nina turns 60

Anniversary

I made it to my year anniversary of not eating sugar. Or really, not overtly bingeing on sugar. There is sugar in the salad dressing that I buy. And every once in awhile I buy some packaged naan, and it has sugar in it. I've had some candied nuts that I pretended weren't really candied because they weren't that sweet. I even had a small square of dark chocolate when I was sitting in a backup caused by a horrible car accident.

But I haven't had ice cream every night after dinner. I haven't eaten cinnamon bears until I felt sick. I'm not buying Cadbury chocolate caramel eggs and whatever other Easter candy I can get away with. I'm not making a batch of hot fudge sauce to eat with a spoon nor eating a pan of brownies one narrow row at a time.

This feels like less of a triumph than I want it to. I still feel as flawed as ever, still feel like there are endless things to do and not enough time and energy to do them. Like most of us now, I am frightened for this world and chilled to the bone by the suggestion that we should be willing to sacrifice people for the good of the economy. No. 

Absolutely no.

 

this & that

I saw some coffee described as having flavor notes of Fuji apple. Not just apple, but Fuji apple. I want to know who has a palate that sensitive that they can get down to that level of specificity when they are tasting a friggin cup of coffee. I'm the biggest dorkiest coffee snob anywhere, but even I must apply the eyeroll emoji to that one. (Hey, why doesn't typepad have emojis? This really is an old school operation.)

I made a notebook!! As in, I folded the sheets into a folios and nested the folios into a signature and I punched holes into the fold and sewed that baby up into a notebook. I'm taking a class with Myrna at Expedition Press and we ended up spontaneously making notebooks at the end of the evening last night. Such a delight to be in a print shop with a group of women who care deeply about words and art. 

I'm the oldest person in the class (including the instructor) by at least 20 years. 

Alejandro is turning 21 in a couple of weeks, and I can't even.

 

home sick

Home sick and frustrated because I seem to be getting sick more often than I used to. One of the main reasons I stopped eating sugar was in hopes of improving my sinuses' tendencies to be irritated, swollen and congested. It hasn't helped. Am enjoying all the other benefits of no sugar, but not that. It's a windy day and the crows are having a bit of a turf war with the seagulls over something tasty. The crows are smarter, but the gulls are bigger. I saw the waning moon this morning, and the dark gray clouds blowing over it, briefly illuminated as they passed. 

(we)blog

Since I'm going old school, I'm REALLY going to go old school and list links of cool things I've seen around the web lately. 

I love reading about fat women who exercise and HAES (health at every size). Here's a look at the fitness industry and body positivity by Virginia Sole-Smith.

This next one is excellent, but may be triggering: an article from Cosmopolitan of all places about sexual abuse and incest within the Amish community. 

For all of you who love poetry, allow me to hype the new website of my employer, Copper Canyon Press. It's full of poems!

Not surprisingly, I follow a lot of coffee companies on Instagram. The best coffee p0rn by a mile comes to us from these guys:

sweet

The cravings come and go in waves like everything else. But mostly I don't have them at all anymore which surprises me. 

When I walk down the aisle at the grocery store I notice it smells incredibly sweet. I look over and see I am standing near the marshmallows. Have I ever been able to smell marshmallows? The same thing happens when I open my cupboard door, a cupboard where there is still sugar inside. I can smell it. 

The local organic carrots taste incredibly sweet. So do apples. Once, eating french fries with some friends, I got a blob of ketchup on one of mine and, well, you know what I'm going to say: it was hideously sweet. These things do not surprise me, but they are interesting.

What would I notice if I stopped drinking coffee? Is that what I'm doing here, trying to prime myself for quitting my deepest addiction? I'm very afraid of even thinking about it, which means, of course, that it's exactly what I have to do.

But not yet. 

 

my drug

Here's the thing about addiction: it protects you from something. It allows you to keep moving forward. It makes you feel good when everything else is shitty. It soothes you. It gives you the energy to go to work every day if you hate your job. It provides a structure from which to make some sense of the world. 

I have my favorite mug. My collection of espresso cups. I have no fewer than three non-functioning burr grinders in various cupboards in my kitchen. I have my trusty hand crank grinder and my aeropress. I have my fancy electric kettle that lets me heat the water to a precise temperature. I order my ridiculously expensive beans from Seattle or Portland. Sometimes I have heavy cream in the fridge. I take great pleasure in preparing a beautiful cup of coffee for myself every day. I also start to get really uncomfortable if I am awake for more than a little while without any caffeine. I will drink the shitty stuff - even the instant stuff - if  I have to, because all of my fancy-schmancy accessories and rituals aside, I need my drug.

I can be as proud of myself as I want to about being off sugar for nine months (and I am), but I am not even one tiny bit thinking about ever giving up coffee. 

small steps

This Christmas I did not make (or eat) fudge. I did not make (or eat) sugar cookies decorated in frosting, I did not make salted caramel to fill chocolate thumbprint cookies with. This Christmas was the first Christmas I can remember that I did not have a stocking full of chocolate. 

It started, like so many things in my life, with a book. The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program by Kathleen Desmaisons was first published in 2000 and likely acquired by me shortly thereafter. Which is to say, I’ve been working on getting off of sugar for a very long time. 

It taught me the value of small steps that you can do every day. Of not needing to go cold turkey. Of being more aware of my body’s chemistry, my mood, and how food affected it. Her tone was kind and understanding. She had not only personal experience with sugar addiction, but lots of research backing her up. 

The only thing she asked of us in order to start was to eat protein for breakfast, and do it within an hour of getting up. And so I did. For years.

not small

I thought a lot about addiction in 2019. My own, mostly. I embrace caffeine and am grateful it is cheap, accessible, and socially acceptable. My relationship with sugar has been much more fraught, the damage it was doing to me more readily apparent, the likelihood of bingeing always present, the shame around food and appetite for women—especially fat women—settling over my head like a cloud. Sugar was my first addiction, and one of my greatest pleasures. I have always known that I should stop, but I didn't imagine that I could.

So, when Eve Ewing invited her followers on twitter to "tell us about a way in which you pleasantly surprised yourself this year. something you didn't feel like you could or would do, but did anyway." I responded by saying that I'd been off sugar since March.

It looks so small when I write it down. Nine months. But it is not small at all. 

 

NaPoWriMo day 3: ritual

The ritual of my addiciton
is not the only lie I tell myself
but it's got the most traction
so far.

Unlike the one about true
love, a lid for every
pot, soul mate fit
like a glove.

Can't brew that in your aeropress
or buy it from the cute
barista for two-seventy-five
plus tip.

things I love; things I need

We all have our little rituals. Mine tend to revolve around coffee. My big fancy burr grinder has a literal screw loose, so I've been using the wooden hand-cranker. There's something gratifying about doing some of the work myself. I get a big kick out of the fact that my favorite coffee maker is made by a company that makes awesome frisbee-type discs.