First of all, while I do admit that writing my last post was somewhat emotionally draining that is not why I’ve been quiet for the past few days.  Ever since we upgraded Wordpress we’ve had problems with the admin page.  It only loads about 20% of the time and we’re not sure how to fix it beyond uninstalling Wordpress and starting fresh with the current (hopefully debugged) version, so as soon as CB decides to take a break on Civilization Warlords I’ll ask him to do that.  That said, on to the topics of this post.

I’ve been trying to answer those that commented on Wednesday’s post with individual e-mails, but I want to thank each and every one of you that left a comment for me on that post.  I actually go out of my way not to post things that I feel are too personal on this blog.  It’s not that I’m intentionally giving a watered down version of my life to you, nor is it that I have anything in particular that I feel the need to hide.  It is simply that I often feel that writing about my problems, issues, past experiences is sometimes a bit self indulgent.  I mean, I realize that blogging in general is self indulgent, but I often find myself trying to focus on the today - the here and now, as opposed to my often dreary and depressing past.  I can understand though, why other bloggers air a bit more of their personal closet space with their readers.  The support and comments that I received were so very uplifting and positive and reinforcing.  I can’t even explain how much your opinions mean to me.  I was even more blown away when I saw this in my Google Reader queue on Friday.

Friday was my birthday (note to self: change my age on my About page) and having someone, especially someone of David’s caliber, recognize my writing and choose to share it with other talented people was a wonderful gift (so was the pint of Ben and Jerry cookie dough ice cream and box of chocolates CB bought for me…I’m afraid there might be some blood left in my sugar stream).

We went to a wedding reception in Turnhout for friends of CB’s last night so we saved the celebrating for today mostly, although I did end up drinking half my body weight in a bit too much white wine which resulted in an embarassing episode where I apparently promised to do several lewd things to my boyfriend (apparently white wine makes me think I’m Jenna Jameson) before falling asleep in the car on the way home and then hurling my guts out getting sick all over the passenger door upon waking (apparently I didn’t get the door open in time, seeing as I had tried to open it while we were going 120 kph…stupid inertia).  We had to return the car to Cabanaparents today and well, no matter how much Febreze we used the car remained pretty foul so we had to tell Cabanadad what happened.  I was hoping to not have to be there but Cabanamom got me a birthday gift (vriendelijk bedankt Cabanamom!) so I went along to return the car.  Soooo embarassing (and I had the WORST hangover ever, which I totally deserved)! But Cabanadad was very understanding and seemed to get a good laugh out of it, so it ended up ok, plus we gave him all the Febreze we had in the house.

After that we went on a nice walk to the city center, did some shopping, had a coffee in NTG in the St. Baafsplein, got some groceries for tomorrow and had a fantastic dinner at Port’A, a small restaraunt run by a man from Yugoslavia who cooks different dishes fresh, daily. Granted, every time CB looked at me he couldn’t stop chuckling over my foul mouthed promises from last night but I can give him that.  After all he still held me when I stumbled into bed after acting like a total ass on the ride home, he still picked a pansy for me this evening while we were sitting in the garden, and he’s still the most wonderfual man in the world.  Even if he does smirk every time we make eye contact today.

Oh, and last but certainly not least, take a look over at my treasureliscious widget.  My newest and definitely my most healthy addiction? Coconut Juice.  I’ve never liked the taste of coconut before although I love the smell, but then after CB used coconut milk in a few recipes I realized that it was the texture I’d been disliking all this time.  I had only ever had those nasty dried out coconut flake thingies before and I hated them. I loved the coconut milk until I saw the fat content and sadly decided to limit my coconut milk to the lotion I have from Body Shop (also on the T-lish widget). Until I found this.  Less calories than soda and a lot of other juices, with a whole truckload of health benefits and it’s a little bit of heavenly coconut goodness every time you sip.

mmmmm….the nectar of the gods, my friends, the nectar of the gods.

I graduated with my B.A. in psychology in five and a half years. Most psychology students can have a masters by then. Aside from that whole breakdown thing that began in year three and finally hit bottom in year five, there was also the fact that I had pretty much decided that I did not want to pursue psychology as a full time career. Going into my fourth year of college I had decided that I wanted to do what I had always excelled at and loved most of all: writing.
I started writing short stories when I was seven and discovered poetry in fifth grade when I was ten. Soon after I began producing increasing amounts of poems and was accepted to the Young Writers Institute of Pittsburgh the summer before sixth grade. It was a wonderful workshopping experience and I enjoyed it immensely. That was all the “formal” training I ever had in writing. I continued to enjoy writing poetry and stories for my English classes through highschool and wrote poetry obsessively through college. When I was in the worst of fugues I wrote my best poetry. I had been told by many and allowed myself to believe that it was just too difficult to make a living as a writer so I had never even considered pursuing it beyond a hobby or as a source of anxiety relief.
After I graduated I floated around in a bit of an occupational limbo. I worked as an in home caretaker for the elderly for a year, considered nursing school and then realized that I couldn’t handle losing patients very well (after two of my patients passed away, one from cancer and one from a heart attack). I accidentally fell into daycare in what was supposed to be a “placeholder” type job until I could figure out what I wanted to do with myself and working with the kids made me feel so good about life in general that I decided to do what I loved (besides working with the kids) and applied to Carlow College for the M.A. in creative writing.
The program was very new, but amazing, with concentrations in poetry, fiction or creative non fiction. It also allowed the opportunity to have one semester outside of your chosen concentration. The best part was (besides the fact that it was all doable from home which meant I could keep working too) that two weeks of each summer semester would be spent in Carlow Ireland studying with Irish writers! I spent hours and hours gathering and editing all of my poetry before choosing ten poems to submit with my application. I was so nervous. Everyone else applying would most likely have some sort of formal training and I had had none. Everything I had emotionally was fused into my poetry and a rejection of it would be like a rejection of my soul. After a month or two a letter arrived from Carlow telling me that I had been accepted to the program! I was amazed and elated. My dream of being a writer was beginning to become a reality.
So I went to Carlow and met some amazing, talented, wonderful people both as peers as well as professors. I wrote some haunting poetry and woke at 5 every morning to go out on the college grounds and listen to the birds singing and to write my heart out over the Irish landscape. And the mentor for poetry was Desmond Egan. Egan is a very renowned poet in Ireland and everyone was flattered to have him as a mentor…until we got to know him and decided he was a bit of an asshole. He always edited all of his own books and expected us to basically be editors as well. And me in particular he didn’t seem to get. I wrote a poem that basically said that I had a hard time always understanding why the Irish are still pissed about the potato famine when my people had been bullied and butchered for centuries. I ended the poem with references to wandering the desert and the Wailing Wall. Desmond loved the desert imagery but totally missed the whole Jewish thing. Desmond asked us to do a writing excercise, to be as descriptive as possible and then said my description was too descriptive. He intimidated me and my poetry didn’t seem to appeal much to him. He made things even more difficult by refusing to communicate with us or accept our writing via e-mail. We were to snail mail all inquiries and projects to him in Ireland from the U.S. (cause yeah I had the money to be printing and shipping a semesters worth of manuscripts overseas). We also had to buy three books, one of which was written by him, one edited and compiled by him, and a third with some of his works in it.

We were supposed to receive a first review from our mentor after we arrived back in Pittsburgh. When I got mine it basically said, though I can’t remember the exact wording, that “despite Korie’s lack of natural talent, she finds the beauty in the simple things.”
My mentor, the person who was supposed to be inspiring me to improve my writing said I had no natural talent. A professional poet who had many publications and knew how the world of writing worked said I had no natural talent. My eyes skated over the positive thing he said and kept falling back on those words.

No.
Natural.
Talent.

And that’s when the poetry died.

I dropped out of Carlow’s writing program, the one that I had been so proud to be a part of, the one that I had gotten into based on nothing but natural talent. I stopped writing altogether. Sometimes I wanted to try but I’d sit down at the computer and my mind would just be blank. Nothing felt right, the words I wrote were all hollow. That was almost four years ago and I think I have written maybe two poems since then.

My blogging actually sprung from the determination to have another go at being a writer. I thought that it would be a great way to keep my writing skills in tact while I went back to school (this time for early education), got myself a well paying job and finally ended up with some free time to research and write one of the books that I’ve had in mind for so long. Well, obviously I ended up leaving school again when I opted to move to Belgium before finishing my masters and it will be another several months before I know enough Dutch to start attending Gent University (3rd attempt at grad school and bascially all I was eligible to study here was, guess what, psychology).

I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated all the time by the fact that I still don’t have a masters and now even when I do it will be in a subject that I’m not particularly passionate for. I’m hoping I can apply it to a career working with children somehow and then I can finally begin to do what I truly want with my free time and begin writing something publishable.

And I’ll pick a copy and write a little message in the liner and send it off to County Kildare, straight to the mailbox of Desmond Egan.

It seems that you underestimated me. I must have some natural talent after all.

This is in response to the Weekend Wandering at Author Blog

Living in Belgium makes remembering American holidays a bit difficult. Mother’s Day is the same, but really that’s about it. When I moved here five months ago I was constantly aware and keeping track of the holidays from home, but it has become less of a concern each month. But now, today, I remember Memorial Day, not only because I was born on traditional Memorial Day (May 30) but also because of my deceased grandfather who served in WWII and my more recently deceased great uncle who served in WWII and Korea (his ashes rest in a military cemetary near Reno).

I have friends that are serving their second or third tours of duty in Iraq; guys that I used to stay up with all night laughing, drinking, joking, playing poker. Young men who have dreams and whose lives have been interrupted for a senseless, pointless war. Men who used to be concerned over final exams and are now concerned over whether or not they’ll be scraping yet another dead Iraqi child up off the road in the morning. Men who, every day shoulder the burden of knowing that they could be dead the next second or worse, that their lives have been used to snuff out the lives of those corpses they remove from the bombed out villages in the desert.

I remember the night that George W. Bush declared war on Iraq. Two of my friends and I were eating pizza and having some beers when the anouncement came on the news. The restaurant got quiet. One of my friends and I were horrified. My other friend though it was a good idea. We were split, much like the rest of our country. Now, five years later, not one single person I know believes in what we’re supposedly fighting for and yet we’re still fighting.

My heart weeps for the state of my nation.

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - original by Eric Bogle, this cover by The Pogues
When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It’s time to stop rambling ’cause there’s work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I’ll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who’ll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

CB and I took a trip to the In Flanders Fields Museum at the begining of this month in Ieper and during a side trip to one of the many, many cemeteries that mark the western front I recalled a certain song that I’ve heard many times in the past, but never truly appreciated until I learned more about World War I in Ieper. It’s a war that America neglects to truly educate many of it’s students about, but it’s one that certainly should always be remembered.

When I first moved in with CB here in the lovely city of Gent, we often split cooking detail. Every other day one of us picked a dish we wanted to try and the other person happily helped prepare it.
Aww, sweet, no?
Now, about five months later, with CB working on his doctorate, teaching psychology labs, giving exams and working on house construction with CabanaDad most weekends and some evenings, I have pretty much taken up the mantle of meal planner, supper preparer, and food gatherer. Don’t get me wrong, CB still makes dinner (last night he made sauteed salmon steaks, steamed asparagus roasted with cherry tomatoes, black olives and eggplant on brown rice…YUM), I just tend to make it more often. Which leads me to my latest dilema, how the friggity frack do moms/wives plan meals every single day?! Seriously, I want us to eat healthy and also with variation so as not to get bored or start snacking just for different tastes but it doesn’t take me long to totally run out of ideas for suppertime.

As a single person I never did a ton of cooking. If I had to impress a guy I could do basic marinated chicken or grilled salmon with a canned veggie like green beans that I could toss some slivered almonds in and a side of rice. And of course I could do any of those premade casseroles, tacos, hamburger helper, etc. But that’s basically all there was to my repertoire. On top of that, as I’ve previously stated, I’m a creature of habit, so it’s not a big deal for me to eat pretty much the same thing for a week. I still do that now for other meals. My breakfast is usually a piece of fruit and/or scrambled eggs (drinkable yogurt when I don’t have time to sit down), my lunch is typically some form of vegetable soup (I’m not huge on salads…I’ll eat one if you put it in front of me, but make one for myself? nah) and some chicken or turkey slices. If I snack it’s most likely on a piece of cheese or fruit, or a handful of unsalted nuts. And really, if I showed you the food journal I’ve been keeping the past week or two, you’d see I’m not lying, that’s really pretty much exactly what I eat every single day. Needless to say, coming up with a different meal every day has become rather trying. I attempted to illicit some input from CB by asking him before he went to work, if there was something he wanted for dinner. Every single time he answered me with, “Whatever you make is fine.”*

Well that doesn’t help much, now does it.

So finally the other night I said something along the lines of,”how the friggity frack do moms/wives plan meals every single day?!”
CB looked at me kindly and said, “If you run out of ideas I can suggest some things to cook.”
To which I replied testily,”I’ve been asking you to do that every day and you always say that whatever I make is fine!”
“Oh,” he said, “I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to make something that I liked.”

Heh, silly silly man…assuming I was asking because I actually wanted to make something that he liked. He could’ve said “Hot snot over a bed of poached planaria” and I would’ve given it some consideration (the snot I got…planaria I might have to special order…).
But anyway, I’ve sort of taken this as a new challenge, the finding new things to try for dinner. Last night was honey mint glazed grilled chicken and caulifower puree. Any suggestions from the devoted peanut gallery?

*We won’t talk about earlier this week when CB got a headache, told me he was craving something unhealthy like fries. I recomended the compromise of going to the Turkish grill around the corner but he said his headache was bad enough that he didn’t want to go out for food. So I went and made quinoa pilaf, roasted eggplant and sauteed shrimp. He came down, looking like death, ate the shrimp and went back upstairs, leaving the rest. Two hours later after sleeping off the headache he ignored the plate I’d saved in the fridge and went out for fries instead.

I dedicate these to Camikaos, who seems enamored with adorable fluffy kitten-y goodness.
And also I feel the need to throw down with my mum, who keeps putting cute pictures of my parents’ new kittens on her blog.

zzzzzzz

streeeetch

get that mouse

chew the everloving crap out of it

aaaand coma

Luna’s babysitter…no really, he’s a good sport, if I were him I’d have eaten the hyper little spazz already