In Season

We live in a culture of instant and nearly infinite gratification with a click of a mouse or trip to a super-store. The internet gives us instant access to anything we want, day or night 365 days a year and if we spend more than $35 we can get free shipping! And while I love amazon.com and mega-store shopping, one of the things I am enjoying about having decided to do the CSA as our main source of produce this winter is the fact that it is challenging me to think differently about food. I can't have anything I want, any time I want it. We pick up the bag on Friday and what we get is what we get. This week we have:

turnips

rutabagas

celery

potatoes

some citrus fruits

leeks

green pepper

2 local hot-house tomatoes

Not what I would have picked up at the grocery if left to my own devices. Over the past 2 weeks Jim and I have realized that we are big fans of roasted turnips and sauteed collards- things we never would have tried had they not been the only veggies in the house for dinner. This experiment is teaching me to think differently, to enjoy what is available to me in season- to appreciate the lean, hearty root veggies of winter and to anticipate the bounty of summer. I have a few onions, a sweet potato, and part of a head of lettuce left over in the fridge. And that's what's for dinner at our house this week!

PS: check out the size of the green onions we got last week! Maybe this is my city-girl ignorance, but I didn't think green onions looked like this except perhaps in Jurassic Park!

picture perfect

I got my latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens in the mail on Friday. And it was covered in all of these notices that this is my final issue- special bright red plastic wrap, a card stock cover, several page inserts, and a no-postage-necessary reply envelope.

I am in a quandary about what to do. On one hand I love getting every issue of BHG in the mail. Magazines in the mailbox have the power to make my day great (I think it is something about the shine of the pages). I love paging through it and looking at the beautiful homes and decorating ideas. I love reading about recipes and I love looking at green yards. The problem is that I don't stop with just looking. There is this seductive path my brain takes at some point with almost every issue. I start off thinking "Oh, what a fun idea". This thought is immediately followed by "I could do that; it would be great in the ____ room". I earmark the page and then this idea starts to simmer on the back shelf in my mind. At first I am planning how such and such idea could fit into what we have, and what I like, and what would work for us, but then things become more sinister. A piece of my brain starts to ask myself why I haven't already finished this project and remind myself of what a mess our house is and how this project would fix that and make me happy. It keeps pointing to the dishes in the sink and telling me that painting the walls in the family room would make me into the sort of person who doesn't have dirty dishes in the sink- ever. And then this rogue part of my brain starts to call me names like "lazy", "unorganized", "unstylish", "slovenly", "boring", etc etc.

So I'm trying to decide whether it is worth it. I love projects- when I can get them done. I love ideas- when I deal with them in a healthy, reasonable way. I love shiny pages and beautiful pictures. I somehow, though, need to remind myself that no one's house actually looks like the pictures unless BHG is coming over to do a photo-shoot. Everyone has a junk drawer and dust bunnies and dirty laundry. I am not a failure as a human being when my house isn't ready for a photo-shoot at all times. The question is whether I can remember all of that next month when the shiny pages arrive in the mail enticing me with their call that "Heavenly Emu" colored paint on my walls will fix all of life's difficulties.

sharing

I read somewhere that 6-10 months or so is the "golden age of babyhood". They can sit up and have some mobility, but they aren't fighting for independence yet and they are starting to be more interactive and fun. They do cute things like suck their toes, play patty-cake and laugh out loud. yes. yes. and yes.

Yesterday I gave Jonathan a frozen bagel for him to gnaw on instead of chewing holes in his board books. He LOVED it and happy chewed off little mushy bits. Then he started t0 try to feed the bagel to me by stuffing it in my mouth and laughing when I took a bite. I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.

Seeing him recognize that I was a person just like him and therefore would like the bagel as much as him was by far the best thing that happened this week.

mundane

Today I had a rough day. I felt exhausted and alone. I kept going over my mental list of the things I was doing that were totally wearing me out: taking attendance, checking homework, changing another diaper, mixing rice cereal, picking up the stacking cups and trying to find the red one under the sofa, grading a test, buying dog food, mopping the floor (ok, not actually mopping, but feeling guilty that the floor was un-mopped). And then my brain would start making longer lists of all the things that I hadn't done yet. All mundane junk, nothing remarkable or worth feeling proud of. None of it seemed like it should wear me out like I was feeling worn out and none if it seemed like made that big of a deal...

At times like this a little voice is usually nagging at me in my head saying things like "the little things add up over time" and "Rome wasn't built in a day" and in general trying to get me back to my normal state of mind where I feel ok about my life. But I didn't quite believe the little voice today. So I was grasping at straws all day, desperate to feel like I mattered to someone. Desperate to see progress. Desperate to believe that what was consuming all of my energy mattered.

After work I went for a walk with a friend and our babies and the dog to a park. We played for a while and enjoyed the sunshine. I came home and ate good, fresh, food and tried to concentrate on the baby. And slowly I started to feel real and ok again. I want to enjoy life and live in the moment every day. But today was really hard.