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.