i had approximately 17 minutes of rehearsal tonight. actually, a few more minutes, because after we all sang the “can of beans” song, we sat around while the woman who plays elizabeth sang a song with the guys. her part consists of singing “today i’m getting married,” or something like that, about three times.
whew, it was exhausting. we have to go back again next week. i’ll keep you posted.
have you ever seen that show “medium?” patricia arquette doesn’t hardly sleep at all in it. she has lots of disturbing dreams, which always seem to be true. so that’s something to be thankful for, despite the not sleeping, at least i don’t have disturbing dreams. have i told you about my dreams? horribly, horribly dull. for a while i dreamed that i was ironing. yep, ironing.
anyway, my weekend…no races. i was going to see that movie “the interpreter,” but somehow i didn’t get around to it. how can a person with this much free time manage to not accomplish something as simple as getting to a movie? maybe this weekend.
i made lots of asian food on saturday night. sushi, pot stickers, pad thai. i did it all because i wanted some sushi, but i knew the sushi from cub foods wouldn’t be satisfying. and plus, i woke up on saturday and decided it would be nice to cook for my family, since i’ve been very negligent in that regard for quite some time.
sunday, i went to an all-day workshop. let me say that i am NOT A WORKSHOP PERSON. i’m not a meeting person, and i don’t do workshops, i avoid any kind of stuff like this LIKE THE PLAGUE. and i’ve been plague-free all my life. but this was an empowering workshop. the title was: EMPOWERING THE SPIRIT: A WORKSHOP TO SHIFT YOUR ENERGY FIELD AND YOUR LIFE.
and let me just say that it did. I mean, it was great. for one thing, it wasn’t boring. for me not to get bored while sitting down in a chair for seven hours is nothing short of miraculous. we did a bunch of guided meditations, and we wrote stuff down in our journals, and we did all kinds of things that you might possibly scoff at (i can hear christine scoffing right now), the kind of stuff that i was quite skeptical about before doing it. the leader of the workshop was judith corvin-blackburn, who is an amazing person, a psychotherapist, an author and teacher. i loved listening to her talk.
it was basically about actualizing your potential. listening to your soul. acquiring more personal and spiritual power.
by the end of the day, i was fully activated, feeling powerful. like i could conquer the world.
and i did, today. well, i didn’t completely conquer it, but i did get a lot of stuff done. and, most importantly, i feel good about things. i’m not sure how long this will last, but i’m going to try to keep the stuff i learned close to my heart.
Mom wanted to know what, exactly, we did in the workshop, and i told her about the meditating, and about how Judith talked a lot, but there’s really no way to explain it well. it’s just something you have to experience. There were 16 of us in the workshop, and when it was over, we had to go around and say how we felt. a surprising number of people said they felt drained. I wasn’t drained, not at all. i think one thing the experience taught me is that even though i have all this angst and stuff buzzing around in my head all the time, i’m actually in pretty good shape, emotion-wise. realizing this is a huge breakthrough, and makes me feel really good.
ok, and i’m going to share with you a big thing that we did – in one of the meditations, we had to imagine somebody standing in front of us. judith said this was our Spiritual Warrior, the spiritual being who would help us to be strong, will protect us and show us the way.
a clear image immediately came into my head. afterwards, judith asked us to share with the group who we saw. other people had some pretty profound images. i decided not to share.
my warrior is a cartoon character. i can see him in my mind right now (and i’m glad he’s going to be with me from now on); he’s a lot like the Disney character Hercules. A class tall cartoon disney strongman, absurdly broad shoulders, dark hair, wearing a tunic. with a silly little half-grin. i’m going to have to watch the movie again, to see if hercules is exactly who i was thinking of. When we were doing the meditation, he was quite wise and good, but at the same time, full of disney-like goofiness, pirouetting around in his tunic.
You can see why i didn’t want to bring him up. everybody else’s warrior seemed a lot more, um, profound and deep and meaningful. but the more i’ve been thinking about my man, i realize that of course he wouldn’t be all serious. he’s thoughtful and is going to help me out a lot, i know, but he he’s funny, he makes me laugh. because that’s who i am, it’s an intrinsic part of me. finding the humor in things is what keeps me from being REALLY depressed, and it’s something that i can’t help doing. it’s just how my mind works.
maybe i should have brought him up during the workshop, because even though he’s not full of the “meaning” that means stuff to other people, he has meaning to me. lots of meaning.
anyway, today i did plenty of physical things. i tried the tri ahead of time. i’m going to be in a triathlon on sunday, a mini, tiny triathlon, but a triathlon just the same. it’s called “try the tri,” starting with a mere 150 yards of swimming, in the fit club pool. this will consist of swimming back and forth and back and forth and back and forth down the length of the pool.
did i ever mention that i flunked swimming lessons when i first took them at the YWCA? we had to swim the WIDTH of the pool, but i couldn’t master that.
after swimming, we’re going to bike 5 miles, then run 1.3 miles.
it seems like nothing, really, but i was nervous about the swimming, so i started swimming last week, and i like it a lot. so today i loaded my bike into the back of the minivan and drove to the fitclub. i swam for 15 minutes, then i put on some shorts over my swimming suit and got my bike out of the van and rode for 22 minutes, then i put on my baseball cap and ran for 26 minutes. all these times are longer than the time i need to go on sunday, so now i’m filled with confidence about the day. the only difference will be that it’s going to start early in the morning.
but with hercules by my side, how could things go wrong?
and not only that, but i’m pretty tired now becaus of all the activity, so that means my sleep tonight will be completely through the night.
one final thing – i was running down the street in my baggy shorts, my big t-shirt and my baseball cap, and there were some guys working on a house and one of them whistled at me. i wanted to yell, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND THERE? YOU THINK THIS OUTFIT DESERVES A WOLF WHISTLE? WHAT ARE YOU, BLIND OR SOMETHING? but i didn’t want to stop.
that is all for now.
ok then,
empowered grace, you’d better watch out.