January 13, 2010 · 3:00 AM

Paralyzed Chicken Feet

I am disturbed.

Disgusted.

Annoyed.

I just watched Food, Inc.

I’m obviously grossly behind the times, since the movie came out in 2008, but still.  It’s awakening.  It’s upsetting.  I’m itching to get to a grocery store just so I can buy organic even though my freezer is already full of food.

And I’m no naturalist.  I’ve always felt that the organic movement was just a ploy by grocers to make me spend $3.99 on spinach when I only wanted to spend $1.99.  Don’t act surprised; you already read this; is my behavior really a shock?

Anyway, it’s pretty hard to get excited about a sale on frozen chicken after seeing chemically-altered chicks hobble around on their enfeebled legs from the “enhancements” farmers give them.  How’s that for too long of a sentence?

I’m literally the last person on Earth to care about where my meat comes from.  But something clicked when my sister-in-law Rachel, who was watching this for the first time with me, turned to me and said, “Yes, God gave us dominion over the animals.  But this is not how He designed them, and we’re abusing them.”

How can I argue with that?

The hard part is when I’m standing in the poultry section of the grocery store, and I’m looking at one price versus another much higher price.  I’m thinking about my wallet, but I’m also thinking about that chicken: that chicken who can’t walk because his butt-head farmer feeds him hormones that make his muscles grow beyond what he can bear.

So I guess I’m going to start paying more for chicken.

Here’s the thing: I tend to find heated political documentaries (read: Michael Moore) to be nothing more than a slanted agenda.  But this seems to affect everyone.  Who among us doesn’t eat corn?  Oh, you don’t?  I bet you eat hundreds of things made with corn syrup, considering virtually everything is made with it.

Ugh, I sound like one of the documentary directors.

Mike and I have always been very on-the-fence about locally grown and organic food, because we weren’t sure that paying more for something meant that we were causing change in a corrupt system.

Now I know that’s because we didn’t realize just how corrupt that system is.

It would be wrong to say that this movie is the ultimate authority on meat and corn; it certainly isn’t.  But at least they’ve done more research than I have, and have spoken with some experts on the matter.

I don’t know if they’ve utterly convinced me never to buy regular meat again; what I do know is that they’ve sold me on doing my own research.  They’ve shown me that ignorance is anything but bliss.

My mom once asked me if I’d like to buy a portion of her cow.  Mike and I laughed.  What?  Your own cow?  What are you, a farmer?  She looked at us like she was speaking to 5-year-olds and explained that you can buy an entire cow from local farmers and the meat will last you a year.  I was grossed out at the thought of all that meat sitting in a freezer for months on end.

Now I’m shuffling my feet around as I sheepishly admit to my conservative mother that her liberal idea was actually…brilliant.

So our brother and sister-in-law may join us in buying a cow.  We think it’s the best approach for an enormous problem that seems beyond repair.

Well, maybe half a cow.  It’s not like we eat beef five nights a week.

But I do eat beef.  Here’s a secret I share with very few people: when no one is around, and I’m out to lunch by myself, I like to visit Taco del Mar.  Or Taco Time.  But never Taco Bell…I do have some dignity.

I love the Mexi-fries and the crispy beef tacos, the shredded lettuce and the diced tomatoes.  I especially love the anonymity of the drive-thru.

But then I had to go and watch Food, Inc., and ruin all of that.  They essentially convinced me that I’m eating dog food, beef fit only for dogs, and I’m sickened…but slightly sad.  Is that weird?  Is it OK to mourn the loss of food that is repulsive but delicious?

I’m not likely to tell people how to eat better or more organically.  I think everyone is entitled to their own choice — all I can do is inform people to watch Food, Inc., and see what they find.

When your conscience won’t let you order a burger after watching this film, I would not be the least bit offended if you wanted to punch me in the face.  In fact, I cry the same crocodile tears about my loss of Taco Time.  The pain is real.

But then, so is the cost.

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January 6, 2010 · 3:00 AM

Downward-Facing Dog?

I’m staring face-down at a yoga mat, willing my hamstrings to stretch to new lengths.  The hypnotizing chants of Eastern music have done nothing to ease my strain.  I’m trying.  I’m trying very hard.

And that is exactly the problem.  “Abby,” the instructor says in the middle of my pose. “Relax your neck.”

Against my instincts, I drop my head down to within an inch of the mat.  Suddenly my back is stretching instead of my head, and I’m feeling better.

I hate when yoga instructors are right.

In fact, I thought I hated yoga instructors and the yoga they teach.  I have only done yoga one other time, and it was because I wanted to see what all the women from work were getting so excited about as the clock neared 5PM every day.  Unfortunately, it was hot yoga.  So what?  I thought.   I’ll sweat a little.

Not only did I sweat more than Niagara Falls in springtime, I also received the yoga blessing of watching others’ sweat fling over onto my mat.  I smelled acidic perspiration that no human should ever have to inhale.  And when I committed the yoga-sin of reaching for my water bottle after enduring a horrific pose, the instructor actually yelled at me.  A scary, tiny, female, Asian instructor with the fiercest six-pack I have ever seen in my life yelled at me in the middle of class.  I found it ironic that I was paying money to relax while being harassed.

I vowed never to return.

And yet, here I am in the middle of a non-hot yoga class, feeling the stretch.  How did I get here?

In case you haven’t noticed (like here, here, and here), I am an intense individual.  I am a control-freak, and I tend to carry all of my problems between my shoulder blades — right at the base of my neck.  I take nearly everything seriously, usually to my own detriment.

For example, during one of our pre-marriage counseling sessions in 2007, we took a personality test and I rated off the charts in self-discipline.  Guess what I felt when the therapist told me this?  Blushing pride.  I felt like the valedictorian of pre-marriage counseling.  You can imagine my surprise when she looked at Mike with total sincerity and said, “This is going to cause many problems for you.”

What?  Don’t you mean, This is going to solve many problems for him as I take over his life?…oh.  I get it.

It’s been two years since that counseling session and I haven’t made much progress in the way of stress.  And since I never want to be the lady who can only relax after two martinis, I decided to take control.  Wait, there it is again.  Do you see my language?  Amendment:  I decided to release control.

“Abby,” the instructor said quietly again. “Let your head hang.”

Shoot — I’m in a completely different position and yet I’m tense again.  I start to laugh this time, because it is exactly my personality that I would be focusing so hard on doing the yoga correctly that I tense up from the effort and miss the point entirely.

I’m here with my sister-in-law, Rachel, who agreed to give this new excerise a try with me.  We are both long-distance runners, and neither of us has the ability to calm ourselves and sit in peace for five minutes.  So, as skeptical as we were that this had anything to offer athletes like us, we went.

I tend to be of the opinion that yoga is pseudo-excercise, that it’s for people who refuse to admit that they’re not really working out.  All of the breathing and moving of the arms can’t possibly be doing anything except tricking people into believing that they’re burning calories and achieving inner peace.  Plus, as someone who loves the Lord, I’m not into the “emptying of the mind” that so often accompanies this practice.  I’ve learned to fill up with the Spirit, not empty everything out.

It’s about an hour into the class when I realize some of the motions are making my muscles burn like warm embers, the kind of burn where I know I’m building strength.  Then we move into a stretch that I don’t have to think very hard about, and I realize I can make this my own and just pray.  Who needs to empty their mind when there is so much of God to fill it?

Thirty minutes later the instructor tells us to lay on our mats for “everyone’s favorite position.”  She walks around to all five of us and places a bolster under our knees for back support.  As soon as my back hits the mat, I feel the most intense vibrations moving through my body.  It’s the most drug-like state I can imagine, and I cannot explain why I’m feeling this way.

In my mind I am suddenly transferred back to being four years old, and it’s nap time at my preschool.  The only reason any of us kids looked forward to nap time was because all of the nannies would come around and lightly rub our backs to help us fall asleep.  That was the exact feeling I felt as I lay on the mat in yoga, like someone was sitting with me, giving me a tiny massage or playing with my hair.  If you’ve ever let someone play with your hair, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s sublime.

In that moment I had to face the humiliating truth, the admission I never thought I’d make as long as I live: I’m doing yoga — and I like it.

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December 30, 2009 · 3:00 AM

My Homeland Security

After handing the gate agent our boarding passes at LAX, Mike and I headed down the little gangway for the plane.  There were still 50 people ahead of us, so we had to wait in the tunnel until the line moved along.  We were small talking, the kind of talk when you know everyone around you is listening to your every word.  All of a sudden, the gangway jolted.

Jolting is not a preferred feeling when boarding an aircraft, particularly when it’s a mere 48 hours after a near-major jolting over the Atlantic.

We gave each other a worried look, and then looked at the other passengers who were just as bewildered as we were.  One midde-aged Chinese-American woman turned around to face us.

“Did you feel that?” she asked, somewhat panicked.  “I felt that!  I saw the plane move too!”

“Yes, what was that?  Why did this tunnel just move?” I asked in reply.  “Like we really need this sort of alarm after the scare on Friday.”

Apparently I thought it would be smart to remind everyone of the danger we were surely encountering.  I’m sensitive like that.

Neither Mike nor I gave much thought to flying despite the thwarted Christmas day terrorist attack.  We both have a very practical, somewhat unspoken agreement that we won’t live in fear of the things we can’t control.  Do I have control over the odds that I will board the same plane as a terrorist?  No;  I am too busy controlling the hyper-increased security check to make sure none of my orafices are searched.

It was all the more surprising then that the lady in front of us told us she DID have control over the terrorists.

She replied to my statement, “They’re not taking ME down.  We fight back,” she said assuredly.  “If there is a terrorist on this plane there is no way he would get away with his plans.”

Suddenly I felt a surge of love for this woman, this small person who was in no way small, who represented the collective anger and strength the US has endured the last eight years.  Here she was, knowing in all certainty that no person hell-bent on hurting her would ever succeed in doing so.  She was ready to give her life to prove a point.  She would go down fighting.

Her “FEAR NOT!” stance didn’t look anything like our “fear not” stance.  We choose to assume that what will happen will happen, and we’ll deal with it as it comes.  This lady has a battle plan laid out, practically daring a radical to be assigned to the seat next to her so she can show him what’s what.  That is courage.

This lady is one reason why I board planes without trepidation.  I know there are hundreds of thousands of people like her, people who would never sit in fear while an extremist lights a fuse in front of them.  Just last Friday passengers saw smoke and pounced on the offender before any harm could occur.  Why?  They’re angry.  They refused to be treated like sheep hunted by wolves.

Me?  I’d like to believe that I would leap from my seat and attack a terrorist with whatever I could get my hands on, and if nothing, then just my bare hands.  But when I’m honest, when I really picture a large man yelling at me in a foreign language with explosives in his hands, I hesistate.  I fear.  I see a more accurate picture of pulling myself under a seat so I can just pray or escape being shot.

And that’s not a pretty picture.

After all, since I know my soul lives eternally, why do I fear death?  I considered this for some time, and realized that it’s not death that I fear.  It’s much more that I love my life.  I love my husband and family, and I would hate to see this rich adventure come to an end so soon.

I never learned where the jolting came from, and the flight proceeded smoothly.  I was able to obsess over my glossy People magazine without worrying about my safety, and that’s exactly how every flight should be.  But unlike every other flight I’ve taken, this one reminded me of my God-given right to demonstrate courage.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to; we made it home safely.  But that initial shake-up did serve a purpose — it jolted me awake.

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