spritechan | Entries tagged with yoga

Even though I was super tired and sore from ITG last night, I needed to go to yoga for sure today. So I got up and headed to yoga at 9:30. I was super crabby, as I usually am when my body is still exhausted/not recovered from the day before. There were two older ladies (like, 60s for sure) who were super good at everything. This class was with a teacher I’m not familiar with, Becka, and I think it’s the kind of class that Haley loves - constant movement and like a thousand chaturangas. I would not stop dripping waterfalls of sweat and I appeared to be the only one lol. I wasn’t the only one getting tired by any means, but god do I sweat so much. During the lame ab work that I can’t do anyway because of my spine curve, I just swayed my legs back and forth. I did appreciate the challenging poses Becka made us try, such as 8-angle pose (astavakrasana).

After yoga I went home and showered quick before heading out to meet Steve for lunch. I was super hungry from not having eaten plus the yoga, so when we got to Jamba Juice, I decided to order a smoothie bowl for more substance. While we were eating/drinking, we sat in this random courtyard at the U of MN and did a couple raids in Pokémon Go and chatting about Steve’s day. And of course, because the world is weird and small, we ran into my old coworker Janice from Nokomis, the speech pathologist. She was apparently there with her daughter. We talked awkwardly for a minute and then she sat by herself and we sat across the courtyard. lol. I was there to hang out with Steve!!!!

When Steve went back to work and I went home, I was just waiting for him to come home. I ended up napping for a couple hours until he got back, and he was self-proclaimed crabby and I was worried about him! I tried to make him feel better with low to mixed success, and he decided to play a bit of ITG while I knitted and watched Parks and Rec. He had an okay day... at the very least he got some exercise in, which was good.

Nick came over soon after he finished playing and showering, and we went to pick up Naf Naf. I had eaten my leftovers from Olive Garden so I didn’t get anything. I spent the rest of the night finishing my sock #1 with the Totoro colorway, and I’m so excited to get started on the second one. It fits perfectly and looks so cute! Pics when I finish the second one. During that time, Steve finished Yakuza Kiwami and it was amazing. A+ game. The second one comes out at the end of the month, and Steve will def get it right away.

Sleep was difficult again, tossing and turning for hours, super anxious.

The day started out fine, I had a decent amount of plans to continue organizing and cleaning and I got started in that... and then I crashed into a deep depression I’m blaming on getting my period on Monday (it was only 37 days from my last cycle, am I leveling out finally??). I’ve been really emotional and weepy, which is super unlike me. I spent the day laying on the couch feeling sad and anxious and worthless and scared, and then when my iPad battery got too low, I moved into the bedroom to continue my moping and so Steve came home to find me in fetal position and leaking tears.

He snuggled me and reassured me and we talked about reading more of the book we’d been reading. I know we both want to keep reading it, but it’s hard to go to such a heavy place when we’re really enjoying each other so much lately. I’ve been wondering if I should go to counseling once I get the school’s insurance (since it’s supposedly so good, though not sure yet about its therapy options)... like obviously there’s significant underlying issues to why I behaved the way I did, which was clear from my one session alone with Kelly. It was so annoying to be aware of my childhood and teenage years and to feel like I’m making excuses or minimizing because we only had an hour and I didn’t want to spend the whole time talking about my past when this issue was more pressing. But who we were affects who we are and clearly there’s more there that I should probably work through. If I can get a good counselor I think it could be helpful.

In the meantime, I cried a little bit and Steve and I napped for a bit until it was time for yoga, which Steve was sure would be helpful. He started ITG while I got ready, and it was a little chillier so I brought sweatpants and wore my shawl.

Yoga was interesting. I wore my Thinx workout shorts in case I leaked, and I LOVE them, but the leg material is really light and thin and rides up high when moving a lot, and I’m pretty sure my butt cheeks hang out. It was only me and 4 other women, all of whom are also “regulars” of Brandi. Normally I put my mat in the front row but because of being self-conscious about my junk hanging out I was in the back today, so only one woman was in front. She made a joke about how she ate a ton of vegetables right before class and maybe people shouldn’t be downwind of her. Brandi walked in in the middle and that sparked a silly discussion about farting in class (since everyone in the room was there on Monday with the other incident). I’m always simultaneously thrilled with being a part of things and tense because I struggle with getting close to people or relaxing into a situation.

I digress. The class was interesting because my hips were more tight than they’ve been in a long time, which I suspect was due to 1. My period and 2. All the traumatic, stressful, sad emotions I’ve been experiencing. In yoga, the hips are traditionally where we store sadness, anxiety, and trauma, so the theory is that you can get more emotional when doing exercises that release the hips.

So, I wasn’t very good at any of the hip openers, but we did something new, which was splits practice, so I got to learn how one starts to move into that that isn’t just standing splits. That was cool. Today in extended side angle I branched out and tried for a full bind instead of a half bind, and I got really close! I surprised myself and it really feels like I might get a full bind here soon. I did maybe pull one of my shoulders a little out of place trying to reach, but it shifted back during the next pose and I’ll be more careful next time.

My standing balancing wasn’t great because of my busy mind, so I held back a little in those poses. But! Brandi had us do a crescent twist with our knees on the ground, and THEN encouraged us to lift into full crescent (like being in the twist and then lifting our knee off the ground at the same time) and that balancing was awesome for me. Lifting yourself off the ground while in a twist is something I always feel like is impossible and then when I do it, I’m really surprised at my own body. Lol. I also did side plank today, which normally I do the modified pose of.

For the inversion, I wasn’t feeling dolphin again, but instead of crow I practiced wheel. I used to be able to do wheel all the time in the past, and now I can’t. I think it’s because I was doing it incorrectly before. I thought it was because my arms are weaker since stopping and starting yoga again but that can’t be true now. I really want to get back into that pose regularly. Instead of forcing my way into the pose I’m working on setting all of it up correctly, which makes it harder for me to push my arms in. So I did what amounted to a bridge headstand, which is a “bus stop,” as Brandi calls them, before full wheel.

Normally during legs up the wall I go into shoulder stand and then plow, but today I was really feeling legs up the wall. I marveled at how when I started yoga again back in June, I couldn’t straighten my legs beyond like 45*, and they’d get shaky and tired, and now my legs are perfectly straight and the pose is really relaxing. It’s my favorite restorative pose right now. Mmmmm.

In Brandi’s class, when we go into fetal before the end of class, she has us do a breathing routine, and today she talked about loving yourself and forgiving yourself, and in order to truly love others you need to love yourself, etc. And since I’ve been super depressed and emotional and NOT loving myself today, it hit me pretty hard and maybe I cried a little... but the class was dark so it didn’t matter.

When class was done, Stacy mentioned to me and Brandi that she got roofied at a local sports bar and luckily she was with a girl friend who got her home because she’d blacked out at like 9:30pm and remembered nothing. She said when she talked to the manager he said it happens depressingly often.

Then I got home, Steve was cute and heated us up our leftovers, we watched an episode of Parks and Rec, and then I snuggled him while he did more sidequesting - mostly Majima stuff - in Yakuza Kiwami. <3

( Score pics for posterity )

Today I played a lot of ITG. If I’m going to actually be a participant in Cupcake I need to get better at the 10s and 11s, so I eased myself in to the 10s by alternating with 9s. I think I did pretty well. The goal is to at least 96% each song to be a competitor, but for the first couple plays ever I think these are decent scores.

My hip muscles are killing me though. My iliopsoas muscle is insanely tight and ITG super aggravates it. I need that shit to GO! AWAY!!!

After I finished, Steve played some himself while I went to yoga. He had a super good day and I was really proud of him.

Yoga was great, we had a lot of new people along with the regulars for class. I had a good balance day and chose to do crow instead of dolphin as my inversion because I hate dolphin, it hurts my back so much and I feel useless in it. My shoulders are also super weak and it’s impossible for me to adequately push them out of my sockets!

There was one older gentleman in class who said it was his first time doing yoga ever, and it was super unfortunate then when we were going into one of the down dogs and he let rip a SUPER loud fart. Like, there was no doubt it was him and he was clearly super embarrassed, but Brandi didn’t miss a beat and no one acknowledged it or anything. I’m super sensitive to embarrassment and shame empathy, so I had to work my way out of feeling so embarrassed for him and THEN I had to force myself to stop creating scenarios in my head where I or someone else reassures him that it happens to everyone (because it does happen sometimes, though usually it’s just a little toot, not a loud honker) and to please not be put off yoga forever. After class though the people near him asked how he liked it and he said he def was coming back, phew!

My wrist has been bothering me so much this week, feeling like a tendonitis flare-up, so I didn’t write entries for the last few days and wore a brace to give my wrist some rest.

Click the pics for HQ.

( My Thursday )

Still not good at the whole getting up and being motivated thing, but I did manage to get up and have coffee with Steve this morning and that was really good.

After he left, the comfort of sleep took over on the couch, until Haley called me and asked if she could come over to apply to for jobs. She also did a phone interview while over. As usual, I felt like I couldn’t do anything but sit with her while she was here. All I managed to get done during the day was make lunch (miso soup, rice and noro) and realize I’d gotten “off” on which color was which for the shawl I’m working on. I posted a picture of my lunch to Snapchat, and Hser, one of my students, replied to it incredulously saying she “didn’t know white people eat white rice” as a thing XD at first I thought it was ridiculous, and I told her the good news is, you can eat whatever you want as an adult, rice included. She said she was very glad she’s not white because she needs rice in her life. When I was talking about it with Steve and Nick later, we discussed that rice is in Asian, Mexican, Indian and African food, but is actually NOT staple of “American” cuisine. And when I thought more about Hser’s experience, it makes sense that she doesn’t know white people who eat rice regularly, because the students who attend St. Paul schools who are white have a diet that is often made up of fast food or foods like macaroni and cheese/spaghetti and sandwiches. Families are struggling to make ends meet and guardians have busy jobs with long hours (or multiple jobs). It would be out of place to have a rice cooker or even the time to make rice on the stove - though if the average white American considered how many calories are in white rice and how much you can get for the cost, I bet many more would use it to fill their bellies.

/thought train

I fell asleep watching Eloise while waiting for Steve to get home. Eloise is a Chinese Hearthstone streamer who, lately, has been doing a lot of IRL streams, of her cleaning her terribly messy apartment, walking around Shanghai with her mom, and attending music lessons. She also gives insight into a country far more open about the ways in which it controls media, monitors its citizens, and disseminates propaganda and other information, which is really fascinating. I fell asleep to a 2-hour stream of her practicing that giant Chinese instrument with all those strings, her plucking out simple melodies but it still sounding so soothing.

Once Steve got home and I was awake, we picked up Nick and headed out. When we were on the highway I teased him about forgetting our coffee ritual, so we passed our normal exit in order to get off on a street with a Starbucks. The line wasn’t long but for some reason the drinks for the people in front of us took like 10 minutes. Steve is always concerned about time because in order for me to make it to yoga, I need to be home by 7:30, and Catrina’s closes at 8 on Mondays. Because of this, by the time we got our order, neither of us pointed out that 1. I ordered an iced drink, not hot, and 2. Steve’s Americano was supposed to have cream. Whateverrr. It was very warm out so I was disappointed at first, but I gotta be honest, the matcha drink IS better hot. So I was fine.

When we got to Level Up, Nick was telling a story as we were walking in. There has been a complete overhaul of the parking lot, and one of the concrete medians had yet to be filled with dirt/plants/rocks or whatever, and so has a 2-foot drop in-between the curbs, and Nick biffed it HARD by stepping into that pit. He tried super hard to catch himself and ended up kind of running sideways before ultimately slamming into the ground on his left side and rolling a bit. It’s weird how much more jarring it is to fall as an adult, and especially so if you fall spectacularly. He was quite embarrassed, so Steve and I talked about recent times that we fell like doofuses. After the moment had passed he mentioned that he could feel that he has scrapes on his legs, hand and arms :/ suuuuck.

Steve got me home at 7:30 on the dot, and I headed to yoga. I was surprised to see Brittany there instead of Brandi, but I guess Brandi hurt her arm and is out for a week or so. When Brittany subs for a class, she turns into a more careful teacher, which I love. She spent a good amount of time talking us through the proper form of the poses, and chaturanga, warrior 2, and extended side-angle. She always looks so impressive in chaturanga, her tiny gymnast body moving super sharp and controlled through it. In keeping my arms glued into my ribs for lowering halfway down, it is super awkward to shift to upward-facing dog because my arms get snagged on the sides of my boobs! I even was wearing TWO sports bras today and that didn’t like, push them in more or anything.

Today was the kind of day I felt strong, and even though I was super sweaty, I didn’t feel overwhelmed or overtired in the postures. She asked me to stay after to talk to her because I told her I couldn’t do the core work she suggested, because it was too painful and impossible on my back no matter how hard I pressed into the ground. We had a really good discussion after I showed her where my back curves, and where my spine hurts to be in a position. Bending my body into an L-shape, no matter how my body is oriented in space (sitting, standing, laying, upside-down) is very difficult and painful for me to hold, as a result of my Lordosis (commonly confused with swayback but is in fact basically the opposite of it). I always feel stupid and like a baby when I appear to skip the core work in class, but because the core work is almost exclusively using some part of your body in a 90* bend OR while laying on the back, I just can’t. Even showing Brittany what I mean gave me a super sore back. Chair pose is also painful and bad. And I know it shouldn’t matter but I feel judged in class too because people probably think I’m just copping out.

After yoga I went home, ate my Catrina’s and watched some Parks and Rec with Steve. It was great. When he went to bed I wasn’t tired since I’d had a nap, so I played some Hearthstone. I did terribly in constructed so I decided to tackle the first boss of the Lich King solo adventure, and that was fun.

I’ve been getting into more of a gaming mood lately. Steve gave me a stern lecture the other day about how I’m just wasting my summer doing nothing, and he’s right. It’s like I get so paralyzed worrying about wasting it that I just... waste it. Ugh, it’s the worst, I’m the worst sometimes.

So I started a bunch of laundry and played Hearthstone. Hearthstone is great, but it’s not finite. You can’t “beat” it. I felt like I should choose a game I can beat. I decided I wanted to keep playing Persona 5, as it was just getting good and I had beaten the second dungeon, but I was surprised to find that my save data wasn’t on my profile. I thought it was because we upgraded to a PS4 Pro and my data just wasn’t downloaded yet. I figured I’d wait until Steve got home to figure that out, and looked at other games instead. I seriously considered playing Bloodborne, but I was in the mood for a pretty, ambient game. I settled for A Girl and Her Robot because it looked like a pastel-y version of Ico.

I played a decent amount of it, and Steve got home right as the game switched from being a gentle, quiet game of exploration and puzzles to an impossible action game. After getting literally nowhere with the boss, I looked it up, and someone wrote my exact fears out. The game ruins itself by becoming focused more on battles and talks about how the boss fights are insanely difficult for no reason (not fun and challenging but because of bad and clunky controls and the way in which you have to start over). I quickly decided that was as far as I’d want to go in that game.

I asked Steve about my save file and...he discovered that WHOOPS. He only copied HIS save data over. Uh ohhh. I got some decent autism because I just cannot imagine starting all of that over again. My lost social links and, to a lesser extent, personas. And the beginning of the game is SO TEDIOUS with the handholding. I really need to mourn and process, and Steve does not handle guilt very well, so he needed tending to at the same time I was trying to wrangle in my grief. So he kind of melted down, frantically putting the game in and saying he was going to play up to where I was (lol I was definitely over 20 hours in, probably even over 30). I kept telling him it wasn’t the same and wouldn’t be the same, but I appreciated his willingness.

Eventually I talked him down enough from the ledge not to kill himself while I was at yoga, but not THAT far from the ledge. It’s just a game, I’m sure I’ll get enough steam to start it over eventually. But I had two hours of yoga planned for tonight and I needed to leave. I called Steve on my way there to check in, make sure he didn’t nope off into the sunset like he was at high risk of doing.

First up was Brittany’s Hatha class. It ended up being just me and one other, who is another instructor there. It’s nice to be comfortable with the teacher, because on days like this when no one shows up, I can get targeted attention. Brittany really pressed me to push out of my shoulder sockets and worked my arms so hard in various poses while in plank. We also did a ton of half-moon/Warrior 3/standing splits stuff. Brittany is a gymnast and obsessed with handstand, so everything we do with her really works towards that. Which is fine for me because even though I’m terrified of handstand, the stuff I do with her is really challenging and makes me feel like I’m trying for something.

Right after that was Hannah’s tune-up class. Thank god it wasn’t demanding because I could barely hold myself up on all fours - my shoulders and arms were just DEAD from Brittany’s class. It was a good way to spend the hour. Prior to class I talked with that other instructor, whose name is Brandi, and she is a special ed teacher in SPPS, at one of the high schools. So we have a lot we can talk about. That was cool.

After yoga, I went home and immediately needed food, so I whipped up some (yep) fried egg sammies and simple fruit smoothies, and Steve showed me his new trick in Mario 3. He and Noah are trying to learn to speed run that game, and Steve wanted to start by learning the fastest, silliest way as a means to get acquainted with the game. He is hilariously bad at the general game, but he’s decent at the wrong warp (look it up, it’s very entertaining and takes only a couple minutes). I asked if I could try the first part, and omg the controller he was using was weird! It wasn’t an originally controller and it felt like the inputs were slightly off. He gave me a regular controller and the B button basically did not work at all. Ugh. Come ON controllers!! But it was really cute and I was curled up in his lap while we played.

After that we spent the rest of the night enjoying Super Monkey Ball speedruns. So fun, so good. After all that yoga and late-night eating though, my processing and memory were SUPER off. It was really silly. I kept asking questions about the runs that they literally had just talked about, and I kept forgetting or mishearing what Steve was saying (in a funny way). At one point Steve spluttered, “What is the MATTER with you?? You’re like, Flowers for Algernon!! Get it together!!” Which caused me to laugh for like 5 minutes straight, and laugh about every time I thought about it for the rest of the night. And when we were getting into bed, I took out my hair, which had been in a bun. Steve took one look at it and notified my that I looked like Solid Snake. Which elicited another huge burst of laughter because I knew EXACTLY what he meant. God I love him. :D

Uh oh, have fallen behind on these again. You’d think with all the time I’ve spent in the bathroom as a result of my urethral issues that I’d be able to get entries written easily. Unfortunately this isn’t the case, for a couple reasons. One, I have nothing to write when all I’m doing is sitting on the toilet with a hot pad in my abdomen, and two, it’s hard to focus when I’m begging the universe for some relief from the pressure in my bladder and knives in my urethra.

So, most of the day was spent in this fashion, sitting for up to two hours at a time, leaving for a few minutes to a half hour, rinse and repeat. I often start worse in the morning and then slowly improve or go up and down as the day wears on. I started the day at like an 8/10 in the pain scale, and was like 4.5 by the time Steve and Tyler got home. Steve arrived and offered to drive me to get Jamba Juice, as I had not been able to eat all day. We got back home just as Tyler was pulling up. We haven’t seen Tyler in weeks! He’s been busy with his stepdaughter’s various sports and dance-related engagements (I think she’s like 8) so he’s been canceling on us for more than he’s been coming along. He also just bought a house and has been moving into it, but I think now they’re solidly moved in. He actually lives very close to one of the game shops we go to, which to him (and maybe Steve?) means that with the alternating on who’s driving, that we should mix it up, store-wise, depending on whose turn it is, to prevent too much driving back and forth between the game stores, Catrina’s, and home. I feel like that sentence makes literally no sense but I’m gonna roll with it.

Aaaanyway. Tyler picked us up and we headed to hi score, which we haven’t gone to in awhile. On the way there, Bre texted me back about a question I’d asked her on Haley’s behalf (I don’t know if I mentioned it here, but Haley got fired from her job after working for them for 5 years, and she’s afraid she’ll never get another job again). She answered my question and we quickly got on alternating topics of my constant pain (she’s an RN) and on her very positive experience with medication (she swears by it and attritubutes her not being dead to it) and finally, FINALLY, Haley is interested enough in getting relief from her incurable mental illness to hear about it (Bethany had a bad experience on medication and is loud about her dislike of medications). As a result of these discussions and the extreme discomfort I was feeling, I admittedly wasn’t very present for the actual game shopping.

After Hi score we went to Catrina’s (per the new schedule we will only visit one game store instead of two each week). I got my food to go, because I learned from last week that eating even an hour and a half before yoga results in heartburn and a physical nightmare. Even with the pain I was adamant about going to yoga, because I made a new friend last week and I feel like it’s important to keep that social link up. And also I wanted to go to yoga dammit!

Yoga is at 8, and Brandi (the teacher) checked in with me about how I was doing. She did this when she met me last week, which is common with a new teacher, but I was surprised that she was very, “Anything I need to know about you this week?” So I told her, and she encouraged me to modify or pass on some of the hip opening poses if they were too much pressure or too painful. I happily did just that, opting for different poses when I felt like it was too much. Thankfully I didn’t need to run out to pee, which has happened before. When I got in, my friend waved me over and I was so flattered. It’s really not fair that I look so unique, because everyone remembers me, but so many people look the same to me in the beginning. She looks like every other blonde, thin suburban mom so I was glad she took the initiative in getting my attention. :)

I felt so good after yoga, but I was excited to get home to Steve. He bought us a 65” TCL TV recently but it wasn’t up to his standards (there was quite a bit of “dirty screen effect”), so he’s opting to try a Sony instead. This means he had to pack up an absurdly large TV into an even larger, more absurd box.

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing with Games Done Quick VODs of the Spyro and Mario Bros. 3 variety!

Because I went to bed so late and consumed alcohol, it was very difficult to wake up today. So instead I opted for sleeping in and recovering, with a brief wake up to watch the Catherine Babel run (god Catherine is SO GOOD). Soon after I actually woke up, Haley came over again to apply for more jobs. I felt like I couldn’t really do anything when she was here, so I just watched SGDQ. There were some pretty fun runs, such as a Mega Man 8 race, where the players ended 4 seconds apart (and it was a heartbreaker because they were neck and neck until one guy got bad luck on one boss that he could do nothing about).

I was really feeling love and affection for Steve, who I just wanted to be home so we could spend time together!! He just has been so cute lately and I love him so much!! After he got home and Haley left, we had some fun that we haven’t done in feels like forever because first my UTI stuff and then my period.

Today is Friday and that means Bring a Friend to yoga!! I couldn’t wait to take him, and even though Hannah was supposed to teach it but got sick, Stephanie was there and she made it a good class. I noticed Steve had his eyes closed most of the time, and I thought maybe because we close our eyes in the beginning to get grounded, he thought you’re supposed to do yoga the whole time with your eyes closed. So I poked him and whispered that he could keep his eyes open, and he whisper-shouted back (in a lighthearted frustrated tone), “I CANT because SWEAT keeping running in MY EYES!!”

It always makes me explode with love and appreciation when he comes to yoga with me, for his own health but also because it’s like, romantic to me that he wants to participate in a hobby I really care about even if it’s not something he’s as into as I am. I’m not like, dragging him along and he never complains. It means a lot to me <3

After yoga we stopped at Whole Foods, where we discovered that Prime members now get special deals, in the same way that co-op members get deals. I’m a Prime member, so that was nice. We picked up a few things (soba, beyond beef burgers for 4th of July, and mochi) and then headed home so I could make dinner.

Dinner was cooled soba with spice and open-faced fried egg sammies. I don’t like tracking my calories, at least not super intensely, but I do appreciate it when I’m unsure about how much I’m consuming. It helped me find out tonight that if I wanted to drink my Starbucks tea latte AND eat a whole avocado that I should cut my noodle serving in half and only use one piece of bread for my sandwich. Thanks, MyFitnessPal. You really did me a solid.

Right now MFP has me at 1959 calories, which is for when I work out a lot, but if I don’t burn more than 400 calories, I try to keep my consumption at around 1600 so that I’m just a bit under and hopefully will continue to lose vs gain or maintain.

The evening was spent relaxing with GDQ, watching some fun runs (the runs tend to get better as the week goes on). There were some pretty cool TAS runs of Celeste and Super Metroid, and there was a fun run of LoZ Wind Waker.

This week is SGDQ, Summer Games Done Quick. GDQ does two charity 24/7 marathons per year, where people speed run games to earn money for Prevent Cancer Foundation (January) and Doctors Without Borders (June). SGDQ typically raises about $1 million USD, and AGDQ raises up to $2 million USD. This year they’re also going to do another one in the fall, but I haven’t researched it yet so I’m not sure what that’s for. Steve and I stared watching Games Done Quick in January 2013, and we’ve made it tradition to watch them all since.

Beginning with probably the last month of school, our house began to experience an increasing decline in its upkeep. I go through cycles of organization and slobbery, and it usually slowly builds up until it basically looks like Steve and I live in a state of squalor. Clothes end up everywhere, laundry doesnt get done, and when it DOES get done, it sits in baskets gaining wrinkles and soon it becomes impossible to remember which clothes are clean and which are dirty. Dishes begin to pile up, both in the sink and around the house (particularly our coffee and tea mugs)... my shoes end up all over the house, because usually I feel like I can’t stop on the landing, and instead wear my shoes to whichever room of the house I’m going to sit down in. It’s a terrible habit that I should fix. Mail ends up all over the place, yarn and projects are in randomly spots, cat food all over the floor........ you get the idea.

To combat this, I usually take a room at a time. When I decided to clean and organize, I CLEAN and ORGANIZE. Having grown up in Paul’s Cleaning Bootcamp TM, I tend to approach cleaning in a militant kind of way. I think this also helps explain why I avoid cleaning: when I clean, I am compelled to do it extremely thoroughly. I can’t half-ass it, or it’s not even clean and I wasted my time. So. I started with the kitchen, because a messy kitchen keeps me out of it. I deep cleaned both the coffee maker and the teapot, and now both run so smoothly. I reorganized the counters - they now have a lot of space. I moved the tea bag holders around and found new locations for the cooking utensils and noodles. I swept the kitchen, took out the trash, and did all the dishes. There honestly weren’t too many dishes, as we have a dishwasher, but many dishes failed to get clean because the wait to rinse them was too long. So I washed everything by hand and put it away. I also made some food, yay!

Noah and I have kept in touch about our food and exercise habits, as he experienced a rough week last week emotionally, which caused him to hate on himself a lot and try to sabotage, but he continues to lose weight, and has stayed under 300 pounds. I’m supporting him as best I can at jumping back on the wagon, and managing myself as well. Because of excuses and reasons, I didn’t do yoga for 2 weeks. In order to get that discount in the fall I need to attend 7 classes per month this summer, which means... I need to get in 5 classes this week. Perfect, honestly. Even though I’m cutting it down to the wire, I like the motivation to HAVE to go. To add in a layer of accountability, I signed up for classes for the first time since joining my studio. I have avoided booking classes and instead preferring to just show up, just in case I get lazy or something comes up. I’m the kind of person who typically does worse when people are watching, because the anxiety of letting people down becomes too great and I self-sabotage to the highest degree. If I outright fail people it will feel less bad than if I try and fail right???

Today’s class was Twilight flow, which is different depending on the instructor. Brandi is a woman I’ve emailed with, but never had a class with. I like Twilight class on Monday because that means I can go game shopping, and then go to class at 8pm. Steve, Nick and I went (haven’t seen Tyler in like a month, too busy being Stepdad of the Year) to LevelUp, but no games of note. We ate before we went, to hopefully allow me to digest before yoga. That was unsuccessful, and I spent the entire class feeling like my quesadilla was in my throat.

I loved Brandi’s class. She has a good energy, had really good words for us, and wasn’t as woo-woo as the other instructors. She’s still relatively new to the studio, so she was more hands-on and took the time to give little massages on our backs halfway through, and on our faces and shoulders at the end of class. Hannah used to do that, but then she stopped.

Since this is a class I’ve never been to, the people in there were all new to me. This means that I got several compliments on my hair and tattoos, both of which I am unaware of during yoga. Yoga is the only time in my life that I can tune everything else out and focus solely on my breathing and postures, so it’s really funny to remember that not only am I seeing other people, but they see me too. When I was walking out, a Mom commented on my hair and mentioned that her 10-year-old daughter asked for highlights and she was really nervous but bought her a semi-permanent dye. She relaxed into the conversation considerably when I told her I teach middle school, and I gave her some suggestions and tips (she surprisingly didn’t know that you can dye hair with kool-aid, which is the most common way I’ve seen younger kids get color in their hair), and she freaked out a little about her son turning 13 - I assured her 7th and 8th grade are so the best. So I guess I have a new Monday friend. Yay!

When I got home, Steve and Nick were watching SGDQ, and I played Hearthstone and talked to Ben Holland. Hopefully he’s coming over this weekend! I beat all of the bosses of the current solo adventure except 1, and I think I keep getting bad card choices because she is like everyone’s fave. Steve said something about how so many of our friends can’t get past early bosses, so I should be kinder to myself because I’m actually pretty decent at Hearthstone. Lol.

Today was my last LAST day at my jobs. First I went to Nokomis and moved all my stuff out. I was smart about this time and packed everything up nicely and was able to get basically everything easily into my trunk. I was surprised at how little I was taking, and proud of myself for not haphazardly throwing things in and taking things I’ll definitely never use. Then it was over to Parkway, where mostly I just chatted with people, looked for my iPad, and gathered what little I had in Tue’s and Tealie’s rooms.

It was very weird and a little sad to walk away from Parkway for the last time as a teacher. It was actually pretty surreal, I mean it’s the place I’ve had the longest time with in my whole life, job wise, and the only solid place I’ve worked as a teacher. It’s so weird to think I’m going to be somewhere completely different, with a whole different set of colleagues, in just a few short months.

Then I went to hot yoga and Hannah was subbing. It was great, but I am so sore from doing yoga yesterday! It’s crazy how much I’ve regressed, but it always feels good to do yoga. Steve and I ate Catrina’s right before I went to yoga, and we went a littler later than expected because nick was late, so my tummy was soooo full of tacos and made it hard to do compression poses because I was at risk of vomiting all of it back up. But otherwise it was really good.

The rest of the night was chill! I honestly don’t remember much of anything else! END OF AN ERA!!

Wow, I've fallen super behind on these, because I've had such crazy busy days with a ton of things that either kept me up too late to be able to write an entry, or worked me so hard I crashed right when I got home. Don't despair; I will write and backdate those entries.

So let's pretend that today is Tuesday. Because this will be posted on the date of Tuesday the 12th.

I slept quite awhile — I failed to wake Steve up in time for morning coffee, but amazing snuggles were had. I had a weird dream right before he woke me up I was having a dream that my coworker Brian and I were "getting fizzy," kind of literally. Brian offered me homemade wrapped candy that was drugs of some sort, and when you put one in your mouth, it fizzed as it dissolved. The spiked candy made me feel warm and fuzzy, like mushrooms. It was all the more surreal because we were simultaneously hanging out but then there were a couple of students there and THEN I needed to go to an IEP meeting that was being held in the middle of a pool? There was a little white dog walking by me, and I was trying to figure out the best way to get to the meeting without apparently getting too wet. Which seemed impossible. The meeting was being held on a platform in the middle of the pool, with a table and chairs and everything. And of course the platform wasn't rigid, but more like one of those massive rectangle floaties used in swim therapy and everyone was seated precariously around the table. Good dream.

( Read more... )

Ward 6 is this local hip place that serves amazing brunch food, located on a busy street on the east side of St. Paul (read: not a super great neighborhood). It was one of the catalysts to revitalizing the street, where several new establishments have cropped up and people want to spend their time walking up and down it. The problem with Ward 6 apparently was their business model: serve high-quality, sustainably sourced food from as many local places as possible while keeping prices reasonable. I guess they have been losing money for a couple years, and they’ve decided to close. Such sadness! Steve and I have gone there almost every Sunday for the last at least 2 years. I’m glad that we’ve been supporting the,, and they were always crazy busy on weekends, but I guess the same can’t be said for during the week? I went there twice for dinner and it was packed then, too.

It doesn’t appeal to locals; most of the people I saw there were white people of the sort you find in the suburbs (hi pot, it’s kettle - I have been trained to notice such hypocrisies I am a part of). That’s not to say PoC didn’t go there, but the food there again was to different tastes - whereas every weekend just across the street is a Hispanic family that sets up a roasted corn cart that seems more appropriate. What I mean to say is, everything at Ward 6 is catered to a white perspective of tastes, even if they have chicken and waffles and chilaquiles.

Still sad to see it go, it was bittersweet and only a week’s notice was given. They were out of many of the main items, of course, and it sounds like people who like the place have been pouring in. We enjoyed one last meal and said goodbye.

Picked up a few things at Mississippi Market co-op and then headed home. Because I have so many things I want to do, and so many things I NEED to do, I found myself in the classic Leah anxiety paralysis and ended up snuggling a ridiculous Nero cat basically all day while Steve played ITG and we watched Hearthstone. The cuddles were amazing and made me so happy, Nero was in the snuggliest mood and helped me feel better. I didn’t do NOTHING all day... I went to yoga right away in the morning after a quick cup of coffee with Steve. Hannah’s hot class yay! It felt sooo good to go again. Can’t wait to keep going.

Nick and Scott came over, and I tutored. Dinner was a homemade lentil soup, yum. The Office was watched, Nick continued Uncharted 2, Scott scrolled, and Steve continued Owlboy. I spent the rest of the night watching The Office and working on my entries for the previous two days because I’d fallen behind. I also spent a significant amount of time flirting with Steve over text (using my mac to type and send texts is so fun), which built a stupid amount of excitement and had a fantastic culmination after everyone left. Ehehe.

Finally I was able to get up and wake Steve up in time for morning coffee! Yay! It’s sooo hard to wake up when the snuggles and sleep are so good. Also I realized I wrote day 14 twice, whoops, gotta fix those lol.

Tealie told me last night that she was calling in because she’s trying to sell her house and needed to schedule several appointments, which intellectually I was totally fine with and support her, but also it’s so annoying and stressful (at least until first block gets going). For some reason every time she’s gone I am max annoyed for foundations and the beginning of first block, but then I remember everything is fine. It’s not like the kids only behave for Tealie, but they ARE rude to subs usually. Thankfully (tbh) she didn’t appear to have one, so I got to spend the first half of first hour with Nicki covering for Tealie. I liked having nicki in the room, because she has a loud voice and at the beginning when I couldn’t find the math review she gave them a stern speech about when they go to 7th grade and the expected noise level. After math review, things went smoothly. We were doing an activity that measures and compares the hand span of everyone in the room, and the way I structured it really worked for them. When we were finished, we went outside for like a half hour (our classes are 80 minutes). Malik of course fell down immediately and bloodied his leg up somehow, but he was back eventually. The rest of the kids organized a couple of games of tag or did little competitive things on the swings. It was relaxing and fun.

Even though I get kind of annoyed, and I’m sure she does too when I’m gone (and I had a lot of paperwork days this year), we never are snippy with each other about it because we’re always being supportive. She texted me halfway through the day checking in, because Kristin made sure to text her and let her know no sub showed up for her, stressing her out, but I just reassured her and she cheered up.

Second block was good, I spent the time running between each kid basically in the first group, and it was uneventful and nice. Second group Dyshawn asked if he could be reading his book for English in the pod, and he sat right outside the door and did read for a decent amount of time.

I had to be at Nokomis at the right time today because my replacement was shadowing me today, and st first I was a little stressed, but since she’s been in the district and has already done split schools, it was wayyy more relaxed than I thought it would be. It ended up being an easy day other than talking a lot about students we’re finishing up, including talking to Brian and Todd over the phone about kids at parkway.

I came home and tried to nap because I was sooo tired, but first I got distracted with Steve, which we both weren’t even expecting and was a nice way to spend my getting home. Lol. THEN I tried to nap, and I think I dozed a little right at the beginning but after like 10 minutes or so I just couldn’t sleep. I only had like a half hour until I was supposed to go to yoga, and when it was time to go I felt so tired it was like I was sick, but I need to stop being reluctant to go to yoga when I love it when I’m there. And I’m so out of practice it’s absurd and frankly makes me sad. So I got up and changed and headed out. It was easier to motivate myself because Hannah was teaching the class tonight, and she’s still by far my favorite instructor. She was subbing for Brittany, and Brittany loves handstands and other inversions, so we spent the hour working on shoulders, core, and legs. I like Hannah’s way of doing core, which is insanely hard but atypical. She has us use our blankets to go from plank to pulling our legs in, in various ways. Vs several others who like to basically do sit-ups and other lame things. The last time I was working on handstand I was able to do L pose pretty good, but today my back was not having it. Which was okay. I felt so good just doing yoga again. When I looked at the schedule, I saw Hannah’s back to doing hot yoga on Saturday mornings, and I just have to go. My favorite time period of doing yoga was when I was consistently able to go to Hannah’s hot yoga class, which at the time was on Monday. I just love how long you hold each pose for, and that it’s the same poses and yet they never get old, and you can really monitor your flexibility and accuracy in the pose.

This was something Steve and I talked about later, about how I was happiest and felt the strongest and healthiest when I was going to yoga almost every day. I asked him to encourage me to go to yoga when I’m being lazy, and he reminded me that people (me) can get belligerent when asked to get active when they’re (I’m) not feeling like it for whatever reason (usually because I’m tired). So we talked about and agreed upon a silly and horrible “code phrase” that he gets to use if I refuse.

I was feeling pumped up still after getting home, so I decided to play some ITG after Steve was done. By the time I got home he’d basically completed his sit and was tired, so I hopped on while he played Owlboy. Shoe-wise it was a bad day, my feet were extra slippery in the shoes (whereas last time I thought I was getting used to to them). However, even with the mild tantruming I did, I did improve a few scores. Most notably I finally got a 98% on Cryosleep, which was one of my oldest scores, from October of last year. Lately my TimeHop has been showing me when I got old scores over the last 5 years, and even from two years ago it’s crazy to see how much I’ve improved. It’s nice to see that progress!

I’ve continued to chat with and encourage Noah on mfp and he and Steve and I have been a good mfp team!

Wait, it’s already halfway through the week?? That’s both exciting and terrifying. We only have one more real week left of school and I have so much to do, including a lot of things that require me to test students - not just paperwork typing. I’m definitely fucked again this year with regards to filing... getting access to our special ed files is so much hassle and I hate it! I was also quite terrible with progress reports, though I believe I’m not the only one by far so phew. It just means I’ll have a long Monday the 11th getting everything finished. Lucky for me though, since I only have 6th graders I don’t need to freak out as much as other years, since none of my kids’ files are getting sent along to high schools. That was my big issue in previous years, especially my first one (where I had 10 8th graders omg).

My day was spent feverishly trying to test and get emails sent out, and by the end of the day I had a pretty bad headache, so I came home to a waiting Steve and tried to nap away my headache in the dark. The nap was unsuccessful because I realized I wasn’t tired, just low energy and kind of emotional. Eventually I sat back up and did some scrolling until Steve was kind enough to heat us up some dinner, more potato soup. Yummm. When he was gone I started thinking about how grateful I am that Steve has stuck with me, and how strong he is, and how much I love our life and how much I appreciate him. I mean I think that stuff all the time, but seeing Pat and Aimee for some reason really launched my head into a tailspin about how even though it was just 3 months ago, that all that feels like a completely different life, and I feel so divorced from that behavior, and a life without Steve is such a sad, empty, pathetic version of a life that is so pale and colorless. He makes my life so full of happiness and love, and I don’t want a life where he’s not in it. So all of that has been swirling in my head and he brought me down heated up soup and bread and I just started crying. He asked me what was going on and I tried to tell him, I hope I did an okay job. It’s hard to articulate all of my feelings on the matter and they just get so intense that apparently what I do now is cry. Lol.

After I calmed down and we talked about it, we ate our soup and enjoyed Kripp playing some Hearthstone, exactly what I want to be doing with my life, and precisely who I want to be spending that time with. Soon after, Nick came over. We chatted for awhile about this and that, and then put on The Office while Nick continued Uncharted and I got scolded for continuing to scroll and not knit, which was so valid. I really would rather be knitting, I think it’s just that I love the iPad so much, it’s hard to transition away. I knit a good chunk more rows on my LYS shawl. I’m about 1 and a half repeats from doing my first color change. The Hedgehog fibers yarn is GORGEOUS and soft and I love working with it. I continue to encourage everyone to take up knitting, it is such a fine hobby AND YOU GET TO USE WHAT YOU MAKE (or gift it, whichever). Like you make an actual textile and it is amazing, and super impressive to non-knitters. To be fair, a lot of it IS impressive. But still. ;)

YarnHarlot posted an entry recently where she was able to take horrible, cheap dishcloth yarn and weave two very nice scarves out of it, and it has made me even MORE excited to learn weaving with Sean next weekend at Sow’s Ear. Another fantastic use of yarn, can’t wait.

Noah and I texted a bit about our food consumption and MyFitnessPal. Noah is realizing that MFP underestimates calories and overestimates exercise. I explained that with my Apple Watch , my scores get wonky as the watch actually tracks my true activity, which can lower (or raise) my total amount of food to consume for the day. It’s kinda cool but also kinda confusing. I’m just aiming for a specific range at this point until I get a better grasp of my activity levels. But Noah sent me a super cute text that ended with, “thanks for excitedly doing this with me, it’s keeping me motivated to become a thinner dood.” Awwww. It was so sweet, but more starkly put into perspective how he lives in the middle of nowhere with only white racists and teenagers as company, and I want to be a good friend! And you KNOW how much I love a good motivational health regimen. What better way than with friends who need support?!

I forgot to mention yesterday that Steve and I went to Stephanie’s Yoga Flow class for anniversary and that was super good and fun. She moved a bit too fast for my liking, and she was as dopey as ever. I prefer classes with slightly less poses in favor of holding to get a deeper stretch. If you’ve ever tried to hold a pose for even 45 seconds, you know that *less* poses does NOT equal *easier* poses. Moving too fast just means that you can’t settle in, make sure you’re doing the pose correctly, with all its micro adjustments and muscle fatigue. But it was good to go for anniversary, and I really want to find a class that works for Steve. Maybe I’ll take him to hot yoga, since that’s the same poses every time and they are slow and drawn out. But still the opposite of easy.

Now I’m about to head to bed. Nick is still here but I think he def needs to head home relatively soon because he has to work, and Steve will probably stay up playing Owl Boy on the Switch, which we just got in the mail yesterday. Looks good so far!