The Monkey Barrel

Archive for June, 2009

I made quite a bit of John’s baby food when he was a tiny guy. Most of it went through the blender or food processor and it was a big ordeal to cook the food and then prep it for freezing when it was done. I’d spend an afternoon each week in the kitchen looking up tasty combinations in my friends baby food cookbook and then have a freezer packed at the end of the day with things he may or may not enjoy. It was very satisfying.
When I had Luke, God bless him, I had not the stamina for doing all that and lied to myself that the premade stuff was just as healthy and cost relatively the same. Really in the end I was paying for my sanity, but it in no way was cheaper than my methods with John. I felt like a loser too. Poor middle child Luke. Tho in hind sight he got a lot more breast milk for a lot longer than John so he wasn’t TOTALLY deprived. right??
Along comes Noah and two inventions that I would like to kiss the feet of the inventors for because it has made cooking, preparing, and storing food for him so easy that I can make food literally under half an hour and fill the freezer. The first invention are the steam bags for vegetables. Whether your frozen came in one of these handy dandy contraptions or you bought the ziploc/glad ware version of them to put your own vegetable goodness in, these things quite clearly are the bomb. Fresh steamed veggies in 5 minutes and NO PAN TO WASH!!!!!!! It’s pure Genius I tell ya. It could make the most kitchen illiterate of women feel like Martha Stewart.
The second invention of awesomeness is the magic bullet. I’m sure many of you pregnant and new mommies have witnessed the infommercials late at night when you can’t sleep or have a fussy newborn. Thanks to my in-laws love of crazy kitchen gadgets we happen to have one in the cabinet. I figured I’d give my steamed veggies a whirl in the contraption and see what come out. Again, pure genius here people. It’s a tiny blender but a very strong one. Within a minute I have puree’s so fine and smooth that even the pickiest of little texture haters would be swayed to try broccoli, green beans and peas free of skin, seeds, and strings.
Noah has had a plethora of vegetables to try thanks to these two handy contraptions. We’ve made eggplant, avocado, bananas, mango, apples, pears, peaches, broccoli, green beans, squash of differing varieties, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pasta. I feel like wonder mom knowing exactly what goes into each serving and that I made it for him and not some crazy factory with a rat feces or cock roach maerda allowance. I encourage you all to check out these hand dandy inventions for yourself and experience the awesome wonder of culinary prowess in the baby field.
Oh, and the puree’s are great for sneakin veggies into older children’s foods as well.

Why is it that when I don’t see myself in photographs I am deluded into thinking that I don’t look half bad and then one picture slips from the camera and I am aghast at the image before me? When I actually do take the time to do my hair and put on make up to spend an afternoon or evening out, I can look confidently in the mirror at home and be satisfied with the reflection but the absolute minute I catch myself in the mall mirror or a window I want to crawl into the nearest hole and hide? Can I really be that naive about what my frame has become, or are contractors these days in such desperate need of materials that they are purchasing parts from funhouse manufacturers? Honestly. I know I’m, ya know, the F word. I don’t know how I allowed myself to pile the layers on. I suppose there is a deliberateness to it and a laziness. I always swore I wouldn’t be the girl who let herself go when she got married, yet here I am, married, and to say I let myself go, is to say Homer Simpson enjoys an occasional donut. Tho I am wholeheartedly with Homer, at what point am I gonna look at food and say, “You’re not as important going in as where you’re gonna find your place to land.”? When you’re fat it’s a daily conversation you have with yourself. How you got there, why you got there, when you’re gonna stop. I think Oprah is full of it when she says, You eat your pain, to fill up the holes in your emotions. I think you cover yourself up so no one will notice the real you that hides out in there. The person under all the layers that once exposed is naked to the world. Trying agonizingly to peel the layers back slowly so that they don’t stick and create new holes once they’re stripped. It’s like trying to work with phyllo dough. One slip and you gotta start all over from the beginning. Hmmm phyllo dough, baklava, now I’m hungry again. sigh……….

Here’s the thing about grief, every day is a crap shoot. There are days that go by and I am totally fine and there are some days where I think I can hardly make it to the end of the day knowing that he’s gone and trying to place my life and all the things that have happened in some realm of sanity. And after the first month or two people become complacent and forgetful and assume you’ve moved on. They’re lives have done so, why can’t you? Dad was such a major chunk of my world, my kindred. The only person on earth who understood me inside and out without my ever having to say a word and would change nothing about who I am to suit him. For him I was wonderful the way I was, even when I was a pain. I will never, ever have that again. Never. And so there’s this giant chunk missing out of my life that seems it will never be filled. I know my heavenly Father is there to supply and fill all the hurts and aches and sorrows and so on, but this seems so high and so deep sometimes that I am drowning in it. I don’t want to sob about it all the time and I don’t want to burden my friends and family incessantly with the abject emptiness that dad’s leaving has caused. They don’t need to hear it all the time. I can’t use it as an excuse for bad behaviour but I am at such odd ends with it all that sometimes I don’t know what end of me is up. Yesterday was horrific. Reminders everywhere. I could not get through breakfast. Choking down the french toast Luke had made for his own daddy and wishing to God that mine were still here. I know absolutely that dad is better and well where He is and I wouldn’t wish his last years here on anyone. He is finally free. But oh how my soul aches to hear his voice, to feel his arms, to smell his cologne, to be his little girl again.

Another funeral tomorrow. My gramma, Carrie Midgette gone home to her family. Preceded by a pair of twins she’d miscarried late stage pregnancy, a son she lost tragically at 17 years of age, a husband taken too soon, and another son just 2 months ago. What a reunion it must have been. There is only one left. Her oldest son. Lonely in is surroundings. All gone before.
She was the tiniest woman I’ve ever known. Even when I was little I remember being afraid to hug her too hard for fear her tiny bones would snap in half. Every Saturday we’d stop by after ballet or chores or some other such Saturday doins. There were peach trees in the backyard just outside the garage left nearly exactly the way it was the day grandaddy died. A winsomeness always followed her. A longing for days gone before and a loneliness we could never fill. Grandaddy was her whole world and the hole he left in her just never seemed to seal up.
She used to keep cicada carcasses on the window ledge and we were both fascinated and frightened by them. Her counters were always full of glasses of water. Never have figured that one out. And she may have been the only remaining woman in Norfolk with a party line on her telephone til the day she moved out over 15 years ago. I only ever saw her in a dress twice in my life. The first time was for a piano recital I had and it was a lovely shade of yellow that she wore. And the day I got married she wore a blue/purple number. I was honored that she’d made such an effort both times to get all dolled up for my special occasion. Again the memories, as with dad, disjointed, coming in fragments, no cohesion, no rhyme or reason, just spilling out of my brain in a grieved jumble. We will travel the miles tomorrow to her Carolina home and say our final goodbyes with a choke in my throat and tears that seem to have no end of late.

Who is the dullard who coined the phrase “getting in shape”? I am in shape. It may not be the most popular, photogenic, pristine, form, but it’s a shape. A shape I am currently at war with. I am attempting to smash it into some form of submission and what better way to deal with wrestling with my figure than to vent about it here upon my blog?? I have been hitting the Y on a more frequent basis of late but not one that would raise any personal trainer’s eyebrow to a height of admiration. Maybe just a sigh of acknowledgement that I’ve gotten my fat carcass off the couch and made it move toward some kind of goal to be smaller. In the coming weeks I will strive to document the process that is becoming less of me and more of myself hiding inside this shell I have created. I can come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses to give you for why I’ve allowed myself to become this enormous, but it all boils down to the fact that I really just like to eat. Food is good. And in America, it’s pretty durned plentiful. There may be some psychology as to why I put myself so far on the back burner that I started covering myself up in fat and perhaps some of that will come to light as I journal this agonizing road back to a former semblance of my physical self and a massive journey to make my outside match who I am beginning to feel on the inside. In truth, there are many things I’ve come to like about myself. I could spend hours giving you a dissertation on my many short comings and have elsewhere at times, but here I will try to focus on the good without blowing a giant bubble of an ego that will be popped on the pin of failure. We’ll start with tonight.
Half an hour on the blasted treadmill. 20 minutes I spent on a 5 % incline trying to prepare myself for the hike I’ll be taking in New Mexico when we go visit one of my favoritist cousins. Why is it that when you are at the beginning of taking your weight in hand and you put said weight upon fitness equipment, it is suddenly and incontrollably full of gaseousness?? And there’s always a room full of people but there manages to be none within 2 machines of you all around so you know there will be no quiet release to blame on anyone else in the room??? It is agonizing to be a woman sometimes. When I was pregnant the last two times I would be gripped suddenly, and very publicly with such gas pain that the tiniest move threatened to expel every void in my poor pregnant body into an embarrassing infamy. I’m not kidding people, gas happens and it happens to women too and if you’re a “lady” reading this saying you ain’t got none packed up in there, I cry foul upon thee. Literally. Maybe holding it all in helped strengthen some area of muscle that needed toning or tightening but good gracious! So not what you were expecting in a weight loss blog was it?
I can’t say that I’m going to diet because the very word imbues a rebelliousness in me that threatens to make me a glutton of epic proportions. I can say that I am watching what I eat and in more ways than just following the spoon as it makes it’s way to the hole in my head. Soda and caffeine are taking a measured backseat in an attempt to see how they affect some of the health issues I’ve been suffering and I am seeking out more vegetables and proteins as opposed to carbohydrate addiction death. I really do enjoy salads and so I’m searching recipes to make some of my favorite restaurant creations in my own home. I’ve actually lost 6 pounds in the last 3 weeks just making minor modifications. I won’t always post my losses or gains, but when there is one of significance I’ll put a marker up.
To close I’ll tell you my motivation for getting this ponderous rear in gear finally besides all the normal, obvious reasons. First, I got an all clear on all of my tests. Praise the Lord! I have a brain and it is remarkably average and normal and frankly that is never something I’d thought to celebrate but I am on top of the world to know it’s a healthy brain. I’ve been living in some fear in the last 6 weeks as to know what the rest of my life would look like as a person with a disability. Fortunately the only disability I have is disabling my jaw from perpetual mastication. But secondly, last night I watched a man who’s body had been completely mangled in a plain crash. This man had every reason to give up and just sit in a wheelchair and let the world work for him. But he chose a different path. One night in the early days of his recovery he laid on the floor too tired, in too much pain and agony to will himself to go to physical therapy where he would scream and cry and wrestle his own body back into submission to have access to his mobility again in the future. His brother came by and laid down next to him and said man, if this is what we’re doin, let’s just call up the nursin home right now. From that point forward he was at every therapy session laying the groundwork to getting back into life. I was shamed. How can I, having full faculties and having all my limbs and appendages, say I am too tired or that I have no time to take care of myself? Frankly I can’t. I’m hoping that coming back and reading this for myself when I feel the urge to quit or give in, will re-inspire me to take up the cause and push forward to getting myself “back into shape”.

Among the many games we have taught the children such as rock, paper, scissors and so forth Fred started the “Hey, you have something on your shirt” and then pops a finger on their nose and says, Made ya look, giggles resound, everyone’s happy. ‘Til the boys got wise to it and stopped taking the bate. Enter mommy who is the reigning queen at this game. How can you resist looking when your mother insists that there is stain on your shirt and is armed with paper towels, wipes, or a rag to wipe it up or tsks at what looks to be baby yark on daddy’s shoulder??? Well, I tell you, you can’t. So in the car the other day, Fred is desperately trying to get Luke to play along and Luke is having none of it and I turn to Fred and with a look of chagrin say, “Gees honey, how long has there been baby vomit on your shoulder?” to which he immediately looks and I get him in the nose and happily yell, “Made ya look!” and Luke in the backseat hollars, “In your face dad”. We howled in hysterics. Still have no idea where he learned that or the correct timing to use it but that kid is good. He’s gonna go places. Oh yeah, and seriously, whatever you had for lunch, it’s on your shirt. Right there on your shoulder. Honest. HAHAHAHAHA Made ya look!!!