When in doubt, bake.

I get so antsy sometimes. And in a life long ago, I would tamper the antsy-ness with baking. Which then turned into cooking after I got smart and purchased some out of this world cooking books. Discovering recipes that were extremely challenging and had lists of ingredients I never heard of before, were an utter joy. A challenge to accept. A reason to drink a bottle of wine and dance around the kitchen!

Anyway, my loving man has found a new favorite thing - cooking. You would have never guessed it. I would have never guessed it! But coming home and busting out his defrosted protein and whipping up an accompanying veggie is his new favorite thing. As such, mine too! But then comes a time when the itch starts to kick in again and all I want to do is cook. I want to chop and wiggle my hips and stir and mix, and sting my eyes with the scent of onion and hydrate my face with steam from beneath the lid. I want to YouTube "how to slice fennel" and wait not-so-patiently as the seeds brown in the oil. I want to stir six times, let sit, spin twice, add one egg, stir, add one more. It's so fun! Following the directions, reading along with Senora Child, following her train of thought and ending up with a concoction I never imagined I could produce. It's the greatest feeling of accomplishment. Having something tangible, (tastable even!) to show after your efforts. And you learn so much. You start to build a relationship with food. Understand how it all works together - the flavors, the science, the art of mixing, cooking, boiling, basting.

So, tonight, I got to cook. And it just brings back all the feel goods. And I won't stop. Dinner is in the oven and I'm starting on the dessert - most of which will go to work tomorrow to avoid the over-indulging of pumpkin and sugar-infused cream cheese. But tonight, we bake. We make. We dance and we drink. Our wedding certainly doesn't boast the budget for foodies, but hopefully our guests will pick up on how much we like to indulge our senses through food and beverages. We spend hours, probably a product of no kids, enjoying, discussing and making noises indicative of how much we love the food! It brings people together and is incredibly fun to share.

With some free time coming up for the weekend and only so many miles a girl can hike, I am pretty confident I'll be fulfilling my desire for cooking and baking. Which is a win because last year I had planned on delivering baskets of goodies to friends and neighbors on accord of the holiday, but ran out of time. This will be on the tails of Thanksgiving, but at least the peeps at work won't mind :)

Indira Gandhi

Never shake hands with a clenched fist.

Francis of Assisi

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

watch: be together. not the same.

I am seeking Refuge. I am seeking Independence.

This could fall on my shoulders and I may look past it years from now and regret how I handled the situation, but like all other times in my life when I didn't know what to do or where to go, I took what I knew at the time, made the best decision I could based off that information, and powered forward. It doesn't hurt to check in now and again to reevaluate where you are and make sure you're on the path you intend to be and can be proud of, but at a certain point, when you're just getting started, sometimes you just have to pick up your bags and go - because the alternative, staying still, in the moment, in the head-space, is more dangerous and detrimental than the move. I have always felt that if you weren't moving forward you were moving backward, and any direction is better than no direction.

Or, as my cousin once told me, always have a plan. It doesn't matter if you stick to the plan, but you always have to have a plan.

Because if you don't, you're going to get left behind. And I'm not talking about racing the world, society or anyone or anything else. I'm talking about yourself. You owe it to yourself to grow, to develop, to change, to pursue a direction. Of any kind. Just move. Move! If you sit, you will become complacent. Side note: I do believe that you can be content and at peace. You don't have to be restless and carefree. We can break this down to moving mentally and emotionally while staying in place. Our brains and our souls need to grow. We must experience and stretch, be tested and feel trials. It's the only way to go. We owe it to our ever-learning selves to do it.

Stay curious. Keep breathing. Keep thinking, analyzing, objecting, giving in, loving. Challenging. The world goes on and we must move with it. It may be painful but again, it's the only way!

I find myself in a place where I can no longer stand to stay where I am at. I knew this was coming a long time ago because there way no way for me to maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay where I was at. I have spent weeks and months widdling away restful, peaceful hours trying to determine which direction to go. How. And why. And if it was okay. Seeking permission from the Universe to progress in the direction I felt drawn to. Challenging my thoughts and having honest conversations if this is the path that's best to take. You know what I found out? I don't know. I don't. I don't have the slightest clue that I'm doing the right thing, but like I said it's something. And all the other scenarios I have been trying on for size, have still brought me back to this place. So, don't ignore a blatant answer when it lies before you. If you keep ending up at the beginning of a path no matter how hard you object to it, you should probably go down that path. You can probably rest assured that's the path you're meant to travel. So, get to it. Start going. And if it changes, well then it does. But at least we have a forward motion!

Zig Ziglar

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily.

Battery issues, part deux.

This time it's just that my battery is threatening to take my mac to nap land. And I'm already down at the shop with no charger, but I want to get these few quotes preserved before it's too late and they go in the trash with the rest of them. The hazards of being a member of a daily quote calendar.

"To hide the key to your heart is to risk forgetting where you placed it."
- Timothy Childers

"The giving of love is an education in itself."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He was a doctor! He was a doctor. It's not that I never knew that, but I suppose I hadn't really ever given it much thought. And it's quite the achievement. I wonder what kind of doctor he was. My thoughts are clearly unable to go much deeper this early in the morning, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

A monthly dose of Falcor.

I. Love. This. Dog.

Become What You Are

Purchased this book from a list. Tyler Knott's book was on the list. And the title of the list is absolutely right up my alley.

5 Introspective Books On Life, Love, And Finding Your Way That Every Old Soul Should Read

The first paragraph chapter, was slightly overwhelming with it's talk on the paradox of self-denial. There were a lot of words like self-renunciation, exaltation of consciousness, insight degenerating into another precept, etc. It's chock full of sentences that you have to read over and over, or you can skim and find yourself at the end of the chapter not with the ability to say "this is what the book said" but more, "this is how it made me feel". You follow? 

Anyway, the second chapter, which is feeling like the actual introduction, was hands down, rock my world, soup for the soul, the warm hand that affirmed why I purchased the book in the middle of holiday shopping when I spent $800 more than I had intended to. Fuck. 

So, here it is. Because it's beautiful and I wanted to share it with you. 

Become What You Are

It has been said that the highest detachment, or, in the words of Chuang-tzu: "The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep." Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of things pleasant nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant. To do this is to move in time with life, to e in perfect accord with its changing music, and this is Enlightenment. In short, it is to be detached from both past and future and to live in the eternal Now. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists for ever. This movement and change has been called Tao by the Chinese, yet in fact there is no movement, for the moment is the only reality and there is nothing beside it in relation to which it can be said to move. Thus it can be called at once the eternally moving and eternally resting. 

How can we bring ourselves into accord with this Tao? A sage has said that if we try to accord with it, we shall get away from it. But he was not altogether right. For the curious thing is that you cannot get out of accord with it even if you want to; though your thoughts may run into the past or the future they cannot escape the present moment. However far back or forward the try to escape they can never be separated from the moment, for those thoughts are themselves of the moment; just as much as anything else they partake of, and, indeed, are the movement of life which is Tao. You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now - otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is and you are it. So become what you are. 

Te V. Smith

No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.

I like strong pickles, but not the funk house kind, alright? I'll toss um out.

Be Vulnerable. Explore. Appreciate.

One heck of an impactful clip. A story I won't spoil in my own words. It's worth the 6:43 you'll spending watching. And the extra 10 when you go back again to hear certain parts of his story because they move you and inspire you and make you want to be a BIGGER, deeper you.  

I am fortunate enough not to have a terminal disease, but where it forced this man to go, is the same reason I love to travel. To explore. Adventure. Because we live in a beautiful place and we are such a tiny piece of it. To spend time fussing about the unimportant things is laughable when we could spend our time enjoying it. Appreciating it. And sharing our love for all the living things. Give yourself a quickened heartbeat this morning and listen to his story.

"I want to be vulnerable in life. I want to be in places that scare me and be in situations that scare me, and bring me closer to the things I love."

"...give up control on the beach, I saw my thank you's and step into the ocean knowing that I am one small little droplet."

"I see the magic of life. I see the things that are truly meaningful to me. The experience that makes me a human being. That makes me alive."

"To me it's like going to another Universe. Being an explorer and a guest. A temporary guest, where you get to say hello, and maybe observe a thing or two." 



The Coast from NRS Films on Vimeo.