Fantasy Life

So the CSA and the farmer's market both ended last week, leaving me only to copious fantasizing about farming. Now I realize that farming is not an easy life, but right now I'm dreaming of being supported modestly with farming-related work, writing, and AL's business, which he's been wanting to start up in earnest for a while now. Sigh.

So what I'm dreaming of is having a limited-menu restaurant or maybe an agro-tourism bed-and-breakfast. There's a lot of fabulous local food here. It's just that a lot of people don't know where to go or are more interested in going to cholesterol huts than farms. So a restaurant that features local organic food would make this area's bounty accessible to those with more money than time. Really this comes from the fact that every time I make a meal, AL says I should open a restaurant. I've tried to tell him that when you've got wonderful fresh ingredients, you really can't go wrong. But he thinks it's me. Sweetheart.

Realistically, I'm probably better off trying to start a home bakery, since that's what I seem to be good at. (We won't talk about my failed canning attempt yesterday. We'll be eating some tomato sauce in the coming days.) But I love the idea of a restaurant, maybe on someone else's farm or orchard that already regularly brings people in. Here are a couple things that would definitely be on the menu based on family reactions: potato leek soup (hot, so it's not really Vichyssoise), banana bread, zucchini bread, omelettes. I'm going to work on a carrot cake this week because it's Tot's second birthday on Friday, if you can believe it! I'd also have lots of sausage and pork products on the menu because I know several sources of really fabulous sausage, bacon, and ham. Like phenomenal food that would bring all but the super-kosher back to the pig. And of course everything would be organic -- if not officially certified, then at least small o organic supervised by yours truly.

Imagine going into a restaurant -- not a really expensive one or ooh la la one -- and being able to be told about every piece of food -- and knowing that each thing is organic and sustainably grown/raised. I want to go there, which is how I know it's at least a decent idea because those of us who are really into organic and local food know that once you turn your back on CAFO meat, you really limit your take-out and dining options. This place would also have to be extremely kid friendly. I do know of a restaurant that was all or mostly organic that went belly up, but it didn't market itself well, I think. It was too specialized. The trick would be that my eaterie would need to have pretty ordinary food at ordinary prices because most people are going to be used to going to Applebees and in order to stay in business I'd have to rope those people in unless it was located on a farm.

Realistically, I might start developing organic baked good recipes in earnest. A new bakery just started up and they're really good so I wouldn't bother except that when I asked about organic, the baker said that he's really going more in the direction of gluten-free. Of course this is important. But my hook would be that everything is organic. Always. All the time.

Even more realistically, AL and I hope to buy a house and have a big garden and that will be the end of it. But even that's just fantasy right now. But if you like the restaurant or baked goods idea, let me know. I'm reading this great book called You Can Farm by Joel Salatin and he talks about a home bakery as a viable farming centerpiece enterprise. So who knows?

There are other things going on in my life, but this one is absolutely the most fun.

This Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life. . .I Wish

Today it's easy to remember why I love being an academic. Because at 11am, I was crossing my apartment complex to go talk to the central command rather than working. (I'm not trying to be annoying to all of you who are teaching right now -- I worked through the summer myself, so while you guys were going on vacation and doing fun things, I was slogging away teaching. Now it's my turn for a little R & R.)

It's noon now, and I've taken Tot to daycare, filled out a permission slip (my first mom permission slip!), went to buy canning supplies, bought bulbs and a bulb-planter, and gotten one of those food mills because I refuse to shell out big bucks for a food processor when I might still have one in storage. I paid the rent and the storage.

Instead of giving myself a week off, which I fear might cause a slide into the slough of despond, I have this wonderful list and all these things to do. Right now, I'm running the jars (why is it called canning and not jarring?) as well as my brand-new stew pot in the dishwasher. So I need to begin my new plan of working on scholarship and creative work. I'm not going to go crazy and drive myself too hard, of course. But I am going to get to work. How exciting! And there are all these apples that need to be cored and softened into applesauce and then "put up." (Really I want to make apple butter for Christmas gifts this year, but I think I don't have enough apples for the recipe. Also there was a terrible late spring freeze that really ruined a lot of the fruit crops in my area, so my wonderful apple orchard is sparse in their offerings -- to say nothing of the astronomical price of Honeycrisps. Mostly I got Galas, which are supposed to be wonderful for applesauce. We'll see how it goes.)

That's really all. I'm working on an article I'm determined to be done with by the end of the calendar year, and I want to make significant strides on a project that has long since been stagnant. There is also work stuff to do: committees and pet projects. But I don't want to deal with that today. Better get to work before I blog the day away.

Hello Fall!

So I'm back, or almost back. I've turned in most of my grades. And for unbloggable reasons, I'm not teaching during the fall quarter. So I've already, tonight, a mere hour after I turned my grades in electronically, made lists and lists of what I want to accomplish in the next three months.

I've been very burned out -- at least on teaching and service. I had a crap class. The other class was new to me, the first time I taught it. I had some great students in there, and it went decently. But with the article I was writing and the annual report early in the quarter, I got behind on things and never really caught up. These students were really great about it. But the situation also made me feel like crap, even as I was taking mental health days.

Perhaps it was just that I starting settling into my second year -- a colleague noted a slump in hir own second year. Or maybe it was my grandfather dying and all that and not having the time to deal with it. There were a bunch of other things too that made me disengage from work: the fact that morale is so low there right now that paranoia and cynicism are prevalent; crap teaching; disheartening service; Absurdist Tot developments; and a growing love of all things gardening to the point that I really wanted to be gardening or cooking all the time and suspecting that I'd chosen the wrong path for my life and now I'm stuck with all these student loans and no way to go and live simply and close to the earth somewhere.

Interestingly, I have an insane list of things I want to get done in these three months, but even though there is an intimidating number of items, I feel tired (now) but excited to be able to focus finally on those things. I'm planning to spend a certain decent amount of time each week on scholarship and creative work. And then there are, unfortunately, even now some service things I need to do. Usually I don't mind service -- am even excited to be part of something larger than myself -- but when I think of doing these things, the wind immediately sucks out of my sails. But what is noteworthy here is that I'm not burned out on my scholarship and creative work. That's good. That means that I probably did not make the wrong choice of career.

I've been sort of haphazardly reading blogs, sometimes preferring not to read academic blogs because I'm burned out on academia. I just don't even want to hear about teaching or students or dumb colleagues sometimes. Because I just don't want to spend my personal time on hearing about the academy, I've been checking my favorite blogs less often instead preferring to read about homesteading and small farming blogs, learn more about FarmAid and Homegrown.org. Because of all this, I'm wondering about whether Absurdist Paradise should morph to reflect these new interests. Partly I'm thinking that the blog has to change or else soon I'm going to feel disengaged from it because it represents only a part of my life. This wouldn't be so bad but I feel sort of weirdly closeted at work because I can't talk about my current passions, so I think if I did that here that I would soon disengage from the blog too. So there'll either be more food and farming talk more here at AP or the blog I started for that several months back will become more important. I don't know yet. Y'all could weigh in on your preferences.

So that's what's going on here on Absurdist Paradise Farm. (Oh wouldn't that be awesome!) Glad to be back, neighbor.

There will be a lull in our lull. . .

I just realized in reading others' blogs how much I appreciate it when people tell me that there's going to be light blogging, so: readers, there's going to be light to no blogging for the next two weeks. (I'm so ornery or my life is so unpredictable -- I'm not sure which -- that having said this I'll probably start blogging like mad.)

In a nutshell, I've been in the professional funk that I mentioned last time for the last few weeks and have now just got to buckle down and get some stuff done. I'm also wondering what this blog is now for related reasons, though maybe that will pass when I have some time to reflect on funkitude.

Thanks for visiting, and I'll have something new to say soon. Meanwhile, happy fall!

Owning Up and Trying to Have a Sense of Humor

I'm so behind. SO behind. I still haven't gotten things back on track since Tot and I were sick. Then last week I had one of those funk days where I got a number of good things done, but I didn't make great headway on the things that are really behind. I'm just hanging on until this is all over, so I can focus for a while on an old (creative) project that I'm all excited about again. But first I have to slog my way through to the end, starting with catching up on things I'm having a hard enough time getting myself to do already.

Now, this morning Tot is sneezing and sniffling. And I've already had a minor freak out. This is not a great way to start out the week!

My emotions were also running high yesterday. I hate apologizing for being a bitch. But I certainly was. I'm pretty sure it's that I'm excited about this new-again project, but I have no time to work on it. My home life is almost completely Tot-care. Tot is not the kind of kid who can be held on my lap while I work. In fact, if the laptop is out, he wants to plunk on it. If we're not paying enough attention to him, he starts running around the house screaming. So I can't get work done here, whether teaching, scholarly, creative -- you name it. The only thing I can do is cook, and then only if Absurdist Lover watches him. The trouble is we both have our agendas for the day and have to compromise. I was definitely not a good compromiser this weekend. In fact, I pretty much sucked at being a decent adult, at least yesterday. But I did make a pretty fabulous zucchini bread, my first. Not that zucchini bread makes anything okay, but it certainly makes for a nicer breakfast.

Now, I'm going to pull myself together and try to be a calm mom and academic with a big supply of humor. Is anything so bad that it's really worth freaking out about? This is just the natural absurdity of our lives. If I just look at it right, I know it's super-funny.

Everyone: have a great week full of focus, self-knowledge and -control, and lovely things going right!

On Cooking (Finally!)

So cooking is now my main creative outlet (though I'm also trying to coax myself into writing again). I love it. I had forgotten how much I loved it. In the past I've gone through periods of being really into cooking, and then sort of falling away from it. But right now the loads of fresh gorgeous vegetables that we get from working at the CSA and the fact that we now get ALL of our meat from local and organic sources means that I must cook. All that good food deserves good care. So lately I've learned how to cook kale in garlic and onion (everything tastes good with garlic and onion -- that is my kitchen motto). I also stuffed a zucchini really vying for baseball bat. I make a lot of small organic burgers, like my grandmother used to make though she wasn't American at all. I made pizza with homemade pizza dough, though it had too much whole wheat flour and AL wasn't a big fan of that. I've also made two rounds of pasta sauce starting with these amazing heirloom tomatoes from the farm. Then there are the sausages we get from the farmer's market. Tot loves ground meat, so he eats sweet Italian sausage and brats and burgers. If only I could get him to eat some fresh veggies! (Though he eats some root veggies he really loves from jars -- organic, of course.)

In addition to figuring out kale, which isn't a big hit in my house (the kale chips went over with Tot like a lead balloon), I've made homemade coleslaw (also not a big hit with anyone but me), cooked beets for the first time (oh my! delish!), made tomatillo salsa, and figured out a sure-fire garlic and onion green bean recipe that AL loves. (Made it with bacon yesterday -- and he was totally overthetop happy.) I also have a broiled zucchini recipe AL loves.

And then there are the omelettes I make when I'm tired and want to make something fast.

AL has sort of despaired of ever eating takeout again, but I don't want to eat CAFO meat (which means eating fish or vegetarian, which is fine) and I want to support Tot's growing interest in eating whatever we're eating. I want Tot to eat mostly organic foods and definitely not CAFO meat since a kid DIED from eating a fast-food hamburger. (How can we live in a country where the government does NOT have the power to recall bad meat? Or to notify citizens of where it came from? How come it's more important to protect the good names of cows (okay, some of these laws probably cover more than just beef -- or not even beef) and CAFOs and the four main meat processors and stock prices than it is to protect citizens? Government by the people for the people? I think not. More like government by the people with money for the people with money. Why aren't we outraged? Why aren't we rebelling against our corporate-driven government? Do we expect that someday we too will have the money to shape policy? I think we're so disgusted we've opted out. AL and I want to move to Europe. You know, no country quite has CAFOs like we do. And many countries in Europe have outlawed GMOs while we have them rampant all over our food and can't even get a law forcing companies to LABEL their products! What is wrong with us???) So takeout is not a great option, though we did get pizza over the weekend.

I also taught myself how to make cheesecake, which has nothing to do with organic or healthy anything, though I'd really like to teach myself to make cream cheese so I can be sure that it's rBGH free. (By the way, did y'all see that Haagen-Dazs has not gone rBGH-free? I bet they use the same arguments that so many others use, that "the market" simply won't allow them to make a commitment to using milk products that don't increase the likelihood of cancer. The fact is it's totally possible to get rid of rBGH completely. Other countries have banned its use, leaving the good old US of A as the only industrialized nation that permits its use. But it's bad for cows and people. But guess who developed rBGH and sold it to a division of Eli Lilly? Yes, one of the most powerful transnational corporations in the world. Yes, the one that seems to care WAY more about their own profits than the health of any of us. If Haagen-Dazs won't figure out how to get off the Monsanto dole, well, they don't deserve my money. Goodbye Haagen-Dazs coffee and chocolate chocolate chip! I'll eat Ben and Jerry's!)

What else have I been making? I can't remember. I think I'll go and cook up some beets.

I Wanted to Write about Cooking, but This is What Came Out

So while many of my academic friends are starting their semesters or gearing up to start them, I'm waist-deep in my summer quarter and taking the day off because I'm sick.

I've been thinking a lot about how I grew up -- or specific shaping experiences from my childhood -- and how they affect me now, how they color my view of the world. And I'm thinking that they do. I see possible menace around most corners. Sometimes it seems amazing to me that people don't kick in locked doors and smash through glass much more often than they do. I guess some part of me doesn't really believe in safety or security. Many of my dreams are about being chased or found -- or acquiescing to some terrible more powerful person in order to live through it. (I guess that sums up some aspects of my childhood pretty well.) I also have a terrible temper, a really low threshold for frustration.

I've explored all this -- written about it, talked about it, addressed it. I was in therapy once, though I think we focused on other things, and it seems like therapy is probably the next step now, but I also had a bad therapy experience. (Don't get me started about therapists I've known from the way past and the problems I can see with therapy.) My former therapist said I had a lot of stuff that was right on the surface. If the point is to talk this stuff out in order to get it out of my subconscious, well, I've done that. I know at least some of the ways in which this childhood stuff colors my life. But what do I do about that, dammit? I want practical strategies, not to just talk about it all the time. I told this to my former therapist, but I think developing practical cognitive strategies wasn't really his strong point. Of course, he also wanted me to go get diagnosed and medicated as manic depressive. I will admit that I feel like I've spent a fair amount of my life trying to cope with fluctuating moods, but not in a manic depressive way. More of a turbulent way. (Super rapid cycling?) A friend of mine said it really well. What did she say? She said I was. . .unpredictable? Something like that. Well, if you think it's hard to predict how I'm going to respond when you're a different person, imagine how much harder it is to live inside that? I try for self-awareness, growth, self-acceptance, but there's a lot going on in here. I often don't know what's going on! It's not that I'm deliberately emotionally dishonest, but I've got a lot of conflicting emotions, some that are elusive even to me! I'm trying to be more mindful. And Tot definitely deserves someone more in control. I certainly don't want to recycle that particular childhood with different players. AL says that a good therapist would help me to see it differently, would ask me different kinds of questions that would help me see it in a different way. It's hard for me to imagine that there's territory I haven't explored, read about, written about, talked to other people about, etc., but I guess that's when you go to therapy. So that is likely coming up in the coming months.

I also really have an aversion to some of the discourse around childhood experiences like mine. The victim discourse. The overuse of the word "abuse." I do understand when people say "I'm this way because this happened to me when I was a kid and I'm still dealing with it" but I don't like to do that. I guess I really want to pass as normal in some ways. I know I'm not. But I don't want people to look at me as some maladjusted misfit either playing the victim card. Yes, I have the credibility to play that card. But I like being able to pass. I really don't want to blame my present lot on my childhood -- that was a long time ago and I'm an adult. But I can see the ways all this fear and crap self-esteem sort of lowers the horizon of my expectations. Sometimes life seems so bleak. (On the other hand, there are great gifts of all this too. I think I understand better when people living under political oppression say that they wonder if every car they hear is for them, if soldiers or whoever are going to break in and drag them out from their beds. How do people live with that, most Americans wonder? You just do, I want to say. You can't help yourself. You live with it, around it, under it. You get used to it, even as it weighs on you, even as you wonder if your kids will make it home from school. You half-expect something to blow up between here and every there you go to.)

But why does all of this lead to crap self-esteem even eons hence? I know I didn't deserve those experiences. I really do know. I know the circumstances and life histories that led to those experiences. I've done work on forgiving the people involved. I can conjure up anger at them if I want. But it does me no good except that anger is a firey emotion and is not as debilitating as grief. But it's all so stupid. Of course, having a child has brought all this up. I wanted to be better by the time I had a kid. I get so mad -- and at what? The fact that being a toddler, he has different priorities. He doesn't understand the importance of getting out the door right now before the cat scrambles out. Or that he can't have his way all the time. Ridiculous. He's a child. He needs love and discipline, not a mom who flashes red because of stupid things. I really do think a part of this is that I feel so worn down that those flashes of anger are also flashes of energy. I need to work out, which is the only thing that I've decided I really must do today, even in the face of a bunch of work that should get done but which is not compatible with the relaxing and recuperating taking a sick day ought to involve.

Why is all this on the surface and why do I feel compelled to share it? Well, I saw a website that advertises parent coaching. It might good. It might be totally inspired. I don't know. But it basically said that when I lose my cool, this reflects on my maturity level. Parenting is about the parents. And while I totally agree with this, reflecting on it in the moment only contributes to my feeling terrible about myself, something I'm trying to work on. I'm actively trying to have a better outlook and not indulge in the ridiculous self-fulfilling self-talk that I'm undeserving and undisciplined and nothing good is ever going to happen for me (a line of logic that my lived life already proves false, but these things aren't logical). Somehow saying to myself that I've got problems or that I'm not good at controlling my temper means that I'm a totally terrible person, rather than a person with an important flaw that I'm working on. So I'm not that mature. Okay, I can live with that. But is parenting really all about the parents? Is this discourse really about blaming parents for all that happens with kids, when that's really just not fair at all? (I'm not linking to these websites because I don't feel I'm representing them fairly or accurately. I haven't participated in their programs, so I can't really say. But I wonder if I would want to participate in their programs or if this is just another way to make parents feel bad or what?)

Why post this on my blog? To own it? To come out? I don't know exactly. I'm writing it because though I really want to write about other things, this is what's come out. But that doesn't explain publishing it. Hmmm. I guess I'm pressing publish because I need to connect with others, share, be heard and listen to what others have to say. Your turn.

***Postworkout***

I feel flipping fantastic! Worth 50 mg of Zoloft my friends. Surely if I worked out regularly, my frustration would just melt away. So much of my life is good. Blessed, really. Thank you, Legs of Steel 2000!