I’m going to recap 2011 a little differently than 2010. I always like doing these reviews because it allows me to see what exactly I did without thinking I didn’t do anything at all.
Backpacking
We thru-hiked the Florida Trail in January and February (and a smidge of March).
We hiked theCrosstimbers Trail with my brother and dad. I think we might have started a tradition?
Thanksgiving was spent on top of Texas and the subsequent days were spent hiking throughout Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
While I didn’t go, Chris spent two weeks camping in various places in remote regions of Florida’s swamps. He was trying to do some ghost orchid work but didn’t end up getting what he was after. I’m sure he will try again sometime!
Adventures
I started a series of Local Adventures that I hope to expound upon in the New Year.
Two years ago I spent a week as a vegetarian. We were still living in Florida at that time and Chris had been sent to work in New Jersey for a week. I’d been toying with the idea of being a vegetarian for awhile, mostly because I’d become interested by learning from my friend Eliana who went from being a vegetarians to becoming a vegan, and I wanted to give it a whirl. Chris being gone seemed to make it a perfect time to put it all on trial. The week was spent well and I learned a lot, mostly that I could be a vegetarian and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought. Around that time Alicia’s Silvertone’s book (insert book) had come out so I purchased that and absorbed all of the information.
Since we were going on our hike it didn’t seem very feasible to jump into this for the long term so I put it on hold. Then we were living with our families and everything was so transient that it seemed too much of a burden to handle at the time.
On May 1st of this year I decided to go full on with it. we were going to be working in the field and for some dumb reason I thought that since we would be eating out a lot that it would make it easier. I couldn’t have been more wrong on that account. Eating out has to be one of the hardest things to do as a vegetarian.
In August we finally settled down and were able to get better on planning meals and figuring things out. Chris decided he would eat vegetarian with me at home and eat meat when he was out. That helped a lot as I know people who are the only vegetarians at home tend to have a harder time with it, cooking separate meals and issues like that. We borrowed vegetarian coookbooks from the library and scanned our favorites for future use. The internet of course is a vast resource, too.
It is easy to fall into being a cheese and pasta vegetarian. I love both, but it isn’t a very nutrious or healthy way to eat either. Hence the problem with eating out; you are resorted to cheese covered items or lots of pasta. Salads are a good option but most of the time they are covered in meat. Sure you can get them without meat but you are a: paying for the meat even if you get it without, restaurants rarey adjust the price for no meat and b: you are usually losing a protein source and only a few restaurants, typically Asian fare, have tofu on hand as a substitute. You can definitely be a vegetarian and be unhealthy.
As you can tell I still eat cheese and eggs as well as milk products, though not milk itself. For milk I have switched to almond milk, even though for years I drank soy milk. Once I tried almond I never went back to soy. I’ve also found that almond tends to be a bit cheaper than soy milk.
Once we started planning meals I realized there is quite a variety of foods to eat and that for the most part I never feel deprived. It also healthier because we aren’t relying on pasta and rice only, we come up with other ideas to make things interesting. Sure, we add in meatless crumbles into our spaghetti or to use in chili and we’ve also bought faux chicken to spice things up, but we by far do not rely on those for meals.
I’ve had meat, I think four times, during this period. Twice I’ve had fish that Chris caught, something I decided that I will eat if the opportunity arises. I splurged and had sushi on my birthday and I ate meat when I met a friend for dinner because my other options were slim. Of course I still think about meat from time to time, particularly when people talk about it or when I smell something delectable. I’ve decided I don’t really miss chicken or lunch meat. I do miss Chic-Fil-A chicken and I could probably eat a mess of Wing Stop wings, but both are fried and drenched in other stuff. I also miss shredded pork, either bbq or Cuban style. Lately I’ve been wanting meat some and I decided that I’m going to eat meat at Christmas. Ham, turkey and gravy….I can’t pass it up! I could, but you know, I’m alright with not passing it up.
I’m sure some people will think it is sacrilege to eat meat a handful of times a year, but I’ve read many blogs where people are vegetarian but allow themselves meat on special occassions. There’s no reason I can’t make my own rules as I go. Will I eat meat next Christmas? Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll see about that next year.
This vegetarian thing, though, will be sticking around for awhile I think. With enough planning (and it really isn’t that hard to plan for two people) it isn’t difficult to be a vegetarian. Eating out and visiting friends…yes, but you will find that most people are willing to accomodate and will even do it without you asking. I certainly appreciate that and don’t expect my friends to bend to my dietary needs, usually I’ll eat what I can find or try to eat something before I go somewhere. I was ecstatic when I went to a party in August where my friend had considered me the meal planning—something I did not expect!
A few tips:
-Don’t go crazy with buying all sorts of new foods. Try new things out one at a time. For one, if you don’t like what you bought, you are just wasting the food. Two, if you are the only vegetarian in the house it will take awhile to go through it. Want to try quinoa and couscous and all sorts of new grains? Pick one each week or two and try new recipes with each. Master a few recipes so you can have on hand when you buy that product.
-Buy your fresh vegetables every few days. You will be more enticed to eat them when they are fresh. If you see produce on sale, particularly if it is in season, buy extra for out of season times and freeze it. It will be great added to yogurt, oatmeal, or to make smoothies out of later.
-Prepare meals in advance and freeze them or make extra for leftovers. This works with any way of eating, but it eases lunch issues at work and will help you make better choices than ordering unhealthy vegetarian food at lunch. Plus, making your own meals will reduce buying premade items that potentially have unwanted additives in them—even if you buy organic and/or natural premade items they can be more expensive than making it yourself.
-Know that you will probably have to make weird food choices in a pinch at a restaurant. Ask the waiter questions about how the food is prepared. If you are flexible (some vegetarians are not) you may have to accept a bowl of French onion soup that has beef broth in it. Yes, don’t forget how your soups are prepared. Rice could easily be prepared in chicken broth. If you are willing to bypass that, eating out might be easier—if not, there’s always salad! I still forget and order sides of beans and they come with tiny bits of meat. My choice is either to share it with a meat eater, eat it myself because wasting food is stupid, or not eat it. Usually it gets eaten.
-Also. be prepared for weird looks by the waitstaff, comments that appear to be funny but are actually snide, and for your meal to come out wrong despite ordering it without meat. While there is plethora of vegetarians these days, and the lifestyle is much more prevalent than in previous decades, we live in a omnivorous society and folks love their meat. That said, be polite, slowly educate and spread the word without being militant about it. Actions always speak louder than words.
That’s just a few. A Google search or a trip to the bookstore will allow you to find tons of information out there. There is definitely a lot of research that has gone into the vegetarian lifestyle.
I’ll probably do another self review again when it has been a year, see how I feel and write about it again. Until then, eat a few more veggies (you too dad! ) next time you have a meal.
I’ve started and re-started this post multiple times, fumbling for the right words to use. The first draft felt too self involved, the second aimless, and the rest were drafts in my head.
Living Adventurously.
It is more than just taking off, quitting your job and vagabonding around the world. Of course, it is that too, but there are all sorts of smaller, side adventures as well.
Part of the draft writing has lead me to realize that while I might not have felt I was adventurous pre-Appalachian Trail, upon closer inspection of my life, I/we had been fairly adventurous. Perhaps I hadn’t taken as full advantage that I could, and I probably still don’t, but that’s where I’m going with this little essay.
Are you doing what you want to do?
That question can be asked in your career, your hobbies, your personal life. Are you going through life just ‘being there’ and not participating? Of course it is easy to fade into the background when stress becomes rampant, life careens a little off course, we get sick, things like that; but, did you get yourself back in line with what makes you happy? Usually we don’t immediately get to it, or it will take weeks or months, sometimes years to get realigned and back on course with life and your goals.
What do you want to do?
Are you following a career or job path that you are only comfortable in and not necessarily happy with? Find a way to make a change. No, don’t completely quit without planning, that would only make you more miserable by upsetting anyone you provide for, but also potentially dig you deep into debt. We took a full year to plan for the Appalachian Trail, saving up money for not only the trail but for life after. We were leaving good, well paying jobs in the beginning of the financial crisis and knew quite possibly we might not find a permanent position when we returned. While our folks were nice enough to let us crash with them during our transient stage, the last thing we wanted was to be bumming money to pay bills. Planning was vital to doing what we did and if switching careers or taking a break from a job to explore the world is on your list of things to do, plan, plan, plan!
Are you doing things you don’t even like or want to do?
Have you been holding onto dreams or hobbies that you once loved but don’t exactly fit in with your life now? We all change, our interests change and what you may have loved last year or 10 years ago might be different than you want now. Case in point, I used to love scrapbooking. Thought for awhile I’d try to get ‘in’ it, submitting to magazines and such. I later realized I was only doing it because others were doing it and it wasn’t something I loved. While I do love scrapbooking it has definitely taken a back seat to my other creative adventures and so I began to phase it out when we moved, getting rid of products I never used, deciding that if I wanted to continue doing the hobby I would do it in a different form.
Another example is that for years and years I have wished on the first star at night I see, when I am out to see the stars, for the same thing I started wishing back in college. However, that wish is unfeasible unless I made a gigantic life course change. Why do I hold onto it? Because it is that little childhood dream of mine that was never fully realized. If I let go does that mean it will never happen? Probably, but maybe it shouldn’t. I’ve changed courses and followed a different path, not that the previous path wasn’t something I loved, but along the way I realized it wasn’t going to fit with all the other combinations of activities in my life. It is a give and take, if you really want something you may have to give up something else in your life.
So, instead of continuing in the same fashion of feeling like you have to keep up a hobby or something else in your life, stop it. It is very freeing not to have the burden of continuing to repeat something you don’t like to do.
Decide what you want
What is it you really want? Do you want to travel? Do you want to try a new hobby? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do but never did, like stopping in a shop you always drive past but never go in because you think you are too busy? Is it not spending time reading a book or researching how to remodel something in your house? Write it down. This is the so-called Bucket List, but there are varying types of Bucket Lists, the long term and short term, plus the serious and frivolous. Separate them out or put them into one big list, but write them down! Have you been afraid to try a new food? Go with someone you know who has been to a good restaurant and can tell you what is good to try. If you don’t enjoy it, at least you know! Sometimes we have to mull over the things on our list, garnering up the strength and wits to do them. Write the list and revisit it often, every few weeks or months, crossing things off as you go.
A few years ago I wrote a 28 for 28 list and while I didn’t get to all of them on my list, I did cross a lot of them off. Maybe your list is only five items, maybe it is 101 like the 101 in 1001 project.
The point is, start doing things instead of dreaming about them. Sometimes writing them down doesn’t mean they will be accomplished for awhile. I wrote down to hike the Appalachian Trail (and CDT and PCT and other things) many years ago but I also didn’t think they would ever happen or fully understand the process of it. I also wrote that I wanted to write and publish a book, but didn’t know what, and here I am now 30,000 words into a book about our Florida Trail hike. The idea is there but sometimes it takes while to figure out the what and how of it all.
Have the simple adventures but make room for the big ones too. The big ones take more time and planning but are so very worth it. I don’t think on either of our thru-hikes did we encounter anyone who said that they didn’t wish they could either do the hike or something like it. Maybe now isn’t the right time, but get started on those dreams!
The thing is, the internet is full of people who have created their own adventures. People who’ve adventured and returned to life, others who have made a long term event of adventure, and people doing smaller things like running marathons for charity or visiting all of the 50 U.S. high points (hi Patrice and Justin!). The resources are out there and you won’t be alone in finding out how to go about it.
I am really inspired by National Geographic Adventurer of the Year nominee Alastair Humphreys and his year of micro-adventures. He says it best: “Adventure is only a state of mind. Adventure is stretching yourself; mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing what you do not normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability.”
Look outside your own town—what hasn’t been done? What adventure do you want to do? What are you driving by day in and day out that you are ignoring or looking over?
It’s time to do something different.
Get on that list! Start marking things off and coming up with ideas to replace those…
Posted by mlittle on December 5, 2011 at 6:16 am under Thoughts. 4 Comments.
Currently playing either via YouTube, Pandora or KXT.org.
Give ‘em a whirl. What are you listening to?
Reformatting my computer tomorrow so I’m looking forward to starting clean and will return with the rest of our Guadalupe Mountains trip later this weekend!
Posted by mlittle on December 1, 2011 at 10:56 pm under Thoughts. 1 Comment.
It’s been a busy few weekends and before that I was in PA so I really haven’t had a weekend to decompress in awhile. This weekend I had absolutely nothing planned.
My poor cats have been sick the last two weeks. First Samson came down with a cold, sneezing and all, and then I took him to the vet. I told the vet that Leo was fine. The next day Leo proved me wrong by sneezing.
He was promptly fed the same medicine Samson was getting. Though he appeared to be worse off than Sam ever was. I went to the field for work for a few days and when I returned he was all stuffy and his eyes were watering. It made my eyes want to water, I felt bad for the poor boy.
Soft treats are the way to go for tricking pets into eating their medicine. Shoving it down their throat—not so much a good idea.
Spending this weekend with them has been nice, cuddling up with them. Chris is returning from PA on Tuesday so I’m sure they will be happy to spend some time with them. My cats are more like dogs and really enjoy attention. Of course they have their moments of solitude but for the most part they like being around us.
I had to pop into the dollar store to get treats for them and found my favorite Christmas candy. It reminds me of my grandmother, my mom’s mom, and they are just plain delicious. I prefer them over regular candy canes, plus they make coffee taste so good!
I also popped into a Starbucks for my first peppermint mocha of the year. I had a love affair with it many years ago but then I kept getting poorly made ones so I switched to regular lattes and caramel macchiatos. This one turned out to be great and I’m so glad I got it. The nearest S’bucks is 20 minutes away so they are not a regular habit of mine. Probably a good idea for my waist line!
The community garden is looking beautiful with the mums out!
And the 4-o’clocks provide a heady aroma in the evenings. They have perked up from their leggy looking status this summer.
A very good weekend. Looking forward to seeing my husband this Tuesday after a month away! Having gone from living with each other day in and day out for a year and a half to not seeing each other much for six weeks—kind of strange!
I came up with the idea to do this post after stumbling across Alastair Humphreys’ post a week or so ago. I’d never heard of Alastair before that night and the only reason I had was because I’d just voted for Jennifer Pharr Davis as the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for 2012. I clicked through to see who else was nominated and followed through to Alastair’s blog and wa-la, here was this magical blog post. Actually, there’s a lot more magic and adventure with Humprheys that I will talk about later (I’m still writing/ruminating my Living Adventurously post).
Anyway, I’ve been to some cool places in my life but there are still places I want to go to and a few I want to go back to. Here’s my top 10 list of places to visit…maybe some are far-fetched, maybe not???
In no particular order:
Prince Edward Island, Canada: This love affair has been on going since I was 9 and first read Anne of Green Gables. Yes a day or two in the touristy Anne areas but then I would meander around the island slowly, taking photographs and relishing the red dirt island of L.M. Mongtomery.
Antarctica: Um, hello, big adventure! Now, I don’t need to go to the South Pole or anything, but setting foot on the continent itself would be great, maybe visiting McMurdo Station, check out some Weddell seals and of course a few penguins. Going to the bottom of the Earth would be awesome!
Salar de Uyuni: Bolivia’s Uyuni Salt Flats. The brief one week I spent in Bolivia was mostly spent in the tropical areas of the southeast and not near the salt flats. If I went again, this is where I’d want to go.
Paris, France: This one will have to be a long term affair. My dream would be to live there for a year, soaking up the culture and learning the language fluently, seeing all of the historical landmarks, doing plein air paintings in the many parks and sightseeing the whole country. I’m jealous of my friend Rosemarie who is living in France for a few months this fall and winter as her husband goes to school there.
The British Isles: Again, I think I’d have to live in each of these countries that make up the British Isles in order to fully enjoy them. That and I’d want to do the Coast to Coast hike or any one of the numerous pub to pub hikes in Ireland or England.
Patagonia: A friend from college went to Patagonia a few years ago and as I looked through her photos I realized this region of Argentina and Chile had to go on my list of places to visit. I haven’t done enough research to figure out where I’d want to go exactly, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be disappointed with anywhere I went!
Rancho Nuevo, Mexico: Seeing an arribada of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles…*awesome*! I could also handle Ostional, Costa Rica to see their turtle cousins the olive ridleys. My hiking trail name is Ridley for a reason!
Oyamel Fir Forest, Mexico: Another place involving masses of fauna in one places, the winter home of the monarch butterfly!
Everest Base Camp: This one might be a bit cliché but I think it would be fantastic! I ruled out climbing to the top of after reading Into Thin Air, when I said no thank you to pulmonary edemas and other high altitude illnesses that often result in death. Despite the fact that many people go to base camp, I don’t think enough people in the general public have gone to make it a ‘routine’ place to visit.
New Zealand: Some friends of ours in Florida, geocachers named FootTrax aka: Chris and Sarah, went there for their honeymoon and did a backpacking trip through some of the national parks there. Their photos were beautiful and I’ve heard New Zealand is the new Australia, as in, it’s the cool place to go.
Now for the places I want to go back to:
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador: Five days on three islands was not enough time during the summer of 1998. One of the islands we only spent one day on due to a protest on the island that prevented us from being able to go ashore. What I saw was just a teaser, a trailer to a larger adventure and more beautiful sights. It was freakin’ amazing!
Bolivia: Yeah I mentioned the salt flats, but I only spent a week in Bolivia and I want to see more! It is such a diverse country, high altitudes of La Paz down to the western Amazonian jungles…so much there to see!
The Bath’s, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands: I think it was my parents 20th anniversary when we went to the BVI and at the last minute we kids got to tag along! We primarily stayed on Tortola but one day we took the ferry over to Virgin Gorda to sight see. Unfortunately for me I’d got a speck of sand or salt from the ocean in my eye and it had been irritated enough to go to the doctor on Tortola and I was thus banned from swimming. Therefore I did not get to enjoy The Baths much at all! I would revisit Tortola, too. I could enjoy also a Pusser’s painkiller now whereas I was only 15 then!
So, what about you? Where do you want to go? Entice me with your list so I have more places to add to mine!
+I’ve been faithfully watering the garlic and dill on our back porch every other day. The dill is doing so-so, not really growing like I thought it would and the garlic was taking forever to come up, so long that I worried it wouldn’t. Then I saw this last night. One sprout emerging.
+Chris got a bit excited about garlic in the summer and started hunting down elephant garlic which he found at a grocery store and then I think he ordered some online as well. Then he bought a few garlic books. I flipped through one right after we moved in and didn’t realize how interesting garlic could be!
+Sometime in late spring or early summer we will harvest the garlic and have enough for a year. I love that! Right now our kitchen cabinets are full of pickles and the freezer is full of cut up zucchini and squash to use at a later date. If only I had enough jars of tomato sauce to last me a year. I miss that.
+I’ve missed writing here but I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’ve written a few thousand words on my book and have done some crocheting, plus random errands and such.
+My one adventurous thing for the week has been to try mead. I saw it at the store and almost bought it last weekend when my mom was here but didn’t. Tonight I decided to go for it. It tastes pretty good, a tad sweet, sweeter than Moscoto or Riesling. I might throw some of the mulling spices that came with it to see how it tastes.
+Hoping to have some time to write some blogs later on Sunday evening, but we shall see. It will be a full weekend as my brother and his family are all coming—that means toddler and baby fun!
Hi! After breaking out of my usual blog routine I realized the whole What I Wore Wednesday is more popular than I thought. Not that anything I wear is that interesting, normally, I’m pretty casual as is evident in this photo. But I was really digging what I wore yesterday so I thought I’d share.
Plus I got my hair cut last week and then had my mom dye my hair for me this last weekend while she was here. As I’ve gotten older my hair has become more ash-blonde than blonde-blonde and I really don’t like it all that much. I liked the brown I did to get rid of the pink hair last Fall but I let it go back to ashy-blech-blonde for awhile and then did a auburn in late summer and this time around I went for Medium Golden Blonde which apparently is more red than I thought. But I like it.
It looks more blonde in the photo than I think it truly is, either that or the highlights are showing through. I haven’t done self portraits in a long time, not since my 365 portrait stint a few years ago.
My posts for November are going to more sporadic than my usual daily postings. Maybe at least three times a week, but I’m going be trying hard do some writing, I have some crochet projects to get busy on (there are babies galore around here!) so I want to focus on that. I do have the beginning of a post on being adventurous started and I think it will end up being a multi-part series, so I’ll also be working on that as well as photos and a post on the trip to the ‘Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania’.
My goals for November:
+Write an hour each day for Nanowrimo
+Alternate between running and yoga each day
I think I’ll keep it that simple, I tend to throw too much on my plate!
Happy November!
Posted by mlittle on November 1, 2011 at 6:40 am under Thoughts. 3 Comments.
This was taken on my last day working in PA. The colleague with me wanted to get her picture taken on the log and after I shot a few of her I thought that perhaps I should go. I was leery at first because Chris will tell you that I am accident prone. It runs in my immediate family; we drop things, fall, slip, trip all the time. I just saw myself getting on this log and sliding right off and into the creek and subsequently being soaking wet for the hike back to the car.
I had a chance this summer to swim across the Neches River in the Big Thicket and I didn’t take it. I really should have, it was hot and the tannin rich, muddied water was perfect for cooling off. After seeing this log I thought of that moment, of not taking the time to do something a little out of my comfort zone, and decided to go for it. Of course I took all electronic equipment off of me just in case the whole thing went south, but it didn’t.
Now that we’re nearing down to the last two months of 2011 I was wondering what I have done that is Possible for my word this year. The Florida Trail. Some interesting trekking situations in the Big Thicket. Choosing a job and moving. I probably haven’t utilized this word to its full potential, sometimes I refer back to adventure instead.
In the next two months I will see about making several things possible. Actually doing Nanowrimo on something I’ve already started writing and need to make significant progress on. Actively working on updating our photography site and getting better at trying to find potential portrait clients. This is something I’ve said before but it seems I kept being thrown curveballs and was unable to really make that a possible situation. I need to make possible some better communication with friends and keeping in contact with many of them. Of course that is a two way street, there’s only so much I can do. In this age of social media everyone seems much more disconnected.
So, we’ll see how possible works out for the rest of the year and will ruminate on next years word.
Speaking of next year, how is it nearly 2012? Chris and I were just talking about a geocaching event The Florida Finders Fest, and we won the first one with our friends team FootTrax. That was six years ago. That was the very same weekend that we drove back from North-Central Florida down to our place in Broward county, boarded up our windows and bunkered down for Hurricane Wilma. Earlier in the weekend they weren’t sure where it was going and only that morning we drove back did we know for sure it was going to come across Florida at Chokoloskee and sweep across Florida to Broward county.
See, here’s a retro photo of us and our friends Chris and Sarah. Digging that face paint! Flickr tells me that was taken on our old digital camera that used to take a mini-cd to store the photos. Classic! Thought I couldn’t find any Wilma shots but went to my old Photobucket account and got these.
I’m not sure why I drove to work the next day but I did. A few other souls did too. Lots of trees in the roadway.
And because now this post has turned into a trip down memory lane:
When we started getting into orchids at our apartment in Miami. That vanda was my first one and I got it for my…24th birthday. It died within 6 months. We finally figured out how to keep orchids and then our collection grew. This is also the skinny-runner girl version of me. I kinda like my haircut—think I need to get it chopped off again. Ok, now that I went back and looked at that vanda, this is another vanda we got for $60 at an orchid show, a steal for this sized vanda. It ended up being like 8′ tall from roots to top of the plant by the time we sold it when we left Florida. It was monstrous!
Thanks for the memory lane tour—now I’m off to make some things Possible!
) next time you have a meal. 
