Mixed bag today. A little work, pain, a little work, pain, class, home, nap, a little clean-up, a visit from Charlie.

Whose website is in need of updating, and I’ve convinced him to let me update it, revamp it, and he’s going to blog the current stuff. In exchange for honey and a few items of produce that I don’t grow.

We had a nice visit because it has been a long time since we’ve talked. He looked at the garden that he inspired and guided, and my studio, and my books, and some photos from Alaska. Sounds like he might be at Spannocchia at the same time as Susanne and I next summer, but we might just miss each other. I have two muses now. Charlie and Susanne. He’s such a great guy.

Now, pain. Icepack, and hopefully, sleep.

I planted the fertile crescent nearest the back steps with a variety of lettuce and mild mustard greens this afternoon. First I weeded and broke up the top inch of soil with a garden rake. Then I shoveled a thin layer of compost from the compost bin over that, and half a bag of commercial topsoil over that. (I’m trying to build up this bed.) Then I sprinkled all of these seeds over the area, raked lightly, and watered from the rain barrel.

Lettuce:
Buttercrunch Bibb
Black-seeded Simpson
Red Sails
Rouge De Hiver
Red Oakleaf
Oakleaf

Mustards:
Tatsoi
Red Russian kale
Mizuna
Spring Raab
Scarlet Ohno
and whatever else is in “Morton Mild Mix” by High Mowing Seeds.

I already have Tuscan kale and one lonely Golden Chard so I’m set for greens this winter. There is a lot of broccoli in the garden but it is not heading very well. I harvested just a tiny bit that I put into a squash casserole. I’ll probably plant turnips, carrots, and radishes in the next week or so.

Oh lord. Ow, ow, ow. Moan.

I tempted Fate by writing about my healing from agoraphobia earlier this week, because my anxiety disorder decided to remind me that it is still here, and THAT part of my problem is unmedicated except for the occasional Xanax.

Yesterday I was all fired up to get as much as I could done off my to-do list so that I could concentrate on being creative today. One of the things that I did that I didn’t have on my list was to visit Laura on her small farm outside Kernersville and give her some fleece that one of my readers had generously given to me, but I wasn’t using. While I was there, I suddenly got a bad toothache, ironically five minutes after mentioning a stressful situation that was making me clinch my teeth badly. It was as if I called it to me.

I drove home in howling pain, mouth open, teeth apart. But I managed to get rid of it with a couple of ibuprofen. Sandy took me out to Fishbones for Smithwick’s and seafood, and I forgot about my toothache and was happy with my day.

Then I woke up at 3 a.m. with the whole side of my head furiously aching, radiating out from my teeth to my jaw, behind my ears, eyes, and cheekbones. A migraine kicked in. I took two more ibuprofen, then two generic Excedrin migraine. I wrapped a flexible ice pack in a washcloth and applied that to my temple for the next three hours. I’m still hurting, but it is tolerable now.

Holy moly. I’ve been to the dentist about this twice. It is not a dental problem. It is pure and simple anxiety. And my anxiety can be kicked off by happiness as well as bad stress. I hope that today is not going to be a wash for my creative plans, but I might have to let everything go.

I have a jury summons tomorrow in High Point. Won’t that be so much more fun if I’m awake all night and in pain in the morning.

This coffee pot post will be a planning post, as I’ve done enough navel-gazing this week online and it is time for some action at Chez O’Neill.

Things I need to do this weekend:
-Weed whack the yard before the neighbs complain to the city.
-Cook some dishes for the week ahead - maybe eggplant/tomato, goat cheese combo? Chicken and tomato sauce and pasta to satisfy Sandy. Black beans and rice.
-Drug store: pick up prescription and decongestant.
-Vet this morning: No delay on this, must do first thing. Revolution for the kitties.
-Freeze field peas and butterbeans.
-Plant lettuce, carrots, other fall/winter veggies.
-Get handmade paper swap ready to mail.

I’m not going to the farmers market because I simply don’t have the money. Payday is Monday, so I’ll do a big trip next Saturday. Fortunately, I have a freezer full of food!

And that’s another purchase that I am considering. I have an old dorm-sized refrigerator in my studio, but what I really need is a small freezer, both for the overflow of summer bounty and storing paper pulp.

I have been spending SO MUCH MONEY lately. My new camera came by Fed Ex yesterday. It looks awesome. Add learning to use my new digital SLR camera to the list. It is a Canon Rebel XS. I bought it for $495 from buydig.com, with free shipping and a 2 GB card. I decided that it was pointless to buy it from Office Depot, since their price was over $100 more, making the gift card that I got in exchange for my defective camera virtually worthless. I’ll need an SLR when I take photography, maybe next semester.

I will probably use the gift card toward a new laptop sometime in the next few months. This one is wearing down fast. It doesn’t have enough memory to do much, the CD/DVD drive is shot, and the battery is dead. I don’t really mind the slowness, and I can probably fix the drive, but the many messages that I get about “not enough memory” are beginning to bug me. Ah, well, it was the right price. My husband bought it for $60 from a co-worker.

Okay, cup is empty, time to go.

A long overdue label. Monsatan will probably sue. Eden Foods is one of the most conscientious large food producers out there.

‘Non-GMO’ Seal Identifies Foods Mostly Biotech-Free
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: August 29, 2009
Many makers of organic and natural foods said their credibility depended on ensuring that their products were free of genetically altered ingredients.

Someone asked me where to buy field peas for planting today. Any country hardware store that sells seeds in the South carries them, but for areas where you’d have to order them, here are some suggestions and links:

Slow Food Triangle had a field pea tasting a while back. Here are the results and some recipes: http://slowfoodtriangle.org/community/?p=26

Baker Creek Seeds: http://rareseeds.com/seeds/Cowpeas

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: http://www.southernexposure.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SOUTHERNPEA

Dixie Lee: I have not ordered from either of these companies; I’m sharing my Google results because Dixie Lees seem to be hard to find online.

http://www.reimerseeds.com/dixie-lee-cowpeas.aspx

http://www.naylorsbr.com/seeds/

I have grown Dixie Lee, the standard in southeastern North Carolina, Purple Pink Eye, which is on its second crop, and Whippoorwill, from Monticello. I’m considering trying Red Ripper next year, but I’m happy with these three varieties.

Most places will be out of stock right now, but field peas (or southern peas or cowpeas or crowder peas or whatever you choose to call them) need heat, so you should definitely wait until next summer to plant, after your last frost date. Once you get a crop, let several pods go dry and you’ll have your seed for the following year. This is true for any bean or pea that I’ve tried.

Anna Banana gave me a good prompt in the comments: “Do you think doing art facilitated/facilitates your transformation? Can you say more about how you got from there to here?” This requires a much longer answer than I can do justice to in the comments, so here it is.

I guess that to explain this adequately, I need to give a touch more history. I haven’t had a panic disorder for only eight years, I’ve probably had anxiety/depression since the fifth grade, and in retrospect my first symptoms of panic disorder began in my mid-twenties. I was diagnosed with anxiety at that time but I had no clue about what the panic attacks were until they became disabling in my early forties. I just thought it was part of my general craziness.

I’m very happy to say that my last panic attack, was, I think, a couple of years ago. I was already going through a very tough time when Squirt got sick and died, and that was pretty much the worst thing that could have happened. I’ve just now stopped reeling from it, but I still dreamed about protecting him last night.

Did art facilitate my healing? This answer might surprise you. I don’t think that it did. I’d like to think that, but if I’m truthful then I’d have to say that it was the other way around. I think that my healing facilitated my art. And now that I feel healthy most of the time, I think that my art energizes and nurtures my soul, and fuels my growth.

I’ve been an artist all my life, but I’ve struggled with it. I was always very uptight or I was crocked. Once I got my “self-medicating” under control, I had to let go of a lot of other things too. One was my best friend. One was my self-loathing. I decided that I had to look within and become my own best friend. I had a strong visual affirmation that I got from a stop-smoking hypnosis group - imagine seeing yourself as a three-year-old child. Are you going to let your three-year-old play in the traffic on the street? I decided to love my three-year-old and guide her to safety. I was very proud of this strategy.

But what I didn’t realize that I was doing at the time was that I was slowly corraling my wounded 3-year-old into a corner. Agoraphobia is a behavioral disorder that often develops as a response to panic attacks. You begin avoiding places and situations where you’ve had an attack, and then places where you might have an attack, until your life pretty much revolves around avoiding living outside your own self-constructed ever-shrinking bubble.

And I was doing art during all of this. It was very processed, tight art. I beaded obsessively. I wove, a very process-driven art, and during my worst time, I wove traditional patterns. I did make some pottery as I began to force my way out of my hole. And I really thought of it as a hole. I remember saying that I felt like as soon as I peeped over the edge of my hole something kicked me back to the bottom. Leaving the bottom of my hole was one of the hardest things that I ever did, but I read about agoraphobia, and I knew that it was up to me to do it. Drugs do not cure agoraphobia.

So I enrolled in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at UNCG. My thinking was that if I couldn’t drive to class, it was possible to finish the degree online. The second class took place at a location where I had to drive 45 minutes through heavy traffic. I forced myself to do it. The class also was extremely soul-searching, taught by a behavioral child psychologist and a lay minister for the location, called Healing Ground. I was often a real basket case in this class. I told the professor upfront that if I slipped out, that I was probably having a panic attack and that I would stay outside until I was over it and either come back or go home.

As hard as that class was, I believe that it was the real beginning of my healing. Ironically, I took my last class from the same professor in the same location, and I was, again, a real mess, but it was due to outside influences (Squirt) more than inside.

I drove to the classes held in several far-flung locations, made friends with like-minded people, and along the way became involved with Slow Food. I gained my confidence back and was able to travel to Italy with one of my classes. I learned to prioritize my life and pursue what was meaningful to me.

Once I learned to love myself as well as protecting myself, I was able to free my mind to play. And that’s what facilitated my new direction in art.

I won’t discount the good that the right anti-depressant has done for me. I had to try several medications over the last eight years, and for some of it I refused to take any. Anxiety and panic disorder is hereditary in my family. It has physical causes, as does clinical depression. Anti-depressants are literal lifesavers for some people. I am one of those people. I tried natural remedies for years that didn’t work.

I’m open about my mental illness, and in a way, I am grateful for it. It is part of what has shaped my life and made me who I am. I hope that anyone who is struggling like I did will try to find an understanding doctor and stick with trying different treatments until one works. It is a rough road but the destination is well worth the effort.

Well, I certainly have come a long way from eight years ago when I was diagnosed with panic disorder and agoraphobia. When I found any decision to be so difficult that I agonized over passing someone in the hall at work, because I couldn’t decide whether I should say hello or not. When it was difficult to drive across town, or down the same highway that I’d driven for years to my hometown. When I often had to pull over driving to work or class because I would get dizzy, and if there was a lot of traffic I’d go into full-fledged panic with nausea, breathing difficulty, and an enormous sense of doom.

I just made airline reservations to go by myself to Journalfest, an artist retreat near Seattle.

Take that, agoraphobia. Bam!

The tickets from Greensboro to Seattle were less than $300 round trip. And I’ll get to study with L K Ludwig and Dan Essig (again) if I get the classes that I am signing up for. I am THRILLED to take classes from L K Ludwig because of this book, which I love.

In a setting beside Olympia National Park on the Puget Sound. At a very reasonable price.

And I can pay cash for it. Why? Because I put $100 a month into a saving account for this stuff and I wear rags and drive a 92 Tercel. I walk to work and I don’t have a satellite dish and I get my hair cut at the beauty school. I don’t have children and I love myself enough to let myself do this.

It’s well worth it. I’ll just have to eat out less and stop buying art supplies that I don’t need and books to save more money for Italy again. I like rice and beans and cereal. I have a garden. It’s all cool. I’ll do this AND go to Italy.

Has anyone asked you to quickly say, without thinking about it, what you would do if you could do anything in the world? Mine would be to go on art retreats and take classes, all the time! I finally have the courage to pursue my happiness. I am happy.

On August 28 at 5:30 p.m., if everything goes as planned, I will declare independence from AT&T. At least, until they decide to buy up Sprint. I finally gave in to the Credo ads and I’m replacing the landline with a cell phone. This will cut my phone bill more than half. We spend so little time on the phone that I can’t imagine needing more than 200 minutes a month.

It has no bells and whistles and it will remain in the house with our old landline number.

Tonight I am making fresh tomato sauce again and I started putting in the Cherokee Purple tomatoes that Sandy keeps forgetting to take to work. They are surprisingly meaty fellers and so they should make a great sauce. I’m also boiling some squash and sweet onions for a squash casserole that I’ll probably make tomorrow night. Tonight I’m still eating leftover meatloaf and field peas from the weekend.

Work is going so smoothly for the first week of the semester. It makes such a difference to have a receptionist that is smart, trained, and sane. And fun. We love her dearly.

I think that the Medieval Art class will be interesting, although the dim lights after lunch could be a problem.

Why am I not surprised that the representative of the development company who is planning to build a large apartment complex two blocks away could not name even one specific example of sustainable/green building or landscaping in their many past projects?

I mean, the guy couldn’t even come up with an easy plausible lie like plant more trees, or use energy-efficient windows. He said something about making the walls six inches thick instead of four inches thick and wandered off-subject for a while hoping to distract me. But he didn’t. I tried to rephrase the question as “green” instead of “sustainable” and he began scoffing at the phrase “green building” meaning all kinds of vague things so I nailed him again to give me one specific example. He could not.

The issue was so far off these people’s radar that they didn’t even have a damned bluff prepared.

Holy cow, they’re planning a huge apartment complex two blocks uphill from my house. Guess I’d better start howling to my local gummint officials.