Home Is Where the Habits Are/Finding Change

Back in Homer at last! So much familiarity, so much change with the swinging seasons here.
In some ways, taking care of oneself is more challenging here than it is on the road. When you're traveling, you can try things out as an exception because circumstances are abnormal. But home is where the habits are. On the road, I was getting along with a loose, adapted version of the meal plan from treatment, which if nothing else provided a reality check if I thought something was 'too much'. But back home, in my own kitchen, with all the history of portion sizing and specific ingredients written on the atmosphere, there's a strong pull toward "No way! That's way too much! You can't eat x item!..." 
And so, the inner struggle to achieve balance continues. 

These huge cabbages on the stoop were just at the dicotyledon stage when I left.

On the other end of that inertial pull, it's going to take a few days to unearth things of mine that got put away here, and a few more to go through the mounds of paperwork from the treatment centers and from the residency. Even as my kitchen and writing space habits are written on the atmosphere, the fact that so much physical paraphernalia of my writing space have been put away in places yet to be discovered makes me feel a little lost, a little unsure of my place here. Push and pull...

But as it turns out, being home and coping isn't about me at all. (I've been surprised, pleasantly so, by how little anyone's said or asked, aside from 'welcome back'.) Phil is having a hard time, partly because of elbow surgery a few days ago, with the pain and frustration over incapacitation and projected slow rehabilitation. 

I need to be there for him and to be very sensitive about how I do that. These past few months I've learned so much about communication and received a whole new level of awareness. Never thought I'd say this, but it all seems due to lithium. The other thing, of course, is that if I need to be there for someone and be sensitive about it, I need to be functioning well myself. 

And thus I find myself praising the paradox once again--all the behaviors associated with home are waiting like clothes to step into, but the environment has changed, the banks of the pond are carved wider so the center appears to have moved; magnetic irregularities skew my compass.

A few still lifes from the perpetual motion:

The view from the stoop is about the most colorful it gets, with blooming mustard, clover, fireweed. I think the last photo I posted from this position featured a pile of snow.

I was telling some people recently about how I habitually find in the freezer feathers, animal hides, and more, that Phil has preserved for their beauty. This still life on our counter with peony, fruit, and binoculars also features a mummified salamander (no I don't know why it got put right there)!! There's also a piece of mammoth tooth behind the binocs.

I hope that's not too far beyond the pale...

We went for a longish beach hike from the Diamond Creek trail this afternoon. Again, more change, more tumbling ground. Erosion seems too light a name for the half acres just wrecked like that.

Meanwhile, this shell of sea urchin is beautiful, and is one of the smallest and most perfect I've seen.

 And...the beach is the place where you find the one-of-a-kind toys you'll never get elsewhere!

Is this a non-magnifying non-glass? Or is it a telephone receiver?
All to say, I'm back. More soon.

The View From Here - Paradoxical Me - Teaphernalia and other Product Reviews

The view from here, back home - looking north up the beach: our cabin is on the edge of the cliff a couple miles up.

Returning home and returning to our own rhythms gave me the opportunity to reflect a little on what those rhythms say about me, and what they give to me to say. (I'm still pondering and going back and forth about how to participate in/shed light on the whole current controversy over raw/veganism.)

After getting up, doing the 5 Tibetans and drinking my MSM/vitamin C/stevia drink, and writing my morning pages, I fix my rhodiola/fo-ti/reishi tea with warming spices, and fix coffee for Phil. I fix nut milk (sesame-brazil nut this time), then make my nut milk/blueberry/flax/pea protein/superfoods smoothie, and I fix bacon, egg and pancakes for Phil. Right after breakfast our first morning back, I got straight onto making bread for Phil (I still haven't gotten into the habit of wearing a mask for doing that, and I really should).

No, I don't approve of coffee. In my body, it's a terrible havoc-maker. I don't feel altogether comfortable with Phil's love of being permanently 'buzzed' either. And no, I don't feel completely good about the nitrates in the bacon, or meat in general necessarily, or all the gluten (although I do make the pancakes with a sourdough culture I started, which I think is the best way to do that).

And so it goes, three meals a day and all the other food: this dichotomy in my life. I have these very specific - recherche, perhaps, foods that I eat and herbs that I make into teas. All my meals are green at least in part, with herbs, spices and very little-to-no sugar. I very seldom eat anything cooked or processed other than by me in the Vita-Mix. I eat no animal products (except for 1% caseinate in one product I'll blog about soon, that might even be synthetic). And I'm surrounded by gluten, dairy, meat, sugar, and I play in it all the time, because that's what the people around me eat!

Am I a hypocrite, living in this paradox? What I want to say today is that it comes down to love, for me. Phil is 30 years older than me, in rude good health, more energetic than almost anyone I know, so I don't presume to think that I can 'improve' him with all my research and nutritional knowhow. Much of the meat and fish I fix for him has been wild-harvested from sustainable/renewable places, and I make sure to use the whole of the animal, out of respect. I relate to the 'cruelty' argument, but I also cannot refute the increase in spiritual connection and even compassion toward animals that I experienced for myself during my time living with chickens and goats and using their products a few years ago, and even during my brief experimentation with eating meat and fish.

So, 'ulterior harmony' - what is the underlying harmony in this picture? Today, I think it's love. But I don't claim to have the answers on the food dilemma, although I'm interested in discussing it more, sharing my perspectives, experiences and insights.

I have to go in just a minute, but I want to share some new 'teaphernalia' for corralling all those herbs that I'm always brewing up!

I picked these up before we left Oregon. On the left, a tea-straw a-la-South American mate drinking. On the right is a copco 'lily pad infuser.' The silicon mat stops liquids from draining out when you take the infuser out of the tea, and when you set it on the cup or jar...

...you can flip it over to form a seal. Great concept, but I'm not super-thrilled with it. You obviously have to have the water all the way up to the top in order for infusion to happen. I even thought it might work for Phil's coffee (we don't have a press or coffeemaker, just make it in a quart jar) but it didn't infuse at all.

As for the tea-straw, I love it! It's so well-designed - the holes are covered by a spring, which enables you to lift up the straw and released clogged material, whilst at the same time preventing anything much from getting clogged.

I used it for the first time with some rhodiola powder and a blend of lavender, chamomile, rose hips and oat straw, so it had a mixture of powders and leaves and flowers to work with. You're not in danger of burning your mouth, because the straw is too hot to touch with your hand when the water is too hot!

And the tea was excellent in taste and texture. Aside from the difficulties washing the mug out, with our lack of running water, I like having the leaves/powders circulating loosely in the tea.

What's your favorite teaphernalia?

Now that I'm home, there's no more natural food stores and no more raw treats to try out. But I did try two more in Oregon, even though my larabar experience told me that they're too much sugar for me.

I tried a 'raw revolution' bar and an 'i am strong' mini 100 calorie bar. The pictured piece is half the bar - 50 calories - it really isn't a lot of volume with those little treats!

I was tickled to see that the 'I am strong' bar was made by the 'Everything Raw' folks: I met their founder when I was cheffing in Costa Rica - he was a kitchen angel, I got to boss him around! And then I met him again when I lived in Hawaii! I loved that the first ingredient was walnuts - best omega 3-6 ratio nut, second highest in antioxidants after pecans. I didn't love that the second ingredient was agave, but I understand why. I love that it had merlin's roots elixir in it - that's quite germane to my superfoods energy bars, although of course mine are no-sugar. It tastes good, roots-y, earthy, not too sweet despite the agave.

The 'raw revolution' bar was better for me than the larabars, in terms of how my body felt with it, even though it has both agave and dates in it. Maybe the addition of flax is a good help. Delicious and good texture too.

I'm chelating, hopefully for the last time, and have to go steam.

Much love to all - and please tell me what you want to hear about!

Back Home - To Winter! TSA Pet Peeve, And Finding My Voice on Blog World Controversies...

We are home! It's good to be back, after a stressful day of packing and then a long journey. Some beautiful mountains in the distance ushered us back toward Alaska-land

Just before we landed...

Sun on the ocean - Anchorage is another of those airports like San Francisco where it looks like you're going to land in the ocean before you finally hit the runway...

It was 27 degrees when we got there! There's something about it when things get below freezing - bracing, or involuting: I'm not quite sure which. Bracing for Phil, for sure, but I generally feel the need to make like the tortoise.

The overall impression when we arrived was of impassive, impressive mountains that care not a whit about our small humanity, and of brown. Green when we left, now brown with powderings of snow. I was struck once again by the sheer improbability that I should be living here.

It was actually snowing as we drove up into the Kenai mountains - lots of fresh, powdery, beautifully chasing and tracing snow on the hills.

And then some blue sky and even a little late sun when we got home. But it's definitely time for winter precautions - long underwear top and bottom, and don't leave the door open when you step out! The 'solar oven' effect meant that the cabin was pretty warm when we got in, but by the time we'd gone in and out ferrying stuff from the truck, leaving the door open, the inside temperature dropped by 10 degrees in the space of about as many minutes.

Many of the garden plants were looking sadly frost-nipped, but many others seemed to be quite resilient. It was fun to find some good carrots -

Oh, and the larch, or tamarack, trees look just glorious. They are the only conifer that turns color in the fall:

Raspberry canes underneath them, and we actually found a surprising number of delicious, ripe raspberries still hanging on!

That was a sweet welcome home. I found the whole packing and leaving portion especially stressful, because when I first left Hawaii with Phil, the plan was to move to Oregon with the in-laws, and it didn't work out. There were still several pieces of my life (like 5 boxes of books) at the farm, and I had to deal with them again. It'll be exciting to have them here, but we have nowhere to put anything else, and it made me feel like a homeless waif with no place for my books. Again.

Despite the cold, despite the lack of running water (I was so spoiled in Oregon with warm showers every day and being able to wash dishes easily), this is home - it is our place in which we can create our lives to our best. I love being reunited with my Vita-Mix! And having the internet at home is pretty awesome too.

I'm looking forward to re-combobulating here - more on that tomorrow, but I've been feeling out of my rhythm just lately...

After cruising the garden and fixing an impromptu dinner, having Phil's daughter over and catching up with her, we started to unpack. And the TSA had left us a nice little calling card...

You can just begin to see what an awful mess they made... And I had a packet of sprouting seeds that they spilled all over everywhere, having made everything wet, so effectively ruining them...

This has to be a pet peeve of mine - if they have to go into your baggage and inspect it, they should at least leave it in the condition they found it. I have so many annoying stories of having things damaged because they generally manhandled them carelessly and didn't put things back as they were. The worst story being when I was taking some seal oil from Phil to give to someone, and they repacked everything carelessly, and the jar busted all over everyone's baggage, not just mine. That stuff smells so bad, everything that had been near it stunk irrevocably even after five washings! Grrr.

Do you have any TSA horror stories? Or advice (short of 'never pack anything unusual,' which is hard for people like us)? It just makes me feel so helpless, violated and disrespected. Thankfully, going through security was straightforward and missing the 'degrading' quality it sometimes exhibits.

A final comment, and I plan to post more on this soon: I've been catching up on some of the recent controversy surrounding raw vegans quitting the diet and going 'traditional'/'primal', etc. My head has been spinning with the information and I feel like I need to write about it, but don't even know if it's a worthwhile commitment. I feel that I have a fairly unusual perspective, having lived in Hawaii, where there were many raw-foodists, and an uncountable number of 'former vegans,' and now in Alaska, where subsistence hunting and fishing is still very common, and having been/being a raw vegan in both places. It's also unusual, maybe, that I took an excursion into experimenting with animal foods and found myself abandoning them again after about a year.  And then, the whole eating disorder challenge piece that has been so big in my life offers me some insight into and compassion for the obsessive traps that people get into when making diet into dogma. More disquieting is that some of the 'ex-vegans' cite thyroid and adrenal issues as reasons for their departure - as I've often discussed here, those are some of the issues that I'm working through too. (Phil thinks it's coincidental, but my impression is that my symptoms were at their worst when I was eating more animal products.) My current suspicion is that it's more about the sugar and cacao than about a lack of animal products, especially having dabbled in more sugar and cacao during my trip and feeling somewhat sicker again.

What would any of you like me to talk about in this?

love and kindness