Tag: Stephanie Richey art

Life

This morning in Seminary we talked about the things the students wanted to do in their lives, anything. We had a big list of things, from skydiving to traveling to all sorts of places to getting married and everything in between. This made me think about what I wanted to accomplish in my life up till now, and for the rest of my life, and made me ponder upon whether I wished my life had taken a different course.

When I was younger, I had lots of different scenarios for my life. At one point I wanted to be a pediatric cardiologist. I once thought it might be fun to be a marine biologist. Then I remembered that I don’t like deep water or getting so far away from shore that I can’t see the land anymore. That thought was short lived, but I do like marine life. I wanted to be a teacher for a while. I subbed at my kid’s school for a number of years while they attended. That was enough to convince me I didn’t want to teach, at least not on that level. I was a typical little girl in that I wanted to ride horses forever. I did get to ride horses throughout high school and enjoyed that, but not enough to pay for one here in Alaska. I wanted to be a farmer or rancher, and still think that would be fun. Always though, I wanted to be a mom which has dictated a lot of where my life has gone.

When I was in my teens, I watched a PBS special about a lady who wanted to be a surgeon but also wanted to have a family. She eventually walked away from the surgeon portion of her doctoring because her family was so important to her. That really changed my perspective, not only on being a cardiologist, but on what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a mom more than any of the other things I could be. I wanted to have a family. This desire, and the subsequent fulfillment of that desire has shaped my decisions more than anything else. This is not a popular decision in our society today, and often as I have found in public situations, it is looked upon as the backup plan, the other thing you do if you’re not smart enough or good enough or whatever enough to have a career. But I think it is the most important goal any of us should have, being parents. There is nothing more fulfilling, hard, rewarding, hard, happy … you get the idea. But I love it more than anything else.

It’s interesting this idea that moms aren’t smart or educated. Most of the moms that I associate with have educations in some form or another, many stay at home moms with degrees, choosing to be moms because it’s important to them. I have had the opportunity to have some great educational experiences over the years that have also shaped who I have become. Some of the things that I have done and learned from over the years have really helped me out as a mom as well. Before my kids were born, I worked at the local school, again as a sub. I also became a certified EMT and worked on our local ambulance service (this knowledge comes in handy when you have kids). I was a pharmacy technician and worked at a pharmacy in Wasilla when I was pregnant with my oldest child. I was also a certified phlebotomist and EKG technician although I never used either because I found out I was pregnant during the class. Since having my children, I have taken a fairly in-depth college course on sewing clothing, going from kind of being able to construct a simple pattern from the store to being able to make my own sewing patterns and sew just about anything. I have used online resources to learn to paint and continue to find new resources online to continue to learn. I have also learned how to cook better, healthier, tastier meals for my family, how to write books, how to create a website, how to run ads and make YouTube videos, how to garden better, and the list goes on and on.

Looking back on all this, I don’t regret the choice to be a mom, or the choices I made in between to get me where I am today. I don’t have a college degree but feel like I have been blessed by living in an age where there are so many resources to learn from, online, in books, in new ways to educate ourselves even from universities. As my kids get older, I have really been pondering on where I want to go from here, I don’t have a solid answer for that question yet, but I’m working on it. But I don’t look back with regrets, and I look forward with a bright hope for the future.

Sunshine

This morning was a bit of a drizzly morning, well, that’s an understatement. We have had another 1.2 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. The first part of our summer was uncharacteristically warm for Alaska, and this last half hasn’t been uncharacteristically wet, it’s usually wet in the August, September, and into October before it snows, but it’s usually just light rain and periods of sunny days all mixed in. Lately it’s been just dark and gray. The leaves are gone off the trees, and it’s been pretty dreary and colorless almost all day every day.

But there have been bright patches here and there and today was one of those bright patches. The sun came out this afternoon! It is cool outside and a bit breezy, so you need a jacket, but it’s been beautiful, and sometimes I don’t realize how much I miss that beautiful, bright ball of fire in the sky until it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. We cannot control the weather however, so sometimes we need to create a little bit of sunshine when none can be seen outside.

This week as been such a week. I have noticed the older my kids get and the more they can do on their own, like driving the places they need to be, and doing a lot more to take care of themselves, the less I have to do as a mom. This is such a great thing in the whole grand scheme of things, but in some ways, I miss all those schedules, the driving, the time spent together. This week I found myself at home alone for the majority of the week. It’s funny how all I wanted when my kids were growing up was to have a little bit of time by myself, and now I have more than I would care for sometimes. This is when I started to notice the lack of sunshine, I think, and also when I realized sometimes, I have to create those bright spots in my life even when the sun isn’t shining.

At first this time caused me to start having a bit of anxiety, but then, as I prayed for help in navigating this new phase, I was reminded of the opportunities to set goals and the things that I’ve wanted to get done for a long time but haven’t had the time. So, on Monday, I set some goals. I was able to start painting more, get the house not only straightened up, but get some of the deep cleaning done that I haven’t been able to get done, and get some things ready for local vendors and markets as well as find some Christmas markets to participate in for the next couple months. I have also had time to do more printing, sewing and just general catchup. The sun outside hasn’t been shining all week, well, it has but it’s been behind the clouds, but as I started to see what could be done my outlook brightened and my anxiety diminished.

The other morning when I took my daughter’s dog for a walk, because she was at work already, I was reminded that even though a lot of days are rainy, and even though a lot of days are mundane and can seem gray, there is always beauty somewhere in my days, actually there is a lot of beauty in many parts of my days, and I just have to slow down, sometimes pray to see, and then look around and see the beauty that is always there, and then do things to create the sunshine when I can’t actually see it shining.

Cranberries

I am not a huge fan of late fall when all the leaves are gone, there’s no snow on the ground, and everything looks dead. The leaves have been driven on or blown around so much that they’re no longer bright yellow, but more of a dirty brown color and everything is stark and empty. But, with this not so pretty time of year comes a last bit of berry picking.

I enjoy picking the lowbush cranberries here in Alaska. They are the wild version of the cranberries you can buy at the grocery store during the holidays; the wild berries however are not as big. I have made a couple of different types of cranberry sauce without a whole lot of success in them setting up. I made one today using the Ball cookbook for home canning. Hopefully it will set up, but I’m not holding out much hope at the moment. The little bit I had left over hasn’t set up yet, bit it was delicious and would work well on pancakes if nothing else. If you have a favorite cranberry sauce recipe that sets up, I would love to know what it is!

My favorite use of the berries, and the one that I save most of the berries for is cranberry/orange muffins. I don’t make muffins very often, and rarely is it me making them. Mostly because I hate cleaning out the muffin pan when I’m done. I also don’t like using cupcake paper liners for muffins as they don’t seem to let go of the cooked muffin very well and I end up with half the muffin stuck in the paper lining. But one of my daughter’s enjoys making cranberry muffins, and because she is willing to make them, I am willing to do the cleanup because they are so good! We use a recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook, however there are a ton of recipes online as well and since none of them are mine, I’ll let you do the research to find a recipe you enjoy.

Lowbush cranberries are a fairly firm berry as compared to a blueberry or especially a raspberry. For this reason, I like to vacuum seal the cranberries, they last longer and hold their shape even under the pressure of the vacuum. I wouldn’t suggest vacuum sealing with any other kind of berry as they would get squished, and you’d end up with berry juice and skins when they were all thawed out. I am so grateful for the bounty that the land around us provides, at least in the form of berries. I have taken a couple of classes about wild plants in my area, and when I am finished, I feel like there is so much to know and remember that I may never get it. But the berries, I remember the berries, and love being able to use them in so many different ways. Every area around the world has edible plants, and it’s good to know what you can and cannot eat for survival purposes. Berries are one of my favorite wild plants and I’m grateful I can at least keep track of the edible and inedible berries around here. Learning how to identify the native plants around us is important, not only to know which to avoid, like poison ivy, but also to know what you can eat, on an everyday basis, or in an emergency situation. I would encourage you to look into the plants around you and learn what you can, because you never know when that knowledge will come in handy.

Prophets

Yesterday and today my Church had its semi-annual General Conference. This is a worldwide broadcast where we hear from our prophet and apostles as well as our other general authorities. I have talked about this in a couple of past posts, so today instead of explaining about it, I will share a short quote from each one of the talks. This weekend is one that we in our house look forward to for weeks, not just because of the food and snacks, but because of the messages of hope and inspiration we receive as well as the wonderful spirit it fills our home with. I am grateful for prophets in our day to guide and direct us in these changing times. I hope you are able to find something inspirational in these short messages as well.

The last two aren’t necessarily the most important, there was just 35 instead of 36. I am so grateful for the words of these men and women, called of God to testify of Him. I am grateful now to have the opportunity to study these words for the next 6 months, until the next General Conference. I will link to Conference talks when they are up and available, usually by Wednesday.

Inflammation

I have talked a little bit about Inflammation and anti-inflammatory stuff, but only briefly. So today I thought I would share a little bit more about what I have learned and how it has affected my body in hopes that it might help others understand a little bit more as well.

When my oldest daughter left for college, I decided to go with her to help her get settled in. She planned on living with my parents, so there was the added benefit of getting to visit family at the same time. Leaving for college is at a particularly stressful time of the year as I had our other 3 children starting school at the same time I would be gone, and I had just been asked to teach early morning Seminary, which I would start teaching the day after I returned, and for some reason, going places away from my normal routine makes me anxious. Once I’m going, I’m fine, it’s just the thoughts of getting there that make me more stressed. I started to develop a small itchy spot on my arm and couldn’t figure out what it was. By the time I got home it had spread. I went to the doctor to discover it was Eczema. I hadn’t ever had it before, so I started to do some research about it. The one common thing I kept coming back to was inflammation and how what we eat affects the inflammation level in our bodies.

Inflammation is not a bad thing. When we get hurt the area swells, as it should, bringing more blood flow to the area to help it heal faster. But excessive inflammation in our bodies has a very negative effect on almost every part of our bodies. Inflammation is one of the leading contributors to cancers, heart disease, skin problems, joint issues, gut issues, sleep problems, lung issues, gum and mouth issues, inability to lose weight and so on. But it’s hard to find out how to control that inflammation. As a result of not being able to find the kind of information that I was looking for, I used the steroid cream to clear up my skin and then went on my way, never really totally getting rid of the eczema for long, but kind of keeping it mostly gone for most of the time. I really didn’t work as hard as I should have.

Fast forward a year and a half later to just around Christmas 2021. I was sitting at the table eating dinner when I started to feel a dull throb in my shoulder. As the evening wore on the throb became much more intense to the point that I couldn’t lift or rotate my arm. Within a few days it had subsided enough to go back to my normal routine, and I chalked it up to a random bug or something. But 2 weeks later, the same throb started, only this time intensifying. I ended up at an orthopedic doctor thinking I had somehow dislocated my shoulder or something. It was actually an old injury that had flared up due to excessive inflammation. I have a blog post from that time that details what was wrong with my shoulder called Injury. But as I visited with the doctor, he mentioned in passing the importance of diet and how it relates to inflammation in the body. This time I was listening and decided I needed to do some serious research.

There are all sorts of lists of foods that are anti-inflammatory, and foods that are really inflammatory, and these are a great place to start, but I am a numbers person. I wanted to know exactly how inflammatory or anti-inflammatory any given food was. Fortunately, I have a Heavenly Father who helps me find things when I don’t know where else to look. I happened to be in a local bookstore and just wandering for a few minutes and found the book I needed. It’s called “The Inflammation Free Diet Plan” pictured below.

There is now an app that goes along with this book called “IF Tracker”. This book is set up with a point system for foods. This has been a huge help for me in my efforts to eat better and keep my inflammation under control. Foods in this book (and that app has way more than the book) are listed in a point system. Foods that are inflammatory are given a negative point, higher or lower depending on how inflammatory it is, and foods that are anti-inflammatory are given a positive number, again higher or lower depending on how anti-inflammatory it is. The goal being to stay on the positive side of things, meaning anti-inflammatory. This has been a life saver for me. It’s easy to follow and the app makes it easy for me to calculate even the things I make from scratch as you can add your own recipes and it calculates it all for you.

How has this affected me? I rarely have any eczema, and when I do start to get itchy, it’s usually because I haven’t been monitoring my diet very well. I rarely have to use the steroid cream anymore as I can now control it with my diet. One thing I have always had is excess gas and gut issues. My family has gall bladder issues and I had always assumed that it had something to do with that. But as I have been staying on the anti-inflammatory side of the range these issues have almost completely disappeared. I have had less problems with my joints as a whole and have had no more issues with my shoulder at all. I also found it interesting that the water that I had retained to some degree or another since having children, had all disappeared. Overall, I feel better and have more energy when I am following the plan. The thing I like most about it though, is the flexibility. I can eat inflammatory foods as long as I balance them out with anti-inflammatory foods because like I said above, inflammation has its purposes as well. There is no cutting out food groups. It’s about eating smarter and balancing what I eat. I am so grateful my Heavenly Father is mindful of me and how my mind works, and that He helped me find this book that taught be a ton about inflammation and helped me get back to feeling better. If you have inflammation issues, or any issue that you think might be affected by what you eat, this book and app are a great resource to help you get back on track and feel better.