growing curious

blossom

These are blossoms from the Serviceberry tree in front of our house.  This tree is special to me because of its open habit -- very welcoming and right near our front door.  It's prettiest right now in April when it blooms, and it's pretty again in June and July when it fruits -- the rust that gets on the fruit most years (in this climate) just adds more color to it all.  She is a happy tree, finding her way.

first market day

Yesterday was not as life-changing as marrying D or birthing E, but -- after those two important days -- it was hands-down the third most intense day of my life. 

After years of study, work, experimentation, licensing, and a trial-run last year of selling my pickled products and fresh vegetables/herbs in a limited way from our home/small farm, I (Curious Farm) got to "come out" into the sunlight yesterday and share my passion with the whole wide world  -- or at least the part of the whole wide world that came to the Beaverton Farmers Market on opening day.

It was a great day.  It was scary.  It was hard.  It was uplifting.  I felt affirmed.  Folks were happy about what we're offering.  They seem ready for these kinds of products and interested in exploring them.

D was there with me today, and I was very glad for that.  He watched our system while I interacted with customers, and we learned a ton today.  We will streamline a lot of our process by next week and even more in coming weeks.  If you visited the Curious Farm booth today, thank you!  Thank you mostly for your patience and warmth while we work through a few kinks in our system.

I loved being there.  My neighbor vendors are great, and I look forward to getting to know them. I felt excited to be surrounded by so many people who are passionate about fresh vegetables, healthy food, and pickles.  It was very affirming for me to be able to talk to many, many pickle lovers.  Curious Farm is a business, but it's a business driven in part by my own particular passions, and I was ready today -- achingly ready -- to connect with others who share those passions.

And if all this exposure wasn't enough for a shy lady who has worked freelance (sometimes never meeting her clients who live thousands of miles away) or just with plants for many years, two articles about Curious Farm were published on Saturday:

--The Oregonian (Cedar Mill's Curious Farm debuts at Beaverton Farmers Market with pickles, herbs and vegetables, by Emily Smith)

--The Cedar Mill News (Curious Farm, by Virginia Bruce)

I am too tired and sore from yesterday to sleep, but I am happy and grateful.  Thank you to everyone who has has been encouraging or constructively cautious about this venture.  Today was quite a milestone, and now I will get to work!

 

bittersweet update

Maybe you would believe how busy I've been?  It's been just a month since I found out that Curious Farm was accepted into the Beaverton Farmers Market, and one month from today I will have survived my first Saturday there.

Overall, we're ahead of the schedule I mapped out a couple of weeks ago.  Engineer D has been a huge help -- solving all sorts of spatial, storage (at different temperatures), fermenting, business and logistical problems.  There is no way I could do this without him.  And it's not like he doesn't have a hundred other things to do that are important, too.

I was doing pretty okay keeping my nose to the grindstone about it all until I looked online and found out my booth space at the Market.  When I was able to visualize where I'll be, it all became much too real.  As I've said a few times, I wish I had three months to prepare instead of two.

We've been figuring out the booth, getting tables and a canopy, finding eco-friendly containers that won't leak, making signage and other collateral, remodeling our house, figuring out new ways to ferment vegetables in larger quantities, marketing the booth and talking to media folks, mapping out production schedules, building relationships with other farms that can grow vegetables for us, product testing, connecting with new customers, integrating new hens into our flock, and planting up our garden.

I already have begun producing sauerkraut for the Market because it takes two months to ferment.  The pickle lab is working very well, by the way.  Right now more than a hundred pounds   (ahem...  all shredded by hand...  have you ever heard of "cabbage elbow?") of vegetables are fermenting in the pickle lab.  I'm excited by how these long ferments are turning out, and I can't wait until a week or so from now when I can begin working on some spicier products that take less time to ferment.

I've been trying to get nonsense and details done so that I can feel more relaxed as I make the products.  That was my goal with the schedule I hammered out two or three weeks ago, and it seems to be working well.  We've accomplished *so* much, and -- as I turn more to production -- I feel more centered because I know how the product will stay safe and vital all the way from sourcing it from our farm and other farms to handing it to our customers.

But it's been hard, too.  I haven't slept very much.  Neither has D, and that's way worse for everyone.

For me, though, the hardest thing I've had to do in this process is what I did today:  clean out the pickle fridge.  This is where we put most of the jars of pickles that I made last year, organized carefully by batches.  I don't know... it's complicated...  The refrigerator of jars represents failure on some levels.  I didn't sell those pickles last year. 

The refrigerator of pickles represents opportunity, too, because I identified the problem with my business down to the *jar* and found another way to sell my pickles.  I'm proud of that.  It's the right way for curious farm.

However, one of the reasons I lost confidence in selling my pickles in refrigerated glass jars is that twice I found jars with issues.  Other jars in the same batches were fine so I couldn't pin the problems on anything specific, but it made me really worried.  And I knew that the longer I held the pickles locked up in the jars, more textural problems might surface.

Last week I sold my last jar, from a dependable batch.

Today I cleared out the fridge of all jars, from all batches.  I opened up every single jar of pickles, filtered and saved the brine, and then threw away the pickles.

But I tasted a bit of pickle from every jar.  6 - 4 months later, they are amazing pickles.  Only two pickles in all of the jars were structurally unsound, and I understand that now as a problem in the cucumber's development on the vine.

I'm thrilled that my pickles could handle being locked up in glass jars for six months and still taste great.

I'm thrilled that I figured out that I hate having pickles locked up in glass jars so much that I wanted to figure out another way to sell them.

I'm thrilled that my "other way to sell them" turned into this.

But I just put 70 pounds of still-fantastic pickles (all homegrown) in the garbage because it's time to get ready for what's to come.

Bring it on, Universe! 

--cathy, covered in sour-cucumber-fermenty-spicy-summery wonder right now, dreaming about what's to come.

 

 

 

 

 

toot toot!

O frabjous day!

Legal pickles...  yip, yip...  legal and safe and tested and jarred and labeled pickles just before heading to the Curious Farm fridge.  (...but you heard it here first because you are you, and this is my special place for saying yippie! and ow! and wow!  today is a yay day!)

 

certifying the kitchen #1

When I am not picking snow peas (it's the middle of July!), pickling them (good results!), watering, weeding, helping bean vines find their twine supports (have you ever found the patience to coax a vine toward a support?  it's my meditation practice), or feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, I am cleaning my kitchen, garage, closets, and cabinets.

I am doing this because I want to get our home kitchen certified so that I can produce jams and pickles here and sell them legally.

I have been trying to wrap my mind around this for a couple of years, but the requirements are daunting.

The worst requirement for us is that no animal is ever allowed in the same building where the kitchen is.  We are dog people, and that has been a deal-breaker for me as I've tried to approach this goal in the past.  Sadly, though, we had to find another home for our dog earlier this year for unrelated reasons.  For months, I refused to consider the possibility of moving forward with the domestic kitchen licensing because this requirement kills the joy for me completely.  But now that my professional plans have gotten much bigger, it's absolutely clear that this domestic kitchen situation is a temporary one.  I can deal with a pet-free home for a couple of years.  The chickens have their own nice digs outside, and they are lovely companions, too. 

There are other requirements about storing ingredients and supplies separately from family supplies.  For my purposes, this requires a second refrigerator.  We already have that second fridge for the farm, and I'm waiting to hear from the inspector if that new one will suffice for the farm and the preserving.  We'll see.

Also, no medicines can be stored in the certified kitchen.  This makes absolute sense, but it requires considerable juggling around of our closet space here.  You know how when you re-organize one closet, you have to re-organize a few more for things to make sense again?  Well, that's where I am right now...

The house is a mess -- with things willy-nilly -- as I try to achieve new organizational sanity here.  I refuse to do the deep cleaning of the bathrooms and elsewhere that has needed to get done for weeks until this stuff is dealt with.  Do we need it?  Should we save it?  Should we donate it?  I won't vacuum until the pile of stuff is gone from the middle of the room.

Also, I'm going through my kitchen tools, wondering which ones I can give over to the business and which ones I need to keep for family use.  Do I need two of every favorite tool?

I also feel afraid to open my home to the scrutiny I imagine is to come.  There will be scheduled and unscheduled inspections.  Truthfully, I'm less afraid of the unscheduled inspections because once I learn the rules I must follow, I will be dogged about that.  I worry more about the first inspections when I'll be trying so hard to do it all right and then feel slammed when I'm told that I'll need to make a costly adjustment.

But I do feel determined.  My preserves -- jams, relishes, chutneys, and fermented pickles -- are made with care and are good enough to be able to be sold legally.  This is my passion:  I like to grow the vegetables and fruits, and I like to preserve their wonderful energy. 

I debated a long time about whether or not to post about this journey toward a certified domestic kitchen.  It's embarrassing to figure out how to turn your private space into a state-certified production kitchen.  But, you know, I would really appreciate reading about someone else's professional journey in this direction.  It would be great to connect with others who are doing something like this, and I never will unless I share about it.  (Thanks, Sarah Gilbert, for that clear insight.) 

So, hi!  My name is cathy, and I'm trying to get my kitchen licensed! 

it begins...

 

life on the farm...

Nothing about Curious Farm has been easy, but I do feel delighted in how naturally the farm develops.  I take one step; D takes another... Then the vegetables, fruit, and chickens follow their own rhythms. We shepherd.  We do the next right thing.  We rest.  Then we go outside the next morning and witness changes that are beyond us.

After all of those years playing politics in publishing, media, and high-tech companies, D and I are experiencing something very sweet right now:  the farm responds to our care.  If we're thoughtful about our own work, we are rewarded with more than we put in.

This is grace, I think.

Our goals aren't lofty, and we don't have cotton candy between our ears.  We've had plenty of garden failures in the past.  We kick rocks, learn what we can so that we can try new tricks next time, and move on.  Like our friend (and hero) Charlie Brown, we're really experienced in failure.

We might not make a cent from this adventure for the next couple of years (or ever), but at least we eat well and grow healthy through our efforts.

farmer tan...

...would you believe I'm already getting a farmer tan?  Okay...  it's subtle, but it's there.

I worry that I wasted today because I didn't dig.  But I dug yesterday, and I will dig again tomorrow.

Today I made breakfast, cleaned up, had friends over, made lunch, cleaned up, mowed for an hour, spent 30 minutes trying to get the chickens into a tub to bring them out into the yard, brought them out into the yard for 90 minutes (all of them this time), began prepping wood to make farm sign, spent 45 minutes trying to get the chicks back in the tub to go back to the brooder, went back outside to clean up, had to clean myself up then so that I could make dinner, picked first asparagus to cook for D and E (I had the first kale raab so I ain't complainin'), made dinner, cleaned up from dinner, went back outside to clean up more stuff (construction stuff, toys and stuff, the radio I left out from earlier), emptied compost, talked to D about chicken run design and compost pile locations, came inside and put the chickens to bed, ran a couple loads of laundry and sat my bottom down and felt cranky.  D said, "So are you going to be alone in your office tonight?"  And I just thought, "Wow...  yes...  I want to be alone for awhile...  I don't know if it will be all night, but I need to find my own skin again."

I should have taken photos of the chickens outside on the freshly mowed grass.  They looked pretty.  I cleaned a couple of chick bottoms and find it interesting that somehow I have become the designated chicken butt wiper since I take care of all the bottoms around here.

Our friends P and S came to visit today, and there was discussion all around about wanting fish but of figuring out how to take care of such pets and clean up after them.  I wondered if P and S could figure out if S was ready for fish if she could keep something else clean for awhile?

8-year-old S said,"I'll keep our dog cared for, but I won't clean up his poop."

P said, "But fish poop, too.  Do you know where they poop?  In the water...  so you have to keep the water clean."

Then E piped up, "Or you could get a cleaning snail like my friend K has!"

So, dear S, your fish tanks may have felt their ears burning today.  :)

I am tired.  My muscles hurt.  I have two loads of laundry to fold up before I can sleep. 

I find the birds overwhelming.  I am used to dogs, and I know how to care for dogs.  Birds are different.  "Duh," you might say, but really... it's just huge to shift from a dog to 16 birds.  (And we still really miss A and hope he is well.)

But everyone seems healthy, and I feel like we're doing the right things for them.  We're holding them.  They're eating and drinking well. When I finally catch a bird to move it somewhere (outside or inside), I feel her relax against me, and I like that feeling of a fragile, winged-creature at my breast.  There is some freedom and release in this chicken adventure.  I don't understand it all yet, but I know I'm in line for a few important lessons of the spirit.

digging deep

I did a lot of digging and moving dirt today.  (I made the 10' by 3' mound in the picture above by shoveling dirt from elsewhere and heaving it over here.  I know it doesn't look that big in the picture, but it is that big.  I measured.)  I wrote about this work over at curiousfarm.  I like digging.  I like doing the heavy work in the garden more than I like to fuss over delicate pruning and stuff.  I'm sore, though.  I'm sure I'll be more sore tomorrow.  I'll use Taylor's gardening elixir tonight before bed!

*I* am still feeling very good -- relieved, at peace, excited -- about our new venture.  D has had a hard couple of days, though, and I'm not sure how to help him through these feelings.  I'm at a place in my own life where I don't expect concrete answers from anyone or anything.  I work through my angst (which is just noise sometimes) by working hard on the house or the yard and by going on a walk.  I don't dismiss his anger and feelings of being lost after the lay-off.  I've experienced this, too.  It's just that I don't know any way through that pain and ickiness except by getting busy with real things.  As far as I can see, the vegetables, chickens, and dirt don't play petty politics.  I trust them not to screw me over intentionally.  So, while I'm tender, it makes sense to give my energy to the garden. However, this week, D isn't finding the joy in that.  

For me, my goals are simple:  really work the garden this year and spend as little money as possible doing so.  We'll have to make some investments (seeds, blueberry bushes, chickens, maybe some soil ammendments), and we'll have to be smart about these purchases.  We won't be getting any doo-dads or implements to make our work easier.  We'll have to use our muscles and our minds to make this all pencil out.

If the only things that happen this year are that we grow most of our own vegetables and sell a couple of dozen eggs, then I will count this venture as a success for the year.  We can build on that success for next year -- when, hopefully, we'll get into a good rhythm with selling vegetables and eggs and finding our niche.

There are many challenges ahead of us in order to grow just the vegetables we need.  We have never been the best carrot growers, for instance.  Our cabbages sucked (very sad because of the sauerkraut and kimchi-making I do).  The beets I grew were more minerally than sweet.  And you might remember all of those green tomatoes?  So I have a lot of drama swirling around in my heart as I move forward with this intention of growing substantially more of our produce than ever before.

But I feel good.  I think we can meet my goal.  We have come so far already in the almost seven years we've lived here.  We've been building the soil religiously.  Every year we grow and save more.

Now that E is older (she turns 5 on Friday!  She wants her cake to say,  "I want a fine birthday!" ), D and I are able to work out there while she does her own garden projects.  She's very aware of how important the garden is and enjoys helping.  She's also very smart about it all and comes up with connections and insights that blow me away.

My energy (physical, mental, spiritual) feels more focused and free now that we have a shared vision for what we want to do.  D and I argue and challenge one another over little things, but we both share the hope that our garden might sustain us more deeply.  This is very good, and I am very lucky.

a different kind of flashback

Tonight D and I were watching The Daily Show, and one of the "correspondents" was standing across the street from one of the Connolly's Pubs in NYC.

Me:  Did I ever tell you about the really bad, embarrassing date I had at that place once?

D:  No...  I don't think so...

Me:  I was with this guy, and he was really boring, but I was in my naive, accommodating mode and kept assuming I wasn't working hard enough to make the conversation work.  I finally decided to step inside the ladies' room to splash my face and try to make my eyes look perkier.  When I came out...

...the stupid guy said:  Blah, blah, blah.

Young Me:  What?

Stupid Guy:  Blah blah blah.

Young Me, leaning into him in a warm, coy way:  I'm sorry...  what did you say?

Me, to D:  This went on a couple more times.

D:  Was the place crowded and loud or something?

Me:  No, it was right after work, and the place was empty.  The guy was just one of those stupid, mumbling assholes!  Finally, I laughed and leaned even closer into him...

Young Me to Stupid, Mumbling Guy:  I'm really very sorry, but I'm having a hard time understanding you...

Stupid Guy yells:  You have a bunch of fucking toilet paper stuck to your boot!

Young Me, turning beet red:  oh.

D:  No, you never told me that story.

Me:  Well, he was an asshole.

It's interesting...  that used to be one of those memories that made me turn red and want to shrink into a corner whenever I thought of it, even 15 years later.  I used to swear at myself for being so unaware, naive.  Tonight, though, I just thought about what a stupid jerk that guy was -- not because he told me about the toilet paper but because he was #43 in a long line of mumbling, uncommunicative, unkind assholes I dated 15 - 30 years ago.

Thank goddess I'm a middle-aged, happily-married woman who gets to relax next to a sweet, communicative man and chat while watching The Daily Show.  You know?  Life is good. 

flashback

The pot roast?  D liked it.  I could tell I did a good job with it; however, I had to leave the house because the smell overwhelmed me.  D, E, and my m-i-l had a good dinner.  After a couple of days of eating it, he confessed that he's not really into beef that much anymore and isn't sure he wants to add it back into his diet in a regular way.

Oh well.  I'll give myself an A+ for effort and execution.

I can't sleep tonight.  I've been listening to the wind for days, have enjoyed being out in it, have loved how it leaves me so breathless and pink-cheeked.  Now I'm starting to worry about some of the trees in the yard.  I wonder how much more they can take.

I stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things today and saw a young girl (8 or 9) having a panic attack/meltdown at the check-out counter.  She was crying, heaving, sobbing, and screaming for her mother to stop touching her.  It sent me into a flashback, and I had to work hard to calm down and get my breathing back to normal.  The jolt of adrenaline made me sweat and stink.  I don't think I ever did that out in public as a child, but I used to have heaving sobbing fits when I was young.  I felt so much compassion for that young girl.  Her circuitry just went haywire today -- whether or not it was provoked by something concrete.  I also felt compassion for the mother but wondered why she didn't immediately pull the child out into the fresh air.  She let her daughter melt down at the counter for about ten minutes, and the door was just a few steps away.  My parents never knew the right way to help me through panic attacks either, and in the middle of the heaving sobbing fits, I'd get so angry and then worked up even more that my parents were being so stupid. 

(I don't assume that the girl in the store suffered from what I did as a child.  Listening to her, I felt my heart break for myself because I remembered what it was like to feel so trapped.  Many times my parents' treatment of me brought on these panic attacks/sobbing fits; yet, in the middle of the upheaval, I'd be desperate for them to *help* me through the panic.  To hate them but to need them all in the same crazy, throbbing moment was overwhelming to me as a child.)

I've done such a good job this year of staying in the present.  I never thought I could be as free of the PTSD stuff as I have been since I burned the journals and said goodbye to my father.  It surprised me to have such a full-on flashback after so long.  There were years when I had them daily.  The PTSD colored all of my relationships and many of the professional choices I made.  I haven't really thought about it much lately so today was interesting -- definitely hard to experience a flashback again but helpful to realize how rare they've become.

The wind has died down some.  Now I hear rain.  2am.  Still not sure if I can sleep.

the beef post

When D went to the naturopath last week (a new thing for him to go to a naturopath for himself), she said he was of a constitution to need much more red meat -- specifically beef.  Since I mostly give him tofu and fish, this presented a problem.  I haven't eaten beef in 30 years and had been refusing to cook beef here inside the house (even though I've been cooking a lot of bacon this year).

But now is a time for many changes.  I went across town today to procure a really good cut of meat from a cow that had a very healthy life.  Tomorrow I will make pot roast in a cast iron dutch oven that my mother gave me (which I haven't used yet because I wasn't looking forward to deep-cleaning all spiritual residue of animal flesh that had been cooked in it).  My mother used to make very good pot roast in this pot, and she's given me all of her tricks.  The roast will be very good, I imagine.

So today I took care of myself and made a pot of beans for me to eat the rest of the week -- black beans, red beans, pinto beans cooked to perfection in the bean pot, in the oven.  I can't say enough good things about this method of making beans.  They are perfect beans, so easy, and so deeply flavored because they relax in the oven for hours.  D and I had these beans for dinner, and now I'm turning some of the cooked beans into a spicy chili for me.  I added some of the leftover pulp from this summer's tomato-juice-making, and I'm going to let it simmer all night.  I enjoyed making the chili as spicy as I want it to be, and I look forward to having this around while they're eating leftover pot roast through the weekend.

I can't help my reasons for not eating red meat.  They aren't political.  I just feel very squeamish.  I do feel a strong (perhaps political)  need to make sure that we buy healthy meat if we buy it.  It was no issue for me to drive across town for this meat.  I was sad that New Seasons was out of rump roast for the next week or so, but I had no problem calling around and finding it elsewhere.   If we will be cooking more beef around here (and that's probably cheaper and better in the long run for David and Ellie if they get deep nourishment from food that makes them feel good), then I'm glad to scope out places from which to procure healthy meat.

It's a big deal for me to cook this thing tomorrow, though.  My friends have heard about the "beef issue" for a couple of months because D has been pining for a pot roast all autumn.  I came up with all sorts of ideas like "Maybe you could cook it at your mom's house!"   When the time of big changes began last week, I realized I needed to accomodate others more.  I realized that I'd be happy to designate my mom's dutch oven and my pressure cooker to any of D's meat needs (I make beans in the oven, after all, and don't need a regular pressure cooker anymore).  He can continue to use the BBQ for steaks and anything else.

I have never been more prepared to make a dish than this pot roast.  I have talked and talked and talked it over with everyone I know.  I have learned all of my mother's tricks.  I remember (fondly, in fact) how my mother's pot roast tasted, and I know I can coax every possible goodness from the healthy meat, organic vegetables, good stock and good wine that I will use.

So this is how I will say good bye to 2009...  In this year, I still grieved my cousin who died late last year.  My dad died .  I had to make my own funeral for my father.  My mother shut down and shut me out.  My brother exploded in grief and rage.  I burned the journals.  We had profound issues with E's school/her changing needs and had to delve deeply within ourselves in order to solve them positively (and this was a subject I couldn't write about here because it involved others here in the community, but we're incredibly grateful for how the issues were worked out in the end).  D's work situation went from toxic to worse and then to lay-off (another subject I didn't feel able to write about here but that colored the last two years in miserable shades of angst).  I gardened and learned how to make real pickles.  I even taught a few nice people how to preserve and to ferment.  I made a vine-cage!  I learned how to say no, and I learned how to give my daughter space to be herself.  I learned how to be grateful for big, hard changes -- even death -- because there's some freedom to be found even when beloved people/things/situations fall away.  I learned how to be stay in the present moment.

To acknowledge all of this, I will cook pot roast for D, E and my mother-in-law tomorrow, and I will marvel at what is now okay with me. 

full

Everything worked out okay today except for the carrot salad.  The turkey, the gravy, the stuffing, the company and conversations, the pace.  It was all great.

My mother came, brought wonderful dishes, and stayed longer than I anticipated.  When I called later in the evening to check in with her, she told me that today had been hard for her.  I understand.  How could it not have been hard?  She also was around more people than she's been with in a few years.  And I'm sure that -- despite her natural grief -- it felt awkward to have Thanksgiving away from her own home because she's had a strangle-hold on this holiday for years (I say with affection).  I am pleased beyond measure that she came, stayed for two hours or more, and managed to sit at a table with 9 other people.

I am not as tired as I might be because D has been giving me foot rubs for the last three evenings.  I am incredibly grateful to him for his foot-rubbing skill and for his patience with me.

Right now I am thankful for this:  My kitchen is sparkling clean.  I am grateful to D's mother for staying an extra couple of hours to entertain E while I cleaned up (because D took one of those long "man naps").  I also am glad that the refrigerator is stocked with great food.  I imagine just kicking back and knitting for the next three days.  I have no agenda.  Even the bathrooms are clean, for goshsakes!

I am feeling full and happy.

survived...

Do you see this child?

 
I couldn't put it off any longer.  She's We've reached a point where it's obvious to both of us that I can't play with her in the bestest way.  I'm still good for making cookies and art projects, but I kinda suck at really fun play because I have so much on my mind.

So...  I decided to court disaster (or at least my own fear) and invite two *boys* over for a parent-free play date that included lunch and two snacks.

It went well!  She had fun!  No tears!  I survived!  We're having cold sandwiches for dinner, and I'm letting her watch cartoons now before D comes home, but I managed a successful playtime at our house.  I feel like crying from relief!

If you don't know her real name, can you guess which famous children's book character inspired E's name?  This picture here captures that character better than any other photo I've taken.

My gosh...  she's not yet five years old...  that gray hair is gonna start coming in even faster...

hope

This morning, E and I went up to my mom's house to bring her some pumpkin soup.  After all of the Halloween hoopla, E decided to wear her new special holiday dress and her new cowboy boots to show Grandma.

E twirled and stomped.  My mom couldn't get enough of her and almost lept from her watching spot to give E a big hug before we left.  That was more emotion -- emotion of any kind -- than I've seen from my mom in years. 

burning journals

Tonight I burned 35 years of paper journals, letters, and articles from newspapers and magazines that had an immediate association with me.

It felt good.  I burned tortured and stupid letters.  I burned the beautiful journals full of pain and pictures (crayon) that I made with my left hand (nondominant) while I was doing really hard therapy.  I burned the pages where the hidden parts of me and memories first emerged.

Tonight I set fire to pages and pages that screamed I WANT TO BE RELEASED FROM THIS PAIN.

The great thing about tonight is that the candles remained lit through the rain and wind.  I set up candles and incense in each direction and put the main Kali candle in the North tonight.  There was rain and wind, but all of the candles kept their fire for more than an hour.  Outside.  In the garden.  While the wind blew around.

I felt heard by the Universe as I let go of all of this tortured stuff that weighed me down.

Done with it now.  Done. 

yodeling

Ah...  a good day...  I felt good, happy (!), empowered, clear, energized (except for -- or because of? -- the nap in the afternoon), busy, even chatty for goshsakes.

More days like today, please!

• Took child to school.
• Had productive conversations with two fellow parents while there.
• Came home and talked to D and watched the fireplace workers install our wood insert (reason why D was home).
• Went downtown.
• Had tea at a cafe and read a book about making dolls.
• Went to therapy.
• Raced back over the hill to meet the Azure Standard truck in the nick of time.
• Picked up E at school.
• Hung out in the forest for an hour and talked to cool kids and cool parents.
• Came home and ate a snack.
• Put away food from Azure Standard truck and tried to figure out what to do with 10 pounds of gorgeous beets and 20 pounds of Liberty apples.
• Took a nap.
• Cleaned beautiful antique canning jars.
• Ate homemade pickles.
• Called my newest kimchi student to tell her that her batch of kimchi was ready.
• Uncrocked and packed up the kimchi for this nice lady and saved a little in a bowl so that she could try the results before she got back in the car with her two young children.
• Nice lady said she could smell the kimchi before she crossed the front door's threshold! (Glad D and E were gone on errands!)
• Re-arranged cabinet spaces in pantry and kitchen so that there is room for the big bowls I'm using now.

At therapy, we had a really difficult talk about the journals and letters for ten minutes.  Then I spent 40 minutes sharing about the people I've been talking to this week, what I've been learning, what I hope to do in the near future, and what's getting accomplished at home (like the fireplace is done so that means the living room is done...  like the bookroom will be done as soon as the window seat cushion is ready).  K helped me see all that I'm harvesting right now after much work and waiting.

This evening, D took E to Concentrates to get some cover crop seed so that I could stay home and work in the kitchen.  He took her to the Original Hotcake House for dinner because it was nearby, and he figured she'd eat some bacon there at least since she didn't eat much today.  You would not believe the swirling, twirling, yodeling young daughter who bounced into the house at 6:30.  She told me all about the PANCAKES with WHIPPED CREAM and STRAWBERRIES she had eaten, but she also "had eggs for protein...  and BACON!"

I told her tonight that I always wanted a yodeling daughter. (Truth, actually.)  She seemed worried...  "What if I forget how to yodel tomorrow?"

But she twirls and swirls and jibbers and jabbers and then yodels, and I think she's a whirling dervish who knows much more at the Universe than I do.

Today on the way to school she said, "You have a lot more things to discover before you die, right?  And I have even more to discover because I'm younger than you, but I discover things all day like when we went to Hawaii I wasn't thinking about a pool being there...  I was just hoping to see turtles!"

ptsd

I am fine.  Now.

It happened 38 years ago, 36 years ago...  33 years ago...  and in the fuzzy, weird times in between.  I made myself forget.

So then there was the silence...  Then there was angst and struggle in my young adult life.  I broke apart.

I tried to do therapy about concrete things in the present tense, and then uncomfortable things bubbled up.  I ignored them.

Finally, after much angst and acting out, I found good teachers and therapists who helped me see that the way out of the pain was through the pain.

I did that.  And I did that.  And I did that.  I have beautiful, sad journals stretching back twenty years.  I was so brave in those journals.  Just seeing the pictures I made splits me:  I am the sad person who created the journals, and I am the editor/creative-coach who is stunned by the real journey being shared (by me).

I have made a beautiful journey, but it has not brought me freedom.

I think I need to torch it all.  Every time I find these boxes that hold pictures, journals, correspondence, I feel re-injured by what happened to me.

It's time to move forward -- all around.  I can't let E find these journals.  She's starting to read.  In fact, just tonight we sounded out the word "hit."

meta -- life and food

Just so that you know...

When it's quiet on the blog, a million things are going on in my mind. 

Aside from my usual family responsibilities, the challenge of starting up a new school year, working in the garden and preserving what needs to be saved...  I am cooking up a new business plan and am actively reaching out for the right support for it.

There isn't time -- chronological or in terms of my family -- for me to make mistakes as I build this new business.  I'd say I'm already aware of 50% of the challenges this business idea faces, and I'm trying to find smart, honest people to help me trouble-shoot the other 50%.

I'll let some steam out of the bag here as I go along, but I'm just sort of thinking so much and so fast right now that it's hard to capture the thoughts here.  I hope to find my rhythm again soon.

memories, dreams, reflections

D and I just watched Adventureland, which was way more intense than I was expecting.  It threw me back to that gaping, yawning void of my early 20s.  Everything was so hugely meaningful back then or entirely empty of connection/meaning.  For the last two hours, I have felt lost and scared in that young adult way again.  Very weird. I felt a lot of empathy for the characters.

I wonder how it would be to watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, and Adventureland over a long weekend with some friends of a similar age?

Last night I watched part of the Let's Spend the Night Together, the Rolling Stones documentary that Hal Ashby made of their 1981 Tattoo You tour.  I didn't see them that tour, but I wore out their albums around then and had my first-of-many, fun Mick Jagger dreams before I went off to college.  (That first dream blew my mind because I was always a little afraid of Mick's energy, and it was oddly freeing to dream myself so close to that energy.  He has appeared in many dreams since then, and I recognize now that he represents a naughty Pan figure in my subconscious so I always take note when he shows up.)

If you've read here for awhile, you know that my therapist used to be a beloved college professor of mine, so she has a long view into my life and my relationships with family members.  Today she reminded me of a heartbreaking episode that occurred with my parents back in 1983.  It's funny how similar the dynamics then were to what's been going on the last couple of weeks.

(I'm rarely this specific here in order to protect my family members, but let's just hope/trust that I don't cause harm here.  I need to talk about this and figure it out.   I'm trying to be as kind as possible to my family... and to myself...)

K and I talked about how -- except for the day when I bought a recliner for my father when he was dying and in pain -- my mother can't acknowledge anything I do in a favorable way, even when I do exactly as she asks.

I've spent my life trying to please her, bring her happiness, make her proud.  I've even gone against my own heart when she was so adamant that I do something or behave in some way to honor her and the family. 

As I said earlier, when I talk about my own interests and plans, she gets agitated, and it's not long before she tells me some version of this lie:  everyone will stop loving me if I pursue my dreams.  She told me a version of that lie last week at her birthday celebration and again on the phone a couple of days later.

This is more than just normal mother/daughter stuff.  When blame pointed squarely at my father, she blamed me.  In order to maintain a sense of "family" and to keep honoring the light that shines inside of her, I have kept tring to please, humor, and delight her.

But I can't anymore.  The people who really do love me suffer when I try to please her.  It's time to work on my own dreams.

I have a lot of catching up to do...

roar!

See this strong arm?  I've never, ever dropped a jar -- even when boiling water bubbles over my arm or plops me in the face.  This arm can can, man!  I am a preserving queen.

A couple of weeks ago, Amy asked me to ROAR!  (I sure like how she roared.)  I heartily believe in roaring, but I don't like to show pictures of my face here and wasn't sure what was roar-worthy in my life these days.  But I thought about it quite a bit.

Then, when my mom scoffed at my recent preserving projects,  I thought, "Well, I'll show her!  Roar!" And I realized I finally had something to roar about here.

These are the fruits of my labor during the last week: 

From far left to near right...

• 4 trays of dried nectarine halves
• 5 quarts of beets pickled in red wine
• 8 half pints of low sugar peach jam
• 10 half pints of low sugar apricot jam
• 14 quarts of Aunt Ruth's vinegar pickles
• 4 pints of low-sugar bread and butter pickles
• 8 pints of spicy nectarine bbq sauce
• 4 quarts of lemon cucumber pickled with vinegar
• 6 quarts of spiced nectarines
• one big jar of fermented garlic dills
• (you can't see the frozen peaches, frozen apricots, or the apricot fruit leather)

Yeah...  I did say fermented garlic dill pickles...  Yes, they're the real thing.  Of course they taste great!  (Didn't I tell you that I'm a preserving rock star?)  My first batch of real pickles turned out!  Yay!  The jar here just holds a quarter of them.  I left the rest in the crock to ferment more.  Please admire the cloudy brine.  Friends, these pickles took just a week in the Harsch crock.  (I haven't had a failure yet with this crock.)  The pickles taste fresh, flavorful, and crunchy.  I'll keep the rest in there another week and then start another batch!  Yay!

My feet and hips are killing me from standing at the stove all week, but my husband hasn't asked for a divorce yet, and my daughter still calls me mom and asks me to kiss her owies.  So shit howdy, man!  I am a preserving goddess.

ROAR!

I won't single out anyone in particular because I had such a hard time following through on this one, but does anyone else need to roar?  We all feel emboldened when we hear other women roar.  Be proud!

should jar update

I wanted to report that D supported me fully in the launch of The Should Jar.

His mother came over on Wednesday evening for dinner, and he listened to her carefully and waited for a time after dinner when she started "shoulding."

D said, "Is this the time for the jar?  Is this the time for the JAR?"

I brought it over to the counter, where D and his mother were standing.  She was intrigued.  The jar is in the shape of a chicken, and the top lifts up to reveal a bowl in the belly of the hen.  I decided to be brave and explain...

"L, I want to tell you how sorry I am that I snapped at you on the weekend.  I don't like to do that."

She softened because she likes it when people apologize to her.  Lucky for both of us, I owed her a true apology for my snap.  I don't care what she does to me, I don't want to respond in anger.

"L, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but pretty much every other sentence you say to me begins with 'You should...' or 'You should have...'  And this hurts me a lot because I'm trying so hard to be a good wife, mother, and daughter-in-law.  I'm very tired, and I'm doing the best that I can.  When you say 'should,'  I feel judged and hurt.  I love you too much to feel as sad and frustrated as I feel when you talk to me the way you do.  So this is the new Should Jar.  Every time you say that I 'should' or 'should have' done something, you owe me a buck, and you put it right in here.  I want the way that you talk to me to be different."

L understood, seemed slightly embarrassed, but didn't deny how she talks to me.  She asked, "Can we reduce the amount to 10 cents each time?!"

I can't believe I said this, but I said, "No...  it needs to be a buck each time because it really hurts me when you use those words.  We need to make a change here, and this will help."

When she left that night, she said, "Well, this is just the way I talk!"  Then she crossed the threshold and made comments about the cobwebs on our front porch.  I was still cleaning the kitchen and D was there with her, and he shushed her.  But I heard.  When he shut the door, I stomped down the hallway and said, "If I had time to worry about the cobwebs on the porch, I would be a happy lady!"

And that's the truth.  It would be a sign of tremendous freedom in my life if I had time to sweep the front porch each day.

But now that she knows the consequences, future comments like this will be charged.

rumi and a good day

I had a good day today.  I woke up at 5:30, showered, and went out into the garden.  I plucked 160 green beans.  I came in and washed them and then went out into the world before E was awake.  (Mothers will know of the bliss I felt to wake up, do my own thing and then leave the roost before the wake-up drill began.)

I went to see my mentor/therapist after some months of not being able to get away, and it was wonderful to see her.

Afterwards, I crossed the river and visited a friend who was making salsa.  I sat while she chopped, and it was wonderful to just be in someone else's kitchen and chat for awhile.  Later, we enjoyed her garden and then went to a nearby nursery to get tickets for the Tour de Coops next weekend.

"The beast you ride is your various appetites.

Change your wantings.  When you prune

weak branches, the remaining fruit

gets tastier.  Lust can be redirected,

so that even when it takes you backward,

it goes toward shelter."

--Rumi from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

wild hare

I went down to the Bay Area this weekend because...

• I grew up down there.  

• My oldest friend was throwing a birthday party for her husband at a dive bar/dry boat dock along the Bay, and it sounded like so much fun.

• I thought I'd like to give my friend's husband a jar of my newest batch of kimchi since it's pretty amazing and full of life energy.

• I needed a few days away from the laundry pile here.

• D and I kept trying to plan a time when we could go down there, but the plans kept turning into a circus when all I really wanted to do was put some old, personal memories to rest and give my dear friend a hug.

So I went down there to crash my friend's party.  I didn't tell her because I didn't want to add any more stress to her weekend.  I booked a hotel near her house for Saturday and decided to wing it the rest of my trip.

Highlights: 

I drove from near Portland to near San Jose in only 11 hours on Friday.

The next morning I walked six and a half miles around the town in which I grew up.  I went to look at the old house.  I mean...  I walked to my childhood house from downtown.  This was really important.  I got to see it all slowly and smell the plants as they began to heat up in the morning sun.  I saw deer, birds, oranges and lemons on trees, plums, Acacia pods all over the ground, Eucalyptus trees more than ten feet around at the base. I saw again the shape of the foothills surrounding the house -- comforting, approachable, but mysterious, too.  I'm sure I'll go back and show E someday, but I was able to say goodbye to that old homestead with some fondness.

It was wonderful to see my old friend P.  She looks great.  She was surprised, and I was nervous for a minute, but -- after all this time -- it always feels very natural to be around her.  She has a nice family and nice friends.

Yesterday morning I had a chance to wander around Berkeley for two or three hours before I headed home.  I hadn't been in Berkeley since the late 80's but went to school there in the early part of that decade.  It was good to sit there across from Kroeber Hall and have a cappuccino.  I wouldn't have ordered that because I don't like to drink those anymore, but it seemed appropriate for the moment.  I went by the four places where I lived.  It all looked pretty much the same after all this time because things don't change that much close to a big campus like that.  Student co-op living spaces always have bikes out front.  Faculty and administration buildings always look tidy and mature.  I recognized several bearded Berkeley street stalwarts on Telegraph and near Euclid Avenue.  (I used to think these people were homeless, but since I recognized them twenty-something years later, and they're still *in place,* I now will assume that I saw them in or near their homes.)

On the way home, the radio empowered me with great bluegrass music and two fantastic public radio programs:  Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity on Speaking of Faith and To the Best of Our Knowledge's show on Fairy Tales.  Wow.  I just felt on fire from it all and kept driving and made it home by 9:00 pm.

It was nice to come home.  D and E cleaned up the chaos before I got here.  It was nice to stop going 80-miles an hour.  I spent this morning in my own garden and felt glad for "here" and "there" and "now."  I also have renewed appreciation for how far I've come from "then." 

a sunflower

Where have I been?

I feel like crying.

I am so overwhelmed...  by life...  by challenges...  by gratefulness...  by worry and angst.

I can't decide how to catch up here.  Do you want the details or the nitty-gritty?  I also want to share my new method for making beans.  Maybe I'll share that in a different post.

The need to cry?

Today E finished her first year of preschool.  There was an awesome moment when the older "graduating" Sunflowers gave the younger Rosebuds (E's group) real sunflowers, signifying their transition into the next Sunflower class.

This transition has been very meaningful for E.  Here are just a few of the things she said to me today:  "I'm going to make poops in the morning when I'm a Sunflower...  Mamma, my arms are longer now that I'm a Sunflower!...  My voice is deeper now, isn't it?...  Can I walk outside for awhile in my old Rosebud shoes, just to remember?"

I love that her teacher and classmates created enough kid-centered ritual for today so that she could feel the transition.  That's so powerful, and it's something I hope we can build upon as she grows. I didn't have that recognition of transitions when I was growing up because events and growth weren't celebrated like that in my family.  This is why I studied ritual and meaning in college.  I craved it.

I'm proud of E, of course, but there's been a confluence of end-of-school year challenges for both of us so the need to cry is more about me, I think.  For instance...

• Is this stupid?  I didn't know how much *energy* end-of-school events and responsibilities require of a parent.  Granted, it's a cooperative school, but this is preschool for goshsakes!  Was I doing something wrong?  Every day for the last month has felt huge, overwhelming, loaded, political, spiritually-challenging, and just plain busy because of school stuff.  Why?  Am I weird?  Did I take on too much?  Does it get easier when the kid gets older and goes to public school?

• One of my parent jobs for the year was to create a DVD of the schoolyear.  This was challening for me because I had to learn new software and publish something in a different medium.  I put so much energy into this project (see above), and I was crushed when the teacher turned the DVD off half-way through the show so that she could move onto other things.  I felt so embarrassed, as if I had failed.  I tried so hard and wish it would have captivated the kids' interest even though they were crazy-full of energy.  Unrealistic, yes, and "adult Cathy" understands the teacher's decision completely, but I had hoped to succeed, and I feel I didn't.

• However, the school year is really over now, and that damn DVD project is over, too, and I feel ugly-weird-huge-naked RELIEF!  Like, okay...  I got a C-, but at least I get to graduate or something.  Shit howdy!  I'm free!

• D and I have been working like crazy so that we can host an end-of-the-year gathering for some families at our house on Saturday.  This is what I mean about a confluence of events and energy happening...  the gathering is so that I can teach a few mothers how to make jam, and it's part of a whole year of food preservation coaching I offered to the school for its fund-raising auction.  I didn't have anything "real" to donate and searched my life for something to offer up and realized I could teach people how to make jam and pickles.  So I've spent the last two months figuring out how to make this work, and now three other mothers are coming over on Saturday with their six kids (and one husband to help D watch them all) for jam-making.  I'm pretty scared, and we've been working so hard to kid-proof our yard and house so that seven kids can run around and celebrate the beginning of summer vacation while I try to share what I know.  (My mother-in-law has been coming over to weed and "clean up" our yard because she's embarrassed at how bad our yard is...  it's that sort of thing going on over here...)

• And my dad is dead, you know?  I've been thinking about that a lot lately.  I don't know what I feel about it all.  I'm still glad for him to be released from his pain.  My mother is not well now, and she's being stubborn, and a new level of worry for her is sinking through my psyche despite the chaos here.

Enough, I think.  Time for summer.  Time for swimming and gardening and letting go of some responsibilities.  Time for new things to bloom.

i love a man in uniform

I put a hold on Lily Burana's new book I Love a Man in Uniform but then got too busy to pick it up at the library.

D came home with it yesterday, and I thought, "What a sweet husband...  he got my book at the library..."

But when he saw me reading it last night, he said, "Hey, what do you think you're doing?  That's my book..."

So I told him I was first in line, and I've been reading it most of the weekend.  It's much different than I thought it would be.  Parts of it are surprising, and I'll write about that later after D has read it and after I have digested more of it.

But here are a few lines:

"But the depression refused to budge...  the reality is, telling a depressed person to 'snap out of it' is like parking someone in front of a stove with an extinguished pilot light and saying, 'Start making pancakes, bitch.'  It's not laziness.  There's no will because there's no way."

playing blocks

You wouldn't believe all that has gone on in my heart since I last wrote here.  Maybe you would?

Even small encounters are full of meaning.  Life is HUGE and overwhelming.  Symbolism and symmetry are everywhere I look.

I'll try to share little bursts over the next couple of days, but here's a little something:

This picture of E playing blocks is proof that I am a different parent than my parents were/are.  You can't see everything that's happening in the sub- and meta-text of this photo so let me explain...

I love my therapist.  She's known me for more than 25 years.  She can sink into a small detail -- like E playing blocks -- and understand all of the levels on which it might reverberate for me.

For comic relief, I sometimes stop in the middle of a hard session and tell her something cool about E.

I did this the other day and mentioned how great E was at staying focused while we made Valentine's cards for each of her classmates. It took two days, and there were lots of stages to the project, and she got tired of it, but she understood that each and every classmate would appreciate a card.  So she kept at it.

After she finished, we went on a celebratory walk, and we told one another stories.  That’s what we do.  We go on walks and take turns telling stories that we make up on the spot.  It’s pretty fun.

When we came home, I said, “I’m really proud of you for doing all those Valentines, and I want to thank you for the fun walk, but now Momma needs to go do a few things by myself before dinner.”

She said, “Okay…  I’ll play blocks by myself for awhile.”  And she did for almost AN HOUR!  She created a neighborhood with houses and tall apartment buildings and a road and bridges and stuff.  It was the most elaborate block play she's every done.

I was thrilled that she was so focused and that she did her own thing for so long.

After D got home, she asked me, “Will you not put away my blocks tonight?”

I said, “Okay…  I won’t put away your blocks tonight, and we can play with them more tomorrow, but Thursday night I’ll have to put them away so that we can begin cleaning up the house for your uncle and cousin's visit.”  She agreed.

The next morning she was THRILLED to find her blocks still out.  It seemed to relax and affirm her.  She practically praised me because she was so happy to have her wish honored.

So I told all of this to my therapist and said, “See…  I’m trying to be a different mom than I had.”

And K said, “No, Cathy…  you *are* a different mom than you had.” 

 

I hadn’t ever thought that before. 

 

I always say to myself that I am *trying* like it’s some excruciating thing I’m trying to do and must be failing at.  But here was evidence:  a productive, content child.  Not only that, she had enough self-possession to verbalize her wish that the blocks stay out, and she was able to negotiate with me on a reasonable time when things would get cleaned up, and she understood why that was important.  I honored her, and she honored me. 

K said, “You are a good mom to Ellie, and you already are a very different parent than the ones you had.  It’s not something you need to *try* to do.  You are.  You are making your way.”

I felt very relieved, happy.  I don’t “see” myself in a positive way when I think of myself as a mother.  But if I can turn this around and look at my life clearly, there’s some stuff to be proud of, and maybe it would be possible for me to ENJOY being a mom.  A radical thought.

 

percolating

As an experiment, today I just decided to be "out" about my emotional sensitivity and my desire to make art with other people.

I took my camera to E's school and took some pictures before I left for the morning.

Then I went to my appointment with our naturopath.  She said that I looked "brighter." She looked at my wild scarf and said, "Did you make that?  So you are a closet artist?"

I felt embarrassed that she hadn't figured that out by now.

I told her about an art project I hope to participate in, and she told me about another local art program for kids. 

Tonight I went to a craft night at E's school and talked way, way, way more than I have in years about what I want to do, what I used to do, and what I used to think about.  I told them about the participatory art project I hope to join, too.  I also took partial credit for a huge movement in the publishing world to which I contributed my heart and soul for more than a decade. Out loud, I talked about these things. 

I even suggested that other parents should come to my house if they would like to learn to preserve stuff from their gardens.

I'm thinking about things Barbara Sher has said.  I want to connect with people who can help me make my wild dreams come true.

letting go

E and I went up to the Arboretum today for a hike.  I love it there.  The witch hazels are in bloom right now.

We spent a lot of time touching a huge Western Red Cedar near the Winter Garden.  E sang it a song.  I leaned against it and felt its strength and admired how its roots grew into the soil and held it high.

It's winter so there were lots of crunchy leaves all around.  I was thinking about how the leaves decompose and then nourish the tree anew.  If the tree didn't let go of the spent leaves, the soil would become depleted of nutrients.

I was wondering how I might let go of more.  Sometimes I cling to patterns and habits because they're comfortable, and I'm afraid to let go -- even though I know I would be better off without them.  But I feel like the environment in my life is very depleted right now.  If I could let go of some old baggage, maybe the decay would nourish me eventually.

I don't really know how to put this wondering into words.  I'm not sure if I'm making sense.

snow, apples, chapatis, dying

It snowed a few inches.  Right now it's raining, and then the temperature will dip below freezing so that all the slush will ice over, and it may stay like that through the weekend or longer.  I like the snow plenty, but I've felt kinda trapped at home this time...  trapped with a preschooler who really, really needs to be playing with her friends at school so that mamma can go have a cup of strong coffee somewhere and chill out.

When D stays home, too (even if he's "working from home"), I feel an extra burden because he isn't available to care for E, yet needs lunch and has the freedom to come upstairs and announce how he'll be taking a break to go here or there in the truck (a truck I haven't felt confident about driving since I got t-boned in my old Honda Civic...  driving is scary, and that's my problem).

This cabin fever situation is deadly for me. It makes me feel incredibly powerless and even more like the inanimate household appliance I fear D and E think I am. Mom/Wife: the one who cooks, cleans, and wipes butts (or pee off porcelain).

Of course D has the right to come and go at will.  He works incredibly hard and tries to be sensitive.  But when you're a stay-at-home mom, you don't get to decide much of anything for yourself -- especially after the naps end.  You just bend and flow and try to fill in gaps for everyone until finally someone says, "Hey...  I'll take over for awhile."

Positives... 

I have tried to make the best of the snow days and worked on a whole grain puff pastry from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book.  I made the dough yesterday and let it rest in the fridge overnight and then made it into an apple gallette this afternoon.  Interesting.  I've never had a gallette made with puff pastry, but this tasted good and held the fruit nicely.  I think I need to roll it out more thinly next time, but the dough -- even though it was made from whole wheat bread flour and oat flour -- tasted puffy-light and didn't compete at all with the apples.

This experiment was interesting because last week I made whole wheat chapatis from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, and they turned out great, too.  I think I'm learning something about letting dough soak, ferment, and rest.  The chapati recipe called for just flour, butter, and water, but PR suggested it be left to sit out at room temperature for 24 hours if possible.

When I finally got back to making the chapatis the next day, the dough had such a spring to it that they almost rolled themselves into balls and happily bubbled on the griddle in a pleasing way.

I'm not saying that making chapatis for 70 people was easy, but it would have been soul-sucking if the dough hadn't been alive and co-operative.  They also had enough flavor -- from resting overnight -- that they tasted good at room temperature, which was the big risk in choosing to make them for a school potluck.

But back to the snow and the cabin fever and the powerlessness...

Adding to my sense of unease, my father is in the hospital again.  Thankfully, my mom called to tell me he was there (unusual for her to do that), but -- you know -- the roads are icy, and she hates to ask for help and so is sitting at home fearful for her husband and fearful of going to him on the icy roads.  Meanwhile, she's trying to weigh how much help she can be to him there and is beginning to feel again how tired she is because she has a hospital staff up there to help keep him alive instead of doing it herself night after night.   It's hard to know when to step in and insist on helping.  Right now I'm focusing on the rest that both of them need, and I'll call her tomorrow again.

He's had this sort of treatment in the past, but it's not working this time.  I feel a lot of different things right now, which I'll post about another time.  Right now, I feel this concrete understanding: "This is how my father is dying."

unstructured

This last week has been the most unstructured time I've had in more than a year.  I finally had enough quiet time to myself that I was able to take care of a few organizing and publishing projects.  Having those done helped me reclaim enough energy to go on some nice walks. 

I guess I just needed some time.  It's been ages since I've felt some foreward movement.  Now I remember how one happily-finished project gives energy for the next project.

I feel blue tonight, but that's pretty natural considering all that has gone on this last month.

Yesterday, a friend reminded me of a really embarrassing episode I had with an off-label prescription ten years ago.  I said, "I'm so embarrassed that you still have that in your memory...  but...  that's sure a reminder of how much pain I was in back then, and I'm not there anymore."

She agreed with me heartily, and that sure felt good.

I'm not sure if the people closest to me (family) see the big changes I'm moving through, but I have been feeling glad that K, P, and P notice big changes happening for me.  I still feel pretty raw, but maybe I will feel more energy in the next few months.