The Current Configuration in Everyday Ramblings

The reason this picture has that painterly blur to it is that I took it just after dawn yesterday and there was not quite enough light. This messy colorful front garden seems appropriate on this mother’s day somehow. It is in front of a couple of houses built in the late 1800’s, one a student rental with tiny rooms and thin walls and the other a private residence that is like a duck out of water with the huge sprawling retirement center across the street.

It was gorgeous yesterday! Warm and clear and mild until the late afternoon when it got hot. Windows open, coats and rain gear off! Freedom.

Today we are back to the murky underwater glare and cooler temperatures of heavy layered overcast that is our usual bill of weather fare.

Kes, (if her gardening stressed lower back allows) is coming up today to deliver the rest of my “stuff” that I took to the beach. You know, rain boots, binoculars, extra gloves and hats and… all the stuff one needs for days of changeable weather including flip flops that I sent on with her last time she was up so I didn’t need to lug it around with me to and from the train station.

With her heightened sensitivity to environmental factors because of the asthma I need to see if I can get up as much cat hair as possible before she gets here. Who knew two gray cats could produce so much fur? They are both very good groomers so that is a gift but when they tussle like kittens, which they do periodically throughout the day they stir up even more.

There is this wonderful online yoga conference going on this weekend and I am getting continuing ed credits for watching it. I bought the package so I can refer back to the videos anytime, which is very cool.

I spent all day Friday thinking about hamstrings. :)

It was a cautionary master class taught by a local physical therapist that is internationally known for her clear concise writing about anatomy and yoga that got me headed down that path.

Her teaching helped me realize that I need to be more careful with my students with super tight muscles in the back of their legs in terms of how we do forward bends to protect their backs.

Not that I am not careful, I am, but it is a slightly different approach in terms of what might be helpful. Like say, standing against a wall with one foot at a time on the seat of a chair in front of you for two minutes on each side most days a week.

I am learning lots of other cool stuff too.

I am reading a library copy of The Iceberg by Marion Coutts. It is beautiful, poetic and hard to read, a memoir of a young mother whose beloved husband is diagnosed with a brain tumor. She is an artist and lives in London.

While I have been writing this Diego has made it abundantly clear to me that he is bored by crawling all over me and the laptop and knocking things off the bathroom counter and investigating kitchen cabinets with momentarily open doors.

I was talking to a couple of students after class last week about how so many of the rest of the women in the class had grandmother duty lately and couldn’t come every week. Both of the women I was talking to are childless, as I am, and one of them said, “I like to think of it as being child free”.

We laughed.

I am grateful that I live in a culture where it is pretty much without stigma not to have children and to have been born to older parents who are no longer living but it makes these days where everyone celebrates the incredible work of parenthood a bit awkward.

But it also gives me the chance to broaden my scope and celebrate a full range of motherhood in all its many forms across the circle of my acquaintances. And that includes you all.

Best wishes for a lovely day with your families however they are presently configured.

Last updated May 08, 2016