bikram-proof mascara

Mac X, decidedly not Bikram-proofSince we started going to Bikram classes at Red Dragon Yoga, it's been endless laundry around here. We've both been doing a lot of sweating -- insane, copious amounts of sweating-- hence, the every-other-day loads of wash.  

After class, my clothes are soaked, my yoga towels are soaked, and by the time I get home for a shower, so is the towel I bring to put down on the seat of the car.  I live in horror of the cloth seats in the rental car I'm driving these days developing that fuggy, swampy gym smell.  Absolutely gruesome amounts of sweat.

Or should I say: good amounts.

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Anusari in Bikram-land

So now I've taken a total of three Bikram yoga classes and I think I'm getting the hang of it. I won't lie: there still comes a moment in each class when the heat is so intense that I wonder at it.  I wonder why I'm doing it.  This moment when it's equal parts glory and hell, delight and torture.

And then I take a deep breath and keep going. 

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Country Mouse Monday: bees are just yoga, man

This was one of those weekends that was all bees, bees, bees from beginning to end, a blissful playing with and talking about them, first on Saturday at Glide, where I think we taught about 30 interested strangers, to yesterday when my friend Fredo came over for lunch and hive inspection.  Super-duper fun.

Somewhere along the line on Saturday afternoon, standing on the roof at Glide Memorial in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, one of the students, all geared up in her full-body bee suit turned to me and said,

"It really helps if you stay calm, right?"

Yup. Exactly.

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hair of the dog, new tricks

Even though it's such a firmly engrained part of my life, still sometimes this life-long learning thing manages to surprise me.  

I mean, I'm expecting to continue to learn new things in my usual ways -- from books or classes or teachers -- so when I learn new things about, for example, such a ground-breaking heavy topic as my hair, then, well, color me surprised.  I think I just never expected new k-nowledge to come from this quarter.

And what's crazy is how ok, yeah, it's super chick-magazine to even write about your hair, but hot damn, this new thing I learned really has changed my day-to-day life in profound ways.

Who knew?

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Taking the time it takes

It's Week One, Day Three of my six-week disability leave and I'm standing here at the kitchen counter, eating toast, drinking coffee and thinking and enjoying.  I could sleep all day if I wanted, but instead I'm trying to keep to a schedule, getting up at around 6, later than Joe but while the coffee is still hot.

Standing and typing is a habit I developed when I was too uncomfortable to sit.  The kitchen counter is just the right height, and honestly it offers everything I could ask for.  Enough room for all my tools, not least of which are coffee in my favorite mug, toasted Dave's Killer Bread (also favorite), space for phone, notebook, calculator, books, pencil, etc.  And the light's just right.

I was just reviewing a list I made yesterday, a shopping list for our bees, and realized suddenly how much things have changed.  We started keeping bees in 2009, so now we're starting our fourth season as beekeepers.  It's the fulfillment of a long-time dream and I love it, but that's not to say it's been without challenges.  Or without expense. Or that I almost quit.

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