Hoop, Hoop, Hooray

I've turned my smiling face to the shiny-tape-wrapped hula hoop that awaits me in the corner, an antidote to the dreary, overcast, frigid days of winter.

My pile of yet-to-be-read newspaper is diminishing now that my hubby is out of town, allowing me some time to sit with a cinnamon-spiked hot chocolate and all the juicy news I've missed over the last month.  Most of the headlines are stressful, but a little piece in the New York Times from December 5 brightened the skies.  In it, Guy Trebay, whose prose usually bring snickerous giggles anyway, describes the wiggly-jiggly artistry of LA's Philo Hagen, maven of Hooping.org, whose YouTube video shows a repressed office worker liberated by a chance-encountered ring that, to the snappy strains of Quentin Harris' "Gotta Do," transforms him to ever-more-amazing hoop-feats as he strips to his "tightie-whities in Downtown L.A."

The message:  The world may look depressing. Your body may not be perfect. But all the externals can't stop an indomitable spirit from rotating around it all--true to self and joyful in the celebration of what you do have.

Gotta go gyrate.