Fermenting

Fermenting

Well, one thing I’m getting into is lacto-fermenting foods.  Here’s a pic of some garlic and red onions, and some cucumber pickles.  It’s very good for one’s tummy to get some of those probiotic bacteria in there.  And it doesn’t taste too bad.  Helps the digestion.  They say a happy belly leads to a happy mind, the gut being the second brain and all that.  Anyway, I recommend it.  I still haven’t gotten very good results with  my water kefir grains, but hopefully soon.

But really, fermenting myself is what I’m doing.  I realized I haven’t written much because I am just kind of treading water or floating or…something.  I’ve been having a midlife crisis since like third grade, so now that I’m actually…da da da dum…forty seven years old, I think I might be having a midlife crisis for real, but I don’t know how it’s so different from every other time in my life.

I’ve always wondered if I were doing the right thing, in the right place, woke up in a parallel universe where everything is just harder.  And I’ve learned to calm those worries by saying to myself, “everything happens for a reason” and “you’re right where you need to be.”

I took a part-time job working with autistic kids and the company is new so things are kind of flippety-floppety in terms of training and other administrative stuff.  It bugs me.  It’s also hard work–I have four clients–funny calling little kids clients, huh? Well, they are really great except when they are melting down and I don’t know what to do.  But I’m just trying to be okay with that.  I want to be able to say, “I love it!  this is my next career.  I’m no longer lost or confused.  I’m focused, ambitious, on a path.”  But I can’t say that. I just don’t know. Sometimes I just want to stay home and do nothing and sometimes I really like the job.  I don’t trust myself to even know what I want to do.  I want my husband to get really rich so I can live off of him!! Haha though, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to do that.  As a little girl in the women’s movement of the 1970s I committed to being independent fully forever.  No one was going to have me under his thumb like all the grown women I knew.  This is a truth that is way deep for me.  I don’t know if it’s true.  Maybe it’s false and just another tentacle of the “don’t ever trust anyone ever” monster that lurks in my subconscious mind.  I don’t know.  Anyway, he probably won’t get rich enough to support both of us in the lavish fermented foods style we’ve grown accustomed to anyway.

So…I am fermenting.  Trying not to worry about money.  Not to work more hours just for money.  Not to worry about financial dependency.  Trusting that I will know what to do next whenever next gets here.

I keep forgetting that I had to quit my more than full-time teaching career because of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, and that what I am fermenting, is a new life where I stress less and have fewer symptoms of exhaustion and pain.  This is what’s in my jar.  I can wait for it.

relaxation

So I can’t believe it’s been so long since I blogged.  New job.  Birthday. What else happened in September?  Oh yeah, my career of 20 years was shown to be REALLY OVER.  So I didn’t write.  I didn’t know what to think.  Words were far from my mind.  Being supervised at the new job by people who are young enough to be my children!  Being in that strange position of not knowing what to do, fearing that I look like I’m lost.  Well, actually being lost and not wanting anyone to be able to tell.  Finally, oh well, I don’t care.  I’m lost.  I’ve come to the place where I have to be a beginner again, again.  Can’t believe this.  and still protest it every time.  am I making sense?  Just be.

real food, real life

Image

Well, I’ve been eating real food for a couple of weeks now.  I am designing a new blog at projectrealfood.wordpress.com.  It’s not really up and running yet, but there’s a little bit of stuff there.  I’ve been practicing taking photos of food and thought I’d post this up here.

I wonder if all of this navel gazing (both psychological/metaphorical, and chubbiness-obsession/literal) is tied to the SAD (standard american diet).  We shall see.  I do feel better, but that might just be that I’m not going back to school!!!

I have a couple of friends who are a tad older than me who don’t really “work” in the sense of going to a 9 to 5 job everyday.  They said the other night “Do what you love and don’t worry about the rest.  It’ll all work out.”

So, I’m experimenting with real food recipes, practicing blog skills,  taking food photos, making jewelry, and relaxing some more.  Keep your fingers and toes crossed!