Monday, December 22, 2014

HIGHLIGHTS

Last blog post: November 6, 2014
Today: December 22, 2014
Time between posts: Roughly a month and a half.
Reasons: Many. See below. 

I am occupied. Busy. My now-life doesn’t look much like my then-life. It doesn’t look much like the holiday season of last year. It looks one-hundred-percent nothing like the holiday season of 2012.

I spent this year’s Thanksgiving at the 49ers game. That is football. It was my first NFL game. We didn’t have the littles this year. Katelynn and Nathaniel were with Jim last year so they went to Nathaniel's parents’ this year. Jim’s mom and sisters have 49ers season tickets. It’s where they were going for the holiday. So Jim, Dustin, and I made a weekend of it.

At 5:45AM on Thanksgiving day Jim and I got in our holiday Bikram yoga class. At 9:30AM I got in my holiday power yoga class. Then we packed the car with brown butter pumpkin cupcakes, lemon bars, and cauliflower tabouli. We grabbed sodas for the road and landed in Palo Alto just in time to swath ourselves in red and join the mass of soon-to-be-disappointed San Francisco fans on their way into the Field of Jeans. 2014's Thanksgiving dinner was a vegan dog—that Jim and I have been craving since (I’ve either contributed to significant improvements in that man or destroyed him altogether)—and diet soda.

Jim planned our hotel to be within a 2-minute walking distance to a Bikram studio so that the day after Thanksgiving I could go take class while the boys went on a long motorcycle ride through the redwoods—or through Endor as Dustin described it. (Dustin rode his motorycle over to SF and Jim rented one there; don’t go thinking those boys were riding nuts to butts. (I learn much descriptive language from Dustin.)) After my sweatfest I spent the afternoon working on yoga class sequencing.

Yoga class sequencing. That’s right, Dear Reader, little Romo is teaching yoga. I’m taking one or two classes a day and teaching a couple a week. While my teacher training won’t be complete until the end of January, for a reason I can’t so much identify, Tanya's seen promise in me, and I get to teach some of the Warm & Mellow classes at Juice Box.

I walk out of some of the classes feeling like a damn fine teacher. And some make me feel like I should personally refund each students’ fee. The sequence I taught on Saturday night was pretty damn bitchin’, so at this moment right now I’m feeling good about the whole deal. Also: I love doing it. So we’ve got that going for us.

I was telling my amazing Ella-yoga-teacher-friend the other day that much like getting a graduate degree in writing destroyed my ability to enjoy reading (it becomes all about learning something from the read and not just relishing the experience), becoming a yoga teacher kinda ruins yoga classes as a student. You aren’t just practicing in class anymore, you’re also trying to learn teaching stuff from the instructor. Oh, that was a good cue . . . Yes! What a perfect transition . . . And so on. I think that’s the beauty of maintaining my Bikram practice while training to teach vinyasa. Since Bikram classes are all the same and I’ve done a thousand-some-odd classes, I’m able to actually take the classes instead of spend the 90 minutes trying to make mental notes on killer cues and sequences.

It makes me extra grateful that I was able to just be in my power class yesterday and not focus on learning to teach from the teacher. I had the terrific opportunity to take Kim Arnott’s 108 sun salutation solstice celebration class at Pure Yoga yesterday. Yes, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT sun salutations. I was completely scared to do it. I thought my shoulders would revolt and fall off with the 108 chaturangas (tricep pushups for the uninitiated), but it felt fantastic. And my shoulders are fine. My hamstrings on the other hand are tender to the touch. 108 chaturangas: okey dokey. 108 forward folds: ahem, not so much.

If you are local, take a class from Kim. While she is a badass yogi herself and a damned hard teacher, she is also one of the most generous instructors from whom I’ve had the pleasure to take class. Her preparation for class is unparalleled, and I feel truly privileged to get to be her student.

I’m fortunate that way. I do a helluva lot of yoga—I’m on another 30-day Bikram challenge right now, because, you know, I just wasn’t doing enough yoga before—and I don’t have a teacher that sucks. The people that teach me yoga work to know their shit and are available to their students. I have so much good in my life and more than much of that good has to do with yoga and the people that come with it.

Also happening lately: Christmas.

Guys, I put up a Christmas tree. That is not something I generally do. Or ever do. But I was happy as happy can be to do it, because, well, this:


At present I’m the most awesome person I know. Jim’s the second most awesome because he didn’t pitch a fit about my putting up a pink tree. In fact, he likes it. I married a man who likes my pink flocked Christmas tree. I couldn’t be luckier.

Part of that good luck is the immediate family I married into. Remember how I said that my life now looks nothing like it did before? Dear Reader, I went to Disneyland. With kids. Some people think that Disneyland is for young children, but they are wrong. Disneyland is for Jim’s 23-year-old daughter Katelynn. You want to see something spectacular? Go to Cars Land with Katelynn. She’s a treat on top of a treat on top of a treat.

While short for me because I had to leave early get back to Reno for teacher training, the vacation was better than I expected. You know me a little. You can guess that Disneyland ain’t my thing. But what with the proximity of our hotel, Katelynn’s infectious enthusiasm, Dustin’s teaching me what makes a good ass on a girl, Josie’s insistence that I pound beignets with her, Benjamin’s love of Star Tours, and the VIP tour guide Jim arranged (read: human Fast Pass for all the rides—dude, he took us in through the back of Pirates of the Caribbean in order to skip the line), the trip was good enough to do again.  I can't believe I just wrote that.

When my mom was in town last week we didn’t have the littles, but Dustin was here and we had Katelynn over for dinner (Nathaniel was at work, good boy that he is), and we laughed too many times for me to remember what we laughed about. I told Katelynn that up until about two weeks ago I was basically terrified of her dry sense of humor, but I’m not scared anymore. That’s progress. Progress she found awfully funny. There’s so much funny when Katelynn’s around.

We have all our young people for Christmas this year. Seeing as we plan to spend Christmas Eve evening eating pizza and go-karting, it shall be a pretty super holiday. Traditionally untraditional. My specialty.

Highlights: complete.
Long-ass update: done for now.
The way things are going: see you in a month and a half. 

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