Blizzard Day 2

Well, I managed to catch the winds in a bit of a lull. Sadly, I don't think I'll ever know what the winds were last night, but at least our weather site is back up again. I can just make out the snow fence from the kitchen window or the shadow of it.

I woke up feeling kind of off. Not quite sick, but groggy, faintly congested and feeling as though I was running a bit of a fever. I seem to have shaken most of it off, but I thought a bit of something liquid would help in the off chance that I'm just dehydrated. I've just started running my new humidifier, but still I've found that I've really been dry since coming back. My milk gave up the ghost on Sunday - so I decided to crack out some of the powdered milk I ordered this summer and make a smoothie with that. (I do have enough sense not to drink powdered milk straight - but I thought all the other parts of the smoothie would overwhelm the processed overly sweet taste.... obviously... it has not. This is by far the grossest smoothie I've ever eaten - although B. says she puts spinach and flax seed and maybe fish oil in hers... so its not that gross... but I see most of my skim milk powder being donated to the school or the food bank. I'll keep a bit for emergencies. But real milk is not that expensive... not for the 1 L I drink a week and I'm sure there is someone out there who will bake it into something that isn't nearly so revolting. I think it is the sweetness that is grossing me out - I'm going to finish the smoothie since it does contain an entire precious banana and a cup of frozen fruit and lots of nutritious goodness that I'm sure my body will appreciate even if my mouth doesn't.

On the heels of my powdered-milk smoothie mishap, I had a jello disaster. I opted to use a dish that was shallow and just big enough and spilt half the jello on the floor. I hope I got most of it off the outside of the dish before putting it into the fridge as it'll be a pain to clean the fridge otherswise and I managed to pick the one box of jello I possess that isn't sugar free... sigh.

I was writing posts in my head last night and if I hadn't fallen asleep accidentally I might have even posted it then. It was the first time in a long time that I actually did yoga. I frequently do bits of yoga as part of other exercising, but its been a very long while since I did the kind of yoga where you think about relaxing and breathing and exact positioning. It was incredibly nice and while I did the best to clear my mind of thoughts outside the exercises themselves... I found myself reflecting on my relationship with yoga instead. My first encounter with yoga was through my drama teacher - who taught us (among other important lessons) how to do the salute to the sun cycle. I learned it in a classroom with at least 20 others. We frequently started drama classes with it... and I've probably used this skill more often than anything I've learned in Math or Science even. Its a good way to warm up when I get cold from sitting too long or stretch when I'm stiff. I often use it as a warm up before exercising in general since it stretches most of the important muscles... and likewise the other skills I learned from Mrs. LeRiche.... How to project my voice, how to perform in front of a crowd, how to apply make-up (stage anyway), how to organize other people (as a stage manager), how to communicate with others,.... especially as a teacher, but even in many of my other roles, I've used my drama skills every day. The math and science is important - I'm the last person to argue that they aren't - but honestly, in terms of useful life skills drama really has all my other subjects beat. The rest of the yoga I taught myself from a library book during my second year of university - thus I'm certain that I probably do half of the exercises wrong, but they feel correct, which is good enough for me. I guess I went to a handful of yoga classes through parks and rec and with my mom. So, my methods are completely out to lunch, just my repertoire is limited to the poses included in "Yoga:Mind and Body" so it'd be good one day to take a few weeks of classes to improve my skills, but in the meantime - I'm going to try and spend at least 20 minutes each day running through my set of exercises - its kind of an experiment to see how much I can improve and how quickly.