Category Archives: Paleo/Primal

The End and the Beginning

Posted on 31 December 2012 | Leave a comment

New Year’s Eve asks us to look back into the past year in order to assess where we’ve been, and it simultaneously begs us to look forward with hope that our future is brighter than, or at least as bright as, our past. Everybody and their brother is posting their reflections and their resolutions, so I figured why shouldn’t I. At the very least, this post will give my friends a heads up about the resolutions I’ll be breaking come January 3rd or 4th.

Obviously, if you’ve read this blog in the past year, you’ll notice that the past 365 days haven’t been a cakewalk for me. While my life has been incredibly blessed, I’ve had a really difficult time recognizing my blessings and reveling in them. My goals for this year in no particular order were:

  1. Eat paleo.
  2. Watch less TV.
  3. Exercise in a variety of ways (including swimming) while running (barefoot) a race a month.
  4. Meditate.
  5. Read more, including the Bible and Common Prayer.
  6. Play and find my inner hippie again.
  7. In short, do things which bring me joy. Relax.

Listing my goals out like that reminds me of Benjamin Franklin and his list of 13 Virtues or John and Charles Wesley’s tabulations of their moral behaviors. I suppose if I am going to list my resolutions or goals, I should keep track of how well I am doing with them in some manner. I don’t. I ate mostly paleo and lost about 50 pounds (I did gain some of that back this holiday season!). I can’t say I’ve watched less television; in fact, I may have watched more (Oh, Mariska, how you tempt me!). I did exercise a lot, but not as much as I would have liked. I finished my first triathlon, so that’s pretty decent. I totally left out meditation and prayer for a good portion of the year. I felt so disconnected, and I am not sure whether my lack of meditation caused the disconnection, or if I didn’t meditate because I felt disconnected. Either way, I didn’t spend enough time alone with my thoughts and God. I read a lot more, but not the specific texts I mentioned I would focus on. I played more, and playing was lovely. I did things which should have brought me joy, but they didn’t always. Instead I feel as if I just focused on the negative, even when I swore I would focus on the positives. I’m a realist; it’s difficult for me to be to be positive. I am going (to try to) to fix that this year. #PollyAnna2012 will become #joyful or #merrymaking or #radicaljoy for this year.

In short, I want this year to bring less of this:

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And much, much more of this:

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Speaking of this year, here are my goals in order of their current importance to me and my mental and physical well being:

  1. CULTIVATE JOY: Do things which me bring me joy. Embrace the random. Enjoy the mediocre. Don’t stress over things I can’t control. Live in the moment and revel in those I spend my time with. Put down my phone or my other distractions and really love and live the moment.
  2. CONSUME CLEANLY: Eat better food. Drink less cider and more water. Put into my belly those foods which will best fuel my body for physical activities and mental joy. I’m going to attempt to jumpstart this with a new Whole 30, beginning on January 7. I want a clean slate and a clean body for the new year.
  3. EXERCISE: Exercise in a variety of ways (including swimming) while running at least a mile a day. Finish a Half Ironman triathlon before my 39th birthday. Carpool or walk or ride my bike to work every day. Use the body and the buses for transportation as frequently as possible.
  4. BE INTENTIONAL: Watch no TV, except an occasional movie. Use social media for no more than half an hour each day. Replace the time spent on nothingness and meaningless conversation with strangers with pursuits of intellect and kinship. Meditate, pray, read, and contemplate theological and academic things. Practice silence. I also would love to finish this dissertation.
  5. PLAY: Play and find my inner hippie again. In the spring, I’ll start a disc golf club at school.
  6. STAND UP: Begin standing up against injustice in a real and tangible way. Use grace and love to resist those things which are unethical or immoral. Help the Burris GSA, Prism, to be more active and visual by bringing meaningful activities into my students’ lives.

These are my hopes, dreams, goals, resolutions for 2013. I hope to use Sunday mornings to write in this space about these goals and about current events. I will begin tomorrow morning, though it isn’t Sunday, by writing in depth about that first goal of practicing joy. Practicing joy will no doubt be my most difficult goal, but for me it is by far the most important. I can’t have another year like this year. Any suggestions you have about cultivating joy are welcome! How do you cultivate joy?

For some running inspiration, join us with this challenge:

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Posted in Barefooting, Biking, Christianity, Cider, Disc golf, Dissertation, Ethics, Food, GLBT, Goals, Grace, Mental Health, New Year, Paleo/Primal, Play, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, silence, Social Justice, Spirituality, Swimming, Whole 30, Work, Writing

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My Own Private Advent

Posted on 26 November 2012 | Leave a comment

I know Advent hasn’t technically begun, and won’t technically begin until next Sunday, December 2, but the past few days have felt like days of anticipation.I feel like things are changing for me. I still feel pretty hopeless most every morning, but I know there is an end in sight. While Bec and I were on our Thanksgiving road trip, I realized that I have much to be thankful for and much that I take for granted. I spent five days riding in a truck with a woman I love. We stopped at nice hotels. We ate excellent food. We met friends, new and old. We walked on the beach. We just enjoyed each other’s company. I take things like that for granted, but I know my life could be radically different.

I have quit Facebook and Twitter, and I am pretty sure it’s for good. I waste a lot of time and the posts people make are inane and anger-filled, so I’d just rather not participate. I’ll miss seeing pictures and having people see mine, but I won’t miss the angry posts. I have enough anger of my own; I don’t need to borrow any more from other people. That being said, I plan to celebrate Advent by writing, reading, running, eating clean, not watching TV and not taking my life for granted. If I have time, I’ll add in doing some art. I’m looking forward to doing that again. And, of course and most importantly, I’ll look forward to Christ’s coming.

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Posted in Advent, Art, Christianity, Christmas, Goals, Grace, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, Spirituality, Writing

Eight Beautiful Things in Life: A List

Posted on 15 October 2012 | 2 comments

I’ve been sitting here trying to think about what to write, and though my ideas are pouring out of me, they aren’t really cooperating and being coherent. I’ve been having the same problem for a while now. I can think of all sorts of ideas and concepts I want to discuss, but I can’t get them to come out in a logical fashion. My thoughts have been coming out in images: So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens, right? Short snippets of songs: mystic crystal revelations, Aquarius. Short bursts of my favorite artistic visions:

Paris Street Rainy Day

As much as I try to gather my thoughts and put them in some sort of order, they just shoot out of me like children throw those little pop-its on the Fourth of July. Random. Loud. And extra-annoying. So, I’ve decided to make a list of eight beautiful things that have happened in my life within the last two weeks.

Eight Beautiful Things in No Particular Order

  1. I cut my 5K time by 6 minutes. I went from a PR of 41 minutes to a PR of 35:17. This was beautiful to me, because after five or more years of running, I started to actually feel like a runner. I ran 11-minute miles. Three of them. Consecutively. Not only that, but I got up the next morning and ran a mile, and got up the next morning (this morning) and ran four more. My body felt like it was singing at mile four, and I felt as if I could have kept going for another four miles. Suddenly, running doesn’t feel like a job; running feels like a joy. My new goal for the half marathon is 2:45.00 or less.
  2. My students read and discussed “The Wasteland,” and I think they liked the poem. They were engaged, they were thoughtful, and they seemed to finally get Modernism. Maybe when I teach Modernism next time, I will start with “The Wasteland” to set up the unit. I feel like I have new eyes for this poem, because it was never one I really enjoyed, but my students were really able to relate to the fragmentation of it, and they had so many ideas about why “April is the cruelest month.” The lines that seemed to resonate the most with them were these: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.” I wonder if they can relate to this feeling of despair in a way that I can’t, because I swear to you, this poem has never had the meaning for me that it does now.
  3. I can actually recognize the melodies of some songs that I have been playing on the piano. I know sharps and flats, slurs and ties, eighth through whole notes and rests, and how to start on the upbeat. I can play a weird version of “Mary Jane,” “Clementine,” “In the Valley,” “Jolly Good Fellow,” and “When the Saints Go Marching.” I can also play an F, G7, and C chords. Basically, I feel good about this piano thing, and what feels really good about it is that I feel so relaxed when I am muddling through the few songs I know. Having something that doesn’t involve reading or exercise to help relieve my stress is perfect, especially this year.
  4. Fall is the most beautiful season when it’s fall. Spring is the most beautiful . . . Summer is the most beautiful . . . Winter is the beautiful . . . But it’s fall now, and fall is the most beautiful when the trees are fully dressed in their brightest colors and the limbs are shifting and dancing in the wind. Fall is beautiful when the rain falls lightly down creating a haze of the lights reflecting on the river and when the days are shirt-sleeve warm, but the nights need a fireplace warming. When the leaves crunch and the birds take flight, fall is the most beautiful.
  5. After I helped my dad butcher some chickens, I learned that I could sustain myself through farming. We raised quite a bit of produce through three minuscule gardens in our city front and back yards, and we made at least five weeks of food-base (broth and meat) from two chickens. I am pretty sure that given a larger farm and a part-time job, I could grow, process, and store up plenty for our family for the year. We might even be able to cut out the grocery for a good portion of the late summer and early fall. I’d even make sure to grow things we’ve never had to keep our mouths interested in home-grown foods.
  6. My brother and I started our first batch of hard cider yesterday. We are brewing five gallons of honey-cider to try an initial test run. Adding honey theoretically makes the cider more alcoholic because the yeast has more sugar to feed off of. I am hoping it will give it a nice clover-y taste so there will be a uniqueness to our cider. We have to let this sit for two weeks or until it stops bubbling, then one more week to let the yeast sift down. Then we have to add in a bit more sugar, so it will carbonate, before we siphon the cider off into another bucket. Once it’s in the other bucket, we stir it up and bottle it. This cider thing, if it works, will be one of our greatest sibling cooperative efforts.
  7. Through a rigorous paleo diet and running at least a mile every day, I am within 5 pounds of weighing 200 pounds. When I get down to 196.4, I will have lost 60 pounds, and as it is right now, I’ve lost 50-55 pounds, depending on the day. I’m well within range of my goal of 170—I don’t want to lose Athena status for running—and I am so excited. Bec asked me if I wanted to buy some clothes when I reached my goal weight. Yes, I do, but first, I want some new body art! Always with the tattoos!
  8. I got to spend the evening with my friend Lyn, who is an artist. We sat at the Yart Sale here in Muncie while people looked at her art, asked for lots of business cards, and then didn’t really buy much.I’m not so sure that people just buy art right out anymore. I mean, we do, but I think we’re atypical. Most people look, mull it over, look some more, mull it over some more, look again, mull it over again, and then maybe buy it. It’s a little disheartening if you’re an artist, I would think. What the Yart Sale did for me, though, is two things: (1) I got to spend time with one of my dearest friends, and (2) I got to soak up all that artiness, all that beauty, all that truth, and all that grace. That evening made me fall in love again with art, and I would argue that’s what’s making my thoughts come out all discombobulated. Art poisoned my logical mind: “I feel certain that I’m going mad again. [. . .] And I shan’t recover this time” (Virginia Woolf).

Untitled, Skull

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Posted in Art, Cider, Cooking, Education, Fat, Food, Gleaning, Goals, Literature, Modernism, Music, Paleo/Primal, Piano, Running, School, Tattoos, Teaching, Whole 30, Work

Blessed: Cleansing. Teaching. Dissertating.

Posted on 27 September 2012 | Leave a comment

For eleven days now I have been getting up at around 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning to run, and for eleven days now I have been eating only meats, vegetables, eggs, nuts, and some fruits and drinking a hell of a lot of tea and water. I am almost halfway through my first real Whole 30 and my first real Run Streak. Yesterday and today I feel almost euphoric. My mood is excellent, my body feels fast and alert, and my intellect seems to be firing rapidly. Yes, it has taken some adjustment to run while also cleansing my body, and I am sure my little cells are probably thinking I’ve gone mad, but the trade offs are worth it. While doing a Whole 30, weighing yourself is frowned upon, but my clothes are fitting so much better, I just had to know. I’ve lost ten pounds in eleven days. Crazy really.

I finally got my new Altras in the mail. I’ve worn them twice for a total of four miles. After those first four miles, I will say I don’t think they’re exceptional. Maybe I just need to get used to them, but they seem heavy compared to my Vibram Five Fingers or my New Balance Minimus. They also seem to constrain my feet in a way that neither of those pairs of shoes do. Maybe it’s just because I am not used to them. I did order them for longer mileage, so maybe on Saturdays when I start doing my longer runs again, I will see the benefits of the cushioning. Right now the taller, though flat, sole is awkward. And, honestly, they are some of the ugliest running shoes I’ve ever seen. Unless, of course, you count Hokas.

I hope I can lose this last 40 pounds, so I can just run “barefoot” all the time!

*

Teaching is going well right now. I have one class that is difficult. They don’t listen, they talk constantly, and several of them are just straight up disrespectful. Working at a school like Burris has caused me to forget about how to deal with students like that. There are so few seriously disrespectful students there, that when I have one, it’s as if I lose my damn mind and forget how to deal with it. There are some students in there who want to learn. There are so few that I had almost written off the entire class, until I saw a quote on a friend’s Facebook wall. The quote said, “When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God” (Charles Allen). As soon as I read it, I realized that was my problem. I had given up hope, which is something I had always promised myself I wouldn’t do in education. No matter how difficult some students can be, losing hope really does nothing except make the situation worse. I spent yesterday asking myself, How can you motivate these students? How can you be someone who challenges them into making something of themselves, whatever that may be? Who are you to slam the door in the face of God? Yesterday was pretty humbling for me, and I hope I can continue to follow hope and, above all, to give grace.

I will confess that I am struggling to keep up with all of the paperwork that I have to keep for the State of Indiana. I have to keep several binders worth of papers from parent communication to extra-curricular activities to data to blah blah blah in order to prove that I am actually doing my job. What I think is totally absurd about the paperwork is that (1) there goes a hell of a lot of trees, (2) anyone who knows me knows I go above and beyond both in the classroom and out, and (3) I feel as if I spend some of the time I used to spend on planning and grading (you know, being effective) on pushing paper around on my desk and into binders. I’m literally making myself less effective to prove how effective I am. Grrr.

*

With all of the blessed craziness with paperwork for school, I am still finding time to work on my dissertation almost every morning. I have read a lot of new information about food, foodways, cutlural understandings of food, commodification, exchanges, and various other related topics. I’ve read Paradise, Bastard Out of Carolina, and The Antelope Wife to start with, and I think those my be my three different chapters. Paradise will be the basis for a chapter about the Eucharistic food exchange, Bastard Out of Carolina will the basis for commodified food exchange, and The Antelope Wife will be the basis for the third chapter about proper food exchange. The overarching idea is consumption of the Other and how people exchange food for identity, sex, and spirituality. Those are the foggy bits of how this dissertation is going to go down.

Tomorrow is my first writing instead of researching day, and I am pretty nervous about it. I’m not sure why, but I get paranoid when I am required to put my fingers to the keyboard, instead of putting my pen to the page to take notes. I know what I see happening in these novels, but I always get nervous that I won’t be able to prove it well enough or write about in a way that others can understand. I have to take a step back and remind myself that I write every day. People understand what I write every day. I can do this.

*

I do have to say that I am blessed with many friends. I am blessed with a good body and a good mind. I am blessed with a loving family and an amazing partner. I am blessed with a job and a home and food to eat. Simply put, I am blessed.

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Posted in Barefooting, Capitalism, Christianity, Dissertation, Education, Ethics, Fat, Food, Goals, Grace, Literature, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Running, School, Teaching, Whole 30, Work, Writing

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Piano Lessons. Body Issues. Teaching. Flowers.

Posted on 14 September 2012 | Leave a comment

I started taking piano lessons at the end of August, and the lessons are going pretty well. I like to think that since I can play two chords and some melody with quarter, half, and whole notes, that I’m going to be the next Sunnyland Slim or something. I can even play with both hands at the same time, though when I have to play a half note with my right hand and a dotted half with my left hand, I get a little confused. The purpose of the piano lessons is two-fold:

(1) I want to be able to play the blues. I think in a former life I may have been African American, and the blues just feels natural to me. The blues are natural to me in much the same way as African American women’s literature feels like a comfortable, old shoe that I’ve worn and worn, which is a compliment because I feel so at home there. I feel it, like I feel the blues. I wonder sometimes if I can identify with African American texts, music, and art because of my own struggles. Though they pale in comparison, I think many GLBT concerns, pains, sadnesses, or inequalities make the bearers empathetic to the plights of others. For whatever reasons, I feel the blues, man. I feel ’em.

AND (2) I needed something to use for relaxation. I used to read for relaxation, but when reading became my livelihood, books stopped providing the same sort of haven for me as they once did. In fact, I can’t stop reading pleasurable books, like I read the books I use to make a living, and I find myself doing feminist or Marxist readings of The Little Engine that Could. Which is the opposite of relaxing. I started playing piano, so I could have something to do that wasn’t letters or pictures or anything rhetorical. Music is round notes and lines. There are few words involved and the pictures music makes in my head aren’t feminist or Marxist or any other -ist. The pictures made by music are art and equality. One day they will also be beautiful. Right now they are 1, 2, 3, 4 or 1, 2, 3 or even 1, 2 as I count the beats in a measure and lift my fingers or put them down accordingly. I have faith in future beauty.

*

On Monday, I plan to start a new Whole 30 and a 30 day running streak, which means I have to run at least one mile every day for 30 days. No questions asked. My goal is to run 2 miles for each weekday and 5 miles for each weekend day. I have to do soemthing, so I don’t feel like shit. I’ve returned to my pre-paleo ways, and I’ve gained five pounds. I’m at 215 pounds right now, so technically I’ve gained 10 pounds from my lowest. Admittedly, I haven’t started eating grains or most other agricultural products, but I have been drinking much too much alcohol and eating much too much ice cream. I just can’t resist a good Strongbow or Chunky Monkey. The last time I went for a run, my body felt so good afterward I am not sure why I didn’t keep up that momentum and just keep running. I felt as if I could run miles and miles! I still have a goal to run a marathon before I turn 40, which means next fall is the last chance, because I can’t run when it’s hot out.

My goal is to complete the Heritage Trail Marathon in September of 2013. I tried to run a road marathon last fall, but I failed miserably because of an asthma attack, so we’re volunteering for that same marathon this year. Once I get ready to amp my mileage back up I am going to order some Altras. (EDIT: I went ahead and ordered the Altras, so I can get a jump start on those longer runs.) They are zero-drop with a wide toe-box, but they’ll provide the cushioning I like for my feet. Because I am a big girl, the barefoot thing works for short distances and in theory—but not in practicality—for longer distances. I plan to order them as soon as I get down to 200 pounds. I keep telling myself: You started at 256.4, and you’ve made it to 205, so how hard will it be to lose 15 pounds? Damn difficult is the answer. I’m hoping that by doing a Whole 30 and running every day I can jump start the weight loss again. If not, at the very least, I’ll feel 100 times better.

*

School’s going well, and I love teaching American literature three times each day. We’ve covered all of the early Americans and my students took their first test today, focusing on William Bradford, Olaudah Equiano, Jonathan Edwards, and some of the important Founding Fathers. I was most frustrated during this unit because the writers we had to cut from the original syllabus were all women or poets. Grr. I should have cut Jefferson, Paine, and Henry. Doesn’t everyone know, “Give me liberty or give me death,” that we’re all created with “unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” Wouldn’t an American sophomore be brain dead not to know these things? One would think they’d be familiar, right? If so, one would be oh so wrong. So, we spent a day with our three rhetoricians and their famous words.

I have been surprised about how much I’ve actually enjoyed teaching British literature, too. My students have read A Taste of Honey and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead among other things, and I’ve been impressed at their thoughtful consideration of texts that even I find challenging. We’ve discussed cultural studies, hegemony, existentialism, absurdism, Othering, and a variety of other cultural issues, and we’re only three weeks into the school year.

*

Finally, I have been surprised at how much I feel like I am getting done this school year. I get up early, and I work on my dissertation. I go to school on the weekends, and get every thing ready for the week. I stay after to take tickets at ball games or to work on some grading or whatnot. I use my prep periods to prep things or grade. And I have time to do other things. I feel so on top of things, and the feeling is pretty nice for a change.

Everything’s comin’ up roses. Or marigolds.

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Posted in Art, Cider, Education, Fat, Food, GLBT, Goals, Literature, Music, Paleo/Primal, Piano, Reading, Running, School, Teaching, Work

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