The Simple Poppy

Farewell October!

2011-10-31T16:10:00.000-04:00

October is such a strange month. A month full of days where the sun is bright, the clouds are an impossibly pure white in a blue, blue sky and we can all romp around in our shirtsleeves. You awaken the next day to charcoal skies sending raindrops to earth and you must grab your nearest warm jacket. I typically love October, cool enough for wonderful autumnul clothing, not so cold that I begin to hate life. This month had its share of gorgeous days and warm sweaters, but I'm afraid this October was lost on me. Many endings, both of life and other less tangible things. After my last post a woman I knew for almost 20 years died - as everyone says, these things come in threes. This October alternated between the bitter and the beautiful. It snowed only a few days ago, enormous flakes the size of a man's thumb, fluttering down horizontally in front of our amazed eyes. It frightened me for the winter to come, I closed my eyes and imagined I was in Greece, and that the searing warmth of the fan heater was really from the sun. October kicked my ass in a so many ways, but lessons learned, and now I'm feeling pretty buoyant, like a giddy balloon let loose in the sky.

I'm actually looking forward to November even though I usually tend to agree with Tom Waits:

November has tied me

to an old dead tree

get word to April

to rescue me

-Wet drives through the inner city, camera balanced to capture murals

- Vibrant plant life, an explosion of daisies, wisps of of pinkish grasses, unknown clownish clusters, berries in just the shade of purple my eldest loves

- Sunlight through the leaves of a fig tree, a tree I imagine is not loving the filtered sunlight of our bedroom as much as the rays on our patio

- The tiniest, most adorable eggplant ever grown

- Possibly the best and most delicious way to end the tomato season, Tomato Corn Pie

How was your October?

A Few Disjointed Thoughts...

2011-10-13T16:01:00.000-04:00

Some disjointed thoughts today on grief, comforting, silence, and how some of the most important things we humans have to offer don't cost a thing...

* * *

There are times when the frailty of life comes into sharp relief. These times also highlight what people really find important in life. In our life, during the past few weeks, there have been two expected deaths, a friend was incapacitated by surgery, and just this morning I learned of a neighborhood woman with four children who was shot down accidentally in the street by men who were aiming at someone else. The people who died were acquaintances that I was not very close too, but whose passing has brought a lot of grief to both good friends and The Simple Man - it's been a sad time. A friend of mine had surgery and needed help with everything, even if it was just sitting with her to allow her exhausted husband to rest.

I have been thinking about what comfort truly is. In both grief and pain - no one is thinking about their new i-phone, 1000 count sheets, grandmother's tableware, or their car. People are too miserable, depressed, sensitive, and/or high on painkillers to read or watch television. What people really want is usually the free and intangible. They want for you to show up. They want for you to care. They want for you to understand how they have been affected. They don't want stuff. A quick message of cheer and commiseration. Help getting dressed. Food, of course, is always good, because it's fuel for the body and a relief in times of stress not to have to think about it - but all the other things in life the marketing drones have convinced us we need to be happy fall away in the face of real and utter unhappiness. Which begs the question - if these things can't make you happy when circumstances are taking you out in the alley and beating the hell out of you - do they really make you happy at all?

* * *

In college I took a fascinating linguistic anthropology course. In one section, we learned that the western Apaches have attitudes they adopt when dealing with people suffering from a variety of different emotions. One was roughly translated to: "Being With Those Who Are Sad." I was particularly impressed that while one can offer support in terms of food and their presence, one was not supposed to really talk to the bereaved. Basically, they consider it a hardship for the "sad person" to have to make an effort to talk. And everyone already knows they are taking it hard - so there isn't any reason to keep asking them how they are or anything else. If they want to talk, you are there to listen. If they don't, you are a silent comfort. It can be quiet healing time without it being lonely time. I find this beautiful, but also incredibly logical.

We grow up believing that it acceptable, to a degree, to be lusty and/or angry. If you watch popular television today, these two feelings are the most prevalent. Conversely, it's not alright to be sleepless, miserable, grieving, mentally ill or anything else that makes you or the people around you uncomfortable. We are in a consumer culture where when someone's partner dies, and they find themselves awake and depressed afterwards, they are prescribed a drug rather than being assured that when the person who is the mother of your children, who you have spent the last 30 years of your life with is gone, it's perfectly normal to feel and act in this way.

* * *

Humans want to fill the space on every occasion, and we are encouraged to on so many levels that it's not surprising that we are neither comfortable with silence, simplicity, or letting things run their course. After cards are given, food is brought, and the poor person has had to reply 100 times to sympathetic, "Are you sure you're alright?" people tend to shrug sheepishly and go on their way - we haven't been taught alternative ways of comforting. And of course we don't want to face that discomfort ourselves. I'm reminded of a great Danish divorce film (Prague) where the couple goes to Prague to deal with the estate of the man's dead father. His wife wants reassurance that her unwillingness to go to the morgue with her husband to collect the dead man's things is fine with him,"You know I'm not good with that sort of thing, right?" Her husband laughs bitterly and mutters, "Yes, because I am so good at this sort of thing!" Really, most people aren't good at these things. It's more the effort you put into it than a natural talent.

And sometimes you just sit there with the person, not speaking. Their face dripping and you palm away their tears and put your arms around them. You lay in the dark with them and hold their hand. You help them throw out the trash from a former life, braving giant spiders, mosquitoes, and waves of spite from exes. You wash them up when they can't do it themselves. You bring tissues. You bring chocolate. You bring corny jokes. You bring hope. You bring a vision of the future when they can't think past this dark spot. You can do all this. You can do it for free.

Share some of the best things you have to offer for free in the comments. And I'm taking a page from Tanja's book (er, blog) and commenting first!

Into Autumn

2011-09-22T12:48:00.001-04:00

As I grow older, I go into autumn and winter more circumspectly than I did before. I have a lot of love for autumn; winter clothes are my true clothing style, leather boots, looped scarves, long sweaters. Then there are the steaming cups of tea in front of a drizzly window, the only brightness being the swirl of fall leaves. Family hikes without heat exhaustion but rather exhilaration, cold noses, and the aroma of leaf decay. It's also cozier, everything shuts down earlier, including bodies, so as the sun goes down, we settle into the house more deeply; there are books to be read, projects to delight, and the sweetness of snuggling without having to tell someone they are making you sweat like an animal and could they please move over?

Yes, autumn is pretty damn fine. But sometime after my first child, for the first time in my cool weather loving life, I felt depressed during the winter. Until my mid twenties, I had never missed the sun at all during the winter months. I once read that children born in the darker months seem to do better with less sun than children born in summer. Who knows if it's true, but I'm a December child and I usually reveled in the winter. Maybe it is hormones or aging or a combination of both, but winter has seemed increasingly blue to me. And not in a good, blue is my favorite colour way. So I've been thinking about ways to help me not only tolerate the dark months ahead, but enjoy them as well.

I think I might finally have a handle of this knitting thing. It's taken a long time, but my daughter and I now have another knitter willing to help us when we are pathetic. Which is all the time. I've been anxious to learn how to knit for some time because it's so portable, unlike sewing, and I can never, ever be still. I love the idea of being able to sit under a pile of blankets while still being productive.

The kitchen (Yes, people, we are still working on it. Though it really is in its end stages now - finished pictures within the month!) really inspired me to make my space work for me. I vowed to never be one of those women with pink cabbage rose upholstery and a scared looking husband. Easy enough, I don't like flowery upholstery, but somehow, in my fear to be girly, our house looks like only very clean men live here. Everything is dark and heavy and it makes me just want to collapse and moan. So we're busting out the white paint and linen everywhere. My mom assures me that spending the winter trapped inside a house you really love is much better than the alternative.

Last year was the first year I really stockpiled food so I didn't have any food emergencies. It was a lucky thing because we had snow ALL. WINTER. LONG. Here I have to admit that I am not a confident snow driver. It makes me so nervous that my stomach cramps and I feel like I'm 100 years old. That means that if we run out of something I'm likely to tell people to go eat snow for dinner before I will shop in the snow. I let my stockpile deplete naturally over the summer and the kitchen remodeling, but I'm building it back again. This is one thing I refuse to be minimalist in, nothing is worse than finding you have to drag your kids out for grocery shopping when there is two feet of snow on the ground.

Most of my minimalistic purging took place over the winter last year. After that I realized I needed an uncluttering break, and concentrated on other things. While I certainly got the bulk of our unwanteds out of the way, after living a few months with my decisions, I now see that I could do more. I'm refreshed and relish the opportunity to poke around in the more obscure places this time around and see what needs to go.

I've written before how it makes me want to sit around and eat bread, which sends me into a semi-lethargic state. This quasi comatose circle begins with it being too cold to want to do anything but eat and burrow which leads to then feeling like I can't do anything but eat and burrow. I won't be doing a cleanse during winter, but I'm absolutely going to limit my comfort food intake, particularly gluten foods and dairy, and go heavy on winter vegetables.

I'm terrible about getting out every day when it's cold. Autumn isn't usually a problem until late in the season when it begins to get bitter and then I simply want to sit in front of the heater. Last year I did myself a real disservice by putting off renewing my tattered supply of long johns until I thought it was ridiculous to buy them since spring was around the corner. Hence, I was always freezing and reluctant to go out at all. This year I'm making sure we are ready for winter and I will be forcing myself out with the kids for walks and playing as much as I can stand it. I always feel better for it, it's mostly just psyching myself out the door.

What makes the cold weather better for you?

Um, I Moved. Also, I've lost all editing ability.

2011-09-10T12:09:00.002-04:00

I had posted about moving blog platforms on my Typepad blog, but was so flustered by the amount of computer gymnastics it took me to do all of this, that I ended up switching the feed before it got sent out. So while subscribers are still getting the emails and their RSS updated - everything looks weird and different with no explanation. Nearly all my past postings are over here, with photos, but I haven't had a chance to fix the broken inner links yet. Please feel free to email me if you come across something that needs fixing! Also, the address is now:

http://www.thesimplepoppy.com/

Yay!

Things might be in progress with the blog for a little while, and I know that I hit the publish button way too soon on my last post. You guys really don't have to ignore gross grammatical errors or mistakes; I'd much rather know! Thanks to a friend I went back a 4th time and checked again. Still mistakes. Sometimes the whole insomnia + toddler + never ending kitchen reno + earthquake and hurricane (!) + neverending rain = violence against the English language. And an apology to Meg Wolfe, since I realized when I went back that I not only committed three errors in that little quote, but spelled her last name wrong. Sheesh.

Going to get some rest! Have awesome weekends, everybody!

Pondering Pinterest

2011-09-07T17:52:00.000-04:00

I'm not on Facebook, I'm not a tweeter . . . twitterer (my blog is automatically posted on Twitter), and though I only subscribe to about 20 blogs, Pinterest has really grabbed me by the guts.

I discovered Pinterest a few months ago. I'd seen it mentioned several times, and had clicked over to it but I was only truly hooked after I visited Jaime's Pinterest boards when she mentioned them in a post. I joined because it seemed inspirational as well as practical - a visual way to keep track of what things I'm interested in. Up until Pinterest I had an enormous bookmarks list, containing anything from crafting to research links - and half the time I couldn't tell from the address what it was. Useless.

I collided with Pinterest roughly around the same time as I was reading Meg Wolfe's (The Minimalist Woman) book The Minimalist Woman's Guide to Having it All* Oh, the irony. Pinning took on a more sinister flavor as, after getting lost in the beautiful Pinterest wilds, I would ask myself whether it was really just an exercise in coveting what I could not have? Or even worse, was I being influenced to want things I never knew existed before simply by being exposed to them? Did voluntary simplicity and Pinterest not play well together?

link

In the beginning of Having it All there is a fantastic chapter on marketing and imposing a shopping moratorium on ourselves in order to allow our natural and inherent style and tastes to come out:

We need to create an environment of minimal outside influence, to give ourselves a fighting chance to really know ourselves, to know our true inner preferences. In such an environment there will be enough space, enough non- marketing/silence, to hear our own thoughts, to see see things as they really are, and get to know our essential selves.

Meg advocates a complete Stop Shopping; as in no brick and mortar stores, no virtual stores, no catalogs, no magazines and no anything else that is going to interfere with your ability to rein in your marketing-crafted consumer lust. While I have never imposed any kind of shopping ban on myself, I've often spent long stretches (months) where I haven't bought anything but necessities. When I consciously chose to pursue "less," which obviously meant very little shopping, and my focus was on purging rather than decorating - what I really liked was finally, and totally clear. And I've never even really had a shopping problem, so I can only imagine what kind of benefit Stop Shopping would have on someone who does. I think it's a fantastic tool to break the cycle.

Link

Once you've broken the grip consumerism has on you though, can you indulge in eye candy without going overboard? Can you choose items for your life, the life you live now without reverting to creating an image though stuff of the person you thought you might want to be? Or who your mother or husband or neighbor thinks you should be? So do I use Pinterest to pin what I will never be, never have, and never make? Well, my conclusion is mostly no, with a little bit of maybe.

The thing is, humans have been inspriring and inspired since the beginning of time. I don't want to not be inspired - I just don't want to be goaded into wanting more than I can ever have. In general, I think I'm fairly good at this. I'm not much of a shopper, I receive no catalogs and don't subscribe to any magazines. I occasionally buy a magazine in the store if I'm interested. I visit a few decor/style blogs that are close to what I like. My tastes are probably too plain to ever be popular, so much of what I see doesn't appeal to me. Pinterest, on the other hand, is great because you can usually find what you like grouped together either by searching or finding someone whose taste is similar to yours. Most of what I pin, I am capable (somewhat) of reproducing, whether it's an actual items or just the ambiance. I'm not pinning castles in a "Future Home" category, anorexics for "Thinspiration" (Gah! Never!) or a 16 layer cake in the "Food" section. Also, I've spent years dithering around not knowing what I wanted my house to look and feel like, so now that I do know, Pinterest has been invaluable to me. Especially since decorating terrifies me and I prefer to simply lift what I like from what I see rather than come up with something on my own.

I'm curious to know how many of you who are trying to simplify feel there is a conflict between that and browsing, either in store or virtually, for beautiful things? Do you feel that exposure weakens your willpower or makes you unhappy?

* Meg's book is beautifully written and a wonderful look at minimalism. I have not done it justice here, but you should certainly download a copy - the suggested donation price is very low: $3

Food Musings

2011-08-16T13:21:00.000-04:00

Food is such a complicated and touchy subject. At some point in the quest for simple living, the subject of what to eat will come up. People often make judgements about someone's lifestyle by how they eat, just as they do with raising children, watching television, keeping a supply of reusable bags ready to go, driving a hulk vs. a compact, or anything else. It can be used as a sort of barometer about where our mindfulness lies. Of course, people are quite often wrong about these stereotypes, but it doesn't stop them making them - and food can be explosive. Anyone who has stumbled upon an argument involving Weston Price followers and vegans/vegetarians knows this.

My upbringing and background are very health conscious, so it's natural that I would be actively seeking to improve my family's diet now that I'm older too. The question is: Just what is the best way to eat?

We eat a diet of whole foods, mostly plants, some dairy, a little fish, very few sweets. I think our biggest vice is our overindulgence in bread. Just as I believe there is no one way to raise children, be a minimalist, worship, or live I don't believe there is one perfect way of eating that will satisfy and nourish all human beings. Because, um, we're all different and live in different places. I base my views on eating firmly around logic, and I'm certainly not going to expect Laplanders, Inuits, or Saharans (or anyone else, for that matter) to become vegetarian in climates that clearly cannot support growing produce for much, if not all of the year. And no, I have heard the argument that they could import these items - I see that as completely unsustainable, both economically and environmentally.

We are bombarded not only about what food is better to eat, but also the pros and cons of certain foods, sometimes backed up by scientific studies, often not. I find it incredibly difficult to wade through the chaff sometimes. For instance, a few years ago, after reading a series of articles about soy; I cut our consumption back to only one block of tofu a week for the four of us. While I was concerned about The Simple Man possibly getting too much estrogen from soy, I was more horrified by the suggestion that it might block nutrients from getting to the thyroid, causing it to glean what it could from other sources, as in nuclear. We in Philadelphia are surrounded by working power plants and the rate of thyroid cancer in our area is 42% higher than the national average, and is thought to be linked to the plants. BUT THEN, Leo Babauta wrote this fantastic article about soy, and I'm completely rethinking my views on it. I still don't want to eat highly processed soy, but I'd definitely add more tofu, which we all love, back in, and not be so wary of other soy products. I had no idea there was such an underlying agenda against soy, but I realized how clear it was after reading his post. All this is to say, at least in my case, instead of truly researching new information (which, frankly, I don't even know how to do, especially when we're talking about peer reviewed studies . . .blahblahblah) I just believed. Hmmm.

Another food I quit buying was agave syrup. Again, I read some eyebrow raising facts about it, such as it being anywhere from 50% to 90% fructose (HFCS is only about 45%) and how refined and processed it is. I really loved it too, but I gave it up, worrying about the fact that fructose is processed in the liver. A friend recently asked, on this post from last year about jaggery (unrefined sugar) whether raw agave was better than regular. I don't know, but I started reading about agave again. While it's been proven that a steady diet very high in HFCS will damage the liver, will eating a few tablespoons of agave a day harm you? Just as consuming some dairy and meat? Or soy? And after all, a lot of fruit has a very high fructose content, and while fruit is in it's original form, I still wonder.

I don't know the answer to this. It seems that in our society we want to be able definitively label foods good or bad according to our own agendas and beliefs. I'm also backing away from information propagated by groups who are dogmatically attached to a certain way of eating no matter what. I'm beginning to think that's simply not the way to choose what to eat. Naturally I'm not talking about highly processed and refined foods, but rather the arguments for and against meat, dairy, various sweeteners, lowfat vs. regular fat, soy etc. I've even recently seen articles advocating against honey because it's too sweet and I just have to say, seriously, give it a rest people. Honey is like a magical food, I will believe nothing else!

I'll end my food musings here, and just say that this post is about health. Also, I know there are people who feel it's wrong to eat animal products, just as there are people who feel that animals were given to mankind in order for us to eat them - I respect both positions, while not adhering to either one. I prefer not to eat meat that isn't fish, and that feeling is primarily compassion based, but I'm flexible, and if I were truly starving, I'd have no compunction whatsoever!

Tell me how you eat and if it's related to simple living. Are you eating the way you want to? Are you confused about what's healthy or not? Strong feelings one way or the other?

Edited to add (8/18/2011): Two things - first of all, I think it's so great this discussion has been so civil! I was worried because a lot of people unsubscribed when this post came out and I thought maybe it was offensive, but everyone's comments have been so interesting, so I appreciate it!

Secondly, I mentioned that I don't know the answer to the agave question. Just this morning, though, I came across an outstanding series of articles on it and felt I had to share, since it was agave that sparked this post. Below are the links:

http://betterworldcookies.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-i-use-agave-nectar-examination-of.html

http://www.braintoniq.com/is-agave-bad-for-you-fallacy.php

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400722/Is-Agave-Syrup-Dangerous.html

http://hansenschoice-greenhealth.com/2010/04/07/agave-lowest-natural-glycemic-index-sweetner-make-sure-it-is-unprocessed-raw-from-the-sap/

Go forth and be informed! Or maybe more confused, but hopefully not!

A Minimal Birthday

2011-07-25T06:52:00.000-04:00

Last week I had an eight year old and now she's nine. Our birthday celebrations have always been simple, and this year was no exception. We're a family of shy introverts; planning the kind of birthday party that is common today in America is beyond my reach and desire. So perhaps I fail in this part of motherhood. I don't think I care. My girls are still floating and dancing and giggling and shrieking, so I hope this is not creating a dark scar on their hearts to share with therapists in later years. It's our tradition, an understated, family oriented gathering, focused on the food that someone spent the day creating - kneading, pouring, grating, and whipping their happiness at this person's existence into deliciousness. My mother's family had these kinds of birthdays, and when we came along, her five girls, this is what she gave us.

Consequently, we've raised our children to have, well, low material expectations on their birthday. They are both blessed to have been born in beautiful months, months that invite humans out to play, walk, forage, run, and bike. We've shown them that they have our attention on their birthdays. They have our time and skillset for whatever they are creating that day. What they consider to be gastronomically delightful will be served with a flourish. We'll all spend time together. We're very casual about gifts; this year I'm planning on taking my brand new nine year old out to pick up some art supplies later in the week. I would say that our focus is less of a celebration of the day one person in our family was born and more of a celebration about the role and space that person occupies in our family and our appreciation of that.

This is not a minimalist rant against birthday parties. I'm just sharing an aspect of our lives that has always been minimal and is probably even more so lately. I have been to some fantastic little parties; they were small, focused on playing rather than things, and not heavily structured. It's so easy to get carried away today - where only a 2K weekend in Manhattan with a gaggle of teens will do. Where some girl whose parents fall on the lower end of the income spectrum feels stigmatized because she doesn't have enough money to chip in on a piece of expensive jewelry for someone in her cliques birthday. That's a shame. A birthday, to my mind, has very little to do with belongings and places and everything to do with gratitude and love. If a length of streamers and some friends helps celebrate that, good. If debt, anxiety, and the feeling of being overwhelmed swamp you - not good.

For us, it was a lovely birthday weekend.

A sunflower bloomed after nearly a week of constant checking on its tightly closed status. To me, auspicious. She's a sunny, mild child. Sweet mango juice runs through her veins. Her face is round and open; I hope this is never lost. I also hope her days are filled with the splash of joy an open sunflower brings.

Balloons, a novelty for the toddler; she called them her ears (WTH?).

Requests for Key Lime Pie. It's a fresh favourite and pairs well with our weather now.

Homemade pasta; a true sign of love as our kitchen is still dismantled and pasta paraphernalia was strewn across a messy table.

Nine candles. I'm happy. I'm wistful. Her feet long ago shed their dinner roll chubbiness and now her mind is maturing - it's always too fast, yes?

Blow by blow accounts of what my uterus was doing at this time or that time 9 years ago.

Repeated trips with just Dad/The Simple Man to the hardware store. They come home with bits and bobs, copper tubing, wire, dreams of projects. Oh, and kitchen tiles. Lots of tiles.

How do you celebrate birthdays?

Kitchen Update and Others (Prettier) Things

2011-07-12T16:27:00.000-04:00

Tiles down. Gray grout to be applied tomorrow. White paint finished, mostly. That light fixture will go, we'll be getting a ceiling fan, which should be nice in this weather. Still a long way to go!

Last week was so busy I couldn't blog. The Simple Man laid the floor, a tile very deliciously named Rialto Terra. I have spent most of my life never seeing my name outside "Terra Cotta" (gardening pots and tiles) and "Terra Firma" (old maps), and now my name is impossibly hip; it's on anything and everything eco-conscious and chips and God only knows what else. It's very disconcerting. Anyhow, then I primed and painted the walls ULTRA. BRIGHT. WHITE. Yes, you read that correctly. I was hesitant about going this white, but my eldest was adamant. "Mom, this one is CLEANER. BRIGHTER. AIRIER. YOU WANT THIS ONE!" I cannot argue in Lowes with a 9 year old while my two year old is trying to eat grout powder and hide in a bidet. We purchased a no VOC paint and primer, both by Olympic. The primer didn't smell until you put your nose right in it, and even then it was mild. The paint was definitely stronger, but even then, if you walked out of the room, you couldn't detect any odor at all. I was really pleased because I wanted no VOC paint, but I didn't want to pay sixty dollars a gallon. While I painted I think the whiteness overwhelmed The Simple Man because he kept mouthing "insane asylum" at me and shaking his head. I refrained from a lecture on sensitivity because, well, he lives with me so he kind of knows what he's talking about. And he's building me a new kitchen. And I was happy.

I think I'm really going to love the white.

View a gallery of subway tiles in kitchen here

I also want white subway tiles for the back-splash. This presented a conundrum because our base cabinets won't be fitted into the wall, so do we tile the whole lower wall or just the foot or so of back-splash? I poked about on the internets, but all I could find was that it was better and typical to tile all the way to the floor behind the stove since it can be moved. So we decided to tile all the way down to the floor across the whole wall because it seems like it would look ridiculous to see a 12 inch span of tiles half way up the walls. Of course, after we made that decision, I saw several kitchens (mostly in Europe - all free standing) that had back-splash tile to the floor behind the cabinets. We were also a little worried about the subway tile because it's common in bathrooms, but I found a lot of great pictures of kitchens that use it, so I think it should be alright. We'll be using very white grout also; I saw some with darker grout, but dang if that doesn't look dirty to me. We haven't bought it yet, so if you can think of any enormous reason why this wouldn't be a good idea, please feel free to chime in.

The cabinets. Gah. I went to Ikea to drag my exhausted self around their Swedish exuberance and I just can't get into the kitchen cabinets at Ikea. There were some I liked, but to be honest, I imagined my kitchen to be free of textures and materials not found (fairly) directly in nature. We'll forget the liquid nails, cement board, and five gallon buckets of joint compound and focus on what my family will actually be running their fingertips along in the end. I wanted wood, rough linen, earthen tiles, glass - I did not picture laminate. It's a laminate lament. I might have to cave and get them; it's basically what we had planned when we started, but we'll see. We still have a bit more to do before thinking about it becomes crucial, and even if the kitchen is ready for the cabinets, I have an island I can move in there for counter space and my makeshift sink - so that gives me some time to think about it.

* * * * * * * *

Other happenings around our house? Our neem tree has exquisitely tiny white flowers blooming on it, and the scent is heady and exotic. It's similar to lily of the valley but with an intense, but light, green note. Our entire front porch is olfactory heaven.

The Simple Man has a miniature pomegranate tree. It was poorly looking all winter, being inside and everything. The moment the weather warmed he put it outside and now it has these amazing buds/flowers all over it. I'm not sure we'll actually get edible pomegranates, but it's look alone is worth it.

Made my own mayonnaise. This was more out of a desire to placate a hungry horde and cover up my inadequacies in grocery shopping than some foodie wish. BUT . . . this is the third time, and it's so easy, and inexpensive, and yummy that I've just stopped buying it. ETA: The recipe I used is from the fabulous and local (to me) Food In Jars blog. Many delicious canning recipes on there. I differed from the recipe in that I whisked my eggs with about a Tbsp. horseradish mustard. Nom. Nom.

Each year my neighbor, whose entrance adjoins mine, has this hydrangea bush that explodes in the most perfect, purplish blues. I've sadly killed about six of my own, hoping to recreate her magic, but now I just enjoy hers.

The delight of finding wild raspberries in the wooded park near our home. It was particularly awe inspiring to the toddler to find food in the "foyest" - she didn't want to leave.

Knowing that this small, pale, lavender coloured flower is going to be an eggplant sometime soon.

Our mint is flowering. Looks wonderful. It's amazing how incredibly lovely fruit, vegetables, and herbs can be in the various stages of their life.

And that is that. We hope to be finished by August, or at least mostly finished. We're both heartily sick of the kitchen, though we know it will be worth it, and I am about to lose my mind with all the mess it's made! Want to get back to normal!

The Halfway Point of Kitchen Hell

2011-06-28T12:16:00.000-04:00

Of course that title is a joke because I don't actually have a kitchen. My kitchen right now is a functionless room containing a hunky, sweaty man with a disgruntled expression on his face making a lot of noise with saws, drills, and heavy sighs. We are, however, at the point where there is no more demolition. The dry wall is all up, it needs a little more joint compound and sanding, and there is only a bit more of the subfloor to screw down before we start painting and laying the tile.

A few things we've decided on:

White. White walls, white tile back-splash, white cabinets. I will add blooms of colour later in the form of some linen dishcloths and curtains I intend to make once everything is installed and finished, but the main colour is white.

Wood countertops. It will warm the whiteness of the kitchen and I really like the look.

Terra Cotta coloured floor tiles. They are not actual terra cotta, but a little bit darker and of different material - more durable for the kitchen, and in an old world style. I had wanted wood floors, but when I mentioned this to The Simple Man he looked at me like I was speaking in tongues and then choked out: "In the kitchen?!?!" Well OKAY THEN. We mutually vetoed beige; we're both sick to death of beige and my mom and good friend (two people with better taste and eye for colour than myself) suggested terra cotta tiles.

No upper cabinets if we can possibly help it. The kitchen is claustrophobic. With everything arranged differently, I think we will be able to swing having no upper cabinets. I toyed with the idea of open shelves instead, but I'm not up for the maintenance at this time. We might install one shelf.

Freestanding cabinets. It's a bit of misnomer, since obviously the sink hooks up to the wall and the counter will connect everything, but they will, essentially, be easy to move like regular furniture. We've decided to do this because the very urban area we live in will always provide us with more than enough vermin to drive me to frothing insanity, and we've discovered that a favorite place for them is in the built in cabinets. There are channels we can't get into and of course there is a lot of empty space - so we are eliminating that.

Skinny, vertical storage. We decided, for more storage in lieu of upper cabinets, that we would go ahead and build very simple, tall, narrow book case shelves and attach a door to it. These will also be white, and should do the job.

Some inspiration I found helpful:

This is basically what we'll do, with the white, wood, and terra cotta.

This kitchen almost made me rethink my white tile back splash. In fact, I really can't look at it for too long without becoming all confused again because I love that shade of green.

This kitchen is a little bit too country for what we're doing (no beadboard!) but I still like it.

A very small kitchen; I love the colours, and again, the lack of upper cabinets makes it feel more airy.

I still come back to white. It just makes sense.

The look we're aiming for is small, a little rustic, and simple. It goes with the rest of our house and it's something we can both agree on, unlike any other style. I found it difficult to find a lot of small kitchen inspiration online because "small" in designer speak is usually quite a bit larger than my kitchen and an enormous farmhouse kitchen with islands, a butler's pantry and two ovens is not really helpful to me. I did end up finding lots of partial shots of smallish kitchens that helped me understand more of what I wanted. I loved the colours in some of them, but I've committed to white because I like it, but also because trying to match colours sends me into the fetal position. I feel paralyzed and I also don't like being tied to a certain colour scheme due to permanent fixtures, like cabinets.

My uber nifty makeshift sink. It's very high and it makes doing dishes much, MUCH easier on the back. I even debated making our kitchen sink this high, but decided it would be too weird. I don't know how you tall people wash your dishes without aching all the time! Also, please ignore the mess, we have the kitchen crammed into the dining room.

I have to really hand it to The Simple Man. He has done everything in his power to make this easier on the whole family. In the beginning, we were thinking it was possible that we were going to have several weeks without running water downstairs or a range. Well, so far I've spent exactly a half a day without water and a few days without the range. He spent extra time rigging up an ugly but perfectly functional sink in our dining room, made out of our old sink, leftover decking, two hoses, and hose nozzle head. While it's not very easy to wash dishes without a counter, it's a thousand times better than lugging them up to the bathroom, which I was having mental issues with anyway. He also put our range out on a small porch we have next to the kitchen and hook it up from there so I can still cook and bake. Plus, he works almost ten hours a day in a physically taxing, dirty and dangerous job, then comes home and works some more on the kitchen.

In a few more weeks we should be all finished, and it can't come soon enough!

Photo credits:

http://bit.ly/mlA3L5

http://bit.ly/jyPhGK

http://bit.ly/hES2tR

http://bit.ly/liM4aV

Dude, Where's My Natural Foods Store!?

2011-06-23T05:48:00.000-04:00

Whole Foods just isn't cutting it for me. I'm warning you now, this is a rant/lament.

The Whole Foods five minutes from my house is located in one of the wealthiest suburbs in the US. As if Whole Food wasn't intimidating enough with its slick and expensive hipness, I have to go and live near one where almost every customer and I are separated by an annual income of several hundred thousand dollars or more. I have more in common with Cajun gator hunters than I do with these people. A lot more in common.

We drive up in my car, one that was considered a luxury vehicle fifteen years ago but now boasts ripped leather seats and hopeless outdatedness. My children are in day old braids, wisps making a halo around their faces, clothed in an eclectic and slightly filthy mix of handmade, hand me downs, and deep discount; they're like the bright little gypsy girls you see in the Paris Metro, delightfully disheveled, bobbing up and down, hands open like butterflies. No Lilly Pulitzer or Hannah Anderson here, and I'm wearing the same Old Navy jeans I've worn every single day for 6 months.

I am self-conscious about going there. It is crawling with elephantine Lexus and Range Rover SUVs. Moms are lean and toned due to the personal trainers who work with them while their children attend 30k a year private schools. They come shopping in their insanely expensive Yoga pants, planning their next holiday abroad on their phone during checkout. Every park in the area is packed with the nannies who care for their children and at 4PM there is a veritable exodus of household workers plodding tiredly down the street to catch a bus that will carry them back to West Philly and beyond.

It's usually tense inside Whole Foods, because a lot of privileged people have privileged places to go and they want you out of their way. Immediately. And they can see, hear and smell that you are not one of them. The difference is palpable, reinforced by ageless class struggles, resentments, and disdain. It's so clear that the cashiers will ask if I really want to buy something if it rings up at an extravagant price, like seventeen dollars for bing cherries, but do not ask those who can obviously afford it. I certainly do not want to spend that much and they know it; the cashiers usually hired are from my neck of the woods.

Mine is a beautiful life. There's dirt, hard work, grease under the fingernails, laughter, spats, gypsum dust freaking everywhere, toddler talk, sweat, and happiness. I don't wish to live in anyone else's life, nor am I ashamed of who or what we are. I don't want to fit in, but I don't necessarily want to be noticed. I'm a naturally shy person and now that I'm in my thirties and over dyeing my hair the colour of flowers and rocking a septum barbell, I prefer to live under the radar as much as is possible.

It all makes me very much miss the co-op I grew up in. I miss the customers, who were an explosion of such variety that everyone "fit in."The woman who actually bothered to figure out what percentage of her taxes were going to support what, and then didn't pay for those she disapproved of or considered unethical. She miscalculated one year and the IRS sent her a "HA HA! You paid us!" letter - she fumed at the register about it. The radical feminist who couldn't understand why we kept taking down her anti-porn flyer that depicted a naked woman bound to a chair (we thought it wasn't, um, kid friendly enough), the enormously tall transgendered male to female who effected this change over years and was gracious when I apologetically got my pronouns mixed up and couldn't remember her female name. And the usual assortment of tiny girls with giant dreads and hairy armpits, Rastafarians, bearded bluegrass musicians, and jocular, butt pinching pagans. It was like going to a circus where Tom Waits was the ringmaster.

I miss the comfortableness of it. Jokes such as putting the nightly floor sweepings in a package labeled Floor Granola: Dust, oats, mud, dessicated spider...Or the closing time log that began as a way to communicate what we had done during the day but ended up being a raunchy, swear fest of a throw down between made up characters who wrote in impossible dialect. The 5 gallon bucket of homemade bulk tofu people raved over until we weren't allowed to sell it anymore due to "health regulations." The itinerant assistant manager, moonlighting as a puppeteer, teasing me at seven, and deciding that at fifteen I was old enough to be told, in a softly Georgian accent, that boys can't always be believed. All with a fatherly expression, while wearing a yellow baseball hat with silver wings, REM wailing in the background.

The people who worked and shopped at the co-op mindfully chose a lifestyle that set them apart from others. Most embraced living outside the mainstream and their choices were often not the easiest ones. Like feeling that the best way to cut down on your waste, carbon and household, was to bike miles to your co-op, laden down with glass containers, so that you could fulfill your volunteer work for the week and then go bulk shopping. Or to not partake in the status quo of anything, including: gender roles, religion, sexuality, employment, lifestyle, food, consumerism, etc. They were non-conformity warriors. Our co-op and what it represented was what these people believed in; it was never just a place to buy food. It was a community for those of us who either couldn't or didn't want a place inside the norm. It was interesting and alive and my education. Co-op life was like a souk, bursting with hawkers, vibrant goods, and lively clientele. Whole Foods is like going to the mall.

I miss you, Good Neighbor Co-op. If there's a co-op heaven, I know you're there. Sniff.

In the Spring of My Discontent Part II

2011-06-13T00:56:00.000-04:00

Sand Dune Garden

My goal as a child was to soak up every livable outdoor minute of the day that I could, pausing only to chew and swallow what my mother handed me, and ignore her warning calls in the gathering dark. I lived outside. I did not imagine, even as a teen and adult, working 40 + hours a week that I would not spend my life outside when I could.

My vision of the future has obviously changed over the years, evolving from the bizarre; me as a sharpish Katherine Hepburn type, living in an isolated cottage but needing a butler (?!), to the simple - my plan of just backpacking continually until one day I collapsed, died, and decomposed on a moor covered in heather.

I ever only planned the outdoor spaces that would be mine. Interiors were fleeting thoughts . . . windows, reading nooks. As a young teen I had a folder, plump with scissored pictures from discarded gardening catalogues; over and over again I cut out tiny shots of teak benches beneath drooping wisteria. I thought I would live in an actual greenhouse, wending my way through a tangle of plants to the kitchen.

As I grew older, my future environment became more ordinary. I would have a potato field. I would wear boots and overalls for the rest of my life. I'd grow asparagus and brush my face against their feathery tops. My plan, up until the moment The Simple Man squeezed my heart with his calloused, tobacco scented hand, was to graduate, buy a truck and Go. Go drive around the country: Biloxi, Texas, Savannah, Oklahoma, the Badlands. Then I would return to my first real land love, Scotland. What I would do once I hiked out of Glasgow (don't let anyone tell you Edinburgh is better, if you want real, and you like grit, Glasgow is it) no longer matters because it's been replaced with my life now. I have only a handful's worth of mourning in me over missing out on my wee adventures, because it's all been so, so good.

Outdoor Daybed

Good except for where we live. One third of my life has been spent in the urban northeast, an area famous for unrelentingly smashing humanity together as close as possible. I think I'm suffering from a deficiency in greeness. I am advised to take advantage of the park. This isn't what I wanted. I want to live outside. I want to cook outside. I want to grow my own food outside. I want to camp in my garden. I want to fold my laundry on a broad tree stump. I want to send my children outside. I don't want to stroll through the park a few times a week and then watch my kids scatter around the playground. That's visiting outside, not living outside. I want my children to live the seasons, not merely watch them from a window and feel their differing temperatures on their skin.

My indoors would be small, but filled with light. There would be enough land to yield the bulk of our yearly food. A tiny orchard, a grape arbour, and a pond. Chickens or quail. Energy efficient - possibly off grid - that's not a deciding factor for me. I want to breath early morning air from my kitchen garden and hear the subtle but unmistakable sounds of nature beginning the day, unadulterated by humans honking, polluting, talking on cellphones, spilling Starbucks, and the ever present thumping of the bass that occurs at all hours of the day in my neighborhood. I want quiet.

When I look back, it's easy to see that a life of voluntary simplicity, minimalism, and environmentalism have always been in my nature. These are the directions I drifted until I became conscious of this and made it intentional. For me, they are all interrelated, though I understand if it's not that way for everyone. I see my best life as one that is low impact on both myself and the earth, where the superfluous has been excised, leading me to appreciate the rest. The good news is that I can live my best life anywhere, as most people can, the sad news is that I'm living it where I don't want to be living it. And that's what my struggles over contentment are about; where we live. What, you thought I was tired of The Simple Man?

Sunset dinner

As I read over this post, I grin at the irony because here I am, endeavoring to live a life of less, reducing my desires one at a time, and all I've written is "I want." So be it; I've made my peace with what I really want. It's something I can't entirely control, passed down in my mother's description of her Dziadek's potager, the warm raspberries my Grandpapa grew, the joyously intense look on my mother's face as she plans her own garden for this year and the future; it was born in me.

I consciously strive every day to want less, accept what I have, and be grateful for the enormity of what my life has been so far. But this is the one thing I cannot get over, give up, or forget about. I suspect most of us who are mindful of our wants have that one item, or dream, we refuse to give up. My dream of the future never once included a lifetime spent inside, which is where I am most of the time by default, since we don't have a real outdoors space to retreat to. The day might come when I have to realize that it's not going to happen and readjust my view of the rest of my life, especially as this isn't a monetary issue, but rather a spousal issue (he was born here; it's complicated!). Ahem. Until then, I'm still saving those inspirational outdoor pictures . . . digitally!

Do you have a dream that won't shrivel up and die no matter how much easier it would be if it did?

Navigating Contentment

2011-06-08T11:20:00.000-04:00

An issue I've dealt with for a good part of my adult life is contentment. Before you think I'm about to blast some Zen platitudes at you - I'm not. No one could be further from Zen than myself; I'm a worrier, a do-er, a planner, a can't sit still, frenetically paced sort of person. Though I see and understand the value of the sit and just "be" philosophy, I admit that my personality is particularly ill suited for it. Being content with something I feel could be ameliorated, however little, goes against my nature.

I have had, and continue to have trouble differentiating between contentment and what I think of as being either indifference or fatalism. If I think something needs to happen, I do my best to figure out how to bring that thing about. I've never understood inaction; it makes me uncomfortable. Now that I'm older, I realize that those feelings are due in large part to my inability to relax, breath deeply, and stop twitching, thinking, doing. I've always equated inaction with apathy, and many times it is, but it can also be a quiet assessment of the situation. It can be the ability to know that it won't work now, but might work later, so there is wisdom in contentment.

At this point, I'm trying to see contentment as a way of making the best of any current situation. I think you can actively be trying to change even while you are working on contentment. It's clearly a state of mind - contentment in what is now and what will come, while realizing that to get anywhere you must move forward.

It's hard to manufacture contentment, though. In many cases, it begins falsely, with you telling yourself that the now is just fine, until maybe one day it is. One of my biggest fears is that somewhere along the road of contentment, the ruts begin to get too large to climb out of. I'm terrified that in allowing myself to be content with the now, I will be "settling" for less than I know is possible in my life. I dread looking back on any part of my life with resentment towards myself (or others) over not trying hard enough. Yet at the same time, I don't want to be less than present and grateful for what my life is now.

So there you have it, my fractious feelings about contentment. I'm sure other people must feel the same way, especially as there is so much talk of contentment juxtaposed with an attitude that settling for less than anything you desire is cheating yourself. I don't necessarily subscribe wholly to either idea; I'm still at the mull and ponder stage. In fact, I might stay there my entire life.

What do you think about contentment? Do you believe that it's a must for a peaceful mind or do you think that rejecting it is the catalyst for change? Or perhaps you think I am completely mistaken on my definition of contentment?

Ripping a Kitchen and Discovering that Minimalism Doesn't Actually MeanNo Organizing

2011-06-01T10:50:00.000-04:00

We had planned to gut our kitchen and completely redo it last year. Then we needed to replace both cars and unfortunately the car The Simple Man replaced his with ended up needing a new transmission. So we put it off in favor of other projects and recently decided that spring would be good because of the weather.

This is after I've taken the floor up and one cabinet down. It's all gone now!

We decided we would take on the kitchen by ourselves since it's so small, 12 by 8, with 3 doors and 3 windows, so hardly any space to actually "do" much of anything! The kitchen was in terrible condition when we moved in, but I could not convince The Simple Man of that. Consequently I have cooked every day in a dilapidated kitchen, from its upside down top cabinets (oh yes), to absolutely nothing being flush, closing properly, foul pinky coloured tiles, and the permanently stained counter top being supported by the dishwasher. I could go on, but I won't. I have pictures. I plan to whip them out the moment I scent the merest whiff of recalcitrance on the part of The Simple Man the next time I want to fix something, as proof that I am not a complete harpy, and I did wait ten entire years before he decided the kitchen needed redoing.

One wall where the pink tile was - you can see a remnant of it at the bottom. Concrete was behind it.

But I have nothing but good things to say about him because he works like a horse all day at his job, and then comes home and works on the kitchen. I think of myself as being helpful, I'm definitely not as knowledgeable about home repair as he is, but I'm never afraid to get my hands dirty. The first day I was so excited because I ripped up maybe half the floor tiles with a tire iron and then took down one of the two wall cabinets. The Simple Man was not impressed. I felt very indignant. A few days later I realized why my enthusiasm for my job was not properly appreciated by him. In one day, after work, he removed the rest of the floor, most of the wall tiles down to the lathe because someone thought 3 inches of concrete would be a good way to put them on, removed the dishwasher, cut out the counter, removed the base cabinets and cleaned up a dozen times in between. And he wasn't pleased with himself at all, damnit. Not only was it clear to me that I am a weakling, it must have been pretty obvious to him, too.

No more sink :(

One thing I was hugely grateful for was that I had already spent a lot of time trying to make my kitchen as minimal as possible. It helped with the transfer of items from the kitchen to the dining room, and also aided in lessening the incredible messiness of smashing the two rooms together. It hit me though, that my kitchen, despite it's minimalism, was still sorely in need of organization. I was never able to do a great job keeping everything tidy or grouped because I was lacking in good storage. I've had exactly two overhead cabinets, one trio of small drawers, and a revolving corner cabinet. I could never store anything under the kitchen sink because the bottom had rotted out of the cabinet long ago. Many in the minimalism crowd have cried: "Don't organise! Minimize!" and for the most part, I heartily agree. But at some point, you have to organise. I thought about this fact a lot in the beginning of my minimalist journey, in part because I have always liked organizing. I wasn't sure what our house would look like once I was finished (mostly) with minimizing so the question of organizing anything was in the future. I was a bit of a fantasist, half hoping our collective belongings would be so skeletal as to not need organising, but I don't think I really believed that would happen. And so it hasn't. I'm not too disappointed; I knew it was unrealistic.

I have definitely seen some people's possessions (usually the "counters," as I call them) who have so little that there is no need for organizing. I have yet to see a family that can do without it. Families with small children will always have enough to organize because of their need for some toys, art supplies, extra sheets and towels (yeah, babies and youngsters spew often, from every orifice) books, and other sundry items. I feel that now, especially after my kitchen is done, I'll be entering a new phase where organizing will take priority over minimizing simply because most of what we have left, we'll be keeping. I might not be totally happy about it, but as it's not my things, and I adamantly believe in not tampering with other people's belongings, it will have to do for now. Of course, I expect that at some point, the strain of keeping loads of ephemera, childhood knick-knacks, unwearable clothes, and other items my beloved family thinks the removal of heralds the End Times, will prove too much and they'll slowly start to unclutter themselves. I intend to be a total martinet about the organization, so I doubt it will take long!

Now, you can either tell me about how you organize, or what your kitchen would look like if you had unlimited time and funds. Or both. Either way, it will distract me from having to look at my kitchen and give me some good ideas!

Getting CLEAN. Mostly.

2011-05-14T14:08:00.000-04:00

I decided to do a detox this spring. It had been hovering about in my mind for some time under the "possibly interesting" category, but as long as the weather was nippy, it wasn't going to happen. Then spring finally arrived and all the sluggishness of my winter habits hit me full force. I still have a metabolism like a rocket (though I expect any day to wake up having put on 40 pounds over night) and in the winter, buried in SAD and cozy blankets, I tend to just eat bread until I can barely move. Bread and I have a soaring and lifelong romance, saturated in evocative memories involving both my mother (a dedicated bread baker) and tomatoes and avocados. This winter, with all the snow and the realization that damnit, SAD only seems to get worse as you age, was particularly heavy on bread and cheese. Spring came and I felt that I was still hibernating. Or dead. I had so little energy that I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering from adrenal exhaustion again, which leaves you feeling like the only human at a vampire buffet. Utterly drained. But then I remembered my detox aspirations.

I feel like now I should say that the detox I attempted to do specifically said not to detox if you thought you were having adrenal exhaustion. I blithely ignored this because I was fairly sure that it was my demon lover, Bread, who was causing the problems. I purchased CLEAN, By Dr. Alejandro Junger. In hindsight, I don't think I needed the book. The research I should have done before downloading it would have shown me that the CLEAN website not only provides a free list of the foods you can and can't eat during the detox, but recipes as well. If you are familiar with the way detoxing works, you probably don't need the book unless you want it. I also don't agree with everything he says, for instance, he claims that a huge part of what is making Americans so unhealthy is meat. Too much meat, and most of it not organic or pastured. Later in the book he says that he feels you need a PHD in nutrition to be a healthy vegetarian. Seriously? Because what it sounds like to me is that humans need a PHD in healthy eating, period. Omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan. Anyway, I soldiered on.

The detox requires you to stop eating processed grains (white rice etc.), dairy, caffeine, sugar, gluten, soy, corn, and a small selection of other fruits and vegetables that Junger feels inhibits the detox process. He does allow some meat, mainly fish, chicken and lamb, all of it organic and/or free range/pastured. I believe I've mentioned before that I'm not a vegetarian per se, in that I occasionally pop open a tin of wild salmon, usually during some kind of wild hormonal craving, but this is a rare occurrence of a few times a year, and I don't eat any meat beyond that. I can't do caffeine, I eat an extremely low sugar diet, and the only soy we eat is organic tofu. The big issues for me were dairy and gluten. The detox can be done for a week, two weeks, or the ultimate cleanse, three weeks. I intended to do the whole three weeks. I made it ten days.

Benefits

My skin cleared up dramatically around the 5th day.There wasn't anything very wrong with it, but my complexion was muddy and rough, and I just looked tired. I was also breaking out frequently. Now my face is bright and clear; it looks and feels so smooth it's like I've been airbrushed.

My acid reflux is gone. It appeared mysteriously a few months ago and got so out of hand I stopped eating dinner for awhile in an effort to be able to sleep without it bothering me. Occasionally it would calm down, but it's been gone since during the detox and has stayed gone.

My energy level is greatly improved. It is not only high, but very sustained. Unusual for me because I'm definitely a sprinter type, intense bursts of energy followed by fatigue.

Allergies. I will admit that I was very curious to see if Junger's claims in this area held true. Essentially, the theory is that your body can't handle allergens because it's bogged down with toxins. I've had moderate hay fever since I was 6 or 7. I also don't take any medication for it because . . . I just don't. It was nothing for me to sneeze fifty to a hundred times during the course of an afternoon outside. That hasn't happened yet and the pollen here is exploding. I don't know what to think. I've experienced a very mild runny nose and a few sneezes here and there, but absolutely nothing like before. Part of me is still skeptical, but I've since read that many other people have had the same experience.

Cons

If you're vegan or vegetarian, you will be hungry. And not the pleasant, omnivore I-just-had- -a-juicy-chicken-for-lunch-and-am-now-mildly-hungry-I-shall-eat-a-few-almonds-to- satisfy-myself. No, more of the I'll-rip-the-throat-out-of-anyone-getting-between-me-and-food kind of hungry.

Smoothies are boring. Once a day is doable. Twice a day feels like you're relegated to baby food. While everyone else is only halfway through dinner, you're sitting there empty handed picking chia seeds out of your teeth.

It's extra work. Depending on your life and what you choose to eat, it's a lot of extra work.

I don't like cold smoothies. I don't like cold food or drinks in general, it really hurts my stomach. So if I was using frozen fruit, I had to warm up the almond or coconut milk before drinking. Perhaps in the heat of July this wouldn't be much of an issue, but any other time of year, certainly for me, I can't stand such cold food.

How come I didn't do the full three weeks? My weight. Junger addresses the concerns of underweight people doing this detox by assuring them that the people who lose the most weight the quickest usually need it, and that if weight is lost, it can be put back on with strategically healthy food after the cleanse. He also advises those who are underweight to double up their smoothies, which I did. I lost eight pounds in ten days. Even though I felt good, I hadn't wanted to lose weight at all, especially considering that while it's easy for me to drop weight, it's hard for me to put it back on and I still had eleven days to go. I can't see being able to do the full three weeks until my metabolism slows down.

I was interested to see whether I would react poorly to certain foods after the detox. Well, I was actually only worried about finding that I was gluten intolerant, because, you know, life wouldn't be the same without bread. I'm happy to say that I found myself having no allergic reaction at all that I could see, so I'm assuming that my body was just overburdened with carbohydrates and dairy and that's what was making me feel so exhausted. I decided I'm going to limit bread and dairy anyway, because I've seen what a difference it has made, but I'm pretty happy that I can still eat them!

I thought I'd like to share this because it seemed pretty fantastic to me and Spring is a great time to do something like this if you feel you need it. Have any of you ever done a cleanse or detox? Did you experience anything similar?

Mea Culpa

2011-05-09T08:19:00.000-04:00

I truly did not mean to go an entire month without posting. One day last month, I was suddenly struck by the fact that I had to assemble a homeschooling portfolio for my daughter's evaluator and school district soon and had yet to begin. That seemed taxing, but doable. It was at this time I realized that, due to my overreaching minimalism, I had applied it rather too thoroughly (code for thrown out) to a hell of a lot of schoolwork that would have been "proof" that I was not giving her Koolaid for breakfast and letting her spend her day bashing car headlights out while dressed in a loincloth. There was much panicking as I searched for wisps of this "proof," interspersed with irritation that I have to prove my kid is literate when my city graduates, or as they like to say "push(es) through," high-schoolers whose literacy skills are below basic, which means they can't understand simple prose. Meanwhile, my kid is plowing through Little Women right now and she's (nearly) nine. Literacy, at least, isn't a problem in this house.

So I had to take a blog break in order to get this together, and I'm happy to say that we are wrapping up her portfolio this week.

It also makes me happy that I'll be able to relish our slowly warming spring now. Here are some things I've been enjoying when I'm not furiously photocopying.

Tiny and translucent, my first gooseberries ever. Bought on a whim, because they are hardy and suitable for containers. Now that I see their veined berries illuminated by the sun, I'm thinking they are worth growing simply to look at, but I've always thought fruit was beautiful.

Blueberry flowers. I have never seen these before because every time we've gone to pick them they are obviously already full fledged blueberries, and I somehow managed to kill the other container blueberry we had years ago. This one belongs to The Simple Man, whose prowess in gardening makes my black thumbs cry with rage. I would love to have the natural touch that he does, but I have to work hard at coaxing my plants to live.

Now that it's warmer in the house I'm able to place rising dough on our sun porch. The sun porch . . . where there isn't a baby gate. Where when I come back to look at the bread I see that it has been molested by teeny tiny baby hands. What it is about puffy dough that is so fascinating to children?

Making our deck more livable by knocking down a yellow jackets' nest built inside the patio umbrella. They insist on building on our deck every year and the girls, who are very girly and screamy when it comes to stinging bugs, refuse to go out there if it's swarming with bees and wasps. I'm still amazed by the natural world's architecture.

Taking my daughters to a homeschooling program (okay, the 2 year old mostly follows the 9 year old around) at the oldest botanical garden in the US; this particular program focused on birds' nests. After wearing the kids out by walking them all over the property in search of nests, they went back to the barn and built their own nest. Decorated with flower petals. No, I don't allow reality to get in the way of my kid's art and nature projects.

How has your spring been so far? I know people who do gardening are crazily planting while a lot of the country has suffered from those severe storms and floods. I am frankly delighted to see the last of snow for awhile and am looking forward to being outdoors more than in!

Llama Love, Nature, and Disconnecting

2011-04-06T11:42:00.000-04:00

We went away, spending time on a llama farm in West Virginia. The girls had seventy acres of grass, ponds, and streams to explore and they went about it with gusto. There was a lot of rolling around, shrieking, mud stains, and exhaustion. And when I came back I promptly fell ill. With the kind of coughing that lasts all night long and was so intense it produced dry heaves. For two weeks. So apologies - there has been no blog writing or reading.

Before our trip I got the book Last Child in the Woods on my Kindle. I've been interested in reading this book for awhile now, but hadn't bothered to buy it, even though it was on my list of books to get. When two bloggers (Jaime and I can't remember the other one) mentioned it in one week though, I felt it was calling to me.

This book really highlighted for me some of the issues I feel are coming out of encroaching technology, as well as pinpointed others that I hadn't thought of as being related. I mean, like any old person (in today's world, that's about 28 or so, right?) I just assumed young people thought they were information messiahs because they were still at the age where they apparently know everything, despite having experienced...nothing. Louv, though, points out that these children, young adults, and yes, even some of us old people, feel like they know everything because they have access to information, usually by computer. But they don't have experience. He goes on to talk about how people are finding it hard to even teach young people these days because they have not actually done anything hands on; they don't understand the mechanics of simple things because they haven't ever touched them, "These young people are smart, they grew up with computers, they were supposed to be superior - but now we know that something's missing." Ouch. Its a pretty damning assessment of both technology and young people.

I was enthralled and horrified by this book at the same time. It provided answers to some thoughts I had been having; it also affirmed what I already knew, regular contact with nature does more for any one person and humanity as a whole than anything made by Apple. Here is a selection of my favourite quotes:

The problem with computers isn't computers - they're just tools; the problem is that over-dependence on them displaces other sources of education, from the arts to nature. As we pour money and attention into educational electronics, we allow less fashionable but more effective tools to atrophy."

"What I see in American today is an almost religious zeal for the technological approach to every facet of life, " says Daniel Yankelovich, the veteran public opinion analyst. This faith, he says, transcends mere love for new machines. It's a value system, a way of thinking, and it can become delusional."

...[A]s human beings we need direct, natural experiences; we require fully activated senses in order to feel fully alive. Twenty-first-century Western culture accepts the view that because of omnipresent technology we are awash in data. But in this information age, vital information is missing. Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing..."

Not surprisingly, as the young grow up in a world of narrow yet overwhelming sensory input, many of them develop a wired, know-it-all state of mind. That which cannot be Googled does not count.

I've been seeing "delusional" thinking over technology lately. People discussing how nothing could ever end or stop the internet, or Twitter, or whatever their personal pet tech happens to be. Really? Electrically supported technology is obviously not independent. Ever heard of rolling black outs? Solar flares? Nuclear meltdowns? Any number of things could stop this kind of technology in its tracks. It seems foolhardy to have the attitude that it is invincible. Even more so to rely upon it so indiscriminately and emotionally. It is a tool that is to be used to its fullest, but can still be lost or broken one day.

There are many other issues Louv discusses, but it all goes in one direction, less screen/tech time, more nature. I found myself absolutely agreeing with the almost spiritual way Louv discusses nature, but then again, I belong to what he calls the last generation to have grown up with nature. It's been even more clear to me that I belong to these remnants of a childhood outside now that I have kids. This winter, with its abundance of snow, who could resist sledding on the steep slope across the street from us? Apparently every child in the neighborhood but mine. She was out there everyday. I would look in awe at that bare hill, wondering where the children were. What should have been, in the girls' and my mind, the most awesome thing to happen to kids all winter, was clearly less exciting than whatever was going on inside the house.

When I was very young, we lived in public housing apartments built in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia. The apartments circled a playground, which I was allowed to play on unaccompanied because my mother could watch me from our apartment. Behind the apartments were endless cornfields, which I was not allowed to go into, but...ahem, often did. They were forbidden to us, so it was with breathless and retching excitement that we would crash through them and back, experiencing fear and delight at the same time. Later we moved to the city, and my friends and I would navigate the maze of alleys behind our home. Finally, my mom got her garden; we had an acre in the suburbs, and five more belonging to a neighbor to explore. With no television, video games, or computers (I didn't have a computer until college), we were outdoors almost all the time. As I grew older and more attached to electronics, I would often put my cd player up to my open window and then go and stretch out on the driveway so that I could both listen to music and be outside. Even at 19, if it snowed, you better believe I was out there on a makeshift sled. And my mom has the enormous metal mixing bowl dented by my bum to prove it. Indoors was where you were when you had to be.

I've been thinking for months about disconnecting/unplugging. Not from a solely child/nature oriented direction, but also from an environmental point of view, and because I realize that I too, am allowing the pace of my life and day be ruled by these machines. A few things have happened recently that have coalesced these thoughts into a decision: We need less of this. We need most of the week to be a digital sabbatical. Using the computer often makes me feel bad in general; the barrage of information, even if it is utter tripe that I reject, still takes energy from me. I'm not nearly as selective as I should be. It's getting warmer, we need to be outside, singley, together, and as a whole family. And lastly, Japan. An environmental blog I follow even though it is way over my head because the dude is a scientist and I'm not, made a big impression on me. Yes, I've been endeavoring to "go lightly" for years now, but for some reason this post really brought home to me where (mostly) all my things are plugged into. A nuclear power plant. And so, I'm not just talking about limiting my tech time, but also greatly reducing our electricity usage.

I don't really know what this is going to look like. I do know that I'm pretty committed to unplugging everything (except the fridge, because I can't figure that out logistically at the moment) until it needs to be used. On restricting other things such as Netflix and computer time; that has to be worked out. And I'm going to take my monkeys outside, even though the streams in Philly smell like the sewer.

How do you all feel about nature vs. technology? Does your life have a balance of both or are you biased in one direction?

The Snowball Effect of Shopping

2011-03-17T13:00:00.000-04:00

I know I've mentioned before that I have never been and am not now, an enthusiastic shopper. I go months and months without darkening the doors of any store that carries more than food or raw lumber. Obviously though, there comes a time when I need something other than lettuce and tofu. This time it was socks. In reality, I need more than that since I've been wearing the same jeans (washed, of course) every day for three months now, but I must have time to psyche myself up for clothes shopping since it's an impossible experience. I do enjoy some shopping occasionally though, and I have a particular weakness for kitchen items.

It started out very innocently at T.J.Maxx, which happens to be close to my house. Too close. I went in to get the socks. Then I wandered into the home section and picked up some microfibre kitchen towels because they work so well. This snowballed into looking at the handbags for something smaller than my one and only since I don't have to carry around diapers anymore. I found the perfect little bag. When I got home I went online to read about the company (Sherpani) since I saw that they use a large percentage of recycled materials in their products. Checking them out and seeing what else they offered gave me a serious case of the wanties, and I decided these were the bags I wanted for replacements of all my old, wornout bags. Serendipity raised it's beautiful head in that I'm actually going away this weekend and, since I don't fly, I am was sans luggage. I usually pack the girls' and my own things in reusable cloth grocery bags when we go somewhere. The Simple Man urged me to buy, like him, an ugly, cheap duffel bag from Target, but I rebelled. I went back to T.J.Maxx, hunting for more Sherpani bags, which they had. It was a good size for a day long outing with children, but not for any longer than that. So I ordered a larger bag, sized for yoga/gym or a weekend away. It seems like a lot as I'm writing this, but except for the weekend bag, I am actually replacing other items. I'm also neurotic and picky about bags; they can't be too girly, I have to be able to wear them cross body, I want to be able to clean them, and they can't be overwhelming either in size, construction, or bling. So if I seem pathetically excited about my trio of perfect bags, please excuse me.

While I was wandering around in a bag fever, I also spied a dish rack that fits over the sink and a wasp catcher. Neither were items that I really needed, but they are useful. Every summer our house holds a convention for fruit flies no matter what I do, and I've tried everything to get rid of them except a wasp catcher, which I've heard is very affective. The dish rack I have no excuse for besides the fact that anything that expands to fit multiple sizes fascinates my feeble brain and makes me want it. All this shopping after the sock purchase was legitimized by the fact that our electric tea kettle broke, so I was also searching for a kettle. Never found just the right one, so that's still on the list.

Clearly, just because I am practicing voluntary simplicity, frugality, and mindful consumption, doesn't mean that I automatically stop wanting things. I don't allow myself opportunities for buying often, not because I always go crazy and purchase more than I need, but because I think it's easier to pick up a small item here or there until you realize you have 27 tea light holders. It's the same premise as with the studies on grocery shopping, in that the more often you go, the more you buy and consequently spend. I tend to get all my needs and wants out of the way a few times a year and avoid stores the rest of the time.

Items I had a hard time ignoring, but did:

A ceramic counter top compost container. What made me hesitate? Made in China. I thought of this recent post.

Another tote bag. I have a problem with bags.

Le Crueset Ramekins. Enough said.

More glass storage containers.

Gorgeous bamboo cutting board.

Painted ceramic mug with silicone lid.

If you're tryng to go minimalist, or live a simplified lifestyle, what are your shopping patterns like?

My Core Essentials - Skin and Hair

2011-03-07T09:21:00.000-05:00

I have a very minimal hair and skin care routine. While I've never been much for primping, when I was younger I definitely fell prey to the idea that I needed cleansers,toners, body lotions, day and night moisturizers, and shampoo and conditioners. Makeup is something I've avoided, preferring to go with tinted lip gloss, and an emergency trial size of mineral powder for those occasional gag inducing blemishes, or when I think I need to look older than 12 and not bloodless.

I am the first to admit that almost everything about my lifestyle, hair and skin, and preferences allows for simplicity. I am not employed outside my home, so there is no pressure to use cosmetics and our social life travels more along the lines of hiking and drinking tea cross legged on people's floors, so no need for it there either. I am also casual and extremely low maintenance, so my need for various products is small - for salon services it is nil. That is not to say I look like a model and wouldn't benefit from services, more that I don't care. Finally, my skin is cantankerous and looks its best when left alone and I have straight hair. I gather from all the curly headed peeps out there that having curly hair is significantly more labour and product intensive than straight hair. In fact, when two curly heads get together and talk about their hair, they enter a realm no straight haired person can follow; it is sacred, the path is hard, and they discuss putting oil on their hair. Baffling, I know, but we lank haired people must count our blessings, we are not at war with our combs.

Here are my core essentials, used daily or several times a week:

Aritha powder for washing my hair. I've been using this for a few months now and am very impressed by how clean my hair is after washing. You may know it by its other name: soap nuts. Can be used to wash clothes and hair. Multifunctional and very inexpensive at the local Indian store.

A peach wood comb. I had heard that wood combs were an excellent way of distributing natural hair oils evenly and they do not scratch the scalp. I used this as an excuse to buy this comb because...well, look at it, 'tis beautiful and simple. And not plastic. Then I used it and loved it.

A dry brush for skin. Dry brushing has a number of benefits, including encouraging your body to release toxins, stimulating your immune and lymphatic systems, and exfoliating your skin.

DryBrushing.net

The Dry Brushing Technique

Vitamin E oil. I use this on my face. It's vitamin E oil mixed with some quality carrier oils since vit. E alone is quite sticky. It's done more for me than any high priced cruelty free moisturizer ever has. I've also used coconut oil, but it made my face break out occasionally.

Soap. I have and will always use vegetable based soap - tallow can clog pores, plus I make it a point to only use skincare products that have no animal (flesh - sustainable bee and dairy products I'm fine with) by-products in them. Two reasons for this: I eat a plant based diet and want to keep my skincare plant based too, and the animals that have been converted for use in skin care are quite often the meat industry's leftovers: sick, diseased, downer animals, euthanized animals from shelters, and roadkill. Yes, roadkill. Even if you aren't eating a plant based diet, you might want to avoid putting this on your skin. Nothing like a good slathering of asphalt baked opossum to make those wrinkles just vanish.

Roadkill Soap Anyone?

13 Gross Ingredients Hidden in Your Beauty Products

Homemade deodorant. Works as well as anything I've used from a natural foods store (never used a drugstore variety, so I can't comment on its efficacy compared to that). It is not an antiperspirant, but I'm not looking to stop sweating. Here is my recipe for deodorant:

To A Good Smelling Spring

Body Lotion. I get very dry and itchy in the winter, so while I do sometimes use vitamin E oil as an allover moisturizer, I often alternate it with a lotion for hand and body. This brand, SheaMoisture, is my new favorite because several "natural" brands include ingredients that are potentially harmful and this doesn't. Smelling divine doesn't hurt either.

I do occasionally use other products or items throughout the month, but these are what I use daily or frequently and I wouldn't want to get more minimal than this. I might write another post on my expanded and not as necessary "essentials."

This is just a peek into part of my daily/weekly routine, and not a judgement on, or a gloat over those who use more than me. I'm just sharing for the sake of doing so, and I hope you feel free to comment about what your essentials are, whether you're into natural, sustainable, homemade, frugal, and minimalist or a total product fiend!

More Stuff? Not Really!

2011-03-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

I realized that I had to clarify on my last post when I said that I realized we needed more things. That's not quite accurate. When you get down to the very few basics, every piece in a room becomes an unavoidable focal point. It's made me realize how important it is to me to be living with objects that have a beauty to them. There are so few items, comparatively, in each room now, especially in common areas such as our living and dining rooms, that their incongruity or all around found-in-the-back-alleyway-ness are glaringly obvious.

There are reasons beyond aesthetics, though. I have dust allergies as well as seasonal allergies. They seem to be getting worse; I cleaned under my toddler's bed the other day and while it had been awhile since the last dusting, I was wheezing and short of breath the rest of the day. Uncluttering has certainly been helpful in this area in that there is less to clean and it is cleaned more easily, but it can't help alone. For the first time ever, I'm viewing my house as the space of an allergy sufferer, and making my plans accordingly.

The items I want to keep I will be making mine, changing them to fit us. Other things will simply have to be replaced. Now that I have much less to care for, there is more time and money to make the house the way we'd like. We've spent ten years buying the least expensive of everything and making do with what we had because we're frugal. Or cheap, to be honest. Call it a byproduct of having nothing while growing up, but somehow upgrading everything immediately didn't seem terribly important. So we've done other things, like paying our mortgage off 20 years early. It's not a bad trade, but it feels like it's time to make this house we own a place we like to live in. Then we'll probably move; isn't that how it usually works?

Yes. Messy. These are not my books, though. And I totally restrained myself from tidying so that I would not be a big faker.

We still have several bookshelves full of books. I can't (or won't) reduce my own books more than I already have. I've already given away twenty good sized boxes of just my own books. The rest of them either don't belong to me, are for homeschooling the girls, or are reference books. So. That leaves us with 4 full 6 ft. high book shelves. And a lot of dust. I'm going to slowly replace these Ikea shelves, made of particle board, which seems to sag soon after heavy use, with solid wood bookshelves I can make myself. All this uncluttering has alerted me to the fact that while I am a bibliophile, I don't want to see the books. I plan on attaching solid doors, not glass, for a calmer, less visually stimulating bookshelf rather than having 500 titles staring out at me. This was particularly brought home to me when we moved our bookshelves from our dining room/living room area to the upstairs hallway. I use to think I loved how books looked in a house, but after that, I realised I found the space more peaceful without them. As I don't think we'll ever have a house large enough for a "library" and we might one day move to a place without a long corridor for books, I think the solution I've hit upon is pretty good.

The couch. I have been wanting to replace it for a long time. Eight years of motherhood as well as the aforementioned dust allergies have convinced me that slipcovers are essential. I refuse to even think about all that couch has endured. I had initially wanted a sort of daybed/couch when I started wondering if we really needed it at all. We often sit on the floor while leaning against the couch. We only have the one couch and it fits 2 adults comfortably, if they don't want to touch each other, three if that isn't an issue. My mom doesn't like sitting there because she's tiny and too dignified to be seen scrambling off of it and her feet don't touch the floor; they stick straight out because of the depth. Ha, ha. So glad I made it to an Amazonian 5 '4. The Simple Man is tall and lanky, so no delicate furniture allowed. It must have what I call "sprawling potential." I thought in lieu of the daybed we could create a sort of floor divan with pillows, but I've discarded that idea. With four of us in the house and family over for frequent casual visits, having no real furniture in our living room seems obsessive and impractical. Even though The Simple Man was willing to go along with me on this, I think it might have been more out of complete apathy for the decor process rather than enthusiasm, so instead of having to redo it when he hates it, I'm just going to stick with my original idea. Plus, I have to say that to tell older people and pregnant ladies to pull up a floor pillow seems positively suicidal. And impolite.

I think something like this, only lower to the ground and lighter coloured. Seen here.

Finally, I think I'll be painting both these alley acquisitions with white milk paint (non-toxic!). I plan on turning the first ones panels around so the glued on fabric faces the inside and painting the bare wood with blackboard paint so the girls can draw on it with chalk. I think the contrast of the black/white will look good, and it houses our school and art supplies as well as being in the room we do school work, so the blackboard is perfect.

This one was originally a child's wardrobe; we took out the hanging bar and added shelves on the right inside of it. There is a space for the television inside but the toddler always closes the door while it's on, so for now it sits on top. Our cameras, dvds and miscellaneous tech junk is in here. And I really dislike red wood, so this will be getting whitewashed also.

Those are my plans for "more stuff," by which I meant different stuff, mostly. I think we're all purged out for the time being, hence the concentration on what's going to stay!