Crafty-Ass Witch

I’ve had a cold since well before New Years and it’s not going anywhere. I couldn’t take it today and decided to chuck it in and take a sick day. So I’m drinking tea, watching American Pickers and the snowfall.

I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions because I feel like I perpetually let myself down, or that the goals that I have are the same goals that I always have. I’m going to try to cook more, clean more, exercise more and be present more, but I don’t want New Years to be my motivation the same way I don’t like to go to the gym in January.

One of my big goals has fallen by the wayside. I was planning on running in the Pacer’s GW President’s Day 10K, but I’ve been diagnosed with Achilles tendonitis, otherwise known as I’m too lazy/inattentive to stretch properly after runs and my calves are paining. I’m benched from running for another week or so and while I could potentially get myself in shape to run it a) I’m scared of reinjuring myself and b) I’ve gotten so out of shape again some more that there’s no point.

(I know, I know, I’m benched from running but I can still use exercise machines and do my yoga and pilates. I just haven’t been. And not just because of the cold, I’ve just been drained. And I know tired begets tired the same way that exercise begets exercise, but sometimes the tired is so much that cooking dinner seems like too much and you have to reassess)

On the bright side, I’m knitting again. Some friends had a baby in July and I still haven’t finished her blanket. I got yarn to make the wife a Paperdolls sweater with hedgehogs instead of paper dolls. My shoulders aren’t particularly appreciating the efforts, but it’s nice to do something that feels productive and that I still love (thought not as much as I used to).

Running races… it doesn’t make sense. I mean, it does if you’re the guy who wins the marathon (and one of the guys at my office does, the jerk). But for everyone else? Here, let me give you $25 so I can get up at an ungodly hour on a weekend to run for half an hour with a bunch of other people I’ve never met, and then we’ll have coffee. YAY. TOTES FUN. Except it’s kind of addictive, especially considering my ridiculously competitive nature and my need to do my best at everything.

I get Schwaggle deals daily. Mostly, I just ignore them like I ignore all my coupon emails because they’re things I wouldn’t want. But last week, they had one for a discounted registration for a 5K in DC (they’ve sent others in the past, but I don’t want to spend $13 on a 5K registration in Hawaii next week, you know?). And I jumped. Why the hell not? I could bus down there and I couldn’t find any good Turkey Trots, so…

I picked up my packet, confirmed I could wear headphones and was feeling well nigh untouchable, even with the end of a cold and residual sore muscles from trying the one of Boot Camp App‘s workouts (warning: those will kick your ass).

The night before, I figured out where exactly this thing started and realized it was nowhere close to where I thought it was. It was a mile from my job, which has $6 discounted staff parking and 6am-12am garage hours. Fine, I will drive. FINE. (It shows you how much I hate to drive that I was willing to take a bus there at 6am on a Sunday rather than drive 30 minutes on Rock Creek Parkway) I laid out my work out clothes, charged my phone, programmed the coffee pot, decided I needed to leave at 6:30, set my alarm, had my number ready, went to bed…

And then I couldn’t sleep. I’d already stayed up too late (midnight) and continued to stare at the ceiling for at least half an hour. Then I had one of my worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had. I tossed and turned constantly, unable to fall deeply asleep, constantly uncomfortable. I think I was anxious I would oversleep – I’ve had similar moments in the past. My body gets so nervous that I might oversleep that it doesn’t let me rest. I woke up 5 minutes before my alarm, turned it off and climbed quietly out of bed.

It was still dark out. That was rough.

I got myself together, had a quick breakfast, sent my first 4 out of way too many bored tweets and made my way down there. (Yes, I drove without difficulty) Even with a last minute parking snafu, I still got myself to the race site at 7:15. The race started at 8. Whoops.

So, I hung out for a while, drank some water, ate a banana. I tried to stretch and stay warm but I’m not sure how well I did with that. I sent probably another 5 bored tweets. And then the race started.

What I’ll say is… for someone with the tail end of a cold and a really poor night’s sleep, I did OK. I finished at 36:06, which is better than my personal best from the only other 5K I’ve completed, 37:07. But that was last year and 30 pounds ago. I hadn’t even finished the Couch to 5K program for the first time. (For those keeping count, I’ve started it 4 times and finished it twice) But frankly, I was disappointed. I wasn’t more than 3 minutes into the race before I was gasping for breath and ready to stop, despite being in decent shape and using my inhaler that morning. I was so sure I could do the whole run as a run – after all, I’d done similar runs recently, including one the weekend before. The course was relatively flat, I’d exercised but hadn’t over-exerted myself… I ended up walking at least 3 times to get my breath back. I did do a fairly decent long sprint towards the finish line.

So, really, I was upset because I wanted more. And disappointed. As I worked to get my breath back (it had gone to whining gasps, which made me even angrier with myself), I was a little teary, I think with frustration.

And then I waited around for an hour for the other runners and walkers to trickle in. And then another half an hour to find out I hadn’t won anything. That was kind of lonely. Most of my friends are not runners and I haven’t had a chance to start forming friendships in the running community. On the bright side, I finally beat Angry Birds on my phone. Then I went home and ate a bagel with my face. That was awesome.

This run was to benefit The Hydrocephalus Association. I honestly hadn’t paid that much attention because I wanted to pay someone to tell me how fast I can run, but it’s a great organization with a great mission.

I’ve just found out So Others Might Eat is having a Turkey Trot on Thursday at 9am. Registration closes today. I’m trying to decide if I want to pay another $25 to see if I can run a little better. I’m a little stiff today, but not crazily so…

I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions lately and the ways that the important stuff gets mixed up with the rest of it, a red light ticket in with the junk mail that you might miss and recycle if you weren’t paying close enough attention.

We are coming out of Samhain, the time when the veil between the worlds is thin and we slip betwixt and between. It is a time of reflection, when we look backwards and forwards, into our hearts and into the beyond.

The closer the day came, the more my various pagan blogs (and crafting blogs and cooking blogs, etc…) got excited, the more friends asked about costumes and plans, the more I did… nothing. We bought (and ate) Halloween candy, we found a fun storytelling event to go to the Saturday before, and while I thought about doing something spiritually to honor the changing of the year and remembering my dead, I still did… nothing.

And as I continued to do nothing, I pondered the significance of that. In the why is tonight different from every other night kind of way, I saw how I could take a holiday that was, without a doubt, one of my favorites and just kind of… ignore it. The one I looked forward to more than any of the others. The one that heralded by the arrival of fall, bright leaves, apple cider and cozy sweaters, ending with Thanksgiving and the endless consumerism that makes me dread and love the winter holiday season.

The pumpkin we bought to make a jack-o-lantern went rotten before we even got there. Our building does a kiddy-Halloween party, so we don’t have trick or treaters. TV shows had Halloween themed episodes, but otherwise, I didn’t take the time or effort to do anything different.

Until I went to the Samhain ritual done by my spiritual group. Something that I had looked at as a bit of an obligation, to make a potluck dish when I was so tired of cooking, put together a costume when I didn’t want to, figure out transit to Baltimore and back, and instead, it was a profound experience that shook me deeply. I don’t know why I’m surprised. It always does.

Without going into too fine a detail, I went from setting up a potluck, to our Samhain ritual in sacred space. It was a dark journey into different space where I received a gift of wisdom that was bright, beautiful and solely mine… and then went right back to setting up the potluck. The juxtaposition was almost as jarring as the ritual had been, and rather than jump right back into what I was doing, I had to go sit alone in a dark room and cry for a few minutes to transition myself back. What I had been given was too much, the fluorescents in the kitchens too bright… I couldn’t stay in there and calmly heat pans of food. I had to take a minute to be, feel the light stirring in my heart, to start doing the work that I had been told to do.

So I cried a bit. I always cry a bit. And then I went back into the kitchen, readied the food, and greeted everyone as they came back from their journey, offering warmth and sustenance to those coming in from the cold.

And for the next few hours, we ate and chatted amicably about everything except for what we’d just experienced, old friends catching up and new ones being made. A group of Pagans is always a disparate, fascinating bunch. Chewing macaroni and cheese, then later discussion midwifery on my ride home and then later still, trying to explain this to my wife, typing this now… it still feels so very incredible that something profound happened and then immediately, it was back to life as usual. I remember thinking that in a different time and place, we’d spend three days in solitude preparing ourselves for what was about to happen and then three days in solitude contemplating what just did, but here, instead… minutes, seconds. Here is this change, and now, you take it and adapt to it.

But I think that’s also the gauntlet that was thrown down. Fighting complacency was part of the challenge I issued myself in January that was only somewhat successful.

It’s only business as usual if I let it be.

I had a dream on Sunday morning and it was one of those where when I reached that hazy, half-awake state, I was curious to see what happened next. So I let myself drift back and the dream took a far more interesting, mystical and spiritual turn than I had anticipated and ended not exactly on a cliffhanger, but with the potential for far, far more. When I woke up for real a few hours later, I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen next. Yesterday was a busy day, with Yay NY!, shopping and some much needed regrouping & recentering while watching shitty TV. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it and feeling like somehow, it was important. So I wrote it down. I haven’t written down a dream since 2009. (I… may have checked my livejournal)

But I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, I started plotting out what happens next as I was falling asleep last night. And today, I’m probably going to write that down. I think it’s a great beginning and it’s got potential to be an interesting story. I don’t know what this means, what could possibly prompt me to write fiction for the first time since 2003, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I dreamt this for a reason and that it’s important.

So, yeah, I’m going to keep writing this, I guess. We’ll see what happens. I have to ignore that part of me that is embarrassed to take inspiration from my subconscious because of… well, other things. Because I can’t seem to let this go and there’s a reason for it, even if I don’t know what it is.

It’s CSA season again, otherwise known as WHAT THE HELL DO I DO WITH ALL OF THIS FREAKING ZUCCHINI!, and as you may have guessed, I occasionally find myself at a loss for what to cook. We joined Spiral Path Farm this summer and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made this summer (please note I got married in the spring). Not only do they do a pro-rated join for latecomers, their pickup is ridiculously convenient and in the middle of a farmer’s market, it’s also Saturday morning, so I’m forced to get up at a decent hour (otherwise I would sleep until 3).

It’s always hard to cook with a random assortment of vegetables. Spiral Path also gives you a newsletter with a rundown of what’s what and helpful recipes, which is ridiculously helpful when you’re trying to figure out how to eat 4 heirloom tomatoes and a zucchini. (Answer? Make caprese salad and a BLT and eat the zucchini tomorrow) I’m also one of those people who always has to have a recipe, so whenever an experiment turns out well, I’m surprised and pleased. Hence, time to share!

One of my favorite things to do with cooking ever is to throw shit together with Israeli cous cous. It’s something I came up with a while back and is surprisingly versatile. I’m particularly proud of what I came up with this week, so I thought I’d share with you.

Seriously, IN MY FACE Chicken, Veg & Cous Cous:
You need:
1 cup uncooked Israeli couscous
2 1/4 cups liquid (water, chicken broth or veggie broth, depending on your preference)
1 onion, coarsely diced
1 chicken breast, diced
1 zucchini, cut into large matchstick-ish pieces
1 golden squash, ditto
2 handfuls of grape tomatoes, halved
2 servings mozzarella, diced
4-5 basil leaves, chiffonaded
salt
balsamic vinegar

Make a pot of Israeli couscous. This usually is 1 cup of uncooked couscous toasted at the bottom of your saucepan for a couple of minutes, and then add 2 1/4 cups of water or broth. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until cooked, 10 minutes-ish, stirring occasionally. Once cooked, let sit off heat with lid for a few minutes.

AT THE SAME TIME, slice and cook an onion in a large frying pan. Add a pinch of salt to help the onions caramelize better (no, really, the salt helps them express their water). Dice up a chicken breast and add that after a few minutes.

Dice a zucchini and a golden squash into matchstick size. Once the chicken is browned on both sides, add the zucchini and another pinch of salt. While this cooks, halve a couple handfuls of cherry tomatoes, dice some mozzarella and chiffonade some basil.

Once everything’s properly cooked, combine everything, either all in one pot or separately in everyone’s bowl. Add salt and balsamic vinegar to taste. The heat of the food should melt the mozzarella nicely, but keeps the pop of the tomatoes. Fight with your family over who gets to take the leftovers to work tomorrow.

Makes 2-4 servings, depending on how hungry you are.

(Image from mj*lafaca and is licensed by Creative Commons for sharing)

(First, hi! Sorry I haven’t been around for a while, something about having a wedding and a two week honeymoon really puts a crimp in the blogging)

Things you may not know about me: I used to be crazy about yoga. Not quite in that ‘every day in the studio, thinking about becoming an instructor’ like some of you, but I really, really enjoyed it. I joined a class that started at 8:20 in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays the final semester my senior year of college. And I went. (Those of you who know me IRL know I don’t get out of bed before 11 if I can help it) And I loved it. And not just because I lost 20 pounds.

I enjoyed the quiet challenge of it, the moving meditation, the fact that this was something that I, the always clumsy one, the always fat one, the one who always wanted to be a dancer and was mocked for it, that I could do. I could do it pretty well. And my muscles grew and changed with me and I loved it more.

Of course, once you leave the magic land of college, things change. I moved back in with my parents and went back to my retail job doing bookstore customer service, but I walked a mile to the yoga studio once or twice a week and bought a series on my $9.25 an hour salary. And then I moved cross country, where the only consistent exercise I got was walking around an unfamiliar city and the 7-8pm yoga class I had at Bally Fitness in Pentagon Row on Mondays. And then I moved, fell in love with my wife, dropped exercise and promptly gained 40 pounds. It happens. There were positives and negatives, yanno?

I tried to pick up yoga again a few years ago. It was being offered at work as an intermediate class. While I had intermediate knowledge, I hadn’t realized that my body had gone back to beginner. I had no muscle tone, and worse, moving to a job that required dress shoes had ruined the muscles in my feet. I couldn’t get through standing series without crying in pain from foot cramps. The instructor told me I just had to work through it and my feet would get stronger. I didn’t come back after the 10 week session was over.

And then, in February, my condo building decided to offer yoga classes at reasonable prices. It was affordable, I didn’t have to leave the house, I had no more excuses. And for two months, I loved it. I’d already made significant progress in regaining muscle tone through running and pilates, so I could physically do a lot more than I had for those frustrating months in 2009. The instructor I had didn’t focus as much on Warrior I, which was the heart of my issues. It was awesome. Except for one thing.

The instructor.

She was… for lack of a better term… mean. She was never incorrect, she had a good heart and I don’t think she was mean-spirited, but her tone set my teeth on edge every. class. Whenever she gave me praise, she sounded surprised. I should, on some level, be used to this. Everyone always seems to be in shock, that, yes, I am 5’4″, 180 pounds and fit. The only thing keeping me from doing this twist fully is the extra 3″ I have on my thigh and you don’t. No, I don’t eat ho-hos dipped in hot fudge, yes, I do exercise and yes, sometimes I have chips and guacamole for dinner (DON’T YOU JUDGE ME). She would hold us in poses for two minutes on one side while she adjusted one person and then have us hold the second for 30 seconds. And so on.

Last month, the wife and I took stock and realized that the benefits of the physical exercise were being outweighed by leaving yoga class angry. And it’s hard to keep yourself in a space of moving meditation when you’re too busy trying to understand someone so completely different from yourself. I’d lost my zen. So we quit. It was utterly liberating. And in a complete departure from who I used to be, I told the class coordinator why.

Turns out we’re not the only ones. We get a new teacher in August. I’m excited to see what this class will bring.

I can sometimes tell when I’m going to be obsessed with something. I knew before I took up smoking and knitting that I would find myself far too involved in both. So, I’d heard some Florence and the Machine covers on So You Think You Can Dance last year, my ears perked up, but I resisted looking into it because… well, sometimes I think that’s best.

Until, in January, I watched the episode of Glee where they did a rather fabulous cover of ‘Dog Days are Over.’ And on the whole, I had a reaction not dissimilar to this baby.

January was a really, really tough time for me personally. Listening to this song on repeat (Glee & Florence versions) really helped me through it. It was peppy, it was upbeat, it was also melancholy… And once I reached saturation point with that song, I started branching out into some of her other titles and found ‘The Bird Song,’ ‘Cosmic Love,’ ‘Swimming’ and a truly fabulous cover of Halo. I’m not one to compellingly write about music, but she has a gorgeous voice, deep and thoughtful songs that stick with you and the ability to make a more than memorable cover.

Which is, I guess, me saying that you should go buy Lungs if you haven’t already. It’s really, really awesome.

I’m really glad she’s catching on to mainstream popularity. I seem to be getting into the habit of liking something right before they get popular (see knitting, canning, The Decemberists) and having a ‘but I liked them first!’ reaction. On the other hand, if I got in to her because of Glee, that reason to pout is kind of moot, huh?

So, um, hi.

Every time I’m like, I have so much to say! I SHALL BLOG ABOUT MY IDEALS! I get distracted by, like, RuPaul’s Drag Race (those queens are fucking FIERCE) or The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (DO NOT SPOIL ME FOR CATCHING FIRE OR MOCKINGJAY I WILL CUT YOU) and then all my passions and distractions melt in the face of pop culture entertainment. Whoops.

On the other hand, there’s not that much going on. I’m jogging a fair amount, have started doing yoga again (after having to give it up due to time & foot cramps), I haven’t canned anything or cooked anything interesting since February and oh yeah I’m getting married in a month. (One month from today. EEEEEEEEEEE) After that, we go almost immediately on our honeymoon (a road trip from Sonoma to Seattle – SO AWESOME). I’ll try to keep you guys updated. I’ve got a ton of things I’m wanting to say but haven’t quite formed out to say them yet. I don’t like blogging about what I ate for lunch today… actually, that’s not true, I love blogging about food, but I don’t love blogging about the minutiae of everyday life anymore (that’s what twitter is for, DUH). So I feel like these entries need to have some kind of DEEP POINT or GRAND REVELATION ABOUT THE WORLD… that I don’t have. But I have many swirling feelings. I need to figure out a way to share them with you without imparting some smug lesson, I guess. Or go back to talking about bacon. Mmm. Bacon.

Image from squacco and is licensed by Creative Commons for sharing.

I’ve had the thoughts about this entry percolating in the back of my head for the past couple of weeks but I’m only now getting off my ass to post. (After not writing anything for the month of February. Whoops) Anyway. Here you go.

When I was an angsty, young teenager starting to look into New Age spirituality, energy work and/or work with the unseen world, one of the experiences I wanted so hard to have was an out of body experience. I did all the meditations and the visualizations and whatever else you were supposed to do, but I always remained squarely where I was, inside myself.

While my inability to float about on the astral plane was a source of unending frustration for myself, I never really questioned why I wanted so badly to try and do this. In looking back now, it was an attempt to escape myself. I was so violently upset with how I looked and how big my pants were that I was desperate to escape. To me, how fat I was affected how I was perceived at school, the friends I had and didn’t have, the shyness, paranoia and hiding in activities I did so no one would know how sad I was. It was pretty typical for being 13 and sad, but to me, it was about being the specialest snowflake and having the most unique pain. The funniest thing about it all is that I hated my body, but I used it well – I took modern dance (and being the fat girl in dance class is its own kind of pain), I hiked & orienteered, I camped, I taught drama and movement in classes. I was solidly in my body during that time. I just didn’t want to be.

I’ve been thinking about those feelings a lot lately. Over the past few weeks, I’ve realized that all the work I’ve done over the past few years has resulted in me being the fittest I have ever been. My pilates classes have given me better posture, resolved some low back issues and led to me being a stronger runner. My running (well, jogging) has taught me the lesson of how to eat the elephant. It’s sped up my muscle mass development, which has made the pilates work even more effective. I started doing yoga with my fiancée and it’s wonderful to share with her.

I feel fit. I feel strong. And it’s changed the underlying attitude I have about myself. I feel like it’s an amazing piece of magic I’ve worked with myself. And if I can find joy in my body and heal that wounded part of myself, I wonder what’s next?

When you eat peanut butter straight from the jar for breakfast because you forgot to buy oatmeal, this. This is when you think you are a motherfucking ADULT. And it’s awesome.