all good things: i'm no superman

All Good Things started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. Cassie is celebrating Easter with her family this week, but will rejoin us next Sunday night.

So set yourself up outside and enjoy this week's good things in the sun!

1. Song of the week: Superman by Lazlo Bane. The Scrubs theme song: I've been listening to it all day, and I also think the words are a good reminder to me. I can't do this all on my own, / no, I'm no superman...

2. Chard sauteed in bacon grease. I made rainbow chard from our CSA twice this week, chopped up and sauteed with bacon grease and just a little bit of pepper. It is unbelievably good, and super quick and easy!

3. New toilet seat! The hinge holding our toilet seat onto the toilet was cracked when we moved in, and it finally snapped all the way off last week... Which means the seat would randomly fall off when you were sitting on it. Not cool. So like adults we went out, bought a new one, and put it on. Seriously one of the most worthwhile things I have done in awhile. It only took about 5 minutes to switch and it makes all the difference.

4. Union Jack's. A pub in Manayunk (Philadelphia) that I've been hearing about for years. It's got a great ambience, great beer, great service, and great company. Apparently the wings are so good no other wings can live up to them, but I'm not a big fan or expert in chicken wings so I'll just pass on the recommendation on that one.

Plus, you can control the jukebox using an app on your phone. Our group definitely took advantage of that.

5. Safe travels. This is something I try not to take for granted ever, but especially now when there have been so many big transportation disasters lately. My mom and sister are in India for spring break right now, and they arrived safely at their destination.

6. Projects. My dad texted me on Saturday morning to ask for help putting together a presentation for the Easter Vigil that evening. I made a version of a Creation story PowerPoint for him sometime in high school, but since then it's deteriorated and the slides got out of order. So I spent a few hours on Saturday putting it back together, and while it wasn't all fun and games, it did feel really good to help my dad in one of the biggest weeks of the church year, and to do something creative like that.

7. Being taken care of. I have felt awful all day today, with a persistent headache and stomachache that laid me out on the couch for most of it. J kindly, and without complaining, gave up his Easter Sunday to camp out in the living room with me, make sure I didn't pass out from dehydration, and keep me company.


8. Lemon honey ginger. This is my drink of choice this week, with the big changes in temperature and feeling sick for most of today. I shred some ginger into a pot, boil it in water, stir in a teaspoon or so of honey, and then at the last minute add a splash of lemon juice. It's so delicious and it has cured many an ill.

9. Scrubs. This is one of the shows J likes to watch in his spare moments throughout the week, and this morning when I set up shop in the living room that's what he had on. So we watched it for most of the day. It's just so good. There are some dumb parts, but the show actually touches on some real human issues, emotional vulnerabilities and the nuances of relationships that keep us all on our toes, even in the real world. And it's pretty funny too.

10. Spending time just focusing on people, and being flexible. This week I spent a little while hanging out with my sister and talking about college; spent time talking with my friend Jess about a whole range of different big-deal kind of things in both of our lives; worked on a project with my dad (that's our quality time); had two date nights with J, one of them spontaneous; went out for dinner spontaneously on Friday night; and I forgot my phone at home when we went out last night, so I couldn't pull it out to distract myself even if I wanted to. I feel like my time was well-spent.

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Thank you, readers, for being with us tonight, and for giving me reasons to write, and things to write about.

And thanks for joining us every Sunday night! Join the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for good things every day, and updates on new posts. Come back next week for another reminder of 10 more things to be thankful for!

Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile!

posted from Bloggeroid

all good things: people who make weeks beautiful

All Good Things is a weekly feature on the blog. It started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. Sit back and enjoy!

1. Song of the week: Knock Knock by Mac Miller. J&J (the twins) were stunning this song after we dropped off the Uhaul truck today and it got stuck in our heads. It's really catchy and the video is funny and actually kind of beautifully done.

2. Car wash. It was getting really sad how dirty my car was. I've been driving past the Greenhill Car Wash on my way home from work for over a year now, but haven't got up the guts (or the $8) to try it out. Finally yesterday on my way home from work I decided I couldn't put it off any longer... And it was kind of relaxing, actually, sitting inside my car, hands off the wheel, foot off the brake, surrounded by gigantic soapy brushes. And now my car is so clean!

3. Bokwa. My roommate and I tried out this new dance fitness class at the Y on Saturday. It has a series of steps in the shapes of different letters, and a lot of room for personalization. Plus, I couldn't help smiling by the end of class. I will be trying that again.

4. Having friends you can laugh with. This one pretty much speaks for itself. To me, this is a sign of good solid friendships.

5. Humidifier. We started running the humidifier in our room while we sleep and every since I've been breathing much better. Coincidence? I think not!

6. Emails from my grandparents. They live in California and we're not in super close touch... But whenever they email me it's always good, and makes new really happy. This week it was a birthday email which is double good.

7. Eating when you're super hungry and tired. You know the feeling. Yummm. Plus, a few people made food for us this week so we don't have to worry about cooking when all our kitchen supplies are boxed up somewhere.

8. Clean sheets. I probably enjoy this a lot less often than I should, but maybe that makes it all the more satisfying...?

9. J. and I had to go get the flu and Tdap shots this week so we could kiss the baby, and if course it cost almost $100 for each of us to get both shots. J. doesn't have insurance and mine only covers Walgreens in South Dakota and Wisconsin for some reason, so the pharma tech went to great lengths to find us a discount or make my insurance cover some of it. We ended up getting a few dollars off, and especially right now while we're moving every little bit counts. It just meant a lot for a person to make such an effort to help somebody else, even someone he had never seen before and may never see again.


10. Feeling at home. Today my two roommates and I had a bunch of friends over and moved all our stuff (almost) to a new house in a new neighborhood. And already I feel more comfortable and happy here. :)

We had a good crew of helpers today, which made the whole project that much easier and more bearable.

Thanks everyone for making this week beautiful!


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Thanks for joining us this Sunday night! Stick with the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for updates on new posts and other stuff about new adulthood. Come back next Sunday night for a reminder of 10 good things that haven't happened yet, and on Wednesday night for a more in-depth reflection on post-grad life. Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile.

posted from Bloggeroid

nights of the (sort of) round table

I started this post last night right after getting up from the dinner table. A particularly full dinner table, with 8 chairs crammed around it.

We've always been a family of 6, and we've always been an infamously spirited family of 6. Tonight we were discussing the possibilities of a superpower that would allow us to switch off gravity in a predefined period of time within a certain area. Then Maria said, "People who have more birthdays live longer." And while we were all chuckling about that, Papa chimed in, "And odds are, if your parents couldn't have kids then you won't be able to either."

And then Mutti said, "...Didn't we have this same conversation a few days ago?"

On other nights we talk about linguistics, or architecture, or theology, or medicine. Or we talk about books we're reading and movies we've seen or want to see. We try to make plans and usually fail because of how impossible it is to coordinate 6 busy schedules full of life and ambition. We tell funny stories and bad jokes. We work through our issues, personal or collective. As cliche as it may sound, the dinner table is the place where our family status gets resolidified. Sitting down to eat, and, more importantly, to laugh together, does the same thing for our family as renewing vows does for married couples. It's like checking our vitals, syncing our personal devices to the familial network.

Sometimes other people join us at the table and we realize how completely strange our dinner table conversations are, and how intense we can be to people who don't yet know the ropes.

Case in point, my sister's boyfriend got an essay published in Teen Ink about meeting the family, his first supper at our house. He talks about feeling justifiably intimidated as we all haphazardly gathered around the table (typical) and then how that anxiety melted away as he realized we were just real, raucous people. Now he verbally spars with the best of us, rises to the occasion.

Another friend of my sister's was lucky enough to be present at a family dinner where the conversation somehow got steered to the logistics of a career in pole dancing, with side stories about the time my dad had to guess a Sensosketch (drawing with your eyes closed) of a "string bikini" at a youth group game night. (He didn't guess it.) Our visitor sat at the head of the table looking mildly shell-shocked, but laughing; and on the way home he mentioned, with typical quiet intellectualism, that we are "interesting" people -- but in a good way.

Friday was J's birthday, so on Saturday I went to have family dinner at his house. I was struck, as a relative outsider, by the warmth of the family table, the passing and sharing of food and, again, laughter. I don't think this is mere coincidence. That kind of intentional time spent together, gathered in a place, facing each other, is an opportunity for care, to nourish not only our bodies but our souls.

My family has been known to sit literally for hours after all of us are full, after all the food is gone and all the plates are clean and the clock strikes whatever ungodly hour. (We have also been known, on more than one occasion, to sit down to eat after 10:00 pm, so I guess the "after dark" thing isn't really a surprise.) Despite all the ruckus lately about headlines reading, STUDIES DEBUNK "FAMILY DINNER" MYTH: CHILDREN WHO EAT DINNER WITH THEIR FAMILIES STILL GET ADDICTED TO DRUGS! ...I still think that our family is a functional one because we eat together.


Because we enjoy our food together. We share our gratefulness that there is something on the table, and that it is usually delicious, and that we have people we love to share it with. I really think it boils down to the fact that we laugh together. And my sisters have mentioned on multiple occasions that the dinner table is where we hash things out. That's where we make plans, and work through issues, and take votes on major family decisions, like when and where to go on vacation, or whether it's time to move. It's the only time and place we all set aside (at least one or two nights a week, now that we're all older and busier) to be present with each other. When we were little dinnertime was the only time we didn't answer the phone, on principle. Our family has committed, for 25 years, to being with each other as we share the gifts we have been given.

And what I like about this now is that we have spent a long time building up our family dinner foundation, so that now we gladly invite others to join us, to be grateful with us, to enjoy food with us, to laugh with us. They bring new jokes and facts and topics of interest and even new tastes to the spread.

We are all infinitely richer for it.

where did you come from, where did you go

I spent today at the Fair Hill Scottish Games watching dudes in tartan skirts play bagpipes and throw logs (theoretically) in flying arcs through the air.  More accurately, kilts and caber tossing.  And as kilts and caber tossing are outdoor activities, and it was a nearly perfect day outside, I spent today in the sun and my brain is fried.  I make bullet points about different blog topics throughout my week, and maybe I should transition my post-grad blog to a "daily thoughts on" format after the 1-year mark.  But I do enjoy reflective essays.

It didn't occur to me until we were waiting in line to pay the exorbitant entrance fee that I have Scottish blood!  Last Christmas, in fact, Granma was emptying out an old Ross steamer trunk and found a tie made of our clan tartan, which she gave to my brother, much to my dismay.  Yes, I am aware that I am not a man and therefore have little use for a tie (since Avril Lavigne slipped out of fashion) but I have a lot of use for heritage, and for the stories often couched in artifacts.

According to the "find your name" booth at the fair, the first Rosses set foot on this side of the pond in 1651 and '52.  Assuming that my Ross ancestors were not unrecognized stowaways, carriers of my blood have been shaping their corners of U.S. History for 350 years.  And now some of us continue to dip our pens in that pot--for example, the pen that inscribed "Ross" in the "middle name" slot on my brother's birth certificate.  Cool.  The clan lives on!  Although sadly it does not appear to have an active faction in the tri-state area.

I've been thinking about heritage and origin a lot since coming back from the Midwest this week, feeling myself lock into place as part of that landscape, and feeling that landscape lock into place within me...  And then being rudely ripped from that landscape, with a pair of psychological bolt cutters, and feeling disoriented upon my return to the Philly airport and to my house and my job and my life in Wilmington.  Jason said I didn't "come back" to Wilmington until Wednesday--2 days after my physical arrival.  Not coincidentally, I think, 2 days is approximately the amount of time it takes to drive (fairly comfortably) from Minneapolis to Wilmington.

Thesis: Jet planes fuck up our biological/psychological clocks.  You know how our eyes take about 45 minutes to fully adjust to darkness?  And the "twilight" part of the day lasts about 45 minutes.  (At least that's what my freshman year senior counselor told me, and I am inclined to believe it.)  There's some beautiful ecological symmetry there.

As much as I would like to dwell on ecological symmetry forever, I'm straying from the crux of the current issue.  Which is, eternally, belonging; originating; coming and going.  Pinpointing the location of my heart at any given moment.

I will probably never find complete security in this realm, and maybe that's just an occupational hazard of being human.  At some point I may also stop realizing new aspects and explanations and solutions to my rootlessness.  But I can never deny value in realizing the same thing over and over and over again: Love is a decision, and homes spring up where you invest in them.

For a second there, back in Delaware and not even able to pretend I was happy about it, I toyed with the idea of cutting all ties and heading back to Sunny V, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  To the physical embodiment of my ideal life.  The place I felt most happy, most at home.

But life is not ideal.  In fact, as we have found, the most beautiful moments are bittersweet.  The most beautiful moments are the ones that mix tears and laughter, the ones that finish chords of sadness, anger, disillusionment, with a flourish of hope.

And I have to remind myself how long it takes to turn a new place, new people, into home.  And how much energy it takes on my part, how many moments of feeling certain I would, finally, once and for all, give up.  Funny enough, it is those moments that make new homes possible.  Those moments slap me in the face and tell me straight to get a grip and work out the situation at hand.

I almost give up a lot.

And those aren't moments of weakness.  They lay the foundation for the moments I look back on and say, "Thank God that happened."  They lay the foundation for moments of glory.

hook, eye, and sinker

I just got back from four and a half days of vacation in the Midwest.  I am writing now because I am due for a post, overdue in fact, and while mere mortals might be unfazed by the calls of a self-imposed schedule, I am the Pinnacle of Self-Discipline.  Sometimes to a dysfunctional degree.  But mostly, without this characteristic, I would have spiraled irrevocably into the deepest circles of the inferno.

But there is no good place to start.  There is no way I can share every activity, every discovery, every crucial moment even of the past five days.  There is no way to fully express exactly how much this time means to me.  So I am loath to write anything at all, knowing I can never do it justice.

My mom said, driving me back to Wilmington from PHL, "You said it earlier, when you were talking about going back: Closure."

There it is.  Closure.  Did I go back for this?

It has been just shy of one year since I pulled the loose threads of my college career into a quick and careless knot of necessity.  Part of me feels that if I had postponed this trip by just a few weeks, certain things would have hardened into unfortunate eternal truths.  I didn't really know that up front, but I think it's good I went when I did.

I went to see Ann, and the apprentice art show at the NAG.  It's strange to me that I haven't seen her in 9 months.  That feels wrong.

I didn't make plans, I told about 3 people in advance that I was coming, and I vowed to keep a low profile.  I was going to avoid campus at all costs.  Anyone I did speak to while in Northfield heard my apprehension about running into any of my ghosts should I set foot on The Hill.  This is something I may never feel prepared to do.

But places get under your skin.  I love St. Olaf.  I am proud of the place I chose to get my (invaluable) education, and awestruck by the relationships that grew out of that place.  Of course I would go back.

I got in on Thursday, which as any Ole knows is Froggy's night.  Froggy's flooded last fall, weeks before I turned 21.  So I never got to experience this particular tradition.

Of course I had to go.

And of course some ghosts appeared to me there, and it was expectedly mundane, and we drank (and sloshed through) cheap beer and danced a little and laughed at how normal it felt to be at Froggy Bottoms on a Thursday night.

The next day Ann had some work to finish in the ceramics studio on campus, so I went up there with her and sat next to her workstation for most of the day.  Again, I felt content.  I snuck out the back door to do some yoga, and tried to work on a stagnant poem, but predictably I got restless.  My respected fellow anthropologist William had suggested to me the night before that I stop by the Soc/Anthro office (Ye Olde Stomping Groundes) and say hi to some of the professors there.  If there is anywhere on campus I do want to visit, it is Holland Hall suite 400.

I undoubtedly chose the right course of study at St. Olaf, and I was glad to be back.  (I did miss the Bananagrams set that used to be the focus of my Friday mornings in the Soc/Anthro office, but things fall by the wayside.  We all know this.)  Mid-May is a hectic time on campus, but I snagged some really good chats with a couple of professors.

Professor Tom Williamson of Anthropology Lore invited me to walk with him to Buntrock, where he was going to a meeting.  Buntrock.  The center of campus activity.  My kryptonite.

Of course I went.  He mentioned the chances he's had to catch up with a few of my classmates lately and said, "What strikes me about seeing all of you is that, in 8 or 10 months, you've got this confidence.  You're just so confident."  He seems a bit awed, as always, with us and with the world at large.

"We have to be," I reply, and launch into a description of the requirements of professional conduct.  But I get this weird feeling he understood better than I did that I was really talking about something much broader and deeper than just self-presentation.  It's about survival, and self-discovery, and the truthful uncertainty of the post-grad world.

I ended up on campus one more time, the next afternoon, to see Grace, who refused to let me escape unscathed.  She recalled the place she saw me in last spring, wild and desperate and even delirious, and she said she understood then to give me space, and she understands now what I felt like.  I was amazed by her perceptiveness of a situation I myself was barely aware of, but I remember feeling the same way in the spring of my junior year and the spring of my senior year about my good friend and peer mentor Jon.  I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her for knowing, all along, and for not letting me leave without a hug, a conversation, and a St. Olaf Cookie.

I ran into a few more people while I was there, all of them important.  For all my fears about having to tell all 2500 campus denizens a blander version of my year, I only suffered encounters with people I think about often and with whom I could have hoped to share my time.  It felt normal, sitting on the quad in the sunshine, being the Enabler of Work-Shirking, just like I always have been.  Talking about nothing in particular.

We did talk about their plans for the impending eternity, and I did find myself spinning my life story with a bit of a didactic touch.  I have learned so many lessons this year and I want to talk about them so much more than I have opportunities to do so; I guess what I'm hoping is to set up the stage for a continuing dialogue, and that maybe someone will pick up the dangling thread a few months or a year down the road.  Or tomorrow.

Feeling sun-tired and almost overwhelmed, I headed back downtown to breathe before Ann wanted to leave for our camping trip.

We were pretty quiet in the Rover, winding between cornfields and trying not to speed too much on those classic U.S. highways.  Both of us alone with our own thoughts, but once Ann said, "I was wondering why this feels so normal, and then I remembered that we did this last summer, 3 days, all the way across the country."

So normal.  We crossed into Wisconsin as the sun sank slowly from its piercing peak.  I didn't know until we crossed the old bridge spanning the St. Croix River, and my heart sped up erratically before thunking back into a slower, deeper rhythm, how normal.  Without a doubt there is a piece of my heart melted into the wild Wisconsin landscape, molded to the river and the hills and the dark green trees.

We stopped just over the border at St. Croix Liquor to pick up the New Glarus Wisconsin beer I've been craving for weeks now.  The proprietor spoke with such a warm, thick Wisconsin accent, was so friendly, helpful, knew the trails and the beers and the importance of a good campfire.  "Beautiful night for camping!" he said, waving us out.  "You girls have fun!"

I didn't know how much I missed it.

I still am not a through-and-through Midwest girl, but my loves are in Wisconsin, Northfield, Minneapolis.  I got my fill of Bread Belt witbiers at the Lowry in Uptown, drank cold press coffee at a hipster coffeeshop on a high-traffic corner.

Most importantly, though, I got to touch base with my loves and with the parts of myself I left with them in May, June, August.  I got to access that deep, unspoken, unspeakable click that happens when we reconnect, which is as simple as a smile and a touch and a minute of quality time.  This is my love language.

taking time

When I was growing up, my parents used to not let me go out on Sunday afternoons because they said we needed to set aside time to "just be."

"Be what?" I used to ask, or more likely whine.  "Be-ing is boooring!"

Since moving back home I've brought this up with both of my parents, laughing as I reminded them how frustrated I used to get about it.  My dad said he remembered me giving almost as much input into the "Formula for a Balanced Life," like asking my 'rents to tell me I couldn't go out if I was feeling too swamped or just didn't feel like doing something with my friends.  And my mom and I came to the conclusion that one of the most irritating parts of this institution was that we never distinguished between "family-time" and "me-time."

To this day I struggle to separate "me-time" from "doing-things-I-want-to-do" time.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who spends a lot of my life doing things I have to do, ticking things off my to-do list, things that need to get done.  Whether I want to do them or not.  So when I have a spare moment to recalibrate, do I spend it checking in with myself or doing something solely because I want to do it?  Tough choices.  And usually the things I want to do involve spending time with people I love, including people I live with, people I go out with, people I visit occasionally, and people I can really only communicate with by phone.

The dilemma I constantly face these days is this: I don't have time to love everybody I love in life.  (This dilemma also means I have been known to eat 2-3 dinners in a single evening, sometimes several times throughout a week.  And then I have to find time for an extra-long workout to keep my girlish figure.)

Since I don't have a solution to that problem, here are a few examples of me finding myself stuffed threefold.

So.  Friday.  J's college roommate came up from D.C. to celebrate his birthday, first with a very late dinner at Sushi Sumo.  Most of the sushi was delicious, except the uni (better known in English as sea urchin).  It just had this slimy consistency of too-chewed gum.  Like when it gets to the point of dissolving in your mouth.  Anyway, I'll try anything once.

...But don't quote me on that.

My favorite thing we got was the Dynamite Roll, which came served atop a flashing blue faux ice cube in a kinky-stemmed martini glass.  I forget what was in it, but it was wrapped in soy paper and it was delish.  I also got to try sake for the first time, warm, at the sushi bar where one of the chefs whipped us up a free special sample while we waited for the rest of the party.  Turns out I like sake quite a lot, though it did kick my simmering desire to go to La Ronda for canelazo into second or third gear.  Worth it, definitely.

Calle La Ronda at night (2009)

(Also, hilariously, the adorable hostess asked to see my ID but not Jason's.  He got a kick out of this because he is always complaining that he only gets ID'd when he goes out with me.  As for me, I have mostly resigned myself to being ID'd until I am 55 years old and finally look more than 17.  Optimistic?  Welcome to my life.)

After dinner we hit up Moodswing, quite possibly the only dance club in the state of Delaware, and located approximately 4 minutes from my house.  Convenient.  I felt very underdressed all night--except at iHop in the wee hours of the morning--but especially when the bouncer told me they normally don't let people wear weatherproof boots inside the club.  I still feel a little sheepish about this, but in my defense I really didn't think there was a single nightclub in Wilmington.  But they let me in "just this once," and I pretty much danced the night away.  The photographer from Spark magazine said it was usually packed, but maybe the rain kept everybody in their weatherproof boots and out of the club, because I could probably have singlehandedly counted the people there on Friday.

I slept through Zumba on Saturday morning but, according to tradition, Asha and I hit up the Y anyway.  She definitely holds me accountable.  We're good for each other.

She had made this elaborate plan for all of us to have people over on Saturday night to play Cranium, since Thom had just got home and really needs to meet some people in this state.  Unfortunately none of my friends could make it, but it's always fun chilling with my sibs anyway.  We got a huge box full of Chinese food and read our fortunes "in bed" style, staged rousing Moulin Rouge singalongs and played the penis game.  Seriously, we are just the coolest people ever.

After the game we watched Mulan and I fell asleep about half an hour into it.  Fail.

And then I slept through church on Sunday (I'm sensing a trend here) and in gratitude for everyone who didn't wake me up for church I decided to clean the whole kitchen.  Plus, staying home on Sunday morning usually has good repercussions of the Sunny V Sunday variety, namely delicious french toast, smoothies, good tunes blasting, etc.

The Original Sunny V Sunday <3 

I also watched Legends of the Fall on Sunday, and while I admit it was a pretty excellent specimen of film, I will also admit that I cried throughout most of the second half.  Maybe because I am a certified sap, but maybe because it hit all the right heartstrings, or wrenched them, maybe, in the family/starcrossed love department.  I have been needing a good cry, though, so it's all good.

About 4 minutes after the movie was over J came to pick me up and was a little taken aback that the movie he left for me to see over a month ago left me choking on tears...  But no hard feelings.  We wanted to check out the Newport Restaurant but it was closed so we took a loop around the Newark Reservoir.  It was cold up there, and windy...  But the sunset was to die for.  J tried to take a picture but his phone died right at the key moment.  Oh well.  This is why we have mental imaging capabilities.  And also why I used to sneak my dad's oil pastels out of his desk drawer to do posters of Caribbean sunsets when I was little.

I have been weirdly nostalgic for Quito lately--note the canelazo cravings, and the reservoir reminded me of the reservoir behind my Aunt Lori's house, where Natalia and I used to go running sometimes.  In a flash of brilliance, J remembered this Peruvian restaurant called The Chicken House, which reminded me (of course) of this Peruvian grill a few blocks from the hotel in Quito...  Instead of sending me over the edge into a deluge of homesick tears, though, this place just made me the most happy girl in history.  I ordered the chuleta a lo pobre, basically a pile of porkchop-topped comfort food like rice, fried egg, french fries, and maduros (sweet bananas).  Oh, and a maracuyá pisco sour, and flan for dessert.  Mmmmmmmmm...

I got home after this feast to find the house dark and a single place setting on the dining room table.  SO SAD!  I had meant to leave time to hang with the fam after spending the afternoon with J, but in line with my social dilemma that did not happen.  (And are we really surprised?)  So I tiptoed up to my parents' room to see if they were still awake, because I like to chat with them.  They're cool people.

Long story short, I ended up squashed in my parents' bed with all three of my siblings and both of my parents--a really adorable family puzzle which fit together a lot better when more of us were under four feet tall and 100 pounds.  OK, when any of us were so pint-sized.

But, this is why my family is the bomb-dot-com.  Seriously.  It is always some raucous good times with us.

So what is the difference between me-time and love-time?  I pretty much consider blogging me-time, but I'm doing it in Maria's room under the guise of "helping her with physics."  (This is our code for "sitting together while each doing our own thing"--an activity I love more than almost anything in the world.  Is "sitting together while each doing our own thing" me-time?  Or love-time?  ...Or both?)

Here it is, I really think so: me-time is Sunday morning, and love-time is Sunday afternoon.  Family time is Sunday night all crammed into a queen-sized bed, or any time a few of us spend around the dining room table.  And all of it is important.  And home is where -time happens, where my heart is the clock.

the 22 review

My personal special edition weekend paper, featuring traffic and sports reports, dining and entertainment reviews, and editorial.

Black Friday morning was stunning, shot through with rays of sunshine like sheets of muscovite.  I got up and out of the house before anyone else even woke up.  Apparently everyone in the mid-Atlantic region was also either still asleep, or being trampled at WalMart, because the roads were so clear, which made the drive very pleasant.  I won't tell you how fast I got to Amsterdam, but I'll just say Mike didn't believe me when I called to say I was half an hour out.

The whole point of leaving so early, if you recall, was to make it to the Annual Turkey Bowl ultimate frisbee game.  The Four Diamonds were covered in mud--foreshadowing for our state a few hours later?  It was so warm people were stripping down all the layers they usually needed to play outside on Black Friday, but a few people refused to shed their traditional Underarmor.  Not that it probably mattered much; everybody looked and smelled just about the same by the end of the day regardless of what we were wearing.

I love AUL, mostly because I love playing anything with that crew; but I might have to learn how to play football by next year because I really miss the tackling that used to be a lot more common before anybody actually knew how to play ultimate.

Maybe I should just learn how to play ultimate.

I hate rules.  And strategy.

As Rich aptly pointed out at dinner, those of us who grew up in Amsterdam (whatever growing up I didn't do there I made up for in passion--I insist!) tended to perceive the Raindancer as this untouchably fancy restaurant, "a five-star joint, like if you went out to eat there, you would probably run into Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, they go there all the time."

This is not true.  The chances of Jay-Z or Snoop Dogg having even heard of the town of Amsterdam are pretty much zero, even though Jay-Z did grow up in New York.  The chances of any of you, dear readers, having heard of the town of Amsterdam, is nearly as negligible.  Oh, wait--did I mention my hometown to you once?  What's that?  You don't remember?

That being said, the Raindancer historically does hold the position of Amsterdam's "time-tested local 5-star restaurant."  One of the only places in town you ever make reservations for.  It sort of feels like Applebee's, covered in a vinyl cucina-style vodka penne sauce, and garnished with Rainforest Café light strings and plastic ivy.

The food was delicious, although of course there was too much of it, and there were too many people there to focus on eating anyway, and my mojito margarita was too delicious.  I was delighted to see and catch up with a few people I hadn't seen literally in years.

Rich later complained that there was too much reminiscing throughout the evening, a mostly harmless statement I latched onto the same way my parents latch onto my passing comments about persistent absenteeism and feel horribly guilty about it.  The dilemma is, I come back to Amsterdam once a year or so, and usually miss out on seeing half the people I want to see.  When I do run into them, they ask me what I'm up to now and I really can't think of anything I desperately want to share with them about my incredibly mundane life.  So I boomerang the question, hoping they'll tell me what has made them laugh and cry lately, their drinks of choice, who they're constantly checking their text messages for these days, and the latest developments in their life trajectory.  You know, the important stuff.  I just don't quite know how to ask.

Also, there are too many skeletons and too much dirty laundry hanging around after 10+ years together for us to stage a non-awkward dance party, and I have very little interest in drinking games.

Although, come to think of it, my birthday this year has involved what seems like an inordinate amount of icing.  Yes, there was a lot of it on my various cakes...  But I meant the other kind of icing:

A St. Croix Falls friend wisely thought twice about sending this package.
"I like my bread like you like your men: ICED!"
...Or was it coffee?  I forget.

All I wanted was to split a few bottles of wine with a few close friends and sit around and talk!  But instead, predictably, we ended up with a house full of good friends, a mysterious amount of beer, wine, and Ice, and a collective headache for most of Saturday.

It was completely worth it.  As we have found, I refuse to go uncelebrated.

Saturday at the G.W.I.B. (which is on the market! How badly do I want it?!) we decided to go see the movie Hugo in 3D.  I was skeptical, because 3D movies usually give me a splitting headache--as if I needed a headache on my headache!  But it was actually very well-done.  The cinematography and imagery was really beautiful, and despite a few moments of really awkward/unsuccessful dialogue, we all enjoyed ourselves quite a lot.  Rich and I, at least, were laughing, and I'm pretty sure I cried at some point.  Not that that is unusual at all these days.  (I also cried at Ramona and Beezus last week, and yesterday at The Muppets.  Just to put things in perspective.)

On the topic of 3D, Titanic is coming out in 3D and I have never been so excited in my life.

Full circle, back to traffic.  Back to traffic circles?  I took a route sans traffic circles back from Amsterdam, and ended up getting stuck in traffic on the north end of the Jersey Turnpike.  Both Bizz III and I tend to get cranky in stop-and-go traffic, once I get sick of my solo sunroof dance party and eat all my snacks, I start noticing all the weird things her 10-year-old engine does, and freaking out about it, and then she freaks out and stops shifting gears properly.  So I pull off frantically to a rest stop and make a phone call, and by the time I get back on the road traffic has mostly dissipated and the transmission is back in action.  Can we apply this to real life relationships?  Couldn't hurt.

It took me a little longer to get home to Wilmington than it took me to get home to Amsterdam.  (Ha, confused yet?  Welcome to my life.)  But my family was waiting for me and we all went to see The Muppets, which I'd been waiting for with bated breath for WEEKS.  It fulfilled all my wildest dreams.  I laughed so hard, and for so long, especially at all the 80s jokes and the 21st-century celeb cameos (Neil Patrick Harris, John Krasinski, and Zach Galifianakis, to name a few).  It's hard to say whether my tears were a side effect of intense hilarity or of the touching moments interspersed throughout the script.  Lots of real issues addressed in this film.  I definitely recommend this movie to any diehards, and anyone who knows the song "Rainbow Connection," and anyone who watched Sesame Street back when it was still good, and anyone who likes puppets or Jason Segal or Amy Adams or basically any hip young celebrity out there--except Justin Bieber.  Sorry Beliebers, no sightings in this flick.  But you should still see the movie.

I'm feeling a little dazed still, but my feeling after this weekend is that 23 is going to be a good year.  Emotional detox is going well and I could be ready to get back on the horse.  But greater than this is less than three, my mantra/amulet/lucky charm.  I am SO amazed and thankful and just completely blown away by all the wonderful people that make my life what it is, interesting and agonizing and rich and hilarious and drunk and soft, in the case of my brand-new birthday flannel sheets!  This sounds cheesy, but I really mean it.  Everyone was teasing me on Friday night (and every other day of my life) because I kept walking into rooms full of these people and just laughing.  And they would all stop and look at me, because I obviously had no idea what was going on in there before I stepped in.  But all I could say is, "I am so. happy."

The 22 Review brought to you today by my parents, my grandparents, and all my other ancestors, without whom I would not exist; also my homeboys and -girls in the Dirty, especially Mike, who planned everything; and just a general thanks to everyone who made 22 what it was.  I'm investing in 23.  You in?