Whirlwind Weekend/Week

What, it's already Wednesday? Why, where is this week getting to!

Saturday was a birthday celebration. Mine, in fact. My wonderful pal AW offered to throw me a birthday party at her house, and I took her up on it. My brother B and sister-in-law M even came to town to hang out and attend. There were grilled foods. There was Nutella Cake. There were friends and gifts and hugs and drinks and general partying. Fun was had by all, I daresay.

I slept in on Sunday, and waited around for our visitor to arrive. I then realized that he was leaving later than anticipated, which worked out perfectly, since B and M wanted to take us out to lunch. We went and had brunch at Greenhouse Grille (yum!), where I ordered blue corn pancakes--Lance, of course, got buffalo sausage biscuits and gravy. Zoe, the little girl of B and M's friends, cried when she realized her pancake was not standard, though she liked it when she finally tried it.

Our guest finally made it, so we bummed around the house for a bit, then walked down to eat some dinner. It was nice and relaxing--and hopefully he enjoyed it, though it wasn't very exciting! Since he was leaving on Tuesday, I took a half-day on Monday, and we strolled around some more. We had every intention to go to a yarn shop, but they are closed on Mondays (sad!), so instead we spent some time at our huge used bookstore. We also took him to our weekly Monday beer night, which was also enjoyable.

And last night? Last night was for yoga. Oh, yoga. I really enjoy it, but since I am recovering from either poison ivy or poison oak, the heat and subsequent sweat made it sting and burn quite a bit. I had to excuse myself to go run it under cold water. Kathryn is continuing to be good encouragement for me to go to class, and to practice more outside of class.

I pushed myself a little harder on my backbends last night, and that felt pretty good. Last week, I didn't stand to do dropbacks because I was tired, but I decided to do them this week even though I was worn out. And they were good. My teacher even complimented me! Backbends are the one thing that I find easy in yoga--everything else is a struggle--so I look forward to them at the end of primary.

There are two ways to do them: starting on your back or from standing. The standing ones are more difficult, since you "drop back" into the position, which is scary when you've never done it. To help build up the strength and coordination to drop back, the instructor allows time for students to receive assistance: he (or she) supports your back as you lower slowly down and helps you to stand back up. I cannot explain how thrilling it is to drop back and to stand back up, even with assistance, and I look forward to being at the point in my practice to be able to do them without.

Tonight will be a bumming around the house night. I want to go for a short run and do more yoga, and then I might read! Or clean! Either way, it's time to slow down the pace of things. I love having lots to do, but I also need to balance the hectic periods with periods of quiet--something I know Lance wants too.