Love

     I hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. I received way too much See's Candy These are absolutely my favorite chocolates and there are stores all over CA in in some other states. If you don't have one around you and have never seen them in the airport, they have an online store. My favorites are the dark chocolate caramels.

     At this point my husband knows what I like, and throws a few other things in just for fun. He also knows that cut flowers make me sad, but orchids are forever.

     These are Cymbidiums in a lovely planter. I have another Cymbidium that I bought a few years ago and leave outside. I almost never water it, never feed it, and it is bursting out of its pot but gives me gorgeous blooms season after season. Orchids are pretty much the only plants I can be trusted with because they're murder-proof.

     Our son was on a sleepover, so we had an actual Valentine's date night. We had an early dinner at The Penthouse at the Huntley Hotel. It was sunset and the views were spectacular all around.

     It was a prix fixe with 4 courses, plus I had a really nice wine pairing. I had the oysters, a lemony risotto and a branzino to die for. The wine pairing was perfect - 3 (generous) ounces per course, and 1 oz. of dessert wine. We were stuffed. Thinking we had plenty of time, we had to make our way to the Edgarmar Center a few miles away for a 7:30 curtain. I know I've bitched about the rampant development around here before, but between getting to this restaurant and then to the theatre, you would have thought we were going into midtown Manhattan from Jersey, and it's all just a few miles from our house. It was a perfect storm - Saturday, Valentine's, and a rather glorious and unseasonable beach day made for gridlock in downtown Santa Monica.
   
     I have to give my husband credit for taking me to the theatre - that's pretty advanced masculinity. We had been here years before to see a friend in a play, and I used to know the theatre's director as our kids went to school together. Train to Zakopane, written by indie film director Henry Jaglom is set in 1928 in the border region of Poland near the Soviet Union, and deals with war, shifting borders and the history and realities of pervasive anti-Semitism that were giving rise to the Third Reich at the time. The play was based on the author's father's recollections of events at that time. My husband, whose parents were from this region found the subject matter fascinating. Also, after 15 years of attending almost nothing but City Garage plays, he appreciated it's straight-forward, linear quality. I was focusing more on the production and of course the acting, which I found ranged from mostly fine to distractingly bad. It's also a love story, but in the end, it didn't bring the feels, and with subject matter like this it really should have.

Don't try these at home

Uttanasana

Paschimottanasana

I finally felt ready to take my first yoga class of the year, which was at YogaGlo with Darren Rhodes

of Yoga Oasis in Tuscon. I had never taken class with Darren, but it was just what I needed. It was only a one hour class but was core intensive because of some innovative adjustments to plank, like doing it with the tops of your feet on the floor. You have to hold your core especially tight to prevent your lower back from sagging. It's clear that he is of the therapuetic mindset and/or is used to giving lots of adjustments. His default instruction for uttanasana is with bent knees, which is how I have to do any forward stretch. I have the flexibility, but the stretch itself is murder on my lower back symptoms. Most people with low back issues should tend to avoid these intense stretches. This is especially true for me in paschimottanasana, which I usually avoid like the plague. I had never seen an adequate adjustment for this, but he had everyone start curving over bent legs with soles of feet on the floor, and then extending out from there if it felt right. At this point I really trusted whatever he was doing. He did some great happy baby variations and quad stretches and thread the needle, showing how to go deeper in a safe way. Like most of the wonderful teachers who come through there, I wish I could study with him all the time. My strongest endorsement is that since class on Thursday I've hardly taken any Advil, and I usually eat them like candy.

     An interesting thing happens when I'm in that studio and it's getting kind of freaky. I go to the mat before class starts, sometimes never having studied with the teacher, and get into an asana that my body needs that day. It could be anything, sometimes it's something unusual and specific, and it almost always comes up in the class, sometimes as the theme of the class. Before Darren's class I was just sitting in Virasana, which I never do, just watching and listen to other students. Sure enough, we end up sitting in Virasana. In Amy Ipolitti's class I started doing these wide circular stretches, and that was what the whole class was about - circles instead of lines. It only seems to happen there so it must be the vibe of the studio - lots of energy bouncing around that loft.

     After yoga I made my first smoothie of the year. It was my first because I finally fixed the blade mechanism on my bar blender. Along with the TV, it's part of our trying our best to repair what we have instead of just replacing things. This is my go-to smoothie. I have a freaky ability to eyeball everything and have it come out to the exact top of the glass, maybe left over from some long-ago bartending days. Here's the recipe - the amounts are guesstimates:

1 cup non-fat plain yogurt
1/4 cup orange juice, or amount needed for blending
Sweetener of choice - Truvia, honey, agave nectar, etc
1/2 cup frozen mango
1/4 cup frozen raspberries
1 tsp coconut flakes (optional)
3 ice cubes

Place yogurt, juice, sweetener and coconut in blender. Gradually add in frozen fruit and ice. Add more juice if needed.

I use whatever fruit I have, but it's usually a mix of 2, with a basis of mango, peaches or pineapple with some berries in smaller amounts. A lot of people like bananas in smoothies, so try that too. It's super simple, healthy, clean and organic if you wish.

     Finally there's knitting. I have not done a lot of it this weekend, but am almost done with my first Aegean Sea Mitt. There was a lot of futsing with the increases and how long to make it. I really want to use all the yarn and I could do it if I wore them slouchy, but I do want to have the option to pull them up. I don't think there's enough to round the elbow (plus that means more measuring and math). I did a decrease on the last knit row from 68 down to 60, then did the eyelet edging. The edging was still a bit too wide for me, so I have to decide it I want to live with it or tink the last 4 rows and try again, decreasing to 56. Maybe a decision for tomorrow.