There was a time when I blogged regularly, and was witty and awesome. Over time, this (the regularity) has changed and sometimes I wonder why I maintain this site. The focus of my posts has also changed beyond observations of my world to personal adventures and creative endeavors. I continue to have the goal to post regularly, but consistently fail in that goal. This past month would be an example of that failure.

Around about a month ago, there was a night when I did not sleep well. The next night, I also did not sleep well. For many nights thereafter, the anxiety that I had about not sleeping kept me up all night. During a four week period, I received between zero and three hours of sleep each night. I felt exhausted and was completely obsessed with sleep. I tried a variety of sleep aids, from prescription sleeping pills, to over-the-counter sleep aids, herbal remedies, alcohol, meditation and deep breathing, yoga, etc. I saw medical professionals and checked out every single book on sleep disorders from the library. And every time I mentioned my insomnia to someone, they would say something not helpful, such as recommending camomile tea, as though I had not already tried the most obvious and readily-available sleep aids.

This past week, I had a mental breakdown at work and took a few days off to try and get myself back together. I was aware that it was the anxiety about my insomnia that was the source of my insomnia, but how to break that anxiety eluded me. I felt frustrated because all of the advice from medical professionals and typical notions of "sleep hygiene" failed to address my anxiety; and no matter how diligently I followed this advice, it was still the utter dread of another sleepless night that kept me awake. So I took some personal time. And somewhere, on some internet forum for insomniacs, I came upon a recommendation for a book about insomnia that supposedly addressed the anxiety about insomnia. The book is Say Good Night to Insomnia by Gregg Jacobs, PhD and it has a cognitive restructuring focus about sleep. If you read through the reviews, which I did several times, there are many indicating that the person was able to sleep much better right away. My personal experience is the same. I got the book on Wednesday and that night was the first night in weeks that I did not use any sort of artificial sleep aid, and while I did not sleep the full night, I slept about four hours and it was good sleep. Prior to this, it had been about three nights in which I had not fallen asleep at all. The next night, I slept about six hours. The next, eight hours. And last night, eight hours again and I am no longer spending all of my waking moments obsessing about sleep. The goal of the book is to make insomniacs normal sleepers and I cannot go on enough about how helpful it was in getting rid of the anxiety that I had built up about insomnia.

Anyway, I did not mean for this post to be a product endorsement, but I wanted to explain what has been up with my lack of posting, and to articulate my utter relief and excitement that I am sleeping again. In addition, I might mention my disgust for the medical establishment and my over $400 worth of medical bills that I have to pay for useless medical advice and ineffective sleeping pills; whereas this book was about $12.

As a sidebar, I'd also like to mention my experience with Ambien. In reading some user reviews of the drug, it is clear that many people consider it to be an effective sleep aide. As I have since learned from both some scholarly literature and my own personal experience, its effectiveness may be deceiving because it is an amnesiac, which means that people might think that they slept while in reality they might just not remember being awake. In my own example, I think this might be what happened. So, as prelim information, my bed is lined up with the "head" of the bed against the wall facing East and the "foot" of the bed facing West. Typically, I sleep with my head at the "foot" of the bed facing West. So, after I took some Ambien, I went to bed normally, with my head at the "foot" of the bed. When I awoke in the morning, my body had flipped and my head was at the "head" of the bed and I had several books next to my pillow. I kind of remember reading in bed, but not really, rather I have a weird foggy memory of holding a book. I also have a weird feeling that I spent most of the night being awake and frustrated, but I have no memory of this. The positive was that I did sleep because I did "wake up" in the morning, however I had no memories of dreams and my confidence that I slept was undermined by the fact that I woke up in a completely different position on the bed than normal and that I had all of these books next to me. In addition, that day I felt particularly exhausted.

One positive experience from my insomnia was that I've started doing yoga and I love the way that it makes my body feel. While I am a flexible individual, what with years of gymnastics and various dance classes when I was a kid ingraining in me the importance of stretching, I find yoga quite challenging. But physical challenges are good and I particularly like the balance and coordination challenges afforded by yoga.

Anyhoo, I hope to post regularly about adventures and my creative endeavors again.

On Friday, for example, Josh and I went on an awesome night mountain bike ride up Rocky Canyon Road. For most of the climb, we didn't need to use our headlights because the moon was almost full and lit up the road very well. It also cast eerie shadows of the trees and canyon wall along the road. I had a lot of fun on the descent; the road was nicely tacky and smooth, I hardly had to use my breaks, and I had a wonderful feeling of flying down the road.

Today, I'm going to start planning my vegetable garden and compost system.

Cycling

My primary personal goal involves putting in a lot of miles on the bike. With school soon no longer being an impediment to being able to ride my bike everyday, not only do I want to ride my bike everyday, but I want to ride it over longer and longer distances everyday. I feel a strong desire to embark on long bike adventures, including the multi-day/week variety. Additionally, I will continue to improve my technical skills, downhill speed, and I hope to complete at least one race.

Sometime around my birthday, Josh and I are going to go on a two week bike excursion. And I've recently been inspired to pair it with a brewery tour. The tentative idea being to drive down through Utah, stopping possibly at Park City and maybe hitting Arches, and then doing a tour of Western Colorado, camping for cheap on BLM lands, spending a day or two at each location, mountain biking the days away, and somewhere in between enjoying some quality beer. This plan is by no means certain, another strong inclination I have is to head north into Alberta. Furthermore, the plan seems to rest on my feeling inspired and excited, and I continue to search for exciting resources on the internet. My two primary sources for Colorado/Utah excitement include the Beer Drinker's Guide to Colorado and Mountain Biking Mayhem which has a lot of neat info about the trails in CO and UT (including fun videos!).

Food

Working full time and going to graduate school is a great opportunity to forget how to cook and to develop a love of processed foods. By the end of last semester, I was eating microwavable burritos every single day. The combination of my stomach virus and eating nothing but greasy food in Arkansas served as a reminder for me that there are better ways to eat.

Since my return from Arkansas, I have been cooking and loving it. Last night, for example, Josh and I made beef gorditas (a recipe from my my new cookbook) and they were delicious and satisfying. Over the weekend, I made an exciting chickpea stew. Tonight, I will make a curried sweet potato and chicken dish. No more microwavable burritos.

Furthermore, I am going to have a real garden this year. I've got a compost pile (sorta) going and a mulch system in place, and lots of enthusiasm. I also hope to buy more from the farmer's market.

Knitting

Over the past few years, I have developed a more meticulous attention to detail. I still tend to knit by the seat of my pants, but it is a little more structured and planned. A huge knitting goal for me is to implement a more rigorous approach to planning out my projects, which would facilitate my then being able to translate them into patterns. Last year, I succeeded in accomplishing my goal of writing up a real pattern - - I don't know if I'll ever make it public - - and it was a significant learning experience for me, instilling in me the understanding that a rigorous planning process would make pattern-writing A LOT easier. Lesson learned.

A second knitting goal is to expand my skills and learn new ways of knitting. I am pleased to have recently incorporated doubleknitting and seamless set-in sleeves into my knitting repertoire; my hope is to continue to expand it.

A third knitting goal is to knit exclusively from my yarn stash.

Here's a mosaic of my 2009 finished knitting projects.

I have a sense that my mosaic for 2010 will contain considerably less stockinette, more stranded knitting, more obscenely complex cables, fewer sweaters and more mittens.

Josh and I maintained our sanity in Arkansas, wherein the population is considerably more religious and less physically active than we're used to, by enjoying some morning coffees and going on walks and hikes. One route we hiked a few times took us along a bit of actual nature, where there were thick vines hanging from the trees. Below, Josh practices his Tarzan.

One adventure was Saturday night karaoke at a local biker bar. The only beer served on tap was Budweiser, of which I had several in addition to a few tequila shots. Josh and I sang "Proud Mary" karaoke, danced and had a lot of fun. I shot several videos of the karaoke, as I found it culturally different than Boise, in a country-western sense. I was pretty toasted by the time that I filmed this video, as evidenced by my failure to keep the camera steady.

Another adventure occurred on Tuesday, when I went along with Josh, his mom and his brother Seth to visit the Pea Ridge National Military Park, which is a civil war historical site. At the visitor's center, we watched an interesting documentary about the battle site and then we took a driving tour to the various points of interest.

While we were headed out to the Pea Ridge site, we saw an interesting piece of property that was littered with old vehicles. One caught our eye; an old Model T with a tree growing out of it. Pretty cool.

That evening, the entire family gathered for a few games of bowling. I bowled my finest game, with a score of 114.

The final adventure of the trip was to visit the Walmart museum where we learned all about the rise of the Walton family and learned the secrets to Walmart's success. I found it to be a one-sided and biased interpretation of history and success, but it was nonetheless interesting. A few days earlier, I had lunch at a Walmart Distribution Center (a big warehouse that serves as a hub for the trucking distribution of goods, that houses enough goods to fill ten entire Walmart stores) where Josh's brother Jim works. This was also an interesting experience - - we had to go through security, were assigned "visitor" name badges, and were not allowed to take photos inside the building. Below is a photo of Josh, brother Seth, and mom Kathy on the outside.

More photos on my photoset.

BACKSTORY

This past Saturday, I spent most of the day in anticipation of a holiday potluck among friends. For the potluck bit, I cuddled up with my library of cookbooks and selected an item that sounded delicious and appropriate for a holiday potluck. Specifically, I chose an apple onion cheese gratin from one of my Moosewood cookbooks.

So, I actually do like to cook. But I like to cook my own way, which normally involves only a cursory attention to the recipe. Interestingly, my methodology for cooking mirrors that of my knitting - - using the recipe/pattern as a guide and then making it my own. As with knitting, this manner of cooking can occasionally not work out.

Josh also likes to cook and he was excited about a recipe that he had selected from my edition of the Joy of Cooking: ginger molasses cookies. The methodology that Josh employs in his style of cooking, however, is the opposite of mine and is a small source of contention and mockery between the two of us. Namely, he rigidly follows the recipes.

Despite our incompatible cooking styles, we manage to get along fine in other aspects of life.

ANYWAY, a few hours before the potluck, Josh and I went to the grocery store to gather items for our respective recipes. It was during the drive home that the evening took a turn for the worse... As I navigated the car through our neighborhood, I became aware of a grumbly in my tummy. After a session in the restroom, I found that the grumblies were increasing and making my existence very uncomfortable. I managed to slice up the apples just fine, but became severely nauseous while slicing the onions. Josh offered to grate the cheese so that I could lie down for a while. A while came and went and I was in no condition to attend a potluck, let alone position my person in any way other than remaining perfectly still on my bed. Josh went to the potluck as one. Neither myself nor his ginger molasses cookies were "up" for a potluck, the latter lacked a necessary ingredient.

It turned out that I had a contagious 24 hour stomach virus-thing. I spent all evening on Saturday, and until about 7pm on Sunday feeling MISERABLE. On Monday, Josh came home from work with the exact same symptoms that I had experienced.

THE PLOT THICKENS... or does it?

As of this writing, it is Tuesday and the sliced apples and onions, diced walnuts and grated cheese have been sitting in the refrigerator since Saturday when I gave up on life. Now that I can look at food without wanting to vomit, I've decided to finalize my dish.

Part of my frustration with "cooking" and "recipes" is that I am a novice. After work today, I whipped out all of the ingredients and the recipe and got to work on preparing what I hoped would be a delicious meal. In reading the recipe, there was an elusive set of instructions about "scalding milk" and continually whisking it with butter and flower until it thickened. Whatever. Sure, I don't have a clue how to "scald milk" nor do I understand its benefits in the cooking process, but I determined that was an unnecessary component to the recipe, so I merely added milk, flour, and butter to a pan and whisked away. Whisk, whisk, whisk. I continued to whisk for what seemed like HOURS with no discernible thickening before exclaiming to Josh, "What a waste of time!"

We then discussed how I would not be a good candidate for a cooking show.

Whisk, whisk, whisk.

Eventually, the sauce did thicken. And instead of following the recipe about drizzling the sauce over all of the ingredients once they were in the baking dish, I determined the better method was to first add brown sugar and then mix it all together before adding to the baking dish.

CONCLUSION

Apples, onions, walnuts, gruyere cheese, milk, flour, butter, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and my secret ingredient brown sugar. But really, wouldn't microwavable burritos have been better?