On the First Day of Christmas...

If I have a personal Christmas mission, it's this one: Christmas doesn't end until January 6. Leave up your tree; keep spinning your Christmas jams; continue to get your Holly Jolly on.

My New Year's Resolution is to correct people--even strangers--when they refer to the 12 Days of Christmas being before Christmas. Why does everyone think this? This year, we even saw a "12 Days of Christmas" themed Advent calendar at Hallmark. Sacrilege! If Hallmark wants to bank on Christian traditions by labeling their countdown-to-Christmas cardboard junk an "Advent" calendar, at least they should not mix up their church seasons.

I understand the confusion, though. Tim was raised in an evangelical church and did not know about the 12 Days until we got married and I insisted that the Christmas trees stay up until January 6. (Just like he didn't know that pickles were cucumbers. Our marriage has been so educational for him.) What's so special about January 6, he wondered.

Well, January 6 is the celebration of the feast of Epiphany, the day when Christians who organize their worship by a religious calendar (like Lutherans and Catholics), commemorate the coming of the Magi. (Magi is the plural of Magus. Did you know that? As I typed Magi, I wondered what the non-plural of that word was so I Googled it. You're welcome.) In some countries, gifts are exchanged on Epiphany. I've heard my old pastor tell of one of his friends who did gifts on Epiphany instead of Christmas--for a lot of religious reasons, but also, hey! buy everything at after-Christmas sales. Thrifty!

So, in short, Advent is the preparation for Christmas and is celebrated the four weeks prior. Christmas is celebrated from December 25 through January 6. Why should yes-Christmas-non-Christians or yes-Christmas-non-practicing-Christians care? Why do you have a tree or exchange gift or do Santa on the 25th? Because Catholics told you to, that's why. So don't mess this Advent-Christmas thing up either, jerks. Also, why not celebrate until the 6th? More days for cookies and twinkle lights and merriment? More Harry Connick, Jr. crooning about wooden soldiers and being nice to strangers because your heart has grown three sizes? Yes, please!

(Sidebar: this year Tim decided that Santa is Jesus-lite for non-religious people: he watches over you, judges your behavior, rewards you for belief, and comes at Christmas.)

So this year, we are going to try even harder to keep our Christmas spirit twelve more days. Yes, we'll leave up our tree like we always do, but we'll also dedicate more family-togetherness time. Yes, we'll keep turning on our outdoor Christmas lights, but we'll also try to say hello to friends we know and everyone we meet. I hope you can do the same.

Merry Twelve Days of Christmas!

Not Cool, Bro

My step-daughter's Social Studies teacher is in his first year of teaching. I remember being there and can sympathize. It's not at all easy. Dealing with discipline issues and creating assignments and making sure you're hitting the moving target of content / skill standards which changes every five years or so. 

He assigns a lot of reports, which I'm cool with. Research and writing is an important skill. HOWEVER, this weekend my step-daughter came over with an assignment to write a report on a topic about Canada. Her paper was supposed to include answers to the following questions: 1. What if your topic was from the U.S.? and 2. What is his/her influence on Canada? The paper has to be two pages, double spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman font. The topic that Lily drew out of the hat was Carly Rae Jepsen. 

First, even she realized that this would teach her nothing about Canada's history or culture. 

Second, to get to the assigned two pages of material, you eventually come across Google hits about Ms. Jepsen's unfortunate hacking incident--complete with entries about naked pictures and blowjobs. Not something I want my 12-year-old looking through. 

Third, her influence on Canada? I was composing sentences in my head like, "Carly Rae Jepsen is as important to the Canadian pop music scene as Avril Lavigne and Nicklebak." "Carly Rae Jepsen has shown Canadians that hard work gets you no where without a tweet from Justin Bieber." "Jepsen is a twenty-eight-year-old woman who dresses and acts like a tween to appeal to her fan base, proving that nothing is more important than conforming to your record label's creation of your personal brand."

And yes, I recommended a paragraph of nothing but a list of Jepsen's music awards just to get to the desired two pages. Yay for teaching my kid how to fill space on the page. 

I'm just glad Lily didn't draw Justin Bieber's name. Can you imagine what his Google search would return? Nothin' like having to sort through reports of drugs and hookers for your parochial school sixth grade social studies report. 

Over the River and Through the Woods

Note: Basically all the photos in this post were taken by the talented Jeff Hobson and stolen from Liz's Facebook. This is why they look so huge!

Last Saturday was the most beautiful fall Missouri day. The fall foliage this year has been spectacular and we took advantage of it!

We kicked the day off with the Wilderness Run. This is my favorite race in the Kansas City area. It's a trail run that starts and ends at the Shoal Creek Living History Museum and winds around Hodge Park--literally over the creek and through the woods. This was also Liz's first race ever!



Jennifer was nice enough to pick up our race packets in advance and picked up some great swag for us--lots of freebies and coupons<--Reason number 1 why this is a great race. We met up at my house on Saturday morning and headed over to the start. The race is never very crowded and there are lots of great volunteers there to help out <--Reason number 2!

Reason number 3? This is where we start and finish.


I took off kinda fast in order to get in a good spot when the trail hit the woods and narrowed too much to pass anyone. I kept up with Jennifer's friend for awhile until I just couldn't keep up anymore. I got a headache around mile 3.5 and a bit of a side stitch. Then Jennifer overtook me and I trailed her in.

I'm floating!

We finished 5th and 6th in our age group, which I'm happy with. Jennifer won a prize just for registering for the race and being lucky<--Reason number 4, and then we went to warm up with some delicious soup<--Reason number 5. They had about a million different kinds of soup, I had the sausage and tortellini. It hit the spot! 

Reason number 6--> They have the best race tshirts ever. 

Then we left to get ready for part 2 of our day. We headed out to wineries in Lexington and Waverly, tasting as we went. 



 

It's the Freakin' Weekend

The last weekend in October was mostly focused on my brother's 40th birthday.

On Friday evening, I headed toward the Plaza to meet up with my Rep volunteering buddies for our pre-volunteering dinner. This time, we chose Spin! Pizza. After dinner, we drove over to the theater for the KC Rep's production of The Foreigner. I got assigned the cushy job of will call and then settled in to enjoy the show. It was pretty funny and I may have spit on myself due to an unexpected laugh. It was late for me by the time I got home and a pretty much fell into bed.

I had planed to get up and go for my long run early Saturday morning before we hit the road, but I was very tired and couldn't drag myself out of bed. Ditching my plans was just as bad, though, because I kind of had a meltdown. I pulled it together enough for us to hit the road and even remembered to pack all of the important stuff. Thank goodness Tim was there to make sure everything else was taken care of.

As we headed out of town, we saw a terrible accident on westbound 70. All of the traffic was being diverted from the interstate. I quickly reloaded Facebook onto my iPhone so I could alert a friend who I knew was going to be traveling through the area. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing. Lily worked on her homework--a creative essay on what 10 animals she would bring if she were Noah and there were going to be floods--and debated with us the merits of, say, elephants v. camels and cows v. goats. I grabbed a bunch of back issues of Better Homes and Gardens and flipped through them, tearing out the stuff that was most interesting. Is it just me or does anyone else have a difficult time of letting go of magazines?? Ripping stuff out is the only way I can bear to send them to recycling nirvana.

We made it to Mom & Dad's and unpacked everything. We presented my brother with his birthday gift.

I finished this project in less than a week. That's super-speed for me!

He didn't realize that I made the blanket until my mom told him. (Made, as in, put the border on it.) That was kind of a nice compliment.

I decided I might as well get my long run in. I got on my gear and plotted a course through the gravel roads of my parents' rural subdivision that was basically six miles long and hit the road. It was a beautiful sunny and warm day. My parent's roads are up on a ridge so it's always fairly windy up there. I got to run past there house several times so I threw a water bottle in their yard to grab every time I ran past. Very convenient!!

I showered and got dressed and we all loaded up in the car and drove across the interstate to go to the sorghum maze. Except for Lily, none of us had been to a corn maze before. It was a lot of fun and we all decided that sorghum was a better medium for mazes than corn. (These are the kind of discussions that are had by a farm/agribusiness family!) Dad bought Lily a "princess" pumpkin and we drove down the road a little ways to try to spot Clydesdales.

Sorghum blew into Tim's mouth just as Mom took this picture.

After we got home, Mom, Lily, Tim & I all pitched in to make this cake happen. Mom baked three cakes in advance so we could stack them up. They were so moist! It was difficult to pile them together, but we managed in the end. I decided we should go with paper windows and signs because there just wasn't time to go whole hog with the icing decorations. I'm not supremely skilled when it comes to cake decorating and covering the cake with different colored star-tipped splotches to make the T.A.R.D.I.S. design was NOT in the cards. I also insisted that we present the cake before dinner just in case if fell over. Thanks to some strategically placed dowel rods, it was still standing when we finished dinner.

Just to make sure we did all the autumn things in one day, my dad planned a wienie roast that evening. We gathered around the fire eating chili and hot dogs and rotisserie-ing our  bodies to try to even out the warmth. We skipped the s'mores in favor of birthday cake!

On Sunday, we went to church and had a big fried chicken birthday lunch with all the fixin's. I so went overboard on the calories, but that is something that you have to do when it comes to Mom's chicken dinner. After lunch, we loaded up into the van and took off to the country to take family pictures.

While we took pictures, we also explored the old barn. Tim had never been in a hayloft before. What a city slicker!

We were all reluctant to leave but after dinner, we packed up the car and hit the road. It was a great weekend and we didn't want it to end.

Crafties

Last night I made a belated anniversary gift for my favorite couple, the Happy Hobsons. Check out their Amazing Race audition video.




This couple got married one year ago on a very cold October 6. Did I mention the wedding was outside and the bridesmaids dresses were strapless?

Copyright 2012 Design and Capture Studio www.designandcapture.com 913-530-5510

I was very lucky to be matron of honor and Liz and I spent the months prior to the wedding crafting button bouquets and boutonnières.
Copyright 2012 Design and Capture Studio www.designandcapture.com 913-530-5510

So, for their first anniversary, I knew I wanted to make something--in honor of all our crafty bonding time, and that I wanted to follow the traditional gifts--paper for the first anniversary. 

Ultimately, I'm glad I procrastinated so long before deciding what to make. (Hello, day before gift giving.) Admittedly, I was a little distracted on the actual date of their anniversary. The Hobsons got married on the same day as Lily's birthday so I was busy planning for this frivolity instead of thinking about a crafty paper gift.

If I had made a gift in early October instead of early November, I would never have thought to make a Christmas ornament. Happily, this is a gift that can turn into a tradition, varying the material with each new traditional gift. 

I stopped by the craft store looking for the following: base for the ornament in the shape of an H (I found a chipboard one to stick with the paper theme), festive scrapbook paper, and Mod Podge. I'd never decoupaged anything before, unless you count the boxes I made in junior high and high school by rubber cementing pictures cut out of magazines to old shoe or jewelry boxes and then "sealing" them with packing tape. I wonder if those are still around somewhere or if I threw them away? 

Besides the H motif in the ornament and the use of the traditional material, I also wanted to incorporate memorable events from their first year together so I combed through Liz's Facebook to make sure I hit some of the high points. I typed them I to a Word document and printed them out to incorporate into the decoupage. 

Here is what I ended up with

I'm kind of excited to start planning for next year's ornament!

Junk in My Trunk

On Tuesday evening, Tim asked if I could show him where my clothes go so when he does laundry and I'm not home, he could put them away rather than leaving piles on the bed for me to deal with. As nice as this request was, it made me feel...frustrated? angry? lazy? selfish? I'm not really sure what particular emotion the request brought up exactly, but it was bad.

Identify the Problem

I have listened to Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project on my iPod so many times while commuting or mowing the yard that her commandment "Identify the problem" floated through my sub-conscious. Since high school, I've never lived anywhere for more than three years. In all of those places, I never settled on a good storage solution for my clothes because it didn't seem to be worth the time or money to come up with a solution that might not work in my next home. To further clutter the issue (and the closet), when I moved into Tim's house a little over four years ago, I willingly jettisoned my estate sale chest of drawers at a garage sale because it wouldn't fit anywhere. No matter how many Rubbermaid boxes I bought or how many items of clothing I decluttered, I couldn't answer the question of where my clothes belonged because I never took the time to create a permanent storage system that worked. 

Finding a Solution

Unlike Rubin, my solution for closet clutter clearing was not simply trash bags. My first step probably should have been to take inventory and pare down, but I've done this so many times that it is becoming difficult to figure out what to let go of. 

I did think about my storage needs for a hot second. Emotionally, however, I needed to take action. I logged onto target.com and opened in a new page any item that struck me as a plausible solution. Once I had opened 173 new pages, I began to narrow down my choices. 

Criteria

1. Size matters. Obviously, if the item wouldn't fit in my closet under my hanging clothes, it had to go. Even if it was capable of folding and putting away the clothes itself, I wouldn't be able to make it work.

2. Caviar taste on a hot dog budget. I have fifty dollars from my side gig burning a hole in my pocket and I decided that my storage solution had to be something I could purchase with that amount. Goodbye beautiful and probably not very functional bathroom cabinets. That cut out about half my open pages.

3. Form follows function.

3A. Fitting into my sloppy clothes-putting-away style. I know from experience that I'm most successful at staying organized with hangers and drawers. I already have the hangers covered but I said "sayonara" to my drawers about four years ago and my clothing storage has suffered ever since. I also knew I wanted several drawers, one for each category of clothing.

3B. No snags allowed. As I was browsing, I started to consider function over form. Although some of the wicker-type drawers were attractive, I thought about the increased potential for my tights getting snagged and nixed all the pretty but prickly options.

I was left with three pages open in my browser. Of those three, price became my main motivator. The option I chose was on clearance, so I got two three-drawer storage bins for less than the cost of one of the other options. And free shipping and a 5% discount by using my Target card--what's better than that? Unfortunately, when I checked today to grab a link and screen shot to the drawers I ordered, I couldn't find them again, so I guess they are all sold out.

The only bad thing about this experience so far--except for the bad feelings at the beginning of the story--is that I didn't have the instant gratification of carrying my new storage solution out of the store when we went last night for our regular shopping trip. So now my thoughts are consumed with daydreams of an organized closet every time I open the closet door or lean over to get my underwear out of the under-the-bed Rubbermaid. (An everyday occurrence--maybe now you can sympathize with my frustration.) The good news is that my order has shipped so I should be able to dig into my mess and tell my husband where my clothes go soon!

It's Called Managing Expectations

The day was going so well, right up until 10:30, the time my boss usually shows up for work. 

One of the first things he did was give me a lecture about "dreaming big." Here's what happened. I told him I was nominating a project for an award. He asked if we had a chance. I said maybe we could get an honorable mention but probably not the big prize and began to describe the type of institution that usually wins. He cut me off (per usual) and told me I needed to dream bigger. At which point I punched him in the face* and pointed out that he's the one who asked about our chances and that I was--after all--doing the work of nominating. Then he asked me if we were going to apply for an award from *this* organization. He had to rifle through a stack of papers to show me which organization he was talking about because he doesn't actually know the name of it. I said that their awards don't happen until Fall, but, of course it was on my radar. Then I escaped with only one name having been dropped.**

Later this day, (yes, all of this before noon) he gave me a compli-plaint (a compliment coupled with a sneaky criticism or complaint; different than a back-handed compliment) and then he reminded me with annoying meddling why I don't tell him about the things I'm working on.

*Punching did not actually occur.

** I think my new way of marking the length of our conversations will be counting the number of names he drops.

Running Recap: Overdue

It's been way too long since my last running recap. Here are some boring details:

Miles run: 15.25
Runs skipped: 4 -- 10.5 miles total
Reasons for skipping: back pain, travel, being mad
Fastest run: 2 mile loop in 19:29
Travel workouts: 2 bouts of 4.25 miles on the hotel treadmill
Longest run: 3 miles
New milestone song: "Who wouldn't wanna be me" by Keith Urban
Bouts of intestinal distress:  1 -- but I ran through the threat
Most memorable runs:

While traveling for my work conference, I really pushed my pace on the treadmill. I always feel so awkward when running on the treadmill. I also fiddle with the speed a lot. I kept cycling up and down from 5.5 mph to 6.5 mph, trying to stay under a 10 minute mile, which I did on both runs.

My first run back home after traveling, I also pushed the pace. This resulted in my fastest run but also it was difficult to catch my breath when I finished.

For my three-miler yesterday, I stupidly chose the hilly route. My legs felt heavy as soon as I started so I kept my pace slow, which might have affected my stride. My calves felt like they were going to cramp as I was struggling up the hills. It hurt. This is also my first run struggling with intestinal distress and mucous choking. This is the glamorous side of running, folks.

And speaking of glamorous running, here's what I've learned from the various and usual gross things that happen when I'm running:

Intestinal distress: I'm not running hard enough. Typically I feel like I'm going to poop my pants only when I'm running downhill or on a flat stretch after jugging up a hill. Picking up the pace or heading uphill makes the pressure go away. If it doesn't, I'll likely stop running and quickly walk to the nearest bathroom. I've never had a real pooping emergency while running and I don't intend to, either.

Side-stitches: Breathe, dummy. And pay attention to what I eat before I run.

Mucous Choking: This means I should have carried water or some fruit snacks with me. Those things usually help. If I don't have them, it's time to spit all the way home and hope I don't start heaving. That's the worst. I've also never thrown up while running. I remember two times where I've gotten close. One was from mucous choking while on my way to go vote (I ran to the polls) and the other was after my 5K PR. I held it together, but in retrospect it would have made that PR much more epic. How many people can say they've thrown up on the field of a major league baseball stadium?

Money Matters

These past few days have been really stressful finance-wise. While I was away at a conference, Tim discovered an area of mold in our drywall. A few days later he learned the source. A big rain revealed a leak in the roof and multiple leaks in the basement. As of that wasn't fun enough, when I got back to work, I learned my insurance premium was doubling. On top of that we have new braces payments starting for the girl, have to get health insurance for the husband, the girl's birthday, my brother's 40th birthday, a marked increase in the water/sewer bill (rates are insanely higher compared to just a year ago) and Christmas is coming. And while I'm piling it on, I might as well mention that the girl's gymnastics went up $3 a month and we're back in competition season, too.

It's a bit scary to be on this side of the checkbook, right now. 

There are a few good things, finance-wise, going for us, though. 

I have some part-time work thanks to my awesome friend. I remembered a couple of things I have that could go on eBay. Tim is making a concerted effort to get more stuff on eBay as well. The weather is cooling down so we can turn off the air conditioner. I've already purchased the components of my brother's birthday present; I just have to put it together. It's getting to be garage sale weather. I've also started thinking about some ideas for an Etsy store (two stores, really, Buttons Up and a as-yet-to-be-developed store).

I don't know if the credits and cut-backs will keep us ahead of the debits, but we're working on it. 

It always feels so gloomy to talk about the sad state of my finances. However, most of us are so much bigger than our money matters. When you talk to folks who lived through the depression as young adults ( or perhaps I should say "talked to folks;" sadly there aren't many of those people left) few of them point to the hardships or deprivations. It's not that they didn't feel the depression keenly, it's that people's lives are larger than their economic woes. Jokes, hugs, and personal triumphs can't be bought. We find these moments even when our wallets are at their thinnest. This is where life happens, not while checking our bank account balances online. 

And just to show you how schizophrenic our financial situation is, I wrote this post in the morning before I left for work and when I got back from a lunch meeting my boss told me that "funny story, your insurance isn't doubling after all...it's going down." Whoever is responsible for that c-f owes me a gallon of wine. 

Good Eats: Fall Banana Skillet

I can't remember where I first encountered this recipe (somewhere on the Internet) but it was probably around 4 years ago and I have to admit, I was skeptical. Besides banana bread, I'd never eaten hot bananas. (Since then, I've taken to putting 1/2 a banana and a scoop of peanut butter into my plain oatmeal. So good.) But, I had some leftover cooked sweet potatoes that needed to be eaten so I gave the recipe a try.

I told my great aunt Dorothy about this recipe and she, too, thought it sounded a little odd. So did my mom. I couldn't make believers out of them, seeing as how they must've shared some recessive anti-hot-banana gene, but I just cooked  this recipe for the second time for breakfast so at least I convinced myself. I didn't have the recipe in front if me but its such an easy concept even I could wing it. 

This dish is a quick, tasty, belly-warming breakfast when you have geriatric bananas on your counter and cooked orange fall vegetables. It's a good alternative for when I get tired of eating oatmeal every day. It might also be good stirred into oatmeal, other cooked grains, creamy polenta, or grits. I've used baked sweet potatoes and baked butternut squash leftovers, but pumpkin or another winter squash would probably work well, too.

Fall Banana Skillet

1. Make your pan non-sticky. Teflon, cooking spray, oil, butter--whatever you choose will work. I use a small skillet because I just make one serving. 

2. Heat up the pan to around medium while you peel your banana and slice it in half and lengthwise. 

3. Arrange banana and cooked sweet potato/orange squash in pan. I put the banana around the edges and fill the middle with sweet potato/squash. 

4. Let it cook, about two minutes per side. 

5. Season with anything from the pumpkin pie spice family, if you want. I don't think I used any spice last time but this time I used cinnamon and ginger because that's what's in my spice drawer. 

6. Eat. I like mine with some hot black tea, spiked with a scoop of Russian Tea mix. My mom makes us our Russian Tea mix, but it's basically instant lemon flavored sweet tea, Tang, sugar and some spices. 

Running Recap: Longer, Smarter, Faster

Total mileage this week: about six (Two miles on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday)

I feel pretty good about this week of running because I adapted. Sunday I was at the Lake with Tim's family but I ran anyway. Tuesday I felt worn down, achy, and generally off my game so I skipped my run. But instead of skipping it all together and the tempting thought of doing it a tomorrow that never comes, I ran Wednesday and Friday. I think my motivation has a lot to do with my COA goal of running 37 miles in September. I did skip a strength session, though. 

Longer: I didn't have a route mapped to go exactly 2 miles at the Lake on Sunday, so I just planned to go by time. I ran longer than I have since I started to try to make sure I got in a full 2 miles. 

Smarter: On my Wednesday afternoon run, I came up with an idea to support my community and promote the nonprofit that I work for. I love it when running sparks a creative solution to something. 

Faster: I ran my fastest two mile loop this morning without even trying. It was much cooler so that helped. I'm still slow but I'm getting quicker. 

Running Recap: Milestone Music

I started back running this week. My ultimate goal is to run a marathon in St. Louis in April 2014, but I'm going to take it slow and just try to hit little goals along the way.

Total mileage this week: 6 (2 miles on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday) It was really hot this week so I'm glad I didn't have a lot of miles to put in. I definitely started SLOW. Despite my turtle's pace, I still collapsed on the driveway for a bit when I got back from my run.

That first run back was super tough. My internal monologue alternated between a couple of "mantras" and an idea to motivate myself to keep running all the way home. One mantra that popped into my head while I was puffing up a long but not particularly steep incline was, "If my lungs can carry me, my legs can carry me." It can also work in the opposite, depending on which part of me is struggling. (It's usually my legs, though.) My other mantra is something I picked up from a Runner's World magazine. It's "You always have enough left to make it up the last hill." This helps mantra comes to me often when I'm struggling up the steep penultimate hill that is less than a half-mile from my house and finds its way into most any route I run from home.

While I was jogging my first two miles in a while and in between mantra-ing myself on a few more steps, I had an idea to mark each extra mile I pick up in my training. Milestone music. Every time I graduate to a mile longer run, (and actually run the whole way), I'll buy a favorite song from iTunes to add to my running playlist. (When I'm training, I like to set a playlist and keep it mostly the same all the way through. It's a comfortable routine for me. I'm not someone who likes to hit the "random" button and see what comes up.) I knew halfway through my first run, that if I made it home, I was going to buy Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" live at Budokan. (And yes, it had to be the live at the Budokan version.) Now, everytime I'm crossing the two mile threshold, I'll know it...whether I'm finishing my run or have 10 more miles to go.

An added benefit to this idea is that I get to mark progress in my pace as well. I always wear a stopwatch when I run, but I usually don't look at it too much. So even though I know when I get home if I ran a route faster or slower than the time before, I will also be able to tell based on my milestone song. In fact, on my third run this week, I never made it to Cheap Trick. I ran my two miles a whole song faster than I did on my first run. I get to move my two-milestone song up in the playlist order. That's a milestone in itself.

Good Eats: Watermelon Salad and Mustard-Bacon Potato Salad

One of my summer aims is to not let the CSA produce overtake me. Sometimes this is a tall order because my parents foist corn, tomatoes, and zucchini on me whenever I see them in addition to the regular CSA. Here are a couple of recipes I've made lately to use up the bounty.

Watermelon Cucumber Salad

Cut up about the same amount of watermelon and cucumber into small, bite-sized pieces. Add onions (and green peppers if you want.) Cut them up smaller than the watermelon pieces. The proportion between watermelon/cucumbers and onion/green pepper should be somewhere between 4:1 or 8:1. I don't know because I didn't measure anything. It's not science. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Dress with a 1:1 mixture of white wine vinegar and olive oil. 

Mustard-Bacon Potato Salad

Cut up new red potatoes and boil in salted water. Drain when fork-tender. Fry some bacon, cut into bite sizes pieces. Drain on a paper towel lined plate. Sauté onion and green pepper in bacon grease. Drain that. If there is a lot of grease left in the pan, pour it out until a little bit remains. Deglaze the pan with a generous pour of vinegar. Keep the heat low so it won't stink up your house like you're dying Easter eggs. Add some fancy mustard: grainy, honey, Dijon.  Add salt, pepper, sugar, curry powder and maybe a splash of olive oil to taste. Mix everything together. If the sauce seems too thin, like it isn't coating the potatoes enough, add more mustard. Best if served warm. 

Six Impossible Things before Breakfast

There is a nursery rhyme that you may not know. It isn't as popular as, say, "Hey, Diddle Diddle" or "Hickory Dickery Dock." In fact, there are no nonsensical word in it at all, which is the mark of a poor nursery rhyme, if you ask me. It goes a little like this (maybe not exactly like this, I'm relying on memory, not the infallible Google):

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

And when she was good,

She was very, very good,

And when she was bad she was horrid.

As with all nursery rhymes, I'm not sure what the intended effect of this rhyme was supposed to be, but my 5-year-old self adopted it as a mantra. It seemed a perfectly sensible way to go about my business. I even tried--at least on one occasion--to fashion my hair after my imaginary life coach. I think this was after behaving horridly...why not go all in, right? My hair could mark me as someone not to be trifled with. 

All this backstory is to say that my weekday mornings seem to follow that little girl's pattern. I have plenty of mornings that are just "meh," but the high are very, very high and the lows are horrid. 

There is another story about a fictional girl that might provide a better model for my mornings. In Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to try to believe "six impossible things before breakfast." 

Here is my list so far:

1. I can make the day longer. I've been getting up at least a minute earlier every day for awhile now. I've added 37 minutes to my day so far. 

2. I can read and write during my commute. I've been composing bad commuter poetry to post to my Tumblr using the voice recorder function on my phone. Also I'm working my way through my library's collection of Agatha Christie audiobooks.

3. I can be stronger than I was yesterday.  I have some back and core exercises that my AR therapist gave me to help with a "bulging disc" in my lower back. I have a hard time remembering to do these, especially once the pain subsides. With all those extra minutes, I can squeeze my strengthening exercises in during the morning. 

4. I can run a marathon. Woof, I have a long way to go to get there. The aforementioned derailed my training program, but get there I will. My new training will start the morning of the 24th. 

5. I can survive without coffee. Double woof. Actually, I usually switch to tea (black, green, and eventually herbal) in the winter. I'm starting the switch tomorrow instead of November or December because I ran out of coffee grounds and don't want to buy more. 

I haven't decided what my sixth impossible thing to believe will be. Should it be something to inspire concrete action? Should it be something that will motivate me? Should it be something to generate positive self-talk? ShouldI start wearing my hair like the White Queen?

What about you? What impossible thing do you believe to have a very, very good morning?

Currently...

Thinking: Between a recent piece I heard on NPR about rebranding Hamburger Helper and my boss's (A) insistence that board members must give a set minimum amount of money to our 501c3, (B) inability to understand that $20 is a lot of money to some people, myself included, I've been thinking a lot about class-based prejudice. I think we're all victims and perpetrators. How do we overcome it? Should we overcome it?

Feeling: Late last week I was hit with a feeling of community. I picked up one of my board members to take her to the funeral of another board member and realized how "right" it felt. My parents do this type of thing all the time. It's the work of being a human, of being a member of a tribe. I always "got" why they do it, but now I feel like I "get" it on a whole different level. I have a better sense of how to do my human work and where my tribe is. 

Watching: House of Cards by myself. I'm a sucker for a good political drama. The Harry Potter movies and Blu-ray extras with Tim. The wizarding world is my ultimate escape from real life. 

Reading: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. This is turning into one of my favorite Gaiman books that I've read. If you've ever scouted a place to live if you were homeless, I have a feeling you'd like this book. 

Excited: A ladybug just landed on my leg. That's a good omen, right?

Missing: Grandparents. I always miss them and in a sense, I've missed them my whole life. I've never known a full set of grandparents although I've had lots of great surrogates. 

Wondering: If my step-daughter ever got registered for school this year. Last year her mom didn't do the paperwork in time. I feel like it is her job because she is the one who insists Lily go to Catholic school. 

Working: I have a love/hate relationship with my work. I love helping our partners reach their goals. I hate the way my boss treats me. It's very bipolar. 

Stressed: Over work and finances. August and September are going to kill me at work. It's just that busy. We have a big hole in our savings to fill after getting Tim's transmission rebuilt. 

Proud: Of just about every creative thing my step-daughter does. 

Wanting: to extend this cool, peaceful morning for hours. Solo, drinking coffee, reading blogs, writing, sitting on my patio steps. 

Wishing: for winning Powerball numbers. 

Eating: trying to keep up with my CSA box. 

Drinking: Orange Crush. Tim and I got Crush when we left the City Museum and I rediscovered what heaven tasted like to my 8-year-old self. Did you know they have peach and pineapple flavors?

Loving: Feedly. Whoa, dude?! I never set up a Google Reader so I'm not sure what I was missing, but Feedly sure beats the heck out of faffing around with bookmarking things. 

Kitchen Decrees: Cabbage

Whereas prior to today cabbage has elicited a firm "meh" in our household, and
Whereas Timothy's delicate system can process neither cabbage nor onion, and
Whereas today I made a cabbage dish that I am unashamed to say I ate in one sitting,
I hereby decree that all cabbage that enters my kitchen shall be eaten thusly:

Deconstructed Fried Colcannon
Thinly slice 1/2 onion and saute in oil. Set aside.
Shred 1/4 cabbage and saute in  oil. Add onion and a bit of cooked roast, ham, bacon and heat through. Season with salt and pepper.
Thinly slice a potato and fry in oil. Season with salt and pepper.
Serve cabbage on top of potato.

Eat all the comfort food goodness.

Community Supported Agriculture: Week 1

Once again, my friend, Aspiring Maven, and I are splitting a CSA membership from our friendly, neighborhood Hen House. This is the third year for us to participate in Hen House's CSA program. (Previously mentioned here and here.) Both she and I have small households so to prevent food waste, she picks up one week and I pick up the next.

In years past, however, this every-other-week schedule hasn't been enough to prevent food waste on my end. I guess I'm not what you could call "observant." I probably won't notice your new haircut or your gradual weight loss (but "It looks great!" and "Good for you!" and I sincerely mean those things even though you had to mention your haircut or 15 pounds or I didn't notice until 3 weeks after you colored your hair). Likewise, I won't notice the gradual accumulation of lint, hair and dirt on a carpet ("Did this carpet used to be a different color?") or the greens gradually wilting in the refrigerator and the squash quietly mouldering on the countertop. I wish I weren't like this and I'm sure it is annoying to those who have to live with me, but I'm not sure how to change.

But...food waste is money waste. And we hate that. (We = me and my newly-frugal husband.) So this year, I decided I'd try to do a better job of eating out of the box---the CSA box. I'm recording what we get and how we use it. This week I was much more mindful of eating the box quickly because Aspiring Maven is on sabbatical [literally (proof)...she didn't just decide she was going to skip her CSA week and eat only McDonald's and call it a sabbatical to make it sound better--although I would support that, too.] so we're picking up until she gets back. Without further ado...

Last  week’s CSA Haul

2 pounds flour – I put this in the freezer because we have plenty of flour.
2 pound Rump Roast
1 pound White Cheddar Pepper Cheese
1 Pint Blueberries
2 Zucchini
2 Yellow Squash
3 Kohlrabi
1 Head Bok Choy

This week’s CSA – SAT

Kohlrabi : Turnips :: Escort : Hooker

What I ate This is not the whole of what I ate, only how I used the CSA haul.

Saturday
Smoothie (almond milk, blueberries, strawberries, dragonfruit, ice)
Handful of blueberries
Fried zucchini (oil, salt, garlic powder, vegan parmesan)
Sautéed kohlrabi greens (canola oil, garlic powder, salt, cooking sherry, balsamic vinegar)
Roasted kohlrabi 

Sunday
 Smothered eggs in a nest (kohlrabi greens sautéed in oil and seasoned with salt and garlic powder, two eggs, shredded white cheddar pepper cheese). This recipe is a variation on the eggs in a nest recipe in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. If you haven’t read that book and are at all interested in food, add it to your Amazon Wish List today.

Monday
Smoothie (almond milk, blueberries, strawberries, dragonfruit)
Penne with sautéed zucchini and yellow squash, roasted red peppers, balsamic vinegar, feta, sardine

Tuesday
Smoothie (almond milk, blueberries, strawberries, dragonfruit)
Penne with sautéed zucchini and yellow squash, roasted red peppers, balsamic vinegar, feta, sardine

Wednesday
Smoothie (almond milk, blueberries, strawberries)
Sliced roast beef sandwich with white cheddar pepper cheese, mayonnaise and horseradish

Thursday
Leftover roasted kohlrabi with scrambled eggs and shredded cheddar jack cheese
Shredded roast beef sandwich with white cheddar pepper cheese and barbecue sauce

Friday
Sauteed bok choy. I ate a whole head of bok choy for dinner. That's all I ate.

Amateur Tip By Thursday, the bok choy was a little wilty. So tore each leaf off the head, stuffed it in our giantest Tupperware-ish container, covered it with water, and put it in the refrigerator. After a day, it was refreshed with very little wasted. Don't leave it in the water too long, though. It will probably get slimy.

What's left I have some leftover penne with squash and one zucchini and one yellow squash left to eat. Also some white cheddar pepper cheese.

Bonus I ate almost four pounds of strawberries in eight days. I don't know why I decided to buy the biggest box of strawberries that Hy Vee sold, but I did.

Preview of next week's box: 1 pound sirloin steak, dozen eggs, pound of sourdough bread, pint tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, head of bok choy, pint blueberries

Book Review Haiku

I decided to change my "Reading" page. It's now "Book Review Haiku." I wrote haikus about all the books I've read this year. Check it out.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back to Regular

As I settled into the standard-issue clinic waiting room chair, I noticed across from me a young blond woman was gazing into the middle distance. She was the first thing I noticed, on the cover of the top magazine on the table. The simpering smile told me instantly the blond was Taylor Swift. The second thing I noticed was the magazine’s title. It wasn’t a celebrity magazine like People or a women’s lifestyle magazine like InStyle. It was much more unexpected than that.

Maybe it’s just because I haven’t settled into a clinic waiting room chair and scanned the selection of magazines for quite some time, but Taylor Swift’s cover’s title caught me by surprise: Web M.D. Think about that for a second. WEB M. D. Many of the magazines of my youth that were piled high on the inherited-from-my-great-aunt half-circle end table that was wedged between the couch and my dad’s Laz-E-Boy are no more. Newsweek for example is no longer tangible, but virtual. Yet, here in my doctor’s office, Taylor Swift is smirking up from the magazine table on the printed cover of a concept that started in the virtual world and has—apparently—jumped into the tangible one. At the time, I didn’t think too much about Taylor Swift. But after I got home, I started wondering about healthcare and a print magazine whose title begins with the word “Web.”

The fact is, new clinics are springing up all over my Northland Kansas City suburbs. And once the postmodern, wastefully soaring-ceilinged, new buildings are open for business, Web M.D. magazine will probably grace their waiting room tables and racks as well. My husband blames the Affordable Care Act for the irritatingly inefficient buildings that are popping up to house groups of nurse practitioners and general practitioners. But I can’t help but wonder if Web M.D. isn’t partly to blame.

Here’s why: On Saturday, my abdomen started cramping after I ate dinner. It hurt enough to give me chills and send me to bed. It happened again on Sunday after lunch. And that’s when the Googling began. Have you ever done that before? Googled your symptoms? I remember my first time. I was living almost a thousand miles away from my parents for the first time in my life and I quickly became convinced I had ovarian cancer. Ultimately the doctors ruled that out but they couldn’t find a diagnosis or anything to make the pain go away for good. Then I went to the chiropractor because my back hurt. A crack and a pop and Surprise! my ovaries felt normal again. Web M.D. makes it very easy to fall down that rabbit hole. 

This time, thanks to the Internet, I feared that I had diverticulitis. It was the lower, left-side abdominal pain that tipped me off. The first runner-up in my self-diagnosis pageant was an ectopic pregnancy but diverticulitis won the tiara. Ultimately, the fear and worry caused by my Internet diagnosis drove me to make an appointment on Monday morning instead of going to work and seeing if it got any better.

And so goes my theory: Web M.D. sends more and more people to clinics. Clinics support Web M.D.’s print edition. People see the magazine in the waiting room, thereby reinforcing the impulse to turn to Web M.D. and increasing the need for more clinics. Once you Google your symptoms, the seed is planted that your stress headache is actually an embolism, just waiting to kill you. Your mind and your symptoms can’t be put to rest until you go see a doctor.

As for my abdominal pain, an x-ray confirmed what my grandfather probably would have been able to tell me, were he still alive and abdominal pain was the sort of thing we talked about in our family. And what he would have told me is this, “You need to poop more. Here take some castor oil.” Instead, I paid my $25 co-pay for cancer causing beams to be shot through my baby-maker and a person with more years of student loans than years of actual medical practice could tell me to go to the store and buy a laxative/stool softener.

So I went, and I bought, and I took, and I’m waiting. I just can’t help but think, though, that Taylor Swift owes me a song about poop.