Monthly Archives: March 2007

One hour shouldn’t be a big deal but I always feel ripped off on the day we start Daylight Savings time. I’m already behind before I even get out of bed.

This morning I decided to linger in bed to read since I haven’t read a book in a couple of weeks. Then Bob brought me some chai and the free donut that comes with it so I ate that. So now I’m more than an hour behind and wired on sugar. Yay me.

This month is eleven years since I started taking yoga classes. Before that I noodled a bit using pictures in a book but never had anything resembling a real practice. It took me a couple years of classes before I developed a solid home practice but when we moved into this house 9 years ago and I had my own space, that’s when I became more dedicated.

Yesterday I did a new yoga thing that I’ve never done before. From downward dog you jump your feet up and float yourself into crow pose.

This my teacher Bill demonstrating crow. There was no boulder involved in my pose. Several years ago when Bill introduced the float into crow in class and I thought it was impossible. How could you possibly land on your arms like that without falling forward on your face?

Bill’s teaching philosophy goes something like: it doesn’t matter if you do the pose, just have fun trying. He says to try it three times a day and maybe a week, maybe a year, maybe 10 years you’ll be able to do it. This is well suited to my learning style because if I thought I had to do it all right away, I’d never have stuck with it.

Ever since my first class there have always been yoga poses, even beginner poses, that seemed impossible. I spent a great deal of time during my first three years of practice wishing I started yoga earlier so I could do these poses already.

Even now after all these years, there are always new things to learn.

With the floaty crow pose I’d practiced not three times a day, but regularly and for a long time it remained something to try but not to do. Then one day I landed my legs on my arms but my feet still touched the floor. Suddenly, this pose was a possibility in my mind. I couldn’t do it yet but I could see how it was possible.

Then it was more fun to practice and I kept at it until last week I floated into it except for one toe that grazed the floor. So close. Yesterday I knew was going to be the day and on my second try I jumped, I floated and I landed on my arms. And then I kept doing it over and over with about 50% success until I rubbed half the skin off the back of my arms.

The point of me telling this whole story is I think there is a metaphor about life in there somewhere.

(Top photo is from the farmer’s market last year. The bottom image used without permission from Bill.)

I scribbled all kinds of notes for possible posts and I’m going to blob it all into one because tomorrow is computer-free day.

When I got married I had been a vegetarian for quite some time. It’s hard to remember how long now but I think at least 10 years and I was strict. No clam dip. No: “I’m a vegetarian except I eat chicken and fish.” I think I even toyed with veganism on and off.

I gave it up because I was having a hard time staying warm during the winter and a naturopathic Chinese medicine doctor (for real!) suggested I think about adding a little bit of meat back into my diet. Once I got used to the idea, I never looked back and I exaggerate little when I say my spouse was ecstatic.

We recently went to a party with a friend of Bob’s who he hadn’t seen since we got married. You should have seen the look of relief on her face when she found out I’d crossed back over to the dark side. She said she’d make barbecue. I whipped out my datebook: when? when? when?

While I enjoy eating meat I don’t eat a lot of it and very rarely beef. Last night Bob was kinda cranky and he thought a Steakburger for dinner would make his night so I said: let’s go for it.

Steakburger is a local favorite with excellent milkshakes AND a miniature golf course. If I’d met Bob 30 years earlier, we’d probably gone on a date at the mini-golf. Of course, I would have been 13 and he would have been 20 so it would have been creepy but why get caught up in the details of our pretend scenario?

My 3 regular readers might remember that my digestive system freaks out if I eat too much fat (or overeat or pretty much overindulge in *anything* super delicious except for booze, thank heaven for small favors) so I was a little nervous about eating a hamburger but Bob was so happy and I didn’t want to cook. Guess what: it was fantastically magically delicious. The whole bun, sauce, grilled meat and shredded lettuce: texture and yum. I could have inhaled the whole thing in 3 bites. Bob also got fries, which my digestive system totally hates, but they were the steak cut and insanely good. I woke up at midnight and was aware of my innards but nothing to cry about. I think we will be returning to Steakburger.

This morning I ran a bunch of errands and when I got home around noon I was starving and all I could think about was: a Steakburger would sure be good. Instead I decided to finish off that tiny bit of lasagna from the other night only it was gone. So then I got tamales out of the freezer and treated myself to those.

After an hour or so of crippling laziness I pulled myself together and decided to crank some Cult, Electric which is an awesome record, and I rocked out around my kitchen and realized how much cooler I am than stupid lawyers [long story omitted and besides, how cool can a lawyer be?] and made some granola.

My hero Mark Bittman did a homemade granola recipe recently and I cut it out but didn’t try it right away thinking: come on, how great can it be for the trouble? Then one of the blogs I read wrote about this exact thing. And she tried the granola recipe and proceeded to eat nothing else for days.

“Well, if it’s that good,” I thought. I finally got enough ingredients together and made it this afternoon and oof, it smells like heaven in a pan. I’ve tasted a few nuggets but I’m going to test it tonight for dessert with some yogurt. This may be a life-defining recipe.

I’ve seen daffodils around town and on the Portland Flickr Stream but this is the closest I have in my yard. The photo is crap because my hands were all yucky because I just emptied my compost bowl into the compost bin and I touched the slimy stuff in the bottom of the bowl to get it all in there. I couldn’t hold the camera properly.

Yesterday I was at the downtown mall on my lunch hour. I find that I rarely take a real lunch. I always think I’ll just leave early and then I don’t leave early so I’m trying to get out of the office for a bit in the afternoon. I have an Ann Taylor gift certificate and I do this every freaking year: I wait until all the Spring stuff is out and I hate pastels and I hate capri pants. I don’t mind if you like them and you wear them. For me, I hate them. Not negotiable. I found maybe one thing I sort of liked and I wasn’t in the mood so I didn’t even make it to the changing room.

While at the mall I heard this song and wanted to cover my ears. I guess it’s an exaggeration to say The Waterboys is one of my favorite bands but I love their music and it always sounds good to me. This was a cover of “The Whole of the Moon” which is one of my favorite songs and it was being sung by what I refer to as a bleating pop singer. Who? Why? My iTunes store search (which I use for research but do not support because of DRM) says it’s Mandy Moore. Why Mandy, why? You were so wonderful in that movie where you had cancer and made me weep but why sing this song?

My other topic has to do with The History Channel. I’m not one of those people who says they only watch TV if it’s the Discovery Channel or the History Channel or something educational. I like shows with vampires, superheroes, pirates, dragons and especially all of those at the same time. But I read about this History Channel thing on The Dark Ages so I taped it and it was awesome. It’s amazing how the decisions of one person had such incredible impact like old Clovis converting to Catholicism and poor Justinian “I just pulled the empire together and married an exotic dancer and now we all have the black plague”. Great show.

For tonight, I have the DVD of The Science of Sleep directed by my hero Michel Gondry and starring the adorable Gael Garcia Bernal. I fell in love with it when I saw the trailer.

Not much to report here. I’ve been working on my story for my writers group. Amazing, me writing again. It wasn’t great but had a beginning, middle and end and I put forth a decent effort and I sent it off to them this morning so they will hopefully have time to read it by Saturday.

I always bake a treat for our meetings and I’ve been eyeing these layer cake recipes in Cooks Illustrated. I’ve never made a layer cake before. But after my latest series of baking disasters, I don’t think I’m up for the challenge quite yet. I’m going to make a sheet cake which seems like a slam dunk.

I won $4 in the Powerball. $4! Writing a story. Winning Money. My luck is changing. I can feel it.

This morning on the radio they were asking: if you were a billionaire and could have anyone you want play at your birthday party, who would you hire?

At first I couldn’t think of anyone that I cared that deeply about. I’d rather hire a fun band that Bob would like since he has so many. Then I decided The Replacements and I think you’d need a billion dollars to get the last line up of the ‘Mats in one place. The most obvious choice would be U2. I’d like them, too.

I read a yoga book one time where the teacher warned about eliminating all possible distractions during practice time. She said you’d be surprised how strong and immediate the urge to vacuum could hit when you were right in the middle of practice.

I’m sure most folks would more likely be distracted by the television or a plate of brownies, but I could relate to the cleaning thing. I often clean or garden when I’m putting off something else.

Remember dead week at college? Everyone did laundry. You had to take a number at the laundry room.

Another reason yoga makes me think of cleaning is because you get into positions where you can see things that you normally never see. If you’ve got your chin on the floor you can spot even the tiniest dust bunny in the corner behind the potted plant.

This morning I did some shoulder openers against the wall. I had my cheek against the wall while I wiggled my scapula around and noticed this long partial strip of that (almost) worthless blue tape I used during the great home improvement project of last year. You use the blue tape to cover things you don’t want to paint and then pull it off and it’s supposedly all pretty and unpainted underneath. I found that it didn’t work nearly that well.

You’d never know this strip of tape was there unless you were doing shoulder openers against the wall but it was all I could do to not stop and rip that tape off immediately. If there were yoga poses against the ceiling I’d probably see nothing but spider webs.

When I was in grade school I had a friend whose last name was Ball. Her Dad bought her and her sister a red rubber ball. The kind you use to play handball against the garage or that back and forth game in the street – I think we called it two-square. He told her to put their name on it so if it rolled off, the neighbors would know where to return it.

She wasn’t sure how to go about doing this. If she put just her name, it would make her sister mad. But she wasn’t going to put just her sister’s name because it was her ball, too. She didn’t want to put both their names because seemed awfully busy for this rubber ball. And she didn’t want to put her last name because people would find it and see: Ball. Duh.

I thought I could wring a lot more out of this story when I remembered it last night but that’s about it. I think she finally put both their names on it and I can’t believe a 2nd grader engaged in such a complicated logic process for labeling a toy.

Not much to report here. It’s raining and 40-ish which seems like the perfect combination for me not being able to warm up. I wear fuzzy socks and drink gallons of hot tea and try not to compulsively check the thermostat.

Sleep remains uneven. I woke up before 5am every day this week so my goal for this morning was to sleep until after 5a. Made it to 5:40! Let the celebration begin. This after being up for an hour or so in the night because of too much Mexican food and margaritas. Still draggy ass. I had big ambitions for this afternoon which have dwindled to reading the paper and magazines. Sometimes I get a second wind after 5p so maybe I can use my brain productively this evening.

I’ve got the sourdough out again this weekend. The main cooking project is a traditional Boston Baked Beans recipe from the NYT that Bob said he would like me to try.

That’s the news from here.