Bittersweet

This morning, my little (or not so little) Zac climbed into bed with me with his book under one arm and his brother's new harmonica in the other. We snuggled under the "covies" as we call them, got comfortable and read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? I read it once, slowly, wanting the moment with him to last as long as possible. Then we read it again. He was done after the second round so he got off the bed, put his book back underneath one arm and harmonica in the other. As he started to leave my room, he stopped at the foot of my bed and played me a little tune. I smiled big at him which in turn made him smile. I loved that all I had to do was smile at him and it made him happy.

Then it hit me. This child of mine will not always be able to see my face. And I wondered: When he does loose his sight, what vision in his head, what memory of his mother's face will he keep?

At first, I thought to myself that I always want him to see me smiling. I want him to remember the happy face of his mother. Yeah that thought faded rather quickly. For me to be smiling 100% of the time would not only mean burning cheeks, it would be a farce. Besides, I don't want my child to remember a robot. I'm human, I have feelings and experience a variety of emotions. And I don't care if he remembers a face with crows feet or forehead wrinkles or a face without make-up either.

I want Zac to remember my face and how my eyes light up when I see him, his brother and his father; how my brow furrows slightly when I'm questioning something; the sorrow in my expression when I hear about death or destruction; the shape of my mouth when I laugh; the tears in my eyes... I want Zac to think of my face and internalize his mother's love.



I do hope for a cure for RP and in time for my son to benefit from it. Yet at the same time, I have to accept what reality might be for Zac. And it's bittersweet.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

We had a whirlwind of a week celebrating mine and Jadon's birthdays! My sister and her little man Owen came to see us from Arizona. We had a lot of fun spending time together, shopping, swimming and just hanging out. On Wednesday we took Jadon and Owen to the Mormon Battalion Visitors' Center in Old Town.


It is a historic site that was remodeled not too long ago. There is a really cool presentation and interactive museum. The best part is that it is free so I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting San Diego. Or even if you already live here but haven't visited this place yet, go!

Thank you Julie for letting me "borrow" these pictures from your blog. The card reader for my camera is missing and just in time for so many September events {ie; back to school, birthdays, etc.}


Jadon has been to the museum like three times in the last three months so he knew all the answers to everything. Luckily the tourists found it charming. He was also the only kid on tour so he got to play with all the artifacts without any competition. Thank you Uncle Robe for playing with Zac so we didn't have to worry about potential melt-downs or mischief!


Love that face!


My beautiful sister and I. She's the greatest. I love her so much.

So I asked Jadon what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday our exchange went something like this:

Me: Jadon what kind of cake do you want for your birthday?
J: Orange.
Me: The color orange or the flavor orange?
J: Both.
Me: What kind of frosting do you want?
J: Chocolate

So I was off to the internet to search for an orange-flavored cake. Luckily I found one and modified it a bit. I made two thin layers of cake, each of which had an orange glaze infused throughout. Then I added a layer of chocolate chips between the cakes {which ended up melting together in the heat...yum!} Lastly, I frosted the darn thing with milk chocolate frosting. Boo. I would have opted for a dark chocolate fudge frosting but it was per Jadon's request. Thank you Mama W for letting me use your cake pan!


We nick-named the cake, Cavity Cake. Did I tell you that I might have a special talent for enhancing the richness and decadence in things already sweet? Dentists, you may thank me later.


Jadon blowing out his sparking candles that are not sparkling.


I am convinced the next nudist beach in San Diego will be named after my kids in homage to their distaste for clothing.



The day after my sister left, my mom and brother, Greg, came to visit us for the weekend. {Once again, I'm pilfering pictures from my brother...you know, because of the card reader thing...} My mom and I got to go out to dinner while all the boys stayed home. It was nice having that time with just my mom. Then, Jadon and Uncle Greg went to a movie Friday night then back to the hotel for a sleep-over that Jadon was very excited about.


Jadon and his friend M had a great time together playing in the waves, building castles and having mud fights.


Every time we go to the beach, Jadon gets upset because he'd rather swim in the freezing cold pool instead of the freezing cold ocean. And every time we get to the beach, he thoroughly enjoys himself. Then every time we leave, he throws a fit because he doesn't want to go. Sensing a pattern here???



Nothing beats family in paradise!

Vegetariana: Part Deux

Disclaimer: This post has no pictures. Boo. So I completely understand if you stop right here...

So just as I was blogging/rambling/writing about my vegetarian journey, I found this post written by a friend of mine.She and her family, along with another couple who are friends of theirs purchased land to start a city farm here in San Diego called Radio Acre Farms. Below is a portion of her journal entry entitled, The Roo:

"I don't know what the difference is between me and everyone else. I was vegan for a little while, and vegetarian for many years after that. It was never the thought of harming an animal that made me choose that lifestyle. I was always an environmentalist and interested in the ramifications of feed lots and hormones in our food. I became more of a health nut with the birth of our children and was always averse to feeding them hormone or pesticide laden foods. The thought of meat never really grossed me out or disgusted me - quite the contrary! I just thought if I was going to eat it, I shouldn't have a problem putting it's blood on my hands and that feed lots shouldn't exist the way they do today. We should live in better harmony with the earth, especially as our population keeps booming and more strain is created for resources. My (judgmental, I'll admit) pet peeve has always been people who say they'd never be able to slaughter an animal, yet they eat it on their dinner plate everyday without a thought. I didn't think it was necessary for my children to be raised vegetarian, but I always thought it was extremely important for them to understand the proper place where their food came from and to understand the sacrifice that comes with eating meat. It is not something that just is born into squared in the supermarket. I wanted them to understand the life that was lost and what it meant to have it on your plate, as well as the dirt that the carrots are pulled from and the water that goes into the lettuce. I am a food junkie, in the purest sense! Thoroughly obsessed with food from top to bottom, or dirt to table as it may seem.

"So on this fateful Monday morning in May I decided that it was time. I called our counterparts and told them to bring over their roo and I collected ours. They left, I was alone with our kids to do the dirty work. I was unsure of everyones reaction, so I made sure the kids were inside and preoccupied with some games. I pulled out my ipad and googled "how to process a chicken". I kept that thing by my side the whole time! Step by step, I followed the first blog I stumbled upon. I wish I had the site, I'll try to find it and post it in our links when I get time to search. I started with the roo they brought over, I couldn't bear to begin with the little guy we had hand raised. I hung him up by his feet and slit his throat, and watched his eyes ask me what I had done. I watched the life drain out of him and I won't lie, I cried like a baby. It took me a couple of hours to pluck and dress that first one and I dreaded moving on to number two. I lured the rooster over, the one that trusted me and came to my hand when I stuck it in the coop. I gently picked him up, stroked and soothed him and then strung him up by his feet and whispered to him that I was so sorry. I repeated the entire process, and this time I cried even more. I stuck them in the fridge and couldn't imagine eating chicken anytime in the near future.

"During the process, a few things really struck me and have grown in my thoughts. I am a foodie, as aforementioned. I am Christian, yet I am interested and educated in other religions. I work at a synagogue, we tutor many Muslim refugees and I have Muslim and Buddhist friends. Food seems to be an integral part of each of these religions except for Christianity, and I don't know why. Slaughtering this chicken gave me so much respect and appreciation of what it means to be kosher and/or halal. I was given the opportunity to thank the chicken for it's life, I felt the warm blood come out of it's throat. I fully understood and received the impact of what it meant to have the blood of that animal on my hands in order for me to put it on the dinner table. For that moment, the sheer importance and reasoning of these religious rituals made perfect and clear sense. It made me sad that in this all, Christians have no blessing they must impart upon their meat during slaughter. If you are spiritual at all, you would most definitely understand the importance of this, I think. It is important to feel the remorse and the sadness and death that must take place in order for you to eat that piece of meat. It really made me feel that God gave us these amazing animals, this amazing life of this creature and it is so bitter-sweet because the meat is delicious and nourishing yet you have to take that life away in order to gain the nourishment from it. It is very post-Garden-of-Eden-esque."

I know it's a bit lengthy but I found my friend's article to be very thought-provoking. As a believer in a religion that teaches that all living things were created spiritually before they were created temporally or physically, the connection my friend made between an animal's life being sacrificed to be on the dinner table makes sense to me. As a member of a Christian religion with a health code, my prayers of thanks and blessing before eating now have a deeper meaning as does my purpose in adhering to that health code. While I choose not to eat meat at all, eating the flesh "of beasts and of the fowls of the air," which is "to be used sparingly" sounds to me like the next best thing. All in all, I know I will be more mindful and grateful for the sacrifices made by individuals and animals alike to get sustenance from mother earth to the dinner table.

Vegetariana: Part One

I don't eat meat.



It's true. I became a vegetarian about 6 months ago. What on earth prompted you to do such a thing? I'm not entirely sure. I have a few hypotheses but I'm no scientist. All I know is that I gradually lost my taste for meat.

A little over two years ago, I had an epiphany. I decided to look at the wrapper of my granola bar because I wanted to know what exactly I was putting into my body. Okay, that's legit. Well, it turned out that I didn't know over half the ingredients. What exactly was I putting into my body? Eating food should not be rocket science. So I decided to eat whole foods as often as I could. Are you talking about that over-priced market in La Jolla that sells fresh edible flowers? What are you, some kind of tree-huggin' hippie? Ha! Sadly, no, not at all. Whole foods, defined by the source of champions, Wikipedia, would be:

"...foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added ingredients, such as sugar, salt, or fat. Examples of whole foods include unpolished grains; fruits and vegetables; unprocessed meat, poultry, and fish; and non-homogenized milk"

Okay, my mom would have a fit if I drank non-homogenized milk, so I don't. But I do consume organic dairy as often as I possibly can. Yeah, yeah but who cares if something is processed right, I mean, aren't there government regulations out there to ensure we don't eat stuff that could harm us. Do you really trust the government to have your back? Do you really think the government has YOU and your health in their best interest. Unless you are the sole financier of every congressional candidate's next campaign, no, no you don't matter to them. {Hey, I'm disillusioned, remember?}



So back to my story. I gradually lost my taste for meat. I started backing off red meat, so cows mostly. Then dark pork and chicken meat. Then it was chicken and finalmente, fish got the axe too. In all honesty, I think I lost my taste for it because I could taste all the additives and the way it was processed. Gross. And I think the only way I could tell is 1.) I already had avid taste buds to begin with (I'm a foodie for sure) and 2.) I was on this whole foods diet for over a year. It was at about the year mark I started "noticing" my meat tasted funny but tortured myself with it anyway. Finally I gave in and gave it up.



And there you have it. I wish I could say I'm a vegetarian for a noble reason like "I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint" or "I really, really love animals and disagree with the way they are raised to be slaughtered" but no, I just lost my taste for meat.



Believe it or not, the same thing happened to my Dad and he's been a veggie for over 10 years now. He was eating whole foods way back before it was even popular. I'm not kidding, he was probably the first in line at the new Trader Joe's in Valencia. He even used to tell my teenage body-conscious self that drinking his organic whole milk wasn't going to make me fat. {For the record, I drink 1% and not because I think I'm fat.} In addition, many of my whole foods foodie friends eat little to no meat as well. So I don't know, maybe there's a connection {or maybe not} to the eating-whole-foods-and-loosing-your-taste-for-meat-thing.

Hmmm...I think someone should turn this into a thesis. Anyone need an idea to research? Because I'm no scientist. I'm just a vegetarian.

Cordelia

Today I visited a dying friend.

I'm not gonna lie, I was scared. I had been putting off a visit to her when she was in a nursing home because I don't think I'm good in these types of situations. I hate going to hospitals. I probably have issues. To me there is an eerie feeling. Sometimes it's too quiet. Sometimes you see people upset and you can't help but think the worst. I don't like it.

But mostly, I was a coward not to visit her sooner. My friend has a brain tumor. She is 70 years old. She is always serving others. She would give rides to people who needed them, she'd work at the Temple, she'd always take in a meal to someone. There is this one woman in our congregation who was in an accident long ago and is now in a wheelchair. My friend and her little old self would pick this woman up for church and push her around for the entire block of meetings. This woman is truly an angel. She is like a grandma to me, although she once told me she thought of me like her daughter. Truthfully, that means more to me now than it did at the time. She and I like to talk about the simple pleasures in life: bargain shopping and food. This woman is always put together and has great taste. She really knows how to make things beautiful too. When I started a Ladies Night Out for my congregation, she was always excited to come and enjoy good food and good company. She often said we should have started it sooner. It was a great way for the 'spring chickens' and the 'fall hens' to mix and mingle. Those fall hens sure know a lot about life.

So when I volunteered to take dinner to this woman and her husband I had to mentally prepare myself. I knew she was nearing the end. We were told that when she had visitors, she rallied. I'm not gonna lie, I looked for excuses not to go. I didn't want to remember seeing her in that state. I knew very well it might be the last time I saw her in this life.

When I walked into her home, her hospital bed was in a room facing the entrance through french doors into her garden. I saw a bald head poking through the pillow tops and a very frail woman underneath a lavender sheet. She didn't look like the friend I knew. Some of her hair on the left side of her head was spared from the chemo and radiation therapy. She had not a spot of makeup on. The bone structure of her face was very prominent but despite her age and her sickness, I still thought she looked beautiful. And when I saw her sparkling blue eyes light up, there she was, there was my friend.

I'm not sure what came over me but all of a sudden, I knew what I needed to do. I smiled and greeted her, no fear, no worry, no emotions creeping to the surface, just peace. Here was my friend. And it had been too long since I last saw her. I immediately took her hand, kissed her cheek, gave her a hug the best I could. "I can do this," I thought, "I can do this for her."

I spent a half hour with her. I noticed she had her nails done and told her they looked nice. To be honest, I couldn't understand much of what she was trying to say. Much of it sounded like mumbling and I wondered if she was wandering in and out of lucidity. She talked a long while and I listened. A few times she tried to ask me questions and I felt bad that I could only say, "I don't know." To which she always smiled and offered a weak laugh. A few times her hands started shaking a lot and she tried to squeeze them together to get them to stop but she had no strength to. So I held them tight for her. I touched her arm the way Jadon likes me to as he's falling asleep and mostly listened to her, smiled and nodded. A few times she looked worried about something so I reassured her that she was okay, that she was alright.

My favorite was when I told her I brought her some spinach and cheese filled ravioli with a homemade butter and cream Alfredo sauce. She closed her eyes and savored it in her mind. I hope it tasted as good as she imagined it. {It was pretty darn good I have to admit.} And did I mention that Jadon came with me? He begged me to come and I wasn't sure at first but I thought it would be good for him to bring dinner. He was so excited and helpful with carrying the dishes to the door. He sat nicely and didn't startle or flinch or show any reaction toward my friend's condition. He treated her just the same, told her he was turning 7 in two weeks and starting the 2nd grade on Tuesday. She loved it. Then her husband showed him the garden and the grandkids' room while I sat with her. I was really proud of him.

When it came time to leave, I didn't say good-bye. I told her I would see her later and that next time I would bring her a cannoli from Arrivederci's. You know, at the last Ladies' Night Out we were both able to attend, well before she was diagnosed, she was telling us about how her doctor had adjusted her medications. She asked him how long she would have to take one of the new meds to which he reliped, "For the duration." We all laughed about the doctor's choice of words but the next day, I sent her a message:

Dear Cordy,

I'm glad we will be friends for the 'duration' and beyond.

I love you.

emily