oh six oh one

so the theme today is “morning” for the 30 day june photo challenge (which I was turned on to by the lovely Owlissa. You can find more details on the challenge here) As i’ll be unable to post later, I’ll just use my morning today (still the 31st) instead.

Bright and early! and yes, that’s actually how I dress for house renos. We painted some furniture today, and will be starting on the walls soon enough too. It’s quite exciting that our boxspring has been ordered! I can’t wait for our new bed.

also :

Enjoying some Black Cherry Liberte yogurht, and wearing my new “Who the Fuck is Arcade Fire?” t-shirt. It arrived in the mail today and I was totally thrilled. I don’t think I’ll ever take it off. <3 I also have the biggest break-outs, insane cravings and moodiness. Shark Week is upon us!

same great taste

as you may have noticed, i have put my sleeplessness to good use and redesigned the blog a wee bit. it may change around a bit in the next few days, but i figured it was time for a facelift. i am also removing some of the older/less relevant posts.

xoxo

no rest for the wicked

I am terrible at having a logical or effective sleep cycle. The past week has mearly been a hodge-podge of sleepless nights – collapsing at dawn and stealing a few precious hours of sleep until I awake again, putter through the day, nap usually from 19:00 to around one, and then am up again. Today went something like this :

12:3o – 07:30 : awake. xtopher and i go grocery shopping around 05:00 (at the 24/h superstore), make vegan chili. I exhaustedly crawl into bed and he follows to give complimentary cuddles until I fall asleep. (he seems to operate on a completely different level in terms of how much sleep a normal human needs. i have come to accept and not question this.)
07:30 – 11:00 : xris attempts to wake me so he can work with a client in the house. I am sleeping so solidly i have no recollection of talking to him at all. after a ten frustrating minutes, he leaves me to continue my coma-like state.
11:01 – 16:30 – awake again. compose some music, noodle around, reheat chili and do some sketches. sleepy and useless by 22:00.
22:30 – 02:30 – restless sleep. Now i’m awake again – I doubt I’ll go back to sleep before my class, plus I have another chiro appointment with Dr. K today (yessss) so we’ll be driving out to Lunenburg for that around ten anyway.

It might also be worth noting that I haven’t done much yoga this week either. The schedule generally worked out to be about two days on, a day or two off, in regular rotation. I ended up taking friday and saturday off due to general sore-ness and a rather busy schedule, but the last few days I really have not been feeling it. I’ve booked myself a class for 8am in attempts to spur myself back into the habit. I really do enjoy the classes and the effect they have on my physical and mental health – and have been having much better practices, though more on that later. (Oh, except for the class last week where my pants fell off – which is entirely a story for another time!)

it’s a fucking beautiful day

it’s such a great day, so i’ll keep this short.

my love and i watched the sun rise. went to the farmers market and wandered hand in hand. we bought beeswax candles, rosemary essential oil, apples, samosas, crepes (yes, indulgent!) and a superb pain au chocolat. we dined outside in the sunshine. observed while a rather inconsiderate person parked in a handicapped zone received a parking ticket. yesssss.

we came home and I went out in the garden and dug up a trench against the house – amazed to find ancient bricks buried beneith the soil. (the state of our back garden is a post in itself)  laid foundations for plans to come, cleaned the bath tub, cuddled my snoozing soulmate, put the laundry out on the line to dry. We are having the house purified today by some colleges of xtopher, the Hatha Girls, and I am very interested to see how that goes. We were sent out last night to purchase five limes, three bananas, two boxes of salt, three oranges and a bulb of garlic. mystery mystery!

(oh, and as an extra bonus track, an Eels cover of “Get Ur Freak On” just came up. What. Even.)

limitations

this happens a lot when i spend too much time reading other peoples blogs. i feel so old and unaccomplished – which is entirely untrue – i am twenty years old and a very talented, creative person. i just wish the truth would be a little easier sometimes.

it feels strange to be writing a post about my limits with a picture of myself looking so happy right above it. xtopher and i were talking about a photo-series of girls looking venerable while eating fudge. there would be a magazine and everything. i would be on the cover, he said.

I did not have a good practice today. rarely do i look around/give a shit what other people are doing throughout the class, but it becomes increasingly disheartening to see everyone holding a perfect pose while you fumble about. dancers pose is one. I can do it at home, if i take time to listen to myself and – here’s the important bit – have something to rest my hand against for balance, but no luck doing it in class. same thing with Bow Pose. (you may be noticing a theme. mainly that i am made of wood.)

If i’m having trouble with something, i try and take that time to attempt it, no matter how many times i bugger it up and start again. but today i couldn’t balance. i couldn’t bend. i couldn’t even hold Tree Pose for more than six or seven seconds. And after seeing the 30 other people in the room effortlessly glide from pose to pose, i just sort of lay down on my mat (okay well at least i could do a savasana) and cried a little. Not a big scene, just sort of miserable tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes – which thankfully went unnoticed due to the copious amounts of sweat pouring off of me, too. after a moment of stillness, I got off my ass and went on with the rest of the class, but that burning feeling of shame and inadequacy stayed with me .

something my partner Christopher talks about is how shame is the most destructive emotion to hold onto. shame cuts us off from all the good things in the universe. when we carry shame with us, we can no longer be transparent –  the forces of love and positive emotions can’t move through us, so we stay in the same state. it radiates outward, and all we want is not to exist. this might sound kind of Hippy Dippy, but the salient thing here is that shame is a terrible thing, and no one ought to feel that way.

after yoga, xtopher and i went to the market and bought beautiful food. i got a little sampler-pack of the house made fudge, a pomegranate, raspberries and the softest, silkiest apricots. we walked home hand in hand and i poured out the sadness inside me to my only love. it felt better to air it out and feel it dissipate in the bright sunlight. there was a cool breeze coming off the ocean, so we left all the windows open and went upstairs to take a nap. dozing off in a pool of sunlight, curled around someone who truly loves me, for all my faults and inflexibility, i knew there would be plenty of time for practice, for improvement. the joy and pride i would feel when i could move effortlessly into those poses would be nothing compared the sweetness i feel when i truly love myself for who i am and what i can do. and i know that nothing could ever be so bad.

here, there, and everywhere

myself & Puffy Sheep. good morning!

I’m writing this about 10 minutes after waking up – It’s not actually so bad, since i happen to be one of those elusive “morning people”, and i find that on top of allowing me to get up at ungodly hours of the morning, i can also do so with relative ease. One of my best friends, Chelsea, takes at least a shower, 20 minutes of silence, and a bucket of coffee for her to even be in a vaguely human state. Even xtopher is incomprehensibly groggy (and possibly even a bit grumpy) until he gets his morning toast.

I’ve been having a bad week. We drove out to Lunenburg on Wednesday to see christopher’s chiropractor, dr. k. this appointment had been made weeks ago, but had become all the more important in the days leading up to it, owing to a sharp, intense paint in my right upper hip/lower back/upper bum area. there would be moments where sitting would be so intolerably painful I would have to eat dinner standing up.

“the pineapple marks the spot”

although xtophers many loving massages were appreciated, I was glad to be seeing a professional. I adored dr. k – she almost immediately had me stand infront of her, with her sitting and myself facing away, and placed her hands on my hips. ”Okay. Put your hands down on top of mine.”. the difference was astounding. Apparently i carry my left hip almost three inches above the right – No wonder I was pain! After some (rather frisky) pelvic adjustments, (and I say “rather frisky” because she had to reach up into between my bum at thighs, which sort of made me giggle.) I felt much better, however I do have to be mindful from now on to how i am crossing my legs/sitting, and especially to make an effort not to roll my left leg out at the hip joint anymore. It’s certainly not a permanent fix  - I’ll probably be seeing dr. k once a week for at least the next month or so, but if that helps, then she can touch my bum all she likes.

drunk on dark sublime

looking probably as tired as i feel (dans la cuisine)

seeing as I haven’t slept in almost two days, I’m just going to keep this simple today with a few pics taken from my archives – Christ it’s nice to have your own computer – I can finally store and properly organize my vast collection of photos. More updates on the Yogaventures to follow (yes, I’ve been going!) Oh yes, and The Holly poked and prodded me into acquiring a “tumblr”, so you can keep up to speed with all the madness on that medium as well. i like to post weird comics, shit ’bout vaginas, photos and probably whatever else I fancy. I think that’s how tumblr works anyway. okay, au revoir! je te souhaite un tres bonne journee!

**all the photos here were taken by me, at one point or another.

for extra bonus points, go listen to Elysian Fields’ album, Dreams that Breathe Your Name. i promise you will like it.