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Back in the 70s, I was a good, doctrinaire Diet for a Small Planet vegetarian.

Frances Moore Lappé's epoch-making cookbook was based on the notion of protein complementarity: in order to get a complete protein, you need both beans and grains. Eaten together, you get more nutritional benefit from the combination than you would if you ate them separately.

So, religiously, I ate my beans and rice together at meal after meal after meal.

Since then, we've learned more about how the body handles these things. In fact, the body and its digestion is more flexible than we used to think. If you eat, say, your whole wheat toast for breakfast and your lentil soup at lunch, you'll still get the full protein benefit from the combination.

And that's another thing that the tribe does for us.

Fall is my favorite season.  The cooler weather (not that we've had much of that yet) is a relief after the stifling heat of summer.  The colors, the sense of the season all appeal to me.  This fall I've been so busy writing and editing, I've not had any time for much else.  

My harvest is my writing.  I'm focusing on getting the stories in my head down on paper so I can share them.  It's not tomatoes or corn or pumpkins.  I stopped gardening years ago when my legs stopped working well.  But it's still a harvest for me.  

In the old days, people would hibernate somewhat in the winter.  Tools would be repaired, activities went from tending the earth to resting.  Animals were tended but outside work was minimal mostly because the weather prohibited it.  Though there were worries about food and fuel lasting through the dark times, it was a quieter more restful time of the year.

Now we don't have the luxury of staying indoors by a warm fire.  We also don't have to worry about food or fuel being scarce.  The frenetic pace of life continues even when we get a snowstorm dropping inches of snow on us.  We wait until the plows dig us out and continue with our lives.  Rarely do we take a day or week or more to stay at home, cuddle in and ignore the fast pace life we normally have.  

I’m sorry to say I went black Friday shopping.  My daughter wanted to go and she dragged me along.  I didn’t mind the craft stores but the others were too much.  Winter is a time to go within and reflect on what’s needed.  Black Friday shopping is definitely not anywhere near an internal reflective state.

While one of my daughters was home for Thanksgiving we went and did things almost non-stop.  We ran errands, cooked food, went to a movie.  It was go go go from the time she got home.  It made me cranky. 

In my day job, I've been struggling with a few issues.  The stress has been higher than normal making me fall into old bad habits.  I'd love to say I recognized this immediately and countered it but of course I didn't.  I got in a rut.

As I recognized (finally) what I was doing and the rut I'd been spinning my wheels in, I returned to techniques I knew worked.  Stress is bad for my gout.  It makes it flare up and cause me a great deal of pain.  

The days are getting longer.  Even if the weather is still winter, I can start to see the energy of spring building as we step forward day by day.  My day job is at a university so the new semester has started and the insanity in my day job is stressful and chaotic.  This reminds me of the energy spring brings.

Spring season is all about new beginnings, fresh starts, and moving forward.  In my way of doing things, I’ve considered over winter what is important, what I need to work on.  I may have (very likely have) made a to do list of what I need to do for my goals – what the next steps will be.  

Whenever I’ve gone to a quiet place in my head, it’s been the same.  I find myself on a path in the woods.  It’s always fall and always leads to a pool with a waterfall.  There’s a stone there large enough for me to sit on or lean against.  For years when I sought out a quiet, centered place in my mind, inevitably this is where I’d end up.  I could feel the crisp coolness of the autumn day, smell the fresh air with a hint of drying corn (yes I grew up on a farm where we did this), and feel the bite of winter.

The other night when I sought out my center, my balance.  I didn’t go there.  I tried.  I was tired, wanted to destress and wanted the familiar and the comfortable of this scene.  My mind didn’t go there.  Even when I tried to visualize it, I couldn’t find it.  It was like a door closed in my mind.