Do so now, or forever hold your peace.

you know how those automated voices on phones, and language learning programs can make anything sound funny? well have you ever wondered what really inappropriate words sound like when uttered by a computerized mouth?
mama got me started on this, i was bored, sitting in my apartment and talking to her on the phone when we got to wondering what the french word for Vagina is, don't ask me how. this then led to me googleing it for lack of anything better to do... it's "Vagin" if you want to know, pronounced "Vaa-shzin." after i got off the phone i noticed a little speaker phone button next to the word.. i meant to click the french one to figure out how to say it, but i accidentally clicked the English instead... there, in the dead silence of my apartment, there rang out a solitary computerized woman's voice, "VAGINA!" i about jumped out of my seat and then died laughing... at this point you are thinking.. i can't believe i'm reading this, who would do this? you would. you know, in all honesty that you would have clicked that button voluntarily just to hear what it sounded like. it's only natural... and you still have an opportunity to go with that instinct. here i've posted the link to the vagina translation... scroll down, and find the speakerphone icon next to the English word.... CLICK IT. you know you want to... and it is so worth it.

you will always regret this if you don't click the button.... let go of your dignity and give it a try!

http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-french/vagina.html

and please, let me know if you actually followed through with this important decision by commenting on this post.

Change is good.

I have made a big decision. I have done it, and the thing is i have such a peace about it, the minute i decided i felt like it was no big deal, like there really was never a decision to be made at all. these are extremely rare emotions for me to be having.

I think i mentioned before how all along i really wanted to do my associates degree instead of the certificate program i'm in now... well, i went and looked at the schedule with my advisor... and, well, there's no way in hell. i've been praying about it, mostly the money part because it's SO MUCH! i really was confident that God would pull through in some miraculous way like he has been doing and i would be singed on for another year of bliss. but this was not the plan, (probably because God know that i THOUGHT that was the plan and couldn't help from snickering at me when he changed it behind my back) it was never the plan. as i sat in that little cubicle with my my advisor a light bulb went off. i started telling her about how much i wanted to be a food stylist and that there is where my real passion lies. she looked at me and said, "you know, both of your food stylists here at the school don't have a degree at all." and with a twinkle in her eye she excitedly started pulling up class schedules and filling in papers for classes i could add on to make myself better equipped... it was a flurry of satisfying commitment. i signed things, and confirmed things, and made calls to financial aid, hoping to god my loan would cover this. the whole time i just knew that this was perfect... this is what i wanted and i didn't even know it, but i knew it now! i'm so excited i can hardly stand it! i'm now going to be taking a series of intense food photography courses along with all my regular ones, and then after that chocolate and confections since desserts are such a huge photographic field right now.http://www.learnfoodphotography.com/2009/10/11-mouth-watering-dessert-shots-to-make-you-hungry/

God always surprises me.. he knows me better than myself! how can that be?

other than that things have been busy, it's either high or low here. i'm either hardly eating cause i don't have time or money, and running from class to work, and barely sleeping. or i'm lounging on the couch at home, doing homework, eating WAY too much (see, it balances itself out!) and watching netflix on demand, which has now become my best friend. everything still seems to hold onto that bittersweet note i was talking about earlier. never quite whole... i miss mama, i desperately want friends, i love my new life, i miss my old life... all of the above. change is good, change is good, change is good my whistling radiator tells me.

Bigger and Better

Does anyone ever feel like maybe we settle for less. i mean, how grand could our lives really be? or more importantly, how blessed. are we asking God for little things we could probably do ourselves? are we asking Him for anything?

I went to church today, the new one i found which i love, but it's far away for someone who relies Solly on public transportation. i finally made the trek after missing it for three weeks in a row and was REALLY glad i did. the pastor talked about asking God for the impossible. one thing he said reached out into the audience and grabbed me by the throat. he said "don't tell people you can't get that job because you don't have a degree... yes you do! you have all the 'degree' you're ever going to need" i thought, i've been running around exhausting myself trying to find this job, be this person, go this place, and maybe, as the pastor says "i just need to stand still and watch God move around me." i mean... i haven't been doing it ALL wrong. God has lead me to be very proactive, and confident in a way he never has before, sometimes we just need to go for it, and not look back, but we also need to stop running before we wear ourselves out and get some help. i WANT God to plan this out for me. i know i would do a sucky job of it. i also want to ask bigger, ask better. God has the world at his fingertips... he wants to share it with us. why am i so hesitant to ask for the dream job, or the money to be able to go to school an extra year, or the super-human strength it is taking to get through every day in a new place all by myself.
i guess that's the gist of it, i'm NOT all by myself. i never have been. from the moment i was born, i popped out being loved fiercely.

so even when i'm walking to class and a car whooshes by soaking me with muddy city water (yes, this did happen, even though it only seems to in movies) and even when i'm so tired i forget to get off at my train stop and ride five extra, even when i come back to my apartment and no one's there to ask me how my day went except that ever-leaking facet... i know, somewhere in the back of my teeny little mind, that this all happened for a reason. this was all part of "The Plan." this is what it looks like to be "standing still and watching God move around me."

Evening in Chicago

I drove up here yesterday with my 10 year old daughter, Naomi, to see Rachael this week. She missed her mama. :-) Woke up this morning to a beautiful sunny day. Took Rachael to her bridal consultant training early this morning. It's another one of those "God things". Another girl at her work had been tapped to go but an unforseen family circumstance caused her to have to go back home to California and that left the spot open for Rachael. It always makes me wonder what God's doing in the life of the "other person".

So, today found Naomi and I with a few hours on our own to spend as we chose. First stop, Starbucks for my iced tea addiction and newspaper reading. Naomi likes to do Sudoko. I don't understand that! We then went to a wonderful vintage clothing and general paraphenalia shop that looked like someone's garage castoffs, where Naomi found some old Betty and Veronica comic books and I found a 1940's looking top. We picked up Rachael after her work and went to a bookstore to rummage through the clearance books and find ones we couldn't do without. Found Julia Child cooking instruction dvd's and I bought them for Rachael to keep her company on the nights she's feeling lonely. We came back to her apartment and watched a movie and colored my hair. Then to the grocery store to stock her tiny little kitchen and finally to drop her off at her school for evening classes to spare her the bus/train ride there.

This day was filled with nothing at all out of the ordinary. Except that, at the end of the day, Rachael hugged me and told me how glad she was that I had come.

And so, Rachael....I read this morning in Romans ( TheMessage translation) to not let the culture around me drag me down to the level of their immaturity but to let God bring out the best in me! He's doing that with you, with me in all of this!

I'm so immensely proud of the woman you are becoming! I love you!

Mama

Lobster Salad

Today was a high, defiantly.
it was the day that I, Rachael Belanger, got to go to the 2010 Chicago Bridal Show!!! I guess i didn't say anything about this earlier, but it's true, because of my job (in training to be a bridal consultant) i got a free ticket to the show. i had to "work" at it of course, but i would have gone even if it didn't pay!! it started out with doing something i've always wanted to do. this would be walking up through a giant line of anxiously waiting people and shoot straight under the crimson rope. yep. it was a thrill beyond belief to be someone important. the fact that i purposely dressed like Anne Hathaway in the movie "Devil wears Prada" also helped.
aside from eating lobster salad, rubbing elbows with the president of Chicago's leading fashion company, and standing at the edge of the runway submersed in pumping music and flashing aqua lights i managed to impress my boss and the head of wedding registry for Bed, Bath, and Beyond with my extrema selling skills.

I weaseled my way into the hearts of around 70 women tonight. they are now bride's to be with registry's at my store. the head lady spoke to my boss and told her that i was one of the best she'd seen. my boss then took me aside and asked if i would be available to go to the training conference for bridal consultants this week. i can't believe it!!!!
I am constantly reminded that everything happens for a reason. the fact that i was even there tonight was a result of one family emergency and another emergency room visit for two of the other girls ahead of me, leaving me in the throws of wedding show bliss.

i guess more that anything tonight i surprised MYSELF. i would have never guessed that i could do what i did tonight. i was proactive, quick, persuading, and overly confident. not me, but also, very me. i think i'm evolving into a different, and better, version of myself. i HAVE to be this person. to survive here, to survive where God planted me, i need to be better. i don't always feel better, but then i get pushed on stage and suddenly i'm dancing. imagine that.

Towing the line in Chicago...:-/

Well, folks, fresh blown back in from Chicago.

Here's the highlight of the trip. As we're driving TO Chicago last week, I get a weather update on my phone. 12 inches of snow expected. 12 inches of snow. 12.

So, we get there, park, hug, dash upstairs to see what Rachael has done with the place......just surreal, to visit your daughter's apartment for the first time. There are familiar comfort things from home and new things from Chicago. "This is her life now", I think to myself. I am visiting HER life. A part of me felt left behind. A part of me feels a surge of incredible pride that almost comes out of the top of my head!

I wake up the next morning very early, feeling like a child on Christmas morning, and tread lightly across the strewn bodies of my children across the floor of the one room we are sharing to go look out the window. It is absolutely quiet and still and white!

When everyone is finally up, dressed, fed and we have our plan for the day we go out to the car to begin our day. Except. There is no car. There are lots of CARS. Just not OUR car. We are standing where we left our car. We look left. We look right. We look at each other. And I start laughing! Rachael, however, is NOT laughing.

I approach a man cleaning the snow off of his car and ask him if it's normal here in Chicago to find one's car gone. Oddly enough, he said "yes". It turns out, they sometimes move your car if it violates any of the 389 random "this is not acceptable here but you have to figure that out yourself" rules in the city. They do, however, kindly place it somewhere close by. Usually. So he advised us to fan out and start looking.

So, Rachael and I go in different directions, me chuckling merrily to myself as I go. I stop and talk to people cleaning off the sidewalks and they all tell me that I've probably been towed. And give me a number to call. So, we call. Boy, were THEY helpful and kind. About like boyscouts gone sour. After a series of calls back home to get our vin number and license plate number so we can prove it's our car, they did verify.....Yep. They had our car.

For the next few hours, we recreated our own version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles schlepping around on various trains, buses and in snowdrifts to get TO the car. Then, another several hundred minutes standing in line in a room filled with little tiny spanish speaking men acting as, for lack of a better word, bodyguards, by the in and out doors of the towing yard, a big angry loud man who said they damaged his car and a smattering of other people all having fun getting their cars out of hock too! It's fun to make friends!

I was happy to contribute $160.00 to the revenue of the City of Chicago. And they, then, were happy to give us our car back. With all that hilarity, we decided to go back to the apartment. And park the car.

This is today.

"flavor is to food what hue is to color. it is what timbre is to music. each ingredient has it's own particular character, which is altered by every other ingredient it encounters."

Today was my first real day by myself. mama left yesterday and i found myself sitting in an apartment that is mine, a city i now call my own as well, and a pantry full of rice... and other things that are cheap and filling. it's a bazaar feeling to come out from under the umbrella and find that life still goes on, you get soaked by the rain, and snow, and sleet allot more often that's for sure, but on the whole, life goes on! how odd.
I got up, got a huge chunk of studying done, and realized half-way through that if i didn't do something fast i might slit my wrists. ha, i spiral fast and hard people. i said to myself, "self, you WILL NOT let yourself get depressed, i won't let you!" so i suited up (which is what you have to do in Chicago because you walk out your door into a wall of icy hell) and started walking. folks... i walked almost all the way downtown..... I KNOW! i couldn't believe it! of course there were brakes along the way....

I first stopped into "Ann Sathers." now, if you have never been there, i have two words for you. Cinnamon Rolls. the minute you walk in the doors you are soaking up the smell of yeast, coffee, and dishes being washed. there are over sized glittering snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and the walls are painted with warm yellows and reds. everything about the place calls you in from the cold. this is what you get, the two cinnamon roll special with a cup of coffee, it's cheap, heavenly aaaaaand, Rachael Ray recommends it. what more do you need to know. i studied my head off there, which for me is less like studying, and more like addictive page turning! how wrong is it that i can't wait to do my homework? that's pretty bad right?
stop number two, I walked into a vintage clothing store called "the haystack" that was out of this world. it wasn't the kind of vintage clothing store that people know about. it didn't try too hard, and your not automatically cool if you go to it either. it was piles of dusty, actually vintage amazingness. we're talking poodle skirts, sweater dresses and nylons. i bargained down two tastefully frumpy skirts to $5.00!! proud of me???
next i grabbed my paycheck from work since i had just gotten carried away and walked all the way there anyway, flat out ran for a block to catch the number 36 bus.

oh! did i tell you that i ran into someone i know? i was at the bus stop and i heard someone say my name, i turned around and there was a girl i had met at work. it may not SEEM like that big of a deal, but it was such a comfort to hear my name!
someone in this city knows my name....
i went home and made my own recipe i've been working on for chicken with mushrooms in cream sauce. soooooo good!

in essence, i am going to be ok. i was all by myself today and nothing bad happened. no one attacked me, i didn't go hungry, and even though as i speak i have that sinking feeling in my stomach , i am going to be ok.

but there's always tomorrow for all hell to break loose....

Miraculous catastrophe

How do i follow that... the never ending question with me and my mama. or should i rephrase, how can i TOP that? there are no boundaries to the chaos that follows us, none. to be fair, there are miracles all mixed up with the the chaos. case in point:


I am going to culinary school. hello! need i say more? if you knew me you would be on your feet applauding right now. I am compulsive, indecisive, have NEVER ever dreamed of being a chef until this day, and most of all, i find it hard to motivate myself into a standing position and finish what i started. most of you are probably navigating away from this page now for fear that some of this will rub off on you... have no fear, I can be other things as well. I am overly passionate, I smile when I don't feel like smiling, and I am driven by a higher calling... thank God. I'm sweet and sour like most people, so don't get too cocky.
When I first decided to go to school, I thought it would be a breeze. it's not of course, its, like mama says, WINDY. I sat down at the computer the last week of October 2009, having stayed up half the night making lemon tartlets, and googled "culinary schools in Chicago Illinois." I clicked on the first one i found and let me warn you, things get a little fast from here. they went a little like this.
Rachael gets an interview with her dream school.
Rachael and Mama drive to Chicago the next week.
Rachael applies that day, and writes her entry essay in the car on the way home.
Rachael gets an acceptance letter in the mail that her mom forgets to give to her.. what the hell?!
Rachael freaks out.
Mama freaks out.
Rachael finds and apartment.
Rachael finds two jobs.
Rachael moves to Chicago three months after the google encounter.
Rachael sits in a pile of boxes, dishes, and Bob Dylan posters and cries.
Rachael misses her mama.

and now Rachael starts a blog.

you are now up to date, and my coffee is cold. i hate that, damn time lines.
In all seriousness, I wish I could tell you how big this is. It's not that I've been sheltered, it's the fact that I have always said, "I wanna be big, I wanna matter..... I want to live." I wanted all this and more, but I didn't know how I would get there. I didn't know what I wanted in life, I didn't even know which doughnut to pick out at the little bakery across the street from our house! It was that bad. I tried allot, almost everything, until I gave up and went to work every day, and came home every night. It was then and only then, after I HAD given up, that God worked his magic. in the silence of me not trying to figure things out, God spoke. God spoke, and He said cook. and did I ever, i cooked everything under the sun! Quiches, wine braised tenderloin, things with three and four layers... I even cut polenta into shapes! I ALWAYS wanted to do that! In cooking I began to feel things again in the tips of my fingers, like I was coming in from the cold. You may think I'm sappy and that cooking has NOTHING to do with spirituality, but I think that there isn't one thing on this earth that God DOESN'T use, me and food being among them.

Call it reckless, call it miraculous..... it may even be a catastrophe by the time I'm done with it, but at least I'm doing something that makes me feel present, alive, and close to God. I'm out of my element for sure... (what the crap is THAT thing he's putting in the pot!?)... but you can be out of something, and IN love with it at the same time. bank on that.

Let the Adventure Begin......Gulp!

Okay. So. I'm the "mama" part of this twosome. I'm the one who said..."follow your dreams....let the door close on you, don't close the door on yourself.......and I will be the wind beneath your wings." So, Rachael, my beautiful 19 year old daughter, finds herself in the windy city this morning on her first day of following that dream. Culinary school, studio apartment, two part time jobs...the works!! At least she won't need my wind! :-/

Let me start at the beginning. Once upon a time there was a daughter born with little rosebud lips and huge green eyes. She was my second child. My first girl. Not having had the most wonderful of relationships with my own mother, I was afraid of repeating history. So that first night in the hospital, after all the well wishers had gone, I sat her in my lap and told her that I wanted us to be friends one day, when she grew up. That has happened in spades!

I have six children, two of those adopted. Homeschooled them all; still do the youngest two. From the beginning, motherhood, and the love of it, took me by surprise. I thrived in the role and loved every minute of it! Being an only child, the swirl of activity, the creativity of making learning fun just agreed with me. I had found my passion!

Unfortunately, the marriage part of that equation was not solid and it crumbled. I chose to leave and not without major failings of my own. Coming from a christian background, I had spent much of my life with the "spirit of buck". I WILL survive, I WILL buck up, I WILL find the ultimate "good girl" list and follow it to the tee. After 20 years, I finally dropped all my cookies on the floor in front of everyone! I have since learned the "spirit of grace and mercy". But that is a topic all on it's own.

Suffice it to say, during all of this, Rachael chose to live with me full time. That was the beginning of the transformation from mother/daughter to mother/daughter/friends. Last winter Rachael broke two ribs, while throwing up. Because that's Rachael. She was sidelined for a few weeks trying to recover and struggling to come up with a "vision" for her life. Essentially, she had none. One fateful day, I called her from work and asked her to go to the grocery store for me. When I came home, not only had she gone to the store, but she had put the groceries away and was actually cooking. Now folks, this was the same girl that, only a short time before, had screwed up a boxed cake mix! I panicked and wondered where they'd put my daughter!

From that moment on, Rachael had found her passion! She ate, drank and slept cooking. If she wasn't cooking, she was watching cooking shows on t.v..I lost total control of my kitchen and was not invited back in! After several months of eating like a queen, and wondering when it was going to wear off, I was driving in the car one day when I looked into the heavens and there appeared in great cloud writing.....RACHAEL SHOULD GO TO CULINARY SCHOOL! Okay, well, the idea popped into my mind then. I called Rachael and said..."I have this amazing idea!" Turns out, she'd had the same amazing idea the same day! Two amazingly great minds! What are the odds?!

Thus began a hilarious, sometimes stressful, seemingly on- a -whim adventure that has resulted in my daughter in Chicago this morning on her first day in her apartment and she can't light the pilot light in her oven. This is not a good start for a culinary student!

We love making new friends and meeting new people. We invite you into our story and our heart and our lives. Be forwarned. We are crazy, imperfect, hormonal females. Well, Rachael is. I have no uterus. But that's another story.