how to deal when things don't go my way

Well, dear readers, I just spent the last hour and fifteen minutes writing a post about how great of a time and all the good food we ate and beer we drank at the 2013 Newark Food and Brew Festival... And the whole thing somehow magically got deleted.

And this after some dramatic soul-searching about what to write about today.

I guess I'm not meant to be a food-and-beer critic. I wouldn't even venture so far as to say it's anywhere near my best genre.

But I miraculously resisted throwing my phone against the wall. That's what I get for not having internet at home and not using the super-slow library computers, right? (As much as I legitimately love the library, I did not feel like dealing with that today. Especially now that I can hook up this awesome bluetooth keyboard to my phone!)

Instead, I set everything down gently and took a few deep breaths (read: about 15 deep, deep breaths). And then Jason (who came running when he heard my shouts of rage) reminded me that I am wearing my anti-anxiety hand-on-heart necklace, and that it fits perfectly on the tip of my nose. Oddly, I have found this really therapeutic in the past.

I'm still mad. But I'm going to move on with my life and go watch Wolverine. It's date night.

all good things: simple pleasures and beautiful things

1. Song of the week: Let It Go by the Zac Brown Band. This song came up in my Spotify playlist called "feelgoodjams." (Are y'all surprised to hear that I have this playlist?) It seemed fitting this week. "Like the fear that grabs ahold ya / Let it go." "Save your strength for things that you can change / Forget the ones you can't / You gotta let it go."

2. One night this week Katy, Jason and I were eating dinner at the kitchen table and heard some weird noises coming from the front of the house. We were understandably a bit spooked, but instead of freaking out we each grabbed a random houehold item (steak knife, ShakeWeight, chopsticks) and did a sweep of the house to make sure there were no intruders. Like group therapy, only... Funnier.

3. Luke and I picked up some coffee last night and went for a drive while listening to 80s music. We had a blast and it was so relaxing!

4. Play-Doh! I bought some the other day and have spent so much time playing with it. I forgot how nice it is to create. Another relaxing and fun activity.

5. Humphrey Bogart movies. This week I've watched a few of his films again that I haven't seen in a while: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo. The dialogue is so wonderful, and Bogie is always so handsome and rugged :)

6. MN weather this weekend! It's been really autumnal here. The daily high is around 70, and it's been such a lovely weekend! Perfect for outdoor activities.

7. Babies! J's niece is starting to make noises and really react to her environment, and she is SO. CUTE. Also a really cool dad with a stroller decked out in glow sticks at the Electric Run last Saturday.

8. Instagram. I know, typical of me, the social media behaviorist, to include a platform on the good things list. But let me tell you that it is the only one I want to check and update when I'm not working. I find it beautiful and simple and expressive in a totally different way from anything else I've ever seen. And mainly, it's fun and it's cathartic, both to post and to scroll through the news feed. Check me out @claradetierra.

9. This bluetooth keyboard I am using to update the blog from my phone! So cool. A coworker-friend picked it up and gave it to me this week and already it is 100 times faster and easier to type and to update. Plus it is thin and compact.

10. Kitchen and home goods stores. I feel so boring and grown up, but this is where I spend the most time and money shopping these days. Today Jason and I went to Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a spice rack and a few other things, and of course had way too much fun comparison shopping and making lists of things we would want in our over-extravagant dream life. (The glamorized $350 Margaritaville-branded blender, for example.)

Here's to a peaceful week for all of us, dear readers. No matter what happens, though, you can count on a full list of 10 good things next week!

promised: 6 things i learned from being robbed twice

On Monday I hinted that I might write about the movie Promised Land this week. I had a basic outline planned out and was good to go, and then after work Jason called to tell me that our house had been broken into and robbed. This is kind of hard to ignore when I'm writing, so I guess I won't be writing about the movie this week.

Lesson number one: things don't always go according to plan. What's that they always say? "The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go often awry." (From a poem by Robert Burns.) You'd think I would have learned this one by now.

I had a characteristically complicated set of plans that were thwarted by this, my second robbery since moving to Delaware less than 2 years ago. Not to mention the hard-earned, if still slightly shaky, sense of security living in the city not far from infamously drug-ridden streets and neighborhoods. 

Oddly enough, I almost feel a little less scared now. More city-hardened. Broken in (ha, ha, get it?). The guy one house down, though, told us he's lived there since 1999 and hasn't known of any break-ins on our block until now. He did say a lady once had her purse snatched on the corner, though, and was screaming for help. He said he and two other guys on the street came out to see what was going on, and one of them chased the guy a couple blocks before catching him and beating him up and bringing the purse back.

Lesson number two: city security. The cops told us "negative" on ground-floor window units and gave us a few other security measures we should put in place. So we're working on that.

In our case, they said, somebody probably was looking for pills or drug money, or both. People walk around pushing on AC units and if there's give, they push it in, fill their pockets and take off out the back door, to turn over the goods for cash or crack a few blocks away.

Lesson number three: we are unbelievably lucky in our family, friends and neighbors.

Talking to our neighbors after the fact, it was clear that people on the block keep an eye out for each other. Call it nosy, but I have had a growing feeling that, when it comes down to it, we all have each other's backs.

When I got off the phone with Jason after work and found out what had happened, I first called my mom to tell her I probably wouldn't make it over for dinner, and why. She said she was sorry to hear it and did I want them to come over. I said I would assess the situation and get back to her. Then I called Katy and told her to come home.

So I went home to find Jason and his brother watching a movie and drinking beer. And Joe stayed until Katy got there and then he left. So there we are waiting for the cops to show up (apparently there have been a lot of shootings in town lately, so they have been busy) and there is a knock on the door, and it's my parents standing there with a crockpot full of stew and some bread. "Want dinner?" they said.

A little later my sister, who was the first person to discover that my parents' house was robbed last September, showed up to give hugs and make jokes. And Jason's parents checked in on us every hour or so, and the morning after.

Family is so important, and ours are the best.

And then I told the girls at work and they said, "Are you suppressing your emotions or are you really this calm?" Since then they have been offering to make plans with us and have been texting periodically at night and in the morning to make sure we are feeling OK. And friends have been checking in and doing the same.

Friends are so important, and ours are the best.

Lesson number four: you never know what people are dealing with behind their eyes. Yesterday I decided to go to work and really dig in, try not to get distracted, act normal. You might never know if you saw any of us that something had happened. Because we don't always have the luxury (or the crutch?) of being able to check out and freak out. We have no clue what kinds of things people deal with on a daily basis. The people driving next to us, making our coffee, delivering our mail, sitting in the next office. The show must go on.

Lesson number five: when my parents' house was broken into almost two years ago, I had the most stuff stolen. I was so angry because I had just come to this new place, and it wasn't treating me very well. It hit me with an earthquake, a hurricane, tornadoes, a break-in, and a manhunt, all within the first 3 weeks of my arrival. I took it so personally.

Jason was the first to discover the robbery on Monday. He just moved in officially a week ago, and he got hit the hardest as far as the value of things lost. I asked him, "Are you ready to move out?" And he said. "Yeah..."

And so was I, two years ago. But in retrospect, how glad am I that I stuck around? I am not one to run away. I am determined -- to a fault -- to overcome. And I have, for the most part. I have kept my job and, in fact, advanced within my company. I still love what I do. I have made a lot of friends and discovered a lot of things I never would have otherwise, and taken advantage of a lot of opportunities. And I met this great guy who moved in and almost immediately got robbed. The literary richness of this story is not lost on me. I only hope that there are as many good things to come in the next two years for him, and for all of us, as there have been for me.

And that no one gets robbed two years from now. There is no curse! We just live in a city.

Lesson number six: this is the kind of thing my parents told me, when I was little, that only happens to people once. I know now that this isn't true, that some people have a lot of bad things happen to them and some people have hardly any. I know from experience it's easy to feel like Job.

But I caught myself thinking that yesterday and scoffed aloud. Not everything is great, and in fact I have been heard to say more than once lately that the world is a pretty rough and unpleasant place a lot of the time. But given what we have to work with, I've got it pretty good. And to compare myself to Job? Well, that guy lost everything. And I'm definitely not trying to jinx it by thinking I'm at that level. I've got a lot to be thankful for.

So I didn't write about Promised Land. But part of what I was going to say about it is that things don't always turn out how we think they will, and life delights in surprising us. And that we don't know people until we sit down and listen to their stories. And that the world is hard, but sometimes all the more beautiful for it.

So maybe I did write about it after all.

all good things: right in the feel-goods

1. Song of the week: Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. I had a Moment with this song on Saturday, when we walked into a bar and wove across a dance floor where every person was smiling giddy and singing along, word for word. Reason to love pop culture: it creates kinship in strange and beautiful ways such as this.

2. The Electric Run. My roommate and I went up to Philly on Saturday for the Electric Run, which was eventually called off because of lightning (talk about electric). I think our time was pretty good, but more importantly we got there in time to finish it without getting electrocuted. Also the lighting design of the run was really cool, the park was beautiful, and the whole thing was a lot of fun.

3. Reuniting with old friends, and making new ones. I joined the run on an old New York classmate's team - we used to live diagonally across the street from each other in Amsterdam, swam together in high school, and used to hang out all the time back in 5th grade. It was fun catching up. Plus, one of her college friends who also ran with us now lives in Newark, Delaware. So hopefully we can meet up in town down here in the near future. I also randomly saw a classmate from St. Olaf in the starting area... Small world.

4. The Delaware State Fair. J and I drove down to Harrington, Delaware, yesterday for the state fair! I love this kind of stuff. Fried food, sugary drinks and shaved ice, cute animals, plaid shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots... Highlights: picking up chicks (pictured), fried pickles, and a great display about environmental consciousness. I'm getting thermal curtains and changing all my lightbulbs to energy efficient ones. 

(On that note, there was an interesting story on NPR this morning about the energy efficiency of ceiling fans, which finished with a crack at hot air in the Capitol and is full of cheesy wordplay. Love it.)

5. Delaware Shakespeare Festival. A bunch of us went to see The Two Gentlemen of Verona on Wednesday night. Even though it was so hot we were dripping sweat just sitting on the lawn watching the show, the production was excellent as usual, plus Wawa sandwiches, wine, good company, and dogs from Faithful Friends! In the play!

6. Promised Land. J and I got this movie from RedBox on Friday night and watched it. It's a complicated film, but we both enjoyed it. More on that Wednesday (tune in!) Plus, John Krasinski is so cute.

7. Going to the zoo with friends. Luke and I went this afternoon to the zoo with some friends. Though seeing some animals in captivity (gorillas) makes me sad, the zoo is a great place to learn about animals and share a fun experience with friends!

8. Eating dinner outside. It's one of my favorite summertime activities! There is something so nice about sharing a meal on someone's patio, deck, or at a restaurant's outdoor area. Also, I love driving around my neighborhood and getting the whiff of someone grilling.

9. Taking a walk in the rain. It was raining when I woke up this morning, and I decided to walk to the gym in the rain. It was so refreshing and soothing! Of course, the smell is lovely too.

10. At my job (legal advocate working with victims of domestic violence) I see women who have been in a relationship with abusive and just all-around not nice guys. This makes me value my relationship with Luke even more than I normally do. It's a nice reminder to not take things for granted.

in the face of adversity

Yesterday I saw this picture on Facebook:

I don't normally read the longer stories online, but I did read this one. I wanted to know whether I was a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean. Here's the story:

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed that as one problem was solved, a new one arose. 

Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She then pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The granddaughter then asked, "What does it mean, Grandmother?"

Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity -- boiling water -- but each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her granddaughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity? Do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor of your life. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate to another level?

How do you handle adversity? Are you changed by your surroundings or do you bring life, flavor, to them?

ARE YOU A CARROT, AN EGG, OR A COFFEE BEAN?

Of course there is a clear ideal answer: you don't want to get all soft and slimy; you don't want your heart to get all tough and bitter; you want to change the flavor of that boiling hot water. (Actually, this analogy feels pretty apt right about now, in this 96-degree, 88% humidity heat, when the air itself feels like boiling water!)

I was hoping the story would present three different but equally constructive ways to deal with adversity, because I can't say that one way works best for all people, in all circumstances. I told the story to J last night and after I left the explanation hanging there was a long pause. "So... which one are you?" he asked. "Because you were just talking about how you keep a cool head through the whole crisis and then at the end of the day you come home and cry. Wouldn't that make you a carrot?" Of course I bristled slightly at this suggestion, but it says a lot.

First, about what he considers weakness and softness. Crying, to me, is a very valid and constructive coping mechanism as long as it doesn't get in the way of good conversation or moving on with my life in a more overall sense. He saw it, at least in my story, as breaking down.

But he also said, when I told him about how I tend to power through until I get a moment to myself, "You need to share that with me." And then corrected himself: "You know you can share that with me."

We agreed that the carrot-egg-coffee bean paradigm doesn't satisfactorily address the importance of community in dealing with the struggles life deals us. Any regular readers know how crucial of a role this recurring theme plays in the blog and in my life.

And overall, I maintain that the Coffee Bean Theory applies not as much to individual situations, like the "powering through a crisis and then breaking down" scenario, as it does to an overall attitude of dealing with struggle and pain. As the good Protestant girl I was brought up to be, I put a lot of faith into the idea that struggle builds character. Our trials and tribulations make us stronger and despite all the dysfunction this attitude has caused in our society I have drawn a lot of comfort from this dogma and have taken constructive life lessons from the adversities I have faced throughout my life.

 

Speaking of facing adversity, I finished the Spartan Race this weekend! We had to climb about 2 miles straight up a mountain, with sandbags to weigh us down and ropes to help us out at different points; and then we had to descend about 2 miles back down, through mud and water, under barbed wire, over walls and fire. Out of 23 obstacles we counted afterward there were only four I couldn't finish. I was left with a few relatively minor cuts and bruises, and some muscle soreness that hung around for a day or two after, but a high that lasted a full day after we got home, and pride in actually having finished the race!

The best part, though, was the community. (Here it comes...) There were people cheering us on the whole way, and of course there were some challenges I wouldn't have been able to complete without boosts from my teammates. And the coolest part about this race, as opposed to some others I have run, was the camraderie between other competitors, other "Spartans." We got to talk and laugh along the route, and help each other out, and support each other. We were sharing in this incredibly intense experience, both physically and mentally, and it gave us some common ground to stand on.

Some takeaways:

1. Believe you can do it. The biggest blocks were the mental ones, hands down. The times I had to forcefully squash my fear were the times I am most proud of in retrospect, and the times I wasn't able to do that were the times I failed to complete a particular challenge.
2. Appreciate your teammates. We got each other through in different ways, whether it was physical help overcoming an obstacle or just moral support. And then we got to eat and drink and reminisce about our proud accomplishments afterward.
3. Try everything. My goal was to finish the race without getting horribly injured. I had no idea what was coming around every turn, but I wanted to at least try every single thing they threw at me. Some of them I failed miserably at (the spear throw, for example). But at least I did try, and I got farther on some of them than I thought I would. And I know now what I have to do to prepare for next time.
4. Keep moving. I tried so hard not to lose momentum at any point throughout the race, because I knew that if I stopped for too long I would get tired and lose the energy that was really the only thing keeping me going. On the flip side of this, you have to take a break if you need it. But know when is break time and when it's time to power through. Otherwise you might find yourself suddenly wallowing in the doldrums. Not good.
5. When it's all over, eat, drink, and be merry. We got free beer after the race, and open-air spray-off showers. And then we went to a delicious restaurant to recharge our batteries and collect ourselves for the drive home. You have to check in with yourself and take care of your needs before you can expect great things.

Maybe it's just me, my 5-step plan, and that is my coffee bean and you like yours French roasted or snickerdoodle-flavored. (Maybe I can rescue this analogy by likening different coping mechanisms to different roasts and flavors of coffee beans...?)

In any case, if anything has become clear to me since I left St. Olaf it is that there is a lot of adversity in the world and in the day-to-day of our normal existence. There are many things that have made the news this week alone that make this painfully clear (the outcome of the Zimmerman trial, political corruption as usual, domestic violence cases and car accidents). I won't address any of them individually since this is already pretty long and I should be en route to the Delaware Shakespeare Festival in a minute or two, but I will say that it is almost entirely up to us how we handle the curveballs and the hardballs that come at us and I'm doing my best every damn day to make bitter coffee taste sweet.

What's your roast? Carrot, egg, or coffee bean?


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all good things: everything of champions

1. Song of the week: Ain't My Friend by Jessica Latshaw, Delaware native. She'll be performing on Market Street for Wilmington's Ladybug Music Festival on Thursday! Also, this video (particularly the smiling thug on the right side of the screen) makes me smile big time, over and over again.


2. I rediscovered The World’s Best Bartender on Wednesday night! He used to work at this creole place around the corner from my house and made a mindblowing mojito I haven’t stopped talking about since last year. I haven’t seen him since. But this week, J and I tried out this new restaurant up the road called Latin Fusion, and he was there tending bar, and he made me two excellent margaritas, and gave them to me at happy hour prices because I told him his mojito is legendary. We got to talk drinks for awhile (one of my favorite topics) and he really GETS it. I’m pumped.

3. Finished the Spartan race yesterday without getting injured! It was about 2 miles straight up a mountain, part of it with a 25-pound sandbag on my back; and about 2 miles back down, through mud and water, under barbed wire, over walls and fire. I did probably 100 burpees for the obstacles I didn't complete, but out of 23 obstacles there were only four I couldn't finish. I'm a little sore now, but it was SO much fun, and so satisfying!

4. The New City View Diner in Allentown, PA. On the way back from the race we were so hungry and tired so we stopped at this "creepy diner" that looked like a 1950s futuristic spaceship model, thinking we could at least get some gross greasy food. But it turns out it has the most extensive and varied menu of any place I have ever seen, and they have a sautee menu that comes with a glass of wine and a salad bar and soup, for between $12 and $18, and they have a full bar, and fresh baked goods made on premises every day, and it's open 24 hours a day! Plus the food was fast and delicious. And they have curly fries! I swear I have glimpsed heaven. 

5. Ginberry slushie. Remember the leftover gin bucket we put in the freezer after the Fourth of July? Well, last night we blended it with some fizzy water and drank it on the porch and it was the best.

6. Impromptu casseroles. Also last night at around 9:00 pm, J and I we realized after running around all over town that we hadn't eaten a real meal in awhile, so we just looked at what we had that was fast and mixed it together. What we ended up with was a veggie-and-whole-wheat rotini and shredded chicken casserole with melted mozzarella on top. Yum. And there's plenty left over for lunch today!

7. Cassie's birthday was last week! So Cassie and Luke drove down to Chicago for the weekend, to eat and see the sights! Sounds like a proper celebration to me.

8. She mentioned specifically Chez Moi, a "fun French bistro that was so good!" I told her I would add her items to the list, since she didn't have internet access yesterday.

9. Brunch at the Blue Parrot. Yesterday I woke up craving French toast, so we walked around the corner to the Blue Parrot. As usual, not disappointed. The French toast was some of the best I've ever ordered out, J's Blue Parrot breakfast had the perfect variety and the homefries were excellent, the coffee was strong and good, and the mimosas were only $3!

10. Delilah's favorite song. Someone called into the show the other night and asked Delilah to play her own favorite song... And she played You Gotta Be by Des'ree. Good choice, D. And a great way to start the week!

when i was 24...

I’ve mentioned The Girls At Work in probably too many posts. Since we’re all around the same age, and in other obvious ways our lives overlap, our lunchtime conversations provide a lot of fodder for this blog.

Mostly we talk about our roommates, and pets. Then we talk about what we do for fun, and lifehacks for doubling up professional dress with casual wear, and working out (or not). We talk about money (mostly, how much we don’t have). We talk about food: fitting grocery shopping into our busy schedules, eating healthy, eating out.

On Monday of this week, while we slogged through all this heavy problem-solving, The Other ‘ara (we get mixed up all the time at work) told us how her skinny, blond cousins, young parents in their 30s, talk about being 24. “Our twenties were a blast,” they’ll say, “but let’s be honest-- we might be less fun now, but we’re not that much less fun. And we sure don’t miss living paycheck to paycheck, living in scary places because it’s all we could afford, going out every night...”

So I started thinking: how will we look back at these lunches and our standard fare, our weird roommates, hangovers, being perpetually on the lookout for the loves of our lives? And I thought about a comment my Gramma made, how she appreciates my blog because I actually listen to the wisdom of my elders, and incorporate it. And I remembered how much I love hearing other people’s stories instead of just writing my own all the time, and I thought I’d better ask some more experienced people to recall being our age.

This post goes out to The Girls At Work, especially Sara.

I’ve also mentioned before how my mom’s experience has been different from mine. The major reason being, she was married at 22, and had me at 25, and so the time I’m spending now getting to know myself, she spent figuring out “ourselves” -- the We-factor. Being married and being a "new adult."

“When I was 24, Papa and I did everything together. We didn’t have any money... But everything was an adventure.

“And then when I was 30, I had three kids. When I was 29, Maria was born. And when my mom was 29, I was born. So that was significant to me. It felt like things were coming full-circle.

“But I didn’t feel grown up until I was about 45. Life was still an adventure and I felt like everything was so new. Now I feel like... I heard this lady say in the store that she wished she was young again but knew everything she knows now. I like the wisdom that I’ve gained and the insight that I’ve gained over years of experience.”

And now, she’s starting to take new kinds of opportunities to get to know herself. In some ways, I feel like we are on a similar page now. It is comforting, though, to hear that she just started feeling grown up recently. Maybe that means we’ve actually got some time to figure things out!

“Figuring things out” is a theme that came up over and over again. More specifically, “I hadn’t really figured anything out back then.” I was talking to J about a friendship I’m frustrated with right now, and he recalled an old friend he couldn’t even speak to for years after a bad roommate experience in college. “I eventually figured it out,” he said, “and so will you. But it will probably take you half as long. Hopefully.”

I was pleasantly surprised to get a similarly clueless impression from one of my most influential college professors. It is strange, no matter how many times I hear it, to learn that “grown-ups” I so deeply admire as capable human beings have or have had their clueless moments. It’s comforting, too. And it often makes me respect them more.

“24. Given that it was half of my life ago, I don't recall that much about my emotional state at 24. I was living in Japan teaching English and happy to be meeting some really great people. I wasn't in a romantic relationship. I read a lot, mostly novels and stuff about Asian politics. I learned how to ski. I intended to keep moving and traveling.

“I didn't know it at the time, but I was making progress on figuring out who I was. Of course I also didn't realize that some big surprises were in store for me in that regard over the next couple of years -- the major wrong turns in my life hadn't happened yet.”

Reading this response now makes me wish I had dug deeper for “the major wrong turns”... But I guess that's a conversation for another day! This part is a little intimidating... What if we have some serious wrong turns ahead of us?!

On the plus side, I guess, we still have a shot at turning out as well as Tom did.

And maybe it just takes that long. My friend Emily, who I met while she was doing AmeriCorps in Delaware last year, is not really that much older than I am. But the way she talked about being 24 struck me almost as though she were a different person commenting on someone else a few years younger.

“So as a 32-year-old, I can't really speak for anyone else because everyone matures at different rates. At 24, I had the time of my life. I had the best group of friends and I had a sense of identity. HOWEVER, I was also extremely dramatic and immature. Every kiss was some epic romance and every hurt feeling was a betrayal. So if I knew then what I know now, it would be to be a little more pragmatic, a little more responsible, a little more sober and a lot less angsty. I thought angst was 'cool' and therefore never tried to grow out of it. I also cared way too much about appearing hip, together, and cultured. I didn't realize how fake it looked. But that's just me. I was extremely immature for that age. Like I said, everyone is different.”

So I asked, what was the catalyst that makes you look back so critically? What sparked the shift, and when did it happen? What do I have to look forward to?

“There was no ‘one’ thing that contributed to the change, but moving to California to be a couch- surfer knocked a lot of it out of my system. Just not living in a place where everyone understood me and enabled my quirky, youthful ways-- that forced me to grow up a lot and realize the difference between friends and drinking buddies, and other important lessons. Delaware was another one for similar reasons.

“But it's been a process and it's one that I am still in the midst of.”

I love that she boiled it down to realizing the difference between friends and drinking buddies. It strikes me as such a beautiful way to express something I’ve often heard about growing older -- that we learn how important relationships really are to our happiness, and, if we’re lucky, how to have functional ones. Distinguishing friends from drinking buddies seems like a pretty good first step.

So maybe we really just don’t “grow up” until we’re 45. But I wonder-- what is the catalyst? And how do we really know that we’ve done it, we’ve hit our peak, we’re grown up!

One of my dad’s best friends, Dan (my dad, also called Dan, was his best man back in 1986), both offered an answer to the “catalyst” question and threw the whole idea for a loop.

“Around the age of 24...I say ‘around’ since that was so long ago (I am 52 now)...I would soon to meet a young beautiful lady who later accepted my marriage proposal, after she said ‘maybe’ and made me wait for a few weeks! For me, finances were ok but certainly not great so there was some tension about finding/keeping the right job. I had gone back to college a few years after high school.

“In some ways, I think I thought I had things figured out fairly well but I didn't really focus on the little things. I had a job that I liked and my employer kept promoting me so I felt rather encouraged and optimistic. I do recall thinking from time to time about my parents who were in their early 50s. I wondered if I would be so stuck in a rut when I get to their age as far as career, family, doing boring church stuff, etc.”

Is this like me, now? What do I have to look forward to? Read on...

“Little did I know how much children change the picture!! Liz and I have five children. The first child was an adjustment, but the second and third not so much. I guess we already had gone through the initial adjustments/shock of a major lifestyle change with the first. We waited five years before having children, but it was all an amazing experience....

“Our fourth child was the one that really threw us for a curve. Not that he was a difficult child but more from the logistical point of having so many car seats and transporting four kids places was not easy.”

AHA! KIDS! THAT’S the catalyst!

I’m actually in a bizarre position right now where I’m watching J’s older sister and her husband with their new baby, and they seem pretty much exactly the same. That is weird. At the same time, she (the baby) is having a major, discernible impact on their lives, on their social schedule, their sleep, their role in the extended family. But if they weren’t grown up before, they’re no more so now. And if they were before, then, well, there goes that idea...

But wait, Dan’s not done:

“I can honestly say that looking back when I was 24 year old, any thoughts of what I might be doing or how life might possibly be now were nowhere close to how they have turned out!

"I have heard people comment that at my age I would be ‘settled in’ to routine and life would sort of cruise by or that I would begin to slow down after turning 50. Nothing is further from the truth! Life is busy. I still have four boys living at home. Three of them are teenagers and one 12-year-old.

“My ‘career’ is just beginning to launch off into the great unknown...and that is amazing and exciting. It's all a God thing! At age 24 I really did not know what my ‘passion in life’ was. I really didn't realize what that was until about ten years ago...in my early 40s. My passion is praying for people! That alone began a period of years of learning, failing, stumbling and grasping this.”

Things are new! There are still learning curves at 32, 48, 52! Things happen that are so unexpected and they throw us for a loop again and again, and we take wrong turns and make new discoveries...

Now, The Girls At Work and I, my classmates and my friends, are looking forward to getting our ducks in a row, getting our shit together, figuring things out. Having our own place, being married, making the salary we want and having our own benefits instead of living off our parents’. (In the meantime, Mom, Dad, Obama, we appreciate it and it really is awesome of you to share yours with us until we’re 26!)

5, 10, 25 years down the line, we will definitely have gained some perspective and some wisdom, but who knows what we will think about who we are now and what we are doing. All we can do is our best, and try to be happy.

Bring on the adventure!

all good things reprise: picking up where i left it...

I got called out on not posting All Good Things last night, which is silly because I've been collecting Things to list. To tell the truth, Sunday just isn't the best day to post. My sincerest apologies to those of you who have looked for it the past two weeks. I've got to figure out a way to not miss it.

I've been toying with the idea of posting on Monday, since Monday is a day a lot of us need reminders of the Good Things anyway. So I'm going to try it, starting tonight. Please bear with me! And thank you :)

1. Song of the week: Follow Your Arrow by Kacey Musgraves, who gets mad points for writing catchy cultural criticisms. This track has been inspiring me lately.


2. Guardian angel? I was leaving work in the midst of torrential downpour recently, bracing myself to get soaked on my way to the car... And as soon as I stepped out from under the overhang, the rain slowed to a drizzle! Everyday miracle.

3. Subject: Three Things I'm Grateful For. Recently I've had an email chain going with a couple of brothers from my high school crew. We cover everything from politics to pop culture to food and adventures... My favorite part of these emails, though, has been our round robin lists of "Three things I'm grateful for today." Like All Good Things, but every day.

4. Today's Google Doodle honoring the 66th anniversary of the reporting of the Roswell Incident. Take a stab first, and  if you can't figure it out fast enough (it took me several run-throughs over the course of five hours) read about it on PCmag.com.

5. Brazilian barbecue. A bunch of us went to Fogo de Chao up in Philly last night. I was terrified because everyone was talking about how much food it is... But it turns out you can choose how much you eat, which I happen to be good at, and every bite was in-cred-ib-le. Seriously, I am not a big meat-eater, but this stuff... Wow. That's all I can say. Plus, I had the best capirinha of my life. Yummm.

6. Talking to people with shared hobbies. I went to breakfast with some local writers on Saturday, just to chat. One thing we all have in common is that we are smart and passionate and it is so refreshing to talk about something we all care about. Also, I got to meet and get to know a few new people this time around, which is always a good time.

7. Drinks in jars. I poured a bunch of gin and lemonade and raspberries together into a giant pickle jar last week and we drank it on the Fourth of July. It was delicious. Also, J found an insulated plastic smoothie cup with a straw... shaped like a Mason jar. I am SMITTEN with it.

8. Figs and peaches and crepe myrtle. (This Good Thing courtesy of my mom.) They're just coming into season right now, which means my backyard is about to burst into fruit! Plus, on the Fourth, we were passing around fig spread and goat cheese on crackers, which is my new favorite snack, and I found out that one of J's aunts has a fig tree in her backyard and makes fig spread from scratch and gives it away, because she doesn't like it. So I got on the list. Now the only question is, what will I do with the figs on MY tree??

9. Summer shandy has suddenly come to the East Coast in full force. Which is odd, since I could only find Leinie's shandy at one local liquor store last summer, and now? It's gone up $3 for a 12-pack, and it's prominently displayed in every liquor store I visit (which is a lot) and a bunch of East Coast craft breweries are making it, and you can buy "fresh" shandy at bars and there are ads everywhere, on billboards and on TV. Why the sudden explosion in popularity? J says, "Because you love it and the universe heard that." I know, gross. (But secretly I love it.)

10. Air conditioners! I'm not generally big on AC, but when it's as humid and hot as it's been for the past week, I can tell you I really appreciate it. It's so hard to sleep when the air is a blanket you can't take off. So yesterday I moved into a new room in the house that has an air conditioner, and actually managed to sleep for once. And I didn't even wake up in a pool of my own sweat. Nice.

weird time to be american

It's a weird time to be American.

A lot of people are questioning exactly what that means, to be American; not that this nation's history hasn't been rife with identity crises. In some ways it seems like the same story over and over again, with slightly different characters. That's what we get for being a melting pot, I guess. An eternity of lab-testing our ever-changing alloy, at super high temperatures.

This week also marks 150 years since the Battle of Gettysburg, widely heralded as the turning point of the Civil War, after which the secessionists had very little hope of winning and the Union began to take shape with greater certainty.

I can't say what it felt like back then, but if you ask me, the winners-and-losers paradigm doesn't apply very well to the wars we're fighting these days. Who really wins? Who really loses?

Especially because, 150 years later, the "Union" doesn't seem particularly unified at all.

We're still fighting the injustices and questions that led up to the Civil War: Racism. States' rights. There are so many huge issues up for debate at the current moment, issues that bring to bear the very humanity of different groups of people. And in the absence of any foolproof or even somewhat workable solutions, we have resorted to a pathological aversion to agreeing on anything.

I can hardly criticize, because I see fallibilities in a lot of the alternatives that have been put out for review, and I can't come up with anything that I'm satisfied with either; but such is being human. There are rarely foolproof solutions to anything. But I am convinced that, faced with this situation, our legislators and people in "power" have stuffed their ears with cotton, tied their blindfolds on, and strapped on their boxing gloves before they go in to "negotiations."

Maybe this is just politics and I am too green to understand, but I've heard this expressed by people who have been around a little longer than I have -- that, on the political stage, we are moving farther and farther away from any kind of bipartisanship.

But then, I understand that the hugeness and diversity of this country makes it hard for any one decision to cover all the bases. Since my highly disputed post about feminism, my eyes have been opened to the variety of experiences even people in the "same" community live on a daily basis. The other day someone I know, a female business owner, asked me if I knew of any minority female business owner groups in the area. She told me about a female professionals meeting she attended: "I walked into that room and I was the only face that wasn't white. Those women don't know what my experience is like."

Women, so often clustered together as a unified interest group, are different from each other. Another blog post on that subject for those who are interested, on how many different kinds of women there are and why one woman cannot truthfully speak for all women.

A classmate of mine just wrote a post about a book called How to Be Black, which I haven't read but probably will now. Thesis?

"It doesn't make sense to work toward ending your personally offensive -ism and in the process make any of the others worse. It doesn't make sense to work toward equality for women but to worsen the inequality against the LGBTQ community, or the African American community, or those who are experiencing homelessness, etc. ...We really do all have to work together, on behalf of one another."

I spent a lot of today looking up patriotic (but politically innocuous) quotes to post on client social media sites. It turns out -- are you ready for this? -- that if anything is politically innocuous, it sure ain't patriotism.

The Founding Fathers were anything but innocuous. They were not content to sit and wait for things to change for the better. You've heard their quotes:

"Give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry

"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Things have changed since then. Americans are different. We are different from each other. We speak different languages and different versions of those languages, we come from different places and have different experiences from each other. We were not all born here, within these borders (which themselves are arbitrary)...

But there is something tying us together. Maybe it is that we live on this soil. Maybe it is that we define ourselves as American, whatever our reasoning and rationale. And for all the subdividing we do to our identity, there is some beauty to the holiday, tomorrow: It is an opportunity, whether we take it or not, to share something.

I hope that we someday learn to listen to each other, and to treat each other with respect, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later. And I hope we can find enough common ground to stand on, to stand up for our neighbors even if they are different from us. Because no matter how many things are different, there will always be something the same. We just have to look for it.