The Left Side of the Moon

Yoga (or Sometimes Laughable Impossibility)

I've mentioned now and again that I'm a yoga fan. I've been to some classes at the local Y, and Blackstone and I were doing a rather intense heated yoga class a few years back, right up until I broke my ankle. Since then I haven't done much in the way of group exercise period. For the last couple of years, most of my exercise has been done at home. When it's nice, sometimes I walk at lunch. Sometimes I'll even do the gym at lunch, but I don't want to take the time to shower and do the hair and make-up again, so I try to keep the intensity down when I do that. It's not my favorite way to work out, just too inconvenient.

These days, I usually work out before or after work, sometimes on the weekend mornings. We have a cross trainer in the bedroom, so sometimes I just do that while I'm watching TV. I also have hand weights and yoga mat. I'll record various exercise programs and do those, you know, change it up a bit. You can find just about any kind of exercise show on TV - aerobics, kick-boxing, yoga, belly dancing, hip-hop routines, step, pilates. I've been recording some of Namaste Yoga programs. They're a half hour and most of them are pretty do-able. Now, there are all different types and levels of yoga. I suppose I'm rather intermediate. I know a good deal of the common poses, my strength and flexibility is moderate. I cannot do hand stands or splits. Luckily, Namaste Yoga doesn't do too much of this. Though this morning they wanted me to stand in a modified tree position with one foot tucked up at my hip, then crouch forward touching the floor (already I'm stuck not being able to reach the floor, because the tightness in my hips is a major reason I do yoga in the first place, a rather common problem for women as they age, especially after having children). Then I'm supposed to lean forward, put my knees on my elbows and balance on my hands. I can't imagine how much yoga I'd have to do to get myself to this level. Probably way more than I ever intend on doing.

I want to stay flexible and strong, try to avoid loss of bone density, ward off weight gain. I'm not sure I need to be able to balance on my hands at this point in my life. At the moment, I couldn't do it if my life depended on it. And I'd probably do my body a great deal more harm than good.

Local Celebrity

You may not have known that I was a local celebrity, at least I used to be, courtesy of my Grandpa. Now, my Grandpa was truly a local celebrity. He was the sports caster for a local radio station all my life, until the day he died, when I was a teenager. He died suddenly. Went to work that day, went to bed and died of heart failure in his sleep. Along with doing the sports, he also did the weather. People used to tell him that they only followed his weather forecasts and wanted to know how he was always so accurate. "I look out the window," he would tell them.

My Grandpa drove me home from school every day from first grade through sixth grade. He drove me to dance lessons too. He had a VW beetle in baby blue at first. I used to call it the Mickey Mouse car because it sort of looked like Mickey Mouse and it squeaked. I also called milk "mook" because cows said "moo" and cows made "mook." Yeah, I was a strange kid. He eventually replaced it with a Dodge Colt, which would become my first car when I was seventeen.

I was also rather precocious, and my Grandma had this habit of making tape recordings of me. She had dozens of tapes of me when I was about three or four, reciting stories and singing songs - The Three Little Pigs, Goldie Locks, Eggbert the Easter Egg, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. My Grandpa must have had a real soft spot for my rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. He brought it to work with him, and he would play it on the radio at the opening of every baseball season. It was rather embarrassing once I got to be a teenager, but I never paid much attention to sports, nor did I listen to AM radio, so it's not like I had to suffer through it. But one person or another would always tell me they heard me on the radio after he played it.

I hadn't thought about that tape recording in years. Blackstone contacted a fellow Mason who works at the radio station for some reason. He remembers my Grandpa, and me from when I was a kid. He said they don't play the tape at the beginning of baseball season anymore. He said he thinks it was destroyed per my request. I don't remember ever making such a request, but I suppose it's entirely possible. I guess my fifteen minutes of fame are up, but how much can that matter when I had completely forgotten about them?

Dexter

We finished watching season 2 of Dexter recently. Blackstone likes the show even more than I do, which just goes to show that I'm not the only one in this relationship with a dark sense of humor. There's one scene from season 1 that I think just exemplifies the rest of the show. Dexter's getting ready to cut up one of his victims into pieces with a chain saw, and he's thinking to himself, "If there's a God then he's here in this room with me. I just wish he'd brought an extension cord." This is from memory, so it may not be entirely accurate, but I think you get the point. The show is dark. The writing is great, though. It's not often you get to see the lighter side of a serial killer, nor one struggling with his morality. I wouldn't imagine most serial killers are that funny, but what would I know?

I have a few expectations or predictions, if you will, for the upcoming season. If you haven't watched season 2, you may not want to read any further because I'm bound to spoil it for you. I have to admit that by the last two or three episodes I thought Lila was going down as the Bay Harbor Butcher. He does drug his victims, so over-powering wouldn't be a problem. And the bodies are cut into pieces and put into bags. It could have physically been a woman, right? Not the way it worked out, so I was wrong on that one.

Now Harry's dad is his foster dad, but we know his mother was an informant for Harry and that they were acquainted. In fact, it's hinted that they were more than just acquainted in the flashbacks when Dexter is listening to the tapes. I'm thinking Harry may be Dexter's biological father, and that he probably knew it.

I also doubt that Harry committed suicide as the sergeant (I think it's the sergeant) explains to Dexter. Harry was a real loose cannon. Angry, beyond reason angry, when the bad guys went free. So angry he taught his son how to be a serial killer and go after these guys and deliver his own brand of justice. Harry may have been rather crazy, but I doubt he committed suicide. Much more likely he got wrapped up in something, found out something he wasn't supposed to, and was off-ed because of it.

I think Dexter also has to come to terms with the fact that his father turned him into this monster. He may have had murderous tendencies from the start, but Harry cultivated them instead of trying to help him. Harry has played a Dr. Frankenstein in all this. He was so wrapped up in his idea of justice, in teaching Dexter how to go after and murder these guys and get away with it, that he never stopped to think about what he was doing to his son. There's the scene where Harry walks in on Dexter cutting up his first victim and he vomits in repulsion, it's much like Frankenstein actually bringing the monster to life and then running in fear from what he's created - leaving the monster to now fend for himself in a world that fears and loathes him. The idea of vigilante justice may be all sunshine and victory in the fantasy, but in reality it's bloody, gory and nauseating.

Smarts and Stuff

It's funny to me that Liz commented that she doesn't comment much because it takes her so long to research and think about the things that I write. Bookgirl said something similar to me a while back, that when she describes my blog to people, she describes it as being very smart. I told her most people who've read my blog are just totally shocked that I write about orgasms. Honestly guys, thanks, I'm flattered, but it's really weird for me too. I know now that I'm a rather intelligent person, not Mensa or anything, but pretty smart. It took me a long time to realize that, though.

I grew up with a very smart group of kids. I mean Bookgirl's a Mensa member, that's pretty intimidating. Her grades were always way better than mine. And Polly, well, sometimes she uses words I need to go look up. Kind of funny since we met when she started cheating off me during our vocabulary quizzes in junior high. There were many kids who scored in the 14 and 15 hundreds on their SAT's in our classes. I was always an honor roll student, always in the top classes (except for English my senior year of high school). But I was also almost always (except English) at the bottom of the class when it came to grades in those honors classes. Part of it was that I split myself so very thin with all the extra-curriculars that I didn't sleep much and didn't study as much as I should have. Between theater, writing for the newspaper, playing the clarinet, and working part time, my schedule was booked very tight. Part of it was that I was way too horny to care about concentrating on my studies more. Hey, it's not only boys that have that problem. Which one of our friends was it that coined our tortuous state as "cunt throb"? I know it wasn't me. And then there was the drinking and the other less than legal substance, that didn't help.

My mother was always comparing me to another of my friends. My grades were always a few points lower than hers. It was so frustrating. We'd study together for math tests. I would explain problems to her, and then she'd always score a few points higher than me on the tests. I swear, I don't know which of the gods I pissed off, but someone was seriously tormenting me, that's how it felt. I had a teacher who asked the class once if we understood some new concept she was teaching us. When I nodded in agreement she said, "Well, if Diosa gets it, then you all get it." That's kind of the way high school rolled for me.

When I started working at a convenience store and met kids that went to other schools, that was really the first time I saw people not only recognizing my intelligence, but also being rather intimidated by it. I was used to getting teased like I was an air-head. It was quite shocking to me. I had recently taken my SAT's and by my friends' standards done just okay. One of the guys I worked with asked me how I did and I answered honestly. His mouth fell open and he wouldn't tell me his score, he was too embarrassed. It was an entirely new arena for me.

Whereas many kids have trouble adjusting to college, the work load, competing with an entirely new and more diverse group of students, the transition was cake for me. In fact, it was way easier than high school. I no longer had this stereotype of being an idiot following me around. Teachers no longer treated me like I was the dumbest kid in the room. Of course, I only went to a state college. I'm sure it would have been different at a bigger, more prestigious university.

There are still subjects that if you were to quiz me on, I'd sound like a moron. I have trouble keeping politics straight. I usually write about it more for my benefit than anything else. My knowledge of history and world politics is abysmal. Geography is a serious weak point. I must have been in at least fifth grade before I understood the difference between a city, state or country. I can still get lost in a box. And if you haven't noticed, for a former English teacher, my spelling is atrocious when I don't spell check.

What's Your Sign?

I finished Embracing Your Big Fat Ass last night and the end of the book has a chapter on astrology. Basically it's a tongue-and-cheek explanation of how your zodiac sign plays into the size of your ass. Now, I don't put a great deal of stock into astrology to begin with, and obviously this book is meant for fun. It is about some serious issues, mind you. Health, fitness, obesity, eating disorders - these topics are no joke. However, if you can't have some sense of humor about the size of your ass, learn to accept it and that there is definitely more to life than obsessing about it, well, then I guess your either a skinny little bitch or stuffing some very uncomfortable feelings.

I'm a Scorpio born on the cusp of Sagittarius, because I was born on the last day of Scorpio. This is the extent of my knowledge on the subject. I have no idea if the sun was rising when I was born or what happens when Mars enters my horizon or whatever. I don't really care. Scorpio is the sex sign. It governs the reproductive system and sexual organs. (I suppose it's not like this is entirely at odds with me.) So, every horoscope or explanation of my sign always relates to sex. According to Embracing Your Big Fat Ass, Scorpios are much more interested in sex and sensual pleasure than with food. I'm not exactly sure my ass supports their theory. It would honestly depend on my mood at the given time, whether I would choose food over sex, and also upon what food we're talking about. I couldn't have both at once. That's just messy. One of those things much better left to porn and fantasy than reality. But I'm sure any astrologer worth their salt would tell you that not being entirely driven by sex has something to do with me carrying some Sagittarius traits because I'm born on the cusp, or that Venus was in the wrong place for me at that moment. I bet it had a lot more to do with how much sleep I got the night before, how much of a pain of the ass my kids were that day, and whether the amount of stress I was managing at the given time was a slow trickle or a deluge.

The book's explanation of Scorpio women describes us a she-devils, more interested in kissing than appetizers and sex than entrees, the type of woman who devours her man. Last time I checked I hadn't bitten off my husband's head praying-mantis-style after copulating, but that must be the Sagittarius in me.

I have to admit though, there are those aspects of astrology that make you wonder if there's isn't a little something to it. Blackstone's a Pisces, and we're a zodialogical match made in heaven. And the physical description on Wikipedia, "In appearance Scorpio is well proportioned, strong in body, muscular, slender, with a broad face and a commanding look. Their eyes are their strong point. Their gaze is often considered "hypnotic, piercing, and imperial"," I suppose that fits except for the slender part. Why does everyone seem to think I'm not interested in food? And the qualities, "Scorpio is considered highly passionate, imaginative, determined, persevering, inflexible and self-confident," yes, I would definitely use all of these words to describe myself. I'm also supposed to be fiercely loyal and deeply committed to relationships of all kinds, that fits too.

According to Wikipedia:

Likes: activity, mysteries, secrets, sex, winning, being acknowledged, strategy

Dislikes: being analyzed, being asked personal questions, people who know more than they do, too many compliments, having to trust a stranger

Suitable Occupations: Anything involving deep analysis, investigation, research or the solving of mysteries, such as detective, scientist, researcher, market analyst

Yes, in fact, most of that fits. Except I'm not really into secrets. And who doesn't like winning and being acknowledged? The suitable occupations is eerily correct though. They do everything but list programmer. Perhaps I should have consulted an astrologer or had my tea leaves read before getting a degree in education.

I love this associated trait, "calm but seething," oh, that is sooo me.

They Grow Up Too Fast

LT has a girlfriend. Well, if you ask him, he says he doesn't, but his girlfriend would beg to disagree. She calls him her boyfriend, they go to the dance studio together. Well, at least they do until tomorrow, because after that we're taking the summer off from dance and starting swim lessons and karate instead. So, she'll have to find some way to deal with not seeing her boyfriend for a while. I think she'll manage. She's sixteen . . . and completely smitten with my four-year-old. He gives her hugs and kisses, but insists she's NOT his girlfriend. His exact words when I asked him if he had a girlfriend were, "Not yet." I asked him who his girlfriend was going to be. He gave me the name of a five-year-old girl in his dance class. Very adorable and sweet little girl. Only one problem with that. She's all moony-eyed for his brother, and Trouble seems rather affable towards her too.

I hope this is not foreshadowing of what the future holds.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About My Ass

I know there was a time in my adolescence when I wasn't comfortable with my body. And there have been several times since, like the year or so following  each of my pregnancies when I felt fat and like my weight was out of my control. But by and large, I've been comfortable with my ass since I was a teenager.

I've been reading Embracing Your Big Fat Ass, courtesy of Bookgirl. It's a very comical read and its got a great message. It's not about condoning morbid obesity or anything crazy like that, but is about self-acceptance and self-esteem. You must have that first and foremost. If you can accept yourself, love your body, then chances are, keeping yourself in a healthy state will follow. It's not important that you be a size 2, probably not even healthy or reasonable. It is important that you take care of yourself. A message it would seem many women could use to hear these days. You watch the news today and it looks like most of us have gone to one extreme or another, insanely starving ourselves or vomiting in the name of beauty and fashion, or throwing in the towel and gorging on greasy take-out and chips and cookies by the bag, washed down with a 2 liter of Coke. Again, I'll insert my constant message of finding the middle ground here. I swear it applies to everything and every situation.

I could not agree with BFAB's (Beautiful Fat Ass Babes) Laura Banks and Janet Barber more on their view of diets. What we do to ourselves in our quest to become thin has nothing to do with being healthy. Starving yourself to the point of passing out, binging and purging, maniacal exercising - there's nothing healthy about it. And you'd be hard pressed to find a woman these days who hasn't at some point subjected herself to some form of this torture trying to lose weight. I remember fasting for periods in high school. There were weeks when I only ate once a day. I tried purging once with ipecac. Once was enough for me, Bulimia was definitely not my thing. I found myself vomiting with a group of friends on a golf course. Yes, a golf course. I don't know what the hell we were doing there. The scary thing to me is not that I did this, but that I think it's rather normal for a girl to experiment with such measures for managing her weight these days. At this point in my life, I refuse to enter the hunger stage that is the headache, which most diets would require of me. I'm sure you know that stage. It's past the hunger pains, past the point where the hunger pains have subsided, and that's when the headache starts to set in. You're blood sugar is dropping, you're tired and cranky and hungry, yet not hungry anymore. You can't really think all that clearly. I don't have the time or energy for putting myself through that anymore. It's just not healthy and I need all the energy I can muster to get through the day. Honestly, just have a snack already. Just don't let it be a donut or a candy bar.

The funny thing about me is, that with all the struggle I've had with my weight, I've never really had a self-esteem problem. I've always thought I had a great ass. A big ass, no doubt, but a nice round one. There is the running story in my family that there must be black genes in our family history somewhere, because the backside some of us sport, well, it's just not a white booty. Blackstone and I were watching Hustle and Flow after it came out on DVD. The opening scene is a bunch of strippers back stage, naked or mostly naked. And Blackstone turned and said to me, "Gee, you really do have a black ass." Yeah, tell me something I don't know. But I consider it a blessing, not a curse. Black women do have the best asses, well, them and Hispanic women, in my opinion.

I know that I do suffer from a bit of body dysmorphia. I look in the mirror and I see what I want to see. Some women suggest not using a scale and just judging by how your clothes fit to see if you're eating too much. I can't do that. I have to step on a scale. I will ignore the way my clothes fit. I will look in the mirror and I will not see what is actually staring back at me. This is true when I lose weight too. The only reality check for me besides the scale, is pictures. I look at pictures of myself at my heaviest and my lightest and it's hard for me to remember being that size, that person. Because that has never been the person I saw in the mirror.

At 5'3" and size 12, that puts me about smack dab in the middle of average when it comes to size in this country. A little short maybe, and that's always been a thorn in my side. I couldn't even be a plus size model because I'm too short (not that I ever wanted to be a model, plus size or otherwise, but still, that doesn't mean I don't want to have the option). And there ain't a damn thing I can do about that. Couldn't be a Rockette either, and no amount of dieting is going to make me taller. And is 12 considered plus size or isn't it? Because I've never really been clear on that one. But honestly, don't even bother, because what's a size 12 in one clothing line is no 12 in another. In some lines I'm a 10, in others a 14. In every line, everything is too long. And a petite section that didn't look like it was entirely designed for little old women, that would be nice. I just have everything altered.

No, We're not in Kansas

I had a dream the other night that there was a tornado. I know, how often do we have tornadoes in the NE? But this is a dream, and in my dream there was a tornado, not a hurricane. The tornado hit very suddenly, without any warning. Trouble and I were in the house and we had to go outside to get LT. He was playing in the yard. The tornado was getting close and he was starting to blow away, but we managed to get him and bring him back in the house. Then I brought the kids down to the basement and tied us all together with a rope and then tied the rope to a beam. I don't remember anything after that. Somehow I think I felt safe once we were tied to the beam, though I doubt that would do much good if the house was struck by a tornado.

I think I might be a little stressed.

It's All About Perspective

Trouble brought home piles of paper work from school yesterday. One of them was a sheet that had people staring at a lake and the instructions were to draw a picture of a monster. Trouble had drawn a big monster with blood shooting everywhere. No big surprise there. And the monster was saying, "I hate you," to the people. The unusual thing is that "I hate you" was written backwards, and when I say backwards, I mean written from right to left, each letter written backwards. It was an exact mirror image. I asked him why he had done that and he had no answer. Not only did he have no answer, he didn't understand that he'd written it backwards.

This is not the first time he's done something like this. We went to a family day when he was in pre-school and there was a teacher sitting across from him at a table and she asked him to write his name. He picked up the pencil and wrote his name upside down and backwards, so it read correctly to her sitting across from him, like it was the most natural thing in the world. She said she'd never seen a kid do that before.

Most of the time his writing is normal. Occasionally there's a letter that's backwards or something. His writing's not that great and the spelling is still very imaginative. But every once in a while, I'll see he's written something completely mirror image. I don't know quite what to make of it. I don't think that's dyslexia. My understanding is that would cause him to read and write with the letters randomly backwards and forwards, more jumbled. And that's not what he's doing. I wonder, if in drawing the picture, he was seeing the words from inside the picture, like from the monster's perspective?

Trouble's also a lefty, and I know that can be associated with different brain activity, different ways of thinking. Not sure if that might somehow be connected. We have several left-handed people in the family, and none of them seem to have done that.

Anyone else have a kid that does this? Is it as unusual as it seems to me? Trouble absolutely has his own ideas about things. He is undoubtedly wise beyond his years in many respects, but just making grade level in others. He's a great critical and abstract thinker, he already has a shocking aptitude for negative numbers. His reading is on the lower-normal range for his age. But this backwards writing thing. It's just baffling. I'd have a problem doing it if someone asked me to, and he has trouble even comprehending that he's done something strange.

P.S. - Amazing what you can find on Google. Suppose it can't be that troubling when he's in the company of da Vinci.

http://www.proteacher.net/discussions/showthread.php?t=6623

http://life.familyeducation.com/cognitive-development/early-learning/42297.html

http://handedness.org/action/leftwrite.html

 

I'm Voting Republican

Courtesy of Bookgirl, source http://imvotingrepublican.com/.