Vegetarian Cooking – January

Time has gotten away from me! Here is our vegetarian food diary for the month so far:

The first week I made Black Bean Chilequiles from  A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.  I was worried it would turn out a bit like bean dip and it did, but not as thick. The flavor was delicious – we all love chipotle. So we put the bean spread on tostadas with shredded lettuce, cheese, guacamole etc. and ate it that way.  A real hit!

The second week I made Brussels Sprout Fritattas – a recipe from Eating Well magazine.  Everyone loved it. It should have been in 10 oz ramekins – the article was about portion control. However, not having ramekins that size, I just made a large fritatta in a pan. There was none left – we each ate our appropriate portion.

The third week I made Fried Rice with cabbage, broccoli and carrots from my CSA box with Johnson’s Backyard Garden. I felt adventurous and added in some oyster sauce to the mushrooms and sesame oil to finish off the dish. It was delish but gave the youngest a horrendous allergic reaction and we very nearly had to call 911. Looks like it was the oyster, sesame, soy combo.  Good to know!  She won’t be having those items added to her fried rice in the future.

This week I have barely gotten any meals on the table and am running out of time to create something new.  I have gone to 3 doctors appointments for the allergic daughter and colonoscopy for myself. So, I am going to count as our veggie dish this week the vegetarian chili my sister made for us today.  Will be getting her recipe, but the fam ate it and thought it needed meat. Of course, because, when you say chili here they envision something hearty and meaty.  However, I don’t think the disappointment for the chili was as bad as when I made vegetarian stroganoff with lentils and yogurt many years ago….

Which, brings me to the conclusion that vegetarian meals are well received in the family as long as they aren’t a meat recipe, remade without the meat. For our purposes, the veggie recipes have to be novel for the family to appreciate and enjoy them and not feel like something is missing.  Also a good thing to have learned this month!

New Year, Clean Slate

I love the new year. The year stretches out before me full of possibilities and new opportunities. It’s a time to reflect on what was and what will be. Of course, I look at the calendar and it’s already full, since we live by the academic year. Still, I love the idea of the new year, clean slate – kind of like a clean expanse of snow on an open field. (Of course, we don’t have that either here in Central Texas, but I remember what that looks like from my childhood in the great white north!)

I do make new year’s resolutions occasionally. The best one I ever made was as a young bride (which was 19 years ago.)  I didn’t know how to cook, so I resolved to cook something new once a week for the whole year. It actually continued for about 3 years. It was a great experience and one that definitely improved me!  Once again, I find myself needing to increase my kitchen knowledge.  I need to know how to cook a vegetarian meal. I have had several guests in the past that are vegetarian and it always throws me for a loop on how to accomodate them with something besides pasta with tomato sauce!  So, this year I resolve to cook vegetarian one day a week and I want to document it here. Husband says he is excited about it – I hope that continues to be the case!!  I went to the half price book store today and bought A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop. He’s a busy father of two and the book jacket said that the meals had to satisfy the kids and be quick, which made me think the book would be a good place to start! Now, he is the Executive Editor of Cook’s Illustrated, so perhaps his kids have a different palate than mine do to begin with but we will see.

I am really surprised at how apprehensive I feel about starting this. I love growing veggies but I think building a meal around them will stretch me a bit. It will be good.

Miracles

Yesterday my church had a special service for wholeness and healing. It was the culmination of a several month long process of talking about our church’s past mistakes, who we are as an organization, who we think God is leading us to be in the future. During the course of the process we talked to one another about our makers – times in our shared history where we saw the Holy Spirit present and doing mighty things and times when differences in theology created wounds and about expectations that have been out of touch with reality and the unraveling of relationships that has caused.  The service was like coming home at Christmas time. It was being in the most welcome, best place possible, where you are known, loved and wanted with all the members of your family.  The reconciliation that I witnessed was nothing short of a miracle – the true working of the Holy Spirit.  It was the church at it’s best – a glimpse of heaven itself that broke into our midst.  This is what the church is about – mending the broken, bringing reconciliation to the world.  It’s why I love being a Christ-follower. It wasn’t the status quo of the world but the valuing the other above yourself, of reaching out asking for forgiveness and receiving it. It was a long hard road to get to that point, and our long road isn’t over. We still have some major polity decisions to make and still need to call a senior pastor, but I think we are building on solid ground.

Tilling

I spent a lot of my kids’ younger years commiserating with friends about the parenting mishaps we all made. Laughing and crying about needing to put another quarter in the “therapy bucket” when we failed to be the good parents we were so desperate to be. We forgave and encouraged each other as we learned. We went from believing our babies were “clay to be molded” to kids that are “rocks and we have a nail file.” They are all so different – from each other and from us! I feel like I have spent years learning how to allow my kids to own their own successes and failures and not equate the quality of my parenting with what the kids failures and achievements reflected. Yet, this week the family therapist (who knew we would really need one!) said that the kids model what they see at home. In other words, they are reflecting not only my parenting but ME. Are you kidding me? Please tell me something else because this feels really yucky. She said other good and optimistic things too, but I struggle with shame and despite any other good thing she said, I heard “you are the worst parent EVER.” What she said is simply kids model what they see. There aren’t quite the same. But until I can separate out the nuts and bolts of it, it feels the same.

I am glad we found a good therapist. It has helped and will continue to help. I want my children to live whole and emotionally healthy lives but how much of my daughter’s bucket is mine to unpack? Where do my sins end and their sins begin? I feel like I am on the verge of my most monumental parenting failure ever because I am not sure if I am truly capable of handling this well. Inside I am storming. Turmoil. Frustration. Failure. FAILURE. And it feels like failure beyond redemption. Which I know is a lie but it’s a loud one to quiet. Phooey. I expect if the talons of shame can be unhooked from my hide, I will become a better parent for my kids through this. God, unhook me because I am incapable of doing it.

So, while I thought God was just tilling the heart of my child, it’s abundantly clear that God must be preparing me for some deep tilling as well. (Perhaps this week is part of the junk that’s going to compost into deep and rich soil.) There have been indicators all week. My preacher sister spoke on families living authentically on Sunday. The therapist said kids model what behaviors/relationships look like at home on Tuesday and on Friday I am going to begin a six week Bible study about breaking down walls with some amazing and faithful women “race horses” who speak truth.  I do wish growth didn’t hurt so much but here we go.

I Resolve

Happy New Year.  It surprised me in church last Sunday when I became emotional while watching a video about the new year.  It was a super video – all about letting go and looking forward and I cried most of the way through it.  All through December, I couldn’t wait to end 2010 and begin 2011.  It had been a hard year – Cheryl’s cancer, Lynda’s death, other friends were diagnosed with returning cancer, yuck.  I don’t know that a flipping of the calendar makes it any better, but there is always hope associated with the changing of the year – all the days out there like a clean and pure gorgeous untrodden field of snow.  And I think by December I was running a little low on hope.  January 1 – things begin again, renewed and fresh.

I have been thinking about church lately – the structure, the significance.  What does it mean to be a part of my particular church at the moment. Would the town I live in notice if my church shut it’s doors.  Are we as a congregation relevant to Austin – are we making a difference in and for our city?  Can we be more tomorrow than we are today and what does that look like?  So, instead of redoing a book on parenting, I hijacked my Sunday school’s plans and decided we will study Max Lucado’s curriculum for his new book, Out Live Your Life.  It sounds just about perfect for what I am thinking about and I hope all the folks in my Sunday School class feel inspired too.   So, while these questions are percolating, I am also preparing to lead a Bible Study Monday morning on how Christ brings peace with God to the church.  Peacemaking and Unity – seemingly so agreeable, but incredibly, it can be a hot topic!

I think I want the same basic things for family as most of my friends, and most of the moms in the world – safety, food security, shelter, a long good life. I think we as a nation get bogged down and paralyzed in the details of how to accomplish it. Heath care, education, poverty, hunger…the list of the problems in our own country is long and heavy. So when I look out at the world and it’s magnified troubles, I feel overwhelmed.  Mother Theresa something to the effect of needing to look only at the one – the need in front of her – because if she looked at it all, she’d never start.  Sometimes, I confess, I feel too busy to even see the need in front of me, outside of my own family.  Two girls keep me pretty busy, but now that they are older, that’s really not a reason for me not to reach out to the world anymore.  I wonder where this will lead….

Tragedy

I am hurting. And wrestling. Bruce and I found a good friend and neighbor after a terrible bike accident Saturday morning. He was on a ride he made several times a week in our neighborhood.  But this particular morning, his bike tire caught the edge of the concrete in such a way that he went over the handlebars. And broke his neck. And is paralyzed from the mid chest down. We came upon him about 35 minutes after he fell.  What an eternity to be alone and stuck in that horrible situation. We called 911 and watched the scene unfold.  It’s a devastating blow to Paul and his wife.  I just don’t understand it.  Cancer (my mom’s, Bruce’s mom’s, dad’s and sister’s), I understand, it’s a bad deal but you can fight it. Most of the time hope remains in the battle. Sometimes the fight is lost but the ultimate victory is won. It doesn’t make the loss sting any less, but there is understanding that the loved one is in a better place.  Paul’s injury is just shit. Life as he knows it is fundamentally altered and probably won’t change.  Topping off the injury, it looks like he also has leukemia.  Are you freaking kidding me? Why??

I am so sad and I am embarassed at my lingering uncomfortableness in the face of such devastation. Like it’s too painful to look upon.  What kind of friend am I to be afraid to visit Paul?  I was good for 4 days (calling and visiting) and now I don’t know what to say to Shearon or Paul.  I am afraid of saying too much, of saying the wrong thing, of saying too little. Of overstepping my bounds of friendship.  I feel fake.  All I want to do is cry with and for them. But I don’t want to do it in front of them.

 

Yesterday I had an e-fast.  I didn’t open my computer all day. It was great. I used the time yesterday to do my Bible study, ironically on shalom and to look up passages on suffering which detoured into sorrow.  What I came away with was the passage where Jesus is about to be taken to die and he is suffering greatly. “My soul is overwehlmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me” he says to his disciples (Matt. 26:38).  Yesterday I thought it gave me direction – a guide on what to do in the face of such great sadness. But it’s really hard to do.  What does it mean to keep watch?  How do I live that out? I feel like such a ninny.

I found this prayer after searching “keep watch” on Google.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted and shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, Evening Prayer II, The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979)

God, in your vast mercy, please bring great healing to my friends’ pain and rest for their weary bodies.

Unspoken

My friend has been fighting cancer valiantly for many years but it appears that battle may be drawing to a close.  I met her at church and knew I loved her when at some point in a conversation about relationship and hospitality she said she’d be ok if a friend dropped in while she was folding clothes.  I was fairly young and relatively newly married and trying to run a house and keep up appearances and felt like I had found someone who would accept me with all my housekeeping flaws.  She has always been one of the wise women in my life whose opinions I deeply valued.  Years later I was teaching Sunday School to a bunch of rambunctious kiddos in the library at church where my friend was working on the books.  After it was over her comments of approval of my teaching and of commiseration about the wild kids were just the words of encouragement I needed to hear and they really meant the world to me.  She introduced my girls to the joys of Lyle the Crocodile books.  I thought of her each time I read them!  When my sister in law was diagnosed with cancer, Avis was the friend I sought out to ask about chemo, it’s effects and the art of tying scarves.  She is honest and authentic and I haven’t said a word about how much all these things have meant to me.  So it is time.

Life is short, it’s a sacchrin saying, but it’s true.  I want to write some lovenotes to my friends and family about how they have impacted my life and what joy they have each brought to me. I was able to do that with my mother in law before she passed away.  I didn’t want it to be seen as a goodbye letter, but a love letter about what she meant to me.  I am glad I wrote it and my husband read it to her in the hospital.    It’s good to know you are treasured and maybe a bit better to hear it before time is short.

Planting Day

I love planting days as much as any other day in the garden.  Turning the earth, finding worms, feeling the texture of the soil all meet some sort of primal need/desire for me.  I love being out there and today was finally warm and sunny enough for me to plant, though briefly.  I planted the onions (red and yellow), butter lettuce, yellow swiss chard, cilantro, mother of thyme, Italian Flat Leaf Parsley and potatoes that had been hanging around the house for far too long waiting for a sunny day.  (Sadly, I am a cold weather wimp.)  I was halfway through planting when today’s cold front blew through with 25 mph gusts.  I stuck it out to finish getting the potatoes in and watered everything with a seaweed solution.

The onion sets looked a little dry because I waited too long.  This is my third attempt at onions.  The first time, several years ago in another garden, the crop was amazing – had enough to dry, store and give away!  My patio table was full of onions drying for quite a while!  Last year’s crop was not so good.  I planted them and they didn’t seem to grow at all.  In fact, as I was turning the dirt in preparation for the potatoes today, I found one, still small as a pencil. It was green though and I decided to leave it and see what happens with it this spring. Hopefully the cottonseed meal I mixed into the soil will help. Today, I put the new onions in the raised garden bed, hoping the better soil will produce better onions!  We shall see.

With the potatoes, I am conducting a garden experiment.  Three seed potatoes were planted in the old bed that has deep soil. I mixed in some cottonseed meal and compost into the dirt prior to planting.  I planted the three other potatoes in the raised bed (not as deep as the other spot) that I also worked today with compost and cottonseed meal.  Potatoes are a lot of fun to grow.  My grandmother had a tremendous green thumb when she was gardening.  I called her the first time I grew potatoes to ask for some advice when harvest time was near.   I didn’t know how or where to find the potatoes on the plants.  My grandma’s advice was classic – she said to just reach down into the dirt and feel the potatoes.  If they weren’t big enough yet, to cover up the hole and come back in a few days.  I laughed out loud and then went to check on the potatoes and stopped dead in my tracks.  Grandma never had to deal with a mound of fire ants in her potato bed.  Not wanting to put poison on my food, I opted for boiling water to chase the ants away, hoping that I wouldn’t boil my potatoes in the process.  I didn’t and in a few days I harvested a good amount of nice new red potatoes.  I hope I get as many this year and the ants stay out.

The yellow swiss chard is gorgeous – sunshine yellow stems.  I planted two plants next to the red swiss chard already in the garden.  The red has been slow to develop this year – it looked a little anemic when I bought it, but I thought it woud be ok. I finally gave up  on waiting for it and purchased some more.  I left the red chard there because it’s hard to rip out live plants and I don’t need the space yet.

I am turning a portion of the old bed into an herb garden, so I planted the parsley, cilantro and mother of thyme next to a clump of chives already thriving there. Having fresh herbs is wonderful for cooking.  I love sending my kids out to the garden to take a snip of something and bring it back to me.

Winter’s chill has come back tonight and will linger for a few more days this week before we have a warmer day again. I hope my plants do well in their new locations.

Growing Deeper

In gardening as in life, when it’s dry, the roots have to go deeper to seek out that essential water and nutrients.  It’s ironic that though the lakes are full and puddles are all around me, I I am entering a dry spell myself.  Perhaps a time of pruning,  certainly a time of deepening.  I am only going reluctantly.  I suppose that’s the pupose of the drought – no one enters times of pain and growth willingly.  I especially find myself reluctant to begin this next passage in life.

I know about pruning in my garden.  I spent hours a few weeks ago cutting back dead wood and weeding the beds. It’s a routine, late winter, early spring activity.  I also know about pruning in my life – it hurts and it’s hard but I know it’s seasonal and purposeful. My husband has lost his job, twice.  Both my parents have passed away, one over a period of time from cancer and one suddenly from a heart attack.

Currently, my mother in law has been diagnosed with esophogeal cancer – it’s already metastasized to her liver and sadly, the tumor in her esophagus is keeping her from eating regularly. From the little info I gleaned from my husband today, the oncologist wants to treat her with chemo.  Husband used two phrases today about treatment that seem incongruous – ‘keep her comfortable’ and ’50/50′.  How do those things go together?  Especially when you add in ‘feeding tube’.

Heaven help us.  I especially need help this season seeking God’s purpose for me in this time and this place.  Kindness, love, support?  Nurture of the husband and the kids who are facing loss, once again? I know these are the things I should do. However, today, I am digging my heels in and am angry. This never gets easier. Losing a parent is just awful.  I pray that the pain isn’t wasted, that we each deepen in our love for God and for eachother. Perhaps after some tears and a good night’s sleep, I will be ready to turn and walk this road, still reluctant, but at least moving.

Spring Rains and Rolos

I must admit that I think a few weeks notice that death is coming is nice.  Enough time to say good bye but not so long that life lingers on.  My mother in law has anywhere from days to weeks left.  Most of the time, I feel ok but today I have been blue.  Maybe it’s because today they all decided that she’s really going and can’t do the chemo and are preparing to bring her home to hospice care.  Maybe it’s because I ache for my father in law who is losing his life partner, my husband loosing his mom and my kids losing their GG.   It’s a strange thing to have a body feel sorrow – not just emotionally but physically as well.  So, today I seek comfort in cooking and eating.  For better or worse.  I made our favorite pasta dish tonight – an old Eating Well magazine recipe we call Asparagus Pasta.  The sauce is simple, made of pureed asparagus stems, olive oil and lemon.  The spear heads are tossed in with the pasta in the sauce.  The girls and I ate it all!  We followed it up with rolos – the Easter candy du jour. I wanted dark chocolate Dove eggs, but evidently so did everyone else in the area because the store was out.  I might follow the rolos up with a cup of decaf and cream. These things feel like kindness to me in a time of harsh reality.  I wish I didn’t find such comfort in food, but I know I am not alone in it or it we wouldn’t have the good old category of ‘comfort food.’

At the moment we are enjoying a good spring storm – lightning, rolling thunder and rain.  I like to watch the radar when we are having a storm – it is comforting to see the band of red or yellow and to get an understanding of how bad things will be and how long it will last.  It answers the questions like, will there be hail, how high will the winds be, do we need to get into a closet etc. Insight into my personality – I want all the details.  I wish we had life radars sometimes.  How long will the pain last, how bad will the storm get, etc.  I saw in a Hallmark store a plaque with words that went something like this, “Life is not about avoiding the storms, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” I loved the image.  Maybe I will go back and buy it as a reminder for all of us. Storms and rain come and go, sometimes it feels like they come more than they go, so dancing in the rain is a great idea.

Late Night Easter

What a delightful day we had today.  I slept in later than usual (8 am) which was lovely, since I haven’t been sleeping well.  The day was full of Easter celebration, good company with extended family and fabulous food.  All that followed up by  photographing my kids in an enjoyable frolic on a bluebonnet hillside.

Running down the bluebonnet hill

I spent the rest of the afternoon outside in the garden – spring trimming and weeding. The last part of my day sounds mundane but it’s so nice to have the job done and it makes the garden look so much better, it’s all worth it.  I have decided there is so much to do this year in the garden between the hard freezes and the winter rains – lots of dead to clear out and millions of weeds to pull – that I have to approach the job in small chunks.  No longer, ‘I am going to weed,’ but instead, ‘I am going to weed the back pathway’ or ‘I am going to weed the front right bed.’  Otherwise, I spend the time thinking I am never going to make headway on the whole yard!  So far accomplishments include: weeding and then laying down 10 bags of crushed granite in front of the circle bed, putting down compost on the veggie garden, making another small veggie bed, planting peppers and tomatoes,  hilling the potatoes, pulling the grass out of the front beds, weeding the front yard grass and A LOT of trimming.  And there’s still more…. Meals are suffering and so is the housework inside, but if it’s a choice between laundry and the garden, I will be outside every time!

My beautiful heirloom irises are gorgeous this year.  They are pass along plants from a dear friend, Carol.  Last year, the first year I had them in my garden, I had a few blooms, but this year – it’s incredible!  I counted 13 buds in just one small group of the irises! Joy!

Heirloom Tall Bearded Iris

The physical rebirth and renewal every spring is heartening.  I love the emerald green days we are having right now.  The fresh green of new leaves makes me catch my breath as I look over our hillside. I am grateful to be cognizant of the fleeting nature of time and to cherish these verdant days of spring.  It is a beautiful season.

Things

I am feeling pensive tonight.  Thinking about things. Material things.  Things I have that I want, things I want but don’t have and things I have but don’t want.  Let’s start with the things I have but don’t want anymore.  I cleaned out the kids toy closet tonight.  I had to sneak it in before my youngest returned home from a baseball game because she is a thing keeper. My older daughter helped by saying “yes” to getting rid of some of the baby toys from their younger days…did I mention she’s 13 now?  Those things have been around a long time and have moved between 3 houses!  It felt good (for me) to let much of it go.  I am passing some of it on to my 5 year old nephew – hooray!  I have been weeding through my clothes lately as well, but that is more of a routine process for me. I have a place in my closet where discarded clothes rest until the pile is sufficient enough to move on to goodwill.  Now to do the same for the kids (again).

Now for the things I have that I want. My husband is funny.  He doesn’t ask for much, ever, really.  So, when he does, I usually agree to it.  He hated our gas grill and didn’t like cooking on it, which left me to do it.  So, for a joint Mother’s/Father’s Day gift, we gave each other a Big Green Egg.  It’s a ceramic grill/oven.  WE LOVE IT.  I thought this would mean that we could move out the gas grill…not so much.  Hubby decided it would be good to have both.  OK.  Evidently this is a common event.  You get a Big Green Egg and still keep the old grill but never use it again.  I might consider a time limit on the old grill’s life with us.  This weekend, after a long and intentional delay,  I took both girls to get some things to update their rooms.  Teen daughter wanted a new comforter set and wants to repaint her room.  OK.  Tween daughter has been asking for a papasan chair since she “didn’t have a place to read in her room.”  She does, the bed, but wanted a chair. OK.  Well, hubby graciously meets me at the papasan store to give me the SUV so we can take the papasan home.  While there, he spots some Adirondack chairs.  Who knew, but he’d been pricing them for awhile and thought these were a great buy.  So we go home with papasan chair and cushion and 4 new Adirondack chairs to put together.  OK.  Now the problem here is that NOTHING has left the house to make room for these new wonderful things!  So, hence my new found urgency to get rid of some other extraneous things around the home!

Which brings me back to the things I have but don’t want.  I should probably add on to that statement…The things I have but don’t want and feel guilty about getting rid of them.  Ouch.  Nothing like having dead parents to make you feel guilty about moving on any of their belongings.  I have a cupboard full of mugs.  They aren’t your usual souvenir mugs though (I love NY, etc). These are really nice, bone china, gorgeous mugs.  But it’s 100 degrees here and it feels like a serious waste of cabinet space when we really need more water glasses because we are dying of thirst in this heat!  And the quilts – 2 king size and 2 twin – not heirloom, just store bought.  Or the wonderful wool Indian blanket that my parents had on their bed when I was growing up.  It’s itchy. But I can’t bring myself to give them away. It feels like giving away the memory of my childhood with my parents and the memory of their house in London.  Maybe I will keep one quilt for a picnic blanket and give the others away.  I might see if my sister wants the wool blanket.  And now for the big monster: the guest room closet.  This space really holds the past, present and future of our family, all at once.  In addition to all the extra pillows in the house and all the sleeping bags, the guest closet holds dress up clothes, stuffed animals, old family photos, my dad’s rocks, baby stuff from the littles, maybe even their crib sets.  Do I really need to hang on to that stuff so that my girls can use it for their kids? Life is really to short to shlep other generation’s stuff around in addition to your own, unless you really love it.  But I can’t seem to let much of it go!

And for the things I want but don’t have?  I don’t really have much desire in the material relm at the moment.  I would like for my sister in law to be cancer free.  Health is the first and greatest wealth.  I would like to have my parents and mother in law back (and not so they can take back their stuff). If they were here, we would be able to share memories with eachother.  Now I just have the things and no one to share the memories with.  I can share the stories about the things with my kids, but I don’t want them to have the same attachment to the things that I do.  I want them to be a little more free and in reality, they will have their own material attachments.  Even so, we are all healthy and I should be grateful it’s a house full of people  and not let my house full of stuff get me down too much. Thinking about the whole is really overwehlming because of the mental energy expended on remembering. I wonder if it’s sort of a grief denial to refuse to purge some of the things in the house.  It’s easy to get rid of some of the kids’ things, probably partially because the kids are still here at home with me and we remember our history together.  Going through the things that belonged to my parents makes me sad and I miss them.

Reflection

Well I have made some peace with my stuff.  I have a large pile sitting by the front door waiting to go to Goodwill.  I have a clean-ish guest room closet and the linen closet in the hall is somewhat organized now.  The old grill is still on the deck though.  It’s ok.  My 13 year old’s room is about to be painted (black on the lower half – be still my heart) and we reorganized that room – what a challenge! I have a great deadline coming up (a family visit) that is lighting a fire under me to get some of this completed.  My husband’s family – Dad, sister and triplet girls, and two dear family friends – will be coming for a visit.  It’s the first time we will all be together again since my mother in law died in April.  When they come in September, my sister in law will be finished with her chemo treatments for breast cancer.  We are going to celebrate!  Good food, good times, laughter, memories, probably some tears, Sea World, the Oasis, and then the BEACH HOUSE!

The Beach House is another story, literally, if you want to read more about it, click here.  We are purchasing a place in Port Aransas and I am so excited about it I can hardly stand it.  It will be a vacation home for us as well as a place we will rent out.  It’s quaint, blue, sleeps a crowd (12) and feels great! It’s a few minutes walk to the beach across a private board walk.  I am really looking forward to our first visit down there with Bruce’s family. Counting the days, really, and making lists of things that need to be done!

Peach Toast

My snack tonight was peach toast. It’s a relic from my childhood.  Toast a piece of bread, slather on some butter and top with diced fresh peaches that have been sprinkled with sugar.  It’s comfort food and I wanted it tonight.  It’s been six years to the day since my mother died.  It was the first day of kindergarten for my youngest.  Today we are still on summer vacation.  The youngest starts middle school in a week.  I can’t believe so much time has gone by, in many ways, it seems like my mom was just here.  In the intervening six years, we have moved once, the kids attended a private school for dyslexics, they have gone back to public school, entered the gifted program, learned to swim, learned to ride horses, the big girl is a cheerleader, the young girl in band. I have done about 1600 loads of laundry (about 5 per week plus some for when lice were about.)  What a way to mark the time! I have really done more than laundry in that time – co chair of the PTA, co chair of a major fundraiser, Presbyterian elder, website database editor, counselor. Notice these are all roles and things to do – shows my weakness as a stay at home mom.  I need the titles to prove worth.

My sister wrote about our mom one time and reflected on who she was and who she failed to be.  That phrase has stuck with me, humbling me.  In so many ways, who I fail to be haunts and taunts me. I fail to be the calm in the emotional storm of my teen daughter’s life.  Why does she want to act and look like she’s 18 when she’s 13? Why can’t I make her see she’s great the way she is and that there is TIME?   I fail to be the soft spoken loving mom to the young one who recoils at any elevation in voice.  She cries when I argue with her sister.  I fail to be the loving and supportive wife I want to be and am often peevish and petty instead.   At this point in this litany, I should just go to bed and try again tomorrow and hope for a better day.  However, I have to write to remind myself that I am also a Christian.  One who is beloved of the Creator who forgives me.  I know it and believe it. But sometimes living it is really hard.  I learn so much about God through parenting my own kids.  My Bible study group takes a break during the summer and I neglected to do one on my own, so I feel a bit distant.  Much like my daughter appears to feel from me.  Even when we are heated in our arguments, and I need to step away from her for the moment, I never do not want to be in relationship with her because I love her and want the best for her.  And in those bright moments, when she want to be with me, I soak it up. And I think she does, too.  So, I need more of those kinds of moments with God, but the only way I am going to get them is to turn around and talk with him. And maybe just have a good cry.

Harvest

I had not checked on the garden for a few days and was delighted to find a lot of ripe yellow pear tomatoes.  My daughter was just as excited as I was to pick the yellow jewels off the plant.  I also picked three cukes, but the vine has turned bitter and the cuke I cut into tonight was barely edible.  I will taste the other ones just to be sure, but I think it’s time to pull the vine out.  Some critter continues to get into the caged garden and feasts on my eggplant.  I think it’s a squirrel and am grateful it’s left most of the tomatoes alone (so far.)

The herbs are doing well and it’s time to use the basil. I saw a neat article about preserving it on The Herb Companion.  Last year I dried it two ways – one batch slowly, letting it air dry and another batch in the oven.  I also made a vat of pesto that I froze in ice cube trays.  This year, I might try pureeing the basil and adding a bit of olive oil and freezing it in ice cube trays. I have already dried some oregano.  It’s so easy – I wash it and then layer the stems between paper towels in a cardboard box and leave it in alone for a few days.  After it’s dry, I strip the leaves off the stems and keep the leaves in a mason jar in the pantry. It’s totally satisfying to reach for those herbs in the winter!

Autumn – seasonal shift

Ah, welcome September.  I love this month of change.  It’s the time when the kids go back to school (happily), the seasonal shift becomes thinkable after a long hot and dry summer and I start a new project of some sort to fill my time.

I am happy that the season’s change is near.  Every year at this time I breathe a sigh of relief that we made it through the summer.  Though, truth be told, this summer has really been marvelous – the perfect amount of rainfall, reasonable high temperatures…up until a few weeks ago when mother nature must have come back to her senses. But tonight, the evening had a promise of change and coolness to it – maybe it’s the late summer thunderstorm or just that the humidity is different, but it’s enough to know something is coming!

This year’s fall project for me is becoming a Master Gardener. Every Wednesday from now until early November,  I will be in class all day learning about some aspect of horticulture.  After I complete the course work and pass the final, I have about a year to complete 50 hours of volunteer work on other Master Gardener Projects – answering the help desk, working on youth programs and also  programs of my choice.  Here are a few tidbits from Wednesdays class:

• Many plants stop growing when it’s above 96 degrees.  Who knew! I don’t want to be outside when it’s that hot either.
• Heat can affect fertilization because pollen can become sterile when it’s too hot.  I wonder if that’s is part of the reason tomatoes don’t set their blooms after a certain temperature….I will have to ask.
• It’s a waste of water, time and effort to water near the trunk of a tree because the woody roots have zero to do with uptake of water or nutrients. You have to do it at the drip line (which I will tell you more about after the class on trees!)

Plants are remarkably complicated living things and I have learned I know very little about them.  And I hope to be one heck of a gardener when it’s all finished! I came home and looked at the leaves and plants in my garden in a new way.  It was awesome.

The girls are both at a new middle school this year – it is an amazing facility.  The staff is great and I think both girls will have a great year. The beginning, of course, has not  been without some curve balls.  Elder daughter left behind some super friends at the old school and that has been hard.  Girl relationships are just difficult at this early teen time – either there is a great relationship or there is an absence of it with nothing in between. On or off, hot or cold, nice or mean.  Why is that?  I am also surprised at the speed with which some of these long standing friendships deteriorate.  Ethylene, I learned on Wednesday, is called the death hormone in plants, it helps them ripen and then, of course, rot.  I think we could probably say estrogen has a similar effect on teen girls. My elder daughter is amazingly resilient and though she has shed tears over the change in her friendships, she is moving forward.  I love that about her and she’s always been that way.  I however, stew on the matter and must let it go.  It think its worse for us as parents to see our children hurt than it is for us to suffer our own pain. As a friend of mine said, if you mess with me, I will forgive you, mess with ‘my people’ and hurt the ones I love, it’s a different story.  Its another opportunity to practice intentional grace and forgiveness  I sent an email to the parents today voicing recognition of the changes in our daughter’s friendships and affirming our own relationships as adults.  We have all agreed to let the girls handle things without intervention or interference from us.