Time for me

Unlikely as it may seem I am discovering that the more time I set aside for myself the more time and energy I have for others, Currently, I take four mornings and one afternoon to workout at Curves, and I take two evenings to work on my novel. Kurt and I have also set aside one evening a week for date night. Before instituting these personal times, I was always dragging, and finding ways to retreat into my own space. Now that I have regular times set aside to nurture my well-being and personal interests, I find myself looking for ways to incorporate Kurt and the kids into the other things I'm doing. Working the kids into the household chores is happening more naturally, and I'm doing a better job of training and supervising. I don't mind a kid snuggling next to me while I fold laundry or read. I take a kid along to do the grocery shopping and other errands.
This phenomenon is puzzling. When I devoted all my time to my family, I was less interested in them. Now that I'm being "selfish" I'm eager to be with them. Life is funny sometimes

Nicholas has arrived!

My good friend Michelle on a beach in Costa Rica with her beautiful new son, Nicholas William. Congratulations.

My favorite cookbooks

I've been enjoying cooking and baking lately. As a result my collection of recipe books has been brushed off. Here's a selection of my favorites.

America's Test Kitchen-- The recipes in this book are generally no-fail, and they are delicious. I'm particularly fond of the Crab Imperial Recipe. The vegetable recipes are marvelous. My sister and I decided that we have to get Mother a copy because she actually ate her vegetables this last Christmas.

Cookwise--This book helped me begin to start making up my own recipes. The book is more about the science of cooking than it is a collection of recipes. It really boosted my confidence to know why recipes work and what each technique is trying to accomplish.

Bread Alone--My sister-in-law gave me this book for Christmas. The author's love affair with every aspect of bread baking is inspiring. I tried organic flour as a direct result of reading this book, and you most certainly can taste the difference. I don't bake my bread according to his system because he really is coming at it from a professional perspective, but I find it inspiring.

Cooking from Quilt Country--My mother discovered Marcia Adams and the fact that Amish Cooking is very similar to the cooking we grew up with in Western Maryland. Perhaps it is the influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch and the strong Amish/Mennonite communities in the area. In any case this book has lots of stained pages. I love the Baking Powder Biscuits, the Orange-Glazed PorkLoin and the Amish Apple Pie. The recipes have never failed me.

Mexican Cookery--I received this book as a gift from my friend Aurora. She is Mexican and after tasting my attempt at a Mexican pizza she felt I needed some help. Boy, was she right. The recipes in this book were so new to my palette. I loved the Enchiladas de Polo, and the Uxmal Carrots. I pull this one out whenever I'm hungry for something new and earthy.

The Great American Baking Book--Sam's Club carries lots of interesting recipe books, and this is one of them. The extensive pictures are quite helpful, and the Corn Bread is divine.

Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook: 1953 Classic Edition--My mother's Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook was one of my favorite reads as a child. I loved trying to talk her into trying new things. This is a reproduction of the 1953 version, but it still has the same feeling as looking at Mother's. The recipes may be oldies, but they're still goodies.

The Joy of Cooking--Believe it or not, I just purchased this recently. I'm really enjoying how thorough it is. No matter what I decide I want to cook this book has relevant information.

The French Chef--My copy is an old paperback I picked up at an estate sale. I wanted it because it shows Julia's Buche Noel. I watched her bake that on PBS, absolutely enthralled. The way she recreated an object from nature with food stimulated my creativity in all kinds of ways. Julia was one of my childhood heroines.

Music, Menus and Magnolias--Regional cuisine is always interesting. My family has been vacationing in Charleston for generations. My father once tripped over an astronaut on the Isle of Palms. This recipe book has great seafood recipes as you'd expect, and a killer turtle brownie recipe. Yum.

Cooking for Fifty--Sometimes I like to think big. My husband gave me this cookbook for Christmas one year. The recipes are very good, and it's fun to cook this much food every once-in-a-while.

Desperation Entertaining--I read this book more for technique and party ideas than the recipes. I don't doubt that the recipes are good, but I just haven't tried many of them. The ideas for putting together low maintenance parties are terrific.

Saving Dinner--This book is a great palette stretcher. We all fall into ruts, and following the pre-planned menus with the ready made shopping lists is a great way to break out of those ruts. Drawing on a wide variety of cuisines the author keeps it interesting without being so out there that the ingredients are impossible to find or the kids won't even think about trying it. This is a great resource for mixing it up.

The Sheltering D

I grew up in a sheltered world, so I thought that if I could just reach beyond the glass of the hothouse I could escape the heat. Life isn't that simple. The broader world has proved itself to be just as intent on deciding who is "us" and who is "not us." But we are all a part of each other. We are all human. I wrote a poem when I was still hopeful that I'd put the dehumanizing life of choosing who to respect and include and who to hate and reject behind me. In it I said that we had "lived" in Auschwitz, but the more I know the world the more I see that I must remove the illusion that the "d" perpetuates. We live in Auschwitz. We live in a world where we permit ourselves to choose who lives and who dies. We live in a world that measures people's merit by standards that can never come close to the truly priceless nature of a human soul.
I believe my faith when it promises me that I will be transformed and that I will leave that wickedness behind me in my own behavior, but the longer I live, the more I see that there is no culture or philosophy or creed that is strong enough to create a world without "not us." The only thing strong enough to counter that is to touch the face of God. Only God knows the truth of our Limbo.

Delinski Glacier

My maiden name is Delinski. I always hoped for something simple, easy to spell like Smith or Jones, but no, I married an Ansorge. I will be doomed to spelling my name forever. Good thing he's worth it.
Anywho, my uncle has worked for the U.S. Geological Survey since before I was born. He can tell you where you can and can't put a telephone pole on almost any continent. I always loved watching him trace the lines on this light box thing that I don't even know the name of. As a reward for helping with a project mapping the Arctic, he was offered the opportunity to have a mountain named after him, but Uncle George is an original thinker. He asked to have a glacier named after him, so they did. I wasn't able to find an on-line image of the glacier, but here is a link to the Wikipedia article that will be written about it, someday.
We're famous.

Life is Delicious!

It's amazing how full of nutritious matter the universe is. Every day offers a banquet of learning opportunities that comes in a surprising array of flavors, some pleasurable, some not-so-much. God is just so much bigger than I ever hoped he was. When you take the time to notice you discover that life hands you the answers you need. What seems like an impossible problem will be answered by an improbable argument. Even the bitter enhances the sweet.
I hope you are enjoying today as much as I am. I think I'll go bake some cake.

Interesting series on the Blog Next Door

My friend Trent, who occasionally plugs my blog, is doing a very interesting series on Augustine's Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love. You can find the first post here.

Decent

Sometimes someone will hit a button by accident that sends all these random thoughts that have been collecting like dustbunnies in the unconscious mind right to the forefront of your conscious thought and this whole thing pops out in a formula that you'd never have put together without that unsought stimulus. I had one of those moments recently. I suddenly found myself arguing that the problems in the world aren't due to overpopulation, but to bad values. Duh, of course that's true, and of course I've known that, but it'd never hit me quite so baldly before. If those with an overwhelming abundance would simply choose to be satisfied with a decent life rather than a luxurious one, those with nothing would be treated decently too.
I like to fantasize occasionally about being a wildly successful author. In the fantasies various little luxuries like a beach house and a sports car (I'm not sure why, but I love excellent machinery) are part of the pleasure of my enhanced cash flow. I don't think I'll ever be able to enjoy that perspective again. I have a feeling that even if I did write the next great novel and it actually sold well I wouldn't be able to indulge without feeling like I was robbing someone else who needed food and shelter and an education so that they can read my inspiring tome. I think from now on I'm going to have to learn to be satisfied with my decent life.

Sketching a Novel

For some reason I can't explain, I think about the process of creating my novel as if I were creating a painting. My previous drafts aren't drafts, so much as sketches of ideas. I've attempted three, maybe four depending on how you count it drafts of this story, and they've each been failures as drafts. I don't see much if any of the content of those drafts making its way into the final draft unless I sentimentally graft some in. On the other hand those sketches provided me with essential information. The first defined the characters for me. I knew by the end of that first brief draft who these people were. The second failure taught me how they did and didn't relate to each other. The third gave me the plot in a charcoal scribble. The fourth gave me a setting for the plot. This current draft is still just sketching. I'm exploring the vertebrae of this beast. I'm trying to make sure that the spinal cord is intact. I'm in no way ready to deal with muscles and skin. I'm still working in charcoal.
This doesn't bother me, but it's driving my writer's group crazy. "Where's the texture?" "This scene is taking place in a white room." "We don't even see this character in this scene." I tried this week to add in the extraneous details, but I found the work frustrating. Until I know what matters I have no idea if the scene on the page will even be in the final novel. For all I know as much as two-thirds of this draft will hit the floor in the next one. Why invest so much energy in what may be cut? Secondarily, I just don't have a feel for what details matter other than the conversations and interactions between certain key characters. I can't tell if it's better for the table cloth to be white like communion linens or some other color more emotive and descriptive, because I don't know if the tablecloth will be useful in conveying the final story. It may be that this entire scene will be rescheduled to a different time of year, or a different age, or even a different setting entirely. What good will all this gluing and pasting of detail be to me? Thirdly, they only give me four pages double-spaced every week. I'm already expecting this project to take between four and ten years. I've got to make time, and all that "texture" wastes valuable time.
I guess I can't expect them to see what I'm seeing from my charcoal sketches. After all I'm not Picasso.

Time flies

This week was full of the little moments that make you notice time. The most important was my husband's tenth anniversary with General Dynamics. He really has enjoyed working there. It's a place where new ideas and creative thinking are encouraged. It is still hard to imagine that we have been here in this area so long. We arrived with just our firstborn, and since then we have been blessed in so many different ways. The whole time just rushed by full of good things to remember.
Our secondborn is having her ninth birthday which is the big American Girl birthday. She's chosen Samantha after long thought because Samantha cares about orphans. Orphans are Number 2's special interest. I'm very proud of her compassion and idealism. They are all in the middle of the birthday change whereby the uneven arithmetic of their births is jumbled for a few months before returning to it's every two years simplicity. I have to sit for a minute and work out who's had their birthday and who will have their birthday when people ask their ages.
I suppose the last thing that has me thinking about time's hurried rush is the slowly hardening realization that I have probably finished having children. There are a number of factors that make that possibility a probability, and I'd rather not go into them now. But I am facing the end of one of the happiest enterprises of my life. If I never accomplish another thing, if I drop dead tomorrow, I have done more than enough for the betterment of mankind, because I have brought five amazing people into the world. The security of knowing that makes the uncertainty of the future unimportant somehow. Somehow, what is is enough.