Maebius Musing

Recently, we have been in a crunch with vacation plans, shifting work schedules, and general summertime activities around Everthorn Farm.   I’ve written recently how we gleaned green beans,  we got a bumper crop of radishes a month ago, and our beets are plumping up nicely along with a few small tomato clusters.

Yet right now,  at this moment, I’m finding it difficult to find anything to harvest.   It’s odd, and definitely something to notice next year, when we plan on spacing out our plantings a bit better.  (you learn and improve each year, they say!)

The potatoes are underground and hopefully growing nicely for digging as the weather turns colder.   Our berry bushes are tapped out, and the elder has thousands of green clusters that only hint at a future jelly/cordial crop.  Likewise with the brussel sprouts and pumpkin/squashes:  Not. Quite. Yet.

Our pepper plants, while harvest-able around this time, sadly have found themselves riddled with slug/bug/mice/alien bites and generally too small for anything except careful chopping for future Salsa or Tomato-sauces.

My musing of late, has been a bit darker and tinted with selfish thoughts.   I want to gather.  I want to wildcraft powerful herbal allies and medicines (that I cultivated).  I want to bring home the bacon basil, yet the planted products are not ready for me yet, and I just can not seem to find myself energized enough to turn towards the more exotic wild-growing foragables right now.
Mint tea is getting overdone, and it really all that’s ‘pre-planted and tended’ around here.   I’m sure there is a bounty available, from luscious comfrey leaves, to mullein in the “back 20″, but I am not feeling fired up about that right now.

One positive point to the New Moon meditations has been a solidifying concept in my mind of the elemental-shrines I mentioned the the previous post about Starwood.   I’m off of work for 2 weeks at the end of august, and already making plans to lay out the foundations of our permanent herb-garden lawn-labyrinth, as well as walking the property feeling out where to best place our own little shrines.
Hmm…..

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While I always manage to avoid finding the time to properly setup a lunch before work the following day, and wind up cramming random leftovers from the fridge into my lunchbox before work, I’ve always been intrigued and fascinated by the concept of making bento-style food to eat.

I subscribe to RSS feeds of bento blogs, I even one attempted a bento in a prior posting, but I never wind up finding little containers to use or fiddling with ingredients to aesthetically define my lunches. …until now!  

For the past few months, my lunchbox at work was the subject of friendly teasing, and smiles.   I got it as a gift from my 4yr old sprogling who, in a wonderful display of sharing and Love4U, used his Chuck E cheese tickets to buy me the superman lunch box to take to work.  He’s awesome, isn’t he?!!  Yep Yep!

Unfortunately, the “sport bottle” got forgotten under the couch once with fruit juice, and not discovered until a few days later when it had turned black and fuzzy inside.  It’s gone now.

But, while this humble box (Maebius strikes a heroic pose as he types ‘humble’) contained many a tupperware tub, or cool-whip container, it was never truly the “Bento Supreme” that I desired.

Luckily, my dreams and wishes were answered, with a trip to WalMart. (I know  I know, *shudder* but we had to go there to get a specific something for the kid’s school. They simply do NOT sell Kinder-Kare play-sleep-mats in the heavily specified and required size/config elsewhere we found except online with horrid S&H.)

There, at Wally World, while shopping for his own Lunchable Packaging, we ran across a line of Crayola lunch things, which drew our little one like hungry moths to a S’more bonfire!   They were thick-walled, not at all flimsy, and easy to open.   The Bright colours were eye-catching, and we just HAD to get a set for him.

….And of course since he got a set, and we noticed it fit perfectly in my own lunchbox, then yours truly needed to go BACK to the store later that week and pick up my own!

For the record,  our sprogling has a set of “Gold” and mine are, if you’ll forgive the pun, so very cherry (red)!

Inside our lunchboxes, there is just exactly enough room for one thermos, one ‘bowl’ thingy, and two sandwich flats stacked together.  For our little lunches, he only has one sandwich container, but I found that I can add a second “orange” one that mom got but doesn’t really use.

The Thermos, in my own lunches, gets filled with miso paste, and random things like spices, rice, beans, hiziki, nori, soba, and/or fresh picked lambs quarter-tips.  At work, I can use the hot water from the drinking fountain which makes a lovely soup du jour.

The Bowl gets filled with fruit salad, macaroni, veggies, or whatever side-dish we had leftover from dinner previous evenings.

Likewise, the sandwich holds just the right portion of entree (or even *gasp* a sandwich!).  Secondary sandwicher is perfect for dessert-type scraps, or additional side-dish leftovers or veggies (carrots and such work awesome for crunch-factor festivities)

You know you think they’re cool!  Admit it!  
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A short little blurb here about my nightly musings before bed, and was inspired by my friend Varulv.   I’m going to try to lose weight and get more in shape.

*Gasp*  Shock, Horror, I know.  Maebius turning into a health nut and improving his Crunchy Hippy factor by eschewing (and not chewing!) junk food and such?!

To be truthful, I always knew my diet was fairly healthy, yet with a big dose of sweets and treats thrown in for proper soul-health.  I periodically drink sodas, but unless we go out to eat, it’s one can a day, and I simply have to induge an ice-cream habit lest I go crazy.

Yet last night at dinner, my friend (who, by the way looks fantastic and works out, and does proper portion control, and is, by many definitions of the word: Hawt) made a simple snarky comment that stuck in my brain and gave me troublesome dreams.  He had brought over a copy of his Abs Diet book, which at first glance seemed quite informative about portions, basic workouts at home (requiring no heavy machinery!) and recommending stuff like using whole grains instead of bleached rice and bread.  Stuff I thought about but never really buckled down and got into myself.   Still, even seeing each other frequently, I noticed such a shift in eating and lifestyle gave noticable results.  I periodically would joke how I needed to do that sometime, but never really buckled down to get into it.   (yes, I repeated that phrase, intentionally)
We had chicken and Norman Kabobs, with salads for dinner.  Varulv browsed the basalmic vinegrette dressing I used, commenting on the not quite low-calorie nature of it, compared to the home-made stuff I sometimes use. (EVOO and herbal vinegar is much cheaper, yummy, and healthy than commercial “light Vinegrette stuff, which is loaded apparently with sugar, salt, and bad oils).

Granted, I never personally got in the habit of checking labels, and just buy what sounds tasty, if we decide to get dressing of any sort.   Still, it was enlightening to hear the numbers from a friend who did practice such reading activity.

The kicker came thought, when it was time for dessert.   Pudding (a rare treat!) topped with fresh fruit/berry salad we made up the night before.  Served in fancy pudding glasses, with local or at least freshly purchased fruit, which was a bit better than canned processed fruit.    Still, I decided it needed something extra…this was my downfall.

Out came the Ready-Whip whipped cream.   *SKWWWWWWW* went the nozzel, and my desert was topped with a decorative white ruffly cloud.  Whole milk cream, and sugar!  YUMM!     With his awesome snarky smile, Var commented on the necessity of the topping, especially in light of the moments-ago salad dressing conversation.

We laughed, I squirted Whipped Cream into the sprogling’s mouth (because you all know kids and whipped cream-mouths are a matched pair).  And I ate my dessert, topping and all.   It was yummy, but the amount I used had no real effect on taste.

…and there’s the disconnect I had.

My own pudding tasted pretty much exactly the same as the leftover dessert I finished from the kid.  I ate the remaining leftovers today at work, and it was yummy.  Plain low-fat pudding and fruit was no less yummy for lack of a big squirt of fatty sugars.  I did not NEED it, but my brain and sweet tooth demanded it last night.

I realzied, in that one simple comment, something that I think I’ve said many times.  I KNOW I’ve heard it many times, but not totally internalized yet.  “Do you need that?”

It’s the same voice that helped curb my milk chocolate cravings, and get me to experience and prefer small nibbles of really good expensive dark chocolates.  Not only is it better for me, but it’s a tiny treat that essentially avoids unnecessary chocolate-munching on big Hershey bars at work.  I used to bring a candybar or bag of candy to work.  I now bring gum, (and sometimes unsalted sunflower seeds in the shell).  They were tasty, but not necessary in the longer term.

It’s these little steps that stick for me better than any Official Diet Menu.  So this month, I am going to re-focus my eating meditations on food choices.  I already made a commitment to myself to limit portions for my bento lunches, now I think I’ll try to fine-tune those lunches with smart choices for “fluff” items.

Whipped cream is still a wonderful soul-happy-food, but it’s not really needed except when I’m feeling extra cravings.  After all,  ice cream sundaes pretty much require it, but regular bowls of ice cream for average meal desserts, not so much.

Here’s to not so much of Maebius, in the coming months!

*pats tummy appreciatively*

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Hmm…You’ve read the media-mongering stories of ‘gamers’, you’ve sighed sagely at the ‘victims’ of an over-reactionary drug-war, and you’ve shrugged off the chocolate cravings as a healthy part of diverse eating habits.    They say the first step is a river in egypt (Denial), and of course our natural inclination to react negatively to thoughts of being addicted to anything.  That can’t be me, can it?

So, the deeper question then becomes:  am I?

Background: This past month has been utter and unrelenting HELL at work.  Forced vacations have meant that when I am not working the night-shift for half-weeks, my co-worker is.  When I’m not on vacation myself and catching up on sleep and house-stuff like mowing the lawn, I am working alone in my office, furiously trying to stay ahead of the oldest backlog and squeek by our SLA timeframes for all projects. (SLA= Service Level agrement: the contracted timeframe that work NEEDS to get done without incurring penalties)
My brain has either been mush, quivering in hyper-alertness, or a foggy amalgam of the two.  Yes, that third stat is strangely possible.  No, I can’t really describe it better.  I don’t think I blogged too much about it, as I tried to avoid long sleep-deprived rants on such a public forum.   Leave it as: Work sucks, in a completely honest, sincere, and deep manner right now.   To the point I honestly had the compulsion when ANOTHER big project landed on my desk to just slowly pick it up, throw it away, and go call the local Burger-joint which had “Now hiring” posted.  It is that bad right now, and I actually stood up to tell off my boss, then sat down not a moment too soon.   (Hope remains though, as September is the cutoff of the mess, and things will return to normal in October.)

Current Muse: My in-laws are camping this weekend, at a vey nice place nearby.  we were invited to crash in their 5th-wheel camper overnight and go hiking, eat S’mores, etc etc.

My lovely wife also asked if I wanted to stay home, and just lounge about the house playing video games while she took the sprog camping with “Amma & Papa”.

Initially, my gut reaction was one of elated and guilt-tinged joy.  Sleep, YES!  Whole bed, YES!  World of Warcraft until 2am, YES!!   But then the guilt set in a little deeper.

I like camping a lot, and I would probably be just as mentally relaxed if I went.  Outdoors is refreshing and grounding in a way no video game can be.  I’d be spending time with the family, and poking around a bonfire at night, which is soul-food of the highest caliber.

Yet the compulsion to just retrest from the world, and be alone at home for a full 24 hours is rather large.   I know myself well enough that while there WILL be much game-playing, I’ll probably wind up doing something like starting to wheelbarrow loads of dirt to the labyrinth garden (which is getting started officially next week), and generally wandering outside in my yard with no goal in particular except what strikes my fancy at that particular moment.  I will drink a homebrew beer, and life will be good.

Hmmm…..

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Hey there fellow Muse-meisters, I am here to let you know I have not vanished into some twisting nether.   I’m sure some (one?  Maybe at least one?!) of you has been waiting for an update from the last post regarding my vacation plans. I went camping.  It was fun. (more to follow, maybe).

Lately, I have been having a wonderful vacation-streak, and thus relatively offline for large expanses of time.   I realized that even though I seem to only browse a few websites at work in between things like watching status-bars inch leftward on computers, there is apparently a LOT of internet browsing and blog-stuff going on while I’m earning my wages!
The last two weeks I have been off work, and either playing outside with the kid,  staying up reading Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” book, or working around the house doing stuff like canning 12 quarts of tomato sauce,  a gross of green beans, plethora of pickles, mountains of mint, and a batch of berries for 1 GALLON of elderberry cordial!  (Grandma elder and I had quite a lively discussion I’ll be blogging about once I get more time online next week, probably for the missed moon musing)

Last weekend we stayed at the beach (Long Beach Island, NJ) with my parents, which was relaxing and fun!  As a result of the trip, we now have three hermit crabs in the kid’s room.  Poppi, Shango, and Cucu-Lacha.  They are funny!

I’ve been tracing out my labyrinth (seen from google earth!) in brick to make it more permanent, and next year to become a mound-walled herbal work of natural art and mystical power!  w00t!

So, I’ve been busy with Living, life taking priority to my usual work-induced webbrowsing, and thus this blog has lain idle for the past few weeks.   I’ve not been. 

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