Happy Thursday: Cats and Yoga don't mix edition

 This woman's real crime wasn't yoga, but drawstring pants. None of my pants have drawstrings.

I've started trying to practice yoga at home in the mornings before work. I was running, but I really, really hate running and the number of times I would hit snooze with a profanity and not get up and go running were beginning to outnumber the times I actually ran. And then when I did get up and go running I hated it. Hated. I don't know what endorphins you people who run are getting from said running, but I was born without them. And because life is too short to start every day with something I hate, I decided to try starting it with something I love instead. I've been practicing at OmBodies for a year now (on August 14, my one year anniversary, I got a little congratulatory email from the studio which made my whole day) and I felt like I could remember enough poses and sequences to direct my own practice. Not to mention I've got some serious upper body strength to build if I'm going to get inverted anytime soon. The twice a week I can get to the studio just isn't cutting it anymore.

However, I have three cats. And every morning that I unroll my mat and go get a drink of water, I come back to three cats resting comfortably on the mat giving me a look that clearly states, "Yes, thank you for the new surface to rest on. You may go." So I shoo them off the mat and get on with my practice. It's gone ok for the most part, I only had one incident where I squished one of the cats when going from downward facing dog through chaturanga to upward facing dog. (That, by the way is one of my favorite things to do. Not just one of my favorite yoga poses, but one of my favorite things to do ever, right up there with watch Jaws, drink coffee and knit. Love it!)


The other problem I've had has been with savasana. The cats seem to think this pose stands for, "The crazy human is done with her crazy movements and now invites us to lay on her!" They roll around next to me and purr, they lay on my stomach, they sniff my face, they even licked my feet one morning. I was able to focus and breathe and not let any of this distract me until the Maine Coon decided to try the ever popular yoga pose Cat Reclines on Yogi's Face and took the deepening option of cutting off the air supply.

That is a lot of fur to have on your face even if you aren't sweaty after yoga.

Brushes with asphyxiation aside, it's been a really great way to start my day. Plus, cats are just a really great way to remind yourself to always focus on your practice no matter what is going on around you, right Hayward? As long as you've taken the drawstrings out of your pants of course.

Happy Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild Wild Women

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Jim Croce during quiet moments at work. I was going to pick one of his songs for the Happy Thursday song, but I couldn't pick. Youtube kept reminding me of more songs and I love all of them. So here is a bunch for your listening pleasure.

But what is with the dog with the pacifier? I do not know; this was the only video I could find of Jim Croce singing this song. Don't look at the screen while the video is playing, just listen to Jim and imagine yourself surrounded about the three items in question.

 This song sounds cheerful, but it's actually one of the most cutting songs. Playing this song while looking at someone meaningfully would be a really great way to break up with that someone if he or she deserved it. "If that's the way that you want it? That's the way I want it MORE." Jim puts the aggressive in passive aggressive.

Fun fact: I tried to draw this picture as a gift for my dad in art class my senior year of high school. I am not very good at drawing and the shading took practically the entire semester to do and it was still hideous. I never gave it to my dad and I now stick exclusively to fiber arts. Fun fact the second: I have only seriously considered two tattoo ideas in my entire life, one of which was to get "Hey" and "Baby" tattooed one word on each arm. I still haven't completely ruled that out.

At the craft sale, a few roller derby girls tried to recruit me and all I could think was, "But I'm not built like a 'fridgerator with a head." To be fair, neither were they, but I'm too big of a wimp. But if I ever do decide to try roller derby, I'll definitely be bad ass enough to get those tattoos I was thinking about. I'm seeing a whole alternative lifestyle for myself styled after Jim Croce songs. Hmmm...

He doesn't make working at the car wash sound very appealing, though.

Anyway, before I go off drinking and passive aggressively/awesomely insulting people and racing stock cars and talking some trash to the secretary (hey now mama, come on over here) and playing roller derby, I have to teach a knitting class this weekend and bartend at the lovely Annie's wedding Saturday night. And by "bartend" I mean pour glasses of wine and beer. The kegs will even already be tapped which is good because I don't see my co-bartender Natalie and I having a lot of success tapping a keg. Now wine bottles should present no problem: I could open a wine bottle in my sleep. I might even bring my own corkscrew because I love it so. It has a truly horrifying first date story that goes with it that I just may tell someday. Sunday morning Erica and I are knitting and watching stand up comedy DVDs and eating cinnamon buns because we feel that's the best way to spend a Sunday morning.

Happy Jim Croce Thursday and happy weekend!

I declare thee a Rage Friday!

Rage Friday, it has been so long since I've seen you!

I didn't realize it, but not working Fridays has seriously diminished the possibility of a Rage Friday. I'm sure a Rage Friday could happen on a non-work day, but I'm not exactly certain what that would entail (for details on the origins and descriptions of Rage Friday, please see this).

Now, you can't cause a Rage Friday, but I'm pretty sure I encouraged this one. I woke up a little late and decided to treat myself to a coffee shop stop instead of oatmeal and French Press coffee at work. I hoped the shop would be open (one of the drawbacks of living in a college town when the students are gone is that while it is nice and quiet around town, some businesses aren't open as much). Not only was the shop open, but they had my favorite bagel and bananas to boot (I do love an alliteration)! "I wonder," I wondered as I walked to my car, "Does this constitute the beginning of a Rage Friday? It's a Friday starting with a treat." I also factored in that while I will not be ending up at the Bird tonight (as is traditional on a Rage Friday) I will be at a show watching a friend's band and there will be drinking. "Yes," I thought, "If the circumstances get weirder once I get to work, today just might be a Rage Friday."

When I got to work, another coworker had brought in donuts, there was a TON of weird work to do that shouldn't have occured for a couple more weeks AND it's window washing day meaning that every so often there is a guy starring in at me through my second story window.

Happy Rage Friday everyone!

Happy Thursday!

May your weekend be this exciting.

(When I first saw this movie, I watched this scene at least three times in a row because I frequently sing to the cats and in the shower and around the house to songs I don't even like and it's good to know I'm not alone.)

It would be nice to have a weekend of nothing to do but dance around the house, but at least I have fun things planned like a concert and a trip to see a friend and a knitting class and visiting my grandma. But maybe soon I can have a whole weekend of nothing. Not in August or September, I can already know that for sure, but maybe sometime in October I'll plan a nothing weekend. But whether you're doing something or nothing, enjoy your weekend!

Happy Sharky Thursday!

I gotta say, I was a little overwhelmed in trying to think what to post for Happy Thursday. It's the second happiest of all Thursdays because it's Shark Week Thursday (the first happiest Thursday of them all is Thanksgiving). AND it's the President's birthday AND it's payday (well, for me its payday, and I hope it is for you as well!)! What's a girl to post about that could possibly encapsulate that much happiness?! Well, here's a whole bunch of happy and shark related stuff that hopefully does the trick. The cat video at the end has nothing to do with sharks, but it's the best thing I've seen all week. The language is EXTREMEMLY foul, so you've been warned. Don't watch it at work and don't watch it if you have delicate sensibilities regarding the f-word.

On to the happy sharkiness:

At my shark week celebration tomorrow, we will be eating:

-Windmill cookies :more for nostalgia reasons as my cousin recently remembered our grandma serving these to us with cranberry juice. But it will be fun pretending to be a shark big enough to eat a windmill.
-cranberry juice: blood red like the blood that attracts sharks! (also, see above for nostalgia).
-Swedish fish: for sharkily obvious reasons.
-Sourpatch kids: for similar, grosser, sharkily obvious reasons.
-chips and salsa: I plan to sing the jaws theme while navigating my dorsal fins (chips) through the ocean (salsa).
-Wine: red, for the same reason as the cranberry juice. (We will hold off until later in the evening to break this out though, I promise)

Some famous sharks here.

Cool shark crafts! And even more!

And now a hilarious cat video:

Jaws: The Sharky Beginning

I remember the day it all began. My parents were pretty strict about what movies I could watch when I was young because I was their first child and a huge wimp. My mother once had to make up some magical powers about a teddy bear that I could squeeze to make myself invisible to bad guys because I refused to sleep after sneaking out into the living room and seeing a scene in a Sherlock Holmes episode where a guy is killed in a very unscary way. But still! Death! Murder! I was a huge baby! (I've since gotten over that and love scary movies (even if I do watch them through my fingers sometimes) as well as Sherlock Holmes. But I digress. Back to the sharks!) My dad loves movies and scary movies in particular; he would get really excited when he felt I was old enough to handle the next level of scary movies. On this fateful day, I was home from school with a cold or the flu and my dad had the day off. He asked me if I wanted to watch a movie and when I said yes he got out The Book. (side note: My dad loves movies so much that he has a book that lists each movie he owns in various lists sorted by title, genre, and actor. Why all this work, you might be asking. Because my parents have so many movies that they are numbered and stored in rubbermade drawers in a closet and it is impossible to find the one you want without The Book. I have bolded and italisized this so that you know what kind of crazies I come from. Not all of my collecting and OCD organizing tendencies are my fault.) He flipped through The Book and asked me if I wanted to watch something scary, which of course I did because I wanted to impress my dad. I remember the excitement in my dad's eyes when he asked me, "Do you want to watch Jaws?"

My dad lay down on the couch and I sat behind him with my legs dangling down over his. The movie started. The first attack happened. I tucked my legs behind dad just in case a shark could somehow sneak into the living room and sat transfixed for the rest of the movie. Jaws was the perfect scary movie for me because I could be terrified of the shark without having to worry about it actually getting me (despite my unwillingness to dangle my legs), unlike other monsters who could (in my imagination) creep around my bedroom as soon as my parents said good night. Free of any impending attack, I was able to appreciate how totally rad that shark was: sharks are real which ups the scary factor over something like vampires or Frankenstein's monster. They are real and fit into an ecosystem and are a reminder that nature can still mess humans up even though we've done so much to control our environment and protect ourselves. And they just look awesome, like torpedoes with teeth and black eyes.

And so my love of and fascination with sharks was born.