You Can't Rush Sourdough

Our sourdough starter #2 is up and running. Or bubbling, rather. We got it going a little over a week ago and had been feeding it twice a day since then to try to coax some life out of it. By Sunday I had just about given up hope. Our starter #1, at the end of its life, had such a delicious yeasty smell. When I gave it a good stir before making something sourdough-y, it smelled a lot like an open bottle of wine. On Sunday, starter #2 smelled like play-dough.

Mark convinced me not to give up on it, though, so I let it sit and think about its actions for another 12 hours without adding any extra flour to it. That seemed to be the ticket. By Monday I was noticing a few more bubbles, and by Tuesday afternoon it was threatening to spill over the sides of its jar. I overheard my dad ask Mark if he should be afraid that the starter was going to attack him in his sleep. That was when I knew we were really in business again.

However, as we expected, starter #2 doesn't have the delicious tangy smell starter #1 had after five months of living in our fridge. We made our sourdough English muffins this morning, and they didn't taste sour. They fluffed up, but barely. It's just going to take time for our starter #2 to come into its own.

It's going to take a while for us to come into our own up here in the Cities too. The vacation effect has worn off a bit. Although we're still enjoying spending time with my family and are still thankful for how they've opened their home to us, we're beginning to wish that we had our own space some of the time. But Mark is still searching for a job, and I'm still not getting paid by my school. We just have to wait to become an autonomous family unit again.

Also, I'm beginning to really miss my library. Yes, I still think of it as my library. I miss my coworkers who are actually some of my best friends. I miss the hustle and bustle, and I miss seeing people everyday. Right now Mark and I have a lot to do, but it's just stuff to do. While we're doing it, we're not very social.

And the driving. Yeesh. It's really really going to take me a while to come into my own driving around here. Hopefully at some point driving to a new location won't feel like a major ordeal. I won't sit forward on my seat, clutching the steering wheel in a sweaty vice-like grip, my heart won't pound as I change lanes, and my lower back won't be sore from tension by the time I arrive at a new location. (Of course, I should qualify this  by acknowledging that Mark does not experience these symptoms driving around the Cities. I'm the hyper-sensitive, ultra-stressed, uptight one in the relationship.)

Moving to a new location is a little tough, even when the move was desired and anticipated. I'm not complaining about our situation right now. We're just like a new sourdough starter-- it will take a few months for us to find ourselves in our own place, begin working out how to make new friends and hold onto left-behind friendships, and drive without hyperventilating. But pretty soon we'll be making things happen confidently (and with a little tang).

So... Many... Changes...

I've been wanting to write a blog post for a couple days now, just to update on what's been happening in the Lives of Mark and Hillary since we moved up to the Twin Cities, but every time I thought I would actually sit down and do it, trying to decide what to write about was simply too overwhelming. So many things have happened, so many things have changed.

So, instead of trying to choose what to write about, I'm just going to make a list of all the changes. Maybe this will be therapeutic for me. I always say I love changes, and I'm always terribly excited for changes up until the day of. Then, the day of the Change that I've been anticipating for months, I feel kind of numb. I don't feel happy or sad that the Change is happening; it just is, and I'm just doing what I have to in order to get through it. Then the day after the Change, when unexpected challenges start to crop up, I turn into an emotionally volatile sniveling lunatic who is absolutely sure that life as she knows it is at an end. Ergo, it may be both informative for you and therapeutic for me to write down all the recent changes that have taken place in our lives.

In the list below, changes are numbered. Sub-changes are listed below each numbered change.

1. Mark and I moved into my parents' basement.
1. We now have to compromise with two middle-aged adults (one of whom is a fairly picky eater) and one teenager (who is definitely a picky eater) on what we eat for dinner. I want vegetarian, more vegetables, and all bread products to be whole wheat. My dad wants ground beef, fewer vegetables, and is actually now okay with most bread products being whole wheat. We haven't talked about other grains yet, like quinoa. My sister wants Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Doritos, and Cheez-Its. Thankfully, it seems so far like we can all be adults about this, except perhaps my sister who insists on being a strong-willed teenager, and heaven help us with that. 
2. We now have Internet all the time. This sounds like a good thing, and in lots of ways it is, but I have to re-learn how to have Internet in my life and not feel the constant need to check my e-mail. I kind of seem to myself like a dog that's been starved regularly. When the dog finally does have food, it gorges itself. It has to re-learn to eat in moderation, trusting that the next meal really will appear. I just realized how very odd and somewhat disturbing those previous two sentences sound. However, since I can't think of another more appropriate simile off the top of my head, I'm not going to delete it. I'm just going to strike it out in deference to how strange it sounds.
3. All of our stuff is in boxes. Except the books that are now airing out after their near miss with gasoline. Even in my parents' basement, the belongings we brought with us that we 'needed' for our time with them are still mostly in bins and boxes, as there's not really place to put them. (Did I really need to bring all those pairs shoes? I'm still not sure.)
2. I went to a Teach For America hiring fair last Friday and Saturday.
1. I got to meet many of the fellow corps members I will be working with over the next two years. That was a lot of fun except that due to a recent ovulation combined with stress, I have had a killer outbreak of acne. So I spent all of Thursday wishing it were socially acceptable to wear a paper bag over my head to meet fellow corps members and the school officials who would be interviewing me.
2. I learned more about the achievement gap, particularly in Minnesota. Did you know that Minnesota ranks dead last in graduation rates for African-American, Native American and Hispanic students? We are failing our kids, and that's really depressing. What's even more depressing is that Minnesota kind of has this reputation of having really great schools. Apparently this is only true if you are wealthy and white. However, on the plus side, I left Friday's discussions feeling completely energized about education and oh-so glad that I'm committing my next two years to combating this totally unfair gap in achievement.
3. I switched from planning on teaching English as a Second Language this fall to teaching general Elementary Education. Yep. I know what you're wondering: So, all those hours studying for the ESL Content MTLE test... do they mean nothing now? Yep, pretty much. Now I have to take a new MTLE test, the Elementary Education Content test. Surprisingly, I didn't start crying when I went online to register. In all honesty, though, the reason that I'm switching is the cost of obtaining the licensure. Over the next two years all the TFA corps members will be taking education classes through a university up here to get our teaching licenses. Because ESL teachers need to take not only general education classes but also linguistics and language acquisition classes, their degree costs more. Twice as much, in fact. After thinking very hard and praying about whether we thought we could/should scrimp and save over the next two years to pay for a $19,000 degree, we decided that it just wasn't worth it. Given our desire to adopt (and soon) combined with other financial obligations, the $19,000 is just plain too much. So, elementary education it is. But I'm not disappointed. I'm still very excited to teach!
3. I gained new compassion for people with medical problems and little to no health insurance. I don't really even want to go into detail on this subject. We're still working things out, so the mere mention makes my blood pressure rise. But combining expensive COBRA insurance with an HSA that is entirely out-of-pocket until the deductible is reached with some PCOS-related medical issues that need attention is definitely teaching me to trust God with each dollar and making me more sympathetic to the plight of people with big medical needs.
4. Mark and I pretty much took over errand-running and grocery shopping for my mom. That has been fun, but the way we use gasoline up here is a rude awakening after being in a small town. However, being near Goodwill, Savers, Plato's Closet, and Half-Price Books definitely will have its perks when we have an income again...
5. We switched phone plans.
1. Now we each have our own cell phone, which is nice. (Those phones were donated to us by Mark's sister and her husband. So we didn't even need to purchase new phones to start our new plan. Thankful, thankful, thankful!)
2. We have some texting now, which is also nice.
3. My phone is turquoise, which I love. 
6. My parents have Netflix and my mom likes the same kind of movies I do. (We're both BBC junkies.) I don't know yet whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I just reviewed this blog and realized it seems a bit long. But I was able to process some of the recent changes, so that's good! And you are now all caught up on our New Life in Minnesota. That's also good! If you leave a comment, I'll consider sending you payment for the therapy.

Not Stressed. I am NOT STRESSED.

I haven't disappeared from this blog; I've just been moving. I'm now typing this from Minnesota instead of Iowa. We're at my parents' house. Most of our belongings are in storage in Mark's parents' basement. The rest of our stuff, that we thought we'd need in the next couple of months, is in boxes and totes here at my parents' house.

Nothing is organized now. We have piles of papers. (I hate piles of papers. I want them in files.) But overall, things have gone well. We are here.

In the two weeks leading up to our move I was really not stressed. I was not worried about the upheaval or the transition. Even as we packed boxes and approached the time when we would have no income I did not feel stressed. And I was so very proud of myself.

Mark's parents came down to drive the moving truck on Saturday, and we weren't going to follow until Wednesday. This meant that we were camping out in our house for about four days. That was okay. All the cleaning was okay. No hiccups in our plans.

We've had a couple of hiccups today, though, and I'm beginning to feel a little stressed.

Well, okay, I'm pretty stressed. I feel a little bit like my life is over. It started this morning when the inside panel fell off of the door of our car, the same car that was hit by a tree branch two weeks ago. Mark knew what to do to get it back on and I helped him duck tape it on. That was alright. No big deal.

Then when we stopped at Mark's parents' house on the way to my parents' (because my bin with essentials like underwear had accidentally ended up on the moving truck), we found out that a can of gasoline that we had packed in a box (yes, we know now what a bad idea that was) had gotten turned on its side and leaked a puddle all over my in-laws basement and our couch. Oh dear.

I handled that alright, though, after apologizing profusely to Mark's parents.

Then when we arrived at my parents' house, I realized that my sourdough starter had gotten sealed in it's container, thus cutting off its supply of oxygen. When I questioned Mark about it, he said he'd sealed it last night. The starter smells funny and there isn't a hint of a bubble. I think it's dead.

That was the final straw. I cried. Tears dripped down my face as I unpacked the rest of our refrigerator items and nestled them into my parents' fridge. It wasn't Mark's fault. This is just one of those communication lapses that seem to happen during times of great busyness. But still. My baby.

After we were all done unpacking, I opened the mail that had begun to accumulate at my parents' house for us. I was expecting to see the letter in response to the health insurance I'd applied for, since Mark's and my health insurance through our Iowa jobs will end on April 30. I was not expecting, however, to have our application denied.

More correctly, my application was denied, because of my 'pre-existing condition' of polycystic ovary syndrome. I was not expecting this little wrench in things, and that was the final final straw that left me feeling like my life is pretty much over.

I know it's not. I know there are things we can do and that we will probably be able to find health insurance before May 1, even if it's through a COBRA plan from our previous employers. We'll be making phone calls tomorrow.

But tonight, I don't have much of a sense of perspective. I'm just tired and stressed.

It wouldn't be a major life change for me if I didn't expend some good solid stress over it, right?

Hamster Escapades

We got a hamster for the library. It was my idea. (See? My raging desire to nurture something is even following me to work.) I had a number of hamsters growing up. I think I counted one time, and I’ve had a total of twelve hamsters from the time I was six until the time I went off to college. Mooney, Rose, Squirt, Alice, Creamy, Calico, Smokey, Sparkles, and Soybean are the hamsters I remember with clarity. There was a string of three in the middle there that died within days of bringing them home. I think one of them was called Mustard.

So, there was this library somewhat near here that adopted a stray cat that they named Dewey. Dewey lived in the library and welcomed patrons. He climbed around on the shelves and the library director cleaned his litter box and made sure he had food to eat. Now there are books written about him. National Library Week is coming next week, and those of us on the planning committee for this Big Event in the library world decided that we would like to have a pet in the library too. Not feeling quite ambitious enough to take on a cat (and not wanting to deal with allergy problems that would certainly arise), we decided a hamster was a good choice for a library pet.

Hammy and me at the library

The rest of the committee was willing to go along with this plan, but I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t propelled the idea forward, it wouldn’t have happened. You see, I loved having hamsters when I was little. I carried them around in a little plastic traveling case all day as I went around the block visiting friends. The poor nocturnal rodent—he just curled up right there in the middle of this little plastic case rocking back and forth and slept as best he could. My friends and I built mazes for the hamsters out of Duplos and toilet paper tubes. I even have a faint memory of carrying one of my hamsters (probably Mooney or Rose—bless their little hearts for being the pets of a six-year-old) around on a tennis racket and bouncing him up and down. Gently.

My friend Allison and I once tried to introduce my hamster, Mooney, to her hamster, Peaches. They immediately latched onto each other in what looked like a furry trembling ball. We couldn’t even see their heads. At first, I think I thought they were hugging (I was only six, after all.) But we quickly realized they were not hugging and we should probably separate them. One nasty hamster bite later, I learned never to introduce adult male hamsters to each other and expect them to be friends.

Squirt was my only dwarf hamster. He was too squirmy for me, though. He escaped from his cage one night, disappeared (probably down the heat register) and was never seen again. Alice was my only albino hamster. When I was little, I had a fixation on being albino. I still have pictures I drew of myself as an albino human being. Alice allowed me to experience the thrill of being albino vicariously.

Creamy is the hamster I remember with the most fondness. Creamy was a long-haired hamster, so I could brush him with a Barbie brush. He moved with me from Wisconsin to Iowa when I was nine and I considered him my only friend for a while. He also escaped down the heat register once, but thankfully during the summer. After he didn’t turn up for a few days, my mom and I went down to the basement and opened up the side of the furnace. There he was, a lovely shade of grey from all the dust, curled up in a ball, sleeping right in the middle of the furnace.

Sparkles probably should have lived longer than she did. I was fifteen when I got her, and I had three very rambunctious guy friends who hung out at my house most weekends. They took a liking to Sparkles right away, but not because he was furry and cuddly. They played catch with Sparkles. Sparkles was the ball. At first they were content to toss him from about four feet apart. After a while, they became so confident in their hamster acrobatics that they would put her in the middle of a throw pillow, pull it taut suddenly at an angle, and Sparkles would fly through the air toward the other boy with another throw pillow. (Please try to refrain from sending me hate mail for my animal abuse. I was an irresponsible sixteen-year-old, and I really am quite horrified at my past self!)

Soybean was the last hamster I had before I went to college, and he spent most of his life in his cage. I was too busy with school and friends and extracurricular activities. I had no time for a hamster. I can remember many times when I suddenly remembered I needed to feed Soybean or give him some water that I would think to myself, I’m so glad God doesn’t care for  me the way I care for this hamster! I wouldn’t say I was terribly neglectful, but I wasn’t a good pet owner at age eighteen.

And now, I have the library hamster to take care of. He doesn’t have a name yet. I’m going to let the kids vote between a couple of names during National Library Week. He will either be called Humphrey, Reepicheep, Freddy, or Midnight. Humphrey and Freddy are both hamster characters from book series. Reepicheep is the adventurous mouse in the Chronicles of Narnia, and Midnight is just a name I thought preschoolers might prefer if the names I gave my hamsters at that age are any indication.

But I really do enjoy taking care of little Library Hammy. One of the hardest things to do with a new hamster is tame it. You need to make it feel comfortable with your hand reaching in the cage, comfortable with your smell as a human (so it doesn’t try to nip curiously at any hand thrust into the cage), and comfortable with being picked up. I’m finally to the picking-up stage, which is by far the most fun. Hammy is comfortable enough now with me that he will let me scoop him up in my hands and carry him around the library (before it opens—I’m still not sure he’s ready for a stampede of children clamoring to pet him).

Contrary to what it might seem from the stories above, I do think I was a good hamster-owner, and I really did like having hamsters. I like having one in the library.

I realize that this is not a baby:

But it is kind of fun to care for, all the same.

Anemic Faith: A Reflection for Easter

“Not everyone who waits to have a baby is eventually blessed with one, and not everyone who waits for a better job eventually gets one!”

This is what I sobbed on the phone to my mom yesterday morning. She was trying to console me, poor woman, over a recent disappointment that Mark has suffered in his search for a job in Minnesota.

The fact that we’re not guaranteed any happy endings, the fact that the proportion of prayers we pray in supplication does not correlate exactly with the number of favorable answers we receive from God, really bothers me sometimes. It’s haunted me, really, since we eased into our struggle with infertility, and it’s bothered me as Mark continues to deal with the problem he’s dealt with since we graduated from college: not knowing what he wants to do and somehow ending up in jobs in which he doesn’t feel fulfilled.

This is the crux of the matter for me, my ‘crisis of faith,’ if you will, that has arrived unwelcomed at my doorstep over the last few years. Can I trust in God’s unfailing goodness to me despite circumstances? Can I take into account the largest perspective possible: that of my problems in light of eternity?

I don’t know. And it’s funny that I should be thinking about this on Easter, the day when we celebrate God’s ultimate goodness and selfless love in sending His son to die for us. I know this is true. I know God loves me more than I can understand. That’s just the problem, though: I can’t understand it.

In addition, I can’t reconcile my sense of personal suffering and my questions about God’s goodness with suffering worldwide. When I think about my suffering, the face of the Mozambican pastor Vicente comes to mind. His teeth are rotting out for lack of dental care. He preaches every Sunday in a stifling rectangular building made of mud. He’s lost at least half of his children to malaria. And what must he think when missionaries come in and out of his life with healthy children? They arrive in Mozambique with healthy children, they fly to South Africa to have their babies, and then their babies grow up into healthy children and adults as a matter of course. He has experienced real suffering, and if he were to compare his life to the lives of the missionaries, he would have real reason to question God’s goodness.

My struggle with PCOS, my infertility, my desire for a fulfilling job for Mark – these are all problems for a rich girl living in a rich country. I’m so used to having my way paved straight and smooth that my faith is rocked by these minor turbulences, while a poor pastor who has buried at least four children continues to travel to his stuffy mud church every Sunday and preach God’s goodness and faithfulness.

This comparison of me and Pastor Vicente makes me think of what Jesus said in Matthew 19:23-25: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ ”

Who then? Really? My faith is shivering inside of me under these minor blows. It’s so weak. And God doesn’t offer easy answers. But thank God, thank God, that Jesus didn’t stop his thought there. He added on the ‘but’ that makes all the difference for my weak and faltering American heart: “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ ”

My faith is not rock solid. We may never have a baby. Mark may never get a job where he can use his gifts. These worries terrify me if I dwell on them. But in those darkest moments of doubt, I know that God’s goodness will win out. I won’t always feel like I believe him but, even so, I can be saved from my quaking anemic faith—

With God, all things are possible.

Not an Island

A friend and I had scheduled time this morning to meet at a coffee shop and catch up. With our move just over three weeks away, little stresses (and some bigger stresses) associated with the move are beginning to creep up on me. I came to the coffee shop with a hankie in my pocket and swollen eyes from crying on the phone with my mom earlier in the morning. 

My heart is feeling a lot lighter, after meeting with my friend. We talked about the stressful things, but we also talked about the happy things. We talked about the 'isms' of living in a small town, like how I found out yesterday I could close my bank account here over the phone if necessary. (But please, don't mess with me. I'm hanging onto my composure by a thread some days and I might just have kittens if my bank account disappears without my knowledge.)

I don't know that my friend said anything new to me that I should be breathing so much more freely. But she was here. She listened. She understood and tried to understand. She helped me laugh when I'm so inclined to view everything with a serious eye. She nudged my mind onto happier topics than the stress-inducing topics that have taken up permanent residence in the forefront of my mind. 

And I like to think that I encouraged her too, that I listened, that I tried to understand, that I helped her laugh. I am not an island. I'm not so good at sharing myself that I consider myself to be on the mainland. But I'm learning allow myself to be part of an archipelago. 

I am not an island.

"We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another." - Thomas Merton in No Man is an Island

February-March Reading (because I have oh-so-much time to read for pleasure right now)

The type of books wandering around the house (at least they seem to be wandering—I find them everywhere) has changed drastically since I took and passed my tests. I’m still reading through the articles and book chapters assigned to me by Teach For America. I’m enjoying those quite a bit, but they’re not easy or necessarily fun to read.

So, here’s the line-up from the past month and what I’m reading currently:

End-of-February & March Reading:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling

5 stars. I haven’t read this series in years and it was delightful to start it up again. And it was a nice way for my brain to celebrate not studying anymore.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J.K. Rowling

5 stars. Although I had forgotten how very creepy a giant poisonous snake wandering through a castle could sound. When I read this for the first time (when I was like 12), I had to stop part-way through and read some cozy James Herriot cat stories to get my mind off giant snakes.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling

5 stars. While I was reading this book, I began to try to pinpoint what it is about J.K. Rowling’s writing style that makes her books so entertaining. I think it’s a couple of things: the books are fast-paced, so I’m drawn to keep reading. The dialogues are well-done. They don’t sound stilted and each character has his or her own voice. And Rowling is just so darn creative in some of the places and things she comes up with to make the wizarding world intriguing and realistic. Kudos to her for her creativity.

Juvenile in Justice – Richard Ross

5 stars. This wasn’t required for Teach For America, but I read it with my future students in mind. This is exactly where I do not want my students to end up: in the U.S. juvenile justice system. I didn’t know much about juvenile prisons before reading this, but I shudder now to think of any child ending up there. I have so much more to say on this topic and this book in general, but that’s maybe for another post.

The Girl on Legare Street – Karen White

3.5 stars. ‘Entertaining’ is probably the best word to describe this book. I don’t think it has any value for my life besides that. This is the second in a series about a woman in her late 30s who has the metabolism of a small rodent and eats donuts all the time while still maintaining a killer figure. She can also see ghosts and tends to get wrapped up in ghost mysteries surrounding old homes in Charleston, South Caroline, with an extremely attractive (and single) local author named Jack. As I say, purely entertainment.

The Strangers on Montagu Street – Karen White

3.5 stars. Obviously I like being entertained enough that I continued with the series. The biggest critique I have of this series (and it’s really quite a significant flaw in my opinion) is that the author tends to overuse the cardinal trait she picks for each character and points that trait out over and over. Like Jacks’ deep and startlingly blue eyes. And Melanie’s cousin’s tendency to wear pink and look like a Barbie doll. Puh-leeeeze. But I still enjoyed the mystery that the author whipped up.

The Mind’s Eye – Oliver Sacks

4 stars. Notice! This is one of the books off of my 2013 reading goal list. So, even though I’m severely behind and not doing a great job of running to catch up on the list, I am making some headway. The author is a neurologist and this was a fascinating selection of case studies about people who dealt with unusual eye ailments. Or rather, brain ailments that affected their eyes in some way. I did think that Dr. Sacks tended to wax clinical a little bit too often. I found myself skipping over some of his hypotheses and explanations about why the brain did this or that. But I’ve read other books by him that I’ve enjoyed much more.

Currently Reading:

Decision-Making and the Will of God – Garry Freisen & Jay Robin Maxs

Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling

A Chance to Make History – Wendy Kopps

Expect synopses and my opinions on these and a few others next month! Hopefully a few of the books read in the next month will be from my reading goal list for 2013… Has anyone else read anything good recently? Something I should add to my 2014 reading list, perhaps?