Catching up on…everything

Whoa doggies. It’s been a busy, weird month since I last posted. Apologies for the radio silence!

Let’s see. I know if I try to actually form a post it’s just going to get tossed into the “Drafts” folder since I won’t be able to finish it in the 10 minutes I’ve got before I need to make dinner. So instead we’ll get some free-flowing list type epistle. Ready?

1. We sent out all of the invitations for the wedding. Yeah, we started them a few months ago and just now finished. What can I say? Gathering addresses, making extra photocopies, blah blah blah. It was more emotional than I thought it would be: paring it down to the number we needed. We’ve got a lot of family, and we had a finite amount of beds to offer. This means we invited far fewer friends than we’d have liked. I felt like a big jerk whenever I hung out with people I like here in Seattle, having a nice drink and conversation, knowing they weren’t invited to this big thing that everyone knows is happening. So awkward! I got over it, though, and I know we’ll be having some sort of Seattle-centric party when we get back from getting hitched so we can celebrate with everyone.

Sky wore a jacket with no shirt to breakfast, it was very "Alice's Restaurant"

2. I got my wedding dress started! Seriously, you guys, I did! I’m so proud of this because I’d been putting it off and both Sky and Jaime were getting a little nervous, I could tell. A way talented lady named Angela is going to make it look amazing. I went in there all “I don’t know what I want but it’s not this dress and yadda yadda yadda yadda” and she was all “How about this?” and did like 5 ninja moves on the dress and I looked in the mirror and was all “Wow.”* Very excited for the next fitting. It’s like my dream dress I’d imagined while watching Cyndi Lauper videos.
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* I needed to write in 13-Year-Old for this exchange. It’s just the only way to convey how it went down.

3. As I wrote in the last entry, I was really, really sick last month. Sickest I’ve been, ever. I ended up taking the following prescription medications: antibiotics, eye drops, cough syrup with codeine, an inhaler, another cough medicine that numbed my throat so it couldn’t cough (!), anti-inflammatory, steroid, and last but most certainly not least, pain medications & muscle relaxers for an injury sustained from coughing. I hurt myself coughing. More than a month after first getting sick, I’ve still got a lingering cough. All of this sick made me reassess a lot of things – the most major has been how I eat…

4. I’m trying to eat less dairy, and stay away from things like white flour and sugar. For anyone who knows me, this sounds like a ridiculous proposition. I could eat baked goods for an entire week. I’ve been a vegetarian for over 10 years now, but I eat a lot of processed foods. If you’d have told me 10 years ago that I’d be reading a book written by the actress from Clueless I’d have laughed in your face, but “The Kind Diet” is a really interesting book. First of all, it uses the word “diet” in an older sense of the word:

diet †1. Course of life: way of living or thinking.
of the same diet, of a different diet, both of a diet, i.e. sort or kind.

(Thank you, Oxford English Dictionary via The Seattle Public Library)

A “kind” diet focuses on, of course, ethical treatment of animals and not eating animal products (i.e. vegan) but also on being nice to your body and to yourself. I’ve never really thought I could give up something like white sugar, so I never tried. Even though I know it’s the source of my energy slumps and probably my headaches. After reading up on how sugar and dairy products can contribute to bad health and respiratory problems, I was pretty sold. I remember how healthy I felt during my time in London when I was eating a vegan diet: I was rarely sick and had tons of energy.

So I’m not jumping into being a vegan 100%. Mostly because I think flexibility is important, as is sharing meals with Sky. When a friend gives us a bunch of eggs from her hens who are totally loved and cared for, I want to be able to use them; if Sky makes me a dinner and he uses some butter in the sauce, I want to enjoy his efforts. Also I hate labels, and I don’t want to be compared to people who really are doing a full on vegan diet. Instead, I’m eating much, much less of those things and trying to be conscious about the sugars and white flours that are present in every little thing I see. I’ve stocked our kitchen with items like almond milk, spelt flour, egg replacer and Earth Balance. I made some crazy delicious vegan, sugar and white flour free brownies last week that were 10293948329 times better than any snack I could pick up during a work break.

So far I’m feeling pretty great on the new food train. I’ve been eating a lot more vegetables and fruits, which is always good.

5. Five? I don’t know what five should be. Maybe it should be: we had sun yesterday and on Saturday and it was GREAT. People outside Seattle complaining about the heat and how we should be happy we’ve got 60 degree weather and clouds are missing a vital point: the rest of our year is CRAP. Winters in those other places involve snow and sunshine and lovely Springs where things shoot up out of the ground. Seattleites only get July, August and September (if we are lucky) with some sun and less clouds. We’re like that girl in the closet in the Ray Bradbury short story everyone had to read in 7th grade. We’re upset about our 78 minutes of summer because THAT IS ALL WE GET TO ENJOY out of this God forsaken clammy rainy cloudy sunless pit of Seasonal Affect Disorder. Not that I’ve got strong feelings about it or anything.

6. I got a bike for 40 clams at a garage sale this weekend. I’m pretty excited about it. I shined it all up and also washed my poor red scooter that’s been gathering dust and spiders all Spring. I rode both of them yesterday and it was glorious.