Thursday morning random

* In the summer, Thursday is my Friday, so I almost called this Friday morning random.

* Trip on Friday is a go. I am so happy to be thinking of getting out of town, getting to a real yarn shop, but most importantly getting to see and hang out with a friend. I do get something analogous to cabin fever in the summer. (I think maybe I have some things backward in my brain chemistry; I perk right up in the dead of winter when everyone else is depressed, and in the summer, when everyone's happy and having fun, I want to hide indoors and I feel "trapped" because of the heat)

* I have no projects for which I am seeking yarn (well, there is one sweater I might want to make some time that calls for about 1500 yards of dk yarn, so I am keeping that in mind). Oh, I'll probably buy something but I admit if it weren't for the meet-up, I totally would not be going. (Or I'd go somewhere closer instead)

* I discovered something last night that pleases me. I can touch my toes again without bending my knees. The last time I remember being able to do this was like high school. (I dropped the razor in the shower while shaving my legs and without thinking, just bent over at the waist to retrieve it, and then was all "Wait....how long have I been able to bend like that without bending my knees?") I think it must be the result of a combination of loss of some girth around the waist but also strengthening my leg muscles or maybe making my hamstrings less tight because of the new-ish workout (this is that dvd I've been using).

I can't put my hands flat on the floor like I could when I was a kid, and I might never be able to do that again (as an adult, my arms are a little proportionally short), but it's nice to regain a little flexibility and realize that midlife doesn't necessarily mean everything physical gets worse.

And I have noticed lately that bending from the waist (like, to pick something up off the floor) has been way easier and actually is my preferable mode of retrieving things (instead of squatting down by bending my knees).

* I was a really flexible little kid - I took several years of gymnastics class (I never was comfortable with the back-flipping stuff or even cartwheels and I gave it up before it got really hardcore, so I never would have wound up as a cheerleader, for example) and I remember my teacher commenting that I could do some bends that some of my classmates could not. I also took a year of intro ballet but dropped it because the teacher was kind of, I don't know, snappish, and it just wasn't as much fun. When I hit puberty that's when I got fat and lost a lot of my flexibility - I didn't like to exercise and I think the paces they put us through at school were not the kind of exercise I needed.

* I did a little house-cleaning last afternoon. Piano lessons re-start next week, so I will have to be better about keeping the place up. (Well, also, I am happier when the place isn't a mess).