The View from Here

  
Dan and I are both very routine-oriented people.  We get very set in our “what we do when’s”, and that actually works very well for us as people working in the arts.  However, it is incredibly freeing and healthy to shake things up a bit sometimes, and today Dan helped us to color outside the lines…..and the day is only half-way over.  I can’t wait to see what lies in store for us.

  Post-yoga ‘glow’…

Every single Saturday morning, we rise before dawn and prepare to head for the YMCA for Dan’s early morning hot yoga class.  There is no option to sleep in, as he has a large and very devoted studio of followers who will be there waiting for him to lead us through a great and peaceful workout. We get to the basement studio and I help him to set everything up before heading upstairs to get in some cardio on one of the machines before class begins.  Afterwards, we shower, head home to let the dogs out, and then go to The Fish Market for the same lunch we get every Saturday.  Except that today was different.  I think I even felt it when I went up to do cardio- instead of jumping on the same treadmill, I chose to workout on the elliptical machine for something different.  During yoga, Dan took us through a routine that was different from his usual, and throughout it, shared quotes about love in honor of Valentine’s Day.

  
As we drove to lunch, Dan proclaimed that he was having something completely different for lunch- it was time to shake things up.  Of the two of us, he is always first to be brave and reach for change…I am always lagging behind a bit.  Our lovely server laughed at us as we joked about coming every Saturday for twelve year, but that today was going to be different! I told her we’d both have our unsweetened iced teas, but Dan interjected, “Nope! Today we are celebrating.  Today will be completely different.” And he ordered wonderful glasses of pinot noir for us to enjoy with lunch.  We laughed about the Seinfeld epidsode we had just seen about ‘the opposite of George’, where George changes his life (for a short time) by going the exact opposite route of his instincts.  Both Dan and I ordered completely different lunches, and it was so much fun to experience new flavors- and to laugh at how it was such a big deal for us to shake ourselves out of our routines. He said that it was Valentine’s Day weekend, and that we needed to have fun and embrace new things.

We came home and made up the guest house bed so that we could spend the night up there with the pups tonight- another change from routine.  We stopped by the store and bought some beautiful red roses to celebrate the weekend dedicated to love.  I love that Dan told the clerk that we celebrate love every day- we don’t wait for one day a year to make it special. We’ll cook a wonderful dinner this evening and enjoy the views from the sunporch and the top deck, even in the chilly weather.  And we will celebrate our love…a routine that I will never grow tired of.  Love is such a gift, especially one where friendship is the cornerstone.  It seems that when we color outside of the lines sometimes, the results are pretty impressive…something that I need to remember more often.