The thing about my power bill

I like to think of myself as a pretty environmentally aware person. I listen to a lot of NPR, I don’t litter, I recycle whenever possible, I turn off the lights when I leave a room, we have a Subaru (you know, ALL the tenets of an environmentalist) (not sure why "NPR listener" makes a difference, but I'm just going with it.) (I don't, however, own a Prius.) I may not be winning a prize anytime soon, but I try and be a good steward of the resources.

Which brings me to my power bill. In an effort to get people to conserve, every other month I get an extra page in my bill. It lists my account information and shows a terribly distressing graph of three categories of neighbors:

• Energy efficient neighbors (who get a green bar! They are amazing human beings.)
• Other neighbors (who get a blue bar. Not amazing, but still…in comparison.)
•  Me. (Blackish-grey bar. Basically, a piece of shit.)

I cannot tell you how hot and bothered I get by this energy shaming. I walk around my house and look for a hidden, giant, energy-hogging appliance. I unplug chargers and electric blankets. I worry that someone is siphoning our power in a secret, government-backed project to get humans on Mars. (OK, not really on the last one…but still.) Where is this usage coming from? What is wrong with me that I can’t be the green bar person, or at least the blue bar person? Why am I the 78^th person out of 100 in my neighborhood? How does this happen?

Maybe it’s a publicity stunt. Maybe the difference between the 2^nd and 78^th person out of 100 is less than .01%. I don’t know and my power company certainly isn’t going to be telling me any time soon.

The most important fact is that I can pay my damn bill. I might not like it, but I can pay it.

I talked with Amy about it a few weeks ago. She said her bill is the same, and she finds it every bit as bewildering. Together, we made a pact not to worry about our energy-shaming bills. I vowed to her that I will always dispose of this document in the least environmentally-friendly way possible, just to be spiteful. It would be fun to say that I will roll a blunt with it; fortunately, I’m not currently doing drugs, so that won’t happen. Maybe I’ll let Ben tear it into strips and burn it with a magnifying glass. I don’t know – I’m going to have to explore ways and means. Shredding is always an option. But I’m not going to let that piece of paper bother me anymore.

I am more than that blackish-grey line, dammit.

One week later.

I look back and think of how long I've felt on edge and I wonder. The past few years have been tough. A lot of big things happened, and a lot of little things happened, and they all affected me. I've felt like a top. I spun along happily and unhappily for a long time. I've felt wobbles - spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, socially - that set me off. I kept trying to self correct, to get back to spinning. For the most part, I was very successful, but I still felt those wobbles deeply. I think that this summer, for whatever reason, I finally just stopped spinning. It felt like I would never spin again. I couldn't even remember how to spin, and the thought of trying to pretend to the world that I was still spinning was one of the most frightening things I've ever encountered.

A few weeks ago I met with a therapist. It was supremely unhelpful. I'm sure that he was well-qualified and probably had a lot he could have done for me, but I wasn't impressed. After 45 minutes of talking over what had gotten me into his office in the first place, he looked at me and asked, "So, what do you want to do?" To say I was let down is an understatement. Isn't that what he was supposed to tell me? I mean, I know he can't tell me what to do, but some guidance would have been helpful. Armed with a few pages of recommended self-help books, I left.

However, that hour wasn't totally unhelpful. While talking, I realized that one of the things that has always kept me spinning has been by looking for approval. I can explain this best from the perspective of my time as a gymnast. To get along during a workout, the trick was to do everything as perfect as possible in order to stay out of trouble. Very little that I did went by unnoticed: my toes weren't pointed, I bent my legs, I didn't cast all the way to handstand, I held back on a tumbling pass, I didn't complete the twist, I fell off the beam, etc. When things were bad, coaches yelled and threatened and told me to get out of their faces, only to expect me to come back a few minutes later, confessing what I did wrong, and promising to do better. When things were good, I got praise and approval. There was some in-between with some coaches or events, but mostly it was all or nothing. Good or bad. And so I got used to reaching for approval from the outward things I did, to being rewarded when I followed the rules.

Of course, real life isn't the same. I don't always get praise for doing something well, or for following the rules. Doing outward things doesn't win other's love or approval. I know that. But sometimes I forget and I revert to that person. I have a hard time letting go. I like structure and rules and when I feel like they aren't being followed, I find it hard to keep spinning. 

I know that this part of my personality has contributed to getting me to where I was last week. I'm so glad to say that I'm feeling a lot better this week. After all of my bravery, I ended up talking with my doctor on Tuesday (after a truly awful night on Monday) and I'm now taking something for my anxiety. It's helping. My days are better, and my nights are getting there. I still have a very hard time turning off my brain. But I'm not as anxious about the lack of sleep, and that helps.

We spent Sunday night in Park City. It was such a nice way to finish off the summer. Although I still felt edgy at times, I enjoyed the time away. I'll admit I was super anxious about staying in a hotel room with insomnia. But it worked out. Life is hard. It's hard to spin. It's hard to spin for yourself and for others. But it's necessary. I have people who need me, and I'm grateful they do.

Edgy.

I’ve always been sort of proud of being edgy. I like having a little bit of rebellion in my heart; not enough that it gets me in trouble, but just enough that I feel like I’m not cookie-cutter.

But lately, my edginess has nothing to do with anything that can be viewed from the inside or outside as desirable. About a month ago, I was driving to work. It was Ben’s first day of school, and I’d just dropped him off at his friend’s house to walk to school. When Thomas was in elementary, this never would have happened. He would have wanted me there, and I would have made sure I was there. But Ben is a different kid, and so I dropped him off. We had also changed his school track from our second choice to our very last choice. He couldn’t be on the one with his friends, and so we picked the bottom-run choice so he could be with the kid across the street on his track. We had gone to Snowbird for a few nights the week before – our big “vacation” for the year. It was great – we hiked for hours, rode the trams and Peruvian lifts, the mountain coaster and Alpine slide to our heart’s content. It was a fun time, but it wasn’t the vacation we are used to. No beach running, in other words. No soul-soothing ocean time. (Not that it’s necessary to have a beach to have a good vacay, but this was the first time in 6 years that we didn’t go. Sigh.) In addition, I’d had a scary little episode on Saturday where I suddenly felt light headed and dizzy – like a drop on a roller coaster, minus the roller coaster. I was fine a little while later, but I didn't like the feeling and didn't know what to make of it.

As I said, I was driving to work. I thought I was handling the stress of the day quiet well, but suddenly I wasn’t. I had a moment just after I got on the freeway where I remembered that scary, light headed feeling from Saturday. Or maybe I actually felt the same feeling. But whatever it was, the actual feeling or the memory, it terrified me. I all of a sudden couldn’t keep myself in check. I pulled over for a few minutes and then talked myself back into traffic, but it was no good. I was making terrible choices, turning the radio up and down and trying to breathe and trying desperately hard to stay in control. I finally swerved to the inside of the freeway in a very wide, safe place, far from traffic. I sat there for almost an hour, trying to pull it together, trying to get my breathing under control, trying to muster the courage to pull into traffic.

I couldn’t do it. I found myself waiting for Shane to come and get me while a very nice Laotian police officer read his emails in his patrol car behind me, waiting it out with me until I had assistance. Shane came and was able to do what I couldn’t – get out of that terrible physical place. He drove me to an Instacare so I could see a doctor. I was terrified I was having a heart attack, or that something equally bad was happening inside my body. Because, after all, I’m edgy, remember? I don’t lose control. I don’t get scared easily and I always pull back into traffic. Hell, I’m the one who would come and get someone else from their stuck place on the freeway.

The doctor appointment was a disaster. I was exhausted from my time on the freeway, and when the doctor asked me “what kind of dizziness were you feeling” I just didn’t have the mental fortitude to answer his question. Slumped on the tiny exam room table, I told him I didn’t know. He sort of looked at Shane like – what the crap? If she can’t answer, who can? – but it was true: I just didn’t know. I didn’t know how to articulate the quality of my dizziness. And why would that matter? My ideal response would have been - I’m obviously dying, you idiot, and you want to know what the dizziness was like? I hate you.

And then he proceeded to tell me it was all in my head and that I wasn’t dying and that if I didn’t like his diagnosis, I could go to the emergency room (Hello $250 copay!) or get my head scanned at a clinic downtown.

I wanted to punch him in the face.

I still want to punch him in the face. But it’s for a different reason. I didn’t want to hear that it was anxiety and that I was otherwise fine. It’s not that I wanted something to be wrong with my heart – I just didn’t want it to be my head. Because hearts can have diagnoses on them that show what is wrong and might be fixed. Or I can take a pill. Or I was hoping for something that was body-oriented, because I don’t want to be that person who, well, can’t detect the difference between a heart attack and a panic attack.

So now I’m here, a month later. I’m still panicking. It’s changed. For the past week or so I have a really hard time going to sleep. I’ll fall asleep, but immediately jerk awake. I convince myself I can’t breathe. I convince myself that the tingling in my stomach means something is terrible happening or is going to happen. It’s consuming. I worry all day that I won’t sleep, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I take tiny little normal body sensations and make them into something direly wrong, all the while thinking – What is wrong with me? Where is my edge? Why am I suddenly terrified of feeling too full, or having heartburn or of drinking too much water? How can I run 6.5 miles with no problems and yet hyperventilate just lying in my bed?

Last night was better. Or at least an improvement over the previous nights. But I am so f-ing tired of thinking about it and worrying about it and talking about it. I was hungry and tired on my way to work, which sent me into a frenzy (but: I did make it to work. I drove safely all the way to work, talking to myself about silly and not-so-silly things, because if you are talking you are breathing somewhat normally and it’s harder to feel out of breath or light headed.)

I want my edge back. I want to fast forward my life out of this place I’m in. I have had great kindnesses – Shane is being very helpful and we’ve come up with a way for me to express my anxiety to him so I don’t feel like I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I got an excellent book recommendation that I’m hopeful will help. I have a therapist that I’ve talked to, and can go back to if I want. I can text or call my sisters and they are helpful and loving and encouraging. I also have my doctor (who recommended the therapist) who, if I wanted her to, would give me a prescription for an antidepressant (but I want to do it on my own until I find that I can’t. That may be wise or foolish – I don’t know. But I just don’t know if I want to take one.)

I wouldn’t wish this one anyone. If you’ve experienced anxiety and panic attacks, you have my empathy. If you haven’t, I hope that you never ever do.

If you have any advice or thoughts or tricks you can give me or you can just relate, I will be ever so grateful. In case you are wondering, the book I’m reading is called When Panic Attacks by David Burns. It is really good. He encourages you to write in the book, giving little quizzes and logs for moods. He is really intelligent, and the writing is good. It sort of feels like a self-help book, but thankfully leaves out all of the encouragement to “breathe deeply” that most of the other books on anxiety that I've read lately focus on. (I’m incredibly sick and tired of trying to breathe deeply. I think I’ve forgotten how, because now when I breathe deeply I associate it with panic. Fantastic. Just what I was hoping, I assure you.)

May and June 2015: A summary

I miss doing lists. I miss blogging. I miss writing. I should be able to solve this problem on my own, since I am the one who decides how I spend my time. Anyway.

May and June were busy months. They deserve lists. Wahoo for lists!

Places we went:

• Spokane. The first weekend in May, we went back up for Bloomsday. It was such a fun mini-vacation. We ate a lot of food, laughed with our friends, ran a great race, duped a fancy restaurant into giving us a free dessert, and made great memories. I'm sure you feel like you were there from that very specific description.

• Park City. Just for one night, the Sunday to Monday of Memorial Day. It was super fast, and we spent most of the time at the pool in the rain (gotta love Memorial Day in Utah! It ALWAYS rains.) but it was fun. I might be the only person ever who takes a sandwich maker on vacation with her. It didn't do any good, since we ended up at Taco Bell for breakfast (we all love sausage AM crunchwraps, and will do crazy things to obtain them.)

Places we ate:

• Buffalo Wild Wings. I am in love with the spicy Thai sauce, and the garlic parmasan (which is bizarre, because garlic is usually my natural enemy, but this sauce is sooo delicious.) I highly recommend the Buffalitos. I don't know why it took us so long to eat there.
• The Habit. Great burgers, and the best part: they will add avocado to almost anything. Be still my avocado-loving heart.
• Costa Vida (where I somehow ended up running into Lucy. Man, I love Lucy. And even better to see her unexpectedly, across a crowded room. Yay for running into friends!) 
• La Puente.  When Shane and I were dating, I hated La Puente. It is a Mexican restaurant on State Street that has been there forever, and I was always a fan of Los Hermanos in the UC which kept me from loving La Puente. But after living on the West Side, aka the Mexican-food-deprived-side of Salt Lake County, I fully appreciated our night out at La Puente. I keep trying to get my kids to go back there, but have been unsuccessful.
• Bombay House. I love me some Indian food, but no one else does. So I have to make a special trip to 3 different restaurants typically in order to have it for myself (the kids eat one place, Shane eats at another, and I get BH.) It is worth all the effort to have the deliciousness that is Chicken Coconut Kurma. 
• Zupas. I ate here with my dear mother-in-law on one visit, and again with my bestie Melanie in a very rushed but worth it lunch one afternoon.

New Business (a veiled Mad Men reference. Mad Men ended in May, a fact that I am still mourning.)

• Shane got a new-to-him car. We sold our Xterra after 11 years and bought a Subaru Legacy. It had some problems at first. By "problems" I mean it stalled ON THE WAY HOME which resulted in two weeks of repairs, paid for by the dealership, that included dropping the trasmission, new transmission computer, and another part I can never remember but we lovingly refer to as the "flux capacitor." While it was being repaired we drove around in a brand new Impreza. I drove it as much as I possibly could, which was fun (we put over 500 miles on it. Oops, sorry Mark Miller Subaru.)
• Pebble Greybeard Lovejoy. He is a Russian Blue kitten, and he is a pain in the ass. He is Ben's cat, and he is just like Ben. He is giving our cat Bucket a nervous breakdown, because she looks like his (Siamese) mother. He jumps out at her from behind corners. He attacks her tail. He acts EXACTLY like Ben acts with his older sibling. But he is sweet, sometimes. Like last night, when he crawled up on my chest and forced his way under the blanket. I had him on my chest, and Bucket on my lap, and it was a little bit like kitty heaven. Note: I have a private name for him, that I abbreviate to MLB. It stands for "mean little bastard." I giggle every time I say it. He loves to chase toys, his tail, Bucket, feathers, and pencils. Piles of folded laundry are an obstacle course for him, and he is never as happy as when he is attacking a rolled up pair of socks. (For approximately 2 minutes of me writing this, he was purring on my lap. And now he's watching me type. Can I get an "Awww!)

• A laptop. Which sounds fancy, but it isn't. Laptops are sort of disposable now, so I didn't want anything too fancy. My old one took 300 minutes just to bring up a browser, which may have been because of the fact that most of the storage was full of pictures. I was terrified it would crash before I moved 13 years worth of pictures. It didn't. The new laptop is adequate. It has a 10 key, which was pretty much my only requirement (I don't know how people have a laptop without one.)

Media that was enjoyed

• Hozier. I love this CD album with my whole heart. I can listen to it exclusively for hours.
• Florence and the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. I will always get excited for new Florence music. 
• Uprooted, by Naomi Novik, a new-to-me author. I just finished it last night, but carried it around with me for 3 weeks. Thomas is also reading her Temeraire series.
• My Real Children - I haven't finished it yet, because I could renew it and not the Novik book, but I will be finishing it shortly.
• Headspace - a meditation app that I have been using regularly. It it so helpful. When Amy and I were little, we shared a room. Our closet was always, always a disaster. We kept everything there and most of it was leftover books and papers and clothes and toys and records that we didn't need anymore, but couldn't get rid of. I feel like my emotional and mental closet has been overflowing for years with hoarded emotions, thought, feelings, and experiences that I just didn't have use for, but were crowding my judgement and thought patterns. I'm cleaning out my closet. I'm figuring out how to not take everything so personally, and not get trapped in my thoughts as much. Headspace has helped with this process.

Other stuff I don't want to forget:

• Thomas finished 8th grade and Ben finished 4th.
• We fed a baby bird for a week. It was doomed from the start, and he passed away sometime before yesterday morning. Sad. But my kids were great bird daddies for a few days.
• We watched Jurassic World on Father's Day.
• My kids finished Spring soccer. Thomas hadn't played on a team since he was in first grade (which mostly consisted of him pretending to be Spiderman, or a dinosaur. My how he's grown!) and so it was kind of a big thing for him to play. Ben is obsessed with soccer, so it's just the usual for him.
• I got new running shoes. After three weeks of hating them, I found some inserts that work really well, and now I love them. 
• I started walking once a week with my neighbor friend.
• Started to clean out my mom's house. It's sort of anticlimactic, since I've obsessed over it for years. (See "Headspace" entry above. Deep breaths.) We did manage to get a lot done in a few hours, so that was nice. But there are many more hours to be spent there, sigh.
• Went fishing with the kids at Daybreak Lake. It was hotter than crap, and I missed a lot of it because I was at my mom's house, but it was something different.
• I got 70,000 steps on my Fitbit in one week. I had to try really hard to get it. I almost made it the week before, but my Fitbit died in the afternoon on Saturday. Sad.
• Threw my back out for one terrible week. I didn't mess around this time and went to the doctor right away. He gave me prednisone, which I didn't take last time because steroids make me very bitchy and mean, but it was only 6 days, and they didn't seem to affect me as much. My back quickly got back into shape. I'm so glad. I think part of the reason it got better faster was that last time, we were going through the baby thing, which complicated it immensely.
• Had the first summer without Ragnar in five years. I missed it a lot. But, the weekend of the race was really hot, so maybe I didn't miss it that much. I could have joined my employer's team - they went through runners like wildfire! - but that was that weekend that my back was injured, and I wasn't invited until mid-May. It was hard to turn it down, especially since it would have been free, but in the end, it was the right thing to not participate. 

How were your May and June?

My dad's scarlet letter

There is nothing quite like the glint of fake jewelry soaring through the hot Nevada air toward their demise to cement a memory.

My dad was a baseball player. Actually, he was a man-of-all-sports, but baseball was his true love, the one that could have taken him to college and beyond, had the motivation been his and not just the talent. Raising four fairly girly daughters kept him from tossing the ball around in the back yard. Since girls didn't fit the definition of "ball-tosser-arounders," it's likely it simply never occured to him to attempt it. When grandsons finally showed up after six granddaughters, it didn't make a difference. He was out of practice, but some talents never leave us.

I wonder if he realized the irony that two of his best pitches, the ones that clearly demonstrated that even rusty, the man had an arm that was meant to throw, were fueled by defeat. Part of the events that had brought us to that moment are second hand; I had spent the night with my best friend at her mom's house in West Las Vegas, while my parents trolled the Strip. Sometime before I returned, but after their morning breakfast buffet of thinly sliced prime rib and sugary pastries, a desperate man approached them, jewelry in his hand, deceit in his heart. He was losing badly at the tables, and needed to shed some valuables to get back in the game. The  flash of gold, the promise of value beyond the price contained in the watch and the necklace, sunk deep into my dad's heart. And possibly my mom's too, as, in her own words, "I pulled out my hundred, too." I imagine the deal was over almost as fast as it began.

It was after that moment that time began to stand still. By the time I had rejoined them, doubt and regret had started to eat at my dad's heart. Both were emotions he knew well; doubt was always right behind all of his schemes to get something more from something less. The wooden duck decoy business. The reverse osmosis laundry ball. The myriad of real estate deals that never panned out. Oh, how he wanted to be a success. To finally edge away from his regret over his blue-collar lay off and his inability to provide for his family in the aftermath. What he didn't realize was that being laid off is generally more forgivable than spending your entire life afterward in a funk of desperate regret. 

They had already started to bicker as I climbed into the car at our rendezvous point. Dad was trying to convince himself and his wife that the item's imperfections implied that they had value. Mom was blaming him for his impetuousness. Both were dreading the inevitable. I don't remember much as we drove to the hotel where my uncle was a security guard to find a jeweler. I know there was a long walk through the casino, trays of necklaces with tiny tags, and expectations that were predictably dashed. The finality of the jeweler's eyepiece as it dropped back to his chest, swung a few times, then lay still.

It is impossible for me to leave Las Vegas without remembering. The air in the car was thick with blame and regret and guilt and shame. Words didn't help, nor were they easy to find. To keep talking about the event made it worse. Small talk was crowded out by past and present and future.

Just after you climb out of the valley of sin, the desert stretches north. Somewhere in the midst of all that nothingness, we suddenly stopped. I watched my dad climb from the car. The necklace and watch were ceremonially cast away, as far as my dad's once-golden arm could get them as his wife and daughter looked on. He hoped that by casting them away and then making a pact to never talk about the event again, it would be erased. The fingerprints would bake away in the sun. The rust that had already started to eat away at the necklace would be helped by the wind and rain. The watch would run out of time.

But the ache of that morning lives on. The attempt to erase acted like cement. Knowing my dad was trusting and too-hopeful and eager to get something for nothing became a rust that degraded my faith in him. Oh how I wish it hadn't. The glint of defeat that is my last visual memory of the jewelry was never erased by any subsequent success my dad could show me. He couldn't process it for himself, so I neither could I. I could neither side with him or against him, because to do either was to go against one of my parents, and that didn't feel right, even though it was the general way that things were played in our family.


How I wish I could tell him that I forgive him for being hopeful and eager. Assure him that those aren't bad qualities. Joke about the glints of flying gold to take away their power. What I understand now is that it was never about the loss of a few hundred dollars. Those few hours and cheap items became a glowing symbol of all the ways he failed those around him, instead of a moment of poor judgement.

He wore that necklace and watch, and all that they implied, on his heart until the day he died. Only three of us could actually see them, but I regret to say that almost everyone could feel them.

Review: Bikram Yoga Express Class.

I've been inconsistent with yoga this year. During the fall, I was able to attend more than one class a month, and I was starting to feel the benefits. So far in 2015, I've only been to a few classes. But, as they say, it is what it is.

The Bikram studio that I frequent started offering an express class - a 60 minute class instead of the traditional 90 minutes. I love to practice Bikram, but there are challenges. Eating has been a hard thing to figure out for me - I like to give myself 3 or so hours after a meal before I practice, and that is hard to do for a non-morning person. My time is limited (whose isn't?) so a typical  class can feel like a strain on my day. And, I tend to feel sleepy and a bit spacey after class. I'm not sure if it is the heat or the time of day that I take class (either morning or late afternoon) that causes this.These aren't things that keep me from practicing, just items that I have to manage on the days I practice.

I went to my first class last week, and it helped me with a lot of these issues. The mid-day class gave me enough time to have my morning with my kids and then do errands or chores once they were off to school. I could breakfast like normal and still had time to digest. Plus, I still have a bit of time after class if I need to finish up any projects or tasks.

During the class, I had a lot of trouble keeping my mind in the room. I had overheard two of the instructors talking about teaching an express class and how to best manage the time. I ingested too much of what the one instructor said about how they organize their classes. I wish I hadn't. It kept me from experiencing and trusting my instructor. I wanted to think I knew what was coming next (hello, control issues!), and so when I had to repeat certain poses that I had anticipated being singular, I felt mental anguish, especially the ones that I don't enjoy! I wished so much that I could quiet my brain and simply experience the great class my instructor was giving me. She is an instructor I know and enjoy, and I didn't like feeling distracted by my expectations.

I also learned about trust. My overly-anxious mind kept me watching the clock, wondering how we would finish on time. Part of it was curiosity, but most of it is related to my tendency to second guess others. This is an issue that bleeds into a lot of areas in my life. I want to get better at letting things happen, trusting others expertise, and quieting my anxieties.

We have been learning about mindfulness (which is really just an easier-to-swallow word for meditation) at work. It has has extended my knowledge and understanding of meditation and the effect that our thoughts and feelings about stress have on our lives. This class and my mindset was a good example for me of my bad habits. I'm trying to break the cycle of anxiety caused from anticipation and overthinking. My old habits keep me from being in the moment and more fully experiencing what I am doing.

The class itself was a whirlwind. Here are some thoughts:

•  I loved moving through the poses quickly. I didn't have time to dread either what I was doing, or what was coming next. 
• When it came time for Camel, I found it less difficult emotionally. We did two sets, and I did both with a sense of surprise that they came so fast, and that they were so much easier than normal. I almost didn't hate the pose. Almost!
• I liked that my feet didn't ache as much as they do in a 90 minute class. I get so distracted by them.
• I tried to be thoughtful in the poses that were singular. I know a few of my bad habits now, thanks to receiving corrections for things I do wrong in the back strengthening poses. I put extra effort into them, which helped me feel that I got just as much back from doing them once as I would have doing them twice.
• I left feeling every bit as challenged as I usually do, and just a bit less spent, which was very helpful to the rest of my day. I wasn't tired or groggy like I usually am, which my family appreciated.

I am sold on the express class. It is something I plan on incorporating into my weekly workout regimen. Also, the more I experience at Bikram West Jordan, the more I enjoy and appreciate the studio. Everyone is welcome and valued.  I hope that this class is successful and stays around permanently.

Book Review: My Name is Resolute

In January, the History Channel did a mini-series called Sons of Liberty. It was awesome. It was interesting to see the American Revolution from the perspective of Sam Adams (who I didn't realize was actually important, or a Patriot), John Hancock, John Adams, and Paul Revere. I liked that it told the story of Margaret Gage, the wife of the commanding British general, General Thomas Gage. Even though I knew America would win its independence, the show was effective at depicting the uncertainty of America winning its freedom.

My Name is Resolute by Nancy Turner was recommended by Amy one night when I was desperate for a good read. January and February were very dry months; I tried to read The Burgess Boys, The Boston Girl, First Frost, The First Bad Man, and The Miniaturist with no success. It was a great suggestion. Resolute is the daughter of a plantation owner in Jamaica. We learn early on about an undercurrent of tension in the family regarding a family acquaintance, Uncle Rafe. It's difficult to see whose side Uncle Rafe is on, and Resolute is clearly on the side of distrust. Shortly after being introduced to the main characters - Resolute, her sister Patience, brother August, and Uncle Rafe - Resolute and her family are captured by pirates and loaded on a ship for the Americas.

Resolute's life is full of adventure. She endures the horrors of being in a slave hold aboard the ship,  witnessing (without understanding) the nightly violations of her sister by the pirates (including our favorite uncle, Uncle Rafe), and being kept alive on hard tac and rum. In the midst of all of this, all she ever wants to do is get back to her mother, the only family member who didn't make it onto the ship. Her determination to go back home carries her through landing in the Americas, being sold as an indentured slave, and kidnapping by Indians. Miraculously, she is able to stay with her sister Patience in one way or another until, 7 years after their initial capture, Patience helps Resolute escape their life as captives in a convent in Montreal only to abandon her, alone and friendless, near Lexington, Massachusetts.

It is in Lexington that the story picks up. I loved watching the events that lead up to the Revolution through Resolute's experiences as a wife, mother, and weaver of fine linens and wools. The mentions of a baby Paul Revere, of John Hancock running goods to the colonies to avoid paying taxes, of illegal Redcoat searches of Resolute's home in attempts to find banned goods like wool, iron, and guns, told a bit of history and helped me to sympathize with the colonists and their dream of freedom from Crazy King George. It produced the same uncertainty I felt while watching Sons of Liberty. I was so glad I'd already met Margaret Gage and her special friend Dr. Joseph Warren. They were depicted as having an affair together in the show, but were just seen together in different scenes in the book, but I appreciated thinking I knew their unstated, but widely believed, subplot.

But mainly, I just loved Resolute. She wasn't a perfect character. She has uncommon good fortune, with a few generous benefactresses that were a bit of a stretch. After she grows up, the book details what happens to her, focusing on the story more than character building. But I didn't mind it; it was satisfying to just read a tale that didn't have to have a big reveal, or a surprise ending that required me to go back to look for clues. It ended in a mostly tidy way, but that's ok. The story brought to life so many real and vibrant characters, all with their own agendas. If you just want a long, satisfying, good story with excellent writing, character development, and a dose of accurate history to go along with it, I would recommend this book.