Where's My Mind?

My mind these days is generally absorbed by two things: working 3 12-hour shifts per week, and studying my online eCornell course on plant-based nutrition. It is supposed to be able to be absorbed in 3 hours a week, but really there is too much information for me to truly assimilate that fast. Also the discussions are extensive.

I'm in the middle of the middle class, "Diseases of Affluence," and the course content is getting pretty serious. Read up, if you will, on Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and his work on reversing heart disease through diet. Heavy stuff.

Anyway, I don't have so many neurons available for blogging. Bear with me.

The Source

I think I want to start a new blog i.e. rename my blog. I noticed from Sitemeter that a lot of people are ending up at this site looking for information about wiener or weaner pigs. I feel a little sorry for them. What a cruel joke, to look for something serious like how to raise pigs, and end up with this nonsense! ; >

I would call the new blog The Source and it would be a synthesis between two of my favorite interests, faith and religion. The Source spiritually because of God being the source of life. The Source physically referring to the sun as the source of energy, which is utilized by plants during photosynthesis, which makes the energy, along with all the protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, carbohydrates and oils we ever need, available to us by eating them.

I have heard, "eat close to the source", i.e., eat foods still recognizable, whole foods. The source being the sun.

Whenever I can figure out how to link this site to the next, and design my new blog, I'll be set to change.

Trip to Pullman, Part 2

So we drove to Elberton and my brother John and wife Sally and the dog and the well-upholstered cat and the wood stove and the cheese and crackers and pickled green beans and two kinds of bread, and visiting. On the walls are several Appalachian dulcimers and other instruments my brother has made, with beautiful cut-outs and inlays of his design.

Then we drove to Pullman and visited Mom at Glen Haven adult family home, this very stellar institution. I don't think I've ever seen an AFH west of the mountains to match it. Glen Haven is run by people in long term care who bought a large house, made it into 6 bedrooms, with paneling and wood ramps and railings, and decided to do it right.

Several days ago they had rearranged Mom's room for easier transfers, and with her memory loss she no longer recognized her room. She thought she was in the hospital. So they wheeled her back into the living room, quickly rearranged the room the way it had been, circled her around in a Politically Correct Fire Drill and brought her back into her room. "Oh, thank heavens I'm home again!"

I gave Mom a stuffed woodpecker which makes a recorded "flicker" sound, a sprig of dried elderberries and one of rose hips, and a dried leaf, and photos of Jerusalem, the Jordan river, Haifa, and Pearl and me camping at Neah Bay. Pearl sang "What A Wonderful World," and we sang the Persian birthday song: "Mubarak, mubarak, tavalud-at mubarak . . . "

My sister Carol and her husband Perry from Bend were there, also. My sister Jean and her husband Kris and their son Andrew from Bellingham arrived, also. Then we all went to make the best of a restaurant with "Grill" in the name; a salad with black beans but denuded of its chicken and cheese; and a baked potato.

During the dinner we ended up discussing end of life issues; a family in Margaret's neighborhood: the wife with Alzheimers and the husband with cancer, and their return to Japan so relatives could care for the wife on his passing. Hospice cases I have known, including one where Grampa died on Grandson's birthday, and I suggested that it was also Grampa's birthday [into the next world] and how this comforted them. We had an incredible talk.

In the morning John and Sally arrived, also, and after a group cluster f*** getting Mom into a car, went to the Hilltop Restaurant, where we met my lovely cousin Bob [in my mind, always "Bobby"] and his wife, and my also lovely aunt Ginny. I took some photos, and Margaret and Pearl, Enayat and I drove back early, leaving them to their whatever-they-ate-and-talked-about.

We had a great drive to Seattle and a great drive to Tacoma, I thawed out some soaked beans, and I made beans and rice which I ate all week at work.

Trip to Pullman, Part 1

Last Friday I worked 12 hours and didn't have time to thoroughly plan our trip to Pullman and Mom's 90th birthday [and Enayat's 25th ; > ] So Saturday morning I planned to take the train over, and our plans changed as time went on and we talked about possibilities and discovered whether Enayat could be ready in time to meet us, as he really did want to come.

My sister Margaret offered to give us a ride from Pullman to Seattle on Monday, which opened up everything. So we all [Pearl, Enayat and I] drove up to Seattle to the King Street Station and took the Amtrak to Spokane, having a wonderful ride, and ending up in the Days Inn overnight. My plan then was to find a rental car to travel down to Pullman via Elberton, the tiny ghost town where my brother and his wife live.

Finding a rental car available for a one-way trip to Pullman from downtown Spokane on a Sunday--ah, there's the rub. After a lot of calling around it boiled down to either waiting until 5:45 PM and taking the bus down to Pullman, missing a lot of visiting, and still not having a car when we arrived, which was affordable. Or, spending $233 for a rental car from the Spokane Airport [plus taxi fare] for a car overnight to Pullman. $233, I kid you not. Train fare for one person from Seattle was only $46. Good grief!

I fell into despair. My lack of planning. We were lost. Pearl was rubbing my back and telling me everything would be okay; sang me "What A Wonderful World," and I made a decision. We were there to visit. I would bite the bullet and hire the rental car, which I did. I called a cab, and was brushing my teeth, and the cab was pulling into the parking lot, when my sister Margaret called from Othello, wondering how we were getting from Spokane to Pullman, and she could come to pick us up in Spokane.

A miracle.

Empty Tamales

Last week at work one of the young ladies took orders for fresh tamales made by her mother for $1 apiece. I asked if they could be made without meat; sure! So I actually ordered ten, as I'm crazy for tamales but commercial ones all seem to have meat, and I certainly don't know how to make them.

Came Friday, and by pure luck or the grace of God I'd brought a ten dollar bill with me, because I'd completely forgotten the day of the tamales. So in comes Lia with the steaming, warm bag of fresh tamales, and I'm thinking, "Oh, boy!"

At lunch I get out the first tamale and open up the corn husk wrapping. Corn meal, delicious, warm, and wrapped around . . . nothing. No beans, no sauce, no vegetables, zippo. I guess she figured that if no meat, I didn't want anything in them.

I was telling the other nurses about this later in the day, and we started to wonder about Lia's mom, making ten empty tortillas, one after the other, and imagined what she must have been thinking. "What kind of a moron wants ten empty tortillas? Oh, well, these vegetarians . . . eight, nine, ten . . ." We laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.

Plant-Based Nutrition at eCornell

I'm taking my first online college course at eCornell, Plant Based Nutrition based on The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. There are recorded lectures by the author, which so far have covered the same material as the book. The great, stimulating part of the course are the online discussions. Whoo! It's exciting to read people's history, many have been eating just plants for a long time and have lost a lot of weight, reversed diseases, e.g. migraines, and so forth, and are very fit.

I feel kind of bad that I'm kind of fat and slobby in contrast, but that's where I am. I did have an agency nurse that saw me for the first time in several months notice weight loss I hadn't noticed. The concensus I'm hearing is that the more you avoid certain foods such as meat, dairy foods, and fats, the more you lose your taste for them, and that they can actually be physiologically addictive.

Great quotes: 1] "Spaghetti is easy. Cancer is hard." Dr. Michael Greger. 2] "You don't see a lot of lions sitting around eating canned rabbits."--Emel, class participant.

We See Vancouver

My husband and I drove to Vancouver, BC Canada Sunday and drove back Monday evening, partly so he could buy the ultimate Persian-to-English dictionary and better translate his poetry, and partly to visit his cousin Mitra and her husband Zia. We had a great drive up to North Vancouver Monday and a ramble through a Persian-type store neighborhood, visiting an Iranian market where two years ago he bought two hundred audio cassettes of Persian music.

Next we walked up and down the sidewalk in the rain to find a second-story Persian bookstore. Too hard to find it from the car, as the sign was small and in Farsi script. But what fun when we found it. Books, CD's, santurs and Iranian guitars. Let's just say, Enayat's upcoming birthday is covered. I wish some time we could spend more time with leisurely shopping in various neighborhoods.

The drive home in the rain, with several multiple lane closures on the freeway, was grueling. What finally saved the day was Enayat singing his songs, many of which are my favorites although I do not know the words, and him tapping and snapping his fingers on the wheel, and me trying to get him to keep his hands on the wheel . . . I'm just glad to be home again.

Tomorrow I start my eCornell online course on plant-based nutrition, based on the China Study.

Solitude Versus Alienation

Direct teaching two weeks ago to people I haven't met before stretched me so far out of my comfort zone, my subsequent severe cold seemed doubly intense with the reaction of alienation from people, and my need for solitude. I actually felt emotionally cold inside. I not only needed to be alone, I didn't feel emotionally connected to the world.

Over the last decades I've come to accept that I seem to be wired as a loner. I like to come out of the cave and play, meeting others and socializing as long as I feel comfortable, and it recharges me. But at some point I really need to recharge by being alone. As a child I think this need for solitude got all mixed up with my deplorable social skills and the alienation I endured in the presence of other children. So every time I needed solitude I thought I had to hate the world at the same time.

Last week I kept peering into these cold, dark depths, meditating on whether I am truly meant to be a loner to some degree, or whether a truly spiritual being would tolerate constant socialization. Sometimes I really feel cut off, angry and sad. I think those feelings are just related to the stress that I feel in my life and work lately.

Pearl and I just watched "Frost And Nixon." I grew up absolutely loathing Nixon and all the corruption and abuse of power he seemed to stand for. Hearing his resignation speech brought me back to my mother's kitchen. At the end of the film, Nixon asks Frost about all the parties and events he attends, and whether Frost enjoys being with people? Nixon indicates that he himself does not. I felt a weird sort of kinship with that revelation, and almost forgave Tricky Dick. Almost.

A Pearl By Any Other Name

"O Brother! Not every sea hath pearls. Not every branch will flower, nor will the nightingale sing thereon."

~ Baha'u'llah

I just finished three days disappeared from the world, three twelve hour shifts at work. Even if I go to sleep at midnight, I wake up-bing!- at six most mornings. Many things about the team-building at work are rewarding. Most are stressful. I came home last night from 13 hours of work, tired and stressed, to hear my daughter's outgoing message as I called to check up on her. "Hi, this is Jake--or as some of you call me, Pearl."

In that stressed and alienated frame of mind, I thought it was all about Me, Al Franken, and some kind of rejection of her given name and me. It turns out it's short for Jakob, as in Jakob Grimm.

Huh.

I guess I can adjust. Most of my friends, even me, change their names from time to time.

The Unquantifiable Universe

My husband always wants me to say how much I love him, as if love were something you can quantify in specified amounts. Finally I said, "As much as an atom; as much as a drop. [Look it up in the Kitab-i-Iqan.]"

"How resplendent the luminaries of knowledge that shine in an atom, and how vast the oceans of wisdom that surge within a drop."

~Baha'u'llah

Girls' Night Out

We had a good day today, Pearl and I. We picked up her car from being repaired within an inch of its life, just short of totaled from her hitting a pole on one of her first expeditions after getting her license. Her car wouldn't start. There wasn't a drop of gas in it. If she hadn't hit a pole she would have run out of gas. We had to buy a container, fill it and learn how to fill the tank with the complicated spout.

Tonight we went to Benaroya Hall for the Seattle Symphony showing of "Psycho." I went to Value Village, hoping to find one of those animal noses, but what I did find was a pair of leather mules with a spotted animal print, which I took home and used the tops to make a pair of cat-like ears. These I sewed onto a scarf which I tied behind my head [I left my latest felt hat at Supercuts or I would have used that.] Then we used long-lasting reddish brown lip color to make a nose and black lipstick to draw whiskers, art by Pearl. A fun and minimalist costume.

She used green, then white makeup for a zombie effect; then added a bar code and the number 5, a fake bruise, red around her lips, and a realistic patch of green circuitry revealed by a bite. [The girl is good.] Then she dressed in white shirt, black vest and pants, a black bowler, carried a black umbrella, and went as a zombie android sort of deal. Very cute.

We met my sister at a great Vegan Thai restaurant called Araya on 45th Street in Seattle's University District. Imagine: an entire menu available to plant-based diners! And all delicious.

Psycho at Benaroya Hall, with the Seattle Symphony playing the score, was a hoot. About a third of the audience was in costume. A lot of men were dressed as women; not just dressed as any woman, but dressed as a woman in costume. So late in the 1960 film when the psychologist is giving his psychobabble speech and mentions transvestites, there was a roar of laughter from the audience.

Two cute coincidences: the opening date on the screen is December 11th, my daughter's birthday. And Marian Crane buys a 1957 Ford [my birth year.]