Today’s purchases:
It is interesting that Accidentally New Age was nasal-pot obsessed on Thursday because on Friday she went to the Yoga Journal San Francisco Conference to take an all-day asana workshop with Ana Forrest. Conference attendees received a gray tote bag filled with goodies including weird supplements, weird energy bars, weird fruit juice, and an issue of Vegetarian Times magazine. But wait, what’s this big box? Oh, is it a NeilMed neti pot and some packets of Sinus Rinse saline solution? Why yes it is.
At the conference marketplace there were tons of vendors selling tons of things. ANA made her way to the NeilMed booth to see what sorts of things they might have to offer a connoisseur of the neti.
Turns out that all the cool kids are using a new type of nasal irrigation technique called a Squeeze Bottle System. It is basically exactly what it sounds like: a plastic squeeze bottle with a little tip that you fit up your nostril. Apparently this provides “positive pressure” as opposed to the “gravity flow” offered by the old-fashioned neti pots.
ANA decided not to buy one of these squeeze bottles because they aren’t as pretty as her neti pot. But last night, when finally going through and deciding what to keep/toss from her goodie bag, she opened up the neti pot box so she could take out the packets of saline solution, and what was in the box? A coupon for a FREE squeeze bottle.
Expect a full report of the pros and cons of each design soon.
Accidentally New Age has been having some sinus issues in the 2k8. Every morning she uses her neti pot, but this year there has been a significant lack of nasal flow, especially from the left side to the right side. But every morning she has dutifully filled up her neti pot with warm saltwater and every morning this year she has stood there and watched the water stopped flowing almost immediately. Until this morning! Elation!
It is quite possible that ANA’s purchase of her neti pot is the true mark of when she went from being able to ignore her so-called new age nature to being able to embrace it. After having heard the praises of the neti pot sung by so many people, and after having her third sinus problem in as many months, she decided to pick one up.
So in the afternoon, after her yoga class, she walked into the health food store and picked up a lovely blue nasal irrigator and took it to the counter. “I use this one!” the adorable health-food hipster declared as ANA set the pot on the counter. “I hope you didn’t use this exact one,” ANA replied. “I want mine to be clean” She declined a bag and walked out of the store, neti pot in hand.
On her way home, a woman noticed ANA’s yoga mat and stopped her to ask her questions about yoga styles and studios. And as ANA stood there, in the middle of the Castro, wearing her yoga clothes, talking about the importance of savasana while carrying her yoga mat and an unboxed, unbagged neti pot, ANA realized there was no turning back.
ANA: crap.
you: what’s wrong?
ANA: oh, I just accidentally emailed my rolfing person instead of my reiki person.
Accidentally New Age has been learning some basic Sanskrit, which has gotten her curious about Latin. In her father’s bookshelf, ANA found the 1949 edition of Word Power Made Easy (Over One Million Sold!), and has been methodically going through it to, well, increase her word power.
This is ANA’s favorite passage thus far:
Gyne, woman, is found in gynecologist, the doctor who treats those ailments peculiar to women, such as pregnancy, tumor of the uterus, tipped womb, menstrual disorders, and other feminine mysteries.
Accidentally New Age is glad that the storm seems to have finished storming it up across the Bay Area. When she got home from work on Friday, the power was out on her block. The storm uprooted a very large, old tree on the corner and the tree must have interfered with the wires on its way down. So ANA opened the freezer and realized that the power must have been out for quite some time as the ice cream was all melted and the freezer wasn’t exactly cold inside. And so she did what any Accidentally New Age girl would do — she grabbed the blue ice from the freezer and wrapped it around the bottle of flax oil in the fridge.
We wouldn’t want our flax oil to go bad now, would we?
