Uh Oh. Change.

I haven't posted here in months. Like...6 months? And today I decided to write about how I guess I'm not a runner.
So I went to my blog and lo! I'm no longer signed in! No problem. Hit the "Sign In" button. And here we are are! Blogger has a whole new look! And I am totally lost.
This immediately reminds me of that old nightmare people have where they go to college and their parents  move without telling them. My parents moved when I went to college. But they told me. They came and picked me up from college to help with the move.
So we pull up in front of this little house in Farmington and I walk in.

"Where's my room?" I ask.
"Uh...ha! No room for you. Dad's gonna build one in the basement. We thought you could sleep on the porch for a bit."
"No really? We live in Minnesota. It gets like, 1,000 degrees below zero in January. Might be a bit chilly out there."
"No silly! We'll have it done then."
And they did. I slept on the porch for the first summer I was home and it was lovely. Except for when it stormed. Then Mom would come bombing in there in the middle of the night, slamming all the combination windows shut.
I'll write about the not running later.

Viburnum: Doing Its Job

Cool when stuff blooms in winter. I have lived in SC for 9 years now and I don't think I'll ever get over that. Or 65 degree days in December. Or Thunderstorms in December.
Or not having to wear 9 layers to go Christmas shopping.

This is What I Have to Say

"Bob, I absolutely refuse to buy you socks for your birthday. You will simply have to come up with other ideas. If you need socks, get them yourself. They are not a luxury item."

"Taylor. It's time. Take off the grey hoodie and put this long-sleeved henley on. You are not 7 years old anymore."

And so that's what I said after my errands this morning. 

Bob's birthday is pretty much always a problem. Years ago, when he needed tools, or had something he enjoyed that needed equipment, like cross-country skiing, I would gather money from the family and splurge on something really really great that, more often than not, was able to double as a Christmas gift. Skil saws, skis, a weight bench...that kind of thing. Now what he does is publish a list that is supposed to work for both events. And inevitably that list has 5 items on it that cost between 5 and 10 dollars each. Well? No MORE! Thank goodness I didn't draw his name for Christmas! I don't know who did, but it's THEIR problem now! 

This is the first year we've drawn. The 5 of us did, $100 limit, I got Taylor. Who wants a 20" monitor for his computer...worth more than $100 but I owe him $40 for last week's Christmas bush purchase. Yes. Bush. It's not a tree. Oh sure, when it's out there on the tree farm, growing out of the ground, shaped gloriously like a Christmas tree, it looks like a Christmas tree. But once you hack off enough lower branches, and you see that it has more than one main trunk growing out of the ground? You end up saying to yourself, "darn, but if this thing isn't really a BUSH!"

Where was I?

Taylor. He wears grey hoodies all winter. Actually, fall, winter and spring. T-shirt underneath. Not a sweatshirt. Not a zip-up hoodie. Just a pull-over hoodie. Grey. He has two shades of grey. And he doesn't wash them often enough for my taste. So I am dragging him kicking and screaming into adulthood and I am buying him other warm, long-sleeved options. He didn't fuss! But then, he's not much of a fusser. I just told him he's too old to dress the same every single day. When people don't know who they are? They describe him thus: "You know...that tall brown-haired kid with the grey hoodie?"

Yup. 

So foot has been put down. 

Bragg Liquid Aminos-a new favorite product

photo from Bragg.com

So here's a product I discovered a couple of months ago and am I glad I did! I adore soy sauce. When we order Chinese food, or I make it at home, I always use a ton of the stuff. But the sodium really throws my system out of whack. First there is the night-long thirst, then there's the swelling in my fingers. It's like eating an entire large bag of potato chips by myself. It always seems to take 48 hours for the effects to wear off.

I started noticing Bragg Liquid Aminos in recipes. They would call for soy sauce or BLA. Since this product is not sold in regular grocery stores, I'd never heard of it and couldn't find it when I went looking. But I did see it at Earth Fare. I decided to try the small spray bottle. It was not cheap...about $4 or $5. But it sure has been worth it. I believe the first time I tried it I used it in a gravy recipe. The gravy (vegetarian) was fantastic, so I branched out to stir fry and now use it to spray on Chinese take-out. I fully expected it to be an "acquired taste." I figured there would be a funky aftertaste, as is the case with so many things we use as substitutes for stuff we are used to. Not the case at all with this.

The Bragg.com website reveals that liquid aminos are not their only products. They have a range of items from vinegar to olive oil to seasonings and put out a newsletter, as well.

"You are what you eat, drink, breathe, think, say and do. Take control to live a long, vital, happy life!" Patricia Bragg

The Right to Die & Being Prepared for the End of Your Life

So lately I've been recording the Dr. Oz show and watching it at my leisure. Good stuff on there most of the time. But today I watched yesterday's episode about the Right to Die debate, and it's been walking around with me ever since.

There was a woman on the show that suffers from a terminal illness and I can't really get her out of mind. Here is a clip from her part of the show. She is bound to a bed or wheelchair all of the time. She is not able to do anything at all but speak. She wants to die because she's tired of fighting for life. She doesn't seem to be in pain. She seems to have full capacity to speak her mind.

I AM a proponent of the patient's right to ask that they be allowed or assisted to die. But I wish this woman hadn't been one of the examples of someone who would use that. When I think of someone who wants to end their own life, I think of someone that is in horrendous pain. Or someone that is reliant on feeding tubes and respirators to continue living. Or both. Not someone that can still have the capacity to finish raising her children, albeit from a bed. Not someone that can help her family with important life decisions...how to deal with relationships, how to choose a college, whether to take a job or not, or even whether to wear purple socks with a red sweater. I don't think of someone with perfectly coiffed hair and the ability to communicate clearly with others without pain.

I think of someone in Montel Williams's situation. He talks about it here. And worse. (If you haven't watched "You Don't Know Jack," you really need to.)

I certainly don't want anyone to think I believe the other woman is not suffering. Clearly she is. But to me, she still has a lot to offer right now.

That said, Dr. Oz touched on another subject that is very real. He didn't spend much time on it, but that other subject is that of preparedness. No matter who you are, no matter how young or old you are, you really need to keep your affairs in order and up-to-date. You need to have a living will and you need to be sure you have the right beneficiaries set up for your assets. Recently an acquaintance of mine passed away tragically. It was discovered after his death that he never transferred his beneficiary information on his retirement benefits to his wife. Those benefits are assigned to another family member who, it appears, does not plan to turn them over to her and their children.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE for letting these details slide. NO. EXCUSE.

Two Restaurants to Try

I'm excited about two restaurants I want to try.

The first is Fern Flavors from the Garden, which is a VEGETARIAN restaurant that has opened in Charlotte! FINALLY! Their website is not built yet, but they do have a Facebook page and they have good status updates on there. Helen Schwab of the Charlotte Observer reviewed them recently here and here. They've only been open a short time. I'm not sure when we'll try them, but I know we will.

The other restaurant is Erin's Restaurant in Rock Hill. They are not vegetarian per se, but they will cater to you if you tell them you are vegetarian or vegan. However, since I have been adding the occasional fish to my meal, I have a feeling I'll feel compelled to try the Shrimp & Grits they are mentioning on their Facebook page this weekend.

So I'm excited. But we're not going to rush out this weekend. Too much other stuff going on right now. I'll take some pics and write something after I've visited.

Gardening Junket Today

Neighbor Mary and I will go another plant-buying trip today. We haven't discussed where we'll go or even when we'll leave, but it promises to be a beautiful day.

The plants I put in a couple of weeks ago are doing well. Especially now that we've gotten some considerable rainfall this past week. The two hydrangeas started wilting about 2 days after I planted them so I had to get out there and water like crazy to pull them back. We've gotten nearly done clearing the underbrush and dead limbs from the woods, so now you can see all the way through to the back of our lot. It's cool seeing the dappled sunlight come through. You can almost imagine little critters around in there. Maybe a gnome or two...

I've been thinking about composting more and more too. I'd like to develop a plan for composting our kitchen waste. We use our garbage disposal a lot for eggshells and peelings and that's a lot of water use, too. My friend Julie says she collects it in a pail under her kitchen sink and then periodically goes out, digs a hole, and buries it. Maybe we should try that. I think a rain barrel probably should be in our future, too.

Let Me Drive to Your House and Read You the Announcements

A frequent comment I get from parents is, "I didn't know about this."

It's often said in an accusatory fashion. I like to think they might be accusing their own kids of not telling them, but really I think a lot of time they are accusing me. Or, if not me personally, they are accusing the school. Of hiding information from them? Of conspiring to keep them in the dark? Of trying to lose money by setting up costly events that won't fill up because we don't tell people about them? WHAAAT???

I don't know.

Yesterday a parent asked about an event we have coming up and wanted to know if it was too late to sign her kid up. I told her yes, it is too late, all the arrangements have been made. I'm sorry.

"I didn't find out about this until the phone message last night."

"I'm sorry."

"Why didn't I know?"

"Ma'am, I'm not really sure. We sent out emails and did phone calls. We advertised on our website and did announcements within the building."

"Well, can I be notified when you do this [event] again?"

"Certainly we will do a lot of advertising when it comes around again." (which, I'm thinking, you will ignore JUST LIKE YOU DID THIS TIME!!!!)

Gardening and Sun Salutations

The leaves are just now beginning to change. Just a tiny bit. In a few short weeks it will look like this photo on the left that I took last year up in Asheville.

So now we are in the spot of time where we want to get out into the cooler weather and do some maintenance in the back yard. This weekend I went to the Charlotte Regionals Farmers Market with  my neighbor Mary and bought some plants. I bought two fairly large hydrangeas and some heuchera and lenten roses to put around in some spots. Spent some time forking over the earth and digging up the buried soaker hoses. Some of them have holes in them now and roots have grown around them. So it's a big job digging them out. We'll lay them out and patch them and the place them again in the spring. The rain we've had the past couple of weeks has made the ground easy to work and the cooler weather has made it kind of enjoyable, even if I'm doing work I don't particularly love.

Tomorrow the yoga class at school is going to tackle their first Sun Salutation flow. I've devised a simple one that yogis around the around the world use every day...no warrior poses or lunges...just pretty much standing to forward bends, lower to the floor and then back up. I asked them last Friday if they had some requests and one said she wanted a vinyasa flow. So here we go. We've done a mini sun salutation for a couple of weeks and they definitely have enjoyed that. The group seems to like having an assignment they can carry out over and over through several minutes at their own pace. They are very good at dropping into their own zones. I suspect it's because, as teachers, they are "on" all the time. Flows are nice for them because they can just focus inward, but in a directed way.

Here is the link to the mini sun sals we've done.

And here is the link to the Surya Namaskar I've modified slightly. I've added a down dog and plank after the standing half forward fold and before the chaturanga, and changed their up-dog to a cobra pose, which I encourage them to do as a mini or full cobra. I've never cared for dropping straight straight from forward fold to chaturanga. It just seems so abrupt to me.

Currant Scones

It's been a weather day here in South Carolina and when that happens on a Sunday, I'm very likely to want to spend the day in the kitchen. I already had pinto beans started in the slow cooker, so my thoughts turned to cookies or brownies.

But then I remembered that $12 bag of xanthan gum I bought this summer when I tried making gluten-free bread. Out of that bag I had used maybe 1-2 teaspoons and it peeks at me from behind all my other little specialty bags of flours whenever I open the cupboard. "You are allowing me and my expensive contents to go to waste,"  it seems to accuse.

So I pulled out another spendy ingredient...sorghum flour... and checked the back for a recipe. (I should note here that sorghum flour is also about $12 a bag, but it's not as snotty to me when I dig around in the cupboard.)

Lo and behold I had on hand all the ingredients for these gluten-free scones. Even currants!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a food processor (Use a bigger one than mine. Mine can't hold all these ingredients, so I mixed and cut in the butter by hand in a bowl) combine:

1 1/4 C GF Sorghum Flour
1/2 C Tapioca Flour
1 1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Xanthan Gum
1/4 tsp Salt
4 Tblsp Sugar

Cut in until it resembles coarse crumbs:

4 Tbsp Butter,cut into 1/2-inch slices

In another bowl, lightly beat:

1 large egg

Add:

2/3 C low-fat plain yogurt or 1/2 C non-dairy milk (like a nut or soy milk)

Pour the yogurt mixture over the flour mixture and combine, mixing only just until all the dry ingredients are wet.

Fold in:

1/3 C Currants

Drop the mixture onto an oiled cookie sheet and push into a disk about 8-10 inches in diameter and 3/4 to 1 inch tall.

Brush the top with:

2 Tblsp Milk (cow, soy or nut)

Bake 12-20 minutes, depending upon how large and tall your disk is. Just give it a light flick with your fingernail after 15 minutes. If it still seems a little squishy, give it more time.

Remove from oven and cut into 8 triangles.

Notes: Remember this a quickbread, so you really don't want to overmix the batter. That will make it tough. Also, you want that butter to stay cold in the dough until you bake, so resist the urge to mix the dough with your hands. Work with wooden spoons and work quickly and you'll be fine.

Thanks for another great recipe, Bob's Red Mill!

Oil Pulling

Image from Meijer.com

I've come across mentions of the practice of oil pulling in the past few months and decided to give it a try.

The most recent article I read was here in Elephant Journal. I had tried it for a few days last summer with sesame oil and just couldn't stick with it. This article mentions using coconut oil and I do agree that it is a bit easier on the taste buds.

There are many articles (here, here, and here are a few) about the health benefits of the practice and I'll be the first to admit that some of the claims are rather...fantastical. But essentially the idea is that the sticky oil "pulls" the toxics and bacteria away from the surfaces in your mouth. You spit out the oil and with it? The icky junk. You are supposed to do this first thing in the morning before you eat or drink or brush your teeth so that you can get all that stuff that has accumulated in there overnight. It does seem to make some sense.

It's not for the faint-hearted, though. Recommended pulling time is 15-20 minutes, but I think any amount of time you do it will be better than not doing it at all. I'm allowing a minimum of 10 minutes in the morning and, if I can keep myself occupied with lunch packing or sorting out my attire for the day, I'll go longer.

The jar cost about $9 at Harris Teeter but it won't go to waste if I give up. It's a great massage  oil (no, it doesn't smell like coconut), or conditioner for the hair and can be cooked with at moderate temps.

I'm Not a Yoga Teacher

But I've been playing one after school on Mondays. This past Monday I had only two students, but I have had 6 or 8 in other classes. I'm doing it for free. Because I think our teachers need relaxation and because it gives me someone to practice with. It's also because I'm not a teacher and I might suck. I remind them of this. I think as long as I have at least one person coming, I'll keep doing it. It's not the numbers that really matter.

It has been a bit of a challenge writing the sets. But not overwhelming. We are meeting for 45 minutes, so I'm designing sets that are a little less than half the amount of time I usually experience in my teacher's classes. I have a wide variety of people in there...some are fairly flexible and others are not at all. I worry about the ones with physical issues. What if I can't figure out stuff for them to do? But I can't worry too much. I have a teacher I can refer them to and I do that if I need to.

I think I might enjoy doing this. I'm finding myself thinking maybe one day I'll scrabble together the $$ to take yoga teacher training. Just so I can still keep giving it away.

We'll see.

The Unimaginable

"I can't leave work to come get him. His father is all the way across town and it will take a while," the mother said when the school called her. She sounded defeated and at her wit's end. Her son had walked down the hall toward his classroom, came up to another boy and punched him. Her son's behavior in school had already earned him expulsion the previous spring and now, with school only in session four weeks, he was looking at expulsion again. And possibly assault charges.

The boy will be 16 soon and when he turns 16 he may be eligible for some other programs that are geared more for children with these kinds of issues. A regular, public high school simply does not have the resources to deal with children who are violent, unmotivated, possibly gang-affiliated or otherwise too far outside the mainstream with their behavior.  At some point the school and district have to make a decision that they can no longer serve this student. The safety of the other students has to take precedence over graduation rate.

My heart breaks for this parent. And for other parents that feel like they are at the end of their rope. When you bring home that brand new, 6 lb, 13 oz little boy, you never in a million years imagine that some day you may have to give him to someone else to get him to adulthood. You never in a million years think that you may be dealing with drug issues, violence, and abuse. You never think that your child might have severe learning issues on top of that. That you may get to the point where you no longer feel safe in your own home because you are worried this child may harm you or your other children.

Accidental Rose'

If you are going to accidentally buy rose' wine, this is a pretty good one. I do that sometimes...I'll be browsing through Harris Teeter, looking at the wines and reading the ratings, and then I'll find a white or red I want to try...and I'll accidentally get something I never would have tried on purpose. I guess I just didn't notice the clear bottle and redness of the wine?

As a rule, rose' wines frustrate me. I always feel like I'm drinking watered-down kool-aid. This one grew on me.

Yup. I Remember. But Some of it I Don't.

I remember sitting at my desk in my home office. I was working for The Cleveland Company, looking out over the back deck, listening to NPR, when I got a message from my brother-in-law.

 "Are you watching this?"
"Listening on the radio," I said. "I imagine St. Paul is a mess right now."
"Not the World Trade Center in St. Paul," he said. "The one in New York!"

Not a little Cessna. Four large, passenger-bearing planes. Boeing 757s and 767s.

I hadn't been listening closely. It was a beautiful day in my neighborhood in Minneapolis. The air was pleasant, the leaves were turning, I was thinking about walking to the precinct to vote.

This past Friday Taylor said they talked in their classes about where they were when the Twin Towers were hit. These kids are all 16. They were babies then. Kindergarten...first grade. He said he didn't have a memory of that day.

"You guys didn't tell me," he said. "Why? I didn't hear about it for a couple of years."

I had no reason. No recollection of deciding to tell or not to tell. Nate would have been 11. Did we talk about it with him? I don't remember that either. I said, "Surely you had to have known something was going on. We probably had the news on all day." He didn't remember. I don't either. All I could say to him was that I didn't remember. That we may have made a conscious decision to shelter him from it. We may have intentionally kept it down low as topic of conversation. We've never really been into hiding dark things from the kids, but we might have. I just don't remember.

I remember the moments I saw it on television after Jeff told me. I remember walking to the precinct to vote and it was so quiet. Everyone at the polling place was quiet...murmuring to each other. Quietly handling bad news like all Scandinavians do.

The quiet is probably a bigger memory for me of that day and several days that followed. We lived under the flight line of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Planes had all been grounded. So there was an eerie silence for all those days.

It was also my sister Julia's 40th birthday. My brother-in-law had planned a wonderful meal out at a nice restaurant in St. Paul. He'd made reservations for our entire family. He was in Seattle and should have flown back in time for the meal. But he was stuck there. "You have to go ahead anyway," he told us. "It's her birthday."

And so we went to this restaurant, which was very empty, and we ate a fantastic meal and we talked about the day and we wished Julia a happy 40th and commiserated with her that her birthday would probably forever be marred by this national event.

I suppose everyone born on December 7 before 1941 felt that way too.

My Weekend Plans

Stay tuned....

I like Warren Buffett

 First This

Then This

The 2011-2012 School Year Has Begun!

Today was the first day of school here and it was a busy busy day. There are always kids who show up the first day that are not registered. And most of those kids arrive without a parent, so we have to call the parent to come in and register. We try to get them pre-registered in the spring, but we always end up with a dozen or so that just won't come then, and then they are surprised (and sometimes angry) that they don't have schedules. And even more surprised (and sometimes angrier) that their parent has to come.

Then we have the schedule problems to resolve. Mass scheduling, while convenient, is not a perfect science, so we end up with kids with holes in their schedules or sometimes classes on their schedules that they've already taken. If a student took a class last spring and failed it, we may not have caught it and changed their courses for this year to allow them to retake it.

We also are still registering brand new students, and I'm still taking telephone calls from parents saying they need to come register. New student registration will slow down now, but not slow to a trickle until after Labor Day. Enlightened parents will check our website, see when we start school, and get in to register before then. Other parents who are not tech savvy, or may  not even have internet access (there are still a few in Indian Land), will have no idea. Yankee families will be surprised that we've started so early. Southern families will suspect it, but may not have actually checked.

So all that is to say...it's general mayhem these days at school. But we have a fantastic new Principal, a new, fun and organized Guidance Counselor, and everyone is upbeat and ready to tackle whatever comes. It's been hard work but fun. I think this might be the best year we've had yet!

Lifestyle Changes

Everyone goes through lifestyle changes. Usually several times in their lifetime. The changes could be the result of getting married (the new spouse might have habits worth adopting), having a baby (my mom quit smoking when she was pregnant with my brother), being done having babies (I joined Weight Watchers and lost 18 pounds and totally changed my eating habits), maybe moving to a new place, or just getting older and creakier.

Four or five years ago I joined Jazzercise and learned how to dance my way to fitness and lift weights. A few years after that I hit menopause and was too worn out and achy to jazz all the time, so I started yoga. 18 months ago I stopped eating meat. Two months ago I decided to add wild-caught fish back into my diet. A month ago I stopped drinking coffee in the morning. I thought I was stopping it altogether, and, truth be told, I haven't had any at all since I stopped, but I realize I may have some in the afternoons. The plan was to just stop turning my guts inside-out with coffee on an empty stomach. Three weeks ago I stopped drinking white wine in the evenings. It made me sleepy and then kept me awake in the middle of night. And the odd bottle would give me a raging, 3-day migraine. It turns out I like sipping cool herbal tea out my wine glasses just as much. I'm sure I won't stop drinking red in the winter, though. It's warming and good for the digestive system.

But I think probably the one change I made that has made the biggest difference in my life has been acupuncture. In March I went whining to an acupuncturist because of persistent problems with my left sciatic nerve and also bursitis in my left shoulder. She had me complete a three page questionnaire about pretty every system in my body and start whittling away at each item that was out of whack.

The first thing that went was the hip and shoulder pain. Then I began to warm up. I mean, like, my feet and hands were no longer cold. I even had a few hot flashes! Then my digestive system calmed down. Finally, my depression and anxiety began to dissipate. And now my migraines are much fewer and shorter. When I started with her in March I was taking a sleep medication, anti-depressant, anti-seizure (for persistent muscle tension), migraine medication and a statin drug for high cholesterol. Today I take the statin drug only. All in five months. I have the migraine prescription but don't use it very often. I have more energy, no anxiety, very few depression symptoms at all and my digestive system is perking along just fine. I'm back to jazzercise three times a week and yoga in-between.

I know acupuncture isn't for everyone. But for me? It's really been great. And I plan to keep it up.

MargaritaPizza

MargaritaPizza, a photo by Food Fanatic on Flickr.

I'm too lazy to look now, but I'm sure I've written too much about pizza already.

Lately I've been pre-baking the crust before assembly. I've been using bread dough I keep in my fridge (from the book "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day"). I spread it out, slather it with ghee and pre-bake in a hot oven.
Top it, slide it in to finish and I'm done.