Oh, say can you see?

So Luis was on the phone for like 20 minutes last night blathering on and on in Spanish. Usually when he does that I just ignore him because it's usually some customer from the Bank wanting to know if he can reverse a fee, or a family member asking for money. I understand Spanish when I'm concentrating, but subliminal Spanish still escapes me. However it turns out this was a pretty important conversation.
When he got off the phone he told me he'd been talking with Emanuel (the guy that got us in to this whole thing- he introduced us and arranged our first blind date) and Emanuel was apparently going over with him the process of him becoming a citizen. Yup. You heard that right. My hubby wants to be a citizen. Weird.
Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day that would happen because if he has to renounce Mexican citizenship to do it (not sure if he does or not) his family will just DIE. Even if he doesn't, it's still the ultimate sell-out for Mexicans to become American; as if filling out mountains pointless paperwork while jumping through countless immigration hoops year after year is some sort of badge of patriotism, and the desire to avoid it is tantamount to being a traitor.
Anyway, he apparently has to pay a $500 fee, take a test, and swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S. That sounds a little too easy for me. After the sheer insanity of applying for his residency, I guess it seems kind of anti-climatic. Two of his buddies did it this year, though. I guess that makes it o.k. now.
I'm not sure if I like it, however. It means, for one thing, he can actually vote. Call me old-fashioned, but I kind of enjoyed the one vote per household situation, especially in this last election. It made my vote feel more important, and I liked being able to threaten him with voting independent. That really bothered him for some reason.
I also don't like that he'll seem less foreign- he'll just be another American with an accent. How exciting is that?
I will like not having to answer questions to immigration officials about our sleeping arrangements, however, and will enjoy not having to worry about paperwork when we cross the border, or the endless questions of what nationality will our children be.
I will not like the inevitable slurs made against me by his parents for being the reason for his deflection from his motherland- as if I've brainwashed him into wanting to be something they don't want to believe he already was long before I met him- an expat.
So all in all, I have mixed feelings. But I guess he's made up his mind. He claims he doesn't want to have to apply for a Visa to travel to Europe this summer, or whatever. So I guess it all boils down to convenience. 7 years of arguing back and forth about how to define our relationship and it comes down to this. Being a Mexican citizen is apparently not convenient enough for him, and he is quite efficient, after all.

Huh.

So this week has been really quiet. REALLY quiet. We had our last scout meeting (hooray!) seeing as they finally released us from the calling after asking 4 or 5 times. I had my last BEEDE class until January (that's the class I have to take to get my ESL teaching endorsement). I also had the last real instructional time with my classes until after Thanksgiving. I feel like things are winding down now, and the manic pace I've been functioning at will start to tone down to a more normal level of insanity now. Thank heavens. I was seriously starting to lose it.
Anyway, Andrei is with his mom this weekend seeing as we'll have him for most of next week, and he's doing a lot better in his after school program, according to his after school teacher. He got suspended last week and had to stay with me from 3-6 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Apparently there was an incident with him poking some kid with a pencil. It wasn't a big deal to us, but I guess his school takes poking very seriously, so we tried to be supportive.
Anyway, things are starting to feel a lot better.
Nothing really new or exciting happened this week, so I don't have much more to add, except that I got to watch a movie on tv this morning before coming to work at the store, because I didn't have to take care of anyone, or share the remote. That was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Alone Again, Naturally.

So my house is quiet. This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but to me it is. You see, on January 10th of this year, my MIL came for a visit. While she was staying with us, Andrei moved in temporarily (like 4.5 months) while his mom was shooting that reality TV show in P.R. While he was living with us, Ana moved in.
Andrei went back to "living" with his mom in August, Mamá went back to Mexico in October. Ana left for Mexico on Saturday. Yesterday night was the first night alone Luis and I have had (excluding Tuesday "date nights") in 11 months. When I get home the house is dark, and still, the t.v. is off, there is nothing bubbling on my stove, there's no crying baby- just the dogs and me. It's the first time I haven't had a long-term house guest this year... I spent most of 2008 living with others.
How bittersweet it is to have peace and quiet, but to lose such large pieces of my life. I know that it sounds weird, but I liked having Ana stay with us. I mean, how many women out there would voluntarily allow their Sisters-In-Law to live with them for extended periods of time? Crazy sounding, I know.
It was nice, though. It felt like I was back in college with a roommate who could cook truly awesome food and who liked all the same T.V. shows as me. We used to stay up late watching "Sex in the City" and we always watched "Martha Stewart Living" when I got home from work. We would give each other wardrobe advice and she helped out with the chores. She's also pretty wicked at "Guitar Hero."
I really, really miss her, as do the dogs, and Andrei, and Luis. Although I don't miss hearing the crying, the lack of it kind of makes me realize how truly lonely my life is here in Provo. So if you're looking to relocate for 4-7 months, feel free to ring me up. We've got a killer guest suite complete with a private entrance and bath. I have a vacancy.

My Six Quirks

Hey. So I got tagged by Shasta. I'll go ahead and fill this out, even though I'm pretty sure that I have a lot more than just six quirks.

1. I don't mix my foods. I can't even let the different foods on my plate touch each other (with a few rare exceptions like turkey and mashed potatoes). I didn't even eat different foods at the same time for a long time. I only ate one food at a time in a specific order to ensure that I neither started nor ended my meal with vegetables until I was married. Somehow marriage has loosened me up a little. When I was a kid, my little sister Lisa used to pile all of her meat, potatoes, and veggies into one big heap and then pour gravy over it all at Sunday dinner and it would make me nauseous, but I've had this bizarre compulsion since I was like 2.

2. I eat cereal for breakfast every morning. Most adults I know skip breakfast, but it's the only meal of the day I can't skip. I have frosted mini wheats with soy milk probably like 340 days a year. Weird, huh? The only exceptions are when I'm on vacation, when I forget to go shopping and run out of soy milk or mini wheats, or when I eat late at night and wake up with a high blood sugar stomach ache. I've heard stories that my great grandfather Partridge used to eat cracked wheat cereal with honey for breakfast every morning and attributed his long life (97 years) to the fact that he ate his daily dose of fiber. Kind of makes you think, huh?

3. I can't sleep at night unless it's totally absolutely quiet and dark. This is getting a little bit better as I get older, but it's still pretty bad. When I was in college I averaged like 4 hours of sleep a night because by the time I got to bed, someone else was getting up. Nowdays, Luis snores... badly, so that means most nights I sleep with a pillow over my head. I also have to turn my alarm clock face down because it's too bright for me to sleep. Hence, I am always the last one to go to sleep at night, and the first one up in the morning because the sun wakes me. I am usually awake by 7 or 8 on weekends, even when I don't have Andrei or an alarm clock to wake me.

4. I make up silly songs about pretty much everything. It's kind of ridiculous but I sing to my dogs, to Andrei, to Luis, with the radio, in the shower, to the dishes... pretty much everywhere. It's something I've done my entire life. Sometimes they have a tune or rhyme. Sometimes it's just string of consciousness singing. When I'm not singing, I have to be listening to music, unless I'm at work or watching t.v. When I'm in the store I always listen to the background music and will often randomly recite the lyrics of the songs that are playing to people, catching them off-guard because who in their right mind pays attention to background music?

5. I only own shirts in the following colors: rose Pink, turquoise, green, brown and red. All of my other tops are neutrals. I just realized this the other day looking in my closet. I only own 1 orange shirt (because it says Wong's Chinese Palace- hello! I look hideous in it, but who cares!?), 1 yellow shirt, and 1 purple shirt (That has a picture of an awesome Tiger on it) outside that color spectrum, and I rarely wear them.I don't wear stripes and rarely wear patterns. My closet kind of looks like one big monochromatic neutral blob. The one major exception is my Chicago Bears Jersey which I still wear even though it's like 20 years old. It has holes in the sleeves from when i was in college and tried to dry it in the microwave for a date I was going on one night. Yes. That's right. I microwaved a shirt to dry it. I bet you wish you'd thought of that first!

6. I'm afraid to talk on the telephone. I screen all my calls for this purpose, so if you call me and I don't answer, it's my irrational phobia at work. I really only have like 3 people that I can talk to without major anxiety: My mom, Emily, and Luis. I call those 3 regularly. I can't even call and order a pizza, though, without rehearsing it. I couldn't call the movie theatre to check show times without having a panic attack until I was like 17 years old. Often I write down what I'm going to say on the phone because I get too stressed out. It's really annoying, but it's been like this since I was a kid. My parents were always concerned because I was the only one of their teenagers who didn't run up the phone bill. I couldn't function as an adult without texting.

Ok. Now I tag Emily, Sara, and Melissa.

I don't care about labels... unless they're mine!

Introducing the Casablanca White Label. I shouldn't feel as good as this as I do... yet it happens. I also like how I saved $600 by making all the labels myself. I rock. I know. You can just admit it now.
There's also a few snapshots of the latest and greatest to roll off the assembly line. I love this job so much.

What's a girl to do?

I have a friend named Bibi who is famous for prefacing all of her comments with a story. She claims it's because she's Latina and therefore is a divergent (as opposed to linear) thinker. I always tell her, though, that us Americanas can be just as divergent and it's not cultural, it's just bad writing. I am the case in point. Today, I'm prefacing my preface.
My whole life I've had really vibrant, vivid dreams. I actually dated a boy in high school that I dreamed about regularly. The bizarre thing is that LITERALLY every dream I ever had about him came true, including the really bad highlight job he gave himself before Senior Prom and the re-occuring dream I had that he would call me 3 days after he got released from his mission. I dreamed about my husband and the circumstances in which I would meet him about 2 weeks before it happened. I also dreamed I would teach at Dixon Middle School.
I also have a lot of dreams that are totally nonsensical- my all time favorite being the dream I had Freshman year of BYU where Pope JPII came to give a devotional on campus and I ended up joining him on a cross-country rally on his tour bus that was painted to look like a pineapple. He let me try on his entire collection of hats including his pope hat, a Medieval jester hat, and a giant cat in the hat hat. I have traveled the entire world (and several other ones) in dream form, and have held hundreds of different professions including Lion tamer, Pool Hustler, Burlesque Dancer, and President of the United States. I am also often a chain smoker in my dreams. The creepy thing is that I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, but I can plainly taste the smoke and I get a nicotine rush when I'm smoking in my dreams. What does that mean?
Also, one time I dreamed I got to talk with some dead relatives who explained to me the circumstances of their death, which I'll NEVER forget.
That leads me to a repeated dream I keep having- pregnancy. Now most of my life I've dreamt of having children. I have given birth to a couple dozen mystery children- usually horribly deformed or otherwise impaired. I've given birth to full grown adults, and to babies who can talk. But I've never been able to imagine myself pregnant until this summer when I had a dream that was so vivid I actually thought it was real. I was walking in my back yard in late July looking at a red rose bush that was blooming, and I just knew I was pregnant. I took a test and it was positive. I experienced the whole pregnancy up until the time I went in to labor, then I woke up.
I've had other versions of this dream a few times, but the most realistic was the one I had two nights ago, that I can't get out of my head. I was in a cabin somewhere. I'm not sure where. Maybe it wasn't a cabin, but there was wood paneling on the walls. Anyway, I remember feeling sick, and thinking I should test- which is nothing new because with PCOS I have had many, many false alarms. In fact I once experience 4 weeks of morning sickness only to find out I had a burst cyst and the $50 I'd spent on pregnancy tests was just money down the tube, and I'm sure I've had at least 1 early term miscariage.
Anyway back to my dream. I took the POAS test and the results were uncertain, so I went to a doctor who confirmed I was pregnant. It was so real that I can actually remember smelling the doctor's office. I went back to whatever building I was in that had the wood paneling and told Luis, because I was actually already like 4 1/2 months along. I remember reaching down and I could feel my belly starting to get a little bit hard. I could actually feel the baby start to move inside of me. I was so excited and so scared.
It was so hard to wake up from it, because it's something I've wanted for so long- most of the time secretly because in order to cope with this stupid disease I have I usually wear my brave face and not tell people I still cry whenever I hear baby announcements.
But it got me thinking. I really don't think I'll ever have children. I never really thought I would be able to since I figured out around age 12 that there was something wrong with me. And I've never been able to actually imagine myself pregnant or with a child, so what's with the dreams? Back to what I was saying earlier, I have always had some weird stuff going on in my head so I started doing dream analysis in college to try and make sense of it all, but I've never come across this before. Well, I looked up pregnancy dreams recently and here's what I got:
"As possible as a pregnancy prophecy may be, usually the meaning of these dreams is not found in a literal event. This should not however, lessen the impact or meaning of the dream as pregnancy dreams are extremely potent. They are telling us that something important is coming; something life-altering is forming in our being. When we think of pregnancy in symbolic terms the dream is much easier to decipher."
Pretty cryptic, huh?
I wonder what's trapped in my subconcious literally waiting to be let free? If any of you have any experience with dream interpretation, please clue me in on this, because it's really weirding me out.
Thanks!

Where are all the Grownups?

One of my favorite political satires ever is a bit SNL did for the 2000 election about then Governor G.W. Bush and his opponent Al Gore. Now I voted for Bush, so please don't take this as criticism of him or anything, I just thought the satire was HILARIOUS!!! The closing line is the title of my post, and it's kind of how I've been feeling lately with Hector leaving for Mexico and Emily announcing that she's leaving for England, and with Ana moving out. Sometimes I just want to run into a corner and hide, too. I'm really glad for everyone, but I think I just resent being trapped in a place that I never wanted to be in the first place. So without further ado, here's "Palm Beach."


Announcer: When life is uncertain, and results are unclear.. then you must be in Palm Beach..

[ cue title graphic, dissolve to George W, Al, Katherine Harris, Jeb, and Florida Supreme Court, dissolve back to title graphic over image of George W. laughing behind Al's back ]

[ open on Katherine Harris fixing herself a drink ]

Katherine Harris: Well, Jeb, with the Supreme Court's ruling to stop the recount, Al Gore is finally finished. It's everything I've worked for.

Jeb Bush: And what about us, Katherine?

Katherine Harris: Us? [ laughs ] You silly boy! There never was any "us". What happened in the skybox at the Dolphins game was.. just a fling. I'm gonna be an ambassador! Do you think I'd jeopardize my career for some beurocrat named "Jeb"? Ha!

Jeb Bush: It meant more to us than that. [ kisses Katherine ]

Katherine Harris: Stop, you'll ruin my makeup.

Jeb Bush: Damn you, Katherine! Why.. I have half a mind to give your job back to Nikki Cox.

Katherine Harris: So go ahead. [ pause ] I didn't think so. Always the conservative, aren't you, Jeb?

George W. Bush: [ stumbles into the room ] Hey, hey, it's me, hey.. Uh, Jeb.. the computer's doing that thing again. Can you fix it for me, so I can finish my game of Tetris?

Jeb Bush: Of course, Georgie. [ to Katherine ] Even presidents need their computers. [ exits room ]

George W. Bush: Hey, Katherine. I've been thinking about my cabinet. Who do you think would make a better Secretary of the Interior - Nolan Ryan or The Rock?

Katherine Harris: [ sits him down on the couch ] You're thinking too hard, George. [ massages his shoulders ] You look.. tense.

George W. Bush: Heck, I just can't wait 'til all this President junk is over next week.. so I can go back to hunting and executing.

Katherine Harris: Next week? You know you have to President for four years.

George W. Bush: [ angry ] What?! [ stands ] That blows! I'm gonna kill Dick Cheney! He told me it was like winning a fishing contest - you win a trophy, you take your picture, and you're done!

Katherine Harris: Don't worry - it'll go by fast, with me by yuor side.

Katherine Harris' Thoughts: You've got him right where you want him, Katherine. [ laughs ]

George W. Bush's Thoughts: The Rock is stronger. But Nolan Ryan's wise. Presidenting is hard!

[ Katherine and George W. lean in for a kiss, but are interrupted by the arrival of Al Gore ]

Al Gore: Hello, George W.! Hello, Katherine!

Katherine Harris: Al! I thought you were dead.

Al Gore: I'm Al Gore. I just appear to be that way.

George W. Bush: [ angry ] Hey, Al! I saw you on TV today! You interrupted the "Rugrats"!

Al Gore: That's right, George W. I was accusing you of circumventing the Democratic process in the name of personal ambition.

George W. Bush: [ laughs ] You said "circumventing"!

Al Gore: [ pours himself a drink ] Ms. Harris, isn't it inappropriate for you to be here?

Katherine Harris: Guess what, Al? I'm always gonna be here. Everywhere you turn, this face will be staring at you! [ smiles wickedly ] I'm gonna crush you!

Al Gore: Damn you, Woman! Not in front of the boy!

George W. Bush: [ sobbing ] Why are you yelling?! Be friends!

Katherine Harris: Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm meeting Justice Scalia for cocktails at the Viscayne Club. [ exits ]

Al Gore: [ sighs, and walks towards George W. ] She's a real piece of work.

George W. Bush: Yeah. She's a "circumvent"! [ laughs ] Right?

Jeb Bush: [ re-enters ] Hey, guys. Dick Cheney just had another heart attack..

George W. Bush: [ panics ] No-o-o! He promised he wouldn't! First, Poppy with the hip replacement, now this! Where are all the grown-ups? [ runs into the corner and cries ]

Movin' on up!

So this blog is about work promotions.

Luis's cousin Hector is a call center manager for Tahitian Noni International here in Provo, and he's really in to it. He's so gung ho about multi-level that the recently offered him a job as the national director of Mexico, a position that is located out of Mexico City and pays the equivalent of a huge raise in salary a year plus a juicy benefits package. Here's the rub, though. They have to live in D.F. and Hector is going to be traveling like 300 days a year. He's going to take it, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I think that the $17000 a year raise is pretty awesome, but at the same time, he'll have to be living in the busiest, dirtiest, most crime-ridden city in the world. Literally. Plus his wife and baby will be stuck in a big, scary city all the time without him, and their families have both recently all moved to the U.S. I hope that they let Melissa travel with Hector and that they allow both of them to visit the U.S. often. He's going down there next week to check it out and see if he's interested. I guess he'll know better what he's going to do then.

I'm also worried for them because they recently purchased a home in our neighborhood. They have been there a little over a year now, and in that time the housing market has tanked. If they were to sell now, it would be at a loss. If they were to rent, it would be at a loss, as well, because it's only a 3 bed 2 bath house, and their mortgage far exceeds the current market rate for that size house. Plus there's not too many families around here anyway looking to rent a 3 bed 2 bath house.

So in all I'm jealous that Melissa will get to stop working and can stay home with Diego, and I'm jealous that they get to move to Mexico, but I'm really not jealous of where they'll be living or the fact that they'll be missing out on everything that goes on in the family for the next several years. Plus working for a multi-level I would always be worried about job security. Those companies have a shelf life (aka Melaluca, Amway, and Tahitian Noni has been around for a while now. Honestly, if it were us, I don't know what I would choose. I think his train of thought is that if he accepts the position and it sucks he can always have "national director" on his resume. Again, not so sure how I feel about that.

Speaking of moving up, Luis was recently recruited by UCCU to start their new Latino banking program. They hand selected him to manage their first ever Spanish Language branch. They asked him to please apply and could he send his resume their way. He did. We'll see if they really want him, and if so, for how much. He's basically decided that he won't switch unless they offer him a 15% raise or more. That would be nice. Cross your fingers for us.

The Weather

Lately the weather here has been creepy. It started Halloween morning when I woke up to find the scariest looking sky of my entire life. As I left for work at sunrise (yes, I have to leave for work at sunrise, and see it most days of the year), the sky was an eerie shade of violet with orange streaks. Everything was flooded with a grayish, glowing light. I kind of felt scared.

It was cloudy and cold most of Halloween day, and there was a pretty strong wind that blew most of the leaves off of the trees and making everything look bare and boney.

Then it snowed.

It didn't snow much, and it didn't stick, but we had scattered flurries throughout the weekend. Election day was gray with a steady drizzle. I left my classroom at 1:00 p.m. and it looked as if it were dusk, it was so dark. I wondered if it was something portentious, like that scene in Julius Cesar the night before the assissins enact their diabolical plot, when fire rains down from the sky.

Then Last night it snowed enough to actually stick and I woke up to a world covered by the most beautiful white blanket. Everything looked so clean and bright.

We have a saying here in Utah that if you don't like the weather, wait. It'll change in a few minutes. It's kind of true. We have the most extreme weather of anywhere I've ever been. I've seen it go from temperatures in the high 90's to snowing in a 24 hour period, and I'm kind of anxious about this winter. Last winter was the gentlest I've seen, and the snowiest. It was textbook- started snowing the first of September and stopped first of March. Usually winter is not so kind here, and I've seen it snow in June, followed by weeks of flooding and tornados.

However, aside from the schizophrenic climate, I still maintain that Utah has the most beautiful skies I've ever seen. Especially out here by the lake where we can still occasionally see the stars and where the air is always clean and clear. I've been taking a lot of pictures lately trying to document that, and they don't really do the sky justice, but here are some of my favorites.

Don't you wish you lived in Utah, too? Ha!

Potpourri

I am a huge fan of Jeopardy. I used to watch it religiously when I was younger and my lifetime earnings if I was an actual contestant in the show would be pretty impressive. One of my favorite categories is Potpourri because the contestants never know what's going to pop up and are always hesitant to select that category. Today's blog entry is kind of a potpourri of my life, so buckle your seatbelts and get ready for some random musings.
Item 1: Andrei
He is growing so fast I can't believe it. The weird thing is, though, that the older he gets the more I realize just how young he is. It kind of makes me wish I was a little easier on him when he was really small, but looking back I can't really find more than one or two occasions I really regret disciplining him. I always figured that even if he didn't like me I at least wanted him to respect me. I can't stand those women who let their step-children walk all over them, and I hate feeling like a doormat especially if the one doing the walking is just a kid, so come hell or high water I've always stuck to my guns with the kid.
The funny thing is that now that he is old enough to tell the difference he prefers spending time at our house over his mom's, despite the fact we give him rules and make him clean up after himself and eat his vegetables. This weekend has been especially great and he has repeatedly thanked me for taking care of him. It's so weird because most parents don't get that kind of appreciation out of their kids until much later in life, if ever, so I consider myself pretty blessed as far as that goes. I never expected that he'd understand something as complex as love and discipline, especially at such a young age.
The other weird thing that I never really expected to happen when he was younger is how close we've become. Especially since January when Jerly left for P.R. he and I have really started developing a parent/child relationship aside from our previous care-giver/child relationship. I really find myself much more emotionally connected to him now, which makes me realize that families are not just the people we're blood related to. He asked me something this weekend that really broke my heart- he wanted to know what "mal criado" and "estupido" mean. When I asked him why, he said it's because his mom always calls him that. That kind of made me want to call her and use some colorful language with her. I didn't. It wouldn't help. I wonder sometimes about the injustice of this world- that a woman like Jerly can treat my husband and my boy so poorly and I'm helpless to do anything about it. I really hope that whole thing about eternal rewards is true.
Item 2: Halloween
We had a lot of fun. Luis took Andrei and a group of his cousins out trick-or-treating while I stayed home and manned the door while cooking sugar cookies for the kids when they came back (an old Black-Lanning family tradition). Our decorations were a hit and the kids loved the boiling cauldron of candy that we had (I stuck a small dutch full of candy oven inside my large stock pot, and stuck dry ice and water in the stock pot so there was steam and bubbling noises coming out of the candy dish). My favorite part was how excited the kids all got decorating their sugar cookies. It was so sweet and innocent, and it makes me sad for all those kids out there that don't get to do stuff like that with their parents. I hope that when they're grown they look back on that as fondly as I do.
Another thing I loved about this halloween was the pumpkins. I got this idea off of the Martha Stewart show. Usually I hate carving pumpkins because it's just so gosh darn time consuming and because I'm afraid of knives (if you want to know the stories behind that, ask Emily- she tells them better than I do). So Martha showed a giant jack-o-lantern snake comprised of literally like 2 dozen smaller pumpkins strewn together with christmas lights. I didn't go that far, but I stole her idea of carving polk-a-dot pumpkins using an electric drill. It was marvelous. I carved like 6 pumpkins in 20 minutes, and all grouped together, the effect was quite charming.
Item 3: I am too busy
This is an ongoing theme on my blog, I know, so I won't beat a dead horse. I just want to mention that this week I had scouts, a school play, a college class, and a work party that I had to throw at night. Why do we overschedule ourselves? Whatever happened to just hanging out at home at night?
Item 4: My health
I am sick all the time. It sucks. I have a lot of other health problems, too, aside from a propensity for coming down with the flu. Most of my health problems are caused by PCOS, which is a truly horrible disease that not many people (including most of the ones who have it) know about. If you don't know what it is, you should read about it. I kind of feel like one of my missions in life is to increase awareness about the condition because it's one of the most misdiagnosed illnesses out there, and it's a growing epidemic in the western world.
The root of my disease is diet, which is stupid and sucks because in order to successfully manage my PCOS I'd have to eat like 1200 calories a day of pure vegetables and lean protein, which you all know how much love. Cough. Cough. I spend most of my time ignoring my disease, feeling a righteous sense of victimization regarding it, or rebelling against it, and I'm sad to admit that I have kind of let it define me. I need to get better about it and realize that I am not everyone else and I can not eat delicious foods and still be healthy. If I want to live a long and full life I have to. Which leads me to feeling angry, and thus the cycle continues.
But I have been trying to make a major lifestyle change which leads me to
Item 5: Beets
This summer in an effort to drop about 20 pounds (which I did, but gained back 5, sniff sniff) I grew a veggie garden. It was a thing of pride and beauty to me, especially my twin tomato plants which I have mentioned before on several occasions. I also GREATLY enjoyed having onions whenever I needed them. The corn, watermelon, cucumbers, and eggplants were kind of a bust, but we gloried and reveled in an overabundance of tomatos all summer long. We didn't even feel the pinch when all the tomatos were called off of the shelves and prices tripled all over the country b/c of the e-colli epidemic; I had but to walk out my kitchen door and down the steps into my patio to grab literally dozens of tomatos a week, vine ripe, organic, and disease free. We had so many we were giving them away. Even with the dogs digging in the vine and eating a couple of tomatoes a day there were plenty. There was a killing frost early this October, and we lost the plants. I'm still greiving for them. It is, however, time to harvest the beets.
On a whim I planted a packet of beet seeds in March, thinking that the seedlings would most likely die. I don't really care for beets because they're such an odd vegetable, but I was trying to add nutritionally dense foods to my diet and I figured what the hey. I assumed I'd get a few scragly plants that would be beaten by the heat, or by insects, or by my dogs. I didn't. I got about 50 healthy and vibrant little plants. I spaced them out thinking that would surely kill at least half of them off. It didn't. Now it's November and I still have literally dozens of HUGE (as in grapefruit sized!) beets growing outside. The frost didn't kill the greens, and despite my best efforts at neglect they've been thriving all summer. I figure now is time to reap the harvest of my poor planning and laziness and eat some beets.
Last week we had roast beets. They were like runny mashed potatos, and tasted like tangy cooked carrots. Not bad. Today I cooked a bunch of orange-glazed beets. They were a hit, especially with Ana. Next week I think I'll make Harvard Beets.
If you have any beets suggestions, by all means let me know. I've still got about 20 plants outside, and I'm hell bent on using them all. After all, I grew them, and that's something I don't take lightly.
The good news is that the beets are greatly improving my general health. I guess the whole idea of you-are-what-you-eat is true, even if we are sick of eating foods tinged in red. My skin has cleared up, I recovered rapidly from my last bout of the flu once the beets were incorporated into the diet, and I have more energy. I know that beets are one of the best natural sources of iron. I wonder what else is in them?
So here's to silly little kids and spooky carved pumpkins and beets in all their stinky red glory. All good things which are excellent for the body or the spirit.