The Wildflower Cafe

I don't often carry a purse. My wallet, keys and phone can all fit in my pockets...really what more do you need? Purses are cumbersome and full of odd items. (At least mine is, I had a can of corn in there for two months...long story.) Plus you have to keep track of a purse. This is not a skill I possess. I lose my purse with such regularity it's almost comical. Recently, after a month of halfhearted searching I put a query on facebook. "Does anyone know where my purse is?" It was at my best friends house. The fact that she hadn't noticed a random purse in her house indicates: 

A.) We're well matched and 

B.) She has too many purses. 

I realized I'd lost my purse AGAIN the night I went to The Wildflower Cafe. I'd just attended my first day of yoga teacher training and was meeting friends for dinner. My plan was to leave yoga around five, go home, shower and arrive at the restaurant for our 7:45 reservation looking fabulous. Well, we all know what they say about best laid plans. Yoga wasn't over until seven so I arrived at the restaurant late, in yoga clothes, looking like I'd spent six hours doing yoga. 

Sigh...

To top it off I realized about halfway to the restaurant that I'd left my purse at the yoga studio. I must have set it down somewhere between digging the keys out of it and putting my coat on. (I found it the next morning on the chair by the coat hooks.) 

My friends were kind enough to buy my amazing dinner and not tease me for being so very under dressed. I had a tough time deciding what to eat, so many amazing choices. I opted for one of the specials, a butternut squash ravioli. Totally made the stress of the evening worth it. Homemade bread, great company, excellent ambiance. I will definitely try it again. Maybe I'll even shower first next time...

Brenda Vaccarro and the Healing Powers of Hot and Sour Soup

Above you see what looks like a bowl of vomit. Rest assured it isn't. It's a bowl of hot and sour soup which I'm convinced is a cure for all things bronchial. My first experience with it came several years ago when I had pneumonia. One of my friends, a nurse, showed up at my house with a container of hot and sour soup. (Incidentally this was the same nurse who convinced me to go to the doctor in the first place. Because he thought I had pneumonia. It's good to have smart, pushy friends.) I hadn't felt like eating for days. Honestly the only thing I felt like doing was curling up in a ball and dying! I very skeptically looked at this vat of yuck he'd gifted me with. Despite how disgusting it looked, I bravely put my aversion aside. It was a nice thing for him to have done and he was right about the pneumonia. So I ate it. All of it. I was restored! Not instantly but I'm convinced the soup helped. 

Today I'm home with either bronchitis or tuberculosis. I'm not sure which but I have this amazing Brenda Vaccarro voice. I thought about heading to Broadway but opted for the Chinese restaurant instead. Wood ear, cloud ear fungus, day lily buds...I'm not sure what the hell those things are but man does it help!

Letting go of Little Pieces

"Little pieces falling in the dust

Little pile of ash we don't need

Just leave it to be taken upon the breeze

 "Pieces falling from me

You can have them for free

I've never felt so complete

Pieces falling from me"

            Little Pieces - Gomez

I've listened to this song a dozen times but when I actually bothered to hear it I adopted it as my new theme song. Pieces falling from me. Let them fall off. Let it go. Let. It. Go...

It's so simple! Why have I never thought of this before!!!!

Because, learning to let go isn't as simple as it sounds. Physical pain is easier to learn from. For example. I know where to stop the curling iron in relation to my neck. Burning my neck hurts and the skeptical looks while explaining it's NOT a hickey are embarrassing. I don't want to do that again. Emotional pain is harder to learn from and let go of. At least for me. I hold on to that shit like a dog to a bone! And the person I hurt the most is me. So I'm going to let those pieces go.

While Gomez cheers me on.

Self discovery via Facebook

Part of the reason I started yoga teacher training was self-discovery. To learn things about myself. Which I have. I've discovered things I like about myself...aaannnd...things I don't like. Unpleasant, but I can't change if I don't know it's there, right? So I've been doing all this work. Reading books about yoga, spending hours at the studio. Learning about myself. 

But I think I've learned more about myself through the quizzes on facebook. (Tongue very firmly in cheek.) The quiz that went with the above picture tells me the Disney movie my life most closely resembles is Beauty and the Beast. I've also discovered I should be living in Wisconsin, am Boba Fett, Professor X, I should be a humanitarian, I'm most like the Rolling Stones and should be living in the 70's. To break this down. I'm a bad ass bounty hunting humanitarian who can control things with her mind and rock a pair of bell bottoms. I'll never be anyone's Beast of Burden but will someday marry a Beast and move to Wisconsin. 

Groovy. 

Crocheting

My Mom taught me to crochet when I was eight and oh boy...the chains I made! I made enough chains to circle the Earth...or at the very least the living room. My first real project was an afghan when I was pregnant with my oldest. Counting by sevens must have thrown me because what should have been a rectangular afghan turned out trapezoidal. Oops. Nonetheless, I stuck with it. 

Maybe it's the repetition, the counting...I don't really know what it is but it's calming. With all the kids and dogs I have, I need a LOT of calming. One winter I made sixty hats. Sixty...that's a lot of hats. Below you see a co-worker who everyone jokingly called "Evil-Ann". I made her this. 

This hat was such a hit and so incredibly easy I started making more novelty hats. Frogs, cats, dogs, vikings...ninja turtles. It was fun making them and surprising people. But then some of my friends started taking orders for me. (Trying to be helpful of course.) I don't recall how many hats I made that year, it's kind of a blur. Fifteen dollars per hat. Fast and easy money, right? Wrong. I quickly learned I couldn't take the pressure. I started feeling like Monica, from Friends, with the Christmas Candy! I thought about starting my own old lady sweat shop. Surely some of the residents knew how to crochet...they could make the basic hat for me and I could add on the embellishments...give them something to do, help me fill the orders...it's a win, win! Yes!! Alas, I couldn't do it. Unless I wanted to wear the above devil hat all the time. I've since cut back on the orders I'll take. 

My work of late is all charitable. As part of my yoga teacher training I have to practice Karma Yoga. This means I have to spend thirty hours doing something for the good of mankind. Not for myself. What better way to spread good Karma than to make hats for sick children? Now that's a win-win. Here's a sampling of my work. 

Jayne's cunning hat from Firefly. I made the boy inside the hat as well.

Walker Bag

Infinity Scarf

I made this hat for myself but my lovely friend, who is also my top sales associate, stole it.

Becoming a Yoga Teacher

I tried yoga for the first time about ten years ago. Not because I thought it was awesome and wanted to try it...I did it to be a smart ass. One of my co-workers, an Occupational Therapist, was also a yoga instructor. She regularly incorporated yoga into our work with the kids. I saw it make a difference but wasn't sold on it for myself. Then one day she mentioned being sore from a yoga class. 

Sore. 

From yoga?

 I scoffed. How could she be sore from standing in weird poses and breathing? So, to prove a point, I went through all the poses I'd seen her do and held each one for a minute. Guess what? I was sore the next day. A really delicious kind of sore. I was hooked. I started practicing regularly and learning as much as I could. I often entertained the idea of becoming a yoga instructor but something always held me back. Until my life went through a series of upheaval. 

First, my engagement ended. (Don't be sad, it was a long time coming.) Then my oldest son told me he was moving three hours away. A week later my youngest son told me he was leaving home too. 

What?! Aren't the birds supposed to leave the nest gradually!? 

In less than a month I went from having three kids and a fiancee in the house to having one kid who's gone every other weekend. That's a lot of change! So what was I going to do with all that time? I decided to finally bite the bullet and do something for myself I've wanted to do since that day I came in to work sore from yoga. 

I signed up for teacher training.