Category Archives: Play

Food, Glorious Food. And Sports.

Posted on 16 May 2012 | Leave a comment

Food 

What’s the next thing I’ll eat? I ask myself this question as I sit here—frustrated because I’d love to put my grades into Power School, but Power School is “either too busy or the site is down for maintenance”—in my comfy, slightly strange chair, which is next to my stack of “currently reading” books. Among comic books (like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and The Breathers), at least one fictional text (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), and several other random nonfiction books dealing with gender and theology (Nobody Passes: Rejecting Rules of Gender and Conformity and John Wesley’s Sermons) are many nonfiction texts about food. From cookbooks or food magazines to theoretical texts, my book collection has recently gained quite a few texts dealing with how food is used and interpreted in culture. These books were part of my dissertation preparation and background knowledge, but now they are just books for pleasure. For fun (mind you), I am currently reading books like Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture and The Anthropology of Food and the Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power, and Eating Culture. I will admit it: I think about food almost constantly. I know it’s a semi-charmed kind of first world life I lead when I can sit around, pouting about not being able to enter my grades on the computer,  thinking about what I might whip up for a snack while I work.

Dining Al Fresco Paleo

Last night I made glorious bison burgers for dinner, because I’m doing the Whole 30 to try to jumpstart my metabolism again and to get rid of the foods that I think are causing me the most pain. The picture doesn’t do justice to the amazingness of these burgers and their artistic presentation. They were half-pound charcoal-grilled bison burgers with spring greens, avocados, onions, tomatoes, and bacon. I drizzled mine with a bit of balsamic vinegar just to set off the taste of the onions. I had a banana for desert. We ate outside on the porch at our new slate table. The weather was perfect. The food was delicious. The evening was wonderful.

The only thing that made the day more wonderful was I got up this morning and was tempted to weigh myself. I’ve lost five pounds in two days by cutting out sugar and dairy. I can’t say I could live this strictly forever, but it feels pretty good to cleanse my body and to lose a bit of weight. I told my brother, last night, that I am trying to focus more on how I feel, how fit I can get, and how my clothes wear than I am trying to focus on weight, but I couldn’t resist just seeing if there was any difference. Now I know, so now I won’t weigh myself again until June 17, just before I leave to go to Florida.

Sports

I am “training” for a half marathon in July, but I haven’t done much running lately. I’ve done more walking and biking than anything, so I need to make sure to pick up the running, making sure to do a good portion of it barefoot. I just sent out a check to Tuhey Pool, to join their outdoor pool lap-swim program for the summer, because I also want to do a triathlon at some point before I turn 39. I’m hoping to do this triathlon in September of 2013. It only cost $75 for the whole summer and I can go for lap swim and for the regular swimming time later in the day after I’ve done the other work I need to do. I never feel like the summer is long enough, and I always feel like I have so much to do. This summer is no exception, but I do know I want to get in lots of exercise and lots of clean, healthy eating. I want to look hot when school starts (I mean not that I’m not super cute already). We’ll see where this goes.

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Posted in Barefooting, Biking, Cooking, Fat, Food, Goals, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Photos, Play, Running, Summer, Swimming

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Dissertation. Paleo & Exercise.

Posted on 21 April 2012 | Leave a comment

As much as I’d love to go around telling each person who has meant anything to me in the process of trying to earn my PhD the following information, I can’t. There are too many of you, so I am writing it here hoping some people actually read these things  and hoping you will not feel betrayed that I am not telling you to your face.

I have made the decision to quit and not finish my dissertation. I am not going to complete my PhD. I am totally and completely okay with my decision. I have not fallen off the academic wagon, and I still feel like I can be a valuable part of the academic community. I am simply choosing to focus on teaching my beloved middle school and high school students, instead of splitting myself between my two loves. I still plan to write and research, but my interest will likely switch from literature and literary theory to literature and teaching literature. Of course, theory will still be a part of that process, but so will pedagogy, methodology, pragmatics, and all of those educational tidbits I’ve been ignoring in my research.

*

I realize I’ve changed my life by eating paleo, and I feel like shit when I eat wheat and corn, so I wonder to myself, “Why is it that you still insist on eating things that make you feel like shit?” There are two pretty obvious reasons: they taste good, and that’s what’s available. I am sure there are other not so obvious reasons, too. On Thursday, at Thirsty Thursday, I decided I had a hankering for a corn dog. Savage’s has corn dogs, so I ate one, and when I woke up the next morning, my belly was bloated, my tongue was swollen and my mouth was on fire. Think there might be an allergy there? I felt horrible, so I decided then and there that non-paleo (or primal if I’m feeling more lax) foods will not be going into my body anymore, no matter how appealing they sound, nor how readily available they are.

In addition to just (sort of) eating whatever I want, I haven’t been exercising the way I want to (or need to). I’ve been sleeping in, instead of going swimming and running. I’ve been couching, instead of going for bike rides or walking the dogs. I’ve been doing pretty much everything to avoid the exercise schedule I’ve created for myself. Because of this neglect, I’ve had to drop out of the Flying Pig half-marathon that’s happening in two weeks. I still have my entry, so I suppose if I feel like it that day, I could head over and make the attempt. I’m pretty sure I could do 16-minute miles for 13.1 miles. Maybe not. Anyway, I haven’t been where I need to be, and as per usual, I decided to “exercise punish” myself. I made up a circuit last night. Four reps with a 3 minute vacuuming break (I was doing housework, too. What can I say?):

  1. 10 air squats with the kettlebell
  2. 25 kb swings
  3. 15 bent rows per side with kb
  4. 15 lat rows per side with kb
  5. 15 overhead arm extensions with kb
  6. 15 tricep extensions with medicine ball
  7. 15 per side side to side crunches with mb
  8. 15 heel-tapping oblique crunches
  9. 15 diamond-bent leg crunches with hands overhead
  10. throw the medicine ball up in the air 15 times
  11. slam the medicine ball to the ground from overhead 15

For dinner last night, I made lamb chops marinated in Bell’s Porter (which is technically not paleo, but I didn’t drink it), broccoli, and sweet potatoes.

Yummy.

I slept so well, like a little baby. When my alarm went off at six this morning, I got up and ran 2 miles to Ball Pool, swam 1.5 miles, and then ran the two miles home. I ate eggs, bacon, a banana, and some tea for breakfast, then walked down to the park to take tickets for the ball game. It was freezing, so I came home and took a really hot shower before I ate squash, uncured hot dogs, and tea for lunch. Basically, it’s been a beautiful couple of days. My body is sore, but my spirits are reeling. I am so excited for summer and for what my future holds. I’m Pollyanna-ing all the way.

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Posted in Beer, Biking, Cooking, Dissertation, Education, Fat, Food, Goals, Literature, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Pedagogy, Photos, Play, Reading, Relationships, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Work, Writing

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Some Things I Love

Posted on 19 April 2012 | Leave a comment
  1. I love God. I love the way [They] decorate this land every spring and then make it barren every winter. The older I get, the more I appreciate the beauty of this land. I want to capture every single beautiful thing and share it with others. Every morning when it’s light out on my way to teach school, I stop and take a picture of these two trees. This morning was particularly wonderful.

    A few sunspots, but a beautiful sky.

  2. I love my partner. Even when I am grumpy and don’t want to hear her singing in the morning before 9AM, she can still make me smile by making fun of my grumpy, pouty face. She’s beautiful, and I am so blessed. The past few weeks, since she finished school, have been a blessing. We’ve been able to reconnect in very meaningful ways. Walking at the Mounds every Sunday is one thing we love and one thing we share. Those walks have reconnected our souls.

    Aren't we cute?

  3. I love my family. We are pretty zany, and sometimes we are a little out of touch with the rest of the world, but we rock nonetheless. My parents are getting older, but they still want to do fun stuff with my brother and me. This summer we are going to the minor league home run derby and all-star game in Buffalo, to Gettysburg, and to Hershey, Pennsylvania. My little brother is one of my best friends, and he takes me to eat oysters, which are also some things I now love.

    My little bro.

  4. I love art, every type of fine art: drawing, painting, writing, 3-d design, graphic design, photography, theater, music, and all those I haven’t listed. Sometimes I even love bad art, because I think about it as someone trying to say something about this human condition. Good art just makes my heart sing. Good art makes the viewer feel more beautiful, more conflicted, more empowered, more enlightened, more spiritual, more angry, more depressed, more loved simply by being in proximity to it. Sometimes I feel as if I can reach through the art (in whatever form) and touch or feel what the artist was feeling.

    Sculpture in Front of Minnetrista

  5. I love coffee and tea, but coffee more.

    Greek Coffee at The Artist Cafe in Chicago

  6. I love my bicycle. I actually love any sports equipment that allows me to move my body. I love my Vibram Five Fingers, my kayak, my basketball, my disc golf discs, my bathing suit, and all of the other things that help me play outside during any season. This is the one of two areas of my life in which I am a little self-indulgent. I own way too much sports equipment.

    Zbornak the Bicycle

  7. The other area of self-indulgence in my life is food. I love food: the way it looks, the way it smells, the ways it tastes, the way it feels in my mouth. I love experimenting with tried and true recipes, making up my own recipes, and just eating food in its natural state. Really, two things make my heart sing: food and exercise.

    Bison Steaks

  8. For the purposes of this post, the last thing I love hearkens back to my childhood when I’d sit in my little red wagon on the way to the library watching the trains and waving to the caboosers and engineers. I love trains, and all things railroad. Watching trains roll by fantasizing about hopping on and riding until they stop, walking on the tracks or rails, lying on the ties on the trestle over the river looking down between them smelling the river water roll by. I look down the tracks and think about how blessed I am and how my life is coming into what I’ve always wanted it to be.

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Posted in Art, Biking, Christianity, Coffee, Cooking, Disc golf, Food, Goals, Grace, Mental Health, Music, Paleo/Primal, Play, Relationships, Religion, Running, Spirituality

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Several Versions of Freedom and Whole 30 (Later)

Posted on 14 April 2012 | Leave a comment

I was supposed to spend today grading, but I decided to spend the day doing things I love, instead of the one thing I have to do that I don’t necessarily like to do. I started the day with a bike ride with a good friend and colleague. When we started riding, there was an almost non-existent mist that slowly turned into a full-on ice-cold rain. By the time we parted ways, we were drenched. We had great conversation and so much fun. It’s good to be adventurous, even if that only means two grown women riding bikes in the rain. Freedom.

After the bike ride, I took a nice, long, hot shower to warm up. I savored the warmth and the smell of my coconut body wash. Sometimes the smallest things make me smile. Mint shampoo and coconut body wash. Smiles. I won’t be needing the mint shampoo again any time soon, because I cut my hair.I just couldn’t take the fluff and stuff anymore, even though one of my high school students just told me on Friday that my hair was bad ass. I could be the queen of bad-assery, but it was also annoying, so the hair had to go. And, as another friend just commented on my Facebook page, maybe my this will “shave” a little time off my swimming laps! Freedom.

March 5: Mohawk

April 14: No Hair

After my hot shower, I put on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt and went out on the porch. I sat there watching the rain fall. I prayed the morning prayer for April 14 from Common Prayer. I read from Exodus where the Israelites are beginning to make the tabernacle in the desert and from Thessalonians: “We had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others […]. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” (2:3-8) I love the last little bit there: sharing the gospel and our own selves.Is it freedom to share yourself?

Right there, early this morning, I was challenged to think about the ways in which I may share the gospel, but not necessarily share my own self.

I was forced to ask myself: how can you share the gospel and yourself?

I also spent a little time reading from Reluctant Pilgrim, and I ran across this passage, which so eloquently explains how I feel about communion, or the Eucharist: “I wish I could string together random beads of words to illustrate what it means to me to take Communion. Each time I walk up  the aisle to the communion servers, I always feel like I am walking up to meet Christ. And there’s a weird mixture of awkward embarrassment, longing, joy, relief, and anxious impatience swirling around my insides. I feel terribly unworthy, greedily hungry, and deeply grateful all at once.” Yes, that’s exactly how it is. Such a humbling experience. Tangible grace. Palpable peace. Freedom.

Throughout the day, I made guacamole and lemon-coconut chicken soup with kale, spent time with Bec grocery shopping, took a nap, and then cooked dinner. We had minimally-processed grass-fed sirloin steaks, broccoli and cauliflower, and salad. I had an Angry Orchard Ginger Hard Cider to drink, which wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t delicious. I give it a C. I love cooking the steaks on the grill, and we’ve been using nice hardwood charcoal in combination with some hickory wood, so the steaks taste like they’ve been cooked over a campfire. These steaks were particularly tender and juicy. Delicious.

Angry Orchard Ginger Cider

Yummy Din-Dins

Finally, I have decided to wait until school is out to try the Whole 30. I just can’t have the stress of no sugar and no alcohol on my body while I am in the most busy part of the school year. I know the end result will be much less stress on my body, but I’ve cut things out before and known the way it can fuck with your normal, every day bodily functions, and I don’t want to try to deal with all of that while grading, planning, and trying to discipline for the next to last month of school. I know it will be good for me, and I know my body will thank me once it’s cleansed, so I plan to spend the month of June detoxifying my body. I am hoping to lose another 40 pounds over the summer by eating amazingly well, organic, fresh, local, and all that. But I also hope to do two-a-days, running and swimming in the morning and in the evening. Not as punishment or even as “training,” but just for fun. I love using my body for the purposes it was intended for, and summer always seems to make me feel so much more alive. Freedom.

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Posted in Biking, Christianity, Cider, Cooking, Food, Goals, Grace, Hair, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Photos, Play, Religion, Spirituality, Swimming

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(Holy) Saturday Between Death and Resurrection

Posted on 8 April 2012 | 1 comment

The Saturday between Holy Friday and Easter Sunday is usually a day I spend wondering what exactly Jesus’ death on the cross means for us. Does it mean that God was “dead” for a day? Or does it mean that Jesus, the human, was dead for a day? Does it mean both? Does it mean neither? Did Jesus descend into hell? Does hell really exist? What did the disciples, both the men and the women, do for the day? What does anyone do when they are mourning the loss of a friend, a mentor, a love, a son? Did any of them anticipate what was coming? Did any of them have any foresight of the resurrection, since all the clues were  there? What does it all mean for us as Christians? What does it mean for anyone else? Basically, I usually spend Saturday worrying myself into a mess of emotion by the time Easter comes and I can celebrate the risen Christ.

This year was no exception. However, I found several meaningful distractions for myself, which took the pressure off of this Saturday.

By 7:30 in the morning I was picking up a couple of my students, so we could go run a trail race at Mounds State Park in Anderson. Neither one of them had ever run a trail race before, so the car was all full of nervous energy and excitement, as we discussed the possible layout of the course and strategies for running longer distances (they were running the 15K). We talked about all types of other things, too, which always makes driving more fun. When we got to Mounds, we registered, got our bibs, and went back to the car to change. The weather was freezing. Literally. The race started on slick, frost-covered grass. They started at 9AM, and my race, the 5K, started at 9:10.

By the time I made it into the woods and off of the grass, I was wheezing and coughing. So much for the honey helping with grass allergies, though it has worked wonders for the tree and flower allergies, because I haven’t been nearly as congested or wheezy as I was last spring. So, I ran coughing and wheezing into the woods, and I realized that everything I told the boys about the race was wrong. The race organizers used every hill at the Mounds, which is a lot of them, and the course was really challenging. The end of the 5K went up the 80 steps to the pavilion, and my legs burned and my heart felt it might explode by the time I crossed the finish line. But let’s go back for a minute: somewhere in the middle of the race, I decided I should walk up the hills and careen down them, which is a tactic I’ve never used before, but I thought it might be helpful in this race. Then, I thought, if I am going to do that, why not be playfully contemplative. So as I ran, in my mind I thought about the Jesus questions, while using my body to respond to my fears and doubts in a playful way. I had more fun and learned more about myself in that race than in any other I’ve ever run. And, I used the time to do my usual Holy Saturday reflection. As I crossed the finish line, the clock read 00:52:53.0. I had finished this grueling race in about 17 minutes a mile. I was pretty excited.

Fred, Me, Logan: We Pretty Much Rocked

I cheered for Logan and I cheered for Fred. And then I realized, after they finished, that the time clock was set for the 15K. I could take 10 whole minutes off of my time. I had finished the 5K in my my best time ever—00:42:43.0! I considered this a pretty decent accomplishment, since that meant my average time per mile was 13.68 minutes, and I hadn’t run a mile in thirteen and a half minutes in about 9 months. And this was on crazy terrain! Now I was elated. I was more elated when I realized that Logan came in second and Fred came in fourth in their age group. At their first ever trail race. I was really proud of us. You can see our times by following the links here.

Sierra Nevada Porter: The Beer of the Personal Record

I also distracted my self from thinking too much or too seriously about the death of Jesus by going to some friends’ house for a bonfire. We drank some beers, ate some wieners, and roasted some marshmallows. We also burned a stool, talked about theology, sports, and life, and decided to attend the outdoor Easter sunrise service together. The evening was a usual amazing night with two great friends.

This was one ridiculously hot fire.

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Posted in Beer, Christianity, Easter, Fat, Goals, Grace, Lent, Mental Health, Paleo/Primal, Photos, Play, Religion, Running, Spirituality, Teaching

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