Undiscovered Country

Oh humility is endless and my preconceptions often blind me, but I never thought I'd end up here.

When Jazzercise first started, I thought it was strange, artificial, and peopled by former cheerleaders. I didn't like the music, the workouts seemed poorly designed, and the moves were funky. The regulars wore funny clothes. They used bunny weights. They hung out in multi-purpose rooms and public halls and church basements. They left their children in the care of strangers for an hour so they could get buff.

I took my exercise outdoors, often with a pack on my back. I took my exercise in a real gym, with weights and machines and macho muscular guys bragging about how much they could bench press.

I started water aerobics several years ago at the prompting of my next-door neighbor. She said it had been wonderfully rehabilitating for her hip. At the time, I was in near-constant pain from my own hip and back, and willing to try anything that might help.

Water aerobics did help the hip and back (although not as much as discovering my food allergies and changing my diet), so I kept it up. I also continued my weight-lifting. Due to my disability, hiking had become a rare treat, one that I paid for with several days of immobility.

Once I cleared my diet of allergens, my body began to heal. Within a few months, I could walk without pain, and even run for short distances. I bought myself a set of exercise videos, and started adding land-based aerobic workouts to my exercise mix. I also lost a lot of weight, and now feel better than I have in many years.

A friend from water aerobics has been encouraging me to try Jazzercise for a while now. She's a regular, and she says it's the best part of her day. One day, I agreed to try it.

I walked in the door, and it was everything I had imagined. The instructors were friendly, peppy, and definitely cheerleadery. The music, frequently country, insulted my intelligence and my esthetic sense. The funky routines made me feel silly and uncoordinated and switched fast enough to make me cautious about injury. The weight and abdominal parts of the routine did not meet my exacting standards.

I loved it. My waist and hips flowed free with the routines, and I left the class feeling sexy, even predatory.

Nor was I the only one. Jazzercise attracts 50-70 women every morning of the week (and two week nights), a pretty good feat in a one-horse town that rolls up its sidewalks at 10pm on summer weekends. The class attracts women of all shapes, sizes, and ages. In the light of the silly country music and funky moves, all of these women are beautiful, sexy, desirable.

Winter Sunshine

A single moment that has brightened what has otherwise been a pretty bleak winter:

Getting ready to go to the hospital one morning, I happened to notice my parents' valentines to one another on their entry hall table. I picked up the pink confectionary cards and read the short, loving notes on them. Placing them back carefully, I am reminded of how my parents' love and devotion for one another is a warm fire at the heart of my father's struggle with cancer. The naked heart of love is everywhere apparent in their lives.

Living in the Santa Cruz mountains, I often receive gifts of sudden beauty:

• Rounding the bend in the road to see the mountain in the evening light.
  
  
• Seeing the sun flash out behind a cloud to illuminate the white crown of a sycamore.
  
  
• The trees opening to reveal a sky full of crystalline winter stars.
  
  
• The scent of first violets in the bouquet presented to me by my son.
  
  
• The redwoods' branches tossing merrily in the breeze.

Stark Winter Beauty

I just read that I can either spend 10.4 minutes deleting spam this week or I can spend the same time contacting all my old high school crushes.

I think I'll take the spam. I did everything I wanted to do with my high school crushes when I was in high school. I like my life now, and, even if I didn't, I don't think I'd want to go back to high school to find my future. My future is the other direction.

Driving into town last week, I was savoring the stark beauty of the winter night. The stars were bright and clear as only winter stars can be, and there was a comet cavorting in the sky. The maples have lost their leaves, and only the evergreens stand against the sky.

Turning onto the main road, I was assaulted by a new display of Christmas lights. A house that has been blessedly dark in previous years had its eaves outlined in colored lights. And not just small, twinkly colored lights, but big, heavy outdoor colored lights.

I thought of my father, stringing big, heavy outdoor colored lights along the eaves of our house when I was a child. I think he did it because he was supposed to, and not because he enjoyed making a show at Christmastime. I imagined the owner of this house on a stepladder, stringing his lights. I could see him: tense, badgered, joyless. No cheerful humming of Christmas carols as he artfully arranged lights around a scraggly bush in his front yard. Just a few mild expletives as he hung his lights, workman-like, from his eaves. Job done, he could retire to his armchair in the living room and watch tv.

I drove on into more stark winter beauty interspersed with holiday light displays.

"In January," I thought, "all of this will be gone and I'll be better able to enjoy the winter nights."

This struck me as odd. Most years, I have enjoyed Christmas light displays. They have cheered and warmed me and made me feel festive. I've enjoyed coming through the stark winter beauty into these oases of human care and comfort. This year, however, all the light displays seem tawdry and overdone, interfering with my enjoyment of the season.

I love winter. I love the cold and the rain, the wind and the bare trees. I love making soups and stoking the wood fire. I love the crisp, clear air and the winter skies. I especially love the winter stars, so clear and bright and cold in the deep darkness. The restraint in the winter landscape highlights everything I see. Every pool of light or splash of color seems more precious in the stark winter light.

Maybe this antipathy to holiday lights is telling me I need to get out more. Out into the winter forest to feel the cold, the damp, the resting heart of nature. Out into the winter night to see the dark trees and bright stars. Far enough into the cold and the darkness that the Christmas lights seem warm and welcoming.

Keeping Warm

A boy and his dog share a blanket by the fire.

40 Pounds Down!

I'm celebrating another milestone in my battle of the bulge.

I've lost 40 pounds over the past year!




Last month, I also crossed the border from obese to overweight.

As slow and stubborn as this process is, it's working. Over time, the calorie deficits add up.

Last week, I decided to wear a sweater with a pair of pants.

I put on my pants. They fell down. I got another pair. They fell down, too. After the third or fourth pair, I thought, "Hmm. I seem to be a size smaller than I was. I guess it's time to go down to the next size."

I excavated my pants cabinet, removing all the pants and shorts in the biggest size. Eventually, I got to the layer with pants that fit my body.




This stack of pants went in a bag to be given away. I'm very happy about this, even though those black jeans were my very favorite pants.

After a hiatus, Malcolm picked up his notebook with his Writing Strands work and started reading. He laughed at his story about the kitten and the ducklings and at his essay about Mr. Lin and his televisions. He decided to finish his essay on Sombrito, which I am sharing with his permission.




Sombrito

Sombrito is my pet poodle, who, being a dog, does not go to school. He lives with me at ***********, Boulder Creek, CA, USA, North America, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Universe.

He is 1' 3" tall, the perfect size for a dog. He is large enough to not be in (much) danger of being stepped on, but small enough to not be scary. He weighs 21 pounds, so he still can be picked up easily. Picking him up is the only way to get him to take a bath.

He has light skin, but it's hard to see it. His black fur blocks it. It's so soft, and it's quite curly. It feels nice to pet him.

When he wants something, he looks at you with his sweet brown eyes and wags his tail. But when he defends his bone, those sweet caramel-colored eyes become fierce, and he shows his teeth and growls loudly. When he's hot, thirsty, or exhausted, he sticks out his tongue and pants. His favorite thing to do is to sleep by the fire or in a sunbeam. He's very cute.

The Writing Strands program works pretty well for Malcolm. He's working at level 3, which focuses on helping students organize their thoughts. It guides him through the process of writing an essay by having the student write the answers to a series of questions, then putting together their answers to make an essay.

Overclocking for Slackers

This weekend, I thought about the magic of taking an hour in the spring and moving it to autumn. I've never liked Daylight Savings Time much, but I should probably be grateful that it makes my allergy season one hour shorter.

As I was thinking about this game we play with the clocks, I thought of other ways we could rearrange time to suit ourselves. My favorite idea is Weekend Dark Savings Time.

Here's how it works: Every weekday at 3pm, the clocks would jump ahead to 4pm. This would shorten each workday by an hour. Then, on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday mornings at 2:40 am, the clocks would jump back to 1am. Thus, each weekend night would have an extra 1 hour and 40 minutes for sleep and other leisure activities.

Think I could be elected president on that platform?