Meet T., my friends nephew. After his parents spent nearly $200 in quarters on the Monster Claw trying to win him the stuffed Spiderman that he had his heart set on, T. decided to take matters into his own hands.

This photo is exactly why I fear procreating.

For sure, this will be my child, except not only will he be trapped inside the Monster Claw, he'll also be choking on a jawbreaker....

Today, I'm crazy angry.

Oh Daddy....

Aint nothing better than a cupcake eating face-off with poppa dukes to knock you off the gluten-free wagon. He gave it his all....but I schooled him.

Robert Christopher Whalen

February 11, 1979 - May 12, 2006

I remember the night I took this...Our anniversary. We celebrated by returning to the drive-in, where we had our first official "date" two years prior. It was super hot, the dead of August, the mosquitoes attacked us as we laid outside the car on blankets, eating ice cream and trying to pay attention to the movie. When we could take no more of the mosquitoes incessant biting, we crawled back into the car. Once alone together, we got lost in the heaviness of the air that surrounded us, in the heaviness of our own breathing. As was often the case when I spent time with you, that was a magical night...and many more followed.

9 months later you were dead....Died alone on the floor of your mothers living room, needle still in your arm. I remember when I got the call. It was a Saturday, and the sun had just made its way up. I remember thinking "who the fuck is calling me at this hour?"....annoyed, indignant.

In the days that followed, I was your widow...although never married. Black dress, black shawl, hair pulled back from my swollen red face. I held your brothers tear-streaked hand as we pushed your casket to the front of St. Mary's, lit candles at the pulpit...."Peace be with you, and also with you". In the unbearable grief of those moments, I grew up. No longer twenty-seven, I felt as if I'd lived a thousand lives...I was changed forever.

"Every loss is an opportunity"...Today, three years after you've gone....these words ring true for me.

Thanks for blessing my universe for as long as you could.

Om Shanti.

Went to see H.H. Dalai Lama yesterday with my dear friend E . I made the early morning trip down to Town Hall, on the heels of a late and emotionally charged night. Woke with swollen eyes and a a quasi-hollow heart, hoping my visit to the DL would put a few things in perspective for me.

And of course it did. I mean really...my troubles aren't so bad when compared to being forced to live in exile from your homeland for 50 years (and counting). I heard a lot of deeply insightful things yesterday, lots of juicy morsels of wisdom were spoken, things that I'll no doubt carry with me into eternity.

But the most profound thing I heard the DL say was "I don't know". He responded to a question from the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, with these three simple words.

"I dont know"....And right then and there I didn't feel so hollow-hearted anymore. Because he didn't know, he didn't have the answer, he didn't pretend to have the answer....didn't fast talk his way to the other side of the question, didn't defer to anyone else, didn't change the subject...he just didn't know, and he humbly admitted it.

And if the Dalai Lama can not "know", then I don't feel half bad floating through life in a general state of un-knowing.

Om Shanti...

woof woof...

Ben: "So I'm thinking of starting a musical theater troupe with highly trained dogs....I'm going to be the director."

Noell: "Like a canine version of 'Shakespeare in the Park'?"

Ben: "Yes, exactly."

Noell: "Nice. We need more of those kinds of things....What will you perform?"

Ben: "Cats."

Thanks for burning out my retinas Mr. Mercedes.

Halogen headlights are direct descendants of Satan himself. They seem to come standard on every luxury car made after 2006, and I detest them.

I truly believe that halogen bulbs are yet another way that we, the working class, are being beat down by the man. Every day, the retinas of the working and poor class folk are being singed out by entitled luxury car-driving tailgaters. It's an atrocity...and it has to stop.

My friend Ben, a self proclaimed "cat man", chillaxing with his feline friend.

When we were 16 and sophomores in high school, my friend M. and I used to say that if we weren't married by the ancient age of 30, we would move to a big house in the country, with thirty cats and a wrap around porch. We vowed to sit on the porch all day drinking gin and tonics, and harassing the neighbors in our nightgowns. And at Halloween time, the mothers of trick or treaters would refuse to allow their children to come to our door because we were "the drunk lesbian cat ladies" (which they would say to one another in a whisper as they pointed towards the house).

30 seemed so far away then....

Engorged...

Woke up with the glands in my neck engorged to the size of two fat juicy grapes, and hurting something fierce. Whatever I'm fighting, I hope I win. The only thing that seems to dull the pain is huge cups of hot ginger tea with honey, and listening to Kid Cudi"s "Day 'n' Nite" on repeat.

Mary Oliver's "Landscape"

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that they have no tongues, could lecture all day if they wanted about spiritual patience?

Isn't it clear the black oaks along the path are standing as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now the crows break off from the rest of the darkness and burst up into the sky—as though all night they had thought of what they would like their lives to be, and imagined their strong, thick wings.

One of my favorite yoga teachers in the whole world, B.B., read this to us the other morning, before we began our practice, and I almost cried. Every time I take one of her classes I burst out of the doors of the studio with my heart cracked wide open, wondering "what do I want to be when I grow up?", truly believing that the entire galaxy is at my fingertips.

Excuse me..is my face melting off?

Ohh the masks that we wear. The masks we put on to satisfy our desires, to paint a picture of what we think others may want us to be, to satiate our ulterior motives....I was always a fan of people who let their true colors show regularly everyday. People who didn't fake the funk, who aired their dirty laundry, and were comfortable saying to the world "I am a work in progress".

My good friend and mentor calls the rigorously honest who walk among us "human becomings", rather than "human beings". She says that none of us have yet finished our development, none of us have yet "arrived".

I agree with her...which is why I have an affinity for waking up every morning and being me - in all my fabulously flawed and authentic glory- rather than a masked version of myself that will dupe the world into thinking I'm something that I'm not.

Because lets face it (no pun intended)...eventually the mask comes off, or melts off, or is ripped off, and your left staring into the mirror at who you really are, and....sometimes boys and girls...the reflection ain't so pretty.

Random Acts of Kindess

Some times you're having a bad day...and then the Egyptian man who runs the bodega next door to your job randomly gives you a hookah and some apple flavored tabacco.....And then your day isn't so bad after all.

Thanks "Deli Stop" friend. I'm forever in your good graces. MUAH!

Okay, I'll admit it...I take immense pleasure out of catching people in awkward or embarrassing moments. I know...it's kind of mean spirited. But having had sooo many myself, I can always immediately empathize with the sufferer, and if I happen to catch some eye contact, I always give them that understanding "I've totally been there man" look.

One of my favorite acts to witness is a little something that I like to call "the sidewalk stumbler". These are the people, usually men, that you see tripping over their own feet while strutting their hardest mean walk down the street. I have seen this happen so many times, that I can usually predict how the victim will recover from the stumble, even before he makes his very calculated decision. But today I saw a phenomenon unlike any other...

Usually the stumbler is going to do one of two things...there's the "trip and jog", where the victim will stumble over his own foot and will immediately break into a light jog, as if he decided in that very moment that he really needed to increase his cardiovascular fitness. And then there's the "trip and terror", where the victim will lose his footing, and a look of sheer terror will creep across his face, as if he has just been subjected to an unimaginable atrocity. He will then look around to see who else saw the stumble with a frightfully perplexed look on his face .

Today, however, was a real treat. The stumbler, a young thugged-out man dressed in oversized clothing...stumbled on the sidewalk, teetered backwards as if he may fall, lifted his knee, and brought his Timberland encapsulated foot to the ground with a smack. He then proceeded to break into a variation of a stomp dance. The "dance" even had lyrics to go along with it, which he sang loudly as he stomped the remaining length of the block.

It was absolutely effin' brilliant.

Whats Love Got To Do With It??

Yesterday morning I woke up at 6am feeling very sprightly. Some mornings, when I'm feeling all sorts of well rested and content with life, I'll put my ipod on and will get ready for work while blaring music and dancing around the living room in my underwear. Yesterday was one of those mornings.

Tina Turner's "Whats Love Got To Do With It" was on, and I started to feel very VERY inspired...

Grabbing my hair brush, which also doubles as a microphone - I headed to the mirror in the living room to begin my performance. I was in the throes of belting the lyrics into the "mic", and shimmying a full body shimmy, when I looked over my shoulder and saw my landlord plus 2 of his landscape workers peering in the window behind me..laughing.

There are no words to describe the level of embarrassment felt in moments like these. These are the moments that, years later, while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, you'll think of, and the humiliation of it all will cause you to draw the covers over your head, again and again, and again.

sooo confused....

Because this is exactly how I'm feeling today.....WTF? Why are people so weird? Am I in the Twilight Zone? Is it opposite day?

Have I secretly been "jinxed"?

Johnny-Five is Alive

On Sunday morning I woke from a delightful rest, rolled over to check what time it was on my cell phone, and saw this monstrosity staring up at me. Impressed by it's likeness to the star of Short Circuit & Short Circuit 2, I decided to snap a photo and share it with the world.

Meet Johnny-Five, the all purpose hand-held personal massager. Settings include; "whoa...weird", "I'm really starting to get itchy", and "I think I just licked a light socket". Johnny is pretty good at working out the kinks in your scapulae, but I'd caution you against using him on your special parts, as he emits a burning smell when powered on for too long.

Not so celebratory, and not such a beautiful life...

Outside of the Al-Fakhora school in Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza." If you are not ouraged, then you're not paying attention".

Cease Fire. Now.

Take some gansta out your lean...

July 19, 2008 San Juan, Puerto Rico - "Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother’s living room. His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: “He wanted to be happy, standing.”

So this little gem of a news story came out in July of 08. Had I actually had a blog over the summer I would have written about it, in fact, it might have even been worth starting a blog over, but I was laying in corpse pose on the Baja coast for a month, so that ship sailed.

But there's no time like the present to take the opportunity to give you my opinion on the matter....so here it goes..."Hmmmmmm??" (pensive look on my face). My mind is wide open with exciting possibilities for my own wake. Chaturanga Dandasana?? Crow pose?? Or perhaps Ardha Chandrasana?

For those of you that end up outliving me...please make sure that when I go, I'm perched atop my Jade yoga mat in downward facing dog, and that my alignment is absolutely perfect.

J to the Dizzle

Homage to my friend J-Dizzle. One of the last few men left on this planet who will help you put your stiletto on, and then will proceed to buckle it for you. He's a man with an affinity for racial slurs, general tso's chicken, and Hummels (for those of you non-Italians reading this, Hummel's are small porcelain figurines depicting eastern European children. In old school Italian homes, they can often be found showcased in large glass cases, right next to the sofa that has been slip-covered in plastic. They are manufactured in Germany, and are overall pretty atrocious).

J-Dizzle is loud, unapologetic, and will call you cute pet nicknames like "cracker jack", "muffin top", or "fluffy". He knows all the words to every Babyface song ever sung, and he's not afraid to serenade you with them. He'll start your car for you when it's blustery cold, he'll brush your hair if you're sad and broken-hearted, and he'll make you a cd called "No Scrubs" featuring SWV, Mary J, TLC, Maxwell, and Color Me Badd.

He's the guy you were friends with in middle school that made you laugh so hard in math class that you peed your pants, and beat people up for calling you chubby. Only now he's in his mid-30's, but still just as fabulous.

Dirty 30...

So I'm officially 30 and lovin' life. I spent my birthday laying on a chaise lounge on South Beach next to one of my closest friends, coated in SPF 30 , and soaking up the sun. (Unlike in my 20's, I'm now concerned with things like sun damage and fine lines). After visually scanning the beach for hot men, we got to talking about the past, and all of the changes that have taken place in our lives over the years. And because the moment seemed appropriate - I suggested that we create a gratitude list, so that when we returned to the icy NY cold and starting slipping into a depression, we'd have something to bring us right back to that very moment of sheer bliss.

So here goes the first gratitude list of 2009 (but certainly not the last):
1. The opportunity to live my days free from war, disease, hunger and oppression.
2. The deep sense of peace and freedom that yoga has given me.
3. My recovery,and the wisdom that's come with it.
4. My beautiful family.
5. The opportunity to teach yoga to others every day.
6. My crazy quirky friends who live very close to my heart.
7. The courage to walk away when the expiration date is up.
8. Bananas, and other delightful Christmas presents.
9. The Nuva Ring.
10. Barack Obama.