A Road From Douglas County

Lightness and Darkness

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:29:00 +0000

Over the last year I’ve noticed that my tolerance level for people behaving badly has significantly increased. Maybe it is in part because I am getting older, or maybe it’s happening because of all the yoga and meditation, or maybe it’s both. Nevertheless, I find myself either ignoring or laughing at behavior that would have previously fired me up and led me into some kind of confrontation. In the worst cases, when I do have a strong negative reaction to someone’s behavior, I’m at least not saying the inappropriate things I’m thinking (well most of the time). The first step, one of my Buddhist friends told me, is to just not say it out loud. Every person, no matter how annoying or mean, has some goodness in them, some light that wants to shine through, but for whatever reason they are failing at the moment to “let their little light shine.” I know I have my bad days just like everyone else, where I am self-involved and do something rude, or I am just down and have trouble being present with others. One of the goals of yoga is to become aware of our thoughts and behavior, to witness our own consciousness and be able to manage these highs and lows, to be aware of the good and the bad within ourselves along with accepting this in others. In yoga we are practicing being present in the moment, not just present with the people we are with, but present with our own thoughts, watching from a place of silence and centeredness.

When I was dropping my oldest daughter off at school the other morning, I realized that I had forgotten to tell her something, and so she was standing outside leaning toward the window listening to me. She had been upset about something, and I wanted to give her one more motherly word on the subject. I made a point of pulling tightly into the curb so that the other parents could get around me easily in the parking lot. Despite the fact that there was plenty of room to go around me, the woman behind me started honking her horn and glaring at my daughter. I looked in the rear view mirror to see this woman’s angry face gesturing and honking. The other parents dropping off their kids just pulled around and drove off, no problem. Still, this woman insisted on being belligerent. I pulled up even more onto the curb, thinking maybe she’d pulled in too tightly to turn out, but no, that wasn’t it, she was just pissed that I wasn’t following procedure. She was going nuts back there. Yes, it would have been better if I had just dropped my daughter off and kept going, but sometimes kids need an extra word. Meanwhile, the rest of the parents are easily passing by on our left, looking over to see what all the honking was about. This whole scene went down in about 15 seconds.

In the past I would have become agitated and upset by the woman’s aggressive behavior. I’m not saying that I didn’t react. I did react, but I made the decision to not act. Sometimes we have to just work on not saying things out loud, even though we are reacting on the inside. In the past, I would have acted on my urge to get out of the car and posture. The thought also occurred to me that in my youth I would have gotten out of the car and sat on the hood, maybe opening a soda and enjoying myself, not moving. The temptation was there to give her the bird out the window. This time, I am proud to report that I did not give her the bird, nor did I roll down the window and yell, “WTF you crazy BIT@#!” I just sat there, relaxed, thinking these “bad” things, and then I heard myself think, “wow, that woman really needs some yoga.” I resisted the urge to get out of my car and flyer her windshield with the yoga schedule (the passive aggressive, I’m more enlightened than you are option). My daughter was intimidated of course, so I told her, “don’t look at her. Just ignore her. She is having a bad day, and that is her stuff.” It really didn’t have anything to do with us. The woman dramatically wheeled around us, continuing to glare and honk. I said to my daughter, “somebody forgot to eat their Goji berries this morning!”

This last weekend, I was teaching to a group of people who are working towards becoming yoga teachers themselves. I wanted to give them my take on yoga teachers behaving badly, most specifically famous teachers. Yoga people love their rockstar yogis, and they don’t want to consider the truth that they are real people with faults. For my readers who don’t do yoga, the phenomenon is similar to how some church members put their pastor up on a pedestal and then are crushed when they find out he’s been engaging in something unbecoming of a pastor. It can be something as simple as witnessing the pastor yell at his kids disrespectfully or the more egregious sin of having an affair with someone in the congregation. Many famous yoga teachers have had affairs with people in their “congregations,” just like we hear about with pastors.

Does this make null everything we’ve learned from them before we learned of their faults and indiscretions? No. Just like all of us, spiritual teachers have their dark night of the soul experiences, those periods of time when they do not feel the divine within them and begin searching in the wrong places to fill their needs. A person can be an amazing orator one day, and then in the next not follow her own teachings and act selfishly. As yoga students, our best protection against disappointment is not to idolize the teachers in the first place. By fawning over the teacher in order to get into the “inner circle” students are not only at risk of being taken advantage of by the yogi – they are most likely not following their own dharma or calling. The comparison to church life is overwhelmingly similar – always, there is the couple trying to get into the pastor’s inner circle, only to be disappointed when they find out he gets drunk on Saturdays while watching Nascar and yells at his wife from the couch to bring more beers. The way I see it, we all have to take turns being each other’s teachers, because sometimes we connect to the spirit within us, and sometimes we don’t. We have to look for the light in one another, and try to accept the darkness when it is present. Sometimes we need others to help lead us to the light within ourselves, someone to walk with us on our journey for awhile. In the end though, a good teacher lets you walk on your own path after he has helped you, quietly returning down his path. If you look back and see him ducking into a questionable pub, just grin and keep walking. He did his job, now it’s your turn.

Knock on the Door of your Heart

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:55:00 +0000

I am again this year taking a lot of calls and e-mails concerning the tradition of the New Year’s Resolution. If people make any resolutions at all, it is often about weight loss. Maybe this is due to all the marketing this time of year for creating the “new you” in the new year or just a reflection of our obsession with skinny bodies as a culture. Part of my job as a yoga teacher and studio owner is to take all of these calls and attempt to stay present with people as they tell me, that this time, this time, they are going to change their lifestyle. I’ve got to make them believe that I believe them, because maybe they will succeed. Maybe they are the one person in twenty who will follow through and do it. And I am the person they are saying it to out loud, so I have to do my best to stay with it. I must admit that by the end of January, I begin to struggle with it, because it takes a lot of spiritual energy and attention to stay focused on all the stories that people tell me. I’m not complaining though. I do like the job.

Still, I can’t help feeling that something important is missing in all these resolutions. Last year, I contemplated why some people keep their resolutions to take better care of themselves and some don’t. This year, I’m starting to wonder if maybe we are all just making the wrong resolutions. I shared my thoughts on this with a friend of mine who is a pastor, and he said, “How come no one makes the resolution to get closer to God this year?” Of course he said that, it’s his job, and he did make me laugh. His comment sent me to the internet in search of the history of New Year’s Resolutions. It turns out these resolutions have been around for thousands of years, but they used to be of a much more spiritual nature.

What are we actually thinking and feeling when we say, “I’m going to exercise and lose weight this year”? Most people who make this resolution and start telling their friends are most likely thinking negative thoughts about their bodies and themselves. For such an out of shape and dormant society, we have an odd obsession with overly skinny, ripped bodies. These images, both male and female, on TV and in magazines are ridiculously unrealistic. But even though we know this, we still compare ourselves continually to them, whether we admit it or not.

What I sense when I talk with people is a deeper unhappiness about their bodies and themselves. Clearly, eating better and exercising is a great goal and will definitely improve quality of life, but it won’t necessarily make a person happy. We can’t put off choosing to be happy until we have a slender, in-shape body. We have to figure out how to be happy with what we have now, even if what we have now is a far cry from some magazine picture.

I can hear what some of my readers, who know me, are thinking right about now. “Easy for you to say, skinny chick!” Yes, that is right, I’ve always been a skinny chick. But I’m telling you right now, and this is important, being skinny doesn’t make you happy. Just go back into this blog and read, and you’ll find that skinny girls have their demons just like everyone else. As women, we need to let go of any thoughts that the perfect body will make us happy.

How can we learn to be happy with whatever we have, even if it’s getting older and fatter and going south? It is easier said than done, but I believe it can be done. I don’t think the answer will be found by extreme exercising or eating twigs. It’s more likely that we’ll find it sitting on our mat or cushion and being quiet, and following the breath. What? Learn to be happy with my body by not doing anything other than sitting on my butt? Yes.

As we practice yoga and meditation, we begin to witness our own minds. We begin to hear our minds chattering. What is your mind saying about your body? Would you say these awful things to anyone else? Why then say them to yourself? Becoming aware of these thoughts isn’t going to stop them, but we can learn to just let them go on by and give them less weight. We are not our thoughts, and we are not our bodies.

Although all the marketing of “body as temple” has jaded us, it is based in the truth that we can find the Spirit through and in the body. I believe the body is a sacred vessel for the Spirit, and if we begin to feel connected to our bodies and the beauty and mystery of them, we begin to make the journey out of the cycle of negative self-talk. Often we abuse our bodies in our quest to fill the spirit. As humans we often want more, when we feel empty inside or unfulfilled, and we want to find a way to fill that emptiness. Sometimes we look to food to fill this inner yearning. When the mind is quiet, we become less thirsty and less hungry. In 2010, let the Spirit fill you from the inside. Sit and knock on the door of your heart.

- Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live. -Jonathan Edwards, 1723

Christmas Eve and Ginger Ale

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:14:00 +0000

Christmas vacation has started and my kids are wound up. They got onto my Netflix account last night and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and now I’m either hearing the songs from Chitty Chitty or some random Christmas carol. I don’t want to be a Grinch already, but the combination is really getting to me. Some simple math here: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang + the 12 days of Christmas = Rum.

A few years ago I sent out an e-mail before the holidays that encouraged people to try mini meditations during those sometimes joyous and other times difficult family gatherings. I also suggested occasionally hiding in the bathroom, because no one is going to bother you in there – or ask you any probing questions. One problem with this suggestion: kids will actually sit outside the bathroom and talk to you. No matter who we are or what kind of family we have, lets be honest, there is dysfunction. The families that appear to be perfect are often the ones that turn out to be the craziest. So if things get crazy at your family gathering this year, try to take a deep breath and remember that you have a choice of how you react to what is happening around you. You can choose to just sit quietly, ignore, and say nothing. It turns out that silence is very powerful. If you don’t say anything, everyone thinks you agree with them.

As I’ve shared before on this blog, my family puts the fun back into dysFUNctional. For as long as I can remember, there has always been some kind of crazy behind the scenes thing going on. The adults think the kids don’t know, but oh yes, we most certainly did. When I was about 9, I sensed that something was going on with my parents and grandparents. It all started to become clear to me with the continual serving of the ginger ale and giggling going on in the kitchen. My mom never bought ginger ale. I didn’t really like it. Yet every time we’d go to Grandma’s house and Great Grandma was there, we’d all be drinking ginger ale. So I thought, what’s up with the ginger ale? Nine year-olds want to know the answers to these kinds of questions.

Christmas gatherings at my grandmothers were always a bit fancy. She knew how to entertain and we kids were expected to behave like ladies and gentlemen – even though we had to sit at “the kids” table. I was required to wear this red velvet dress that itched and little black patent shoes. My great grandmother fascinated me and I would sit next to her in awe. She would look down at me with intensity. Her crooked fingers still worked, and she played cards with me while we drank our ginger ale. She evidently liked ginger ale. Maybe that is why we always had it? Wiggling my way into the kitchen one Christmas Eve, I saw my mother grinning while my grandfather was pouring some stuff into her glass of ginger ale. Then he put the bottle back into the cabinet, and they both started giggling. I thought to myself, wow, the kitchen is kind of interesting. Maybe I’ll hang out for awhile. Grandma started giving me snacks, assuming that I was in there because I was hungry. My dad came in, and Grampa did the same thing! He pulled the bottle out of the cabinet and poured some of it into my dad’s ginger ale. I started to get the picture. Years later, I found out that Great Grandmother did not approve of liquor and had poured out all my grandfather’s liquor when she first visited my newly wedded grandparents in the early ‘30s. So while she was with us, everyone drank “ginger ale” and the liquor bottles were hidden safely away.

The whole “kids table” experience pretty much sucked for me because I was the only girl. Of all the cousins, I was it, the only little girl. It was like eating with a pack of wolves. You’d better get what you want, and you’d better be ready to hit someone who attempts to take your roll. I’d tried the crying and complaining to my mother routine when I was 5 and 6, and this just excited the pack and they’d laugh at me. There is actually a photo of me sitting between my brother and my cousin Craig. I’m crying and they are both evilly laughing at me. Boys can really suck sometimes. So I got tough and started knocking some heads, and by the time I was 9 there was no problem anymore. However, I still had to endure eating with them. The smacking, the belching, the “see food” routine, the mixing up of the food, the daring others to eat gross concoctions, yes, I would see it all. One of my little cousins however was sweeter, and perhaps not as smart as the others, and he would sometimes get picked on by the pack. His only defense was his sense of humor. If he could keep them laughing, then everything would stay on an even keel.

One Christmas eve the Swedish meat balls turned out, well, kind of hard. Just imagine what a pack of boys would do with a bunch of hard, overcooked meat balls. The situation began to roll out of control, and the little guy held his knife up high and blurted out, “this meatball can stand up to anything” and with a dramatic pause draws the knife down onto the plate with a big “KEEE-YAWWWW!” Nothing happened to the meatball, and everybody busted out laughing. All the parents drinking “ginger ale” start calling from the dining room as to what was going on. I’ve never seen boys pick up meatballs that fast. They sat down quickly as my uncle walked over and gave us all the eye. Luckily, he didn’t notice the one lonely meatball that was still sitting in the ashtray on the mantel.

EatSpicy

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Recently, my youngest contracted the swine flu, and I spent the better part of a week taking care of her. When the kids get sick, life sort of comes to a standstill. Appointments get canceled and nothing gets done, except maybe some housework when they are sleeping. I move into full-time mom mode, checking temperatures, keeping track of doses of Tylenol and Motrin, and pushing fluids. It is hard to convince kids to take fluids. I keep hearing myself say, “drink your water, little sips of water!” The vomiting, well, you just get used to that as a mom. I remember that before I had kids, if I saw someone else even act like they were going to be sick, I would feel sick … and if possible would get away from the person as soon as possible. Now when someone vomits, I go and hang out with them with no ill effects. I talk to them while they are puking:

“Do you need a washcloth?”
“Are you done, or is there more?”
“It’ll be ok, it’ll stop in awhile”
“Just relax and let it all come out….”

They can even puke on me, and I will have no reaction. My daughter pointed out after one round that the big white plastic bowl I’d given her to throw up in was also the big white plastic bowl in which I made brownies. She thought this was kind of funny. The discovery that she felt a lot better right after vomiting pleased her, and she naturally focused on this, popping up off the couch to check her Webkinz account between rounds.

Kids don’t like to be alone when they are sick. Those first rides through a bad virus can be kind of scary. So even though I would attempt to go and do some laundry or clean the kitchen, she would realize I’d left and start calling, “come and sit with me mom!”

I finally had to just “give-in,” as we say in the mom business, and accept the fact that I was going to get nothing done. I was in the living room with a large iced tea, my iPhone, a bottle of Purell, and daytime TV. I’m not really a TV person. I just don’t have much time to watch, and most of it bores me within about 15 minutes (yes, I’m ADHD even with TV). What I did find interesting was all the ads on daytime TV – especially all the weight loss ads. The amount of money being spent on ads for weight loss pills, diets, and diet plans is mind boggling. The diet business is evidently an over $35 billion per year industry. That’s billion, not million, according to CBS news.

People sit at home on the couch watching daytime TV, most likely snacking, and then in mass ($35 billion worth) buy various dieting products. After the 20th Jenny Craig ad, bad Becca started thinking how she could get into this racket and make a buck. My first idea was an electronic device that turned the channel to a diet station which would broadcast in Cecil B DeMille’s voice the message, “get your butt off the couch and go walk around the block!” If they tried to change the channel the device would administer an electric shock. Realizing that this was cruel and that most people would never install the machine, I moved on to my next plan, the EatSpicyTM diet.

With the EatSpicyTM plan, you’ll have more energy that you have in years! No measuring or calorie counting with EatSpicyTM, no boxes of dehydrated food. Our plan is simple and it works due to ancient south American secrets that only now have been discovered by European scientists. Simply add spiciness, such as cayenne pepper, jalapeños, red pepper flakes, Indian or thai curry, Mexican hot sauce, or hot salsa to your food and burn extra calories with every bite! The spicier the better. When you eat spicy food, this raises the internal temperature of your endocrine system, which regulates the release of cortisol and serotonin. The spicier you eat the less cortisol is produced, and this reduces the amount of belly fat that you produce. Due to the energy your system must produce for digestion, you’ll burn 30% more calories after eating spicy food rather than bland boring food. Our special hot sauces and curries have been specially formulated to maximize the effects on your endocrine system to help you lose weight fast and keep it off. Call now, and order our EatSpicyTM Curry Pack and receive the EatSpicyTM Hot Sauces totally free! Call today and lose weight the natural spicy way!

Before EatSpicyTM

After EatSpicyTM (Results not typical.)

Caution: Eating spicy food may cause you to drink alcohol, counteracting the EatSpicyTM effect.

Smart Kids Rule

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:46:00 +0000

Lately I’ve been frustrated at the lack of education I’m seeing all around me. It’s not just the people I interact with here in Oklahoma, but also those who are getting quoted on the nightly news and print media. The political fights on health care and the economy have brought out all kinds of opinion, on both sides of the aisle, much of which is people spouting off with no basis in fact or reality. Many of the people getting air time haven’t even read the bills on which they are commenting. We’ve always had uneducated people with us throughout time, but now they can be manipulated easily by the media and quoted on the 24 hour news cycle. I believe we have uneducated, reactive people on both sides in the political process. Until the politicians start working together, with the united purpose of helping people, especially the poor and underprivileged, we will not go forward.

I remember the first time I realized that some people lacked basic intelligence and critical thinking. It was at my mom’s garage sale, and I was 13 years old. We were hanging out in lawn chairs selling all sorts of random stuff and watching the parade of people. All sizes, shapes, races, and socioeconomic statuses were represented. I discovered that some wealthy people like to garage sale; I guess it is the joy of the hunt. I had been growing so fast that I’d outgrown some shoes that were barely worn, so my mom was trying to get a few bucks for them. A very large woman, with very large feet attempted to stick her foot into my old shoe. I stared at her, wondering what was wrong. Couldn’t she see that her feet were at least 3 sizes bigger than those shoes? Everyone else noticed and started looking around at each other and then tried not to look at each other for fear of laughing and hurting her feelings. Her heel hung off the edge of the shoe by quite a bit. She looked down with disappointment at her fully grown feet. Then she tried on the other shoe…. I watched the adults trying not to laugh at her. It was hard not to laugh, but at the same time I felt sorry for her. She didn’t appear to be mentally challenged; she just didn’t have a realistic concept of her foot size! The items she did want, she had trouble determining if she had enough money to buy. After she left I asked my mom, “what was wrong with her?” My mom grinned a little as said, “well you are old enough to know now, the world is filled with people that are not very smart.” Now I wonder if in fact the woman was high, and if my mother wasn’t really ready to explain that to me. But that still qualifies for the “not very smart” category.

I’m watching my daughters, who are now in public school, learning this same lesson. They finish their tests way before half the class, and sit and wait, and try to be patient. There is a lot of sitting and waiting and being patient in public school when you are the smart kid. Patience is a virtue though, and I think going to pubic school helps gifted kids learn to deal with the real world. In the real world, people don’t know how to add up basic numbers, and they don’t know how to determine who to listen to on the television. There is a fine line between helping those who are underprivileged or uneducated and patronizing them. When you are smart, and you are in public school, or maybe in public office, you have to learn to walk that line carefully.

I’ve been hearing quotes about “those stuck-up educated liberals, who think they know what is better for everyone else.” Who I hear in those remarks are the kids in my high school who hated the fact that no matter what they did, no matter how hard they tried, my friends and I out-scored them in the classroom. That didn’t mean we were better people. We just “got” school. I’ve been working with my oldest daughter to help her find this line between truly helping others, rather than dominating them. When she helps the other kids without ego, using her gifts to encourage and support rather than to “school” the other kids, they have learned to like and trust her, and in some cases look up to her. What if we had all done this in high school to help the others along, rather than leaving them in our wake? Maybe they would listen now when we told them who might be a good person to listen to on the TV.

The Enemy Within

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Slim and I started watching the original Star Trek series with our kids. We are on the first season now, about halfway through. There is not much I really want my kids to watch on prime time, and Star Trek certainly held my attention as a kid. My brother and I had the Star Trek toys even, and pretended to beam up to the Starship Enterprise. An argument always ensued among the boys as to who would be Spock and who would be Jim. Not to mention who would be the unknown security guy who beams down with the team and ends up dead in every episode.

I really enjoyed the 5th episode of the first season entitled, “The Enemy Within.” The transporter system goes awry, and Jim gets split up into two Jims. The good Jim and the bad Jim are both on the Enterprise vying for control. Bad Jim starts drinking and hitting on the women in miniskirt uniforms, along with making selfish and rash decisions. Good Jim tries to get control of events, but being so nice he starts to fail to get anything done. The more powerful the bad Jim becomes, the more everyone’s lives are in the balance. At some point, Spock and Bones realize that Good Jim just can’t run the Enterprise without Bad Jim. Bad Jim is part of what makes the whole Jim a great captain – as long as he is kept under control.

Why did I like this episode so much? I have been referring to an aspect of my personality as Bad Becca for some time now. Those who know me well have been laughing at my Bad Becca jokes for years. If some young, good looking guy walks by and I get caught looking at him, I say, “Bad Becca likes him.” If I say something funny at someone else’s expense, I’ll say, “Bad Becca said that.” It’s one of those gags you can’t pull too often, or it fails to be funny. But within reason, under some control of good Becca, Bad Becca can be quite hilarious. There are some situations, however, when I just have to lock Bad Becca up in the cage in the back of my head and tell her to be quiet. She rattles the cage sometimes, and I just have to laugh at myself.

We all have these internal battles – and sometimes it’s full-on ultimate fighting inside our heads. Some spiritual disciplines and practices work to get control of these “bad” thoughts to snuff out our evil desires. In the end though, I don’t think people succeed in this. Their personalities just get muted somehow. They practice themselves into some half shell of who they are meant to be, always in inner turmoil. In the end we are not our thoughts. It is our words and actions that define us.

At some point we have to accept ourselves as we truly are, broken somewhat into good and bad. Our best assets are also our worst. Bad Becca can be selfish, competitive, ambitious, rude, bossy, and judgmental. Without her fire though, I’m not sure I’d get much done. An old friend who knew Bad Becca well used to call me “Captain.” Even though she could be bossy and rude, he still couldn’t help liking her.

As I’ve practiced accepting myself as I truly am, a not so perfect girl, I’ve found the biggest reward is a growing acceptance of others. Lately I’ve found myself liking people that years ago I couldn’t stand to be around. Sometimes the bad stuff around the edges just makes people more interesting. Through our practices or spiritual beliefs we have to find a way to make peace with our enemy within.

The PURGE

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:07:00 +0000

All my mom friends are tired right now! The end of school activities are about to do us in, we need summer to be here. We need less time in the mini-van and more time at home (preferably with the kids playing outside). Remember when you were a kid and your mom started hollering “go play outside!”, or my favorite, “in or out!” We are at the end. We need no more activities or recitals or soccer games.

Today I went to get some plastic “glad”ware out of the cupboard to put away the pasta salad I had made. I found no plastic containers. Where are all the plastic containers, I pondered? Then I looked over at the fridge and realized…I’ve been so busy that I hadn’t done THE PURGE. You know - the refrigerator purge.

I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t purged in a long time, and well, it was pretty disgusting. I guess I just quit seeing it when I opened the fridge (where was Slim?). Luckily my kids are old enough I don’t have to worry about anyone actually trying to eat anything out of there! There comes a time in every girl’s life when she must learn from her mother those household tasks that she will be expected to do someday as a mother herself, because NO ONE ELSE will do them. This includes among other things: cleaning up puke, removing lice from hair, cutting someone else’s finger nails, putting away the clean laundry, changing the toilet paper rolls, and purging the fridge.

I called the girls in and began directing the purge. “Take out all the old plastic containers that look like they have dead food in them, and put them on the kitchen table.” You would have thought I’d asked them to clean up dog poop off the carpet or something like that (another task reserved for mothers). Then they started giving me lip, “Mom, we ate this spaghetti and bean balls for supper like 4 weeks ago!” or “I can’t even tell what this was!” and my favorite from Hermoine, “I think the swine flu actually started in our refrigerator.” When it came time to open the containers, the real fun began. Some seriously gross stuff was in there, and they just flat out refused to dump the contents into the trash. I used an old carrot to scrape out the molded contents, as Taz screamed, “it smells awful in here!” She ran and got a handkerchief, wrapped it around her face for what she called “maximum defensive from stinkiness.” I didn’t think it was that bad, really. I’d seen worse. It didn’t really help that Slim had just finished putting some fresh “organic” mulch in the yard, which smelled like chicken poop.

Father Dave

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:23:00 +0000

I grew up in a college town with my mother taking me and my brother to the Episcopalian Church. Church was a place where I felt I belonged. I believed that the people there really cared about me, and I think for the most part they did. They all knew my name, they complimented my little outfits, and they taught me Sunday school. I learned about this guy named Jesus. He was a guy or maybe a God, or maybe a guy/god. I couldn’t really figure it out. But he had been really nice to the children and tried to teach all people to be nice to each other. It seemed like a good thing in my 8 year-old mind. Besides, I liked how the nice people gave me donuts and juice. The Sunday school teacher made me memorize the Lord’s Prayer. She also taught me to cross myself after I prayed. And so at night I would kneel next to my bed, put my hands together, and pray to Jesus quietly to myself. It would go something like this, “Dear Jesus, I had a good day today, except when we came home and mom found dog poop in the living room. It really stank, and she threw TomDog out the back. I hope she will let him back in tomorrow. If I promise to be really good, would you please see if you can get her to let him back in?”

The Episcopal Church was full of academics and university people, the kind of smart, artsy people who liked to question their faith and argue about everything. Wherever people gather, there will of course be politics. As a kid, though, I was totally unaware of most of the adult soap operas going on around me. A really crazy guy would show up and argue with all of the academics during the adult Sunday school. He didn’t make any sense at all and was quite annoying. No one threw him out because it was church. You are supposed to be nice at church.

It was the 70s, and it was only later, when I got older, that I heard about the divorces and drug use that had gone on in this quiet college town. When I was in high school I discovered certain people’s mothers were now married to other people’s fathers, but it hadn’t all started out that way. Somehow the priests and ministers had made it through the 70s. But I’d say they probably still hold a few secrets.

As a young teen, I became an acolyte in the Episcopal Church. In the late seventies the church was just beginning to let girls be acolytes, as the argument over female priests was raging. I really enjoyed being an acolyte. It was kind of like putting on a play every Sunday. There were many details to remember…the Episcopal service included a procession, candle lighting, and communion. As I got older I would carry the First Cross at the front of the procession, flanked by two little boys carrying candle holders on sticks. At the back of the sanctuary I was to instruct the boys as to when to light the candles and before that time keep them quiet. They were rowdy. The cross was this huge, heavy, brass contraption. I would hold on with one hand, resting it on my right shoulder while I flicked the little boys heads with my left fingers.

After a time I got promoted to Second cross. We walked at the back of the procession, followed by the priests. The second cross led the priests to the altar and then walked into the room to the right of the altar. Second cross also helped with communion. It was quite a lot of choreography to remember. I loved all the ritual and formality; somehow in all of this I felt the spirit with me. The quiet stillness would find me as I was sitting motionless, just left of the altar. I had to pay attention to the service and listen for my “cues,” but otherwise I was to sit still and focus forward. For large sections of the service, I was left to quietly deal with myself. I would sit there and breathe and think about my life. Sometimes I would pray. Other times I would work out a solution to some teenage social conundrum. Boredom would set in, and I would listen to myself breathe. After church I usually felt better emotionally, with a sense of calmness and groundedness. In hindsight, I believe it was the structured quiet time that I liked, where I just had to stop doing.

As I got into my late teens my parents lost interest in church, and I started driving myself. They got frustrated with the politics and the realization that many of the people attending church didn’t really want to “do” anything for the less fortunate. It was as if church had turned into a clubhouse. I had become friends with the priests I served with as an acolyte and didn’t want to walk away from them. At 16, I would get into my folks’ little Honda civic and actually drive myself to church. My teenage mind didn’t see anything odd about this at all, but at the same time I didn’t tell any of my friends at school.

As a senior acolyte I served at the 8am morning service every fourth Sunday. The service was a slightly shorter version of the 11am service, with just one priest and one acolyte. The architecture was set up like many Episcopal churches; the altar was in the middle, and it had a room on either side. When I walked up to the altar I was taught to genuflect, and then usually I walked to the right into the side door of the priests’ room. This priests’ room is where the acolytes met the priests and prepared for the service. It was a small room with ornate wooden decorations, various priests’ robes and sashes, brass candle sticks and candles, and a large wooden door at the back. This door was where the priests entered before the service. No one would see them coming into the building before the service. It was sort of like they arrived by magic.

The priests took turns; I don’t think it was anyone’s first choice to do this service. My favorite priest, Father Dave, would occasionally be there at the same time as me. Although I was young, even I knew that his personal life was a struggle. When I got into high school, I began to understand why the people at church were always gossiping about him. He had been divorced a couple times. Dave was kind of a mess, and at times was a complete space cadet. He couldn’t remember his schedule, nor could he always remember what he said he would do. To me, it just didn’t matter. I realized as a teenager that this priest was not a perfect person, and I really liked him for it. When you talked to Father Dave, he gave you his total attention. He was completely present in the moment, actually listening. It was obvious that he deeply cared for others. This is why everyone liked him so much, and probably why he was still around regardless of his reputation. So despite his brokenness, he was a great priest. I saw myself in Dave. Despite my continually trying, I realized I wasn’t ever going to be perfect either.

Maybe it was just Dave’s nature to be late all the time, or maybe it was a reflection of his inner turmoil, but whatever the cause, his proclivity for tardiness had attracted the attention of the “church ladies”. The church ladies, as my teenage mind called them, were the women who had to be in everyone’s business and thought they ran the place (and they probably did). They knew that Dave and all the other priests came in that secret back door to the priests’ room. The ladies also knew when the priests arrived, because the Acolytes were supposed to leave the door from the altar to the room open, until the priest arrived. The priest would then close the altar door and put his robes over his slacks and dress shirt. Usually there would be a quiet moment of prayer in preparation for the service. Sometimes if something special was going on, the priest would remind the acolytes of their extra duties.

When Father Dave was the 8am priest, the “church ladies” would begin to wander up to the altar and then peer into the room. His tardiness was just another piece of gossip that added to the dysfunction. But as always, Father Dave would turn up at the last minute, throw on his robes, pray quickly, and we’d march on out to the altar. I found the whole scene really amusing. Looking back now, I wonder if this whole drama was part of why I liked to sign up for the service. As a teenager a lot of adults just act like you’re not even there. In my teenage mind the church ladies just wanted to spy on Dave; they hardly took notice of me, when they peered in, sitting there in my red and white robes, holding the big brass cross, waiting. I figured Dave would show up eventually. I mean, we couldn’t do it without him. Did God really care if we started a minute late?

In my late teens my confidence level with the job had really grown, I knew the services so well, I probably could have done the Eucharist myself. I had also gotten tired of the church ladies. Some of them really had it in for Father Dave. I overheard adults talking and complaining. As I got a little older, he just got a little later, which didn’t help. Of course we are only talking about 3 or 4 minutes late, mind you. So I’m sitting there in my red and whites holding my big brass cross, waiting. This one lady kept poking about for Dave. Then I saw her talking to another lady, eyes rolling, hands waving around. Out of nowhere this idea just pops in my head. Just close the door. It wasn’t supposed to be closed until the priest arrived, but I was getting tired of all the drama. So in full teenager fashion, I got up, waited for the church ladies to turn their backs, and closed the door. I smiled to myself, grabbed my big brass cross, and then checked the time. It was exactly 8am. My impulsive idea had been in fact a leap of faith, not in God, but in Dave. He always showed up. Why waste energy worrying about it?

I went to the back door and opened it. It was a gorgeous fall morning and the smell of freshly fallen leaves filled the room. Some red leaves blew in with the breeze, and I stood there holding the cross, silently. I said the prayer in preparation for the service. It was 8:03. I leaned out over the step and heard footsteps; Dave was running down the alley. He was always doing that park-and-run thing. As he careened around the corner and found me standing there, he stopped for half a second and stared blankly. The back door was open, the side door to the altar closed. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I simply looked at my watch and made a face at him. He threw on his robes like a tornado, getting sort of tangled and spinning around a bit. At the door we both crossed ourselves in unison, now grinning ear to ear at each other, and then we walked out to do the show. I saw God in Dave, and I learned that year that sometimes we have to like people just how they are, and accept them in their brokenness. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn every decade of my life.

Coming Home to the Breath

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:56:00 +0000

This time of the year, as the weather warms and the trees start to bloom, everyone in my neighborhood begins to come outside and putter around their yards. It’s like a big neighborhood community stretch after the dark cold retreat of winter. We are talking over the fences or sometimes in the middle of the street, exchanging gardening and yard care advice, petting dogs, and looking at the new babies. The ice storm this year took out a few of our trees, and we’ve all watched with regret as some of the rest have had to come down.

I’ve been getting out in the yard myself, helping Slim plant some more seeds in his garden extravaganza, and I’ve been considering starting in on trimming the holly bushes, but I’m not in a big hurry. In the early spring, I feel like a big bear that is coming out of hibernation. Or in my case, I am a small mama bear. I’m slow to start, but by mid April I’ll be going strong. Winter has always been difficult for me. The lack of sunlight and the cold just puts me in a funk, and I lose my motivation to do much. Most winters I function just fine doing my yoga and meditation and making myself go outside and walk the dogs. This winter, however, has been particularly hard as I got into a bad virus cycle. You moms reading this know what I am talking about! The kids give you a virus, and then you push through it, and then just when you are over it, they give you another one, and on and on. Once my immune system gets taxed, then it’s hard to get out of the cycle, and I just pray for spring to come.

This winter I found myself in a real funk. I think the official term is “seasonal depression.” Nobody likes to talk about this or admit that they might have it, but I’ve found lately through conversations with my friends that lots of people struggle in the winter. It is incredibly common. The best words I can find to describe it, is that it felt like somehow my internal fire was flickering on and off. Somewhere deep inside me the energy and light that usually bursts out of me (often driving others crazy with a lot of bubbly talk) was on hiatus. I found myself watching TV, which I usually don’t do much, and I was watching stuff like reruns of Heat of the Night. You know it is always the same thing on Heat of the Night: Someone gets killed and then Chief sends out Mr. Tibbs and the officers to investigate. After not solving the crime for awhile, Bubba goes and talks to Mrs. Tibbs, and she helps figure it out.

I knew I needed to get moving, get back on my mat, and back sitting in meditation, but I was struggling to do it. I’ve got two people in my head, the grounded inner voice that knows what needs to happen, and another surly girl I call “bad bec.” They have arguments.

Inner voice: “Get up and walk the dogs.”

Bad Bec: “Too cold.”

Inner voice: “Go find your mat and do some sun salutations you’ll feel better”

Bad Bec: “Whatever.”

Inner voice: “Let’s go sit and meditate”

Bad Bec: “Let’s watch Matlock.”

I’ve found through my yoga practice that the only way to balance out this internal argument is to focus on my breathing – by meditating on my breath. For some reason just sitting, even for ten minutes, and attempting to focus on my breathing will send Bad Bec somewhere deeper into my mind. I don’t want to get rid of her entirely, because she is a pretty funny girl, but she cannot be in charge.

Each of us has within us a voice of groundedness, a place of inner peace, that when we quiet our minds long enough to hear, will lead us through anything our lives bring. The other day a student of mine came out of shavasana (the ending meditation in a yoga practice) and blurted out, “wow, after that maybe I won’t have to yell at my kids today.” In the end, this is what the practice is about; learning to find a place of internal eternal quiet, learning to feel the constant comforting inner fire, and then learning to live your life from that place. This is what I wake up every day and try to teach people, but I sometimes derail for a bit and forget to stop and practice myself. Wherever I find myself, wherever I wake up, I can find my breath and make my way home.

One of my yoga teacher friends sent me this quote:

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." -Albert Camus

Family Gardening

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:52:00 +0000

We are beginning to see the first flowers of spring. They are mostly tough Oklahoma weeds that send up little purple flowers. Taz has been collecting them from yards on the way home for me and presenting them with much enthusiasm. Before the warm up we had our last ice storm for the year – which shut down school for about 3 days until it all melted. A little snow came down too and Taz tried to make a snow man out of it. It was a little mini-man. My friends from Minnesota will crack up over the picture! She got so into “sculpting” the little mini-man that she laid down on the front porch on her belly while the melting ice from the roof dripped onto her.

Once the ice broke Slim started into the vegetable garden project. He built a huge raised garden box and then got a friend to help him haul in some top soil and compost. We relied quite a bit on Mike McGrath and his You Bet Your Garden series on NPR, http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/. This is definitely the biggest garden project we’ve tried and we’ve got the whole family involved!

My mom always had vegetable gardens when I was a kid, and I remember the fun of planting the seeds in a long row. She’d tell me how far apart to plant the seeds and I’d dutifully use my finger trying to estimate 1 inch or a ¼ inch. It seemed really important at the time. When I got older dad taught me to use the big tiller. At 5 foot tall my mom really couldn’t handle the beast, so I’d be out there wrestling with it in February trying to break the ground. I must have looked pretty funny out there with my rail like tom-boy body wresting with this huge tiller. Inevitably I’d get the machine stuck deep into the dirt in the middle of the garden. I’d start swearing and kicking it, and then finally give up. I would have to wait for my dad or my brother to show up. This always frustrated me.
Dad would question how in the world I got the tiller that deep and stuck, and then he would demonstrate the proper tiller operation. I think the tiller might have weighed as much as I did.

Dad’s family had always gardened too. My grandmother had studied botany and human anatomy at the University of Minnesota, back when girls didn’t go to college. She liked doing technical science drawings including botany drawings. Gramma and Grampa’s backyard was a wonderful place if you were a kid. They had a screened in porch with a little electric fountain that I would beg Grampa to turn on. Gramma grew many beautiful flowers and plants, all sorts of interesting varieties. In my childhood memory it was a big house with a huge backyard, a wonderful and special place. When I was in my hometown recently I drove by and laughed as it was just a standard little middle class split level from the 70s era, with a very small yard! Although it was a small yard much of it was under cultivation of some kind, and ever year Grampa grew the most amazing tomatoes. He was proud of his tomatoes and he would bend down and hand me some to take inside to Gramma. I would stand on a stool next to her in the kitchen and wash the mud off.

Once we got all the backyard chores done, Grampa and I would go hang out in his big leather chair in the living room, while Gramma and my mom would work on dinner. I’d sit on his lap and watch him put tobacco in his pipe. He’d light the pipe and give me a butterscotch candy and we would watch the Lawrence Welk Show together. The pipe smoke never bothered me, in fact I liked the way it smelled, it was kind of sweet. Plus I’d get the butterscotch…. When a funny skit would come on the show he’d start belly laughing, his whole body would shake. I didn’t always understand what the joke was on the TV, but I’d start laughing too, because he was laughing.

Breath Meditation

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Over the last year I’ve gotten quite a few inquires about meditation classes. Although there are many great groups and teachers in the OKC area, I hadn’t found a teacher I felt fit with our community. I’ve asked my friend Erik Braun to teach a beginning meditation class in April. The class will meet on a Sunday afternoon in April, date tba. The event will be free, and those who want to will go to dinner afterwards. Erik is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at OU. He has been meditating for many years, attending workshops and retreats, and is a student of Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

For my readers who live elsewhere, and may not practice yoga at all, you can try just sitting and focus on your breath for awhile and see how it makes you feel! My guess is that if you try it, you will feel a lot better. It doesn’t matter what your religion is – as Thanissaro says below – “the breath is common property.” As a Christian, I have found the Buddhist traditions and teachings quite helpful, and often find similar teachings that I missed before when I return to reading Christian texts.

Erik sent me the following transcript from one of Thanissaro’s teachings. You can find more of his writings at:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/index.html

Basic Breath Meditation Instructions
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu
The technique I'll be teaching is breath meditation. It's a good topic no matter what your religious background. As my teacher once said, the breath doesn't belong to Buddhism or Christianity or anyone at all. It's common property that anyone can meditate on. At the same time, of all the meditation topics there are, it's probably the most beneficial to the body, for when we're dealing with the breath, we're dealing not only with the air coming in and out of the lungs, but also with all the feelings of energy that course throughout the body with each breath. If you can learn to become sensitive to these feelings, and let them flow smoothly and unobstructed, you can help the body function more easily, and give the mind a handle for dealing with pain.

So let's all meditate for a few minutes. Sit comfortably erect, in a balanced position. You don't have to be ramrod straight like a soldier. Just try not to lean forward or back, to the left or the right. Close your eyes and say to yourself, 'May I be truly happy and free from suffering.' This may sound like a strange, even selfish, way to start meditating, but there are good reasons for it. One, if you can't wish for your own happiness, there is no way that you can honestly wish for the happiness of others. Some people need to remind themselves constantly that they deserve happiness — we all deserve it, but if we don't believe it, we will constantly find ways to punish ourselves, and we will end up punishing others in subtle or blatant ways as well.

Two, it's important to reflect on what true happiness is and where it can be found. A moment's reflection will show that you can't find it in the past or the future. The past is gone and your memory of it is undependable. The future is a blank uncertainty. So the only place we can really find happiness is in the present. But even here you have to know where to look. If you try to base your happiness on things that change — sights, sounds, sensations in general, people and things outside — you're setting yourself up for disappointment, like building your house on a cliff where there have been repeated landslides in the past. So true happiness has to be sought within. Meditation is thus like a treasure hunt: to find what has solid and unchanging worth in the mind, something that even death cannot touch.

To find this treasure we need tools. The first tool is to do what we're doing right now: to develop good will for ourselves. The second is to spread that good will to other living beings. Tell yourself: 'All living beings, no matter who they are, no matter what they have done to you in the past — may they all find true happiness too.' If you don't cultivate this thought, and instead carry grudges into your meditation, that's all you'll be able to see when you look inside.

Only when you have cleared the mind in this way, and set outside matters aside, are you ready to focus on the breath. Bring your attention to the sensation of breathing. Breathe in long and out long for a couple of times, focusing on any spot in the body where the breathing is easy to notice, and your mind feels comfortable focusing. This could be at the nose, at the chest, at the abdomen, or any spot at all. Stay with that spot, noticing how it feels as you breathe in and out. Don't force the breath, or bear down too heavily with your focus. Let the breath flow naturally, and simply keep track of how it feels. Savor it, as if it were an exquisite sensation you wanted to prolong. If your mind wanders off, simply bring it back. Don't get discouraged. If it wanders 100 times, bring it back 100 times. Show it that you mean business, and eventually it will listen to you.

If you want, you can experiment with different kinds of breathing. If long breathing feels comfortable, stick with it. If it doesn't, change it to whatever rhythm feels soothing to the body. You can try short breathing, fast breathing, slow breathing, deep breathing, shallow breathing — whatever feels most comfortable to you right now...

Once you have the breath comfortable at your chosen spot, move your attention to notice how the breathing feels in other parts of the body. Start by focusing on the area just below your navel. Breathe in and out, and notice how that area feels. If you don't feel any motion there, just be aware of the fact that there's no motion. If you do feel motion, notice the quality of the motion, to see if the breathing feels uneven there, or if there's any tension or tightness. If there's tension, think of relaxing it. If the breathing feels jagged or uneven, think of smoothing it out... Now move your attention over to the right of that spot — to the lower right-hand corner of the abdomen — and repeat the same process... Then over to the lower left-hand corner of the abdomen... Then up to the navel... right... left... to the solar plexus... right... left... the middle of the chest... right... left... to the base of the throat... right... left... to the middle of the head...[take several minutes for each spot]

If you were meditating at home, you could continue this process through your entire body — over the head, down the back, out the arms & legs to the tips of your finger & toes — but since our time is limited, I'll ask you to return your focus now to any one of the spots we've already covered. Let your attention settle comfortably there, and then let your conscious awareness spread to fill the entire body, from the head down to the toes, so that you're like a spider sitting in the middle of a web: It's sitting in one spot, but it's sensitive to the entire web. Keep your awareness expanded like this — you have to work at this, for its tendency will be to shrink to a single spot — and think of the breath coming in & out your entire body, through every pore. Let your awareness simply stay right there for a while — there's no where else you have to go, nothing else you have to think about... And then gently come out of meditation.

OU Sooners Go Down

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:27:00 +0000

Many fans in Oklahoma are a little sad about the Sooners loss to Florida last night in the BCS Football Championship. There were long faces everywhere I went today.

It's Friday night and I think this song fits the mood best in Norman today:

B double E double R U N, Beer run.
B double E double R U N, Beer run.
All we need is a 10 and a 5,
Or a car and a key and a sober driver.
B double E double R U N, Beer run.

The rest of the lyrics fit too, but I'm not sure they are really appropriate for my blog :-)

Actually at my house we've made up a tune mimicking the Beer Run song, and we call it "Pie Run." It all started one night when Slim and Gramps were listening to everyone talk after dinner about how we wished someone had made dessert. Their eyes met and one of them said "Pie Run" and they both got up and walked out of the house without saying anything else.

The New Years Resolution

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:53:00 +0000

In my business, teaching yoga, it’s all about the New Years resolution. Everyone calls me wanting to get in shape, lose weight, and feel better. Some people get a jump on it and call in the middle of December. Every year this happens, and I try to do my best to help people help themselves into better health, and I watch as most of them disappear after a few classes. I watch some people give up about 20 minutes into class, when they realize that yoga actually has an exercise component! They start to sweat and breathe heavily and get this look on their face that says, “What the hell was I thinking?” Others get on an exercise binge and go crazy coming to class, and then they just “flame out” as we say in the business. The quiet meditative aspect of yoga will sometimes cause people who are really struggling emotionally or spiritually to totally freak out at the end of class. Just quieting the mind long enough for the unhappiness to surface is upsetting, and they would rather go back to being really busy and not dealing with whatever is going on. Every year there are 3 or 4 people who show up at my studio in January with a resolution to take better care of themselves, and they actually make it and are still around the next year.

So why do some people manage to keep their resolution and finally take better care of themselves, and some people just fall back into their old habits? I have no idea! One thing I’ve learned, though, is that it has nothing to do with me. All I can do is help them to see that they are in charge, and they can choose to help themselves. I can hand them the seed, but they have to plant it and nurture it.

Here are some observations I’ve collected watching people change their lifestyle. Most of them are completely obvious and easier to write or say than to actually do.

1. Go slowly exercising! Set a goal for yourself that is reasonable. That way, you can feel good about yourself. If you haven’t been exercising at all, set a goal to exercise 30 minutes twice a week for the 1st quarter of 2009. Then give yourself credit for meeting that and add on for the 2nd quarter. If you’ve been exercising some, just add one more class on. Going crazy, trying to radically change your lifestyle all at once, almost never works.

2. Go slowly dieting! Again, set a goal for your intake that is small and reasonable. Reducing sodas, chips, and sweets is a good first goal for 2009. Don’t worry about everything else you are eating. Just try to reduce – not deny – the junk you are eating that isn’t healthy.

3. Try your best to focus on how you feel on the inside, rather than on what you look like on the outside. Focusing too much on weight loss just gets the mind in an obsessive state, and brings on negative thoughts and feelings about the body. If you set some reasonable goals for exercising and eating healthier, then you’ll feel better on the inside, and over time you’ll begin to shape up on the outside too.

Exercising is the #1 way to get yourself and your mind out of slump. Here is a great New Years Resolution: I’m going to be happier in 2009!

I found this link to an old Jack Lalanne clip from the 1950s. Jack is the grand daddy of the fitness world. He was one of the first to make a workout TV show about taking care of yourself. This little speech from the 50s is still just as applicable today as it was then, maybe more so. Preach on Jack. I just looked on his site, and found that he is 94 years old and still works out 2 hours a day!

Christmas Morning

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:07:00 +0000

Watching my kids open presents was extra special this year. They are finally old enough to appreciate their gifts at a deeper level (not just screaming and running around the room) and also to give gifts too. There was a little screaming and running around when Taz opened her Nintendo DS. I had told her there was no way she was getting that, but Slim broke down and got her one. I tried playing it on Christmas Day, but I kept getting eaten by the evil mushroom guys on Mario Brothers. No one ever refers to me as a girly girl, but when I tried playing the game I kept yelping and jumping like I’d just seen a mouse in the kitchen. I just couldn’t keep my shoulders relaxed while playing the game….ha. Taz will have limits on how long she can play with the contraption (she reads this blog :-)).

Right now, Taz is down in the basement with my dad learning how to solder. They are making an electronic “bug” with eyes that light up. Every girl needs to know how to solder. At least if she is related to Gramps. I too went through this rite of passage around 10 years old, learning to solder parts onto a circuit board for some invention or another of his. Yes, I realize this was not normal for 1976. By the time I was 14, I was on the convention floors in a suit helping my folks run the booth for my dad’s manufacturing company.

(photo of the bug with eyes lit and model magic body covering his electrical parts)

My dad is an inventor, and some of his designs he manufactured and sold for many years in the amateur radio market. His biggest splash was modems that worked by sending packets of information using radio waves. Most of his realistic interests center on radio waves, but he is always blurting out random ideas for products, businesses, or projects. If you want to start a business, just hang around Gramps for awhile and you’ll get a great idea. For many years I ran “The Xtal Set Society” out of my apartment, an idea he had to produce Crystal radio kits for the hobby market. The small business allowed me to stay home, take phone and internet orders, make macaroni and cheese, and hold a baby all at the same time. In retrospect, I don’t know if running a small business while raising babies was the best choice for me, but it worked, and it paid the rent. We started making real money when he learned about self publishing books and told me to look into it. The first book I published was called “Crystal Set Projects: 15 Radios You Can Build.” I was later told by a customer that the book should have been called 12 Radios You Can Build, and 3 you can only dream about. I put out a newsletter for the Society every other month, and in one issue ran an ad for a radio building contest. The winners’ projects would be printed in a book. A huge number of entries came in, and I had enough to publish a book. One month I sold $11K worth of paperbacks on the internet out of my flat in St. Louis. I was nursing a baby at the time. This is the kind of stuff that happens if you tell Gramps you want to run your own business.

I found a booklet of family stories, which I had written many years ago before I had kids, in my mom’s study. One of the stories in it captures what it was like to grow up with an inventor. Every day brought new ideas and grandiose plans. Luckily for all of us, he had enough business sense to only act on the ones that might actually work. In an attempt to poke fun at him, I took a bunch of his random ideas and weaved them together as if to make them all into one great business plan. I gave him the plan on Christmas morning, 1992. He loved being roasted, and on Christmas morning that year he was laughing so hard at himself he ended up lying on the floor, eyes watering.

Why I’m So Weird

The following is a list of a few ideas that dad has had and also verbalized to the family (who knows how many he’s had and never relayed to our universe).

He wanted to make an airstrip going south to north from one end of the farm to the other. Dad paced it off and determined that there was enough room. Planes could land there, but where would the people go once they landed?

They’d get off the plane to see the BUFFALO! Dad kept telling me that the next time I came home from college there would be a big buffalo there to greet me. He could collect money from the local farmers and stud his buffalo out to make beefalo. But what would the buffalo do when he wasn’t being a stud?

He’d watch Dad play golf on his three-hole course going east to west on the property. Dad could charge all the locals to come over and work on their game. He’d have a driving range and everything. But what would everybody do after they got tired of playing golf?

They would get drunk off the wine from all Dad’s grapevines growing everywhere. Chateau Anderson Semillon would be sold all over the Midwest, and people would come from miles around to take their picture holding up their golf clubs and wine bottles in front of the buffalo. But what would Dad do with all these people partying all over his property?

He’d put them to work picking all the fruit in his 600 tree orchard (this came true with my brother digging 600 holes and calling me at college saying, “I can’t believe you left me here with them all alone!”). After the fruit was picked, it would be dark. So how would the planes take off to send all the drunks home?

The airstrip would be lighted by “Mister Blinky.” Mr. Blinky works in your hallway, driveway, or bathroom. Buy Mr. Blinky today! Yes, dad had the idea before Mr. Blinky ever showed up in stores.

The ideas are still flowing out of him as he is working on his 68^th year in this life. His latest is an Ultrasound Receiver kit. It converts a portion of sound above human hearing down to a range within human hearing. Why? Well there are all kinds of applications like car repair or finding power line problems, but what really drew him to designing the kit was listening to bats talk. It’s a bat detector. Yes, bats, those little furry creatures that fly around and hang by their feet. You’ve got to have one. You can build it yourself and impress your friends. Stock is limited, so don’t miss this great opportunity to hear the bats talk in your neighborhood! Just $69.95 or three payments of just 22.95!

Really. I’m not joking. Lol. http://midnightscience.com/ultra-kits.html

Eric the Dog

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:52:00 +0000

I have a little dog named Eric. Yes, really his name is Eric. For the record, I did not name him; it was his name when I adopted him. After awhile I just got used to the name and sometimes forget just how weird it is until some unsuspecting person I encounter looks at me and says, “Eric?” The other day, a friend came over whose name is Eric, and I’d never told him my dog had the same name. For a moment, he gave me this look of disbelief, with maybe a little inner angst mixed in that Slim and I are actually crazy and he shouldn’t have come to the house. He says quietly, “The dog’s name is Eric?” Everyone just lost it.

When Slim and I found Eric, we had been looking for a small, gentle, non-aggressive dog to adopt in order to help our youngest daughter overcome her dog fears. Her fears had started when our first dog, a basenji, had bitten her older sister in front of her. It was a nasty bite accompanied with a lot of growling and parents freaking out. Later, a friend’s Jack Russell nipped her when she was just standing next to me doing nothing.

Slim and I both love dogs, and we knew that if we didn’t address this she could end up as one of those grown ups that doesn’t like dogs. How sad would that be! She could end up a cat person….

We went out to Second Chance Animal Shelter and found Eric pretty quickly. He was what the ladies there called, “our office dog.” He was 8 years old, and no one wanted to adopt an older dog. He was so docile and sweet that the second chance staff let him in from out back every morning and he greeted everyone. When Slim reached down to pet him, the dog immediately rolled over.

The staff’s story was that Eric had been brought in with his brother Max, and when they came in they were fighting like crazy. Their owner had been an older lady who had gone to a nursing home, and her kids had dropped off the dogs for adoption. We will never know what motivated her to name the dogs Eric and Max.

So why didn’t we change the name? Once we got him home, we discovered that Eric was not the smartest dog around. In fact, he is probably the dumbest dog I’ve ever owned. He is also the sweetest dog I’ve ever owned too. He is one of those “baby dogs” ladies have that go everywhere with them. The problem, which probably added to his adoption woes, is that he hates being picked up. If I pick him up, his ears go down and he gets this look on his face that says, “I hate this I’m totally freaking out put me down….” He never growls, but he gets all tense and gives me “the look.” He wants to be next to me, be scratched, and follow me all around the house, but with no picking up! We decided it would just be too much for him to change his name. We weren’t sure he’d even know we were talking to him. His whole life he’d been Eric. What would he do if we started calling him Sparky or Spike?

Now we must endure the looks of judgmental park people, who stare at us in disbelief as we call out, “ERIC, come on boy, ERIC, good boy, good boy ERIC!” Slim has actually taught the dog to come when called, but if you don’t keep calling excitedly in a high baby type voice the dog forgets what he was doing half way to you and starts sniffing around. Sometimes, to avoid public ridicule, I’ll just look down at my border collie, Spirit (the smartest dog I’ve ever owned), and say quietly in plain human speech, “will you go get Eric?” Her eyes meet mine as if we are having some kind of Vulcan mind-meld and she’s off like a rocket towards the little guy, and she herds him back to me. I’m convinced she is actually smarter than I am. She brings me dead animals all the time, including birds, moles, and squirrels. The thought occurred to me that if economic times get much worse, this bordie collie could be worth a lot….

One other story about Eric I wanted to share. He stares at me when I meditate. I sit down in my study floor where I like to meditate, and he runs over trying to get petted. I sit on my hands at first to show him that I’m not available for petting. One day after starting to come out of my meditation, I had this sense someone was watching me, and I opened my eyes and there he sat, intently watching me, waiting for me to open my eyes and pet him. The bordie collie, meanwhile, was stretched out on the floor taking Shavasana to a higher level, known only by dogs.

Confessions of a Fast Food Addict (part 2)

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:00:00 +0000

We had a nice gathering on Saturday at the studio. Everyone brought something to share and talked and enjoyed the food. Some of the highlights: Streak’s guacamole with blue cheese in it, E’s chewy mac n cheese, L’s greens and citrus salad, JT’s quinoa salad, D’s homemade macaroons, and J’s pecan tarts! Sharing a meal gave everyone the opportunity to really talk outside of yoga class. All the good food and discussion of food brought up some comments about my blog. In the last couple of months I’ve had a number of questions about my whole fast food confession.

“So what was with all the fast food?”

“How did you get off the stuff?”

“What do you eat now – any fast food at all?”

And one brave person asked, “ So were you ever fat?”

I try to leave the food talk out of the studio, as inevitably when we start to talk about food and diet everyone has an opinion, and sometimes people get aggravated by the discussion. We humans are attached to the food we like, and we don’t want to give anything up. However, since I started this whole fast food confession, I will finish it (although probably not in this post!).

I started craving fast food as a kid and ate it probably at least once a week on average until I was in my late 30s. Although some might argue it was a bad habit of mine, not an addiction, I would argue that the intense cravings and frequent conversations I had with myself seem in hindsight very similar to addictive type behavior. I would also hide the wrappers from people close to me. I’m convinced that it was not just me and that many people are extremely addicted to this high-fat, high-sugar processed food.

Getting myself off of fast food was difficult, and it included going on and off of it over about a two year period. I had to refrain from eating it long enough that when I tried to go back again I experienced the highly salty and sugary taste. I remember eating a cheeseburger after having not eaten at McDonalds for about 6 months, and the saltiness surprised me so much that I couldn’t finish the burger. It was like I had to detox off the stuff so I would stop craving it. I’ve never had any emotional eating disorders. During this time of “addiction,” I liked all food, including well made gourmet food. Even though I knew the fast food wasn’t healthy, I would still go and get it all the time. I would choose it over whatever was at home.

I’ll still eat good quality pizza and occasionally onion rings and a milk shake. My rule is that it must be made of real ingredients that I can pronounce. Milk shakes should have milk and ice cream and that is about it! After getting off of fast food, I then slowly went vegetarian. That is a whole other story for another post, but I’d like to note that I don’t evangelize vegetarianism. Honestly, I don’t care what people eat. I just want them to be happy. One of the cookbooks that really helped me find new, healthier food that I liked was Moosewood’s Simple Suppers. It was a challenge, as I had to get my kids off the fast food too and convince them to eat new things. All I can say is that if you stay with it, and take it slow, and don’t make a battle over it, kids will learn to eat healthier. Both of our kids are now vegetarian, although we never forced it on them. Kids just want to be like mom and dad.

And the final question, was I the skinny yogini ever fat? Well, probably no one would have ever described me as a big girl. I’ve always just burned up the food. It’s just my constitution. However, after I had my kids and I was eating a lot of Wendy’s and McDonalds I managed to put on 20 pounds. That was a lot of hamburgers. That may not seem like a lot, but on my small frame I think it was rather unhealthy, and it in fact did lead to health problems in my mid-thirties.

Slim found the following links on the CDC (Center for Disease Control). The first is obesity trends in the U.S. from 1985 (my first year of college) through 2007. You can hit play and watch the rate of obesity skyrocket.

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm

During the same time the rate of new cases of diabetes tripled.

http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/incidence/fig1.htm

And what else during this same time period exploded? Fast food industry revenues.

Slim and the Bunnies

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:18:00 +0000

I had a lot of errands to run yesterday, some of which had to do with getting my yoga school licensed by the state vocational board. Since the state requires a yearly fire inspection for all vocational schools, we got to meet Randolph, the city fire inspector and stand-up comic all in one. I had gotten some lighted exit signs installed for him earlier in the week, and he came to give us our occupancy permit. He explained that we wouldn’t see him again until next year’s inspection, unless he drove by and saw some wild keg yoga party going on with people spilling out of the studio onto the sidewalk chanting Yoga, Yoga, Yoga!

After all the errands, I was ready for some iced tea and pizza, and just as I settled in Slim says, “hey we are out of dog food.”

"I’m not going back out, I’m done!” I announced, probably a little too frothily.

Slim didn’t really want to go out to get dog food either, but instead of arguing with me he tried nudging me with humor. I think he knew he was going for the dog food, but he couldn’t resist the fun of agitating me a little.

“What am I going to the store for again, milk?” He tried the typical clueless male trick, hoping the female would just get fed up and do it herself. After trying various lines of this sort and getting no response from me, except the “look” as I was eating my pizza, he turned to more creative tactics.

“Maybe when I’m at PetsMart I’ll pick up a bunny for the girls?”

Ding, Ding, Ding!! It’s a winner, my short chain was official pulled! He’s a winner!

“NO, No they don’t need a damn bunny, just get dog food!”

“Maybe a chinchilla then, they are really cute…?”

“NO, stop it, stop it now!”

“Hey, I could get everything I need for boa snake, the heater, the tank, everything!”

“Get out of here and go get dog food! GO!” I was yelling at him as he was laughing his way out to the garage. Hermoine sat knitting at the kitchen table, she had a huge grin on her face.

“You and dad are pretty funny.”

When you’ve been married for 20 years, it’s really all about the banter. Who can out- banter who. We are getting like old married people.

I sat back down to finish my pizza and got a second glass of iced tea (like I need that? Ha.). About ten minutes later, the phone rings,

“I’m at PetsMart, should I get a brown bunny or a white bunny?”

Slim wins the round!

“All right that’s it; don’t call me again, DOG FOOD!”

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for my family and friends, most especially Slim!

What would I do without him?

Have a great Thanksgiving Day. May we have peace and joy in our hearts, Namaste!

Moving in the Heat

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:14:00 +0000

After a grueling two year job search, Slim finally landed a tenure track professor position. Professorships are hard to get, and the stress level of going through the search after all the sacrifice of the years of training took its toll on us. We had been holding on trying to make ends meet with my home business and his postdoctorate research position. Our two young daughters, my home business, and our graduate student furniture were all crammed into a 900 square foot flat in U-City. We were packed in, but truthfully we couldn’t afford anything else.

Our apartment was in an old brick building that had been erected in the 1920s. Original hardwood floors and decorative woodwork gave the small flat city character. In the hallway was a built in wooden phone box and below it was a laundry shoot that dropped into our locked storage unit in the basement. Luckily the laundry shoot was just big enough for Hermione’s toys, but not big enough for a toddler to get stuck. That didn’t keep her from trying though, as I was always finding her with one leg in the laundry shoot, her little toddler brain working overtime, “there has got to be a way down this thing!” Whenever I couldn’t find my keys, I would go to the basement and check the storage locker.

A galley style kitchen with a big swinging wooden door led to the back entrance and a separate brick garage. Nothing had been done to this original kitchen other than paint, and maybe new countertops in the 70s. The 1920s tiling and mahogany trim usually got a warm reaction from visitors. While cleaning out the cabinets during our move-in, I found the users manual for the gas oven and stove. My mouth gaped open when I realized that the oven/stove combo had been manufactured and installed in the same the year I was born, 1966. I dove into the directions with some curiosity. “Remember that nothing pleases a man like a flame- cooked steak.” The words were printed next to a drawing of a woman holding a plate of steak with one hand, her other hand on her hip. She had on a cute lacy apron. Whatever happened to wearing aprons anyway? Slim got really excited about the directions, and we fired up the broiler the first night in the place. It was one of those moments when you wonder, wow, should I really light this stove? It turned out to be a very reliable stove, and I learned to love cooking on a gas range and have never been able to go back to electric. No matter how much of a feminist your man might be or pretend to be, they love to come home from work and find their wife in a good mood, about to serve dinner. I don’t know what Slim would do if I was wearing an apron. Would he even notice?

Our “rich lawyer friends,” as we called them, took pity on us and gave us one of those old roll-over-to-the-sink dishwashers. I’ve never been so excited about a dish washer ever! I’d fill it up with all the dishes and sippy cups, roll it over in front of the sink, plug it in, and then hook the attachment up to the sink faucet. It was more of a sterilizer than a dishwasher, but with little kids it made a huge difference.

When it finally came time to move out of our flat and move to Norman, we were ready to get out of there. In some ways, we were on our last legs. It was a relief to me for him to get the job he wanted. We rented a U-Haul and our friend, Dennis, helped Slim load the truck late into the night. Dennis was one of those people you could count on to show up when you were down. It was July in St. Louis, so loading at night made a lot of sense. It would be way cooler. I tried to triage in the main living room as I watched them slug down beers like water. At one point, I walked into the foyer to peek out the front and found the entire outgoing mail bin for the building filled with empty beer bottles. We got everything we owned into a 24 foot U-Haul.

Some of our business and lawyer friends really wondered about us when they found out that we were towing a 1988 Toyota Corolla behind the U-Haul to Norman. But those of you who are academics, you totally understand. It was a beater Toyota that still ran. It probably had at least 5 more years left in it! It still had a little dent in the front bumper from the Hardee’s parking lot in Seattle, but it ran well. The plan was for Slim to drive the truck, and I’d drive the 95 Sable. We set off early the next day on the 9 hour extravaganza through Missouri into Oklahoma. When we got to Norman it was 102 degrees, and as we pulled off the freeway onto the Main street exit, Slim calls me and says, “the check engine light just came on, and the truck is really dragging.” I responded, “Just keep driving. We are almost there.” Our friends D & M had helped to rent a house on Lahoma for us to stay in while looking to buy a home. By the time we reached Lahoma, the truck would only go about 10 miles per hour. It seemed somehow symbolic that the truck was trying to break down on our last mile into central Norman. We pulled up to the house and got out and stood there looking at each other. Nobody said anything. We went into the house, turned up the A/C, and then started unloading the truck. Later that night, we both realized our fingers and toes were swollen because we had lost so much salt working in the heat.

Slim had to go back to close down his laboratory at WashU and move it to Norman, and so I found myself in the middle of a heat wave in Norman, with a bunch of boxes, and two squirrelly kids with nowhere to go or anyone to call. I loaded them up in their car seats and went looking for the local fast food establishments. I found something so different, so new, I could hardly control myself. I found Del Rancho Steak sandwiches.

The Oklahoma chain makes huge chicken-fried steak sandwiches like no where else on earth. The picture is not a lie. The fried steak hangs out of the bun, and the onion rings are made fresh. They put the Oklahoma amount of mayo on them. Slim would never eat one of these, even before we went vegetarian. This is partly how he got the nickname, Slim.

The Dogs of Morning Walk

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Everyday, I take my dogs for a walk behind the nearby elementary school. Sometimes I’m not really in the mood for a walk, but the dogs really need it and enjoy it, so I make myself go. Lately, I’ve been using the dog walk as a way to practice getting out of my own head and appreciating my surroundings. I’ve been making friends with all the dogs along the way by stopping and paying attention to them, scratching their heads and talking to them. Over the last couple of months, the “dogs of morning walk” as I call them have now become very excited to see me. I can see their tails wagging behind their fences from quite a distance! One day last week, I was really distracted and feeling frustrated with a project, and I went out to take the dogs. About half way across the field, I realized that I was walking with my gaze down, totally in my own head, completely oblivious to my doggie friends. I stopped when I realized I’d forgotten them and turned around. As soon as I turned, I saw two big pit-bull mix dogs watching me intently. They were thinking, “Denied!” and then “Hey, I think she is coming back, oh man here she comes!” Tails wagging, feet up on the fence, they were so happy that I finally remembered to pay attention to them.

Another dog I’ve grown to like is a little super-hyper Jack Russell. He goes completely berserk when he sees me and runs up and down along his fence. When I try to reach over to pet him, he does these 3 foot-high standing high jumps, making it virtually impossible for me to make contact. I’d thought about giving up on him, as he never really lets me pet him. He just can’t relax. But I’ve kept at it, hoping he gets used to me. I feel a certain connection to him, because I figure he feels they way I do after too much iced tea and back bending ;-). I suppose that before I found yoga, I might have been like a Jack Russell on Red Bull. I’d like to think that I’ve moved up a little. Hopefully now I’m more like a crazy Border Collie.

The family went with me on the dog walk the other day, and Taz ran off to play on the playground equipment. Running from the merry-go-round to the monkey bars and back, she was not so unlike that Jack Russell. She is always in motion going full-throttle. Slim, Hermoine, and I made it all the way across the field when we looked back to see Taz just standing motionless in the middle of the field looking up into a tree. We couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Was she looking at a bird, or scared of a wasp, or what? We started calling her and she wouldn’t respond. Then as we got closer, she started waving us all over. We kept calling to her, “what is it?”

“The tree. Look at the tree, it’s gorgeous!” The fall colors had just that day covered the leaves of all the trees surrounding the field. Brilliant yellows and oranges glistened in the light of the setting sun. Taz exclaimed, “We need to get a picture mom, I want to paint this tree!”

Children are so naturally in the moment, experiencing each day with such enthusiasm, they can be our best spiritual teachers some days. And I think our dogs are not bad teachers either ;-)

MIA Yogis at Super Target

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of people I know at Super Target. On more than a few occasions this fall, I’ve seen someone that came to my class months ago, and when I thought, “Hey I should wave or say hi,” they are just gone! They get this startled, deer-in-headlights look on their face, hope I haven’t seen them, and wheel their cart around and run. So, what are they thinking to themselves when they run from me? Here are some possibilities:

MIA Yogi : “Oh man, it’s that talkative yoga lady, I really don’t have time to talk her.”
Me: Totally valid point. I’m OK with that.

MIA Yogi: “Oh my God, it’s that weird yoga lady!”
Me: Again, totally valid point. I’m OK with this too.

MIA Yogi: “Oh no, there she is, and I haven’t been exercising. I’m BAD, I’m Bad, Bad, Bad!”
Me: This is NOT OK! No self-flagellation over seeing me in Target!

MIA Yogi: “Oh crap, I don’t want her to see all the cheeto's, bon-bons, and beef-n-cheese hot pockets in my cart!”
Me: Again, not OK. Remember, you probably saw me in the candy isle.

MIA Yogi: “I never went back to class. She’ll think I didn’t like it!”
Me: Most people think yoga is a good idea until 10 minutes into class…. Down dog isn’t really a resting pose, is it?

Fall Has Arrived

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Fall has arrived and no matter what kind of work we do, this time of year brings with it busyness and a feeling of overload. The holiday celebrations and stresses that come with them have begun to move into our thoughts. For some, the financial stress of “how are we going to pay for Christmas this year” puts a damper on the festivities.

As we become overly busy and stressed, we stop taking care of ourselves. We stop taking the time to make healthy meals, we stay up late, and we fall out of our exercise routine. Everyone does this to some degree, including me.

I’m writing today to suggest that maybe this year can be different. Maybe we can look at our holiday plans and scratch just a few things off the list. Maybe we can choose to go home and warm up some vegetables and spaghetti rather than driving through Burger King. Maybe we can stop, and take a big inhale and then a nice long slow exhale, and enjoy our family and friends. In the end we have a choice of how we respond emotionally and internally to the holidays.

When I start to feel scattered, overloaded, and less centered, I’ve learned to stop and breathe, and change my perception of what is happening. Viparita Karani (the legs-up-the-wall pose) is a great way to relax, even for a few minutes, to calm the spinning mind and reduce your stress level. I do this pose almost every day, and over time it has helped to truly change my internal world.

Yoga is about going deeply inside ourselves to find that place of groundedness where our love and light dwell. Through practice we learn to bring that light back out into the world.

Cowculations

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:14:00 +0000

I was thinking the other day, if I ate hamburgers for 20 years…exactly how many cows did I eat? I did some research, and this question turned out a lot more complicated than I expected. It turns out that the average big cow is around 1200 lbs. However, a lot of the cow doesn’t get used for meat. First there is the “dressing percentage,” the percentage of the animal that actually ends up as a carcass. Then there is the “carcass cutting yield,” which is the percentage of the carcass that actually ends up as meat. The average dressing percentage for beef is 61% and the average carcass yield is 62% -- this is for deboned steaks and roasts and regular ground beef. (A special thanks to Duane M. Wulf, Ph.D., Department of Animal and Range Sciences, South Dakota State University, http://ars.sdstate.edu/MeatSci/May99-1.htm).

So here is the math:

(0.61 X 0.62) X 1200 = 38% X 1200 = 456 lbs of meat

The average cow produces about 450 lbs of meat. I probably ate 2 hamburgers a week for twenty years. So,

2 burgers per week x 52 weeks = 104 burgers a year

104 burgers x 1/4lb each = 26 lbs of hamburger per year

We continue and divide 465lbs of meat per cow by 26 lbs per year = 17.88 years to eat one cow. But, we have to remember that this is just hamburgers. Or another way to put it is I ate 0.056 of a cow per year in hamburgers.

Let’s also add in a couple ½ pound steaks a month along with either hamburger helper meals or beef tacos each week. The hamburger helper or beef tacos probably added in another 26 lbs per year and the steaks another 12 pounds.

Sooooo, that is 38 lbs of hamburger helper, beef tacos, and steaks per year. Which,when we divide 465 lbs per animal by 38 lbs per year, equals 12.23 years to eat one cow. Again, this means I ate 0.082 of a cow per year in the helper, tacos, and steaks.

If I ate beef for twenty years, that is 0.056 x 20 years = 1.12 and 0.082 x 20 years = 1.64

Then I ate 1.12 + 1.64 = 2.76 cows in twenty years!

I wonder how many chickens I ate?

Fast Food Addict in the St. Louis Fringe

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:14:00 +0000

How much fast food I ate varied depending on what was going on in my life. The years I lived in St. Louis with small children were probably the worst. Staying home with children can be isolating. In some way the rich food was my way of filling the void or emptiness I felt emotionally. Although I really loved my children, and liked being a mom, I was struggling to fit in with the women at my church and with being part of a new community. Having given up my job to stay home, I’d lost that working-woman identity that I had clung to.

I went through a Wendy’s single with cheese phase in St. Louis that lasted for quite awhile. My cravings for the single with cheese took my car through the Page Boulevard drive through. My 1988 Toyota Corolla had seen better days and was now sporting a “girl dent” as my husband called it. The car wasn’t pretty, but it ran really well, and for the area it would have been considered a really good car. Although it was a reasonably safe area, a lot of white people really didn’t like going up there. I became “drive-thru friends” with the guy who worked the window. He had a huge smile with a few gold teeth. “How you doin baby?” he would say as we chatted and waited for my order to come up. It wasn’t the fastest drive through. I really liked ketchup with my French fries and he remembered, which I thought was both sweet and hilarious at the same time. He would turn around to make sure his boss wasn’t watching and proceed to hand me unusually large numbers of ketchup packets. More ketchup packets than one little white woman could really use. I would take them all because it gave him such pleasure to give them to me. His smile would engulf his entire face. I saw the Spirit in him, this wild guy working the drive through. His sense of humor and love of life was getting him through the day. His attitude was, if I have to be here I might as well have fun.

Closer to my apartment was a McDonald’s. It was run entirely by African Americans except for the little nerdy white guy with glasses who seemed to be either the owner or top manager. It appeared that no one paid any attention to him or what he said. Mutiny at the U-City McDonald’s was underfoot, and the little guy didn’t seem to have any idea how to fix it. If you wanted to drive through the U-City McDonalds, you had better have had at least 10 minutes, and to be safe, more like 15 minutes. If you chose to sit in the drive through for 10 or more minutes, you were rewarded with the freshest, hottest McDonald’s sandwich ever experienced. It was made after you ordered it. They didn’t seem to like making them ahead of time and letting them sit as Corporate requested.

I imagined white guys somewhere having meetings about the McDonalds in U-City: Suit #1: “What is wrong in U-City, and what do we do about it?” Suit #2: “The drive-through times are out of control!” The thing was that no one would run around like crazy in U-City as you are expected to when working for a McDonalds. Another issue was the Special Sauce. Sauce was King in U-City. You needed sauce on your sandwich, and you needed lots of it. McDonald’s has rules about how much sauce employees are supposed to put on the sandwiches. These rules were not followed. You had to open your sandwich carefully and keep the wrapper underneath to catch the globs, not drips, of special sauce. Just like at Wendy’s, Ketchup was also an issue. Ketchup packets were tossed out of the drive-through window with unabashed enthusiasm and a complete lack of respect for the corporate rules. Again, I’m sure there were meetings about this. Suit#3: “Why are the ketchup packet numbers so much higher in U-City?”

The building actually had three windows for the drive-through, but the little manager had given up on it and only used the one at the end. Just inside the second window was a whiteboard with a message scrawled in red ink, “drive through times, drive through times, drive through times!!!” It was underlined three times. Un-expecting white people with foreign cars and college stickers would pull off the freeway to go through this McDonalds and go ballistic. “I’ve been sitting in the drive-through for 10 minutes, what the hell is going on around here?” What I learned from this was that many white people needed to calm down, myself included. I’d put my kids in their car seats and drive around awhile until they fell asleep. Then I’d head for the drive-through, place my order, and kick back and relax listening to the Who. After 10 to 15 minutes, I’d relish the piping hot Quarter Pounder with lots of extra ketchup packets.

Confessions of a Fast Food Addict

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:56:00 +0000

I had a long and tumultuous affair with fast food. It probably started when I was a kid; I remember begging my mother to take me to McDonalds. Those juicy QuarterPounders with cheese, ketchup and pickles called to me when she drove down 23^rd street. Once every couple of weeks, she’d pull over and take us in. My brother and I were proud when we graduated from the Happy Meal to the Big Mac. Even the commercials in the 70s promoted this “right of passage” with the little boy looking up at his dad and the dad saying, “I think you are ready for a Big Mac.” McDonalds marketing has always been powerful and effective. Once they get you in the door, the fat-and salt-laden food closes the deal. I craved the food so much as a kid that I would beg and whine at my mother and be deeply disappointed when she drove on past the restaurant. I wanted to go even though my dad would purposely embarrass me by ordering a whopper at McDonalds, or a Big Mac at Wendy’s. He thought it was really funny to get the teenagers on the other end of the drive-through speaker to say, “We don’t serve Big Macs here Sir, this is Wendy’s.” I’d be hollering at dad from the back seat. Mom just sat there laughing in the passenger seat. It took me a long time to understand that he was just pulling my chain. My brother Ken was obsessed with Coca-Cola, and mom rarely bought it for the house. He’d beg my dad to buy him a Coke and dad would say, “we’ve got drinks at home.” Dad was being prudent. Why spend the extra money on drinks when we could have water or milk at home? Ken would have a melt-down in the back seat. To this day, if I say the words, “we’ve got drinks at home,” my 40 year-old brother screams and puts his hands over his ears. Mom did a good job of limiting how often I got the food. She also worked hard to get my brother and me to eat our vegetables. What she didn’t know at the time was how big the fast food industry would become. Some people now believe, as seen in the film SuperSize Me, that McDonalds was consciously and purposefully working on creating a generation of addicts. Whether they did it on purpose or not, the marketing and fast food “high” worked on me.

Once I got a driver’s license and some spending money, I starting driving through myself. It wasn’t just McDonalds, it was the whole industry. I didn’t leave anybody out. At each establishment, I had my favorite sandwich and I would rotate through, sometimes getting attached to one particular sandwich for awhile and then switching to another. Wendy’s, Burger King, Arby’s, and McDonalds got a lot of my money from 1982 until 2002. That is twenty years of hamburgers. I would try to limit myself to eating the food only once a week. Honestly, now I have no idea how often I really ate it, as I was in denial about it. I certainly ate the food once a week, but I remember having conversations with myself about how long it had been. I’d try to keep myself from eating it “too much,” but every time I’d drive by, if I hadn’t had lunch, I’d pull through. Gripping the wheel, my knuckles would start to turn white as I would chant in my head, “don’t do it, don’t turn.” Before I knew it, I was whipping that wheel around and dragging my way into the drive-through line. I’m convinced that many people have these same conversations with themselves about fast food. The stuff is highly addictive; we have addict-like conversations with ourselves. We want that rush of fat, sugar, and salt into our system that we’ve learned to expect and enjoy. The rush is followed by a crash about 45 minutes later.

Tagged

fireflyroad@gmail.com (Firefly) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Last week I got tagged by one of my blogger friends. A blogger friend, for those of you new to this, is someone whose blog you read and comment on, and they then sometimes come and read and comment on your blog. But, in the end, you have no idea who the person really is. I’ve made a few blogger friends, but the one who really stands out lately is T. She has a lively mom blog and goes on rants sometimes that are hilarious. Her family and friends who post on her blog are also a lot of fun. This makes me what T terms as a “lurker.” I just sort of lurk around the blog and read about her kids and occasionally post something while trying to be funny. Personally, I think for moms it’s a great thing to check in on some other “mom blogs” for a sense of camaraderie and sanity. I don’t read the mom blogs that are all blissful talking about how perfect their life is with cute pictures of their kids doing fun kiddie activities. I prefer the moms that tell it like it is, with all the good stuff and the mind-numbing madness too. ;-)

The rules of the Tag game are the following: Link to the person who tagged you, share 7 random facts about yourself, and then tag 7 other people (and then post on their blog and tell them).

Random facts about me:

1) When I was 12, I played Snoopy in the musical theater production, “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.”

2) I used to be addicted to fast food, more to come on the blog.

3) When I was 13, I got taken to the principal’s office after being caught fighting in the hallway with 2 boys. I was winning.

4) I sold Antique Radio parts and kits on the internet for about 8 years.

5) In my 20s, I worked for a national computer service company running the office and buying up 250MB disc drives. At the time, the drives were 5 feet long and 2 feet wide. Really.

6) About 6 months ago, when I turned 42, I just suddenly got over myself.

7) When I get really tired after teaching too much yoga, I sneak over to “Classic 50s” and order homemade onion rings and a large vanilla milkshake. I park in the back so no one can see me from Lindsey street. ;-)

Tags/Links

Some of the blogs I like just wouldn’t participate in this tagging fun, so I’ll just link to those.

1) Lireal She has been knitting rather than blogging lately, so I’m hoping this tag will get her going. If you have a teenager who you’d like to get reading, have them visit her blog. She is a cool kid with a great book blog.

2) Nasa Astromony blog (Yes, my nerd side is being revealed)

3) Small glimpses I like her blog, and I’d love for her to write more.

4) Shay Shay’s blog may need to be rated R, so just a fair warning. She just started it, and I want to encourage her because she is a great writer.

5) Suzy Turquoise Blue The blog of a 10 year-old is an adventure! I want her to write more, so I’m tagging her.

6) Sara This is the real estate blog where I met T and others. It makes me laugh.

7) Mariann and Tory Here is another mom blog that is a lot of fun. Good luck to her going back to school and furthering her education. Lots of moms are going through this same thing right now!