Space Sticks and Tang

40 years ago today, Apollo 11 launched into space. The Apollo program and gardening are the two areas where my mother and I truly connect. We were living in Houston and I was a toddler at the time of the Apollo program. Everyone in our neighborhood was involved in the space program. Everyone's dad worked for NASA, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman. I remember once sitting on my father's shoulders at a neighborhood block party to welcome home astronauts. I attended Edward White Memorial Elementary School and it was years later that I realized Ed White died on the launch pad of Apollo 1 and why my elementary school had such a long name. My husband and I toured Kennedy Space Center one time and loved it - I got extremely emotional standing on the Apollo 1 launch pad that has never been used. I went back this past December - back to Seabrook, Kemah, Galvaston Bay, Clear Lake City. I took a drive down Saturn Lane and also a drive down memories I didn't realize were so strong. I was pulled strongly towards an internship that would afford the opportunity to do nutrition research at Johnson Space Center. I still find that a jet engine screaming down a runway moves my soul like no other sound. The TV image of liftoff makes me cry everytime. I stayed home the day John Glenn returned to space and jumped up and down screaming during countdown. I was standing in the Louvre when Challenger went down and felt like I had just be punched - hard. I was home when Columbia went down and both my husband and I could not stop crying. As a toddler, I was a space child. That still resonates somewhere in my core.

As a small child I drank Tang and ate Space Sticks. Tang became mainstream. I drank it hot at summer camp and poured the powder down my throat on the starting blocks of swim meets as an age-grouper swimmer. My grandmother made Tang Ice Tea: sometimes when I get extremely lonely, I still crave it. Space Sticks were something else. We LOVED them. I cannot tell you what is in them. But I would spend time at the Shepherds house and all the kids would fight over the last space stick in the box. Today I found them on Amazon (of course I did! Where else would they be?!) And while I am darkly fascinated, terrified, and frankly - disturbed, by a space stick, I may just have to get myself a stick or two and celebrate.

40 years ago today - someone of about my current age, climbed on top of one unimaginably huge rocket and dared to go to the moon. They went with nothing by a slide-rule, bad ice cream, Tang, and a box of space sticks. They went with the dedication and support of the brightest minds on earth. They went with the hope and inspiration of the entire world. Just how cool is that?

Good Food

Last night we had a picnic in the park by Lake Washington. In a thunderstorm. And downpour. With Shakespeare. Yes, really. It was perfect! Friends from Oregon were up and had spent the day watching baseball so we met them and other friends at Luther Burbank Park. We grilled burgers in the rain and then gathered around one of the two tables under the shelter for burgers (man food), tomato/basil/mozzarella/violet salad (girl food), watermelon (kid food), and raspberry sorbet (pretty food). We learned that the Shakespeare in the Park had been cancelled due to lightening so a group decided to picnic with their Richard the 3 library books. So we shared the shelter. We gave them watermelon and they did readings of Shakespeare - while waving the watermelon knife, wine bottles, and cookie dough! Huddling under blankets with long time friends and their families watching the lightening and counting to thunderclaps while laughing hysterically at the antics of our collective kids and the thespians made for the perfect meal - even if it was slightly damp and a meal fit for a warm summer night and not quite the stormy night we had.

All food shared with friends and strangers is good food. Our meal was heavy on the fruits, herbs, and laughter making it great food.


I had spent the weekend taking an Ayurveda intensive. There may be a post on that later. The part of the class that I loved was the premise in ayurveda that:
Our souls are guests in our bodies so treat your body well; be a gracious houseguest.

Eating well is how we thank our bodies for providing housing for our soul.

Having satisfaction and happiness is the goal of life. Not things mind you - happiness. Happiness like picnics in the park during thunderstorms with lifelong friends and random strangers.

Biking to Visit the Angels

Yesterday I biked with friends and my guy up Blewett Pass. Well, sortof. The 4 ladies biked 70 miles from Lake Wenatchee up Blewett and back down to Leavenworth. My guy joined in at Leavenworth. I took one look at the thermometer at 8:30 in the morning and thought "uh oh". So I did water patrol up the first 10 miles of Blewett Pass and then joined the fun on the old highway road and did the last 7-10 miles UP. Good thing too - we went through 15 liters of supplemental water in the 98 degree weather. Somewhere along the line I got hooked on biking UP hills. I hate, with a passion, descents. They scare me and I suck at descents. But climbing, call me crazy, I think is meditative. Your heart pounds, all you can hear is your own breathing and it sortof hurts but then the pain fades and all you hear is your breathing and the birds and you feel the sensation of the cadence and where exactly your feet are in the pedal stroke. There is a rhythm to it that is rewarding. Yesterday on the quiet road in the forest with the heat radiating off the potholed pavement I thought I had died and gone to heaven; just me, 5 friends and a bike going UP for hundreds and hundreds of feet. Oh - the down part down all the curves (don't go off the road - nothing but air) was frightening - but when I stopped to unclench my hands from the brakes the views about broke my heart they were so beautiful.

Dinner was grilled salmon, veggies, fruit, and champagne overlooking Lake Wenatchee - wonderful.

Raspberry Heaven

Oh my. Really. Oh my.

Yesterday I drove down to my mother's house to check on the house, the garden, and the cats AND to pick raspberries. Her raspberries are taking over one of the abandoned chicken coops so I could stand with raspberries dangling right in front of me through the chicken wire and just pick and eat myself into raspberry delirium. The buzzing of the bees was so loud, at first I worried that there might be a hive nearby but no, the bees were just buzzing their striped, fuzzy selves into raspberry delirium as well. I also picked lettuce, rhubarb, onions, and an armload of roses.

Tonight, I sent both Ken and I into serious raspberry heaven: raspberry sorbet with a shot of lime, and a garnish of spearmint. We ate sorbet for dinner. For dessert we ate more. You are about to learn why I rarely write recipes and never cook from them, but this will get you really close!

Make sure the bowl from your sorbet maker is frozen (can be anywhere from 6 to 22 hours in the freezer).
Approx. 1 1/2 quarts raspberries
Juice of 1 lime
1 cup agave

Combine all ingredients in a blender until a consistent puree. Pour into sorbet maker. Hit "go".
Garnish with spearmint leaves.

Past, Present, Future

Wednesday.
5:30 am
"Do you want coffee?"
"Yes, Please"

This is how every morning starts at my house sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 am. Since my household lives and breathes aviation, morning starts early and starts with news. Ken makes coffee and it is a sprint through breakfast, packing lunches, frantically comparing schedules, grabbing bags and dashing out the door. The day begins. This is my present.

10:00 am
My amazing groupmates and I present our grant proposal. The final presentation I will ever do for grad school. Laine sets a relaxed tone, Claudia throws detail after detail on the screen. I close with a photo of the kitchen seniors from the Pike Market Senior Center. Unexpectedly I feel a pang of emotion. The Senior Center taught me much - but it is becoming part of my past.

1:00 pm
I am sitting on P's bed watching the ceiling fan and holding her hand. Her other hand holds an icepack where her right breast and a boatload of lymph nodes used to be. She is telling me a story that cracks me up. But then I ask, "Do you get angry?"

"No. Someone asked me what do I think about first thing in the morning and it isn't anger, or why me. It is how awed I am to be alive. I have a past, and a present. I want a future."

The answer and the fact the person giving the answer has honored me with her friendship for almost 30 years, leaves me speechless.

7:00 pm
Standing in the back of the Bastyr chapel I am watching my future. Every year the graduating nutrition students cater a dinner for the interns and their preceptors. There are candles, truly amazing food, and flowers from my mother's garden covering almost every surface. The interns are thanking their preceptors and the director is thanking them. Next year, I am an intern. This is my future.

11:00pm
The swim technique video finishes. Cathy's house (my tri coach and personal trainer) is cooling off after the 90 degree day.
We sit there in the almost dark and talk: about how to fix my swim stroke, how to fix my terror of riding a bike downhill fast, surfing, chocolate, paperwork, her own past fight with cancer.

"Do you have a time goal this year for a sprint tri?"
"For the first time ever, I do have a time goal, and a plan for what the splits have to look like."
"OK - you'll be doing the level 3 workouts this summer." "Misha, you'll be fine."

The last comment is in response to my whining. She never - ever raises her voice but the message gets sent. She knows what she's doing and more importantly she knows what I should be doing - don't whine, just do it. She is a great coach and tonight especially she gets in my head and soothes my fretting. Close to midnight, I head home.

5:30am
"Do you want coffee?"
"Yes please".
"What are you thinking?"

I give P's answer from yesterday. "I am in awe of being alive. I am lucky to have my present. I want my future."

In a Time of Silver Rain

The name "In a Time of Silver Rain" was the theme of one of my high school dances. Yikes. That theme came from a song and I have no idea which one. But the idea of silver rain has stayed with me all of my life. I love rain. This is good since I live in Seattle, a city known for....well... rain.

I used to spend summers with my grandparents in rural Alabama. We would have amazing thunderstorms in the afternoons. To this day, give me a screened porch, a glass of sweet tea, a wicker chair, and a good old thunderstorm and I can hear my grandmother's voice. In a time of silver rain.

I scattered my father's ashes high in the North Cascades, one of the few places he found peace. When the time came, I left Ken and Patti safe and snug at camp brewing tea while I wandered alone higher to a place of granite and small tarns. A place where granite peaks will keep watch and the seasons will keep him company. It had been sleeting all day but suddenly the sun broke through reflecting on the sleet and it looked like diamonds falling all around me. In a time of silver rain.

My husband Ken and I went backpacking in New Zealand shortly after we got married. Our luggage was sent ahead and lost so when we arrived at the hostel covered in mud and soaking wet, there was a long wait before our luggage was found and we could be unmuddy and not wet. Ken bought a 6-pack of Kiwi beer and we sat bedraggled in our room telling jokes and laughing harder the more beer we drank, watching it rain so hard we literally could not see across the road. That was a flood - and not really silver.

Last summer there was a deluge at my house. I opened the front door, sat on the doormat and watched it rain through the screen door while Tay kitty slept in my lap. Sadly, we lost Tay the next week to a coyote. I treasure that perfectly peaceful summer evening with Tay just watching the silver rain.

This morning I ran a half marathon in a town that has always opened its arms to me. I finished my undergrad in Tacoma and found in that town a place to have a little success and my first sense of permanent place. Today Tacoma again opened its arms and gave me a hillier-than-all-get-out course but a sub-3 hour gun time. (a crap time for most, but for me - I'll take it). Tonight as I tend to blistered, sore feet and twitching back muscles, I am irritable and restless. But the sun is filtering through the trees giving a golden glow to my little yard and there is suddenly a bright flash a light followed by a huge boom of thunder - and then rain. Calming, comforting, silver rain.

Water is necessary for life. For us, for my garden, and for the earth. Water is the medium needed for the reactions in our cells and provides structure for plant cells. Without water, we don't have much. Without rain, I don't have a little garden that is lush and green tonight. Without water, I don't get far on any run, or bike ride. I just don't function - and neither do you. Some of my most treasured memories involve rain, and water. Drink up.

Sundays and Mondays

Sundays are my long runs.  I run with a dear friend named Pam. She chats and keeps mile times and I navigate.  We start with 30 women but Pam and I run together.  We check out houses that we love, yards I wish mine looked like, and chat up anyone that will listen.  Our coach, Cheryl, claims that "if Pam and Misha would put some of the energy from their mouths to their feet, we could all go home sooner."  I once followed a group of guys down an alley to finish a conversation to emerge back from the alley with Cheryl standing there, a look of astonishment on her face.   And I take pictures from time to time.  The miles get long but I am learning to love the repetition. What could possibly be more spring than a beautiful proposal for someone in Cowan Park.   Finding this sign made our run.   

Mondays I volunteer at Pike Market Senior Center.  I hear stories of depression, hope, addiction, recovery, and grumpiness.  Mostly I laugh.   I have learned from homeless seniors about joy and finding the funny in the everyday.  There is sometimes heartbreak when we run out of food on a snowy cold day.  But they keep me grounded.  Mostly I have learned what "no judgement" really means.  I will never change or save these seniors.  I will hear their stories, witness their courage, and accept that their view of the world and how to function in it is completely different than mine.  And that is OK.    Enjoy some pics of spring in Pike Market.