How do you feel about savasana? Do you feel that it's essential?

My yoga teacher was sick tonight.  Class was cancelled.  The backup yoga teacher is taking a cake decorating class with her daughter this session (and let me tell you, she is super super pleased to be doing so.)  So I just came home and ate leftover pizza, and now I'm having some kind of bad-food-no-yoga guilt.  The pizza was pretty good though.

I love my yoga teacher.  Seriously.  She is fantastic, and I am lucky that I blundered into her class.  But she's not going to last forever.  She's had cancer the whole time I've known her, and she's spent the last year getting chemo.  She feels like crap a lot of the time.  At some point, she is going to decide it's time to retire.  She is not a young woman.

So, I feel that it would behoove me to start looking around.  I'm going to have to interview some yoga teachers.  What do I say?  I'm coming up with some questions even now.

• How do you feel about plank?  Do you feel that it is essential?  How about side plank?
• Do you adjust the poses to fit the decrepitude of the students in your class?  Do you ask your class about their disabilities?  Like, every single time you teach a class?  Because people feel different on different days, you know.
• Do you insist on inversions?  Do you provide alternate poses for your students who are fond of their various arteries?
• Do you have a good backup instructor?  Does her daughter insist on mother daughter time?  Or anything having to do with baking?
• Are you okay with groans?  
• How about jokes?

And so on.  I don't think it's going to be so easy to replace her.

TANSTAAFL, mostly

I lucked out in the free lunch department today.  My company had a lunch for employees at a pretty nice restaurant nearby.  Normally you pay for those things by listening to some blowhard go on and on about things NOBODY CARES ABOUT.  But this time, they spoke for under a minute!  And then they gave away money!  Or gift cards, which is essentially the same thing.

So I got out of the office, I had a delightful lunch, and it was free.  It was pretty nice.  (medium rare sirloin, in case you were wondering.  plus salad bar and a baked potato.)

At work I actually got useful work done.  My brain felt pretty much fully functional, which is better than it's been doing recently what with cold and flu season going on over here.  Our office now has a plague-o-meter on the door.  It's up to 75% today.  Two of us had sore throats and one of us was wheezing.  You can guess how productive we're all being.

I had a lovely but chilly (I would say brisk but some might take it to mean that I was moving quickly) walk in the afternoon light.  The winter woods aren't much to write home about, all brown and crunchy.  But I was listening to an interesting podcast on worms.  You might think that worms aren't interesting, but you haven't listened to the podcast yet.  It was pretty good.

This evening I went (against medical advice!) to yoga.  I haven't been in a month and I've been getting creaky.  I was careful not to do the few parts that really aggravate the L5-S1 joint.  I'm still just the teensiest bit sore afterward.  After a month off, I've definitely lost both strength and flexibility.  But, the nice thing about that is I can totally get them back again just by going to class, which I shall do!

It was awesome to have our regular teacher back.  I missed her.  Her sub is good, but there's nobody like Carolyn.  I would have been happy if she just stopped in and said hi, but to have her lead the class again was sublime.

At the end of class I talked to a new member.  Tonight was her first class.  She's there for back problems a lot like mine.  Hers are more severe - she's walking with a cane.  I told her that regular yoga attendance had gotten me to the point where I hadn't had a backache that kept me from standing upright in several years.  She's going to sit near me in class next time to see which poses I modify to save my back.  I hope it helps her.

I had a whole post in my head about gratitude and not taking the people in your life for granted.   Maybe tomorrow.  Unless something interesting happens.  Or it slips my mind.  Which, given my mind, is likely.

Head, shoulders knees and toes (knees and toes)

Ah, yoga.  I love how you make me all bendy and stretchy.  I think that with enough time and sweat, you might make me have a somewhat useful back again.  But I will settle for a happier neck in the meantime.

Last week I actually had sore muscles after yoga.  Two months of no yoga had left me with weak yoga muscles I guess.  Weak, and stiff.  Hefting a backpack up and down mountains all day does not make for a particularly flexible physique.

I wondered today if it would make sense for me to try a slightly higher level yoga class.  There are some things I can't really do because of my back, but with a lot of the others I'm ready to step up a bit.  I mean, I've been in a beginner class for four years now.  There are people in the class who have been there for a decade so it's not like moving up is a big deal to most.  I'm just pondering.

Tomorrow I hope to see (and ride!) my horse, so that takes care of Thursday night.  Which means that on Friday after work I'm going to be running around like a crazy woman, trying to get my backpack ready for the weekend.  Bets on what I'll leave out?

There's no such thing as a perfect paradise

I made it to yoga tonight!  First time since July.  I was surprised at which parts were tight and which parts were strong.  Apparently my abs got stronger while I was hiking this summer.

While I was driving there from work I was thinking about how nice it is to take a break from whatever it is you're doing.  If you're working hard, it's nice to go to the beach.  If you're at the beach, eventually that gets boring and you want to go see the shops.  The shops are busy so you want to sit down somewhere quiet.  And so on.

I often have fantasies that revolve around doing something different from whatever it is I'm doing right now.  The problem is that something different doesn't remain different for very long.  I'm sure somebody has worked out how to keep a little variability in life so that one never gets bored.  Or how to accept sameness.  I haven't, though.

For me, at least, that means that there is no perfect situation.  If I have two weeks off of work, sitting on the sofa with a book sounds great the first day.  Not so great the second day.  By day three I'm totally fed up.  (You can imagine how much fun I am when I'm sick or injured.)

Fortunately, the longer I live the more I recognize this trait in myself.  Experience has given me the ability to appreciate what I'm doing (say, applying software updates while sitting at the computer in my office) by remembering all those times I was doing something else and wished to be at the office (hiking in cold rain, mowing a pasture for the fifth hour, vacuuming any time ever.)

As my train of thought so often does, it led me to hiking.  I like hiking.  A lot.  I dream of finishing a thruhike.  But what that actually means is walking all day, every day, for a really long time. Even in a place of astonishing beauty, this can get tedious.  I read often of former thruhikers who claim that if they did it again, they would take fewer days off.  I wonder if they really remember what it's like to be out there, after they're done.  When I'm hiking long distance, I *treasure* my days off.  Sleeping on a bed I didn't have to inflate, flipping a light switch instead of fishing out my headlamp, and eating delicious food that somebody else cooked (and that I didn't carry anywhere), are all extremely pleasant activities after a week of hiking.  I mean, camping pretty much rocks.  The sitting around the fire, watching the sunset, smelling the evergreens parts of camping all rock. The washing the dishes, setting up the tent, dealing with muddy clothes part of camping?  Not so much.

I'm not so profound tonight, I guess.  But I think it's an important if small revelation.  I should not plan on doing one thing for the rest of my life.  I need to change it up.  Perfect doesn't make me happy.  I mean, I like perfect, but perfect loses its perfection after a while.

Should I really be the one doing the reassuring here?

I drove myself crazy locking down machines today.  Please can it be penetration testing time now?  I don't even care what the results are anymore, I just want it over with.

It turned out to be an incredibly beautiful, perfect day outside.  JD and I walked to lunch and it felt like the sort of day when you would lay out beside the pool with your best friend and soak up some sun and maybe gossip.  Okay, definitely gossip, and drink drinks that are so cold that condensation beads up on the side and slowly rolls down and makes a ring on the table around the can.  And then maybe later, when the sun starts to throw long shadows, we would get up off of our towels on our chaise lounges with the straps across them, and we would go make some hamburgers on the grill.

That sort of day.

But, instead of doing that, I went back to work and tried not to break everything while reviewing the firewall rules and creating smaller groups of machines with more privileges, and larger groups of machines with fewer privileges.  And then I drove over to my chiropractor's office and reassured her that despite my spine, I am okay.  And she was relieved.  

Then I drove to work and typed rapidly for a few more hours, and then I drove to yoga where I reassured my instructor that despite my spine, I am okay.  Mostly.  But some of those poses aren't happening anymore.

So now I'm more bendy than I was this morning, and thanks to my chiropractor my right arm isn't all numb and tingly anymore.  And she recommended a good neurologist, although when I called for an appointment they put me with his PA but said she worked closely with him.. and anyway he's really a neuroSURGEON and stay away from my spine with your cutty knives you madman.  I'll take the PA.  I just want advice on activities to avoid or pursue with my newly discovered bulging and/or torn discs.

So, long day.  But much accomplished.  How bout you?

No yoga = bad

I headed out to my chiropractor's office this morning.  She was concerned that I wasn't healing very quickly.  She mentioned sending me out for xrays.  :(  Do not want!  I told her it felt like something was pulling me out of position after I got adjusted, and she started poking around at the not-hurty side.  Turns out, my left quadricep is really tight.  It probably wouldn't BE tight if I had been going to yoga, but I wasn't going because I was hurt and wanted to let the ligaments heal.

So, now I have a quadricep stretch to do.  And yoga starts back up next week.  We're between sessions right now.

It is becoming more and more obvious that I really can't live without yoga. Whether I want to or not.

I had a thought this morning and looked up sign language.  DeLee and I talked about it while hiking a couple of weeks ago.  She thought sign language was a direct translation of spoken language, and I thought it had its own grammar.  But neither of us really had current knowledge so we kind of left it hanging there, undefinitively addressed.  According to Wikipedia, (Wikipedia knows all ), there are a BUNCH of sign languages, and generally no direct correspondence to the local language.  There is a geographic correspondence - people in one area tend to all use the same dialect.  But the grammar isn't necessarily similar to the grammar of the local language.  Although, there are such things as Signed English, and that is a reasonably close representation.  I think.

Interesting stuff, to me anyway. The article also addresses areas in which everybody knows and uses sign, because the deaf population is large.  Martha's Vineyard, for instance.  And situations in which you have to know at least some rudimentary sign language, such as in the military for combat situations, in baseball, or when there are taboos against speech.  The article mentioned Australian Aboriginal  sign language which is used during times when speech is taboo, but I wondered also about folks who had taken vows of silence for religious reasons.  Does the silence extend to all communication, or just oral communication?

These are the sorts of things I ponder.

I have been listening to an audiobook recently.  It's apocalyptic fiction.  I'm glad I'm listening to it now, not while I'm on the trail fifty miles from anywhere.  In the book, the main character is starting to miss some of the advantages of civilization, primarily electricity for food preservation.  And that's important, but I think what I would (and do, while I'm hiking) miss most is the vast repository of knowledge readily available to me online.  That, and the easy communication afforded by the internet, cell, and phone networks.  I could probably grow and store food, but if we lost the networks I would probably never hear from most of my family again.  Or most of my far-flung friends.

Hey, friends.  Love you!  I'll miss you if the world ends!  Just wanted you to know.

The neighbors won't look at me funny. They're used to seeing tents in my yard.

Oof.  I think that sitting trot thing is harder on the back than it used to be.  I'm trying to remember how long ago it was that I never posted, I only sat the trot.  It was back when Playboy was in good riding shape.  That would make it.. twelve years ago?  Yeah.  My back noticed the twelve years of no sitting trot. 

I can do the trot no problem, it's afterward that I feel it.  That old degenerative disk disease rears its ugly head.  I can feel the muscles seizing up in my back. 

Still, it feels good when I do it, and I am certainly happy that Pluto is learning to do his part.  It was aggravating the first N years that the only trot he knew how to do was the super high, super lurchy one.  There was no sitting that.  Now he will consent to do a small quantity of a trot that I can sit.

At yoga tonight I was hoping to stretch out my various riding parts and it mostly worked, but I somehow got a cramp in my calf.  I think it was because she told us to point our toes for something.  All it's every really taken for me to get a cramp is for me to point my toes really hard, and then BOOM big old knot in the muscle of my calf.

Before yoga, I raced home and finished seam sealing my tent.  I think that by the time I'm ready to sack out, it should be pretty much dry.  I hope to sleep in it tonight to see if I'm comfortable in it.  I'm concerned that I might feel claustrophobic, since it's one of those tents that comes to a point at either end.  If I do, I guess I'll be ebaying that as well.   Since I sewed on some tabs myself, it looks kind of amateur in places.  Not to mention my stellar seamsealing job.

So, I hope, I am happy with the tent because it would be somewhat embarrassing to have to describe the defects I created in an ad.

Off I go to fish out my sleeping pad and sleeping bag.  And ear plugs.  Stupid road noise.

I wish to fall off the milkshake wagon now.

The good news:  my dad's surgery went really well.  And Dad is feeling pretty perky, due to what sounded like maybe really good drugs.  Also JD made a fair approximation of sticky rice and mango, and it was ready to eat when I walked in the door tonight.

The bad news: (There's a lot of it, I'm going to have to use numbers.)
1) Congress canNOT get its crap together, and so I'm probably out of a job next week.
2) My government agency isn't handling it particularly well.
3) Nor is my contractor.
4) Olli is trying to kill my printer.
5) Somebody barfed on a wool rug.
6) The dog peed in the house twice -once who knows why, and once because I yelled at her.
7) Both times, she hit wool rugs.
8) The dog and possibly the cats pulled down the garbage can and had their way with the contents.

I was pretty mellow when I got home from work due to a nice after-work yoga class.  But now I'm all tense and kind of pissed off.  I'm thinking it's going to be one of those "take drugs to sleep" kind of nights.  In my case, the drug is just Benadryl so it's not like I'm going hardcore.  But it's still a drug.

Oh but in other good news?  I'm half a pound lighter.  You can't tell by looking, of course, but I know it's not there.

Being homeless = :(

I didn't hit yoga tonight.  I felt a little too pitiful, with cramps and nausea.  A bean burrito and a couple of beers set me right.  (Go figure.)  And I've been doing extra yoga this week anyway.  Mostly because I had to. I got a freaky pain in one arm that (according to Marsha) is likely due to a pinched nerve.  So I was stretching away, doing the towel under the neck thing, and not doing upper body work to avoid aggravating it.  And so far so good.  I had the opportunity to get adjusted today and skipped it, so I hope agonizing pain doesn't come back over the weekend.

I had been thinking about getting "my" thruhiker a flat rate box in which to send a care package, and today I finally got off my duff and did it.  I'll put it in the mail tomorrow.  I hope he likes it!  The care packages I got last year were a huge big deal to me.  Out on the trail, you spend so much time alone that any contact with somebody who actually cares is enormous.  So, Goose, I hope you like it as much as I liked mine last year.  If not, spread the wealth.

I was thinking today about thruhiking (as one does.)  It's very hard on the body, of course.  One day of hiking is no big deal.  One week of hiking is a lot.  One month of hiking starts to turn you into a hiking machine.  Three months of hiking starts to see serious wear and tear on your joints, your skin, and your equipment.  Many thruhikes have been ended prematurely due to ACL tears, broken ankles, giardia, Lyme disease, and other afflictions common to those getting physical in the great outdoors.

I think, though, that the biggest strain of thruhiking is emotional.  Very few hikers have a partner the whole way.  Those who do, may not actually *like* their partner the whole way.  Spending 24x7 with someone doing something strenuous is pretty stressful.  When the reason you are doing it is internal, and you may have different reasons for doing it, conflicts can arise.  I want to take time off to rest and heal, and you want to push your physical limits.  I want to get to the shelter 20 miles away, and you want to stay in this pretty glen.  I need to be done by September 15 and you need to be done by October 11.  Hiking with somebody else is tricky.

So a lot of people end up hiking alone.  Not ALONE alone, there are still people out there.  But with no constant companion.  That can be a very lonely thing.  Most of us are used to having a home.  Being set adrift is alienating.  It leaves you feeling lonely and at a loss, for no readily definable reason.  Sometimes you just want to see someone and have them already know your name.

Home doesn't have to be much.  It can range from a full on mansion to a townhouse to an apartment to a trailer.  It doesn't matter.  Everybody knows what home feels like, and it's a good thing.  "Coming home" every night to a place where you feel you belong is such a subtle and accepted thing that I doubt you ever think about it until you don't have a home anymore.  It can be freeing.  But it means that you never get the feeling of safety and security every night that most people take for granted.

Not all hikers are truly homeless, of course.  I had a home to go to.. I just wasn't anywhere near it.  My tent or my spot on the shelter floor was my home every night.  I got used to it, but it definitely did not leave me feeling as safe and warm and welcome as coming to my house every night.  I woke up when coyotes howled, when trees creaked, when thunder rumbled.  When I was camped with friends I got a fleeting sense of security from the mass of humanity around me.  Even one hiker (Cody!  Miss you!) was enough.  But I spent a great deal of time alone on my hike, and it was hard.  I had no idea how hard it would be until I did it.  It wasn't enough to make me quit, but I did recognize the strain.

I know I will encounter this feeling again.  And I know there are thruhikers out there right now experiencing it.  Keep it up, my friends.  It is not a comfortable feeling.  But it is worth it to experience it.  It may make you more appreciative of friends and family.  It may help you reach out to strangers with a smile and a kind word.  It may help you appreciate humanity.

Newborn kittens may have more muscle strength than yours truly

Yoga kicked my butt with a size large boot tonight.  Everything hurts and I feel limper than a dishrag.  I may have picked the wrong day to start lifting weights.  And if I were going to start lifting weights on yoga day, I should have done it more than an hour before class.

I think there's a good chance I won't be able to lift my arms over my head tomorrow.  But it's all for a good cause, right?

I was reading a piece about thruhiking and insulin sensitivity last night.  It proposed several reasons why hikers get fat after a thruhike.  One is that your insulin sensitivity goes way up.  So like the body of a non-civilized person, your body doesn't deal well with lots of sugars, and without the huge amounts of exercise it's used to, it just piles on weight.  Also, most of your non-leg muscle atrophies when you hike because you're not using it.  (True.  It is funny to see all the T-Rex hikers at the end.)  And you need muscle to burn energy. 

Whatever the reason, it is VERY COMMON for hikers to get fat when they're not hiking, although they don't tend to eat extravagantly when not under the duress of hike-induced calorie obsession.  I never had a clue why.  Now I have a clue.  Maybe not all the information, but a clue.

Here's the link:  Why Hikers Get Fat  Enjoy.  Or, you know, don't.  Whatever.  I'm too busy staring at the tire around my middle to care.

Also, the quivering in all my muscles is really distracting.

I've been a bad, bad girl (apparently)

When I tried to post the link to my daily blog on facebook yesterday, I got a snippetty message telling me the page had been reported as spammy or abusive.  Which makes no sense since I had just written it.  I can't tell if my whole blog has been blocked, or maybe all of blogspot.  If it's my blog, I have no idea why.  I'm not selling anything, and I don't think I've been particularly abusive.

I have been posting a daily link to new blog entries, as requested by others on facebook.  If one of my "friends" reported that as spam I'm going to be pissed.  Why not just unfriend me?  Nobody is being forced to read the dang blog.

So anyway, if you used to follow links from facebook, sorry.  I apparently can't put them up anymore.

In other news I went to my first yoga class in a month.  Man that felt good!  I can touch my fingers across by back again!  I tried to do that last week and couldn't.    There were a lot of new people last night so the rest of us did a bunch of sun salutations and warrier poses and balance poses on our own.  Which, yeah, I could have done at home.  There's just something different about doing it at class.

Also?  Today it got up to 50 degrees out!  I didn't need my survival suit!  I took a walk with Alex and didn't even wear a hat.  It was awesome.  Of course, it's barely going to get above freezing tomorrow, and by Saturday the high will be only 27.  But I savored it today.  It was so nice out.  And it wasn't super dry, which meant that when I kissed JD, sparks didn't fly.  Sparks flying is less fun that it sounds, as it turns out.  All winter we kiss each other, then back away and say "Ow." 

Oh!  Oh!  Also also?  I signed up for a 5k race on April 30!  It's called Run Amuck.  It's a combination race / obstacle course.  Windy is doing it and it looked like so much fun I decided to do it too.  I don't care about the winning part, I'm just looking forward to the adventure.  There's a costume class, but I'm not doing that.  Seeing as how I've never run a 5k race before, let alone one with obstacles, I think just the non-costumed race will be plenty for me.  I do look forward to seeing how others dress.  Also there's a music festival at the same time.  So you run, (and climb walls and crawl through mud and stuff) then you change into non-muddy clothes, and you eat and listen to music.  What a cool idea.

I guess I need to do some running between now and then.  Or something.

Yoga class goes hardcore

Yoga kicked my ass tonight.  What with one thing and another, I haven't been to class in at least a month.  But it was not just my sorry behind being out of shape.  Others agree that it was a harder class than usual.

I don't usually "feel the burn" during yoga, nor am I shaky walking out.  I sure was today, though.  Ow.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to hurt tomorrow.

And what's worse is I won't have another class until mid-January.  It's run through the community center, and there are always weird gaps between sessions.  So any strength I may have gained today will be of no use to me because I'll just be slack again in the middle.  Yogawise, that is.  I just don't push myself as hard as my yoga teacher does.  I'll walk, and run, and maybe ride, weather permitting.  But it doesn't work the same muscles as interminable chair pose, know what I mean?

It took some doing just getting me to the class.  I know I'm not the only one who hates going out at night when it's cold.  I have a very strong desire to just stay inside and play with kittens.  Or watch tv.  Or basically do anything that is slothful and comfy.  Maybe play with kittens AND watch tv at the same time.  While eating a cookie.

Unfortunately for my sloth[1], I've been feeling generally stiff and unwieldy.  I knew I really, really needed to get back to yoga.  So I had my power bar two hours ahead of time[2] (which only made me hungry so I also had a sliver of stollen, which is JD's fault for buying it) and toddled out into the dark.  And the cold.  Have I mentioned the cold?  It's brisk.

When I wasn't running internal bitchy commentary on the cold, I took a few minutes to notice and appreciate the Christmas lights.  I love this time of year for its lights!  I was thinking about maybe taking the dog for a walk one evening so we could check out all the neighborhood lights.  Not that we live somewhere fancy with million dollar lights.  But a lot of people put up at least a few strands, and I really love to see the neighborhood looking pretty.  Plus, dogs love walkies.  Well known fact.



[1] We have every other kind of animal, why not a sloth?

[2] Because real food makes me barf in yoga class.

Thanks for yoga, India. Seriously. You rock with the stretching.

My friend L convinced me to make time to go to yoga tonight rather than working late(r).  And I feel a lot better.  Not stress-free, but better.  I don't think the tight knot around my heart is going to go away until December.  But I could feel tense muscles all over my body letting go as the teacher led us through the many poses. 

As much as I've worked my butt off for the last couple of weeks, it's amazing my pants stay up.*

Today is WedFriday for me.  Tomorrow JD drops me and Delee off on the trail and we have several days of my personal choice of relaxation, which is hiking up and down mountains all day.  It's difficult enough to keep my mind occupied and prevent me from thinking about things that might bug me, and it's tiring enough that I'll sleep like a log at night.  Combine that with several days with a wonderful friend, and it's all I could want.**

I was amused by several people who today who were shocked that I was hoping to walk thirty miles.  THIRTY MILES?  ON FOOT?***  And I was thinking we were doing super low mileage.  Non hikers are astounded whenever anybody walks farther than the parking lot.

I spent all day packing boxes for the upcoming move at work.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to hurt tomorrow.  Which is okay.  I need to use my upper body more.  All the hiking I did this year left me with T. Rex arms.  The riding hasn't helped much in that department, either.  Horse people get strong upper bodies through farm work, not riding.  I pay somebody else to feed Pluto.  Now I am a weakling.  Serves me right.*****

*I'm so hip, I can't see over my bum.

**That, and a coke.

***Or on your butt, depending on severity of terrain.****

****Maybe I talk about heinies too much.

*****Still, I feel like all those years of toting hay and water and what not should have counted for something.  Alas, bodies do not give credit for previous activities.