What do you do with sunshine

I used to love that old song:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine; you make me happy when skies are gray...

When it comes to rallying for life, I am at the front of the picket line waving the flag of independence and self-reliance. At some point, I figured you can have the best of both worlds, so relying and depending on people has gotten harder the older we get, but when you learn you can harbor such trust in someone else (friend, family, personal relationships overall) you start to use it.

So what happens when you realize that you're life isn't everything you thought it would be? For instance, with the economy in the crapper, I run into more and more people who are extremely unhappy with their job. And considering you spend like 80% of your day working, it's probably one of those places you prefer to be coming up roses. On the other hand, maybe you entered into a line of work that you much later realize isn't what you want to do forever.

If you're in this boat, keep reading...

While we wait with breath bated and fingers crossed, it's becoming ever-so important to rely on the other things that make you happy. Primarily, the people in your life. In even the darkest of days, you need to be able to rely on that one special person. The one person you can go to and just...exhale. Frenchie from Grease said, "the only man a girl can really depend on is her daddy." And while I agree with this comment 100%, my dad isn't much of a chit chatter. So I have my brigade, and at the front of the line a leader full of sunshine.

Is that sunshine an actuality? Or is it a flame in the allegorical Cave?

I come to this question on a relatively frequent basis, and fear I may be putting more effort into it than necessary. Is it really this difficult to make yourself your best possible self without reliance on others? Are the people who have freely chosen to be in your life actually a product of choice as we commonly know it, or necessity, and can these two ideas live independently from each other?

I have no answer to this, except that I can't shake that everything is subjective, and nothing is real.

Now THAT is depressing.

Posh Spice: Hilarious

There is no shortage of Victoria Beckham cracks spread all over the internet, TV, and the Us Weeklys of the world. She's often portrayed as stone-faced and cold, with her harsh features and skeletal frame, her poses quick-to-react for cameras and is often never smiling. But the Victoria Beckham I see is anything but stone-faced and cold. In fact, she's quite funny!

No woman could make the following videos and not be a lot of fun to hang out with. It might be one of the few intelligent moves Tom Cruise has ever made.

Hot yoga: heat should not always result in nudity

Last night I completed my third day as a bikram yoga student. The first time I ever took yoga was working with a Beginner's VHS tape when I was 18, and it's slowly graduated to this: bikram yoga, where the temperature is raised to 105, allowing you to really sweat your ass off. If you've heard the workout results in what appears to be the yogee to have jumped into a pool, it's true.

(This often results in a few stares from the community I bike through afterward. I don't blame them: my sports bra sweats through the shirt I wear, leaving these big (or, not-so-big) sweaty prints right over my boobs.)

The class is comprised of many different types of people. We have men, large men, skinny-tall men, (un)flexible men. We have women, large women, skinny-tall women, (un)flexible women. And what I love, we're all scantily clothed as you have no idea how much 105 degrees hits you when your yogic for 90 minutes.

So last night, I was in the Tulandandasana pose (see right). You're supposed to look toward the mirror in front of you, which sounds like a good idea...unless you're Tulandandsanaing behind the same girl I was last night. I look up to face the mirror, and home girl was not wearing any underwear.

I completely understand that your knickers get a little swampy, and I'm all for women's liberation, but OMG...at least wear pants or long shorts. Something other than what a roller skater from the 70's would wear.

Maybe I'm acting a bit prudish about the event, but I couldn't keep my pose. It reminded me of the Friends episode when Pheobe's boyfriend's genitals kept popping out from underneath his shorts. Just knowing it was there, staring at me like I was guilty for being in the second row, I ended up standing most of the pose.

So ladies, men, whatever you do, wherever you go, when you're in yoga class, remember to put your pants on.

Griller sans la buerre

I once read that the origin of the word (and musical genre) "Zydeco" came from the Clifton Chenier song "Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés," which means the beans aren't salty. This was in reference to the Louisiana-based singer being too poor to provide salted pork for his beans. The actual word Zydeco is a corruption of the shortened "les haricots."

During this economical crisis, or the intertia of it's trough, I can't help but modernize by own "les haricots." After one of my biggest clients was busted running a Ponzi scheme worth $11 million, I've added on 13 offices and lost the next few months of commission. I am able to pay my rent and most of my bills, some gas and even afford a new bit of mascara here and there, but other than that my means are rationed. I've taken to canned vegetarian chili ($3 at Trader Joe's - delicious!) and water crackers, and making the meal spread over 2 days. A hard-boiled egg or instant oatmeal is close to doing to the trick in the mornings, so I feel relatively covered.

However, this morning I found myself toasting high-fiber bread...and realizing I have absolutely no butter, no jam, no spread whatsoever. And the $50 in my checking account I have to live on for the next 6 days is inspiration enough to eat the toast dry. I can't afford the butter.

So I have decided I am going to start my own line of music, my own corruption of the phrase "griller sans la buerre: the toast without butter."

This is what my life has come to.

Why I am destined to be alone in life

My all-knowing mother once told me that the secret to never getting sick is to just eat large quantities of garlic; no one will want to hang around you and therefore you will never catch their germs.

Mom, I agree.

Since I always do exactly as my mother has always told me to, I decided stand tall beside familial piety during my usual Subway lunch order. You might ask, what does a non-dairy vegetarian eat at Subway?

6" Veggie Pattie, with spinach, onions and jalapenos. Oh yeah.

Though the lack of garlic is beyond my lunchtime control (and yes, I have really thought about bringing my own), I submerge myself in the stench that has been sourly whipped together by my local Sandwich-Making Artist. The combination of onions and jalapenos has a "stay out of my office" success rate of 33%.

So how do I keep away an additional 18%? I do like some of the people here.