Namaste

My sister roped me into doing a 21-day yoga challenge in December. She thought it would help clear my head after all I'd been through. Bikram yoga: 26 poses in 90 minutes in a 105-degree room with 40% humidity. I learned quickly that 1) tight hamstrings are the root of all bodily evil, and 2) I'm no yogi. The liter of sweat, the time commitment, the expensive wicking clothes from Athleta and lululemon, the inner thigh strength needed for a proper triangle pose...I just wasn't game for it. Plus I had to stifle my own laughter at the end of class when the instructor said things like, "When you are one with you, and I am one with me, and together we are one, we can change the world with our integrity." Who are these people?

I completed the 21 days and, you guessed it, I joined the studio and gave them permission to hit my credit card every 1st of the month. Turns out I love yoga. I even love some of the stuff they say after class. My favorite instructor, Jamie, steps on the soles of my feet in between spine series if I'm lucky. She also sings at the end of class and I like to close my eyes and imagine I'm in the Himalayas with a bunch of yaks catching her song on the breeze. Jamie says good stuff. Last week during standing bow she said, "Don't ever judge yourself in a mirror."

Yoga rules state that you move as a class and focus only on yourself in the mirror. I try to not break the rule but it's so easy to make faces at my sister or stare at other people that are doing the pose better than I am. I also stare at others' quadriceps. I have a strong case of Quad Envy. I've always suspected my life would be easier if I had bigger quads and now yoga has proven my theory is truth. Just try doing balancing stick without them. You'll feel my pain.

Women compare more than men. What's worse is that we compare our weaknesses to others' strengths. I have tiny leg muscles, so I stare at big leg muscles. I have thin, straight Ramona Quimby hair that could be ponytailed by an orthodontic rubber band, so I naturally lust after thick ponytails. I am not athletic, so I want to marginally harm people with Garmin watches. Watch-wearing women with sculpted quads and thick, naturally curly hair? At the top of the list in my black book.

After yoga I was talking to my friend Jaime (not to be confused with Jamie the Instructor) about comparing and she told me the Roosevelt quote. Genius. We all do it. We all waste what we have by only noticing what we're missing.

Things I'm missing: a baby, a dining room, a pergola, the legs of a gymnast, half of my hair, most of the math I learned after 9th grade

Things I have: a quaint home, husband + kid, freedom of religion, half of my hair, a recipe box full of many hours' worth of effort, office supplies, collections of postcards and salt & pepper shakers, wisdom from living life beyond 9th grade

I need to focus only on myself in the mirror. I have joy. And I think I'm smart enough to know that a pergola won't change anything.

Funny thing, today at church 3 girls and 1 guy told me my hair looked awesome. Namaste.

*My yoga mat. Very Tangled, no? It doesn't remind me of a mobile my king and queen parents hung over my crib. It reminds me of a Ritz cracker. I'm always hungry at yoga.

Resident

 

It's already been six weeks.

My dad sent me a sweet, handwritten letter after our IVF didn't pan out the way we hoped. In it he told me that there will be dates I'll remember the rest of my life because they are significant from either joy or sadness. He knows this because he has his dates, too. December 6: the day he proposed to my mom. December 14: the day they lost their twins.

I have two December dates of my own. December 23: the day I wrecked our truck two years in a row (hence the reason I avoid driving on said date). December 3: the day I was sucker punched. I just didn't see it coming.

As I was marking the birthdays of friends and family on our new 2013 calendar I couldn't help but realize that I would be going into labor this week if I hadn't miscarried in May. I would also be 10 weeks along if IVF worked. But here I sit, zero weeks along with any baby...and yet I've grown six weeks' worth of calm and peace that echo between my empty insides daily. Ultrasound that.

I was anxious to leave Egypt, the land of my enslavement. I might have jumped the gun on that one. Restoratively, I saw a very pretty thing last month entitled "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" by Luc Olivier Merson. (Seriously, click on the link. It's beautiful. And only $2000 framed. Maybe I'll opt for a small print.)  Painted in 1879, it depicts Mary and her royal infant sleeping on a sphinx with a comatose Joseph and unsaddled donkey mere feet away. The caption said This painting symbolizes the feeling of safety Egypt offered to the holy family. When I realized what it meant my heart whispered to my brain, "There, there. Do you see now? Egypt isn't all bad. Some people wanted to get there as badly as you want to get out. There is still safety in Egypt, so rest up for now." Six weeks I have rested. I plan on resting in Egypt for as many weeks as required, except I am clearly not napping between the chiseled paws of a giant lion bearing a man's head. I am resting in the soft and aware arms of my Savior who continues to carry me.

I'm still a resident in the land of pyramids and sphinxes. No change of address just yet. Should I be surprised that this month-to-month Egyptian rental I've recently unpacked in has everything that I need?

Hummingbird

My New Year's resolution is to be a hummingbird.

Both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do.*

I'll admit that my natural state is more of a snarky, cynical vulture, so it is going to take all my effort to flit around the good, the possibility, the hope and the joy. Greg is famous for two phrases since we've been married. One is NEVER WORRY IN ADVANCE. The other is WE CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY. He has probably said them to me a thousand times, usually at times when I'm not being happy (which makes me more mad) or when I'm anxious. But darn it all, he's right. Happiness is a choice. It is also a natural consequence of righteous action.

Yes, I still want to improve my freestyle (swimming, not rapping) and learn to make sticky rice and register for the stained glass class at Thanksgiving Point. I want to have a longer fuse when I argue with my daughter. I want to do yoga until I can touch my nose to my knees. I want to keep reading The Classics in hopes that I will have them all knocked out by the time I'm 40. But more than anything I want to be the hummingbird that chooses happiness regardless of the landscape below.

*Steve Goodier, Quote Magazine, in May, 1990 R.D.

Unshackled

Have you ever felt like you were stranded on a sheet of floating ice with nothing to eat but seal blubber and nothing to sleep in but a damp, rotting reindeer skin? Me too. It happens.

Christmas break found me holed up in the safari-themed guest room of my MIL's house reading a book about Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition gone wrong. It was probably the best metaphor that I could have read for THIS POINT in my life, THIS POINT being the point that follows a miscarriage and a failed IVF attempt seven months apart. 

There is a reason Santa lives at the North Pole. It's because the South Pole totally blows. It's the most hostile environment this side of the moon. A continent made of glaciers two miles deep, Antarctica hits temps as low as -100 F, winds up to 200 mph, and ocean waves up to 100 feet high. When winter arrives, the ocean freezes at two square miles per minute. Antarctica's frozen ocean is twice as big as the United States. In 1915, a British crew of 28 men was stranded there for 18 months—with no ship and no way to contact the outside world—and they all survived.

There is no way to summarize the feat, but these are the things that stood out to me:

Shackleton's wooden ship was originally called Polaris, but he changed it to Endurance because his family motto was BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER. Lesson: My own family does not have a motto. We need one. And maybe a coat of arms.

Shackleton and his 27 men sailed out of England with the blessing of the Queen and Winston Churchill just as WWI was erupting. The crew was more than sailors. It included surgeons, artists, geologists, biologists, motor specialists, photographers, cooks, carpenters, meteorologists, physicists and even two firemen. (Firemen? In the land of ice? Really?) Lesson: Surround yourself with all sorts of people. Variety really is the spice of life and it's nice to learn from others. Plus, you never know what kind of person you'll need in a jam.

The Endurance sailed south until it got stuck in the frozen Weddell Sea. The ship remained locked in ice for months on end while the men remained on board. They swallowed delicious food, celebrated holidays, played soccer, read novels, listened to the gramophone, and pet the sled dog puppies. Lesson: Sometimes being stuck is not as bad as it seems.

The ice swelled. The ship shattered. The delicious food ran low. The men had to evacuate to an ice floe (a giant sheet of floating ice the size of several football fields) and haul the three lifeboats behind them in case they ever came to open water. For months on end they slept on slush and recorded that they could feel whales hitting the ice underneath them. The southern hemisphere's version of the northern lights, aurora australis, were beyond ethereal. Lesson: Sometimes it's way worse than you planned, but even then you can experience uniquely awesome things because of where you are.

Once the food ran out they survived on raw seal meat, blubber, penguins, and three sugar cubes a day. (One day they killed over 600 baby penguins for food. Penguins have no land predators, so they are not afraid of man, the poor things. They killed baby penguins because they tasted like chicken. The adults were tough and chewy. I'm not joking. The book said this.) When there was an absence of penguins or seals flapping around, they were forced to shoot their sled dogs and eat them. Fortuitously, a giant leopard seal leaped up on their ice and when the men cut it open it revealed fifty undigested fish, which were gobbled up along with the 1,000 pounds of meat.  Lesson: We are being watched over, especially in hard times. The Lord might ask us to endure an icy shipwreck for a time, but He will also toss in a seal full of fish when we really need it. And, I don't think my fight-or-flight would ever kick in enough for me to kill an innocent, fuzzy-faced baby penguin or a dog. Ever. I think I'd just have to starve. This is why I'm a graphic designer and not an explorer.

Despite the permanent misery, there were a few unshakeable men that remained optimistic and buoyant. Other men crumpled to the ground, sobbing, asking to be left behind to die. Shackleton somehow always cheered his men up and convinced them to fight just one more day. Lesson: You can always make it one more day. It's probably easier if you're one of the happy people. If you're happy long enough you become unshakeable.

By some miracle, Shackleton got his men to Elephant Island. He then took the best boat, the best navigator, and the man with the best attitude, and left the remaining 25 on the rocky shore in their wet clothes with no shelter and little food. He navigated that 24-foot boat 800 miles to South Georgia Island, an island populated with a whaling station and civilization. The only hiccup was that he landed on the opposite side of the island's habitation, so 29 miles of Antarctic alps had to be traversed to finally reach help. Four months after leaving his crew, Shackleton returned and rescued them all.

The rescued 25 later said that every morning of the 100+ abandoned mornings they would wake up, roll up their beds, and get their work done because today might be the day they'd be rescued. And one dreary day, just like all the dreary days before it, they rolled up their beds and did their chores and a rescue boat appeared on the horizon. Lesson: Your ship being crushed was just the beginning. You have no idea how many rounds there are in your fight. Just keep fighting. Eventually it ends. At some point you are saved.

Shackleton was happy he saved his men, but sad that his expedition was a failure for the second time. The initial expedition was his attempt to be the first man to reach the South Pole. He got within 97 miles but had to turn back due to bad weather. Then a Norwegian beat him to it. Dang Norwegians. On the second expedition he wanted to be the first man to traverse the continent. Instead, his ship got crushed and he led his team to survive the worst 18-month shipwreck in history. He was a hero the rest of his life even though he never reached his personal goals. Lesson: I know something about two failed expeditions and I don't even know any Norwegians. It is not always about winning. Sometimes it's not even about reaching your goals. Sometimes it's just about surviving.

I am not giving up on a baby. I will do whatever it takes (except killing a baby penguin) to get there. Crush me, starve me, freeze me, trick me that I am abandoned. None of it will work. I will get there. I will conquer this with my husband by my side and my God at the helm.

BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER.

*Icy photo taken of the Zermatt Ice Castle, Midway, Utah, the same day we explored Soldier Hollow in snow clothes and lost Chris Powell's Jeep keys on the Heber Creeper's railroad tracks. Good times.

Ploptart

Homemade poptarts filled with homemade blackberry jam. Flour everywhere, messy, labor-intensive, best thing I've eaten in months. The drizzle had vanilla bean paste in it, which means it had little brown specks in it. You know specks make everything cuter, right? Like on a chicken egg. Like freckles. Like the underside of a fern frond. (I know, those are spores, and spores aren't a lovely thing to speak of...but I still like them.)

I drove all the way up to Orson Gygi JUST to buy vanilla bean paste. It comes in a dark brown glass jar and has an apothecary label. I'm over the moon for it. But, like cocoa, don't lick it on its own. There were enough dough scraps to make a 10th poptart, so I filled Mr. Bonus with nutella and peanut butter. I don't want to quote a Bryan Adams song, but I think I have to: Thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Oh, Waking Up the Neighbors, you were probably the 5th cd I ever bought from BMG Music Club.

Organic Goop Treats from Gwyneth's blog. Perhaps the nastiest thing I've ever put in my mouth. The maiden 8x8 sailed into the trash and Greg named it a "ploptart" since it looked like a giant cow plop. (Should I talk about spores again?) Basically the opposite of my earth-shattering poptarts.

I reworked a second batch with normal Rice Krispies instead of Arrowhead Mills Puffed Rice cereal (which taste like sugarless, soft-from-humidity Honey Smacks). I also used half almond butter, half Skippy. Sue me. I have unquantifiable love for Skippy peanut butter. I can't let my childhood go. I just can't. The second batch was good. We rolled them into balls and named them Balls of Energy, but that's probably misleading as they are mostly Balls of Brown Rice Syrup. Semantics.

You know how in Runaway Bride Julia Roberts has to figure out what kind of eggs she likes because she always conforms to the man she is with? I have never changed my eggs for a man and just want it on the record how I like them:

Sauté:

5 button mushrooms (sliced)

10 grape tomatoes (quartered)

a few dashes of Spike seasoning

Add:

1 scrambled egg

1 T. crumbled feta

Additional breakfast info: I have to drink my water from a plastic cup. I can't handle my lips on glass so early in the morning. My green cup has a corduroy texture and I've had it since my bridal shower. Suz bought the set at Function Junction. My daily vitamins: multi, Vitamin D, folic acid, DHEA, and two L-Methionine for good measure. Just in case they work.

That is my perfect brekky (200 calories if you add half a Rio Star grapefruit). So now it's out there. I know what I like. I like vanilla bean paste, Skippy and anything with feta.