Quote on Wednesday

Begin it Now

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has Genius, Power and Magic in it.

Begin it now.

- Goethe

Mom interrupted

So, something must be in the air. First J has some friends here for a sleep over and they go outside to rollerblade, they do not heed my advice regarding the importance of wrist guards (from my experience) and it results in poor little A breaking her Ulna and her Radius. The actual event was actually less of an interruption than the feeling guilty somebody got hurt at our house, while in our care.

Fast forward 2 days and we have the next candidate for emergency procedures. Apparently our cat Mika had a bad infection inside her leg for a while, just never showed any signs of it until it was horribly bad and needed surgery. So this poor cat is limping about and has a tube inserted into her leg and a cone around her head. Now I am lucky my husband is the animal handler in the house and he takes her to the vet and gives her the medicine (an extremely difficult undertaking). I got burnt out handling sick animals when we got them as very sick babies last year and I spent many hours a day for many weeks dealing with that. Now I take care of the peripheral actions, like trying to clean bedsheets, he put the dripping cat on or taking care of spots the cat mistook for a litterbox. So I banned the cat to the downstairs where, guess what, I am working into the whee hours of the morning, or at least attempting it, since attention starved Mika wants me to just spend time giving her TLC and have you ever noticed how a little cat can be so incredibly and understandibly demanding? She keeps on trying to nudge me with her head, resulting in actually just bumping into me with her cone. That is as funny as sad, but was not really welcome, since I already had to divide my attention between my hands on the project and my eyes and heart glued to the TV screen to catch every glimpse of Colin Firth in a late showing of Bridget Jones 2.

I am experienced dealing with interruptions, for years I was prepared to be ready in a seconds notice to run S to the ER with either Croup or horrible head wounds. Oh and then there was the time my husband broke his neck. I think I can handle these unforeseen events pretty well, after all, I had training myself throughout my whole childhood, being so very accident prone. What I do not like though, is this looming feeling of impending disasters that could possibly strike any moment, because I have other interruptions to deal with, like loosing my 160 G external hard drive, meetings that expand from 1 to 4 hours, last minute play dates that require shuttling kids back and forth or last minute school assignments. Or of course, getting caught up in blogging on Saturday morning.

Battle the Frazzle with list making

Somewhere I read just a while ago something along the line of: "Stop making lists and start life." I think I understand what it is meant to say, expressing that if we are too focused on listing our goals and wants, we are not working on actually achieving them. At the same time, I am an avid list writer, always was and so is my mother. The difference here is probably in the type of list, condemning a list of goals, but surely not a to do list?

The past few weeks things are starting again to go crazy with me trying to juggle working, family, volunteering, friends, exercise, music and writing. I tried juggling one summer, I think it was in '88, and I gave up relatively soon. I am not good at juggling, may it be balls or different aspects of my life. In the past days I have been getting so frazzled, that I started getting into a hysterical panic and started thinking I should just stop Everything instead of trying to do Everything. I think I was actually whining - urgh - and started listing the 200 things that need to be done outside of work and family to my husband. He told me to just write it all on a list to get it our of my head and get to it later. Now that is exactly the advice I would give somebody and usually I do exactly that. When I get frustrated though and desperation is set in motion through too much stress and too little rest, I can get lost.

I think making lists is a wonderful thing, it organizes our thoughts and it takes pressure of a mind already over burdened. But, often I find that even though I try to put things out of the head and on the paper, I did not transfer them, but merely made a copy and now I have it in the back of my head and on paper as well, just to remind me in case I manage not to think about all the things to be done. So in order for the lists to be more effective, I am trying to link my items with time planning. What that means is for example, that in order to get ready for my show next week, I only do the most necessary things outside of it, like homework and dinner, but keep the rest for later. The week after my show, I will concentrate on fixing up the guest room, as my mother is coming to visit. The following week will be getting ready for a trip to D.C. and so forth.

I think what I am trying to achieve is a list that I know will actually really be done and is not a conglomerate of lofty goals and vague ideas. Though they have their place somewhere too. There probably should be a multitude of lists and maybe a list to keep track of the lists? Well, I am not anal enough for that. When I worked at Tanner Research in California, we had to keep track of every 15 minutes of our time and we had to write weekly reports about what we did that week and which goals we achieved and what our short term and long term goals and plan for the following week are. At times it was annoying, since it was meta work and did nothing for the project to be done, but it kept things nice and organized. I think I need to apply some of the things I have read. I like some ideas of Covey from the 'seven habits' and Randy Pausch had some interesting ideas in his time management lecture.

Well, enough musing about lists, time to make some :)

“One of the secrets of getting more done is to make a TO DO List every day, keep it visible, and use it as a guide to action as you go through the day.” Jean de La Fontaine

Cooking inspired by literature

I had a really boring dinner planned for Thursday, just rice and soycutash. My back was hurting and that usually kills the motivation for grocery shopping and cooking alike. While I was soaking in the tub, trying to numb the back pain with excessive heat, I started reading 'The Toss of a lemon' by Padma Viswanathan. Slowly some kind of atmosphere of India grew inside me and by the time I made it to the kitchen to prepare dinner, it could no longer be boring, it had to be indian inspired. So here is what I did.

I started some brown Jasmin rice in the rice cooker. I added ground cloves and coriander, ginger, cumin, salt, golden raisins and butter to it. When the rice was getting closer to being done, I took my wok and heated up some Ghee (clarified butter), added some Panch Puran, dillseeds and diced onions. When the onions where nice and soft, I added frozen soycutash (soybeans, corn and red pepper) and unsweetened coconut and salt. When I considered it done, I added just a bit of cream to bind it a bit.

Since the kids like fresh veggies with dinner, I cut up carrots and celery and made a dip from cream cheese, milk, curry, onion, ginger and mustard powder. The rice got a sprinkling of sliced almonds and we also had European style yogurt and Tamarind chutney to perfect the taste. As a treat we had sugar coated fennel seeds, of course, because we all love them. I am lucky to have a good Indian supermarket in town.

And so, just because the book inspired me, we had wonderful - yet super easy - dinner that lasted well over an hour filled with conversation.

Who has the time for more than 2 blogs? Certainly not me and so this will sit idle, at least for a while.

If you want to read my posts, check out the cardinal compass or maybe the blog about my own little company Raventree-Studio.

I wish I could just write, really and I keep falling into the same old traps that take all my time. If my day could just have 72 hours - 48 of which the world stands still and I am all alone, quiet, peaceful with time to think, read and write!

Giving children independence and freedom

This week marked a big step in my daughters life. This was the first week they were allowed to walk home alone from school. They are 8 and almost 10 and I thought the moment was right. They are good about traffic safety, they know about strangers and they walk the first part with a group of moms and kids. If we cannot give our children responsibility and trust them, how are they supposed to become self reliant and feel good about themselves? And that they did, the big smiles they wear when they come through the door after school speaks volumes. Doing things on their own makes them happy, independence makes them happy.

Earlier this year a NY mom gave her 9 year old a Metro Card, $20, some quarters and a subway map and let him find his way home from Bloomingdales. As she describes in her column, he was "ecstatic with independence". And then it took a life on its own, as far as asking whether she is America's worst mom, you can read about the reactions here.

I applaud her. People often make the point that times have changed, but I do not believe that to be true, statistically it appears to be actually safer. The chance for kids to be abducted is as small as being hit by lightning and think about it, the majority of those abductions are relatives anyway. What has changed is the media coverage and we hear about every little thing happening in the western world and that makes us think that this is an imminent danger out children are in. Our society lives in an atmosphere of fear and as parents we are overly worried about our children. When I compare my childhood to the ones of my children, I am bewildered how different it is. Today, life is packed full of programs and time is micromanaged. Unstructured time is an anomaly and fun is drowned in classes and learning, turning kids into stressed, pressured and worried little adults. Meeting other kids is facilitated through organized play dates, children do not just meet their friends at the park and instead of biking they get shuttled around in comfortable vans while watching videos.

When I was my kid's age life was free, there was time, there was boredom to spark creativity and there was the great outdoors, even in the middle of a big city. Yes, there was danger; I had my run ins with sexual predators and strangers that lured me with candy, but I had been warned, I had instructions how to deal with the situation and that is what I did. I had no kind of damage from that, instead it made me feel safer, because I knew how to handle it. I had a lot of freedom growing up, but I also had responsibility and my mother trusted me and I never wanted to betray that trust. Trust is something that needs to be earned and I want to give my girls the opportunity to do exactly that. In the end parents need to also trust themselves, trust that they raised their children to make the right decisions. I admit that I was very self reliant at an extremely young age because of the circumstances my mom and I lived in, but I prefer that over the other extreme. I have met girls at the end of high school still completely parent managed, that I have to question how they can find their own way at all, never having had the chance of their own road. If kids have no freedom, they lack freedom of making their own choices. Without their own choices, they cannot make mistakes and those are important to learn, to become competent and successful. Parents who try to keep mistakes away from children, keep experiences away from them and hinder self development.

It is not always easy to let go and to give up control and I do have a tiny slight worry while they are on their way (literally and figuratively), but I have to trust them.

Lentil Soup

Even though it is not here, the enjoyable absence of humidity and the clear air leads to feelings of fall. Couple that with soup and we have heavenly bliss - after all, it is Monday and that is declared soup day.

Since I have not made it for a while, it was time for boring looking, but delicious tasting lentil soup. Lentils are protein packed health food and we love them. A while back I had read about french lentils, also calles green or Puy lentils. They are supposed to be the finest lentils around, with a rich taste. They were originally grown in Puy (France) on volcanic soil, hence the name. So when I saw them at Whole Foods, I thought I should give them a try. The soup turned out good, but I don't think it is necessary to use french lentils for it, after all, they are more expensive and harder to come by and it does not make such a big difference in soup or stew. Because they stay firm after cooking, they make great lentils for salads or appetizers. I will have to try that soon.

Recipe for Lentil Soup:

I cut up 1/3 lb of bacon and start frying it in a heavy soup pot.
I then add a medium sized small diced onion.
After 5 minutes or so, I add carrots and celery, finely diced. I used about 1/2 lb of carrots and bout 1/2 stalk of celery. When possible, use celery root, but i is not always available.
When everything is nicely coated and hot, I add 3-4 Tbs of tomato paste and 1 Tbs of flour and mix it all up.
Add about 1 1/2 quarts of broth - I used 'Better than Boullion' beef broth, but it can be anything - and about 2/3 pound of washed lentils (300g)
Let this simmer and stir once in a while or the lentils will all stick to the bottom.
After 1/2 hour add diced potatoes, I used 4 medium sized ones.
Let it cook for another 1/2 hour.
In the last 15 minutes I added small diced polish kielbasa, but that is optional.
Season with salt, black pepper, balsamic vinegar and fresh parsley.

The magic of music! My iMixes on iTunes :)

Music is amazing. The multitude of musical expression is unfathomable and does not seize to amaze me. I think music speaks to something so deep within us that words can not adequately describe it. Sometimes when I think I just cannot go on with life, I think to myself that I could just give up everything in life and just listen to music until I die and that would be a good life. In my view, music is the highest achievement of human kind. It transcends nations and borders and even time, it influences our emotions and it can fulfill and heal our soul. I cannot imagine a life without music.

The way we listen to music has changed a lot and I freely admit to loving my iPod. I listen to a broad range of music, may it be medieval, baroque or classical; rock, pop, jazz or new age, world or meditation or whatever else. The iPod allows me to always have the appropriate soundtrack of my life right at my fingertips. Since its first release, iTunes has captured me, there is so much music to discover and re-discover. It is just like following book after book on Amazon, one can get lost and the wish list can get longer.

I have made music compilations since I was 15 and had/have quite a reputation for mixing. I would spend a lot of time analyzing the order and trying out different sequences. So when iTunes came out I was in playlist heaven. Any birthday party gets its own mix, as do some trips or Girl Scout meetings. Why it took me so long to actually publish some of my iMixes, I don't know, but here are my first few published ones (with more to follow):

Relax and let your mind take flight - for Ben
Fantastique! Contemporary french music
Timeless classics for kids and adults :)
Yes! There is great music for children!
Music for kids that adults love too :)
L O V E - L O V E - L O V E!
Movie Magic Music

Check them out next time you are on iTunes and give me your rating ;)

Healthy and delicious school lunches

Lunch at my children's elementary school is a sad affair. Why it is not possible to have a healthy school lunch with food that is good for learning? Domino's pizza or curly fries just doesn't cut it. Hence my children bring their own lunch. To be honest, I have been dreading the beginning of the school year partially due to the 'morning-lunch-making' experience. My mother cooked for about 85 children and 30 adults every day. She followed a kind of food schedule and certain meals appeared on certain days. I have decided to do the same this year.

Lunch needs to be nutritious, wholesome and fresh. Of course it needs to taste really yummy to actually be eaten. I also try to plan the lunch in a balance with the other meals. If the children have omelet with goat cheese for breakfast, lunch can be pasta and dinner should be focused on vegetables. When the children start with oatmeal or some other cereal, I try to get more protein into the lunch and so forth. Additionally it is important that it is ecological sane and keeps trash as minimal as possible. We are using sturdy lunch bags from Pottery Barn, Sigg bottles, Tupperware sandwich container and snack cups. We also have these great sandwich wraps that double as a surface to eat from. I also like to put a thin damp washcloth in a ziploc bag for messy lunches. Hot lunches stay nice and warm in thermos cups for soup.

This is my plan so far: Monday is sandwich day, because dinner will be soup. For bread we use multi grain, whole wheat or rye, english muffins or flat bread. On the sandwich could be turkey and cranberry sauce, roast-beef and salad, tuna salad (rarely), egg and tomato, homemade cream cheese spread, cheese and apples or anything else we come up with. Tuesdays is soup day, left over from the day before. Favorites are tomato soup with rice, butternut squash soup, chicken noodle soup, lentil soup, chili, minestrone and this list could go on forever . Wednesday is special day like panini, bagel, homemade waffles, spring rolls, salad, natural chicken strips or something special the children request. It can also be buying school lunch for the experience. Thursday is another sandwich day and Friday is Pasta Day with either penne and tomato sauce, whole wheat mac 'n cheese, ravioli or some other pasta dish.

As a side I pick something that complements the meal, usually along the lines of unsweetened apple sauce, yogurt, fruit or veggies (carrots, celery, red pepper) and dip, corn chips and salsa, pita chips and hummus, hard cooked egg or cheese and crackers. My children always have their water bottles, but sometimes they can buy milk. For snack at recess I often pack string cheese, fruit, yogurt smoothie, pop corn, pretzels, crackers, oatmeal bars or popcorn. Because of so many allergic children we stay away from nuts at school and have them at home instead. I like to get the children involved in the planning and to some part in the making. They are already very good at reading food labels and understanding them. We also have them help with the snacks like counting out pretzels or crackers or measuring the volume of a snack. This way they help and learn portion control and serving sizes.

I can control what goes into the lunch box, but of course I cannot control if the children eat it, especially since S seems to eat so slow and talk so much, that she returns home most of her lunch. Today I gave her orders to stop talking and start eating until half her lunch is gone.

My child's school assignment turns into thought exercise for me

S. came home with a school assignment for tomorrow, we had to tell her a funny story from when she was little so she could put it into her graphic organizer and bring it to school with a photo from the same time (see below). Sounds easy enough, but I was wrecking my brain and could not come up with a funny story. What came to my mind was the time we lost her at Playmobil World, her many ER visits with extreme Kroup or with horrible head wounds from being unbalanced and other catastrophic times we had together, like puking for hours on a flight to Germany or on another flight when she was focused on kicking the seat in front of her and I had to physically restrain her legs for seven hours.

Apparently my child does not offer a lot of physical comedy, though in retrospect horrible stories can have very amusing and entertaining qualities and if we would make a video showing the many times she has fallen of a chair, we would probably win a prize for it (but we don't have the footage). In our search for stories, we looked into our book in which we record interesting moments of childhood if we remember to do so. Looking through the book, almost everything we found for S was something she said, usually a dialog in which she took everything literal, or just very interesting expressions. Now this should not come as a surprise to me, this child did not learn walking the stairs and running until she was four, but she could write her name before her second birthday. When it comes to vocabulary and perception, she is light years ahead, when it comes to coordinating her body in space, not so much.

But back to the assignment, we had a lot of fun reading in that book of memories and remembering the funny stories and it is good thing for all of us, it makes us laugh together and it shows us the funny and heartfelt times. Through this shines the message that life has its ups and downs and that there are always good moments waiting around the corner, it also shows how life and people are changing, but what is not changing is us being a family. So what story did we come up with? When S was two years old, we had this long and cold winter and the snow accumulated and grew and grew. The children wanted to play in the snow while I got some firewood and S started walking on top of the snow following me until, all of a sudden, she broke through the snow crust and was completely gone! The snow was so high in the backyard, that is swallowed her all the way. After the first shock and overcoming the difficulties of pulling her out, we all just burst out in roaring laughter and stayed away from the snow until it melted away in spring.

And before I forget it, I will add two more entries into the book. While on vacation, when I tried to convince J not to visit the souvenir shops, to my delight S remarked that it is all "glorified junk" anyway. And when I went on an evening walk with her the other week, she complained about not having taken her cardigan and when I reacted surprised, she told me: "I feel a pinch of coldness on my skin." I can't begin to tell you how much I love my cerebral and clumsy muffin.

To dare to sing despite the fear

Today I have joined the Stow Festival Chorus. I have loved singing all my life, especially in a chorus, but it has been quite a while since I sang in a chorus or sang at all for that matter. I have been wanting to join a chorus for so long, but did not know where to start and ... well, I was afraid to do it. So when a friend told me she is joining a chorus and if I would like to do so as well, I just replied that I would be too scared to audition and make a fool of myself. And then it tortured me: here was exactly what I had wanted to do and why was I not jumping with joy and instead had fear rule me?

Why the fear? When I was a child (the newspaper clip shows me performing at the age of four) I was musically gifted, but due to lack of adult guidance, I decided against singing in the advanced chorus at school, because I did not want to get up earlier than I had to. Yes, I gave up the chance to sing at the Hamburg Opera to sleep in. Now I could scream just thinking about it! When I was a teenager, I wanted to join a wonderful chorus, but the director told me to wait until I was 15. I could hardly wait, but then got so scared, that I never auditioned and just went to the concerts. By the time I reached University, I was invited to sing in a chorus and since I was successful in anything I attempted at that time (outside of love) I joined and had a wonderful time singing. The singing was exalting, but the chorus itself was very strange. The singers were a very close knit group that also sang in the academic choir and a lot of them studied music part time or full time. I never found a way into the group and it ended on a very strange note (pun intended). Since then I have been paranoid that it was my singing that was so terrible, that it made these unfriendly and arrogant people despise me. This experience - coupled with the the fact that I have never learned sight reading and need to know what I sing or play - left me with so much fear, that I spent the last years just wishing to be singing but too scared to attempt it.

Fear of failure has always stood by me, I can count on that! But if we do not dare, how can we know? The issue with trying something that might not work out is exactly that, it might not work out and then it is a fact. Sometimes it is easier just to keep wishing and not to try, one can have fear and hope at the same time, but when there is failure, the hope has drowned. I am actually very afraid not to be good enough and not to learn enough to be decent, but I have decided that I rather take the risk. For if I take the risk and give my best effort, maybe it will turn out right and this chance, however little it is, is worth being taken.

And so I have joined the chorus (luckily without audition)! Granted, I feel like I do not quite belong there, that I am not good enough, but I will try to become good enough. The Mass in D by Ethel Smyth is sure worth a huge effort.