Eternal Balance

Blah

2011-05-23T13:59:00.002-04:00

So I am not feeling that great. Monkey had a friend over last week who sounded like he is going to cough up a lung any moment now. While we all tried to stay away, we just don't have that much space to stay away. And so on Saturday I woke up with a little bit of a sore throat that got worse as the day went on and worse still on Sunday. It's better today but today I'm a bit congested and I think my pregnancy symptoms are kicking in, or it might be the cold. But I'm feeling a little nauseated now that I ate. Eating seemed like a good idea, even though I am not hungry, but who knows. Now it's tea time and more rest.

Being sick is when being self-employed is not that fun. Not that it's fun when you work for someone else. I canceled my yoga class for tonight so I can take another day to rest, but I'm expecting to be back in full force for tomorrow when I have several classes. I am hoping to anyway.

Waiting game

2011-05-20T12:23:00.002-04:00

I don't think I remember when the time seemed to pass this slowly before. It's only been a week, but it feels like forever. I need to switch my focus, but I'm not feeling very energetic right now. If you are not in the loop yet, we are expecting a new little one. I am so far 5 weeks along. I am feeling pretty good, but today I'm feeling lazy. Mostly I'm looking at a ton of cute baby stuff online with a full realization that we won't need most if not all of it and that we don't have room for most if not all of it :) But it's fun looking at little baby nurseries and such. I keep wanting to get something for the baby, but it's so way, way early to do something like that, it's not even funny. I did break down early in the week and got myself a pair of comfy pants and a belly rub. Again, don't necessarily need those at this point, but at least I'm using it now.

The main concern right now is the lack of space even though we are still ways away from needing the space. We have a general idea of where baby things will go and we need to figure out where other things that baby things will displace will go. I am thinking of getting a co-sleeper to start and found them on Craigslist, but again, too early to get it. To do at least something, I started cleaning out a bit of space in a bookshelf we have in a living room. It's not really related to baby, but I figured we might need to put something there to make room for baby.

On a more tangible note, I have my first prenatal appointment at a birthing clinic in Beverly on June 13. That's very excited even though I'm leaning heavily towards a home birth. Honey is not very excited about that, I don't think. My other exciting appointment after that is at the end of June when I will meet with an herbalist again where she can recommend stuff for healthy pregnancy. And now I'm ready for a nap.

Fun weekend

2011-05-06T08:13:00.002-04:00

I am so excited, we are going away for the weekend! We are going to Hillsboro, NH to see Bhagavan Das and participate in his workshop and a kirtan. He is awesome! I've never done a workshop with him, so that will be interesting. Last year we went to NY, NY to see him, he's that good.

I am buzzing around, as usual. I was doing a registration for a mini yoga event next weekend when honey mentioned that I might actually want some down time. He says I have not had any since our Costa Rica trip, which is probably true. I don't know. I feel like I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I am certainly busy, much busier than I would have thought I would be. I'm not necessarily busy with clients, but there is all this life stuff :) So, for next weekend, I'm only going to take 2 classes and not 4. I'm compromising and listening to common sense :)

I got a cool program that let's you work on your client relationships but I have not had a chance to fully utilize it yet. I did pay for a year though which usually motivates me enough. The sticking point is that I need to enter all my clients info in it, for it to be truly worth something. Turns out, I have a lot of paperwork for that. I do want to get on it though, would be nice to reconnect with some folks.

Face time

2011-04-28T08:02:00.002-04:00

Ever since I have recorded the welcome video for the studio I was thinking what will I do next. Welcome is great, but I want actual content! I was trying to figure it out, and trying, and trying... I couldn't really come up with anything that I thought would be good. Well, the other day I was trying to find a video of Sun Salutation sequence that I use in classes. I could not find exactly what I was looking for and most of the things I found just were not that great for beginners.

That's when I thought, hey, would not that be nice then if I made a little video of the sequence? It took me a while to record this! First, I recorded it but it was during the day and the light coming through windows was too much contrast. Then I was making another little trial video with a thought that I will record voice separately and overlay it on the video. That just didn't work that great. Not necessarily technically didn't work, but I just didn't like how it was coming out. Finally, yesterday, I did a recording with an ongoing instruction. I like the video, I think it came out pretty good. It's almost 15 minutes so I'm pushing YouTube limits there :) The only thing now is that it would be really lovely to clean up the sound on it. Honey said he'll help me. I just need to strip the audio from the video and he'll work his magic on it. I am so hoping I'll be ready to post it next week.

During this whole process I found that I really need some yoga clothes, namely tops! I think it's all fine when I teach a class because I can always adjust, but during a recording I just don't feel like fussing with a shirt. Perfectionism rears its ugly head :)

I also made another little video yesterday, about catching your breath. That should be faster to post, I am not going to do any fancy audio on it.

Fanciest cats ever

2011-04-24T12:55:00.003-04:00

We have come to the conclusion that we have the fanciest cats around. This conclusion is not based on any research or study, we just think so :) We did have a reason though, namely that our three cats now have five litter boxes. Yep, you read that right, five litter boxes for three cats. Surprisingly, I am not actually annoyed with it. I am shocked at that, personally.

There is of course, a story of how we got to possess so many boxes...

When honey's kitties moved in, so did their litter boxes and we had three boxes right then and there. I was not happy with this, but it was a compromise from having four boxes as honey suggested. The boys had two boxes in one closet and then my girl had her box that traveled for a bit as we were all settling into the new way of life. It was in my son's room for the longest time until not so long ago we took it out. My son's room is now cat-free zone and he keeps the door closed, always, even when he's not home. My cat's box traveled to another closet in the hallway and that's where it is now. Of course, designations such as 'boys box' and 'girl's box' are arbitrary as they all use all the boxes. Loosing my son's room as their territory has upset the cats and my girl started using the bathtub as her personal litter box at night. So the morning routine started to include cleaning up the tab, which really wasn't a big deal. The last straw, however, came when one of the cats (assumption is on the girl) peed on the stove! That's when we decided to get another box which somehow led to two more boxes. One now lives in the bathroom and travels into the tub at night and the other box is in the living room by the cat tree. What makes this very fancy is that the new litter boxes are stainless steel! They are very cute and stylish too!

So far the cats haven't used the box in the living room so it might eventually replace one of the plastic boxes in the closets. Then we'll be down to four :) I do hope the boxes last much longer. It seems they are more durable and more hygienic since stainless steel is not as porous as plastic. They were only $10 more than plastic ones, so this might be a good long term investment since I'm pretty sure we'll always have cats.

Happy Earth Day!

2011-04-22T12:27:00.002-04:00

And for today's post, I'm copying from my new blog. Yes, now I have another one. If you have landed here because you googled Eternal Balance, you are probably looking for the other one. The new blog is going to be for business use versus this one which is all about my personal life.
Here is a link to the new blog: http://eternal-balance.com/blog/

There is not much there now and I have not announced it officially yet. I'm thinking it will be nice to have a little more content there, but I will probably announce it in the next newsletter.

Here is a little tidbit for Earth Day:

Both at home and at the studio I try to make environmentally conscious decisions. You might not know this, but Eternal Balance strives to be a green and eco-responsible studio. This was important to me when I started the studio couple of years ago and I evaluate every purchase I make with the environment in mind.

Some of the examples of how I try to stay ec0-friendly are:

All the paint used for the walls is Benjamin Moore Natura Paint. It is zero VOC and virtually odorless.
The yoga blocks are cork from Gaiam.
The yoga straps are organic cotton, also from Gaiam.
There is filtered water available and mugs.
Any plastic cups that you might use instead of the mugs are recycled.
All the tea that is provided is organic.
The cold drinks in the fridge are also organic.
We recycle all the plastic, aluminum and paper.
The candles used at the studio are beeswax or soy.
All the handouts and schedules are printed on 100% recycled paper.

I hope that you find this information useful and maybe it will motivate you to evaluate your choices from an eco perspective as well. You can also check out Earth Day Network for tips, motivation and information.

Knit one, knit two

2011-04-21T22:34:00.002-04:00

I have let go of my Etsy store for a bit. All my listings have expired and I'm not planning on renewing them in the near future. Maybe I'll do that in the fall when people will start looking for warm things for their little ones. I have few projects that just need to be finished and then I'll be able to post those too. There were a couple of sweaters that I almost finished. Finishing a project is not my favorite part, I don't really like sewing all the pieces together.

It's funny because I have not knit in a while and then I took knitting with me on our honeymoon! I was working on a blanket which is looking pretty nice. It has a fancy border that is done after the main part is done, so I'm stuck on the border at this point. That project has also been put away for now.

Now I am making some simple blocks for a charity project. The charity is called Warm Up America and a friend is gathering donations. I had to go buy a skein of acrylic yarn because everything I have at home is either organic wool or cotton or bamboo. The project requires acrylic yarn however. I am trying to use up the whole skein so I am on patch 5 at this point, I think this will be the last one. I bought a very colorful stripey yarn, just for fun. I hope those bright patches bring smiles to someone!

Getting Ready

2011-04-20T15:40:00.002-04:00

Just a couple of hours left before I go teach my workshop, Living From the Heart. I have finished putting the folders together for people and now I just need to add a little marketing card I have for my services. Turns out I have those at the studio, so I'll need to add them in.

I am excited about the presentation. People liked it when I taught it at the retreat and I received good reviews for it. I had several people register for it tonight, some I know and some I don't. I hope I won't have any issues setting up the projector for it. I don't normally do presentations, so it's not a second nature to me. I was using a presentation mode at the retreat that I really liked because I got to view my notes on the screen and other people didn't. Now I just hope I can setup the two screens correctly for the presentation.

Of course, the workshop comes at a right time for me. My son is at home, and it's harder to work with a different dynamic. Some things at my business don't necessarily feel right, and this is something I need to work with and really step into the heart space before I make any decisions. Teaching will be great because not only I will take my audience into their heart space, but it will be a powerful reminder to me as well.

More things away

2011-04-19T11:57:00.000-04:00

I am continuing with my slow parting with unneeded things. I have gotten rid of an old humidifier that my son had for years. He used to get nosebleeds and his doctor recommended humidifier. We would use it continuously, winter and summer, and it seemed to have helped. But for the past couple of years it's been sitting in the closet, all dusty and dirty. And so it was time to let it go as it gotten beyond a point when it could have been cleaned.

Another things I let go of was a bag of clothing that we no longer need. That went to my mother and she will sort through it and see where it will go, to relatives or donation.

I think the next source of things to let go of will be my son's closet, yet again. We are planning to rearrange his closet, maybe this week, and so I'm sure there are things that can go to someone else. Freecycle to the rescue!

9. Bag of clothing
8. Humidifier
7. My winter boots and old sneakers
6. DVDs
5. Unneeded craft supplies
4. Old socks and such
3. Wall Lamps
2. CD storage cabinet
1. Old CD cases

Yey!

2011-04-17T23:42:00.002-04:00

We are going camping! Woo hoo! Not yet, in a couple of months, but that still counts for all the excitement now. Usually I am all over the summer plans, but this time we just got around to it. It seems that between being busy and trying to figure out the whole new schedule with my work, I have not been thinking about summer as much. Mostly I've been thinking about what to do with business in the summer and what day of the week would be better to schedule events.

But couple of days ago I decided that it's time to book something! So now we are going to Emerald Lake State Park campground in Vermont. We are going to stay on a lake and they have kayak and canoe rentals too. It's all right there and it should be beautiful! The pictures looked great, can't wait! It's a little far, I think a little more than 3 hours away so we are going for 5 days!

We are going after I teach a class on Thursday and we will come back on Tuesday. I am avoiding scheduling anything for Fridays and weekends during the summer. Last summer people were not too excited about coming to things on Friday and I also want to be able to enjoy a weekend without working. I am hoping I'll be able to take advantage of that whole self-employed thing :)

50 things, revisited

2011-04-16T10:47:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about my 50 things project recently. Spring just brings these feelings of openness and new beginnings and cleaning and organizing goes with those feelings for me. I remember the project as being fun, I just didn't realize that it's been almost a year since I started. Or maybe pausing for a great big while doesn't count?

The project's idea is to purge your home of 50 things. Those can be not just physical things, but emotional things as well. Maybe some old ways of thinking that you are ready to let go of, old ideas that you had. However, if you get rid of multiples of the same general thing, it only counts as one item. Such as getting rid of your whole DVD collection will still only count as 1 item.

When I was doing the project, I only got to 6 things that I let go of, and that's it! I am not sure what distracted me, but something did. Since I've been cleaning up again some, I think I'll continue my 50 things list and add some to it. It's tempting for me to include recycling in this list, simply because we accumulate it for a while and by the time I take it to the drop-off site it feels like I'm parting with an actual item and not trash. Still, I don't think recycling counts... And so for all my cleaning up I have only thrown out the number 7 on the list. My winter boots got just way too worn out and the sneakers as well, too worn out to donate them to anyone. I'm not sure what to let go of next, though I'm sure there are plenty of things we don't need.

7. My winter boots and old sneakers
6. DVDs
5. Unneeded craft supplies
4. Old socks and such
3. Wall Lamps
2. CD storage cabinet
1. Old CD cases

Life is good

2011-04-15T10:27:00.003-04:00

Well, that's the feeling for today :) Life has been pretty good, specially when I get out of my own way. Business has been going well. Workshops have been filling up more consistently, which is wonderful. This has been an easier month for me because so far we've only had one evening workshop per week. Tonight I get a free night, which is awesome! Also, the retreat in early April was lovely. People liked it and I got some good comments on it. I have even already scheduled a next one in early October :)

I also got good response on my workshop that I taught at the retreat, The Love Course. I am doing the workshop again next week, just at the studio. This time I decided to name it Living From the Heart because I think it gives a better idea of what it is about. I am excited to teach it again. I think it will be a little different because it will be a different group of people, so different questions and comments. I feel pretty fancy doing the workshop because I actually get to put folders together for people with handouts! That's a first one for me so I'm feeling very official about it :)

The other day I got a wonderful compliment from one of my clients. Details are changed to protect the innocent, but basically I was told that she felt uplifted and hopeful after my workshop and that she doesn't always get this feeling after workshops. That was so great to hear because that is what I want to do - help people feel hopeful and uplifted. You know that feeling of lightness? When everything just seems brighter and more beautiful? That's where I want to help people get to. And so hearing that I managed to do just that was uplifting to me as well. It's a win-win.

In case you are in the area (Beverly, MA) and are curious about the workshop, you can read all about it here. It's based on Marci Shimoff's book Love For No Reason. It's a great book too, I highly recommend it.

School Progress

2011-04-08T09:57:00.002-04:00

Today was our official first carpool drive to school. I have driven the boys before, but only after a sleepover. Today we actually picked up another boy on the way to school, so I'm calling this official. It took us some time to get into the carpool, mostly because it's hard to get teenagers to do it for you. They are all a little fuzzy on the details, they just know that they carpool. Yesterday morning we ended up going to a home of one of the boys and saying, "hey, we want to carpool". And so here we are. I'm still not sure how things will work next week and so on, but at least now we will be in the loop.

I do like meeting the kids from this school. The boy that we picked up today opened the door to the car, said "good morning, nice to meet you" and introduced himself. It's a nice change from other instances where the kids avoid looking at you or saying anything. Here they were all chatting in the car so I get to hear what's going on.

Yesterday we had an interesting conversation where one of the boys was instructing my son on how to check what might be wrong with our PC. One of the desktops we have doesn't want to play any games. Which is kind of funny, but also very annoying. So the boy talked about hardware and software compatibility and what you can check to fix it. He was spot on. It's amazing how much kids know about computer these days. And now I sound like an old lady :)

Today they were talking about their sleeping habits. They observed that they slept great last night. One of the boys slept over so my son and him were sharing with the boy we picked up. They were saying how they played outside most of the day yesterday and then they played again in the evening. And that is what made them tired and let them sleep so well. At the ripe age of 14 they understand that being outside and being active will allow you to sleep well, rest well, and feel great the next day. I hope they'll still remember this in few years.

Sleep, come back!

2011-03-23T13:57:00.002-04:00

I am absolutely exhausted! And I have been since Monday, so I'm really not sure how I am functioning. Or maybe I'm not that tired but I'm tired of looking at the computer screen. Whatever it is, I can use a nap and a break.

We are trying to figure out how to work the drive to Framingham into our schedules. This is my third day here this week, hanging out at the library. That's why I'm tired. I drive, I work, I drive some more, I work at the studio, I come home... plop on the couch. That's it!

Yesterday we had an interesting development. I got a call from monkey asking about a sleepover. Fine, why not. We had two extra boys for the night. One of them lives close to the school and one is close to us. Maybe we can carpool with that one. I also got a list of families that go to the school so we can figure out a carpool. Anyway, sleepover was fine. They ended up going to a skateboarding park. Then they played video games and then we had a nice treat. One of the boys plays a guitar, and very well too, so we had a little concert. Since we have two guitars at home, monkey was learning some as the other boy played. I think it all went rather well.

In the meantime, I'm trying to catch up on all the emails, and flyers, and ads, and website, and on and on and on. It didn't help that the weekend was busy too, between going to my sister one day and going out to a tea and then teaching Reiki the other. And I wish it was warm!

Back to School

2011-03-15T14:32:00.002-04:00

So the monkey started his new school yesterday. So far, he likes it. He actually seems very serious about planning his time of "learning nothing". He told me yesterday that he had a good day, started to make some new friends, and seemed in good spirits in general. He was excited that the kids there play Magic Cards and so he brought a box or two of his own today. He also found that they have a pool table. He said he spent some time playing on computer, some time drawing, and some time watching other kids play Magic Cards.

Because this is such a long a drive, I have stayed in the area for these two days. Yesterday I did a little shopping and then went to the library and today I've been at the library the whole day. I got some work done both days so it's been very productive. Tomorrow I have to come back home in the morning because we have his evaluation appointment. Thursday honey will take him to school so I can go to a marketing event with Beverly Chamber of Commerce, and Friday I have to come back again because I have a client, so I think honey will be picking him up. Busy busy.

The picture is a little funny face that the monkey drew on the little message board he has on his door. I thought it was cute.

Different View

2011-03-13T09:49:00.001-04:00

And this is a different view this morning. It looks beautiful out here with snow being white and not spoiled by plows, sand and rock salt. It's been snowing here yesterday and today, but I hear it didn't snow where we live. I hope so anyway. As pretty as it is, I am ready for snow to leave.

Home and away

2011-03-12T07:47:00.001-05:00

Well, we got home. It took us more than 12 hours but we made it. We had a long layover in Orlando which was actually good because we were not worried about being late while standing in all kinds of different lines. My dad picked us up a little after midnight and we were home around 1. Then it was time to show the souvenirs to my son, hang out with kitties and try to settle in. It was chilly too.
And then on Friday I had to leave again and come for my Priestess Path weekend. I will be back home again on Sunday night, hopefully no later than 10.
It was fun sharing pictures on the trip, but I no longer have access to tropical landscapes. So, this is a picture of one of my favorite pair of earrings that I use for bellydance mostly. I don't know why I needed to share that, but I am wearing them today.

San Jose

2011-03-09T23:44:00.001-05:00

Just a pretty tree in front of our hotel in San Jose. This is our last night in Costa Rica, bummer.

Happy Stop

2011-03-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

Just some pretty flowers on our way back to San Jose. This was on our "happy stop". That's what our tour guide calls bathroom breaks.

Marriott

2011-03-09T08:22:00.001-05:00

Off we go, back to San Jose. We are still taking a boat cruise today for part of the trip. Marriott was nice. The hotel was gorgeous, the room was beautiful, the ocean amazing. They have very pretty, heavy furniture throughout the hotel.

Pacific

2011-03-08T12:44:00.000-05:00

Beautiful sunset!

Guanacaste

2011-03-08T12:35:00.001-05:00

Just got to J. W. Marriot in Guanacaste on the Pacific!

Hanging Bridges

2011-03-07T15:48:00.000-05:00

Today we are on the road again, going to our last hotel before coming back to San Jose. This time we will be on Pacific coast. This morning we had to get up really early at 5:30 and we were leaving at 7:30. This was so we would not be too hot walking around.
The hanging bridges were great! And they weren't as scary as I thought they would be. Beautiful views everywhere. One of the bridges had an awesome view of Arenal that cleared up for us again.

Cute!

2011-03-06T19:29:00.001-05:00

We came back to the hotel to find these cute towel elephants! We went on a cruise this morning all the way to Nicaragua and saw lots of wild life. Different birds and howler and white-face monkeys. Then we went to hot springs and now we are back and waiting for dinner.

Arenal

2011-03-06T19:19:00.001-05:00

Today we are at Arenal volcano. As we were driving in yesterday, we could see the whole volcano. That is a rare treat! Today the volcano is covered in clouds. Still, very pretty! We have a great bungalo with king and queen size beds and a view onto the volcano. Oh, and a bidet :-)

Tortuguero

2011-03-04T14:37:00.001-05:00

This is our first full day in Tortuguero and tomorrow we are leaving again. We went on a boat tour in the morning and saw monkeys and different birds. We also saw a sloth but it was so high in the tree, all you could see was a spot of fur.
We also went to see a town of Tortuguero, which is tiny. It was also pretty dirty. There was one main street with lots of shops for tourists but towards the end of the street there were houses.
Later today we are going on another boat trip. I hope it doesn't rain during this one. It was pouring on and off first time around.

Costa Rica

2011-03-02T23:34:00.001-05:00

We are here! We've been here for a full day now. We visited a volcano and a lagoon and a coffee plantation. The weather is so nice! It's warm and it didn't rain yet. Though it was freezing at the volcano Poas. Tomorrow is another fun day! We are going to Tortuguero park and staying there for two nights.

Almost!

2011-02-26T10:56:00.003-05:00

It is so very exciting as we are counting the days to our vacation. Only a couple left! It seems like we've been waiting forever. First deciding on what we are going to do, and then getting all the tickets and such back in October. And now we get to go on our honeymoon!

I don't remember if I wrote about it already, but we are going to Costa Rica with a tour company, Caravan. We wanted to go somewhere warm, where it will feel like a vacation, but we also didn't want to stay in one place. The tour seems to fit what we wanted to do. We'll get to travel and see a lot of different places in Costa Rica while enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. Neither one of us has been there before, so we are very excited.

Given that we are down to the wire here also means that I'm panicking slightly. It seems like I have to do so many things before leaving! I'm nervous about leaving the studio for so long. I did find a substitute for a couple of my yoga classes and I'm feeling pretty fancy about that. Most of the things I have to do deal with updating the website and making sure everything is posted there. I also need to write up a description for the new retreat I'm organizing and I haven't settled on the schedule yet. At this point I just need to write it and deal with it.

Another strange thought about going away on vacation is that this is the first vacation I'm taking without my son since he was born! So, 14 years. And before that I was way too young to take vacations anyway :) So, first vacation without my monkey. It feels strange to leave him home. I'm also feeling a little guilty that we get to see Costa Rica and he does not and I'm not sure when we would be able to afford for him to see something like this. This is honeymoon though so it also would be strange to take him with us. No honeymoon that way. He was cute telling me that I better have a good time and not miss him or he'll feel bad.

So, lots of excitement and a little anxiety all mixed in together. Really looking forward to it though!

School, again

2011-02-23T11:09:00.002-05:00

Life has been pretty full lately, but I'll focus just on one topic for now. I'll try anyway :) We have given up on homeschooling, so my son is on extended vacation at the moment. His vacation will continue until we come back from our honeymoon, and then he'll start school.

We found him a new school that we hope will work for him. It's Sudbury Valley School. It is very, very different from anything we've known before. My husband was joking that what we need is a school without homework or grades. Turns out, such thing does exist! Sudbury Valley operates on the premise that kids naturally want to learn and that they will learn what they need for life through playing and free time. They have no classes, no grades, no homeworks, totally different system. Still, the kids can get their high school diploma if they write and defend a paper on how they are prepared to be an adult. And they attend for at least 3 years. In addition to their high school diplomas, the kids also manage to go to colleges and/or land jobs. A lot of them start their own businesses.

A friend kept talking about this school and saying that it's just too far for them. I think it's closer for them than for us, but we are going for it. We went for a visit last week, all three of us. It took us an hour to get there and then we had a nice chat with one of the staff members. Mostly about the philosophy of the school and what my son would like to do and then some practical details. They do not have a rigid start time. The school is open from 8:30am until 5pm, but they suggest to be there in the morning. My son has 3 years left of school, so he would be able to graduate from there if he does the work. We decided that we will alternate between who drops off/picks him up and also between just staying in the area until it's time to get him. We were told that there are some nice libraries in the area, I'm assuming with WiFi so we can both do some work if we stay there.

Our next step is to take him there for a week when we come back. This school is actually less money than previous one which would come in handy for all the extra gas money we will be spending. In that visiting week we will be deciding if we will be going there and they'll be checking to see if my son can get along with kids and that he doesn't have any behavioral issues. Fingers crossed it will all work out.

Stop snowing, please!

2011-02-01T20:23:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it's snowing again and will be snowing again tomorrow! Honey is being a wonderful husband and is clearing our cars right now, at least for a little bit. I have not had to shovel my car out once this winter! I have an awesome husband :)

We are having a better week with homeschooling this week. Hmm, I just realized it's only Tuesday. Anyway, it's been a couple of good days. Honey and son did history, we did math, and did some biology today. Son has also finished reading his book for literature. It's an online book that he gets from his teacher and he is supposed to read the next one. I sent an email to his teacher to get the new one, and I just got an email that she might not get the message because her mailbox is full. Great... At least he started to read a book on Alchemy that honey gave him.

We also got our Cobra information yesterday. Not only it's a huge amount of money by itself, we also need to pay for 3 months by March. Ouch!!! I need to fill out the paperwork for help paying with it. Though if we can't get help with it, we'll have to cancel it and look into other options. It's $1700 a month for a family. We can not afford it, not at all.

I had to cancel my yoga class again for tonight. It's just too much snow. This is not helping financially either. Canceling and moving classes around does not help with the business. But hey, only 27 days to Costa Rica :)

It only took few months

2011-01-27T20:33:00.002-05:00

We finally mailed our passports in yesterday! Woo hoo! Costa Rica, here we come! Well, in another 32 days :) Yes, I have a countdown on my laptop :)

Anyway, we were planning to get the passports done since October. I needed a new passport because of the name change and honey's passport has expired a while ago. We finally got ourselves together and went to the post office to do all that official passport business. The guy in the passport window was a little strange. I can't really explain it. He seemed to be running around, excited, but not necessarily happy, and seemed to be unnecessarily active. Maybe he just had too much coffee.

We were planning to do the applications and the pictures all at the post office, since they do that. However, the guy said that we should go to the AAA office in West Peabody for our pictures. He did that by leaning towards the window while checking out if anyone can see him. Strange. He said the pictures at AAA are free and at post office they are $15 for each of us. While I would rather have just paid and gotten it over with, honey didn't trust the guy :) So we drove to West Peabody where it turned out that the pictures are only free for gold level members, and not basic membership. We upgraded right then and there :) With all the towing between two of us, having a higher towing mileage seemed like a good idea.

We did manage to get everything together. The women at AAA were very nice and helped us, mostly offering moral support, which is always nice. We ended up paying the expedited fee because we are so late mailing things in, but I guess you have to pay for procrastination.

I also ended up missing my Reiki client with all that running around, which is not good at all. I hope she'll still come and see me.

School stuff

2011-01-26T20:19:00.003-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that I'm one powerful woman. I was just contemplating homeschooling for any future offspring. Maybe just for first few years, to see how things go. And I think the universe just heard 'homeschooling' and said, 'here you go hon'. And so here we are.

My lovely son was expelled, kind of, out of his nice private school. Because as nice as they are, they still require him to do work. Mysteriously, he can't manage to do that. He did manage to fail majority of subjects in 2 quarters and so he is out. We found out on Sunday, at the retreat, that he is out. I went to school on Monday to gather his things and talk to principal and his high school teacher.

Because he was not kicked out for bad behavior, he is welcome back if he improves his grades. Somehow they thought we'll send him back to public school. Like that was working wonders for us. I said, 'no thanks, we'll try homeschooling'. Which brings us to an interesting question of how they would know if he is doing better. They are, however, hoping he will be back for the last quarter. I really don't know how.

And so, our homeschooling journey starts tomorrow. I am really not sure how that would work with a 14 year old that has never been home-schooled. But we ordered materials online and just got them today. We have sat down earlier in the week and came up with a schedule for the day. It seems pretty aggressive to me, since we have not had a schedule before, but I hope it will work.

In the meantime, we are also hoping to have my son tested for any learning disabilities and such. Just to check why everyone is saying how smart he is yet he can't get a C in any subject. Turns out it's expensive, most likely not covered by anything, and takes a while. It would have been nice if the school refunded us some of the tuition, but that's not happening. Who knew when we were signing that contract that he will fail out of school and we'll lose that money...

We'll have a new label now, 'homeschooling'. Oy!

Retreat

2011-01-24T16:06:00.002-05:00

Retreat was awesome! After all the emotional turmoil about people, lack of them, finances, and who knows what, it's behind us and I enjoyed myself. I thought that everything went pretty well overall with some areas for improvement, of course. Based on the evaluation forms, that's what people thought as well.
I enjoyed the classes. I liked teaching yoga in the morning and in a retreat environment. We chatted a bit more about poses and talked more about more of the subtleties of practicing. There is not always the time or the right group for that in regular classes. Here, I knew everyone's background so it was easy to find a better language to express myself. I liked honey's class, I thought he did a good job and it was just good to see him teach. He has such a wealth of information but he downplays it. I also liked QiGong class, kirtan, and Shamanic Journeying. What I was surprised about was how much I liked mandala class. Basically we did coloring. And I could not believe how much I liked it. It was so calming, meditative, peaceful and just plain fun.
I also enjoyed the hot tub. Not many people did :) It was in another building few steps away but since it was so chilly, people didn't feel like braving the weather. I dragged my poor honey on Saturday night and it was just two of us there. But the hot water just felt so nice, I didn't mind going.
Now I will be looking to the future, to see what we will do next time. People liked the location, so we'll stick to the same place for next time. And they also had ideas for other classes and things they would want to do, so we can start there. I do, however, want to offer just a yoga retreat, maybe for just one night. I think that would be nice and will let me get out of my comfort zone a bit more.

Updates

2011-01-13T09:57:00.002-05:00

I am back from my Priestess Path weekend but I am still feeling totally out of it. Well, today I'm feeling less out of it. With all the snow we got all my routines that I'm trying to start went completely out the window. School was canceled, I canceled everything at the studio, and just stayed home. And didn't do much at home either. I did manage to write up a newsletter that you can check out here. I am excited about everything that is going on at the studio, but the stress of gathering people to come can be too much sometimes.

I am all filed for unemployment. The wait really wasn't that bad as I thought. I think it took me about an hour to wait in line and then the whole filing was maybe 5 minutes. Of course, now I still need to call them because they got wrong last name and a wrong address. That's after I asked her to check. Maybe it's somewhere else in the system. Anyway, I got my letter saying they got the claim and now I just have to wait for everything to go through. I think I'm actually getting paid my severance tomorrow. It's only 2 weeks and it was delayed by 2 weeks too. Now I'm wondering if showing that money will close my claim and I would have to go reopen it. We'll just have to wait and see.

On the more exciting front, my awesome retreat is coming up. It's amazing how much stuff I have coming up around it. Guess what? Only 6 people are coming! And my husband and I are 2 of them. Tricky part is that I have to pay for 12 people based on my agreement with the center. So, if you want to give yourself a wonderful weekend of yoga, peace and exploration, with a sauna and hot tub, come on over!

Sleep! When?

2011-01-06T23:28:00.002-05:00

So, here I am, at 11:30 at night, cooking. Yup. Cooking. At 11:30 at night. I am sooo sleepy. Why am I cooking? It's my turn to make an entree for my Priestess Path weekend. I have to make something vegetarian for 15 to 20 people. I was hoping to make something earlier today, but this is the only time I have. Being unemployed is very time consuming. I just got home at 9:30 after a workshop at the studio. Before that I was running around all day between errands, teaching a class, picking up my son, more errands somewhere in there and then the workshop in the evening. I had one short break when I was home. I ate and answered emails.

Pretty much this whole week has been like this. I went to a couple of networking events, I taught classes, I had Reiki sessions, and I am so exhausted. So, I'm cooking. They better eat it! :) It's a Russian dish, you eat it cold. It has lots of veggies and some beans. My husband likes it, and he's my "will an American eat this?" adviser. I made it for Christmas to take to my parents and it went well there.

I am finally done making it, I'll just be putting finishing touches on it tomorrow. And finding a big enough container for it. Plan for Friday is to take my son to school, have a meeting, do something for couple of hours, have another meeting, come home, get picked up for the Priestess Path at around 3:30 or so. And then come back home Sunday night. I hope I get some sleep there, but so far that hasn't really been the case.

Bed... Pillow... Almost there...

Wait

2011-01-05T09:09:00.001-05:00

I finally decided to bite the bullet and go to file my unemployment claim in person. After trying to call them all day Monday, it's just obvious that phone way will not happen for me. Most of the time the automated system would just hang up on me. Only one time my call actually went through and I got to the "your estimated wait time is" message. It was 27 minutes so I decided to hang up on them. It would have costed me more in minutes than I was willing to give. In an effort to reduce our costs I recently reduced our family plan minutes and we are still trying to figure out if it will be enough.
And so, here I am, sitting in unemployment office in Salem. I paid for 5 hours of parking, but I really hope I won't be here that long. Wish me luck!

Last minute

2010-12-30T23:58:00.002-05:00

My plan to do all the holiday shopping this week has backfired somewhat. Well, maybe a lot. Not that I really wanted to go shopping before Christmas. And until then I didn't have much time to go shopping. Well, this week, I don't even know what exactly happened, but I had to scramble tonight to go and buy gifts.

Nevertheless, I did pretty well. I still have to run out tomorrow morning and get a gift for my niece, but that's the only gift that's been left to buy. My niece wants a particular Strawberry Shortcake item, and they just didn't have that one at Target. I will have to go to toy store. Oh, well.

I did all the wrapping tonight too and now we just have to haul everything into the car tomorrow. I also still need to make salad and maybe muffins. Muffins might be pushing it, so maybe no muffins. We'll see when I'll get up. Since I'm still up, that might not be too early. I have been pretty lazy these past two weeks.

Gift and not

2010-12-29T11:48:00.003-05:00

The struggling economy does have its benefits. Couple of days ago I got a little gift in the mail. My mortgage rate was up for recalculation so I got the result. My interest rate went down from 3.125% to 3.0%. Monetary it only means that my monthly payment is $14 less, which is certainly not a big difference. Still, it's nice to pay $14 less than more :) Now I am all set for the next year and we'll see what happens the year after.

I have one of the 5/1 adjustable loans. I am now into year 7 of it, that's why the adjustment. The first time it adjusted the rate went down quiet a bit, given how the economy tanked. Now it's just a little. Given how I'm now officially unemployed and I still can't get through to unemployment office to file my initial claim, any adjustments down are welcome. I wonder if I will have better luck calling after New Year's. I think I read last year that there was an unexpected surge of new claims in January. I think that's because if you are laid off right before holidays you have a really hard time getting through. So, January is when you can actually file your claim.

I am wondering if it still makes sense to make little extra payments on the mortgage. I'm guessing it doesn't, since we have other more pressing demands on money. Like my son's school tuition. I am still waiting when the principal payment will equal the interest payment. So far the interest is still larger, but I'm almost there :) Ah, the price you pay for home ownership. The condo is about 20K under water, so we'll be here for a while! Funny how when I bought it I thought I'll be here for just few years and then buy a house. I thought the same thing when I bought my car 11 years ago :) I still have both.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T13:45:00.001-05:00

We are at my parents, waiting for everyone to arrive so we can eat. All the food looks delicious and we'll be eating until night :-) Starting with cold appetizers, then hot, then main dish, then desserts. I think they will be rolling me out of here :-)

Since we also celebrate New Year, we didn't have to buy any gifts yet. I am hoping to do all the shopping on Monday.

2 more to go

2010-12-16T09:53:00.003-05:00

It's pretty strange to be coming to work knowing that I only have one more day, and half a day at that. This time always feels weird even when you have another job lined up. Not having a job lined up makes it all the stranger.

To make life more interesting though, my car didn't want to start on Tuesday night. I went to go get my son from school and it would not start. I ended up waiting for AAA for an hour and 40 minutes. It was a long time to wait in the cold. They finally came and towed me to my mechanic. We were able to go pick up the car on Wednesday. It needed a new distributor. $285 later it has one. Unfortunately, they must have forgotten to connect something because my remote started no longer works! I'll have to go back there next week to get that fixed.

With the amount of errands I have lined up for next week I think I'll need several weeks to catch up. I am wondering what the life is going to be like on unemployment. Busy, I'm sure. I really hope it all is going to work out. It seems like we have taken so much on financially with no steady sources of income. I hope it works, I hope it works, I hope it works...

Flowers

2010-12-14T11:16:00.001-05:00

Actually, I posted this yesterday! I took a picture, wrote a post on my phone, and then emailed it in. And, nothing! Argh... So, here we go again.

My sister got me some flower bulbs for my birthday in October. Frankly, I thought she was nuts because I can't even keep already grown plants alive. I quietly kept the baggy with bulbs in the gift bag she gave me and decided to ignore it. Eventually though I was trying to clean up and the gift bag was in a way so I decided to plant the darn things and hope for the best. I got few little pots that I had and some soil we had left over from the failed tomato experiment. Thankfully all the little bugs that were in the soil seemed to have died by now.

I was surprised that few days after planting there was some greenery poking through. I think my excitement about it far outweighed the actual greenery because my husband looked at me funny when I was jumping with excitement.

I was however truly amazed when the flowers appeared! Here they are in the picture, tiny white flowers. So far only one plant is blooming, but the other ones have the flower stalk so I think they'll bloom too. It's a little miracle :) Specially now that it's so chilly outside!

Knitting stuff

2010-12-12T11:22:00.002-05:00

I got just the cutest yarn the other day! I have not bought any in a while so it was nice to get something new. It's very colorful!

I have given up on my knitting for a while. I sold few baby things last winter, but then things just kind of stopped. The last thing I made was a baby poncho, very cute, lots of effort, but it didn't sell. I think I was just disappointed so I didn't want to make anything else. And then this fall I decided that it's probably time to just re-list the poncho on Etsy. I did and it sold! I was so excited! Unfortunately the person who bought it didn't leave me a feedback. Given that in general I don't have many sales my feedback numbers are pretty low. Oh well.

Selling the poncho gave me a permission to buy more yarn! Sure, I bought yarn at a 3 times cost of the poncho, but somehow it made sense :) At this point I made a little scarf and a hat, you can see them on the Etsy plug-in I added back to the blog. Currently I am working on a little sweater. I asked honey what should I make after the hat and the scarf and he said 'mittens'. Unfortunately, I could not locate the right needles for those quickly enough so we decided to go with a sweater. This will be the largest sweater I am making for sale! I just went with the dimensions on the pattern and didn't think how big it will end up. I think it will fit a 3 year old easily. At this point I did the front and the back and now I'm working on the sleeves.

The new yarn I got will let me finish the sweater and also make something else. I am not sure what yet. Also, I am not sure if I should start making things for the summer. I still have some bamboo yarn that I can use. The yarn I bought now is wool. Some of it is organic and some is just local but because it's colored it's not organic. I don't have enough for a blanket and I feel like I should sell something before buying more. Maybe I'll make couple more hats? Ideas?

8 more to go

2010-12-08T08:52:00.002-05:00

As in days I have left to work at my corporate job. I had a chat with my boss yesterday and he told me that my last day is Friday, they are not going to renew my contract or have a part-time opportunity of sorts. He wanted to talk to me last week, but that's when I got sick. Might be for the best that way, I don't have a lot of time to think about this.

Not that I have not thought about this for a long time now. I have been planning and working towards this day for a while. I took this contract leaving a permanent job because I wanted to transition into a self-employed status at the end of the year. Still, there is a difference between planning and thinking and then actually doing it. For now I feel the same, but talk to me next year.

The good thing is that I think I can collect unemployment after this job is over. I read a bit about the rules and the amount I'm making from the business is not exactly enough to interfere with unemployment. I will just have to declare it, which is fine, but it most likely won't affect the unemployment benefits.

This is a pretty good timing overall. I'll get to hang out with my son who has 2 weeks vacation at the same time. And of course honey will be home with us. We had a little preview when we were all sick, but I'm looking forward to being home and not being sick :) It was fun, though not very productive. But again, being sick is not fun and definitely not productive.

In any case, I am excited for the new year. I have a couple of new people starting at the studio and the schedule is filling up. Stop by if you are in Beverly area! Help keep my dream alive :)

Blah

2010-12-02T11:42:00.003-05:00

I've been sick for few days now, not fun. Well, it is actually fun, except for the sick not feel good part. I was fine Monday night. We had a small Reiki share, then I taught a yoga class, all good. And then on Tuesday I woke up and I just felt sick. A little sore throat, a little sniffly... I decided to stay home. Well, Tuesday night I ended up having a fever that continued into Wednesday morning. Honey made me take Advil at that point. My son decided to stay home on Wednesday as well as he got all sniffly. Now that it's Thursday, I don't have a fever anymore but I'm not feeling capable to sit at a desk all day. I am still home.
Being sick is not a fun thing whether you are self-employed or not. On my self-employed part I had to cancel all my classes for this week. I am holding out on cancelling a movie night we have tomorrow. I hope by tomorrow night I'll feel OK, but I'll see this afternoon how I'm feeling. Maybe I'll just move it to next week or something. This has been unfortunate, I feel bad cancelling things on people.
However, being employed and taking time off is also not fun. At my corporate job, we don't have sick time. We have the 'flex' time that you can take when you are sick or as a vacation. Well, guess what? There is not much of it. This is my third day staying home and when I enter all this time off, I'll be in the negative balance. And I won't be able to make it up by the end of the year either, it just doesn't accrue that fast. Anyway you look at it, not a great situation. Hopefully I'll feel better soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T14:51:00.003-05:00

I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving and easy time with family! We are down in Maryland this year for our Thanksgiving. That's a first one for me, but that's what my husband does every year. Now that we are attached, I guess that's what we do, at least at this point. My family is getting together tomorrow for their big dinner.

We decided to opt out of flying this time after flying here in the summer. I don't know why, but I felt exhausted after flying last time, so I didn't want to do that now. Instead, we drove over night. We left home on Tuesday night at about 10:20pm and ended up getting here at 9:30am. I was the designated driver which was nice. The guys were sleeping most of the time, so it was just quiet. We stopped few times to use the bathroom and I needed a nap. Though it was so cold the napping didn't last long. I would get cold and wake up. The drive was still nice, no traffic.

We will be leaving here on Saturday and driving back during the day. I hope the traffic won't be too bad then. My dad has an appointment with an herbalist on Sunday morning that I'm taking him to. And then we'll have dinner with my parents and watch their pictures and movies from the recent trip to Israel they took. So many things happening, lots to be thankful for.

Updates

2010-10-29T09:25:00.002-04:00

Yesterday marked two year anniversary of meeting my husband and also a month and 10 days since we were married! No, I'm not pregnant :)

It also marked the graduation of my very first Reiki I class! My husband was in it, and so were two women that I know. I was supposed to teach a class as part of my training to become a Reiki Master Teacher. I loved teaching! It was so very exciting and I hope they all liked it and found it useful. We did a lot of practicing yesterday and I think that was helpful. I am looking forward to teaching them Reiki II and also to start holding regular classes. Regular classes will probably start in January when I will actually finish my training. In the future, I feel like I want to add Reiki I classes for teenagers. I don't know what it is about that but I feel like this will be very important for me to do.

In other news, I have started my 8 months Priestess Path journey. Last weekend I was away from Friday night and until Sunday night. It's been a weekend filled with wonder and I'm not even sure what. All I know is that since the weekend I have started to set aside time in the morning to journal and that I feel like adorning myself. Seriously... I feel like drawing on my arms and hands, henna-style and just decorating myself. I have been wearing a new necklace each day and it feels ritualistic putting it on. And journaling has been awesome. Everyone is still in bed and I get to sit and write a little. I love it. Why I didn't do it sooner when so many people told me to, I don't know. But now the push and pull is there and so here I go.

And it's Friday! And a rare free weekend is almost here! I get to enter into my weekend by doing Reiki on a client and I think that this will make for a nice weekend start.

Archie

2010-10-12T13:44:00.001-04:00

Cat in a bag :-) We bought few goodies at Floating Lotus store in Rockport and Archie decided to check things out.

Dreaming Mountain, Part 2

2010-10-05T09:36:00.003-04:00

So the empty posts that were here are from my phone acting up. My phone's touchscreen decided to stop working. Most of the time it doesn't work at all and sometimes it registers a click in a completely different spot. That's what happened. I was trying to post but it would send the message before I could type anything. I need a new phone :(
This picture is taken from the little area that was between our rooms and the main house. This was early morning on Sunday. We had to get up and get breakfast before my presentation.

I think the presentation went well. There were 6 people in my class plus my husband. The class ended up going a little faster because the women in the class have done yoga before so they were familiar with most of the techniques we covered in class. But it seemed to have gone OK anyway.

It was interesting talking with people in class and then outside of class. They are building a pretty neat community there. We also got invited back if we ever want to do a yoga or some sort of retreat there again. I am not sure about that yet as it's pretty far for us to go. It took us 4 hours to get there Friday night and then much longer coming back on Sunday. In any case, I'm excited about the winter retreat we'll be doing in Essex and I need to focus on that for now. Next summer feels so far away!

Dreaming Mountain, Morning of 10/03/10

Dreaming Mountain

2010-10-02T10:26:00.001-04:00

This is the lovely view from our room at Dreaming Mountain in Vermont. Vermont? What? We are here for the weekend to get a bit of a break. There a Healer's Symposium here on Sunday that I am presenting at and we decided to come for the whole weekend. We got here last night, at 11 or so. This is pretty much in a middle of nowhere, at the end of a long unpaved road. We didn't see much yesterday since it was all dark already. It was funny looking for our room with flashlight in one hand, instructions on how to find it in another, and bags on the back. The one thing we already discovered is that saying we get a room and full bath does not mean that bath is in the room :-) It's across the hallway. I am assuming it's shared with other rooms but we have not seen anyone yet. Now we are planning to descend into town to have breakfast and no plans beyond that. I am getting hundry.

Silly

2010-09-01T18:17:00.001-04:00

I typed up this nice post this morning and then accidentally deleted it! So, shorter version... I brought my son to work with me last week. Just for an afternoon though he was complaining like I was going to keep him there for a week. He was bored silly. After about an hour he declared that he will never have a desk job unless it's something he really likes. He also couldn't understand why we have to be there even if I don't have much to do. It was a slow day between projects. It was an interesting experiment to show him this type of desk job. He did not like it. This is a picture from our collective sillyness that day. He wanted me to try his hat on :-)

Herbal Conference

2010-08-19T17:39:00.001-04:00

I am so very excited! Tomorrow I am going to New England Women Herbal Conference in New Hampshire. This is my third year and I am really looking forward to it. I have registered back in May and now it's here.

I am not too sure what I will be doing there. Usually I have all my classes circled out well in advance. This time I just know I am doing a sweat lodge again and most likely yoga each morning. Other than that, I am planning to go with the flow.

I have to pack my tent and stuff tonight. I am taking half a day at work, picking up my son at camp at 12, dropping him off at home, and hopefully making it there by 2:30 when first class starts. I am not sure it's realistic, but we'll see.

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Dreaming

2010-08-18T11:12:00.001-04:00

Today I am dreaming of a time when my life will be simpler and I would have time for myself. Today in particular I wish I could stay home and lounge on a couch with a cup of herbal tea. That would be raspberry leaf tea for today. Just the word 'lounge' sounds so relaxing and unattainable at the moment.

Yesterday was tough. It started pretty good with the whole hair thing. And then it kind of deteriorated. I got to work at 10 which sent me into a 'how can I make up this time?' mode. My son is at camp this week and that adds to the usual chaos that I am used to. Then, things at work just weren't going well. I could not get some stuff to work so I didn't progress much. And then it was time to pick up my son from camp already. My original, not reality based plan was to bring him to work with me after camp. But he was all soaked and sweaty from the camp after all the canoeing he did. So we went home. And then it was just too late to go to work as I had to go teach a class. Oy!

Hair

2010-08-17T10:15:00.003-04:00

In case you are wondering why there is a picture of me, today is a hair day. So, you are looking at pretty much how I'm going to look on my wedding day :) I had my trial hair up-do this morning, bright and early at 8:30. Now my job is to see how long the curls in my hair will actually last. Since my hair is straight and heavy, it doesn't like curls. The hair dresser didn't put a lot of hair spray in because this is not the official day and we were just trying things out. We did change it a bit from the original look and I think it looks better now. We tried it out with a veil as well, but she took it out of my hair before the picture.

Very girly post today :) Oh, and the place I went to is at the Cummings Center and it's called Limelite.

And here is the back view, not that you can see much.

Mental throw outs

2010-08-06T15:46:00.002-04:00

I have finished reading the Throw Out 50 Things book. It was awesome! I think I amaze my honey with my ability to consume self-help books. I think he was the most amazed when I was reading a book about de-cluttering and simplifying. It was written as a tip book, so just tip after tip. But it was interesting and fun :)

The book ties together the physical stuff you throw away with mental stuff you throw away. While there is a section completely devoted to the mental stuff only, you are encouraged to think about all this mental/emotional mess as you are throwing away physical items.

The mental stuff is what I was thinking about as I was getting rid of my pantyhose. They were all stashed in the back of my drawer and I haven't worn them in years. They were left from the years when I was thinking of a more corporate career and having to look more professional. As I (and my honey) now commonly describe my look as 'whimsical' :) those hose really didn't need to take space in my drawer. It was interesting though that as I was throwing them away, I felt that I'm nailing yet another nail into my corporate career path. Making my decision a little more final if you will.

I was also working on a little project yesterday and came across some craft supplies that were not even good anymore. So, that went out as well. And in the last piece of throwing stuff out, I posted my Stargate and Charmed DVD collections on Freecycle. I hope someone will come get them. I wanted to just take them to the library, but they are in a middle of renovations and don't accept donations right now. Honey suggested selling them, but after researching how much they will fetch me, it's just simpler to give them away.

And so my total for yesterday is at 3 items, so I still have 44 more to go.

Moving slowly

2010-08-03T14:27:00.003-04:00

We are back from our camping trip, hopefully not the last one this season. Actually, we were back on Sunday night, but yesterday was all a blur and today I'm still feeling extra sleepy and tired.

We went to Acadia National Park and camped at their Seawall Campground. Very beautiful area, even if I'm not so in love with Maine campgrounds. They seem to give you very little space with sites close together. This is only the second Maine site we've been too, but so far they've had this lack of space in common.

We went up to Maine on Thursday, pretty much afternoon and got there just in time to set up tent and start a fire. Friday was pretty leisurely with driving around a bit on the Park Loop Road and taking pictures. For some reason, I was having trouble letting go and just relaxing. I was still in some kind of work mood - frustrated that I have no cell phone service and can't check my email.

Saturday was much better! We kicked it off by going to a Common Good Cafe in the morning for breakfast. We also got to check emails and honey had to take an English placement test for entering college again. Then we went on sailing trip on Margaret Todd. It was awesome! The weather was nice and the views were beautiful. It truly started to feel like vacation. After that we went kayaking on Long Pond and watched the sunset. Great day!

Sunday started with another breakfast at Common Good Cafe, strolling around Bar Harbor and then taking a sunset carriage ride at the park. That sunset ride is what made us so much later coming home. We got home after 1 in the morning and it was around 2 when we got to bed. Given that we always have trouble falling asleep first night after camping, I'm not even sure how much sleep we got. I know we all got up at 6. I was holding up better yesterday, but today I'm very sleepy.

If I manage, I might share a picture or two from the trip. One of the strange highlights of this trip is that for the very first time someone talked to us at the camp site. Our neighbors on Saturday night invited us over to sit by the camp fire and to try some venison. I don't think I'm a fan of venison after trying it, but neighbors were fun.

And, if you are in Acadia, you have to go to Common Good Cafe! They are awesome! They serve local and organic foods for breakfast and lunch and they use the profits to run a soup kitchen in the winter. Their wait staff is paid regular wage and all the tips go to the soup kitchen. The food was great and they had awesome coffee. Even honey had some and said it was good. And the little honey ended up having mini bison burger. He liked it. If you need another incentive, the views from the dining room are great. You look out onto a natural sea wall and the ocean.

One more thing

2010-07-28T21:16:00.001-04:00

I threw out two lamps that have been sitting in my closet for about 6 years. They were wall lamps that I thought I will do electrical for, but then I bought wall lamps that just plug into a regular socket. So 3 things down, 47 more to go.

The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. Get busy.

Out we go

2010-07-28T09:36:00.002-04:00

And, almost a month later, here I am. A lot of things have been happening and also things have been pretty much the same. I have a couple of new clients that are keeping me busy. July has been full of different workshops at my studio which has been awesome. August is looking pretty bare by comparison on the workshop front. I still have my clients though and the yoga classes. And I'm busily putting together a schedule for the fall. All of that has been keeping me busy and the regular work has been busy as well.

I can't believe the summer is almost over. Some of the highlights for the end of the summer include going camping at Acadia National Park and also going to the New England Women Herbal Conference later in August. I hope we'll get to go kayaking again which was great.

I've been on a cleaning kick lately. First I read the 8 step Home Cure. Liked it very much and started to re-arrange the condo. My son's room looks very different now! It's not entirely done yet, but getting close. We moved his bed to a different wall, threw out an old dresser he's had since he was about 3 or 4 years old, and bought him a recliner. He wanted a recliner. Now we moved TV from the living room into his room and he actually spends some time there watching TV and using his laptop. I still need to install AC in the window of his room. It gets really hot even with shades closed. So, AC and bringing in the stand for TV and placing it on top of it instead of being on top of a dresser. He'll end up having way too much furniture in there, but it will have to do for now. I also need to tackle his closet. The wire shelving there is just not functioning so I want to replace it with something nicer that will also work better.

Anyway, just yesterday I came across another book being mentioned on a blog I randomly stumbled on. The book is called Throw Out 50 Things. I checked it out on Amazon and decided to see if they have it in the library. They did and now I have it! It is a very easy and even funny read. The author is very conversational in her presentation. I haven't finished the book yet, but the premise seems to be that as you throw out stuff, you also throw out mental and emotional stuff that has got to go. As you let go of the past, you evolve into the person you are meant to be with your environment supporting your vision. I liked one of the things the author said somewhere in the beginning of the book. She was talking about having a little voice in your head that tells you that you will not be able to accomplish this, this is not for you, and who do you think you are. And then she tells you to embrace that voice and welcome it, because if it's silent, you are growing way too stale and too comfortable in your routine, you are not challenging yourself.

Since you do actually have to throw out 50 things during the course of the book, I thought I might as well start. It's funny. Anytime I have an urge to throw something out, I go to my son's room. He's starting to run out of things to throw out though he still has plenty. Plus I use his closet as some kind of catch all where I stash some other stuff that has nothing to do with him. So, I throw that out. Anyway, he had a CD storage case that I bought years ago and never liked. I think my parents got the same one and so I got one. It has little drawers for CDs, but they are open sided so I always had trouble with closing those little drawers. At this point it was filled with empty CD cases. I threw out all the cases. There were 34 of them but they only count as 1 thing being thrown out for my 50 thing list. And I put the CD storage case at the entrance to the building. I hope someone needs it and will have better time with it. Two things down, 48 more things to go!

Hmm

2010-07-08T16:19:00.001-04:00

My chili from lunch is seeping through a styrofoam container. Kind of yucky.

Summer time

2010-07-01T10:04:00.001-04:00

My son has been enjoying his summer days. He spends them hanging out with friends and doing very little. Yesterday I came home from work to find him playing Scrabble with a friend. Slang was allowed for this one.

Technically, he should be looking for work now that he is 14. In practice, it's not happening. I guess if I took him to different stores and places to apply, I think he would go. But I have neither time nor energy to do that. Maybe after the long weekend, but I doubt it. I thought he would be more motivated to look for work since he has all these plans for money he would make. But I guess he is having way too much fun.

All that freedom of being home by yourself and hanging out with friends sounds pretty good to me too.

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Organic flowers

2010-06-30T15:32:00.001-04:00

I like flowers. I like potted plants and cut flowers. O am, however, lacking in the green thumb department. I manage to kill most plants that my mother gives me or that I buy. I also now have to think of the cats and make sure plants are not poisonous to them. That really limits the greenery in the house as well.

Finally, I have an excuse! The book I was talking about yesterday, 8 step home cure, recommends buying fresh flowers every week. I could not commit to every week, but I knew a perfect place for once a month!

I have been eyeing Organic Bouquet's website ever since I found it. We even sent flowers to my future in-laws from there. I just didn't have an excuse to sign up for a monthly flower club. And now it all came together!

I already got my first bouquet and it was gorgeous. It also lasted for 2 weeks even in the heat we've had. Now I can't wait for next month bouquet!

Lots of changes

2010-06-29T15:30:00.001-04:00

Recently, a lot of things have been moving in the house. The reason for changes this time is yet another organizing book. It's called "8 step home cure" and I loved it! I actually bought it, which is rare for me to begin with. I bought it after reading associated website, apartmenttherapy.com. I was so impressed, I had to get the book.
I liked that it was talking less about organising and more about living in the space. Somehow that made more sense to me and so I've been busily re-organising the condo.
First on the list is my son's room. I am pretty tired of him occupying the most space. He has a bedroom, but he only sleeps there and hangs out in the living room instead. I should probably be thankful, but his stuff is all over the place! We decided to move TV from the living room into his room so he can set up his gaming system there. We already moved all the furniture to accommodate this in his room, except for moving TV in. I even got him a recliner so he can sit comfortably.

Up and Down

2010-06-17T17:43:00.002-04:00

It's turning out to be a crazy week and a crazy day today. I feel like I've been running around a lot more, and on Tuesday particularly I was in a grumpy mood.

My honey found an out of the house job and started on Monday. As much I wanted him to do that, it's also challenging because he was doing the majority of the housework when he was working from home. We haven't fallen behind on anything yet, but I'm having nightmares of compounding laundry and trash everywhere.

And then he's planning on going back to school in the fall, and I'm not sure how he's going to be able to juggle everything. Once again, I'm worrying about the future instead of focusing on right now, which is actually quiet nice.

On Tuesday, I was putting together some bookshelves I bought online. They ended up looking nice but holding a lot less than I was hoping. And that kind of pushed me into a mini-meltdown.

I am recovering though, I don't stay down for too long. I am also really looking forward to a kirtan on Friday night at the studio. I know that it will just reset everything and I'll feel great. At this point, I'm still a little anxious about the number of people coming. I just hope more people will show up than I have registered so far. Or at least everyone who registered will come.

And so we go, on and off, up and down :)

Yey!

2010-06-15T15:14:00.002-04:00

Once again, long time coming, but... I am now a registered yoga teacher! As soon as I get all the paperwork back it will be even more official.

My graduation was on Sunday and I got my diploma, which was very nice! Honey made it over to Arlington for the ceremony and we got to hang out together and he got to meet all the people I was in training with. It was really nice.

This ends my 10 months training and I'm now certified at 200 hour level. Next up - 500 hour level :) That will have to wait a bit though as I'm doing other things next year. What specifically? I have signed up for Priestess Path program with ALisa Starkweather which is another 9 months program where I go away for a whole weekend now. And, I will also, hopefully, be advancing my Reiki skills and becoming trained to teach it. Lots of things!

For now, I am happy the training is over and I'm also a little sad it is. I'm not sure now when is the next yoga class will be for me that I get to take and not teach. And, of course, saying goodbye to everyone is a bit sad.

School Update

2010-05-19T16:54:00.003-04:00

My son started a new school! This is his second week and he loves it. I know that this is the very end of school year for them and they don't do as much, but it's still very encouraging. As I wrote before, we went to Clark School in Danvers. He ended up going there for a week before I took him out of Peabody school officially. We wanted to make sure that he'll still like it after being there for few days.

And so, after the Open House, we went there again when my son stayed there for a whole day, shadowing a student. I was a little nervous how that will go. My honey and I both went there to pick my son up and have our interview. Well, they loved my son and said they would love to have him next year. I don't even know who brought it up, but we ended up asking if he can just start this year, right now. And the head of school said yes.

The very first week of school they had testing that they do in the beginning and end of school year. Before the testing, they weren't sure my son will be able to graduate. With him failing all his classes and all. But after the testing, we got a great news that he did very well and will graduate with the rest of his new class. This was very exciting! I am happy for him and glad that he did so well.

At this point, he is doing his homework (not always when I would want him to, but at least he does it). And then the school ends on June 2nd, which he is pretty happy about. They have lots of fun things planned for the end of the year. On Friday they are going to Six Flags and then having a Boys Night Out. They'll go watch the new Shrek during it. And then next week they are going to visit a farm that one of the teacher's owns where they grow heritage turkeys and such. Pretty cool, I think.

Mushrooms

2010-05-14T11:10:00.002-04:00

Yes, I'm writing about mushrooms, though not the food kind. We had an interesting conversation last night at the meditation group. In case you didn't know, the meditation class recently became a meditation group. I know you are all eagerly following all my adventures :)

Anyway, I changed the format a bit just to make a little less formal. I want it to be a place to get together and meditate and I can always help out with questions if needed. Check it out if you have a chance, it's Thursdays at 7pm. It is now also by donation instead of a $5 charge.

After the meditation yesterday we were chatting about the movie night that is actually tonight. You can read about it here, if you would like. It's a documentary about the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. As they travel around the world, we get to see some of the indigenous spiritual and healing traditions and rituals. When Grandmothers are visiting Mexico, they partake in the ceremony where they eat some of the 'magic mushrooms'.

The conversation yesterday came to those mushrooms or using any other substance as means of spiritual development. Frankly, I didn't do the best explaining my position on this after being put on the spot. It's one thing talking about it at home and another being asked as a teacher. One of the things I said is that personally, I don't see myself using mushrooms. With my 'live and let live' attitude, I don't care if you personally want to use them. I think that if done in proper surroundings and with the right intention, it can lead to spiritual awakening. I certainly read of accounts of just that happening. The objection that I have is that I think it would be easy to confuse the experience with the message. In other words, you might be so fascinated with having visions that you would lose track of why you wanted to have them in the first place. Visions for visions' sake are not helpful to anyone. I don't know if you can transition from a Western culture with negative view of mind-altering drugs to a reverent view of the experience easily. I think that's something you need to grow up with for most people.

That's my general opinion. For me personally, I don't feel like I need to use anything, and that's the point I forgot to make yesterday. I think because this gets too personal for me. If you think about it, why would you want to have this kind of experience? To experience yourself larger than life, to feel limitless, to feel connected and merged with everything, to experience your true self. Well, that's why I would do it. In my own case, I already feel that. Through Reiki and practicing Reiki on others, I feel the connection, the limitless existence, the dissolving of ego, the connection to heart and universe. Sure, that experience is mostly prevalent during a Reiki session and not every moment of my life, but so is any kind of induced experience. And so I just don't see a point in using anything to induce the same state that I can access much easier and at all times. On another hand, if I'm in a Grandmother's circle and the mushrooms get passed around, I might try it. I will let you know if that happens :)

Now, do I bring this up again next Thursday or just drop it? That is the question.

Kelp Woes

2010-05-12T13:32:00.003-04:00

Remember the health test I did at the old job? I wrote about it here. I got my results maybe 2 months back at this point. I thought I wrote about it, but I guess it was a post in my head as I can't find it. To sum up, I am very healthy :) My blood test came back pretty good. There is just one 'but' to it: my thyroid is a bit under-active. There are two measuring points that they check for it, and both of them showed my thyroid can use some help.

I did some research online to see what effects under-active thyroid would have. Well, I do have the symptoms. They are however so wide-spread, that it could be anything. I know I will be asking my doctor about it when I go see her for my physical in ... December :)

Since I am not planning on using medication for it, regardless, I figured there is no rush to see the doctor. Yes, I'm a bit tired and have trouble getting up, but then I work 2 jobs, what do you expect? In general, any of the symptoms of hypothyroidism that I have are pretty mild.

I did a bit of research and found out that kelp is good in stimulating the thyroid. In fact, there were multiple warnings not to overuse it. I decided to give kelp a try. I bought some organic kelp powder from my favorite Mountain Rose Herbs. I got it. I tried it... In yogurt... I think I'm scarred for the rest of my life! When I just smelled the kelp, I began to have doubts. After trying it, I am not a fan. That might be an understatement.

I just found a kelp energy bar recipe... I have my doubts, but I'll try it. I think... Yes, I am hesitant. I just don't want to give up. I figured that if I can't eat it, I will just buy capsules to fill and take kelp that way. Since I only had it one day, I am not sure yet if it will help me or not. It will be funny though if I start taking it and suddenly have energy to not only work full time and run my business, but also cook, clean and have productive down time!

Mother's Day

2010-05-10T17:56:00.007-04:00

We had an interesting Mother's Day yesterday - it started off a little rough, almost ended a little rough, and then had lots of good things in the middle.
First off, we planned to go out with my parents to the Arboretum in Jamaica Plain to see the lilacs. While my son was in general OK with that, he had some strange ideas of when we should actually leave. After doing some back and forth on the theme of 'it's time to go, now!', I pointed out that he didn't even wish me a happy Mother's Day yet. He tried to get out of that one by saying that he was planning to say it when we see my parents. So that I would wish a happy Mother's Day to my mom and he would wish it to me. I said it was a lame excuse and I was not in a very good mood after that. I think he got that and we were able to actually leave the house...
The Arboretum was beautiful! There were so many people! Everyone was taking pictures and smelling lilacs. Here is a pic for you:Pretty, huh? They all smelled so good! Here is another variety:

And some more over here:
Poor little bee was so called, he didn't even move! My mother pointed out that he's alive though. But it was really cold!
Just to show you how cold it was, here is a picture of us, all bundled up:
In case you are wondering, I am wearing an undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, a hoodie that you can see, and a vest :) I was warm, but not hot! And, honey and I are such dorks, wearing matching hats :) Both of those are actually my son's, but he refused to wear any or put anything else on. The vest I'm wearing was for him!

We had a nice lunch afterwords and then I gotten so sleepy, I fell asleep on a way home. It was a very good day. It was nice to see my parents and chat. I haven't seen them in so long and they only live 20 minutes away.

Atlantis

2010-05-05T15:06:00.003-04:00

My honey is hoping to do a presentation on Atlantis on May 19th, Wednesday night. I am pretty excited about it, so I hope it happens. So far it has not been met with overwhelming support. For my part, I think it would be interesting. My knowledge of Atlantis consists of - it might or might not have existed, it might or might not have sunk, and it might or might not have been technologically or otherwise advanced. I can definitely learn some more :)

In any case, I hope it happens. We might just record it and then have it available online for honey's membership section. It's a lot of work for him to do to pull all the materials together, but I hope he does it. Thinking about how cheap it is ($20) and how much he has to do for it is upsetting, but we wanted to keep it affordable. Anyway, pass the word along and I hope you can make it! And if you do, let me know asap :)

Atlantis - Myth and Reality of the Lost Civilization
We've heard the stories about ancient Atlantis – a once great civilization that seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth in a watery cataclysm.

* Where do these stories of a once great civilization come from?
* Is there any basis for them in reality?
* Why should we strive to better understand the facts and fictions beneath the stories?
* What can we learn about the history of humanity and ourselves?

In this unique workshop, we'll begin by analyzing the origins of the Atlantis story in modern times from a historical perspective. Next, we'll look at real archeological evidence of lost civilizations. From there we'll explore some of the remarkably similar events described in various ancient texts and legends. Finally, we'll examine the concept of Atlantis from a metaphysical perspective, seeking the inner meanings that these ancient stories can provide.

Along the way we'll explore the work of scholars who've tried to better elucidate these questions, including intriguing and sometimes controversial researchers like Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Manly Palmer Hall, and Michael Tsarion.

When: Wednesday, May 19, 7:00 - 10:00pm
Cost: $20 before May 12, $25 after and at the door.

Register here

New school

2010-04-22T17:31:00.004-04:00

Today was pretty exciting day for us. We went to check out another school for my lovely little boy. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, he was not accepted to Essex Aggi, which we found out a month or so ago. And in that time I have pretty much resigned myself to watching him fail class after class. I am wondering if the public school system is just not compatible with my parenting style. Anyway, I was feeling very unsettled giving up. After all, that's my baby and I want the best for him. But I was just not sure what to do.

And then I was talking to a friend of mine about kids, schools and so on. Actually, that friend is a new therapist at Eternal Balance. She's great. She was telling me about all these different schools that she looked into for her kids. And some of them weren't crazy expensive. That motivated me to go home and do some research. The schools that she was talking about were pretty far from us, so I dug around a little more and found a school not too far from us. It's the Clark School for Creative Learning in Danvers.

They had Open House today so we went to check it out. We really liked it. As soon as we pulled in and saw the old farmhouse the school is in, my son asked with disbelief, "This is the school?!" They actually have 3 different buildings, but they are all small, nothing like where he goes to now. After being pretty reserved at the beginning of our tour, my son started to grin and by the end was comfortable asking questions and chatting. All in all, he loved it. He loved the idea that he can go through material as fast or as slow as he would like. I am a little concerned on the taking it slow part, but I'm sure he'll be progressing. There are only 20 kids in their high school and he's looking forward to joining them.

Now we have another appointment when my son will mirror one of the students there for a day to see how he likes it and how they like him. He is very excited. I hope they'll accept him and he continues to like it. Who knows, maybe he'll even like learning! Or reading... That would be a shock, though very, very welcome.

It is pricey, but not as pricey as other private schools. It will set us back about $12K a year, plus we need to buy a laptop, and I'm sure pay extra for some field trips they take. I told my son we have enough money for one year, after that I don't know. He wants to get a job this summer so he can have his own spending money. If that does happen, I hope I can make him save up a little. The money aspect certainly worries me, specially with me thinking to work part time. Oy!

Rings and such

2010-04-20T16:22:00.002-04:00

I wanted to get back to the wedding planning so I can catch you up on all the updates. We've done quiet a bit already. We got the wedding bands, I have a dress and veil, we ordered cake and flowers. I think that's where we stopped.

Speaking of rings, we ordered ours from Etsy, from this wonderful seller. They are hand-made, and we got to specify not only what gold we would like, but also all the details on how the rings would look. And they came out just as we imagined. Very pretty! And the sellers were very nice in explaining everything and sending multiple pictures to make sure we know what we are getting. And they use recycled gold too.

My dress is not that environmentally friendly, but it was cheap - $200. I bought it online and it fits pretty well. I still need to tailor it a bit. It's a little too long and I need that whole train-lifting construction added. I need to buy shoes before I can do all that though.

All three of us went to order the cake, which was really fun. I felt like my son got to participate in the planning, and he had good ideas for the cake too. It's going to be white (or ivory, now I don't remember) with red flowers and some black designs on it too.

Unfortunately, we can't afford organic flowers for the wedding, but I guess you can't have everything. I can't believe how expensive flowers are in any case! Ouch!

I think that's it for now. We still need a photographer and we need to figure out what we are going to do with music. We are planning to just play it off the iPod, but we still need speakers.

Kirtan

2010-04-19T15:53:00.002-04:00

So, I hosted my very first kirtan on Friday night. What's a kirtan? Kirtan is a beautiful heart opening experience of call & response chanting usually sung in the sacred language of Sanskrit. The leader sings a line or two & the participants repeat it back. Musical instruments accompany the singing which can invoke inner states of harmony, ecstasy & bliss. The sound vibration of Kirtan leads to a deep devotional experience of one’s personal connection to the Divine.

It's hard to explain what kirtan is and why you should go to one. It is summed up in the call-and-response phrase, but what happens during it is so much harder to explain! This is definitely one of those things that you need to experience.

Anyway, I was very excited about hosting one, but I was also getting more and more concerned as the date was getting closer. Reason? I only had 2 people say they'll come! My vision for a much more populous kirtan was not happening. So, there was just 4 of us for the evening. And then of course, Ravi, our kirtan leader. He played harmonium though he also brought guitar with him. And he gave us all kinds of noise makers to accompany him if the mood strikes us.

It was really fun! Of course, I had to overcome being a bit shy at first, but I truly enjoyed the experience. Ravi kept commenting that there is a nice energy in the space, so that was also very nice. I hope he'll come back. He said yes, but who knows. I really hope I can get a bit bigger group for him though. So, if you would like to come to next one, possibly on June 18th, let me know!

The W Day

2010-04-14T12:53:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned before, I am getting married. I guess you truly should never say 'never'. I am very excited about it and it feels like a very natural next step in our relationship. We didn't really have a proposal, we just kind of talked about getting married at some point. And then we talked more and more. And then, me being me, I looked at the calendar, just for fun. We like the numbers 18 and 28, they are significant to our relationship. So, for fun, I looked at the calendar to find any 18 or 28 that falls on a Saturday. Guess what? There was just one, coming up this September. After sharing this news with honey, we decided that we'll get married then. Everything was still hypothetical though.

In my leisure time, I looked at different wedding venues... Talk about being expensive! The prices really put a dumper on our wedding plans as they put the wedding within the 'I'm not paying that much!' category. At the same time, I had some career classes that I was taking at a local hotel in Salem, Hawthorne. They have good food and service is always outstanding. I was too afraid to even ask them though because I thought it will be really expensive, with the hotel being downtown historic Salem and all. My mentor convinced me to ask and gave me a contact at the hotel. And they turned out to be very, very reasonably priced! They only charge for food, not the venue itself. After talking with honey, we decided to book our date and the wedding became a reality! And now we are very, very excited!

First Day

2010-04-12T18:18:00.002-04:00

I am first day at my old job. It has been a good day! Everyone has been so nice welcoming me back, it's been great.

It's kind of strange to be back. It almost feels like I haven't left, but not really. I came in, security gave me a badge (with my old picture on it), and that's it. I met with HR briefly, got some paperwork to fill out, and was shown to my cube.

I am back in a cube, which is not that fun. With my back to the entrance, of course. Is there any other cube design? Other than that things seem fine. I think I talked to more people today than in 18 months I was at the other job. I am guessing that's the perk of working on a project where you get to interact with different departments.

I have my cube pretty much setup already. I had a bag that I loaded at the old job and kept in a trunk. I brought it in today and set things up. Now I have pictures of my guys right next to me :)

I was even a brave soul and kicked my behind out of bed early. Frankly, it's not even that early, 6 o'clock, but I don't remember last time I got up at that time. Everyone was still sleeping and I got to practice a bit of yoga in the morning. I miss that little pause in the beginning of the day, so it was nice to have it. I also had breakfast, packed lunch and snacks, and yoga clothes for the class I'm teaching tonight. I was doing well all day, but now I'm tired! I think it's early to bed for me!

I know the question I'm going to be thinking of every day is 'What are we going to eat?' I'm not sure what the answer is going to be.

Yey for time off

2010-04-07T19:52:00.002-04:00

It's been a wonderful week! I am really enjoying the time off work, staying home, and just working on the business. I have been teaching classes and doing Reiki, so that's been nice. I even got a new client today! We have been going for walks almost every day too. Today was just way too hot! We ended up going to Lynn Woods and it was sunny and muggy. I felt like I was melting away. I have also been cooking this week, so no take out so far! All bets are off for next week though when I'm back at work.

I've also been working on a website a bit, and some business related stuff. I actually have to get a handout together for a class I'm teaching on Friday - "Breath for Health". I have about 6 people coming to it, so it's pretty exciting. I'm glad people were interested in it, I think it will be very helpful. We'll go over few different breathing techniques and also do a bit of exploring of how the breath moves in the body. It's basically geared towards getting more familiarity with breath, becoming aware of muscles involved in respiration, and increasing lung capacity.

So all in all, this has been a productive week with the only exception being the state of the house. I had vague ideas about cleaning up a bit, but haven't made any progress on that. Well, the week is not over yet. Today is too hot! :)

Oh, we are going to see Deepak Chopra tomorrow! Very exciting!

Job stuff

2010-04-01T10:53:00.004-04:00

I have so many news to share, I almost don't know where to start. I guess I'll start with the most looming one... Tomorrow is my last day at this job! Even more exciting than this is that I will have a week off before I start the new job. What's the new job? Unfortunately, it's same old, same old. I'm still going to be wearing my SQA Engineer hat. I am actually going back to a place where I worked before this one.

My mentor asked me, "Does this feel like a step in the right direction?" Because on the surface, it pretty much looks the same as what I'm doing now. Actually, when I told my honey about it, his first reaction was, "Aren't you going to be home even less?" All very valid points. So, why am I going there?

There are few reasons... Here they are, in no particular order:
- New job will be closer to my healing studio, pretty much 10 minutes away. That means I don't have to have an extra hour or more around each class that I will be away from work.
- It is still close to home, though I won't be able to come home for lunch anymore.
- On the plus side, there is a lovely reservation next to new job that I used to walk at before. I'm looking forward to going for walks at lunch.
- I already know the job, so I know I can do it.
- I like the people I used to work with.
- I have ran my somewhat creative schedule by my boss and he's OK with it.
- This is a contract position, full-time, that includes benefits, such as health insurance and vacation time.
- The contract is through the end of the year only.

On the more negative side...
- I will have to put in few hours on Saturday to make up for my creative scheduling.
- It is still full-time
- It ends at the end of the year.

I am hoping that they would want me to stay after the contract on a part-time basis. I am hoping. The HR lady said that I will be eligible for unemployment though at the end of this, so I might be applying for that. The unemployment is a tricky, tricky point. I am hoping that the business continues to grow and I'll be able to support myself at the end of the year.

The main reason I'm taking this job though, is that it does have an expiration date. I have come to realize that my own sense of obligation to my family prevents me from just quitting the corporate world. I have provided for my son for so long, that I can't just compromise my ability to provide. And so having the job kind of expire on me is my way of getting around that. Seems like silly mind games, but I guess we all have to work with whatever is given to us. For now, wish me luck!

White Tantra

2010-03-19T14:04:00.002-04:00

Couple of weekends ago, in the beginning of March, honey and I made our way down to Franklin, for our second year of white tantra meditation. It's a bit of a drive for us and it starts at 8:30 in the morning. Neither one of us was looking forward to getting up early on the weekend, but we were looking forward to the meditation. I had very fond memories of the previous year. Throughout the meditation I got to experience a very blissful state once in a while and it made all the other discomfort worth it. Honey, on the other hand, had a lot of trouble sitting upright, without support for a whole day.

This time we had loaded the car with all kinds of meditation cushions, blankets, and so on. Having a healing/yoga studio really helped with the supplies we have access to now. After we got to the place, I was quietly swearing to myself about carrying all those cushions, blankets, and yoga mats. No way we'll need that many, I thought to myself. And, no, we didn't need that many, though we used more than I thought. It was a pain in the neck trying to check in while holding all the stuff.

Eventually we made our way in and the meditation started shortly. We missed the warm up part, but it is just what it is. We were pretty excited to hear that there won't be any 62 minute meditations, only 11 and 31 minute ones. Things were looking up already! And then the first 11 minute meditation started. I don't even remember what we were supposed to do, but we were also supposed to be accompanied to a recording of a very nice chant. However! It kept skipping! For the next 11 minutes we were listening to a skipping chant. It was not pretty. After a break, we did it again, and the DVD kept skipping. The organizers were looking for another DVD player and someone went out to go buy a new one. The new one didn't turn on, so they went out again and bought a couple of new DVD players. After an extended break we were back in business and there weren't any more technical difficulties.

This time the experience itself was drastically different from the previous year. Last year, I experienced bliss. This year, I was so very aggravated! And honey too! Not that we were sitting there, being grouchy at each other, but I was not feeling too happy. At one point the organizer said that if you are feeling agitated, that's your emotions coming up to the surface and releasing. That made us both feel a little better. The title for this day of meditation was "renew to be new". Perhaps we were renewing :)

And as a welcome side effect I have gotten back to my own practice. I am now using those beautiful mala beads I made and it's been very nice. I am very curious what's the next year going to bring. I hope we'll make it there.

Walk, walk, walk

2010-03-08T15:15:00.003-05:00

I've been recently re-inspired to take better care of myself. Part of the better care is moving more, a lot more. And so today I'm wearing a pedometer, just to figure out where I'm starting from. You know that 10,000 steps a day goal that we should all be aiming for? Turns out I'm really far off from it.

I knew I don't move as much as I should, and in winter particularly. I don't go for walks, so it's mostly running around the house, teaching yoga, and practicing my belly dance. And while it seems nice when you list it like this, believe me, it's not much actual activity going on.

I put the pedometer pretty much as soon as I got up. By around 10 o'clock, I still had under a thousand steps. I was slightly horrified and decided to go for a walk around the building. That gave me extra 500 steps. I should go do another lap of that shortly. Feeling that lack of movement rather acutely, I decided that I will definitely get out at lunch and run few errands. I went to the mall and bought another pair of pants for the little monkey, and also a picture frame for honey and .... wedding invitations (more on that later). My grand total after all that was at about 3,000 steps. I see lots more walking in my future, for sure!

We did take advantage of the nice weather yesterday and went for a walk on the beach. That's few miles going up and down Nahant beach. That was the longest I have walked in a while and I could feel it in my legs. It was nice. Hopefully with spring coming we'll be able to get out more.

Vanity and what not

2010-03-03T13:49:00.002-05:00

I think I'm being punished for vanity. Well, maybe not vanity, but something. Remember I wrote about signing up for a wellness program at work? And the only reason I signed up was so I would get a $25 gift card and a chance to win free health insurance for a year? Perhaps those weren't good reasons.

Today was the day to participate in the wellness program. Before that I had to fill out a questionnaire online and today was a health screening. For some reason I thought they'll just do the glucose test by poking the finger, but no, they actually took 3 vials of blood from my arm. They also measured height and weight. Of course, both of those done in my boots. So, I grew another two inches to 5'7" :)

Anyway, once the guy took the blood, and put the band-aid thingy on it, I was free to go. I got a little bottle of juice, orange, and granola bar. And, my $25 gift card! I made my way to my desk, sat down, and looked at my arm. To back up a little, I am wearing a white sweater today. So, I look at my arm and there is a lovely blood stain at the elbow about an inch in diameter. I pull up my sleeve, and the band-aid thingy is soaked in blood.

I went back to the guy to get the thingy changed. Believe it or not, it's about 5 minute walk! This building is huge. Then I washed off the blood from my sleeve. That was back at 8:30 in the morning. My sleeve is still wet and I don't have anything to change into. Normally, I would have gone home and changed, but I'm in a bit of trouble here, so I'm staying put.

Now I'm trying to figure out if $25 and a breakfast are enough to compensate for the aggravation. I just hope the sweater will be OK, I like it. The stain came off, but the sleeve is all stretched out.

Just to keep things fun

2010-02-25T17:05:00.003-05:00

Because you know, everything was getting dull lately... Add a heavy helping of sarcasm to that statement.

Anyway, my son fractured his finger! It happened last Saturday. We just came home from his drawing class and I was still in a hallway getting my boots off. He took off into the living room and then turned around and start sliding across the floor towards the bathroom. At first I thought he's just being goofy sliding all over the place. But he fell! And hurt his finger... When he finally showed it to me, it was sticking out at an odd angle. We managed to get it to look normal and did lots of touch and move tests to see if it's broken. It didn't seem like it.

Of course, after few hours, it got all swollen and less movable. So, I took him to the ER to get x-rays. Oh, yeah, at this point, he had a friend over for sleepover. We dragged the friend with us to the hospital, to keep us company. We were very lucky that we only spent an hour in the ER. They just did everything really quick and let us go. My son got a little splint to keep the finger protected.

We went to the specialist on Monday and they put more of a cast on his hand. It's not really a cast as it doesn't wrap all the way around and he can take it off. It covers three of his finger. He fractured a ring finger on his right hand. He's been complaining about going to school and writing ever since!

And they are out

2010-02-17T14:11:00.002-05:00

Well, two of them are. What am I talking about? My wisdom teeth, of course! I know that my health is of utmost concern to everyone :)

My whole thing, as I wrote before, is about needless medical interventions. So, when a new dentist told me to have my wisdom teeth removed just because that's what everyone does, I looked for a new dentist. And I like this guy. He left my teeth alone. At the last visit, however, he said that the top pair needs to go. While they don't bother me, they started to impact the gum between them and the adjacent teeth. OK, I can see it and I can do it if necessary. I had them removed last Thursday.

I chickened out and went under for the removal. My dad wasn't happy about my choice, but the dentist is just stressful for me. Going under was very easy and I don't have any contraindications for it. Though, of course, not a choice someone should take lightly. After they woke me up, I don't remember much. There is a period of a couple of hours where my memory is very spotty. I ended up sleeping after my honey brought me home. After all the sleeping, I promptly started to Reiki my cheeks for the rest of the day. I was anticipating pain. The pain, however, didn't come. Yes, my gums felt irritated, but nothing that would warrant an Advil. I'm not even talking about pain medication they gave me. I ended up sleeping most of the day on Friday too. I don't know if that was a reaction to something or not, but I'm glad I stayed home.

All in all, it was very uneventful. Not being in pain was a very nice bonus and being able to eat normally come Saturday was great too. I still have my bottom wisdom teeth. The dentist said they can stay in for a while, and they'll just keep checking on them.

Snow!

2010-02-10T10:12:00.003-05:00

Today I'm eagerly anticipating a snow storm. I know it's coming... well, the weatherman says so... It's 10 in the morning though and it's still not snowing yet! I got two phone calls from our new fancy school system yesterday. One was to say they are monitoring news and no school closings yet. And then another one later on saying that there will be an early dismissal. And that's what I'm waiting for, if not the snow. School will be dismissed around lunchtime and I promised the little monkey that I'll pick him up from school. I'm guessing that will be a good time to stay home as the snow storm should be in full swing in the afternoon.

At this point, I'm planning on making lunch when we get home and then starting on dinner. Baking chicken tonight. We haven't had chicken in a while so this will be a nice change, I missed it. We get our chickens at the farm and they are free-range, organic kind. They are not however from the farm we go to. I like those the best, but they don't have those all the time.

Other than that, it's going to be a mish-mash for the next few days. I am going to have some of my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday morning. I'll be staying home on Thursday and Friday, hopefully not in too much pain. And then Monday is a day off. I feel like I'm going to be on a little vacation, minus the change of scenery, plus the pain. But I'm still looking forward to it. Frankly, I'm hoping that by giving myself Reiki I won't be in too much pain. I'll keep you posted :)

Mala beads

2010-02-09T14:59:00.003-05:00

Once in a while I get to do things for fun. Sometimes it's a some kind of project. I have lots of them around the house. Crafty little projects that I start, but not necessarily finish. This weekend witnessed a rare occasion of me actually finishing a project! And in just 2 days to boot!

I have been wanting mala beads for a while. But anytime I see them in a store, something just wouldn't feel exactly right and I wouldn't buy them. My sweetie got me mala beads for my birthday. They are a gorgeous amber and I love them! I wear them sometimes, mostly for decoration and not meditation. They are not, however, a full 108 bead mala. I've been wanting that one.

The other day I was poking around online, and decided to look up beads so I can buy them and make my own mala! I found some agate beads that were very reasonably priced and bought them in a lovely natural green color. Over the weekend I bought a satin embroidery thread and made my mala! I decided to tie knots between each bead as I like how that looks and I think that would be easier to count. That was the longest part of the process, tying those little knots. It also came out pretty long! I can wrap it twice around my neck without strangling myself :) Anyway, here it is. And with 108 beads total!

My new mala beads

Essex Aggie

2010-02-05T09:58:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we had another family outing, though very different from going skating. Instead, we went to Essex Agricultural and Technical High School for a tour and my son's interview. It's all a bit of a long story. Here we go...

Sometime in the fall, I got a little postcard from Aggie telling me about their open house. I kind of looked at it, but then the open house was on a day we couldn't go, so I set it aside. Given my son's struggles at school though, I decided to look at their website and see what it's all about. I loved it! Of course, me loving it has nothing to do with what my son would want to do and I have a hard time visualizing him actually doing something physical. Regardless, I told him more about the school. Particular selling point was that they have a day off/day on academics schedule. So, not very excitedly he said that we can apply to the school. And so we did. Application involved attaching his grades from last year and for the first quarter of this year. Frankly, I thought they'll just throw it out. I'm guessing they can't do that :)

Few weeks ago I got a phone call from the school asking us to come in for the tour and for my son to do an interview. Interview is a major decision point whether he will get in or not. I was reminding him of that and he was kind of waving me off in that, 'yeah, whatever...' manner. And then, we went on the tour. We were lucky to get the tour first and interview later. This way he got to look at the school to figure out if he wants to go there or not. He loved the school. We walked the grounds and looked at the various barns and animals. We peeked into an environmental studies class. We saw their heavy equipment. The girls that were walking our group around did a good job talking about what you will do in school. My son absolutely loved it! He said he so wants to go there now and sounds like he means it.

During his interview, we were given another tour, this time of the academic areas. I was pleasantly surprised of the small class sizes - under 20 kids. And those 20 get a teacher and an assistant. And they also have a lot of after school clubs for other interests. They don't have art or music as part of a curriculum, but they have them in the after school clubs. They have late buses that accommodate the kids that stay after. We all really liked the school. I am hoping he did enough at the interview to get in, but I also hope he won't give up and will re-apply for a year after if he doesn't get in now.

The school reminded me of a school I went to back in Minsk. It had the same kind of sense of community. And I was surprised to see that in all the classes we saw, kids looked like they wanted to be there. They were paying attention and seemed engaged. I wish more schools were like that. I know it's much more expensive than regular public schools. Oh, I know! If only we spent less money on military, we might actually be able to afford this type of environment in all the schools.

Skating

2010-02-03T16:44:00.003-05:00

The stars have finally aligned just so, and we were able to go ice skating! I have been wanting to go for years, but my little monkey didn't want to go. And I wasn't brave enough to go all by myself. And then my son ended up going with a friend sometime in December and loved it! I have been looking at my calendar since then for when we will be able to go.

We finally made it on Saturday! The rink is just about 15 minutes away from us, so it's really close too. The guys got hockey skates and they gave me figure skating ones. I am not sure if that's the default by gender, but the figure skating ones are the ones I'm used to. Though it's been 20 years or so since the last time I had skates on.

Needless to say, I started off by holding on to the sides of the rink. That was followed by a realization that my legs are really not used to this. Of course, one side was better than the other. I managed to not have to hold on to anything after a bit though! I was pretty happy about it. My son was just flying around, more or less. He told me he doesn't know how to stop! So, he was flying into the rink's sides to stop :) And the honey, for whom it was the first time ever ice skating, did awesome! He didn't fall (neither did I) and was able to let go of the sides and go more towards the middle as well.

When I was growing up, we used to get so excited about the snow because then it meant we could skate to school! Then during the lunch break we would put on the skates again and go skating some more. I don't think it would be a possibility here, with the blades on the skates and general sense of panic about sharp objects. Oh, yeah, and a lack of meaningful lunch break. I was never a very good skater. I could stay up, skate, turn, and I think I used to be able to stop at will :)

It was a great day and I think we will be going again. My legs were hurting though until Monday. They stopped after I taught the yoga class Monday night. My ankles still hurt however where the skates were hitting them. I don't know if I had them too tight or what. I thought they were supposed to be a bit higher. Still, looking forward to next time and hanging out as a family together.

Prison

2010-01-25T09:40:00.003-05:00

I think I figured out why my job bothers me so much. Sure, it's boring. Sure, I feel like my brain is shrinking while I'm here. Sure, it's very impersonal and not rewarding. But... this is nothing new. Definitely not the first boring job I've had where I felt under-utilized. Actually, only my very first high-tech job was fun. It was a nice group of people, work was more or less interesting, and I had an awesome boss with whom I could chat. On the other hand, I might be over-romanticizing it at this point, since that was a while ago.

Anyway, why is this place bothering me so much? It's not the place! It's the sense that I'm in prison and I locked myself in it. If you think about it, what's wrong with a prison? You are fed, you have a roof over your head, you get to go outside and maybe do some work too. I'm not talking about high-security prisons, but just the ones with minimal security. I'm sure you develop friendships and have someone to hang out with. Why is this bad? Probably because you can't leave when you want to.

Relating this to work... I can't leave! I'm stuck in it! I had an interesting conversation with my mother yesterday. I had a long weekend of yoga teacher training and I was just exhausted. My mom was asking me if I'm actually planning to teach classes. Of course I am, I am already teaching. She then pointed out that I'm way too busy and when will I be able to teach too. And then the conversation went on to, 'you can't quit your job, you'll never make as much money, and what about health insurance?' Aaahhh! I know all that! If I didn't, I would have quit already! This job is like a blessing and a curse. Yes, I'm pretty sure I won't make as much money doing alternative healing and yoga. But, do I really need that much money? It's like some cursed number that I can't get away from. Hence, the feeling that I'm in prison. I have all these good things happening for me financially, but because I can't just walk away, I can no longer appreciate them.

It definitely has been a long weekend. The problem is, I can't see the end right now. I am moving along, schlepping down my path, hoping for things to get better. I know I should trust that things will get better, but this just goes so much against my doing nature. Ah, well, I can give myself permission to be depressed for a day, right?

Growing or shrinking

2010-01-06T09:48:00.004-05:00

I think I'm growing... Or maybe my clothes are shrinking. Either way, it's pretty annoying.

Thankfully, if I'm growing, I'm only growing vertically and not horizontally :) It seems like majority of my tops are becoming annoyingly short and are hitting me just below the waist when I want them to be mid-hip. And I think that's how they started when I bought them, at mid-hip! Given that I'm 31, I find it unlikely that I'm growing. Then, shrinking clothes... Would not they shrink in all directions though and not just vertically? Maybe that's what happens when you wear things for long time.

In any case, I find myself lacking things I want to wear. I have things to wear, I just don't want to wear them. It seems like it's time to purge my closet some more. Then I'm afraid I'll be left with really nothing to wear, beside sweatshirts :) Those don't seem to shrink. And that would lead to shopping. Not my favorite activity, and clothes shopping is least favorite. I have a hard time finding something that I like, that fits well, is of good quality, reasonably priced, and all of that in one item.

I am getting to the point though when I am ready to start cleaning out the closet. A lot of my sweaters will have to go. Surely, if I had more free time, I could knit myself one that would be perfect :) I am pretty sure that I will be OK with less clothes, but I definitely have a bit of unease to let them go.

Monkey business

2010-01-05T08:35:00.004-05:00

It's interesting who ends up reading my posts and emails and so on. It's kind of like people that you expect to read are not reading, and the ones you don't think about actually read. This goes not only for the blog but for my newsletter for my business. I can't tell who reads the blog, just how many people, but I can tell who reads my newsletter. And there are definitely some surprises there.

When I first sent out the newsletter, back in October, I didn't really have anyone who signed up. So, I did one of those bad things where I just subscribed everyone for whom I had an email address. I did apologize for it right at the beginning of an email and pointed out that they can unsubscribe. And I did have few people quit, right off the bat. Even in that round, there were some surprises. Now that I have sent out several newsletters (once a month, plus a couple of promotions in December), I had few more people unsubscribe, and I also have some people who subscribed. Those are exciting!

Anyway, the program I am using let's me see who opened the newsletter and it also rates people according to how active they are. Last week or so I manually deleted some people off the list that still haven't opened a newsletter. I figured if they haven't already, they are probably not going to start. And, this improves my 'open' percentage :) I actually highly recommend the site I'm using for newsletters, MailChimp. I got few comments on how professional the newsletters look and they are extremely easy to put together. And, it's free up to 500 subscribers!

And, if you stayed with me for this long, here is a link to the newsletter. And you can always subscribe to it right here, on the right hand side. It's probably only of interest to you if you are local to the area, but I do include articles and tips in addition to schedule of classes.

Arts and Crafts

2010-01-04T08:32:00.004-05:00

You know how sometimes you have a very pretty calendar and it's a bummer to throw out at the end of the year? Well, I have three calendars that I had to throw out this year. I bought all of them in the natural foods section of our grocery store last year and they were printed on 100% recycled paper. I got three thinking that one will be for work, one for home, and one for my honey's place. Then honey moved in and we ended up having two calendars within maybe 5 feet of each other.

Each calendar was with some uplifting, spiritual messages and as I was looking at them now, I was really bumming about throwing them out. Every year I think, maybe I can do something with those pictures... And, every year I end up throwing those out because, well, what am I going to do with them?

Not this year! This year, I decided to decorate my office at work with the pictures. I just tore the pictures out, cut out the rough edge, and taped them to the wall. The walls are metal, so there won't be any damage from the tape. I am curious if I get any reaction from people. Well, those 2-3 people that stop by to say 'hello' once in a while. Anyway, I like it! It's much better to look at then blank wall.

And here is a picture of a final results, thanks to the more or less decent camera in my phone.

My office with the new 'wallpaper' ;-)

Bank gift

2009-12-30T10:53:00.003-05:00

I got a little (huge) unexpected gift for the New Year's. Let me explain. I bought my condo almost 6 years ago. However, 5 years ago I refinanced it. There is a long story involving flood insurance in that. Curious? Ask me!

Anyway, five years ago I refinanced to a 5/1 mortgage. My 5 year locked rate was 4.75%. With all the turmoil in the housing market and people defaulting on their mortgages once their locked rate adjusted, I was understandably apprehensive. To the point that in the beginning of 2009 I decided to be proactive and find out if I should refinance. However, the rates I was looking at were higher than 4.75%, I would have to pay closing costs, my mortgage is underwater, all kind of good stuff... I then called my bank and asked them what my rate would be once it adjusts. The guy ran some calculations, and said that he must be doing it wrong because my rate comes out to about 3%.

I decided to wait and just see what happens. And, yesterday I got a letter from my bank with the rate adjustment and recalculated payment amount. My new rate... drum roll please... 3.125%!!! Needless to say, I'm pretty excited. Yes, this is only for one year, and then they'll recalculate again. But, if I remember correctly, the bank is limited by raising (or lowering) the rate by no more than 2%. Which is still pretty good. And, I don't see the index they use going up anytime soon, or at least not drastically coming up.

This is my wonderful little gift for New Year's from the bank :) The only question now is should I try to pay as much of the mortgage as I can, or just pay the new amount? Suggestions?

Back to work

2009-12-28T13:07:00.003-05:00

Well, I am back at work for now, but with my mind set on various other things. I had a beautifully relaxing weekend, it was awesome. We went to my parents on Saturday for a big dinner and had lots of yummy foods. It was very nice. The kids seemed to have liked their presents too. My son read all the gifts in his little coupon book. As I expected, he liked some and some got a raised eyebrow from him.

And my honey got me a Flip video camera! Which is very exciting! I am not normally good with taking pictures or recording anything, but this is just so easy to use, I might start recording things. Mainly he got it so we can record my belly dance performances and share those online easily. But I'm sure we'll find other uses for it. My son now wants to put his sketches on YouTube, so he can use it. He got a lot of drawing supplies, so he's happy. He got a couple of new sketch books, and lots of markers.

Other than going to parents on Saturday and then to the farm on Sunday, we have been staying home and watching 'The Office' on Netflix. I haven't seen the show before and I love it. It's funny. Honey now tries to draw parallels from 'The Office' to my work place to cheer me up. It works somewhat.

I am now looking forward to having some time off for New Year's. It will be fun, though we'll probably run out of 'The Office' episodes. Oh well...

Student Showcase

2009-12-25T13:47:00.002-05:00

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and the time off. I know I am :)

Earlier in December we had a belly dance student showcase where I got to dance as well. It was a crazy weekend of going to New York, and then on Sunday going to class, performing, and going to a party. It was a great weekend though.

Anyway, I have a video of me performing. Honey also taped me, but since we got there late, he ended up taping me from a side, and not front view. Plus, there is still a question of how to transfer the recording from dad's camera to a PC.

I hope you like the video! I had to keep readjusting the sword... I'm just glad it didn't fall :)

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-24T11:19:00.004-05:00

The holiday spirit is in the air, I can feel it :) Maybe not that much as work, as it seems as gloomy as ever, but otherwise...

I still have some gift shopping to do. I did most of the shopping already, but there are still few things I need to pick up. Basically, I have a gift for my son, my honey, my mom, my sister, and my dad. I still need gifts for my nephews, niece, and remainder of dad's gift. I have ideas for all of those, now I just need to get to the stores to get them.

I'm trying to give some homemade things this year or at least close to it. My sister requested a scarf at the last moment, so I bought a pretty one from Etsy, since there just was no way I would be able to make one that fast. My son is also getting a homemade gift from me, more on that later.

That actually sums up the homemade gifts... Pretty sad, I think. I also completely forgot about the herbal olive oil I started back in September. If I find pretty inexpensive bottles to put it in, then I will add it to the gifts.

Now, onto my son's gift... This is something I wanted to make last year, or maybe for his birthday, I can't even remember. It's a coupon book! How exciting does that sound?! :) Fine, maybe just to me. I hope he doesn't throw it at me after opening. Well, I know he won't, but I hope he likes it. I figured he's getting enough gifts just the way it is. I might as well get him something original. So, just today, I finished putting together a coupon book with coupons for various things. Some of them I know he'll love... like a CD on iTunes, new drawing supplies, trip to the movies, junk food dinner... And some of them I don't think he'll necessarily like, but I hope they'll be a nice conversation starter, such as a trip to museum of his choice or a donation to charity of his choice. Well, I'll let you all know how it goes.

All in all, I think this year we are doing very well with spending modestly on the holidays. We never spent too much on winter holidays, we spend more on birthday gifts, but still. I think this year I'm on strike. I'm tired of having to spend a certain amount per person. I am still using an amount as a guideline, but it went from $50 to $30. After all, we all already have everything we need. My biggest expense right now is buying things for my healing studio, and I would love to get a gift for the space. But... that's just not happening, and I don't really need anything else. And I'm pretty sure it's the same with the rest of my family. So, all the gifts are just niceties and not necessities. And I feel like I'm being pushed into buying them and then receiving gifts that I don't really want or need. OK, I'm done rambling.

Happy Holidays and thanks for reading!

Countdowns

2009-12-23T10:42:00.003-05:00

It's funny what stays with you from your childhood. Sometimes it's just the most bizarre things. Anyway, when I was growing up, I remember my older sister marking important things on the calendar. She would mark the actual date, and then proceed to number days leading to that day. So, every time you look at the calendar, you would know how many days are left to that important date.

Wanting to be just like my big sis, I picked up this practice as well. I would scribble in my own calendar a countdown to some event. I can't even remember what I was counting to, I think the end of school :)

Recently, I returned to that habit again. Of course, now with technology, I am not writing things in a paper planner. Even though I have one, I love them, love physically writing... I do however have a Google countdown gadget on my desktop. My most recent countdown was to the New York trip to see Bhagavan Das. Now that it's behind us, I am counting down to a trip to Kripalu. And that's going to be in 15 days!!! Doing a happy dance right now. I have not been there for 2 years, and I'm a little apprehensive about things changing there. I am hoping that the spirit is still the same though and that it will be nice to go there for a weekend.

After this countdown is over, I will be counting down to a vacation that's hopefully coming up. I wonder if it's just a way to be destructed for a bit with a pleasant plan for the future.

Oops

2009-12-18T20:04:00.002-05:00

Well, I didn't quiet make it to my yoga class tonight. After sitting in traffic for 2 hours and only making it about half-way there, I decided to turn around. I got on the road at 5, class started at 6, and here I was at 7, moving inch by inch. Of course, I decided to turn around at the most unfortunate time... It took me another hour to get home but here I finally am!

I am sleepy and tired, and craving something sweet. Good thing we have some organic raspberry licorish. That thing is good! Though I'm the only one who eats it :)

Tomorrow is going to be a whole new day and I am hoping with a lot less traffic. Friday nights are usually the worst for me to try to get to my class, but it's never been that bad! There were no accidents that I could see, so I don't know if it's just because of the holidays or what. Good thing that I took an extra class earlier in the fall, so I don't think I'll need to make up this missed class.

OK, I'm off to working on my new custom knitting order (extra cute alpaca vest for a little boy) and napping at the same time.

New York

2009-12-16T11:03:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderful long weekend, specially if you don't count my honey being in pain. More on that at a later date. I took Friday off and we went to New York! Neither one of us felt like driving and dealing with that, so we took a bus instead. We went on a Bolt bus that was very reasonably priced. It was also clean, comfy, and quiet. I thought it was very good. I got to nap a little bit and snack a whole bunch.

Why did we go to New York, you ask? We went to a kirtan with Bhagavan Das. I was looking around on his website, thinking that it's too bad he doesn't come to our area. And then honey said that why don't we just go to New York? And so we did.

Kirtan was amazing. I have been to one with him at Kripalu and really liked it. I have to say that this one didn't disappoint. Bhagavan Das is my favorite though I haven't heard too many, just few. The energy in the room was palpable and I got to sing my little heart out :) And, he also went an hour over the scheduled time, which was nice. We ended up doing 3 hours instead of 2. I'm not complaining.

The one thing I can complain about is the yoga studio that hosted the kirtan. It's Dharma Mittra's studio. I know he's a big name in yoga community, huge... But it was still a bit creepy to see his images plastered all over the walls and on the altar. And, the staff was kind of dismissive. We got there a bit earlier and waited around. After attempting to check in with a more or less friendly guy, he told me I need to talk to a guy behind a desk. Something about me registering for two people. Mind me, they didn't have a problem charging me for two people. So, I talk to the guy at the desk who tells me that even though my registration and payment went through for both people, I had to email them to tell them that it's for two people. My question was just that how am I supposed to know that? The guy blamed it on the system and started getting increasingly irritated. Once again, how am I supposed to know how your system works or doesn't?

Anyway, once the kirtan started, or maybe just as soon as Bhagavan Das arrived, I was able to put the whole check-in process behind me. And then just close my eyes and chant. It was very peaceful and we had a great evening.

We also got to stay with my honey's friends for the night and come back home on Saturday. I had a busy day on Sunday with a class, a performance, and then a party. We saw a big car accident on the way back. It was 4 cars and one of them was on fire! Our bus was stopped right in front of the accident and we got to watch the firefighters come and put the flames out. It was creepy and I hope everyone involved is OK.

Speaking of overconsumption

2009-12-10T10:33:00.003-05:00

What? We weren't? Well, maybe just me then. I remember speaking of it somewhere. I now have a new cell phone. I have an excuse for that, I promise!

My cell phone carrier is AT&T. They have been for ages, back when it was Cingular. I have a family plan and with all the cell phone upgrades I'm locked in with them forever and ever. Every two years you can upgrade your cell phone to a new one for free or pretty cheap. Well, depending on what phone you are getting. My cell phone became eligible for an upgrade about a year ago. However, I decided that my phone still works, I only use it to make phone calls, so I don't care about other stuff, and so I don't want to upgrade it. I was still tempted to upgrade it, once in a while though. I would go on AT&T website, look at the phones, see which ones are free... But, in truth, they are not free. Each phone is just more resources dug up and used for vanity. And that pretty much stopped me from getting an upgrade.

Well, that's where my parents come in. One of the family lines I have is for them. They have one cell phone for both of them, for the 'just in case' things. It seems that they manage to do something to their phone once in a while. One time my dad went swimming in the ocean with the cell phone. It didn't survive. That was few years ago. Well, now their latest flip phone just broke apart. The two parts broke free from each other, beyond repair. And so, they needed a new phone.

Given that my line was the only one eligible for an upgrade, I decided to get a new phone for me and give my old phone to my parents. And the one I got was actually a refurbished phone, so not that new. I'm hoping that was the least damage given the situation. I still have to recycle parents' broken phone. I think I now have a small collection of their old phones :)

Pause

2009-12-09T09:06:00.002-05:00

It's funny how sometimes things come together. One of my yoga students dropped out of the class because of busyness this time a year. And I remember reading that email and thinking, well, when you are too busy, that's when you need to take a little break. When you are busily running from one thing to the next, that's when it's important to pause once in a while. Otherwise you end up feeling overwhelmed and under constant stress of rushing and not having enough time to do everything.

And then yesterday I got an email from Yoga Journal's mailing list that said the same thing. You need some kind of meditative practice when you are extra busy the most. Think about it. If you are not that busy, you probably have plenty of pauses in your day and feel a nice even flow to your life. Doing meditation then is a nice icing on the cake, but you have plenty of contemplative moments anyway. However, when you are busy-busy, what happens then? You are running around with no pauses. You don't have a time to catch your breath. And that's when you need those pauses the most. Just so you can get in touch with yourself for a moment and stop feeling overwhelmed.

Of course, that's easier said than done, but it's still possible. Anytime you do something mindfully, you are taking that pause. I am trying to make sure that I pause during the day for few times. It becomes easier with time, easier to remember. Maybe I can just close my eyes and take a deep breath, but I'm all the better for it.

Back again

2009-12-07T15:41:00.003-05:00

I feel like I'm falling off the face of the Earth and then re-appearing again. My posting certainly hasn't been regular by any accounts. Of course, I have lots of excuses :) Not sure where to even start with those!

I guess the first one was that my dad was in a hospital. I was excitedly waiting for the Thanksgiving break when I would get to do absolutely nothing, and that's when my dad ended up in a hospital. This doesn't sound very caring of me, huh? Well, keep in mind that it all ended well and I was able to be there for my parents. Surprise of surprises, I think this was the first time that I didn't snap at them in a high-stress situation. Perhaps all that mindfulness I'm teaching others is actually working.

Anyway, turns out that my dad has stones in his gall bladder. He will need a surgery to remove the gall bladder sometime soon. The reason that he went to the hospital is that one of the stones got stuck and so he was in a lot of pain. The interesting observation for me was that I did Reiki on my dad when he was in the emergency room and then the doctor said that the stone must have passed on its own sometime during that evening. Interesting coincidence, I think.

Not having a break during my Thanksgiving break, I think I learned three things. First of all, just because you plan, doesn't mean things will happen that way. Plan, but don't get attached to the plan. Second, give myself a little break every day instead of planning a big break at some point in the future. That goes along those lines about eggs in a basket. And thirdly, I need to have more free time and something's gotta give.

Messy, messy

2009-11-20T15:54:00.003-05:00

When I was growing up, I always thought that our apartment could be just a little neater. Not that I felt like putting some effort into it beyond the weekly cleaning mandated by my parents. Oh no. In my teenage self-righteousness, I just observed my parents cleaning efforts and compared our apartment to the apartments of my friends. My best friend, in particular, always had an absolutely spotless place. It was amazing and mind-boggling to me. Never a dish in a sink or extra clutter. If there was a newspaper on the living room table, she would apologize for the mess. And both of her parents worked full time too.

Now that I have been living on my own for so long, I have often struggled with clutter. Stopping by my parents place today to take care of the plants (they are on vacation), this struggle really hit home. As I walked into their apartment, I was struck by how neat it looked! Not neat for when I was a teenager, but super neat as I am now. I just thought it ironic and a nice smack in a head by the Universe.

While I would get back on and fall off again from that clutter-free wagon, I have really fallen off this time. We still haven't really unpacked all of my boyfriend's things after he moved in 9 (!!!) months ago. Sure, most of it is unpacked and is in various piles around the condo or falling out of the closets once you open them. And as much as we can blame those on lack of space to put them away, truly we just don't want to deal with it. I don't have time is my usual excuse. Dusting once in a while is the extent of my cleaning these days while my sweetie picks up things after himself, my son, and me. Bless him for that.

I am not really sure what the plan for action is. The first step is to recognize you have a problem, and yes, I have a problem. I visualize myself living in a neat and comforting space, yet do nothing to make it happen. I decided to pick up a book at the library, "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized" by Marilyn Paul. It was listed as a guide on the website of a professional organizer, Erin Wells. And, I'm looking forward to hosting her at my space in Beverly for "The Sacred Work of Releasing, Cleansing, and Healing" workshop on January 15th. Let me know if you are interested in going, I'll give you more details. I'm hoping by January 15th I'll be able to see some changes in our condo and then continue with some new strategies from her.

Yoga Adventures

2009-11-19T10:54:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally managed to get my son to my yoga class. Yesterday night was his first class and he brought a friend, also 13 and his friend's mom also came. And then there was my sweetie and my friend. First of all, my son was loudly complaining about going. Then he was finding some ridiculous things to argue about. I don't know if he was nervous or what was going on.

When we got there, he asked to stop at the little store that is on the first floor. I gave him few bucks and the rest of us went up to the yoga studio while the boys went shopping. And so they burst into the room with junk food and sodas in each hand... Horrified is a strong word, but my reaction was getting there. All I could think about was, "Oh, please, I hope no one else comes tonight!". I drew the line when my son pulled out a fork and a jar of olives and decided to eat them right then and there.

And then it was time to start the class. Normally, we start with a bit of centering, grounding, and breath-work. Looking at the boys, they didn't seem like they were going to sit still for that. So, after a very brief grounding, we went onto the movement with your breath with few Kundalini exercises thrown in. Of course, all that intense breathing made the boys giggle. And off we went to learning postures and doing warm-ups and basically just moving. We worked on the Down Dog a bit and then on plank, and then putting things together. As the class progressed, there was less giggling and more of actual doing of the poses. And everyone just loved Savasana at the end.

Several times during the class I was thinking about why am I doing this to myself. This was my idea, I did it. I was concerned that my friend is not being challenged enough as he is way beyond beginner. I was concerned that my sweetie can't tune out all the giggling and is slowly steaming. I was concerned that I'm giving the boys a horrible introduction to yoga and they'll hate it and never go back. I had so many concerns! And yet on a ride back home, my son told me how he really enjoyed Savasana at the end and how he felt melting away. And he also told me how challenging it was for him to do the poses and how his muscles were protesting. And how the fast paced breath-work was funny and he couldn't help giggling. And how now he knows what to expect for the next class. And it was all worth it.