the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions

Really, truly, my friends – I do have the best of intentions when it comes to writing more. It’s just that it’s summer here, and our Prairie summers are short and must therefore be savoured and absorbed with great gusto. And then there’s, you know, life. I’m trying to get back to the blissful unscheduled existence I had a while back, but it’s tricky, cause I really do like doing everything I have scheduled. I think I just need support staff – someone to handle the grocery shopping and house cleaning and garden weeding and planning and organizing – and then I will be liberated to catch up on blog posts and emails and the like.

Yes, that sounds awfully good right about now.

My sister’s FIL did pass away, and while it has been hard on everyone, I think they are doing as well as can be expected. My nephew is doing ok with it although like all grieving people, he will be going through a process for quite a while yet. I was able to spend the day with him and his little brother the day that his grandpa died, and it feels good to know that I could help in some way, even if it did just involve playing in the yard and going on a shopping expedition for sidewalk chalk, washable markers and popsicles.

I am starting to look pregnant. For reals. I have to say that I get completely humbled and amazed at least once a day at it all, and Manny is no doubt becoming quite sick of me exclaiming, “Dude! I look PREGNANT!” in a tone of complete awe. I am 22 weeks today and seem to have hit the stage where I cannot possibly eat enough. I need to eat around the clock, like I was on antibiotics or something. Last night when I was going to bed I was just about to turn off the light when I realized I needed to eat. How sad that a homemade wheat-free banana muffin with a thick slab of cream cheese on it has become a sort of a chore.

I have a feeling I’m going to have to start watching myself a bit with my food intake – my ass and belly are the only things that have really gotten bigger, but that could all change in a couple weeks if I keep downing the calorie-rich snacks the way I have been. On the other hand, I have also been eating really well overall – I made a fabulous quinoa-black bean salad last week that provided a number of tasty lunches. If you want the recipe, you can find it here – it is definitely worth making. I skipped their crazy quinoa cooking instructions because I am too lazy – I just used less water, fluffed it with a fork and then chilled it overnight in the fridge before making the salad and it turned out fine. I also omitted the jalapenos because while they would be very delicious, heartburn is currently my mortal enemy and I fear excessive spice. Mild green chilies might have made a good substitute, though. Will try that next time.

Um, boring much, Anna? Here’s even more:

I have been wanting to cut my hair short for the past couple weeks since it got hot. My last haircut wasn’t with my usual person and she left it way too thick, and then I haven’t gotten it cut in about 3 months, so it’s feeling pretty heavy right now. Every week at flamenco class I turn pink like a lobster and fantasize about chopping it all of so it doesn’t make my neck all sweaty, but then I hesitate. Partly because everyone tell me not to cut it (why I even ask is beyond me since I know I look good with short hair and most people I ask have only seen me with a bob or longer hair) and also because I always had it in my mind that I would cut my hair really short when I have my baby. I do like to change my hair as part of big life changes and for some reason I just want to have a super short and cute haircut when I have a new baby. But my sister correctly pointed out that short hair is a lot more work – you can’t just ignore it like you can with my trusty current bob. So I am going to cut it fairly short now and over the summer, and then probably let it return to the bob into the fall and once the baby is born. I am going to get it cut on Thursday and promise pictures unless it’s a total trainwreck. Or maybe especially if it’s a total trainwreck. Although I rarely get truly bad haircuts – the worst one of my life was circa 1989 when the gal spent about 15 minutes cutting and 45 minutes crimping it with a huge crimping iron and hairspraying and teasing it into oblivion, and even that wasn’t so bad once I washed it. I was heavily into The Cure at that point, but had no desire to actually resemble Robert Smith.

I am dying to go swimming but I am loathe to spend big money on a maternity bathing suit. In an attempt to find a bargain that might work, I tried on some bikinis the other day and not only was the sight of my pale white belly not exactly attractive, I also had trouble with the tops providing adequate coverage for my veiny, swollen boobs. Going up sizes didn’t help either because the band around the chest was too loose, so I don’t really know what to do. Manny might find it sexy to see me displaying ample boobage but I would prefer to avoid the very real possibility of flashing my browner-by-the-day areolas to the world at large.

I have had some deep thoughts lately but need to work harder on formulating them into coherent blog posts. One of the big things has been around identity, and one of the other big things that has been plaguing me is how weird I find it that once I started to feel the wee bit moving around, my anxiety actually increased. Like when I haven’t felt any kicks in a while, I just sit still and start jiggling my belly until I feel a thump. Or I eat something or drink a glass of juice. It occurred to me this morning that I’m starting to get into this pattern where I am deliberately bugging my baby to make myself feel better, and that seems a bit wrong to me. So I am going to work on finding other ways to manage my anxiety when it comes rather than just harassing this little being. Not all the time, but at least some of the time.

Manny and I hit a garage sale on Saturday that was all baby and kid stuff, and we scored some pretty sweet deals. We picked up a glider rocker for $20 – it is oak and in really good shape and its only flaw is a fairly ugly cushion. Fortunately, said cushion just velcroes onto the chair and will be very easy to re-cover. I also got 6 sleepers, 5 very sweet onesies, a couple blankets and a little fleece bunting thing that my oldest nephew had but my sister has since gotten rid of – for some reason, I found myself getting almost weepy that I was going to get to put my own baby into something I had lugged my nephew around in. It is really sinking in that there is a baby coming to us.

meet Boris

By special request of Io, here is some food porn. Because it took me so long to chop the tiny ends off the tiny carrots I used, and peel the skins off the tiny beets, I didn’t actually make the borscht until last night. As I spent days with the ingredients that would become the borscht, I found myself bonding with the soup. So Manny named it Boris. Boris the Borscht. A temporary child, whom we ate part of last night, and plan to eat in portions throughout the winter, and also to share with family and friends. And certainly not as cute as Lucky sleeping or playing with his new toy, as you will see below. But a fine upstanding Boris he was, executing his deliciousness with valor. I would mourn for you, Boris, but I’m too busy enjoying my purple pee. 

I used every single container I had available, and I still have a pot of soup left. I’m bringing some to my grandparents tonight, and will probably eat it again for supper, so that should be taken care of. Our freezer is getting mighty full. Thanks, Boris!

Now for the cuteness – Lucky murdered his previous chew toys, so Manny got him this new one last week. Lucky loves it so much and it is the best when he grabs it from the middle like this and runs around. Sometimes it covers his eyes and he runs into stuff on the way back to his hideout under the table where he loves to give his toys a good murdering.  Oh baby, you’re so vicious!

I know I am supremely biased, but isn’t he the cutest dog of all time?

show & tell: harvest

Oh, my darlings! I have missed you. The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy and although I’ve made several false starts at an update, it just hasn’t made it up on the blog. So I will jump back in with this episode of show and tell. 

I got up this morning, watched Coronation Street, drank a pot of tea, ate some toast, and took my herbs and vitamins. And then I went outside, where it is a beautiful windy but warm fall day here on the prairies, to harvest my carrots and beets, and a few other stragglers. The chard is still standing proud as it withstands seemingly impossible amounts of frost, but everything else is picked. The beets and the smaller carrots are in the washing machine (note to self: remember to take them out!) getting clean, thereby saving my energy for the chopping which will follow the washing and precede the annual borscht-making. 

Borscht in the fall is a family tradition. My mom made it when we were growing up, and I’ve always liked it. There are many variations, but here is my recipe:

2 Tbsp. butter  

1.5 cups chopped onion

1.5 cups sliced potato

1 cup sliced beets

1 large carrot, sliced

1 stalk celery, sliced

3 cups cabbage, chopped

1 tsp. caraway seeds (optional – many people hate these)

4 cups stock or water 

2 tsp. salt

pepper to taste

bunch of fresh dill or 1 tsp dried dill – I like lots, so I pile it in while cooking and then fish out the big fresh dill stems before serving

1 Tbsp. + 1 tsp.  apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp. + 1 tsp honey 

1 cup tomato puree (optional)

Saute the onion in the butter until the onion turns clear. Add everything else except the vinegar and honey – add those at the end – and simmer until veggies are tender. Serve with a dollop of sour cream. 

Easily veganized and adaptable for various other diets – since I don’t eat nightshades anymore, I leave out the potato and tomato puree. I’ve put in sweet potato in the past and that has worked well, although since it cooks faster than carrots or beets, I usually put it in about halfway through.  You can add chopped greens, too – beet greens or chard – to bulk it up.  I also tend to love the vinegar taste, so I often add a bit more toward the end. Also, when I make it to freeze, I use less liquid – just enough to cook the veggies, and then add stock or water when I use it. That way it takes up a lot less room in the freezer. Genius!

 

supper & support

So Manny and I went out for supper tonight to the site of our best meal ever and had a pretty deadly supper. For starters, I got garlic toast made out of amazingly good Italian bread that probably had half a pound of butter on the two slices of bread that came with the order, and Manny got “chicken lollipops” which were basically wings with one of the two little bones removed that were smoky and sweet and tender and so yummy. Then Manny had fish and chips, which has been endorsed by one of his colleagues who is a Maritimer, and I had a pizza with blue cheese and beer-braised mushrooms. I sort of fell in love with the pizza at first bite – the mushrooms were incredibly tasty, and I am just a sucker for blue cheese on anything, but it was particularly well employed on that pie. Oh, and lest I forget, I had the cheesecake and fruit beer combo I waxed so eloquently about in that post I just linked to. It was delish but, as I said to Manny, there are some things that just never taste as good after the first time. Still very fabulous and a total indulgence, especially with the beer. So I’m feeling quite stuffed and satisfied, and I hope it will be a long time before I have to do this again!

My other news is that I’m actually getting things together to start a support group here. Everyone I’ve spoken to is super supportive and agrees there is a huge need for it. My clinic has a social worker on staff, and I spoke to her yesterday. They are unable to take this project on because their mandate is to serve people who have been admitted to the hospital or those who are directly referred to them by hospital staff. But in a way that is really good, as it means I will have a lot more freedom in how I want the group to be. I’m thinking now that once the group is established and has been around a while, then I will start lobbying the health region and doing more advocacy work to educate the healthcare people and others about IF and the need for greater supports. One thing at a time, though. I’m in the process of making a few connections with people who have experience with support groups, and will be reaching out to them for mentorship and advice, but I have quite a few good ideas already from my own reading and experience with meditation groups I’ve been involved in for a few years. My main challenges at the moment will be finding space that we will be able to have on a regular basis – I’m thinking of monthly meetings at first and more frequent if people want that – and promotion – I’m wanting to promote the group to people at my clinic but also at other doctors’ offices and possibly a few other spots in the community. I have ideas but the execution is going to take some time, I think. I want to have a meeting in August, but Manny pointed out that September might be better when people are back from vacations and it also gives me a lot more time to promote it and get contacts with people who might be interested in attending.

I will have more to say on this as it progresses, but for now it just feels like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing, like I’m fulfilling my purpose on the earth. I haven’t felt that way for a long time – I had a major career meltdown last year and have just been letting that part of me take a rest, not worrying about what I should do for a job. Now I have a job that’s just a job, and I’m very happy and blessed to have it, because it means I have the time and energy I need to do this, which is where my heart is right now. There is so little here in terms of treatment, in terms of support, in terms of awareness. It’s one of the things about living in western Canada  - things are so spread out that even if you live in a larger city with one or more fertility clinics (which I don’t), there aren’t alternatives close by the way there can be when you live somewhere that’s just more densely populated. So it just feels like a bit of a wasteland. And I can’t control whether a baby grows in me, but I can definitely do something about this, and it truly feels like the right thing to do.

Thanks one and all for all your kind comments earlier today – it means so much to know you’re all with me through everything! So a big smooch to everyone!

G*d is present in the sweeping gesture, but the devil is in the details

So a couple posts back, I referenced my food issues, and the very sweet and charming Love Comes First asked what happens to me when I eat the forbidden foods. Her question made me realize that I have never told the full story here on the blog, so in the interests of boring you all nearly to death with the minutiae of my medical history, I will be telling the story today. It’s very interesting to me (naturally, because it’s ME, and there are few things that fascinate me more in this world) but I am fully aware it may not be so for you. So feel free to skip this post, if you’re looking for something juicy.

About 3 years ago, I started having weird symptoms. They all appeared quite separate from each other, in time and in general description. First, I had an episode of double vision that lasted exactly a week. When I woke up in the mornings, I saw double so badly that I couldn’t really do anything for about half an hour, after which time it would resolve enough that I could be up and about and driving. Throughout the rest of the day, there was an odd sensation in my peripheral vision, like when you are wearing glasses and just move them around slightly. Like looking through a very slightly distorted lens. I went to the doctor after a few days and unfortunately saw a replacement doctor who was handling walk-ins that day. My regular doctor is a superstar, but this guy was a chump. He didn’t really listen to me, and ended up prescribing a medication to help with the dizziness, even though I didn’t have dizziness. I took the script and talked to the pharmacist, who told me that the medication was actually an  anti-psychotic drug that was more commonly used as an anti-nauseant for people undergoing chemo. If you know me at all, you will not need to be told that there was no fucking way I was taking that drug, given that it didn’t even treat the symptoms I was having. So much for that. I waited a few more days and went back to see my regular doctor this time, who referred me to an opthamologist, who did a little routine on me, but couldn’t see anything wrong. Another day or two, and it was over. So I just figured it was a weird one-off and left it at that.

At some point in the fall, I had what I think was an episode of gall-stones. Unfortunately, it happened while I was visiting Quebec City on business and was about to eat what would have likely been one of the best meals of my life in an amazingly posh restaurant. I was struck with intense pain, and my one trip to the ladies to try to fart it out was unsuccessful. So I had to get a cab and head back to my hotel, where I writhed in pain for about an hour until it passed. Eventually, I had an ultrasound when I got back home, but they couldn’t find anything, so who knows what it was. It had never happened before or since, and I don’t know whether it was connected to the rest of my weird symptoms or not.

Later in the fall, I was under a lot of stress at work, and my appetite just disappeared. That is unusual for me, as I generally have a super high metabolism and eat a lot. But I would eat half a sandwich and feel so full I felt kind of sick. I chalked all this up to the stress and just tried to eat when I was hungry. I still ended up losing a bunch of weight, about 15 pounds or so, but my vanity was kind of stroked by this, and it’s not like I was dangerously thin, so I just carried on.

Then, about two and a half years ago, I started having the weirdest symptom. Numb patches, all over my body. Just numb, like being completely frozen from the dentist. It wasn’t tingly or painful or anything else. They would last in one spot for a week or a few weeks, and then they’d disappear, only to crop up somewhere else. Manny did a “blind” study on me by touching my leg under the table to see whether I could tell when he was touching me. I was wrong twice. So I figured that was serious enough to go back to the doctor to try to figure out what was going on. At this point, I had already had the thought that it could be MS, as there were 3 people in my extended family who had MS, and I live in the place with one of the highest rates of MS in the world, and I’m kind of a prime candidate to get it – woman, 30s, Scandinavian descent…not good. I was worried at this early stage, but had read enough to know that it wasn’t presenting typically – tingling and weakness is more common than numbness in early MS, and I hadn’t had either of those.

So off to my doctor. After a few months of testing and fiddling around (I didn’t have a B12 deficiency, but I was anemic, which can cause numbness, but after supplementing my iron and getting my levels up to where they should be, there was no improvement), my doctor referred me to a neurologist for an MRI, as he thought that even though I didn’t have typical MS symptoms, I should still be seen by a neurologist to rule it out. After that appointment, I was a lot more stressed than I had been before. When it was just my neurotic mind thinking MS was a possibility, that was one thing. But when my doctor actually said the words, it became a lot more real and a lot more scary. But he assured me that it would be a matter of weeks to get in to the neurologist, and that calmed me down a lot.

Except it wasn’t a matter of weeks. Turned out it was going to take 6 months to even get the first appointment with the neuro, and then a further wait for the MRI. (Canadian health care – I love it, but even a good socialist like me, living in the cradle of Medicare, can get impatient when waiting for something like this.) When I found out I was going to have to live with the symptoms AND the uncertainty and anxiety for 6 months, I crossed 3 lanes of traffic on the western medicine highway, and took the nearest exit to alternative medicine, in the form of my naturopath.

My first visit with her was amazing. I was with her for about 3 hours, answering her questions about every facet of my physical health, touching also on my emotional health and the circumstances of my life at the time. It’s a bit weird to tell someone you’ve just met about the consistency of your poo and the details of your menstrual flow, but it’s so rare to meet someone in health care who actually listens that I was just happy to talk. Towards the end of the visit, she took my pulse and looked at my tongue. She told me that my adrenals were extremely depleted, and prescribed an adrenal supplement, which I think was made from dried New Zealand cow spleen or something equally delightful. She also prescribed nutritional support in the form of a daily multivitamin and fish oil supplements. Mmm, burpy. The worst was yet to come, however, and though I had expected it, I was still pretty daunted when she told me what to cut out of my diet. She asked me to give up the following for 2 weeks, and then reintroduce things, one at a time, to see where my sensitivities were:

• wheat
• dairy
• eggs
• soy
• nightshades – potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant
• oranges
• peanuts

Yup. Kind of all conveniently available food, at first glance. But mostly, I remember feeling really good that I was finally doing something about my health, and was more excited by the possibilities of healing than horrified at the restrictive diet. I wasn’t convinced I was sensitive to any of these foods – after all, I had been eating them my whole life, and had never really been sick before. Why would they be linked to my numbness or any of the other symptoms I’d been having?

Within two weeks, all the numb patches had disappeared, something that hadn’t happened for the past year. This was, and remains, a huge motivation to stick to my diet. A lot of people wonder how I can be so disciplined – for me, it’s not really discipline. I went from having neurological symptoms of a pretty serious disease to having no symptoms at all. When no regular doctors could tell me anything useful, a simple change in what I ate, along with a few supplements, completely changed my health and reminded me again that I am my own responsibility.

I started re-introducing foods, one at a time, to see which ones really bothered me. I started with soy, cause I was already pretty soy-dependent, drinking soy milk and eating tofu fairly regularly. But life without soy milk is a bitch, and I couldn’t do it. At the time I was travelling fairly often for work, and soy milk is widely available. Try getting breakfast in an airport when you can’t eat the things on my list – a Starbucks chai latte with soy saved me from getting faint-y with hunger more than a few times. To date, soy is the only thing that I have brought back without restriction, although at home I do tend to rotate my “milks” and use almond and rice milks as well.

As for what these foods do to me – well, they’re all different. The reason my naturopath prescribed this diet is because these foods are all inflamatory foods that can increase inflamation in the body. I think this can mean different things for different people, but for me wheat makes me mucus-y and if I eat a lot of it, I will feel like my sinuses will explode; dairy gives me scaly skin on my face, and if I eat uncultured dairy (like ice cream or straight up milk), I get a gut ache and upset stomach; nightshades make me feel tired and achy all over, and also give me weird needle-like pains in my mouth while I’m eating them, like the feeling you get when you salivate a lot all at once; oranges make me itchy, but only if I have quite a bit, so I will sometimes indulge; eggs make me feel overly full and kind of pukey, like they just sit in my stomach all day, and also I get a weird sensation of being overstimulated, like being in Wall-mart for way too long; and peanuts are tolerable in small amounts, like oranges, but they are known to foster yeast issues, so I generally stay away.

I eventually had the MRI, which came back negative for MS or anything else. By the time I had it, I had been mostly symptom free for about 6 months, so I wasn’t expecting them to find anything. Whether or not I would have gone on to develop more severe symptoms if I hadn’t followed the advice of my naturopath, I don’t know. I certainly don’t think that I had MS and I cured it, and while I feel turning to alternative medicine was hugely beneficial in my case, I’m certainly not dogmatic about it when it comes to other people. But what I do know is that from my very first visit to my wonderful naturopath, who has since become a good friend, I’ve been on a healing journey that has encompassed taking 9 months off work and eventually changing jobs to something far less stressful, paying more attention to my spirituality, seeing a counsellor, and blogging. My life is so much better now, and I’m really grateful to my naturopath for helping to set me down this path on which I accept and embrace responsibility for my health, in all aspects, and am able to make choices that are the right ones for me, regardless of how weird or difficult they might be.

So there you have it – the long tale of my last few years and my health. I’ve healed enough now that I can occasionally indulge and not suffer huge consequences – when I first started this diet, just having a tiny amount of wheat was enough to have me whining in pain over my sinuses and expelling gross colourful snot. Now, I can eat a whole sandwich and feel pretty normal, maybe just a little stuffed up. I think a huge amount of this was down to stress, which is a whole ‘nother post in itself, but since quitting that job and working on my emotional and spiritual health, I’m a lot healthier overall. I know I’ll be restricting these foods for the rest of my life, but as the years go on, I will likely be able to ease up even more than I have now. My naturopath says that my having food sensitivities greatly increases the likelihood that my child will, as well, so it’s important to be quite strict during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and then to be mindful of this as well when introducing solid food to children. So other than my CD1 ritual, I’m trying pretty hard to be good. I’ve always eaten very well, and these last few years have kind of reinvigorated me when it comes to cooking and eating.

So how about you, internets? Any weird tales of illness or healing you feel like sharing? What foods bug you? If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a gold star. So thank you, and gold stars all around.

Protected: day one

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i’m back

With deep thoughts. Oh yes. It was really only a matter of time. It is my nature – I can’t help it, really. What can you possibly expect from someone who wrote angsty poetry from grade 5 onwards, went on to get a philosophy degree, and who now spends the vast majority of her time alone, pondering the nature of her existence? And who adopted the ridiculously long and certainly pompous nickname of “Annacyclopedia”? (Although in fairness to me, it was actually bestowed upon me by someone else, someone who is very dear to me and who has survived her own struggles of the baby making variety. If you’re reading this, my darling, you know who you are. Mwah!)

I’ve been a bit of a basket case all week. I’ve been incredibly exhausted and the smallest burst of energy quickly fades. And, as you remember from my last post, I couldn’t string a thought together to save my life, and I’ve been wandering around the house like an extra in Shaun of the Dead, the end of which I’m watching right now. It takes me an hour to make lunch for myself because I can’t stay on task for more than 10 seconds and I keep getting distracted by every little thing that pops into my mind. I wipe the counter down and remember I should throw the cloth in the laundry, which turns into rounding up laundry and starting to sort it out, then I remember the dog is probably busting for a pee, so I take him out quickly, and then I need to get something out of the freezer for supper, which reminds me I should tidy up the back porch where our deep freeze is, and on and on and on.

I’ve been so frustrated with myself being in this state of mind. So little patience, and even though I know it’s a sign that I need to just stop and pay attention to my process, I have responded by trying to push myself to be productive and get things done. Today, in my meditation group, one of the members mentioned how he was having trouble quieting his mind during the meditation because he was excited about something. And I suddenly remembered that I’m excited. I’m excited, and I need the time to really enjoy my excitement. I think that my trying to keep a lid on my excitement is why I’m having so much trouble focussing on anything these days – I’ve been waiting so long for this to happen and I’m scared of being disappointed, so I’m trying to stuff it down. And I just need to stop doing that. I know lots of people in the blogosphere seem to think that hope is a bitch, but I just don’t work that way. I have been trying for years to let my feelings get felt, right when they happen. And if hope is fluttering around, then all I can do is let her be there, right along with excitement and joy and happiness and fear and anxiety and worry and everything else that comes up for me.

When I try to stuff feelings away, I stop functioning in some other part of my life. I’ve been through enough around this that I should realize this sooner, but I guess it’s only been a week – a vast improvement over the 4 years it took me to quit my job. My body or my mind or my soul will start to misfire if I’m not paying attention. So as of today, I’m going to try to pay better attention to everything that is coming up for me in this, my first real cycle. And to try to enjoy the anticipation and the excitement, just as they are, regardless of the outcome. My counsellor reminded me the other day that I have no control over whether this is going to work. All the spiritual work, emotional work, physical work I’m doing – it will not determine whether a new life is going to come to me in this cycle, or in any other. It is so hard for me to accept that it’s not me controlling the world through my actions, although it is absurdly obvious. But there it is. The reason I do the spiritual work is to take care of myself. As my teacher said today: We can’t change the “what” in life, but we can change the “how.” The only thing in my control is how I respond to what I’m going through – I can’t change the fact that suffering will happen, that things I don’t want will happen. So to take care of myself, of my tender little heart that so deeply wants a new life to sprout in me this cycle, I’m going to open myself up to the swirling mass of emotion and everything that comes with it. Right now, it’s a mixture of excitement and fear. And that’s just fine. There really is no need to change it or keep it under control. If I am disappointed, I will survive that. And if I get pregnant, I will survive that, too.

My mom said recently that she saw a sign that said “Either way, it’s going to hurt.” I like that so much better than the idea that everything is going to work out for the best, or it’s all good, or everything’s going to be ok. They are the same thing, in a way, but the truth is that there is suffering on every path, and it’s much more helpful for me to remember that than to cling to the belief that everything will work out. It’s so easy for me to get tricked into believing that there really is a “golden ticket” that will take away all the pain of this journey, that if I just do things right, if I just get pregnant within the first few cycles, if it all goes according to plan, well, I’ll get to escape all the pain I’ve gone through. But that is bullshit of the highest order. There will always be something happening that I wish wasn’t happening. That’s how life is.

As I’m re-reading this, I realize that in some ways I’ve contradicted what I said earlier about embracing hope and excitement. But I’m going to leave it. This is the contradiction I’ve learned from Buddhism and my meditation practice that I love so deeply – when we open ourselves up to suffering, we open ourselves up to everything, including joy. And when we close ourselves down and try to avoid suffering, we end up closing down the good stuff, too. So I do my best to open my heart to my experience, and slowly, slowly, slowly…I’m changing. And I feel good. I feel strong.

And now for some facts.

Yesterday I invited some friends round for supper as they just came back from a trip to NYC and I figured (rightly) that they had no food in the house. So I made an amazing curry supper with 2 curries and rice and papadums and even pakora from scratch (yes, I am proud of myself). The pakora turned out so well and they were so ridiculously easy that I plan to make them all the time – I am so crazy about them that I could eat a whole mound of them in one sitting. Mmmm, with a spicy chutney and a sweet one, maybe a bit of yogurt….. I’ve decided that I want to start mastering certain kinds of cooking – I’m definitely on my way with Indian, and I’m working on Japanese. It’s sort of weird because even though I lived in Japan for 3 years, I really didn’t learn to cook much Japanese food. I guess because I was always craving food from home – we ate out a lot over there and it always seemed pointless to try cooking stuff when we could get it so much better in a restaurant. It really is fun to get super good at making particular meals or types of food. My regular cooking tends toward what my dad always calls “food that schmecks, ” which is both the title of a Mennonite cookbook and another way of saying “comfort food.” I make a damn fine meatloaf, and this winter I invented at least 3 chicken casseroles completely from scratch and they were totally delicious. The one with mushrooms, rosemary and a creamy sauce is Manny’s favorite…I’m such a housewife! I am hoping at some point I will get organized enough to post some recipes here, because I really like getting recipes from other people’s blogs (Oro over at Birch and Maple had a fantastic one a while back for this. I haven’t made them yet but I am so going to.) For now, though, I will focus on posting more often than once a week. And I need to get back to Stirrup Queens to check out NaComLeavMo. I didn’t quite grasp all the details during my first read, and I am often hestitant to make commitments because I tend to break them and because I’m quite hard on myself I feel REALLY bad about it and think I’m the worst person on the earth. If I think I can manage joining in without abusing myself (and I don’t mean in the fun way), I certainly will, as I think it’s quite a laudable thing and will no doubt be very fun. That Mel, always invigorating the community with her brilliance and good ideas. What a swell gal!