Graciously

I have had a good weekend so far, but it has been pretty toxic – far too much drinking, just like last weekend… I shall try and have an alcohol free week. Once it stops raining I am going to go and buy some healthy food to sustain me through the week.

On Friday night I had a nice catch up evening with Susan and heard all about her trip to Canada. We enjoyed some fine vodka at the Polish vodka bar As I like to over-schedule I then went off to have a meal in Hammersmith as a mystery customer, where I had to have a few more drinks – yes, I had to, it was part of my assignment!!!

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day in London and I sat in the sunshine with an old friend who I have hardly seen this year. We drank lots of wine, putting the world to rights, then I did some drunk-texting… oops, fortunately the recipient was out of London for the weekend so any consequences were avoided! I went to bed at about 10 with the thought that I might go to practice this morning. I then woke at about 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep for ages, and when I finally woke up this morning it was 9am so too late for practice. I did have lots of strange yoga realted dreams though – that must count for something…

I haven’t done any yoga today and will go dancing later on. Susan managed to convince me that a Bikram class might be good for my backbends – there is bikram in Chiswick so I may try it out next weekend.

The weather in London today is gloomy and horrible and keeps bucketing down with rain. Roll on November when I go to Sri Lanka!

Well, I have tried to write this post twice already and it has either crashed or accidentally closed. Anyway, I try again.

It is distinctly autumnal in London today. Somehow things seemed to have changed since the long weekend, and both last night when I got home from work and this morning when I got up, it was dark. So depressing…. winter is coming!

Practice this morning was great. I am currently completely pain free. No sciatic pain whatsoever thanks to not doing BK and having had a long weekend without yoga. I just love this kind of practice, which I always have after a few days off. Tomorrow will be stiff though, which I am not looking forward to so much. There isn’t really much else to say about practice. My current thing is to keep my legs somewhat behind my head and my ankles crossed whilst coming out of Supta K. This morning H lifted my feet too soon before my hands were in the right place, resulting in total collapse – oops! Backbends are coming. The resting state of my spine is currently slightly tender but not painful.

The battle with IKEA about the cupboard doors is ongoing. They have now told me that it will be 4 more weeks until the matching doors arrive. I went ballistic and am waiting to speak to someone in store rather than in the call centre as they know nothing. I shall be crafting my complaints letter today.

I had such a fab weekend that I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, don’t want to have to go back to work tomorrow. With Karaoke Friday and singing more songs in one night than I ever have before in, then hanging out with A and her friends on Saturday night and Sunday, and spending this afternoon with my best school friend and her kids, it couldn’t have been much better.

I am trying to remember what I sang at Karaoke:
Cranberries – Zombie
Katrina and the Waves – Walking on Sunshine
Nelly Furtado – Powerless
Madonna – Like a Prayer
Whitney Houston – So Emotional
Irene Carr – What a Feeling (Flashdance)

There may have been more that I don’t remember! The footage ended up being pretty awful, you can hear all the drunken idiots in the background singing along too (not you CK)!!! But here is a picture….

On Saturday night we ate at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, the food was gorgeous, the staff were extremely attentive and the cocktails were very, very drinkable (perhaps too much so – hence hangover). I would definitely go back there; especially if I can get someone else to pay I don’t do enough eating of expensive meals, so if anyone out there fancies coming out for dinner and cocktails with me, please stand up!

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed to go to the Courtauld Gallery and see a small Exhibition of Cezanne paintings, this was followed by afternoon tea at Swiss Hotel. It was reasonable, but if you want a really good afternoon tea in London you have to have booked it weeks and weeks in advance. Claridges, for example, has an 8 week waiting list. A says the Lanesborough is the best… I’ll have to look into it!

Today I have basically just chilled out and spent time with C and her kids. It’s lots of fun playing for the afternoon, I don’t think I can do longer than that

Whilst hanging out at A’s friends place on Sunday I heard a track on MTV or something, by The Script. I have listened to their album all evening. It’s a bit like a cross between Maroon 5 and Sting!! The song I like the most hasn’t been released yet, so there is no official Video.

Afterthought – I haven’t done any yoga!

I have lots of nasty work to do, so I shall write on my blog instead!! Two horrible cases are looming and I am not sure I have the answers It has been a bit like that all week actually, doing the easy stuff to avoid the difficult.

Practice this morning was a fast and sweaty affair. It keeps raining in the morning so the humidity level in the shala seems to be even higher than usual. I looked like I had just done a Bikram class even after the sun sals! Speaking of Bikram, I got an email advertising a workshop with him at the Excel centre (pretty large venue). Tickets for the front section of the room are £125…. bloody expensive if you ask me! I didn’t really feel like practising this morning, or getting out of bed, but as it’s a holiday on Monday and the shala is closed, I won’t get back on the mat till Tuesday, I thought I ought to.

Other work avoidance tactics at the moment include looking for a new flat and planning holidays. I realised that if I get a ground floor flat (I have seen a two bed basement flat for sale) I could have a CAT!!!! [WITH THE FUR!!!!] Holidays are stressing me out as I want to go away at Christmas. My family is sufficiently dysfunctional that Christmas is usually spent trying to please too many different people, so being on holiday is the best option. I want to take three weeks off, in India. Ideally 20 Dec – 10 Jan. But, there is a choir tour to Luxembourg in January, which requires me to be at rehearsals the week of 5th Jan. Ok, so I could move the Christmas holiday forward a week… but I am going to a wedding in Sri Lanka on 29th November, so if I did that, then I would be in Sri Lanka for a week, then back in the office for a week, then fly out to India. Well, that isn’t going to work, not to mention the silliness of paying for the two flights so close to one another. Oh, what to do? The flights are much more expensive than last year, a flight to India has gone up from about £600 to about £1000 – ouch.

Right, I think work avoidance has probably gone on long enough, a colleague has just phoned me and asked me to do something which I can actually do without too much strenuous mental activity….. so I suppose I should do that and make some ££££.

(2 hours till Karaoke Friday officially begins )

I managed to set my alarm this morning, so made it to practice – hooray! This week it has been quiet in the shala again, so no queueing, which is nice. Practice was generally good today, enhanced by yesterdays morning off, I expect. Even the slight hangover didn’t bother me too much (the result of a nice meal and quite a bit of wine with my dad!). I still don’t feel like I am making progress with the backbending. At the moment, H doesn’t let me drop right into a backbend that I feel comfortable with, but this seems to make it easier to stand up from. I guess he doesn’t allow my hips to drop as much as they would when I backbend from the floor.

Piriformis isn’t too bad, although I still feel it when I go to sit into BK. Poor DZM got the full force of one of my piriformis rants this morning – sorry!! I don’t expect my story of pain and no real recovery was exactly what she wanted to hear.

I seem to have spent a huge amount of time doing personal admin today. Phoning Ikea again and again to try and get my doors sorted out – they say they are sending me some more, but I am not confident they will match…. anyway, I actually like the brighter white of the new doors, so I am rather hoping that they will have to replace the original ones… we’ll see.

At least tomorrow if Friday and it’s karaoke night too… I’m really, really, really looking forward to it. In fact the whole weekend should be lots of fun. I must just try to avoid hangovers…. oh, and Monday is a holiday too – super long weekend WITH THE FUR!!!!!

afterthought – I somehow managed to give myself a mini-black eye at yoga this morning… have no idea how, I’m sure it wasn’t there when I left home in the morning, but it was when I got to work. Perhpas it was the over vigorous mopping of sweat from my brow?!?!!

Well, Ignoring all of the other memes, I get these:

Clare needs to get in on the act – from the ‘Northern Argus’, the Clare Valley in Australia needs more art facilities

Clare needs more nous – from ‘This is Lancashire’ regarding the Labour Party’s Clare Short

Striker Clare needs ankle surgery – Burton Albion striker Daryl Clare needs ankle surgery

Clare needs help to bloom in 2003 – A new Clare in Bloom committee is being formed to take on the challenge of trying to win national recognition in the Britain in Bloom 2003 competition.

Gaylord handles Buck kickers; Clare needs two OTs to win – Following a 6-0 loss at Gaylord Monday, the Roscommon varsity soccer squad was downed by Clare Tuesday 1-0 in two overtimes.

In total the items Clare needs to buy for her daughters comes to £328 – School uniform Case study from the Citizens Advice Bureau.

I had a lie in this morning because I forgot to set my alarm clock – D’oh. I turned it off yesterday rather than re-set it to go off this morning, then totally forgot to turn it back on. I woke up with the gloomy feeling when you just know you have slept long past getting up time. I guess I needed the sleep?

After a 4 month wait for my remaining kitchen cupboard doors to arrive from IKEA, they appeared today. Unfortunately, they are a different shade of white to the rest of the kitchen. I am now trying to convince them to send me replacements for all the doors I already had. Angry does not even describe how I am feeling about this. The person on the phone obviously didn’t want to deal with me and told me that someone else would call me back.. GREAT.

Practice was good the benefits of a good nights sleep in my own bed were definitely felt. It was very serene at the shala, which is unusual on a Tuesday. I felt so relaxed after practice that I could have stayed in Savasana for a proper amount of time rather than rush off after about 2 minutes. I managed maybe 5 minutes!

Other than that I feel bloated and unhealthy, I need to do something active (other than yoga). I was going to go dancing but tonight was the second of a series of two classes, of which I missed last weeks class, so didn’t bother.

I have a reasonably quiet week this week, but as tonight is my second night in in a row, I am feeling a bit restless. The weekend with my mother was lovely, but didn’t fulfil my desire for ‘fun’, if that makes sense. I’m having dinner with my dad tomorrow, that may also not constitute ‘fun’ but at least I will be out of the house (in a nice way!). Friday night is Karaoke night – hooray. That will be ‘fun’!!!

….to whinge.

I had a rubbish practice today, body made of lead, arms made of rubber. Everything felt like a massive effort. Yesterday wasn’t much better, despite having turned up early to the shala which was nice and quiet, and taking my time. I shall blame my stiffness on sleeping on the sofa, because it is nice to take the blame away from oneself My mother has been staying with my since Friday so I have been sleeping on the sofa whilst she sleeps in my bed. I slept OK Friday and Saturday night, probably due to exhaustion, but last night I woke up a couple of times firstly with a totally dead leg, then with a dead arm. I will be pleased to sleep in my bed again tonight. Good yoga news is that having not done the forward bend in baddha konasana since Wednesday, the back/hip/sacrum pain has eased up a lot.

We had a lovely weekend though. On Friday I sang in a Prom, which went pretty well. My mum and cousin came to watch so we went out afterwards. On Saturday we went to the Tate and saw a couple of exhibitions there, then yesterday we went to the British Museum, then had a lovely Spanish lunch in Bloomsbury (plus a glass of Albarino for me – thanks V!) then we ambled around looking at properties in the streets in which I might like to live. I did eat and drink far too much, for which I shall blame my mother . She doesn’t think I eat enough, and the first thing she did when she saw me was try and decide if I had got any thinner. She just e mailed me now to tell me that she went to Tesco and did some shopping for me before she left this morning…. no idea what she has bought, or if I will actually eat it, but it was a nice thought!

I am feeling like the eternal singleton at work having received and e mail from our senior partner about a dinner in October for one of our members of staff. Guest list includes all the other partners and their spouses and “Clare + ?”. Great, even if I met somebody between now and October I doubt I would put them through the agony of a work dinner… this is almost worse than being a singleton at a wedding… at least weddings are fun. I shall be making polite excuses and not attending.

Right, back to work now!

… I suppose I ought to write something. I am so totally ready for my day in the office to be over, but don’t really need to leave here for another half hour – well unless I want to arrive in Watford half an hour early for rehearsal – which I don’t. I’m hungry too, but can manage for another half hour, can’t I?

Practice yesterday sucked, lots of physical pain from sacrum/piriformis/whatever it flipping well is…. this was accompanied by mental pain from thinking about why it has been hurting for so long. I managed to struggle up to a failed Supta K, then did finishing. H came to talk to me about it after practice, and we have decided that for now there will be no more forward bending in Baddha Konasana, this makes me very happy. That way I can hopefully relieve some of the pain without having my practice suffer.

Today I decided to go to the shala earlier, so arrived at 7 instead of 7.20…. then ended up waiting for half an hour, so ended up in a time deficit, despite getting up and arriving earlier. It was quite a fun wait though as a couple of friends were waiting with me. It was raining yesterday and was really quiet, so obviously all of the ‘lazy yogis’ (not my expression) came today, making it super full. I did do a super speedy practice and managed to get to the office by 9.30 ish. I don’t like practising that fast though; I subconsciously seem to just take really short breaths, when it would be much better to take fewer slow breaths…..

The new Baddha Konasana approach was reasonably successful, although it seems that my seated alignment in BK is just off. H manipulated my hips and lower back from what I felt was a neutral aligned position to what he said was visually aligned and I felt way off to the right. I didn’t feel uncomfortable in his alignment either, so maybe we have found the root of the problem. Next question – how to work with it?

I hope to get to the shala tomorrow, even though tonight will be a late night. Hopefully caffeine will get me through the day, plus the anticipation of taking Friday as a day off!! HOORRAAAAYYYYYY