I went back to yoga. It’s been awhile. But it is THE NEW YEAR and salads must be eaten and muscles must be stretched and exerted with strangers sharing humidified air. Thems the rules.

You know what I also wish was a rule? That sick people wouldn’t go to the gym. Yesterday, like some sort of Olympian, I attended a competitive spin class and followed that with a power hour of hot vinyasas. In each class the willowy woman near me was… coughing. Phelgm-y bike girl was more discreet, hacking into her hand towel on the up beats. The sweaty downward dogger in front of me just spewed her virulent microbes into the damp studio without compromising her warrior two. This freakishly fit fanatic was never asked to leave, and certainly wasn’t going to let a touch of tuberculosis thwart her hour of half crescent moon twisting. (Yoga is occasionally very Pillsbury.) YOU ARE ALREADY SKINNY SO GO HOME, I scream-thought.

You faithful few still reading this drivel know my love/hate/complain/mock/go back again relationship with exercise. Yesterday, I was fully in the love zone; I’m actually very stretchy and good at yoga. Plus, it will be perpetually dark and freezy here until May, so I appreciate a fire hot room. But then this ponytailed terrorist aerosolized her sputum all over us, and the heavily bearded (why? why? why a beard when you spend all day at 110 degrees?) instructor told us to “relax your eardrums” and I was over the edge into scream-thinking.

But I will not be deterred! I went back to spin class again today and college boy next to me was so genuinely hating it, too, my hope for humanity was renewed. For sure there were still whoo whooing weirdoes racking up more miles than a minivan, but gasping boy next to me (who was killing it nonetheless) was my silent, exercise-begrudging conspirator. Maybe. More likely I was just some invisi-mom on the next bike. But knowing there’s at least one other person immune to endorphins made the never-ending 45 minutes suck less.

How are you getting through these January, work-off-the-cheese days? With a New Year enthusiasm for fitness, I’m continuing this (2 days and counting) habit of two-a-days with a second workout: dismantling the Christmas tree. Fourteen trips up and down stairs lugging boxes and then vacuuming up the godforsaken mess of it all…the way Jesus intended.

Hope all of you are being kind to your minds and bodies in this New Year and remember to RELAX YOUR EARDRUMS.

A previously underreported source of stress and tension… according to yogis everywhere.