Headline: Yoga leads to carpet cleaning

Beware, friends, cause they dont' tell you this at the ashram, or the Y... yoga is not just about flexibility, strength, spiritual onenes with the cosmos and looking like Madonna. Oh no, it's also about opening yourself to your inner housewife.

This morning, as I leaned forward on my yoga mat, my attention kept turning from my body and position to the dark, nasty stains on my rental-colored carpet. These stains are the result of my cats' hairball and eating until vomiting habits, and I have scrubbed them before, but today, the shadows of Kitty Digesting Fluid were too much for my sensitive soul. I tried to gently refocus on my shoulders and hamstrings, but it was a struggle to tear my mind away from the filth. I finished my practice, and got my ass a rug-doctor from Safeway.

I rented one before, when I was equally desperate after a particularly well-attended New Years party. I'd assumed I'd be paying half my paycheck, but was stunned to discover that it's only 21 dollars (which for those of you keeping track of childcare salaries, is actually only 1/4 of my paycheck. Thank goodness for the union... oh and my sugardaddy.)

If you ever do this, (or want to clean anything else without filling your house with yucky chemicals) I highly recommend the book Better Basics for the Home by Annie Berthold-Bond. (Basically, everything comes down to vinegar, washing soda, borax and tea tree oil in differing amounts, but it's comforting to have someone else tell you how much, and why it works.) She's incredibly practical, wise and has thought of virtually anything you might want to clean. When we first got Trinity (the only cat I've ever had to housetrain) this book sat on my bedside table. Now it automatically opens to the pages on odor-removal, which are dog-earred and tear-stained.

Rather than buying the good Doctor's soap at Safeway for ten bucks, I just used a little simple green with borax and washing soda, and now (part of) my carpet is Poorly-Installed-by-Cheap-Landlord clean again. (And I didn't have to do this "experiment-with-homemade-hippie-dippie-cleaner-and-hope-I-don't
permanently-mark-my-carpet" which can be stressful. (I'm now taking a bit of a food break, but will return to the fray and finish before my allotted 24 hours are up.)

Tomorrow, I look forward to my monkey-mind obsessing over the super clean smell in the air instead.