Just got back from yoga class...my first class since December. Getting back into any form of exercise is a lot like deciding to watch Grey's Anatomy in the middle of season four. All of your friends know all the subplots, who's slept together, and random additional social configurations, but you're the loser who doesn't even know the name of Patrick Dempsey's character. I don't know if you understand this logic. If you do, we should probably get together for a drink sometime.

Last week a very gracious and premium seated season ticket holder invited my daughter and me to see "Annie" at the Carson Center. I am famous for saying that I dislike all musicals (caveat: "The Wizard of Oz"), but I guess I am being forced to throw yet another blanket statement out the proverbial window. I really, really liked "Annie." And I know I'm going out on a limb here with the possiblility of causing some musical aficianados unspeakable anguish...I liked it better than The Producers.

I ran across a couple of friends in the restroom (where else?) that I hadn't seen in years. They had their daughters (aged 5 and 6, respectively) with them to see the play. I felt such pride and a strange sense of relief after meeting their little girls to point at my own daughter seated in the foyer, absently playing with her cell phone..."That's my little girl." (now basically a full-grown woman).

I know that I have an entire blog pending about being a very young mother...maybe even more than that. The entire time my kids were growing up, going to school, and I was one of the youngest room mothers, I never thought there would ever be relief associated with it. I would love to say it's a cake walk by the time they're 17, but just tonight I had to speak with a very reputable and upstanding attorney of Paducah about teenagers and speeding tickets. Parenthood is like taking a high school achievement test. First you're sailing along being embarrassingly self-congratulatory when suddenly the questions turn into a mensa application as you turn the last page.

Namaste

Today hope returned to my life. After spending some amount of time de-icing my car in the parking lot after work, driving to the library (closed!) to return some items before their actual due date, I returned home to find that my basil seeds have actually germinated! I was astonished. Last spring was a dismal year for my flowers. I simply abandoned them in favor of self-pity and air conditioning. This year I am attempting to rekindle my gardening passion armed with a few peat pots and an assortment of envelopes from the Burpee company. I have an assortment of annual herbs (dill, parsley, basil) as well as sage and even a few annual flowers. I hope my one and only fluorescent light will serve as surrogate sunlight long enough to get them started. By the time they are transplantable, we should be through with all of this icy mush.

There is no therapy like gardening. Setting a seed, watching it sprout and grow, caring for it like your own child. Working the soil in the springtime feels like talking to God. It's deep and hypnotic, revealing truth and meaning. It promotes a feeling of connection with life itself. Peace, I guess.

I wish I had the land to have a real garden...one like my grandfather's. Potatoes, corn, green beans, squash, watermelon and the most luscious tomatoes ever grown on this earth. He had a true talent for gardening, for growing anything, yet he made it seem effortless. There were apple orchards, peach trees, cherry trees (my favorite), gooseberry and blackberry bushes, pear and pecan trees. If only my own grandchildren could visit such a wonderland. I never knew how much love and care lived in the rich dirt of my grandfather's garden until now...when the sight of one tiny sprout makes this soggy, cold, wet February day a great one.

Namaste

I am here but still lacking any substance of which to write. I went to work, then to an off-site event two hours away and am home again. I thought a lot about the event that I attended, and I actually started to write about it but thought better. Work should remain at work.

I haven't been to yoga since December. I get this way...hermitic (is that a word? It should be) at times. I come home from work and immediately put on my sweatshirt and yoga pants. This way, I convince myself there's no chance in leaving since I'd have to put on real clothes to meet society. And let's face it, that's just too much trouble.

Some days, if my daughter is actually at home, I start supper. It's no secret that I like to cook, but cooking for oneself is anticlimactic to say the very least. On the nights that I don't cook and no one's here to witness, I eat gigantic piles of Wheat Thins or half a bag of Baked Lays for supper. Eating something crunchy always makes me feel like I'm getting more bang for my calorie.

Lately I've been sewing. Yes, you read that right. I've taken it up with a vengeance. I have yet to make myself anything presentable, but little Heidi has more dresses than she could ever possibly wear by age 12 months. I've become somewhat obsessed by it, I'll admit.

Well, I have to go now and get back to my latest work in progress. I will update you on how that goes...only if it turns out, that is.

Namaste

It feels a little weird to be sitting here writing in my blog. I've been a little out of sorts lately...in a "general funk" as my friend Kim used to say. With the holidays gone and the cold and dreary weeks of winter creeping in, I had nary an ounce of blogging fortitude. I'm quietly making my way back, but it's been a bit of a struggle.

First and foremost, Seinfeld was great...much funnier than I'd expected. I've never been one of those die hard Seinfeld fans...the ones who know every word in every episode. The ones who know every scene that features the Soup Nazi or each Kramer idiosyncracy. All in all, I can say that I really like Jerry Seinfeld and were it not for this man, would probably have loved the show. I've never been able to name specifically why I despise him so and have wondered that very question aloud to more than one close friend. Is it his Weeble-ish physique? His whiny demeanor? His smarmy, totally unbelievable aptitude with women?

As usual, someone is circling the computer as I type...anxious, nervous. It has been a full 8 hours since her last IM (texts don't count, you know).

To be continued...

Finally back from my road trips for the week. They started on Sunday with a five hour trek across Missouri, through the horror of St. Louis construction traffic and back again on Monday. Then Tuesday it was off to Louisville for a meeting early Wednesday morning and back again this afternoon. Spending four and five hour stretches in a car creates a kind of interdependent depressed anxiety a lot like insomnia. The more I think about it, the slower the miles tick by. The slower they tick by, the more I want to scream, etc.

So, although it feels like Friday, it is only Wednesday...however...TOMORROW:

Yes, as a very unexpected and thrilling Christmas gift, and no doubt through some bizarre planet alignment, my brother was able to procure a Seinfeld ticket for yours truly. Aside from the cobalt blue ten-speed I received at age nine, this may be my best Christmas present EVER. I am joining my brother and his girlfriend for dinner tomorrow night at an as yet undisclosed location and then on to The Big Show. This is a very big deal for me since it starts at...

9:30 P.M.!

It might as well be at midnight, as anyone who knows me would agree. Even my brother, as I was marveling at the gift on Christmas Eve, said "The only thing is...it's a little late." But Seinfeld in Paducah is a once in a lifetime, so I am going to get crazy and may even stay up until...who knows...11! Wish me luck.

Namaste

Project Runway is Back!

Project Runway has returned from its holiday hiatus and not a moment too soon. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America have begun to rerun. This week, the designers were taken to Hershey's Times Square Superstore. They were to create a design of their choosing from only the materials that they could find in the candy store. They had no budget, two sacks, and five minutes to grab and bag their materials.

The results were amazing. The winner of this challenge, Rami, created an incredible halter dress using Twizzler pillow cases and Peppermint Patty papers. The dress was an amazing fit on his model, and the styling he chose was a great match for the fun and funkiness of the dress.

Although I tend to favor halter dresses as a rule, the design by Chris could just as easily have taken top honors this challenge. I especially liked how perfectly the Hershey's logo was woven in and out of the bodice of the piece. The only thing that didn't quite do it for me was the fit. It didn't appear curvy enough. I guess this is one of the hazards of strapless, especially when fitting runway models.

There was quite a bit of crap out there, in my humble opinion, not the least of which was this losing design by Elisa. I'll have to say that I will not miss her other worldly presence or her hand sewn craptastic designs. Her creativity was too much for her skill set, and her taste was usually ten paces behind both. The final straw was this drab brown collection of pillows [bottom left] stuck on a model hailing from the same planet as Elisa. A melted chocolate Barbarella Kiss. How in the world could the model keep a straight face with those silver pillows hanging off her elbows? Good-bye, Elisa. The rest of us are due back on Planet Earth.

One very honorable mention: although I wasn't crazy about Jillian's design, I was awestruck that she brave enough to construct a garment out of actual candy...the only contestant to do so. Check out this incredible edible dress made out of Twizzlers. Wow!

Namaste

New Year's Day is for marathons...televisions marathons. And this year was no exception. I spent the first day of 2008 watching back-to-back episodes of the Twilight Zone until my eyes bled. Except for the incessant commercials, each episode is perfect...filmed in black and white, thinly veiled slightly leftist message, neat and tidy storyline. Rod Serling smoked right there on television in front of God and everyone while setting up the moral structure of the story. I had started watching the marathon on New Year's Eve when I awoke at 12:30 p.m. after having taken a nice, three hour nap. It just doesn't get any better than that...New Year's Eve or not.


I had spent the previous day watching another marathon...which in the end amounted to my watching the first movie completely and then switching back and forth on the sequels. Planet of the Apes (1968). I embarrassingly admitted this to a friend I'd called during the 17th commercial of the first hour.

"You like that, too?" she asked. "I can never resist the Apes."

We spent a couple of moments considering this and wondering why we were both so mesmerized by the film.

(Charlton Heston in a loin cloth screaming "Keep your hands off me, you damned dirty apes!" HA! - Every time the apes would gag him during the movie, I thought how effective that image would be on a gun control poster.)

It wasn't until today that I learned that screenplay for Planet of the Apes was co-written by none other than our good friend Rod Serling. Who knew?

Namaste