Riding over I5 at night
It was a great night for riding home after the first meeting of my yoga teacher training. Not a lot of traffic at all, not too cool or hot. It was nice riding through the neighborhood to the pedestrian bridge on Bryant. It struck me how much changed in the last 10 years. Here I was, 39, riding home at night from yoga teacher training, 150 pounds less. At 29 I'd pretty much given up on riding a bicycle a few years prior, had not notion of taking yoga (although I was still swimming then), and spent a lot of my time distracting myself from all the messy emotions I had inside, which is what I had been trained, forced to learn to do as a child.
I was quiet, just my breath and the appreciation of change, the late summer night. I enjoyed the noise over the freeway. Even at 9:45 or so the traffic was still rushing both north and south so there was a constant hum. The loud, present roar that is the buzzing hum in the background of my bedroom. I peddled up over the rise of the bridge then coasted down the other side, mindful of the changes, the feel of the night air on my face and the drone of I5 in my ears.
After that it is an easy, pleasant coast to my house. I quickly rode across Albina then turned to coast down the hill on Commercial. Standing up on my peddles, leaning up into that feeling of flying, and coasting along until I braked at the house.
There were frogs singing as I stopped. I stood on the lawn for a moment just listening to them; so beautiful.
AM had pumpkin curry waiting for me when I got inside. Spicy and sweet, it is warming after the ride home (my legs get cold quickly). I'm tired, but feel more grounded in this commitment than I did earlier today.
Recognizing Anxiety
Woke up with a bit of a start when CK's alarm went off. Not being used to her setting one, much less one that made intermittent buzzing noise, I was disoriented at first. Then fell back asleep for a while longer. Yes, of course I know I should have leaped from the bed and gotten on with my day, but I felt so tired.
Mornings are like that. I really like the idea of getting up an hour earlier to do zazen and yoga practice before showing and heading into the office. It is rare that I have enough resources to get up some mornings, much less earlier. This is where my therapist would point out that I need to, once again, cut myself some slack since most people don't do all the things I do and manage chronic pain as well.
I have to admit that I am nervous about the teacher training starting tomorrow. I'm also feeling the hard work I've been putting in around my own intimacy issues, which is just draining and at times leaves me feeling emotionally raw and exposed. I can tell I've been anxious these past few weeks, my hands look a little bit up here and here. My dentist was also reminding me yesterday that that unless I'm chewing or talking my teeth shouldn't be touching.
On the positive side I made some progress at work today. Got MySQL up and running in my dev/test environment. Tomorrow I may even get to play at setting up a database and tables. I'll have a quick Denver trip next month -- they're getting together a team I was part of to celebrate our completing a project. Dinner out, the whole things. I feel a little small saying this, but I kind of wish we'd get recognized without a trip to Denver needed!
Dentist Day
Wow, what a day. I was feeling OK about the dentist appointment until about an hour before it happened and then the tension surrounded me like a cape, pulling on the front of my chest. I didn't feel panicked as much, but I was just taut and cold. Finally I took some Xanax before we left and it settled in by the time the dentist was working on my teeth. Although I think it would have been good to have had it a little earlier so the cleaning and flossing would have been a little less intense (I particularly dislike someone flossing my teeth).
CK saves the evening
CK and I rode over to Prananda for asana practice and somewhere after we went over the freeway I hit a nail. It sounded like a rock but at a light we saw what looked like a tack. I made it to the studio but after class we came out and discovered the tire was flat. When CK pulled the metal out we saw it was a good sized nail!
CK jumped in and said we'd eat outside, just have out take out front. In the end they made us noodles and ended up serving us, on plates, bringing us water, and everything. Mostly they just wanted to keep the indoors clean! Thankfully the dinner was tasty, quick and helped some of the sensation of defeat. The rest of the ride home was mostly flat or downhill, so that helped improve the evening hugely.
September Starts Slowly
Still feeling a bit slow today. Seemed like many people today were still moving slow after the holiday weekend. At work today and in my class "tired" was a common word. It was such a long weekend for me but still pretty busy in many ways and getting back to the routine seemed a bit of a challenge.
I got through the day, making myself get up and go for a short walk around 2:30. Picked up a nectarine, some rice cakes, and other fruit for the week at Whole Foods. Tried to make sure I had a snack soon before leaving. When I got to the house I also had a banana before going to the community center to teach yoga.
Did some sun salutations in class with a focus on lunges and a series around adho mukha svanasana. Then did some work on the core muscles in the abdomen -- I'm thinking I may feel those tomorrow! Afterward I walked over to CK's flat to pick up my bicycle -- neither of us had felt like biking over in the chill of the weekend and had left mine there.
I was glad she was home. Since she'd been over hanging out on Monday and had slept in a bit today we decided not to have our usual Tuesday lunch. It made sense but I had to admit that I missed that part of the "normal" routine. Instead I had some leftover chili and kept working on simple, but necessary tasks on my list. As I walked up the block I first saw her truck, then reminded myself she might be on her bicycle. Then I saw the open windows and Atari sitting looking out at the world going by. CK was what I saw next, waving at me. I realized how much I had wanted to see her at feeling the smile spread across my face.
I summoned up what energy I'd gathered teaching class and got set to ride home. I gave AM a quick call to let him know I was on the way and he asked that we go to Dalo's for dinner. I had an easy ride over and the usual, yummy vegetarian platter. AM offered to come up with a way to bring my bike home in the Outback, but I pointed out that the best part of the ride home was what was left. Sufficiently fueled by injeera, lentils, cabbage, spinach, peas, and beer I easily got up the hill and coasted home.
"Whoosh" goes August
The usual routine gets going again tomorrow morning after a weekend of my being hugely indulged and spoiled for my birthday. Amazing good food, drinks and much movie watching. It was a very nice laid back weekend. CK went home a little while ago, laundry is nearly all done, just some more fabric left to finish and put away. I've even repacked a few things in my room to get ready to store behind the closet -- fabric, sewing notions.
Today we all slept in and napped a lot. It was a lazy day. Feel a little bad about that, seems like maybe we should have done something. I reminded myself we've all been so tired and worn out that maybe a day of napping has been what we all needed. AM took pity on our sleepiness and ran to the store for some ingredients. He made us breakfast for dinner this evening -- pumpkin waffles, Gardenburger breakfast sausage, and a tofu scramble. None of us had really had any real off all day, most snacks, so it was nice having a warm dinner. The waffles were particularly nice to have, a real "holiday" type meal since we don't often have them.
Birthday Weekend Indulgence
Suddenly it is 9:45PM on September 1, 2008. My long birthday/holiday weekend is at an end -- here's a quick re-cap.
My evening Saturday with CK was really marvelous. We biked back to her place, which seemed really hard still on my legs, and hung out a little. I got dressed while she hopped in the shower and sat on the sofa feeling the strange nervousness. I wore a very simple black skirt and shirt with my Teva sandals on so I'd be able to walk around comfortably. I added the necklace she'd given me along with the coconut ear jewelry I'd bought at Last Thursday. She woke a black shirt & blazer with some gray trousers. I realized I've never seen her that dressed up and she looked fantastic.
Drinks at the Heathman were fantastic, as good as I recalled from years ago. We also popped into Southpark and each enjoyed a half glass of wine with some spiced nuts, she a German Riesling, I picked a French muscadet. Both wines were very good and it was great having the half glass option. The nuts were very tasty and we didn't bother to find out about butter or not. We were having such a good evening and conversation that CK suddenly noted that we had to go.
Dinner at Higgins was excellent. We had a roasted summer vegetable & spinach salad with a balsamic dressing and a smoky, blended gaspascho that was rich with olive oil. CK's entree was a tomato, zucchini & chick pea flour cakes with basmati rice and a lovely sauce that included capers. I ordered the roasted eggplant risotto that came with a red pepper sauce. We also had a bottle of Evolution, which still is a favorite white.
It was great fun, although chilly for my birthday. We enjoyed walking around from spot to spot. It is an easy walk to her flat and the MAX stop on 7th Avenue, so it made the whole evening a piece of cake. Which we didn't have, instead we had a luscious peach, plum & ginger sorbet with a cup of coffee. CK even had a little of the coffee with me, they even had soy milk for us!
Sunday we got up and CK came up with the idea of hopping out of bed and over to Sweet Pea for brunch. This is something that is a regular with friends of ours but I rarely get to go since most Sundays I teach yoga at 11:15AM. However, this was a long holiday weekend and my summer series finished last weekend. We quickly pulled ourselves together and made our way over. It was crowded, of course, and we sat for part of our meal on the stairs leading up the the photographer's office (closed on Sundays). Tofu scramble, spicy seitan sausage (which I liked), steamed kale, diced red potatoes, a suitably savory gravy, pancakes, AND biscuits. Midway through we split a table with some other folks and each indulged in a second biscuit (I covered my with some agave on top of the Earth Balance).
Sunday afternoon CK and I watched Primer. I enjoyed it although the whole story starts to unravel and you start going back and forth in your mind as to when things really started to come apart. Subtle and lots of small things to catch. CK was going to watch and listen to the director's commentary which should be rather interesting.
Today we tried to watch Across the Universe, but it wasn't really catching us. I was enjoying it alright, just curious to see what music they'd use where, but not so much that I wasn't willing to turn it off.