Sure, I could blame my health (it’s not been a great year in that respect — as I type this I’m sick with yet another cold). Or I could blame it on adjusting to the new patterns and schedules of turning my home and my life into our home and our life (oh, how quickly I become comfortable and set in my not-so-old ways). Or there’s always the weather to blame first too hot, then too rainy, then too cold and too snowy. The reality, however, is that I simply haven’t tried that hard. Its been a happy but somewhat lazy year.

So this is me, attempting to write my way into some progress on at least a few of that multitude mentioned above. I’m not going to list them all out — that tends to leave me overwhelmed and turning in circles trying to decide which project to start on first. Instead I’m going to pick one that’s been popping up into my head a lot lately, break it down into steps and see how I do.

The first I’d like to tackle is our grocery list. I’ve been feeling like I’m always in the grocery store, but there’s never anything good in the house that I want to eat or cook. At the same time I’m spending far more on groceries than my budget allows. I’m going to try to put together some sort of price book/list of staples that we ought to have on hand at all times. Which I guess means I ought to start by

1. Going through the kitchen (or wandering through a grocery store) and making up a list of our food and household items.
2. Dividing them up into categories and also noting which ones are necessary basic staples, which ones are (or ought to be – can you say veggies?) a regular part of lives and which ones are fluff, junk or luxury/once in a while treat type items.
3. Then its price checking time. I think I’ll start with our lowest priced grocery store in our area (Wal-Mart) and then do a comparison at Costco (I’ve been meaning to re-evaluate whether the membership is worth renewing, and if it is to make better use of it)
4. I’d love to find a decent app for my phone (a Palm Pre) that could manage all this. I know there are several out there but I haven’t quite found the one I like. It would mean a fair bit of data entry, but it would be handy to have in something small and portable.

It sounds like a lot of work up front, but I think it will save me time and money down the road. We’ll see how it goes.

Both trees are having an easier time this year with leaf munching insects. I remembered to spray with insecticidal soap fairly early on. Unfortunately both trees are having problems with Cedar-Apple Rust. The Fuji is having a worse time of it than the Pink Lady which follows what this table of apple tree susceptibility to cedar-apple rust shows. I imagine the lack of air flow due to all the vertical growth on that tree doesn’t help. I’ll have to rake up the leaves when they fall, do better about spraying and work harder at my branch training.

Only 1-2 more years till my apple trees ought to start bearing!

Hi!

Today I made bread. Technically I started yesterday. I’ve finally (over a year later) gotten around to trying out Cheap Like Me’s most excellent bread baking method. It’s not that I don’t like my existing favorite bread recipe. It’s quite tasty. Kneading is fun, now that I’ve got the hang of it. I even enjoy the time it takes, as it keeps me close to home on baking day and encourages me to finish up those little odds and ends of the zillion projects I always having going on. But if I want to eat my own bread more often, and keep up with my part-time job, my health and various and sundry other interests, I really can’t devote a whole day every week to baking (and it takes a whole day in my cool/cold kitchen). It’s just not practical for me.

I’ve looked through a variety of no-knead bread books. I didn’t like the use of sugar in the Kneadlessly Simple base recipe (I’m trying to cut down on my sugar intake to please my doctor and my body). I’ve had trouble with the method described in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. For one thing, I’m a clutz. Slipping a gently shaped loaf of dough from its floured resting place onto a hot baking stone tends to result in dough landing on my floor or oven door at best. I also always seem to wind up with dough that is too wet or not quite cloaked right, in that my resting dough grows outwards, not up. My Bread perhaps comes closest to what I’d like to be able to do with bread. I appreciate the smaller amount of yeast used (both for cost and for health reasons), the book itself was a real interesting read and I’m curious about the baking concepts it describes, but I wasn’t sure about the extra dark crust. I still have too many childhood picky food issues that I’m working on. Dark crusts are one of ‘em. Its silly, I know. But I like a lighter, slightly softer crust.

Cheap Like Me’s method seems to take the recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and use some methods similar to My Bread’s. And dumping dough into a pot – that I can do without needing a major clean-up effort after (plus, her crust looked nicely browned but not quite so dark as the My Bread crusts, points out the stubborn child in me). I started yesterday mixing together the dough. Had to wait a while for my super cold filtered fridge water to come up to lukewarm temp, but otherwise it was the same easy mixing I’d experienced before with Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe. I let it rise and stuck it in the chest fridge after it leveled off.

This afternoon, while doing far too many other things, I decided to bake. I cloaked the bread, turned it out, floured it some more (because my dough is usually too wet) and shaped it as best I could (gently and quickly working in some of the flour). As always, while resting, my dough took on the shape of a Frisbee and I started to get sad. Flat bread is tasty, but not what I wanted. I preheated the oven with the dutch oven in it (belatedly wondering if I ought to have greased the pot, too late now) and tried to ignore my ever flattening dough. When the time came I dumped my dough in the pot (a set of oven mitts and pot holders, that thing is HOT!) set the timer and went back to making dinner, doing laundry and fixing up our bikes’ new home. By the time the bread’s first 30 minutes were up I’d made peace with my flat bread. It’s still bread after all, and still tasty. But when I took off the lid for the bread’s uncovered 20 minutes of baking – Surprise! Big bread! Tall bread! Bread you could use for a proper sandwich! Clearly, the dutch oven fixes all my little, not quite right, dough flaws.

I’ll definitely be making this bread again. Thanks Cheap!

I’m still sick though, nine years later, and today is one of those days where, even in remission, the illness dictates what I can or cannot do. I just can’t find the energy to get my thoughts in order today. Much less take my dog for a walk, or shower,  or play in my garden even for a few minutes. So I’m going to leave you with a couple links that might help you understand, if you’re curious, what life is like with CFIDS and Fibromyalgia.

The first is The Spoon Theory a great way of explaining life with chronic illness. The second is an essay On Pain. Both are feeling rather appropriate as pain is winning today and I’ve been recklessly using up my spoons for the last several weeks as I’ve enjoyed letting someone new into my life. Who knew dating took such energy?! Its been well worth the trade (and I’d make the same choice again in a heartbeat), but I suspect its time I start paying attention to my body again and try to find that balance between ill and well that I’d once found.

Perhaps there are some doors I’m not ready to open yet.

I’ve decided, however, that I don’t like this particular coping skill. It might have served me well when I was a child and didn’t know any better. Now, it feels more like hiding from myself than actually coping. I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of fear. I’m tired of secrets. I’m tired of not feeling – and there are so many wonderful things out there to feel!

So I’m (somewhat cautiously I admit) opening metaphorical closet doors and digging up the occasional box. Just to see what’s in there. Just to see which is worse: the anxiety over what might be in the box or what’s actually in there. Its not been too bad so far. Many of the boxes simply make me want to, for example, give 14 year old me a hug and tell her it’ll be ok. Some of them even make me laugh, when I realize I’ve been hiding from such a silly thing for so long.

Sometimes though, I find one, like this week’s – a box that contains a lot of the failed relationship/marriage stuff. There’s so much anger in there! I’m not even sure who most of its for – him or me? Both probably. I don’t really know how to cope with all that anger. It still scares me so much to be around it or feel it myself. The other emotions I do alright with, but anger – that’s the one I almost always go straight to repressing, often without even realizing I’m doing it.

One trick I’m learning is using what I’ve got in my life as a means to let it out. Swimming is good, its meditative and leaves lots of time for thinking while the body moves through the water. That only works if I have an idea what’s wrong though and am at the point where I want to think it through. The peace that follows after getting out of the pool goes nicely with having worked through it as well.

Other times, I’ve gone and repressed the anger so quickly that I don’t really know what’s wrong. All I know is that I feel… off. This is when its time for grass mowing!

You see, I have this old reel mower. Its bright orange, circa 1970-something. It cuts grass reasonably well if you put the effort into it. But its old and cranky. It has trouble with ground that isn’t perfectly level, and grass or weeds of different thicknesses throw it off so that it jams or skids right over without moving the blades. I call it my acoustic mower. It also turns out to be the perfect tool for getting unstuck when dealing with (or rather avoiding dealing with) anger. The trick seems to be to do it purposefully and with a certain amount of awareness. This allows the mower and grass to become a nice safe trigger for the release of the anger, while providing me with a mindless task to perform while working through it.

I’m sure my neighbors think I’m crazy. I don’t care though. I opened a box I’d been avoiding. Faced the contents. Dealt with it in a way that not only left me feeling better, but also got my stupid grass mowed.

I know what it was like from my perspective. The superficial parts of what I wanted or needed seemed to change so rapidly and drastically from one moment to another. Sometimes I wanted to be distracted, so that I could pretend I’d be able to forget for a while. Sometimes I needed to be allowed to be angry or miserable or sad, so I could let it out without thinking about reasons or solutions. Other times I needed to read and research and study, trying to figure out those reasons or causes and look for solutions. Often, I just wanted to live what life I had. With CFIDS. In spite of CFIDS.

Sometimes I wanted my ex to try to understand what it was like. Sometimes I got exasperated when he did try – how could someone who hasn’t experienced this hell possibly understand what it was like? Often I needed his help for simple tasks. Even more often I didn’t want that help even when I knew I needed it. Sometimes I need him to let me test my limits, even if we both knew I’d pay dearly for it. Sometimes, I needed an arm to help my balance or a hand to comfort. I needed him to want to make plans that included me, and yet know that those plans would most likely fall through (and not get mad at me when they did).

Always though, I remember longing so deeply to feel even just a tiny bit less alone. At the time, I didn’t know how to give voice to what I meant by that. Looking back now, I know. I didn’t need my ex to suddenly understanding what I was going through, or find some magic new way to help, nor protect me from the hurt of it – I simply needed him to be present with me while I went through what I had to go through. Nothing more than that. and not as easy to do as it might sound.

The grief of those losses, all piled up on the heels of each other, used to be overwhelming. The beautiful (and disturbing) thing about time though, is that you forget – not the thing itself, but some of how it felt. These days, the wound only hurts if I purposefully re-open it or if it accidentally gets opened for me (little glimpses that send shivers of fear down my spine at the thought of going back to that existence).  The knowledge of how fleeting all of those things we take for granted are, has become simply a part of the fabric of my being.

Instead I see, most every day, new things.  There’s such a world full of wonders out there, right out my front door. I’ve experienced such a tiny fragment of them. Along with those new things are bits of myself returning to me, like long lost friends. One thing I missed most, without really knowing it was gone – my smile. I noticed it missing when I started working at the library. Greeting patrons, the closest I could often come was somewhat more akin to a grimace. Or as I practiced and was able to shape it a bit more like an actual smile, it was still so superficial that even I didn’t buy it. Lately though, its back and oh suddenly I realize how much I’ve missed it! That genuine sort of smile that practically dances right out of your eyes and feels like sunshine inside. Welcome back old friend.

Its an odd thing this divorce process. Not the legal aspect, as much press as that gets – its fairly cut and dry. I mean the process of separating yourself from this person who was such a huge part of your world, going through the stages of grief almost as if one of you had died, learning to identify yourself as an individual again, and most likely trying to figure out who that individual is – what you like about them and what you don’t. Then deciding what to do about it.

Its an amazing period of growth. Or it can be, if you’re willing to take a serious look at why you ended up how you did. Not his part, or her part – your part. What did you do to bring yourself to this point, and what do you think of those actions or in-actions now? I’m not advocating divorce or anything, believe me its something I never wanted to experience (so much so that I vowed as a small child never to marry in the first place, specifically to avoid this particular experience). Its just that, as hard as I tried to avoid this experience, its a rather incredible one.

This journey has been challenging as hell. Some days I’d have rather not gotten out of bed, or preferred to lose myself in a bottle of wine. Other days (most days now) have brought such joy at this rediscovering of self. I still get surprised now and then, little moments mourning a long friendship lost – like watching movie previews in a dark theater and turning to whisper your thoughts, only to find that person no longer sitting next to you.

Last year at this time I would have been rather melancholy. I was rather melancholy. This year though, I’m eager to see what other aspects of my old self resurface or what new parts there are to this self I thought I knew. So I started off this new year by doing something my old self would not have done. I wrote a long overdue letter, facing my demons – acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the hurt I’d caused (without, as my old self would have done, hiding it in excuses and blame, though there was plenty to go around that wasn’t the point). Spring is here after all, the world around me is coming back to life, filling itself with color and birdsong. Much to my surprise, I feel myself moving into a new phase of my life – one I want to enter with a clear conscience.

I still don’t know where I’m going. I’m still learning who I am and what I want. I’m still just doing whatever comes next. But I’m looking forward to the journey, rather than just getting through it. Its a nice change.