Living-Deliberately.com

This blog will be taking a vacation through Christmas. May all of you have a blessed and peaceful holiday season. I’m spending mine quietly with my family, thinking through  this major life change, and sifting through what needs to get done.  I’d like to bake some bread again, walk through the woods, and face a new year fresh.

~ See you on the other side!

5 Things I’m Thankful For, The Week Before Christmas:

• the magical fun of playing Santa Claus with children
• the holy reality of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker
• for sustanence, in it’s many forms
• for snow, that covers ugliness, at least for a little while
• music, and how somewhere, there is a song for every mood and place

“When I breathe, I hope.” ~ found on a map.

“Your hair is glorious.” ~heard while waiting in a very long line at the end of an exhausting day.

“When will we have a normal day again?” ~ said by one weary little boy.

“May better things come your way Dear.” ~said by a wee old man in a sherrif’s office.

“I’m the widow to a living man”,  ~sung by Ben Harper.

How about it readers? Got a list to share? post it in the comments.

My 5 things I’m thankful for this week:

• special one-on-one time with my daughter.
•  reliable transportation and the dad who made it that way; I can’t imagine the last few weeks without it
• irony. The “flip side” lends valuable perspective
• my confessor
• friends, friends, friends

Though I’ve used a laptop as my personal computer for well over a year now, until now I’ve only used my wireless portability within the various rooms of my house. I liked having the option of working at desk, kitchen table, bed, or front porch. When I left the house, it was almost always with all four kids in tow, with a list of errands to run and stuff to obtain, so sitting around in coffee shops and internet cafes was simply not part of my wireless environment.

One of the best luxuries of high-speed, wireless capability, I’m finding, is that business and communication need not come to a stand-still though the rest of my world may be uncertain and constantly changing. And this, makes it so much less of a luxury and more a necessity in order to accomplish certain tasks. What a blessing my laptop and wireless card have been! I can grab a cup of caffinated-courage and keep up with email, get the news, take care of book-keeping changes and when I’m done, move onto the next deadline or location-to-be. Not as portable as my Blackberry-using friends but a world away from having to “get back to the office”, freaking out that things were going down the proverbial toilet in my absense. As I write today, a daughter is doing school work at the table with me as we uber-multi-task through a day that will no doubt hold many, many redirects. Technology can almost seem like a grace sometimes with the freedom and flexibilty it affords.

And so a new challenge has become part of my travels: finding the free wi-fi. Others who’ve gone before me gave a little list of who’s got it and who doesn’t. And someone pray tell why Starbucks can charge BOTH 4.50 for a latte and 10.00/day for internet, when Krystal next door offers admittedly poor coffee but free wi-fi? This has confounded me on more than one morning, when coffee cravings assault (I get just the brew, not the latte) and drive over to find the free wireless. So much better to be lounging in dusty sunshine amid the boxes of christmas french presses and chocolate covered coffee beans….but I digress.

Anyway, one day this week had me jaunting down to a major city in the south and then back again before nightfall. The chosen rendevoux was an Olive Garden parking lot in what they called, “a shopping area”. And HOW. What it really was, of course, was a vomitous ode to commercialism and gaseous emmissions due to extreme traffic, that could only slightly be blamed on the coming holiday. I decided the best way to handle it was to pick the shopping pod closest to the restaurant, stay on that one side of the gridlock, and ferheavensakes stay out of any stores! And then I remembered I needed to check my email….

A call to a local provided a tip to find a McDonald’s….yessirree, McD’s also offeres free Wi-fi, and I found them…BUT they do not have a single power cord in the entire dining room! This was after I bought their fake-food, promising myself that it could be my one-annual McD’s “meal”. That was also after watching 10 minutes of the most profound inefficiency possible, in an empty restaurant utterly overstaffed with clueless teenagers and an even more clueless manager, who could not understand why I’d ask for a power outlet. If you have to ask then…..

A sympathetic listener directed me to a panera in the mall. Malls are kinda devil-playgrounds in my pov but I steered my car in that direction and we circled twice, not finding any such bread company. What WAS there was, you probably guessed it, a sunny, warm, Starbucks with a brick patio and smart people all about. With resignation, I parked.

45 mintues, one tech call, and one intelligent and helpful student nearby later, I was on. Thankfully that day pass is good for 24 hours and I used it three other times in other locations before it expired. What’s more is that I was soon back in familiar territory, where panera has it for free AND good coffee to boot. Oh, and they are neither overstaffed, nor under, and quite efficient from the looks of things.

And so I offer my plain-coffee-one-cream in salute to panera bread company…you get it right. Thanks a bunch.

Dear friends and readers~

Just to clear a little controversy up…. maybe it occurrs to regular readers that this blog has not generally had negative comments left attacking the blog writer, yet lately there has been a series of “hit and runs”.  Some of these are people I know, who have assumed a false identity in order to leave something hurtful on the blog.  Thanks to Ip addresses, and email, and real contact with people, I know who is real and who is not.

More than that though, this blog will not be the stage for side taking, debate about what is going on in my life, accusation, or implication. It is where I write, where I work, where I share, and at that, in limitation. I have deleted that chain of comments because they were part of a direction that is not what this blog is for.

To my loved friends, family, and supporters, thank you for all you are. To those who only show up when there is some kind of drama, move on. There are other places online to better spend your energy.

Today Forward~

It felt like a good habit I didn’t want to let go of…..so here are five things I’m thankful for this Wednesday:

• great friends who stick up for me but also don’t let me take myself toooooo seriously!
• Tennessee….I love it!
• smart lawyers who do their jobs well
• white sunshine in a  true blue sky
• the art of a well-made pb & j

One more, in honor of a very special day…. a little girl ’round these parts turns 10 today. She is living sunshine, a jolt of feminine in a household of brothers, and she adds beauty and creativity to everything she does. I can’t wait to see the fantastic woman she’s going to become and miss those sweet baby days of dolls and dress up all at the same time.  Once upon a time I had two daughters and I’m every day grateful that God let us keep at least one here with us. Life would never be the same without her. Happy Birthday baby!

From “The Life and Adventures of Nicolas Nickelby” by Charles Dickens, more directly from the current issue of Real Simple Magazine:

When I speak of home, I speak of the place where- in default of a better- those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it the same notwithstanding.

So that’s why….

In the sidebar, near the top, you can see that I’ve added a separate “Triathlon Goal” page, to chart my progress between now and the hoped-for accomplishment in 2009. My plan is to chart my progress there and post reflections on the process, along with alerts when there is a chart update, here on the main page.

Anyone else working on an althetic-oriented goal, or considering one with the upcoming new year?

The Living Deliberately Goal: Eat a diet that is nearly all whole foods, as organic and locally grown as possible.

Broken Down: While traveling, keep it to whole foods and avoid processed junk.

In usual circumstances, I’m a true home-body. I love to nest, love routine, love stability and structure. My happiest days are just after grocery shopping, looking at a pantry full of glass jars of beans and grains, and a fridge crammed full with rich, whole dairy and colorful produce. My co-op has bins of beautiful bulk items, honey dripping into bottles brought from home, with wooden floors and hip music playing in the background. I’ve frequently felt homesick in the past weeks and one of the places I long to return to is 3 Rivers, if not for a full grocery list, maybe at least for some cream top yogurt and coconut almond granola.

Living on the road has not been awful; I’ve had cozy places to stay, mom’s homey cooking now and then, warm dinners with friends, and there was the turkey-crammed holiday in there as well. Still, not so long ago I was cooking 21 meals a week, completely from scratch, surrounded by my own tools and ingredients. There is a contrast, no bones about it. Margarine exists in others’ fridges! Fast food means lots of soda offerings. There’s no co-op in this small town and finding whole milk is as good as it’s gonna get…forget finding non-homogenized or (shhh….) raw options. For weeks I couldn’t even find my way around a kitchen with a wit of sense.

This is where having a “seasonal” attitude has helped tremendously. This won’t last forever. The thought behind the meal matters much more sometimes than the actual content. And, making good choices hasn’t been impossible. For instance:

• I can always get water to drink, no matter where I go. That is a luxury in many parts of the world! So, NO SODA.
• A box of Frosted Mini Wheats has been a constant friend. A good dose of fiber, a filling meal in a pinch, and much cheaper than eating out…it’s also a comfort food of mine.
• Veggies can be had at least once a day, every day. Salad with dinner or carrot sticks to snack on or a side of peas. Getting some green while on the road is easier than it used to be.
• I’ve been eating foods containing MSG here and there, simply because it’s in SO MUCH and is often unavoidable without hurting someone’s feelings. And a grace has been that I’ve not had a single headache from it, a change from my usual reaction.
• I also have a box of granola bars in the car and a jar of roasted peanuts for a quick protein-jolt. There are bottled waters in the back and when I’m traveling far, milk in the cooler. I never used to pack snacks and I’m finding that this change in behavior has been a smart and helpful one.

I know/hope the day returns when I chart a week’s meals and head to my various grocery stores to get our “usual” foods again. In the meantime, it’s a comfort to realize that health doesn’t need to be abandoned just because the old context was removed. It feels good to see how far resiliency and flexibility can stretch a person, and how elements of value can exist in many realms. And, while it’s easy to make a little idol out of organic living, people always come before ideas. So, “please pass the margarine”.

Living Deliberately Goal: Complete My First Triathlon

Broken down goal: learn and research the componenets, to decide what gear I need to get started.

Further broken down goal: start with bikes. It’s a big world!

I think the last time I rode a bike was a fat-seated beach cruiser when I was pregnant with my third baby. I was barely showing at the time but the fear of falling was too intense so I got off and left it. Wait no…that’s not right. It was earlier this year, at the beach, on a man’s mountain bike with a crotch-numbing seat. While soaring under a mossy canopy near ocean views, it was nothing like racing down a dirt road on my banana-seat Huffy as a kid, trying to make it home before a storm broke, wind through my hair and dust coating my bare feet!

The first time I had an interest in cycling was after watching the movie Singles; I’ve since seen that movie at least 500 times and I still get a giggle out of Debbie and her gear. Her peter-horton love interest in the movie was also a cyclist in Thirtysomething, his bachelor bike on a stand in his uber-cool apartment. Somehow, serious cycling has kind of interwoven itself into an impression of active-adulthood in my mind. Coupled with it is my interest in energy reduction and blogs like Simple Reduce that document regular people using bikes more often and their cars less. Cycling, in all its forms, feels like a responsible choice for a hobby, more productive than collecting things that gather dust or add to heedless materialism.

I’ve recently spent some time with a cyclist, getting just a snatch of exposure to safety concerns, stories of road accidents, and the wide expanse of choices there seem to be in very task-specific bikes. Silly me took a look at a bike on a stand and thought the same bike could go down both highway and off-road trail!! I couldn’t figure out why the spokes looked different or why the wheel routinely came off or why a wheel would go to the repair shop. I’ve since learned that wheels, like everything else associated with cycling, can be pricey and is designed to go many, many miles; bikes come odometers and regular maintenance is a must. Getting parts replaced is necessary, just like on a car.

Still feeling rather shy about asking questions, I’m going slowly and using websites where I can. I found a british site today that broke down the differences between the kinds of bikes out there and most importantly, had a separate article for the difference I need to look for in a woman’s vs. man’s bike. I found one site last week that was triathlon-centered and said repeatedly to just get the cheapest bike that would do the job but I’m thinking that there are certain elements that need to be paid attention to (like that, um, SEAT?!?)

In other Triathlon news, I have found a race or two I’d like to pencil in but the ‘08 dates feel way too soon. I’m setting my sites on being ready for ‘09. This year will include trail running, learning to swim, getting a bike and learning to ride it, and practice runs.