Day 12- 100 day challenge

Nothing is challenging today. I'm just grateful.

I'm grateful the lights are on.
I'm grateful I'm not hungry.
I'm grateful I can run a hot bath.
I'm grateful I can walk out doors and be in a park in the next minute
I'm grateful I have warm blankets when the weather turns cold.
I'm grateful I have a job that brings me challenges and happiness and a sense of purpose.
I'm grateful my my mother is beautiful and smart and I inherited some of her genes
I'm grateful my father is creative and intelligent and I inherited some of his genes.
I'm grateful my parents straightened my crooked teeth.
I'm grateful I have unusual, inspiring friends.
I'm grateful I've never been horribly hurt either physically or emotionally.
I'm grateful I have been hurt emotionally and physically. It reminds me that I am grateful for my health.
I'm grateful my family is safe and healthy.
I'm grateful I live in Canada.
I'm grateful I'm not buried under rubble in the dark like so many in Haiti tonight.
I'm grateful I am alive.

Day 11- 100 day challenge

Day 11 of the cleanse.

It's raining daily, and I'm just starting to feel rid of the flu. No bike riding yet. I went shopping last night and tried to find the allusive pair of jeans. I pulled a size 33- the usual since the last time I tried on jeans and they were massive. I kept trying on jeans until I realized I know fit into a size 29 Levi. That hasn't happened since my early 30's. Things are looking up.

I had a tarot reading that told me good things were coming.. I have to remove a few things before they can come along though. And all the answers I'm searching for are within me. I hate that. Honestly, I wish someone would tell me what to do, sometimes.

Oh yeah.. I bought a pair of grey cashmere cocktail gloves. I love grey cashmere. 

Day 10- 100 day challenge

Day 9- 100 day challenge

I went to go see Petunia and the Vipers last night at a nearby pub last night. Rockahillbilly is one way to describe them. The first time I heard them was down on Granville Island busking and I was entranced. So, I check out the gigs now and then. And, I guess I feel into old habits because I ended up having a pint of cider and a shot and never realized the sugar content. Whoops. 9 days penance for me. It's April 19th now.

Trich: 5 minutes. Not a good day. Not a bad day. Just not great.

Day 8- 100 day challenge

My year in review based on blog posts. It's been a frivolous year of traveling (wait.. travel is never frivolous- you're right Heidi) . There wasn't much else recorded.. that's all.


Jan
Almost took glass blowing classes but then didn't.

Feb
Discovered Buddha Hands


March
Went shooting photos with my great cousin
Cooked Cuban
Went to Seattle with my mom and sister
Saw Big Brother & the Holding Co in concert

April
Booked a ticket to Cuba
Went to the Skagit County Tulip Festival with my sister
Discovered Edison, Wa
Spent a day in Toronto

May
Walked in the Worker's Rally, Havana
Travelled acros Cuba and back again
Had a mini road trip to Victoria

June
Started a 100 day cleanse to eliminate sugar, flour, dairy

July
Went to Winnipeg Manitoba in search of dear old friends
Took a bunch of photos
Discovered Saskatoon perogies with cream gravy
wrote a poem
started making lanterns
planned another trip
Tried to sell lanterns in the rain
went on a juice cleanse

August
Went to Alberta and saw family
Had my forearms tattooed
Went to Nanaimo to see my old friend Bob

September
Went back to Manitoba
Had a 1000th post
locked myself out
dressed up as goose that laid golden eggs

October
reviewed my list of 100 things to do

November
Blogged every day for NaBloPoMo
decided on color in my tattoos
Sesame St turned 40
Slickety Jim's burnt down
I made a lot of lists
it rained alot and there was a flood warning
went to Bowen Island for the day
HINI was all over the news

December
nearly finished my tattoos
made prints for Christmas presents
Went home to Alberta
saw my friend Bill and got sad that I'd spent so many years out of touch
wrote a poem
Got really sick

Day 7- 100 day challenge

When in doubt use what you have

brown chicken breast
search for some sort of casserole dish with lid
chop onions
chop potatoes
cut up a carrot or 2
line bottom of casserole dish with onions/ potatoes
season chicken breast with salt/ pepper
add chopped garlic to casserole dish
chop up 1/2 yam left over from soup, toss in with potatoes/ onion
put chicken breast on bed of veggies
rinse a can of chickpeas and add
add a can of stewed romas tomatoes
cut up any big chunks of tomatoe
season with basil, salt/ pepper
cover and bake @400'C or until carrots are soft

Tada. No flour, dairy or sugar.

Trich: 1 minute.

Day 6- 100 day challenge

Today is the 4 yr anniversary of my blog. In 4 years I've posted 1055 posts. It's an uncountable number or words, paragraphs, poems ( well maybe 4 or 5), pictures, and other emphemera.

But there you have it. 4 years of my life documented. Here's this post that started it all...

Day 5- 100 day challenge

I've bored myself to death with writing about what food I'm eating. So no more. I'll just talk about my moods for the next 95 days.

For a week of so I've been having existential angst that I've wrecked my life. Silly, I'm sure, that seems. I don't know what to say except I've been waking up in panic and states of disbelief and disconnection. I don't know what to do.

Is it the sugar leaving my body?

Um.. 10 hrs later I'm swinging from a rainbow and I think I have the world on a string. WTF

Day 4- 100 day challenge

Countdown to April 10

Isn't it a bit boring, really, to hear what I've digested in a day? I mean, no one cares what you had for lunch. But then again, my blog isn't exactly charging the way of readership.

Breaky:
2 cups porridge, almond milk, almonds, dates, oranges
1 cup of coffee, 1 glass of water
Trich: 0

1 phone relocated.
1 taxi to work
It's raining.

1 new wool sweater in use.

to be continued...

soup..
I know this butcher place down on Granville Island that cut up the bacon slab ends and vacumn pack them into little balls of bacon bits. You can get a pack for about $5. Take that and stir fry in a little oil, onion, garlic at the bottom of a soup pot.

Add potatoes, carrots, yams, celery, red pepper
Salt & Pepper, tarragon or basil

Shzamm. Bacon & Potato soup.

Dinner.

I feel dark and unworthy. Needy. Greedy and sullen, tonight. It must be the sugar coming out. Or the sick.

Trich- 45 sec

Day 3- 100 day challenge

Due date: 10 April 2010

I was supposed to go to East is East on Broadway to meet up with a friend but instead I went to East is East on Main St. Bugger. One new year resolution is to have  a bigger group of friends and one that resides outside of work. I've been in a terrible rut of having my social life filled in by work and then not really maintaining any friendships outside of it. Tres bad. So, I had an invite today to meet with a friend and her friends and well.. how can you say no. But I got lost along the way and ended up at Locus on main St for breaky.

I phoned a dear friend of mine and we met up at Granville Island, one of my favorite places to be in the whole of Vancouver. A foodie wonderland. She introduced me to a girl who's right eye is blotched with brown, like mine. (my eyes are blue except for a brown splotch in one). If you have one, you often immediately spot one. I've met only a handful of people who share the characteristic. We thought maybe we should start a facebook group in hopes we'd find more people and then have a conference about recessive eye color genes and their fight to represent.

Sonia and I went downtown and 2 fortuitous events occurred.

1- I found a sweater I really wanted in Red Deer but that Gap didn't have my size. I found it in the Gap in Vancouver!

2- I left my phone behind in a bathroom. Not sure if this is fortuitous or not. But it's an event. Bugger.

So, my day started with one friend and ended with another. Thank god I'm up and about and not pining over gorgeous older men.

Sorry, I know its probably dreadfully boring, but Iam challenging myself to eat better and leave my hair alone..If I write it down publically everyday, I'm less likely to mess up. Especially with the trich. Come on root for me.

Lunch:
3 eggs scrambled
roasted potatoes
fruit- watermelon, canteloupe, honeydew, orange
2 cups coffee
2 glasses water
Dinner:
Large salad- greens, carrots, beets, almonds, sunflower seeds, cucumber dressed with oil/ vinegar
2 glasses of water
2 cups of tea

trich- 0 minutes

 

Day 2- 100 day challenge

Due date: 10 April 2010

It's not easy to eliminate all flours, sugars and dairy immediately. You have to read everything that is in a package. Why is cane sugar in everything? Sigh.

Today has not been a big food day. I better get better or I will alarm my mother

2 eggs scrambled, roasted potatoes, beans
2 cups of chamomile tea
2 glasses of water
3 oranges
1/2 apple
a handful of almonds
small bag of popcorn
bowl of tomatoe soup
Trich- 30 seconds

Over the years, I definitely see a pattern of becoming preoccupied with the attention of certain men. I could list them, but lets not go there. But what I can list is that they have all been creative, aloof, independent, good looking, great kissers. And I become so preoccupied that I begin to obsess over my own shortfalls and insecurities. Why? Oddly, the same qualities I describe these men are qualities I also have. I think it's some kind of break in my psyche that has become disconnected from my inner male, so when I meet these men that resonate with this piece of me, I cling to them in some way of feeling complete?? But how did the break happen in the first place?

I usually attribute all my problems with intimacy/ men to the death of my grandfather when I was 5. My grandfather adored me and I adored him. He would wait on the porch step for me and gleem in delight when I ran down the path. Pure joy. It was pure joy for him to see me and I knew it. I doubt I was able to process his death properly at 5. When I think of these men that I become so strongly attracted to, I have wanted all of them to adore me and hold me and protect me, like my grandfather. They've all had this feeling to me that I could fall into their eyes and arms and somehow magically everything would be alright.

Naturally, this isn't possible. These men are not my grandfather. I don't think my grandfather was particularly aloof, but maybe he appeared that out of reach for my 5 yr old mind. I don't know really what it is, I just see a pattern and it bothers me. It's happened again and I'm preoccupied and anxious and trying to make sure they keep paying attention to me. Really, I need to pay attention to myself and fill my own needs and be deliciously thrilled to see me.

Know what I mean? Sometimes you just need to talk about it a bit too. It's a bit silly, but the feelings are really powerful and I don't really understand why. By the way, Clint Eastwood could be one of these magical men. Its a combination of the blue eyes, creative spirit, working hands, and a smell of dust and tobacco. If you're prone to jeans and t shirts, I could fall in love with you.

It's a new year.

It's Jan 1. It's a time for rituals, reflections, and resolutions. Some people reflect on the year and set goals for the new one. Some cleanse themselves of past transgressions. Some part take in the ritual of the annual Vancouver Polar Bear Swim at English Bay. And some get dressed up in hot pink bikini bottoms and encase themselves in a giant bubble.

Onwards and upwards 2010. It's going to be an interesting year.

Day 1- 100 day challenge

Due date: 10 April 2010

I've challenge my self starting Jan 1, to eliminate sugars, flours and dairy products from my diet. By default, that leaves me with whole grains, nuts, beans, vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry, fish and water.And too blog everyday about it.

Today I started the Wild Rose Cleanse. It helps get you on the good food and off the bad.

Off to English Bay to photograph the Polar Bear Swim

Breakfast- large bowl of mixed greens, a few dates, half an apple dressed with oil, vinegar and 1/4 white onion. 2 glasses of water.

Dinner- small salad; dressed with lemon juice & oil. Organic meat patty; no bun, side order of fries, black coffee, water

auld lang syne

The new year rose unfolds. I always find the ends of cycles to be auspicious. The beginning of weeks, months, years, birthdays all seem to hold a stronger spark of opportunity for a fresh start for me. I'm bound in some way by cycles, feeling at times that something must run its course, or that I'm compelled and held in a loop.

I don't have very many resolves for the new year, but only a few:

To live a more honest life with trichotillomania and be held back by it less. It's a course that's been running in my life for a long time and I've been terribly disappointed when a new cycle starts and it tags along into the new years, new birthdays. I vow to love it like a funny child that needs to hold my hand and less like a heavy weight on my heart.

To enrich my diet with fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains/ beans, organic and ethical meats, and plenty of loved water. To eliminate dairy, flours, and sugars (except for the odd teaspoon of Cuban honey)

To display my creativity more often. To have a show of my photography.

To live a more balanced and enriched life with work, exercise, and fun.

To give more love, kindness, support and patience to people.

To dance more often.

To be Jill.

for you B, sweet friend

Seasons cold that push the frost
hiding from the clock time ticking.
The chickadee cries wait wait..
she's still playing in the tall wheat grass picking.

For the peek a boo of lovers,
waiting for breeze the summer warms.
Electricity comes on the coattails of the sparrow
when the nighttime turns to darkened storms.

Sun beams through the old farm windows
your gaze peeking through the seasons of my life.
The hide and seek of friendship,
cut up for children, a cake with a golden knife

One day she will take that lovely creature
wrap them up with feathers from her nest
and play the tiny birdsong of words
where her eyes speak and the heart knows the rest

the trapeze act

I'm going back to school. I think. First stop.. my GED. Next stop Biology 12. I'm going to try and open a few doors and windows.

Then I'll jump through some hoops, do a few summersaults and jumping jack or two and feel less like a caged monkey and on my way to ringleader extrodanaire.

Life is a god damn circus, doncha know.

Maybe I'll blog about being a shiftless 37 year old who starts to walk down the yellow brick road, get famous. It'll all be turned into a movie and Natalie Portman will play me.

I watched Julie & Julia tonight. It was good and I enjoyed it. But I enjoyed it less for the entertainment of it and more for the parallel I felt towards it. Julia Child was 37 and hadn't found a career and didn't know what to do with herself. Ok, she was also married, had come from a family with money and was living in Paris with her diplomat husband.

The fact is she was unfocused and untrained at 37. Much like me.

Julie was in a dead end secretarial job, living with her husband and a cat when she started a blog on cooking her way through Julia Child's - Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Inadvertantly rescuing her from a drowning feeling and inertia of going nowhere.

I live with my boyfriend and a cat and have a sinking feeling in my stomach that if I don't do something about my sinking feeling it might get worse.

I don't think I'm going to cook my way through a book or run off to Paris, but I sure which I knew what was going to do.

in honor of my mother

Because I know that she'd rather I hadn't colored all over my arms, but she still makes lovely and supportive comments and says the work is pretty. By the way, thanks for letting me draw all over my bedroom walls in black permanent marker. No matter how many coats of paint, you could still read the lyrics to a Beatles song. I only wish we'd taken photos of that.

One of my favorite recipes from my mom.. its dinner tonight. Looking forward to seeing you in 15 days.

Smothered Chicken

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cups diagonally sliced carrots
1 cup sliced onion
1 garlic clove, minced
2 (8 once) packages pre=sliced mushrooms- I ignore this.
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 14.5 ounce can fat free chicken broth
1 tbsp chopped fresh or 1 tsp dried thyme
Chopped fresh chives (optional)

Brown chicken in a skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Remove.

Heat oil in pan; add carrots, onion, and garlic. Cook 2 minutes. Add mushrooms; cook 5 minutes until vegetables are tender. Sprinkle with flour; cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add broth and thyme, bring to a boil and cook until slightly thickened. Return chicken to the pan. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes until chicken is done. Garnish with chives if desired.

Yield 4 servings.

Note: I put in a slow over (280 – 300) and cook for 2-3 several hours like a stew. Often add more broth to make sure I have lots of gravy and serve with mashed potatoes.

little birds

IMGP5068, originally uploaded by jilly71.

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