Author: Michele Minehart (Page 265 of 311)

things on this blog have been a bit heavy lately. i blame the lack of sleep. i have nothing to do but lay there and think. and the husband worries when i do too much of that (thinking, that is). so tonight is just a nice conglomeration of random thoughts.

1. i hate sinuses. i would likely give up my sense of smell (not taste) to get rid of mine this week.
2. baby #2 is either a dancer or a soccer player. it’s like a little disco in there currently. i suppose it *could* be the tollhouse pie.
3. i love love love living a quick, driveable distance from family. H and i made a quick trip today; totally worth it.
4. typically when you do one of those bible studies about “spiritual gifts” the hospitality is written off as the person who provides coffee. not so. my husband has been blessed with a double dose of hospitality and i’m so grateful for it. we hosted our “dinner for 8” with the church tonight and he is so – so! – good about welcoming people into our home, making others comfortable and generally being, well, hospitable. and if it wasn’t for him i would’ve served the ketchup straight from the bottle.
5. the kid is a walking machine. we’ve now mastered getting up on our own from the floor. it’s quite hilarious to watch the learning process on that skill – it involves lots of turning, and falling and arms in the air, but man it’s stinkin’ cute. but the kid in footie jammies and there you are, wrapped around his pinky finger.
6. i’m ready to go back to my non-40-hour work weeks. i know, i have 2.5 months before i do. but i’ll be ready. having the morning with the kid and time to make dinner – wow. i forgot what that was like. and it was nice. told myself not to get too used to it yet.
7. the hubs is going to be an excellent teacher. you should know that in case he teaches your kid some day. and i love being able to discuss with him what it means for a student to get excited about learning and to take ownership of learning. he’s one of those teachers who just reallllly wants to see that happen. i love it. and him.
8. speaking of a man full of grace – i need to wrap up the blog so he can get some homework done.

*peace*

last week we watched the green mile. it’s the only king book i ever read, and though the movie was good, the book is better – as always. (btw, can i quote the husband here? he said a while back, “you know i heard that the book is always better but i never believed it – until i started reading books.” it was the funniest thing i’d heard in a year). i read the book while on vacation sometime in college and i’m really surprised that i missed the christological parallels drawn, how a man gave life back to another but in exchange, took on his / her illness. and was sentenced to the death penalty. how did that not scream parallelism? proof in point that i’m smarter than a college student. or at least the college version of me.

then i went to bed but read a chapter of Lamott’s book that i’ve been working through. ironically, the chapter was on her experiences teaching / speaking at a nearby prison. she speaks a lot of how the church should be reaching to this specific group of “least of these”s.

this was the same day that my mom told me that my sister was coming home today. she made the trip because a friend of ours got released from prison after 7 years.

ok, God, i get it that there’s a message in there. i’ve held off on this post for a week because i was hoping to resolve what this message was. however, in this particular situation, sky writing may be a bit more effective.

i use the term “friend” about T very loosely. mostly because i’ve been a very bad friend the past 7 years. my sister and my dad both made trips to see her, and my sister assured me that she is very forgiving for people who haven’t made the efforts. “she realizes that life goes on” she said.

which just makes me feel more guilty. because i didn’t just forget about her. it wasn’t lost in my memory. i’ve thought about her more often than any other person i went to school with. i prayed, i cried, she even showed up in a dream or two. i wrote a letter once. i was relieved when i got the address wrong and i used it as an excuse to not reach out again.

the worst part is that i have no idea why i’ve felt this way. and i hate (yes, hate’s a strong word) that i was one of those people who just did nothing. really – does feeling strongly but doing nothing even really count? i’ve told the kids a thousand times that love isn’t a feeling, it’s something you do, it’s something you choose. i may feel for her, but i chose and did nothing.

i think some of it is because i’m a fixer and in this situation there was nothing to fix. i’d end up being the stereotypical “here, read this book, i think you’ll find it inspiring” type of friend. it’s not who i want to be, but that’s who i would’ve been. i’d offer canned advice. that’s not what’s needed. what is needed is real love. and that’s a scary thing to offer.

fortunately, this is a happy day for her and she’s had several people stand by her through the years. opportunity is on the horizon. she’s had quite a story of a life up to this point, but she gets to write the next chapter, starting today. so once again, i need to stop thinking about myself and just celebrate with and for her.

i’m a pretty rule-driven person. it’s comfortable to me to know the boundaries. i believe that you can enjoy yourself more when you know where the confines of “safe” is. and it’s been said in writing that you must know what the rules are before you break them. i frequently told the kids who complained about particular rules that “for every rule, there’s an idiot [that caused the rule into being]”.

for some reason i woke up early on saturday morning thinking about food rules. ironically, my mom, sister & i later talked a lot about michael pollen on oprah and his newest book is called Food Rules (seriously, pollen, i deserve endorsements).

my first food rule ever, circa 2002,revolved around diet coke. i love a good fountain diet coke. i’m not a huge pop drinker, but i do love me some diet coke. i found, at one point in my life, that even though i really loved diet coke, i would drink pop on all occasions – even pop i didn’t thoroughly enjoy. when i decided to think more about what i ate, i decided that i would only drink diet coke at restaurants that served it. if the restaurant served pepsi, i drank water. it was a good compromise. and i found myself eating at taco bell and kfc less (because they serve pepsi). but still, it works for me.

my eyes have been opened to the food world mostly because i’m becoming more conscientious of what the child is eating. as he is growing and developing, i feel like i need to offer the best stuff i can to help him get a good start in life, building a stronger baseline. later in life, like where i am now, it’s about extending what i have- i’m not really creating anything new (well, currently i am, since another child is getting a direct line of my food selection). i have a firm belief that anyone over 70 should eat whatever they want without anyone complaining. but i digress. surprised?

what i’ve come up with as my personalized guidelines to feeding my household operates off of a principle one of my cousins told me about a while back – “always foods” vs. “sometimes foods.” this goes great with the discipline ideology i ganked from KLM’s training, based on “rights” vs “privileges” (separate post). i don’t like the idea of “never” foods – God created all things and said that it was good. perhaps not good in the sense that we make a dinner out of chocolate, but good enough that I can’t put a “never” label on it.

i’m starting to try to see things more on a spectrum – that there are always foods (good example: broccoli) and sometimes foods (example: cookie). there’s no dark black line between the 2 and sometimes foods vacillate between the two based on factors. and there are things about foods that make them a stronger always food – always, like daily – or a sometimes food that is best enjoyed once you’re 21.

so how does one know where on that spectrum a particular food lies? here are my primary factors:
1. Number of ingredients. the fewer, the more it’s an always food. broccoli has one ingredient. milk the same. burger. apple. all very good always foods. the more ingredients, the less often you eat it. because it goes with the next….
2. Pronunciation of ingredients. hydrogonated anything doesn’t sound appetizing. anything that sounds like it should be a medicine instead of a food ingredient rapidly sends it down the sometimes food line. high fructose corn syrup puts it at the back of the line. (i know, “its nutritionally the same as sugar.” but. it’s not. it’s not sugar. its CORN. corn should be eaten off a cob, not sipped through a straw). the ingredients of the ingredients of a dish do change where in the spectrum a food falls. mac and cheese made of real cheese, milk and butter is closer to always than one made of velveeta because the list of ingredients on that box is 80x longer. i fully accept and understand that velveeta does make mac and cheese much creamier. you win some, you loose some.
3. packaging. the less, the better. and if it needs to convince me that its nutritious, it’s probably not. no one disputes the grapes in a ziploc baggie with holes, but the fruity pebbles seem to need to tell me about all the “vitamins and minerals.”
4. Locale of creation. jj and i decided that it’s ok for H to enjoy a treat or two if mommy (or grandma) made it. specifically if we made it and it did not come from a box / bag / plastic square. so pancakes sans bisquick. cookies sans nestle tollhouse tub. ice cream sans ben & jerry’s artwork. they’re on the sometimes food list – we don’t have pancakes every day, or even every week – but they work their way higher in the frequency chart by having roots in my kitchen. theory applies also to where foods are grown, such as in my garden vs. Argentina. and i think my crawford county cow is better than what’s been shipped to my meijer from omaha.

i think that’s all to my rules, but you never know. my list could be ever evolving, much like my reading list. but it’s helping me to achieve balance in my life, that i can enjoy a few things as a sometimes food (especially if i’m truly only sometimes eating it) without too much guilt because i’ve established a good repertoire of always foods.

happy eating.