Two weeks later

So much for my plans to update at least weekly. I had a grand total of one student during my first week at the studio. But during week two I had three students. One of my new students scheduled a return visit and my second new student scheduled FOUR additional lessons. I also taught my two classes and two private lessons at home. It would appear that I am actually a Pilates instructor.

Today is Friday and I don't teach. My brother is in town from Portland. During our wanderings around the city, doing various errands and window shopping, he told a sales person in a fitness store that I am a Pilates instructor. He made it sound like she should be impressed. That was a first.

The experience of these past two weeks has left me relieved because I still love teaching. After teaching for three hours on Thursday I felt energetic and focussed. Most of my nerves come before I start a session or class. But I got incredibly nervous while teaching one of my new students - a 42 year old man. I forgot how to get someone out of the foot straps on the reformer. I instantly got a hot flash which only made things worse. I started to freak out that my mentor teacher had witnessed my ineptitude. But I managed to pull myself together and move on to the next exercise. A little later when we had finished the session, I was stunned when he bought a package and scheduled four more lessons. I guess he liked me anyway.

I made Afgan-style shish kabob, barbecued sweet corn, and salad for dinner Saturday night. The boys made chili-cheese corn bread from a Cooking Light recipe. Then I went out of town, so the left over lamb just sat there in the refrigerator until I came back Monday night. I made a curried stew with French lentils, carrots, onion, celery, left over sweet corn, and the lamb. We ate it with cucumber and cilantro raita, basmati rice and sweet chutney. Another lovely meal. After dinner I baked some of the oatmeal, chocolate chip, and dried cherry cookies that I had in the freezer. On Wednesday morning I took some chicken out of the freezer to thaw. But we ended up going to see a movie and I didn't cook. That meant I HAD to do something with the chicken Thursday. I made a Chicken Tagine with lemons and olives over Quinoa. We had salad with snow peas, pecans, and cherry plum tomatoes with balsamic mustard vinaigrette. Tonight we had dinner out. I went all out for duck - seared duck liver salad with a bacon-wrapped fig and roasted duck breast and leg over greens and a fantastic corn pudding that I would love to be able to recreate. Stay tuned. I'm hitting the farmers' market tomorrow and I'm going to get enough sweet corn to experiment with!