The Persian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_%28pastry%29




I have a new quest. I made cupcakes last week. In trying to decide what kind of icing to use, I landed on raspberry. It made me think of the pink icing on Persians. For those of you who don't know, a persian is a doughnut that is unique to ontario - a specific bakery in Thunder Bay (Bennett's) gets the credit for creating them sometime in the first half of the 20th century.

So, since I was making raspberry icing, I remembered that my mom had once tried an experiment with using raspberry jello icing that apparently turned out pretty close (there is some debate as to whether the persian icing is strawberry or raspberry flavoured, and the recipe has been a secret for a long time)

I looked online to see if anyone has ever come up with a recipe that's close, and I discovered that it's still a secret. However, I did learn that it's based on another doughnut recipe called a 'pershing' which is a yeast doughnut that's cinnamon swirled and usually glazed. And I did find a recipe for those. I'm going to try it, hopefully with raspberry icing instead - and then maybe i won't have to go to Thunder Bay to eat one of these delicious things.

Wedding Wednesday

I borrowed/stole the idea to do 'wedding wednesday' from a fellow blogger and pole dancer who's getting married this june.

Wow, looking at the time left (168 days), there is way too much still to do. I have a list that I've compiled from several wedding websites, and it's helped quite a bit to put it all into perspective. Let's just say it's a long list.

So here's what's been accomplished so far:

- we've tentatively decided a date - Sept. 14th, 2011.
- we've made a basic guest list
- our colour/theme is navy and white, with ivy greens as an accent. Kind of an outdoors-y theme, with a casual reception in some kind of community hall
- we've decided to hold an outdoor ceremony in fish creek park nearby (with the reception hall being used as an emergency backup if it ends up pouring rain)
- we've decided to let the bridesmaids/groomsmen pick their own clothes, as long as they're within our colours (shades of medium to dark blue. white, and black is ok for pants or skirts) and semi-formal
- instead of having a DJ or a band, we're going to use iPod playlists hooked up to some kind of stereo equipment
- I've tentatively gotten a photographer - one of my pole instructors does photography part time. I like what I've seen of her stuff so far, so I haven't officially booked her, but I've asked her if she's available and if she'd be willing (she is)
- my mom's offered to make the wedding cake (she's made the cake for the last few family weddings)
- I have a friend who scrapbooks who offered to help me make the invitations. We got together over the weekend and pretty much hashed out what the invitations will look like. Now we just have to figure out how many to make (probly approx. 30 or 40) and finalize the details that will be on the back. I was going to post a picture, but I think I want them to be a surprise.


Things to do this week:
- call the friend I have in mind to be our officiant (we were talking about it a while ago, and she said she could probably do it)
- call my other friend who offered to help me make a wedding dress. See if she'd be willing to come with me to try things on and figure out exactly what style I'd like
- decide whether we're officially going to announce our engagement or not and how we'll do it if we are
- look into reception sites, and decide where we want to have it
- figure out # invitations needed and order the supplies needed to make
- start looking into catering stuff and prices

Book Review: Dream Called Time by S.L. Viehl

Dream Called Time by S.L. Viehl

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book pretty much gave me exactly what I was expecting - easy to read, a storyline interesting enough to distract me from my life, and not to the point where I couldn't put it down if I had to. These kind of books are similar to watching TV for me. Not necessarily a book I'd want to own and read again and again, but definitely worth reading once. Exactly what the library is for.



View all my reviews

Mastermind Monday

Also a bit late, but I've been toying with the idea for a while and wanted to post while it was still in my mind.

A while back, right before I moved to calgary, I took part in some self-improvement seminars and became part of this thing called the mastermind - a group of people who talked to each other once a week at a set time to support each other in reaching their goals.

After a little bit of time we kind of lost our commitment to the group and we decided to go our separate ways, but I kind of miss having the structure of the mastermind to help me in increasing my commitment to certain goals. So I've decided to create my own version on the blog. Mondays are now mastermind mondays, and I will post three goals a week, and the following week, I will do an update on how they went and my new goals. I'm going to try not to get into my own 'stuff' with it, and I'm also going to try to be honest. and to try to work it all out, I'm going to start by listing all the things I've been thinking about wanting to do - I created a page for them, since they're likely to change over time.

With my three goals a week, I wanted to kind of go over the mastermind components again, even though I'm doing this by myself, I thought it might be useful.

So, starting next week, that's what I'll be doing.

Use Your Senses Sunday

I know. My fitness post is a little bit late. But, sunday rolled around and once again I hadn't really followed my plan. I poled a bit, and I walked a bit, and I got a bunch of research done for my Maca thesis, and i felt good about it all. I was enjoying my senses, instead of working on my fitness levels. So I've renamed my sunday fitness update to what you see above.

I also made cupcakes on sunday night, so I haven't really been doing anything this week either (although I did practise pole last night - they've finally set up a student performance night, so I HAD to start working out a choreography right away, lol).

I'm missing my motivation. So I'm making some changes - I think I was trying to do too much. So I'm cutting out my 'conditioning/pilates'. I'm bored doing pilates, and trying to add in some stretching on top of it all proved to be too much. So, my new plan is this.

- 2 pole practises a week (one is class, the other could be assisting, or my own practise at home)

- 3 cardio a week (these are turning out to be a walk on my lunch at work - once the snow melts and I buy myself a bike, it'll probably be a bike ride in fish creek)

- 4 pole strengthening exercises a week (I'm aiming for these to be a 15 minute routine I can do in the morning before work - I may break it up into 2 different sets of moves)

- 3 stretching sessions a week (following the 45 minute routine on my DVD)

put together, I have at least 5 days of exercise a week, plus my stretching and strengthening for pole, which I consider separate anyway.

As for eating healthy, I've decided tonight that I'm done with alcoholic beverages for a while. I'm also done with eating things that make me feel sluggish and tired. It's probably the beginning of spring warm weather affecting me, but I want fresh, whole fruits and veggies. I want food that makes me feel healthy and energetic.

And I want more time. I've been feeling short on time with all the things I think like I need to do. I remember way back when I felt like I had all the free time in the world. Where did it all go? Before I was working part time and going to school and hanging out with friends. Now all I do is work full time, and have dance class, and I feel like I have less time than when I was doing all that. I'm going to have to look into that one, lol.

Why I Want to Teach Pole Dancing

"The Dancer beleives that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... There are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has the power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art."

-- Doris Humphrey, 1937

I've been thinking lately about teaching pole, and why I want to. Here is what I have come up with.

I LOVE dancing. And I've been doing it since I can remember - from my early childhood (before I started dance classes at age 5 or 6) dancing around to christmas music and my dad's Tom Petty in the basement, to today with pole dancing, I've pretty much been a dancer my whole life - it was the first thing i can remember loving. I take joy in the movement, and that makes me want to share it - if I can show just one person how to take joy in the movement of their body, I have made a positive impact on the world, because joy taken in movement through dance can translate into joy taken in every day life, which then ripples through everything. I love how dance puts me fully in my body, makes me conscious of my movement and how graceful that, in turn, makes me feel.

I love pole dance specifically for a couple different reasons. First is that there is no age restriction. Most forms of dance are catered towards young kids - in some cases, even starting as late as 12 or 13 carries the risk of ending up in a class with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds. There are not very many classes for adults out there - especially beginners. I think it's especially hard for those with absolutely no previous dance training at all - they have the added challenge of trying to learn how to move their body to mimic another person, often in ways they've never tried to move before.

Second is that there is nno style restriction with pole. We teach the movements, but everyone brings their own style to it. You can pole with just tricks, you can pole with just dance transitions, you can do spins, or any combination of the three. You can make your dance athletic, funky, sexy, graceful, flirty, sensual, angry, dramatic - really, you can bring almost any feel you want to the range of movements that pole dance encompasses. I personally find myself leaning more to the graceful and flowing, although I like to play with fun and flirty, and I've been trying to build my comfortability and confidence up enough that I can try dancing in a way that is blatantly sexy and sensual - I feel it would be a very empowering thing to explore - I'm planning on posting on that sometime soon.

The other thing I'd like to bring up in regards to why I want to teach is a reconnection to your physical, sensual self. I think that a disconnection with our bodies is one of the biggest reasons why so many people struggle with low self esteem. To find joy in the movement of your body, and fall in love with the world through sight, smell, sound, and most especially touch is a beautiful and amazing thing - and how can you feel that you are not good enough, or your body isn't good enough when you're experiencing joy through it? I speak from experience when I say it's pretty hard to feel bad about yourself when you feel so good about what you're experiencing. The tricky part is remembering to include those experiences in your life - and I find that dance brings me naturally to that place, and makes it easy to connect.

There is one more point of teaching that I'd like to mention - it's going to need a post of it's own for me to put everything in detail, but here's a brief overview. I want to teach choreography, finding/creating your dance style, adding more presence and emotion to your dancing, and how to polish tricks you already know to make them look better. But mostly I want to teach how to really feel the dance deep into the body, and take joy in the feelings it evokes there.

Fitness Update

So, here I am in the middle of the night, and I can't sleep. My brain is going over and over all the things that I need to do but haven't done. I'm really not feeling on top of things in my life right now. It's like I'm lost, and drifting. I have the strongest feeling that if I can just get clear on what I really want, it will come to me. I'm just not sure what I really want. Or I don't want to be sure because what if I get it and it turns out to be not really what I wanted (like my current job), and I won't be able to trade it in. I hate being in this frame of mind. I'm going to try not to post too much about this stuff - but I want to be honest, it is a little therapeutic to share it, even if I'm not sure exactly who or when anyone will see it. However, I know it's a little repetitive and not exactly cheery - just something I'm struggling with lately. I'm working through it though - it mostly only gets to me late at night, when my mind won't turn off, and I have to go back to my job after my days off. I really should just quit. (but how will I pay for things! my mind tells me. Is that why I feel stuck?)

Sorry. It's late and I'm rambling. Back to what I usually post about on Sundays.

This week was not too bad for fitness. I started out good. I took it easy on myself to let my wrist heal up a bit since I had a pole photo shoot today and I wanted to be able to do all my moves. I did, and it was awesome and fun, and I will post more on it when I get the pictures back in a couple weeks.

March 20th 2011
Waist - 39.5 (just a smidgen over)
Exercise - Pole 2/3, Conditioning 0/2, cardio 3/3, Pole Exercises 3/5
Food - did pretty good during the week, up until saturday when I fed us scones for breakfast, chips, and bagel sandwiches for lunch. And today I had a couple millet-crispy-squares (like rice crispy, but with puffed millet instead). All in all, not too bad. Looking forward to another week filled with yummy, low glycemic foods.



Hmmm. still wakeful and thinky. Maybe I'll write a little about my exercise stuff.

Pole is either pole class, practise dancing and moves at home, or today, a pole photoshoot.

Conditioning is a 30 minute pilates routine that I have on DVD

Cardio right now consists of going for a 25 minute walk on my lunch break at work. Hopefully this summer it will also be bike riding

My pole exercises will likely not make sense (unless you also pole, but even then maybe not) It's essentially a 20-30 minute routine of strengthening exercises using the pole and pole moves, and I'm using it to try to strengthen muscles specific to pole dance - bb grip tucks, shoulder mount practise, obliques, step ups, etc. I seem to be especially weak in my upper abdominals (there are a couple of moves that I can't do where these are the main muscles used) so I'll be adding in some moves for those.


Well, here's hoping I've distracted myself enough to be able to fall asleep now. Or at least long enough for my flower essence to start working. G'night!

Living Earth

Have you ever noticed that there is a strange satisfaction in doing a mundane job, and doing it well? For example, I cleaned the living room and my altar/sitting area yesterday, and today I am taking immense pleasure just sitting and enjoying the peacefulness I feel here now. In this space, there is no cleaning or rearranging that still needs to be done. It's clean and arranged in a way that pleases me. And somehow that translates into being able to connect to my divine self. To take a moment and turn it into ritual – to take a break from life and spend some time reconnecting to myself as sacred and not just the busy everyday person that I also am.

Other things help me reconnect too. When I go to a Spira ritual I find that part of myself ready and waiting to connect. Other times, it seems more difficult here in the city. Put me on the side of a mountain, or deep in the trees, or out on the ocean and I connect easily. Put me in the middle of a city, concrete beneath my shoes, and the wind through the trees seems much less magical to me. The energy of the natural world feels muted somehow when I am here – although I wonder if it's my own reaction to the city and so many other people that does that. Maybe it's not that the land feels muted here, maybe it's that I cover my ears to block out the city sounds, and as a result can no longer hear the land as well.

I've begun to think lately that it's not that I can't connect to nature here. It's that I'm scared to. Spring still pulls at my soul, and the full moon rising large on the horizon fills me with mystery. It's not that I can't connect, but that I'm afraid that if I start connecting here then my spirit will become muted and chained the way the land feels muted and chained by concrete and car exhaust. I've always envisioned what is in my soul as wilder and more free than what nature exists in the city.

It's not that I never have moments at all. There are some places where I feel the wind in my hair, and the moon (or sun) in the sky and my heart sings with the joy of the moment. And there are moments watching the snow in the trees, or feeling the rain pour down so hard I feel the urge to run through it as I am soaked - just for fun, or standing on the edge of a ravine by a friend's house, walking a circle on the gravel by the edge of fish creek, where I feel it still. Where the feel of the land around sweeps through me, exhilarating and strong. But then I get back on the train to go home and the wonder of it starts to fade. And soon it's gone as I meld back into my normal life. Gone, but never forgotten. And I have to admit, there is a part of me that craves the ease of connection I once had, living amongst the trees, where the night isn't lit by thousands of street lights, and I can step out my door and stand on the earth – not the soft grass of a lawn, but truly earth, hard packed and smooth, alive beneath my feet.

Un-neglecting

I feel like I've been neglecting the blog (already! *laugh*). It's been more than a week since I've posted, and I even have a couple of subjects half written about already. Ah well.

As I promised last week, here is my fitness update. This past week (up to sunday) I kind of haven't been doing much (I blame my menstrual cycle). It's starting to feel a bit like what I did last year, where I kind of do things half-assed and don't see any major results. It's not a complete waste of time, since I'm still down two inches around my waist from when I started back then, and I'm definitely much stronger on the pole. But I feel like I'm not fully committing myself to doing this. I could blame my fiance's bad eating habits for influencing me (I ate much better before I moved in with him), but I know it's really all me. I'm going to have to work out a way to make my commitment to it bigger. (I would have thought that getting married in 6 and a half months would be incentive...doesn't seem to be. Also, more on that soon)

So, this week, I vow to move away from the half-assed and towards actually being committed to my fitness stuff. And to benefit that, I'm getting a bike. Soon. I'm going to say by the end of april at the latest. Also, there is extra incentive to keep to the fitness thing because I have a pole photoshoot coming up on sunday. If I stick to it at least I'll feel less bloated and better about getting pictures done before I'm perfect at anything (if it's being recorded, I'm a bit of a perfectionist).

I finally got my stretching DVD! Haven't actually gotten a chance to go through it yet and do the flexibility tests so I have a starting point to compare. I'm planning a post on that sometime in the next week or so.

Also, for anyone who may have been trying to leave comments on anything, I finally looked at my settings and fixed it so you don't have to be logged in or have an account to say something :)

Imperfections

I've been sitting on the couch tonight, and thinking. Thinking about all the things I should work on - and realizing that what I am doing tonight is far more important than any of those things could ever be.

I realize how crazy I've been this last month, worrying about how I should be figuring out what to do next, about my job, my aspirations, my life in general. Not trying to figure it out, mind you, worrying about how I don't have it all figured out.

And it hasn't been fun.

So now I'm sitting, listening to crickets chirp (they're food for the pet leopard gecko, and they chirp quite a bit at dawn and dusk), and thinking about how I really don't know how to do this. How to figure out my life all at once, how to be a 'grown-up', how to do ANY of it. And you know what? I don't care about any of it right now. Right now, I'm enjoying the illusion of being somewhere outside of the city, listening to crickets chirp, enjoying my tea and the satisfaction of the clean living room/altar area (I cleaned yesterday).

And I realize too, just how much I miss my family. I miss knowing that there's a place that feels like home waiting for me when I go visit my parents. I have a feeling that where they are is going to feel like home - in fact, I have a feeling very much like the Hiraeth** towards it, and I hope I can go visit them there soon. I'm thinking I might want to wait for spring - I want to sing the land awake, to make some connection there as my own, and see if the land will recognize me as belonging to it or not.
**for those that haven't heard me use the term before, or have forgotten, Hiraeth is a gaelic word that describes a feeling - a yearning for something the soul once knew.

For the last month and a bit, I have been pretty miserable. And instead of dealing with it, or doing something about it, I have spent my time running from it, and pretending that nothing was wrong. I've probably been pretty unpleasant to live with (I'm so glad I have such a wonderful and understanding fiance). I'm done with that now. And I'm starting with the small things - like tonight.

I guess it's partly being done with Wild Rose. I still have to write my final thesis thingy (I'll probably work on it after this - don't worry daddy, you won't have to keep reminding me much longer), but I did metaphorically release it from my life at Samhain. And it's taken me until now to realize that I hadn't fully let it go. It's frightening to finish something when you've used it as your guiding direction for the past 4 and a half years (even though it hasn't been useful for the last year and a half), especially with no clear idea of where to go next. I thought that getting a job at Planet Organic would be a logical next step, at least until I figured out where exactly I was going. But really, it was me trying to let go, without the risks and fear associated with really letting go.

And in that, I realize why I've been so unhappy with it. I started there with the expectation that I was going to love it, and I was going to instantly have the rest of my life all figured out. Instead, the job is a little boring, I don't love it, and I definitely do not have the rest of my life all figured out. Now I see it for what it really is - just another job used to pay the bills on my way towards doing what I actually want to do. And maybe I don't know what that will fully look like just yet, but I'm starting to be excited about finding out.

Oh, and given all my self-inflicted stress and worry for the past week, I kind of gave up on the fitness/healthy food plan. But I'm back at it tomorrow, and I'll keep letting you know how it's going. Keeps me accountable ;)