Yesterday was my last day of art classes for the school year. We had a sweet little party with strawberries and pizza and celebrated summer by beginning our nature journals with the assignment of filling them over our break.  Mine was mostly supposed to be for example purposes, but I got a bit gung-ho for the project as journal art tends to be my very favorite thing. I wish blogs could ever be as tangibly fascinating as journal art. But like ebooks are to the real, wrinkled, great-smelling thing you hold in your hand, I know that the two could never truly compare. 

There's something really wonderful about baking. I let the magic of cooking kind of fall to the wayside of my life for quite a while, but in the last year as the focus of my life has turned to food, I've realized how great it is. And also how accomplished you feel after making a big, delicious meal. 

Baking is even better in some respects, because I often have 90% of the ingredients on hand which makes it easy to bake whenever I feel like it. This afternoon was banana bread with walnuts.

I guess this is growing up

All these people at interviews are like, "So, are you passionate about marketing/health policy/technical writing..." 

And I just sit across the table from them thinking, "I like flowers." 

I think about how I love this poem by Mary Oliver, and how I'd hate to sit at a desk all day while the sun is out, encouraging all the petals to unfurl their gentle sunsets, their egg-yolk centers, their spiny, sticky greens. I think about lawns sliced open by old men riding dilapidated lawn mowers, and the smell that trails them--oil and grass stains. I think of sunburns and flip-flop blisters and charred hot dogs on the grill.

I think about my to do list and the stack of bills that needs to be paid. "Yes, I am SO interested in insurance practices," I tell them. 

Poppies
Mary Oliver 

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Re-imagined

el nopal, the prickly pear 

I've been trying to re-imagine myself as someone who is more creative, more interested, and more engaged in the day-to-day activities of their life. Not to make this some kind of freaking self-help blog or something, but maybe it is really important to be constantly asking yourself "How can I make this day meaningful?" even when it seems painfully hard to pull yourself off the couch after a long eight hours of chasing after snotty two-year-olds and searching for teeny weeny tantrum-flung tube socks.

It's easier, for sure, to be meaningful on the weekends.

This re-imagined self of mine does more painting, adventurous cooking, and tells funnier jokes. She is more inclined to apply for new jobs, read new books and worry less about the furniture arrangement in her apartment. She trusts the fortunes out of fortune cookies (even if they are usually just more of an assertion of facts than any kind of true psychic prediction) and worries less about money. She takes advantage of vacation days and buys tickets to things without over thinking it.

Obviously, easier imagined than brought to life...but let's just take it one step at a time, shall we?

The painting above is my manifestation of being meaningful yesterday. Baby steps.

Alien Body

The thing that you should know about my pancreas is that it turned me into an alien. Watch out for yours, because the transition happens without a lot of warning.

I haven't written in a long time because I've been depressed. No one wants to read about it, and I don't want to post it all up on to the Internet like some sad sack Nancy Drew just trying to find herself in the middle of this diabetes wasteland. Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Inexplicable Organ Failure. Yep, that one would go straight to the best seller list.

On top of the fact that no one loves a whiner, having a disease like diabetes just doesn't work the same way as having cancer or liver failure or a flesh-eating disease does. When I'm down, it's because there's a container of pasta salad in the fridge and I want to eat the whole damn thing, but I can't because my body would flip out. And let me just say that after you're done throwing a tantrum because you can't eat unlimited amounts of pasta salad, you are guaranteed to feel like a childish fool. And your boyfriend is guaranteed to confirm that for you (even if he's usually pretty kind and tolerant). So yeah. You have to have a mastectomy? Feel free to scream and cry. Can't have French fries anymore? Seems kind of petty in comparison.

But back to the part about being an alien. Hands down the hardest part of all of this has to be feeling utterly alienated from my own body. It seems kind of silly, maybe, but I guess it's just something we take for granted most of the time. My whole entire life I was in touch with my body without thinking much about it. I understood the rules of what made it happy or irritated and though I didn't always follow them they were constant and reliable. The way I thought about my body had mostly to do with what size jeans I wore, or whether or not there were irritable zits all over my face. Size eight or size four, though, I perceived myself as a healthy person. I never knew how important that distinction was until I found out I was sick. Having a disease has altered my entire perception of myself, from the way I eat to the way I organize my day or keep my home. Transitioning from healthy to unhealthy has persuaded me that there is something inherently bad about my life, even though there actually isn't. It has managed to alienate me entirely from the person who I am (was?) and forced me to reexamine every millimeter of my daily life, transforming me into a controlled, reserved, blood-sugar robot.

For a while I didn't notice the changes in my demeanor. I just kind of lumped all of the frustration together and held it at an arm's length, dealing with it when I could and blaming it for all my harder days. It took a while to notice how deeply upset I truly was about having diabetes. Sure, it was initially shocking and overwhelming to find out something was wrong and it would be wrong forever, but it was manageable. The thing that I didn't anticipate was how unmanageable it made many other things in my life. The stresses of taking such particular care of myself every day all day intensify the stresses of work, my relationships, my self image, my household, bills and expenses, and every other little thing I might encounter throughout the day. Thus, my writing has fallen by the wayside.

I read in a book just after being diagnosed that many people grieve their health as if it is a deceased loved one. At the time, I didn't think the two things could compare. Still, I'm not sure exactly how similar they are. But I do know this: a few weeks ago, in the middle of an argument with my usually kind and tolerant boyfriend, I realized how sad and angry I was and how obviously it was not his fault at all. I deeply miss my life before becoming diabetic, and I wish more than anything to be able to eat as much pasta salad as I want without thinking twice about it. But this is my life, and in every way I am grateful to have it diabetic or not.

This post is to clear the air, to start fresh and to move forward. Thanks for hanging in there for this one-time-only mega downer post...I promise to be more good natured from here on out.

Things that happened this weekend: painted some, hung out with kiddos all day, got new running shoes. Also, folded laundry. A LOT of laundry.

Overall, I'd say it was a success.

Fall Harvest

I have a new job.

My last job, you might remember, was one I'd been doing for forever quite a long time. I loved it for many reasons, most of them revolving around the fact that my boss was most likely the best boss I'll ever be lucky enough to have in my entire lifetime. Also, free meals were available. The problem with the last job, though, was that it wasn't exactly an adult job, as in, it didn't really pay the bills. It was a high school job, an in-between job, a living-at-home job, but not a GROWN-UP job, even if I really wanted it to be and tried pitifully hard to stay working there as long as possible.

The new job isn't exactly a GROWN-UP job either, but I like to think of it as qualifying because it fulfills some major requirements like paying rent and allowing me to have some savings and forcing me to get up earlier than I would like to. It's a nanny job, or really, "daycare", but to be frank I'm not a huge fan of the idea of working at a daycare so I'd prefer to call it "childcare" or whatever else you might be able to think of without conjuring the idea of kids picking their boogers and wiping them on unknowing, overwhelmed adults who are just trying to change one damn diaper without collapsing into a mental breakdown. Sure, there's a lot of literal shit and screaming involved in my day-to-day activities, but I do love kids and I'm trying to visualize this period of time as a stepping stone, and perhaps a motivational tool, to help push me out into the bigger, scarier (well, that depends on your perspective) world of actual careers I might enjoy. The one bonus is that Tom's sister is my new boss, and she's pretty wonderful and also great to work for. And also I'm assistant-teaching some kid's art classes, which is lovely and extra-gratifying because they don't involve snot, drool or diapers whatsoever.

To be sure, I've been trying to get the most out of my weekends, which are also majority snot-free.

The thing is, though, that I have a lot of beautiful pictures of apples that I took this week at my parents' house. This whole post was supposed to be about them, not my slightly somber job situation, so sorry about that.