food and love

I'm actually feeling a little settled right now. It's nice.

I'm only going to drop a quick line right now because I have little to say and not a lot of time.

What I'm thinking about right now is LOVE.

After spending Friday night at my first high school football game since, well, high school, I stayed the weekend in Baltimore with Lisa, my next-door neighbor freshman year at St. Olaf, and Mary Lynn, Wednesday morning breakfast buddy four years straight. I haven't seen her since the last Harry Potter movie came out last summer.

Both great loves of my life.

We had dinner at a busy little BYOB pizza joint called Iggie's, where the pizza was delicious and the laughter came easy. Lisa's roommates are great (thank you, Craigslist) and her house is beautiful. And Baltimore is a pretty cool city, from what I can tell. I bussed out on gorgeous Sunday afternoon, watching Ravens tailgaters crammed into every side street and back alley and parking lot they could find. Purple and gold everywhere.

I know I totally dropped the ball on the food blogging, but I may get back to it especially now that I have to think about food every night instead of just counting on my mom to have gone shopping/cooked. Life skills. It's not unusual for me to get home from the gym/work/some event/hanging out with someone after 8:00 and realize I haven't eaten since lunch and I suddenly need food, fast, and I want to want to eat it. Strange.

My roommate Katy eats every 2 hours, and she can have food ready faster than you can say Ratatouille.

Speaking of food, and of good company, some coworkers and I went out for lunch today at Palacio Maya, about 2 feet up the road in Hockessin. I will tell you that I work with some really smart, fun, down-to-earth people. Respect.

And now I'm off to the Queen for Wilmington's Fringe Festival preview party!

Here's my charge: Love the ones you're with. And the ones you're not with. Enjoy the people you value in your life, and tell them you care. Touch base. It makes a difference.

xoxoxo

new territory, and oh, how familiar it is



Jason + Jerk Chicken Tacos = <3

This has been a strange and wild week. I'm spending a lot of my free time getting familiar with my new neighborhood, which has turned out to be a very cool place.

We already know I like Dead Presidents. Good food, good drinks, nice bartenders, great atmosphere and great social media. The...quintfecta? The only thing that could make it better is if they played Call Me Maybe/Gangnam Style mashups.

It turns out there are a lot of other places to like, too. Black Lab Bakery. The Blue Parrot, which was nearly empty on Saturday afternoon except for Chris, the server, who made the best mojito I have ever tasted and was also super friendly and fantastic. I'm not kidding about that mojito and I'm not even inclined to qualify that statement, and you know how seriously I take superlatives. That is, not seriously. But I really mean this one. Also, great creole food. We all know how much I love that taste of New Orleans!

Across from the Blue Parrot is a place smiling underneath a sign that says only "Pastry Shop," and which features a gorgeous display of cakes and pastries, as well as gelato. Just enough flavors not to be boring, but so you know it's pretty much the freshest gelato around.

I don't remember if I already mentioned Rocco's, where I got a gin and tonic (emphasis on the gin) and some delicious gnocchi that lasted me three days -- for only $10.

I know I have mentioned the library. It's still wonderful. The lawn is wonderful. It's the place to be on a sunny Saturday or Sunday afternoon; I've done both.

I also found another farmers' market, which to me seemed like more of a weekly carnival. It's in a park probably a mile from my house, and it had used books, some produce (sweet potatoes!), Thai and Mexican food stands, Philly water ice, and a cover band riffing on Bob Dylan.

Also had beers at Famous Tom's in Hockessin last night. It was a comfortable place, and good company didn't hurt. A bar I could get into. I may also have to start a bucket list of Famous [insert man's name here]'s bars to visit in New Castle County, because I can name at least 5 off the top of my head: Tom's, Jim's, Joe's, Tim's, and...

Well, I can name four.

AND on Sunday, I got to hit up HersheyPark with my roommates! Despite the fact that I started off the day with a bang by admitting that I don't actually like rollercoasters, I had a great time and only sat out one ride: The Comet, gigantic wooden coaster. I also flew solo (almost literally) on the Tidal Force, a log flume of epic proportions which inescapably soaks everyone within a 20-foot radius of the foot of the slide.

The last time I was at HersheyPark, I was in eighth grade and the Great Bear, a dangly-feet rollercoaster, was the big new thang. Some of our group waited in line for 3 hours to ride it; I, terrified of heights, irritated by long lines, and delicate of stomach, opted out. This time, we waited in line for about 30 minutes to ride the now 9-year-old coaster, and I loved it. This season's new ride, Skyrush, was terrifying to the nth degree, with thigh-only restraints and floorless edge seats. Needless to say, I sat in the middle. And I screamed the whole time, with my eyes closed for most of it.

OK, let's be honest, I screamed the whole time, as in, on every single ride. I still haven't completely gained my voice back.

The best part of the outing, though, was getting to spend an entire unbounded day with my roommates. You'd think we would see each other at least once a day, since we live in the same house and all, but somehow I only manage to run into them 3-4 times a week. Turns out they're pretty cool! (Ha ha, like I didn't know that before!)

In all seriousness, it is so important to me that I touch base with my roommates, and even just with my friends. Relationships of all types require maintenance, and it's been an interesting exercise so far figuring out the balance of roomies versus boyfriends versus family versus local and long-distance friends.

This brings me to one of my themes this week: living well. This also happened to be my dad's theme last week. If any of you go to Hope Lutheran Church in New Castle, you heard him preach about how will I feel at the end of my life about the way I have lived. This is partly coincidental.

And, of course, partly not. My dad is coming at this question with a bit of agitation, balancing his insatiable drive to make the world a better place, and wrestling currently with whether it may sometimes be more hurtful to speak out on an issue than to remain silent about it. I reminded him, "The beautiful thing about life is that to say we have lived well doesn't mean we haven't made any mistakes. It does not mean that we will look back and see a life free of missteps. We will look back and cringe, but that doesn't mean we can't be happy with the progress we have made and the things we have managed to figure out."

That being said, my angle of concern right now is balance. I'm struggling to balance routine with spontaneity; I'm finding balance in communication, and balance as I said between my various relationships. I'm really focused on balancing practicality, especially financial practicality, with having fun and doing things that make me happy.

Weirdly, my horoscope last Wednesday read:

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). It's normal, but not helpful, to come at financial issues from an emotional place. Pay what you can really afford and not a penny more. Finding the right number will require thought as well as accounting.

I've resolved all the medical and auto-related expenses that had me in such a state of despair over the summer, but I'm now facing another year of doctor and dentist appointments, and adding rent, utilities, and regular groceries into the mix. Fortunately I am fairly responsible and aware, but this takes my personal finance skills to a new level. More to come, I'm sure, on that front.

I'm also suddenly very aware of external forces that factor into the "living well equation". Maybe it's that I have moved into the city; maybe I'm just out of the St. Olaf bubble and getting my feet wet in the real world. Let me tell you, that water is muddy. I'm talking dirty politics; racism, classism, sexism; poverty; violence.

A few days ago I heard a tribute on the radio to the servicemen and women who have been killed in Afghanistan this year. We are also mourning the deaths of our countrymen in Libya last week, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say there's been a shooting a week since the heat hit us a couple of months back. In fact, Wilmington was recently named the most dangerous city in the nation. And this in the face of a year of infamous shootings: Trayvon Martin; Tulsa; the Aurora theater shooting; the Empire State Building; a Pathmark in a town in New Jersey where a colleague of mine grew up.

I could be angry about these killings, but my default emotion is grief. I mourn the victims, I grieve with their families and friends; but I also mourn the perpetrators. To me this endless violence indicates a thinly veiled pathology in our society, locally, nationally, globally. To me each new crime and ensuing public outcry feels desperate, defensive, hopeless. I am too shaken and too small to understand the cocktail of factors that instigate such violence, but I listen to NPR and I talk to people and I'm trying to figure out the small ways that I perpetuate the hurt of the world, and the small ways I can turn those into healing. I take weekly, sometimes daily moments of silence to mourn for my fellow human beings, to treasure the life that I still have, and to muster enough courage for a smile, small talk, maybe a hug, and enough breath to make it to the end of another (wonderfully terrifying) day.

And in the meantime, trying to live well. Whatever that means.

parallelism

A week ago I watched that old classic The Holiday with my fam, and throughout the movie Asha kept pointing out moments of parallelism: Most notably when Cameron Diaz ends up in a car with a sexy man, looking at him in the driver's seat, for the second time. The significance of this moment is the second man is different from the first man, and her relationship with him is portrayed far more positively than her relationship with the man from the first five minutes of the movie.

I got to thinking about this in a different context this week, when Jason brought me a copy of this month's In Wilmington. It features the annual Wilmington Fringe Festival, coming up I think in 2 weeks.

I first arrived in Wilmington about a year and three weeks ago, just to refresh your memory; so we're entering the second lap in a race of ambiguous meterage. Some of you may recall that I spent three weeks after my arrival frantically searching for a job, so as not to lose momentum and get stuck wallowing around aimlessly in my parents' house.

You know what that means: This week marks my one-year anniversary at what has turned out to be the firm of my dreams. Exciting! And mildly terrifying. Stability is a coveted but elusive state and I'm never sure if I trust it. Maybe it's best not to, completely -- but I'll save that heavy metaphysical discussion for another day. Or just try not to have it.

Sidenote: Other anniversaries this week include the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, and 150 years after the bloody Battle of Antietam (September 8th). On a more vague and less death-oriented note, it's 5 years since I started college and my second fall not going back to school. Talking about parallelism, my "twin" sister is getting settled at St. Olaf instead this week, in Kittelsby (which you Oles can pick apart for layers of parallelism -- I lived in Kildahl first year), and starting classes. Things seem to be falling into a strange but somehow comfortable rhythm.

Back to the mag. Soon after I started working last September, I went to a networking event at World Cafe Live at the Queen. It just so happened to be the evening of Wilmington's Fringe Festival kickoff celebrations, held downstairs at the Queen and at other local venues. This was the first indication I had that Wilmington had an arts scene -- something I understand, something I can latch onto and use to build my nest in a place.

This also just so happened to be the evening I met Carly, who was the first person my age I met in Delaware and who also happened to be an anthropology major. We walked up to check out one of the Fringe Festival art exhibits and got to talking, and I remembered what it was like to be on the same page with somebody. It was something I had been craving. Talk about raining down hope for this new life.

So you can imagine the odd cocktail of feelings springing up as I take the magazine from Jason's outstretched hands: Surreal. Sad. It's bittersweet, knowing I've survived a year and knowing that Carly is now studying anthropology at McGill and may never come back to Delaware. And yet how far I've come since last September.

Last September I was doing some major vocational discernment (although to be honest, that hasn't really quit even now; actually working, and working at something I like, is teaching me an infinite amount more about myself than I could have possibly postulated). Last September I was figuring out who I was, as a woman and a daughter and a sister, figuring out what I wanted out of life and what I was willing to give in that barter system. Last September I was relieved that I hadn't met any "nice young men" yet, and that I had no clue where to go to meet one of those mythical creatures. Last September I was testing out my security net and the resilience and strength of the threads binding me to the people I had worked so hard to love, that suddenly needed to stretch cross country and learn to tie new kinds of knots.

Last September I was scared. Of almost everything.

I can't honestly say that has changed a whole lot, but I'm just now getting to a point where I can look my fear in the eyes and say, "Suck it. You're coming with me." And grabbing it by the hand and dragging it out where I can meet people and get into situations that are enriching for everyone in them.

To illustrate how much has changed, I shook hands with at least 6 new people yesterday, and exchanged email addresses with two. I finally found a writers' group! (Somehow I never thought to look at Facebook...?) I forced myself to brave the pouring rain yesterday afternoon to go to Jackson Inn, an incredibly sketchy-looking bar that turned out to be really lovely inside, even with broken air conditioning! I tried a very local pale ale that I actually really liked, from Twin Lakes Brewing Co. in Greenville. And there was an open mic, and it was fantastic, and I thought, Finally! HERE are my people! HERE is where I belong!

In other news, the weather today is gorgeous, the sun is hot but the air is cool in a fall-is-coming kind of way. I walked to the library, planting my feet on the streets of my new neighborhood, and managed to snag a computer for more than 15 minutes (though my time is running low by now). I made major strides in setting the kitchen in order yesterday, and I get to drink my tea every morning staring out the kitchen window into the jungly back garden, with roses and lovely purple morning-bloomers and fruit trees and flowers, and that unique September yellow sunshine slanting through the whole thing.

I'm more settled in at the new place than I was on Tuesday, but it's still a work in progress. I wonder if it ever ceases to be that. I wonder if I will ever stop marveling at the cycles and stages that roll out through my life. I wonder if the Fringe Festival will ever stop reminding me of Carly and of Tim Otte and Sean and James Doyle, and I wonder who else it will remind me of next year.

15 minutes of moving

Greetings, readers. I'm going to try and make this quick, because I'm on a computer at the library and there is a 15 minute time limit at this station. The reason I'm at the library is because it's four blocks from my new house! And we don't have internet yet at our place.

13 minutes. It is weird moving into a new home. You'd think a holiday weekend would be the best time to make a major move like that, because we have 3 full days instead of just two to get three people's stuff from point A to point B, and get the whole place unpacked and functional. We did get mostly functional, and found some key dysfunctions (like the upstairs toilet, which refuses to drain). But there is still the issue of getting comfortable.

This involves things like, on a day like today where the humidity is higher than the temperature and the temperature is 85 degrees, installing air conditioners or at least fans in the important rooms. This involves things like mapping out our new routes to work, putting a few important edible items into the fridge, clearing a path through the boxes and stuff scattered at random across the major walkways.

More specifically, moving in consists of a series of strange rituals.

1. Making granola, which makes the house smell familiar and also secures a good 2-3 weeks' worth of comfort food.
2. Taking a shower and figuring out how the water works.
3. Also, not to get PG-13 here, but I always have to get naked in a new place before I feel really comfortable there. It's a vulnerability thing, I guess.
4. Be in the house when it's full. The first couple of days, the three of us (Kristy, Katy and me) were in and out, really busy, and never managed to cross paths in our new shared home. Weird. I was on edge until I got to say "hi" to one or both of them when I walked in, or when she walked in.
5. Eat pizza. Jason claims this is a universal moving-in ritual. It may or may not be, but there is definitely something to be said about eating pizza on the couches piled with misplaced items and tools and unpacked boxes. It's funny and cozy.

I have 2 minutes left so for the sake of starting this conversation, I'm going to publish now. I have a feeling this is a list that will keep on growing. There are still a million things to do.