Dear Seaweed

Dear Seaweed,

Please stop tangling around my feet while I stand at the edge of the ocean, letting the water come up and around my feet.

The whole thing is so nice until I feel your slimy green threads manacling my ankles, writhing and wriggling in joy at having taken another prisoner.

Just go ahead and pass by me a few inches either to the right or the left. The sand, water, and I have a good thing going. Leave it alone.

Got it? Great.

Thanks,

MM

Dear Old Men In Yoga Class

Dear Old Men In Yoga Class,

Yes. You. Hello. I appreciate that you want to work on your flexibility, strength, inner peace, inner goddess, etc. like all the rest of us here today.

I understand that we’re supposed to breathe audibly and there’s a yoga name for it I can’t think of right now. We’re also supposed to put our butts in the air and push backward, straining against the fabric and probably we’re going to sweat as we do this, given that the room is approximately two hundred and ten degrees.

But I am not sure why you need to breathe MORE audibly than anyone else in class. In a specifically old-man-type-way, so it’s very easy to identify that it is you. As class goes on, it becomes more of a continual groan coming from your corner, the connotations of which I’m not entirely comfortable with.

I am also not sure why you need to wear loose gym shorts to class. The problem with these is that they slide up your thighs. Not that I’m looking. But I would rather not have to be wary of even glancing in your general direction, which sometimes happens accidentally when I’m looking around for the elephant giving birth.

As a side note, and I know you can’t help this one, the sweat stains along aforementioned loose gym shorts are atrocious. As is the sweat puddling along the back of your tank top. No, the solution is not to take off your tank top. Thank you for asking.

Part of why yoga is so popular for women is because it’s not generally a gym filled with sweating, groaning, heaving men. It’s a place where we can go, and have quiet, and focus on our bodies without feeling invaded or intimidated by the equipment or the equipment users. I know yoga is for everyone. But maybe– kind of like there are yoga classes specifically for pregnant women– there could be class specifically for you! Where you could all go, and do yoga, and be men, doing yoga, but not in my yoga class. You could all do it naked if you wanted! Hell, you could play rock music and sing along (it’s like really, really loud breathing) and be naked and do yoga. That could be great fun.

What do you say? In the meantime, try to keep the breathing to a minimum.

Volume-wise, I mean. I recommend doing it regularly.

MM

Dear Laundry Left in the Shared Machine

Dear Laundry Left in the Shared Machine,

You make me sad. Who has forgotten you? Do they not want you anymore?

You lie there, wet and wrinkled and tangled about the central spinner like forgotten ribbons at the Maypole.  Stuck, you cannot move on to the next phase of your life (the warm and woolly dryer).

I do not want to move you to the counter. It would mark you as permanently displaced, to be so interrupted in your natural cycle. And yet– I too have needs, and my laundry too needs to be washed (but not forgotten). So I sigh and reach in, reluctant to embrace your clammy being, and lift and set as gently as I can on the cleanest spot I find, saying a little apologia in my head to the person with whom you belong.

I wish you all the best.

May you be re-washed and dried immediately, may you be folded carefully and stored away with hands that love your clean, new feel.

MM

Dear Girls in San Diego

Dear Girls in San Diego,

Your bra situation is out of control. I mean, props for wearing one…but you don’t need to be so proud that you show us.

Put the bras away. I’m not even talking about the boobs here. I’m hoping if you at least cover up the bra, the boobs will be marginally more covered. Bathing suits too– they’re called “bra top suits” for a reason folks, and that’s because unless you’re at the beach, they’re functioning as a bra, and should be treated as such, and as such should be PUT AWAY. UNDER YOUR SHIRT.

I don’t care if it’s San Diego, the entire city is not the beach. It is also not that hot here. It also cannot be that much cooler (temperature-wise) to have your bra hanging out and your shirt sitting below it. Or cut out around it. Or whatever it is that you’re doing. I don’t even know how you are showing that much bra when you are indeed wearing a shirt. It’s baffling.

I do know that I have seen a LOT OF BRAS PEOPLE and if I wanted to see your bra I would tell you. I’m just straightforward like that.

For shame. Get on the classy train. Tickets are free.

MM

PS– If I can see your pockets– if they are below your shorts– your cut-offs are too short. Just a thought.

Dear Leftovers

Dear Leftovers,

Oh, you mock me! Sitting there in the fridge, embodying my wastefulness, my wanton eating habits, my wayward grocery choices. You, with your congealed fat and grease, your separating ingredients, your frigid flesh, you judge me.

How am I to face you the next day? How am I to soften what has hardened overnight? Such a difference between hot-off-the-stove in a fit of passion the night before, and the cold logic of lunch the next day! I am showered, I have changed, and yet you must confront me with the day before, holding me in a clutch of guilt so strong I cannot move on.

I cannot throw you out, and yet I cannot bring myself to willingly sit down with you again. If I make myself, we eat in silence. Resentful, dried-up or melting mushy silence. Dissatisfied, I judge all others who come after you– passing them along to friends or refusing them on the spot, not allowing any one the chance to prove me wrong.

How am I to commit to you? Five days may as well be for eternity. I would just as soon let you hide and rot until my guilt it assuaged by your green envy of other, fresher food. “Ha! I cannot eat you now!” I think. I throw you out and only feel a pang of remorse for what might have been. But I know it never would have worked.

No, you and I, we were never meant to be. Now if only I could find the perfect sized-for-one recipe.

With a sad, remorseful sigh,

MM