just be.

pwned by yoga

had a frustrating first attempt at taking a yoga class today. i haven't taken any kind of group exercise class since i was maybe 11 years old, but i've wanted forever to take a yoga class, and today there was one at my gym right after my trainer appointment. i'd looked forward to it all week.

got into class, got my little spot—what an exercise in human behavior this was. everyone else seemed to know exactly what to do, to position their mats just so, to put their sticky mats on top of the gym-provided whatever-they're-called mats, to sit in the center of the mat just so while waiting for class to start. i did my best to just do whatever everyone else was doing. 

the beginning of class was super cool. the instructor was friendly and seemed approachable, soothing yet somehow also energetic, full of encouragement to smile and be happy while we were doing this. but. then the hard stuff started.

it isn't like i thought i'd be able to do everything everyone else was doing. my lower back still spasms painfully when i try to bend over too quickly or too far. but i had heard for years how group instructors are always really good about giving alternatives ("if this is too difficult, put your knee down" or "just go as far as you can"). 

although she said those kinds of things sometimes, they were never about the things that were hard for me or making my back freak out. so one frustration was in trying to keep up with instructions that i didn't understand or couldn't do as quickly as everyone else before she moved onto the next thing, but a lot of frustration was just feeling pain and not knowing the best adaptation to make to whatever everyone else was doing, so that i could be doing SOMEthing until they were ready to move onto the next thing.

plus, we spent a lot of time in downward-dog pose, which puts all your weight (at least, the way i experienced it) on your wrists, and my wrists are shit from working on a keyboard and mouse all day and knitting needles all evening and weekend. so i ended up cheating those poses into child pose sometimes instead. but the problem was that, if i found the pose sequence difficult or frustrating or painful the first time, repeating it five or six or eight times without giving me adaptations that would help was just making it five or six or eight times more difficult or frustrating or painful. and i wasn't interested in spending the whole hour in child pose (as awesome as child pose feels, it's pretty silly to do it in a room with a bunch of other people doing all kinds of other shit) (especially when those other people are clearly more advanced than me, doing even things that the instructor wasn't mentioning—definitely experienced yoga practitioners).

although i had gone into the class resolved to do my best and stick through the whole hour, i was so frustrated and humiliated and in such physical pain in both wrist and lower back that i finally gave up. i sprayed off my mats as quietly as i could, returned them to their original spots, and left. i kind of want to cry. i'm so angry that i couldn't keep up, but i'm also angry that the class couldn't accommodate a novice.

so. that happened. i'm so sad because i really wanted to incorporate this into my life. and before we got to the fast-moving ratatat business, i remember thinking, "wow! this is great! i should do this every day!"

oh well.

visual analogies

at first, they were all like 

 

but then they were all like

more news than is fit to print.

• michael steele is hilarious.
  
• dana rohrabacher is :singsong: looney tunes.
  
• megan mccain has potential.
  
• i like hillary much more now than i did when she was campaigning for the presidency.
  
• i prefer less regulation.
  
• sarah palin != hillary clinton.
  
• simon cowell is hot, but nobody needs to leave a shirt unbuttoned quite that much. it's 2009.
  
• i look forward to adding kris allen to my new mitch mix station on the pandora.
  
• even a song as perfect as "a change is gonna come" can be wrecked. there is no crying in baseball, and there is no shrieking in sam cooke.
  
• mitch mcconnell and jim bunning are not interesting enough to me to take up my news-watching time.
  
• the cia knows how to lie and makes mistakes. srsly?
  
• i LOVE baby elephants. all elephants, really, but babies are teh best.
  
• i am now going to have the song "banana phone" stuck in my head. maybe it should become my new ringtone.
  
• i used to love tucker carlson.
  
• john ensign and john o'hurley: separated at birth.
  
• nothing in the constitution confers responsibility for health care onto the federal government.
  
• the global war on terror was neither global nor a war.
• edited to add that james harrison, who was already low in my esteem following his hitting an opposing-team player—while said player was on the *ground*—has officially lost all the esteem points he can have. this is not what my pittsburgh steelers need. 

troy is the man.

i know. how embarrassing that i have not blogged in WEEKS! sorry. one man is apparently worthy of the first entry in a long time: troy polamalu. i bring you reasons 1–72 for my love for him. 

reason 3 for my eager anticipation of tomorrow's broadcast.

and, not troy specific but pittsburgh specific, our new fan-chosen fight song, by a local band that includes the son of one of my coworkers.

happy superbowling! go steelers!

exaggerated influence

i have this joke--i can't remember where exactly i picked it up, but almost surely from a camp friend back in the day--about how i'm the center of the universe. holding up my left index finger vertically, i proclaim, "this is me." then i begin to orbit my downward-pointed right index finger around my left index finger, which remains still: "and this is the rest of the universe."

sometimes i think i really think that. i try not to, but i can be very puerile that way. i think that's why i don't always enjoy children. they have the nerve to believe that *they're* the center of the universe. i mean, honestly: the audacity.

an example: last night, we watched the steelers play the jaguars. now, the jaguars have played well this season and have handed us our pride before. recently, in fact. but i had hope. i mean, we're the *steelers.* sure, we've had lots of injuries of key players this season--no willie parker, no troy polamalu, ben roethlisberger and najeh davenport getting the crap beaten out of them game after game, and even the sweet man himself, hines ward, was a grumpy-grump last night. but i really thought we could pull it off.

after a very fun afternoon out with m'girls (see another post for that), i was exhausted when i got home and napped away the time that i should have spent changing into some steelers gear. i secretly knew that nothing was clean and that this would mean doing laundry. and who wants to do laundry when you can nap? (answer: not me.) so i told myself that, if i just knitted something black and gold during the game, that would be good enough.

ha. not so much. we flailed during the first half. a couple of minutes into the third quarter, i said to smartboy, "maybe i should go put on some steelers gear." (note: he has no steelers gear. when i insist on him wearing black and gold--which i did not last night, shame on me--he wears his office t-shirt, which is black with a gold bridge on it. this is NOT an acceptable substitute. i tried to shame him last weekend, when we were out shopping and nearly every person we saw was wearing a steelers jersey. it did not work. the man does not shame easily.) he said, "it couldn't hurt." true that. so i put down my knitting, rummaged through the laundry pile, and found my "property of steelers football" hoodie. i changed into black leggings. i did not put on my gold fleece slipper-socks with the black padding on the bottom, nor did i change into black underwear. those might have gotten us that extra couple of points. but i didn't. i came back upstairs and watched the game.

now, in the subsequent moments, ben and the offense were amazing. we cruised down the field like we were plowing over last year's crop. we made a touchdown. we actually took the lead: 29-28. i tugged on my hoodie and said to smartboy, "see? it matters!"

not the months of daily practices. not the playbooks or the coaching. no. it was me in my hoodie.

then it happened. hines' touchdown was disqualified because some ref decided that #61 had been holding, way back behind the goal line on the other side of the field, where nothing would have mattered anyway. and #61 was on the freaking ground when the flag was down, touching no one. but there were bad calls last night all over the place, so it didn't surprise me.

what saddened me, though, is that we never recovered. we couldn't pull ahead enough to make up for my not wearing my gear during the first half or for not completing my ensemble with socks and underwear to match. i was a bad fan. we lost by two very painful-to-watch points.

what's also sad is that i had planned out my blog post about our win while we had that lead. it was very clever, of course, all about how troy polamalu and i have this cosmic connection, that despite his wife's being a stunning beauty and his being a devoted husband and all-around wonderful guy, i could mystically connect to him like mike teevee through willy wonka's tv transmission and help him bring glory to his team.

alas, it was not to be. i bet his wife wasn't wearing her steelers gear.

good weekend.

aside from a big fat ugly migraine today, this was a good weekend. i finished my embossed leaves socks.
a very easy pattern with just gorgeous yarn, squishy and soft. and that added 6,060 stitches to my tally for the month, and if i add the rows of the peacock shawl that i attempted (later frogged) and the rounds of the cowl that i did (not sure they won't get frogged eventually, too), that brings my total up to 17,042 for the month. that's a little shy of where i should be for the month, but i'll try to make it up next weekend. i need to block and seam the empire-waist sweater, which i really can't wait to wear, so it sucks that i've got no place to block it. i've also been making myself some gauntlets; i'm maybe 3/4 finished the first of the pair, so those i could finish next weekend. i also want to try the peacock shawl again, probably with the wool i bought from the woman on craigslist a few weeks (months?) ago. the only other major work i have in process is the bauhaus fair-isle sweater for my brother, but he's no longer at school in massachusetts, so it seems like overkill. i may give it to smartboy instead. it'll be huge on him, but the colors are gorgeous. if i have to, i can frog it and make something else, but i've made a good bit of progress on it, so i hope i don't have to. oh, and i have the widdershins for lisa (yes, the birthday in july).

aside from knitting, the weekend was all about handmade arcade. so much fun. i got some great stuff, though i really had intended to get stuff for christmas presents, not stuff for me. i was going to buy more when i went back today to volunteer, but the migraine kept me home. i HATE when that happens. anyway, i'm sure the event went on without me, and i can shop most of the vendors on their own web sites or on etsy.

and, of course, today we watched the steelers game. we watched it late, since i was in bed most of the day (thank god for tivo), but it was a serious nail-biter. ben roethlisberger kicked ass with his touchdown! i love that man. and next week it's the jets. woot!

lazy-ass weekend.

man, what a lazy weekend. last night, after taking claudia and neal to dinner at la feria (yum-o!) and showing them a little of the east end neighborhoods, i knitted a bit but mostly read blogs and email. i caught up on my soaps and dr. phil, took the dogs for a late walk, and collapsed into bed. i had my usual bizarre dreams but woke up in the middle of the night with a heinous headache. this has been happening a lot. my dentist says that at least some of it is due to tooth grinding and jaw clenching, so she's fitting a splint for me to wear during my sleep. i've been doing this for more than 20 years, but my current splint isn't actually a splint; it's a tooth-whitening tray made of rubber. but i didn't want to get out of bed to take anything for the pain because it hurt too much to move, much less think about anything enough to get myself a drink and take a pill. plus, if i had, the dogs would have thought it was time to go out for a walk, and i would never have gotten them settled in for sleep.

but this was stupidity. i couldn't sleep through the pain very well at all. eventually, the dogs became so impatient for me to get up that i finally did (plus i had to pee). so i experimented with the whole pain-relief thing: i rubbed a bit of ben-gay on my jaw joint and a little above and below it, took the motrin that my dentist prescribed, and put some polar frost on my temples to ease the migraine. it didn't get rid of the pain or inflammation completely, but it was good enough that i could eat some oatmeal and chill for a bit before i took the dogs out. they were VERY happy to get outside by then, poor things. but this is why i hate being in charge of taking care of the dogs (and why i'll never have children): my head pain is just too unreliable. or it makes *me* too unreliable, i guess i should say.

anyway, after an uneventful trip outside--damn, these are good dogs, i must say--we came back inside and i watched my morning show. i took a long nap and putzed on the computer this afternoon, the closest things to effort being expended on (a) making a plan for vegetarian options for my thanksgiving menu (fortunately, not as hard as i thought it would be--she won't eat the turkey, obviously, and i need to find a vegan or vegetarian gelatin substitute for the cranberry mold, but otherwise it's just a matter of making a separate little pan of chowder with no bacon, putting the pancetta aside for the brussels sprouts and radicchio, and making a separate ramekin of dressing with no sausage (or maybe vegetarian sausage) and (b) making a few decorating and layout decisions about the bedroom. i decided to stick with earth tones for the paint and reaffirmed my decision to put the bed against the west wall.

i ordered dinner in tonight from ali baba; since wheel deliver took so long (for the second time in a row) to get my food to me, they paid for it. so free dinner! w00t! shish tawook (i LOVE the salad and rice, and there's plenty left for tomorrow--i just wish i'd ordered some hummus for the pitas) and oreo cheesecake. i didn't really need the latter, but it was yummy.

the dogs were great on their walks, too. these are seriously good dogs. luxo never fails to amaze me with how smart he is. smartboy trained him in just a few evenings to bring the food balls not just to him at the food bin but right in his hand. so cool. and when i put their harnesses on, he aims his nose right through the straps to make it easier to get on. he is SO an example of the premack principle--he gets it like crazy. (the premack principle is the idea that you can get the dog to do something that doesn't really excite him--say, bringing a food ball or standing still for a harness--to get something he really wants--say, food or a trip outside. he also runs to his crate as soon as he knows it's time for walks, because he knows that the sooner he does that, the sooner we'll get zuzu back from her walk and get him. seriously amazing dog.)

and now i'm chilling with "trading spaces," which i haven't seen in a while--we tivo new episodes, but it hasn't had any for a while. i am loving the new designers and carpenters (well, faber's not new, but he's adorable and wonderful anyway). i love all these shows. i pretend i've been in training for this renovation for 15 years :) as if.

oh--speaking of the renovation, the building permit and no-lien agreement are all but complete, and the contractor should be starting work any day now. squee!! i'll be trying to keep up with it all (including before, progress, and after photos) on the house blog, if you're interested.

weird.

it feels weird to be blogging--even thinking--about anything besides joe these days. but i went out yesterday to the waterfront with smartboy for the first time in...i can't remember how long. weeks? months? it felt great to get out of the house and feel normal for a little while. i'd dropped my iphone (!) on the sidewalk friday night and broken the glass, so we started our morning out with a two-hour (!!) trip to the apple store. since it was an accident that caused the damage, warranty--even my special paid-for warranty pro-apple-take-care-of-me care--didn't cover it, really. it couldn't be repaired and had to be replaced, which cost me $250. they gave me not only the new iphone, though, but also the broken-glass one, so i kind of have an extra ipod now. i wouldn't want to carry it around with the broken glass, but i could put it in my ihome and use the big ipod that i have there for...something. put it in my study with some speakers? i don't know. it's nice to have (though a little embarrassing that i now have a first-generation shuffle, a first-gen 60gb, a broken but functioning-except-for-the-inactive-phone first-gen iphone, and an iphone). and a macbook. and my work mac. i think i am, as accused, drinking the kool-aid. i also bought (duh) a case for it this time, which i'd looked at several times before and never did. learned that lesson once. anyway, i really like the case i chose--rubber, very tactile and easy and comfortable in the hand--and i think it'll prevent it from slipping off a stack of papers again if i should be dumb enough to put it there in the future. (which i doubt.)
so after that little adventure, we lunched at la feria (yum!), where we haven't been in ages. so good. i had the vegetarian sandwich with their salad that is SO YUMMY and a freshly squeezed limeade (gigantic and delicious), and we shared a plate of the sweet-potato chips with huancaina dip, because you just have to have those when you go there. omg. i was stuffed after not-so-much food, but it was worth it. yum. did i mention yum?
finally we were off to the waterfront. i walked a bunch while andrew shopped in places that tire me, and he met up with me later at target. and boy did i score at target. fancy new hair dryer (i do this once every couple of years--get a wild hair [pun intended] to try straightening it again and buy the latest new gizmo to help me do that; this, too, shall pass--a bunch of my new favorite hair product (infusium 23 leave-in treatment*, you ROCK!--thank you, emy, for showing me the way!)
also: a hello kitty lunchbox/purse thingy. SO cute. a few ideas of what i'll use it for, but really: $4? i couldn't pass it up.
the CUTEST tweed jacket for fall that is, of course, not pictured on target's web site. you'll just have to trust me that it is GORGEOUS. wide portrait collar, gorgeous shade of blue, fitted, perfect length, straight out of jackie o's closet. i nearly bought another style on the same rack, a cropped empire-waist jacket, but chickened out. i was going to go back online to buy it this morning, but it's not there. there are some adorable swing jackets there, though. :sigh: i cannot own every cute jacket and sweater on the planet, can i?
okay, enough of that. also bought a troy polamalu jersey--licensed, but a third the price of the ones at dick's. i am so excited. i put it on this morning (it *is* game day, after all!) and asked smartboy whether i looked like troy. he laughed and said, "yeah, it must be all in the number." i told the dogs that now i am all speed, agility, and quick reflexes. they'd better watch out.
found an adorable little evening bag in pewter satin with some pretty lace--clutch or it has a little chain strap--to take to wedfest07. gotta love target.
but the real score of the day: in the dollar section, it's an office-rama. i scored pens, paper, notepads, memo boards (takes me right back to college), mouse pads, sticky notes, and mugs, all with different office quotes on them. i could have bought more (not just because i'm obsessive, but because they had more different designs), but i stopped myself. i just don't use that much paper in my life. but gah. i was so stoked. i love a good dollar section. and i loves me a pen.
in other riveting news--because i know you've been on the edge of your seat up to now--i had not one but two romantic dreams last night. the first was odd (well, they're all odd, but you know). i'd gone to some remote northern locale with my mother, and we'd decided to play like we were foreigners who didn't speak english as our first language (stay with me here: the remote location was, i guess, in like canada or maine or something. i don't know. it was a dream. geography was clearly not the important part here.). so we put on these accents and pretended. we went to the train station and were totally baffled about the whole token system for getting where we needed to go, and this handsome young man who turned out to be grady something or other (remember him: he's the love interest in this one) turned right around from leaving the joint and followed us back inside to help us. he stayed with us, took us back into town--the little village where we were headed--and on the trip, apparently, he and i fell in love. very sweet story.
but fast forward a month (in my dream--overnight, of course, it was just a few hours, if you're keeping track), because i won't bore you with the sweet, romantic courtship, though it really was a fun dream, with townspeople and festivals and laughter, but he and i are inside with a bunch of townsfolk, and he's professing his love for me and, i think, about to ask me to stay there with him and be his wife. apparently, he's some sort of prince or something, i've come to learn, so this is why the townspeople care so much about what happens to him. anyway, just then, my mother comes to the door of this glass-enclosed room where this is all happening. it's snowing and blustery outside, and she's knocking on the door in the dark, all cold and wet and not wearing a coat. i blurt out--for the first time, breaking my accent in front of these people--"where is her coat?" with grave concern--and realize that they know. grady has already gone to the door to let her in by then, but she wants to talk to him outside. i know that he knows now that i've been keeping this from him, and all i want to do is tell him the truth--myself, and explain. inside, the townsfolk are moving away from me, suddenly hurt, bewildered, angry at the girl they'd thought was so wonderful and perfect for their darling grady. i am sad--SO sad--and mad at myself for not telling him sooner. he comes inside, and, before he passes me, another good friend of his--a female friend--takes his arm and wants to talk to him. he has this kind of glassy look in his eyes and doesn't even look at me. i try to get his attention and say that i really want to talk to him alone. he sort of says, "yes," absently, but walks past me, where another female friend takes his arm, and he turns and, again, in this distant voice, says that he's going to talk to her first. i am utterly dismayed. i am a pariah.
i leave, and the rest of the dream is scenes of me trying to explain it to him when we see each other on various occasions later, over a period of years. but he won't listen. he jeers, makes jokes, teases, never letting anything get close enough to hear. clearly, i've hurt him so much that no one can get close to him any more. i awake so sad that i'm actually crying.
i tried to go back to sleep to make the dream restart and go a different way, but he was no more. instead, it went a whole different direction. this was an entirely new dream, all happy. this time, i was the love interest of bobby flay. this dream was totally different. we were always in happy places, lots of laughing, and i was always me. his parents were there sometimes cooking with us--no fancy show kitchens, though: outside with picnic tables. totally funny people in this dream. and we were very snuggly--sitting on his lap, kissing. fun. of course, smartboy started making noise in the kitchen just as we were getting to the naughty parts, so he must have some kind of sense of timing or something :) good man.

* hint: though there are five lines of this stuff, i compared the ingredients. *cough* geek *cough* the leave-ins are all the same. (i compared because i wanted a giant bottle for reserves and a smaller bottle for traveling, but target had only repairology in the supersize, and i wanted to be sure that this would be relatively similar to the frizzology. whatevs.)

liveblogging the hall of fame game

8pm: blah blah blah mike tomlin and ben roethlisberger blah blah enshrinement.
heineken commercial.
8:06: back from commercial: blah blah blah enshrinement. no steelers inducted this year. 'saright. but dude: where's my game? where's my kickoff? stop teasing me with the steel curtain standing there in all its finery on the sidelines, their muscles all coolin off n'at. let's get to some football!
home depot commercial. he's restoring an historic house. that's good.
iphone commercial. this is not the usual nfl sponsorship.
nfl network commercial. bleh.
8:12: bryant gumbel blah blah. flags + anthem = always good. i'm a sucker for patriotic music. pause blogging. (okay: stop playing the parachute game with the giant flag, first of all, and second, players, you're on television. stop jawing yer chewing gum for a minnit, wouldja?)
8:15: more about mike tomlin. i miss bill cowher, but mike graduated from my alma mater. i'm good with that. and full of good perspective. interviewer: "do you feel pressure following a legendary coach like bill cowher?" tomlin: "no, man, pressure is trying to feed your family. we're just here to play a game." that's our guy :) now we're ready for some football!
8:17: we won the toss. and we have eight new coaches. and no willie parker tonight?? eek. no one told me that. where is he? well, we have hines ward and big ben. those are two good faces to see out there. must check steelers site for injury list.
8:21: beeyootiful pass from big ben to cedrick wilson! 55 yards. w00t! with a follow-up two minutes later! a little more help downfield and wilson would have had a touchdown. luckily, next play, he charged through for one. i love it!! that's a great start. statistically, if we can get two before halftime, we almost always win. cross your fingers!
oh--same heineken commercial and a car or truck commercial--i forgot to pay attention.
next commercial break: nascar video game, kingsford briquettes, and united way (cool). score remains the same. our guys held their own.
i wish wilson had caught batch's pass in the next bit, but we're doing okay still.
nationwide and kia commercials. not as redundant as i usually find these. and...a...chicken driving a getaway car. ah, a wendy's commercial. that explains it. i guess.
8:37: go troy! he is such a badass! he's my favorite. :)
wendy's + home depot commercials. repeats already. bleh. and sirius.
what? the saints challenging our possession? whatevs. not even. he totally had it. why would you use your first challenge so early in the game? (sock update: i am four pattern repeats, or 16 rounds, from starting the heel flap--aka the part that breaks up the monotony--so i'm trying to slog through instead of casting on something black or gold. let's hope i'm not jinxing our boys.)
so far, so good. our possession stands. and our guys are kicking ass and taking names plowing across that yellow line. it's a sight to behold. not unstoppable, but good. shockingly, jeff reed misses, though--that never happens.
8:52: iphone commercial. gmc commercial. taco bell commercial. nfl network commercial. aside from the latter, what exactly *is* the demographic?
boy, is it raining there. it's raining here, too, but i'm not outside playing football. i'm cozily inside knitting and hanging out with my dogs and my guy. times like these i appreciate my job. and my life.
i didn't even know we had a third quarterback. bummer about that sack, but how about passing to that moose who took it way down? i love that shit. move out the way! w00t w00t!
ford and giant eagle (regional supermarket chain) commercials. highmark (regional blue cross/blue shield affiliate commercial). and (surprise) another nfl network plug. (note that i'm watching this on our local cbs affiliate). and they're showing wacko steeler fans in the stands. love that. we have great fans.
9:16: ugh. i hate time outs! and i have four repeats left. i miscounted my tick marks before: i had five repeats. how irritating.
9:18: and we have our second touchdown before halftime! loves me the santonio lately. he worried me a little early on, but he's been good since then. go baby!
i cannot wait until commentators quit talking about ben's motorcycle accident, his appendectomy, his lousy interception record last season (okay, that's recent, but i hate hearing about it anyway), blah blah bah. most of it is old news, and it's all NOT THIS SEASON. we have a new coach and it's a near year, baby. if you don't have anything *interesting* to say, stfu. your commentary is NOT why we tune in.
10:03: i am sleepy. this is bedtime and the commentary couldn't be duller, and the game isn't all that exciting. i'm not seeing much polamalu, it's early in the third quarter, and i don't think we're going to lose. that's good, of course, but do i really want to stay up another two hours to be certain, if the process of getting there isn't enthralling? i have a headache building, too, and i have three more pattern repeats (12 rounds) before i can start the heel flap. oh.my.god, this pattern is infuriating. a four-row repeat, but the four rows are nearly identical--the only difference between rows one and two and between rows three and four is ktbl versus k. and the two pairs of rows are very similar, too. so, not mindless enough to be truly mindless stockinette tv-and-movie knitting, requiring just enough attention to be distracting from whatever you wish you were really able to attend to. like a mosquito in your ear, but a mosquito on which you have to make notes for biology class or something. that kind of annoying. otoh, the resulting sock is deliciously soft, squooshy, and beautiful. i do love this yarn. and i do love my dad, and i want to send him a present. so, on i trudge. but i think maybe not tonight. i think now i might go to bed, catch up on the game results in the morning, and get to the heel flap tomorrow after work. nighty-night.