My spice blend ~

I've been using the same set of spices to put in my morning eggs for two or three years now. It's a tasty blend of spices that I put together over the years as I read about anti-inflammatory properties of each one and the health benefits of each one.

It's nothing fancy, just normal spices put together so that you can shake them out and make the eggs healthy and it tastes great. The spices that I use in about equal proportions are turmeric, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, garlic, paprika, black pepper, and I like to add the Complete Seasoning from Badia because it gives it a little extra zing.

Recently I've blended all of these into one bottle instead of pulling each spice off the rack and shaking it into my eggs. I kind of miss doing each individual spice but it is a lot easier just to shake it out of one bottle.

I used a large spice bottle that did have garlic in it before. Part of me would like to save our next Parmesan cheese container and put my blend in there but I'm concerned that the holes might be too big.

It's hard to tell but it's all part of my effort to make things a little bit easier and more efficient in the mornings. I like my little blend of spices.

It's fun, it's part of my effort to be healthier. I also use olive oil almost exclusively now. For a while I used coconut oil but I switched to olive oil and I really like it. The flavorful olive oil, not the plain boring tasting olive oil.

I hope I'm actually getting olive oil and not getting the fake stuff. Anyways, give those spices a try and blend them together. They taste great!



#food #spices

Not autistic ~

My mom told me in my 50s "you're probably somewhere on the spectrum". This was after watching several Oprah Winfrey shows about autism.

I've never been diagnosed with autism. I've never been told that I am neurodivergent, though I have been told that I'm thinking wrong many times.

I don't act like the autistic people that I've seen through my life. So, I took the comment as not valid, and yet it echoes in my head still. When I read articles about neurodivergent people being assets to companies and how they can increase productivity and be creative in ways that neurotypical people are not creative, I perk up and take notice, but I also wonder, what was she thinking?

And why would she say such a thing and put such a label on me? My mother has put other labels on me like "you have OCD" and "you're anal retentive". She said these things during a time when they were a very popular talk-show subjects. She watches a lot of video entertainment so probably picked up the ideas there.

The crowning comment is when my wife and I were helping her after a surgery and she said that she was "learning that people that look like you can do nice things". I had a beard and mustache and was growing my hair out long at the time.

She had commented several times in the weeks leading up to that that it would be nice if I would shave and why didn't I shave like other people do and people that shave look nice and clean. I haven't shaved my face in seven years. I keep the beard neatly trimmed and it's not unwieldy.

I explained to her multiple times that I don't like shaving because I don't like to cut myself. Almost every time that I shave my face I cut somewhere on my chin typically right on the middle of it and it hurts. Sometimes I'll cut myself in other parts of my face when I shave my face. I shave my neck on a regular basis usually twice a week and I don't cut my neck. It's not an issue down there.

As my mother gets older, she acts a lot more like her mother. That was something she asked me to warn her about if she ever started doing it, but I know that it would be hurtful for me to tell her that she was acting like her mother.

So I don't. And I take the hits and just keep rolling even though they continue to echo in my head.



#personal

Mental illness as a joke ~

So many people minimize the words associated with mental illness. They'll admit to "binging" on streaming shows one after another and losing a whole day doing it and laugh and say that's just the way it works now. Kind of like a bulemic person will binge on food and then "purge" by vomiting it out of their body.

They'll call somebody that's a little bit skinnier than what they like or appreciate "anorexic". The person's not anorexic at all but they are skinny.

They'll say that someone that someone who is careful and double-checks things has "OCD". Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental illness.

Marketers have ruined the word "mania" by saying, oh, shopping mania happening this weekend during the holiday. When you have a relative go through a manic session, you learn just how wrong it is to use that word that way.

Shows also poke fun at it and use it for comedy. From what I understand Big Bang Theory was based around a person who had autism. Maybe two or three of the people on their had autism and they were super smart but they had emotional issues and it was comedic relief to put them through a bunch of hoops and laugh about it.

I went through and got a mental health coach certificate. I learned a lot going through those lessons. One of the things that keeps popping up in the press and that they stressed in those mental health coach lessons I went through was that we have more mental health issues in our country than ever before. I wonder if it's because we joke about and minimize it so much?

I'm starting to understand why people longed for the days of simple shows like the Andy Griffith Show and Leave It to Beaver. Even if they were facades covering up terrible things in some cases, the shows were pleasing and typically stress-free. The extremism of today was not there.

Please be careful using words that are associated with mental health issues. They tend to hurt people when you use them in certain ways.



#personal

Cooking hamburgers ~

I remember learning how to cook hamburgers from my grandmother. This was my mother's mother, who we called "Grammy". She lived with us for many years after Granddaddy died. She didn't really want to live with us, but she didn't have any other good options.

So she moved in with us, and Mom and Dad welcomed her. She resented it and snuck around and read the mail and snooped on things and complained. Stuck her fork in the bowls and plates with the shared food in them so that Dad would get upset later.

He never said anything to her about it that I know of. Grammy and Mom always had the unspoken tension of who was in charge of the kitchen and who could do what. But I do remember Grammy teaching me how to cook hamburgers and how to check and make sure they were done.

It's a skill that I practiced over and over while I lived at home and after I moved out. It's a skill that I honed working at McDonald's for two and a half years and that I continued to do as an adult.

And now when I grill burgers, I'll sometimes think of her when I'm checking to see if they're done. She taught me to poke the spatula in the top of the burger and then press it like I was searing the burger.

And if the juices were still reddish, it wasn't quite done, but if the juices came through clear, that burger was done and ready to come off and be eaten.

Good guidance. Good memories.



#personal #food #history

Rebel upholder ~

I read the book The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. I think I've talked about it before but it's a book where she talks about personality types and says personality type tests didn't quite do it for her But after she started observing behaviors and doing a bunch of surveys, she started to see patterns in tendencies that people have.

And she came up with four tendencies to explain how people tend to behave. They're not boxes, they're just a tendency that someone has. I find that a lot more appealing than other personality test type things.

I tend to react poorly when I'm put in a box and I tend not to fit in any box. When I take personality tests, I tend to be an introvert and tactical, but also strategic with extrovert tendencies and lots of different things.

The Enneagram test didn't do it for me. I remember taking one personality test a long time ago that told me that I needed to find a job where I worked in an ivory tower and didn't interact with hardly anybody. Which I enjoy, but I also enjoy being with people just on my own terms. And so, Gretchen Reuben's book laid out these four tendencies that people have. The main two that I focused on were Upholder and Rebel. 

And it's funny because the Upholder is where when I take her test or survey that's the main tendency that i have. I like to know the rules and then I like too abide by the rule. I tend to be on time to a fault and I tend to not understand why other people aren't on time.

If someone has an expectation of me I do my best to meet that expectation and I tend be successful at it.

But I also seem to have a lot of rebel tendencies. The way that manifests itself in my life is not liking when people tell me how to do things.

I'll uphold your objectives, I will even uphold you rules, but don't tell me how to do it. Don't try to micromanage me. Even with myself, which is comical because she talks about how rebels tend to rebel even against their own expectations.

And I find myself doing that over and over. So I come up with ways to put these two together and make them work for me. I've been pretty successful in my life. The phrase I use is "I have met all of my objectives" and that continues to happen.

They don't make much sense to anybody else, but man, I'm firing on all cylinders and nobody's telling me how to do it. Although I do watch a lot of videos and read a lotta things on the Internet to try and different ways of approaching things.

Since I started meditating with the Calm app and doing my lessons daily that's helped give me a firm point in the day to get away and focus on my growth and learning.

I tend to listen to a book of Proverbs every day. That book is the chapter that correlates with that day of the month. So if it's the 15th then I listen to Proverbs chapter 15 and I find that soaking myself slowly in Proverb's has those teaching oozing out in different ways.

But if you're looking for a different approach to personalities and trying to learn more about why you do the things you, do you ought to give Gretchen Rubin's book a tumble. Check it out at
https://a.co/d/0bh2Mamd

#book

Squirrel hunting ~

I remember going squirrel hunting with dad one time.

I was 13 years old. We got up early that morning. He made sure that we had water and the other stuff that we needed. We drove out into the big scrub in the Ocala National Forest. We parked somewhere and he fretted over somebody coming by and messing with the car then we got the shotgun. He had a bag that he slung over his shoulder. It was a macrame bag and it was pretty big and it was weird to see on him because he never carried any bag like that ever.

We got out in the woods and we found a place to stop and he said that I needed to watch for squirrels and when I saw one let him know. The sun was coming up and dew was all over the place. I remember hearing all the sounds of the birds greeting the morning.

And then we saw a squirrel making his way around scampering on branches. He had me position the 20-gauge shortgun on my shoulder, had me sight down the barrel, and as the squirrel was moving along and he said, watch for it and if you get a shot, take the shot. I didn't really know what that meant, so when I saw the squirrel and everything seemed to line up, I shot and I hit it. I watched the squirrel fall from the tree to the ground.

Dad had me put the gun down and then he ran over to where the squirrel had landed. It was still wiggling. And I watched my dad pick the squirrel up by the tail and swing its head against a tree several times so it would die.

I must have turned green or something because dad didn't have me shoot any more squirrels. He got several more and then I discovered that the bag was for him to put the squirrels in the bag to carry his kill.

We took them home and dad cleaned the squirrels. I wanted no part of that so I watched him start on one and gagged and went inside. Mom fixed the squirrel meat with a kind of crispy fried-chicken-like coating.

It wasn't the best meat, kind of tough and stringy, but it tasted okay. I kept thinking about how that squirrel looked when he stopped and he fell. and then watching my dad swing its head against a tree to kill it.

Dad never took me hunting again, and I've never been as an adult.