Use What You Have

I rode my bike to work three times in the past two weeks! One of the pleasures of biking to work is riding along the Charles River and seeing the crew teams rowing. People who crew are inspiring. They’re out there every day, in the rain, in the cold, no matter what. I only bike to work when the weather is nice and I don’t have to run errands or take Astrid to school or pick her up from swim, etc., so it ends up being not very frequently. I like hearing the crew coaches through their megaphones. I always think how nice it would be to have someone following along behind me, yelling out encouragement as I go through my day. Sort of like a life coach. But since I can’t afford that, I have to use what I have. Which is myself. And it’s hard to be wise and encouraging all day.

At a recent birthday party, I was talking with Mary, a fellow mom (and fellow ex-Chicagoan!), about all her various projects. She’s a lawyer who’s writing a screenplay and starting a T-shirt company. When I jokingly said “one job’s not enough for you?”, she said she’s also been collecting wise sayings from yoga instructors to put into a book one day. I told Mary about my favorite yoga teacher of all time, Rolf Gates. I went to his class every week at Baptiste Yoga and somehow my body did things I never thought it could do. At one point in the class, we’d have a break where he’d tell a story, usually something from his life. I’d lie on my mat, listening, sweating, breathing, and feel inspired. It must be like how you’re supposed to feel in church. And then he’d finish up with “…and that’s why we do abs” and we’d go on with class.

“We show up, burn brightly, live passionately, hold nothing back, and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.” –Rolf Gates

Mary had heard the story about how Baron Baptiste and Rolf parted ways and we talked about how yoga teachers can be assholes in real life, and maybe she should expand her book to include other inspiring people. She related this story from when she was volunteering during art class last year. The kids were painting and ran out of blue paint and started freaking out. Ms. Iluna, not a yogi, but a wonderful art teacher, calmed them down, saying, “Children, children, it’s true we’re out of blue paint. But we have to use what we have.” Ms. Iluna is awesome. She would make a great life coach. In fact, maybe that's what she should do now that Astrid's school canned her because she made too much money and hired a cheaper, younger, art teacher. Anyway, that’s my mantra from now on: “use what you have.”

And my second mantra is, “if something feels bad, stop doing it.” After one of Eliot’s many doctor visits last month, we saw a display of various handouts at the checkout desk. One, that was for knee pain, said “If you are doing something that is causing pain to your knee, stop doing that thing, and the pain to your knee will stop.” I had to read that a couple times, thinking I was missing something. Why would they say something so completely obvious? We were cracking up and the nurse at the checkout desk said “You’d be surprised by the number of people who call to say that when they eat a certain food, they get a stomachache, so they want to talk to a doctor about it. I want to tell them to just stop eating that food.” I thought, “Yeah, people are stupid,” then I realized I was doing that very thing. For the past few months, whenever I drank coffee in the morning, I felt sick afterwards. So I switched to tea and now I feel much better. Duh.

My Edible Rewards

This was not the greatest year for edibles in my garden. First I planted peas and beans and the bunnies ate them. I put up rabbit fencing and planted again. They ate them again. Repeat process two more times. Finally, I have fairy-size plants growing with miniature peas and beans on them. It’s the weirdest thing.

The cucumbers were probably my most successful. I harvested enough for sushi a couple times and made 2 jars of pickles. It was my first time making pickles and Eliot mentioned the pickle episode from The Andy Griffith Show, where no one has the heart to tell Aunt Bea she makes lousy pickles, and even though Eliot swore he thought my pickles were good, truthfully, just like in the episode, they weren’t as good as “store-bought.” Then my cucumbers got some sort of virus where the leaves and stems turned yellow. And any remaining cucumbers were eaten by chipmunks or squirrels. Here's one pre-pickle:

The onions and spinach never came up. The rabbits ate the lettuce and beet leaves. The pepper plants never got that big, although one plant has a few fruits finally forming. The basil did well. Yay! I grew a lettuce-leaf variety which was perfect for tomato sandwiches. Unfortunately most of the sandwiches were made with bought tomatoes. So far I’ve gotten 2 ripe tomatoes (from 6 plants!) and they were good, although not as tasty as last year’s. But I have a lot of green tomatoes, so there's still hope.

Eliot is strongly suggesting sticking to flowers next year. I see his point, but what's life without homegrown tomatoes? And basil to go with them, of course. And I’d like to tweak that pickle recipe, so maybe a few cucumber plants. And dill for the pickles. I didn’t think of that this year and had to buy dill. And now that the rabbit fencing seems to be doing its job, I could probably plant a few peas, too...