This week I found out I'm an Associates Degree Grad, and a Licensed Massage Therapist!! Yay me! Now gimmie that vacation cause I NEED it!!

Trig was my last class for my degree and I feel dumber having now taken it, lol. Then the board results which were supposed to take 6 weeks ended up taking TEN!! Out of 800+ people sitting for the massage boards in my state 403 people passed, and my entire class of 18 made it.

Out of worrying that trig would beat me delaying my degree and not passing the boards, I. is. tired. ;) Conviently, 10 days from now I'll be bound for my week of yoga, bellydance, and spa-ish stuff in Costa Rica. Bring on the zen.

When I get back, I have my last yoga class and will be a Registered Yoga teacher. Its been a productive summer :)

Pose triumph!

They say yoga is not a competitive sport, but for myself it is :)

I tend to be drawn to mastering 'pretty poses', and set goals for myself in the pursuit of them. For instance my first achievement was one legged wheel, where your doing a back bend and extending one leg up towards the ceiling. Full wheel is usually hard enough, and adding the leg up version makes it a balance posture bordering on inversion. Strangely you don't see too much instruction on the more difficult versions. Usually if your trying one of the harder variations its just something you need to work with a teacher and they spot you until you feel steady enough on you own. I dedicate alot of my practice to finding those little tricks that make poses more attainable. So I threw myself into getting comfortable with one legged wheel, and like a mad scientist of extreme bending I have some conclusions :)

When you first attempt to bring the leg up, your instinct is to increase pressure with your grounded leg. This is a mistake, because it throws your weight into the least supported direction, like pushing a tripod over by shoving a support between two of the supports. The 'trick' to be able to raise say your right leg, is to resist with your right arm as well. The arm then takes on the weight the leg is adding and distrubutes it to your left side which is fully grounded. So, as you begin to slowly lift your leg you want to imagine you are pushing harder against the ground with that same arm. So yay, success! I'm still experimenting with bringing the grounded foot to midline first, giving a more even tripod position, but for now I like being able just to bring my lifted foot down without having to switch foot positions. Next time, I'm going to work on getting my elbows down in wheel, *then* lifing the leg, muhahahah.... If I get realllly ambitious, I may try this:

One legged wheel, elbows down, while grasping the grounded foot. Holy shit! Isn't that amazing?!?

This is probably why they say yoga is not competitive, because you'll never be told your not doing the posture right as there are so many variations and you use the one the works for you. But for me, things like this are something to strive for. I think its fun ;)

Another pose goal I have on my list is 'Get my foot on top of my head in King Pidgeon'. Before class last week, the best I can do is catch my foot in the crease of my elbow and grasp hands over my head. In class my teacher helped me reach over my head and actualy grab my foot! This is one of those instances where a spotter comes in damn handy, I had felt like my foot was a mile away from my hand and I could never find it. She simply took my hand and placed it on my foot. It was funny, even though I was reaching for it when my hand first made contact with my toes my foot screamed 'AHHH! Somethings got me!' Like I said, my brain was telling me my foot was way far away, lol. And another funny thing, I was so elated when I got ahold of my foot that I broke out in a sweat, including my toes. Which made it very hard to hang onto my foot, which wouldn't have been a big deal except another class mate was taking pictures of me at the moment. In one shot I'm trying so hard to not let my grip slip off my sweaty toes that my front foot looked like a claw going 'raaawwrrr' with my toes going every which way, lol. So much for 'pretty poses', lol! She said she'd email me the pictures, I'll post them when she does cause they are rather amusing. But in the mean time, heres the same pose performed by one of my dance idols Rachel Brice, albeit way more flawlessly...:

Bellisima! Now *that* is a pretty pose! I'll be experiementing with this some more and see if I can come up with any 'tricks' to it to share. I've tried working with a strap before, but its tricky since your foot has to be pointed which makes the strap slip off. Not a good thing when your in a balance pose, which this does not look so much like one, but it is. Whenever you've got a foot off the ground, your balancing. But I'll give it a try again, seeing as I now know my foot is within reach behind my head ;)

The fun stuff I get to play with when schools out, squee! It is so nice having a few weeks off before going back for my 'real' degree. Grades still aren't posted for summer semester but I'm fairly confident I've got straight B's. I'm not 'officially' an associate college grad, but I think I'm good to go. Will be nice when I finally have that paper in my hands ;) Also another thing I should find out about this week are my massage boards. The outcome is either 'You are now licensed' or "Sorry, come back in December'. I should know by this Friday, the 14th. I'm trying to keep busy so I can forget about that ;)

Clay ornaments

I have one week of class left then a brief period of delightful nothingness before it starts up again. I keep saying I'm not going to take summer classes again, but yet I always seem to end up there again, bitching and moaning the whole time about how I'm not going to do it again.

This time I mean it. I don't care if it takes an extra year to finish my Bachelors, next summer, I'm taking it OFF! I'm thinking of taking the kids to Florida again anyways.

Once I'm done with this school nonsense this week I've got several piles of craftyness I've been wanting to dig into. I've got dance costumes that need assembled, I want to dabble in my water colors and work on my drawing skills, but mostly my fingers are itching to get into my polymer clay again.

For the last 2 years I've made 'cutesy' ornaments and sold them at Christmas time for extra Christmas money. Mostly cats hanging off of glass balls, but last year I came up with an extra cool version that I thought was way cute:

The kittys vain attempt to capture the fish made his expression seem more comical than cute. 'Cute' usually isn't my style, but if its something that makes you laugh I'm all for it. I visualize the fish thinking 'Dude, your sooo totally not going to get me...'

The tricky part with this original design was orienting the cat so he didn't completely make the ball hang crooked so the fish inside rests against the glass (which ruined the floaty swimmy fishie effect). My first solution was to put another cat on the other side to balance the ball, which is also cute because then it looks like a conspiracy to catch the fish, but its also makes the whole presentation a little more fragile. Another tricky part was constructing the fish in a way that I could get him inside the glass after cooking him without breaking him. I totally pulverized a few unfortunate uncooked fellows before getting it right.

This version of my cats was quite popular, and before I knew it all the clear glass balls I had bought were gone and Christmas ornies aren't something that are usually available year round. I had people asking about them well after December but had no supplies to make any. But recently I found a huge stash of them at Hobby Lobby, in larger quantites and *on sale*. Yay, now I can premake plenty before Christmas time and not worry so much about running out. And I also have plenty of extra to play with some other ideas I had as I'd like to try out some non-Christmasy stuff. Though I know alot of people leave theirs out all year long, especially the ones that I did memorial cats for. I'll have people send me pictures of their cats and I'll make the cat to look like theirs which is tricky sometimes, but a fun challenge. I especially like when I can make an angel cat for someone such as this guy:

This is actually a version of my parents cat Tina who died right before Christmas. I like doing angel cats, a more sentimental version of clay cuteness.

I'm trying to expand my range from cats, so far I've also done foxes and racoons because they're almost the same shape as cats. Dogs are trickier because they have very breed specific ears, muzzles, tails, yadda yadda. But experimentation is in order, and I do have some fun ideas I'm going to work with. If I come up with anything noteworthy I'll be sure to share some pictures.