bearing blog

Clearly I need more sleep.

My cell phone alarm goes off at six so that I can take my temperature.  You know the drill.

This morning, when the digital thermometer beeped, I took it out of my mouth and squinted at it, using the light from my cell phone screen to read it.

(My last thermometer had a backlight, but it was a crappy pink baseball bat of a Walgreens thermometer that I threw out after two cycles.  The one I replaced it with was Canadian, and you have to push the buttons twice to get Fahrenheit, and it doesn't have a backlight, but it's better than the Walgreens one.)

Anyway, this morning.  This morning my thoughts, on squinting at my thermometer, went like this:

"....uh.  how disappointing.  i was expecting a higher temperature."

"....wait a minute."

"....this doesn't make sense."

"....i really hope this thermometer is not broken."

"....i can't even read this. my eyes are so blurry."  *squint harder* "why so many numbers?"

Several more seconds passed before I realized what I was trying to read was the lot and model number from the back of the thermometer, plus the words "Made in India."

Yeah, you guessed it.  Disgusted, I went back to sleep.  Good thing it has a last-temp-recall.

Why I am not posting much. Maybe.

I could pretend that I'm sequestering myself with my family for a cozy, prayerful Advent, but that would be a big fat lie.   The truth is I don't know what's going on.  Today I will give you ...

 

TEN THEORIES WHY I CAN'T SEEM TO GET ANY POSTS UP, AT LEAST NOT ANY GOOD ONES

 

1.   It's too cold in the house and I'd rather wrap at least one hand permanently around my coffee cup, leaving only one hand free to snake out of my sleeve and click the mouse once in a great while.  Perhaps if I turned the thermostat up I would feel more creative.

2.  Deep down, maybe, I know that the minute I get engrossed in writing a post the baby (ack!  he will be two next month!  must start calling him something else!) will start crying.  Just can't face the frustration of having my train of thought interrupted.  Even now I feel panicky just knowing that at any moment someone will wake up.  

I am a classic introvert, and if there is anything I miss about being single, it is the ability to choose to be alone whenever I crave it.  

3.  Perhaps I am more in the mood of being... like... a passive consumer of media rather than a creator.

4.  An effect of the Marian consecration that I perhaps didn't foresee.  Getting what I asked for, maybe.

5.  Feeling sorry for myself because it's slowly becoming clear that all the business travel my husband's been doing for his "new" (last few months) job within the same company is not merely an artifact of learning the ropes at a new job but is in fact the new normal.  I know lots of people have to deal with their spouse being gone more than 4-8 days per month, and so I mostly don't get grumpy about it because I'm thankful that there is a job, especially one he likes that's well suited for him and pays well, but on Day 3 of a four-day stretch of putting the kids to bed by myself, I do, in fact, sometimes get grumpy.  And then I have trouble thinking of non-grumpy things to write.  Which means I post nothing.  Also, putting them to bed by myself cuts into my blogging time.

6.  Haven't even been cooking anything very interesting lately (see #5), so my old trick for climbing out of blogger's block -- post recipes until I get back in the habit of writing again -- is not working for lack of inspiration.  

7.  I know it's not for lack of topics.  I do think of post topics I would like to write about.  I remember having a political thought a few days ago, for example.  It would have made an okay post.  Maybe something about the rhythm of life right now is maybe preventing me from getting to a computer in time to put it into words.  Most of what seems interesting to me slowly evaporates as time goes on and seems not at all interesting by the time I sit down at the computer.

8.  I do a lot of my blog thinking and composition mentally in the pool, swimming laps.  And lately, it's been hard to arrange things so I can get to the gym two or three times a week, for perhaps the last 5 months (see #5).  Could be that I just don't have time to think underwater right now.  

9.  But maybe it's a symptom of something good.  Teaching the kids always has its small frustrations, of course, but right now school is interesting and intellectually challenging and even fun.  Busy, but fun.  It's quite possible that because I'm busy with fun parts of school right now, I'm not looking around for something to help me procrastinate.   Maybe that's all the blog ever was.

10.  It's the holidays, and there are cookies everywhere, so I can't bear to write weight loss posts (another old standby for digging out of blogger's block).  If that's some January, when it will draw a lot of traffic -- and face it, probably be on my mind for personal reasons -- I'll probably feel like writing about (sigh) my most popular topic again.

11.  ARGH.  SOMEONE IS COMING DOWN THE STAIRS NOW.  

Conflict.

Typing feels like moving through wet sludge this week.  I'm going to try to get this post out, though, while the middle kids are decompressing with some cartoons, the oldest is finishing his mechanics assignment (think punctuation, not wrenches), and the baby is sleeping.  I mixed myself a rum and coke before I sat down, hoping that the combination of caffeine and relaxant will generate a little fluency.  *slurp*  Let's see.

I don't know why, but I have had little desire to write this week.  Many ideas, little desire.  Could be the early days of school; lots to do, less time.  Could be that I have decided to embark on the consecration I mentioned a few days ago (thanks to those of you who emailed me and commented -- it was very helpful).  On that, I've had a number of thoughts I've wanted to share, but had difficulty putting into words.  This probably isn't the post for it.  I will write about it.  I want to write about it.  Somehow I keep abandoning the posts after two or three sentences.

The kids are pushing back at me as we get started with school.  Except for coschooling, which is so far fine, my days are so much less than I want them to be.  If only there were enough of me to go around.  If only I had enough energy at the end of the day to greet "Can I watch videos now?!?" with anything other than relief.   I have made sure that my day's schedule includes a block of time spent one-on-one with each school-aged child.  That's an improvement over last year.  Now if I could just get the others to stop interrupting.  

And why so much drama?  Why so much wailing about what there is to do and how long it will take?  Why not just sit down and do the damn stuff?  

I'd better shut up on that last point, lest I have to take my own advice.

All right, I think I'm done venting.  I just wanted to keep the blog from going blank.  

Yesterday I went for a swim at the end of the day, and thought furiously as I plowed back and forth across the pool.  I just need to discern what I'm supposed to be doing, I thought, figure out how best to allocate the limited resource that is me.  An answer floated back to me as I touched the side of the pool:  No, it is much simpler than that; I just have to do what I can and do it in love.  If I don't know how to do that, I have to ask for the grace to do it, and trust that it will be enough.  It makes sense, but I wonder what it would feel like; I don't think I have ever tried.

Okay, let's get that empty cupboard round-up on.

Consider this post a call for submissions for an empty cupboard recipe round up.  

It's an experiment -- we'll see how many posts I can get for it, and maybe tweak the process next time.  (MilWifeMamaofOne has already sent me one link, thus lighting a fire under me.  Thanks, MilWilfeMamaofOne!)

Let's say you have about three days to get the posts in, and I'll try to post the roundup on Friday of this week (before dinnertime).

A recap of the rules:

1. Write a post about what you managed to throw together when you hadn't yet gotten a chance to go grocery shopping.  
2. You have to post the whole meal, not just one recipe.  (This is especially important if no actual recipes were harmed during the preparation of the meal.
3. It's okay if one or more of the components was packaged/prepared/processed, out of season, non-organic, or raspberry Jell-o (TM).  I'm interested in the whole picture of thinking out of the box to create a pleasant dining experience for your family.
4. Send me a link to your post by Friday morning and I'll get it up on Friday before dinnertime.

Shall we give it a try?

Pondering a recipe-roundup: empty cupboard meals.

I've been bouncing around the idea of trying to host a recipe roundup, once or twice a month.  (You know the drill -- write a recipe post, send me the link, I'll put it all together into a post.)  But I've been searching for a theme that hasn't been done to death.

Today I think I might have hit upon it.  What do you think about an "empty cupboard" roundup?  I'm not sure how often -- once a month or biweekly -- and it doesn't lend itself to an alliterative name, maybe you all could help me with that -- but here's what I'm thinking:

The idea is to write a post about what you managed to throw together the night before you go grocery shopping.  What can you make from your pantry staples?   It's easy to eat fresh, local, seasonal, interesting, and impressively right after you come back from the farmer's market (or the co-op -- or even the SuperValu).  What can you do at the end of the week, from your leftovers, odds and ends, and emergency rations?  What have you got to choose from?  What did you decide to make and why?

Here's an example from today.  I'm pretty good about meal planning, but I often leave the last couple of days blank because I know I'll have things to use up; on the other hand, sometimes we eat up all the leftovers and I have to get suddenly creative.  I'm about to leave to go grocery shopping right after I finish this post.

Before dinner, the only fresh veg I had in the fridge was a bunch of broccoli (and it was starting to look a little sorry, so raw was out).  No fresh fruit left except some wrinkly apples, an orange, and a lemon.  We had some leftover enchiladas and arroz con pollo, but we were kind of tired of both and needed a break (it'll still be good for lunch tomorrow).  

So I made this:

• Grilled Meatloaf (double onion, since I had no green pepper -- there's always ground beef in my freezer)
• Steamed broccoli with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil
• Plain Fordhook lima beans cooked from frozen -- just a little salt and pepper
• A can of cut beets, drained and briefly marinated in a dressing of orange juice, balsamic vinegar, and fennel seeds
• Homemade bread and butter.
• Oh yeah, and rum and coke for the grownups.  (Hence the need for me to churn out a couple of blog posts before I go shopping)

I think it turned out pretty great, and not bad for a day when I didn't know what I was going to make until about three-thirty.

Anyway, what would you say to having a roundup on a semi-regular basis?  I think it would be a nice way to explore our creativity, celebrate frugality, and get over some of our hangups about appearing as if we only occasionally rely on convenience foods.  Also share some ideas.  And even if your answer is something like, "frozen pizza -- again," well, why not fess up?  If you had an ice-cold beer on the side, you could at least tell us about that.  In fact, I'll make one of the rules be you have to tell the whole meal, not just one interesting recipe.

What say you?  How often?  Which day of the week (or month)?  And furthermore, what should I call it?

The demon that feeds on fasting.

 

It just goes to show:  Never brag.  A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn't been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn't pushed it.  "But I'm holding pretty steady, and that's okay," I wrote. 

So, a couple of days after I'd been traveling, I suddenly saw my weight SPIKE.  Probably water, most of it; but my experience is that if I don't reverse it quickly, the water weight sticks around and becomes non-water weight.  Maybe a better way of putting this is that I suspect that the first sign I'm beginning to store some fat is a sudden episode of water retention.  Only a hypothesis, and only about me -- but still.  I was alarmed, and even more alarmed the next day when it didn't go away but was higher.

How big a spike?  Well, I've been a stable 113 pounds for about six weeks, but one morning the scale said 116, and the next 116.6 .  Yow!  I haven't seen either of those numbers for a long while.  And I have a philosophy about the scale:  don't bother too much about daily ups and downs, except when I see a number I haven't seen in a while.  I notice those.  The big ones scare me.

Like, really scare me.  Lie-awake-in-bed-sweating scared. 

And maybe here's the right time to mention a significant spiritual struggle.  Gluttony was a real problem for me, and somewhere between my asking and God answering and my work to meet Him where He wanted me to go, it's not a problem for me (much) anymore.  Yay me!  Except:  enter vanity.  I am now seriously, seriously afraid of regaining weight.  I like the way I look and feel now.  I am proud of myself -- not necessarily in a good way.  Am I diligent about getting to the gym... or obsessive?  It's hard to tell the difference. 

It's only natural to be pleased with my success so far.  There is, I am sure, a correct attitude somewhere, where I could be grateful to God for the gift of self-control, diligent in my stewardship of the health I have been graced with, pleased to adorn myself attractively for my husband and to reflect to the world my inward happiness and peace, and still unattached to the world and to my flesh.  I am not there.  I fear that I have made thinness and physical health an idol. 

Maybe it's always been an idol for me, but it was perhaps safer when I couldn't attain it.  Now it's my precious, y'know?  And I think the surest proof that it's really a problem is this:  I pray earnestly, "Please Lord, take away my vanity...." and what pops up in the mind is "...but even more than that please please please don't do it by making me fat again."   Don't make me choose between You and my body, I mean.  But I know darn well that God has already made me choose between Him and my flesh.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Oh yes, I know what THAT means.

And meanwhile I keep looking for a way around it.

+ + +

If any of my readers think of gluttony as a big spiritual problem for themselves, then maybe this sounds self-indulgent. Wish I had your spiritual struggle instead of mine, Erin!  But bear with me.  Back when I was fat, it was really obvious that food was a sort of idol for me. Looking back at those struggles back then, they seem so simple compared to these crazy mind games.   Simple, simple struggles of the flesh versus the spirit.  All I had to do was deny the flesh!  Just like it says in the Bible!  It wasn't easy to do, always, but it was easy to understand.  Such a childish little weakness, wanting more cake.  Now I struggle with spirit against spirit -- it's not myflesh that makes war against God's will, but instead my love for my flesh.  So much harder to root out cleanly.

 
Gluttony isn't that complicated to fix (it's tough, but uncomplicated), because you only have to change something visible.  Your attitude doesn't have to change right away.  You can will your fist to put down the plate, and your heart can let go later, when it sees that it is safe feeding on the Lord.  But now I have to change something invisible, while not changing the visible all that much.  Can my heart let go of the idol of health, while my decisions and actions still responsibly preserve it?  What does that look like?  Does it look like anything at all, or is it entirely within?  How?  If I could only drive this demon out by prayer and fasting -- but on fasts, this demon grows sleek and strong.

+ + +

Today, vanity or no, I'm controlling calories and experiencing hunger.  I am thankful for obedience, which relieves the heart of some of its responsibility to ferret apart good and bad intentions.  It only makes sense to follow through with my plan to respond to a weight spike with careful attention to my food intake. 

At the same time, I am troubled by the intensity of my worry, and I wonder if I can somehow find peace.  I know, rationally, that the answer is not to set my heart on thinness and health and youth and beauty -- even though these things are often rewards of a disciplined life, I must not love them.  I must love God more.  And He has not yet asked me to choose between Him and those things -- except in the tiniest possible ways, just enough to chide me, to show me where my heart lies. 

I must be willing to lose it all, cheerfully.  I am not willing.   And yet I must be willing.  And I'm not. 

Yet.

"He went away sorrowful; for he had many possessions." 

Yet.

Bland and cautious: Two posts that say something I meant to say.

First, from Darwin, a few weeks ago.

[T]here are a good many people who know me in real life who read the blog. More than that, after writing a blog for four-and-a-half years, you get to think of a number of your long-time readers and commenters are friends. The blog becomes like a corner coffee house or bar where the same characters assemble regularly -- with the occasional stranger dropping in as well -- and discuss a range of topics, with everyone knowing the basic terrain of who everyone else is and where everyone is coming from.

The way in which a blog can serve as a combination magazine and coffee shop is, to me, one of the most appealing elements of the medium. It's more personable than simply sending one's words out into the void, knowing that someone out there is reading them but seldom sure of what others think about them. 

At the same time, however, this community element to blog writing makes one particularly aware of the difficulties of writing within a community. As the number of people I know (whether locally or online) who are blog readers increases, I increasingly find myself thinking, "If I write about that, so-and-so might be offended."

Next, from Betty Duffy, and indirectly Pentimento, more recently.

On one of the shelves in the bookstore, I picked up a book for grown-ups that looked interesting. I read the back cover, absorbed the synopsis, then looked for an author bio. “Well what do you know,” I thought, “It’s that angry man on the internet,” and re-shelved the book. I’d recently happened upon the author’s blog, on which he peeled apart the writings of some bad Catholic with whom he took issue.

The author bugged me, not because of his lack of charity. Mean people are a curiosity. He bugged me because his self-appointed Catholic gate-keeping functioned as a sort of literary terrorism, scaring anyone who writes with a “Catholic” next to his or her name out of writing anything interesting.

As Pentimento suggests in a recent comment here:

“If your Catholicism is an openly-stated aspect of your writing and your consciousness, you may find that some of your equally open and self-conscious co-religionists are standing by waiting to judge the way you express your faith and tally how well you live up to it…. I was surprised a year or so ago to receive deeply hurtful criticisms in my comboxes from some who thought my writing was inappropriate, and from others who called my faith into question and even slandered me in the comboxes of a friend. My best friend in real life… took me to task after that because she thought my writing had become bland and cautious.”

Who wouldn’t write cautiously when our writing about our personal experiences as a member of this Catholic Community faces such vicious scrutiny? 

...Here then, is one Catholic blogger who will say without shame, I write this blog only because I enjoy doing it. It is not my apostolate. I might lead you astray. I might cuss. 

I've been a little stilted lately. Like Darwin, I don't conceal my identity terribly hard on my blog. I'm not trying to shield it from friends and family. But I recognize the signs of hesitation sometimes when I write about politics, morality, sometimes even the petty arenas of judgmentalism that arise from parenting style, schooling style, liturgical preferences. No wonder I take refuge in posting so many recipes.

I appreciate posts like this by Darwin and Betty, whose writing I have admired for its candidness. It's nice to be reminded that others are dealing with the same kind of internal censor. And I am beginning to appreciate the value of the blog as a learning environment for... what -- sensitivity maybe? There is a balance to be learned:  a balance between honesty and truth, and charity to the real people who might see themselves (rightly or wrongly) between the lines.

What is the good and true purpose of this blog? It is not my apostolate, either (though see Betty's followup to her post quoted above). I don't write in an attempt to entertain others -- not much anyway -- nor to have a soapbox -- okay, I do my share of venting, I admit it. Even though I pad it with a lot of fluff and kid-pictures and recipes and "funny things that happened to me" bits, things that would be better suited to Facebook if I was the sort of person to have 293 "friends," there is a "main purpose" belied by the actual word-count I spend on various side purposes.

Once during Christmas vacation midway through graduate school, I sat down with a pencil and a new legal pad and I wrote the date at the top and a title, "On the isotropic and unidirectional compactions of compressible packed spheres" or something like that, and I began at the very beginning and I wrote for hours and went straight through, as if I was explaining to someone with absolutely no background, everything I knew, guessed, and was trying to demonstrate about my thesis topic.  I made few corrections and I drew a lot of pictures along the way.  I filled the legal pad over the course of a few days.  With surprisingly few changes, that legal pad became a large chunk of the explication my doctoral thesis, and I still consider it one of the most viscerally satisfying pieces of writing I ever did.

The reason I want to blog is the same reason I have always used that kind of derivation, and also the reason I have always journaled, and also the reason I have always savored (when I can get them) long conversations over a bottle of something or other: figuring something out, breaking sloppy reality down to its elements and reconstructing it into a model that I can wrap my mind around and say "This much I understand."

Lately I think I have been overwhelmed by the thought of who might be reading, and have lost some of the courage I need to lay out what's on my mind.

Well then.  PASS THE BOTTLE.

Suppressed evil impulse of the day.

On seeing the "3.00 Liter Calibration Syringe" on the middle shelf of the cart in the pediatrician's office: 

 "There you go kids.  That's the shot you're going to get at the end of the appointment."

Like I said:  suppressed.  But just barely.

Obsessive avoidance of backsliding, or, I feel bad about my bread.

Alert readers, especially those who came from Cathie's blog, remember that I keep up with my family's need for sandwich bread pretty well using a bread machine.  Also that I experimented recently with acid-soaking flour in the bread machine and came up with a more-or-less reliable method for adapting bread machine recipes to an eight-hour soak.

  (Acidulate the liquid if needed with 1 Tbsp white vinegar; halve the yeast; remove added gluten at first, and experiment to see if you need to add some back; hold back the salt, mix the dough 5 minutes on the quick bread cycle, reset the machine to make whole wheat bread in 12 hours, and put the salt on top for it to be mixed in when the cycle starts)

Soaking the flour, while it is more nutritious, is marginally less convenient than not soaking because of the plan-ahead factor.  And the method isn't perfect (yet) -- the loaves are always edible but occasionally don't rise properly.   So I've soaked every loaf of whole grain bread I've made since I developed my technique, but... I've also made less bread and allowed us to run out from time to time.

This morning I didn't have any bread but I need some for lunch, so I went ahead and started a non-soaked loaf for the first time in months.  I feel kind of guilty!  

* * *

This is a problem I have, my own special kind of perfectionism.   I avoid developing new good practices unless I am sure they are permanent.  All-or-nothing:  once you add, don't cut back.   For some reason it seems okay to say "I know I ought to do such and such, but I haven't figured out how to fit it into my schedule yet."  But it seems not so okay to think about saying in the future, "I used to do such and such, but then I decided I didn't have time for it."

This is probably the number one reason why, for example, I have never even attempted to add any daily Masses to my schedule with my kids.  I dread coming to a decision where I have to say "Sorry, I have to cut back on going to Mass."  Even though I know very well that going to Mass more than on Sundays is optional and not at all required, I fear that once I've established a practice of going more than once a week it will feel like "CHOOSING SOMETHING ELSE OVER GOD" if I ever decided to back off from that.

(Thank God for liturgical seasons, by the way.  They give me the freedom to try out devotions without the stress of commitment past the end of Lent or past the end of Advent.)

I recently decided to try out instrument lessons for Milo over the summer.  I explicitly announced to everyone "This is just trying it out, we might not continue in the fall," and I deliberately cut out preschool music class for the summer to make up for the extra cost and time.  I'm trying very hard to be committed to deciding whether it makes sense with our schedule, but I am still anxious about the possibility that I might have started something we'll need to stop.

In short, I'm good at saying "No" to too much commitment up front.  I'm not so good at being a quitter.  Or, at least, I feel bad about the possibility of quitting. This even though some of the best decisions I ever made have been decisions to quit something.

So, Cathie, if you're reading this, please tell me I have your permission to occasionally bake some bread that hasn't been soaked.  I think I will feel a whole lot better.  

My own personal madeleines, or... maybe there is a time and place for excess.

When I was a child, my mother would take us on Saturday mornings to a tiny little pretzel bakery on Xenia Avenue in Dayton, Ohio -- just about every Saturday that we remembered to do it in time to get there before they closed at 1 p.m.  If we were especially lucky, we would arrive just as the hot soft pretzels were coming out of the oven, their steamy, bready smell filling the building no larger than a single-wide trailer.  "Extra salty ones," Mom would request, and the bakers would pick over the pile cooling in the bin to find the ones that were totally encrusted in crystals of salt.  We would get a dozen and a half in a paper bag, an armload for a little girl, the bag almost too hot to touch, and grab a handful of mustard packets from the basket on the counter.  We'd sit in the front seat of the car and we'd each eat three or four pretzels, burning our fingers and mouths, before taking the rest home --- to be finished by the end of the day, because the fresh homemade pretzels would be break-your-teeth hard by morning.  No preservatives or dough conditioners here.

To this day, no butter-soaked mall pretzel will ever compare to the taste of plain salt and dough, slightly bitter from the mild alkaline bath that seals the surface and helps the salt stick.  No SuperMegaJumboBallpark pretzel will ever be as satisfying as those hand-sized, golden-yellow twists.  The closest I have come to the right flavor and texture is the top half of a salt bagel from Bruegger's.  Nope, Smales Pretzel Bakery near the corner of Xenia and Wayne is the standard by which all pretzels will forever be judged.

So yesterday I was in Dayton, and I took my kids to the pretzel bakery.  A baker (the same guy I remember from my childhood, I think) gave the kids lumps of dough and showed them how to twist them into pretzels, while I paid for my pretzels.  They were still a little warm.  And we sat in the car and wolfed them down.  I ate three, right there, with mustard from the little packets.  Over the next hour I ate three more.  "Grandma Susan used to take me here when I was a little girl," I told the kids.  They nodded at me, their mouths full of pretzel.  I was pregnant with Milo when my mother passed away; but they know her as Grandma Susan anyway.

What about gluttony and the pretzels?

In the years since I moved away from Dayton, I've been back to the pretzel bakery five or six times.  Each time I have eaten several pretzels in the front seat of my car.  And each time the memories that the flavor brought back were mixed with guilt at having eaten so much.  A guilt I never felt when I was sitting with Mom in her car on Saturday mornings, exclaiming about our good luck at arriving just when the pretzels were coming out of the oven, or digging through the paper bag looking for the very saltiest one (for mom) or the one that was just the slightest bit burned (for me).

Yesterday I ate three pretzels one after another and discovered that the guilt was gone.

Even though I wrote only a few days ago about the dangers of binge-like inhaling-instead-of-eating... I think I have to temper my remarks a little bit.  There is a place for "the feast," for celebration of plenty.  There is a place for having something that is so good that you want to eat a lot of it, and for eating a lot of it.  The thing is, part of my good memories about the bags of hot soft pretzels... inseparable from the experience... was the fact of eating three at once in the front seat of the car, there in the gravel parking lot, next to my mom, and all of us sharing that experience.  That is what the memory is made of.  I can just hear how Mom would have reacted if my teenage self had said, "No pretzels for me... they're full of calories," or "I'll stay home, because I just know if you buy a whole bag of hot pretzels, I'll eat way too many."  I can't imagine ever declining a trip to the pretzel bakery.  Sitting in the car and inhaling fresh hot salty pretzels was one of the few loves that Mom and I ever had in common. 

Yesterday I ate a half-dozen pretzels because eating a half-dozen pretzels is, well, the tradition I shared with my mom.  She's not here anymore and the pretzels still are; I can take my kids there and give them a little bit of what my mother gave me.

I am sure that many diet writers would tell me this is an unhealthy thing to do.  That I am trying to recapture a relationship through food, and that the food can never fill the hole that is missing.  And that I ought to be satisfied with a reasonable portion:  half a pretzel, or just one.  But I don't think that's quite correct. 

I have no guilt about it anymore because now I know in my bones that I can compensate.  I am free from guilt because those six pretzels (that's how many I ate yesterday all together) weren't added on top of my normal or normally excessive eating.  Knowing where I was going, I had only a boiled egg and some fruit for breakfast that morning.  Those six pretzels (and a vanilla Coke from Frisch's; I'm loading up on nostalgic food while I'm in Ohio) were my lunch.  Even as I ate them, I knew I wasn't going to want anything more than a big green salad and some protein for dinner, and indeed that's what I ate.  No, it wasn't a really well balanced day, not in terms of nutrients, but... it was not a gluttonous day.  It was instead a rare, very rare, treat, tempered  by light eating in the hours before and after.  So much less dangerous than it used to be, because now I know how to make room for it.

In the end, I believe, we have to give ourselves permission to feed our memories and hearts from time to time.  Careful though:  It's a good idea to steer clear of this kind of thing while you're still learning how to compensate, because if you haven't developed the necessary skills, it's true, you can derail your confidence.  Such an experience can wait a few months until you've really learned how to absorb the impact:  Don't try it before you are sure you are ready.  And even after you've learned how to compensate, you've got to  save such "treats" for the ones that are really important.  Because you can't feed your body like this every day.  But... there can be room for those rare experiences, not for your physical health, but to bring balance to your well-being.  After you've learned how to compensate for excesses, excess can be enjoyed. 

But only in careful, careful moderation.

(Posted in the Weight Maintenance category but not Weight Loss... because I really could not safely have had this experience until I was done with the "loss" part.)