Tag: yoga

Not wasting my vacation

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, Holidays, local fun, movies, restaurants, shopping, tweens, yoga

I think that it’s very important to get out of your rut–I mean, routine–on your vacation week. This is especially challenging, of course, if you are taking (yet another) staycation. Having part of your time off fall during the holidays can make it a little easier to break out…as in the  “Hel-lo? What day is it?” situation in which I found myself just after Christmas. Still, the gym on Tuesday and Thursday, food shopping on Saturday line up could definitely stand some tweaking.

Sunday: Christmas. ‘Nuf said.

Monday: Clean up the house, rest up from the holiday, dinner at Olive Garden. Happily, I found the $4 off dinner coupon prior to paying and then remembered to use it.

Tuesday: Friends came over to make home-made, authentic egg rolls. Last time we made chicken and shrimp. This year, to change it up some (hey, it is vacation!) we made a third version: spicy pork, which ended up being a hit.

Wednesday: Pirates game (a present for the fam) after dinner at Binga’s Wingas (a present for Dad).

Thursday: Friends day. Lunch with former colleague for our rescheduled gift exchange, then scrapbooking for the first time in a year and a half, with more friends. The understanding kind that are not shocked that, despite your good intentions, you did not remember to organize your stuff and print out the Christmas pictures to use that day. Hey, it’s all about friends, right? UPDATE: This event did not actually happen and will be rescheduled. Instead, I went to Kohl’s and bought some cute things on clearance. Yay!

Friday: Shopping at the mall with my tween with her gift cards. Got an $89.50 fur-lined hoodie at Aeropostle for $10!!!  This was followed by eating w/reckless disregard for the future at the Buffet of Gorging and Obscene Excess at the mall. Then we saw We Bought a Zoo at the movies. May I just say: Go. See. It. It was excellent. We both loved it. Movie watching was accompanied by popcorn and Peanut M+Ms (aka “the devil”).

Saturday: New Year’s Eve. Chinese buffet at East and Just Dance 3 on the Wii to work (some of ) it off. Yoga first thing in the morning.

Sunday: New Year’s Day: Pajama day! Read stack of books and magazines that have been piling up. Went for a walk. More Wii. And…let the healthy eating begin!!!! Egg whites, soup, salad were on the menu. Really.

One of the best vacations ever. 🙂

Time is on my side

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, Midlife Crisis, yoga

I went to see my friend Stacey for a massage at Mainely You Massage a few days ago. I had picked the time so that I would not have to rush around to get there. I had the entire day off from work and had planned things to do (lunch and book-browsing with my friend Kristen, visiting another friend Teresa at her ice cream shop to try some new flavors that she created, dinner out with both of my children at the same time!) to which I was really looking forward and about which I was very excited. I arrived 15 minutes early for my appointment, after seeing my daughter of to school, my husband off to his job.

Stacey said, “How are you feeling this morning?” and I paused (completely uncharacteristic of me) and considered this question for a second before I responded. “Rushed!”  I was feeling like there wasn’t enough time. I felt pressured. “And there’s not one reason for my to be feeling this way!” I admitted. I pretty much always feel like I don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do, yet here I was, at the beginning of a day filled with exactly that, and I was still carrying this feeling around!

“That is a mantra that you created,” Stacey offered, inviting me to be focused on the thought, “I have plenty of time,” which is true, instead of  “I don’t have enough time,” which is (usually) not.

Wow.

As I went about my day, I started to really notice my thoughts, and was shocked at the number of times just that morning that I thought, “I don’t have enough time”!

Louise Hay, in many of her books, writes about the idea that, basically, “What you think is what you get.” I’ve believed this but for the first time I considered it in a different plane, almost, because even when I really did have all the time I wanted, it was right there in front of me, I didn’t see it.  Wasn’t appreciating it.

Has this ever happened to you?

Vacation week (continued, day 2)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, movies, tweens

Saturday (Day 2) was a full day.  Yoga in the morning at Windsong Yoga with my favorite yoga teacher Kristen. Then stopped in at Fetch’n Fun for their fundraiser for The Lucky Pup Rescue.

Chicken Parm made by the tweens

Then my daughter and I picked up her friend Madi for a tween day. Library first (the girls did a scavenger hunt and got a prize), then The Smurfs movie at the Wells Five Star Cinema. The movie was much less annoying than I thought it was going to be. I was even asked by my daughter to stop laughing so loudly, so there you go. The nice surprise of this movie was that I knew and liked some of the actors: Hank Azaria (where’s he been?) and Jayma Mays (Glee).

Next, we headed down to the Wells Harbor for the All Together Now concert. The bugs were out in full force so we left halfway through it (no reflection on the band; they were great!) and stopped at Big Daddy’s for ice cream, right on the way home. Good day. Got to do lots of stuff on my (vacation) wish list.  At the end of the day, I read an email from my cousin Kathy (who’s two weeks and two days older than I) asking me if I’d made a “Bucket List” for the second half.

Nope. Not yet.

(Just put that bucket list on my to-do list).

Then a quick stop at the grocery store to buy the missing ingredients for the Chicken Parmigiano recipe that the tweens wanted to make for dinner. Home to play some Wii Just Dance 2, then cooked dinner, which turned out to be wonderful (worth putting the oven on in the heat of the summer for).

Oh, and did I mention that I did two rounds of dishwasher filling and emptying and 5 loads of laundry as well? And my online class that I had hoped to do on the day it posted (Friday) is still not done. Here’s hoping for a Sunday completion.

Spaciousness (or: A Theory of Relativity)

by Karen, posted in book reviews, books, family, friends, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships, yoga

In the book What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, she talks about the idea of spacious days.

What a concept!!!!

Mostly, my days feel jam-packed to me, without a moment to spare for anything. That’s how I usually think about them, at least. My to-do list is longer than my arm. I suspect that other mothers feel this way as well, since today I heard my friend Donna (also a mother) say those exact words.

In yoga, spaciousness is sought in your body through postures, in your mind through meditation. I’ve been searching for spaciousness through yoga for 4 years now (I’ll let you know when I find it).

🙂

Four years seems like kind of a long time to me…but as a percentage of my age, it’s not that long really. Could it be that all I really need is an adjustment of perspective?

Back to yoga class: this week, our instructor Kristen happened to mention that there was a period of her life that she would gladly relive, which sparked a conversation among the women in the class on this topic. As some of them mentioned ages that they would be interested in repeating, I did a quick review: high school? No way! Early twenties? No thank you!  I soon realized that I couldn’t think of any time period of my life that I would want to live through again, but then I reframed the question: What was a happy memory?

When I asked myself this question, I got a very clear image in my mind. It was in the summer: August 1991. It was in the first apartment that I shared with my husband after we got married.  The sun was streaming in through the large windows in the dining room, shining on my infant son, born just a couple of weeks prior. I remember being in that room, gazing at the baby, standing in the sun, and realizing that I’d never been happier than I was at that moment. Twenty years later, I can still stand in that room in my mind’s eye, and still feel that happiness just as strongly as I did that day.

So, I guess time is relative, just ask Einstein. Or Liane Moriarty.

Or me.

🙂

The day I ate whatever I wanted: Part 2 B (the day of)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, Life in the cube, local fun, Midlife Crisis, restaurants, yoga
Chocolate Croissant from Standard Baking Co.

My friend Susan told me to have a: “Happy Birthday!!! Enjoy the whole day and do what YOU want!!”

My response: “Well, since I’m working it will be hard to DO whatever I want, but instead I’m going to EAT whatever I want!”

🙂

So here goes: Day 2B of “The day I ate whatever I wanted”…I’m starting to fear that this is a slippery slope…better reign it in after today. This is what I did on the actual day.

I decided not to go to the gym so that I could sleep an extra hour. Good decision. I decided not to do any laundry and not to stop to gas up the car. Those things could wait. My mantra for the day: “If it’s not ‘all about me’, I’m not doing it.”

Breakfast: Decided to wait until I got to Portland then sprinted over to the Standard Baking Company (no website, unbelievably) to get a chocolate croissant. Monument Square was packed with dressed up, suited up people at 8am; usually it’s a ghost town on the weekend at that hour. I heard there was some sort of a convention going on which almost made me late for work (reference: “sprinted” to the bakery!).

Note: Around noon I started rethinking the whole shorts thing;  may not have been the best idea…it barely made it out of the 50’s in Portland.

I continued to go where the whim took me. I didn’t follow any plan at all. I had two days to celebrate: the day before my birthday with my husband (which was awesome), and the birthday itself, which was kind of the icing on the (cup)cake after Friday.

For lunch, Micucci’s Pizza was a no-brainer. I was in luck too; they were just putting out the slabs of pizza when I ran up the stairs and grabbed one out from under the noses of the slower people assembling boxes to my right. When I ran down to pay I got to say “Hi” to the baker, Stephen Lanzalotta (author of  The Diet Code), who was just putting out the fresh cannoli…I resisted, since I had a piece of tiramisu from my son and a chocolate coconut cupcake from Two Fat Cats waiting for me for later on. A colleague at work, Laurie, handed me a chocolate shortbread cookie chaser after lunch, which enabled me to save the cupcake for later.

🙂

Had to miss my regular yoga class (with Kristen of Windsong Yoga)  in the morning so I was thrilled when a colleague Mary Ann said “Hey, want to do this yoga dvd with me at 2:00PM?”  I just happened to have my mat in the trunk, so that’s what we did.

To balance it all out, I ate half the Micucci’s slab for lunch then had the other half with a salad (with greens from the garden) for supper, followed by the cupcake and my favorite  (which is unfortunately seasonal) Keurig coffee that I saved from Christmas: Spicy Eggnog.

When I got home from work at 8:30PM I had a surprise waiting for me: gifts from the kids:

  1. An adapter that allows me to play my MP3 in the car from my son Anthony that I’ve been wanting forever and
  2. A handmade card with 3 dark chocolate covered cherries from my daughter Izzy.

What can I say? My kids know what I like. 🙂 My husband gave me my gift The Day Prior, but actually started it last fall. He got all of the raised beds ready for my fruit and vegetable gardens (not to mention most of the actual planting and watering thereof), and he bought many more lilac bushes for me (my favorite flower) and scattered them around the yard.  He knows what I like too. :D.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This was the best birthday week ever.

A room with a view

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, writing
The view from my room this morning

I got to have an entire room of my own (with a view!) in which to work on editing my book.

This is big; you see, I’ve never had my own room before.

My husband, after realizing that I had an extra day off this week said, “Hey, get a room!”…Well, even though he didn’t mean what I thought he meant…it still turned out to be a great thing.

Here’s what he proposed: I get a room, pack up my laptop, book draft, notebooks, and anything else I thought I’d need, go there and work on my book. Alone. Away from the laundry. Away from the dishes. Away from the fam (I love them all, but I always stop what I’m doing because I want to do things for them, as my husband pointed out, instead of doing things for me).

I arrived at the (cheap! off-season! weekday rate!) room around 1:45pm, worked until 6pm, when my husband and daughter arrived with supper. It was one of my favorite meals:  sausage pizza from Spiller Farm (Jeannine Spiller makes an awesome pizza!) and a bottle of Diet Coke. We ate together, balancing pizza on napkins on our laps as we perched on the edge of the bed (Izzy got the chair). Life was good. Then they went home and I continued working until 10pm.

Having a great excuse (for the second week in a row) to skip the gym, I picked up some pre-dawn breakfast and got back to work by 6:45am. I worked until noon and managed to finish the first round of edits on my manuscript. While I was working, I set a timer, and every thirty  minutes I took a break, jumped up to do a minute or two of yoga, then got back to work.

Structure…it’s a beautiful thing. 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The best yoga class ever!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, fitness, friends, quest for the best, yoga
Kathy, Alexis, Kristen (our teacher!), Janna, Me, Jeannie
Last night was a special yoga class at Windsong Yoga Studio in South Berwick. My friend Kristen (right in the center) is the instructor, and she teaches nice blend of many different styles of yoga. She has studied with some of the top teachers in the United States,  including Doug Keller, Desiree Rumbaugh, Sianna Sherman, and Judith Lasater, to name just a few. A bonus: she teaches women (no men allowed!). 🙂
She planned a special class to celebrate the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year).
After this excellent class, we were treated to an excellent meal, prepared for us by Kristen. A Tempeh Wreath was the main course, accompanied by a side salad of mixed greens, lightly dressed. Dessert was partially by way of Whole Foods  (and may I just say, OMG! Especially the chocolate covered figs? Unbelievable!). There were also some delicious Christmas cookies made for us by Janna, because, after all, what is Christmas without the cut outs? I ask  you.
Now, if you are someone who practices yoga, and midway through most classes you start thinking about pizza and/or assorted baked goods, this was like a class made in heaven. Thank you, Kristen! Put that Tempeh Wreath recipe in your cookbook!
What holiday celebrations are you participating in this year?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Life in the cube

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, movies, yoga

I was sitting in my cube at work (hour 10), checking out Mayo Clinic’s website for anything new. I found a video of people working at treadmill desks.

I do not have a treadmill desk. Currently, I sit in my cube (to borrow a line from Sandra Bullock in the movie While You Were Sleeping) for 10.5 hours a day  “like a veal”. I am not burning the 10% more calories that people who are blessed with bad backs and get notes from the company’s contracted physical pherapy associates and are awarded “sit-stand” stations. So I sit, not stand.

I recently attended a yoga workshop led by Judith Hanson Lasater. I learned many things from listening to Judith, including that the optimal angle for the hips while sitting in a chair is 120 degrees. I am currently sitting in a chair at my job that gives me about a 45 degree angle of hipness. Not good.

I attempted to remedy this. I rolled up a blanket and put it on my desk chair which afforded me a hip angle that more closely approximated the goal. I was feeling smug about having saved about $50 on a new cushion for about an hour, when I started noticing that my right shoulder (which was now clearly at an untherapeutic angle) was killing me, thereby proving once again the theory that “the thigh bone’s connected to the shoulder bone”.

Darn! I guess I also need to attend a workshop about shoulders. Or ergonomics. Back to square one.

It’s all good

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, health, italian, local fun, restaurants, tweens

I was annoyed the other night, thinking that even though I was lucky to have had an extra day off from work this week, it had been all used up with medical appointments. Deciding to make them, scheduling them, dealing with insurance company in advance to try to make sure they didn’t weasel out of paying for them, transporting to and from them, waiting to be seen after arrival, waiting for test results…

The ocean

That evening, as I was telling my husband how annoyed I was, I decided to stop and change course. Why? As I was talking, I noticed that he was quickly becoming tense and seemed to be losing his good mood. I decided to change course and instead started listing what had been good about the day.

  1. I did not talk myself out of exercising in the morning!
  2. I had time to finish reading book that I was loving while I waited for my husband at his appointment
  3. My daughter told me things about her day that she probably wouldn’t have otherwise while we waited for doctor at her appointment (“Guess what! I’m an alto in the chorus this year!”).
  4. Lunch (Chinese lunch specials from Maple Leaves!) and dinner (Quattro Formaggi pizza from Pizza Napoli!) and dessert (Mocha Mousse Torte and a chocolate chip cookie as big as your head from Bread and Roses in Ogunquit!) dates with spouse.
  5. Drove down to say “Hi” the ocean for a few minutes. 🙂
  6. Appreciated having my son around the house more, now that college has started back up again.

After reviewing list, noticed that yoga was missing, and immediately jumped to the floor into “down dog” so I could include it on my list, and in my day.

I realized that my day had actually included many of my favorite things, but if I hadn’t noticed my husband’s reaction to my complaining, I may not have taken the time to stop and appreciate that it had, in fact, been a really great day!

Sometimes, when you try to do something nice for someone else, you are actually doing something really nice for yourself!

yoga workshop with Doug Keller

by Karen, posted in education, fitness, health, no fear, yoga

Doug Keller came to give a series of workshops at Newburyport Yoga Center ; i attended one last night.  the schedule includes 4 workshops friday4/30  through sunday 5/2.  as i headed there with a friend, i realized that i didn’t even know what the title of the workshop was; i had chosen it because it was the only one of the four that my scheduled allowed me to attend! in the end, it really didn’t matter; i was going to meet him and find out why my yogi friends speak so highly of him and to see if i agreed with their assessment. i DO.

reasons to take a yoga workshop with Doug Keller

  1. it will pull you out of your comfort zone.
  2. the price is really reasonable
  3. he is not threatened by questions from the class
  4. Doug is a very mellow, calm, kind teacher
  5. do the thing you (think you) cannot do

here’s Doug’s website: http://www.doyoga.com/

if you are interested in attending a workshop, there may still be some space: contact Newburyport Yoga Center fmi:  http://www.newburyportyoga.com/index.php