Virtue?

I had dinner with Pete and his nephew last night and the topic of religion came up. Pete's nephew was presenting a paper at SUNY Stonybrook this week on the intertwining of Catholicism and Mayan culture. The conversation around this fascinated me. It was about the origins of faith, the parallels in every culture on this planet, and how at times the western variety religious teaching could be pretty insular.
My parents were an interfaith couple in a time when "the faiths" even if they were both "Christian" didn't mingle. I grew up hearing that the faith I was being raised in was the only "true" faith and that non-believers would surely go to hell, or purgatory, or somewhere really, really unpleasant. I grew up thinking that maybe my mom, even though she was a protestant, would be saved from certain doom just because she showed up at the catholic church twice a week to drop us off at Mass and CCD. Then later having to explain to my own children that daddy would surely not burn in HEdoublehockeystix for being Jewish and that "heaven" was not secular and full of separate faith-based rooms. My journey through life has led me to do some extensive research on religion and quite often I venture there metaphorically with my artwork. Why? I think it is that one word that stands out which is MYSTERY. That word "mystery"intrigues me. The risk of wonderment is almost as great as the RISK of jumping off a cliff and in most of my life. It is what drives me. I love flying by the SEAT of my pants! Despite leaving the "church" 10 years ago though, I have yet to give up my faith, that is TOO risky so I study other things as if I am searching for a reason to let go completely. Yet secretly, I pray that what I was taught to believe in will eventually stop being hypocritical and come around to the true meaning of the word catholic: broad scoped, liberal, open to ideas, and universal.

I eventually got back in my car and headed home just catching the tale end of This American Life. The episode: Return to the Scene of the Crime. Act 3: Our Man of Perpetual Sorrow, Dan Savage.

"Keeping you in my thoughts"

In Search of The Ghost Train

I grew up in this town and have always been so incredibly intrigued by its history thanks to a third grade teacher who made every kid in the district passionate about it. Thanks Mrs. Egan. Then there was my friend's mom, Doris, who is now the town historian, who I adored, that made that history come alive. Despite being a relative outsider (my kids have more legacy in this town than I do) I am in love with this place.

A few days ago, Kenny and I were hiking and while I stopped to take a photo of an old foundation I found this cache. At first I was sure it was going to be something hunting related, only to find out that it was a geo-cache. The rest was history. I have spent more time than I should this past week, thinking about it, plotting strategy and waypoints…uh hello, reality is calling…you would have thought I was planning that expedition to the top of the world, which I had told myself at 10 that I would do when I was  55. Well, I have 8 years to go and honestly no real desire to die climbing. I can't bare to be above 9K feet for too long without a massive headache I can't imagine 29k. (oops, sorry got a bit sidetracked- that was a whole other story).

So today, it was beautiful. My meetings were over by 3. My work was done by 4. I drove home, music blasting out the sunroof and got the urge to go treasure hunting. I decided to go on the quest for the ghost train. It was late when Roseanne and I started down this abandoned railroad bed. Leave it to me to decide to follow way-points in the woods during a solar storm. We walked past the first cache while I was trying to get the coordinates correct, oh yea, another stupid point, I was in a rush so i figured I could enter them on the fly. This did not work out so well. I spent stupid time trying to get it correct. we walked almost  mile past the first waypoint because I had a typo. Remember the Little Rascals episode, the First Round Up, when the kids went camping? When we figured it out we were so deep into the woods, had lost track of time,  and it was already 6:10. we were loosing light fast. We decided to turn around and head back in the interest of making it out of the woods before it was too dark. Put it this way, I was glad I had a hoodie on as there was this BAT who decided to make us feel like we were trespassing. Then there was the train whistle in the background right as i saw the fox run across our path. On the way home I decided that i was disappointed that i missed that cache, looking at the map I know I must have looked in the tree its in. Now I am determined to complete this one. Until tomorrow?

purging the past

This post isn't what you might think. I have spent the past few months trying to go through our stuff. mostly because I am trying to downsize our clutter. One of the things that I seem to have collected is cookbooks. I am not talking about your latest and greatest fad things from today. I am speaking of the latest and greatest from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, etc…there seems to be an incredible amount from that casserole age.

I have been making my own bread exclusively for the past 2 weeks or so. It came out of the desire to have a whole grain product that had a lot of flavor with zero salt and only needed fat. So far I have made oatmeal bread, a dark rye, and this afternoon a whole wheat polenta bread. While I started to think about culling cookbooks I decided to make some recipes from them first. I wanted to "test" things out before I dismissed the "old". The CIA cookbook is my latest keeper. Published in 1969 it has some interesting recipes. One thing I decided was that I would also pay close attention to serving sizes. I learned that we have expanded our portions greatly. Actually that revelation was not a new one but the actual portion sizes when I stuck to them were about 1/3 of what we are accustomed to now.

I made some meatballs tonight- it called for 3/4 of a pound of ground beef, 2 eggs and breadcrumbs along with a range of spices. The recipe served 7-9 people (and made between 28-32 meatballs). Think about that  for a minute, less that a pound of meat to feed 8 people. I encountered this thought in Korea a few years ago- the average serving size of meat per person was about 70- 90grams, about 2 oz per person. What was surprising to me is the calorie count for this recipe, nothing special in it, each meatball was about 150 calories so my serving actually was limited to 300 calories, not the 450 for the average called for serving.

These vintage books are fascinating though, less Americanized than I would have suspected too considering they were from that "wonder bread age". So as I work my way through them eliminating the salt, halving the butter and sugar and keeping to the suggested serving I am learning a great deal about both my mother and grandmother and Kenny's mother and grandmother(s) from the notes that they have left behind.

Conquering mountains! OK molehills is a better description.

Yesterday Kenny and I decided to go out for a ride, only his road bike had a mechanical issue so in the interest of time we decided to head out on the mtn bikes. Neither of us could decide where to go, Stewart Boundary Lands, Fahnstock, the Horse Farm, Blue Mtn Lake, Huntington State Park, Wilton Woods, Mianus Gorge, Ninham, Taconic Hareford, do you get my point, too much to choose from and one of us really hates mountain biking. In the interest of making a decision that did not involve too much preparation or thought I decided to just tour the dirt roads that are inhabited by most of this country's 1%. I admit that I uttered WTF under my breath a few times, but other than trying not to feel less than by gawking atmulti-million dollar real-estate I was just enjoying the sunshine and being out with the coolest guy on the planet!

Today, Kenny bagged the bike for the gym so I was on my own. I decided to do the same as yesterday but making it a much longer ride with even more challenging hills. Who knows maybe I will be trail ready by the end of the muddy season. the thing about riding on a dirt road with a mountain bike is that I am far less likely to hop off at the sight of a steep incline. In other words I ride much more. When it comes to the paved links in-between proves more difficult too.

What can I say, it was a gorgeous day for a ride. Tomorrow? Maybe I will actually get into the woods!

Is your head screwed on right?

Apparently my new chiropractor has just informed me that mine was not. Kenny wants to know why I had to pay money to hear that as he has known that for years. All I can say is what a difference an adjustment makes. Other than that, its been one of those really slow days. I spent most of it trying to get caught up on school work so that next week registers low on the stress scale. I hope it was a good decision.

So the chiropractor asked me if I was aware that I hold my breath a lot? Hmm, never really focused on it. I guess its another thing to add to my mindfulness quest. She suggested I learn to meditate. Its funny, our friend Joey tried to encourage the same thing this past summer. I have been thinking about his reasons more than hers. His were stress reduction thoughts, hers were more technical.

I think about this. Joey is just younger than Justin and such a balanced young man. A speedskater and member of the US Sprint Team he has been quite the inspiration to me. This past summer he was a wonderful influence on Chris while we were out in Salt Lake. Joey started his season with wonderful results only to be taken out with an injury in December which has been heartbreaking to many I am sure. (Joey, if you read this, which I hope you will, know that we are thinking about you and remember, as you would most likely say to me "positive energy only for the next few weeks no matter what you are going through". You can do this. You are strong! There will be an ax and a big log waiting for you when you recover!)

I am off to focus on my breathing among other things...

being mindful is exhausting

Mindfulness: the Buddhist practice of pouring 100% of your focus into the activity you are engaging in.

My health has been on a roller-coaster ride lately. I have seen my doctor more times in the past 14 days than I have in all the years I have been going to him, well almost. I have to say that despite doing all that I am supposed to do, I am getting mediocre returns. It is certainly teaching me about patience. So where do I go from here?

 In the past two weeks I have been making an effort to try to be mindful about a great deal of my life from eating to work. I have learned a great deal about how this sense of hyper focus works. Its exhausting and quite difficult to mindfully devote your heart, soul and body to one activity at a time. I am a woman after all, I have that extra leg to the second chromosome (x) which demands that I multi-task! I have never thought so much about sipping tea,  eating a bowl of cereal or each step of a run in my life. My head hurts. Mindfulness is exhausting.

Some things I have observed:

I haven't been able to taste anything for years, its an occupational hazard that I have come to accept. What I have learned though is that part of this is also due to my lack of paying attention to my interaction with what I am trying to taste. How often do you even question what you put in your mouth? Is it salty, sweet, sour, bitter, savory, bold, subtle, tart, etc?  My taste buds are still not all that great but I do know that after spending the past 14 days counting every milligram of sodium in my food and limiting it to about 1gram a day that a normal restaurant experience is like chomping on a salt lick from the Dead Sea. Even a piece of commercial bread tastes like it has been bathed in the white stuff. We eat WAY TO MUCH SALT!

I have made is a point to record all my exercise on a GPS, even the hamster routine of the speedskating practice which, by the way, turns out to look like a toddler's refrigerator drawing. My purpose? I wanted to be mindful of not only what I was doing, but how far I was going when I was doing it as well as how long I endured the activity. ACTUALLY, in all honesty, I wanted to be able to PROVE that I am doing what my health care professionals seem to think I am lying about. If I hear one more time that I need to exercise more and eat less!!! (3500 calories a week average burn / 1450 calories a day average intake) This week I even managed to GAIN weight. BTW, I measure and record every morsel too. This mindful act is exhausting.

Now we get to the mental health piece, STRESS! Some things I have been teaching my self to do: laugh more, advocating for myself, saying no and asking for help, then there is the act of rating stress like a samalog system. In other words I am taking the average of the possibility of content and dividing it by the difficulty/awkwardness factor and coming up with a scale. The stress that other people try to infect the world with would score high points, which like calories I try to avoid. I have essentially reduced myself to a rating system. I guess these are my compartments. I am learning that unless my house is burning down, someone I love is gravely ill, or our family finances (even that is a stretch) suddenly careen off the north face of Everest then there is no reason for me to fill a steamer trunk full of cortisol, especially when I am the one that owns that hormone and have to pay the price to harbor it.

Slowing life way down…ALMOST - Red beans are in the oven, cooking 6 hours and I am working around the house getting things done that I have wanted to accomplish for ages but then there is part of me…still racing along!

getting out of Dodge

I spent a week trying to figure out if I was going to make it through finding the right blood pressure medicine and going through countless tests to be told I had to do three things; reduce stress, exercise more and eat less. I was also told that during my stress test I was only expected to be on the tread mill for 6 minutes or so, but 25 min later the thing was cranking out full speed and full tilt and my HR was still only at 90%, apparently it takes longer for those who exercise regularly,  even longer for those who run on treadmills, and way longer for those who are active outdoors. I apparently caught them profiling, which will tickle my doctor as he understands my frustration to some extent. Someone I know told me that "the financial markets are closed on the weekend so whatever happens with my money will have to wait until Monday". What he was trying to say about my latest bout of work related stress was that "school is closed on the weekends all problems will have to wait until Monday or even school is out around 3PM so all related problems will have to wait until 7AM". I am trying to learn this way of thinking.

I got out of Dodge this weekend. I decided to go to Lake Placid to visit some friends despite not feeling 100%. The reasons? I needed to exercise and the atmosphere in that town is conducive to it. I needed to relax which I always seem to be able to do up there. I needed to laugh and I knew that a combination of Jen keeping me on my toes and the Ottawa Pacers in town, there would be plenty of that. I also needed to be inspired and Kevin Frost was racing.

I am not home yet. Tomorrow I head to Dana Farber with my mom. I won't speculate about that. It is just a fact. I will think of it as an adventure in its own right. Maybe we will see or hear something exciting along the way?

More later!