PARIS!

Yes, it is just that gorgeous ALL the freaking time! They really do have a way with lights, that I cannot understand or possibly replicate. In fact, most of my Parisian pleasures were things that could only be experienced and enjoyed in Paris. The food, the lights, the sounds, the wine, the champagne, the bread, the art, the architecture... none of those things could be packed up and taken along to enjoy weeks later in the bland midwest. Well, maybe the wine, but I didn't have a spare suitcase to bring it home.

I did try to export what I could-- cute outfits, ideas for personal and home styling, scarves, photos, and memories.

Now I'm going to try to track down anything that remotely recalls Paris here in the Twin Cities. So far, I've found a good herbed goat cheese, the New French Bakery that sells $1 baguettes after 5 p.m. (just in time for picking up after work), a decent Cremant (sparkling wine) from Trader Joe's, and a sweet shop that sells French style macaroons (which, if you haven't had, are not the same coconut variety we have here) and a Tibetan shop at the Midtown Global Market that sells nice silk scarves.

Oh, yes, I was that inspired.

How could I not be with scenes like that above?

I love Paris in the winter...

It's a Beautiful Day!

Ever have one of those days when everything just seems so right and perfect that you wouldn't change a thing?

This is one of those days for me.

I went for a run this morning down by the river and stopped to watch a plane fly overhead against the thin, rumbly-looking clouds and thought "that is going to be me soon."

I stood a couple feet from the Mississippi and watched the perfectly calm water swirl oak leaves downstream, and looked at the reflection of the East Bank buildings in the river.

The color of the day was just like Thanksgiving week looks in my mind.

And I thought of one word: santosha.

The book website is up!

http://www.dogdaysattheweirfarm.com

Thank you, Heather, for your gorgeous design and brilliant ideas.

Now it's time to find a publisher. Wish me luck!

I've started work on a kids' story. Its working title is "The Fabulous Adventures of Oona Oolong." Here is a bit that I've written so far...

Oona Oolong opened her front door and stepped onto the porch. She took one big inhale and looked around. A tendril of morning glories wrapped the faded wooden fence in green and sky blue. They were not there last night. Orange sunshine streaked across the lawn and alighted on tiny dewdrops on each blade of grass. A cat sashayed down the sidewalk, as if it had a very important engagement.

“I can’t possibly go to school on a day that smells like this,” Oona Oolong declared, and walked right past the bus stop and kept going until she reached an old stone staircase that led down into the river gorge.

Some kids may have stopped and looked back at the bus stop, with a fleeting sense of guilt or obligation. Some may have even turned around. Oona Oolong was not one of those kids. She forgot all about the bus stop the moment her foot hit the first worn stone.

If she had thought about school at all that morning, she may have said to herself “Oona Oolong, you will have many days, many years of sitting behind a desk, but you will only have one morning in September when the flowers are still blooming and the sumac is turning red and the air smells just like someone somewhere opened a window and let everything in.”

But, Oona Oolong was already skipping down the steps, anticipating what lie ahead and half-watching a log in the river below swirl past the sandy shore.

Book Website update...

I have seen some sample pages of my book website from the very talented Heather Murphy. I am absolutely thrilled with her gorgeous design and I can't wait to see the finished website! This is just so very exciting for me to see it come alive. I am lucky to have such a professional and inspirational artist to work with.

I will share her lovely work as soon as the website is ready.

Thank you Heather!

Smile Philanthropist

It usually pays to do that thing that you are afraid of doing because someone might not approve, or you may face ridicule. In fact, those are the things you really should do, because there are way more people out there who are waiting for you to do it. Someone has to pave the way to show that it's okay to be honest and bold and brave. Go ahead. Do it. Then watch what happens.

Yoga teacher training is going great so far! This week I learned how to give good Sivasana.

I'm going to state my BIG DREAM here right now, because I know the more I focus on it, the more likely it is to come true!

So here it is...

I'm going to start a yoga/writing/art/meditation/nature retreat center. It's going to be in northern WI. I'm going to live there with whatever friends and family wish to join me. I'm going to try to benefit the community as well, with a focus on good health through nutrition and physical activity.

More to come...

A Song

I'm sorry if this makes no sense
I just got back in town
I went away to find myself
And got all turned around

I met a crow out on the road
Who pointed to the sky
He said your answer lies up there
And flapped his wings to fly

I wandered on and met a girl
With marbles white and gold
Who stretched her arms out wide and said
Continue on this road

I walked until I reached the sea
A turtle there turned 'round
And told me things get lost sometimes
That don't want to be found

So home I went to my front door
And fumbled for my key
I found myself just sitting there
And Humming patiently

Nightfall

Out the front door and the globe of sky
Hisses a warm pink and way orange
Like the wave pattern on sand.
Inhale the watery-smelling air
As a V of geese squawks by.
Sun hangs outside that globe
Slipping around to the other side
Leaving those watery rumbles to memory
And dragging behind a purple reminder
That drips to blue, to black, now night, now home.
A crisp moon crescent cuts the sky,
Its sharpened tip pointing at Venus
As if to say, look over there
That's where I'm going.
Breath of night air, smell of cold and green.
The star globe twinkles with satellites
Like lost fireflies, ever circling and searching.

My Author website is up!

My dear friend, Heather, whom I met at MCTC taking graphic design classes, has recently graduated, and is unleashing her creative genius upon the world. I asked her to create a website to promote my writing, and she came up with a gorgeous design that I think reflects my own love for ephemera as well as her unique collage style of design. Thank you Heather!

Here it is: www.kskarshna.com

Next up is the website for the book, coming soon!

Labor Day Weekend at the Christine Center

I had another mystical stay at the Christine Center over Labor Day weekend. The weather was gorgeous and the silence was penetrating. I watched grasshoppers get it on, saw a doe nurse her fawn right outside my cabin window, observed turtles eating algae in a pond, witnessed a daddy long legs wrestling match, and narrowly missed being hit by a tree spontaneously falling in the forest while I watched two pileated woodpeckers on adjacent trees. I also had plenty of time for yoga, meditation, reading, guitar-playing, painting, walks and photography. Man, do I love it there.

Twins Stadium

On my bike ride around the perimeter of downtown Mpls. I stopped to take some pictures of the progress on the new Twins stadium. Looks like it's coming along quite nicely, at least from the outside.

Duluth!

Spent the weekend in Duluth with Rebeca, who ran the Grandma's Half Marathon. It was a gorgeous weekend and we had a beautiful solstice! Spent part of Saturday doing one of my favorite things in the world-- beach combing on the shore of Lake Superior. We walked along the lake and saw these brave people swimming and jumping off this old part of a pier. It looked really fun, but the lake was very, very cold. We knew this from just having our feet in the water for awhile while we sat on the big granite rocks on the shore.

Bike Ride Cont. 2

Finally, coming off the bridge, the trail goes through a little wooded section before connecting up with West River Parkway. Today it looked especially magical, all dappled in sunlight and with the cottonwood seeds gathered on the sides of the path like little fairy feathers. Makes one wonder where this portal leads...

Bike Ride Cont.

One of my other favorite sites is the Mississippi River. I go over it every day, either in my car to and from work, or on my bike rides. It's hard to avoid it since it's about 2 blocks from my back door. This is one of the prettiest views of the river-- Coming over the Ford Bridge, looking upriver toward Minneapolis. If I had a 180 degree camera, you'd also be able to see the Ford dam, from the other side of the bridge. The river looks so nice and wide and calm right here. And you can't even tell it's right in the middle of two cities.

A Bike Ride Through Minneapolis and a Bit of St. Paul

Today I had a totally free day! So after morning meditation, breakfast, coffee and farmers' market, I took Little Blue out for a spin around the neighborhood. I headed south to Minnehaha Falls Park. There I saw the meager flow of the creek cascading over the limestone bluffs, and a special treat-- this guy was playing guitar and violin and singing and yodeling. You can't really tell from the picture, but he has an old bicycle leaning against the tree. I wanted to ask how he managed to balance all of his instruments on the bike. It was cool to experience some real live music while I was looking at one of my favorite natural wonders that happens to be just 3 miles from my house.

Back on the bike!

So far so good. I'm about 90% pain-free, so that's good enough for me to ride about 3x a week. Not sure what the racing outlook will be, but I have a contingency plan for my spare time if I can't ride as much this summer. I'm learning how to play guitar.

Here it is-- a Seagull Coastline Grand (parlor-sized)

A Shot in the A** or Too Much Information

I stopped riding my bike in August of last year after having intense pain in one of my sit bones :( This was not entirely a bad thing, because while I was looking for something to occupy my time and take my mind off the fact that I couldn't ride, I somehow discovered the Christine Center.

Being off the bike for 5 months should've healed whatever ailed me, right? Well, no. 45 min. on a spin bike and the pain was back and badder than ever last week. So I have made it my sole mission in life right now to get back on the bike pain-free.

I went to see a sports medicine doctor. He thinks it's ischial bursitis (a.k.a. a pain in the a**!) So the prescribed remedy was a shot of cortisone. I've never had one of those before, but I can tell you that I've had blood draws that hurt more. So now I wait a few days and see if it gets better. I can even go for a trainer ride in a couple days! I hope this helps. If it does, it was sooo worth getting a shot in the butt! If it doesn't, well, MRI here I come.

Can't wait to ride!

BIRKIE REPORT

Thanks to everyone who called, wrote or otherwise wished me a good race!

Team Sturdy Women (me, my mom, my sister Wendy and Niece Leah) all wore our team sweatshirts to Telemark the day before the Birkie to pick up our bibs and to see Bjorn Daehlie, who was singing autographs. We got in line early and got our team sweatshirts signed by the greatest skier of all time (Michael compared him to Eddie Merckx) and then picked up our bibs and timing chips. All the while we were there, people kept saying things to us like "there's Team Sturdy Women" and we thought it was just because we all had our matching sweatshirts. Finally one woman said "are you the family from that article in the paper?" and we asked her what she was talking about. Apparently the local paper (Sawyer County Record) had featured us on the front of a section of this week's paper.

Leah had written up a little article about us and sent it to the Birkie office, but we had no idea they gave it to the paper!

So we were minor celebrities this weekend. On the trail, many people commented on our Team Sturdy Women signs on the back of our bibs.

I was feeling pretty good for the first hour or so of the race. I did crash on "yard sale hill" but didn't hurt myself or anyone else. About a half hour later, I saw someone lying on the side of the trail, and it was my mom! I asked if she was okay and she said "no." She was lying very still and she said she was pretty sure she broke her arm!

A few people stopped to help, and we sent some to the next food station to get the ski patrol. One guy had some vicodin, which she gratefully took. And then we sat there for about a half hour until the ski patrol arrived.

Once she was safely in their hands, I took off again, and finished the race. I was a little preoccupied, to say the least! As usual, the last 15 km. was very hard and painful, but I pushed through. I didn't get the usual adrenaline rush at the end, so the 2 km. of skiing into a headwind on the lake was extra tough, and the mashed potato snow up to main street was hellish, but I finished and I got my mom's chip to the finishing line, too. They announced my name and her name at the end and it almost made me cry.

I found my dad and Leah and Wendy right away and we went to the hospital and picked up my mom. She is truly a sturdy woman!

Sent queries and first few pages to four more agents. I have no idea what I'm doing, but it feels good to be doing something.

The Agent Search Begins

Now that the book is written, I'm trying to find an agent. I've submitted the first chapter to an agency and will hear back by Feb. 1st whether they like it enough to want to read the rest.

I don't like this waiting part. I feel like I've spent so much time on the thing, that I just want it OUT THERE as soon as possible.

It's exciting being done with it, but weird to think I'll have to start something new to take its place.