blink and step into the sun

WOW! The weather the past couple days has been phenomenal!!

Yesterday evening I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Tonight I raced home so I could spend time cleaning out at least one of the flower beds. Everything is starting to come out: the lilac, the peonies, the daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, spirea, the redbud tree, and every other unidentified plant in my yard.

By the time John got home I had raked leaves and trash out from under the pine trees and out of the flower beds so he could help me pick up and bag the piles. He complained and called me names the whole time. But when we came back in, he did say it was nice to be outside for a little while. Turd.

I think I haven't mentioned in a while how much I love yoga. I'm still able to do most of the stuff in my Monday Hatha yoga class (with a few modifications). It feels so good to do that class. Sure, JT gets a little scrunched in some of the poses... but I feel like a new person after that class. My back feels better, I have more energy, my mind is clear, my pickup truck runs again, my dog comes back... etc... you get the point. :-)

On Saturday I tried one of my new DVD workouts: Tai Chi for Expecting Mothers. I loved it. Tai Chi is great anyway. But for right now, I'm just thankful that I will have something to keep me moving through month 9 without hurting myself.

I bought JT some books yesterday. Crazy good deals, even if the books are a little bit old for him. One is called The Paper Dragon by Marguerite Davol and Robert Sabuda. I am in love with this story! It has fold-out pages with chinese-style paintings of people and a dragon. The story is beautiful as well. A painter saves his town from the fire-breathing dragon. And the ultimate moral of the book? "Nothing is stronger than love." Awwww!!! It's art, life, culture, all rolled into one book. If you have kids, you should read this to them... they'll love it.

And here is a good way to end a random and wandering post... Check out this article about a wandering mind: When Our Minds are Wired to Wander on MSNBC.com. No really, look at the image of the article on my screen. The article talks about how much our minds wander during the day and how it can be a big problem. But look at the very screen on which the article is written. How do you keep focused in reading a 2-page article that is bombarded with advertisements that interrupt the reading?! Gee, why do our minds wander? Maybe we are trained to lose focus... we watch tv 10-15 minutes at a time, interrupted by commercials. We visit with friends only until their cell phone rings and we are put on hold. Anyway, the article is interesting, but the context is completely ironic.