Random, etc.

Part I: The Random

I don't have anything planned as far as writing today, so I'm going to subject the few poor souls who read this to a little 'free association,' and just write whatever comes to my head - and there are reasons for this.  They're mostly selfish reasons, but here goes:

1. Because on Tuesday (or was it Monday?) I didn't take the time to write, not in my journal, not a blog post, nothing.  I think I just posted something I had written already and saved the previous week.  And I noticed something.  All day, the only thing I wanted to do was call my mom and try as I might, I couldn't get in touch with her.  I was a little despondent...I was bored, I realized, despite being busy.  I guess I had too many half-finished thoughts bouncing around in my head without an outlet.  On the days when I do write something, that doesn't happen.

2. Because I'm trying very earnestly to do this blogging thing consistently.  I'm not very good at sticking with something once I've started (as evidenced by the early archives of this blog as well as the myriad books I've never finished reading).

Usually I try to think ahead of time about what I'm going to share with the world wide web, because very few people should be exposed to the wilderness inside my head.  It's a place where the wind almost always blows - kind of like here, on top of the mesa, and over the train tracks down below - and sometimes, the laws of gravity don't quite work, and once in awhile, I have very convenient ninja skills.  Nevertheless, in the spirit of Christmas, I think it's only appropriate to deal out some unprepared, unfiltered disorganization.  Because I, for one, have spent much too much energy this month trying to be organized.

Part II: The etc.

On that note - no, wait, on both of those notes, I am currently packing in preparation to make our trek far away from Far Away.  In other words, we're going home.  At last.  I can't tell you just how long this week has seemed, nor how excited we are.  What I don't know is whether or not I'll have any time for blogging, but I'll try.  If nothing else, I'll take lots of pictures and think up scads of posts that I will probably never post.  Great promise right?

I would go on to share with you more of those ricocheting words, but I am now on borrowed time.  Nap time is over and soup-making time is about to commence.  This post probably did not enrich anybody's life except for mine, but if you read it, thank you.  And I really, really hope that you're having a good day.  Really.

Love,
Me :)

How to Use a Baby Swing

Ever since she became mobile, this girl has been teaching us to look at, and approach things in a whole new way.

More than once, I've turned around with my hands buried in dishwater to see her attempting yet another daring feat of acrobatics, centered around her swing.

The most amazing thing is that she has yet to lose her balance and find herself on the kitchen floor with a large goose egg.

It's becoming clear that we have a girl of many talents, not the least of which is keeping her parents entertained. :)

Things That Really Matter

Yesterday, someone referred me to a letter written to the public and posted on the internet regarding a statement that a well-known celebrity recently made.  The letter was brief, sarcastic, and has so far incited over two thousand comments.  While skimming through the first few of those comments, I had a nauseating realization.

My natural inclination was to reply directly to some of the responses I saw, but by the wording in many of them, I decided that the writers might be too worked up to take the things I wanted to say as anything but an insult.  Furthermore, those things would have taken a long time to write and I didn't think that would be smiled upon either.  So I'm writing some of them here.  I know that only a handful of people read my blog, at best, but I have to say something.  I have to react to this, because it's my world, too, and more specifically my country, that is reflected in that long line of discussion.

When, I wondered, did we become a society so set on violence?  When did it become so repulsive for anyone to express an opinion that is in any way contrary to our own?  Why is it that so many people, upon reading something that doesn't reflect their own views exactly, feel inclined to respond with as much venom as they can project?  I quickly lost count of the epithets, both toward the author of the letter, the subject, and toward others who had left their comments.

One highly unpopular comment following this particular document stated that "our society, as a whole, has fallen..."  If that's so, I think I can see why.  People were so up in arms about this letter and the resulting discussion that they were striking at each other in any way they could.  I don't think I've ever met a person who would look another human being in the eye and say to him or her anything of the repulsive, hateful nature of these comments.  And yet, there they were, spitting fire at complete strangers over the internet.  They might have been saying those things to their best friends or grandmothers, for all they knew.

It's not just this incident, either.  I've begun to notice that almost any article, blog post, etc. that 'goes viral' like this one, is followed by comment after comment of people jumping down one another's throats.  What is wrong with us?  Do we so thoroughly despise our neighbors?  Both among those who do and those who don't believe that we are all the children of one God, I did not imagine that we could put so little premium on the lives or feelings of others.  We are not our opinions.  We are children of God, brothers and sisters.

I know there isn't much rhyme or reason to this post.  For that, I apologize.  I was surprised to realize how upset I was at reading the letter and comments, and I had to get some of that out of my system.  So here it is, along with one final thought:  I mentioned that the letter that sparked the whole discussion was highly sarcastic.  During my time in anatomy labs and physiology lectures, it was easy to see the common thread between words like 'sarcoplasm,' and 'sarcomere.'  Just about any word containing that 'sarc' refers to muscles, flesh.  Combined with the '-asm', the meaning of the word becomes, 'to tear flesh.'  Whether or not the letter's author was right in his views, the manner in which his letter was written invited more vindictive words to follow.  It's almost Christmas, for goodness sake.  Surely the rush of adrenaline and the surge of anger that comes from attacking and being attacked cannot be worth the peace they cost us.

I know I probably sound rather high and mighty, to be writing this way.  I don't mean to be.  I recognize that my own tendency toward sarcasm is stronger and more evident than it ought to be.  Perhaps my little token of peace on earth and my gift to the gentle and loving Savior whom I commemorate this season, can be to temper those habits that hurt.  When I open my mouth, put pen to paper, or reach for my keyboard, may my words be kind.

Christmas Rhymes: A Rant

OK, I know that pretty much everything I've posted this month condemns me as a miserly Scrooge-y, grinch-y type, and I know that this won't help my case, but I just have to say something about it.  Publicly.  Because that makes all kinds of sense.

Right, so during the last few years, I've started paying closer attention to Christmas songs, and there is one rhyme that almost EVERYONE uses that has never sat quite right with me: 'mild' and 'child.'  I have a bone to pick with that rhyme and pretty much every song that uses it.

First off, many of said songs describe the newborn baby Jesus as 'mild.'  I really don't think that he is ever described biblically as being 'mild.'  In the King James Version, at least, it doesn't happen.  It just alliterates nicely with 'meek.'  Secondly, according to my dictionary, 'mild' means "gentle or kind in disposition or behavior."  Very well, touche.  That description probably does fit Jesus very well in the Christmas story, but then again, what newborn couldn't be described that way???

Secondly, and this includes the lyricists who have described Mary and/or Joseph this way, what ever happened to creativity?  I thought that was what poetry was all about!  How about 'smiled,' 'un/defiled,' 'un/beguiled,' 'riled' 'piled,' 'exiled,' or 'trialed'?  Yes, most of them are probably not as clear cut as 'mild' and 'child,' but you could work them in, right?  If you wanted to get really crazy with it, 'filed,' 'wild,' or 'dialed' would also work.  Or here's an idea - don't use 'mild' or 'child' at the end of a line at all.  I can't stop applauding whoever wrote 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing,' for rhyming 'mild' with 'reconciled.'  *Looking it up...*  Charles Wesley - bravo, well done, sir!

Alright, alright.  I don't mean to be irreverent here and despite all I've said, I really don't mean to be a Scrooge.  I love Christmas songs, and particularly Christmas hymns.  I love the message that they relate and I love to sing and hear them again and again and again.  I'm just writing this for any up and coming poets who might happen to read my blog and are planning to write the next classic Christmas song, to let them know that this caroler is ready to celebrate the season with some new rhymes.

Blah, Blah, Blog

Some days, I ask myself, 'What exactly is a blog?  And what on earth should I write on it?'

Sometimes, I answer that a blog - this blog, at least - is my forum for using big words.

I've heard a lot of people mention, lately, how blogs and social media are often used to post our best selves online, and I think, 'Oh, is that what I was supposed to be doing?'  Because it seems like most my posts go something like this: 'wow, today was crazy/hard/non-productive...but that's OK.  I'm happy anyway.'

Other times, I'm convinced that a blog is really just a public, online scrapbook, so that I can post pictures for my friends and family to see how cute my baby is.  But as far as that goes, I've discovered that I am definitely not a photographer.  Maybe someday, but not today.

If lots of people read my blog consistently and I were a really, really, really good cook, I could post a new, fantastic recipe every day.  For awhile, cooking blogs composed the majority of my recreational reading.  Nevertheless, I'm not cut out for that either.

I could post about my opinions, because I'm very opinionated, but I'm not always up for the incendiary comments that follow those types of posts.  I could post about the books I read, but I am a notoriously slow reader.

Sometimes, my head is full to bursting with things that I want to write and post...but sometimes, it just comes out like this.  None of the above.  :)

Where are you, Christmas?

Christmas this year is kind of a first, in some ways.  It's the third I'll have spent with my husband, but the first in which the pressure has really been on my shoulders to 'make Christmas happen.'  For our first Christmas, we were living a mere twenty minutes from my in-laws' and about an hour from my parents' home, so while I did my best to come up with pajamas for the two of us and a little something to place under the tree for my husband, our frequent visits to both families made up for the atmosphere that our little apartment lacked.  On top of that, we were both attending school and were working, so our workplaces and the campus also contributed to the yuletide ambiance.

This time last year, I was about thirty-eight weeks pregnant, was working full-time and had just finished a grueling semester of hybrid schooling (part online, part face-to-face).  Ben was working full-time too, so in the midst of our business, although we were constantly looking for Christmas stories to read and gifts to wrap, and although we even took the time to thread thousands of pieces of popcorn onto a length of fishing line, Christmas was largely overshadowed by the fast-approaching arrival of our first child.

This year, all of that is different.  We live too far away to borrow Christmas from our families.  I am not working outside of my home, so I haven't enjoyed any of the seasonal rituals kept by most or many employers.  And finally, I am awaiting no enormous and palpably life-changing event to take my mind off of Christmas itself.  I found myself asking, as we raised our wiry tree, 'why don't I feel Christmas-y yet?'  I was singing right along with Cindy Lou Who.

I found the feeling I was looking for, of all places, in Walmart.  The store was crowded beyond belief and, unable to find that item that I just had to have (I know, I know), I was just about to have a meltdown.  I've since decided that, along with store greeters, Walmart should invest in store psychologists for just such episodes.  I can't be the only one, right?  Luckily, I had something better.  As I was weaving my way down the crowded baking aisle, no doubt looking murderous, my husband found me.  He listened sympathetically to my woes, put an arm around me and took the crying girl (because who wouldn't be indignant at being told that they mustn't stand, facing backward in the seat of a grocery cart?  Yes, she was wearing the seat belt) from my cart.

Somewhere between then and the manic check-out lines, I felt a little change of heart, or maybe the change of seasons finally registered with my heart.  Leaving the store, and still feeling somewhat like a train wreck, I realized that it now felt like Christmastime.  Yes, of course, Christmas doesn't come from a store - yes, Christmas is indeed a little bit more.  Doctor Seuss and his Hollywood followers taught all of us well.  Nevertheless, it's one thing to accept mentally and another thing to internalize it, and I guess it's something I have to do a little bit each year.  I've come to the half-solid conclusion that the bustling store did the trick because it provided the atmosphere, complete with cheap decorations and cheesy holiday tunes that I would never allow on my Pandora Christmas station, that I was lacking.

What is the message I am sending here?  That Christmas will never be complete without commercialism?  No.  That's not my intention, anyway.  The gaudy ornaments and overflowing toy aisles don't make Christmas what it is, but I wonder if the throngs of people all flocking to that crazy supermarket for the same purpose as I was - in preparation for a common and well-loved celebration - do.  Maybe the mayhem of thousands of people all seeking to bring their families together for Christmas brought it to life for me.

A Gentle Hum

It begins with a 'click' and from the far side of my house, our propane furnace kicks into action.  Often, that's my signal to get up from wherever I am - if I'm already sitting down - and to find a nice, cozy bit of carpet or linoleum, just beside a heater vent.  The hum of warm air that follows, rising through the vents, is usually accompanied by a soft metallic 'clang, clang, clang.'  That's partially due to the fact that someone has discovered that not all of the vent misers are attached to the floor, and that the holes she exposes by removing them are great for stowing her favorite toys, such as padlocks, pens and socks.  Consequently, bits and pieces have begun to go missing, leaving some remaining parts loose.  The passing air easily rattles them.

Ben says that we should get the grates fixed so that the sound will go away.  He's begun to devise clever ways of stilling the flaps on his own.  I don't think I would mind the absence of the noise, but I don't mind its presence either.  I love to be warm in the winter.  Who doesn't, right?  And the sound of the miser flaps clapping to the warm air has begun to register in my mind as a comfort, just like warm milk, favorite songs, a familiar sweater, or the heat itself.

I had to take a moment, earlier today, to remind myself that the end of November doesn't have to mean the end of giving thanks.  In fact, it really shouldn't.  The wintry cold hit our house the week after Thanksgiving, whereas before it had been pretty mild.  If we had come so far south hoping to escape frigid winters, we would be feeling sorely disappointed right now.  And although I was grateful for those vents - a luxury we didn't enjoy in our last home - and for the heat that comes up through them a week ago, I feel doubly so now.

Wild Running

When I was in college, I was crazy about running.  I was never a very good athlete, certainly never good enough to participate on a college team, but it was my escape and I loved it.  As my schedule became more demanding, I began to wake up at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning to get my daily exercise, winter or summer, rain or snow or clear sky.  I found that there was something oddly enchanting about the silent, frosty mornings that I met between November and March.

It's been years since I had that routine.  I'm discovering that one of the most puzzling challenges raising a very young child is finding a way to exercise in the winter.  Fed up with the handful of cheesy televised workouts through which I usually rotate, I decided, this morning, to attempt to recover the daily ritual that was so dear to me a few years ago.

I have to admit that I'm not in the shape I once was.  My legs aren't accustomed to carrying me the way they did before and when I was doing this sort of thing every morning, my lungs didn't mind it.  Now the jolt of the cold alongside the increased demands of my muscles awakens the usually-dormant exercise-induced asthma, limiting how far I can push myself.

Nevertheless, as I pushed myself around and around the track - a far cry from the mountain trails and twisting streets I used to chase - covered from head to ankles to reddened knuckles with layers of fabric, the enchantment returned.  I had the clear, cold stars all to myself and from my ear buds, music kept time with my steps.

I'm not saying that I recommend this routine.  I'm not entirely sure that I'll be willing to drive myself to do it again soon, but there is something unique about it, and beautiful.  There's some element of insanity and some feeling of power, even as I'm all but shivering between sweat and wintry cold.  And the music is...exquisite.  Running out there on my own reminded me of a passion for music that I had long since forgotten.  The cold, the dark, the solitude, the movement or the wildness - or maybe a combination of all of them - gives the music a whole new dimension.

   

Curry Fry

Once upon a time, I was making stir-fry, and I had a thought.  It went like this: I'm using about 1/4 cup of soy sauce and just as much brown sugar for this meal...for two people.  That's a lot of salt and sugar per serving.  Since then I've been trying to style my Asian-inspired foods after curry, rather than regular stir-fry.

Usually, I'm very good at over-steaming my vegetables so that the result is somewhat...gray.  Ugh.  The following was a lovely success.  I wouldn't go so far as to call it curry, as I don't keep things like coconut milk around, but maybe 'curry fry' would be an appropriate name.

Ingredients:

 - 3/4 cup of brown rice

 - 1 1/2-1 3/4 cups water

 - 1 tsp butter

 - pinch of salt

 - 1 large carrot, chopped

 - 1/2 large onion, wedged

 - 1/2 cup of frozen peas

 - 1/2-1 cup of pumpkin, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes (remember my nativity pumpkin?)

 - 1-2 Tbsp oil

 - 1/2 tsp garlic

 - salt & pepper to taste

- 1/2 cup of chicken broth or 1/2 cup water + chicken boullion

 - 1 Tbsp cornstarch

 - 1 tsp curry powder

 - 1/4 tsp ginger powder

 - 1/8 tsp mustard powder

 - shot of soy sauce

 - teeny tiny dash of red pepper, if you like it spicy

Prep:

1. Combine water, salt, butter and rice and prepare per package instructions (mine cooked for 45 minutes).

2. Heat oil in a frying pan and add onion and carrot.  Toss until coated and slightly softened.  Add peas, pumpkin, garlic, salt, pepper and 1/2(ish) cups water.  Decrease heat, cover, and let steam - and be careful.  That pumpkin and carrot will absolutely LOVE to adhere to the bottom of your pan.

3. While veggies are steaming, combine water/broth, boullion, cornstarch, curry, ginger, mustard, soy sauce and red pepper.  Whisk together until smooth.

4. When the water has all evaporated and the vegetables are soft, turn the heat up a little and add the sauce (cornstarch mixture).  Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon until the sauce thickens and begin to bubble.  Remove from heat.

Serve curry fry on top of rice.

*Only after the fact did it occur to me that it might have been very very yummy to crush some fennel seeds and saute and steam them with the vegetables.  If anyone tries this before I get the chance, please let me know how it goes!*

And here's a picture of my helper. :)

December Evening

Happiness is...

The girl who sits in my kitchen

at the edge of the light,

wearing the banana I sliced for her

on her fingers and face,

only a window away from new snow.

Changing Seasons

Nativity pumpkin...hehe...

Halloween ran away from us before I could really, properly celebrate...so here I was, in early December, with the little pumpkin I'd gotten for carving still on my kitchen table.  And let's not forget the two-dollar cleaning and carving kit I'd splurged on.  That was still in the cabinet, where it had been waiting for two months.

So we carved our pumpkin, really only a month an a few days overdue.  Somehow, Halloween seems much longer ago than that and I'm not precisely sure why, but I think that time moves so much more quickly around this time of the year.  I can only base that hypothesis on something I've never confessed to anyone, except maybe my husband...maybe.

In my mind's eye, I see the months of the year like blocks in an oblong loop of sidewalk, moving clockwise.  From about mid-May to mid-September is one long, straight portion and the other goes from January through April, so there's not much of a corner at the spring-summer end of the loop, but on this end, it curves from September to the end of December.

I don't know what came first in my mind - the idea that this season is a bend in the calendar or the feeling of constant, rapid change, but they exist together in my head and have been that way for as long as I can remember.  So there you go, thought of the day.  Nothing profound, but it's a little insight into my own personal weirdness. :)

Lovely Nonsense

Someone decided to help me blog today, so I decided to let her.                        

/g jK VGBNHTYJU7
GH1   hJNVVVRF





'1

Usually she only wants to push keys like 'alt,' 'ins,' 'F11,' or the keys that will change the language on my computer to Hebrew, so this is kind of a special treat, just so you know. :)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...?

I'm coming to a daunting realization about motherhood (yes - another one!), and that is that Christmas is largely my responsibility now.  As a 'stay-at-home mom,' it is up to me to get Christmas wrapping, Christmas Eve pajamas, stocking stuffers, and everything that Santa will leave under the tree.  In addition, any Christmas cookies, fudge, or other goodies are also up to me to provide.  I say everything, but that isn't quite fair.  It's more like 90%.

The other day, as I wove my way through Walmart crowds and sparkly red and green displays, I found myself complaining aloud to my husband.  "No one told me this about motherhood!"  Yes, I had fully expected to get spit-up, boogers, poop and every other bodily fluid or goop on my hands, face and clothes (and those expectations have been realized, I assure you).  I anticipated long, sleepless nights of taming wiggles and banishing nightmares.  I was amply warned about the perpetual messes I would spend my days chasing from one end of the house to the other.  But no one told me that the magic that my kids will anticipate all year round, the magic that is Santa Claus, would  be mostly mine to forge.

In the midst of all of this, I also heard a little voice in my head, reminding me that I've only got one child, and she isn't old enough yet to know what a present is, or to care.  If I'm stressing now, am I ever in trouble!

And then, there was last night, as we raised our Christmas tree, our modest little shrine to the season.  Taking the advice of many blogs and magazines we'd found online, we began to decorate by putting the more fragile ornaments up top, and the ones that could stand a little almost-toddler investigation down low.  As I hung little stuffed Santas, felt candy canes, and bulbous silver jingle bells on the lower plastic boughs, Addie decided to pitch in, removing each ornament as soon as I had moved on to the next.

I realized that if I can focus on those little things, the memories and photographs of my almost-year-old's first real Christmas (last year didn't count), somehow all of this manic buying, baking, planning and wrapping will all make so much more sense.  It's a thought that's made it into my mind, but I haven't fully internalized it yet.  Maybe that's what I'll focus on this month.

Goodness - and I thought I had already learned that Christmas isn't about what's under the tree.  I guess I have a lot to discover yet.

Happiness

Last night, I had laundry to fold and Ben had things to do on the computer that were not really conducive to family time, so in a rather non-creative attempt to make it a family activity, we put on Les Miserables (1998? version), one of my favorite movies.  To me it's very much a humanist story, about the potential in every person and about the ability of the Atonement of Christ to transform us.

In all of the reflecting I've gotten to do this past month and in all of the fond memories I've found, I've also stumbled across some memories of which I'm anything but proud.  Growing up, I always knew that I was the 'difficult' child, and truly I was a piece of work.  As a teenager, I didn't sow my wild oats in the way many other teens do, but it wasn't exactly smooth sailing.  As I transitioned to adulthood, I could feel myself growing tremendously in some aspects, but I also experienced some of the most turbulent times of my life.

I've spent a lot of time looking back on those years and on the people I knew then, wondering, 'why wasn't I as good or kind or [insert virtue] as [insert name - probably your own if I've ever known you ;)]?'  Yes, I know that everyone has their own challenges, and I know that many of the people who knew me growing up, found it hard to believe that I could ever be out of line.  Nevertheless, I know my faults very well, and have known them for a long time and, like many people, I'm a harsh critic when it comes to my shortcomings.  But as I listened to the Bishop admonish Valjean, "Now don't forget, don't ever forget you've promised to become a new man," and then watched his subsequent transformation, I remembered all over again, the peace.

I remembered that, because of the tremendous gift that my Savior has given to me, and to each of us, I can let go of my regrets.  I can let go of the moments - so many of them - which I destroyed in passing.  I need not relive the unkind things I've said or done, my vanity, or my impatience.  Thanks to that gift, I am able to stop ruing that I never was the person I wanted to be, and instead can focus on becoming the person I want to be now.

This may be my last post before Thanksgiving.  In all my efforts to express gratitude this month, I will have failed if I do not acknowledge this most important thing: that every good thing - yes, every good thing in my life has come to me and comes to me still, by way of my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I too seldom mention it, but I must do it now.  His was the supreme and all encompassing gift and more than anything in my life or anything I have power to comprehend, I am grateful for that.  It has taken years for me to begin to understand what the apostle John meant, in saying that "We love Him, because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19, KJV).

I do love Him.  I am glad for the words of prophets, ancient and modern, that testify of Him, so much more powerfully than I can do.  And I am grateful for those moments of clarity, when the 'thank-you's come like a heartbeat, not for His sake, but for mine.  When I feel truly grateful to Him, it is my sustenance, and it flows over.  And that is true happiness.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Remembering

Today, I am fondly remembering.

I'm thinking about the trails that used to take me high above campus and above the vast valley when I was in college.  I'm thinking about the road that took me through canyons and farmland (which is kind of like over the river and through the woods) to my grandparents' home.  I'm thinking of the job that I once worked in a shoe store (my friends all laughed about it then, as I used to go to great lengths to avoid wearing shoes) and about the people who made it a wonderful time.

And, sitting on my bed, on the quilt that my mother-in-law lovingly stitched together as a wedding present for us, I'm remembering the home that was ours six months ago.  I'm remembering a morning when I smoothed this quilt over this bed and a strange thought popped into my head.  Someday, I realized, I'll look back on this time, and it will be a sweet, pleasant memory.

The thought seemed a little strange, because I was attempting to wade through my last semester of school online.  I was becoming very proficient at single-handedly (and I mean that literally) filling page after page with research and reports.  I was learning to care for a new baby, having started the semester when she was less than a month old.  Our house was warmed only in one room by an enormous, propane-powered space heater.  I had passed many an hour pecking away at one assignment or another, or nursing, with cold, cold, cold feet, willing that heater to roar to life (which really was an impressive sight) while temperatures outside dipped and dived below zero.

Yet when I stopped to think about it, it was not hard to imagine the whole semester as a happy memory.  And it is.  I would not do it over again, given the choice, but I love the hours I got to spend with our little Cricket, watching her wake up from naps, giving her baths in the kitchen sink, and having her fall asleep on my lap while I typed.  I still pine for the view from our kitchen window that I enjoyed while doing the dishes.  I even faintly miss the feeling of pulling together my research into a paper and compiling my APA-formatted bibliography at the end.

The view from our kitchen window.

Now, it's just as easy to see this chapter of my life, even with its uglier days, as a happy memory in the making.  I'm grateful for all of the things I have to look back on.  I'm grateful for pleasant and happy memories, not to live in, but certainly as a place from which to leap - especially on difficult days when I need a pick-me-up.  I think that we have memories for a reason and I believe that this is one of them.
So, sitting here, surrounded by the aftermath of our second (glorious!) snowfall on this little mesa, I'm watching blue and gray battle to color the sky, and personally, I'm rooting for gray this time.  I probably will forget this precise moment and even this morning, but I will not forget the period of time that is now being formed, the tapestry of which today is a thread.  And, the way I figure, I will never have to look back on my life and regret the way I lived it, so long as I can look back, and shamelessly and fondly remember.

A Not-Quite Fruitless Day

Happiness is...

A long road, flanked with junipers,
with a warm home at one end
and an adventure at the other,

the sounds of patti-cake coming from the back seat,
Handel's 'Messiah,'

and the rain at our heels.

Home and Homesickness

If I wake up early, sometimes I'll see horses wandering through my backyard.

It's one of the very unique charms of this place.  Free-range horses are not uncommon and we're constantly dodging piles of manure on the roads (I should mention that I rather like the smell of manure...in some strange way...  I'm not describing what I see to be a bad thing, in other words).

We spent this weekend with my in-laws who took the time to visit us, and took time to really explore the place where we live.  We finally ventured out to the scenic desert, and were pleasantly surprised.  Ben and I kept stopping to look at the sky.  We've seldom seen one so...big.  Deep.

The communities around here have also been celebrating Native American Heritage Month, so while we were exploring, we also had the chance to attend some cultural celebrations and demonstrations.  I find myself growing fond of the rich heritage that is tied to this land.  It's beautiful and I loved feeling saturated with it this weekend.

It's amazing to me, that I can so dearly love this new home and be so homesick at the same time (no one told me that it could ache like this either!).  I'm grateful to be here and to be learning.  And I'm grateful to have another home to welcome us as the holidays draw near.

Life and Poetry...

Yesterday was, well, stressful.  It was a Monday on which I woke up to a very long to-do list, without a really solid plan about how I was going to attack and conquer said list.  I tend to be an anxious person, to let stress get inside me and gnaw at my nerves, and I'm sure that my blood pressure was a little above where it should have been.  The worst part was that I couldn't seem to put my finger directly on the problem.  It's like there was something in the air that was forcing me to live on the verge of an emotional sneeze.  Not a good feeling.

Yet, as I whittled away at my list of things to do, managing to wedge in just a little bit of me-time during the (glorious) afternoon nap, I found myself approaching evening.  We were having company over for supper and my husband arrived home early to help me get ready.  A mere forty minutes beforehand, I finally began to throw together a soup and found out, to my surprise, that I felt...happy.  It was like a warm, fuzzy, almost euphoric quality had made its way into my day and had just been waiting there to be recognized.

I have noticed in the past year or so that those moments happen quite frequently.  As my own, somewhat scientifically-minded, overbearing psychoanalyst, my natural reaction is to go back through everything that was said and done throughout the day to pinprick the exact cause that brought about this feeling of peace.  Often, I can do it, but there are also quite a few days, like yesterday, when I can't.  More importantly, I can sometimes quell the 'why?' and 'what happened?' questions, to simply enjoy the sensation.

It took me back to a beautiful, gray day, toward the end of my fourth semester of college.  I was doing well in my classes and I had recently been accepted to the program that would carry me through the next two years of school.  It had been a season of self-discovery for me.  That was the time when I had learned that I could decide to be happy, and I had been.  As wildly happy as I knew how to be.  And yet...that anxiety hung over me like a cloud.

I had gotten the opportunity to spend the semester studying a variety of things unrelated to my major, among them, the works of Pope, Johnson, Shelly and Keats, and loved every minute of it.  But on that steely-gray day, crossing the campus, I found myself thinking, your life isn't a novel.  It's not a poem.  You've got to grow up.  This is the way life really feels and it's time to get used to that.

I was wrong.  It has taken me all of the years between then and now to begin to see the cadences to which life flows, the lovely words that lie beneath breaths and between sunsets, and the repetitive phrases that make sense of heartbeats and heartbreak.  Life is poetry, though sometimes it's difficult to find and keep the rhythm.  Someday, I might revisit this thought, to explain what made the difference in my perspective and how I discovered what I now know, but for today, this much is sufficient.  

Looking back at that moment of confusion, I'm so grateful that I was wrong.

Mommyhood

The other day, I was in the library and instead of just checking out the handful of board books for storytime, I decided to allow myself a (tragically) rare privilege, and began to browse the adult fiction section for a relaxing mommy-book to read.  I have to admit that these days, despite my best efforts, I don't get through a lot of books.  Furthermore, I have several at my house that I haven't finished and I have been pretty disciplined about not getting more from the library to further slow my efforts to read those.  But I was in the mood for something else.  I was ready to allow myself to forget about all of the books that had come to my living room from a variety of 50 cent or 10 cent book sales for a few days.  (You would think that after accumulating so many books, I'd learn to curb my book-owning fetish or something...)

Our library is small and has little variety to offer, but there are several books there that I haven't heard of before and several more that I've always seen and often considered reading, but have never taken the chance.  I was browsing the titles arrayed before me, my daughter balanced on my hip, just far enough from the shelves that the books were beyond her reach.  Eventually, she turned away from the display shelves and nuzzled her face into my arm.  And then sunk her teeth into my shoulder.

I was somewhere between indignant and laughter and spent the rest of my short browsing time with my free hand protecting my shoulder from those little teeth and scolding unconvincingly through my own giggles.  In a lot of ways, motherhood has made me ridiculous.  Every time I watch a video I've taken of Addie doing something cute, I hear my own voice from behind the camera and think there's no way my voice is that high.  Or annoying.

And then there are those moments when life hands me a laugh while reminding me, at the same time, that I may not be quite as proficient at this mother-thing as I think I am.  At church a few weeks ago, on older lady turned to me and said, "You remind me of me when I had my first baby.  I was twenty-eight and I had no idea how to handle a baby."  I did not miss the implied 'just like you' and the end there.  I guess I'm something of an awkward mom.  I can't count the times that I've wished that I had a third hand to keep a diaper change contained or to manage holding a baby and getting my work done at the same time.

Let me share a final depiction of my motherly dignity:

After attacking a runny nose with a length of the dreaded toilet paper, I tried to explain to Addie why I was being so cruel.  "You see, there's just that booger sitting there, calling out to me, saying 'Mom!  Mom, come clean me up!  Don't leave me here sitting in Addie's nose.'"

From the kitchen, my husband, who I didn't think was listening, asked, "Boogers call you Mom?"  Yes.  Boogers call me mom.  At least they do if they are my baby's.

So today I'm taking a few minutes to be grateful for the chance to be my daughter's mom, even though it makes me look and sound ridiculous, cuts into my productivity, decreases the number of books I read and the number of days on which I actually do my hair.  At the end of the day, all of that is a small price to pay and I'm grateful that I get to pay it.

I know that not every woman is blessed to be a mother and not every mother is blessed to have a supportive father by her side to allow her to enjoy these little moments.  I am trying to remember these things, especially on the days when she won't let me get anything done because everything interesting happens to exist around the level of my waist or higher, or on the days when it's hard to sit down without seeing finding dirty dishes or unfolded laundry materialize in front of me.  All of this exists for my girl, for the sake of creating a safe and pleasant place for her to call home.  I am glad to be at the heart of it.

Cliches

I've noticed lately, that I'm a sucker for cliches.  I do love sunsets, rainbows and the smell of rain.  I've never really had a chance to spend a lot of time on a seashore.  All of the beaches of my childhood were perpetually jammed with tourists and I was more interested in finding seashells or swimming than weaving through the masses, but I'm sure that I would more than like taking long walks on the beach, if I had the chance.  I can go through Maria's list of favorite things, and heartily agree with every one of them.  Well, I think so.  I really have no idea what 'schnitzel with noodles' is.  Oh wait - according to Wikipedia it's a thinned, boneless meat, breaded and fried, essentially.  OK, then, schnitzel with noodles probably wouldn't make my list of favorite things, but it sounds pleasant enough.

When I was a teenager, I came up with a theory that cliches come about for one of two reasons (mind you, I have yet to reevaluate this from my adult and semi-mature perspective to see if it really holds water, but here it is).  The first possibility is that people just have too little imagination.  They heard or saw or tasted something somewhere, it agreed with them, and, voila!  A cliche is born...again and again and again.

The second possibility is simply that the original - the stars on a clear night, the smell of cinnamon, the laughter of children - really is something inherently beautiful, meaningful or fascinating.  Maybe something about them communicates with us on a level that surpasses our physical senses because of who and what we are.  If there is any truth to this conjecture, I would say that the list of favorite things and other cliches that make me happy fall into the second category.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, and since I'm working with a very slow computer and have a munchkin who recently woke up and is intent on helping me with the post, I should just say that I'm grateful for raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, sunny days, rainy days, chocolate, bright colors, and the myriad of other things that season my life and my memories with pleasantness (assuming that's a real word).

Happy Monday!

So...I decided that if I can start doing the listing-things-I'm-grateful-for after the beginning of the month, I can stop using the silly 'grateful-vember' heading half-way through too.  Haha, can you tell I'm tired today?  Someday I'll figure the whole blogging thing out.

Today, though, I'm grateful for a weekend's end.  I am grateful for the rhythm and repetition of my life, from sunrise and sunset, to the swing of seasons.  I'm glad to be returning to a very full-scheduled week with its responsibilities and routine.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to attack my goals with renewed energy.

My dad lent us an audio copy of 'The Screwtape Letters,' by C.S. Lewis, for our most recent drive down here, so the devil's words are rolling around in my head, admonishing his nephew to 'work on [the] fear of the same old thing.'  Through that perspective, Lewis points out that we have been given an inherent love of both change and constancy, hence the repetitive nature of days and seasons.

Yikes, this is starting to sound like a  book report.  My point is, that life is a constant effort and the way in which time itself is organized makes room for us to catch our breath, get back on our feet and try again.  Right now, I feel like I'm standing, rather bandy-legged and shakily, waiting for the next onslaught to begin.  Don't get me wrong, the 'onslaught' of which I speak is something marvelous and something I wouldn't miss for the world, but, well...  I guess it just feels, at times, like life isn't something I'm incredibly good at.  This is, after all, my first one.  Right now, I'm feeling so grateful for second chances and for renewal within the spectrum of the 'same old thing.'  Here's to the beginning of another week.  May it be a good one.

Grateful-vember: Looking Forward

The other night, I found myself hurrying down a very dark, very empty closed road.  I felt haggard after a long day that had not concluded with the usual respite of my husband walking through the door in the early evening, and I was very much awake to the cold.  It seems like just a couple of days ago, I was wishing that it were jacket-weather, and suddenly, my worn hoodie was not enough to counter it.

Not in the best of moods and anxious to get to the warmth that awaited me at the road's end, I broke into an awkward, shuffling sort of run, the kind that you do when you're wearing shoes that really aren't meant even for serious walking and seem eager to jump right off your feet.  Semis and cars rolled past on my left, their headlights casting a wan, evanescent light to my feet.  I began to notice the smell of new asphalt (the reason for which I was walking in the first place), but even stronger was that dry November smell.  Drawing in and releasing that gusty cold, in steady puffs, it occurred to me, not for the first time, but for the first time in awhile, to feel grateful for my body.

I have hesitated to post this, because I know that several of my friends, some of who read this blog, don't enjoy the same health that I've taken for granted almost every day of my life.  It used to bother me that I didn't have the athletic talent to carry me to the Olympics or the miniature waist on which Hollywood sets such a high premium.  Then, of course, teenage insecurities have gradually given way to adult complacency.  Something about the cold and dark and solitude of that moment brought back the realization that not every pair of lungs can enjoy this exchange that were so casually repeating, and not every person has a pair of legs can, without adverse effects, propel them over the four-hundred meters or so that I had come.  I know this should be obvious.  It seems that all of my epiphanies these days are re-runs.

A pervasive little voice, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, whispered to me that I should not write this, that I have to right to write it.  I know that I am a stranger to pain, that physical hardship and the mental and emotional struggles that often accompany it, are at this time quite beyond my comprehension.  Still, I can't help but believe that to ignore the blessing of my health, even while I can't yet fully appreciate it, would be to belittle the physical hardships that others face and to show contempt for a very profound blessing.

Moreover, I believe in and look forward to a physical resurrection, in which our bodies, flawless and whole, will be reunited with our spirits.  Even in the health I've enjoyed, I have sensed little fore-warnings of my mortality, the promise that age will someday brittle my bones, dull my thoughts and wither my muscles.  So I celebrate the sensations I savored that night, not only as a gift, but also as a promise.  

That was the second realization to which that dark road brought me - that gratitude is not confined to the present or the past.  It is akin to hope, which casts its seeds into the future and the unknown.  I am grateful for the promises in which I hope and for whose sake I am learning to live patiently and happily now.

Grateful-vember: Silliness

OK, I am short on time today, but here's what's on my mind:

Sometimes (I admit so many embarrassing things online) I wake up in the middle of the night and anxiously mull over what I would do if, say, a Bengal tiger or a crocodile or a giant spider (Lord of the Rings, anyone?) were to stroll into my bedroom.  I'm not kidding.  I do lose sleep over this issue.  How would I get out?  How would I get my family out?  What if I forget the car keys and end up trapped in my thorn-filled yard with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run??

So today, I'm taking a few moments to be grateful that I have never been attacked by a large predatory animal.  Or any predatory animal, for that matter, unless you count mosquitoes (but the day of reckoning is coming).  And I'm grateful that those large predatory beasts don't live around here anyway, so that my fears are totally irrational.

There's my little slice of grateful profundity for the day.  Hopefully it made you smile and to anyone else out there whose overly active childish imagination tends to run away with them, you're not alone.

Grateful-vember: Your Words

This one is specifically for my friends and family.  It is to any person who takes the time to leave a kind comment online and to people who approach one another as strangers, just to give a word of encouragement.  This post is to those who go out of their way to say something kind: I dare not say that you have no idea the effect of the words you write or speak, but you never cease to amaze me with your capacity for spreading happiness.

After much deliberation and many years of analyzing myself to death, I have come to the conclusion that I struggle with an inferiority complex.  Whenever there's a competition involved, I somehow feel sure that I have no chance of coming out on top.  Therefore, I am grateful that, when that ever-present, diabolical little voice pipes up in my thoughts with, "No, you can't," a dozen exterior voices always seem to chime in with "Yes, you can!"

I have a husband who has been nothing but supportive, especially in those times when support has been the thing that I needed most and deserved least.  I have a mom who has always made a big deal of my talents, abilities and interests.  I have so many friends who take time to point out positive attributes in me that I have never acknowledged in myself, or to say, in their own ways, "I love you."  I could go on, but then I would be here all day and then some.

So today, I thank my family, my friends and many treasured, transient acquaintances with whom I've lost contact, for the words you speak to uplift me and one another.  To them and to anyone I've never met who may be reading this, I thank you for the little acts of kindness that you do and for the inherent goodness within you.

Grateful-vember: Making a Choice

I remember seeing on Facebook last year, that a lot of my friends had decided to do a 'grateful November' challenge, every day posting, in their 'status' bars, something for which they felt grateful.  I thought that it was such a great idea, but somehow - maybe even subconsciously - I felt like I couldn't participate, because I hadn't thought of it until the third or fourth day of the month.  This year, I decided not to let that hold me back.  It's November 4th, and I'm going to make an effort to post (at least several times) this month about things for which I am grateful.

Last weekend, one of my best friends in the whole world came to see me.  While she was here, we went to the Snowflake Arizona (LDS) Temple.  It was a marvelous experience and I got to revisit a realization that I had forgotten.  That is that happiness is a choice.  At some times, it's a more difficult choice to make than at others, but it is a decision.  Furthermore, happiness and gratitude go hand in hand.  They are inextricably linked.  At least for me, this has been the case.  I have noticed that I am happiest in the moments in which I can see just how blessed I am; in which I realize that someone has done for me what I needed and could not do for myself; in which I decide to enjoy what I have and to feel glad that all that has happened has brought me to where I am today.

So today I am grateful to be in this place at this time, living this life.  I am not regretting that I haven't traveled the world, that I am not prettier or more educated, or that I don't have more friends than I do.  I came, utterly vulnerable, as a stranger into a strange land - and I don't just mean to this Somewhere - but when I have hungered, I have been fed.  When I have thirsted, my thirst has been quenched.  As I have walked into the darkness, I have been led.  I never could have imagined, a few years ago, what my life would look like in the latter end of 2013, nor that I would or could like it so well.  I am grateful for the gift of agency,  by which I can choose happiness in seeing the divine hand that has given me everything from the air I breathe to the home enjoy to the family I love.     

Trick-or-Treating on the Res.

When we first moved here - no, maybe even when we first came here to look for a place to live - one of the first things our neighbors told us was this: prepare well for Halloween.  The trick-or-treaters come here in flocks.  The reason for this was, supposedly, that the houses out on the reservation are very spread out.  Obediently, Ben and I stocked up on otter pop-type goodies by the hundreds and waited for the predicted onslaught.  Two days ago, on the eve of candy collecting night, I got to see for myself, why the little teacher housing loop, with houses right next to and across from one another, was so popular.

Helping Mom with the Halloween treats

I was being led to the house of a friend of mine, whom I hadn't gotten the chance to visit before.  About a mile from the freeway exit, the road was no longer paved and smaller dirt roads appeared frequently on either side of it.  We turned off on one of these, which was uneven and muddy from the recent snowfall.  The Elders who serve here have told us stories about getting their truck hopelessly stuck while driving form house to house.  I began to understand how that was very, very possible.

After about thirty yards, the road forked - not a ninety-degree angle, geometrical fork, as I'm accustomed to, but a very narrow fork, so much so that, as we veered to the right, I half-expected the left road to re-merge with us.  It didn't.  And thirty yards later, it forked again.  And thirty yards later, yet another split.  If I hadn't been following someone who knew the way, I would easily have gotten lost.  On the way back home, I finally put the pieces together, realizing that so many kids flock to the teacher housing neighborhood, not just because the houses on the reservation are far apart, but because they're each on their own little road.

Personally, I found it charming in a way I can't exactly describe, but I see why it's not exactly conducive to door-to-door trick-or-treating.  All evening, Ben and I got to enjoy the parade of costumes as something like three hundred kids knocked at our door.

Embracing the Familiar, as Far Away becomes Home

This morning, I am enjoying the aftermath of the first snowfall in our new home.  Yesterday, I enjoyed the storm from our kitchen floor, with my daughter craning her neck in wonder, trying to figure out what was making that plinking sound on our stove-pipe.

Today, I stepped outside to toss a diaper, and found that a silvery rime covered everything, from my front porch to the sloping ranch-land across the railroad tracks, and far beyond, drip-dripping into a warm, muddy morning.  Despite our rather sudden move, from the rocky mountains to this high desert, winter still knows where we are.  What's more is the strange realization - one that should have been obvious - that snow found this place long before we ever did.  It's odd, but somehow that warms my heart.

My mom, husband, and others can attest to the fact that I've spent many a precious minute whining about the lack of trees, the lack of mountains, and the lack of just about everything to which I'm accustomed, in this landscape.  But I think I'm ready to take all of that back.

Right now, I love it here.

Happiness is...

Morning,

sitting here, on my bed,

folding a week's worth of laundry,

listening to my daughter

who is playing on the floor,

enunciating "da-dd, da-dd,"

in a warm October house

as sunlight trickles through the blinds.

Pumpkin Spice Near Miss

There's a bag of pumpkin spice kisses that has been in our cupboard for about two weeks now.  When it first appeared, among a few other lovingly packed items in a Happy Halloween package from my mom, I determined (after squealing for joy) that I would not open it before Halloween night, knowing that if I did, the treat would almost immediately disappear and we would have nothing festive with which to celebrate the holiday.

A few mornings ago, after lazing about far more than is good, even on a Saturday, I went for it.  I've learned that junk food and I don't get along well in the mornings.  If I indulge too early in the day, I tend to feel icky for the rest of it and am more likely to make poor choices (nutritionally speaking) later on - so I was breaking two rules when I padded, still pajama-clad, into the kitchen, in search of naughtiness.

I found the bag on the top shelf, behind the vitamin bottles, and lifted it out.  With determination, I took hold of the plastic wrapper from either side of the seam and pulled.  It didn't come apart.  Through my mind fluttered the thought, 'you haven't opened it yet.  You haven't made the choice yet.  It's not too late to turn back.'

Glimpsing the diagram on the bag, of the orange exterior chocolate and creamy, pumpkin-spicy interior, I thought, 'I'm deciding now.  It's too late.'  I took the bag in my fists and squeezed.  Desperate little snatches of 'Too late - not too late' darted back and forth in my mind.

The bag did not pop.  I considered it for a moment, said, "hmm..." and then tossed it back onto the top shelf.

Here's to one of those little victories.

The Make-Over: Ceaseless and Sorrowless

The other major change I made to the blog was, obviously, the web address.  After I changed the name, I thought that I really out to have a new web address too.  Why not, right?  I wanted something to match the type of things I hope to write about as well as the name.  I wanted something to remind me of why I started blogging in the first place.  But, alas, I couldn't come up with anything I liked, much less anything that hadn't been taken.  So I have up.

As is the way with these types of things, though, the right idea eventually found me.  I've found that brainstorming is only really productive if you have some clouds in your brain to begin with, maybe a little wind.  I don't know how it is for anyone else, but I can seldom will myself to be creative on the spot and come up with good results.

But where was I?  Ah, yes - the address.  The bolt of inspiration that caught up to me after I had given up on it.

When I was in college, the LDS Institute held weekly devotionals wherein a guest speaker spent an hour or so with a chapel full of students, offering motivation and inspiration (or trying to do so, at least.  One of the first devotional addresses I can remember involved the speaker saying something like "You know you're in college when you spend $200 for a book you don't want, don't read it, and sell it back for $7.  Neener-neener.").  It was in one of these devotionals that I was first introduced to Arthur Edgar O'Shaughnessy's "Ode."

I was working on getting into nursing school at that point, but I was also very interesting in poetry.  I set out to find the full poem, fell in love with it, and committed it to memory.  You probably know the one I'm talking about - "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams..."  (It is not a Willy Wonka original.  Don't be deceived).

The seventh stanza reads:

"But we, with our dreaming and singing,

Ceaseless and sorrowless, we!

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

O men!  It must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing

A little apart from ye."

It seemed like the perfect companion for a title like "Tales from Far Away."  My life has diverged from all of my friends' and family's.  We are not far, and yet apart.  Not separated, and yet irreversibly divided.  And wherever we are, time moves on, ceaseless.  We have sorrows, but they are not what define us. 

I married a man who loves to sing.  He is always singing something and he sings sunshine into our home.  If anyone asks, we are out here in the middle of our lovely Somewhere, living our dreams.

The Make-Over: Tales From Far Away

Ever since my blogging identity crisis, I've felt the need, as I begin again to try blogging on a regular basis, to give the page a make-over.  Anyone who read my earliest posts when I first began writing them will have noticed that almost everything has changed: my background, blog title, self-intro blurb, and now my web address.  Some of those things will probably be subject to change on a semi-regular basis, but getting a new title and address felt like kind of an extreme, though merited change, so I decided to try to add some explanation.

The original blog title and web address were the products of boredom.  I was in a new home, relatively far from my family and friends, had applied for work and been hired, but had to wait for weeks for the background check to come through, and had no means of transportation to explore my new home town.  On top of that, I was still in the beginning of my pregnancy and was still feeling somewhat...shall we say newly pregnant?  Once, during a phone conversation to my mom, as I moaned and groaned about my lot in life, she said, "Why don't you start a blog?  That'll keep you busy."

So I did and I used the first name and web address that came into my head, unwittingly turning my last name into what sounded like a religion or philosophy.  When we were contemplating moving here, I settled on the name 'Tales from Far Away.'  In a way, that seems silly, since one of my best friends from high school is now living over a thousand miles further from home than I am.  Another is living across the Atlantic, and one of my best friends from college has been travelling across Europe on business.  What right have I, a measly 500 miles from every place I have ever lived, to claim the description 'far away?'

First, there is the fact that, among both my family and Ben's, we are the outlier, not counting his sister who is serving a mission in Taiwan, of course.  We communicate with the family via email, phone calls, and internet video chatting, but when it comes to family gatherings, ours are the faces that will almost always be absent.  We're out here having our own little adventures and doing our best not to focus on the ones we know we'd enjoy if Ben's job had kept us closer to home.

Then, there's the feeling I've had almost since we were married, and which has certainly grown stronger since then, that when we got married, in a lot of ways, we got up and left the world behind.  Most of our former associations with friends and acquaintances of single life faded away or disappeared altogether.

What's more, we've changed.

I used to imagine that, as a single girl, I was always standing at a crossroads.  I could go in any one of several directions, or in other words, I could develop and encourage any one of several inclinations, and each of them might be equally good.  In marrying Ben, however, I chose on of those roads to follow.  He did the same.  Where our inclinations matched, where our desires and tendencies harmonized, there we walked.  Had we married different people, we might each be different, to some extent.

I am, all the time, pleasantly surprised as I realize where our marriage, and now our family, has taken us.  I keep seeing things in Ben, in the way he treats me, or just in the way he thinks and acts, that I never thought to look for in a prospective spouse when I was dating.  They are things I didn't even realize I wanted.  It's funny how two distinct and separate people can also be, in so many ways, a single entity.

So I guess that's the truest reason I can think of for the blog's name.  Ben and I are far away in the same way that every marriage takes partners far away.  I'm hoping to give the people I love a few glimpses into our little world.

S'more Cups!

So I guess that all I think about is food, or at least, that's all I could think of when I thought to myself, 'self, we should post something on the blog.  What should we talk about?'  Therefore, this will be another one of those food posts.  I hope it makes you hungry.

Remember when I told you about our camping trip?  And how it was more or less a failure except that we got some good pictures out of it as well as the right to brag that we went camping in October with a baby?  Well, there was one more success that I forgot to mention.  These:

The pine cone makes it look rustic and outdoors-y, right?  Not at all like it was photographed in my kitchen or something...

A couple of weeks before our camp out, we ran out of graham crackers, which have gradually become an ever more popular snack at our house.  Always the experimenter, my husband said something like, "I wonder if we could make our own graham crackers?  I'll bet we could..."

I ran with the idea, did a little research, found a recipe and tried it.  After my first batch of oddly shaped, Picasso-looking graham crackers, I got a little crazy and began to experiment.  The result (well, one of them) was a treat that just might become a must-have for camping at my house.

For the graham cracker dough:

I should tell you that I rarely ever follow a recipe just as it is written.  Almost everything gets tweaked, either because I'm missing ingredients or I'm just too lazy to do it the way it's written.  I followed this one almost exactly, though.  The only real difference was that, since I didn't have honey, I used molasses.

Combine:
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

Add and work into a cornmeal-like consistency:
7/8 stick of margarine or butter, cut into 1 inch cubes and chilled

Whisk together:
1/3 cup molasses
5 tbsp milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract

Add molasses mixture to other ingredients and mix just until combined.  Pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick rectangle on a piece of plastic wrap, sprayed with cooking spray.  Wrap the rest of the plastic around the dough and chill for 2-12 hours in the fridge.

If you're not a molasses fan, I can reassure you that the strong molasses taste in the dough fades significantly after baking.

Remove the chilled dough and, on a well-floured surface, roll it out so that it is about 1/8 inch thick (is it just me, or is it IMPOSSIBLE to get your flour to stay where you want it - under the dough?  On my second attempt, I tried spraying a clean counter top with cooking spray, then flouring it thoroughly.  It worked pretty well, but if anyone knows a trick for this sort of thing, I'd love to hear it).

This is the fun part - you can either cut little 2 inch squares and poke holes in them with a fork to make regular graham crackers, or, if you want to try making s'more cups with them, cut 3-4 inch circles and place them in a sprayed muffin tin.  I found that by making a cut almost to the center of each circle, it was easier to fit them in, cut out the excess dough, and mold them to the cup.

The original recipe says to chill your dough on/in the pan for another 25-35 minutes.  I've tried it with and without the second chilling and gotten similar results, but I definitely don't have very cultured taste buds.  Maybe a more proficient cook could tell the difference.  If you do have time to chill it again, this would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  The original recipe also says to bake these for 15-25 minutes.  I have found that I like to stick on the 15 end of things.  My resulting crackers and cups tend to be firm enough not to bend or fall apart without getting so hard that I can't bite into them without milk.

Remove from the oven and place a square of chocolate, a small handful of chocolate chips, or whatever sweet, gooey thing you would like melted beneath your marshmallow in the bottom of each cup.  It just so happens that my cute mother-in-law had sent us a Happy Halloween package, complete with Halloween candy, which arrived the day I did this, so I decided to try putting a Mini Milky Way bar in a couple of them.

Return to the oven for 1 minute, remove, and stir the chocolate/gooey stuff with a toothpick. 

Mmm... chocolate...

Let them cool for 5-10 minutes, then use the tip of a knife to lift them out of the muffin tin.  They should pop right out.  I put mine in the fridge for a few minutes to let the chocolate set up and then keep them in the cupboard for a week or two.

Roast marshmallows over a campfire or over your stove, place one in each cup and enjoy!

The downside of doing s'mores this way is that you kind of have to think ahead and take time to do all of the mixing, chilling, rolling, shaping, chilling, melting and chilling.  And that they obviously aren't as compact as regular flat grahams.

The upside is that, once you do have them, s'mores are so much less of a hassle and so much easier to enjoy.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm used to getting marshmallow all over my fingers, lips, nose, chin, hair and pants whenever I attempt to eat s'mores.  In fact, I've noticed that most people seem to like making the s'mores more than eating them and for me, this is one of the main reasons.  These make eating s'mores about 1/10th as messy (sticky-wise and crumb-wise).  I would definitely recommend it for kids.  

The second reason I love doing s'more this way is that, usually someone, either my mom or me, ends up sitting next to the campfire, trying to assemble and balance stacks of graham crackers and chocolate while everyone else roasts marshmallows.  How much fun is that?

And last but not least, they're pretty cute. :)

Spiced Autumn Chicken Stew

It seems like in order to blog about food or cooking, you have to be a photographer, and an excellent photographer at that.  I am not.  I think I have mentioned before that I take most of my pictures with my phone, and if the thing I'm looking at isn't my daughter doing something adorable, I usually don't think to take a picture of it.  I love to cook.  I love food, and I love love love autumn.  The pictures will just have to come later.

When I tried describing this successful experiment to my mom, she seemed a little bit aghast that I would put sugar and cinnamon with chicken and potatoes.  Trust me on this one, though.  It tastes like yum.

This is loosely (very loosely) based on this recipe for Autumn Sausage Casserole.  I wanted to make a very Autumnal dish, but lacked pretty much all of the ingredients that make that what it is - raisins, sausage, apples...  I would highly recommend it, though.

What I did have was bone-in chicken that needed to be crock-potted, since I didn't want to go to the trouble of separating meat and bones that didn't want to be separated, basic stew vegetables (you know - carrots, potatoes, celery), spices, and a husband who is always up for an experiment.  I've made this twice now and both times, the results have been lovely.

Here's what I used:

• 1 chicken leg (don't think that because you shop somewhere fancy like Safeway, the chicken you buy won't have odd little quirks like, oh, I don't know, the feet still attached?  If yours does, get rid of those talons first.)  I'm sure a breast would be fine, too.
• 1 medium-sized potato, chopped (If you have a yam or a sweet potato to add instead, it will be especially good, but a regular potato does just fine.)
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped

Throw all this in the crock pot (I think mine is 1.5 quarts), then in a small mixing bowl or measuring cup, combine:

• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp chicken boullion
• 1/2-1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1-2 tsp parsley
• 1/2 tsp thyme (OK, I mostly just added this because I have been looking for it for almost two years now.  I found it in one grocery store and it was very expensive so I didn't bother, but the urging struck again a year later, and none of the grocery stores where we were then living even had it, then, the other day, miraculously, I found it at the Family Dollar, of all places, for *drumroll* a dollar!  It did make a nice addition to this stew, though).
• 2 heaping tbsp brown sugar (You're going to trust me, remember?)
• 1/3 cup of warm water

Pour the spices on top of the chicken and veggies and let it cook on high for 3-4 hours, until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are soft.  My little crock is a speed demon and does it as quickly as two-and-a-half, sometimes.  Ben and I basically knew it was done when we starting to smell it.  I've never tried it on low, because I've never thought about it long enough in advance.  I'm guessing that 6-8 hours would do the trick, though.  

The second time I made this, I added more water (a cup, I think), so the spices were a little less pronounced and I had more liquid in the final product.  We ended up serving it over white rice and loved it that way.  I can't help but imagine what it would be like over wild rice, but we're not that rich, and I'm totally an advocate for healthy eating on a budget.

*This only makes 2-3 servings, but it would be an easy recipe to double using a bigger crock pot.*

Our Little Cricket

We love the bed-head.

This girl has grown up so quickly.  All the time, we are noticing more and more little landmarks that are suddenly behind us.  For example, this last week, we came in to get the girl up from a nap to find her not laying, sitting or kneeling, but standing in her crib.  On the same day, she got stuck under our bed.  OK, I know that's not exactly a landmark, but it was a first, and I admit that I called her daddy into the room to see before rescuing her.

Teeth already?!

Now, she is pulling herself up on everything.  As of late, these are a few of her favorite things:

• her shadow, 
• kissy lips (especially when accompanied by a crinkled nose and squinty eyes),
  
   
• putting forbidden objects into her mouth, 
• power outlets, 
• anything grown-ups are eating,
  
  and 
• her daddy.  

I can't help wondering whether or she would smile like that for me if I were the one who was gone all day and came home a couple hours before bedtime?  But I keep remembering how lucky I am that I will probably never know.  I get to spend my days at home with this girl and teach her and love her and let her know that she is my life's work.

As I explained in the previous post, my camera has been lost for awhile and I am currently working on standing up to my fears regarding our nicest camera, so most all of these pictures were taken from my phone, which probably explains the lack of quality.  Our girl also has the incredible talent of turning her head or crawling away just as I'm taking the picture.  Still, we've managed to capture a few good ones, I think.

With Uncle Christian, recently returned from Peru

As we rapidly approach her first birthday, I am realizing that we are passing through a lot of 'firsts.'  In fact, we are getting to experience a first just about everything with her.  It's interesting how parenthood both ages you and makes you young again.