the children's hospital

I recently spent a night at the UNC Children's Hospital. Everyone is fine and the little patient was discharged after less than 24 hours because she was recovering so well. But not all of the kids I saw there were fortunate enough to need only one night in the hospital.

There were kids there, and their families, who clearly had been there for a while. A week, maybe more. There were older kids. There were infants.

One little girl had hand-drawn signs on her door letting the staff know when she was awake, asleep, etc. You don't even know what kinds of signs you would need to make unless you've spent at least a full day there, experiencing the routines and the unexpected awakenings and the odd schedule of tests and checks and pricks and visits. And on the window of her room, the most recently passed holiday-themed mural included her name. She had likely been there at least a week. Who knows how much longer.

Late into the evening, I saw a caregiver pushing a toddler around in one of those low strollers that looks like a racecar. This tot looked to be about my son's age, maybe a couple of months younger. She seemed unsettled, like she wasn't sure what was going on around her. I figured she was probably new. Maybe it was her first night, or maybe her second. I would be bewildered for days to know I was sick enough to be admitted, too. The image of the child my own son's age, wide-eyed and uncomfortable, is one I don't think I'll ever forget.

During one of my treks out of the room -- to the linen closet, the snack room, the elevators -- I noticed a lady walking the halls pulling a radio flyer wagon and an IV bag. In the wagon was a baby who wasn't even old enough to sit up on his own yet. I didn't think about it at the time; it was only later that it occurred to me that this floor had a couple of wagons.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: this floor needs wagons, so that parents and caregivers can pull their sick babies around. The linen closet is stocked with tiny, absolutely tiny hospital gowns. The rooms' exterior windows overlook a "memory garden" full of oversized sculptures of flowers, animals, and bugs that move.

We'd anticipated our stay to be brief, and it was. There are some kids -- some infants -- who have spent a lot of time here, though. Long enough that their caregivers didn't even have to think about how to load an infant into a wagon and haul him around without losing track of the IV. Long enough that they don't have to look at the menu anymore to know what they want for dinner. Long enough for the staff to paint a personalized mural on their window. How grateful I am for my son's health. So very, very grateful.

How to make Greek yogurt

What is this madness?

We've been making some changes in our food habits lately. Eating more vegetables. Eating  less in general. Making less-bad snack choices (usually). Brian's been having yogurt-based smoothies. I have kefir when it's in the house. 

Brian asked the other day what the difference between regular yogurt and Greek yogurt is. My understanding is that Greek yogurt is regular yogurt with whey drained out of it. Incidentally, it's pretty easy to make. I made my first go of it yesterday, with a little encouragement from my Nourishing Traditions cookbook.*

Have you ever gone a day or two and then looked at your yogurt tub and found this yellowy liquid in the middle? That stuff is whey. And have you noticed that the yogurt itself is a little thicker when it separates like that? Ta-da, Greek yogurt by neglect!

It's easy to make on purpose, too. Most instructions will tell you to set a strainer in a bowl, line it with cheese cloth or a dish towel, and spoon the yogurt into it. Check back in a couple of hours and test it for thickness. When it's as thick as you like it, put it in a container. 

Me, I'm not so much into washing dishes when I don't have to. So I saved the previous yogurt container and washed it. If you look at that picture, you can figure out what else I did....but I'll spell it out for you here, anyway. 

I pulled the yogurt container from the fridge, folded up some cheesecloth, rubber-banded it over the container, and turned that thing upside down over the empty one. Easy, peasy, and no extra dishes to wash. (I did wash the cheesecloth, though. That stuff is gonna see some good use.)

Too thick? Stir some whey back in. 

Lots of time to wait? Let it drain until it's done draining and you've got cream cheese!

My guess is that most people toss the whey, which is unfortunate because there's some cool stuff you can do with whey. I haven't tried any of it yet, but I have some ideas. It'll keep in the fridge for 6 months, they say, so I've got time. 

I'm thinking about soaking rice grains before cooking them and/or playing with something called lacto-fermentation. 

I really love this stuff. 

*Not an affiliate link.

What's the most ambitious thing you ever made, in the kitchen or otherwise?

swf iso kefir

Kefir, in case you don't know, is a culture milk product, kind of like yogurt but not as thick. I make my morning smoothies with it all the time. It's a probiotic and I've found it to be really filling and satisfying. Most morning anyway. Some days I need a bowl of grits.

My store stopped carrying the brand I like, and all the other brands are loaded with crap and sweeteners and yuck. I just want kefir, straight up kefir. So it's time to start making my own! As best I can tell, you put the kefir grains in milk and let them work their magic a while, and then you have kefir.

Except I don't know where to source kefir grains. Sadly.

But you all are smart, and maybe you know where I can find some!


So tell me - have you ever bought kefir grains, and if so, where did you get them?

Some things I'd like to do in 2011

I'm not much for New Years Resolutions, mostly because I don't find it necessary or particularly motivating to start something at the beginning of a year. If I need to start doing something, I start doing it. January 1 is arbitrary. For me at least.

But this coming new year feels a little different to me. I've begun to think about what 2011 could mean for me, professionally, individually and maritally. I have a lot of ideas. And what happens when I get a lot of ideas? I make lists.


Home/Work Life
I'm back at home, with a vision for what being 'at home' means to me. Taking care of my home and my little family - me included - has become important to me. Yes, these are things that I've always valued and felt drawn toward, but right now I am feeling an urge to prioritize home life - to devote my energy and a large part of my days to holding down the fort. Sustaining this is also important to me. I want to find some work this year, yes, but I know now that I want to be working from home. Freelancing is an obvious first step in that direction, as is looking for work-from-home positions. I may also look at smaller side hustles like Etsy. And I have a few other small and medium projects on file too - mostly involving liquidation of assets (in other words, I'll be in charge of selling our car, our spare washer and dryer, and some high-end clothing that it turns out I like to look at but never wear).

To that end, there are some specific things I think I'd like to do this year:

• Finish unpacking from our move 3 months ago, for the love of Pete
• Set up the 'man cave' so that it looks like an actual man cave, and not a girly collection of miscellany (first step: get a rug that isn't pink and swirly)
• Repaint the guest bathroom (and take down the wooden hand-painted shells tacked on the walls...)
• Revamp my ailing professional website. Maybe even come up with a logo (gasp!) And then put the she-bang to use.
• Flex my bulky but unused social media muscles.
• Find a nice balance of minimalism/simplicity and organized abundance at home.

Health

Brian has been going to the gym pretty steadily for oh, maybe 6 weeks now? He is being proactive. It's starting to show, too. I really admire him for doing this. I've thought about shelling out a second membership to go to the gym with him. It's fairly frequently that he tells me he's heading to the gym and it occurs to me that, hey, I could go to the gym now too and not be too bothered by it! But then I wonder if that $25 a month could be put to better use, when I have walking shoes and a bike (not to mention a few workout dvds) that are already paid for. To increase our food budget to include grass-fed beef and free-range chickens. To go to the Chiropractor and/or get the monthly massages that keep my hip and shoulder in working order (because what good is a gym membership if it hurts too much to walk there, and then it hurts too much to do anything with the upper body?). To take a ballet class instead. We have to make these choices more carefully now. 

Same goes for food. We need to make more deliberate choices. And a large part of my role in that is making sure we have good options on hand. I also want to do even more cooking at home. This year may be the year of mastering high altitude bread-baking. There are some things I've always wanted to do in the kitchen, and now is as good a time as any to make that happen (hello, New England Clam Chowder Served In A Bread Bowl). This year may also be the Year of the Garden. If I can work up the nerve.

So here's the next part of the list:

• Bake consistently good bread. Primary targets include sandwich bread that Brian will eat, and dinner rolls.
• Reach for healthful snacks and lunches more often than less good options. 
• Grow, and then eat, something. Maybe a few different kinds of somethings. 

Money and Travel

Because no amount of introspection is done without consideration of The Bottom Line, I of course have a section on money here. It's not that detailed yet - I feel like we are still in a financially shifting stage of life right now, so setting big goals there isn't something I want to do. I did come across the 20 Financial Milestones to Reach in Your 20s, though, and I'm looking to them for guidance. I'll share the specifics here when I figure them out, in case you're interested. 

But really what our financial goals will boil down to is likely to be "Save for Traveling." We are going to Israel in June, and saving up to pay for it in cash - a goal made doable only because the church is paying for Brian's trip. Brian is also hoping to go to Haiti in March, which may be fully or partially covered by the church as well. We've recently been invited to a destination wedding in Costa Rica(!!!) in the fall, which we are hoping to swing without dipping into savings. If the Costa Rica trip doesn't pan out, I think I'm going to put together a little road trip to Austin, TX. I may even go to Vegas in a few weeks with my mom and her friend, depending on how some 'professional inquiries' shake out (I've never been to Vegas, have you?).

I love the prospect of traveling. We haven't had a chance to do much of it in our 3 years of marriage. We had our belated honeymoon in Hawaii, we had a fun road trip moving out to Colorado, and there were other road trips from the home base in Richmond, but those were all to see family, rather than pure, raw vacationing. So having these trips on the horizon is really exciting. And hey, if we can put away 4 Grand in 10 months to go to Israel, maybe we can keep saving at that same rate and finally get to Ireland in 2012. I traveled a lot with my family before I went to college, and Brian has a big travel bug too. It's good for us and our marriage to get out of town whenever we can.


And then I'm reminded: we have student loans. And maybe we should focus on paying those down faster, not on taking these trips everywhere. And there are other things we need to be thinking about too, like retirement accounts (uh...we don't really have those yet) and saving up to pay cash for a car in the event that we need one (the Highlander is coming up on 10 years old). It will probably be a while before it would make sense for us to buy a house (have you priced houses in Denver lately?) so a down payment is not even on the radar yet. We live below our means and build our general savings every month on top of the Israel trip savings, but is that good enough? This is the year to figure it out.

So with all of that rambled said, the third prong of things to do in 2011 is as follows:

• Fund Israel trip with cash - enough cash to bring home a really special thing or two
• Take one other trip in the fall
• Contribute to Brian's 403(b) and open an IRA for me
• Develop a budget that both of us can stand, and stick to it

Random Misc

Every time I've moved, I pack more boxes than I'd care to admit labeled "Random Misc." It started in college, before I realized that the phrase is redundant, and the label has stuck. These are the boxes that rarely, if ever, get unpacked. I'm pretty sure that the reason I was able to unpack every single box from our move out here a year ago is that we had packers for that move, and none of their boxes were labeled 'random misc.' But, what's a list of things to do without a little bit of random miscellany thrown in?

Here are some of the other random things I'd like to do this year: 

• Take a class in something. ballet, pottery and foreign language are top contenders
• Dig into my 'special' yarn and fabric stashes and start making things with them
• Make butter and see if it's worth it
• Get someone else to help me decorate (any volunteers?)
• Make curtains for the tall, skinny, off-center window over the bed
• Read 52 books - one for each week of the year. Unless it turns out I read more than 52 books this year, in which case, read more books this year than last year. 

gloom sans doom

I woke up this morning under a cloud. Not a dark cloud or a rainy one, but a cloud.

There are a couple of identifiable factors at work this morning. The big one is lack of sleep. I haven't been sleeping well, or long, the past few nights. I go to sleep later and later, toss and turn more, and then get up earlier and earlier as Rory has her daily morning meltdown. Today she probably started before 6am; I couldn't even open my eyes until 6:18.

I've woken up the past couple of mornings feeling like I had a light or maybe even medium hangover. I'm guessing this is a combination of being too tired and not getting enough water the day before. Preventable, and all the more frustrating for that reason.

Rory is cranked to 11 when she first wakes up. She is loud and jumpy and herky-jerky - all around bad news for a zombie-tired me, who has to leash her up and take her out. Oh how I long for a yard for days like this.

It's light enough to need sunglasses by 6:30 now. But it's really overcast today, so the light didn't stab at my eyes when we went out. It was actually pretty nice, and there was a brown-grey cast on everything. Interesting. If I were motivated at all, I'd be playing with my camera.

But my instant pick-me-up is gone. I can't see the mountains when it's overcast. So, it's not even 6:30am and I am doing the work of picking myself up. Usually it's best to push myself through the fog, place an emphasis on 'doing stuff' so that the sense of accomplishment improves my feelings. That's what I did yesterday.

Not today.

Today it will probably involve lots of couch time to finish a book I'm reading, and lots of time spent listening to my favorite podcast. It's a knitting podcast done by a guy in Australia. The pick-me-up isn't instant like the mountains are, but it's pretty close. Probably no knitting or sewing - my current projects are taxing.

I realize I sound like a whiney baby. Believe me, I annoy myself more than I annoy you. Compared to most, I've got it ridiculously easy. I can pick and choose the work I do, I don't have to schlep to an office (not until July 6!) and nobody is tapping a foot expecting me to do things. I don't have kids, just a high-maintenance dog, and I come and go as I choose. The truth is, I am so grateful for my life the way it is. I set it up this way intentionally, knowing that I needed to have a short season of my life when being able to take care of myself was the priority. So I don't feel guilty on days like today when I take advantage of that. It's the reason why I (don't) do what I do(n't).


By the way, I've read that overeating sugars or carbs the night before will make you feel hungover the next morning. Have you ever experienced that?




How do you pick yourself up when you're having a bad mental health day? What are some of the constant, little things that lift your spirit? Do you make it a point to take care of yourself when the signs are there?

Healthy?

Brian and I have never exactly had 'much money.' We don't have much disposable income and never have, and rather than living an inflated lifestyle using credit cards, we just don't do a whole lot of things that cost money. One of the things we don't do is eat out much. When I was working and Brian was in school, we still ate at home most nights but that doesn't necessarily mean what we ate didn't come from a can or a jar or a box. I wanted to make a change to that, but I just didn't have the time and energy to make a meal from scratch every single day. So when I quit my job and we moved halfway across the country and I decided to be a housewife and eventually do some work from home (all in like 2 months), one of the things I wanted to focus on immediately was making good dinners every night.

I've done pretty well for the most part, I'd say, and I am really proud of my efforts to cut WAY back on our reliance on pre-packaged foods and reducing like whoa the amount of chemicals and preservatives and how-do-you-pronounce-this foods. I never bought into the idea that low-fat and fake processed foods are better for you - I just use less of the good stuff. (I'd rather have a tablespoon of real butter than a tub of Smart Balance.) 

In that vein, I have begun to think about how to augment the actual healthful factor of what we're eating. (Because homemade pizza is awesome, but it's still just pizza.) Introducing new vegetables, seasonings, cooking methods, etc. It's been fun. And it's been really cool too - I am so much less intimidated by 'real cooking' and a lot of things that would have put me off a year ago are now on my list of things to try. I've started with some really basic things - like making bread from scratch, experimenting with home-made chicken broth, and making cream sauces from a roux and even making Chinese and Japanese sauces (like teriyaki and plain stir fry brown sauce) from scratch. 

So when I saw a recipe for a healthy healthful corn and potato chowder, I made immediate plans to bookmark the site. And then I read the ingredients list, and stopped short. Ingredients included canned corn, canned brand-name chicken broth, Velveeta, bacon bits, and fat-free half and half. (And potatoes of course.) I reeled.

First off, I'm not sure how a cream and cheese-based potato soup could be called healthful (although it could easily be called AWESOME). But really...I don't see how something with Velveeta in it could ever be called healthful. Bacon bits aren't real food either (unless you crumbled up half a pound of bacon in a jar too). And I've already mentioned how I feel about fat-free stuff.

Certainly this recipe is less-bad-for-you than if it were to come from a calorie-laden restaurant vat or a tin can that you dilute and heat up in the microwave. But to me, there's a big difference between less-bad and actually good. Maybe Velveeta, mass-produced chicken broth from a can, and pseudo-meat are a step in the right direction, but they in and of themselves do not a healthy life make.

Maybe I shouldn't publish this opinion. I don't necessarily have room to talk, and my eating habits are far from great (I might have had 2 miniature York peppermint patties while writing this). But can I be the only one to raise my eyebrow to this notion of healthful eating? Is this recipe really what we think of as a good food decision? I don't know. Maybe. But maybe not.

take out da funk...pleeeeease

So. True story:

Two Saturdays ago, Brian came home (a couple hours later than planned) from a conference in Nashville. There was some doubt as to whether he would make it home, as there was a giant snowstorm making its way across the country and it was expected to hit Nashville about 12 hours before Brian's 5:30am flight. We didn't know if flights would be running that early in the morning after a big snow - which we all know the South is generally not equipped to handle.

He also wasn't sure if taxis and shuttles would be running at 4am, as there wasn't a way to predict the road conditions. But, it was imperative that he be home because he was being installed the next day. And you kinda need to be present to be installed...at least in the Presbyterian way of doing things, you do.

Someone suggested around maybe midnight (yeah, people were up then) that he go ahead to the airport, while taxis and shuttles were definitely still running. So he did. And what this meant was, he essentially pulled an all-nighter. And then he sat on a plane for 6 hours.

What does all that mean?

He came home sick. And a couple days later, I got sick.

Only, his sick went away in a couple days. Mine is STILL HERE and I'm going on day 9. I spent the majority of last week stuck on the couch, moaning and coughing and wishing I could breathe. Yesterday (Tuesday) and today I seem to be somewhat better - I can manage to care for the dogs (mostly) and I can breathe out of at least one nostril; my appetite is starting to show itself again, and I only cough a little bit. I can more or less function, as long as I get enough breaks. But I still feel pretty yucky.

The posts you saw last Wednesday and again on Monday were written days in advance - I had scheduled them over the weekend while Brian was away (and I wasn't sick!), and I was surprised both times a new post from me showed up in my reader. I have consumed more nyquil in the past week than I probably have in the entire span of my life prior (don't ask me about the fear I get every time I ingest it - how long is this crap going to stick around and screw things up, and there HAS to be something less bad for the body! I just don't have the energy to figure out what that might be.)

I would never describe myself as a 'healthy' person - especially after moving to Denver. I catch a new cold pretty much every time the season changes. I've been a little bit sick on and off since moving here - adjusting to the altitude and the new rhythm of life has not been easy for me and I've probably been 'sick' as much as I've been not-sick. It's been a long time since I was as sick as I am now, though. I had the flu once, senior year in college and I missed about 4 days of classes. So that was...5 years ago. (I AM SO OLD.) And I'll get some nasty bronchitis every other year or so, usually between February and May, but nothing to take me down for more than a week.

My nose is raw. My chest and back are sore from coughing and sniffing. I have a major dehydration headache, despite pumping the fluids nonstop. I can only focus my eyes for a minute or so before I have to rest them (I've been writing this post for 40 minutes already). I've had nausea for days on account of all the mucous making its way down, despite my frequent blowing and hacking. The dogs have un-housetrained themselves because up until yesterday, I just don't have the energy to take them out every time they beckoned.

For some reason I feel the need to share this with you. Maybe I'm tired of being miserable by myself and I want some sympathy. Maybe this is an attempt to be open/honest with you. Maybe I just want to share what's really going on in my life right now. Or MAYBE I'm out of pre-written blog posts and I want to stick to the schedule but I have no brain power to write an interesting post!


Stay healthy, folks. The alternative is not fun.

how do you, how do you sleep

A few days ago I was having a bad morning. Brian was out of town, for one. And for two, Rory decided to get up around 4:30 instead of her usual 5am or later. And I mean, 5am is hard enough for me; 4:30 was making me angry. Really angry. (I might have told her to shut up.)

When I'm tired, some old joint injuries come back to haunt me, and I have been tired every single day for months. Since November 24, to be exact. As I lay there, alone, all I could feel was the lumpy pillows and my aching shoulder and hip. I couldn't get comfortable! And the more I tried to get comfortable, the worse I felt.

To make matters worse, one line from the refrain of some stupid pop song kept running through my head (see: title of this post). The song, if I understand it correctly, is written from the viewpoint of a guy who has been dropped by his girlfriend like a hot potato, and in the chorus he is confronting her about it a year later. How do you sleep - as in, how can you sleep at night. You're smart, you get it.

Those moments, struggling to sleep, trying not to hate the dog, and not being able to shut the song off, were not my best. To distract myself from my misery discomfort, I began thinking of all the different ways I've slept in my life. I've generally been a side sleeper for as long as I can remember, with several attempts to become a back sleeper thrown in for good measure and to appease my chiropractors. The back sleeping never really caught on - you can't curl up that way! I've found recently, though, that when I am hurting (on any given day it's right hip, right shoulder, or mid-back) I am most comfortable sleeping on my back. Even better if I have some heavy blankets, including one electric one to keep everything warm.

Brian is one of those contortionist elbow-in-every-corner sleepers, so it's easy to get comfortable on my back when he's not around and I'm not getting jabbed by an errant knee. When he is around, sleeping straight on my back is asking for trouble. And bruising. Usually I'll give in to the angles and try to cuddle - married life and all - but this doesn't always lead to feeling rested.

So I'm curious - how do you sleep? Do you have any tips for getting back to sleep after being rudely awoken by a spoiled border collie? Do you get jabbed and poked all night too?

early rising

Since the Dawn of the Puppy about 2 months ago, Brian and I have become unwilling early risers. And as it appears that waking up at 5:30 is something deeply engrained in Rory's soul, I am faced with two choices:

1. Continue to have us stumble around in the dark, trying to shush her for an hour and a half; taking her outside to potty when it's urgent which involves the putting on and taking off of many layers; and generally being cranky between the hours of 5am and 8am (at which time she has most of her just-woke-up energy burned off); OR

2. Start getting up at 5:30. Me, the night owl. Me, the girl who goes to bed early so that she has plenty of time to read under the covers...until 11 or 11:30.


I have been leaning more and more toward the getting up early part, because I think it would be better for me in that I could get some actual income-earning work done -  because, let's be honest, not much of it is getting done during daylight hours. Having that hour or two before Brian gets up and moving could make a world of difference, if only I could be disciplined enough to make it happen. And I know it could work, because when we first moved here I was up by 5 or 6 most days anyway just because of the time zone change. And it was AWESOME.

And speaking of Brian - I know it would be good for him too, to be able to sleep until the alarm sounds instead of playing the your turn, my turn, up and down game we play the first two hours of the day.

We already turn in between 9 and 10 most nights anyway, so a major evening routine change wouldn't be necessary. Except I wouldn't be able to stay up late reading, but it wouldn't be hard to read during the day instead.

On the other hand, waking up when I don't want to or plan to is HARD. And one silver lining in the whole taking turns to address the puppy plan is that Brian and I spend those hours cuddling, and I would miss that.

Have you ever tried to implement an early rise schedule? Or had one imposed on you by puppies or babies or construction next door? What are some things that work to get you awake and moving when the rest of the world is still asleep?

Water - it's important, y'all

It's amazing how big of a difference water makes in day-to-day physical function.  I have often sat in a slump at 2pm, wondering why I can't seem to focus my eyes or concentrate on anything, only to realize that I had not yet taken a single sip of water that day.

Granted, I'll have a piece or two of fruit most days for breakfast, which is a good step toward proper hydration. But there's nothing like dehydration to get me permanently sidetracked in a sorry slump.  One or two cups is enough to revive me, but it's sometimes an effort to get a full 8 cups throughout the day.  Generally, if I don't get it all in while I'm at work, I don't get it all in.

I urge you to learn your body's signs of dehydration.  For me, I lose the ability to concentrate.  I will 'come-to' with my head to the side, staring at my computer screen, with no memory of how the previous moments passed.  Also, the back of my tongue will feel dry.  If it's REALLY bad, I'll get a slight headache above my eyebrows and find any movement to require more effort than usual (read: I get clumsy).

How do you know when you're dehydrated?  What are your symptoms?

Photo by Nico van der Merwe, from here.