Day 43 - Day of the Dead & CSA Part deux

Really, I have a lot I want to share tonight, so maybe I'll blog it all out and then take a couple days off from the blogging. Let's start with Day of the Dead party and the aftereffects of my over-the-top consumption extravaganza. Let's just count the entire party as my mindful consumption, and I was extraordinarily mindful of this particular party. In a way, it's like the end of an era. I'm 95% sure that this is the last big party that I'll have out here, and with that in mind, I wanted to be there for as much of it as possible. Being sober -- Ok, fine, I ate some special brownies! I confess, you twisted it out of me! No alcohol, though, so I was pretty sober. Special brownies don't wipe out my memory in quite the same way as too many jello shots -- ANYWAY, being mostly sober, it was easy to be present and awake for my last party. It flew by in a haze of cleaning, decorating, face painting, baking, eating, dancing, dancing, dancing, talking, talking, talking, reminiscing, hugging, sleeping, breakfasting, cleaning. Now, without further ado, I present you with a few pictures.

The altar.

Altar sans flash.

One of the graves from the spooky hookah area. A 15 x 20 foot space surrounded by chain link fence with a little corner overhang where we put chairs and the hookah.

One of my bestest lady friends, Miss Mac, and me lookin' beautiful together.

I threw this one in because I think it's a good picture of me. Probably because the dude next to me looks like such a retard, albeit one of my most favorite retards in the world.

Aw man, it was a really good party y'all. One of those parties where you think it's only 2, but then you look at the clock and realize that its 6AM and the sun's about to rise. I went to bed around 6:30 and got up at 9:30 to start cleaning the kitchen and fixin' breakfast for my crew that crashed/camped at my house. It's a party tradition. I get up, tidy the kitchen and cook home-made sausage gravy and biscuits (the Pillsbury kind) (but the sausage gravy is completely from scratch and A-MA-ZING). I even had fresh sage on hand to add to this batch. OMG, it was so fucking good. So, you can add that to my list of off-diet crap I shoved in my mouth for the party.

So, let's talk about the effects of my sweets binge. It started with brownie baking and licking the brownie off the spoons and out of the bowl and spiraled from there. At one point, I was pushing, shoving and scrambling around on the ground trying to get at all the good candy and flavored lube that dropped from the pinata. My elbow strike practice really came in handy at this point. Hmmm...not sure what happened to my pina colada flavored lube. Damnit! Everytime I went into the kitchen, I grabbed a nibble of the sugar skull cake (lemon/red velvet) and shoved it into my mouth. The skull's flaming, flickering eyes just pulled me in....really, all told, I probably nibbled my way through a normal American sized piece of cake. At one point in the evening, my tummy started to get a little upset, but I just ignored it and kept snacking intermittently on candy. The next day I was a bit headachy, tired, but overall not too bad. I'm sure the lack of sleep has a lot to do with my party hangover, too. I got my fill of candy and cake for quite some time. I've been craving vegetables and lots of them the past couple of days. I've laid off the evening carbs a bit and added extra veggies. At this point, I'm just listening to my body. Ok, so, that's the party.

On to the CSA update. Ok, so, I kind of think I'm in love with my CSA. Not sure how I knew, but I picked exactly the right CSA for me. There are 5 others participating in this UF CSA program, but the guy running this one just fits my personality. I barely know him, but I loved his demeanor and his newsletter. He's a good writer and used this opening opportunity to talk about the importance and necessity of getting back to whole foods, for our health and the health of our world. Good stuff, man, good stuff. I'm going to get in touch with him and set up a visit to the farm. It'll be fun and a good future blog post topic. So, in this week's share, japanese eggplant, zucchini, sweet potato, cute little radishes, green beans, arugula, turnips, sweet peppers, corn. It's a good share of food. I'll plow through it though, esp. since I'm splitting my share. Oh, and sunflowers. Here's the arrangement I put together from my sunflowers.

You know, flower arranging is meditation, too. Perhaps you should start requiring a flower arranging meditation for KFB, Patrick.

Alright, last thing I want to throw at you tonight. Today, I'm feeling stronger and more balanced. Last week, my body felt weak. It was in constant pain, all the exercises felt harder than they had felt the week before. But, today was different. My balance was right on in ballet. AND, my flexibility is markedly improved. In the picture below, look at the pose in the bottom left. I was able to balance on both sides in this pose. My hips weren't open as much as they're supposed to be for it, but they were open more than they've ever been in the past.

I feel like there was a lot of muscle building happening last week. I'm not sure how the body builds flexibility, but however it does it, it was doing it last week. Either that, or I'm relaxing more. Maybe it's a bit of both...at any rate, my stretches were deeper and more satisfying yesterday and today.

Well, I guess I've thrown a lot out there this evening. No blogging until later in the week, for me and for you. I'll leave you with this awesome quote Noah, our CSA farmer, dropped into our newsletter.

Whatever you can do or

dream you can do -

begin it.

Boldness has genius,

power, and magic in it.

Begin it now.

-Goethe