In A Pickle

I have to admit, I was a little shocked to realize it's been nearly a month since a new post graced this little corner of cyberspace. The thing is, I'm almost always working on a blog post in my head and it's a bit surprising to realize that not a single one of those thoughts have actually made it out of my fingertips and into reality.

As I'm apt to do this time of year, I'm feeling a nudge for some change in my life. But when I really look at things, it seems that maybe things already are changing. In the last few years, I've devoted so much energy to being a "writer," yet somehow, in the last few months I've been watching what feels like all of that focus and resolve draining away. Last month, for the first time ever, I turned down a freelance job from a gig that I've been doing since November 2009. Despite my intentions to be the best freelancer/blogger ever this summer, even with a full-time job, somehow I've barely blogged or written a word. (Have you noticed?!) Other things that have given my life structure in the past have been missing this year too, from regular ice fishing trips in the winter to blueberry picking and canning peaches this summer.

It's all a bit discomfiting and as a result, I've been suffering through an endless case of the "mean reds." You know the mean reds, don't you? As Holly Golightly put in Breakfast at Tiffany's, "The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of."

What I didn't realize when I started chasing my crazy marathon dream this spring was how much energy it would require and how it would dominate my free time. Even only running somewhere between 9-12 miles each week sucks up a great deal of my free time in the mornings since I tend to run on work day mornings. The mornings I don't run are spent cleaning the bathroom and other exciting household chores. The running's been a good thing and my body is stronger (and slimmer) than it has been in years. I'm also happy to report that the childbearing hips I'd been developing over the last couple years are now a distant (and unpleasant) memory.


But if this all just sounds rather depressing, what I'm really trying to say it that there's only so much time in each day. Our priorities dictate how we use that limited time and apparently priorities have been changing around here.

The garden has been in hardcore harvest mode for the last month or so and has been demanding a fair amount of attention. I've been canning (dilly beans and pickled carrots and daikon radishes pictured below) and freezing (16 lbs of green beans and at least that much again of kohlrabi) and drying (mint and oregano), whirring (pesto) and shredding (zucchini). I'd say we're at least at the halfway point for harvest 2013 and we have been blessed with another bountiful year. That said, I never want to blanch another green bean ever again. Well, at least not until next year.

We had a strange hot spell at the end of August that really tested everyone's good humor. At times such as those, I'm especially happy to live only an hour away from a Great Lake. When it's 95 degrees at your home, it's lovely to go spend some time next to what essentially is a very foggy refrigerator.

We finally pulled up all of our giant kohlrabi (and blanched it and froze it, oy). The biggest kohlrabi (below) ended up weighing in at 6.5 lbs. Not quite the 8 lbs promised on the packaging, but still a pretty impressive cruciferous vegetable specimen. I'm usually not for giant vegetables (probably because the only vegetables I've ever encountered in giant form are zucchinis) but I found a fair amount of Wallace and Gromit-ish pleasure in our large kohlrabi.

 

Speaking of beautiful vegetables, check out these beautiful Yukon Gold potatoes we pulled out of a rotting pile of straw. We hadn't really planned on doing the Stout method of gardening again (basically, where you put seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with straw and forget about them) but I'm so glad we did.

Andy and I had to run into town last weekend to attend his cousin's wedding celebration, which was a lovely event with really, really good eats. We didn't stay too long, but did manage to capture the most truthful photo of the two of us at a social gathering ever taken. Ha. Hahahahaha.

 

This weekend, my friend Sarah comes to stay with us and I'm so excited to have her up when the world is not either totally frozen (February) or one mucky mess (April). I'm not sure what we'll get up to exactly, but I'm looking forward to it immensely.

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The Willpower Instinct: a book review

I've always thought that I have a fair amount of willpower. And according to Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct, that probably means I don't have much.

Although I'm a non-addict and my struggles with weight have been few (and totally limited to a couple porky semesters early on in college), I really should exercise more, I have a terrible time getting up when I want to in the morning, I have a love affair with marshmallows, and we all know about my best frenemy - procrastination.

But then, who doesn't have a good handful of personal willpower challenges?

McGonigal knows that willpower challenges plague all of us. That's why a couple years back, she started teaching course on willpower as part of Stanford's Continuing Studies program. The course was a smash hit and this book picks up its cues from the course . . . i.e, McGonigal teaches her course over 10 weeks; the book is divided into 10 chapters.

And how lucky we all are to be able to take the course, even if we're thousands of miles away from McGonigal's lecture hall. This book gathers together the many scientific studies about willpower and presents their findings in an interesting and conversational manner that makes clear what these studies tell us about the decisions we make every day. McGonigal's conversational tone can almost trick you into thinking she's talking only to you and she possesses a wicked sense of humor.

While the book is labeled as a self-help book, you won't find any big claims or even definite answers in this book. Instead, McGonigal points to proven ways that people can increase their willpower (hint: think exercise, yoga, and taking time to truly relax). She goes to great lengths to explain the inner workings of our brain and how instincts picked up back in our hunter gather days continually undermine our own logic today. (Come on evolution, keep up!)

I really enjoyed this book. It's funny, honest, and fascinating. In the pages of The Willpower Instinct I found permission to let go of some the guilt I hold when I don't live up to my own expectations (turns out that guilt just makes it harder for me to succeed the next go-round) and also learned how to pay better attention to the thoughts that run through my mind before I opt for an instant reward rather instead of continuing to strive towards a long term goal. If you've ever wondered why your mind can often be your own worst enemy, this book's a fast read that's well worth the time. 

You can find more information and discussions about The Willpower Instinct over at the BlogHer book club.

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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Life in the Woods: Everyday Challenges

I always assumed moving home was kind of a cop-out, something you do when you're scared of rush hour and can't wrap your head around the expense of work clothes.

When you return home, you return to a little safety net of familiarity. You'll know the majority of people you bump into while running errands and you'll pick right back up on the small town gossip. Although I live an hour away from my childhood home, I still have the same zip code that I had growing up (it has to be one of the "most area covering" zip codes in the country!) and I shop at the same grocery store as my mother and bank at an institution where my grandmother worked for 39 years. Because I've simply fallen back into "the way things always were," there's not a whole lot of "figuring it out" that has to be done on a daily basis.

Yet despite the familiarity of it all, I find myself doing things every day that I never thought I'd do.

There's the whole "learning to drive a manual transmission" thing that I think I'm finally getting a handle on. Every day, I light a fire in the wood stove, something I never did growing up. Let's not even get started on my everyday fashion. In the end, my daily apparel of wool pants, "moon boots"  and Carhartt vests (Yes, I received not one, but two Carhartt vests for Christmas) isn't really the haute couture I'd imagined for myself.

And if you'd told me that one day I'd be crawling underneath the cabin to swap out propane tanks, I would have laughed in your face.  

But on Saturday afternoon, I went to brown some venison (case in point). But when I turned the knob to light the burner, I was greeted by "tick, tick, tick." As the ticking continued and the burner still refused to ignite, I knew we'd run out of propane. I'd suspected we were near the bottom of the tank, since the stove had smelled slightly gassy the last couple times I'd turned it on, a sure sign that a replacement tank would be in short order.  

Since moving into the cabin, I've always made Andy swap out the tanks because I didn't know how to do it. But the last time we ran out of propane, Andy was at work. So, after some detailed instructions from Andy over the phone, I donned my Carhartt vest, grabbed the crescent wrench and hopped underneath the deck to detach the empty propane cylinder. It took a little doing to get the cylinder detached. Propane tanks are threaded opposite of most things, making "lefty loosey, righty tighty" totally irrelevant and it was harder for me to wrap my brain around that than I would like to admit. Nevertheless, I eventually got it and getting the new cylinder in place was a piece of cake. 

The propane tanks are small, just the standard cylinders that you'd use for your grill. Despite their petite size, the cylinders usually last us close to four months, but as luck would have it, when the tank ran out on Saturday, Andy was again nowhere to be found.

I figured I remembered how to switch out the tanks by myself, so I threw on some shoes and headed to the shed to grab a full propane cylinder. This time of year, the ground beneath the deck is littered with sunflower seed shells and as I knelt beneath the deck I noticed four little squirrel paws pop out on the side of the deck plank right above my head.

"Living the dream," I grumbled as I sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that the squirrel would not defecate on my head or make a nest out of my hair while I tried to remember which way to turn the wrench. (Towards the house to loosen and towards yourself to tighten.) 

The gods above must have been listen. The squirrel scampered off, oblivious of my presence and the propane tanks were swapped out in minutes By the time Andy came home, stew burbled away on the stove top.

I will not be defeated by ticking ranges. I am woman: watch me swap out propane tanks.

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Do I Dare?

What to do at my desk today? Oh, I know, maybe write a novel! 

I'm not the biggest fan of  NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, is an online writing challenge which started in 1999. Participants attempt the semi-ludicrous challenge of getting a 50,000 word novel completed between 00:00 November 1 and 23:59 November 30. Yep, that mean you need to write an average of 1667 words per day, and in a month that has a major holiday in it no less. Oh the horror!   

After railing against NaNoWriMo this past November, about how it sabotages your life and all you get in the end is a crappy 50,000 word novella, I should really be blushing when I say this next thing . . . 

Over at ivillage's The Writing Life, a similar challenge called WriLiMarCha (Writing Life Marathon Challenge) takes places. Participants are challenged to get 50,000 words of writing done in the month of March.(Hooray for March having an extra writing day over November and no major holidays unless you count St. Paddy's) I'm tempted, really tempted, to try to get a long languishing novel draft finished this month. 

After all, in WriLiMarCha's description posted over at the Writing Life makes the challenge sound so much more accessible than NaNoWriMo: WriLiMarCha, was born as a freer, gentler alternative to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The anti-rules are many and you can ignore what you want. You may write a novel but you don't need to. Poetry is acceptable as are articles, essays, and short stories. Journalism works here too, possibly better than in your favorite newspaper. You can write anything you want. (I really believe in that rule.) There is no need to download your daily writing into any program. We trust you. Speaking of word count, our goal is 50,000 words during March. Writers who can only manage 29,000 (my average) still win. Anything that keeps you writing makes you a winner.

Friendly sounding yes, but still, even with an extra day in March, meeting the 50,000 word goal in a month means 1613 words a day.   

Why try?

Well . . .  because this novel idea has been rattling around for four years and has received hardly any attention at all. Because it's already started: adding 50,000 words to the already begun document would get the story darn close to standard novel length. Because it doesn't matter how good the first draft is, I just need something to edit the heck out of at some later. Because the novel I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for years is currently making the rounds with literary agents. Because I am overdue for a new major writing project. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

Anyone else joining me? Just remind me why this was such a swell idea around March 19th, okay? 

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