Three weeks ago MadMax was up at our local ski resort and he did one more three-sixty on his last run of the day before heading home. He fell. He heard a pop. He couldn't put any weight on his left knee. He almost passed out from the pain when it happened, but he managed to ski down on one leg, and by the time he got home, the pain wasn't too bad.
Several medical consults later, the decision was unanimous: ice and ibuprofen, don't stress it too much, and it will heal up in a few weeks. The option for an MRI was left open, but it didn't seem necessary at the time.
But two weeks later, he was still limping heavily and he kept saying his knee didn't feel stable, in fact it felt less stable instead of more. If you're in the know about this stuff, you already know what's coming. We finally got an MRI last week, and his ACL is torn.
We went in for the follow-up appointment this morning to see if surgery was recommended. It was, and by the way, the surgeon has an opening in his schedule tomorrow (which will be today by the time you read this), and suddenly-- like getting caught in an avalanche that started with just a tiny crack-- we're on an inescapable route that started with a simple fall three weeks ago and will end up with school absences, intense rehab, probably not going on the band trip next week, and the end of his senior track&field season before it even started.
MadMax has been remarkably poised and stoic about the whole thing. He's already switched from being one of the standouts of this year's track team to being a coach and mentor to the younger kids. He missed the last days of the ski season without complaint. He's made a few rueful comments about wishing he hadn't taken that one last run, but really, the trick he did was one he'd done safely a dozen times before. It was just an accident. An accident that is now having huge consequences.
I've been outwardly calm, but inside I'm not nearly as calm as I probably appear. We have not had to deal with many health issues with our kids. I've only been to the emergency room once, and that was just a couple of years ago. We've had a few bouts of flu, the occasional allergy or sinus infection, some sprains and bumps--nothing that even comes close to qualifying as major.
So I am very nearly approaching panic. This is my baby, I want to tell them. You better fucking take good care of him or you will answer to ME. I want to grab the surgeon by the collar, get right up in his face and make sure they know who they're dealing with. Don't you mess with my kid.
Of course I won't. It's a little silly to be so panicky because the guy who is doing the surgery is somebody Dean has known and respected for years, he's successfully done ACL reconstructions a gazillion times, including his own kid's. But I can't help it. I want them to give me an iron-clad guarantee he's going to be all right. YOU PINKY SWEAR YOU'RE GOING TO DO YOUR FREAKING BEST. IF ONE SINGLE THING GOES WRONG, I'M HOLDING YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE.
So, yeah, in the face of my moment of panic, the post I was going to write is seeming pretty unimportant. If you're a praying person, please say a prayer for MadMax and his surgeon today. And also a smaller one for my sanity. :-)
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Friday, April 8, 2016
7ToF: the world's gonna wake up and see / Baltimore and me
1. Since I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for fiction these days, I've been reading memoirs. There are so many good ones out there you could read forever and not run out. When I get to the end of my current TBR list, I'll pass along the best ones. If you've got any recommendations, let me know. My favorite so far is Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm, the story of the winter he spent 40 miles from a paved road babysitting a couple million salmon eggs. Or maybe Upstairs at the White House, written by the guy who was the chief usher at the White House from Roosevelt to Nixon.
2. Some of you may remember my stories from back in the 90s when I was involved in several women's circles that were exploring feminist spirituality (this post, for example). It's a phase of my life that I'm not really planning on revisiting, but there was some genuine searching going on, and I loved those women and our group meetings. One of the things I loved most was the smell. You would walk in and there was this spicy scent, maybe a little bit of sandalwood, a little patchouli, a little cinnamon, but I could never find it when I was standing in front of the incense section of our tiny new age store. I looked for it off and on for years.
3. A couple of days before we left on our trip, I was wandering around our local beauty supply store looking for sample sizes of various toiletries for our travels. I've heard about Kenra hairspray for a long time--in my mind it's the original fancy, expensive hairspray, and I've heard many women swear by it-- but I'd never tried it because it's so expensive. But it was on sale, and the trial size was $7, so I thought what the hell, and bought it. I pulled it out of my bag in Mexico and sprayed it on, and OMG, there was that scent. The smell of 90s New Age feminism that I'd been looking for all those years was hairspray. Made my week.
(for the record, it doesn't work as well as the cheaper stuff I get at Target, but it does smell better.)
The rest of these are my Weight Watchers update, move on all ye who are not interested.
4. So, Weight Watchers. Still doing it, still working, although slowly. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Other than post-pregnancy, I've never successfully lost more than about three pounds in my life. I only joined WW as a last-ditch effort, one final thing to try before I gave up and moved on to size 16. But after the first couple of weeks (which were admittedly awful), it hasn't been bad, and it's working. I've been losing a half a pound to a couple of pounds a week for three months now (with, admittedly, the occasional week where I go up a half pound). I'm more than halfway to my goal.
5. The main thing I've learned is that I eat too much. I live with two athletes, guys who can eat massive amounts of food without gaining weight, because they exercise like crazy-- Dean is a runner/skier/tennis player/hiker/biker, MadMax is a skier/lifter/thrower. I never ate anywhere close to as much as they did, so I didn't think I ate all that much. But once my body adjusted to the new way of eating, I realized that I was eating way less than I had been before and not really feeling hungry.
6. My one big complaint about the program is --and I think this is probably true of most diet programs-- it's really easy to start seeing food as the enemy. That's not built into the program-- you can eat whatever you want on WW, as long as you account for it in your points. But there's certainly a flavor of that in some of the conversations that happen at meetings.
I'm not going there. Food is not the enemy. I don't want to get to the point where I can't enjoy food, where I panic at the idea of gaining a pound or two on vacation, or can't eat a piece of my own birthday cake, or feel bad about having a margarita with my friends. For all of human history, food has been part of human celebrations, part of the joy of socializing with people you love, part of the celebration of being on a bountiful planet with amazing resources. I need to lose some weight, but I don't ever want to get to the point where I can't enjoy good food. I just needed to cut out the crap, eat nutrient dense food, and stop stuffing myself (which I didn't even know I was doing, see #5.)
7. I'm getting up on a soapbox here, but I really think this is important. I think it's why so many of the people who were so vocally enthusiastic about the program back in January are no longer there. If you deny yourself, deny yourself, deny yourself, eventually you're going to binge and/or quit. On the other hand, if I eat healthy most of the time, I seem to do just fine if I have the occasional bowl of ice cream, or a piece of bread out of the bread basket at a good restaurant (my theory on bread-- if it's good, and fresh, I'm eating it. It's the boring, supermarket stuff I can live without).
Word geek extra: Google tells me "eat healthy" is now considered correct, even though "healthy" is an adjective and it's being used as an adverb. I know I'm not the only grammar goddess around here, so I'm feeling a bit defensive. I did have "eat healthily" in the previous paragraph, but changed it because The Google says it's OK. :-)
So, packing up my soapbox.... Sorry to rant at you. Have a great weekend, and celebrate spring with some good food. And a margarita.
2. Some of you may remember my stories from back in the 90s when I was involved in several women's circles that were exploring feminist spirituality (this post, for example). It's a phase of my life that I'm not really planning on revisiting, but there was some genuine searching going on, and I loved those women and our group meetings. One of the things I loved most was the smell. You would walk in and there was this spicy scent, maybe a little bit of sandalwood, a little patchouli, a little cinnamon, but I could never find it when I was standing in front of the incense section of our tiny new age store. I looked for it off and on for years.
3. A couple of days before we left on our trip, I was wandering around our local beauty supply store looking for sample sizes of various toiletries for our travels. I've heard about Kenra hairspray for a long time--in my mind it's the original fancy, expensive hairspray, and I've heard many women swear by it-- but I'd never tried it because it's so expensive. But it was on sale, and the trial size was $7, so I thought what the hell, and bought it. I pulled it out of my bag in Mexico and sprayed it on, and OMG, there was that scent. The smell of 90s New Age feminism that I'd been looking for all those years was hairspray. Made my week.
(for the record, it doesn't work as well as the cheaper stuff I get at Target, but it does smell better.)
The rest of these are my Weight Watchers update, move on all ye who are not interested.
4. So, Weight Watchers. Still doing it, still working, although slowly. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Other than post-pregnancy, I've never successfully lost more than about three pounds in my life. I only joined WW as a last-ditch effort, one final thing to try before I gave up and moved on to size 16. But after the first couple of weeks (which were admittedly awful), it hasn't been bad, and it's working. I've been losing a half a pound to a couple of pounds a week for three months now (with, admittedly, the occasional week where I go up a half pound). I'm more than halfway to my goal.
5. The main thing I've learned is that I eat too much. I live with two athletes, guys who can eat massive amounts of food without gaining weight, because they exercise like crazy-- Dean is a runner/skier/tennis player/hiker/biker, MadMax is a skier/lifter/thrower. I never ate anywhere close to as much as they did, so I didn't think I ate all that much. But once my body adjusted to the new way of eating, I realized that I was eating way less than I had been before and not really feeling hungry.
6. My one big complaint about the program is --and I think this is probably true of most diet programs-- it's really easy to start seeing food as the enemy. That's not built into the program-- you can eat whatever you want on WW, as long as you account for it in your points. But there's certainly a flavor of that in some of the conversations that happen at meetings.
I'm not going there. Food is not the enemy. I don't want to get to the point where I can't enjoy food, where I panic at the idea of gaining a pound or two on vacation, or can't eat a piece of my own birthday cake, or feel bad about having a margarita with my friends. For all of human history, food has been part of human celebrations, part of the joy of socializing with people you love, part of the celebration of being on a bountiful planet with amazing resources. I need to lose some weight, but I don't ever want to get to the point where I can't enjoy good food. I just needed to cut out the crap, eat nutrient dense food, and stop stuffing myself (which I didn't even know I was doing, see #5.)
7. I'm getting up on a soapbox here, but I really think this is important. I think it's why so many of the people who were so vocally enthusiastic about the program back in January are no longer there. If you deny yourself, deny yourself, deny yourself, eventually you're going to binge and/or quit. On the other hand, if I eat healthy most of the time, I seem to do just fine if I have the occasional bowl of ice cream, or a piece of bread out of the bread basket at a good restaurant (my theory on bread-- if it's good, and fresh, I'm eating it. It's the boring, supermarket stuff I can live without).
Word geek extra: Google tells me "eat healthy" is now considered correct, even though "healthy" is an adjective and it's being used as an adverb. I know I'm not the only grammar goddess around here, so I'm feeling a bit defensive. I did have "eat healthily" in the previous paragraph, but changed it because The Google says it's OK. :-)
So, packing up my soapbox.... Sorry to rant at you. Have a great weekend, and celebrate spring with some good food. And a margarita.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
you wouldn't know me with this golden glow, soakin' up sun in Mexico
We returned from Mexico on Sunday. We don't usually do major vacations for spring break, but it's our last one with our last kid, so we decided to go big. We went in with two other families and rented a condo in Puerto Peñasco (sometimes called Rocky Point).
We flew Allegiant (a bargain basement airline) to Mesa, AZ, then drove four hours to PP. Allegiant charges for every little thing-- you want a reserved seat? $10. you want a carry-on? $25. you want a coke? $2. But even after we paid all the fees, our airfare was still less than half of what we would have paid on a traditional airline. In spite of a few things we'd heard, they were actually pretty pleasant to deal with. I'm a fan.
Puerto Peñasco is still fairly undeveloped. There is a ring of hotels and condos along the beach, a small "downtown" area, and practically nothing else. It wasn't fancy. There are a few decent restaurants, and a couple of shopping areas with typical Mexican souvenir stuff. There are jet skis and ATVs you can rent (some in our group did, we didn't). The weekend was a bit noisy, but it was blissfully quiet on the weekdays. The water is that gorgeous turquoise color that you see in postcards. For our purposes--getting out of cool, overcast Montana without paying a fortune-- it was perfect and we had a great time.
You can, and we did, feel some discomfort at the contrast between the beautiful resorts and the poverty surrounding, but two things helped with that. First of all, tourists from the U.S. were far outnumbered by vacationing Mexicans. And secondly, their economy is decidedly improved by the tourist industry. There are jobs. I know you could argue about this. We decided to enjoy our vacation.
I've had plenty of time over the weeks since I last posted to think about blogging. I've had some pretty demoralizing things happen in the past few months, and I'm afraid I let "not a famous blogger yet" contribute to my feelings of failure. One or two fails you can chalk up to experience, but several spread out over a year and a half start to feel indicative of your worth as a person.
But at least as far as the blog is concerned, I had to remind myself that I don't really want to be a famous blogger. Every time my number of pageviews starts to tick upward, I panic and quit posting. So here's that.
I also had time to realize that I was occasionally trying to do something with this blog that I'm not good at. Instead of just writing about my own experience, at least in my head I was trying to speak for all women at my stage of life. Which is ridiculous. I don't think I even realized I was doing it until I had an a-ha moment while reading another blog.
I can't write for anybody else, I can only write for myself. So it's entirely possible that this blog will become tediously boring from here on out--I'm not exactly doing anything thrilling these days-- but I suspect it has already been that, at least sometimes.
So, with that said, on we go. I did not come to the conclusion that I need to quit, which is what I was thinking back when I said I was taking a break. For the time being, I'm planning on sticking with my original schedule--posts on Tuesday and Friday, with the occasional TBT (throwback Thursday) re-post of stuff from my old blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
We flew Allegiant (a bargain basement airline) to Mesa, AZ, then drove four hours to PP. Allegiant charges for every little thing-- you want a reserved seat? $10. you want a carry-on? $25. you want a coke? $2. But even after we paid all the fees, our airfare was still less than half of what we would have paid on a traditional airline. In spite of a few things we'd heard, they were actually pretty pleasant to deal with. I'm a fan.
Puerto Peñasco is still fairly undeveloped. There is a ring of hotels and condos along the beach, a small "downtown" area, and practically nothing else. It wasn't fancy. There are a few decent restaurants, and a couple of shopping areas with typical Mexican souvenir stuff. There are jet skis and ATVs you can rent (some in our group did, we didn't). The weekend was a bit noisy, but it was blissfully quiet on the weekdays. The water is that gorgeous turquoise color that you see in postcards. For our purposes--getting out of cool, overcast Montana without paying a fortune-- it was perfect and we had a great time.
You can, and we did, feel some discomfort at the contrast between the beautiful resorts and the poverty surrounding, but two things helped with that. First of all, tourists from the U.S. were far outnumbered by vacationing Mexicans. And secondly, their economy is decidedly improved by the tourist industry. There are jobs. I know you could argue about this. We decided to enjoy our vacation.
~~~
I've had plenty of time over the weeks since I last posted to think about blogging. I've had some pretty demoralizing things happen in the past few months, and I'm afraid I let "not a famous blogger yet" contribute to my feelings of failure. One or two fails you can chalk up to experience, but several spread out over a year and a half start to feel indicative of your worth as a person.
But at least as far as the blog is concerned, I had to remind myself that I don't really want to be a famous blogger. Every time my number of pageviews starts to tick upward, I panic and quit posting. So here's that.
I also had time to realize that I was occasionally trying to do something with this blog that I'm not good at. Instead of just writing about my own experience, at least in my head I was trying to speak for all women at my stage of life. Which is ridiculous. I don't think I even realized I was doing it until I had an a-ha moment while reading another blog.
I can't write for anybody else, I can only write for myself. So it's entirely possible that this blog will become tediously boring from here on out--I'm not exactly doing anything thrilling these days-- but I suspect it has already been that, at least sometimes.
So, with that said, on we go. I did not come to the conclusion that I need to quit, which is what I was thinking back when I said I was taking a break. For the time being, I'm planning on sticking with my original schedule--posts on Tuesday and Friday, with the occasional TBT (throwback Thursday) re-post of stuff from my old blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
if I knew what I was doing I'd be doing it right now
As you can tell, I've been desperately scraping the bottom of the bin for post ideas. I thought it would only last a week or two and I should just work through it, but apparently it is longer term than that. So rather than continue to bore us all, I'm taking a break until I have something interesting to write about again. Spring break is at the end of the month, so maybe I will be back after that. Have a lovely spring.
Friday, February 26, 2016
7ToF: my heart hurts
1. Andrea's memorial service was today (Thursday). It was a lovely mix of memorable and heartwarming and absurd. And sad. But also joyful. At the reception, there was lots of sharing of memories and wishing that the pre-cancer, wickedly funny Andrea--who loved a party and threw some of the best parties I've ever been to-- could have been there. And maybe she was. The whole thing made me ache. But you know, one of the things that has been brought home to me this week is that life goes on, even when it's not fair and you really wish it would just stop for a few minutes, or at least slow down.
2. Here is the Piano Guys video that they played at the end of the service.
3. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that when I wrote that last post about Andrea, I had forgotten that her mom sometimes reads here. Muriel, who is one of the wittiest, most interesting people I know, lived here several times for weeks and even months to help out while Andrea was going through treatment. We had some great conversations about books and life. She even took a couple of my Jane Austen classes. So special love and hugs to Muriel, Andrea's siblings, her husband and kids, and all of Andrea's family who are so especially feeling her loss right now.
*deep breath*
4. So, really, I got nothin'. But I've already done the thing where I end the Seven Things on Friday before I get to seven, so I'm determined to come up with something here. Hmm. OK, I will pass on a couple of links I enjoyed this week. First: Don't turn away from the art of life - a literature professor ruminates on the humanities.
5. Even if you're not a Broncos fan, it's fun to read this interview, with Super Bowl MVP Von Miller talking to three of his lifelong friends, all of whom have ended up playing in the NFL. We had a bit of an extra attachment to the Broncos this year because their backup quarterback, who kept them in the running while Manning was sidelined with injuries, is from our town and was a year behind our daughter in school (we don't know him personally, but you know, hometown kid).
6. I told you a long time ago that my favorite phone game is Seven Little Words. I'm still playing a year later. It's a great game for word geeks. Sometimes I know the answer because it's something I know (French writer Hugo = Victor, German diacritic = umlaut), sometimes I figure it out because word geeks know how words are put together, sometimes it's purely a matter of mixing the syllables around until I come up with the right combination. Sometimes the clues are amusing (one after another = eleven, a place to find gunpowder = tearoom, manual essential = gearshift, emphatic type = italic). Occasionally the clues make no sense. But I do love it. This is the longest I've ever played a game in my life.
7. This week's Montana Short Story trivia: the iconic western movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, is based on a short story but Dorothy M. Johnson, who lived much of her life in Whitefish, Montana. It's a good story if you can find it online, and the movie is pretty fun, too. Check it out sometime--lots of classic John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart moments.
And that's it. Have a good weekend.
2. Here is the Piano Guys video that they played at the end of the service.
3. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that when I wrote that last post about Andrea, I had forgotten that her mom sometimes reads here. Muriel, who is one of the wittiest, most interesting people I know, lived here several times for weeks and even months to help out while Andrea was going through treatment. We had some great conversations about books and life. She even took a couple of my Jane Austen classes. So special love and hugs to Muriel, Andrea's siblings, her husband and kids, and all of Andrea's family who are so especially feeling her loss right now.
*deep breath*
4. So, really, I got nothin'. But I've already done the thing where I end the Seven Things on Friday before I get to seven, so I'm determined to come up with something here. Hmm. OK, I will pass on a couple of links I enjoyed this week. First: Don't turn away from the art of life - a literature professor ruminates on the humanities.
5. Even if you're not a Broncos fan, it's fun to read this interview, with Super Bowl MVP Von Miller talking to three of his lifelong friends, all of whom have ended up playing in the NFL. We had a bit of an extra attachment to the Broncos this year because their backup quarterback, who kept them in the running while Manning was sidelined with injuries, is from our town and was a year behind our daughter in school (we don't know him personally, but you know, hometown kid).
6. I told you a long time ago that my favorite phone game is Seven Little Words. I'm still playing a year later. It's a great game for word geeks. Sometimes I know the answer because it's something I know (French writer Hugo = Victor, German diacritic = umlaut), sometimes I figure it out because word geeks know how words are put together, sometimes it's purely a matter of mixing the syllables around until I come up with the right combination. Sometimes the clues are amusing (one after another = eleven, a place to find gunpowder = tearoom, manual essential = gearshift, emphatic type = italic). Occasionally the clues make no sense. But I do love it. This is the longest I've ever played a game in my life.
7. This week's Montana Short Story trivia: the iconic western movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, is based on a short story but Dorothy M. Johnson, who lived much of her life in Whitefish, Montana. It's a good story if you can find it online, and the movie is pretty fun, too. Check it out sometime--lots of classic John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart moments.
And that's it. Have a good weekend.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
tiny brief update
I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting on Tuesdays and Fridays, but it's not going very well, is it? Not helped any by the fact that the class I'm teaching is on Tuesdays, and I need to prepare for it. So for the next bit, I will probably only be posting on Fridays.
Andrea passed away Sunday morning. If you pray, please say a prayer for her family as they adjust to life without her.
Andrea passed away Sunday morning. If you pray, please say a prayer for her family as they adjust to life without her.
Friday, February 19, 2016
7ToF: End of Winter drag
1. I spent last weekend in Texas for my amazing mom's 80th birthday. The weather wasn't all that great--by some odd meteorological coincidence, it was only about ten degrees warmer there than it was here--but it was nice to get out of town for a few days. Had a great time with my sisters and got to visit with some of my mom's friends that I've known for years. Make that decades.
2. We're to the part of winter that gets to me every year. I don't really mind snow--especially not when it's coming down-- and I don't really mind cold --unless it gets below zero, which is not often-- so early winter doesn't bug me much. But by now, the snow is dirty and the roads are a mess and I am a pale, pasty, mushroomy sort of white so I look like something that crawled out from under a rock. A few days in Texas were not enough to fix that, dangit. My car looks like one of those Jeep commercials where they've been 4-wheelin' it through hubcap-deep mud, but all I've done is drive around on paved roads. Well, slush covered paved roads. Come, spring.
3. FAFSA. If you know what that is, I know you feel my pain. If you don't know, you don't want to know. (It's the enormous, bloody complicated financial inventory you have to fill out for your child to qualify for financial aid of any type.)
4. I've seen several recipes for cauliflower couscous around, but having been bitterly disappointed by the whole hoax that was Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes, hadn't tried any of them. But I finally got around to testing it out this week, and can report favorably. They don't taste remotely like couscous, but it is a great way to fix cauliflower, especially if--like me-- you're not a huge cauliflower fan. One more veggie recipe I can eat happily. It's simple--toss raw cauliflower florets into a food processor, then saute in a little olive oil for 6-8 minutes--but if you want detailed instructions, just google cauliflower coucous and there are approximately four hundred and ninety-eight food bloggers out there who can describe it better than me.
5. (I KNOW it's supposed to be "better than I" but that always just sounds wrong to me, even though it's correct.)
6. The Montana short stories class I'm teaching this semester started this week. So I have been madly reading short stories. D'Arcy McNickle and Grace Stone Coates get a definite thumbs up if you run across their work. Will pass along more names later as we work our way through the twentieth century.
7. Nothing like spending time with Andrea to realize that while I've been angst-ing about midlife transitions, some would be thrilled to go through this stuff. Message received. Thanks for your kind thoughts, all. And in case you missed my reply in the comments, I don't by any means want to make it sound like I'm one of Andrea's main caretakers-- she has many friends, some of whom have spent considerably more time with her than I have. She is much beloved and will be missed.
2. We're to the part of winter that gets to me every year. I don't really mind snow--especially not when it's coming down-- and I don't really mind cold --unless it gets below zero, which is not often-- so early winter doesn't bug me much. But by now, the snow is dirty and the roads are a mess and I am a pale, pasty, mushroomy sort of white so I look like something that crawled out from under a rock. A few days in Texas were not enough to fix that, dangit. My car looks like one of those Jeep commercials where they've been 4-wheelin' it through hubcap-deep mud, but all I've done is drive around on paved roads. Well, slush covered paved roads. Come, spring.
3. FAFSA. If you know what that is, I know you feel my pain. If you don't know, you don't want to know. (It's the enormous, bloody complicated financial inventory you have to fill out for your child to qualify for financial aid of any type.)
4. I've seen several recipes for cauliflower couscous around, but having been bitterly disappointed by the whole hoax that was Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes, hadn't tried any of them. But I finally got around to testing it out this week, and can report favorably. They don't taste remotely like couscous, but it is a great way to fix cauliflower, especially if--like me-- you're not a huge cauliflower fan. One more veggie recipe I can eat happily. It's simple--toss raw cauliflower florets into a food processor, then saute in a little olive oil for 6-8 minutes--but if you want detailed instructions, just google cauliflower coucous and there are approximately four hundred and ninety-eight food bloggers out there who can describe it better than me.
5. (I KNOW it's supposed to be "better than I" but that always just sounds wrong to me, even though it's correct.)
6. The Montana short stories class I'm teaching this semester started this week. So I have been madly reading short stories. D'Arcy McNickle and Grace Stone Coates get a definite thumbs up if you run across their work. Will pass along more names later as we work our way through the twentieth century.
7. Nothing like spending time with Andrea to realize that while I've been angst-ing about midlife transitions, some would be thrilled to go through this stuff. Message received. Thanks for your kind thoughts, all. And in case you missed my reply in the comments, I don't by any means want to make it sound like I'm one of Andrea's main caretakers-- she has many friends, some of whom have spent considerably more time with her than I have. She is much beloved and will be missed.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
a placeholder for Andrea
Insert here a beautifully written, elegiac post for my dear friend Andrea, who has battled brain cancer for four+ years. No one ever knows for sure, but she seems to be entering the home stretch. All of us who love her are torn between wanting her to stay and being ready for her sake for her long, torturous battle to be over. I tried to write a post that would do justice to her wicked sense of humor, her insanely detailed-oriented competence at every thing she did, her aliveness. But there are no words. Everything I tried came out maudlin, which she would hate.
She can't really speak anymore but she's still Andrea, she's still in there, inside her battered body. But I don't think she will be much longer. I sat with her for a couple of hours this afternoon. When I arrived I thought I was doing it for her, but it turned out the gift was for me. She is radiating herself. Sorry I can't explain it any better than that.
Pass gently, my dear friend.
She can't really speak anymore but she's still Andrea, she's still in there, inside her battered body. But I don't think she will be much longer. I sat with her for a couple of hours this afternoon. When I arrived I thought I was doing it for her, but it turned out the gift was for me. She is radiating herself. Sorry I can't explain it any better than that.
Pass gently, my dear friend.
Friday, February 5, 2016
7ToF: my kid likes pride and prejudice
1. My eighteen-year-old would rather ski or hunt or play golf or stick needles under his fingernails than read these days, although he enjoyed reading when he was younger. But Jane Austen has won him over. He's reading P&P for AP English and he sheepishly confessed at dinner last night that he kind of likes it. Mic drop.
2. Politics. LA LA LA LA LA *fingers in my ears*
3. So everybody knows that mom jeans are totally lame (even though we all wore them back in the 80s before we had kids, so they weren't mom jeans then). Nobody wears them anymore. They're embarrassing. Except you know what? I bought a pair by accident about a month ago (bought them online, didn't read the description very carefully) and omg I had forgotten what comfortable jeans feel like. They are awesome. I've never worn low-rise jeans, because hello two pregnancies and menopause, but I had made the switch to mid-rise. Not anymore. I have returned to my roots.
4. I re-read A River Runs Through It this week as background for my Montana Short Stories class. It's too long to read as one of our stories, but it's the gold standard for Montana literature, so I thought it would be good to have it fresh in my mind. It was both better and worse than I remembered from the last time I read it a dozen years ago. I remembered it as more of a fable or a morality tale than anything else, with not much to say beyond setting up the metaphor of fishing and life. But it is more than that: the love of a wayward brother you cannot save, the mix of honorable and dishonorable traits in the same young man, the play of the narrator's life, lived within the lines, against his borther's wreckless life, inevitably gone too soon. And of course there are some breathtakingly lovely descriptions of rivers and fishing. But it has the annoying problem (shared by Guthrie's The Big Sky, Montana's other literary claim to fame) of a view of women that is so dated as to be almost unreadable. The old dichotomy between the angel in the home and the whore at the bar is blatant. Still, definitely worth reading.
5. Over the winter, our seven chickens were averaging two eggs a day, which is about perfect for the amount of eggs we eat. Then several days this past week there were five eggs. Maybe because the days are longer? (although not much longer, sunset was at 5:40 today.) Who knows. They're tough little things. There's still quite a bit of snow on the ground and they get out and scratch around in it every day.
6. We watched way too much Big Bang Theory a few years ago and got heartily sick of it. We didn't watch it for about a year and a half. But we've been catching up on the episodes we missed over the past few weeks, and they really do have an amazing team of writers. They've done some pretty creative stuff to keep it interesting. If they would just ditch the laugh track it might be my favorite sitcom ever. We've also been watching lots of movies (see previous statement about sunset at 5:40). Most of them were just a way to pass an evening, but if you haven't seen Once, it's really good. Kind of slowly paced, character-driven, with lots of music.
7. Weight Watchers update: still doing it. Still slowly losing weight. I may not adore it like some do but it's working, so I'm not complaining.
Have a great weekend.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
mid-life transitions: the cog feeling
I've talked to two women in the past few days about being in our mid-fifties. Each of us is in a unique situation, but I'm not sure anyone is getting through this lightly. There are physical changes and life transitions and readjustments of expectations.
Since we're all unique, I suspect we feel alone, like we're each the only one going through this. But some things seem consistent. I keep hearing the same things: I thought I would feel different/better/more accomplished. More adult. I thought I would have done something significant by now. I thought I would feel more useful. I thought all this effort, all the gazillions hours of my self that I've poured into my kids, my job, my volunteer work, my music/writing/dance, whatever, would feel more worth it.
Instead, at least for me, I find myself feeling more and more like a cog in an enormous machine. Like everything I've done has mainly served to just move things along, keep the wheels turning. When I was studying theory in grad school, I read Althusser, who proposed that there is no such thing as individual identity. Instead, he thought we all occupy predefined roles (subject positions) in the massive machine that is our culture (the hegemony). When I first read that, I thought it was absurd, but now I wonder if he developed that theory in his mid-fifties, because that's how this feels some days.
(aside: it's entirely possible that was Gramsci and not Althusser. My brain is dying, and I don't care enough to go back and figure it out.)
I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days. This isn't depression-- as you know, I've been through that, and this feels different. Depression is like an endless well of blackness inside me. This doesn't have that black hole feeling, it's just ended up with me re-evaluating the things I do and jettisoning quite a few. I'm reconsidering what's really important to me at this stage of life, and aligning my activities to match.
Maybe the cog feeling only happens to those of us who were dreamers, who fantasized that we would really help change the world, that we would be part of something big. I believed that wholeheartedly when I was younger. But I've told you before, I'm convinced now that the only way we change the world is in the small things, the little ways that we connect with the people around us, the way we carry ourselves in the world.
So the only thing I've come up with so far to work on this is to adopt a defiantly positive attitude-- yeah, well, my life may be a boring and insignificant cog in a machine, but it's my cog, damn it, and I'm going to do the best I can with it.
As with all of these posts, I know this doesn't apply to everybody. There are plenty of people who hit their fifties at full stride and never look back (I see them on Facebook and I sigh with a tiny bit of friendly envy). But I suspect there are more of us uncertain ones out there than are admitting to it.
(This has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of weeks now. I've re-written it at least three times. Maybe part of the re-evaluation thing is wondering if there's any point in posting stuff like this. But it's late, and I've missed posting on Tuesday for the past several weeks, so here you go.)
Since we're all unique, I suspect we feel alone, like we're each the only one going through this. But some things seem consistent. I keep hearing the same things: I thought I would feel different/better/more accomplished. More adult. I thought I would have done something significant by now. I thought I would feel more useful. I thought all this effort, all the gazillions hours of my self that I've poured into my kids, my job, my volunteer work, my music/writing/dance, whatever, would feel more worth it.
Instead, at least for me, I find myself feeling more and more like a cog in an enormous machine. Like everything I've done has mainly served to just move things along, keep the wheels turning. When I was studying theory in grad school, I read Althusser, who proposed that there is no such thing as individual identity. Instead, he thought we all occupy predefined roles (subject positions) in the massive machine that is our culture (the hegemony). When I first read that, I thought it was absurd, but now I wonder if he developed that theory in his mid-fifties, because that's how this feels some days.
(aside: it's entirely possible that was Gramsci and not Althusser. My brain is dying, and I don't care enough to go back and figure it out.)
I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days. This isn't depression-- as you know, I've been through that, and this feels different. Depression is like an endless well of blackness inside me. This doesn't have that black hole feeling, it's just ended up with me re-evaluating the things I do and jettisoning quite a few. I'm reconsidering what's really important to me at this stage of life, and aligning my activities to match.
Maybe the cog feeling only happens to those of us who were dreamers, who fantasized that we would really help change the world, that we would be part of something big. I believed that wholeheartedly when I was younger. But I've told you before, I'm convinced now that the only way we change the world is in the small things, the little ways that we connect with the people around us, the way we carry ourselves in the world.
So the only thing I've come up with so far to work on this is to adopt a defiantly positive attitude-- yeah, well, my life may be a boring and insignificant cog in a machine, but it's my cog, damn it, and I'm going to do the best I can with it.
As with all of these posts, I know this doesn't apply to everybody. There are plenty of people who hit their fifties at full stride and never look back (I see them on Facebook and I sigh with a tiny bit of friendly envy). But I suspect there are more of us uncertain ones out there than are admitting to it.
(This has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of weeks now. I've re-written it at least three times. Maybe part of the re-evaluation thing is wondering if there's any point in posting stuff like this. But it's late, and I've missed posting on Tuesday for the past several weeks, so here you go.)