Kundalini, Pumpkins, and the Dreaded Subjunctive

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 8

There is nothing like the subjunctive to knock you off your pins when you are learning Spanish.  Just when I was feeling confident—maybe even a little bit cocky—about my ability to hold meetings and have conversations of the kind I did not imagine possible six months ago, Jorge, my Spanish teacher, trots out the subjunctive.  And Whamo!  I am left in the dust, taking five minutes to say, “I asked my husband to cook me some eggs this morning.”  I ask you, is it really necessary to make the construction so damn complicated?  I vaguely remember learning the subjunctive in Guatemala, more than 15 years ago.  My brain did not retain it.  What to do?  Truth is, I think I cheat a lot when it comes to verb tenses, and not just the subjunctive.  Perhaps I should just memorize all of the tenses of the most common 25 verbs and call it a day.  Sounds like a blast, no?

So that’s how my day started.  Then in the early evening I went to a yoga class.  I really needed to stretch.  I used to be very particular about what kind of yoga I did, but now I pretty much take what I can get, and go when I can.  I’ve done Iyengar, Anusara, Ashtanga, Dharma, restorative, Kripalu, and the all encompassing Hatha.  I don’t really care—just give me a good stretch.  My gym schedule said this was a Kundalini class, and honestly I could not remember if I’d ever been to one before.  So off I went.  Well.  We spent most of the class sitting or lying down, doing small repetitive movements and breathing rhythmically.  Oh, and some chanting.  I don’t mind a good chant, either.  In fact, my daughter C.C. came into the world with Krishna Das booming out of the delivery room boom box.  There’s nothing like a little satsang to give you a boost when you are feeling low.  But I also want to move my body, get the kinks out, stretch.  I did get a good lie-down from this class, and I felt relaxed afterwards.  In fact, I would have fallen asleep were it not for this strange whistling breathing thing everyone was doing.  But stretched?  Not so much.  I don’t think I will be returning.

It has been a long while since I baked—or really even cooked much of anything for that matter.  Alec is a fine and willing cook and, well, it’s just easier to let him whip up the dinner.  But I’m starting to miss it.  And with the weather turning cold, and my cupboard stocked with a supply of chocolate chips that came across the Atlantic with me earlier this week, I was moved to turn on the oven.  That and the fact that Alec cooked the lumpy green Murcia pumpkin we had used to adorn our threshold for Halloween for a gypsy stew a few days ago.  He pureed the leftovers for me, and I couldn’t let it go to waste.  So I whipped up a tasty pumpkin bread after dinner, with some chocolate chips thrown in to entice the young ones.  It felt good.  I think I need to get my butt back into the kitchen.