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Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you were all able to spend the day celebrating the moms in your life. I spent the day working on crocheted baby blankets for some of the future mothers in my life and getting my ass kicked at Pilates, so it was a pretty perfect day.

*Formatting update: Each Weekend Update will still be posted on Sunday, however, it will contain updates from the prior Sunday – Saturday vs. how it is currently: Monday – Sunday. You’ll still get the same coverage, but Sunday’s activities will be covered in the next update.

Pilates Review

Monday (May 5) : Reformer Flow 1.5 with Lorena

Happy Cinco De Mayo! To celebrate, Lorena had a Mexican themed class: playing a mix of Mariachi music, Mexican “serenados”, and Selena, while telling us the story of Cinco De Mayo as we did our flow. It was an interesting class and very informative! I was a little surprised by how easy this class was as it was a 1.5 at Pentagon City which is usually more like a 2 at Alexandria. It wasn’t bad, I just didn’t feel very challenged which is what I was hoping for.

Wednesday (May 7): Reformer Flow 1.5 with Maesy

The challenge that was lacking in Monday’s class was definitely made up for on Wednesday. It was a Maesy class so it goes without saying that it was physically challenging but I was also dealing with some mental challenges today too. I am saddened to report that last week’s near death experience where I almost fell on my face has resulted in a mental block. It seems to be whenever I am facing down on the reformer, where I can see the ground.

It started when we were doing planks on top of the box on top of the reformer, which, oddly enough, I love. But today, I was not that tired but was still shaking like a leaf and was finding it hard to breathe while I stared at the ground. Then we put one strap on one foot and swept it down and back up behind us in an arabesque. (The first part of this video, but on top of the box on the reformer so even higher up.) I was shaking, trying to force myself to breathe, and moving in slow motion. Maesy assured me that these mental blocks happen and that it will eventually go away and then sometimes pop back up again at random times – but it’s normal.

That night, I was trying to force myself out of the mental block by closing my eyes and imagining myself doing the movement well and being safe. Instead, every time i thought about it, I pictured the strap somehow snapping back and body slamming me to the ground. So visualization is not working out so well. Hopefully I will get over this soon!

Friday (May 9): Reformer Flow 2 with Wade

I like Wade’s classes. He always starts the class by asking if anyone has any injuries and when no one replies, he tells us that he wouldn’t say if he was hurt either, but that we should listen to our bodies first then to him. I always feel comfortable to push myself in his classes which I needed during this class because I was still dealing with my mental block.

We did a lot of moves standing on the reformer, which doubled my fear from just kneeling on the reformer, but I took it slow and ignored my shakes to push through it. We also worked on balance by standing on one foot on the Bosu, which was easy as pie for me. It’s so weird how the brain works – I can stand on an unstable surface on one foot and be totally relaxed, but standing on both feet on a relatively stable, elevated surface that cannot be more than two feet off the ground, I go into fight or flight. It’s getting better though, so hopefully I’ll be fully over it soon!

Making Moves Feat. ChatGPT

As I announced last week, we are moving! As we still don’t know where we are moving to, I am not able to plan too far ahead which is a lesson in patience, for sure. I have held myself back from starting to pack anything but I’ve started going through all my possessions to see what can be donated or sold in order to make packing easier when the time comes.

ChatGPT has also been a big help with making a timeline, checklists, and budgets. I’ve also asked it to give me updates on the prices of the apartments we are watching so that we can, hopefully, get the best price available. We are waiting until the 27th to actually apply so fingers crossed that we will get the one we want. In the meantime, I’ll be measuring all our furniture and making miniature models out of graph paper, just to be prepared.

We also happened across a tarot reader while on a little excursion to Old Towne who told us that we were making the right decision to move. She also told me that I would write and be published – little did she know, I’m published weekly! (Self-published but it still counts). Or… I just thought of this… she is a secret fan of the blog… ugh, I can’t go ANYWHERE without being hounded by fans. Seriously, guys, please respect my privacy.

Entertainment Weekly

Movie(s): Thunderbolts*, Until Dawn

On Sunday, we cheated on AMC to go to the movie theater in our future neighborhood, to see Thunderbolts*. In the Marvel universe, the Avengers are gone and an unlikely team of slightly less super super-heroes has to defend New York after a failed super experiment (Bob) accidentally gets released on the city. I have written before about my interesting relationship with Marvel movies. I don’t think I’ve ever said “Hmm, you know what sounds good right now? A Marvel movie.” But, I typically enjoy them when I inevitably end up watching them. The same goes for this movie – I wasn’t necessarily chomping at the bit to get to see it but I really liked it. Florence Pugh can also do no wrong in my eyes, so I enjoyed it.

Wednesday Movie Date Night was Until Dawn which is apparently based on a video game and the movie was produced by Sony. I’m pretty partial to an A24 or a Blumhouse scary movie, but Sony did pretty well with this. I loved the concept – a group of friends is on a road trip, retracing the steps of one girls’ sister, who went missing a year ago. They end up in a spooky secluded house where they find proof that her sister was there. While looking for clues, they all end up murdered, but once the last person dies, they all wake up again, starting the night over. Every version of the night is different and they have to either “survive the night or become a part of it”. It was a cool concept and had a few good jump scares as well as a couple moments of levity. However, we are continuing the trend of super gore-y scary movies. I’d like to go back to the days where it was simply implied that someone had been impaled in the face rather than seeing the actual eyeball, but I guess I’m just old-fashioned.

Book(s): The Butterfly Garden

This week’s book was The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. As I was looking up the book to add the cover to the graphic for this week’s update, I discovered that I have once again been bamboozled into a series. I was not aware what I was signing up for because this was yet another library book sale find. This story starts in a police interrogation after a gruesome discovery. A man has been kidnapping women, tattooing intricate butterfly wings on their backs, and keeping them locked in a secluded garden as his own “butterflies” for years. The interrogation is with one of the surviving butterflies as the police try to understand how this happened and how it was able to stay a secret for so long.

It was a good book and a quick read. I liked how it went back and forth between her time in the garden and the police interrogation. This was obviously pretty dark, but I appreciated how it didn’t go into too many details on some of the more gruesome parts. I liked this book enough that I will probably eventually read the others in the series, but I’m not dying for more at the moment.

TV: Kevin Can F** Himself, The Valley

We are still working our way through Kevin Can F*** Himself and still enjoying it. But there’s no real updates on my thoughts on it.

Meanwhile, in The Valley, everyone goes to Santa Barbara for a lovely little get away. Jax inserts himself by rage texting Brittany from rehab. Zack brought up a good (non-demonic) point when he says “Why does he have his phone? What kind of rehab is this?” Brittany, girl, the “block” button probably wasn’t created to keep psycho ex-husbands from rage texting while withdrawing from a decades long coke addiction, but you can still use it.

Zack and Janet have a sit-down (joined by Nia to hold Zack’s hand while he pseudo-apologizes), where Zack is obsessively fidgeting while he finally admits to his demonic behavior of saying he did not care if Janet miscarried. Although he does admit to it with a few caveats: 1. Janet didn’t invite him to her babymoon trip (so she kind of deserved it), 2. he was blackout drunk (so obviously it doesn’t count), and 3. it was a private conversation between him and Brittany and Brittany took Janets side (so honestly it’s Brittany’s fault). It’s messy, it’s drama, it’s a great reminder to stay sober.

Mysteries of the Unknown

Here’s something that has been plaguing me for a while: how can I possibly still have hair attached to my head, considering how much hair I lose on a daily basis? I probably clean out my brush once a week, and the final thing I do before getting out of the shower is rinsing clumps of hair down the drain. I am truly shocked each time I look in the mirror and am not bald. They say people typically lose 50 to 100 hairs each day out of the around 100,000 hairs on their head.

I understand that hair grows back, however, my hair is about 18 inches long. If I lose an 18 inch hair, it would be replaced by a tiny little baby hair. And apparently to grow 18 inches, it would take 36 months or three years. For one hair to grow to 18 inches in that time, I would have lost between 55,000 and 110,000 hairs! That’s all my hairs! I may just be dense, but I cannot comprehend how I still have 18 inch hair that does not appear to be thinning. To me, it is truly a mystery.

In’s and Out’s

In:

Mothers

Robot vacuums

Cap’n Crunch

Out:

Not locking in

Separate streaming accounts

Kimade (she seems to have disappeared from CVS)

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Until next week, ILYSM,