sand in the machine

better

2012-01-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

You know that line from that movie, where Jack Nicholson's character tells Helen Hunt's character that she makes him want to be a better man?

Yeah, I've never understood that line. How can someone else make you want to be a better person? Huh? Doesn't compute. Someone good in your life may bring out the best in you. Or make you want to try harder, strive more, challenge yourself. Sometimes, I think having a good partner, even a good friend, to anchor you, makes it easier to strike out, to reach further, because you know that if you fall, you've got someone to help you get back up. Which, come on, everyone needs. But you make me want to be a better man? No. I do believe the aphorism that if someone tells you they aren't good enough for you, believe it.

Anyway. Sort of not the point. The point is that tonight I ended up doing something that I needed to do, for me, that was harder than I thought it would be. And I do feel as though forcing myself to do it made me a little better of a person.

I got an e-mail over the weekend from the guy who dumped me about 4 months ago. Right after he broke things off, he attempted a bit of chatty e-mailing, and I shut that down. I got no explanation then of why he unilaterally decided to end the relationship, and I would have done unseemly things for "closure" at the time. Instead, I had a realization that there was no such thing, and all I really needed to know was that he no longer wanted to be in a relationship.

So this weekend, he finally decided to tell me what had been going on in his head. It was not the most coherent writing I've ever read, and it was less coherent (although longer) than most of the e-mails we exchanged during our relationship. But basically, if I boil it down to an essence, he broke up with me because he was insecure about our relationship and how I felt about him, but he couldn't say any of those things to me at the time, and he was now feeling out the possibility of maybe giving things another chance or at least being friends.

I considered ignoring it entirely. I don't owe him a response. I decided I owed myself a response. It was an effort on his part to tell me what was going on his head, which was more than happened most of the time we were together, and in a Golden Rule fashion, I wanted to acknowledge that. While I didn't need it, and I suspected his motives in e-mailing now, I wanted to honor the best intention I could imagine instead. And also use my words to say, no, there will be no relationship, I wish you had said any or all of this months ago when we could have ended things kindly, and while it's too little, too late, thanks anyway.

All of which I had to type out three or four times until I could say something like that sincerely, without snark, sarcasm, or condescension. And when I finally did it and sent it, I did feel as though I'd at least honored my own moral code.

What I learned was that it's harder than you think to actually live by your own code, that trying to assume good intent from someone who hurt you is difficult, but that doing it while honoring yourself and your boundaries is actually more worthwhile than you might think.

Feels like a good way to open the new year. (Also? Still going good on the produce front).

Be it resolved,

2012-01-01T19:10:00.000-08:00

that it is within my power to make 2012 more awesome than it would be without my active participation.

My basic resolution for the year is to live the life I want to live to the best of my ability. I resolve to be present, to be kind, to be well, to take care of myself, mind and body. This will make 2012 awesome, no matter what happens.

To that end, I have resolved to look at the following aspects of my life for improvement:

1. Keep doing the things that already are working to make me healthier and more centered, including but not limited to pilates, yoga, therapy, acupuncture, naturopathy, hypnotherapy, supplements and vitamins, and getting more sleep.
2. Drink water. Lots.
3. Be kind. To myself and others, though the first leads to the second.
4. Be social within my abilities to be. Have dinner with C regularly.
5. Be active. Just move. As often as possible.
6. Manage my money more purposefully, within line with my personal priorities.
7. Floss more.
8. Go to at least one cultural outing or event a month.
9. Save for travel. Then travel. Not on credit.
10. Make a plan to meet the biological extended family.
11. Set work goals before March review.
12. Write more.
13. Work out a plan for the cookbook, cook things, learn to gluten-free bake, at least cupcakes.
14. Make a knitting project list on Ravelry, so that I'm not hunting around for patterns when I want a new project.
15. Declutter the apartment, get rid of things I don't use, go through boxes that aren't opened regularly.
16. Be realistic about my needs, about where I am, and what I want.
17. Do monthly focused "challenges" to help create new habits and learn new skills.

Challenge for January: eat at least one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetables every single day. Work towards at least one serving at each meal.

Mostly, I eat a lot of vegetables, but very little fruit. I just don't like a lot of it. Sometimes, I don't eat much produce, and I should eat more. I feel better when I eat more. So I should eat more.

2012 will be a good year. So I intend, so shall it be.

Goals

2011-12-28T19:52:00.000-08:00

I'm not very good at resolutions. I like clean slates, fresh starts, new notebooks, and I LOVE a clean calendar. But these days, I need next year's calendar before Thanksgiving, and this year I had to buy an 18-month calendar that started last July for next year. It was the only thing that suited my needs That Day when I needed it. So it's clean, but not new for January 1.

This year, I read this blog post about writing yourself a "wellness prescription." As someone who has minor but relatively debilitating medical issues that can only be improved with the choices I make in my daily life, it really resonated that my life is the prescription I need to solve my issues. Huh.

So in order to work towards personal goals in all aspects of my life, I thought I'd set goals and challenges rather than make resolutions for 2012. I am going to put together a list of things I want to do in 2012. Then I'm going to figure out what I need to do to achieve them, and set those as goals. I'm thinking one challenge a month, with some over-arching ideas and plans will do quite nicely.

Stay tuned. I'll be posting some goals, some challenges, some plans, and some inspiration as a lead up to 2012. I've got a lot to do if the world is going to end next year.

luck (and hiccups. I have them).

2011-12-12T20:05:00.000-08:00

I am currently suffering a near-incapacitating inability to move my right arm/shoulder and neck, apparently all a result of being abducted by aliens Saturday night (and/or sleeping very wrong). It's made me realize how important that dominant arm is to daily living, and wonder about what I'd do if it were completely gone. How would I adapt? How would I cope? But you know, people learn to do it every day, and why should I think I'm special?

It's amazing how the universe conspires to show you how damn lucky you are sometimes. Good for the universe.

giving thanks.

2011-11-27T17:07:00.001-08:00

Since 'tis the season, I've spent my long weekend being thankful. Thankful for my team of health professionals, from the naturopath to my pilates and yoga instructors. Thankful that I make enough money to renovate my whole pantry (contents, not layout -- this is a rental). Thankful that I feel immeasurably stronger and healthier and better than I did even months ago. Thankful that I spent a holiday that makes people a bit crazy alone making incredible food for myself. Thankful that I have friends and family who understand that I love them enough to see them at other times of the year when traveling isn't crazy and food concerns won't put anyone out. Thankful for two cats who have loved me being home. Thankful for the recently deceased Anne McCaffery and the world of Pern she gave us, as well as for my great local bookstore where I bought her original trilogy -- and for the realization that I've never read these before.* Thankful to have a career I enjoy. Thankful for my knitting guild, the friend who dragged me to a knitting class years ago, and for a hobby that has soft and fluffy end products.

Thankful, generally, that my life is what it is. And that all the work that I've put into it has gotten me here.

*I discovered Anne McCaffery at the beginning of my love of fantasy and sci-fi, before I realized how much better it is to read things from the beginning if you have the time and patience to track them all down.

being janis joplin

2011-11-12T18:46:00.001-08:00

I first heard of Janis Joplin when I started college. A girl on my hall had an acoustic guitar and a giant poster of Janis Joplin on her wall. I didn't understand the hero worship, but I also didn't know a thing about Janis Joplin or much of anything about music. I was still a fan of The Jets (not that I shared that fact. I was ashamed of it in college. Now I just admit I have questionable taste in music. I deal.)

Over the years, I heard some of Janis Joplin's music. I admit, I didn't get it, didn't understand the big deal. She had an interesting voice, yes, but so do many other people. She was well-known as an early pioneer in rock music. Okay. Tonight I am admitting that my opinion is entirely changed.

Janis Joplin was fucking amazing.

I saw Festival Express, a kind of amazing documentary even if you don't care what was going on in rock music in 1970. But that summer, a Canadian rock promoter got the idea of having a traveling festival. Originally planned to go from Montreal to Toronto to Winnipeg to Calvary to Vancouver, with the bands traveling by train between sites, the tour was truncated to the middle three cities and plagued by protesters wanting "free music." Apparently it lost a ton of money for the producers, and the hastily put-together film crew dispersed, many unpaid, without putting together a film. The film came together between 1994 and 2003 after sitting around in garages and basements and other random, most uncontrolled storage areas, to be made into what one of the cinematographers said was a way better film than could possibly have been produced in 1970. The advent of digital technologies allowed for adjustments that compensated for the lack of light.

But while the tour may not have been a financial success, the footage shows an amazing behind the scenes experience, of musicians just being together and making music and having an amazing time doing so. I am not a musician. I don't know the joy of a good jam session. But imagine a week of them, of the inspiration of other people who love music the way you do, of playing together and mixing it up? Even I can see that would be an unforgettable, once in a lifetime, glad-we-caught-it-on-film experience. And the movie is funny, too.

The movie was about music, about what it is to people who perform and make it for a living. It was about what music means to an audience, both a peaceful paying audience and a Woodstock-inspired rioting audience.

But back to the amazing Janis Joplin.

Here:

Janis Joplin threw it all out into the world when she performed. Her talent wasn't in her voice, her songwriting, her music. It was her, her performance, her ability to give it all, hold back nothing, throw herself wide open to the world.

Yes, that's what I got from two songs in a film not really about Janis Joplin.

Imagine living your life raw. Open. Uncovered, unconcealed. Not balls to the wall because there is no fucking wall (and you don't have balls). Imagine being able to send it all -- your pain, your rage, your loss, your love, your need and desire, your hope, your peace, your hell -- to send it all out into the world. What would it feel like? What would you get back? What would life be like without the parameters we create for ourselves?

Watching Janis Joplin, I see power, I see command. I do not see peace. But I do see joy in the performance, in being able to perform and give away the pain. I see the possibilities of opening up the parts we might normally seek to keep hidden.

Positivity!

2011-11-06T18:58:00.000-08:00

I have been to three stores since the diagnosis of food sensitivities and gut flora imbalances. Friday night, I did the two small stores, a co-op and a natural foods store. I nearly cried at the first, and talked to a lovely employee at the second (and taught her something -- chickpea miso does NOT contain soy!). Today, Sunday, I went to the normal grocery store.

You know what? I survived. The grocery store was once a mecca of exciting possibilities. I loved it. My roommate and I, first apartment out of college, made an event out of shopping and learning to cook together. As of last week, the grocery store became a zoo of sorts -- lots of enticing things I could no longer have.

But I took positive steps this week. I scheduled a dinner party with some suitable food sensitivity friends for the first Saturday in January. I had some great conversations with a few friends in similar boats to mine. A friend and I thought we might start taking notes for a cookbook.

I survived. I've been allergen-free for about 36 hours so far, and while I don't notice a difference yet, I'm glad to be on a path towards better health.

This post may have been brought to you by the liquid courage of gin. Which is allergen neutral. There are good things in life.

talking 'bout a revolution

2011-11-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

Today I got back my results for tests done on my gut and its many many issues. I am apparently missing most of the "good" bacteria that helps my body digest food properly. In addition, my body is attacking food like it attacks viruses, meaning my immune response is completely abnormal. Yay! Normal is SO over-rated.

Years ago, I cut out all cow products (dairy and beef), pork, alcohol, caffeine, lettuce, peas, and lima beans. Most of those were a prescribed diet, but with a few things added that I learned from my elimination diet. Since then, I have added back in minor amounts of caffeine (mostly green tea, but an occasional coffee) and an occasional alcoholic beverage.

But things still aren't going brilliantly. So I asked for help. And this time, really for the first time ever, got it.

Sadly, it turns out that I'm showing food sensitivities to eggs, bananas, pineapple, soy, wheat and gluten, peanuts, and pecans.

And so the food revolution begins again. I've found a friend to take most of the flours I have, I have a huge bag of unopened packaged foods for the food pantry, and I will have more stuff to find friends or coworkers to take off my hands. It's amazing how many things have soy or wheat or gluten in them.

ARGH.

I am frustrated. This is a challenge, and I'm sure I'll see that soon, embrace the challenge, learn new things. But today? It is just frustrating and annoying and overwhelming.

where are you going?

2011-10-31T19:59:00.000-07:00

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow and Xander play a game called "Anywhere but here," in which players daydream about being someplace else.

Places I have been which would be good places to go again in a daydream:

Atlanta: Decatur Square, has a great coffee shop (Church Street Coffee, or so it was called years ago), some neat gentrified shops, and some good restaurants. Also worth checking out, the High Museum of Art. It has space. And good art.

San Fransisco: Alcatraz and Golden Gate Park (rent a bike!)

Oregon: Crater Lake, which you will take a billion photos of that don't even begin to capture it, Astoria (where Goonies was filmed), and most everything in Portland (but especially Powell's Books).

Seattle: the Space Needle is almost definitely the best tourist destination I've visited, plus there's a monorail.

North Dakota: the Badlands (Teddy Roosevelt National Park, great for wildlife viewing, weird geology, and some shorter hikes with great views), Space Aliens in Bismarck(possibly the best french fries ever), Whitey's (now closed) in East Grand Forks (technically in Minnesota). But if you can time it right, the Wells County Fair and the New Rockford Steam Threshers Association gathering are so worth checking out.

Minnesota: There's a great diner in St. Paul somewhere, Mickey's, I think. Great Claes Oldenburg sculpture, too.

Boulder, Colorado, just because. For the same reason, Keene, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont. Nifty college towns with great downtowns and things to see and do. Oh, and Eugene, Oregon -- go during summer on a Saturday for the best and most amazing farmer's market (and best berries) ever. Oh, and good bakeries right around there.

Chicago. I know it's known for lots of things, not all of them good, but I adore the museums -- the Field, the Museum of Science and Industry, amazing skyline. I love Chicago.

Michigan, along the lake. It really is a pretty lake.

DC. See the Library of Congress. Of course, there are a few museums there, too. :)

Philadelphia -- skip the liberty bell (I did) and go to the Eastern State Penitentiary tour. Also, hit the art museum and watch people run the steps like Rocky. That is some of the best people watching I've ever seen.

New Hampshire's Mount Washington, to ride the Cog Railway or go to the Lupine Festival and Polly's Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill.

Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for Pier Fries! Don't forget the malt vinegar.

Boston. Pretty much all of it, but the Isabella Stewart Gardener museum is quirky and cool (and free, if your name is Isabella) and the North End is fun (with pastry).

Delaware Art Museum in ... damn, what town is that? Wilmington. Very amazing collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, and try the macaroons at the Hotel du Pont.

New Orleans -- the Clover Grill, tater tots.

And on that happy note, sweet dreams, both day and night.

say what you mean to say

2011-10-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

I live with cats.

When cats want attention, they stand on you, sit on your book, paw at your head while standing on the back of the couch, or lay across the keyboard. When you're petting a cat, the cat will squirm into position until you're scratching the spot that feels best. When a cat is hungry, you will hear about it, be lead to the food bowl, "told" how empty it is, and stared at intently.

Cats are not subtle.*

But people often are. Or they try to be. There are times when diplomacy is the best course, when listening and following are important. I will say that I am confused by how unwilling people are, though, to claim their own needs and desires, to ask for what they need and want, and to do so in a clear and concise way.

Sometimes I think we are losing the ability to know what we want clearly and the communicate that. We are losing the ability to hear those statements clearly from others.

What would life be like if we had people in our lives that we could be honest with? A friend to whom I could say clearly and easily, "I need help. I need someone to listen to me right now because I'm having a really hard time." A partner to whom I could say, "Tonight, I need to sit on the couch with you, eat nachos, and cry over Robert Sean Leonard's fate in Dead Poet's Society. No, it won't be pretty." Someone you were always so honest with that they trusted you meant what you said?

I have a few of these friends, but discovered recently that I was holding back even from them. Almost the instant I stopped -- the e-mail I sent saying "I feel stupid saying this because I'm embarrassed to admit I feel this way" -- I felt a weight lift off me. I think that looking back, some of the honesty I've shared, the openness, scary as it was and is, it made me whole. It made me brave. I wrote a scary honest letter and got back a letter that made me laugh in recognition.

It's been years since I started sharing space with cats, but apparently I'm finally listening.

*I grew up with dogs. Dogs are also not subtle, but most dogs want their people to be happy. Cats don't give a shit whether you're happy so long as they are.

peter pan syndrome

2011-10-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Things that occasionally make me feel like I am not a "real" grown-up adult:

1. I live in a rental. I do not own a home. I do not have plans, nor am I saving for, a home of my own.
2. I'm not married. I'm not partnered. I am single.
3. I am not, nor do I intend to, have children.
4. I am a woman who lives with cats.
5. I can wear jeans to work.
6. Sometimes my apartment looks like college students trashed it.
7. My wardrobe is still a mess of decent clothing and stuff that matches nothing else in the closet.
8. At work, I am so often still the youngest person in the room. And I've been in the field for 10 years.

Things that contradict my apparent temperamental tendency to fuck over the American Dream of picket fences and 2.5 kids. Oh, and a dog:

1. I owned a house for three years. I sold it. I made enough money to move across the country and go to China.
2. I'd rather be single than lonely in a relationship.
3. I don't think being a parent is something to commit to lightly, and I've considered that decision carefully for more than 20 years.
4. I like cats. They give me more freedom than a dog would to go and have a social life and work.
5. I love jeans. I try to wear them nicely, well-paired.
6. I hate cleaning sometimes. When I hate it, I don't do it. I've learned to be happy with that.
7. I need a friend to shop with, someone to tell me what I'm missing. Or actually, I probably need a professional to just buy me clothing.
8. Actually, I have nothing to counter this one.

Apparently, despite repeatedly bucking society's pathway for A Good Life, I still sometimes feel as though I am missing "the point" of adulthood (is there a point? I missed that memo, too.). As though the definition of "adult" includes marriage, children, property ownership, and something about fences (you know, they make good neighbors, I hear). The feeling is brief, almost like vertigo from the space between what I have and like about my life, and what I think I should have to look like I've achieved adulthood to the world at large.

And yes, I'm totally aware that this is a problem of privilege, but knowing that I have choices and options that other people don't does not make my life much less confusing some days.

mistake

2011-10-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

I've grown up knowing that my life, as it is, is the product of mistakes. One big mistake -- two teenagers getting pregnant. One nature's mistake -- a married couple with infertility and a desire to be parents. And the solution to those two problems was adoption.

When I was about 9, I was watching some nature documentary with my mom and grandma. We were in the kitchen, sitting around the kitchen table, watching the small television (which likely means the male half of the family was watching something "more important" in the den on the normal-sized tv). There were snakes slithering across the screen, creatures that inspired only a bit of revulsion.

"He's a slimy bastard," I said of the big snake.

"What?" yelled my mom and grandma, shocked but nearly in unison.

"What? He's a slimy bastard." I said, somewhat confused.

"Honey," my mother said slowly, re-gaining her equilibrium, "Do you know what that word means?"

"Well, yeah," my 9 year old, dictionary-loving self replied. "It's someone bad or nasty. Not nice." Mistake. Probably should have used a dictionary.

So my mother explained. Impartially, undramatically, clinically. That a "bastard" is someone whose parents were not married when they were born.

"Oh!" I said. "Like me!"

My poor mother. It took her a few beats. Not as many as I think it might take me. And then she told me about "connotations" or common meanings, about how words that technically mean X might actually be used to mean Y in context. And how I shouldn't use words unless I was sure what they meant, which was increasingly becoming a problem as I read voraciously but relied on context rather than the beloved dictionary a little too often.

She did confirm that, yes, technically, I was a bastard, but that my parents (adoptive) were married when I was born, and since I was now their child, I was not a bastard.

Except that she's wrong -- I am. It's another fact of my existence, and I think that knowing it doesn't feel awkward the way denying it does. Knowing that I wasn't meant to be doesn't change that I am, or that life has been, overall, pretty privileged and decent. I am finding that reunion is stirring up a lot of confusion about how I feel about things, but not much about who I am. It's as though the framework will never change -- just the details. If a life is like a house, getting to know my birth mother and my origin story is finishing the basement -- the foundation that has always been there, but closed off and unfinished.

closure

2011-09-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

I e-mailed the now ex last night to ask for some stuff I'd left at his house. I would guess that everything I left there would fit in a grocery sack, and none of it is crucial, but I'd like my books back.

Originally, I wanted to use this excuse (though I wasn't think of it as an excuse at the time) to ask him what the hell happened, to attempt to extract an explanation for the abrupt end of our relationship out of him. On the advice of a good friend, I didn't. I just asked for my things, to be delivered via a friend, so with no direct contact.

My request was simple and short. So was his reply. If I can read between the two lines, I can almost sense a relief, whether at getting this last reminder of "us" out of his life or that I wasn't asking questions or creating drama, I don't know. I could be making up the relief, even.

Realizing that, how much of what went on with him was influenced by me "reading" things into reality? I don't know. I do know that I wasn't honest with myself about my reasons for wanting my platter and books and hairdryer back. I wanted another chance, another opportunity to possibly find out WTF happened. I hoped that this would be an opening for an explanation.

It wasn't. I was relieved and disappointed. Relieved because I knew at some point I would ask (I really like one of those books and the platter), and disappointed because I didn't get what I wanted. Now I realize that I don't need it.

Closure is a myth. Why will I feel better if he tells me what happened 5 weeks ago? I won't. It'll dredge up the original pain of being dumped, I imagine. He wanted to be broken up. We are broken up. What more is there to know? All I need to know to move on was that he did not want to be in a relationship with me anymore.

So I know that. I do feel better now than I did five weeks ago. I still miss him. I still miss us. I am still sad. I've spent a lot of time thinking about myself in that relationship, what worked, what didn't, what I know now that I didn't know when I started. But I've spent a lot of time on myself, working through the things I think I was putting aside in favor of being conflicted by my romantic relationship, and I have instead been trying to figure out what this adoption reunion means to me and my life and my emotional state, and that feels good.

I have closure in that I can give it to myself. I can decide to honor what we had by honoring his decision and need not to be a part of my life anymore, at least not in that way (and maybe in no way at all). I can smile because I deserve to. I can do yoga and read and live my life, because my life was never about one relationship alone. I can acknowledge the hole and let it be for now.

What if you were stolen?

2011-09-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

The NYT published an article on an adoption scandal in China. To make a long story short, the Chinese government has determined that at least 16 children were taken from their families by a provincial government and sold to orphanages to be adopted. The adoption market in China and many other countries is a lucrative business, and it can be even in the US. As the book I reviewed in 2008 but didn't publish until yesterday discussed, coercive adoption practices were common in the US in the mid-20th century.

One thing that resonates with me so deeply is a sentence my birth mother wrote to me in her very first letter, her response to me seeking her out:

The extent of [our] relationship I want to be your choice, seeing as you didn't have a choice 30+ years ago.

It seems to me that missing from a lot of the discussions about adoption, the practices of adoption agencies and governments involved in international adoption is the fact that the child in question is not a commodity but a human being.

From the NYT article:

The [adoption] process connects birth parents, child and adoptive parents in an unequal relationship in which each party has different needs and different leverage.

It isn't that adults involved in the adoption process forget the humanity of adoptees, but more that they believe that they can know what will be best for a child who cannot speak for herself yet, nor for many, many years. And the narrative of adoption as passed down to the child being adopted is that the adoptive parents have saved the child and have been saved from a lonely childless life by the child. That you are lucky to have been adopted, lucky to have been wanted, lucky to have the life you have. A life in which you had no say in choosing. In some cases, adoptees are told they should be grateful. Grateful. Again, for something you had no say in at all.

*******

I can't say that I know the differences between being an adoptee and being raised by your birth parents. I read stories, but as is so often the case, the negative stories are easier to find -- happy people have fewer stories they need to share, I guess, or they share them more softly. I only know my life story.

My adoptive parents are good people (well, were, in the case of my father). They wanted to be parents and couldn't do so biologically. They had an excellent adoption counselor who helped them know how to be adoptive parents -- how to tell my brother and I this part of our story that would respect our feelings, our needs, and our curiosities, and help us understand what it meant to be adopted. We were always told that if we wanted to seek out our birth parents, our adoptive parents would support us.

But you know, searching is harder than that. I wrote a letter to the agency when I was 17. I thought about it over the years. I talked to a birth mother when I was in graduate school -- the wife of a mentor, and the topic just came up. She was one of the girls who went away, and adoption was not a choice for her -- it was just what happened -- but when her child sought her out, she was glad to meet her and know her. In her case, her daughter was a bit of a mess, and her life took her away from my friend eventually. One of my good friends has an extended step-family including a step-sister who surrendered a child for adoption and refused to meet the child when she was tracked down.

I considered all of that and more when I was deciding what I wanted for my life. When I decided to search, I decided I could be okay with rejection if it came. I decided that I wanted to explore this chance to find out my origin story, that I wanted to open this door of possibility and see what happened. I was scared that I would find out that my existence was painful for her, that surrendering a child had in some way ruined her life, that I was a secret that, now revealed, ruined anything in her life today. I was scared that my search would be a negative for her.

And what I found is a story so much bigger than I thought. Not only bigger in scope -- my birth mother's life neither started nor ended with me -- but also bigger to me than I thought. I have something like 8 or 10 cousins who know of me but have never met me. Now I know of them, too. It is possible that I have half-siblings. But she was happy to hear from me, to know I was well, to have the chance to get to know me. It was better than I had dreamed could be possible.

Knowing that my own feelings about my origins were so complicated -- in a domestic adoption with reasonably complete paperwork -- I wonder about the NYT article's choice to include no interviews with adoptees in their story. One birth parent is mentioned; several adoption agencies are quoted; several adoptive parents are interviewed. Many of the adoptive parents do not seem to want to know the truth of their children's origin stories right now, and it's understandable, as the fear of raising a child who was kidnapped to be sold to you undermines any of the "good" in an adoption story -- the idea that you are raising a child who would have no home but for you. It's a scary, world-changing thought. Denial is much safer.

The author asks,

For now, though, is it the parents’ duty to ask those questions? Or is it for children to decide, in time, how much they want to know?

To that I have to answer -- it is the duty of adoptive parents to know as much as they can about the system they are participating in. When profit margins and greed can create a system where children are sold to parents who want them, rather than families found for children who need them, the entire system of adoption is corrupted. When the goal is to find children for parents who want children, rather than to find homes for children who need them the whole field of adoption becomes suspect. No one is entitled to adopt a child. Adoption agencies have no real motive to stop these practices. Most agencies have only the best of intentions, but it may benefit them not to dig too deeply in certain situations. The children themselves cannot often tell the truth of the situation.* This leaves adoptive parents to look beyond their own wants and desire for a child and a family and really understand the politics and problems, to think deeply about the system in which they are participating, and to think ahead to the future when your child will be asking you questions about their family of origin and how they came to be in the world and with you. Because they will ask. We always do.

*The article briefly mentions a heart-breaking story wherein two girls were old enough to report, presumably when they learned the language to do so, that they had been abducted from their families. That was 6 months after their adoption and relocation to the US. No one was able to translate this for their adoptive families before then, and it took that family another 6 years to find the girls' families.

serious thoughts from March 2008

2011-09-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

I found this post in my drafts, and since I've been thinking a lot about the whole adoption process lately, I thought I'd go ahead and throw this out there while I'm working on more processing.

"So you've found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts.
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?
Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon.
How's that thought for you?"
Silent All These Years, Tori Amos

I'm reading Ann Fessler's The Girls Who Went Away. Subtitle: The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade.

And thinking really deep thoughts.

I was adopted in the years after Roe passed, but I would guess that the circumstances surrounding my surrender were not all that different. Abortion was legal, but a mortal sin in the eyes of the Catholic church (birth control is also sinful, so take that as you will). The little information I have about my biological parents includes their ages (17 & 18) and their religous affiliation (Catholic). They specifically requested a Catholic family, according to the papers, although since many of the Homes for Unwed Mothers were Catholic, and Catholicism still stigmatizes barren women, you have to wonder if that request was coerced out of many "caught" girls.

I am having a hard time with this book. It is well-written, and the stories are well-told. I have one friend who is a birth mother, and she has told me of her experiences and meeting her bio-daughter. I respected her for telling me the story, as I respect the women Fessler interviewed.

But I have bought the adoption myths, the positive ones fed to my parents (my "real" parents are the people who adopted and raised me, and the terminology insults all involved, so please don't use it), and through them fed to me. I need to believe that the girl who surrendered me, who gave me up, and her partner in my creation who, according to the papers, was involved in the decision, thought and honestly believed that this situation was the best solution to a problem. That problem, of course, being me. I don't have a problem with being a bastard child born out of the sexual liaison of two lusty teenagers. I do have a problem wrapping my head around the possibility that the fact of my existence has altered forever the life of my birth mother, for the worse, not the better.

I have had, overall, a happy life. I am an introvert, was a bookworm tomboy of a child, and do not make friends easily. I'm not all that social most of the time. My parents are. I do not think the way they do. I do not look like them. I do, however, act like them. They raised me. I can make arguments for both nature and nurture.

consolidating procrastination

2011-09-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today, in a fit of procrastination from the list of "fun" things I really didn't want to do and another fiction writing challenge for my writing group, I finished the blog consolidation I've been working on for a year or so. I started sand in 2005 as a personal dumping ground/diary for my thoughts and musings on the world, but over the years, have blogged in a few different capacities. I did my stint of food obsessiveness and participated in three ultimately unsuccessful group blogs. I've consolidated two of those blogs into this one, as those were all in my own voice and don't need the context of others to make sense. This is an incomplete portrait of a woman becoming, with months of heavy chatting, and months and even years of virtual radio silence. Still, overall, it is part of who I am.

I am also procrastinating feeling. In my head I think I should be over being single yet again. I've been single before. It's in the archives! I am good at it (although I don't think that it's my superpower). And I still feel abandoned, alone, and a bit pissed off that it ended through a phone call. I was flirting with the idea of being friends with the now ex. Would it work? It might. I don't entirely agree with the linked piece, but what I can agree with is that as long as the bargaining phase of grieving the end of a relationship is anywhere on the horizon? No. Just no. No so hard that Nancy Reagan would approve and give me a headband. If my mind can still seriously play with "if he would just" and "if I could be more" then, no.

I miss the companionship. The ease of being with another human being. The casual touching that exists inside a relationship. And when I am honest about it, I want more than what I had there. I want a different communication style and level, I want a different feeling within, I want something that fits better. I hate giving up. I am stubborn. I want the square peg to go through the star-shaped hole just by the sheer force of my will. And I am working on the inner 5 y.o. still stamping her foot because it wasn't.

I wasn't blogging when this relationship started, or when it got rough the first time, or when it was amazing. It started well -- meeting at a group dinner. I liked him, but not enough to actively pursue, but he e-mailed me. He asked me to dinner, and when I agreed, suggested two places -- enough planning on his part to show interest (he didn't just say "well, where do you want to go?) but without being overbearing (which allowed me to address my own food issues without explaining them). We had sushi. We talked until the restaurant closed and then awkwardly and quickly agreed to see each other again before we got frostbite trying to talk outside. It was honestly one of the best first dates I've been on. And that memory, regardless of anything that comes after, is worth having. So are many others from the past year and a half.

Knowing something isn't working doesn't make it not worth the experience.

So right now, I'm just trying to remember this great tip: Just Knit instead.

diagnosis

2011-09-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Ever since I became a non-academic adult, I've been confused. The year no longer makes sense, the rhythm to life is wrong.

I suffer from calendar dysmorphia. The form of my year is wrong. The calendar as it's laid out on paper (and yes, I still use a paper calendar. Three of them, to be exact. And I LOVE them. Especially this one.) doesn't fit the calendar that is in my head and my bones.

And really, who decides this? I work in government. The federal fiscal year is 1 October through end of September. The state fiscal year is 1 July through 30 June. My work plan runs March to March.

For so many years of my life as a school-loving nerd (and a learning-loving nerd those years that school was a miserable hell hole of a place to be -- and I mean you, third grade), the year began just before fall. With the promise of crunchy leaves and cool mornings, some new school clothes that it was way too hot to wear just calling from the closet, brand new pencils, and a clean slate to write on. In the metaphorical, not the literal sense -- I am not old enough for slates.

So this year, with the assistance of a friend, I am becoming a Rosh Hashanah celebrant. This year, my New Year's celebration will fall in September, where it rightly belongs, rather than in January, where it frankly makes no damn sense at all. I figure if my father could be a Christmas Catholic (and yeah, just Christmas), then why can't I celebrate the spirit of a holiday outside my cultural tradition that make so much more sense to me?

Prescription for fixing calendar dysmorphia? Ignore the calendar. Improvise. Eat apples and honey for a sweet new year.

And people say that a liberal arts education doesn't enhance your life.

childhood sweethearts

2011-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Did you have one?

I didn't, not really. There was a kid in my third grade class named Eugene. He was what passed as my bestest friend in the world until my parents decided we had to move about 10 states away to a town where I had no friends. Age 8 really was a traumatic year for me.

I don't know anyone close to me who married a childhood sweetheart. Most people I know met their mate later in life, often college, rarely high school, and sometimes later in life. But I have read those stories, and there is often a little pang. To know, so young, at least one of the directions you'd be going in life? What would that be like? Does it take the mystery out of things, or just create different mysteries?

I am at the stage in my life where if I wanted to marry and have children, I would be getting desperate. My ovaries only remind me of their existence once a month a brief spring of pain, just to remind me of the reproductive potential I'm wasting (or to pay me back for Eve's hunger for an apple, some believe). And while I am not jealous of my married friends on a regular basis, I do occasionally read stories of people who have loved and been with their partners since what seems like the dawn of adulthood. My life would be so different if that had been the case.

Now, I am single by choice -- the mistake of marriage has been on the table in the past, and as those relationships are not part of my current life in really any shape, I am more than glad I never made it.

I have done wonderful, amazing, and happy things single. I have dated interesting (and deadly dull) people, had interesting experiences, and built my own life. But it is occasionally lonely to be on your own, to not be sharing the journey with a chosen partner. It is especially keen-edged when it's all new once again. This doesn't invalidate any of my life in any way. It's merely an acknowledgement that there are different paths that I might have gone down in life.

I wonder about the couples married for 50 or even a shocking 75 years. What stories, both joyous and painful, gut-wrenching and side-splitting they must have! That is a thing about stories: you can tell them to anyone, but telling them to and with someone else who was there exponentially increases the experience. What is it like to know that this person in front of you is the one you've chosen to build a life with? To know that someone's "got your 6" as a friend used to say (your back)?

Still, I've built a life. I am not opposed to the idea of sharing it, but I am unwilling to compromise and settle and choose someone just to have chosen. It is not a mistake to be alone. It would be a mistake to choose the wrong someone. In being on my own, I've been able to take opportunities that may have caused hardship had I been considering someone else's needs and feelings the entire time.

It has taken me years to realize that wondering how things could have been different isn't an indictment of my current life and past choices so much as it is an exploration of those and a foundation for future choices. I am seeing that trusting my gut instincts is usually the right thing to do, and it leads me where I need to go more often than not.

enough

2011-09-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't signed on to participate in all the "self-discovery" posts, but I love the idea of exploring one word and that word's meanings to my life today. This month's word is "enough" and it is being hosted by Miss Mary Max.

Enough. What is enough? When are we enough? When is what we do enough? Is the idea of "enough" akin to the settling, giving in, giving up?

Whatever it is, wherever we are in our lives, I like to think that we are each enough. I am enough. Who I am, how I am, I am enough.

Which doesn't mean that I am perfect or even adequate to every task or every situation. I royally fuck things up on a regular basis. And what I am learning in the wisdom of old old age (meaning I've been out of 20s for a few years) is that there is no end point where life is set and figured out and I am suddenly going to be good at everything that comprises adulthood.

Every 2-3 years, I miss a payment date on a bill and (!) incur a late charge. It doesn't mean I am fiscally unsound or irresponsible. It happens once in a while, and I learn from it, and it doesn't happen again for a long while. Sometimes I don't keep track of my checking balance and have cause to be grateful for my cushion. But most days/weeks/months, I have enough money to cover all my bills and still go out for dinner with a friend if I want to.

I still suck at socializing at parties. This has not magically been solved by adulthood. Sometimes this means I choose not to socialize, and other times I go into it knowing the amount of energy it will cost me, determined to make it worthwhile.

Some days, I am the consummate professional at work, on task, on point, and frankly amazing. Other days, it takes me half an hour to answer an e-mail, I can't remember the alphabet while filing, and I procrastinate returning phone calls.

Some days? I am a lousy friend. Self-involved, wrapped up in my own life and dramas, forgetting other people's important days and events, forgetting to even keep in touch properly. Other days, I remember what a hard time a friend is having and send an e-mail first thing in the morning, call for a good chat in the afternoon, send a funny video for a laugh.

I am not perfect. I am a work in progress. And my faulty, failure-riddled, occasionally brilliant self? It is enough. Where I am today is enough. The work I am doing -- professionally and personally -- is what I am capable of doing, and it, too, is enough. When I can remember that I am enough, I am capable of being even more than I expect of myself.

And that's enough about that.

permission

2011-09-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

At Friday night yoga, our teacher was asking us if anyone had plans for the three-day weekend.

I didn't. Well, I did, but not really -- my plan was to give myself permission to do nothing for the entire weekend. Sleep in, nap, read, watch TV. Not that this is drastically different from what I do many weekend, or even in the evenings, but to have three days with no list, no plans, no commitments? It felt a bit like a gift to myself.

So that was my plan -- nothing. I did sleep in. When I woke up, I read for a while. I wandered around the house, not really accomplishing anything, until I was ready to do something. When I left, I went to the library for more books, to the hardware store for some project materials, to the bookstore because there was a sale, and to the grocery store hoping to find my favorite popcorn. I didn't get the popcorn (or the plastic bathroom tile I need to fix), but I got everything else. I've already painted the porch rail and done most of the dishes. I made the bed, did some cleaning, groomed one of the cats. I've figured out how I want to rearrange the living room and office (it will require an exchange of furniture).

In having permission to do nothing, I have actually accomplished a lot. And feel fully ready to commit to two things I want to do this weekend -- knitting guild and a writing challenge before the submission deadline for my next writing group meeting. It's amazing how much a little nothing can get done.

Lonely or alone.

2011-09-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

I don't have a problem being alone. Choosing to move across the country, where I'd know no one and nothing about where I was, sort of compels you to be okay with your own company. The fact that it takes me a while to make friends is another factor. But mostly, I am okay with being alone.

But as okay as I am with myself and my company, it's lonely to be alone after a breakup. It's lonely to go from having A Person to call for dinner plans, weekend hikes, or a night in watching TV, to doing these things, once again. solo. It is lonely to give up a dream that you curated in your mind of How the Future Could Be If Only... Knowing that a relationship ended for reasonable reasons, logical reasons, that things really didn't work and weren't working and weren't going to get better is one thing. It addresses the mind. And it's funny, but no matter how you value logic and the preeminence of the mind, emotions defy logic when the world suddenly shifts beneath your feet. The emotional core -- which is, so far as anyone can tell, part of the mind, too -- says "Fuck logic. I am sad. And I will be sad in defiance of your logic until I am done being sad." And so, you are sad.

In "On Love," Alain de Boton details how "love" is a construct of ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, our desires, all projected on to another person who has no idea that they are playing the role of our ideal rather than starring as themselves. Love, he says, is a willing suspension of disbelief that this situation is unique and perfect, that small shared likes and desires show a compatibility of the soul -- a part of ourselves we cannot fully describe but claim to understand and know enough to find it a mate.

Breaking up is, and I feel I may have said this before, more about giving up on the potential of a relationship than it is losing a reality. Yes, it changes our immediate days and nights. But the heartbreak is not giving up the history of coupledom. The history stays with us, can be replayed from memory, in the early days often and unbidden. It is giving up on the future that has been discussed, day dreamed, and hoped for.

Oh, Monday. Hello.

2011-08-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yea, I'm just going to blame everything on Irene today. It seems realistic, for some reason.

Yesterday, we got a storm. Lots of rain, a good bit of wind, nearly 24 hours of grey skies and water falling on us. After the rain stopped, the wind really got into things, and despite all my plans and preparations, I spent most of the day lounging on the couch watching TV. The biggest "issue" that came up was that every time the power blinked out -- never for more than 30 seconds -- I had to get up and turn the TV on manually (it's old, and thinks that channel 1 is the place to start out.) So Sunday? Good. Enforced downtime, and I still got to watch Leverage at the end of the day. Who doesn't love a heist?

Monday? Was Monday. I started the day with the range timer going off each time the power came back on (over and over and over and over) as it flickered. I woke up to no power. Showered in the dark to remedy truly insane hair, and wandered over to work, where there was power, but no server access yet. Discovered the clean black t-shirt had a little hole in it -- through which showed a lovely bit of my only clean -- white -- bra. I did a few useful things today, but nothing that felt like it was really worth getting out of bed for, and then tripped up the stairs and smashed my thumb on the way home.

So on paper/screen, Monday was sort of a crap day. But I did some interesting reading at work. I had food at home that made for a quick, if unexciting, sandwich dinner. I had a few necessary and useful conversations with good friends. I feel like I can see a way where the crap day composed of minor setbacks doesn't actually feel like a crap day emotionally or physically. Like I can see what's useful in the day instead of just things that didn't work out as I wanted them to. It's a good feeling.

Except for the thumb. Damn is that an unfortunate joint to jam. The spacebar hurts!

balance

2011-08-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

"Balance" is the word of the month hosted by Tasty Life, and it also happens to be the focus of tonight's "New Balance" challenge on Project Runway.

Balance.

Balance is a bane. It is something I am seeking, but I'm often not sure if I want balance or if I am convinced that I need it by the dominant paradigm of our society, made worse by the fact that I'm a woman who should be balancing a career and a family life. Well, strike half of that. I do not have a "family" so therefore, I have no "life" to balance, right?

Wrong. Sometimes it feels that single people's lives are discounted by our society, especially single women's lives. I have a career, so good, I'm good husband bait. My personal life should be seeking out that husband to fulfill the ticking of my biological clock -- and then, I'll have a "life" worthy of needing balance.

But I do have a life outside of work, even if it doesn't fulfill someone else's expectations of what I should be doing. I read, a lot, and books that have nothing to do with my line of work. Many of them are novels. I quite enjoy watching television, where good writers are given 10 or 15 hours to develop a story line instead of 2, like a movie. I knit, I write, I spend time playing with my cats. I do yoga. I cook, I bake, and I take care of my apartment.

My favorite thing about not being a full-time student, which was most of my life, is that I can do one thing for the majority of my day -- work, in a career field that I love -- but I can do something completely different, or even nothing much at all, with the free time I have after that. "Free time" isn't something graduate students have -- you are either working or should be working, and there is always something else you could read or research or write. That doesn't mean you don't go out for dinner with friends or hang out, but it does mean you are thinking of what you need to be doing most of the time.

Some days I miss school, especially this time of year. The whole clear calendar, new schedule, new challenges thing is very enticing when I consider that I am trying to finish a project that started in 2008 right now. "Long-range" planning in grad school means looking forward to the end of the term, or occasionally planning out your actual educational path. But grad school has an end date to it that life, in general, doesn't. And I think that's where balance comes in.

Throwing myself 3000% into graduate school, knowing it would be 2-3 years of my life that could shape the rest of my path, was very unbalanced in the short term. In the long term, that dedication of time has paid off in the form of a career path that gives me 40 hours of time I feel is (mostly) well spent, every week, for nearly 10 years. (Doing that math shocked me a little, actually. Wow.). Learning how to go from having one thing that took up 95% of my time, to having a job and a life outside that job has been rocky for me. Some days I throw so much of myself at the job that at home, all I have energy for is recovery for the next day. What I am realizing, though, is that that's okay. That taking the time to be alone with myself, indulging in that time I need, well, that's just satisfying -- in the short term and the long term.

For me, a lot of becoming an adult has been accepting the reality of who I am, what I want, and how I actually need to live to make myself content, and letting go of some of the dreams and ideas and even ideals I had carried about who I wanted to be and who I dreamed I'd become. Balancing the reality of me with the desire for more than just what I am today -- growth, but realistic. I will not become a crazy party girl anytime soon, not without a personality transplant.

Balance isn't about perfection. It's about striving to find out what makes your life work for you, what combination of work and play, society and cave, sleep and wake, water and air, indulgence and asceticism, black, white, and grey, together and alone. What works for you? And understanding that what works for you will change in different phases of life, and even day to day. How can I honor what I need today and what obligations I have, and come out winner at the end?

New Thoughts.

2011-08-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Thoughts.

I went to a documentary tonight that my friend Linda's work was sponsoring -- she works for the Coalition on Preventing Domestic Violence in NH -- Sex + Money.

It's a documentary about domestic minor human sex trafficking -- or basically prostitution of children, here in the US. I've read about sex trafficking in other countries, especially southeast Asia, but not heard much about it here.

The documentary was odd, to be honest. The film crew was all young photojournalists, and they traveled around the country in this RV and talked to people. The cuts and shifts and focus shifting felt very post-MTV generation, and was a little much for my uber-delicate inner ears, but I did adjust. But they focused not only on the story they wanted to tell, but on themselves discovering and processing the story. Some of their discussions, reactions, and insights added greatly to the movie, whereas others more or less expressed their confusion or distaste and didn't, to me, add much.

They went into the documentary pretty much saying "selling kids for sex is morally wrong. We should raise awareness." And the documentary succeeds in that, but as one section showed, even the five member crew couldn't really parse out what this means in the larger culture in America.

What is the difference between sex work -- women and men who choose to be porn stars, strippers, or even prostitutes -- and sex slavery? How do you describe a woman who is now of legal age and a prostitute "by choice" but who was sold by someone else when she was 12? Can anyone really choose a life of prostitution, or is it an act of desperation? Were all sex workers abused as children, or do some people legitimately choose this life?

It was depressing to hear the statistics -- the fact that the center for missing and exploited children now tracks two groups of children -- runaways, who left home and someone reported it and is or was looking for them, and throwaways -- kids who leave home and no one cares enough to report it, or their parents think they're better off on the streets.

The fact that the average age that a girl is sold for sex for the first time is 13. Thirteen.

The fact that a man who buys sex with a 13 year old girl is often not prosecuted -- but the girl might be. Whereas if that same man had sex with a 13 year old neighborhood girl, he could be prosecuted and listed as a sex offender.

The fact that people, mostly men, buy sex with girls as young as 13.

The film makers did touch on the sexualization of our culture, the prevalence of porn and violent porn available on the internet, sex addiction, and child abuse, but the fact remains that experts in these fields estimate that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are sold for sex in the US today. That there is a market for the exploitation of these children. That gangs are getting into prostitution as it's "safer" as a way to make money than drugs or guns -- less harsh penalties, harder to catch. That there are approximately 100 beds available in rehabilitation facilities for children rescued from sex trafficking, and without help, these children will go back to the only way of life they know.

There is a market for this, for the selling of sex with children. And where do you draw the line between forced sex slavery and "consensual" prostitution? Can there be such a thing? In a culture where women's bodies are commodified, is there any way in which selling sex can be empowering, or is the power imbalance too great?

The trailer is on You Tube, and it's worth a look. They are traveling now, trying to take the film to all 50 states, so if it comes near you, it's worth seeing.

What should this post be about?

2011-07-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

At random times during my day, usually when I am nowhere near a computer -- driving and showering seem to be popular -- I think of things that intrigue or interest me that I might be able to write enough about to justify a blog post.

Most of those things never make it here.

Most of those things never make it here because I've forgotten most of those things by the time I'm done doing whatever I'm doing, driving, showering, scooping the cat litter box. My brain seems disinclined to hold on to too many things lately, and I know part of it is the extreme media box of denial I've been in. Give oneself little time to think, and the brain stops bothering to try. Not that it stops completely. I haven't figured that out yet.

Mostly, lately, I've been going through the "musts" of life with breaks for the wants. Figuring out how to actually stay on top of the Responsible Adult chores of laundry, bill paying, cleaning, and getting oneself to and from work. And of course, working.

Because of some shifts in my working environment (budget cuts, staff losses via retirement, with open positions not to be filled), we were all forced to do tests for a retreat to discuss moving forward, doing more with less, maximizing our impact with our existing resources. Personality profiles are so much fun -- really, they are. I once again was told that I prioritize logic over feelings, accomplishing tasks over forming and maintaining relationships, concrete facts over abstract ideas (that last is "against type," I guess). Which, you know what? I know all of that. It's not just my work personality -- I've lived with it for over 30 years. Some of it works great for me, and some of it is consistently a problem. But it's not a problem I know how to fix. How do you "fix" the core of your person?

Actually, to rephrase all of that, I have a problem seeing any of it as a problem. I know that my natural tendencies make life difficult sometimes, that I tend to create issues by being who I am. I don't have any intention of denying who I am or changing it. But I could like to figure out where my reactions, of natural inclination, are causing problems, and then figuring out from there if there are different ways I might approach some situations that would make life easier for me and those around me.

See? Concrete versus abstract.

I'm not saying the session wasn't useful. Getting to know my coworkers better was helpful. Understanding that most of them prioritize relationships and bonds explains why some of them so overshare their personal lives and feelings at work. I don't fit in well to that, as I'd prefer to keep my lives as separate as possible. My personal life has very little place at work.

But today is a gorgeous day out. I'm going to haul around doing chores and stuff, but will have some time to be outside at least a bit, and I'm making a personal goal to save time for a walk this evening, right around the time it gets cool and gorgeous out.

Not Being in the Moment

2011-07-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Signs that maybe you should slow down and pay attention to what you are doing Right Now:

Trying to unlock your front door with your car key fob unlock button
Putting things in the fridge that do not belong in the fridge (cordless phone, keys, remote control)
Trying to pause live television (okay, I know some people can do this with DVR, but I don't have that. Never have.)
Randomly knitting rib stitch in a plain stockinette stitch sock that you've been working on for months
Blinding yourself by looking at the LED lights while "testing" the batteries you just installed in your brand new headlamp

Upside: I am back to yoga and focused for at least part of that. Growing up and being a responsible adult who can not only meet her responsibilities but also take care of herself, body and soul, is an interesting pattern of leaps forward and slides back, baby steps forward and slipping downhill.

June

2011-06-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

June.

Oh, dear gods, June.

It's almost over, you know? I think it started yesterday and also about 5 years ago.

I visited my mother. I met my birth mother. I went to the most amazing conference of my professional career. I lost a friend. I visited a friend -- possibly the only person in the world with whom I have no almost no similarities in lifestyle and goals and so many similarities in personal life philosophy. For the first time, I submitted grades for two graduate students I taught in a class I created that represents where I think my professional field should be headed.

In between, I tried to work, live my life, manage my life, and not get overwhelmed.

I've managed to do laundry once. I have grocery shopped twice, but both in this past week, and I have managed to get all the dishes done yesterday. My cats are clingy and needy after three different "random" people came and fed and watered them.

To be honest, I feel like I've been spun around 100 times with my head on a baseball bat. I'm not entirely sure there's a piñata, though (if there is, I'd like it to be a unicorn. Or one with Peeps on it.)

I have found myself running and hiding -- running to be doing something or with someone or otherwise busy, hiding in books and tv shows and behind entertainment. And although I see it as running and hiding, I know it's also a coping mechanism, a way to give all of the Too Much At Once enough space to mellow out and become Part of My Story instead.

And so I approach another year's turn-over with trepidation. I like to sort things out, but I know I have to sometimes let Things sort themselves out. It's all for the good.

For hiding, I can highly recommend In Plain Sight, A Game of Thrones (the book, not the show -- I have heard good things, but am waiting for the DVDs), and the fantastic The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Also good times if you like short essays and have ever been to or been near Maine, Man Bites Log.

Cancer.

2011-05-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

It's my astrological sign, supposedly denoting a sensitive homebody.

It's also what seems like an epidemic of epic proportions.

My dad died of cancers (yes, multiple) in 13 years ago. My high school boyfriend's grandmother was being treated for breast cancer (she's now a survivor) while we were together. My mom's best friend -- my second mother growing up -- was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer about three years ago. She is currently in remission, hoping for a cancer-free 5 year status, but the treatment destroyed her kidneys and she's not a candidate for transplant until that 5 year mark. Last year, a friend of a friend, a woman in my knitting group, was diagnosed with a different blood cancer. After a grueling path towards a marrow transplant, which she got in December, she's officially in remission and allowed out in public again. So many of my friends have lost parents and friends to cancers. It affects everyone. Everywhere. With little rhyme or reason.

But now and most immediate, a woman I respect and admire deeply, and am honored to call a friend, has called off a year and a half battle with cancer. They found two separate cancers, and despite treatment, ... well, she was weak already by the time they diagnosed her correctly. She has fought valiantly and with grace beyond what I can imagine in myself. She is so young.

Not that the older you are, the more you "deserve" cancer. Age doesn't factor in, and no one deserves this scourge. But if anyone is less deserving, I haven't met them. Age factors in this time, in my mind, as she is leaving behind a son, not yet 20, who has already lost his father. When I think of how angry I am occasionally to not have had my father around in my own adulthood, I feel almost hopeless for this kid. He's shown such maturity throughout this. I don't despair for his future. He has been raised to survive and thrive. He will be okay, eventually. But I am angry at the universe for him, and I hope to whatever is holy, that she can see that though she is leaving too soon, she is leaving the world full of people who are better for having known her.

Productive is...

2011-05-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

... getting up and to work an hour early for a meeting you found out about only 5 minutes before work ended yesterday.

...being awake at said meeting.
...getting two estimates to repair the damage incurred running over one poorly placed curb at one crappy designed bank drive-thru.
...not having a heart attack over those estimates, even if it was warranted.
...getting to another meeting, chairing and being secretary for said meeting, getting the meeting done 15 minutes early with all business accomplished, and not causing bodily injury to the person who kept going off task (who also wrote the agenda).
...getting an eyebrow wax at lunch and running through the tiny thrift store nearby with the extra time.
...working another 5 hours after all that.
...hitting the drugstore, pet food store, craft store, photo shop
...dropping all that off at home
... and then going to a nerdy science discussion on climate change

Productive is being ready for bed at 9:30 and unable to wind down.

New!

2011-05-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am not a big fan of new. I am an historian, by training and by trade. I collect history, the stories and the furniture. Most of my household goods come to me secondhand. I buy used books. And most of my major appliances were either hand-me-downs from my mother or gifts.

Anyway, I bought a bread maker. I had my mother's old bread maker, but as it was about 15 years old, I am not surprised at its demise. I simply ordered another, newer version of it, which arrived with today's UPS delivery. It's squatter than the old one, a bit wider, and much, much lighter.

It seems odd to get an adult sense of accomplishment out of spending money on an appliance, really, but there is something home-making about it, especially about bread, that just makes me feel reminded of my adulthood, something I tend to take for granted thees days.

What is not new -- the rain. I think it's day 6 of the rain. Spring hasn't felt so soggy since I lived in the Pacific Northwest. Out there it is expected. Here, it's just sort of miserable.

Chaos Theory

2011-05-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ever feel like you just can’t keep everything straight? The world’s apparently on catnip, darting here and there, wide-eyed and paranoid, and you cannot get it to stand still long enough to look in its eyes and see what’s up?

Yeah, I think that’s been my year.

I don’t think I’m going to complain. Life isn’t dull, for sure. But I could use a time out. Just a day off, to stare into space, contemplate the universe, and breathe.

The problem (first world, for sure) is that I can’t seem to stop. The crazier life gets in my head, the more I find that chaos in my physical schedule. As if it leaks out and permeates the world around me, manifesting. Be the change you wish to see in the world? I am apparently the chaos I wish, subconsciously, to see in the world.

I tried to take a day off work last week. As soon as I’d decided it, a weight of obligation and responsibility fell on my shoulders, a mental to-do list that would be way more taxing than spending a day at work. I went to work.

At some point you realize that you can't shake off the chaos because you are the chaos. Wherever you go, there you are.

fixing your own life

2011-04-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

Lots of things outside my control can screw up my life. Other people's decisions affect me, including a giant body of officials I did not elect.

But only I can fix things. I can't change anyone else. I can't change most things. But I can figure out how I am going to deal with them, and I can figure out how to engineer my life to work for me, make circumstances suit me.

I am working on my Relationships. I cannot change the other people -- but I can work on me, how I interact, react, and act. Interestingly, while working on myself within the primary relationships in my life, I am seeing differences in the more casual relationships in my life, too, including working relationships, even those contacts that I make only rarely. It's like taking control of myself and my reactions is more about responsibility, allowing me to accept other people as they are, rather than how I wish they would be. Responsibility to myself, for myself. Acceptance of the reality of everyone else.

I feel free.

contrasts

2011-04-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking. Reading novels and thinking about people's lives. Reading self-help books on communication and relationships and thinking about my own history. Reading the textbooks and articles I've pulled together for my class and thinking about this Thursday's lecture. I should be reading and grading midterms, too, but I'm a bit scared of them. I came up with some amazingly cool essay questions, but I don't know how the students will respond. Plus, I have to grade them. Scary.

But right now, my next door neighbors are having a party or gathering of some kind. The woman who lives next door to me has had a revolving set of roommates. I'd guess she's in her late 40s, and either she's hard to live with or knows weird people, because in the less than a year she's been her, her sister, son, son's girlfriend, boyfriend, male friend she may or may not have had another relationship with, have all moved in and out of the place. It's a three bedroom apartment, but it's not large. Right now, she appears to be renting floor space to a host of kids between the ages of, say 18 and 25, mostly male. It's a little weird. They arrive crammed into small crappy cars, stay for a few days, and move on. There must be upwards of 10 or 15 people there some nights. They smoke a lot (but thankfully, no longer in the hallway), play some crappy music too loud, and slam in and out of the house talking loudly. But to be honest, they aren't that bad. They don't fight (she did with her son and the son with his girlfriend), and they seem to be generally glad to be in each other's company.

It's weird, though, to be here in my quiet apartment, only a few lights on, working away on my class work or just goofing off online, two sleeping cats nearby, while I hear the hubub of next door, tons of lively humans chatting. I prefer my solitude, but I wonder what it is like to want to be surrounded by other people, to thrive in that atmosphere, to live embedded.

Sometimes, it is not that I wish I was different, but that I understood where people who are different than I are coming from.

Monday

2011-04-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

If there was ever a day to write nasty letters about, it is Monday.

Today started out gloomy. It started raining last night, but it smelt of spring, not of winter. The smell of rain falling on earth (okay, fine, mud) is so different than rain on asphalt and snow. It smelled of the potential of shoots and leaves and green. But rain on a Monday morning, especially when the alarm is set for an hour earlier than normal, is just blah.

The gloom extended through a frustrating work morning. Co-workers, contractors, and actual paper files all conspiring to muddle my morning.

But lunch brought change. Our office is going through transition. We have shared our space with one organization for years, but they have moved out and a new group is moving in. Two years ago, we reorganized our lunch lounge. Today, after lunch, we rearranged it, and it's lovely and new, with minimal investment of effort and no investment of money at all. A bit of spring cleaning made all the difference in the world. That, followed by an afternoon walk in the balmy spring and I had lift-off to better spirits.

I stopped at the library on the way home to further the fun. New books, some decent non-rerun television, a bath, and some lounging? Along with some cereal eaten right out of the box, I've had the Monday night I needed and deserved.

How do you really feel?

2011-04-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a week. Well, a week minus one day. And in six days, I have had one mini e-mail exchange and one very short, extraordinarily polite phone call with the man I wias discussing the possibilities of forever with just a week ago.

I called him on Thursday, and after a rousing game of phone tag, I asked if we could talk. Which seemed stupid, given that we were, and also, was a little vaguer than I'd intended. I clarified that I meant in person, this weekend. Saturday. We both have Sunday off, so whether this talk goes well or poorly, we have at least a day to recover before we are expected anywhere. Well, I have a day. He has more. Whatever. I do get bogged down in the details. He agreed, and we agreed to meet at a park we have walked in before.

The problem with blogging and/or journal-keeping is that you are giving yourself a written record of your past. Granted, that's also the benefit of writing. I have, in some form, been writing about me since 4th grade -- then in a lovely Ramona Quimby journal. I have been blogging in some guise for 9 years. I got an e-mail that there was a new "like" of a post on a blog I didn't remember existed, and I started re-reading things.

I often wonder when I'm blogging if I am repeating myself. I suspect I am, but I am too lazy to go back and see most of the time. But this week, I was doing the post-mortem on this relationship, which includes rehashing all former breakups. Luckily (???) for me, I don't have too many to count, and with the exception of the first two (high school and college) all are easily in archives. Some even way back on this blog. And the issues are The Exact Same Every Time. I get it. Communication is difficult. But seeing this commonality, and knowing that the common thread is me, I wonder if, unchanged, I am doomed to fail perpetually.

With the others, there were times like this, times I thought things were over, but they weren't. Yet. They all eventually ended. As a wise friend pointed out to me, though, the only way things don't really end is if you die first. Eventually, all relationships end. It doesn't mean they aren't worth having. So, I called him. Asked him to meet me and talk. And then spent the next two days trying not to overthink things, trying not to pre-game the meeting, trying not to have conversations with him in my head. Of course I've failed at that. Everyone fails at that, don't they?

I want to know how he feels. I want to discuss the completely idiotic fight we had that ended things last weekend. I want to know if this is really over. Because I am not done yet. No click. An irresistible hope, instead, that maybe there's a ghost of a chance here. He may not see it, and in that case, I can and will move on. I know that this is not entirely my decision. I also know I can't let it go without talking, without trying to understand, without an effort to understand this so that, while I know the future will have these moments again, maybe I can make them different -- make different mistakes, not the same mistakes. Infinite number of potential mistakes exist, so why make the same ones over and over? To get them right? Is that generally what we seek from our mistakes -- to perfect them?

And so the ramble.

But I know how I feel. I feel as though I'm sitting on the fence. I feel like I need to understand. I feel that there is hope, and that it may be best to dash it. I feel that this isn't about just me, and maybe sometimes I treat it that way, and that's a problem. I feel scared and nervous and ready to talk. Outside, in the sunshine and fresh air, where whatever it is, it can be seen and, maybe, understood.

deja vu, sort of

2011-04-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

After another kickass Zumba class (I really am a fan -- I can't dance AT ALL, but this instructor is great and makes it so much freaking fun.), I decided to take Maude, my lovely Civic, in for her annual post-salted road car wash. Yeah, I know, I should probably wash my car more than once a year, but once is what she gets. I had to drive past the post office, site of my rushed letter pickup just two weeks ago, right after class. It was sunny today, too, but warmer. My heart jumped into my throat as I turned into the same drive as two weeks ago -- post office to the right, gas station with car wash to the left.

As I was pumping gas, I was thinking about that reaction, entirely physical. I don't come to the post office often. I hate its location -- in a strip mall, in an area of really lousy "rush hour" traffic -- and minimize my drives through there. So it's not like I'm immune to the area. But thinking about it, that letter was a huge moment in my life. I carried it around with me for most of the next week, and though I haven't looked at it in at least that long, I can see the handwriting, the photos, and the envelope all vividly.

Things are proceeding slowly with getting to know my birth mother. This is fine with me. I have never felt, as I have read other adoptees say, an incompleteness. For years, I used the difference between how I felt and how I thought adoptees should feel to justify not searching, to quash curiosity. I didn't "need" to find my birth parents. And I was afraid of what I might find. I was afraid of finding out that surrendering me -- or even getting pregnant with me in high school -- ruined lives. I knew this was the story for other people, but if it was my story, I wasn't ready to know.

And then I was. I was ready to know whatever it was. I thought, somehow, that my world would change with this letter. Mostly, it hasn't. My immediate world has just expanded a little, to include someone I always knew existed and was connected with me. Maybe it will expand more, and we will become part of one another's lives in a deeper way. Maybe not. But right now, it is enough to say that I have a letter from my birth mother. That I have photographs. That I am writing to her, and she to me. That maybe there is a chance that we will meet. That we might like each other as people, rather than place holders in each others' lives.

Hermit's Friday

2011-04-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

I'm usually pretty thankful when Friday rolls around. This week, I was kiss-the-couch grateful. I actually stopped at the grocery store at 8 pm last night, on the way home from my 12+ hour day, after working both jobs, so that I would not have to do it tonight, after a long conference day. I thanked yesterday's self for that tonight when there was food enough to make a sandwich without leaving. Less than 5 minutes after I got home, I was in ratty comfy sweats that will never see the outside of my apartment. Less than 10 minutes after I got home, I was on the couch with two lazy cats, a huge glass of water, and the laptop.

It was bliss. It was restorative. It was quiet, peaceful, and alone.

My life has been, to put it mildly, a little overwhelming lately. I have needed the silence and aloneness to process it all enough to continue to function. My mother offered to come visit me, and I had to explain to her that, sweet as the offer was, I didn't need the added stress. She was hurt that I would consider a visit from her stressful, but she can't quite understand that just having someone else in my space is stressful.

My hermit-like tendencies are actually perfect for apartment living. I can hear my neighbor downstairs. He has a few people over, and they are watching tv or a movie and laughing. In a few hours, I will hear the many random people who live next door banging in and out of the front door to go smoke. Oh, wait, no, there they are. Often, no one is home over there until late. I ran into another neighbor in the parking lot, and he regaled me with his DMV experiences of today (and yes, it apparently took all day). I hear and see just enough of other human beings to know and be reminded that I am not actually all alone, but none of them intrude into my space.

At my conference today, during and in between long sessions, some of which were interesting and others which were less so, I was Professional Me. I smiled and chatted and appeared to pay attention even if I wasn't. I talked to people I know a little, some I have worked long and well with, and others who were new to me. I made small talk and I talked professionally. I led a breakout session, with minimal fidgeting, and gained some good information (hope they did, too).

It was exhausting. I am physically drained tonight. I don't know how other people find this to be energizing. I don't hate people. I just don't really like people, either. I might like you, individually. I might want to spend time with you and enjoy your company. But I may never meet you because I just don't like people, especially in crowds. I am always glad I have gone to these conferences, but mostly I am glad that they are over and I have survived.

Friday evening. Quiet. Peaceful. Alone.

Pondering

2011-04-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've been browsing my archives, looking at the beginning of this self-indulgent masterpiece. It all started as an important relationship ended -- six long years ago. That one? It hurt, but to be honest, I was DONE with that. I was done with the issues and unsolvable problems there, and it didn't kill me. I know there's another minor breakup in there, but I couldn't find it, and it wasn't really long-term.

This won't kill me either. I know that. But if I'm honest, this is sort of a new depth of low for me. I can't tell if I'm this messed up because I've made a huge mistake or if this is the first time I've had hope when a relationship ended, not been fully convinced that things were un-salvageable. My friend C tells me I have to wait. Only time will make that known. Come on, though. I am not a patient person. Another friend, J, tells me to accept that I am human. Not sure I like that, either.

In the meantime, I have yoga, I have knitting, I have books. I have the joys of the internet to distract me. And I think for now, full distraction is all I can manage. Guess I am human.

there were no moose

2011-04-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

Even when you know it's the right thing to do, breaking up with someone (or being broken up with) doesn't feel good. It feels shitty. It feels sad and achy and melodramatic, and frankly a bit stupid and insane. Because breaking up is giving up on potential. On the potential that the "us" now being mourned once had. The potential trips and dreams and memories that hadn't been created -- the potential future that you'd dreamed, even if you tried very very hard not to.

Every time it happens, it feels like losing your best friend. Which I guess means that there was good in the relationship -- at least that wasn't a waste. The one person you wanted to tell things to first is gone. But then you realize that when you got some of the biggest news of your life, you didn't call that person. That the person you've broken up with looked at you quizzically when you shared things important to you, deep and personal, and didn't really share much unless you asked. And the more you dig below the generic suckiness of the breakup, the more you realize that while the good times were absolutely amazing, the fights and bad times... weren't. And the times in between were good, but not great, and you want more great in your life. You deserve more great in your life.

And frankly, so does your former significant other. You can, of course, demonize him (or her). It's generally easy. You can remember the once-cute, now annoying quirks. The always annoying habits. The way he chewed really loudly or had to be reminded to clean off the front seat if you were driving together. The way your exchange of holiday gifts pretty much sucked on both sides -- not that they were bad gifts, but more that they showed a disappointing lack of "wow" factor or true delight on the receivers end. The way most of your trips together had to be salvaged after something stupid happened.

The way the last trip you took was, well, the last. Anything. The last togetherness. The last hope. The trip so desperately needed after a few weeks of high stress, and how it ended with both of you feeling worse than when you left. And how you didn't even see any moose.

There's always hope, of course. Hope that things will change and magic will happen and you'll fall in love once more. That something will happen and the floodgates of passion will open. That you will never again write a sentence as bad as that last one. But after high school, you have to admit that there is a limit on the number of times a self-respecting adult breaks up with a partner before admitting defeat. And that three is probably over that limit. Sometimes the end is okay, maybe even good, even if it means giving up plans and hopes and dreams, because there are other plans and hopes and dreams, or will be once it stops sucking. Two people who cannot communicate with one another should not attempt long-term anything.

2011-04-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

It's been less than a week, but a roller coaster week. Have you ever tried to get to know a stranger with whom you have a history? I doubt it. I don't think it's common. To be honest, the most frustrating thing about this is that I don't know anyone who has been through this. There's no one I can tell who can say, honestly, "Yeah, I know what you mean." It's crazy.

It's like the worst parts of dating online -- trying to get to know someone through e-mail, looking for connections and commonalities, hoping that the person you're writing to likes you, and hoping that you like them.

So far, it's gone as well as it could. I'm still terrified, but I am also excited. It's a new chapter.

anticipation

2011-03-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I came home from a kickass Zumba class today, and found a little peach USPS mail slip in my mailbox. According to the slip, it was put there on Wednesday, but it hadn't found its way into my hands until this morning. It was for a signature-required letter, and this was the second and last delivery attempt. I never got the first pink slip. The letter was due to be returned if I didn't pick it up today, and it was 11:30 and the PO closes at noon.

So I went. Reluctantly, hoping I'd make it. I was starving and attempting to eat leftover fried rice while driving (note: don't attempt.).

The letter is from my birth mother. And I am scared to death to open it. I spent the drive back being frustrated and angry at the postal service because it was safer than thinking about opening this package. Right now, all possibilities exist. In a few minutes, I will know.

mixed emotions

2011-03-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am, today, unsure what to feel.

Yesterday I learned that the legislature voted to eliminate my department, reassign and realign my division, and eliminate a whole hell of a lot of jobs. As well as the right to collectively bargain my contract.

I have been a unionized public employee since 1999, when I was a teaching assistant in graduate school. I had excellent health care, which is important, and some rights as a teaching assistant -- rare back then, but still rare. I have since worked for three states, all as a public servant in a field I believe in, providing valuable services to the general public. And in none of those positions did I feel that public servants were respected or held in high regard. I worked with individual people who loved working with me, loved our office, and loved our programs and what they could do for a community. But as a villainous "public employee," I have felt under attack for my entire career.

What for? Because I have a pension? Yeah, that promise is regularly threatened. Because I have health care? HELL yes, I do. I have a master's degree and a good track record -- I will be seeking employment that provides that benefit, even at the cost of lower pay. And there's the key -- I have decent health insurance and a pension because I get paid less to work in the public sector than I would in the private sector. I love what I do. I hate the implication that I am overpaid to do it.

You know what though? I am overpaid to do it. I spend at least 30% of my time doing clerical work -- mailings, filings, copying, basic data entry. I am in no way "above" any of these jobs. I can do them as well as anyone else. But I am being paid a professional's qualified salary to do this work which could be done for minimum wage. You know, if the system made sense. If departments of transportation weren't paying huge salaries for qualified engineers that they then do not allow to engineer -- an engineering salary for project management. Penny-wise (fewer staff), pound foolish (doing minimum wage work for really higher wages).

On the flip side, I had a great class tonight and feel good about the teaching gig, even if that really does pay less than minimum wage.

I am stressed and confused at this point. But tomorrow is, I guess, another day. Another day to figure it all out.

eco-warrior's guilty indulgence

2011-03-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

I try to be very eco-conscious. I was never a bottled water buyer, with the exception of the occasional road trip, but I do have a filter pitcher, which I put away in favor of a faucet filter, and a kick-ass water bottle. I make my own cleaners, all of non-toxic substances, and buy only dish soap and laundry detergent. I use old sheets and washcloths for rags, knit my own cotton dishrags, use cotton napkins (many of which I bought used). I use less than 3 rolls of (post-consumer recycled) paper towels a year, and I found a brand of recycled toilet paper I like. I live close to work, on purpose, and try to bike when I can (weather and schedule depending). I use reusable tupperware and recycled jars for bulk food buying, belong to a food co-op, and recycle everything my city will take. I eat sometimes organic, local where possible, mostly vegan, minimally processed. I teach sustainability.

But my secret downfall, first world indulgence, the one place where, even with good intentions, I cannot compromise, is my use of water. I love baths. More than most things in life, a bath at the end of the day relaxes me. A bath before a night out invigorates and pampers me. A bath late on a lazy weekend morning is just bliss. I know that a bath uses way more water than a shower. I know that even a standard American's average shower uses more water than a family uses per day in parts of Africa. And when I read those statistics, I feel guilt about my bath habit.

But I try not to be discouraged. I try not to be an entitled American, either. I am not perfect. I have not given up my first-world life style to live minimally, but I try to reduce my footprint wherever and whenever I can. Sometimes I fail. But I try to remind myself that those failures do not undo the strides I've made in other realms.

sad and vague

2011-03-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

One of my uncles died last weekend. Well, I guess technically, he was a cousin removed or something, but the whole relationship thing gets complicated, so he was my uncle D.

Thing is, I'd only met him once. His mother died when he was quite young, and then his father went off the deep end and shipped his kids off, all three of them, to three different families. The oldest brother I know well; he grew up with my mother's family. There was also a sister.

D lost touch with his family for many years. There were decades when no one knew what had happened to him. He was a minor character actor, though, and after his family tracked him down, I enjoyed watching for him on TV and in movies. He would appear as "priest," "auto parts dealer," "copy repair guy," and other un-named roles. I met him at a cousin's wedding, though, and he seemed a profoundly sad man. I don't know what his childhood was like, but I know his life was hard, and he seemed a sad man. A man who wanted to connect or reconnect with family, but couldn't quite get there.

No one knew he was sick. The hospital called his brother and told him that D was dying, and D died while his brother was flying out to see him. He died alone. Not that he didn't have friends. He did. But he did not reach out to them, either, and he died alone.

I don't know why that makes me sad. It isn't as though you can take people with you as you go. But I guess I've bought into the whole Victorian era ideal death scenario -- at home, surrounded by family and friends, holding them close as you go forth to ... well, whatever's next, be it life as an ant, heaven and hell, or vast nothingness. Personally, I think I believe in atomic disintegration -- we do go on to live again, but as cat fur and broccoli and wood pulp and other cosmic particles of the universe.

I do hope that D found happiness at points in his life. I didn't really know him. He was never really present in my life. And yet, I feel a loss of never having the opportunity to know him.

continuing resolutions

2011-03-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

So, we have an agreement (obviously unenforceable) not to argue on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursdays from here on out -- between our work schedules, we have no time to talk face-to-face, and no time to talk at all except when one or both of us is working.

Because talking it out helped. We do not fight well. I am relentless in trying to dig to the bottom of something, and he's a conflict avoider. If he manages to change the subject, I feel blown off, and then I'm like a freaking terrier. The combination is bad. So, Friday we talked out the actual issue that came up. Saturday we talked out the fight -- why it escalated the way it did, and what went horribly wrong. Part of it was taking some things for granted, on each of our parts.

The comment about the new friend being easier to communicate with was intended to end the conversation, to hurt me, and it was unfair. He says it's not true, too. Fighting dirty is... well, it's not productive, but it happens. I just tend towards believing that it's the truth rather than just mean. My bad.

So I'd suggested that we agree to stay together for the weekend. We could try working things out, see if we were happy about it, and then decide what to do. Taking breaking up off the table while we talked out the issues. Yesterday, he suggested a "continuing resolution" of that. We decided that if Congress can't figure out how to run the country, we're well justified in just taking our time, right?

I feel better, but still on edge that we're just going to have the same fight or same model of fight again. How does one learn to fight somewhat productively? So that cleaning up after doesn't take many times longer than the fight itself?

cusp

2011-03-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

I am sad today.

I have reached a cusp in my current relationship. He met a new friend and has been odd about it. After confrontation today, it comes to light that he's been odd about it because he feels guilty -- guilty that he finds it easier to communicate with her than me.

Communication has been an issue in our relationship almost from the beginning. I am, within the confines of a relationship, probably an over-communicator. I don't believe in over-communication. But when I feel something, good or bad, I am inclined to share it. To be open and honest about it once I am comfortable in doing so. I expect the same from my partner. And apparently that can be intimidating.

I have no real desire to change this about myself. I like to talk with people I click with -- have deeper conversations, understand where someone else is coming from. Debate random things, discuss important things. If this is too much pressure, then I think there's a basic compatibility issue.

And I have my theories on why communicating with someone you've known for a few weeks is easier than communicating with someone you've been in a relationship with for more than a year. Theories having to do with newness, excitement, the complete lack of knowledge about the other person that makes every conversation spark. It's not cheating, yet, but the thrill comes close.

I think that at some point, you may have to admit that love, some shared history, and comfortable companionship don't mean much when the two people within the relationship seem to want different things out of it, incompatible things.

I don't know where this is going to go. As is par for the course here, we can't even meet up face-to-face to talk until Friday. I hate limbo.

first day of school

2011-03-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I will be teaching for the first time.

Well, not the first time. I was a teaching fellow in college. I ran review sessions and did a bit of teaching, plus grading (woo) and office hours. I taught online for a year, remedial grammar. The syllabus was designed by the department, not me, and I was one of many teachers teaching that class. And I never met my students.

This class? This class is my baby. I created it. I was asked to pitch a class on this topic to the faculty who run this certificate program within the larger master's program, and they loved it. I was scheduled to teach it last summer, but enrollment just didn't happen. It wasn't just my class -- enrollment was low across the program, maybe across the school -- finances are tight, and summer classes do not always pay off for students, many of whom probably need a break anyway.

I have been fussing over the syllabus. I have been tweaking the reading list. I have fought with the online class system, and I believe I am abandoning it -- I lost all my formatting from last summer, despite being assured that it would remain. As I procrastinated, I did not actually find that out until yesterday, no time to fix it.

On top of all that, I have been meaning to do laundry for three weeks. I have no clue what I am going to wear tomorrow, but it likely will be a dress, as that's easy and professional. Hopefully?

I've said it before. I'll say it again: I am excited and petrified. I am excited to be able to share my passion for this huge amorphous subject with my students. I am scared I will not explain it as clearly as I'd like, as I feel less than perfectly prepared. But there is no such thing as perfection, and besides preparing for my second job here, I work full time and try to have a social life.

Good enough is good enough -- I am ahead of the students, and tomorrow is presenting the class and syllabus and the topic. I can do this. I will do this. Doing things that are scary is important in life -- otherwise, we stagnate.

ponderings

2011-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder if this blog has a theme. I think there are themes -- occasionally I read a post and think that for sure I've written much the same in the past, but I don't really enjoy reliving the past, so I don't go back and look. And it's hard to tag the ramblings that go on here, so I don't.

But if I think about it? Life doesn't really have a theme. So why should a rambling blog that I'm pretty sure has no audience? This is all just me shooting my mouth off at the world, and enjoying seeing my words on this pretty star-filled backdrop. Whispering at the universe, being okay that the universe doesn't care.

In high school, I copied out this poem on a notecard, attached it to a pretty photo of the universe from a National Geographic magazine, and hung it on my wall:

"A man said to the universe,
'Sir! I exist!'
However, replied the universe
The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

I should look up the attribution for that, but it is a lazy Saturday morning, and I shan't. But the sentiment remains. I am important. I am important to me and those close to me. As the world expands out from there, my importance decreases, probably exponentially. And I'm okay with that. I don't need to be important to the universe to find my own life significant.

Precipice of a breakdown

2011-02-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Internet world, I am on the verge. Of cracking. Of coming apart, of flying forth from the seams of my being. Of being overly melodramatic in a very teenaged (yet, somehow more literate) way.

(Sidenote: Dear American Teenagers, Spell-check exists. Please learn to use it. Also, that grammar thing that the boring English teacher talked about? It is a beautiful thing full of nuance and meaning. Look into it. It is very likely that "no one understands" you because you speak and type like I imagine a drug-addled chimpanzee after a pot of archaeologist coffee would.)

But no. In all honesty, I think too many things are coming to a cusp at the same time. In two weeks' time, I will be in front of my very first class, a class I created from a thin idea and will now (hopefully) be teaching to a small room of graduate students. I am somewhat excited. Mostly I am terrified and wish to hide. I may be capable of this. I may also fail miserably, and this distinct, if relatively unlikely, possibility makes me want to hide under a desk. Or in a cave. Or down a well.

Beyond that, I am at this very moment waiting for paperwork that has the power to change my world drastically or disappoint me to my core. I am waiting on the US Postal Service and their unique sense of timing to deliver papers. I hate waiting. But almost 33 years ago, my adoption was finalized. The records of my birth were sealed and cannot be opened, not even by me, the subject of that paperwork. But there is a small chance that identifying information about my birth parents, or at least my birth mother*, is in that paperwork, and if it is, I can actually begin a search for the origins of my DNA.

The papers come from a court. But I could not request them. My mother** had to. I suppose I am lucky that I have an adoptive parent (only have one left) who supports me in this search, but I don't feel lucky. I feel entitled to that support. That the woman who loved and raised me, helped me become who I am, would deny my interest in "chapter one" of my life just seems unthinkable to me; thankfully, it is for her as well.

I have no legal right to any of the paperwork about me that the state of my birth holds. In this, I am like approximately 6 million adoptees in the United States. In this, I am unlike the majority of Americans who believe they have a birthright (pun intended) to access any information their government holds on them. I am lucky in that my adoption and therefore my "amended" birth certificate were finalized within a year of my birth; adoptees with changed paperwork dated more than a year after their births have been denied passports and scrutinized under PATRIOT Act security measures. In that respect, we are not like the rest of you. Our births are a deep dirty secret that the government must protect us from. Or you from, I am not sure.

I have a small but burning hope that this paperwork will contain information I need to move forward. It took me this long to commit to a search, to feel fully vested in my life, stable enough to deal with whatever I find, good, bad, or indifferent. Nothing is predictable when people are involved. Deciding and doing are separated by the waiting, though. And I admit that already I feel more anxious than I expected. I have considered the possibility of searching for for almost 17 years, and I was never ready. I am ready now, or as ready as I can make myself.

I believe in setting realistic goals. My goal right now is to make what I can of the papers and information available to me. To ask to meet the person who gave birth to me and possibly the other half of my biological family as well. To see what happens from there. And like the class I will be teaching, I am both excited and terrified.

*I use the term "birth parent" as I was raised with it and am comfortable with it. I know there is debate in the triad communities over terminology. If I meet the people I call my birth parents, I will be happy to discuss with them what they would prefer to be called, and if we can come to a comfortable solution, I will from there forward, use that term. Until then, I am sticking with the familiar.

**I also refer to my adoptive parents (aparents) as my "mother" and "father." No qualifiers, as they are the parents I have known throughout my life. We are all happy with this terminology, and it will stand.

tree

2011-02-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

I am very bad at tree.

You know, the yoga pose where you stand on one foot with the other leg bent out to the side, arms up in limb posture?

Tree requires focus. Tree requires a calm mind, an ability to let go and just be.

I am very bad at tree.

But finally, more than three decades in my life, I have learned that being good at something isn't a prerequisite for doing it. I try. Some days, I find a moment of calm. Some days, I pretty much fall down. But I keep trying because when I try tree, I learn exactly what my mental state is -- can't hide your brain from yourself while trying to stand on one leg.

Life, Liberty, and Happiness?

2011-01-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

I don't really get the impression that anyone would call the United States a "happy" country. Of course, I'm in the middle of it, so I'm not objective, but I think the relentless striving, towards some objective "happiness" doesn't help. I don't know. I don't get the impression that as a people, we are happy.

But then, too, what does it mean to be happy? For me, happiness is in moments, in memories, not a constant state of being. It would be exhausting, wouldn't it?

I read a depressing list of "10 Things Every Woman Should Try at least Once in her life". Or some other equally ridiculous title I will not link to. I don't want to perpetuate the crap that was in that list. Item #1 -- on a list that was supposed to include things EVERY woman should try -- was to NOT be on a diet.

To NOT be on a diet.

That's something that the lovely people who write meaningless drivel they target at women think that all us women should "try." At least once. Be decadent! Be "naughty!" Eat what you want! But just once.

Then please return to regularly scheduled programming. Which is dieting, I guess, which is attempting to reduce your physical presence in the world to a socially "acceptable" wafer of being. Don't enjoy life or food or physicality, except on occasion, so as not to see a Debbie Downer.

WTF? Seriously, people, WTF?

I think this is a distraction. I think the focus on women's bodies (and to a lesser, but growing extent, men's bodies) is a distraction from the actual business of living, of engaging with our communities and the larger human world. Distract and disengage. Starving people who believe they must exercise for at least an hour a day can't get too engaged in anything else. Dissatisfaction with one's personal appearance can become all-consuming, leaving little time for anything else.

And no, I'm not against personal time. I am 100% in favor of self-care, in whatever form that takes. I spend time shopping and cooking so that I eat well because it makes me feel good. I spend some time choosing clothing to present myself to the world. And no, not all of it is flattering -- I still feel my best in a non-professional setting wearing my college standard attire -- jeans, flannel shirt, and hiking boots.

What I am not in favor of is someone else -- a person, a corporation, a marketing interest -- telling me how I should feel about my human -- and therefore very imperfect -- body. Or how much time I should spend on it. Or how much money I should spend on products for it. Or which flaws I should be most embarrassed of.

This year, when I think about my body, I am focused on what my body CAN do. What it is, how it feels, how I treat it. Not what it isn't or can't. And that seems a pretty clear path towards personal happiness, as well as freeing up a lot of energy for other pursuits.

Food and Fear and Fun. And a bonus recipe!

2011-01-23T13:16:00.000-08:00

I think, growing up, that food didn't mean that much to me. I ate, but it was another thing to do in the day, like brush your teeth or get dressed. My mother's a great cook, so I didn't think much about food.

Around the age of 10, I found a recipe on vacation. I remember, it was in a USA Today newspaper -- Heaven and Hell cake. I cut it out and brought it home, determined that I would make this towering monstrosity -- 8 alternating layers of devils food and angel food cake, separated by a peanut butter mousse, with a chocolate ganache on top. I'm pretty sure THIS is the recipe. It was the first thing I made on my own, and it took me an entire Saturday. I got hooked. Baking was my hobby. I did birthday cakes for everyone in the family, cakes for family get-togethers, and cakes for any other excuse. My mom baked cookies, so I didn't touch those (I still prefer making cake to cookies), but cakes were my exclusive domain.

Until college. In college, there was a meal plan and a dining hall, but I started making simple pasta dishes with herbs and olive oil. I started experimenting when I was home, and I sure as hell appreciated my mother's cooking more. When I went off to graduate school, now in an apartment sans meal plan, I had to cook. My roommate and I were broke. We weren't underwater, as neither of us had debt to deal with, but we were only making it through each month by the narrowest margins. Her mother was a mediocre and uninterested cook, and it turned out that just being around mine, I had picked up loads of valuable kitchen knowledge. We muddled through, discovering great recipes (Stir Fry o' Luv, our name for it) and awful (the Arabian beef that somehow sucked all flavor out of a dish, no matter what you added to it!). We couldn't afford to eat out, and we couldn't afford to eat anything much that wasn't on sale, so we got creative. And damn, were we proud of ourselves.

I continued on into adulthood much as I was raised -- eating home-cooked food, as a rule, and eating out only as an occasional treat. Eating out was a social occasion, not something to do on your own, and I've never been a huge fast food eater. But in my late 20s, after some battles with food, I was diagnosed with an array of stomach and digestive issues. There are drugs that will mask the problems, but the only way to fix things, to work with my body to avoid symptoms rather than manage them, was to massively over-haul my diet. I had to start slowly, and work up to being able to eat a wide variety of foods again, and I had to get over my new-found fear of food. Food could make me sick. Food was also the only thing that could make me better -- plus it's sort of necessary for living.

So I branched out. I cut meat, dairy, caffeine, most processed foods, and a lot of fat out of my diet. I experimented with vegetarian and vegan cuisine, trying a host of things I'd never even heard of before. By making it into a game, I could enjoy the process, removing some of the fear of food that had developed. I still like to read menus before I visit restaurants, and I have to ask questions of the servers -- and still occasionally end up getting something I cannot eat. I don't like the uncertainty I have about food, but I am working on acceptance. In the meantime, I cook.

So yesterday, when my writing group came to meet at my house (we rotate), I had decided I wanted to do a "tea party" theme with the food. I had a recipe for tea sandwiches, which kicked the whole thing off -- soy cream cheese, mango chutney, shrimp, and watercress, open-faced on baguette slices. My mother sent me some of her tea cups. I made mini-cupcakes (vegan, using agave instead of sugar and whole wheat pastry flour instead of white), edamame in the pods, and herbed whole wheat drop biscuits, and everything was (in my opinion) really good. It felt good to cook, to make things that other people would eat and enjoy, to share my experiments (I had not made one of these recipes before yesterday).

So, in honor of the fun of cooking, and the joy of experimentation, the biscuit recipe, slightly adapted from Vegan Brunch, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz -- the cookbook author who taught me almost everything I know about vegan cooking.

Herbed Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits

Preheat the oven to 450F, and grease a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, mix:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
(Here's where I improvised)

Recipe calls for: 2 teaspoons dried rosemary, 2 teaspoons dried thyme
I added: 3 teaspoons herbes de Provence, the Penzey's mix, 1 teaspoon dried thyme, and 2 teaspoons dried chives)

Using a pastry mixer, two knives, or your fingers, cut in the floowing until pebble-to-marble-size pieces of dough form:

3 tablespoons cold non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons cold non-hydrogenated margarine (I used Earth Balance brand of both)

Add:

1 cup almond or other non-dairy milk (I used soy, with an added teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to "sour" it like buttermilk)

And mix with a wooden spoon until soft dough forms.

Use an ice cream scoop or 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop biscuits onto greased sheet. Bake 15-18 minutes, until lightly browned. Transfer immediately to a cooling rack, but serve warm if possible.

"Wintry Mix" and presence

2011-01-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last two days bemoaning both the actual weather called "a wintry mix" and the phrase used to describe it.

If you are lucky enough not to know, "wintry mix" is the crap you get when the atmosphere keeps playing hopscotch around the freezing point -- a blend of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain, which is slushy, wet, slippery, gross to walk in, and hazardous to drive in. It's the utter low point of winter weather in my opinion, and I hate it.

I also despise the term. To me, "mix" is usually used in phrases that evoke happiness and comfort. Hot chocolate mix. Cake mix. Chex mix. Trail mix. (Apparently mixes are mostly food and food makes me happy.) But also, mix tape. Mixing things up. MIX is a nice word. Except when used with "wintry." Is wintry a word?

I think a wintry mix should smell like Christmas spices -- cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa, powdered sugar. It doesn't. Right now, it smells like burning engine from getting poor Maude stuck getting into the driveway right now.

I hate a wintry mix.

And because of this hatred, I have been playing the popular first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer game of "Anywhere But Here..." I would like to be in Belize, or Puerto Rico, or (sigh) Spain. Or, for a change of pace, Moscow. Anywhere. Anywhere but in the middle of a damp New England winter.

This desire, typical of February for me, is hampering my goal to be present. To be here and now and in my own body in my own life. Enjoying the cat snuggles, watching the ocean while eating a great haddock sandwich in a sunny booth with good company, stretching in yoga class, even doing data entry at work. How can one reconcile the desire to dream with the desire to be here and now and live?

AARG(H)

2011-01-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

Dear AARP,

Yes, you, the American Association of (for?) Retired Persons.

I am 33 years old. This is 17 years younger than the age at which I would be eligible to join your august and annoying association. You have been sending me membership cards, life insurance policy information, funeral planning service ads, hearing ad advice, and medical equipment fliers for 16 years.

Yes, since I was a SENIOR in high school. This is not the same as a senior citizen, although I'm sure I knew more than a senior citizen at that age. I've forgotten a significant bit since then.

I have called and politely asked you to stop cluttering my mailbox more than once. That actually seemed to double the number of lists you sold to purveyors of fine bathroom assistance handles and canes, judging by my mail box. You are killing forests.

For the record, I am well aware that I share a first name with my mother. I am also aware that that combination of first and last name is extremely common in the US and western Europe, and your insistence that I join has induced me to pledge to never be a member of your organization.

Still, you are killing forests. I wish you would stop. Only my mother still finds this funny, and that's just because she's old.

Sincerely,
33 is NOT over 50, idiots.

Cat Love

2011-01-10T18:34:00.000-08:00

This? This is the best thing about my day. I live with the snuggliest cat ever born, who is at this very moment staring up at me making pathetic mews. It's sad to hear a 20 pound tabby cat squeak, but that's what he does when he feels my attention should be on him, not ... well, not anything else. Tonight, I paid all my bills online. One-handed, though, as I had a cat to pet. This monster shares my pillow some mornings, sometimes using my head as his pillow. But 8 years ago in a shelter in the middle of nowhere, I was lonely and he was desperate and he chose me.

I swear, the best things in life happen when you're open but not expecting them.

Planning to Succeed.

2011-01-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

So last week's food plan went well. Not to plan, of course, but I had food every day for every meal, I had good snacks, and I ate well. And healthily. With flavor.

This week's plan is a little looser, as I am focusing more on using up some of the food I've stocked in the cabinets and freezer. Right now, I have the rice cooker going as well as a made-up dish of New Orleans-inspired Cuban black beans, the beans from Trader Joe's, but with onion, bell peppers, celery, some hot sauce, Vulcan Fire Salt, vegan cream cheese, and butternut squash. Odd, but tasty. That's for lunch. Dinner tonight will be a crab and mushroom pasta. I'm also whipping up some homemade hummus for snacks.

I feel as though the new year has started off well. I made some unofficial resolutions on the fly -- a continuing one not to get lazy when dressing for work (wearing jeans on non-Fridays), and another to take up the random opportunities that show themselves. I met a friend I see rarely for a tea and cookie after work. I tried a Zumba class (fun!). I went out of my way to see an exhibit that sounded interesting just before it closed. I finally cleaned up my mess of an office (home) and will tackle the desk itself this week. I think I am going to try knitting a sweater finally.

Time crunch

2011-01-06T17:47:00.001-08:00

Ever have a week fly and poke by at the same time? I hope things slow down just a bit for the rest of the year. Or pace themselves just a bit.

Resolved.

2011-01-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

Today I made it to my Sunday afternoon knitting group for the first time in a month. Sheesh. I don't skip knitting ever just because "I don't feel like it." I am either out-of-town, have other plans, or am sick. Because knitting once a week with this group enlivens me.

When you aren't the most social of beings, finding spaces and people with which and with whom you can be comfortably social is difficult, and when you find one of those spaces or any of those people, you relish it/them. Knitting group is one of those spaces for me. These people challenge me, encourage me, and help me along when I get stuck. And it's about more than knitting.

Last week at this time, I was sick in bed. With the lovely flu. I felt physically at my worst, unable to control my body and unable to use my body productively. I was, frankly, depressed. And miserable. And fatalistic.

In the past few days, I have felt more in control. I've sat down with cookbooks, paper, and pencil, and figured out what I could cook that would make me feel good again, what I could plan to cook that would make me excited to feed myself and nourish myself. I made a plan, went to the grocery store, and jumped right in. I feel better already, a mere three meals into my plan. I don't think it's entirely the food -- I think it is the control, the feeling of being able to do something good for myself, to change my outlook by changing my actions.

My menu for tomorrow:
Breakfast: a crab, dill, mushroom, and egg white omelet with a slice of toast, maybe with jam
Morning snack: applesauce with cinnamon
Lunch: Chinese sweet corn and crab velvet soup, a side of carrots, and bread
Afternoon snack: smoky black bean dip with blue corn tortilla chips
Dinner: Teriyaki grilled portabella mushrooms with ramen noodles tossed in wasabi ginger sesame sauce
Dessert: Vanilla bean soy pudding

Yep, I plan my snacks, when I am planning things. Without a plan, sometimes I don't eat a snack even if I'm hungry, which isn't good for my gut. Eating often is the best way for me to eat well, and when I listen to my body, that's what it tells me. I am trying to pay good attention.

1-1-11

2011-01-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Yup, officially a nerd. I love the look of that date. So streamlined and clean, classic.

I started off my new year asleep. Slept in, and then bought myself breakfast -- an everything bagel with tofutti cream cheese and a blackberry-sage tea.

Today, I am going to work on a menu plan for the coming week, a resolution I made in 2010, which resulted in me eating well for a good few months. When I plan, I eat well and healthily and feel great. When I slack, I get lazy and don't feel as great. It's a bad cycle, as the laziness then extends to planning. But this week, I have a new cookbook and a new Vegetarian Times magazine to spark my imagination. Grocery shopping and buying a new spatula, to replace my favorite (damaged by my new food processor, a Christmas gift from my mother), should round off that equation, and my day. Start off right, and then just keep going.

One more post before it goes...

2010-12-31T14:05:00.000-08:00

2010, that is.

2010 has been a different year. Besides having the zeros out of order (seriously, 10 years of writing 200X has been a hard habit to break), it's been a year of change and acceptance. Many of my friends have had hellish years, especially concerning their own health or the health of a loved one, and they are ready for this year to be over.

Me? I'm not ready yet. But I am almost never ready for endings. I'm always ready for a new beginning, though. Thursday, the last work day of the year, I cleared my desk, set up the new calendar, and made things nice for Monday. I have my brand new Moleskin planner set up and ready to go -- and this one was purchased in Paris. I LOVE a new calendar. Love it. It feels brash and hopeful and full of possibility. What will 2011 be? I don't know yet.

I hope that 2011 will see good things -- the teaching of my first class, the wedding of a childhood friend, my first anniversary with a new love. I have no hard travel plans yet, except for the aforementioned wedding, but there is possibility in that, too. I will likely go out to the midwest to visit my mom, and I hope to visit a small town that I don't remember but which has a special place in my heart. I might start a big project with a huge potential to fail, just to see where it goes. I would also like to finish some smaller projects, especially the one that ends with me having a handle on the paper that comes into my house.

But back to 2010.

2010 found me branching out. I pitched a class, with a syllabus I created. I fell in love. I traveled, a lot. I finally saw the Brooklyn Bridge in person. I had Nepalese food for the first time. I ate a real French baguette. I spent the first half of the year in fear of getting laid off due to budget cuts, and the whole year preparing a plan B for if that happened. The threat looms again, but I don't fear it now, as I'm prepared (for everything except packing and moving the books out of my office if that happens). I completely fell off the wagon of eating well for my body, and the end of this year finds me beginning the laborious task of climbing back on that wagon. I found a yoga class that suits me, both in spirit and in schedule. I did not get over my dislike and procrastination of laundry duties.

Closing the calendar is always both sad and exciting. I wish that 2010 has brought you understanding and 2011 brings you hope.

Vacation Stress

2010-10-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Today is day 2 of my vacation. I started it well, with a great yoga session on Friday night. I have been going to yoga classes twice a week for about a month now, and I notice a difference in myself already. I felt so good after yoga that I was able to come home and make dinner despite being exhausted after only 4 hours of sleep the night before. And it was a good dinner, if quick -- ramen noodles (no packet o' salt), frozen stir-fry veg, and baked tofu.

Friday night, I slept enough to make up for the lack of sleep the night before. Saturday, I started packing and cleaning up for the real start of my vacation this evening -- a flight to Europe. Had a relaxing date night.

And yet? I am stressed. I have digestive/gut issues, and they haven't been stable for the past two months, ever since I got some flu-like bug that just threw me for a loop. I have been doing everything I know how to do lately to keep myself stable, and that includes managing stress (this isn't stress-induced, but stress makes it worse. Stress makes everything worse). I know that I am not a great traveler -- I am prone to motion sickness, lack of sleep makes me physically ill, and I generally can't eat most plane food. Getting stressed out makes all of this worse.

This morning, I woke up too early, wired because I knew I had Things To Do and Places To Go. I did not feel well. I could feel all the stress in my gut and neck, and despite being hungry, wasn't too keen on eating. But I did eat. Applesauce and half a bagel, some tea. I did some yoga stretches and deep breathing. I took a bath. I exhausted my repertoire of stress-relieving techniques, and I still wasn't doing great. I thought maybe I would try someone else's stress-relieving techniques, but realized that I really didn't know that many.

Despite the stress of modern American living -- I'm aware, a third-world problem, but this is my world, so... -- we don't talk much to one another about stress, its effects, and what we do to manage that in our daily lives. I don't know if this is because "experts" in all forms of media are always blathering on about it, or if we are just in denial or ashamed of our stress or our management of it (or lack of management). I don't know.

But I remember my friend Linda talking about the restorative powers of a simple walk. My mother says the same thing. And sometimes at work, a 15-minute stretch can change the entire rest of the day.

So I went for a walk. I thought about this post, about the things I know I am not going to get done because I don't want to make myself crazy today, and I let them go. I am learning (slowly, admittedly), that letting things go, accepting my own shortcomings without reconceptualizing them as failures, is key to my development into a reasonable, functioning adult.

So I'm off to go cram my liquids, gels, and aerosols into a tiny plastic bag, shove too many pairs of shoes into my suitcase, and head off on an adventure. A walk turned my crazy head around and refocused me. Now. Things to finish.

Fog

2010-09-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

I drove a few hours through fog today, all to discuss my vision -- which, if we're frank, is foggy. Hmmm. The universe speaks.

I think fog is gorgeous. The veiling, the added mystery to the very well known. It reminds me of modern conceptions of harems and silly things like Jeannie and her bottle. The mystery of the partially hidden, the allure of the mystery, the contrast with our in-your-face, TMI society.

I guess I'm just I'm more of a Seattle kind of girl than an LA kind of girl.

Water Your Inner Flowers

2010-09-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

My yoga instructor gave us a visualization this week about treating your life, yourself, like a garden. Inside all of us are "seeds" of kindness, caring, nurturing. These are the seeds that grow into flowers, that generate the goodness in our lives. We every day absorb events and incidents that can turn into weeds that take over our gardens.

We can either focus our attention on the flowers or on the weeds. We can look for the positive in life or the negative, and what we look for and focus our attention on flourishes. If we nurture that which we value in ourselves, that will flourish, grown, and generate more flowers. We can wither the weeds in part by ignoring them, refusing to waste precious time and energy on them.

I find that the metaphor is easy for me to connect with, regardless of my black thumbs and inability to grow actual plants. That on which we focus thrives in our life. Simple and yet profound.

Dreams

2010-09-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that my brother and I were traveling together. We were driving to the airport, bags packed, ready to embark on an adventure of some sort. We were calm and prepared and excited. We acted like people who have traveled together before and enjoyed it, and both of us expected to enjoy this trip.

The last time my brother and I traveled together was likely a family vacation that took place before 1995, with both of our parents. The last time my brother and I saw one another was two years ago at our grandmother's funeral. The last time I spoke to my brother was 9 months ago, by phone, while my mother was visiting over the winter holidays. I don't have his phone number, his address, or any direct way to contact him.

My family is very small. In reality, I am related to a reasonable number of people. I have 5 aunts or uncles, all of whom are married, so another 5 aunts or uncles, plus one ex-aunt (divorce). I have 14 first cousins. Blood is mostly meaningless when your relationships to these people are only legal, I guess. The only family member I have regular contact with is my mother, however, and I have friends who are far closer than family, including a childhood friend whose family is my family. I guess you can sometimes choose your family, even if your family once chose you.

I wish, sometimes, that I had the brother I dreamed of last night, someone with whom to share things -- adventures, memories, even conversations. I don't. My brother and I do not hate one another, or at least I do not hate him, but we have never found any common ground besides our mother. When she is gone, I imagine my last connection with him will be. I can imagine that the rest of my life may continue -- and eventually end -- without my knowledge. To a degree, it makes me jealous of friends who have siblings they fight with -- fighting is a form of contact, at least. In my family, we don't even bother to fight anymore.

Reality

2010-09-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I spend too much time with the things and the world in my head, I forget that what I am seeing and experiencing is not exactly what anyone else is experiencing. It is tempting to take my vision and experience of "the world" as reality. Well, actually, it IS reality. My Reality. But it does not mean that it is your reality. And that's okay, so long as we all realize that the world as we see it does actually revolve around our own perceptions -- but no one else's does.

So there. My metaphysics for the day.

But in connected news, I have realized that when I keep things to myself, secrets of sorts, they are not as real as they are when other people know about them -- people about whose opinions I care, people I trust to tell me about my world as they see it -- people who have a reality fish on hand if I need slapping with it. I have never been a person who made friends easily. That living in your head thing makes it hard, as do general trust issues and an inability to click instantly with most people. But I know good people. The people I tell about the things in my life that matter? They are good people, people I am blessed to know, whose presence in my life enriches my reality -- the reality I experience uniquely.

And so the hamsters in my brain spin wildly and come back around to home. They must be dizzy. That, or they, like me, have heat stroke from the hell-bent weather we've been having.

One last example of realities. I look at my blog, redesigned with the fun new template software a few months ago, and I see something not particularly polished. I see geeky influences, shades of my middle school years, my college days of decoupage and glitter, and my life-long love of geeky cheese. And I think that while the blog does not look the way I wish to present myself to the world -- polished, professional, intelligent, together and balanced -- it does accurate portray me as I am. My subjective reality of myself. And so instead of changing it, trying to create an image the way I do in my work world, I leave my geek flag flying high. Astronomically.

Sick Day

2010-08-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

I called in sick today. Well, e-mailed in sick. I never call in sick. Tried to talk myself into going to work, and I'd gear up and almost feel good enough... and then no.

And yet, well enough to be online? Am I faking it? Nope. I've been suffering all week from insomnia and fatigue, and today, it's culminated in triggering my host of digestive issues. I'm dizzy, too. I am borderline well enough to work -- I might get some writing done today -- but it will be between naps. I am just overall Not Well today.

I have alternated this year between taking really good care of myself, being balanced and healthy, and just failing miserably to keep anything going. The good periods are great, but they make the bad periods even worse by comparison. One, because I know what feeling good feels like now. Two, because I know that I have some control in that realm. I just can't seem to maintain it.

Summer Breeze

2010-08-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

It's 82 degrees indoors.

Outside, a light, gentle summer rain is falling. It makes a nice, soothing sound, and the breeze that blows through it smells refreshed, green, and earthy.

I just finished a quinoa pilaf for dinner, featuring fresh kale, tomato, and onion from my CSA as well as local corn and locally-made pineapple salsa. I am gently full.

I can hear only the rain and the fan, with the occasional car making its shushing way down the wet streets.

Calm is not an emotion I am much familiar with, but I do enjoy it when I experience it.

PMS diet

2010-07-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

There are one or two days a month where there is not enough junk food in the world to satisfy me. Back when I could eat anything, I always knew PMS had arrived when I would buy two candy bars in the grocery checkout aisle, ate both on the way home, and didn't feel any ill effects from all that sugar.

Now that candy bars are mostly not an option (seriously -- go dairy-free and see how many junk foods you have to give up!), I have to be a bit more creative.

This afternoon, I've eaten out of the freezer, giving my toaster oven a workout: pizza (vegan, courtesy of Tofutti's new frozen line), tater tots with barbecue sauce, and cherry amaretto coconut milk ice cream. I am not full. I do not feel ill. I have chocolate, some coleslaw, some fresh cherries, and a plan for guacamole for dinner.

The Joy of Knitting.

2010-07-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

Gross Generalization Uno:
Knitters are good people. They are also enablers. Let's talk about this.

First. There is a woman in my knitting guild who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer treatment is debilitating, yes, but it is also expensive. I can't personally do much about the toll this will take on her physically and emotionally. But the group as a whole, as well as another group from the next town over, put together a yarn auction -- knitters parted with pieces of their precious stashes (if you know a knitter, you know what this can mean) and then bid on each other's yarns, all proceeds going to help this woman and her family with medical bills. In the span of about 5 hours, two small groups of people got together and raised over $2000. It was amazing.

Stash before auction:

Part the second. This incestuous trade of yarns, albeit for a good cause, has more than doubled my own personal knitting stash. And this is seen as a good thing by other knitters. They encourage you in obsessive knitterly behavior. There is even the start of a Knitter's DSM, created by my friend Linda, which is definitely worth a look. We are a bit of an obsessive group, and we all like it that way.

Stash auction additions:

I have in there some green sock yarn, some cotton-linen blue stuff that may become a summer top, the off-white wool that will also become a garment, rather than an accessory, the bulky grey wool for a sweater, a sweet stash of Noro that may become holiday gifts, and black, yellow, and orange to go to a not-so-secret '80s-based project of geeky proportions that came to me (seriously) in a dream. And other things, of course.

Knitting is a community activity. Knitters take care of knitters. Knitting can be an extremely social activity -- in the past week, I have knit socially on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Admittedly, this is an excessive week, even by the standards of normal knitters, but when opportunity arises, take it, right?

Knitting is also a solitary activity, much like yoga, where you might be working near other people, but not with them. Your projects are yours alone -- your goals, your triumphs, your mistakes. Knitting socially means that there is always someone to tell you you can do more than you think you can. To celebrate your triumphs with you. To help you fix your mistakes (or, sometimes, just fix them for you).

In conclusion, everyone should have a hobby as awesome as knitting, but not everyone is that lucky in life. I did not set out to become a knitter. A horoscope told my friend C that she should learn, and she dragged me to class. I learned a lot in that class, including the possibility of having a good dating life in your 70s, but it opened a whole new world I am daily grateful for having.

Nourishment

2010-07-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

Today was our weekly CSA pickup. As it's been overly hot lately, even for summer, and I've been remarkably lazy with regards to cooking -- applying heat to ingredients to create food being less than appealing when my apartment hasn't been below the 80 degree mark in two weeks -- I have "lost" a few ingredients before I had a chance to prepare them.

This really bums me out. I hate to waste food, and not just because I am your typical child of the '80s who was supposed to eat my dinner because there were starving children in Africa. Especially in the case of my CSA produce, though, there are farmers right here, a few miles away, who are carrying water to their fields, hand weeding beds of lettuces, taking care and effort to bring me the best that northern New England has to offer. Throwing away food that has been produced by people I have met -- well, it brings home what you are wasting. Not just nature's bounty, but the time, energy, and effort of local farmers and farm workers, the energy of the sun, the nitrogen and other nutrients in the soil.

Suffice it to say that I am highly motivated to make the best of everything I get, and after throwing out a few things, I am trying even harder.

That means Wednesday night, no matter the interior temperature of my apartment, I am cooking. Preparation is the key to utility (though things can be saved, as I proved that last week with a cold pea, arugula, and dill soup using up almost lost ingredients).

Tonight I made dairy-free nacho cheese dip (see Joanna Stepaniak's books. She's amazing.) with dandelion greens and scallions from today's haul. I blanched the broccoli, my favorite way to eat it cold (lunch tomorrow, along with the soup from this weekend). And I turned the lemon basil into pesto. It's disturbingly deep green, but smells amazing and will make an excellent salmon dish this weekend when I have a little more time to cook.

In addition to all that, I made The Most Amazing Mocha Chocolate Mousse Cake -- Vegetarian Times, March 2010, Passover recipes section. Worth hunting down, people. The last time I made this recipe I totally screwed it up -- I added an entire can of coconut milk instead of 3/4 of a cup, but I didn't realize it until I made a copy of the recipe for a friend who asked. Oops! No one noticed -- it was great! Today I've made it correctly, and tomorrow I'll ask my Thursday night knitting crew for opinions. At least one of those people tasted the original mistake.

Other nourishment this week? Mainly water. I have been drinking gallons every day, never feeling like I get enough, as I am sweating nearly constantly. Oh, summer. I wanted you, and now? I really don't. You can retreat a little.

Simple pleasures for tired minds

2010-07-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Junk food and Friday night Syfy television.

Orange soda, fantastic spicy chocolate cupcakes from Treehouse Vegan bakery, potato chips, a fantastic new episode of Eureka, and now Syfy's version of Maine??

Yay for Friday.

Age

2010-07-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

I'm another year older now, but do not feel wiser. Mostly I feel cranky about my body's decision to wake me up at ungodly hours of the morning. 8 am! Today, 7:30! It's my day off -- I should not naturally wake up in time to make it to work, even if I know that tomorrow, if I did not set my alarm, I wouldn't make it to work on time. HOW does that work? Good grief.

No wiser, no, but probably crankier. I notice that as time goes on, I opt further and further out. I am one of the only people I know who does not have a cell phone. Well, I have one, but it is a cheap, pay-as-you-go plan deal that I only turn on if I am traveling. Mostly, I have a home phone and an office phone. I do not have 3G. I am not connected. I do understand the impulse, but I have decided that it does not suit what I want for me in my life at this time, and I am out.

But. I am not opposed to new technologies. I love web cam phone to chat with a few friends. I have high hopes that someone will be developing teleportation soon (even if the web spell check does not think that "teleportation" is a real word).

Refocusing.

See, one of the reasons I limit my technologies is that I like being present in this very moment, and I find that for me, technology enhances my innate tendency not to be Here and Now. Being Here and Now makes me a more positive person, makes me happier, and I think makes me more pleasant to be around. All of that sounds good to me.

So, in honor of years passing, and in deference to Sei Shonagon,

Good Things

Iced green tea soy lattes
Vegan pizza
Summer sunshine, even if it does wake you up
Cats
Laughter
Socks
Teal nailpolish
Phone calls from friends
Birthday cards
CAKE!
Making cake for someone else
Grills and outdoor cooking
Eating with neighbors
Cotton
Summer breezes
Baths
Stretching
Gentle touch
Funny t-shirts
Days on which nothing needs to be done but anything can be

Attitude.

2010-06-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm working on attitude. I cannot change the world and the people around me, but I can change my attitudes about them and some of my reactions to them.

I can decide that a morning off is not "wasted" time.
I can decide that doing laundry is NOT a miserable task.
I can decide that seeing a former neighbor is happy, not awkward.
I can decide that someone running off at the mouth is not about annoying me.
I can decide that having a clean house is worth the effort I will need to make tonight.
I can decide that my expectations are about me, not about the person not meeting them.
I can decide that eating well is necessary and cooking is necessary for the eating.

The attitude adjustment is working. I am in a better headspace than I was yesterday.

Honestly, though, part of that attitude adjustment was knitting group today. The group is full of fun, and I get to sit, chat, and laugh, while creating things and learning new knitting skills. I am working on the heel gusset of my very first sock, and it is thrilling to watch it take shape. So far, I haven't made a lot of truly useful knitted things, but I feel a disproportionate sense of accomplishment every time I learn something new or do something successfully. Everyone needs a hobby like that and some fabulous women to do it with.

Working on the Weekend.

2010-06-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Really, what is there to say about a 9.5 hour day on a gorgeous June summer Saturday?

Well, there's the total fuck up where my alarm did not go off. I woke up, wondered if it was a little too light out, looked at the clock, and freaked the fuck out. It was 7. I was supposed to be at the conference center at 7. I had a backseat full of the entire contents of our display table.

In the first 15 minutes of my day, I desperately called my co-worker, who (thankfully) was also running late, teased and pinned back my dirty hair, threw on a dress, slapped on a bit of makeup (mainly to make up for the dirty hair), and ran out the door. Thankfully, this place is only a few minutes from my house, but I made a wrong turn and had to loop around -- ARGH.

Got everything set up only about 7 minutes late. Shook from the adrenaline rush for about an hour.

More or less skipped the cheese-based lunch. Sigh. I have eaten so much bread today it's not normal, even for me. As is always the case when I skip a meal, I have scarfed down random food from the fridge since I got home a few hours ago. I was going to go for a walk at dusk, when it got cool, but that last random indulgence (cherry amaretto coconut milk ice cream -- oh yeah) sort of tipped the scales from full to stuffed.

So instead, the couch and I are bonding. I have very very low standards for tv when I'm tired, and I have watched reality shows on Bravo, We (television for women!), and am now watching an actual Amanda Bynes movie. I think bed should come soon, to save my brain from rotting.

This, though, is part of my decompression. I need the brainless. I am taking care of myself.

Friday Plans.

2010-06-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

Cards with the ladies.

I can't wait. Have to get a little weekend in before working all day tomorrow.

Mean Girl

2010-06-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes?

I'm not very nice.

I'm not a people person.

I don't generally like "people," and "people" do not like me.

I am not warm and fuzzy.

I do not let people in easily. I do not dive in to other people's lives easily.

I am happy being alone most of the time.

And yet, sometimes, I am lonely.

I do not mean to be brusque or off-putting.

I don't mean to be mean.

But sarcasm and inappropriate jokes are how I deal with the stress of not being comfortable in the company of other people.

I'm working on it.

Quick Easy Dinner

2010-06-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

So quick.
So easy.
So gone.

I didn't even get a photo.

Tonight's dinner was baked mustard-crusted salmon (wild-caught Atlantic, courtesy of Trader Joe's frozen seafood section) and CSA-fresh spinach sauteed with garlic and olive oil.

The mustard-crusted salmon was super easy -- throw the frozen, vacuum-packed salmon into the fridge in the morning. Come home to defrosted fish. Toss in glass dish, skin side down. Sprinkle with pepper, herbes de Provence, dill. Squirt on dijon mustard, and spread out with a knife. Throw in oven at 325 F for 15-20 minutes.

Easy flavorful fishy fun, quick enough and light enough for dinner before what is like to be a long meeting tonight.

Supplementary

2010-06-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I was diagnosed with a relatively severe vitamin D deficiency. I've since been on a high does of vitamin D. About a year and a half ago, I got an anemia diagnosis, and I've been on iron ever since. Because I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, I take a B12 supplement. And since I'm pretty much allergic to the world, I'm daily dosed with meds for that.

Sometimes I feel like a deficient living organism, but I like having energy and feeling somewhat healthy, so I pop the pills and call it good.

But beyond the pills, there are other things I need in life to supplement my general mental health. I think everyone has these things. After a busy week or two, I relish the opportunity to come home from work and vegetate on the couch, watching television of questionable taste. Every night I read before I go to sleep, 15 minutes minimum, fiction only. Often, I read in the bath. I read magazines while I blow dry my hair in the morning. I like quiet alone time to go for a walk or do yoga.

Sometimes, though, it is hard to remind myself to do some of these things, despite the fact that I do not enjoy work or my social life as much. I don't think twice about the pills I take to supplement my life, so why does it take near exhaustion or a cranky breakdown to make me take the time out to supplement my mental health and well being?

Further proof that sometimes, you're your own worst enemy.

CSA! CSA! CSA!

2010-06-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

THIS? This is what Community Supported Agriculture looks like.

Look! Look at this:

This is some fresh bounty, people. Fresh strawberries. Tomato! Super early tomato. Kale, pak choi, lettuce, spinach -- all the greens. And garlic scallions. And this is the first haul -- it only gets bigger and better from here on out.

Yum.

One of my favorite things about the CSA is that it feels like walking away with free stuff -- we pre-paid back in March, so the money is gone and I don't miss it anymore. Every week, I walk out with half a haul of fresh, local, organic veg. It's one of the best parts of summer.

Tonight's menu? Scrambled eggs with spinach and garlic scallions. I think the spinach is the least likely to last long, as it's been pretty wet and the spinach is wet, so I'll get that going first. That's some green eggs for you.

Challenge

2010-06-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, C, I've redesigned the blog.

And you? Have a new crockpot (which, for the record, does not match the new blog, but we'll forgive it) with new recipes.

POST!

My dinner tonight was not exciting. Not to a normal person, at least. But I? I had a grilled cheese.
With this: Daiya cheddar shreds.

Sigh. Bliss. It has been years since I had a grilled cheese, and this is some tasty stuff. THANK YOU, inventors of Daiya!

Tomorrow is our first CSA pick up. I am excited and hope to be inspired.

Distraction

2010-06-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

So after months of bemoaning my body's new sleep schedule, which basically seemed to consist of waking me up before 8 am no matter what the alarm said (or didn't say) and no matter the day or the time I went to bed, I am counting myself cured. Two weekends in a row I've managed to sleep into the double digit hours of the morning, and all is right with the world.

My goals for this morning were/are simple: get the apartment straightened up (total time: maybe 30 minutes, including the dishes). Stretch or yoga (10-20 minutes). Make a grocery list (15 minutes?). Shower and get ready to leave the apartment (40 minutes). I was going to spend the remaining time working on the "learning environment portal" for my summer class, which is blending a few online classes into the regular classroom teach, but I got stymied and then distracted, and guess what didn't happen?

Instead, I updated the blog template.

I find distraction to be a big part of my life. I have, since I was a child, read fiction almost obsessively. It is my getaway, my distraction from daily life, and I still find solace in it. Nowadays, I have the entire internet to distract me when I'm online. I can't imagine how much worse I would be had I any form of constant connectivity -- I don't own a smart phone, and my cell phone, when charged, is actually quite stupid. I do actually turn off the laptop pretty often. But I have a library full of books, which grows whenever I visit a book sale (yesterday), so constant opportunities for going off to someone else's world.

I'm now down to less than the two hours my chore list will take me to complete, so it's time to sign off the great internets.

Desire

2010-06-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

In January of 2007, I confirmed, through painful and probably unnecessary medical testing that I was, indeed, entirely lactose intolerant. It was one of many causes of some horrific problems, and cutting out all lactose has helped me become a happier, healthier, functioning member of my society.

I cut out cheese, butter, milk, yogurt, ice cream, milk chocolate, ranch dressing, sour cream, cream cheese, most Italian restaurants, many American restaurants, and most packaged foods. You'd be amazed at what has whey in it. Dairy is everywhere.

And no, for the record, those "little pills you can take" do not make the problem go away. They make it possible to deal with a bread that was baked with milk when I go to a potluck. Maybe. If I'm lucky.

Now, I have found substitutes for the majority of those products, and don't miss the ones I've not replaced. I am happy about the change over all.

But I gave up pizza.

Do you know how hard it is to give up pizza? Pizza smells amazing, people. They give out pizza at the gym once a month. When meetings are hosted, pizza is often served. When you're tired and want to order in, what is the quickest and cheapest option? Pizza.

I miss pizza. I slightly resent people who can eat pizza without thinking about it. Yes, I realize that this is a First World problem. But it is mine, petty as it is, and I own it.

I found a purveyor of Daiya vegan cheese in the next town over. Tonight, I will stalk, hunt, and buy Daiya vegan cheese, and I will see if it's truly as amazing -- as melty, stretchy, and tasty -- as all the vegan blogs claim. I want it so badly... I need just to have my hopes not dashed.

On the upside, it's been 3 full years since I've had any cheese, so I may not notice that this isn't quite the same.

UPDATE from Saturday:

The Daiya? The Daiya is GOOD. The pizza was fantastic. Tonight, I made a grilled cheese with it, and holy crap were the blogs not lying. It ... well, it was a grilled cheese.

I know the photo is blurry -- I could not wait to try it. I don't have photos of the pizza as I was way too busy eating myself into a food-induced coma of pleasure.

engineering

2010-06-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

I wonder if we can all engineer ourselves better lives.

Now, I don't mean we need to go out and enroll in the nearest Tech, nor do I mean technology has all the solutions. I am not sure technology has any of the solutions, though we might create a few out of it.

I mean that while we cannot control other people or their actions, we can maybe learn to engineer around them to make ourselves happier.

For example, if your family is always late to dinners, maybe you stop planning sit-down meals and start having buffets of food that is forgiving of time. Maybe you have potlucks that guilt people into showing up on time because they have part of the meal. Maybe you lie to them about the time. Maybe you start eating without them a few times and they stop showing up late.

Maybe accommodating the problem is part of the problem?

I have a friend who works a crazy (and ever-changing schedule) and tends to live his life that way, by the seat of his pants, making plans like "I'll be there sometime Tuesday night." This really never works for me. I understand that people's plans can change, but I really like it when there is a plan to begin with. It's fine to meander when no one is counting on me to be somewhere at a certain time, but I don't like waiting around for people so I try not to make them wait around for me. My solution is to only make plans when plans can be made. That way I don't get frustrated with other people, and don't take out that frustration on them.

To me, it seems a good solution. Not always so to others. But why should I accommodate a quirk or personality trait that makes me annoyed, frustrated, or angry, when there is a way to prevent it? To work around it? Doesn't that make more sense?

Frustration

2010-06-05T20:14:00.001-07:00

99% of all frustration in life is due to your own expectation that people and situations will react as you want them to rather than as they will.

Managing frustration is managing expectations. Or such is the working theory I'm going with tonight.

Inspiration

2010-06-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I get to go to a symposium on sustainability. I am excited, as the topic rolls around in my head on a daily basis (class starts 1 July!), and I am excited to hear the conversations of other professionals on a topic that I truly believe we, as a world, need to spend more time thinking about.

Independence, freedom, loneliness, and choice

2010-05-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

I decided to go away for the weekend.

I admit that part of this was motivated by the fact that my current SO is off on a road trip vacation. I know I am big on talking up the travel, and less big on doing it (though I do follow through more often than a lot of my friends. I feel like I talk big game and instead, fish trout.) And I am a big talker on independence, being single, living alone, etc.

Truth be told, as much as I want to see the world, I have not see all that much of it alone. I have not traveled alone before except on business, and even that gets lonely sometimes. And this time, I traveled not only alone, but to a place where few speak my language. Montreal is not, no matter how many guidebooks say it, bilingual. They are a French-speaking city in a French-speaking province of Canada, which is a bilingual country.

The signs are in French. The wait staff speak French. Menus are in French. Now, I passed an exam in 1999 that certified that I could translate French. French articles on ART. Amazingly, my menu translation skills are, well, not so good. Neither are my city driving skills, and I ended up woefully and nearly hopelessly lost.

After ditching the car in a very reasonably priced municipal parking structure, though, and getting a good hippy meal (organic, local, fair trade), things got better.

Montreal is a walking city, in my opinion, but then in my opinion, cities that aren't walkable aren't worth visiting. I'll reference back to the city driving thing. The architecture is extremely European in the old city, and the museums in the old city are all bilingually signed (MERCI!). Over and over again, people build in the same spots, we learn at the city museum and the archaeological museum, because they are good places to build. Good travel routes, good lands, good micro climates, good places. We have lost the ability to recognize such things, I think.

Saturday night, when everyone is out with Someone, was difficult. I saw no less than 4 wedding couples at churches, of which Montreal has many, and at "photo opportunities" around the city. Most tourists traveled in packs. I wonder how it is that solo travelers navigate the world and meet others like them. I tend to withdraw and insulate myself from the singleness, making me more solo, if that is possible.

Sunday night, though, after a long and foot-tiring day of hitting as many free museums as possible (4), I strolled leisurely along the river, where a beautiful park has been created despite the active port activities. Multi-rider bike cab things were for rent and quite popular, as was ice cream and other walkable treats. I saw Habitat '67 across the way, as well as the Biodome, the Cirque du Soleil tents, and an odd pavillion that looked as though it served as a night club. The city was quiet, with pockets or bursts of activity, and I felt as though it were open to me to absorb. That was the feeling of freedom within the city that I'd been craving.

Funny, though, that experience happened only after an expensive but cathartic phone call to my mother -- I admitted that traveling alone was a bit lonely. And afterward? I didn't feel alone, though I was still solo. Admitting it gave me the freedom to be independent. Weird, contradictory, and utterly human, I guess.

Live like you were dying?

2010-05-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Is there any other way? I don't understand this whole movement, the idea cropping up in songs on the radio, books about it, movies.

Live. Like you were dying.

Well, damn, dude. You are. Every day, one step closer to your inevitable death, one more foot in the grave.

Okay, fine, I know that most of us only have two feet to put in a grave, some have one or none, so it's not like that's a good metaphor, and your feet will be all up in the rest of you if you're cremated or crushed or something. And I understand -- we get caught up. Life is full of quotidian minutiae. You forget to appreciate that cup of coffee in the morning, a kiss good-bye, a warm breeze, a full moon.

But you are dying, there are limited numbers of all of those things in your future, and a finite number in your past.

I can see how some people, those diagnosed terminal or potential terminal, may have a realization that they need to refocus, to see what's around them, to stop putting things off. I know. Carpe diem, we should all be doing that as much as we can. But here's the thing -- we chose the quotidian bullshit. Choose quotidian bullshit you will enjoy to some degree, because it does not go away.

There's a line in a Deathcab for Cutie sign -- "Love is watching someone die." I think it's somewhat profound, given that watching someone you've chosen to spend your adult life with -- a choice is key in this -- die, no matter the circumstances, strikes me as a much harder thing than acknowledging your own mortality. When you cease to exist, you also cannot know you do not exist. Whether this is the eternity promised by some religious creeds, I don't know, but once I'm dead, I don't care much what happens. I won't be here.

Watching someone else die? Different. Acknowledging the mortality of those you care for -- that's what I'm not ready for. I think I'd rather go first.

Heat Wave

2010-05-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

I've spent a lot of time online and not a lot of time writing lately -- I've been locked up in my bedroom, the only room with an AC unit in it, while the rest of my apartment sweats it out at 94 degrees (Fahrenheit). Only yesterday (after three good days of heat) did it occur to my addled brain that I needed to dig out my precious stash of Taza Chocolate (a little bit of stone-ground heaven) and put it in the fridge. For good measure, I put the Trader Joe's chocolate chips in there, too.

Last night, in a fit of despair at the mess things had become, I switched the summer and winter clothes in the closet and made a stack of things I need to try on. Last night wasn't the night -- not only did it take 3 hours of constant AC to get the room below 80F, but it's PMS time and smart women know you don't go shopping during PMS. Not only does nothing seem to fit the way you'd like it to, but the odd shapes of ready-made clothing tend, because of our culture, to inspire body hatred rather than righteous indignation at the templates used to manufacture clothing.

I wonder how many women have that perfect pair of jeans. How many women who can't afford the latest designer cuts can even find a decent fitting pair of jeans? And just for the record, it's not you. It's the jeans.

Here's a story about why: I bought a fantastic pair of moderate name brand jeans at one of those lower-end department stores where everything is always on sale. This was about 5 years ago. I loved the wash, the cut, the fit, everything. Then, as I am won't to do, I fell down. This time, I didn't tear the jeans, but I did get a spot of tar on the knee, and I will tell you -- I still own the jeans and that damn black spot is still on the knee. I thought this would be easy to fix -- the jeans were only about 3 weeks old, so I went back to the store -- grabbed the same pair, same size, same wash. They didn't fit! I tried on every damn pair of jeans in that brand and size -- there were 7, I think. Each pair fit differently; none fit like the jeans I'd loved and ruined. I'm just saying -- it's the jeans, not you.

One of the great things about the internet is that with more voices and fewer filters, you can learn about things you didn't even know existed. The Fat Acceptance movement, body positivity, discussions on cultural messaging about women's bodies, and style bloggers -- these are women and men talking about (primarily American) body image issues and our bodies as social and cultural objects. Our self images are not formed in a vacuum. We are part of a culture that has specific expectations and images of "femininity," "woman," "sexy," "attractive," "masculine," "man," "fashionable," and even "acceptable." These expectations and images are generally narrow in range, and the "punishment" for not meeting them can be severe, depending on the differential of the deviation.

Navigating these ideas and cultural waters is more interesting and engaging a process when you can read and watch others doing the same thing. Being more aware of the messaging can help ameliorate its negative psychological effects -- or so I like to believe. Recent studies* are showing that this may not be the case, but I still believe we should keep talking.

*For the record, I don't believe the study shows "hardwiring" in the sense that women are born innately hating their bodies, though that is how this article represents it. Neural pathways can be formed by repeated thought patterns, and body hatred is constantly reinforced by many things in our culture. I have not read the full study.

The Importance of Having Down Time

2010-05-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

I have been living alone since... 2001? Maybe 2002. I had my own room growing up. Shared one for three years in college. Shared apartments for a few years in graduate school. And now, I happily live alone. I have never lived with anyone I've dated.

I am used to having approximately 800 square feet that I only have to share with about 45 pounds of cat, not quite evenly divided in two. I control the heat, the air conditioning (what little there is), the remote control, the volume of the radio, the phone, the laptop on which I type. The alarm clock.

But even with all that control, there are days and weeks and most of the last month where I'm home so infrequently that control is sort of meaningless.

This morning, I woke up to cat hairball at 6:45 am. I went to bed after midnight last night, having gone to see a play and have dinner, so waking up early was not on my to do list. Damn cats. And I was awake. In the past 6 months, I have mostly lost the ability to roll over and go back to sleep, damn it all to hell. But I do not have anywhere I need to be until 2:30 pm, which is brilliant. I've spent my time catching up on websites I read and watching all the TV I've missed online. I'm still way behind on the TV, but it just felt so good not to have to be anywhere and not to have anything pressing to do.

The house is still a mess. The dishes are still undone. I have little food in the house. But I feel rejuvenated and relaxed.

Short range views.

2010-05-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

I spent a day in a room discussing insulation today.

Okay. Really it was energy code compliance, but mostly we talked about insulation. Where to install it, how to install it, what kinds of barriers (air and vapor), where the barriers need to go in relation to the insulation, which type of insulation to use in which locations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Seriously. I had no idea there was so much to say about insulation.

The point of a more stringent energy code is ostensibly to reduce energy use to conserve resources to create a better world for ourselves and the next generation (and the one after that and so on). If we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we will have a more stable worldwide economy and hopefully a more sustainable society.

But here's the problem: a lot of the insulation being produced out there is OIL-based. Petroleum. Black gold. That stuff spreading out all over the Gulf of Mexico right now.

We cannot manufacture "solutions" to our oil dependence out of petroleum. It does not make sense.

Now, let me be clear that I fault neither the trainers nor the participants of the session we were in today. It was billed as code compliance training, and most of these people need to work with whatever codes our state board, courts, and legislature decide to adopt, whether they like them or not. This was not a big picture or philosophical training -- these codes are in place and must be complied with. But I don't see code boards and design professionals and industry professionals having these discussions either, and that worries me. We have got to look at the long view, at the systems, and the life cycles, at the production as well as the end product. We have to face the uncomfortable truths that our privileged lifestyles in the first world come at the expense of someone else somewhere. We have to take responsibility for that, maybe endure some discomfort about our comforts, and think about how we can each individually work to make changes in the bigger system.

Extruded polystyrene is just never going to be the answer.

Sunday Morning, coming down

2010-05-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

This morning is quiet, serene, sunny. Birds are chirping, squirrels are chasing one another, and the cats are cramming themselves into window sills to watch the action. The lilacs, having been beaten down by a strong New England spring (95 to 32 in 24 hours!) are wilting on the hedge outside my window. The driveway and yard are littered with the pale pink petals of the crab apple tree, which have blown down over the past few days.

About half my dishes are done, and the house is merely in disarray, not complete junkyard mode. About 75% of the grocery shopping is done, and I have food to prepare for lunches this week as well as some frozen Boca Vegan burgers which will suffice for the few dinners I'll be home for this week.

I spent yesterday giving up a fun event (yarn superstore sale) and instead worked on class prep, and I have a neat and organized stack of file folders (half red, half teal) organized by each class topic I intend to teach this summer, complete with cover pages for notes and questions. It was a long but good day's work, even though I am completely green with jealousy over the facebook photos of yesterday's fun.

To reward myself for buckling down and pretty much finishing what needed to be done yesterday, there was Chinese food at the really good Chinese restaurant one town south. There are leftovers in the fridge. There is company in my bed, still asleep, and the prospect of banana chocolate chip pancakes on my horizon. I have half a mug of green tea in front of me, the good stuff I bought in China last year

I am not yet as philosophical as Wallace Stevens' protagonist on her Sunday morning, no peignoirs, no birds, no thoughts of death and life and transience, but as I feel the silence, rare in our world, soak into me, beneath my skin and skull, I can feel that kind of philosophy come up. But I am not in the mood today. Today, the world is green, and I am in control.

Trying to be the eye

2010-05-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

of the storm, that is. You know, the storm I generally call my life.

It seems as though my life can chug along at its own sedate pace for, oh, forever, and then all of a sudden things explode. It's like spring bulbs -- things I planted so long ago in the fall that have now, all of a sudden and all at once, taken off. Work got busy, as it always does in shoulder seasons. My second job crept up on me with deadlines I'd been ignoring. Knitting festival season arrived. My social calendar started to fill up. Things. They started to happen all over the place.

And I have to say, I'm happy about 90% of it. I don't even mind the overall timing -- dormancy to tornado speed in one month flat -- but part of me misses some of my don't-leave-the-house, wear-pajamas-for-48-hours, shut-in weekends. I live alone and have done so for about 8 years, so I am used to that pace of things. I think I'll have to schedule one of those weekends in -- or at least one of those days -- on my busy calendar.

Travel plans are also coming together. I was itching to get out of town, so I've scheduled a mini-holiday up to Canada to tide me over before the big vacation -- Paris in October -- and the party-time weekend in Vegas for a friend's zero-ender birthday in December. See what I mean? I've got plans, and they extend to the end of my calendar this year! Crazy talk. I even ordered a new travel bag.

What I am struggling most with is taking adequate care of myself. Sleeping enough (though I have a doctor's orders to remind me on that), resting enough, exercising, eating well, planning and preparing those meals, cleaning up my living space so that I can breathe in it. I find that mostly I am good at being busy or good at taking time for me, but the latter isn't an option so much as a necessity. I am working on it. I have been taking a bit better care with my appearance, using the explosion of style blogs out there to inspire me into new and creative ways to wear my existing wardrobe, and mentally I feel more positive about my body image having dressed it well.

I am not sure this post had a point, but if it did, I am trying hard to keep my center in the midst of the chaos I've created. It's a fun, if exhausting, battle.

Plans

2010-05-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

I am a planner by nature. But not a long-term planner -- the last time I had a long-range plan, I was in 9th grade and planned to go to college far far away from home. I made it to college, but I only got about 45 minutes from home. But then, you know, Stalin's five-year plans weren't exactly fantastic successes.

Plans negate chance, or at least eliminate the general desire to go along with whims and fancies. But a good plan, a loose plan, give you structure and the ability to follow along uncharted paths, to take chances you never imagined would be offered.

My life plan has basically been to try to take as many uncharted paths and capricious chances and encounters as are offered to me, as many as seem like they will be interesting and beneficial. I have ended up in random places and with random people, but they do not feel random. I feel as though the universe offers things at the right time and then it is my job to figure out how to make them happen, to follow through.

That said, I like to make plans. When I see something I would like to do, I add it to my calendar, I sign up, I commit. I found out years ago that prefacing my participation in the world around me on anyone else's participation or whim was a losing proposition.

It is my life. It is up to me to make it happen, to make it what I want it to be, to live it.

It's all just a little bit of history repeating.

2010-05-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

I am currently prepping for a summer class on sustainability. One of the many sources I may use as readings for the class is a most excellent find from our extensive work library called "Energy Conservation in the Home: An Energy Education/Conservation Curriculum Guide for Home Economics Teachers" published by the Department of Energy.

In it we learn four strategies proposed for dealing with the current energy crisis:

Strategy 1: Develop "successor sources: to replace oil and gas over the next several years.
Strategy 2: Develop an energy economy not based on fossil fuels.
Strategy 3: Increase efficiency of energy generation and use.
Strategy 4: Change from a "disposable" to a "durable" society.

Excellent strategies, right, if overly broad and non-specific. I particularly like the last one and have a class discussion planned on the subject, including debate on "consumers" versus "citizens" in the municipal participatory system.

Here's the kicker, though. This book was published the year I was born, 1977. The energy crisis the book is referring to was the OPEC oil embargo. Nothing has changed. The book's advice is spot on, and almost without change applicable to the current green/sustainability/climate change discussions -- only the context and the calendar year have changed. The Energy Conservation Ethic outlined in the book should be taught to every citizen of the world today.

And it won't be. These discussions are difficult, especially for Americans living in our over-privileged society. And yes, even from my middle class upbringing I include all of us in this. We have been spoiled by government subsidies of an unsustainable highway and auto system, and our entitlements have spread to other sectors. "Buy more, live better" could be the slogan of the country, rather than a bastardization of Wal-Mart's current sales pitch.

We have to reconsider our lives and their impacts if we want to leave anything other than utter disaster as our legacy -- and that includes those of us who plan purposely to leave no genetic legacy. As an historian, I am dismayed, but part of me wishes also to be hopeful -- we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from our past and our past mistakes, and we can make changes now.

We could start by teaching home economics again.

Fear

2010-05-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

We have become, I fear, a fear-driven people.

Advertising plays primarily on our fears. Fear of being left out. Fear of getting old. Fear of being unattractive or unpopular. Fear of missing out. Fear of car crashes, fear of terrorists, fear of being alone.

What is there, really, to be afraid of? Of things that I can control? I am scared of falling asleep at the wheel. I am scared of moths. I am scared of getting my heart broken again. And yet, I still drive, I still -- well, you can't really avoid moths, evil creatures. I still date and meet people and engage with the world.

I don't fear dying. It will happen some day, and I only hope that it will be quick and not protracted and painful.

I fear not living the life I've been given with alacrity, with passion, and with indulgence for my human frailties. And instead of giving in to that fear, of being paralyzed by it, of living less than I am because of it, I let the fear provide the energy to go and do and see. I'm just trying not to be distracted.

The Telling of a Story versus Truth

2010-04-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

There are at least two ways to tell any story. There's the way you tell it to your nearest and dearest, those people you don't mind knowing about something stupid you did or said. Then there's the way you would tell it to anyone else -- people you want to impress, or people you'd rather not show your dark and seedy and stupid sides to.

And then, I suppose, there are the stories you don't tell at all.

I considered this over the week when I did not tell one of my people the full and honest truth. I left out something stupid I'd done, not because I thought she would judge me, but because *I* was judging me.

Which, actually, was the reason I finally told her. She was much nicer to me about it than I was to myself. I think that, for all the many many many faults of the Catholic church, confession is one of the things they got sort of right. There needs to be someone you can be honest with about your foibles and fumbles; everyone needs that person. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that person.

And no, I don't think "god" or your DOC -- deity of choice -- is enough. I know people who have quite an incredible relationship with prayer, but I think the telling out loud and receiving a human response back is part of the catharsis and openness, of being in oneself.

So, yeah, I did something stupid this week. And there is one person in the world who does not think I'm a complete loser because of it. And that is enough for me.

Springing lack of success

2010-04-03T18:27:00.000-07:00

So far this year, I do not feel as though I've much made 2010 mine, especially not when it comes to how I've dealt with my food challenges. And when I am dealing with them, the cooking is taking all my time and I've no energy left to talk about it.

Last week, I did a big shop on Sunday and then spent time Sunday and Monday doing pre-prep of ingredients both for cooking and just eating, and the prep really does make a difference. I bought carrots and strawberries this week. I washed, peeled, and cut the carrots, put them in water in a Tupperware. All the carrots are gone -- I ate them as snacks most days after work. I did not wash the strawberries. They are still in their nice plastic carton, untouched.

My goal this week is to use up the rest of the food in the fridge. Currently, I have:

1 pint strawberries (destination: ice cream)
1 head of fennel (destination: spring couscous dish)
1 leek (destination: spring couscous dish)
1 package of sugar snap peas (destination: snacks)
most of 1 bunch of spinach (destination: couscous, chickpea dish)
1 tub of seitan (destination: unknown, but possibly more meatless stroganoff)
1/2 package of Szechuan baked tofu (??)
1 brick o' multi-grain tempeh)
part of a stalk of celery
2 small tubs of chickpeas (approx. 2 c each)
13 eggs (I hope to make tea-stained eggs, but I cannot find star anise. One stop tomorrow, and then I'll just try it without)
2 apples, 1 pear (charoset)
bananas (breakfast -- also, not in the fridge)
2 tomatoes (couscous)

Vacation

2010-03-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

In order to prepare for, indulge in, and recover from my 3 day vacation, I took off two weeks of responsible food preparation. I ate. Decently before, decadently during (post later), and disinterestedly after. But not much of note.

So I am meal planning again.

After my brilliant visit to New Orleans, I am going to attempt jambalaya from a recipe given to me by my host (not her own), assuming that New England can provide me sausage of an appropriate caliber. I'm planning this late in the week for food for next weekend.

I have shrimp in the freezer from my last visit to Trader Joe's, so I will be attempting a seafood-infused variation of my standard broccoli with peanut sauce stir-fry, this one with noodles as the jambalaya should take care of the rice for this week.

Because I am Irish and a week without potatoes is a week without food, I am considering a reprise of my fish and sausage dish from previously in this blog. Fish is in the freezer, and I have vegan sausage if I choose to use that again.

I am also going to re-season the three servings of potato soup I've defrosted -- the potatoes broke down when reheated, so I am going to doctor this into a few servings which will compliment the sandwiches I plan to bring for lunch this week. Nothing exciting -- whatever strikes me at the deli. I am feeling non-vegetarian this week, tired and in need of fuel from the animal kingdom, so I am going with that gut impulse. I am craving chicken, but I am not sure in what form I will cook it. I'll decide that tomorrow before the shopping. Maybe chicken diane -- mushrooms, chives, and a brandy-mustard sauce.

That's the plan. It is good to have one, but I do not find it intrinsic -- no cylon am I.

Death is the source of all

2010-02-21T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm laughing at myself, my intentions, and my denial of self-knowledge.

I am a list maker, but I am not a list keeper. I regularly set myself up to fail by attempting to keep lists, like the "culture" list I started earlier this year. I would love to know how many books I read in an average year, but keeping a list is, well, not likely to happen. I remember those summer reading lists that you could keep for the library, usually to earn a prize. I usually read enough books to make the list count about two weeks into summer vacation, and the rest of the summer I wrote down nothing. I read like I breathe, constantly. I currently have three books I'm actively reading and a few more I'm using constantly for reference. There are books in every room of my house, and I find them comforting. I don't need to track or count them for that to continue.

This morning I started re-reading an interesting book. No, I guess the "re" is wrong. Just reading. Reading my journals from 7 years ago, trying to write up the story of a relationship beginning while I'm currently in the stages of a new relationship beginning. I think I'm drawn to reanalyze the start of that relationship because it was the last relationship of any consequence I had before this one. The honeymoon, lust-fueled stage of that relationship was set against an amazing natural backdrop, one which added drama and grandeur. What I am finding, though, reading what I'd written during those days, is that I saw all of the things that caused the demise of that great love in its inception. Every problem we had that came out in that last six weeks was there in the second journal entry I wrote in the first month we dated.

Are the seeds of destruction always apparent at conception? I guess biologically they are -- the cell replication that creates us is often what kills us (don't hold me to the biology of that -- I haven't taken biology since 1992).

What does it mean to see the end in the beginning? I wrote of the preciousness of the honeymoon stage, of knowing that it was all the more meaningful in that it would end, much like life.

Maybe that is true today, too. Does acknowledging an end negate the glory of a beginning? If we are lucky, the end of love's actions is death. If we are lucky. Which means I should not feel sorry for those who have lost a loved one -- the loss was inevitable, and they lost the person, not the love. Is it truly better to have loved and lost?

I guess it is. To quote, again, Nikki Giovanni, "We love because it is the only true adventure." I quote that to myself regularly, reminder that life is ours to take risks with.

Off to go read myself some Wallace Stevens.

Fried Rice and Planning

2010-02-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

So Monday, I made chicken and veggies and rice for dinner. I marinated about a pound of chicken tenders in the juice of a lemon and an orange, both of which were a bit old and wrinkly and still good for juice. I added some lemon pepper (Penzey's Sunny Spain) and herbes de Provence and threw them in the fridge for a few hours. I threw some rice in the rice cooker and a cheapo bag of pre-cut veg in some boiling water. The chicken I cooked in the cast iron skillet, adding the leftover marinade towards the end and bringing it to a good roiling boil. This made an excellent dinner and a generous portion of leftovers for today's lunch.

With the leftovers from the week so far, I made fried rice last night -- my own version. I had leftover rice from the chicken dinner, leftover shrimp, scallions, cabbage, and carrots from the potstickers, and celery, mushrooms, and sugar snap peas in the fridge. With some peanut and sesame oils, a splash of rice cooking wine, some garlic, and some Chinese five spice, I mixed up an untraditional, but tasty, fried rice. Cashews and soy sauce completed the dish -- at least two, probably three, servings in a few minutes of work and a lot of leftovers.

And it was pretty! The "grey" in the photo is just steam. Tasty. This is lunch tomorrow.

I've skipped two meals -- I made a standard black bean soup for a potluck at work on Wednesday, and tonight was our co-op's wine tasting, with food. Tomorrow, leftovers for lunch, and dinner out.

I have not yet completed my challenge for the week -- grapefruit! But Saturday is looking good for that. I have everything in the fridge ready to go.