new blog

My life is, once again, in a groundless state. I'm listening to Anais Mitchell and drinking a lot of tea. I'm starting a new blog, jenniehyatt.blogspot.com check me out.

Your Fonder Heart (Anais Mitchell)
come out, come on, come outside
don’t you hide your handsome face from me
I want to see you half-lit in the half-light
laughing with the whites of your dark eyes
shining
darkly

way over yonder I’m waiting and wondering
wither your fonder heart lies

come out, the streets are breathing
heaving green to red to green
come with your nicotine and wine
tambourine keeping time
come and find me in the evening

way over yonder I’m waiting and wondering
wither your fonder heart lies
way over yonder I’m waiting and wondering
whether your fonder heart lies

come out, come inspired
you will not come to harm
if I cannot take you for a liar or a lover
I’ll take you for my brother in arms

way over yonder I’m waiting and wondering
wither you fonder heart lies
way over yonder I’m waiting and wondering
whether your fonder heart lies

Home from Retreat

I'm home from retreat. I'm back. My body is back, my mind is still in swirly wanderland.

I really like being on retreat. I like meditating, I like ringing the big gong, I like staying up late giggling with my coworkers. I like having meals made for me, and the food was mostly great. A few too many hardboiled eggs for protein, and I'm clearly more addicted to kombucha to keep me ungassy, but well, so it goes.

Meditation retreat is such a precious gift. I can't believe I have a job where I get to go on retreat for a week once a year. A gift! It is so incredible seeing the students at the end of a 3 year graduate training program that is so much more than just training to work with others. Getting to see and hear students speaking their truth in so many ways was amazing, powerful, and inspiring.

There was a lot of pain this week--my knees are unhappy, my back is tight, my heart is aching. And I just want to be held. And right now I am alone. My best girl dol in her amazing thoughtfulness invited my roomie, Mr. Guy, over to play tonight, so they could hang out, and I could have some decompression time. I considered going over there to hang, but I'm not ready for lots of people yet. I'm unpacking, I'm decompressing, I'm reflecting and trying not to process too much.

When I got back to cell phone range, I found many messages from friends--I will call you tomorrow, as I'm not quite ready to make calls.

Sincerely yours,

The Outrageous Buddha Buzzard

countdown to crazytown

I'm approaching the final countdown to my departure for a week of retreat. This week I've been doing an excellent job of being really, really neurotic. There has been a whole week of pre-travel freakout going on. For other hilarious tales of pre-travel freakout, see related blogs.

It seems that when I travel, I return to my roots. I return to the my early socialization, the messages I received from early, early on: the world is a scary and dangerous place, and you better watch out because you never know when a TV might explode. The way this paranoia manifests in me is wanting to make sure everything is in order before I leave "just in case I don't come back". You know, in case I leave this mortal coil while traveling.

There's really no reason to think that going away for a weekend or a week is any more dangerous than my daily commute to work, and yet I have made lists and lists of things I want to do before I go: cleaning, purchasing things that I maybe might need (like batteries for that 3rd flashlight), ensuring I have twelve kinds of snacks (for a 2 hour drive), can I pay all the bills and mail all the things I need to mail, and get to my safe deposit box and take those clothes to the salvation army and plan the garden I'm going to dig, and make all those calls I want to make, and write my will and write love letters and write the story of my life all before I go away for a week?

And tonight I was able to let go for a few hours and read a book while I ate dinner, and kept on reading after I finished dinner. And ok, maybe I got obsessive and finished the book I was reading so that it would be one more thing I finished "just in case". Tonight I created an "in case of emergency" contact list. I don't expect that anything will happen to me ever, but well, better to have a short list of the important people in my life that don't necessarily have each others' contact information. I'm not distributing the list widely, because, really I don't need to freak out a lot of people by sending them my crazytown list for no really good reason.

And if something terrible were to befall me, I'm putting this out there for the world to know: I'm an organ donor, and I don't want to be in any prolonged vegetative state. Give away my useful bits & pieces (guts, etc) to others who might find them useful, and let me go. Don't bury me in a metal box--a plain old wood thing, preferably sustainably harvested. At this time, I don't have all the documents I keep promising Dad I'll get together...I really will someday soon do those more official "just in case" documents. In the meantime, this will have to do.

Sorry for being all melodramatic and nutty, but, well, you all know me, and this is what I do. It is my pre-travel freakout, countdown to crazytown (or maybe I'm already in crazytown!)

looking ahead

I'm doing a lot of looking ahead, planning, trying to wrangle some control over my life.

I had a delicious and crazy fun Saturday night with my best girl dol and other friends. I love that girl! I found out she has a dream to go to Paris for her upcoming big birthday in November, and I agreed on the spot to go with her. The last time I was in Paris (OK, the only time I've been to Paris) I was there for 12 hours, and saw all the major everything in a crazy rushed way. The idea of going back to Paris 10 years later...oh la la! And I woke up the morning with a word in my head "morocco". What If after the Paris birthday trip, I went to Morocco?

On the shorter travelbug news, I leave on Saturday for a week. I'll be going for the 4th year in a row to a week-long retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center. I'm feeling pretty neutral about it this year. I'm looking forward to being up at the land and spending time with the students, but it is always a lot of work, and I'm usually left feeling pretty exhausted at the end.

I'm curious to see how the next few weeks will go...I'm pretty booked for the next month with a lot of travel plans. I'm gone to SMC March 22-29, back for a week, then back to SMC for 2 days (April 6-7) to set up a retreat, then back for a week, then off to Texas April 12-14 for the Doug-n-Susie wedding-o-rama, then back for a few days, then a giant cooking fest for Passover on the 19th, then an all day work meeting on the 20th. Then likely going back to SMC that week or that following weekend to visit, then going to SMC one more time to take it all down on May 7. Seriously, my first completely un-scheduled weekend is May 3-4! I think that is good, because the following weekend is graduation! I forget every spring is like this. The difference this year is no baby watch...and that I will really miss :(

hard week

This has been a difficult week in lots of dimensions, personally and professionally. I had a hard time adjusting to springing forward an hour with the end (or is it beginning) of daylight savings time. My sleep cycle has been off this week, leaving me really tired. Both work and personal life have been very roller-coastery this week; a lot of ups and downs. I'm left today feeling "what am I doing with my life?!" I want to be of benefit to others, and yet I'm having a hard time seeing how I'm doing that in my job these days. There were some good things in my job this week, including some meetings that I thought would be depressing turning out to be good, but after several unexpected depressing (to me) meetings, I'm left feeling confused. I want to be happy, and I want people in my life to be happy. Yet I find that significant people in my life aren't feeling good, and I'm feeling pretty helpless. I have multiple people in my life that I haven't found time to call back and I'm really sad that I keep doing this.

Blah.

On another note, I've done a great job of spending less than my weekly budget this week, so I'm proud of me for that :) Those extra pennies are being saved up for things I want to do...including travel and therapy! :)

Pumpkin, Chickpea, and Banana Curry

Tonight I made a lovely curry. I got the recipe from theppk.com there were some things I modified and comments I have to add, so if you want the original recipe go to the post punk kitchen.

Pumpkin, Chickpea, & Banana curry
prep time: 20-25 minutes | cooking time: 30min-1 hour | makes 4-6 servings

Equipment:
large pot with lid

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander (I forgot to add this, and it was fine without)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/4 lbs pumpkin, peeled,seeded and cubed (about 2 ½ cups) (you can also use yams or sweet potato or other winter squash)
1 tablespoon hot curry paste (I used 1.5T thai green curry, and found it to be so spicy that I added a can of coconut milk after eating my first bowl)
2 ripe tomatoes, chopped (I substituted a 14oz can of diced tomatoes)
1 1/4 cups vegetable stock (I omitted and instead used the liquid from the can of chickpeas)
1 3/4 cups canned chick-peas, drained (see above, I drained, but used the liquid in lieu of veggie stock and used the whole can of chickpeas)
1 large banana, peeled, sliced 1" thick (could omit, could also use a plaintain)
optional:
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro or parsley (yay for cilantro!)
1/2 cup pine nuts, to garnish (I omitted)
1 can coconut milk

Directions
1. Heat 2 tbls. of the oil in a saucepan, add the onion, garlic, ginger and ground spices, and fry over a medium heat for 5-6 mins until the onion is lightly browned.
2. Add the can of tomatoes and liquid from the chickpeas to the onion mixture, and bring to the boil, simmering gently for 15 mins. (I'm not sure why this is 15 min...seems worth a try to reduce the time, or just bring to a boil and proceed to next step)
3. Add the pumpkin, curry paste, and chickpeas to the tomato sauce, cover and cook for 20 mins, or until the pumpkin is tender.
(At this time, if you are making rice, start that going!)
5. Five mins before the end of the cooking time, stir in the banana, and/or the coconut milk, if using.

Stir in the optional chopped cilantro or parsley, and sprinkle the pine nuts over the top.
Serve immediately. Eat served over rice, couscous, or just by its awesome curry self.


Note: the original recipe calls for mixing the curry paste directly with the pumpkin in a bowl, and then frying the curry paste coated pumpkin in a skillet--this was a disastrous idea, and I'm still trying to get the vaporized curry out of my lungs. I don't see any reason to torture self or others with curry vapor, thus my suggestion of adding un-fried pumpkin and curry paste directly to the tomato/onion mixture.

money

For the last week or so, I've been thinking a lot about money. Money is a resource that I have to use as I want, and I frequently forget that it is MY resource and MY CHOICE how to use that resource. I've been feeling tight and controlled by money issues lately, and maybe some of that is legit since there was that whole ugly snafu with the evil former leeches living in my house. But I still have choices.

I got a great idea from my girl dol who said that she categorizes all food expenses together (groceries, eating out, even those cups of coffee she buys). And all the food expenses together have a budget--here's how much I spend a week. If I eat out a lot, I have less for groceries. If I buy a lot of fancy high-end items at the grocery store, I have less for going to get coffee out.

I've used Quicken since I was a freshman in college, and I love it. It is a tool my Dad encouraged me to use. It is great, because it is a way of tracking expenses, it can make graphs and charts and pull summaries of data for you. Even with this amazing tool at my disposal, I am terrible at budgeting. I hate it. I hate trying to track a bazillion little categories of expenditures in my head as I spend money. So I don't do it, and spend money mindlessly. So I took a look at the last few months and was SHOCKED to find out how much money I've been spending on food every month. I knew it was going to be high, but not that much.

So all the various things I've been saying I can't afford to do, or the things that I want to save for, etc. I have the choice to continue to spend haphazardly on food, or become more aware, more awake and choose to do something different. So I'm choosing to do something different and give myself a guideline of an amount I'd like to try not to exceed each week. I decided that my week starts Saturday morning, and ends Friday night. This helps split up weekend going out, and fits along with the work-week, too.

This week I did ok, especially since I didn't do this money figuring until part-way through the week. I went a little over, but not by much, and I feel good about the choices I made.

I debated a lot about putting actual numbers in here, and I'm not afraid to share that if people are interested. I decided not to, as a way to not get caught up. The real learning here is about choice and putting my resources where my values are.