I need a beach

I grew up 25 minutes from the Pacific Ocean. Once I got out of college, I stopped going to the beach very often. Too sandy, too busy, too much traffic on the way.

I took it for granted.

Now I live smack-dab in the middle of the US where the nearest beach is a 3-hour plane ride away, and I feel desperate for it.

My friends have told me to go to a lake.

A lake.

Sigh.

Aisling and I in Carlsbad, 2004.

Worst semester ever is OVER

I have spent 11 years of my life in college. While doing my Masters', I worked full time, Liam was a toddler, and I was pregnant with Zing for part of it, too. I have faced school-related challenges and I have felt stressed out of my mind before.

But this semester. This semester was the worst of all these 11 years. Between getting sick over and over again, starting a new job halfway through the semester, and having classes I actually had to study for, I thought I was going to lose my mind. Then Aaron got laid off - all I wanted to was crawl in my bed and cry, but because I'd gotten so far behind, all I could do was cry in my car on the drive home when I couldn't do anything else anyway and then get right back to work.

Anyway, I got through it. I did end up with one B, which would normally mortify me, but at this point, I'm just glad I survived.

Now it's time for another nap.

Running lessons

I started running today. Lessons learned:

1. Running with chest congestion does not feel good.
2. 8 year olds run faster than me.

What I learned about electroconvulsive therapy

I got to observe electroconvulsive therapy yesterday. What I learned (not all of which is related to ECT itself)*:

1. It's not as "shocking" as you might expect. (Or, at least, it did not provide the drama I feared it might.)
2. The patients get lots of meds ahead of time, like about eight.
3. Some patients get IV caffeine because it makes the seizure stronger.
4. Just before the procedure, the patients get a sedative and a muscle relaxant.
5. The muscle relaxant ensures that the patient's seizure remains confined to their brain, so they don't flop all over the bed. The nurse anesthetist uses a muscle stimulator on the patient's arm; when the arm stops twitching in response to the stimulator, they know the muscle relaxant has kicked in.
6. The nurse anesthetist inserts a bite block after the patient's sedation has taken effect to protect their mouths.
7. The anesthesiologist manually ventilates the patient using a bag and mask attached to oxygen before, during, and after the procedure to "hyperoxygenate" them.
8. When the seizure starts, you see the patient's jaw suddenly clench. If the blood pressure cuff had inflated when the nurse anesthetist administered the muscle relaxant, you might see that hand twitch during the seizure because those muscles did not get the muscle relaxant.
9. They can place the electrodes in three configurations: both on the front of the forehead above each eye, one on each temple, or one on a temple and the other on top of the head.
10. When I asked how they knew where to place the electrodes, the technician answered, "Wherever the doctor orders."
11. When I asked how the doctor knows where to place them, I got silence, even from the doctor. [Hm.]
12. The anesthesiologist then jumped in and said, "They use whatever works." [This bit disturbed me a little. I know there exist many things in medicine that we don't understand - we simply know they work - but if I decided to allow someone to pour voltage through my head to make me have a seizure, I would want to know that they knew exactly where to put the damn electrodes. On the other hand, this therapy usually remains a last resort for patients; many of them have already demonstrated that they pose a danger to themselves or others.]
13. Manually ventilating a real person with a bag and mask takes a lot more work than ventilating a mannequin in CPR class. [Human heads are heavy!]
14. People "hiccup" when they start to come out of the sedation.
15. Some patients get wicked headaches after the treatment [go figure]. 
16. The FDA just recently approved IV acetaminophen. Countries in Europe have used it since 2002. 
17. Patients can have treatments as often as every other day. As they improve, they start spacing out the treatments. Some patients have had hundreds of individual treatments. [I didn't know a person could survive even ten, much less hundreds.]

Other notes, plus some commentary:

I mentioned in #12 that the patients getting ECT are at their last resort. Some of them have attempted suicide or have seriously thought about committing suicide. Others have seen their lives implode. They elect to get ECT after they have tried everything else, when medications, counseling, and other interventions have failed. They don't make this decision lightly.

Every ECT patient I saw looked absolutely normal. If we saw them walking down the street, we would never know they went in for regular ECT treatments. They looked like dads, grandmas, and college students.

If you don't know a lot about mental health issues, think of them this way: when someone has diabetes, their pancreas either does not produce any or enough insulin, or the body doesn't use insulin effectively. Mental illnesses work much the same, only the problem lies in the brain; the brain either does not produce enough of the hormones (for example, serotonin or dopamine) it needs to regulate moods, or the receptors for those hormones don't work right. Both diabetes and mental illness are physiological problems.

This reality highlights how very important it is to avoid assuming that someone is "normal" just because they look it. We never know the feelings or thoughts another person has unless they tell us. I've seen patients with depression who appeared outwardly gregarious and engaging; we wouldn't know that on the inside, they felt utterly hopeless - unless they told us. 

* Everything I've written here comes from what I observed or what I was told during the procedures. For more information, try these sites:

The Mayo Clinic

Mental Health America

Words with Mother Nature

Earlier today, as I cupped my hands around a mug of stevia-sweetened hot green tea, I gazed out the window at the falling snow and marveled at how wondrous the world  can be.

I opened the front door to better see the majesty of the blowing snow and found this mound of snow standing against the door in neat little layers.

I called the kids to come see our front porch. The stairs had seemingly disappeared.

See? We really do have stairs.

Then.

I shoveled.

The driveway.

That high point you see there is taller than Aisling.
Approximately 4.5 feet.

I had serious words with Mother Nature as I did so, admittedly with many cuss words thrown in. It's really quite interesting how much better a good four-letter word can make you feel.

Mother Nature responded by blowing my entire shovel-full of snow right back into my face.

It didn't feel good.

When I finished (here's another pic),

What you cannot tell from this picture is that the snow at the end of
the driveway is about 12 inches high.

I came inside, declared that I was not making dinner that night, and got straight into a hot bubble bath. Ahhh.

And then, pondering the depth of the snow, I realized that it was taller than Flea, our shih tzu, who would most certainly need to pee at some point. The thought of having one's nether parts encased in snow while attempting to relieve oneself made me get out of the bath (although not immediately, I admit) to go shovel a path for him in the backyard.

Then I went to admire my wonderful shoveling job, and this is what I saw:

It's only been about an hour, and it's already covered again.

Sigh.

Rainforest Adventures

I got my wish! Feeling much better now. However, I was in so much pain that (1) I researched GI pain to verify that, yes, plain ol' gas and diarrhea can make you feel like you are going to die, and (2) I wondered what I was going to do if I needed to go to the hospital in the middle of the night when (a) I did not know where the hospital was, and (b) I did not know who to call to find out. Yep. Pain was that bad.

I did learn in all my researching that acetaminophen is the painkiller of choice for GI pain. However, the symptoms of acetaminophen toxicity are, beautifully, the same symptoms you would take it for. You can, though, take all the acetaminophen-combination drugs, too, like hydrocodone. Unfortunately, I (1) did not have any, and (2) was not going to put anything into my system unless I was guaranteed relief. I mean, what if it made it worse??

Anyway, I was well enough to go on our rainforest tour. We went to the Manuel Antonio National Park. It was, of course, beautiful, and our guide knew just where to look to show us the animals. He had a telescope, too, so we could see them "up close." The sloth was my favorite. Very cute.

The capuchins were cute until one of them snatched Olivine's carrots. Kat was sitting with her back to one of the monkeys, trying to shield them from seeing her open the packet of carrots. I turned to her just in time to see one of the monkeys dart forward, leap into Kat's lap, snatch the packet of carrots, and run back to his perch. Took maybe 2 seconds tops, certainly not enough time for me to get out a warning shout. Kat was a tad surprised and from then on, the capuchins were my enemies. No one takes carrots from Olivine! The damn monkeys didn't even like the carrots, either. They each tried one and then threw them on the ground. Stupid monkeys. The raccoons were aggressive about stealing bags, too, but they were easier to scare away. And really, raccoons?! I don't need raccoons in my rainforest. Got those at home. :-)

But the best news of all -- I got to go ziplining today!! It was awesome. I almost threw up after the first line simply because of all the adrenaline, but, as you know if you've read my previous post, I don't remember how to throw up, so I didn't. We took 12 ziplines total to get down the mountain, and it felt fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that I thought I'd have a lot to write about it, but I am finding I do not. It was fantastic. Just ... fantastic. Liam liked it so much he told me he's going to move to Costa Rica after he graduates and work at the zipline place.

A couple of our guides had some fun with us. One of them hollered, "Hold on!" and then twisted the platform. The platforms are hung from the trees by thick cables; they're not nailed down. So when he grabbed the cable and pushed with his feet, the whole platform twisted -  not a lot, but certainly enough to surprise us. The same guide gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder as I took off on the last line - just enough to set me spinning slowly around all the way down the line.

Tomorrow: a yacht out to Tortuga Island.

The Amazing Zipline Excursion - Not

*** Warning: Contains references to vomit and diarrhea. Read at your own risk. *** 

I was planning to write today about our amazing zipline adventure through the canopy. Ziplining through the rain forest is something I have wanted to do for about 10 years, ever since my friends Karla and Paul told me about their trip to Costa Rica. The trip was planned for today.

Sam, the smallish, but not smallest, iguana

And I had to stay at the Compound enduring burning stomach pain while almost everyone else went. I lay awake most of the night trying to convince myself that throwing up would really make me feel so much better. However, I have not vomited in 24 years, and I am apparently (and quite happily) out of practice. I failed in the convincing, so I tried to make it go through the other way. I have never wished for diarrhea like I did last night. Please, please, please . . .

Unfortunately, it appears that my GI system had turned off. Nothing was going anywhere. I endured the racing heartbeat followed by the super-slow, irregular, pounding heartbeat, the sweating, the chills, the nausea, hoping, hoping, hoping that I would feel better by morning.

I didn't, and while I'm starting to feel better, I'm still not back to normal. However, I am going to hike through the rain forest tomorrow no matter what. I may need to rest every 2 minutes, but I am not letting another day go by with me just sitting. Granted, I am sitting among beauty and watching iguanas, which is pretty damn cool, even with an upset stomach.

It looks like I will get to zipline on Thursday or Friday. Cross your fingers for me!

Ears in Costa Rica

We are in Costa Rica! Haven't seen a whole lot yet, but what we have seen is beautiful.

I am here today, though, not to write about Costa Rica -- that will come tomorrow -- but rather to tell you about the hell that was my ears. I have a head cold. I'm sure I've flown with a head cold before, but this time made me swear I never will again. When we were making our descent into Houston, it felt like someone was stabbing an ice pick into the sinus above my right eye. That was only slightly worse than the pain in my ears radiating down my neck and into my teeth. On a scale of 0-10, this pain was an 8, easily. Keep in mind, too, that I would probably never rate anything a 10 because a 10 is the worst pain you can imagine. I have a very vivid imagination. So essentially this pain was an 8 out of 9. I almost cried, but it hurt too much to cry. The worst part, too, was that there was absolutely nothing I could do, nowhere to go, no one who could make it better. I was stuck on that stupid plane with my stupid ears, and that stupid ice pick stabbing over and over into my forehead.

Now I'm having a really hard time hearing conversations. However, all the sounds going on inside my head -- chewing, swallowing, random ear crackles, etc -- are magnified 100,456 times.

BUT, I am in Costa Rica! And I do not need my ears to appreciate the beauty. Unless, that is, there are animal sounds I should be hearing.

Books I've Read

I'm supposed to be studying. So instead I am posting this on my blog.

How many of these books have you read? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

I wonder how they came up with this list? I've read 70, started 7, and watched movies for 2. This does not mean I remember them, though, just that I read them.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 

4 Harry Potter series – JK ROWLING

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 

6 The Bible

7 The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott  

 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens  

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 

34 Emma – Jane Austen 

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis  

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere 

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving 

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan 

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville  

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome 

78 Germinal – Emile Zola 

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert  

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Google Game

Rules: Search Google Images to match your answers. Only use images from first 2 pages of your search.

My Age:

Fun place I've been to:

Somewhere I want to go:

One of my favorite places:

Favorite object:

Favorite food:

Favorite animal:

Favorite color:

Birth place:

Current place of residence:

Past love:

Best friend:

First name:

Nickname:

First job:

What I'm doing now:

(This took way too long to do. Obviously, I'm not feeling very productive today.)

Black-Eyed Peas and Liquid Smoke

I have decided that one of the best food combinations ever is black-eyes peas and liquid smoke. Here's my latest soup with these scrumptious ingredients.

Mix together in soup pot:

• 4 cups water
• Not-chicken broth cubes (appropriate amt for 4 cups water)
• 1 can diced tomatoes (mine happened to be italian style, and I did not drain them)
• 24 ounces mixed frozen veggies (I used green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots)
• 1 can black-eyed peas
• Onion powder (1-2 tsps?)
• Basil, oregano, and parsley (1/2 - 1 tbsp each?)
• Lots of minced garlic (4-6 cloves)
• 1 tsp liquid smoke
• About 3/4 cup quinoa

Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer. Cover loosely and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Nothing's in the Pantry Vegan Baked Pasta

I haven't gone to the store in awhile and didn't feel like going tonight, so I had to figure out how to make dinner with limited ingredient choices. This is what came of it. It's a good basic mix - nothing I would make for company, but great for family dinner. The kids even had seconds.

I used:

• 16 ounces curly noodles
• 1/2 jar leftover spaghetti sauce (about 12 oz)
• 1 - 8oz can tomato sauce
• 1 - 6oz can tomato paste
• About 1/2 cup (homemade) leftover creamy tomato soup*
• 1 - 14oz can diced tomatoes, drained
• Couple shakes of onion powder
• Couple shakes of garlic powder
• About 1/2 tub of vegan cream cheese (4 oz?)
• About 1/2 tub of vegan sour cream (6 oz?)

Directions:

1. Boil pasta
2. While pasta is cooking, mix everything else in saucepan over medium heat. Simmer till pasta is done.
3. Coat bottom of 9x13" dish with sauce.
4. Pour drained pasta in dish.
5. Cover pasta with rest of sauce. Mix up a little bit if needed.
6. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

* Two 8 oz cans tomato sauce, 2-1/2 cups rice milk, onion powder, garlic powder, and ground mustard. 

Donating Blood Woes

The past several times I've given blood, I've done a double donation where they hook you up to a machine that separates your red blood cells from the plasma and then puts the plasma back into you. I'd been told that double donations are "easier" on you afterward than are whole blood donations, but I figured that assertion was just justification from those people who were either too chicken to do a double, who were trying to take us arrogant doublers down a notch, or who didn't have high enough iron levels. I mean, sure, you're getting plasma back, but you're losing the same amount of red blood cells, so your oxygen levels are affected the same as someone who has not gotten their plasma back.

Well yesterday, I donated blood, and they didn't have their plasma-phoresis machine (I think that's what it's called) set up so I had to give whole blood instead. It wiped me out! I felt fine when I left, but then I almost hit a car pulling out of my parking space [Sorry other driver! I probably scared the pants off you!], and then I almost fell asleep reading to Zing. I did fall asleep in her bed when I finished reading to her. I went to bed at 8:00 and slept straight through to 6:30. I could have slept longer, and I still feel apathetic.

Maybe this whole blood vs double donation has something to it after all. Or maybe the stress of taking my patho test right before I gave blood made me more susceptible to exhaustion. Whatever happened, it's a good thing I haven't had this reaction before or I might not have given blood again. Good thing I know it's not always this bad.

Really Easy One-Pot Vegan Tomato Veggie Quinoa Soup

It's not quite cold enough for soup yet, but I couldn't wait any longer. Made this soup last night. It's thicker than most soups, so use more water if you prefer a soupy soup.

Throw the following into a soup pot and bring to a boil:

• About 3 cups water
• 1 - 28oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1 - 14oz can diced tomatoes (not drained)
• About 24 oz frozen mixed veggies (I used a mix of broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peas, and something yellow)
• Basil, oregano, and parsley - I think I used about 1 tbsp each
• Onion powder - I think I used 1-2 tsps
• Many cloves of minced garlic - I probably used 6-8 cloves
• 1 cup quinoa (rinsed unless you buy Bob's Red Mill)

Once it comes to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Simmer until quinoa is done -- the middle of each grain will become translucent and a little hook, or tail, will pop out of one side. They'll be firm but not crunchy. I think it takes about 15 minutes, just enough time to heat up a multigrain baguette!

Surprise! I'm a class rep!

I've been elected class representative for my nursing school class!

I threw my name in because I thought it would be fun, that I'd be good at it, and so I could get to know the faculty better so I'll have good references for graduate school. All we had to do was write a paragraph about ourselves and why we wanted to be class rep. There are four reps - one for each group (we're divided into three groups) and one at-large rep.

I really didn't think many students would vote for me. After all, I'm about 15 years older than most of them (19 years older than some -- I could be their mom!) and in a totally different place in my life with kids, a house, husband, bills, etc. As we don't break into our groups until next semester, I don't know many people in my group either, so it really was a surprise.

This also means that I (probably) won't apply for the honors program. I couldn't decide if I wanted to or not, and so I thought I'd let this election decide for me: if I was elected, I would not do the honors program, and if I wasn't elected, I would do the honors program. To me, both are a means of having a higher chance of getting into the graduate program I want, so one should do the job.

Of course, being me, I'm now thinking, "Hey! I can do both!" And then my realistic (boring) side reminds me that I do like having time with my family, especially since it has been suggested (passive voice intentional) that our chances of getting a job right after passing the licensing exam will be much higher if we're already working as a nurse associate somewhere.

Anyway, I got elected! Even better, our group is quite diverse. We have one man, one older student (me), an african-american woman (I think she's mid to late 20s), and one or two younger white women (they tied twice -- once in the general election and once in the run-off, so we have to decide on Monday if they both join or if we take only one of them). Our class, though, is about 10% men, 15% people of color, and 10% over age 30 (these are all my estimates, not official numbers). Cool, huh? No tyranny of the majority here!

Here's the paragraph I wrote:

Hi there! My name is Yara, and I am a returning student -- in other words, older. :-)   I’ve been married for 15 years and have two kids: an 11 year old boy named Liam and an 8 year old girl named Aisling. My two favorite things to do are reading and dancing. In fact, I almost dropped out of college the first time ‘round to audition to be a Las Vegas showgirl. (THAT would have been a different life!) I have two degrees, one in English and one in Education, and I think these would help make me an effective representative for our class. I have spent most of my working life in teaching, instructional design for adults, and management. In particular, I spent a year teaching at a university, so I know the system from both sides. I also know how curriculum and teaching should be designed to be as effective as possible, and my eight years as a manager have given me negotiation and leadership skills. But most importantly, I’ve been told over the years that I’m a good listener, and I promise to do that for you all, too!

Calendar Comfort

I had my first "real" day of nursing school (ie, classes rather than orientation), and I'm still not entirely sure what's up. So I have assuaged my inner control freak with calendars: 


A Google calendar with the entire family's schedule (plus my major assignments/tests), so I can see just how crazy my life is from anywhere I might happen to be. (School was a helluva lot easier when I didn't have kids' dentist appts, softball games, after-school socials, etc, to think about.) I also print this calendar each week, and we have a family "meeting" to go over everything on it, so everyone knows where everyone will be.

A whiteboard wall calendar with all my major assignments for the entire semester, so the family knows when I'm more likely to be a stress-case and avoid me.

A whiteboard refrigerator calendar with the family's non-routine events so everyone can see at a glance when the schedule will vary. (This does not duplicate the printed Google calendar, because it is for the month rather than the week.) 

A spreadsheet showing all my assignments, readings, tests, quizzes, papers, etc, organized by due date. This one is especially satisfying 'cause I can check things off. (I love checking things off. I'm one of those people who writes "Write list" at the top of my lists, so I can immediately check something off and get that feeling of satisfaction from getting something done.)

Plus I have all the syllabi, which I check regularly to make sure I'm not missing anything. And now, since creating more calendars would be overdoing it a bit (don't you think?), I am writing about my calendars. I find a certain comfort in them, like they are my security blanket. I think what they illustrate more than anything, though, is that I will need a long vacation with nothing to do but lie on a beach once this semester is over.

Chickenofu Noodle Soup

I was craving a chicken-noodle soupish type dinner tonight, so I came up with this. Aisling -- who declared just last night that she hates ALL soup -- said this was the best soup ever. So good, in fact, that she wants it on her birthday. So if you follow 8-year old girls' gustatory recommendations, this soup is for you! (I thought it was pretty good, too, or I wouldn't be posting it here.)

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 2-3 carrots, finely diced
• 3-4 cloves minced garlic (or even more!!)

• 9 cups water
• 3 Not-Chicken broth cubes
• 1 1/2 tsp Spike seasoning
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp celery salt

• 9 oz (ish) thin spaghetti noodles, broken into smaller pieces
• 9 oz (ish) extra firm tofu, pressed and diced

Instructions:

1. Heat olive oil over medium low heat. Add carrots and about 2 tablespoons water. Cover and steam for about 10 minutes.
2. Add water, broth cubes, and the three seasonings. Simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Bring to gentle boil. Add spaghetti. Cook for as long as directions on spaghetti box tell you to.
4. Turn heat to lowish. Add tofu and let it heat through, about 5 minutes.

The Vanity Button

Note: I wrote the following post about 3 weeks ago. I didn't publish it then because I have a fear of sounding like I'm bragging about myself. (This habit comes from two of my high school best friends "breaking up" with me because they said I was stuck-up. I stopped saying good things about myself about that time.) So please read this in the vein in which it was written: irony with a touch of chagrin. :-)

I went shopping with my mom today. There is a little shop, Nomads, in downtown Lawrence that I love. It is actually a travel agency that sells travel clothes and accessories. You can get a travel bag ... or you can get unique clothing from one-of-a-kind designers and hand-made jewelry from Turkey, Greece, or ... Lawrence. (The owner supports local artists, too.)

Best of all, the clothes are all T R A V E L - F R I E N D L Y. Do you know what that means? Do you know how exciting this is? They don't have to be ironed! Ever! And they're comfortable and movable-in! And they're not t-shirts. They're cotton and wool and all sorts of different materials that might normally have to be ironed but these clothes don't have to be because they've got seams and folds in strange places and they're all asymmetrical, and, and, and ... I just love them so much. Asymmetrical is me. Comfortable is me. Not ironing is most definitely me.

I knew I would buy something. I have to, if for no other reason than to support this local, woman-owned store that I love so much. I did not know I would walk out of there with a two skirts, two shirts, a necklace, and a shrug. Yes, a shrug. I have never envisioned myself in a shrug. I have enormously broad shoulders and shrugs have either failed to stretch over that great breadth of shoulder or they have made me look like a football player wearing 80s era shoulder pads. But this shrug, while it does emphasize my shoulders, does so in a way that makes my waist look small., which is, most definitely, a good thing.

So I bought a lot of stuff, more than I planned on. I would not have done it, either, except that the saleswoman hit my vanity button so damn well. You see, when I was a teen, into my early 20s, I was a runway model*. Because of my large shoulders, I had what they called the "hanger" body. Put clothes on me and there were no pesky breasts, stomach, hips, or thighs to ruin the line of the clothes. They just hung.

After two kids, a desk job, and no exercise, that hanger body became more of a stuffed pillow body. And then (fast-forward through long not-nearly-so-dramatic-a-story-as-I-like-to-make-it-sound), I lost 40 pounds, so I now have a smoother soft pillow body.

So today, I put on the first skirt, which was fabulously asymmetrical in front but tighter in the butt than I have worn in about 15 years, and the first thing the saleswoman said in her Peruvian accent (which made it sound even better) was, "She has a model's body." To which my mom replied that yes, I used to be a model. And then they continued to flatter me with how well everything looked and so I bought more. And more. And then one more. I knew, the entire time, that I was letting vanity and nostalgia influence me, but I still did it. That damn vanity button.

I hope everything looks as good tomorrow.

* I accidentally wrote "runaway model." Does that tickle you as much as it does me? hee!

Avocado Mango Salad

One of my own concoctions -- very proud of it.

Throw together the following ingredients:

• About 2 handfuls of spinach
• 2 avocados, diced
• 1 mango, diced
• 1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
• About 1/3 cup red onion, sliced
• Candied walnuts*
• Red pepper flakes (optional)

For dressing, I used the following recipe; it's the balsamic vinaigrette we always use. However, I think this salad would also be good with a sweeter dressing or a lime-based one.


Shake or blend the following:

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3 Tbsp agave syrup (or honey)
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1-2 garlic cloves, minced
• 3-1/2 Tbsp peanut oil

* You may have a better way of making candied walnuts, but this is how I did it: throw some walnuts in a small skillet over med-low heat. Pour sugar over them. Stir regularly, especially as the sugar starts to harden.

The man in the cap in the old blue pick-up truck

I noticed the man in the old blue Nissan pick-up truck because of a bumper sticker. I don't remember two of them, but the third said, "Veterans for Kerry." I felt a connection with this man in the old blue pick-up truck because I voted for Kerry, too. I thought about the man being a veteran. I could tell he was older; I'm not sure how exactly. Maybe it was his neck and the way his shoulders sloped. He was wearing a flat cap, the kind that old men wear, and I thought when Aaron is old, he will wear a cap like that.

[Extraneous comment: I did not know the name of the hat the man was wearing, so I tried googling various hat names that I could think of but could not find it. I finally searched for "old man hat." It came up instantly.]

The old blue Nissan pick-up truck was a stick shift. Each time we pulled away from a stop light, it was in harmony with his clutch. I wondered about his life, did he have a wife, kids, grandkids? Was he a widower out enjoying his drive, maybe on his way home from the library? I wondered about him in his old blue Nissan pick-up and flat cap.

We toodled along, me behind him, and I felt whimsically downcast that I soon had to turn off for gas. I wondered where he was going. Was he close to home? Had he lived there long? Had he just moved and why? And then he turned into the same 7-Eleven where I was going to get gas. I felt happy. I got to wonder about him more, maybe see what he was wearing. I also felt a bit chagrined, though -- I did not want him to think I was following him all those miles -- so I was glad when he parked rather than getting gas.

He was wearing khaki pants with cuffs and an old-style windbreaker. I don't remember his shoes. They were not sneakers, perhaps they were loafers. He went inside, and I got gas. I was getting ready to leave, when he came out with a bag. If he was a widower, it might have been dinner. Or maybe he was taking a sweet to his love. Then, he lit a cigarette.

He got back into his old blue pick-up truck, and I wound up directly behind him again, wondering again about this man. I had imagined all sorts of romantic lives for him, but at this point I thought, what if he is a child molester? What if he beat his wife? A flat cap, Kerry bumper sticker, and old blue pick-up truck do not make him a good person. Then I wondered why my thoughts suddenly went that way. Was it the cigarette?

He turned off at that point, and I continued along my way. I stopped wondering about the man, but I kept wondering about wondering, about where those thoughts come from and why. Why was this man in the old blue pickup truck a romantic figure until he put that cigarette in his mouth? Was it simply coincidence, and my thoughts would have gone that direction anyway when I realized how I had romanticized him? I don't know. I wonder.