Harvest time

This weekend we got to see the payoff for all the hard work that went into setting up the garden. We spent most of yesterday harvesting most of what was remaining - Jeff dug the potatoes, while I dug carrots and beets.  

Then we both spent a good amount of time brushing dirt off of potatoes and preparing them to be boxed up for storage. All in all, we ended up with almost 60 pounds of potatoes, 9 pounds of carrots, and 7 pounds of beets, not counting the four bags of beet greens.

Today I spent the afternoon cleaning some of the beets, cooking them, and pickling and canning them. Unfortunately, I was trying to do too many things at once, and the sugar-vinegar-spice mixture for pickling boiled over and got all over the stove and floor. Jeff came home about one minute later to see the kitchen in a total state of entropy, and by that time I was so tired from all the work that I had done that I really wasn't any use in cleaning it up. So Jeff cleaned while I ordered pizza. There is something kind of funny about spending an entire weekend harvesting food we had grown ourselves, and preserving it so that we can enjoy it for months to come, only to end up ordering pizza  :-)

Making the most of what you've got

Yesterday Jeff and I went out hiking at a recreation site about a half an hour out of town called Wascana Trails. Not long ago, I would not have called what we did going for a walk, let alone hiking. I had the idea that to really be "hiking" a person needed to be on fairly rugged terrain. And to be "going for a walk" things ought to be fairly carefree. For either, a person ought to be headed out for a reasonable distance, at least a couple of miles, otherwise the activity might better be just called "walking." What I am currently able to do I previously would have labeled "staggering" or "hobbling," and that only with assistance. Partly for this reason, we had not previously ventured to Wascana Trails, despite having been told numerous times that it's a nice area.

I sometimes avoid going places that remind me of what I wish I could do, because it makes me sad that I can't do it. That mostly it doesn't work – I am reminded of the things I wish I could do anyway, and get sad anyway, without the benefit of visiting somewhere nice. So with that in mind, and in the spirit of exploring, on a whim we decided to go check it out. It is not especially rugged terrain, but rugged enough that it was quite challenging for me, even with Jeff holding my left hand and my trekking pole in my right. We probably walked for about an hour and went nearly a mile, and I'm so glad we did. Even if I can't do the kind of hiking that I used to do, it is much better to try to approximate it in whatever way I can than to not try at all.

Exploring

I have been saying for a while that I think it takes about a year to start to feel settled in a place. Because things have been so crazy for our first year in Regina, I decided a while ago that our second year here would be the year to do the kind of things that lead to feeling more settled. So with that in mind, I am making a commitment to do more to explore this city.

Right at the end of August I joined a club called The Regina Newcomers Club, which is a nonprofit organization with the goal of "welcoming newcomers to the community, to introduce them to activities in Regina and to help them make new friends." It is a club for women of all ages (so Jeff doesn't get to join), and so far I've been out to dinner and out to coffee, and met about 25 women (some just by introduction, some I've actually spoken with) ranging in age from mid-20s to retirees. It is an interesting club, and I will at the very least have the opportunity to try out new restaurants, and I'm hopeful that I might end up making some friends as well. It is too early to tell how that will go.

On Friday night Jeff and I went out to a sushi restaurant we had never been to before, and while it was definitely better than the previous sushi we had tried, it was nothing like what Seattle has to offer. But we are starting to realize that going solely off of recommendations of colleagues in picking restaurants, we have made some assumptions that may not be accurate. For example, we were under the impression that there is no such thing as real wasabi in this town (having previously been served something that looked like wasabi but had no taste and no kick whatsoever), but the restaurant we tried on Friday had perfectly good wasabi. We are realizing that we just need to try things out for ourselves.

With that in mind, we took a drive to scout out a restaurant that I want to try in hopes of finding some better Thai food here. We had to scout it out first because the address listed for it didn't really seem like a place that you would find a restaurant, so I wanted to be sure that it actually does exist, and that it doesn't look too sketchy. I found out about this restaurant through a food delivery service similar to Pony Express in Eugene, which has it listed as one of the restaurants they deliver for. I have never heard anyone mention this restaurant, which on the one hand makes me skeptical of it, but on the other hand all the people I have talked to about restaurants like ones that I don't particularly like. So this potential new Thai place turns out to be on the very edge of town, past the sketchy neighborhood, past the car dealerships, in a tiny little strip mall where an industrial area meets open prairie. At this point it almost doesn't matter whether it's particularly good, just finding it was kind of an adventure, and eating there will undoubtedly be another one!

September Is Pain Awareness Month

Things are definitely busier now that school has started back up. I am teaching 2 classes, an undergraduate abnormal psychology class and a 1st year graduate psychopathology class. So far it seems like I have good students, and this is material that I enjoy teaching and have knowledge about that goes beyond what's in textbooks, so both of these are fun classes. My one complaint so far is the classroom that I have to teach my undergrad class in – it is nowhere near "accessible" in that it is a lecture hall with an entrance at the top/back and big steps that go down to the front (where I have to teach) but no handrail. I absolutely cannot safely navigate that. There is a fire exit near the bottom/front, but that door is locked from the outside, so the current solution is to have my students prop the door open for me before class. It is an okay solution, but a better solution would probably be to switch classrooms, which I had not thought of before but will probably look into tomorrow.

I have so quickly become used to the fact that things are not well set up for people with mobility limitations that I sometimes forget there may be an easier way to deal with something (other than to get irritated but just deal with it and make it work). There are so many places that I can't go without assistance, many of them places that would be accessible to me if people were just a little bit more thoughtful (like a restaurant that has 3 steps to get in and no handrail could easily have a ramp and/or even more easily a handrail), or places that are probably legally required to have better accessibility. These are issues I didn't think about much before, but can get very angry about now, and not so much even for myself (because I keep improving, and also often have help) as for others who have greater mobility impairments than I do and less help. I am still sitting with this one, but I imagine that sometime in the future I may start taking action to right these wrongs.

On another advocacy note, I have been informed that September is National Pain Awareness Month in the US. So here are some facts that you may or may not be aware of:
 - About 1 in 5 people in North America experience serious chronic pain and about 1 in 4 suffer from at least moderate chronic pain--  more people than are diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined.
 - Pain is the number 1 reason for visits to medical providers, and accounts for about three quarters of visits to the emergency room.
 - Chronic pain is associated with having poorer quality of life, increased rates of mental health concerns like depression, and doubles a person's risk for suicide.
 - Although many healthcare providers have a stereotype of the "chronic pain patient" as overly needy, seeking disability payments, and personality disordered, this does not describe most people with chronic pain. Because there are so many individuals living with chronic pain, there will of course be some people with difficult personalities who also have pain, and the fact that pain often cannot be adequately treated leaves many pain sufferers feeling helpless, and trying to find help. People living with pain (and conditions that cause pain, like HIV or cancer) are more likely to be disabled from work. However, the majority of people living with chronic pain continue going about their lives and work in spite of it.
 - A majority of doctors say they do not feel that they have received pain education adequate to deal with the range of patient presentations that they see.

Why does this matter to me? For lots of reasons, including what I see professionally both in clinical practice and research, the fact that I have friends and family members with chronic pain, and most prominently in my mind at the moment the fact that I have had pain since last fall. Ever since I began regaining sensation on my right side, the sensation has not been normal – at first a sort of pins and needles numbness, evolving into a feeling of constant burning that I experience now. I experienced a worsening of this pain until around February, and since then I have really had no change in sensation, either for better or worse. I still have hope that I may regain some useful sensation and/or have reduction in pain, but no one knows whether this will happen. I tend to minimize this, as it is usually most adaptive to do so– if there is nothing that can be done to change it (other than medications I take that make it tolerable to some degree), best learn to live with it. However, this also contributes to lack of awareness of the many different presentations of chronic pain. So I am trying to do my part by sharing my experience with you.

And now, because it is better to turn my attention to something else: today was a lovely late summer day, that included pancakes for breakfast, a little bit of work from home, a breezy bike ride along the creek, and currently a cat sleeping in my lap. In spite of challenges, life is good.

Easy As Pie

Yesterday I baked an apple pie from local apples. Since the growing season here is so short, and the winters are so harsh, not a lot of fruit grows here. Prairie Sun apples (the only variety available at the farmers market, and these only from one grower) are tiny – about 2 inches in diameter – but they are one of the few varieties of apples that do well in these harsh conditions. It turned out to be a delicious pie, and the best part is that I made it all by myself from start to finish. Two years ago this would have been nothing special, but one year ago it would've been a miracle. Brandon and Krista, friends who visited us last year for Canadian Thanksgiving, can vouch for the fact that at that time I was unable to participate in much of pie-making other than telling other people what to do. I was not especially pleased about that, and had unrealistic expectations about how much I would be able to do, but what was unrealistic 10 1/2 months ago was actually pretty easy yesterday. But really, making a pie from scratch is not all that easy – there are many steps, and many ways to mess it up. I have often thought that whoever came up with the phrase "easy as pie" must never have actually made a pie, and out of curiosity yesterday I looked up the origins of that phrase. It makes much more sense that the origin comes from EATING pie, which is indeed almost too easy.

About three and half years ago it was decided one day that one of my friends from internship, Sarah A., and I should have a "pie off," in which we each offered up one of our best pies for a taste-testing competition. We had a slight disagreement about what ingredients should go into a piecrust, and she advocated for including a bit of the vegetable shortening in addition to butter, while I was a butter-only purist. Ever since then, I have had a nagging curiosity about whether vegetable shortening would actually make the crust better, since I had never actually tried it before discounting it. So for this crust, I included some vegetable shortening, and I have to say that I believe I was right – all butter is better. Not that it was a bad pie, it was definitely still delicious, but the crust had a texture that was a little too cookie-like. So Sarah, we still have to have that pie off one day, because I think I would probably win :-)

Tomorrow is the start of the school year here, meaning that this weekend (and thank goodness it is a long weekend) is the last of summer. The weather here doesn't seem to know that – we have been having sunny weather in the high 80s, and that is predicted to continue at least through this week – and mentally I am having a hard time accepting it as well. But whether I fully believe it or not, I have to start teaching two classes, start advising my first graduate student, supervise a flock of research assistants, set up a new research space, actually start some research projects, attend meetings, and all the other little things that go along with this job, starting tomorrow. I have a different attitude about this than I used to. In the past, I might have felt overwhelmed by all the things I had to do, feeling that it was necessary to get all of them done and do them all well. Now, I see that there is a list of things that need to get done, some with greater urgency than others, and I will do my best to complete as many of these things as is reasonable, and if what I deem to be reasonable is not good enough, they can fire me. I doubt they will fire me, but that is really the worst that could happen, and I am certain I could handle it just fine. And, I seem to actually get more done when I am not wasting time and energy being anxious about it. So I may go along continuing to act a little bit like it is still summer, because winter will be here soon enough. This time where summer is transitioning to fall has always been one of my favorite seasons, not least of all because it is perfect pie-making time; cool enough to have the oven on (at least at night) but still some fresh local fruit to be had. And since now I know I can actually bake a pie on my own, there may be several more to come in the next little while. I promise that I will bake a pie for anyone who comes to visit us :-)