Yoga

I know, I have a serious post or three promised. And in the works. But I just had a whole bunch of excellent Chinese food and I'm sitting here feeling fat and not very serious, so I figured I'd write about my latest venture into exercise.

I started prenatal yoga classes last night. I'm almost a complete newbie to yoga; I took one class at the Y a couple of years ago, and between sessions being cancelled and me not going, I probably only attended a handful of sessions. I also have a yoga DVD that I like, but let's face it-- with a DVD, you could look like a curly fry and there's no one to correct your alignment. So I consider myself a newbie who at least knows what a downward dog is.

I've heard that yoga is a good exercise for preggo chicks, and it can eventually help with labor and delivery, so I signed up. I also want to stay as active as I can for as long as I can-- I am short and not exactly slender, so I have to be as careful as I can. (Yeah, look back at the first paragraph and note the "whole bunch of excellent Chinese food" comment. Whatever.)

Talking to a friend before I went to the class, she cautioned me to take it easy. "It's prenatal yoga," I scoffed. "It'll be a bunch of fat women sitting around breathing."

HA. I was wrong, like a wrong thing that is totally wrong. It was hard. Hard in a really good way, yes, but hard. The only thing she doesn't really do are poses that are inversions, which makes sense. Otherwise, it was a typical yoga class. I liked that she provided more than one way to do some of the poses, based on where you were in your pregnancy. As the class wore on, I tried to do some of the tougher poses. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. :)

I have never had particularly good balance, nor am I a strong woman who can stay in frozen poses for long periods of time. But I (mostly) didn't embarrass myself, it felt absolutely wonderful to stretch and to push myself, and it was definitely mind-clearing.

Two very big thumbs up. I'm going to make attendance at this class (it's weekly) a priority.

Acupuncture, yoga... If I start buying crystals and chanting, someone needs to smack me.

It's still the holidays, darn it

Hey! How were your holidays! Here at chez Plus One they were nice; as usual, Santa was ridiculously good to me. Also, there were no blowouts with visiting family, which is nice. There was stomach flu, but (knock wood) not from me.

It is snowing. It has been snowing. It feels as if it will always be snowing. I know this is not rational, but there it is.

I promise a longer, more thoughtful, and more interesting update later this week. I have genetic testing on Tuesday, for instance, and want to talk about the process as well as my thoughts on the whys and wherefores. But today, I'm just enjoying having the house back to myself, and I need to get to the gym. So far, weight gain has just been in the belly area, and I'd like to keep it that way.

So off I go. See you soon, when I have something more to offer. :)

Be happy

"You don't sound happy. You should be happy!"

This is a direct quote from my mother.

Apparently, I'm supposed to always sound happy, and if I don't, that means I'm not happy. I'm not quite sure how this computes, but in her mind, it does. So I get a lecture about being happy. And then she passes the phone to my father, who asks why I'm unhappy and what's wrong, and tells me that I should be happy.

There are so many problems with all this logic that I'm not even sure where to start. Sounding happy does not, repeat not, equal being happy. Trust me on this: I've put on the perky voice during times when I was so far from happy as to be practically comatose. I've sounded happy talking to people I'd like to set on fire.

What my parents are telling me, basically, is that I should fake it. That I should sound happy, because it makes them feel better-- regardless of how I'm feeling during the conversation. And, you know, if that's what they want? Come out and say it.

For the record, I'm in a fine mood today. I've gotten some stuff done, have puttered around the house, and am about to go to the gym. It's a nice day, if a bit gloomy. We were having a good conversation, but apparently, I wasn't up to the happy standard of their day.

(Tangentially, somewhere out there, there's a really good essay by someone (Kate Harding? Amanda Marcotte? Can't find it now) about how annoying it is, as a woman, to be told by complete strangers (generally men) to smile. That's about the level of annoyance I feel when one of my own parents tells me to sound happy.)

I'm continually amazed that I've reached this ripe old age of 40-something, and my parents still don't have the faintest idea who I am. I told a good friend once that my parents think my being politically liberal is a "phase." Her response was "Do they know you?"

(Frequent Citations is wise. And absolutely accurate.)

Anyway. I'm actually in a fine mood, despite how I may sound. Hope you all are, too.

It seems early for this

The Midwest has been hit by the first big storm of the year.

I kind of like snow, actually (especially since I don't have to drive to work). Snow puts a sparkly white blanket over the ugly dirt where flowers used to be, and it looks pretty on tree branches. If you walk outside during/after a snowfall, sounds seem muffled and distant, and you feel kind of like you're not really walking down your street at all, but down some strange, new, wonderful street you've never seen before.

What I don't like is when you get a couple of days of snow, and then the temperature drops like a stone, everything freezes over, and you slip and slide if you take two steps out of your house. (This is supposed to be what happens tomorrow.)

This is also the first snow since I lost Vertigo Dog. On the train home yesterday, a little part of my brain started thinking about how much suiting up was necessary and how many layers I was going to need to don in order to give her a proper walk when I got home-- and after a moment or two, the rest of my brain reminded me that she wasn't around to need a walk any more.

I would give anything to have to go to all the "trouble" of bundling up, just for the chance to give her one more walk.

Slackerdom

I kind of played hooky from work today-- not totally, because I worked from home a fair bit. But I didn't go in, so that's hooky.

The Big Firm that bought us is changing how we get time off, and today was a little bit of petulant "nyah nyah, I've got three more weeks to use the sick days you're taking away from me," and a little bit of "I'm tired, dammit."

(I find "food poisoning" to be a fine excuse to stay home. You can't claim a cold, after all; you would still have the remnants of that in a couple of days. Headaches are good. Fevers are touchy. Food poisoning? Excellent.)

It was a good slacker day. I slept in, got up and did (work) e-mail, went to Tar.get, came home and did a conference call, met up with a friend and went to Cost.co, then came home and did more e-mail.

Hey. It's not exciting, but it's life. And I love Cost.co. It's my happy place. Also, I ended up spending $40 and the friend I took ended up spending several times that. Ha! I am a Cost.co pimp-- and proud of it.