Me, emerging

Tonight I was drying off after a shower and I saw something that gave me a bit of a shock – right there on the underside of my upper arm was the distinct outline of an actual muscle. I jumped on the scale and found out I'm finally back on track in the weight loss department, down about five pounds since the last time I weighed myself around Thanksgiving. I had decided not to put undue pressure on myself by obsessing about my weight over the holidays, so it's kind of a relief to know that I'm still doing okay.

After that I decided to try on the final remaining item of clothing I've been dragging around with me for more than 20 years now – specifically, a pair of army cargo cutoffs I wore to the park with a friend on my 20th birthday – and voila, I was actually able to squeeze into them. They were uncomfortably tight, and I still wouldn't be seen dead or alive in them in public, but the point here is, I was WEARING them. All the way zipped up, and all the way buttoned, and I could sit and stand and walk around and everything. Maybe by summer they'll be as loose and baggy and comfortable as they were way back then, and I'll wear them on a celebratory lap around the plaza for my 43rd birthday.

I've had a nice solstice weekend overall. On Thursday I went to a solstice party and soup exchange. I brought my famous Spicy Mushroomy Chickeny Magical Healing Soup of Luv (Now with More Seaweed!)® to trade, and came home with a quart of tomato lentil. I also took note that homemade soups with strangely evokative, esoteric names are somehow much more popular as an item of white-elephant style exchange than those that arrive lukewarm and halfhearted in flabby cardboard containers from the soup bar at Whole Foods, even when the latter includes a small brown paper bag full of oyster crackers in cellllophane. (One "l" or two? When in doubt, add more!)

Friday after work I went to yoga and experienced a couple of firsts – first class taught by a man, and my first time being the only woman in class. Almost all the teachers around here are women, and most of the students too. At first I was a little discombobulated, thinking I had somehow stumbled into a guys-only class, but that was not the case. It just happened to be a very small class (five students), and none of the women who usually show up, showed up. It was different from other classes I've been going to in other ways, too – less "pretty" and new-agey (no chanting, for example), more basic and athletic. The teacher was easy-going and approachable, with a bit of a paunch, and seemed not at all embarrassed about not being able to do some of the poses as well as a couple of the students. Instead of the air of "sacred silence" that seems to permeate my usual classes, this class had laughter and questions and checking in with each other about "now WHAT was that last thing again?" I kind of liked it.

Yesterday, to celebrate the sun, we laid out a 30-foot circle of stones in the back of the property, which will eventually become a labyrinth for walking meditation. The land is so rocky we didn't even have to search for the rocks – just measured out the circle with a long tape measure and a can of street-marking paint, and then pulled the stones out of the ground and lined them up around the circle. Our hope is that next summer, when the Google satellite takes new pictures of the world from space, we will be able to see the labyrinth on the google maps photo. It could happen – in the current photo you can see our canvas patio umbrella, which is only about 8 feet across!

I spent some more time out there today digging up more rocks and making sure all the paint is covered (it will wash off by the end of winter anyway) and finger-pruning a nice little coyote bush that we left inside the circle. Tater stayed with me the whole time, stretched out on the ground next to me like a little black sphinx. At one point I took a break to sit on the ground and watch two ladybugs walking on some grass – studying the way their legs move, and did you know they can fold their legs flush into their bellies, so they are completely flat on the bottom? – and watching the sunlight fade out of the sky, and Tater got up from where he was sitting about a foot away and scootched over to reposition himself right flat up against the side of my leg, and sat there watching those bugs with me for upwards of 35 minutes. Completely content just to sit with me in the stillness, for as long as I wanted to sit there.

God, I love that dog.

Also today, I took Tater for a long walk in town, did a little last-minute Christmas shopping, started pruning the dead wood out of some of the bigger oak trees back in the field, and rode my bike down the mountain behind our house (after being dropped off not too near the top by Mr. A – since I was too scared to ride all the way down the steepest parts).

And finally, it occurred to me to Google that Cynthia I was writing about before – and there isn't much to be found about her online, except her dad's obituary which seems to indicate I mis-remembered some important things about her family life, and a mention of her in the "thank yous" of a ten-year-old newsletter from a Tibetan buddhist meditation center in my home town. So, um ... wow! I guess you just never know who's going to turn out to be a dharma sister. Somehow it makes me happy, beyond all reason, to know that about her.

As for Christmas, I'm about 99.9% ready. All I have left to do is wrap Mr. A's presents, which I will do while he's at work tomorrow, drop off presents for a couple of friends' kids, and make another persimmon pudding to take to his sister's house for the family thing on Tuesday. Other than that my only plans are to take every moment as slowly as I can, enjoy the silence, do at least two or three more good long walks through the beautiful gold-blue-and-green winter landscape, and possibly take a lovely hot bath in the moonlight on Christmas Eve. Because have you seen the moon lately? Christmas moon, solstice moon, beautiful yellow winter moon – it's been amazing.