Some kind of incredible...

Something happened today that made me so proud...of myself and yet at the same time completely sad for myself too...

I ate a blueberry muffin from the cafeteria for lunch...the incredible part...there was ginger in it! Ginger in a blueberry. Lets just pause for a moment at the brilliance of who had the brilliance to think of it...

ok, now to my own 'lesser' brilliance...I recognized it was ginger!!! hurray me...this means I have been cooking with spices and can now taste spices in complex baking...hurray, hurray, hurray...I could never do this before, my sisters would talk 'ingredient' talk and even my friends do it too and I usually just sit there, wondering, how in the world can you taste 2 teaspoons of salt in something? really? is that seriously something we need to hash out in conversation? but today, today i realized that yes, ingredient talk is real. It has meaning, as in, I want to make those muffins too. And how can I make my muffins as exciting as ginger-blueberry was? all this because I tasted ginger and recognized it for what it was...GINGER...the spice of...excitement?... this could impact my life...forever...

and then I sadly noted that it took me 28 long years to taste the ingredients of something...I have missed out on the essence of food talk for too long... I want in on the ingredient conversations...this language I have yet to master...but slowly one spice at a time I am going to taste the rainbow as it were...

and on an equally low note...last week i counted kraft dinner as my home cooked meal...true confessions people...I will do better this week...

ginger has inspired me...

Lenten

So what are your lenten activities? Oh the pressure to figure out those lent-ils...lent, lent lenty, lent lent...LENT
I did learn something new this lent...that during the lenten season we are not supposed to be aiming for easter, but observing a period of ...preparation...I have always chided myself into lent by reminding myself that Jesus gave His life, so i must give up or take on something in rememberance of that...'keep my eye on the prize' and all that...missing the point comepletely...that during Lent no one knew what was coming next...on Palm Sunday people weren't thinking about forgivness and death, they were thinking about world domination and a young man taking on the religious rulers and political powers; leading a revolution for a new and glorious establishment for the jewish nation. They were still searching for answers, they were clutching at a promise and they thought they knew what it should look like.
But lent is the unknown, lent is the waiting, lent is shadows, lent is being told to have faith to move a mountain but not understanding what mountains have to do with figs...(Mk 11:20-26)..or faith...
mostly, this go round I have been wondering why I try to nail (no pun intended, but accidental brilliance is allowed right?) God down all the time...I want Easter, but God makes me go through Lent...I guess thats where I struggle. I want everything gift wrapped, express delivery, made to fit, the culmination of every promise. Resolution people! I want the 'it is finished' parts to happen right now. but first there is lent...so this time

I'm waiting.

Don't get excited for me...yet...

here's the thing, I am always the last person to catch on to anything. I am the last one to get the joke. I am the last one to clue in. and I am definitely always, and i do mean always the last person to get excited about things...I really do need to adjust, get used to the idea, feel comfortable and then, only then, do I start feeling even slightly able to let myself get excited.
I got accepted to university of lethbridge for nursing...do not get excited for me...although it has been over a week, I am still at adjustment phase. I haven't even started getting used to the idea...who knows when I'll get excited...
I am a turtle, hiding inside my little shell thinking, I am a turtle.

Dear Grandma,

Grandma the past few weeks I've missed you. I missed you and thought about your cooking while eating Aunt Netty's homemade buns and sweet and sour meatballs. I thought of you as I worried about family health problems from here to Indonesia. I knew you would worry with me and that was somehow comforting; so i kept worrying and pretending you were worrying with me. I thought of you as I cooked my first batch of chili and how much better it would taste if you had helped me. I thought of how you would give the other person the biggest piece of dessert when I had to share mine the other day. And in honor of you i did give the other person the bigger piece. I even thought of you when i was taking a walk, just randomly, out of the blue...cause that's how much I miss you. Tonight i got a call from Grandpa, he was the first to call and congratulate me on university stuff. And I thought of you, he would have never called me before cause you would have. But here we are missing you and he called me right away. that made me think of you too... but your a happy thought, even when I'm missing you.

Rituals

Every morning i get up. Yes, most people have this ritual too...and my mornings probably start out with similarities to any other persons' day. I trudge to the kettle and boil water for coffee and fix up my french press. I make breakfast as i wait for the coffee to brew and when i am satisfied that i don't need to wait any longer, I trudge to the couch and settle everything around me. Once everything is in it's place, the first sip of goodness has been had, I turn on my laptop and wait for it to boot. Then comes the actual ritual. I check for email. It's not because I am trying to keep up with corresponding or getting a head start on paying bills or managing my life. I am checking for a message from my Dad. And usually about 3 times a week, sometimes every morning I just sit there with my coffee and read a note from my Paps. It's not usually spectacular or even notably brilliant. But it's how I communicate with my Dad. This past week I realized that me and him have been 'talking' like this for about 10 years. No matter where he is in the world, no matter how far away, if he is around internet I will usually get either a generic email, family email, or even personal note from my Dad. This week he was away from the internet, visiting churches in a far away country, and my mornings were missing something. Even the generic 'read this article' emails were not there for my morning ritual. I got alittle bit sad.
But it made me think, about what it means to have a communicator like I do, for a Father. I don't write as often as he does. There have been times I have been silent, or exaggerated, not to mention all the venting emails of death i have written. I have been frustrated sometimes by thinking that we aren't cliquing. That he doesn't understand how important all the problems that I am writing about really are. That he doesn't understand me. And I can make him cry so easily when I am careless with my words, cause I know he worries for me always...
He writes, and writes and writes and writes...and when he can't write or is especially busy, I realize how much i take for granted and how truly special it is that even though we aren't in the same time zone we can still be on the same page. Whether he understands me or not, he writes...he's my Dad, and that's our language. Knowing I am in his daily routine, comforts me. So this is to commemorate 10 or so years of Father daughter communication...or mostly Father communication...Dad, thanks so much for being a ritual person, I like this ritual and hope we keep it up...

Far away is just not good enough....

I worry. I think. I analyze. Usually after thinking extensively about a something and considering all the possible negative outcomes that a something could have, I analyze my role in each scenario and that's when all my mental exercise and brilliance usually turns to anxiety. I am a dreamer i guess, except while other 'dreamers' are contemplating promising future's I dream about disaster. This problem gets amplified when I am given time. Time to think, that is. When the something isn't going to happen for a while, the mental disaster usually reaches catastrophic levels that need a superhero's intervention. Someone who can swoop in and beat the giant dread into oblivion, crushing it and making headlines doing it. A hero, saving the day until the evil, looming, specter of anxiety thinks up a new villain.
In reality, what happens is the ginormous problem usually gets laughed at by my family as they wonder, "Is that what you have been wasting your time thinking about all this time?" And so with that, their humor super power lightens my mental load and crushes evil anxiety to shreds. And we break into singing and dancing celebrating the fact that anxiety has once again been overcome as we move on with the tasks at hand. The mountains have been turned into mole hills, not only that, the moles have come out to play with us and they are talking moles, like in Narnia. We are a singing with moles, a truly happy place. The end.
Sometimes, no one is here to laugh at anxiety though. They are all far, far away...and a little worry will be born. And it grows. And pretty soon it is a universal blight and the sky is falling and world is coming to an end. All that is left to do is hide under the table and pray for a miracle. (Tables are like impregnable fortresses, they are safety zones, anxiety can't get to you under a table. But they're heavy so you can't exactly carry on with normal life under a table...which is why anxiety is such a major problem.)
The only worse thing than actually getting to the place where all I can do is find a table and crawl under, is when I resort to laughing at myself to get back out from under the table to face life. A sick little depreciating chuckle that sounds more like a hyena, or a dying frog. This may not conquer the heinous anxiety, but I have to at least learn to manage my fears, however humiliating the process may be...because someone once said, "a life lived in fear is a life half lived"... another person said, "perfect love casts out fear", I get frustrated when people say these kinds of things, it worry's me, which is maybe not the effect they were looking for...which brings me back to my semi constant state of mind lately...M-A-R-I-A and I am an anxiety addict...

Blessings...

the inaugural tea for my christmas tea pot...I brought it to bible study and we had tea together...

Lent is in full swing, winter is slowly giving way here in winnipeg to let some wonderful wet and sunny days in, and midterms are over. Yes, I am officially done my 3 midterms and knowing the marks of 2 of them so fast has alleviated some of my after test anxiety. truly blessed by my physio and stats profs marking things so fast. I only took my physio midterm yesterday and today at lab my prof said we could email him for our marks. Today's lab involved taking our pulse and blood pressure which seemed to suddenly rise as soon as he said the tests were marked. So, yes i emailed and then literally sat there waiting for the message to come back telling my mark...now that i know i understood the first 2 months of class I can gear up for the final in 4 weeks. Which I can't think about right now or I will get anxious again...
Cooking is progressing, I think i have nailed curry so should maybe try some other foods, I am actually finding that cooking is a great distraction for nerves as well as a good study break...kinda weird that I look forward to chopping tomatoes and onions and garlic and ginger. I like chopping everything into their little piles and then putting the piles in one by one...I am working my way up to a stir fry except I am so terrified that i will be a lame, western, imitation stir fry cooker intead of something that tastes alittle like indonesian stir fry...I am so sad I didn't learn to cook some indonesian style dishes, back when i had the chance...
Anyway, so i have been craving muffins lately, and my roomate informs me that she is going to make banana muffins this weekend and also that she is going to make me a batch too...where did that come from. I really have no idea. She is hilariously blunt and usually just tells me what she thinks. So when she informed me that she was making me muffins, i just went with it. And when i told her that I would mention that she made the muffins when i post a picture, she just smiled and said, well if the people who read your blog know much about you, just posting a picture of food won't make them think that you made them anyway...Oh, Courtney (my roomie), it is so true, I don't cook, and everyone knows. But she made me muffins...I am truly blessed. God bless you Courtney!:)
I did cook the curry and tomatoe soup though so there!
I am so blessed by having great people around me, even in the anxiety of school which gets me rattled far too easily, I have been encouraged and blessed. I hope that the blessing cup spills over for you too, in the little moments that string together your day...blessings

Fukumotto Killer camp

I went to 'boot camp' with some of my friends, who have been going once a week for the past 2 months. I went yesterday for the first time, and today I am dead. I hurt everywhere. My head hurts, my feet hurt, my knee is bruised, my shoulder blades are like knives in my back and my bum hurts...well actually mostly my bum hurts, but even my eye's hurt...they want to cry everytime I sit down...fuku killer camp...I am going again next week...maybe I will rise out of the ashes of this experience yet...right now I am an old woman and I need to climb a flight of stares to get to my class tonight...I feel my eye's tearing up at the thought...climbing stairs right now feels like the most wicked kind of torture ever imaginable...I hate stairs, I hate fuku-motto craziness, I am a mound of beaten flesh right now instead of the woman I usually am...