The head and the heart

For the first time in over a year I did not rush home from work to let Ramona out.

Instead, I went to the main squeeze's house where we ordered in pizza as the snow blew around outside, watched silly sitcoms, snuggled, and ate the most delicious popcorn drizzed with coconut oil and honey. Oh, and I got a backrub. Perfect.

Except, on the drive home, overflowing with love and warmth, I remembered why I was able to go right from work to my squeeze's house and I remembered that when I got home Ramona wouldn't jump off the couch to lick my nose and beg for dinner.

Tonight Ramona is with the woman who is thinking of adopting her, and with her two-possible furball siblings.

In my head I have known for awhile that Ramona is not a good fit for my social lifestyle and my growing relationship. Her aggression towards visitors has grown and worsened, and my ability to control it has also worsened and ultimately failed. For the safety of all, I have finally accepted she needs a more experienced caretaker.

But in my heart, she is my dog and I am her "mom."

This is my first pet and my first pet failure. It is a pain that is hard to touch on for too long, too hard to focus on, for doing so leaves me a little breathless. She is going to be gone from my life soon I realize, and I choke on the words as they form. Our paths are heading different directions, my heart sobs.

I keep looking down at the foot of my bed, where her empty bed is, and I can barely believe she isn't in it, groaning and snoring, turning and scratching, occassionally craning her neck upwards towards me. It's hard to believe there is a possibility that soon she will not be the last thing I see every night and the first thing I see every morning.

She has been my company this last year, most times in a positive way, but sometimes in a burdensome and hard way. She is my shadow and companion - never more than a few feet away at any given moment. I know her noises and what her movements mean. I know when she is giving me sincere affection versus treat-motivated licks. I know when she is sick of hugs and my high-pitched sing-song conversations. I have come to cherish when she treats me to the rare and much loved morning snuggle. I try to tell her every day how much I love her. I hope she forgives me for being unable to fulfill the commitment I made to her a year ago.

My house is so quiet without her.

The Last Five Months....OR What I Have Been Doing When I Haven't Been Blogging

The last five months...nearly the last six months...many times my thoughts have wandered to this online blank page and I have thought, "I should write. I should reflect. I should share."

Instead I have been sinking into this thing called life, in ways nourishing and needed, in ways challenging and needed.

Writing is this whisper in my heart that is always there, and yet for these five (nearly six) months I have ignored the call for other things.

I have ignored it for a dog that wakes me up before the sun is up, chin on the edge of my bed, begging for the morning meal that I can only assume has been cycling through her doggy brain all through the night and wee morning hours.

This dog has slowly sniffed her way through our shared neighborhood, started to come out of her shell in the most subtle of ways - a tiny tail wag on our afternoon stroll, a lick on the tip of my nose when I return from my 9-to-5 - and both expanded and broken my heart in countless ways.

I have ignored writing for a job that demands more than 40 hours a week, that is unrelenting and punishing, that makes me cry in the office bathroom and question my strength, my boundaries.

This job that I put so much hope into has taught me about the risk of expectations and the risk of always saying "Yes." I seek new opportunities with the promise to myself that I will never again give my A++++ game, that my B game is more than enough, that boundaries in the workplace cannot be overvalued.

I have ignored this space to fall in love with a boy. (Saw that coming right?)

This boy who has taught me through his introvert-self about the truth of my extrovert-facade. This boy who has helped me slow, who has given me permission to relax and let the to do list wait a day, who has waxed poetics about social justice and topics of EXTREME nerdery.

In his way, which is so different from my way, I have discovered the things I value, the things I stubbornly fight for, and the places I need to bend and give way a bit. I believe he has made similiar discoveries about himself, and in this - in this learning together - these last six months have been something altogether new.

When I was 18 I took a semester off school and moved to California. Even though I'd been living in a college dorm the year prior, my move to California felt like the first time I was truly "on my own."

I was on my own and I had no friends.

Until I met a coworker, Shannon, ten years older, who - in a profound and real way - took me under her wing. I'll never forget the weekend we first hung out - I had been so excited when she'd asked me the day before if I wanted to go to a park with her. I had been so bored and lonely all the weekends leading up to that one. When the planned excursion ended up lasting hours less than I expected, I started to feel a bit panicky thinking about how I would fill the rest of the day.

Shannon asked me in the car a mile from my house, "So, what do you do on the weekends usually? What will you do when I drop you off?"

And because I had no defenses up I just straight up said, "A lot of reading and staring at my wall."

I'll never forget the look Shannon gave me, or the very swift u-turn she made as the silence after my comment filled the car. As she turned her car around she said, "You are coming to my place. There will be no wall staring today."

Every weekend there after I would wait for Shannon to pick me up and when I heard the beep of her car horn, I would run downstairs, and jump into her passenger seat. Shannon's passenger seat became the most important "place" of my six months living in CA. And the symbolism of having an occupied passenger seat has followed me.

Throughout my twenties my passenger seat held many friends, and bags, and books, and flowers for my garden, and tools for my house, but mostly it was a quiet, blank space waiting to be filled.

So imagine my surprise when, in my 30th year, my normally empty passenger seat suddenly became occupied by a tolerant and quiet furball named Ramona. We took many drives in our first three months together and she was a nice - thought silent - co-pilot.

Or when, in the spring of my 30th year, I suddenly found myself driving home after dropping off this amazing boy I was getting to know and I looked to my right - to the passenger seat I had spent my last decade trying to accept in its emptiness and trying to not beg or long to be occupied - and I felt so swiftly and strongly that the seat had found its inhabitant.

I thought, "It's not just empty now; it's empty without him. It's empty when he's not in it. My passenger seat is full."

Which is why I haven't been blogging, and what I have been sinking into - and letting sink into me - over the last five (nearly six) months.

Ramona Update - Independence Day

Here's a very important collage I made about Ramona's reaction to fireworks.

 

 

Puppy can't be bothered.

Making a Kumquat Pie

Making a Candied Kumquat Tart Pie is not so bad.

If you have three hours to kill.

First Row: 1) Wash kumquats 2) Slice kumquats 3) Be sure to get all the seeds 4) Boil kumquats in sugar water 5) Dry 

Second Row: 1) Roast hazelnuts 1-2) Forget to document boring parts of making dough 2) Throw hazelnut dough on pastry mat 3) Knead 4) Push into pie pan (instead of tart pan recipe calls for) 5) Bake crust weighted with rice on foil (but burn it anyway)

Third Row: 1) Semi-sweet chocolate chips go in bowl 1-2) Do not document heating of cream and pouring of cream 2) Stir together decadent ingredients to make filling 3) Fill tart shell / crust 4) Start arranging kumquats 5) Think about how much your pie doesn't look like the photo from the blog.

Recipe can be found here.

Bored sous chef not included for all chefs

Review: Not dentist approved aka immediate toothache, but excited to know how to candy fruit.

Saturday Morning, Pondering the Big Questions

Read this.

Words to live by: You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

Real

love

moves

freely

in

both

directions. 

(Just something I've been ruminating on a lot as I've started again doing this thing called "dating.")

Dog is Co-pilot

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my dog, Ramona.

That's where I have disappeared off to, this world of dog ownership and the swiftest growing of my heart, expanding with love that increases every day.

I have bonded with other dogs before, notably my parent's newish dog Bea and even more significantly the resident dog on the farm I worked at in 2006, Loki.

Loki

I'll never forget the day that the lunch bell rang and I lingered in the harvest shed with Loki. Normally, the sound of the lunch bell felt so overdue after a morning in the fields that it was all I - and the other workers - could do to not sprint towards the house. Go slowly, look less desperately hungry, I'd tell myself.

This particular morning, I found myself alone in the harvest shed with Loki by my side. Like Ramona, Loki was a dog that was always underfoot, and like Ramona, I often tripped over him, so surprised I was to find him by my side.

That day, I found myself compelled to plop down on the ground and begin to pet him from forehead to tail. I remember gazing into his eyes and thinking to myself, "I am going to try something. I am going to manifest the biggest orb of love I can and try to transmit it from my hand into Loki."

So I sat there in the shed for a good ten minutes, just petting him over & over, with each pet thinking to myself I love you so much, Loki, I love you so much. Finally the lunch bell rang a second time, with more urgency, and I picked myself up and headed to the house.

Interestingly enough, Loki was not at lunch that day, doing his normal graze between chairs for fallen food. I noticed this but didn't think much of it until hours later when I was back in the field.

I was crawling on my hands and knees, pulling weeds (oh the joy of organic farming) in a field at the top of the hill, when I had the distinct feeling that someone - or something - was watching me. Imagine my surprise when I looked up, and saw Loki just a foot away from my face. Due to my position, we were eye level. I looked at him, thinking What the heck are you doing, pup? And then he took a half step forward, maintaining eye contact, and licked me square on the nose, turning afterwards to run off into the distance.

I felt certain this was his acknowledgment of the exchange we'd had before lunch. Love passed back to me in the way he knew how.

I recall this story as I think of the deep love I felt for Loki and how it compares to what is growing for Ramona. I think there is a difference in the love you feel for a creature you are responsible for,  rather than just enjoying.

I look at Ramona and I think of my friend who said, "You are both rescued." I think that is true. In no disrespect to my wonderful life, career, community, Ramona truly gave me something outside of myself and my goals to be connected to: a reason to rush home after work, awake at the crack of dawn to get in a walk, abuse Google with my dog care questions, and build relationships with strangers who share this one thing in common with me: a canine companion.

I have seen those bumper stickers that say "Dog is Co-Pilot" and though they always made me chuckle, I never really got them until getting Ramona.

It's funny, because a lot of my twenties were about existing without a solid co-pilot. I remarked to many coupled friends how often I was alone, taking care of my mundane tasks and errands, looking at the passenger seat with a bit of longing and uncertainty. Towards the end of my twenties I began to see the gift in my independence, and actually found myself cherishing the moments after dropping off a friend when my passenger seat was empty again and I got to drive home with by myself. And in this space of less desperate longing for a companion, I found Ramona, and she found me.

The other day, I was transported back to the harvest shed with Loki, when I found myself petting Ramona one evening. She was curled up in her dog bed at the foot of my human bed, and I was lying at the very edge leaning over to stroke her with my right hand.

I looked at my hand, and it was like as if I could see golden rays of love and light and nurturing transmitting from my hand to her body. Or, to articulate it another way, I saw myself.

As I pet Ramona and poured my love into her, I realized I was pouring myself into her. Though all I could see was my hand petting her, we never really see ourselves fully, right? Even a mirror image is skewed. And in this moment, in just my hand, in just the action of loving this animal, I saw myself so clearly.

I feel so lucky to have found her.

What Was, What Will Be

I've always been the reflective type. Thus, honoring have the start of the new year with some heartfelt reflection on the year ending and the year to come has been my go-to New Year's tradition. Setting intentions for myself feels about as natural as taking a breath in, a breath out. It feels good. It feels like the right way to close one chapter and start another.

So, to my surprise, as 2013 came to a close and 2014 jumped to a start - with my 30th birthday just a few days into the New Year - I've felt no such inclination to step aside and dream of what's next.

Not that I'm not dreaming...

Perhaps starting a new decade requires more concentration or focus. Perhaps reflecting on the year past has felt a bit surprising and so I've wanted to linger there longer. Or, simply put, I have been living into my intentions and felt less bound to the actual ritual of stating them.

When I think about this past year I recognize that I put up a lot of walls - a sort of fortress around myself - to quite literally protect myself. 2012 had a lot of heartache and I went into 2013 a little weathered and exhausted. In my bubble - created through fear, heartbreak, disappointment, and needs I couldn't yet articulate - I ended up digging deeper into self-care and discovered someone I rather like: me.  It was a year of looking back to name the hurt and looking forward to say how it could be different. It was about self-love and forgiveness, which includes loving the bits that will always be broken. It was also a year that ended with serious career transition that put me face-to-face with my walls, fears, BS, excuses AND power, humor, sensitivity, competency, and passion.

It was a year about quoting from Dear Sugar; cooking adventurous and epic meals in my new kitchen; expressing love and accepting rejection; acting courageously in my career; finding support in surprising places; being less surprised when things don't always work out the way you expected but they still work; speaking my own truth; laughing through tears and crying through uncontrollable laughter at therapy; and driving home more times than I can count filled with overflowing gratitude for my community of wise, loving, wonderful people.

All that being the case, I know 2014 has to be about kicking down some of those self-protection walls. It can't all be about self-work: eventually you have to try out your tools in the field instead of just sharpening them over and over again in the shop. This year I looked within and came out on the other side liking who I am, scars freckles and all. This year I aim to be open to new experiences, new people, new challenges, and the possibility of new hurt, if it means new growth.

Seemed like a dog was a good way to start.

Hello, Ramona. 

thankful

I'm thankful for pumpkin muffins about to go into the oven

And the smell as they are cooking.

When I think over 2013, I chuckle to myself as I ponder whether or not to just post a link to "How to Survive your Saturn Returns." The universe was up to something this year, and I felt it in ways large and small.

But as I stand here - disheveled hair, flour splatters on my (stupidly) all black PJs, the smell of pumpkin wafting through the kitchen  - I know I have much - so much - to sing praises for.

As 2013 was distinguished by transitions and some annoying necessary introspection, here are some related 2013 gratitudes:

 -I am grateful for the many mentors that arrived on my doorstep this year - some expected, some surprising.

-I am grateful for the multiple circles of women I am blessed to be a part of, as well as those women I can sit across a table from, face-to-face, and speak truth, hear truth.

-I am grateful for where I was one year ago - literally and symbolically.

-I am grateful for how far I've come from that place - literally and symbolically.

-I am grateful for a full year in my beautiful kitchen and the many cooking adventures we've had.

-I am grateful for my house, and have found myself sending it more love this year.

-I am grateful for the ability to say when something isn't working, and the ability to make changes that are not easy.

-I am grateful for my former coworkers who said "congrats" before they said "how could you abandon us?"

-I am grateful for remembering that the world around me is more nuanced and strange than I was giving credit...

-...and in taking notice, feeling very small but very empowered in my specific place in it all.

Ready.

Chard Soup - Pretty & Tasty

For me, this is a very happy sight.

I wish you could smell it. This is the start of one of my favorite soup recipes.

Off the wagon, on the wagon - where's the wagon?

I've fallen off the wagon. Face first. Hard.

In the midst of a difficult transition (see: perspectives on surviving a transition), it feels like everything that's good for me has taken a backseat to everything that is easy, which is not always what is healthy or best for me.

Take this post for example: I just spent about an hour finding ways to avoid writing. (Including: this. Twice.)

But here's the thing: I am really feeling like I need something to strive towards right now. Simultaneously, I have started to feel really weird about turning 30 in a few months.

THIS in itself is extremely WEIRD. I mean, I have been rounding up my age for seriously my entire life as a twenty-something. Halfway through my 25th year if you'd ask me my age I'd say "26." Super casually, blinking slowly through the lie that didn't feel one bit deceitful. And this was the case for all my twenties: at some point in the year I'd round up 'cause why the hell not and/or some part of me wanted the future to come more quickly. (I'll analyze that shit in therapy, dontchaworry.)

I'd heard all these thirty-somethings say they were so hapy when their twenties were over and that they really felt like they settled into themselves in their thirties. Well shit, obviously I wanted that! (Sidenote: maybe they were just relieved to have survived their Saturn Returns.)

But suddenly I've started to feel really strange that I am bidding adieu to my twenties. I already started to look in the mirror and have felt the minutes tick away as I stare at a worry line between my eyes that seems more defined in the last few months. Is this line gonna be a permanent mark on my face when the clock strikes midnight on Jan 3rd and I roll into thirtydom?!

But really, the question is: is this where I thought I would be at the start to my 30th year?

Comparisons to others aside, is this who I want to be? Am I living well? Am I successful? How do I define success? Am I having fun? Am I building meaningful relationships? Do I like myself? Do I like my work? How do I recharge? And why the hell do I always fall off the wagon???

With that in mind, I am extremely aware that I could probably use a good visioning-goal-creating-session. Off the top of my head I am pretty sure they will fall into the classic categories of health, relationships, and creativity. Being kind to myself, being kind to others, and making the days a little more whimsical and colorful.

It's hard to even write specifics down right now though, as I'll admit I am afraid of failing. Accountability is a challenging concept for me right now. I see myself in this long plummet from up there on that comfortable wagon and  if I say out-loud what it takes me to get back in that seat, then it is truly only me holding myself back from my dreams. Usually I am pretty good at kicking myself in the butt into action, but right now I'm in some sort of transitional-overload induced holding zone that feels suffocating to my own self-care and nourishment.

Super huge UGH.

Reader(s): how do you set goals and achieve them?

Beauty in the Small Things

There were the most beautiful fall flowers at the market this weekend.

And now I am hand-grinding some black peppercorns for my latest obsession - homemade chai. Side benefit: really good stress reliever. 

La Cocina

Now that I have a new job and it feels like this HUGE weight has been lifted off of me, things are starting to return to center. Things that felt stressful are feeling good again. Cooking felt like such a chore when all my time off was barely enough time to recover from such a stressful job. I was always rushing in the kitchen, rather than enjoying the process - and it's the process of measuring, chopping, mixing, stirring, waiting, contemplating that I so love about cooking and preparing food. That feeling was just not present when I was consumed with work-related anxiety. So it's no wonder with a job that feels more connected to my core values that I am rediscovering the joy in things such as cooking.

I'm loving the color and smell of things in my kitchen. I'm loving taking my time - Sunday I spent hours in the kitchen. I love having music on in the background or preparing a new recipe in complete silence. I am reminded of my time as a naturalist on a bird sanctuary where our most core lesson with the kids was the five senses and experiencing the world with a sense of wonder through sight-sound-smell-taste-touch. This feels alive and well in the kitchen lately.

Yesterday I had this brilliant idea to add chopped up chocolate-covered pretzels to my favorite oatmeal-flax cookie recipe and they are heavenly!

Creativity and joy can flourish when there is true space for it.

Blog vs Journal

So, I haven't really felt like writing lately for ye ol' blog lately. Maybe you've noticed.

I'll come online - to write an update - and I'll stare at the screen for awhile until I decide I'd rather not spend any more of my day staring at a screen. And then I'll turn off the computer and go about my day.

The other day I did a strange thing though: I wrote by hand in my paper journal - a space that has been pretty much ignored since I started this online diary thingamajig.

And, oh wow, it felt SO good.

So maybe I do feel like writing, but not in the way I have been these last few years. To write for an audience (even if small or merely perceived) is totally different than writing for yourself.

Unedited, stream of consciousness, raw honesty - not worried about sounding good or saying the wrong or right thing or oversharing or making people uncomfortable because I'm lonely/bored/uninspired/too inspired/et cetera. I didn't even know I missed that sort of writing, but apparently I did!

I started this goodbyeuglyrobe project to be more intentional about self-care and exploration, but suddenly I am not so sure if I've gotten closer or further away from the heart of the project. Because just thirty minutes of writing by hand - privately, for myself - made me feel closer to myself than I have in many, many entries on here. Cut straight through the BS - even if it did give me a slight hand cramp.

I'll be back. Here and there, when the feeling moves me.

But for the moment, I think I need a little more unedited time just for me.

...



Oh, by the way, my taste-testers told me my green tomato pie turned out perfectly. They couldn't believe it was my first-ever homemade crust. Beginners luck.

There's probably a lesson in there somewhere.

A Pie Story - In Photos

It was a beautiful night.

So I decided to make a pie. Obviously.

Check out my first ever homemade pie crust, crimped edges (sorta), and decorative vents!




Drum-roll please............

Thursday Share

Thought this was utterly fantastic!

Daily Mantra

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.

The question is: What are we busy about?

-Henry David Thoreau

Go into art

"…go into the arts.

I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.

They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.

Sing in the shower.

Dance to the radio.

Tell stories.

Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.

Do it as well as you possibly can.

You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. "

-Kurt Vonnegut's words, with my spacing.

Remind me to tell you about the time when I was 12 and I went alone to a Kurt Vonnegut lecture in the gym of a nearby college and sat in the very front row in a room full of twenty-somethings so I could get a good look at the man who confused me- and yet delighted me* - completely with Slaughterhouse Five. I left more confused and without my copy of the book signed and a little bit changed and without my parents knowing where I'd been for those two hours.**

*which in itself confused me

**It is also to be noted that sneaking into a lecture given by a prominent literary figure is exactly how an adolescent book-nerd rebels.

My first galette

I'm super proud of my first galette.

kale!kale!kale!

I love my greens.

Shaking Off

Sometimes I'm scared.

Sometimes I keep myself awake because the fear of i'll never find love, be loved, be loving echoes louder when I shut down, close my eyes, try to slumber.

Gotta quiet that.

I can spend an entire evening bouncing from one website to the next: a friend's photos, a stranger's popsicle recipe (yum that looks good, I should make that), a self-help list on the 8 things to ask when seeking true vocation... I bounce between things, but not towards anything in particular. I'm avoiding my work.

I never bring work home - except tonight I did - and on a night like tonight that is all about avoidance, I slip into some adolescent self that can't focus and must play.

Or is it play?

I've been spilling over nostalgia lately; since I saw two friends from past lives and marveled at how much we've changed, how little we've changed, how the only change is time's fault, not our own. The nostalgia has been upon me and it causes me to feel jumpy, to feel as if my bones are knocking against skin, as if something is literally stirring in me.

What is stirring in me?

I can't focus. Work is harder when you are seeking something new. Now it takes me longer to do my work - now I bring my work home with me because it takes me longer because I have to spend as much energy trying to care about my work as I am trying to do my work.

This is not me - not ideal, not what I want. But it's who I am right now.

Scattered, unsure. Hopeful to hopeless in a snap. Distracted and distracting. Quiet screaming. An oxymoron on purpose?

I'm on oxymoron on purpose. I want love and I fear it. I want new but fear it. I want change but can't find it. I wonder why it's so hard to put myself out there. I didn't think I was a shy person, but I am learning I'm more introverted than I previously thought. I wonder why when I'm finally trying to put myself out there, I'm not getting clear signs that it is worth it. Is this just a fancy way of admitting I no longer know how to flirt?

I do know how to embrace insomnia though.

Something is knocking at me. It's keeping me awake. I can't pinpoint the problem, but I sense it is a deep and endless yearning. Or, perhaps, what some people call loneliness.