Tell me the small stuff, my friend says to me on the phone. She hears the hesitation in my voice in the way I say okay after the customary how are you.

And it is small stuff that’s throwing me off kilter at the moment. Though actually the objects themselves are big. Squash. Fifteen huge butternut squashes dragged in at dusk because of frost warnings. A large recycle bin that was too heavy for two of us to carry, even though the house guest who was helping me was a young 30-something. And because this squash had not grown in the garden, but was a volunteer sprouting out of the compost pile into the grass that we hadn’t cut for months out of fear of damaging our bounty, its skin was wet and mottled, meaning that it was not going to comfortably store until we got around to using it. We had to process the bundle ASAP, before rot or mold set in.

I just picked 15 squashes, I told my friend. And now on top of everything else on my to-do list, I have to cook and freeze them.

Shel will help, right?

Of course, Shel (my partner) will help. Shel will likely insist that in addition to cooking these 15 squashes, we must roast every single seed from their inner cavities, because it would be a travesty to waste them, even though separating the seeds through all that pulp will add hours to the process. But he can do that. I will need to be the one to scrape the pulp out of the squash, because he doesn’t do it to my standards. And likely, I’ll end up doing most of the peeling after it’s cooked, because he’s always been challenged by intensive fine motor tasks. And then likely, he will scrape out whatever smidgeons of squash I’ve inattentively left on the peels, because he sees detail that I will often miss–sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

But in the end, we’ll have squash for the entire winter. So this should be a great project. It could even be fun if it didn’t feel like one more thing in my pile-up of things I never get to, which continue to scratch on the doors of my mind, louder and louder like a Halloween ghost.

I tell my friend, I don’t think of myself as having classic ADD, but what I do have is ADD of “the shoulds”–meaning that whatever I’m doing, my attention keeps wandering to something else I need or want to do, which minimizes both my enjoyment of what I am doing and my ability to pay mindful attention to it. And then I think about a parable I recently heard about the Dalai Lama, who, when asked what was the happiest moment in his life, paused for a moment and said, I think it’s right now. Because in the mindset of mindfulness, the past and the future don’t exist. All that remains is the moment, the right now of where we are.

So, I mentioned this to my friend, who has a much clearer understanding of Buddhist practice and meditation than I do, even though we both still struggle, and she agreed–with the mindfulness part, at least. She hates cooking and would never want to process 15 squashes, mindfully or not.

I was glad to feel a little better when I got off the phone. Gratitude to friends who see through my wimpy “okays” and tell me that’s what friends are for when I apologize for harping on the latest trivial obstacle in my rich and abundant life, for which I truly am grateful. My next to-do was a check-in call to my 92-year old mom. As we talked, I processed 5 of the squashes for roasting. When I got off that call, I found takers for several of the remaining butternuts, leaving us only 2 or 3 more to process. Nothing more gratifying than sharing your abundance.

In the morning, I woke to a delicious smell of something baking in the oven. After overcoming the initial disappointment that it wasn’t muffins, I felt grateful to Shel for starting his morning by roasting the squash, along with one tray of seeds he’d picked out of the huge bowl of pulp I saved for him.

In the three minutes I had while waiting for my toast, I managed to peel half of one of the roasted squashes, cut it into chunks, and put it on a tray in the freezer. Still, a long road ahead, but hey, there’s no road. Only the moment.

And though I’m not supposed to think of the future, I know that come winter, I will enjoy squash bread; squash soup; squash pie; squash custard; Chilean-inspired squash with cheese, onions and tomatoes; Indian-inspired squash with curry and coconut milk, Carribean-inspired squash with dried fruit and ginger, and countless other recipes I haven’t yet invented.

And if my friend, who lives far away, comes to visit. I’ll make sure to cook her a nice dinner.

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Mercury is not currently in retrograde, but earlier this week, there was a 24-hour time period when I was convinced that supernatural forces were taunting me with one of my biggest pet peeves: wasted time.

It all started with the kale, which I’d been eyeing in the garden as it grew bigger and shaggier every day. I knew I should harvest it, but there were so many more perishable things to attend to: cherry tomatoes to pick, cucumbers and zucchini that were still holding on, larger heirloom tomatoes finally ripening, peppers, eggplant, the first blush of fall raspberries, grapes. The kale can wait, I kept telling myself. It’s hearty, and there are so many other things I need to cook and eat.

But last Monday, despite two time-consuming Zoom meetings and a bunch of activism homework, I looked at the yellowing lower leaves and decided the kale really shouldn’t wait any longer. I gave all six plants a severe haircut, gathering the leaves in a large plastic bag. Way too much to eat before it went bad, the only option was to freeze it for soup and smoothies. So I set about the process, which involved washing, chopping, and rewashing two colanders full, plunging them first into boiling water, and then into a large pot of ice water–a chore in itself to make room for in the fridge. Afterwards I gave my hands a workout squeezing the chopped kale into little balls, which I prepared to freeze on a cookie sheet before transferring them into freezer bags.

It took me an hour to wash and chop the first batch, which I did sometime midday, and then it took until mid-evening before I got back to the project–the boiling, cooling, ball formation, and then a repeat for the second batch. It was about 10:30 pm, and I was almost done when I saw it in my hands among the kale shards.

A little worm.

I’ve been gardening long enough that one worm to remove is not going to bother me. But I also know that more often than not, worms travel in packs. So I checked the kale balls on the cookie sheet that I’d spent the last two hours putting together.

Sure enough…a tiny little worm or two hiding in every single ball.

What got to me most was not the ruined kale (it’s pretty easy to get good kale in the fall in New England) but the lost hours, time when I could have been working on writing or activism projects, or shortening the list of household and administrative chores I’d put aside, or finishing my PT exercises, which I was now going to have to stay up late to do.

But in my quest toward mindfulness I didn’t let myself get as upset as I might have been. The moments spent on the activity were not unpleasant. I was kind of enjoying the quietness of the kitchen, the meditative quality of chopping and washing, getting some time for my brain to roam where ever it wanted as I went about the rote aspects of the task. And the shimmering bright green color the kale turned in the boiling water remains a pleasant memory, even days later.

I had a harder time staying mindful the next day when I left my car headlights on and was delayed an hour and a half getting home because my battery had died. It’s hard not to scold myself for my lack of mindfulness that led me to leave them on in the first place, but I’m over it now. And I just looked up what to do about worms in kale. They’re likely cabbage worms, based on the holes in the leaves–which I did notice as I was chopping and washing, but attributed to old age or a few bites from hungry beetles, rather than a major infestation. Apparently, planting marigolds or applying plant extracts can help. I’ll think about that for next year.

In the meantime, I have one previous batch of frozen kale I already put away for smoothies. And in the summer, I’m substituting cucumbers instead. And I am very mindful when I drink my morning smoothie, because in addition to being filled with protein and calcium, it is always utterly delicious! Here’s my recipe:

–2 scoops of whey protein powder (I use Terra’s Organic vanilla–which does not taste grainy. There are also vegan options, but I haven’t tried them.)
–1/2 cup of plain kefir or Greek yogurt
–Splash of beet juice
–Splash of unsweetened cranberry juice
–1 mini cucumber, or 1/3 of a big cucumber (or a small ball of frozen kale if you have some that isn’t worm-infested)
–1 tablespoon of hemp seeds
–3 frozen strawberries (can substitute raspberries or blueberries)
–2 slices of ginger

Blend and enjoy!

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