Every day, Tuesday through Saturday, she jumps out of bed (O.K. - allow me a little poetic license here! "Jumps" may be a wee exaggeration!) and into the shower, and within a half-an-hour, she is riding in the car, heading for High-Tec City to be in the office by 5:30 A.M.
My dear friends (friends of Amy already know this!) - at home in Los Angeles, the only thing that would get her out of bed at this un-holy hour would be a horse show and an 8:00 warm-up class at The Oaks or down at the HITS shows in Thermal! She's going to be great at her new position at Deloitte, I just know it, because, frankly, she is great at anything she tries.
Suzanne has tried more new things in the last six-weeks than she has in our entire thirteen years of our knowing each other!! That's one of the things that is so exciting about watching her get settled here. We all know the truth in this: Sometimes in life, we get into habits, and habits can cause us to fall into some well-worn ruts. If you've ever seen a wagon-wheel stuck in a deep rut, especially if it's a muddy road...you know how difficult it can be to break out of it. In our experience, it is simply not in my loving wife's psychological makeup to break free of such obstacles in the road. THere is no doubt in my mind: Amy would have been perfectly happy staying in her cozy office on top of Bunker Hill, living on Old Mill Road, going to her horse shows every weekend and never, ever "varying the theme". And she would be the first one to admit this...I'm not telling secrets out of school here!!
Prime example (one amongst many!): The other night, we were doing our nightly yoga class. Now between the two of us, I'm the one who is the "sweater". It runs in the family. It's how my mother and I always had out interior thermostats set. If it got to be 76-degrees (24 C.) - both my Mom and I would begin to sweat like "stray dogs in Koreatown"! That's just how both of us were "wired at the factory". My Dad? He was just the opposite. "104-in the shade" ... while outside dove-hunting down in Mexicali, Mexico, he never sweat a drop...while I, on the other hand, would be reduced to rusty shotgun sitting in a puddle of brine beneath a folding aluminum lawn-chair.
Mostly, our Amy seems to do her worst sweating at the L.A. Equestrian Center horse shows in mid-August (is that Gold Coast?)...while she's doing multiple hunter rounds wearing a black helmet and blue hunt-coat...but most of the time she's not nearly the "sweater" that I am. Yet, on Monday of this week, here we were...just a minute or so after our hour-plus long yoga session in our basement...and she's laying in the savasana (or, "corpse pose"). I'm sort of sitting in the sukasana (easy sitting) pose. I looked over at my beautiful bride... and she looked every bit like a wet dish-rag. I smiled over at her and she said, out-loud, to no one in particular:
"What the hell has happened to my life???" She smiled and we all had a good laugh!
It's so true!! We are both going through some serious changes and growth-spurts. Perhaps mine are coming more quickly than hers, but I'm pretty proud of both of us, I've gotta say! We have this wonderful home theater in our basement...and it has morphed into a bloody yoga studio!! Amy Brubaker, the WCHR Champion at The Capital Challenge Horse Show for two years running...is doing yoga, she is having a wonderful time coaxing polo ponies to canter along the "rail" (actually more of a "fence" made out of tree-branches!) at the Hyderabad Polo and Riding Club, and we have both made lots of new friends! She's growing, and seems to be smiling every minute! As for me...I'm attending a wide variety of wonderful worship services from any number of traditions (this Sunday it looks like "St. Andrew's Orthodox Church" in Secunderabad!) and meeting tons of new and interesting people. Our "family" has grown to include Krishna (I mean our caretaker, not the Big Blue Guy), his wife, Jyoti, their kids, our security man, Sangamesh. It's a wild, wonderful, exciting, crazy and sometimes hard-to-deal-with place...but - we feel honored to be here...and we are loving it!!
N.B. about YOGA. This $#!+ is intense!! We are only at the very beginning stages of learing the basics...but - I'm telling you, no exaggeration - I feel better by leaps and bounds. I'm much more limber, some of my more arthritic parts are becoming more supple...and (this is huge...it may not sound like much, but for me - it's HUGE!) now I can bend over to pluck the golf ball out of the bottom of the hole without straining a ligament or getting a hernia!! I would be very sad if yoga got cancelled tonight. Every day I get juat a little stronger, just a little better.
For those of you who know me from back home...you better be sitting down. Are you ready? No McMuffins and hash-browns for me! Here is a photo of Fr. K.'s breakfast this morning: Hot green and tulasi tea with wild honey, a fresh, local-grown orange, a handful of raw almonds, about a cup of raw, freshly-soaked and sprouted "seed sprouts" and three raw dates. Some of my friends from home have told me that it looks "like bird food" ...or, "like dessert for a squirrel!" But I don't care!! When was the last time you saw a squirrel in the hospital geting a quadruple bypass?? I'm just fine with the jabs and ribbing I'm taking from friends. I like it here, and I want to stay alive longer to enjoy it! And guess what? It's all really good!!
I think your breakfast looks wonderful. You're inspiring me to make some changes.
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