Prelude to Irene

I am sitting here in my cottage listening to the rain and watching the trees bend.  Irene is coming.  A few minutes ago my house looked like this:

Before Irene: Own Your Backbone Abode

(Tomorrow morning I'll take anotner photo and share it.)

A few hours ago I looked like this:

6 in the rain.  Bring it.

Felt good to be out in the elements.  Wind was whipping a little, rain came down sharply against my straining quads.  All the while, I was baptizing my attitude to look a life in a more positive way.  I was thinking about something my brother in law said last night at dinner:  Dream Big, Clair.  He asked me about how my Yoga was going - he knew I was recently certified to teach and added a new studio to places I am currently teaching.  I told him...

I love it.  Don't know where it's all heading but I would love to become so good at teaching that I can travel to offer classes and workshops at executive retreats.  Maybe I can Oom my way to the Four Seasons in Fiji to teach.

He says...

Go for it Clair.  Keep dreaming big.  I think Yoga is out there as a great exercise regimen and a wonderful lifestyle balancing tool but people are missing the mark that it can improve productivity.  You might have something there. 

He's a guy that dreams big and makes life  happen.  Husband to my beloved sister, fabulous father to 5 of my 17 nieces and nephews - he started a very successful business in a spare bedroom of my parents tri-level.  Now he's movin' and shakin' with the leaders of our city.  He's in numerous locations across the country and taking on more.  He's daggone smart, with a personality bigger than Irene, and dreams larger than life.  And he's not even 40.

So, in my wallet, I have tucked away some of my favorite items.  They mean so much to me that if I died in a car wreck whoever found me would find Me.  Here it is:

 My Dad's funeral prayer card, picture of my Mom (I miss her so!), notes, cards, etc.

Including this:

It is from my big-dreaming brother in law in response to a note I sent to him and my sister just before they ran the Suntrust Richmond Marathon in November.  It says:
Thanks Clair!  You should be proud as well, you've done it.  More than anything, YOU and Grace have really challenged yourselves recently to achieve new milestones in life.  Few people in life move themselves forward an get stuck in a life of complacency.  Both of you have shed that tendency and pushed yourselves further and further.  Way to go.  You both are an inspiration to me daily.  Thanks.
I keep these words with me at all times.  When I feel sluggish an unmotivated, I open my wallet and I remember to keep dreaming, keep moving.  That's what my husband and I did in the Irene rain today.  This note, the pile of treasures from my wallet inspired me.

So maybe on the other side of this Irene, I'll find myself in Fiji someday.  Where would you like to go after the storm of a lifetime?

Quaking in your boots

I mean boobs.   When Beth commented on yesterday's post, she wondered if my boobs shook during the historic Virginia earthquake just 48 hrs., 46. min. ago.  As always, that Beth is funny.  She made me start thinking about my babies and their bras and I have come to the conclusion that:

Running bras and Yoga bras are not the same thing.

I am a runner and a yogi with a drawer for all fitness clothes.  I don't have them separated by discipline.  Maybe I need to be more disciplined.  I went on a run today as part of my half marathon training and my legs felt heavy and sluggish.  My boobs did not because I was wearing this:

and not this...



I am brilliant.  It wasn't until the end of the run that I noticed just how in place my girls were.  Not moving or playing peekaboo with my neighbor walking his collie.  I'm not that brilliant.  I have worn that very bra to run and it hurt my pecs, pectoral muscles that is.  Shakin' like a quake.  On that day my legs were the perky ones.

Why am I discussing my boulder holders?

Because I deserve it.  Almost 11 years ago (when I was 32) I had breast reduction surgery - deemed medically necessary by my totally cool plastic surgeon.  Now I did not have 'freak boobs' I am fairly tall (5'7") with a sturdy bone structure but they were too much for me.  Hated it.  Think Loni Anderson without the self-esteem.  I had just over 2 pounds of breast tissue removed (no, you cannot have it for yourself - do you how many times I was asked why they couldn't transfer it to a more flat-chested friend.)  I still have healthy C's but they match me.  Like your bra should match your sport.

This cottage is making me smarter already.  Here I am hard it work...

with her.

I love my cottage.

The State of Virginia owes me a Thank You note.  Because If I hadn't had that surgery, the quake would've been at least a 6 magnitude.  Less boob.  Less shake.

What kind of bra do you wear?  How do you lessen earthquakes?

My writer's cottage

I don't know why I have such long lapses between posts.  I do love to write and find the immediate gratification of instantaneous publishing quite... um, gratifying.  When I publish something I feel all giggly about, I think about it before I go to sleep, when I wake up and often check for comments (thank you!), visits, ANY feedback.  I'll post two or three times in a week - a good pace for me then, there's this huge dry spell mostly caused by negative self-talk.  Things like:
"You really should be cleaning the toilet."
"Your writing is not that good, it's self-indulgent to blog at all."
"You need to go cure cancer or something."

Sometimes it takes the earth moving to get me to move to my computer to write.  So I baptized our little outbuilding my 'Writer's Cottage'.

Clair's Cottage

Hmmmm... I' think, I'll go write.  Come on in.

Cute, huh?  My companion, Maggie awaits my hindquarters and my laptop.

Just below this sweet space, about 20 miles away is the epicenter of Virginia's biggest earthquake in history.  I'm feeling the energy from the tectonic plates all up in my business.  There were several recordable aftershocks - one at about 8 PM and another at 12:45 AM.  I'm having a hard time NOT comparing great seismic s*x with this LITERAL earthmoving experience.  Wouldn't it be nice if we all had aftershocks this often, this much later?  (Mind is back in the cottage and out of the fault line/gutter.)

So, in this hiatus from posting, I have been to Colorado and back.

Steamboat Springs

where I saw Beth finish her half ironman...



and an elk at Rocky Mountain National Park.

My kids started school.

They are thrilled.

I started training for Richmond's Half Marathon (11/15), have been teaching a bit of Yoga, taking and practicing some Yoga, cut way back on my wine, reconnected with friends and loved ones, got back into my groove at work, survived an earthquake and claimed my cottage.

I'll be writing more from here from my heart.  I hope you read it, I  hope you like it and I hope you all experience aftershockingly good stuff.

We are now bracing for hurricane Irene.  What natural disaster have you survived?

I’m always in a State

I love to watch the magic of a team coming together to win a title or a tournament.  If one of the players is one of my children that makes it even better.  I love the ultimate underdog Cinderella Story of the 2010-2011 VCU Rams during their journey to basketball’s final four.  Both of my older two children have almost made it to their titles.  My son is playing for a State baseball title right now and might yet pull it off but dang if this process doesn’t put me in a State, tournament that is.

The crazy thing is, I NEVER PLAYED TRADITIONAL TEAM SPORTS.  I was a dancer and an athlete nonetheless but I never got all those goodies folks say team sports gives you.  I also NEVER LIKED BASEBALL OR SOFTBALL and I am the mother of two muthaeffing Trojans at it.  Karma. God.  Atonement. Purgatory.  Not sure why it happened but I spend an enormous amount of time at ball fields.  I can’t say I love it but I do love watching my children do something they love and I am as into it as the rest of the die-hards.  I caught Nick’s coach talking on his bat phone before yesterday’s game.

  And yes, he is solving the word’s problems.  Training up a group of pubescent boys to work together, eat/sleep well, be accountable to each other and reach for more than they think they could ever achieve.  I think he’s the bomb.

So I ponder the issue of team vs. individual sports.  What if you are good at and like each?  What would you choose?  I love running and Yoga and dancing because you don’t have to rely on anyone else.  That translates for me to my personal history.  I like to take care of things myself, hold only myself accountable (easier/less fear and potential for disappointment).  But what about the exponential benefits of putting two or 5 or 9 talented individuals together.  Mathematically it reaps more and better benefits.  Personally it might not fit you. But the objective outcome is bigger, more and maybe better.  Not sure. 

So, I am in a State – baseball tournament.  Learning a lot from a group of 13 year old nice boys.  Batman’s wife told me Jane looked like Jodie Foster when she was a child.  The totally cool thing is that’s what people used to say about me as I was growing up.  What do you think?

See?  We do talk about things other than balls and at the field.  Maybe this team sports thing is worth acknowledging more deeply.

Where do you land?  Team or individual sports?

I have butter all over my body

I have never had very expensive yoga clothes.  I have some high quality stuff that I splurge on sometimes.  I adore my pieces from ALO, Reebok, and others.  I hadn’t visited Oz until my birthday when the yellow brick road took me to Lululemon.  Why would anyone want to go back after THAT.  Here’s my new favorite Yoga outfit:

It feels like butter melting slowly all over my body.  (Not that I’ve ever done that)  Decadent, warm, oozing, dripping, magic woven silken threads of pure I don’t know what.  That’s why my three articles of clothing cost just under $200.00 with a teacher discount.  Lawd have mercy!  Yoga teachers aren’t rich in the wallet – they are dripping with spiritual wealth but that’s not enough to support a closet-full of Lululemonade.  A dancer in dancer’s pose:

With a daughter thinking she’s full of it.  I am.  I will love this get up and know it’s purchase was a happy-birthday-to-me moment. 

After all don’t you get it with butter on your birthday?

Birthday preview

I love my birthday!  I always have.  I am the third of six children and was always the harmony-lovin’, peace-maker.  You can talk to my therapist(s) about how that manifests into adulthood but for now just know I never lost my love of my day of birth.  So much so I elected to have a child on my birthday and give myself the ultimate gift – a healthy 8 pound baby girl who’s about to be 8.  Tomorrow.  I already have received 2 gifts to mark my 44th year of life.  A lovely friendship necklace from one of my dearest, Darla.  I love her plenty and always will.  Here’s another surprise from the mailwoman in our hood:

All the way from Longmont, Colorado my beautiful SUAR (Shut Up and Run!) tee shirt with the slogan:  “never quit” emblazoned across my chest.  I love it!  My soul sister, Beth sent it to me along with a most wonderful card that lit me up.  I wish the slogan would’ve lit my family up on our 7-mile hike in Palmyra, Virginia.  We take off:

We play in the river:

Dogs too:

We realize it’s not a loop but out and back and the children say our little adventure is like this:

Horse manure.  Out the window goes my harmony.  I tell them that children in wheelchairs would give anything to be able to walk 7 miles and to be grateful.  Jane made me carry her most of the second half of the hike and I pretended I was an adventure athlete who trains deliberately like this.  60 pounds on my back through brush and mud.  It got me through to this:

Like being born.  Emerging from the birth canal of the Fluvanna Heritage Trail.  Makes  me miss my Mom.  Only I was a Caesarean birth.  No wonder my head is perfect.  See:

I drive a lot.  Tomorrow I will drive wherever the wind blows me.  Did I mention it’s my birthday?

I lied (and birthday countdown)

When I got certified to teach Yoga, I swore I'd stop doing this:

I lied.  Today, I taught a Step II class.  Awhile ago I told myself I was way over this kind of silly mindless exercise - I was much too evolved  - and that I'd only substitute teach it if one of my group exercise homey's was unavailable.  I woke up this morning thinking:  Drudgery Ahead.  I greeted the class with a fake smile, tightened my shoelaces, stacked my risers and plugged in my ipod.  Eye-rolling on the inside.  Then, Gwen Stefani (my homegirl) started singing:

Ain't no hollaback, girl.

I even lied to myself.  I am not too evolved to love. this. sh*t.  It was fun.  Sweaty, hard core, mindless, rock-your-body fun.

Other lies I've told:

• Of course, you child can stay over an extra hour.  I don't mind a bit.
• No thanks, I don't want another glass of wine.  I usually only drink about 1 glass then I'm finished.
• I love running.
• I hate running.
• I don't blog at work.  It's wrong.

I will be 43 on Monday.  And that's no lie.  How old are you?  Don't lie.