Gratitude, Story, More on the White Flag

I'm not grateful to be alive. But:
- there are numerous people for whose existence I am boundlessly grateful
- and I am grateful for all the experiences I have embodied and absorbed through my senses
- and for the stories these represent.

I'm not grateful for the unprecedented peacefulness of our era, which is apparently the case despite endless war. I believe in it, but have no way to understand it. But:
- I am grateful for the safety of my family in the Middle East
- and for the love, grace, peace, generosity so palpable in my circles of friends
- and all the stories this brings.

I'm not grateful that my scale's battery died the very day I went to give an honest weight. I'm further not grateful for the anxiety provoked by the fact that the scale and I had been quite consistent, after wild initial fluctuation; and that now, with a new battery, it's showing wild fluctuations again. But:
- I am grateful to be shown that wild fluctuations may, astonishingly, not be all me
- and I am grateful for the reminder that technology isn't always home base
- most of all, I am grateful for the story it offers.

I'm not grateful that I have to have vital signs tracked, and to have rebelled against this, and to have been out of integrity. But:
- I'm grateful that I couldn't stay out of integrity
- and I'm grateful for having the experience of returning to integrity, that waving my white flag felt like such a relief, as it set the scene for beginning to project what might come next, rather than keeping things stuck
- and I'm grateful for the story to be told here.

I'm grateful for hearts, their hugeness, their power of connecting, like the earth with its mats of roots and mycelia.

I am grateful for the brain, with its firing and subliming, more powerful than a WiFi hub.

source: http://fearofwriting.com/brain-food-for-writers.htm

And oh yes, I am grateful for guts, seat of our instincts, absorption, seed-bed of neurotransmitters that regulate our feelings, tidal in ulterior motion like the ocean, like the hidden side of the moon.

http://www.fpnotebook.com/gi/Anatomy/SmlBwlAntmy.htm

And I'm thankful for all the ways these organs connect; all the stories for which they are lenses.

Thank you.

Heading Home, Blog Interview Recalling Home, Gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'm getting ready for my long flight home, which will start late tonight.

I want to share this picture, because it's just too funny.

The guy is stealing a quiet moment to talk on his cellphone--and is in the store window tete-a-tete with the half-dressed mannequin!

So, as I prepare to wind the clock back eleven hours and return to the land of winter, I find myself full of word-shards from assorted languages, bristly with half-thunk thoughts, lots for my brain to sieve on the long journey.

My good friend Joanna Steven just published an interview I did with her almost a year ago--publication got held up because her gorgeous baby was born, but it's so interesting to see now what I was saying back then about eating healthily and high-raw in an Alaskan winter. When I'm home and decompressed, I'll prepare an update.

I don't know how I'll keep things together back home, but I seem to have behaved myself fairly well here--been helpful and fairly even-keeled. How did I manage that?

Well, I took my pills. I almost left one important bag of tiny pills behind in Anchorage and had to run back for it, and did so...

(ouch)

I prepared and shared (and ate) good food...

And I got outside every day. I love the nature here--it's so absorbingly beautiful.

I'm grateful for all these helpers, and for the ways I've helped myself, and for the wonderful opportunity to spend time with my family and see myself in context, for once.

Do you learn about yourself when you visit with your family? Do you like what you see?

A Chia-Ful Thanksgiving: Back Home, Ways of Being Our Best

Happy Thanksgiving and happy late fall! We finally got home late Wednesday evening, so yesterday was consumed with basic unpacking and re-combobulating, fixing food and socializing with family and friends.

We arrived home to a wonderful surprise. In the main room of the cabin, there is a little nook with bookshelves on one side. On the other side used to be more bookshelves, mostly taken up with sprawling stereophonic equipment. Now, instead, this: (laptop added since our arrival!)

A desk, with its own office chair and shelving unit, and that beautiful wall-hanging also! I haven't had a workspace for such a long time and it takes its toll ergonomically. I don't know if she did it singlehandedly, but Phil's daughter was the mastermind of this: what a superstar. We were already feeling grateful to be home and to have the opportunity to reconnect with friends and family, but this gave us very clear grounds for marvelous gratitude and amazement that someone should do all this for us.

As I struggled toward the end of our long trip, I talked here a few times about the need to figure out how to take care of myself in order to be my best. In a standard-diet environment, it's all too easy for me to end up underfed, with unfortunately predictable and unfortunately ugly consequences. It shouldn't be as hard as it is, but sometimes it just seems impossible! As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm backed up in my head a couple posts, some still about our time in England, and they have somewhat to do with answering this need. But since it was just Thanksgiving, I'm going to skip ahead to the almost-present!

One easiest way of taking care of things to be my best is to bring my own - make and bring plenty of good food that will be enjoyed by everyone. This is Alaska in the wintertime, and the selection of produce is not enormous. We also had only just got home, so I didn't have any lead time to prepare fancy things. So, I kept it simple, but hopefully, appetizing!

This is a salad of mandolined red delicious apples and fennel, with walnuts and pomegranate and a simple lime juice-balsamic vinegar dressing with a bit of olive oil.

This salad is spinach and watercress, with pea and lentil sprouts and avocado. The dressing, which didn't turn out exactly as I'd have liked, was half a big carrot, two tablespoons of almond butter, dash of apple cider vinegar, smoked paprika, oregano, nutritional yeast, a clove of garlic all blended together with the addition of a little salt and a little olive oil. This needs some serious tweaking! It wasn't tart enough, for one thing, and there was too much oregano.

There were all kinds of nibbles while we waited for the main spread to be ready: with apple slices and almonds available in addition to the cheese ball and shrimp, etc, even I was covered! I had a small-to-medium portion of the two above salads and nothing else on my plate for the main meal, drawing some surprise about how little was on my plate. But my appetite is pretty small really, and I can't eat much in one go. Dessert was yet to come and I still went to bed plenty full when all the courses were gone through!

Part one of the chia-ful thanksgiving:

I brought along this 'nog' to share. It was a creamy almond-sesame-brazil milk with xylitol and lecithin, with lots of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, vanilla bean, and a little turmeric for color, with two tablespoons soaked chia seeds blended in. I added a tiny bit of whisky: most people added a lot more when they drank it! It was very yummy, but next time I wouldn't use sesame. In fact, if I'd thought it out, I wouldn't have this time! It clashes with the nutmeg.

Does anyone else ever do that? Know somewhere in your brain that something won't be a good combination, but go ahead and make it, and only realize that you already knew it wouldn't be best after actually tasting it?

Next time, I also think that I'd use something other than the chia (whose seeds can be a little scratchy) for thickness - I know it's time for me to get some irish moss to try soon.

Part two of the chia-ful cheer: raw, no-sugar pecan pie. It's the right-most pie in the spread below at our friends' home.

The crust was golden flax meal, pecans, shredded coconut (about a cup of coconut and half a cup each of flax and pecans), 2 tablespoons xylitol, cinnamon, a little water, coconut oil. The filling was two cups of chia-sweet (chia gel made with stevia and spices: in this case, cinnamon and ginger) and a cup of soaked pecans. Really got the Vita-Mix working with that! Added some lecithin, xylitol, some more spices. A soft, puddingy kind of texture that didn't ooze too much at room temperature. I thought it worked quite well.

We brought lots of after dinner mints but I also made a batch of my own peppermint bark with some chocolate flavor extract in it.

It's a half batch, still with its odd whitish sheen from setting up in the freezer. No one else even tasted it, they were too busy with the chocolates, but I was glad to have a nibble too, although it wasn't the best I've ever made it. A little too much chocolate extract and too little peppermint.

I feel like I've been pretty critical of what I fixed for yesterday: a lot of things didn't turn out exactly as I'd have liked. And of course, most things I was 'winging,' as always. But I think that considering we'd only just gotten home the night before, it was an ok success story. Mostly, I'm grateful to have such understanding friends and family, and to get to spend such good quality times with them.

Can you let it go when you prepare something and it doesn't turn out just right? Happy winter weekend to all!