago) all of the hospital cancer stats onto large record sheets.
I blithely wrote down, every day, patients' names and diagnostic codes in the records, without any thought for their anguish.
Lung cancer, breast cancer (the diagnostic code is 174, if you care), malignant melanoma, benign tumours. They were all just words to me.
Now I know better.

Back to yoga.
I loved it.
It was easy for me.
Our instructor (an elderly man whose favourite trick was inhaling water up one nostril and exhaling it out of the other) was big on Salute to the Sun.

I loved it too.
Tree pose?
No sweat.

This one, not so much.











Many years passed and yoga was NOT a part of them.

About five years ago, I realized that if I was to have any chance of enjoying myself in my old age, I needed to get back to yoga.
So I embarked on a love/hate relationship with yoga classes.
Our instructor is ex-Marine and runs a tight ship.
Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon I fight with myself.
"Shall I go to yoga tonight?"
"You certainly need to."
"But I'm tired and it hurts!"
Sternly: "You know you'll feel better if you do."

And I do.
Eventually.
Last night was no exception.
Even the downward dog hurt.

Enough of that!

We went to the tulip fields in Woodburn yesterday.
It was sunny and hot, the tulips were at their peak, and you could see snowy Mt. Hood against the blue sky.


I love Joshie's scrawny little neck.


Jenny and The Boys.
That's Jeff in the wild sunglasses.


Some of my favourite close-ups.



The only way to get a photo of Natalie when she's running free is this.


Our sweet McKenzie.