Free Range Friday ~ Culebra

Sarah

For Christmas, I was, along with a couple of other friends, given a yoga class as a gift. Yesterday we decided to actually take the yoga class, except for one friend who has a cast on her ankle and foot, making her unyogalimber. I thought the class was an hour and a half earlier than it actually was so that should have been my first clue it was going to be an interesting day...I almost always know when I'm supposed to be someplace. Unless I don't.

Between the time I thought I would be gone and the time I actually left, a guy came by about computer stuff, I made a batch of hot sauce, and Dick's wooga wooga horn announced his pick up of eggs. Finally! it was time to go get limber and mellow.

How long has it been since I've taken a yoga class? I'm thinking about 38 years, back when I could wrap my leg around my neck. I was in Boulder then and went to a class with a friend. I loved it so much I fell asleep at the end of it. Sleep, always being an elusive in my life, I was thrilled. I swore I'd be a yoga devotee for life. It was the last yoga class I took until yesterday.

I didn't fall asleep this time, but, after the wobblies, the burning, the awkwardness - my own, not from Sarah - if I'd just laid on the mat the whole time she would have been smiling -  I did feel a very relaxed and peaceful sensation at the end when we rested. A few more minutes and I might have slept. I won't make any promises this time but I truly did enjoy the class. Thank you, gift-giver! Thank you, Sarah Teacher. Even if I can't wrap my leg around my neck anymore. Yet.

View from the yoga studio. Blissville.

Before we started, one of the questions Sarah asked was, what is your intention in being here? It wasn't a question to answer out loud but I'm going to answer it out loud here, mainly since I say it to myself so often. 'Because I can.'

There are a lot of things I can't do and that frustrates me, often. There are things I don't want to do, but I can do. And sometimes, the only reason I do them is...because I can. Sometimes that means, I do what I can because I should. Sometimes it means WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!! I CAN! and sometimes it's just a quiet voice, reminding myself how fortunate I am that I can.

Not Evi's 'dozer, I was too stunned to get a photo

When I got home I tried to do something I couldn't, but Culebra came to the rescue, as it often does. There was this piece of rebar right where cars pull off the road by my house; to park, to pick up or drop off, for whatever reason. I've lived here a long time and never saw it, but there it was, mostly buried in the hard packed dirt. So I cleverly thought, I'll take the hose, muddy up the dirt, take my garden spade and get it out of there before someone destroys a tire on it. I knew in about a minute that that plan was hopeless. It was rebar, it was twisted, it was IN there.

Then, rumbling down the road, came Evi, the bulldozer guy. The bulldozer guy who drives his dozer like Fred Astaire with Ginger, like a brain surgeon with his scalpel. That back hoe in the photo up there? With the narrow, three-tined bucket? He somehow got the rebar around those tines or those tines around the rebar and pulled it out of the ground. Three feet out of the ground. I was worried it would spring out and of course, kill me, but it didn't even come close to slightly maiming me. It just came out and plonked undramatically down on the ground. While I was still trying to figure out how he defied all the laws of physics,  Evi lifted the stabilizers, gave a little laugh at me holding up my garden spade and drove away. I owe that man a few beers.

Go gumbo limbo! I can't decide if this looks human or alien.

One of the positive aspects - about the only one I know so far - of our present drought is that this gumbo limbo tree, tangled in weeds for most of the time I've lived here, is emerging more every day. With almost all of the weeds around it dead and even the weed trees in and around it dying, I can get behind it now. I realized today that once upon a time this tree fell over, maybe in hurricane Hugo, and the reason it grows so weirdly is because it just kept on growing, sideways, reaching up as much as it can, stretching out 20 or 30 feet in all directions. This isn't rich soil, this is rocky, rough dirt about 15 or 20 feet from the salty bay, but there it is, with other trees growing through its roots, carrying on. Because it can.

Where's the food part, MJ? Well, I did make a chicken pasta salad yesterday but was feeling ravenous and ate it before I thought to photograph it. But how hard was that? Left over chicken chopped up. Spring onion, chopped up. Mayo, horseradish, garlic powder, a dash of curry powder, a dash of cumin. Mix all of that together and put in the fridge. Make pasta. I didn't have anything but spaghetti, so I broke that into pieces a couple of inches long and threw them in boiling water. I put an egg in while the water was heating up, to hard boil. By the time the spaghetti was done, the egg was done too. Chop up the egg, do shell it first. Mix everything together. Put it back in the fridge to cool down. Eat. Yum. Celery would have been a good addition. Tomatoes would have been a good addition. Cucumber too. But just as it was? Not bad at all, even minus any excitement factor.  There's the food part.

Have a fistful of unfluttery flattery Friday. Do something fervently first.