Simple Egg Muffins

I’m starting Day 11 and unfortunately don’t have much time to post about it, hopefully more later. In the meantime I made these last night so I could wake up a little later today and not have to worry about breakfast! Yum.

Simple Egg Muffins.

Day 4 – Oh yeah I have to plan meals in this kitchen?!

So I breezed through the headache day and got that over with. Feeling somewhat tired but not more than normal. I’m feeling alright, I know I’m not at the “aha!” moment yet, but just feeling day 2 was reason enough to keep going. What I’m struggling with now is how to prepare meals/stock my kitchen when I live in a studio. Now I know you might be thinking studio = there’s still a kitchen, and there is, kind of. There is technically cupboard space, I have four built in shelves and I’m using a bookcase as my pantry, so that’s not really the problem so much as making/storing food after it’s made. I have a two burner stove, a sink about the same size, a toaster oven, a crockpot and a MINI FRIDGE. I’m having a love/hate relationship with it at the moment. On the one hand, it keeps me from making new food when there is plenty of good food in the fridge, on the other hand my freezer is TINY (one of these days I’ll post a picture of my tiny kitchen/living area). So at the moment I’m either stuck eating the same thing every day or attempting to re-configure the same meal ten different ways which has been fine, but there is only so much chicken and veggies one can eat when it’s the same chicken and veggies. I did make a pretty awesome omelet on accident this morning. 

two eggs

little bit of ghee

spinach

salt

The end.

I was planning on scrambled eggs and adding some other veggies but I was running late and trying to do too many things at once so it turned into a very simple but delicious breakfast omelet. 

Now a friend is on her way over so we can do some meal planning together. She’s on Day 3. Any tips for us?

Day #1 & #2 – Whole 30

In the midst of my breakup/moving/ready for a change brain, I decided it would be great to do a drastic overhaul on my health. Which is good timing considering I had basically nothing in my new mini fridge clad studio apartment in my dad’s garage. It’s actually a lot nicer than it sounds but that’s for another day. The pantry consisted of some not Whole 30 approved flour and raw sugar for my tea, and also some sweetened almond milk. I put those on the very tip top shelf that I cannot even reach and left it at that. Then I had a couple of awesome workouts – 

Day 0 – Kettlebells with some friends at a local park 

Day 1 – Kayaking with friends who had never been before. Needless to say this was a short trip out on the water, especially after one friend decided the beautiful dolphin I saw was actually a shark – it wasn’t, but she watched too much Shark Week so that was the end of that. But we did spend a considerable amount of time loading and unloading three 60lb kayaks so I consider it a successful workout. Also the day felt awesome. I packed a delicious lunch, drank tons of water, came home and did a wayyy to expensive shopping trip for things like almond flour, and coconut oil, etc… 

Day 2 – Feels exactly like day two. And it’s only 10am. I thought it was from the awesome workout I had the past two days and possibly not quite enough water. But no, I’ve been chugging down the water like it’s beer at a keg party. Good to know it’s the average feeling for this point. Looking forward to later in the month when I’ll feel awesome again. In the meantime it’s protein and veggies for breakfast and then off to work for the mid-shift. Praying this headache will GO AWAY soon. 

End of the Day Edit:
My headache did NOT go away, in fact as the morning tore on I contemplated calling in sick but decided to try having one small plum before giving up on the day entirely (Okay I probably wouldn’t have called in, but it was bad people. The plum definitely made the headachy/hungover feeling quite a bit better which just convinced me that my body has indeed been addicted to sugar. Also the plum was the most delicious plum I had ever tasted. You guys, there is nothing like fruit when it’s the only sugar you’re allowed to eat and even then only in small quantities. Also today is still day 2. We shall see what Day 3 brings.

In the meantime it’s off to bed for me if I’m going to go through with any of my goals for the month. #1 included more sleep at more reasonable hours.

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Trying it out. Posted a little something I wrote. I may have posted an earlier version here. Do you guys like tumblr or WordPress better? Both? Neither?

One Year Later.

This blog was not supposed to be my “down in the dumps” go-to, but lately, I just can’t help it. I know eventually we’ll get through this. “We” will become “she” and “I”, individuals simply moving through space hopefully near each other’s galaxies, hopefully friends. Today is supposed to be our one-year anniversary of signing our domestic partnership paperwork, one year since our parents cried happy joyous tears in officially welcoming the other as their family. Family. I thought this would last forever. Some moments I catch glimpses of our love and think maybe this is still real. Maybe this is not the end. Or maybe I’m just writing another breakup poem and my heart just needs time to heal. 

She says she think I’m “over it.” But inside I’m just protecting my already broken heart, and maybe even though we said forever, this is the best way to support each other. To let each other go. To find our spirit path. To break free of whatever holds us back. And she’s keeping the dog. That I fought so hard to get in the first place. She understands him. Me, maybe I need a cat that will curl up with me, just as easily as they will be strong and independent while I’m gone. 

My Grandmother

Upon hearing that my wife and I are splitting up, and that I might possibly someday want to consider going back to school to become a Rabbi. She said, “K will always be apart of our family, because you loved her and because we love her.” I know Grandma. I love her too, we just can’t be together. She said “Of course you can be a Rabbi, this is not such a crazy idea.”

So we talk. Then last night a few hours after our lunch, she sends me two emails, with one link in each email, no other text the first one is this:
http://www.reformjudaism.org/blog/2013/07/15/profiling-first-generation-transgender-rabbis
and the second one is this:
http://www.reformjudaism.org/blog/2013/07/19/fight-equality-life-changing-experience-alabama

Now, I don’t know if my grandmother ever knew that I thought for a time I might be trans, or if she just knows Queer Judaism are as intertwined into my soul as anything. She’s not one for big heart-to-hearts but she is my liberal southern Grandma and I love her with all my heart.

Separation Anxiety

I always have this plan that I’ll write it down. When things get tough I’ll let it out, that’s what I say. That’s what this is for. So I can write the good, the bad, the ugly. It never actually works out that way. I shut down. Attempt to block it all out until the tough is too much for my heart and something comes pouring out in immature spouts. I’m holding it together, just barely. How do you separate when you have to live together? Is there some book on lesbians who are breaking up and trying to stay friends while living in a one-bedroom apartment with the new dog you both love? It’s worth a shot. Someone should write that book. At least we didn’t get a cat. That would just be too stereotypical don’t you think? I can’t sleep anymore, apparently insomnia is back and this is what spews out at 4am.

I’ve writing things down on my new iTouch (new being a loose term for used a couple times by my father who couldn’t figure it out, let it sit there for years and then gave it to me a week ago). It helps me process, being able to write it down as I’m thinking it. Therapeutic almost.

Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:

 

I never ever think that we will ever break up.

Says my naive heartstrings to my yearning for redemption brain.

The problem is, I think we will someday break up.

Stop moving in tune with each other to start moving to the tune of our own crazy lives.

And the thing is: I thought I would never have to write another breakup poem. I thought this is it.

So I tattooed my love upon my own hand, instead of showing you my love with birthday cards and latenight conversations.

I made big gestures that never replaced the in-between moments, the ones I was to wrapped up in myself to show you.

I thought you were my song, or maybe I didn’t.

Maybe we both had doubts from the very beginning, hiding each one in paper hearts of I love you, and never really sharing our truth.

What is your truth?

I know it is probably too late now, but some days I want to know how you feel, how snow feels on your face this time of year.

Yes, I know we’re in July and it’s our least favorite time of year so I’m trying to remind you of months where we snuggled in front of a movie and ate popcorn.

The nights we made each other laugh building a gingerbread house, instead of sitting silently on opposite couches too wrapped up in our own screens to notice if the other person is laughing or crying.

Maybe I should be angry, screaming insecurities like they were magic cures. Or begging for more time, when we have none left.

Some days I knew it was over and I dug myself further in, hoping for someday when it would be new again.

Maybe this is angst again but I hope the next time I fall I’ll remember it might not last,

and fall head first anyways because that is just the way I operate.

Next time maybe I’ll remember that 1 + 1 does not always equal 2.

Sometimes we get so damn wrapped up in each other we end up with some mixed up version of 1.3

I never was very good at math but I still want to be a teacher, and I’m hoping that when we struggle through it together we’ll all learn something new.

or maybe not.

But I always thought teachers were the very best kinds of people, so maybe I’m just trying to be like my elementary school teacher.

She knew how to teach you the times tables while reciting nursery rhymes or bouncing on a pogo stick.

She was 70 years young, or at least I thought she was. but she’d still play flag football or take us out on the grass to measure Noah’s Arc, and what else were we learning that day?

We learned about love from the greek goddesses and grade three crushes turned into sixth grade sweethearts, or we memorized the lines to Shakespeare that somehow didn’t add up to what we were feeling, so we made it up.

And isn’t that what we’re doing now? We’re just, making it up.

Making up the way we think it should go, playing music only our hearts can hear or falling in love the way Shakespeare did.

We’re always falling out of love the way Shakespeare did.

Some days, when my heart is full or you’re singing your songs I think we’ll end up like my great grandparents. Together for 60 years or more.  But today is not one of those days.

My elementary school teacher could tell stories about the lives she had lived and the places she had been, making you dream about futures unknown but not scary.

Today is scary,

Today all the unknowns got thrown together and hurled at my gaping chest wound and I wish she were hear to tell me it’ll all be okay.

It’s just another, bad day.

3 Years Blogging. 25 Before 25.

This post will probably take me quite a while to write. Maybe I shouldn’t put everything all in one post, and maybe I will end up splitting this up at some point, but for now, here goes nothing.

I have had this blog for going on three years. I suppose I started it around the same time I decided I was to propose to my then girlfriend, now domestic partner. Oh boy did we not expect to be where we are today three years ago. We have been through so much.

What I really want to talk about though, is this: In about a week and a half, I will be 24. Three months after that, my father will turn 50 and that, my dear mathematicians means that next year, when I turn 25 and finally getting my BA/starting my Masters? my father will be  exactly twice my age and I will be the age he was when I was born. It seems like that should be such a bizarre concept to me, but really, it makes sense. My dad was definitely a mid-twenties/early thirties kind of dad. In that, I mean I never felt like he was soooo much older than me. We had intellectual discussions, he allowed me to make my own decisions, even if he fought them the whole way. He grew as I grew, and we grow together. What does feel weird is that I’m not there yet. I’m not where he was when he was 24, of course in some ways I’m past where he was I suppose.

When he was 24 he was living in a co-op household attic, my mother was almost five years older than him, and lived right across the attic. He had just graduated with his BA in Environmental Studies and was working on a farm. I think I’ve told this story before, but just in case we need a refresher… His father was dying and his girlfriend (my mother) found out she was pregnant, the same week. They moved up to Mendocino with dreams of starting a blueberry farm, but instead lived in a little one-room cottage with no electricity and my mother, pregnant and living with an incurable disease that causes really poor circulation to extremities, absolutely hating every second of the cold. My dad’s best friend – his dog midnight, was stolen one night while they were eating dinner, and eventually they had had enough. They moved back to their community, rented a little house, I was born. He got a job with the county as a planner and six months later they got married. Typical early 90s life right? Two years later they were divorced. I don’t want to be divorced before I turn 30.

I don’t want to be divorced period.

Don’t get me wrong. I am so happy for the people I have gained in my life because my parents divorced. But generally, divorces are not so easy. For my parents, well, my family is unique. Divorce in my family seems to just mean an addition to the family, no retractions, but still. I don’t want to get divorced.

I wound up so off track I have to remind myself to rein it in.

I wanted this post to be about the things I want to do or accomplish before I turn 25 because I know the year will flash by in a hurry or seem to drag on until it is over. I so badly wanted to put “create life”, “have a baby” on this list of mine. It’s been on my “to do before, or at 25” for as long as I can remember. I guess I just assumed somewhere in my head that would be the natural progression… I get married at 24-25 and then have kids immediately. That’s not what my parents drilled into me, the opposite is true, but I somehow just assumed that would be my life. Reflection is an interesting and dangerous thing. We have solid plans now and that makes my heart rest a little easier, having the goals, the stepping-stones that have to be crossed. Of course the best laid plans right? Such is life, especially our life.

Here goes 25, before 25:

1. Take ME time, and US time.
2. Run a 5k
3. Take a walk to the beach at least once a week.
4. Re-learn the cello
5. Visit a country I’ve never been to
6. Take an “electronic-free” day at least once a month.
7. Choose 5 accomplishable tasks every week and complete them.
8. Finish our “first year” scrapbook, almost four years later.
9. Read two books per quarter that are not required reading.
10. Play a duet with my partner
11. Start a community garden near our apartment and/or Plant a garden for my grandparents
12. Hike 7 falls again
13. Take the kayaks out
14. Keep our bedroom clean for a month
15. Paint a picture
16. Make a new friend
17. Get a cat
18. Find a doable volunteer position and go once a week.
19. Fly a kite
20. Take a dance class
21. Visit my godson
22. Prioritize music & friendships – Go to a friend’s show at least every other month.
23. Minimize the STUFF (get rid of things I don’t need), de-clutter.
24. Call my nonbio-still-completely-siblings, more frequently.
25. Dance in the rain.

Schedules

Class. Gym. Class. Scarf down lunch. Repair rock chip. Interview caretakers. smog check. bank. Dinner? taxes. Homework. Pack. Sleep. Breakfast/homework. Class. Gym. Sign lease. Move some furniture. Taxes. Dinner. Homework? Sleep. Class. Lunch. Dentist. Sell truck. It’s a busy three days. Who decided to sign a lease/sell the beloved truck/interview caretakers and put off taxes until RIGHT before financial aid forms are due?! This crazy person, that’s who. In addition I would like to mention Taxes for a newly partnered twosome are no fun. There are no good rules about how to do this. The tax preparers were more confused than we were and said we should come back today when the “domestic partnership expert” will be here. Awesome. So we’ll hopefully head back tonight. I shouldn’t even be on the computer right now. Good day to y’all!

In other news I’m going back to work soon.

Little moments, Big gestures

The past few months I felt as though my wife and I had these great little moments but our day-to-day interactions were just friendly/civil and perhaps we weren’t connecting the way we should be. I started to question why, if it was just the stress, or our inability to handle stress together, or did we suddenly just hate each other?! What the hell happened?

I realized somewhere along the way, as it was getting closer to Valentine’s Day, that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to her. Not that this was the sole issue, but I noticed. I ask her how her day is, and then butt in with how annoyed/stressful/tiring mine was and then we get on our separate computers and forget about each other for the rest of the night… Or so it seemed.

For Valentine’s Day I bought a big giant puzzle – she likes mind games, I can’t stand playing hardly any game against her because she always wins by at least 100 points, and what’s the point in playing if there is exactly ZERO chance of winning? I at least want to think I have a chance no? – I digress. I bought 1000 piece puzzle for us to do together and then frame in our new apartment. An accomplishable project for us to as a team. Then I bought some flowers and she made us a packed lunch, I met her at her office and we took off to the beach for a quick lunch in the sand. Seriously, it was so easy, we could probably do it once a week at least and it was just a nice relaxing, let’s remember why we love each other moment. Also there were about 10 other couples of all ages walking or picnicking which didn’t hurt the feeling of love in the afternoon air either.

She wrote me a really truly from the heart card, and I said some ridiculous things, as is my nature. And then I told her she was getting a full-body massage, from me. “What?! But you’ll be tired, etc etc.” No, I said. You deserve it, and I want to.

I’ve been thinking about this. I hadn’t felt very emotionally attached and whenever I can provide that relaxation and give that amount of love to her, I feel so much more connected, spiritually, emotionally, sexually.

So a few nights ago, I told her it was time at least a warm-up massage, a shortened version of the full massage I want to give her. I massaged her neck and her chest, her arms and her hands, her scalp and even her face and her ears. And then, well, this isn’t that kind of blog, but we had a really good night, and we connected more than we have in weeks.

I’m putting more effort into it, I’m thinking about why we fell in love with each other and the little things I used to do just to say that incredible smile, or make her notice me, when I notice myself doing these things again, I also notice the ways she notices, and all the ways in which I love her, and all the ways in which she loves me.

We’ve been together less than four years, and domestic partners less than a year, but we have been through so much sometimes it feels like twenty, so I am committing to remembering to do the little things, to notice, to appreciate, to touch, to care, to love.