God save the Queen

And the queen would be me. Yes, I do believe things have to change around this kingdom, especially in light of the recent strain of Anglophilia that is seems to be catching. Not one to be all the caught up in such things as castles and royalty--as I do believe the resources tied up in that fantasy, both financial and otherwise, would be better utilized to help with modern day catastrophes and global concerns--I do admit that there is something quite attractive about being queen.
   While I won't insist that anyone here in my tiny fiefdom (read: my husband) refer to me as "Your Royal Majesty" or even "Ma'am," after first reference, I have cottoned to the idea that I should not be spoken to until I initiate the conversation. This would completely eliminate a lot of useless prattle and if I had known about this years ago, it would have been very helpful in child rearing. Something oddly Puritanical about the whole notion.
   I also fancy the curtsy. Nothing elaborate, mind you. Simple, short and sweet, but please don't look me in the eyes. That would just belie your commoner roots. This I would like to make a practice for my guests and friends, every time I enter the room. Or nod, cough, gesture or laugh, for that matter. Curtsy on demand, so to speak. Good exercise for them as well.
   Finally, the subtleties of switching my purse from one wrist to the other to indicate the party's over is another regal practice I would like to employ, with modern day revisions of course. Now I don't own a purse that sits comfortably on my wrist without risking strain, so I would use my shoulder bag. Subjects would have to keep an eye out for this, so they would know when to vamoose. It would be a very tactful way to get them on their way so I could catch up on my essential beauty rest.
   Yes, there is something quite attractive about being queen, even if it is only for a day.

You are what you wear

If clothes make the man, then hats must make the woman. I love hats, but it's on the rare occasion that I scare up enough gumption to wear one. Watching the nuptials of William and Kate underscored my love of hats.
   While it is a uniquely human trait to be able to accessorize, animals have always innately understood the importance of preening, lest we forget the male peacock. I admit that when I am gussied up in my Sunday clothes, it makes me feel differently about myself. Even if the outfit is arguably not comfortable, it changes the way I view myself.  
   Hats have a more immediate impact on my self confidence. But getting there can be a tug of war with myself. The judgmental part of me argues that I do not have the right to wear a hat. "Who do you think you are calling attention to yourself like that?" This often silences my urge sufficiently. But once in a while, the bolder side emerges and takes things in hand. "Why not wear that hat, Missy?"
   Ultimately, my hope is that as I age and get a bit dodgy (as the Brits would say) I hope that my hidden side wins out and I become a veritable Bella Abzug.
   To read more on my Erie Times-News blog, click here.

Insectitudes

There is symbolism in all that surrounds us. Nothing new there. Native and indigenous people have known and worked with this for thousands of years. Animals and plants, flora and fauna are wrinkles of nature that can hold deeper meaning.
   Dragon flies have held special interest for me. When I was little, they would scare me because of their sheer size and my accompanying fear that they might bite me, or worse, carry me away. Of course, I now know they do not bite and are actually harbingers of what's to come for me. So in a sense, they have indeed carried me away.
   But dragon flies have intrigued many cultures and been the subject of their mythologies. Chinese believe they are a sign of happiness and harmony; to Native Americans a sign of happiness; the Japanese Samurai so respected them that they were adopted as their symbol of victory. Folklore has them stitching up wounds on snakes, being able to sense bad souls from good, and being sent directly from Satan himself to create bedlam amongst humans.
   Perhaps most importantly, dragon flies symbolize change, from an internal, introspective perspective. This interpretation most likely comes from the fact that a dragon fly has 360 degree eyesight, which allows it to see everything around it, symbolically representing one's internal or third eye, which allows us humans to see all that is unseen as well.
   This particular dragon fly above, or darning needle as we used to call it when we were kids, alighted on my car antenna one day last summer when I was visiting my brother. In retrospect, it would prove to be a trip that changed our relationship forever.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
          -- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

To read my Erie Times-News blog, click on www.goerie.com/blogs/gutcheck. And for this week's column, click here. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110428/LIFESTYLES0605/304289982/-1/LIFESTYLES

Less processing, the better

Nothing smacks of healthy more than granola. But lots of the packaged stuff that's out there is loaded with sugar and fats, not to mention lacking in freshness. Even the organic stuff can be sitting on the shelves for months, which isn't a good thing if you are looking for nutritional bang for your buck.
   Making granola in your own kitchen is a simple alternative to spending a lot for a little. All it takes is a bunch of uncooked oatmeal, whole and organic if you can get it, dried fruits such as raisins and currants (or apricots, dates, figs, whatever you love), nuts and seeds of your preference (soaked in water for a while to help invigorate them) and some sweetener such as agave (pretty easy to find in the baking aisle next to the honey) or reconstituted, pureed dates, which is what I used.
   Put everything in a large bowl. I let my dates soak in a cup or so of water and then pureed them in a food processor to make a thin, sweet liquid. I poured it on the mish-mosh and mixed well. Really well so that all of the ingredients are evenly distributed. I then let it set until all of the ingredients were lumpy wet and well saturated. (Add more water to get this consistency. You really can't screw this up.)
   Now I happen to have a dehydrator. I spread a think layer of the mixture on parchment and layered four sheets. And then I let it dry for about 24 hours until crunchy and breakable into chunks. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can use your oven set on the lowest setting closest to 115 degrees. (Mine does not go this low.) But I have used my toaster oven in a pinch. The whole point is to dry out the granola, not bake it. Baking it kills nutrients. And that's the whole point behind eating this stuff, isn't it?
   While eating foods that aren't processed appeals to me because it often means much less prep time before I eat, the reverse is true when it comes to creating more elaborate, palate-pleasing dishes. It often takes a lot longer than just throwing ingredients into a pan on the stove.
   But in the long run, it is worth it, because as they say, patience is a virtue. Bon appetit.
   

The sun sets on Pine Valley

I love my grandmother. She and my mother indoctrinated me into soaps in January of 1970, when a new show premiered called All My Children. Grandma was an avid fan of soap operas, and along with my mom, kept track of the comings and going in several fictitious towns, stemming back to the early days of General Hospital when Dr. Steve Hardy was a heart throb and many of the story lines unfolded in front of the nurse's station or while sipping endless cups of coffee in the kitchens of Port Charles' first families.
   While daytime dramas will still unfold in Port Charles, they will not in Pine Valley or Llanview. This is a blow that marks the end of an era. The remaining soaps are sure to follow, despite what the network executives parrot. Rumors of the end of All My Children and One Life to Live raced through the Internet months ago and were denied. The ax dropped shortly after that denial. And some of us have been floating ever since, unsure of what to make of the end that looms.
   There is no shame in admitting to being a fan of soap operas. We fans are a hearty and weather-beaten lot, having taken our licks over the years. Others love to poke fun at us who have loyally followed years of multiple story lines that can swing from the preposterous to the dull and boring.
   For those who deride soap fans and scoff at our fandom, I ask that you look inward. Who amongst you can cast the first stone? It is a the rare person who isn't a die hard fan of something, whether it be baseball, a reality television show, WNPR, Danielle Steele novels, coffee, chicken wings, hot baths, running, knitting, scrap booking....you get my drift. As my grandmother would say, different strokes for different folks.
   In daytime dramas, actors come and go, as do the plots that thicken and thin, but it's us, the fans, who have been the constant. The land of daytime drama has asked a lot of us and yes, we do complain but we remain steadfast. There are plenty of sports fans who can't claim that. We are expected to believe that people come back from the dead, enemies can actually find out they are biological siblings, mothers do forget to have given birth, children grow up into teens in less than a year, and almost everyone has an evil twin.
   For me, soap operas are entwined with my coming of age. I watched Secret Storm, Days of Our Lives, Young and the Restless, Ryan's Hope, Search for Tomorrow, GH, AMC and OLTL. I was glued to General Hospital in college, following Luke and Laura. But while I have kept a passing interest in those shows that weren't shut down like a cheap massage parlor, my attention has been on AMC, as someone who can claim veteran status for following it for 41 years.
   I am not ready to never return to Pine Valley again. It's times like these I want to turn to my grandmother and reiterate the words of a young Tara Martin. "Oh, Gran, why does life have to be so hard?"

Don't be scared by live food

Living raw--as in what we eat, not what we wear--has been a continual experiment in our kitchen. So much so that it is becoming a preferred way of life because it fits into our belief that we should live as close to the earth as possible. Simply. In other words, more is too much.
   We launched into a mostly raw diet last September, but thanks to this hard, long winter, a sad lack of commitment and a dearth of fresh and tasty vegetables, we fell back into old habits. As a rule, we don't eat meat, but we did eat a lot of cooked foods--hearty soups and vegetable bakes, all natural and gf (gluten free) but not raw.
   Even though the outdoor climate isn't cooperating, it's clear that the climate somewhere else is. Lots of organic, tempting-looking vegetables and fruits have magically appeared at the co-op and grocery stores. I say magically because I know damn well that they aren't what an environmentally-conscious person such as myself should be buying. They are "oily foods." (Because they have to be transported here either by truck, train, plane or cargo ship, their travel costs, both environmentally and economically, are exorbitant.)
   In fact, Barbara Kingsolver writes in her book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," that "a quick way to improve food-related fuel economy would be to buy a quart of motor oil and drink it." Her point is that "Americans consume so much oil, that if every American are just one meal of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels (not gallons) every week." In order to appease my guilty conscience that I am buying out of season produce from places thousands of miles away, I tell myself they appear by magic. (More on this later, but suffice to say, we as a household make it point to purchase all our edibles from local sources, including dairy for my son when he is home from college.)
   Back to lunch. Since I wrote my initial article in Lake Erie Lifestyle March issue (click here and go to pages 12-13) about our foray into raw veganism, my husband has been fielding a lot of questions about it, since many of those at his workplace are fascinated but somewhat trepidatious. The photo above shows how easy it can be. You don't have to cook vegetables for them to be delicious, as any crudite tray will tell you.
   I marinated the raw veggies above in simple cold-pressed EVOO, added seasonings like fresh oregano, basil and parsley, some Himalayan crystal salt, and let set overnight. They soak up the marinade and create a nice, tender yet crisp snap when eaten. The dehydrated tomatoes were easier than that. Adding some apple cider vinegar to the leftover marinade, I sliced the tomatoes into thin slices, let them soak in the marinade for 10 minutes, then placed them in the dehydrator over night. The result is an amazingly delicious, crunchy-chewy burst of zesty tomato. Mix all the ingredients together with baby spinach, fresh romaine, some nuts and dried fruit if you like and you don't even need a dressing. We added them with homemade pesto and raw tomato sauce to some raw veggie rounds I made for some living pizzas.
   Eating live food doesn't have to frighten you. Just think of it as eating your vegetables and liking it.   

No place like home?

A room that has been dark for a thousand years can be illuminated by a single candle. Light overcomes dark every time. It's the foundation of the power of the positive, the strength of respect-based living and the belief that events unfold for a reason, whether logical or unknown.
   Yet despite the positives of being positive, unhappiness and frustration, anger to the point of rage, is an easy place to list toward; a welcoming hole in which to set our feet. Sometimes it's the most comfortable place to be because it's home. While home is a concept associated with nurturing, convivial family ties,and warmth of comfort, in truth, in can be none of that. Home is different for all of us, and can be a place of judgment, cold shoulders, erratic behavior fueled by addiction and even trauma.
   But it's still home, and therefore the place, both emotionally and psychologically, we are drawn to throughout our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.
   As adults, even though we know better and are fully aware that we don't like chaos, drama, feeling sorry for ourselves, lashing out at others, justifying our wounds and generally wanting to blame life and those around us for our unhappiness, we can't help it. It's our return home. Home is the first place we knew and has that type of lasting impression. The echoes from our home-life dynamic can be heard in the whispers of the innermost part of ourselves.
   It's hard to know that home can be whatever we want it to be, despite how, where and with what dynamics we were raised. The power of the mind and spirit can override the conditioning of the past which can and does become the present. It starts with the simplest of things, really, something shared by everyone--the ability to be aware. It has become somewhat of an unnoticed and unheralded trait this century. But awareness of self, otherwise known as self reflection, separates man from the rest of the animal kingdom. It helps us gain perspective and knowledge. And with that, the knowingness that internal change is not only possible but certain. Stepping outside of our egos is tantamount to eyeballing our lives from an objective perspective and embracing the understanding that we do not have to live out our lives as the sum total of our past conditioning.
   Once we key into why we react the way we react, we can change it, and truly understand that if we always do what we always did, we always get what we always got. And that shift requires another commonly shared human trait--it's called guts.

Check out my new column: No use crying over powdered milk

Check it out:
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110414/LIFESTYLES0605/304149984/-1/LIFESTYLES

And the temps, they go down and down

So I leave to go downstate for one day and what happens? The temperature on Lake Erie soars to 80 degrees yesterday. Of course! Luckily, we got back to town before nightfall and the weather shift took us so off guard, we decided to do a summertime thing: wash the car.
   Well, it's just another one of Spring's little teasers. The weather savvy amongst us know that jumping 40 degrees in one day is a cruel joke. We will be back to the 40s in a hours--today's oncoming storm will see to that.
   As the rain pours down the windows and the outer world looks like the more familiar version of spring that we are all accustomed to, my spirits remain high with the lingering brush of balmy breezes, the prickly crunch of new grass under my feet (yes, I took my shoes off) and the sun on my face.
   Yes, that one day, those few hours of summer erased the months of wet, cold, dare I say, harsh winter. And I am reminded of the verse from William Wordsworth poem.

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, 
of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.

Who moved my comfort zone?

Life does that to us, doesn't it? Just when we get settled into our comfort zone and have defined and accustomed ourselves to its boundaries--BANG! Something happens and the ground shifts. Our comfort zone is gone. We find ourselves rummaging around, trying to find it once again. Sometimes, the shift is a minor tremor and we regain our footing and rebuild it with some effort. But more often than not, the shift is colossal, like an internal earthquake, and no matter how furtively we look, nothing is familiar in the aftermath.
   As we pick through the debris, desperate to reconstruct the familiar, we are left with some emotional options especially when it dawns us that the familiar is gone forever. We can give up, accept defeat and just sit down in the demolished pile of the used-to-be, feel sorry for ourselves and bemoan the tragedy of losing what we have become accustomed to, and then slowly wither and die. Or we can be completely self consumed and develop the belief that this only happens to us and very few can understand what we are going through, thus underscoring our general belief that life is a them vs. us scenario and, dammit, we are not going to let them win. Of course, the result of that is usually stress-induced health problems, an overall bitter attitude and a constant belief that life is hard and it sucks.
   Or we can accept that maybe the whole point behind life is to have our comfort zones challenged and demolished on a fairly routine basis, and it's what we do to redefine, recreate, rebuild and thus morph into more flexible, pliant versions of ourselves that matters.
   And you know what? The end result is that by doing the latter, we find that given enough time and enough experiences, our comfort zone expands and breathes and, sooner or later, it encompasses everyone, everything and every variation of life around us. The whole world, no, the universe, becomes our comfort zone.

Dear Spring....

Where the hell are you? Not sure if you knew this, but this wretched little rodent in Punxsutawney claimed that you would be arriving around this time. Not that I put much stock in an animal as a predictor, but he does have a proven track record. NOT.
   As I watch the snow falling on the trees and ice forming on Lake Erie, I am reminded of, oh, I don't know--January. But interestingly, it's April. And just two weeks shy of Easter. How is the bunny going to scatter eggs and leave chocolate baskets in a blizzard?
   So, Spring, I don't like to threaten, but if you know what's good for you, you'll kick it in gear and get here by this weekend. I have some outdoor activities planned and don't want to wear a snowsuit.
   Yours very truly,
    An  Angry Fan

Check your ego at the door, kemosabe

My four brothers have taught me a lot. As a group, are they the funniest band of clever witted males I have ever known and like most siblings, have adopted a shared vocabulary that is testimony to their bond. A metro-sexual, in their vernacular, is known as "Mr. Fancy Pants;" one who is pumped up on his own testosterone is a "Hard Guy;" and someone who is self consumed and me-focused, is "Mr. Very Important." Of course, they use these terms to describe each other as well. And there are varying inflections that accompany each phrase, which I would have trouble mirroring here for you in mere words.
   Part of the benefit of having a lot of siblings is that, with or without intention, they keep everyone else's ego in check. It doesn't take much to be reduced to those childhood days when the playing field was much more equal and power was summed in who got to pick what television show we all would watch. I am thankful that our dynamic is a humorous one.  
   Hence when Mr. Very Important--that substantial ego that resides in all of us--takes the center stage, there is always someone within virtual elbow room to help point that out. But it requires seeking that ego check. And when Mr. VIP is in charge, he doesn't like to be corrected.
   There are some misconceptions about Mr. Very Important, alias, your ego. For instance, while ego is integrally tied to feelings of self importance and entitlement, it is not a measure of self esteem. Many get the two confused. Arrogant people for the most part do not enjoy intrinsic, unshakable self worth. Scratch the surface of a braggart and a bully and you will find insecurity. Conversely, someone who is modest and self effacing isn't necessarily a quivering nebbish, either. Those are often the characteristics of someone who has sufficiently pushed their egos aside to enjoy a much more peaceful existence of not having to prove themselves to anyone.
   Ego manifests itself in hurt feelings--I have found it's the main indicator that my ego is responding to a situation rather than my soul. The scenario goes something like this: Someone is critical of something I wrote. I react. I am hurt. I am angry. I am even mortally wounded, depending on how ego-based I am that day. But when I don't take it personally, when I remind myself that their reaction is completely their own and they are even entitled to it, well, I find myself in a very secure place. When my ego is in check and not front and center, I can hear the same criticism and respond much differently. Nine times out of ten, the end result is a win-win for both of us.
   It's true what they say--don't take anything personally. People go about doing what they do not in collusion to hurt us. There is no grand scheme afoot to undermine us. If you think that, it's your ego.
   Ego comes part and parcel with the human experience, but it isn't the entire package. It's lumped in there with emotions, physicality and mental thought--all aspects of our human selves that we sometimes erroneously believe is the sum total of who we are. Mr. Very Important has a way of edging out spirituality and soul and even love. What we are left with is a series of ego skirmishes, both small and colossal, that undermine the truth. And the truth is, we are in this together.