Yoga, baby niece, house-hunting ...

A lot has been going on! First of all and most importantly, Jo and Emma have had a baby girl in London - Charlotte! Lovely ... born the same day as that 'royal' baby! So happy for them - can't wait to see her, though I will need to - they aren't due back in Oz for a visit until January.

Progress (slow but steady) is happening in yoga. I'm still not doing proper sun salutes, but am now doing a deeper version of the one I was doing, and I've also been given back the initial (knee on the ground) version of parivrtta parsvakonasana.  It all felt great at class yesterday ... even my balance in UHP was (amazingly!) much better. But I better not get too excited about that - balance is a very variable thing with me!

Still haven't quite decided what to do about going to Dena's Bali workshop at the end of September. I will need to commit soon as the flights will all fill up. I guess I'm still wondering how much I'll be able to do if I go. But it's two months away, and I would hope that I'd have managed to get back a lot of my practice by then. (And even if I haven't 'officially' been given poses back, I expect I will be doing them in my home practices, and at the workshop!) Probably I'm scared of getting sick yet again and not being able to go. But I can't live my life like that! Hopefully I'll manage to book something this coming week!!

I also went down to Ocean Shores for a couple of days at the end of the week - to check out property etc. It was good - even though a lot of the houses are suburban brick-types, there are definitely some houses are are more my style, so I feel fairly confident I'll be able to find somewhere really nice ... We also had a lovely time going to the Mullumbimby farmers market on Friday morning - there are heaps of markets around there, and there is just nothing here (well, nothing that's not an hour's drive away!) I was also introduced to someone who runs a community choir down there, and then there's Dena's shala in the district ... It will be good ... :)

Things are looking up

Although still suffering from a shoulder injury (bursitis apparently - developed/first appeared when I did that long drive down to NSW back in April!) things are ((fingers very crossed!)) getting better. I've been going to see my osteopath weekly for quite a while now, and last week she told me that she felt we had 'turned a corner' with the shoulder, and it was definitely starting to mend.

I had decided the previous week (ie. a week ago) that I just had to start doing yoga again, no matter how much modification I needed to do to the practice. So I went back to class last Saturday. My teacher got me doing a different kind of Sun Salute (no downdogs or anything that put any stress on the shoulder). I'd never seen this before - a bit like Surya Namaskar B, but from the utkatasana stage you step back and rise up into Virabhadrasana 1, then step back to utkatasana and repeat on the other side, then come back up to standing.

It felt so good to finally be back and doing a sustainable practice - by which I mean one that I won't have to stop doing again because I'm damaging myself again! I've managed to do 2-3 practices during the week, and this afternoon it's back to class. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can start to put back the ashtanga sun salutes, and then gradually the other poses/vinyasas that I can't do at the moment.

Apart from that I've been doing a bit of entertaining, again for the first time for absolutely ages! Had my aunt and cousins round for Sunday lunch a week or two ago, which went very well! I gave away various bits and pieces of Napier family 'stuff' that I'd brought back from Bowral (my Mum's house) for them. It was nice to share it around - and I've got heaps for myself already.

The proceeds from the auction of the contents of Mum's house have finally been sorted out/allocated to the respective beneficiaries. A mammoth task as there were two wills involved (my Dad's as well as Mum's) and in each will, different things were split between different people. And despite our best efforts, the sale list from the auction bore very little resemblance to the list we'd sent up to the auction! However, all done now!! Who knew there was so much hard slog involved in being an executor! But as I said to my nephews - I shudder to think what the solicitors would have charged if I had left that job to them <grin>