more things to fall for, or why delaware might actually be kind of COOL

G-g-g-greetttings, readers, from the frigid state of Delaware! (...Whaaaat??)

Yeah. It's cold here. I was well aware of that from the moment I woke up, with my bedroom window wide open. (Typical.) I drove to the Y for my regular Monday morning swim, only to find the insulated winter pool closed for maintenance, and instead the outdoor pool open for business. It was supposed to be 81 degrees, and clouds of steam rising off the top supported that theory.

But when I jumped in after dancing across the icy concrete on my bare feet, the breath exploded from my lungs in classic gasp reflex form.

I'M IN DELAWARE, PEOPLE. COME ON NOW!

 All said and done, it was actually a refreshing way to start the week. Nobody could say I wasn't awake when I got to work today.

My roommates and I have been saying for at least a month now that we'll be around more, and have an easier time planning things, and maybe even SEE each other every now and then, now that summer's over.

So far this hasn't fleshed out. We literally have to clear our schedules for a simple hangout months in advance, and just so you all know if you want to get the three of us together in 2013 you'd better make the call now. Because right now we're scheduled through mid-December, and that's not counting Christmas. So good luck ever seeing us.

Here are some key points I'm looking forward to for the rest of the year:

• I've invited some of my besties from all over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to Wilmington for a birthday extravaganza mid-November. So far only my roomies and boyfriend (OK, and Mary and Lisa) have RSVP'd, so I'm a little worried about having space for everyone at the party... Ha. Ha.
• Then there's Thanksgiving and my actual birthday. This year, I plan to finish and ship the fruitcakes BEFORE the holiday season. Stay tuned for the second annual fruitcake saga.
• On the second Saturday in December, Old New Castle opens its historic doors to tourists. There are sales in the shops, tours of old Revolution-era mansions, toasty drinks and snacks, and festive music. You might recall the Spirit of Christmas as my first moment of endearment to this tiny old state.
• In that same post I mentioned the Santa Crawl, which I am DETERMINED TO DO this year. I swear I have been waiting since that moment to get in on the fun. This year, it's not on the same day as the Spirit of Christmas, but the week after.

Fortunately all of these things are scheduled to happen before the Apocalypse on December 21, so that's positive. Still debating if I should even bother to buy Christmas presents this year...

BUT. We all know I am not the kind to live in the future. Sort of. I refuse to put all my stock in the next two months, so instead I am predictably doing fun and interesting things left and right.

It turns out PR kicks into high gear in the fall and winter, so I'm suddenly throwing myself into my daily checklist, scraping away at it all day long, and never quite getting to the end of it. The best part of this is how many new things I'm learning about every day, from trendy high-end products to cultural rituals to economic and industry patterns and concerns.

After leaving work late almost every day, I go grocery shopping, to Zumba with my roommates, out to eat. On Wednesday Jason and I checked out Ernest & Scott Taproom on North Market Street. It's been on our radar for awhile, since they advertise in the same magazines that all our other favorite places advertise, and their selling point is a ridiculous number of delicious draft and craft beers.

We were not disappointed. Its burgers were rated #2 People's Choice in Wilmington, second to Union City Grille right around the corner from my house. I will say, Union City had some killer burgers, but Ernest & Scott's was unlike any burger either Jason or I had ever tasted before. We also tasted some pumpkin beers, and since I'm planning to write an entire post on pumpkin beers by the end of the season, I won't go into it, but I will say this: DO NOT miss a chance to taste Wolaver's Organic Pumpkin Ale. It's #1 on both of our lists so far this season.

While we were waiting for our food, and then while we played a half-hearted version of the debate drinking game (we basically just drank when anyone said "taxes"), the manager Elvis stopped by our table to talk about the business. It's new, refurbished from what used to be Public House, which I hear had a bit of a sleazy rep toward the end. Before that, it was Delaware Trust. The inside is super spacious and elegant, high-ceilinged, with beautiful antique detailing everywhere. It's named for Hemingway and Fitzgerald:

The contrast between Hemingway– the macho, gritty and somewhat disheveled character and Fitzgerald- the stylish refined aristocrat, parallel the available offerings at Ernest & Scott and aims to capture the spirit of both writers. 

Romantic indeed. Anyway, we promised we would recommend it, and I have. I do now, in fact, for great food, great beer, great ambiance, and the opportunity to support local business.

On Friday I got done with work and as I left had one of those terrifying driving moments where you realize you may have just missed a red light, or a stop sign, or one of those important things you should note while driving. So I convinced Jason to go out to Shellhammer's, which also had a delicious, if oversalted, burger. And, of course, good beer. Their Facebook page is a pretty fun one to follow. Not quite as clever as Dead Presidents', but they post tantalizing specials that make you want to go to Happy Hour every day. Yum.

We stopped at RedBox on the way out, and picked up What To Expect When You're Expecting. With an all-star cast, it looked decent. Substantial enough but mostly funny, a little romantic, but not mushy. When we put it in and started the previews, I got hooked on the preview for Friends With Kids, and decided I would FAR rather watch that, so we went on a Harold-and-Kumar adventure to every RedBox and Blockbuster Express and spin-off insta-dollar-DVD rental in the area.

An hour and a half later, we finally started Friends With Kids, which turned out to be one of those great, agonizing movies about two people who are obviously supposed to be together but everyone can see it except them, and they just keep missing each other. Cast includes some SNL staples (Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph) and the movie tackled the modern family/parenting issue with just the right amount of humor and reality.

And when it was over, we decided to watch the other one, which was considerably less good, with less developed characters and storyline and less substance. But funny nonetheless.

On Saturday night, the most thrilling part of my weekend, Jason borrowed a friend's season tickets to a Philadelphia Union game (soccer). I like soccer, the way the chants sound more European, the constant motion on the field, the flopping...

Plus, Union won.

This weekend also marked the first writers' meeting, the one I've been looking forward to since before I knew it existed, since I even thought about setting foot in this state. I met up with my mom there (at Panera) and got my first pumpkin spice latte of the season (smashed Dunkin Donuts' overly sweet pumpkin sludge into the ground with its goodness) and a french toast bagel. Yummm.

More to the point, we got to talk craft with more than just each other. We met some monster/comic/experimental writers, which was new for me, but well-timed for the Halloween season. I miss talking about writing for fun, and I think my mom misses it in general. She really does love to learn new things, and to write, and unfortunately she's been doing it in a vacuum for awhile now. I, on the other hand, get to talk about writing and to write every day at work. PR: Where writers go instead of journalism. I love my intellectual, grammar-freak, word-nerd work crowd. But it's good to talk about monster writing and graphic novels and where to start when writing fiction every now and then.

In college, the question is: "So what's your major?" In a group of writers, we ask, "So what do YOU write?" I say I blog, and that theoretically I write poetry although that's taken a backseat recently, and they say about what, and then I am inevitably surprised that some writers blog about things other than their own lives.

...What?!

By the way, stop by second set of baby steps, the Facebook page, and click "Like" to get an update every time I post. I waffled over posting other, related items, but I've decided to mostly keep that to a minimum. So blog only.

***

ALSO, check out our claim to fame! Last week's #WednesdayNightDateNight got us into Spark magazine, the "what's happening in Delaware for mostly young people" guide with infamously bad grammar (which I keep misspelling...) Our claim to fame:

good-lookin' couple

things to FALL for

Happy October, dear readers!

I have always said fall was my favorite season, and while I am becoming disillusioned by the fact that fall is also pretty nasty allergy season, and I'm appreciating summer more for being nice and warm, and the romance of winter (for a few weeks, anyway), and the relief of spring, I can't deny that fall still holds something special for me. In the fall everything seems sharper: the coolness of the air, the edgy yellow of the sunlight, the leaves on the trees...

I remember a conversation with my friend Elaine in college, about making the most of changing seasons. I would be willing to swear that every time winter approaches, for the rest of my life, I will think of Elaine because of this one moment. And for the life of me I couldn't tell you which year it was; it could have been freshman year or senior year. It really is just timeless.

It probably started with me saying something about how I don't really like snow, and that I can't help thinking in November how tired I'll be of winter by the time February rolls around. I remember feeling as though I was dancing on the edge of feeling differently about winter, though. When Elaine put words to the feeling it sounded so profound, the way truth sounds when someone says it right as you are coming to the same realization, but before you have thought to put words to it.

I think at that moment we made an unofficial vow to ourselves, with each other as witnesses, to henceforth make the most of every season.

And since, then, I have. First year half our dorm rallied to go sledding down Thorson Hill, on caf trays or sleds or tubes or cardboard boxes or whatever we could find. When my air mattress popped, we hauled it out there and stacked a 7-person pyramid on top of it and squeezed a little more life out of it. For example.

And this year I enjoyed my summer like I was raised in the Arctic Circle, even though I didn't have a summer vacation for the first time. (Last summer didn't count, because Sunny V had an expiration date.) And even though the summer went by so fast I hardly had a chance to see it, I'm actually really excited for fall.

I've been dancing around whether it's here or not, but this morning I hit the Y for my Monday morning swim and discovered that the outdoor pool is closed for the season. I could see the steam rising over the lane lines through the complex gates, and then headed down to the newly enclosed bubble pool, which still smelled like musty plastic and was far too warm for my taste.

Speaking of pools, I also helped my neighbor hang her inflatable pool up to dry yesterday afternoon. "We had fun splashing around this summer," she said, "but I think it's time to put it away." She seems really nice and I'm excited to get friendly with the neighbors: the younger women and their nontraditional families on either side of us; the older Italian ladies still in their family homes, who put out orange traffic cones to block off their parking spaces, much to my dismay; the young dad a few doors down who I've only nodded to when one or both of us was on our way to work or to work out.

Aside from the bittersweet end of pool season, fall also means more hours spent in the yard raking leaves or picking up chestnuts. My mom has been leaving chestnuts by the road in buckets, hoping neighbors will take them off her hands. She has been learning about them this year, though: about the blight that took down most of the chestnut trees in the region decades ago, about chestnut soup and the price per pound and how people swarm to parks on weekends to pick up chestnuts from underneath the trees.

I also learned, after seeing the strange cauliflower-y green balls scattered along my most traveled roads, that osage oranges grow around here. Last summer, Ann and I spent at least a month scouring grocery stores for them to ward off the spiders that bit Ann in her bed while she slept.

On Saturday my family went apple picking. I don't remember the last time we did this, but I can tell you I wasn't driving yet, and most of my middle school youth group was still intact (so I couldn't have been older than 15). My mom had been dropping not-so-subtle hints that she wanted to go to the orchard, so finally we took her for her birthday, and left with almost 100 pounds of apples that will become applesauce and baked apples and caramel apples (I hope) and school lunches. Jason's favorite part was the apple cider donuts. Yana enjoyed the great, colorful, American apples-and-pumpkins tradition and took plenty of photographs, and I couldn't help but notice that the place was swarming with adorable small children wearing fall-themed outfits and face paint.

Speaking of pumpkins, I was psyched last year to discover that Punkin Chunkin is a real thing -- not just what my roommates and I did in college when we needed stress relief and a break from studying. In fact, it's an international thing. AND, the annual world championship is held in Delaware! I would love to go this year, but if I end up being able to go to a very important wedding that weekend, I will put it on my bucket list for my future in this highly underrated state.

Also speaking of pumpkins, this year I am jumping into the delicious world of pumpkin beer. Last year I jumped on the bandwagon too late to really get any, so I want to urge you all earlier in the season to GET SOME! GET SOME NOW!

Yes, like all beers you will have to try several different kinds to find out what you like. Sam Adams does a pretty classic one; so does Blue Moon. Around here Dogfish Head Punkin Ale is the coveted brew, for obvious reasons; and there's Pumking and the Flying Dog one which I have yet to try. But so far? I'm all for Long Trail Brewing Co.'s Imperial Pumpkin Ale. It's heavier, darker, and sweeter without being sickly sweet. Rich and spicy. Mmmmm. I want some now!

Oh, and not a pumpkin ale but one of the best beers of my life: Iron Hill's Abbey Dubbel. Also of the dark, rich, fruity-spicy family, and so, so delicious. I am starting to think that fall beers are also my favorite. So long, summer!

So, the weather is cooling off drastically. The figs and peaches are gone from our backyard, although I noticed the patio scattered with dried-out peach pits. They're actually very pretty, but I haven't come up with anything to use them for yet. Suggestions?

I ended up on the patio yesterday because, since the fruit is gone and it is colder out, the bees and flies have also gone their merry ways, and I needed some sunshine, and I had a book to read: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins -- the second installment of the Hunger Games Trilogy. By now I have finished it, and put a hold on Mockingjay at my local library, and I have to say, I am not disappointed in the least. People have told me that the second and third books were disappointing after the original, but the book is fast-paced and daring and just the right amount of dark. It's well-written, too, with an intricate plot and brilliant setup. No shame: I definitely set it on the shelf with Harry Potter.

It's good to get reading again after four years of lit-heavy college and the refractory period during which I sometimes actually shuddered at the touch of a book. It's like being 10 again and spending my whole summer in hammocks and armchairs, oblivious to the real world happening around me. I'm glad not to have TV or internet or even a computer (although I might do more writing if I had one... theoretically) and I'm glad to have to find new things to do. Right now I'm blazing through easy, lively YA fiction, but for once I'm not opposed to more academic reading. I like reading articles and blurbs for more invested specimens (and I want to get my hands on JK Rowling's and Junot Diaz's new books!)

And I like listening to NPR. In fact, I'm addicted. I am like a werewolf hungry for knowledge. Or maybe what I like about NPR is that it's framed around stories, more developed than a news ticker or a 11:00 news sound bite. I'm hungry for stories. I learn about new books and music (like Ben Taylor, son of JT and Carly Simon), and about world politics, and the upcoming elections, and scientific discoveries, and even sports and the fact that this week is the 50th anniversary of James Bond hitting the big screen. It's rad.

This morning I was all over a story about the CD turning 30, maybe because I am one of the few people I know who still listens to CDs. In fact, I'm in the even smaller pool of people who still buys CDs. This is partly because I don't have a computer, but also because I am nostalgic and maybe a small amount of hipster.

The story was well-timed, 36 hours or so after I stocked up on discount CDs at Best Buy, and danced around the aisle with a guy looking for a Nas album. He doesn't trust digital music, because it's easy to lose. He likes having hard copies of things. So do I, after all the mp3s I've lost through various accidents.

As for me, I enjoyed making that random connection with a kindred spirit of sorts. I've done a lot of that lately: I met the digital mistruster, my next-door neighbor and her boyfriend, a lady at church who just retired from 18 years of being an executive chef. I asked her how she spends her time now and she said she volunteers, teaches kids how to cook, takes water aerobics classes at the Y. I want to end up like that. Never still. Having to carve out my free moments. Like my grandparents and adopted grandparents, who always say, "We'll slow down when we're old," and never seem to get there.

Life is far too full of things to fall for, too full to let them pass without a glance.

food and love

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

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

What I'm thinking about right now is LOVE.

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

Both great loves of my life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

xoxoxo

new territory, and oh, how familiar it is



Jason + Jerk Chicken Tacos = <3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, I can name four.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weirdly, my horoscope last Wednesday read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

parallelism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last September I was scared. Of almost everything.

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

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

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

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

15 minutes of moving

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

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

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

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

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

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

growing out (parental advisory)

PARENTAL ADVISORY: Mutti & Papa, I'm just warning you, you guys will probably find this very sad. New empty nesters, parents of college freshmen, and parents of any adolescents, teenagers, college students, and young adults will probably join in the cryfest. Like I said, I'm just warning you!

I.

Outgrowing

Remember when we were little, about 7 or 8, for example, and it seemed like we needed new clothes every week, because the dresses we'd been wearing suddenly exposed most of our skinny little thighs instead of ending below the knee? Remember how you had to wrestle the dresses away from us to "wash" them, and take them straight to the curb because they were so threadbare they were almost transparent, and anyway like I said they were suddenly 10 sizes too small? And you had to take them straight to the curb because if you didn't we would pull them out of the rag drawer and put them back on and get more grass stains on the grass stains?

(Totally made-up situation, of course...)

At some point you realize there are bigger clothes in the world that would fit us better, whether we like it or not.

Remember later on, when we were 11 or 13 or 15, and we started pretending to be asleep when you came to tuck us in at night, and learned how to roll our eyes, and stopped returning your hugs, and constantly schemed up ways to get out of your house?

I hope you didn't take it personally. At some point we realize the world is bigger than the world we have so far experienced, and we want to try it on and see how it fits -- whether you like it or not.

II.

Growing Up

I remember the moment my parents' faces and voices changed as it suddenly dawned on them that they had to pass on the baton and trust that they'd taught me well enough how to hold onto it.

I remember when I first pieced together the fact that my parents didn't have any grand secrets for navigating the world. Until that revelation, I was waiting for the ritual during which the key to adulthood would be bestowed upon me, complete with a detailed guidebook and map.

SPOILER ALERT: That ritual never happens (not yet, anyway). Or, it's at least not held in a dark room full of candles on the eve of your 17th birthday. Nobody is wearing cloaks (probably). There is no master of ceremonies who splashes holy wisdom water in your eyes, hangs the key on its thread around your neck, and sets the guidebook solemnly into your outstretched hands.

That ritual is much more drawn-out, over the course of years and maybe even decades, through every misstep and stumble and trial and error. It's drawn out over every new job and internship and tax return, over every courtship and breakup, every friendship and mentorship and through all our courses and classes and travels. Every now and then we dig up and dust off a key that looks promising, and we're cruising for awhile on our newfound adulthood, until we come up against another locked door and it starts all over again.

I can't say for sure, because I am by no means at the end of this epic quest, but I'd put money on the fact that there will always be another locked door ahead of us. No one hands us the key and the guidebook to adulthood because nobody has it.

Just a guess.

For now I'm jangling my ring of keys and just hoping I have one that works.

III.

Outgoing

It's been quite an exciting, fast summer in our house. Last night we had nine people at dinner; the night before you could see a different combination of 9 people around the fire pit in our backyard, and a bunch more people inside.

This morning I walked into the kitchen and Papa was washing dishes in there (atypical to run into him at 7:30am). He asked me how I was and I mumbled something amounting to "fine," and I after a minute I asked, "How are you doing?"

"Oh... I'm sad."

Which was, of course, heartbreaking.

More heartbreaking was the fact that I didn't even have to ask why, because the reason he was up so early was because he had just gotten back from dropping off Maria and Mutti in Philly, where they got on a plane to St. Olaf (via Minneapolis). Mutti will be gone until Sunday, but Maria won't be back until at least Thanksgiving, most likely.

Adding heartbreak to heartbreak, Thomas is leaving tomorrow to spend next semester in Berlin, and adding heartbreak to double heartbreak, the day after that is my official move-in day to my own place downtown.

I know both of my parents are in agony at the thought of three of their children going off into the world.

I know this because even I am a little sad about it, and also because they've both mentioned it to me on multiple occasions, together and separately.

What is even more sad to me is that they are being so supportive and excited for each one of us, and for Asha and Yana going to high school and playing volleyball and doing all their stuff, when they probably still see us as newborn babies that still fit in the crook of one arm, a la Father of the Bride.

And who would DREAM of letting newborn babies go out into the big scary world?! Or 7-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds, and 22-year-olds, for that matter...

IV.

Growing Out

The original title of this post was some variation on "parting of ways." But of course I have come up with a way to spin even goodbyes into an upward twist.

It's not really spin, though. We're not outgrowing home or the family. The cool thing about family (and homes, the way we tend to conceptualize them) is that it grows with us. Unlike clothes; unlike childhood, for the most part. We're expanding our worldviews, but we're not ever going to lose the seeds that planted us in the world, and the world in us, in the first place.

As I am about to learn from the peaches and figs in the new "backyard," things that are planted require special tending and care. And, if properly cared for, they drop juicy, delicious fruit right into our baskets. And every season they drop fruit, and every season their roots reach out a little farther underground. The roots might crowd each other out (or crowd out the crepe myrtle) or they might fill up the garden box and start breaking through the soil and the walls that hold it in.

But instead of leaving destruction in their wake, they bring fruit outside the walls of the box, and they expand the box itself to include parts of the world that were previously excluded.

Everything we are doing is just part of the equation, another leg of our quest for the Giant Ring of Grown-Up Keys, each one of which opens another door and expands the world again. Everything that happens creates new reality, and the infinite new possibilities that come with it. Everything we do and everywhere we go and everyone we meet becomes a part of us, and we grow out and our family grows out and we are all the richer for it.


***
Speaking of people we meet becoming a part of us, and of heartbreak, we also found out yesterday afternoon about the devastating loss of a family friend. Please direct your thoughts and prayers, dear readers, to this family, that they may find love, comfort, and support now, and strength through pain in the days ahead.

wednesday night date night

You all know how much I love my routines. How they have formed so many important friendships (French toast with Mary every Wednesday morning since freshman year; wings/nachos/half-price burgers with the That’s-What-She-Saiders). How they keep me sane (my obsession with having a regular workout schedule). How they give me something to look forward to. All of these play a pretty huge role in my life as far as keeping me on the other side of the fence from dysfunctional.

One of my routines, though, has been getting me a decent amount of good-natured ridicule lately: Wednesday night date night.

My friends have mostly gotten used to the fact that I am never available on Wednesday nights. In fact, now that they are starting to date more, too, Wednesday night has pretty much become date night for everyone. Which is, of course, hilarious, given the months they’ve spent saying, “Every week?! Come on now,” and the months I’ve laughed back, “Gotta keep the fire alive, man.”

It’s a little upsetting that I have to schedule a regular date night into my week if I ever want to see my man. (Thus my plea for help de-nutsing my life.) But I got the inspiration from my parents, who are still together, and more than that, are still happy together after 25+ years of marriage. They’ve tried to schedule a weekly date night every week for twenty-five years. Wrap your mind around that, y'all. Especially in between kids, school, church, multiple jobs, moving, grad school, no jobs, moving… If they didn’t schedule time to “be in love” one night of every week, they wouldn’t have time for it. That’s the sad part, if you ask me. But it’s also indispensable. That's the way our lives are these days, in this culture. We don't have time to be in love, or even to get a grasp on what that means in the first place.

To get a slightly different angle on the topic, let’s take a jaunt back to my sophomore year of college, when I was a free agent and just figuring out what that meant. I met a guy named Tim at a pillow fight planned by one of the theater groups on campus, of which he was a part. He was interesting, and he thought I was interesting, and we ran into each other at the silverware station in the caf a few weeks later and I don’t remember quite what happened, but we made plans to hang out.

Regardless of how it all went down, we got together a few times just to talk. New friends-like. And then it was the end of the semester and we decided to go to late night breakfast together (St. Olaf’s best finals week tradition, in my opinion) and in our Facebook thread he said, “It’s a date.” And I freaked.

“I guess I should clarify,” he wrote back. “I’m defining ‘date’ as two adults spending time explicitly with each other in order to determine whether they are romantically compatible or if they’re better off just being friends.”

That definition changed my life.

Before Tim, the moment I agreed to go on a date was the moment I signed your freedom and singlehood away forever. Now? It’s time I set aside to spend with a specific person and to focus on our relationship. I do usually see Jason more than just on Wednesdays, but that’s the night we always know for sure we’re going to spend with just us. That consistency is super important. Especially since quality time is my top love language. You can tell I like you if I want to spend time with you. Pretty simple.

(Incidentally, it just occurred to me that my sister tells me she cares about me by sending me photo messages of things I said I wanted to buy, and telling me how much they cost in different stores or states. She also gives me hugs and says cute things, but I like figuring out the subtle ways we say that stuff to each other. That's love iRL.) (...in Real Life.)

On top of being a check-in point and a time to keep the fire burning, Wednesday night date night also forces us to come up with new and interesting things to do, to keep from getting complacent. This summer our Wednesday dates have got me to see The Italian Job and the Italian Festival, both of which I liked a lot; we’ve gone swimming; we’ve gone for sushi and beer and fro-yo; we’ve hit the mall and HIMYM; we saw Avengers, Rock of Ages, Wanderlust, and The Hunger Games; we went to the Delaware Shakespeare Festival to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he bought me my first ever Philly cheesesteak at Tony Luke's; and last night, we went to World Café Live at the Queen for their Grilled Cheese & Craft Beer Night. (The winning round, in my opinion was the Brooklyn Blast IPA and a swiss cheese with house-made duck pastrami on rye bread. A close second grilled cheese was the manchego with jerk chicken on caramelized plantain bread, and the second place beer was Victory Yakima Glory. Although now I'm second-guessing myself. Everything was SO, so good.)

Lots of delicious, hilarious, active, important, interesting things that we do together, sharing our old interests and stumbling upon new ones. I would like to be able to use any and all of those adjectives to describe my relationship overall, as well as the individual dates.

To top it all off, we were walking off the four to-die-for grilled cheeses and the peach cake and all the mind-blowing beers (I won’t tell you how many there were) up and down Market Street when a guy approaching us called out, “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see a cute couple walking out here.”

Keepin’ the fire alive, man.

weekender

OK, so you may have picked up on the fact that Delaware is growing on me. Despite my weird welcome (see August 24 to about September 24, 2011) to the state, there are actually quite a few reasons to like this place. Here's one: 

interactive version here

While Delaware itself doesn't have a whole lot going on as far as fun things to do, one of its major perks is its central location and general proximity to almost every world-famous city on the East Coast (New York, Philly, DC, Boston), not to mention big-name amusement parks like Hershey and Busch Gardens, and a lot of pretty critical American history. A year ago, Ann and I left left Sunny V around 11:00am, and six hours later we were still in Wisconsin. Now, I would have to very carefully plot out my route (in a general northwest direction) to stay in the same state for 6 hours. (That would be Pennsylvania, in case you were wondering.) In any other direction, I would almost definitely hit at least 2 non-Delaware states in 6 hours, if not more. When I went to Boston, my wheels touched five different states in six hours. Toto, we're not in Kansas/Nebraska/Wisconsin anymore!

Anyway, if you've been following the blog, you know the stories behind most of those little blue pins. Two of them, however, are new as of the last two weeks.

Last weekend Jason and I took some much-needed time off (what even is that?!) in Bethany Beach. Actually, this brings me to a misspeak. Delaware is famous for a few things: Delaware Park, the outlets at Rehoboth and tax-free shopping, Dogfish Head (still on my list, still untapped) (ha ha, untapped, get it?), and the beaches.

So we went to Bethany Beach, and it was FANtastic. We stayed at this adorable little boutique motel I found on TripAdvisor (a habit from my Casa Foch days). I think the guy in the office was a Midwesterner, but I never got a chance to ask him. Wherever he's from, he was very pleasant and welcomed us with cold bottles of water and some great recommendations -- notably, the Cottage Cafe, where we housed some delicious flounder and rockfish dishes with fresh asparagus, plus their special drink, a really beachy, pink, frozen concoction involving peach liqueur and champagne. AND, best of all, the most delicious Chocoholic Cheesecake of my LIFE. Not kidding. It was all I could think about for the whole rest of the weekend.

Well, I am exaggerating a bit there. There were a lot of wonderful things to think about for the rest of the weekend. Such as the beach itself.

We had breakfast at the Frog House, a really fun, lively diner right on the main drag. We had to wait awhile for service, but that was understandable given the hordes of gigantic families with 1-5 babies and children in tow. It's not like we were pressed for time! And if any of you ever vacation with me and I start dithering on about being pressed for time, PLEASE slap me square across the face!

We spent as much time as possible at the beach, in the water (which was full of what Jason called sand nits, like tiny sand-colored crabs that got into the lining of my bathing suit and tried to eat me as revenge for my recent seafood binge). The surf has been pretty wild this summer. Some of our group got rocked by waves at Rehoboth last month (and I still have a scar from the beesting on my wrist, if you wanted to know), and on Saturday at Bethany we couldn't even walk against the current, it was so strong. It was a little scary.

Anyway, because of rainstorms and Captain Jack's Pirate Golf we couldn't spend the whole day at the beach. Mini golf is a pretty important vacation activity, especially pirate "putt putt," as Jason calls it. (I put it next to "pirate" to make it sound even more ridiculous.) (Also I pretty much kicked his butt after the first 3 holes.) We escaped the rain by ducking off the boardwalk into Turtle Beach Cafe for local gelato, made by Gelato Gal, which also has a location near the outlets in Rehoboth. These are two things that are very exciting to me: local, and gelato. (NO, I am not a HIPSTER!) And let me tell you, the cherry gelato was some of the best I have EVER had. Way to go Delaware! And Gelato Gal!

(I'll tell you, we tried Maureen's the next day, which is on Garfield Parkway, and it was a disappointment in comparison. Sorry Maureen's, but I had just tasted the gelato love of my life a mere day prior.

Thrashers fanboy

But we had to try everything, right? Jason has a deep passion for Thrasher fries, apparently a Delaware beach classic. And yes, they are amazing.

Jason also had to check out Bishop's former Bethany Beach location, which is now called Java Llama even though the sign hasn't been changed yet. He almost got conscripted to work down there this summer before they decided to sell it, but let's just say I'm glad -- we're both glad -- he didn't.)

Outside Turtle Beach Cafe I saw a dollar bill stuck through the cracks of the boardwalk. I almost bent to pick it up, but Jason said, "Nope," and nodded at the stairs facing us a few yards away, where a couple of kids sat stifling giggles. Then I heard a giggle from beneath my feet, and the dollar bill disappeared.

Pranksters.

"Did you used to do that?" I asked Jason accusingly. He suddenly found something very interesting to look at in the sky. "...No..."

In the afternoon the rain really started coming down, and lightning + lifeguards cleared the beach, so we headed to the Blue Crab to wait out our parking meter with beers. It turns out the Blue Crab also has delicious fresh house-made chips, and pretty great calamari too. As you might expect, they do crabs, so our table was decked out in the telltale brown paper and roll of paper towels of a crab restaurant. But we weren't hungry yet.

For dinner that night we went to Armand's Pizzaria in Sea Colony, right around the corner from our hotel. (I got a kick out of the spelling painted on the side of the building; that's not a typo. Unfortunately it's also not the official name of the restaurant.) We got a deep dish pizza that we ate while packing up our room the next morning. It was really pretty good both times. Also, in the past I've found deep dish pizza to be a little too heavy, a little too much to handle... But this one was really good. I could still only eat two pieces.

We passed Griff's Bakery on our way to get ice cream for dessert, and Jason made me promise to get up early and go eat there. There was a help wanted sign in the window, and inside it was all dark and empty. Even the racks were completely bare.

And the next morning, once we had packed up our hotel room and checked out, we headed back to Griff's for breakfast pastries. We got the last two strawberry cream cheese puffs and they were some of the last options. Apparently this place just gets completely cleared out every day. And we still weren't early enough.

The guy who seemed like he was in charge apologized for the limited selection, but we told him we felt lucky to get anything at all! He was very friendly, and Griff's seems like a hotspot. I will say, though, if anyone wants to bake, think about baking for Griff's.

I returned to Wilmington with a swimsuit full of sand and a hankering to pet the kitty. Poor Stella had to hang out at home alone for the weekend.

While I was in Bethany Beach, I got a text message from my former podmate Anna Linn, asking if I was free the following weekend and would I like to go to her aunt and uncle's beach house in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey.

Would I?! Despite the fact that it was my third weekend in a row traveling, and the last of a series of six weekends where I was home only one... I couldn't really say no! Plus I wanted to see her.

So that's how I ended up in the unlikely situation, dancing in a club on the Jersey Shore on Saturday night with one of the last people in the world I would expect to be doing that with: the infamous "Good Girl" of Pod 278 in Fall 2010.

We had such a good time, though; the Jersey Shore really knows how to do food and drinks. Not to mention the band came on to do a set and started with a cover of "Jersey boy" Bon Jovi. Let's just say the whole club was livin' on a prayer that night.

I won't go into so much detail since this is getting so long already, but in case you are ever in Point Pleasant Beach, I can't leave you high and dry! We had delicious meals at Wharfside, the Shrimp Box, and Tiki Bar. Wharfside has both patio and restaurant seating, and on Sunday afternoon they hosted a really fun "old stuff" cover band. They sang Journey. I'm good.

For dancing, check out Jenkinson's or the Tiki Bar.

More importantly, Anna Linn's family was so great. Her cousin Kate had a baby back in January, and Alex is now 7 months old and captivatingly adorable. Between them and their parents, the house had 3 dogs in it for the weekend, and I actually loved all of them! Making strides. It reminds me how much I actually like meeting new people. That's been oddly stressful this year, I guess because the stakes were so high, when I didn't know a single person in the state and had a long way to go to establish myself.

That being said, a year ago Wednesday was my first foot -- or tire, I suppose -- set in Delaware. I'm a few weeks away from my one-year anniversary of working my current job, which is so exciting. I'm days from signing on an apartment and being able to move in (knock on wood). I've covered a lot of miles, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

in thought, word, and deed

I got back from the beach on Monday and had a whole post planned out, but given the circumstances of the past few days, I need to write a different one.

I am thinking about people this week.

When I got back to my normal life, I found out that a Delaware friend would be out of town for a few days because her cat had to be put down and she needed to be at home.

Today, I received word that a friend of mine from college has been diagnosed with cancer. It sounds like he will probably make it, but the road will not be an easy one. And besides, we are 23. These things aren't supposed to happen to us.

A lot of things have been happening lately that aren't supposed to happen. Shootings, and mass shootings, and discrimination, and war, and robbery and assault and all manner of other things that hurt. These things hurt not only the immediate families or affected populations, but they affect the collective human psyche in potentially irreversible ways. These violences cause us to recoil, to curl up inside ourselves and put up our defenses and lick the wounds whose origins confuse us; why are WE bleeding and sore when it wasn't US who were shot? Why do we and our communities reel from the violences we commit against each other?

And then there are the hurts that are not committed against us by anything we can name -- like the cat, and the cancer, and other things we name in our hearts.

In these instances, we send out messages, beacons, to our mainstays and our loved ones. We ask for "thoughts and prayers." I always say I will pray in my own way, and regardless of any evidence of the healing power of prayer to one god or another, I think there is incredible power in Thought. I believe there is legitimate, nearly tangible power in thoughts flying in from all over the world, concentrating in exactly the place you need them most.

I went to Walgreens with a friend after Zumba tonight to look for a sympathy card. Most of them were awful. Lame at best. Most of them said to me, "I would feel bad if I didn't say anything to you right now, so here is my half-assed and partially thought-out clearing of the conscience." I know that I am unusual in that I HATE euphemisms, and I'm fairly comfortable with tears and suffering and depression and grief. The simplest thing that needs to be said is, at the core, "I care." I can't say anything more honest or more healing than that.

So I want to ask for your thoughts and prayers, dear readers, for these friends of mine, and for your friends who are undoubtedly also in need of thoughts and prayers, and for OUR friends. And for people at a few more degrees of separation. Thoughts and prayers do not run out like money or even words. Pain is one thing a lot of people share, and there is strength in sharing even pain. We can make ripples and waves in each other's lives, so, so simply. This I do believe.

routine recharging

It's 7:15 on a Friday morning and I am blogging. Already today I have:

• hula hooped for 20 minutes (which, according to the box, could have burned something like 600+ calories...?! Not that I count. I measure workouts by sweat and burn, and satisfaction)
• made coffee
• scooped out the cat's litter box
• fed said cat
• grabbed the mail which I forgot last night, and the remnants of balloons from Maria's grad party on Sunday
• closed all the windows according to my mom's "temperature + humidity" formula for keeping the house cool without wasting resources
• washed a few dishes
• put the fresh batch of granola I made last night into the giant plastic container we keep it in
• I also am eating some. I think it is the best batch yet.

The reason I have been up long enough to do all of these things goes back to my to-do list. I didn't know when I wrote it how big of an impact it would have on my life. I didn't expect to do so many of those things, or to do many other things by extension of it.

I'm up because, as I mentioned in my progress report, I started a pretty disciplined tradition of waking up early to go swimming every Monday morning. It has really been an energizing way to start the weeks. It feels so good, in fact, that I decided to start getting up early EVERY morning to work out. This week I've done swimming, running (still sore from this, it's been such a long time since I ran), yoga, hula-hooping. My main hangup on doing this is just that I haven't committed to anything by the time I wake up in the morning, so my alarm goes off and I think, "OK! I'm awake. What could I do this morning?" And then I lie there for 5-12 minutes debating with myself over different workouts I could do, or going back to sleep for another 45 minutes. So that is something that will change next week. I just have to plan.

I used to be a night person, or I used to call myself that, back in middle school/high school. I just could never fall asleep, so I would lie there ruminating in the dark for hours, and then wake up early for school and be cranky and tired. Except during swim season. When my days were full and I wore myself out. That, and the herbal tea of the destination, has become my cure for jet lag: touch down, sit down, have a cup of tea, go out and do stuff until a reasonable bedtime hour, and then pass out. Wake up the next day at a reasonable hour, and repeat.

This new routine has already changed my life in a few key ways. Exercising energizes me, so I start the day with a boost coffee can never give me. I'm much more focused and less restless all day. Even though I've been getting less sleep, I'm more productive and I have more stamina to keep it going until bedtime. It makes it harder to skip a workout. I have a whole evening to check other things off my to-do list. Until last week, I would get up and drag myself to work, come home, scramble to change into workout clothes, go to the gym, come back home and eat dinner, take a shower, and go to bed. And if I really needed to do something else in a week, or in a day, (which never happens, LOL) I had to skip working out. My stress level, thanks to this schedule, was sky-high.

My schedule still desperately needs pruning, but so far this week I have looked at a potential rental house, filled up my car with gas and my tires with air, gone out to dinner with my parents, written a long-awaited blog post, made granola, submitted a rental application, gone to Target (that shopping list has been in the making for a WHILE), packed for my trip to the beach this weekend, AND (drumroll) I finally wrote and mailed those letters that spurred me to write my to-do list in the first place! ...A month and a half ago. But I did it!

This is starting to sound a bit infomercial-y. I promise I'm not trying to guilt you all into making leaps and bounds in your lives. This blog is called second set of baby steps for a reason. We're walking blind here, and we have big shoes to fill, big dreams to fulfill. That's why any stride I make gets me excited.

One of the best parts about letters (though I could write at least one full post about what is great about them) is that the more you write them, the more you get them. I'm sure the correlation would be just about 1, if you plotted it out. And letters (or comments, emails, texts...) from you people are what make it possible to take baby steps, and what make it easier to take toddler steps and kid steps and angsty teen steps. And I'm sure they have the same effect going the other way, too. We've covered a lot of important ground in letters this year, and throughout my life. We've also covered a lot of ground in phone calls, which I have never ever ever made and picked up so frequently at any other point in my life. (I have a friend here in Wilmington who calls me to check in and chat about once a week, even though she lives literally 7 minutes away from me, even if I'm probably going to see her. It's weird how weird it is, but she'll leave me voicemails telling me just to call her back when I get a chance. No reason. No emergency. Just to talk. It's kind of cool. It's something I haven't done since I had curfews and since my parents could still tell me I wasn't allowed to go out.)

The great thing about letters, though, is you can go back and read them a billion times if you want, until they disintegrate. Whenever you have letters that you can touch, if there is something hand-addressed to you in the mailbox by a familiar pen (often the G2, in my case), you can never honestly bemoan your aloneness in the world. It just doesn't resolve.

Let me bring this back full circle. I usually have an idea for what I'm going to write about, and usually the post I imagined is not at all what I end up writing. Today I wanted to write about two things; one of them was my new routine -- again, partially to hold myself publicly accountable to keeping it up, and partially because I'm excited about it and it feels really good and I like to share good things that I am excited about. (Anyone who is my Facebook friend will know this all too well...)

Halfway through this post, I started to panic because a.) it always takes me way longer to write a post than I think it will when I start out, and I'm in danger of being late for work right now, and b.) I had NO idea how I was going to tie in the second thing I wanted to write about:

This is a picture of postcards I've been sent, most of them through the course of this year.
I pin them to the bare drywall in my basement and look at them every day and think,
"Man, am I lucky to have such cool friends who go to such cool places and send such cool postcards."
Man, am I lucky.

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.