The Never Never Jar

Today a friend shared on Facebook a "never" she has that was a "never" I actually had until a couple months ago.  It seemed like every turn I made I would run into someone who was having a glorious experience with Bulletproof Coffee or "Butter Coffee." 

I have had a lifelong disgust of butter, mayonnaise or anything oily.  One my favorite
"excellent daddy" stories was about the time he took my 7 year old "boyfriend" and I out to lunch.   Patrick ordered a tuna sandwich. I wanted to be like him but I hated mayonnaise so I ordered a tuna sandwich with no mayonnaise.  I vividly remember the waitress being dumbfounded and a conversation with my dad ensuing with instructions to literally take some tuna out of a can and slap it on some bread.

She came back -- after a good long while, of course -- and my dad saw my eyes swell with tears after I took my first bite.  He looked down and saw we had been served the wrong sandwiches.  I was too embarrassed to say anything in front of Patrick, of course.  I contend that my dad waited waaaaaaaay too long (and remember full on tears silently streaming down my face) to come to our aid, but he always maintained that he immediately remedied the situation for fear we might both projectile vomit on him.

My tolerance for butter and mayo has, of course, grown.  But I still only use scants of each in any culinary situation.  I got a little sick to my stomach even imagining butter coffee in my mouth the first time I heard about it.   But, one day a couple months ago when yet another good friend was extolling the virtues of her new discovery I heard myself speak exactly like a 7 year old about how I would never try it, that I didn't NEED to try it, it wasn't for me, etc. 

Just hearing that petulant voice made me realize I should possibly push through it and try.  The next day I bought the damn butter, and the coconut oil, and soon found myself flicking a pat of butter into a blender.  I had to psych myself up for the first sip, and even the next, but eventually I realized my disgust was all in my head, that really it just tastes like frothy coffee with heavy cream, which makes sense: cream being the precursor to butter, after all!

I actually gave it a shot for a month and came away with the biggest win: that the Brain Octane (highly purified coconut oil by the Bulletproof Coffee company) was my ticket to my happiness. It unequivocally cured the brain fog caused by hormone fluctuations.  Gone!

So I got something great out of pushing against a never.  That being said, I can't tell you how happy I am that I don't have to touch butter every morning.  Ew.

We all have to push through our "nevers" from time to time.  I have heard parents speak of theirs on many occasions.  But I am keenly aware that as I get older I can be even more convincing - to myself and others -- and firmly entrenched in my nevers.  Friends will concur "Good idea, Bridget, you probably should NOT ever do that again." 

So, I've decided to up my elasticity game.  I have some lasting body elasticity issues due to a running injury, so I've recently increased my yoga game.  Now I'm going to up my inner elasticity game too. 

I made a NEVER JAR so I can stay conscious of how often I create hard edges and build walls with my nevers.  Every time I come against a never, I'll write it down and throw it in the jar.  I will try to bust through one every once in a while because it does appear that every time I do bust through a never (never run a marathon, never buy a house without a second income, never try Bullet Coffee, etc.) something pretty amazing comes out of the mix.

I will confess that one of things in my jar is never dating a Virgo again.  It didn't turn out splendidly all 4 times I've done it and I'm pretty fricking firmly entrenched (aka Aries bullheaded entrenched) in this never.  Watch me meet another charming Virgo in the near future just to test my never resilience.  I shall pray for some heart elasticity if that occurs!

Everything Has Its Place

 

Perfect Place for Wisteria I'm Planting in Honor of My Friend Jim Hamilton

 

I’ve been unequivocally blessed in the housing department since I moved away from home when I was 18.  The year I went to Berkeley, many California residents didn’t get into dorms.  The year I moved to Paris there was a bizarre housing crisis.  New York is always New York.  Yet in even these most extreme cases, even though it sometimes took a while, I miraculously ended up in the most beautiful, convenient spots. 

My homes have been of various sizes, some super tiny (first place in NY, but lovely setting so I didn’t care) and some huge (a mansion I rattled around in with sheer glee), but I have never fit a home so perfectly as the one I just bought.  It’s a glove of a house, not too small, not too big.  For Goldilocks and her two furry bears, it fits just right.

The internal cheer that I keep hearing myself repeat silently to myself as I continue to get settled is “Everything has its place.”  There’s a drawer for the hummingbird food.  There’s a perfectly sized and placed drawer for baggies.  The bijillion cooking and/or eating utensils that I have amassed (and proclaim to be over-the-top by friends) also each have a perfectly situated spot.  The furry bear girls are serene and happy here too.  They have all their perfect happy places too.

My heart is happy right where it is too.  Many times a day I thank my lucky stars, even when I’m in the middle of the crisis.  Yep, even that has its perfect place because crises – whether mine or that of a friend that needs my attention – makes me connect with people in a different way, makes me appreciate.

I’m starting to get that this phrase I found myself repeating throughout my days as I’ve been doing my necessary nestling is becoming a new mantra for me: “everything has its place” brings me delightfully into the present, and reminds me to be grateful. 

It’s not about stuff.  It’s about being here right now in this perfect spot: even as I write this, overtired, having dealt with difficult news today, working too late, many more tasks ahead of me before bed.  All of it is perfectly placed.  With a furry bear girl snuggling on either side of me, it’s hard to doubt the perfection.  Even in the pushing through, there is perfection.

Sometimes “be here now” is too much for me to take on.  I aspire to it daily, but I sometimes think only Eckhart Tolle and a few others have that one down.   I’ll continue to strive, but this new mantra has the training wheels I currently need, perfectly placed until they no longer serve me.

Self-Criticism: The Bullying We Can All Address

 

Sagging chin.  Need to lose weight.  Flabby here, saggy there.  Why does that jiggle?  That neck, oh my god that aging neck. 

The never-ending inventory of my aging body continues between my two ears and has been the topic of many a conversation with my girlfriends.  As we age, my friends and I seem to carve out more and more of our together time doing an inventory of all of our detestable bits and pieces.  One friend says her eyelids are too heavy. I just don't see it.  I love her eyes just the way they are, exactly, precisely the way they are.

Often friends don't see what we see.  Other times they are simply polite and offer the obligatory "I have no idea what you are talking about, I just don't see it."  Sometimes, as with my friend's lovely lids, we either don't notice or don't perceive what they do as a flaw.

A few months ago an older friend who has had several successful plastic surgeries suggested I should consider addressing my chin's unattractive saggy situation.  It appears the floor is beckoning it with a treat.  I protested inside and out, thinking I was too young to start waging this war (I'm not, it turns out) and confirming to myself "I'm not the plastic surgery type!" I have had dreams of aging gracefully and loving my body in all of its incarnations.  Methinks I doth protest too much though. 

In response to her suggestion I proceeded to get obsessed with my chin, looking in the mirror more often than I ever had before, hoping to catch a glimpse of it that would either prove my plastic surgery proponent friend right or wrong. I was keeping a tally in my head.  The more I watched it, the more swiftly it seemed to lose its elasticity, as if my vigil was encouraging the aging process.  I started thinking my obsession might actually be making me age faster!

The day after Valentine's Day I was sitting at a dinner with friends and suggested to the women at the table that it would be a great Valentine's gift to ourselves if we gave up criticizing our bodies for a year.  I asked who was up for the challenge, assuming that others would and that I, too, would rally.  But none of us wanted to commit.  

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the fact that of all the kick ass women at that table not one of us was up for the challenge.   Since that night I have found myself averting self-criticism about 50% of the opportunities that presented themselves.  It's a start, but not enough.  A higher part of myself is craving a moratorium on public floggings.  So in a few weeks on my birthday I will be taking one year off from the public self-criticism of my body.  I don't get to speak negatively about how fat or old I look in front of another human from March 22, 2015 through March 21, 2016. 

Will I slip up?  Probably, but  if I fall I'll get back on the wagon.  And I know I won't be able to eliminate the chatter between my ears, but I will get to see how much it decreases because of this experiment.

Honestly I can't imagine not speaking ill of my body's weight with someone, anyone, for an entire year.  No matter what weight I have been, it's been a lifelong topic of conversation.  The aging thing is a hot new topic of the last several years.  It's still got a lot of juice left, particularly with the recent chin debacle upon me.   I'll have to look for other adrenaline rushes.

I've got a few weeks to milk it all for what it's worth, but I don't think I will because I'm starting to enjoy the winding down from the highest heights of the self-judgment mountain.  Just thinking about the prospect of proclaiming this publicly has curbed my desire substantially, and makes me want to help my friends curb theirs as well.  Self-criticism hurts.  It's one of the worst kinds of bullying around.

Happy Birthday to me.  I get to start learning how to be my own better friend. 

 

Superhero Smoothie Wars: Vitamix Stomps the Ninja

 

My superhero food of choice is the smoothie I drink every morning to start my day.  So my blender is really important.  I was a Ninja girl for two years.  The Ninja had come highly recommended by two dear friends, so when my last blender broke I bought one and became an instant fan.  I found elements of its design to be annoying, but all of my pet peeves were overridden by its power, which now reminds me of a muscle car.   Strong looking but it tries too hard to show it.   It sounded like a jet engine and the blade demands careful handling.  I always felt like I was holding a handful of mini ninja swords when I had to insert or remove it.  But I was swayed by the seemingly kick ass ninja show.  It seemed to take the kale and frozen fruit I fed it, battering it into a smoothie with rapid fire consistency.  Or so I thought.

I should have known my love was blind when I would proudly serve my kale smoothies to guests who would find themselves concentrating on the surprising opportunity to chew something from the glass I had proudly served as a drink. 

I was always trying to figure out what foodie memory was evoked by Ninja smoothies.  Recently I saw a box of cornflakes at the store, and all my childhood cornflake memories came flooding in to explain why I didn't question chewing my smoothies.  Kale smoothies made in a Ninja remind me of what I consider the perfect cereal eating moment, where the balance of soggy to crunchy is just right.   I really actually DID enjoy the flavor and texture.  Truly I did.  BUT, it’s not called sog-crunchie.  It’s calls a SMOOOOOOOOOTHIE.  Vitamix understands that.

When the carafe for my Ninja cracked and I had to replace it for the second time in two years I started researching blenders.  I had heard wonderful things about the Vitamix over the years but never wanted to go to spend that much.  But after reading a bunch of blogs and watching some great YouTube videos that compared them, I realized that the perfect fit for me, and the most cost-effective solution (last longer, less breakage) was the Vitamix.   The article that ultimately swayed me mentioned the Vitamix Certified Reconditioned option and I knew that was the answer for me.

You can buy them on the Vitamix site but if you buy on Amazon it's a little cheaper and with free shipping.  The downside is you don’t know the exact model you are going to get when you order.  I was hoping for a 5200 because I had seen comparisons that put it ahead of the 6300 in my mind.  But I got the 6300.  And, thank god I did, because man oh man is it the perfect blender for me!

The 6300 has an automatic smoothie setting, so you turn it on, walk away and do other stuff and it shuts off automatically when it’s done!  There’s also a frozen dessert and soup setting.  Yes, it makes HOT SOUP out of cold ingredients out of your refrigerator!  One day I accidentally hit the FROZEN DESSERT button and it started to make a beautiful sorbet out of my smoothie ingredients - in seconds!

Let me count the ways I think the Vitamix wins the blender superhero wars:

·         Blade – That damn blade that looks so ferocious in the Ninja is dangerous.  I have accidentally cut myself a couple times.  It's a pain to clean too. Getting between the blades without slicing a finger is a feat.  Frankly, I couldn’t keep it perfectly black so it never appeared perfectly clean even when it was.  It developed a film on it that I could never scour off completely.  With the Vitamix, you don’t ever have to touch the blade and it's so damn small it's baffling how it works.  Seriously, I don’t get it. Amazing.

·         Clean-Up – There is simply no comparison.  To clean the Vitamix you put soapy water in it,  blend it up, and then rinse.  I usually have to do a little more sponge work than that, but not much.  Ninja clean-up is a huge, unsatisfying hassle. 

·         The Lid – Again, no comparison.  You have to line up the Ninja lid (which I always found to be awkward) in just the right way to get it to work.  There is only one way to put on the lid and it takes three steps to do it!  With the Vitamix you put it on from any angle any old way and you don't even have to push hard to see that it's secure.  Done!

·         Affixing Carafe to Base – Yet again, no comparison, there is no lining up in just the right way that the finicky Ninja demands. You just put it on the base.   Done.

·        Noise – One of the blogs said the Vitamix was loud.  Have you ever heard a Ninja?  It sounds like you are inside a jet engine.  The Vitamix is a lullaby in comparison.  I put a ton of frozen fruit in my smoothies.  With the Ninja, it sounded like a bunch of marbles being ground up.  With the Vitamix, if you were in another room, you would never guess the level of grounding up that was taking place in that thing.

 

This is a ton of kale, an orange and a bunch of frozen mango (plus coconut oil and protein powder) and it barely let on what a big job it had to do...

 

·         Carafe Shape – The Vitamix carafe shape is far more beautiful and user friendly being wider at the top.  And the pour spout is wider and works better.  It feels lighter to me, although I didn’t weigh my Ninja carafe before I tossed it.  Bottom line: it's far easier to work with, and far better looking than the Ninja.

·         Beauty – I noticed that a few blogs said the Vitamix isn’t great looking. I disagree. If nothing else it is far more attractive than the Ninja in shape and proportion.  I have no issues keeping it on my counter and I'm pretty adverse to all things unattractive.

·         Smoothie Perfection –   Throw ingredients in the carafe.  Set to SMOOTHIE.  Turn it on.  Drink the blissful concoction that doesn’t leave one morsel-unblended. End of story.