flexibility newsflash

Today after Bikram and painting some more of the interminable swathes of wall in our house I took a shower. And, guess what? I could touch my toes. I know, bad visual, but it has been years since I was able to do that.

mom for a night

My Christmas present to Ellen was the offer to spend the night at her house so that she could get a full night's sleep. Last night was the night. It was quite lovely. Zack (pictured in entry below) is a chunkster of a baby with a sweet temperament. He was up for a bottle at about 12:30 and again a little after 5am. At that point he was quite awake so we wandered about looking for some toys. Once we got out of his room and into the breaking light of dawn, I think he finally realized I was not one of his people. He kept craning himself backwards so as to get a better look at me. Very cute. Then we went into the room where I had been sleeping (Ellen and Jerry's room) and he truly looked perplexed as we got into the bed to play and there was no sign of the parental units. They were downstairs in Lars' room with ear plugs in. We played for awhile and then both fell asleep until 7:30. It was actually quite fun (I know, that's because I can go home!), so I told Ellen I would do it again sometime.

Catherine making money

Catherine has finally discovered the incredible cash cow that is babysitting. Here are a couple of pictures of her babysitting Ellen's baby Zach this afternoon.

Crafty Christmas

A holiday arrangement.


This is Catherine's table decoration.


I made this wreath so we can keep up with the wreathy neighbors. Note all greenery comes from our very own garden.

humbled by hubby

Today Ellen and I had signed up to attend a 3 hour Bikram workshop. A guru woman was in town from Boston to teach it. She had been advertised as a person who takes cripples and gets them bikram-ing like mad. So, I get up this morning and Craig says he'd like to join us. There were about 35 of us at the workshop and it was great. The usual class is 90 minutes so this was working through the poses and getting feedback and answers to questions. Craig was singled out and dubbed "new guy" because he was the only one in the room who had never been to a class. He was like a human piece of positive reinforcement for the instructor. He is naturally quite flexible and in the distant past did a lot of yoga so is familiar with some of it. But she would come over and coo about "you see, the new guy just trusts his body and just goes with the pose." Sickening. Anyway, I got up my courage to ask a question regarding pose: hands to feet:




Anyway, you have your knees bent and then you are supposed to cup your heels with your hands and straighten your legs. Ultimately you end up looking like the people above. Problem. Cannot cup heels no matter how bent my knees are. So she comes over and we work at it a bit and she concludes that I just have to hold my ankles and keep working towards my heels. There is absolutely no question that I can straighten my legs. I stand up and she says to everyone (and this was fine, because it was clear already that the class was about seeing what different anatomy means for the poses): "Well, of course she is having trouble. Look at those legs. They are long, the torso is short and the arms are short." at which point she gestured to the length of my forearms versus my legs. So I have spent the rest of the day integrating this limb issue into my understanding of my general inflexibility which I had attributed to my tight hamstrings. Meanwhile, Craig bends over, cups his heels and straightens his legs. God love him.

downtown on a Friday night

As I was walking to my car after a rousing Mozart Requiem at the Utah Symphony I witnessed the following amusing scene. It was chilly, but cold not withstanding there were two young women clinging to each other and shivering at one of the crosswalks. They were each wearing a sequiny halter top and teetering on high heels. (They also had on trousers, just in case that wasn't clear). Anyway, along comes this 'hobo' (this is the word that Catherine and Sam use for down and outs. I have no idea where they got it from. In my idiolect it conjures up visions of unemployed men riding the rails. This man was clearly unemployed but decidedly less romantic than my 'hobo' visual.) Anyway, he says to the two women: "Wow, I thought I was crazy, but you two have me beat." It was a cute, urban moment in a not very urban place.

Marking papers

This is the part I hate the most (well, maybe not the most, but it ranks pretty high). So I have stayed home this morning with 35 assignments that I should have handed back by now and which have been lying on the floor next to me desk for two weeks. Meanwhile, I find myself posting, whipping up a tasty beef stew, and committing other acts of procrastination.