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#FoodieFriday Peanut Butter Cream Pie

In life we get reminders that our time is finite. Yesterday was no exception. I read Nicki’s post about her friend Jennifer losing her husband. So often we put things off until it’s too late, and Jennifer’s to-do that didn’t come in time was a peanut butter cream pie. She’s asked that we all make peanut butter cream pies today to honor her late husband. Today I’ll be honoring her request and amending it slightly to appeal to my husband. I’m the sweet tooth of our relationship, and he’s the savory lover. He’ll be enjoying a delicious dinner including home-made macaroni and cheese made with sharp cheddar. We don’t know how long we’ll get with the ones we love, so we should treasure them while we have them.

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#ThankfulThursday – A Nibble

On this lovely Thursday, I’ll finally be going* on a job interview. Now, I realize this isn’t what I keep manifesting here on The Prose of an Electrate Mind. I typically manifest self-employment and pursuing my passions, but the starving artist lifestyle doesn’t appeal to this momma. The first seven months of 2011 have shown me that I still have a long way to go before my passions can be the breadwinners in my life. Additionally, the job hunt hasn’t ended simply because I wished to be my own boss — far from it. I also realize that getting a shiny (or not-so-shiny) place of our own will likely be contingent upon having an employer, and that fact has plagued my 2011. As you can imagine, finally getting even a nibble on the line has filled me with hope for the future and a strong sense of gratitude. Perhaps this interview will lead to gainful employment and a path towards building the dream. This budding writer/ editor/ tutor/ consultant cannot function unless the bill collectors have been appeased, that’s for certain!

*By the time this post is published, I’ll likely already be finished with my interview. I plan to tweet the results.

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July and August #Reverb11 Prompt

July: What new thing will you try this month?

I made a tiramisu with some of the marsala wine my sister brought back from Italy. I’ve made several tiramisu cakes that came out lovely, but this tiramisu wasn’t as photogenic. However, it was much lovelier than my first ever tiramisu that I made when I was 15. Nothing bruises your foodie ego like a leaky spring-form pan. Luckily, I have more marsala left, and I plan to buy some more mascarpone at my next earliest convenience.

August: Describe an unexpected moment, activity, sighting or conversation that touched you during July.

July was quite eventful for me, and my regular readers definitely knew something was up because my website went down for roughly half the month. The root cause was an unexpected moment that touched me negatively. However, that wasn’t the only unexpected event of July. I wasn’t expected for my whole family to contract ear infections. I wasn’t expecting to get both an ear infection and bronchitis. I wasn’t expecting that I’d have to ask the ER doctor to prescribe one inexpensive prescription. Economic hardship plagued the month of July, and living so poorly took an understandable toll on my self-esteem. It probably didn’t help that a major retailer called me back simply to tell me that I’m overqualified didn’t help — I’d become more or less accustomed to no call backs at this point. However, that month inspired me to write a book, so July couldn’t have been all bad if I still managed to glean inspiration from the negative events.

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Two Week #DigitalSabbatical

Today I’m starting another digital sabbatical — but this time I’ll be gone for two weeks.

Won’ts
I won’t be checking email.
I won’t be updating Facebook or Twitter.
I won’t be reading my Google reader, and I won’t be succumbing to the urges to search anything and everything on Google.

Wills
I’ll be meditating.
I’ll be getting back to practicing yoga and belly dancing.
I’ll be hitting up the punching bag. (And I totally intended for that pun.)
I’ll be tracking my eating habits and tweaking my diet again.
I’ll be drinking water (and tea when the heat isn’t so stifling).
I’ll be lounging in the pool, soaking up some vitamin D.
I’ll be petting my cats because they tend to get the shaft. Furry friends require love, too.
I’ll be reorganizing my living space — purging what’s no longer necessary or useful, storing whatever’s not needed for the time being, and making our necessities and luxuries a little easier to navigate.
I might actually pick up one of my Hemingway books and read.
I’ll get back into the 3-pages-per-night habit.
I’ll at least start on my 101 goals for 1001 days. It’s been over two years since I completed a challenge like that, and I want to do it again.

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June’s #Reverb11 Prompt: Part 2

While we’re discussing letting ourselves off the hook for things, I think I might take this opportunity to let myself off the hook for the #Trust30 prompts celebrating the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I originally signed up for it spontaneously before shutting down for a week, figuring when I got back I’d catch up. I thought having a mid-year reflection period would be wonderful. I did well with the #Best09 and #Reverb10 series, but somehow life isn’t working out exactly how I want it to at the moment — I am not working as efficiently as I would like to at the moment. I can make excuses and place blame elsewhere, but it all leads back to me and how I’m functioning as of late. While I have the prompts archived in Gmail, ready for me to respond at my leisure, I can’t promise myself — or anyone else — that I’ll get around to them. In fact, it might come down to me deleting that label entirely in December.

I’m torn between feeling like my attitude controls my destiny and feelings of frustration in that my positive hopes and manifestations have done nothing. Seriously, I wrote something beautiful and positive a couple weeks back, and a couple days later I was horrified to learn that my positive outlook made no difference whatsoever. A situation in which I had been very emotional invested has forced me to give pause and deal with a varying range of emotions and the reasons why I’m feeling them. Part of why I’m so upset over it is because of the event itself, but I’m also partly upset  because it was a physical manifestation of fears that I’ve pushed into the darkest corners of my mind.

I’m absolutely terrified inside, honestly. Over 5.5 years ago, I was forced to make a decision to alter my path and abandon a dream of which I had invested so much time and energy. I’m at a crossroads again, and I absolutely do not want to make a decision to abandon another dream. Several factors involved in my current stalemate are merely temporary issues that will resolve with time — my abandoned dream was a matter of permanent factors that likely won’t ever change. I’m finding more and more that the past decade hasn’t been at all what I would have imagined 10 years ago. I sure life’s like that for many others, but that doesn’t make it easier to manage. The entire human experience is totally different from everything else in nature, and sometimes I’m actually quite jealous of “lesser” species that really don’t have to think about such profound, abstract ideas. It’s a matter of finding food and water, maintaining a protected shelter, rearing and protecting offspring, and staying alive long enough to be biologically successful. It’s not about paying taxes, living up to expectations, fancy houses and cars, or finding your niche. We, as human, complicated things so much so to the point that we’re suffering for all sorts of stress-related ailments. We have amazing technological advances, but we’re never satisfied. Even now, I’m sure my words will resonate with at least one or two people, but I find myself feeling like writing this from the heart, from my thoughts isn’t good enough. See? We’re a complicated species.

I’m letting myself off the hook again. I’m letting myself off the hook for writing a more profound entry. What I’ve written is good enough — and it’s time to face reality once more and live in the present. It’s time once more to dive back in and do, rather than sit and wait for change.

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Foodie Friday: Chicken Marsala Penne

Last month my sister went to Italy and Greece and brought back a couple bottles of wine for me and Brian. I requested marsala and chianti — because marsala makes excellent dishes, and chianti’s an Italian classic. I was also inspired by Bitchin’ Kitchen’s creamy chicken marsala penne. It was perfect: bite-sized chunks of chicken served over pasta. I got to work searching for recipes to build my own, but I mostly adapted this recipe from Bitchin’ Kitchen and Emeril Lagasse.

Chicken Marsala
3 chicken breasts (or roughly 1.5-2lbs)
8-12oz sliced mushrooms (more or less, depending on your tastes — get creative with the varieties, too!)
Half of a diced vidalia onion (or just use what’s on sale and in season)
3/4 cup good Marsala wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 cup of AP flour
5 tbsps unsalted butter, divided
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Season flour with salt and pepper in a shallow bowl. Chop chicken into bite-sized chunks. Dredge chicken in flour. Heat oil and one tbsp of butter in a pan. Cook the chicken through, then place on a plate in the oven to keep it warm. Add 3 tbsps butter into the pan, and saute the onions and mushrooms. Once golden, add marsala and bring to a boil. When reduced by half, add broth and remaining tbsp of butter. Lower heat and return chicken to the pan. Cook until sauce is thickened. Serve over penne pasta (or whatever pasta you’d like). Serves 4-6. I also added some green beans for some additional veggies.

 

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June’s Reverb 11 Prompt

What can you let yourself off the hook for?

Today I promised myself that I would make the time to write. I originally planned to publish a Foodie Friday post, seeing as how I had a recipe and pictures all set to go. This perfect prompt found me this morning before I received heartbreaking news from a friend this afternoon. I almost considered voiding that promise to myself because that heartbreaking news has been so devastating — and as devastated as I am for my friend, I can’t imagine just how deeply her pain must sting. Sitting down with my laptop this evening, reviewing tabbed windows, I knew exactly what I had to let myself off the hook for. I’m letting myself off the hook for writing what I planned to write. No amount of words I could write here would change past events. So I’m letting myself off the hook. I don’t need to show off what I made for dinner Monday night, nor do I need to be a creative genius right now. Instead, I will grieve the loss of someone so small, so fresh, so new, and so innocent. I will send my thoughts and prayers to my friend. I will make myself available — because that’s what I would want if I experienced that same pain. I would want to know that someone was there, even if it was 3am. I would want to know that I could cry with someone over what I fought so hard for but would never get to cherish. No mother should ever have to experience such a soul-shattering pain.

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Thankful Thursday: Coming Clean

On Tuesday, I dropped a few f-bombs and came out about my husband’s bipolarism. In the three years of running this blog, I’ve been fairly tight-lipped about my husband’s condition based on the stigma society attaches to this disorder. People don’t view mental illness the way they view things like diabetes or cancer. I’m grateful for the work that Bring Change 2 Mind does in raising awareness and breaking down the stigmas associated with mental illness. I’m even more thankful to Kelly Gurnett of Cordelia Calls It Quits for sharing her own experience with bipolar disorder.

Now, it’s not like every day is a scary, horrible day with Brian. It’s not like what you see on TV or in movies that demonize those who suffer from bipolarism. He’s not a threat to society like the stigmas would lead you to believe. Actually, when he’s in a low, he’s really just a threat to himself — any harm caused to others would be a result of him causing harm to himself. He takes medicine to treat his condition, much like he takes medication to keep his triglyceride levels in check. It’s really not all that different from taking medication to prevent seizures (actually, his mood stabilize is an anti-seizure medication as well) or to control thyroid hormones. He regularly visits his psychiatrist to evaluate his treatment plan, and he visits a therapist once a week. Just like anyone with a health condition, he does what he needs to do in order to keep his disorder under control.

Today, I’m thankful to say that I see no reason why this should be kept secret from everyone else — after all, he’s my husband and a very big part of my life. He’s a very wonderful, loving person, and his presence enhances my life. I’m thankful knowing that there are others who suffer from this same condition and still lead fulfilling lives. Mostly though, I’m thankful to get this off my chest.

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Taboo Tuesday: Wherein I Drop The F-Bomb

Times are tough. You, me, and just about everyone seems to be going through some pretty rough patches, and we’re running out of ideas for all these lemons we’ve been given. If you follow me on Twitter or have friended me on Facebook, you have a fairly reasonable idea of my woes. About a month ago, physical health problems became an issue for both myself and my husband. First, my husband had some internal bleeding issues that needed serious diagnostics. A couple of hospital visits and one colonoscopy later, we’re waiting impatiently on lab work to answer our questions. Suffice it to say, we’re hoping for benign results and the easiest condition to treat. What’s the worst that could happen, you ask? Why, a diagnosis of colon cancer, my dears. Should that be the case in a week and a half, I think I’ll have all the right to moping about with a “woe is me” attitude.

Can it get any worse than that, you ask? Why, yes it can! You see, a little over two weeks ago I experienced some of the most terrifying pain of my life. Only once in my life have I ever been as scared of pain as I was then — that was when I had salmonella poisoning. (Fyi, NEVER eat Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Yes, I’m still angry over 5 years later.)  Actually, I was a lot more fearful for my life this time around. What started out as gas pains quickly escalated into dizziness, cold sweats, light-headedness, and sharp pains that felt like knives twisting around in my abdomen. I curled up into the fetal position on the bathroom floor, gasping for breath and pleading with my children to get their father. My husband tried to persuade me to go to the hospital, but it took another few minutes of pain before I realized it wasn’t going away. I conceded defeat and begged him to call 911. My “I’m uninsured and unemployed” side still nagged me to rethink the “error” of my ways, but it was too late to turn back. Let’s skip past the ambulance ride and time spent in the ER waiting room (because sometimes your fear of dying isn’t as founded as you think it is). One bag of IV fluids, some pain and antiemetic medication, and a couple cups of oral iodine contrast later, I received a CT scan that showed I had a ruptured ovarian cyst on my left ovary. Well no wonder I was in a world of pain! I received instructions to follow up with a gynecologist. Only, I’m unemployed and uninsured.

Whereas my husband has received care for his condition, I have not. As it would seem, a sliding scale clinic may see you and take a prorated amount of your money — but you’ll get what you pay for. I didn’t even get a prescription for birth control pills, which are the first line of defense against future cyst development. They are the least invasive form of treatment. I got about 5 minutes with the doctor before she hurried me along and told me to schedule my “annual.” For $20, I had a doctor tell me common knowledge about most of my issues and brush off my concerns. Even Medicaid will reimburse her more for a patient than I paid for my sliding scale fee. Of course she wouldn’t spend more time on me! Oh, but this post isn’t about my opinion of healthcare in our country. This is about me and my life. This is about more personal matters.

You see, I recently offered advice to a practical stranger on a blog I read just about everyday. Only after I posted it and walked away did I realize I was being a hypocrite. Only after I posted it did I realize that I need to follow my own advice and practice what I preach. I stopped, realized I’m being a fool, and began plotting the specifics of my digital sabbatical. Yesterday I divulged that I will be taking one very, very soon. Lately, I’ve been a wuss. I haven’t had the courage to face life head-on. I’ve not been myself, and I’ve been drifting through the past five months, hoping and praying for salvation. There’s one gigantic problem: I know I’m better than this. Gwen Bell once tweeted, “You have to be fucking fierce with your life. Nobody else will do that for you.” And you know what? I AM fucking fierce. If ever I need proof of that face, I needn’t look further than my HBA2C. You want fucking fierce? I roared with such ferocity while giving birth to my precious baby boy. Fucking fierce? You bet your ass I’m fucking fierce.

Life has been the opposite of a cake-walk — more like a liver-and-onions walk, or perhaps a tripe walk. Hell, walk isn’t even a word I choose to describe it. It’s been an all-out claw-your-way-out-of-the-ditch experience lately. And while the noise out there let’s me know that some people have it worse, some people are going through their own problems, that noise doesn’t make it easier. That knowledge doesn’t make it easier. In fact, it makes it harder because than I feel even worse for feeling like my life’s hit rock bottom. That noise isn’t comforting. It’s down-right stifling. People I love are hurting. People I’ve never met but feel like I’ve know them my whole life are hurting. And I’m powerless to help just about everyone at this point because I haven’t even made the effort to save myself. How can I save the world when I’m ignoring my inner ferocity? How can I make the world a better place when I’m wallowing in negativity on a daily basis? By virtue of being exposed to negative people, I have become fairly negative myself. When I plug in and see all my positive binary faces, I become more addicted to that digital hit. I close the laptop lid for an hour or so before I’m back for my next fix. I find myself living vicariously through those who have achieved more success than me. And then one day, I read something wonderful…

“Never compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”

I’ve been guilty of this for a very long time. I also realized that I’ve been struggling to be more authentic in my life since 2007, when I discovered Brenda Della Casa. For years she has inspired me to be more authentic, to take more control over my actions and words. And in all honesty, I’ve been afraid to share this post. But today? Today, she encouraged me to “use [my] voice.” Today, I’m using my voice. I’m peeling back the layers and bearing my uncensored self. Today, I’m telling you that life can be pretty fucking hard when you’re unemployed, uninsured, married to a man suffering from bipolarism* and GI disorders, raising three kids, living with your disabled in-laws, and about an hour away from decent medical care and shopping. Life can be pretty hard when you let all the hits knock you down into that muddy ditch. But as Kaileen Elise has said, “It’s easy to get down on yourself when the hits keep coming, but the only choice we have is to jump back in.” Indeed, it is time to jump back in. But I can’t do that with all the noise in my head. I need to unplug. To relax. To dig deep. To ruminate. To review my past accomplishments. To review my life as it is. To live the life I have instead of pining for the life I planned. I need a break. And with that, I bid you farewell for seven days. I won’t be checking email. I won’t be on Facebook or Twitter. I won’t be reading blogs. I’ll get my news from Brian, who seems to have reading news in record time down to an art form. I’m tuning out the world, and tuning into myself. I’m tuning into the 5 most important people in the world to me (I’ve included myself in this count because no one is as important to a person as their own self). See you in a week!

*A post is forthcoming regarding this admission. I’m taking a break, but not before I schedule some delicious words.

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