Beach Bums

Ah - spring break! The kids are home and Dan took the week off. I'm not quite sure how I ended up working this week, but when I thought about getting subs for my classes, I just didn't want to leave them. That must be a good sign.

My kids have been telling us about their friends' spring breaks. Among the destinations of our rich and famous minor friends, they are traveling to: Hawaii, Tahoe, Disneyland, Lego-land, both Disneyland and Lego-land, Arizona, and Utah. Not wanting to disappoint, when my kids asked, "where are WE going?", I said, "the beach!"

Now, I won't tell them my super-secret plan which is to teach my classes, plan my garden, use them for child-labor to plant and weed that garden, clean their closets, and more. To get really good quality child-labor out of these precious few days off of school, I'll have to throw them a bone or two.

Enter, the Pacific Ocean:



It's only 90 minutes away, it's gorgeous and peaceful, it's inexpensive, and everybody is happy.



Well, maybe not ecstatic. When did our San Diego beach baby refuse to put on swim trunks and run away from waves? Poor Brandon spent gorgeous beach time with his headphones on, connected to his phone. I guess the beach just isn't his thing right now. Bless his heart, he didn't complain once.



Who needs Hawaii? Don't get me wrong - if I had thousands of dollars lying around, we'd be in Hawaii. But we don't NEED Hawaii to have an amazing beach day. And, the added bonus is that the kids toughen up. Literally - as in, they go numb and learn that comfort and joy aren't necessarily dependent on each other. Have you swam in the Santa Cruz Pacific before? Brrr....



My friend Lisa (who grew up in SoCal but isn't a "beach person" (what kind of craziness is that!?)) makes fun of me because I bring a BIG garden shovel to the beach. A garden shovel, and a book. It's the big frugalista secret for pure entertainment. You can dig a huge hole in record time for a massive sand castle/mote. Or, dig a huge hole for each kid and tell them to wait for the tide to come in and turn it into a swimming pool, buying you hours of entertainment while you have a romantic dinner at sunset with the hubby. Or, bury them alive and you won't have any disruptions to your peaceful beach reading time. This year, Dan told the kids that in nature, the animal parents don't help their young hatch out of their eggs, ensuring that the little baby turtles are strong enough to make it through life. It took Kieran a good 30 minutes or so to break free from his sand trap. All on his own! That was 30 minutes of good reading time, without having to even look up and make sure the kids weren't drowning or kidnapped. Score!

The only whining yesterday was about not wanting to leave the beach. So, we always bribe them with Pizza My Heart in downtown Santa Cruz. They get to eat the "best pizza on earth", let a little grease drip down their elbows, while people watching. Santa Cruz has it's own charm and culture, you just don't get this kind of quality people watching anywhere else. Just be prepared to answer some fun questions. "Mommy, how did he get his ear to stretch down to his shoulder? Was he born that way?", or "what's that smell?", and "How come the stores here don't let us use their bathrooms?" (I was tempted, but didn't have the heart to take a picture of Drew holding herself for 3 blocks on our jaunt to go potty. The girl's gotta keep some dignity.)



The slices are HUGE. Guess who got the award for eating the most pizza yesterday?

Nope, wasn't the boys. Wasn't even Dan....



Little Drewby ate 2 big slices, plus nibbled on crust. Running in the ocean must build a huge appetite. Plus, I'm not sure what they put in that pizza (it is Santa Cruz, after all) or why it's better in Santa Cruz than Mtn. View. Drew's reward was a Pizza My Heart t-shirt. It's only a buck with a slice and a drink.

And no trip to the coast is ever complete without making a quick stop by Aunt Shelley's house in Campbell for some time with the "fuzzins", Roo and Rabbit:



Good, simple, cheap fun. Hopefully it will bleed into today - I'm hoping to get some weeding out of these kids!

Classic T

"Mutha, there is no utha." Click "Muttha" for entertainment you'll never forget.

Ah. This is pure awesomeness on so many levels. My 15-year old posted this on my FB wall for my b-day. I feel like I'm doing something right if my teenager has a good sense of humor. He's going to need it at our house.

Ladies who lunch

I suppose there are some ladies who lunch. I haven't met them yet. Everyone seems SO busy. I've always been determined not to be so busy, so when I did unfortunately become SO busy, I was so disappointed in myself. I may not have become a lady who lunches, but I am thrilled to have enough down time to begin tackling the yard. We bought our house almost four years ago. It was our first home purchase, and because it had taken us so long to finally buy a little place of our own, we were thrilled. I vowed to never have another white wall, and I quickly ripped out the sad old rose bushes in the back yard to finally have an amazing vegetable garden. I'd been gardening in our rentals for years, in sad old containers and without much luck. So, my Dad and Dan built some raised beds for my birthday a few years ago and we brought in some special garden mix soil for maximum veggie potential. Which brings me to Problem #162 on my list of life fix-its. (Notice I'm not starting with #1? That's because I never seem to do things in logical order.) That special mix that we spent a fortune on, had delivered, and moved into the boxes by wheelbarrow-ful? It came with a special surprise: Don't let this little guy fool you. Cue the Britney Spears... 'cause he's not that innocent. That's right. Grubs. Do you know what these tiny little grubs do to veggies? They eat the tap roots. The plants look pretty good, but don't grow any veggies. Do you know any organic solutions to killing the Japanese Beetle Larvae? Didn't think so. Neither did any of the garden pros at any of the garden shops in the Tri-Valley area, or online gardening sites or gardening chat boards I've visited. So, we've tried picking them out by hand. (A fun game for the kids, but they tend to give up after a few hours.) I've tried planting menacing plants that are supposed to repel the grubs. (They just eat at the roots for dessert.) I've tried two rounds of nematodes at $40 a pop. No luck. The only thing I seem to be able to grow successfully? Grubs. I have a beautiful, prolific assortment of them. Ugh. My birthday is Thursday. This is what I ordered to ring in my 39 years of bliss on this planet: I'm skeptical, but trying to have some faith. If you can just try to contain your patience, I'll update in a couple of weeks and let you know how it works. Say a little prayer for me. Found something else in the wreckage that I've never seen before. Now I'm on the lookout for some smurfs... too cute. Bright red! It was mixed amongst my favorite weed. I'm not sure what the weed's scientific name is, but to me, it's "wanna-be four-leaf clover". Just like marrying a Gallagher makes me, "wanna-be Irish". Still, amongst the rubble are a happy little faces that manage to survive all sorts of neglect: They are so cheerful, I planted a whole mess of them in the Grand-daddy version to greet me at the front door when I come home. What IS it about the word PANSY that makes me giggle like a teenager? These hearty faces are anything but pansies. Their ability to thrive in the middle of the winter muck is one of my favorite things about them. It's one small shift toward cheerfulness...

It's been Cosmic

Three years ago, I committed to saying “yes” to things that scared me, things that moved me out of my comfort zone. I said, “yes” to my friend Lisa and partnered with her to open up Cosmic Dog Yoga in Livermore, Ca.

There were many “no’s” lining up. No, it wasn’t the right timing – my daughter was only 3, my boys were in new schools and still adjusting to our move to a new city. Three kids, three school schedules, daycare issues, a husband working insane hours miles away, and a 30-minute commute for me. No, it wasn’t convenient. “No”, I had never run a business, didn’t know anything about marketing, income projection, hiring laws, taxes, etc. I had done management before, and I knew I would be getting phone calls night and day from teachers and employees who wouldn't be able to show up for one reason or another. I knew that I would have to make tough decisions and get really comfortable with the idea of not pleasing everyone. I knew I would have to nurture and mother and grow the studio. I was just getting to know Lisa and her husband better, and knew that going into any type of business partnership was always a huge risk. I knew going into it that I was going to have to pour all of myself into the project, even when I didn't feel like it. I knew it was going to work me to the bone.

Why say "yes"? Why give all of myself to my family and this yoga studio, knowing full well that there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to keep a personal balance? I can’t fully explain it, except to say that I felt “compelled” to. There have been a few times in my life that I have felt compelled to do something big, and I’ve learned to jump into action when something compelling drives me. That instinct has never served me wrong.

I’m not sure that it will sound believable to anyone out there, but the yoga studio was born from some deep altruistic place inside of me. It wasn’t about making money, and it wasn’t an intentional career move for me. It’s pretty simple – I’m one of those people who were “saved” by yoga.

I know that sounds nutty and declarative, and it is. And when I say, “saved by yoga”, I don’t mean that I learned to throw a leg behind my head and chant “aum” and then suddenly all of my troubles melted away in a sea of bliss. I mean that slowly, I began to see more clearly. I opened my mind to new ideas I would have never experienced had I not been so miserable that I was willing to try anything – even sitting with a bunch of crazies and learning to let myself go to places I’d never been before. There’s something innate about yoga – the real teachings of yoga – that stretched and expanded me in directions I didn’t know I needed to go. I was traveling to places of real contentment, and true liberation. Places I didn't know that existed.

With strong a strong shift like this moving through me, I couldn’t sit back and not take an opportunity to let yoga grow and expand through me. It’s that simple – yoga was moving through me and asking me to create a tangible space for others to experience something similar. I suppose I had a choice in the matter, yet the experience was just so organic, that every cell of my being enthusiastically said, “Yes!”

Fast-forward 3 years. Lisa and I managed to build the space, and people came. Man, did they come! CDY is one amazing yoga community with beautiful sun-filled rooms, happy teachers, happy students, and lives changed immeasurably for the better. The Livermore community has the best yoga studio I have ever been to. I have gained so much strength and flexibility from this process than I ever thought I was capable of.

And with this great project, there also came a cost and a limit for both Lisa and I. We had both given all we had to Cosmic, and couldn’t find a sane balance in life. Every good yoga class has the right balance of effort, surrender, and rest in it. The same is true with life, and rest is something I just wasn’t getting. Life became an energetic drain and I just couldn’t keep up. It became to energetically expensive to life keep going the way it was. I missed having the time to look in my kids’ eyes and play games with them. I felt my teenager growing up and away from me and didn’t want to miss a minute of his life in our home. I missed spending time with my husband and don't like seeing him so tired and stressed. I actually yearned to pull weeds and clean out drawers and feel that my surroundings were calm and organized again. I needed sleep - badly. I felt compelled again. This time, we put the yoga studio up for sale.

2011 brought two brave people into my life: Karen and Theresa – the new owners of CDY. I’m so glad to keep teaching yoga and running the CDY teacher training program. I’m glad to move to a supportive role rather than a leadership role. I’m still stretching, expanding and opening every day.

And yet as I sit here, I'm just trying to figure out exactly “where” I’m at. I’m thinking about the past few months and what loss feels like, what change feels like, and what shape my life will take as I move forward. Where will I be compelled to expand to next? In true Laurie fashion, that’s where my mind goes to – expanding. Yet, after the sale of CDY, I just felt compelled to draw inward for a while, to cocoon into a space of rejuvenation, rest and quiet and trust that when I’m inspired to expand, it will again be an organic and compelling process.

In the meantime, this drawing inward business has been a really messy unpleasant process. With no inspiration to move outward and get things done, my confined space has become full of 3 years of unfinished projects, ideas, uncleaned closets and garages. It’s spilling over with so many emotions, thoughts and questions circling my mind that I’m not sure where to begin.

After three years of putting everyone elses' needs before my own, I can’t think of a better way to move forward than by simply having a bit of fun with it and beginning wherever the hell I want to! And that’s what this blog is all about. I’m putting myself back on the schedule and reclaiming my personal life. It’s time to give myself the rest I need, the time to really connect with my kids and husband, enjoy my pets, my garden, my artwork. It’s time to expand inward a bit. So join me here if you dare to observe the terribly mundane things that excite me to no end, one small and simple shift at a time.