Just because it makes me smile

Summer Wishes

I dream of summer

Heat pressed against my shoulders

Clothing optional

Oppressive sunshine

I dream of the warmth on my face

As I trudge through the frost

It’s soon

Soon

What lurks beneath my depths?

I like………

My daughter singing in the car – she has a beautiful voice

Standing outside in the pounding rain

My new Android phone – suck it Iphone.

Purple the color of fresh picked eggplants

Spotify – I’m obsessed with obscure music now

Dark chocolate 72% cacao squares – I eat one every night and enjoy every single bite

Walking down by the river front – catching a breeze off the water

Turning my face up to the sun and forgetting for one moment it causes wrinkles

Swedish films – go figure

That I’ve ordered a Ukelele – and I’m determined to learn to play

Big bouquets of basil – I’d rather have that than flowers

Merging onto the highway just as the sun is rising and it momentarily blinds me and I’m reminded of the wonder of it all

Ancient Aliens – I’m hooked on it and Giorgio’s hair

Giggling

Eating a spoonful of peanut butter every night – it’s just good

Colored pencils

Spinach in and on everything

Fuji apple pear water

Cinnamon in my tea

Swats

Good night spoons

April

Scruffle

Hats in the summer

Cow keychains

I really like me

How Laura Got Her Foodie Back – Day 4

This morning I woke up craving an egg mcmuffin without any meat.  I’m not known for getting these, but for some reason it sounded so good.  Keeping with my vow not to go through drive thrus, I decided to make my own.  So, one fried egg, a mini bagel smeared with butter and half a piece of american cheese, and it was, dare I say, better than anything I could have gotten in the car.  I still have two light cappuccinos in my fridge, so I drank one today.  A delicious hazelnut.  Sometimes I really miss Starbucks.

It was pouring rain today and I was treated to a lightning storm out the window across from my desk.  I stayed in for lunch, having brought mine and ate butternut squash tossed with greens and a salad.  Again though, I cheated and had a Diet Mountain Dew.  I’m blaming my soda consumption on my pure exhaustion.  I haven’t been sleeping that well, woken up by the dog for middle of the night bush waterings and my own tossing and turning.  I think I’ve been going to bed too early, so I’m trying to stay up until Midnight tonight.  There has to be that perfect sleep number somewhere.

The farmer’s market was closed on my way home, so I went to the local grocery and settled on a loaf of French bread, with inferior brie and one of those steam in the bags of baby vegetables.  Okay, so this isn’t very impressive and definitely not exactly what I had in mind.  I have to find triple cream brie somewhere.  The nearest gourmet food store is 40 minutes away, so I need to take a field trip this weekend.

Gearing up for Friday’s pitch-in.  It’s a potluck at work where everyone brings a dish or two.  I’m bringing a vegetable tray and salsa dip.  The last two times I’ve made this intensely rich and decadent banana pudding.  It just didn’t appeal to me this time.

So I need to widen my shopping range, really ask myself what I want and definitely go to Qdoba sometime this week.  The mango salad looks delicious and now I want one.  I also have to make it to the Mayan cafe and for freak’s sake, I’ve got to take more pictures.

Until tomorrow…have fun eating.

 

 

How Laura Got Her Foodie Back- Day Two

So I woke up feeling fruity so I made a smoothie with almond mild (so yummy) and frozen strawberries and mango.  This time I didn’t include my usual two packets of Splenda.  I had my usual coffee sans cream.  For lunch, I had a salad with sunflower seeds and feta cheese.  Dinner was leftover butternut squash and greens.

Let’s be honest.  Nothing exciting about today’s food.  But the smoothie was delicious and the salad was filling.  Dinner was more of a throw together because I was exhausted by the time I got home.  I really wanted a piece of caramel, but of course I want a piece of salted  caramel, so decadent and delicious a Werther’s will not do.

I’m feuding with my parents again.  It’s a culmination of all these years with a dash of how they treat my daughter sprinkled on top.  But exploring food, brings me home again.  It was always food that brought us together as a family, that was a catalyst for a visit or celebration.  It was food my mother taught me was a balm for the blues.   Having traveled and explored, I learned to differentiate between good food and mediocre.  There really is no going back.  Not with food, not with my family.

So I’ll look for that salted caramel this week and try to be a little more adventurous.

 

A Pie In the Eye

I went to the farmer’s market despite the sweltering heat.  I bought one vine ripened tomato that actually smelled like a tomato and the earth it came out of.  I couldn’t resist the fresh corn, even though I’m concerned about my consumption of corn, high fructose syrup and otherwise.  There were fresh cucumbers, plums and cantaloupe.  Melting in the heat, I didn’t stay as long as I hoped, but I returned with my reuseable bags full of fresh veggies.

After a cool shower, I decided to watch a documentary.  I figure I’ll spend the summer indoors, too delicate to handle this southern heat.  I stumbled upon A Pie in the Sky:  The Brigid Berlin Story.  I found it timely and eye opening.  It wasn’t so much about this woman who was an artist, an Andy Warhol muse, but the eating disorder she had suffered with since childhood.  It was anguishing watching her as a sixty year old who measured every bite, called in her daily food to a sponsor and then spiraled out of control with a key lime pie binge that left her dejected and depressed.

Here I am wanting to reclaim my love of food, and Brigid is tortured by it.  Her weight is her enemy and food has become both a crutch and a punishment.  It made me wonder what percentage of Americans aren’t on a diet.  Probably a very small number of those who don’t care about their weight.  There are blogs devoted to dieting and it is indeed a billion dollar industry.  The funny thing is that it is widely  believed diets do not work. 

Brigid Berlin was a case study in this fact.  She had been dieting since childhood and a patient at the most expensive diet clinics around the world.  She had endured hypnotists, fasting and an amphetamine addiction.  All in an effort to be thinner.  To not want the food she tried to deprive herself of.  Then there she was at sixty, still struggling, still bingeing.  She was thinner, but a prisoner to her scale.  Standing in her kitchen she was chopping up beautiful heads of romaine lettuce.  She ate her salad without tasting it, just shoved it into her mouth after carefully measuring every addition to it.  I thought about the girl she had been who had once loved food before it became the very thing that added to her misery.

I ate a plum after watching the movie.  Slowly and with my eyes closed.  It was juicy and the flesh was red and it tasted like the plums of my youth.  It was sweeter and more satisfying than any candy bar could ever be. 

Food is there to be loved.  It’s like people I suppose.  You can love the ones that are good for you, that nourish you and that make your life more fulfilling.  Or you can love the ones that leave you starved, that aren’t good for you and make your life a misery.  A relationship with food has to be as healthy as a relationship with someone should be.

 I’ll still want my fruity pie with flaky crusts and vanilla bean ice cream.  Except I’ll eat it with relish and never once think about the calories I’m ingesting.  What a novel idea.  Let’s see if it’s achievable. 

IN THE BALMY NIGHT

I had forgotten how balmy spring nights can be in the south.  The hint of moisture in the air, the heavy hang of clouds, but still no rain falls.  But it is there looming on the horizon.  In the distance there is a rumble of thunder that will bring with it the torrents, not needed this spring.  You can stand outside and smell the soil and the hint of far off places where the clouds have traveled from.

As a child I would stand in the grass, smelling of the sticky heat of the day, my legs painted with clear fingernail polish to ward off the chigger bugs that would leave behind red bite marks.  There would be the scent of the honeysuckle, not yet bloomed and the mimosa tree blossoms not yet open and I would search the bushes and the trees for the first flicker of light.  A lightning bug meant summer was imminent and the nights would be as hot as the midday.

But the spring meant the storms would be fierce, the wind would howl and there was always a threat of tornadoes.  The air crackled with the electricity of danger and everywhere else seemed very far off.  I would count the caterpillars nesting in the tree and then worry for them as the rain sluiced great waterfalls against every surface.

After a rain, late at night when the breeze still managed to cool, I would step out onto the wet grass, my toes sinking into the mud and stare at the stars.  Later, in college, when I took astronomy during the winter months, I would wish I could have seen those same spring stars and understood more what I had seen as a child.  But then, I was just in awe of the dots of glittering somethings. 

Life was not simple or uncomplicated then.  I was not unfazed by pain or disappointment, whether it was in something or in someone.  I was just a girl, waiting for the storms to pass, waiting for the flowers to bloom, waiting for whatever lay ahead.  Sometimes I would try to will a future in existence, but it looks nothing like what I saw as a child.  I am not living anything that resembles the life I would wish upon the stars for.

Tonight when I stood outside and I complained I didn’t remember so many bugs when I was a child, I stopped for a moment.  I listened to the steady sound of whatever insect it was in the trees that hummed like downed power lines.  I looked at the stars, barely visible behind what were bright billowy clouds during the day, but were like discarded crumpled wads of paper now blocking the light.  I smelled the rain that will fall later when I’m asleep.

I am an adult now.  Not unfazed by pain or disappointment, whether it is in something or someone.  I’m just a woman, waiting for the storms to pass, waiting for the flowers to bloom again, waiting for whatever lays ahead.  Waiting in the balmy spring night.

CHICK AND BADGER …. BOOK TWO

Badger was in only one word that could possibly describe him at that very moment, despondent. He sat in the dankness of his hovel, his stomach rumbling as he had eaten the last of his honey and clovers the night before. He had been hiding for days from Chick, who showed up every morning for breakfast and every morning he peeked out of the burrow to watch her waddle away, her beak ducked sadly.

For days they had been the best of friends and the fizzy feeling in his badger stomach had made him fall asleep with a smile only a badger could manage. He didn’t think he would like having a friend who poked and prodded his feelings so much. He didn’t think he would like having a friend who could talk about the color green or a dandelion she had sat watching. But he did. He looked forward to when he would hear Chick humming as she walked and the little fluff of her feathers she did when she saw him. She thought he didn’t notice, but he noticed everything about her.

She taught him about ducks and he taught her about badgers. When they walked along the creek, she floated in the mirror of the water and would look at her reflection and think there is one all the other animals know, and then there is the real Chick I know. In return, he let her see the real him behind the fur and the growling exterior.

He knew in his heart Chick’s heart was full of the us that was. Yet, sometimes, they would sit on a patch of grass and the bees buzzed and the birds flew and she would ask him to tell her something important and the words would get stuck in the fizz of his stomach. He would get grumpy when he became tongue tied and twitchy when she poked a certain feeling too hard. He had not known ducks were so sensitive and Chick would drop her wings in a sad way and he would feel the change between them.

One morning, when Chick had huffed away having only asked him what his favorite flower was and he wanted to tell her it was not really a flower, but the honeysuckle bush that tasted as sweet as honey but smelled so much sweeter, but the words jumbled on his tongue. What did she think? He was a badger after all. Badger’s had certain behaviors and who was she to huff about them?

“Friendship is impossible.” Bear, the squirrel who lived above the honey hive, said as he piled acorns in a pyramid against the root of the tree.

Badger harumphed and watched the field to see if Chick would make the trek across the dew dotted grass that morning to yet again be turned away.

Bear clucked his tongue and shook his tail. “I know badgers are stupider than squirrels, but you Badger are the stupidest of them all.”

Badger growled and snapped his jaws. “Leave me alone, Bear.”

“Squirrels know a lot about love, Badger.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“The world is big, Badger.” Bear continued, balancing another acorn on top of an already lopsided and wobbily pile. “I was up in my tree and I heard her chirping about other ponds. You’re afraid she’ll go away to another pond and you’re afraid all these things about you that make her huff away will mean she will never come back.”

“Why can’t she just let me be me?” Badger sighed, no longer interested in arguing with Bear. Squirrels were smarter than badgers after all.

“Because one day she’ll have to move to another pond, and she is afraid too.” Bear clucked his tongue again. “And she’s afraid you’re so comfortable hiding in your hole you won’t want to venture to other ponds with her.”

“Why can’t she just stay in one pond and things never change between us?”

Bear walked over to Badger and patted his shoulder. “Just like the seasons, we change Badger. If we don’t change everything would always be the same and we would never meet ducks named Chick or see snow on the tree limbs or seas of flowers.”

“I make her huff and I think I hurt her feelings.”

“She makes you harumph and she hurts your feelings, but does that mean you don’t want to be her friends?”

Badger sniffled. “It never does.”

“Squirrels are smart.” Bear tossed an acorn over his shoulder and his entire pyramid of the nuts collapsed and rolled into the leaves. Bear shrugged. “Things fall down and you get a chance to rebuild it. Every time you make it a little stronger and a lot sturdier until you get it figured out.”

At that moment, Badger knew squirrels named Bear were the smartest of squirrels. He moved closer to the edge of the hill so he could look down and see it all stretched out before him. He could see Chick then, her black and yellow feathers lit by the sun as she made her way toward him, stopping to sniff a flower to watch a bug. But she was coming toward him.

Instead of hiding, he sighed heavily and waved sheepishly. At least he thought he waved the way a sheep would. Chick fluffed her feathers then and he knew no matter about the huff or the harumph, she still wanted to tell him about green and dandelions.

“I’m sorry I don’t always understand you.” She said as she sat down next to him.

“I’m sorry sometimes I stop trying.”

“I saw a grasshopper with dark green wings.”

Badger smiled and the fizzy feeling in his stomach made him feel warmer than the sun ever could.

CHICK AND BADGER..BOOK ONE

Badger awoke one morning and lazily climbed the tree next to his burrow.  There, on a high branch, was the beehive and he reached his paw in and scooped out the sticky honey he could find there every morning for breakfast.

“Thank you, bees.”  He muttered, as he slid back down the tree trunk to sit on the patch of grass and lick the sweet sticky confection from his fur.

Across the meadow where the badgers lived, he watched a family eat big juicy earthworms as they lounged in a bed of flowers.  Badger frowned as he watched the flowers trampled on and worried about earthworms beneath his feet and whether they would someday be some other badger’s breakfast.  He sighed heavily and shook his head.
From a very early age, he had realized he would never fit into his badger clan.  His father had told him, “You don’t think like a badger.”  and he knew it was true.  He didn’t think like the others, feel like them, or even begin to understand them.  So, he burrowed his home far enough away from the others to be left alone.  Alone was much better than that feeling of never belonging.

As he sat watching the others, he heard a rustling in the tall grass behind him.  Immediately alert, he turned to bare his fangs, even though in his soft heart he knew he would never be able to fight a predator.

“I like honey too.”  Came a small voice as a dark downy chick waddled from the weeds with a bright yellow face and stopped right in front of Badger.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?”  He asked curiously.  All the small farm animals were afraid of him.

“No reason to be.”  The chick walked over to a drop of honey that had fallen from Badger’s paw and began licking it from a blade of grass.  “I’m Chick.”

Badger harrumphed, “I like to eat my honey alone.”

“No one likes to be alone.”

“I do.”

“Do not.”  Chick fluffed out her soft feathers and shivered in the sunlight.

“Why aren’t you with your family?”

“They’re eating worms and playing in the water.”  Chick tilted her head.  “I don’t like worms or the water.  I get left behind a lot.”

Badger laughed, his belly full of honey sloshing pleasantly.  “Every duck likes water.”

“Not me.”

“But you’re a duck!”  He exclaimed.

“I don’t have to be like all the other ducks.”  Chick tucked her webbed feet beneath her and sat down in the shade beneath the tree.  “I like to sit and watch the clouds and the bugs on the flowers.”

“Well, I like to be alone.”

“But you don’t have to be.”  Chick gave him a duck smile.  “You have me now.”

Badger huffed with agitation, “But I don’t want you around.  You walked over to me.  I never asked for you to show up here.”

“Funny how those things happen anyway.”

Badger growled and stomped down into his burrow.  He would usually laze in the sun for hours in the morning, but with her presence, he would simply stay inside his hole until she left.  Taking deep breaths of the earth scent, he thought himself clever.  She would leave soon and he could go back to enjoying his aloneness.

“So, this is your house?”  Came a soft voice from the darkness of the burrow.

“Ducks do not go down into holes!”  Badger exclaimed angrily.

“I’m not like all the other ducks.”  She said again and he felt her brush against him.  “I’m usually afraid of the dark.”

“Then leave!”

“Come outside with me.”

“I told you, I want to be alone.”

“But now that we found each other, why would you?”  Chick walked up the burrow and he could see her in the sunlight streaming through.  “The day just started and we have so many things we can do.”

Badger sniffed and shook his head.  Why couldn’t she just leave him alone?

“You’ll see.”  Chick declared.  “We will be great friends because we are more alike than not.”

“But I’m a badger and you should be afraid of me.  I don’t like to be around other animals and I can be grumpy.”

“But you’ll like being around me.”  Chick said, and Badger realized he did.  She was irritating and a know it all, but he could tell he would like being around her.  She didn’t care he didn’t eat worms and she would not care if he was grumpy and lazy.  She would like him just because.

“But one day you’ll grow up to be a duck and you’ll leave.”

“I’ll grow up, Badger.”  She tilted her head and regarded him as if she had known him his whole life.  “But I won’t leave.  We finally found each other, why would I leave?”

“Because I’ll hide in my burrow sometimes and not want to come out.”

“Then I’ll just have to keep talking you out.”  She held out her wing for him to grab as she walked out of the burrow into the sunlight.  “See how wonderful it is out here.  Imagine the fun we can have.”

Badger looked around the meadow where the other badgers lay beneath the sun and the birds flew from branch to branch.  He looked down at Chick who didn’t like water, but for some odd reason she liked him.

“I could get some more honey.”  He suggested.

Chick nodded,  “And we’ll share it.”

Badger felt a lump in his throat he had never felt before.  He finally wanted to share his honey with someone else and as scary as that was, when he sat in the grass the honey tasted sweeter and the sun felt hotter and the sky seemed bluer and he felt happier than he ever had.