"Sleeping is giving in..."

I am extremely lucky to be able to take off for an entire month and travel up and down the California coast. I am not unaware of this and I treasure this luxury. I also consider it our Midwest trade off agreement. I will live in the Midwest, but I get to travel in return.

However, my luck has always stopped at sleep. I do not sleep so well in general, when I am traveling I do not sleep much at all. This last week I was expected to share a bed with my lovely daughters. If I had a hard time sleeping before... I had an impossible time last week! My girls could not be more opposite in sleeping style, while at the same time both are perfectly effective at keeping their bedmate wide awake.

Beezus, as is her way, will literally sock you in the middle of the night if she feels you infringe on her turf. I can not be within a foot of her with out a sharp wake up call in the form of one of her stick-ly knees or elbows in my side or back. I wonder now if she stays so petite to keep her night time jabs finely pokey. My face has been sore for the last month or so, which makes me overly paranoid about bumping into things, much less getting sucker punched in the middle of the night by my 8 year old, somewhat rigid daughter. One night she came at me with a right hook, accompanied by childish, groggy profanity and a demand that I leave the bed. She did not have to ask me twice and I am left to again feel anxious for her future husband's welfare.

I switched over to Ramona’s side of the bed. My cute baby and the cuddlier of the family. I was completely sure that we she would share her side of the bed with me. I was right, she was more than happy to share – mommy sleeping next to her was the highlight of the vacation. What I did not plan on was how the enthusiasm to share bed space would assert itself. Ramona, as it turns out, loves company in bed and wants to spoon. At first this is very cute. She wiggles up close and wraps her little arms around me. Eventually I get tired and hot! I am balancing on the edge of the bed to begin with and the more she cuddles in the more I feel myself tipping out. Although I continually untangled her clingy appendages some how I would find that I had a surprisingly strong six year old arms wrapped around me and, as if that was not enough, her leg slung over my hip. Kinda like sleeping with a very sweet parasite.

Well, I spent most of Tahoe on the sofa upstairs right next to the kitchen… so that when my mom got up bright and early I had a great spot to hear the coffee maker start up!

Sitting in the morning sun...

Today my hair dresser implored me to “name one thing you like about South Dakota.” I hesitated which he took as humor. However, to clarify, my hesitation was because I knew the answer immediately and I did not want to insult any Californians I know. Or my hair dresser who I only sorta know.

Unfortunately ever since I moved to South Dakota there is a constant comparison. I do not like to compare two places that are both dear to me. It reminds me of all the parenting books I have read about not labeling our children and navigating sibling rivalry. I get visuals of my two states getting complexes and needing expensive therapies or getting attitude and storming off. However, everything I know is held up and measured out in new terms…

And the answer to his question is without a doubt, the people. I love the people in South Dakota.

South Dakotans are a community. A strong community. I am not sure I ever understood community before I moved there (though my kids school program before we moved was close). When I was at my lowest in South Dakota complete strangers came out of no where to help and make me feel more at home. I never want to generalize too much. There are some great, really great, Californians I know. But it is in South Dakota that I am learning through example how to be a better community member – which I know I have a lot of work to do to achieve.

Whenever I try to understand it better all I can come up with is there is a smaller population, harsher weather and people rely on each other more for support. Maybe in California we are to dispensable to each other – we can hide from social responsibility in our large population assuming we are anonymous.

So Californians tonight I say be a little less snide next time you refer my other home – we Californians do not have it all figured out yet.

GF Pound Cake Cupcakes, New Icing and Jules GF Flour

A nice, GF and nut free cupcake and icing recipe derived from our favorite lady Martha Stewart with minor alterations in cook time:

Brown Sugar Pound Cakes
3 Cups – Jules GF flour
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
½ Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 ¼ cups packed light brown sugar
4 Eggs, room temp (I did not bother with room temp)
¾ Cup butter milk

1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. Mix it all together – add butter last. (Martha write more, but I was in a hurry and just did it this way and it turned out fine).
3. Cook for 25 minutes. That is what Martha says… it took closer to 30 minutes. Not sure if that is a GF flour issue.

• We used Jules GF flour. It utilizes a modified tapioca starch. It is an awesome 1:1 alternative to regular gluten all purpose flour. It is however extremely expensive even for a GF flour. ALSO - in this recipe the GF cupcakes need to cook for closer to 40 minutes - check on them at 30 and 35 and wait until they have started to get that golden brown on top - not burnt - just slightly golden on top. Otherwise they tend to sink. A knife will come out of the cupcake clean long before they are actually done cooking. Otherwise the best flour alternative and cupcakes we have made so far.

Icing (I LOVED THIS ICING!):
½ cups (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 Cups sifted confectioners sugar
2 Teaspoons pure GF vanilla
2 Tablespoons milk

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, swirling pan (I mixed with spoon), until nut brown color (I did not wait that long), about 10 minutes (I did more like 5).
2. Pour into bowl, add sugar, milk and GF vanilla and stir until smooth.

Virtually Transmitted Disease

Oh the joyous, bacchanalian of the internet! Oh, the endless supply of human ingenuity! The carousal of home sapien sapiens imagination on display in bright illumination daily! All hail social networking, blogs, status bars, sharing opinions on our walls/articles in cute comments, email accounts, articles, news reports, tabloids, online shopping, and sometimes even making attempts at exercising our neocortex with educational articles and research.

If you wake up desperate for people, if you need to express yourself, if you are bored, never fear the internet is here! If necessary wearing spandex in a cape – just bing it. Feel the exhilaration of those tiny little keys under your finger tips and look up your latest symptoms for your undiagnosed malady, turn on music, write a friend, tell someone off (this can be most gratifying, but highly not recommended, but also gratifying, but really bad for happiness!), admit you are wrong, prove you are right, forgive, forget, get smarter, stay dumber, find support for your beliefs, derail another’s sacred credence or just watch hulu/netflix - whatever… the possibilities are endless!

But please be careful! There are dangers out online. My poor email account would be a good example of this. I thought I had treated that account delicately, nurturing its growth with contacts and emails, protecting it from strangers, blocking it from those who would mean it harm, filtering the content that was just too sordid. Afterall my email account has been my trusty companion and served me well as I shopped, never judging me as I applied to jobs, saving my treasured drafts of my most intimate thoughts and secrets, while helping me handle my bills and ordering my average level college transcripts, supporting my networking attempts and, when I need it most, connecting me to family.

I knew there were some dangers to my email account. I had been warned. Still I risked shopping online. I justified it, guiltily. I always figure they were legitimate sites, safe for both me and my beloved email account. They were such fun – oh the fun! I only visited the most wonderfully professional, hoity-toity, clean cut sites, like Crate and Barrel, GAP and Pottery Barn. Upstanding, upper middle class sites that would never sell my information (and always have sales!); therefore, never putting my innocent, subservient email account at risk! Yet, sadly… my poor email account has been infected. Infected!

That is right, infected. I hang my head in despair, in humiliation, ashamed and… dirty. Though I was careful about where I went online – keeping out of those shady corners and depraved places that only the most brandish, or testosterone saturated, of us travel. I always stayed on the straight and narrow – prudishly even.

As I watch as my email account breathes it last sighs, sending out painful spasms of spam, I know, seeing it convulse, that I have done it wrong. I am left to contemplate the message of educational preformance about HIV that toured my high school in California…

Be careful who you email with – you do not know who they have been emailing with.

Wait… that wasn’t it. Well, whatever… you catch my meaning and, hopefully, not my email accounts virtual virus.

Ashes to ashes my friends it is time to terminate my hotmail account, before it taints us further.

Happy Birthday "Beezus"!

It is unbelievable for me as a mom to watch my daughter have yet another birthday! She has become the most contemplative, talkative, imaginative, articulate, curious and just all around intelligent little girl.

She asks the big questions, what came first the dinosaur or the egg. She wants proof that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy really exist and has determined, via her own logic, they do not. She plays along with my fanciful ideals nicely – I think she is under the impression she is letting me live the dream a little longer. She still believes that Tinker Bell and Disneyland are magical. She is very interested in science concepts. Lately she has asked about human cells being implanted into animal, she wants to know why she is not allowed to build a warp drive in her amazing machines camp (she has been playing more RPG video games and watching StarWars with her daddy). She is certain light speed means getting to CA will take less than five hours and more like one. She is very focused on becoming a vet and can not wait to have a bunch of cats when she is older. She is still under negotiations on whether she is allowed to live in my house while she collects these animals.

“Beezus’s” birth is really the start of one of the most amazing journeys I will ever have the joy of embarking on. In so many ways my tiny little girl and I have taken the world on together. I know we will continue to do so!

I know that Beezus will grow up to do amazing things! I love you sugar. Have a great Birthday!

To be happy you must savor! Part One & Part Two

A favorite photo of the Settlers King and a great memory!

I am so excited to post about one of my favorite happiness findings. This will be a multi part post, because there is too much good information... and I got excited.

Learning to savor moments more fully leads to happiness! This seems too obvious. However when I stop to think about my day I know that, at least before all this happiness reading, I was likely to spend most of everyday going through the motions. Running my errands, thinking about what I had to get done the next day, focusing on problems and frustrated by lack of solutions. I hardly spent any time thinking about the wonderful people in my life, my favorite memories or future fun. Honestly, if I started to think about pleasant thoughts I would brush those happy thoughts aside. It felt down right greedy to indulge when I have so much more to worry about!

BUT every mind wellness book I have read addresses the concept of savoring happiness. Savoring happiness – is what it sounds like - appreciating and fully committing ourselves to a positive experience. In “The How of Happiness” Sonja Lyubomirsky says savoring is split into “past, present and future component(s)” and she states that “researchers define savoring as any thoughts or behaviors capable of ‘generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment’”. Lyubomirsky says that to truly savor an experience you must step outside the experience and assess it. Since she is the expert I figure she must know what she is talking about.

All social psychologists and ordinary people (like me!) pursuing that valuable 40 percent of flexible happiness are in agreement that relishing our happy experiences is fundamental to increasing happiness and, as importantly, maintaining it.

To use Lyumbomirsky past, present and future components - savoring goes something like this:

1. The Past: Is remembering in detail the sites, tastes, sounds and emotions of the good times you have had.

Activity to enhance savoring the past: Lyumbomirsky suggests an activity used in social psychology research in which participants of the study used “positive reminiscence... (to) travel to a mental destination through recall of positive images and memories”. The study had participants list their favorite memories and reminisce about them twice each day for one week. The happiness increased for all participants and more for those who vividly remembered.

I have actually been using this – but in correspondence to rumination – when I find myself focusing on a negative experiences and replaying them. I stop the rumination and immediately think about my positive memory in great detail. Right now that memory is holding Ramona for the first time. In the past if trying to stop rumination cold did not work, worries are powerful, but having a robust positive memory has been magical!

A friend of mine had a facebook status addressing dealing with “difficult people” in the morning. She had been put in a real bad mood as a result of dealing with these “difficult people”. I felt bad for her, because she still had a full day of work ahead of her. I thought to myself she needs a positive memory she can combat those bad vibes with! To me this is a perfect time to exercise taking control of our mind and not let it take control of us. I know, way easier said than done. This is especially true when dealing with other people we can not control. However, it is easy to think happy thoughts when we are happy, it hard when we aren't, but ultimately much more rewarding.

2. The Present: Is being able to be fully aware of the moment at hand. Mindfullness and Gratitude are practices that are especially helpful in learning to commit ourselves fully to the present moment and cherish it. I write about this a lot – so I will let it go for now. But I have a future post on some neat brain research in association with mindfulness.

3. The Future: Gretchen Rubin in “the Happiness Project” refers to this as Anticipation. Anticipation is an awesome ability to get excited about future positive events. This particular form of savoring I have been focusing on recently and I feel is very important. So below is a “piggy back post”.


To be happy you must savor!
Part Two:
Anticipation!

Kids are brilliant anticipators! My children begin to plan birthday celebrations for the pending year before they even complete their birthday parties in the current year. They spend every month changing the themes, activities, invites and locations – it is going to be a Pirate Birthday, it is going to have a piñata, I am going to invite Mary and Sue, never mind let’s make it a Gargoyles party, nope changed my mind again lets have it at the zoo… all the while totally excited.

I have always had the hardest time with anticipation and savoring the future. I know that both my husband and I are likely to hold back our excitement when we think something good is about to happen. It seems as adults we are always concerned about that let down – not building expectations to high. My man and I just did not realize that part of being happy is just enjoying the dream a bit and feeding into the build up. Being fearful of a let down is the opposite of happy! It is anxiety provoking to avoid optimistic thinking and plays into those pesky negative thought patterns.

Kids never worry about their actions back firing. This could be interpreted as a lack in foresight, but that would not be fun! Case in point, climbing up trees they can not climb down! Some of us adults might think this is reckless. But hold on there! They had a lot of fun getting to the top of that very tall tree. It is true that my kids can never have a birthday that lives up to their frenzied fantasies, nor do they need to. The excitement they get from imagining how great those birthdays are provides them with happiness the entire year - which far exceeds the happiness of the single day.

For me savoring the future has been liberating. Recalling the past has never been an issue (in part because I photograph and then photobook and then write about it!); however, the future often has. It is now time to revert to a child like state and just be gleeful over future events!

My Savoring Example: I spend a lot of time imagining how amazing going home will be. I encourage talk at the dinner table from everyone – tell me what you want to do, who you want to see, lets plan where we will go.

I am divulging to the point of making lists. Lists that go something like this...

Dancing, high heels, make-up, tide pooling, cheesecake eating, movies, hair cuts (high lights, low lights, layers, salon), BBQs, the San Diego zoo, Disneyland, fireworks, sunsets, friends, family, hills (hills, hills, hills, hills), trees (BIG trees – oak trees!), drinks, the ocean (the waves), hermit crabs, the waves, Noah’s Bagels, The Jewish Community Center, maybe a hike and Costco. I do this in sing song voice. I am anticipating clubbing, going out to the city (to the a city on the bay!), by trying to stay up to date on the various club music. I listen to this while I work out and I think about dancing and my knee high boots that have had to sit in a tuber ware container under my bed. Poor boots, poor, poor boots.

And I do not even bother with contemplating whether or not California can live up to my expectations, because it is unimportant. I know that it makes me immensely happy to think about the view of the bay from highway 13, the view of SF from old tunnel road, the sun hitting the water off Golden Gate Fields, Sather Gate, Telegraph Avenue (the dude that gives away jokes for free and hemp necklaces I can’t wear cause I am too old), Tilden park’s Lake Anza, the band stand in the commons and Broadway Plaza. OH gosh! I almost forgot… MEDITERIAN FOOD, THAI FOOD, THAI FOOD, THAI FOOD, Chinese food, Mexican food – sushi! I guess I am savoring right now! Which – let me tell you – feels great!

Next will be…

Part Three: Savoring!
Why Savoring is important. For those unbelievers out there.

I won’t torture you all with it tonight. So excited! Love savoring.

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