Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all..

On Christmas morning we woke up to a the beautiful, snowy view from my parents house...
I always love being at my parents house...they live in the woods right on a lake, and it makes me feel like I'm at a cabin. I made coffee and after everyone had stumbled out into the kitchen in their pajamas, we started on the Gorder family Christmas tradition of pancakes and present opening.

At around 10am, our family friends Jim and Jayne stopped by - Jim and Jayne are almost like second parents to me, and their daughter Alex is one of my best friends, so it was great to see them, and Jayne gave us an adorable loaf of homemade teddy bear bread!A couple of hours later, we drove down to Ben's parents house for more gifts and dinner with his family. Ben's mom, Bekka, who is a State Fair prize-winning knitter, made me a gorgeous cashmere scarf - probably my favorite Christmas gift this year.

The house looked beautiful, warm and Christmasy - just perfect.

We had a great time with Ben's family - his grandparents Bud and Loey, two sets of aunts and uncles, four cousins (all high-school and college age) and parents. Lots of laughter, wine and great food.

When we got back to my place, we lit some candles, turned on the Christmas tree lights and watched part of Fantasia (another Christmas gift from Bekka and a childhood favorite).

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night :)

Santa Claus is coming to town...

On the 23rd, I went to a class at the Om Collective at night - it was a really lovely class, very multigenerational and full of laughter. After class Ben and I spent the evening just the two of us, with a delicious homemade asparagus and guryere tart and some scotch :) Then we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince until we fell asleep...

In the morning, we had our very own Christmas morning before the madness of two days of family descended upon us. We made hot cocoa, opened presents and finished the movie. Ben gave me a lovely cloth and bracelet from his summer in Ghana and I gave him a J. Crew sweater and a Gryffindor scarf. Harry Potter nerds forever :)

After we'd finished opening gifts and washed a few dishes, we drove up to my parents house for spritz cookies! My dad is doing amazingly well with his new hip - zooming around without even a walker! So impressive. Also impressive was how quickly Ben picked up the subtle nuances of the Spritz cookie press. That thing can be awfully tempermental and he was very good at it.

Then, we drove down to St. Paul for the annual Christmas eve choir marathon. We sing two services on the 24th - one at 5:30 and one at 10:30. Our drive to church quickly became an adventure when Ben's tire got a flat on the way in to town! We stopped at a gas station to fill it with air, but the air pump was broken, so we patched it with a can of foam and drove to church. While I sang at the 5:30 service, Ben was driving around St. Paul, trying to find someone who would change his tire. Unfortunately, Christmas Eve is not the time to need a new tire. But, the foam tire held up pretty well and we made it to the restuarant to meet my parents and sister for dinner.

Dinner at The Lexington is a family tradition - mostly because it's one of the only places that's actually open on the 24th. I love eating there because they always make it look so Christmasy... and it's close enough to church so I can get there and back in time to rehearse for the second service, which is usually more of a concert than a service (this year we sang Vivaldi's Gloria)FINALLY after the second service (which was waaay too long... too much sermonizing...) we made it home by about 12:45, took some pictures in front of the tree which quickly deteriorated into goofiness, and then went to sleep.

Coming up... Christmas day!!!

We have nothing to fear but fear itself

I have been having a hell of a time with Pincha Mayurasana. For the record, I love arm balances. My extreme lack of hip flexibility causes me to love pretty much anything that makes me feel like I have accomplished something yet does not require my legs to be splayed out everywhere. Obviously this is something I'm working on, since the whole point of yoga is to work through difficult situations, but sometimes it's fun to hang out in a figure 4 arm balance or eight-angles pose after struggling through a weak, sad version of wide-legged seated forward bend.

Pincha, however, had me stumped. Handstand against the wall - not a problem. Headstand or tripod headstand anywhere - not a problem. But every time I tried to kick up into forearm stand, fear of falling kicked in, my shoulders collapsed and my head usually ended up bumping unceremoniously into the ground, resulting in an awkward flailing headstand sort of situation, which is obviously not what I was going for. I should probably mention that the alignment for f0rearm stand is much, much harder than headstand or handstand. It takes a lot of concentration to keep melting your heart and plugging your shoulders in, because the position of your arms makes them want to round forward. If you are instead focusing on being scared of falling, you're pretty much screwed.

Anyways, last weekend my dad had hip replacement surgery. He's been putting off doing this pretty much forever, despite the fact that he has had painful osteoarthritis for about 12 years and his surgeon did not understand how he was continuing to function. Yes - he continued trucking around, going to work, going to the gym (low-impact activities like biking and weight lifting only), and generally living life despite immense pain and inch-long bone spurs, mostly because, I think, he was afraid, he recognized the inherent risk that comes with any major surgery - you might not make it out the other side.

My dad is an extremely stubborn guy (obviously), and would say he was just waiting for the right time, but really there is no "right time" to have your leg essentially taken off and put back on again - the technology will always be a little better next year. This summer, he finally decided to go for it - I think it was a combination of wanting to be able to walk me down the aisle without pain, wanting to jog with my sister during her final college track season, and just being ready. I hung out with him the night before he went to the hospital and watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock and The Office. The morning of the surgery, he texted me and my sister to tell us he loved us - and I realized that, as morbid as this sounds, he had made peace with the possibility that he might not be around tomorrow. I know, hip replacements are pretty routine and the risk is extremely low, but in order to make himself OK with going through with it, my dad had to first overcome his fear of the worst possible outcome, which is pretty amazing.

A couple days later I went to visit him in the hospital, where he was already back to his old self by making his PT into a contest and concentrating on beating all of the other recovering patients on the "feet walked" chart in the hall. Welcome to my family. Every other sentence he said was "I can't believe I did it. I can't believe it's over." Part of the practice of yoga is letting go of attachment, including your attachment to your body and the phyiscal world, and making peace with death. My dad had become a yogi without ever practicing a single asana.

When I got home, I decided that if my dad could overcome that much, I could certainly learn to not be afraid of banging my head on the ground in Pincha, so I rolled out my yoga mat next to the wall. "Hey there mat," I said. "My head might bang into you but I think that is OK." I placed my forearms on the ground in modified down dog, walked my feet in, willed my shoulders to stay in place, told myself I didn't care if I fell, lifted one leg and kicked up. A second later, my feet landed against the wall, and my head did not land on the ground! I stayed there for a few seconds, testing my balance, then brought my feet back to the ground, rolled up my mat and put it away, and made some cookies for my dad.

Mean people suck

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love. ~ Mark Twain

Without going into too much detail, over the last couple of days I've witnessed a couple of random acts of meanness - and when I say meanness, I mean actual mocking of random strangers for no reason. It made me sad - maybe I'm just extremely naive but I really don't understand why someone would ever do that. I made a decision a while ago that I would do my best to never deliberately be the cause of someone's bad day, and that even if someone was cruel to me I would never stoop to their level. I forget who said it, but I read a quote to the effect of "treat everyone with respect even if they don't do the same for you - not because they are kind, but because you are." Mean people especially get to me during the holidays, when we are supposed to be showing our neighbors love and compassion.

This morning I decided that instead of continuing to be mad at mean people, I will make the week leading up to Christmas a random act of kindness week, and will try to go out of my way to give one small gift each week to someone I wouldn't normally think of giving too, and counteract the bad energy with good energy

So suck it, mean people. You cannot win.

Snowmageddon etc.

If you live anywhere in the Midwest, chances are some snow got all up in your business last weekend. Chances are also that the aforementioned snow is now being plowed into 10 foot piles that you have to walk around to cross the street to get to the grocery store...or maybe that's just me.

Snowmageddon Day 1: Friday Night/Saturday Morning

On Friday night I went to the Doomtree Blowout at First Ave with some friends from school.

Needless to say it was a great night of music that lasted from about 8:30 or 9pm until 1am (and yes, they were actually throwing Christmas presents at the audience). When we entered First Ave, it was not snowing at all. When we left, we could barely see the road or anything else for that matter. Getting home was quite the adventure because, as it turns out, getting on the highway near Target Field sends you on strange detours and you end up missing several exits before finally being spit out onto 94. Who knew. So we had to turn around, wet icy snow was messing up my windshield wipers etc, but we made it back safely. Hooray!

Snowmageddon Day 2: Saturday

When I woke up about 6 hours later, it was still snowing. A lot. I realized the fact that I do not own a shovel with which to dig my car might prove to be a potential problem, so I bundled up to walk over to CVS. CVS is about 3.5 blocks away, and I am in pretty good shape. However, by about block 2 I was muttering inappropriate words, wishing I had snowshoes and contemplating turning around. I felt like a pioneer, trekking through the snow to get supplies to feed their family who was trapped in a log cabin. However, 1) all I needed was a shovel, 2) I'm pretty sure most pioneers did not have poofy wind-proof coats, and 3) my log cabin has radiators.

Subplot: My dad had hip replacement surgery on Friday morning, and I'd planned on going to visit him on Saturday but after hearing horror stories from Amanda and Lia of not being able to drive more than 10 feet from where they were parked, I decided to stay home with some soup and my pricing final.

Snowmageddon day 3: Sunday = digging day

I diligently woke up at 6:50 am, put on about 80 layers of clothing and trudged out to my car. For some reason I thought I had to move it by 8am... I wondered if it could possibly be as bad as I expected.

It was.

My car is the one in back. Also the temperature was 5 below. After about 45 minutes of solid shoveling, it looked more like this:

I quickly realized that I probably needed help. I figured that all of my friends who live nearby were either still snowed in, working, or unable to drive - however, my mom was about 2 miles away at Abbott with my dad, and also his SUV.

After we dug out my car, we stopped briefly by the hospital to see my dad, then went over to St. Paul to dig out my sister, who repaid us in freshly baked cookies!
And then, back to Abbott where we supervised my dad on his evening walk and then grabbed some dinner and watched the original Miracle on 34th Street. And that is the tale of my weekend of snow. In a related story, it took me 2 hours to make the 10 minute drive to school on Monday (I drove instead of taking the bus because traffic was so bad I had no idea when the bus would actually get there).

What I am thankful for part 1

This Thanksgiving week really reminded me how blessed I am to have such wonderful people in my life. On Tuesday I got to spend some time with my friend Rachel, who lives on the east coast now but is still one of my very closest friends... she is one of those people where we always seem to be able to pick up right where we left off even if we haven't seen each other for months.

Wednesday, Ben arrived after stopping off in Chicago to see his new baby niece, and we went to dinner at Town Talk and then to see Harry Potter!!! (I'd already seen it... midnight show actually... but it was so great to see it with Ben, huge Potter nerds that we are). I got to spend time with my family, went to a 2 hour yoga workshop, baked a LOT, saw Alex and Katie, two other good friends who were in town for the holiday weekend, had a wonderful potluck at Amanda's, and finished decorating my (very small) Christmas tree!

This weekend just made me think about how lucky I am to know such amazing people - people who love sharing delicious food, laughing so hard we cry, and just knowing that we are all there for each other whether we've known each other for 20 years, 10 years or just a year or a few months. Here is just a small smattering of the people I am so grateful to have in my life:

And obviously:

Hope you all had as wonderful a weekend as I did! Happy (belated) Thanksgiving.

They say that I'm a lunatic they say that I am full of it, I say that it's worth dreaming just for the dream of it...

Last week I got to see one of Cloud Cult, play at First Ave! I've been excited about this show for months - Cloud Cult is one of my absolute favorite bands, they are offbeat and talented, and their music is meaningful and thought-provoking and they're just all-around awesome. I went with a few friends from grad school - Lia, Judd, Keith, Adam, and Ellie - and and we met up with some of Judd's other friends there as well.

We were all hungry so we grabbed dinner and a beer at O'Donovan's after class and by the time we got to the show it was pretty packed and we ended up standing upstairs...this was our initial view:

However, some of Judd's friends had gotten there before us and grabbed a spot right at the front. He tried to weave through the crowd to join them, eventually gave up and came back upstairs. Something resembling the following conversation then occurred (keep in mind, I was a few beers in at this point):
Me: What?? You're back???
Judd: Yeah, It's hard to move down there, I couldn't get to them.
Me: Nope that's ridiculous. I'll help you.
Judd: Seriously?
Me: YES WE ARE DOING THIS. Let's go.

The following are videos of our successful journey from the balcony to the ground level, to directly in front of the stage. We learned that it's much easier to maneuver if the tiniest person who can fit through small openings (me) goes first, followed by the larger person (Judd), forming a sort of human wedge. It's called "the wedge technique." I may patent it.

... we weren't moving during this video, because I felt like such a heartwarming song is just the wrong time to be shoving people....
Anyways... this is where we ended up!!! :

VICTORY! We found Judd's friends and enjoyed the rest of the show about 10 feet from Craig Minowa. Amazing.

I'd never seen them live before and I was super impressed. In their recordings, Cloud Cult uses strings, brass, keyboards, all sorts of random and crazy percussion instruments and I couldn't help wondering how they would pull it off live....well...it was the shit. They're almost a music collective more than just a band - everyone apparently plays like 3 instruments and they switch off during songs to get the right sound at the right moment, and they were very in-sync with each other and their sound was tight and polished, and full of energy. One of the best shows I've been to in a while.

Afterwards, we might have gone out for more drinks. I might have drunk-dialed my sister just because Anne Frank and Helen Keller came up in a conversation (long story) but I made it home safely (thanks Adam!) and it was a great night. Now... Holiday weekend!!