Bibliosphere

Happy Halloween friends! I'm celebrating this year with carved pumpkins, handing out candy, and dressing up as Rosie the Riveter. My friend is coming over for a while, and I'll get to see the kids in their costumes.  Hippie will also be dressing up. He will be a demon again, because that costume is far too cute to use just once. I do believe that next year we will have to reuse the mermaid costume. Here he is last year on Halloween:

 While I've always loved cooking and baking, and have often experimented with recipes and new foods, I've become especially interested in the last year or so, especially with plant based and healthier foods. What truly spurred the change was yet another blood test that came back poorly, and a letter from my NP telling me again the steps that I needed to take and had ignored for years. I've come to an understanding though. To cook for yourself as a single person, to try new recipes, find healthy foods, and push the boundaries of what you eat, that is a form of self love. To nourish your body and soul is truly an act of love. We recognize this when we cook for others, baking cookies or bringing a chili pot in times of grief, but why don't recognize cooking for yourself as it is? I will stand on this hill forever, but cooking for yourself is a wonderful act of self love.

 This is a hard post to write, not just because reflecting on the sad things in life can be difficult, but also because the sorrow that has been felt over what I am going to share is so deep and wide. As I mentioned in September, my brother is a long term survivor, with minimal side effects. He is a healthy young adult, a little shy, but as "normal" as anyone else. But when he was diagnosed, there were other children who were diagnosed with rhabdo, around the same time or within a few months to a year. I watched my brother get better, with treatments ending and check ups getting more and more spread out. The other families though? They did not get this. They may have gotten a reprieve, a remission, but it was always followed with a relapse. Like so many families, they did not get to long term survivor. Because childhood cancer is a monster, and, unfortunately, is still a killer. We need an end to this outcome. The death of a child from disease outside of the most extreme of c...

 My last book post was in July, and I've read quite a lot since then. I track my books in StoryGraph, a website that's an alternative to Good Reads (honestly I think it's better). Here's what I read between late July and now: #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women, by Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale  Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done by Chester Elton, Adrian Gostick (audiobook) Office Zen: 101 Ways to Make Your Work Space Calm, Happy, and Productive by Emma Silverman Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice by Brené Brown (audiobook) How to Deal with Angry People by Dr Ryan Martin How to be an Inclusive Leader by Jennifer Brown I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy (audiobook) Simple Giving by Jennifer Iacovelli Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (audiobook) White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism...

 I post about food because I do love food. When it comes to describe my diet, my doctor would say it's the Mediterranean diet, but I cannot be contained with Mediterranean flavors only. My diet isn't vegan or vegetarian or pescetarian or low fat or whatever else. So the word that fits, a word that I do not like, is "flexitarian," defined as eating in a variety of different diets and styles. I want to say that this is what everyone does, but that's not true, because many people eat one style of food, one way of eating, and that's it. But I would prefer to dabble. I make myself a middle eastern flatbread one night, spiced with za'tar, and the next I make a root vegetable hash, full of plants native to the Americas.  One of the benefits of being "flexitarian" is that nothing is off limits. I can make a vegan dish, I can make a dish with pork, and everything in between. Part of the reason this works is because I don't have other dietary restricti...

 So I work for Girl Scouts in the program department, and part of my job is (surprise, surprise) to run programs. I was ambitious and ran a combination overnight and day program for the eclipse at our camp, since it was at 87% totality. Which, for an annual eclipse, is pretty darn close to "totality." For those of you unaware, an annular eclipse is when the moon passes in front of the sun, but it's closer to the earth, so there's a "ring of fire" surrounding the moon, which is actually the sun. Armed with a solar filtered telescope and a whole box of eclipse glasses, we took in the eclipse. I've never seen an eclipse. I don't remember any growing up, so the first one I learned about was the 2017 eclipse, which I did not end up seeing, something I do regret. Seeing an eclipse is a pretty special experience. I knew about the pinhole projectors, about the leaves on trees, the idea of what would happen, but I was unprepared. As the moon moved across the ...

 My work has started doing an annual staff fun day where we'll get together for a day at the end of our year (September) and do something fun instead of work. This year, I'm delighted to report, we went to a culinary school and shaped pasta! As an avid cook and wannabe home chef, this was a perfect day for me, tinged with issues only due to crabby coworkers. But a great day nonetheless. I spent many a moment trying to just soak it in. It started with a tutorial on making the pasta dough, and we got a whole sheet of the recipes we would be making. Eggs, flour, and a little salt mixed together to form a dough. Ours was already rested and rolled, but I still got to cut a sample into spaghetti. We watch the roller go, the got to shape our own. We shaped two varieties: a tube shaped one with ridges that I forgot the name of and orichette, a pasta I was familiar with. We even got to keep the tools used to make them!  Then we learned about three sauces. We didn't actually make the...

As I found out researching my Awareness Days and Months post and page, October 14 is World Hospice and Palliative Care Day this year. It has been celebrated for 17 year and aims to celebrate and support hospice and palliative care around the world ( x ). This year's theme is Compassionate Communities: Together for Palliative Care, which is described by the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance as Compassionate communities care for people, assist people to live in the place they call home, connect people to services, and raise awareness about end-of-life issues. We will engage governments and key stakeholders in a health promotion approach to palliative care, aiming to support solidarity among community members throughout their life course up to and at the end of life. In recent years, hundreds of compassionate communities have been developed all around the world. We believe that palliative care working alongside compassionate communities multiplies the ability to respo...

 So recently I got a workbook that aims to increase self compassion. Self compassion is about the way your treat yourself in the face of failure, stress, or in times of difficulty ( x ). It is about treating yourself with kindness, humanity, and mindfulness. I wanted to learn more and work on this with myself because of a book I read on intuitive eating. You can take a short quiz here to see where you fall in self compassion.

 This September, while doing something I can't quite remember, I was hit with inspiration: I should make my next goal to try new things. I do goals of the month, and generally some sort of new year's resolution, so I had options. At first I was thinking, "Try one new thing per week," but they I settled on my current goal, "Try as many new things as possible." I'll be honest, I started early. I consider my first "new thing" was an Afghan cooking class at the local library. Yes, our library is that cool. We made bolani, a stuffed flatbread that is fried, and I got to stuff my own with fresh cilantro, shredded potato, and green onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, chilis, and coriander. That was the beginning of this challenge. I plan to continue until the end of the month, and if I like it, I'll make it my New Year's resolution for 2024. Wish me luck as I try new things, and I'll check back in in November with a list of everything that ...

 Now we've made it through September and I'll be getting back to more of a mix of blog post topics. I can't believe I made it through the whole month with three posts a week of only childhood cancer topics. I'd like to start October with a life update from me. I continue to work for Girl Scouts, although it's been a stressful month with people leaving, working overnight at camp, and trying to take on more and more. I am also still on the HOA board for my condo, which is an adventure in and of itself. I went on a visit to my parents and I caught COVID either on the plane getting there (despite a KN95 mask) or shortly after I arrived. I was sick for most of my visit and made it out of the isolation phase just in time to get back on the plane to SLC. COVID is no fun, so get your booster! I'm getting back into the swing of things after COVID and travel still. I'm a creature of routines and rhythms. I have a chaotic job, so my goal is to make the rest of my life ...