This Bitch got Hitched!

Yep, it happened. Yesterday, Matt and I went down to the courthouse and got married. We were officially engaged for a few hours short of one week, as he proposed after my Tuesday yoga class around 8 p.m. and we were married around 5:30. We decided not to post the engagement on Facebook, and I  only told my immediate family. I generally don't like to have a fuss made over me, actually I get really uncomfortable when too much any attention is placed on me. I would have happily gone through this entire experience not telling anyone, quietly slipping the ring on my finger and happily knitting my way to domestic bliss. Part of me also wanted to avoid the sideways glances, the impending questioning, and the assumption I was pregnant considering the short span of our relationship and engagement. Although I knew Matt was the one for me on day 2 that feeling is hard to portray to those who haven't felt it. Then I thought about the conversation we had early in our relationship about being "all in", and I knew this marriage had been in the making months before the engagement. Then I thought to all the lessons I'd learned in the years leading up to meeting Matt and how much I'd grown, and then realized this experience was a lifetime in the making. God had been preparing me for Matt and Matt for me, and placed us in the right place at just the right time.

It wasn't until spilling some of the information at my Yoga Teacher Training that I realized how selfish I was being by not telling anyone, and how ridiculous protecting this happy information was. I got to see how other people could share in the excitement of an engagement, and it was contagious! Although I'm more of the quiet contemplative celebrator I got to see how other people get excited. Friends reached out in very touching ways. There was an out pour of emotion, love, well wishes, and genuine excitement! I got to see the light turn on in others and was feeding off of that excitement.  It brought me back to hearing my sister was engaged to the love of her life,  and when a dear friend had only one ovary and very little chance of having children had conceived twins,  and hearing all of the little stories and moments that happen that allow us the opportunity to pause, and possibly sigh, or scream, or smile ear to ear and share in life's smile miracles.

While all of the details of yesterday will not be shared (yup, I'll be selfish about that) I will share some of the amazing moments I won't forget. Like that the judge's name was Paul Simon, the wedding certificate guy pounding my new husband and saying "look what you got", and the look... the look my husband gave me after saying our vows, and the expansion of love in his eyes that sunk down into the depths of my icy cold heart and allowed me to be myself, completely and unabashedly in the forever of every moment.

So, thank you for sharing, and thank you for everyone who has ever been on this path with me, for making me the woman I am today, thank you to God for giving me Matt, and thank you to Matt for loving me for everything I am, I am so blessed.

Word of the day : Terror

 

ter·ror

[ter-er]

noun

1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear: to be frantic with terror.

2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror: to be a terror to evildoers.

 I started this journey officially in August 2013, although in hindsight it may have started much earlier than that. It may have been that one moment in D's class(circa 2010) when he said my extended side angle pose looked "good" (still to this day one of my favorite poses). It may have been the couple months I was trying to get sober and would weep silently in savasana. It might have been the moment I found out about the teacher training at an impromptu breakfast with two dear friends and the feeling I had in my heart that God wanted me there in August. Or it may have been the first workshop I took with Darren and Christina in January of 2013 when, after an intense morning of back bends on the second day, I sat in my car and cried my heart open during the lunch break. I was unsure of where it would lead, but knew that it would change me. It started with a love of practice, and an untapped desire to be helpful to other people, to possibly allow them the space to find the things they wanted in life as it has for me, and it has become so much more. 

Our YogaHour 200hr Teacher Training is coming to an end this weekend, and although others are excited, nervous or possibly even sad for it's culmination, I, am terrified, and add to that the fact that I am scared to admit I'm terrified.  A lifetime of insecurities are flooding the space between my ears. "What if I fail the test?", "I was never good at memorizing", "I probably did too many drugs and now my brain is fried", "I will be the only one to choke, they will all laugh at me and drum me out of the studio". Even in the time I've found to study the sequences and script I find myself drifting into these places of doubt, self-pity, and terror. It feels like now I am not only fighting the battle to study well, but first to fight off the dragons that keep me from learning, growing realizing my true potential, and it is exhausting. 

When this is all over this weekend, I will have already taught 41 hours of yoga, and my heart is so full because of this. Already so many amazing memories have happened in the big studio at YogaOasis and Yo Downtown, that I feel blessed to call them home. I think the reason why the test terrifies me more than anything is because it is not a true reflection of the woman I have become over the last 6 months, 1 year, 5 years. This introverted, anti-social, awkward human being can now stand confidently in front of a classroom and teach fairly well. And although as soon as the class is over I fold back comfortably into my previous self and reflect, I am happy. I have a hard enough time articulating what that means to me let alone putting it down on paper. And although I'm absolutely terrified that any of the aforementioned "failures" may happen I know in my heart of hearts that even if I sat down in front of my instructor tomorrow and cried the entire test period I would be okay, because I've already received so much more than I bargained for. 

So . Many . CARROTS

So, in true American style, my sweet sweet man and I signed our lives away to Costco. The wonderful fluorescent world of mass production and over consumption so neatly packaged in the well oiled machine that is the Costco warehouse. Although we don't even venture down the bread and chip aisles, and I have to yell loudly to divert his attention from the tool aisle (as he diverts mine from the ice cream, fresh flowers, coffee, candy, clothes and free samples) we generally go for the produce, bulk meats, and paper products and the like. Anyway, on our last trip we bought the necessaries; toilet paper, ground beef, perrier, and yes... a 25lb bag of carrots. What, you ask, was I going to do with 25 pounds of carrots? No idea. But the American in me totally justified spending $15 on 25 POUNDS of carrots without a plan for the aforementioned carrots. Although my honey and I go through a lot of food, we can't seem to go through the produce fast enough. We buy in bulk and try to eat the perishables as quickly as possible, but sometimes they just go bad. I was determined to not let this happen. We had just finished eating all of the leftover carrot soup we had conjured up after the last 5 pound bag of carrots we were trying to salvage, so that was out of the question, so what was I to do?
We found a couple of recipes for carrot chips, Matt making long strips of carrots and baking them, while I shredded them and put them into any kind of slaw and cold salad I could think of. I also tried to use our mandolin to cut thin chips and bake them. This experiment did not go well as I lost more finger skin than I care to admit while slicing those orange sticks of doom.

And then I remembered... the juicer! TADA!!!! Then a flood of projects washed over this discovery that I had been meaning to try! I had been wanting to incorporate carrot juice in my soap making (the beta carotene is amazing for your skin, and the orange color would be amazing to try!) and had also been craving a cracker (sigh, I miss crackers... since embracing the paleo lifestyle I hadn't realized how much I miss having cheese and crackers as an afternoon snack). I wanted something fucking crunchy dammit. So here was my problem solved on 3 levels; 1) I would be able to put to good use the remainder of the Mt Everest pile of carrots in my fridge 2) I would be able to use the carrot juice to enhance my soaps 3) I would be able (theoretically) to use the carrot pulp to make a crunchy cracker alternative. YES! Success!

20 carrots made about 32 oz of juice! The pulp was enough to make two cookie sheet size batches of carrot crackers (I halved the batch, added; sage, thyme, basil, salt pepper, a little almond flour and coconut milk, rolled between parchment paper and baked for a million hours on low heat in the oven - it's still a work on progress, good thing i have another half batch!) AND being the lover of efficiency that I am, I even froze the carrot tops to put in our chicken stock, the next time we get a full chicken. Dang I'm good! These are the moments of domestic introverted bliss where I raise my fist in the air 'Breakfast Club' style and wait for the affirmation from the dog and two cats about how amazing I am, they usually agree.