Clanking of Crystal

A friend--who had very good fortune in her professional life in 2011--recently told me that in 2012, we would switch: In 2012, she would get her personal life on the upswing, and I would get my life in order professionally, in terms of jobs and careers.

What's important about this switch-off isn't that I'll get out of my dead-end job(s). It isn't that my hopes for 2012 are that I only have to work one job to pay my bills. What's important isn't that in 2012, I will start on the path toward my future career.

What's important is that in 2011, despite a graduate program that didn't want me to acquire a degree, despite two bratty children who love Dolce & Gabbana and refer to the homeless as "poor," despite answering phones and teaching at ITT Tech, of all places, and working online as a tutor for a corporation not necessarily invested in education, I had a wonderful year.

I graduated, for one thing. I learned to love New Hampshire, and even learned to miss it once I was gone. I traveled three thousand miles with my best friend and cat, stopping in gas stations & parks to eat and laugh and take pictures. I moved home, to a place that even though it's strange--even though I don't quite feel comfortable just yet--is the place I was born, the place I will always come home to. I moved home to my Nest, to work with Ari and see Ardith and live with Kili. 2011 brought me closer to my niece and nephews and brought me two new nephews. And at the risk of sappiness okay everything about this whole post is sappy, but I get to spend every day with Patrick, who in the words of my oldest nephew, is great because "he's nice and wears skinny jeans."

In short, I'm happier than I've ever been, and I'm about to be even happier because I think it's about time to open some champagne. Happy New Year!

The Graduate

So I got my diploma in the mail. My student loans have gone into repayment. I also started reading a book that I wasn't assigned, that didn't feel like a chore to read.

These things may or may not be related.

Of course I did not pick up a book when my diploma arrived, in a stiff cardboard envelope forwarded from my apartment in Dover, NH. It didn't occur to me to think, "finally, some closure. Now I can pursue intellectualism, free from the restrictions of academia." But it seems fitting that, yes, finally it is secure. It is real. I have a master's degree and now I am reading a book. And, of course, if we cannot force symbolism and meaning onto our lives through blogs, where else can we do it?

I haven't wanted to read in a long while. Since moving to Seattle--which coincided nearly exactly with my the completion of my thesis, of academic reading--I have read three books, total. The first was a collection of Hemingway short stories, called In Our Time. I tried reading it aloud to Kili during our roadtrip, but we got depressed on the first page and decided Hemingway was a buzzkill. I'm sure he could throw a party like no other, but man he was a buzzkill. I labored over the thin book for weeks and weeks, stretching into two months or at least one--far too long, at any rate, for a ninety page book.

In the past month and a half, I have read two collections of David Sedaris stories, Naked & Holidays on Ice. I've read most of the latter before, and I love David Sedaris. He's a fast, easy, fun read. Yet it took me six weeks to finish his stories. Much of my excuse for not reading lies in the fact that for the entire fall, I was working three jobs and applying to graduate programs. Free time consisted of more work, in various formats.

My mind was tired, too, from the dead jobs and from working hard for two years. But I can't spend my entire post-graduate degree life collapsing on the couch after a thirteen hour day and watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding episodes.

Patrick's mother bought me a book for Christmas called All Over But the Shouting, by an Alabama native named Rick Bragg. It's his memoir, of a life lived in rural, dirt-poor Alabama, with an abusive & drunk father, and a mother who made do. I've read the prologue and two chapters only so far and it is beautiful and it is heart-breaking and I know, I just know, I'm going to be so sad. So, so sad. But I'm reading, and that, at least, feels wonderful.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Does anyone remember this book? It was a children's book (and, according to Wikipedia, a "modern fairytale") about a boy who receives a magic tollbooth, which, when driven through, transports him to a magical land called The Kingdom of Wisdom.

That is much more fun than real tollbooths.

Tolling began today, after many months of false starts and mishaps, on the 520 bridge that connects Seattle and Bellevue. If there's one thing that didn't change throughout my two years in New Hampshire--and many things did, including my fundamental feelings for the state itself--it's my hatred for tolls.

Raise the taxes! Charge more for gas! But for heaven's sake, don't take my seventy-five cents every time I need to drive south on Highway 16. Who just has 75 cents lying around regularly?

What's even worse about the toll over the 520 bridge is that it is $3.50. Each way. The fact of the matter is, it is now going to cost me $140 a month to drive to work, not including the gas I pay for regularly (and this, coming the same month that my hefty student loans go into repayment). The fact of the matter is, this doesn't affect the wealthy, the people who can afford spontaneous expenses, the people who won't effectively be surrendering over a day's pay in order to drive to work. It affects people like me, who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have room in their budget for an added $140 every month. It affects the people who can't afford to live close their jobs, who couldn't find jobs close enough to their homes, the people who sometimes don't go out for a much needed drink because tomorrow is payday, and not today.

I cross 520 every day, twice. That is seven dollars a day, just to make it to work and back home again. I found a job in Bellevue, not because I wanted to. Not because I love driving to work. Were the bus system more user-friendly, if I did not have to wake up at 5:00 am in order to take three buses and still have to walk over a mile to work, I wouldn't be driving. From WSDOT to me, this holiday season: yet another reason to get out of Bellevue.

Seasonally Affected Native

As soon as the rains came, I knew what to get Patrick for Christmas. Before the rains came, I knew, actually. Had suspicions. Ideas. But when the rains came, and Patrick got headaches and got grumpy and sometimes took two showers a day to warm up, I knew. He says it's not so much the rain as it is the grey, and he's probably right about that. It actually rains more in Huntsville, AL than it does in Seattle, but the lack of sunlight is what really gets him. The interminable grey, stretching from east to west and down into the water, too, so you can't always tell where the sky ends and the sea begins.

I bought him a SAD lamp. More specifically, a HappyLight3000 or something like that. I made him open it at 3 am the night we got back from Alabama, because the forecast was grey skies and showers from now until May.

I've lived in Washington most of my life. I was born here, moved to Las Vegas for a few years, then returned east of the mountains for a few years. At ten, I moved to Woodinville, where I stayed until moving to even drearier Bellingham. But I loved it. I still do. I'm from here, a Pacific Northwesterner through and through, though I cut my teeth on the traffic in Boston and you can tell by the way I change lanes and merge onto freeways without fear.

But I haven't lived here for three years now. Since moving to France, the longest time I had spent in Seattle was around five weeks, in the middle of the dead & cold New Hampshire winter my first year in graduate school. I lived one winter in southern France, where I swam in the Mediterranean in October & early November, and spent most days where the mistral wasn't blowing outdoors in the sun. And though the winters in New Hampshire were rough, the cold was bitter and the snow piled up in great banks alongside the roads, more than two thirds of the year is sunny in New England--beautiful & glaring & cold, but the sun shines nonetheless.

In short, I suppose I've lost my thick skin. I go to work in the dark and I get off work and it's dark and if I see the sun daylight at all it's on the weekends, but then only if it's not dark and cloudy, as it usually is. And it's taking its toll.

I don't know about this winter. I know the days are getting longer and soon when I drive home from work the sun won't set until I walk inside. But I might be fighting with Patrick for a position in front of the SAD lamp before too long.

History Lesson

I spent yesterday driving north from Alabama to Nashville with Patrick and his parents, visiting the places his father's family lived. We passed old log tenant homes, plantation houses, and slave-built stone walls.

There is so much history there.


On Christmas Day, Patrick's granddad came to spend the afternoon with us, telling stories from his childhood in Lynnville. We heard about someone's dog peeing on the lettuce, left outside in the shade so it would not wilt in the southern sun, and about the mayor--who was also the barber--who scolded Grandaddy Jim for taking the hill into town too fast. In the morning before we left, we had Mother Linda's--Patrick's great-grandmother's--biscuits, and headed north into Tennessee.

In 1918, Patrick's great-great grandfather died during the flu epidemic, leaving behind his wife, nine children, and an unfinished house in Lynnville, TN. Mama Brown raised her children, finished the house, and ran the family farm until her death, becoming the embodiment of a Southern matriarch. One thing that separates the south from my homeland is the connection that people have to their families, to their heritage, and to their histories. Patrick and his family have been to these old family homes, despite the fact that they are no longer in the family. The new owners are kind people, caring and respectful that others have a history on their land. The owner of Mama Brown's house restored it, furnishing it with beautiful antiques and quilts, retaining the original flooring and doors and architecture. He was sick yesterday, but he drove out to let us in to his house, so that Patrick's father could show us around, explaining where Mama Brown died, where his Uncle Bobby convalesced from tuberculosis, where the large family gathered around their piano to sing in the evenings together. When a house leaves your family in the west, it leaves your family. In Patrick's south, these places become places to share.

We ate lunch at Soda Pop Junction, where Patrick's great-uncle served as a soda jerk years and years ago, and had Tennessee's Number 1 burger, according to the Food Network and the Travel Channel and me.

Before leaving Lynnville, we went to the town cemetery, where generations of Browns & Weatherlys are buried. Like New England, there are flowers on nearly every grave. Patrick said that for the people in the south, the dead are just as much--if not more--part of the family as the living. Visiting gravesites isn't really a holiday affair in Alabama. The Brown & Weatherly gravestones are grouped together, and the large Brown stone lists name after name, child after child--most of whom lived to around a hundred years old, with the exception of one little girl who died at age three. The current owner of Mama Brown's house said that his daughter, when they lived there years ago, had a young friend who was about 3, who they couldn't see. His wife refuses to stay at the house anymore, because she wakes up to piano music and singing. When he told this to Alan, Carla, and Granddaddy Jim, he didn't know that Mama Brown and her children would sing together in the evenings in the olden days.

I know there is history here, too, in Seattle. Native history, and logging history. Fishermen and pioneers. History that is no less interesting and no less valuable or storied than the history in the south. But there's something enthralling about the south, about the family ties and sense of community. There's something about driving through somewhere that you know was built on slave labor, driving through a place that you know has struggled to grow and move past that history without forgetting, driving through a place like Lynnville, TN, where--despite its municipal neighbor of Pulaski, TN being the place the KKK was born--Patrick's granddad said he never once heard the n-word, in all his life there.

Don't go to Denver

Plane delayed in Denver. Overpriced sandwich with two and half times too much meat. I am quite possibly the unluckiest traveler of all. Tomorrow, bright and early at 7:45 am--though I will get in after midnight and not be home until around 1:30 or 2:00--I will spend the day blogging about Patrick's father's family homes in east Tennessee.

Christmas Service

Between yesterday and today, I have spent more time in church than I have in the past seven years. But even one minute is more than zero, so I suppose that's something. Patrick's father's service this morning was about the varying places along what he called everyone's faith journey, about right and mindful living year-round, instead of only during a specific season of giving and love. Every day should be about giving and love, about living rightly and mindfully. Which, even without stopping to think deeply or profoundly about it, is nothing to sneer at, atheist or agnostic or no.

During the offering, a banjo player and a singer performed "Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head," and a woman told me she just loved my style (I love church.).

Tomorrow, we'll drive north to Lynnville, TN, where Patrick's grandaddy is from, to visit places like "Soda Pop Junction" and the Brown family farm. I am full, and happy, and lucky, and about to have another Martha Washington ball. Happy Christmas!

A (Business) Proposal

Last winter, when I visited Tennessee, I went to an antique shop and noticed how cheap and awesome everything was. There were mink stoles for $45, beautiful crystal for pittance, and well-built, stylish shoes from the 60s in mint condition. I realized that the antique, vintage, and thrift stores in places like Tennessee are not--as they are in Seattle, or Boston--picked over and over-priced. My assumption that Alabama's antique shops would hold true to this statement as well was correct; this afternoon Patrick and I stopped at a huge antique mall in Madison to browse the old kitchen items and beaded dresses. We ended up doing some last minute Christmas shopping, and spent a good hour and a half inside, before checking out with two gay men who once befriended Patrick at a bar.

There are no hipsters in Madison, Alabama, and there were none in Kingsport, Tennessee, either. No one interested in purchasing old school suitcases and styling them in the quaint DIY wedding decor. No one interested in having an old typewriter in the corner, to, you know, bang out some poetry now and then. No one searching endlessly for that particular Chanel jacket with the pearl buttons, either. And this is what I love about these sorts of stores, anyway, is searching through what people have discarded, what no one seems to want, and finding something that I can love. A tiny cast iron pan. Costume jewelry rings made from old clip-on earrings. A ceramic juicer. White lace gloves.

In a particularly bountiful "shop" in the antique mall--which Patrick described as my perfect ten square feet of space--I found fur collars and coats, beautiful vintage dresses and petticoats, well-made shoes and handbags. I think one of the fur coats, real fur, was pricey--at $45. I told Patrick, flipping through beads and chiffon and tulle, that I should buy a bunch of vintage clothes and shoes and jewelry in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and ship it back to Seattle, where I could make a killing up-selling it to the hipsters on Capitol Hill, Fremont, Ballard, and the rich women on Queen Anne. A woman looking through the dresses with me chuckled, saying in her remarkable Alabama accent, that there weren't many hipsters around her, and that was a pretty good idea. I think I could get at least $90 for that fur coat, at any rate.

Stars Are Definitely Still Falling on Alabama

Today, Patrick's father took us on a drive around Madison and into the surrounding fields, to show me what a cotton field looks like. Most of the cotton has been harvested, but there were a few stalks in the wet fields still standing, dry brown sticks with tufts of white stuck to the tops. We passed an empty lot, which Alan said used to be a cotton field. They're building houses there in the new year, but for now, the ground is torn up, and the mud is red, red and wet and clay earth that must be why crops like cotton and tobacco grow so well down here.

I am further south than I've ever been.

We drove out to Guntersville, AL for dinner tonight, to a restaurant on a lakeshore that serves the "Riverboat Special," a plate of fried catfish, fries, and hush puppies, with a side of cornbread, the best coleslaw I've ever had, pickled onions, mustard greens, and sweet tea. There is so much more food to eat.

I've seen more churches in the small town of Madison--smaller by far than Bellingham--than there probably are in all of Whatcom & Skagit counties combined. Tomorrow, I will go to Christmas Eve service at Patrick's father's church, and sing hymns and light candles--something I am not sure if I've done since I was a child living in small town Eastern Washington.

Tomorrow, I will go buy a present with Patrick for his giant beagle named Barney, a family tradition that I've heard about for two years. Every year, Patrick buys Barney a Christmas present, a toy or a bone or a ball. He wraps it, puts it under the tree, and somehow Barney always knows, every year, which present is his, and noses it and worries it and paws it until Christmas morning. Barney loves Christmas.

Way Down South in Dixie

In a few short hours, I'm flying east, yet again, though this time a little southerly (Weatherly? Oh my, what a hilarious joke!), to Alabama. I'm spending Christmas with Patrick's family in Madison, just outside of Huntsville. For those of everyone of you unfamiliar with Alabama's geography, that's in the northern part of the state, just a little south of Nashville, TN. I'm going to eat the best catfish in the world, evidently, go to church twice to hear Patrick's father preach (and worry that I don't know how to dress for Sunday Service), pet a beagle named Barney that I've heard so much about, and hear lots of lovely accents. Doesn't that sound nice?

Birth day time story

Meet Trenton. He's one of my newest nephews and he is five days old. His brother was a little sleepier, so I didn't get any pictures of him, but you can believe he is just as cute (they are twins, after all). Kyler is the little one, at 3 lbs. 13 oz. when I visited tonight after work, and Trenton is the chunky monkey at 4 lbs. 5 oz. I told April that Kyler weighs less than I eat in a day. Some days, I'm not exaggerating.

There's been a lot of birth around me lately. A lot of young things, small and squirmy and unable to survive on their own. In a matter of six days, three new lives have come into my own. I also spent a good amount of time with a 2 year old and a baby who is less than a year. They are all so tiny and helpless and were pushed into this world forcefully and violently, and they enter wet and crying.

I am so afraid of them. Not--as many are--of babies themselves. I have been around babies for nearly my whole life, it seems. Loved them, and rocked them, changed them. They all seem to think that I am some sort of mattress, flopping their arms and legs over my sides, sprawled out, sleeping, mouths open, on my chest. And children, too, they love me. Eye me in the grocery store, curls and dimples, and see something of themselves, I suppose. Smiles, waves, shy eyes for a strange girl. I am not afraid of these kids, the ones of other people, but my own.

I know I will have children. Not for many years, but before one more decade is up (for health and safety and to lower risks). They will come out screaming and covered in my body and I will love them--of course I will love them.

I listen to my sisters talk of being mothers; I listen to Alyssa, such a new mom, too. I read this story and I cry and I ache and I shake in fear and awe of those moments, those hours, and I am more afraid than I ever have been before to be a mother.

Not just for the pain of labor--but because I have a suspicion that that pain doesn't go away. It doesn't vanish when the mother heals, but changes and morphs into a lifetime of instinct and knee-jerk reflexes of love & pain & worry & fear. No one ever teaches you how to raise a child lovingly, properly, how to turn it into a human being. Perhaps someone taught you, but I don't know how.

The point of having a child is to show it all of the most amazing things in this world. The point of having a child is so that it can become a better person than you. The point of having a child is so that this world--so full of amazing things--can be full of better people, too. These are the things I know.

Chicken Pot Pie for the Soul

When we were in college, Kili and I spent the last year in quite a few classes together, as we were both completing not only our English degrees, but our TESOL certifications together as well. The last quarter was a doozy. We were in an Oscar Wilde author study, which we both agree was one of the most difficult and one of the most influential classes we've ever taken. We also had to create an entire unit plan for an ESL class in a matter of weeks--including each lesson, each activity, each rubric, and profiles of each student you were going to pass and fail (okay not really...).

As I recall, we spent a good two weeks spread out over my kitchen table, papers and computers and a requisite glass of wine everywhere. See? What I remember most from those few weeks was the one night that I took a step back and stopped for a few hours. Kili kept typing away, but I moved into the kitchen, chopped some onion and carrots and potatoes and celery, rolled out some dough, and made a few chicken pot pies.

That pie saved our lives. I think we subsisted on it and Wilde witticisms for days on end, and made it out in mid-June sun-starved but full.

I pride myself on my pot pies, but I haven't been able to make one that good--before or since. I made another one last night, for Kili, Ari, Brendan, & I, and even though we each went back for seconds, it lacked that life-saving or changing factor. More butter, maybe?

Listing

Confession: I think I've used this title before.

Second Confession: It is still one hundred per cent applicable.

Post: It is no secret that I love to make lists. But this time, I'm not making a list, and instead just telling you about lists. Generally, I'm a paper & pen kind of girl. I love my moleskin planner more than a Cap Hill hipster loves his black-rimmed glasses, and I wouldn't even consider purchasing a handbag that wasn't big enough for both it and at least two pens, unless it were made of glitter & sequins.

But I spend at least forty hours a week in front of a computer screen, trolling the endless fashion & kitchen blogs for ideas, inspiration, and a cure for the ever-present boredom that comes with reception. I've got a pretty good memory, but because I'm spending so much time on the internet, I just can't keep track of every fish I want to fry, every bow I want to tie, or every way to braise a brussel sprout. So I've started a few Google Docs, to try to start an archive of the crafts I want to do and the meals I want to make. I trust that I can keep coming up with my own outfit ideas, so I haven't started bookmarking individual outfit posts (But how will I style that new sccaaaarrrffff???) yet, but it is getting a little laborious to load each of my many fashion blogs every morning when I get to work. I may give Bloglovin a try soon.

I find a lot of crap on the internet. A lot of bloggers who are writing about topics only their friends will be interested in (guilty? potentially), a lot of bloggers whose DIY craft tutorials include printing off small-sized photos & giving them as gifts, a lot of bloggers whose families must hate dinnertime every single night.

What's relieving, though, is that there are an awful lot of interesting, thoughtful, creative people on the internet, too--and it's very, very easy to tell the difference between the two. I can usually tell by the end of the first post if I'm going to enjoy someone's blog. If I make it past the first page, chances are you'll find me obsessively reading through the blogger's archive back into 2009, eyes bloodshot, hours later. So now, when I've got a vegetable drawer full of leeks, some leftover feta, and a cupboard full of beans, I can pull up my Bookmarked Recipes page and see this, instead of a ragtag assembly of unrelated ingredients and the whole wide Internet at my fingertips.

All I Have to Do is Dream

I have teeth dreams. I've heard and read that this is not uncommon--Kili has them, and several of my other friends do, too. Their commonplaceness (commonplacity?) does nothing to make them any less disturbing, however. I have had my teeth crumble to pieces and fall out bit by bit while talking. I have picked slivers of tooth out of my tongue and cheeks, yanking pieces out of my gums. I have been chewing gum, and had it get stuck up around all of my teeth. When I pulled the gum out, my teeth came with it. Most recently, Patrick slapped my face, causing me to lose seven teeth on both sides of my mouth. This is laughable for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that I often wake up from bad dreams in a foul mood, angry at whoever I fought with in my sub-conscious. (Patrick bought me an eggnog latte that morning after breakfast...)

Someone told me once that dreams about your teeth falling out (or crumbling out, or slivering out) are about feeling a lack of control in your life, which wouldn't surprise me in the least. When I do have teeth dreams, now, I try to remember to take a step back, put some Bailey's in my morning coffee, vacuum my carpet, and do some art. Not because I need to clean for company, or because Christmas is coming & my crafts aren't done, but because it's something I want to do.

Skipping Time

I missed yesterday's post because babies keep popping out everywhere! Congratulations to my sister April and her partner Andie, on their lovely, teensie twin boys. At 4 lbs 1 oz and 4 lbs 8 oz, they won't fit into the onesies I'm making for them for a good...two months? At least you'll be ready then. They are going to be wonderful moms, and I'm going to continue to be a wonderful auntie.

I'm feeling a little like this commercial. Anyone? Anyone? BABIES EVERYWHERE.

Mixed Media

A few weeks ago, a co-worker stopped by my desk and mentioned that he had seen a news story about circumventing illiteracy in the Egyptian elections through pictographs. The content of our conversation, however, is beside the point. What struck me about that conversation was that he began by saying, "I was watching the news last night--I won't say what channel because it will betray my political beliefs--and..."

What I found to be so astounding about this statement, so utterly confusing and absurd, was the fact that it was said unabashedly, with no hesitation or shame or even consideration for any implications such a statement may have.

I understand that media bias--liberal or conservative or Ron Paul--is unavoidable. But shouldn't our goal as responsible humans be to seek out information, not to immerse ourselves in biases that we admit freely and that do nothing to shake up or question or dispel?

Essentially, what my co-worker's conversation-starter amounted to was an admission that he knows his news aligns perfectly with his political beliefs and he likes it that way. No questions asked. No wonder America is falling apart at its seams.

Bangers & (S)Mash

This was Sunday night's dinner. Growing up, we didn't really have a "Sunday night dinner" tradition. We mostly just had dinner together every single night. All seven of us. My parents usually sat on the couch, when it wasn't the holidays & the leaf wasn't in the table, and my four siblings and I sat at the round kitchen table in our open concept one room living room/kitchen. One of us usually sat on the butter churner, which we used for a stool.

Kili's family, when she was in high school, had a standing & open invite for Sunday night dinner at their house. Her mother is an excellent cook, and would make meals for their family and whoever else wanted to show up.

Cooking for both of our families has never been a special occasion thing--though it really was only once a year that we would make peanut butter balls & fudge--and despite my multiple jobs and Kili's job & school schedule, it is still a mostly every day thing for us, too.

On Sunday night, I made a modern version of bangers & mash, which is usually served with onions, if I'm not mistaken, Heather? Halp? We had some purple potatoes, onions, and andouille chicken sausage. I baked the potatoes and instead of putting in the work & butter to make mashed potatoes, I just smashed them down onto the plate. (Okay, I put butter on them, anyway.)

The onions were adapted from French Food at Home chef Laura Calder, and are slow-baked, over the course of about two hours. Just slice off the bottom, poke some holes in the tops, and put them right in the oven, skin & all. Serve with an egg-based vinaigrette--we substituted lemon thyme and added extra garlic. They come out soft and warm and delicious and I love them.

If you're lucky, your roommate is also the best salad dressing maker in the whole world, and you'll have a bottle of chianti in your teacart.

The Proper Preposition is "b(u)y" not "on": Accidental Sustainability

Accidentally or not, I am buying almost entirely local & small-business this Christmas. Two gifts I purchased online, from larger retailers--one, admittedly, that I could have probably found in a local shop somewhere in Seattle, hand-crafted by artisans, forged by Dave Matthews and christened by John Richards of KEXP fame. Or something. But the other, from Amazon, is not the kind of thing that can be pulled from the earth in Seattle. Mum's the word on that one until December 26th.

But for the most part, I am purchasing my gifts at small stores, local businesses, and from vintage & hand-made shops on Etsy. Two of the gifts are used (although I think the word in polite company may be vintage), most are hand-made and/or upcycled, and at least two are food items from local, um, foodmakers.

I'm not bragging. Every knows I'm the most modest person of all time. No one is ever more modest or humble than me. I mean, my modesty knows no bounds, really. What I am saying is that this is so easy! And so fun! I encourage all seven of you readers (I said I was modest, didn't I?) to try to purchase gifts from places other than Best Buy or Target, or any of the other companies that don't really need your money. Also, look at these baby shoes:
Who wouldn't want a pair of vintage white baby shoes?

What's the opposite of progress

Today, at work, I cut out thirty paper snowflakes, and pinched a nerve in my thumb. I only cried on the phone twice! Once was a man who was very upset with me because I could not provide him with the name of an insurance agent with whom he could get his contracting business bonded. I think, somehow, this place is not for me. Tomorrow, my goal is fifty snowflakes!

Here Comes the Sun

On Friday--a particularly sunny day--I went out to lunch with Ari and Kili. I realized, when I put on the pair of spare sunglasses in Ari's car, that it had been weeks and weeks since I had seen the sun during a weekday. Generally, I wake up and drive to work before the sun rises, and it is setting as I leave in the afternoon. I spend my lunch hour indoors, both because it is too far to drive anywhere regularly and because the games of Quiddler are literally the highlight of the 40 hours I spend in that building every week. Most weekends, of course (because we live in Seattle) are overcast or raining, but the rare sunny Saturday I do try to spend outdoors as much as possible, despite the chillier temperatures. For the most part, though, I don't see the sun. It's shady back in my office park, and the trees are pretty and green but tend to block the sunlight.

But Friday, Friday was beautiful. The sun was bright and it was on my face and I know all too well not to take a dose of vitamin D for granted.

A Little Less Vitriol

Two of my lovely friends had their first child early this morning. Weighing in at just a shade above five pounds, he is the littlest living thing that I love right now. Isn't that neat? I can't at to get rid of this cold so I can go stare into his little cloudy eyes

Feminism Failing

I highly suggest you watch this video. This is a trailer for Jessica Valenti's film The Purity Myth, which is adapted from her book on the subject. Valenti is described as a "feminist blogger" in the snippet accompanying this trailer.

I grew up in the Northshore School District, a place where--I am learning more and more--we had excellent sex education, education that was open and honest and informative and important. But the more that I talk to Kili (who went to private school), and Patrick (who grew up smack inside in the Bible Belt, and even friends of mine who went to public schools around the country, the more I realize that my experience was an exception, and nowhere even near the norm.

There is nothing wrong with choosing to wait to have sex until marriage. There is something wrong with equating women who do choose to have sex before marriage with the morally corrupt, with the impure. There is something wrong with refusing to educate individuals who are interested in safe, healthy sexual relationships. There is something wrong with ingraining so deeply in a woman that marriage is a sacred union, that sex is wrong outside of marriage, that she stays with an abusive and disloyal husband. There is something wrong with warping our understandings of sexuality so far that adults who do finally get married and have sex are unable to have healthy and pleasurable sexual relationships because they've been taught "sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad." This is scary. These are things that we--women, men, people, humans--need to know about, to be happy to know about, and to be happy with.

An issue that I think gets side-stepped in most discourse surrounding abstinence-only education and the virginity or purity myth/movement is the bad rap that's been given to feminism over the course of the past decade or two. This, too, is scary. Perhaps even more so. Because it undermines any authority or confidence that a girl who may want to educate herself about sex actually can have. If sex is bad, and feminism is bad, where does that leave young women? The following are some sound bytes from the Valenti trailer:

"Young men if you are dating a woman who boasts of being a feminist, who uses every four letter word in the Marine Corps manual, who wants no children, who wants to drag you around like a dog on the end of a rope, RUN!"

"Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism is what led women astray."

"Feminism is sexism."

"And the man needs to pursue the woman. You know, some people think, 'oh that's just sexist.'...Personally, I love gender stereotyping."

What's scary about this is that this is real. This is trickling down into the consciousness of our students, of our youth, of the people who are sexually active now, and of the people who will be the future of our culture. During my last semester at UNH, I had my students read an essay by someone who probably would define herself as a feminist. She was writing about gendered language in biology texts, and when I asked the students what they thought, they all--and I do mean all, including the females and the people I thought more intelligent than this--protested that the woman was just an annoying feminist, and that they didn't "believe" in feminism, and the issues she was addressing weren't real issues.

Wait. What?

I asked who in the class identified as feminist. No one raised their hands. I asked what they thought feminism meant, and most had a skewed understanding of bra-burning, man-hating crazies. I asked how many of them thought that women should get paid the same amount of money as men for the same work. All hands raised. I asked who thought women should have the right to choose who they have sex with, and prosecute those who rape or take advantage of them sexually. All hands raised. "You're feminists." They didn't understand. Feminism has become a bad word, a concept that no one wants to be associated with, and this is problematic. There is nothing wrong with being a feminist. And planting the idea in young women's--and young men's--heads that there is something wrong with feminism, that feminism is sexist or goes against morality or represents all that is bad in America, that men shouldn't date feminist women is going to fuck with our culture so hard that we'll find ourselves back in the Victorian era so fast you won't have time to say goodbye to suffrage. Pardon my French; I realize it's not very ladylike.

So if you are reading this, and have children or will have children, you probably already are teaching them or have taught them about feminism, about sex, about being healthy and happy and about respect and equality--about how to be a human, and a good one. But unfortunately, this type of education cannot be merely on the individual level. Something needs to change globally, systemically, communally, in order for any sort of healthy understanding of feminism, of sexuality, and of the body to survive. If this means you have to do a little guerrilla parenting--sit your friends' kids and teach them what feminism really means--do it.

Because Valenti's point is that my moral compass doesn't lie anywhere between my legs, but rather in the fact that I want women, and men for that matter, to understand their worth, their bodies, and themselves.

Climate Change

Sometime between Patrick's birthday and the end of November, it became winter, and it is cold. And the funny thing is, I just spent two years where at least three months out of the year were perpetually below freezing. If it's gotten below freezing in Washington, I have been safely in my bed next to a heater that does not run by oil that runs out every three weeks. I've always been one to adapt quickly to the weather where ever I'm living, which sounds like a skill but is actually just annoying: in Seattle, 38 degrees is unbearable. In Dover, I'm okay as long as it doesn't drop below 10.

To be fair, a few friends and I have recently come to the conclusion that Seattle has the coldest 40 degrees we've ever felt. It's something in the way the air is damp and gets in your lungs and bones and makes you feel like your toes might not every feel the same again.

At Fred Meyer this past week, I found a pair of green fleece-lined leggings, which Patrick got for me. I had been pining over these, but Fred Meyer's were a fraction of the cost and GREEN. Forest green! I wore them to work yesterday, along with a large sweater that hides my shape--my favorite kind--and for the first time in weeks I felt warm somewhere other than my bed or my car with the heat on full-blast. I was wrapped in a cocoon of comfort! Knits and wool and fleece and plush!

I can't help but remember those nights (and days) in New Hampshire where the temperature would dip into single digits, and think that these leggings would have kept me just as warm there as they are here.

Tripping the Lights Fantastic

This morning at work, this phrase popped into my head, for no apparent reason. It might be the Christmas lights and sugarplums dancing in my head. Or maybe it's the fact that I've spent the past several nights having party party fun fun for birthdays and celebrations about jobs (more to come on that!), and homemade corndogs.

What? Corndogds are a cause for celebration, aren't they?

Either way, I logged into my computer this morning and thought, "tripping the lights fantastic." One of my morning duties as a receptionist is to send out an email detailing who will be out of the office that day, and in the past receptionists have also offered trivia questions to pass the time. I get a lot of complaints about how difficult my trivia questions are, so needless to say I did not propose an etymological inquiry to my co-workers.

I did, however, do some research of my own. It turns out that tripping the lights (or, rather, light, which is the original phrasing) has nothing to do with ecstasy or acid tabs. WEIRD. In fact, evidently I never even knew the meaning of the phrase, which means to dance, especially if you're doing it "fantastically," or imaginatively, or...let's be honest: spastically.

The apparent origins of the phrase are in a poem by John Milton, titled "L'Allegro," which reads:

Sport that wrinkled Care derives,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe.

"Trip" didn't mean stumble around drunkenly, like we may assume from the phrase's present-day connotations, but rather to dance nimbly--quite the opposite in fact. "Light" and "fantastic" refer to the movement of the feet (toe. Because we all dance with one toe). Shakespeare used a similar phrase in The Tempest, writing:

Before you can say come, and goe,

And breathe twice; and cry, so, so:

Each one tripping on his Toe,

Will be here with mop, and mowe.

Since Milton and Shakespeare, "tripping the (light and/or fantastic) toe" became a popular phrase in newspapers, poetry, prose, and accounts of cotillions and the like. It was in 1894, when the song "The Sidewalks of New York" became popular that the toe was hacked off, and the phrase morphed into "tripping the light fantastic" on the sidewalks of New York. Which, really, is probably the best place to trip the lights fantastic this time of year.

Fashion Forward (Backward?)

In college, Ben & I used to poke fun at a girl that lived in his dorm who wore a skirt over her pants every. single. day. Over jeans, over leggings, over slacks. We once saw her with a jersey material over her sweatpants coming out of the rec center. What I like about that girl is that she just did it. Obviously no one else was wearing a skirt over their jeans every day. Obviously the trend was not catching on. Obviously everyone looked at her funny--especially when she was prancing on the treadmill. But every day she got up and that's how she wanted to look. So she looked that way.

It's admirable, in the very best kind of way. It's also a quality that I definitively lacked as a sixth grader, when I found a white shirt with red sleeves, similar to this, at Value Village. When I wore it to school, all of the boys who were in little leagues made merciless fun of me, asking if I wanted their old shirts from previous practices and years. (I did not.) I never wore the shirt again, even though I loved it and thought it was cute. Whatever. The joke was on everyone else when they popped up in American Eagle a few years later.

What's interesting is that even though I thought Ben's "fashion forward" dorm-mate looked lame, she managed to earn my respect just by, well, doing her, to borrow a phrase from Beach House 2010. This is, in fact, how I choose the fashion bloggers I follow. I don't care much for trendspotters or the women who troll new merchandise--at least not as much as I appreciate a good thrifter who will rock a good wool dress. I mean, I want to buy some gold pants. I don't care if metallic is so in this season. All of this to say: I'm wearing black pants and brown shoes. I can't remember if that's okay or not. (Stacy? Clinton? Help me out here) But I don't really care either way.

Imagination Station

This weekend, Patrick & I were driving through Northgate after shopping for decorations when he asked if he had ever told me about his imaginary friend, Penny. When he was in preschool, and his mother picked him up at the end of the day, he spent the rides home telling her about what he and Penny had done at school that day--who they played with, what they did. His mom became suspicious when Patrick told her that Penny was a boy. She figured it out when Patrick's teacher told her she had no kids named Penny at the school (and also when Patrick began to regale her with stories of Nickel & Dime, Penny's brother and sister, and Good Dollar & Bad Dollar, Penny's cousins).

What is interesting about Patrick's imaginary friends is that he really didn't spend his days playing with Penny, Nickel & Dime, and Good Dollar & Bad Dollar. He had friends--real ones--at his preschool that he played with. But when he got in the car, what happened that day was not "Legos with Timmy" but hours filled with Bad Dollar pulling all the little girls' hair, and running around with Penny.

Patrick said that he did some research a while back about childhood imaginary friends, and discovered that this is not uncommon. We are, of course, most familiar with the kind like Fred. This sort of imaginary friend, where the child creates a solitary world, is the more psychologically troubling kind, the kind that indicates that the child has difficulty connecting to others, or feels isolated in some way.

Telling stories about an imaginary cast of characters, however, isn't indicative of loneliness. Rather, Penny & his family showed an active imagination, a passion to create and to keep things interesting.

After all, Timmy probably only ever built boring old towers with his Legos, anyway.

Better than a cornballer

Sometimes, on a Saturday at 7:30, you might decide to make a homemade corndog. And if you do, you will go to the store, and buy hotdogs and cheese (um, because you can't fry corndogs and not make fried cheese) and skewers and pancake mix, and take them home. And by this time, it may be already eight o'clock, but you'll thread the skewers into the hotdogs and rectangles of cheese, and then you'll mix together the pancake batter with water, and an egg, and some cornmeal, and it will look something like this:
And you can put it in a beer stein that you won in college and use to drink water, so that the sticks don't get covered in batter, too. Then, you will be starving, and you'll take your roommate's Le Creuset, because its oval shape is the perfect shape for a corndog. Then, on Saturday nights like these, you will heat vegetable oil and drop in a hot-dog covered in batter, and watch it brown. What happens next, probably around nine pm, is delicious.

Cheer(ing Up)

In an effort to bolster the Christmas spirit, and wrap up a fairly emotionally draining week (of note: do not drive north on 405 at 4:30 pm if you are already stressed, and when applying to graduate programs and fellowships simultaneously with your significant other, do what you can to choose programs with varying application deadlines), I went to do some crafts & decorations shopping at Joann Fabrics and Target today. After lights and holiday shoppers and cinnamon pinecones and glitter balls and chicken tikki and holiday scented candles, we came back to my house to finish grading for ITT Tech and do some online work for Patrick's new teaching job.

If lighting pine-forest scented candles doesn't give me the holly jollies (not those kind of jollies, jeez!), then hot-gluing felt Christmas trees to a red tree skirt sure will.

And if that doesn't, almost lighting both of our faces on fire when trying to douse a candle holder that mysteriously went up in flames (honestly, glass doesn't just...burn...does it?) will have me singing Ave Maria and wiping the tears off my sooty face.

With my luck, I've probably made some stupid mistake now, too...

One of the fashion bloggers I follow recently stated, concerning a dress of hers, "It's very subtle, but this dress has rabbits on it." When I complained to Patrick, he said "It's very subtle, but these are socks," to which I replied, "It's very subtle, but I'm wearing jeans."

Another, a French model who posts her fashion blog in both French and English, translates the site herself. Her most recent update had her giving thanks for retaining old clothes: "This is when I’m really pleased I never sold one single thing of from wardrobe."

Please don't misunderstand. I'm fully aware that I am being a snob. I am also fully aware of the difficulties in speaking and writing articulately in a foreign language. Please see the Gauchedroitegauche backlogs from all of 2008 and most of 2009 for details about how I express myself with the sophistication of a five year old in French. And not a French five year old. Just a five year old.

But what baffles--and infuriates--me about these ridiculous mistakes, misuses, and general lack of attention paid to language in these blogs and others is that people are making their living off of this. Many of the fashion bloggers out there--and kitchen bloggers, and craft bloggers, too--are being paid, in advertising, sponsorships, and schwag, and they do not understand how to use the word subtle, let alone the English language.

And, not to be more than a little self-important, there are bloggers like me, who know how to craft a sentence and put together an outfit. Or bake a pie. Or emboss the shit out of something.

Honestly, I know that if I wanted to, I could make some sort of living this way. But I don't have the marketing background or interest to do so. I don't want to write about a scarf because I'm paid to (although I would take a paid position to travel & write up hotels and restaurants. Just saying). What I do want, however, is to see the people who are getting paid to write online do so with the same respect for language that writers in the print world have.

To Add to the List of Things That I Like, But Are Woefully Passe

One: The Decembrists.

Two: Nine West handbags.

Three: CSI Las Vegas

Tonight, I apply to the University of California, Berkeley. That is the number one literature program in the country.

Tonight, I begin a month of nightly blogging, as well.