Veggie tales

It was not a deep, uninterrupted sleep, but I slept again. Yay.

Not everything is getting checked off the list today. But I did prepare half the CSA veggies, took Sag to gymnastics, and we head out to common meal soon.

Bok choy, tatsoi, kale, with non-CSA vidalia onion and garlic. Sautéed in Spanish olive oil with a splash of Japanese sake.

I also pickled some radishes of the red and long variety. I'll call them fingerling radishes since they resembled the shape of spuds of the same name.

I looked at a few recipes online and settled on David Leibowitz's version. (Don't know how to create links on the phone...Google it, please.) He has a way about him that I like. Clean, simple, kind of elegant.

These will be ready to eat by lunchtime tomorrow. Looking forward to it!

Peace and love.

On being a super smeller

Maybe "super smeller" is overstepping. I don't have anything official decreeing my smelling status. But, as an adult, I have become increasingly aware that I am sensitive to smells (pleasant and unpleasant) and I process/learn through them, as well.

A couple of nights ago I was struggling to fall asleep.  As I finally began to drift off around 2:30 a.m., I was enveloped by the aroma of freshly ground coffee. Heavenly, comforting and nourishing.

And curious. My mind was aroused enough to wonder: who nearby was quietly grinding coffee at this hour?

Suddenly, the smell morphed. Skunk. Wow. It was so strong that it smelled almost chemical/inorganic. Foreboding. I got out of bed to confirm there was nothing hot in the kitchen. It didn't smell like fire/smoke/burning...it did smell like synthetic heat.

I lay back down and could not get back to that drowsy place. My system was stressed. My receptors had taken in the chemical message loud and clear: fight or flight!

My heart and pulse alternated pounding, fluttering, racing. My eyes were wide open. I was so tired in body, though, so I stayed in bed. Eventually, past 4:30 a.m., sleep came.

Today has been humid. There have been plenty of wonderful breezes, cold and warm fronts competing in relative vicinity bringing dark clouds and scattered showers.

It has been the kind of day where suddenly, in a fit of stillness, sweat would begin to stream.

Since going soap- and shampoo-free a couple of years ago, I have virtually no body odor. I can't remember the last time I used deodorant. Being a super smeller, I have enjoyed noticing the way my body, specifically my arm pits, smell on a day like today.

I wonder what my body, my chemicals, are communicating. Hormones, pheromones, any-other-mones.

This evening my pits smell like semen. How interesting. They have smelled like this before, though not frequently. A bit salty, a bit musky, a scent that screams re/fresh birth/life.

I confess, I have been taking hits of my intoxicating pits.

It's no wonder, really, that, a) the scent of the so-called seeds of life would smell really good; and b) that if you dug a little deeper, semen would contain elements both male and female...so a woman could exude this particular scent.

The world just beyond

I spotted this little guy as I jogged out of the museum after dropping the kids off. For a moment, I was transported into the Miyazaki-esque world just beyond. The one on the other side of our fields of vision, across the edges of our imaginations, the fantastical one that flourishes just fine without us while quite possibly containing other versions of ourselves.

I burst with love and joy and wonder.

Then snapped the pic and meandered to the car. Moving slower, with more peace.

Laptop

Well.

First things first.  Gem's birthday was lovely.  We now have a teen amongst us.

We decided to give him a laptop.  The timing for Mac Book Pros is not good at present so we gave him the choice of waiting for a new one or taking over my year-plus old one.

He chose to take mine.

So, I am operating without a laptop. I will probably buy a new Mac Book Air next month.  In the meantime, it is time to adjust again.  Though I have been largely sharing my laptop with Gem for six months or so, this feels different.

I will get the hang of blogging via iPhone, I hope.

Here's a shot I took from the car early this morning on the way to the airport.  I think it's a fairly old section of wall from a former train station that is now a strip mall downtown.

Peace and love.

Stuff

I have slept better for three nights in a row (between 5-8 hours/night).  My body is more leaden today than yesterday and the day before.  My head feels like it's made of papier-mâché.  Not even going to try to understand it.

When in doubt, pretty pictures:

I love our Hario coffee grinder.  It's a perfect little gadget.  The confluence of sensory experience it invites is heavenly: a little muscle, the scent released by fresh ground beans, the shiny dark orbs disappearing out of sight...
 

The Wii U has been very entertaining.  Cool technology.

An example of what happens when the kids and I sleep together.  Three bodies squished together at one end of a vast king-size bed.  That cream colored pillow is mine.  I took this shot after getting out of bed unable to fall asleep one night...from under Sag's leg.

Sis and bro-in-law came over for the start of Gem's birthday season.  I love a special occasion which calls for the making of homemade ranch dip.

Nephew dog Finn is gorgeous inside and out.

Kousa Dogwood.

Late spring canopy.  So grateful the heat wave has been followed by sunny and dry and wonderfully seasonal temps.

Pippa's ruby slippers.

Handmade pappardelle pasta with an organic mushroom medley, micro greens, caramelized onion, black Hawaiian sea salt and quail egg.  At Le Salbuen Cafe.  Yum.

Brioche bread pudding which instantly became my favorite local bite.  Inspired by my Vinny session, I followed my desire to grab some time with my honey and invited him out to a rare weeknight dinner out.  Our intention was to go to the Red Eye (easier on the wallet) but they were closed due to an electrical issue so we wandered across the street to Le Salbuen Cafe.  Yum, yum, yum.

Local architecture.

Evening swinging.

Play ball.

A morning after a night we slept apart.

Gem's breakfast yesterday.  A duo of potatoes.

My loot from Cap's trip to Chicago.  He went to Quimby's and loved it.  In another life we likely could have been very happy living in Chicago.

I baked another pound cake.  Gluten-free and butter-ific.  The littlest common meal-er remarked upon tucking into it: "no, it's not good...it's excellent!"

Our driveway has been ripped up, old pipe being replaced after sewage backed up into the basement one too many times (because ONCE WAS NOT ENOUGH).  Despite its issues, we remain fond of this apartment and are crossing our fingers that we will have another year here.

I love colored glass.  I love old glass.  Kelly was giving away a bunch of old Mason jars and I snagged this beauty.  (Thanks, friend!)

A Facebook friend from high school said these are anniversary jars and pricey.  They are beautiful, either way.

Peace and love.

What's going on

 shot at dawn sometime last week.

Mucho sleeplessness.  Way too mucho.  Going on ten days or so now, nearly half my nights have seen less than an hour of sleep.

This is not good.

Part hormonal insomnia, part getting out of bed multiple times a night to sit in the kids' room, part circadian rhythm shifting.

: :    : :    : :

A few days ago a local teenager climbed an embankment not far from our place and stood in front of an oncoming train and died.  I have been haunted by this...due in some part to my sleep deprived state.

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Sleep deprivation is not good for hair plucking.  My system is a bath of peri/menopausal hormones, my brain chemistry is far from shooting on all cylinders...I'm in a state of restless stasis.  Pluck, pluck, pluck.

: :    : :    : :

My corrected corrective lenses are perched on my nose.  Much better.  I am feeling inclined to read again.

: :    : :    : :

Eleven weeks since my last period, another one came.  It's been qualitatively different.  Not normal is the new normal.

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The kids are growing a ton.  Gem is changing inside and outside.  I swear he goes to bed and wakes up and is another inch taller.  He is morphing into a teen.  The countdown to his birthday has begun.

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We're in the midst of a heatwave, but I have been so out of it I've barely noticed.  Of course, I am using the air conditioners assiduously.  And drinking lots of iced coffee and tea.

: :    : :    : :

I have been enjoying the game Candy Crush Saga.  It's my first social media tie-in game.  I've been playing it a lot.  On a related gaming note, Gem bought a Wii U.  It all happened quickly and was quite shocking because he has historically been a non-saver/-big spender.  But, he had amassed quite the bundle of coin since his last birthday and so we chipped in just a little bit and the kids have been enjoying the new Wii system thoroughly.

: :    : :    : :

I am entering a non-productive cycle of the vicious kind.  The sleep deprivation is affecting my capacity for stress management.  I am starting to feel bad about things that I can't control...or can't control easily or readily.  I am getting the bare minimum done on any given day...some days with more impromptu and nice flourishes than others.  But there is no rhythm.  Things feel haphazard and chaotic.  I have been okay with that for months, but now, not so much.

: :    : :    : :

Cap decided he wanted to replace our long suffering kitchen trash can before his impending trip to Japan.  We did our due diligence and checked out the selection at Bed Bath and Beyond...but we were not impressed.  The cans that had the features we were looking for were crazy expensive.  I found a great seeming can online at a restaurant supply store made by Rubbermaid in the USA.  Not cheap, but not as costly as the highest end stuff in BB and B.  Waiting for its arrival.

: :    : :    : :

Yep.  Feeling unmoored.  And grumpy.  Called our first, brief, official family meeting a few days ago and proposed a month of seriously increased structure.  I have been feeling quite a bit of tension holding the various strands of "home" together.  Anything that can help increase harmony by paring away missed and/or mixed expectations sounds good to me right now.  The kids were wary of committing to a month so we decided to assess how things were going after two weeks.

: :    : :    : :

The sky is lightening.  It is 5:30.  I cannot believe I've had another night with not a wink of sleep.  I am going to play a round or two of Candy Crush and then head into the kitchen.  My sister and brother-in-law are coming over for dinner and I am braising short ribs.  Yum.

Peace and love.

NASA rocks

Cicadas

Grateful today for this video about the 17-year cicadas.  We haven't seen any around here, though I've heard there are hot spots in town.

Difficult night sleep-wise.  This too shall pass, this too shall pass...



Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo.

Nashville

Mrs. Coach's* daughters on the show Nashville are sisters in real life!  I had no idea.  I loved their performance of this Lumineers cover.


*Mrs. Coach (nickname) = Tami Taylor (Friday Night Lights) = Connie Britton (the actress) = Rayna James (Nashville)

P.S.  I am re-entering normalcy bit-by-bit.  Last week's drama was severe sleep deprivation.  Things are looking up.  Hoping to get back to more regular blogging anon!

P.P.S.  Peace and love by the bucketful.

Scandal

What on earth...I have no idea how this show never made it on my list of tv fare to check out.  What.  A.  Rush.  The first season is streaming on Netflix and the second season is on Hulu Plus (totally worth the $7.99).

For my friends who cannot do violence, there is some of that...this is a network program, but there were scenes here and there that pushed the intensity envelope.  (Think Black Ops assassins torturing each other/others.)

The cast is excellent...my favorite character was Huck.

Go watch it if you haven't!

Peace.

Mrs. Bourdain

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece this morning and am now semi-obsessed with trying tinned beef.

Music = life

Zach's songs are available on iTunes.

Glasses gone wrong

Here I am.  Sleepless.  My consolation is that I am not stressed about not sleeping.  I wish I had slept, but it was not in the cards.  Once I realized it was starting to get light out about twenty minutes ago, I knew there was no use staying in bed.  The only times I can sleep in natural light are when I am very sick or just a bit pregnant.

I realized, also, that with Gem asleep, I would have my laptop uninterrupted.  He has been using it more and more, it feels like.  So I got up.

I recently learned that the lenses in my new glasses, which I'd been wearing for over a month, were incorrectly made.  Not enough as to be glaringly obvious...which is why I spent weeks and then some more weeks wondering why my upper back and neck were SO tight without concomitant stressors and why I was starting to experience headaches (unusual for me)...and why I was finding that I could not read things close up and generally feeling eye strain/fatigue (particularly when reading on my phone screen...which I have doing much more of because my laptop has been occupied by another).

Because the onset of my body's messages of protest was gradual, it took me awhile to figure out the problem might be my eyes (it did not occur to me that it might be the glasses...luckily, I brought my old pair with me in the event that, crazily, my prescription had changed in the month-plus since my last eye exam and I would need to temporarily part with the new glasses).

I mention this because I had noticed, and been feeling bad about, the persistent lack of pleasure reading/writing in my life the past few months.  I do believe this is one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, my blogging has come to nearly a standstill.  It is a relief to have the smoke clear...metaphorically...my revamped spectacles are due back to me sometime this week.  Time will tell whether and how much my newly-able-to-focus eyes will guide me back to reading and writing.

This integrates a whole new awareness and understanding of learning issues/disabilities into me, physically and mentally.  It took a long time for me, an adult who once made her living working with kids with learning issues, to put two and two together.  I can't imagine a kid, or an adult who has never known themselves to be otherwise when it comes to reading and writing, would be able to easily articulate the connection between the complex physical realities and manifestations of deficit (eyes/brain/body) with what may not even feel like unmet potential...

And pretty much on cue, my eyes are straining...my shoulders are tight, and I am going to sign off.  My dreams of luxurious uninterrupted writing time, dashed.  The light outside just seemed to intensify...as if to make it clear there will be no sleep for me tonight.  It being nearly six a.m. and all.

Peace and love.  (Speaking of love, I LOVED Call The Midwife!)

Last week

I guess I am in a non-blogging phase.  Which, for the record, I do not like.

The weekend was very split-personality.  Which, for the record, I do not like.

I seem to be having some period action after 8 weeks of menstrual radio silence.  Which, for the record, I do not like.

Whether I like it or not, life happens and time marches on.

So...

The kids are good.  Gem is on the cusp of becoming a teenager and he is transforming before our eyes.  Sag is experiencing springtime allergies for the first time and it has hit him like a truck.  OTC medication helped for 24 hours but were disrupting his sleep.  We switched him to homeopathic stuff which brought/are bringing symptoms to a level where coping is possible.  

(Interesting aside...for many years, Sag had "terrible (fill in age)-and-a-halfs" (as opposed to the "terrible twos")...we never understood the whys of it but came to expect the few weeks/couple of months during which he raged and roared and just seemed so uncomfortable in his skin.  We chalked it up to developmental growing pains...the unrest that can often precede a firm step forward in growing/growing up.  Then, as suddenly as they came on, these rough patches stopped, about four years ago.  The arrival of this Spring's allergies has highlighted the reality that Sag has been in a somewhat prolonged highly sensitive mode for about a month now.  The timing of it makes me wonder if there is...and was, a seasonal component to his difficulties around the time of his half-birthday.)

Last week we had time with their youngest cousin and with my Dad.  I don't think about it much, but it is really nice for them to be able to have this kind of (almost impromptu) time with extended family...something I did not grow up with myself.

(Barbra that is your travel pillow, by the way, on Gem's head.  I have it "out" to remind myself to mail it back to you!)

Switching back to mostly Paleo (not sweating it if I am eating out or PMSing bad...though even then I flexed just enough to allow occasional rice/corn/dairy...no gluten/sugar) has been pretty delicious.  I so appreciate color in life and forget how well having vegetables and fruit around can enhance one's colorscape.  Coffee has been fine without cream, my appetite has gone down a lot (though my ability to figure out serving size has not, concurrently...that shot of food in a pan is what was left after I took what I wanted and my intention was to cook up one serving!) and I have discovered a super simple way to prepare chicken that I love.

The chicken thing was enlightening because I have long been someone who could take or leave chicken.  It is great timing to have tasty chicken in the repertoire because I am wanting to eat less, generally, and specifically, less meat.  I suspect the cut and quality of the chicken are what makes this "recipe" a stand out.  I am getting boneless, skinless thighs from my meat guy at the Farmer's Market.  Cap has been using the chicken breast from Anthony for months now and I have been aware of the wonderful quality, but never ate much of it because...I thought I didn't really like chicken.  (This is the same farmer from whom we buy our gorgeous eggs.)  Well, despite being a dark meat girl, I never explored the world of dark meat chicken because Cap doesn't like it and the kids are not fans of eating chicken off the bone.  Deciding to follow the "getting started" recipes in Well Fed last week, kind of blindly, I asked for the boneless, skinless chicken thighs at Anthony's stall, not knowing they were a thing, and was pleasantly surprised to have two packages thunked down in front of me.

The "recipe" wasn't much of a recipe at all for anyone who cooks chicken with any regularity/intuition (not me).  It called for grilling the chicken, but had instructions on how to bake it instead, which was perfect for me.  (We have access to an outdoor grill, but living on the second floor, we don't really use it.)  The chicken is seasoned with salt, pepper and granulated garlic, placed in a baking dish and then baked at 400º for 30 minutes.

That's it.

It looks like the pic above (not very attractive, if you ask me) and tastes like gangbusters.  I cooked up 3 lbs. last week and went down to 2 lbs. this week.  (The kids liked it, but didn't ask for it again.)  It's a perfect little protein with veggies or on its own.

I did have way too much food prepped last week.  My brain must be foggier than I think because I thought I slashed items off this week's grocery list, but ended up spending more/buying just as much, it felt like.  Some patience will be needed as the process gets streamlined and sorted out.

Some seasonal stuff that happened last week: the annual film festival in town where Cap and I saw Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (directed by an alum of my high school...followed by dinner out while the kids were happily ensconced with friends) and herbs picked up at one of the annual plant sales in town.

The final pic is just something that caught my eye.  One of our drying racks broke which prompted this:

Peace and love.  (And less Ruzzle...though it comforts me when I am PMSing...and don't have ice cream or potato chips.)

Monday, monday

The leaf has turned.  To the Paleo side.  Lunch was roasted rutabaga and sweet potato, haricot vert and baked chicken (in lieu of grilling outdoors).  I followed Well Fed's recipe for grilled chicken and it was delicious.  The kids liked it, too.  I cooked the chicken while working with the kids this morning.  Easy.

The fridge is packed with pre-cooked/prepped meal components:

• steam-sautéed red cabbage

• steam-sautéed Brussels sprouts

• steam-sautéed bell peppers (green, red, orange, yellow...I love my colors)

• roasted plum tomatoes

• roasted sweet potato and rutabaga

• steamed haricot vert

• sunshine sauce

• browned ground beef/lamb

• grilled turkey sausage

• baked chicken thighs

I also have a tub of baby spinach and plenty of eggs.  Cap is swinging by Trader Joe's tonight and will pick up basil (for a pesto sauce for which I will also need some homemade mayo) and some veg for raw consumption (Persian cukes, grape toms and snap peas).

I think this is going to be too much food.  There will be an easing in period of figuring out what (variety and balance) and how much (quantity and perishability).  One of the things I am curious to see is which meal components the kids will dis/like.  In the meantime, yum.

Had rare-for-me scary dreams last night involving scenes of personal danger.  Yuck.

Early morning quiet enabled an hour of listening to a This American Life podcast while practicing Qigong and squatting.  Very nice.

Peace and love.

 

Sliding into sunday

My eyes are drooping but I wanted to check in before tomorrow's scheduled media-free day.  Here are some pics...

In a fit of...self-care?...self-love?...pushing to get closer to finishing something I started?...inspiration?  I decided to move my personal work/inspirational books to the top shelf.

The fantasy is me curled up reading poetry...some day.

Sweet blooms are studding our hyperlocal landscape.

Went to a community swap today at an elementary school gym in town.  It was sobering to see folks who clearly needed the respite of picking up things they need without having to pay for them.  I felt a little guilty taking anything...but things were pretty picked over by the time I was poking around.  My very interesting find was this this old chopper thingy.  I was completely intrigued having never seen anything like it.

Shifting the old diet back to sugar- grain- and dairy-free on Monday.  Stocked up on animal protein at the farmer's market today and pre-cooked some veg.  Tomorrow I will roast some more veg (sweet potato and rutabaga) and if I have time, brown and grill some meat.  Oh, and hard boil a dozen eggs.

Peace and love.