Let Me Drive to Your House and Read You the Announcements

A frequent comment I get from parents is, "I didn't know about this."

It's often said in an accusatory fashion. I like to think they might be accusing their own kids of not telling them, but really I think a lot of time they are accusing me. Or, if not me personally, they are accusing the school. Of hiding information from them? Of conspiring to keep them in the dark? Of trying to lose money by setting up costly events that won't fill up because we don't tell people about them? WHAAAT???

I don't know.

Yesterday a parent asked about an event we have coming up and wanted to know if it was too late to sign her kid up. I told her yes, it is too late, all the arrangements have been made. I'm sorry.

"I didn't find out about this until the phone message last night."

"I'm sorry."

"Why didn't I know?"

"Ma'am, I'm not really sure. We sent out emails and did phone calls. We advertised on our website and did announcements within the building."

"Well, can I be notified when you do this [event] again?"

"Certainly we will do a lot of advertising when it comes around again." (which, I'm thinking, you will ignore JUST LIKE YOU DID THIS TIME!!!!)

Gardening and Sun Salutations

The leaves are just now beginning to change. Just a tiny bit. In a few short weeks it will look like this photo on the left that I took last year up in Asheville.

So now we are in the spot of time where we want to get out into the cooler weather and do some maintenance in the back yard. This weekend I went to the Charlotte Regionals Farmers Market with  my neighbor Mary and bought some plants. I bought two fairly large hydrangeas and some heuchera and lenten roses to put around in some spots. Spent some time forking over the earth and digging up the buried soaker hoses. Some of them have holes in them now and roots have grown around them. So it's a big job digging them out. We'll lay them out and patch them and the place them again in the spring. The rain we've had the past couple of weeks has made the ground easy to work and the cooler weather has made it kind of enjoyable, even if I'm doing work I don't particularly love.

Tomorrow the yoga class at school is going to tackle their first Sun Salutation flow. I've devised a simple one that yogis around the around the world use every day...no warrior poses or lunges...just pretty much standing to forward bends, lower to the floor and then back up. I asked them last Friday if they had some requests and one said she wanted a vinyasa flow. So here we go. We've done a mini sun salutation for a couple of weeks and they definitely have enjoyed that. The group seems to like having an assignment they can carry out over and over through several minutes at their own pace. They are very good at dropping into their own zones. I suspect it's because, as teachers, they are "on" all the time. Flows are nice for them because they can just focus inward, but in a directed way.

Here is the link to the mini sun sals we've done.

And here is the link to the Surya Namaskar I've modified slightly. I've added a down dog and plank after the standing half forward fold and before the chaturanga, and changed their up-dog to a cobra pose, which I encourage them to do as a mini or full cobra. I've never cared for dropping straight straight from forward fold to chaturanga. It just seems so abrupt to me.