Begin Again.

Sometimes the hardest part is the beginning. 

So much has happened in my life, in my family's life, in the world.  Nine weeks have sailed by since I last blogged here, over some bumpy waters, and it seems we're about to elect a new president - How did that happen?  Today is Halloween - How did that happen? I have a new baby daughter - How did that happen? (oh wait, I know how that happened). Beginning this blog again after nine plus weeks is definitely on the hard end of the scale.

I have sat down to this computer at least a dozen times trying to decide where to begin.  This is a blog.  This is a blog that has been primarily about food, and only sometimes about the lives that live around the food.  That is going to have to change.

So much life has happened in the last nine weeks, it would be negligent of me to continue to edit the life out of the food I blog about.  It is really what the food is for, isn't it? It's about the lives that are fed.

Nine weeks have passed and at least nine years knocked off my life I think.  My darling baby girl has been the most difficult of cases. Born eight weeks prematurely we owe her life to the nurses and doctors at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital's Intensive Care Nursery.  For 19 days we were merely participants in the game of baby survival.  Day after day our little one's every breath was monitored, her every heartbeat watched.  She is good now.  No, she is great now. Fat and fatter with every passing hour.  We have almost exhaled - but not quite.

We owe our lives to the dozens of friends and family members who came by with meals, love, support and older sibling care. These were our nurses and doctors. Our heart monitors. Thank You.

In the dozens of almost beginnings in this blog, I felt I was walking a fine line of be unfaithful to a new me.  I had met this me before, when my son was born prematurely five years ago.  Sometimes things happen for a reason to a person.  Sometimes things, events, situations, happen over and over again until a person gets the point. I call them frying pan moments.  It is as if you are being hit by a frying pan in the head, and until you are ready, you can ignore the pain of that massive iron skillet striking your skull.  Everyone else sees your frying pan.  They even think, and sometimes say, "Jeez, there goes Jane, and she's going to get hit in the head again".  And then, you can't take it anymore.   That frying pan hits you so hard that the pain finally causes you to change permanently (or gives you brain damage). You step to the side and let that pan hit someone or something else. Lesson learned.  The thing about frying pan moments is that you don't always know your new place in life just because you know to avoid the pan.  Sometimes you must stumble around a bit ducking for cover.

I think I may have just decided to step to the side of the pan.

I am notorious for not having a "No" button.  I want that to change.  I am notorious for signing on for too much.  I don't want that to change.  I am notorious for doubting myself.  That has changed. I am nothing more than  me.  I am a mother, woman, a liberal flipping democrat with a serious agenda this particular weekend, a wanna-be writer, a self-underrated cook/chef (see, I did it just there, "cook/chef", what's with the "slash"? I'm too shy to claim chef - I am). My name is Meloni, what do you want?

I will continue to cook in this blog, for this blog, around this blog.  But, I will also live in this blog, and so will all of you. Beware, it is a new day.  Embrace it. You could be famous.

On that note, I have returned to my own kitchen.  After essentially missing the action at the stove for two months, I have slowly stepped back up to the hot-plate.  And you know, I think I am a better cook? Ok, ok, a bit braggy for someone who has been in an anti-social mode for so many months, but honest, I think I'm good. Let's end that sentence with a little dance and some bow-chicka-bow-wow moves (yah, I just did that).

So here it begins again.  The beginning. Of a newer blog? Of a newer life? Of a new family? Of a new way of looking at the world.  I am inspired today not by my tiny infant, or my gargantuan waistline, or by the historic moment we are all about to celebrate as a country, but by the man at Peet's Coffee this morning who for no reason at all bought the older woman in line behind him a cup of joe. For no reason (she wasn't even a cougar). Three cheers for him.  Three cheers for kindness. And, three cheers for you if you are still reading this crazy blog.