Balance: Cardiovascular + Craft

I finally found MY gym. At the community college up the hill from where I live. And it’s glorious. During the pandemic I so missed swimming and spinning and group exercise classes. A friend has invited me to his birthday celebration in Bacalar, south of Tulum toward Belize. Unfortunately, my spring break happens after his couple of weeks in Mexico. But I would like to go on another surfing vacation again. And maybe this time to Costa Rica instead of Mexico. Hence I’ve been swimming laps to build up my endurance for all that paddling.                 

And I love spinning because of the music, either rock or rap or techno and an instructor to tell you to increase the resistance and get up out of the seat for a “hill climb” or sprint and pedal faster for some interval training. Ditto for the music of Zumba and Bollywood and UJam and exercising my brain by learning different dance moves. Oh and kickboxing too with jabs, cross punches, upper cuts, hooks and roundhouse kicks. Variety is what keeps me moving. Not that I didn’t enjoy walking, hiking and running during this pandemic but it was all so one note.

And on the advice of my doctor for the hot flashes and insomnia and because I’ve been eating a more plant-based diet anyway, I’m upping the tofu and tempeh. For lunch today, I enjoyed the vegan chikn salad with my green salad. I like it even more than chicken salad, and now I’m remembering too how much I liked vegenaise when I used to be vegetarian. Weird to come full circle to the teetotalism and intense athleticism of my youth and early adulthood. And that’s not balanced either. So tomorrow I’m taking a break off from the gym and going out to an early dinner with friends. And you betcha I’m gonna maybe eat steak instead of my usual garden salad and margherita pizza and yeah hefty pours of wine with dinner. And I took today off too from the gym to do clay club with my colleague, Zan. Finally I glazed most of my speckled buff bisque pieces: two mugs and two succulent planters.                          

And I also went back to this bottle and decided it needed to be bisque fired again to burn out the wax resist followed by a glazing that revealed sloppy wax resisting.

I’m trying to take my time on glazing and enjoy it as much as the hand building.