Rachael

Oh, my god. I just got back from the best yoga class I've ever been to. At the risk of sounding like I'm joining a cult, I'm going to tell you all about it. I'm JAZZED, people.

Now, I've done yoga. I've done classes and class-packages, intro 1, into 2. I'm not a beginner, since I've done it for so long and know how the moves should work, but I'm back to beginner strength since it's been such a long time since I used my yoga muscles.

Most yoga studios are a little stuffy, and I don't mean air-wise. Most places I've been have had a This Is How You Do It vibe and if you're not doing it right, you feel like you should still be struggling alone in front of your video tapes of Rodney Yee. They'd deny it, but some yoga studios tend to make you feel like you should get in shape and tone up at home before you come in.

Not my new local yoga studio. I am in love.

Loka Yoga, just down the road from me, is the BEST. The place had the best reviews on Yelp I'd ever seen, and that would have been enough to get me there, but the deal was made sweeter that they have an intro offer of three classes for a total of fifteen bucks. Dude. A five buck 90 minute class? How could I go wrong?

I didn't go wrong. Alice, the owner and main teacher, was amazing. I have such a big crush on her now. She was warm, kind, and sweet, while still being strong and managing to direct us all, calling us all by name (even me, and I'd only told her my name once).

The room felt like a neighborhood. Everyone was friendly. There was DIRECT EYE CONTACT. There was a childcare room for kids under three, and they made happy noise while they played during the class. At the end of the class, the kids' room door flew open and many short little people pattered out, all directions, all over the big room and threw themselves into their mothers' arms.

But what I liked best was the take Alice had on yoga. I've always felt known there's a strong connection between meditation and yoga, between Buddhism and yoga (although I'm only an accidental Buddhist, not a practicing one), but I just couldn't find it in other classes. Alice brought the spirituality without sounding kooky or weird. She brought balance. Oh, god, it's hard to explain. She helped me be completely present, something I struggle with, just like everyone else. She was utterly lovely. It seemed as if she were ministering to each person in the room, and I'm not sure how she accomplished that — there must have been twenty of us scattered around the floor.

And she played a HARMONIUM while we were in corpse pose at the end! That was the raddest thing EVER. (That, and she made us think about corpse pose, about what it was practice for, and I loved that. No one in classes ever address exactly what corpse pose is good for, other than making your back feel great.)

And damn, it was hard. It's been a long time. My legs were shaking sometimes, and I was in a full sweat. But for the first time in a yoga studio, I wasn't self-conscious. I didn't care that I was sweating, that my hair was a mess, that I was having an allergic reaction and that my left eye was all puffed up from touching one of the cats earlier.

God, it felt good. I think I will take a nap now. If you're local, you should go, no matter your fitness level. If you're not, you should go find your own Alice. Keep shopping until you find her.

Namaste.

No riots in my neighborhood last night. They were across town. You did hear, didn't you, about the BART shooting? I thought Oscar Grant, the man shot, looked familiar, and then I thought I was crazy, but it turns out he was the butcher at my local grocery. Sigh. We are hoping for peace and a
swift resolution, but I'm thinking that might not happen as fast as we'd
like.

Also, don't parents teach their kids to protest anymore? What
the hell? Those kids lying down on the ground, in the position he was in when he was shot to death, that's an effective protest.
Chest-bumping riot police and jumping on police cars (of the wrong
police agency, at that)? Morons. (Of course, I think I knew We Shall Overcome before I knew my ABCs. It was an easier melody.)

From heavy to light.

I'm back to writing every day again. I managed to take three days off before I got too cranky to even be around myself. I wrote, and everything slipped back into place. I think I might actually be a workaholic or something. I'm not even kidding. I think lala would say I'm the last to know, but it does kind of come as a surprise.

Now, having worked for a few hours, I'm enjoying my morning. It's overcast, but it's that bright, hectic overcast that comes right before a shower. I was going to go for a run, but if it rains, I'll just stay inside and Wii Fit it a little.

I just about died the other night when I was playing with it, and I unlocked the MEDITATION game. Dude. What's it called? Locus Focus? The goal is to sit in the lotus position on the board and not move while staring at a candle on the screen. You can hear boards creaking, and then a moth flaps by and gets burned in the flame, and then a mosquito buzzes. If you move your center of balance, the candle flickers, and then if it flickers again, you're out. I made it all the way through! 180 seconds! Champion of meditation! Woot!

As tongue in cheek as I'm being, there really was something to it. Sure, I was playing a game with a controller and a TV, but I was meditating. I was watching my body, my breath. My mind went pretty empty, except for focusing on my center of balance. I am completely aware of how anti-meditation this sounds, but it was strangely effective, too. Whoever came up with that one had a lot of cojones, and I love it.

I'm getting a cheap massage-school massage later today, and I'm planning on spending a couple of bookstore gift cards today, too. (I think the new Meg Cabot books, book 10 of the Princess Diaries, where Mia writes a romance sounds delightful and it has great reviews. You can also purchase the "romance" she writes, too! I've never read her, but it sounds like fun. Good marketing ploy.)

The Wii Fit is WAY more fun than I thought it would be. You play little mini-games, which usually feel kind of dumb and annoying to me on regular game platforms, but when you're doing it under the umbrella of Exercise, you can just lean into it and have fun. It's a multi-tasker's dream! Plus, when you measure yourself and find out you're a whole inch and a half taller than you thought, your BMI goes down, even if your weight goes up! Ask me how I know!

I am not writing for a few days. I turned in the book on my deadline, January 2nd, and I need to launch back into the second one, but it's a long work week (five 12-hour shifts in a row). I have given myself permission to sleep in (until 4:45! Whoop!) for these few days and not write. HOWEVER, it has made me a big grumpy-pants. A grumpy-pants who gets even grumpier when the hole in her sweats is pointed out by Lala, who is knitting behind her. A grumpy-pants who feels like something is just wrong and can't figure it out and OH, I'm not writing, and I feel like I'm withdrawing from something. Actually, upon reflection, I think I'll just get up and write before work tomorrow. That'll fix it.

I love that not writing is hard for me. I love that SO much.

Also, you need to know that an apple slicer, that ring thing that cuts the apple into pieces, is the most genius kitchen gadget ever. Best four bucks I've spent in recent memory. I only like apples if they're sliced, and I hate slicing them. Then this comes along, and whooomp! Apple, sliced! Ready for peanut butter application! What could be better?

We had a lovely New Year's Eve — an impromptu games night at home which led to none of us really noticing or counting down the year. I heard gunshots and glanced at my cell phone. "Happy New Year," I yelled into the living room, but at least one person missed the announcement entirely and asked for the time about an hour later.

I loved being at home for New Year's. We never get to do that, and it was perfect. I might have had a drink or two (ahem), and I was feeling quite nappish by about 1am (I go to bed closer to 8 or 9), so I went in our bedroom and put up my feet. Nothing makes me happier than to drift off with the sound of happy people in the house. Of course, it wasn't the nap I thought it was going to be — instead it was just bedtime, and had I known that, I would have brushed my teeth.

Resolutions? Only one: I will not stab anyone this year.

I make this resolution every year, and it proves that making resolutions TOTALLY WORK!

(Also, I'd like to love a lot and write a lot and eat lots of nice things and hug lots of animals but not take any extras home.)

You're supposed to start the year the way you'd like it to go, and I did all sorts of nice things today:

We stayed in bed late. I made quiche. We walked dogs. We ate garlic fries. We watched a great movie, Slumdog Millionaire (which was almost, but not quite, ruined by the lady behind me who kept squealing at the grim parts and running out of the theater, saying "I can't WATCH this, this is HORRIBLE!" Then she'd kick my chair on her to sit back down. She did this three times. And she was a talker. I don't mind a whisperer, but a talker? Do you see why I make that resolution every year? We consoled ourselves later with realizing that she was with the dumb-ass we'd watched get a ticket earlier that evening. They'd been parked in the bus zone. When the cop rolled up and put his lights on behind them, the guy STARTED HIS CAR and started to drive away. Now, that's kind of the wrong thing to do when you've been caught by the long arm of the law. So Talker was with the right guy, for sure). But grim parts aside, you should run to go see that movie. I loved it. All in all, a lovely day, and a lovely start.

So, Happy New Year! 2009. It's gonna be good.

Look at that! It's the end of another year. Let's quickly go over what this very strange year has held, shall we?

January:

Diagnosed as allergic to soy lecithin. OMG, I've been allergic to 99.99% of all chocolate goodness for that long? That's crazy. I'm doing okay with it, though.

It was nice this week, though, to remember that although I've been avoiding sugar, I'm not actually allergic to it. Therefore, when I had that lebkuchen and stollen that my sisters made, my face/eyes/tongue weren't going to blow up. Boy, did I get a sugar rush. But fun!

Harriet got older. But she also got wiser, and dare I say it? Cuter, too.

February:

Boy, I didn't do much. I wrote. I knitted. I went to Stitches. I completed Jeanie, which is one of my favorite things I've ever made.

March:

Bought my Roomba-boyfriend! I still heart my Roomba. Nine am, rain or shine, home or not, I am vacumming. If you have three dogs and four cats, you should totally have one. Of course, it breaks a lot, but Costco just refunds my money and I go down to aisle 19 and grab another one. I'm just about due for a new one — the spinning arms fell off and the screw is stripped. Still working, though. The one I have now is the hardiest so far — I will be sorry to see this one go.

Lala found Bart (who has been adopted by a man in Danville, so that means Bart is now RICH and spoiled and probably only eating caviar and prime rib. Do NOT tell Clara.)

I finished the first edit of Love Spun. Whoohoo!

April:

We went to Hearst Castle for our 2nd anniversary. Yay! I had a really, really bad flu. Boo. I wrote most of a script. I sent out my first, trembling query letters to agents. I went to visit the little mama, who wasn't feeling well. It wasn't the best month for anyone we knew, actually.

May:

Lala was deep in training for the AIDS ride, so I was a bike-widow for a month. Mom went into the hospital with lots of symptoms that eventually were diagnosed as multiple myeloma. I finished the Mom sweater at her bedside:

June:

Lala rode the AIDS Lifecycle, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I was SOOOO proud of her.

Mom died. My heart broke in a way that will never be healed, nor should it be.

I re-learned that I have a kick-ass family.

We had a music party for Mom, which she would have liked very much.

Sister Christy had her appendix out in emergency surgery only a few hours after the above picture was taken. Of all of us, she really had the crappiest couple of weeks. Dude. That just ain't right.

July:

I went up and worked for a couple of weeks at an expanded dispatch center for the big fires we had in California. It was good to get out. But I did work twenty-three days in a row (hello, overtime!), so I was good and tired by the end of it all. But that money paid for a new tattoo:

August:

I attended the Romance Writers of America National Convention, which blew my mind. So many incredible, talented, smart, motivated writers, all in one spot. That was awesome.

And way more awesome, I got myself an agent! Susanna Einstein, best agent in the world.

Merlin Mann wrote a twitter that honestly changed the way I look at my writing:

Yep. I've done that ever since. I've missed a few days since August, but only when I was either sick or travelling, and that's allowable in my personal rules. Otherwise, I've written every single day, and it's made all the difference. I'm convinced of this.

I got a Kindle! I love my Kindle!

My friends bought me a desk! I love my desk! (It was to celebrate my getting an agent — a token of their belief in me. I love them for it.)

September:

Went to Strawberry Music Festival and missed Mom (but had fun with Dad and the Whoreshoes).

Got married. Again. I know. Third time's the charm.

October:

I edited my little hands off, in preparation for Susanna sending out the book.

Said goodbye to sugar. (I'm still off the sugar and 14 pounds lighter for it. I don't miss
it — I'm so used to being allergic to things that it doesn't feel like
deprivation, does that make sense?)

I ran the Nike half-marathon! Woot!

November:

OBAMA! 'Nuff said.

I gave my first reading.

I GOT THE CALL! (Three book deal, HarperCollins (Avon), the first due out in a year.) AKA – the dream come true.

I received my Love Blanket from people like you:

I won Nanowrimo! (Third year in a row, yay!)

Chickens were wanted, and are still being planned for.

December:

New York! (Dude, wasn't I just there? Almost a whole month has gone by? That's bizarre.) I met my agent! I met my editor (May Chen)! It was so great! (Lots of exclamation marks!)

I accepted an offer in Germany for my book. (Thanks, little mama.)

I signed The Contract.

I went to Dad's house for Boxing Day, where we all played Apples to Apples (best family game EVER). I swear I could feel Mom in the kitchen while we laughed in the living room. It was very hard, for all of us. But we made it through. I can only imagine the holidays get easier as time goes on. I hope so, anyway.

All in all, a very, very bad / very, very good year.

And you've been here for all of it, and I thank you. I adore you. I send kisses. Let's move on into 2009, shall we? I'm ready.

Merry Christmas (I always type Merry Christy, since I'm more used to typing my sister's name than the holiday) to you, if you celebrate it. If you don't, then enjoy the non-hoopla!

Actually, this year I am seriously non-hoopla Christmassing it. I'm working today, which is fine. A coworker and friend just lost her father, and went home to Albuquerque, and I'm working for her. Way too many people around me have lost loved ones, just in the last few weeks. It is teh suck.

Tonight, though, I will go home. Lala will be there. Her brother will be there. They will be playing Rock Band, I can almost guarantee it. (Or beta-testing City of Heroes for Mac – they are excited about that.) There will probably be something to eat, and most certainly something to drink, and we will open presents. That should be good.

Tomorrow I drive to Dad's house. The sisters are already there. We will be sufficiently Christmassy and we will get clam chowder. Then I will drive back and finish working on a January 2nd book deadline (yay!). Then this whole holiday crap will be over and we can go back to normal.

I like this photo from 2003. Mom with her new Xmas accordian:

Yep. That's all. More fudge, please.