In Search of a Cure

There are so many fantastic food blogs out there and I have been following a few. It happened accidentally. Romancing the Bee is a mixed bag of wonderful information about bee keeping, gardening and amazing recipes using honey among other great topics.

Texana’s Kitchen was a find from another blogger. This lady is hilarious. I’m always learning something new from her as I dab tears of laughter from my eyes. She also has some very profound points of view that I enjoy.

One of my fellow writing class students writes a food blog for a local paper. I mentioned that I was not a foodie but would read it anyway. Then I find out that the phrase “foodie” is now an insult according to floreakeats. I found this through Texana’s Kitchen. Who knew?

Not only did I not consider myself a foodie, I’ve had a love, hate relationship with food my entire life. I love food, but since the age of 8, I’ve used food for comfort. It’s been my stress reliever and the cause of it.

Before I started my health routine

Cooking food is also how I love others. I was never a great cook. I knew how to cook cheap and feed many. On my first date at 17, I didn’t even know how to cut the steak my date ordered for me. I’d never had one. No one ever got sick from my cooking and my kids liked most of it. It’s the kind of cooking my dad called “belly filling”. I learned from watching my mother cook. I make a few things very well but there isn’t much variety.

When my family first moved to southern California in the late 70’s, we moved into our first real house though it was still a rental. I got my first crack at gardening and I found great peace in being outside. Our next door neighbor was a genius at gardening. One afternoon, she came to the fence with a bowl of fresh strawberries and a container of whipping cream. I thanked her profusely, looking at the whipping cream and strawberries like they were foreigners. In fact, to me they were. I had never prepared fresh fruit of any kind nor seen real whipping cream. Thanks to her patient instructions, I soon became adept at making the luscious treat.

Taste buds are a requirement for good cooking. Mine are missing. For the first half of my life, food was often scarce. Spices were nonexistant. People wondered how I could eat stale popcorn, chips etc. It was easy. If I found it and it didn’t move away, I ate it. Yes, I’m an addict and I had treatment for it. There is appears to be no cure but I’m finally once again, getting a handle on it. My diet right now is minimal to keep the addictions at bay. I’m adding as much spice to my food as possible to fool my brain into thinking it’s getting wonderful stuff.

So much better, still a long way to go.

When my scale finally reads (HEALTHY), I might try a few of those wonderful recipes I’ve read. In the meantime, I love reading about wonderful food and enjoying it vicariously. Maybe one day we will be good friends again. Do you have a good relationship with food?

“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.”
― Erma Bombeck

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself

In Search of the meaning of Father

Father’s Day is here once again. I don’t believe I’ve ever done a post explicitly about my dad. I read all the stories about close relationships with dads and am always struck with envy. My dad was a good man. He just wasn’t around much and didn’t know what to do with us when he was home. I had almost no memory of his existence before the age of 6 ½. Military life kept him mostly far from us. When he was home, there seemed an uncertainty about him. What was he supposed to do with these little rug rats? He was the oldest of 10 children. When I asked him toward the end of his life how he could go away from his family and not write to his mother, he said he was just another mouth to feed. That sentence broke my heart and answered all my questions.

Dad gave what he had to give. He was the one who sat with me on Sunday afternoons holding a dictionary. I was between 11-13 and struggling with the English language. The nuances were difficult to grasp and I was always feeling like such an idiot because I didn’t understand what someone was saying. He would open that dictionary and pick a random word, tell me to spell it and tell him what I thought it meant. I learned root words, prefixes and suffixes from him. He taught me to guess what a word meant by the root of that word. There isn’t a conversation I can’t follow now because of that drill. Words finally became my friends and they fascinated me.

My dad was hardcore military. Strict and meticulous as any soldier needs to be. He sacrificed his toys so his kids could have some. One Christmas, during the dictionary years, he spent a lot of time at the base wood shop, building a desk with a typewriter insert for me as well as a bookcase. My love of books was already in full bloom. He sold his shotgun that he hunted with, to buy my brother a bike. No more squirrels or rabbits in our pots.

Just a child in uniform.

After he retired, I discovered we were reading the same books. He would devour everything Edgar Casey had as well as anyone else, in his spiritual quest. We were traveling the same path 2000 miles apart. We could finally have a conversation of sorts. Retirement was very hard on him. Without the structure of the military, he seemed to flounder. He was a man of deep commitment. That I knew when my mother would try his patience to no end and he would say he was there until he left the planet. He came back to Germany for my mother and I when so many had abandoned the children they produced. It took until I was four to get all the channels and hoops jumped. He may not have been the warm, cuddly dad so many have but he was a good example of tenacity and doing what was right in spite of popular opinion. I was able to be by his side as he drew his last breath and hold his memory fondly as I write this. He made the writing possible. Thanks Dad.

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself

In Search of a Little Progress

I’ve been in retreat for the last couple of weeks. Sometimes one just needs time for reflection. My routine for health was getting more sporadic and I needed to figure a way to get back on track. If all I had to look forward to the first thing in the morning was exercise, I didn’t want to get up. Since that wasn’t working I gave myself permission to change it. Now I get up, have one cup of my watered down coffee, write in my journal, then I do my exercise. It’s so much better that way and it has led to enough weight loss, I am now finally below what my driver’s license says. Imagine that!

I need pockets on everything.

It needed a butterfly on the back left shoulder. I don’t do tatoo’s so this has to do

I have been busy doing practical things as well. The work goes a little slower these days but that no longer matters. Enjoying the challenge of solving a puzzle (sewing pattern) is good exercise for the brain. I have made four of these big shirts so far. The last one I made more than four years ago. One of the shirts is so large, it’s still in storage somewhere and I made one for a friend for Christmas several years before the Bells struck. They are supposed to be big, hence the name “Big Shirt” to go over something else. I like the layered look and with these, I can be a bit funky.

The back of the flannel shirt. I can’t take a picture of myself in it.

I also embroidered a t-shirt that has been in the top of the closet for over 2 years waiting. There’s a stack of them I bought wholesale to make gift shirts. Just one peach shirt in the bunch and it needed a butterfly on it.

Peach t-shirt for underneath

it became a butterfly

So as I continue on my journey searching for the missing pieces of my soul, I will do my meditation at the sewing machine. My next project is a small quilt for a friends rescue dog they just brought home. She is a 12 year old terrier that is blind in one eye. Cloe cuddled right next to me when I went to visit. I’m hoping to have the blanket done before going back. In between, my daughter is working on making a blouse for herself while I pass on my vast (?) knowledge to her. She is enjoying my souped up machine and the fact someone is there to let her know that she is indeed doing a good job.

It’s the little bit of forward movement that seems to be most encouraging. Being task oriented is a hard habit to give up. It’s how I measure my myself. Not very Zen of me but I take my Zen where I can get it. Like not needing things to be absolutely perfect. I’m glad you can’t see my sewing close up.

How do you measure progress or do you even need to do that to yourself?

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. ~
George Bernard Shaw

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself