Well, as of October 12th, I am no longer a happy team member at Trader Joe’s. Those days were good but I’m glad that I’m no longer working seventy-hour weeks. I’ve been accepted into the Massage Therapy Program at the Swedish Institute. I have my registration and orientation on Thursday and then classes begin on January 2nd. I’m excited. I was intending to attend full-time but randomly discovered that I’m not able to do so. It was during the routine re-certification interview for my apartment.
Every year, my finances have to be evaluated to determine the current number of low-income units in my building. When I was shown my projected income for 2008, I was surprised that it was so high. I realized that my representative had factored in another year of steady work at Trader Joe’s so I informed her that I was no longer working there. Immediately after the words came out of my mouth, I realized that the whole situation looked a bit suspicious. My last day at the grocery store was only four days prior to my re-certification appointment and I couldn’t help but think that my exit would appear as a means for me to maliciously manipulate my current income. Truly, the only reason that I was at Trader Joe’s was for the health insurance and, after six months of hard work, I was able to get some holes in my teeth fixed, a new pair of glasses, and a whole battery of routine blood tests. It actually had very little to do with the money.
I decided to offer my rationale for quitting. So I told Jacqueline that I had to leave Trader Joe’s in order to balance my load a bit before attending school in January. I hadn’t yet been accepted at the time, but it was all a part of the plan. Fine. So she sent me on my way with the promise that I would receive a letter from her (that I’d have to sign,) confirming that I was no longer at Trader Joe’s. Fine. Five minutes later, while on my bicycle on the way to yoga, I received a phone call from Jacqueline. She asked me if I planned to be a full-time student. My entrance interview at the Swedish Institute was two days later and I did, in fact, plan to attend full-time in order to complete the program in sixteen months.
I found out, for the first time, that full-time students are not eligible for this particular type of subsidized housing. It’s a simple stipulation and there’s no way around it. (TRUST ME, I researched.) Although my plans are going to be altered and although the program will take twice as long to complete, I don’t really have a choice. I have to either be patient or lose my apartment. For those of you who’ve seen my apartment, I think you’ll know why I’ve compromised. But I’m trying to consider it to be a blessing. If I were to attend full-time, I would have had a busier schedule than I’ve had for the past six months, while I was a Grocery Joe. I’m sure I’ll be better off with the additional time to absorb all of the material. I’m just glad that I HAPPENED to mention that I was planning to be a student. You can’t imagine how devastated I’d be if I ignorantly enrolled and was later kicked out of my palace.
Nonetheless, the Trader Joe’s legacy has come to an end. After returning from Hawaii, I worked two more shifts at the store before retiring my nametag and T-shirt. It was just in time too. There’s all this controversy about an article that was published in New York Magazine. Have a look for yourself. The journalist got a job at the store and was selling lightly sweetened, dried hibiscus flowers at the register right alongside mine. I’m glad that she didn’t write anything about me; the whole thing was somewhat scandalous. The article basically states that customers return to the store and wait in obscenely long lines because of the attractive employees rather than the quality of the products. I think it’s true and I actually think that the article does a pretty decent job of accurately describing what it’s like to work there (but I’m careful to admit such a thing because most people are up in arms as they feel that they’ve been misrepresented. You’ll understand if you read the article.)
But with the grocery store now behind me, I’ve been able to devote a bit more time to my yoga. Yay. People have been asking me what I’ve been doing with my time. I actually don’t have that much more time. I guess I’m just one of those people who will be perpetually busy regardless of how many things I’m doing. Last Thursday, I completed a 26-day streak of teaching without a single day off. And on top of that, this past Sunday was my 120th consecutive day without missing a day of taking class. So between teaching and taking…I’ve been occupied. (But I’ve still found some more time to spruce up my blog a bit!) I’ve also been trying to get eight hours of sleep these days. It’s kind of humbling going to bed at 8:30pm but it’s well worth it when I have to teach eight classes in 48 hours…as I did last week.
And of course yoga does not stop for Halloween. At the Lower East Side studio, we’re encouraged to dress up while taking class. It’s loads of fun and there are even some prizes to be won. My tactic for winning the ‘Hottest Costume’ prize was to come up with the most ridiculous outfit to wear in a 110° room. So I made a nametag and bought a winter jacket: I was a ski instructor.





I even made a sleeve for my coffee.



I didn’t win the prize, but everyone was impressed that I made it through the entire class without even unzipping.
In addition to increasing my core temperature in that coat, I’ve recently noticed a little bit of a surge in my class attendance. Now, I can’t attribute this entirely to the fact that people like my class or that people are actually seeking me out as an instructor but I consider it to be good news that, rather than my average 11-person class, the past couple Saturdays I’ve taught a 29 and 35-person class. Last Monday I taught thirty-six people in one class. Although a big part of it has to do with the fact that this is the time of year that people start to appreciate the hot workout more, my superiors were generous enough to offer me a bit of a salary increase. And who can contest with that…cold, hard cash?

I arrived in Hawaii on Tuesday, October 2nd. The flight was ten hours long…the longest flight I’ve ever taken, by far. It was somewhat bearable because Adam and I were able to gossip for a while in between delicious vegan Indian meals and looping screenings of Die Hard: Live Free or Die Hard. When we first showed up at the training facility we were accosted by the trainees who were there from New York. The memories came instantly flooding back. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training is such a secluded bootcamp that any hint of something familiar from the real world is a blessing. But it was just a brief visit because, by that point, I had been awake for about twenty hours and we still had yet to get settled in at the hotel. The Aqua Marina Hotel was very strange, to say the least. There were 40 floors with only four rooms to a floor. The rooms were triangular with a huge bank of windows and lots of diagonal walls.


This is me in our great glass elevator, 39 stories up. All of the hotels in Honolulu are designed with glass elevators on the exterior walls as to allow for some pretty cool views.



I woke up pretty jet-lagged on Wednesday morning and we immediately drove to Kailua for some time at the beach. I didn’t think anything of the scratchy throat that I was feeling after lunch at Down to Earth
which is a health food store that we visited roughly four times per day. The two vegans in the group couldn’t get enough of it. After lunch we hiked (in flip flops: we weren’t prepared for anything other than yoga class — woops) in search of a waterfall but turned around halfway through because we would have otherwise been late to take class at Bikram's Yoga Kailua. We made a whole ritual out of thoroughly washing our muddy feet as to not track the remnants of our hike all over the Bikram carpet. After taking class and drinking a few smoothies, we returned to training to help out with Posture Clinic.



By Thursday morning, I had a full-on sore throat and had to make an appointment at some tourist health clinic in the middle of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. That’s the thing about Honolulu; everything is about tourism. My favorite part was the people on the plane who were already excitedly festooned with images of hibiscuses before even arriving.

The doctor determined that I didn’t have strep throat and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics in case it was bacterial. We talked a lot about Bikram because she, as a marathon runner, loves to take Bikram classes in order to recoup from her long runs. It turned out that I didn’t get a chance to pick up the prescription until five days later.



I headed over to training where I had my first interaction with Bikram. He said three words to me: “Hey…shave, boss.” He refers to everyone as Boss, and I was instantly reminded of how many times he told me that I should shave during my training, a year prior. We were truly lucky though because Bikram was in Hawaii for almost our entire stay. He lives in LA and is always busy traveling so we weren’t sure if we would get a chance to even see him at all.

The guy who I was staying with was asked to teach a class for all of the visiting teachers which was a huge honor. He and I stayed up late studying the script that Bikram expects everyone to follow when teaching class. Adam was nervous that Bikram was going to stop by to see if he was being true to the Bikram Dialogue. The last-minute cram session brought me right back, a year and a half prior, when I was cramming to learn those words.

Adam taught a great class which was immediately followed by a dip in the pool, a relaxing shower, and a shave. It’s one thing to scuttle down into the subway and run off to your next obligation in New York after taking class. It’s entirely different to jump in the pool and lay in the Hawaiian sun after sweating in a stinky room for ninety minutes. Later that day, we helped with Posture Clinic and then watched the sunset. Every evening, at 6pm, there was a spectacular light show splattered outside of our window.



We had the most delicious Thai food for dinner at Chiang-Mai, one of Honolulu’s best Thai restaurants. Garlic-infused green papaya salad marinated in tamarind sauce, eggplant with basil and tofu, green and red curries. Yum. It was amazing. We returned to training with full bellies in time to catch one of Bikram’s infamous all-night lectures. He started with a discussion about the murder of Carol Ann Gotbaum in the Phoenix Aiport and segued into how human beings treat each other and how practicing yoga can change the world. It was a good one.

On Friday, we headed down the street to Waikiki Beach. In New York, I used to live above a place called Waikiki Wally’s; in Hawaii, it’s a place to surf and sun. Amy rented a surf board and caught some waves with the locals. Later on, we drove to the North Shore which is where all of the real surfing happens. At one point, while completely lost in the middle of nowhere, we pulled over next to a guy standing by his pickup truck. I got out of the car to ask directions before I noticed that he had a huge, bloody fish in his hands. In the back of the truck was a harpoon. The guy was tan, shirtless, and about three times the size of me. It all suddenly became pretty intimidating. Then we took a class at Bikram Yoga North Shore before heading back for another lecture with Bikram.



Saturday started with a class taught by Bikram. It felt so great to be back in the hot room, practicing with the big guy. This was a good reminder to me how fortunate I am to be a part of this ever-evolving yoga practice with the guy who designed it and who has continued to develop it over the course of the past thirty years. We decided that Saturday would not be complete without an honest-to-goodness Hawaiian brunch with Megan, Lucy, and Jennell (three of the trainees who will be moving back to New York in a couple of weeks.) Coconut Pancakes with Pineapple Preserves…need I say more? It was incredible. Megan got Mango French Toast. Unbelievable.

I think I was doing pretty well at not letting my sore throat get to me and detract from the vacation but then it started to pour (…not literally; figuratively. In fact, it kind of never rains more than a drizzle in Hawaii and for never longer than three minutes. And immediately following the showers, the sky is painted with beautiful rainbows. It’s incredible.) While getting changed for a night out on the town with Adam, I sat on and broke my glasses. It didn’t turn out to be so bad though because I think the boys at the gay bar looked better without the corrective lenses.

The broken glasses and sore throat were just the beginning. Sunday started off with a snorkeling trip to Hanauma Bay. It’s supposed to be one of the best places to snorkel because it used to be a volcano until rising sea levels filled it with water and converted the lava into living coral. I think the fellow tourist did a great job of including the trash can in the photo. Adam made fun of me for actually instructing her to get the mountains in the background.



Snorkeling is kind of difficult to get used to at first. Maneuvering with those big flippers and trying to breathe through a hose; neither task is too simple. We saw loads of fish and urchins and things. My favorites were the Convict Tang Fish and we actually got a chance to see and swim alongside a huge Green Sea Turtle. All was good until I got pretty banged up and bloody while impersonating The Little Mermaid on some rocks that were breaking the surface of the water. I was pretty worried about infection, among other things but Leigh, the instructor at the Bikram Yoga Honolulu studio is a registered nurse and she gave me some suggestions to keep my various wounds clean.



I rented a bike to get to the Honolulu studio but trying to navigate around the city was a bit tricky. See, the Hawaiian alphabet only has twelve letters (a, e, i, o, u, h, k, l, m, n, p, w) so you can imagine how everything kind of looks the same. Things become complicated when streets such as Kapiolani, Kalakaua, Kaimuki all intersect. But with only twelve letters, I guess there are only so many combinations. So they just have some really long words. I kid you not, this is the name of the Hawaiian State Fish: Humuhumunukunukuapuaa (no idea how to pronounce that.)



We all took class together on Monday at the Honolulu studio and then came back to work some Posture Clinic. We did some souvenir shopping and then had some more awesome Thai at Phuket Thai. The flight home wasn’t so bad because it was overnight. We got on the plane at 9:30pm Hawaiian time on Monday and then arrived in New York at 1pm on Tuesday. And the best part is that, although I had an amazing time in Hawaii, I was absolutely thrilled to be back in NYC.

In September, I volunteered to teach a Saturday class at 7am on the Upper West Side. Now it’s one thing to wake up four times per week before 5am but it’s entirely different to wake up at 4:30am on a SATURDAY in order to somehow shlep myself to the other side of the planet (aka the Upper West Side) to teach. And, without the use of my bike, this endeavor would require traveling on three separate subway lines. The most surprising part of the entire situation is that people actually wake that early on a Saturday to take a yoga class.

Although they’re awake and present, it seems to be quite clear that they don’t really want to be there. So part of a Bikram Yoga class is respecting the fact that the class is a moving meditation and that there should be a sense of stillness and focus between postures. So one of the ways that we embody that is to stand in a neutral position in between. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, teaching class that morning, until I asked a 53-year-old gentleman to relax his arms down by his side in order to assume this neutral position. I had to ask him three or four times over the course of the ninety-minute class and at one point he simply said “No.” It’s my job to get this man, who has twenty-five years of wisdom and life experience over me and a salary which is ten times what I’m making, to stop putting his hands on his hips. And his response — in front of the entire class — was simply “No.”

Hey…whatever. I suppose some people come to yoga class, not to learn and move as a group, but instead to do whatever the hell they want. Fine. Later in class, one of the female students felt the need to let me know that she was cold. I suppose I should feel lucky that she didn’t just open her mouth and blurt it out but what she did do was rub her hands up and down her biceps as if she was shivering. So, it’s the first class of the day (at 7am on a Saturday morning,) and I’ve only taught at this particular studio a few times so granted, the heat is not blasting. But I assure you that, at a balmy 103°, there is no way that this woman is so cold that she’s shivering.

And I work in a grocery store. Every once in a while I have to remind myself of this. And not only to I work in just any old grocery store, but I work in the busiest grocery store in Manhattan. At one point, the Union Square location was quoted as grossing over a million dollars per week. Selling food. After completing the grueling process of inventory, a few months ago, it was calculated that we were missing over $700,000 worth of food. Yup. Somewhere, over the course of the previous three months, we had managed to misplace more than a half of a million dollars of eggs, frozen enchiladas, and pumpkin butter.

The store can be so busy and overwhelming that, at one point, a woman passed out in line. She had accomplished the feat of making it all the way through the serpentine line with a cart full of her favorite products while having to say “excuse me” to at least thirty-five other frenzied shoppers with their brimming carts. She survived the entire ordeal, all the way to Register Three, before toppling over — cart and all — into the guy next to her who was patiently waiting for his receipt so that he could rip into his Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds with Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar.

Today I received a pretty decent compliment. A guy came in to take my 6:30am class at the Upper East Side studio and outright, told me that he would have to leave early. This happens from time to time especially during early classes because people have to get to work. There was the usual does of Upper East Side drama during the class: one girl left early because she thought she was going to vomit and another guy, who has only been doing this for a month, thought that he was perfect and did not wish to receive any corrections. But the ultimate compliment was when Ralph, the guy who told me that he had to leave early, stayed for the entire class and told me afterward that he decided to stay because the class was so good. He sacrificed getting to work on time to see how the class ended. It must have been a real nail-biter.
So that’s what’s been going on in the yoga world for me: lots of sweat, lots of drama, but still…lots of fun. Last month, after teaching my two early classes, another teacher came into the studio and told me that there was a homeless man who had set up camp in the vestibule. So that teacher, the manager of the studio, and myself went down and take remedy the problem. I immediately reverted to the sir-I’m-going-to-have-to-ask-you-to-leave route but the instructor who was teaching the next class instead decided to invite him into class. Yes, that’s correct. After some requisite probing to find out if he was drunk, she invited him to shower, offered him some yoga clothes and allowed him to join us for a free class. As to protect the belonging and the well being of the other clients, she requested that I supervise him in the locker room while he showered and got dressed. After cinching up his pink lost-and-found boutique hospital scrubs (compliments of Bikram Yoga Upper East Side,) he joined us in class in the hot room. Yes, a homeless man somehow found himself in a one hundred and ten degree room with a gaggle of half-dressed soul-searching Upper East Sider’s. The lasting images are truly priceless. The instructor kicked him out after twenty minutes because she deemed him too distracting. To say the least. As the other practitioners were attempting to find some focus and intention in the mirror, the new guy in the back corner was doing postures with his head cranked sideways as to get a better view of the crazy guy in the room who was talking to himself and who had a case of scoliosis which was simply painful to witness. It was honestly a complete wreck. After she kicked him out, I had to accompany him back to the locker room so that he could pile more clothing, from his Duane Reade luggage, on top of the sweaty surgical scrubs which he had now claimed as his own. I escorted him out of the building and attempted to return to class and jump right back into the practice as if nothing had happened. Apparently he’s returned to the studio, several times, to receive another free shower. Big surprise.
Speaking of kicking someone out twenty minutes into class, I had to do the same thing two weeks ago while substituting for an instructor on the Upper West Side. As I was going around the room getting people’s names and surveying for any injuries or medical concerns, one woman informed me that she was six months pregnant. Now taking Bikram while pregnant is a bit controversial but it happens all the time…IF you happen to get pregnant WHILE having a consistent Bikram practice. However, she also informed me that it was her first day. After attempting to dissuade her from taking the class — because it’s not suggested that she start any new type of physical activity while six months pregnant — I caved when she became confrontational. She told me that she knew her body well. See, she was a dancer and she had not stopped dancing throughout the pregnancy. So that made it all OK. I was already running late so I just started class. I didn’t feel like making the situation any more dramatic than it had to be. The in utero baby was all that I could think of while I was trying to teach class. I felt that I was basically responsible for the welfare of this unborn child. At one point I approached her to ask her if she had consulted her physician. She told me that she asked two of her friends about it and that they had thought it would be a great idea. With that, I told her that I was not qualified to teach her the pregnancy series and that she would have to leave the room. With that, I could actually breathe and focus on the people who were actually physically capable of taking class.
I took class alongside Idina Menzel last week which was kind of cool. Another kind-of-cool thing is that I got a raise at Trader Joe’s. It was my regularly scheduled three-month review and I was told that it was phenomenal given that it was my first review. I received a raise of a whole thirty-five cents per hour. Unheard of. And I damn well deserve that thirty-five cents. I guess there’s drama everywhere I turn because TJ’s has been pretty crazy as of late. Remember that huge thunderstorm two weeks ago which left the entire New York subway system out of commission and some Bay Ridge, Brooklyn homes without rooftops? Well, I was lucky enough to evade the hectic sans-subway commute because I had to be at the grocery store by 5am. When I left the house, there was nothing more than a mere drizzle. Fact: when two scheduled trucks arrive at your store in the pouring rain before 6am and your store is too small to have a loading dock and you have to unload all of the inventory onto the street…when all of that happens, you get wet. Very wet. Freezing cold, and soaked to the bone, I spent the next two hours stocking racks upon racks of damp cheese in the refrigerated section. Everything was damp, even my feet. Trader Joe’s provided us with complimentary dry socks but relief was only temporary because our shoes were saturated as well. We thought that we had escaped the rain once we got all of the food sheltered under the roof. But to our surprise, it started raining inside as well. Apparently, there were four inches of water collecting on the floor of the compressor room upstairs. And then the trouble with the subway: because the MTA was completely paralyzed for a few hours, only half of the staff showed up for work that morning. We were miraculously still able to open the doors with a clean, stocked store at 9am on the dot.
I suppose all of that wasn’t quite so bad as the following day when the dairy case was on the brink. I ended up with dry ice burns on my fingertips. In an effort to salvage the hundreds of dollars worth of milk and yogurt, it was my duty to pack the fridge with blocks of dry ice until the fridge repair guy could get in. Dry ice is carbon dioxide that has been frozen at -110 °F. When it comes in contact with your skin, it can be just as severe as a burn from heat. But you know, I hang out all day in a room 110 °F, so I thought I’d give -110 °F a try. I suppose I should consider myself to be lucky. Another TJ’s employee accidentally sliced a tendon in his forearm with his box cutter. My fingers felt numb for a few days but he’s in cast.
I may have been able to save the dairy but the bananas were not quite so lucky. It was almost a month ago that I had to write off and donate 12,000 organic bananas. Yup, that’s $3,480 worth of bananas. The bananas come in cardboard crates which contain plastic bags filled with about one hundred bananas. Apparently the bags have to be “burped” (sliced opened) so that the bananas can breathe. That didn’t happen so the bananas steamed themselves. All I know is that a whole lot of people probably ended up with some delicious banana bread. The regulars at Trader Joe’s are crazy; they’re like family. I got a haircut in July and received more compliments from random strangers at TJ’s than I did from my friends. They all know me; it’s very strange. And they happen to see me a whole lot more frequently than my friends.
Besides taking a tremendously difficult class tonight (but not complaining because I survived it…) the worst thing that’s happened in yoga recently was that someone stole my towel while I was in the shower. I know. I don’t know if it was a mistake caused by a yoga daze or if it was intentional. Either way, I was left standing, dripping, completely bare, asking a fellow student to go find me another towel in the lobby. It probably took him 45 seconds to find me a replacement but it, of course, felt like 45 years. Some people are just naked people; I’m not.

Sometimes things break. It happens all the time and it generally makes life more difficult. So, picture this: a grocery store is filled with groceries (well, most grocery stores are, unless it's the Union Square Trader Joe's after a busy Monday when the customers have swarmed and done us the kind favor of scouring the shelves of all available products.) Each of those items happens to be shipped in a cardboard box. The result is a whole lotta empty cardboard boxes. Something has to be done with all of those boxes. That's why we have a baler. We toss the used cardboard into the bailer which then uses hydraulic pressure to compress the cardboard into manageable bales. When I arrived at work on Friday, the main baler was broken; the part needed to fix it was not scheduled to arrive until Monday. (By the way, it's Thursday and it has still yet to be fixed.) Great; we have to survive a busy summer weekend with only the back-up baler which is much smaller and much further away from all of the cardboard. One of my exclusive duties, on Saturday, was to cart all of the bulky cardboard about a half of a block — down a pedestrian-packed 14th Street — to the home of the back-up baler. Well, sure enough the back-up baler buckled under the pressure of handling the load of its much more brawny, much more experienced cousin. Back-up baler breaks; now we use the even smaller, even less capable wine store baler. Now there are two broken balers and the little engine that could...also known as the wine store baler. Where's the repair guy with that part???

OK. So, we're dealing with the cardboard drama. Cardboard, cardboard everywhere and nowhere for it to go. I arrived at work this morning at 5am to find that Big Joe was broken. Who is Big Joe, you ask? Big Joe is not a man at all; it's a machine...a machine built to lift up to 6,000 pounds of groceries. It's just a coincidence that we use a tool called Big Joe at a grocery store called Trader Joe's. No relation. So, rather than having the seventeen pallets of milk, yogurt, and watermelons gently placed on the sidewalk in front of the store at 5 in the morning, we had to hoist it all by hand. This is quite a pleasant experience while it's still fairly dark outside and most of my friends aren't even considering waking up for another four hours. Just as we're about to be finished with the 5am truck, the 6am tuck arrives. That's right we receive one truck at 5am which delivers dairy and produce followed immediately by a truck filled with bread and meat. This process occurs every single day followed by a truck at noon and another at 6pm. It's insane how much food we sell on any given day.

My body is another thing that recently broke down. My super-human immune system which has kept me strong for the past two years has finally collapsed under the pressure of keeping up a schedule which allows me no personal time. (Sort of like the back-up baler being unable to handle the overwhelming load of cardboard.) On the Fourth of July, I tried to disregard a sore throat while at a stunning dinner party at some stranger's apartment. My friend, Gwen was cat-sitting at a fabulously lavish and utterly unique duplex in Tribeca. The next day, the ailment quickly evolved into complete sinus congestion. Friday brought a sinus headache and by Saturday I was unable to leave the presence of a tissue box because there was so much fluid flowing from my nose. I had a solid week and a half of residual phlegm and today was the first day that my health seemed to be completely restored. Over the course of the past two weeks, I skipped three yoga classed. This is strange for me because I generally take a class every day and on July 6th, completed a 104-day streak of consecutive classes. And although I believe that the yoga helped wipe away my illness, there were times that I just needed to get some sleep as well.
Other than that, life has been good. Since I last had time to blog, I've been to a wedding in Detroit and another wedding in Jenkintown. I saw The Facts of Live: The Lost Episode (hilarious) with Benn and Spring Awakening, with which I'm now completely obsessed. I missed my scheduled ushering responsibilities for 110 in the Shade due to a severely delayed Greyhound bus from Philly but Doodle and Natalie willing filled my shoes. My good friend Brian, was in town from San Francisco (...or Chicago...or wherever he's living this week) and the ever-lovely Breanna was in town from LA, both of whom I adored having the opportunity to spend some time with. This weekend, I have a friend in town from Baltimore. Last night, I shared a birthday with DarlaDiva at an Ani Defranco concert and tomorrow, I see Patti LuPone in Gypsy with Doodle.
I'm no longer teaching in Hoboken and I had the opportunity to try three new Bikram Yoga studios in Detroit: Farmington Hills, Ann Arbor, and Plymouth. All of this, and now I have to get to bed so that I can teach early tomorrow morning. I'm currently pondering how good life is and how lucky I am to have had my dreams come true. Next on the list are health insurance (which should be coming my way in about two weeks) and massage school.

Monthly recap: Things are going pretty well. After two weeks of a preposterously crazy schedule, I decided that I had to take my week, teaching in Baltimore, as an opportunity to gain some perspective and to try to remember what life was like before Trader Joe’s. After the respite, I determined that quitting was inevitable. I returned to New York on Sunday, May 13th (Mother’s Day,) and attempted to quit on my first shift back at the grocery store on Monday. That didn’t work. Beyond the fact that my superiors were pissed to see me go, they also wanted to work with me so that I’d stick around. We came to an agreement that they’d reduce my schedule from four to three times per week. I decided that it might work out. When I got home and looked more closely at my schedule, I determined that I’d still be exhausted and that it wasn’t worth it. In the meantime, I acquired four additional weekly yoga classes: big news. I tried to quit again on Thursday. The First Mate (yes, that’s what we call the second highest-ranking position in the store…like we’re on a boat or something) instructed me to come back the next day with a proposed schedule that would work for me.
Now all of this comes as a surprise to me because when I was hired, I was told that my availability, which I submitted on the original job application, was basically written in stone (and signed with blood) for the first ninety days of employment. Seeing as how they want to work with me, it’s now apparent to me that they want me around. After formulating a schedule that I though I could handle, I came to the conclusion that it’s all still too much for me and that I have to quit the next day. Friday comes. I tried to quit again; they won’t let me. Do you see a pattern? I love working there; it’s true. Every time that I’m at home, looking at my schedule, I decide that it’s too much. Every time I’m at the store, I see more and more reasons to stick around. They must think that I’m completely bipolar.
Finally realizing that neither I nor my superiors want me to leave, I decided to stay. In order to make a little bit of breathing room in my schedule, I decided (and with the help and advice of my good friend, Doodle…after listening to Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes talk about getting old,) that I would eliminate something that I didn’t like to do: teach in Hoboken. First of all, the PATH train sucks. Unless it’s raining, every other studio is accessible via bicycle. I ride eighty-two blocks to the studio on the Upper East Side; I ride three and a half miles to get to the studios in Brooklyn. But spending three dollars to hoist my bike up and down the stairs, being a slave to the crappy schedule, and never getting a seat on the train is truly frustrating. There’s no bridge to New Jersey so there’s simply no method, other than the stupid PATH, for the commute.
So, starting June 1, I’m no longer teaching in New Jerseay. That reduces my class load from 57 classes in June, to only 45. I’ll teach about eleven classes per week and sell groceries for 21 hours. Hopefully that will be a manageable balance. NO MORE PATH TRAIN!!
What else happened? I saw Doodle's show and I saw DarlaDiva's show: they are both so good. Nothing beats a talented group of bloggers. I completely missed the opportunity to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, taught a whole bunch of classes and played with two very cute girls in Baltimore, decided that there might be a small glimmer of a chance that I’ll decide to participate in the International Yoga Asana Championship (previously, I would have told you that there was not a chance in hell, but people have been trying to talk me into it), and completed a full sixty days of uninterrupted daily yoga classes. I want this to be the summer of sangria (…perhaps even white sangria,) but I simply haven’t had the space for it yet.

That’s enough for a month, isn’t it?
Oh, and I also met a boy on a train. I was on the downtown 6 train on May 2nd after teaching two classes uptown and before going to Brooklyn for a haircut. There was a gorgeous boy sitting across from me. I wanted to talk to him but fumbled and was egregiously awkward instead. I wrote a witty posting and published it on craigslist. He replied. Halleluiah to Missed Connections. Despite the fact that there was not a single word uttered at the time, we have now had the ability to connect. Look how far we’ve come since the dawn of the Internet. Anyway, he’s from Trinidad and currently vacationing in Barcelona…and, so far, making several international phone calls in order to talk.

Yesterday was my fourth day at Trader Joe’s. Yes, I officially now work in a grocery store. The Union Square store is absolutely crazy. It’s the only location in Manhattan and people flock. I tell you, when the store first opened, there was consistently a 20-minute wait before you were even able to enter the store. And once inside, the register line occupied the entire perimeter of the store. Things may look a bit calmer nowadays, but I’ve been told that sales have not dropped but that they’ve (…or I guess now “we’ve") gotten better at handling the crowds. It’s not uncommon to have to wait in line for thirty minutes in order to pay for your food.
There is simply no way to keep the shelves stocked. The moment that an item gets re-stocked, the vultures swarm and return the shelves to their barren, third-world condition. Every day, the store receives four trucks with a fleet of 30 – 70 employees (on the floor at any given moment) to unload and stock. And the amazing thing is that the customers don’t care. They have such a passionate loyalty to the products and the company that they are willing to overlook the mayhem.
Yesterday, the situation was exacerbated by the malfunctioning elevator. The first level of the store is for the public. The second level is where you’ll find the stock room, fridge, and freezer. So naturally, the contents of all four trucks, which arrived yesterday, had to be manually hoisted up a flight of stairs. That’s right: bananas, milk, bottled water, you name it. Regardless of how heavy it was, whatever was unable to find a home on the floor, had to find its way upstairs with no tool other than sheer human vigor. It took the repair men more than eight hours to get us back up and running.
Which brings me to my next point. When the store was designed, it was obviously not intended to handle this type of capacity. Who knew? Everything is too small. When you first enter the stock area, you find boxes of varying shapes and sizes lining every inch of available cubic space: the stairwell, the hallway…it’s even common to find the sidewalk, in front of the store, stacked high with massive pallets of food waiting to be broken down. Even the employee break room is too small. The store’s 200 employees have to share two tables, ten chairs, one toilet, one urinal, (and I don’t know what’s in the women’s bathroom.)
Speaking of bathroom…yesterday, some little Asian girl shit her pants. As we were trying to lug heavy boxes up the flight of stairs, using the method of a human assembly line, a visibly shaken six-year-old joined the frozen broccoli in the ascent to the second level. It wasn’t until later that we found big pieces of poop in the loading area. I guess it had fallen right through the leg of her pants.
My schedule, these days, is absolutely ludicrous. I’m working about 32 hours per week at Trader Joe’s in addition to teaching about ten classes. This week, I was awake before 5am to teach on both Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I have to be at TJ’s to start my shift at 5am. All of that surrounds my birthday on Friday, which I’m obviously going to have no time to celebrate. Wednesday is going to be a kicker: I work at Trader Joe's from 5am to noon. Then I take a class at Flatiron. (I actually requested to leave an hour early in order to take class. Yoga is my saving grace after being on my feet, lifting, and climbing stairs for eight hours.) After that, I look forward to an hour and a half commute (each way) to teach two classes in Connecticut. I won’t return home until after 10pm. I’ll be exhausted (and hopefully be able to fall asleep immediately because I have to start the whole thing over again at 5am the next day.)
But the people who work there are all kind of amazing. This is the guy who trained me on Thursday. He is one of three beat-boxing flutists in the world. I literally have no idea how he uses his mouth to create a beat and play the flute simultaneously. Seriously.