things i love thursday (2)

Aurora

Johnny Park

(pictures of the gruesome twosome because we haven't had any in a while and also in honour of Dave Grohl's birthday, as my cats are named after Foo Fighters songs!)

1. I started the creative writing course that Ma and Pa Yogini bought me for Christmas on Monday night. It made me remember why I write, how I write, when I write best and that actually, maybe I’m quite good at this. But more than anything it was so nice to be back in a university seminar room with like minded (and fabulously eccentric) people again. You don’t realise how much you miss things until you get them back. And you forget how there are some things that you just need to keep you going.

2. All my lovely potential clients booking onto this yoga course.

3. Sending off two pieces of writing this week. Just getting stuff out there feels fantastic, regardless of the results.

4. The new single from Laura Marling.

5. Home & Away is back after its Christmas break (I know, lame. But I'm hopelessly addicted and it makes me happy).

Your turn!

a new look for a new decade and a very happy new year!

I've been coughing for about three days now and have had to cancel my New Year's Eve plans for a hot date with the sofa and TV instead. Sigh. Still I've been being productive from my sick bed.

As you can see, the Suburban Yogini has undergone an overhaul in preparation for the new year. I have felt this blog has been heading in a new direction for a while so I figured it was time to make it look that way. I've added a whole new "About Me" section which should appear in the previous post and also if you click on the pretty pink "About" button! (Thanks to shabbyblogs for that and the awesome header!)

I feel as though I have undergone an overhaul over the last few months as well. I'm not going to pretend 2009 has been an easy year, it hasn't. It's been one of the toughest years of my life. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and without this transitionary year I wouldn't be in the position I am in now - to really live my life to its fullest in 2010.

Happy new year, dear dear readers and thank you for reading. I leave you, not with poetic genius as such, but with the very simple words of Dave Grohl.

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again

an early christmas present

Everybody has something that they covet over anything else. It could be an end to war, or bigotry. It could be a first edition of Keats' poems. It could even just be wealth, health and happiness.

For me would it be one of the original cassettes of Pocketwatch. I think only 200 were ever released, scattered around the globe; those that still exist, stuck in dusty boxes in people's attics. Most of them are probably destroyed. The mastertapes certainly are.

I've always hoped to come across a copy at a record fair or a car boot sale. There have been a couple of occassions when a copy has popped up on Ebay but Himself and I just haven't had the money to justify buying it (they go for £100s).

Then a couple of weeks ago this came up on Ebay. It's not Pocketwatch per se, but it is a 7" vinyl pressing of one of the 1990 tracks.

And until I have a copy of one of the original tapes, this will make me grin with delight. Best Christmas present ever! Many many thanks to dearly beloved Himself for always watching out on Ebay :D

What do you wish for this Christmas?

Reasons to be Thankful

It's been a rollercoaster of a week and on this Sunday afternoon in November I feel somewhat drained by it all. But the rollercoaster has brought with it some amazing things. The two most important are somewhat interconnected and need some backstory.

Learning to Love London Again and the Return of my Writing Mojo

It only took two and a half months of living elsewhere. On Wednesday night, for a moment, I missed London. Don't get me wrong, moving out of London was the best thing I've done in a long time, but I guess it's natural I will miss it occassionally - I lived there for ten years after all.

On examination however it wasn't London per se that I missed - it was a specific part of London. A part I haven't visited for a long long time. A part, I'm sorry to say, I have never visited with Himself.

When I first moved to London as a wide-eyed 25-year-old the Ex and I lived in a gorgeous flat in a beautiful Georgian house conversion in Highgate. It was like my dream of what London should be. We had parks, we had Coleridge's house, we had a cemetery (where EVERYONE is buried), we had Hampstead Heath just across from us in which we had Keats House. My writing muse had never been stronger than it was there. I wrote all the time. I wrote for the Ham and High paper. I wrote for the local magazine Buzz. I wrote my first (unpublished and will undoubtedly remain so) novel. Looking back it was wonderful (I look back with rose coloured spectacles here of course, it wasn't that wonderful as my health was diabolical - but isn't nostalgia and hindsight all about forgetting the bad stuff?).

We were there for just under a year - then we moved and everything started fucking me off and my hate-hate affair with London began.

Over the last week or so my writing muse has returned for the first time in ages. To put this in perspective I have written two mediocre poems in the last twelve months and that's it. No magazine articles, no short stories and the only thing I've added to my in progress novel is a comma, which, like Oscar Wilde, I later removed. (Please note the only resemblance I have to the genius of Wilde is my constant input and output of commas, nothing else. I would never assume such arrogance!) This week I have written the first draft of a poem and a short story which just may amount to something and have sent off a little something to a magazine.

And so I remember Highgate. And I want to go back and take Himself. I want to show him my past. It feels important and necessary. We're going before Christmas and I'm excited.

Other things to be thankful for this week
* Being given two weeks' worth of cover teaching for a yoga teacher I hold in very high regard.
* The latest nephew being born without a hitch and absolutely perfect apparently! :D
* Doing a presentation at a sixth form open evening for work and making lots of good networking connections. This also made me feel nostalgic for my years at sixth form and especially the Latin stall at open evenings. I ran the A Level Latin stall two years in a row. Hardly anyone ever came :(
* Solo Acoustic Everlong.
* My new Foo tshirt.
* A day off with Himself, drinking Christmas flavoured soy latte in Starbucks and discussing the future.
* Yoga with my mum.
* Walking with my face against a November storm.

Reasons to be Thankful

Thursday Night was lovely. The firework display for Guy Fawkes Night was awesome and it was so nice for the whole family to get together for food and laughter - it's so hard to get everyone together at the same time! I felt horribly under the weather all day on Thursday, tired and washed out, and I didn't really feel like going but it turned out (as is so often the case) that it was exactly what I needed. So I am ridiculously thankful for my hilarious family this week. Other things that have made me smile with glee this week:-

* Himself making me vegan "cheeseburgers" for tea on Friday night.
* The new Foo Fighters Greatest Hits, Dave Grohl being on Jools Holland's TV show and also him saying that a Greatest Hits does not mean the Foos are over. Hurrah!
* Becoming a redhead again.
* Having the photos taken for my new yoga website (coming soon!) and actually liking all of them.
* Buying spring bulbs with my mum.
* Planting spring bulbs and reminding myself that winter may be bleak but it doesn't last forever.
* The new Flight of the Conchords album (laughed until I cried).
* Purple stripey wooly tights - winter was invented for them!
* Yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga.

ETA: I can't believe I forgot one - this week I have "met" a whole bunch of lovely new people on the blogosphere and for that I am grateful :D

Day 19 - Cats

After talking about different ways women utilise the "mother" phase of their lives, Andy reminded me that another way of "mothering" (and fathering I guess on his part) is the great privelege of an animal deigning to live with you.

I have had cats since I was 7 years old although in many ways I am a dog person . Cats are easier for little kids to look after and through university and my early 20s of moving around and being out at work all day, having a cat made much more sense. These days whilst I am in the position to and would love to have a dog, I cannot guarantee that I will be well enough to give it the exercise it needs.

Not that my two furry children are in any way second best. They are without doubt two of the most awesome cats I have ever known. And Himself loves them as well. In many ways they are our surrogate children (having decided long ago we did not want children of our own), and I don't care if I bore people to death talking about them.

Our 18-month old girl, Aurora, is the black and white one. She is part British Short Hair and came from a rescue shelter when she was 10 months. She adores Andy but took a while to trust me.

Johnny Park (JP) is the tabby and white one. He's just a common or garden alley cat, one of a litter of three that we got from a colleague of Andy's. He's 9 months old now and a complete menace who eats us out of house and home. He adores me and follows me everywhere, even gets under the duvet with me and scratches and mews pitifully when I'm in the bathroom with the door shut. Sigh...
And yes, they are both named after Foo Fighters' songs!