The Opposite of Mindfulness and Ostentatious Wealth in Everyday Ramblings

Yesterday afternoon after teaching my work class I clocked out, came home and with perfect timing Kes and Most Honorable (my sister and Brother-in-Law and Love) appeared at my door.

I had spent Thursday evening shopping and prepping and so as a team we assembled the vegetarian stuffed bell peppers, beautiful organic red and yellow ones, for the slow cooker.

Then we went off to our local science museum, which is right across the river but complicated to get to by car. There was a ridiculous amount of traffic on those narrow streets and we had to wait a bit as a bridge had opened for maritime traffic as well. They don’t have GPS and the directions from Google Maps were not particularly helpful. But we persevered and found our way.

Kes has a deep interest in things Egyptian and I had heard that there was this big exhibit about the discovery and contents of King Tut’s tomb but knew nothing much else about it. My oldest sister and I had seen the traveling show in San Francisco together a long time ago with some of the actual pieces.

Then about 10 years ago said fearless oldest sister went on this amazing history tour of the Nile and the Valley of the Kings in person. They went to classes for months first and then the whole group went to Egypt and toured by bus and at one point took a multi-day barge trip down the Nile.

She said the hardest part of the whole trip was pooping in an open field. :) Archeologist style.

So anyway we had no idea how extensive and magical the exhibit was. It is a recreation of the layout, discovery and all the pieces in the tomb. It is kind of overwhelming, there is a lifetime worth of things to learn about there. Very cool and well worth the price of admission.

We all enjoyed it enormously and without them saying anything overtly political, the fact that all this wealth and artistry and focus on the afterlife was contingent on the backs of thousands of ordinary people who had such hard lives was brought to the fore.

Talk about income disparity!

It is hard not to think about our current climate with absurd gold plated toilets when looking at say the chariot with figures of slaves carved all over it and the denial of change itself that is going on now.

We managed to navigate back to my place without incident and the cats got a lot of attention as we prepared and ate our fresh persimmon spinach walnut salads, the stuffed peppers with yogurt mint and cucumber sauce, roast veggies (I got this gigantic turnip in my veggie box this week) and honey crisp apple pie with vanilla ice cream to finish. Ha. To finish! As if I had a clue what I was doing.

I bought the pie.

We exchanged gifts to open on the 25th after we all said we didn’t want “things” for Christmas. The temptation was too strong for all of us. There is that feel good finding just the right thing for someone gift giving pleasure that we were unable to quell. But at least my gifts are small and simple and chosen with the other person’s interests in mind. And can be recycled.

It was all very stimulating and yummy and fun and I really needed that!

I was feeling under the weather for about 5 days and just started feeling my relatively normal energetic self about a day and a half ago. There is for sure something going around and Mrs. Sherlock started showing signs of it last night at a concert.

She is taking on too much. I haven’t seen her for a week and a half, and I miss her and am sorry she isn’t feeling well. She says she will have me over for a long leisurely hang out after Christmas so I look forward to that. I also hope she is able to make it back to class.

I think of yoga often as preventative medicine. And it certainly was for me this week. I had a dental cleaning appointment and was rushing off down there preoccupied with a political maneuver at work and was texting Saint Joe to warn him not to respond to something and I missed my footing on a curb and totally torqued my ankle.

Since we went to the beach in October and I noticed walking on the sand that my ankles were weaker than usual I have been doing this short one-legged balances each day (a low tree pose) and it obviously is working! My ankle was absolutely fine, no swelling, no sprain or strain, no pain. I know a number of folks who have broken or seriously sprained their ankles doing exactly what I did.

Of course we all have structural weaknesses and I know that lots of individuals have less than ideal support in the ankle and for me that area is my wrists, which I have also been working on.

Not enough though. With Most Honorable spotting me I still am not able to kick up to handstand. I have my 2019 work cut out for me.

Last updated December 16, 2018