butternut squash soup in a box

every holiday season my family gathers at one of the members homes.  usually my grandmothers or my uncles, just because of the size of their homes.  the last couple of years i really wanted to have everyone over to my house for one of the meals, thanksgiving, christmas eve or christmas night.  i have always had roommates so it was kind of hard to coordinate, enough room and a clean house to host the group. this year my boyfriend and i live together so i knew this was my chance. i decided to do thanksgiving dinner.  while i was figuring out in mind whether i could pull it of or not, my uncle told everyone he was doing t-day.  never mind! "christmas eve will be at my house this year" i announced over thanksgiving dinner, after a bottle of pino grigio.  "are you sure?" everyone asked.  "yes!"

my family is full of chefs, i am not one of them, like at all!!  i cant hard boil an egg to save my life, one of my favorite meals is top ramen and all of the people at the thai food restaurant know me by my first name.  when my great grandparents first moved to ojai, my great grandad pat met up bill baker.  pat and bill worked together and shared recipes.  back in vermont, the other side of the family was running the family candy business, which my mother later took over. these genes ran through the family forcefully.  my uncle scott is an awesome chef.  my grandma makes the very best comfort food you could ever ask for.  then there is my mother.  my mother flew to vermont when i was about 6 and apprenticed with my great aunt marie.  marie and dick were running the carsner's candy company.  there getting old and didn't want to do it anymore.  my mother brought the family business out to california, and later to hawaii with us as hanley's candy.  my mother made everything by hand in our massive kitchen.  day and night she would work making caramel, chocolate, peanut brittle, turtles etc.  i would go to sleep and awake to the smell of chocolate and caramel.  everyone always says, "wow, your so lucky", actually because of that, neither my mom or i really like chocolate all that much any more.

about five years ago, my mother was working at a job in LA that she hated.  she decided to get a student loan and go to culinary school.  she worked her ass of.  working 45+ hours a week at her job and then going to school all night and all day saturdays.  not to mention the commute both to and from work and then to and from school!  my mother is insane, i don't know how the woman functions.  she finished school. quit her job, sold her house and moved to ojai, after a job offer.  she now works in montecito as a pastry chef.  she is amazing!  she makes the most fantastic deserts ever!  all of the guys at the fire station are in love with my mom and her food.

so, needless to say, i was nervous about making dinner.  my family knows how i cook.  we have alot of family dinners.  during this time, everyone will talk about food and wine and marinades, soups, dressings and roues.  i always sit and say "ohh yeah i like that stuff" or "what does that mean?" i remember being really young, making cookies and fucking them up.  my family would say, "how do you mess up chocolate chip cookies"?.  my mother always said they were great, but they were horrid.  still to this day, i cant believe i'm going to admit this right now, but i buy the pre-made cookie dough from vons, bake them and then all i say is, "i made cookies".  

i was getting nervous about my christmas eve dinner menu.  i surfed the internet, looked in magazines and cookbooks.  then one day i got a flyer from trader joes. he he he!  butternut squash in box. oh yeah, i've had that before and it was good.  sweet!  i bought a fully cooked ham, 5 boxes of organic butternut squash soup, parmesean croutons, sour cream, chives and salad stuff.  i stole my mom's glaze recipe and i was off the hook.  the ham only needed to be in the oven for an hour and a half and i poured the soup in the crock pot just heat it.  it was so easy.  everyone was very impressed and thought i worked really hard!  i set the table all fancy and served the soup with garnishments (just like the picture on the box) and it looked really nice.  at the end of the night everyone praised me and said "wow, you've really grown up", ha! again i fooled everyone.  i even got calls on christmas asking for recipes!  "oh, um,  it was so easy, you just throw a bunch of stuff in the crock pot!", i said.  ha ha!  thanks trader joe's.

haulk hogan

i am so thankful for this teacher training. i envisioned the journey to be something sooo radically different. i pictured lazy days, days off of work that is. riding my bike into town and slowly cruising to lulu's for some super sweet kira time.

its actually been kind of a stressful exhausting 8 days. i started the class straight from a week teaching in lompoc not teaching yoga..ha, teaching new employees the "ropes" of being a federal wild land firefighter apprentice...ugh so lame! i raced home down the 101 to try to make it to a restorative class in hopes of landing before class. thanks to the amazingly soothing Alana, i landed as i had hoped.

as the week continued, so did my stress level. this is odd, because i rarely really stress. because i had taken 2 weeks off of work, people freaked a little bit. I've been bombarded with phone calls and emails. literally, filing my cell phone voice mailbox 2 times last week. i had 3 totally random people STOP bye my house asking for help with resumes. my best friend broke up with her boyfriend of 5 years an needed me to help her move from San Diego to OJ. she has also needed emotional support, of course! not to mention all of my other friends who rarely get to see me during summer months have been vying for attention during my "vacation".

I'm not even going to go into the financial burden of lawyers and vehicles and what not that Andy and i have been dealing with. lets just say that in 2008 alone, we have spent almost $20,000 in attorney fees! with another court date just around the corner.

the funny thing is this class has actually just MADE me drop everything around 12:00 everyday, because i have to be downtown. i can worry for the first 10 minutes of class, then i simply forget. when class is over, its dark and time to go home! it's amazing! for the first time this morning, i realized that this class is what has kept me sane on my vacation! ha!

i am so thankful for Lisa, Celine and Kira for being so loving and supportive. this really has been a great experience for me. it's SO nice to chill with chicks! my everyday life is so full of masculinity all day long, which is not necessarily bad, but its exhausting sometimes. i take a bath almost every night, just to unwind. often have the sound of hulk hogan like voices in my head from the replaying the work day.

I'm really happy that Lisa feels comfortable to share with us. she spoke about her breast cancer last night. she so lovely, she has perfect teeth. I'm thankful that i have these really strong lovely ladies to spend my last few days off with. no flexing, yelling, spitting, farting (well maybe a bit) going on , just breathing.

Zen is not a scrabble word

i grew up very poor! my mom was a single momma and worked really, really, really hard to make things work.  she worked 3 jobs while i was growing up, day and night! I'm not saying any of this out of sorrow, i swear, i LOVE my life and i admire my mother for everything and i am actually thankful that i grew up this way. 

okay, so because we were so f-ing poor, we did not have television, or a telephone..he he, it's funny now!  it was just erin (our golden retriever), my mom and i.  my mother, who is very intelligent, would make me play scrabble ALL the time! we played every weekend and during the week, it seemed like we played everyday.  we also played boggle.  at the time, growing up, i was like "dang mom this is soooo lame, cant we just get a tv or something?" i would say, "lets play something else" and she would say "we can play scrabble, boggle, uno or we can walk the dog". "ugggg, scrabble it is"

so there i was  7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,and so on.  playing with the big girls, my mom and her best friends. They would drink wine, eat cheese, sing their hearts out to bonnie rait, tina turner and smokey robinson. they would make words like hexapla, hexosan, teocalli(these are actually  in the official scrabble dictionary). "what the hell is hexapla, are you serious?" i would protest. "when six texts are in parallel columns, silly girl", one of them would remark.  "ohh okay, yeah, sweat, thanks this is awesome", i would complain, never getting the reaction i was hoping for. every once in a while, i would win. really i would!  so whenever i actually won a game, i would write the date and the score in my mom's dictionary (she still has it).

so throughout the years, i have made the people in my life play with me.  i purchased a travel scrabble a few years ago and i make the boys play with me on fires, when of course were not saving babies and churches and all that good stuff that the movies portray! really, i've never saved a baby or a church! anyway, if you work for me, you HAVE to play!

now, andy and i play all the time! it's so funny, he LOVES to play.  i'm not bragging, i promise, but i always beat him, by like 50, 60 points.  then, the other night we played, like we always do. i kind of have a "bank" of words i always fall back on, like words with the letter Z.  zen, is one of these words.  sometimes you are not sure if a word is REALLY a word, like dude, shit, shat etc. i made zen, this amounted to 22 points and moved on.  i didn't bother to look it up because it's a word, i use it all the time.  this was our closest game EVER, i won by only 10 points.  i say "good job babe, your getting so good!, im proud of you". we laugh, kiss and go to sleep.

about midnight andy says "babe are you awake?"

"i am now, why?", i said

"there is something that wanted to tell you earlier but couldn't"

oh great i think, i knew it, this was just too good to be true! he has an STD or he has another child somewhere, or he cheated or lied or looked at porn on my million $ lap top and now it has a virus! 

"what?", i ask, all bitchy

"zen, is not a scrabble word", he says in the most sympathetic voice

"WHAT!!!!!????? zen IS most certainly a word!", as i fly out of bed

"no, i promise, i looked it up"

"why didn't you tell me THEN?"

"because i know you like that word..............so actually i won"

so, alas my friends, zen is not a scrabble word :(

Circus Clowns

I am so thankful that my mother made me do yoga at such a young age.  Okay, let me clarify, she never made me do anything except clean my room and I made a pretty poor attempt at best.  So I remember being oh about probably 5 years old and my mom would do the Raquel Welch Total Body and Fitness video.  I remember watching my mothers beautiful Eagle Pose.  For a long time I would just watch gazing a my mom and then at Raquel in her zebra print bathing suit.  Then I wanted to try. I started to do the video even when my mom wasn't around. That video stayed with us for years.

When my father passed away, my mom and I moved to Maui, HI.  Of course we took Raquel with us.  We did the Total Body & Fitness quite often.  I would show my friends this workout...."uh, well I think it's yoga" I would say.  At that time yoga was not such a buzz word, especially for 6th graders.  Over time, the video started to deteriorate, but we kept using it.  I remember mastering my headstand in 7th grade showing all my friends, they really didn't give a shit! 

I was a swimmer, that was my focus in life from 7th grade until my senior year when I decided to just be a kid again.  I used to tell my friends (only the close ones) that I wanted to be in the circus.  Ha ha, okay so growing up in Hawaii was a little tricky.  Umm, I was a Haole Girl, a white girl, there were very few us in my high school.  So already I was different, but it was never really an issue but it was always there.  So when I would say that I wanted to be in the circus it was like, wow that must be a haole thing.  I would say I want to be in the Circe De Soleil.  You mean like a clown? My friends would say.  You want to be a circus clown?  No, like an an acrobat, I would reply.  Again blank stares and confusion...the Cirque De what the hell is she talking about?!

I eventually moved to California for college.  A few years later after realizing that we hated living so far away from each other, my mother moved here too.  Unfortunately, Raquel did not make it in the move.  We were both devastated.  For years I googled, ebay'd and yahoo'd the video with no luck.  About 2 months ago, I searched for it again on a whim.  I found it!  I found like 30 of them, what the hell?  Of course it so old school that it dose not come on DVD, luckily unlike most people my mother still has a VCR.  So, this her Christmas gift.  I am soo excited to give it to her.  

That video to me, reminds me of all the beautiful moments my mother and I have had. Throughout the years, yoga has been one of the many things that binds us.  I am so thankful for this opportunity that I have with Lulu's to relish deeper into this love affair.

yum

As I lay on the floor with my love Sequoia keeping me warm this morning, my mind is flooded with thoughts of growing up. Ha!  I feel like I never really grew up.  I've been think about guava's lately.  Guava's remind me of ditching school to go up to Iao Valley to climb the waterfalls and pick guava's.  That smell always makes me smile :)  Ha, Ha..my mom always knew when I had ditched school because she could smell the guava's on me, or maybe she could just see it my face, I'm a TERRIBLE liar! I felt so free and fast and indestructible!  The funny thing is, I still do.  I never really grew up.  Have you ever seen the movie Big, with Tom Hanks?  That's me!  I swear, there are so many moments throughout my day that I make these adult decisions and do adult things and then I think "holy shit, don't they know who I am?" I mean really I'm just a kid! Okay, granted I AM turning 30 in July.  People come to me on a regular basis asking me important things.."ummm, yes", I say and in my mind I think "sure, I don't give a shit, why are you even asking ME?" This is why I like to lay on the floor with Sequoia.  I tell him everything.  I cry to him all the time, I tell him I'm scared, I don't understand, I hike really slow etc.  He doesn't care!  He thinks I'm sooo cool, smart, pretty..I think he thinks I'm an adult. He keeps me grounded and by the way, he does the most amazing downward dog!  He loves to stretch in the sun and I love to watch.  He inspires my practice.   I am so thankful for what I have in my life.  I cant even believe how blessed I am! My friends and family are amazing.  Not to mention that I have a boyfriend who actually enjoys playing Scrabble with me! I started a new journey yesterday.  I had my first day of my yoga teacher training with the most amazing little big group.  This is just one more thing to be thankful for.   Maybe I'll grow up :)