I’m having a hard time thinking of things I want to cook and am feeling unmotivated to try to cook much. When I do cook, I’ve been messing things up; recipes I’ve made over and over again, that I used to be able to make from memory, just aren’t coming out right. Also, I’m not really enjoying the process of cooking like I have in the past…I cook because we have to eat, not because I’m excited about a recipe or anything. It feels like just another chore, one that comes at the end of the day when I’m dealing with a tired toddler who just wants to be held and all my reserves of patience are very, very close to being empty. I hate feeling like cooking’s a chore.

So, basically: MEH.

Deep down, I really do like to cook, I think, but am having some kind of mental block about it. Not even reading my cookbooks or looking for recipes on foodie websites lately has inspired me. Usually that’s what I do when I’m feeling bored, but right now I can look at page after page of recipes and come away thinking there’s nothing interesting there.

Also, for some reason, I’m feeling like the food I usually make (like, basically, every recipe I’ve posted here…my standard 20 or 30 recipes that I usually love) is boring. Uninteresting. Uninspired. Bland.

I know I tend to get into recipe ruts, too, where the same, like, 8 recipes are in my rotation until Brett points out that we’ve had, say, black bean soup or macaroni and cheese five times in the past month. That’s definitely the case these days, too. I am sort of feeling tied to one genre of food and find myself only remotely interested in pasta recipes. And I know that drives Brett nuts.

So…help. I don’t know what to do. I am bored with the few standard things I’ve been making lately, but at the same time I have no motivation to get out of the box and try something new. And yet I’m getting really tired of Annie’s Mac. Not to mention we simply can’t keep spending so much on food.

How do you deal with this? Wait for it to pass? Force the issue and just make new and different recipes until the mood changes? I haven’t felt this way in a long, long time and I’m just at a loss.

Help!

I’m not going to delve into the specifics, but it’s been kind of a long, drawn-out process that we’ve seen coming down the pike for a while now. That said, even having known that it was, at some point, probably inevitable doesn’t exactly make it a walk in the park.

We’re dealing with the news surprisingly well, I think. Who knows, maybe it does have something to do with the fact that we knew it was probably coming and we could kind of brace for it. For the most part, we’re pretty peaceful and are trusting that God is going to continue to provide for us now as he has in the past.

That’s not to say I don’t have my moments of panic. I have had a few, and I’m sure that until we have a steady income stream coming in again, they’ll continue off and on. But that’s okay. I think it’s one thing to have peace about it, and to trust God about it, and it’s entirely another to be completely devoid of worry about it from time to time. A little panic seems warranted; at least that’s how it seems to me.

I can’t help but think that it does suck, though, to have this happen right now, right at the one-year anniversary of my heart thing. It seems ironic, really. Maybe it’s supposed to be that way, though, to let it fall within the same calendar year. Perhaps these two events are the bookends to one hellishly difficult year: near-death on one end, job loss on the other, and a whole lot of other crap in the middle. Maybe it’s not a boring and stress-free 2009 we should be hoping for, but rather a boring and stress free mid-May to mid-May. I don’t know.

At any rate, I am bummed that this means we can’t do something really special for my birthday-non-death-day. I had hoped we could go out for a really nice dinner somewhere, but alas, expensive dinners out are a pretty big no-no when there’s no money coming in.

I haven’t been blogging here lately because, up until now, I really have been pretty stressed out about all of the details surrounding this. As I’ve told a couple of people, it’s as though before last Friday, Brett and I were carrying both the weight of making ends meet and the stress of his job situation. Now that one of those stressors is eliminated, and it’s almost a relief.

I really want to write more, to blog more. I know, I know, I say it all the time, but I really do. But for me, it’s quite hard to blog when there’s an elephant in the room that I can’t talk about. I’m such a transparent person, and such a terrible liar (or truth-concealer, anyway) that it is nearly impossible for me to just blog about mundanities amid something that is, in my own heart and mind, a Really Big Deal.

Anyway, we’re managing, and we have a plan in place. It’s not a very concrete plan yet, but it’s a plan nonetheless, so that makes me feel better. Hopefully I can share more details about that soon.

Until then, part of the plan is that I’m taking in as much at-home work as I can while Brett’s home to hang out with Elanor. This week has been a little hard, trying to find our stride with Brett being home all day and me trying to do roughly double the amount of work. I know it’s only been a few days, but hopefully we can find that rhythm sooner rather than later.

That’s the update. Not exactly encouraging, certainly a little dramatic, and kind of depressing, honestly. But like I said, we’re handling it surprisingly well, thanks to God’s grace, and that is definitely something to be very grateful for.

Bottom line: we’re all healthy, Elanor’s doing great, Brett and I are fine — it’s nothing relating to our health or our family relationships. It is something that’s really frustrating, though, and to be honest, kind of consuming. I just don’t have anything much to share that isn’t, well, about this annoying non-boring stuff. Ugh.

Anyway, moving on, because I’m bored and annoyed with myself as I write this, so I can only imagine how bored and annoyed you, like, two remaining readers must be.

I’m almost done editing Brett’s French Press post. I think you’re going to enjoy it. I’m sure it will give you a good insight into who Brett is, as well as give you a great guide for how to make a delicious press at home.

So, I am hoping to get that post up in the next few days. Until then, I’ll leave you with this scene, which happened a week ago as we were lounging on the futon, watching cooking shows on PBS, while Elanor and Brett were trying to recover from a cold. We’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately, which completely whets our appetites for amazing food and gives us inspiration for things to make here at home. We’re also lazy, though, so we watch these shows with an element of, I don’t know, masochism, because some of the things that these chefs make are, let’s face it, not going to happen in this kitchen, amazing and tasty though they may seem. (Especially the things that include meat. Poor Brett. I think he wishes I were not a vegetarian anymore. Oh well. That’s not gonna happen, I can tell you that for sure.) This scene sort of typifies that experience.

Jacques Pepin was on at the time. He’s become one of our favorite people to watch (we also enjoy Julia Child’s baking show). The following scene unfolded as we watched. It is definitely an insight into Brett and his personality and tastes, and it made me laugh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jacques is chopping, cooking, about to add a bunch of onions, garlic, scallions, and celery to something sauteing in a skillet. We are gaping at his amazing chopping skills and wishing we could mince garlic and dice onion so deftly. He adds the onion and garlic into the skillet, and in his thick and charming French accent, identifies the mystery item already sauteing away.

Brett: What’s he got in the skillet?

Me: Bacon, I think he said.

Brett, with a massive eye-roll and a groan, as he falls back onto the pillows: God, I love this man.

On Sunday night, Elanor was asleep and I was sitting next to her messing around online, reading different blogs, etc. It’s hard for me to turn the light off and go to sleep when Brett’s away so I was procrastinating doing that by reading a lot of blogs that I hadn’t read for a while.

One was Post Secret, where people send a postcard with a secret written on it to a guy in Maryland or somewhere and he posts them on this website. It’s mildly interesting, normally, but not a site a visit regularly.

Anyway, I came upon one of the secrets that had a picture that completely and utterly FREAKED ME OUT. I seriously can’t convey to you the depth of my freaking out-ness. I felt totally squicked after seeing it, just disgusting, creepy crawly all over, sick to my stomach, just sick.

I’ll describe it but I’m not linking to it or posting a picture of it because EW EW EW. It’s a picture of a breast (you can’t really tell it’s one, though) with, like, the pods of a lotus seed flower thingy photoshopped over it. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Totally fake, right, so what’s the big deal? Well, I know, I know. I KNOW. It’s fake, I shouldn’t be so freaked out, etc.

But I have been haunted by the image ever since I saw it. I cannot get it out of my mind even now but it was particularly bad right after I saw it. I was terrified that I was going to have nightmares about it, especially because Brett was gone. I prayed and asked God to please help me not to have nightmares about it, and thankfully, that prayer was answered.

Still, it’s stayed in my mind since then and I think of it and get creeped out every time I nurse Elanor. Not an association I want to have, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve read some about the history of the image online since I saw it and apparently the image was sent around with an email forward (which was disproved on Snopes, by the way) a couple of years ago, claiming that it was (warning: seriously sick) a woman’s breast that was diseased.  She had been to Africa, gotten a rash, and then it got worse and she took off the bandage one day to discover maggots crawling around in her breast.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. *Kathleen runs screaming from the room*

I was reading some more on the Post Secret forums, actually, and people were saying that it creeped them out, too. But what they were saying was that it wasn’t the idea that it was maggots that freaked them out, it was the clusters of holes. And I realized that was totally true for me, too. It freaked me out before I went to Snopes and read the story of the rash and the whole maggot thing. My initial reaction, before I knew anything about it, was one of utter horror and disgust, in an almost visceral way.

Again, from my reading, I learned that there’s an actual phobia of clustered holes/bumps, especially in organic material or in material that’s supposed to be smooth — like the skin of a woman’s breast. It’s called trypophobia.

Now, I don’t think I have the actual phobia (mine’s not that severe), but in reading the descriptions of what the phobia entails, I think I at least have some of the mild symptoms, especially a fear of small holes in organic matter, small holes or clusters of holes on something that would otherwise be smooth, and small holes that aren’t exactly round — things like honeycombs can be problematic, for example, or holes in wood, or especially lotus flower pods. But, say, the holes in the metal washing machine basket? Those don’t bother me at all. Weird, I know. Another complication that’s definitely true for me is the idea that there is or could be or appears to be something IN the holes that doesn’t belong there. (Maybe this explains why I cannot ever leave a zit unpopped?)

I am trying to think of what could have caused this, and I’ve come up with a few conclusions.

1. I vividly, vividly remember a dream I had when I was maybe 9 that seriously freaked me the heck out. Like I thought about it for months and it really disturbed me. In it, a kid I knew kept vomiting this blue honey-comb-like stuff. It just flowed out of his mouth every time he opened it. I was seriously disturbed by that dream at the time and even still feel mildly squicked when I think about it.
2. When I was little, maybe 7, I was playing on the church playground and I put my hand around a wood post, only to feel that the other side was infested with a teeming mass of small, round-ish bugs that had burrowed into the wood and were just clustered there on the back of the post. It scared me so bad I ran through the church hallways screaming, trying to get to my mom, who was in a church meeting in the parish hall.
3. Having shingles when I was 14. The clusters of blisters…oh, ew ew shudder ew. Nothing more needs to be said.

Yeah, so I don’t know. There’s really no point to this, other than the fact that I was majorly weirded out by the picture. Weirded out doesn’t even describe it right. Disturbed, maybe. Twitchy. Ughughughughblahbleckewyuck. Something.

Thankfully, I’m feeling better about it today. It’s not so very disturbing although the compulsion is still there for me to go back and look at the image over and over and over again. I am trying to make myself look at it so I can confront what freaks me out about it but at the same time I don’t want to obsess any more about it so I’m not really sure if looking at it is healthy or not. Probably not.

Ok, I’m done. I’m going to go upstairs and get cozy with Elanor and try really hard to not think about this.

Does anyone else have this problem? Do you have a different fear that is totally irrational but makes you all twitchy regardless of the fact that you know in your head it’s irrational? Do you have any ways you cope with fears/reactions like this? Please, help me feel like less of a freak and tell me what squicks you out.

Also, I really miss Brett. He left this morning for Amsterdam, and while I don’t usually see him during the day since he’s at work, it’s different when he travels like this because I can’t get in touch with him easily. When he’s in town but busy working, we at least talk on the phone a couple times, or text, or email, but today we talked for about two minutes on a borrowed cell phone during a layover, and that’s probably how communication will be the whole time he’s gone. Which is fine, I suppose, since the trip is for work, after all, I just miss having him accessible to me, even if he isn’t physically present. It makes me feel lonely to think of him being so far away, even though his mom is staying with me and even though I have lots of friends around to hang out with, too.

I guess it’s always harder for the person left behind when one spouse travels, especially when it’s to someplace as cool as Amsterdam. Brett’s going to be having a great time, meeting people, seeing a new city and country, eating new food, drinking amazing coffee — the days will fly by. But for me, I’m sitting at home, fighting a cold, paying bills and trying to figure out how to make ends meet this month while thinking about how he gets to do all of those fun things.

I know there are lots of people out there whose husbands are gone a lot more than Brett is, so I feel kind of bad complaining about him being gone. It’s a relatively short amount of time for him to be gone, and I know he’ll do his best to keep in touch with me even if it is spotty.

When he’s traveled in the past, I would buy wine and lots of junk food and watch girly movies or Gilmore Girls episodes, or hang out with my girlfriends, or go shopping, but now watching junky TV isn’t as easy to do with Elanor around, and getting together with people is kind of challenging with no car and a baby in tow, and we are on a complete no-frills budget so shopping is out of the question.

So, tell me, what do you do when your husband or significant other travels? How do you cope? I need some new ideas.

P.S. — I promise that as soon as I kick this stupid cold my posts will be much, much less whiny. I don’t know what my problem has been the last few days; I hate feeling whiny and meh like this and I hate even more blogging about it and then going back later and reading it and thinking how dorky I sound for being so whiny. Sorry!!

I felt not great but mediocre most of the day, like I might be fighting it off, until about 6 p.m., when it all just hit me. Ugh. And, of course, Brett’s home for tonight and tomorrow and then gone again, and I’m sick during the few precious hours we were going to get to spend together. We were hoping to go to a yoga class together tomorrow morning, since Brett’s mom and his sister Amy are here to watch the baby, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen since I feel so icky, and I’m really bummed.

So yeah, I can tell this post doesn’t make great sense as I type it, but my brain is foggy and I don’t have the energy to figure out a better way to say anything. This post is purely for the sake of NaBloPoMo…I wouldn’t be posting if I didn’t feel some sense of obligation.

Please say a prayer that Brett doesn’t catch whatever this is since he’s going to Amsterdam day after tomorrow. I would be so sad if he wasn’t able to enjoy his trip because he felt like this.

Now that I’ve posted, I’m heading up to bed. I hope I can sleep moderately well and that I feel better in the morning.

This is the second cold she’s had in the past, oh, three weeks. Ugh. And now my throat is sore, too, which is usually the first sign I am getting something. Double ugh! I don’t have time to be sick again! I have a ton of work to do this week.

Plus, I don’t think we have any Zicam in the house. I usually take it when I am getting a cold and, if I take it in the first few hours of feeling icky, it helps a lot, but I think we are out because I used it all when Elanor had a cold a few weeks ago and since it costs about a jillion dollars a box, I didn’t buy any more.

And, of course, Brett is out of town for work almost all week. He’ll be home Tuesday night and Wednesday night, but then he leaves again Thursday for Amsterdam for five days. (Lucky.) Thankfully, his mom came up to stay with me while he’s gone and to help me with Elanor, which is great, but I still miss him and wish he were here.

I guess I’m feeling a post-vacation letdown tonight. We had such a wonderful trip to the Oregon Coast this weekend. I enjoyed spending time with Brett, walking on the prom, riding bikes all over town, getting to sleep in (yay!!!!!) and watching Forensic Files and drinking wine in front of the fireplace after Elanor went to bed.

But now I’m home, and Brett’s out of town (today he’s in Wasilla, Alaska — yes, where Sarah Palin is from), and Elanor’s sick, and I feel like I’m getting a cold, too.

*pout*

Okay, really, I just need to get over it. We had a great time at the beach, Brett’s mom is here with me so I’m not alone with a baby for, like, 10 days, I’ll get to spend two nights with Brett this week and then he’ll be home and around for the whole long Thanksgiving weekend. Those are all good things, indeed.

So, on the count of three, I’m over it.

1, 2, 3…over it.

(My friend Becca and I used to say that to each other, that on the count of three, we’d be over something. It became abbreviated to 123 in emails and in Gmail chat. I sort of forgot that we used to say that to each other until the other day when she reminded me of it. Now I just say, “I’m over it” way more than I probably should.)

So, tell me, since I don’t seem to have any Zicam, do you have a cold fighting remedy other than taking lots of cold medicines and sleeping for a few days? Because as much as I’d love to do that, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be an option for me.

Being alone with a baby for, sometimes, 18+ hours in a day is not easy. Of course, it’s what I want to be doing, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Well, maybe it makes it easier but it doesn’t remove the difficulty entirely. 

I don’t like being so worn out. For one, it makes me nervous health-wise. I do not want to get myself to the brink again, like I felt before my heart thing happened. It’s scary. And for another, being tired makes my emotional fuse very, very short. I find myself getting weepy over the dumbest stuff these days, and I find myself snapping at Brett a lot more, which is not cool.

I’m learning, though, what I need to do to get out of this tired, short-fused place. I have been trying to think through what would help me, and here’s what I’ve come up with. (I always feel better when I have a plan in place!)

1. I need to get Elanor to the place where I can leave her with someone else for even an hour so that I can do some of my at-home work, or do the laundry, or blog, or even just sleep. Right now, if I leave her anywhere or with anyone other than Brett or his sister Rachel, she flips out. Not cool. I need to change that. We’re working on it, but it’s not easy.

2. I need to relax my standards for my house and not be so focused on getting my to-do list completed every week. Part of what’s hard is that I make myself a list to finish every week, and it never, ever gets done. Ever. And then I feel frustrated that I haven’t finished it and that isn’t good. I am trying to, at the bare minimum, pick up the toys in the evenings, do the dishes every day, and keep the living room/kitchen/dining room swept. Oh, and keep up with laundry. And do my work. And blog. And, you know, be Elanor’s mama. (No wonder I’m tired. I just re-read that sentence and realized that it sounds like a lot. Perhaps I need to further refine the “bare minimum”.)

3. I absolutely need time to connect with Brett when he’s home. I hate feeling like we’re two ships passing in the night. It’s not good. So I am trying to make an effort to shut my laptop and put the cleaning/laundry/etc aside until later, and when he’s home, hang out with him. That said, I’m very excited for the next few weeks. We are going to get massages together this weekend and then are going out to dinner. (Rachel will be visiting and she’ll watch Elanor, so I won’t even have to worry about whether Elanor is okay or not.) And next weekend, the three of us are going on a family vacation to the Oregon Coast. It will be wonderful to just be together, the three of us, with no distractions, in a beautiful and significant place.

4. Instead of just snapping and flying off the handle when something is upsetting to me, I’m taking time to think it through and pray and find the root causes of my frustration or anger. I’ve been working on writing a few things, processing through some big issues, and it feels really good to be getting at the heart of things and not just be slapping another band-aid on an old wound.

Anyway, that’s me these days. Tired. Sleep-deprived. Sometimes overwhelmed. But trying, in the midst of it all, to maintain a calm, loving, Christ-like demeanor and trying to be the best mama and wife I can be.

~~~~

I’ll leave you with something lighter. Brett came home from work and told me this joke today.

What do they call pallbearers in Oklahoma?

…

wait for it…

…

Karaokes.

Get it? Carry-okies?

Badum-bum.

Yeah, okay, sorry, that was pretty bad terrible. Sorry about that…

Work is…overwhelming, both while I’m actually there as well as when I’m not there, as it tends to really sap my energy in general and leave me exhausted once I get home. And that’s frustrating, because I have very little energy for the things I need to do — see my previous post — not to mention the things I want to do, like having fun with Elanor and Brett, blogging, hanging out with friends, answering emails, etc.

I am not really sure what to do about that imbalance. We are trying to talk it out and pray and figure out what our life should look like going forward…because how it looks at this present moment isn’t practical or sustainable for us. We’re both too tired and too overwhelmed to continue as we are, but we are really not sure how to get from here to where we want to be.

My friend Carmen and I were talking today (I called her while I was pumping at work, which is the only time in the day I have to do things like make phone calls) and she mentioned how when she worked part-time, she was often really frustrated by it, even though almost everyone else she talked to seemed to view part-time work as ideal.

Carmen said that what she found was that when she was working part-time, she felt stretched way too thin: she never got everything done at work she needed to, and found it hard to be present at work when she was there, and then when she got home, there was still the same amount of work to do at home but it was that much more overwhelming because she was gone that much more. And dude, that’s totally how I feel. Even though I’m only working half-time, commuting adds about an hour (well, about 45 minutes) on to either end of my day, so I am actually gone for 7 hours, which is — I think — a long time to be gone every day. By the time I get home at about 2, the day just feels like it’s gone. I can *maybe* get a quick nap in, or a quick errand, but then before I know it, Brett’s home and it’s dinner time and we’re eating and cleaning up and there’s laundry to be done and then I have to get everything together (clothes ironed and laid out, bus bag packed, etc) to start it all over again the next morning.

I almost feel bad writing that because it seems like I’m just never content with my lot, and that I somehow think the grass is always greener on the other side, since when I worked full-time I would have given my right arm for the schedule I have now.

But I guess I’m just being honest, that part-time work isn’t all I had it cracked up to be in my head. That’s probably partly due to the fact that I am just freaking tired from all the health stuff and partly due to what Carmen and I talked about, that stretched thin feeling when you are not fully in one world or another.

Anyway, I’m just feeling in a complain-y state right now, and I hate it. I do not like being frustrated with and dissatisfied with things, and I don’t like complaining. I feel like I do it waaaaay too much. Yet here I am, whining once again to the Interwebs. Sigh.

I promise there are more fun and interesting — read: less whiny and self-centered — posts coming soon. I have a whole list of things to blog about; I hope I can get some time in the next week to just get some posts written. I guess we’ll see about that.

I’ll leave you with a more cheerful thing: a picture of Elanor. We went on a walk on Saturday morning and she was wearing her cute outfit with the bear ears, which her Noni got for her. It is one of my favorites!