Change is good and scary and I should make muffins or something but I can't swallow.

I've been offered two amazing new jobs for next year.  I have chosen one.  I hesitate to release the information because contracts have not been signed.  I have not quit my current job yet, but I may be fired anyway as they are firing 100 people.  And I am a squeaky wheel.

It's all amazing.  The new school is wonderful, peaceful, high tech, accessible, high achieving, cares about students.  I was chosen from 40 candidates.  I feel very proud.  I have to keep reminding myself of how amazing this is.  I keep thinking it will feel real any day now.  I think once I sign contracts I will feel the completeness.  Years of working somewhere where there is always a possibility of bait and switch has left me feeling wary.  I still feel like I won't actually get the job, but it looks promising.  The only thing keeping me interested in staying in my current job was to teach a new course next year and they dropped it (budget).

My body experiences all this new change as ACK WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? WE CAN'T DO CHANGE. NO, WE CAN DO CHANGE.  NO, WE CAN'T.  YES, IT WILL BE GOOD.  WHAT IF IT'S NOT GOOD? WHAT IF NO ONE LIKES ME? WHAT IF IN A HIGH PERFORMING PLACE, I AM A LOUSY TEACHER?   AND SO ON WITH THE SELF-DOUBT.  And so, I can't swallow and I have heart burn.  I so quickly manifest things in my body, it makes everything really simple to figure out.  We also need to move closer to my husband's school and my new school.  MORE CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I'd like to take a minute to talk about eating for esophageal spasm disorder.  Not my usual baking routine but hey, maybe someone needs to know how to eat for this.

1.  Mixed frozen berries defrosted, cooked lightly served over brown rice
2.  Steel cut oats with apples.
3.  Ensure shakes.  Hey, don't be a hater.  When you aren't getting many calories, these suckers are easy to swallow.
4.  Strawberries and nectarines.  For some reason, these fruits do not bother me.
5.  Fresh veggies and salad are out.  Throw spinach in a smoothie with almond milk, frozen berries, spiruteen powder.
6.  Toast.  Dry toast.  Sometimes works.
7.  Yogurt.  No.  Sadly no.  Thinned down, maybe.
8.  High protein pasta plain with salt.
9.  Bananas  chopped small.
10.  Turkey burger went down okay.  Small bites.

This all sounds bizarre unless you have been there.  The GI recommendations are to eat whatever will go down without spasm.  For some that is more liquid, and for others it is small bits of solids.  Very cold water is universally bad.

Of course, I recognize the trigger here, and I am working that through.  In the meanwhile, I need to gently feed my body.  No baking.  Just healing.

Where have I been? And Challah

My last post was December and I think I have done some baking since then.  I will try to catch you up on some good discoveries.

Baking

Have you seen the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook?  I have made her lemon ricotta cake, potato frittata, cheddar biscuits, and challah bread so far.  My favorite of these was the challah.  I can't share the recipe here as I did not alter it enough to call it mine.  Her challah has a fig filling.  In the gourmet store, I found quince paste and filled the challah tubes with that instead.

The only problem I had was that it browned too quickly.  Her recipe smartly recommends to cover with foil if that is happening...  I was out of foil.  Foiled again!  So mine was a bit overcooked on the bottom which I scraped off.

I think the author Deb would appreciate that in my 6 X 9 foot kitchen, there is little room for letting things cool - hence the radiator as cooling spot.  

The real beauty of the recipe is that her measurements worked out exactly right.  I have been making bread for 20 years and have always just started with some basic level of flour and added as I kneaded it (I mean needed it).  I may have just reached my pun limit for the day.  Oh wait - when it came out of the oven, I boasted "Can I get a holla for my challah?" I mostly kneaded it in the kitchen aid with the dough attachment and then finished it off on the counter.  I made the dough the night before, let it rise once, refrigerated it, and then shaped it in the morning.  After its second rise in the morning, it was really nice and big.  

It is probably in very poor taste to post challah during Passover but I am in the mood to blog about it today.  

I have loved many of Deb's (Smitten Kitchen) recipes over the years on her blog.  Lemon spaghetti!  Sour cream chocolate cake! And lots of other stuff I can't think of right now!  A friend of mine also made the mushroom bourguignon and roasted chicken and love them both.  Wow, I just spelled bourguignon right without looking it up or anything.  (lying)

Healing

My last epidural injection for my leg pain was in the beginning of January.  I was able to go three weeks with almost no pain medication.  It is just starting to get bad again but I would like to wait as long as I can.  I have become so weirdly accustomed to the pain.  The other day, a colleague and friend said, "Are you in pain?  You look like you are in pain."  I said no, but then I realized I was in pain.  I just thought I was unhappy.  It was such an odd sensation for me, as I used to know the difference between my emotions and pain.  Of course, once the pain is really bad, it is no longer a problem noticing the difference.  It was a real heads-up for me to realize that sometimes my inner compass cannot distinguish emotional and milder physical pain.  

My latest visit with my primary, we discussed depression at length.  She has a chronic illness and had some interesting insights.  She said that the research says that almost all (98%) of patients with chronic pain or illnesses which cause pain also suffer from depression.  I guess that probably seems obvious but I have previously been able to manage my inner landscape of emotions more than I am currently able.  Small stressors can throw me right over the edge into tears these days.  It's interesting.  

I have been listening to Jon Kabat Zinn's mindfulness series for chronic pain.  It's really good.  I started meditating with his stuff in my 20s so his voice is a comfort, and I connect his voice with deep meditative states.  This and some of his other recordings are available as an app for the ipad and iphone.  

I'm writing today to get to this point where I can explain that I feel like my pain and MS really suck, but I don't know what I really want to say about it.  I'm grateful that I can still walk, read, work, and enjoy my life.  I just keep finding little ways that I don't function well anymore, and it bothers me. There is this underlying THING that is changing me.  It is slow and insidious.  If I think of good times over the last few years, I don't think of them as things I did while I was in pain.  Alternatively, I don't remember what it was like not to have the pain either.