Happenings

A couple of years ago, I bicycled from my house in Marblemount on the West side of the Cascade Mountains to the town of Winthrop, which is 91 miles away on the other side of the mountains. This involved my dinky old mountain bike, an elevation gain of 6,908 feet, and 8.5 hours in the saddle. In other words, I blissfully biked all day, all by myself, up two mountain passes, and I never once felt like giving up.

So why is it so hard for me to RUN three miles? Our family has been training for a 5km run, and the most I've ever ran (this weekend) is four miles, every single one of which kicked my butt. And I had to take breaks walking on the last mile.

Put me on a bike, and I can easily do 100 miles. Put me on my own two feet, and I huff and puff like a chain smoker. It's incredibly frustrating, especially when I run with my 8 and 10 year old sons, who barely change their breathing patterns or break a sweat while jogging next to me, while I drip and groan and moan. Is this going to get any easier, or what? I mean it, people - suggestions are highly welcome here.

I am blown away by how many people read my blog (and I know there must be some runners out there who read it). I can view the statistics of my blog writing endeavor, and I can tell how many pages are read every day. I have only started blogging in November, but there have already been three thousand page views (not including mine). This feels so very lovely, because I feel like I am writing to an audience – to you! My words don't get lost in outer space somewhere, but they land – with you! Wow! I love it when people leave comments on the blog, although most people leave comments on Facebook, after I post my new entry there. So all I'm saying, feel free to post here, in this space, although I know it's kind of annoying to sign up for the whole google thing. Just know it makes my day to read your comments, thoughts and ideas, and it's also really great for my Ego! And – runners – please tell me what I should do to hang in there with my pathetic running efforts, okay?

We've been spending our days home schooling, practicing fiddle, starting more veggies seeds, taking enchanted walks through the woods to the river, baking bread, and making good food. I can't eat the bread, what with my elimination diet and all, but the rest of the family enjoys it.

I feel great, by the way! No sugar, no dairy, no gluten, no alcohol – and no cramps this month! I usually have to swallow ibuprofin to get through my moon time, but this month, I am breezing through it. I have lots of energy as well. That must have to do with my eating, don't you think? I am really trying hard to feel proud of myself for being so virtuous, but I still do feel deprived. Especially when my terrible dear family stuffs their faces with my home made bread, dripping with butter and honey, while I munch carrots with tahini instead. Or when Lukas inhales chocolate chips after our training run, with the smell wafting right under my nose. Sigh...

These are my brassica starts, poking their lovely heads out of the soil.

Thanks to our wonderful friend and neighbor, Kai is getting fiddle lessons.  He really, really wants to learn how to play fiddle, because, in his own words, "It makes my heart happy."

This is one of our typical meals.  Here you see salmon with garlic and dill, plus lots and lots of vegetables.

One of our projects this week involved fire, and lots of it. For months, I had been walking by the huge brush pile next to one of the living room windows, and I finally declared that I had enough of the mess. I am Southern German, after all, and it is deeply instilled in my genetic material that picture perfect farms do not entail big, ugly brush piles next to the house. So we spent an afternoon dragging logs and branches over to a roaring fire. We also burnt a lot of bamboo, since I had cut down lots of it the week before. You can imagine how wretched it looked after having been bent over by winter rains and snow. So my German sense of orderliness hacked a lot of it down. Have you ever heard the racket bamboo canes make when they burn? They sound like fireworks, with their popping and cracking. That's why they call it BAM-boo!

Check out the sound in this video.  The bamboo sounds like gun shots!  

I've been on a sock knitting kick lately. This way, my family ends up with plenty of wool socks, nice and warm for this temperamental spring weather. And they feel so heavenly comfortable on your feet. Another plus is the fact that when they get wet (since I have plenty of puddle splashing children), they still feel warm. When Lukas put on his first pair of wool socks, he looked at me in astonishment and exclaimed, “Wow, these socks feel like walking on water!” For the ones of us who have never walked on water, we can just assume he marveled at their softness and magic.

This is a hat I knit up in half an hour for Lukas.  Hurray for bulky yarn!

How I deal when life is rough. It involves chocolate, pumpkin pie, and lots of hugs.

I really wanted to write about how much grey hair I have acquired in the past month and why, but that would be too much of a downer.  So let me just say, I have so much admiration for us brave little humans, stumbling along, hurting each other, loving one another, trying to find our way...
Finding my way has been a theme lately.  I got a new smart phone and was playing with the destination finder application.   Ater a solo downvalley shopping trip, I typed in my home town just to find out how the device works, but since it's a straight shot home on a scenic highway, not much electronic direction-giving happened.  I drove an hour in quiet contemplation, marveling at how I have navigated this grey-hair-inducing past month of health scares, deadly shootings of innocent children, and disharmony with my husband.  As I reached home, I thought to myself that I will never arrive at being enlightened, but that I am proud of how I handled all the turmoil of this month, letting myself feel and cry in the face of so much pain and dealing with it courageously.  Contemplating how much personal work I've done on myself to arrive at this outcome, I felt a beautiful connection to the universe as I drove into my little home town.  Just at this spiritual moment, a voice said, out of the blue, "You have arrived."  For a moment, I thought this might be the voice of God, telling me that I have reached enlightenment, but then I realized it was my smart phone destination finder.
So.  Stumbling along, finding solace in little things, like holding my children close, forgiving myself for being such a bitch to my poor husband, enjoying the snow, smelling the freshly baked pumpkin muffins I made for breakfast, giving myself the day off.
So I am sharing with you what that looked like this week:

Steve striding out into the snow to feed the goats and ducks, so I can leave early and take the day off to go to a Korean spa, where I can recuperate and maybe relax enough to realize how mean I can be to him.

And this is what happens when Mama is gone relaxing at the spa.  Build large snow sculptures with Daddy and then put a lawn chair on it and sit in it, so you can break your neck.  Okay, okay, I promised to be nicer.  I will, as soon as I get back from the spa.

So what do I do in times when things are rough?

I eat chocolate.  I knit.  I spend time alone.  I eat chocolate.  I call my girl friends.  I have a kick ass workout.  I eat some more chocolate.  And I cook.  What is more comforting than nurturing your loved ones with food that you grew and prepared?  Here is a poached egg dish (thank you, lovely chickens), with fresh goat chevre (thank you, goatie ladies).

And here is a progression of pumpkin goodness.  Step one: Grow pie pumpkins in the garden.  Step two, bake them.  Then puree the flesh, bake the pumpkin seeds and make pie and muffins.

Little helpers supervise and taste test.

So, friends?  Remember to be gentle with yourselves.  Let yourself cry.  Bake a pumpkin pie.  Eat lots of chocolate.  And hug your loved ones.

Many blessings to you.