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.

Winter Pictures, Kefir Woes, Giveaway Tomorrow

Happy day to everyone! I wanted to share some of the scenery with which we're being blessed around here.

Last Saturday, we went birdwatching on a beach about 15 miles north of here. We saw some unusual birds, including redwing blackbirds who have no business this far north at any time of the year!... And we got very close to this juvenile bald eagle, who was conserving energy and looking haughty. (Out of respect for the bird, we didn't try to get real close, but this is closer than I'd normally expect to be.)

Yesterday and today, we were hiking on beaches near here as the sun came up around 9.45:

Isn't that glorious? The temperatures have actually been dropping after sunrise these past few days: it seems that at night there is some cloud-cover, which warms things up, but when the sun rises and the sky clears, even though the sun is bright and beautiful, it doesn't warm things up.

Speaking of warming things up, Homer has a lot of coal: in fact, it was originally a mining town as much as a fishing town. Unfortunately, the mining out of coal seams is a big factor in the terrible erosion problems along the seashores around here now. But as you hike along the beaches, you'll often find deposits of coal, and sometimes great patches spattered with smaller coal chunks. You'll often also see 'petrified wood,' which is semi-fossilized wood that hasn't quite turned into rock or coal yet. I adore it: it's just so beautiful. Here's a huge chunk we saw this morning:

We also found a stranded jellyfish. This was about as big across as my foot. Doesn't it look just like a giant hard candy? (despite being so soft itself)

Just for fun, because I thought it looked so funny: here's a shot of our cabin after we did laundry two days ago. It's a ventilation issue, because those wet clothes represent a lot of water that needs to go somewhere...

So we opened and flapped the door periodically through the day, which cooled things down faster than you'd believe.

Now for my kefir update. Remember my very time-consuming coconut kefir-making process using Wilderness Family's coconut milk powder?

Well, between my concern over the trace of dairy in the coconut milk powder and the time-consuming factor, when we finally got home from our travels, I decided to try making water kefir for a while instead. In fact, I tried out Amanda Rose's suggestion of making water kefir, adding nettle tea and fermenting for one more day as an extra mineral boost together with the probiotics.

Well, it made wonderful tonic kefir for a few days, but then, the grains simply ceased to convert the sugar! (I was using pure evaporated cane juice.) I'm at a loss, and unfortunately, Marilyn Kefirlady, from whom I obtained the grains, hasn't been forthcoming with any suggestions as to whether I could revive them. She suggested that keeping them warm enough is very important, but every time I've gone traveling,  I've left them in the fridge while I was gone and they've bounced right back afterwards.

Meantime, I'm missing my kefir. Both the effervescent, bacteria-sour-yumminess, and the wonderfully creamy sour coconut that I used to have in the fridge. I'm missing the coconut version even more so since, for reasons I'll be talking about soon, I'm experimenting with cutting all nuts and seeds, including the chia and flax that I mostly eat (with the exception of coconut and mac nuts), down to a minimum or nothing for a little while, and when I get hungry for a snack and am not going to eat a chia cracker, coconut kefir was often a go-to item, at least when at home. So, I'm putting my hopes to the universe and my feelers out to get kefir back into my life soon!

Have you ever quit something and then really missed it?

Stay tuned for a giveaway tomorrow!
much love.