Skyfall

Dang, February has been an off month for blogging. The month has just about come and gone -- which I'm ok with. Days are getting longer, ice is beginning to melt off the streets -- I even made it to work on my bike last week without falling off. Can't let those gams (or the rest of me) get too soft!

My daughter asked me in the car the today if Adele was my favorite singer. She's not (Eddie Vedder still holds the honor) but I do think she's amazing, and her Oscar-winning bond hit is no exception:

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again

For this is the end
I've drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue I owe them
Swept away, I'm stolen

Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together

It hasn't been an easy stretch, these last few days, with a sick kid and a pile of new house issues that just keeps growing and even includes, Adele-style, a crumbling ceiling in my daughter's bedroom.

As for standing tall in the face of it all, well, I'm doing my best, and sometimes, that just doesn't seem good enough. I try to clean up my messes when I make them, though, or soon after -- this morning I apologized to the Target pharmacist after being short with her.

Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together

I reckon the other tricky part for me is that sometimes it feels like my boyfriend and I are facing it all together and sometimes it feels like he's about to bail. I'm not going to lie, that's tough, and I think it sets up this strange space where we don't really want to break up but we don't really know that we can continue as we are once he's a thousand miles away again:

Skyfall is where we start
A thousand miles and poles apart
Where worlds collide and days are dark
You may have my number, you can take my name
But you'll never have my heart

That Adele, she's a clever lyricist, but I'm not gonna pretend that last line has an ounce of truth to it in my situation...

Ice Cream

I've been neglecting my blog of late, and I don't have a lot of time this eve, but I gotta get back in the game. Plus, as it turns out, when you spend the better part of a day in bed with the ipod on shuffle, you're gonna have a lot of contenders for songs with which to mark it.

But this is the one that has lingered, perhaps because I gave up caffeine, alcohol and refined sugar for Lent (not because I'm religious, but because I love a good cleanse):

Your love
Is better than ice cream.
Better than anything else that I've tried
And your love
Is better than ice cream
Everyone here knows how to cry

(Especially me -- I'm a big believer)

Your love
Is better than chocolate
Better than anything else that I've tried
And oh love is better than chocolate...

Don't know if I've ever been more grateful for this truth. In the past, chocolate has been the hardest thing to give up, but this time it's sugar.

I guess that's because my sugar intake was ramped up pretty far over the last couple of months. On a recent afternoon, I found myself making a peanut butter, chocolate chip, and marshmallow sandwich for lunch. If that's not my body beggin' me for a cleanse, I don't know what is!

Warrior

Warriors keep coming up for me lately. On Thursday when I rode my bike to work, one of my yoga students asked me in another exercise class we sometimes take at the same time whether I had ridden my bike in the sub-zero temps. When I told him I had, he said "Wow, you are a true warrior! Can I have your autograph?" I gratefully accepted his praise, and continued to be grateful when this song started blaring internally on that freezing cold ride home:

Shooting at the walls of heartache
Bang, bang, I am the warrior
Well, I am the warrior
And heart to heart you'll win
If you survive the warrior, the warrior

And I survived. Speaking of warriors surviving, I sure hope Chuck Hagel survives the process of being confirmed by the Senate for Secretary of Defense. This weekend I read about the hearing, and it sounded pretty brutal. I, for one, believe that no one is better equipped to help decide whether we should go to war than those who have been there themselves. The article paraphrased this Douglas MacArthur quote that expresses this idea more eloquently:

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

In my yoga classes, when I put people in warrior poses, I often remind them that as yogis we are warriors of peace -- love and compassion are our weapons. There's no question in my mind that yoga helps me focus my warrior-like energy and use it to positive ends; I didn't always have yoga to help me channel my warrior nature. Just ask my mother. "You were my little pistol" is one of the more loving ways I've heard her express how challenging a child I was to raise.

A friend came over last night and we were talking about our powerful warrior daughters and how to channel their power so that it doesn't disrupt the rest of the family too much, but at the same time, how to preserve it so that it can be of use to the world:

I don't wanna tame your animal style
You won't be caged in the call of the wild

I definitely think we need to preserve our children's animal style, and this is one thing I fear that public education is doing that is harming our children, our nation, and our world. I get that it is complicated, that our culture is full of violent images and messages that take what might otherwise be productive energy in a child and manifest it in a way that may be dangerous to the community at large.

I'm doing my best to change it. Every day that I manage to muster up the strength (which isn't every single day), I get to work toward making education better in this state, and I often do it by challenging the powers that be, upsetting the status quo, and pushing for the best possible solutions for kids. I also continue to look for means of direct service to the teachers and administrators who bear the burden of a system in danger of collapsing under its own weight...

I'll See You Again

Youtube now sends me emails suggesting videos it thinks I might like, and today one of its selections for me was this one:

Always you will be part of me
And I will forever feel your strength
When I need it most
You're gone now, gone but not forgotten
I can't say this to your face
But I know you hear

I don't know much about the band, and I'm pretty sure the song is about someone dying, but it resonated with me nonetheless. My boyfriend is off skiing this weekend and out of cell phone range, and although I miss having him around, particularly this weekend when I don't have my kids, it kinda feels like he's here with me in spirit:

I'll see you again
You never really left
I feel you walk beside me
I know I'll see you again

Maybe that's why I'm feeling ok about the prospect of him moving away -- both the feeling that part of him is still with me:

When I'm lost, I'm missing you like crazy
And I tell myself I'm so blessed
To have had you in my life, my life

...and the knowledge that whatever happens, I'm better off having had him in my life.