12 Goals for 2012

(I swear I didn’t specifically aim for 12 goals. When I counted them before making this post, I was pleasantly surprised by the symmetry though.)

– Knit 12 projects (1 per month) from yarn already in my stash and patterns in my queue or favorites list on Ravelry. I will get a post up about this soon.

– Run the Instant Classic Half Marathon on March 17th. The goal is 2:30, but being a trail race, I will accept any time between 2:30 and 2:45.

– Sew several new pieces of garb over the Spring and Summer, for all of the family. We all need new garb to get us through Pennsic, but especially Grace.

– Pre-plan monthly menus. That system works too well and takes nothing more than me applying some brain power to it. Saves us a ton of money and headaches when I keep it up.

– Find some way, some how, to find the funds to join a CSA (I want Victory Farms if they keep their system the same as the old owners). I will continue to fantasize about having the money to get a cow share from Faith Farms for milk.

– Run the 5 mile Dauber Dash on June 17th.

– Expand my cooking chops and learn new and amazing ways to eat unfamiliar vegetables. (See the CSA goal above).

– Work with Grace to continue to help her with her goal of learning to run along with Mommie.

– Run Warrior Dash on September 29th and earn a PR for that race (would like to do it in 50 minutes or less).

– Run the Richmond Half Marathon in 2:30 or less on November 10th.

– Tighten up my nutrition to improve my performance in the races I have planned. I am shooting myself in the feet with my diet. I could do so much better if I was even more careful about what I put in my mouth.

– Present the family with beautiful handknit Christmas gifts that will keep them wrapped in warm wooly love.

I want to focus 2012 on food, fitness, and family, and improving the connections and relationships I have with each of those things.

The Neglected Blog Looks Back

I have had nothing to say. Nothing to show you. Nothing to share. Not that there hasn’t been an abundance of words, potential photos, or knitted projects, it’s just that it is the time of year where my brain is overwhelmed and I just don’t feel like talking. I have neglected the blog and I am sorry.

2011 has been a year for wild ups and downs. It will go down in my memory for several momentous occasions.

First, it was the year I found my feet. I started running in the Spring of 2010 a few months after gastric bypass, but it wasn’t until this year that I found the confidence to run races. It began in January when I learned that Warrior Dash was coming to Virginia and I signed up as a way to motivate myself. Then I discovered the SuperHero 5K; a perfect race given my ability, my fondness for superheros, and the charity appealed to me. In total, I ran 3 races this year, finishing the year with the Jingle Bell Run, and even before 2012, I have signed up for two more races, both 13.1 mile distances. I am already well into training for the half marathon I am running on March 17, 2012.

I will also remember it as the year I received my Pelican in the SCA and as a year in general where I gave most of my spare time to the SCA, at least up until about October. Between autocratting, gate keeping, and general event support staff, I put a lot of time, sweat, and work into the SCA. I have committed to making 2012 a lighter year for the SCA for myself. No jobs, no event staffing, no offices; nothing unless I am taken hold of by some bolt out of the blue and inspired to do something.

It was the year of car repairs and cash hemorrhaging in general. Things were looking up early in the year, but then the van needed work, then the washer gave up the ghost, then we bought a new t.v., then my truck needed $1000 in work, then the van again, then the truck broke down the day before Thanksgiving, and finally, the van needed a new radiator just last week. It has been brutal, but we have held on and received a lot of blessings too; just the fact that we aren’t deeply in credit card debt still puts us in a better place than we were 3 years ago. I hope things will improve in 2012.

Also in the hardship category has been the breakup of my parents’ marriage after 32 years. As I told my dad a couple of weeks ago, this has been a long time in coming, so long in fact that I just stopped believing it would actually happen. But at long last it has, and we are picking up the broken pieces of my family and trying to figure out how to make a new puzzle out of it all. Some pieces are missing. Some pieces don’t fit together anymore. For better or worse, I suspect it is only the glue that is Grace Elizabeth that is preventing total disintegration.

I confess that I always assumed that divorcing parents would be vastly easier to manage as an adult than as a child. In fact, I thought I would have no emotional fall out whatsoever. I was categorically wrong on that front. This is hard. It hurts. And there is not a quick end to the hurt in sight, but I will push on to do right by all of my family, even though that balancing act is difficult at best and leads to hurting others sometimes at worst.

2011 was the year I began to earn some culinary chops. I have enjoyed experimenting with food, flavors, cuts of meat, and preserving food. The surgery I underwent almost 2 years ago has totally transformed my interests in food. Gone are the days when fried chicken and French fries made a meal, and all for the better as far as I am concerned. Yes, almost everything I cook has to have some kind of sauce with it for my own benefit, but the great thing about sauces is you can cook the same type of meat 10 times (hello boneless, skinless chicken breast) and have a different take on it every time. I have truly begun to enjoy cooking to the point that I frequently prefer it to eating out at a restaurant a lot of times.

It is also the year where I began to really care about what is in my food and where it came from. Websites I follow like Well Preserved and Fooducate have opened my eyes to possibilities and problems with our food. Sites like Food Freedom and Farm to Consumer Legal Defense have opened my eyes to the incredible power wielded by the large food corporations and how they influence government policy to their own fiscal benefit, though frequently to the detriment of the general public (remember, this is the year that tomato paste made pizza qualify as a “vegetable” for the purpose of school lunches).

It was not a big year for knitting for me. My Corrie Vest was the only really impressive project I succeeded at. The well-intentioned Self Created Sock Club flopped in May when it was supposed to be a pair of socks for my dad; this was simultaneous with the discovery of the divorce. Between the insanity of getting ready for Sapphire and the tumult of the early days of the divorce proceedings, I just couldn’t bring myself to knit his socks. And once I was off a month, I never got my sock mojo back. I have a new plan for 2012 and for knitting that I will describe in a forthcoming post.

It has been an incredible year with my daughter. Watching Grace become a little kid who can write her name, her numbers up to 10, who can spell C A T, who can color in the lines, who can draw pictures, and can remember and sing entire songs back to us has been uplifting and amazing. She has been the light and joy in my year.

I feel like I am ending 2011 a very different woman than I was when it started. I feel much older, more care-worn than I was 12 months ago. It has not been an easy or light year in any way, which doesn’t expressly mean it was a bad year overall, just a very intense year across the whole spectrum. I feel like I changed more in just this year than I have ever before, in some ways for the better, and in other ways, not so much.

I am closing out my third decade of existence very soon as well. My twenties were an awesome set of years, to be sure, but I am entering into my thirties in better health than I have ever had and with an amazing family I didn’t have at the beginning of my twenties. I don’t know where I will be at 40 in the same way I could never have predicted where I am today when I was 20, but I hope and pray that the coming decade will a decade of action and doing. I want to use these years to do rather than to hope to do. I will never be any younger than I am today, every day, and I learned very acutely this year that if you want to do something, you better hurry up and do it. Opportunities come far less frequently than excuses.

On that note, I will be closing out 2011 by running seven miles on Saturday morning. That is something I definitely could not have done on 12/31 a year ago. I can’t wait to see what I can do a year from this Saturday.

I wish you and yours an amazing 2012.

Jingle Bell Recap

I like reading race recaps and I can’t be the only one, so I do try and submit my own, partly for the amusement of others, but also partly so I can look back on these moments, good and bad, and remember where I have been.

I picked the Jingle Bell 5K because it was for a good charity (Arthritis Foundation) and because the price and date were compatible with my needs. Because it was themed, I had promised that if I met my fundraising goal, I would wear something themed for the day, thus with the jingle bell antler headband and the bells on my shoes.

There was no communication that I could find on where the race was starting at the mall, so we just followed a car that had euro stickers for half, full, and 50K races on it, figuring they probably had something like a clue.

One factor that had not occurred to me until Saturday morning was that the mall itself would not be open yet. I had been counting on there being warm stores for Byram and Grace to wander around in to stay warm. Fortunately, Panera Bread did open and they had warm drinks and a loveseat by the fire that was perfect for them.

The race itself did not feel especially organized. I know the Richmond Road Runners put out a desperate plea for volunteers last week, but there was not much communication on the website and the one email I sent with a question about packet pick up only was answered late on Friday. That is the downside of doing charity runs. It is all volunteer work and I can’t complain about that, really.

Byram had the camera and used it well.

I saw race numbers in the 600’s on people but it didn’t feel like there were that many attendees. I also chose to line up fairly close to the front this time, unlike the CASA run. I knew I wasn’t the speed bump this time and wanting that sub-30 PR, I needed to get out of traffic as quickly as possible.

Byram and Grace were able to be right next to me at the starting line. The race marshal yelled “Go!” and we were off.

I was pumped and being at the front with the faster runners, I broke out very fast at the start. I knew I was too hot but didn’t try and pull it back until we were about a quarter of a mile in. My MP3 player’s ear buds quit that morning, so I was running without my musical companions, just the raucous jingles of all the bells the runners were wearing. Those bells turned out to be a hazard because in almost no time, they were flying off shoes everywhere and were like little marbles all over the course. I lost my little bells on the Big Mama-Jama hill.

Oh, the hills. I suppose that whole commercial zone was built into a bowl around the James River. The steepest feeling hill was the Big Mama-Jama I mentioned above, but that one was relatively short and brutal and over, with a lovely fast downhill when we turned around in a cul-de-sac at the top. Then, up another hill, through an office park, and back down a gentler slope, until we got to the run-killing half mile hill. MapMyRun shaded the hill when I mapped the course for its elevation change. The course leveled out a bit, but still was slightly an uphill battle the rest of the way in.

There were cars in the course, as I suppose there had to be since we were running through a mall at Christmas time and an apartment complex is right next to the mall. The police were very friendly, but one driver was not. Sorry we ruined her day. The bells were a nuisance on the road as well, and fortunately I only stepped on one, and even though it was right in the middle of my instep, it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. My main complaint was that the Dog Walk took place in the last half mile of the race route, so after the hill from hell and being close to gassed, I had to contend with walkers, dogs, people pushing wheel chairs, and kids. I managed, but I wish that maybe they had marked off a separate route for the walkers and dogs, or timed it so they were in that section while the racers were off in the office parks and off the mall property.

Without music, I focused intensely on a visual I had in my head of the race clock at the finish. I kept imagining it with random numbers like 28:50 or 29:10 or even 31:52 (though I kept banishing that one). The hills were so painfully slow and I felt time slipping away from me. I began to make myself accept that I had not accounted for such a hilly race, and maybe this wasn’t the race for a PR. As I turned back into the mall parking lot for the end, I spotted Byram and Grace pretty easily and tried to smile at them, but just as I saw them, I realized I could actually see the clock.

It had something in the upper 28 minute on it and I lost any focus or control on my pace and breathing. I WAS going to make a sub-30 minute 5K if I would hurry the hell up! I pushed hard and tried to sprint for the finish but I really was gassed. I am sure I looked like I was running through mud, but it felt like I was flying. As I passed the clock, it read 29:30 as I hit the line and went into the longest chute ever, and they were yelling “Don’t slow down! Keep going!”

Ugh. It took me a minute to regain composure and controlled breathing but by the time I hooked back up with the family, I was beaming. I saw 29:30 as I passed the clock. I made my goal.

I don’t know if I will run this race again. I disliked the course, and it had minor annoyances like the water station had its trashcans so close you only had time to grab a cup and splash water in your mouth before passing your only opportunity to toss the cup. I would encourage them to place the can a good 40 or 50 feet beyond the station in the future (I know how minor such a nit is to pick). It would have been nice if there had been water at the end of the race too. It was halfway across the parking lot and not in the direction of where we were parked. The dogs and walkers were a bigger annoyance, but not unbearably so.

It was inexpensive, very local to me, and I liked the DJ and the fact that Panera opened their doors, making life nicer for my family. I certainly appreciate the cause as well.

I learned my lesson about the end of the race though. Losing my focus and control left me feeling completely blown up after the race and I am not sure I gained any benefit in my speed. I also learned that gloves would be a lovely thing for all these Saturday morning training runs I am about to embark on. I hate when my hands are so cold they are stinging. Yeah, they were warm by the end, but it took a long time. I love my ear warmer sweatband! Yes, I might look ridiculous, but see the picture of me and Grace walking above and realize…I already DO look ridiculous and that is okay. Other than my hands, I was well prepared for the cold and also for the inevitable sensation of TOO WARM later on. I love that my pull over hoodie has a zipper for venting purposes and I had it all the way down at the end, and it came off after the race.

It was a hard race but a wonderful feeling to achieve what I set out to do and run the race in under 30 minutes. I am thankful for my family and their love and support. After the race, Grace told me she wants to learn to run with me. I could not be more proud.

Our Local Thanksgiving

Well, my challenge to myself was to source as much of our Thanksgiving Day feast foods as locally as possible. I am annoyed at myself because every year, we always take a picture of our spread and this was the first year I failed in that, and this is the first year it really mattered to me what our spread looked like.

So, starting with the blatantly unlocal stuff. I did not extend my challenge as far as the goods other family members were bringing. Anna Jean was bringing deviled eggs and Dottie was bringing the beloved dish affectionately known as “green glop” (lime jello, pineapple, and marshmallow salad) and pumpkin pie. Because cranberries don’t seem to grow in Virginia and I really do like cranberry jelly, I got a plain old can of cranberry jelly. Next year, I am going to make my own. The white potatoes came from the store because I couldn’t find decent white potatoes at the farmers market except for tasty small new potatoes that would not make good mashed potatoes. And of course there was the Savory Toasted Cheese.

Other than those items, pretty much everything on the table, down to the fresh herbs for seasoning, were local.

Of course the star of the show was the turkey. At $6.50 a pound, it was really hard on our budget. One would hope that for $95, it would be the most amazing turkey you have ever tasted.

Fortunately, it was. Yes, I will spend $100 on a turkey again. I brined it in a fairly unscientific brine of a cup of sea salt, a half cup of brown sugar, a variety of herbs and garlic, in enough water to cover the bird for about 18 hours in a 5 gallon lined drink cooler out on the back porch overnight.

I worked very hard this year to smooth out timing issues that have been plaguing me over the past several years. I spent most of Wednesday afternoon doing a lot of pre-cooking. I made my mushroom stuffing and melted the STC together, I sliced and boiled the sweet potatoes for my sweet potato casserole. I mandolined all the veggies for my “root vegetable salad” and got them coated in their olive oil and herb coating to sit in the fridge overnight. I really need a nicer name for that dish since “roasted root vegetable salad” sounds shockingly unappetizing, but the end result is a delicious, sweet and savory dish of perfectly cooked squash, purple onions, carrots, garlic, parsnips, and garlic cloves.

All this prep work made Thursday morning the most relaxed Thanksgiving morning I have ever had. I still had to be up at 6am to get Tommy in the oven, but that didn’t bother me. If the pan goes in the oven length-wise, it leaves enough room on the side to put a smallish dish in next to it, which meant things like the dressing (I do actual stuffing in the bird and dressing in a dish for those who are concerned about contamination, even though I also check the internal temperatures of the stuffing) and the sweet potato casserole could be baking simultaneously with the bird. I was religious this year about checking on Tommy and checking his internal temps as the morning went on. There was NO way I would risk over- or under-cooking him. At exactly 11am, as my plan had been and thankfully worked out to be, he had reached the appropriate temps I was looking for and out he came for a good long rest. That allowed the root veggies plenty of time for their one-hour roast.

At 1pm, everything was ready to serve. Byram had a very hard time carving up Tommy because the physiology of the bird was unlike any regular turkey we have ever had. He had more muscle, fascia and sinew, tougher skin, and was more boat-shaped than flat and round like an ordinary turkey, so he would not lay flat on the cutting board (or the roasting pan for that matter).

One of the things that really startled Bryam and I as we worked with the bird (though in different ways) was just how physically different it was. The giblets were HUGE compared to a regular bird, as would be necessary since he lived outdoors, moved very freely, and could even fly (a regular bird cannot fly, even if it had access to space to do so). It would of course need a larger heart to move more blood. Its internal cavity was huge as well to accommodate all those larger organs. The breast was smaller (but not by a whole lot) but the thighs, legs, and wings were much bigger, and the dark meat was absolutely delicious.

For all the expense and worry and work of getting it right, that was the most amazing turkey we have ever had. Interestingly enough, the skin was not especially tasty, though I didn’t add a ton of seasoning directly to the skin, just smeared it with butter and a little salt before roasting. I usually find the skin on a regular bird to be yummy. It didn’t matter that the skin wasn’t tasty though. The meat itself was so good that you didn’t need the skin for extra flavor.

As for the rest of the table, the food was generally really good too. The mashed potatoes flopped, but they were the last dish I put any effort into and I don’t know if it was the choice of potato (russet) or the much larger quantity I made than usual, but I couldn’t get any flavor into them no matter how much half and half, milk, butter, and salt and pepper I added, and I could not beat the lumps out of them. Ah well. Of all the things to flop, mashed potatoes were the least important.

The roasted vegetables turned out to be a big hit when in the past they have been less popular. And shock of shocks, even though there was “bird-free” dressing on the table, everyone kept going for the stuffing we had taken out of the bird, even all those who are generally fearful of it. That blew my mind. And they all loved it too.

All in all, I would call the Local Thanksgiving Challenge a big success.

Now the big question. So how about the budget? Excluding things I always have in the house like flour, salt, eggs, milk, chicken broth, and butter, which of course do add to the total, but were not bought specific to this meal, the total for my part of dinner came out to be about $120.

That is a lot of money, but then I broke it down further. I fed 8 people one meal. That works out to $15 a head. So that makes my Thanksgiving dinner about the price of a decent sit down dinner in a restaurant (excluding drinks). But then, I sent leftovers home with 2 people who didn’t have to make dinner that night. So that is 10 meals.

Friday morning, we ate leftovers for breakfast. Call that 2 more meals (since Grace didn’t eat as much and I don’t eat a huge portion), so we are up to 12 meals served, bringing the cost down to $10 a meal. We continued to eat leftovers for lunch and also dinner on Friday. Add 4 more meals to our overall Thanksgiving meals. Now we have served 16 meals from that dinner.

Saturday was a Thanksgiving-free day, and we splurged on things like homemade steak, eggs, and bacon for breakfast, lunch at a local, charitable restaurant, and dinner with friends.

Byram was 100 % done with turkey but we still had a bunch leftover, so since he was gone all day on Sunday, I made a sort of Mexican Turkey chili thing. Grace wouldn’t eat anything so spicy, so I made her steamed broccoli leftover from the head I bought at the farmers market for Thanksgiving, and served her rewarmed turkey pieces and rice. I had the Mexican chili on rice for lunch and dinner, which my mom ate as well. I would call that one real serving since it was just turkey even though it fed 3 of us for last night’s dinner. That makes 17 meals, and there is still enough turkey left that I intend to make into turkey salad to eat for lunch, which I would call one last small meal, bringing the tally up to about 18 meals served out of the $120 I spent on Thanksgiving.

That brings my total to about $6.67 per meal served. Yes, $120 is not playing around money, especially when our budget is squeezed to the limit right now, but getting that many meals out of it makes it surprisingly economical when you consider the grand scheme of things.

So, my conclusion is that I loved the local challenge and even with the insanely expensive turkey, it was no so expensive as to prevent me from doing it again. What a wonderful experiment this turned out to be.

If I do Thanksgiving at my house next year, I would do this again, and I would tweak only a couple of things like maybe I will serve roasted local new potatoes instead of plain old mashed potatoes and I will get green beans while they are in season and blanch and freeze them or can them while they are fresh to serve in November. I will make my own cranberry jelly from non-local cranberries, but without all the HFCF in the Ocean Spray stuff. But that is about all the changes I would make.

Thanks for following along if you are still with me, 1700 words into my wrap up. I hope you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Next challenge: Occupy Christmas and make it Local! I will come up with details and ideas and post soon.

Another Wash, Rinse, Repeat Post

Knit. Run. Play with Grace. Run. Knit. Play with Grace. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Throw in some stupid internet games and my salaried job (where a lot of the Knit. Run. Knit. Run. part happens…) and that is pretty much the sum total of my life. I spent a week run down by a cold, but am mostly recovered now, and thankful it hit before Thanksgiving, rather than next week.

I am working on a poncho with a deadline. That is going mostly well, and at least faster now that I am to the interesting part of the poncho.

I have several Christmas gifts set aside, but not everyone’s yet and time is winding down. Trying not to panic here.

Next week is Thanksgiving and my menu is mostly planned. Care to see? Things with a * next to them denote that the dish is as local as I can make it.

*Empress Farm Heritage Turkey w/ gravy
*Kim’s Mushroom Stuffing
Savory Toasted Cheese (blatantly non-local!)
*Steamed Broccoli (to appease the Girl Child who loves the ‘little green trees’)
Green Beans
*Roasted Autumn Veggies (very flexible depending on what is at the farmers market tomorrow)
*Mashed Potatoes
*Sweet Potato Casserole w/ meringue topping

Those are my contributions to the table. The rest of the menu is as follows:

*Fresh baked rolls (Ama makes them and gets the flour from the mill in Ashland)
Green Glop (yummy pineapple and lime jello salad brought by Greatma)
Deviled Eggs (contributed by Nana)
Can of Cranberry Jelly (I can’t help it, I just love this stuff so I put it on the table)
Pumpkin Pie (Greatma)
*Apple Pie (Ama)

Some of the dishes might vary based on what I find tomorrow at the market. The mushroom stuffing might get to be a local dish if the guy who sells the mushrooms is at South of the James tomorrow, or it might not. If I were making the pumpkin pie, it could count as local since all our pumpkins this year came from the Chesterfield Berry Farm and we stowed the pumpkin goodness in the freezer, but this is another way for my grandma can contribute. I might make a pumpkin pie of my own over the long weekend though, or more of the pumpkin bread I made last weekend that was so delicious.

Wherever everything ends up coming from, our little band will eat well. Looks to be only 8 of us now, technically 7 if you count Grace and I as one normal serving.

Tomorrow, I will be two weeks away from my 5K Jingle Bell Race at Stony Point Fashion Mall. I am not feeling as confident about my sub-30 minute goal as I was, but I am not as unhappy about that as I thought I would be. I have not yet been able to maintain the 9:30 min/mile pace I would need for the sub-30 minute 5K, but I still believe I will run a solid race and hopefully make a faster time than my 31:52 in April.

That being said, I finally signed up for my first half marathon. I am running the Instant Classic Half Marathon Trail Race on March 17, 2012. I plan to train for it with Kitty’s team who will simultaneously be training for the Shamrock Half being held in VaBeach the same day. They start their training on 12/3, the same morning as my 5K run, so I will be coming in a week late to the show. Hopefully her team won’t mind.

And that’s it in a nutshell. I have lots of stuff going on, but nothing that has been much worth blogging about. Like I said, it figured to be a quiet month. I hope to have more to share leading up to or right after Thanksgiving.

Occupy Christmas

(Oh yes, I went there.)

Here’s an Occupy Thought:

The holidays are coming, specifically Christmas, the biggest gift giving holiday of the year. Regardless of religious beliefs, the vast majority of people give gifts to family and friends on Christmas.

If you are pissed off at Corporate Greed, then vote with your dollars this Christmas season, and don’t buy gifts from Corporate Giants. You know all those Black Friday deals at Wal-mart? You know the $6 coffee pots, the $10 DVD players, and whatnot? You know why they are so cheap? They are made with essentially slave labor, by a company so large as to be able to leverage the entire market down, keeping wages and benefits at those same “rock-bottom” levels as their much celebrated prices.

Buy gifts from local artisans, craftspeople, and producers. Or, try non-local sources like Etsy, or Artfire for beautiful handmade gifts.

Or, try making your own gifts. Baked goods, canned/jarred preserves, jams, and jellies, baking “kits” (all the dry ingredients necessary for a special recipe, like cookies, layered prettily into a Mason Jar with the recipe and instructions printed on the side), are wonderful, inexpensive options. More extravagant options could be buying someone a share at a local CSA. If you have a knitter or crocheter in your family, another extravagant option would be a subscription to an independent dyer’s “sock club” or “fiber club.” I am sure there are similar options for Quilters and other needle artists out there.

Do you have a family member who has everything they could possibly need, and cannot think of anything they truly want? Make a donation in their name to a charity foundation you know they would approve of, and make a beautiful card or letter telling them of your donation.

If you have a friend or family member who has jumped on the growing Do It Yourself movement, and they have interest in making some of their own foods from scratch, consider getting them a home cheesemaking kit, or a nice book on artisan bread making.

Are these things much more expensive than the $6 coffee pot at Wal-Mart? Absolutely. But just because you can get more stuff to show your love, does not necessarily make the gifts more loved or more meaningful.

This Christmas, vote with your dollars. Make your gifts count in the way your conscience dictates.

That Thanksgiving Challenge Again

Eat Local Thanksgiving Challenge

We are closing in on a month away from Thanksgiving here in the States (happy belated Thanksgiving to my one or two Canuck readers) and my challenge hasn’t left my mind, but I am realizing the significance of the challenge, or really, how many challenges this encompasses.

Challenge No. 1 — Avoiding “Weird” Foods
There are very few “weird” foods to me, however, when dealing in particular with my older family members who have very deep rooted food “comfort zones,” serving unfamiliar produce that is in season locally is going to come across as “weird.” A roasted root vegetable salad like I made several years ago is the perfect seasonal produce dish that I can serve, but when I made it a while back, it was definitely not the most popular dish on the table due mostly to its unfamiliarity.

Challenge No. 2 — Handling “Traditional” Expectations
We always have corn on the table at Thanksgiving, therefore, it must be traditional, right? If I want to serve local corn, I have to hope there is still some around right now and de-cob it (is that at word?) and freeze it. Otherwise, I either will miss that window or make an exception for the table. Further, I will have to be okay with traditional non-local foods like cranberries being there because it just “wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it.” That’s okay too.

Challenge No. 3 — Being Okay Not Being Perfect
I frequently set myself a goal and when I see that I cannot perfectly execute said goal, I tend to give up altogether. I recognize this as the character flaw that it is. So when I see myself having to make exceptions (like Sweet Potato Casserole with locally grown sweet potatoes but HFCF-dense marshmallows and maple syrup from Vermont), I wonder why I am even bothering. Instead, I am trying to focus on two things: a) alternatives to the objectionable ingredients (like the maple syrup) or b) barring any alternatives, accepting that this is supposed to be fun, not make me insane and my family unhappy.

Saturday morning, I intend to make a visit to the South of the James Farmers Market and see what there is to see. I would like to make my roasted root vegetable dish again, though it has been some years since I last did it, and serve it. Those who don’t try it will miss out. I am looking for interesting apple dishes to try since apples are so easy and abundant locally. And I will see what fresh remaining summer-type produce I can get now and preserve in ways to put them on the table on Thanksgiving Day.

Soon, particularly after visiting SotJ this weekend, I hope to start scratching out a menu, which I intend to share here.

Writing My Way Through It

Here is a very simple, very true, and very hard fact about life. For the most part, we all outlive our pets.

On a sunny spring day in March of 1997, my Dad came off the road from an extended trip out west and in his arms was a little brown and black puppy, picked out of a litter in a box in Kingston, Arizona (if I remember correctly). She was known to be at least a mix of Lab and German shepherd, and based on her small size, we anticipated her becoming a medium sized dog. Mom named her Cheyenne, reflecting her American Southwestern roots.

It wasn’t until later that the Greyhound and probably Great Dane mix appeared; it was about the time she could stand on her hind legs and look me in the eyes at 5’7″.

I was fifteen when Cheyenne came to live with us. I will be 30 in January.

Cheyenne loved to run and she was lightning fast. She could sail easily over a 4′ fence, leaping like a deer, leading to many occasions where one or several of us would have to go out on a search mission for Cheyenne back in the old neighborhood in Hampton.

Cheyenne formed an incredibly intense bond with my Mom, and she thought she was a lapdog, even at 80 lbs. It was quite funny to see Mom sitting with Cheyenne in her lap.

She is also the most intelligent dog I have ever met. She communicates with us by jingling her collar, and there are times she will directly into your eyes with such intensity that you know if she had the ability, she would speak and tell you exactly what it is she is trying to say. She has an uncanny sense of what day of the week it is. When Mom first started spending the weeks with us in Richmond, she always went home on Friday evenings. After a while, on Friday evenings, Cheyenne would start wandering away from the house in Suffolk, looking for Mom to be coming home. She knew when it was Friday.

For being so big, she was also amazingly deft. She is amazingly gentle with small children; I never had the slightest fear of her interacting with Grace. Many years ago, one night, Mom and I had gotten tacos from Taco Bell, and then were called away to go pick my brother up from a friend’s house. When we came home, the six wrappers were laid out, perfectly flat, completely undamaged, no tacos anywhere to be found, and Cheyenne was asleep with a pretty satisfied look on her face. To this day, I have no idea how she got those wrappers open without damaging them.

She is now closing in on 15. We estimated her birthday to be around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January, putting her birthday within a week of mine and my Mom’s. Large breed dogs are not known for their longevity, so we have been blessed to have had her for so long. However, in the past couple of years, her health has been in decline. A golf-ball sized cancerous tumor was removed from her face last November and the vet said then it would definitely come back. She has been plagued with incontinence and worsening arthritis, her eye sight is fading, and now she is fighting frequent infections.

The time has come. It might even be overdue. But how do you make this call? We have never had a pet live to old age; every previous pet we had either became severely ill or injured to the point where it was blatantly obvious what the next step needed to be.

Cheyenne does not have a severe illness. She doesn’t seem to be suffering other than her aches and pains in her hips and back legs. We have only now reached the decision to go ahead with the final visit to the vet because Cheyenne seems to be developing a nearly neurotic level of anxiety whenever my Mom leaves her alone. We are talking loss of bowel control and it happens even in cases where Mom is gone for less than 10-15 minutes. And it is becoming an almost daily occurrence.

We think it’s time, but it is so hard when occasionally she gets a little prance in her step and springs around outside a little. We thought it would happen while the family was at Pennsic and Mom was in Suffolk that week, but the vet put Cheyenne on estrogen (to help the incontinence) and antibiotics for her skin infection, prolonging her life, but also told us then that she had early stage kidney disease, and we knew then that time was growing very short.

She has been the most amazing companion to my Mom, the best “little sister” to me, and a wonderful protector to my daughter.

I know it is the right thing to do, but I am not okay. And I am not going to be for a little while. And it will be much worse for my Mom. So think kind thoughts for us over the next week or so. Please be patient with me if you have to interact with me.

I am so thankful that we have had her, and it hurts so very much that we have to lose her.

The Story of Corrie

So, my Corrie Vest kit arrived back around September 13th. Only a couple of weeks before Coronation and before the Warrior Dash and Montpelier Fiber Festival weekend. I dove straight into knitting it, just going with it.

For whatever reason, stranded knitting goes extremely fast for me. I think it has more to do with keeping highly focused and the frequency with which the pattern changes, and less to do with the actual technique. I am much more likely to set a plain knitting project down for just about anything than I am to set down a fair isle project because I don’t want to get lost where I am in the pattern. Also, I am more likely to say “Just keep going until you change that left hand yarn.”

Closing in on Coronation, I was knitting a couple of hours per night, but the weekend of the event itself, I was barely able to knit at all. In the back of my mind was this fleeting fantasy that maybe the sweater could be done in time for me to wear it to Montpelier, but you have to understand that it seemed impossible at that point. I had steeks and short row shaping, and purling in pattern and 3 needle bind offs in my future, most of which I was completely unfamiliar with.

But I didn’t let go of the little idea in the back of my head.

So I knit. And knit. And knit. Fiendishly knit.

Tuesday night last week, another knitter looked at it and agreed with my assessment that completion by Sunday was exceedingly unlikely. But I kept knitting.

By Thursday, I had completed the body of the sweater and it was time to steek. I found my sharpest sewing scissors, my silk sewing thread, which I then quadrupled, and started backstitching along each side of my cuts. That took a good long while. Then, after pacing around, wringing my hands, forcing back a nervous tear or two, and 3 or 4 false starts, I made the very first snip. The world didn’t end. The sweater didn’t instantly unravel or turn to dust in my hands. So, I kept going.

Snip, snip, snip. One stitch at a time, one float at a time. Snip. Snip. Snip.

When it was totally cut, I had a beer and didn’t look at it again until morning.

Friday was a desperately slow day at work, and I knew I was 90% of the way to home plate. With the race on Saturday morning and going to the State Fair on Saturday night, I knew Friday was my do-or-die day to finish the vest if I wanted to wear it to Montpelier on Sunday morning.

I picked up and knit the first armscye with my longest 2.75mm circular needle was which just too long and uncomfortable to knit with. The shorter, 24″ one was holding the live stitches on the neck line, so rather than go on to the second armscye like the instructions said, I went ahead and picked up and knit the neckline with the longer needle, freeing up the shorter one for the second armscye. Worked like a charm. I left work about half way done with the second armscye, and, probably to my family’s dismay, proceeded to knit through our lovely dinner at the Mexican restaurant, knit in the quickly darkening backseat, and cast off while we were waiting at the pharmacy for some medicines.

I broke the yarn in the dark in the car, and we came home from our evening out and I displayed my now finished sweater vest.

When I pulled it over my head and it fit perfectly, I could have cried.

I wove in some ends while Grace was in the bath and while Byram was putting her in bed. The whole body is woven in, but I still have a lot of loose ends around the upper left armscye and the back of the neck. That was fine. I could wear it like that.

And I did. I wore it to the State Fair on Saturday night.

I wore it around the house.

(Grace took the photo which partially accounts for my completely amused expression.)

And best of all, I wore it to Montpelier on Sunday morning.

One of the highest compliments I think a knitter can receive is to go to a fiber-centric festival and have people look at the knits you are wearing and then be shocked when you tell them that yes, indeed, you did handknit that vest. When seasoned knitters gasp with delight, you know you have done good work.

I wore it to work yesterday along with my Warrior Dash finisher’s medal. Almost no one at my office understood the importance or the pride I took in each of my hard-won accessories, but I knew.

This past weekend will go down as the most insane and wonderful weekends in my memory. In fact, the whole month of September 2011, will be firmly stuck in my memory as one of the most extreme months of my life, between beginning with an extended power outage, a wonderful family BBQ over Labor Day weekend, fun in the mud at Coronation, fun in the mud this past weekend, and lots of ups and downs in between. Onward now into October, my favorite month of the year usually, and I am particularly looking forward to a week off from work next week. I opted for a “stay-cation” to get my house in order and hopefully some personal time to recover from the insane summer and get my head and heart ready for the holidays to come.

Recovery

Wow. It is September 1. The unofficial start of Autumn. I am not sure where August disappeared to, but the summer is over, for all intents and purposes.

We are into Day 5 now without power after Irene, but despair has yet to set in. We are weary, worried about a whole freezer full of frozen meat, and I am getting anxious watching Katia spinning up in the Atlantic, though she at least remains fairly disorganized and a long way away, but all things considered, we are holding up very well.

One of the things I am most grateful for is that during Pennsic pack out, Byram had set aside our brand new Coleman camp stove for storage in our trailer at Pennsic. I asked if we could bring it home as a “just in case” thing and he acquiesced. That stove has been such a blessing, keeping us in hot coffee and hot food. The only major thing we lack is hot water to wash, but we have taken up friends on the offer of using their shower, and with deep gratitude. It is much easier to face a dark night with clean skin.

I bought a pack of candles to put in our lanterns since we have used up a lot of the smallish pillar candles. I also picked up a whole slew of glo-sticks of various shapes, sizes, and colors for Grace, now that she is back from Nana and Papa’s house. She has water color paints and acrylics, play-dough, and the whole back yard to turn into her own personal mud bath if she so desires (for a kid who can be wildly fastidious, she sure does like playing in the mud). I bought henna tattoos for her and Ama (my mom) to play with, and am trying to come up with other entertainment ideas for around the house as well.

I had not done any driving around much after dark so I was really stunned to see just how dark it was in my immediate area last night. We have power up to the next block over, and then it is just pitch dark. That meant we all got a phenomenal look at the stars last night. I have never seen so many stars in the Richmond sky before and it was quite impressive.

There is a relaxing aspect of the whole situation from about 8 p.m. each night. We get home and we move franticly around to get as much done as possible before dark. Cook, eat, wash up, clean up indoors and out, run errands, make visits, etc. But once the deep dark sets in, we settle ourselves either on the back deck or inside in the living room, and we chat. No rushing around, no television, no internet, we just sit and chat or read and relax. I am accepting the enforced downtime with a grateful heart because once power is restored, the real work of recovery will begin. Between laundry, sorting and tossing food, restocking perishables, and such, we will be very busy probably for several days. And the whole time will be with the specter of Hurricane Katia looming in the Atlantic, with no good idea where she is going to go; we will be getting ready for that possibility at the same time we are recovering from Irene.

But that’s life. My family is back together, the weather is gorgeous, and the company has been wonderful. That is more than enough for the moment.