The Thanksgiving Post

Today my husband (ha, isn't that a funny word? I am still working on using it in daily conversation, anyway) Today, Michael and I are driving down to San Diego to have fancy Thanksgiving dinner with my cousin Amy and her husband (the chef/very important government lawyer guy), my pseudo Uncle John (actually 1st cousin once removed/also some sort of fancy rights protecting lawyer guy) and his wife Karen (who I can't write anything real in parenthesis about because I don't really know her yet).
I, unfortunately, am up at 7am so the drive and the turkey tryptophan effect (if that is true) combined with my love for the vino, should have me passing out in the guest bedroom shortly after dinner. Oh, and in this family we do dinner at a reasonable hour. None of that middle of the afternoon nonsense. If you do that, how do you fit in appetizers and cocktails? Also, as much as I love wine, the idea of cracking open a bottle to have dinner at 11:30am is even a little much for me.
Amy has reported that she has been banned from the kitchen today, which would be funnier if the kitchen was larger and could feasibly fit two cooks with the oven door open. This cozy group of 6 will be a welcome change from my last Thanksgivings, one at my parent's house with 23 of my closest relatives and 3 toddlers, and one at our apartment in Cincinnati where Michael and tried to starve everyone and didn't serve dinner until around 7pm because I was so excited about cooking my first turkey that I continually opened the oven door to baste the turkey, thereby bring the oven temperature down substantially and making the turkey cook in twice the expected time. Whew, how's that for a run on.
The almost-Thankful Part
In my crappy Monday staff meeting, I obligatorily told the staff that I was thankful for having all of my assistants in my class. I repeated this when we did what I am thankful for with the kiddos so they would have some examples (ooohh modeling remember it is Kindergarten), and then I prompted each of my kid's to raise their hand to come up front and say they were thankful for their Mommies.
Yesterday I found out that the school is replacing my assistants with other people. I don't think the people in charge understand that having to train staff is almost like having extra little kids around for a month. Now I am just hoping the replacement is quick and painless.
But really, I am thankful I have a wonderful husband. (there's that word again and ugh that sentence makes me want to gag, but seriously he kicks ass; does the laundry, cooks yummy food, brings me fizzy drinks, and wakes me up to go to bed when I fall asleep on the couch)
I am thankful that I have such a wonderful family on both coasts, who I can visit with and eat lots of food with over the holidays. And most of all I am thankful that I can be stressed about the trivial things in life from my own comfortable home. I do not have to worry about my own daily living conditions. I can feel sorrow over the tragedy and unfair conditions in my community and my world in the awareness that I am healthy and safe in my place in the world. And as much as my little snotty monsters make me crazy, I see them learning (some very slowly, but learning) and I am thankful for the small changes, I can make with my little guys everyday. (Whoa, preachy anyone? Now I have to go find some light Thanksgiving humor writing to read)
Well here is something amusing from last year, I am not sure anyone drinking can report back this early in the morning even on the east coast.

the exciting weekend recap

When I am not stressing out about things I cannot humanly take care of with school and my little guys; I am hanging out at home and watching bad cable, and sometimes actually going out and doing interesting things. This Saturday I went to a shmancy restaurant in Hollywood called Geisha House. I stuffed myself with expensive sushi and hung out with Michael's classmates, while surreptitiously looking around to see who in fact could afford this food and if maybe they were famous (no I didn't really do that, it was the type of restaurant where I should have. Hip and fancy with a DJ and an expensive wine and drink list). Then we went dancing at a club that had 3 DJ's in 3 rooms; 80's, hip-hop and what I was calling the 90's room that was in fact the inde rock room. I was leaning towards hanging out in the large inde room with all of the young gothy crowd and the depressing music but my crowd leaned hip-hop and so I found myself shaking my ass to the likes of Britney and Paris along with some random Madonna, Prince and I like big butts. A totally strange night but it is definitely fantastic to have found friends that like to dance as much as Michael does. This is something we occasionally talked about but never did in Cincinnati (besides the rare Salsa night). We wandered later through 90's/inde or what I thought of as my first two years of college and into 80's. 80's was small and also full of strange hipster gothy kids but unfortunately also full of the smoke from the outside smokers cage (I mean lounge), not nearly as bad as a bar in Philadelphia but the idea of having to wash my hair 16 times to get the smoke smell out made me ready to leave. This was the first time I went out in Hollywood and it was odd. We took the train 3 stops too far on our way there (reminder to self, mapquest directions even when Michael seems to know what he is doing) and then when we actually got to where we needed to be it was like being on another planet. Clots of people with cameras filled the star lined sidewalks and street performers and street preachers were everywhere, along with the scary attack asian lady that was selling flowers in a sort of yelly aggressive ready to walk right into me sort of way. The sidewalk outside of one theater was closed (making me irritable about security scams and being made to feel like a peon to walk a block out of the way and across the street so that the "famous" Tara Reid could avoid the masses (Of course that is just me being me because Jerome was all poetic about how he loved living in a city that has movie premieres). My memorable nice and human part of the night was talking to the asian convenience store old guy. I chose to forsake the silly girly high heels since the last time I went dancing my feet hurt for three days. Unfortunately, my comfy black flats don't actually fit. Old guy said, "Blister?" When I got to the counter, in a prophetic I worked here forever sort of way. Then said something about the people who come here think Hollywood is a little place where they need to look fancy and won’t actually have to walk anywhere. I showed him my comfy (yet blister forming) shoes, and he agreed that they did look comfy.
Tonight I return to school stress, and tomorrow to little snotty ones and what I hope will be successful meetings.

travel 2

I just found this post when I was adding labels to old posts (while half assedly watching the moving Munich ahh Spielbert (this was a typo that I am leaving in now because it cracks me up--the movie was scratched and unwatchable in the end). Anyway, I realized that I have been in a lot more states this summer, so here is my new map.

The first time I did it I forgot Missouri and the states didn't connect. I had to ask Michael what state I missed. Now it is fixed. He said "Missouri, remember St. Louis."and I said "Oh yeah, the arch."

the more I don't post

The bigger the task of posting becomes...so then I can't do it because my life feels like a novel, too long for this format.
So here is the bullet point update to get things rolling again.
October/early-November bullet synopsis

• I got married (it was rainy and fun)
• It was on the east coast and full of family and drinks and beach and rain and coastal flood warnings
• teaching is hard
  
• and as much as I hate the whiney teacher mantra about not getting paid enough etc. This is the hardest most stressful job, I've ever had.)--that being said
• I still like small children (They are cute and huggy --though often snotty--that is runny nosed not stuck up)
• I went to a week long literacy training and actually missed my kids
• I turned 30
• this involved 2 yummy dinners, a yummy breakfast,
  
• a visit from Amy
  
• and a pseudo surprise party with Michael's friends/classmates and significant others who were fantastic stand in friends
  

ta da, now I posted. All comment based questions shall be answered forthwith.
I don't actually know what forthwith means but it sounds official.

thoughts on L.A.2

So on the way home tonight I was stopped at a red light and there was a guy (next to the usual fruit guys) and he was selling stories for a dollar. There was a handmade cardboard sign tied around his neck that said so. And there were the stories themselves. I didn't have a dollar (seriously not even in change because I bought a Coke at work). So you can't see one. But they had colored pencil drawings of planes and things. hmm.


Also,
I am getting married on Saturday. in new jersey.

posted

Yes, um sorry if you are still checking in.
I haven't posted in about a month, because I am busy teaching and tired and often to lazy or too concerned with confidentiality issues to say things I want to say.
So things are going fairly well. No major problems. If learning is measured in dirt my kids from class are awfully smart. The Kindergarten playground has sand. Everyone goes home like they have been rolling around in the dirt. (some of them have been). My head has not yet exploded.
I'm getting married next week. Also next week there is back-to-school night preceded by a pedicure. Because I need pretty wedding toes.

wow informative, boring.

also here is an interesting article that I will so eloquently sum up by saying, ivy league sucks.

um yeah new crazy stuff

I haven't posted in a while, because my sheer exhaustion after a whole school day with developmentally delayed kindergarteners makes me useless. But I am still here. The wedding approaches. And I am just taking it all one day at a time. I only plan enough schoolwork to get through one more day (semi) successfully. We have sung songs, danced, read many stories, worked on puzzles, and created silly kindergarten art projects. We are working on walking in a line, finalizing a daily schedule, inside voices, raising hands, not eating inedible puzzle pieces, sitting for 5-10 minutes at a time without wandering away. The school system will be one I am awkwardly navigating for sometime. The bureaucracy between the school and the special education offices will be one I will struggle forever, or until I leave. Everyone is fantastic and helpful, but within the administration if it is special ed. I should talk to someone else because it is not their job, and if I call SPED it is the schools' job. This makes all the tantrums, biting, hair pulling, wet pants and disobedience seem like nothing. I am tired. But I am enjoying the smiles, the smartypants, the hugs, the burgeoning language, the helpful kindergarten teachers, and above all QUIET TIME my saving grace.

the deal

What is the deal with L.A. and helicopters? Sure, on the beach you know people are being shuttled from a shwanky house in Malibu to their private jet at the airport. And standing on a friends deck in Silverlake you can see the helicopter downtown with its shining beam of light, cops, police car chases? But when I am trying to watch a movie in my living room and a helicopter continues to circle over my house, I really have no idea what is going on. More police? I know better than to try to find out through the media. Living in Cincinnati there was a night where armed gunmen robbed a bank and were roaming the neighborhood, streets were blocked for hours and a friend (and another friend of a friend) said there were tanks driving up the street. The news? nothing. Continually check through the rest of the week...nothing. (--by the way as I type the helicopter continues to circle, seriously it has been about an 1/2 hour)*. Cincinnati's only reporting was on the bank robbery that occurred around 10am, however a friend driving home from my apartment around midnight was stopped by the police and reprimanded for being out, when armed gunmen were about....news....nada...she had to return to my place because the streets were barricaded leading the 4 blocks to her place. That helps you sleep at night doesn't it? Ah the ghetto, will I ever miss it?

*Michael's helicopter comment "It's kind of weird, cause its right above our house”.


p.s. Kate wants me to tell the story about the time I Bruce Lee kicked down the door to our bedroom. I think she could tell it better as the more rational sibling in the situation. You should ask her to guest post it here.

Closing the Gap (a serious post for a change)

My friend Vanessa just started a blog called Closing the Gap for Individuals with Disabilities that I see kind of as a post M.ed. collaboration tool. She puts it best when she says

My hope for this blog is to facilitate conversations with and between other special educators, caregivers, and anyone working with individuals with special needs. I believe in collaborating with others to provide my students with effective and appropriate services.


Anyway, Vanessa is supremely cool and I hope that her site can serve as a nice forum for people with special needs, their friends, families and service providers. (Wow! I am sounding all grown up here, more like a grad paper than my usual rambling blog fodder)

A colleague/professor of ours piloted an exercise program, called Jumping Jacks & Jills, for kids with ASD in Cincinnati. Vanessa has successfully expanded this program in her new neighborhood in NJ. I love the program and it is something I would like to see nationwide. I have already started talking to people I met at a school curriculum training last week about starting one near here in the spring. (I am not quite as quick as Vanessa at getting these things together, but really, I typed it out now so I am accountable for making it happen.)

Finally, Vanessa is so crazy motivated that she is also doing a Walk for Autism Research on September 30th, and raising money as a team for the Jumping Jacks & Jills. So, if you are just sitting there with all that money you meant to earmark for charitable donation burning a hole in your bank account go visit her Walk site to make a donation.

Hurrah!

I am credentialed (is that a verb? It is now.) to teach in California. At least that is what my HR lady told me this morning. I can't wait to get a paper or an email for the proof. But still, this is fantastic and now you can be happy that you don't have to read (or skim, or ignore) any more posts about my credentialing nightmare. (just crazy posts about my actual teaching nightmares).

What does this say about me?

Michael and I spent most of Saturday afternoon rearranging furniture again. When you live in a shoebox, there is always the misconception that if the couch were just on the other side of the room things would be so much more spacious. Our misguided spatial abilities lead us to an entire afternoon of shifting and rearranging. I need to see it to believe it. Things are still bizarre and we are still sleeping on a mattress on the floor, but the living room...it looks so spacious.
The point?, you may be asking (please this is a blog post, do they ever have points, well maybe in a vague narcissistic sort of way. I'm getting there.

Last month, Michael noticed that when we moved from Cincinnati I swapped sides of the bed. (Do you know how couples are about their sides? I think it gets bad enough that it carries over to hotel rooms, and if you are ever forced to sleep with a sibling or friend in a hotel bed you might get into a fist fight if you are both right siders.) Me, not so much. Michael believes I need to sleep nearest to the door. This is very mobster of me, no? Kind of like the favorite seat in restaurants (in the corner so you can see the room of course, and no one can sneak up behind you with a weapon --or more salad dressing). In my family, we sometimes end up doing a little restaurant dance where we shuffle around one another trying to get the premium seating when the table is wedged in a corner. But, back to bed sidedness, I never noticed my switches or proximity to the door but Michael's theory of it cracks me up. Do I need to escape to somewhere? I am not a get up in the middle of the night bathroom person. I could get all psychoanalytic about this, but I am not so much concerned as amused. We swapped the side of the room the bed was on yesterday and when I looked at the bed the first thing I said was "You know I'm going to have to sleep on the other side now."

Wow, an entire post of drivel about bed sidedness. Do you have a side? How about the seat on the bus? Last week in my training, I sat at the "Kindergarten table" (sounds super cool right?). We sat in the same seats everyday. You know how when you go to class and someone is in "your" seat it screws you up for the entire class. (And how this is especially bad if you have to sit way closer and you can feel the rest of the class behind you, or you have to continually wrench your neck around to catch site of the person asking a question or making a comment.) Apparently, this does not affect me in bed, and if I was alone, I'd just sprawl anyway.

more training (and a note on internet browsers)

idiotic training continues here
I forgot my massive binder and the "homework" contained within on the second day. If my other rant didn't contain my thrill of in-service training, that statement alone should illustrate the responsiveness my anal-retentive homework obsessive-compulsive butt has to this class. Just send good vibes to the dept. of ed in California so that I can receive money for this drivel instead of class credit. I have enough class credit in my opinion, I just want the cash.

I am supremely lazy when I come home from a strenuous day of sitting on my butt and listening to teachers complain about the math program (when they are not reading aloud sections of the manual). I read things on the Internet and watch silly cable. Recently, I re-added a site meter to my blog. My only insight I have from this is (I am fantastic at wasting time ) more people I know should be using Firefox. I mean it! Tabbed browsing! It is fantastic. If you are at your home computer and can download you should at least check it out. I have no more to say, other than, do you have cable? Are you watching Weeds and Project Runway? I think I will watch Weeds tomorrow and then catch the Runway on one of the multitude of reruns during the week. (I am currently watching too much TV). I can't wait to get financially together (maybe sometime next year, but at least something will be in direct deposit by November) to start exploring the Korean BBQ in the neighborhood, as well as the Carry OK as it is pronounced by my Korean friends (Kareoke) and other shady bars and grocery stores in the neighborhood.

teacher math training

This week I am spending 5 days training at a local elementary school to learn to use the district wide math curriculum. I would say it is a bad sign when the facilitator rants about her family (they are all engineers, she is a teacher) and in a manner of speaking blames the patriarchy (or Malibu Stacy, "Math is hard!") for her career aberration. She goes on (after the other women in the class have an, I so agree the man is bringing us down bitch fest*) to talk about the allotted time for mathematics instruction (60 minutes). She makes sweepingly broad statements about emergency schools (schools where the kids are not passing tests and they government requires more intense programming) and explains that this particular curriculum recommends 15 more minutes of uninterrupted academic time for these schools or students that show the need for more intense instruction. She says, "So, what is that? .... (long pause)....90 minutes of instruction".
4 more days of this and crappy catering.

*I am a feminist; I just need these people to learn to run a professional program. There are many reasons why this is not one of them (not just an inability to add whole numbers). I just hope I don't need the credential credits so that I can collect a nice check for my 5 days of inanity and boredom.

all about me (the title of the wall paper bound book I made in 2nd grade)

I just moved to L.A. I am trying to be a teacher (just finished a degree and certification in a different state). I am getting married in October. I love wine. I like to cook and watch other people cook, (at home and on TV.), my fiancé is a composer, musician, film scorer, and generally just the nicest person ever, I am much more cynical, and not as talented. I read all the time. I like babies. I love to go to the beach, but I am obsessed with sunscreen (even so I still burn, just in odd patches that I miss), I tried to cut down on book reading while I was in graduate school and consequently got obsessed with blog reading when I was supposed to be writing papers. I really love good conversation, but I talk a lot so I may intimidate or annoy you but it is just in my excitement to get the words out. I am kind of computer geeky as far as my family is concerned but really I know nothing as far as the real world is concerned. Lucky me, the (elementary) education world is as clueless as my family so I am still a girl genius on the Microsoft Word. I am currently watching Iron Chef America (which totally sucks compared to the original) and the secret ingredient is puff pastry, this is an incredibly lame secret ingredient because everything tastes fantastic in a buttery flaky puff pastry. Also I think the chefs know the "secret" ahead of time and that is pretty lame. I went to college (undergrad) for biology and got many bad grades and then completed an art degree (in only four years yay me!) Ultimately this did not make me competitively employable. Lucky for me I could type and alphabetize and I spent about 4 years as a very educated secretary (ahem, adminstrative assistant/office/sales manager--doesn't it make you feel better to have the word manager in your title? no.) I made the most money doing grunt filing work at a pharmaceutical company. I got many paper cuts and lost many brain cells to alcohol and boredom. Eventually I decided I should work at something more worthwhile that didn't make my soul hurt with the uselessness of it all. I still paint (sometimes). I don't do ceramics or sculpture any longer because I don't have the space or money. It is way past my bedtime. This should all stay true for a while so I won't have to update (I don't think) other than to change the word fiancé to husband. This makes me happy. I hate the word fiancé (maybe the dingo ate your fiancé!) Wish me luck this fall 13 small 5 and 6 year olds may crush my will to live.

the weekend debriefing

I feel like I should do a boring weekend recap. Partly because I have been posting pretty regularly and partly because I am on the "left" coast. (a quote from one of Michael's many high school friends) and I feel that I should try to keep in touch with any east (or right) coast friends that read this.

So, the obligatory bullet point weekend retrospective:

Friday afternoon

• ADR work for some random crime movie (this entails doing silly voice overs for crowd scenes of movies to sound like the crowd) Hooked up through Michael's dad's childhood friend (said in a Long Island, New York Italian accent "from da neighborhood") received checks (woohoo! not quite as poor)[I don't know what ADR stands for, though Michael tells me the R stands for Recording and I told him I thought the A stood for Audio, and he said no)
  
• Dinner with friends-lots of yummy food, an apartment that is gorgeously decorated, and a glass of red wine unceremoniously dumped on my linen beach pants (picture this: me and a good looking young man, a camera comes out and someone wants a picture of us we move together and he moves to swiftly run his fingers through his hair, swings his arm around abruptly and slams the bottom of my wine glass, the glass goes flying into the air--along with its newly poured contents all over the apartment (and my pants) with itty bitty shards of broken glass. Lucky me, these people are so cool there was a quick clean up, and a pair of drawstring replacement pants, as well as a new drink. Yay!)

Saturday

• I am lazy; Michael goes to a recording session.
  
• We both attend a children's community theatre production of Annie! (doesn't it deserve the exclamation point, just like E!)
• Go out for Mexican food, and a show break down (synopsis: cute kids, glad we went to see the one we know, Daddy Gaybucks may have some actual talent if he can lose the sibilant S)

Sunday

• I am still lazy; Michael goes to another recording session.
• Grocery shopping, laundry, bill paying
  
• cable television (including the movie The United States of Leland--quite intense, lots of names)
  
• preparation for tomorrow: lunch making, mapquesting, paperwork preparation

In complete retrospect:
Oh, my, god, Sunday was boring, why did I even include it?
I am obsessed with commas and parentheses (am I not?)
I need to learn how to make stories like the wine incident sound funnier (I mean it isn't often you go home from a dinner party wearing another man's pants.)

I finished a really good book A Child in Time, by Ian McEwan
I really didn't want to start this book because my stress was begging for a Devil Wears Prada, type of cushy girl reading. Instead I got desperate and ploughed on through as is typical for me when I am short on reading materials. (of course my copy is from the library)

Here is my favorite quote:

"To have a destination, a place where you were expected, a shred of identity, was such a relief after a month of game shows and Scotch. To show his pass to the familiar taciturn guard, to saunter across the marble hall among well-dressed, self-important people, to penetrate deep into the building, knowing without giving the matter a thought which staircases and corridors to take, to arrive at just the room and make small talk with colleagues, to sip coffee from the plastic cups bearing the ministry's stamp, bought from a machine in the corridor that dispensed onion soup down the same nozzle -- it was for little repetitions like these that people kept their jobs, however dull. It was all Stephen could do to refrain from bursting into song."(p. 155)

In one paragraph, my life, the last month full of television and wine versus the previous years of alarm clocks and office work, summed up. I can't wait to be back to the bored me that knows how to get places and who will be there when I arrive. Then I can add my own drama through weekend trips around the city or out of town.

picture pages picture pages

Here are more pictures.

First my new apartment
with my itty bitty kitchen
Check out the photo set here

Next some snaps of the dress

and me taking ridiculous pictures of myself in it.
See more here,
because I am sure you need multiple blurry pictures of a fluffy (off) white dress.

road trip photos

I uploaded pictures to flickr of our 5 day trip across the U.S. from Eastern Pennsylvania to Los Angeles. They are in a set called driving cross country.



Get excited for lots and lots of highway pictures, lots and lots of pictures of clouds from the passenger window. Wow, in one boring stroke I bring back the vacation style slide show which I know only from sitcoms and that one episode of the Simpsons.

evil things, good things

I just got off the phone with the certificated personnel HR lady. She now informs me (not really a surprise but irritating nonetheless) that she doesn't expect to hear from the state for 3-4 weeks. Hmm, that would be after school starts, and after all my training and orientation. Oh, she has new information...if it doesn't go through I can reapply for an emergency certification or for a one year certification, but they like to wait to hear about the full on certification first. Good of her to tell me this now. Then she says the contract will only be for one year (at this point does she think I care, whether it is for one year or ten, I just want the paycheck and the stability). I am taking this to mean that no matter what the first outcome, I will have a job (just not an ongoing contract). I will also take this to mean that when they deny my cool person certification I will have to go get another money order for $55 and try to get another kind of not as cool person certificate. She didn't say that, I just believe that is what will occur. I would love to be able to have one conversation that involves all the required information and not some half-assed version.

the good things?
I also just got off the phone with my former landlord, who apologized repeatedly and told me he is putting my security deposit in the mail tomorrow. This was fine with me, because now I know it is coming and it is coming to my new address.

I started a blog at blogsome under the same name. I think I might move over there because it looks like an easy way to categorize posts. I'll have to see how lazy I am about actually setting it up. You should check it out if you are interested in a banner that has cute puppies. Other than that there is not much going on over there.

Are you watching Project Runway tonight? Do you hope neck tattoo leaves just so you don't have to look at his neck tattoo any longer? Do you have a fun group of people that you watch with or do you have your own version of Michael who will be falling asleep on the aforementioned comfy IKEA chair when he is not to busy making fun of my taste in reality television. If it were up to him we would be watching World Poker Tournament all the time.

thoughts on L.A.

There is something in the water that makes all dogs purse sized. (or punt sized)

the healthy and creative pact

Michael has proposed (starting yesterday) that we each try to do one healthy thing and one creative thing each day. Similar to New Year's resolutions that I fail to keep or even to make for that matter-- we seek to better ourselves*(I hear this in a snooty accent)--or at least look pretty good for the wedding and not go crazy from working all the time and never doing anything for ourselves. The idea is a good one because it is far to easy for me to fall into patterns of work and school that involve breaks in the evening only to eat a bag of chips drink a couple glasses of wine and start all over the next day. Barring gifts for friends I haven't really painted throughout the time I was in graduate school, so the proposed creative/healthy streak is Michael's effort to get me back in gear and not let himself fall into an all work all the time routine with schoolwork. Examples of our healthy and creative things are easy to think up, but of course much harder to actually get my butt off the comfy IKEA chair to do. One day for me might include playing with some watercolors and going on a long walk, for Michael it might be nightly push-ups and sketching out a piece of music that is not for school. I am immediately behind one day because I did crunches and push ups yesterday but no truly creative thing. Though my lazy procrastinating self is already cheating the pact by thinking of things I did that could fit into the creative part. I printed all the wedding invitations and double checked the envelopes, I made a quick chicken stir fry for dinner...that's creative!, how about if I floss tonight?, that's healthy right? But truthfully the creative and healthy things need to be separate from the daily things. So Michael can't count his walk to the bus stop and I can't count cooking because we do these things every day. Instead our creative and healthy things need to be more intentional and more suited to our creative outlets musical and artistic and become more physically active. So today I prepped a canvas (that's the start to something creative) and maybe later I will do some yoga stretches.