A few weeks ago, my mother asked if I wanted to be added to a winter sowing group on social media, and I said yes, eager to learn whatever I can about vegetable gardening in general. We've recently moved to a more rural location, and I've been excited and enthusiastic about learning (finally) to garden and preserve. The fact that the house came with a few tomato plants and a tangled cluster of Concord grapes thrilled me to no end, and resulted in a few extra salad toppings and low-cost jars of jelly.
Winter sowing appeals to me because I'm often hanging around in the winter, bored, indoors, without much to do, and filling containers with soil seems to be at just about the right level of strenuousness for post-holiday-season activity. I hear that it can toughen up your seeds and make your plants potentially hardier, although I have no anecdotal evidence of this for myself yet. That's why it's an experiment!
Earlier this week, my organic seeds came in the mail, and I had procured a bag of high-quality potting soil from our local farm store (they're starting to recognize me there from my frequent visits to fawn over their selection of Carhartt apparel). I found my husband's sloth in not bringing the recycling to the transfer station to be of benefit, as I was able to salvage several empty milk jugs to use as my mini-greenhouses. My daughter, who is already four, sat with me on the kitchen floor to help me assemble our emerging winter sowing collection and, for the sake of keeping her interest, we began with radish seeds.
We proceeded to sow red peppers, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, and zucchini, as well. The little plastic containers were originally going to take up residence on a table near our back porch, until a gust of wind blew two of them off the table. I hope that they still have their seeds in them. So now they are hanging out on the back porch, subject to the chilling winds of fate. We shall see how things unfold, and more seeds will be planted as I gather more containers.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Sunday, January 1, 2017
New Year, New Me! Kinda.
Earlier this evening, my beloved spouse hollered at us that it was time to go to dinner. As I mumbled a half-hearted "all right" and urged my little one -- no longer a tiny baby, but a four-year-old, a full-fledged PRESCHOOLER for heaven's sake! -- into the dining room, I found myself struck with inspiration.
The blog! I'll go back to the blog! Even though blogs are so 2006, I'll go back to it, and I'll resurrect it with riveting tales of my adventures!
Oh, the enthusiasm that poured forth onto paper, all of my ideas and thoughts and scribbles and head shakings rendered into ink on the back of a watercolor pad! It was joyous!
Then fear reared its lovely, lovely head again.
That's all right, though. My most popular post has 25 viewers. That's almost a classroom full of students, and a classroom of students is a totally manageable audience! Here's some of what I'm looking forward to sharing with all of you in my posts this year:
- My mother-in-law got me the most amazing socks for Christmas, but the tags on them were written in a language I do not recognize, possibly of East Asian origin, and I threw away the tags. How can I tell everyone where to get these socks if I don't know anything else about them? Well, as you all know from my overuse of Dr. Google, Secret Agent Google, Inspector Google, Google, LICSW, and His Holiness the Dalai Google, I have mad research skills and I WILL get to the bottom of this!
- I just got a box of art stuff from Sketchbox due to an amusing set of circumstances involving the holiday season, shipping, and my forgetfulness. Is it awesome, or just meh? I'll tell you all about it!
- Come and laugh along as I tell you my tales of physical prowess! I promise, it will be fun. Ever watched a middle-aged woman learn Parkour from the beginning? Well, at the very least, you will get to read about it. And by "beginning," I mean, I currently bench about 20 pounds. As a special bonus, hear about how packing a set of double-D cups and a post-preggo belly impacts the journey (literally and figuratively).
- There will be more Feats of Strength, including my journey toward running a 5K in under 30 minutes, and moving on from there to my first 10K. Will I be able to complete it without overtraining (from the first time I trained), or without acquiring shin splints that may turn to stress fractures (from the second time I trained)? It's anyone's guess.
- Speaking of Feats of Strength, my sister has mentioned that she will host our first annual Festivus this year. THAT will be a story for the books.
- Find out whether or not my experiments in winter sowing will be successful, and if I will uncover the Holy Grail of perpetual produce production.
- How NOT to clean the ashes out of your pellet stove.
Stay tuned!
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Blend This! (Green Smoothies, Revisited)
December
My name is Amy, and I have a pizza problem. Oh, and a chocolate problem, a coffee problem, and an ice cream problem.
The problem is all of these foods are delicious (I am particularly indiscriminate about pizza), and more of them find their way into my body than is healthy and appropriate. This became clear over the holidays this past year.
In December, if I only had myself to think about, I would much prefer to curl up and hibernate a bit. I'd probably spend a fair amount of time reading, writing, painting, and doing other soothing activities. Instead, everything gets busy. There are relatives that I want to visit, celebrations I want to attend, and gifts. At work, there are projects to wrap up, paperwork to finalize, deadlines to meet, and projects to support students in wrapping up. There are regular schedule disruptions at both home and work.
Chocolate and coffee were both available in abundance and, as I am fond of saying to my assistant at work, "Amy runs on Dunkin'." She would respond by bringing out a bag of mini Snickers. We would laugh, and then I would eat three of them in a row while staring despondently at the stack of science classwork that I'd just received and had no chance of being rendered accessible by third period. It would then occur to me that it was only 9:10 in the morning.
With this kind of habit, you can imagine how much it might have been affecting my body. I realized that, after the holidays, I would need a reset. My old friend, the green smoothie, wandered back into my thoughts.
Contemplative Impulsivity
"Are you going to do the smoothie thing?" The spouse asked me on January 3, steam rising from the dishes he was rinsing.
I shrugged as I opened the freezer, reached for one of the 15 chocolate products I had received for the holidays, then stopped. I hadn't been fully aware that I had just grabbed a chocolate bar, but then I suddenly was. I shoved the chocolate bar back in the freezer and heaved a sigh of martyr-like proportions.
"Yeah," I said. "I have to do something. I've felt like crap for over a month."
On January 5, I was on to the smoothies. Twice a day, I had a smoothie and followed it up with protein. I had forgotten how good they could be. Spinach and mango and pineapple and coconut. Kale and blueberry and banana. There have been pomegranates. There have been kiwi (and I don't like kiwi). Oranges and grapefruit, apples and grapes, all a welcome respite from the onslaught of holiday stress.
Every night, I had whatever I wanted for dinner. Snacks were herbal tea, water, water with lemon and ginger, fruit and veggies if I really needed them. The chocolate bar in my desk at work taunted me. The snickers bars...well, they snickered at me. I ignored them. I tried to blot out the smell of coffee while I was in the teacher's room. By day 3, I noticed the hunger pangs between meals had stopped. I had been fighting off some kind of illness that cleared itself up. My energy began to return. I discovered fried brussels sprouts and fell back in love with raw ice cream. Even my dinners became healthier, as I started to focus more on vegetables and fruit, making sure to include some at dinner.
Diet and Habits
I'm on day 19, and I definitely feel better. I plan to keep it going until February 5, at which point I will, with any luck, remember to keep on blending. I don't know if other people are affected this strongly by changes to their diet, but I never fail to be stunned when I realize I've fallen into a pattern of eating unhealthy food, then change back to healthier eating.
The older I become, the more important it is to me to keep track of my energy and my health as best as I can. This is not always easy, between working full time, caring for my family, and finding time to rest or socialize. These days, I do not get as much exercise as I would like. Yet I find that changes to the way I eat impact me quite profoundly.
I think it's important for people to find a way of eating that works well for them, doesn't feel overly restrictive, and helps them feel nourished and energized. I may fall back into a pattern of eating unhealthy food, but fortunately, I know what to do to get myself back out of that place.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
How Does Life Change Once You Have Kids?
Before I became pregnant with my daughter, I had a lot of questions. One thing I wanted to get a handle on was how my life would change once I had a child. Now, I find it funny. There is no way I could have figured out how my life was going to be after having a kid. I had no frame of reference.
If you are thinking about having children yourself, but are afraid of how your life might change, the following is for you. Here are some of the ways I found that my life changed, and you may find that these are true for you, too.
1. Your life will change completely, but not in the ways you might expect.
I can't tell you exactly HOW it will change, but you will have a small, helpless person to whom you will need to attend. This is a real person, with real needs. It seems obvious intellectually, but it is a whole different ballgame once you are actually there. Being a parent is a completely different experience than not being a parent. I enjoyed not having children, and I also enjoy having a child, and I don't think that one is better than the other. They both have their strong pros and cons.
2. For awhile, your life might be unrecognizable. This is temporary.
Becoming a parent has a way of turning your old roles on their heads. You will wake up in the middle of the night a lot. You will probably be doing a lot of laundry and managing a lot of human body wastes. You might wonder where the "old you" is. The answer: the "old you" is still there, although changing and evolving. Your new role as parent will be your top focus for awhile as you learn to integrate it into the other roles in your life. However, as I discovered recently in taking my first overnight trip away from home since my daughter was born nearly 2 years ago, the other parts will still be there when you are ready and able to focus some attention back on them.
3. You may become more deeply aware of your mortality.
Many people don't like to think much about their own death. We all know it's coming sooner or later, but having a child brings your attention to the passing of time in a sharp way. As you watch your child grow, and marvel over how quickly this happens, you become more acutely aware that time is passing for you, as well.
4. "Your Life Is Over Once You Have Kids" does not have to be the truth.
I overheard someone say this the week before I gave birth, when I was hugely and obviously pregnant. A group of attractive younger people were talking with one another over Margaritas and salsa a few tables over from us in the restaurant, and I can only assume I was the impetus for the conversation, given the dearth of pregnant women in the vicinity and the fact that the restaurant TVs were playing NFL games. They were not quite right in their assertion, however. Life as you once knew it is over. It will often take you several hours to do what used to take you one hour (for example, writing a blog post). Like I said above, your role as parent will take center stage, especially at the beginning, and almost to the exclusion of other things. Part of being a parent, though, is finding a path that makes you available to your children and ensuring their needs are met while making sure that you maintain your own self-care. You might not be able to spend hours meditating, or take off for a last minute trip to Europe for three weeks. However, you will learn how to integrate these parts of your life-before-kids into your life-with-kids.
5. Certain things bother you less.
It's almost as if something happens and you wind up with a secret decoder in your brain that is able to empathize with kids and parents everywhere. You start to realize that that child yelling in the produce section is overtired. Your dealings in the comings and goings of human waste become less loaded with squeamishness: it's still kind of gross to deal with loaded diapers, but it's balanced with a certain perspective, especially if you were the parent who gave birth and went through the labor process.
6. Speaking of labor...
Yeah, it hurts. The first few days after birth, you will likely feel like a zombie. You will be in completely new territory. This is not the time to try and keep a stiff upper lip and power through alone, nor is it a time to let yourself be pushed around. Go into pregnancy with a good sense of your limits, but do not be surprised to find out that you change your mind about some things. The entire process of labor and childbirth is a growth process and a transformational process in and of itself and can lead you to access a sense of self-trust you may not have had before. Do not underestimate its power, and try not to judge yourself if childbirth doesn't go the way you expected it to, because it probably won't.
7. You may find your life expanding, rather than contracting.
Related to the myth of your life ending is a common sense that you won't be able to do anything, have a life, or do any of the old, fun things you used to do. While personal growth isn't a reason in and of itself to have children, the journey of becoming a parent will take your growth in directions you wouldn't have imagined before. It will inform other areas of your life and shift your perspective. I have found myself becoming more thoughtful in my words and actions, considering what I want for my child to learn from my example. It has meant I have had to confront my own fears and weaknesses in order to be a role model for my daughter on how to live well. You may find your emotional life takes on a whole new texture, as you share in your child's joy and delight in discovering the world.
If you are thinking about having children yourself, but are afraid of how your life might change, the following is for you. Here are some of the ways I found that my life changed, and you may find that these are true for you, too.
1. Your life will change completely, but not in the ways you might expect.
I can't tell you exactly HOW it will change, but you will have a small, helpless person to whom you will need to attend. This is a real person, with real needs. It seems obvious intellectually, but it is a whole different ballgame once you are actually there. Being a parent is a completely different experience than not being a parent. I enjoyed not having children, and I also enjoy having a child, and I don't think that one is better than the other. They both have their strong pros and cons.
2. For awhile, your life might be unrecognizable. This is temporary.
Becoming a parent has a way of turning your old roles on their heads. You will wake up in the middle of the night a lot. You will probably be doing a lot of laundry and managing a lot of human body wastes. You might wonder where the "old you" is. The answer: the "old you" is still there, although changing and evolving. Your new role as parent will be your top focus for awhile as you learn to integrate it into the other roles in your life. However, as I discovered recently in taking my first overnight trip away from home since my daughter was born nearly 2 years ago, the other parts will still be there when you are ready and able to focus some attention back on them.
3. You may become more deeply aware of your mortality.
Many people don't like to think much about their own death. We all know it's coming sooner or later, but having a child brings your attention to the passing of time in a sharp way. As you watch your child grow, and marvel over how quickly this happens, you become more acutely aware that time is passing for you, as well.
4. "Your Life Is Over Once You Have Kids" does not have to be the truth.
I overheard someone say this the week before I gave birth, when I was hugely and obviously pregnant. A group of attractive younger people were talking with one another over Margaritas and salsa a few tables over from us in the restaurant, and I can only assume I was the impetus for the conversation, given the dearth of pregnant women in the vicinity and the fact that the restaurant TVs were playing NFL games. They were not quite right in their assertion, however. Life as you once knew it is over. It will often take you several hours to do what used to take you one hour (for example, writing a blog post). Like I said above, your role as parent will take center stage, especially at the beginning, and almost to the exclusion of other things. Part of being a parent, though, is finding a path that makes you available to your children and ensuring their needs are met while making sure that you maintain your own self-care. You might not be able to spend hours meditating, or take off for a last minute trip to Europe for three weeks. However, you will learn how to integrate these parts of your life-before-kids into your life-with-kids.
5. Certain things bother you less.
It's almost as if something happens and you wind up with a secret decoder in your brain that is able to empathize with kids and parents everywhere. You start to realize that that child yelling in the produce section is overtired. Your dealings in the comings and goings of human waste become less loaded with squeamishness: it's still kind of gross to deal with loaded diapers, but it's balanced with a certain perspective, especially if you were the parent who gave birth and went through the labor process.
6. Speaking of labor...
Yeah, it hurts. The first few days after birth, you will likely feel like a zombie. You will be in completely new territory. This is not the time to try and keep a stiff upper lip and power through alone, nor is it a time to let yourself be pushed around. Go into pregnancy with a good sense of your limits, but do not be surprised to find out that you change your mind about some things. The entire process of labor and childbirth is a growth process and a transformational process in and of itself and can lead you to access a sense of self-trust you may not have had before. Do not underestimate its power, and try not to judge yourself if childbirth doesn't go the way you expected it to, because it probably won't.
7. You may find your life expanding, rather than contracting.
Related to the myth of your life ending is a common sense that you won't be able to do anything, have a life, or do any of the old, fun things you used to do. While personal growth isn't a reason in and of itself to have children, the journey of becoming a parent will take your growth in directions you wouldn't have imagined before. It will inform other areas of your life and shift your perspective. I have found myself becoming more thoughtful in my words and actions, considering what I want for my child to learn from my example. It has meant I have had to confront my own fears and weaknesses in order to be a role model for my daughter on how to live well. You may find your emotional life takes on a whole new texture, as you share in your child's joy and delight in discovering the world.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
An Act of Loyalty
"Movement invites attention, asks us to practice devotion to ourselves, not in a self-centered way, but as an act of loyalty. Instead of abandoning ourselves, we can learn to inhabit ourselves." -- Denise Taylor
While traveling with my sister-in-law to Toronto last week, I had the chance to settle in on the balcony with a book during a few hours' downtime in the afternoon. The book I had brought with me, Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life As Spiritual Path, is a compilation of writings by a variety of people who talk about various aspects of spirituality and how they are a part of everyday life. It is an old favorite of mine that I flip through from time to time, and it is loaded with ideas for spiritual practice that are down-to-earth and feel relevant to the way I live my life and walk my path.
As I tend to do when re-approaching an old favorite, I took a deep breath, quieted my mind a bit, and opened the book to a random page, upon which the above quote by Denise Taylor appeared. I flipped back and started reading the essay, Coming Home to the Body, in its entirety. I loved what she had to say in her essay, and I wanted to bring out some thoughts I had, specifically about the quote above.
I've done enough spiritual work, met enough people (in person and online), and read (more than) enough books to know that a lot of people who are into personal growth stuff are trying to find the sweet spot between being totally self-sacrificing and being totally self-absorbed. My observation is that most of us seem to lean toward one of these, or vacillate between the two depending on the context, personal history, and personality characteristics. One of the things I have observed has to do with concern over being self-centered, especially with people who perhaps lean more toward being self-sacrificial but are feeling frustrated, resentful, used, or unhappy about this tendency.
Sometimes, the magic is in the wording. I really like how Denise Taylor talks about devotion to ourselves as "an act of loyalty." Many of us are familiar with what it's like to be loyal to someone else. Loyalty is about being on someone's side, about showing our support, our alliance with, our allegiance with someone or something. I think that there is something to be learned by focusing our loyalty on ourselves and our spiritual lives.
Learning to be self-loyal can be about being on one's own side. It is about supporting ourselves, aligning with ourselves, forming an allegiance with ourselves and with a spiritual source of some sort, whether that source is our own basic personhood or a concept of a divine being. This can be a starting point, perhaps, for people who struggle with befriending themselves and their own experiences.
This may be tricky to interpret, though, because it can be read through a filter that insists that loyalty to ourselves precludes loyalty to others. This is not the point. The point that I am trying to make here is that loyalty to ourselves can co-exist with loyalty to others, and that the two ultimately are not mutually exclusive. When we're loyal to ourselves, we exist in the world as people of inherent worth and value. We learn about ourselves and know ourselves well enough to be aware of our triggers and weaknesses while not over-focusing on them within the greater context of who we are. We become real, whole people with quirks, foibles, strengths, and admirable qualities. We lay off of the judgments, forgive ourselves, and take life a little easier. This is where some of that "magic" in "Ordinary Magic" might come in.
While traveling with my sister-in-law to Toronto last week, I had the chance to settle in on the balcony with a book during a few hours' downtime in the afternoon. The book I had brought with me, Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life As Spiritual Path, is a compilation of writings by a variety of people who talk about various aspects of spirituality and how they are a part of everyday life. It is an old favorite of mine that I flip through from time to time, and it is loaded with ideas for spiritual practice that are down-to-earth and feel relevant to the way I live my life and walk my path.
As I tend to do when re-approaching an old favorite, I took a deep breath, quieted my mind a bit, and opened the book to a random page, upon which the above quote by Denise Taylor appeared. I flipped back and started reading the essay, Coming Home to the Body, in its entirety. I loved what she had to say in her essay, and I wanted to bring out some thoughts I had, specifically about the quote above.
I've done enough spiritual work, met enough people (in person and online), and read (more than) enough books to know that a lot of people who are into personal growth stuff are trying to find the sweet spot between being totally self-sacrificing and being totally self-absorbed. My observation is that most of us seem to lean toward one of these, or vacillate between the two depending on the context, personal history, and personality characteristics. One of the things I have observed has to do with concern over being self-centered, especially with people who perhaps lean more toward being self-sacrificial but are feeling frustrated, resentful, used, or unhappy about this tendency.
Sometimes, the magic is in the wording. I really like how Denise Taylor talks about devotion to ourselves as "an act of loyalty." Many of us are familiar with what it's like to be loyal to someone else. Loyalty is about being on someone's side, about showing our support, our alliance with, our allegiance with someone or something. I think that there is something to be learned by focusing our loyalty on ourselves and our spiritual lives.
Learning to be self-loyal can be about being on one's own side. It is about supporting ourselves, aligning with ourselves, forming an allegiance with ourselves and with a spiritual source of some sort, whether that source is our own basic personhood or a concept of a divine being. This can be a starting point, perhaps, for people who struggle with befriending themselves and their own experiences.
This may be tricky to interpret, though, because it can be read through a filter that insists that loyalty to ourselves precludes loyalty to others. This is not the point. The point that I am trying to make here is that loyalty to ourselves can co-exist with loyalty to others, and that the two ultimately are not mutually exclusive. When we're loyal to ourselves, we exist in the world as people of inherent worth and value. We learn about ourselves and know ourselves well enough to be aware of our triggers and weaknesses while not over-focusing on them within the greater context of who we are. We become real, whole people with quirks, foibles, strengths, and admirable qualities. We lay off of the judgments, forgive ourselves, and take life a little easier. This is where some of that "magic" in "Ordinary Magic" might come in.
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