Creature Bug

Reflexology & Acupuncture

I'm not one of those people who doesn't take medication. I'm on a first-name basis with my Costco-sized bottle of Excedrin, waited in line for three hours to get the girls their H1N1 vaccines, firmly believe in taking anti-depressants as necessary, and absolutely under no circumstances would endure an all natural labor and delivery. Here in the PacNW, a lot of people are all about the all-natural healing/pain remedies, and I can respect that. I say, whatever floats your boat. As for me, my boat would sink in a dramatic show of fire and screaming were it not for Excedrin and epidurals to help me manage pain.

I write all this to preface a new experience for me that's a little bit out of my regular routine.

Last Friday, my mil and I visited a healing center in Portland. In fact, we visited this healing center. We went to hear about an amazing skin care product, as well as have our feet treated to a bit of reflexology.

Anytime I get the chance to have someone rub my feet, I'm all on board. Even if it means going somewhere that has a more existential approach to life than I do. If a very nice existentialist wants to rub my feet, give me jugs of healing water, and provide some emotional therapy and a hug, I will not stop them. No sirree, I won't.

My assessment of reflexology and visiting GroundSpring Healing Center? It was a treat. A seriously lovely treat. Joanna was the therapist who spent some time with me, offering me gentle advice about how to deal with emotions, pinpointing areas on my feet that indicated some health concerns. I talked with her about my migraines, and she suggested acupuncture.

There's plenty of Eastern medical practices I wouldn't try, but acupuncture seems to have earned some credibility among traditionalists. I decided that I'd be willing to give it a shot. So next Wednesday I'm going in and, in fact, paying for someone to insert lots of tiny needles all over my face. Since I don't mind needles, I'm not the least bit nervous. Excited, actually.

If it doesn't work, I'm out $20. If it does work, my kidneys will thank me.

Either way, it'll be an interesting experience. I'll keep you posted.

Week 283: Thanksgiving...almost the same

I can't explain it exactly, but my brain has felt like a big blank this past week, unable to organize my thoughts in a coherent fashion. I know it's because the holidays are coming up, and for as much as I'm looking forward to them, I'm also feeling sad and missing my grandmas so much my heart aches.

While of course I'm excited about Thanksgiving this year because it's our first as Family Farm residents, I've become keenly aware that my role in the meal has changed. It's always been my grandma and my mom that do Thanksgiving, and I've always been the one who sits around chatting and eating olives like I've always done. It's true: I can be absolutely worthless when it comes to kitchen help.

A couple weeks ago, when my mom started planning Thanksgiving, she called me to start organizing everything. "You'll have to come over early this year," she said. "You'll be helping me out."

Her words hit me with an unexpected panic and gravity. This is the year everything changes. This is the year that I don't get to sit around being the entertaining daughter and granddaughter. I don't have any excuses to sit back and do nothing. This year, I'm stepping up into the role that my mom once filled, and my mom is now the cook in charge.

To my girls, the kitchen scene will be just as I remembered it as a kid. To them the characters are all the same. The grandma and the mom will spend the morning in the kitchen, prepping the turkey, fixing the bean casserole, keeping the kids' fingers out of the pies. The kids will play in the basement, unconsciously absorbing the sounds of Thanksgiving being prepared.

The picture will look just as it looked so many years ago when my mom had her first Thanksgiving meal on the Family Farm, her mom by her side, her baby girl unknowingly watching a holiday tradition that would last 33 years.

To my girls, Thanksgiving will be the same scene I watched so many times.

To me, having been witness to that very first Thanksgiving on the Family Farm, this Thursday will appear almost the same but not quite. As if a hand has reached in and rearranged the characters, dropping familiar faces into different spots. My mom at the oven. Me at the kitchen sink.

My grandma conspicuously absent.

It's the same scene. And yet, it isn't.

Week 282: Because Talking About Books Is Easy

Yesterday, I had the lovely opportunity to go back and visit my MOPS group and talk to them about reading. Last spring, I talked to them about reading to your kids because if you don't they'll end up in prison and you'll have that on your conscience for.ev.er.

Just kidding.

I bet you'd get over it in way less time than that.

Ha!

No, reading to your children won't keep them out of prison, but just so you know, 60% of inmates are illiterate. I like using statistics. I use them all the time when I'm teaching because I make my students use them in their speeches and that's a bit inconvenient for them.

ANYway. Yesterday, I didn't speak about reading to kids. I spoke about reading for yourself. Obviously, being English minded in hobby and profession, I'm a big proponent of reading. Not so big that I'd ever give up Thursday night tv for it, but generally speaking, I think reading is really good for you.

I thought about posting my whole speech here, but then decided against it. Most of you don't need to be convinced to read. Afterall, you're reading this. Or you're just looking at the pretty pictures on the sidebars, which are mostly pictures of books. Either way, a tiny bit of literacy is seeping into your brain. I'm like lead paint, except half as poisonous.

Instead, I thought I'd pass along the list of books I recommended to my fellow moms. It's certainly not a comprehensive list--I didn't even include Jasper Fforde, whose Thursday Next books I loves a lots.** It's just a few of the books I've enjoyed at some point in the last few years. My goal was to get a variety of genres, as well as choose books I could take along with me to show during my speech.

Fiction

• The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield*
• The Testament, John Grisham
• The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith (highly recommend for moms who are short on time and want immediate rewards of entertainment)
• Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers

YA Fiction (generally aimed at females)

• Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
• Before Green Gables, Budge Wilson* (if you've read the GG books, WHY haven't you read this yet? You must)
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

Social Non-Fiction

• Better, Atul Gawande*
• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (Gladwell's books are good for my ego; I immediately feel smarter for even having read just 5 pages of his books)

True Stories

• Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion* (I really need to write about this book, but if I don't, let me say it's...a succinct adjective escapes me...it's amazing)

Literary Novels

• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (I'm sad that her newest literary novel is not getting good reviews--TPB is excellent)
• The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
• Possession, AS Byatt
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini*
• My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

Other Books and Authors I Mentioned in My Speech

Anne of Green Gables (and series), Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Bookseller of Kabul, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, Three Cups of Tea, The DaVinci Code, Twilight Series (I haven't read them, but you know, people like them), Where the Red Fern Grows, Flu, Harry Potter; Judy Bloom, Lois Lowry, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Of course, there are LOTS of books out there worth reading. This was just a random sampling of ones I've read (or reread) since becoming a mom.

*If I had to pick one from each category that I would say is absolutely worth reading, it would be the starred items.

**Even though this particular grammatical incorrectness was done on purpose, I had to correct more than half a dozen typing/grammatical errors after I first posted this. Clearly I'm not alwaysEnglish minded. Ack. This is what happens when I go off my meds.

***Consequently, I am now back on my meds. The English language rejoices.

My Grandma Was Awesome

 

Totally awesome.

(Posting inspired by My Parents Were Awesome site.)

New laptop? There's an App for that.

A few weeks ago, Jason and I tentatively started looking for a new laptop. We've had ours for seven years now, and even though it's not exactly broken, it doesn't run all that fast anymore. I have no tolerance for slowness when I'm working in Photoshop. I have little tolerance for slowness anyway, let alone from machines.

So we started looking.

My mom told us to get a Mac, but our budget wasn't going to accommodate that idea. Plus, I have no particular attachment to Macs. I've been a PC girl my whole life.

But my mom was persistent. (I suspect she needs me to become proficient at working on a Mac so I can help her with some of her work.)

She gave us an offer we couldn't refuse: her tricked-out Mac, only a year old, for less than one-third the cost of what it's worth. It even has the new version of Photoshop on it. *swoon*

In case you didn't know, my parents hate it when their children don't have sufficient computer processing power. They take great pains in making sure we all stay up to date and technologically functional. Yes, it's a real nuisance having received a good printer, scanner, computer, iPod, digital camera, and external hard drive over the past few years as gifts from my parents. It's like my parents are ridiculously cool or something.

So, in a couple weeks our new Mac will get networked with our old desktop PC. I think that's called having the best of both worlds.

I'm excited and a little bit nervous. A new computer is a big commitment, but one I think I'm ready for.

I'm really hoping my Mac and I will make beautiful pictures together.

First question though: how do I right click if there's only one button on the mouse?

Where's the beef? Look in my freezer.

When we moved out to the Family Farm, I started thinking that maybe some of us should buy a cow together. Not a real living, mooing cow, of course. A butchered cow. A very tasty butchered cow.

I had heard of people doing this, buying cows or part of a cow. I guess it's more economical that way. (More economical providing that you generally buy beef.) So Jason and I, along with my parents and my brother's family, all agreed on it. We ended up with a full cow.

In theory, I think this is very good idea. In practice, I think it could be a good idea.

However, when the meat arrived today all nicely packaged in one pound increments, my eyes had a hard time taking in the sheer amount of meat we now own. I might have panicked just a teensy tiny bit.

First of all: We now own 63 pounds of meat. For someone who has probably not even purchased 63 pounds of beef in her entire married life, that is A LOT of meat. Our storage freezer is now totally full. No less than THIRTY pounds of hamburger are waiting to be turned into...tacos? meatloaf? hamburgers? I'm happy about it, but my precious frozen blueberries are feeling a bit squished. Some of them have volunteered to be turned into shiny top blueberry cobbler for dessert tomorrow evening. They need out of the cramped quarters.

Second of all: After I finished putting all that meat in the freezer, I realized that we're going to have to start eating meat a lot more often than once every two months.

There's goes my New Year's Resolution of becoming a vegetarian.

(Fortunately that wasn't going to be my New Year's Resolution anyway.)

On Behalf of a Grateful Nation

A lot is written about our veterans, and deservedly so. I have nothing but gratitude for those who serve our country through their military service.

A lot is also written about The Greatest Generation. My grandparents were part of this generation. Both my grandpas fought in WWII. My maternal* grandpa (the one who lived next door) briefly fought in World War II, and then also in the Korean War (I've written about his brave combat service here). My grandma didn't fight in the war. She didn't work in a factory. She wouldn't have ever identified with Rosie the Riveter.

But she raised four kids. Often without my grandpa around.

 

I heard someone ask her once how she managed to raise those little kids by herself. How could she keep the house clean? Cook meals? Do laundry? Do everything by herself? How could she do it?

"Well," she said, "I just did it because that's what I had to do."

And that was that.

This Veterans Day, I remember not only my grandpa who served 20 years in the Army, but also my grandma, who raised a family while my grandpa served. She may not have earned a purple heart like my grandpa did, and she never climbed the ranks to achieve "Major" status, but her work was still vitally important. She loved the Army, even if that meant the Army made her job a little harder sometimes.

Many, many years after my grandpa retired from the Army, my grandma had one last role in supporting my grandpa's military service.

 

The Army that had made her responsibilities so much more difficult those 20 years my grandpa was in the service gave her one final task, one that was perhaps the hardest of all.

 

She took the flag, held it tightly, and listened to the soldier solemnly thank her "on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army" for her husband's faithful service.

I'll never forget seeing my grandpa's flag-covered casket, or watching the young soldier present the tightly wrapped American flag to my grandma, or hearing the gun-salute crack through the cold February air.

Forever I'll remember the sacrifice my grandpa made.

Forever I'll remember my grandma's sacrifice as well.

For both I am profoundly grateful.

______________________________________________________

*Corrected from an earlier version that read "paternal grandpa"

The real trouble with America's schools? Meeps.

Weird news of the day:

Danvers High [Salem, MA] parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word "meep" at school, they could face suspension.

Meep doesn't mean much, unless you are Beaker — the hapless, orange-haired assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on "The Muppet Show."

While meep may be nonsense, what it represented was no laughing matter to the high school's administration. High school Principal Thomas Murray said students were using it and other words to disrupt school in a particular part of the building on Cabot Road. The term later became part of a disruption some students were planning online.

I taught high school enough years to know that anything--even, uh, meeping--can get out of hand. But still. It's so silly.

If only this was the most serious thing our schools had to worry about.

Meep meep.

Week 281: She loved the Army

When my grandpa joined the Army, he asked my grandma--his friend and neighbor--if she would send him a picture and write to him so that his name would get called during mail call. She wrote to him. I don't know what exactly she wrote, but it was enough to capture my grandpa's heart. In 1938, they got married. And just like that, Grandma was an Army wife.

My grandma often talked about how much she loved the Army. Even just a few days before she passed away, she said again to my youngest brother, "I loved the Army." Considering this small town girl hadn't been to a big city until she was 17, getting a life of moving from place to place--all over the country and the world--was an exciting life for her. It was hard too, but she loved it. She did not want to be a farmer's wife. She grew up a farmer's daughter, and she figured whatever the Army had to offer her was bound to be better than farming.

So many of her stories of Army life blend together in my mind. There were homes that had bugs; homes that had squeaky floors; homes that needing painting. In Japan, they had women who helped her with the cleaning and admired my aunt and my mom's blonde hair. Oh, how she loved having women help her with the daily chores.

 

Since I got to travel quite a bit with my grandparents, I often was able to see the different places my grandpa had been stationed, sometimes even driving by the house they might have lived in. In 1997, my family went to Hawaii with my grandparents. We drove through the neighborhood they had once lived in; we walked around Tripler Army Hospital where my grandpa had worked; we visited the friends they had had when they lived in Honolulu.

   

It has never been far from my mind that my grandpa was in the military. I can hardly bear to watch World War II movies because I always picture my grandpa as a young kid fighting in the war. He didn't talk much about his Army days.

My grandma, on the other hand, loved to talk about her Army days. Her experience makes me smile. It wouldn't be a life I would want, but then again, I didn't have the childhood she had. From Washington to Oregon to California to Nevada to Japan and finally Hawaii, it was the Army that took my grandma where she wanted to go. 

She might have been a small town girl who grew up during the Great Depression, but she had big dreams. That's why she loved the Army.

Pearl District & Halloween

A couple events got a bit lost in the shuffle of all that happened in October. Before November gets too far ahead of me, I figured I better record some of the fun times that happened the last two weeks of October.

First of all, when my sister had planned on just being in town for a few days (rather than what turned into two weeks), we made a date to take a trip into the Pearl District of Portland.

If you're going to the Pearl District, and if you were an English major in college, then you are required to go to Powell's Books. It's a rule. Trust me.

Those are two bags of books Andrea is carrying there (yes, she's carrying my bag because I had to carry the camera). I picked up a couple of children's books, as well as The Year of Magical Thinking (I had to have my own copy after listening to the audiobook from the library), The Things They Carried (my favorite Tim O'Brien book which I had loaned out and not received back), and a few copies of Angela's Ashes that I'm giving to my Irish lit students when the semester ends.

Naturally, all that book shopping at Powell's left us mighty hungry, so we walked down to the street for a little vegan fare.

I had seen Blossoming Lotus written up somewhere, and decided that we needed a new experience since I've never been in a vegan restaurant before. We were not disappointed. The food was so yummy, and I would definitely go back (oh, if only I lived closer and I'd get it for take-out!). I had the black bean chili burrito, and Sis had the Incan Bowl. Yum yum yum. Big portions too!

After lunch, we headed over a block for some cupcakes at Cupcake Jones.

They were good. I'm more a light and fluffy cupcake kind of girl, so these seemed a little heavy for me. But you know. Chocolate. Yum.

A sunny October afternoon in the Pearl with your bestest sister? Fabulousness.

As for Halloween fabulousness, we had a penguin named Bingu ("Bingu," she said, "like Bingo with a 'u'") and a fairy princess ballerina ("Fairies are my favorite! Princesses are my favorite! Ballerinas are my favorite!").

Yes, in fact, both the costumes are from Sydney's ballet recitals. (Hooray for being able to reuse costumes that cost us a small fortune!)

When I was a kid, I was always a little jealous of my suburban friends at Halloween time. There are no streets to trick-or-treat on around here unless you feel like walking up long dark driveways only to be met by someone who refuses to give out candy on the basis that Halloween is the Devil's holiday. Now that I am older, wiser, and have experienced the joys of suburban living, I have learned the trick that rural kids can do in order to get themselves candy: drive to the suburbs!

We trick-or-treated around Jason's parents neighborhood, which will probably be our tradition from now until eternity. I will not be denied my miniature Snickers bars. Oh, and yes, the girls had a grand time too.