baby, the bread is rising

Here it is.  another year.  another National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is upon us.  2010.  It seems that right now…that this year…I know less and less people who are talking about eating disorders.  Maybe it is because I am talking less about eating disorders.  I am continually further and further in time from that time in my life, where it was my life.

And I like that it is not something I have to talk about all the time anymore.  I like that I do not have to explain my behavior– why I eat at very specific times and very specific quantities of food, why I see a therapist every week, why I disappeared to Tucson for 80 days.

And.  I wonder if it is useful to talk about eating disorders.  or just to talk honestly.  to consider our relationships with food and feelings and life and bodies and ideas.  I think that sometimes it can be useful to bring it up and start a dialogue, to connect and understand and release the shames that often inherently in my perception exist in secrets.   Maybe I need slash want to bring it up more.  so we all know that we are never alone.

I feel sad when I think people forget how perfect they already are; for example, when people are dieting, it seems like people idealize their lives when their diets are over, idealize their bodies when their diets have fulfilled their purposes instead of recognizing that change for assumed health can be beneficial and also we are beautiful and perfect as we are right now.   I love and accept myself unconditionally as I am right now.  That is something I have said many many many many many times to myself when I am in times of change or when I am doubting myself.  Bodies and lives flow.  ever-changing.  Changes can happen, yet it is hard for me to support extreme goal-oriented changes because then the process and the everyday experiences lose their validity.  when the end goal is all that matters.  What about health through slow and joyful means?  Instead of punishment and shame and intentions to be something else.  Because no matter my body, I am me am me am me am me.

There is this gym that triggers me regularly, daily.  I feel angry when I encounter the membership heckler on the street, who asks me, “where do you work out?”  and I say, “I don’t” and he says, “well that’s not something to be proud of…blah blah blah”  and I think why isn’t it something to be proud of??  I am proud that I am healthy and alive!  I do not enter this facility that advertises themselves by encouraging people to get a better body this 2010.  My body is perfect.  And I can exercise it’s physicalness in so many ways without going to this place where people run on treadmills with headphones and televisions and track how many calories they burn, and then go in the locker room and weigh themselves and consider how many calories they need to burn tomorrow…because I can be outside!  I can walk and run!  I can be in nature and community!  I can work with my body.  and meditate and practice yoga and go dancing with my friends…and further physicalness.  through life.

not that gyms are evil.  and I am not anti-gym or anything.  I want to stress that there are other options.  and that not knowing my weight frees me from a system that tells me that this is what I should weigh.  instead of relying on my body to tell me what is right for me.  instead of relying on taste and smell and the way my body feels to decide what and how I should eat.

and speaking of eating,

Last night…Daniel and I had a very very special (as special as it was birthday celebration)–  we went to dinner at GREAT LAKE, a tiny pizza place in Chicago.  Where we sat and breathed and watched our heavenly heavenly pizzas made with a real person’s hands.  Oh it was glorious.  I respect a place where the people who own it do things the way they want to, where the customer is not always right, where it seems like they are just cooking some food for us, and there is less distance between the cook and the customer.  hooray!  and then afterwards we went and ate a cannolli at the tiny Italian bakery…also heavenly!  mmmmm.

what a glorious experience of deliciousness and celebration.  so hooray for life and celebrating and bodies and being!

I am glad to be alive.  I am thankful to be alive. so let’s talk about it.  feel free to talk to me about it.

the little cookie.  with the big bite!  woot!

on Tuesday, Daniel and I sat in boocoo all afternoon, getting totally hopped on coffee (they serve Just Coffee), and eating these little homemade chocolate chip cookies that sell for 50₡.  And later I was thinking how good, meaning absolutely delicious, I found the two little cookies I ate (when I say little, I mean just regular size cookies).  There was a simple-ness to them, something that reminded me of the kind of cookies a person makes at home one night when he or she decides to bake a few cookies.  There is a familiarity that is safe to me.
There is something so marvelous to me in something made by hand, mixed by hand, so that one can detect the parts that went into it, instead of it being so well blended that they go without notice.  I think every part is important.  and the homemade bread and cookies seem to lack that pristine professional quality, they are from a real person in a real place and time.

I choose to live my life in this way.  In a way, where I cultivate and have my hand in as many aspects as I do of the things I do and interact with.
I can thus find joy and peace and home in all that I do.

I am reading this book, NOURISHING TRADITIONS, these days.  learning about lacto-fermentation, and animal fats.  Thinking my knee wouldn’t get stiff if I had more raw milk in my life.  This morning I think I baked one of the delicious soda breads of my life, and I blame it on lacto-fermentation, although it could be love.

MY DELICIOUS SODA BREAD (all measurements are approximate)

12 to 24 hours in advance of baking, gently mix— 2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups spelt flour, 2 cups whole milk yogurt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, a little less of a teaspoon baking powder, a couple teaspoons of salt.

allow to sit covered with a towel.  after 12 to 24 hours, turn out on a floured surface (I used dark rye flour), and then knead and fold in a handful of raisins and caraway seeds.  form into a round loaf.  butter an iron skillet and place loaf in center of skillet.  cut a cross in the top of the loaf and bake at 375 degrees fahrenheit for 30 or 40 minutes [until done!].

cool!  eat!  I like it sliced thin!  daniel likes it sliced thick!  totes dee-lish.

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in other news.  Daniel and I have been dreaming lately.  Sleep-dreaming.  vivid dreams.  we have written some.  we have not written some.  we maybe will write some.  Frank at the farmer’s market tells me that lots of people have been dreaming familiar things lately.  That something big is happening.  2012??!!?!

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I ran the Chicago marathon.  All 26.2 miles.  without injury.  I am very thankful for some friends I met around mile 18 who stayed with me through the end, who kept talking to me and being with me even as it became challenging for me, when my hips and my knees began to stiffen and tighten, and I secretly longed that someone would come pick me up and carry me to the end.  And then it was done.  and it was bananas and space blankets and relief and awe and sadness and joy and inspiration.  I think there will be other runs if I want there to be.  Now three weeks out, I am still running.  It’s been a process of seeing what my body is ready for as it recovers and giving it the time and space it needs.  oh amazing healing.

Today Daniel and I are spending the early afternoon at SWEET DREAMS ORGANIC BAKERY & CAFE in Glenview.  I used to come here before my doctor’s appointments across the street or after my doctor’s appointments across the street while waiting for bus back to Evanston.  I am sitting in the cushy cozy burgundy velvet chair.  I want to fall asleep in it.  mmmm….It is a gift to have this early afternoon to sit here and breathe and write and think and read and be.  To me, it seems that much of my recent life time is spent doing.  doing and being slash it seems like there is an accent on doing.

AND!  there is an amazing gift of gifts in my life that is not all doing!  I am taking part in a psychological study which is meant to ‘train psychic intuition in women’ through a series of biofeedback sessions.  So!  I go twice per week for these half-hour biofeedback sessions!  for free!  not only for free!  I am being paid to practice meditation!  hooray.  what a lucky reminder that grounding and presence is for me.

There is breath in me.  a contentment.  a freedom!

We have moved out.  into our own place.  I do not need to rely on anyone else for transportation anymore.  just me and mi bici.  just me and mis patas.  sigh.  I sigh.

oh glorious world and life.

so much to say.  so little say.  We are going to run this marathon.  I feel abundantly excited.  and fearful.

My beginning ventures into running and nearly barefoot running, left me with a week of rest for some sore feet (mostly in my toe area).  It’s like.  I felt so excited that I thought I was invincible.  that without having run in years, I thought I could run anything.  and I guess I ran longer and harder than my feet were ready for.  Yet!  I am discovering relief!  and after a week of rest am running again!

hooray!

little bits.  taking it slower, icing my feet, elevating my feet.  alternating grass and asphalt.  alternating running and walking.

It’s like.  I broke through this wall.  I had this barrier about running, this fear, this hatred, this perception– that running was torture, punishment–a medicator.  Yet it shattered.  and now it’s celebration!  It’s life and and lightness and love and spirit and heart.  and it’s all inside of me.  and I want to run–

oh mysterious world.

so I’ve got this new hobby, new spirit, new home (!).  phew.  satisfaction. mmm