Fierce

Fierce
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

Back from Hawaii and a much-needed escape from NYC. Did some running around, did some sitting around, did some staring into the ocean, did some more sitting around, did a LOT of eating, did some weight-gaining (that will drop away, shortly, I'm sure, now that I'm paying for my own meals again). I think Kauai and Big Island are tied for my favorites. I loved Maui, but I love the solace and languid pace of Big Island and Kauai much more. A week of strolling and sitting around in either of those places would be a fantastic vacation. However, there are two more islands to be explored before that happens: Molokai and Lanai. After those two, I will have visited every island available to outsiders (Ni'ihau is owned by a single family and one must be invited in order to go there, although that may have changed).

Being back in the city isn't as awful as I thought it would be. It may be that it just hasn't hit me yet that I don't have a single vacation from work coming up in the next two or three months. I'm not a lazy person, I just need the occasional mental health break from the repetitive nature of my current temp assignment. I must admit that it was nice to come back to work on a Friday and know that I had two more days to adjust to city pace before a full five-day work week. At the beginning of this last Hawaii adventure, I kept realizing that I'd left my family in the dust whenever we walked somewhere, and I had to stop and purposefully slow down. My sister admonished, "You don't need to walk so fast here!" and I answered, "I thought I wasn't walking that fast!" By the end of the trip, I'd learned how to amble again.

The final thing I've taken from this vacation is that I need to take better care of myself. That doesn't mean pampering (at least not all the time). It means getting my butt to yoga. It means budgeting for dance class three times a week. It means finally buying a loft so my bed doesn't dominate my bedroom. It means making time for the activities (and they need to be active) that keep my brain out of the miry mush of the doldrums. I've been neglecting my body, and as a result, I've been neglecting my mind and spirit. Time to get moving, because, as they say, you've only failed if you fall down and stay there.

I Guess It's A Snickers

I Guess It's A Snickers
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

I don't remember where I was, but I was watching television. It was unusual because I don't own a television, nor do I frequent places that have televisions on and available. Nevertheless, I was somewhere, watching television.

A public service announcement came on. The donkey from Shrek started rapping (badly) about kids getting up and playing outside. Computer animated storybook forest creatures cavorted and did outdated, embarassing, "my parents are STILL doing the Macarena at weddings" dances, while children ran, in a manic fashion, around a playground. It's weird, but cute.

However, while watching, it hit me that this was a PSA to get children to go outside and play. How weird is that? I don't remember being a grade schooler and my mother and father telling me to go outside and play. (They probably did, repeatedly, when I was a teenager, but laziness is intrinsic to adolescence and cannot be countered with parental admonishment.) I remember them having to yell at me several times to come back inside and eat dinner/do homework/take a bath and go to bed. What have we come to that we have to make commercials where animated movie characters tell kids to get off their butts and go play?

My temporary roommate put it simply: "It's a symptom of the internet and video game culture." I totally get that, but it still disturbs me on a fundamental level. Physical education is relegated to once a week for an hour. We dope our children with television, video games, movies, and food because we don't want to deal with them. No wonder kids have no love for movement or the wide-open possibilities of the outdoors.

It hurts my heart. I, currently, can't go to dance class because I'm (still) recovering from a sprained ankle. I feel like I'm a little crazed. I don't get the release of shutting down my logic center, using a different part of my brain, and exhausting my body at least once every other day. It hurts me that perfectly healthy children are not taking advantage of what I would (almost) kill to do.

Wake up, people! How can we make this better?

More bullet points!

I have been busy. I know I say that all the time, but this time I mean it. So because I went to bed at 2:30 and woke up at 7:00, you get the bullet point list. Bullet Point List of Doom!

I have:

• started a dance residency with Kenwood School. Yay! Fun!


• been understudying "The Left Hand Singing" at Park Square to go in for Christiana May 2nd through the 4th; you should come see it


• started writing my blog posts on my hard drive so I don't have to worry about losing them


• been throwing the dog's schedule all out of whack because my schedule is all out of whack


• been eating fat and sugar almost exclusively


• NOT been going to the gym


• been getting to use my newfound Japanese skills, specifically shooting a commercial for Cub Foods


• woken up before 7:00 am nearly every morning for the last week and a half; I get to sleep in on...Tuesday. I think.


• started working on another screenplay


• needed desperately to clean my room


• looked at my room and thought, "I'm not cleaning this now"


• wanted to run away to Duluth for a weekend


• realized that I love writing more than most things I'm doing these days


• randomly text messaged some folks; sorry! I was bored


• had no idea what bullet point to use to end this magnificent work of art, this blog post, and left off with some lame sentence that desperately tries to be sort of funny but really isn't

This post is not about acting.

So, the thing I was going to write about the gym? I'll give you the truncated version.

I was on the stationary bike, workin' up a sweat. All through my workout (and this was about 20 minutes into it) I felt some obstruction in my nose every time I exhaled. I hate that: when you have loose-ish boogers and you're in public or your hands are busy so you can't do anything about it right away. So I have some loose-ish boogers and I'm exhaling through my nose to keep my breathing calm, hoping that said boogers don't fly out of my nose while I'm still working out and before I have a chance to run into a bathroom stall. You might ask, "Well why didn't you just breathe through your mouth to keep from feeling that icky feeling?" And I might answer, "Because in some sick way, I kind of like it. I hate it, but I kind of like seeing how much I can test the boogies before they do come out. I want to know how far I can go." I might answer something like that. So with about five minutes to go, I exhale and - you guessed it - a large, dry, green boogie comes flying out of my nose, ricochets off my knee and lands on the floor near the bike.

My eyes got big, but only momentarily. I didn't want to give away what had just happened. No "tells". I thought, "I hope no one in that looooong line of women standing and staring at nothing or possibly me working out while they wait for their aerobics or step or body groove or whatever it is class to start saw that boogie fly out of my nose and me making no effort to pick it up." Because I wasn't going to pick it up. There was no way I was going to stop riding with only four minutes left to get down on my hands and knees and look for a lone nose emerald in the berber carpet that was probably harboring all manner of germs and nasties. There was no way that was going to happen.

So anyone who saw that? Sorry. Hope I didn't gross you out too much.