break

This week is winter break. I have a week free from teaching; a week of daytime flexibility (save for a few days I have to go onto campus for meetings). Additionally, I’ve somehow made it so that I am all caught up on reading/grading.

So, what will I do with myself? I wonder.

I need to write. I’ve got a notebook with about 4 poems that need attention. I’ve got 2 ideas for research projects that I should get a-moving on with. There’s a sweet potato brownie recipe that I should experiment with. And I’ve got an idea in my head for a song that I should record.

I need to clean. I would just like to say: I used to be able to keep my shit together at the house. My natural state of being-at-home involved mindlessly picking up and sweeping, moving loads of laundry along, wiping down the baseboards in the bathroom as I sat on the toilet. (Yes, not a joke.) Somehow, though, in the last years, this whole way of being has left me. I get home and I wander. I look at, and see, the sand and pine needles and cat hair piling in the corners. I witness the crumby evidence of children eating at the computer desk (prohibited). I stare blankly at the stove top, greasy with yesterday’s bacon-based meal.

The cupboards are spotty.

The tile grout is grey.

The windows are smeared with kitty nose prints and the oil of people’s foreheads.

The carpet is beyond vacuuming; it needs to be replaced, but I could AT LEAST vacuum it.

Break. Huh. I think I’ll just spend a few hours at the box every day instead.

the open

Every year, CrossFit HQ organizes the CrossFit Open, where individual affiliates can participate in a worldwide competition for entrance into the CrossFit Games. Any CrossFit athlete can register and log their scores to see how they stack up — and potentially win a spot in the regional competitions.

And I have no chance, not one in hell, of making it to regionals. I’m stronger and faster than last year, sure, but I’m 37 for good gravy’s sake, and I’m still a lightweight when it comes to all the lifts.

So why bother? Why would I spend $20 to log some pitifully mediocre scores? Why would I care about coming in, like, 5,000th place out of 10,000? Why — when there’s certain to be some muscle-ups in one of the later workouts — would I want to break my own heart like that?

Because I love it. I love the anticipation of the secret WODs; the excitement of their announcement. I love the added camaraderie that my CF community experiences as we suffer — coaches and athletes alike — through having our movements judged and counted (and no-repped). The open puts our attention back to the standards in a very useful way; there’s no flubbing that wall ball shot for ANYONE.

The open is a time to re-charge our passion for working as hard as we can, for going all out, for leaving it all on the floor.

nothing to see here

Alright. Gird yourselves; this is a non-crossfit post.

This here blog started a few years ago when my youngest, who is now 9 years old, was but a wee babe. I wrote several times a week about the intersections (collisions) between being a mother and being an academic. In fact, this blog used to be titled “Academom.” No one could pronounce it.

I mostly wrote about how being a mom was hard. Super hard. Changing diapers, potty-training, house-cleaning and having babies who wouldn’t stop screaming. Getting kicked out of stores because my baby wouldn’t stop screaming. Mediating toddler fights and tantrums. Nursing in public. Running a Girl Scout troop for a bunch of 1st graders. Listening to “Heart and Soul” on the piano over and over. Etc.

About two years ago, however, I realized that my motherhood had shifted completely. There were no more babies and no more toddlers. No more diapers. Shit, there was no more having to make any meals if I didn’t want to; these small people that had taken the place of the babies — and these small people could pretty much work the microwave and reach the cabinets to get their own cereal bowl and they could wipe their own butts and entertain themselves for hours watching TV and playing games on the internet and reading books and playing with their friends.

I still was a necessary person to them: they required rides and clean laundry and sometimes gentle and not-so-gentle reminders about bathing and teeth-brushing. But I could sit for 5 hours writing or grading papers and they would be outside playing hockey or at the mall with friends and I would be all, “Holy crap. I can be a person again!” For the past couple of years, I’ve reveled in this newfound, low-volume mothering.

Yeah. All that loveliness is kind of crashing down around me right now. I said to a colleague, “I miss having toddlers. THEY’RE SO MUCH EASIER.” I can’t imagine ever actually thinking that. But these small people in my house are now starting to have big people problems. The damn mothering honeymoon of late elementary school children is over.

The larger challenge for me, though, is that my inclination is to write about these problems. I write about stuff to work things out in my head. To solve problems. To get feedback and advice from other people. I make stuff public. But these problems are not really just mine anymore. I don’t get to air other people’s dirty laundry.

So, if you’ve got a baby or a toddler, and you think mothering is hard. Things do get better. For a while. But then they get hard again.

through hardships to the stars

Per aspera ad astra.

walking we are caught, by tiny hooks that hold our hope
our skin may be scratched, but nothing holds us back
i will be brave, my body may change
but my spirit will stay, i will be brave

Today, I went to the gym. Today, the programmed workout was 5 rounds of the bear complex, a series of movements with the barbell (clean, front squat, push press, back squat, push press). For each round, we were to complete 7 repetitions of the complex, and then add weight for each subsequent round.

So I did what I do. I look at the white board and peg the people I chase. I decide what my last round will be, do some mental math, and figure out the weight I’ll need for each of the 5 rounds.

I get set up on a platform, and I get through three rounds with little fanfare. Lindsay is sitting on a box in front of me, and on my last repetition, she says, “That’s not heavy enough.”

I look at my little white board, where I’ve written my original planned weights and rounds. I inwardly grimace. I know that I can finish the last round at the weight I’ve chosen. Her proposed revisions sound scary; I’m afraid to get too close to the limits of my push press; I fear with an increase that I won’t be able to get the bar over my head — especially on the last reps of the last round.

But she says to me, “You can do it. It’s all in here.” She pokes one manicured finger to her forehead.

I have posted about this before. I have written about how when people have expectations of me, when *other people* think I can do stuff, then I feel like I can have faith in myself. But it’s very difficult for me to muster this on my own.

I loaded up the bar with 15 more pounds than I originally had planned. And I finished the last round. It was ugly; a few of the presses were sloppy, slow, and probably technically no-reps.

I did it because Lindsay did her job as a trainer. She knows me; she knows what I respond to (high expectations). She knows that I need a small nudge, a little bit of personal encouragement. She was gentle but firm. She didn’t let me cheat myself.

***

I had another small victory today: an email from a woman I don’t know, but whom I’d like to kiss. She wrote:

Congratulations. Your submission, 10380, has cleared all of the necessary checks and will soon be delivered to ProQuest/UMI for publishing.

The submission she refers to is, for those of you blessed to be outside academia, my dissertation. Writing that dissertation was like getting through a million bear complexes, y’all. Fortunately, I had a lot of people who sat in Lindsay’s place while I cried at the barbell, balancing their high expectations of me with loving encouragement.

If you’ve shown me kindness and encouragement over the past 10 years; if you’ve been compassionate and you’ve believed in me; if you’ve loved me through my inability to be a reliable friend, sister, daughter, wife, mom; if you’ve read my writing with generosity; if you’ve told me I could do it… thank you. None of you let me cheat myself.

Aspera

i’m in shambles
blown to bits by our troubles
these brambles
our stumblings our struggles

aspera! per aspera! per ardua! ad astra!

it’s a forced march
and i’m parched in denial
it’s a struggle
of faith and of fire

aspera! per aspera! per ardua! ad astra!

walking we are caught, by tiny hooks that hold our hope
our skin may be scratched, but nothing holds us back
i will be brave, my body may change
but my spirit will stay, i will be brave

aspera! per aspera! per ardua! ad astra!

i’m in shambles
blown to bits by our troubles
these brambles
our stumblings our struggles

aspera! per aspera! per ardua! ad astra!
thorns! over thorns! through this trouble, we are born!

© 2005 Erin McKeown

banana chocolate chip muffins

When I chew, it sounds like there’s someone squishing a soapy wet sponge in my left ear, and my right-side jaw feels like I’ve been punched. Therefore, for about 10 days now, I’ve been “eating” a lot of soup and smoothies.

But when the storm came earlier this week, I decided I had to bake something, even though I wouldn’t be able to taste it or comfortably chew it. It just seemed right to run the oven during the wind and the rain. And while I genuinely cannot taste these to let you know whether they’re good or not, I will say that the texture is right, which is what I struggle with when I use this dad gum coconut flour. Also, anyone on the Lurong challenge will have to record a cheat for these, since they have the chocolate, honey, and baking powder in them. Or you can do what I’m doing, which is to eat totally clean about 90% of the time, and let the program record 2 cheats a day for you automatically.

3 ripe bananas
1/3 C coconut oil
6 eggs
2 Tbsp honey
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C coconut flour
1/tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 C dark chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips)
1/8 C chopped walnuts

So, you know the drill: wet stuff into the Cuisinart. Then scrape into a bowl with the dry stuff; mix. Fold in chunky stuff.

Pour into muffin cups. (My batch made about 15. I know. What a drag to have to put a twelve-muffin pan back in for three measly muffins.) Bake @ 350 for about 35 minutes.

crock pot curry

This recipe is so ridiculously easy that I’m afraid to give it away; people will then understand what a poseur I really am in the kitchen. But it IS tasty. And good for pot lucks or for when you start to feel sniffle-y (it’ll clear you out). Also, it’s paleo.

The key to this recipe is the Red Curry Paste, which you can purchase at a regular old grocery store in the international foods aisle. There are all kinds of lovely curry pastes out there; if you have access to a good Asian store, you’ll find that the best kinds of curry pastes, like Massaman:

often have labels you cannot read. But the Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste suffices.

You’ll need:
2 cans of coconut milk
1/4 C of almond butter (or peanut butter, which would de-paleo-ify the curry but would still make it delicious)
1 C chicken broth
1/2 jar of red curry paste (more or less to taste)
1 roasted chicken, picked
about 3 cups of chopped vegetables, whatever you want or have lying around; I like to use various combinations of red pepper, onion, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, and yellow squash

Now, you can be as Martha Stewartish as you like here, roasting the chicken on your own and making the chicken stock yourself like the lovely Counting Chickens does, or you can be as lazy as I am and buy a rotisserie chicken from the deli and some organic chicken broth. I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.

Get our your crock pot and crank it to high. Put the coconut milk, curry paste, almond butter, and chicken stock in there and let it heat up while you’re picking the chicken and chopping your veggies.

Stir the contents of the crock pot, add the chicken and the veggies, and let it cook for about 3 hours. Depending on how awesome or sucky your crockpot is, you might have to turn it down so it doesn’t boil over (or maybe let it cook a bit longer). When the vegetables are to your liking (I like them a bit toothy still), eat it. Don’t burn your tongue.

If you want, you can add a bit of coconut cream to the top. I used to add a dash of Bragg’s Aminos to this soup, but they’re soy (I think), so I don’t use them anymore. If you had some coconut aminos, that might be a tasty addition.

worlds we can’t live in

I was thinking today about expectations we construct. Expectations of ourselves, of others. I won’t go into too much detail about what prompted me thinking about expectations, but I will say that it was fueled by the revelation that expectations can be poison for some people, especially when those expectations are not fulfilled. Unfulfilled expectations make people get mad and give up.

So when I came across this image on my twitter feed from author and artist Hugh MacLeod, whom I’ve admired for a while, it struck me how our expectations essentially create our world. They construct the basis for success and failure, for satisfaction and disappointment, for good days and bad days. I expect to be able to deadlift 200# no problem, but if for some reason there is a problem and I can’t, I am disappointed — I feel as though I’ve failed. I expect to make it to Harrisburg in about 40 minutes (and so I plan accordingly), and when I run into traffic and end up late, I feel anger. Et cetera. I think I could probably argue that everything, every situation, every interaction and circumstance, if it involves human beings and events, is colored by expectation. But the coolest thing about that is: we get to construct our expectations. We don’t have to knee-jerk our way through life.

Knee-jerking through life means harboring expectations that create worlds we can’t live in:
1) when we have expectations for others’ behaviors that we cannot control, and
2) when we simply expect for crappy shit to happen.

We can’t live in worlds where we want people to act in specific ways. Now, I don’t mean we can’t expect others to follow traffic rules, and I don’t mean that everyone has license to act like total shitheads all the time. I mean, it’s reasonable to expect people to be decent-ish. However, it’s UNreasonable to expect people to conform to what YOU think THEY should be doing. You don’t get to dictate others’ thoughts, choices, and behavior.

Additionally, we can’t live in worlds that we frame with constant pessimism: if you’re looking for people to be rude, for the guy sitting next to you on the bus to cough and sneeze, for the damn sky to fall, they/it totally will. And I don’t mean that in the “you created that negativity with your negative energy.” I simply mean that we generally find what we’re looking for — we see what we are tuned into. And if you’re tuned into being pissed off, you’ll find something to fulfill that for you.

However, we can create worlds that we CAN thrive in: give everyone else the benefit of the doubt. The jerk in front of you on the road — maybe his wife left him this morning and he can’t see the road through his puffy eyes. Or, you can tune out the seemingly-rude comment someone made at the gym this morning and instead focus on the gentle compliment someone else offered. It’s about living generously.

Expect to be grateful. Expect to be surprised. Expect to be thoughtful and considerate — and I mean always thinking and always considering. Create YOUR world so that it’s one you can live in without constant disappointment in others (and in yourself).

the hardest thing and the right thing

So, I’ve written here before about my friend Debra.

If you’re interested in how things are shaping up for her, check out today’s post on her journey to awesomeness.

I find her story to be ridiculously inspiring. She makes me want to eat some brussels sprouts and see how fast I can run a mile. She makes me want to put meat in my crockpot and do push ups on the kitchen floor. And her story is full of awesome lessons that I need to remind myself about:

Lesson #1: Anything worth doing takes (sometimes significant) effort. Eating well is time consuming. Planning, cooking, and (for me, the biggest one) cleaning up after eating well takes a gazillion times longer than throwing a Hot Pocket in the microwave. Here’s my kitchen sink — and I promise, I didn’t stage this:
Yes. My sink looks like that RIGHT NOW. Halp.

Lesson #2: Many things worth doing really, truly, and totally suck ass *in the beginning*. Not just the “I hate doing the dishes” kind of suck-ass, but the “Holy shit I feel like I’m going to die because my body is so addicted to sugar that I can’t function properly for several days as it detoxes” suck-ass. However, once we change our lifestyles, the suck-ass goes away and we reach a new state of normal. We essentially form new habits (ugh! effing dishes TWICE A DAY) that slowly move into the background of our consciousness; they don’t suck so much anymore.

Lesson #3: Often we need to be single-minded in order to succeed, and often that single-mindedness is seen by others as selfishness. And in some ways, it IS selfish — but it is the GOOD kind of selfishness. The self-preservation kind of selfishness. You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of other people. And while I believe with every cell of my being that the right thing to do is always kindness, sometimes in order to be kind to others, we have to be kind to ourselves first. You know, like putting your own oxygen mask on in the flaming airplane before you put one on your kids. You’re looking out for number 1 so you are strong enough to look out for the rest.

Lesson #4: Success requires some kind of support network. I know I come back to this point repeatedly, but it’s because it bears repeating. And while this lesson seems to be in tension with #3 above, I think we can overcome the (potential) isolation that our lifestyles create by seeking out people who share our goals and values. This is why CrossFit has been so crucial for me; those people *get* me. Also, while my family did make fun of me a little bit when I started telling them “bread is just filler!”, we now share several protein and vegetable meals a week and no one complains about the lack of mac and cheese. Plus, I’ve been very lucky that Brian likes to grill meat because, frankly, I don’t know my way around a charcoal briquet.

I tell my kids and my students that the long way around is the way to go. Shortcuts, more often than not, mean doubling-back, starting over, and frustration. We remind ourselves at the box that *slow, small gains* constitute the best kind of progress; those are the gains you’re going to maintain.

Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same. ["All At Once" --The Fray] I’d say NORMALLY the hardest thing and the right thing, but I won’t argue with iambic hexameter.

hot cereal

I ordered a boxful of coconut flour last week. It seemed like a lot (you know, alot) of the recipes I’ve been reading lately call for coconut flour, and my local grocery doesn’t carry it. So I went online to find some.

And, as it goes with ordering stuff online, I always think more is better. That way, I don’t have to go through the hassle of keying in my credit card number a second time when I run out. Or something. Really, I don’t have any idea why I decided to order 4 bags of coconut flour. But I now have 4 bags of coconut flour.

And I’ve used it three times, each an attempt at pancakes. Heinously failed pancakes. They always end up too grainy or too runny or just plain gross. Recipes that promise “fluffy, lovely” pancakes either have a completely different definition of fluffy or are simply written by liars.

The saddest thing about all the gross pancakes I’ve made is that I still. eat. them. And normally they kind of look like pancakes — enough that I can pack them in a ziploc and tote them as a snack (a dry, tasteless snack) to committee meetings.

But this morning they didn’t even LOOK like pancakes. I laid dainty dollops of the batter in some hot coconut oil and they never really caked up. Not enough binder. There was no flipping these puppies; they were just mush in the pan.

So I scrambled them and ate the end result like hot cereal. And y’all, IT’S GOOD. It’s like cream of wheat, minus the gut bloat.

Hot Cereal

1 egg
1 tbsp coconut flour
1 medium apple, sliced or grated (leave the skin on if you’re adventurous; I used a honeycrisp. Mmmm.)
2 tbsp almond milk
dash of cinnamon
dash of clove
dash of salt
enough coconut oil to grease the bottom of your frying pan.

Beat the egg in a food processor for a minute, and then throw everything else in there for a whirl. Dump into a frying pan like you’re going to make a pancake, but then scramble/brown for a few minutes.

Dump into a bowl. This makes about 2 bowlsful.

nut-ola

Or paleo granola. Or “granizzzle,” if you prefer. For shizzle.
I remember when I found out how much fat granola had in it. This was probably the mid 90s, when I was still anti-fat. I lived on root beer (no fat!), bagels (no fat!), pretzels (no fat!), and Twizzlers (ibid!!). For my entire senior year in high school, I ate breakfast cereal with skim milk for nearly all my meals. Corn Flakes, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Rice Krispies. No fat, no problem. I also ate granola. And then one day I actually read the nutrition label on the box of granola and had a heart attack. TWELVE grams of fat??!! That was more fat than I wanted to consume in an entire day (back then!).

When I came to my senses about fat, which has only been recently, I remember one of my first thoughts was, “SaWEEET! I can eat me some fatty fat fat granola, because fat is gooo-oood.” But then on the heels of my fat revelation, I had the grain/carb revelation. And GRANola is, like, GRAINola. Like shit and shinola. Whatever that means. Both mean disappointment.

So, a no-grain granola. It’s really more of a NUTola (not to be confused with Nutella). The iteration I offer here is completely paleo compliant, if you are participating in the Lurong Living Paleo Challenge or other similar eating quest.

Set your oven @ 350 and get out a good chopping knife. You’ll also need some parchment paper.

Combine:
1/3 C coconut oil
1/4 C unsweetened applesauce
1/2 C pureed pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla
dash of nutmeg
dash of cinnamon
dash of ground clove

then add:
1/2 C sliced almonds
1/2 C chopped pecans
1/2 C chopped pepitas or pumpkin seeds
1/2 C coconut flakes
1/2 C chopped dates

Mix it all up, throw it on a baking sheet lined with parchment, and bake it for about 30-40 minutes, making sure to turn it. Then you’ll want to leave it out to cool and get a little crispy.

I have yet to eat it cereal-style, with almond or coconut milk. So far, I’m munching on it.