Got Some Yoga in my Pocket

February 13, 2015February 25, 2015 ~ meh ~ 1 Comment

I’ve now had my Pocket Yoga app for a month. Initially I tried to do it every morning, but work got so busy that even waking up at 5 didn’t give me enough time. So morning yoga has only been happening occasionally.

That being said, a few learnings from the mornings that I have been able to squeeze in a little down dog:

You can still injure yourself. I used to think my injuries were the result of me not wanting to look stupid in front of the teacher and/or classmates. Not so! They can happen anywhere. So be careful.
You can still sweat. I was skeptical, but it’s true. Just don’t cheat.
Stretching in the morning feels incredible. I can’t emphasize this enough. It seems obvious, but somehow after years of doing serious cardio workouts before dawn and “stretching” before we started, I never fully grasped the ecstasy of it. Now, if I can’t do a 30 minute session in the morning, I do 3 minutes of sun salutations. It makes everything creak and groan and afterwards, feel amazing. Hasn’t replaced my coffee, but it’s a really wonderful way to wake up. Seriously. Try it.
You look stupid doing it. Duh. I always look stupid doing yoga. But that’s the joy of doing it AT HOME. I did accidentally set up my yoga mat next to a mirror one time, maybe don’t do that. (Even though I think the official stance by yoga pros is you are supposed to be near a mirror so you can work on your technique. Or, in my case, “technique”.)
It’s way better than I thought. I’ve actually gotten much more out of this than I expected. If I find myself struggling to concentrate during the day, I’ll take 10 minutes with the app. If you’re wavering on it, give it a try. It’ll only cost you $3…and your dignity, should your friend walk in on you. But it’s worth it.

photo: me perfecting my arrow in a grassy field.
did you even believe that for a second? via

The Problem with Swimming

January 26, 2015 ~ meh ~ 2 Comments

Saturday morning I swam for the first time in over a month (all the pools in town close over the holidays). The first thing I did when I got home was make a shake, a sandwich, and finish all of the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner.

Then I sat down to work. But instead I fell asleep.

Meditation: Early Lessons

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

The lessons learned over 10+ days of meditating (I was with the grampies last week, meditation wasn’t happening there) are less of the altered-world-view type, more practical. But they’re still lessons.

Brush your teeth before you start. Morning dragon breath is a distraction when you’re doing deep exhalations.
In a completely unshocking twist of events, sitting still with your eyes closed before 6am is difficult to do without falling asleep. What IS surprising is the fact that if you can persevere and make it through a mere 10 minutes, you actually feel more awake when you open your eyes than you did when you started.
Apparently mind exercise triggers the same physiological response as full body exercise because without fail, 3 minutes in, I will have to get up and run to take care of business. Then come back and start over. I need to figure out a system, like I did with running, so my morning sessions don’t take twice as long as they should.
Breathing exercises (like simply counting your breaths–odds on the in breath, evens on the out breath, up to 10, then start over) are very, very similar to doing hypoxic sets in swimming (breathing every 3/5/7 strokes) or getting into a breathing rhythm with running. It makes it easier to focus without having to focus on focusing. The thought centering just kind of happens. And I like it.

Routine

January 8, 2015January 9, 2015 ~ meh ~ 5 Comments

Being back in California has been great. Adjusting to this new life of part-time daycare, working from home, Paul always gone: less great. I’ve struggled to get into a groove and spent a lot of the past four months feeling exceptionally tired and stressed, like I was spinning my wheels.

I’ve never been big on New Years resolutions, but there is something nice about the beginning of a new year and a clean start. So I decided to step back and evaluate: what can I change? Starting from the top…of the day.

Mornings, to me, have always set the tone for the rest of the day. They are also one of the few windows during which I have time to myself. And I get to choose how to use it.

In 2014 Paul started his intern year, and I started actually adhering to my own rule about not running in the dark alone (especially with a kid in tow). This threw a monkey wrench into my previous schedule of early morning runs or swims.

So instead, I’ve been getting up around the time that Paul walks out the front door (at 4:45…yes, seriously, sucks to be him) and squeezing in some work before the Kraken arises.

It’s great because I get work done. It sucks because by 7am I feel lazy and drained, have already spent over 2 hours staring at a screen, had 2 cups of coffee, and am usually still in my PJs. Apparently 20 years of voluntarily subjecting myself to various forms of physical and psychological torture before the sun comes up is a special kind of masochistic behavior that is hard to de-program. Because slow mornings make me feel lethargic and crappy and like I want to go back to bed. All day long.

So I started there. I decided to change my mornings.

First up: movement.

Despite my contentious history with Lululemon, I’ve loved doing yoga the past few years (WHATTUP PEACOCK). But I cannot afford to pay $15 per yoga class right now.

As someone who still can’t touch her toes, I’ve always been skeptical abut the value I would derive from instructional yoga DVDs. But I decided if I was serious about this then I had to risk it. So I sucked it up and spent $3 on the Pocket Yoga app. Five different types of workouts, three options for duration, difficulty, and environment for each. Good place to start.

Second: peace of mind.

My father has been on my case for years…YEARS (like almost a decade)…about meditating. I know it wouldn’t hurt to slow down and be more mindful. I also know that as soon as someone tells me I need to do something for my own good, I will refuse to do that thing.

After 7 years my father finally gave up on trying to convince me to meditate, so I finally started to seriously consider it. But every time I actually tried to sit down and do it I had trouble starting.

Enter Headspace: the super hot meditation app that everyone and their mother is talking about. 10 minutes of guided meditation first thing in the morning. Turns out the guidance, for me, is very helpful. I’m still on the 10 day free trial, so we’ll see if I’m ready to buck up and pay money by the end of this.

SO! New morning routine, as of last week:

Up by 5:30 (give myself that extra 45 min to sleep)
10 min meditation
30 min yoga
Shower, change, maybe coffee and news (depending on how long she sleeps)
Deal with Crazyface.

It’s not the normal cardio extravaganza that I’m used to, the risk that she will wake up and I won’t be able to do a complete yoga sesh exists (and has happened once), and I realize that an n of 7 is too low to reach any sort of real conclusion, but so far my days have been better. I’m diggin it.

To be continued.

Tomatoes Gone Wild

December 23, 2014 ~ meh ~ 2 Comments

I just don’t even know what to do. The tomatoes are taking over not just the garden but that entire section of yard. That sad little plant you see hanging out of the garden box on the bottom right? Those are our (previously huge) basil plants. The planter to the right has also been taken over by tomato vines.

And the crazy thing is, THERE ARE LIKE 2 TOMATOES IN THAT MESS. How???

Marsha showed up last week and when I showed her the first thing she said was, “Oh yeah, it looks like there might be too much nitrogen in the soil so it’s not flowering.”

What.

Turns out, I should never doubt what Marsha says when it comes to gardening. Via SFgate gardening section:

Since tomatoes hate imbalances in soil nutrients, they are prime indicators in the garden when any deficiencies or excesses exist. Adding an overabundance of nitrogen fertilizer can cause abiotic disorders in your tomato crop. …

Perhaps the best indication that a tomato bed contains too much nitrogen occurs when the plants produce lush foliage but little or no fruit. … Besides fostering heavy leaf coverage, extra nitrogen causes vines to grow to great lengths with few tomatoes to support.

Exactly.

Those white ropes you see in the picture? A whole system Paul rigged to hold the plants up because the vines were so huge and heavy. It didn’t work.

We could add bonemeal or colloidal phosphate to the soil to balance the nitrogen content…but let’s be real. That would mean I’d have to go out and find those things and figure out how much to put where and blah blah blah. We’ll probably just pull everything out and start from scratch.

So in addition to no tomatoes, we also managed to shade or push out any other plants in the garden. All of our squashes have been eaten or rotted away before they were ripe. We got about three tomatoes, a handful of peppers, and one cucumber. Oh, but we did get a ton of basil.

Moral of the story: don’t over fertilize your tomatoes early on, and watch for these symptoms so you can nip them in the bud. Literally.

…and thus concludes Garden Flop 2014.

On Running

December 14, 2014December 14, 2014 ~ meh ~ 2 Comments

Running isn’t about what distances you’ve raced, or even if you’ve done a race. … Not enough of us are talking about what a holistic sport it is, or should be. It’s about staying fit and pushing yourself to achieve and surpass goals, sure; but it’s also about personal and spiritual growth, creativity, mental clarity, and emotional stability. I find these things in running. Even if I can only do a couple miles at 10-minute pace.

~Jamie Quatro, author & runner, from an interview in this month’s Runner’s World

Thanksgiving Lessons

November 28, 2014December 14, 2014 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

over dessert:

J1: did you know that one time a guy ate a whole automobile?
M: an automobile? no way. that’s not possible
J1: yes! it’s true! he broke it down and ate it piece-by-piece
M: but…why? why would you eat a car?
D: well because then when someone would introduce you to their friends they’d be like, ‘hey, this is my friend, the one i told you about who ate a car.’
M: why would you want that to be the way someone introduces you?
J2: why eat just a car? why not go for something bigger?
E (joining the table): are you guys talking about the guy who ate the school bus?
M: well, there you go. he totally one-upped the guy who ate the car
J1: it wasn’t a school bus, it was a car
E: no! it was a school bus. his name was hamish mctavish. when i was teaching there was a book called ‘hamish mctavish eats a school bus’
M: they teach that to kids at school? that it’s ok to eat school buses?
J1: i don’t believe it
E (getting up, heading towards the computer): look, i’ll show you. i think he ate everything except the tires
J2: of all things to stop you from finishing a school bus…
E: OH MY GOD!

E: someone ate a 747!
D: how long did it take him to eat it?
E: it doesn’t say
J1: i wonder if his doctor asked him if he gets enough iron
M: who gave him a 747 to eat?
J2: that would be a bummer, you eat a bus and then find out someone else ate a 747
D: especially because then when you’re friend introduces you as, ‘hey, this is my friend that ate a car’, someone else can say, ‘oh yeah? well my friend ate a 747’

Update: there’s a book about the 747. it is fiction. but apparently some french dude did eat a cessna.

Solar Biking

November 15, 2014November 15, 2014 ~ meh ~ 2 Comments

This week two different companies introduced two different uses of solar power on bike paths in the Netherlands: one for harvesting energy, one using tiny, twinkling, solar-powered stones to light up the path at night (inspired by Starry Night, as the bike path runs through the city where Van Gogh used to live). As somebody who used to bike out to the bars on a bike path with NO LIGHTS at all, I can’t even tell you how many wrecks this would have prevented.

Get on it, USA.

Immobile

November 3, 2014January 2, 2015 ~ meh ~ 4 Comments

A friend of mine from Kentucky was recently in a bike wreck. She broke her neck and back and sternum in several places (just writing that makes me cringe). This friend is incredibly active, an accomplished triathlete and cyclist, and this setback seriously blows.

Since she is more or less immobilized, she’s started to write (and knit). And of course, because I am a blog whore, I am totally subscribed to her blog.

When I was 19 I was in an accident where I broke a bunch of stuff, including my back in six places, and took a good thump on the head (of which my mother is convinced I never recovered). I was in and out of the hospital/ICU for over a month. Reading her blog of course reminds me.

It reminds me how tough things can get once the initial shock wears off. The isolation and frustration. Being so ready for it to be over. And time ticking by ever. so. slowly.

It reminds me how little you can do to expedite the process. You can’t push harder or work longer or train smarter…the best thing you can do, in fact, is not rush it. That is hard.

It reminds me of the day, about 2 months in, when I got maniacally happy because I tied my shoes by myself. I was on the way out the door to get breakfast with some friends (who, for the record, along with my parents, had loved me and babied me and carried me through this entire episode) when I sat up and announced, arms in the air, “EVERYONE, LISTEN UP!! I JUST TIED MY SHOE! BY MYSELF!” expecting some sort of ovation. Everyone was like, “Whoop…let’s go eat.” But I smiled through breakfast, my sense of accomplishment so real that the feeling lingers 13 years later.

Because it’s not going to happen in one day, or one month, or even one year. It will happen in baby steps. Baby steps that nobody else will notice or care about. But recognizing those for what they are, representative of you moving in the right direction, is important.

I try to remember these things. That celebrating the small steps in life is important. That setbacks are not the end. That adjustments to your life plan is not always a bad thing. That being forced to slow down is hard, but sometimes necessary. That every boring, ordinary day really is a gift.

But sometimes I need a reminder. A reminder that if today is just another boring day to take a second, tie my own shoes, and soak in the ordinary.

Plants

October 30, 2014October 31, 2014 ~ meh ~ 1 Comment

Late October no longer means harvesting every last possible green thing before the frost hits. Things here are growing and growing and growing, and they don’t seem to be slowing down.

Our tomato plants are approaching 6 feet. We’ve got baby straightneck squashes making their way into the world, some huge anaheim peppers ready to be picked, our red bell peppers are finally turning red…

The basil, dill, tarragon, cilantro, and parsley can’t be stopped. The rosemary hasn’t grown much but doesn’t seem to be hurting at all.

Some of the wildflower seeds that I threw into the barrels are sprouting.

And finally….wait for it…

straight eight in the houuuuuuuuse!

The lemon tree out front is about to topple over there are so many lemons on it. Our green beans, early girl tomatoes, and zucchini plant didn’t quite make it. But you can’t win em all.

Maybe it’s because the heat finally died down, maybe it’s the organic soil I used, maybe it’s our magic coffee grounds that get dumped on the garden weekly. I don’t know. But I honestly don’t feel like I’ve given the garden enough love to deserve this kind of output (not that I’m not complaining). California gardening is awesome.

Bring on fall.