growing pains

Birthdays come & go. We get older every day, true, but once a year we really feel it. When we're little this is exciting. We want to grow up so that we can finally understand all those "you'll understand when you're older" comments. Then we get older & most of the time we wish we didn't have to know.

This year was the first year I really got stressed or had negative feelings about growing older. When it comes down to it, I had just always seen myself at 26 with life a little more, well... settled. I saw myself with kids, I saw myself with direction and I certainly did not see myself crashing in my old bedroom at my mom's house, homeless and unemployed. I felt like a disappointment to myself for not having those dream-future-me things in my real life.

Then I took stock of what I do have. What I have accomplished. And more importantly, all the amazing things I am doing and want to do with my life! I may be crazy and spontaneous and have trouble looking past today sometimes, but I am proud of taking risks and experiencing new things. I never want to stop learning or loving or living!

My charming husband took me out to a delicious birthday dinner at a posh vegetarian/vegan restaurant on Madison for my birthday, and I found this quote in the bathroom. It seemed so perfect I just wanted to share it with you. It is exactly what I never ever want to feel.

If I had my life to live over by Nadine Stair

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

I never wear a raincoat. I eat entirely too much ice cream. I am barefoot more than most would find appropriate. And this twenty-six-year-old girl wouldn't have it any other way. :)

cleanse

It has been seven days since I have eaten any solid food. SEVEN. DAYS.

I am cleansing my body and it feels holy.

I have wanted to do a deep detox/fast for a very very long time. When I was in college I did a water-only fast. I wanted to make it to ten days, but I only made it to seven. I probably could have made it to ten days, but one of the things you don't realize until you stop eating is how much of our lives revolve around food. Meals are a time to eat, yes, but more importantly they are a time to socialize. It is where we tell stories, where we share pieces of ourselves, where we open up and where we let others in.

Most of the day we spend working away to make money, and then at the end of the day (or at the beginning of the day, or in the middle of the day, or in the afternoon on our breaks) what do we spend that money on? Rent and clothes a bit, for sure, but we spend most of it on... you guessed it, food.

Before we created this monetary system for ourselves, people worked in the fields. To cultivate what? Food. Either for themselves, or for their kings and queens and fellow serfs, or for their community. All their energy, all of their work was spent in efforts to cultivate food. Castles were surrounded by acres and acres of furtile fields, without which they would not have survived as royalty very long.

And before agriculture, what do you think hunter/gatherers spent the majority of their time doing? Changing the facebook status on their cave walls? I doubt it. Well, they spent it hunting and gathering food.

While we are much much more removed from our food than those generations before us (how many children these days know when foods are in season? Hell, how many of you know when a tomato is in season or what a potato plant looks like?), most of our social lives still revolve around food and food traditions. Pick any holiday. Is there any way to celebrate without sharing food or drink? Think about any time you get together with friends or family. How often is it not based around going out to eat, or making food together or getting coffee or tea or dessert? Almost never. We don't know how to be happy without food.

Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Food is a very vital component of our existence. There is a reason our lives are centered around it. It gives us life. It is our life force. Without it we would not survive.

Which is why taking this time apart, taking this time to focus on healing my body and opening my mind has made me realize how truly sacred food is. And made me see how sacrilegious our modern eating habits are. We scarf down a bite of processed food real quick on our ten minute lunch break, we down a liter of soda in a day for an energy kick and we absolutely abuse alcohol. Good wine takes years to get from the vine to the bottle and yet we don't even take the time to savour it anymore. And we don't even know where our food comes from anymore!!!

Fast food might be the most hypocritical idea we have ever come up with. Food is not fast and should not be fast. It is not fast to grow, it is not fast to harvest, it is certainly not fast to digest and it should not be prepared or consumed with too much haste. And we wonder why our children are obese and our family and friends are sick and weak? Maybe instead of focusing on "the magic cure" we should focus on prevention and pay more attention to what we are putting in our bodies in the first place.

I have three days to go, and when I start reintroducing solid foods into my diet I am going to cherish every moment of the process. I will do my best to buy produce directly from the farmers so I know who's been caring for my food. I will do my best to only eat organic and preferably locally grown food so that I know I am not poisoning my body, my family and friends and our planet. I will do my best to take the time to plan, prepare and savour every life-giving bite of my meals. And I will not forget that what I put into my body makes me. We truly are what we eat. And what we eat eats, too.

a new life

I've always felt that New Year celebrations are a bit overexaggerated and I've never quite understood all the hype. People and their resolutions they never keep, their promises to themselves and to others that they will somehow magically change into something better when the clock strikes twelve (or rather when they wake up hung-over the next morning). Most people know they won't make it to February, meaning we all start each new year lying to ourselves. How sad.

I've heard for twenty-five years that where you are at midnight is symbolic of where you'll be for the rest of the year, and trust me, in the race to be somewhere amazing I always seem to find myself somewhere no one would ever want to be (peeing in Safeway parking lots, cleaning up my husband's best friend's face after I accidentally smashed it open on a plate full of glass, projectile vomiting red wine on my own bathroom floor; you get the idea). And the first day of each new year always seems to be spent grumpy, more because I feel let down than because of the splitting headache and constant nausea or the fact that I am cleaning up my own vomit.

I just never got it. In January it's dark and it's the beginning of winter and it's cold and rainy and I still want to stay in my pajamas most days and eat copious amounts of dark chocolate and play board games and read books. I'm not ready for a new beginning because I'm still in hibernation mode and there's still six months of school or work or whatever until the weather gets nice and I start itching for new horizons. I want a fresh start come spring.

Which is why this last day of December as I was drifting off to sleep well before midnight, perfectly sober and perfectly exhausted from the final day of moving out of our apartment in Chamalières, I was completely caught off guard by my overwhelming sense of renewal and bliss. It was simple; I was curled up against my husband, toasty warm under a giant comforter, sleepy from the delicious meal we had just eaten, physically worn out from a day of moving and cleaning and stressing, and perfectly content listening to my partner's even (if not rather loud) breathing and the purring of our cat curled up at our feet. We were technically homeless (crashing at his parents' house), very poor (neither of us had gotten our last pay check yet) and absolutely unsure of our future (no definitive plans for housing, occupations or way of life for 2011). It was perfect.

And for once I got it. I understood the New Year. It is a fresh start. It is symbolic. It represents what you will be doing for the next year just as much as, as an ancient Tibetan teaching suggests, "If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing at this very moment."

At this very moment I am immigrating to the United States with my French husband. At this very moment I am learning as much as I can about instructing a language so that I can become the best French teacher I can be. At this very moment I am detoxifyng my body and nurturing myself with as much local, fresh and organic food as possible. At this very moment I am preparing myself and my family to bring children into this beautiful world. At this very moment I am learning, I am growing, I am loving and I am loved, and I could not ask for a better way to jump into a new life.

happy holidays from france!!!

all i want for christmas is... 100% organic cotton undies & socks

Holy moly underwear and socks are expensive!!!!

Rémy had an appointment at the dermatologist the other day to get some moles checked out before we leave France and full medical coverage (don't worry, they're all normal - it was just to take advantage of our awesome insurance before we don't have it anymore) and he discovered that he has a severe and highly contagious bout of Athlete's foot. His feet had been itchy (mostly at night) but this had been going on for a while and we hadn't really thought much of it.

Well, it turns out it's super contagious and super annoying to get rid of. Since it's a fungus it can lie dormant in old socks for weeks on end and then sprout up suddenly one humid night when there's a full moon. Gross? Yes. Annoying? It is decidedly so. Rémy has to wash his feet with a special antiseptic gel and put on special medicated lotion and powder and we can't be sure it's 100% gone for 15 days.

Then there's the whole sock business. If Rémy wants to keep his socks (and since we share socks it becomes if WE want to keep OUR socks, any of them...) we have to wash them daily (all of them, not just the ones we wear) and powder them daily with some special powder and keep them in sealed plastic bags when we are not wearing them. And we have to do this every day FOR THIRTY DAYS. Now I don't know about you, but that seems like a helluva lot of work just to have clean socks. Since all we own is a shit-ton of really old socks (some dating back probably to the 80's) and we will be leaving our apartment in 16 days and the country in 27, we made the executive decision to throw away all of our socks and buy new ones. (We did briefly consider donating them, but then realized that would be rather sadistic.)

It gets worse.

The genus of fungus that causes Athlete's foot, Trichophyton, also causes another annoying and painfully itchy condition sometimes known as "dhobi itch", more commonly known by the lovely name "jock itch". It is exactly what you think it is. How does fungus from the feet get to the groin? Well, just think about how you dry yourself off with a towel. And then think about using the same towel for a few days, and sharing it with someone who secretly has Athlete's foot.

Yes, you guessed it, I am the unlucky one. I have jock itch.

Don't worry, I'll spare you the details on how I have to cure my little problem. But what it comes down to is that we also have to throw out all of our underwear and replace them with new, total clean & fungus-free 100% cotton underwear.

So today I throw all of our old socks & undies in a giant sack and go out in search of new 100% cotton socks & undies, preferably organic since cotton uses an absurdly high percentage of the world's pesticides/insecticides. (Cotton covers 2.5% of the world's cultivated lands but uses 16% of the world's insecticides - that's more than ANY other crop!!!)

First of all, the green movement is still in the very very early stages here in France so it took me forever to find what I wanted, and when I did it was exorbitantly expensive. I almost had a stroke when the lady told me my total and I had to ask her again to make sure I wasn't hallucinating: 120€ worth of plain cotton socks & undies. And I only bought 21 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of slippers, 7 pairs of undies and 3 pairs of tights/leggings. I guess it comes out to only 3€64 per item, but it still seems freaking ridiculous.

In light of this crisis I have come up with some rather renegade New Years Resolutions that I have taken a vow to follow with the utmost seriousness:
- I will take much better care of my socks and my undies from here on out.
- I will wash them in a timely manner.
- I will make sure that each sock is with his mate at all times.
- I will not leave them balled up covered in dust bunnies under the bed or dresser.
- I will cherish each moment my toesies are warm and snug, and
- I promise to try not to wear tights too often to give my jock area some breathing room.

On that lovely note, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year & to all a Good Night!!