This is about as close to touching my toes as I have come since hitting puberty some 18 years ago. It’s embarrassing and alarming! This photo was taken about 10 minutes after an hour of deep stretching in my first yoga class of the Power Year. I don’t have documentation to confirm this, but I estimate that just prior to the class I was probably two inches shy of this pathetic showing. I am really inflexible. Physically.

I usually go to classes at Core Power Yoga, which is basically yoga meets jazzercize in vibe. It’s a fast moving, heated vinyasa class with a lot of emphasis on the core (i.e. crunches.) I really enjoy these classes because I feel like I’m actually getting a workout in addition to reaching those fingertips just a little bit closer to those toes.

The problem with Core Power is that it’s pretty far from my house and if I go home after work I often lose momentum for braving the traffic to make it to a class at rush hour timez. So on Friday I tried out Yoga Shala which is just a few blocks from my house. It was very different from the crowded, hot, fitness vibe of Core Power. There were only two other people in my class at Yoga Shala, and the instructor started us off with a good deal of chanting. I think you can guess where I’m headed with this.

I don’t care for hippie yoga. It stresses me out to be told to empty my mind. I don’t want my sweaty head to be touched during Triangle Pose and I certainly don’t want to be murmured to. I want to get in, stretch my damn hamstrings, do too many chaturangas, attempt a head stand and go home! No chanting at me, and no encouraging me to chant, okay?! No chanting!!

So it seems that Yoga Shala is not for me. I bought a 3-pack of classes at a special new student price ($21), so I’ll go back at least twice but after that I think I’m done. There’s a hot yoga studio nearby that my friend Amy swears by, so that will probably be my next step. They have a 10 classes for 10 dollars deal for new students- that would get me 1/5th of the way toward my goal!

But for now: 1 class down, 51 to go.

Valentine’s Day is for jokes!
Last night I had a great hang out with Steve, Mike, Katy D and Nicole G at Ye Olde Comedy Club. Tig Notaro made my whole torso hurt with the laughing. I think that averaging 2 social events a week is going to be easy but the documentation will be tricky to keep up on. I’m going to make a flickr set but I want to note my progress here as well. Mike has offered to design some pie charts for me- I think I’ll take him up on it. Because nothing spells friendship like pie charts, amiright?

Well I am checking things off my list! Mike and I just go back from two nights (check!) in Lincoln City just hanging out (check!) with Judah & Sarah and Thomas & Sage! We went for a walk on the beach (would be a check for “hikes” but despite gale force winds it wasn’t much of an exertion so I’m not going to count it.) We made lots of food and drank lots of wine and Mike and I creamed them all at Pictionary. Seriously creamed them. Seriously.

I decided that the whole weekend should just count as one hang out though because while we did a lot of stuff it was basically uninterrupted. Likewise, we were away for two nights but it only counts for one of my twelve overnight trips away from Portland. I don’t want to cut corners here!

The house we stayed in belongs to one of my students’ grandma and it was so nice! It was built in the 60’s and had some amazing built in shelves that sort of divided the main room into living space and kitchen space without closing it off. I wish I’d thought to take a picture but I’m sort of a dummy about that stuff. I will definitely need to get better at pictures for this Year. Anyway, there were so many windows facing the ocean and the weather alternated between foggy clear, so our view out to sea and up the coast was constantly changing. On Saturday, as I mentioned, it was crazy ass windy and we all walked up the beach to these tidepools only we couldn’t really enjoy them because the wind was literally going to blow us over if we didn’t watch out. So we mostly took pictures of each other getting blown around and then booked it back to the house by way of someone’s private staircase and side yard.

It’s been a great birthday week you guys. I’m realizing that documenting this project on Perfect Heart is going to maybe be more work than the project itself! I haven’t even started in on the book assignments I received from Liz and Jae OR the amazing Soul mix CD’s that came to me in the mail from Rob! I’ll have to do lots of updates I think so stay tuned!

Thanks for the support so far!
Powering on!
Willow

Day 2!

Last night I was faced with my first Power Year conundrum: what counts as a hang out? After school I stopped by to see my N. Buffalo Girls Molly and Penny. I stayed for an hour, had a beverage and then went on my way. Once home Jae came by to give me my birthday presents (more about these later!) and help me pick out my birthday outfit. Then it was dinner with Rita, Nathan, Mike and Rebecca at the Farm and then dancing, dissing and dedicating at DJ Hot Air Balloon’s Red Teddy event with Alex, Steve, Adam…

So what I need to figure out is which of these hang outs counts as a hang out? Should I lump them together and count them as one? What’s the minimum time limit? An hour? Two? I want to set up some guidelines so now so that I’m actually pushing myself socially.

I think I’ll say that any get togethers within a 6 hour period count for one “point” toward my goal of 104 hang outs. So last night, while filled with amazing friends, counts once. Leave a comment if you think I should tweak this policy. :)

I’m giddy about this Power Year. I’m so full of ideas and I’m getting such good advice! More to follow soon, I promise!

I’m 31 tomorrow. In my 30’s for real. I am embarking on a new project- well, a series of projects actually. I’m excited to work on them and revive ol’ Perfect Heart in the process. So check it out! For your health!

I’m on my way to Australia today, drinking wine at a tony lounge in the International terminal of SFO. I could write for ages about how much I love getting little luxuries for free, but I still have aging on my mind.
Thinking more about the continuum of my twenties I realize that I made some miscalculations. In my early twenties I did things just the way I should- college followed by semi-aimless adventuring. But as soon as I decided to become a teacher it’s like I put myself on this Path To Responsible Adulthood that was quite constrictive. I had this idea of what a young professionally-minded woman in her mid-twenties should be like and it involved locking down a job, home, husband, and pet. It also meant letting go of a certain amount of silliness, and embracing a more demure “adult” existence. I never articulated those things to myself, I just kept making moves in that direction, thinking I was doing what was right. It probably goes without saying that this drive for adulthood was not necessarily shared by the two gentlemen friends that inhabited my life during this period- in fact I think it was one of the leading causes of my break up with the first of the gentlemen. Thankfully (and frustratingly) the second (and current) gentleman has been largely nonplussed by my waves of marriage mania and now at 30 it’s way less of a big deal to me than it was at 25.
In fact all of the things that seemed so inevitable and important to the process of becoming an adult seem so… arbitrary isn’t it exactly, but definitely not critical. Maybe because I’ve achieved a few of them the rest seem less essential. It’s probably blindingly obvious to most people, but I’m just now discovering that getting older doesn’t have to mean following some prescribed route and turning in my Youth Pass. If my late twenties were about narrowing my path, I think my early thirties will be about broadening it out again. Doing the Beyonce dance team with Allison and her ladies feels like an amazing step down that broader path, as do the funny trips that I’ve taken (and am currently taking) these last 12 months. I feel like a part of me is thawing.

I am 30. 30. 30! I’ve been 30 for about a month and though I don’t feel much different than I did when I was still 29 I have been thinking a lot about the continuum of my adulthood- where I’ve been, where I’m headed. Of course I know this is a cliche. When I turned 20 I must have said to myself a hundred times, “I’m not a teenager anymore!” And I’m sure that when I turn forty I will look at the Over The Hill mugs at some rest stop somewhere and think, “That’s me.” (Is 40 still over the hill or has the crest of the hill been bumped to 50 by the Boomers? I hope it’s been bumped.) Regardless, birthdays that end with 0’s are cause for pause and reflection. The ought decade was the decade of my twenties:
2000: Sophomore year of college, I spend a semester in New York living in a hotel next door to the Dakota and studying art, architecture and theater, i.e. a Charmed Life.
2001: Back at L&C with a renewed commitment to my studies, i.e. finally seeing college as more than a social exercise. Living in Sellwood, dating a biologist, settling into nice friendships, performing in a Brecht play.
2002: Graduation followed by my first Portland summer nannying for some professors’ baby, riding a bike while drinking beers, the first What the Heck Fest which I went to on a whim but became one of the seminal experiences of my life. Then I moved to NYC with a vague notion of becoming an actress for realz.
2003: In New York. Not acting. Not living in a hotel. 6th floor walk up on the Upper East Side, slinging drinks at a pub in the shadow of the 59th Street Bridge (feeling groovy.) Dated a Republican (ugh.) Made a lot of Irish friends, didn’t see enough of my bestest friends who lived in Brooklyn and the Berkshires, respectively. Mild identity crisis, questions of “Am I an artist if I’m too chicken to audition,” etc. Lots of all-nighters locked in the pub with the rest of the staff with everyone buying rounds at half off. Back to What the Heck x2 somewhere in there, a well needed respite. Fell in love at that one.
2004: Needing a change, deciding to leave New York for Dublin, indefinitely. Heartly complications involving a spontaneous and romantic flight to SFO just days before flying to Ireland, then followed a (very) long distance love and I made my way in a (relatively) foreign land. Sharing a house with an accountant, nurse, and airline pilot (all Irish) while committing (condoned) identity theft so I could work at the oldest bar in Dublin without a visa. One night late at night walking back from a pub with a friend deciding I wanted to be a teacher. Five months later making my way back to the States and slowly west.
2005: Back in Portland, living with silly girls (in a good way), monthly trips to SFO to see the Love, monthly visits from the same. Nannying and working in a school, applying for grad school, applying for food stamps. Getting dumped so hard and being so sad. Starting this blog.
2006: Graduate school! Learning how to teach! A new love beginning on the first day of a new year! So many firsts! First job in my field! First year of teaching! First class! First grade! First apartment on my own! Exhausted, exhilarated!
2007: Major nesting- T.V. on DVD, wine, and going to bed so early. Career adrenaline running low and feeling the hard work. Saying goodbye to my first class, meeting my second. A lot of being tired. Adopting my cat.
2008: Getting into the swing of things- the mythical third year of teaching being all that it was promised to be! Teaching feeling fun, loving my class. Moving in with the man friend, another fancy first. Serving on many committees, becoming a Force on staff, gaining a cool reputation with the parents at the school. Feeling good! Having fun! Also, Obama!
2009: More good feelings plus a road trip down Route 66 with my friend of friends- a dream vacation to be sure. Moving up to second grade, keeping my sweet class for another year, more committees. Planting a garden for the first time and it looking so nice. L.A. trip to cap off a cool year. Oh and loving basketball.
2010: Turning 30! Dancing to Beyonce with my dance team in costumes! Besties visiting for my birthday and making me a cake! A trip to Australia around the corner! What next? I don’t know! I hope I like it.

It’s actually getting colder and colder “out there.” Today is my third snow day in a row, and it’s likely that it will be a whole snow week. Let me tell you, one snow day is A W E S O M E, two snow days are pretty sweet, three- plus snow days are NO GOOD! Especially when they butt up against Christmas break. My classroom is full of half-finished calendars the kids were making for their families, and now they won’t be done in time! Plus, I won’t get any kid-made cookies or fudge this year! And I LOVE cookies and fudge! PLUS, I have a tiny case of cabin fever if you must know. But none of that really matters BECAUSE….
This Friday at the House of Mike and Willow, I am hosting a 60 minute dance party from 6-7 PM with a 30 minute slow jamz after party upstairs. It’s the kind of party designed for people who have to get up very very early, and maybe they think to themselves sometimes “oh, tonight I should go out dancing with some cool friends!” But then instead they eat Thai takeout for dinner and go to bed at 9:45. You know, people like that. It’s also of course for people who ARE able to stay up late. They can roll out of bed at 3 PM, eat a little something, work on a crossword puzzle, then boom! start their day off right with some kick ass ass shakin’. Everyone wins!
So early birds and night owls: come over to my house and dance with me!
Heat it up!

I am in over my head.
I am taking this intense 800 level math class to improve my practice as a math teacher. Lots of teachers in my district are taking it, too. We all got subs for three consecutive days (which is a NIGHTMARE to plan for by the way) and have been immersed for 8 hours a day in math concepts, content, and the development of “sociomathematical norms.” Its exhilarating and exhausting in turns, with so much metacognition that it gives a person a headache! One example of this- we were given a problem to try to solve, first independently and then in our table group. The problem was 1 divided by 2/3. That’s right, division AND fractions! Hard! I felt totally stupid and stuck as I tried to brush the cobwebs off of my trusty ol’ algorithms, knowing of course that the point of the exercise was to look beyond algorithms to the true meaning of the numbers and their relationship to each other- just like we ask our students. When we got as far as we could in our own solving we were allowed to work collaboratively, and my table-mates (who teach middle school math) were able to handily solve the problem and succinctly explain their reasoning. It made total sense to me when they sketched it out on paper, and I found that I could apply their reasoning to other similar problems without resorting to the traditional algorithm. But man! That initial feeling of panic and lack of directionality made me so sympathetic to my little first graders who heave great sighs when I push their thinking in subtraction or whatever.
Basically this course is designed to give us teachers a paradigm shift in how we conduct our lessons, and the kind of environment and opportunity for discourse we create for our burgeoning mathematicians. It’s about raising expectations, allowing students to feel a sense of disequilibrium when they are presented with challenging problems and encouraging them to work through that feeling to find a solution. It’s also about enabling them to co-create knowledge with one another, rather than having everything be super teacher-driven. It’s exciting to think about, but still difficult to envision how it will play out at my grade level. It seems like in order to spark that deep thinking, I need to give the kids a vocabulary for metacognitive expression, and I don’t quite know how to do that in a useful (for them) way. They need the language to have a meaningful discourse, but they are little kids who do much better with concrete rather than abstract ideas. I hope that the rest of the course will offer some guidance here.
So… that’s what’s going on with me professionally. I’ve been wanting to blog for a while- I miss this avenue for keeping in touch with people I care about. So excuse my very dry and specific entry, I just needed to get back in it and math is what is on my mind. I promise next time to write about butts or TV or Barack Obama or something else fun.