pass it on.

Due to financial circumstances outside of our control, it's been a pretty stressful month. We think we know what's going on, then we don't, then we think things are certain again, then they're not. I know I'm being vague right now, but trust me, it's the best way for me to be about the whole thing. Ultimately - money is tight and nerves are frayed. In an attempt to not go completely looney toons on everybody, I've been focusing on shit I can control, like making sure the house is clean and dinner is tasty, that I get lots of sewing done and get new items listed in my etsy shop, that I save as much money as possible by making our laundry soap and putting on an extra pair of socks before running the heater, that Silas is bathed and clothed and fed. The important things.

This Winter has been long and weird and cold and has drained me of the energy to write very much. Predictably, I've turned inward and have taken more words in than I've put out. I've been reading A LOT and may as well share the random bits I've stumbled across.

Fat Sex: What Everyone Wants to Know but is Afraid to Ask by Amber Parker
"It took me a long time to realize that my partners were having sex with me in part because of the way my body looks, not in spite of the way my body looks. It sounds simple, I know, but when you spend your whole life being told that fat bodies are not sexy, it takes some time to realize that sexiness isn’t that simple. This understanding is not something that happens overnight for most of us. Hell, it can take years. But, the sooner you learn (yes, learn) to feel sexy just the way you are, the sooner you’ll be able to enjoy your sexuality more fully."

Co­lo­ni­al­ism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago by Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin
"We typically think of diseases in terms of how they threaten us personally. But they have their own stories. Diseases are born. They grow. They falter, and sometimes they die. In every case these changes happen for reasons.For decades nobody knew the reasons behind the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But it is now clear that the epidemic’s birth and crucial early growth happened during Africa’s colonial era, amid massive intrusion of new people and technology into a land where ancient ways still prevailed."

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power…Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

— President Theodore Roosevelt, 29 April 1938

Meet JAL's cafeteria-eating CEO by Kyung Lah
"That philosophy, that he's just like everyone else trying to make it through Japan's recession, is why he takes the city bus to work, eats in the cafeteria with his employees and strolls through the operations room at the airport. When the company looked to cut costs, he eliminated every single expensive perk of his job. He took away the corner office and chauffeur. Then he slashed his pay dramatically, so that in 2007 he made less than his pilots."

My Fat, Beautiful Body By Jenn Leyva
"'Body image' isn't really about the image of bodies. It's about the holistic relationships we have with our bodies. It's about how bodies look, how they move, what they feel like, and how we treat them. Even if we ignore semantics, conversations about body image almost always come down to health. Most conversations I've had about body image blame the media and advertising for exposing young girls to impossible standards in order to sell products. But more than selling products, these images drive people to unhealthy habits—crash diets, disordered eating, and sometimes even more dramatic actions like diet pills and self-harm."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you."

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

I don’t want to be a feminist anymore on Feministing
"I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of seeing someone writing something offensive, sexist, racist, ageist, ableist, somewhere online. I am tired of seeing those writings getting likes and lol’s, and SO TRUE’s. I am tired of being consumed by confusion and anger, typing, typing, typing and typing a seemingly endless response, including research, links and statistics, and then hesitate clicking “submit”. I am tired of knowing that I hesitate because I am afraid of the flood of responses that will come. I am tired of knowing that I will be bombarded with lighten up’s, stop whining’s and get a sense of humor’s for so long, that I will start to wonder if I am indeed wound up too tight, a nagger and humorless."

Crackpots Do Not Make Good Messengers by Kevin Drum
"This isn't the biography of a person with one or two unusual hobbyhorses. It's not something you can pretend doesn't matter. This is Grade A crankery, and all by itself it's reason enough to want nothing to do with Ron Paul. But of course, that's not all. As we've all known for the past four years, you can layer on top of this Paul's now infamous newsletters, in which he condoned a political strategy consciously designed to appeal to the worst strains of American homophobia, racial paranoia, militia hucksterism, and new-world-order fear-mongering. And on top of that, you can layer on the fact that Paul is plainly lying about these newsletters and his role in them."

3 is the magic number

I really don't know why, but our family doesn't eat much chicken. In my quest to try out 25 new recipes in 2012, I decided this is something we should remedy. I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks for poached chicken that uses the 3lb bags of frozen boneless/skinless breasts (which are $6-$10ish, depending on where you shop and what brand you buy) that was simple and straight-forward:

Set the (thawed) breasts flat in a large crockpot and cover with 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock. Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours. Once cooked, the breasts should shred easily in your hands. Divide evenly into 3 freezer bags and freeze! Make sure you write the date on the bags and use them within 2 months (I used mine in 3 weeks, because I was eager to try out some new chicken recipes).

Week 1: Chicken Sour Cream Enchilada Casserole (in the crockpot)

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 can green enchilada sauce (24-32oz)
• 10-12 soft corn tortillas, cut into strips
  
• 1lb shredded chicken breast
• 2 cups grated colbyjack cheese and/or sharp cheddar
  
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 can sliced olives
  

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat, then add the onion and cook, stirring often until soft, about 5 minutes. Pour about 1/2 cup of the enchilada sauce into the crockpot and tilt to spread around. In layers add 1/4 of the tortilla strips, sauce, sauteed onion, chicken, and cheese. Repeat layers twice, ending with cheese on the top. Spoon the sour cream all over in small dollops and spread gently with a spatula, not disturbing the layers. Sprinkle sliced olives on top, cover, and cook on LOW for 3-4 hours. Serve with rice.

Week 2: BBQ Chicken Calzones

• 1 can refrigerated pizza crust
• 1/4 cup bbq sauce
• 1lb shredded chicken breast
• 1/2 green pepper, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
  
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella or cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 425. Heat a little bit of vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high and saute green peppers and onions until soft. In a bowl mix shredded chicken, bbq sauce, and veggies. Lightly spray cookie sheet with cooking spray. Unroll dough; place on cookie sheet. Starting at center, press out dough into 14x10-inch rectangle; cut into 4 rectangles. Spoon 1/4 chicken mixture onto half of each rectangle, spreading to within 1/2 inch of edge. Sprinkle cheese over each. Fold dough in half over filling; press edges firmly with fork to seal. Prick tops with fork. Bake 10 to 13 minutes or until light brown.

Week 3: Honey Chicken Salad

• 1lb shredded chicken breast
• mayo
• honey mustard
• honey
• 2 ribs celery, chopped finely
  
• walnuts, pecans, or dried cranberries (optional. I didn't use them.)

Combine ingredients, adding a little of each and mixing until you reach the desire flavor and consistency. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve in sandwiches (we used Trader Joe's Cracked-Wheat Sourdough, which I toasted lightly) with lettuce.

As seems to be the theme so far with all new recipes I've tried this year, every member of the family LOVED them. What? So in summation: 3 lbs frozen chicken breasts made 3 delicious meals for a family of 3.

context... texture... text books?

I think that at the core of our beings, we are who we are. My experience doesn't define me, it gives me context.

From what I can tell, many parents around me seem preoccupied with "training their children up" to be the best they can be, whatever that means to the parents (or is expected of them by society). That can be relating to anything from raising them in your chosen or culturally inherited religion, to public or private education based on your own experiences with either/both, to extracurricular activities like sports, or into a specific career path (your dad was a doctor, his dad was a doctor, by god, you shall be a doctor!). The flaw I see in this is that your kid is already them. They're here, they're living their life... RIGHT NOW. They have their likes and dislikes, interests and passions, temperament, personality... Those things will change and shift over time, as they grow older and learn new things. Who we are is fluid. Our experience does not create or define us... it is simply the context in which we live and grow.

I know families across the board, as far as parenting-style and educational philosophies go. In my estimation, as long as every adult in that family is truly and fully invested in meeting they and their children's needs (as well as each others) as much as is possible, people are doing the best they can in the context of their own experience.

I am who I am. Always have been, always will be.

I have a close friend who is currently in the process of moving one town over from where she's been living for the last 2 years. Her kids are not yet school-aged, so her first concern was what the schools are like where she's moving to. She's heard they're not great and isn't quite sure what path to take regarding homeschooling, private-schooling, public-schooling, etc etc etc. She ended her latest e-mail to me with this, "If the school system in [redacted] truly does end up being as horrible as I've heard, then we'll tackle that issue when we come to it." This is my own educational philosophy in a nut-shell. I think the entire approach to school or no school and anywhere in-between needs to be "We'll tackle that when we get to it." and alternately, "we'll see what works best for our particular children."

That's what parenting is; doing the best you can to meet the needs of your specific children - Not some hypothetical children, not some possible future version of your children - Your actual existing children, who they are and what they need right now. There is no ONE RIGHT WAY TO DO THINGS.

Some kids do alright in public school and are happy and nurtured and it works for them and the whole family (granted, I do think the system is inefficient at meeting the needs of children, but I've seen exceptions to every rule), many kids do best at home (that could mean anything from radical unschooling to a dry-erase board in the dining room and worksheets spread out on the table), many kids do well in Waldorf, Montessori, or Sudbury schools, some kids do well in religious schooling (I did baptist private school for a year and had several friends who attended Catholic school), some teens are ready for community college at 16 and some don't need college in their lives at all, some travel and some work and some take classes or lessons and some read all day... Honestly, the vast majority of kids/teens/grown-ups I've known in my life haven't chosen one path and stuck to it unconditionally; they've done a couple years of this and a couple years of that and tried out other environments and new experiences.

Kids know what they need. It is our job to help meet those needs (including the need for autonomy, which often gets lost in discussions of "traditional" parenting) and facilitate their growth. We can't turn them into something they're not or "fix" them, but we do help provide the experiences that give their life context. Any specific path, as long as it is forged in sincere and unconditional love, isn't going to make or break our child. They are who they are. The best we can do is to honor that and do what's best for all involved at the current time.