Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I've taken the leap into making sauces/dressings for my salads and other dishes that a sauce/dressing just seem to go naturally with. And in the process, I cleaned out the rest of the heavily processed, packed with oil and sugar foods from my fridge. It really is amazing to see just how much oil and sugar is used to create salad dressings and other kinds of sauce. When I think about how much dressing I used to put on a salad, even when all I would have for a meal was a salad, all of the calories were coming from the dressing. They weren't nutrient dense calories, either. Just calorie dense calories. Bad calorie dense calories. I cringe now thinking about all the oil and sugar I was consuming.  So now I'm making my own sauces/dressings. Knowing exactly what is in the sauce and how much of each ingredient is in the sauce creates peace of mind about what I am putting into my body. The first dressing I made is an avocado/lime/cilantro combination. It pairs wonderfully with mixe...

I've seen some very cool things during my walks with Ado this week.  The first cool thing: two bald eagles circling overhead. We had headed out around 2 pm, and just a block away from the house I heard a call I've never heard before. I started looking around, trying to find the bird making the call. When we reached the main street through our small town, I looked up. There they were. Two beautiful bald eagles gliding, circling right overhead, low enough I could clearly make out their white heads and white tail feathers. I stopped, wanting to watch for as long as they stayed around. For several minutes, both circled in the same area.  As I stood there, I thought about how just the day before I'd watched Anne Lamott's TED talk. At one point, she brings up Emerson, how he believed that the happiest person on Earth is one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. She says, "So go outside a lot and look up. . . . Look up. Secret of life." I couldn't agree ...

I started this past last Wednesday. This is what I'd written: For the first time in months, probably years actually, I didn't make my bed right after getting up. Or even an hour later. In fact, I didn't make my bed at all today. I know! The horror! I'm not sure why I was such a rebel. I think I just got going on other things and didn't even realize I'd left the bed unmade until after lunch, when I walked into the bedroom to change into shorts. Or maybe it's because I'm getting old and just forgot. When I went to change from jeans to shorts since the day was warming up and saw my unmade bed, it was like meh, whatever. I changed and left it the way it was.  Every day since, I've made my bed like usual, right after getting up. There's just something about the practice, the routine. It's a small accomplishment, keeps my bedroom tidy and comfortable.  With it being just me here, the living spaces remain mostly tidy all the time. Living on one leve...

Fall is definitely in the air. The mornings are cool, enough so that I need a jacket for our walk. The sunflowers are ready to be cut out after the gold finches picked them over until all the seeds are completely gone. And the robins are moving through. I've not seen them all summer, but this morning, quite a few were in the driveway and yard. Yesterday, as I drove home after visiting with a friend for the afternoon, the killdeer seemed to be grouping in preparation for migration. I don't think I've ever seen so many killdeer my entire life. I love living where we have four very distinct seasons. Fall is my favorite of the four. It just seems like we're being told to slow down, relax, enjoy. I really try to listen and do all three as often as possible. I worked a bit in the yard over the weekend, mostly removing the tall sunflower stalks and other ungainly weeds growing alongside the house. I'd left everything alone this summer just to see what was already here, and...

I am now six weeks in to being "two steps away from being completely vegan" as Angel Baby puts it. The two steps keeping me from being fully vegan is I still eat mayo and honey. When I think about it, though, I so seldom eat either one that it's kind of silly for me to even have them. Maybe I'll do what I did with the milk and eggs -- toss them in the trash. I felt just a tad bit bad about dumping out a half gallon of milk and throwing away two dozen eggs, but it had to be done. The three packages of unopened cheese, though, I kept. I gave those to Funny Delightful Son when he was here for the weekend. He bowed slightly when I handed him a bag full of cheese, bacon and sausage I'd had in the freezer, along with a package of frozen salmon, and said, "Thank you for your vegan ways."  My vegan ways have me cooking a lot. I was cooking quite a bit anyways, but now I'm preparing things I've never tried before. Yesterday it was falafel with a tahini dr...

I've been told twice now, that because I believe I am entitled to my perspective on things, just as anyone is entitled to his/her/their perspective, I must be a Democrat (I'm pretty sure this was meant to be an insult). I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this logic, if there is even a logic to it. I guess for the person who said this to me there must be a logic, but I'm failing to find it. For the person who said this to me, it's called Theory of Mind. Look it up. Read about it. Learn about it. Everyone has a perspective that is unique to him/her/they. Even you. And I am more than happy to allow you your perspective on things though they are very different from my own. And in the process, I won't stoop to calling you a BITCH (the all caps where how you sent it in the text). I won't sink so low as to say, "Fuck you" like you did in another text. After you've finished learning about Theory of Mind, consider turning to Malcolm Gladwell's...

So, apparently I'm stepping over the boundaries in speaking out about a family member's behavior. Also, apparently I'm not allowed to have a perspective on what my life was like growing up in my family. According to one sibling (who ordered me not to write about them on the blog, and who I'm pretty sure didn't even know my blog existed until I wrote the last post and it was shared by the family member that post is referring to), "I'm still wondering where the rest of us were when things were SO bad for you. We had an awesome and blessed bringing up."  I don't disagree. We did. But this doesn't mean there weren't bad things, too. It wasn't all butterflies and unicorns. To believe otherwise is to live in La-La Land. And, I just want to go on the record now and say I'm pretty sure I've never said through the years writing on my blog that my life growing up was SO bad. I'm still scratching my head over what blog posts my sibling...