Miscellaneous

Some people ask me what I do all day while Al is at work. Everyday is different from the last. I enjoy my spa-like gym for yoga and a variety of classes, weekly--lots of water luxuries, too. A good chance to mingle and I promise you, I wore new white socks around the class and machine areas, and the socks were just as clean when I finished as when I put them on, because no one wears their gym workout shoes outdoors.
Then weekly, also, is the Tuesday lunch group, and Friday night is the restaurant-review night. Mondays is Japanese brush-style calligraphy. Last Thursday, I went to a French cooking class. I've agreed to teach English to a friend of my yoga sensei. I admire sensei so much, and now and for a little over a year, she is in a battle with cancer. I visited her recently to drop off a toy for her granddaughter, whom she would visit in Osaka for the weekend.
We sat for awhile over a cup of tea. I asked her about the small round bandaid at the base of each thumb. Not bandaid , she said but a leaf morsel instead--round and less than a centimeter across. Why, I asked; because of acupuncture there, I wondered out loud. Not that, but instead a treatment she does herself. She uses the dried form of a plant, yomogi, which forms a tiny puffy morsel (cotton-like); when dried it's called mogusa; she used a piece about the size of the end of a Q-tip. She laid this dried morsel on top of the leaf patch on her skin. She used a butane lighter (here, lighters are like miniature blow-torches) to light a stick of incense. With the point of the glowing incense, she set the small cottony morsel on fire. It didn't flare up, but burned down quickly and went out. She flicked the ash into a nearby ashtray, and said it didn't hurt. I'm privileged she would tell me about this procedure. It is called moxibustion, and a similar explanation can be found in Wikipedia. Not to advocate this method, just intriguing to witness it, thus daily life includes the unexpected, as well.