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Taking Rest

Mar18

Baking bread used to be a special occasion; now it’s become a weekly routine, and one that I remain exceptionally grateful for. Proof that when you do something often enough it becomes a habit. I’ve settled on a ratio of three-quarters regular flour (King Arthur) and one-quarter hearty flour, in this week’s loaf the Rouge de Bordeaux, described as a “19th Century bread flour” in the class of ‘hard red winter wheats.’ Now we both know.

I’m grateful for the little wonder tomato in the sunroom, whose vines are putting on new green growth, new flowers, and new fruits. I used one in lunch the day the bread baked, slicing the heel and one slice while it was still warm, and slicing one small tomato still warm from the sun. I wanted to savor the tomato, so it got its own piece of bread with simply mayo and a sprinkle of salt; the heel I spread with fromage fort. What a simple, quick lunch, and so delicious.

A lot more things than simple, delicious lunches have been happening here over the past week. I’m working extra hours for a couple of months creating lesson plans for a new course I’m halfway through teaching. I’m so grateful for the students who are so enthusiastically participating in this offering. We’re all learning a lot, and enjoying the journey. And at the end of most days, I’m exhausted, so I go to bed without opening the computer again. I’m grateful for the inquiries from faithful readers who are concerned about me. So far, nothing to worry about; just taking rest as needed.

I’m also grateful that the friend who had a heart attack last week is recuperating at home now, with enormous gratitude of his own at his miraculous survival. “You just never know,” he told me today. Indeed. And what a potent reminder this incident was. Death or near-death always jolts us into a heightened awareness for awhile. I’m aware of all the stuff I’d like to get rid of before I die, and all the things I’d like to accomplish, and the loose ends of end-of-life paperwork I have yet to tie up; I’m more keenly aware of the love I haven’t expressed, the amends unmade, the kindness I get to show to anyone, anywhere, anytime. And so much more. I bump up against a little edge of anxiety about it sometimes.

Fish, fish paste, and mirepoix mixed in the bowl before adding eggs and breadcrumbs.

But then I walk the little dog and the big cat up the driveway or through the woods, listen to the house finches warble in the treetops, watch the little green sprouts grow in the garden, gaze up at the bright stars on a clear night, and everything feels all right: in this moment, all is well. This “ever changing present moment,” as someone mentioned in Telesangha this morning. Letting go of what I can’t control, and making the best of what I can. And that includes the ritual of lunch. Another healthy habit that used to be hit or miss for me, and now is an anchor in my day. Today I made pan-fried fishcakes, with some wild-caught cod I had in the freezer. I learned a new word, mirepoix, which is a mix of sautéed vegetables used in a sauce. In this case, the mirepoix of finely diced onion, carrot, and celery was added to finely chopped fish and a fish paste made by blitzing some of the diced fish with heavy cream in the food processor.

Eggs and breadcrumbs are added, and the mixture formed into patties, then dredged in flour, egg, and more breadcrumbs before getting fried. I had enough egg beaten to cover eight small circular patties, which had to chill for at least twenty minutes before frying. I let them chill away all afternoon, and used some of the mixture that was left to shape a custom fishcake for my sandwich, and fried that right away.

Mayo, mustard, fish cake, lettuce, and another precious tomato made for another simple, special lunch.

Taking a break from the computer and the kitchen, I spent another outside unit sanding and oiling the handle of a garden hoe I had decided would be the right tool for a particular job of spring cleanup. I was grateful to find a file I hadn’t used in twenty years right where I had left it; and grateful I had ordered axe oil last summer and knew where that was. And even though I couldn’t find my set of three smaller files, I did find the spare fine one, so I was able to get a reasonable edge on the rusted blade. I’m grateful I made it through this precious day that will never come again without sleeping away some of its fleeting hours.

Relief

Feb27
I’m grateful for homemade granola, for Honeybadger whose gifts inspired me to try my hand at it, for all the ingredients from oats to syrup to dried fruit and nuts that I happened to have on hand, and yes of course I put chocolate bits in it.

We got a taste this morning of the severe winter weather that’s rampaging across the country. We woke to a blizzard with stinging snow blowing every single direction all at once. It only lasted a couple of hours and dumped three inches of snow. No one wanted to go out in it. I’m grateful that my little pets can hold it a long time. Shortly after it stopped snowing I persuaded Topaz and Wren to go for a short walk in the woods, just long enough to find Topaz a small spot without snow under a juniper. I’m grateful it was largely melted by late afternoon so we could take a longer walk, and grateful that tomorrow promises to be warmer and sunny.

We were asked in a group this morning where we find gratitude in the day. One person said “In relief,” i.e., when something happens or doesn’t happen and the emotion is relief, gratitude follows. Once it was articulated, a number of us could relate to that; though I hadn’t thought before about being grateful for Relief. Or if I did, I’ve forgotten. My answer to the query was, “Every morning when I wake up alive in my bed, for waking up alive, for the bed, for the house the bed is in, and on from there….” And of course, I’m grateful for my almost daily cheese sandwich.

Today’s version included mayo, mustard, dill pickle relish, Havarti, two fried eggs, and shredded lettuce, piled between slices of fresh-baked bread an hour out of the oven. Grateful for the convenience of ready-made condiments in the fridge, for the fridge, for the solar power to run the fridge; for the flour, salt, and sourdough still going strong, and the water and how it gets here, and the oven and the propane that fuels it and how those got here; for the fresh organic free-range eggs, and the non-stick skillet, and the wooden spatula; for the organic lettuce and those who grew it and transported it; and for the cheese, and the Danish cows it came from, and all the roads it took to get to my doorstep. I suffer some, but I really have nothing to complain about. And that’s a relief.

Idle Rambling

Feb24

In which Topaz leads the way. It’s Mud Season, and the pathways through the woods are half icy, half muddy, and half dry. So it’s a good time to follow Topaz on a walk because she hates mud and ice, so she finds the driest way through the forest. I’m grateful for idle rambling this afternoon, seeing parts of the woods and old juniper friends we haven’t visited all winter.

Environmental Protection

Feb14

I’m grateful for community activism on behalf of environmental protection, and this time it’s right in my own back yard. As a community, we’ve been fighting for our quality of life and our livelihoods for more than a decade, in a battle with the oil and gas industrial complex that seems to never end. If you’ve ever visited here, or you just want to support us, please consider signing this comment form to the BLM now. The deadline for comments is February 20.

When this started in 2011 with proposals to lease public lands at the heart of our watersheds for fracking, there was enormous community response. Hundreds of people attended meetings, thousands sent letters, urging the government to protect these lands that are crucial to the agriculture and recreation that drive our economy. What can one person do? I realized I could compile some of my many photographs of the area into a ‘visual comment’ to submit to the BLM during the initial public comment period. And then I realized I wasn’t the only one who had photographs.

By the time it was done, more than fifty valley residents and a few visitors from out of state had sent me hundreds of digital images, which I complied into the North Fork Scrapbook. Please visit the online scrapbook generated and maintained by our leading environmental protector, Pete Kolbenschlag, now director of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, to learn more about the unique valley and the looming threat to its health. I’m grateful to Pete, to the Western Slope Conservation Center, to Citizens for a Healthy Community, and to the thousands of valley residents who are making their concerns heard in an effort to protect our home.

Zoom Cooking with Amy

Jan21

This week we baked focaccia to go with what Amy predicted would be ‘sad beans.’ She was wrong. They were very happy beans. But I’m grateful she suggested the focaccia, which I’ve only made a few times and none as successfully as tonight’s simple, delicious recipe for a small loaf pan focaccia. I didn’t even make any adjustments for altitude and it came out beautifully. I topped mine with flaky sea salt and Penzeys Bouquet Garni spice mix. I really miss having a rosemary plant in the sunroom, and regret that the one I’d had in a pot for many years didn’t survive a repotting last fall. But the Bouquet Garni mix was a good substitute for fresh rosemary.

Amy also suggested a delicious ‘dirty martini dip’ she found on instagram, which is just cream cheese, sour cream, an ounce of gin or vodka, and an ounce of olive brine zapped in a food processor with a pinch of salt, then served with olive oil and olives. I skipped the olive oil, substituted greek yogurt and mayo for sour cream I didn’t have, and tossed one olive in the mix as well. Next time all the olives go in the food processor. We are both grateful for olives. Amy ate her dip with pretzels and crackers and saved her focaccia for the White Beans au Vin that I had proposed for dinner, but I enjoyed the dip with my bread.

I don’t think we intended to put alcohol in both our dishes but I just realized that we did. I’m grateful for tomato paste in a tube, which lasts a long while in the fridge and doesn’t get yucky like that in a can when you try to save it, even in another jar. I’m grateful for all manner of kitchen and culinary conveniences, and grateful that I have a kitchen in a warm house during this cold winter.

I led an interactive guided meditation today in a study group. The meditation, from one of our instructors, called on me to lead the ‘client’ in an exploration of feelings of amazement and gratitude for the most basic things, including how our body breathes and pumps blood and mostly does everything right most of the time without any effort on our part. But when I reached the part where I encouraged the client to bring to mind the things in their life that provide security, the kinds of things I write about here day after day, like a safe home, sufficient food, and clean water, they balked.

Their big heart immediately skipped over gratitude for the comforts of their life, to a desire to help the many who lack these basic amenities. It can be a fine line. I struggled with this myself for many years, and still do sometimes. It’s not fair that I have so much and others have so little. But gratitude is not antithetical to compassion and may indeed be a necessary precursor to it. We need to give ourselves permission to experience gratitude without guilt: for the small things in our lives, like tomato paste in a tube, and the big things like lasting friendships, meaningful work, and our capacity to help others as we’re able. The bottom line is that it’s not only healthy but essential to acknowledge and give thanks for all the good in our lives.

“Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted. ”
― David Steindl-Rast, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day

Both recent research in neuroscience and the longtime teachings of Br. David Steindl-Rast reveal the importance of gratitude. Brother David is passionate and eloquent on the transcendent meaning within gratitude. It’s a spiritual practice for him, and he’s been studying and teaching its importance for many of his 97 joyful years on earth. I’m grateful for his influence on me through the years, and that I am finally beginning to live his message. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.

“There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.”
― David Steindl-Rast

Inspiration

Jan19
The chicken that’s been nourishing me all week getting carved by the chef.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: A homegrown chicken is one of the best gifts. I honor the chicken’s short but happy life, and the women who raised it along with its flockmates with love and care, in a wholesome free-range setting. I’m grateful for the ongoing gift, which has made several sandwiches, a bowl of picked chicken ready for salad tomorrow, and the carcass simmering in the stockpot on the stove right now for future soups. It may be that my experimental commitment to vegetarianism is winding down. I’ve been eating meat when it’s offered but not buying or cooking it for myself, so in almost two years I’ve eaten meat only a few times. I’ve got to come to terms with the fact that I feel more energy when I eat a little meat.

I’m grateful for this sandwich even without cheese. Grateful for avocados!
And grateful for this nifty avocado keeper which has a space for the pit, to preserve the heart of the fruit. I run the cut side under cold water for about twenty seconds (how grateful I am for tap water!) and then close it into the container. It can last a day or two with hardly any oxidation this way.

I’m grateful for flow in the kitchen, using up a chicken day by day, or using up the last several meals by combining the last of the bread with the last of the avocado and the last of the Brie… and grateful for the luxury to live day by day with sufficient food that keeps coming into the house and moving through the fridge, pantry, freezer. When you stop and think about it, it’s a miracle.

I’m grateful for a fulfilling and meaningful week. For all the love and connection with friends and family in various contexts, for old friends and new, near and far; for teaching a motivated and engaged class the transformative skills of mindfulness and meditation; for access to inspiring talks, interviews, and creative efforts of people around the world.

One inspiration I’m especially grateful for this evening is the story of a stuntman gone horribly awry. After working all day I sat down to rest this evening and watched “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived.” This is a documentary of the tragedy and resilience of the young man who was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter movies for a decade, from the initial Sorcerer’s Stone to the Deathly Hallows part 1. During filming, an accident broke his neck. He’s found the strength, spirit, and courage to reinvent himself as he’s struggled through the years with ongoing complications. Though comparisons can be detrimental, they can also inspire a healthy perspective: In the same way that David recognized that many people he met along the way had it far worse then he, his story inspires me to resilience with my own physical challenges and limitations. I’m grateful for inspiration.

Wren is grateful to her Aunty Melinda for a beautiful new red parka! She feels inspired to romp about in the snow. Isn’t she the cat’s meow?

Leftovers

Jan17

Oh my. What a cheese sandwich I made today. Leftover roasted chicken, lettuce, and havarti, with of course mayo and Penzeys sandwich sprinkle, and a little Grey Poupon. It was a masterpiece. I’m grateful for the ongoing abundance of my leftovers. I made a little pot of stock for the animals with the bones from last night’s dinner, and have plenty of meat and bones for more meals.

I learned today that two friends caught covid for the first time on the same day last week, hundreds of miles apart, and both while caring for loved ones. One at an assisted living facility, and one at a doctor’s office. “No good deed goes unpunished,” said one of them. I’m grateful that it wasn’t too terrible an illness for either of them, and that they’re both feeling better already. They had been so careful. I’m sorry that people in general have thrown caution to the wind, making life more risky for those of us still hoping to not get it. So it goes.

So Much

Jan13

I’m grateful for so much today. For a functioning, pain-free body; for all the beautiful green and/or flowering plants in my sunroom and making time to water and tend them; for an exhilarating zoom with Foundations Course graduates across the country, for exercising and laughing with my frousin (yes autocorrect: frousin: it’s my friend-cousin), for a delicious lunch with a bunch of leftovers in a tortilla wrap, for RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16; for my best girls back east planning a birthday zoom with me… for community, companionship, friendship, love; and for the mindfulness that makes it possible for me to appreciate it all, despite the climate, political, and other human-induced chaos plaguing our precious, fragile planet; and for cultivating the capacity to hold the ten thousand sorrows and the ten thousand joys with both hands and an open heart. This is it.

This is the only life we know we’ll ever get. We might get another one, but can we know that? No. The only thing we know for certain is that we have this present moment in this singular life. I’m grateful for the pure awareness that allows me to appreciate almost every moment of it just the way it is. I’m grateful for equanimity, contentment, perspective, and the gazillion stars in the night sky–oh, in the day sky also–whether or not they’re obscured by clouds. I’m grateful for knowing my place in this universe. All I can do with this knowledge is love.

I’m grateful for loving this little creature that came into my life, no matter what she does, just loving her for who she is. I’m grateful for the growing capacity I experience with practice for loving myself just as I am, no matter who I am. I’m grateful for having a roof over my head, a bed to sleep late in, a kitchen filled with tools and food and the resources at hand to nourish this animal body who loves what it loves. I’m grateful for people like Mary Oliver who say things more eloquently than I have yet. I’m grateful for this carrot-orange-ginger soup that I made tonight to nourish me for three or four more meals, with organic carrots, ginger grown in the sunroom, and regular old oranges, as well as a handful of spices from around the world via Penzeys and Amazon. What a world we live in, with so much available to us!

OMG so simple so delicious. This carrot-orange-ginger soup took about half an hour to make start to finish, and is absolutely delectable. I used leftover coconut milk instead of cream, and homemade vegetable stock heavy on the celery. I love keeping a bag in the freezer for celery, broccoli, and cauliflower stalks, mushroom stems, parmesan rinds, and any other veggie scraps that will enrich a stock. I added a couple of small potatoes, a few outer onion layers, and a few garlic cloves when I dumped the stock-bag into the pot the other day to simmer for a few hours. Pulled the jar out of the fridge tonight to make this delicious soup.

I’m grateful for all of this, with the caveat that I understand there is impact and injustice involved in me getting what I need to make a simple carrot soup. We live in un-simple times. I do the best I can with what I have in each moment, to be the best human I can be under the conditions leading up to this moment. If we would all do the same, what a wonderful world it would be.

Face Poison

Jan11
  • Day 9… beginning to show some results
  • Day 10… starting to itch
  • Day 12… beginning to sting
  • Day 18… pretty uncomfortable
  • Day 19… how much pain is too much pain?
  • Day 22… one day after I stop applying cream
  • Day 23… face swells more
  • Day 24… my nose and cheeks hurt like a bruise
  • Day 25… Day 1 of antibiotics
  • Day 26… morning after Claritin
  • Day 29… last day of antibiotics
  • Day 31… still feeling creepy crawlies
  • Day 35… no more peeling, no more itching, no more creepy crawlies

I’m grateful for science, and medicine. I’m grateful for my experiment with face poison, aka flourouracil, a topical chemotherapy for precancerous actinic keratoses and some basal cell carcinomas. I was instructed to apply this cream twice a day for 30 days, with the caveat that if it hurt unbearably after two or three weeks I could stop. “If it hurts bearably, you can take a couple of days off and then finish out the course.”

I’m grateful I had friends who’d been through it to offer support. I debated whether to share photos of my face here, partly out of vanity and partly because some of them are pretty harsh. But I have heard of several people intending to undergo the same treatment this month, and I know there are others out there, so I offer the gallery above and words below with humility in hope of benefiting fellow sufferers.

The first week there wasn’t much sensation with the cream, just a sense of skin tightening, like a chemical facelift. Into the second week red spots started appearing and soon my face itched, and then began to sting. I started to apply vaseline and Aquaphor ointment between morning and evening applications of face poison. After awhile this didn’t do much to diminish the hot, tender feeling. It hurt to apply the cream, it hurt to apply the vaseline, it hurt if it dried out, it hurt to wash off vaseline. But it didn’t hurt unbearably. At the end of week two, I began to wonder, How much hurt is too much?

Because the effects were incremental, my tolerance increased incrementally. It was a classic case of the mythical frog in a pot of water. I learned that as a true thing, that if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly bring it to boil, the frog won’t jump out because it adapts to the incremental heat increase until it’s too late, and it gets boiled alive; if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it will instantly jump out. I hated whoever did that experiment. Years later I heard it was just apocryphal, which was a relief, but also knocked the legs out from under a beautiful allegory: one that nonetheless that applies to my face and my perception of reality as I continued to gradually increase the amount of poison in my system. My awareness tunneled into darkness as a fever developed, but I didn’t notice.

I took a day off at three weeks, and the next morning my cheeks were swelling, so I took another day off. I wondered if I should start the cream again. The following morning, my cheeks and nose were sore deep in the tissue. I called the dermatology office, and they said, “If it’s swelling, we recommend you stop.” The next day, it was so bad that my cousin doctor suggested I might be getting cellulitis and could need an antibiotic. I’m grateful that the office had an on-call doctor on a Saturday evening, and that I happened to have some leftover antibiotics to start before I could get my prescription the next day. I’m grateful the pharmacy was open on Sunday morning.

All in all, I’m grateful I tried this process, and my skin overall is more smooth and clear of flaky patches and keratoses. There are a few spots I think could have benefited from another week of face poison, but maybe my doctor was right all along when he said he thought it would be easier for me to just get a few things frozen off every six months, and a Mohs surgery now and then. I’m grateful for my dermatologist; but I’d gotten fed up after my August visit where he biopsied three spots, froze two, and would have done more if he’d had time. I ended up with two Mohs surgeries in the fall, and those are uncomfortable and disruptive in their own way. I hope that the face poison has bought me a few years free of freezing and Mohs, but we’ll know more later.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful it’s over, and I can wash my face with hot water again, and scrub it with a washcloth, and moisturize with cream that doesn’t stick to everything and line the sink with vaseline slime and grease my pillow so my face slides off. I’m grateful I can put on sunscreen and walk outside without feeling like a vampire at risk of sizzling in sunlight. I’m grateful for the kindness, curiosity, compassion, and humor my friends provided throughout this experiment with face poison.

Letting Go

Jan8
A wall hanging in the massage room at Wellspring.

I’m grateful for equanimity, letting go, going with the flow, and a pleasant surprise today. I’ve been hampered with a minor back injury for the past week, and tried to reach a handful of bodyworkers seeking some relief. Over the weekend I recalled one in Hotchkiss that I’ve never been to, and called there this morning. It was my lucky day: she had a cancellation and got me in this afternoon. I was expecting a regular massage. Instead I received a Core Alignment Therapy session first, and then a massage. The combination was more than I expected, a pleasant surprise. There was certainly some letting go to be done, both physically and mentally, as I surrendered to a new and different experience. At times it felt I was in the caring arms of an octopus, as though Liz had more hands than most people. The pain was diminished considerably. Wellspring Vitality offers several hands-on therapies as well as numerous other healing and fitness options.

I was grateful to feel so relaxed when I got home safely. As I turned onto the highway in town I heard a loud clunk, but ignored it, thinking snow, ice, gravel… Only when I turned off the engine in my driveway did I realize what had actually happened. I don’t drive often and always park in the same spot, so I hadn’t noticed a few little oil spots where I park until the other day. I made a mental note to call the shop that changed the oil last month, but only a mental note… and I dashed out today focused on clearing the snow off and getting to the massage, so I forgot all about the oil drips. When I got out of the car at home the air reeked of burning oil so I popped the hood. I could hear and see the last of the engine oil streaming onto the gravel. The loose oil plug had fallen out in town and I’d spilled oil all the way home. Phil’s Towing came again and loaded up the little Honda, and took her back to town. A little more mindfulness on my part would have been helpful in precluding this situation, but equanimity came to the rescue. Also, letting go.

I’m grateful for the little bit of snow we got yesterday, and for living inside the kaleidoscope, and for a new spectacular puzzle in the club collection. More on that next time. I’m grateful the unexpected therapy today allowed me to enjoy puzzling again.