First loves

A facebook acquaintance of mine is busy dealing with her daughter's first broken heart. It got me thinking about my long ago romances, and how it will probably be tomorrow that I am going through the same thing with Audrey.

I was very lucky in my first love. He was sweet. (And he had a Raider's jacket he let me wear SQUEE!!! Funny, I didn't care about the team, but it was black, matched all my clothes and looked cool.) We did schloopy teen things together. I did things that, as a parent, make me consider putting bars on my kid's windows. (Not really dad, I was a perfect child! I swear!) When we broke up it was because we had drifted apart and there really didn't seem to be much of a broken heart on either side. All in all, it was a perfect intro to teen dating.

My first broken heart probably didn't come until later when my long time boyfriend joined the Air Force. I remember being pretty heart broken when he left. Walking around listening to the Counting Crows and just generally being down. (I still can't hear August and Everything After without thinking about that time.) I don't think that my parents could have offered me much comfort at that time. It was just something I needed to work out myself.

My latest broken heart is a little different, but I already am starting to feel the mend. It is amazing how you never forget the one's you have loved, regardless of the end. How every time you open yourself up to that you make a new person.....usually a better one. So that is what I told my friend to tell her daughter.

Relay

Last weekend was Relay for Life. Audrey and I spent the morning hanging out and then came back for dinner and my walking time. I was supposed to come back in the morning and do another round of walking, but for once my daughter slept in and we woke up about 10 mins before I was supposed to be there. I had such a good time just hanging out with the other Livermore Moms and talking to people on the track. Audrey had a BLAST hanging out with the lovely Miss Emma and that is ALL she can talk about now. I got to feed a crowd which always makes me happy.

Saturday would have been Carl's birthday, which was one of the motivating factors for my signing up for the walk in the first place. It really wasn't too bad of a day for me. I am always a little sad/jealous when surrounded by a lot of cancer survivors because I wonder why WE couldn't have been one of those families that made it to the other side. But that feeling was more of a background low level thing than it has been in the past.

It is amazing to me how differently people deal with a blow like cancer. There are some people who were newly diagnosed, who were still going through the fight there. These are people whose first instinct in a personal test is to get out. They immediately seek out ways to help others and support themselves in the process. They need to feel like they are doing something. My in-laws came, but really I am not sure they wanted to be there. I think people like them are more prone to pulling inward in a test. Seeking a way to deal with it themselves and not wanting to be reminded that others have been more fortunate, or even less fortunate. I think I am somewhere in the middle. I need some time to lick my wounds, then I want to do something to get out and meet people and help....but it is hard to overcome my own inertia.

I am always amazed at the boundless energy and dedication that my team captain Kathleen has shown, not just in this endeavor but in others as well. I wonder if she is secretly Wonder Woman, because she is always up for a volunteer post/ taking on city hall/ working for something she believes in. I never see her tired or cranky. She never seems to regret being in the action and secretly wishing to be watching bad reality TV with a glass of wine and chocolate, as I am prone to do. I may want to be her when I grow up.

Over all the whole thing was a blast, I would like to make it a tradition for Audrey and I to go every year together. I wish that I had gotten it together to get a babysitter so that I could see the luminaria ceremony. I had hoped Audrey could hold out, but with the heat and the hard play all day, she just was pooping out. Maybe next year we will get to see the luminaria for Carl get lit and shine in the dark.

Food 'tudes

I like food. A lot according to the numbers on my scale.

Being a culinary student, an avid eater and major reader means that in the last couple of years I have spent a lot of time thinking about, reading about, or discussing food. When you think about it, food is a completely fascinating subject. Where it comes from, what different cultures do with different ingredients, what is added too it, etc.

Because I spend a lot of time reading about food and the food supply (and possibly because of Carl's death) I am a little subject to THE FEAR. Because once you realize how little the food you know resembles the food your grandmother knew, and the amount of Monsanto brand antibiotics and hormones are out there, you start to wonder if that could really be good for anyone.

It started out pretty simply. Before Carl died, I made most of our meals at home. I would sometimes buy organic things but not with a huge frequency and always with a risk that my husband would roll his eyes at me and laugh at me for buying into the belief that it is better. When Carl was diagnosed with cancer, he halfheartedly joked that it was all the Diet Pepsi's that killed him. Or maybe McDonald's. I think he was only half joking as they were pretty big staples of his diet from childhood until the day he was diagnosed. (While I don't eat fast food much, Carl had it for lunch almost every day.) In fact several of his work colleagues all gave up diet sodas cold turkey when he died because they were convinced.

So I gave up sodas. And bought more organics. I was not sure that it was really necessary, but what does it hurt? If the only thing I waste is money, well you can always earn more of that. The more I started to research what was worth spending more money on for organic, the more I realized that buying organic produce is low(er) on the list of things that are important. The more that I read about dairy and meat raising practices the more I became convinced that those are what I needed to buy organic......especially if Audrey was going to be eating them. But Whole Paycheck has it's name for a reason.....organic meat can be in the $15-20 range which is COMPLETELY insane. So I looked around and found that I could buy organic beef and pork directly from the farmer at a steep discount. Though it is still more than conventional products.

So now I have a big chest freezer and if an earthquake comes and knocks out power for longer than a day I will be throwing the biggest damn block party you can imagine. But that is not enough.....I start looking at bread and crackers and condiments and think "What is that crap on the ingredient list?" And I start making the stuff myself. Who knew ranch dressing is hella easy to make? And bread is like heaven when it is direct from the oven. Except when you really need a piece of damn bread and you don't have the time to bake and you are walking around in the kitchen wondering why the F didn't you just buy the stupid chemical laden crap when you were at the grocery store. And you start to wonder if this has stopped being an exercise in doing good things for yourself and the kid and the CRAZY has started to take over.

I look around at other people who are close to me in their attitudes toward food and I think they are possibly a little crazy, a little fearful. Maybe I am too. But then I wonder, who does it hurt really? The only time I am put out by it is when I am attempting to short cut, because let me tell you when you don't want to cook and you are weighing the greenness and organic nature of take out food, there ain't a lot out there. And really, as long as I can stop myself from getting into a tither about the fact that the only place that serves organic takeout is Z-Pizza and their sauce is made from plastic-lined cans so BPA is totally leeching into every bite. I can dial it back and agree that Chinese food or Baja Fresh is just fine once in a while, I think that my trip down the rabbit hole is not so out of control. But in the spirit of full disclosure I should tell you, I am making my own Barbecue Sauce this week. And canning my own tomatoes.

It's You in Four Letters

Every boss that I have had has always really loved the Myers-Briggs personality test. They all loved to have everyone take it and share their results as a "team building" exercise. When I started questioning what I wanted to do for a living, many many people recommended taking it again. Apparently, the culinary school's department chair is also a big fan. Every once in a while I wonder what it would be like if it became the next cocktail question. Instead of "what do you do for a living" you could ask, " And what is your personality type?" Maybe you would be better able to extract yourself from completely boring conversations.

So this week I took the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. It came out the way that it always does for me. I am a ESTJ (Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking and Judging) through and through it would seem. It always is comforting and also a little surprising to me that it is always the same.

It is funny because I am borderline in a couple of the categories, the first one is the extrovert/introvert category. It doesn't surprise me I am on the edge because I don't feel much like an extrovert. I like people and need to have them around, can and will talk to strangers in line or on the street, but I don't get revitalized by it. When pressed for the best way to spend the day after a hard week, chances are I am going to want to bond with my couch instead of hitting a club. Maybe I might invite someone to join me for dinner at Chez Boyd, but it will be someone who won't mind if I open the door in my PJs.

I have always been prone to picking up acquaintances pretty easily, but true friends are hard to come by. I have some that I don't even consider friends any more, they are more like family. People who could tell you they did something SO ridiculous that if they were anyone else you probably would be uncomfortable and not hang out much longer, but instead you just shake your head and say "Geez Jillian, that's the stupidest thing I have heard in a while." (really just an example, not true) I love them because they are defacto sisters in my life. To maybe put it more succinctly, I have lots of people I would have dinner with and not too many I would ask to help me move.

The other category I am always on the border for is the Thinking/Feeling. That shit cracks me up. If you are a Thinker, you are rules/outcome oriented. You don't think too much about how that effects the feelings of everyone involved, even including yourself. For example, if you wanted to do a teacher appreciation and stopped a teacher's class to deliver a cup of coffee, the feeler would be happy to have been recognized while the thinker would be irritated because you interrupted the class, he has already had his coffee this morning, and it's not like he can drink it while he is lecturing.

I always end up on the border of these, even though I know I am TOTALLY a Thinker. I think because the way the questions are asked, they always ask about whether or not you follow rules. But it is really all about logic. Well, I follow all rules that make sense. I am not into stupid rules just for rules sake.

So there you have it......it's me in 4 letters.

Good Samaritans, Bad Apples

Today, my rusty first aid skills got a chance to be brushed off and put into action. And then I got to direct traffic in an attempt to prevent idiots who were driving too fast from running over a fellow member of mankind who was lying prone in the middle of the street.

All I can say is that there are some really good people out there.....and some serious shit heels.

When I was leaving school I had the misfortune of watching a bicyclist flip himself off his bike head first and into traffic. Two pedestrians reached him while I stopped and some guy driving a BMW and yapping on his phone barely missed running him over. A couple of quick inquires revealed that the biker (Lee) was alert and oriented, but was in serious pain and didn't feel like he could move. The pedestrians (Mike and Joe) asked the BMWer dude (DB) to call 911. DB hemmed and hawed, not wanting to get off his current phone call. Just when I was about to stop taking Lee's pulse and go fetch my phone out of the car, DB finally relented and called 911. Mike and Joe moved to direct traffic around me and Lee, while DB kept answering the dispatcher's questions poorly. When asked a question he didn't know the answer to he kept telling them he didn't know, despite being less than 10 feet away from 2 different people who could answer the question. He also kept telling the dispatcher that he was just calling it in as a "favor" but he really needed to leave already. And within a few moments, he did.

While Mike, Joe and I spent the time waiting for the police to arrive I was impressed by the number of people who stopped and asked if we needed any help, was surprised that one person went around the block again to come back and get another look, and was SHOCKED that more than one person (who didn't stop) rolled down their window to take a picture of Lee laying on the ground with their iPhone. But I guess that is the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity there.

I am happy to report that Lee seemed to be doing as well as can be expected as he was being loaded into the ambulance. He seemed to think that he broke his collar bone, but was able to focus on being concerned about whether or not they would bring his bike (they would) and if he could direct them to a specific hospital (he could).

So the moral of the story here is, wear your helmet for cripes sake. And watch it when you fly around a corner.

Following that excitement I headed off to the DMV, but that is another rant about the state of the world and the government that will have to wait for another day.