Prefix Thursday

Hey hey, happy Thursday everyone!  Thursday is my last day of classes for the week, meaning as I write this post it’s already my weekend.   Whatuppppp!!  My mom’s coming to stay for the weekend because we have a baby shower to attend in New Jersey on Sunday, so hopefully she’ll cook for me all weekend.  I love to cook and prep food but somehow it always tastes better when one of my parents makes it for me.

I have a confession to make: The pictures from my last 3 posts come from my BlackBerry camera.  Why?  Well, somehow the exposure button on my digital camera popped off in my purse and I have no idea how or where it went, soooo I’m BBerry-documenting my life for now.  Thank goodness for the WordPress for BB app!

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback on my post about my passport.  I am sentimental about very few material objects, but I feel like my passport transcends the material and has become an essential piece of my life. Even though I now have my learner’s permit, I can’t bring myself to leave the house without my passport on me.  Just in case, you know, I just *have* to leave the country unexpectedly.  Because, of course, the probability of that occurrence is extraordinarily high.  I’m also loving hearing about the places you’ve visited!  My goal in life is to visit as many places as I possibly can, and seeing where other people have been feeds the desire to continue expanding my horizons.

Also, HIIIIIIIIIII to everyone who’s stopped by over the past few days! I’m not sure how people are finding their way over here but I’m sure glad you are, even if you’re just scrolling through and clicking away!  So, HIIIII!

Anyway.  I have another confession to make.  One of my fave parts of the blog world is how different bloggers choose to designate certain days or months as specially assigned occasions (eg: Heather is doing Yoga Month this month).  Basically, it’s like blogging empowers you to make every day a personal holiday and announce it publicly.  In honor of that, I’ve dubbed today “Prefix Thursday” and I’ve filled today with various “blog activities” and meals.

So, I’m not going to do Yoga Month, but I can for sure do a Yoga Thursday.  I decided to do 40 minutes of Goddess Yoga #1 from YogaDownload.com.  I did the half-hour version recently and really enjoyed it, and ditto for today.  For a beginner, it’s a gentle flow through some basic yet flexible moves.  The instruction is a little sappy but it’s cute at the same time, and it definitely helps channel my thoughts.

Gettin’ down on my Aurorae mat, wearing my fresh white Beyond Yoga leggings.  Sup.  OMG, forgot to mention.  So, I’m basically a dead beginner when it comes to yoga, I’m just now learning the different poses and learning to clear my mind during a session.  Thus far, my favorite pose is tree, I really like balancing on one leg.  Also, my first name means “tree.”  Last week I tried the half hour Goddess Yoga #1, and about midway through is the tree pose, which for the purpose of the Goddes flow, the instructor also dubbed the “Athena” pose, the Goddess of Wisdom.  Suddenly I felt this jolt of energy and inspiration course through my body – something had just clicked in my head.  Not only does my first name mean “tree,” but in my culture, my last name translates to “wise man,” and I have always considered my name to mean that I am a wise tree.  I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s an image I have always identified with.  I even tattooed the Sanskrit symbol veda, meaning ‘wisdom,’ on my back as a reminder of my life-long search for wisdom and understanding.  In that moment, I felt open to the universe and receptive of any information and light that might touch my life.  No wonder I love that pose.

zen in the moment. i spy: too much laundry and typical bedroom clutter

Since it’s Vegan Thursday I figured today would be a good day to eat all-vegan (earthshatteringly creative, I know)  – I’m kind of a boring eater as of late so that’s why I haven’t been posting any pictures of my food.  If you read blogs (which I suspect you do if you’re here), I’m sure you’ve seen more than enough pictures of oatmeal and sandwiches, and much prettier ones than can be shot using my BB cam but oh well!

Since it’s Thankful Thursday I figured today would be a good day to mention just a few things I truly am thankful for:

Martha Stewart.  Seriously.  Without this website sometimes I don’t know what I’d do.  I’ve got a whole buttload of packages to prepare for the upcoming holidays and there are so many adorable and simple tips to making everything more visually appealing, I don’t even know where to begin, but I’m thankful for the endless inspiration.  Also thankful that people seem to accept “Martha Stewart” as a valid answer when they ask me what I want to be when I grow up…but really, wouldn’t you?

My food processor.  My love affair with my food processor started when I bought Veganomicon and first tried to make hummus, and ever since, we’ve been inseparable.  Since my homemade maple-pecan butter is loooong gone I thought I should make some more.  No pecans in the pantry, so I made maple-almond butter.  This time, I put raw almonds, maple syrup, maple flavoring, and a touch of salt in the food processor and went to town.  It took, like, forever.  I think raw nuts and seeds take longer than roasted nuts?

Annnd…since I’m feeling like “that girl” today, I’m really thankful for my boyfriend (at least at this very moment haha).

Sometimes I have a tendency to bottle everything up and hide the way I feel, especially from him, because I really want to present the perfect, bubbly, ever-cheerful and exciting girlfriend face to him.  I mean, who likes a Debbie Downer?  Not I.  I tend to forget that he’s actually a really good guy who cares a lot about me, that he actually sometimes LISTENS to what I’m saying and then does something about it,  and he pays a lot more attention than I ever think.  The other night, he checked up on what I was eating for dinner, prefacing, “It better not come through a straw!”  Silly, I know, but I really didn’t think he was listening when I told him I think I have a problem eating real food.  Apparently he was.  And he managed to tactfully find a way to tell me he thinks I’ve gotten skinner than I need be  (“You know you can’t donate blood right now, right?”)  That may seem weird but let me explain – it was always a really big deal to me that I didn’t weigh enough to donate blood.  One of my life goals is to help as many people as I can, using whatever resources I have available to me.  I was fourteen when two planes hit the World Trade Center, and I distinctly recall the continual requests for blood donors from the New York Blood Center, and I promised myself that when I was old enough to, I would donate blood frequently.  To my ultimate dismay, when I was finally old enough, I discovered I didn’t weigh enough to donate – I was just shy of the weight requirement and no one would make an exeption.  Then over the past couple of years I slowly started putting on a few more pounds – you know, the kind you get as a female when you get older, hips and butt and that kind of thing, and those few pounds rendered me eligible for donation.  Because of ink and piercings, I have yet to donate, and suddenly I’ve lost the weight again, so I am no longer eligible, and he knows what kind of a big deal this is to me.  Insert thirty-five heart emoticons here.  You can imagine.  And I’m thankful for him leaving his t-shirt here for me to sleep in.  🙂  Yeah I’m gross right now, I know.  Moving on.

And, of course, today, like all Thursdays, is Pilates Thursday (most days are Pilates Days, I know, but just go with me on this one alright??)  Now, I don’t know if you noticed but I really like my Pilates.  And maybe you can, too!  EpicSelf is giving away (omg) 10 free virtual Skype Pilates dates!  Holy cannoli!  I’m really into this giveaway because, while I loooove Pilates, I’m still nervous about doing it at home on my own unsupervised because I’m afraid of hurting myself, and because I have a tendency to get careless about positioning when I’m alone (which is how I’d get hurt in the first place).  I guess I still have to work on my focus more.

wore my fav. American Apparel tshirt to Pilates today. I have this in like three colors

In fact, that has been the goal I’ve set for myself recently.  Now that I’ve seriously improved in my positioning and I’m mostly familiar with the movements, it’s not enough to just go to class and go through the motions.  That used to be enough, because just holding my legs up straight in the air or holding a straight plank for ten seconds used to be a challenge.  Suddenly these things are, like, no sweat, which means I need to seriously challenge myself to stabilize my core for the duration of the class, and to complete EVERY rep of every exercise rather than slack off if I’m feeling a little tired or lazy. I want to come out of tonight’s class feeling a SERIOUS BURN and that isn’t going to happen if I don’t apply myself!

Oh and I almost forgot – it’s gotta be Thirsty Thursday somewhere, so if it is for you, have a drink for me 😉

Soooo…this has been an adequately long and hopelessly random post.  I’m done talking about myself.  I have a few questions for you now!

• What is your favorite yoga pose?
• For bloggers in relationships, how did you tell your other that you have a blog? Did you include them from the beginning, or did you let them know eventually?  Or have you not told them?  Why or why not?  This is a followup to my question the other day about how to break the blog news to your real-life people.  I’m still considering how I should do this, and if I should do this.  We’ll see.
• What kinds of goals do you set for yourself? Are you a big-picture, big-goals kind of person, or do you set little goals with the intent of gradually improving or moving towards your dream, or are you some kind of combination of the two?  Do you track your goals and your process towards achieving them?
• And finally: HOW THE HECK DO YOU KNOW IF A PAPAYA IS RIPE? Haha.  Thanks in advance for that one.

Right now I’m eating the most random dinner of quinoa, avocado, beets, salsa, and carrot sticks all in a bowl.  It’s totally strange and totally awesome.  Ok, off to read blogs and probably re-watch Lost for the thousandth time.

PS: I wrote this post this afternoon before I left for Pilates but WordPress went down (!!) so I waited it out til I got home.  Almost went crazay though!  Alsooooo… I just updated my