What doesn't kill us...

Though it frequently works out this way, I still don't cease to be amazed by how educational a lousy period in one's life can actually be. This week, which was lousy for any number of reasons, I learned not only that it is possible to function on three hours of sleep a night and that few things feel better on an empty stomach than black rice pudding, but that I am even more like my father than previously thought.

Aside from a last name, workaholism (if that's not a real word, I just made it one) and large eyebrows, my dad and I also apparently share the same stress response. When something particularly horrendous goes down, we'll both let it run around our brains so much that the rest of our bodies, namely our stomachs start to follow suit (thus the pudding). This week, I, the healthy 23-year-old graduated to the same gastric reflux medication regimen as my 57-year-old father. Aren't we cute.

What's a little cooler though (and much less embarassing) is how similar our coping mechanisms of choice are. When things got significantly more stressful in his life this year, my dad, the good Catholic, started praying the rosary much more frequently. He keeps one nearby when he sleeps and gets through at least a decade (one loop around the beads) when he runs each day. While I'll admit that I haven't prayed the rosary nearly as recently as my dad has, I do knit, and pretty obsessively when the rest of my day has been crappy. During the last seven days of craziness, if this gives you any idea of the scale of things, I knit an entire 5ft by 2ft shawl. There's a pretty big gap between knitting and praying, I know, but here's the thing: In a talk I went to last week, I learned that repetitive, relaxing activities such as meditation, praying the rosary and knitting can increase the length of time that theta waves are present in the brain. Theta waves are the ones our brain produces when we're daydreaming; our normal self-criticisms and internal censors turn off, and we're more likely to let ideas flow. This is why people feel like they come up with their best ideas right before they fall asleep, for example. And if you're in the middle of a stressful situation, getting yourself into theta state can help you work through whatever's going on in your head without giving yourself massive gastric reflux. My dad and I were dealing with the shittier parts of life in the exact same way, and we didn't even realize it.

Granted, stumbling upon this information isn't going to fix whatever my dad or I may be going through, but when outside forces already have you feeling crazy enough, it is nice to discover that the way you're responding isn't so far-fetched. It may even bring us closer, assuming we each survive this. Thanks for the worry-genes, Dad.

Take THAT, Martha Stewart

On my last of four days off, I spontaneously got productive.

Spent the morning teaching a friend from work how to knit in the round, and while she was getting the hang of it, I started on this baby.

I'm supposed to be finishing the cabled socks I started, I know, but the sinfully soft alpaca I picked up at Alpacapalooza last week finally got the best of me. Someday, it will be a whole "Column of Leaves" lace scarf. Could be a while, though. This pattern goes sloooooooowly....




Anyway, after lunch, I ran to Fred Meyer, initially just to buy supplies for dinner and check out what they had in their garden section, in case I ever got motivated enough to tame the leafy craziness outside my apartment. But then the plants were pretty and fairly inexpensive and it was sunny and relative warm out, so I decided to just tackle the whole mess that day.

A few hours of digging and weeding and hacking away later, and we have a garden. There's some basil in there, some rosemary, begonias, a little lavender and lobelia on the side...we'll see how long it lasts. This is my first attempt at gardening, as I have a previous history of quickly killing plants.

Once I'd finished, it was back to my original dinner-making plan. I usually just buy pre-made stuff from the grocery store during the work week, because I rarely have enough energy during a stretch of 3 12-hour night shifts to prepare meals for myself.

A healthy alternative, of course, would be to make a big pot of something from scratch the day before I go back to work, and then just use that as my lunch for few days, but that requires planning, and I usually kind of suck at that. Except for yesterday, apparently. Not only did I think far enough ahead to pick out a recipe before I left home for the day, but I actually managed to stick to the plan and cook it after my little gardening adventure. Behold, polenta lasagna with portabello mushrooms, chicken sausage and pesto. And also some wine (because, really, what's a good Italian dinner without wine) and a movie (finally saw The Constant Gardener. It was a pretty intense flick, but I liked it).

Phew. After all that, I need a break. Maybe I shouldn't tackle all this stuff the day before my next night shift. We'll work on that whole planning thing.

And so it begins...

Finally, finally I have broken down and set up a public blog. This space will hopefully be a more entertaining and shareable alternative to the private online event chronicling/ranting I've been doing for years. Anyone who comes back to watch the silliness unfold can expect entries heavy on writing, knitting, pediatric nursing, and coffee--you know, the important things in life.

Ironically, I really can't think of anything fun and exciting to write today, so instead I'll have to start with a picture that I took of two alpaca.

Welcome to the blog, folks.