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

eating the apple

This post is not so much about new adulthood or post-grad life, but it is about being human and negotiating independence in this particular time... The Age of the Third Screen? Is that a thing?

Anyway, I hope it's thought-provoking!

Many of you know that I don't buy or use Apple products, if ever I can help it. I had an iPod Mini, back when those were a thing... And while I remember that brief fling ending in frustration I can't remember why, exactly, at the age of 17 I was so disillusioned. I did still use iTunes (on my Dell laptop) until sometime in the middle of college, when I swore off the brand altogether - and I do remember what spurred me then.

It was the moment Windows Media Player stopped playing the preferred iTunes file type.

In that moment of acute first-world frustration, I realized that Apple was very intentionally selling not a series of products but a lifestyle - a type of person. And I didn't want to buy into something that by design excluded everyone who didn't buy a certain item (or, worse, couldn't afford it).

Of course, it is an absolutely brilliant business model. The dream for any brand. And these days, when the vast majority of people have a personal device, every tech brand is selling a personality, when you get down to it. There's the artsy designer type; the non-conformist; the geek; the loyalist. And Google - Big Brother - The Cloud - is my personal poison. They all have their drawbacks, and are good for different types of things and different uses.

It can also be a very social decision, which device and operating system you use. It is much more convenient to have the same family of devices as your family, the people in your inner circle. (My sister and I bump phones to share photos or contacts; J's family Facetimes. That's going to cause some issues in our marriage, I can already tell!

...kidding. Hopefully...)

But back to the issue. One of the most foolproof ways to get under my skin, to really raise my blood pressure, is to tell me that your iPhone is better than my Verizon Android phone, or any other device I could possibly choose. Drink the Kool-Aid! Go on! I won't mind! (I'm getting worked up just thinking about it.)

But, last fall, I took it too far. I was having brunch with a bunch of friends I hadn't seen in awhile (a few of them Apple users) and we got to talking about those group texts, which only work on certain devices (i.e. not flip phones and certain Android devices, like the one I had at the time). One of my friends joked to me, "OR you could just get an iPhone!" not knowing she had entered delicate territory. I made a sharp reply, basically insulting everyone at the table, which turned into a momentary awkward silence before someone brought up another topic.

Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. It's funny, isn't it, how in pure hatred of a thing we end up epitomizing the very object of our hatred? I always marvel how people fighting passionately for two opposing sides tend to sound so much the same. (More on that another time...)

Since then I've tried to tone it down. I still won't buy Apple products, but (aside from this post) I'm quieter about it. I'll do my best to steer the conversation somewhere else if you bring it up, and trust me: if you value my good humor, it's better not to touch it. To each our own.

This past weekend, I spent 24 hours with a couple of my college besties. I noticed, about half an hour after I got there, that their phones were just not a part of the gathering. They were not a presence.

And what a shock it was for me to realize just how different that is from my norm. It was hard for me not to think about my phone, or to move it with me from room to room. As the odd one out, I realized how dysfunctional it is for my phone to play such a dominant role in my life, in my relationships and my group gatherings.

Maybe what I should be worried about isn't what phone I'm using, but whether I'm using it at all.

posted from Bloggeroid

when life gets in the way

It's Wednesday, and I am just sitting down to post at the time I'm usually hitting "publish." As always, life is complicated, and it starts pouring when I am halfway home, and right when you are starting to get comfortable with the way things are something happens to shake it all up again and you have to start the "getting used to it" process all over again.

Date night is experiencing some turbulence lately. Not so much internally, and if it was I guess you wouldn't expect me to share it on the blog anyway, but thanks to factors outside of our control, J. and I are having to reevaluate.

The coffeeshop of lore, Bishop's, where we met, has been uprooted and is now a one-man baked goods supplier run out of a home kitchen. For awhile J. thought he was going to be without a job, but then the people who are taking over the space said they wanted to keep him on as part of the startup team for the new place. Which to me sounds like a great opportunity, but also comes with a heavy load in terms of time, energy, and expertise.

In my entrepreneurship classes in college, we always talked about what huge investment is involved in starting a new business. It's more than a full-time job, and obviously tends to require a lot of financial capital, and you also have to be extremely well-prepared with a business plan, some projection of how things are going to pan out (hopefully supported by at least a little market research), a certain degree of knowledge of the industry and good business practice in general.

But you don't really get it until you or your significant other is working 13- to 16-hour days, and when he's not actually at work he's tired and stressed out and distracted. You don't really get how much of a sacrifice it can be to follow your dreams (if opening a business is a dream for you, as it has been for me since I was 13 or 14) until you start to feel the repercussions on other areas of your life, outside of work.

And here's what really gets to me, as I'm recognizing this latest embodiment of the ripple effect.

I have a friend who recently got a 9-to-5 job just as her husband started working second shift. Exciting developments for both of them professionally, but rough because they are pretty recently married and now they rarely see each other. It turns into something similar to a long-distance relationship, where you only see each other on the weekends. And as many of us know, when you have so little time together it puts a heck of a lot of pressure on the time you do have to spend with each other.

I wonder how friends with new babies manage to maintain their jobs, their relationship, and make sure the baby gets fed, when, for example, they have to get a sitter to cover the undetermined amount of time between when mommy leaves for work and daddy gets home. When do they see each other?

And how did my parents, when I was three, four, five, six years old, take care of two to four children while my dad was in school and my mom worked second shift catering at Holiday Inn (which did not fulfill her), manage to feed themselves and their children, and still have time to even speak to each other, much less maintain an actual relationship and stay married for twenty-some years? I'm floored.

Because here I am, with no children, working 35 hours a week, falling out of touch with my boyfriend who I see every day, when he has an unusual work schedule for a finite (if undetermined) amount of time. We snap at each other. We talk past each other. We keep missing each other's meaning. Our communication -- the very foundation of our relationship -- is just generally suffering. I don't know how people do it when they have to go out of their way to see each other at all, when they have dependents, and when they are operating under these conditions for an indefinite amount of time.

When it comes down to it, J. and I are fine. Just today he had a couple of hours off from work, so when I got out we sat down for a pretty leisurely dinner at Hockessin's favorite little Mexican place, and got to actually look each other in the eye and talk about the things we haven't talked about.

So what I'm saying is, it's hard. It takes a daunting amount of energy and intention and commitment to even approach the topic of reconnecting, working out how to line everything back up, or find a new order that will work under different circumstances without burning everyone out. And every couple or family or friend group has their own version of this story: And Then Life Got In The Way.

Actually, I would bet that every couple, family, and friend group has a whole series of these stories. I'm sure I'll be writing and rewriting mine until the end of time.


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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

30 weird things we never would have thought to prepare for before "growing up"

This week's lunch break phone date covered a lot of really important topics, starting out about as sad-serious as you can get and ending on a much more lighthearted note. Still, though, the things we have to talk about are big. Important. Of consequence.

I want to take a moment (before I dive into topics I am actually equipped to tackle) to pay homage -- one of the sad starting topics for those Oles who read the blog. First, I must make tribute to Professor Jim Farrell, who I just learned passed away almost a month ago. This man made a huge impact on the St. Olaf community at large, and more specifically on my immediate circles, of which most members at least dabbled in environmental studies, campus ecology, the impact we make on our surroundings. To a man who knew the great extent of what that means: cheers.

You may also know that Pastor Jennifer Koenig has resigned since we left Olaf, due to illness. I must also pay tribute to her, the woman who taught so many of us how to communicate, how to smile, how to find peace. This week has brought some heartbreaking updates on her status, posted on CaringBridge. This is an uncomfortable thing to mourn at this stage, and yet we are in mourning. Please keep her and her family and the huge number of her supporters in your hearts in the coming weeks and months.

Now, I realize, this post can't be lighthearted in any universe. But I must take this, as I said, to a dimension where I can process it.

One of the amazing things about both of these people is how wide are the ripples of this news. Both of them taught my peers and me far more than could ever be encapsulated in a textbook or thesis paper. Or in two years of blogs. The things they have left us with clarified who we are and how we understand our lives, and continue to emerge to this day as we work through things like relationships and grief on the phone more than two years after our last class, our last coffee bought with FlexDollars in the Cage during senior week.

After Monday's phone conversation, which finished with a bittersweet acknowledgement of "the weird shit we have had to deal with since graduating," I read an article on BuzzFeed called "12 Things Our Parents Forgot To Teach Us."

(Since I am in the social media marketing field, I can't gloss over this prime example of native advertising: posts with some degree of actual substance, designed and paid for to promote a company or service. The topic of a future post, I'm sure... But back to the meat of the issue.)

My parents luckily at least mentioned once or twice that credit cards are not free money (number one), and that lending money to people must be done with extreme caution, if ever (number four), and they've definitely given me a crash course or 11 about how to read a paper map (number eight). But even if they did give me lessons in some of the others I still have stumbled over them once or twice. For example:

5. You never really stop feeling like a kid.
7. How to get along with your roommates.
9. How you feel after too much coffee.
10. How to deal with your first heartbreak.

And to be fair, a lot of this stuff would be pretty dang hard if not impossible to teach. I'm not sure whether the history of anthropological theory and the forced downtime and the infamous Project Without Parameters were intentional cover-ups for daily life lessons, but some of them sure served that purpose in the long run.

So, without further ado, a partial list of Weird Shit We Would Never Have Thought To Prepare For, But Kinda Wish We Would Have Known About In Advance. (Also known as, A Preview Of What Life Will Be Like From Here On Out.)

Disclaimer: Some of these are drawn from personal experience, and some of them are borrowed from undisclosed sources. You know who you are.

1. That we have food allergies, and spent all of college feeling really gross all the time and not knowing why.
2. Along similar lines, how to cook (and drink) gluten-/lactose-/meat-free...
3. Speaking of drinking, that we get more hungover, even if we drink less, higher-quality booze.
4. In other news, how to drink with bosses and coworkers without accidentally saying anything you shouldn't. Plus, what if everyone else is just hammered?
5. Also, how do you grocery shop in general?
6. What it's like really not having any money, but also not having a cafeteria that we, our parents, our grandparents, and/or our student loans already paid for.
7. How great it is to live somewhere that has laundry included.
8. How to meet our significant others' parents.
9. That we might want to move in with somebody before we marry them, and
10. How to talk to our parents about it, or
11. How to pretend like we are not living together so our parents or other important institutions don't find out about it.
12. How to work a job that didn't exist when we went to college, or even when we graduated college, or even when we got called in for the interview.
13. How to find something new to do if what we thought we wanted to do as a career turned out not to be the right thing.
14. How to leave a job properly. Is that a thing?
15. Deciding whether to sign our souls away to make monthly car payments on a new(er) car, or whether we would rather figure out how to get our old car into the shop every other month to get repairs done on it and parts replaced, and then how to get to work after that, and how to pay for it.
16. Or, whether it's worth it to live and work where you don't need a car. Really, there aren't that many options!
17. Facebook friends who get married and then change their names, and you have to look through half their pictures to figure out who they are and how you know them.
18. And then when your news feed is suddenly full of babies. Babies everywhere. Where did they all come from?! No, wait... I don't actually want to know.
19. Realizing that every conversation and relationship we have is a cross-cultural one and that you can never assume anybody is on the same page as you.
20. How to handle getting mugged, or robbed.
21. Is it ok to move away to get over somebody?
22. Or, if you move away for any reason, how do you meet new people you might like to spend time with? How do you meet anybody?
23. Also, how do you make friends in a new place if you know that you, or they, are going to be leaving after their gig is up?
24. How to get up and go to work when we really just don't feel like it.
25. How to grieve when life goes on and nobody around you knows about it.
26. How to wear black, brown, navy, taupe, or anything conservative without getting super bored.
27. That people make up responses and solutions to a lot of questions they don't know how to answer.
28. How to reconcile spiritual needs and personal faith, disillusionment with organized religion, and family expectations.
29. How to go on a cheap date without feeling cheap, or, if it is a first date, without making a big deal about it so the other person doesn't think you're high-strung.

And finally, number 30:
How to do all this stuff when your closest friends, the ones who know what you're dealing with and how you deal with things... When those people are who-knows-where, but they're definitely not up the hall, they may be in the same city if we're lucky but sometimes aren't even reachable by phone?

This is the really tough part. I have been fortunate to know that I am not alone in dealing with super weird stuff, and fortunate to be able to share it with people close to me and also with people who are really far away. (I must admit, I love Facebook and smartphones and text messaging for this reason...even though they are apparently causing the breakdown of our society.)

And I have been incredibly blessed to share it with all of you. Read on, dear friends. Live on!


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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

consequences

Good Thing #4 on Sunday was J.K. Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy. Since Sunday I have finished this book, and I have to update my recommendation.

 

I still say the book was excellent. J.K. Rowling has always had a sixth sense for details, which is largely what made the Harry Potter series so compelling, in characters, plot, and setting. In this latest book, the details did most to build characters and their relationships with each other.

She writes people so well. She writes teenagers to a T, which I think is hard to do without cheapening them as human beings and as characters, and she gets into the inner workings of adult minds and motivations as well. And, I think most brilliantly, she packages up so perfectly the complexity of everyone's emotions and motivations and the way they all tangle together to create situations, in all their awkward, dream-like glory.

All of this truth gets a little heavy and rough at times throughout the book, but right at the end, between page three-hundred-and-whatever and the end of the book, between now and Sunday, she just clobbers the readers with sad. I had heard when I first started reading that the book was depressing, and I didn't really believe it, and I still wouldn't personally call it depressing... But I must mention this disclaimer, that the book is really dramatically sad. And also that I loved it anyway. It made me think, but not too hard.

On Monday of this week I went out for dinner with my parents, and we talked about relationships. There has been a lot of relationship talk lately: how love distorts our decisions, and how our responses elicit certain responses from other people, and other things that would take days to relay to you. I will mention briefly that, on Monday night, the main agenda item was Jason moving in with me.

Now, despite the fact that I have always been fairly independent, and that I definitely am developing my own life now, and that I truly believe that my parents would accept me and love me no matter what... This is a scary conversation to have. It's also one I want to have with them, because they are pretty smart and have a lot of life experiences and, as much as I might not like to admit sometimes, they do know me extraordinarily well.

I won't go into a lot of detail, but the sum of the conversation was something along these lines: "Your actions have consequences, and you have to live with them one way or another, and we don't want anybody to get hurt."

Pretty amazing. Did I mention my parents are really smart and really cool?

Anyway, this isn't really anything new to me, since that has been, more or less, the gist of every "tough" conversation I've had with my parents ever (and a lot of the less tough ones too). Your actions have consequences. This is a fact I am all too familiar with.

Among the other things I've learned in my relatively few years: I can know things, and I can be 110% prepared, and I can have thought out the possible consequences of my every action hundreds of times (paying more attention to the details than J.K. Rowling herself)... And I can still be surprised, caught off guard, thrown for a loop, mentally and emotionally destroyed by an outcome to a situation. The degree of destruction caused by life's little curveballs has tended to decrease over time, because I learn from my mistakes and I learn how resilient I am and that I can recover from most everything that comes my way on a regular basis. (Knock on wood...)

All that being said, I can't go around letting the Fear of the Unknown keep me from doing things... So I go on. Sometimes recklessly, but mostly with a deeply-instilled awareness of what will happen if I...

A conversation with a friend after last week's post reminded me how big the decision-making topic actually is, and how relatively little of it I covered in the post. I think choosing and deciding is a particularly large and poignant topic for those of us who are just out of college, 1 year, 2 years out. And, I'm sure, it is monumental also for our parents, recent empty-nesters who are faced suddenly with a forced opportunity to rediscover themselves.

At this point our first jobs and appointments and living arrangements are running out or perhaps wearing thin, or we are suddenly presented with new jobs or positions or appointments. (Sidenote: look for a guest post soon about the year of service. The ultimate bookended post-grad arrangement.) We may be starting or finishing another round of school. Our relationships are changing. (How many of my friends are married or engaged or pregnant or now posting pictures of their babies all over the social networks -- I am too young for this, I insist!) Or we are moving in, or moving out (in with our significant others, out from our parents' houses).

And I will speak for myself and say that, to me, as I near the 2-year mark at my first "real" position, the possibilities loom with even more intimidating shadows labeled, "The Rest of Your Life." And all my decisions and their consequences bear labels and disclaimers warning me that this next thing, or, in some cases, this now thing, could be forever.

That's huge. It's like how we, as 17-year-olds, chose colleges that in many ways shaped our destinies and our identities. At 23, 24, we are trying to project who we are now onto who we want to be, and who it looks like we are turning out to be, and do they line up? Are we compatible with our dreams?

I do still believe in dreams, even though I see mine now as though through a fishtank, or in a funhouse mirror. I will answer my own question: I am 23. I have no idea. I don't know what I will be dealt in the next few months and years, and I have at best a rough sketch of the cards I will deal myself. I'm just trying to be straight-up with myself and the the people around me, and put out good into the world, and be smart without committing hubris, and believe that I will handle my choices and their consequences with grace and wisdom.

And if I mess up, I'll deal with that too.

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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

All Good Things Reprise: Episode 14

It's Sunday afternoon again! I don't know how it is where you are, but here in Wilmington it is HOT. Humid. Even the breeze is sticky.

If you ask me, these are perfect conditions for feel-good tunes and All Good Things! Enjoy the list this week, and stay cool!



1. A submission from a reader: Pens! But not any pen. Specifically, the Zebra F-301. This 99-cent gem is a staple in my small world: all my flight instructors had them and once we (the students) discovered them, we were hooked. I know my flying friends back East have them still and when we sign the checks for lunch at the diner, it is a little reminder that represents how far we've come as pilots.

Protip: check out the F-701 if you've got the cash, about $5, to spend on a super-elite writing utensil. Though you might like the new "Flight" models better. And they're not related to flying, as you'd think. I know too much about pens for a normal person.

2. The Baltimore Aquarium . My roommate's mom got a few free tickets through work, so my roomie brought me and two of her high school friends to spend a hot, hot day looking at fish in a dark, air conditioned building. Great way to spend a summer Saturday also because I am a huge nerd and I love learning new things about the world. Plus, water is so calming to me.

3. Speaking of water, I am obsessed with going to the pool at the Y. Unfortunately it is usually swarmed by people... Except before 10:00 in the morning, which makes swimming in the morning a great way to start a day!

4. Happy hour. I've finished off the past couple of weeks by hitting happy hour with coworkers and friends and I totally understand how it got the name. Drink specials are really great ($2 rail drinks and domestic beers at a place two minutes up the road from work, for example), but what really makes it happy is getting to talk and spend time with really great people.

5. Bachelorette parties! I had 2 yesterday: 1 for my cousin and 1 for a friend. My cousin's was crazy and loud while my friend's was quiet and low-key. It was great to simultaneously experience both. Now I know what I want for mine!

6. Date night! Luke and I went out for dinner on Friday. Sometimes he'll surprise me and randomly make reservations. We get semi-dressed up and it's so much fun! We went to Ciao Bella, and I love it more and more every time we eat there.

7. The Edina Art Fair was this weekend. It clogs up neighborhood traffic and annoys us, but the fair is so fun! Lots of fun pieces to look at and food to try.

8. Banana Chocolate Chip Kashi granola bars. I have one before I work out and it's the delicious boost of energy I need!

9. Minute-to-win-it games. We played some at my friend's bachelorette party and had the best time! It's funny how competitive people get over small things like keeping a feather in the air by blowing on it :)

10. Porch furniture. Date night this week for J. and I was burritos and mojitos on the porch, which was so relaxing. Since the weather warmed up, all my neighbors spend their evenings and weekends sitting on their porches, so I've gotten the chance to say hi to some of them and exchange pleasantries. It makes me feel part of the community.


If you read the blog often, or even just All Good Things every Sunday... Or if you used to listen to the radio version of this feature, you are probably not shocked to note the common thread of community and good people that makes this list pretty much every week. I wanted to point it out, though, because our good relationships and the good people in our lives should never be taken for granted. If the feature was only "One Good Thing," I think it's a pretty safe bet what that thing would be.

Don't forget to tell someone you love them this week! Until next Sunday... Stay "Classie," friends and readers :)

you are starred

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). The wind is invisible, but its strength changes the landscape. You love with a power that is stronger than the wind, and the force of your feelings will move people.

I can be pretty thorny, tough to pin down. If you know me well, we have probably had some sort of battle sparked somehow by my seeming nonchalance about our relationship and its sustainability. You have probably stood by, biting your lip as you watch what is most certainly my back retreating from you forever. I don't consider myself an easy person to stay friends with; historically it has been like pulling teeth to get me to schedule a phone date or write a letter.

This week, on Monday evening, I suddenly fell violently ill. I was curled into a ball for a lot of the evening in response to awful head and stomach pain; I was getting increasingly delirious as the night wore on; by 9:00 I couldn't stand up straight without throwing up.

And of course, there was my family standing by, watching for their opportunity to swoop in and take care of me. They took turns knocking on the bathroom door and asking if I needed anything, despite my inevitable snap in response; my dad gave me a head massage; my mom gave me a wet washcloth for my face; my doctor-grandfather suggested a series of painkillers and, when I refused each and every one of them, he suggested my family pray over me. Which they did, and which, despite my convinced heathenism, actually made me feel the tiniest bit better.

But despite all of this attention, I was convinced that I was too gross and mean for anyone to actually want me around, and refused many offers to drive me home until it became clear, an hour or so later, that I wasn't going anywhere if I didn't let someone else drive me there.

Like I said, I can be incredibly difficult.

I've written about this before. One of my most personally groundbreaking posts, written almost a year ago, was about freely giving and receiving open-handed love. Well worth a re-read.

I've made progress since this post, but I still don't really get it. I have felt pretty selfish at a lot of points throughout these years since college, where arguably everyone is a little selfish; but it gets thrown into a different light out here when I'm not surrounded by other hormonal college students absorbed in hacking out our own paths.

Let's be clear: I'm still working on hacking out my own path. I don't foresee that ever really changing, so I've struggled a little with how to balance taking care of the needs of others while keeping my own feet steady underneath me.

J., my parents, even my roommates, seem to be constantly giving me things, giving me time, gifts, cards, emotional support; they help me out of situations and are very often willing to work with me to find solutions to problems I'm having, or to work around my schedule. My friends from far away will schedule phone dates with me, send me letters and packages, text me to say something reminded them of me.

In comparison, I feel cold, uninvested, unhelpful.

I mentioned this to a couple of college friends at a bar in New York City a few months back, that I feel unbalanced in my social exchange with the people around me. First, I said, I hate how much I got hooked on social exchange in Sociological Theory sophomore year. Social exchange theory explains social interactions in terms of balancing equations, equal trades. It creates a system based on people in relationships owing each other.

Now that's cold.

My friends looked at me curiously, and after awhile K. spoke up. "That's interesting that you feel that way," she said, "because I've gotten a LOT of mail from you since moving to New York. You're always sending me new granola because I told you that one time it's my favorite comfort food, and I've seen you pretty often... And you just told me I'm starred on your Facebook!"

Indeed I had. In fact both of these friends are starred as "close friends" on my Facebook page, which means I get a notification whenever they do just about anything on Facebook. It sounds a little creepy, but fortunately both of them were flattered to find this out. Even if I don't comment or like everything they post, I see everything. Just the fact that I've opted in to staying up to date on their lives, they said, shows that I care about them.

Which is true. I think about the people that have been a part of my life, and a part of who I am, every single day. I miss you guys. I can't turn off my radar for reminders of the people I love, even if I wanted to. And you can bet that these reminders are constant. It's just that I am forward-facing to a fault, and I'm fidgety and I get anxious if I ever start to feel stuck in place, in time.

This, in a nutshell, is why I identify so strongly and stubbornly as a Sagittarian: I am intense, restless, passionate. The horoscope I started this post with (from Friday) gave me the chills, because I know how true it is. Some time back it occurred to me, and I completely latched onto the idea, that I love fiercely. I don't always play nice and I don't sit still for very long (literally and figuratively), but I stick to things, and even more so things stick to me. Once you have me hooked you have your little lovely barbs in my heart for a long time. You're starred in my eyes.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). The wind is invisible, but its strength changes the landscape. You love with a power that is stronger than the wind, and the force of your feelings will move people.

children of children: having parents with aging parents

I found out this weekend that there is a new genre in fiction: New Adult, which falls "after" YA in the literature spectrum but "before" adult fiction. To be honest, I didn't really know that YA had an official age bracket; in my mind YA meant "interesting" and adult fiction was code for "slow paced and trying too hard to be mature." (Forgive my sweeping generalizations. When it comes down to it I divide by books I like and dislike, and the genre is really a nonissue.) It turns out, though, that Young Adult fiction officially targets high school-aged teens, and it's actually required that the protagonist is between 13 and 17 years of age. New Adult fiction, though, is for young adults in the 18-21 age bracket.

I feel sort of left out by this arbitrary distinction, because I would consider myself a young adult; a new adult, if you insist; not quite a full-blown adult, not yet. Not because my responsibilities and concerns aren't full-blown adult concerns (i.e. rent, food, work, paying my bills, healthcare), but because I think there is a distinct set of issues that adults in my stage of life face. Some of these are generational, and some of them just affect twenty-somethings -- which I suppose could be an age category, but it has always sounded frivolous to me. I guess no label for my peers and I would satisfy me; we all know of my hearty distaste for limiting categories.

Besides, to be fair, even within my immediate friend group there exists a mindblowingly broad spectrum of issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Some of my friends are married and some are planning weddings; some of them are having babies and some of them have a kid or two already. Some of us are still on the fence about the whole dating thing to begin with. Some of us are focused on our careers, and some still funneling our energy into education, and some into service. Some of us are just trying to keep our heads above water.

Actually, that last point seems like the most widely applicable shared issue of my personal peer group. We're all just trying to figure out what it means to get by, and then how exactly to achieve that.

Note: Upon further research -- Wikipedia says new-adult fiction covers the "coming-of-age that also happens in a young person's twenties." Target market: 18-30. I'm more accepting of this category now, but still... 18 was a few years ago and I hardly even recognize it anymore.

So this is my guiding star for the blog and how I choose the baby steps I blog about: issues we face as twenty-somethings, and how we navigate them. Many of these issues are very personal, and I struggle to balance the very real considerations of privacy and particularly the privacy of others with my heartfelt belief that secretism and shame and reluctance to talk about the tough stuff is a huge driving problem in our society -- a root cause of mental illness, domestic and foreign political issues, crumbling personal relationships, institutionalized inequalities, and just general personal and societal instability. So, even though my parents and grandparents are some of my most dedicated blog followers, I try to be real on here about things I'm dealing with, whether I worry about what they might be thinking or not.

Speaking of grandparents, and age categorizations, I have been thinking a lot lately about a strange situation that I feel gets very little airtime. Having aging parents is something that people write articles and even books about. It's a gigantic gold mine for advertisers and marketers, and something a lot of people can relate to -- particularly because it's the Baby Boomers who make up The Aging these days.

But what's strange for me right now is having parents with aging parents. The combination of negotiating and navigating adulthood for myself while watching my parents and my friends' parents negotiating and navigating the aging of their parents makes for some pretty serious musing on my part.

One thing we commonly accept as difficult about thinking about old age is that it forces us to face our mortality. I know for a fact that my grandparents (and adopted grandparents, C&S) think about this pretty regularly. I know some of them are more graceful about coping with this uncomfortable truth. It's uncomfortable for our parents, too, when they still have jobs and routines and children who depend on them for food and shelter and education, to think about preparing for the inevitable end, and what happens after. And to think about this for their own parents, who may not still provide a basic livelihood for them, but who did for a good and important chunk of their lives, and who continue to be emotionally intrinsic throughout their lives. And, obviously, there is love that makes things very complicated.

So, now, our parents are having to face a series of odd decisions, like whether their parents are still capable of living on their own safely and comfortably; and if not, then where do they go? Into a "home"? Into our parents' homes? And how do we pay for all that? What about medical care? (We all know how I feel about the healthcare system in the first place; and when making medical decisions for someone else these things get even more complicated, particularly when the person you're making decisions for has always been considered perfectly capable of making those decisions for him- or herself...) And then there is the whole issue of estate, and what the house and unused furniture and other possessions should be used for, or if they should be sold; and tied up in that is what has been promised to the children, and how that will be divvied up.

And underlying all these questions and the others I have not addressed are the lifelong familial tensions and the roles everyone has always played in the family dynamic; plus the questions of personhood which is what makes most issues an issue in the first place: at what point can a person make a decision that directly affects the life of another person? At what point are we incapacitated to the point of losing a say in our own affairs? And then, who is qualified to make those decisions, and who has the final say? Especially, in this case, when there are multiple siblings. Imagine how the situation is magnified each time you add another voice and another family member, with their own worries and values, into the mix.

And what about if they are grieving, too? What if they are struggling to retain control of their own lives and their own selves and feeling it slowly slipping from their grip? They feel less sharp mentally and physically than they used to; they are forced to give up things they are passionate about and have given their lives meaning; they have already attended the funerals of siblings and friends and other contemporaries; they are waiting for dementia to set in, or insomnia, or incontinence -- for the dreaded ills and "second childhood," as we've heard it called.

So, these are the conversations happening among our parents' generation. How does this affect us?

It has been strange watching my parents and grandparents facing old age. Perhaps because of my relative lack of life experience and logistical and emotional involvement in the situation, the answers seem clear to me. I have read Tuesdays With Morrie and the Living Will and I have thought about these things; I have thought about what would happen if (knock on wood) something happened to my parents, what decisions and responsibilities I would be left with. I know my parents pretty well and I can guess what they would say to someone else faced with a similar situation. But I also understand how critical are the nuances that make this situation different from that; I understand, on a removed intellectual level, how emotionally complex these situations are. I know how fuzzy and heavy my mind feels when I am grieving -- or even just stressed.

So I am anticipating making these or similar decisions for my parents, imagining how my siblings and I will handle things, hoping fervently that the bonds I think so strongly bond us together will hold true when we are called upon to act. I'm picking out the traits my parents share with their parents, in what ways they will be similar and different... And in what ways I am similar and different from them. How I say I would handle a question they are faced with, but how that might not be how I would realistically handle it or how I will handle it when the question arises in front of me. What is my ideal model for dealing with an aging parent, and what factors will complicate that by the time it comes up for me. How can we kick the unhealthy patterns and replace them with ones that will work better? And how will I deal with the fact that, despite all my awareness and thought and premeditation, my decades of analysis can only do me so much good when it comes down to crunch time?

I know I'm being vague, but I also know that my family is not the only family looking at this situation. I know some of my friends are watching their own parents' families navigating this strange geriatric territory, and some of my friends are even thinking about navigating it themselves. I know it makes me feel old and very young at the same time, but the important thing is that it makes me think about the big picture of my own life and my life in community and the other lives in my communities. This is something, I believe, that makes us human and it's important that we not brush over it or try to avoid it. I'm taking notes. We'll see if they come in handy when my time comes.

to take time for tea (for mutti)

There is a long list of things I would like to write about. I still owe you guys a post about pumpkin beer (we're looking at next fall, at this rate, since pumpkin beer is pretty much irrelevant now); also, having parents with aging parents; how tough it is to start something new without solid leadership; and going out to dinner with people who can't split a check. All issues conscientious recent college graduates like myself probably think about... But let's be real: the latest baby steps have been pretty heavy. They're starting to leave dinosaur footprints in my psyche.

If you read Sunday's All Good Things, you'll know that I was in Baltimore over the weekend, and that I went to an Indian buffet for lunch on Sunday (#5 on the list). While I thoroughly enjoyed the meal, the part I was most excited about was the "Nepali tea" (called chia if you find it in Nepal) in one of those big industrial plastic dispensers. Number 5 mostly made the list for my mom's benefit, and sure enough, I got a text message saying, "About the Nepali chia. I'm jealous!"

My mom just revamped her blog, which is now called, "Hot Tea at Dawn." This title was the agonized result of a series of conversations and thought processes, trying to capture a journey, a lifelong journey embodied by a hike, where you get up early-early and have a steaming cup of tea that will hold you over until midmorning, when you stop again for a meal, and then continue hiking for a few more hours until a midday rest, and on 'til the next camp at dusk. And that morning cup of tea is your greeting to the dawn, and the dawn's to you, the anticipation of an entire twelve hours somehow encapsulated by the wisps of steam curling out of the cup and warming your hands and your face and your throat all at once.

You might recall that I have started a new project of being early to things: early to work, early to the gym, early to bed. Since my latest conversation with my mom about the blog, almost two weeks ago, I've been making even more of a conscious effort to actually enjoy a cup of tea every morning. This involves setting my alarm a little earlier and getting out of bed faster; it means not dawdling in front of the mirror or in front of my closet so I can dawdle over the kitchen table, the tea, and NPR instead. It means spending an extra dollar on a box of tea I will actually enjoy, and not getting distracted and leaving the tea so long it starts to get cold, or it steeps too long and gets too strong.

So back to Kumari (the Indian buffet -- highly recommended). The four of us made a pass at the buffet, but at the end we spent a long time sitting at the table, talking and eating kheer rice pudding and drinking tea. I could hardly bring myself to set the cup down, I was so excited. I remembered, when I didn't have to make the tea, boil the water with the spices and add the sugar and boil and add the milk and boil and then let the tea steep and then strain it and then drink it, how calming and energizing it is at the same time. I need this. I think I actually said it out loud. I need to write a blog about this.

A couple of friends of mine are currently traveling in the U.K., and the photo documentation of their trips as it appears on my Facebook and Instagram news feeds throughout the day is pretty stellar. There was a picture in a London cafe, and better yet, a picture of "proper high tea." I am really jealous of this tea tradition. It's like the recently abolished siesta (institutionalized "naptime"/rest hour) in many Latin American countries. At boarding school in India, we had a 15-minute tea break every morning between our classes, and lunch halfway through the day, and then tea after school.

But here? We just snack at our desks, and take working lunches.

This morning I finished the snacks I had stashed in my desk drawer, fortunately, because now I will not replace them and I will stop snacking compulsively at work. So, since I was still feeling fidgety and had already chewed a quarter of a pack of gum, I drank two or three extra cups of tea throughout the day. 

It gets me up from my desk, first of all, it's a low-sugar snack (unless I load it with honey, which I have mostly stopped doing since I was thoroughly ridiculed by my mom and Alex at the Whistling Kettle back in the day), and some types of tea supposedly have other health or mental benefits as well. There's the vanilla spice energy tea which allegedly energizes the body and focuses the mind; the rooibos chai which is revitalizing and stress-relieving; green tea has antioxidants; chamomile soothes (and knocks some people right out).

Last week we took a business trip and we stopped at Starbucks to recharge after our drive. I ordered a Refresh Mint tea and a banana, and in the car my boss turned around and said, "What is that smell?!" When I told him I was drinking mint tea, he said, "Oh, that is my favorite kind! I always get that." And I said I self-medicate with peppermint tea all the time. Tired? Have a peppermint tea. Feeling queasy? Peppermint. Too wired at bedtime? Headache? Cramps? Sore muscles? Thirsty? Peppermint, peppermint, peppermint!

So, tomorrow is Thursday, and every Thursday my mom comes over to my house after work and we drink tea and sit for an hour and a half and talk until I leave for Zumba and she catches a ride or catches the bus home. Tea has always been a common point for my mom and I, a conduit and an excuse for us to spend time together. If I got anything from her, it was to value slowing down for a minute, and to allow or sometimes force myself to do so. And if we get anything from tea, it's this.

As Lisa said at the buffet this weekend, you can't rush a cup of tea. You have to let it steep. You can't throw it back; you have to sip it, because it's hot. Sipping leads to savoring, and savoring leads to happiness. The formula is that simple.

I'm excited for summer to come, for the return of the sun, harbinger of sun tea! In gigantic pickle jars now catching the light with a color that can only come from the earth: hazel, honey-colored, rum-colored. Rich and smooth and warm -- the color of flavor, the color of time. The color of tea.

And now, it's time for dinner and for date night and for perhaps this day's final cup of tea, #5: Sleepytime.

mediation meditation

This post is about anger, and about positive communication. Just an FYI, because as I'm starting to write this I'm realizing it's taking me awhile to get the core topic.

I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few months, and after last week's apparently very controversial post I have been thinking even harder about it. After last week's post about my struggles with "feminism" as a falsely all-encompassing entity I am left feeling that I might not have the temperament to put myself out there on the internet or in any of those volatile public forums (like politics or activism, for example). Not when it comes to controversial topics, anyway. I don't have the temperament for arguments either, or even for particularly heated discussion.

Here's why: I am stubborn as all get-out, but I am easily persuaded to seriously consider and even adopt a contradicting viewpoint -- if it's presented properly. If it's not... I'm like a shark. Or a bee (my most feared adversary). Or a skunk, or a... platypus? What's the thing that rolls up into a ball if you poke it? An armadillo?

ANYWAY. What I am getting at is this: if I feel like I am being attacked, or if I feel that you are telling me the ground I'm standing on isn't sound, then I am very likely to either snap, or retreat into an icy silence. And I'm not the only one. But I do know certain people who like to argue, or be incendiary, or fight. With one exception I can think of, I don't like to be around those people.

When I was little, I used to fight with my brother and sisters just as often as the next kid. When a fight broke out, we were usually separated and not allowed to look at each other for a slow count of ten. We had to take a breath in between each number. And then we were forced to go back and face each other and work it out. We were not allowed to speak to each other until we had let the initial anger pass.

As I've gotten older and had more of my own experiences, the benefits (or perhaps the results) of this parenting technique become more and more clear. Thanks to a few encounters in which I didn't take ten deep breaths before speaking, I now remind myself sternly (with mixed success) never to have a conversation with anyone who is already yelling or angry; never rise to the occasion of false accusations or implications; always consider someone's motivations for saying what they say and respond to those, not to their actual words and phrasing.

Because if we are yelling or lashing out, we are not listening. We feel threatened. Our first instinct is self-defense, whether or not there is anything truly at stake. You can't have a conversation with someone who's not listening or receptive to what you're saying.

It seems like there has been a lot of arguing lately in the public sphere; and with good reason, because there are a lot of very important issues on the national table right now. But I don't think many of you would argue if I said that we're not really making much progress on any of them.

I was excited to hear on NPR this week Chris Satullo promoting the Bernard Wolfman Civil Discourse Project, where he will be helping "two top experts on health care have a lively but respectful conversation about where they disagree, and as importantly, where they agree about what's not working with the nation's health care system — and what we should do about that." If we could all sit down and start from our common ground, and then talk through our respective solutions, and listen carefully to our opponents' questions and challenges, then maybe one of us could propose a solution that covers more of the bases, and makes less of us feel personally attacked. But the first step is actually listening.

What if the national conversation on gun control turned into a conversation about controlling gun violence? That conversation could consist of all sides offering solutions to the problem we all agree needs a solution -- and the solution we eventually come up with would be that much stronger and more appealing. What if we could address all the issues on the table starting from the most basic, most common good and go from there? We'll start with things like breathing and eating, and when we come up against a conflicting interest we'll figure out a way to work it out so no one feels threatened.

The other day I was hanging out with J. and he got up to leave for work half an hour early. I asked what was wrong and he said, "Nothing, I'm just gonna get into work a little early today." And I said, "Well why don't you come sit with me for awhile first? You've got time. You seem like you're mad at me or something." So he came and cuddled up with me and said he was frustrated and told me why, and after a moment of silence he said, "Wow... It's amazing how much better it feels just talking about it." And then we got around to actually addressing the issue.

I know this is idealistic and seems impossible. But I'm working on doing this every day on a small scale, and it seems to be working. I'm looking at human motivations and the root causes of anger: shame, fear, pain. People do unbelievable things when we are in pain, and we are in pain a lot of the time. It is a painful world we live in. I'm working actively these days to address the root causes of anger and lashing out, to take ten deep breaths before I look someone in the eye again, to resist responding to or prodding a scared or hungry shark. And I've realized that half the time, when someone lashes out at me, it has so little to do with what I've actually done or said it's almost funny. My job then is not to respond in kind, and to carefully defuse the potential explosion.

I can't say that I've mastered this art or that I succeed even a majority of the time, but I'm really, really trying and I wish that we could have some constructive conversation on a grander, more global scale. I wish we could give each other the time of day and realize that our actions and attitudes have an effect on the other people around us -- and, in the meantime, remember that the people around us often forget that this is true. Don't take it personally. Take 10 deep breaths. Try to make magic.

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.

in relation to

So as you may have noticed I have hit another reluctant point on the writing cycle. This is mainly a direct result of the fact that I have hardly had time to breathe, let alone think, let alone sit down in front of the computer, in the past month or so. The cherry on top of this situation (perhaps not coincidentally) is that I also have about 1395756302 big things to think about in life at this moment. And no time, again, to think about them.

It all started with New Orleans. I mean, leading up to it I was totally swamped, I forget why, but I distinctly remember not packing until the evening before I left, because I just did not have time until then. I guess the weekend before that was the weekend Kristy and I went to the beach, and the weekend before that was Audrey's last weekend on the East Coast... So it makes sense. My week nights are all spoken for, consistently, filled with trips to the gym, to the gas station, to half-price nacho night on Main Street, to the couch to watch The Bachelorette (no longer! And happily ever after to Emily and one-F Jef!)

I was already starting to question the jam-packed-ness of my life before New Orleans. But then I experienced this amazing spiritual peace and fulfillment and inspiration on that trip, and returning home it was replaced by that ironic creeping anxiety of not being able to envision holding onto that peace upon returning to life as usual...

Service. That's something I didn't write about, that I wanted to write about after coming back from there. Service was a major element of the trip, with a full day set aside for service projects. Our service project? A historic walk to the New Orleans School of Cooking... to be served a traditional New Orleans meal.

Wait-- Our service project was to be served?

In the end, I felt we got far more out of the service day than most of the other groups, who spoke sometimes condescendingly about the "good work" they got to do "for the people of New Orleans." Maybe I just feel the need to justify how we spent that day, but to me it seemed they had completely missed the point. Service shouldn't be something we, as The Privileged, give to people who are "less well off" than we are; service should be a way of life, a social code, a way of conducting relationships. And it's not 100% selfless. How can we truly enjoy the food cooked for us if we eat it selflessly? How can we be sincerely, deeply grateful to the cooks if we have eaten too selflessly to enjoy, to taste what we are putting into our mouths? And how then can we hope to serve with any impact if we don't allow ourselves to know what being served feels like?

Honestly, I find it uncomfortable. And tapping into that discomfort, when I go to "pay it forward," is to me what makes service, on both the giving and receiving end, worth our while.

***

So this has been on my mind. Not that I had time to process it, seeing as I finished the week in a puddle, liquidized beneath the weight of too many things to do.

Kristy and Katy and I are looking at apartments, and hopefully moving into one by September 1st. We'll see what happens, as some really important things are thrown into cutting light. This brings into play finances; commitment; relationships; personality; taste; values. Some heavy shit.

More on that later. Right now I need to break down my weekend for you, so you can see how NUTS my life is. (Any tips on de-nutsing it, PLEASE let me know.)

This past weekend, I went to New York twice; slept in 2-3 hour chunks that did not total 8 hours in any 24-hour period; went to work on Saturday; and celebrated my sister's high school graduation. I know what you're thinking... There aren't enough hours in a weekend to fit all that stuff in.

Well, you're right. Fortunately I have the time turner.

Yeah, I don't really have that. But let's be real: What, out of those things, can I be expected to cut out? I went to New York on Friday with my family. And I had already committed to the work event, months earlier, not realizing it took place on a Saturday -- much less a particularly important Saturday for me to be out of town. It can be pretty critical to step up at work, to go above and beyond, especially for young professionals who are trying to establish themselves and show their commitment to a job and an organization. (The work-life line is a bit fuzzier, but I don't think I'm in any position right now to tackle that.)

But Saturday I went to New York to visit some old study abroad friends I haven't seen in seven years. It was a one-weekend deal. I pretty much had to go.

And it was so good to see them. It's strange. B's place, where we gathered, was a 5-story walk-up. Which I walked up, to discover B, Georgie the legendary Aussie in our group, and Gus, sitting on a terrace looking the same... But older.

We are adults now. We are doing adult things. Working. Going to med school. Buying houses. Looking for apartments. Traveling. Trying out things we could end up doing for the rest of our lives.

I laughed because all of Georgie's travel stories involved her either wingmanning some Swiss hostel-mate, or anti-wingmanning some Swiss hostel-mate. Gus is forging his way in a town void of denizens between the ages of 18 and 50, working in real estate, brewing beer at home, being responsible and eternally pleasant. Gus has always been nice to be around, at least that hasn't changed.

I was in awe of how closely B has stayed in touch with people in our class. She said, "I think I am better at long-distance relationships than in-person ones." And Georgie said, "I think I'm the opposite. I always say I'm like a bad cold. If I was friends with you, even just for a short amount of time, you're my friend for life. And I will most likely show up in your life 7 years down the line and say, what up!"

There are a lot of amazing people in my life, and I'm very, very lucky. I was so happy to touch base with these people, to connect. We are very different. I am very different. But there is something underneath that holds fast even after 7 years of falling out of orbit.

Speaking of amazing people in my life, I'm starting to dread the day, 3 or so weeks from now, when Thomas and Maria leave for Germany and St. Olaf, respectively. I think the family is starting to dread this day. Assuming my girls and me land an apartment, the house will be only half-full with my parents, Asha, and our Russian exchange student. Empty, in comparison to the usual household chaos.

Also amazing: my growing and morphing Delaware network. I just got back from our crew's biweekly half-price food Tuesday, and for the second or third week running we have a new person at the table! Scratch that -- tonight we had two! This is very exciting. And these people have been such a blessing and a windfall to me since November and counting.

It takes work, to maintain relationships after college, after we're not all housed within 10 minutes walking distance of each other anymore, or when my heart feels scattered across the nation. It takes work, and it takes patience, and there will be tears. But relationships, at least, are rarely not worth it.