Yoga and My Husband and A Very Cool Offer

361 days ago I married my hero. Our one year anniversary is this Sunday; we're going to meet up in Del Mar (where we got married) late Sunday night after my show and spend til Tuesday morning there. I can't believe it's been a year---and yet I can----I feel like I'm still getting used to saying "My husband", and in a way I don't remember us not married......I know how lucky I am to be with such an extraordinary person--not a day goes by I don't say Thank You to the powers that brought us together. Here we are on September 19, 2009

photos courtesy of Michele M. Waite

Because I love him so much and am so impressed by who he is I'm going to shamelessly promote him. Sky is CEO of Manduka, which is the only brand of yoga product you want to own. Before he had anything to do with Manduka, I coveted the famous Manduka Black Mat which lasts your lifetime (the most eco-conscious choice you can make as you'll never have to replace it, hence creating zero waste!). Since Sky came aboard the company has grown like green beans in summer. There are the lifelong mats, there are lightweight mats, there are biodegradable mats, there are travel mats. There are blocks and straps and bags and towels. There are bolsters (my favorite prop since they inherently imply one will be lying down in relaxing positions for lengthy periods of time, and these are so pretty and so comfy. I've been known to set out on a full practice only to spend the whole time in viparita karani-- ie legs up the wall with a bolster lifting the mid back--because the bolster is so seductive) and super-plush towels for "hot yoga" which I love so much that I go to hot yoga classes every once in a while just so I can use one.

Their new website is amazing. Really--go take a tour. You can get inspired by the yoga community, see little diagrams of how the mats support your joints, read uplifting quotes by yoga teachers, and discover a passion for yoga products maybe you didn't know you had.

Why I am sneakily linking this to my anniversary and introducing you to Manduka is because Manduka is participating in Yoga Aid, a fundraising event happening all over the world on Sept 18th and 19th. Free classes will be offered as part of an effort to raise money for charities that are doing miraculous things to bring yoga and most importantly consciousness to corners of the globe far and near. As part of Yoga Aid, Manduka is offering 10% off everything on the site, plus they're giving 10% of all purchases to Yoga Aid. AND if you spend more than $150 you get a free mat cleaning spray, so maybe this is the time to dress your yoga room for fall.

I haven't talked much about yoga since I started this here blog but it's a huge part of my life. It's where I've gotten a lot more comfortable being imperfect, it's where I've done things I didn't think I could do, it's been a source of peace, it's where I've honestly gotten ecstatic, it's been something that no matter what I know will make my day better if I do it. And it's actually how Sky and I met, in Yoga Works Teacher Training in 2001. That was a couple of years before we started dating, and perhaps on another day I'll tell you the whole story.

Happy anniversary my sweet.

And happy shopping my sweets.

Sneak Peek

We had our first preview on Friday, another one last night, and we'll rehearse for a few hours today before doing one more this evening. They're going rather brilliantly! These audiences have been smart and generous and laughing and applauding throughout the show. We open officially on Friday. We hit the point a couple of days before our first audience where suddenly it was time. No more playing to a big empty theatre trying to guess where reactions would be and even forgetting the play was funny. There's only so many times the director and designers can laugh. I love these preview audiences!! They are helping us the right pace for the play, feel what's working and what needs a tweak, AND we all know there will be that show where the folks out there sit on their hands and stare at us the whole time barely breaking a smile. The shifting shape of live theatre:)

The play is Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw. It's about rules and breaking them, parents and kids, ideas and real life, social class, romantic relationships.....just a few little light concepts packed deliciously into a story about a wealthy middle class 1909 English family whose life gets turned upside down when an airplane comes crashing through their greenhouse and a handsome aviator and mysterious Polish woman enter the scene.

My character is Hypatia, the daughter of said wealthy middle class family, who's a rebel wearing a lot of pink. The biggest tragedy of my life so far is that nothing has happened to me and everyone talks too much for anything to happen. The airplane crash changes that.....

I've been called by my castmates a "buttercream geisha" as well as a My Little Pony. I do get to gallop around the stage on a couple of occasions......

Here's a sneak peek of my costume, courtesy of our genius costume designer Maggie Morgan

I get to wear that! And have a blonde wig styled like that! (Appropriately Edwardian). This is definitely one of those dresses that as a little girl would have made me want to be an actress even more.

The play runs through Oct. 10 at South Coast Repertory. If you find yourself in the area, please come say Hi.

That Step Forward I Mentioned

I love being up early on Sunday mornings. The street is so quiet and I feel such a sense of space like the mind of the city is resting along with all its human inhabitants. Sky sleeps in and I have the place to myself if I stay quiet, and it's one of my favorite times to think, read, write, reflect.

Each time I've thought about writing what I want to write today I've come up with a reason not to. I guess because it's deeply personal and I'm not sure, even sitting here, exactly what I want to say. I'm not pregnant--that's not the Step Forward I referenced in the baby department earlier this week. And that's OK:) The fear I had around Can I Get Pregnant a few months ago is gone. I actually know I can; I don't know when. Which is a reminder to me that all fear passes and we can't predict when it will pass; one day we wake up and it's gone. The progress I meant is 2-fold: one, on a physical level, had another hormone test--I won't go into all the scientifics here----but they're good. Every time I go for scientific evidence I get terrified the results are going to show something is wrong. And every time they've been positive. So I'm welcoming as much science into this process as I need. Right now that involves some tests, ultrasounds, and some sticks I'm peeing on as of a few days ago. Finally surrendered to the Ovulation Predictor Kit. I thought it would take the mystery out of conception and y'know, it's not taking the mystery out at all. That my body can do what it's doing at all is the greatest most gorgeous mystery of this whole thing.

The next piece of the progress has been more about my head: getting through a fear I didn't know I had-- not fear of Will I or Won't I Get Pregnant but fear of Being a Parent.

I remember last summer about 2 months before I got married I had a meltdown. It was my birthday and I cried for pretty much the entire day. When I got my journal out to try to figure out what was going on that I could water a lawn with the tears I was shedding, I realized it was about getting married. Taking this huge step, making an enormous life change, leaving a part of my life that had been my whole life behind. Didn't mean I didn't want to get married--I did and I am and it's a whole new adventure that is so delicious and wild----just meant I had a Goodbye to say and I've never been good at those. I didn't read much about that in wedding magazines; nor do I read a lot about the fear I've been feeling about mothering without also reading that somehow that implies I'm not ready. Which is not the case.

I am SO READY. I affirm that every day in the meditation corner of my bedroom. I talk to the soul that will be my child, tell it that I'm ready, can't wait to nurture it and support it and LOVE it. I use a visualization that Alisa at LSW gave me about a helix of energy that takes root in my body right where that baby will. I see myself in hundreds of different scenarios with a big belly, I see myself in the delivery room, I see myself with Sky and a little munchkin sleeping, walking, playing, eating. I am READY. And so scared that I'll never be alone again. Which, judging from what other moms have told me, is probably true.

I don't mean physically alone---I know I'll eventually take a walk by myself and get to yoga; I know Sky and I will one day have a weekend where we leave the baby with family. I mean more psychically alone. Autonomous. Free to do whatever I want whenever I want to. That's going to go away, or at least seriously change, and EEEEEEEE! I'm scared. Me as independent is how I know me. And again, I will be saying Goodbye to my life as I've known it both with myself and with my husband. Which is also scary! I'm going to have this creature that I created with another person! We're going to be in this unbreakable triangle for the rest of eternity! I half-joke but I'm half-serious. It feels big and profound on a level I just can't quite wrap myself around. And maybe that's the point. I'm not supposed to be able to feel it before it happens. I couldn't feel how my relationship with Sky would deepen when we got married. I couldn't predict what it would feel like when I, a few years ago, got really honest with both of my parents about things I'd been holding onto in our relationships. I don't think it works to try to compare an unknown future to a familiar present. And if I'm going to reference past experience, anything I've really wanted and been really scared of at the same time has been so worth going for. Being scared let me know that I really really cared, and those experiences have been some of the best of my life. I'll never forget standing with my grandmother for over an hour on a diving board in Crystal Lake as she tried to teach me how to back dive. I wouldn't do it--I so wanted to and I was so scared. The decision not to do it--to swim back to shore without having tried it--became for me, at age 10, the moment I decided that was not how I wanted to live. I usually now assume that the more scared I am of something the more it's going to be an incredible part of my life if I'll look it in the face and take it on.

One thing Alisa suggested I do which is my project for sometime in the next couple weeks (my new show starts previews on Friday so realistically I'll be doing this after that) is write my vision of motherhood. Since we all write our own stories anyway, consciously or not. Write it out so I can embrace the "And" equation rather than the "Or". Not so I can predict what mothering will be, but so I can see in my own hand how yes, I'll be connected for the rest of eternity to this baby and it's daddy but it's not Mommying OR Freedom, it's Mommying AND Freedom. If I can think it, feel it,write it I can do it. I want to be an incredible mother; I want to be an incredible partner to Sky; and I want to feel like this in my own life

found this image on this site

The "step forward" then, was just recognizing that and starting to create it.

Soon so Soon

Ahoy maties!

this week so far has included:

closing one play

rehearsing another

step forward in baby land

making a different fig jam you'll want

making a blackberry pie for a husband returning from the wilds of New York

working on a stellar commercial you'll probably see soon

re-acquainting myself with my favorite florist in LA

and being home VERY VERY little

so many things I want to post!!! will you wait til next week to read them? can I make it up to you then?

Say yes.

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