Oh coffee

I'd never even had a sip until I was nearly 30 years old. That's more than 8 years ago now. It was my doctor who started it. Just after my son was born, and just 17.5 ( yes the .5 is important) months after the girl baby came along I was facing some very serious medical issues. My doctor reeling with disbelief at the caffeine intake box checked 'no' asked if it was a religious thing. He leaned in close and looked me square in the eyes and said "if you need a little something to keep you going try coffee, trust me".  So, he's a doctor. I trusted him. I was sure I was dying anyways so I might as well start experiencing new things. 

    I was only sort of dying. Slowly and painfully bleeding and having my internal organs crushed over the course of about 14 months. 

*Spoiler alert, I lived*

   
  I was so sick, in so much pain that the awful taste didn't bother me. I just wanted to be able to stay awake long enough to feed the baby and play with the almost toddler and maybe sit outside on the back porch in the biting cold Chicago winter air and breathe. 

     Of course there are a million things that helped me pull through that scary sad time in my life. The surgery didn't go as planned and things got scary. Blood transfusions and visits to the VA hospital and being pushed in wheelchairs and waking up in hospital beds happened more often in those few months than anyone should ever have to experience but the one thing, the simple pleasure that stuck with me is coffee. It's an addiction for sure. Morphine and Oxycontin are pretty addictive too but somehow I managed to wean myself off of those fairly quickly and just coffee remained.

     Just a few months after surgery. The surgery that took away a piece of me I wasn't ready to give up just yet, we moved thousands of miles across the country to a place where coffee rules. It became a huge part of my healing. In the state of Washington coffee is social, it is friendly, it warms hearts and hands and gives people an excuse to venture out under wet gray skies and seek out the electric buzz that some of us need to live. 

       I'm in Hawaii now. Humid mornings and hot coffee don't always mix and my body is perfectly healthy, better than ever in fact, but I don't think I'll ever be whole without a fresh hot cup. 

Notes on Hawaii.

Nothing particularly new to say here but I figured I'd gather some of my bitchiest crybaby crap thoughts here.

But first...- a quick list of things that are awesome.. Because really there ARE ton of awesome things and I am often reminded in life that looking on the bright side and maintaining a positive attitude is super important in order to be a proper and well adjusted adult human being. Am I right? (Duh I'm always right)

1. Beautiful beauty wrapped in a snug blanket of more super pretty beautifulness with a flipping cherry on top.  Majestic green mountains with waterfalls and palm trees, hibiscus flowers and unreal beaches with white sand and crystal blue water where sea turtles reside and tropical fish of all different magical colors swim. High fives all around for awesome fantastic 

beautifulness 

Sounds great right? I mean it's a magical place that millions of people visit every year. A place of aloha dreams and mahalo Shaka brah, shoots and leis and Dole pineapple whip that folks save for and plan romantic honeymoons to and stuff. 

and yes, that's my whole list jammed into one little paragraph.

Except I kinda hate it a little bit (or a lot, whatever) 

Here is an example of a typical day in my life.

Wake up and cover all exposed skin in loads and loads of sunscreen. 

Take kids to school and try to get in a workout before the blazing hot fireball in the sky starts shooting it's laser beams at me and burning the shit out of me leaving oozing weeping blisters and a tender coating of red inflamed flesh on my entire body. 

Go to my safe air conditioned lonely bedroom to cool down. 

Do some housework and work on my business. 

Realize that it's nearly time to venture out to pick up children and start panicking. 

Get in vehicle and drive past a bazillion brave and acclimated people riding bikes towards the school to pick up their children and wonder how the hell they are not being sizzled into tiny bits of charred flesh and start to feel like some sort of freak for not being able to handle a bike ride outdoors at 2pm without burning and sweating and crying. 

Start crying, avoiding awkward eye contact with all other parents while waiting for kids in fear that if anyone talks to me I'll blurt out "I hate Hawaii please help me escape!" 

people here are so damn nice. So so nice. Inviting me to the beach and to come work out with them in the middle of the day... outside. Um no. I can't. Really. For serious. It's not fun. 

Also, sand is annoying. 

Okay okay I know....

How bout this? I'll make ya a deal. I'll write something happy next time. Maybe.  

So, tell me. Have you ever lived somewhere you didn't like? Why were you there and how did you cope?

Oh yeaaah. This.

I feel like this is something people do-start a blog, promise to keep up and then  totally forget about it. Obviously it's something 'I' do. So here I am again, making promises to try to keep writing. I even thought about starting a whole new blog but figured why bother if this is still floating around out there, I might as well just go with it. Okay, so, done with the explanations and excuses. Most of what I've written about in the past is about being a mom, and a wife and a woman who is just trying to figure shit out as I go. I suppose that's a good place to start. I feel like I have important stuff to say sometimes and nobody to say it to. So this is my solution. I guess I'll just dive right in with some crap- I live in Hawaii now and I don't super love it. I feel guilty and stupid even saying that, which only adds to my misery. Sometimes I want to lay it all out on Facebook but again that just adds to the feeling stupid part. So here's a big long thing I wrote and then decided was too annoying for Facebook but is perfectly okay in a blog (right?)   depression is like living in a deep dark place with no proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel'. But there is another kind of sadness. The kind that is not like living at the bottom of a well. The kind where we CAN see the light but it's really far away and while we might have all the tools and all the support and all the hope and knowledge to know for sure it's going to be alright,  it's still really really hard. Part of it is very specific to being a military spouse. That feeling of instability, of being uprooted, ungrounded. Sometimes it feels so light, so free, so good to know I am capable of just packing up and moving on and making a great life wherever the Navy sends us and making a lasting impression of positivity and love anywhere we go. But there is a dark side. Laying all that love on the line, putting in all the work and positivity and then having to leave it behind is hard. What's even harder is seeing those communities and friendships and things you once were a part of thriving without you. Moving forward and expanding and becoming exactly what you had hoped they would but not being there to partake in the fruits of your labor. I suppose this is what true love is. Looking back and appreciating that you had the opportunity to be a part of it to begin with  and fighting the urge to be hurt by growth in your absence and knowing that you still have a million chances to do other great things.  

Oh and here is a picture of a beautiful butterfly in my yard- it's symbolism or whatever. 

Notes on Kindergarten from a Mama bear

I try hard to be, hard, tough, unwavering and serious. In fact I have read a few of these sorts of blogs already this week and told myself I was wayyyy too cool to write one myself (fail). All this because really, I am scared to be uselessly incompetent at all of those things and I feel like its my job to make an effort to uphold some sort of good front.  This is my style in life and particularly my style of parenting. I make rules, set boundaries, push for maximum effort and expect that things be done properly and in a timely manner, but really I'm a big ball of mush at the core and all these things are put in place to keep me chugging along with a sense of purpose and certainty that all of my efforts will pay off in the form of bright successful polite little children. So far its working out great. Tomorrow is a whole new ball game though. Tomorrow I send my five year old son off with a healthy lunch packed, some quarters to buy chocolate milk and walk away as he enters a new place with new people I've never met to have new experiences that I have zero control over. Up until now I have made all the choices. His circle is quite pleasantly small, his needs are simple and always met. I have been his teacher and provided him with the basic core values that are meaningful to our little family. Tomorrow he will ask questions and get answers from people with all different background and beliefs. Tomorrow he will be a part of something that I am not, tomorrow I will have nothing to do all day. These are all good things, things I am of course, in my open minded and rational level head, quite pleased with, but...but...the Mama bear part, the the piece of me that sees him as all mine will have a tough time walking away tomorrow.

love.

its more important that I ever imagined. really. it's huge.
so many ways.
fear, joy, despair, loneliness, smiling, laughing.
connected at the core.
a jumbled ball of string whose end is tucked away deep where it might never be seen.
just unravel it a bit then wrap it back up haphazardly.
or maybe you can lay it out straight and run your fingertip along, pressing hard to leave a scar.
sway it loosely, as if teasing a cat, then yank it away at the last second.
bound.
tie me up in a neat little bow...and
love me.

and again.

Publish Post

I read somewhere that dreams are what happen while your brain is busy filing memory into neat little compartments...or something like that. And that things get, mixed up, confused, out of sequence and while the rest of your brain is busy  dreams float on the surface flashing daily dramas and mundane nicety and sometimes unspoken fear. Reoccurring dreams are some sort of glitch, the filing drawer left open or the memo never read. It's always the same, a place with so many rooms that all feel strange and yet, familiar . Opening doors and knowing what I think will be behind them and sometimes its easy and I'm right, but sometimes I'm wrong and I feel embarrassed or ugly. My dreams so often have to do with rooms, big houses, mazes and confusion with a spatter of triumph and comfort  here and there. I suppose that's how it goes.

Almost as good as Granny's Chicken and Dumplings

My husbands Grandmother is from the south, Tennessee to be exact. She cooks like she is from the south and shes an outspoken, hard workin, take no shit kinda lady. The first Christmas eve I spent with BJ and his family , about 15 years ago, I was treated to the most wonderful meal and a house full of about 75 people waiting on Granny's famous chicken and dumplings. She worked all week making chocolate pies , ham and green beans, biscuits, and of course the famous chicken n dumplings which turned out to be made with flour tortillas, what a great idea! About 3 years ago we were back home in Indiana visiting when Granny called down to my in-laws house to inform us she was not feeling up to making Christmas eve dinner and that she was calling off the whole thing. Before I had a chance to offer up some help My father in-law, her eldest child, had jumped in his truck with BJ and headed over to make sure she was okay. By the time my mother-in law and I showed up BJ, his dad, and his two uncles were in the kitchen cooking up all the fixins for a Christmas eve feast with Granny shouting instructions from her favorite reclining chair. I was perhaps the sweetest thing I've ever seen and I always relate this meal with that sweet moment. My recipe is a little different, my own version that will never quite capture the magic of Granny's but I think it's pretty darned good.
Today was a typical northwest kinda day, rain, more rain, gray skies and rain.
Just the perfect kinda weather for some sweet memories and some yummy comfort food.



Chicken and (fake)Dumplings

5 frozen boneless skinless chicken tenderloins (or 3 whole breasts)
3 cans low sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon smart balance (or real butter)
10 baby carrots (or 3/4 cup diced carrots)
1 teaspoon low sodium chicken soup base (or 1 bullion cube)
3 large burrito size flour tortillas cut into 2 inch strips
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon flour
1/2 teaspoon corstarch
black pepper
onion powder

warm up olive oil(I used garlic flavored olive oil from trader joes..yum!)in a pan and add frozen chicken (I buy bag of frozen chicken tenderloins and use them for EVERYTHING super easy and a really good price) and cook for about 5 minutes on low heat flipping once until mostly thawed and then add enough water to cover chicken  and put a lid on and let it chicken boil until cooked all the way through with no pink in the middle. In a large pot stir together chicken broth, soup base, butter, carrots a dash of onion powder and as much black pepper as you prefer(I like A LOT) oh wait, let me back up and tell you how I dealt with the carrots. I have one of those slap chop devices, well its not actually a slapchop but its  the same idea and it works GREAT for dicing up carrots perfectly. So I just put them in about 5 at a time and pounded away to perfection! Ok so back to the rest..  Once the chicken is cooked dice it up on a cutting board and put it in with the broth and cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes or until the carrots start softening up. Add flour and cornstarch and stir in with a whisk to thicken the broth. stack up about 3 or 4 large flour tortillas and cut them into 1 or 2 inch strips ( I like to use a pizza cutter) drop tortilla strips into the pot and cook for about another 3-5 minutes or until the tortilla strips are soft and  yummy and soaking up all the wonderful goodness of the broth.  I'm thinking I might try this as tortilla soup sometime and add black beans green chillies and a can of diced tomatoes...YUM!