You Can Have "IT" All

So, I am running along, trying to finish my first six-miler (on the flats), running mantras through my head to pass the time, the most prominent one being “yes you can!” As things normally, go, my mind took off on a different path and came up with “yes, you can have it all!”

I thought back on what “have it all” meant at various times in my life, but it occurred to me that we are usually trying to achieve a somewhat stock “haveitall.” This often is some version of house, family, job with a pension and a nice boss, nice car, weed-free lawn, good grilling skills.

Then my head went to something like “so indeed what the hell does haveitall mean?” We can indeed have it all, as long as we define our own personal haveitall. I think there are as many haveitalls as there are people, and so if we are all trying to attain the stock haveitall, most of us will probably not get there, which is often perceived as failure. It's not that we fail, only that we are trying to fit ourselves into a haveitall that is not really ours, but someone else's.

So, how do we achieve our own personal haveitall? I suppose there are scads of ways, but one thing I have noticed of late is that when I really want something to come to pass, I vision it in excruciating detail, or break it down to a few very succinct details, and then just keep my mind harping on them. Somehow, it usually works, usually being the key word. Also, very succinct, simple details relating to me. I don't envision world peace. 

Once again, I keep this excercise very simple. I don't do any going to the vortex or pick a specific meditation time or place, but just when I think about it, I go through my mental list, not changing, just picturing quickly. This happens several times a day. I do not do this on my motorcycle or in a moving vehicle or when operating machinery. 

Another point that comes to mind is that our haveitalls will change depending on where we are in our lives. So, there are times when I am gung ho on haveitall exercises, but others when I don't do it at all, just depending on the circumstances. 

I think my biggest challenge is to define my current haveitall, getting it down to a few succinct visions that can become my sort of mantra. I am all over the map right now, and I need to reign things in and get moving forward again. I will keep you posted on my progress! 

Accentuate the Positive!

Think positive! Stay in the vortex! Every day is a beautiful day! And so on. We are bombarded with messages and movements encouraging us to "get in the groove","have an attitude of gratitude", and I am sure you can come up with many others. I have now seen about four decades' worth of this advice in one format or another, popularized by a new round of leaders every decade. It's the same message over and over, like the universe keeps beating us over the head about it and we still are not getting it.

I like this "think positive" approach to life as long as it allows room for all emotions and thoughts and provides a way to deal with the entirety of life. I had not really thought about the physical implications of thinking positive; I just knew that I thought it was a good way to live, and lord knows it has gotten me through some tough times.

Until a couple of weeks ago. When I was running, my mind wandering hither and yon. I was going along, letting thoughts run through my head. A of a sudden I lost my energetic edge, enough that I stopped to walk. Then I was curious--why did I stop? What made my energy suddenly take a nosedive?

My thoughts! Could it really be? Do your thoughts really have that much of an effect on your energy? That fast? I ran along some more, changing thoughts, feeling my body speed up and slow down accordingly. Amazing! The scientist in me wanted to keep doing this all day and run me ragged, but I overcame its enthusiasm and got back to completing the task at hand. I tried it again the next day. Same effect. It was instantaneous, depending on my thoughts.

It occurred to me that I go through my days not paying a lot of attention to how my thoughts make my body feel, knowing there are times when I have no energy, but not really examining why.

I am working on checking in with my body periodically throughout the day now, especially when I feel low on energy. I am wondering if I can spend 10 minutes in the afternoon doing a sort of meditative pep talk instead of coffee. I will keep you posted.

Life is a Pinball Machine and a Little Padding Helps

As many of you know, I am a an average middle-age chick who doesn't always exercise and eat right, and I have pillows for hips these days.  In order to combat said pillows and just to get feeling better in general, I have started running. Actually, I have restarted running. You know how it goes.

I usually run on a stretch of pavement that runs for a few miles along the shore of Puget Sound. It's lovely, and in the morning I am joined by dog walkers and other runners including a number of young, strong, fast, angular females. No pillows on those gals.

I was pretty athletic growing up, so at one time I was angular like them. As I ran and contemplated the softening of my angles into pillowy voluptuousness over the years, I realized that they represented experience and wisdom and confidence and finally enjoying the sound of my own laughter, even when directed at myself! They represented lessons learned, relationships come and gone, and everything else that made me me.

I continued to run, and my brain decided to give me a shot of my life as a pinball machine. Like a pinball machine, I was dropped into my life by my mother (that may explain a lot). Then, when young and angular and sleek and fast, I raced around trying to determine my path, racing on to the next big thing, bouncing hard off of the bumpers but not always having a say in which direction I ricocheted, picking up many bruises and dents, then getting whacked by a flipper and getting shot off in a different direction that I did not necessarily want to go, ricocheting off of more bumpers as I went. Ouch.

As I grew, my pace slowed a bit. I could see the upcoming bumpers and try to avoid them or at least try to determine which direction I would ricochet and what bumpers lay along that trajectory. I still ricocheted in unforeseen directions and still ended up with a few bruises here and there, but overall came through it all feeling a bit better.

Now, my path is even a bit slower and more deliberate. I saunter through the bumpers and choose to get whacked by the flippers far less often (but want to still get whacked to stay in the game). My pillows give me a very soft landing against the bumpers and the time it now takes to rebound from the impact gives me time to determine how I want to roll off of the bumper and which direction I want to go. Do I want to head for the flipper and get shot into another round? Do I want to find a place to rest for a bit? My mental pinball machine has a Hawaiian theme. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

So, ya, as I run along, no doubt there are moments when I envy the youth and strength and angles leaving me in the dust. But fleeting those moments are.

Contemplating a Coffee Cup

Okay, so everyone who read my last blog entry, all 12 of you, were so encouraging, I thought I would write another one. Being new to this blogging stuff, I get lots of great ideas throughout the week but I don't write them down because--silly me--I think I am somehow superwoman with a super memory and will of course remember all of them!

However, I received inspiration from a coffee cup this morning while I was working at my computer, so inspiration met opportunity. Not any coffee cup, but the Whale Trail's coffee cup. I love them because they have a nice mission and their leader, Donna, has her crap totally together and it is a joy to work with her.

But enough of my plug for Donna. So, I am staring at the Whale Trail logo on this cup and I begin to see into the cup. Not its molecules and atoms, but its origins. Its materials. Its people. I begin to see the places the materials have come from--mountainside mines, maybe big open holes in the ground. I see laborers who mine the materials the cup is made of. I see trucks that transport those materials somewhere, and a factory, with more workers who transform the materials into ceramic. Then maybe another factory where the ceramic is transformed into cups. I see tankers hauling crude petroleum to refineries (since most everything contains something from petroleum these days), probably to be made into the ink on the cup. I see more people packing the cups, each one into boxes, then the boxes into more trucks, and then onto ships, and then off of ships, back onto trucks, then to Donna's house, where I pick up my cup. I think about all of the materials being used in these processes, all of the time and energy others have invested to bring me this cup.

My mind is speechless for once, instead swimming with a thousand rotating pictures of all of this activity, all vying for space, all constantly in motion. The complexity of this activity increases as I stare at the cup. What about the cup's designer? Its engineer? The logo's designer? What about all the materials and machines they use, and then the story behind those materials and machines? And then I get up and go get some cold pizza, because, like a cold shower, it redirects me, and it's tastier than a shower.

Now, nothing turns me off on Facebook faster than someone challenging me to share a post that is supposed to make us all better people. "I challenge you to share this post if you are really, truly ______________." First of all, I have to think long and hard whether anyone in my friends list would really give a crap, and then I get depressed when the truth reveals itself.

Despite my Facebook attitude, however, I am going to challenge all 12 of you, my faithful, to spend a few minutes contemplating an object this week. A cup, a dog toy, a head of lettuce, a computer, anything at all, and think about all of the people and everything else it took to bring that object to you. What do you think about all of that? Leave comments if you feel so inclined. 

And if you are at all interested in reading further about this topic, I have been an inactive fan of Annie Leonard and The Story of Stuff Project for years. She is my favorite environmental person most people have never heard of, except she recently became the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, so now I guess people will hear of her more. Annie has followed stuff around the globe for years, and I highly recommend her website if you are at all interested in the topic.

Once again, I thank you all for sharing a few minutes of your time with my blog! 

Really, It Is

"It's not much, but I hope it helps."
"It's the thought that counts. Really, it is. Thank you."

It's not often I think "Oh, such and such has changed my life!" In fact, very few of our experiences cause us to sit up, take notice, and make a permanent change in how we think about ourselves or interact with our fellow human beings or the planet. Usually, they are something forced upon us that we cannot ignore--a serious illness, loss of a spouse, but I have noticed that even these events, although difficult and thought-provoking, often don't lead to lasting change in our habits or interactions once the crisis has abated.

The above exchange, all of 10 or 15 seconds, however, did result in some kind of profound change in my thinking and habits that will carry over into my interactions with others. I was driving to work at my part-time job at Seattle Used Bikes, a small, independent motorcycle shop. I take the same exit off of a busy thoroughfare to a light and then take a left at the light. Often there is someone on the short grassy strip just before the light panhandling. It's often the same couple of guys, but this man was a recent newcomer and I had only seen him a couple of times. The light was red, and I offered him a dollar, which led to the above-referenced interaction. The one that profoundly changed something in me.

The impact of his words stunned me, then it dawned on me what the dollar had probably meant to him--acknowledgement of him as a fellow human being, in need, worthy of assistance, anything I could give. Acknowledgement that he was indeed someone, not just someone to be ignored.

It made me think about all of the nameless, faceless, sometimes homeless people out there, panhandling for a dollar or whatever I can give.  Not think for a minute, but for days. About how, although the dollars are needed, what is needed even more is acknowledgement of the fact that they are human beings, that they matter in this world, that they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity just like the rest of us. It somehow made me see beyond the material situation--beggar, perhaps homeless, unshaven, to the humanity within, the connectedness we shared beyond the overlay of the material.

Ya, you can argue that the panhandlers don't really deserve my hard-earned money, that they prey on the gullible, but the bigger question is, what put them there in the first place? What put that guy there on the grass by the light where I turn left? Were there so few options left to him that he felt he had none other? Is he just mentally unable to handle the complexity of finding work? Does he have issues preventing him from being able to hold down a job (mental illness, injury, PTSD, or a host of others)?  I am sure there is a very small minority who come from perfectly normal backgrounds who have chosen to panhandle as a profession, but I think for the vast majority, that is not the case.

I have decided going forward that I am not going to ask, or worry about whether I am being "taken for a ride" by someone, or anything else. I am going to give that dollar because if the thought counted to this man, it probably counts to a lot of others as well. It's simply part of my job as a human being.

First First Sunday Supper a Huge Success!

The first Sunday Supper was a huge success! Exactly what I hoped would happen, and I can see this thing getting really large. Since I can only fit 12 people in my house, though, for now it remains thus.

One of the first rules of blogging, especially blogging about food, is to insert pictures! Notice there are no pictures of the event, because out of 12 people, no one took any. Not that people didn't like the food; I think just the opposite--they were so into the event that stopping to take out phones and cameras and snap pictures was obviously not the first thing on their minds! Nice.

Anyway, it was a traditional German-like affair--sausages from the German butcher, parsleyed potatoes, sauerkraut, kale and green beans from the garden, and rhubarb crisp, also from the garden. I had a few gluten-free vegetarians at the table, so I tried out some chickpea-based veggie sausages from a local restaurant. Expensive, but well worth it, as they were all eaten. These are on the culinary horizon and you can find many recipes for them online, but I would not choose one over a nice brat or smoky herb from the butcher. 

I think what I liked most about it all was the coming together of a large range of different age groups (30 to 85) and interests--mathematicians, foresters, musicians, lawyers--and how well it all worked so well together.

So, on to next month, a vegetarian affair--polenta topped with mushrooms and taleggio cheese melted over all. I am hoping for some wild mushrooms to be available, but if not, cultivated will have to do. 

I think the potatoes were probably the biggest side dish hit and I got requests for the recipe, so here is not really a recipe, but how I made them:

4 pounds red or other potatoes

1 bunch parsley

1 cube butter or 1/2 cup olive oil, or brown butter, or a mix of any of these

white wine vinegar to taste (at least 1/2 cup)

Cube the potatoes and steam them until desired doneness (the softer they are, the more they will become creamy while mixing--mine were almost mashed by the time I was done). I steam them because it retains more nutrients than boiling.

Meanwhile, chop the leaves of the parsley.

When the potatoes are done, put them in a bowl and start adding the butter/oil and the vinegar and salt and pepper until everything is quite tasty. You are aiming for a slight tang to the potatoes, along with a richness contributed by the butter/oil. Be generous with the oil, vinegar and salt and pepper. When you have the flavor where you want it, add the parsley and mix. 

It seems like a lot of parsley, butter/oil and vinegar and salt, but potatoes are very good at softening flavors, so don't be skimpy!

First Sunday Supper Club

I did it. Three years in my head, and now I have to put my food where everyone else's mouth is.

I grew up eating Sunday dinner, as did a lot of people I know. My mother was a great cook and did it almost every day for seven people, day in and day out, three meals a day. You would think she wanted to rest on Sunday, but most Sundays we got Sunday dinner--roast chicken, roast beef, and a host of other tasty traditional meals that we ate with gusto! Often we had worked all weekend on some family project, and Sunday dinner and dessert were our reward.

Throughout my adulthood, whatever the circumstances, Sunday dinner has always remained just that--the one meal with which to take time, prepare thoughtfully, and, if possible, share with friends and family. Even when shared just with myself, Sunday dinner was always something I took pleasure in preparing and eating. It started the week off right and put me in a good mood for Monday mornings.

I have always been in awe of the power of food and a great meal shared with others to build community. I am sure that if the world sat down to a meal together, there would be a great deal less conflict and a great deal more of caring for and supporting each other. Additionally, I am an avid gardener and forager, and always have more than I can eat from the garden and the fields and forests around Seattle.

About three years ago, the idea came to me to start small--bring together a group of friends, family, and anyone else who wanted Sunday dinner and a bit of community, and cook them dinner! I banged it around as it morphed it into several different variations, big, small, etc., but always came back to the same theme--food and community.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got tired if it nagging me. The idea just wouldn't leave me alone. So, I sat down and figured out how many people I could feed, how much of a contribution people would be willing to make, and then put the invitation out there.Needless to say, the table is full. The inaugural meal of the First Sunday Supper Club will honor faux Oktoberfests everywhere--sausages from the local German butcher, homemade sauerkraut, potatoes of some kind (still not sure), homemade pickles, something green from the garden and of course, dessert!

As the date draws nearer, I am surprised that I am getting nervous--is this thing going to really take off? Do people really want to do this? Ack! I know--vulnerability is good for the soul somehow. My soul should be full of lots of goodness by the time this is all over.

I will be sure to report back.