Wandering Mind

So for the last two days I’ve been weaning myself off all the sugar and fat I’ve been ingesting for the last, oh, I don’t know, Month, Maybe?  All that talk I did a month ago about eating light, well, as soon as I got super-slammed at work and ran out of good food I lost the battle.  And damn, my head hurts.  I’ve had my caffeine for the day so I’m assuming this is sugar based.  

I almost practiced today.  I will practice tomorrow.  That’s why I’m writing this now; to get my intention out there.  I did pull the weights out this evening and lifted (lightly).  I think I’m going add a little weight lifting back into my life.  I don’t think I necessarily need it, the Ashtanga definitely keeps me strong, but I just like doing it.  It’s the testosterone in me…  I’m not planning on the hardcore workouts from the past, just 15 minutes before I practice everyday to warm up and wake up, and if I follow it up with my asana practice it should keep me from tightening up.

I didn’t realize my last entry sounded as depressing as it came across.  I’ve gotten more than the usual number of comments/calls/emails (Thank you all for caring). I’m really ok, I just made the observation that I was going the wrong way and happily, this time, I caught it more quickly.   I’ve gone years in the past before catching it (and I’m not exaggerating).  I like what I do for work and it’s real easy to bury myself in it so deeply that I lose myself.

Other notes from my world- I was in Arkansas over the weekend meeting and visiting with the Blonde Lady’s family and on the return trip American Airlines lost my luggage (Bastards!) so I’m still waiting on that.  From my family I got a couple of gift cards so I bought a Magic Bullet and an iPod Speaker Dock which puts out surprisingly good sound for it’s size and it means I can use my iPod as my alarm clock… waking to good music instead of a beeping phone.  I don’t like using a normal alarm clock because the numbers are too bright.  (It’s so dark around my house that the littlest lights become too bright once your eyes adjust).  

Ok, I’m starting to ramble and I need to get some sleep to follow through with my intention.  Plus the Blonde Lady is coming up tomorrow and we’ll have our own Holiday as we really haven’t had the opportunity yet.  As great as her family is, I think they cramped our private time a bit.

I haven’t thought about myself much lately.  This might sound like a good thing, an unselfish thing.  But it’s not.  I need the time, ability, and energy to focus on myself so I can figure out where I stand and from that footing I can exist with the rest of the world.  I’ve allowed myself to get overwhelmed with things that are unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  I have ignored my spiritual self, my physical self, and for the most part, my intellectual self.   I haven’t written in a while, nor have I practiced, nor have I read, or thought about anything that (directly) stretches me.  I haven’t even been reading my “regular” blogs because they will remind me of what I haven’t been doing.  

I am unhappy and unhealthy and it’s time to change.

New Paltz is cancelled today due to too much snow… I was in Buffalo too long, we’re only getting 6 to 10 inches… oh well. I still came in and practiced today and I really should go home, sit and drink hot chocolate and watch the snow fall. but I can really use today to get caught up on the end of the semester … and I’m here anyway… I’m not sure if the Blonde Lady is coming out this weekend. I have meetings tomorrow and strike on Sunday for our dance concert. By the way, the flying of the dancer went really well and now he’s thinking of choreographing a piece next year with a bunch of people rappelling… Should be really cool. But back to the Blonde Lady, with the snow on top of my schedule it may it too crazy of a weekend. And I know she’s really tapped out from work right now… she was shooting a commercial the other night that went from 9pm to 6am… No Thanks!

And I’m still pretty wiped out from my schedule right now, too. I haven’t been practicing this week until today. I almost didn’t get up and I started a half hour late but I made it. And I didn’t do the Ashtanga series today… I did most of the standing and then branched off into some random vinyasa thing. I don’t think I would have been able to finish if I had just done Primary. I really needed to follow my body and the poses came one after the other so I didn’t question, just enjoyed the opening.

It’s weirdly quiet here. The lack of constant questions will be nice today but I really miss the students when they’re not around. That could make for a long Holiday break. Of course with everything I have to do, I really will need the time to focus.

Some days the universe gently says we’re just not meant to practice. I didn’t get home from work last night until nearly midnight but I had Sparkplug meeting me at 6:30 this morning to practice so I was actually motivated to come in and practice. And then 5am came and I didn’t want to get up so I snoozed until 5:30 (bad sign number 1). I finally got my tired ass out of bed and staggered into the kitchen and fed the animals. I checked my email real quick to make sure she hadn’t canceled, let the dog out, and headed for the shower. When I got out of the shower I went to let the dog back in and she was nowhere to be found…shit… (Bad Sign number 2) So I get dressed, thinking she’s just wandered a little. As I’m getting ready to leave she’s still not there so I get a flashlight and go wandering around in the dark and in the cold looking for her. After a half an hour I’m sort of at my wits end. I was supposed to meet sparkplug 10 minutes ago and I don’t know where my dog is. She’s 14, has a limp, is going deaf… did she take off after a deer? Did she run into some coyotes? Did she slip and fall down and is freezing in the snow?...shit…shit…shit… One more lap around the house and then I going inside to put more clothes on, I’m freezing. And there she is, standing by the car, looking at me like I’m an idiot. So off we go, hoping to catch Sparkplug before she leaves (I don’t have her cell number to call her). I get to school, 20 minutes late, go straight to the studio but no one’s there. I go up to my office to drop off the dog and grab my mat and head back toward the studio. And as soon as I close my locked office door…shit…Bad sign number 3… I left my keys sitting on my desk…Fuck…I had a limited time to practice as it was because I’ve got a meeting at 8:30 off campus. There’s only one other person who has keys to my office and I don’t know where she is… So off I go in search of the Cleaning Lady to unlock my office. It doesn’t take me too long to find her but by the time we get back to my office I would only have 45 minutes to practice. I thought about it, I really did… but I put on a pot of coffee instead.

At work right now we’re in tech rehearsals for our dance show. I think I’ve mentioned that we’re flying someone. It’s not too high, just about 5 feet but the way the rig is set up the person flying him has to move 20 feet because we have it set up with a 4:1 mechanical advantage. So I’ve got one of my students, Mo, flying him, or maybe being a human counter weight is a better way to describe it. Essentially, I have Mo twenty feet up a wall, with the dancer attached to a pulley system. Mo then rappels down 20 feet and raises the dancer 5. We’ve got the bugs worked out now (ok, most of them) and it works pretty well. But in order to get Mo comfortable hanging out and rappelling from 20 feet (it’s a lot higher when you’re hanging off the side of a wall than when you’re looking up, especially if you’ve never done it before) we came in on Sunday and rapplled from the grid (40 feet) a few times so 20’ doesn’t feel so high. And in our practice rappels I finally worked up the courage to do something I’ve wanted to do for years. I rappelled Australian style! (which means rappelling face down) we got some video but it was a little dark. If I can get it cleaned up a bit I’ll post it. It was really cool but I nearly chickened out a couple of times. I actually had climbed over the edge of the rail and was getting ready to step off, freaked out, and then climbed back… But finally, I stepped off with one foot, then the other, the rope had my weight, but I still had a death grip with my non-brake hand on the railing. When I trusted the rope or the grid wasn’t going to fall I slowly released my death grip and hovered… 40 feet in the air…facing down…with nothing visible between me and the floor…and I slowly released the brake.

The first time was fun but a little slow so I could get a feel for it. The second time was a little faster, and a little more mission impossible style… I wanted to keep doing it but we actually had work to do and I needed to pick up the Blonde Lady from the train at 12:40 so I had to stop…