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Happy Vernal Equinox!

By on March 19, 2012 in mindfulness, true story

Foto from Flickr’s 55laney69.

In yoga this morning, our instructor (a sweet-voiced woman named Blossom) informed us that today is the last day of winter. An equinox names the period when day and night are equal—yin and yang, push and pull, the light-bound tilt from one season to another. We stretched and flexed, reached and inverted, to honor what Blossom called “the deepest truth, which exists inside our bodies.”
I sweated and swayed as I thought about this. I stood in mountain pose and felt my diaphragm concave and convex, lung floor surging down and up with every passing breath. Inhale, exhale, in and out. I dove to the floor, peaked in downward dog, and sayonara pranayama. Winter weight’s been hard on girlfriend and now she’s panting hard.
The moment itself, the slide from day to night, passed at 1:26PM. At 1:27 we moved into spring, the wood season, according to Blossom, associated with growth and renewal and perseverance. The recommended poses are still, flat, restful. In other words, lie down and honor your chi.
Sounds like a plan to me!
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Even My Fortune Cookie Wants Me to Be Happy

By on March 13, 2012 in mindfulness, true story

Darn tootin’.
Here in Pleasantville Charlottesville it’s a balmy 79 degrees.
Apparently it is March 13th, but the heat and the extra hour of sunlight indicate otherwise.

My brain keeps screaming SUMMER! OMG SUMMER!
I even got a farmer’s tan.

A bonus beyond vitamin D: all this sunshine soothes my soul. It reminds me that perfectly legitimate outdoor activities include, but are not limited to:
- reading a book for hours on end
- napping in a field while storm clouds brew overhead
- walking through centuries-old woods
- articulating hopes and dreams while drinking a soy latte
- starting that art project you thought about 5 months ago
- smelling unspent rain on breezy night air
- coming home and pausing outside the front door—one extra breath, one glance at the stars—to savor the taste of these sweet final hours, the delicate finish of another delicious day.
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How to Make a Deck of Love

By on February 23, 2012 in DIY, humor, true story

Hey, remember Valentine’s Day?
It was this holiday, like, a week ago? I’m pretty sure it made 75% of America feel terrible?
I was one of the lucky few that really enjoyed her Tuesday. Not to brag, but I probably ate more chocolate in 24 hours than most of you eat in a month. I’ve just got it like that.
Anyway, Boyfriend was not one of the lucky ones. Since I wasn’t sure we’d even be celebrating, I waited until the last minute (i.e. after I’d received a present on Valentine’s Day itself) to get him something. The good news is that I already had a gift in mind, something I had seen on Pinterest. It looked cute and easy and like there was potential to futz around on PowerPoint. Hooray!
I had a lot of fun making this gift and took pictures along the way. Please note that if you want to make one yourself and need specific guidelines to do so, other bloggers have done a much better job than I have. I think Papervine’s finished product is especially lovely, and she gives all the details here.
Papervine’s Mini Love Book
So here we go with my version of this idea:
Deck of Love Tutorial
1. Get a deck of cards (duh). I found these adorkable ones at a thrift store. I think of them as a celebration of the fact that Boyfriend and I are incredibly nerdy.
You could also use standard playing cards. Maybe you already have one spare set lying around your house (or twelve, if you’ve got some sort of problem).
2. Punch holes in your cards. I failed to use a ruler and just eyeballed the first one with my hand punch. Even though I used each card as a model for the next, the spacing was pretty inconsistent. In other words, don’t be as lazy as I am.
I put my punched cards onto binder rings. You can imagine the satisfaction when I snapped those babies closed.
Side note: punching holes takes a lot of time. And energy. And wrist strength. I’d imagined that I could finish this project in about two hours, which now seems laughable as I spent at least that much time punching holes. The good news is that you can do it anywhere, including play rehearsal or sitting on the front stoop on a sunny day. Stoopin’ with paper crafts.

Having one of these on hand will both skyrocket the cute factor and decimate productivity.
3. Make labels and glue them onto the cards.
Again, this part took longer than I thought it would. Sometimes I think the entirety of my adult existence centers on my need to realize that everything takes longer than I estimate. Including this blog post. Augh.
So I made labels in PowerPoint. This time I used a ruler, but I still had to adjust it a few times. I chose the font and the color to reflect The Science Fiction Book Club theme, not the usual red and black business. Then I cut out the squares and glued them on with a glue stick. For one blissful hour I felt like a kindergartener again.
4. Clip those binder rings closed!

All done. I think my favorite part was brainstorming the fifty-two things I love about Boyfriend. Happily, my attempts at humor did not go unnoticed, and even though he got it almost a week late I think he liked it. (Of course I gave it to him at the end of the day, when his alternatives were express delight or sleep alone.)
One last thing: while brainstorming my reasons for love, I felt awash with warm and fuzzies. This leads me to believe that ruminating on the virtues of our loved ones, no matter what the occasion, is a great way to rejuvenate gratitude, a practice so healthy it might even compensate for all the chocolate.
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How to Make the Worst Gnocchi Ever

By on February 8, 2012 in humor, true story
Did you ever notice how many cooking blogs are out there?
There are, like, a lot.
All these millennial Renaissance multi-taskers, with their home grown tomatoes and backyard chicken eggs and do-it-yourself cheeseries, they author these incredible posts with gorgeous pictures and make it all look, if you’ll pardon the pun, easy as pie.
Cue my grandiose, ill-advised homemaking fantasies.
So I’ve been cooking a lot lately. OK, not a lot. And not cooking, really. Mostly I’ve been mixing frozen spinach with egg, flour and cheese and hoping for the best. These delusory efforts began when I found a seemingly simple recipe for spinach gnocchi. I imagined the result comme ça:


Image courtesy of The Tasteful Life. Tasteful indeed.
Mine didn’t quite turn out like that.
As a result, I can proudly offer today’s tutorial:
How to Make the Worst Gnocchi Ever
Step 1. Get a bunch of spinach and dry it out.

How does this happen? Where is my industrial-sized sink? JEEVES!

Step 2. Get a bunch of other ingredients.
You will use them to make the spinach stick to itself. They can include flour, dry bread, eggs, cheese, Elmer’s glue, whatever. You’re not going to eat it anyway.
Looking good so far. On a side note:

Visitors welcome!

Step 3. Mix the ingredients together.
Form this mixture into small, gnocchi-shaped lumps. Be sure to flour the countertop on which you work, so once you’ve ruined dinner, you have a significant mess to clean up.
Mine did not look like this.

Step 4. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
This is not a picture of boiling water. You should know how to boil water, for Godssakes.
Step 5. Carefully drop the gnocchi into the boiling water. Watch the lumps burst apart like kamakazie foodstuffs, et voila!
Enjoy the bitter taste of dissatisfaction as you wash your pot, cutting board, mixing bowl, countertop, and proceed to cry yourself to sleep.
…
…
…
But wait!
What’s that I see? That brilliant flash at the back of the fridge? Is that…could it be…

A TUBE OF PILLSBURY CRESCENT RECIPE CREATIONS® SEAMLESS DOUGH?

Thank God. OK, I’m pretty sure we can just stretch it across a pan of spinach goo and bake it. Thus our terrible, terrible gnocchi becomes…

surprisingly delicious spanikopita!
I realize this picture looks terrible and not at all delicious. Let’s try again:

OK, this is a bad picture too. Whatever. I think the moral of the story is that with a little creativity, time, effort, prepackaged dough, shredded cheese and a very forgiving stomach, you, too, can become a culinary mastermind.
Godspeed!

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Right Brain, Meet Left

By on January 31, 2012 in creative writing, quarter-life crisis, true story

It’s a gorgeous day in Charlottesville, and I’m sitting in front of the window worrying about the future. The conversation in my head goes like this:
RIGHT BRAIN: Let’s go skip in the sunshine!
LEFT BRAIN: What will that accomplish, exactly?
RB: Fun!
LB: How is that going to further your career as a writer?
RB: Sun!
LB: …
RB: Yaaaaaaaaay!
LB: No one wants to read babble about daylight. Let’s think about how you can build a name for yourself.
RB: …
LB: What if you wrote something fun and amusing? Something people would want to tell other people about? Then you could justify your existence for another day.
RB: …
LB: What?
RB: : (
LB: Come on. Careers are about working hard and proving yourself over and over and over again.
RB: : ( : (
LB: Oh, it’s not so bad. We just need to set some goals and eventually be louder and smarter and faster and more creative than everyone else on the internet.
RB: : ( : ( : (
LB: Look, we’re not going to have a pity party about it. You knew this would be hard.
RB: I want a nap.
LB: You can’t. We have things to do.
RB: : (
LB: OK, we aren’t getting anywhere. Look, maybe we just need to get the blood flowing. Move around a little bit.
RB: Can we go for a walk?
LB: Sure.
RB: And skip in the sunshine???

And we did. 

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The Grapes of Wreath

By on January 23, 2012 in design, DIY, humor, true story
Today is my sister’s birthday, so yesterday I surprised her: I left Charlottesville at the crack of dawn and drove six hours to the Dunkin Donuts where she works.

Her reaction was basically this, at which point I collapsed on the counter and had an emergency Dunkin Turbo shot directly into my veins.


Later we took a walk through my hometown and admired the wintery landscape, the lacy tree limbs and frosty porch lights and drunken Giants fans falling into the snow. Despite these simple pleasures, a thought kept tugging on the back of my mind:

TAKE DOWN YOUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, PEOPLE!

Now, I realize 95% of suburbanites follow basic human protocol and remove their sh*t by January 1st. It can be sad, taking down the pretty bows and bells and heirloom ornaments; it can be downright depressing, tossing that poor, used-up tree into the street. But if you or your loved ones have trouble letting go—or just want some festivity back in your life—Doctor Derby has your fix.


Make a wreath!


Yes, the solution is a ring of stuff hung from your front door. Nix the pine and ditch the orbs; there are a bazillion different ways you can celebrate the season—like, every season OTHER than Christmas.


Make it happy:

From blog.tiffanyzajas.com
Or hopeful:
From centsationalgirl.com
Or pretentious:
From hgtv.com
Just make it appealing to you. I would kill to mush around a neighborhood spotted with personalized dashes of color; it would help me feel like I knew my fellow townspeople.
Can’t you just imagine the difference between these people?

Person A: 

From thepaintedhive.blogspot.com

Person B:

From kk.org
Clearly A is a farmer and B is a toddler. Nice neighborhood!


Seriously, I can’t overstate how easy it is to make a wreath.  (You can also make it super-complicated, in which case you should read someone else’s blog.) Here is my three-step guide to wreathing:

                
                   1. Go to the Dollar Store and buy what appeals to you.
                   2. Go to a craft store and buy a glue gun and a foam ring. (You could also bend a wire 
                        hanger into a circle.)
                   3. Arrange your frou-frou and glue it in place. Don’t forget to attach a loop or hook to 
                         hang that baby.
That’s it! So easy, so much fun.

 I’m speaking from personal experience here. I decided to make a Valentine’s wreath last week, and look at how perfect it (I) is (am):

Bedford Falls, here we come!

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Snowflakes and Sunshine

By on January 18, 2012 in mindfulness, quarter-life crisis, true story

We’ll learn fear might not mean ‘stop’; I’ve come to believe fear usually means ‘go.’
— Frances Moore Lappé
Tuesday morning opens with snowfall.
I sit at my desk and watch little flurries salt the trees, scraggly branches reaching incredulously upward. Yesterday the air was balmy, a tropical 60 in our mountainous suburbs. Now white sweeps down like a stage-length curtain, paving the backyard with pixilated ice.
A fresh start.
Isn’t that what we expect when we vow to change our lives? We gaze onto a barren landscape and imagine a future that’s wild, invigorating and white as a page. Blood churns and fingers tingle at the thought of phantom frost.
I stare into the gathering cold and hum Bon Iver in the back of my throat. I can’t find my snowshoes; I can’t seem to mush. With every useless moment passing, I sink deeper into drifts of lassitude, soaked with muddy self-loathing. I’ve become a shifting weather pattern, confused and confusing, scattering Canadian geese to all points of the compass.
Our dog meanders into the room and sits heavily at my feet. Her brown eyes ask me to make it stop snowing.
Out there in the great big world, I know other people are complaining. They’re sucking their teeth and refueling with coffee and lamenting another day in the office. Not long ago I was one of them, anxious to flee the press and grind, propelled by my conviction that I would suffocate without new air. Now I envy their routine, certain endings to certain days, and fear the vastness stretched before me.
Maybe this is the truth of change, the thing our fallible minds reject. Excitement is a cresting wave, the rush of cumulus toward the heart of the storm. All this energy, this certainty and power, serves to push us just so far. We ride high enough the see the shore, the sunshine above the clouds; then we are unceremoniously dumped to earth, falling like snowflakes or sea foam toward the earth.
The aftermath crushes. We must learn to breathe again.
Now we stand up shakily, slowly. The tundra looks different from here; the cold and damp are real. We lack much of the proper training, and we have needy dogs in tow. It’s a long hike to our dreamed-of fields.
But even the fearful body remembers that once we rode high as kings, alight like stars burning across the sky. Once in those highest, clearest moments, we saw where our lives were waiting.
I sit at my desk and open my computer. Outside, bits of white fall more thickly. Then something heavenward shifts, parting the pockets of gray, and the air is pierced by golden angles, shafts of smoking light. In the sudden illumination, I find my blank page and lift my fingers to the keys. I will write of all these changes, the lift and the crash and halcyon dreams. I will venture forward and carry my fear, leaving footfalls on the face of the world, wearing skin brightened by snowflakes and sunshine.

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I Need to Stop Having Conversations With My Dog

By on January 11, 2012 in true story

I didn’t make any resolutions this year. Sure, I want to finish my novel and post to my blog every day and become a better cook and make new friends and meet local artists and get involved with volunteering and start freelancing, but I didn’t “resolve” to do any of those things. If I had, my head would have exploded.

Instead, I opted for the Plug-and-Chug-to-Git-‘Er-Dun Method. Like, just do something every day or whatever.

Imagine my chagrin when I realized this wasn’t working. For the 11th day this month, it’s 3PM and I still haven’t written a lick. Didn’t I quit my job to write, like, every day? Didn’t I vow to get on some sort of schedule so that I could accomplish work-y things like writing AND submitting said writing to contests? But here it is, 3PM , and I still haven’t written anything. Seriously, how did this happen?

::slap::

Haha, sorry Brain. You’re right; I know exactly how I got here. Allow me to recount in excruciating detail how “this” happens:

7:30AM: Wake up.

7:35AM: Iron Boyfriend’s work shirt because you promised to do so for three days running and now he actually needs it. Clumsy with the weight of so much domesticity, you take approximately half an hour to press six buttonholes.

8:05AM: Start a pot of coffee. When Boyfriend appears downstairs—already fully clothed—hand him a travel mug.

8:10AM: Wave goodbye to Boyfriend as he skips into the world of professional productivity. Fold the ironing board, hang up his shirt, and shake your head.

8:10:30AM: Suffer the first many mournful gazes from the dog.

8:11AM: Swap hobo sweatshirt for gym clothes.

8:20AM: Brush teeth. (Whoops.)

8:25AM: Read a fiction story in a three-month-old Washington Post Magazine. Because, you know, you’ve earned a break.

8:40AM: Face another surge of accusatory pet-eyes, feel the wash of misery suck your feet out from under you and succumb to the strength of your animal’s emotions. In other words, grab the leash and a bunch of poop bags because you no longer control your own life.

8:55AM: Realize that a) Dog is on a Mission to Point at Squirrels, not necessarily answer Calls of Nature; b) it is beginning to rain; and c) your gym class starts in fifteen minutes.

9:00AM: Suck wind while chasing Dog back up the hill to the house. Usher Dog back inside while panting heavily; hand her a treat to compensate for your imminent absence. This does not prevent a reproachful glare.

9:15AM: Pound away at your stationary bike. From beneath a blanket of sweat, confirm your self-declared truism: the perkier the instructor, the more psychotic the gym class.

10:20AM: Stagger out of the spin room and swear you’ll never eat another piece of junk again. Angle for the showers (assuming you can still walk).

11AM: Arrive home showered, polished, and primed for another heavy dose of guilt.

11:01AM: Eat a cookie.

11:05AM: Take Dog for a real walk this time. Get squawked at by some chickens in a driveway.

11:20AM: While passing the gas station, some dude holding a brown-bagged forty starts yelling and waving his free hand. He asks if you are trying to kill your dog by walking past cars. Sagely, you refrain from throwing a bag of poop at him.

11:45AM: Boyfriend calls to make lunch date. You offer to cook like the fool that you are.

12:30AM: You decide to make chili: simple recipe, ingredients on-hand, the perfect antidote on a day of drizzle and misery. Miraculously, chopping onions and opening cans only takes you 45 minutes.

1PM: Boyfriend comes home and you both eat a surprisingly delicious lunch. Victory!

1:45PM: After noticing a tick and some fleas (AUGH) on Dog, Boyfriend applies some flea-and-tick medicine to her coat. Pavlov here has trained your dog to associate Frontline with a long walk. She gives him big sad puppy eyes as he puts on his coat; when the door swings shut, she turns them on you.

2PM: Donning a hat and mittens this time, you schlep back into the cold. Dog vaults down the hill with glee and you scuffle through the rain, calves burning, in an attempt to keep up.

2:30PM: Wet and tired, you collapse into a chair so you can keep an eye on Dog and make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish, like lick her medicine or demonstrate affection. She climbs onto her bed, curls into a ball and sneaks a look in your direction. Gratitude shines in her wet doggy visage. (Or maybe she wants a treat. Let’s not go there.)

2:33PM: You finally turn on your laptop and spend a very necessary half-hour trolling other people’s blogs. You laugh and laugh, delighting in the wit and frivolity of this bizarre universe before resolving that you, too, must be a part of it.

So here we are. It’s now nearly 6PM. Why? Because I took a break to Google the new Britney Spears song? 

Actually, Self, I do know why: time flies when I write for this blog. It’s how I know I’m doing the right thing, a thing I will never regret. The minutes aren’t boring; they don’t even register. I dive into words and emerge from the deep with no sense of loss, no confusion or argument. I am refreshed, excited, a brave new girl. Exactly the person I resolved to be.

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The Novel Project: 50,000 WORDS!

By on December 1, 2011 in creative writing, mindfulness, true story

This is totally going on my sidebar.
November 30th, Day of Reckoning.
When I pulled up to Writer House last night, I clicked into warrior mode. Like a samurai poised for battle, I wore black; like Rocky, Eye of the Tiger played in my head. I kicked open the front door and laid fierce claim to a desk chair and table, arming myself with my 2009 Mac WhiteBook and four tracks of Death Cab for Cutie.
I was so ready to type my last 1700 words. At that point, 2K felt like child’s play, easier to destroy than a box of double-chocolate Milanos labeled ‘Fair Game’. Over the course of this month, I learned that it really ain’t that hard to churn out epic word counts, provided you have the pressure of the internet and no day job to distract you. I was gonna crush it.
Inside, the enthusiasm was contagious, verbosity flooding the House like the scent of fresh Papa John’s. Incidentally, the kitchen was full of pizza, but I, not to be deterred, stuck to my tried-and-true regimen of Coke and Cheez-balls. Settling back in my thinly-padded chair, I began pounding at the keyboard.
The hour flew by. I’d finished a monster battle scene the day before, and now the living was easy; in moments of distress, I simply employed the handy ‘glib dialogue’ technique. Plot propulsion, here we come!
As I wrote I knew I was drawing toward the end. My characters laughed, my characters cried. My characters taunted me with the fact that even though I’d written 1/20th of a million words, they still had so much more to say. Before I knew it, the threshold was crossed, and a beam of brilliant light shot down through the ceiling as the crowd burst into cheers.
So thank you, thank you, and let me just say that I was so impressed by everyone else who did this project. From apartment foreclosures to hospital trips to Thanksgiving dinners, these writers endured almost everything during their 30 days. Two people finished 50K by November 15th, and someone wrote their entire word count in just 11 days. I even heard the story of a stay-at-home mom who, despite the presence of small, presumably screaming tots, wrote 100,000 words in our allotted time.
Whaaaaaaaaaat.
Despite the absence of insurmountable roadblocks in my path to verbose glory, I am proud of my 50,000 words. (Or if you want to Times New Roman and double-space and it, 171 pages!!) Way back in April, when I took a novel writing course at NYU, I vowed to finish a draft of my book by the end of 2011. A very busy spring, summer and fall had my unspoken goal looking less and less attainable, but now I see how truly possible it is.
I might not be finished with my story yet, but this experience allowed me to see that I can do anything if I just stick with it. It gives me hope, it renews my faith, and it reminds me, as I hope it can remind you, that no matter what we do or where we are, any moment can be the one to start something big.
So 30 days later, the Novel Project continues. I’ll keep you posted from time to time, but allow me to stress, for both you and for me: the best is yet to come.
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The Novel Project: Day 29

By on November 29, 2011 in creative writing, true story

Twilight falls outside my window, no doubt trying to get a peek of the next great American novel.
Greetings, earthlings! It’s November 29th, or Day (you guessed it!) 29 of National Novel Writing Month. Writers all over the world have recovered from Thanksgiving (or weekend) hangovers and are sprinting all-out to hit the 50,000-word mark by 11:59PM tomorrow.
I am oh-so-proud to say that I played some serious catch-up in over the last week. I wrote thousands words on my birthday, aided in large part by epic rainfall, a banker’s dozen donuts, and so much caffeine I couldn’t sleep until 3AM. I maintained a mildly acceptable word count during my holiday visit to NJ; this credit must go to the dog, whose fearful presence in the house caused my cat to flee the county, thereby depriving me of hours upon wordless hours of cuddling. As we round the final bend in this crazy race, I hover at just over 48,000 words. The rest will come tomorrow!
Lest my current success fool you, I’d like to explain that it’s not all cookie consumption and musing brilliance. NaNoWriMo, the group that manages this annual event, provides some pretty excellent tools to keep motivation high. These include motivational essays, funny videos, access to a thousands-wide database of participants, and two resources that I particularly enjoy:
Word Sprints. These challenges are issued by volunteers who use a Twitter account to set the start time and duration to anyone following; for example, you might log in at 5:26 and see that a word sprint will start at :30 and last for :20 minutes. Four minutes later, the imaginary gun goes off (because we do know how to use our imaginations, believe it or not), and for 20 minutes, everybody writes like crazy. Then you can share the number of words you’ve written, get a coffee, cry into your cereal, or whatever practice prepares you for your next sprint. I can attribute 50% of my novel to these sprints. (And yes, the writing may be garbage, but I have sworn not to edit or re-read until the dust settles on this whole psychotic undertaking.)
My NaNoWriMo. This is a personal profile page on which you describe yourself, your interests, genre, synopsis and excerpt. You can also upload a picture and find writing buddies, and honestly if online dating profiles were half this interesting I might have actually enjoyed that brief depressing foray into Match.com. Anywho, my favorite part of the site is where we get to check our stats—update word counts, track progress, etc. etc. Here is a picture of my stats so you can see how truly inconsistent I am. It’s not you, blogosphere, it’s definitely me.
So now you know the dirty truth: it doesn’t take a wizard to write a novel in 30 days. It takes a lot of encouragement, time and commitment, but mostly the excitement of knowing you can accomplish something you once thought was impossible. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow, when the moment know of truth is at hand.
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