Author Archives: Dantzel
Where’s my Shape Up Saturday?
No post again this week, folks. Lately I only have time for blogging OR writing stories. I’ve got to pick one for a while. I’m hoping that after the middle of December I’ll have more time to devote to writing in general, but until then all my posts will need to be ones that don’t require oodles of research and carefully inserted photos and videos, which is how I’d prefer to do the Shape Up Saturdays. So until then, I’m putting Shape Up Saturday on indefinite hiatus and will be writing less stress-inducing posts.
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Cook something today, so I have time to write tomorrow… and the day after…
I’m feeling quite accomplished and homemakey tonight. I just made a HUGE pot of potato and kale soup and portioned it and labeled it and put most of it in the freezer. It’s joining several containers of sweet pork as well as vegetable soup. I also have a pot of pinto beans and a pot of black beans soaking, ready to be boiled tomorrow and also go into the freezer for future projects (like tasty, tasty sweet pork burritos).
I’m doing this because I’m determined to 1) have more time to write instead of feeling concerned about not having dinner ready, and 2) to be prepared for the near future when I’ll need to be on an even tighter budget. I feel the need to get the hang of cooking on a budget NOW when mistakes can be financially forgotten easier.
Did you know that a dry bag of beans costs .88 and makes 4x the portion of a can of beans, which costs around 1.10? Yes, it takes some prior planning, but I’ve make some incredibly savory pinto beans with just a little bacon added and it tastes better than any can of beans I’ve ever eaten.
Beans also go great in burritos with the sweet pork I made yesterday. Mmm…
But for now, the biggest bonus (besides cooking with fresh ingredients which is AMAZING and way healthier) is giving myself more time to write.
You may have noticed (or not, I understand if you don’t hang on my every word… yet) that my Shape Up Saturdays aren’t arriving each Saturday. That’s because I can’t keep up with all the demands on my time right now AND present a well-explained post for each body issue I’d like to cover. I’ve considered just posting a picture or short video of one pose or exercise to try each week. Would this be helpful? You tell me in the comments and help me decide where to take my Shape Up Saturdays from here.
In the meantime… I’m off to take a few minutes to write.
Shape Up Saturday: Ow! My back!
To begin, I’ve already seen so many people with lower back pain that I believe this week’s exercises won’t work for everyone at any given moment. Like those exercises I’ve picked in my previous posts, these are some of the safest exercises/stretches I can offer, BUT I can’t emphasize enough that it’s important that you know your body and listen to it. Developing an awareness of how you hold your body and why can go a long way.
So, you know. Consult your doctor and all that, especially you people with herniated disks and stuff. A lot of times you can still do these exercises, but every situation is different.
With that out of the way, let’s point out – again – that posture plays an enormous role in how much tension you carry in your shoulders, neck, and back. So take a look at this photo and see which one best represents what your posture looks like on a regular basis:
Be honest with yourself – which way to do you stand?
Correcting your posture (using gently engaged core muscles) will save you from a lot of discomfort.
So, assuming that you’re experiencing an uncomfortably tight lower back, but your spine is otherwise healthy, here’s a gentle stretch that feels lovely, particularly after standing for a long period of time:
Notice that my back is relaxed here – the goal is not to touch the toes, but to stretch the sides and the back. This may extend the stretch into the hips a bit.
Another pose that may gently stretch and release the back is Child’s Pose. Your knees hurt when you bend them like I am, you say? Then roll up a small blanket and place it between your hips and your heels.
Child’s pose.
Modified child’s pose – see which one feels better, and do that one.
Often gently rocking the pelvis forward and back (using the abdominals, not pushing with the feet or squeezing the rear) can remind the back to relax. It’s also a great way to practice correct posture. In this first picture I’m arching (I know my clothes make it hard to tell the difference) and in the second I’ve pulled the front of my hipbones up, which aligns my spine without much effort involved.
Arched lower back – my spine is not happy in this uncomfortable position.
Abdominals gently engaging to create a comfortable neutral spine.
From that neutral spine you can also roll up into a Bridge, trying to lift off one vertebrae at a time, and then slowly lower back to the ground the same way. If you care about breathing (and if you’re reading this, you’re alive and I assume therefore that you care a great deal about breathing), you inhale to prepare, exhale while rolling up, inhale at the top (zipping the abdominals together), and exhale while rollling down.
From neutral spine continue rolling all the way up to a Bridge – notice my ribcage isn’t pushing up.
Here is Bridge in its 6 second glory: https://vine.co/v/hppbqjBV5hY and https://vine.co/v/hppb9E7TYgj. Why are the clips sideways? Because my husband accidentally filmed them that way, and I let it go this time… this time.
Gentle spine ‘twisting’, such as the Mermaid (or Merman, of course) I am demonstrating below can also help relieve tightness in the back. Keep the ankles and knees gently drawn together as you lay there. Notice my face is turned away from my knees – this increases the stretch. I’m also -gently!- keeping both shoulders on the ground. If you can’t keep the shoulders on the ground just yet, that’s okay! It will come, grasshopper.
Another incarnation of Mermaid – ahhhhh. So nice.
The last exercise I’ll offer for strengthening the back is Locust. While lying on your stomach, forehead resting on the ground and palms facing the ceiling, engage the abdominals so you feel like you’re ‘lifting’ them away from the ground. Lengthen the legs and arms behind you and then lift them off the floor while lengthening and lifting the head forward. (It is key that your body works together as a unit here.) Take a few breaths here, and then lower the body and rest in Child’s Pose, like I demonstrated at the beginning of this post (you always want to round the back after arching it).
And here is Locust, if we’re talking yoga. Flight if we’re talking Pilates, and planking if we’re talking pop culture.
And there it is for today. This only begins to get into exercises for the back, but I can only crack this can of worms open so far before I end up writing “Your Back and You: A Promising Relationship” and ignore all my fiction writing, which would make me sad. That’s not my book to write.
Let me know which exercises worked best for you!
Shape Up Saturday: Mermaids – and why we should all love them
My apologies for the break in Shape Up Saturday posts. Saturdays seemed to get a little crazy there, and somehow I kept delaying videoing these simple exercises on Vine. But I’m back on it, and today’s post is short and sweet.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years of teaching and observing is that the universally relaxing stretch in Pilates seems to be the Mermaid (or Merman. Take your pick. It’s still the same exercise.), which is also known as Side Stretch.
This stretch is fantastic because it has so many variations. I use it in class on ALL of the equipment, and it can be done sitting or standing. You may have seen it show up in yoga as well. I love this stretch because it releases endorphins, stretches and strengthens the waist, and is just a great, basic way to get people to breathe and relax.
The basic movement, whether you’re sitting or standing, is bending your trunk sideways, exhaling as you bend and inhaling as you lift back up to the top. Here I am doing Mermaid on my kitchen chair:
Notice I’m lifting my opposite arm over my head. Doing Mermaid without lifting your arm is okay… I guess… but I get way more out of it when I create that long arcing curve from my hip to the tips of my fingers. My opposite hand doesn’t HAVE to cross over the body to hold onto the back of the chair like that, but it’s a nice basic way to help you keep your body and balance stable.
In case you want to impress all your friends with your sweet moves and there ISN’T a chair available, you can do it standing. (In yoga this has been called Crescent Moon). You can use the same breathing.
Swaying with the breeze and it feels so nice.
So we’ll leave it at that for today. I still need to do a quick report of FenCon, which was two weeks ago and gloriously successful in the baby-toting realm, so I’ll be posting that in a day or two.
Tell me how Mermaid (or Merman, no judging!) feels for you! Next week I’m planning to give a few tips on relieving back pain, but I’d love to hear what else you’d like me to cover.
Blabbing about WorldCon 2013
So WorldCon happened four weeks ago in San Antonio, and I’m just now blogging about it. (Life with a baby makes for good excuses.) It had its frustrating moments, but overall it was still fantastic. I didn’t have a novel ready to talk about so I knew I was going simply to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones. Strangely, that helped decrease the pressure when meeting anyone.
So I left for San Antonio Thursday morning after teaching a couple of private Pilates lessons, and I’ve got to say, Roslin was a total champ. I fed her right before we got on the road, and she slept for all 3 hours of driving time, only waking up just before we got to the hotel. We arrived a little after 2PM, which gave me time to check into the hotel and pick up my WorldCon badge before picking up my aunt from the airport. (My aunt had graciously offered to come watch Roslin for the weekend so I could attend more of WorldCon. She didn’t have to come spend her weekend in a hotel with my daughter at all, and I’m thankful she came.)
In line at WorldCon Registration.
So we entered the convention center briefly, where Roz was quite sweet towards the registration volunteers. (By the way, the volunteers were very kind and helpful, and I give all of them major props for helping out!) Then we ran back to the car and went to pick up my aunt from the airport. Her flight was delayed by almost an hour but she showed up eventually, and we picked up fresh fruits and vegetables for her to eat over the weekend from HEB.
By the time all that was done, it was time for dinner. It took a bit to arrange, but me, Roz, my aunt, and my friends Megan and Gama went to one of the Mexican restaurants down on the Riverwalk. It was pretty tasty – I do love shrimp fajitas.
My aunt and Roz went back to the hotel room, and I met up with some friends from the Writers of the Future forum, and we had dessert at Denny’s. It was great talking to everyone in person! I’d met half of the group in person at conventions last year, and it was great to meet even more of my online friends in the flesh.
After much conversation, a few of us visited the room parties on the party floor – I think they were all bid parties. Most of them had died down by the time we arrived, but we still had a good time chatting.
As you can see, Helsinki would have been an awesome host for WorldCon 2015.
When we made our way down to the bar, we met up with other friends. Lou Anders stopped by and we had a good chat about his upcoming children’s series, as well as some of the books that Pyr has or will be publishing.
And then it was time to crash.
Friday morning was the Codex breakfast, and I got to meet even more online friends in person. Roz wasn’t feeling super awesome – she was running a slight fever, among other things, and so she wasn’t her usual sunny self. Over the wailing, though, I managed to have a few conversations, and no one seemed terribly annoyed.
I managed to attend the Creating Anthologies panel, Wesley Chu’s reading, and the Writers of the Future panel. Megan and I were determined to go enjoy the Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chao, and I’d like to think we succeeded. We ate the heck out of that place. (But what Brazilian steakhouse doesn’t serve glazed pineapple? This one, apparently.)
A large portion of Friday night’s party time was spent at the Writers of the Future party, which I helped host, and it was a blast.
I also got some time in at the Tor party, and finished up chatting at the bar.
Let me just emphasize how many sodas and waters I had this weekend. I don’t drink, and it is definitely cheaper that way. Apparently it’s just not worth it to bartenders to charge for a Sprite. Can someone explain that to me? I’d get my wallet out to pay, and they’d tell me to not worry about it. Not at the hotel bar, of course, but at Ernie’s Bar.
On Saturday I attempted to sit in on the Wiring the Brain presentation, but a few minutes in Roz decided that now would be a good time to create a ruckus, and continued doing so until I gave up trying to sneak back into the room and just grabbed all our stuff and sat outside. She recovered by Dave Farland/Wolverton’s reading, and along with several other friends we had lunch with Dave, which was really fun. I’ve been waiting for years to have a chance to chat with him. We booked it back to make it to our Kaffeeklatsch with Patrick and Teresa Nielson Hayden, and then it was time for breakfast/dinner at Denny’sĀ and more parties!
Say hello to my steampunk baby.
While chatting at the Baen party, Bud Sparhawk sparked a new short story idea for me and I need to make sure I finish it in the next couple of weeks so he doesn’t write it instead. š
Sunday I made it to the Literary Beer with Ellen Datlow, and that was all. Sunday was a hard day, especially since I got some kind of food poisoning during dinner, which began to take effect around 10 or 11 PM (though up until then chatting at the bar with writers like Myke Cole, Carrie Vaughn, Brian McClellan, Kevin Hearne, Gail Carriger was really, really fun), I struggled to enjoy the night since this was the last chance to chat with so many great authors (and the occasional editor/agent/assistant/fan/etc), but I gave up completely at 12:30. It just wasn’t happening.
I did, however, manage to steal some cuddle time with Ken Liu’s Hugo.
My second cousin once removed, who happens to live in San Antonio, offered to give my aunt a ride to the airport Monday morning, which gave me plenty of time to miserably lie in bed. I eventually checked out of the hotel and made it to Jo Walton’s reading, which was as lovely as her reading at ConDFW. Her upcoming novel (with Tor) sounds fantastic, and I can’t wait to read it when it comes out.
Meeting up with Jo again, one of the loveliest people in the world
On my way out of the convention center I met up with Jeremiah, Tina, Marina, Andrea, Martin, and Austin one last time and we snapped a quick Writers of the Future forum picture:
Tina, Marina, me, Roz, Andrea, Austin, and Martin
And then I drove home, still feeling crummy, with this sweet scene in the backseat:
Cooing and reading herself to sleep.
So there’s my very long update. (I didn’t even begin to name all the amazing people at the convention but this post is far too long as it is.) I’m glad we went, but I’m not entirely sad that I’m not going to London next year. For how difficult it was balancing time with a 3 month old, I’m not sure that running around with a louder, larger, more mobile 15 month old would be any easier. We’ll save our terrorizing for local cons, and hopefully be ready for Spokane in 2015.
Long days (and nights) in the Cherry household
So Roz is growing up lovely and fine, but it’s a bit disheartening that she went from sleeping almost through the night – usually 4-6 hours between feedings – to every 2 hours. I feel a bit betrayed by all my friends-who-are-also-parents.
“Once they start sleeping through the night, it gets so much easier.”
Does it? Does it? Because the last couple weeks have not been all that easy.
But it’s fine. I am, as they say, as healthy as an ox, and my ‘schedule’ for sleeping (or doing just about anything besides my laid-in-stone commitments) is about as well formed as the scribblings of a toddler. So I can deal for quite a while with sleep deprivation before I start hallucinating.
My other big surprise of the last couple weeks is that Roz has developed an extreme need for bouncing. I have discovered, after about a week and a half of wondering where the screaming banshee came from, that if my baby is upset and it’s not that she’s hungry, it’s that she wants to bounce. Or have her legs pushed up to her chest repeatedly.
So with the crazy nighttime feedings and the bouncing, my baby is asking for way more attention than a couple of weeks ago. Lest I deprive her of attention (and teach her that Mommy has more interesting, important things to do – like staring at a bright white screen – rather than play), I’ve spent a great deal of time bouncing and jiggling my child. We’re achieving relative peace in the house once more, though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she changes again. And again. She can roll from her tummy to her back (though only occasionally, as Tummy Time is akin to torture), so the Potted Plant stage of infancy is almost over.
Alas.
So the writing isn’t streaming out of me right now in great floods, but I feel like I have more ideas to work on. I find myself developing and working on several short stories, as well as continue work on The Novel.
While it’s certainly never much at a time – the biggest chunk I’ve written in a single day lately was about 1000 words, while many other days it’s between zero and 200 words – it’s still creeping along, and all the ideas I’m working on make writing that much better when I actually do get time.
And progress is still progress, so I’ll take it.
Dantzel Cherry 