Yesterday, on my way to Los Angeles, I watched a man try to clear security with a cat in a duffel bag.
The man was asked to remove the cat from the bag because:
1) you can’t send a cat through the belt screener
2) TSA needed to scan the bag the cat was in.
The man objected to his removal of the cat because he and the cat had not been formally introduced, and to him, taking the cat out of the duffel bag didn’t feel appropriate.
TSA promptly guided the man and the bagged cat to a private room for a formal introduction and security check.
After the private screening, the man and the cat boarded the flight without further incident.
There is so much talk these days about what is and isn’t appropriate behavior in the corporate world, in Hollywood, and at home. And while the conversation is around male entitlement and power, it should also be about self awareness and context for both sexes.
Like the man with the cat in the duffel bag, if we all just took a moment to consider our next step and how that would play out in the context of the moment with our current audience, so much of this wouldn’t even happen. Because in so many cases, the intent in these terrible moments isn’t actually sinister, it is just fucking cluelessness.
Last night, while schlepping my toddler from house to house in the dark , I heard a kid tell a group of trick or treaters about a friend who, upon returning to his burned out house during the Santa Rosa wildfire, found the family dog, burned but alive and waiting for him where their front porch used to be.
I don’t know how true this story is and I lack the journalistic integrity to do any sort of fact checking. But for once, this isn’t a story about truth. It’s a story about where we are right now.
Right now, we are going through the motions; doing what we are expected to do, doing what is normal. But our minds are on the fire. Our minds are on the future. No one is here right now. Not really.
We are a community in mourning. Telling and retelling our stories about the fire. Waiting for the time when we tell the story about the fire that was long ago, and how it changed us for the better.
You can count on me to completely lose my shit twice a year; once in September and once in January. I call it, taking a ride on the crazy train. I know I have arrived at Breakdown Station when every little thing starts to piss me off. When my perspective turns bitter because it seems there is always something more to do and it is all my responsibility. When my usually positive and sunny outlook goes dark.
I mention this now because it is nearly September and that means the Crazy Train is approaching the station.
The September freakout occurs when summer exhaustion meets a new school year and then combines with the fact that my company is about to enter the fourth quarter of our fiscal year and I’m not sure how I’ll accomplish all the goals I set for myself by 12/31/–. These three factors converge to create a complete derailment featuring anxiety induced frustration and rage.
The January derailment occurs when holiday exhaustion meets the second half of the school year and then combines with the fact that my company just entered the first quarter of our fiscal year and I only have 12 months to accomplish all the projects we scoped.
Looking at them now, September and January seem to be two very dangerous and obvious kinks in the the railroad track. However, for the first time since embarking on my career and becoming a parent, I see and understand this pattern. More and more, I see that keeping the trains running on time, for me, is about two things:
#1–Recognizing when I need to calm the fuck down
#2–Knowing what it takes to calm the fuck down
During practice this morning, my yoga teacher said
“Notice if every little thing is pissing you off; then get stronger.”–Anna McLawhorn, Three Dog Yoga
Granted, she said this within the context of Warrior 2 (Virabhadra) which we had been holding for what felt like 3 hours, and we were all a little pissed off. But I heard it within the context of my own life and my own mental state.
“Every little thing IS pissing me off and I DO need to get stronger.” I need to get my shit together and take back the things that make my life work, like yoga and writing and sleep. Those are always the first things to go when schedules fall apart and life gets hectic. I need to calm the fuck down. I need to get grounded. I need to stay on track.
Many years ago, I saw an interview with super model Gisele Bundchen. She was explaining to the interviewer that she ate mostly steak and french fries and did things like heli-skiing to stay fit for the Victoria’s Secret runway.
Okay, well now she is pushing 40 and has had two kids. And, according to her Instagram, instead of steak and fries on the regular, she and her super hero husband eat like this:
it helps to know that even super humans battle against the march of time and
after the Super Bowl, there was a lot of buzz about Tom Brady’s recipe for success AND his black bean brownie recipe. In actuality, the buzz was around Tom and Gisele’s personal chef’s black bean brownie recipe.
Obviously, I was going to have to try those brownies because if they are good enough for a super model or a super bowl champion, then they are certainly good enough for me.
Unfortunately, Chef Campbell doesn’t divulge his recipes, so I had to come up with what I think is a pretty close approximation, based on the ingredients he claims to use: black beans, flaxseed meal, coconut oil, cacao (NOT COCOA FOR GOD’S SAKE, CACAO!!!), and agave nectar.
The key takeaways:
If you are a regular person who can eat a regular brownie instead of something posing as a brownie, then you absolutely should do so.
If you have celiac disease,are a vegan, are trying to cut out refined sugars in your diet, or you are a killjoy, then these are the “brownies” for you.
And now, Tom Brady’s Vegan, Gluten-free Black Bean Brownies
Ingredients
• 1 15 oz. (425 g) can (~ 1 3/4 cups) black beans, well rinsed and drained
• 2 large flax eggs (2 heaping Tbsp (~16 g) flaxseed meal + 6 Tbsp (90 ml) water)
• 3 Tbsp (45 g) coconut oil, melted (or sub other oil of choice)
• 3/4 cup (72 g) cacao (if you don’t know, this is chocolate with NO sugar)
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/3-1/2 cup agave nectar (adjust to taste)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Optional toppings: crush walnuts or pecans (if you are splurging).
Oven temperature: 350°F
First, this is cacao. Chop 2.5-3 ounces into small pieces.Combine your coconut oil and the cacao in a microwave-safe vessel and nuke it until it is smooth and melty. Cacao, and cocoa for that matter, doesn’t melt well without a fat to help it out.Next, make your flaxseed “egg” (this must be a vegan thing). Combine your flaxseed meal and the water and let it rest until it gels.Okay, NOW, you can dump everything, except for the nuts, into the food processor. Process until it is well mixed and smooth.Evenly distribute the batter into 12 well greased muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with nuts if that is what you are in to. Then bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. FYI, mine took the full 25 minutes.When the edges are starting to pull away from the sides of the muffin tin and a toothpick inserted into the middle of a few brownies comes out clean, you’ll know they are ready. Pull them from the oven and let them cool in the pan for 25-30 minutes before you try to remove them. Even when cool, these seem to want to fall apart.
Obviously, yoga nerds are excited and the workshop is sold out. However, if you are like me and you have waited until the last minute to prepare for the workshop, a quick review of the resources below should be enough to get you in the door.
How to prepare for a Leslie Kaminoff Workshop
Read (or at least be familiar with) Chapters 1-5 in Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews. Those chapters break down the foundational theory and the remainder of the book gets into the specifics around the asanas
Growing up, I often heard the proverb, ” A leopard cannot change its spots,” a line always used to confirm the fact that, like a leopard’s spots, a person cannot become good if their nature is bad. This is from the old testament and goes like this:
Jeremiah 13:23
“Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.”
But, for decades, scientists have been looking for ways to prove or disprove Jeremiah’s theory about the spots and the people (because they are scientists and they had some left over grant money I guess).
And as it turns out, Jeremiah was probably incorrect. A recent study published in Psychology and Aging (2016 Vol. 31. No 8, 862-874) determined that your personality and the content of your character at age 77 bear no resemblance to that of your 14 year-old self.
“We hypothesized that we would find evidence of personality stability over an even longer period of 63 years, but our correlations did not support the hypothesis.” Harris, Brett, Johnson, and Deary, study authors.
This is all really great news because I was a self-absorbed a**hole at 14 and I like to believe that I won’t always be one. So what’s the catch?
THE CATCH:
You have to live long enough to experience a change in your personality. Their data indicates that as expected, our personalities change incrementally over time based on the life experiences we have and how we process them. This is the first time a study included anyone old enough to demonstrate a significant change in personality. So plan on living into your 80’s if you want to be fully self-actualized.
WHAT IS SCIENCE MISSING?
There are so many limitations to this study that I feel bad even pretending this data is legitimate.
There were only 171 of the original 1,208 study participants still alive at age 77 for the researchers to even talk to and collect data from. And, there is no mention of a personal motivation to change our spots over time, which arguably is the only way we can.
We must change our spots ourselves. We must want to go on a journey, we must recognize that journey for what it is, and we must be willing to be changed by it.
A more accurate title for this article would have been “The Filipino Ingredient Invading the White Dessert World,” because this beautiful potato has been a staple ingredient in asian cuisine and desserts forever. White people did not “discover this potato” into existence, that was America. Duh!
But anyway, as a white girl reading GQ Magazine, I decided I was going to mess around with this “new to me” ingredient in my test kitchen.
And like with all things foreign, I was going to work with only my feeble knowledge and broad assumptions–what could go wrong?
First, I had to find some purple yams. I grabbed a few at my local grocery store, but many of the recipes I found called for rehydrated ube, which required a visit to amazon.com for some powdered purple yam.
With my ingredients in hand, I settled on cupcakes and muffins, both of which I managed to screw up, but still produce edible final products.
For the cupcakes, I used fresh shredded ube and a recipe I grabbed from the blog of a woman in Australia. I failed to steam the ube before adding it to the cupcakes, which gave them a decidedly chewy texture.
Note to self: next time, cook the ube first.
it went like this
Next up were the ube muffins. Here is the recipe.
This recipe was kludged together from other recipes and what I know, generally, about making muffins.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cub rehydrated ube
3/4 cups sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup yogurt
1/2 tsp lavender food coloring
Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin trays with baking cups.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to combine. Set aside.
3. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together until very light in colour and fluffy.
4. Beat in egg, ube, and lavender food coloring.
5. Switch to a spoon to stir (these are muffins so don’t over mix) In three additions, alternately add in flour mixture and yogurt, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Scrape bowl as needed to ensure that everything is incorporated well.
6. Fill each baking cup with the cupcake batter about 3/4 full.
7. Bake for about 20-25 minutes. Transfer each cupcake immediately to a wire rack to cool completely.
Note: My Filipino friends were a bit surprised that my cupcakes didn’t involve coconut, so for authenticity, I gave the muffins a sprinkle of unsweetened coconut on the top before they went into the oven.
Another Note: For some reason, these muffins fell, which made them look sad, even though they were delicious and we’ll be making them again. And thanks to my Filipino friends for the coconut tip.
For more on ube, you can follow it on Instagram and Facebook.
We’ve had record rainfall this winter in Sonoma County, which is more than welcome after years of drought, but I can honestly say that we are all ready for a bit of a break from the wet weather. The sun was out for a bit today so we all ran outside to play (and catnap).
Wheel pose (Chakrasana or Urdva Dhanurasana) by Jes. Cat pose (not actually cat pose) by Doug The Cat.
My dad was a competitive swimmer and diver until the early 1970s when he became a coach. This is known. What is not known, not even to him, is that he is the most influential yogi in my life. Unintentionally, he gave me the gift of the mind body connection.
Power yoga, particularly Baptiste power yoga, is full of arm balances and inversions, none of which are possible without sufficient arm and core strength. Hence, the handstand prep, which is designed to build said arm and core strength. If you haven’t seen it (and there are several by the way), it looks like this:
It may not look like much is happening, but that is because you aren’t doing one right now.
In 2010, at my first power yoga class, I did an “official” handstand prep. I say official because I had been doing them my entire life, not because of yoga, but because my dad did them constantly throughout my childhood and I inherited his “quirk”.
His handstand preps showed up in seemingly odd places; conversations in the kitchen with my mom, at the office, out on his job sites (after he retired from coaching he started a construction company).
But years later, looking back at that strange behavior, I finally saw it for what it was; a holdover from the diving platform, a release of negative energy, a clearing out, a centering. Somewhere in his swimming days, he had made the mind body connection. And, I was completely blown away.
Now, as I exhale my hands to the floor and rock forward onto my toes with my weight in my hands, balancing with my fingertips, I see my dad’s hands, not mine. Tan, veiny, well used hands.
He is nearly 70 now and has a total spinal fusion, so handstand preps are a distant memory for him. I need to ask him if he misses them. He would likely be surprised to know that I consider them his trademark.
I think about this now, as I handstand prep my way through my day. I worry less about the frequent impulse I have always had to put my hands on the ground and get upside down. I understand it now as a completely acceptable need to get grounded and release excess energy rather than some weird compulsive behavior I shouldn’t tell people about.
And I see it in my daughter. She clearly feels better when she is moving and it is my job to make her feel okay with that need rather than bad about her lack of self control. I will not tell her to hold still. I will teach her to use her energy for good instead of evil–to channel it.
As I sit here, procrastinating the preparations required for the coming week, I think about a story I recently heard. It goes like this:
An old Hindu master had become tired of his apprentice complaining. So one day, he had the apprentice bring him some salt. The master instructed the apprentice to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
“How does it taste?” the master asked.
“Bitter,” said the apprentice.
Satisfied, the master asked the young man to take a handful of salt and and stir it into the lake. As they strolled in silence near the lake, the apprentice did as instructed.
“Now drink from the lake,” the master said.
After the apprentice had taken a drink from the lake, the master asked, “How does it taste?”.
“Fresh,” stated the apprentice.
“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
“No,” said the young man.
With this reply, the master sat beside his young apprentice and offered the following insight, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things . . .Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”
I think about this now as I gear up for another week of the trials and tribulations of a working parent, pondering the state of our divided country, and trying to be something other than burned out and disgusted.
Tomorrow, I’ll get mystical and consider our collective situations in the context of infinite time and space rather than another week of school pick up and drop off and office and government politics.
Right now, things are very salty. But in the grand scheme of things, what does “right now” even account for in the continuum? It is merely a blip. In time, the kids will become more independent, things will level out at work, and our country will preserver.
