spiritual catharsis

My nerves are high. I have no control over the next few steps of my life, and instead have to hope that the effort I’ve put in already will see me through. It’s nerve-racking for a control freak like myself. But rather than be able to sit back and distract myself with entertainments or busy-work, I ended up doing some serious spiritual catharsis, and cleaned my room.

Now here’s the scary part—I haven’t cleaned my room since probably last year. I’ve done minor tidy-ups, and maybe vacuumed a couple times (the parts I could get to at least), but my room has been a pit of clutter. I wouldn’t call it particularly dirty, although dusty would definitely be an appropriate modifier. Most of the clothes and papers on the floor and around the desk and dresser were clean, just all over the place. But no more… It took me 4+ hours (with a couple breaks) to shuffle and re-shuffle the different clutter into manageable segments that I could organize. Somehow it’s all done… I even vacuumed under the bed. Everything is folded or hung up, although I still have a full laundry basket. The desk is more or less organized, as are the dresser and bedside table. The bed is made.

As I’ve been connecting everything from my weight to my car problems to my emotional state of distress, why not connect this too. Sure, cleaning my room was busy work to keep myself from freaking out entirely. Sure, it was long overdue to be done. But why did I wake up this morning knowing that I would do it, and then actually come through on it? It might seem like a stretch, but in my deepest core I know that the room was a mess because my mind was a mess. I’m starting to get things figured out again. I’ve got a path again. I know what I want again. So now the room was the only thing still needing to be caught up to speed. It’s really interesting to me to see how much I manifest things in my life to so clearly represent my emotional state. I can only hope that things will continue the way they are going—that the room will stay clean and all my worrying will be for naught.

Recipe, OR... How to Empty the Veggie Drawer

This one is especially for Maureen, since she insisted that I do actually cook every once in a while. So far this week, I've been really bad about clearing out the veggie drawer. One big salad and a lot of fruit got eaten, but the gigantic beets lurked in the drawer, taunting me with their foreign allure (I've never tried beets before, other than one rather unfortunate experience with Dad's borscht experiment). So today I decided to roast what was left.

Here's what I had for dinner (all veggies came from the Full Circle CSA):
2 large beets, peeled
2 large new potatoes (about the same quantity as the beets)
1 small red onion (could have used more)
1 crookneck yellow squash, medium sized
a handful of baby carrots

note: ANYTHING that you have can work here, that's the point of a "clean out the veggie drawer" meal. Broccoli tends to need more oil to not burn, but zucchini and brussels sprouts are divine roasters as well.

Chop everything to chunky, roasting sized pieces. Throw them in a bowl with a healthy (or not so much...) drizzle of olive oil and a nice amount of Italian seasonings, garlic powder, and black pepper. Toss with hands, and dump on cookie sheet. Place in oven (which I forgot to preheat) at 400 degrees, and let cook for about 30-45 minutes. Stir with spatula once or twice... or just forget about it all like I did and come rushing back into the kitchen muttering "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..."

Meanwhile, make some rice-a-roni. Another option would be to make some greens as a nest for the veggies (beet greens would have been a great idea on my part, but I forgot about them). A non-lazy person would grill a chicken breast or something else tasty like that, but I was kinda tired of cooking at this point. Remove veggies from oven when tender and enjoy. As I ate mine, I had another "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." moment, but this time, one of purely surprised ecstasy. That shit was GOOD.

Now I go on my little high and mighty rant: If you want this to be extra good, get real carrots. Those little wooden sticks that come in bags at the safeway are nothing like the carrots that came in my box last week. Bear in mind, the carrots I got were the same size, but actually only grown for a few weeks rather than whittled down to cute size. They were as sweet or sweeter than the beets, which were insanely good as well. Sometimes I get carrots in the box that are only as tasty as the store ones, but when you get the good ones, they are melt-in-your-mouth amazing. They don't have to be organic per-say, just get the ones that look funky, like you grew them in your own veggie garden. The uglier the better it seems. K, I'm done :)

shedding the weight of the world

I always feel bad bringing up this subject, because I realize how many people out there struggle with weight far beyond anything I can understand. I've been blessed with my father's metabolism and the weird talent to forget to eat, so take all I say with a grain of salt and the understanding that I don't hold weight against anyone. I just want to be able to talk about it from my perspective.

Over the winter I picked up about 5lbs on top of the 3-4 I already had above my "really, really fit" weight level of 125. At first, I just blamed it on eating out too much, not biking, and generally being lazy. Then, one day in May (after biking to work and being relatively back into shape post-winter), I realized I was back up over my typical high school weight. By no means did I think I needed to lose weight at that point, but I was simply surprised. I haven't been over that since I went off to college, and I started to think that the mid-twenties metabolism shift had hit me. But then, a week ago, someone at work suddenly asked me if I'd lost weight. I hadn't checked in a month and a half, so I chalked it up to more biking and my cycling interest in food (I was forgetting to eat more often in July than I had for the previous few months). I checked the scale two days ago and sure enough, I've dropped 7lbs in the six weeks since I checked the scale last.

Thing is, it's not all the eating and the biking. Well, it is, but I wouldn't have lost the weight had my emotions not shifted. I'm starting to think that the eating shift happened when I no longer needed something to stabilize my emotional state. Sometime around the end of June, I pulled out of my dark cloud, then over the last few weeks I've been pro-actively grabbing my life and making steps towards where I want to be. I'm scared shitless a lot of the time because of the steps I'm taking, so my nerves probably help keep me disinterested in food, but it's a good nervous that in some ways has been propelling me. I'm happy, and thus crave less fat and want to get out and exercise more. I'm in awe of what my body does and how I react to these extremely simple, yet frustratingly intertwined processes.

I can't help but be grateful that my mood is generally not in a co-dependent cause/effect relationship with food. What I mean by that is that I can pull out of a bad emotional situation without having to fix the food problem, yet the food problem comes along for the ride and fixes itself. I doubt that without my mood lifting, I would have been motivated enough to drop the weight (which, I repeat, I didn't need to or feel pressured to at all). I also wonder whether losing the weight would have lifted my mood as a by-product, or whether it would have stayed right where it was. "What if's" for miles won't help, but hopefully in the next few weeks I'll start to be able to open up about what's going on, why I'm suddenly happy to the point that my health has improved, and what I'm looking forward to.

Dare I say it... I might have a plan?

tick tock the time clock...

Work becomes abysmal when the auditors come to town. As a GLP (good lab practice) lab, we get to conform to government standards regarding documentation of the work that goes on, and to check up on how we are doing they send in a guy to look over everyone's shoulder and try to find what we're doing wrong. Constant second-guessing of myself doesn't exactly bode for a fun 3 days at work...

But speaking of work... I'm inching towards finding a way out by applying to things vastly different from where I am. At the same time, the second-guessing comes naturally, and I'm really skeptical of whether I'm on the right path. The truth is, I haven't applied for any other lab jobs because I can hardly stand the thought of another lab job. Reading through my old journals the other day I came upon a passage in which I contemplated stepping off the train and joining the Peace Corp, a VERY random thought that never developed, but was clearly signaling that I was dissatisfied with the course my life was heading for. The sad thing was that entry was written in 2005. Even now, it's hard to let go of the lengthy numerations of methodologies I'm familiar with; cutting them out of my resume feels like amputating my fingers, one at a time. I'm proud of them and of the list because it says I'm impressive, I have value, I am the smart girl.

But I'm not the smart girl any more--that stopped when school stopped. I only became the smart girl because one day in 3rd or 4th grade, I learned that I could get approval from my teachers and parents, along with some level of recognition from my peers, by getting all A's. I've always been intelligent and have been blessed with a strong memory, but this choice was to define myself by those characteristics. Now that I'm working at a job that is intellectual, but not challenging me in an academic sense, I realize what a charade I've created. I am so much more than S-M-R-T...

Except for the fact that, by being the smart girl, I picked myself up and plunked myself down on the other side of a fence, away from social knowledge and the risk of not being liked. I may need to be "schooled" in the art of everything non-academic. Perhaps looking for something that seems like a step down from a highly qualified resume builder isn't a step down, but a chance to pick up all those lessons I missed out on. We'll see though, I have to get past various interviews first and convince someone to take a chance on someone who's so obviously a science nerd.

Update on the 101

So, I'm kinda being bad about keeping up the 101 in 1001 details... but the work is still happening (sorta). I managed to eek out 10 trips to the mountain (found the 10th lift ticket the other day and realized I'd underestimated at 9), so number 3 has been done for a while. I'm also working on the bike to work goal as long as my tires would stop going flat--new spoke tape should help. Mostly, I just need to pay attention to my goals, especially reading and drinking water and flossing. I'm bailing on noting things, forgetting the last book I finished, falling asleep without flossing a week or so in, and so on. Oh, and then there's the problem with uploading (seen at right).

So, a new Short List:

2. Be BRAVE enough to try a level II yoga class...
4. Stop the flat tire madness and get a biker bod.
5. One Nalgene a day won't kill me... oh wait, it might.
7. Stretch (at home yoga can count!) 30 days in a row.
8. The all-elusive 10 full pushups.
13. Keeping up between the teeth.
17. Eek! I'm past due on a spa moment!
25. Stop buying blueberries and strawberries at the last minute on the 4th at QFC. :P
32. Drink water, not soda.
42. Find new career of choice... or at least look.
51. & 52. Keep track of the books I read.
57. & 60. Blog and upload more frequently (regardless of kittens on keyboards).

Okay, so that's 12 things. We'll stop there and hope I can cross off 6 by the end of the summer at least. Maybe I'll try to update something interesting about the last couple weeks soon. Hopefully I'll get through June with the Flickr stuff by the end of July. The 60+ hike photos are daunting though.