spynotes ::
  October 12, 2006
If I were any closer, I'd be in back of you

AJ and I had a bona fide snowball fight on the way home from school. Except that we both like to make snowballs and don�t like to get hit with them, so we fought with a tree, which clearly lost, as demonstrated by its trunk, now adorned with many snow-colored splotches.

We came home red-eared and pink-cheeked and buried our noses in steaming beverages (cocoa for AJ, tea for me).

Afterwards, in anticipation of drama arising from the fact that The Girl Next Door was having a play date with Ben Franklin Boy, to which AJ was not explicitly invited, I hauled AJ to the store to find him a new fall jacket and a present for N�s birthday party this weekend. We got a soft wool coat that zips up the front for AJ and toy pirates for N. Then we went to our favorite diner where I drank tea with lemon and honey and AJ went to town on the world�s largest hot dog.

And then it was yoga time. My addiction to this particular form of recreation grows ever stronger. I�m now up to three classes a week with plenty of practice sessions in between. I look forward to my Thursday class from the minute I get up in the morning (at four-fucking-forty-five). My Thursday class is my favorite. For one thing, Thursday is the end of my teaching week, so I feel like I�ve earned a night off. I need my Thursday class. It feeds my soul and makes me feel strong. Even hearing that AJ asks every Thursday night, �Daddy, do you miss Mommy too?� doesn�t make me want to stay home, although it does make my heart break just a little.

Tonight�s class was particularly challenging. I�ve discovered, however, that I might have a second career as a contortionist. As long as I can stop laughing when we get in these ridiculous poses. But it feels good. I may take that tomorrow when I try to get my overextended hips onto the ice rink.

I love the mental part of yoga. For someone like me who has some serious mind/body split issues, yoga is the perfect form of exercise. It�s a concentration I haven�t experienced since I was in ballet school, the devotion to formal perfection. I like that some of it � the flexibility part � comes very easily to me but that some of it � anything involving balance � is challenging enough to require serious concentration. I like the mix of exertion and meditation.

On the way home from class, I always tune into my favorite radio program, American Routes. I find the program strangely compatible with yoga, in that it both engages the intellect � I am a scholar of American music and its subjects are frequently of academic interest to me � and my sense of fun � the music rocks. Tonight I heard a lot of cowboy yodeling along with Louis Armstrong scatting his way through Basin Street Blues.

Tonight, I came home to find one of my favorite Marx Brothers movies (A Day at the Races � great until the scarily racist ending) on TV. A perfect ending to a perfect day.

[Second entry today. Click back for a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather]

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