Ten Year Anniversary

Sitting here on the couch after a long day's work Jordan and I just randomly realized that we missed our 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY yesterday! hahaha, that has never happened to us. Just sitting her laughing about it and feeling a little bummed. We'll celebrate later on this week or month. Happy Ten Years to my Best Friend.

Buche de Noel

Sur La Table Christmas Party last night. I made a Buche de Noel for the first time [click the photos to see them large] Chocolate Genoise (cake) with Bailey's, and mascarpone, coconut, Malibu Rum filling with meringue mushrooms. After un-rolling it to fill, it fell apart on me! So Jordan made frosting and frosted it for me while I was at work. What a guy.
Our store manager handed out $1,000 in prizes and I got this cloche (I sound like I'm speaking Klingon when I say that). There was a ton of food because it's Sur La Table! Two different kinds of mac n' cheese, feta sandwiches, salad, another gorgeous Buche, canelle, the list goes on. I only wish I got a picture of it all. Jordan took these, I was too distracted trying to get it all in my mouth!

Up early this morning kids

Long story short, I rushed to the SFSU campus early this morning with about 5 hrs sleep under my belt. How could I be frustrated or flustered when I get to drive by this beautiful bay on my way to school and look out onto the horizon? This must be how people make the commute each day. I didn't take these photos b/c I don't have one of them new fangled iPhones like the kids these days,and I also want to live. Here are some sunrise pics of the bay bridge to show you what I mean.[you can click on them for a larger view]
Anywho, I got to school, got a primo parking spot [rare], walked across campus in the bone chilling, face numbing winter air, and arrived to find that I actually didn't need to be there until 10! I could have complained butwas just so relieved I got every single class I wanted...pheww. The woman at the desk at the health center today asked what my major was and gave me a big time congratulations saying "Wow, it's practically impossible to get into the SFSU program!" Feels pretty good, I still Sort of can't believe it's happening. Well, happy Friday morning.

Somatics- Nerding out a bit, but only cuz I love you

I often have a good amount I want to share, yet I know not everyone is always in the mood to listen. So blog I go. :)
I've read a book for my Holistic Health class on Somatics (among others)
and I think the last chapter was really great. I pieced together a few quotes I wish everyone could see. The way we expect to "get old" and be in pain is often nothing more than diseases of adaptation from our life struggles and old injuries. We are meant to enjoy each age of our lives, and growing into our best selves. If you care to read, here it is.

"In our worship of youth, and in our frantic scramble to falsify our age, we have blindly ignored a growing number of discoveries that can make life and aging a continuing process of growth, achievement, satisfaction, and pleasure. To despise the fact of aging is not only to despise life but to betray a pitiful ignorance of the nature of life...youth is a state to be put behind us as we grow [and yearn to be] taller and deeper and fuller...it is by losing this yearning that we forget the first principles of living and begin to worship a false and superficial image of youthfulness...Not to expect to grow is to misunderstand what it means to be human....We must reeducate ourselves to the full possibilities contained in the entire human life span...Life is ever redemptive and rejuvenating...We must make our future what we want it to be. That is what human freedom is for." -Thomas Hanna "Somatics"

This book is about SMA (sensory motor amnesia), which is really just a reversible condition and a way of explaining that what we as a culture attribute to "getting old" can actually be subconscious over-contracting of muscles over years of time. At the point of SMA, we actually don't know we're doing this, and have temporarily lost voluntary control of these muscles.
Since muscles are not visible in x-rays, most of the time the doctors diagnose many people with arthritis, scoliosis, compression of disks, one leg longer, simple chronic neck and back pain, impotence, shallow breathing, elderly people hunched over, or the "archer's back", even crows feet etc. When really, we have just made habitual "alarm responses" through muscle contractions over time that eventually stick with us and/or have learned to overcompensate for an old injury, either way changing our walk, and functioning. Rarely is it a structural problem, unless the person has been in a serious accident, but often functional problems of life that are preventable and reversible.
There are easy exercises in the back of the book that demonstrate how to help prevent and undo any problems, and it is never too late and they improve your overall quality of life, no matter what age. We have done quite a few in class and the results amazed me.


Here's his website: www.somaticsed.com

Busted Cam, more to come, adventures in the works!

So just when I started my blog, our digital camera took a turn for the worst. You could say the battery is in anaphylactic shock! wha happon'!??
There's so much I want to share! Early Thanksgiving with mom and dad, Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving with in-laws. We even had the gnarliest Mexican Train marathon pictures! So bummed. I'll get a new one yet. Look forward to some christmas-y blogs, and nursing school preparation blogs sometime in the future!
Also, my amazing brother (not his real mustache in pic, hehe) has recently accepted a job as Fish and Game Warden in Southern California, and will be in training for the next 6-7 months in Chico, living in Paradise with his bride, literally! I'm so excited that we are both on these fantastic career/life journeys at the same time. I want to visit home in Fresno more, especially since we both have flown the nest! I miss our families so much. Here is a pic of my sweet Grandma when she came with my Mom all the way to to the bay to see me a few months ago, one out of many loves I miss terribly!
It's homemade Pizza and sci-fi night tonight in the Sobolew household. I wish you all a lovely Saturday night!

The music I love

Albums that have been on my playlist Lately: :)

Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica
The Black Keys - Brothers
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Murder City Devils - In Name and Blood
Florence and the machine - Lungs
Misfits- Static Age
Weezer - Blue Album
Cake - Fashion Nugget

I feel like making someone a mixed tape! remember those?! :)
Happy Thanksgiving Eve... cooking to these tunes at this very moment

There aren't many blues a stroll around Lake Merritt at dusk can't cure. Especially with your favorite person whose name rhymes with shmordan. Something to do with the miles of open water that really calms the soul, and of course the snoozing duckies! DUCKIES! We live about a block away from this historic place, and try to take advantage as often as we can.

Doggiieess

Every weekend Sur La Table is filled to the brim with Shiz Tzus, Giant Schnauzers, Mini Schnauzers (scotties!), Weenie Dogs, Bernese Mountain Dogs, you name it...it's basically Dogsneyland for Emily.
I tried to take a picture of my favorite dog today, a brindle colored (looks like leopard or cheetah) French Bulldog! UGH, so damned adorable and snuggly; he felt like velvet! My camera was unsuccessful, He looked like this though, and even more "leopardy."
It's so torturous because I am low on Dog! I must have more Dog, STAT.

books books books!!

Well as I walked in the door from work I was thrilled to see two big packages, some of my books arrived! It's like my birthday or something. To me, it's shows promise that tonight will complete Emily's vision of "real magical awesome hanging out time" [explanation later]. These two arrived today.

The rest of the books I ordered (that I anxiously await!!):
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (includes whole series)
The Alchemist
World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Driving Over Lemons
Random Kinds of Factness: 1001 absolutely true tidbits about everything
Happy Birthday or Whatever
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things
Rumored to Exist

So Lately I've been realizing how much sitting in front of the tv drains me. Coming home exhausted , only to come home and sink into the orange couch and become an all out zombie.
It used to be that I would have to try and "quit tv" (it never lasted), and now It's like, "I must get away!" Don't get me wrong, I love me some X-files on Netflix, LOST (I'm obsessed with Kate, can I be her plz? thanks), Always Sunny, Parks & Rec, Fringe, documentaries and crime/mystery shows,...love. it's all great and good.
But especially after my holistic health class, getting more in touch with connecting soul with body, and how much our culture has evolved in the past hundred years it leaves me aching to get back to something closer to how we are truly made to live. I don't want to watch tv as much anymore, or spend hours surfing the interwebs, I want to experience real life; real people, real time, face time.
As a result I've really had a hankering to indulge myself in some quality books recently! I got on Amazon the other day and ordered about a dozen books, I'm so excited! Yet doesn't it feel a little unnatural to spend money, then have to WAIT for your items? I paid, I want them now!
Well, Anyway I have this desire to sit around in candlelight, or a fire and play cards, backgammon, chess, mexican train, read books, listen to music and drink tea until a pass out to sleep. Isn't it a cleansing thought? It feels really free to me, and less polluted than that artificial light and boob tubes! My vision includes Jordan & I reading books together, I feel like it'd be nice! He seems to think it's a really funny and odd idea to read actually the same physical book at the same time, but I HAVE heard of people doing this! Haha, somehow I wonder if maybe it's better in my imagination than it actually would be, it's not unheard of.

For months, Jordan, poor guy, has been begging me for peanut butter cookies. I mean truly, any dull moment..."peanut butter cookies?" Tonight while he was at band practice I finally measured, mixed, smooshed and scooped to surprise him with some when he gets home (made these ones vegan), while blasting some feel good tunes of course.
One of the free-est (word?) places I find myself, is being creative in my little kitchen, singing, dancing and being an all out wild woman. Just give me a good album, some sugar and flour, bare feet and I'm just about the happiest woman-ten year old hybrid.