Raw for Lent: Day 27

This morning I got up much later than I anticipated (I had hoped to get my car mirror fixed before I went to the gym) but instead just got up, made breakfast:

1 scoop sunwarrior

1/2 T spirulina

1 c chia gel

1/4 c almonds

1 c water

1 c strawberries

I'm finally getting the proportions down somewhat, so I could actually nearly drink it out of a pint glass.

I went to the gym and also brought my trainer a scoop of Sunwarrior so he could use it on the gym's "go vegan" week (since he is anti-soy). We will see, if he's used to protein powder he might like it. For me, it's not terrible, but the stevia flavor really drives me kind of nuts. I am not a huge fan of artificial sweeteners.

After I got home, I worked on some financial stuff and then had a raw bar because I had another appointment this afternoon; Pole Dancing class.

Yeah, that's right. I caved on a $15 deal on living social and bought a set of 6 classes at a studio here called Vertical Tease. So I wandered around looking for this joint for like 10 minutes, finally found it and joined into the class. We warmed up pretty easy, just a lot of bending and stretching and a little light strength stuff, then we got into it. We learned:

"sexy walk" - parading around the pole and dragging yr toes on the ground behind you (which gives you gummy toes)

"pirouette" - a slightly more complicated move where you pivot on one foot and end up with your back to the pole

"drop" - where you fall backward down the pole and land on your back (holy fuck, I got some bruises on my ass, thighs, shoulders, back and head from this bad boy)

"legs up" - which is basically propping yourself up in plow or neckstand in yoga, then bicycling your legs slowly. the teacher also did this thing that made her legs look like sea anemonies, which we all laughed at but she was like "dudes don't care what looks stupid, they are looking at what is between your legs."

"feet in" which requires you to do some kung fu, pick yourself up and get from your knees to your feet quick-like

"sexy up" which is basically standing up really slow from a touch your toes position

"fireman spin" where you grab the pole with your ankles and spin around to the ground (I have bruises on both of my feet as well as pole-burn,)

"leg wrap" where you spin around the pole, plant a foot then lift the other foot.

So what I learned is that pole dancing is way more painful and awful than I expected. The rolling around on a wood floor I always expected to be painful and bruising, but the amount of skin I left on that thing, especially off weird places like the tops of my feet and toes was truly unexpected. I have to be honest, the sort of sexy parading around and painfulness of it remind me altogether too much of what I would imagine a slave in a Dom/Sub relationship would be. So the place also offers Zumba and Kickboxing, so I'll pole dance maybe one more time in this "intro" class, but I think that it's back to kicking stuff for me. Horseriding provides me with enough stupid bruising and death defying stunts, thanks.

After class, I was basically in CH, so I went to Whole foods and got some more kale in order to make more of that awesome kale salad. It's marinating as we speak, although I may have used too much because it didn't have enough room to bruise when I shook it, but hey, I'm sure it'll still be tasty.

When I was driving, I noticed a gaggle of protestors lined up outside Planned Parenthood. I drive to Chapel Hill at least 2 days a week, usually 3-4 though. When I see a bunch of people there on Saturday Morning, it bothers me some, but I guess I'm just used to seeing the two women with no life protesting most of the time, at 4pm on a wednesday or 8 pm on weds. Seeing like 30 people outside of PP really irked me today. Women have a right to a yearly pap smear that they can afford. Women have a right to reasonably priced prenatal care. Everyone has a right to STD testing. Just imagine what it would be like if you were someone without health insurance, going to get cancerous cells burned off your cervix and a bunch of looney tunes yelled at you, spat at you, while you were going in to do what was probably the scariest thing in your life. Hell, imagine if you were getting an abortion (which, btw, I'm not even sure PP Chapel Hill provides in house. Every PP I've ever been to refers patients to private clinics for abortion services), it would still probably be scary and horrible. But for many women, so is the prospect of having a kid, especially when they are in circumstances where they need to go to planned parenthood (either because of insurance issues or age issues) to talk to someone about that kid. I swear, one day I'm gonna lose it, pull over and start a counter protest. /rant

Before prepping Kale, I went to pubquiz at the James Joyce, which is definitely not my fav pubquiz in the world, but it's better to get out of the house than watch primetime TV.

For dinner I rolled up some avo and cukes in nori, then ate some kimchi as well. Snack was some passionfruit juice.

I also ran across an amazing raw blog today...Raw on $10 a Day. Granted several recipes rely on a dehydrator (and I feel like the vitamix is a more realistic year round kitchen investment, which is why I bought it!) Some of these recipes look AMAZING though, like the pies. Holy balls, I want pecan pie.

For today's meme answer

day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere

This song will forever, in my mind, be linked to the S-Bahn, particularly overlooking the hotel Construction between Hackescher Markt and Alexanderplatz, overlooking huge construction projects in 2005. Whatever it was is probably finished by now. But goddamn, did I love this song.