Balance In the Dust

The sun was shining and the clouds were gone when I awoke this morning. It was a bit cooler and windier than it had been, but the oppressive humidity seemed to have dissolved with the cloud cover. It was a lovely morning for yoga class. We concentrated on strength training - standing poses, inversions, and core work. I had to take things easy. I've been turning myself into one big lump lately. In addition to my badly bruised stomach and sore left thigh, I think I pulled a muscle in my right hand, and I have a nice little bruise on my left shoulder, too. I am, however, getting very good at walking on the wall, even if I can't get on my head yet.

Volunteering at the Collingswood Library didn't go nearly as well. There were tons of volunteers there when I arrived, and they all seemed to be working on the DVDs. I got fed up with everyone trying to put everything where they wanted to and just stormed upstairs. While there was only one non-fiction book to shelve, I did find an unusual biography in the children's section that made me feel better. Lily Renee, Escape Artist is a graphic novel for older kids about an Austrian Jewish girl who escapes the Nazis and makes it to England. She's treated no better than a servant there, until she manages to get a job in a hospital in London. She saves babies from the Blitz, but almost can't save herself when she's taken to the police as an enemy alien. She does finally make it to New York, where her parents have fled after leaving Vienna. There, she becomes one of the first woman comic book artists, drawing pioneering female action characters during World War II.

I'm not the biggest fan of comic books in the universe...but I am a fan of action stories with strong female characters. Lily Renee managed to make her characters' lives seem dull by comparison! Talk about the original Wonder Woman! I used the last of my Barnes and Noble gift card to buy it this evening.

I ended up leaving early. It was getting a little cooler and cloudier by then, around 11:30. Thankfully, they weren't the heavy stormy type of clouds, and they were gone by the evening. When I got in, I had Spinach with Mushrooms, steamed green beans, and the last of the chicken meatloaf for lunch, then finished dusting the apartment. I mostly needed to do the entertainment area. The baker's rack and black DVD shelves were horribly dusty, probably because I never got to spring cleaning last month. There was less to do in my bedroom; I did a lot of it when I rearranged furniture on Sunday and Monday. I mainly cleaned the closets, Ikea shelves, and the inside of the roll-top desk.

I managed to get to work on time, which is good, because they were busy again. There were a lot of annoying people, too. A lot of people were just giving me a hard time. I was happy it was slow enough by 8:30 to be able to leave with no relief.