toes over the edge

Monsters + Books

2012-01-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to bed early to help fight off the remnants of a nagging cold*, and promptly found myself too scared to go to sleep. Scared almost in the way that makes one take a running leap on to one's bed so as to avoid the monsters underneath. Scared in the way that makes one call one's boyfriend and sound like a silly dumb girl who is scared of monsters.

The monster, in this scenario, was Cathy Ames from East of Eden**. I am reading it for the first time and have been mesmerized by the tragic beauty of it from the start, but I was not prepared to meet Cathy Ames. You may find me a silly dumb girl, but yikes. Those cold eyes. I am thoroughly creeped.

And then today I saw this, about the secret life of books:

And yes, initially I was nearly as creeped out as I was by Cathy Ames. But then the music picks up and they swim and dance and the colors! It's like ideas and inspiration and history and truth and poetry all coming to life and having a party. It's like what happens when you read.

It's funny how creativity kicks in all at once, like these books coming to life when the door is locked tight. I wrapped this year's xmas presents in such a way that I wished no one would open them. It was a Pinterest-inspired masterpiece of brown paper, twine, vintage sheet music, paper doilies. And I didn't even photograph them. I also picked up a crochet hook and some yarn for the first time in months (I didn't forget how to do it). I've even been baking. Just a little. Twice, to be exact. And one of those times was actually a no-bake recipe. So I guess I've been no-baking.

And while I did not want to post another post about how it's been so long since I've posted a post, I just cannot ignore the hideous elephant in the room that is 2+ months away. Please know, I am not abandoning this just yet. I've just been fighting with some monsters.

*I can feel the NyQuil kicking in now, so please forgive any typos, blatant spelling errors, or weird subliminal messages.

**I will ask that anyone prompted to leave a comment please don't give anything away about the book. I am really weird about spoiled endings and will probably never forgive you. But do leave a comment! About anything else, related to the post or not. How's the weather where you are?

Falling for it

2011-11-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

I am in the coffee shop by my apartment drinking a tea called "firestorm". It has ginger and cinnamon and a long list of other things that are burning my throat on the way down, though the water is now luke warm. I was going to go with the cranberry+orange but on one of San Francisco's first crisp fall days, I couldn't resist what sounded like a real warm-you-from-the-inside-out kind of thing.

We are just coming out of our -- for lack of a better term -- Indian summer here in SF. We pout through the fog of June, July & August and then, if you're me, whine when September and October are just too hot. One year in San Francisco has turned me weak against any kind of extreme weather. And by extreme, I mean high 70s.

To those of you who knew me in a former life, I know this sounds strange. I was the girl who wore sandals 364 days a year and it is still true that my natural element is water. But I like that in this city I can wear TOMS every day with no socks and I won't be too cold, nor will the bottoms of my feet sweat.

And so, I welcome the fall. Another point in its favor is that sleeping in is so much more delicious. There is a level of both discomfort and guilt that wells up in me if the morning sun is shining too brightly through my bedroom window. But rain? It's like a personal invitation to adjust the pillows and enjoy them for several more hours. This, combined with my rare lack of weekend travel plans, makes November Sleeping In Awareness Month.

Every wellie of the rainbow.

It will also be the month that I buy, for the days when weather does not permit canvas shoes, some serious rain boots. I am trying to decide between your classic rubber Hunter. Or, for the polar bear in me, Sorel's Joan of Arctic boots. The fur may be a bit much for San Francisco's mild 60 degree winter, but a part of me really wants to wear something called Joan of Arctic. It's got that chic+tough thing going on, no?

I've also got myself a shiny new clear plastic bubble umbrella, courtesy of my mom. So, yeah, the future's looking bright. Or, rather, dreary and wonderful. I will leave you with a little fall flavor, courtesy of Pinterest. I don't know about you, but I'm going to go put on some thick socks and read a book.

Source: imgfave.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: sahalie.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: salvagedgrace.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: danielleburkleo.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: whiskandaprayer.blogspot.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: northerncottage.blogspot.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Rut-a-tut-tut

2011-10-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

You know that feeling when you find the one little thing that just might get you out of your rut? Like you're down at the bottom of some dank wet hole, groping blindly at the slick walls for something, anything to grab on to and hoist yourself up, and then you feel it, a sturdy root or branch reaching out to you, waiting patiently. It's not much, but it's enough. And you start to move upward. You start to see light.

Forgive me if I sound dramatic. While I have been feeling like I need to shake things up in my life as a whole, the rut I'm referring to is a creative one. I like this blog of mine, and yet I somehow never want to visit it. Sort of like the yoga studio down the street, a place and activity that I know is good for me and I know I love, but lately lack whatever flutter of inspiration used to get me there.

I think change is what makes me tick, what makes me look at myself through a different lens, what makes me write. I recently observed the anniversary of my first day at my job, and that tired thought washed over me, the one we've all held in our hands time and again, turning it around and around like a Rubik's cube, trying to figure it out:

It doesn't feel like it's been a whole year.

But then I thought, for the first time, how absurd it is to pretend I even know what a year "feels like". Has a year in my life, from start to finish, ever felt like any one thing? Have I ever really felt the passing of time in the same way twice?

I'm reading Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to reevaluate how they see the world and themselves. I heard Foer speak at a City Arts & Lectures event last spring and he is just as charming in person as he is on the page. He's also the brother of Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote two of my favorite novels. A clever family, to say the least.

Anyway, there are many notable ideas in the book and I may write a separate post about them, but on the bus today, a line jumped out at me: "we forget our lives almost as fast as we live them."

This is true, is it not? Foer calls it an "elemental human problem", and it is, without a doubt, one of the major reasons so many of us post the every detail of our lives onto the Internet. At least the details that we want to make sure other people know about and we remember.

In the past four months, aside from living my daily adventures in San Francisco, I've been to New York, DC, Los Angeles, Nashville, Tahoe, and Colorado, and I'll be in Chicago this coming weekend. I have told you almost none of it, any photos are still shriveling up in my iPhone, and I haven't kept a journal in years. So aside from foggy, surface memories, much of it is, and may always be, lost.

Of course, this blog can play only a minor role in any attempt to remember everything, and I'm comfortable seeing it simply as a time capsule of that which I thought worth writing down. I think I feel the gears shifting again, shaking themselves free of rust, and I will be here more. I also think, however, that sometimes it's OK, instead of writing about stuff you just did, to go do more stuff. Or, equally acceptable, to go to bed.

And speaking of ruts, I did make myself a proper dinner tonight for the first time since Idon'tknowwhen.

And over the weekend I chopped off most of my hair. Hello bob!

Have rut-free, memory-filled week, my pets. See you soon.

Missing Something

2011-10-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

Image by Tatsuro Kiuchi

There are a lot of mornings in San Francisco when the fog is so thick you can't see the tops of the buildings. You can't see what you know is there.

We're all looking for something, aren't we? Something we know is there because other people have it, or have seen it, or have told you it's there. Love, money, time, meaning. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am not the only one who doesn't have all the answers. I am not the only one who's missing something. Sometimes your world changes or looks different and you have to get it back where you want it. Sometimes the only thing you want is for everything to change.

Sometimes I can't tell whether my mind is too empty or too full to formulate rational, intelligent or creative thoughts. What I want you to know is that I have not forgotten you, despite all the answers I'm looking for elsewhere. What I want to tell you is that I know it's been a while, but I'm still glad you reminded me of it. And what I want to remember is that living more life is no excuse to stop writing about it. And that if inspiration is eluding me, I am probably just not looking in the right places.

Tatsuro Kiuchi

Feeding Elizabeth Striker

2011-08-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

My roommate is in Europe for a few weeks, which leaves yours truly to feed her pet fishes and, of course, her snake. I mean, what else would be named Elizabeth Striker? A hamster? Certainly not.

www.nataliedee.com

Now, Elizabeth Striker is a senior citizen. She has been on this earth some 18 years, and she's still scootin' --rather, slitherin' -- around. The problem is that she's turned into a rather fussy eater in her old age. From what I understand, she used to strike at live mice with the speed and accuracy of, well, a snake. A vicious predator. Unfortunately, when she moved from sunny Santa Barbara up to San Francisco (a snake's paradise?), she stopped eating all together. Simply could not be bothered to unhinge that rusty ol' jaw and enjoy a nice meal. So, the reptile geeks at the pet store made a few dietary suggestions, sort of like a doctor might for your withering grandmother, and (thank heaven!) Elizabeth took to it.

Now, I don't do a lot of cooking, so trying new recipes at home is always an exercise in caution. But this one was a total breeze! I am just so happy with how the dish turned out that I had to share it with you here. It's so simple and a total crowd-pleaser. I swear, bring this baby to your next potluck and you will be the talk of the party! Here's the recipe. You are welcome!

Ingredients:
1 full-grown white mouse, frozen
1 cup rat seasoning (combination rat bedding and droppings)

Directions:

Remove mouse from ziploc bag in freezer labeled "Not Food" (Note: it will be stiff as bone and soft as velvet. Try pretending it's a chicken. A small, hairy chicken.)
Toss mouse in rat seasoning in a small bag for one minute, or until seasoned as desired.
Place mouse in small airtight bag and thaw in a bowl of warm water, about 15 minutes or until tender, like a hot dog.
Remove mouse from bag and serve in an empty cereal box. (Note: it will feel warm and squishy, and will smell like, well, a dead animal.)
To eat, unhinge jaw and take in slowly. Best enjoyed in a dark, quiet room.

Now, if your guests look creepy as hell while savoring your dish, don't be alarmed. It means they like it. They will probably eat so much of it that they'll look as though they've just ingested something three times the size of their head. Don't worry, this is also normal.

Bon appetit!

Planet Birthday

2011-08-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

I always say I will never live in Southern California again, but I am glad I still have reasons to visit. My beau and I drove down to LA last weekend for some quick and dirty quality time with college friends and, of course, my beautiful niece (and her parents).

Alice, rocking the pants-on-head look for summer.

That kid is a ripe 14.5 months old and I cannot believe this number means it's been more than one year since she was born. She is no longer an infant, all gums and swaddle and involuntary movement. She is a toddler, a girl, a little person with intentions and a sense of humor. She puts one foot in front of the other and reads coloring books upside down. I only get to see her every few months but within the first hour she was sitting contentedly in my lap as I melted, the love in me breaking down like sugar molecules into their simplest form.

That was the end of the weekend, but our visit to LA started off a little more sinister. I had somehow forgotten the kind of weird you can find in Hollywood until Friday night when we went to the Nuart Theatre for a midnight showing of the cult slasher Sleepaway Camp. Note: this was not my idea.

The movie was one of the all around strangest things I've ever seen in my life. The ending? Anyone? I won't ruin it for you but all I can say is wtf. Like, seriously.

Anyway, in what ended up being a wonderful illustration of the Hollywood absurd, we also got to see one of the child stars (now in their 40s) from the movie perform two songs on his acoustic guitar before showtime. And yes, he was wearing a wife beater tank, a necklace, and, you got it, bleached tips. The quiet, unassuming leading lady of the film was there as well and (can you blame her?) most certainly drunk.

And, though it is connected in no way other than that I learned about it the same day as Sleepaway Camp, I will now introduce you to Cookie Puss. You may have heard of Carvel, the chain of ice cream stores hailing from the East Coast, but have you heard of Cookie Puss? He is the mysterious dessert creature you see to your right. Let's read more, shall we? The name alone is worth a little of our attention.

"Cookie Puss is an ice cream cake character created by Carvel in the 1970s as an expansion of its line of freshly made products sold only in its stores, along with Hug-Me Bear and Fudgie the Whale. According to Carvel lore, Cookie Puss is a space alien (his original name was "Celestial Person" and his initials, "C.P.", later came to stand for "Cookie Puss") who was born on planet Birthday. In his television commercials, Cookie Puss has the ability to fly, though he requires a saucer-shaped spacecraft for interplanetary travel. During the 1980s Cookie Puss was repurposed to serve as a cake for St Patrick's Day, dubbed "Cookie O'Puss"."

Thanks Wikipedia! Does anyone else find that as hilarious as I do? Again, words escape me. I mean, wtf.

Sigh. Image via.

Fortunately the rest of our weekend did not have me asking WHY DOES THAT EXIST?! But rather, we just caught up with dear old friends (otherwise known as "main bitches"), and made some new ones. We went for a hike in Runyon Canyon for a dramatic view of LA and all the clear turquoise rooftop pools you can imagine. We went for a swim and remembered what it feels like to lay down on hot brick as the sun and chlorine tighten your skin. We grilled on a balcony and wore dresses at night (me, not Ian). We celebrated my friend's birthday at a bar called the Parlour Room and found out the next day that Jon Hamm had been there too, that perhaps we'd brushed shoulders with him and didn't even realize they were the most classically handsome and manly shoulders ever.

Yes, just your typical weekend in sunny LA.

Purging

2011-07-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Source: etsy.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Do you ever let yourself sit somewhere so long that the room grows cold and dark around you? And suddenly you're uncomfortable and you don't know why? You would be so much happier if you just got up, turned on a light and donned a sweater, but you can't move. You've been there so long already, so there you stay, depending on your own limbs to warm each other. You are hopeful yet afraid that your roommate will come home, possibly with a friend you don't know, and find you sitting alone in the dark."Uh, hey?" they'd say.

And you would snap back to life.

In the months since I moved to San Francisco, I've let myself sink into an excess of stuff in just this same way, and suddenly I realized I was drowning. Piles of crap in the corners of my room, my closet regurgitating countless identical tee shirts that had been chewed up and digested, but that I thought I might one day use again. The thing is, when your bedroom is only a 10x10 square with one small closet, you can't afford to accumulate in the way that I do.

I love to wander through thrift stores and pick up $1 frames or funky knickknacks that are just like the ones I see on design blogs and would be oh! perfect! in some eclectic but clean arrangement on a beautiful bookshelf or brick wall that I might one day have. But I don't have that bookshelf now and I don't have the space/time/money/energy to commit to making my temporary month-to-month apartment look like Pinterest (oh god, the pretty of it all). I just don't care quite enough, because most of the time I'm not at home anyway. That's the thing about being 25, you do stuff, so you don't need to own quite so much of it. And you know? When I do have that beautiful bookshelf, that perfect wall or room, there will still be knickknacks out there for the finding.

So upon my return from 2 weeks on the East coast, when I realized I couldn't even unpack because I didn't know how I would put anything away, I set to work purging. I am getting rid of stuff and plan to make due with what I have. My place is nice enough for what it is, so I'll just keep changing out the fresh flowers and, for now, stop collecting junk. I cleaned out my closet and my dresser, I rearranged my bedroom furniture for the third time and have finally found a set-up I like. The hard drive on my computer is full to bursting, so I'm finally going through and deleting all the duplicates and duds from a 6-year-old, 20,000+ file backlog in my iPhoto. I'm growing out my bangs and gettingthehairoutofmyfacegoddammit.

But still, I've stowed away those piles of cheap frames and knickknacks because one day? I am going to do this:

Source: sweethomestyle.tumblr.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: decor8blog.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Shannon on Pinterest

I am I am I am.

Happy 4th of July from DC!

2011-07-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a little red, white & blue that I found around New York and DC. We're making corn on the cob, potatoes, asparagus, brownies, and of course some sweet tea vodka + lemonade, before heading up to the roof to watch the fireworks above the Washington Monument. Not too shabby. Hope you're all celebrating in style!

So this is what summer feels like.

2011-07-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

A trucker just drove past with a dog in the passenger seat and an alligator head on the dashboard and I am in a bus bound for Washington DC. The sky is gray and the highway is flanked by green and we are somewhere in Pennsylvania or New Jersey or Delaware. American flags hang from cranes stopped from their work and I am going to see how the 4^th of July is really done.

This week I’ve learned that in only six months, San Francisco has made me forget how it feels to be hot, to be sweaty and sticky and to surrender to the oppressive warmth of the atmosphere. San Francisco has made me forget what it feels like to be outside in the middle of the night in sandals and a dress and walk slowly down the street, because there’s no other way to be on a summer night in Manhattan than relaxed. It’s so warm that it feels like someone’s taking care of you, like they’ve brought the evening to the exact temperature you need to feel alive. Like they’ve put the drum circle and the fountain and the laughter in Washington Square Park because they knew you’d be passing through, because they knew you wanted to feel like you were in some kind of heaven.

And you know what else they have here? Fireflies. Someone teased me when I stopped the conversation to point them out, the little floating lights that come and go. They teased me but I hadn’t seen fireflies since a summer in Michigan when I was 12, and to me they are magic.

Living in San Francisco has made me forget what summer means, but can despite all the beauty in New York – the heat and the life and the streets of trees and brick – can I tell you what leaving San Francisco has done? Made me want to go back.

PRIDE

2011-06-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

Isn't it cool that the gay rights movement has gained so much steam that we can now say "pride" and the "gay" is pretty much implied? That the movement has come to own this word so profoundly that no explanation is needed? That it has taken on a new meaning which is both much more specific, much more whole? That pride is not only for those who are proud to be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, but also for those of us who are proud to advocate for equal rights?

In New York on Sunday, pride was for everyone. Everyone who knows and says out loud that all human beings deserve the same right to happiness, whether that's to marry or just to be. I stepped up to the crowd of onlookers just as Governor Cuomo went by, hoards of supporters in his wake, holding up signs that read "PROMISE KEPT". Dan Savage, who started the It Gets Better Project, was the Grand Marshall, and he and his partner Terry rode by atop a white convertible, smiling and waving and deserving every bit of our respect.

We saw senators and their families, human rights organizations and their supporters. We saw children who will hopefully grow old in a world where the kind of victory that happened in New York last week will not seem like history in the making, but like a given. We saw drag queens and partial nudes. We saw people being people and people letting them. We saw incontrovertible and unflinching joy. We saw a couple of old men who were probably there when this whole movement started, walking hand in hand and waving flags that told everyone - those who support them and those who fear them - that they have been together in love for 31 years. We saw all this with tears in our eyes and love in the humid New York City air.

I know it will continue to take time, but things are changing, and I can't wait to see what that's going to look like.

Hey, I'm 25.

2011-06-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Source: None via Shannon on Pinterest

Well, twenty-five and one week, to be precise. Last Friday was my birthday, and I feel like I’m still recovering from the weekend of celebrating. Twenty-five is a nice number, isn’t it? I like how it feels in my mouth when I say it out loud, clean and round like a ripe piece of fruit. I like how it sounds. The five much lighter than its cumbersome predecessor, it practically skips through the air. I’m happy to be rid of the awkward four, so dull and slow, the kid in PE who drags his feet and always gets picked last for the team. Twenty-four is a limbo, an in-between, a not-quite-there-yet. It’s the invisible rock you trip on right before the finish line.

Or maybe that’s just what it was to me. I remember not wanting to turn twenty-four. It was the first time I felt decidedly averse to the idea of stepping into the next year of my being. I wasn’t ready; I hadn’t done enough. My life was at a stand still, a turning point but I couldn’t see what was around the next corner, a blank wall I couldn’t figure out how to decorate, a puzzle I couldn’t solve.

It was, in a word, lacking.

(Read my take on the 20-something life here.)

But twenty-five? This feels different. I most certainly don’t have it all figured out, don't really have a plan, but I like where I am right now. On Sunday night I stood outside a trendy restaurant with my parents, drunk and happy for the second day in a row, and said, I love my life. The words floated down the street and I was acutely aware of the fact that I had never uttered them before. Not that I haven’t been happy before now, not that I haven’t done and seen some amazing things, but I am only just learning what it means to be content.

And on my birthday last Friday I was exactly that. I had the day off work and allowed myself, guilt-free, to stay in bed until noon. The afternoon was a field trip to the Sutro Baths at the end of Golden Gate Park and the trail that runs along the coast. It was sunny and windy, which is as good as you can hope for on a summer day in San Francisco, and the ocean was moving. Dolphins swam idly past, maybe fifty feet or so from the rocky shore, and we watched them from up on a lookout, while I, once again, could not believe that this is where I live.

On our way home, we stopped at Whole Foods and this guy:

Blog, meet Ian.

picked up some things for a birthday dinner he’d been loosely planning. As has become the norm, I followed him around the store quietly, watching his mind work, watching him blink and stare intently at nothing while thinking thoughts about food that I’m sure were beyond me. You guys, he can cook.Like, really cook.

Saturday night was a party. My housemates and I bought some food and liquor, cleaned the apartment and dressed it up in fresh flowers and mason jars filled with tea lights, and then lo’ and behold, awhole bunch of people came over to get sloppy. They came in and I hopped up anddown in my 6-inch wedges, feeling good to be surrounded by so much love. Somuch fancy and so much free. And if that's what it feels like to be twenty-five, I'll take it.

Oh, and now I'm on vacation in New York. So far? It's a good year.

Source: weheartit.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Color + Light

2011-06-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

My window.

Do you ever have those days when you feel things more acutely? When everything is moving, everything is brighter? My skin has been warm since this afternoon when I sat on a bench in the sun for an hour. I am taking some prescription medicine and I forget that it makes me more sensitive to sunlight. Well, there's that, and the fact that my skin never sees the sun in this city. I don't really care, though, because I love it here.

You know that feeling? Loving where you live? Like, really loving it? Turning corners and gasping at some beautiful surprise on a regular basis. Everything is colored, everything is rosy. The late afternoon breeze comes in through your bedroom window, and it's so simple but it makes you feel something that can only be described as light.

You see the city moving around you, and everything looks like shapes, patterns. Like it's alive but like it's art. You're looking at life going by as usual, but your eyes are kaleidoscopes, and everything looks like this:

Source: ffffound.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: mwmgraphics.blogspot.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Source: showandtellgallery.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Food Truck Me

2011-06-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't call myself a foodie, but it's hard not to come close when you live in San Francisco. You can find unique, high quality noms made with local organic ingredients pretty much anywhere, even on wheels. Off the Grid is a roaming food court in which all the best gourmet food trucks in the city gather so you can try a little bit of everything. They come to my hood in the Upper Haight every Thursday, but you'll find more trucks and more people at Fort Mason on Friday nights. Here, of course, you get both beautiful bay views and gale force wind. But when you're huddled in a crowd of people eating their way into a food coma, you hardly notice the chill.

I popped over for my first visit and tried the expertly done Asian Asada from Kung Fu Tacos, and Brass Knuckle ("stylish street food" including menu items such as Lamb Halen, Notorious P.I.G. and Fryin' Maiden). What I had to share with you, though, was the cupcake. (Well, I couldn't share the actual cupcake with you, unfortunately. And I probably wouldn't have, anyway.) Cupkates Bakery runs the Bay Area's first cupcake truck, and oh my god can we talk about genius? The Salted Caramel is pictured above, and look how red that Red Velvet is peaking into the frame. It was, in a word, divine.

And speaking of the ethereal the spiritual the up above this world, tonight I'm going to see Florence + the Machine at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, and from what I've heard about her live show, I am not emotionally prepared. I mean, listen:

Happy Sunday, cupcakes.

Severed heads, etc.

2011-06-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

Source: ubertrivia.com via Joan on Pinterest

Source: letrixacuteangle.tumblr.com via Angel on Pinterest

You know how there are some things you just can't tell your parents? Like when a fatal shooting happens just two blocks from your house? That is, two blocks from my house. On Tuesday.

I didn't hear the shots, but I saw the crime scene. Medical examiner van, a fleet of cop cars, investigators in suits standing around everywhere. The whole block wrapped in caution tape. Just when we thought we were safe. Mom? Dad? Are you reading this? (Here's where we find out if my parents actually follow my blog.)

Despite how this sounds, I really do live in a good area. I frequently have to slip through crowds of bums on the corner to get to my front door (protected by an immense wrought iron gate), and some nights I can hear the tormented cries of lifelong junkies through my bedroom window (also protected by wrought iron). Really, though, the Upper Haight is a pretty nice neighborhood. But a shooting? By Buena Vista Park with its expensive homes and their expensive views? This just didn't sound right.

Turns out, it was some criminal from Orange County who had somehow made his way up here in a stolen vehicle and managed to get himself shot by the police by running at them when they tried to arrest him. Pure coincidence that he ended up in my lovely corner of San Francisco, from what I can tell (see more here). So, Mom and Dad, not to worry. Let's just hope those folks down south can contain their suspected bank robbers from now on.

Speaking of foul play, the next night I was having dinner at a friend's place and saw this on their refrigerator:

He had told his mother that he was planning a vacation in Mexico, and she sent him that newspaper clipping in the mail. The best part is that she wasn't joking, at least not entirely. I like his initials there on the top of the index card. I imagine her collecting these absurd and grotesque bits of articles with a pile of index cards neatly stacked on the table next to her, initialing each one so she remembers which of her children to send them to. I have no idea if she actually does this, but you can picture it, right?

I'm lucky that my parents don't worry too much; or if they do, I don't hear about it. And they're lucky that I keep my wits about me and don't do anything stupid. Speaking of stupid, I also found this on my friends' refrigerator:

And on that note, here's wishing you all a weekend with lots of beer and very few severed heads. Try not to get shot, either.

Muni My Heart

2011-06-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

Source: emilierichardfroozan.com via Shannon on Pinterest

If there's anything people in San Francisco complain about more than the weather, it's Muni. I was lucky enough to snag a ride to work today and skip my usual journey on our city's fine public transit, and it made my morning. I watched the bus pull away from my front door without me on it and looked in at all those poor saps hanging like moss on the railings and plastic seats. Ha! Suckers, I thought.

Really though? If I'm being honest? I kind of like Muni. Don't tell anyone that lives here, but a part of me enjoys moving through the streets in that tangled knot of civilization, just a tiny red blood cell in the arteries of the city. Sure, it gets crowded and people are rude. People are loud, take up too much space and are often creepy. People smell. But when it comes down to it these are the people that make up this place that I live in. These people, strange as they may be, are the reason I am here. I wouldn't live in a metropolis if I didn't want to be stirred in with the rest of humanity. The rest of the weird, the inexplicable, the mysterious. The rest of the working, the thinking, the living.

There was a woman on the bus recently who, standing near the door, danced for at least 10 or 15 blocks. I watched her, moving so exuberantly and wondered what must be going on in her head for her to dance in silence like this, everyone around her morose, staring at their hands. Then suddenly the music in my own head stopped. Headphones on, carefully blocking out the rest of the world like a good Muni rider, I hadn't realized that this woman wasn't actually dancing in silence, that some hip hop was coming out of someone's speakers and she saw no reason not enjoy it fully. She was probably a drug addict. But still, I thought, we ought to never assume we know what someone is hearing, what's making them move. We should never assume that just because we can't hear it, there isn't music to dance to.

Source: blog.iso50.com via Shannon on Pinterest

And speaking of Muni! The Bold Italic (of which I am a huge fan) just published a hilarious guide to good bus-riding in San Francisco (or more accurately, what kind of freaks to look out for). Check out The Bus Stops Here to get an idea of the kind of weirdness you will only see on dear ol' Muni.

Image found at The Bold Italic, one and only.

Buena Vista

2011-06-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Source: etsy.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Folks, we are now almost a week into a new month, and I am somehow still grappling with it. I have never been so surprised to see June on the calendar. And you know why? It's not because I don't keep track of days and weeks (I might not if it weren't for work), and it's not because I've been so busy I failed to notice the passing of time (I am busy, but that's not it).

It's because the weather has hardly changed since January.

People in most other parts of the world (hell, of the Bay Area) recognize the start of summer with sandals, corn on the cob and sticky sun screen skin, but here in San Francisco, we have to double check our iPhones to make sure we're reading the calendar straight. The sun sets later, sure, but the average temperature in June is 66 degrees. Never in my life has a temperature so low been cause for celebration, impetus to run and skip in the street because you only have to wear a light jacket. I keep hearing, "Oh, this is your first summer in San Francisco?" followed by an evil knowing grin as the fog settles in for a long stay.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, (not considering the weather my friend Stacy in Seattle has been having), but I've learned that complaining about the weather is just something people do here, like eating organic produce or wearing pants. Maybe I'm just trying to fit in. Maybe I'll turn out to be one of the folks 7X7 is talking about who like the weather more than they're willing to admit. (See Jay O'Lear's bit on Why San Francisco Weather Isn't That Bad.)

Because really, if dreary weather means having a weekend like I've just had, it can't be all bad. I'm sure it will wear me down come August, but this weekend it meant staying in bed till noon, drifting in and out of sleep with the soft tap of rain on the window, a cool gray light suffusing through the curtains. It meant sitting in a cafe all day with good company and a good book. It meant taking advantage of a break in the rain with a stroll through Buena Vista Park, a block from my house on Haight Street, and in an instant feeling totally removed from the city. The park is like a little forest, and the weather left it wet and humid. We found edible plants, little onions growing in the ground, wild flowers. The air smelled like nature, like clean wet dirt and photosynthesis.

We went up to the top and stood over the city, over the pastel Victorians, the trees and the churches, the tall buildings downtown, over the hills and the Bay and the bridges; and whatever the sky was doing, we felt, fully and unequivocally, happy to call it home.

Pulp Fashion! Get it?

2011-06-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since the last few posts have been pretty text heavy, I thought I'd keep things brief today with some images from the exhibit at the Legion of Honor I'll be checking out with my mom this weekend. Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave constructed these elaborate dresses inspired by early European icons. The crazy part? They're made entirely out of paper. I know. They just extended the exhibit through June 12th, in case you're in San Francisco and are as amazed by this as I am.

We're expecting rain here this weekend, and I can't think of a better way to spend the time than strolling through a beautiful museum with my mama, breathing in some art. I hope you all find yourselves some color too, and maybe something that blows your mind just a little bit.

Happy Friday!
xo

The Story of a Birth. 5, and final.

2011-06-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

Once it begins, the pushing lasts for about an hour. Jon stands on Erin's right, the grandmothers-to-be on her left. I am down at her legs, front and center with camera around my neck. Erin pushes as instructed by a nurse with a blond bob and a positive attitude. She coaches Erin through, counts out each push -- each mountain she climbs -- and tells her when to relax. In between, Erin cracks jokes and the mood in the room is remarkably light. Excitement is building; the is air electric and fuzzy. It's late morning and the world is awake and it's time. There are a total of 13 people in the room. Midwife, doctor, nurses, nursing students who are there to observe their first delivery. I know there is music, but I am not conscious of it.

I watch only the opening, mesmerized as something takes shape. The nurse's hands work to help the baby out. Push. That's it. You're doing great. Push. There is a sliver of something solid and dark. Push. They're holding Erin's legs up and she throws every ounce of strength she has against the pressure, strength and power she has been cultivating and storing up her entire life for this exact moment. Push. The head appears and I see her smashed red face and I float up out of my body and hover there above it all, suspended in disbelief.

Time stands still and yet moves faster than seems possible. In an instant this baby emerges and is there among us, a living human being with breath and a voice. A voice we all hear and recognize as a sound we weren't sure would ever exist. A voice that will one day become defined and intentional. That will be loud and carry love and hate and every kind of emotion through the air and into the world.

The baby is outside of her, and Erin lets out a wail, a great crying release. She sobs freely and throws herself back onto the bed. Jon cuts the umbilical cord but I don't see it. I see only the blood that splatters on his glasses, face and neck. The baby is carried to the warmer and fiddled with. Jon goes to Erin then goes to the baby then goes to Erin. He is shaking and has no control over his face. Erin laughs when she sees the blood all over him, and asks that he not get any on her pillow. He doesn't even seem to hear her and just burrows into her neck with some desperation. I have never seen him such a wreck. Standing there next to his wife, he removes his glasses and wipes them clean on his shirt, and it is an image I don't think I will ever forget.

Oh, and the name. Erin asks if we want to hear it. "Alice Aurelia," we hear her say. Two perfect little words we've been waiting an eternity for.

Alice Aurelia.

Alice Aurelia.

Alice Aurelia.

She is here. And now, like magic, we all know a new kind of love.

Photos by Erin Senge at Alice's 1st birthday party. See more here.

The Story of a Birth. 4.

2011-06-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Source: cdryan.com via Shannon on Pinterest

1:30am. It becomes apparent that Erin's body will need some rest if it's going to handle what lies ahead. It's been 7 or 8 hours and they predict that time will double before the baby is actually here. She makes the decision on her own to have an epidural, and though she hadn't wanted it in the beginning, it's become the right thing to do. The midwife discovers meconium, a dark green substance indicating fetal distress, and Erin is hooked up to oxygen.

We all leave the room. Jon and I, talking quietly in the hall outside, are acutely aware that the man is inserting a giant needle into Erin's spine at that moment. Jon is scared and tired, and it shows in his face. He's afraid Erin will regret this decision after the birth is all over, he doesn't want her to think he's disappointed in her, and he's crying. I say what matters is that a baby is born and everyone is healthy. I say births never go as planned, and this is how it's meant to happen (I read this in a book, though really I know nothing). I say this is what she needs, and she's sure.

When they let us back into the room, Erin is lying there in peace, blissfully isolated from the pain in her abdomen. We all breathe a collective sigh of relief and settle in to keep watch over her and get a little rest ourselves.

4:45am. After shifting from chair to couch to chair again, my legs propped up on the exercise ball, I sit in the dark room looking on as Erin sleeps. She's so angelic and lovely, and a love for her as my older sister swells in me like I swear I've never quite felt before. She looks both wise and strong, innocent and childlike. And I am so happy to be here.

Jon and I head downstairs in search of food. We sit there in the dark cafeteria booth eating vending machine burritos, trying to act as normal as possible. I think we talk about life and love, change and growth. The places you find yourself that you never could have imagined. The places we have yet to find ourselves.

After an hour more of stiff sleep on the chairs in the waiting room, I get up and convince myself I slept a night, though we've all been up for nearly 36 hours. My hair is oily, my armpits smell, and I'm queasy from too little sleep and too much vending machine burrito, but all I want is to see this baby. That is what we're here for, right? She is still coming?

10:15am. Erin is dilated 9 centimeters and we're waiting for the baby to drop down, shift positions. Erin is sitting up in bed, patiently sucking on ice chips. I brush her hair and put it in a ponytail, Jon sets up two Flip cameras on little tripods. She seems to have grown in size since we arrived, or maybe it's just the size of the moment. Her legs are fully spread with belly balancing precariously between them. You can almost see it quivering as the baby gears up to make her debut. Erin says, "It feels like I'm going to shit a turtle."

And this is where my notes end.

***

Dear all who are reading: Thank you for bearing with me. I know the length is long, but the wait was longer. Next post, a baby will be born.

The Story of a Birth. 3.

2011-05-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Source: chroniclebooks.com via Shannon on Pinterest

9:05pm. Erin is perched on her blue exercise ball in her pale blue hospital gown, working through the contractions as they come every two minutes. Jon holds her hand and the two of them huddle there, like a cloud. When a contraction comes, we all watch as Erin bows her head and breathes quietly, her short hair falling in soft sheets around her face and shoulders. She is brave and resolved. At the start, she grimaces slightly and closes her eyes tight, then her face becomes clear and open, full of breath and life and strength as she guides her body through the pain. In the in-between she looks around at us, makes little comments and laughs. It's finally begun, and she feels good. "I've never been so happy to hurt, ever!" she says.

11:40pm. The pain doesn't let up, of course. It plods on, seeming to rise around her like a pool of sludge, slowly becoming thicker and more oppressive. Nurse Sheila comes in to check the monitor and tells Erin that towards the end there will be a lot more pain and a lot more pressure, and Erin wants to know if she might be able to stand for the delivery. It depends on how the baby looks and what the midwife says. Erin goes to the bathroom to take a shower with Jon to support her -- the warm water is meant to loosen her muscles and speed up the process. We all wait. The air in the room has become dense with worry. Watching this kind of pain isn't something any of us are used to.

She emerges from the steamy little room, warm and supple, her belly like a great ripe fruit. Lying on her left side facing the window, she prepares herself for more contractions. When they roll through her, she tucks her chin and folds in on herself. Her toes curl, her legs bend and stretch. Breathy, animal-like sounds come from the back of her throat. She lets out a little groan or whimper, and my mom says she looks like she's four years old, like she's not old enough to have a baby. She's twenty-eight. Jon holds her hand and I roll a tennis ball around the small of her back. A few times, we switch and the hand she holds is mine and as I sit there, gripping the hand of my older sister in labor with all the strength and love that's in me, I feel as though it is the most important thing I have ever done.

1:00am. The midwife does an exam and finds Erin dilated 3-4 centimeters, which is good progress but still far to go. The pain has started to wear her down physically and psychologically, and after 6 or 7 hours of contractions every 2 minutes, she's starting to think she won't be able to do what's coming later. "It's not going to split me open from the inside, right?"she asks the mothers in the room. Despite the fear blooming in her, Erin continues to handle the pain with grace and calm, releasing a steady, monotone humming as she finds her body's rhythm and moves with it instinctually. She seems at once wholly natural and grounded, and yet up above us all. She is somewhere else, and we are waiting down below, feeling as helpless as we are.

The Story of a Birth. 2.

2011-05-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

Days later, we were all doing our best to keep the expecting parents preoccupied. Erin was calm, as she'd been throughout the whole pregnancy, and moved through the house quiet and serene. She was accepting of the fact that it wasn't up to her to decide when it would happen, that despite how many walks she went on, how many special herbal salads she ate and how many times she and Jon got busy (twice a day -- yeah, I said it), she wanted a natural birth and the baby would have to make the first move.

The waiting had become excruciating, but it was nice just to be together. We played games, wandered through Ikea, and drank lots of coffee. We ate potato soup outside in a backyard still just cement and weeds, the power lines crisscrossing through the hazy Los Angeles sky. We walked every day up and down the tree-lined path by the house. We did everything we could think of to do. Jon said he had been waking up each morning thinking, today. It will happen today. And then he stopped thinking this all together and no longer believed it would happen at all. He started to think the universe was lying to him, that it was all a hoax.

The doctors knew otherwise, and were less willing to wait. Despite much protest by Erin, the powers that be finally decided that if, by Wednesday, May 19 at 6:00pm, active labor had not begun, they would induce. Upon this news, Erin seemed defeated and reluctantly set about making her peace with the thought of a new plan, the thought of Pitocin. We arrived at the hospital at the appointed time and walked through the lobby. I remember it in dramatic slow motion, but it actually felt strangely normal. It was as though we were arriving for a routine check-up, when really, a life was about to start.

They assigned us a room and administered an IV. As the nurse inserted the needle and taped the tubes to her wrist, Erin lie there on her side, her spaceship of a hospital bed in a pool of heavy yellow light. She squeezed her eyes shut with a twinge of pain, and as a few big tears fell down her cheeks, said, "I'm ready to go home now." The nurse-midwife explained that the Pitocin would come next, and left the room. Then, miraculously (or, due to stress), the contractions jumpstarted on their own. It was as though the baby had been waiting as long as she could, and finally responded to the threat. Wait, she seemed to say, I'll do it myself.

After this, Erin perked up. Jon, with a tenderness I had never seen, dried her tears with a tissue and off they went for a walk through the hospital hallways, IV in tow.

Source: flickr.com via Ashley on Pinterest

*Note: Image not my sister.

The Story of a Birth. 1. (For my niece, Alice.)

2011-05-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

She is one year old. I saw her enter this world and, per the request of her mama, my sister, I wrote about it. One day Alice will read it, but in the meantime, I'll post a few excerpts over the next week because if there's any experience I want to share with you, it's this.

To Alice: This account of your birth comes purely from my own perspective. I am describing how it looked and felt to me, your aunt. Much of this is from memory, some is from notes, and all of it was written nearly a year after the fact, having been postponed out of fear. Words, after all, can hardly touch the start of a life.

Friday, May 14, 2010. We came to wait. It was five days past the due date, which was on Mother's Day and would have been perfect but of course it didn't happen that way. By this point, we believed something would happen at any moment. Something huge, magnificent, and wholly inconceivable. Something we didn't want to miss. What we hadn't anticipated, my mother and I, was how long we would actually be there, in Burbank, slowly sinking with everyone else under the heavy stubbornness of this baby that just wasn't ready.

This baby -- this solid, curled mass that had made its home in my sister's body. A being still unknown to us, a fact we understood intellectually, but beyond that could hardly imagine. Erin and Jon are having a baby, I'd think to myself. It sounds so simple and, of course, it was. Reproduction, the survival of a species, the most basic truth of nature. Yet it was somehow impossible to grasp as reality. The meaning of it -- Erin and Jon are having a baby -- was beyond my scope of understanding. The creation of human life? Here? Now? This, a part of me thought, this could not possibly be.

As we waited, sitting around that little blue house, Erin's hands slid constantly over the hard, round surface of her belly. She'd chat with us, make jokes and laugh, all the while her hands roaming -- seemingly of their own accord -- around and around and around. Her fingers were swollen, her knuckles dry and cracked, and she was always warm. It was May in Southern California, granted, but the mother-to-be carried a dense heat with her, generated by something, an energy, that the rest of us couldn't feel.

My own hands reached instinctively for her belly time and again, wanting just to be near these layers of muscle and flesh that protected beneath them the beating beginning of a life. I'd find a thin, delicate layer of sweat escaping from her pores, seeping through her blue flowered dress and onto my palm. It was as though her very skin was hard at work, preparing for the tremendous feat her body would soon take on.

We've all seen pregnant women before, but being around a woman so close to giving birth does not feel commonplace, it does not feel regular or ordinary. It's the closest I've ever felt to standing in the presence of a higher being, a holy entity, like some kind of prophet or angel that's leading you into an unknown, and somehow, you trust her.

Question and Answer

2011-05-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

Source: myrevelment.com via Shannon on Pinterest

Yesterday, someone asked me what I'm going to do next, once I'm no longer doing what I do now. I shrugged it off and said some words, when really, I don't have a plan at all. I don't even have any ideas. I've been at my job for almost 8 months and I've been focusing so much on trying to be a grown-up that I've forgotten more will come after this. Life will not carry me, I have to walk.

Sitting on the bus this morning, I stared into the air, my eyes out of focus and my brain moving too fast for 6am. How long has it been since I've thought about what to do with my life? Weeks? Months? For years, I thought of nothing else. I thought so hard I nearly went nuts, my psyche always soggy, soaked through with uncertainty. The options, the decisions, the I don't have a fucking clue. It had all faded away and I didn't even notice, like when the sun goes down so gradually you're surprised when it's suddenly too dark to see.

Have I been living so much in the present I forgot there has to be a future? Is this what happiness is? Not worrying about what will come next? Does living in the moment mean you don't have goals? I love my life, but that's no excuse. I won't love this life in a year or two. I need a plan, or at the very least, an answer to the question, what will you do next?

But I don't want to go back to that place. The place full of questions and anxiety and the lights are always on. I want to keep living and wait until it makes sense to see what else is out there for me. I want to ease into a plan as though into a warm bath. I want to keep taking it one step at a time, maybe forward, maybe up.

WHOA Ohdeedoh!

2011-05-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

Something magical happened yesterday.

My little ol' blog was linked on a huge blog with tons of readers, and a good lot of 'em actually visited me here! Ohdeedoh is Apartment Therapy's design blog for children's spaces and they somehow located a photo I posted of my niece's nursery, designed and decorated by my very own sister. (You can read about her life as a working mother and wife over at Growing Up Senge.)

The folks at Ohdeedoh featured my niece's crib nook as an example of a small cool space -- they said super nice things about the giraffe spots my sister painted on the wall, her hanging tissue paper pom poms, and the striped blanket I crocheted! See the full post here.

I'm trying to learn just how they might have found my little corner of the Interwebs so I can do more of whatever it was that lead them here! When I see my dear sister this weekend for Alice's 1st birthday party, I'll definitely toast her awesomeness for her home design being featured on such a prestigious blog! And for good measure, here's a picture of the adorable child who gets to enjoy this small cool space:

Photo courtesy of my mom's iPhone.

She's stoked about it too.

Bay to Breakers; or, freedom.

2011-05-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

A real live miniature Up house, complete with the cast of characters. One of the more elaborate props/costumes we saw.

It seems like San Francisco is a living calendar of giant crazy street parties. People will take any excuse to drink in droves and today, a fine Sunday morning, they've emerged from their homes to march, dance, yell and, in some cases, actually jog in what is loosely dubbed a "foot race". I suppose some people are racing, but most are just... living. Parading through town however they damn well choose.

A lack of momentum left me merely a spectator to the madness. Next year I'll go big, but this year I stood on the sidelines with an old friend and watched the multitude of crazies drift by. This friend, T, is my backbone in this city. He is the person I call regularly to check in with when our lives have kept us apart for a week too long. He is the person I used to lay under beds with giggling about obscene things and funny voices, the person who would sneak over to my house and knock on my window in the middle of the night so we could go outside and lay on the driveway and be teenagers. He has always been there, somewhere in my life, and now he is here. Here where I can do my laundry at his house while we talk about Lady Gaga and watch Golden Girls. We live within a short walk of each other for the first time since sophomore year of high school and there is no one with whom I would rather be in the sidelines, watching the world go by.

In the crowd was a couple of naked older men, as you're bound to see at Bay to Breakers. They walked along calmly, taking it all in, their tan papery skin adorned with careful precision. One had glittery stars stuck here and there, random but intentional, a walking constellation. His taller companion had been painted with a subtle abstract design; his body a canvas and the artist, no doubt, by his side.

We looked at them, and T hoped out loud that one day, when he's old, he might have such a person. And shouldn't we all hope for that? Someone who will paint our wrinkled skin with care and attention to detail. Someone with whom we can stroll the streets naked, clad only in the knowledge that you have and will always have each other, plus some glitter stars and pink paint. This, T and I agreed, is freedom.

Then we realized much of what we were seeing before us could accurately be defined as freedom. All of those who wanted people to look at them but clearly did not give a shit what anyone actually thought. Guy with a belt of rubber chickens? Freedom. Couple of old broads dressed as cowgirls, complete with shiny white tennis shoes and a look in their eyes of pure naive wonder? Freedom. Naked Elvis? Also freedom. These people are living. They might have looked like nut jobs but they must have felt like the world was theirs. Maybe they don't always go through life with this same sense of can-do, of pride in whatever the hell they are, but I like to think that they just might. And if there's any city in which to be this way, it's here.

Easter Weekend a la iPhone

2011-04-25T22:23:00.000-07:00

I spent a lovely weekend with my family in dear old Livermore. Some highlights: the bridal shower of an old childhood friend, laying in the sun, cat snugs, fondue feast complete with mini martini flight, little girls with white gloves at my parents' church, the great egg hunt (over which I was victorious), colored egg names courtesy of my friend Marnie (most notable: Ocean Sacrifice).

I hope all of you had an equally fun-filled weekend! Please enjoy this feast for the eyes. And no, we did not take a plate of eggs out to the front yard for a photo shoot...

The end is.. where?

2011-04-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

Source: etsy.com via Susan on Pinterest

Leaving work downtown today I found myself funneled into total mayhem on Market Street. Traffic was ten buses deep and the sidewalks swarmed, more so than usual, with pedestrians. I saw at least one firetruck and ambulance squeeze through the congestion, sirens screaming.

Everyone around me seemed excited, loud. Horns honking, street cars dinging their bells, more sirens, bikes fighting through like insects, and the villagers all riled up. The sky was that colorless wash that carries with it an inevitable sense of foreboding. I couldn't tell what might have been going on other than an isolated emergency somewhere, some construction, just particularly bad traffic. Or... earthquake? Zombie apocalypse? UFO crash landing?

I got on the 6 outbound like any other day. The big black bus driver ma'am was shrieking from up front, "TEN MINUTES!" with more sass than I will ever have in my body. "I bin through it comin' down and it wuz TEN MINUTES!" I can't remember if this was before or after something hit our bus and she went into action mode, disembarked and, presumably, put an appendage back in place.

In a high window of a building on the corner of Market and 7th was a sign that said
the end is near. I looked up at it from the bus and then closed my eyes, listening to the hum (the roar?) of civilization, just glad to have a seat.

***

I found out later that Obama is in town, hence the traffic. Bit of a shame... the UFO thing would have been cool.

Source: flickr.com via Mara on Pinterest

What the Craft?: Crochet 101 at Workshop SF

2011-04-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Is there anything better than a basket of yarn?

I recently attended my first DIY class at Workshop, an indie establishment in San Francisco that offers unique and affordable classes to the public. Screen printing for newbies, anyone? Glass jar terrariums? Basic bicycle maintenance? These are just a few examples. All the classes are a couple hours long and cost around $30-$40. Materials are included, and you usually go home with an (almost) finished project!

My sister lives in LA, and on a jaunt around South Pasadena last year she took me by Common Thread Studio, a beautiful, inspired space that offers sewing classes and machine/workspace rentals with a retail shop in front selling lovely handmade wares. Upon seeing it, I cried a little inside knowing I would never have time to utilize the studio as an out-of-towner, and had been wondering ever since if San Francisco had something similar to offer.

Enter...Workshop! Somehow I had never known about this magical place (that is, hallelujah, cheaper than Common Thread) until chancing upon it on a friend's Facebook. The world-rocking began and I immediately signed up for last month's Crochet 101.

Now, I wasn't brand new to crochet, having learned last year and made a couple of projects. See below.


Exhibit a. Crochet hooks and other tools enclosed.

Exhibit b. Baby blanket I made for my niece. Isn't her crib nook adorable? Giraffe spots and tissue paper flowers courtesy of my talented sistah.

However, my skill was limited, and as hard as I tried with Youtube tutorials and books, I could not get beyond the basic single stitch crochet. Wah wah. I figured joining some other eager yarn fools to get tips from a pro could be worth it, and boy was I right! There were only three of us in the class, and the teacher worked with everyone closely as we moved at our own pace to make a bottle koozie/pouch. I learned how to crochet in the round, do a double stitch (success!) and, sort of, read a pattern. The space was cozy and inspiring, and the instruction was accessible and non-scary. Behold:

Not too shabby, eh? (It's unfinished, of course.) Now the trick will be remembering how to do all that stuff. If you live in San Francisco (or want to come visit me) and like to make stuff, let's take a class together! I'm thinking I'll try out the glass jar terrariums next.

Happy crafting!

How pure a thing is joy

2011-04-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

I always say I'm not very good at favorites. I find making such choices to be far too committal, not to mention unnecessary. Why rate things in such ways? I don't have top five places I've ever visited, I don't have a favorite book or song of all time. I have a web of beautiful things that I've spun in my psyche, and each one is good and important in a different way.

That being said, I just may have a favorite poem. I've reread this so many times that its rhythm has become a familiar place. When I want to be reminded how to live, how to make sense of our existence, of the great and terrible impermanence of our world, this is the place I come to.

What are years     

       What is our innocence,

what is our guilt? All are

       naked, none is safe. And whence

is courage; the unanswered question,

the resolute doubt -

dumbly calling, deafly listening - that

in misfortune, even death,

          encourages others

          and in its defeat, stirs

       the soul to be strong? He

sees deep and is glad, who

       accedes to mortality

and in his imprisonment rises

upon himself as

the sea in a chasm, struggling to be 

free and unable to be,

        in its surrendering

        finds it continuing. 

       So he who strongly feels

behaves. The very bird,

       grown taller as he sings, steels

his form straight up. Though he is captive,

his mighty singing

says, satisfaction is a lowly

thing, how pure a thing is joy. 

        This is mortality,

        this is eternity. 

Marianne Moore

Source: kyandra10.blogspot.com via Jade on Pinterest

Free cone day+extra

2011-04-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

Turns out, there is a perk to living a block away from the most overpriced Ben & Jerry's ever:

Living down the street meant popping over there as they handed out their last few cones of the day and not waiting in lines. Ever had ice cream with potato chips in it? Neither had I. Free ice cream means ice cream when you wouldn't normally eat it, especially because you'd never pay $5 for one small scoop.

Free cone day is sort of like Tuesdays at Anthropologie when everything goes on sale, when you wouldn't normally get a dress but then you do, because it's only $30 and why not get a dress when it's only $30? Especially if it does such marvelous things for your caboose. And yes, this frock used to cost $168. Just sayin'.

Tuesday wins! Here's wishing you all some equally brag-worthy freebies and bargains.

Wah wah wasa

2011-04-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

You know that feeling when you don't know what to do with yourself? When you feel so aimless that the only thing you can manage to do is close your bedroom door and stare into space? When you want to cry but you know it's only hormones, this cave you're in. When you know you exist in the world like everyone else, but you feel more like this guy:

{Images via}

You want to be like him, but the idea of it is so sad. A part of the world but not really, you would spend 10 hours painting yourself too if it only meant you would be hidden from view.

You feel like you could walk the ten blocks from the bus stop to your office with your eyes closed and it would be the same because you don't see anything anyway. And after work you're at a loss so you trudge to Lucky because the cold air will be good and you're out of 59-cent plain yogurts.

The woman who rings you up has a name tag that says Arlyn and jowls like a bull dog. Her eyes droop at the corners and she calls you Hon and Darlin' and Sweetheart and you feel better because you know she means it. Because you know you can be coddled at the grocery store like the sad little lamb you are when all you really came for are Wasa crackers. Arlyn must treat everyone this way, but at least the world has that.

You know that feeling? When the only thing to do is go home, get in bed, and read Angela's Ashes, because no one has it worse than the McCourt family. Och. Least of all you.

What the Craft?: Craft Bar w/ Etsy Labs at MOCFA

2011-04-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Folks, let's be clear about one thing. I love-in-italics the world of craft and DIY. This is a relatively recent obsession of mine, having blossomed within the last year, and though my skill and follow-through are minimal, my appetite is great. I can (and do) spend hours on DIY design blogs, coloring in an image of my handcrafted home in the sky that will one day have solid floors and walls, a clean white bed with a headboard I will make out of books. I've dabbled in crochet, embroidery, and handmade greeting cards, and I have a budding relationship with the sewing machine.

Lucky for me, San Francisco--a haven for recycled living and individualism--offers plenty to inspire the amateur do-it-yourselfer. I thought I'd share my glimpse into this world with you here, in a weekly series I'll call "What the Craft?" that will probably appear, let's be honest, once or twice a month.

First up: Craft Bar with Etsy Labs! This is an event the first Thursday of every month at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. They bring in a different local artist and/or crafter each time to lead a project. You pay $5, they provide the design, materials, and instruction. Oh, and they have $1 beers. Sometimes there's one project, sometimes you can choose from several, but from what I've seen, they're always delightful.

Last week, I made the clip-on bow tie you see above. Hand-sewn with love by moi. Impressed? Feel free to leave a comment telling me so. The pattern came from WhipperSnapped and the fabric was donated by Britex Fabrics, a San Francisco landmark with four stories of floor-to-ceiling designer goods sure to make any crafter weak in the knees. The best part is the actual artists and other knowledgeable folk are on hand to show you exactly what to do and walk you through each step of the process.

I made it to another Craft Bar a couple months back where I made this felt bib necklace, still missing the necklace part, so really just a cool piece of felt. But I mean, awesome right?

Craft Bar is cool because you get to be there with a bunch of other like-minded people, giddy with the thought of using their hands to make something lovely. They crowd the door and fight their way in for seats and scissors. The first time I went alone and got to know an older lady next to me. Last week I went with friends and we hardly spoke because we were concentrating so hard on stitching our bow ties just so.

You get in this trance while crafting, you know? Your brain ticks off, your hands work, and your eyes focus. While you may not be able to socialize and do an overstitch at the same time, you feel good in this collective creativity, this warm lighted room full of people who just want to leave their jobs and spend a couple hours making something simple and pure.

The sun, it remembered us.

2011-04-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

This city is an entirely different place when it's not raining. When it's -- dare I say it? -- warm. The past two days have felt like a vacation. People are celebrating. It's like that scene in Pleasantville when everything turns to color.

And by that I mean, surprising.

Instead of boots and tights and multiple twisted socks, instead of the perpetual damp, instead of the rain and the wind -- god, the wind -- it's sandals and it's walking slowly because for once you don't want to get to where you're going. You just want to be where you are.

When the sun comes to San Francisco the city smells like hot brick and flowers and outdoor dining. People drive with their windows down and their music up and every street feels like a party. You get to stroll down to Golden Gate Park with no jacket and big earrings and get food from a truck at Off the Grid. You get to sit in the grass with your friend and his dog eating Korean BBQ tacos and steamed pork buns from Chairman Bao and watch the sun set behind the trees.

Like this.

And? If you're lucky? The warm weather will coincide with an actual party on the street, like the Lower Haight Art Walk, and you'll get to spend your Friday evening enjoying art, drinks, and live music.

Happy Friday, my pets. Word has it the rain will be back tomorrow, but until then I'll be wearing a flower in my hair like this girl.

Love+Haight: Red Vic Movie House

2011-03-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

As I continue to get settled in my neighborhood, I thought I'd begin sharing some of the treasures and quirks of this colorful slice of San Francisco that is the Upper Haight. I live a block away from Haight and Ashbury, in the heart of a place known as the center of the '60s hippie movement. Counterculture is still alive and well here, coexisting peacefully with mainstream affluence.

The bums and drifters walk pit bulls on ropes, carry cats on their backs, and generally mind their own business. They hang around outside the American Apparel and expensive restaurants (see: the Alembic), and in passing have never done more than tell me I'm pretty or try to sell me grass. While the counterculture is manifested in little more than the clouds of weed lingering in the air or the used clothing stores on every block, the neighborhood still has that feeling that anything goes, that you can come here and be yourself, whatever that may be. My particular location provides a nice glimpse into the character of the area. Our flat is in a dingy Victorian with a record shop on the ground floor, an anarchist book collective next door, and a head shop across the street.

Last night I went with a friend to our local independent movie theater, owned by its employees and a proud part of the neighborhood for 30 years. The Red Vic is cozy, relaxed, and cash only. You can sit on cushioned benches that are halfway between your couch and a church pew. They play recent blockbusters in addition to old favorites (coming up, for example, are "Black Swan" and "The Big Lebowski"), and on Tuesdays offer matinee prices all day. I recently saw all the Oscar-nominated animated shorts there, and last night caught Sofia Coppoloa's "Somewhere". The movie was lovely, doing a lot with very little dialogue, prolonged shots, and a natural, understated performances. LA is viewed through a pretty pastel glow and I must say it had me feeling quite nostalgic for Southern California in all its palm trees, concrete and sun.

A trip down there may be in order soon, but for now I'll keep enjoying my home in the Haight.

Run for it

2011-03-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Image found here.

Yesterday I bought a pair of running shoes. Like, real running shoes. They cost one hundred dollars.

Only, I'm not a runner. In fact throughout my life as an athlete I can think of few things that made me more miserable. Few things that made me feel so weak and incapable. I swam competitively from age 7 to 17, with a couple years of water polo thrown in, and rowed crew for 3 years in college. This meant getting up at 5am every day (6am on Saturdays) and getting my ass kicked for 2 or 3 hours. I have been an athlete. I can do things that are hard. I can thrive on the pain and push through my physical limits.

But running is something I've never been good at, something I've always written off as not for me. I've resolved, however, to change that. The thing is that I live right next to the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, a beautiful green wonderland laced with winding paths, teeming with lean, healthy bodies. I considered a gym membership, but the thought of spending $60/month when I could get in equally good shape using just my body and the park, well, the miser in me just couldn't justify that.

I've already given this one try and ended up hurting my knees to the point that it took 3 weeks before I could walk down the stairs without cringing on every step, stiff like a robot. I was told that good shoes make a huge difference, so here goes round two. I did it right and went to a small, specialty running store just for women, tried on at least 7 pairs, and with the help of an expert, chose the one that felt right. That's the thing, isn't it? The shoes, the place, the air you breathe, your body. It all has to feel right.

Image found here.

Speaking of feeling right, let's talk about yoga. This I like. This is where I feel strong, purposeful and at peace. I have only recently managed to get my heels to the ground in down dog and it is one of my greatest triumphs. There is a lovely studio six blocks from my flat, and the 90 minute classes have my arms and legs and back twisting and folding into places that needed to be found. I hold myself up with muscles that had been missing and forgotten. I sweat. I am only my body and more than my body. I am one in a room of 40 people, melting into a steady, round OM.

There is something about that moment at the end of the class when the teacher takes all the light from the room and you lie flat on your back. It feels like that first time you spent the night away from home without your parents as a kid, when the darkness falls on you and at first you aren't sure what you're doing there, but then you are calm. You feel safe and you try to figure out what that is in the air around you, floating in the dark. It's something you don't carry with you as you move through the city. This thing in a closed room full of strangers that can only be trust.

Hear me out

2011-03-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Good morning daffodil in the hallway outside my bedroom door.

Hello, old friends.

It's been a while, no? If any of you are as bad at keeping in touch with people as I am, then you'll understand that the longer you go without reaching out, the harder it becomes. So here I am, four (four!) months later, crawling back to you with my tail between my legs. If I have to beg you to take me in, so help me I will do it. The surprising and wonderful thing is, however, that some of you have asked me to return to this place. To begin filling, once again, this void I've left. And that, as hard as I tried, was impossible to ignore.

I've wondered whether blogs, like dairy, have an expiration date. Do they curdle and go bad if left untouched for too long? Or is a blog more like an old piece of clothing? Something that you used to adore and wear every day, but then suddenly couldn't stand the sight of, discarding it on the floor of your closet in a sad, crumpled heap.

This has been my view of le petite blog over the last few months. A sad crumpled heap that I never wanted anyone to see again. I started shopping around to replace it, trying on generic titles and begging web designer friends for a free makeover. I hated "toes over the edge" -- so sappy, I thought. So easy to forget.

But then my sister talked me off the edge, so to speak. Own it, she said. Nurture it and be kind and it will grow into something all its own. So I've picked it up and dusted it off just in time for spring. Maybe it was hibernating for winter? Like a bear? I wonder how many metaphors I can throw at you in the form of excuses. If a blog is like a bear, a living breathing beast with a will of its own, then do I get a pass for being lazy and uninspired?

Tell me, beloved readers, that you're still there. Tell me that you'll stick with me as I figure things out and, inevitably, make changes. (Because I am nothing if not fickle.) I promise I'll be here if you will.

Welcome, 2011.

2011-01-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

Image found here.

Happy New Year, my loves. I hope you're all safe, and though tired or hungover, I hope you're all happy. Happy and new. It's fun to see both ourselves and the new year as just that, isn't it? Brand new and clean, freshly plucked from the time continuum like a flower bud, untouched by the toils and meltdowns of 2010 and all the years that came before it. Ready to bloom and surprise us all with what color we will find.

Of course this isn't really the case. A new year on the calendar is not a blank slate and on Monday we'll all be exactly who we are, who we have been. We'll go and do exactly what we've been doing, perhaps with the errant resolution thrown in here or there. (The best I've heard so far is a total avoidance of waiting in lines at any cost, though this was his resolution for last year and it did not work. Sometimes, all you can do is wait.)

And what are we doing, anyway? Does anyone really know? Maybe this is just a question for the young and wandering like myself, but do you have to be young to wander? To wonder? Last night at a sparkly house up on a hill in Bernal Heights, I sat around a kitchen table strewn with empty champagne bottles and dwindling homemade snacks with a small group of big-hearted people, all but one of whom I had just met.

The light and life of the city below us sat patiently in the wide windows and we talked about being proud of who we are even though we don't really know what that means, being something. We agreed on the importance of progress even if we don't know where it leads. We will not be sedentary and unchanging. We will find what is new in ourselves and the world as long as we are breathing. Yes, everyone nodded gravely, yes, this is how best to live.

Just before midnight, our small band of six set off and walked 10 or so blocks to a dance party in the Mission. The crowd was swollen and giddy and agitated and we burrowed our way through to the deepest corner of the club where we danced in a pocket of air and space.

Twelve o'clock came with a shower of champagne and a screaming wish for unity and peace from the woman on the microphone, a squat lesbian with a happy raspy voice and bushy armpits. The life of the party turned out to be this lesbian's aging mother, a woman with a loose gray braid and a gold velvet turtleneck tank blanketing her sagging breasts. She looked at least 70 and she danced with more energy than any of us, her arms reaching and bending toward the low dark ceiling, her eyes smiling and alive.

None of my group really knew each other or what to make of this crowded, grungy party in the basement of a fire hazard, but we just danced and I knew it was a metaphor, moving in the dark like this. Blind, unsure of what we were doing or why, and alone but not really alone.

Renegade Craft Fair!

2010-12-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

As you might imagine, it's been a pretty busy week trying to get settled in my new place in San Francisco and also relishing the return of my social life now that I no longer I have to go to bed at 9:30pm to be up in time for a hellish commute. No sir, I hop on the bus right outside my door on Haight for a quick zip downtown and I am THERE.

Here.

Anyway, I promise to share more about my new pad soon, but for now just know that all in all, I'm happy. And the staggering amount of art, vintage, and DIY design at my fingertips in this city is certainly on the list of things that are making me smile right now.

This weekend I'm going to the Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Sale and I am thrilled. I've been looking forward to it for months and am already prepared to WANT and, of course, to buy. Those of you in the area, I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's free to attend and will be, at the very least, fun and inspiring.

I'll be sure to showcase my finds, unless of course they're Christmas gifts in which case you'll have to wait until January. Though, let's be honest, at this rate you'd probably have to wait until January anyway.

Moving Day

2010-12-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is it! Today, I move. I am unrested, unorganized, and only partially packed. I didn't get to work on it yesterday until about 5pm, but that's who I am. The bigger the move, the longer I put off the preparations.

But as unprepared as I am, I'm definitely ready.

Image found at CAPow Art & Design.

Little Miss Self-Conscious

2010-12-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

My cubicle feels private, personal, like I'm in my own little world, protected from lurking office eyes.

This, in reality, is not at all the case. People can see me. And when they're behind me, I have no idea. They're not always there, but often a few folks will congregate several cubicle rows back behind this little Plexiglas partition. They're facing in my direction, and naturally their eyes wander. There's one tall gentleman in particular who has about 2 heads on the rest of us and an excellent giraffe's eye view of the whole office. This gentleman and anyone else who may be standing there might see me do something I do when I forget people could be looking my way.

Like just now, when I sneezed twice, then grabbed a dirty paper towel off my desk that I'd been previously using as a napkin and markedly wiped the sneeze spray off my forearm before blowing my nose.

When I turn around in sudden panic realizing my error and see people there, crap! there, I have to bank on the hope that in reality the whole world is not looking at me at all times, that they don't actually care what I do or where I sneeze. That they're probably preoccupied with sucking in their gut or taming an unruly eyebrow hair. All those things they think other people notice, when really, we've all got our own noses to blow. Our own sneeze spray where we just don't want it.

...right?

Parts of a Whole

2010-12-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

Did you all enjoy feasting again and again on your Thanksgiving leftovers? Each day tupperwares being emptied, the options becoming fewer. At the end of the week you're eating a plate of 3 brussels sprouts, a mountain of sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce on the side. Not a meal most of us would normally prepare, but somehow because those were each part of what was once a whole, we welcome it. Next year I'd like to try something my coworker did with her friends this year: a post-Thanksgiving leftover potluck. Genius, no?

Speaking of genius, and of leftovers, I'd like to direct your attention to one of my most favorite bloggers. Krista's writing is honest and poetic and effortlessly profound. The kind of writing that makes you wish you could peer out at the world from behind her eyes, think it through her brain. Her post today is about who she used to be and who she is now, how those two people are connected, and how they're not.

"i used to be me. and now i'm me all over again. with the dirt and pebbles sifted out. i am what's left over.

the gold in the pan."

I love this metaphor, and I found it resonating with me I think because lately I have been more preoccupied than usual with the direction I'm heading in, the person I'm going to turn into. I know this is a mystery for everyone, and when you ask most people to look back on their teens and twenties they'll say they never in a million years would have guessed they'd end up where they did.

Similarly, I look ahead toward my thirties and forties, and the person I'm picturing is not me. She doesn't have my face, my hair, my body. She's imaginary. Not an older version of myself, but someone else entirely. I already know I'll turn 40 one day and be surprised that I'm actually still me.

Growing up is funny, isn't it? At all stages. My niece, Alice, has grown and changed so much since the last time I saw her in early September that I look at pictures and videos of her now and feel like I've never even met her. Like it's some other baby, some other kid, and I desperately need to make her acquaintance, meet this month's version of Alice. This bright smiling little person who moves and laughs and does things intentionally is certainly not the same tiny thing that emerged from my sister 6 months ago. That is, quite simply, impossible.

I guess what I'm saying is we never really know what time is going to do to us. It is both the most constant, predictable and unchanging truth of our existence, and our greatest mystery. But whoever we become, all those versions of ourselves that take shape over time? What we can know is that they will always remain part of a whole.

Jump

2010-11-29T22:02:00.000-08:00

It's time I break the news. Drumroll, please! There. Shh.

I found a place to live in San Francisco. I'm moving on Sunday to a flat on Haight Street. The building is 100+ years old and the apartment is nestled above a record store. There are 3 friendly flatmates, and my room has pretty blue walls, a window, and a closet. What more could a girl want?

So, friends and loyal readers -- here, as they say, goes nothin'. I'll be sure to let you know how it all turns out.

*Beautiful (and inspiring) print found at the Etsy shop of Jessica Swift. If you want to see many, many more beautiful things (or buy me a Christmas present), go and have a visit.

The most fun you can have with your trousers on

2010-11-28T00:08:00.000-08:00

What is...The 32nd Annual Great Dickens Christmas Fair & Victorian Holiday Party?

Yeah, I went there. With my mom. And it was -- you guessed it -- awesome. It's at the Cow Palace for the next 3 weekends and I'd recommend going if you fancy a little "magic, mirth and mystery," being wished a Happy Christmas! by everyone you see, and herds of people dressed up exactly like this:

We feasted on hot cider, meat pies, Turkish coffee, shortbread, sausage rolls, copper ale, and butterscotch candies all while scanning the crowd for the likes of Oliver Twist, Fagin, Dickens himself, and my personal favorite, Uriah HEEP! I recently finished reading David Copperfield and I was simply tickled when that devilish Heep walked by slowly, his hands hanging limply folded at his chest, his back slightly hunched, whatever current evil scheme no doubt hatching in his twisted sweaty head.

We also enjoyed a number of performances including but not limited to some Scottish and Irish dancing (HELLO kilts!) at Mr. & Mrs. Fezziwig's dance party.

My, how this fellow could leap..

Also, a performance of The Mikado during which I may have fallen asleep if it weren't for the quite authentic-looking Victorian gentleman at the end of my row who kept chuckling heartily and shouting "Here here!" in a thick British accent. When the play ended, the gentleman deemed it the most fun you can have with your trousers on. And by jove, he was right! Speaking of trousers, we also saw The Saucy French Postcards Tableaux Revue featuring...live nudes! Yep, nudes. It was racy, and there was a man with an eye-patch patrolling the aisles for cameras.

Actual beggar children. I don't know where they got them.

Some of you may not have known what a huge geek I am, but there you have it. Don't ever tell me I wasn't open with you. If you want the whole truth, this is actually my second year in a row as a visitor to the Cow Palace's London. I remember thinking last year it was something fun to do once, but somehow, I couldn't stay away.

I even imagined a romantic scenario (something I do a little too much lately... time to up the social life!), in which I meet and fall in love with a hot man in character and a tailcoat, perhaps with those giant sideburns indicative of the time. We'd have a great story to tell our friends -- we'd pretend to be embarrassed about having met at the Dickens Fair, but we'd keep going back year after year. I'd dress up like a proper lady with feathers in my hair and we'd stroll through the foggy streets of London, arm in arm.

Hey, thanks!

2010-11-26T11:33:00.000-08:00

Well, everyone, I hope you had a super lovely Thanksgiving. As heartwarming as this American holiday is, the funny thing is that the best word I can think to describe it is gezellig, a Dutch word that we have no translation for. It means... cozy, warm, friendly, homey, inviting, fun, etc. Any number of tasty English adjectives the combination of which doesn't even cut it.

Here's what some of our gezellig looked like yesterday (not pictured: a rousing game of Jenga, stimulating table conversation, catching a yellow jacket in a mason jar, and a family trip to see Disney's new Tangled):

The short list of what I'm thankful for? My family, obv. They're nice to me even when I'm a horrible little brat (yeah, that still happens), and every day I can't believe how lucky I am that I have parents who understand, and siblings who I can call best friends. Oh, and the most beautiful little niece you ever did see.

Now it's time to set our sights on Christmas! I'm at home getting inspired by handmade goodness rather than out with the terrifying masses on Black Friday. I mean, who wants to participate in something with a name like that? It sounds like the plague. But instead of locusts, shoppers.

This, however -- this is little more like it.

32 Years

2010-11-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

I have given my parents almost no anniversary cards over the years. Certainly no gifts or parties. I think once or twice I've sent an email congratulating them and saying... ya know, thanks? It was never really on our radar as kids, just something that was maybe mentioned around Thanksgiving every year -- my dad coming home with a card from the drugstore that he'd sign in a burst of emotion and present triumphantly to my mom, wanting simply to tell her he's glad she's here, glad she's always been here. We'd hear him say "Happy anniversary, Dear" -- and they'd hold each other close in our old kitchen while we, the fruits of their lasting marriage, focused on whatever else there was.

That's, at least, what I noticed. As most kids raised in nuclear families, we took the fact that they were still married, that they had ever gotten married, for granted. The idea that they had ever not known each other, had ever been anything other than our parents, a single unit, seems in my mind to have been nonexistent. Immaterial. Blank. There they were, and to change it would be to change the earth's orbit. To change it would be to change gravity.

Last weekend, my parents bought a motor home for little trips, particularly down to LA to visit their grandbaby. It's small, somewhat of an antique, let's say, but it's cozy and it's right. My dad brought me out in the cold last night to give me the grand tour (all 21 feet worth). We reached the back and I realized the toilet is there, out in the open as though the whole thing is one giant bathroom that happens to also have a table, sink and bed in it.

"Isn't there a door?" I asked. My dad slid said 'door' out from inside the wall -- it's really nothing more than a thin sheet of paper that doesn't even reach all the way across the opening. Surely, I suggested, one person would have to leave while the other person.. you know. My dad threw his hands up in the air and said loudly, his face incredulous, "We've been married 32 years! You close the door and what happens, happens."

This, I think, is marriage. At least, it's my parents' marriage. What I know is you can't stay bound to a person for 32 years without being able to let what happens, happen.

Last night, my dad did the same thing he's done many times before -- he ran out and bought a lovely card and bouquet of flowers, laid on the sweetness when my mom came home and when he said "Happy anniversary, Dear" there was a brief moment of confusion when it became clear that my dad had the date wrong. "Thanksgiving threw me off!" he said. This year their anniversary, November 25th, falls on Thanksgiving day and that just didn't sound right to him, so in his mind, the 24th it became. An honest mistake, really.

We all had a laugh, but in the end it's not really about the anniversary of a little wedding that happened a long time ago, it's about every single moment since.

Happy anniversary!

Ain't nothin' Ron with that.

2010-11-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

I don't know where this came from, these heroic hipster wizards and witch. The chosen one, The Boy who Lived in old man shoes and skinny jeans. I found it on Facebook and I normally wouldn't share something I can't credit, but I just couldn't pass it up. It makes me want to see the famous trio in any number of other themed ensembles: Olympic gymnasts, perhaps, '90s grunge, Target employees? What I'm saying is that I love them and I'd love them in any variety. Particularly (and I don't want to make any of you uncomfortable here), Ron's bulge in those pants. I mean, have you seen ol' Rupert lately? Our squeaky Ron Weasley has become, oh yes! a man.

Boy's beefed up, eh? Now if you'll excuse me, it's almost 8:30pm so it's time I get in bed with book 7 and fall asleep with a certain ginger on my mind.

Some pretty I found in Colorado

2010-11-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

This? This is my parents, looking up at the little mountain cabin that was their first home together, over 30 years ago.

Friday Night Whine Fest; Or, Trainspiration

2010-11-20T01:35:00.000-08:00

Have I told you that my commute is approximately 1.5 hours door to door? It's likely you've been made privy to this thrilling information because it seems like I can talk of nothing else. It's unlikely you've heard because oh, right, I never post.

My sorry excuse is that working+commuting+sleeping is not the perfect formula for inspiration or creativity. I may be inspired to, say, elbow somebody on the train in the teeth for letting their mouth hang open to release -- like rot in a tupperware long-forgotten in the back of the fridge -- their clammy, oven-baked morning breath. Don't they know the train is an enclosed, poorly ventilated can in which the air does not filter but rather hangs in thick sickly clouds of stench? Don't they know they have nostrils? Don't they know I have nostrils?

I may be inspired to squeeze tears out my bloodshot, I-woke-up-at-5:30am eyes. Tears my nose pushes up in protest of being too near what can only be described as sweaty human body crevices. (A phrase thinked up by none other than my brilliantly scornful sister). Tears of self-pity too for, well, obvious reasons.

I may be inspired to bow my head in resignation and trace my eyes over word after word on pages of worlds that are not a bleak screaming train with stained blue upholstery. Worlds that are light and open and make me feel like I'm breathing something more than oxygen.

I may be inspired to let myself have music, to surrender to, say, Arcade Fire the whole hour. To let my brain lift and dissolve into nothing but stars and clapping and harmony and orchestra. To look out the window and open myself up to the lights, to the world outside the train. I may be inspired to see that the great looming machinery, the many metal shades of gray and brown, the plumes of thick smoke twisting like flower stems into the sky -- that with the right music in my head, it's beautiful. (I'm telling you - listen to Arcade Fire.)

I may be inspired to stare at the heads and shoulders, the clenched jaws and watching eyes, the people who wait. Every day. Just, wait. Like this train ride is a pause, a time when the world moves, but they are still. Still and surrounded by hundreds of others squished in next to them, just trying to live. I may be inspired to hold my breath and thank the sky that I am mixed in with humanity, right where I want to be.

But am I ever inspired to write? Not so much.

Her Talks

2010-11-16T21:08:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month I spent three days in Colorado visiting enough relatives to populate a small village. My mother is one of eight children: five sisters, three brothers. Now, the great thing about these eight is that they're all wonderfully clever. The perhaps less great thing is that they all know it. Don't get me wrong; they're a very fun bunch and there's always lots of laughter, but things reach a competitive level that leaves some of us caught in a crossfire, innocent bystanders in a repartee bombardment. It's like a perpetual game of hot potato, the potato being regular, joke-free conversation.

One of my aunts in particular, however, is quieter than all the rest. While her wit is sharp, she seems to keep it mostly to herself (or at least her immediate neighbor). I made this observation to her, wondering how she could have possibly ended up this way, so remarkably mild-mannered in a joke-eat-joke family. She hmm'd on that for a moment and suggested perhaps it was a result of being the third born and never having to speak for herself as a little kid because her two older siblings did all the talking for her. "Her's hungry," they'd say. "Her wants more spaghetti."

One day, as the story goes, the silent child spoke. I don't remember what she said, but the two older siblings ran into the house eagerly reporting, "Her talks! Her talks!" Now, let me just say that I don't know exactly how old these two were at the time... but somehow everyone overcame the apparent yokel vernacular and they've all grown up to be not only jokesters, but writers and, you might say, wordsmiths. In fact, "her" went on to recently place 5th in the AARP's National Spelling Bee (who knew there was such a thing?). As it turns out, her spells.

I sat with my thoughts this evening on my commute home, my mind coming to rest on this family that I love but have never known all that well. My aunts and uncles -- never the prominent figures in my life that they might have been had we lived nearby -- I've now begun to see as more than just relatives I've always known were there. Just, there.

I know that these faces have been present from my earliest moments, that their steady love has followed me patiently over the years. And I now know more than I once did that the love they carry with them through the world, the words they spell, sentences they string together and jokes they lob into the air, that all of it truly is somehow a part of me. Somehow woven into my bones and skin, into my own words and sentences, my own stories. I've long felt that a blood or familial relation does not mean a relationship, but I've come to believe more and more that it does mean, unmistakably, a piece of my identity.

Identity. I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y. Identity.

Eleven

2010-11-08T15:37:00.000-08:00

Since today is November 1st and a crunchy new fall has officially begun, I'm going to introduce a personal challenge for this month.

Hold on, what? You mean it's not November 1st?! You're saying an entire week has gone by without my knowledge?

Well, crap. That's going to make this goal I'm setting much more difficult to meet. You see, I've become a real slacker in the blog-posting department. I mean, four for October? Pathetic. In the short lifespan of this blog the best I've done is a measly 10 in one month! So I've decided to set the bar just a touch higher and shoot for 11 in this 11th month of the year. That can't be so hard, right? I thought about promising myself some kind of prize if I make it, but I'm thinking that escaping the shame I'm sure to suffer by failing in the eyes of my beloved readers (that's you) will be reward enough. It's a good thing I'm getting an early start on the month instead of putting it off a whole week to do even the first post! Or, wait...

Anyway, I'm going to kick things off in triumph by drawing all ya'll's attention to what I find to be a delightful coincidence. Remember back in July when Holland won game after game and made it to the World Cup finals? I was there with a country full of pride and glowing orange. Pride for a team of underdogs that should not have gotten that far. Pride before it all, and pride after. I watched the games among the Amsterdam thousands, a tiny drop in an orange everything.

And then last Wednesday, where do I find myself? Crowded among orange-clad masses once again along Montgomery Street in Downtown San Francisco as the Giants, a victorious pack of misfits (and certainly underdogs), rolled by in cable cars to the hoots and screams of their enamored fans -- and may I say, seeing that beard in person was, in a word, exhilarating.

I mean, look at that guy.

While I was admittedly far more emotionally invested in the World Cup than the World Series (and maintain that the US has nothing truly like the national unity and spirit that other countries know in the World Cup), I still find it funny that in a span of four months I happened to find myself in these two cities as they cheered on their champions in orange.

So on that note, dear readers, I hope you'll be cheering me on (and, of course, reading) as I use these last three weeks of November to post my way to victory. One down, 10 to go. The odds are against me, but I just might pull ahead.

How does a parade sound to you all?

Make Believe

2010-10-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, my pets. I'm clicking away at my keyboard with shiny red finger nails painted specially for the '60s housewife get up I sported on Friday. Black lace cocktail dress that belonged to my great grandmother and somehow fits me perfectly, with a curved neckline resting just beneath my collar bones, a high waist, and a layer of lace falling at my knee. Paired with a last-minute tailor-made plaid apron courtesy of my mom, black peep toe pumps (pain included), fake cigarette, luxurious feather duster, and of course, pearls. It came together deliciously and cost me a grand total of $13.

Dressing up is fun isn't it? Marching around in something that makes you feel like a million bucks but would never fly on a regular day. I secretly loved holding that cigarette -- so real yet without the poison -- bringing it to my lips and inhaling the make-believe. Filling my lungs with pretend. Meeting people at a Halloween party is sort of unlike any other social dynamic. You don't know what anybody is truly like in real life. They don't know what you're like.

In a way I feel like I'm currently trying to put my life together the way I put a Halloween costume together. The image I have of myself living in San Francisco is so constructed that it's almost unrecognizable. I have this idea and to make it real I need a number of garments and accessories: a job, an apartment, a bicycle, maybe an iPhone, and Etsy shop, a favorite coffee spot. The costume is me living the life I want to live in the city I want to live in. It's like many Halloween costumes in that the idea is the easy part; you get all excited like "Yeah! It'll be brilliant!" and then realize you don't know how to make, say, a Marge Simpson wig or a Ghostbusters proton pack. The idea dissolves and you go with something you already have.

My friend Anne once told me to start acting and looking like the person I want to become, and eventually I'll just find my way there. Eventually it will no longer be a costume, but real. This is how we build our identity over time, isn't it? Some of it is organic, and some of it, calculated down to every detail. Down to fake cigarettes and red nail polish. At first it feels like you're playing dress-up, and then it becomes so comfortable and familiar you can't remember being any other way.

While I already have one element of my costume -- the job -- after a month I still feel like even that is somehow pretend, like I'm faking it or something. I walk through the Financial District every day and while I love it -- the industriousness of it all, looking up every block or so to where the buildings meet the sky -- I somehow feel like I don't belong, like it's a secret club and people notice me on the streets and think, what is she doing here?

Actually, though, building a new life for yourself is like a Halloween party also in that you really can be whoever the hell you want to be. It might take time, creativity, and 20,000 email responses to Craigslist room-for-rent ads, but in the end the costume is yours to wear. And if you really want, you can be something different every year. The people you meet may not know it, but you'll still just be you, whatever that is.

Sketchy

2010-10-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you what, folks. The problem with my current situation is that I get up at 5:30am to commute to work, and by the time I get home in the evenings I have about 2 hours before I want to be in bed! Free time currently goes to (drum roll please): sifting through sales racks to boost my very meager business casual wardrobe, emailing people on Craigslist about rooms for rent, and blogging. Oh, wait.. no. Clearly not blogging, say the only two other posts from October almost over. Woe, guilt, etcetera.

But as it happened last night, some of my free time went to attending a super awesome cooler than I'll ever be monthly art event at the 111 Minna Gallery in downtown San Francisco. A good friend finally managed to get me to a Sketch Tuesday which is basically a bunch of established and emerging local artists sitting in a stylish urban space and making art while the rest of us stand around, drink cheap drinks from the full bar, and listen to the DJ spin tunes. THEN when an artist finishes something they'd been working on, they walk over with the piece and a piece of tape, and slap it up on a big wall with their name and a price (which ranged from one PBR to $45, though the max is supposed to be $30).

Anyway, I bought something that I love but cannot show you because it is waiting here in my lair (lair?) as an intended Christmas gift for one of my (many) readers, to remain unnamed. But when I bought it from the quiet fellow with glasses working away at his spot at the table, he revealed to me that he was this person:

Well, not that actual squid man on the escalator, but Josh Ellingston, the artist who illustrated this and two other fantastic scenes that are currently up in many of the BART stations around the Bay Area as BART's featured artist for 2010. I'd been seeing these for months and then lo and behold! I'm handing the guy $20 for something he'd just made with googly eyes. And he was so nice and you should totally go to his website and admire his work.

Another fave from the night was Mia Christopher. How quirky and charming is her style?! Check out her Etsy shop here. Watching her color in those tiny shapes with such precision was a delight.

And we were all ogling the work of Annie Galvin from 3 Fish Studios.

Couldn't you just cry? These postcards are similar to the absolutely lovely little pieces she was making last night. I didn't buy one, but I will be dreaming of them until I do. Especially the bottom left, and bottom right.. well, all of them. OH, oh.

I hope you also get to do something cool with your free time this week. In fact, it's almost over! Nice to see you, Thursday.

Swell Giveaway!

2010-10-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

Anyone interested in a little Monday inspiration? Check out this awesome giveaway and interview with DIY star on Living the Swell Life! The artist/designer hails from Paper + Twine, and I don't know about you guys, but I'd love me one of these darling little notebooks.

All Aboard the Pubic Express

2010-10-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm going to ask you to do something. Please scroll down and read the first sentence of the post preceding this one. Now, read this short email that I got from my mother today:

Have you ever been sitting on pubic transit...?!

You might want to take a different train!

Love, Mom

Folks, I consider myself a careful writer. Blog posts, emails, essays, tombstone inscriptions, whatever it is, I check it twice. I proofread diligently and yet somehow I managed to let "pubic transit" slip by me. PUBIC TRANSIT! Now, I realize most people probably wouldn't get their panties in a twist over something like this, but I live off catching other people's mistakes. (Well, I don't actually live off it because no one will pay me to be a copy editor, but you get the idea.) I can't very well go around telling everyone how they've erred if I can't get sentence #1 right.

Normally, when a mistake becomes apparent to me after a post has been published, I slyly make the edit, re-publish, and pretend nothing ever happened (kind of like when you accidentally let one go in front of your friends, cough conspicuously, and hope they mistook it for street noise). But this cannot be ignored. I mean, pubic transit. How many of you noticed that?! I am simply mortified, imagining you all throwing your heads back in the wicked cackle of a schoolyard bully. Me, my little baby blog with it's nice wood paneling and regrettably corny title, the laughing stock of the blogging community!

Of course it's a vain and lonely enterprise, writing a blog. People may have noticed my typo and laughed -- or, worse yet, hardly anyone has even read it. I am reminded of something my favorite blogger, Petunia Face, wrote in a post from the beginnings of her blog, which has since become the favorite and delight of many adoring readers.

"Blogging is a bit like going to a cocktail party where you don’t know anyone. You hang up your coat and stand there feeling a bit naked, hoping your dress is the correct attire. Nobody hands you a drink at first, there are no appetizers and you don’t really know what to do with your hands. All around people are laughing at other people’s stories. You feel fringe.

So you just open your mouth and start talking to the air. It feels funny at first, speaking into a void. You tell your stories and maybe someone smiles at you. Hands you a drink. A plate of bite-sized mushroom quiche even though you hate mushrooms so you just nibble around the edges to be polite. You keep talking and suddenly someone laughs. Someone else talks back. Introduces you to her friend. And suddenly you are not alone anymore, your words floating up into nothing. They are heard. You are heard."

Again, you may say the typo is no big deal, but if blogging is like a cocktail party, then such a mistake is like having a booger peeking around the corner of my nostril. Like having spinach in my teeth all night long, or walking out of the bathroom with my skirt tucked into my thong. Like any number of awful things when all you really want is for them to like you. When all you really want is to be heard. And we all know that no one's gonna keep talking to the girl with a booger hanging out of her nose.

So readers, I hereby invite you to laugh with me (and please, not at me). The pube train is now leaving the station -- on or off?

I wish

2010-09-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been sitting on pubic transit, perhaps during commuting hours, listening to a podcast or something on your iPod that incites in you a little irrepressible smiling or giggling? And you become the freak sitting there grinning to yourself while everyone around you looks like a sad robot?

Actual sad robot from Spike Jonze short I'm Here - image via

I had one of those moments today. I was listening to an episode of This American Life on BART coming back from San Francisco. Episode #259, "Promised Land" from August 8. Anybody catch that one? He starts off talking about Disney movies, and how so many of them and other musicals start with what they call an "I wish" song. Snow White wishes for the one she loves, Dorothy wishes for somewhere over the rainbow, etc. The examples are too many to count. The same thing happens again and again: the main character appears, sings their anthem spelling out what it is they're after, and this drives the story forward. Ira Glass observes that you start noticing this everywhere, and then? What does he do? He sings. He sings his own "I wish" song for the show, and this is where the smiling ensues. As far as I can remember, I've never heard him sing before, and I was just plum tickled.

But it got me thinking about how everyone has an "I wish" song. See the world, buy a house, graduate, retire, procreate, survive. Maybe you're still trying to place the tune, work out the melody or come up with the lyrics, or maybe you've been singing the same ditty your whole life. Whatever we're after, each of us has a song that drives our story forward. But unlike a Disney movie, our tale doesn't end happily tied ever after up neat with a bow. Our song isn't over when our wish does or does not come true, we just add more verses.

Ira played the opening number from Stephen Sondheim's broadway musical Into the Woods as the BART train sailed over the sprawl of industry and suburbia of the East Bay Area. The voices of six characters spun together in a medley, all crying out their own respective wishes, and it was as if those voices were floating up out of the windows and chimneys of the tract houses below. Dusty, freeway-adjacent developments awash in grays, taupes and burnt siennas. Rooftops and sidewalks all diagonal lines and one foot in front of the other. Some of those houses are dreams realized, and some hide wishes that may never leave the driveway.

As for me, I've recently had a wish granted (one that took me months to come up with in the first place), and as a result I've got a whole new set of wishes. Today I started a brand new shiny job in San Francisco. It's on the 10th floor of a tall glossy building in the Financial District, and I have a cubicle, a company email address, and benefits. Now, having spent the last two years au pair-ing, traveling, camping, road-tripping, interning, and just generally floating around, this will be a huge change. My peep toe flats clicking on the waxy floor of the lobby as I made my way to the elevator this morning sounded like a foreign language. It's change, but I'm ready for it. I'm ready to find an apartment, buy a bike, and make San Francisco my own. Yes, friends, I'm ready to drive my story forward.

Stay tuned.

Look! I make stuff! (But seriously, please look at it.)

2010-09-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

While I haven't been terribly inspired to write lately, I have found inspiration of another color in Craftland (note: not a real place). I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon yesterday learning how to do some embroidery stitches with the expert help of my mom and this handy book.

I promptly decided that it's a delightful pastime, not to mention the source of abundant potential for style and cuteness. I mean, look how fun!

Just a simple sampler, but I'll definitely be playing with this some more!

Something I've been trying out for a while longer is the irresistible art of making cards. I've combined three of my most favorite things: paper, words, and colorful fabrics... and behold!

Charming, no? So far I've just made one here and there to give to friends and family, but I'm toying with the idea of an Etsy shop. What do you think? Would you give money in exchange for something like this? Handmade, each one unique, perhaps less cutesie and more funky+weird? If no one comments and says yes, I'll never do it! I'll burn all my fabric scraps and flush my rubber stamp alphabet down the toilet! I mean it! I don't care how lowly and pathetic it makes me look, I need your validation! Yes, that's in italics.

Happy Monday, friends! And you know what? I am so glad you looked at this. You made my day. I hope someone made yours.

750 Words

2010-09-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

By 8:30 this morning (Saturday, mind you), I had already written 750 words of free text (758, actually). I feel pretty good about this. It's my first day trying out a little site called 750 Words, an online version of the tried and true writing exercise of (go figure) writing. A little bit every day. No editing, censoring, or drafting. Just letting the words flow. I wrote my 758 words (about 3 pages) this morning in 15 minutes, and there's actually some decent material in there. But that's not even the point. The point is to just open up your mind, put whatever's in there on the page (or the screen), maybe for practice, maybe for therapy, maybe as a way to sort through your thoughts, relieve stress, purge.

Whatever it becomes, the cool thing about it is that it's bound to become something. We so often lack motivation or inspiration and as a result do nothing, produce nothing. But by sitting down and just forcing yourself to pull sentences out of the empty space in your brain, things appear. Ideas materialize before your eyes as if by magic. Loose ends connect. Questions are asked. Conclusions are drawn.

The site is the brain child of this guy. It's different from a blog in that the content is totally private and there's no "posting" involved. Different from a journal in that you can type instead of suffer massive hand cramps, it helps you keep track, and it goes into a kind of little bank instead of just into a boring word document. He's made it fun and motivational, with monthly challenges you can sign up for and little badges to reward you for writing, say, 10 days in a row.

It also provides stats that measure things like how long it took you to write each day, words per minute, and number of distractions. It shows you your frequently used words, which can provide a fascinating (and potentially disturbing) look at your subconscious. Maybe it won't surprise you, but you want to know my most frequently used word today? In 758 words at 8:30 on a Saturday morning? That I am now sharing with you in the assumption that you will even care?

my

My my my my my. Me. My. Mine. I.

Conclusions, you see, are drawn.

Creatures, Fairies, and a truly beautiful bit of music

2010-09-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

Just... watch/listen. I am tired and my hands smell like the mall, but here is something special, something that makes me feel alive. And that is as much as one can hope for at the end of an exhausting day that resulted in pretty much nothing.

Happy hump day, my friends. Here's to acoustic instruments+old books+creaky wooden floors.

Oh, and to harmony.

Let's Move

2010-09-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

As someone who's itching to get into a new place to call my own (and decorate it as such), I have to share these awesome photos from the new apartment of my Swiss German/English friend, Martina Schürpf, across the pond in Zürich. She's über-crafty, loves a good ice cream, and is always in the know when it comes to great new music (notice the antique radio). Get some inspiration for new tunes from her here. But first, get some design inspiration from her freshly moved into flat. She says there's lots of work to be done, but judging from these photos, the place looks pretty great already. Now off to Craigslist to see if I can find one for myself...

Thanks for letting us ogle, Martina!

Back to School

2010-09-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to Office Max. If that sentence doesn't make you wanna keep reading, then I don't know what will! But seriously, Office Max. I walked through the automatic sliding doors, my flip flops clapping on the black plastic floor mat, and the smell of school supplies nearly knocked me on my back. The clean scent of fresh plastic and rubber, of cheap metal and wax and so many pounds of trees-turned-paper. Paper that'll be used just as much for passing notes in class as it will for churning out math problems with mechanical pencils. Show your work. Yes, it nearly made me stagger drunk-happy in the florescent-lit aisles, the scent of binders, spiral ring notebooks, erasers, highlighters, folders, crayons! The scent of potential, of work to be done, of knowledge just waiting to be absorbed.

Are these pictures of crayons totally turning you on? Because there are few things that excite me more than a giant pile of colors. (These particular ones come from the work of this amazing artist.) No sir, nothing like a fresh 96-pack of Crayolas. Granny Smith Apple? Yes, please! Robin's Egg Blue? Don't mind if I do. Cerulean? Oh, oh yes. My personal favorite.

And speaking of crayons (still with us?), I'm about to show you something very special to me. This, darling readers, is my single greatest memory of young childhood TV-watching. It defies description, the liquid orange wax like so much flowing lava or nacho cheese. The sheepish grins of the factory workers, knowing that they alone hold the secret to all that is simple and wonderful in the universe, that they alone hold in their hands the source of creative innocence. When the music builds as brand new cylinders of color rise up out of those little holes like creatures from the earth, I nearly faint. The symmetry and synchronicity of it all is enough to make me leap up and sing, dance, pump my fists in breathless jubilation. Come on, you know Sesame Street has made you feel that way before.

I mean, awesome, right? And while we're at it, have a look at this stunning collection that doubles as both art supplies and art. My sister brought these 500 Colored Pencils by Felissimo to my attention, and they quickly shot to the top of my wish list.

But! I digress. As intoxicating as that new school supplies aroma is (if someone bottled it and sold it as perfume, I'd wear it), I didn't buy anything. See, I'm no longer in school. Somehow, though, I've still managed to start afresh each September. Change gears and do something new, the time of my little world still syncing with that of the academic calendar, two years after graduation.

And this year is no exception. The difference between now and the days when I used to decorate my plastic binders with obnoxious zitty pictures of myself and my friends (who were far less zitty than I, those bitches), is that no one is telling me exactly where to go, what to do and when. At least, not until I get hired somewhere and have an employer to tell me that stuff. I just had a job interview in San Francisco, and I couldn't help but think that maybe, if I do land a job (if not this one, then something else), I'll allow myself a few fresh school supplies, perhaps even a new box of crayons, for old times' sake. I may never have a first day of school again, but I'll have plenty of other firsts, and I can always use that scent of potential, of work to be done, of knowledge just waiting to be absorbed.

I also have shoes and, um, a face.

2010-09-03T01:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what a shell with shoes on would say? Oh.. no? Well, you'll want to watch this anyway, just for good measure.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Today I went to the new and improved California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco for the first time, and it was, in a word, awesome. Among the most notable creatures were tiny rainforest frogs. Actually, pretty much every reptile/amphibian in there got me all pointing and saying "dude" a lot. "Look at him!" I'd say, referring to some kind of gecko or snake, "He is so cool. Wow, that's so cool. Oh my gosh, he is really cool. So cool." Somehow going to a place to learn about sciences only makes me dumber.

There was also this special eel place only for children, but we crawled right in there and found these tiny garden eels the size of worms that pop up out of the sea floor like this!


Hellooooo!

Oh, and the Journey to the Stars planetarium show narrated by none other than Whoopi Goldberg. I mean, who else? Speaking of people who narrate a lot of stuff, my brother saw Morgan Freeman the other day. Just, ya know, saw him. His actual body, and face, and he probably had shoes on.

On that note, happy long weekend! Anyone up for hang gliding on a dorito? I'm going tomorrow.

The Great 20-Something Debate

2010-08-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

Many of you have probably gotten wind of the current discussion that has the media all a-buzz, the one about people in their twenties? About why we're taking so long to become "adults"?

Almost two weeks ago, a New York Times magazine contributor tried to answer the question "What Is It About 20-Somethings?" in a lengthy article that got people talking. The next day, Jessie Rosen of the blog 20-Nothings wrote a great response, "Dear NY Times, Here's Why I Haven't 'Grown Up." Love, a 20-Something". You can hear them both discuss the issue further on NPR here.

Rosen decided that we actual 20-somethings should join the conversation, explain ourselves, let people know exactly where we fit into this whole phenomenon, and how we got there. She asked her readers to respond to the prompt, "At twenty-[blank], I feel [blank]." I decided to contribute my two cents. Here's the little essay I sent her.

At twenty-four, I feel on the verge of something big.

Since graduating from college two years ago, I’ve spent a year living and traveling in Europe, two months on a 5,714-mile road trip around the American West, five months interning for no pay at an exciting literary nonprofit in San Francisco, and another six weeks in Europe.

Now, age 24 and freshly returned to California from my most recent travels, I’m living at my parents’ house with no job, no savings, and no boyfriend. I am, essentially, starting from square one. I’m proud of the choices I’ve made and the things I’ve done, and yet embarrassed by where they’ve landed me.

I'm not in a hurry to reach society’s prescribed model of “adulthood,” and I'm optimistic that things will eventually work out and fall into place. I’ll build a fulfilling and meaningful career, maybe go back to school, meet someone I want to marry, have smart and healthy children, and make a nice home.

I’m optimistic, but I’m also terrified. I realize that all those things, unlike what many of us have always thought, are not a given. In fact, from my vantage point, they seem largely unattainable. I feel like I’m standing in front of a locked door and I can’t find the key. I can just barely hear the music and noise of all the things I think I’m supposed to have, all the things I’m supposed to be, on the other side, but I can’t figure out what they look like or how to get to them.

I know I’m not alone on this side of the locked door. And with the way our generation was raised, it’s understandable how we’ve ended up here, nothing but impressive college transcripts and unanswerable questions in hand. All our lives, we’ve been spoon fed sentiments like “follow your dreams” and “do what you love and the money will follow.” We’re taught that we can be anything we want, so is it any wonder that it’s taking us a while to narrow it down?

I remember the frustration I felt as a 17-year-old finishing up high school and being asked left and right what I wanted to do with my life. I remember thinking, how the hell am I, a teenage kid brought up in sheltered suburbia and educated at a less-than-stellar public school with limited resources, supposed to know what I want to do with the rest of my life? Why can’t it be enough to know what I’m going to do with the next year, even the next month? The thing is, when I finished college, I still felt that way, and now, at 24? You guessed it.

The unprecedented wealth of opportunity and choices facing today’s 20-somethings is both a blessing and a curse. We’re situated in a strange paradox, one in which we’re encouraged to reach for nothing less than the stars, but once we finally figure out what that means to us, we can’t actually get the right job. In other words, the values instilled in us from the beginning don’t exactly line up with what’s available in today’s job market. We’re taught not to settle, and after seeing so many of our parents realize the mistakes of a youth cut short, the value of waiting until we truly know ourselves (given the means) is all the more vital.

What I don’t understand is why everybody seems so surprised. Is it really news to anyone that the times they are a-changin’? I mean, as Robin Marantz Henig points out in her NY Times magazine piece, we’re not even the first generation to take this more meandering path toward adulthood. Anyone remember the ’60s and ’70s? Take my father, for example. Now a successful business man, but before he found something that stuck, he explored various professional avenues until age 30, including higher education administration, carpet sales, the turquoise trade, and beer-drinking, pot-smoking, white water-rafting mountain life (that last one maybe not so much a career path as general debauchery). The point is, he turned out OK. He’s your proverbial self-made man. He put three kids through college, has a big house in the suburbs of San Francisco, and is on track for a comfortable retirement with his wife of over 30 years. While this is a common story, it’s also common for these same wandering hippies to grow up, turn around and shake their fingers at their wandering children (not my parents, of course). Like Henig says, “It’s reassuring, actually, to think of it as recursive, to imagine that there must always be a cohort of 20-somethings who take their time settling down, just as there must always be a cohort of 50-somethings who worry about it.”

For me, though, much of that pressure comes not from my parents’ generation, but from my own peers who have taken a more traditional path. I often sense in them an attitude that says “I’m working a 9-5, paying the bills and putting away savings, and you should be too.” But what I hear again and again from people who have already been settled for a while, when they hear about how I’ve spent the last year or two, is this: “I wish I had done that.” Call me crazy, but I think that’s worth listening to.

I sometimes think I’m imagining the peer pressure because maybe I actually do wish I were a little more like my traditional counterparts. But then I realize how much I love the thrill of not knowing exactly where I’ll be living in five years, one year, or even a month, not knowing what I’ll be doing or who I’ll be with. I feel good about the person I’m becoming, and while I’ll admit that the future is a scary thing, I have to trust that I’m gonna turn out OK. I have my whole life for certainty and stability, but this? This is just one little decade.

Join the conversation, leave a comment! I'd love to hear thoughts from anyone and everyone - fellow 20-somethings, baby boomers, or even actual babies.

Beer, Spinach, Licorice, Tomato+Strawberry

2010-08-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

This is a post about ice cream.

You may remember that I recently spent a week in Denmark, five days of which I enjoyed the delights of a tiny island called Bornholm. You'd have to visit it for yourself to get a sense of what a truly special place it is, but I'll do my best to share it with you here. Starting with ... ice cream!

My friend's family's summer home is near the lovely little town of Svaneke on the eastern side of the island, and Svaneke is home to a beautiful (and beautifully delicious) ice cream shop called Svaneke Ismejeri & Cafe. It's always got a line out the door, friendly servers who will give you a taste of every flavor and tell you all about them, charming enough to cozy up in all day long, and a lovely garden to boot. It's the kind of place that makes you feel instantly warm and fuzzy, that turns your world all into flowers and light and colored glass until you walk out and know nothing but the wonder of the ice cream dripping down the side of your handmade waffle cone.

Cute, right? But the best thing about this place isn't the decor, it's the ice cream (obviously). They rotate through a menu of over 200 flavors - some classic and some surprising - and they make them all with entirely natural ingredients, including Nordic berries and herbs and locally produced honey.

And the flavors! Truly, I die. On our first visit, we figured we'd taste the beer-flavored ice cream (called Catch 22 after the dark stout from the local brewery they use to make it) just for the novelty. Of course we ended up ordering it, commenting on its deliciousness after every bite, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. The shop girl - a perky high schooler - told us all about the flavors and how they make them, and then told me it's a dream of hers to see every state in the US. This is not something I hear often from Europeans, and I told her to go for it.

We had to try the beer itself at the brewery around the corner, and we decided it was a choice ingredient.

On our next visit, we had a scoop of licorice on the bottom, and tomato+strawberry on top. Sounds weird, right? It was heaven. So good, in fact, that on my last morning on the island, I insisted we walk the 30 minutes into town just so I could get it a second time before I said farewell to lovely Svaneke, to Bornholm, to Denmark.

I know I'll be back on that island someday, but until then I hope to get my quality ice cream fix from Humphry Slocombe in San Francisco. I haven't been there yet, but it comes highly recommended and I mean, look at the crazy flavors! Maybe I'll try the Thai Chili Lime, Foie Gras, Skull Splitter Root Beer, Collaborative Evil Ale? Or I could go for something more tame, like Banana Pecan, I Have a Dreamsicle, Jesus Juice, or Guinness Gingerbread. Clearly, it will be nearly impossible to decide. I'll let you know where I settle. If anyone cares to recommend a favorite flavor, or would like to accompany me on this ice cream escapade, just scream. Well, scream, and then leave a comment or send me an email. I probably won't hear you scream.

Are you my mother?

2010-08-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

Someone told me recently that they didn't think their mother was that pretty when she was young. Not that she was ugly, just...regular. It didn't strike me as a weird thing to say at the time, but then I thought, how could a person not think their mother was beautiful in her youth (given the fact that she wasn't, you know, a terrible person)? How could you look at an image of this woman in her few shining years, this person who brought you to life, who poured her very everything into you like dry soil, and think Eh...? This person who could have been anything, but somehow became your mother?

This, lovely readers, is my mother. Age 18, the year 1973, on a school trip to Washington DC.

I look at this and want to cry for the unbearable purity and youth of it. I look at this and I want her brow bones, her thick lashes, her knowing eyes and full coral lips. And how is it that her natural hair color was such a rich auburn and mine is so ashy and flat? Hers full and wavy and mine stringy and limp? Or maybe that wasn't her natural hair color. Maybe she spent hours staring into the mirror, wondering why she looked the way she looked. Wishing it were different.

I say purity and youth, yet somehow there is wisdom waiting there, behind her eyes. Do I see it simply because they are the same eyes, now wise, that I've been looking into all my life? The eyes that I once looked into as into those of a super hero, a queen? But here, those are the eyes of an 18-year-old girl. Eyes that I know so well, yet don't really know at all. A person that I look at and I know is my mother, but she's not, she wasn't.

My mother, who sewed her own wedding dress and often prefers the company of a good book to actual human beings. My mother, who won the Betty Crocker Homemakers of America contest in high school because she knew that to peel peaches you have to boil them (although she couldn't really cook at the time and had certainly never boiled peaches). Who went to Europe by herself in a time before the internet and cell phones, who denounced the Catholic church she was raised in. Who fell in love with my father at age 23 while staring at his hands in hers at some diner in Colorado. My mother, who wears her glasses on a chain around her neck, who makes a mean apple pie, who's drink of choice is Jameson on the rocks, who loves "that's what she said" jokes. Who raised 3 kids, who just became a grandmother and discovered a kind of love she didn't even know was in her.

My mother, who I am absolutely sure never realized how beautiful she really was. Is. Will always be.

My mother, who will either cry or roll her eyes when she reads this. Or, more likely, both.

I hope this isn't the last post of mine you ever read.*

2010-08-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Because it's late and I am up looking at photos instead of sleeping, and because I realized all I've shown you of Amsterdam so far is Orange fanaticism and pictures of cute children, here are a few favorites from just plain old city wanderings. There are plenty more where this came from, so don't be surprised if I soon rely on photography instead of writing yet again.

I hope these make you want to visit Amsterdam as much as they make me want to go back. My heart breaks a little each time I think of it, but I remind myself to also think about the things that suck about living in Amsterdam ... the depressing weather, the oft inefficient public transit (that's actually all I got right now). It's like trying to get over a crush or a break-up by imagining the other person taking a shit. Grunting, squirming, that slight yet repulsive screwing up of the features, a focus and determination in their glazed eyes as they produce sounds and smells that no one else should ever bear witness to.

How's that for a thought to start your day with? I bet you're all sitting there now, imagining various past loves squeezing a few out, and either hating me or loving me for it. You can try scrolling up to look at my stunning photos one more time, though I don't think anything will be able to get that image out of your head.

Happy Tuesday! I wish you all a triumphant crap.

*I promise I'm not always this crass. I just like the odd parallel between a city with a clogged train system, and an ex with a clogged toilet. Please don't hate me for it, and come back again.

Sun Sun Sun

2010-08-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

Still wearing my procrastipants. If I keep saying it like that does it make it more forgivable? I'll go with yes.

For now, I can't help but share this. Someone who sits in an unusual spot in my life once wrote these lyrics to me in an email, but didn't tell me what song they were from. That was almost 2 years ago, and I've always loved it and always wondered.

"Well in five years time we could be walking 'round a zoo with the sun shining down over me and you and there'll be love in the bodies of the elephants too and I'll put my hands over your eyes but you'll peek through and there'll be sun sun sun."

Then I heard it on a blog I follow, and the lovely and creative Jessica of Living the Swell Life kindly dug this up for me, and I can't get enough (I can't embed the video, but I promise the whistling in the song alone will put a little sun in your day and pep in your step. Click the link!). I heard the lyrics and suddenly having a melody to put to those words was like chancing upon a beautiful place that you've seen a photo of a million times. Standing real in a context you didn't know was there.

I've got sun sun sun all over my body this week for one last stint of teaching swim lessons, and then it will be time for something else, something more. I'll let you know when I figure out what that is.

Procrastiplan

2010-08-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

Remember how I told you to expect a surge of posts? Yeah? And then remember how I didn't actually do any posts? That was weird, right? I know, I don't get it either.

See, the thing is, my hard drive is full to the brim. So I can't upload any of my photos from my week in Denmark until I buy a new, bigger external hard drive and do some reorganizing. For that, I need some money and a kick in my procrasti-pants. I mean, it's like organizing your closet. Who wants to do that? It's so much easier to just close the door and when you need to extract a shirt or some socks, cry a little bit and then just close the door again. (I don't actually do this. My closet is quite orderly.)

www.toothpastefordinner.com

So just know that one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few months, I will be here again, dazzling you with my beautiful photography and poetic words. I know you can't wait.

Meet Alice.

2010-07-31T00:37:00.000-07:00

Hi! Did you miss me? I missed you too. I arrived home from Europe safe and sound last night and proceeded to sleep for 12 delicious, pharmaceutical-enhanced hours.

But I have to admit, I'm a little sad. A month in Amsterdam had me feeling like I was living there again, only to see it end suddenly, like waking up from a dream you swear is real. The night before I left, though, I got the perfect little reminder of some of the love and goodness waiting for me at home. I hopped onto Facebook for a quick check, and saw these:

Oh, have I not told you about her? Are you simply and completely falling all over yourself right now wondering what ever is this glorious spectacle of beauty and cuteness? That’s my niece. Two months old. Easy on the eyes, ain’t she? I know. Even those of you who wouldn’t exactly qualify as baby enthusiasts, even those who are black inside, you have to admit that this child is a truly incredible piece of human engineering. And don’t tell me I only think that because she’s family. Even if I knew full well that she were actually the spawn of the devil incarnate, I would have trouble not bringing my face to her perfect tiny mouth hoping to be so lucky as to catch one small whiff of her sweet breath as it floats from her new, new lungs. Lungs that have yet to fill themselves with any of the toxins and gloom that hang in the world she has barely begun to discover, not yet breathing air heavy with time and sadness.

So I'm getting in my car tomorrow morning and driving down to LA to go give her a squeeze. I haven't seen her in 6 weeks and I mean, at this age, that's over half her life. I have some catching up to do.

*Photos by Erin Senge (baby mama)

Brief update from the road

2010-07-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

Hello dear readers! I am checking in ever so quickly just so you know I haven't drowned in a canal. I have said farewell to Amsterdam and am now in Copenhagen, where I am spending a couple of days with my beloved Danish friend Anne ((who can be seen dancing like it's goin' outta style in a previous post)). We depart tomorrow for the lovely island of Bornholm, fondly referred to by the Danish as the Sunshine Island. I'll be there for 5 days or so in Anne's family's summer home. We'll hike, swim in the Baltic Sea, cook delicious dinners, and enjoy the local small-town bars. Best thing about it, no internet! It should help to somewhat curb my email-checking addiction.

Upon my return to California, you can expect a surge of posts! Until then, everyone, enjoy the sunshine. I know I will.

De Kleur van Gekte

2010-07-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the finals have come and gone, Holland now runners up a third time. Life here seems to have gone back to normal. The orange garb has been hung up and stuffed into drawers, to wait there patiently until Queen's Day in April. Even the weather has cooled, returned to the gray skies and wind that is more characteristic of this place. It's as though the very atmosphere heated up as the explosive fervor of the population swelled with each victory.

At Museumplein, where about 180,000 people turned out to watch the game, the spirit and energy was overpowering, hypnotic even. The hours leading up to the start of the match were filled with cheering, dancing, drinking, and the anticipation grew hot. It was like a pressure cooker.

This is only a portion of the back third of the crowd. There are two more sections of equal or larger size with screens of their own.

See that orange stuff? There were helicopters flying around dropping orange gerber daisies and confetti on the crowd.

Yes, it's true.

And we caught one!

During the game, it was mostly quiet. Some cheers of HOL-LAND clap clap clap HOL-LAND clap clap clap erupted every now and then, but mostly people were spellbound, frozen. 180,000 people were quiet. I won't lie, it was painful to watch and wait, then wait longer. When Spain scored, no one made a sound. During the previous games when the opposing team scored, there were screams and boos and throat-ripping yells. But here, nothing. It was too much, too big, for sound. And when the clock ran out? People looked down, and walked out.

But then, two days later, the team came home. The team came home to a happy city, a city celebrating, and things ended on a high note after all. What I keep hearing is, "Well! In four years it'll happen." And damn, that's really cool. Because what I've seen here this month is an entire city, an entire country, millions of people, who all wanted the same thing. Everyone. The stoners and the Queen and everyone in between not only wanted, but felt the same thing. It is a kind of unity unlike any I've ever experienced.

The team's homecoming canal parade as seen from my spot on the Herengracht. Robben is the first on the right standing with captain Van Bronckhorst, and Sneijder is on the back facing the other way and pumping his fists.

I can't believe my luck that I just happened to be here for all this. I keep thinking, what if I had listened to my doubt and reservations and not spent the money on my plane ticket? I'd have been sitting at home, twiddling my thumbs and hating myself while I watched the elated masses on TV.

But I was here in my second home, and while part of me wishes that one day I could tell people, with a smirk and that obnoxious tone of one who considers herself well-traveled, "Yeah, I was in Amsterdam in 2010 when Holland won the World Cup," I am actually happy to have been here among a people as they rose higher and higher, and then fell. And fell together.

p.s. I know some of this maybe looks silly now that Holland did not, in fact, win the final game, but I still love it (and them). Yes, I'm a fan, and a real sucker for those men--superheroes, you might say-- running around in their shorts. Had to be said.

Wij houden van Oranje!

OK, now I promise this will be the last post full of pictures of crowds in Orange. Extra promise.

But how will we ever get to the bioscoop?

2010-07-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Over the last three weeks, Amsterdam has wooed me all over again. I thought the city had released its hold on me, but being here has sort of been like seeing an old beau long after you’ve parted ways—you don’t realize how strong your feelings still are until you’re face to face. Turns out, it wasn’t such a clean break-up after all.

I have to remember that I’m on holiday, that I moved away from this city for a reason and a one-month visit is pretty damn great (especially during summer and, oh yeah, the World Cup). I ought to be content with that. But that’s the trouble with good things; we never want them to end.

Yesterday I took Alex, the 4 ½-year-old of the family I lived with, to see Toy Story 3. We made a day of it and took the train to the theater. Doesn’t that sound quaint? It was really just because the theaters in the city center weren’t showing the movie in English at a time that worked for us, and it was actually the metro, not the train. But it was a bit of a journey because the metro station nearest our house was closed, so we had to take a bus to another station (two buses, actually, because I got off the first one too soon), then the metro. Alex loved it, as he doesn't have the opportunity to ride in a bus or train very often, and he kept saying, "But how will we ever get to the bioscoop? (bee - oh - scope)." He's got a flair for the dramatic.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a photographic chronicle of our journey:

After breakfast, dress up like a knight. Or in Dutch, a ridder.

Then, no longer in knight uniform, ride the bus. Make sure to repeatedly touch the hardened smear of old gum on the bar in front of you.

Take a ride on the metro. Ask Shannon at least 3 times at each stop why the train stopped.

Fake smile in a picture with Shannon, and get stared at by people who think she's an idiot for taking pictures on the metro. All together now, "You've got a friend in me, you've got a friend in me... " Anyone? No?

Obtain movie ticket, apple juice and special Toy Story bucket full of popcorn that you won't eat. Wait on the light-up steps to go into the theater.

3D glasses WHAAAT!?

Anyway, this is relevant because the movie really got me thinking about the idea of moving on. I won't say how, but it very poignantly deals with the inevitability of good things coming to an end (so poignantly, in fact, that I cried. Wept, if we're being honest).

This, of course, is something we must all deal with. Things that become a part of our past instead of our present but leave their mark on us nonetheless--a mark which, fade as it may, remains a part of our identity no matter what we move on to. The hardest thing, though, is often not the inevitable change, but the change we choose, the change we impose upon our own world and with it usher in a flood of self-doubt.

And what, harder still, if we have to choose between one good thing and another? Which to give up? Which to put off until later knowing you may very well never come back to it? Which are you clinging to for the wrong reasons, and which will give your life new meaning and promise?

Reaching the answers to these kinds of questions can be a lifelong journey, so in true Alex fashion, I ask, "But how will we ever get there?"

Here's wishing all of you a clear choice, a positive change, and a happy ending.

Nederland O Nederland

2010-07-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

The match didn't end quite as we'd hoped, but hope? Hope is a beautiful thing.

ORANJE

2010-07-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

In a few short hours, Holland will play Spain in the World Cup finals in South Africa. Here in Amsterdam, the anticipation is electric, buzzing behind everyone's eyes, underneath everyone's skin. I, for one (like most Americans), have never known nor cared anything about football, but this has been wholly impossible to resist. The excitement is palpable and alive and, believe it or not, I really like watching the games. The constant motion is mesmerizing, and the flashes of power and speed, addictive.

They've predicted 1 million extra people coming into Amsterdam from outside the city today. To give you some perspective, the population of Amsterdam is around 750,000; so we're looking at more than double the population staring rapt at screens all over the city, screaming and jumping if Holland scores or is scored upon, and then roaming the streets in either jubilation or despair, probably drunk in any scenario. I was out on my bike earlier, scoping out the scene at Museumplein, where five enormous TVs are being set up over the grass and some 80,000 people are expected to watch.

Oh, and? It's probably going to storm. Last night we were trapped in a restaurant as the sky opened up, cracked and spit at us. We finished our meal and cycled through thunder and lightening and rain coming thick and fast, and in three minutes arrived soaking wet at Door74, a swanky, reservations-only cocktail bar so exclusive the website features only a phone number. We sat in an intimate leather booth sipping very high quality 15euro drinks and were asked to put our shoes back on. I hoped that perhaps last night's storm was the extent of it, but it now seems as though the clouds are just waiting for another opportune moment.

Judging on the enthusiasm the city has been floating on for the last couple of weeks, however, a little rain won't keep anyone inside. Here's how and where I watched and celebrated the last two wins.

The crowd celebrating an unlikely Oranje victory on an oppresively hot day at the Vondeltuin, an outdoor bar where we watched Holland beat Brazil.

Fans heading off to celebrate after the Holland/Brazil match.

The crowd craning their necks to see the big screen at the Westergasfabriek, one of the many big parties all over the city the night of the Holland/Uruguay match.

Heineken in hand, ready for action.

Winners!

A quick video I managed of celebratory national songs, showers of beer, dancing, hugs, and overall euphoria. Holland goes to the finals.

And, we dance.

It has been amazing to be here so far as Holland made their way to the finals for the first time since the 70s, and here's hoping for a win (and an all-night party) tonight. Now off I go to once again join the cycling orange-clad masses. Hup Holland Hup!

Foam-ing at the mouth: Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

2010-07-08T03:07:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love about Amsterdam is the Museum Card, the purchase of which makes most of the city's museums accessible and affordable for a whole year for the culture-hungry gal on a budget. Since I'm only here for a month, I borrowed a friend's card and yesterday decided to pop into Foam, the Fotographiemuseum Amsterdam. I've always loved the space, and the exhibits are reliably bold and provocative. Currently, they're showing "Pretty Much Everything" -- a collection ranging from 1985-2010 by the famous duo Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.

They've done a lot of fashion photography, celebrity portraits, digital image alterations, collage work, and many beautiful nudes. They were the first to shoot the models and the backgrounds seperately and then subsequently superimpose the images digitally. Which, of course, was resisted at first but is now how so many things are done today.

In this show, they try to represent their lives as artists, their brains, their work that explores identity and desire on every level. Some of the images are rich in their simplicity, illuminating the natural beauty of the subjects, while some are distorted and manipulated, jarring to the point where you hate to look at it but you can't tear your eyes away. I loved it. Below are some of the many memorable images I feasted on yesterday afternoon.

If you're in Amsterdam before September 15th, be sure to stop by the museum, and definitely keep an eye out for the work of these two.

And it's time to stand and say...

2010-07-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

Whoops! Didn't even realize it was the 4th of July. That's what happens when you're on holiday and any awareness of date or time simply lifts. I hope you're all celebrating extra hard for me in the good ol' U S of A. I'm about to head to bed, and as I drift off to sleep I'll imagine my fellow patriots back home with corn on the cob in hand, meat on the BBQ, and fireworks overhead. And, because when thinking about the 4th of July it's impossible to avoid, I'll be humming "Proud to be an American"- a lullaby of sorts as I think of my homeland from far away.

Staying still

2010-07-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I've come to a cafe to blog and what do I do? Send 100 emails instead. First. Not instead, because now I'm here. But what is it about needing to do something that makes us first do so many other little things?

I still procrastinate, and I guess some things never change. When it comes to bad habits, this is an unfortunate human truth; but when it comes to the quirks and wonders of a beautiful place like Amsterdam, I celebrate the unchanging.

For example, riding my bike. My tall, bright green Dutch bike. Stepping myself up onto the seat, stretching my legs as long as they'll go to reach the pedals, and allowing the bike to become just an extension of my body. The movements so natural, so simple and free. Riding that bike, up over the canals and under the trees; it still feels like breathing, like seeing, like drinking cold water. Fast moving air in my lungs and there is nothing else.

Hm ... also? There's the same skeletal old man with the same blank, almost haunting expression. He still walks every day in his suit past the upscale boutiques and fresh fish stands on Utrechtsestraat, carrying his newspaper.

Heineken still rolls through town every week with their big old horse-drawn beer wagon. If I close my eyes and listen to the clopping of their hooves on cobblestone, I can still imagine I’m in Amsterdam 100 years ago.

I still love - no, I still melt - when the kids put their small, warm hands soft and flat on my back with the kind of pure love and purpose that makes your heart stand up and breathe in deep.

The beers they serve in bars and cafés are still only half-pints, and I still don’t really know why.

Dutch cool guys still take their boats out on the canals and play annoyingly loud house music, dancing around like d-bags with collars popped and long hair slicked back like Uncle Jesse.

The adrenaline from the belief that everyone is looking at them on their boat and in their white pants pumps through their veins with the Heineken they chug, and they remind themselves that they are cool, that they are on a boat, and you’re not. Let's revisit this short, for emphasis.

The canals are full of dinghies, not yachts, but I still think Andy Samberg must have gotten some inspiration in Amsterdam.

Tourists still look at me with a mixture of amazement and affection as I pedal the gigantic yellow bakfiets up hills, two little boys bouncing and jostling about as we then coast down the other side.

I still love the distinct, strangely clean smell of the canals at dusk—like sitting water, stone, and just a tiny bit like fish.

I still drink tea and sit in cafés with my laptop writing (or procrastinating) until I have to pee so bad I start squirming noticeably and have to leave before I embarrass myself. But I guess I do that everywhere.

Until next time, dear readers, think about those things in your life that don't change, and be happy for it.

Love story

2010-07-02T05:32:00.000-07:00

I write to you now from Amsterdam, where at this moment the air is blowing a stifling 88 degrees, which here somehow feels hotter than it sounds. The sun seems to be slowly bringing the canals to a boil, and people are nearly naked in the parks. But oh, summer in Amsterdam is bliss. Pure, simple bliss eating ice cream with your legs dangling over the side of a canal and riding your bike as slowly as you can without tipping over. To leave a club at 4:00am on a Monday morning, drenched in sweat from hours of dancing, and ride through the streets with bare limbs letting the warm night air dry your skin; this is Amsterdam weather at its best. This is what makes everyone fall in love with the city all over again each year, what makes them forget the miserable winter.

And I am here. Here where I lived for one crazy year as an au pair for a family that I fell deeply in love with. It's been 10 months since I moved back to the States, and I am now merely a visitor to this place called Holland, but it feels as though I never left. Sure, the kids are older, the family is living in a different house, and I am no longer tied up in a romance with a Dutch boy, holding hands as we cycle through town, but things are mostly the same. My connection to this place and the people in it feels just as vibrant, true, and whole as it did last year. Perhaps even more so now that I've truly seen it stand the test of time.

Plus, I mean, look at that face, those cheeks as he fills them with three whole yogurts on a summer afternoon. This alone, to me, is worth the cost of the flight.

Now I'm off to don my orange and watch the Netherlands/Brazil game in a bar somewhere. Hup Holland Hup!

Go.

2010-06-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen it a million times. A group of dripping kids huddled beside the pool, their tiny, wet bodies folding in on themselves, searching for warmth where there is none. Their knees bend inward; their hair hangs matted and oppressive on their woeful faces. They are cold. It is only for a minute, a minute that to them feels like a lifetime and oh, how they shiver. These kids, dancing about on the soggy concrete, so cold and so vulnerable, at once loathe the universe and yet want nothing more than what they are about to do.

Jump.

One by one they step forward. “Toes over the edge!” I yell, reminding them to get a grip on the deck to prevent themselves from slipping. They almost never remember to do this on their own. They also tend to forget to wait until I say, “Go”—to wait until I’m ready for them.

I move back through the water, hold out my arms, and brace myself for another sharp splash to the face. On cue, each desperate child flings a body toward me, face screwed up in a manic smile or something else, arms flailing wildly, legs searching for something solid they’ll never find. Suddenly they are there; suspended alone beneath the surface in another world, and time stops.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t something all kids are up for. Some of them just refuse to do it, usually with a lot of whining and tears, while some try to rationalize with me, or simply stare pleadingly, hoping to bend my will with their mind powers. They are terrified. It’s as though I’ve asked them to jump into an erupting volcano. But sometimes, they suck it up and let it fly, only to learn that, hey, it wasn’t so bad.

I wish someone would film these many hundreds of children in their swim lessons, leaping out into the unknown. I’d like to see a compilation—slow motion, set to music—of the pure joy and fear on their faces, uncensored and unconstrained, as they soar through the air for a thrilling fraction of a second.

Here, then, is to noticing all that is beautiful and weird in the simplest of things—like kids jumping into a swimming pool. Here’s to submerging ourselves, like those kids, in that which we don’t understand. Here’s to being afraid, to loving things and hating things and not always knowing why. Here’s to listening to ourselves and to others. Here’s to looking before we leap—or, not. Here’s to finding new life and meaning in the mundane.

Here’s to not waiting until somebody says go.