Cookbook Challenge

I need a challenge. NEED might be a bit strong. WANT might be better.

Earlier today I was reading the NY Times Food Blog, "Bitten," a blog I catch up on from time to time when I want to be inspired about good food that is within the reach of the home cook.

As so often happens when "surfing," I followed links until I found one that caught my attention and made me want to act. The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge will take challengers through every recipe in Peter Reinhart's cookbook of the same title. The date of the entry was about a week and a half ago and I immediately made plans to run out and get the book so I can join the challenge.

Then I read the next post. The challenge is closed to new participants. I know I can still do the challenge on my own but I think I'm less likely to actually complete the challenge if I don't have a group of people I'm accountable to, who will follow a schedule and keep my on task.

I still want to do this. Perhaps I'll find another group to join. Maybe there will be a "shadow group" of folks who found the challenge too late to join. Or maybe I'll start it on my own and post my progress here, to the blog that nobody reads. Make an attempt at being the self-starter that I aspire to be.

So I'm off to the bookstore to peruse the baking section. I'll take a look at The Bread Baker's Apprentice and see if it looks doable in my kitchen and with my willpower. After all, I've (mostly) managed to keep the commitment I've made to myself about taking a picture each day. And I'm trying to give this blog thing a real go. So baking bread isn't out of the realm of possibility, right?

In the Land of the Alpine Mood Swings

L is a nine-year-old girl. One minute I'm her best friend and the best thing going in her life. The next minute, I'm the enemy, the cause of everything bad that has ever and may ever happen to her. I usually do a good job of remembering that I'm the grown-up and respond like I don't care. Of course I respond if she's destructive or disrespectful. Part of my responsibility as a parent is to help her learn appropriate ways to weather the ups and downs of daily life that she feels so accutely right now.

I've learned to (mostly) let these moments roll off my back like water on a duck. It doesn't always work. Sometimes she says hurtful words that break through the grown-up exterior and wound me. If she hurts me deeply, she sees me cry. She is learning that her actions can cause pain in other people, even if there are no visible wounds. The few times she's driven me to tears, she's completely taken aback at my response. Nothing stops her tantrum faster than me crying. I don't cry to get her to stop. Quite the opposite; I feel like if I cry she wins, as much as if I had given in to a demand to buy candy in the check-out line to stop her crying as a toddler (which, by the way, I never did. I have a very strong will and would rather have her throw a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store in front of strangers than give in to a demand.)

The thing that amazes me about all this is that when she's not stomping off to slam the door over the drama of the day, she's friendly and cooperative. She voluntarily cleans her room. This morning she even thanked me for making her a yummy lunch every day. She wants to have cuddles and hugs at home and tells me how I'm the best mom ever.

It must be hard to inhabit the body with these drastic mood swings. Sometimes in the middle of a tantrum or crying fit, she'll tell me she's not sure why she's acting this way or why she can't stop crying. I think she genuinely doesn't want to act this way! So I do my best to help her navigate out of the terrible moments. I encourage her to stop and "hit the reset button." I calmly remind her about consequences of tantrums and how out of hand she got the last time.

But sometimes I yell back and then feel horrible about my reaction. "After all," I tell myself, "I'm supposed to be the grown up." Sometimes I just don't feel like the grown up. And sometimes I don't act like the grown up. But I think we're growing up together, she and I. We'll make it through this and hopefully, we'll remain close on the other side.

You Say It's Your Birthday?

Happy Birthday to me!

I love birthdays! More than then New Year's Day, it's the time that I set my goals and experience a sense of renewal. I put the previous year, with all its achievements and mistakes, behind me and plan for the next year.

Today I turn 39. Which means that this is a big year for me with the goals. Next year is a "0" year so long-term goals already exist. For some reason I don't have my goals for 40 written down anywhere so I'll have to do my best to remember them. But not here. They're too personal to put out into the blogosphere.

So what did I do last year?

• I am stable on my anti-depressant medications. I feel like myself and like I have normal emotions. I'm not happy all the time, nor am I sad all the time. I feel pretty normal and that feels pretty great.
• My dog died a few months ago. She was an amazing creature who demonstrated sensitivity in all her interactions with people. I miss her deeply. I think I have never loved an animal like I loved her.
• Barack Obama was elected president! 'Nuff said.
• I'm glad to no longer be working at the clinic I recently left. I had been there for 3 years, including 2 years working part time. It's time to move on. April 29 was my last day. Maybe I'll write more about this later.
• I traveled extensively in the US, mainly with my daughter. I went to 8 states that I had previously not visited.
• I was initiated into PEO, a sisterhood that raises money to support education for women (and has a great time together in the process). I immediately gained a cadre of friends who will support me and love me through whatever life brings.
• I lost 20+ pounds. As a side-effect of my medication cocktail, I lost interest in eating and gained the ability to stop eating when I'm approaching full. I leave more food on my plate than I eat. Don't get me wrong, I'm eating plenty to sustain myself and am not losing weight at a dangerous pace. The weight loss has stabilized and I'm once again interested in food. Now I just stop when I'm full and hope that the weight doesn't creep back on.
• I am paying more attention to my body. I started taking Pilates and am finding other ways to take care of my body. I still need to do more to take care of myself but that goes under the "goals for next year" section.

So, what does the coming year hold for me?

• More travel. At least a little bit. L and I are setting out on another road trip the day school gets out for the summer. No new states this time, but anticipating a great time with my daughter and reaquainting with friends we will see while on our trip.
• Better saving and economic awareness. So far the economic downturn hasn't really affected our family. My husband's company's earnings are down a bit from last year but we're doing fine financially. However, when I reviewed our taxes last month, I realized that we don't save nearly enough money, nor do we given away nearly enough money. I want to be a better steward of our resources.
• It's time for me to get serious about getting going on the next step in my career. I have declared a long-term goal and if I'm going to achieve it I need to work toward it. So tomorrow the work begins with a phone call to the grad school I plan to apply to.
• I'm tired of living in clutter. I think I declare this every year but this year I have no excuse for not getting something done about it. I no longer have an external work schedule to use as an excuse for not downsizing and cleaning. Maybe it's time to make an internal work schedule to treat housekeeping like the job it should be.
• Continue taking care of my body. The weight loss and Pilates has been a good start but I need to go further in taking care of myself. I need to better monitor my chronic health conditions and take the steps to be working toward overall better health.
• Mother/Daughter time. Both with my own mother and with my daughter. My mom is aging and I tend to try to pretend she's not. I need to help her make good decisions about her health. My daughter is at an age when she is torn between seeking independence and wanting to stay my little girl. I need to be sensitive to her needs, let her know I'm a safe place for her to share, help her identify others who are safe harbors for the times she feels she can't confide in me, and help her find her learn to be independent while remaining safe. No small task, that.

I think that's plenty to put on my list of goals for now. Oh, yeah. I also want to develop the discipline of daily writing.

Now it's time to head off to my birthday dinner. Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Mother's Day!

I just returned from my Sunday morning Pilates class and have been ordered back to bed. Time to experience an official rite of motherhood: "Breakfast in Bed on Mother's Day." I'm not sure I grasp the appeal of eating in bed but I definitely appreciate the love behind the gesture. From my comfortable perch, propped up against pillows in my comfortable bed, I can hear the clanging of dishes and the smell of burning pancakes. L and her dad are working hard to prepare my special breakfast. I can hardly wait!

Review Session

An old friend has an admirable discipline of writing a blog entry daily. I want to do that. I get such clarity from writing (even if what I write isn't clear to anyone else!) that I think I need to make it into a daily discipline. I think the discipline part would be easier if I knew that others expect me to write, so I'm going to go a bit more public and be a bit more intentional in my writing.

In anticipation that people I know or admire might actually read what I've written, I reviewed all my past entries to see if anything needed to be taken down. I edited a few entries and removed a few--some were just too much of me on the page and I don't want to be that vulnerable.

In reviewing my past entries, a couple things struck me.

1. I started this blog almost a year ago. In that time, I've written occassionally with no particular focus. I started writing to try to work through some of my depression issues, which are mostly resolved now (via chemicals and good self-care).
2. There are many things I wrote about that I need to follow-up on. I wrote about voting day but not the amazing experience of being with my daughter and many of her friends and their moms on inauguration day. I wrote in anticipation of my dog dying but haven't been able to write about her death and how my family is dealing with it.
3. I want to write about random things that interest me, from healthcare reform to recipes. I don't know have a focus for this blog, which may be my undoing if I want readership. I just want to be able to look back on it in a year and see a chronicle of my life and what I was thinking.

So here I go. Am I really going to commit to writing daily for a year? I'm certainly going to try!

The Flu and Girl Scout Camp

The mom in me wants L to have a fun time at Girl Scout camp this weekend. The wife in me is looking forward to a weekend away without the kid. The nurse in me is terrified that I'm going to look back on this weekend as a bad idea: hundreds of kids with a tenuous grip on handwashing and basic sanitary care, together for a weekend at the beginning of what is potentially a pandemic flu.

Many of my friends and family seem to think that this is all a big media hype that has gotten out of control. I hope they're right. However, I don't think so. I trust the CDC and the WHO to look out for public health in a way that my mind can't begin to grasp. If the best epidimiologists in the world are one step away from declaring pandemic, I'm all for stopping it now by putting everyone into quarantine. I've already heard parents making jokes about the school year going long and having to make up "virus days" because of school closures. Close the schools if necessary. I'd rather send my daughter to school all summer than risk her or any of her friends dying for fear of making up a virus day in the summer!

Maybe everyone has a point: maybe it's all a big overreaction. After all, only about 200 people in THE WORLD have died from this so far. Thousands of people die from the flu every year, right? So what makes this different? The high hospitalization and fatality rate. Only about 200 people have died but only about 500 have been diagnosed. That's about a 40% fatality rate. Not a number I'm interested in gambling with. And the people that are dying aren't the ones who die from the flu: the victims were healthy and not in high-risk groups of elderly and infant and immune-compromised. So PLEASE! OVERREACT!!!

The thing is, if the public health officials order these measures before the country/world has had a chance to panic, they will be called fools and everyone will say how much they overreacted. There will be congressional inquiries and agency heads fired for the perceived overreaction. But what the public sees as overreaction will likely just mean that the measures worked; that the epidemic was stopped before it became a pandemic. Good public health policy is rarely applauded. Bad public health policy costs lives.

I don't want to fiddle while Rome burns. I hope our society doesn't turn a deaf ear to what the experts are telling us. If we listen and their prevention measures work and the flu doesn't develop, I hope society doesn't ridicule the leaders who are potentially saving us from global pandemic.

So, while I desperately want the romantic weekend with my husband, I would completely understand, and even applaud, a brave (though some may say rash) decision to close the camp for the weekend.

I changed my mind. The mom in me desperately hopes she's not making a mistake sending her daughter off to camp this weekend. Maybe the mom and the nurse are the same person, after all. Now if I could just do something to appease the wife part . . .

Pilates Update

I've been doing Pilates for over a month now and I'm settling into a routine. I'll admit that one of the things that still pulls me out bed in the early morning is the self-righteous feeling I get from being the kind of person who gets up for an exercise class that starts at 6 a.m. But another part of me just REALLY likes the way I feel. My body is getting stronger and I feel like I'm doing something good for my body when I go to Pilates class. When I miss a class, I'm disappointed for myself, not afraid that I'm letting down the instructor or that I'm not able to live up the new label of "exerciser" that I strive for.

The first intro series that I signed up for finishes at the end of this week. I'm trying to figure out how I can add in another class or two each week. I really DO like this stuff!