30/90, successes and failures

This week, I have focused on my personal health, especially my mental health, more than any other week. I have set myself up well to go into next week and Spring Break sitting pretty well. But the world has been careful not to let me feel too good about things. Along the way, there have been just enough setbacks and annoyances to keep my ego down.

Failures: let's start there

The Cheese
Making vegan cheese is roughly a two and a half day process. Cashews are soaked in water overnight. They're blended with probiotic powder and left for 16 hours to culture and get cheesy. Then, you add the actually herbs to give it a good flavor and let it set in the fridge.

The cultures form if you put the cashew-probiotic mixture in three layers of cheese cloth and if you put that cheese cloth in a sieve before covering it to make the whole thing air tight. I don't know what percentage of college students bring cheese cloth and a sieve to their rentals, but I can tell you that I did not.

I poured the cashew-probiotic cream over a clean dish towel placed in a plastic bowl with a lid and set a bag of potatoes on top of it.

This morning, there were not cultures. There was a growing, yeast-filled, fermenting mess of bubbles swimming in its own byproduct.

Roommate Communication
Wow, this is a mess on two continents. College students should be forced to live by themselves and learn to care for themselves.

I am not passive-aggressive. Indeed, I may be on the edge of too-aggressive-aggressive. I am not, and have never been, afraid of confrontation. But when you live with girls that are as busy as you, that have jobs and assignments that take them out of the house more than yours do and that may or may not be home at any hour without your really being able to tell, there is little opportunity to directly address a situation.

So I sent a facebook message. This is a large failure on my part. I don't like it, but I don't like taking care of an entire house either. And I don't like the idea of losing my deposit. So, here's to them forgiving my message and buying some of the things we need. Here's to them responding with ideas of how we can get the house deep-cleaned (since I just regular-cleaned the whole thing Thursday) before moving out. Cheers!

Now: France. Joe and I have been working with a college student who rents out an apartment for his parents. We sent our deposit this week. We then received a message that said we needed to send two additional months' rent, because that's how his mother wanted it done. I said, "That's not what the lease said." He said, "That's what my mom wants." I said, "Shit it's a scam," and I cried inside. Then, I said, "Fuck that. Give me my money back."

We're getting our money back, because he is, indeed a real person. This makes me feel worse, really, knowing that I pissed of an actual French person that I could have become good friends with. I'll admit, though: I was a bit concerned about his English skills and word choice, as he closed his e-mails with "Your tenant, [name]." Oh, language barriers.

Let's close with a list of successes

Successes: in list form for expedited happiness

1. Yoga: done several times this week, making my body feel longer, leaner and more at peace, just like Patricia Walden promises on the DVD
2. Falafel: made and eaten for several meals this week to increase my spice intake (for mental alertness) and my protein intake (for energy and muscle restoration)
3. Sleep: more of this, including--shocking--eight hours last night; more important: no stress or panic attack when I woke up and realized it 
4. Groceries: under control and under budget, feeling good about myself
5. Room: clean, with a clean rabbit cage (Baby is loving this. As I type, she's sprinting around the room and doing her leap-kick-twists in the space I made for yoga-doing.)
6. Goodwill: a stack of donations that's growing, which makes me feel better about buying all of the size 3/4 skirts they have

29/90

will be on the other blog

the week

I've started the ball rolling, getting my life back on track.

1. I sent a telegram to England to reserve a home in France after pissing off five JPMorgan Chase employees, Wal*Mart, Western Union and Marsh. It only took five hours.
2. I cleaned the house, and in doing so cleared out my head.
3. I got comfortable in an early morning writing routine--not settled in it in a comfort that dulls the edge, but comfortable in a way that makes me anxious and acutely uncomfortable when it doesn't happen.
4. I blew off my translation work to get reading done.
5. I "got ahead on" (aka printed a ton of articles and selected a topic for) two research topics.
6. Tea > coffee this week.
7. I took time to have a beer.

That said, I didn't have time to make or eat real food. This is my greatest unhappiness. I'm giving myself today and focusing on high-energy foods tomorrow. I was wimpering by 10 a.m. today, when I realized that my calculations moving from euros to dollars to pounds had somehow gone off course. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody should be that pathetically dependent on coffee. Vive la libération!

28/90, morning, still life

I’d been letting trash build up in paper bags around the trash can, hoping someone else would get annoyed enough to handle the situation. This is silly.

I cleaned the house last night. I sprayed orange cleaner on everything in the kitchen, waited for the fumes to settle and went to town. I let every speck of dirt I found fall to the floor. I watched the tiles at me feet be covered with onion peels, a rotten potato, tortilla chip crumbs, coffee grounds.

I swept the mess into the trashcan and ran mop water that was so hot it covered my hand in steam by the time I walked from shower to kitchen. I watched the tiles reappear, return to their shining grey. I watched the kitchen transform, return to the way it was when Rachel and I first fell in love with our little house.

I was contented. Joe was out for the night, so with no one to lay around on the phone with, I kept myself moving. I scrubbed the bathroom. I decided that if you left it out, it was my right to throw it away. I piled up things from my life that I want to give to Goodwill, things that I may be able to sell, and things that I didn’t even remember having.

I felt lighter, airier. I got close to that summery feeling from the times of V8 juice and new house smell. I felt like so much of what had been bothering my vanished when I scrubbed the orange cleaner off of the stove, was washed up and thrown out with the mop water. I felt respectable and respected: I’d prepared a clean place for me to think and be in. Sometimes, I forget to think and just keep doing. Sometimes, worse times, I forget to be.

I wanted to continue that this morning. I set my alarm for six, actually forced myself out of bed at 6:30 and got dressed right away. It’s the weekend, so that means leggings and the biggest sweater I could find, which does not prevent me from going back to bed.

I crept down the stairs and remembered the teapot my grandma gave Joe and me for Christmas. I still had the blooming tea bulb it came with, and I thought it was a perfect morning for it: the cool air outside still, my mind quiet and able to “feel the effects,” as my yoga video would say, of the jasmine and herbs.

Months ago, when we returned to the house after Christmas break, Joe and I tossed the instructions. I’d been teaching myself how to do and make more things around the house, and I was confident in my tea-brewing abilities. We’d become frequent shoppers at a tea store in St. Louis, and they’d given us tips for each kind of tea. For jasmine, a floral tea, the water shouldn’t boil; the leaves shouldn’t steep too long.

I don’t have a kitchen thermometer, so I did my best to guess when the water was hot enough. I poured it over the dried bulb of tea (looked a bit like an owl pellet, actually). Nothing. I thought that perhaps I was supposed to completely drown the little guy, so I poured the whole kettle’s contents into the teapot. Nothing.

It is my habit to become angry, then discouraged, then depressed when my domestic skills fail me. This progression takes less than five minutes. I felt the tightening in my throat and refused to accept it. Not today. It is Lent. I have said no excuses. I am trying again; I am not accepting that I cannot do this. I am not going to fail.

I emptied the teapot, put more water in the kettle and forced myself to be more patient. (If you know me, feel free to laugh at that last bit.) I watched for the steam, knew that it would come out of the kettle’s spout seconds before it started screaming and boiling.

The moment this steaming, near boiling water hit the bulb there was an explosion of color. Red petals floated on a green water lily. The scent of jasmine was so sweet it made my eyes water. The color turned beige then caramel. 

My throat loosened. I grabbed a Late July dark chocolate sandwich cookie, my white teacup and my computer. I am ready for another day and reminded that sometimes we have to wait for that moment just before boiling to open ourselves up. 

27/90, our house

Tomorrow, I am making myself pancakes for breakfast.

This seems like nothing. In this moment, it's everything. It's a new recipe to add to my collection (which I really need to organize this summer). It's a really healthy, from-scratch meal. It's full of peanut butter, my favorite food group. It's something that I've been waiting for all week: a weekend of respecting and rewarding myself for all of the work I've been doing.

Tomorrow technically starts my weekend. No classes. Four hours in the History Department Office. Four hours of translation. A few hours of reading homework before really kicking some assignment's asses on Saturday and Sunday.

I am incredibly excited for my small moments. I am looking forward to the smell of coffee, the hiss of a water drop hitting the warm burner below the pot, the steam rising from my cup. I am looking foward to the light  coming through our kitchen window. I am looking forward to feeling at home, instead of stuck in a place that is the in-between in my adult and childhood lives.

On the drive back from St. Louis Monday, I stopped to buy a juice. I got back in the car and began sipping my V8, and I was surprised to find myself feeling nostalgic. It took a moment to piece the scents that were coming back to me, the anxiety that was building in my stomach and the bit of sadness that was tightening my hand on the steering wheel together.

When Rachel and I moved into our house, before our junior year of college, it was just us. The walls were white and bare. The rooms were largely void of furniture. The downstairs bedrooms didn't yet have girls living in them. There was no rabbit. There was no clutter on the landing between our rooms.

In those days, I would sit in my room. The early morning light splashed onto my bed, warming my face. There was always a cup of V8 juice in my hand, in the same plastic cup that I found for 50 cents. It was easy for the two of us, me and Rachel, to finish off a bottle of V8 in three days. These were times when loan checks were rolling in, when we hadn't learned what winter utilities look like. Times of plenty, when going to the grocery three times a week was nothing.

The smell each time we walked through the door was a mix of summer and cleaning solution and emptiness. It was open and waiting. I don't know what that smell faded, when it was lost in the furniture we kept adding, when our roommates--two last year, two new girls this year--added their cotton candles and fruit-based perfumes to the mix.

Those early days seem brighter, lighter. When I think of summer, the scent of our new home hitting my at the front door, the scent of the bushes in front on either side of the front door and their stickiness against my arms when I trimmed them back that first month are the first things to rush back to me.

Tomorrow, standing in my kitchen in that early light while my roommates are still and the air in their rooms have settled, I may be able to call back that open, inviting scent--the one that tells me this place is mine for the taking.

26/90,

I will never again underestimate the power of a good Spring-cleaning style re-do of my room.

I couldn't stop thinking about moving last night. How it's really gaining on me. How I have too much stuff to ever fit into a vehicle and move back to Ohio. How I will have to scour every inch of my room to remove rabbit damage.

So I began throwing things into the center of my room: magazines I'd kept because I like the covers; Adidas from my sophomore year of high school that no longer have arches; candles with their wicks burnt out; duffel bags with no zippers; storage containers and boxes that Baby has chewed up. I threw things until I couldn't see my bed.

And then I moved my bed. For the last year and a half, I've been using a set of folding doors as a sort of screen in my room, providing privacy (a place to throw my laundry that I don't have time to fold) and a place for Baby to run (chew carpet).

I would squeeze my yoga mat in front of my desk and bed. Laying down with my arms stretched out for the morning relaxation positions, my fingers would skim desk and folding door. Now, I have space more than a yard, a big rectangle for flopping on my newly clean floor to do my homework or yoga, a landing strip for Baby when she dives off of my bed.

My mind feels just as open. Last night, I was in a panic. This is nothing unusual. One thing goes against my plans for the day, and I don't know what to do with myself. I think that I'll never get caught up, let alone get ahead.

I'm letting it go. Last night, I simply couldn't stand myself. I realized that I am unhappy with my body because I have been mistreating it lately. I can't expect it to hold together when the things that I sacrifice each day are the things that make me feel exponentially better about the skin I'm in--yoga, slowing down to eat food that does not come from a box or a paper bag.

There are small sacrifices each day, and when I'm increasingly apathetic toward my last semester of college, it gets harder to make these decisions. One thing must be settled, though: I cannot continue sacrificing myself.

The feeling that I had when I stretched out on the yoga mat in my new, open room was the reminder I needed. Nothing will be really gained in the thirty minutes I give myself for exercise. No assignment will ruin my chance at graduation. No professor can stay mad at me long enough to keep me out of graduate school.

Now, let's try all of this again. For the second day in a row, I overslept by an hour. I am making myself be okay with this. I am reminding myself how tired my body has been. I am moving on from here, with post-yoga calmness and a focus on life after graduation (only two months, really) instead of the stress of each assignment.

25/90, groceries

I went to the store yesterday and stood in the produce section for a long time. I looked at my cart. In summary, it was a $45 salad. (And a box of Late July cookies. Hello.)

I was on the phone with my mother. "I feel like I'm not buying any food. There's no food in my food."

She asked what I had for lunch. "A bag of trail mix." The good kind, with the chocolate-covered soy beans and M&M-ish candies and the craisins. "Half of a V8 strawberry-banana juice. Gross." I should have stuck with their Spicy Hot.

She expressed her concern. I was also concerned, because as I looked around in the florescent glow, I realized there wasn't a lot here I wanted to be eating.

I have read and researched more than my fair share of food science. I've been vegan, vegetarian, carnivorous and famished after a five-day fast to cleanse my liver. The shine from the apples hurts my eyes. The plastic wrap around the broccoli makes me wonder when it was cut and who shipped it. Pineapples are next to apples are next to raspberries are next to radishes. I wonder what about this is natural. What field did this come from? What sunlight made these grow--at the same time? Why do we need this?

I looked at my cart and was embarrassed. I slipped the prickly pear, the processed soy cheese, the hydroponic tomatoes back onto the shelves (granted, between loaves of bread and not with their comrades) and began looking at the homes of my food. Vermont. Mexico. Idaho. Vietnam.

I wanted to put it all back. I wanted to dig up the snow and the frozen earth and spread seed and wait for spring and then fall and then harvest. I want to know. I want to see the soil, to pull the weeds, to avoid chemicals, let rabbits eat some of the carrots and birds pick at some berries.

I want to eat like we've eaten for centuries, when we were hardy in a real way, when we earned it. Last summer, Joe and I cruised the Soulard farmers' market each Saturday. We sifted through the Dole and FreshCrisp to find the fruits of the Ozarks.

We balanced saving money on imported papaya and pineapple with finding the local zucchini and okra. We saved money, savoring the fruit at breakfast and stretching the vegetables in soups and stir-fry to make the produce last through the next Saturday. This summer, I'm heading home to Ohio.

The goal: to find Wapak's local goods, to work with my grandma in the garden she's had for as long as I can remember, to stain my fingernails with dirt and learn how to feed myself.

24/90, she dances better, a prose poem

The stickers lining her computer monitor say things like she would never let work interfere with her social life. They say Milk Shake, Piña Colada, Banana Boat, in pink novelty type to look like signs for the beach, like America in the 1950 when all three were sold as a special for 35 cents and served on a cardboard tray. When her waist was narrow. When she ate all three and dove into the water, not thinking about cramps in any serious way, but wondering what boy to let save her if she did. She may have hoped for this.

She foregoes her lunch break and instead gnashes the boiled egg between grey teeth
while clicking through her inbox. And when she says in those days, she danced better
with her shoes off, you imagine flecks of egg white too small to chew dancing with yolk mixing with saliva clinging to the inside of her upper lip and turning creamy, melting, lining her smile when she remembers the way her shoes never seemed to follow her home.

23/90, the wives

It wasn’t until last night that I felt like an adult, that my being in love wasn’t just a fun game of house we were playing, that this is the next Life Stage.

When Gertrude Stein had fellow expatriate writers over to her apartment in the 1920s, the wives were segregated. Her “companion” or “friend,” as Hemingway refers to the woman Stein lives with, did needlepoint and maintained a conversation with them separate from the writers’ talk. “The wives… were tolerated,” Hemingway explains in a moveable feast.

While Joe and the other members of his writing group got together to workshop their writing, I realized that I was a “wife.” I was not segregated--I had no work to share and had read no one’s work. There was another “wife” in a similar situation.

We sat together, quickly discovering that we were in remarkably similar situation. We had sifted through long-distance relationships to find nuggets of time to visit the person we loved. We are passionate about nonfiction. We are not writing as much as we should, in the way that we should or about the things that we should. We are getting married. Soon, she sooner than I--May. 

While we talked about the weddings, literary conversation around us hummed and pulled us in. We admitted that we were anxious to get back to writing. We admitted that we felt odd and uncomfortable without something to share--an uncomfortable far worst than that first sting of a workshop.

That was the moment when I realized this was our life. This was not us being students. This was us in the circle of friends we'd been searching for. This was us in a moment that represents what we want for our lives: evenings with writers, sharing and editing and admitting that our plot has started plodding or we have more scene breaks than scene. 

 This will be us, living the dream that Hemingway and Fitzgerald made real for us in so many ways... minus the sexism and alcoholism (on our parts), plus a bit of financial stability and casual drinking games.* I mean, you can only talk about your 30 pages of writing for so long before things digress.

*Note: I did not say more drinking. Ça, c'est impossible.

22/90, the reader

 

I have started reading Ernest Hemingway's collected essays of the Paris years. I give myself 20 minutes a day to take it in, walk the streets with him and figure out what it all means. 

How do we live as an expatriate? Which part of us will never leave? Which will create the lens through which we take in a culture, even after we're no longer a "tourist"? When are we not tourists?

Among the scenes of passionate writing and declarations of love found in the minutia of each day, Hemingway gives us his wisdom, which I admit I was not expecting to find. In closing his preface, I felt like he was giving me a bit of advice I'd always needed.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

They will read it as they will. Some will read in a way that is easy for them--that is comfortable and does not push their understanding or acceptance. It is not my job to write to them. It is my job to share these things that have shaped me. To write them down and show them to you and say, "This was not just you. I figured out that it was not just me, either. See? See how we are the same and that you are not alone."

Yesterday a friend asked me, "What do you write about?" My immediate reaction was, "What do I write about?" How can I say that one thing is not important when a year from now it could be the center of a starbust of events. The choice to eat the reuben and not the salad for lunch, or to eat the pickle first, could be pivotal.

Then I realized that this response is not true. I do not writ, on my blog, what I am really "writing about," what this learning of nonfiction is really all about. The key points, it turns out, never leave my journal--to protect my reader, to protect the parties involved, to protect myself for the time being. But I feel the need to write these things. I know that the feminist/housewife project I'm working on cannot be complete without reviewing these journals. 

Now, things are getting complicated. Things are heavy and undoable and, I'll say it, impossible. At the present, at such close proximity (timewise). With such high sensitivities on all sides. I am writing, but I am not writing about "what I am writing about." I am writing pretty, writing comfort, writing confused moments, writing feeling better. I am not writing the story yet. 

21/90, stuffed

I had my smoothie for breakfast. I packed my lunch and felt good about it.

Then I ate a cookie.
Then I went to work and was given cheese pizza.
Then I helped a committee and got banana bread and crackers and cheese and strawberries and grapes.

Now I feel horrible--mentally and physically. I want to fix this. I want to buy the workout video that makes me stop doing this. I want to stop eating bread and eat only lettuce.

This is not true. I know this would feel equally horrible, in its own way.

It is Lent. I have given up excuses. I am taking ownership for each task that I do and do not accomplish eat day. I am giving myself room tonight for yoga, cookie-making and documentary-watching while I write at least one paper. I am not doing my reading. Because. There is no reason, there are only reasons why I don't want to.

So this is it. No excuses. No hormones-made-me. No I'm-lonely-and-he's-far-away. No but-I'm-in-college. No lying about why I'm late. I'm starting with my self, with what I put in my body: something that I have complete control over. I'm taking control back, and I am going to feel good about it.

I am starting this now, a weekend when I will see Joe. These are conditions that usually bring me to abandon all health goals, and instead sit on the couch eating a loaf of cheese and the worst smelling cheese we could find. But I'm doing and, and he'll deal with it because I'm bringing my new favorite cookies.

So here's the deal: I am up to four cups of coffee by 8 a.m. I crash in the afternoon and turn to refined sugars. I crash again, walk through the cold and enter the kitchen of my house. I eat the first warm carbohydrate I see. At midnight, after homework, I am hungry from thinking. I eat.

No more. None of it. I want my energy back, and these tricks to my body aren't doing it. Instead, let's try this:

• Yoga in the morning. It hurts and I don't like it, but I have to do it. I find excuses not to in the evenings (like making cookies or talking to Joe or writing papers or, say, sleeping).
• A smoothie for breakfast. And when I get tired of the (never home)makers' amazingness, I have an entire book of them that I got for Christmas from my boss. No excuses there! Tons of energy, natural sweetness, and time for drinking it--it's so cold I can't chug it and binge.
• A solid lunch full of whole grains and a snack of mixed nuts. Every day. Unless I want the sweet potato. I'm standing by this idea: it's filling, wholesome and a good excuse to have some sugar in the raw and Earth Balance. No complaints. No reason not to love this. No need for excuses.
• A new recipe every week, from my vegan cookbook... No excuses for getting tired of food, for having no idea what to eat, for having nothing in the fridge.
• No refined sugar, but I will treat myself. I will not eat cookies at work. I keep saying it, but I don't do it. I will carry more gum and remember how horrible I feel when that sugar hits my stomach that used to be so pure and lined with spinach and jasmine rice and tofu.
• Treats! Like pancakes on the weekend. Or beer! I am not giving up alcohol. Noooo way, sir. I have it once a week on average, rounding up, and I am OVER feeling bad about it. So bring on that double stout. Bring. It. On.

No excuses. Time to start enjoying things. No excuses means one less thing I'm searching for. It means finding power in each small decision I make. It means pushing myself harder and realizing that some things will have to go--but not the same thing every day. 

FOOD, INC.

I 

 I ordered it for $10 on Amazon. Can't beat that.

This documentary could finally push us toward the changes our food industry needs to make. I'm not saying be vegetarian if you don't think you can handle it. I'm saying it's time to start looking at what you're putting in your body and having a say about it. Check out the movie, the site, the movement.

I'm hoping to plan some screenings of it and start making changes in a small way.

20/90, my back is dry

My back is dry in a place I can't reach, and I add this to the reasons that I wish Joe were here. I count the days since the last time I shaved, and I'm glad he isn't.

We counted the days until school ends, and we nearly two weeks of being with each other. There are now 71. I said, "It is like Christmas," and this is true, because at Christmas we are together.

It wasn't always like this. We had a year and a half together, almost, with the exception of the summer in between. So it goes in college relationships. And then I left. I went to France, and we talked, actually heard each others' voices--four times in three months.

I wonder how we made it. Because now that Joe is in St. Louis and I am in Muncie and we live our lives for that one weekend a month, I feel like I am not making it. Like I'm treading and slipping at times, especially the times we are in lately.

Then he reminds me that we are floating beautifully along. We are sailing, maybe. We are suspended, stuckin a stop-motion animation, waiting for the frame when we touch each other. We can see it now; our hands are posed. Each weekend we have together is surreal, a Utopia of just the two of us in a bubble. We envelope the world when we want to, close it off just as easily, behind the door of his studio apartment.

We buy groceries and make food and watch French movies and dust and fold socks and read and read to each other. We do all of the small moments that will, in August, make up parts of our daily lives. We have a three-day marriage, and it feels perfect.

We wonder at times if, perhaps even fear that, this euphoria will wear off, that buying groceries will be the chore of going to the store and not the opportunity to figure out what food we will share. The he reminds me that we have seen what our other options are.

We will not always be happy to fold laundry. We will not always be happy that it took so many dishes to make dinner. We will always be happy to forget these things as I lean into him on the couch and his arm moves through my hair and comes to a rest on my shoulder. We will always be happy, and this is not naive. This is realism. This is acknowledging the down moments and accepting the overall, because we have seen unhappy. But even in the unhappy, there is the hope of happy, living for that one weekend a month.

19/90, sweet potato, pie

The truth is that I've gained twenty pounds since coming to college.

The truth is that I was too skinny in high school.

The truth is that until a week ago, I thought I was the only one whose belly hung over their low-rise jeans when they sat down. I thought I was the only one that lived their life with their stomach sucked in.

The truth is that I have also grown an inch since college, that I am four years closer to having children and my body knows that.

A lesser-known truth is that I am willing to give any diet a go. Hence the sweet potatoes three times a week. The cans of sardines I plan to eat on avocado sandwiches. The smoothies for breakfast. The vegan blogs I follow. The Skinny Bitch book and lists of groceries to follow their sample month diet.

Hence the cookies I bake and give to people. Because when I eat one, when I stray by one meal from any of these plans or lifestyles or goals, I feel like I have failed. One missed step, and I eat four cookies for breakfast. One missed day of yoga, and I am convinced that I have lost all lean muscle and growing flexibility.

The truth is this is nonsense. This is not eating or enjoying food or being healthy. I truly love the foods, love the cookbooks and the meatless meals. I love every vegetable I've come across. I love yoga. I love the feeling of being satisfied and not full and glowing with the nutrients of fresh, seasonal foods.

Right now, I am reading The One-Straw Revolution, a manifesto that encourages a complete return to natural farming and eating what is found on the earth based on the natural cycles of the year. I am reading these words and reminding myself that this is what it's about. A return to the communion that is at the heart of meals, the sharing between nature and human. That is what leads to a healthy body, beyond weight and beyond societal image and beyond dietary trends.

I am reminding myself that I will fit in my wedding dress; that a beer is not a six-pack is not a beer belly; that one cookie every once in a while keeps you from sneaking four cookies at six in the morning so no one knows it happened.

18/90, hot potato

Today, I pissed off an Asian couple in the library. This isn't exactly new.

I go as fast as the snow will let me, racing in my plastic-bottom shoes from my class to the library and down the stairs. It is 12:15. The lower level of the library has one microwave. It has not been cleaned in [insert your favorite number] years. Standing in front of it makes you smell like a mixture of theater-style popcorn and no-salt-no-fat-no-preservatives frozen chicken.

I have no choice. I stand in front of the microwave and wait for the girl to cook her Uncle Ben's Minute Rice and then the girl to cook her Southwest Chicken Entrée and then the woman the cut me in line to cook bagel. Yes, cook her bagel. I stand in front of the microwave and breathe it all in and think about the mythical diseases that come from standing this way, but I know that if I move the Asian couple will beat you again.

They beat me every Tuesday and Thursday. I wait as they cook their white rice. And then their water for tea. And then their beef tips. And then their three individual cups of vegetables in sauce. Not today.

I am starving because I had a smoothie and a pitcher of coffee for breakfast. I have peed nine times, losing every nutrient I took in. The sweet potato weighing down my backpack will take eight minutes to cook. It is my turn.

When I start stabbing the sweet potato with a fork, the skinny man realizes what's coming. He knows what he's waiting on.

I wrap the potato in a napkin and toss it into the microwave, where it comes to rest on, what? Dried tomato bisque? I set the dial for eight minutes.

After five, the man is getting nervous. His girlfriend is calling to him, her eyes pleading, her tiny stomach growling inside that enormous sweater. I think of how unfair it is that she can be so small when she will sit there and eat so much of that damn rice. I think of the paper napkin holding my potato and worry that it may burst into flames.

I rush to the microwave and grab the potato. The napkins disintegrates in my hand. Tiny flecks of its fiber are burrowing their flaming selves into my palm. I smile at the man. See? See how nice I can be to you? I have stopped my lunch three minutes early.

At my table, I saw the hard potato in half with a plastic knife. The core is still tough, and I tell myself that it is ok. I saved the Asian couple three minutes of waiting. I will save calories by not eating it. And, let's be honest, that's what this is all about.

17/90,

I am attached to the idea of escape. When there is no way out, and at the same time no place to hide, my breathing becomes shallow; my hands go white; I blink faster; I don't speak. I expect the same from a story.

This is why I read and reread The Angry Idol, The Ghost Boat, Saturday Night, Jane Emily, The Secret Garden, Heidi, Anne of Green Gables... books my mom found in the rows of library books, had found in her own childhood and shared with me. I escaped, like so many of us do, into the summers of these books.

I launched myself capriciously into moments that resembled the tales, turning the foundation my dad dug for our future garage into the winding paths of Mary Lennox's hideaway. I slipped my Sunday church shoes from their box in the closet and onto my dirty feet so that my steps made the right tip-tap-scuff along our brick sidewalk. I spoke with an English accent to a man that I forgot was my father and, in that moment, was without doubt the groundskeeper. On special occasions, he begs me to repeat those lines and I still blush at how fully I made myself that character.

There was a moment when I realized that my sister shares this passion with me, this search for moments when we can willingly suspend disbelief. I don't know if she realized it. I don't know if I ever told her.



The toy car was shaped like a scorpion. The orange body had already begun to fade when I found it among the alley rocks. Fishing in my pocket, I unwound my piece of purple and bound the scorpion's tail. I held the string, and when I continued my walk down the alley, I heard the scorpion's wheels clicking and clunking over the uneven ground.

There is a church behind my house. It has been, forgive this, a forbidden playground for as long as I can remember. Looking back, it's no wonder they didn't want us to practice tennis against the brick walls or use their water taps to fill our balloons. They yelled at us to stay away, to keep our bikes on the sidewalk. But they could never keep me from their back stairs, the few concrete steps hidden behind the shrubbery and ending a man's height below the sidewalk at their office door.

I hid here, on the cool concrete landing. As I pulled the scorpion behind me, I knew where I was headed. I knew that this rejected toy would join the rocks and leaves that I'd collected and hidden in the landing, under the thin metal drainage grate that my five-year-old fingers could reach through and twist up. I stored everything the alley gave me here, sure that Scout would have acted the same. I knew they were safe. I knew that this was were they were meant to be.


When my sister walked into the house years later, when my fingers no longer fit into the openings of the drainage grate, my sister walked into the living room. Purple string hung damp, sticky in her hands. She unraveled the decomposing mess and showed me a faded scorpion-shaped car.

16/90, sexing a rabbit

No, you're not missing something. Post 15/90 happened here. And I'm days behind. Two days, to be exact. But here is the first go at catching up:

One of the first things that happens each time I make a trip back to Ohio is a family gathering around my rabbit's cage. Baby, a Netherlands dwarf, is white with gray spots and more loved than she can handle.

She does not like to be held. She occasionally growls and charges at your hand when you give her a handful of hay. More upsetting than her inability to show affection is her sudden interest in the teddy bear that sits on my bed, the stuffed animal Joe got me for our first Valentine's Day.

When I let her out of her cage to romp around the room for an hour or two each day, she bolts straight for my bed, leaps onto it and begins nuzzling into the covers. On a good day, she'll lay down next to me while I read. On most days, she tries to chew my book out of my hands.

Sitting at my desk one day, I noticed that she was prancing around the bear, nipping at him, pushing him along the comforter. And then there was a horrible smell. And then there was Baby mounting the teddy bear.

I dove at the bed, and she leaped away, jumping off of the bed and hiding in the closet. I was stunned. Baby was a girl. She had to be a girl.

This would not be the first time the pet store got it wrong. When my parents bought her, the woman assured them that she was a tiny, baby girl bunny. The store had also assured my parents that their guinea pig was a girl. This later resulted in a name change.


When I got home this weekend and I sat with my mom and sister in front of Baby's cage, watching her try to chew her way through the bars to get to us, I told them the story. She is nearly a year old, so it made sense to me that she was "mature." My mom agreed, and then asked what I'd been fearing.

"You're sure she's a girl?"

Well, no, not exactly. Not sure as in I'd checked. Not sure as in she showed definite, human-like traits that let me know she preferred dolls to Tonka trucks. I just felt it. She had to be.

My mom insisted that we sex the rabbit, to which I could only reply, "What?" This is what they call it, she said. You flip it over to check, you determine the sex of the rabbit: you sex the rabbit.

My mind flipped through all of the times I'd tried to hold and cuddle Baby, the scars and claw marks and bleeding slices across arms and chest. I wasn't so sure about this. I wasn't so sure I wanted to check, either. What would I do if my baby wasn't my little girl anymore? It took women hundreds of years to have their sex drive acknowledged. Why couldn't my baby just be, you know, testing the water, experimenting, figuring herself out?

We opened the cage door and let Baby hop out onto the carpet. Before she could get one lap around the room, I had grabbed her in an arcing swoop and flipped her over. It's true, what they say about rabbits. Get them on their back (if you can) and they're stunned. They just sit there, wide-eyed, ears back. I thought about how many guys had said this about how many women.

Her teats were bright pink against her white, white belly. I knew this meant nothing; the guinea pig had them, too--useless but there.

Mom tugged her little feet and saw nothing incriminating. "She's a girl."

14/90, many thanks

Today, I decided to take note of all the things that I am thankful for. I jotted them down as they happened.

1. Perfect Binding: the sound of it when a book is opened for the first time, the crinkle of the spine when you pull the cover back, the tension against your hands as it wills itself shut, the scent of glue that grows stronger until it changes to the scent of must and yellow
2. PayDays: not regular ones, but the snack-sized ones that I can say are a source of protein and two hours of energy; the ones that the Career Center of my university has scattered at displays around campus to advertise their career fair (clever, really)
3. Google Books: the reason that I can write my footnotes on 18th century French literature from my bed
4. Valentine's Day Cards: one from my mom, one from my fiancé's mom; both sealed with a ton of love and fear that I'm stressing too much; both waiting for me on the dining room table when I got home and sat down for dinner (or rather, grabbed dinner from the fridge and stood at the counter)
5. Snow Boots: the high ones that would keep my feet dry and warm if I didn't use them as a way to step into puddles and trudge through snow and kick snowbanks so that I can feel like I'm a character in The Road
6. Aldi: the store that makes it possible for me to eat half a sweet potato with unsalted butter and brown sugar, yogurt with apples and walnuts for lunch for less than $2
7. Yoga Mats: the only way I can lay on my floor and (fall asleep while) doing homework, with my pet rabbit hopping on my back
8. Trains: the sound reminding me of days spent in my grandma's backyard, nights in tents in my own backyard, the mornings following when your hand on the tent wall pulls a puddle through and onto your sleeping bag
9. Razors with Multiple Blades: less shaving, less thinking about shaving, less shaving cream, that perfect cold when newly bare legs hit cotton sheets
   
10. Today: the stress, the too many assignments, the fear of not getting it all done, the worry of needing to do it all while I'm with my family for the weekend, the calling Joe instead, the pauses to eat, the e-mail reminders, the Democracy Now and coffee wake up, the time with Baby, the reading of amazing books (Nada and Slaughterhouse Five)
    

13/90, Christian love song

There are times when I consider, not out of doubt or hatred or feeling of abandonment, only out of curiosity, what it would be like to leave my faith. What it would be like, more than anything, to accept that this is it, or maybe more precisely that it is all my fault.

I think of this, and then I think of you. You, giving birth to me. You, wrapping my presents on Christmas Eve, my birthday, just-because-days. You, running through a sprinkler with me. You, pooping in the tub the one time we bathed together. You, dropping the ring in my mimosa. You, accepting what I want from my life even if it's not what you were picturing, exactly.

I think of you, the time we have. I think of dedicating myself to you, what it feels like to not see you for a day, what it feels like to touch you in the smallest, most seemingly insignificant moments.

And more than an absence of Heaven, I worry that there will be an absence of you. If after this life of caring and breaking and falling, I don't get to spend the rest of everything with you, as some glowing entity or some pink bubble or some living painting, then I am lost. Then what are we doing? There is nothing, and this is what scares me the most.

So when I say that I believe in God or I believe in Heaven, what I mean is that I believe that I will be with you. Because I have to believe it. Because I find no other way to make these days possible, not when we're really feeling them. Not when we let ourselves be immersed in it.

Even if I concede that you are a blink on the Morse code of humanity, and I am a blink that followed, I would still believe that the dots follow for a reason, the two points of "i," an I am. This is my faith. This is what I believe, what I hold onto and orbit and draw my heat from. This connection to you and you and you.

12/90, frequencies

I have come to the conclusion that my ears are set to a different frequency.

My dad and I have a habit of thinking seven other things while you are talking to us. We'll ask you to repeat. We'll try hard to focus, but the next project is still looming in that open brain-space right behind the eyes. I used to blame it all on this inability to pull myself in and bring attention to what my ears were working on.

Granted, my dad lost the hearing in one ear when he was caught near an explosion while he was still working in the factory. He got a hearing aid. He says it makes the crickets that hum in his ears die down, that he can pick up words again, but the background is amplified.

They say that when a mother watches another woman give birth, she can experience sympathy labor pains. She begins to cramp, to pant and swell and lactate. I did not witness or experience the explosion with him, but I'm wondering if, by some genetic symbiosis, by our hugs and fist-bumps, I have taken on the changed frequency of his ears.

I strain to listen, and I know that sometimes this is hard for you to believe. I seem absent, distracted. My mouth is closed tight; I look angry; my eyes look away. This is me concentrating. Now I'm laughing, nodding, "I know"-saying. This is me having no idea what words you're saying.

You went to Meineke--not my Nikki's.

The store has a new display--not a nudist play.

The electrical hum from my computer charger keeps my awake long after prayers and reading and changing my socks and putting facial moisturizer and double-checking my alarm.

I had my watch. I've heard it so much that the pace of my heart has changed. I am set to Fossil time. At least it has a good warranty.

the cars

There are moments when, above the exhaust or the rubber or metallic smell, you catch the scent of the person inside the passing car. A lei or a pine tree dangle from the rearview mirror. Magnetic Jesus clings to the dashboard. Over all of these things, like a dusty halo, you smell the mothballs that line the corner of their closet. Or the skin behind their ear, stained with freesia or gardenia or, God forbid lavender (you've always been allergic). Or the three cats with one little box changed not too regularly that are waiting by the door of their home. Or the empty fillet of fish sandwiches filling the passenger seat, where you know no one else sits. Or the stale baby spit-up stuck in the crevices of the seat belt buckles.

They pass, and as your head turns to follow them and for just that part of one second when they glance at you because you are, after all, on their side of the road, you know them. You know all there is to know about them. They pass through you and you wonder what they took.

And when they are gone, you smell the collar of your coat, the inside of your glove that rubs against your palm, and on top of their sent that still lines your nostrils, you look for yourself again. You mix the two. You know yourself, all there is to know.

11/90, complaining about long distance

For the past five weeks, I have been using this holiday. I have been counting it down to understand the space between us, what these days mean, how we are still connected.
Next to my closet, I have been piling my pink sweaters, the bottles of wine we didn’t drink, the magazines I’ve saved for you. I was determined to use this time to convince you that I am still here; I’m still holding it together.

It is a habit of mine to view things as my penance. The weather, which is strategically keeping from you, is my punishment, a way of atoning for sins we couldn’t forget if we tried.

We’d given up this holiday anyway, offered it instead as a sacrifice to the wedding. We would each drop our dollars into the change jar, buying boutonnieres and programs instead of flowers or chocolates or see-through underwear or red, red, red.

When I told you the first time that I wouldn’t be visiting, there was a bit of a shrug in your voice, and I followed your lead. I became convinced that the bits dangling under my car would swirl and reconnect, like I was some Cinderella carried to you.

The snow died down, I changed my visit to the family. Dad could fix the car on Tuesday. We could steal some family time. I could hug my sister like I’m dying to. I could sit with my mom and plan the flowers I’ll carry when I walk toward you. We could be one step closer, and I could still sneak the weekend. In that moment, we felt like we had it all.

The "I'm sorry" in my dad’s voice when he told me that Tuesday would bring eight more inches, that I would have to wait for the weekend to come home, made me realize how much I’d needed it all. I tried to accept it immediately. I would still see my family, still work toward our wedding. I would see you sometime. You are still somewhere.

This is the part I’m still working on, the accepting and adapting, the changing of plans. Once, when my parents worked and I spent the days with my grandma, when I was three maybe, Dad arrived earlier than I was expecting. I heard his knock at the front door, behind which I’d just redecorated Barbie’s penthouse. I stood in the middle of her pink bedroom, holding her stiff plastic hand in mine, crying—not moving, just standing, my mouth open and my nose running shamelessly.

When I lose sight of you, when my days of seeing you drift of my Google calendar and pocket calendar and wedding planner, I am lost in the middle of a bedroom that seems to small for me.

Today, there are exactly six months left. I’ll pencil St. Louis into the next weekend and the next until it’s true. I’ll remind myself that in 180 days, we’ll be in the same bedroom and it will be too small and I will cry because it is perfect.

10/90, flashlight

Diane was a child in the 50s. Most of the stories she shares about her youth involve dancing in socks, eating burgers, loving JFK--iconic moments, black-and-white pictures that I can understand.

One day, she reached farther back, took me to a Christmas when she was still a little girl, the youngest of three, except for this Christmas. This year, there would be a younger brother.


The boy lived at an orphanage in their home town. I imagine the place similar to the scenes from Cider House Rules, because unlike her other memories I have nothing to match this to. I wondered, as she was telling me this, if these places still exist. The scenes of orphanages I imagine are perpetually in the mid-1900s, sometimes as close to the present as Penny in Disney's The Rescuers.


The boy, Diane's father told her, would be staying for them through the Christmas holiday. He would have a family this year, this season. They bought gifts for the boy, and her father rejoiced in having a Little Man to share a love of cars with, to romp around with and tousle. When it came time for presents, the family sat together, softened in the multicolored glow of the Christmas tree.

Of all his gifts, the boy was struck by the unparalleled possibility of his new flashlight: the one bright spot showing exactly what the boy found most important, most interesting, most meaningful in that instant. He focused the world's attention with his ray of light, manipulated and controlled how the world was seen.


While I was home for Christmas this year, my family watched A Dog Named Christmas. A boy encourages folks in his town to take a dog home from the shelter for the holidays--ease the work of the shelter's limited resources, make the dogs' winter a bit brighter. I was torn by the potential psychological damage. How would children respond when the dog was taken away? How do you make a dog understand that they are not being abandoned?


I wondered these things while listening to Diane's story. How does a little boy ease himself back into life without a family of laughing sisters, sitting at one table for dinner, forced to share his toy cars and flashlight with no one save his stand-in father?

Diane does not know where the little boy is today. They didn't stay in touch much, after their holiday together, save one visit to the orphanage.

When the boy returned with his bags of new toys to bring some kind of joy to his surroundings, he and the other boys who'd been fostered for the holiday surrendered their toys. Because not all of the children went and not all of the children received equal gifts, their treasures joined the common wealth. Each boy picked their one toy, the one possession to keep only for themselves.

Diane walked into the visit with her family; saw the children playing with toys she'd helped pick out for one boy; saw the boy that had joined their family for those few days, still holding his flashlight.

9/90, a thought after a phone call

I have an obsessive need to help people, to dedicate my life to leaving more good than bad, to improving what we've done to this place.

I'm realizing that this is not something I'm very good at. At one point, I was the friend that they came to. The one with the cookies or the beer or the tissues. Or just the being, because it is surprising how often that is enough.

I feel the need to help, to fix, to over-talk until I am convinced that we are okay. Maybe it is selfish. Maybe that's what it always is--just looking for the career or cause that allows us to fulfill a need.

I am not good at making people better--their feelings, their situation, their self-esteem. I try, and then somehow it gets distracted.

There are people that disagree. They're sure that if I suffer through the mathematics and learn to hold my own without blushing each time I share an opinion in class, then I will definitely make it in these public policy programs. I can make it to the UN. I can be a part of it, the Big Change, the shift, an attempt to convince myself that the world is not ruined.

These people, they have seen my in the moments where it all feels like it's coming together. They haven't been in this house, seen the fucking mess of tears all the time, and I often worry what they would think then. As if their believe that I could do it is what makes it real.

I've started to wonder if this is really what I want. It is, in a way. I'm still obsessed with the helping, because if we know and don't do better, what are we really knowing? My magnet, sent with a letter from a friend, asks me "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?"

I know what this is, but it is not what I tell people. Not directly. I hope that this is what makes it true, that I can make it on my own with this one. And after I pull that together, I can move on, fix the things that need a'fixin' and do the things I've tricked people into thinking I'm capable of.

We are never okay, and that is a part of it. We find the things that make it less obvious, less invasive, less dramatic (well, ...).

When I look at the magnet, when I sit in nonfiction workshops; when I pick up Kincaid or Pollan or Wolff; when I hear about you having a beer with your colleagues, the writers; I need it. I would try it. I would try it even if I knew I would fail. Even if I had to pay for it--the sin of graduate school, the deal-breaker. Even if I had to stay in Indiana for another half-decade to have the chance. Even if it never got published or recognized. I would try it.

Because when I sift through everything, see it spread out in green and blue and black in through the days, through the journals, and can piece it together and caress the details, it feels like something. Because someday, I could help someone, but now I need to know myself.

Someday, I may be that person again that people come to. I may stop telling myself to listen better and start being good again. I may not become good at statistics or political science, but may study my way into the UN.

I may stop needing so much from you. Lately, I've been promising more that I won't cry on you. I may be telling the truth. I may be on to something, finally. I may help you.

8/90, tgip

Thank God I'm Part-time.

She was laughing at her computer screen. A loud laugh, deliberately a bit nasal, like it caught her off guard. Like she accidently clicked on the pink Cute Overload icon, like she was not expecting the dachshund puppies in knitted bonnets to pop up on her screen. This was my cue. In my year working in the office, I knew that I had several options. I could immediately walk over, be excited and crouch at her shoulder, ready to click through the album. I could turn and smile and say, "Well, that sounds exciting!"

I tired of these after the first week of work. After I was called, along with several new professors, to stand behind her while she held the dusty collage photo frame. This is the hubby. If it's true what they say, about the dogs matching the owner, I would have expected something else. The short-haired wiener dogs were a surprise, as were the smiles they were sporting in the JC Penney Photo Studio prints. Was I imagining it, or were their heads cocked just to the left, chins tucked in and shoulders drawn back?

I thought she was kidding about her "children." When Diane, who I officially work for, spoke about the Thanksgiving dinner at her daughter's house, about her son finally getting the kids for a holiday, our administrative coordinator was quick to chime in. She, too, had a rousing weekend with the kids. Maggie was so excited about her leg of the turkey--not that they make a habit of getting table scraps, but you know, a holiday is a holiday--that she actually LEFT her chew toy alone. She never leaves that toy, the little blue dog. You remember it? Oh, nevermind, I'll retell that story later. But she just loved the skin on that turkey leg, oh!

Now, 58 weeks into the afternoon office work, I hear the laugh and find it hard to turn my attention for the Travel Authorization Form I am typing. She laughs again, mumbles something about her father's crazy e-mails and waits a moment. The silence gets a bit uncomfortable, and I give in. Only a little, I say to myself. It's this giving in that makes her staying home with Maggie when she has an earache acceptable. We acknowledge it. We smile or express condolences or coo at the puppies.

I resent my part in this, but cast a sideways glance over my shoulder to the computer station behind mine. Her hand covers her mouth, a sign of delighted disbelief. I raise my eyebrows. It's a good one, huh? they say. Megan, you really need to see this.

7/90, this part is interesting

"But pay attention to the little voice that whispers, 'This part was interesting.' Pay attention to everything." ::Abigail Thomas, Thinking about Memoir

These are words that I live by, and you must understand this first. It is not about it. This is an obsession. This is not about healing, not about confessing. It is beyond that. It is compulsory.

You explained a need of your own this way once, when you thought women didn't get frustrated. It justified your masturbation. You got backed up. You couldn't think straight. It was painful. You used it as a release, and now I'm losing myself here. I'm letting myself get ahead, but I have to believe that you're understanding what I'm saying: that you can't take this personally, you can't find yourself in it. It's a release.

And when I look at these things and I find them interesting, I do not wish to project this on you. When I scream and when I make you wrong and when I read into it to much because I've seen too much or read too much, remember this. Remember the moment when I sat you down and said, "Believe me. I am watching these little things. I'm getting it wrong this time, but you have to know that this matters, the noticing. That I have to."

You're looking around now. I need you to listen. Use active listening skills, or at least keep nodding along. I still don't think you believe me. Some part of me senses that you're not understanding, you're resisting it. You're pulling yourself into it, but you've got to just let me go. I've accepted the fact that no matter what I say or how often you'd have sex with anyone, that need would still be there. See? You're blushing. You can't deny that. You'd hide somewhere, you'd release. This is the same. It has nothing to do with you.

So don't forgive me then, for looking too closely. For taking it all in. But forgive me for the connections. Sometimes I forget that the writing, the feeling, doesn't make it true. That because when you kissed her years before you met me and I heard about it now, it still feels like a betrayal, it still feels like things are possible. And when I watch the amount of salt you put on your eggs, and I try to add that in the next time I scramble them--even though I know you'd rather have them fried--and you still salt your eggs, this means something. When the cookie's chocolate chips are arranged and resemble the face of the Virgin Mary, this means something. This is why I can't sleep with you after seeing Her.

Do you see yet? It is not you. And I may get the corrections wrong sometimes. I'm arranging our chocolate chips wrong, but you can't say I didn't warn you. You can't say to me, "Let the chips fall where they may," and expect me not to connect the dots and find some kind of pentagram and scare the shit out of both of us. Because this part is interesting--the getting it wrong, the feeling it. And I can't stop it. I won't stop it. Getting bogged up in the minutia. Because if I accept that things happen for no reason, that we are small and part of nothing and their is no Order or no Reason or no connection between the fallen chips and which one you pick up first, then what is there? Where am I? What am I looking at?

6/90, or 3/45, or cooking the chicken

The other day, I tried to make vegan oatmeal-banana cookies. They had peanut butter, which under normal circumstance is the duct tape of food. This was not a normal circumstance.

I am not a vegan, not really, but I try sometimes. Right now, I'm trying. I'm giving my body a chance to slow down, to forgive me for the frozen pizzas, jars of nutella, bottles or pints of stouts, pots of coffee. But at this point, after giving myself a month of Holiday Eating allowances followed by a month of Another Year of Long Distance allowances, it was hard to make it through a few hours without chewing on some type of carbohydrate.

I was excited when I found the recipe. I thought that this time I could stick to it. This time, I would find recipes that I love, that I could share with future children. It would be a success; they wouldn't know the different. There friends would come over, eat chik'n nuggets, dip vegan cookies in soy milk and not know what they were "missing."

As I folded the batter, mixing the soy butter with the rolled oats, I knew something was off. I thought of the years of tofurkey, of being afraid that my children would go to a sleepover and be sick when their friends fed them cheese or hotdogs. This wasn't what I wanted. Not really.

I didn't want to be dependent on the specialty grocery, but even more, I didn't want to be attached to these processed combinations of textured vegetable proteins any more than I wanted to be attached to the CAFO* that required so much processing of meat. Because wasn't this defeating the purpose? Wasn't I cutting out meat to cut out the boxed meals, the canned soup, the processing and salting and preserving?

I thought of this as I dropped the sticky spoonfuls of banana paste and oats onto the cookie sheet. I thought of this more when I realized I was craving a steak, when I was chewing (for a longer time than usual) the doughy cookie.

I am not blaming the recipe. I am not blaming the vegan way of life. The cookies were a mishap, but the vegan chocolate chip cookies, the apple crisp, the falafal... These were joyous moments in the kitchen. I left my cookie half eaten, cooling on the aluminum foil. Exhaling through the steaming cookie I was still chewing, I realized my snack wasn't the only thing burning me. There was another question reeling, the question that I so often try to ignore.

Could I contain myself to one lifestyle choice? I could not say that yes, I will eat meat again. This is not what I want. But I cannot say that I don't want it either. What I want can be stated simply, in a day that I often imagine.

I return from a farmers market. Carrots and celery and potatoes still covered in dirt hang in a sack on my shoulder. I am carrying a chicken, killed yesterday on a farm down a country road where they have been killing chicken for over 100 years. I pause to imagine the family's efficient operation, cleaning the chicken lovingly, with appreciation. I lay the naked bird on the counter with an equal amount of appreciation.

From here, I go to work. My knife knows what curves to follow, how leave the bones nearly clean. I know how to put the bones to work, making stock, wasting nothing. I have mastered my kitchen--freezing thighs for coq au vin; chopping up darker pieces cook with the stock and make noodle soup; soaking the breasts in marinade, prepping them for dinner.

Here, one could see Joe entering the kitchen. The meat has been soaking up flavor. He gets the grill going with a burst of flame and I prepare the table. But this is not that story. This is not about playing a gender-defined role. This is not about mastering kitchen skills to create a happy home, though I'll be pleased if this happens.

No. This is about reconnecting with food, with the communion that it represents, with the tradition that spreads across every culture, time and society. This is the story of nourishing oneself and others. This is what I want. This awareness and appreciate of my body, and the bodies that are required to take care of it, be it vegetable, animal or mineral. This is a love story, a relationship.


*CAFOs are the reason for my vegetarian lifestyle. I'll save this for another blog post...

5/90, for Big Rudy

Once, a man convinced me that he could fly. This is not to say that I believed in magic or superheros or angels. This is to say that I believed there was something about the man I knew as Big Rudy. Something that held him to a different standard, a completely different set of parameters.

Our feet would just touch the landing, turning to race up the second half of stairs to the second floor. Above us, we saw Rudy's feet hit the floor, heard the thump of his weight at the top of the stairs. He looked at us wide-eyed. You guys didn't see anything did you? We felt our own eyes widen, feel like they would fall from our heads that shook silently. Okay, good. And he would go back to his work.

We didn't immediately question this, and I don't know at what point the idea was solidified. If Rudy was left alone, he simply couldn't keep his on the floor. He couldn't stop himself from flying.

Dominic, Rudy's son, was one of my first and, until leaving for college, one of my best friends. His family made me believe that we were soul mates. I was meant to be with their family, drinking hot chocolate and eating chicken noodle soup with mashed potatoes by the big fireplace, going on weekend trips to movies. Before school started and Dominic could be embarrassed by it, he played with Barbies.

In between moving Barbie to from her studio apartment on the couch to her penthouse in his sister's room, we would be distracted by Big Rudy's magic show. We watched as he practiced, tricking and frustrating us. When Big Rudy brought the show to school, our friends asked how he did it, how does he know? We smiled, convincing them that we understood.

We didn't. I still don't, but of course Rudy did. Because this was what he did, mastering skills that made people happy. Hugging. Laughing. Story-sharing. Magic-tricking. This was his real power. We all believed that with Big Rudy, it was all possible; we were all possible. We could fly, if wanted. You just let your feet come off of the ground. You just let it happen.

When my mother told me yesterday that Rudy, who I admittedly haven't seen for years, died yesterday, it was the image of his landing that came back to me first. I imagined the flying that came before this and again accepted it as something quite possible. I was heartbroken, for the selfish reasons one is always heartbroken, and then I was thankful. I was one of the lucky ones. The ones that got to learn first hand that flying is possible.

4/90, control

This birth control is starting to feel like a cancer. The heat between my ears, the ringing, is intensified. The split, for the first month, felt manageable. The sound part of my brain still existed.

Not that I'd ever had much control of it anyway. I don't know why I flatter myself that way. This year was supposed to be different. I began praying for serenity, praying to calm myself down, doing yoga and staying centered and taking less on. I thought this was what brought it all on last time--the depression, the increased anxiety. It wasn't until months after stopping that I saw the commercial: It wasn't my fault. Their pill could do that to you.
I would say that it was a glorious year, the freedom to have my own hormone levels, to learn what it felt like to be in a body all my own again. There were moments where it felt that way, when I knew I was cheating and the regularity was stolen from the pills still soaking in my stomach for months. They did wear off, and we did pay the price for that.

The doctor didn't like me relying on my own body. It hadn't done it's job very well in the past, it was nearing the year mark, she said, when all of the residual perks would fade, and she didn't like to think about what my body could go back to.

If for no other reason, if I ignored the drowning in myself, the inability to get out of bed, I told her, I can't afford it. She ignored this, wrote the prescription for Wal*Mart, $10 a month for security. $10 a month to break the laws of my church, to feel like I was getting away with sin.

That first month went well, though. I felt great, happy even, clear. I could control the two parts of my brain--the self I was controlling; the emotions that weren't mine, that even at their most intense, in my screaming and blaming, I knew they were not a part of me.

So when you told me you had lunch with her, when you told me her life was falling apart and I imagined you being there for her, I was jealous. Yes, I, myself; my stomach tightened thinking of the comfort you could give her and where that could lead, even though I knew it wouldn't. I didn't react at first; I gave myself a chance to calm down. I remembered that you loved me, that before me there wasn't anyone, not in that way, not even her. You dated, but now you could say that was nothing; you were friends, and that was important. It would always be important.

But I felt the pill catch in my throat, the slight orange taste choking me. I woke up, afraid that you were sleeping with her; knowing this was impossible;, staring at the wall with cheeks coated in dried salt; feeling the heated, in-heat part of my brain chewing on everything else, destroying me.

You ask me to stop reacting this way, to stop fearing her, to stop looking at the ways we are both your type. And I can say I will do this. What I don't say, at least right away, is that the levels are up, and how it's all just transferring. That even if I stopped now and let my body try to go it alone, it would be months before I knew myself. That if I stop fearing this, I will not stop fearing. The irrationality will transfer; I will become a new kind of crazy.