I love my assorted ways, I contain multitudes

I've had to do a lot of self-describing lately. I don't want to call it justifying myself, or selling who I am to others. I know who I am, and you can take me or leave me. Hell, you can take parts of me and leave with them if you want to! I have a lot to give, and there's lots to go around.

In the last 6 months I've met new friends, new loves, new bosses, and I'm currently trying to organize my life to coordinate with 47 other people I just met and have to work with. You think with all the "I'm a hard worker" and "If I like you, I'll bend over backwards for you" 's that I've muttered over this time, you'd think I'd have a better idea of who I am, and what makes me me. And maybe I do know, in a sense. I know that I change constantly, or maybe I am change. I know that I contradict myself on every available occasion.

I'm the aspiring raw-foodie-would-be-health-nut, who smokes. Put me on a stage with a spotlight, and you bet that I'll rock it, but put me in a house party with a bunch of new strangers and I might very well be the girl who leaves early. I'm always rushing around, but I'm the person who strolls more so than walks or runs. I'm the albino hermit that feels like a nubian queen. Naked in front of 40 strangers? No problem! Fully clothed in front of that one guy? We might have some issues.

I am everything, a mess of contradictions, the assorted package of nuts, and I'll celebrate this as my divine advantage.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
- Walt Whitman

And this is how we milk your nuts...

I am obsessed with milking nuts. And not just because it sounds dirty. I take pride in the fact that I will soak nuts overnight for a glass of nut milk in the morning that is preservative free. So here goes...

Step 1:Soak le nuts. Personally, I prefer almond milk in the morning, so I put about a cup of almonds in my glass and filled it with water to soak overnight. It only needs about 4 hours, and it gets rid of all the gunk you don't need (there's actually some sort of enzyme it gets rid of or something, I don't remember, all I know is that this is step 1 and the last step is almond milk. Nuff said!).

Step 2:
Rinse les nuts. In the morning. In a bowl. It gets rid of more gunk.

Step 3:Put your cup o'nuts in the blender with a cup and a half water. Get Kairee a Vitamix blender for Christmas. And Blend. You may also add salt, honey, and/or stevia at this point...if you like salty and sweet.

Step 4:Put cheese cloth in a bowl. Pour blended awesomeness over cheese cloth. You can buy bags for this, but I couldn't find any last time I was at the store. I'm also 99% sure that you could, theoretically, use a lingerie bag but milking nuts where I wash my unmentionables is even too much for me.

Step 5:
Grab your cheese cloth/lingerie bag and milk dem nuts! Squeeze with good intentions, and you'll get more.

Step 6:
Enjoy! Add it to whatever you want, or drink it on it's own. So good.

Step 6.5:
If you so choose, you can take the almond pulp outta your lingerie bag, switch it for a freezer bag and freeze it. This way, when I get my dehydrator, you can bring over your pulp and I can make.....crackers! I know, I should let the cracker thing go.


Also on a side note, because I know you want to know what I had for breakfast this morning (after almond milk), here it is:

Blended: Blueberries, raspberries, bananas, flaxseed = yum.

Taken care of

This last week has been an exercise in listening and ignoring myself, and then suffering the consequences. I was house sitting for my uncle this past week, and typically I love it. It's like a little mini vacation for me. It's a 20 minute bus to school, instead of an hour and a half. I can run the blender at 5 am without worrying about waking anyone up. I can cook freely. The leaves are turning all these amazing colours and I get to run through all of them, because this neighborhood is so full of these pre-hibernating leaves. I can hunker down and kick school's ass.

That's what I usually do, but it didn't quite happen like that this time around. When the shit really hits the fan, we never take the time to properly grieve missed opportunities, change, or what have you. As my friend's mom puts it, we dig deep, we keep on truckin', we carry on. But sometimes we need that day off! So the last 10 days, I think I started coming down from my emotional frenzy the previous 2 weeks had been. Instead of cooking (at all, I don't remember eating), running, enjoying, and breathing, I was recalibrating. Figuring out which direction was up, releasing tension, and clearing my head. It's exhausting.

I had a yoga class last Thursday, and when you have scheduled time to get in tune with what your body is trying to tell you, it screams. I felt so much better after. Releasing tension in my back and hips. The instructor is pretty amazing, I never knew how flexible I could feel in my toes.

All of this, the plans falling through, the yoga...it's what I needed. I am always provided for. I left yoga on Thursday thinking that I could do that every day, and then I went to work on Friday to learn that we're turning a committee room into a yoga studio over lunch for the next month.

I chose to be exhausted and a hermit last week, to try and get back on the horse, so to speak. I wasn't loving my body the way I should have, and now what? I'm so sick. I have a head cold from hell and my throat feels like it's on fire. But I love it, I know what this is. My body is saying "you've come down, you've stretched it out, but you're out of balance, and you NEED to give your body the same things you give your soul." Sooo...to the nutrients!


When you cook your food, the enzymes break down and you cook a lot of the nutrients out of your food. Put simply, raw and organic spinach is better for you before you throw it on the stove. I'm new to this raw food thing, but I'm having so much fun with it. I threw a bell pepper, some strawberries, an avocado, and some spices in a blender...and voila! Salad Dressing! It's so yummy and amazing. I'll be eating this way for the next week (so expect lots o blogs) to help my body out a bit.

Also, my go-to's for when I'm sick: Oregano Oil (it kills all the bad bacteria, and leaves the good bacteria) on my toothbrush and a netti pot.

I love that my body sends me these messages, and that I am provided for in so many ways.

Ode to my Former Water Bottle

I want to tell you a sad story about my water bottle. One morning, I spent too long making my breakfast, and I missed my bus, but thankfully caught a later one. Upon arriving into the first of three transit stations I roll into to get to work, our bus broke down. About 20 minutes later we were rushed to a rescue bus that got myself, my purse, my wallet and most of my sanity all the way to work, but sadly my super amazing klean kanteen was left behind.

You don't understand the gravity of the situation. I pined over this particular, red, 27 oz, stainless steel, BPA free, environmentally-friendly-in-comparison container for an ENTIRE YEAR before I coughed up the $30 for it. For the month that I was it's proud owner, it was my constant companion. I even bought the sports cap for it so it could accompany me to the gym, and when it wasn't lounging atop my treadmill it endured the pleasure of my wonderful breakfast smoothie creations. Oh, the love affair!

I called the transit centre to see if anyone had turned it in, to no avail. I can only assume that someone recognized how awesome this container was, and swiped it for themselves. Well, you heart-breaking, klean-kanteen-stealing, wonderful person, I have something to say to you.

Please, experience the full awesomeness of this bottle. Take it with you everywhere. Don't just put water in it, it makes the relationship dull. On that particular morning you most likely found a wonderful blend of banana, strawberry, mango, flaxseed and vitamineral green that probably kept you alert and functioning well into your lunch hour. I would recommend bathing it in soapy water when you get home, but otherwise a little hot water will do. If you're lazy, you can even throw it in the dishwasher. Now, if you're active, you can get the sports cap (I'm still holding on to mine, sorry), be warned- it does leak, but if you e-mail the klean kanteen people they'll gladly explain away the irony in this.

I hope you love this klean-kanteen just as much as I did, share it with your friends, and leave it on a bus somewhere for someone else to find and enjoy too!

Don't worry guys, everything is going to be awesome.

I am so freakin' excited, it's ridiculous. It seems like every year I'm a little busier than the last, and I love it! With classes and work, I come close to 10 and 12 hours everyday. Nevermind all the reading, 7 group projects that meet once or twice a week, yoga, and life! I've ditched going to the gym because I can't bring myself to wake up any earlier than 5 a.m. but I've started running again, and picked up yoga, finally. I'm cooking again too.

I love raw food. I'm definitely not a strict raw-foodie, as I'm making up that I need my previously mentioned juicer and dehydrator to make the commitment, but it just feels so good to be able to toss everything in the blender. Everything tastes so good too. And all these new foods, it's like I've found paradise. After my brief affair with detoxing, I ate only raw, organic, vegan foods for a week. I wasn't paying attention to calories, or nutrition really, but I felt so AMAZING! It felt like my body fell back into sync with itself. So amazing! I'm excited to be back there.

Everyone in my life right now is helping me be awesome, so thank you lovelies! :)

Never give a pretty girl a hand grenade.

Absolutely in love

I've fallen in love. This is it. I know what I would consider selling my soul for.

The Hurom slow juicer.

I'm not even shitting you. A lovely lady and I had a conversation about 4 months back about how I could save the world if only I had a juicer. The thing is, I never found a juicer I quite loved until this one.

You see, there are so many possibilities, because...wait for it..it seperates the juice and pushes out the pulp. This means that I get juice (duh) and then with a few special ingredients I can throw the pulp into a dehydrator and make crackers. Put the avocados in the blender and I have juice, crackers AND something to dip my crackers in. I'd totally take that over a double rainbow.

I mean, juice AND pulp? Get outta here!

So you know what? As soon as I find $500 lying around, world, you can consider yourself saved.

On a side note, something way too awesome happened today. Have you ever known something and forgot? Nothing super important, but a little tidbit of information, let's say. Only to have someone completely random remind you of it at the exact right moment you needed to really have that knowledge sink in? I love that life takes care of me like that.

Seeing beauty when it ain't pretty

Life is so funny. Or, at least I'm making it up as funny. I am a planner at heart. I daydream frequently about the people in my life, the places I'm going to go, and what I'm going to eat for dinner next wednesday. It's all pretend. Things get turned around!

Last week is a good example. I won't kiss someone who's been hitting on me for years because I truly feel committed to someone else, and even though there's mutual interest I chose to give someone else a chance, who later in the week doesn't give me that chance. I wait on the wrong side of the street for a bus, miss a class, and have to spend a few days back tracking, apologizing, and brown nosing because out of all the classes, that class shouldn't have been missed. A friend of a friend passes away because of low potassium in her sleep, and I eat an extra banana.

I didn't plan to be stuck with the short straw this week, or dig up old relationships to try and analyze more recent ones. I didn't plan on being so excited about my life. Without my 4 year, doomed to fail, way-too-long-distance relationship, never in my life would I have given the last 5 weeks a second thought. And maybe this time, I'll learn to ask about someone's previous relationships before I start envisioning one with them. And then, maybe I'll learn that I ask too many questions.

I love all of it. I love that I can give myself time to be angry, sad, and mope around the house, and when the time is up I can jump back in. Life sucks sometimes and you just have to enjoy the burn!
Also, of note, I'm so happy I have friends and family who will stand in the fire with me, again and again. I was talking about how ridiculous the last week has been, and we were sharing stories. At the end of it we decided that worse-case scenario, birds sing after storms (ohhh the cheese!). But fuck that! I sing during the storm!