I think one of the big things that I miss while driving is the smells. Miss in the sense of I just rarely encounter them (except going past a restaurant that does salmon). Miss in the sense that it doesn’t even occur to think they might be there. There are, of course, all the tiny blooming flowers that one misses, but as one moves incrementally slower and slower, more and more tiny things appear.

The ride in this morning was nice. It was spitting and the last drop hit as I was going down the drive way. I was wondering how hard it was going to rain, but it didn’t the rest of the way in. There was no one really on the trail as a result of the recent rain. A few people, but I left a little late, so I missed most of the hardcore commuting crowd and the casual riders were not out in the middle of the day.

The ride home was also nice. More people out, which makes sense — it was nicer, and later in the day. I noticed a lot of grim faces on bicyclists. The runners all looked mostly like they were working hard, but they weren’t grim. The walkers were walking. One dude was bopping along listening to his ipod, some were on phones, some were talking with their walking buddies or children, some were walking purposefully. None of them really grim. There was only one bicyclist I saw that didn’t have that aggro, grim, GRIM!, expression, and it was a big lady riding a ginormous cruiser with an even more ginormous grin, moving even slower than me. Her smile said everything I was feeling, “This is AWESOME!” And it is totally awesome! There was another lady on a bike that probably wasn’t grim. We were traveling about the same speed for a while and she was ahead of me. It’s hard to tell from the back if someone has that concentrated GRIM! look on their face (although sometimes one can tell). Her body language wasn’t grim though. I hope all those grim people were able to work the grim aggro out and feel better after their rides.

Both times I’ve ridden in, I get really really cold. I think I didn’t get cold on the long Sunday ride because we stopped a bunch. But when I go consistently for an hour or more, when I stop, I get cold cold cold. It’s bizarre. After about a half hour I ended up putting my coat back on.

Am thinking though, it was so nice to ride in, perhaps I can find nice quiet side streets to get to work on. Not every street through town is a crazy busy thoroughfare… *ponder*

Also? Shoulders are Totally Not Aerodynamic.

We got the tag-along bike added to my electric bike today. First P & I went out for a short four mile ride to see what it was like to get down to the Burke, to gauge how we were going to get the girls down there safely. Having deemed it… ok, though a few cars didn’t really give much breathing space… about two miles in, I decided if I had to take the back rack off to get the tag-along on, then by golly, that’s just what we had to do. So glad I did. I think today’s ride would have been a lot less fun for me if I hadn’t had a little extra help, mostly in getting started at major intersections, and by about three miles in, and it was *awesome* on the last hill home.

Going one way down to the Burke is fine. The road has a wide shoulder in that direction, so there’s room to pull off safely if something needs fixed like shoelaces (an issue we encountered yesterday, but thankfully not today). On the way home, there is no shoulder and a narrow sidewalk that tends to actually get used by bicycles & pedestrians alike with not much safe passing space. Any error lands you in fast and aggressive traffic. My preferred route home, while much more uphill, is also back residential roads and much less traveled so it at least feels safer.

On today’s ride M2 was enthralled the entire time, and M1 had no problem keeping up (and on occasion even passing ahead of me). The recurring chant for the duration of the ride from my little backseat driver was, “Faster, Mommy! Faster! Faster! SUPER FASTER!” Gotta get that one on her own bike, then I can catch up the tail end of our little caravan, and she can try to keep up with P who claims, “I mostly coasted today.” So glad I could provide him with the hilly route on the way home a couple times so he had a small challenge. Heh.

Things I learned: it’s a challenge to balance for two people, one of whom doesn’t quite get the hang of balance yet. Steering, likewise can be a bit more of a challenge when the balance is slightly awry. I didn’t run into anyone/thing, but my direction wasn’t quite as stable as I wish it were. I expect this to improve, especially since while P & I were out this morning, M2 was apparently dedicatedly trying to figure out how to ride her own bike. The Ms were out in the culdesac when we got home, and we were informed she was THIS >< CLOSE!

There was a showing while we were out today, they wanted to see the house, “between 1 & 3.” Which. Whatever. As we were pulling up to the last leg of the ride home, we’d have gotten home about 15-20 minutes early. We decided to get ice cream fortification. Nom. It was the perfect time killer and we arrived home at 5 to 3. No idea if the realtor ever showed. If so, she didn’t leave a card. Grar.

But we had an awesome bike ride & the girls couldn’t have done better, & P got to spend time with his newly beloved (his bike), and the rest of the family too.

Ok. It wasn’t *all* about the psoas, but that was a good part of it. I can’t wait to take a full class incorporating all of this. Due to the volume of material, we kind of skipped around and messed around a bit more in length with some of the new stuff. My psoas is telling me about it still. Probably because afterwards we went back to M’s and played on the leg extension unit & tower & the last thing I did was some stuff where I made them burn. Which they are still doing. OMG. I’ll be able to walk tomorrow, but that’s a part of my body I don’t think I’ve felt so distinctly… well… ever, really. Except I have, because it’s been aching with the funky back stuff lately.

I think I need the yoga anatomy book — I want to see the groupings of muscles and how they all fit together. So much connects in the pelvis. You know how they say that the human body would be structured entirely differently if we had wings? I mean, duh, right? But we just really wouldn’t look so much like angels if we had wings because of the musculature that would be required to hold everything in place (much less to fly). Stay with me for just a moment longer here… ok, so right, it’s kind of like that with how much is anchoring in the pelvis — sometimes I just get lost and can’t keep track of all the movement that’s happening that’s anchored in the pelvis and it kind of blows my mind. Maybe at however old it is that I am now I’m finally acceding, conceding to Balanchine’s exhortation, that I always fought, to do, not think. And much like I can hear Balanchine in my mind’s ear, I think I can hear Juliu in my mind’s ear saying feel, not think. These dudes — they’re like Yoda. “There is no try, there is only do or not do.” Oy. I have been breathing too much this evening!

So there. I am being contradictory. I want the anatomy book so I can break it all down and analyze the heck out of it and then integrate it all to the point where I just feel the holistic movement. It is hard to just let go and do/feel — moving in so many directions at once!

In yoga, one of the lines of thought is that the mat is like a portable laboratory. A portable sanctuary. A portable space of peace. It’s always my laboratory. My body is a laboratory like *whoa*. There’s always something going on to pay attention to that is interesting . Stretch here, contract there, arch here, curl there, bend here, straighten there, twist and twist and twist and twist…

I’m going to have to take a hot water bottle to bed with me for my belly tonight! And tomorrow M1 has an orthodontist appt bright and painfully early so time to start wrapping this evening’s written processing up! I’m not sleepy. Want to move more and play with some of this new stuff! Carting children around bright and early, PLAY!, carting children around, PLAY! Sigh. Being a grown up is annoying sometimes.

…yoga isn’t about doing 3 hours of asana a day or remaining perfectly calm when you get lost. It’s about paying attention, and having awareness, which gives you choices about how you want to live your life: in a way that is constructive, or a way that is destructive.

Without yoga at work, I really think I’d be much worse off. Or rather, the situation would be the same, but the lack of balance would cause the context to be much worse. I joke a lot about needing to go breathe now, but truth is, I desperately need to carve that space out in both my personal life and my work life. It gives me just a little it of time to back off, step back, center myself, reorient, and if not approach from a better perspective, at least I’ve had a chance to do the other stuff…

Gyrokinesis does the same thing for me. The movement modality shares some similarities and has its differences as well, but my approach tends to be the same.

Today in class, I went into it with goal of practicing with intention and thinking about where each movement was originating from, and where it should be originating from. I would have moved slower and gone deeper, but it’s nice to not be too far off everyone else. I can go slow and deep at home. Or when it turns up in class. :)

Weirdly doing ‘halo pulses,’ my hip cramped up. Here I am thinking about movement originating from my rib cage, and my hip went all grar! on me! Silly hip. So many muscles connecting in the pelvic structure, it’s kind of crazy, really.

Now I think I’m going to knit for a bit. I’m slowly, maybe, making progress on the sweater. Or: At least I’m on to the sleeves…

It’s hard.

And increasingly I find that the people I practice with don’t do full time either, they do something here, something there. Lots of people do it and keep “the day job” or get the training just for themselves, knowing it will never ‘pay back’ except in personal satisfaction and depth of practice. Knowing this makes it… well, it makes it a little harder not to push forward and just do it.

I think back on all the ballet I did and the most valuable part of the practice besides the never ending classes, was the teacher’s assisting that I did, and teaching when the teacher was out. I learned what to look for, what needed correcting, what simply needed learning, and what had physical limitations that required care to work with. I admit to watching people in the various classes I take all week. Not with a judgmental eye, just out of curiosity — what does this pose/movement look like on them? Where are their limitations? Where is the impetus of their movement coming from? Where is their alignment giving away a physical limitation? Where is their alignment giving away proprioception limitations? And then frequently I’ll close my eyes and go back to what I’m doing and how it all feels in my own body, what my limitations are, where the impetus of my movement is initiating, where my alignment is physical v. proprioception… I watch my teachers with the same eye. We are all blessed and cursed with different abilities, different strengths, different weaknesses. I am slowly learning not to mirror my instructors movements but to move to the full extent of my ability to express the movement. Forever I thought a teacher had to have a perfect expression to teach a movement, but I look back on Ms. Jan and realize by the time I was taking classes from her, she must have been in her late sixties, if not into her seventies. She would mark through the movements she wanted us to perform, and if she really wanted an example, she’d have either an assistant teacher or a student show the exercise. She would sit in the middle of the mirror and watch us, or walk around and make subtle corrections, drop a hip here, lengthen a leg there… adjust a gesture over there. So it helps to have someone who can do a full expression, but it is not necessary. As one of my teachers says at the end of class, “Thank the real teacher, yourself…”

For the first time in a long time, I tweaked my back hard over the Labor Day weekend. Tears. Ice & heat packs. Hot baths & showers. Standing, sitting, lying, whimpering… Worked from home one day, and was ginger when I went back the following day. It’s been increasingly better, but now and again since then, it’s been achy. Today was one of those days. My alignment was off, I needed to move more slowly through things, and think through the alignment very carefully. There are a lot of muscles, ligaments, bones, and various viscera and being aware of all of it can sometimes be hard to keep track of! I do think if I’m still getting the achy stuff going on I’m going to check in with a doctor then likely a physical therapist who can tell me what’s going on & just make sure there isn’t something bad, but first my insurance stuff has to get straightened out. In the meantime, paying attention and moving with a lot of care in alignment!

Weirdly, my least favorite pose right now is child’s pose. It is very hard for me. My calves are big, and push my sit bones away from my heels when I lean forward, unless I am very actively using my arms to push myself back into position. It’s tiring. Even when I push my knees to the side, to let my belly nestle down, it’s still a very active and not particularly restful pose for me. I’d rather do down dog as a rest or repose, it’s that active for me. If I’m thinking about it. I can relax, but I lose “the correct alignment” and my butt goes up as my knees attempt to stay connected to my femurs. Something has to give somewhere for relaxation… always such a relief when the instructor comes around and puts pressure on my sacrum and pushes down gently. The same spot that tweaks out on me…

Paul is home from metal kommand and the kittens are hungry so this is as good a point to pause as any…

So my final thoughts are these.

• It’s absolutely decadent.
• It was a lovely ride in and a lovely ride home.
• If I do it somewhat regularly, I will likely get faster.
• Realistically, this is something that will have to be a treat — it leaves too much of the dropping off & picking up of kids to P. At least until I get faster.

There might be more to say, but I’m watching The Pink Panther with the girls & am distracted by Inspector Clouseau.

I’m simultaneously looking forward to it and somewhat apprehensive about the whole thing. The distance is one thing. Eight miles? I could do eight miles and not really be phased. In my mind’s eye, I can picture eight miles from here & it’s a ways, but it’s not too bad. I think after about eight miles, I get into more urban and more bicyclists, and the roads I’ll be crossing are more major crossings, and more people, etc, etc. After eight miles, I don’t really have a sense of the trail I’ll be bicycling on either. Not that I haven’t done it before, I just haven’t done it for something like 16 years and I’m kinda foggy about how it all goes. I think I can just keep following the yellow brick road (and all the regular bike commuters), but still. I like to be able to visualize this stuff.

I’m also not a super confident rider. I’m ok. I’m not particularly fast, even with an electric-assist, I average out at about 10mph unless I’m going downhill. You know, gravity helps everyone out there. Being slow like that means the silly lycra/spandex people zoom past me. As does pretty much everyone else, but… whatever. I like bicycling. I just don’t like going up hills & I have help with that now. Also, my bike is real purdy.

I think my best bet tomorrow is just to let myself be a tourist. That’s more fun anyway. That means instead of being all boring and serious and focused, I get to look around and stop and smell the wild roses and take pictures of the lakes and generally dawdle & annoy the boring, serious, focused spandex people. And if I’m late to work, eh, I’m late to work. It’s an experiment, after all…

In other news, got the article draft out to the people who need to contribute to it. A little (a lot) later than I wanted it going out, but… it’s out & hopefully they get it back to me in time to revise & send on to the editor so we can go through the whole process again. Also did a walk through of a webinar presentation. I’m the host… which of course brings to mind, “I am your host und sagen wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret!” I fear the presentation will be nowhere near so interesting as Cabaret, certainly not choreographed as well (I mean, really — who can compete with Bob Fosse?), but it’ll be interesting.

And if I’m going to be coherent enough to be peddling a bicycle, electric-assist or no, I need to be going to bed in the very near future. So that’s that for now.

In other news:

• I love my new job. It has it’s challenges, but they’re good challenges and I work with good people.
• M2 is finishing off the last of her medicine for a strep throat diagnosis that turned out to be staph instead. Not the whatsit resistant one, “they usually tell us when it’s that”, just run of the mill. Makes me wonder if that’s what it was the times last year when it was diagnosed as “Not Strep.” I might have to ask from here on out assuming treatment is required for it. It looks and hurts suspiciously similarly…
• Our back deck is now finished and stained. Hoorah! It looks so nice. Now that we’re past the dog days of summer and starting into my favorite season of fall. Not that I didn’t get a massive sunburn on my shoulders. UGH.
• Mmmmmm, fall…
• We went and saw Julie & Julia. It was lovely. We followed it with dinner at Persimmon where we were the only people in the restaurant until about five minutes before we left. The lovely owner brought us two candles to sit at our table with us, since we were re-attempting our anniversary dinner. The dinner was perfect & tasty. It really could not have been lovelier.
• The prior weekend I had a gyrokinesis class with the ever charming Mia. There wasn’t really any doubt in my mind that I would love it. Now I’m just plotting how to get a regular fix. The length of class I want is at the same time I *should* be sitting/exercising at the Y while the little girls take swimming lessons. I could take a class half as long, but… it’s half as long! Anyway. LOVE. No surprise. I am what I am, for sure.
• I gave the tortle a new home this weekend. She has responded by burying herself gleefully in the dirt. She comes out to eat, wade, bask, & wander around, and then buries herself under her little log again.
• Aaand, I think that’s about it. Probably stuff most of y’ins reading this already knew…

Yesterday I went for an 11 mile ride on Elby, my electric bike. Came home and took a long hard nap — if I start riding to work (around 13 miles), I won’t have the luxury of recovering from my ride with a nap! I think this will require working up to since the round trip will be closer to 26 miles by EOD. My time is not all that fast, even with the electric assist — I averaged 10 or 11 or so mph yesterday (11 miles in 1h:1m). I’ll need to pick up the speed some too. My goal is to get to work in an hour (or less). I have work to do, kids to pick up, blah blah blah blah. I do wonder if I’ll ever make that time without showing up all bright red. I guess people would get used to it… Hopefully I don’t prove myself to be too much of a princess to do it semi-regularly.

The ride itself was pretty lovely — going past fences of honeysuckle, hills covered in wild roses, the lake. I will say that warm lake was not my favorite smell, though. I will have to get used to the seat too. About eight miles in, my girl bits were objecting. Happily my sit bones were quite content with the state of affairs though, which is an improvement. My hands & arms also didn’t freak out from the ride. Hoorah! I was dumb and didn’t put sunscreen on. I got a faint burn, but it’s gone already today — but for the future, I will be remembering the sunscreen, even if it’s earlier in the day than freaking high noon. I meant to start out earlier, but the first ride was an epic fail when I switched gears… too fast? In combo with a pause in pedaling? I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I managed to derail the chain off the front gear, and it was a bitch to get it rerailed. Things like this make me apprehensive of making a regular commute on bike, although I think it was just noobishness on my part and trying to get gears switched & being uneven, etc. It’s not like occasionally shit doesn’t go wrong in a car too, hello clutch & clutch stuff my first week of my new job…

My new job! Is awesome. I have lots to catch up on that I’ve not been paying attention to, since my focus the last five or so years has been pretty much taxonomy, but… I’ll get there. And since I’m kinda in the deep end of the pool, I’ll figure out how to swim fast. :) It’s mostly a matter of following up on the questions as they come up and making sure the information gets filed away in my brain in a way that enables retrieval.

Today I need to go hack back the roses, they’re getting out of control. I should probably do some weeding & other stuff too. Sounds like not too much — P hacked back the blackberries that were trying to take over the north side of the house. Which means I need to hunt down the sunscreen and a big hat. And thinking of going out in the sun makes me feel suspiciously like a nap would be such a lovely thing… Mmmm. Naaaappppp.

After everything stopped gushing, P went upstairs to read & listen to music (big headaches + noisy splashy swimming pools just don’t mix), and the girls & I went swimming. M2 is getting braver about the whole getting her face wet, I think a few more times noodling around in the pool & she might be ok with swimming lessons. I hope. I know. So domestic.

Tomorrow such exciting things as fish tank cleaning & general house cleaning. And then going back to the Y so the little girls will stop begging. It’s new. You know.

In other completely unsurprising news, I <3 Dethklok.

I finished the book I was reading, borrowed from a friend at work: The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. It was interesting, mostly for the natural world facts along the way. Kinda preaching to the choir as far as the message goes — yeah, sustainability. I don’t need justification for sustainability. I get it. So, it was an interesting read, but not really world view changing. Now I have to decide what to read next. I have a huge stack of books to read. I have the original Girl Scout handbook which I’ll probably read in bits and pieces interspersed between the other stuff, but the three I’m trying to decide between that I just can’t seem to settle on one — Information Ethics: Privacy, Property, and Power by Adam D. Moore, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition by Umberto Eco, or Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Bowker & Star. I want to read all of them at once & that… I think that would just be not good. Since I have been trying to decide what to read next since, like, Xmas, I’m going to go alphabetically. No, I think actually I just want to start with Info Ethics because that’s where I think I want to start, because when I thought about going with LoC classification, which would have given me Sorting Things Out, and I decided I preferred to go with alphabetical, so I seem to have *some* preference here. Info Ethics it is. Woo! Been a while since I read any Eco, but after 18 years, I’m still a little stung from having a professor snidely say ‘oh semiotics is so two years ago, now it’s all about deconstruction.” Pretty sure he said it to be a jackass, but w’evs. Both are interesting theories.

ANYWAY. I’ve apparently decided what to read next. Did I mention I love Dethklok? I love Dethklok.