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Mermaids in Forts

edisonhatesme — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:47:00 -0400

Sometimes you spend the week stressed out about money and dirty dishes and all the places you have to be, and you count your pennies trying to figure out if you can spend the few extra on a food processor. These are the days that also coincide with the weather getting hot and an obligation to be somewhere every single day for weeks and the thing that rolls down your driver side window popping off in the rain and floating away in the deluge down the street. The crankiness is palpable, and you repeat the mantra over and over “adulthood is stupid” as you get intolerably irritable with all the people around you - even the ones who love you dearly and somehow, for some reason, have put up with this cycle for years and remind you of lovely things until you stop being such a wretched person.

And then you find yourself dressed like a mermaid in the same kitchen where a few weeks earlier, you spilled beer all over the floor and collapsed in a fit of laughter, and you end the night in a fort made of blankets with amazing people and bottles of wine and colored lights and discussions on antibiotics for fish and proper techniques for peeing in the woods. This, you’ll think, is what life was made for.

It was one of those moments where you are acutely aware that you are making a meaningful memory in the tiniest, silliest thing. When you imagine yourself 20 years from now, giggling with these same friends about the time you drank wine under blankets in that first house with the checkered floor, before all of the things that haven’t yet been.

Teenage me was impressed. Teenage me read a lot of Francesca Lia Block and assumed all parties involved warehouses or weird house parties with mermaid and robot costumes. Turns out I was right.

And I drove home at 4am, giggling about the whole evening - feeling all at once ridiculous and relieved. I peeled off the bridesmaid-turned-mermaid dress that once matched the black eye I had from a particularly debaucherous bachelorette party at age 21, in a wedding of two friends who now have a baby and a house and who no longer drink terrible beer from plastic boots and ride a mechanical bull at 6 in the evening.

On the way home from seeing said baby and said friends Sunday evening (we drank wine from actual wine glasses and ate a cheese tray and talked about toddler teething toys. My, how things have changed), there was an intersection with the usual cardboard sign ads for all sorts of credit restoration services and auto sales. But one of them, in black letters on a white sign, simply said “Tell someone you love them. I LOVE YOU.”

I believe in signs. Whether they are from a cosmic force in the sky, or our brains being tuned into the messages we need to hear, I can’t say - but I believe sometimes the perfect things appear. And there it was, at a literal intersection on a metaphorical road, when I was in the car thinking of how lucky I am to have these people in my life, thinking of how one dress carried me through two silliest of memories. One we discuss over baby’s squealing and one too recent to giggle about just yet.

I love you, it said, but it what it meant was you are surrounded by love. Constant love. Good love. Warmth, beauty, lovely, amazing things. Mermaids in forts.

PS: I didn’t buy the food processor. I put the money aside to an eventual roadtrip fund on Route 66. Adulthood is stupid, after all.

At the airport once again! Headed to meet a very special month...

edisonhatesme — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:53:22 -0400

At the airport once again! Headed to meet a very special month old baby, and I cannot wait.

explore-blog: No female reporter before her had ever seemed...

edisonhatesme — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:05:00 -0400

explore-blog:

No female reporter before her had ever seemed quite so audacious, so willing to risk personal safety in pursuit of a story.

How to pack like Nellie Bly, pioneering Victorian journalist who raced around the world in 80 days.

In Defense of Old Things

edisonhatesme — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:16:00 -0400

The Internet has made waiting in line for days on end to buy something a thing of the past and yet - on Record Store Day, there I was. At 8am, standing with two of my closest friends in the cold with a bunch of crusty old punks and young, hipster college students. We waited for two hours to dig through crates and hopefully find special releases of albums on vinyl, an arguably outdated form of media.

Twenty minutes later, after fighting a hipster for the last copy of The Misfits/Lemonheads Skulls release, a mostly successful Record Store Day looked like $80 and two David Bowie 45’s, the new Superchunk 45, a Zombies album, Graceland, a stack of old country, jazz, and folk albums, Bat out of Hell I, and the Best of Joan Baez.

I could have listened to any of these songs online, for free, without the cold or grabby gutter punk hands after my Bowie album. But I didn’t. I stood in line, chatting with strangers about our favorite concerts feeling all at once ridiculous and awesome for recounting the story of my punk show black eye in explicit apologetic-clumsy-crowdsurfer detail.

My new record player came in the mail yesterday - a little portable blue one, the kind I’ve always wanted, that makes me feel just like Suzy Bishop. I cancelled everything I was going to do, and just laid on the floor listening to the needle find the groove on Fats Domino and Harry Belafonte and Rosemary Clooney records, contemplating through the static all the people who’ve listened to these records before me.

It’s partially nostalgia, I suppose. As a child it was Cat Stevens and Beatles records. Then CDs, and then eventually, an iPad hooked to speakers. A few years ago my parents bought a new record player to replace the one that had broken years before. They giggled as they sorted through their record collection, laughing at the clear difference between my mother and father’s records (my mom has infinitely superior taste) and pulling out scratchy records from local bands they listened to in New York.

I’m not old enough to remember records as a primary source of music. The first music I bought for myself was purchased on cassettes in the 7th grade with saved loose change, when the cute grungy boy at the record store had to pop it out of the thick plastic casing for me. But I remember Saturdays and dancing to scratchy albums in the living room and loving the smell of old records almost as much as I love the smell of old books.

I travel with an old Brownie camera from the 40s (the same one next to my record player in the photo at the top) an iPhone, and a DSLR. There’s a typewriter from the 20s on my desk, next to my shiny Macbook. I wrote a grocery list on it once, and one of these days I’ll get around to replacing the ribbon so I can write letters on it. I don’t love my record player more than I love my mp3s or - gasp! - my CDs (I still listen to those!), but I love them differently. I love them deliberately.

Outdated things require intention. Changing the film on cathedral stairs and remembering the days when you had to document your trip in just 12 shutter clicks and you didn’t have space for photographs of food and architectural details, typing every word when delete isn’t an option, putting that needle on the record, watching it wobble away, and being unable to skip a track when it doesn’t speak to you in the first 10 seconds. Even finding the records that you want requires patience, digging, and a little bit of luck.

Old things want us to be careful and intentional in our creation and consumption. As they spin, records ask us to be still.

Beer Baby's Two Week Check-Up

edisonhatesme — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:07:00 -0400

Our beer baby, Anxiety Ale, didn’t develop quite the way we had expected when we popped it open to bottle it a few days ago. Which is to say that it looked just the amount of yeasty it was supposed to, and it actually smelled like beer. It wasn’t a miserable failure as we’d expected! We were ladies making beer! Draw up the legal documents, we’ve made beer and we’re starting a brewery!

And it continued to smell and look just like real beer as we ended up drenched it in.

Bottling, it turns out, is pretty sciency. There’s pressure and fluids and tubes and, I couldn’t tell you exactly how it happened, but we felt like we were on an episode of Double Dare, spilling beer all over my friend’s beautiful black and white checkered tile floor - feeling so proud of our yeasty creating and the powers of gravity as we finally figured out how to siphon beer Jenni yelled “GRAVITY BITCHES!” followed by me saying “WE JUST SCIENCED!” Because that just seemed like the right thing to say.

We got three and a half bottles in when we realized the giant pot was not working, and transferred the beer to a tall cylindrical container, because we were figuring out science! And as Jenni was saying the words “This may not be the best container,” it slid out from under her spilling nearly a gallon of beer all over the floor and all over us.

We collapsed in a fit of laughter, sitting on the floor in puddles of sticky beer, unable to get a hold of ourselves for a good ten minutes, struggling to breathe or even find words to explain what had just happened.

Gravity, bitches indeed. We got scienced.

We're Gonna Have a Beer Baby!

edisonhatesme — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:14:00 -0400

There’s one thing my friends will say in confidence about me - I’m the world’s worst cook. Last week I set an onion on fire. A whole onion. On fire.

So when two of my best friends and I decided to take on making beer this weekend, I had my suspicions it would end in disaster. My friend Arrie is one of the most innovative people I know, and Jenni is one hell of a cook. So, collectively we thought we’d at least make a good attempt at “beer science” and make our “beer baby.” We also had an awesome kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop that made it super simple. At least for people who aren’t the world’s worst cooks.

We’re expecting! Our baby’s first picture!

Taking a little bit of hops in our hands, we each said our wishes for our future beer baby and, like three cackling witches, threw it in my grandmother’s spaghetti pot, now full of grains and grapefruit. “All we ask it that you try your best!” “Please don’t be the worst!” “We’ll love you no matter what, beer baby!” There may be something wrong with us, but at least we’re encouraging future beer parents.

We took a break for a French techno dance party, like you do, and overcooked our baby.

We added water to cool it down, and then boiled it off. The rest is kind of a blur of forgotten ingredients and missed steps that resulted in roughly half the beer we were actually supposed to have, which, when you’re only making a gallon, is really not very much.

Note - this is no ordinary funnel. This is two funnels taped together with floral duck tape. Because we’re classy ladies.

Per the instructions, we filled the rest up with water, and in two weeks we’ll bottle what we’re fondly calling “Anxiety Ale.” In another two, we’ll taste our concoction. It’s probably going to be horrible, but we have a plan B - beer from the grocery store, as made by people who don’t stop midway through the process to eat candy and have French techno dance parties. And then we’ll try again.

It’s an ale! We’ll see you in a few weeks, Beer Baby!

firsttimeuser: John Schabel’s Passengers “The idea of being in...

edisonhatesme — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:26:27 -0400

firsttimeuser:

John Schabel’s Passengers

“The idea of being in a plane is so much about being between places and that’s part of that state of mind I wanted to try and photograph.”

explore-blog: An enormous ice dam formed at the source of the...

edisonhatesme — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:11:28 -0400

explore-blog:

An enormous ice dam formed at the source of the Niagara River on the eastern shore of Lake Erie on March 29, 1848. Just after midnight, the thunderous sound of water surging over the great falls at Niagara came to a halt as the flow of water became severely restricted due to the ice jam. The eerie silence persisted throughout the day and into the next evening until the waters of Lake Erie broke through the blockage and resumed their course down the river and over the falls.

The day Niagara Falls stood still.

(↬ Cojourneo)

March: The Month I Failed at my Monthly Challenge

edisonhatesme — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:11:11 -0400

It turns out I’m pretty bad at year long challenges. On only my third month in, I neglected to learn a new thing. I did learn two things in February - cheesemaking and stone skipping, so I’m going to pretend it counts. It’s my challenge, I can do whatever I want.

I had intentions of learning to yo-yo, but I did not. I failed at yo-yoing, of all things. I have concluded that I will never be a person who is able to yoyo properly, and I’m just going to have to be okay with that. It hadn’t occurred to me that I may try to learn something and not be good at it, because the things I wanted to learn were so silly and small that I absolutely 100% had to succeed at them. That was the whole point.

Yo-yos are supposed to come back to you when you do all the right things. Mine never came back, it just turned into a tangly mess. There’s a lesson here somewhere and probably some symbolism, but I haven’t figured it out just yet. I guess it’s just that failure is okay. Sometimes you can do the right things and it still won’t work out, and that no flicks of the wrist and undo giant knots that you’ve made for yourself, and that it’s fine because you made a solid attempt. Sometimes we just need to have our own cliched epiphanies over yo-yos in our living room.

Next month I’m taking on a pretty big, sciency, and delicious challenge. I’m brewing beer in my teeny tiny kitchen with two of my best lady friends. We’re going to talk about our feelings over piles of hops and grapefruit peels and tubes and bottles. We’re brewing grapefruit ale, which, thanks to all of our recent struggles with mental health, we’re fondly calling “Anxiety Ale.” It could be awesome, or it could be a disaster. Only time will tell!

Picking this dude up from Camp Grandma and Grandpa, where he was...

edisonhatesme — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:31:33 -0400

Picking this dude up from Camp Grandma and Grandpa, where he was spoiled rotten for three days.

matthoworth: It’s the journey guys, just keep going!

edisonhatesme — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:16:49 -0500

matthoworth:

It’s the journey guys, just keep going!

Greetings from Topsail Island, NC. A girl could get used to...

edisonhatesme — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 10:43:15 -0500

Greetings from Topsail Island, NC. A girl could get used to waking up to the Intercoastal Waterway in your backyard.. My drive started off a little rocky (cars need oil? Who knew?), but thanks to an awesome dad and helpful strangers, my car didn’t blow up and I headed here, which is, by the way, the most boring drive ever. There’s a certain point when you can smell the ocean. I love that moment. I roll down the windows and take long, deep breaths of the salt. This morning I had breakfast looking at the ocean, and thanked every applicable deity I get to live so close to such a beautiful place.

Running for Peru

edisonhatesme — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:15:00 -0500

This morning I became a runner.

Well, not so much a runner as a chubby lady awkwardly jiggling in the woods, who face plants within 30 seconds of being on unpaved trail. It’s a start. I’m told it gets easier, and though I’ve found that to be true of most things, I’m not sure I will ever be able to not trip over roots. I like to think of my 50 pound mutt who needs to smell everything as resistance training.

Running has never been a thing that appealed to me. At all. I’ve often joked about the only times I would run being away from a dinosaur or to cake. I even have a plan if the dinosaur is holding the cake (should the situation arise, I would throw rocks at the dinosaur until he dropped the cake). But I’m friends with a lot of people who run, and more inspirationally - a lot of people who have only recently become runners and have run marathons. That’s impressive. After one day, I’ve yet to figure out why this running thing is appealing. I could, and have, hiked hills for miles and miles and miles. Living in the mountains without a car, where weekends spent on the Blue Ridge Parkway are par for the course will do that to you. But running? No way.

Before I went to Iceland, I printed off a picture of the glacier I was going to hike on and stuck it on the treadmill at the gym each morning. It wasn’t just a matter of looking good in my vacation pictures (which, by the way, is impossible when you go to Iceland in the winter), it was a matter of survival. My very life hung in the balance of losing a few pounds. I had to fit into my snowpants, or I’d freeze to death on that glacier. But the gym is so boring, and once I fell off a treadmill because I got really into the One Direction album I was listening to (don’t judge). No one looked up. They were either giving me my last shreds of dignity or it happens so often no one blinks an eye. I’m going to pretend it was the second. I did, eventually fit into my snowpants and then lost an extra 8 pounds in 6 days when I was there. Iceland isn’t particularly vegetarian friendly. When I landed in New York I stuffed my face fall of tacos,and after eating nothing but yogurt for a week, I regretted nothing. But then the holidays and a five day booze and starch fest in Canada happened, and all of that was immediately undone.

I’ve gotten really into these four mile hikes around the lake with the pup in the mornings, so early there isn’t anyone there, so early I forget the highway is half a mile away and in my boots, hike over fallen trees and through creeks. It’s surprisingly hilly for being in such a flat part of the state. I’m there at sunrise and back to my apartment before my alarm clock even goes off, and I feel so good just being in the woods. The dog likes it too. Weight loss has never been a particular goal of mine (despite wanting to look really good in my bridesmaid dress this fall). If you don’t love your body fat, you’re not going to love it thin, either. I look back at pictures of me when I was thin (on a strict Stress and Poverty Diet. I don’t recommend it), and am appalled at how fat I thought I was then. These fat thighs have climbed waterfalls and hiked to the top of a mountain in La Mancha. That’s not something my skinny self could have ever said (though, in fairness, skinny self went caving almost every weekend).

A few days ago, it dawned on me. I’m going to Peru. I’m going to hike the Inca Trail. I don’t know when, but I’m going. It’s a cliche, yes, and I don’t care. I’ve wanted to go since finding a tiny llama figurine in a cabinet my great uncle brought back a million years ago as a kid. And I’m not going to die on the trail, so, I today, I started running.

I mean, seriously. Look at this trail. I’m not doing this in the shape I’m in.

My boss, an avid runner, asked me if I’d picked a 5k yet. I’m just working on not passing out, but with images of Machu Picchu in my brain, I’ll keep running. Excuses are boring.

Little Bit Challenge: February

edisonhatesme — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:26:51 -0500

February came and went so quickly I hardly had time to notice it’s presence. It was a month of fancy French food over multiple bottles of $60 wine and so much bread, for playing guitar on my couch and reading books under fuzzy blankets. The mornings were for hiking hills and through creeks just a few miles from the city, and the weekends for dancing and gin and tonics with cucumber. Lots of gin and tonics. And though it was a month of starting things in motion, it was also, per usual, a month of snow and sadness and cold and being so ready for warm days, literal and figurative.

I didn’t pick a skill for February. If my Friday nights have taught me anything, it’s that my white girl dance moves could use some work, but I think that may be beyond hope. And then all of a sudden, February ended. So yesterday, the last day, all congested and achey thanks to a case of the sniffles I’ve been fighting for weeks, I headed to the lake on a dreary day with my dear friend where she taught me to skip stones. There were mean hissing geese who didn’t like the presence of my dog or us throwing rocks at them (I can’t imagine why). I am a spectacular stone plunker, but after a while and only sometimes, I successfully was able to get a solid two skips. The first time I did it I didn’t even notice. It was my friend who jumped up and down and yelled “you did it!” We high fived.

And then I came home and pulled out the ingredients to a cheesemaking kit my friends in Canada sent me and, two hours later and with cheese curds all over my kitchen, I had mozzarella. Delicious, creamy mozzarella I had to stop myself from eating all in one sitting. It was surprisingly easy, and though I don’t know if I’m ready to take on hard cheeses just yet, I can officially cross “make cheese” off my Life List.

I set out to learn a skill each month. A concrete, actual skill. I made cheese and threw rocks at the water, but yesterday as I accidentally dumped half a pot of cheese curds on my stove, I realized how nice it was to have have friends who will support the tiniest of victories and send you cheesemaking kits in the mail. I raise a piece of my grilled cheese to you, friends.

In Which I am a Volcano

edisonhatesme — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:22:00 -0500

A few months after the hurricane that put a several hundred year old oak tree through our roof in the middle of the night, my older sister and I hopped the fence to the woods behind our house as we often did. The woods held all things that were magical. There was an old car with bullet holes in it, a broken down Buick someone used for target practice, but with a little imagination was an old 40’s gangster car dumped in the woods after a police chase where the bank robbers took off on foot. There were mounds of rocks that were clearly Indian burial grounds. After the hurricane, it became a mess of tangled trees, navigable by only the most adventurous explorers. We built a fort for our secret club in the huge branches of a fallen oak and called ourselves The Volcano Girls, after the Veruca Salt song that was out at the time. It was edgy and empowering. Volcano Girls, we really can’t be beat.

I knew nothing about volcanoes, and continued to know nothing about volcanoes when, during my senior year of college, I failed a geology class. I failed a class because I could not, under any circumstances, make myself get out of bed and go to class. I missed deadlines at the newspaper where I worked. I rarely left the house. It was, I assumed, a bad case of senioritis and I continued to hole up in my apartment for days on end. I’d been hospitalized a few months before with a panic attack so severe I couldn’t breathe, taken a hiatus from the paper where I worked and started sleeping on my friend’s couch most days. My living situation was not good, and the idea of going home was so stressful it sent me into fits of panic. But this was different, I’d removed myself from the situation and was living healthfully and happily with my wonderful roommates who kept me safe, well-fed, and stocked with a constant supply of Jason Schwartzman movies. And still, I couldn’t manage the energy to just get out of bed. I tried taking anti-depressants for a few months, but they made it worse and I, being impatient, didn’t bother to try a new medication or adjust the dosage. I just stopped, and continued to be miserable for another year.

Three and a half months ago, in the middle of a very serious Funk, I flew across the ocean to be alone with my feelings and center myself in the most beautiful country on earth. I hiked a glacier, ran on black sand beaches, ruined $3000 worth of camera equipment when I hiked in the rain, and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

I’ve thought a lot about what it meant to be in Iceland, alone. What it meant when, while driving through the night looking for the Northern Lights, we pulled over on the side of the road by a waterfall, and I took off alone, without a flashlight, climbing behind it over icy lava rocks on my hands and knees by myself in the darkness, what it meant to be near hypothermic on a boat, sharing a handful of words and a tiny heater with an Italian family, what it meant to stand in the shadow of a great volcano. Under Eyjafjallajökull, the famous unpronounceable volcano I can now almost pronounce you’d never have guessed it disrupted the universe. It was lovely now, a green rocky mountain with waterfalls from the side and a glacier on top.

But the truth is that I bought a plane ticket to Iceland on a whim because I was sad, and when I got there I was still sad. Mental illness does not give a shit that you are standing on a bridge over a river where the European and American plates collide and that you are literally watching the earth form in front of you. If mental illness stayed in one place, I’d have moved a long time ago. It ignores beautiful things in favor of collapsing inward on itself and imploding, slowly. It tries, but there is always an aching sadness brewing somewhere in this deep, dark part it can’t even find. Mental illness is a volcano, with bubbling lava deep within that erupts when things shift beneath your feet. When things are good I notice everything. I’m annoying effervescent, I want to tell everyone about the way the light came in my window this morning. Look at these trees! And these flowers. And isn’t life amazing? Everything is the best. But anxiety doesn’t let you leave the house to see that, and depression doesn’t care when you do.

The Volcano Girls may not be able to be beat, but the next line is but now and then we fail and we admit defeat. Today was a bad day, it was a panicky, anxiety day. With due reason, but it was the first bad day in a string of very, very good days. It was the first day in a while I had to admit defeat, had to come home early and admit that my body hurt, that my brain was all a-flutter with a million worries. It was a mini-eruption, a tiny earthquake - all shaky hands and rapid heart.

But I know, because I saw it, even Eyjafjallajökull eventually is calm.

I Ate A Baby Today

edisonhatesme — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:04:02 -0500

Or rather, I nearly did. We had a King Cake at work, and I got the baby. The prize, other than not choking on a creepy looking secret cake baby, is a year of good luck and the honor of bringing the cake to next year’s celebration.

I’ll take it.

I’ve never been to Mardi Gras, but my love of New Orleans is absurd. I’ve been there twice in my life, once as a kid on a spontaneous trip with our neighbors, and once as a 20 year old on St. Patrick’s Day. Each time I’ve loved it differently and loved it fully.

The first time, it was a rainy spring break and my mom, an airline employee, and my neighbor, married to an airline employee, were debating what to do with four antsy kids. My neighbor’s sister lived in New Orleans, and a few hours later we were at the airport en route. My memories of the trip involve muffaletta and what happens when four children are double buckled in the back of a camry and one gets car sick. I don’t know who started it, but once it started there was no stopping it. We pulled over on the side of the road, in front of the superdome, and there we were, all four children throwing up on the sidewalk repeatedly and for what seemed like hours. I’m fairly certain we went straight home and were hosed off in the driveway.

Years and years later, a few months after Katrina, I took an Alternative Spring Break trip to Mississippi to do some relief work. It was the closest thing to the apocalypse I ever hope to experience, and I can absolutely not imagine a more heart breaking or life changing experience than my time there. I’ve tried to write about it for years and have never been able to properly articulate everything I felt in those 10 days. Our last day before driving back to the mountains we headed into New Orleans for the St. Patrick’s day celebration and some much needed mental health. On the way back, we ended up lost somewhere in the middle of Mississippi.

There is nothing to say about New Orleans that hasn’t been said already. The food is amazing, the people are incredible. Those accents are my favorite regional accents in the United States. It’s magical and mystery and voodoo and fancy cocktails and walk up bars. It’s fried beignets covered in brown sugar in brown paper bags. It’s meeting up with a childhood friend, dressed in drag, and walking arm in arm through the streets of the French Quarter. It’s traditions involving a year of good luck for accidentally eating a baby.

This weekend my plans include making homemade beignets with one of my dearest friends and listening to French creole music and me wishing I hadn’t sold my accordion.

Suggested listening, Balfa Brothers, La Danse de Mardi Gras

Uncomfortable

edisonhatesme — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:38:28 -0500

I have never liked resolutions. I like lists, I like goals, I like plans. But somehow, resolutions just seem silly, arbitrary, and self-defeating. Once upon a time my friend introduced me to the idea of a word to live by for the year. Her words have been lovely things like “light” and “create.” Mine have been a little uglier. Last year, I was unpredictable. This year, I chose uncomfortable. It’s a one word summation of everything I want to do - challenge myself, get out of ruts, try new things, take risks, address and remove problematic things from my life, stop impeding my own happiness because it’s easier to be stagnant.

It’s the last day of the first month of 2013. I have learned to eat with chopsticks. On Sunday, I’m taking a beekeeping class. I went to Canada. I have started seeing a therapist, which is quite possibly the epitome of uncomfortable. And yesterday, I did something crazy. I sent in an application to my community college to enroll in their baking and pastry program in the fall. It’s an expensive foray into something that may or may not work out. But I know that I am the happiest when my hands are in bread dough, and I know that I have to do something uncomfortable to get to a point that isn’t.

Here’s to you, 2013. A year of discomfort.

Little Bit Challenge: January

edisonhatesme — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:01:00 -0500

Actually, I was wrong. Something did happen in Canada.

I ate an entire meal with chopsticks and didn’t drop anything. Little Bit Challenge #1/life list item completed.

I’d been practicing at home for a while with a gorgeous set of handmade chopsticks and a super cool noodle bowl my sister had brought me back from a recent trip, and though I’d mostly awkwardly dropped noodles on myself I was making slow progress. I don’t even hold a fork the right way. One afternoon in Canada when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed, we headed over to an all you can eat sushi place where we all promptly stuffed our faces with plates and plates of amazing sushi. They didn’t even have forks.

And I did it. Plates of avocado and sweet potato rolls entirely with chopsticks without dropping a single piece.

I haven’t decided what my February challenge will be. Maybe I will learn to whistle? Or skip stones? I’m open to suggestions!

Nothing Happened in Canada

edisonhatesme — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:04:00 -0500

and it was amazing.

We arrived from all over on Thursday night for the big surprise, which involved a near asthma attack and hugs for approximately an hour.

And then we did nothing. For five days. We slept until noon and drank whiskey and attempted to drink (to no avail) some weird schnapps made of moss I brought back from Iceland. It was horrible. We went to a bookstore and ate donuts and so many different types of french fries we declared it St. Starch’s Day. We watched cartoons until 2am and giggled and reminisced and rarely got out of our pajamas, and none of us could stop hugging each other.

But there were sneak attack hugs.

And there was poutine.

There were taco bell fries (that’s a thing in Canada! Weird!)

There was a sunset over the bridge back to the States.

And riverfront laughs.

There were snowy rooftops.

And there was the realization that being a grownup is totally overrated.

Surprise! I’m in Canada! In what was one of the best...

edisonhatesme — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 10:13:00 -0500

Surprise! I’m in Canada!

In what was one of the best surprise parties imaginable, I flew to Ontario Thursday to meet some of my oldest, dearest friends (also flying in from all over) and surprise our friend for his birthday. I’m in awe we were able to pull this off without anyone blowing it for the last 6 months we knew. It was glorious. He was literally speechless, and for the last few days we’ve done nothing but hang out and hug each other, laugh, and reminisce about the good old days. There’s not a lot to do in the town where they live, but we probably wouldn’t have felt like doing it anyway. Mostly, thanks partially to the wind and partially to whiskey, we haven’t left their apartment much. I love these people with all my heart, and this surprise was incredible.

What has surprised me about Canada:

Everyone is actually as nice as they say
Eating at a steak place with canoes on the wall, being served 34 oz beers, watching a Leafs game, while wearing moose antlers, and falling in love with Canada
The ease of crossing the border via car this time around (my previous trip to Canada by way of Niagra Falls included needing to declare 18th Century firearms, but that’s a story for another day)
The amount of Tim Horton’s everywhere
How weak Canadian beer is