Kripalu

For my 40th Birthday, Jerry and I treated me to 48 hours of Kripalu bliss. I arrived at 3:30 on Sunday, the 22nd April, checked in, dropped my stuff in my room, a small dorm with 3 other women, and then waltzed off to have an ayruvedic massage. Wowza - it brought out a TON of stuff for me, and really cleared up a bunch of ongoing minor things - an infection in my gums, a bit of lower back ache, that kind of stuff. It was truly wonderful. It ended with a full body clay mask, which absorbed most of the toxic stuff she worked out of me. That night I did an intentional collage, with my body and my book as the centerpieces. VERY powerful.

Monday I had Aaaaaaall day there! It was so great to know I had hours and hours of ME time! I haven't felt that free and unfettered in years and years. I realized my last 'real' vacation was when I went to Hawai'i with Nick...SEVENTEEN years ago! Holy cow. I did some great walks, had wonderful food, and did a core transformational session, which again, was very emotionally powerful. A lot of emtional issues bubbled to the surface, and were treated with respect and nurtured. I felt quite drained after that, and glad of a nourishing and delicious supper afterward. That night I was part of a wonderful and invigorating drum circle. YAY for drumming!!!

I made a terrific friend there - Alyssa Kapelas. She admins a Kundalini Yoga studio on 39th between 4th and 5th! How amazing is THAT!? We collaged, drummed, and yoga'd together. We chatted, shared, and really enjoyed meeting and getting to know one another. I feel honored to have shared my time there with her! Hopefully we will see her again in NYC and also at the Gathering of the Vibes!

Tuesday was day of departure for me. Sigh. HARD to leave that place, I tell ya! I woke to a sauna and whirlpool, which was such a great way to start the day! I walked the labrinth, hiked a little, and ended my time at Kripalu with a relaxing hot stone massage. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Here are some photos from my walks and of Alyssa at the labrinth.






I got some great writing done, work on chapter 2 that has been 'stuck' for quite a while, and did a vigorous pole hike that left me quite breathless, but happy. Overall, I am so grateful to Jerry for being on call for that 48 hours, and feel very blessed to have had this incredible experience.

Birthday!

Me on my 40th Birthday

I had a really wonderful 40th birthday! 10 yrs ago JAC and I were eating in the Dop n Dut hotel with Geoffy and D'Arcy...getting quite liquored and having a BLAST! Ahhhh - the memories... this year? JAC was still recovering from an awful chest cold, but we made dinner together, and I had a really nice day. Ori took a longer than normal nap, Beca was sweet all day, left me messages around the house and was just such a doll! We found a choc. chip cookie cake, and got fancy candles, and with a nice dinner, it was a worthy celebration!

Eating Cake!






Ori sang me Happy Birthday -about 400 times! Jerry and Ori made it to the Mac Store and found me some fun gadgets for my iPod, which came in very handy for the BILLY JOEL concert Beca and I went to last night! WOW!!! WOW WOW WOW!!! We had SUCH fun together, munching pretzels and dancing. It was a wonderful very full crowd, with such nice people, everyone was super friendly and we had such a great time! I got most of it on my iPod, too bad no audio links here (that I know how to do lol!). I've been listening to it over and over haha! I really had a great time. I got calls from a lot of people, Tasha and Loreena, Diane, David, and Dad, and emails from Wendy and Norbert and others, too. THANKS everyone!!! Thanks, for making me feel so special and loved. :D :D :D

Here's a cute vid of Ori. :D

Now for more news! A few weeks ago, Beca and I put together a little story - she wrote and illustrated it, I typed it and scanned in the pictures. We sent it off to the Reading Rainbow young writer's and illustrator's contest, which is in two parts: national level and local level. I'm not actually sure how it works, I'll have to look into it more closely, but Beca received the news today that she won 3rd prize for her story at the local level! 191 children in 3rd grade were competing for 4 prizes, we are very proud of her to have completed the story and drawn all the pictures! I wonder...can I get the story on here? Hmmm...I'll try!

Beca's story is here, but I don't know if people will be able to see it...I kinda think not. I'll have to find a better place to store it online.

Ok, so I've taken my 3rd aikido class, and I'm really digging it. I think I get more out of the class than just exercise! I walk outta there feeling like I CAN DO IT! Which is such a great uplifting feeling! Now I have to figure out how to feel this wonderful and get to bed before 2am!

Ori is going to start in training pants pretty soon, mostly because he makes such a fuss over getting his diapers changed, that maybe letting him actually get wet will make some impact on him. Mostly he wants to be naked AND not have to put pees or poop sin the potty. Hmmmm...kinda not working for everyone ELSE around here! Other than Zami who ALSO thinks that would be cool. Sigh. Anyway, I've got some Little Rain Dancers, ImseVimse and Bots on order, so hopefully he's a fish and takes to this like water! Now, time to sell diapers! Woop!

Visit to the Farm

Took the kids for a badly needed outing to Indian Ladder Farms on Monday April 9th - we were all on the verge of colds, or had colds, so I gotta say I felt BADLY about touching all the animals with sick germy hands, but we washed before AND after going into the shed, so hopefully none caught our toxic strain of common cold. The babies are so incredibly beautiful - serious baby lust over the baby LaMancha and baby Pygmie goats! Man, I want goats... Anyway, back in reality, we managed to have a great hour there, and then buzz home to full blown sickness. Poor JAC has been down with this awful cough for days and days. It really wracks his body. :( I am well enough today to brave driving to the other side of Albany to the BIG health food coop, and see if we can't get some better meds. HOPE for us!

Some gratuitous pics from the farm:



Ori enjoyed the chickens, said good bye to them for a loooong time.




Here's the adorable La Mancha baby goat. Awwwwww!





Beca enjoyed the goats too - they're very friendly.




Beca and Ori mug and smug and dripping lol!




One chick always has to be the boss of them all, eh!?

I'm knitting on the spiral ditty bag for beca now, using the awesome Filatura Di Crosa Tibet yarn Jackie bought me for my birthday! It's such a pleasure to knit with, a nice Z-yarn. :D Of course the fact that it's a beautuful eggplant purple doesn't hurt either! I'm almost finished with the body of the bag, and will start on the bottom next. It was harder than I'd thought because the pattern keeps changing, and I really had to stay on top of the movement of the stitches, or else the pattern doesn't look so swell. Not a knit and watch TV kind of pattern, oh well! I have some other projects in mind that may work better.

Easter 2007

Happy Easter ya'll! We have a cold, snowy Easter here, lots of hibernating! JAC and I both have awful colds, sore throats, snotty drippy noses, and coughs. Waiting for the kids to drop from it - of course they'll wait till next week when JAC is away lol! So they did an indoor hunt today and found lots of big eggs, and got overflowing baskets! Paint sets and a pretty dress, chocolate bunnies and slinky's. LOTS to keep them busy, for about 6 minutes.

Thinking back to Ori's first and 2nd Easters, it's wonderful how much more he's into everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - than he was then. Incredible how much these little people learn in their short time on earth! He 'found a egg mama!' lots of times, four to be exact. Pictures:



We did an indoor hunt this year - the weather was cold and windy outside, and we were all sick or getting sick with colds. Just made sense. Beca was a great sport - enjoyed the hunt and helped her brother open the eggs as he found them.



Mid-hunt goodie count!



Mid-hunt goodie tasting!



I FOUND AN EGG!!! I FOUND AN EGG!!! I FOUND AN EGG!!!



Rainbow stacker for Easter! Wow - this is one cool toy!



Beca in her Easter Dress, and the flowers my wonderful family found for me!


Renewal is an interesting theme for me, I seem to be willing to reinvent myself whenever I want to! I just will it and BOOM! My Earthly connection to the Universe slips slightly one way or another and there's the new ME! Right now, I've started Aikido, hoping to be able to follow through and LEARN it well. And my writing, and my knitting, these are all things that honestly have flourished in the past few years, some in less time than that! I seriously doubt I'll be running any tri-athlons any time, well, EVER, but getting some perspective on myself as I enter the 2nd half of my life is an eye-opener! Living for 40 years, loving it, really really loving it all, is just about the most wonderful gift I can ever give to myself. Now I look forward and into today, and I feel GREAT about who I am, and what I'm doing to be all that I am, all that I can be. So as I wait for spring to SPRING, it's a wonderful feeling to unfurl from myself and blossom into a new and even better me.

Yarn!!!

Saving a slot for the March and April Yarn swaps. This is so much FUN!!!

Ok, negating this - it's too far away from where I am now (JUNE!) and I'll just add this stuff in there. Thanks for thinking ahead, kiddo!

Free Therapy

We spent all day yesterday with the Sasloff's to celebrate Liana's birthday with them - what a great day! We didn't go anywhere exciting (other than a great hibachi dinner!), we didn't build or invent or perfect anything, but we sure did enjoy everything! Jackie and I spent a whole hour in the LYS, and I picked out some new rosewood circulars and 4 skeins of gorgeous yarn! Jackie gave me the yarn for my birthday, and I got the needles for myself. What a treat! I'm working Beca's new ditty bag on them now, and with the new purple yarn that is 20% alpaca 80% lambswool, it's AWESOME to knit! I have frogged this particular pattern so many times I can knit the start of it in my sleep now - so moving on is feeling great!

Today I got a super nice long call from T, too! What a bonanza on friendship reconnects! We yakked like we were drinking coffee with time to spare - a lot about her amazing recent triathalon and all the training she did to get through it no sweat. I've been really looking into the next phase of me, and am sure that what I really want for myself is to just let go of the impatience that seems to plague so much of my life. For me, working towards a goal is one way to do this, so I am setting myself some more concrete goals:

1. Finish all the odd chapters before end of school (June 15).
2. Draft out the even chapters before end of summer.
3. Finish 2 knitting projects for B to take to camp
4. Shorties for Ori.
5. Build some muscle mass in my stomach and quit overindulging in comfort food.
6. Get my teeth done (cavaties are not a great thing to live with, ugh!).
7. Make 2 food items for the play kitchen (cupcakes and pears, probably).

So those are my goals! If I can lose 20 or 30 lbs, that's good too! I'm not setting it as a goal because what I really WANT is to be FIT, not skinny.

In other parts of my world, I reconnected with Lauralee! She showed up at the HWFC, and though we hadn't seen each other in nearly 3 years (since my first year here) and she'd lived for most of that time on the West coast, we really fell right back into friendship! She has a little 1 yo named Emerson, who has the world's chubbiest cheeks! What a cutie! It's great to see her, and more of her will be awesome!

Carolyn is STILL pregnant! Ok, not impatient here, but the poor girl could use all the birthy vibes you may have to spare for her! Her in-laws arrived from England last Friday, so I think they'd like to actually MEET their new grandbaby before they have to leave again!

Although I missed the Mom's meeting where they made Mamergency boxes, I've put my own together! Here's what's in it (right now in a shoe box, but I will decorate it some day soon):

1. 3 dark chocolates
2. pictures, photo squares and some fun paper and scissors.
3. Some cards with ideas for exercises on them.
4. a brand new necklace of turquoise stone pendant on a simple setting with a hemp thread. NICE!
5. A hokey but not unuseful meditation books for new moms. Still reminds me of those long dark days, and in reminding, I feel blessed to have THIS life. :D

I think there are 1 or 2 other little things (stain pen, lipstick), but if you think of something that belongs there that I didn't mention, feel free to let me know! It's just a little space where - when things get to their inevitable boiling point - I have a bit of solace almost instantly, and it's not something that requires a lot of time. A little gift, a bite of chocolate (small squares, nothing huge), or some exercise are all ways I do feel better. Sometimes putting on a bit of makeup when I'm still in sweats makes me feel better. Go ahead, make one for yourself! For me, thinking of the things that do make me feel better was a bit of free therapy on it's own!