Yogalicious

Last week Mon. I went to a yoga class with Donna and Jen, and it totally kicked my butt. I could hardly lift my textbooks the next day. Last night I went, and I'm not that sore. That's yogalicious!

Oh yeah, and there's this weird move in yoga called "happy baby." You lay on your back with your legs in the air, grab your big toes, and extend your legs above your head. I would like to suggest "birthing mother" as an alternate name...Not yogalicious. I heard Donna snicker out loud when the instructor told us the name. Go Donna.

People I've pressured/shamed into writing or sharing their blogs:

Amanda

Angela

Donna

Next on the list: Charity!!!!

PS...maybe I had nothing to do with this. I'm thankful though!

Spectacle

I got new glasses over Christmas, and I love them. They're green, my favorite color. I actually got them back this week after a debacle with Lenscrafters. I won't tell the whole story, but it involves me looking very crazy to the Lenscrafters people, and ends with me getting lenses from my eye doctor in Iowa.

Anyway, so I wear them to school today. Oh, and the lenses are Transitions, so they turn blue/purple outside. I had recess duty this morning, so I was outside wearing them. I came back in, and saw half of the 8th graders. Now, some of them were very cool--they either minded their own business, or they said "hey, nice glasses Ms. De Yager." And then there are those chosen few...who said mean things. Especially this one girl, who said "Wait, you're actually going to wear those? Like for real?" And then sort of snickered...I wanted to call her a bad name in class. And I kept thinking in my head "regressive pull, regressive pull" which is where when you spend enough time with adolescents, you want to act like them. And I totally wanted to. But, I kept calm and just said mean things in my mind. I still love them. The glasses, that is.

Love, aka OCD

I was reading National Geographic tonight, and came across an article about love. Usually I eschew these articles around Valentine's Day, but I took a chance that National Geographic would be a little less woosy about it all, and they were. The article looks at the different theories about why we fall in love with whom we do, and the (possible) science behind it.

One scientist studied a group of people in love, and compared them to a group of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She looked at the levels of serotonin in each, and compared them with a group "free from both passion and mental illness." What she found is that "love and obsessive-compulsive disorder could have a similar chemical profile." The article, tongue-in-cheek, suggests using Prozac to escape the grip of runaway passion...

Another theory is that we're attracted to body odor...fascinating. And here's my favorite bit from the article: "If the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to a mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychologial damage. A good sex life can be as strong as Gorilla Glue, but who wants that stuff on your skin?" Now folks, there's some fine writing.

Fauxhawk

This week was "spirit week" at my school, and this is a picture of my "fauxhawk" from crazy hair day. My kids wanted to know why I didn't use gel and hairspray (it's completely constructed of bobby pins), but I had somewhere to go after school, and I wasn't feeling THAT spirited.

Actually, I haven't been feeling spirited much lately. Maybe it's just a funk, but I've been kind of depressed lately. I have no reason to be anything but thankful, but it doesn't seem to affect my mood. I have friends around, an amazing place to live and yet I feel depressed. I think it has something to do with stress in my family, but who knows. I'm just praying it'll pass quickly.

My Life's Movie

Thanks to Dave, I found my life's movie:

The Movie Of Your Life Is An Indie Flick

You do things your own way - and it's made for colorful times. Your life hasn't turned out how anyone expected, thank goodness! Your best movie matches: Clerks, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Help!

This week is spirit week at school, and tomorrow is dress like your favorite movie character/book character, and I don't have any good ideas. Anyone have a good idea?

Why I don't like Bally's, or salesmen

Last night my friends Donna and Jen and I went to Bally's to take a yoga class. We got free 8-week passes from the Discovery Health network, so we thought, why not? As I drove up, I was taken aback by how ugly Bally's is. It's basically one huge room, all painted grey. And of course lots of sweaty people. So we walk up with our free passes, and the salesmen wants to give us a "tour." And by tour, he meant walk in a circle around the big room. Oh, and he showed us into the weight room, where some prehistoric-looking men sort of looked at us out of the corners of their eyes. As we're walking, he starts asking Jen about her "goals." He says "So, what are your goals? Specifically, what specific goals do you have?" We both looked at each other...."Um, getting healthy I guess" she says. So he counters: "What specifically, do you have specific goals? Do you want to tone up?" By this point I'm raising my eyebrows at her, adn she's annoyed.

So this continues for a while. Then we go to his office, and he tells us all the reasons that we should trade in our free passes for a paid membership. Now, this man was either not very bright at all, or just a REALLY bad salesmen, and totally unacquainted with women. Here are some of the reasons he gave us: I'm sure you have goals. That's why you walked through that door. Now, if you want to reach those goals, you need motivation and determination. That's what I'm offering you. You know you can't accomplish your goals in 8 weeks. You could have a session with a trainer, and he could determine where you are. Because you won't get to your goal in 8 weeks. He could measure your body fat and tell you what to do to reach your goals. Because I know you want to reach some goals and show determination. I'm not going to pressure you, I just want you to know what's realistic here. And everyone's really been trading in the free passes because they know they can't achieve the results they want in 8 weeks."

At this point, I think I actually snickered at him. And finally, he sort of looked at us for our decisions, and Jen said no, and I said no, and he finally let us leave.

Sheesh. I'm thinking about writing a letter giving him a few pointers.

More Points

10 points for anyone who knows what this photo is, and where it came from.

Implausible Stories

I'm continuing to read Under the Banner of Heaven...and Mormonism is wilder than I thought. I have only a vague notion of the story of the religion until I saw an episode of South Park about it, which was remarkably accurate. It's fascinating that the story is implausible even on South Park. I had never bothered to read another version of it, just thinking that the South Park guys must've embellished it greatly for effect, but not so! In fact, the story is that Joseph Smith mysteriously found these gold tablets that no one ever got to see.

And some of the things that have been done in his name by Mormon fundamentalists, wow...Of course, not to be confused with the legitimate LDS church, a completely different thing.

Here's one of my favorite lines from the book: "And although his [Joseph Smith] perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the
American republic." I guess I never thought of Calvinism as being worse than "absolutist and unyielding."

On another book...I loved James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Now everyone is all benout (how do you spell that?) about him completely lying about most of the "crucial" parts of the book. That bugs me. First, it's still a great story, and pretty well-written in my opinion. You get what life is like for him as an addict. Second, he fully and completely admits that he's an ass in the book. Well, yes, he's proven it. He's just an ass in a different way than he purported himself to be. So be it. If people feel let down by him, or deceived or lied to, get over it. People get famous for much more insidious things than this.

Sad Cat

This is the saddest cat ever...

Rockahontas

Another little school bit: At school today, one of my 7th graders told me she has a hamster named "Jeffy," or so I thought. It was awesome because Jeffy was my first cat. He was only named Jeffy after Samantha was out of the question because he was a boy. Anyway, this 7th grader is way cooler, because her hamster is actually "Geoffie" which I think is just great. Plus, she had a video of Geoffie on her camera--of him in a hamster ball, and her sort of shoving him around in it on a linoleum floor. 7th graders rock sometimes.

I like the title Rockahontas even more now because last year I had a colleague whose first name was Hontas, short for Pocahontas. And she's not Native American either...just a family name.

The Weather Pixies

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the weather pixies (or weather geisha, in this case) change their clothes. And Donna's dog even moves around and occasionally disappears.

The Wisdom of Annie

When I was little I used to watch Annie every other day during the summer. On the off days I would watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Occasionally, The Ugly Daschund was thrown in for variety. Anyway, our middle schoolers are trying out for the Annie musical right now so I downloaded some of the Broadway musical songs. Ah, the wisdom in the song "Tomorrow." and it just makes you feel good singing it.

Today I had a funny moment (to me) as I was working out. It was day three in my new bid for a healthier life, and I was looking out the window as the sun was going down, and I saw a squirrel. Now, the squirrels at my apartment complex are stupendous. They can scale completely vertical buildings, hanging on only to the stucco. They can also leap long distances, from building to building. And they're brave...The other night as I was sitting on my porch a squirrel jumped up on the railing, looked at me, and appeared to be deciding to attack. So I made a sudden noise, and he inched away slowly. Anyway, right when I saw the squirrel today, "Hollaback Girl" was playing on my ipod, and I had this sudden vision of the squirrel singing and dancing like Gwen Stefani. Now that would be something to see. Here's the problem with exercising for me--my mind needs something to do. Reading is great, but not always practical on the elliptical trainer.

Speaking of reading, lately I've been reading "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. It's non-fiction, about mormon fundamentalists, like the ones who captured Elizabeth Smart. I'd heard something about this on Dr. Phil a while back (I'm a junkie), when Dr. Phil's son Jay went to this town called Colorado City, which is a mormon fundamentalist stronghold. Interesting stuff. Anna Karenina is still there, but I'm just not sure what can happen in the next 600 pages--she's already having an affair. Can it really be 600 pages from affair to death? I'm not opposed to reading that much, but it just better be something good.

Here's a funny school moment or two. Ususally I post them on my school blog, but this might be one a wider audience would appreciate. I'm not sure, but I liked it...So we're reading the Diary of Anne Frank in my 8th grade classes. In the play (and the movie), Anne gets her period. She's all sentimental about it, calling it her "sweet secret" and saying she longs to feel the pain again, to know she's a woman. It reminds me of the episode of the Cosby show where Rudy gets hers, and her mom takes her out to this big dinner, which is strange. I know very few people who really view it this way. Anyway, in class, as we're reading this, I can see all the girls making weird faces--either looking at me as if to say "is she serious?" or snickering. Now, they love Anne Frank, but they just don't see this as normal behavior. And the best part is that the boys are casting sidelong glances at the girls, and you can see them trying to figure out if this is how the 8th grade girls reacted. Ah, puberty. Gotta love it.

Is this even possible?

As I was sitting through another "who can we set you up with?" conversation this weekend, I started to realize that I do not have one single girlfriend left. Not one, from either high school or college. Actually, there's one possibility from high school, Lisa Ochsner, but I just haven't kept up with her enough to know. And Charity, but she's all the way in Haiti...

So I suppose it's time to make some new single girlfriends. Not that I don't love my married friends (I'd be friendless without ya'll), but a few more "how can we get you married off" conversations and I will seriously self-destruct. People mean well, but sometimes they make you feel like you're not okay the way you are. So anyway, I'm on the lookout for some single friends...and, well, church seems to be the best place for that...ugh. (See the post below about church)

Last night Dave's blog helped my team win a question in Trivial Pursuit. I don't remember the question exactly, but it was something about a famous person causing a stink because of her involvement in Vietnam. I knew it was Jane Fonda because of the picture. And it was for a pie! Thanks, Dave!

People I would like to see blogging in the very near future:

(in no particular order)

1. Amanda B.-V.D.B. (Panda, you have crazy long initials)
2. Angela K.V.
3. Jen W.
4. Becky B.
5. Sara P.
6. Charity C.

So yes, I'm hoping to shame you into blogging. At least if you're reading my blog, that is.

Meet Chrisie

So I've always wanted a cat. When I was younger, I had a cat named Jeffy. He was a lilac point Siamese, and totally awesome. Jeffy was sadly poisoned when I was in high school, but not before he had developed feline diabetes. My mom had to give him insulin injections in his tail. When I moved out, she (my mom) got three new cats--Calvin, Hobbes, and Bug. Actually, she inherited Bug. My sister-in-law Susan had a baby kitten, and accidentally ran over it. After that, she got a new cat to replace it. She named the new one Gary. But, my brother did not want a cat in their house, so they wanted to bring it to the Humane society. My mom couldn't handle it, so she adopted Gary and changed his name to Bug. It's an open adoption, Susan sees him often.

Anyway, I would love to have a cat, but with $50 a month pet rent, I can't really afford one right now. I still do browse the Humane Society webpages though, and that's where I found Chrisie. What I love is that the picture does not agree one bit with the information written about here. Here's Chrisie's profile: Chrisie is fairly socail and affectionate. She was easy to handle during her behavior and medical exam. She can be a little shy but warms up quickly. Um, yeah.

Prayer for a Constant Sense of God's Presence

by Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769)

O God our heavenly Father, renew in us the sense of Thy gracious Presence, and let it be a constant impulse within us to peace, trustfulness, and courage on our pilgrimage. Let us hold Thee fast with a loving and adoring heart, and let our affections be fixed on Thee, that so the unbroken communion of our hearts with Thee may accompany us whatsoever we do, through life and in death. Teach us to pray heartily; to listen for Thy voice within, and never to stifle its warnings. Behold, we bring our poor hearts as a sacrifice unto Thee; come and fill Thy sanctuary, and suffer nought impure to enter there. O Thou who art Love, let Thy Divine Spirit flow like a river through our whole souls, and lead us in the right way till we pass into the Land of Promise; through Jesus Christ. Amen.

From A Book of Reformed Prayers.

This is part of what makes me crotchety--there are some kids growing up now who will never hear prayers like this. They will never read words that were uttered centuries ago.

Crotchety Before My Time

So I've been sort of crotchety about church and churches lately, and the service I went to this Sunday didn't help. I went to a reformed church, Church of the Chimes. The real preacher, Dwight wasn't there, but instead there was this guy from a new church called the Mall Church. The idea is that they're planting this new church in a mall...The mall church has been started by another church here, The Journey. So the idea for the Mall Church, according to the guy who talked about it, is that it'll be where the people are...and that it's where Jesus would've been.

When he first started talking I was very annoyed. For one thing, he started talking about "someone who was looking for Jesus," and he did this audience participation thing where he had a 12ish year old girl get on her dad's shoulders. At that point I knew it would be Zaccheus. And somehow, I feel like I've heard 4 or 5 sermons on Zaccheus this year, and I was just not looking forward to it. The sermon turned out to be okay, but the whole idea of the Mall Church grates on me somehow. Partly, his sermon was about "who are you" in the Zaccheus story. Basically, you're either Zaccheus (feeling judged by the people), Jesus (um, yeah, not us), or the pharisees and tax collectors (the judgers).

I just totally reject that--that everyone in the church, and all churches, are judgemental of those not in the church. And this seems to be a fundamental belief of most of the emergent churches, although that group is somewhat nebulous too.

At the root, I can't yet articulate what really bothers me about these new churches, but I can articulate some of the details. First, I think it's sad and wrong that whole generations of Christians will grow up never having heard the hymns and creeds that have been part of church life for hundreds of years. It's like they're denying the church through history.

These next two maybe go together: First, it seems as though many of the emergent churches are just not as deep in their theology as many traditional churches. Second, the fact that pastors are always joking and making lighthearted comments on the Bible seems in some ways like an apology. Like they don't want to handle truth in its real forms, so they make jokes and it irritates me.

To be a little balanced, I do appreciate churches that try to be both relevant and rooted in tradition. I've really enjoyed services at Vintage Faith in Santa Cruz. But yet, it feels like something's missing. I guess until I can really express what that is, I'll just have to go on being crotchety about it.

My baby

This is an ultrasound picture of my baby! I mean my newest pre-born niece or nephew. This is Noah and Susan's baby, due in August. I'm so excited to be an aunt. It sort of looks like the baby has a big nose, but my mom said it's actually the baby's hand, that it looked like it was waving during the ultrasound. I saw Gabe and Kristi's ultrasound pictures, but they don't have them digitally. So, baby #1 in March, and baby #2 in August. Yea for auntie Bridge!

The beach scene

Today I went to the beach with Jen and Brian, near Santa Cruz, CA. It's only about a 45 minute drive, but I don't get there nearly enough. Today was an absolutely beautiful day for it though. We hung out while Brian listened to his ipod, and Jen read the classifieds and we talked. It was one of those just perfect Sundays. Then we had dinner with Donna and John, which I always love.

What?!?

Yesterday I received a check in the mail from the DMV for $45, a refund from registering my car. Huh? The DMV gives refunds? I thought they only sucked money in, and now they're spitting it back out. I'm grateful, but confused.

Good question!

10 points for anyone who guesses correctly what the picture is. (By the way--"points" is a fun game created by some of my 8th grade students. One day when a student and I were going back and forth with sarcastic comments about some homework assignment, I made a great comment, and a funny kid said "Ooooh, Ms. De Yager 10 points!")

Tag!

So, appearantly Heather has "tagged" me and my blog. As in "You're it!" And, according to Heather, the rules are that I have to tell ya'll 5 things you may not know about me. Although I'm not sure if Heather can be trusted...hmm, although she got it from Cristina, and I'm pretty sure she's trustworthy.

So, 5 things:

1) There is a home video of me, when I'm maybe 7 or so, where my brother and I are playing with colored blocks. the blocks were these circular, sort of hexagonal (but with more sides) things, that were no big deal. So we're playing on the video, and my brother Gabe wants to have some blocks. I actually tell him, on the video that "You can't have them. You don't know how to play with them!" Um, they were blocks...Anyway, my mom hauled out the middle name, as in "Bridget Nicole! If you don't play nice, you are going to get a spanking." So I tell her that I'm trying to sort them by color and Gabe doesn't know how. He was about 5, and I'm sure he really did know how. So about 30 seconds later, for some reason, I look straight at the video camera, and say "I love you" while making the motions we must have learned in Sunday school. Then I look at Gabe, and say "I hate you" and stick my tongue out at him. And my mom was not happy, saying "Bridget Nicole, that's it, you're being a naughty girl."

2) When I was also very young, 4 or 5, my parents took us to the high school boys' state tournament. My dad used to teach for Western Christian, and their mascot at that time was an Indian. So when they took us to the state tournament, we all dressed in Indian costumes, headdress and all. Once while we were dressed that way my dad locked the keys out of our van, and so we were left standing in a hotel parking lot in Des Moines at 11pm dressed in Indian costumes. I have pictures.


3) I wanted to name my youngest brother Barkley when he was born, after the dog on Sesame Street.

4) Since Heather had a recurring dream, I might as well too. My recurring dream is that I'm in a house or hotel, and fall from a great height. But I don't ever fall to the ground, I always land hanging onto something--a banister, light fixture, etc. And I never get hurt. It's like I have a cat-like ability in the dreams to grab onto objects as I fall.

5) I used to be in love with Joe from the New Kids on the Block. Everyone picked a New Kid to call their own, and I picked Joe because he was the youngest, and therefore it was most practical for us to get married.

So, there are my five things, and according to Heather, I now get to pick 5 people to tag. So, if you're reading this, you're it:

Dave
Jason
Kristin E.
Kristin A.
Donna (this means you need to start a blog!)

The one time you may not feel utterly harassed at Ikea

is New Year's Day morning.

Top 5 Baby Clothes Sayings

Both of my sisters-in-law are preg-o, so I've been doing a lot of baby shopping lately. Here are the top 5 items I've seen on baby clothes, in no particular order:

1. I ate my dreidel
2. Not an elf
3. I might puke
4. Chicks dig me (on a blue onesie)
5. No one puts baby in a corner (on a pink onesie)

And my all time favorite baby outfits are anything that has ears on the top. For Christmas both babies-to-be got a really soft, bear suit with ears from BabyGap. One was brown and the other white. I guess I'm setting up good baby versus bad baby. That's okay, my mom used to dress my brothers, who are 18 months apart, as twins. That's much worse.

The New Year's Plan

Okay, so it's 11:15pm, and the New Year's plan is in full swing. Ordinarily I would be somewhere with my family, or on an airplane, but this time I'm at home. So, to make it extra-festive, here's the plan. First, I went out to dinner and a movie with friends. This was unforseen, but fun. We saw Memoirs of a Geisha, which was much more Hollywood than the book, but that's to be expected. Post-movie, I'm going to drink champagne out of little pink cans with a pink bendy straw. OK, it's really sparkling wine, but it's fun. Just the idea of wine out of a can is cool. As I drink the champagne, I'll do one of two things--watch some tv countdown, or read more of Anna Karenina. I read a summary online today, and realized that she is a tragic figure. Perhaps not the best name for a baby then, although Anna does mean grace. I wonder if Tolstoy knew that.