Just in time for allergy season, a little opportunistic horseweed on the balcony. Nature is wise.
Now back at home from Casa Weeks, alone in my studio with the kitty and the inexplicable hum of 83, which has heretofore been mostly silent, the one thing I keep coming back to is nature.
I have the deepest urge to plant something. It’s a deeply hopeful act – shoving a tiny seed into wet, dark soil, believing that it will rise its face to the sun over weeks or months.
Meister Eckhart said, “What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.”
This dovetails nicely with yesterday’s urge to slow down, be still, reflect.
So I will head to Falkenhan’s in Hampden to pick up some spinach and mixed greens, maybe radish, which I don’t love but which comes up very quickly and gives nearly instant gratification – a comfort always but especially right now.
What are you planting these days – literally or metaphorically?
Eating with a spoon is the best kind of eating. Fight me.
Well, here we are, July 1, time for me to begin to pull together the one blog a month I felt I could pull off.
Yes, this is past tense.
But I am not going to beat myself up about it. Because here I am, on the 1st, sitting in my studio, looking at a painting in progress and watching the neighborhood scary/tragic neighbor do slow and sweaty laps around the block on a loop. And writing this.
This July 1st, I find my two favorite people out of town, one for one week, the other for two, and I am feeling a mite blue about that. Mine is a generally solitary existence, but the people I like I really like and I want them around.
On top of the stupid solar system and my MIA people, my plan to get rejected is going well. The goal is 100 rejections by the end of 2020, and although I started off slowly, things are picking up. I found a place that will reject my work within 24 hours, and The Sun has rejected my photography, poetry, and prose. The point of all of this rejection is to get serious about submission and creating new works, and to some extent, it is working. I have written a couple of new poems this past month and have been note-taking and researching other forms of poetry and doing generally writerly things.
But the rejection can be a little challenging. Not knock-me-back-on-my-ass challenging, just not completely pleasant. I have gotten some lovely form rejection letters (in the vein of, “This is no commentary on the quality of the writing” which may, upon reflection, be a falsehood and not very nice at all and actually a loud commentary on the quality of the writing).
I do have a poem being published in Plainsongs this month. The acceptance letter referred to it as “your fine poem.” My self-esteem will be dining on those three words for at least the rest of the summer.
So I am just feeling meh and low-grade shitty. As this is a blog, I put that forth as an entirely legitimate way to describe what I am feeling. I am saving the words for the poetry.
And I have been cooking, even though it’s sad little meals for one. Today I made mango sticky rice in the rice cooker and some granola with the last bits of Costco dried mango (it’s mango-riffic), the only fruit I could scrounge up in my pantry.
I made gluten-free chocolate frosted chocolate fudge chocolate Pop-tarts that I had to throw out because they were making me ill, they were so rich (I saved an unfrosted batch in the ‘fridge).
I made epic pizza crust and ate the shit outta that (pro-tip: don’t make the crust too thin and it’s MONEY).
Many other lesser lights have made it to the groaning board in the past 30 days, but here’s the thing: when I feel low-grade shitty, I only want to cook sweet things, or else I want to lounge around in my bed and eat chips and watch crappy Netflix (I call this “Netflix and chonk”).
When this gets old, I need some food for real. Easy food that can be made with whatever is in the ‘fridge that’s not cold cereal, chips, gluten-free chicken tenders, or an entire cake.
So I make confetti salad.
Easy: boil two cups of water/veggie stock and add one cup rinsed quinoa and half a diced onion. Cover and cook until fluffy.
Add to a large bowl: three shredded carrots, one diced bell pepper, handful of chopped cilantro, handful of dried fruit, handful of pumpkin seeds, handful of sunflower seeds, can of chickpeas (rinsed and rained), juice of one lemon, olive oil, and black pepper. Add cooked quinoa, stir, adjust seasoning (maybe more lemon juice or olive oil), and you’re done.
Infinite variations. Add sliced snap peas. Dried fruit can be raisins, cranberries, barberries, mango, cherries. Add a thinly sliced spicy pepper. Use parsley instead of cilantro. Mix up the seeds. Add fresh, halved cherry tomatoes. Add warm grilled chicken (otherwise it’s vegan).
I eat this warm, cold, and room temperature. Throw it over greens. Whatever. Perfect for when your people are gone and you have been barefisting hunks of cake in front of the ‘fridge since they left.
This afternoon, I pulled my Subaru into the crusty parking lot of Charm City Medicus on North Point Boulevard to pick up my first prescription.
If you aren’t for cannabis, medical or otherwise, maybe best to pick a different post. I am all for hearty debate, but there is evidence that cannabis helps with seizure disorders, chronic pain, and some mood disorders (including depression and anxiety). For the most part, though, findings are mixed, and most studies are neither scientifically valid or adequately funded, which means that most of the “research” on cannabis is largely anecdotal. One nice fat review of studies done by Canadian researchers showed that medical cannabis exhibits promise in the treatment of PTSD and substance abuse disorders (including opioid addiction). Otherwise, pickings are slim, and results both pro and con often come from seriously flawed studies.
I’m not here to argue about what or who it does or does not help. I am just desperate.
I have had diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder since 2006, but I have experienced anxiety for as long as I can remember (legit). I remember anxiety attacks from as young as five, but I would not have been able to paste that label on them at that time. I think most people just thought I was overemotional or too loud or too something.
My anxiety manifests itself in a physical way with a charming combination of gastrointestinal effects that only manage to increase the anxiety (I will spare you the details. But just imagine food poisoning for four to six hours, once or twice a week at the height of anxiety and you’re close). My worst attacks from as far back as I can remember are accompanied by fainting.
Picture this: you are driving a car with your child inside on 495 in DC, and the edges of your vision start to get fuzzy and black, darkness creeping towards the center. Your lips go numb, and you can feel your head start to swirl in a circle on the inadequate stalk of your neck. This happened to me racing from a baby shower in Middletown, Maryland to my brother’s house in northern Virginia in order drop my daughter off and then catch a plane at Dulles. I thought we were going to crash. I had to get off on an exit that turned out to be pitch black with no shoulder. I pulled over on the side of the road as far as I could go, and threw myself out of the car to a grassy area on the passenger side where I let myself faint for a few seconds. Sicily – used to this by now – just asked, “Are you okay, mama?” I don’t think it even phased her. She was seven.
These days, some of the pieces of writing and art that I am working on seem to have found an extra gear in the transmission of my anxiety. A low-level buzz of anxiety is ever-present and has been for the past six months. At night, I have been waking up every two hours for the past month or so. It’s as if in reliving some trauma I have actually given birth to myself as a newborn (see what I did there?).
On top of that, due to a fivefold price increase in my anxiety medication, I have not refilled my prescription, so what I am taking is fairly expired. So that’s not working.
But even if I could routinely buy clorazepate, I would like to be done with it. Benzodiazepines increase the risk of dementia by 40%, more if you use them daily (which I do not – just as needed, which is sometimes daily). Although they were a lifesaver in the past, they don’t seem to be working anymore. Whether it’s the fact they are expired or that I have some kind of tolerance, I have no idea. It’s just not working for me anymore.
So here I am in my kitchen, a few hours after the doctor I paid $200 said yes, and the lovely lady at the dispensary helped me pick out a Tangie cartridge and a vape pen (and some higher THC mints for insomnia), about to sit down to Canadian gluten-free fusilli with pesto, arugula, and chicken, legally high after figuring out how to work my vape (which, friends, is harder for old people to figure out. There’s counting and paying attention involved, which seems paradoxical to getting high, like a stoner Zen koan).
It’s strange. I spent a lot of money to figure out whether or not this will work for me. Right now I just feel like sitting down. A lot.
It is important to me to mention that in the entire series of transactions I conducted in getting prescribed medical cannabis, the only person of color to cross my path was the doctor who certified me. The receptionist and the patients at the doctor’s, the security guards, receptionist, and patients at the dispensary, all three bud tenders, the greeter – every single person was white. Yet another system in which privilege gives me access, and I don’t know what to do about it.
It’s not just a fleeting thought as I walked back to the car from Medicus. It’s the entire process from the application to the fusilli, peopled almost exclusively with white people. I wonder if other people are thinking about it, and almost asked the bud tender about it but felt dumb enough trying to understand what she was talking about and nodding like I got it when she explained to me for the zillionth time about sativa, indica (“In the couch,” she offered as a mnemonic device), CBD, and terpenes.
As I finish up and proofread this post, I am less high, uncomfortably full of pasta, and still unsure how to think about the color of my experience versus the experience of people of color who are disproportionately arrested and overwhelmingly prosecuted for the same substance that I legally obtained (even after cannabis is legalized in many states).
Maybe I use my voice at the polls and my dollars at the dispensary to champion black cannabis cultivators. Still seems inadequate, especially given the fact that my consumption will probably be very, very low.
We’ll see how it goes – Charm City Medicus offers cannabis cooking classes, and I foresee some interesting concoctions coming out of those. At the very least it’s maybe another tool for sleep.
Have you considered medical cannabis for what ails you? Interested in your experience, if you’d like to share below.
Don’t hate me because I like snow. More on the way tomorrow.
In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.
I wake up after a dread-filled sleep to a sunny cold morning and hurry off to a meeting regarding the City Ranch grant. It’s at a wonderful little diner of a restaurant, the kind where the waitress tells everyone when to move their cars because of street sweeping and calls all of the patrons, “Hon” unironically.
I have eggs and home fries because this isn’t the place for gluten-free toast, but the coffee is pretty damn good and the conversation is even better.
Mr. Dahn and I hug when we part, our first hug, and he feels like a friend. That makes me feel warm.
I go home and floss my teeth, brush, and use plaque-reducing mouthwash. I have an appointment at the periodontist, and when I get there I [unknowingly] sit right across from a mucous-filled old lady who coughs with her mouth open and blows her nose into the same tissue for the next 45 minutes. It is utterly horrific.
I sit there for an hour and am about to lose my shit when I get called back and everything is worth it because my new favorite periodontist tells me that there is really nothing wrong with my teeth so he will leave my mouth alone but recommends a bite guard for my raging bruxism. I think I love him.
Side note: I wrote the above-linked article for bruxism, and all the other articles on that website. It is a miracle my teeth survived that year and a half.
It’s one week until my birthday, one week into the social media fast. I have had a few moments where I considered checking back in to The Facebook, but I have not done so. They passed, and I felt better for staying off.
Like someone on a juice fast, I feel lighter. I missed the connection of some of my social media interactions, and I am sad that very, very few people read this blog (thanks, friends who do), but for the most part this has been refreshing and clarifying.
I recommend it.
In late-breaking, entirely unrelated news, I am so proud and pleased to be a Marylander today after the House of Delegates passed an assisted suicide bill, making it legal for terminally ill people to end their lives in the state of Maryland. Hopefully the Senate will follow suit, and Governor Hogan will sign the bill.
On Saturday, I had, as my particular friend called it, a visceral reaction to the suburbs.
We had dropped Khristian’s daughter off at the movies with a friend and planned a drink and some food at the least offensive of the chain restaurants in Hunt Valley (which turned out to be California Pizza Kitchen).
Things started out fine, as they usually do, and we ordered drinks and food at the bar.
After these diversions were settled I was able to look around.
The customers next to us were unhappy with something and a perfectly nice manager came over and soothed them.
The incoming male bartender, clearly an annoyance to our outgoing female bartender, overpoured for a lone male customer and mentioned that he (the bartender) would prefer some Rumplemintz. It was clear that the male customer was not really interested in the extra booze, but it was delivered in such a way that refusal would have seemed odd, so the male customer pretended it was fine.
It wasn’t really fine. I could feel it. The gesture of the extra booze came off as the “everybody’s doing it” kind of knuckle-dragging peer pressure one experiences around the beer funnel at a backwoods party.
Then we heard the same bartender mention Rumplemintz again at the other end of the bar. Soon after we watched him stick his finger in the neck of a bottle of some kind of juice mixer to unclog it before adding it to a waiting tray of drinks which was then, presumably, delivered to an unsuspecting patron.
Right around this time I started to feel…off.
I am not sure the last time I have been in a “fast-casual” dine-in chain restaurant, but I do remember saying that I didn’t want to do it again, and as I watched the people at the bar eating and listened to the modest din of their conversation or watched them staring into space or at the NCAA women’s basketball on the TVs over the bar I started to feel worse.
We finished our pizza and kale salad and paid. With time to kill, we boarded the escalator and descended into the belly of the beast: Wegman’s.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Wegman’s. And the Hunt Valley Wegman’s is legendary.
But the second I walked into the store I knew it was a mistake. It was hot, and it smelled strongly of food and people at the same time, in equal measure. Whole families were doing the weekly shopping, which translated into hordes of people, all with a determined look on their face and little regard for the people around them. We headed to the back of the store and perused the gluten-free section for a bit, and then I started to realize that the rest of our lovely day, the day that started with a walk to the Waverly farmer’s market for asparagus, a Blacksauce Kitchen biscuit, and a bag of Michele’s Granola, was not going to end well for me.
Anxiety is visceral. It may originate from a few random firing synapses in your brain, but the second those electrical impulses begin, the physical sensations are unmistakable with sensory detail that is clear, odd, and particular.
I could taste the last bite of kale salad in the back of my throat, where my breath lodged and came in short, shallow gasps. I was hot, and my clothes started to squeeze me. My mouth dried out. My heart beat in my chest, and I could feel the pulse in my belly, the one that connects to the vagus nerve, the transmitter of butterflies and anxiety and fear in a straight shot to the base of the skull.
Thinking to maybe head off the inevitable, I left my particular friend holding our few groceries and went to the restroom. Sometimes the quietness of the bathroom gives me space to collect myself. It may seem impossible that a public bathroom could become a refuge, but sometimes it’s the only quiet, peaceful space to go to when anxiety fires up.
The bathroom was rank-smelling and unclean. Loud music piped through the store, the kind of saccharine pop music that sounds like Christian rock but isn’t and involves no real instruments, reverberated against the oddly terracotta walls here. The bathroom was no help. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture, foul-tasting and pebbled with tastebuds that felt every particulate-filled, unrelenting morsel of inhaled air.
I will spare you the details of the next 45 minutes or so except to say that I visited that bathroom once more, plus a Peet’s coffee and tea bathroom and the movie theater bathroom (three times) before the girls finished their movie. I had taken an anxiety pill, then another half, and then another half. It’s hard to know if the medication sticks when you can’t keep it down. We made it home, where I took another pill, spent some more time in my (mercifully quiet and clean) bathroom, put on thick jammies (for the shivering when it came), and got into bed.
It’s not like I am unfamiliar with the trappings of the suburbs.
I spent 13 years in the suburbs of Atlanta. Without knowing it, in those 13 years, I lost bits of myself. It was subtle at first. Weekend shopping and meal planning on Sundays. Casual acquaintances who never really knew me (or cared to, really). Weekends consumed at the softball field, my child the center of the universe.
I kept the house, bossed my husband (Dane, for those who are just joining in) around, swore he couldn’t live without me (even went on strike once, like a total douche), and fully developed the raging anxiety that first surfaced when I was young. Every moment was gogogo, working for the weekend, taking care of business. The joy of teaching I experienced in Seattle evaporated in Georgia under a domineering boss who spent faculty meetings yelling at us.
We bought a farm. We lost a baby. I quit my job and started a school. Dane lost his job. We lost the farm. Dane died.
Sicily and I fled the suburbs for Baltimore.
Forgive me.
The vacuous homogeneity, the forced joie de vivre, the conspicuous consumption, and lack of individuality of the suburbs nearly killed me.
The low-key unhappiness that no one will admit to. The women complaining constantly about their husbands, who continue to ask forgiveness, not permission, of their wives.
The soul-killing lack of creativity, a hole that women attempted to fill chock-a-block full with Mason jar crafts, Pinterest boards, and wine painting party girls’ nights out. The insistence on calling each other “girls” in the first place.
The apathy towards politics, or the overwhelming conservative nature of the politics they did participate in.
The sheer size and number of SUVs and the callous, blatant disregard for fellow humans who are not in the inner circle, as evidenced by the lush green lawns and huge bags of garbage.
The subtle once-over every time you walk in someone’s door.
The endless evenings and weekends driving to activities or playdates or else keeping up the lawn, the house, the charade.
Forgive me.
It’s small wonder that in terms of volume and sheer violence, most heinous crimes are perpetrated not in rural areas or in the darkest parts of the urban jungle but just outside the beltway. School shootings happen in the suburbs, most often carried out by deeply unhappy people with startlingly easy access to guns.
But I digress.
I didn’t realize how miserable I was being the person I was never meant to be until I didn’t have to be that person anymore.
I shared these thoughts with Sicily the following day. We were walking across a parking lot, and when I told her my thoughts, her chin quivered and she lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes.
“Do you regret it?” she asked me. “Being a softball mom?”
I stopped in the parking lot and looked her full in the face. I reassured her that she is the joy of my life. She made me understand the unfathomable depths of love and has given me the most blissful moments I have yet experienced in this incarnation. I am who I am today because she was born – she has made me a better person.
In truth, as much as my flight from the suburbs was about excavating the person I buried for so many years, it was also about being someone my kid could look up to. To show her that even from the shadow place of grief and through years of feeling unworthy, there is a way to come back. That it’s a sad and hard and joyous and exhausting and frustrating and hilarious and angry-making journey filled with ten tons of bullshit but also an equal measure of tears and laughter and the full range of emotion.
That feeling the full range of emotion – the crevasse of the depths and the universal height of joy – is the necessary thing. It’s the thing I couldn’t feel for 13 years. It’s the thing that came surging through me as we wandered the chaos of a strip mall in suburban Hunt Valley on a Saturday, only this time it came like a coiled snake, snapping out of a clay pot.
I want my beautiful daughter to know that it doesn’t have to be so for her. She can be who she is, just as she is. The Wiccans express it thus: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” And so I say now to both myself and my daughter.
As my anxiety receded, I felt like eating. Usually, I don’t eat for the rest of the day after an anxiety attack, and today was no different, but my cravings are always specific – sweet, comforting things, usually in the form of cake. I am possibly cake’s biggest fan.
In light of the burgeoning spring that has begun to sprung outside my bedroom window, and to honor my heart walking around outside of my body as we both continue to move towards who we are, I present to you this lovely, easy, unfussy carrot cake. I made carrot cake for Sicily’s first birthday. She ate it with a fork, no sticky fingers for her, and I knew, even in the middle of the suburbs, that she and I would somehow get to be just fine.
LouAnn’s Carrot Cake
Sicily, a.k.a Muffin Girl and Lovey LouAnn, maybe would have chosen a different cake for her first birthday, were she given a choice. I made this to try to reconcile her steady diet of organic, handmade meals and snacks with my deep love of sweet, sweet birthday cake. This recipe is a mash-up of several different recipes I have made over the years, with tweaked spices and a new technique that is shamelessly stolen from Cook’s Illustrated. After making cake in this way, I may never return to the round.
2 2/3 cups shredded carrot (about 3 large carrots – this measurement needn’t be exact)
Frosting and decoration
12 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
Optional: 1/4 cup buttermilk powder
2 teaspoons lemon
3 cups powdered sugar
Optional: milk, as needed
2 cups pecans, toasted, cooled, and chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (allow overhang at the ends) and set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
In a larger bowl, use the same whisk to combine eggs, oil, bananas, and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly until egg and oil are completely incorporated.
Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined (note: if you are using regular AP flour, do not overmix). The batter will seem fairly thick, closer to brownies than cake.
Fold carrots into the batter.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Use an offset spatula to even the surface and make sure it is level.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is dry. You can use a cake tester or toothpick to test also; no crumbs should stick to either.
Cool in pan for five minutes, then carefully life with the edges of the parchment paper and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
To make the frosting, place cream cheese, butter, and buttermilk powder (if using) in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar (sift if you are particular; I am not), one cup at a time, beating well between additions. If your frosting is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk at a time, beating well, until it achieves a smooth, spreadable consistency.
To assemble, use a sharp knife to cut the cake into four pieces: one big cut across the longest part of the cake and one on the shorter side (you will end up with four rectangles that are about 6″ x 8″ each).
I use a rotating cake stand to frost, but since this is a round cake that is not entirely necessary. Frost and fill, allowing plenty for the top. If some crumbs show through on the sides, that’s okay.
When the cake is frosting, press handfuls of pecans into all four sides until covered. Pro tip: DO NOT DO THIS OVER THE SINK (don’t ask how I know). What happens is you waste a ton of pecans, which are very expensive. Complete this by holding the cake in one hand over the same rimmed baking sheet it was cooked in, using the other hand to press a handful of pecans into the sides at a time. Whatever is leftover can be used in another application.
Try not to eat it all, but remind yourself that since there are carrots in there it’s practically a vegetable.
Recipe Notes
You can substitute applesauce OR drained crushed pineapple for banana in the same amounts.
Buttermilk powder is not strictly necessary, but it’s nice to have around and lasts forever. Find it in the baking aisle near the canned and powdered milk.
You could also add currants to the batter…if you were a MONSTER.
