Best 2012 End of the World Kit!!

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I had this idea to make everyone I love an end-of-the-world kit this year with stuff my friends make that I totally love. Unfortunately, my finances didn’t align in time to gift, so here is a virtual kit, feel free to order what you need for yourself!

 

End of the World Kit

If it was good enough for (the end of) the Mayans, it’s good enough for (the end of) us!

The world is ending, go out with the best, most sacred healthy, RAW chocolate IN THE WORLD. One small bite of the Amazonian raw heart is to kill, I mean die for. Plus, it’s made and blessed by a minister of the sacred heart, the amazing Sacred Steve, so it’s extra zombie protection.

Have a little Cockfidence!

It’s the end of the world, might as well go out with a bang! Yeah, those are my hot friends on the cover. Get your groove on too!

 

Express Yourself!

Always wanted to paint your body green but didn’t know what your boss might think about it? It’s the end of the world! Now’s the time to do it! Here’s a book my friends made with some inspiration!

 

Fuel up to Run From Zombies!!

Delicious raw energy food – order a bunch now so you won’t have to waste precious time pillaging stores later! Zombies hate healthy food like Lydia Organics green crackers or Kale Krunch in dairy-free cheezy or chocolate too…nom nom nom

 

Hope you enjoyed! Love you and have fun in the new Era :-)

2012 Recap – My Happy Holiday Letter!!!

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Wow! What a year! I thought it would be fun to look back at some highlights from this year, to reminisce and catch up those of you I don’t get to see often enough :-)

2012 opened for me with a bang, at midnight watching fireworks 360 degrees around me on a rooftop in London, decked out in a flamboyant costume party dress, drunk enough on mulled wine to feel warm instead of cold, and in the company of some fabulous and fun human beings.

My 9-day trip to London with a very special friend and lover was wonderful and insightful. We learned that living together wasn’t going to be in our immediate futures :-) I got to spend about 3-4 hours/day touring the city, visiting museums, met up with a Chevron colleague and his wife for dinner, got to peek around the Olympic stadium in East London while under construction, and stayed at Cambridge. It was really magical.

Returning home in January, I spent much of the month doing live interviews of Olympic track and field throwers for a project I created called the Powerful Women Athletes Telesummit. About 200 people tuned in over the month and it was a really amazing experience that allowed me to give something new to my sport in a big way.

It was my 5th year coaching at San Francisco State University, and my fourth year with athletes Deirdra Bridgett and Luisa Musika. They were my first group of athletes to have been coached by me all four years of their eligibility so that was pretty special. In February, I decided to do a radical experiment with the throwers that dared to: Go six weeks without eating wheat, dairy, or sugar. Two of us made it 5 weeks, and during that 5 weeks, my athlete Luisa lost 30 pounds and qualified for the indoor national championships in the shot put for the first time in her career. It was so brave of them to try something so difficult and I think we all learned a lot from that experience. I got to travel to Minnesota with Luisa for the indoor national championships and I really enjoyed taking the Californians out to a nature area on one of our days off to experience walking around in the snow and throwing things onto an icy river :-)

We had a challenging outdoor track and field season with the weather: A lot of rainy meets, some even got cancelled part-way through. It is difficult to stay motivated when you are soaking wet to the bone as part of your job, but we hung in there and continued to do what we love despite the difficulties. It was also my first year coaching the javelin throw event and I really learned a lot from my athletes.

My coaching job doesn’t pay all my bills, so I continued to work other jobs part-time. I did a lot of special-event valet parking jobs this year around San Francisco, and got to see some of the most beautiful properties, drive some of the nicest cars, and work at the most exclusive parties in the bay area. I met so many amazing people who work as valets. Many are students, but many are people sort of like me! People who have incredible qualifications and have had really interesting lives and have found themselves starting over in some way. I am so grateful for all the awesome people I met at that job.

I taught 6-week intro to yoga courses for some private clients. I gave some more massage virgins their first ever full-body Swedish massages. And I helped at least three people move out of their houses to get started with their next life chapters. I decided to help out more at church and went to training to become a Sunday school teacher. That has been very rewarding to shepherd some young people through their high school years in a way that was starkly different than my own (in a good way). And I tried a short stint as a gogo dancer.

I take random jobs too, and my good friend Diane found the most awesome random job for me one day this year: Getting paid to model as a zombie and walk around downtown San Francisco handing out “blood” popsicles and stickers to random people to promote Zynga’s new video game.

I made a light-painting video with my friends Jackie & Julian that helped them get onto America’s Got Talent! It was superfun and as a result I got to meet their new friend Andrew de Leon and recycle my zombie dress to do a photo shoot with him for his promotions.

I continued to take lots of people on hikes through my part of the city as part of my business “Excelsior Urban Hikes.” I met so many wonderful people from around the country, around San Francisco, and around the world who somehow found out about my tours. It was great to be able to walk around in beautiful nature areas within San Francisco to get good exercise, fresh air, and beautiful scenery. The city started to look a lot smaller than it did when I first showed up here 6 years ago.

I watched the solar eclispe from China beach in San Francisco while on a date with a Cancer. This was astrologically significant given I’m an Aries ;-) I also dated a somewhat mysterious and handsome academic professional Indian man for a couple months who enjoyed spoiling me with 5-star accommodations, fabulous dinners, and day trips. I’ve since renewed my vows to stop dating men who drive Porsches. Nothing personal ;-)

During the summer I recommitted myself to my LegalShield business as a way of earning part-time income. I attended a lot of trainings and continued to be inspired by that company and the great attitudes of the people who I befriended at the trainings. I joined a networking group to promote the company and fell in love with the awesome people I met at that group. We meet at least once a week to help each other find business, and those relationships have been very rewarding.

I took several more 4-week courses in astrology, did my first “paid” astrology reading for a friend. Went to my first 49ers game. Got to go to Montana to coach a high school throwers clinic while my college coach attended the Olympic Trials with one of his athletes. Got to see my sister and her family, and carpool to Montana and back with a really interesting character in public banking. I also took a Forex trading bootcamp and learned to trade foreign currencies.

During the summer, I started dating a new and really amazing person, an Italian artist fairly new to the US who makes the incredible digital creatures/monsters for the movies. It was so fun to spend so much time in the company of an artist, pouring through art books and images together, eating yummy Italian food, and enjoying each other’s company over the summer. At the end of the summer, he got his dream job with Lucas Films, and I moved out of the city to Berkeley, and we kind of went our separate ways. It was an epic, if short, romance and a real highlight of my year :-)

I had no intention of moving to Berkeley but somehow I got swept up in the need to change something after 5 years of living at the same residence in San Francisco with an extended family I had come to love dearly. I was craving more space, more stuff to call my own, an environment I could keep clean and put my stamp on. My friend and mentor, Coach Mike Hammerquist, had a room open up in his house and invited me to live there. It was a perfect fit for me and my cat of 8 years.

I began commuting from Berkeley to SF for work in September, and the first day using the commuter car pool we were rear-ended and I sustained my 5th whiplash injury. As a result, I got to know the limits of my health insurance plan much better, and found a wonderful chiropractor and amazing physical therapist who have nursed me back to better shape than I have been in my entire life.

I got on board for Obama again during the 2012 election year, and again was victorious. But it was during the first Obama-Romney debate that I finally had an “aha” moment (as Oprah would say), that there was something I could really do personally to make our country better. I ended up conceiving of a company that would help people get healthier on their own. It is called the Center for Public Wellness, and I will be rolling it out in the new year. It is exciting to have an idea I can put all my passion behind and I feel like it is truly my life’s calling. I attended a women’s political conference in Beverly Hills right after the election and got even more fired up about what women ought to be doing for our country.

I struggled a lot the last few months of the year following my car accident. Financially I was really struggling, physically my body was undergoing a lot of changes, and I made some risky health choices in that state which challenged my body quite a lot. I had to hitchhike for the first time and beg for money to get home or stay with friends. All-in-all I had a couple near-death experiences this year, some intentional and unintentional interesting chemical experiences, and learned a whole heck of a lot through it all.

I came back coaching in the fall with 8 strong and talented women coming out for the throws, my biggest and most dynamic group ever. The semester ended up being really challenging and enlightening at the same time, and I look forward to seeing what this young group of athletes will be able to do this year.

And finally, I decided to undergo a radical experiment in foot health and strength this fall. First, changing the way I walk drastically by wearing flat shoes, pushing off the ball of the foot more and aligning my feet under my hips straightforward. I ended up successfully creating arches in my feet for the first time in my life, and continued the progress by deciding to go barefoot for 30 days. 2 weeks in, I gave away all my shoes and became a convert for life, it was that awesome. It led to some adventures, such as getting booted off a couple buses and an airport, but those experiences just led into more better and profound experiences that have truly changed my life. I finally get to have the “dream job” I envisioned after high school: somehow working barefoot in a skirt. The health benefits have been really remarkable, as have been the sensations and learning opportunities embedded in this experience.

This inspired me to change a lot of other things about my life, such as getting rid of much of my chemicals and metals and coming into a more “natural” state. I went as far as growing out all my body hair, but changed my mind and decided that’s where I would draw the line for now :-)

The last couple weeks I’ve been looking into dating again and have enjoyed spending time hiking and having tea with a doctor, believe it or not :-) Who knows what 2013 will bring!

It has truly been an epic year and I am excited to see where life will take me next year. I’m sure I left out a bunch of other good stuff too, but oh well. Cheers! And enjoy the last couple days of this era…here’s to an awesome next 5,000 years.

More Thoughts on God

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I can see the temptation
To write a spiritual story
About how we went through many lives
To finally end up
Here!
So are we building another tower of Babel?

Will our technology connect our minds
And in doing so,
Drop the walls between our perspectives
Our incarnations
And reveal the Wizard behind the curtain?

Is that why we love science so much?
Giving us glimpses into the “other”
Seeing life from their perspective
Knowing the infinite integral of us is God

That sense of unity one feels
During trips or meditation
All the endings looped to beginnings
No sense of up or down
Back or forward
Wrong or right

Just a salty wave-crash sommersault
Until we popped up and took a breath

All I know is I keep opening my eyes
And there’s a comforting continuity
That surely exists outside my psyche
How could I create what I haven’t imagined?
And yet when I see it it’s all so perfect
It’s all how I would have planned it
I can keep choosing to follow my story
It’s pretty clear where this one’s going
Though the twists and turns are delightful
And the details rich and vivid

Heel Bruising – No Shoes Day 44

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They say lessons in life are repeated until learned.

Since I’ve been walking everywhere without shoes, I’ve finally realized I am still walking too heavy on my right heel. I have almost a permanent tiny bruise right in the center of that heel from catching a sharp pebble too hard there, over and over. It hurts like a mofo when it happens. And today when it happened again during my 3+ mile walk in the city, I realized it’s just on that foot!

Come to think of it, back when I used to jog with shoes on, I would have this problem where my right heel would clip my left ankle on the inside, painfully right on the bone. So my right foot probably tends to evert (I believe this because I have to invert it and move it further distal for it to land “normal”) naturally and land harder on the heel.

So now, I have to work extra hard on getting the ball of the foot down sooner on the right side. Instead of my whole heel aching at the end of a day when wearing shoes, I get instant feedback when my heel finds a rock too hard.

Still totally worth the tradeoff.

As an update, my feet are still getting stronger/muscle-sore each day. They feel and look muscle-y now, instead of like a withered sick and pale child that spent the entire winter in bed. My hamstrings are also getting stronger (as evidenced by their tightness).

I had some interesting borderline numbness today, and noticed my big toe and next toe were a little too buddy-buddy during much of my hike on the cold ground. Probably the longest my toes have spent in the coldest weather (not including surfing in the winter here when entire foot would go numb) Seemed like the more ball pressure I used the more they spread out, though.

Enough for today…

So Much Change

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Caught in the middle
Everything’s changing
I’m the fulcrum now
Watching the hurricane spin around me
The carnage and drama
And my core strength
Keeping me stable
While we spin balanced with this heavy object
Life
My new hammer throw
Gathering data
Gathering momentum
For a torrential display of power
Grace, and beauty
One final,
Perfected triumph
On the world’s stage
Flinging far, far away
What is cruel, hidden, and festering
Exposing within us all
What is worthy of glory, honor, and praise
Weathering the storm
And emerging with renewed strength
Again and again
And again and again

No more shoes: Day 42

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So yesterday was another milestone day for me in my no-shoes-healthier-stronger-feet experiment.

I went jogging barefoot with the pit bull in the Mission/Excelsior neighborhoods of San Francisco. I had only walked before, and gingerly at that. I was ready for a little more pressure.

And I got my first piece of glass lodged in my foot.

I felt it for about 3-4 steps before it bothered me enough to stop. That was about 2-3 steps too many apparently! Usually, when I feel something in my foot, it hasn’t yet totally penetrated the skin. This happens pretty often. It kind of warps into the skin and I have to reach down and brush it off or rub my foot on my leg or top of the other foot.

When I realized this piece of glass (about a quarter of the size of my pinky finger nail) was stuck in the foot my heart dropped. I wiggled it out and a big bead of blood immediately formed where I pulled it out.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a bandaid, I was on a bridge where there was a LOT of broken glass pieces and small rocks, etc. And I had about 3 blocks left to walk home. From earlier experiences I had already learned that having an open “wound” on the bottom of the foot, as long as it wasn’t bleeding out, wasn’t a concern for infection. In previous weeks, the foot skin sometimes needed to break open and create a new bridge of skin across the opening to expand the available surface area. I found it was actually healthier to leave the bandaid off than to put a bandaid on for a few reasons. Sometimes the bandaid would trap dirt against the wound, and it would cause the skin around the wound to turn white and die.

But this one was bleeding and I didn’t know when it would stop. Something sharp had penetrated a few layers down, and it hurt to walk on it. I tried not to think about the small amount of blood I might be leaving with each step, and how “unhygenic” that would be.

A few steps into it, I got a small rock stuck in the same hole. It was very painful. I flicked it out. A few steps later, another small rock lodged in the same hole. Very painful, flicked it out. Stopped walking on the ball of the foot and walked on the outside edge of the foot for about 100 feet, to give the bottom of the foot a break. Once I reached the stoplight, I began walking on the whole foot again, and the pain was much reduced. It felt tender, but not sharp anymore. I looked at it after crossing the street and it was not bleeding at all. I walked the remaining 2 blocks home normally and went inside to the bathroom to clean the bottom of the foot.

I used a washcloth but no soap (avoiding anti-microbial soap and that was all that was at this house), to wash off the whole bottom of the foot. By that point, the hole had closed to a slit about as deep as it was wide. It had a little dirt on the inside so I rubbed the washcloth across it and it was a little cleaner. I considered peroxide or something harsh to totally clean it out, but decided it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t sensitive to the touch at all or red at all. It was just fine :-)

I remembered back to the time I snapped an ankle in the dark running back to my car after Coachella one year and got rocks lodged in my hand as the skin tore up during the fall onto asphalt. How I tried to clean out the wound in my hand and it started turning red and the red started creeping down my arm, indicating infection. How I went to the emergency room and I was told it would be a 5-7 hour wait, and how I decided I would take my chances and go home and sleep. And my body fought off the infection and won.

There was no apparent infection in this small wound, everything was fine. The wound had sealed up in less than 2 minutes. The human body really is amazing, and can handle much more than we think it can.

Guess my feet will need to toughen up a bit more before tackling glassy sidewalks. Perhaps some beach running would do the trick. Maybe I”ll work on that more first before going back to sidewalk jogging. But maybe not :-)

No More Shoes: Day 42

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So yesterday was another milestone day for me in my no-shoes-healthier-stronger-feet experiment.

I went jogging barefoot with the pit bull in the Mission/Excelsior neighborhoods of San Francisco. I had only walked before, and gingerly at that. I was ready for a little more pressure.

And I got my first piece of glass lodged in my foot.

I felt it for about 3-4 steps before it bothered me enough to stop. That was about 2-3 steps too many apparently! Usually, when I feel something in my foot, it hasn’t yet totally penetrated the skin. This happens pretty often. It kind of warps into the skin and I have to reach down and brush it off or rub my foot on my leg or top of the other foot.

When I realized this piece of glass (about a quarter of the size of my pinky finger nail) was stuck in the foot my heart dropped. I wiggled it out and a big bead of blood immediately formed where I pulled it out.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a bandaid, I was on a bridge where there was a LOT of broken glass pieces and small rocks, etc. And I had about 3 blocks left to walk home. From earlier experiences I had already learned that having an open “wound” on the bottom of the foot, as long as it wasn’t bleeding out, wasn’t a concern for infection. In previous weeks, the foot skin sometimes needed to break open and create a new bridge of skin across the opening to expand the available surface area. I found it was actually healthier to leave the bandaid off than to put a bandaid on for a few reasons. Sometimes the bandaid would trap dirt against the wound, and it would cause the skin around the wound to turn white and die.

But this one was bleeding and I didn’t know when it would stop. Something sharp had penetrated a few layers down, and it hurt to walk on it. I tried not to think about the small amount of blood I might be leaving with each step, and how “unhygenic” that would be.

A few steps into it, I got a small rock stuck in the same hole. It was very painful. I flicked it out. A few steps later, another small rock lodged in the same hole. Very painful, flicked it out. Stopped walking on the ball of the foot and walked on the outside edge of the foot for about 100 feet, to give the bottom of the foot a break. Once I reached the stoplight, I began walking on the whole foot again, and the pain was much reduced. It felt tender, but not sharp anymore. I looked at it after crossing the street and it was not bleeding at all. I walked the remaining 2 blocks home normally and went inside to the bathroom to clean the bottom of the foot.

I used a washcloth but no soap (avoiding anti-microbial soap and that was all that was at this house), to wash off the whole bottom of the foot. By that point, the hole had closed to a slit about as deep as it was wide. It had a little dirt on the inside so I rubbed the washcloth across it and it was a little cleaner. I considered peroxide or something harsh to totally clean it out, but decided it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t sensitive to the touch at all or red at all. It was just fine :-)

I remembered back to the time I snapped an ankle in the dark running back to my car after Coachella one year and got rocks lodged in my hand as the skin tore up during the fall onto asphalt. How I tried to clean out the wound in my hand and it started turning red and the red started creeping down my arm, indicating infection. How I went to the emergency room and I was told it would be a 5-7 hour wait, and how I decided I would take my chances and go home. And my body fought off the infection and won.

There was no apparent infection in this small wound, everything was fine. The wound sealed up in less than 2 minutes. The human body really is amazing, and can handle much more than we think it can.

Guess my feet will need to toughen up a bit more before tackling glassy sidewalks. Perhaps some beach running would do the trick. Maybe I”ll work on that more first before going back to sidewalk jogging. But maybe not :-)

Mortal Enemies

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Hidden beneath their harsh words
Judgements
Attacks
Attempts to change you
Disdain
Lies a heart so close to yours
You wouldn’t feel a difference
If it were in your body
Your fiercest enemies
See a mirror in you
And deep down
They want to crawl inside you
Steal what they couldn’t take for themselves
And leave your carcass to rot
They are not really killers
They are a parallel version
Of you
And you
Of them

Wild Projection

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What a wild, wild projection!
Decide to be spiritual
And have everything taken away
Decide to be profitable
And have even more added to you
Decide to be useful
A call out of the blue
The hard part is knowing what you want
Or is it?
Maybe the hard part is trusting what you want
And the only way to be more trusting
Is to leap
Before the net appears
Fuck on the first date
Hitch a ride somewhere
Eat that last piece of nobody’s chocolate
Knock and the door will be opened unto you…

Day 37, No More Shoes, Healthier Feet

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I haven’t cried due to foot pain until today. The 4th toe on my right foot is reshaping and it is excruciatingly painful. I don’t recall dealing with this much pain since my shoulder surgery rehab in 2004, when the sadist therapists would manually stretch my arm all the way back over my head after having kept it in a sling for a few weeks, tearing tissues and making space. PTs are like carnies, I’ve decided. They start to get a little twisted hearing people scream all day.

Anyway, I have been applying more ball of the foot pressure when I walk to stimulate more arch development, and my 4th toe is beginning to have to activate. It appears that the 4th toe is like the ring finger: the weakest of the series. It is the most bent/deformed of all my toes, hence its needing the biggest structural change post-shoe.

That toe was the reason I stopped wearing shoes. It cried out to me that it was being squished sideways when I started walking more ball-heavy in my ballerina flats. I knew it needed more room, and I had ignored it for 32 years and let it grow cramped.

This is a really emotional process. I have to suffer the painful reshaping of my bones/joints, but I feel so compassionate in the process. I feel like I am finally caring for my feet, and not taking their work nor pain signals for granted. I feel like I am developing a relationship with my feet. We are getting to know one another and appreciate each other. I feel sorry for them. I tell them I’m sorry when they scream at me while restructuring. I think of all the other toes in the world who are not getting this loving attention and it makes me sad. We’ll get through this together, and in the end we’ll have 10 beautiful, functional toes, and sexy, gracefully curved arches.