Satan Called Today...

He wanted to know if I had any rooms available so he could come warm up, because it's hotter than hell here. He said he's due for a vacation anyway. By day he sees the sights in rovers with no range, and by night he likes to toast marshmallows at the bonfires of vanity. He says it's heavenly. What a joker.  

Anyway, he has an iPhone (shouldn't you?) and he said you can follow him on Twitter. If you caught his update that said, "warming up at the sweat lodge, doing yoga" that was here.

He said he was going to have a talk with the Stones about changing the name of the song to "Sympathy for Sarah," because no mortal should pay rent to endure this kind of heat. You should get it for free by living a life of sin. 

Yesterday was so chilly I almost had to turn on the heat. But I didn't. I put on a sweater and walked barefoot on cold floors and reveled in the numbness in my toes and my nose and worshipped the fog god. I did a little dance. And now this. 

Sweaters, scarves, boots, fireplaces. Shear the cashmere goat. Bring on the cold. I'm so ready.

Off to Pho for a steaming bowl of spicy-hot noodles. I hope they have A/C.  

Backseat Explanation of "The Market"

Last night the kids overheard me on the phone talking to a friend about the bottom falling out of the market. I'm resisting the urge to use more colorful, profane language here, in an effort to keep this a family-friendly blog. 

The following discussion ensued:

Ryan: "Mom, what do you mean the market dropped?"

Me: (How do you summarize the stock market to an eight year old?). "It means the, uh, the price of lots of stocks fell all at the same time."

Ryan: "Oh. At which market? Gelson's, or Trader Joe's?"

Me: (This could be good). "Trader Joe's."

(Pause)

Rachel: "You mean it fell on it's side? It just fell over?"

Ryan: "No, Ray-CHEL. It means that the stock at the market is less money now. Like if you wanted wanted to buy, like, a wine glass that WAS $40, now it's like $20."

Me: (Of all the billions of things an 8 year old could choose as an example, from Trader Joe's, no less.... a wine glass?)

Ryan: "I mean, things that were $400 are like a hundered dollars now."

Rachel: "but what dropped.....?"

Ryan: (sigh) "Mom, Rachel just doesn't understand the stocks at Trader Joe's. She's too little. But that's great! Now our groceries won't cost very much money, and we can get stuff for, like a dollar." 

Juice Evangelist

I drank this for dinner.

Using the juicer is fun. Sometimes drinking it's output is not.

The kids stare in fascinated disgust.

They look a little nervous.

Like I might ask them to try it.

(But they love putting the carrots in and watching them get annihilated)

This will be my last juice-centric post. Swear.

I'm a little obsessed, maybe.

Wakes Up Late Her Makes Disgruntled

What does it mean when you wake up at 6:45 and consider your morning shot? At that point, how long before you show up at Dennny's at 4:00 a.m. looking for coffee and a skillet scramble just because you've got so many hours to kill before daylight?

Where is my yogi mind, the equanimity, because ever since I rolled over and peeped those digitized numerals eulogizing the breaking dawn, all I've been able to mutter is: aaahhuurrggh. Is that a suitable string of gobbledygook to express the frustration of time lost... sleeping? (Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sleep. At nighttime. Morning: Wake. Nightime: Sleep. I'm primal that way.)

It was a thwarted morning. Planned a 50 mile trek to my yoga mecca to practice with my favorite guru and voluntarily turn myself into an independent climate zone of raining sweat. Then I realized, late, that guruji is out of town and his substitute, with all due respect, doesn't justify the expenditure of time or fuel. Now what?

Beach? Tried. By 7:30 already clogged with sensibly-shod strollers and their cacophonous chatter; parking lot stuffed full. Even more irksome because the morning was gifted with an epic marine layer that turns the place into a padded, cloistered, muted marine wonder world. Wah.

So I wound up at the farmers market looking for new things to turn into compost heap juice (photos above).  A lady told me that dandelion greens are the ticket, so I picked some up. Otherwise, standard fare. 

Speaking of juice. The juice of smashed grapes. I am not a wine snob. Here is my highbrow criteria for identifying a good wine: It tastes good to me. The wine pictured above does just that, and it's cheap (you know friends are family when they feel comfortable bringing an $8 bottle of wine to the party). This stuff doesn't even say what kind of grapes are in there. It just says it's from a vineyard numbered 10 somewhere in Washington. So, if you're going to a party with people who won't stare down their noses at you, and you don't want to bust the bank but you love your friends too much to induce the involuntary mouth-pucker of Two Buck Chuck, get this.** Wine snobs need not apply. And as a footnote, a glass or three of this humble vintage was the perfect companion to the (i thought) snore-fest of last night's debates. Hmm. Maybe that's why I woke up with rumpled karma. Watching John McCain hoist his permanently akimbo right arm and flick his tongue, lizard-like, over his pasty, unmoving lips would have a disquieting effect on anyone, regardless of political affiliation. 

**I recently tried this wine again. It wasn't nearly as good as I remembered. Not awful, for eight bucks; drinkable, but hardly an Opus One-like mishmash of grapes.  

Back To School Night

This one's for you, Dad.

Girlchild, Buttoned Down

Last night was back-to-school night. Having two kiddos in the same school, parental duties were divided between classrooms and along gender lines. Dad went to boy's classroom, mom to girl's. I arrived slightly late (or should i say typically late), and was ushered to my daughter's dwarf-sized desk. Now, I'm a shorty, and my knees were level with the top of the desk, if that gives you any idea how itty-bitty these things are. I was pleased, however, that my butt stayed within the confines of the bitty-chair, and that was consolation enough for never scaling the heights of five-foot-five. but wait, this isn't about me (oops, i'm a blogger now. sometimes i forget). 

Anyway, as i entered, the teacher, a radiating angel of a woman, was discussing her approach to problem solving. In short, she asks the students not just to come to her with a problem, but also with a proposed solution. She looked at me, smiled beautifully, and launched into this story:

"Today one of the little girls in class came to me with a problem. She couldn't get her water bottle open."

It was right here that I knew. And I don't know how I knew, but I did, that it was going to be my daughter. Maybe it was the way she smiled at me when I sat down, kind of like they forshadow events in the movies. Or maybe it's because I've opened so many water bottles for her it was just too familiar to be anyone else's little girl. I took a deep breath and waited for the rest, hoping I wouldn't blush or be obliged to make apologies after class. I was grateful that she was keeping "the little girl" anonymous.

"I asked her what her proposed solution to the problem would be."

"The girl said, 'to ask you for help.'"

"And I said, 'What's the magic word?'"

"And the little girl said, 'SHOPPING!!'"

The teacher was clearly tickled and delighted by this twist on the magic word every child has had engrained since birth (except mine, apparently). Still, I had to speak up, since my lil bit o' honey claimed to have learned this "magic word" from me ( for all the world not a shopper). I blamed it on the rightful owners of the onus, her grandparents.... my parents, who are, handily, the catch-all culprits for everything (oh, I need therapy? It's my parent's fault! My mom said a cuss word when she was pregnant with me!). 

Love ya dad, you'll be pleased to know that she was listening. :) 

Girlchild, Unleashed

Not To Belabor The Point, But...

It's a new place, and the same place, every day. I always take my iPod. But when you have this all to yourself, it seems like a crime against nature to fill your ears with anything else. Sometimes Ma Nature talks, and her voice is crazy beautiful.

This is my favorite rock formation. I call it (in my head) Alien Rock, because it's an almost freakishly perfect circle. Sometimes when the tide is out and there isn't anyone else around (which is pretty much always) I do handstands on it. Or more frequently I just stand on it in absolute amazement that I am, well, standing on this rock, in this place, in this moment. I climb on the other rocks, too, and remember the year I took rocks for jocks in college, and it rocked my world (haha anyway, capital-G Geek). That winter I drove my family out of their minds as we drove from Denver to Snowmass and I insisted on telling them about the mountains surrounding us, how they were formed, what they were made of, and how they differed from other tectonic phenomena around the world. Boy, was I fun. 

 

Alien rock from my perch on the climing rocks, 'bout 6:20-ish.

Well, I do. So I wrote it. It's a sand blog. An ephemeral blog. A get-eaten-by-the-tide blog.

And this. Always.

Morning. Beach.

Perfect morning. Perfect season. Perfect Ocean. Four miles of miraculous solitude. Musical surf. Evolution took my fins, the ocean still feeds me. 

Yogi In A Cardigan.

Waiting for first light, so I can hit the beach. Summer officially ended a few days ago, didn't it? Where'd the time go?

Yesterday I Drank 24 oz. Of Kale/Beet Juice

Do I need to say anything else?

Bootz, Mate! An Honorable Mention From Down Under.

Weird, but at least the Aussies don't try to hide their sense of humor. On someone who wears their eccentricity with aplomb these might even work. It's the Anti-UGG. Thanks CRA. 

Disasters: Natural and Man-Made

1. Ike (Natural)
2. The Banking Crisis (Man-Made)
3. Sarah Palin (Uhhh.... Both)
4: These:

Dominatrix meets pinup girl meets wall street cross dresser meets The Matrix, meets sex and the city. Heels + Booties = Hooties.

Whoever designed these shoes had to have been in on the boondals crisis (boondals boondoggle?). Or maybe it's just the luxury footwear industry trying to amuse itself through some lean times.

For $995.00--yes, Nine-Hundred-Ninety-Five American dollars--you could own shoes this strange-looking and uncomfortable. 

Blogaholics Anonymous: The first step is admitting you have a problem

Hi. My name is Sarah. I am a blogger. 

I never thought it would happen to me. I never thought I'd be standing here, saying this....

In truth, I haven't reached addictive levels of bloggery yet. I think first I have to surmount the feelings of criminal self-absorption that attend this activity.

But c'mon, everyone's doing it. 

Certainly. And that's why my virginal blog status is something like five million (and sliding). It's also why there was an article in the New York Times last week about parents who are blogging for their newborns, sometimes in the voice of the newborn: "my favorite food is mommy's milk. yum!" (thanks j.b.) 

There is undoubtedly a large population of drooling, inarticulate, illiterate, inchoate and even in-utero human beings who have a much higher blog status than I do. 

Lovely. 

And I even have a fancy piece of paper from a leafy, lofty liberal arts institution that says I can string words together all by myself, dammit. (The paper doesn't actually say dammit... I don't think. Then again I'm not sure I ever fully read it because it's in Latin. Sarah, for your great show of discipline, intelligence, and occasional debauchery, we confer upon you this degree with high honors, dammit.)

But lets not squander precious time on halting fits and starts of self-conscious equivocation. Let's do this thing.  

Since I've really just been getting my feet wet with picture posts and the like, let me share with you, on this first, texty post, some of the perils of coming late to the blog party:

1. Good blog names ain't easy to come by. And in comparison to one's own, everyone else's seems incredibly clever or witty or cool or sexy. You spend a good few hours searching for a blogosphere identity that suits you, maybe even makes you look clever or creative, and muttering to yourself, "why didn't i think of that?" And maybe you did, but it was already taken. It's crowded on these here webbernets.

2. I like yoga. Some would say that's a gross understatement. But I am a real person with all kinds of spastic realities to wrangle on a daily basis. I'd love to say I'm a zen master, that I've conquered the ruckus-causing fluctuations of the mind.  I'm working on it. I'm right on schedule to get it done in my 470th lifetime. In that life I may be a camel, cloned and genetically engineered for hydro-resilience on a hot, dry planet. But at least maybe i'll be in India. 

Anyway, it has been suggested that I put this blog to use for professional purposes. Another quandry for the neophyte blogger: personal or professional? Hmmmmm.

How about this as a post: 

Mindfulness in habitual asanas: redefine your down dog. 

or

Economy of Movement: awareness in transitions to deepen your practice

Or maybe some anatomy?

The psoas muscle and it's vital link to.... everything.

Have I lost you yet?  Thought so.

And so my posts here, when i get comfy enough about making them, will be eclectic and personal (not too personal), and i'll leave the yoga business for submissions to Yoga Journal.  

That's it. That's my hello. Hello. My name is Sarah. I am a blogger. 

Besos y abrazos.

s.

Magic, Personified.

Tiggs: "I'm cheering for LaMock"

Me: "Huh?"

Tiggs (exasperated): "LaMock! LaMock Obama! I'm cheering for him!"

Her big bro thinks his Lego fund will be better protected with... that... man in office... and that.... woman... whose name casts a pall on my own.

And so we are a house divided.

Meditation Point, 6:45 a.m.

I get to start my day with this? Gratitude.

Now Here's a Surprise

Boondals on clearance. 

Damn. 

I paid full price at the Xena: Glam Rock Warrior Princess store

(I'll stick to Warrior I, II and III.... barefoot)