“If we are to survive beyond our own experience of survival, we must all become artists in some sense, the artist of our own lives, in possession of the keys that allow us to enter the transcendent state what will remake us.”  Laurence Gonzales in Surviving Survival

Tis’ the season to be merry, or so the carol says, but in the midst of all the jingle bells and jolly elves is also a strong reminder to many friends and families of the empty seats at the table. Not all Tiny Tims are saved by reformed Scrooges and even reformed Scrooges eventually advance to the graveyard, to then be missed and mourned. So it is in my home and heart this holiday season. In my large family of origin there are now only three of us still sending cards and presents to each other. My progeny is grown, and of those I cared for as my own, one is also beyond the reaches of any phone service or the US mail.

I am far from alone though, I have friends who love me and even a young romance in my life, but new people carve new places at the feast that is my life, no one can ever fill another’s empty chair.

Also, my life has had a fair share of trauma and drama, some self inflicted by my own bad choices, but also some that falls in the category of beyond my control, and the most devastating some that were the direct result of me trying to do the right thing for the right reasons (my military service for example).

I am a survivor.

There are few, if any who would disagree with that label.

This post is for others, who like me are survivors. You know who you are, even if no one else does. Others see your smile, your acts of generosity, your lights and decorations.  But underneath we are a Charlie Brown tree, and in the quiet and alone time we balance between celebration and grief. We find it hard to do all we expect of ourselves,  things we used to do easily; we cry at certain ornaments, certain songs or smells, or sometimes at nothing at all.  We eat food we shouldn’t and normally don’t, sleep past alarms we once didn’t need, forget things, are late to things, find living just a little overwhelming. It’s as if someone else, some emotional beasty, has taken over our lives at times.

In the movies the stories always end with upbeat music just as we realize the surgery worked, the person lived, the job was finally gotten, etc; happy faces all around, and “Cut.”

Real life isn’t like that, it just keeps on going and going, and the impact of loved ones absence finally hits just as others grow weary of all the grief; or the surgery wounds get infected pushing your absence of work far past your FMLA and right into when all the bills arrive; or maybe everything goes right, and the doctor casually mentions the pain is normal and part of still being alive. Whatever the sequel looks like,  life never goes back to how it was before the crisis, the loss, the disease; the event horizon of stress and grief.

I do not believe in coincidence,  when I saw  Laurence Gonzales book “Surviving Survival” facing out on the library shelf, I knew it was there for me to pick up and to read. Not that he is saying anything my counselor hasn’t already told me, but a second witness makes anything more believable.

Apparently, there are two parts of our brain the emotional and the logical, actually like most of us, I  knew this. Then there is a third part where the two overlap, the wise mind, the place where we are truly present in the moment. If we go too far into the rational mind, we loose our compassion; too far into the emotional mind and we loose our functionality, especially when the emotional mind is processing pain, loss, betrayal and all the other little minions of the Big Boss, Fear.

I like video games, especially the quest games; after all my life is a quest for true happiness. The Big Boss at the end of each chapter is Fear; Fear of Pain, Fear of Humiliation, Fear of being Abandoned, Fear of Powerlessness; the minions battling beside this boss in my life game are Broad Generalizations especially ones starting with “everyone,” “always,” “nobody,” and “never;” they are Mind Reading and Assumption and False Conclusions.  They carry weapons of helplessness, hopelessness, distraction, avoidance, excuses and isolation.

My plucky hero(ine)s are Love, Meaning, Gratitude and Creation. They live in the “Wise Mind”, they must conquer the demons overrunning the emotion portion of my brain. Apparently a way for them to accumulate life points and stronger weapons is through goal oriented tasks that force me to re-center in the logical part of the brain where the demons can’t reach. Yup, this is pretty much what I get from Gonzales book.

Apparently I have been doing that my whole life, even more so the last few years as the battle has reached a more epic story line.  Various chapters have extolled the benefits of physical training like swimming and running, repetitive and self rewarding behaviors like cooking and knitting, creative outlets like gardening and of course today’s chapter (because I have been avoiding my blog and journal like the plague) is all about how therapeutic it is to write.

So I am.

This blog I guess is really for me, but I hope if someone else needs it, it will help them too. Surviving survival is harder than the initial crisis because it goes on for the rest of our lives, but it is worth it. In moments of intense pain it is hard to remember how wonderful joy feels, but I promise that if we can shift to our rational mind long enough to properly arm our heroes, Love and her team will win.

Learn it, do it, teach it. Whatever “it” is. Running, swimming, cooking and knitting have been working for me, writing a little less these days because how close to the emotional mind it takes me, but it still can work (if I work it.) However, use whatever tools work for you.  There will be moments when you wonder if it is all worth it, if you are worth it. Please, in those moments, knit or write or color in a coloring book, learn to play the kazoo or the tuba, walk a 5k or just around your block, bake cookies or fudge, start a blog, cut and paste a collage; do something that engages your mind in learning, practicing, and then find someone with whom to share the skill.

Among other things I am a more than once survivor of someone choosing a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Whatever is generating the monsters, we can get through this, and in the end, beat the game!  The only true loss is to quit playing.

My lack of posts this past week has been the direct result of a plethora of positives. Sleep accounts for 50 of the past 308 hours (7 days), leaving me at 252 waking hours; then work as a nurse accounts for 56 of those hours with another 5 added on for driving to and home from said work and delivering my records, which leaves me with 191 hours; 4 hours for my round trip to the VA hospital including visit, 4 hours spent meditating, 8 hours accounted for with training (run/swim/bike), another 15 hours spent this past week emailing or talking to someone I met who has special potential, 8 hours spent with my son and I am still at 152 hours. My little star chart says I did actually accomplish most of my goals last week but seriously, I look at that number “152 hours”. That is actually my “free” time, or that amount of time I get to divide between my wants, needs and desires.  It looks like a lot until its spent. This morning I feel a wee bit frazzled, like there just isn’t enough time to do everything.

This also is how money works out for me, did my budgeting (a weekly Monday morning chore). The money looks like such a large amount until I start looking at too big a picture. Like my time, a certain amount of my money is committed immediately to bills. I have the standard stuff like rent, electricity, trash pickup, water, car insurance, life insurance, cox bill for phone and internet (nope, not TV, just the necessities), medical bills, student loan payment; but they all add to an amount that is less than my take home (I remember many times when they didn’t, grateful they do now, most months anyway).

So why am I always broke and out of time?

I know the answer is budgeting.  I have been working towards making and keeping a budget ever so slowly.  In fact, I sort of had it down there for awhile, but then, just like my journey towards a healthy body and mind, I take three steps forward and two steps back.

It all boils down to discipline and balance. Its easy to make goals, its a whole other thing to say yes to crawling out of bed at 4 AM and making it to the gym to swim, or out the front door to run or bike. Its one thing to decide to be frugal, its quite another to actually sit down, devise a budget, and then say no to the first, second and third off-budget temptations. It does get easier with practice, just as repeated slips make it easier to fully embrace old and broken behaviors. So I am practicing my discipline this morning and writing.

I mentally recommit to the Monday morning budgeting of both my time and my money which means giving writing a prominent place once again. However, since I am actually working on a Biography and a novel as well as this blog, I will be trading off the writing times and may blog more, but only promise one blog a week. I do promise to get back to book and music reviews as well as all this posting of recipes, I have made some incredibly awesome new word friends and well, I know I am too old to even say her name, but have you listened to Amanda Palmer?

All this talk of budgeting leads me to today’s recipe. It is actually more of an instruction manual for those who keep wasting their precious pennies on prepared canned beans when dry beans are the cheapest, tastiest and best-for-planet-Earth protein source in the grocery.

Cooking Dry Legumes (fancy talk for beans)

Pick any bag of dried beans except Kidney beans (due to potential toxins, they are special case, not a beginner bean). I think garbanzos or black beans are great ones to start with, buy organic when possible. Take yourself, a large soup pan (able to hold minimum of 12 cups – 3 quarts), and a light colored plate or breadboard to a table and sit yourself down with the pan to the side. I actually place the cooking on a chair to the right of me and my compost coffee can on the chair to the left of me and  use the Pampered Chef large flexible cutting mat.

Cut open the corner of the bag and pour a handful onto a light colored board, sorting likely looking beans to the right into the pan and all sticks, rocks, and “mummy beans” (just like it sounds, they are dryer, wrinklier and smaller than the rest) to the compost catcher on the left. Once all the beans are sorted fill the pan with water and slosh it around a bit them dump it all into a colander and rinse. Dump back into the soup pan and add 10 cups of water. Here comes the easy part, let them soak for 2 to 10 hours (I put them in at night, so they soak while I am sleeping) and then dump the water on your grass or garden to give your growing things a nutritious treat as well, over the colander of course, and then rinse again.

Not cooking in the soak water helps reduce the fart factor of beginning bean eating. I still rinse them, even though I am a great bean eater because everyone notices if I get lazy and don’t, LOL.

Add 10 more cups of water. For low salt, add 2 tsp. For regular salt add 1 T. I also add two Bay leaves if I have them as they also help counter the gas producing qualities of bean digestion. Bring to boil and then simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally, and testing 3 or four beans for done-ness. (Or throw it all in your slow cooker and ignore for 6 -7 hours while you go work or play, again test beans for texture when done.)

I eat the first batch warm, spiced with a dash of tobasco and served with warm tortillas or dark bread, then I refrigerate or freeze the rest in 2 cup quantities and replace into any recipe calling for a can of beans at much lower cost to my wallet and the enviroment!