9:15 a.m.

I feel wonderful this morning. Why? Because it is only 9:15 a.m. and I have already done the following:

-Made Aaron a sandwich to take to work for lunch
-Went for a quick jog, which included running up and down the stairs to BYU three times until my lungs burned
-Watered the lawn
-Took a shower
-Cleaned the bedroom which had piles of clothes everywhere due to the recent removal of our dresser for re-painting
-Did about 45 minutes of article writing work
-Made a delicious breakfast of steel cut oats with buttermilk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and flax seeds while I swept the kitchen floor, put the dry dishes away, and got myself ready for the day
-Ate the delicious breakfast with a glass of OJ
-Read my scriptures
-Brushed, flossed, and mouth-washed my teeth

How long will I be able to keep up all these positive, healthy habits? Who knows.

What is the plan for the rest of the day?

-Continue article writing work for a few hours
-Perhaps pull some of the weeds that are growing outside our window
-Bike to Riverwoods for the first day of Yoga Teacher Training Certification
-Buy a yoga mat, and some yoga books, and get really excited to learn more about yoga and be able to do headstands
-Take a yoga class
-Bike home to Aaron
-Eat leftover Cafe Rio that I made last week which we have been eating every night since
-Wash the dishes, relax, lay on the couch while Aaron does stuff on the computer, and go to sleep

free money

Ever seen these?
                                   

Basically, they are free money. Though you can't use it for yourself, you can donate them to elementary schools where the future of America is getting educated.

Though I obviously do not have any children going to elementary school, or any children at all, I have started collecting them. Most of them expire in 2014. Hopefully by then, I'll have some sort of significant contribution to give to either a school in my area, or maybe my dear Shorewood Hills Elementary School in Madison, WI. Why throw away ten cent? I guess people do it a lot with real money, but it seems pretty silly to me.

This is my official challenge to all you readers to collect Box Tops for Education--mostly because, why not?

For a list of all the products that have Box Tops on them, and for more information, click here:   http://www.boxtops4education.com/

design workshop

Last week I began a summer choreography workshop with Jacqueline's School of Ballet. The school is connected to a semi-professional ballet company here in the Valley called Utah Regional Ballet. The company has some very amazing young dancers, all of them are about my age. For two weeks in the summer they have a design workshop. This year, they have brought in Troy Mundy, who is a choreographer from Australia who has set and made work all around the world. I heard about the program from my friend Roxanne Gray, who I danced with at BYU. She did the camp last year and was excited to come again this year.

This is how it works:

In the morning, the dancers take a modern class and a ballet class. Roxanne and I try to go to the modern classes when we can. It is great to have the opportunity to take class again, and from a great teacher. Angie Banchero is faculty at UVU, and she is great fun. When I first met her, at least to my recollection it was the first time we met, she said "Oh my! You got married. I swear you guys are like my little 10 year olds!" What exactly she meant, I am not sure, but I wasn't aware that I had ever met her, and she definitely didn't know me when I was 10.

Then we get an hour with Troy. He has choreographic exercises and tasks for us to do. Some days it is writing a sentence about our bodies, then taking each letter in the sentence and writing a body part, then using those body parts to make up a phrase of movement. Some days it is creating four characters and using those characters as the inspiration for our movement. He has a lot of good ideas that I have never experienced before.

Then we eat lunch, quickly, and try to use as much of our free hour to plan what the heck we are going to do with our dancers.

After lunch we get 2.5 hours with a pre-determined set of dancers to create and teach some sort of piece. Some days you get 6 dancers, some days you get 18. Sometimes you have members of Utah Regional Ballet, and sometimes you have 10 year olds. It is quite a challenge with the varying degrees of abilities, not to mention the fact that you are just racking your brain and body to try to create something to show at 3:30. So you work, you have the dancers help you make stuff up, some like it, some hate it, sometimes they cry, sometimes they laugh, sometimes you are pleased at the end of the day, and sometimes you would rather shield your eyes and not watch.

All in all, it is a really great experience. I have explored new movement styles, new ways of approaching how I can choreograph, and how I can help instruct and use my dancers. It is extremely mentally draining, though. Yesterday began a two day project, so I should be using this time to plan and prepare what I am going to do with all the random scenes I created yesterday....

from the garden

Celery

Red Pontiac Potatoes

Cilantro...mmmmmm

Raspberries

game night

more spiders

Why does everyone always say that spiders are more afraid of humans than we are of them? We all know that is completely false. Here is my evidence.

1. Every spider I see while I am in the garden is charging full speed ahead... in my direction. If I am afraid of something, I usually run away. Not spiders. That is because they aren't afraid.

2. If I were afraid of a huge scary monster, but was trying to secretly live in her house, I would not hang down from my little spider's web at the perfect level for said scary monster woman to walk out of the bathroom and run RIGHT into me.

Okay, I confess to being the huge scary monster woman in that story. Luckily, I did not run into the fearless, freaking scary spider. I jumped back and watched it spin around it's little bungee cord, trying to figure out how to kill a floating spider. Oh wait, then the creepy black-widow looking spider death drops to the ground and starts running towards me. Yet again, shouldn't they be running away if they really are afraid?

dinner

What do you make for dinner when there is "nothing to eat," according to me?

Steamed turnip greens with lemon juice and olive oil

One leftover chicken breast with salsa over leftover rice

Roasted baby carrots with the quarter of a red onion from the fridge with olive oil, thyme, and rosemary



And Aaron was still satisfied.