Run! Write! Make!

Growing up, I was not an athletic kid.  I was a tiny, scrawny, little white girl.  I could not hit a ball, I could not run very far, I never lasted very long in dodgeball.  I played no sports.  My closest brush with athleticism was in high school marching band, where I learned to march backwards while holding crash cymbals steady for a snare drummer to play.  (Don’t laugh.  Those cymbals are heavy and we did it in the New Mexico heat.  In hideous cream and brown polyester uniforms and plastic egg-shell hats.)

I will be 36 later this year and the desire to keep my body fit and healthy presses on me.  Simultaneously, the effort to keep my body fit and healthy seems to rise exponentially.  I’m not interested in joining any sports, and my options are limited there anyway.  I’m not interested in anything that requires an investment of equipment or a membership pressure.  I have found, however, that I really love to run.  I feel good when I run.  Unfortunately, the first thing to go when my schedule gets busy is my daily run.  So I tend to run in fits and starts.  Running regularly for a few weeks or months, and then not at all for months.  Sometimes I’m derailed by the general mayhem of family life.  Once I was knocked off track by the flu.  

A few weeks ago at the library, I found a copy of Haruki Murakami’s memoir-ish book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  I’d not read any of his work before, but was led to him in my quest to read through some magical realism this summer.  I haven’t read any more magical realism since I suffered through Love in the Time of Cholera (I’ll save my ennui with that one for another post perhaps), but Murakami’s personal tale of writing and running gave me a swift kick in the butt on two counts.  

For Murakami, running and writing work together.  He does not write when he runs or even particularly think about ideas.  But it seems that running gives him an absence of thought and an ability to focus that increases his ability to focus on writing.  By training to run (and he is a serious runner of marathons and triathalons) he is a more focused writer when he is writing.

In spite of the particularly harsh and dry summer we are experiencing here in the Coastal Bend of Texas, I have been running five or six days a week for the past two weeks.  Since I haven’t run for months, I’m back to doing interval work to build up my stamina.  I’m up to half-running, half-walking a little more than two miles a day and it feels great.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever build up to a marathon, but if I could continuously run a few miles a day, without being sidetracked for months at a time, I’d feel very proud. 

Running is hard and it is hot and I get sweaty and dirty and funky.  But I’ve been injury-free so far, and working my body just feels so good.  I am more physically tired, but it is a satisfying tired.  Now that I’ve settled into a running rhythm, and my body is getting stronger and I am less worried about injuring myself, my mind is free to wander as I run.  Mostly it wanders into empty spaces.  Thoughts do come to me as I go, worries sometimes plague me.  But in running, I find that I can embrace meditative thought more effectively than I’ve ever been able to in other ways.  The thoughts and worries don’t linger.  They float by me like clouds, and I am able to consider them dispassionately, letting them pass without clinging to them.  At other times my mind wanders to the beat, counting the steps, predicting my tempo, comparing the beat of my heart to the thump of my shoes.  

And I’m learning (or rather reminded), slowly, that I need balance in my life.  Everything feels better when I’m running.  Everything feels better when I’m writing.  Everything feels better when I’m crafting.  But all three of those things have to work together somehow.  When one of those things drops out of my life for a while, the other two tend to disappear as well.  

Besides blogging a little bit more often again, I can’t say that I’m actually writing again.  But I’m getting closer.  I’m working the balance.  The writing notebook is on the desk again.  A few ideas have been scribbled in it, and the more I run, the more the ideas come to me.  The more ideas for writing I get, the more crafty ideas I get and the more enthusiastic I get about running each morning.  

I’m chasing my activities around in a circle.  I just have to keep them all moving in a positive direction, moving with balance in mind. 

Changes Afoot

Did you notice how the holidays sort of zoomed by?  Well, ok, they zoomed by for me.  I find myself here, in the middle of January a little flummoxed by how zippy things have been.   On top of that, we’ve had a big change. 

We have been joined by my Sister, who will be living with us for a while.  The kids think she has really cool stuff.  Preparing for her arrival, we turned the house upside down and shook it a little bit, then turned it back the other way and shifted things around.  All but one room in the house had furniture moved in, out, or around.  Here are the twelve feet of lovely shelves Partner added.  

Sister arrived here with her car-full of cool stuff after three days and 1,600 miles of solo driving through wind and rain and caffeine jitters, but finds herself stronger and more resilient for the adventure.  I think she might have a grey hair, but she denies it.  

The good news is that things are settling down.  Sister has several promising leads on jobs, which, in the current economy, leaves us all thankful.  Today she is taking her next brave step, driving over the Bay Bridge.  This is a big deal because she has a thing about bridges.  I patted her on the back and wished her best of luck.  Seriously, after 1,600 miles of American Highway, what’s one little old bridge?  Nothing!  

Somewhere in the haze and shuffle, I forgot all about sending Christmas/End-of-year cards to family and friends.  At this point, if I send them, it looks like they will turn out to be Inauguration Cards.  Ack, and I just realized that I have until Saturday to send something for a cousin’s wedding.  

My usual, organized self is feeling a bit jittery at the thought that something has fallen off the radar, so for now, I am reminding myself to breathe, picking up the second kilt sock, and knitting for the next thirty-five minutes.  Yes.  Thirty-five.  All while glancing sideways at the calendar.  

Sending some love across the miles

Whoever said that food isn’t love didn’t know what he was talking about.  

This is a yellow ruler and a batch of my family’s Irish Soda Bread recipe.  I can’t account for the ruler, but the recipe has been passed down through who-knows-how-many generations of women, each adding, altering and tweaking to her preference.  Each woman (and, I can hope, a few men, perhaps) made up this bread to sustain, warm, comfort, praise, love, or generally provide for their families and friends and bake sale goers.  None of these people, apparently, thought to cut down the recipe.  

I am sworn to secrecy as to the exact recipe, but I must give you a general idea of the scale of it, just in case the picture doesn’t make it clear.  That is 12 cups of flour and 4+ cups of milk.  There is a pound of raisins in there, and a pound of butter.  Uh, and some other stuff (because that is starting to sound too much like a recipe and old Irish women are rolling over in their graves in preparation for haunting me).  But one of the other things is Caraway Seed. 

That’s it!  I promise not to say any more.  Settle down, Mumsy.* 

Anyway, I made a batch of this last night.  One regular bread loaf, one round in the cast iron skillet, a dozen regular-sized muffins, and a billion mini-muffins.  They make absolutely delightful accompaniments to tea, either at breakfast, or perhaps in the afternoon, or right before bed.  They are just sweet enough to sub as dessert, but not so sweet that they can’t be a hearty breakfast.  It freezes well, and keeps forever on the counter even without freezing.  Just add a dab of butter to bring it back from the brink of staleness. 

I learned this recipe from my mother.  So did my sister, though I have no proof that she has ever independently chosen to make up a batch.  As I was stirring the batter, which takes a lot of muscle, I was thinking of my mother.  This bread is all tied up with the best kind of memories of her.  I was remembering funny things, and tea, and being covered in flour ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, as we made dozens of loaves of bread for some reason or other.  Good memories.  

I was thinking of my step-father.  It was from his family that this recipe came to us.  He loved a slice of soda bread or a couple of muffins with a dab of butter and a cup of piping  hot tea (Red Rose, mostly, and he had the little figurines to prove it).  Also good memories.  

When the first bits came out of the oven (the minis, which bake in 25-30 minutes), I broke one in half and took a bite.  As the muffin touched my tongue, I had the most intense, reflexive, emotional wave wash over me.  That one bite of muffin made me weep.  Deep, soul-tugging sobs as all of these feelings just bubbled up and out.  

I’m fine.  It felt good to cry about those things that feel so far away most of the time.  

It was a heady reminder of the power of food, and of traditions, and of the things that connect us to one another even when we’re not together, or not even alive.  

So, like many women before me, I baked this bread with love and care, mixed and baked it as best I could, with attention to every detail and nuance of the recipe (I’ve doubled the baking powder and soda, as well as the vanilla; sorry Mumsy), to feed to my Partner and my children, of course.  But I made it with the intent to wrap it carefully (I used ziplocks and bubblewrap and a beautiful piece of fabric) to mail to my brother and sister, far though they may be this Christmas.  

I hope that it will last them from Christmas to the New Year.  The hardest time for remembering in our family.  

This New Year’s Eve, it will be ten years since our father died of a gunshot wound to the head.  His soul, I hope, is at peace.  The soul of our mother is more in question.  My brother and sister have been somewhat battered on the oceans of life since then, and in whatever way you send out messages to the universe, I wonder if you could send them a little bit of peace this year as they contemplate this past decade.  Perhaps we can all add to their bread in bringing them a little warmth and calm this year of all years.  

***

*Mumsy was my lovely Irish grandmother.  She would have a genuflection and some very colorful blessing to add to a reference to the dead.  How about this one: May her soul rest in the loving bosom of Jesus.  Yes I think we all need a loving bosom of one kind or another.  

Stash Toss

I may have mentioned that I have too many hobbies.  I sew—clothes, quilts, household goods, toys, costumes.  I knit—socks, lace, sweaters, toys, apple jackets.  I make crafty little weird things from time to time.  I encourage my children to do the same.  Their projects often involve small pieces of wood and copious amounts of scotch tape and glue.  And also sometimes paint.  I write—yes, I think right now this counts as a hobby, so seldom do I do it, but I aspire to shift this from hobby to, well, to something more involved at some point.  Oh, and I used to be a runner, and hope someday to be one again.  

That doesn’t count reading, which isn’t so much a hobby as a need.  And cooking, ditto need.  And gardening, which truthfully doesn’t involve me as often as it does Partner, but I’m there in a pinch.  

Each of these activities has accumulated stuff.  Reading: books.  Gardening:  uh, dirt, and vegetables, gloves, tools, blisters.  Knitting:  yarn, needles, scissors, patterns.  Sewing: boxes and boxes of fabric, and stuffing, elastic, buttons, snaps, velcro, thread, patterns and two sewing machines (ok, one is a serger and I haven’t actually used it successfully yet, but I’m hopeful).  

The craft stuff has filled an entire closet in my house.  I’ve admitted to my yarn stash being fairly reasonable and modest.  After tossing the craft closet, the yarn now occupies two plastic file boxes and one plastic blanket bag.  The fabric is another story altogether—several bins, a couple of garbage bags, and slouchy stacks.  

All of this stuff wears down my brain.  Even when it is successfully crammed into the closet with the door shut, I know it is there, occupying space.  Making me feel guilty with the unfulfilled promise and possibility that all of those raw materials represent.  

Before his death, trying to finish one last album before cancer finished him off, Warren Zevon noted about his love of reading that buying new books does not buy the time it takes to read them.  Not the happiest thought, but it is a realistic assessment that each of us has only a limited amount of time in any day, week or life, and that the accumulation of stuff does not magically expand our hours.  

When I shop (which I really dislike doing), I often ask myself the basic question, ‘Do I need this?’  That’s fairly easy to answer, but harder often is the next question, ‘Do I have time for this?’  I can cascade from there into sub-questions about whether I’m willing to make time for something that I need or something that I will find fulfilling for other reasons.  This basic personal consumption questioning has helped to keep the stashes under some semblance of control.  

Fabric and yarn are difficult for me though.  I can see the possibility in every piece of fabric I have.  The things that I could make.  I have the skill, the creativity, the enthusiasm.  So when someone says, ‘Hey, I don’t need this fabric/these bedsheets/this old quilt/this yarn, would you like to have it?’  I often can’t say no, especially if they are walking to the trash can as they say it.  When the yarn or fabric is super-cheap, I often can’t say no.  But the generosity of neighbors, the lure of a good deal, the infinite possibilities that those materials could become, do not give me the extra time to actually use them.  

So, in the interest of simplifying my closets, life, brain/clutter distress, I tossed my craft closet last night.  I wanted to be firm.  I planned ahead.  I had decided to keep all yarn, but sort it (and, oh, did I find some of the flashiest, sluttiest red mohair yarn that I did not know I had—I would link to a pic, but it’s discontinued and I can’t find it online: Pingouin Panache Mohair.  I don’t even know where it came from.  Yarn fairies?  There are at least two lace scarves coming out of that).  I had decided to keep fabric that I like that would be useful in the creation of quilts (I will quilt again.  I will.  I feel a moral compunction here.  I made quilts for some friends/family for their babies, and feel certain that I will want to do the same again for future babies.  Also, my sonars are outgrowing their kid quilts, and one day I will want to make them growing-up quilts that fit their big bodies.)  I had decided to keep any garment fabric that was already cut or paired with a specific pattern.  In other words, I would finish what I’d started in there.  

Out the door I had planned to throw all other apparel fabric, all weird fabric, all upholstery fabric, all stinky fabric (I inherited a bunch of stuff from my grandmother’s garage), all ugly fabric, and any clothes that were beyond reasonable mending.  

The will is strong in theory and weak in the face of the actual stuff.  

As I started to unload the closet, I was struck by how much more stuff was in there than I realized.  It really was worse than I thought.  Some things were easy:  8 yards of stinky, yellow, knit terry cloth.  Gone.  Ditto the 50 yards of stinky, navy, woven terry.  I fudged a bit, keeping the old sheets because I thought they might make a good bottom layer for summer quilts.  I completely faltered at the fleece-lined neoprene.  I mean, seriously, I know it’s red and black, and I know I bought it for a ridiculously low price, but what if one of the Sonars needs a wet-suit one day?  I could make it!!  It could happen.  We do live on the coast.  Maybe one of them will become a surfer.  Or a kiteboarder.  

It was painful.  Two hours later I had two large trashbags full of fabric to freecycle.  Which is good.  But I really did want to get rid of more.  I am left with one giant bin full of quilting fabric (loosely defined).  A giant bin of various works in progress, and apparel fabric that I just couldn’t get rid of (the pink/orange/drapey Hawaiian print that my grandma bought a whole bolt of on vacation 800 years ago and which she begrudgingly shared 3 yards with me, among other things).  A smaller bin full of upholstery fabric, which is really just too handy and versatile to part with (and oh, what if I need drapes sometime?).  In there is also about half of the array of lining fabrics that I inherited from my mother-in-law (seriously, we could have lined anything to match.  The woman had collected everything from shell pink to blood red to chocolate brown to caramel paisley—I kept the caramel paisley).  There is a file box full of patterns.  Ditto a file box full of notions (which really needs its own toss, but I was too drained to do it last night).  

Remind me not to look in the garbage bags again before I get rid of it.  I might take stuff out.  

Do I have time now to knit the slutty red lace?  

The Woodshed

I spent all day yesterday overdoing things in fine fashion. A grand and gluttonous lasagna was had, as well as fresh bread, fresh granola, and an icy coke to top off my spicy crab rolls at lunch. We continued today by constructing a decadent key-lime pie, complete with towering meringue. It’s still cooling, so I’ll have to let you know about that one later.

I do confess that the excess of rich and lovely food has done a lot to improve my mood. Not to mention the minor clearing of the sinuses affected by the spiciness of all. Though I still fell into a deep, coma-like sleep on the couch at 8:00.

Many thanks to the beautiful C’s, who in their infinite wisdom have reminded me that I have been missing music and baby animals in my life. I have to wonder whether CM intended the berry marinade for one of the wee ones? ;) I will turn on some Steve Earle and macerate some blueberries, just to be ready.

In the name of good humor, I will share with you additional topics of cheer.

First, bless a group of socially and politically active and aware crafters. They’ll just bring you up out of the dumps. Especially when they sprinkle their work liberally with gloom, doom, sarcasm, and insult and are willing to dedicate an entire issue to bacon. Eat it up friends. Then go back and read some of their earlier crafting extravaganzas.

If you just need to get your hormones racing a little bit, take Janet Evanovich at her word and grab a little birthday cake—in the form of a racy novel, that is. A romance novel perhaps, or maybe just jump into a Stephanie Plum novel. If time is of the essence, skip right to the scene with Stephanie and Joe in the backseat of the Uncle Sandor’s Buick in Four to Score. Trust me when I tell you that consummation is underrated compared to Joe standing half-naked in the street holding his gun.

If slightly (and I do mean slightly) higher brow literary entertainment is what you need, how about picking up Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. I’ve seen the movie, but I’m enjoying the novel for the first time. You read it too and we’ll share reviews.

I’ll save for another day some of my real deep-well, pulling out all of the depressive stops, such as advanced patriarchy bashing, heavy drinking, and painting my toenails orange.