Bakeram Yoga

Note: We have a guest blogger today, my wonderful father, Bill Howe.  He is writing about something that has been really helpful to him and I hope it will be helpful to you too.

Approximately twenty years ago, as I was changing my youngest daughter’s diapers, I realized that original Desitin relieved the arthritis pain in my hands. I had been changing her diaper from a mild explosion. It was messy. I cleaned her up and to make sure she did not get any diaper rash, I liberally spread original Desitin all over her bottom. In the process, I got some over my fingers.

I could hear the inhales and exhales around me of the uji breath.  It struck me as harmonious: like the waves of the ocean.  It was oddly comforting and allowed me to melt back into the flow of my sweaty vinyasa.  I was in a small room with lovely wooden floors and the sun streaming in.  It was a lovely crisp morning and the room was quite cozy and filled with people who were excited to be there.  Their energies shown around me.  I could feel the santosha, or contentment, swell up around me.  I was sweaty with exhausted arms of jelly, but content.  I felt like I belonged. I love this feeling in yoga, when I feel exhausted and sweaty, but also peaceful and that somehow this is one of those wonderful moments to savor in life.

I was in the middle of an Ashtanga yoga class.  I had been invited by a teacher of mine, Rossana Lo.  It was a lovely class.  I had only done Ashtanga yoga once before in a mysore setting and hadn’t had a good experience.  I was overwhelmed by not knowing the series and intimidated by all the yoginis around me doing many contorted things with their bodies that I could not fathom ever doing. This was different.  The people were more accepting.  Most of them were still doing very contorted things that maybe someday I might or might not ever do, but this time it was ok.   I remember that yoga is about the journey and the destination is irrelevant because even if I were to get to the crazy pose point, there will always be something more. So I sweat and take chaturanga on my knees and remember to do the uji breath and it is good.

Butternut squash is hard to deal with.  I have vivid memories of the last time I tried to peel and dice one up.  My hands were bruised and broken by the time I was done.  However, it is fall and the wind is blowing outside and I am feeling cozy inside.  My husband and I have been eating seasonal produce with the garden cycles this year.  So it was time for winter squashes and root veggies and things that are very different from all the tomatoes and salads we have been eating all summer long.  My mother-in-law has a lovely recipe for butternut squash soup.  So I decide that to celebrate all this fallness, I am going to make the soup.

However, with the vivid memories of last time still in my head, I decide that I am not dicing up the squash nor the apples.  I will peel them both, but then the cuisinart is going to deal with the rest.  First mistake.  It seemed all well and good – it was still a pain to deal with, but I got everything sliced up.  So I started the cooking: I sauteed the leeks and the butter (the smell of butter cooking is just sooo yummy!).  Then I realized that the pot I was cooking them in was not distributing the heat correctly so the leeks started burning.  I started freaking out a bit.  However, I dive into the leeks with a pair of tongs and start fishing out the burned pieces of leek and add some more butter in.  That should fix things right?  Well it did for the moment.

Then I toss in all the sliced up butternut squash and the apples.  I am supposed to cook both until they are “caramelized” and then add in the chicken broth.  Caramelizing has always been a bit of a mystery me and I have never quite understood the difference between it and just cooking something until it is a bit soft.  At this point I realize that I might have a bit of a problem.  The butternut squash and apples that the cuisinart sliced up is way more than the required measurements of the recipe.  I had thought this wasn’t an issue, but I now realize that I have way too much food matter in the pot and a comparatively small surface to cook it all.  At about this moment, Alex walks into the kitchen.  He looks at my pot and me being slightly disheveled and says,

“Maybe this is a bit much for right now, why don’t we eat something else for dinner and I will put this away for the moment.”

I reply, “No, of course not – I am being stubborn, I am going to finish this soup and feed you some of it for dinner.”  Then I promptly begin to vigorously attempt to stir the contents of the pot, which is kinda hard.  I stir for a bit longer and Alex and I go back and forth as to whether I should be doing this or not.  Finally he wins, I realize that I am exhausted from a particularly hard workout that morning and I haven’t really eaten enough during the day so I am starving.  He directs me to Sophie’s bed and instructs me to lay down with her and he will get us some dinner.  Then he makes us some lovely boca burgers.

The good news is that today I approach the big pot in the fridge with a new take on it.  I have decided that the squash and apples are going back into the cuisinart and I will use the blade to pulse them into smaller pieces.  This worked quite well and I have soup cooling on the stove for tonight’s dinner with some pumpkin ravioli and a light pumpkin cream sauce.

Here’s the recipe if you decide you want to chop things!

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

2 T. unsalted butter

1 ½ c. sliced leek, white and pale green parts only

1 T minced garlic

6 c. peeled and roughly diced butternut squash

3 cups peeled and roughly diced apples

6 ½ c. chicken stock

Sea salt, preferably gray salt

1 c. chopped spiced candied walnuts

Met the butter in a large pot over moderate heat and cook until it turns nut brown.  Add the leeks and sauté until slightly softened, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and sauté briefly to release its fragrance.  Add the squash and the apples, raise the heat to high, and cook stirring, until the vegetables begin to caramelize, about 5 minutes.    Add the chicken stock, bring to a simmer and cover partially.  Adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the squash and apples are tender, about 40 minutes.  Transfer in batches to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.  Return to the pot, reheat to serving temperature, and season with salt.  Garnish the soup with the walnuts when serving.

On my cooking journey my next stop is raw foods.  I am fascinated by raw food diets.  I am not entirely sure how one can possibly feel full eating only mostly fruits and veggies, not to mention how you manage to get all of the necessary nutrients.  A friend of mine lent me a book called The Raw Truth: The Art of Preparing Living Foods by Jeremy A. Safron.  She further enticed me with stories of lovely desserts without sugar or butter.  My sweet tooth couldn’t wait to see!  So this week I decided that I would “cook” a raw foods meal.  I made Apples with Ginger Chutney, Gazpacho and for dessert: Bliss Balls.

So it turns out that raw foodists get a good portion of their nutrition from sprouts.  When plants sprout, they release a good amount of nutrients so that they can grow into a plant.  These nutrients aren’t available when it just in a seed form.  So by eating sprouted plants you get those lovely just released vitamins and minerals.  I had my first experience with sprouting because the bliss balls called for a cup of sprouted oat groats. Oat groats are the seed form of oats which surprising Whole Foods carried.  According to the book you are supposed to soak the groats for 6 hours and then in two days they will sprout.  In the meantime you need to keep them nice and wet.  So I soaked and I waited and I admit, my groats didn’t sprout.  I am not exactly sure why, but I think groats on are on the harder scale of sproutable things so I think I will go back and try something easy next time like alfalfa.  None the less, I mixed them into the bliss balls, which consisted of soaked dates (makes them easier to blend), peanut butter, cocoa powder (so I was supposed to use carob powder to be true to raw foods, but I don’t like carob powder), raisins and some spices.  They were tasty and I am looking forward to snacking on the leftovers today.

“Cooking” for raw foodists involves more of using the food processor a lot and a juicer if you have one, which I don’t.  They gazpacho is entirely just cut up veggies and fresh herbs.  I got to try out a new herb that I haven’t used before: tarragon.  It was a bit spicy smelling and added a lovely flavor to the gazpacho.  The ginger chutney involved more soaked dates, their soaking water and grated ginger.  Then you cut up apples to dip into it.  Super tasty!  I also have to admit a bias for anything involving ginger.  It is the best.

By the end of the meal, I was pleasantly full, which surprised me.  Although I admit that we also opened a bottle of champagne too because it just seemed like the perfect thing to go with the food; so nice and light and airy.  I doubt that champagne is raw food approved.  I have the leftovers in the fridge which I am going to eat for lunch.  My husband loved it all too – he really enjoyed the gazpacho especially.  I think the raw foods meal was a success and I will definitely try out some more recipes.

As you can tell from this site, I love to bake and cook.  So when Alex found a preview for Julie and Julia he was determined that I should see it the weekend it came out.  He even checked out Julia Child’s My Life in France for me to read as background.  I read the book at a feverish pace and finished it just hours before we went to see the movie.  The book is just fantastic.  My favorite part is the begining where she describes how she feel in love with French food.  The descriptions are just so full of love and wonder.  It resonated with me and inspired me to want to cook more and try and take my cooking up a notch.  I am job searching at the moment and so I even had a few days where I decided that I might go to culinary degree.  This quickly ended by realizing that it cost $50,000 for a year and half and I really have no desire to work in the craziness of a professional kitchen.  So instead I decided that I am going to cook something very hard sounding at least once a week as way to teach myself to be a better cook and save $50,000.  Then, because I have this lovely blog, I will write about it.

So back to the library we went for a Julia cookbook.  I got Julia’s Breakfasts, Lunches, and Suppers.  Flipping through the pages, I found the recipes for a “VIP Lunch” which included the recipe for the choulibiac, a watercress salad and pear sherbet.  Not having an ice cream maker, I decided that I would just make the choulibiac and the watercress salad: mainly because it just looked ridiculous and hard and I wanted something just like that.  Choulibiac is a french fish pastry.  It requires 5 different recipes before you can actually assemble the pastry and bake it.  It also has 5 pages of instructions, including a discussion on the use of white peppercorns (mature and used on fish and white sauces) versus black peppercorns (immature and used in heavier sauces and meat).

Yesterday at about 3:30 p.m. I began the first step: making a giant crepe.  Now crepes and I have never really gotten along because they are picky and delicate and I detest non-stick pans which are practically required to make them.  So I was a wee bit nervous.  I read the instructions and the ingredients.  They looked simple enough until I got to the part about leveling the oven.  You see, this crepe will be the size of a cookie sheet and about 1/8 and inch thick.  Therefore, Julia admonishes not to use a pan that is not absolutely level and to make sure that our oven is level.  I checked my pan and it looked level (although not non-stick) and hoped for the best with the oven.  I mixed up the crepe batter and buttered and floured my pan.  Then in it went to oven for several minutes and then under the broiler for several more.  During this process I was supposed to make sure the crepe didn’t “stiffen.”  What this meant was beyond me.  However, as I pulled the crepe out from the broiler and tried to gently pull it out of the pan, I abruptly realized: I let it stiffen and since it was stiff, there was no way I was getting it off the pan without breaking it.  Doh!  Fail on the crepe.  So I ripped it out with some frustration, tried it (tasty!) and threw it in the garbage and cleaned out the pan for try #2.  I mixed up another set of batter and waited and watched it in the oven very carefully.  I pulled it out and it started to come away from the sides.  I could get all of it off except for one side which was thinner and crispy.  No good.  It seemed either my pan or oven was not level.   However, I managed to save a good chunk of the crepe, decide it was good enough and move on to the next step.

At this point, I notice the sweat dripping down my neck and realize just how hot it has gotten in my kitchen.  I found out later that it had reached 94 that afternoon, which was quite hot in my un-air-conditioned house!  Nevertheless, I was going to persevere.  I chopped up the shallots and seasoned the fish and put it in the fridge.  Then I started to work on the pate a choux, which is a pastry paste.  This seemed to go well and I finished, put it and the pan it was in a bowl of warm water and moved on to the fish mousse.  The mousse seemed to go well.  In fact it looked so much like white chocolate mousse that I had a hard time convincing myself that it was really mostly cut up raw fish and that I should not taste it.  Then it was on to the mushroom duxelles.  They are very finely chopped (thank goodness for the Cuisinart!) mushrooms and more shallots.  The interesting thing about them is that after I put them through the Cuisinart, Julia instructed that you should wring the water out of them by putting them in a cloth dish towel and squeezing to get the water out.  I was very dubious of this because the mushrooms looked pretty dry to me.  Sure enough though, I put them in the dish towel, squeezed and water came out.  Then when I open the towel there was a very compact sphere of mushrooms in it.  Then the mushrooms went into some butter to saute until they “begin to separate from each other.” Did I mention this woman might love cream and butter more than I do?

Finally I was ready for the final assembly.  I looked at the clock and realized that it was already 5:45 p.m.  I couldn’t believe the time had passed so quickly; I had been completely absorbed in the recipe.  There were detailed photos in the book and I began to assemble per the instructions.  I even managed to use my damaged crepe in a way that no one could tell the difference.  As I finished off putting the last of the choux on top, I realized two things: I had forgotten to put in the second layer of mushrooms and my choux was way too runny.  Julia’s looked like frosting and mine was not holding its shape and falling all over the place.  I began to panic a bit.  Had I missed something else?  Was it going to turn out ok?  I reminded myself that there was little I could do at this point and that I might as well put it in the oven and hope for the best.  So into the oven it went and I started on the sauce.

The sauce required that I make a fish broth first.  I had procured “fish trimmings” from the fish person at Whole Foods and was now staring at a fish head and skeleton in my sauce pan.  This was a wee bit gross.  So I piled in the required veggies and then a cup of water and a cup of vermouth.  Have you ever used a cup of vermouth in anything?  I quite enjoy my dirty martinis, but never before I had used quite this much vermouth.  It was oddly satisfying.  Once the broth had simmered, out came the junk and in went the cream and a bit of choux (this stuff is very multi-purpose!).  As it thickened, I tasted it to see what spices it might need.  I was a bit suspicious, but the sauce was just delicious!  The flavor was very subtle and with the taste of fish without being fishy.  The sauce also seemed to have the cream almost layered over the broth as a secondary taste.  I was quite impressed.

At this point Alex walked in.  It was close to 7 p.m. and I realized that I was about to fall over.  I recruited him to help me finish up the salad while the choulibiac finished cooking.  Once I “began to smell a delicious odor of pastry, fish and mushrooms” I knew it was done.  I pulled it out and plated two pieces with the sauce and Alex delivered the salad to the table. We tasted it and it was unlike anything I have ever tasted before.  It was quite delicate and flaky.  Alex pronounced it a masterpiece and we commenced the eating of it.  I went to bed exhausted, but very satisfied that I had succeeded in some real ridiculous many-stepped cooking.

Here are some pictures.

The law and I have had a long and somewhat tumultuous relationship.  It began when I was 16.  Up until that point I really wanted to be an astronaut or an actress.  In my perfect world I would get to do both.  Then came my junior year of high school and a lot of AP science courses where I promptly realized that I did not like science that much.  To be very honest, it was just boring.  At the time, my mother suggested to me that I think about law.  She pointed out that I was quite argumentative and had no problem speaking in public.  She even reasoned with me that a lawyer gets to do some acting in the courtroom to convince the jury of her client’s position.  I mulled these thoughts over in my head and decided that it made sense.  I liked politics and was thinking more and more that that was where my life’s purpose was and all the politicians I knew seemed to have law degrees.

In undergrad I became very immersed in Texas politics and rationalized a law degree as a good booster for my political career and a good plan B if I ever decided that I was tired of politics or needed to put children through college.  Then there was law school itself.  First of all, it was located in Houston.  The city and I did not get along the first time we met and spent 3 years at each other’s throats.  It is only recently that we have come to some peace.  I didn’t mind the school part.  I had always been a good student and enjoyed reading the case law and learning the stories behind the litigants.

However, that is when my tentative relationship with law began to completely fall apart.  Law school was everything I was not.  It was all about conforming, keeping your mouth shut and being scared out of your mind (especially first semester!).  I did not conform, ever.  In fact throughout my life I would often make a point of doing things just because they were non-conforming.  I liked to argue politics and would argue with anyone pretty much anywhere.  This sounds all well and good, but after awhile, it was just too much.  I was exhausted.  I was generally the only one in my class that was willing to argue the liberal viewpoint of an issue.  The pressure to follow the established law school track was intense and there was no help for anyone who wanted to deviate from it.  I never dated because the men there simply couldn’t handle a woman that was as smart as they were.  Luckily I had some really good friends and I was still involved in local politics.  That and my desire to get the hell out of Texas kept me sane.

By the time I arrived in DC in January of 2005, I was pretty much convinced that I would never practice law.  I forced myself to take the Maryland bar because I figured I might as well just in case.  It was not a fun experience and my antagonism with law grew.  However, after three years of trying to stay employed in politics, I was tired of job searching every time the money for my position got cut off.  Law beckoned to me seductively.  Come practice it said, we will give you a decent salary and guaranteed employment.  So I started applying to law firms.  I was still applying to political jobs, but I reasoned, if something came through on the law side, I would see what it was like.

Within a week, I had two interviews with small firms.  I decided that it was fate and I took one of the offers.  Over the next year, I discovered exactly what it was like to practice law.  It was a topsy turvey year and not one that I would ever like to repeat. Needless to say, when I moved to the Bay Area, law and I were not on good terms.  However, I was trapped.  This is how law gets to you: you pay all that money for the legal education, then you pay to take the bar, then you pay bar dues.  Then you move out of the jurisdiction and have to re-take the bar.  Despite the fact that it costs another $5,000 to do it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to practice anyway, you do it because you spent all that money already and if you want or need to practice again someday it would be a shame to have wasted all that time.

Fast forward a year.  I have just finished taking the bar for the second time and it really got to me this time.  It was hard and the questions were unfairly random.  I am tired and I want nothing more than to chunk it all out the window and leave law behind forever. But somehow I know that it isn’t going to be that easy.

My dear readers you will have to forgive me, this post has absolutely nothing to do with yoga or baking, but instead just the inner workings of my head that need to somehow get out on paper in an attempt to get them to make some sort of sense.

I am taking the bar again at the end of July because I didn’t pass it in February.  Which means I am studying again.  This time around I am not doing a course, but instead I feel like I have a sense of what I need to work on so I have structured a schedule around this.  Problem is, I am incapable of making a schedule that is actually doable.  This goes hand in hand with my love of to do lists and of crossing things off them.  This creates a bit of a problem to say the least.

I decided that this time around I wasn’t giving over my entire life to stuyding.  I just couldn’t do it again so soon.  I need things to stay somewhat normal.  This means that I was going to do yoga, run, have my weekends free and get time off to go see my sister in Houston and a family reunion in Taos.  So last week, I sat down to make a schedule.  Keeping all this in mind, I figured I could devote about 4 hours a day to studying.  Suprisingly that is way harder to fit into a day than you would think.  Then I went through all of the subjects I needed to know and started putting them into the schedule. However, if I was being honest with myself (which I wasn’t) I can’t accomplish in 4 hours what I put down for a day.  Most days probably have closer to 5 or 6 hours worth of work in them, especially when you add in the time to go to the bathroom, search the fridge for snack food and just generally procrastinate which I find if I don’t alot time for it just festers into an entire wasted afternoon.

So here I am today, on day 4 of the lovely schedule and I am going to be behind.  I spent 5 and half hours yesterday studying and promptly burned out on today at hour 3:30.  Additionally this weekend, I made a giant to do list and Alex and I worked through the majority of it, which was quite impressive and oh was it so much fun to cross it all off.  However, I worked myself into the ground and fell asleep at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night. So needless to say, I might possibly be a bit sapped.

So I did what I always do when I am in need of study motivation, I called my sister, Peggy.  She is a medical student and so has much experience with studying and burnout.  I started to regal her with my lack of accomplishments and promptly got a lecture back from her about how I need to prioritize and that I couldn’t work my into the ground and burn out now.  Furthermore, my schedule seemed entirely unreasonable and I needed to rework it.  To which I replied, “But I don’t wanna rework it!  I just want to get it done!” To which she basically laughed at me.  Which was probably exactly what I needed. Although entirely not what I wanted, I wanted some magical way to accomplish everything on my schedule and my to do list and somehow remain a sane person.  So I will work on the schedule.  I will attempt to make it more reasonable while still including the important parts.  And yet, once again, I will attempt to work on one of my biggest challenges in life: to accept my value as a human being and stop pushing myself so hard to be a human doing.  Big sigh.

It is official: staying home is the new going out according to Marie Claire.  Today, I indulged in a pedicure which my feet desperately needed.  One of my favorite parts about pedicures is all the very girly, ridiculous, outdated magazines that I would never actually buy, but I admit to really enjoying reading.  They are kinda like junk food reading.  There is no real substance (yes, veggies have all sorts of really good health benefits and surprise, surprise, men like blow jobs!).  But they are brightly colored and have lots more colors inside which draw me from page to page.  Lately these magazines have started writing many “cost saving tips” (although buying a $100 dollar skirt does not count as a “steal” in my book) amongst the rest of the articles. One of these such articles proclaimed that gone were the days of mojitos and 3 course meals and instead people were having friends over for dinner.  It then proceeded to detail a couple of recipes to make for your first dinner party.

I hope this trend continues.  I have loved dinner parties for as long as I can remember.  When I was younger, all of the major holidays had large formal dinners associated with them.  We didn’t normally have people over because we didn’t have any close family.  But they were still large productions and so much fun.  We would have a family meeting during dinner a week or two beforehand to plan the meal and then assign the dishes to each person.  Everyone in my family cooks very well so it was always quite tasty!

I was always in charge of setting the table.  It was always an elaborate procedure, but it just looked magical when it was done.  I would spend a good hour ironing the white linen tablecloth and napkins.  Linen is really hard to iron, but there was something almost meditative about it.  Then I would carefully take the tablecloth off the ironing board and lay it across the table.  I even grabbed the iron and would work on any creases it acquired in the move. Next came the silverware.  We had acquired an extra set of real silver from my father’s parents and it was so heavy and cool in your hands.  His mother was very strict on manners and I learned from her exactly how the silverware should be set and in what order in conjunction with the plates and glasses.  Once the silver was set, it was followed by the plates and then the glasses (both water and wine).  Then I would place the candelabra in the center of the table and make sure the candles were secured.  This was followed by the salt and pepper shakers (did you know that salt tarnishes silver so you should always store salt shakers sans salt?) and placement of all the serving bowls and their accompanying serving spoons. Once everything was set, I would step back to admire my handiwork and feel all nice inside.

As I have grown older, I still like throwing dinner parties.  I threw them in my studio in DC where we had to sit on the floor because I had no furniture and then more and more when I met my husband who actually owned furniture!  When we got married, we were fortunate enough to get a set of china.  I love this china probably more than is warrented for a set of plates.  Tonight we are throwing a small dinner party for some friends of Alex from work.  I have throughly enjoyed going through all the motions of getting ready for the party tonight.  The table is set and it still looks magical.  I hope this dinner party trend continues even when people can afford to eat out again. I know my friends and I will keep it up.

Yesterday was a good yoga day: yummy as a favorite teacher of mine would say.  I have been feeling very low energy lately and getting through yoga and my runs has been something of challenge.  But yesterday was good.  Alex took Sophie to work with him.  This left me with extra time and energy before yoga because I there was no Sophie walk to do.  So I decided to bike to yoga for the first time in a bit.  It felt so nice to stretch my legs.  They had so much energy running through them and it just felt wonderful.  I felt unstoppable.  The cool morning breeze blew through all around me and I flew to yoga.

I got to yoga all nice and sweaty with my muscles feeling nicely stretched out.  The class isn’t normally particularly difficult for me and this morning I just flowed through it.  I felt like I could get just a bit more out of the twisty poses.  When the choice of child’s pose/down dog/another vinyasa came up, it seemed the natural choice to go through the vinyasa and then press back into down dog and just feel the nice stretch in my arms and shoulders.  It was just lovely.  I remembered what it feels like to really feel apart of my practice and to feel at one with my body instead of constantly feeling like I was fighting it (and then yelling at myself for fighting it instead of just accepting where I was that day – my brain is capable of creating so many chances to yell at myself!).  My body felt very connected and it was very nice.  Now if only I can accept with grace the other days my body is not quite so happy with me

This spring has been full of starts and stops and I keep waiting for it to actually stick.  One day it is bright, sunny and warm out and the next day it is cold and cloudy.  My mood seems to follow this ebb and flow of the weather too.  Last week it was so sunny and so warm (a bit too warm for my non-air-conditioned house) and I was happy and soaring with the thought that spring had finally arrived and hoping that it would stay warm.  I brought out my favoritist brightly colored sun dresses and wore them with abandon. This week it is cloudy and downright cold and I am cranky and the world just feels so very blah.

After I took the bar at the end of February, I had great hopes for the start of Spring.  I figured that out here in warm California land, like my home state of Texas, March would signal the end of the coolness and the beginning of the warm up to summer.  I was very much looking forward to the new start.  I would be done studying and worrying about the bar and I could begin to get my life (and the house!) back in order again.  While I studied through rainy, cold February I imagined myself sitting outside at a cafe sipping coffee and typing away on my computer while the warm sun warmed my shoulders.

Alas, this did not happen.  It has gotten warm a couple of times, only to get cold again.  I feel like actual spring/summer has to be quite around the corner, I am just not sure where or when it will appear.  I feel like this mirrors my life at the moment.  I am trying to start out on a new path, but at times it is harder than I expected.  I feel like there is something wonderful out there just waiting to happen or for me to stumble upon, but I don’t really know where it is or how to get to it.

I keep retreating in: back to the safety of my home.  I am sleepy in the morning and it is hard to leave my warm bed.  I feel like I need to be dealing with things at home and getting them prepared for something.  I am just not quite sure what that something is.  Even my yoga lately has been very slow and I seldom have the energy to get through the more difficult sequences or hold a pose for very long.  I find myself often choosing child’s pose instead of holding down dog or taking the extra vinyassa.   I am no good at waiting so whatever I am waiting for, I hope it reveals itself soon and I can go back to being me: back to bounding out of bed in the morning, back to attacking my to do list with excitment and lots of energy and back to a yoga practice where pushing myself to new levels feels so good to my muscles and my body.

Spring, wherever you are, I am waiting for you!  Not so patiently, but I am doing my best.