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Crushing the Christmas Crush

They are so Zen.

And just like that, the holidays are here!

This year, it’s an extra-action-packed December because our firstborn is graduating from college next week. For me, this event actually rivals the usual annual festivities in importance.

The following weekend, her younger brother will finish his semester exams and arrive home, just in time for us to pack the car for our yearly holiday trip to Massachusetts to see the family.

It’s a hike.

With a late Thanksgiving we are just now getting started with holiday prep, and I’m not gonna lie, there is a sense of stress that’s creeping in. What’s the answer? Rum-laced eggnog?

Nope. Yoga, y’all.

Do you ever check out the Yoga with Adriene videos? Adriene Mishler has great free yoga content and for December, her squad put out a calendar of short-ish videos to get us through the season. I dove in and have been taking a moment every morning (five days in now, it’s a start) to stretch out before getting on with my day. Take a look, you can find all of the videos on YouTube:

The hard thing about morning yoga is that the cats like to join in, but I’m not going to let them add to my stress. I’m gonna glide through December.

Posted on by Anne · 4 Comments

Doing a Good Thing

Checking out the Peaks of Otter is always a good thing.

There are a whole lot of things to do down here at Smith Mountain Lake.

As summer has roared in, the powerboats have roared in with it, toting wakeboards and waterskis while they zip around Sea-Doos (or, in our case, kayaks) all over the lake.

You can volunteer with any number of excellent service-oriented organizations and spend time at any number of churches. You can exercise at the YMCA or at the Carilion Wellness gym, or get your Zen on at the Vita Zen yoga studio. All this without even going into Roanoke!

But lately, I’ve been doing something that has really been making me happy: working. Since May, my former employer from Northern Virginia has given me plenty to do, writing stories about George Mason University faculty research. And since January, I’ve had the opportunity to learn some really interesting about the history of local communities here in Franklin and Bedford Counties.

It’s cut down on my driving around and exploring, but I’ve come across some interesting things that I’ll tell you about in the weeks to come. Because I’ve found that while exploring a new area is fascinating, so is digging a little deeper into it. Talk to you soon.

Posted on by Anne

“Rejection is God’s Protection”

This quote was written on the chalkboard in the yoga studio here in Franklin County where I pop in from time to time.

The Centre at VitaZen has a full slate of classes and I really enjoy all of them, though I haven’t found the one that is going to be my go-to class. This week, I went to the Thursday after-work class which was so terrific that I think this might be it.

The quote was the icing on the yoga cake during a week when I heard back from an interview for a job that had looked promising but turned out to be less appealing once the potential employers and I sat down to talk. (Clearly, they felt the same way.)

Feeling thus protected, on to other things! Chief among them is a week’s vacation with someone dear in a new place. It will be scenic, I think, but it’s outside the scope of this blog (#thisisnotatravelblog). I can promise you’ll hear more about springtime in the country as soon as I get back.