Yes, still alive.

I've kind of drifted away from the blogosphere, mostly because I'm too busy. I often think about things to write, but don't have the time to sit down and actually do it, and besides, I'm much more articulate inside my head than I am here.

Here goes, anyway, if for no other reason than ten years from now I might wonder what I did with my life.

I'm still working, roughly 10-12 hours a week. I really like it, other than one fairly difficult, uptight guy with not much of a sense of humor in the office. I think I like the getting up and putting on real adult clothing and going to an office where there are other adults, just as much as I enjoy the work.

Also, I'm much more efficient with my free time if I only have three hours of it as opposed to seven, and I appreciate it more.

Oh, and the extra money definitely makes life easier.

So, yoga. I'm still practicing at the local hot studio. I've not been to the ashtanga studio much at all; I went to a class there two weeks ago, and before that, I last went on a Saturday in June. One reason is time - it's much more convenient and eats up a lot less of my day if I just practice here.

But another reason is that I've discovered if I don't do primary series on a regular basis, I lose my ability. The less proficient I feel, the less I'm motivated to go. The less I go, the less proficient I am. And so on.

Another reason is because I've gained a little bit of weight. Not much, maybe five pounds. That's a result of being 42, of not being as careful with my diet as I should, and I think because of a reduction in how much I practice. I feel large and awkward in a room full of highly skilled yogis.

Ironically, I feel stronger now in my practice than I ever have, whereas the things that came easily to me, like twisting and folding, have become more difficult.

All summer I regularly attended boot camp, which was a lot of cardio, interval training, training with resistance bands and medicine balls, that sort of thing. It really wasn't as hard as I would have liked, because it is geared toward women who are not very fit. So I may have lost some conditioning by going there instead of hot vinyasa flow. It feels great to be outside sometimes, though, instead of closed up in a yoga room, and the boot camp group is a lot of fun with great energy.

So, kids. One is in fifth grade, the other, second. Michael bikes to and from school by himself every day, which is awesome, surrounded by pedestrian-hostile suburbs as we are. I drive by his school during the day and look over to see a hundred or more bikes chained to the railing and it does my heart good. Michael can bike with a group of kids, or not, whichever he likes. One more little push toward independence.

Will is Mr. Personality (and Mr. Push Every Limit). He is all about the sports and being cool in a way Michael is oblivious to. He wears a black cord with a silver skull on it around his neck, says things like "oh crud, dude" and "whoa, extreme!" He can tell me all about a video game that he's never played because he'll pay attention to the smallest details in a commercial or in a conversation with someone who's talking about it. He keeps asking us questions about middle school. The other day in the car, he asked "how do you get a baby?". I told him "that's something you need to ask dad, because it involves your penis". I think that was enough information for him for the time being.

Lee's work is insanely busy, but no one is complaining. He's had to do some traveling lately and has more coming up, and in about three weeks, we are tacking on a long weekend in Chicago to a trip he has to make there. I'm taking the kids out of school and we are going up on a Friday morning to meet Lee. I've never been to Chicago, but I keep hearing it's fabulous.

Last but not least, Haiku from mamayogini, memorialized forever here.

very cute he is
and it is a good thing, too
or else, jail for me

this too shall pass, yes?
inhale, exhale, repeat for
the next fourteen years.

this year, second grade
what I think he really needs
military school

sullen teenage years
stays in room always, won't talk
damn, that sounds good now

So, until next year.....Kidding!

Self-loathing

I ate seven Tagalong cookies tonight.
I'm never going to be able to bring my legs down with control from tripod headstand, much less lift up into bakasana from there.
Two years into practicing vinyasa/ashtanga yoga and I still can't straighten my legs in navasana for more than a few seconds.
It's a beautiful night but I'm spending it indoors with the TV & computer.
I'm procrastinating something fierce. I was supposed to have a date with my box of semi-permanent hair color, but it's almost 9:00 now.
I spend three to four hours a day at the office, but somehow only manage to do about two hours of work. It's taking me forever to get up to speed with how everything works and is arranged, and I hate to keep asking questions, which other people have to stop working to answer.
Tomorrow I have to fork over $850 for a new water heater.

So I did the 5K race last Saturday....

and it was an absolute blast. It was a sunny, chilly morning. The race started in the neighborhood next to the middle school. About four hundred or so kids and adults did the 1 mile fun run, so I stood next to the finish and watched for Lee & the boys, and cheered on the other runners. The 5K started shortly after, and because the race start was on a residential street, we runners were kind of packed in at the start, but once I got around the crowd, I felt awesome and had tons of energy. I never felt winded or like I needed to stop, and I wound up finishing in 27 minutes. The ING Marathon came through Decatur this morning....made me think about the possibility of training for the half-marathon...

In yoga news, I'm still dealing with right shoulder pain, but have gotten quite good at jumping out of bakasana. Marty the instructor usually gives us five minutes or so in the middle of class to work on bakasana and then headstand, so I practice it four or five times each class.

In other non-physical news, I'm still working...it's about twelve hours a week...it's suprisingly fun and I hope I can keep on indefinitely....I guess I need to make myself indispensable!

Michael has a research project for his his gifted class and his topic is "how does the universe expand?" I had a conference w/the gifted teacher last week and she said she tried to steer him away from that topic - since none of us knows anything about the topic and therefore can't really help him organize his material - but he insisted. So far getting him to do the research has been like pulling teeth. Not sure what form the final project is going to take - powerpoint, perhaps. He's interested in the topic, but not at all interested in putting it into any kind of report or presentation. Is this what it's going to be like for the rest of his school years, or is this just because this is the first real research project he's ever done? I have to keep reminding myself that he's only ten years old.

Shoulder pain, part deux

After a week or so of relatively pain-free yoga, today my right shoulder joint really hurt, esp. in things like downward facing dog and chattarunga. Not so much with the small pinpoint of pain in a specific spot that I felt previously, but more in the entire joint. Pushing into my hands while driving my shoulders away from my ears is painful.

On a positive note, however, today for the first time I went from tittibasana to bakasana. I have tried it plenty of times before, but always get stuck when my feet hit the ground halfway back. Today Marty gave me some pointers and on my second attempt, I cleared the floor entirely. I didn't feel like my knees were well enough positioned to jump out of bakasana, but I'll work on that.

I have been running a few times week and loving it. I've got a route that is about 3.5 miles and I've been doing it twice a week for the last few weeks. I was very surprised to find it was easy to get back into it. I thought the cardio part of it would be a real struggle, but it hasn't been. I have really enjoyed doing something outside, too. I love my yoga, but sometimes I feel a little claustrophobic.

In further news, I am now working part-time at Lee's firm helping out with filing, both administrative and case-related, and am also summarizing depositions. Unlike most other businesses, they have a ton of work and have gotten behind on those things. They discussed hiring an additional staff person, but Lee suggested me, so I'm working when I can, which amounts to a few hours a few days a week, with the summaries being done at home, and I'm getting paid by the hour. Not sure how long it will last - as long as they need me, and at a minimum, a month or two, presumably until they either decide they need another full-time staff person, or I get caught up.

Surprisingly, it's like I just did this work last week, not August 1997 which is when I quit my paralegal job to have Michael and stay home with him. It feels like yesterday.

I'm enjoying it, but I need to get more efficient with my time. I don't see how full-time working moms do it.

Birthday haiku

I wrote a few amusing haiku for a friend's 40th birthday party last night. He's fortunately a very good-natured guy because everyone at the party had a poem, limerick, etcetera for him. Said party is also why I missed vinyasa flow this morning. Ahem.

sign of getting old
40 year old prostate gland
yellow spots of floor

lots of friends at house
what happened to that Jim Beam?
oops, must pass out now

rope swing hangs from tree
all the kids want me to push
holy crap, my back

wife likes to party
whose turn is it to get up?
morning after sucks

Shoulder pain mentioned in previous post is mostly gone. It's now an occasional ache in the whole shoulder, but not a specific pain to be concerned about. What I'm more concerned about is how I'll ever manage to go from tittibasana to bakasana without my feet hitting the floor. My ass feels like a ton of bricks when I try.

I am also running in order to do a 5K in mid-March. I have to say, the running has been awesome. Love being outside & getting my heart pumping. It's also not been nearly as hard as I thought to get back into it.

Shoulder pain

This week I started experiencing pain in my right shoulder, in a small but specific area in the front of my shoulder, right in the center. I'm not even sure when I first felt that pain, Monday maybe?

I took Monday, Wednesday and Thursday off from practice, for other reasons more than for my shoulder, but yesterday I opted to do a Hot Core Power class at the Decatur studio instead of full primary with John, as I normally do on Fridays. Hot Core is easier on the upper body than primary series. I did tripod headstand during the class and my shoulder felt fine; however, at the end I did headstand the regular way and the action of pushing into my shoulders was painful. It didn't last terribly long, and was only a very mild ache by the end of the day.

This morning I went to John's and did full primary. It didn't hurt in a specific way during practice, just a general ache, though again headstand produced a specific pain in my shoulder. All afternoon I've had an ache in my right shoulder, stronger than it's been before. It seems to have migrated to the joint, and the entire shoulder hurts.

What seems to hurt the most are small back and forth or pulling motions, like when I was shredding chicken for tacos with two forks, or when I used our wine vacuum pump to put a cork in a bottle of wine. Also, extending my arm out and back to put my jacket on is uncomfortable.

It doesn't feel severe enough to see a doctor (and I'd be paying out of pocket to do so), yet it's uncomfortable and I'm worried that continuing to practice is going to make it worse. I am loathe to take a prolonged break, because I am worried about losing all I've gained in terms of upper body strength.

NSAID's haven't helped so far. I wish I knew if this was a case of things happening in my shoulder as a result of my practice, like when I was first binding in Supta Kurmasana and my collarbones hurt all the time, or it is a bonafide injury that needs attention.

Kids, god love 'em

1. I am going on a field trip with Michael's class tomorrow to see Greg Mortensen (http://www.threecupsoftea.com/) speak at Agnes Scott. There was an interview in the paper with him today, so while Michael had his snack this afternoon, he read the article. He asked me "What's a fatwah?" and I told him, then he said "Eww, he had to eat ibex jerky in Pakistan." I said "Isn't an ibex some kind of freakishly large rat?" and he's all "No, it's a mountain goat" and I'm all "No, I think it's a rat" and he's all "Google it and see" and darned if he was not right. It is a mountain goat.

2. I found out yesterday from Will's teacher that she has been giving him chewing gum - her own chewing gum - to help him focus in class, to try to channel his desire to wiggle and talk. She says it really helps him. God bless her. When I was in school, chewing gum was strictly verboten. When I came to pick will up today, I brought her two big packs of gum along with three boxes of granola bars for snack.

3. Tonight for dinner I am roasting a marinated pork loin (ahem, turkey tenderloin, otherwise the kids won't eat it), making roasted cauliflower which will be blanketed in parmesan cheese, and homemad macaroni and cheese. A beige meal, to be sure, but one I won't even get to enjoy until I am back from curriculum night. Since fourth grade seems to be the year when you hear nothing from your child's teacher about what they're doing in class, I am not going to miss this one. For at least a month now, when I ask Michael what kind of project they're working on in his G&T class, he says "space junk". He won't elaborate. So I guess I have to find out for myself.

4. I've gotten Michael his own email address. Last week I registered him for the Duke Talent Search program, and there was a spot for it on the application, so I thought, what the heck. All the relatives have been given his email address, so my MIL forwards photos of things like elaborate sidewalk chalk drawings, or ice sculptures, while my SIL and Michael trade video links of things like cats pooping on the toilet, or Weird Al songs.

5. I think I need a Facebook intervention.