UpHill Battles

I bought my bike to cut down the cost of my commute to and from work.  At present it costs me $3.00 both ways if I ride during peak hours.  This cost almost as much as gas in a car.  Why am I willing to pay that and not own a car?  Initially when I ditched the wheels it was $2.25 at peak times.  I bought a monthly pass.  But as I moved to bigger places my rent went up.  Coming up with nearly $100 at the same time rent is due was not feasible.  I bought a scooter first.  I still own her, but she is not very environmentally sound.  I should ride her more often but my environmental side balks at the idea.

I bought the bike when I was 6.5 miles closer to where I work.  Three years ago I moved back to the Central Area of Seattle.  Not the CD but close to it.  I now ride that big old beast almost 20 miles a day round trip.  Some days I go further to go visit friends, join in activities or go to the doctor.  This would not be a huge issue, except that I live on Beacon Hill.  It matters not which direction you come from, that hill is an obstacle.  I have managed to make it all the way up from the South end twice and twice from the North End.  Everyday when I get home, I am so tired I just want a drink some dinner and to fall into bed, but no, I have to clean cook, and do laundry.  My knees often hurt, beyond belief.  Tonight is one of those nights.  I truly want nothing more than an ice pack some ibuprophen, a stiff drink and some dinner.

It is all I can do some mornings to get out of bed.  The ride to work is not my issue, it is mostly downhill.  On my way home I drag my feet.  I stop at my partner’s place, sometimes saying screw it and staying the night.  This week I am making an effort to fight that uphill battle and win.  Once I get up the hill the rest of the ride goes by quickly.  What I need is to motivate myself and challenge myself to get up that beastly hill on my beastly bike.  If I can do it once it can be done, and if I do it on a regular basis that makes me a truly badass biker chick, right?

Disclaimer, this is not my picture, I just copied it off a website.

Hidden gems in my kitchen.

Every other Wednesday I get a great delivery of fresh organic fruits and vegetables.  Unlike a true CSA I am always given a specific amount of produce.  Most of it is local some is imported from other areas, such as California in the Winter.  I can add to and take away as I need to.  I used to get a big bin once a week when I had the kids home all the time.  I found myself throwing much of it out as they were not home as often.  One would think that a $30 bin bi-weekly would barely feed a person.  WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Are we clear here, that is a misconception.  The bigger bin was $40 and I struggled to use it all up before the next bin arrived.  Today was my delivery.  I got home dreading this, because I have not really cooked at home much in the last two weeks.  This means a purge and creative dinner night.

Half a head of cabbage, two carrots and two spring onions, add some mayo, vinegar, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper and plenty of ground cumin: you have a spicy cole slaw, about 3 days worth.  OK, lunch is covered through Friday and I had some for dinner.  One yellow crookneck squash, some kale that has seen better days, spring onion, fresh garlic (not the dried kind, like just out of the ground kind) sesame oil, sesame seeds, tamari, saracha, and some of those weird clear rice noodles: you have a very tasty veggie and noodle dish.

I now only have potatoes left over, a leek  and some cucumbers.  I will use the cukes for a sandwich tomorrow to go with my spicy slaw.  I now need to proceed in making some potato soup.  If my daughter comes over tomorrow she will likely eat that up.  Then all I have to worry about is this loaf of bread I made last week.  Anyone want some rosemary garlic wheat bread?  I got a double loaf.  Maybe I will have to freeze it.

 

Confession of a teenage misfit

Growing up, I was always the awkward girl.  The loud one that always tried desperately to fit in with the cool kids.  I had a hard time understanding why many of my peers poked fun at me.  I learned, over time, to just laugh it off.  It does no good to get angry, they will just persist.  

I grew up wishing my life was something else.  I wished my family to be different, my looks to be different and mostly I wished to be in a different place.  I grew up always feeling out of place, no matter who had invited me in.  I never understood it until I was 32.  I moved to Seattle at that time.  I learned that I was simply a city girl trapped in a rural world.  I was an urbanite, to the core.  The suburbs do not appeal to me any more than the rural area did.  What I desire and where I thrive is right in the core of the city.

For years I misunderstood my dilemma, and thought it was those around me who were too harsh on me.  The reality was that I wished many of them dead.  I spent hours thinking about how my life would change if they were not there.  They taunted me, they picked at me and they drove me to the brink of violence.  I stop for a moment to consider those tragic school shootings, and think I was very close to that stage when I escaped.  I escaped one prison for another.  I accepted my life, simply because I did not know there were other ways to live.

 I spent years blaming others for my misery.  The reality is simply that others may make your life miserable, only you have the power to change that.  It took me years to realize that being a misfit was more about the fact that my whole life was wrong for me.  I made all my life choices based on my upbringing and my limited knowledge of what life had to offer.  In my rush to escape my teenage hell, I fell right into the same life as an adult.  I never explored outside what I already knew.

It has taken me years of researching my own life to discover one great truth.  The path to follow is the one that suits your life, do not take just any path, find the one that is right for you.  This boils down to fulfilling your life dreams, as long as they are reasonable.  A dream to be a rockstar with no music talent is not really a feasible one, but becoming a community leader if you desire to be a cornerstone in your community is.  Choosing your path should be based on your goals and values, not your parents and peers ideas of what you should be.  

The hardest thing for me was realizing my path was not actually chosen by me but I simply accepted it as mine.  I never wanted a family, I wanted to travel and to do something in my lifetime.  Children were not my idea of fun, this seems like work.  Do not mistake what I am saying as regret for having children, I love my kids.  I am just stating that  I should have recognized and followed my heart when I was young.  I do not regret my life choices, what I do regret is not realizing that I was living a lie sooner.  I could have changed my path many years before I did and possibly decreased 10 years of miserable marriage in the process.

I spent many years resenting my peers and wishing dark thoughts upon them.  I spent similar years focused on darkness upon my ex and his family.  What I did not understand that focusing that much dark energy on others actually drained me.  I needed to focus my energy on myself and my future not on my past and others who had hurt me.  My pain was so great that I carried it around for years.  Once I let go of it, my life began to spiral upward and I have since made peace with my past.  I have not made peace with my ex, I simply just stopped caring about their opinions.  I also never confronted my peers from my teen years, I simply moved on.  Confronting these people would possibly drag me back to where I was 10 years ago.  Moving forward sometimes means never looking back.

 

To find the future, you must destroy the path to the past.

I have spent my most of the first 30 years of my life doing what others told me was my destiny.  I got married and had a family.   I bought my home when I was 19.  I am from a very small area of Washington State.  The most conservative section of the west side of the state.  I was 40 miles from anything.  Getting access to ideas outside of what your family gave you was difficult.  Prior to the Internet, the huge dish was the only outside reach.  My mother kept me isolated, sometimes I feel she did this on purpose.

I was raised in a pentecostal church.  As an adult I took my children to church, in fact I tried so hard to fit in, volunteered for many positions, helped out when I could.  The problem with fitting in, is that you never flourish, you simply exist.  I lived like June Clever from Leave it to Beaver, except I had a full time job.  When I wanted to go back to school my husband was decidedly against it.  I saw it as an escape from my life.  The only way to improve myself, if you can imagine the desire to better oneself.  I had a drive so great I would sacrifice anything, even my marriage.  I should stop to mention that my husband was so focused on ownership that he never really asked what my goals were.  I didn’t know, but I can tell you the pressure of debt was not exactly high on my list.  He wouldn’t allow me to have a bicycle, skates, go swimming or have mustard in the house.  This all sounds bizarre now, but it was true.  I could go swimming but he would have nothing to do with it.  My dream at that time was for us to do things together.

He had no interest in anything that I enjoyed.  He was a sports nut, and I have no interest in sports.  This was my misery for almost 11 years.  I was unhappy, I just had no realized it yet.  So I delved deep into the church, my kids and school.  I was always doing something.  I think I naturally am a doer, but the need to keep busy to escape my misery was not exactly lost on me.

My entire life I have always felt that I was supposed to do something with myself.  Something great, I am sure most people feel they have a purpose.  As a young adult I would attend sermons by evangelists and missionaries and be fascinated with their adventures.  On a few sermons the pastor would have us fill out questionnaires about our spiritual gifts.  Mine always came back as a missionary and an evangelist.  I had no idea how to follow that path, but I was certain that when members of the church turned on you and tried to get you into trouble, the current path was wrong.  I have had pastor’s wives make up tales to tell my mother on me.  I have had people push me to the edges and make me feel as unwelcome as it gets.  Yet I kept trying to fit in.

For me, the final point was when I was told we never question people in authority.  At that point I threw it all away.  If we never question authority, that is how Hitler and the Third Reich came to power and pull off the atrocities that they did.  Being told to never question made me question my faith all over again.  That feeling of purpose was exchanged for rage and frustration.  I walked away and I will never turn to the Church again.  I understand that faith has more significance than just Church.  For me my faith has been dissolved when I really began to question why I believed the way I did. I found that I believed in everything because I was told to believe in it.  Most of my faith conflicted with the facts I know.  Most of my deep faith conflicted with my whole being and for that I had to walk away.  I cannot continue to be something I am not.

My marriage dissolved, my relationships with most of my family dissolved.  I was left alone to care for two young children, then I lost my job, no child support and no state help coming in.  When those things cascade upon a person they hold tight to things that are dear and let go of things less important.  It was those times that I realized that my life was a sham.  I was living a lie and I needed to live the truth.  I am not some straight laced pretentious church person.  I am a liberated female with strength right down to the core of me.  I am a survivor, I am a fighter.  Some people think I do not fight enough for things, but what I have found is some battles are not worth the fight.  Winning a worthless battle hampers us with guilt and betrayal.  I see those things and walk away.

I have found my purpose in life, and it is so simple.  It is a relief to finally have found it.  My purpose is to live life for friends and community, advocate for a better life system and share these ideas with people who need and want to hear them.  It took me so long to find this, yet I have been doing it since my June Cleaver life fell apart.  You cannot find happiness in a box or in someone else, you must find it within, the easiest way to do that is to really question your faith and values and rid yourself of those things that were forced upon you.  Not everyone is meant to own a home, or have a bid family or be financially successful.  Many of us are simply meant to be.  And if you can find contentment in the fact that you live life on your terms then you have found your place, smile and advocate to the rest of the World that you are proud to just be you.

Experimental Community

When I first moved to Seattle I lived in a not so nice neighborhood.  In fact the entire time spare a year was in what people often would refer to as ghetto.   My first apartment was cheap, dank and small.  I put myself, two preteens, a big dog, two cats and a rat along with myself and my then boyfriend into a one bedroom apartment for a year and a half.  It was so bad that the landlord and I would walk every morning and run crack whores out of the stairwells so my kids could leave without being offered whatever or asked for whatever.

As the first summer neared, I had a table that I had brought up and placed in the community yard.  I would sit there in the evening drinking beer or on the weekend mornings sipping coffee.  I enjoy being outside, and when you are cramped into a space like we were, outside is heaven.  The table had an umbrella which I would use when it was rainy.  I noticed one evening that there was a group of hispanic men sitting at the table when I arrived home from work.  I had never met them officially.  They lived in an apartment below me.  I stood on the porch that night overlooking the yard with my beer.  One of the men stood up and motioned for me to join them and have his seat.  He ran and fetched a new chair for himself.  They apologized for utilizing my table.  In the best way I could communicate, I told them that it was a community yard.  Anything left in the yard was for all that lived there.

I was always offered a beer when they were in the yard, I was even offered some bbq roasted pig, but try explaining you are a vegetarian to a culture that revolves around meat.  I took the pig with grace and slipped it to my dog and cats.  They were happy, and my neighbors were satisfied that we had formed a community of sorts.  I have long since moved but I left that table there for future residents.  It bridged a huge cultural gap for us, I wanted to ensure that others would enjoy it as well.  I can still see that table in the yard down the street from my current location.

Strange how something as simple as putting a table out can invite community and friendships.  Those men would play cards and dice into the wee hours of the night that summer.  I look for that sense of community in every living situation I find myself in.  If you have a communal space in your living quarters and do not interact with your neighbors, try putting a table out or a couple of patio chairs.  Leave yourself to be open to whomever drops in.  Sometimes just the suggestion of community is all it takes to build a strong foundation for future community events.

In my current apartment complex there is a a communal deck.  I have overtaken it with my gardening boxes, but there are a couple of small bbq’s on it, one of which is mine, and a small table and a few folding chairs.  I love having coffee out there and wish to spend more time with others in the apartment.  I have seen a few out there but not often.  Hopefully as summer starts blazing people will want to get outside to escape the heat of the interiors of their living spaces.