Monday, October 8, 2012

Autumn

Approx mile 70 of the Gran Fondo, Sept 29
I LOVE autumn. It’s my most favorite time of the year, yet one of the most challenging times of the year for me.

Here’s how it usually goes down - around summer solstice the amazingly beautiful yet cold and damp fog rolls into San Francisco. I feel like making soups and stews to stay warm, yet keep getting wonderful and delicious summer produce in our weekly box. And I love every tomato that I can get my hands on! But here’s the deal - usually after Labor Day, the fog takes it’s yearly hiatus (until the next summer solstice) and summer really heats up... in autumn! Last week we had a heat wave with a few days in the low 90’s!

So you can imagine the tug of war that occurs - just as I’m ready to bust out the pumpkin recipes, bake more, create warming and comforting food and start the chai making - and it’s 88 degrees out. The weather makes me want to be even MORE active - so I usually end up pushing myself beyond what the season is telling my body to do - sloooow down. So eventually, around the end of October, the dichotomy of “summer” being here, yet it being autumn, takes its toll. Usually in the form of getting a cold, being tired all the time or just plain not feeling well. This is where acupuncture is the most amazing and best thing I can do for myself. And not over doing it - but I’m pretty sure I will anyway!

So, since the last time I wrote SO much has happened! I think I have to put it in a timeline...

-Labor day weekend: My friend C from NYC came to visit with her boyfriend. We had a wonderful weekend of food, wine tasting and for them, sightseeing (R and I went for a training ride... get to that in a minute).

-C left to visit the lovely state of California... then a friend from Seattle came to stay in our apartment for the weekend.

-The same weekend, we had a 6:30a flight Friday morning, off to Albany, NY to attend a beautiful wedding at Lake George, NY. An amazing wedding. Beautiful beyond words and so fun to catch up with acquaintances that we haven’t seen in nearly 4 years.

-After the wedding, we drove to NYC. It was so odd to drive across the George Washington Bridge and think “wow, I lived here for THREE years!” That and quite a few non-choice words for the new bridge toll ($12!!!! F&#$!). We stayed in C’s flat as she and her boyfriend were still touring around California - how lucky am I?

-On Monday, the 10th, I turned 30! A beautiful, relaxing day of wandering around the city, enjoying gluten free cake (an amazing new GF store opened in our old neighborhood!) along with champagne and an incredible meal at Le Bernadin (with a surprise bottle of champange from our dear friend was just married 2 nights prior). I cannot imagine a better way to start a new decade!

-We flew back to SF the next day and then N and S flew in from Seattle to celebrate my birthday!! It was the best birthday present! A fantastic weekend of wine, too much cake, too much food and a wonderfully healthy dose of girl time had me feeling wonderfully happy (and hung over).

-The following week was a recovery week! I did freeze a flat of strawberries (because R was incessently requesting that I have his strawberries available for him for winter breakfasts). I canned a flat of early girl dry farmed tomatoes. I did an 88 mile training ride - ON PIG! Yes, Pig finally arrived and R put her together. She's a beaut!

-Two weekends ago, I rode the Gran Fondo!!!! It was 103 miles with over 8200 feet of climbing. And it did it in 9 hours 22 minutes. Great weather. Great people. It was such an amazing ride, so well supported and a huge accomplishment for myself. I’ve been training for this since about June and I’m pretty amazed at myself for finishing. I also helped to raise over $600 for charities and I rode for my darling little niece who is in the PICU at the moment (I’d prefer to not go into the details, but suffice it to say that she has a good prognosis). I can't wait to do this ride again next year and would like to be better trained and finish in 8.5 hours - wonder if I can do it?

-Last weekend was a “relaxing” weekend of canning *another* flat of tomatoes (1 20 lb flat of tomatoes ONLY makes 7 quarts - OMG, they better be worth it in the winter!!) and then another batch of strawberry jam, along with catching up with friends via skype in Europe and a lovely dinner at our friends’ house that we haven’t seen in ages.

Life has been quite chaotic. But what I’m realizing is that this is the way I love life to be. It’s quite amazing to come full circle back to where I was just a year ago - thinking about acupuncture school and hating my job. I’ve realized that I like to be busy and exhausted in the evenings. I like to push myself to the brink - where I think I cannot continue, yet I still climb another 1000 feet on Pig. I enjoy not having time to watch TV and where reading a fictional book is a treat. And most of all, I cannot believe how much I’ve changed within the short timespan of a year.

As of right now, I’m focusing my energies on 4 volunteer jobs, Statistics, part time marketing work (for my prior company) and how I'm going to apply to nursing school. I’ve decided to apply March 1 (for a November 2013 start). More importantly, I’ve decided to become a nurse - not a nurse practitioner! This is pretty huge. This means only 1 year of schooling, not 3. This means a high likelihood of making it into a program (versus a 15% chance) and this means that if I want to become a NP later in life, it will be much easier. Thus, winter is about to become extraordinarily busy! I’ll probably take 3 courses, drop 2 volunteer jobs and still work part time. If I’m not accepted, well, I can continue with my original plan and apply August 1 (for a April 2014 start). If I am accepted when I apply in March, that means I’ll start school in about a year!

Another note, I’m on the fence with continuing this blog or not. As life has made a clear definition of itself (or rather, I made a clear definition of what I want my life to be), it seems as though my medium of venting my frustrations in written format has become less important. Also, I love sharing recipes and what I’m doing in my life; little tidbits of my interpretation of Chinese medicine and wellbeing, however, it seems that it’s not reaching a wide audience (no offense to those of you who do read my blog!!! I still love you and please email me if you ever have any questions that I could possibly help with!) and that is completely fine! It’s just a whole ton of work to write, edit and post these pieces and given my commitments, I’m not sure it’s really worth it for me. But then again, the ever changing wave of life could certainly pick me back up and plop me in front of a computer and having me writing again. For the moment, just know, that I want to thank you, dear reader, for accompanging me through this turbulent year of discovery, encouraging me to write, commenting on things you found interesting and simply being there to share my experiences over the past year. For now, I shall leave my future blogging to be left with ambiguity. I may return, or I may not. But in the meantime, thank you.

Be well and find the things in life that make you happy!

xox