Wordless Wednesday: Cherry Blossom In Bloom
Mindful Monday (July 19th)
Sitting here quietly listening to the piano solo net radio station while lying on the futon underneath the spinning ceiling fan, I realize I have a moment of peace. It may be a short moment of tranquility, but it is a lovely moment indeed. The breeze from the fan brushes against my face, blowing my bangs across my forehead. If I close my eyes, I can imagine the breeze is that of the ocean, calming my soul with its salty scent. I pause between key strokes to soak in the peaceful atmosphere that has settled into my living room. I hesitate to imprint these calm thoughts onto the permanence that is the Internet — nothing goes away on the Internet, I’m told. The warm mug of chamomile is now a fixture of the past, its soothing flavor still lingering on my tongue. The hour is late, the children are sleeping soundly, and thoughts of bedtime began to take center stage in my mind. At the moment, my mind is flittering among many heavy, serious thoughts. But for just this moment, life is peaceful.
Don’t You Know Who I Am?
I’ll admit it — I’ve had some pretty rough days in the past couple of weeks. Some days I’ve coped better than others, but days like yesterday? It’s all I can do to just coast through my day. I sat up thinking about things. I couldn’t shut off my mind. This happened the night before, too — come to think of it, nearly every night my typical train of thought involves this state of upheaval. It can get pretty depressing. And then, I came to a realization.
Earlier this year, I discovered that I survived a threatened miscarriage. I somehow defied the odds for a whole ten months (approximately 46 weeks). Throughout my childhood, I defied odds. When I was five, I fell back and hit my head on a sharp corner in my room. I laid down in my bed to take a nap after that fall because I felt tired. Had my parents not come in to check on me, I might not be here right now. We moved around so much throughout my childhood, and yet I still managed to graduate high school with honors and go onto my first and only choice of college. In fact, I was a fairly good kid — I got picked on for being a goody-goody! Even though I got pregnant young, I still managed to graduate college with my Bachelors. You don’t even want to know what my first apartment was like — the fears of violent assault loomed over my head every single day for nearly two and a half years of my young adulthood. I made it into a nicer apartment. That second apartment? My neighbors caused a fire that destroyed nearly every apartment in that building — except for mine. All of our stuff was safe and secure. Perhaps one of my most defining moments in life happened when I gave birth to my youngest within the confines of my own living room — even though his two older siblings had been c-section babies. The tale of this great accomplishment has circulated the Internet many times.
Don’t you know who I am?! I’m not some push-over. I’m not a wimp. I’ve clawed my way out of worse situations, and this whole messy ordeal will become nothing more than an unpleasant memory of a less than stellar time. It will become nothing more than fodder for my ambitions — ambitions to become something so much more than just an ordinary person blazing a trail to the grave. No, I’m not going out without a fight. It’s not always fun to have to fight through it, but I can do this. I have something much more important than several zeros before the decimal point on a paycheck. I have something much more than power in an influential company. I have ambition. I have determination. I have a proven track record. For crying out loud, I’m practically legendary among the circles of ICAN! People now come to me for advice on who to hire! Don’t think for one second I can’t do this. Just watch me. I will come out ahead, and I will come out a better person.
Foodie Friday: Homemade Pizza
Being a transplanted New Yorker, I have very high standards with regards to pizza. I expect nothing but the best, and more often than not I find pizza outside of The City to be quite lacking. While we have been fortunate enough to acquire the delicious pizza from Pizza Vito’s, it’s not always economical to order out. I have been perfecting my own pizza making skills for a few years now, and I can attest to how simple it is to make your own pizza from scratch. Here’s what you’ll need:
Dough
3 cups bread flour
1 tbsp yeast
1.5 tbsps sugar
3/8 cup & 3/4 cups warm water — keep separated, and make sure it’s not to hot to the touch!
3 tbsps cups olive oil
1 tsp salt
In a bowl, combine yeast and sugar. Making certain the water is not too hot (you will kill the yeast if it’s too hot), pour in the 3/8 cups of water. Whisk gently then leave it alone to proof.
When the yeast mixture looks foamy, it has finished proofing. Be careful not to let it sit too long, lest you desire a beer-y smell in your dough.
Now, there are many, many ways of doing this. Everyone has an opinion, but here’s how I do it. I drizzle in the 3 tablespoons of olive oil, pour in the teaspoon of salt, and add 1/2 cup of bread flour. Mix it together to make a “sponge” — from here you can choose to let it ferment and become a sour dough starter, or you could continue on with the process. Depending on my mood and the amount of time I have, I’ll let it hang out and ferment a bit to add some flavor. Usually, I’m more inclined to continue with my slow additions to the dough. To the start, add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 of water at a time, stirring after each addition.
Once you’ve worked up to all of the water and 2 cups of the flour, you should have a nice, sticky dough. Add another 1/2 cup of flour or so before turning it out onto a floured surface. Basically, you want to make sure the dough isn’t going to stick to your hands and the surface rather than forming a lovely dough. Sprinkle some flour on top of your turned out dough.
Now comes the fun part — kneading! For about 5 to 10 minutes, knead your dough. Add flour as needed. Keep in mind that the amount you need in the end will be contingent on the atmospheric conditions — dry or humid weather can affect the dough. Squish it. Fold it. Work air into it. You want the gluten strands to form and the dough to get nice and airy. Air pockets are a good thing!
After you’ve kneaded your dough, form it into a ball. Grease the bowl with olive oil, or you can be lazy like me and spray the bowl with canned, sprayable oil. Put the dough ball in the center of the bowl, grease/ spray it, and cover it with a tea towel or greased/ sprayed plastic wrap.
Put the bowl somewhere nice and comfy, preferably about a nice 80 degrees. Yeast likes warm, lovely weather. Now walk away. Leave it alone. No peeking! Your dough needs to rise and double in size for about an hour. Go for a walk. Watch some TV. Play. Watch paint dry. Shoo!
An hour later, your dough will have doubled in size and is ready to be reformed into a ball. Resist the urge to literally punch it down — you will deflate all of those lovely air pockets and have a lousy end result. Trust me on this one! Place the reformed dough ball back into the bowl for another 30-45 minutes and go about your business again. See? It’s pretty easy as long as you can distract yourself between the rises.
Now that your pizza dough has risen, it’s time to get your pizzas prepped for baking. Preheat your oven to about 400 degrees F. I split the dough into two because I like traditional thinner crusted pizza. You could, of course, make a thick crusted pizza if that’s your thing — but you really should separate it. I promise you, there’s nothing as glorious as a New York style slice of pizza, flopping under the weight of gooey, delicious cheese. After separating the dough I’m a little unorthodox and roll it out with a rolling pin. You’re more than welcome to try flipping your dough around like the pros, but be careful. Pizza dough only needs a small bit of persuasion to become a horrible, messy accident.
Roll out the dough into either a nice circle or rectangle, depending on how you’d like to enjoy your pizza. Sometimes a nice Sicilian style pizza can be fun, you know. A good way to transfer your dough to the baking sheet (or paddle if you have a nice paddle and pizza stone — lucky you) is to fold it over twice gently. Place the dough on the pan and unfold it carefully. You can manually spread it out a little more if needed.
Now poke the dough lightly with a fork to ensure the crust doesn’t puff up too much. Of course, you can skip this step if you like. I happen to like the end results with this method, so that’s what I do. Now it’s time to add some sauce of your choosing. You could make it from scratch, open up a jar and use it straight, or you could doctor up some jarred sauce. I assure you any method is just fine. Spread out the sauce on the crust to ensure even coating.
Sprinkle a thin layer of mozzarella before adding toppings. This part is also fun because there are endless possibilities. In this particular instance*, I used pepperoni. Then add another little sprinkling of mozzarella. I like to sprinkle some “parmesan” — really, it should be called parmigiano — and parsley on top. The parm adds a little extra flavor, and the parsley looks pretty on the pizza. I figure some people sprinkle parm on their pizza right before they eat it, why not just bake the flavor into it? And the flavor is absolutely worth it.
Switch your oven from bake to broil (or don’t). Put the pizzas into the preheated oven for 7:30 minutes. After 7:30 minutes, switch them so both pizzas cook evenly. Bake for another 7:30 minutes. Cooking times will vary based on preferences and oven efficiency. You may need more time if you want a crisper crust, but be careful.
Voila! Homemade pizza. Slice that delicious pie up, and enjoy!
*Last night, I actually made pineapple pizza, but the pizza looked less than photogenic. This particular pizza was actually from a previous instance.
Introducing Thankful Thursday
I’m very pleased to announce four theme days – Mindful Monday, Wordless Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, and Foodie Friday. Let me explain each topic.
Mindful Monday will be all about mindfulness. I will be discussing my practices with mindfulness, topics discussed on The Mindfulist, and ideas to be more mindful. Wordless Wednesday will be a single picture – no words. It’s fairly popular, actually. Thankful Thursday will essentially be the evolution of my gratitude series. And my favorite? Foodie Friday will encourage me to get into the kitchen to bring you glorious pictures of delicious food. It might not be anything like Smitten Kitchen or The Parsley Thief, but I do enjoy food.
I had several ideas for Tuesdays, but none of them really seem exciting. The most viable Tuesday theme was Taboo Tuesday, which would essentially be my day to discuss more serious topics – to treat this platform as my soap box. I may still instate that theme, but for now Tuesdays will be open. Perhaps Typical Tuesdays will work? Saturdays and Sundays are also open-ended. If I don’t have anything worthwhile to say, I probably just won’t post. However, I do need a set schedule in order to encourage myself to write and be creative. I’m looking forward to my posting schedule.
Moving onto today’s theme – gratitude – I’m very grateful to have come up with this schedule. I’ve been lacking in the creativity department lately, and it feels wonderful to finally get some creative ideas flowing again. When your livelihood is based off of creativity, it can be very stressful to loss that creative touch.
Gratitude # 77
At this very moment in life, I can count many blessings that make any uncomfortable life changes that much more tolerable. This life change itself is a blessing in disguise. I wasn’t happy with the job change I made, and I had several red flags warning me that it was the wrong move to make even before beginning the process of counter offering. However, we all know what they say about hindsight. There’s only so much living in the past a person can do before moving on and absorbing the lesson – and that’s exactly what this was. I learned a valuable lesson about trusting my instincts over looking to others to justify something that just doesn’t feel right. I learned not to trust someone just because they seem personable. I learned that I shouldn’t settle for anything less than I truly deserve, regardless of how “good” it might seem on the surface. I learned once again that minutes are most definitely worth more than money, and that the people you surround yourself with are more important than the digits before the decimal point on your paycheck. I discovered that right now I’m in a place where I haven’t been before. You see, I had a life changing moment like this nearly three years ago, and I didn’t handle it nearly as well as I’ve handled this. Brian has noted that I seem happier than I did in a long time. I have shocked myself with how happy I am despite the fact that I’m involuntarily unemployed at this juncture. Imagine that!
I think I have grown and changed in such a way that I trust that everything will be as it should. I have experienced enough uncomfortable situations in my life thus far that I know determination and perseverance can carry you quite a long way. I’ve learned to live in the moment, to value the present. While I still have moments of rehashing the past in my mind or agonizing over the future, I’m becoming much more mindful. I’m focusing so much more of my efforts on making my dream – the dream to become a consultant and freelancer – become a way of life. I don’t doubt it will still take some time before I can consider it to be a fully supporting way of life, but everyone has to start out small at some point or another. This is my time, and I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I am so grateful to have built a network of good friends, and I am grateful for each one of my readers. Life is much better than it seems.
Redesigned
It’s taken quite some time to come up with a new layout, but I finally found a few layouts that I liked. Brian saw promise in this particular one (originally Black Neon) and created a color scheme and background layout for me. Please let me know how this affects your experience here — I’m all about user-friendliness here. If something doesn’t quite suit you, please give me constructive feedback. Things I’ll need to know are:
- Colors – if you don’t like a particular color, offer a suggestion (note: some of the used colors are not web-safe, so what looks seamless to me might not be so seamless to you)
- Layout – you’ll notice I’ve chosen a three column layout this time in order to maximize my sidebar area
- Placement – if something seems like it’s out of place or should be moved, let me know what and where.
Aside from that, I’m pretty much happy with the layout and color scheme. Now if I could just figure out what to do with the rest of my website…
[The Mindfulist] July 7th
As we go through our daily activities, we frequently get lost in thoughts of past and future, not staying grounded in the awareness of our bodies. – Joseph Goldstein
This statement resonates within me. Recently I’ve been trapped in that state of past and future thoughtfulness. My mind will often drift back to that unpleasant moment nearly a week ago, or it will spin scenarios that could happen should a piece not be placed properly or in time. In fact, my mind has worked this way for much of my life — dwelling on the past, dreaming of or fearing the future. It’s a habit of sorts, and I believe we should treat it as such. I would go so far as to say it can be a dangerous habit because we can miss some very important experiences and ques in the here and now if we are lost in the past or future. Our society is caught up in the concept of time travel, too — we talk about going back in time to change some event or going into the future to see how things turn out. But what about enjoying the present? Remember the saying that states today is a gift? We most assuredly should cherish the present because we will only get one shot at it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Once the experiences have been lived, the course of our future will be altered. Instead of worrying about it, it’s likely better to act and react in the present in the best ways possible if we’d like to ensure good memories and a good future. Sure, we can’t escape bad memories or completely prevent unforeseen or uncontrollable events, but we can certainly strive to enjoy each minute we have.
Several Documents Later…
I spent much of the weekend researching freelancing, consulting, and just general independent contracting. I’ve got several documents of information pulled together now, and I feel confident that I have plenty of resources all at my finger tips. Now comes the hard part — making sense of it all. It definitely is a lot of information to sift through even after scouring the internet. Of course, it’s definitely worth the effort because this is what I’d like to do in a lucrative capacity at some point in the future. All this information will better enable me to create a viable business plan and set realistic, achievable goals for myself.
Tomorrow I will be kicking my job hunt into high gear. There will be several sources scoured, companies and businesses researched, resume polishing, cover letter creation and customization, and application submissions. It’s apparently a science, as you can find just by searching the web. In all honestly, sometimes it’s important to have that day job to fund our passions, even if our passions aren’t ever meant to supplant the day job as primary income. Regardless, I shall be doing my best to stand out from the crowd. Seriously, how many other candidates remember to bring a portfolio? I nailed an interview just by having that beautiful little folder of my work along for the occasion — and I can do it again.
Assessing My Progress
We’re already halfway through 2010 — have we decided it’s two thousand ten or twenty ten yet? — and it’s high time I assess my progress on this year’s goals. Obviously, I’ve been granted the time to recenter and refocus, so I’m most certainly going to take full advantage of that fact.
Health
Healthy eating habits: I’m going to be brutally honest with all of you — I really don’t think I’ve done a single thing to work towards a more balanced diet. While I’d been snacking on apples, a simple 60 calorie piece of fruit isn’t exactly a good way to prevent those sugar cravings. At the very least, my easy access to those Panera chocolate duet with walnut cookies is long gone.
Exercise: Again, I have a confession to make. I have not had an ounce of discipline with regards to exercising. Sure, I walk a lot, but that doesn’t count for everything. How can I sit here whining about my weight loss plateau when clearly I’ve not done a thing to keep the weight melting off?
Lose 29lbs and 33 inches: I’ve lost 11lbs and 9 inches since the start of the year. That leaves me with 18lbs and 24 inches more to lose before the year’s over. That’s a pretty tall order to fill.
Home
Get back on the Flylady band wagon: I think you’re going to see a pattern here. No surprise, I haven’t done so well on this goal. I’d get home at the end of the day feeling wiped out and ready to veg. So many things added up, and I really just didn’t know how to process that sensory overload. Too many things were happening at once, and it obviously culminated in Thursday morning’s unpleasant scenario. Well, at least I have more time to devote to routine creation, right?
Potty train Tati: We’re still welcoming the Disney Princesses into our home. What? It can get pretty hectic around here.
Self-Betterment
Write Daily: For the first quarter of the year, I did fairly well — right up until I became overwhelmed with everything going on in my life. No, we’re not going to detail everything, but clearly my mind was far too disjointed to formulate coherent thoughts. I’m getting back on track, though.
Make Friends/ Strengthen Current Friendships: I could still to improve upon this, but I’m pleased to say I’ve gotten better with talking to people. Okay, only when I’ve slept for a fairly decent amount of time. I still have my moments where I feel like I open my mouth and stupid comes out. 😉 And hey, this whole losing my job thing has opened my eyes to the social network I’ve created for myself. I have connections, and this time I’m not afraid to ask for help.
Religion/ Spirituality: Well, I’ve certainly seen some signs and either chosen to heed or ignore them. Sometimes, I just don’t learn to trust the instincts I’ve been blessed with. Yes, Sir, I hear you loud and clear — minutes are worth more than money! Thanks for the lesson and the test. I’ll do better next time.
Overall, I’ve got a lot of work to do if I’d like to achieve my goals. This little unplanned vacation will be spent as wisely as possible.
