Is it a bad sign that I’m still counting the days of this four-week adventure? I mean, is it bad that the last thing I think before I fall asleep at night is “Three down, 25 to go…”? Or that the first thing I think when I wake up is, “Jesus, really? We’re only on day four?”

I may be losing my enthusiasm for this change and could require a serious attitude adjustment. Or perhaps – just perhaps – I need to be a little patient with myself and acknowledge it’s gonna take a little while for me to settle in.

I’m finding that the biggest challenge to eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet is my deep and abiding commitment to laziness. You guys, this thing is hard work. I don’t mean it’s hard work avoiding big piles of meat and bowls of ice cream. So far, that hasn’t been too difficult. But the problem with whole foods is that they come whole. Which means you have to do a lot of prep work. Significantly more than pulling a Lean Cuisine out of the box and bunging it in the microwave for five minutes.

If anyone says that all things worth doing require hard work, I will punch them in the face. I’m playing it pretty fast and loose with the face punches right about now.

That said, there have been some gratifying experiments – my quinoa, corn, mango and black bean salad, for example, turned out to be delish. There have also been some food experiments that taste distinctly like punishment. Like the chocolate “pudding” from the Engine 2 recipe selection. It involves mixing together cocoa powder, silken tofu, agave and vanilla.

There’s an anecdote in the Engine 2 book that they served it to a fire chief who doesn’t subscribe to their healthy living approach and he didn’t know it wasn’t regular chocolate pudding. To which I say, with all gratitude and respect for the service he provides, that fire chief’s an idiot.

Of course, I still ate a bowl of it.

In addition to – or perhaps because of – the amount of planning and prepping required to eat this way, I’m finding my biggest obstacle is that I’m not eating enough. I’ll put off meals or snacks because I can’t be bothered trying to get my pea-sized brain to figure out what to ingest and then I find myself at the garden center grasping at giant pots so I don’t pass out. I have to work on eating more and more often. Not normally a problem for me in the face of junk food. Odd that it would be so difficult when the challenge is to eat healthily.

I also realized that no matter how much lip service I paid to my intentions, I have to recognize that some of my expectations are unrealistic. The purpose of this exercise is to lower my cholesterol, to become more heart-healthy and try to upset my genetic legacy for heart disease. And yet, I found myself, on day two wondering why I wasn’t rail thin yet. Clearly I have to do some work on the strong mental connection I have between eating changes and weight. Considering my mother put me on my first diet when I was 11, it’s probably understandable that this is a tough rope to cut.

And then there’s my pain. The book talks about how eating this way helps with any number of chronic ailments and, even though there wasn’t a single mention of pain-related issues, I secretly internalized a hope that it would cure my fibromyalgia. In four days, at that. I don’t think I even knew how much I’d hoped this to be the case until a pain cycle settled in and I got mad at the diet. Nobody promised me less pain. I made that part up. Get it together, brain!

In case you’re interested, here’s a rough “recipe” for the quinoa salad I made the other day. I just played with the ratios, so you can adjust them to include more or less of things. You could also substitute other whole grains or even whole wheat cous cous for the quinoa if it’s not your bag.

Salad

• 2 cups quinoa, cooked & cooled
• 2 cups black beans
• 1 cup corn (I used the canned Summer Crisp corn, as it’s crunchier)
• 1 mango, diced into little bits
• 1/3 cup diced green onions
• 1/2 cup diced red or yellow peppers

Mix ‘em all together in a big bowl and toss with the following dressing:

Dressing

• Juice of 1 or 2 limes
• 1 large clove of garlic, minced
• 2 TBS agave syrup
• Couple pinches cumin
• salt & pepper to taste

Now, the Engine 2 Diet technically nixes adding oil to food, but I added about a tablespoon of grapeseed oil to the dressing. I don’t actually think it made much difference, so I’d probably just pass on it next time.

Sunday I made a lengthy list of items the book recommended I’d need to pick up. Being the good, obedient girl that I am, I added things to my list being careful not to think too long and hard about a) what they were or b) what the hell I was supposed to do with them.

However, as Sunday slipped away, I became increasingly gun shy about the whole thing. What was I doing? Why was I doing it? Amazing how quickly I can forget. At Whole Foods, I tossed items dutifully into my cart, fighting a feeling of doom with each addition. Liquid amino acids? I don’t know what ANY of those words mean. NUTRITIONAL YEAST FLAKES? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

But I promised myself I’d make this change. And so I came home Sunday night, put away all the evidence that I was about to embark on a brave new journey, and then promptly ate McDonald’s and a big slice of chocolate cake. If I gotta go down, I’m going down fighting.

Then Monday rolled around. D-Day. I woke up refreshed and ready to meet the challenge with this attitude: I’m not doing it and you can’t make me. I was facing the first of many moments of panic-induced catatonia as I thought: what the hell am I supposed to eat?

Starting off gently, my husband handed me coffee with almond milk. Well, that’ll take some adjusting.

As the day progressed, Chris kept saying,  “Look at us, being all vegan.” Until I told him that if he didn’t stop using the word vegan I was going to punch him in the face. Now that I’m actually doing this thing – as opposed to flapping my mouth about it – there’s something about that label that gets me panicked, makes me think I’m doing something impossible or undesirable. Yes, it’s shorter than saying, “Look at us, trying to eat a whole-foods, mostly-plant-based diet.” But that version doesn’t seem quite as scary.

Not quite, anyway.

I decided that the only way I’ll survive the days ahead is to stop looking at this as some overwhelming, foreign change – and focus instead on what I’d normally eat and figure out how to adapt it. Morning, then, wasn’t that tough. Usually I just have coffee and fresh fruit-and-vegetable juice and, except for the fat-free creamer I like to mainline, there’s not much to alter there.

Then lunch came around and because I hadn’t wanted to think too much about it, I delayed it to the point where I was shaking with hunger. I almost cried at the realization that I would have to make some food. And while I wasn’t up to tackling a recipe from the Engine 2 book, I know enough about what I’m supposed to be eating to throw something together. Into a bowl went some cold brown rice, a rinsed can of chickpeas, some chopped cucumbers, asparagus and peppers. A small handful of walnuts and dried cranberries.

I made a quick dressing of fresh lime juice, garlic, and agave. And, here’s where I have to confess my first serious departure: I added a little grapeseed oil to the dressing. I KNOW! The Engine 2 police would have confiscated it, but it made it a little more tasty for me. While I’m wary of giving myself too much rope,  I’m also trying not to be too rigid about this. Success will be if I incorporate most – or even many – of the nutrition lessons into my everyday life. I’m not going to freak out about a tablespoon of oil split across a giant salad. (Although clearly I AM freaking out a bit, since you can HEAR the rationalization, can’t you?)

The rest of the day progressed okay. Ditto today so far. I won’t pretend that it isn’t tough. Again, the biggest thing I’m battling is this voice inside me that screams “YOU CAN’T EAT ANYTHING,” when, clearly, that’s not true. It’s just that I’m going to have to try. Put forth a little effort. Get creative.

I know. It sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?

And a final observation: if there’s such a thing as the Chickpea Council of America – and I like to think there is – then all I can say is they are going to owe me BIG TIME. They are fast becoming a mainstay of my diet, and if they’re casting for Miss Chickpea USA, I guess all I’m saying is I’d like to, at least, be considered.

A few months ago, I watched the documentary Forks over Knives and – persuaded by its arguments for a plant-based, whole food diet – I promptly became a vegan.

In my mind.

In reality, I didn’t immediately change much about my eating habits. Maybe I bought a little freekeh at the store and a handful of wheat berries, but it’s not like I cooked them or anything.

On some level, though, the messages from the film got stuck in my craw, for better or worse,  especially those linking an animal-protein and dairy heavy diet with heart disease. I’m no good with science-y stuff – as evidenced by the fact that I just used the phrase “science-y stuff” – but the fact that heart disease and cancer rates are significantly lower in countries whose diets are nearly devoid of those things is pretty heady stuff.

Especially since, nearly three weeks ago, my father underwent open heart surgery, a quintuple bypass. He is, thankfully, recovering well but the experience has forced me to take a more serious look at my heart health.

My mother died at 60 of a heart attack brought on by an aortic aneurysm. There had been no previous symptoms or indications that she was suffering from heart disease. And this seems to be in keeping with statistics – for many, sudden death is the first and only symptom of heart disease.

My parents’ history combined puts all four of their children in the highest risk group for developing heart disease.  For someone who spent a chunk of her twenties having panic attacks and feeling certain her heart was going to explode, this isn’t calming news.

I mentioned in a previous post about my struggle with some corticosteroids I was on for low blood pressure. When we were trying to figure out the cause of that issue, I did a stress test. If you haven’t had one, it’s a delightful process in which they hook you up to an ECG while you exercise on a treadmill for a few minutes, as hard as you can, to see how your heart fares. It’s intended to uncover any irregularities or blockages. The good news was that my heart, as far as that’s concerned, is in dandy shape.

But taking the steroids left me packing a lot of extra weight, which is piled on top of the extra weight I was already carrying and have carried for most of my life. That’s no good for the ol’ ticker, either. So far, my meager attempts to lose it haven’t amounted much and that’s been nagging at me – not to mention dampening my spirits.

In addition, I have high cholesterol and I’ve been unsuccessful in lowering it significantly, even under the specter of being put on a statin – something I really, really would like to avoid.

A segment of Forks over Knives covered the story of a firehouse in Austin, Texas, where the men had banded together to eat more healthily when it was revealed one of their members had dangerously high cholesterol. The firehouse adopted – and still sticks to – a plant-based, whole-foods diet. I kind of love the idea of all these strong, bulky men sitting around eating quinoa and carrots.

Fear, as you probably know, is a terrific motivator. Sitting in the waiting room for five hours as they cracked open my father’s chest and removed veins from his legs to build five different bypass sites, my thoughts weren’t all about his wellbeing. I wish I could say they were. But a part of me was equally consumed with fear because I couldn’t help thinking: I don’t want that to be me.

Thus, a few weeks of mulling later, I find myself gearing up to make the change. The Change.  I’m about to embark on the 28-day eating plan outlined in the Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn, the Austin firefighter who designed the eating plan for his station.

The book says you can make a significant change in your cholesterol and triglyceride numbers in just this short period. Now, I’m not a person who is converted instantly and without skepticism by documentaries. Does part of me wonder if this isn’t all selective research citing and hype aimed at moving more books off the shelves? Sure. But I also know, on some gut level, that eating this way is going to be elucidating.

I do, however, like that the book is frank about the fact that, after the 28-day period, people maintain their plant-based, whole-food diets to varying degrees. It helps me that the message isn’t: you have to change your ways forever and ever. It seems to be: try this, it’ll help you, and if you decided to hang on to some or all of the eating habits, that’ll be great for you.

So…here we go. Monday is The Day. And since I have a little history of writing about my struggles with change, I’ll be tracking the experience here in the hopes it’ll keep me a little bit more accountable.

Now, who’s with me?

Hello?

Where’d everybody go?

A few days ago, I was self-diagnosing online – as you do – examining the side-effects of a corticosteroid I started taking a couple months back. I had noticed sudden weight gain, face puffiness, fatigue and an increase in joint and muscle pain and, sure enough, each of those was on the checklist.

Then, I saw, at the very end of the list, this little gem: depression.

I know it seems obvious looking at it from the outside, but to me it came as a bit of a lightning bolt. A disinterested, dull lightning bolt, but a bolt nonetheless. Here I had been thinking that my life had just reached a point of being patently uninteresting, that I had used up all my enjoyment and would need to hunker down for the next few decades of disinterest.  When what was actually happening seemed to be real, clinical depression.

Now, I am no stranger to depression. I’ve suffered from it on and off since adolescence. Clearly, though, it’s been a long enough time since I’ve experienced it in full force that I had trouble recognizing it. That, I suppose, is the good news.

I also think that I’ve become used to certain cyclical dips in engagement, shall we say, that come from being in chronic pain. It’s a given that if you don’t feel well much of the time, your energy and enthusiasm are going to take a hit. And I think I too easily call those moments depression – we do tend to bandy the term around, don’t we? – so that when the real thing comes a-knocking I didn’t recognize it early enough.

So now I am left with a choice – although it really doesn’t seem much of one. The corticosteroids I was taking were keeping my blood pressure stable; somehow mine became weirdly low, which I discovered because I felt faint all the time, tired, and had no energy. Ironic, then, that the treatment for it created a similar set of symptoms. Similar, but not the same. Because even when I was wandering around the surface of the earth with blood pressure of 70/50, I may have felt woozy and tired, but I didn’t feel despondent.

That’s the trade-off with modern medicine, isn’t it? Do I choose the condition or its treatment? How do you determine which is the lesser of two evils?

And all of it leads me to another place today: some very real anger at and sensitivity about the healthcare debate that is at hand in our country. It is difficult for me to hear people argue theories and abstracts when I am one of the people upon whom the outcome will have a real and serious impact.

My husband and I are both self-employed, each of us bringing a pre-existing condition or two to the table. He’s largely a healthy guy, a marathon runner. On paper, I’m a mess. I have fibromyalgia (a chronic condition with no known cure), hypothyroidism, polycystic ovarian syndrome and orthostatic hypotension. I’m a recovering alcoholic to boot – which seems to give actuaries the heeby jeebies above all else.

From a health insurance standpoint, it makes life difficult. I can’t tell you how many individual plans we were rejected from before finding one that would accept us – at an exorbitant monthly copay. People like us cannot have it all. Would we choose catastrophic coverage and keep our fingers crossed? Good prescription medicine coverage or copays for doctor visits, because we couldn’t have both?

We wound up with a plan that helps cover prescription meds, procedures at 70/30, but no doctor visits. Before, when we had group insurance through work, I was able to see specialists who could help keep all my ailments in balance. That’s simply not a reality for us anymore, and it has had a very real and significant impact on my health.

That said, I am truly grateful that we have health insurance at all, or else we’d be facing two possibilities: either we’d go bankrupt trying to take care of my many and sundry illnesses or I’d just have to go entirely untreated. It is not lost on me that those are the options many face.

I don’t like to get too political on here, mostly because I’m not particularly good at it and I rarely have any idea what I’m talking about. But at a gathering the other night, some friends debated the question of whether or not healthcare is a basic human right. I understand that some people don’t think so and I can intellectually process their rationale, but it’s awfully hard to hear it and not take it personally.

Because no matter how objective we pretend to be about it, what we’re really talking about, to me, is whether or not I have the right to be well, to have access to a pain free life without it costing us everything we have and jeopardizing our financial security. And it seems to me that those arguing against it always seem to be some combination of young, healthy, or wealthy enough to afford access to private, top-notch care.

I don’t really wish to start a debate, though, and perhaps I’m over-simplifying matters. I often do. I’m a Scorpio, after all. I’m hard-wired to react. And what does all this rambling have to do with the original matter at hand, my depression? I don’t know, but I will say this: despair is a terrible place to be, even temporarily.

Yesterday I was able to email my doctor and get her advice on coming off the corticosteroids. It made me aware, simultaneously, of how lucky I am to have a doctor who consults with me via email to help keep visit costs to a minimum, and how crazy it is that I can’t easily and affordably get help figuring this out, achieving some sort of balance.

So I have been off the corticosteroids for two days. I won’t say it’s been a miracle recovery, but I’m starting to feel better. My spirits are slightly lifted, but now I have to wait and see if my blood pressure plunges. It feels like a tremendous trade-off and I feel a little bit like I’m figuring it out alone.

However, I do notice that I seem to have written a blog entry here, something that has felt entirely too daunting the past few weeks. That’s something, right? It didn’t cost me a penny, either. And I didn’t have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide on it.

Instead, my friendship with Leslee has moved primarily to Facebook, “liking” a comment here and there or leaving a smart-ass remark on the other’s “wall.” As with many of my Facebook friends, I haven’t actually laid eyes on Leslee in a very long time.

Yeah, I know. I’m aware that cynics denounce Facebook and other social media as substitutes for “real” friendships. I get that they’re the lazy person’s way to stay up-to-date on people’s lives with just a mouse click. And I know that it’s far more de rigeur to roll your eyes and declare oneself “over” Facebook, but I love, love, love the fact that it has allowed me to keep tabs on people I might have lost track of otherwise.

This is all swirling around my head right now because on March 1, her first day back in Korea, Leslee was hit by a car in Daegu. To clarify, with details that tell you enough about Leslee that you’ll start to feel you know her too: she was in a taxi when she witnessed a car accident and got out to help the victims. When she did so, Leslee was struck by another car. She sustained massive, life-threatening injuries, including multiple broken bones and damage to numerous internal organs.

I may never have known about Leslee’s accident had it not been for Facebook. And I’d have missed out on one of the most moving, uplifting uses of social media I’ve ever had the privilege to witness.

Within hours of the accident, a friend of Leslee’s had created a Facebook group for her friends and family. It garnered hundreds of members in extremely short order and quickly turned into an online vigil, a virtual gathering place for her loved ones to seek and lend comfort and prayers. People from all over the world post photos of Leslee every day, share thoughts and good memories, write messages directly to her – even if she isn’t yet able to read them.

The Facebook group has become a clearinghouse for information, providing updates from her hospital bedside, sometimes hour-by-hour. The group has also proven tremendously and pragmatically helpful to her parents and friends in Korea – in one case, something as simple as helping her parents find an adapter for their laptop in Daegu. It’s remarkable – a unified, mobilized throng of people all focused on a single goal: loving Leslee back to health.

For me, Leslee’s Facebook group has allowed me to express my sympathy to the friends and family who know her far better than I do. It’s allowed me to bear witness to an extraordinary force: an online community in the very best sense of the term. I now check for updates a few times throughout each day, always touching in right before I go to bed.

I do it for two reasons. The first is, of course, to see how Leslee’s faring. The second is because, when I take in the outpouring of love and support for her scrolling across my screen, I feel somehow less alone, less vulnerable and fragile about life and the world.

I’m grateful to the friends of Leslee who created the group in the first place, and to those who labor to bring us updates on the latest setback or small triumph. And I’m feeling extremely grateful – and even charitable – towards our ol’ pal Facebook which, damning multi-million dollar movies and waning street-cred aside, maybe isn’t such a bad thing after all.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cameron’s work – which has given her vaulted status in creative-self-help circles – it’s a 12 week program for those who consider themselves “blocked” creatively. The idea is to take a fearless look at old beliefs, excuses and self-criticism that is holding us back from achieving our creative goals – and to start practicing being “honoring” our creative selves on a daily basis.

I know. A lot of hooey, right?

I should also mention that the subtitle of The Artist’s Way is: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. At the time my friend suggested I try this program, I was brand-spankin’ new in sobriety. I was having a terrible time going from agnostic-with-atheist leanings to someone who could find a place in a 12-step recovery program that asked me to embrace the concept of a higher power. One spiritual struggle was enough. I wasn’t anywhere near ready – or open enough – to consider The Artist’s Way.

As you can probably guess by the tenor of this post – which, I confess, I am writing despite lingering feelings of sheepishness – I have recently had a mind-shift about this hooey. And if you’re as astute as I think you are, then you’ve already guessed that it’s because I’m in the process of finishing up The Artist’s Way, and I have found it – much to the chagrin of my inner judgmental, stubborn self – revolutionary.

First, let me say that I am a firm believer that everyone has to be completely ready to undertake any sort of self-help endeavor and that we all come to these places in our own time, if ever. That is, I may be copping to having sipped some Kool Aid, but I want to be clear I’m not in the business of converting others.

I just want to stick with my intention of being more honest than ever in this blog, of trying to write without fear (or despite fear) about things that I’m, well, afraid to talk about. And right there next to “pain,” which I wrote about recently, is “writing about writing.” Or, more specifically, my fears about writing and my own ability to do so.

Nothing has brought these fears closer to the forefront than my decision a few years back to try my hand at writing a novel. When I first embarked upon this project, I was incredibly rusty at writing fiction, only recently having returned from a 15-year hiatus. But I was fueled by the rediscovery of my passion for fiction and I received some terrific encouragement to continue from very generous mentors. And so I did.

At the time I was writing the first draft, I found it to be a mind-bogglingly frustrating experience. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had an idea and I would just bang away for hours at the keyboard just to get all of it out of my head. Of course, in retrospect, as I flounder in the world of rewrites, those now seem like halcyon days. It actually helped that I was unaware then of just how little I knew; I could propel forward on enthusiasm alone.

The last two years, as I have continued revising my novel (with long intervals in between efforts), attendance at workshops has also taught me just how much work I still need to do to get where a good book needs to be. Ironically, it was after a particularly invigorating and encouraging workshop last July at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival that I found myself hitting a wall, and hard.

I had in my hands some very useful, very helpful input – practically a road map for what needed fixed. Yet when I got back to the solitude of my own cave, I had a very strange experience. I felt absolutely unequal to the task before me. I would open the damn file up and stare for hours. A tsunami of self-doubt – far greater than I knew I possessed – came rushing in. I became absolutely convinced that I couldn’t possibly do this.  I spent the next few months telling people I was “struggling” with the rewrite – which was code for “avoiding.”

And that – of course, crazy universe – is when another friend suggested The Artist’s Way. While I’d been extremely fast to poo-poo the idea in the past, I was at a particularly low place, creatively-speaking. It was painful to feel so…useless. To question whether or not I had been foolishly pursuing an endeavor that I simply lacked the talent for.

Before I could give it too much thought, I picked up a copy of The Artist’s Way and, surprising even myself, I dove right in. You know what they say about desperate times. I figured if I committed myself to a 12-week artistic “recovery” program, then at least I could buy myself 12 weeks of excuses why I wasn’t writing. I can’t write and recover, man.

I’ll be the first to say that it was tough to slog through some of the earlier pages in the book, especially those that hinged on the notion that creativity is a gift from God. You know, God. The Creator. Fortunately, my 12-step background had given me loads of experience with figuring out how to take what works for me and leave the rest, and I was able to do that (mostly) successfully here.

What I didn’t expect, going in, was how difficult and painful and absolutely essential it was to do the tasks aimed at helping me identify what exactly my inner critic is rattling on about – and the source(s) of all that negative thinking. It’s one thing to know you have self-doubts. It’s another to write each and every one of them out on paper and try to trace its origin.

However, I believe that hard work is required to do our biggest growing. That’s been my experience in 15 years of sobriety, and in the past 15 weeks of doing The Artist’s Way. (Yeah, I know it’s a 12-week program, but I’ve fallen behind a few times and had to push the reset button.) Until I identified all that horrible critical noise in my head, it was impossible for me to counter it, to separate it from reality. That alone has been life-changing for me.

I really needed to be told to stop using outside validation to define whether or not I’m a creative being. I needed to stop pinning that definition on how much I’d been published or how much money I earn with my creative pursuits. How refreshing just to know that you’re a creative being just because you are. No other justification needed. Really.

It has also helped me immensely to commit to writing morning pages – a few hand-written, stream-of-consciousness pages every day, aimed at clearing your mind and jump-starting each morning with a creative nudge. My morning ramblings haven’t consistently revealed anything mind-blowing, although a few genuine moments of epiphany emerged as I was busy writing about how stupid the assignments were. What’s actually been most useful to me is to look back at the morning pages I’ve written so far and it’s a stack. A stack. I didn’t realize how much it helped to know that I can be prolific, even if it’s not with anything I’d ever want others to lay eyes on. I can produce work.

I dragged my feet and rolled my eyes heartily, too, at the instruction to take myself on an Artist Date every week. Something the focuses on or informs my artistic self, by myself, for at least one hour. I’ve done a little creative tap-dancing around what qualifies – watching a documentary or making a pie, for example – but I can also say that merely acknowledging that the creative side of me requires and deserves attention – has had very tangible side effects. I’ve become a better baker. I’m reading more for pleasure than I have in years. I re-dedicated myself to learning about photography and on January 1, started a project on my Tumblr photo blog, Learning Curve, where I try to take and post one photo a day in 2012. I’m not nearly as worried about what other people think of my photos as I once was. That’s kind of amazing for me.

The Artist’s Way and my Artist Dates are also directly responsible for my re-starting this blog, because even though I still feel very uncertain and often overwhelmed in the world of novel-writing, I realized that I needed to get back to doing the kind of writing that comes easily to me – even if it doesn’t garner a lot of readers. That’s not really the point. The point is I need to remind myself not only that I’m someone who can write, but that I’m someone who does write.

Is that, technically, artistic recovery? Who knows? And who really cares? All I know is that, for the first time in years, I’m feeling a greater sense of possibility than insecurity regarding my creative life.  I’m recognizing and prioritizing how crucial it is for me to be a creative being. It feels pretty great. And if that ain’t worth the cover price, what is?

You should know this kid. You really should. She’s smart and hilarious and full of beans and she is our full-on guarantee that, no matter what, there will never be a dull moment. I can’t believe I’ve gotten to be her aunt for a decade.

So I just wanted to take a moment to say: Happy birthday, Livvie Lou. I love you. And here are just ten of the gazillion reasons why:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

But for now, I’m rendered too nervous because of this:

Or, more specifically, because of this: lemony olive oil banana bread, which I put in the aforementioned thing. It is my first foray into baking with an oven so far out of my league I swear it laughs at me a little when I open the door. Not unkindly. Maybe.

I’ve never really had a great oven before, certainly nothing this fancy-pants. Nor have I, for most of my life, much cared whether I had a great oven. Now I find myself in a place where my horizons have broadened (read: I’ve aged) and suddenly I care a great deal more about things like baking pies and my own bread.

I know. I’m not sure who I am, either.

We have lived in a rental house – which we like a lot – for nearly six years now. It has a deck that practically doubles the living space in summer, our landlord’s the nicest guy and we’re in a great location. Yet, for years there has been an increasing tension building between me and the previous stove, a gorgeous-looking old-timey Roper vintage number.

It was frequently the first thing people commented on when they came into our house. Enjoy the following short play:

Them: “Wow. Awesome stove.”

Us: “Yeah, but…”

Them: “It’s super cool looking.”

Us: “Yeah, but the oven temperature’s uneven. And the oven itself is uneven. And there’s only one rack. And only one of the burners stays lit…”

Them: “But do you love it?”

Because it’s a curious thing – when people see something they think is lovely and unusual, especially if it hearkens back to another time, they get all soft and gooey. Soft and gooey to the point of having selective hearing. And it’s not fair to blame it all on others because, let’s face it, we put up with that stove for a lot longer than we might have otherwise were we not keenly aware that it had some sort of intrinsic cultural value simply by dint of being Vintage.

It’s an interesting topic for me to consider at a time when I’m trying, despite appearances, to think more about what I own and what I need to own. In Glasgow, I stayed at the flat of my Grandma, who has recently  moved into a retirement home. At nearly 94, she’s about as mentally spry as they come, although her hearing could use a little boost. And until the last year she’s enjoyed an enormous amount of independence, thanks to assistance from her loyal son and the NHS.

My grandma lived in that flat my entire life. I think the family lore is that she bought it nearly 50 years ago for 800 pounds, perhaps the best investment anyone in my family’s ever made. Until this visit, I’d never even been in the place without her. It was a strange confluence of feelings – I felt a little as though I were spying on her life, but it also made me feel closer to her, somehow comforted, as I’m still trying to get used to the idea of her living anywhere else.

I had thought I would do an artsy project of photos from my Grandma’s life – you know, Granddaughter Sums Up Grandmother’s Life Through Objects. But as I started to look around my Grandma’s tiny flat, I realized just how few things she owns. Partly by necessity – a small flat doesn’t lend itself to an acquisitive lifestyle. But I think it’s also just who she is – sentimental in a way she’s had to be to get through life, unattached to things , unwilling to toss something aside simply because a newer version is available. The negotiations it took to get her to use an electric kettle a few years back made the Camp David Accords look like casual banter.

There were only a few things I found truly, searingly personal. Her rose-colored dressing gown, hung up behind her bedroom door. The drawer with neatly folded nightgowns in pastel shades, with a little cotton lace trim at the edges. Four small canisters of Elnett hairspray and a handful of half-used Coty powder compacts. A few pieces of jewelry – nothing I particularly recognized – scattered in a few different boxes throughout her bedroom.

And I guess that if there were a place where all this babbling about the new oven and my Grandma’s old flat were to cross over, it would be something I haven’t quite crystallized yet, something about stuff and value. What defines us. When we’re supposed to hold on and when we’re supposed to let something go. When we’re being pragmatic and conscientious and when we’re just being stubborn and defeatist. When we’re reusing and when we’re just resisting.

It will not surprise you, I’m sure, to learn I have no answers. I’d blame jet lag, but I think we all know it’d be unfair to jet lag.

All I know for sure is this: right now I have banana bread. She has risen. She is level. And she might actually be cooked all the way through.

Today, the answer would be different. It wouldn’t be, as some might guess, my recovery from alcoholism. Hell, anyone who knows me knows I’ll shout about that baby from the rooftops. No qualms whatsoever. Not even a residual modicum of shame.

No, today I’d have to say that the thing I’m most afraid of writing about is my life in pain.

Not the emotional kind. Like almost everyone i know, I’ve had my fair share and I can write about it with my eyes closed. What I’m afraid of writing about is my physical pain, the chronic pain I live with. Only, I keep hearing this little voice telling me that I need to write about it. So I’ve been thinking that I probably need to figure out how to write about it in a way that won’t – as I fear – annoy the hell out of people.

I am currently involved in a long-term relationship with pain. I wouldn’t call it a domestic partnership – more like an arranged marriage. I feel like I’ve got pain’s number and yet I’m still  thrown when it does exactly what I expect. Somehow, we’re making it work. There is no choice. This is a condition without a cure and without a really effective treatment.

Many of you may already know my story but, for those who don’t, please indulge me. It all started about 16 years ago, when I was rear-ended twice within a year. (Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean my car was rear-ended twice.) Neither incident, by the way, was my fault. I am only a little surprised that I still feel it necessary to point that out lo these many years later.

I suffered whiplash and some serious damage to my left trapezius muscle, which is this large kite-shaped beauty that spans your upper back, reaching across your shoulder blades and into your neck. (Whiplash, by the way, is not nearly as funny as they make it look on sitcoms.) Unlike most people who suffer these injuries, I did not get better over time. My pain grew. It spread. I was baffling modern science. I’m just that interesting!

Eventually, I was diagnosed by my very ahead-of-the-times doc as having fibromyalgia. This was 1996, and only about  three people had even heard of fibromyalgia. Including my doctor and me. Ever since, the pain and attendant set of unpleasant symptoms have been among the most central and overwhelming factors in my life. This doesn’t begin to make me even remotely unique – anyone with chronic pain’ll sing you the same song.

I’m not trying to be dramatic when I say that I cannot remember – or imagine – what it is like to be pain free. My pain presents mainly in my neck and shoulders and it operates in shades of grey. I can’t predict with any certainty when it’ll be better or worse. It makes planning one’s life a tad difficult. I’m the queen of canceling at the last minute. Some people get it. Others, understandably, don’t.

I haven’t been able to sleep without an ice pack on the left side of my neck for 15 years. Sometimes the pain migrates into my limbs, making it difficult to lift my arms above my head or climb a flight of stairs. Occasionally, the arches of my feet feel like they’re being pried away from the rest of my body. Add to that the cruel exhaustion-with-insomnia, the charm of irritable bowel syndrome,the embarrassment of a compromised memory – and it’s all just a bit too effing much.

At times I feel as though I’ve reached the point where I cannot possibly deal with it any more. (And what exactly does that mean? THERE IS NO CHOICE.) I hear friends share their tales of woe and I think, “I’d trade with you in heartbeat just to know what it was like to be pain-free for an hour.” Sometimes the self-pity overwhelms me and other times I err far too far on the other side of that coin – insisting to everyone around me that I’m fine! I’m great! until I’ve run myself into the ground.

Which sort of touches on why I’m afraid of writing about it. I’m clearly far more addled than I like to admit when it comes to Caring What Other People Think About Me. And I’m afraid that people will think it’s boooooooooooooooring to read about someone’s pain. But I’m reaching a point in my life when I don’t know how to talk about myself, to be honest about who I am, without talking about my pain.

So I’m trying to figure this out. Trying to find a way to write about it that might be something, anything more than just annoying – maybe that could even be a teensy bit helpful to someone else. I don’t know how to do it, but I seem to be on a self-punishing tear of trying to write things I don’t know to write.

Might as well give this some more thought. I’m sure you’ll let me know how I’m doing. If you’re still awake.

How weird is that?

When I blogged here back in the good ol’ days – before abandoning ship for that wacky year-long change experiment – I was pretty new to Ann Arbor. Exploring the town gave me things to write about, especially in the early days. Until I ran out of things to write about.

I think this go-around will be different. More “life,” less “northern town.”Some stuff about my trying to learn how to take photos. Some adventures in cooking and baking. Some travel. Some navel-gazing. Okay, probably a fair amount of navel-gazing.

I suspect I’ll probably be writing a lot, too, about recovery stuff, especially since that’s the subject matter of my novel I’m struggling to finish. I know that’s not always comfortable and/or interesting for people to read about. That’s okay. I get that. And I forgive you.

Damn, I’m magnanimous.

Now I just have to go off, deal with some dough that’s rising* and decide what to write about first.

*Not metaphorical. If I meant that as a metaphor, I’d probably have to insist you stop reading for your own sake.