A slight change has been made to this site. I finally bit the bullet and upgraded in order to have a “no ads” option on this blog, so hopefully those who were feeling annoyed by advertisements popping up in between paragraphs will no longer have to deal with that visual insult.

So we are now past the halfway point to Spring and have moved mostly out of the single digits and into the 30-40°F range by late afternoons, which has felt almost balmy by comparison to what has been, and yet I still feel cold. There was one day that almost reached 50°F, but now it is wet and clammy out there. I’ve just finished off a rather large bar of dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt on the heels of an avocado with lemon and jalepeno salt, which unfortunately has left me feeling a bit nauseous. I just never seem to learn….

As a harbinger of “Getting Closer To Spring”, there seems to be a wave of fruit flies (or some other minute winged thing) invading the house. At first I thought all these little black spots in front of my eyes were just a new crop of floaters, yet another indicator of “You sure are getting old,” but they are actually tiny flying insects. I got rid of the softening persimmon in the fruit bowl but it made no difference. There are no rando bananas hanging about. Part of me suspects something is going on in the soil of one of the house plants, some internal timer awakening these teeny winging dots. I suppose that is better than more floaters….maybe….

To follow up on the last post, I did make the Rosemary Oat Bannock recipe for Imbolc (which has usually not been celebrated, but hey why not? ) They came out a little chewy and pretty good, with a hint of orange zest, a whisper of rosemary and a liberal sprinkling of sugar on top. Actually I liked them a lot. After sending some off with a neighbor I ate most of them myself, although it always comes back to the same thing; that I don’t enjoy baking all that much. Still, I printed off the recipe and added it to my collection for another cookbook compilation which probably will never be put together. But perhaps these can be added to the quasi-holiday baking rotation for next year.

Staying with the food theme, for the last two Sundays in a row the weekly Dutch Baby has been Apple-Ginger. I’ve added some allspice to the batter, chopped apples and pieces of crystalized ginger, vanilla, with a dusting of cinnamon and vanilla sugar on top. I think I could even do this breakfast three weeks in a row and be happy.

A few weeks ago I was visiting an old friend who made us some Shake and Bake Tofu for lunch, which I hadn’t had in a long time. She used to live on The Farm during the 1970’s, which back then was a commune in Tennessee (look up Steven Gaskin/The Farm if you are interested in the history). They ate a lot of tofu. She makes it with nutritional yeast, which is a little different than what was in The Farm Cookbook. I totally love the taste of nutritional yeast and was so glad to revisit this, having made it already twice since I’ve seen her. Just writing about it I feel like I want to make it again this week.

I’m noticing there are a lot of yellow-ish colored foods featured in this post. Maybe it is an enticement to help bring on the sun.

Another pre-Spring endeavor has been The Annual Haircut. Because the weather has been so cold and dry, my usually out of control hair had been actually behaving pretty well, but I knew as soon as a hint of humidity set in that it would expand outwards to about four or five times in volume and be way beyond manageable. When stretched out it was falling below my ribcage. This is something that is only truly understandable to those that have very curly/frizzy hair and perhaps were raised during a certain generation. There is a great deal of childhood angst attached to this, growing up in an era where hair like mine was not considered very attractive, with the motive to get it as straight and contained as much as possible. My mother could never deal with it. While other girls I knew were wearing ponytails and ribbons, or braids, or straight, shiny bangs, or growing their hair long, I was being taken to a barber (crying, wailing) to have it shorn off into a very short style my mother called a “muffin,” leaving my head more like a miniature version somewhere between Don King and Albert Einstein.

Times have changed, but my damage is still inside. When I finally got to a point to own my curls, my hair began to turn white. Then I had to deal with owning that too. Because it is so white in addition to being so…boing-y…..people (strangers) are constantly noticing and commenting on it, which my mind cannot totally wrap itself around – I always have trouble accepting or digesting when it is a compliment. My automatic response is usually “Thank-you. I grew up totally hating it.” Then I indicate their cute, straight hairdo and say “I always wished for hair like yours!” Which is true. Then we smile at each other, acknowledge that we always wish for what we don’t have, and go on our way. For some reason this often happens in the supermarket, and there is another even odder facet to these encounters. Sometimes I will be approached by a woman with the same hair as me who will compliment my hair. Then I will say “Thank you! You have the same hair as I do!” At which point they will insist that they don’t, even though they do. It is fascinating that we don’t see ourselves as others see us. It’s like hearing your own voice on a recording and saying “That’s not me.“

Even though there is no longer stigma involved, it is still very difficult to truly ever see myself for what or who I am – I guess I have a type of Hair Dysmorphia (in addition to Body Dysmorphia) if that makes any sense. I suspect many women experience some of this to different degrees.

Back to the present…..there are limits to what can be done with it, so I asked people for length suggestions, the consensus being to take it down just at or slightly below the shoulders. So about eight inches came off the ends and even more with layers.

It will take about two weeks or so until I feel totally comfortable with it, although I have to say it is a pleasure having much less to deal with in the shower. It is still kind of messy and berserk, but it feels so much lighter. This will last about a year, because it grows outward before it grows down.

As a summation of all this, I was at the gas station the other day filling up my car when someone started yelling. A few people standing at the next pump were staring at me. Because of my hearing loss it was difficult to discern the direction the yelling was coming from, so I kept twirling around looking for the source, until a woman pulled up her car right next to me, rolled down her window. leaned out of her car and shouted, “I love your hair!!! I LOVE your hair!!!! I LOVE YOUR HAIR!!!” I was kind of embarrassed but I smiled and thanked her. This year I am really going to try to accept and appreciate whatever good things and compliments people send my way; to transcend the damages instead of allowing the little girl inside to shrink away – to be more empowered by it. I am lucky to even have hair, let alone hair that some people actually like. I really need to own it and shut up.

Also, as we lament the changes in our bodies as we age (and everybody I know does), it is at least important to acknowledge that we will never be as young again as we are today, at this very moment – and to appreciate that. A little bit more of Be Here Now.

Moving into other changes in this new year, there is the ongoing (and ongoing and ongoing) difficulty of getting rid of things. The older I get, the more panicky I feel about my lifelong accumulation of objects, especially things that are beautiful or artistic, or have meaning. I’ve read all the books on Swedish death cleaning and decluttering and getting rid of stuff your kids don’t want, etc. etc. It has been slow going, but at least it is going/crawling along. Today I fell down a rabbit hole of old family photos, which is always a slippery slope and a place all the books tell you not to begin at in your decluttering journey. It is so easy to get lost there, and sometimes hard not to cry.

This past week I decided to delve into the medication stash. Yes, I have a medication stash. For many years I have saved pretty much every leftover or unused prescription I’ve ever had. I have often joked that I am keeping these meds “in case the revolution comes” – in the event we are unable to access whatever medications we may need should the world as we know take a turn for the even worse. While that used to pretty much be sort of a running joke, these days I am not so totally sure it is a mistake to hold on to your meds. Although they are all expired, I imagine expired medication is better than no medication in an emergency. In any case, I’ve been throwing these partially unfinished or unopened vials into a large tubby in the closet for years without looking at them or realizing how they had accumulated. It was a surprise to find so much of it and definitely time to clear this stuff out, keeping only the most recent ones. I pulled out twenty bottles worth of expired meds – and some really weird stuff, like anti-malaria pills! Some of these bottles were dated over twenty-five years old! That’s pretty crazy! So what do you do with all of it? The pharmacy takes and discards expired prescription and over-the-counter meds, so I brought them there. Although it had been out of sight and I had forgotten much of it was even there, mentally it already feels a bit freeing.

On to other subjects, I was babysitting one of my grandkids last week. Before tucking her into bed, she turned on this machine that projected a galaxy onto the ceiling. Apparently this is a step beyond those little glow-in-the-dark stars I once stuck on her mother’s and aunt’s bedroom ceiling. She told me there are different ones you can choose. So we read a story and then stared up into the universe. It felt a little bit awesome, actually.

Back here on Earth, since we’ve had a few days above freezing, the snowbanks are slowly starting to shrink down. During the dog walk I spied this little blue valentine made of sky, peeking through a wedge of snow in the fork of a tree trunk.

A doe has been returning repeatedly to lie in a bare patch of ground where the snow has melted. Or perhaps it is her body heat which has created this area. It’s hard to believe in not too many months there will be dancing fawns again.

Little Rudi stares out the upstairs window, waiting, nose twitching, perhaps in anticipation of verdant aromas emerging, when it all will begin again…. hopefully soon……

~*~