When you look at my days, today is really no different than any other Tuesday except that it sort of is. I finished my 30 day Yoga Camp this morning, and I became unexpectedly emotional at the final Namaste, and let’s just back up a stinking minute here, people. Please don’t send me articles about how yoga will steal my Jesus and turn me into a Hindu Muslim Buddhist Terrorist.
Okay. Inhale. Release.
I’ve done 30 day clean eating challenges and crunch challenges and squat challenges and butt challenges (I’m not making any of this up) and every one of those long and grueling challenges made me throw my fist to the sky when the 30 days were up. When Yoga Camp was over, I didn’t feel the relief of completion. Instead, I felt like my vacation was over before I was ready to come home. SO, tomorrow I’ll be starting my second 30 day challenge. (I highly recommend Yoga With Adriene, and I’m cringing at my use of the word Highly because I’m trying to be more careful with unnecessary adverbs and adjectives. It’s a very long story. It’s a long story. It’s a story.)
After getting off of the mat this morning I threw on jeans and eyeshadow and drove 20 miles in the rain for a B12 shot. As I drove, I drank a caramel macchiato and listened to The Nightingale which is WWII historical fiction and I’m not yet loving it, but I’m finding that listening to it sometimes makes me think with a German accent which is both confusing and great fun. Ich bin müde!
After returning home from my shot, I ate a salted avocado and read Harper’s classroom’s greatest wish journal.
Ah, the greatest wish journal. It’s a whole class journal in which the students write paragraphs describing their greatest wish. This is Harper’s week to write. (Fourteen kids have already written.) The journal starts off with a boy who wants to buy all of the cars and then make a fortune by reselling them (except for the nasty ones that will find their way to a junk yard). One boy’s greatest wish is to “…have a happy family, have a good life, and live until I’m 100 and still be active just with a cane.” A few of the girls want to run bakeries or be veterinarians or famous volleyball players. One girl wants to be rich but not let it go to her head. More than one boy mentioned wanting to be a good father.
The thing that warmed my typically tepid cockles? The following paragraph, written by a boy whose first dream is to become a neurosurgeon because he would love to be able to save a life.
“Finally, I would like to win the Powerball when it’s up to a billion dollars. I have always dreamed of being a billionaire. I could help people that are struggling to survive in other countries if I had that amount of money.”
Today I’m a soft rainy puddle of hopefulness. Also, my heels now touch the floor during downward dog. I can handle whatever happens knowing that things just keep happening and happening. How I respond is up to me.
Oh, you guys.
Do you remember when we all looked like this?
You are you and that is great.
Oh, the greatest wish journal! That’s lovely.
Stop making me want to do yoga, damn you! (Now I want to do yoga.)
I want to want to do yoga, but yoga is not my friend. The last time I tried, at the behest of a very good friend who raved about her really nice instructor (who really was a really nice instructor; I thought so too!) in my zeal to show off my astonishing flexibility (“for a woman your age”) I blew out a knee (“How did you manage to do that?” they ask when they see you on crutches. “Well, see, I was sitting on the floor…” Ugh.
So you do it for me, OK? I will enjoy it vicariously through you.
And the Greatest Wish Journal? Fantabulous idea!
I TOTALLY had that haircut.
Hm. Where’d you find that photo of Meredith from like five years in the future??
Genetics, those darned magical thing.
Side pony, but otherwise very same.
I never looked like that. I count that as a bad thing.
Actually…I had that exact same haircut. Also this post made it feel like there’s a fist squeezing my heart.
That is a picture that causes my inner Def Leopard to sing about pouring sugar on stuff.
Also, you know what has historically and consistently (adverbs? ADVERBS!!!) has stolen my Jesus? Baptists. Boom. I’d drop the microphone and walk off stage, but the people in the restaurant I’m current in would wonder why that guy just dropped his phone and walked out into the rain without his coat.
My phone automatically corrected ‘Leppard’. Trust me. I know the difference between cats and bands with one-armef drummers.