Do you ever sit there and stare into outer space when you’re zoning out….. you know…. .like that wide eyed blank stare where you’re just staring at something random, not really knowing what it is you’re staring at, but deep in a trance-y thought??  And you’re not really in deep thought, it’s just that your mind is taking a little break from being engaged and you’re like in la la land? I know you know what I’m talking about. And then someone says, “HEY!!”. “HEY!!! Yoo hoo. Earth to Erika…. “…  Well, I was in one of those trances today and was outside at 6am listening to our neighbor’s dog up the street just barking it’s head off. They had this bright idea to go get a puppy for the kids about 5 months ago. So they did all their research and had this German Shepherd down in Sacramento, Calif about to have a litter of pups, and his brother is a breeder or something… So they fly down there to get this dog. And yes, we were all very excited for them because lets face it, puppies are super cute. It doesn’t matter what breed of dog it is, puppies are just cute!! Well, when they returned with this 8 week old puppy, we found out that it wasn’t allowed indoors. Not even in the garage. They created this chain link fence get-up outside the left side of their house, bought him a dog house, a super thin pad, and they keep him outside 24/7.  And it was almost 2 degrees outside the day they brought him home for the first time. So anyways, long story short, now he’s what? 5 months old or so, and he barks ALL DAY LONG. And when I say “all day long” you might think, like every 10 mins, maybe 2 times an hour… NO…. I’m serious, he barks incessantly all day long. I’ve even taken videos of him barking but I don’t have the cajones to send it to her. Thing is…our daughters are like best friends. They play all the time. Ema is either always over here, or Maggie is always over there. And the kids aren’t even allowed to play with the dog because he’s not been socialized in any capacity and the minute they let him out, he’s knockin’ kids over, biting people, running off…  They just weren’t cut out to be dog – owners and they somehow thought the kids wanted a dog. UGH…  So this morning I got woken up by “Lucky”… (far cry) at 5:30am…. He was barking up a storm. And when something like that wakes you from a deep sleep, you get a little agro. So at 6am I shot her a text saying, “Do you hear Lucky barking? He’s been barking since 5am!! He barks all day long Oksana. Poor dog”…  And she writes me back saying how he’s “not poor” and that there was a skunk in their yard last night because she could smell the residual odor and thats why he had been barking. Whatever..  Just an excuse. I wrote her back and told her “Well, just making you aware in case any other neighbors begin to complain about his barking.”   There are about 6 dogs that live in a 100 yard radius from my back yard and Lucky is the only one that barks. He barks at his own farts. He barks at the wind. I think he barks just to bark quite frankly. He’s totally lonely, he never gets to play with other dogs, he’s not very leash-trained because they don’t spend any time with him. It’s like they just got the dog so they could say they were dog owners. And it really shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. I’m not even all that big of a dog person myself. We have Loosha, our weimaraner/lab mix, and she’s sweet as pie. She tries hard to be part of the pack. She’s a happy dog and we love her. And even tho’ I’m not a big dog fan, I would NEVER EVER leave her outside at night. I mean, at least they should be putting him in the garage for cryin outloud… especially when it gets so blasted cold here.  I find myself hating the dog. Like I have little visions of seeing him get hit by a car…. I work from home all day, and so I get to hear him all day. Even tho’ they are like 4 houses away, we are all sort of on a corner of a culdesac so our backyards all come to one point and we can all see in each other’s yards. There are no fences. And I really shouldn’t hate the dog I know.. it’s not his fault. It’s their fault. And why I feel like it’s MY job to let them know that their dog is incredibly annoying is beyond me. It just bugs me. And when I get bugged I try to fix the problem. Unfortunately you can’t “fix” ignorance. Please Lord don’t let them be reading this blog. ;c(

Enough of Lucky….  he’s the reason I’m tired right now..

The sun is shining today. FINALLY!!! It’s been about 16 days of straight rain. When the sun comes out, us Oregonians are like little bugs, crawling out of the woodwork. Coming outside with our eyes squinted and our pale skin. I worked these last two days, so today is sort of a free-day for me. If I was smart, I’d load up my skis, pack a lunch and go hit the mountain for a few hours. But I’m really in one of those do-nothing moods. I hit yoga yesterday. I could go shopping, but don’t feel like it. I could go get the cars smogged, but don’t want to deal with that circus. I could organize my electrical cord drawer, but that’s just a rats nest. I should be outside enjoying the special sunshine, but that would require energy I don’t have at the moment. A nice brisk walk would perk me up, but then I’d have to put a bra on. So instead I sit here and write about all the things I SHOULD and COULD be doing. Got a severe case of the lazies indeed. THANKS LUCKY!!!!

I started doing Bikram yoga about a year ago now… and when I began going, in the back of my mind, I was hoping it wasn’t going to turn out like every other exercise regime I had started and quickly fizzle out. Not pertaining to all areas of my life, but I’m notorious for joining a gym and going for ohhhh twice and then completely forgetting about it. I had started a few hatha yoga classes when Anders was a baby… you know.. trying to be all super mom and getting out of the house in the evening when hubbs got home…  but… like anything, I’d quit going. I REALLY wanted to love Bikram. I really wanted it to be my new thing. It was like I was vowing to myself that if I was gonna start going, then I was gonna take it seriously and make a 100% effort and not wuss out and quit going. I mean, I think even my husband was waiting for me to quit going one day…..  But when you’re payin’ close to a hundy a month to have unlimited classes, it’s kind of stupid to just quit going… and even stupider when you’re so gung ho that you go ahead and buy the $900 annual unlimited membership as sort of a motivation to keep your butt in that hot room. But I could tell after my very first class that I had indeed….found my new thing. Now, I’m not gonna lie and say that I go every single day and I’m all hard core yogi material or anything. But I do try to maintain at least a 3 to 4 times a week attendance. There’s just something about it. And I’m sure it’s different for everyone. Everyone is in that room for the same reason, yet we are all in there for different reasons. Same reason being we want to do something good for our bodies…. different being, maybe someone is there because they want to heal their chronic back pain. Maybe someone is there because they are a runner and it’s one of their “off” days and they want to keep their joints healthy in between pounding miles on pavement. And as I sit here and really think about why it is that I go, I can’t really pin point it.

When I am in that hot room, I push myself past crazy limits that I never even knew I had. I’ve always been very athletic and very agile. And when I find something I’m not 100% perfect at, then I’m going to work as hard as I possibly can to get perfect at it. And the thing with Bikram yoga is, you can push yourself as hard as you want to, but if you aren’t doing the poses correctly, then you’re not getting an ounce of benefit. I give 110% in each and every class. Even on days when I feel like dog doo doo, and swear I’m not gonna push myself too hard, I always end up forgetting that I wasn’t going to push myself, and go on ahead and push myself. It’s a challenge for me. It’s more of a challenge for me to NOT push myself to the point of hurting myself. It really is. There’s nothing more gratifying than holding Dandayamana-Dhanurasana ~ standing bow pose for the full hold time (which, I believe to be a full minute, but never really know)..  I’ve only been able to hang in standing bow in the first set the entire hold time I think maybe a dozen times total. I usually fall out because I get distracted. Bikram yoga is very tough, yet very beneficial for people like me….. people with ADD. Or ADHD… or AADD… or whatever you wanna call it. I have a hard time focusing on one task. Bikram has helped me in so many ways, but especially with my focus ability… or focus inability rather. I find that after a full year now of going regularly, my focus is way different. I’m able to sit here and type out this blog post without getting up 20 times to go put the wash in the dryer, or to hop over to my email to check and see if so and so answered me. But you seriously can’t pull off many of the poses unless you have steadfast, unbreakable concentration. What I find really fascinating is that in between the standing series and the floor series, you’ve got 120 seconds of flat-on-your-back, no moving, no fidgeting time and it is a CHALLENGE to not move, or not let your mind wander during those two minutes. Again, major improvement in that regard. Another thing about Bikram…. is that your skin loses all those nasty ingrown bumps and whatnot everywhere. You know how in the winter months, wearing jeans and long pants, and dry skin, you get those bumps on the back of your thighs? Yah, those go away when you do Bikram yoga regularly. Your complexion changes. I’m not as quick to anger. I find myself taking huge deep breaths, just out of no where. You spend an hour and a 1/2″ of pure breathing….. and I mean…. all dirty air gone breathing. In fact, you don’t even want to try doing hot yoga unless you can learn to breathe. Breathing is the only thing that keeps me on my mat and not jumping up and running out of the room in a panic. When I first started going, there were times when (during the floor series) I honestly thought I was going to jump up and run out like a weirdo!! I was millimeters away from getting up and leaving so many times. But I remember the first class I went to, the instructor, Micah, in a calm sweet kind tone said, “If you feel very panicked and feel like leaving, just remember to BREATHE.”…..    The one itty bitty bit of advice that I will never forget.

I sit here and think back to when I first began. How self conscious I was of my body. How I was more worried about those around me than looking at myself in the mirror. It was uncomfortable for me to look at myself in the mirror at first. I hated who I was. An addict… a recovering alcoholic… a recovering addict… ewwww. Often times I sat there and thought, “Oh dear Lord, WHY am I here?”… “Why should I even try to better myself with exercise?” “I’ll never be good enough or do well enough” “I’m just a junkie addict and a loser mom and a loser wife..”…  You start nailing an extremely difficult yoga pose a few times a week, all the while staring in your own eyes for 90 mins, and you begin to love yourself. And I’m not saying that yoga is the reason I love myself today…..  God is. But yoga has really empowered me to believe in myself again. Long gone are the days of being the star middle blocker on my high school volleyball team… long gone are the days where I broke the USCoast Guard boot camp base record for the 2 mile run….  Those days are over man. I’m a mother of 2, I’m 35 years old now… I’ve put my body through hell and back. Punished the body that God gave me. By the skin of my teeth am I alive even. Our bodies only last a little while you know? And it’s true… the older we get, that’s when we start to think about it. We lollygag and frolick in our youth like no biggie… do drugs, drink heavily, party… drive drunk… what have you… never seeing the bigger picture that our bodies are the only bodies we have. There are the few out there that avoid all the stupidity smartly, but we can’t just trade our bodies in for a new one when the old one runs out. We must nurture them, and take care of them. They get us from point A to point B.

I don’t know what it was that made me want to sit down and write this page out. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to yoga today, it’s my day off from going and I noticed how excited I am about getting to go tomorrow. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying the 30 day challenge. Going for 30 days straight. With kids, it’s a hard commitment (or at least that’s my excuse) My fear is that at the end, I’d be so burnt out that I’d never want to go back. And I really love Bikram yoga. Don’t want it to be like a good song you hear on the radio. You hear it, you love it, so you buy the cd or the mp3 file and play it incessantly for a week and then you can’t stomach it when you hear it after awhile, changing the channel quickly. It is my hope that I never fall out of love with yoga. If you are considering trying it…..  just go for it. Don’t be afraid that you’re gonna suck at it. From what I gather, it’s like the mysterious exercise. The one everyone knows about but never wants to try. And why?? Because of the heat? “Ohhh I don’t like the heat, I don’t think I could stand the heat? Ohhhh the heat…” wahhhh… Get your butt in there. You will be surprised at what it does not only to your body, but to your outlook on yourself, your outlook on LIFE!!!  It’s a true motivator… It makes you want to be better. Do better. Eat better. Sleep better.

Through the Christmas rush with Mountain Girl Silver I wasn’t able to go for a month straight. Sure… I could’ve totally gone to the 8:15pm class… or the 6am class and be diligent about it. But stamping and processing orders took over my life for those 6 weeks. And boy howdy… not going sure started to affect me. I was irritable, wasn’t sleeping well, noticed my posture going downhill, short of breath just going up the stairs, bad appetite, BAD APPLE!!! Never again will I take a break from yoga that long. Because when I finally got back in the hot room, I was shocked at how much flexibility I had lost. I grew so frustrated during my first class back. Thought I was gonna DIE!! No bueno. But was equally surprised at how much quicker my flexibility came back. It wasn’t like I was starting out from the beginning like a year ago. Got right back into the groove.

So alls I’m saying is… give it a shot. I think you’re gonna find that you’re going to get a lot more out of Bikram yoga than you think you will. And there’s nothing to fear. After your first class you will be so proud of yourself, as you will feel like you just finished and completed the hardest workout you have ever done. No lie!!

Oh for cryin’ outloud…. I swear I wanna move to Anchorage. These last few days… since before the weekend actually, the weathermen and Mother Nature has been just TEASING us with snow. It’d start snowing, then it would stop. Snow, stop, snow for an hour, accumulate, stop, rain, melt, snow again, ……  it was annoying. I sit here and just crave weather where it would literally just DUMP SO MUCH SNOW THAT THE CITY WOULD SHUT DOWN. It’s engrained in soul. That giddy feeling ya get when it begins to snow. Takes me back to pepsi slushies and pimped out snow forts in the forest as a child. Growing up in a place where snowing 5 feet in one night was nothin’. Memories of my dad actually waking up in the middle of the night, tromping down the hall to check the street for snow depth. Living on Edison property, and daddy being a campground foreman, he was responsible for the snow removal to all the different little areas that the company used throughout the winter. The substations, the service centers, the entrance to the campground. And I remember him getting all dressed and sorels on, packing his thermos, his igloo, and his pack(s) of Winstons and heading out to plow. He’d be gone for HOURS… I mean hours. Then…. the snow would get so deep on our roof that we had to get up on the house and squeegie the snow off so the roof didn’t cave in. All the while, the wood stove crankin’. Watching each piece of wood go in the cavity of the stove, recognizing the knot or the bark pattern from a piece that I KNOW I stacked that previous Fall. Growing up in the mountains, living in the snow, it ain’t for the weak.  We just got hooked on a show on TV called “Alaska- The last Frontier”.. I think it’s on Discovery channel. Well anyways, it’s about this family that have been homesteaders there on a peninsula up in Northern Alaska. They don’t have electricity. Depend entirely on their own means for their food, heat, etc…  Grow all their own vegetables, harvest them in the Fall and store them in their root cellars for the winter. They make 4 hour treks on snowmobiles in the middle of winter to go to lakes and stuff to CHAINSAW 3 foot deep holes in the ice so that they can have some fresh fish….  They go out and shoot rabbits. They fall trees and drag em’ around with their tractors when they are preparing their wood for the winter. And when their cows give birth in the dead of winter and the baby calf is flailing around in sub zero temps, they go out there and find them in the dead of night and bring them to shelter and get them nursing on their mothers.. I mean… really? Eric and I were watching it the other night, and the kids came into the living room and we told them that they should take a look and see what it’s like to live in the middle of Alaska in the winter. They were glued to the tv. I’d honestly love to try it before I die. Survive a year in Alaska, solely living off the land….. I really would. See if I could do it. I think it would be challenging as all get-out, but man…. what an experience that would be. Just wild. I dream of it snowing…. that’s the bottom line here. And yah, the snow is falling in the higher elevations and the mountain ski areas are getting some good freshie, which I’m eternally grateful for, but why can’t it just get a shade colder down here in the valley? I remember a couple years ago, probably about 4 years ago now, we got severely dumped on here in Portland. Like some crazy 5 feet of snow over Winter break. It was phenomenal. Etched in the bank. I visit that week in my memory quite often. If you are reading this and are from Portland Metro area… then I KNOW you must remember it. I also vividly remember that by that 9th day or whatever of my husband being home from work, I was actually out in the street chiseling the ice from his tires and shoveling out his car so he would leave the house and get back to work. The entire city was shut down man. It was cool….  That’s when we lived in our old house, had a wood stove. Miss that thing. And to think…the people we rent it out to now, they don’t even know how to use it… pffft….

But now the storm is passing, and it’s all turned to just rain. The wind is blowing pretty hard. I had to run up to the feed store this afternoon and pick up some more chopped straw for my hens coop. When it’s wet like this, they tend to spend the entire day in their coop, and well… we all know what that means. I feel all farmer-Joe’ish when I go in that store. When I know I’m going there, I even try to play the part a little more. Wear my boots instead of my Dansko’s. I grab my dirty jacket instead of my North Face fluffy one. You know… I wanna at least LOOK like I’m a farmer. Not some yup chick mom from Suburbia. ;c) Got my dog a new leash and collar today too. Oh the excitement. But I did stamp and ship out 47 orders in the last 24 hours, so …..  I enjoyed the January lull while it lasted. Business always dies down to almost NADA the week or so after Christmas. The first week or so of January, everyone is getting their credit card bills from December and doing the freak out and not spending money. But now that Feb – Valentine’s Day is around the corner, things are picking up. Time to get back into the groove.

And remember….. TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR MOUNTAIN GIRL SILVER jewelry and email me the pictures!!!  I don’t know how I’m going to officially advertise the photo contest, but trust me, the winners are gonna get some serious credit towards the store. Don’t say “yay, that is a great idea, but I’m a bad photographer”… No…. you’re mistaken… you’re not a bad photographer. Take off your necklace, or throw the camera at your husband or wife or kids and tell em’ to snap a shot of you wearing your bling!! I’m serious as a heart attack here. Email me the jpeg’s to mountaingirlsilver@mac.com

HAPPY WINTER!!!!