A Christmas Miracle

In accordance with my previous post, I just blazed a trail two hours north in preparation for my nephew's surgery.  It's closing in on midnight, and I made the last minute decision to leave the family behind and head up before Christmas Eve.  After all, tomorrow is a very pivotal day for this little guy.  There will be hours upon hours of surgery to remove a mass that everyone is hoping is benign.  I brought all of Christmas with me -- the packages I've wrapped for the family, the stockings for the kids and me, a little bit of this and that from Santa, some pajamas and some workout clothes.  I left the dog, the husband, and the children behind to all caravan up on Christmas Eve.  It's better this way.  I can hide what Santa has left.

Speaking of the jolly old fellow, I'm not sure how much longer the Santa magic will continue.  I volunteered last week in my 10-year-old's classroom and all of the talk was about how Santa was just plain made up.  To make matters worse, movies make reference to the belief or non-belief in Santa.  Perhaps I wasn't paying attention before, but the lack of belief seems to be everywhere.

Beyond Santa, we have one of those Christmas elves -- an "Elf on the Shelf."  Somehow I've made it through the entire holiday season without forgetting to move him nightly to a new spot to "peek in" on the kids during the day.  The kids left this evening to be with their father, so our elf is  hanging now from the Christmas star, just waiting it out for the next few days to fly on back to Santa for the rest of the year.

To be honest, this year it's a stand-in Elf.  When my ex and I separated, I bought an elf for the house I'm renting.  The kids named her Holly.  Unfortunately, Holly went missing this past year.  I think at some point I ran into her and must've thrown her into some elusive cabinet.  She'll show up, I'm sure -- probably around Easter when I'm hunting down last year's plastic eggs and Easter baskets.  So before the kids arrived back from their Georgia holiday with Daddy, I made an emergency elf replacement trip.  The price of an elf has risen quicker than the rate of inflation. So there are two elves in our house; one of which is hanging out in plain sight while the other is perhaps doing other elf-like mischievous things.

Elves or Santa, I'm not ready to part with these sweet holiday traditions -- even if it means I'm lying to my children about their existence.

Believe

I've officially registered for my graduate courses this semester and have already begun my reading.  First on the list is a book about the historical and social context of Jesus.  This is not a story told by the New Testament.  These are accounts from others in history.  After all, I'm learning that the books chosen in the NT were selected to portray Jesus in a deliberate nature and particular set of narratives.

Common sense told me so already.  This is not Bible class for sure, and for that, I am grateful.

Nothing though,  could cause me to believe more than a miracle taking place in the next few days for my little 3-year-old nephew.  My brother and his wife found out today he's got a growth in his brain that is surrounded by fluid.  The doctors inserted a shunt into the front of his head to drain some of the fluid out before the MRI scheduled for tomorrow.

I want to believe there is some higher being that is watching over him, as we all hold our breath and hope that this is simply a minor setback in his life. It is moments like this one that people are encouraged to believe in something, anything.  Human beings want to accept that there is a loving God that watches over us.  When things like this happen... we are all ready to make any pact we can to keep hope alive for those who suffer.

Yoga Body, Yoga Mind

 I recently contacted my yoga studio where I've sunk a thousand or so dollars into my Hatha 270 hour training.  Lo and behold, it's time for me to do the dreaded Final Project. Am I ready?

Tis the season for tying up loose ends.

She says, "Great! How about the 20th?"
I respond, "That works."
I'm positively grateful that she'll even respond after my lack of class time at the studio this year.

I was scheduled last year around this time to conduct a class on my own to complete this training.  Separation, divorce, headaches, soccer games-- all of it came between me and this final piece before I "officially" graduate from this stage of the yoga program.

So by Sunday afternoon, I'll have completed my own class.  Yes, I do yoga classes all the time...but not to be evaluated. The past few days I've typed up my notes, glued them in pieces to note cards, recorded myself talking through the notes, been quizzed on my biomechanical cues --just so I can pass this.   Off for more flashcard action...

The Starting Gate

2 days each 2 miles of running.  I am returning to the streets and trails once again.  I tried a couple of months ago, just after surgery, but it was not good.  My insides felt detached from the rest of my body, and it's taken some time for everything to feel back to normal.  Running.  I absolutely loathe it, but I do like what it does for my physique, and it is so incredibly convenient with little to no gear or apparatus necessary.  Mind you, I am not built like a marathoner, but it feels good to be back out there.

I fashioned myself a tour of my little neighborhood's quaint downtown area.  There's a park trail to run around the city hall building. There's a view of the lake as I run down the gravel street to my house.  Every day I feel like stopping and taking a snapshot, it's so beautiful.  I'm afraid though, if I stop, I'll never want to run again.

Slog.

This semester was a slog. It was too much -- like an overindulgent night of pizza and chocolate chip cookies.  Yes, I want to teach. Yes, I want to study. Yes, I want to be there for every soccer game. Yes,  I want to instruct in various formats: yoga, writing, dance, weight training. Yes, yes, yes.

Too many yeses can be the recipe for disaster, for sure.

In my graduate program:  Somehow, I managed it. I felt all semester like I was squeaking out a high "B" or low "A." The semester report is in:  A for sure.  I don't know how considering I felt like I sucked all semester.  So much of literature, allusion, metaphor, meaning, character traits, etc. made sense to the other students.   Not so much to me.

I'm happily relieved to be moving on to the next course along the Liberal Studies track. Slogging along.....

Winter Weekend Blur....

This weekend was a wash.  I got dumped off a cruise ship at the end of the week just in time to drop the children with my former other half.  From there, it seems as though I crawled into bed and never left the house.  It's not the truth, of course.

In reality, I taught my Zumba class Friday as I typically would.  I showered up and nestled in for the evening.  I toiled over my final paper due on Saturday where I would concoct some semblance of an argument over the realism present in Petronius' Satyricon.  It wasn't much of a last paper, but it was enough for me to end the semester.

Saturday I rose early and began polishing up my last thoughts in paragraphs to then be emailed to my professor. Then, I submitted grades for the writing and yoga courses I taught over the fall semester. I still wasn't feeling very well, but managed to stroll over to the Vietnamese restaurant within walking distance and eat some curry to soothe my sore throat.   Sunday was much of the same; I made an effort to get to the grocery store and threw together some slow-cooked chicken concoction for dinner.  The husband and I watched football between naps and an impromptu pizza delivery.

The kids will be back in the afternoon.  I'm tossing around the idea of going to have lunch with them tomorrow at school.  After all, it's winter break for the college, and there's a little more time on my hands.

Surely, I could chalk it up to feeling under the weather.  It's truly all a blur.

Holidaze are here again.

It was only shortly after the pumpkins were pulled from the shelves that I started hearing commercials for Christmas.  The Holiday hub-bub seems to come earlier and earlier each year.  Last year, I managed to put a snowman on the porch and buy a skinny little tree for the corner of our eat-in kitchen.  This year hasn't gotten much grander.  There are lights strewn across the length of the porch, both outside and inside.  My ex dropped off the wooden red-nosed reindeer and hand-painted Christmas tree made by my parents. Those are sacred family heirlooms not to be left behind!  So, in effect, the decorations are slowly accumulating for the season in this 60-year-old house that I'm renting.

I've been in and out of bed the last two days.  After returning from a short vacation with the kids, I'm dealing with a scratchy throat and low energy.  Tis the season. It would be a "bad mom" kind of thing to say that I am glad I don't have the children this weekend; they are with their dad. As much as it sounds like a some ungrateful mother, I am actually looking out for their best interests.  They've just spent four days with me on a cruise ship, and I'm feeling blessed to have a little downtime to recharge my batteries.  Otherwise, I they'd think I am truly the Grinch.

So I'll just lie here and listen to the new Coldplay album.....maybe toss another throat lozenge back for a try at numbing my throat pain. Daze.

The Overhaul

This past month has been filled with a lot of realizations. One happens to be that, a person can do many things, but not many things well. 

Between teaching college students writing and yoga, taking graduate level courses, doing the typical soccer mom shuffle to practices and games, keeping the dog and fish alive, tutoring the anxious populace, and generally all that comes with the different roles played as mother, wife, daughter, friend, exercise instructor etc, I realize I have to scale back somewhere.  I could rattle off a dozen reasons why one should not carry such a heavy load.  Ultimately I've learned that the more I try to do, the quality of what I produce is watered down and suffers greatly by being pulled in so many directions.

When I turned 39 this year (just a short month ago), I had high hopes to keep up my journaling.  There's so much that happens over a course of year that I cannot recover-- feelings, special moments that I shared with the children, milestones.  This is one of the things that has truly fallen by the wayside as I try to "invent" time to sit down to write.  Even as I type this, I am supposed to be reading, grading papers, watching the movie based on my graduate readings, commenting on our discussion board, calculating final grade.  I'm putting it all off as my mind feels too full to accomplish those goals.

With the steady rise in my responsibilities, my workouts have also suffered.  Yesterday I ran a couple of miles before getting ready for work, and I was immediately reminded of why I so desperately enjoy having exercise in my daily regimen.  It's personal time I desperately need, and getting the blood flowing keeps me energized during the day.  I've spent almost the entire last year in an exercise lull.  Granted, some of that was brought on by cancer and recovery, but I no longer feel the pang of abdominal discomfort from too much movement.  I'm able to do the things I used to do; for instance, for the past two days I've jumped rope, which was once a level of jostling that my body couldn't take.

So with all that said, I'm again dialing back, and the only way I can do that is to let go of something.  I let my manager at the college's writing center know that I wouldn't be back in the spring to tutor.  It is easy money, but it is rather frustrating as well, and the time spent there could be better spent working on the two graduate courses I have coming this spring.  It will also help the writing and yoga courses I teach during the semester. I'm not putting in the energy I should be for those classes -- as I had spent a good part of my summer prepping a new way of teaching the yoga course, yet I never implemented it.  It's a shame.  I'll try again for sure.

So as the year comes to a close, I'm hoping to be better organized and produce better work.  It's a commitment to not just putting together classes at the last minute, or half-ass writing a paper for class, or forgetting that exercise is part of completing my day.  Narrowing the focus for next year and we've still got a month to go -- now that's thinking ahead!