Since I’m not regaling you with stories about the onset of first-trimester nausea, we have a little time to focus on funny shit people said this week. Last week’s yoga teacher talked about breathing like a dragon out of the left nostril; this week’s teacher said to, ‘Use your breath to rinse out your left kidney.’ I didn’t. Who wants kidney effluent in their lungs, even if only as a visualization? Rinsing out a kidney is not like rinsing out a sponge, man, there is no convenient sink in my torso (or if there is, it’s my kidney!) Also, what about the right nostril and the right lung? Apparently the imagery is only meaningful the first time because we were never encouraged to turn to the right and breathe dragon-fire out the other nostril, or to give the other kidney a nice rinse. Am I missing something about an East/West, Right/Left thing? Was the yoga teacher just lazy? Is that why he’s always either sitting, stretching, or lying down?

When I was 8 months pregnant with Frida, I had a pregnancy massage. The massage therapist explained that for clients in the third trimester, she didn’t massage anywhere below the knee, ‘just in case.’ Just in case what? In case you accidentally hit the button that opens the trap door and the baby falls out? Seriously? As I was 9 and then 9+ months pregnant, my friends and I had lots of fun pressing my ankle, or my calf, or my shin, trying to find the magic spot that released the jack-in-the-box baby. Didn’t work, though, and neither did the 4 rounds of labor-inducing lower leg acupuncture. The fifth round of acupuncture worked, if by worked you mean produced 20 hours of labor before an emergency C-section.

Obviously, despite two yoga classes and a Pilates session this week, I have not yet achieved the pure crystal enlightenment our yogi described during guided meditation.