Today, we helped Anna, a good friend of ours from Portland, move into an apartment THREE BLOCKS AWAY! Can you tell I’m excited? While the men maneuvered heavy furniture up very narrow stairs, I unpacked the kitchen. A friend of ours did that for me when we moved into our Seattle apartment–which was a huge help–and today it seemed like something I could do while the stairs were occupied. Anna’s sister-in-law and nieces drove up with her, and the nieces, ages five and one, helped me in the kitchen, which really means they handed me cans of beans to put in cabinets and kept stuffing anything that would fit into the oven. When I explained that putting plastic in the oven wasn’t a very good idea, the one-year-old seemed puzzled as it was clearly a very good hiding place.
I enjoy when moments of community sprout up, and moving often inspires those moments. Fundamentally, moving is not something that can be done alone unless you own only inflatable furniture. It requires help, and sometimes the help from strangers as was the case for Anna today (and was the case for us when we moved to Seattle). City life makes it easy to exist unnoticed if you want to, disconnected from your neighbors and the people passing on the street, and moments like moving remind us that some tasks are best done together.
I am excited to have a friend in the neighborhood, someone close enough to invite over for dinner on short notice. We have friends with whom we will spontaneously get together, but none in our immediate neighborhood–or at least none with whom it has worked out yet. And I am excited to have one of my female friends in the neighborhood. A lot of our friends in Seattle are guys with whom I talk about football, ask about the dates they recently went on, and perhaps most importantly, feed when they come over to our apartment so they exist on more than only boxed macaroni and cheese.
But I miss my women friends. Between distance and contradictory schedules, I don’t see them as much as I would like. Even the ones in Seattle with whom getting together would require minimal traveling. Thus, every time I do get together with a friend, I feel as if I am updating her on my life, and she is doing the same with me. It’s hard to build a friendship on updates; at some point, it’s important to walk together. I’m not entirely sure what that looks like at this point in my life. I am no longer living in a dorm or with roommates, and the rhythms of our lives do not weave as naturally together as they did. This year, my job disrupted any progress I was making in Seattle, and the thought of trying to add anything else to my week overwhelms me–even if it’s something good (which, as a side note, is one of the many reasons I’m struggling to begin exercising again).
Once again, I am learning to move within the tension of desiring deeper relationships and accepting what I am able to do and give, an ongoing theme in my life these days. In the meantime, I am excited Anna is here.
It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Saturday, 30 January 2010
Pancakes Save the Day Friday, 29 January 2010
Yesterday, I came home from work exhausted, which has been standard for this week. It’s the beginning of the new semester so everything is in upheaval. We are simultaneously trying to finalize semester one grades while launching the semester two schedule. Personally, I am adjusting to new rhythms at work. My prep has moved from second to fifth period–ultimately a good move but slightly stressful when I came to work Monday expecting to have prep in the morning only to find out it was after lunch. Yikes. So much for those copies. Activate back up plan. Or perhaps more accurately, create back up plan as it is activated.
Yesterday was particularly wearing though. I overheard a group of junior high girls talking, and one girl described a fight she had with her mom the previous night. I winced as she recounted what her mom had told her and teared up as I related it to a colleague later. My students carry large amounts of pain at such a young age: they may be at a private school, but they are not immune from this world’s fallenness. It is often too much for my heart to hold. After school, I found out that one of my high school students whom I respect has been cheating in my class for most of the semester, and as he told me, I felt outraged/embarrassed/nausea/pity and yet mostly tired–of teaching a curriculum I don’t really know, constantly feeling inadequate, of treading water and trying to survive until summer.
On my way home, I stopped at the grocery store to get a bunch of dairy items and some salad dressing and soup I probably could have gotten cheaper somewhere else or at another time–which is exactly why you never go to the grocery store hungry. When I got home, I fell asleep sitting upright on the couch. I’ve been that tired all week. My sleep schedule has been off–or as Mike said today, just generally lacking.
After I woke up, I didn’t have to think for very long about what I would eat for dinner; I have fallen into the habit of eating breakfast for dinner whenever Mike works at night. It began after a reader suggested I freeze the remainder of my Thanksgiving pancakes –which proved to be an excellent idea. I slowly worked my way through that bag over the next month and a half. I love eating breakfast for dinner; it was always a treat growing up. Since Mike is not a huge breakfast fan and I am not a huge fan of cooking when he’s not here, it works out nicely. I am learning that several other women I know cook breakfast for dinner when the husband is not home. It’s an interesting phenomenon really.
I had finished my freezer stock a couple of weeks ago, so last night, I put on one of the aprons I made with Granny at Christmas time, cleaned up my kitchen, and since Mike was working, made pancakes at 8:30 p.m. I make mine from scratch because I want to know what’s going in my body, and food labels can be deceiving. It seems that cooking pancakes (and then eating pancakes) is therapeutic for the soul. Perhaps it’s the act of creating after a relatively abysmal day, perhaps it’s doing something I remember my mom doing, or perhaps it’s just playing with flours. Whatever the case may be, I was in much better spirits by the time Mike got home, and the fact that he got off early helped all the more.
Whole Grain Buttermilk Pancakes
(The original recipe can be found at Chow Foods (thanks, Jessica!); my version–or at least last night’s version–is below, which includes more whole grains and some other substitutions to make it lower on the glycemic index and healthier overall. And no, I didn’t whip the butter. I used my Healthy Choice spread from Costco, which is nearly the size of my head. I will probably still be using it when Jesus returns.)
1 1/3 cup whole grain whole wheat pastry flour
2/3 cup whole grain whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Salt to taste — I sprinkled in a little sea salt as that’s what I had on hand; the original recipe calls for 1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs
2 teaspoons sugar or 1 1/3 teaspoons agave nectar
4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 cups buttermilk*
Whipped butter and pure maple syrup as accompaniments
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients together with a whisk.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar, then whisk in the melted butter. Stir in the buttermilk and stir well.
- Add the dry ingredients all at once to the wet ingredients and stir briefly, just until everything is moist; do not over-mix.
- Pour the cakes, about 1/3 cup at a time onto a lightly oiled or buttered electric griddle or in a smooth, well seasoned cast iron skillet on your stove top. Wait until bubbles are surfacing in the center of the cakes and the edges are ‘setting’. With a metal spatula, flip the cakes over to cook the other side.
- If you’re trying to feed everyone at the same time, keep the first pancakes in a warm oven on a baking sheet lined with baker’s parchment while you cook the next round. Serve the pancakes hot with whipped butter and pure maple syrup.
Makes about 12 pancakes that freeze really well.
*For financial and nutrition reasons, we rarely buy buttermilk. I use a common substitution (1 tablespoon lemon juice to 1 cup fat free milk), which is explained more here.
On Writing Groups and Muddling Through Friday, 22 January 2010
Last summer, my husband’s friend posted on Facebook: “Are there any serious writers in Seattle who are interested in a writers group?” My husband replied that I was, and then he asked me what I thought.
He was right. I was interested. I was still working a couple of part-time jobs, and I was considering pursuing my M.F.A. The thing about these writing programs though is that they require a writing portfolio and I hadn’t done any significant poetry writing since 2007. Writing is a lot like exercise: once you stop, it’s really hard to get started again, and it’s easier to do if you have a buddy.
As a writing major and an English teacher, I have a long history with writing groups. I learned how to give and receive critique from my high school English teachers who both modeled effective critique and created workshop space for us to interact with each other’s work. It wasn’t until I began teaching that I realized how rare those creative writing classes are in high school, and I have yet to work at a school that offers that same opportunity. By the time I graduated from college, I had come to depend on feedback from my community on my writing, and I found it harder and harder to come by.
To read the rest of this blog post, please click here to visit Relief’s website.
Orcfest 2010 Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Orcfest: (noun) a festival of orcs (ie, all things Lord of the Rings) during which the Noblins obtain a projector (this year, borrowed from Kristin’s classroom), set up a big screen via white sheets attached to a curtain rod, serve munchies, and friends come over to watch the extended versions of the the three movies. Traditionally observed over Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend because there’s an extra day to recover and because it’s January in the Northwest. Who really wants to do anything other than hole up and watch movies?
It’s that time of year again–the time for hobbits, orcs, dwarves, and Aragorn–and the 3rd Annual Orcfest did not disappoint. It was everything Orcfest should be: awesome and exhausting and relaxing and oh-so-very fun. I think each year gets better and better. In the past, we typically have had a different group of people on the first two nights (with some overlap), and by Return of the King, only the diehards remain. We’ve actually never had more than four people at the last movie (including Mike and me). This year, and we actually had ten people at the last movie, a new Orcfest record! We also had several more people come to all three installments, including some friends of friends, which established a fun sense of camaraderie.
Here are the reasons I love Orcfest:
- The audience side commentary. We have lots of helpful advice for these characters if only they’d listen to us.
- Knowing that several people throughout the room are tweeting/facebooking (is that really a verb?) lines from the movie as we go.
- Aragorn. Need I say more?
- Noticing new things each time I watch the movies.
- Inevitably sitting through the end of the credits on at least one movie to find different names of the fan club’s charter members.
- All of my favorite moments.
- The music. Particularly the themes of Rohan and the Shire.
- The reminder of hope and purpose on bleak winter days.
- Laughing, yelling, crying, swooning, and hanging out with people who know more about these movies than I do. This year, they inspired me to renew my resolve to finish the books, an endeavor my first year of teaching rudely interrupted. Perhaps this summer…
In honor of Orcfest, I named my new computer after Eowyn, lady of Rohan, because Eowyn is awesome, kicks all sorts of ass, and is pretty. And she stars in one of my favorite moments in the entire trilogy. I really do think nerds have more fun.
