Wondrously Other: June 2016

The Friendships of Highly Sensitive People

A few years ago, I heard a term that made a lot of sense to me. Actually, that’s not entirely true, at first it made me roll my eyes at yet another –ism entering the vernacular. I wondered whether the world really needed another label to navigate round, until one day, to my shame, I realised that the label, quite literally, defined me.

I’d never considered myself in need of explaining before that point. I was just, well, me, and yeah I had a few quirks – who doesn’t – but they weren’t coherent, and they certainly weren’t problematic.

And for that very reason, people who wear this label, are architects of our own demise. Our emotional kinks don’t usually result in public meltdowns, or explosive swearing, or an inability to function, even if those things are happening to us inside.

The label I saw was Highly Sensitive Person, and it applies not only to me, but also to at least two of my children. It influences every part of how we see and interact with the world, but most importantly right now, it has huge consequences for how we make friends.

Why do I mention all of this now? Well Esme is, once again, navigating the Russian Roulette world of HSP friendship.

She is blessed to be a part of a community who care very deeply about her, and who have been working with me, to understand how she sees the world. As is often the case when we unpick our own journeys, this process has helped me to come to a few realisations of my own, about HSPs and friendships.

HSPs are people pleasers

It is my absolute favourite thing in the world to make other people happy. Last year, I spent a week of my life creating a personalised travel and prayer journal for a complete stranger I got on NZ Secret Santa, and I was frickin GIDDY to see her reaction. Never met the woman, didn’t know her from Eve, but the emotional investment I made in something I thought would make her happy, was damn near surreal. And when she got in touch to tell me she had cried with happiness? Yeah, I cried too. More than I cried at The Land Before Time, which was a lot, because Littlefoot’s mama DIED! She frickin’ died, leaving him alone in the world, and I cannot even with that sort of thing.

I’ve noticed as the mama of HSPs, that those simple, malformed, slightly second hand gifts are similarly more important than breathing to my children. It’s not about the gift - hell, they'd bring me a desiccated mouse as a gift if they thought it would make me happy - the pleasure for them is in seeing my face light up, even as I fight back tears, and sometimes vomit.

HSPs see rejection everywhere

Hey friend, remember that time, fifteen years ago, when you exhaled in a kinda sigh-y way, while I was telling you about a particularly crappy relationship? No, of course you don’t, because you were simply expelling air from your body in a way that allows you to stay conscious and, well, alive. I remember it though, because what I heard was “jaysus woman, would you stop boring me with your drama”, it was like a dagger through my heart, and ever since then I have been trying to feel like you weren’t rejecting me, with your judgy bodily functions.

I’m pretty sure everyone who identifies as an HSP can tell you a tale of feeling mortally wounded by a friend.

The HSP approach to befriending people they really like, is about as awkward as a pre teen boy at a school disco. Our tendency towards empathy goes into overdrive, as we do the usual up and down assessment of whether this is a person we want to invest time in knowing, and by the time we have decided, we either feel like OMGTHISISMYNEWBESTFRIEND, or we are mentally filing a restraining order. Either way, life experience usually makes us believe that the best way to deal with the situation, is to make a fart joke before running away.

HSPs don’t need lots of social interaction, we need the right sort of social interaction

Extrovert HSPs sometimes get called generalists, because we can strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone, given half a chance. We also find it quite easy to be open about our lives (oh hai, yes I do splash my life all over the internet) but for us, that is very different to actual, real friendship. I suppose you could say that extrovert HSPs live their life in the way a lot of people approach their Instagram feeds; you see a lot of us, but we probably won’t show you much of consequence.

In case you hadn’t realised, we also use humour: A lot.

Tuesday, 21 June 2016 Comments: 0

Why Three Year Olds Are Like Drunks

I have finally dried my tears long enough to write about my thoughts on Olive turning three. My tears are not over the loss of my baby; quite the contrary, I was thinking just the other day how exciting it was to be able to go out for the day without needing to hire a sherpa, or having to calculate the infinite permutations of time vs nappies vs number of spare outfits.

Having older children is actually really liberating in that sense, especially when the youngest is this amazingly chilled out, happy go lucky child, who makes hearts melt with a single smile and all manner of ills vanish, with the squish of her cheek against your own.

Which brings me to the tears.

These are tears of mourning, not (as I said before) over the loss of my baby, but at the arrival of the gorgon she has become. Not all the time, just maybe 30% of the day, when she has hit the wall, and decided that those big emotions she is starting to experience are justification to make us all suffer.

At some point in the last week, Olive made the decision that if she's going down in flames, she's taking us all with her.

My life currently feels a little like being the sober driver at a party, every single night.

First come The Mood Swings.

We all have friends like that, right? The ones that seek you out, throw their arms around your neck, and declare "I love you, man" in a cloud of beery fumes. There's really no point in trying to reply, either with some very English dismissal, or even by joining in, because this is actually the opening line of a soliloquy.

Somewhere in the mix is usually some unwanted affection, some declarations of love, and the slow creeping numbness as the full weight of your new "best friend" compresses your spine into your shoes.

Then at some point, for reasons impossible to understand, you turn into their worst enemy. All that love suddenly becomes "fuck you man, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME" and you're left trying to work out how the hell that escalated so quickly, and why you still appear to be holding this person up.

This is pretty much my life every evening.

Olive will dive bomb onto me, and gently take my face in her hands to profess that I am her best friend. She will usually squash her cheek against mine, before saying "I love you" through a smooshed up mouth, and falling about laughing. There may be some cute, kitten-esque noises (I dunno, she like to pretend to be a cat or something, go ask her why!) and maybe even a few rounds of raspbellies, on a good day.

The next thing I register, is a sudden realisation that her nails are overdue for a trim, as they slice through the soft flesh of my cheeks. Any attempt to make her understand that she has hurt you, and it's not a good thing, are completely futile. Save your breath. She bathes in the tears of adults.

Now that she has your attention, like any good drunk, she will move on to rousing a practical jokes.

You will understand my pain is you have ever watched an episode of The Science Of Stupid or if you have seen someone who thinks that shimmying up lamppost to set a traffic cone jauntily aloft is hysterically funny, when you just wonder …. Why?

Pick any evening, and imagine me sitting on an armchair, watching Olive running around the house cackling as she hones in on some potential for “fun”.

The other night, for instance, she came to a stop at the crate of Duplo, picked up one handle and started to tip.

Every parent out there knows the sound that makes; that sound of a hollow, plastic landslide, as bricks tumble out into a hot mess. There are few sounds that make me move faster, and I predictably lunged towards the crate, only to grab at thin air as Olive dodged past me, cackling.

Fucking CACKLING, man!

She then ran to the other end of the room (the end from which I had just come), to my wine glass, and slowly picked up a rubber duck. Once she had made sure I had seen her, she balanced the duck on the top of my glass.

I shit you not, this child actually planned a decoy.

It worked too, she passed me running in the opposite direction – still cackling – while I lunged to save my glass, from the inevitable pull of gravity.

I hadn’t even reached my glass before the cackling stopped and the duplo-slide began.

And that is the reason for my tears.

Friday, 10 June 2016 Comments: 8

Not a Cooking Blog Working Mama

Meat Free Monday: Beetloaf

It being scarf and hat weather down here in the southern hemisphere, I was hankering after something earthy, and a bit stodgy, to fill my vegan belleh. After a morning tramping round Zealandia, I somehow managed to do a search on my phone, while pushing both girls on the local swings (because I am multi-tasking QUEEN) and found a very promising recipe over on Oh She Glows for Lentil Walnut Loaf.

I usually give lentil-loaf the side eye, because past experience has taught me that it usually ends up as a vaguely cohesive slab of sawdust and rat droppings. Still, God loves a trier, and I needed comfort food.

As always, my spur of the moment cooking meant I had to get creative with some of the ingredients, so below is the original recipe, with my notes on the right. Also, please note that the instructions on the original are about twelvty hundred steps long, and I don’t have that much patience, so I was a little more efficient with my assembly method.

Beetloaf

2 tins of lentils, drained and rinsed	Off to a good start. I was extra sure to rinse my lentils of that weird foamy liquid that seems to dwell in the tins of all pulses.
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped	We had no walnuts. In fact, we had no nuts of any kind in the house. Instead I used 1 cup pumpkin seeds
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil	Check
2 cups sweet onion	I used onion. Not entirely sure if they were sweet or not. I was too busy mopping my crying eyes to notice.
3 garlic cloves	Yup, and I made sure ours were bit fat cloves to boot. Because Mediterranean.
1 cup finely chopped celery 1 cup grated carrot	We don’t have celery as a general rule. Right now, I do have a metric ton of beetroot, so I substituted these two ingredients for grated beet.
1/3 cup peeled and grated sweet apple	Check. Except I have to be honest, I didn't peel the apple. Nobody noticed.
1/3 cup dried cranberries (chopped) or raisins	I used raisins. I wasn't sure whether the chopped instruction was supposed to apply to both dried fruit options, but I didn't chop my raisins. I don’t have that sort of time.
2 teaspoons fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried thyme)	It’s the middle of winter; safe to say I'm on the dried herbs right now.
1 teaspoon dried oregano	Mine was a generous teaspoon.
Fine sea salt, to taste (I use about 1 teaspoon)	OMG me too!!! It's like our minds are one.
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste	OK, I flat out forgot to add the pepper.
3 tablespoons ground flax	Pretty sure we have never had this in the house. I used 3 tbsp of coarse semolina assuming this was something to do with texture.
1/2 cup oat flour	I used normal, slummy, wheat flour.
1/2 cup spelt bread crumbs (or bread crumbs of choice)	My breadcrumb of choice today was normal bready breadcrumbs.
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)	Not with my children, sunbeam!
For the Glaze: 1/4 cup ketchup	I may have been slightly generous
2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce or apple butter	I toyed with the idea of using marmalade instead, but in the end I just left it out.
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar	I emptied the dribble we had left in the bottle. It was about 2 tbsp. Probably.
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup	Ends on a high! Hashtag nailedit!

Method:

1. Set oven to 180oC and get out food processor. Drain lentils into colander and stick under a running tap.

2. If turning perfectly good future toast into breadcrumbs, do this first. Put in a big mixing bowl.

3. Put onion and garlic into food processor and blitz until finely chopped. Scrape out into a pan, add some oil and salt and set on a low heat to sauté.

4. Rinse the food processor and then add the pumpkin seeds. Pulse until chopped. Add to the pan with the onion and garlic

5. Measure out the raisins, herbs, flour, flax substitute, and add to the breadcrumbs. Go back and add the pepper you forgot.

6. Wonder why you feel the need to visit the toilet. Remember the lentils still under the running tap and turn off tap. Bang colander to drain excess water, grab 2 handfuls of lentils and put in bowl and add the remaining lentils to the food processor. Set to frappé.

7. Check on onion/ garlic/ seeds mix and stir if necessary. I had a few toasty bits in my pan, but these really added to the flavour.

8. Grate apple and beet. Beware the beet spray. Add to mixing bowl.

9. Add lentil paste to bowl and mix everything together.

10. Line a loaf tin with parchment paper. Add the mixture and squish the whole thing down as hard as you can.

11. Mix the glaze mixture together and pour over the loaf. Shove in oven for 60 minutes.

12. Remove from oven. Put on cooling rack for 15 minutes then use the parchment paper to lift out the loaf and allow to cool for as long as you can before cutting.

We ate this with jacket spuds, onion gravy and peas. Frankly it was the perfect winter comfort food, and didn't taste at all of either sawdust or rat droppings.

Oh and PS, I will write about something other than food soon. I am currently processing the terrifying spectre of Olive being 3, which I'm sure we will all laugh about in a few days, once my tears have dried enough for me to type.

Monday, 6 June 2016 Comments: 0

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