her able hands

Gale-force winds began to buffet (I first wrote bugger, then backed up and corrected it, but bugger? really?) the house sometime around 2am. The air leaking in through the edges of the windows smelled like spring, just like it did all day yesterday. My body felt so confused when I went out to pick up a few groceries at lunchtime and it was 67 degrees. The impulse was to run home and start turning over the soil—to sow some hearty greens seed.

It’ll be about 20 degrees cooler today, though, so I guess I can quit fantasizing about that and just get my seeds organized for winter sowing. Gracious, it’s windy out there right now. We should have moved our Christmas tree out and stuck it in the ground during this warm spell, but I’m looking at it right now with all of its lights and ornaments. Meant to do it last night, but once again the evening just slid down the rabbit hole to bedtime and I crashed at 9. We’ll try again tonight.

I think I’m extra tired the past few days because I’m changing my eating habits drastically. Hell, over the holidays I lived on cookies and coffee cake. And coffee and wine. I’d love to stuff my face with buttermilk pancakes right about now, but it’s eggs or yogurt and nuts for brekkie and a salad with chicken or tuna for lunch, and then lots of vegetables for dinner with maybe a small bit of pasta and a protein of some sort. Just one cup of joe to start the day, and then lots of water and tea. I haven’t had any soda for over a week and my guts thank me very much. So I guess I’m detoxing because I am perpetually tired. This is the point in the past year or so where I’ve hit the wall and said pass the Pepsi. But I’m going to power through this.

Before bed last night I did some stretching and a few yoga poses, which interestingly enough, settled down the hungry feeling I had even though I’d already eaten. It’ll take some time for my stomach size to catch up with the portion reduction. I’m just not going back for seconds and dammit, I’m hungry all the time. But the stretching calmed that right down and I slept very well until the wind hit the front wall of the bedroom like a giant fist.

I am going way outside of my eat local boundaries in order to clean myself up this winter, and doing so gratefully. Thank goodness I can easily buy broccoli and kale and salad greens. Last winter I didn’t touch cucumbers, but I have a half dozen in the fridge right now because they make a wonderful lunch with chopped celery and cottage cheese. I guess I should say thank you California. I won’t be heaping metric tons of bullshit guilt on myself for the food miles I’m ingesting right now. My health is more important than my social conscience and it’s mostly the vegetables that are grown far away. I will, however, be making some local, small farm meat purchases this weekend. I can’t quite stop thinking about the soulless-sourced meat the FDA is going to allow into the market. I also can’t wait to get some greens started in the raised beds, under the windows, at the beginning of next month. Next year I will have some sort of a greenhouse or at least a low tunnel.

Thank you all for the kind words and commiseration. I’m feeling tons better and the rash is just about gone. Terrified to eat a shrimp again, but that’s how it goes. It was a bummer to toss that entire pot of soup out, because it was delicious—I highly recommend making your own dashi to use in soups. It’s super easy and oh, so tasty. I wonder if it freezes well?

This week will likely bring a bit of overtime at work, so posting will still be light, but I’m getting ready to blog the Great Basement Clean-Up 2008, as well as the winter sowing of perennials, the living room, dining room and kitchen painting and the dining room chair re-upholstery. I’ve only had the fabric and foam since May and have decided that I’m simply going to do the seats for now because the wood is in very decent condition. That can come later some day when I don’t work outside the home a full 40 hours a week.

In other news, I’m gagging and fuming and wishing I could bitch-slap the FDA for saying it’s safe to eat cloned meat. Factory farm at its finest, people. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat meat in a public food setting ever again. A whole new layer of “from whence came this meat” is added to the already mysterious game of eating. Will they put on the menu “Chicken-Thrice-Removed Marsala”? Chew on that.

Saturday night I made a soup with a dashi and miso broth. Dashi is made by simmering water with a piece of kombu seaweed, then turning off the heat and adding bonito flakes (fish) and letting it sit until the flakes all fall to the bottom. Then you strain it, which I did into a pot of sautéed mushrooms, carrots, bok choy, ginger and shrimp.

An hour after I ate it, I was hanging over the toilet, turning myself inside out. I now have a disturbing looking rash all over my lower face and neck. Tiny red dots that may be broken capillaries? I have no idea. It’s not pretty, though.

I’m assuming it was a shrimp because nobody else got sick.

Such a shame, it took me almost two hours to make this soup and it looked, smelled and tasted so healthy and yum. Going down, at least.

I wish I had my camera with me on the drive in to work this morning so I could have shared the nuclear winter sunrise that blasted out of the horizon in the rear view mirror. There were deep purple clouds layered just above the tree line and the sun a hot pink and orange ball sitting just perched on top of the frosted trees. Most of the storm had cleared out but it was still snowing lightly and bitter cold so everything sparkled. One thick, throbbing ray of orange-pink light shot straight up into the sky for miles and miles and the sky all around glowed and seemed to positively roil with light and shadow and energy.

Because I was less than a mile from my job at the time that I noticed this extravaganza going on behind me, the elation mixed with a dash of bitterness. Work. Meh. I gazed at that beam of sunshine shooting up at daybreak (while trying to keep the car on the road) and felt the ache in my jaw from the nighttime grinding of teeth that has apparently become a recent habit. My teeth hurt. A lot. Wouldn’t I have loved to just turn that truck around and head on home to write and fold laundry and listen to music without headphones? Why yes, yes I would.

Focus on the light, I told myself. Feel the warmth even though the thermometer on the truck readout says it’s 8 degrees. And just get in there and fake it for another day. And so I did.

I’m thinking a lot about intention. And about complaining less while I’m at work. So I intend to practice at at least catching myself when I’m complaining and zipping my lips. So I caught myself about a hundred times today, but not so much with the zipping the lips part, no sirree. No, it was more like Wow! I’m bitching up a storm here aren’t I! And aren’t I justified!? I sure am! And here’s why!

But I’m also thinking a lot about how much I’ve picked at and picked on myself in recent years, and about how that just makes me feel worse and even less like growing and changing. I’ll actually share something kind of gross and personal with you because hey! it’s a blog! that’s what we bloggers do, right?

I pick at every blemish on my skin. It’s a habit that has become worse with age and now I’m a 40 year-old woman whose arms and legs are covered with angry red-purple scars. I even do it in my sleep. All of my sheets have tiny blood spots from where I scrape off tiny blemish scabs with my fingernails in the middle of the night. My hands are always snaking up my sleeves and picking away at whatever tiny bumps and imperfections pop up on my skin. I haven’t worn a skirt in years.

So these are two big things that I believe are well and truly tied together in a nearly fool-proof knot, and two big things that I intend to work on every day until I no longer do these things unconsciously. Maybe then, once I’ve brought some consciousness to the habits, I’ll be able to let them go.

Happy New Year.

Well, goodness. I’m finally feeling healthy and human again and I’ve got all limbs and digits crossed in the hopes that it lasts for more than five days. Lila bean jumps back into the germ pool on January 7th and the whole bloody thing could start all over again. But while I’ve got my head above water I’m going to start taking some things to try to build up my immune system.

The holidays are mostly past and I’m going to step away from the baked goods and get on that recumbent bike in the basement again. After I clear away all of the boxes stacked around it. But this week I’m just letting myself move very slowly, just treading water and breathing. Staying as quiet as I can. I managed to only have two days of rush during the wind-up to Christmas and while being sick sucked donkey balls, it was one of those back-handed gifts you tend to get when you’ve been overdoing it for so long that your internal barometer doesn’t work anymore. I think they call that a shit storm or something. But anyway, I enjoyed the results of keeping it light and small. Missed my family back east, but it was just more important to sit still and do nothing much for a few days. Putter in the kitchen with some cookies and butter toffee. Make some dishes to bring to friends’ for dinner. Read. Watch movies. Throw in a load of laundry. Have to rewash it two days later because I forgot to move it to the dryer. Like that. Very slow.

So New Years is right around the corner and world events are giving me the heebs. I wish I could just fake optimism, but I can’t. I have plenty for myself and my family and friends, so that’s good. It’s on that level that we get to work anyway—those of us who choose not to get involved in politics and activism on a large scale. So I’ll enjoy this fallow time and noodle around with ways I might be able to manifest in my own life, the change I’d like to see in the world.