Good Food / Bad Food
I've been swinging back and forth between these two polarities for a while now. I began by being inspired to "lose weight for the wedding"--sigh--which quickly turned into "I'm so stressed about the wedding" and the comfort foods flooded in while the discipline went out the window. Now I'm swinging between the two poles because at lunch I'm eating really healthy food with my Eat to Live partner and at night I go home and eat my stress foods: namely pizza, pasta, tapioca and ice cream.
That said, here's a great new soup I came up with this week--for lunch--so you know it's healthy! I'm calling it Moroccan Stew. What you'll need:
1 large can of roasted tomatoes (include the juices)
1 regular can of garbanzo beans (drained)
5 sticks of celery
5 zucchini
5 cloves of garlic
1 cup of quinoa (preferably red)
1 bunch of white chard or other greens
pinch of black pepper, cayenne, and cinnamon and the juice of 1-2 lemons
Coarsely chop the vegetables (reserve the chard until the end) and throw everything into a pot, cover with plenty of water (but not too much) and heat until boiling. Cover the pot and turn down the heat; let it simmer for an hour--add the chard, allowing it to steam, add the lemon juice and then serve.
Delicious!
Learn to Merge
I drive in to Santa Fe every Saturday morning to go to a couple of meetings and run my errands. This past Saturday was no exception, although the errands were a bit different than the norm: buy wedding veil, drop off bags at Goodwill to create closet space for my husband, price bulk chocolate, show up for massage appointment (a gift!). On the way in I found myself yelling at the top of my lungs, LEARN TO MERGE!, at a driver in the far right lane, unsuccessfully merging onto the highway. Now--there are several kinds of crazy in this story already, so let me just admit to that up front. But the beauty of it is this: after talking about my experience in a meeting, a woman approached me and said, "But isn't that a beautiful affirmation for you right now? You are getting married aren't you?" And I had to laugh! It was so simple and so true. Everything in my life right now is about making room and learning to merge. And the fact that I had to scream it aloud in order to "get it", well, that's just the way it is right now. There are times when it feels overwhelming, like taking a drink of water from a fire hydrant; at other times it feels more like overflowing, an artesian well, pure and light and delightful and all I have to do is head downstream. At other times I just feel full, complete.
I don't have any answers to the questions of my life right now. And I can't even report from the field very well, alternately blind-sided and dumbfounded by my own response to the fact that I'm merging with another human being, very very soon--25 days if anyone is counting. But I can say this, with confidence, it's an inside job. Listen to what you're yelling to the universe and see if there's an "ah-ha" moment for you this week, too!
Fly Ball
Someone was asking about the wedding--again--and I said it
sometimes feels like I'm right field waiting for a fly ball. Everyone's
watching and the entire time I'm saying to myself, "you've never caught a fly
ball in your life--and the last time you tried it hit you smack in the face--you can't do
this". And there I am, standing alone in a field flooded with lights, waiting, in suspended animation,
hoping I can make the catch.
I think the hardest part is talking about it. I communicate my ambivalence more than my joy and excitement, because that's what I do--that's my coping mechanism for life. Heaven forbid people know how happy I am! God might strike me dead. . . . and all the other superstitions the Positive Mind makes up to rationalize the Negative Mind's stories about how life works.
Meanwhile, the fans are up in their seats, anticipating, waiting for the perfect catch! Wish me luck!
