Wednesday, December 14, 2016

The Pink Fleece

Before I moved from New York to LA, I made a point of ridding my closet of the majority of my black.  I kept some basics: pants, a cardigan, a mini skirt, a cami, and I left a handful of black long sleeve shirts and sweaters in a bin at my parents’ house in Boston, because I figured I’d be back for enough visits between Thanksgiving and the holidays to want to bust those out for family and work gatherings - less to pack for longer trips - but otherwise my goal was to go bright.  I stocked up on linens, white peasant blouses, turquoise and salmon tank tops, some nautical looking sweaters and neon work out garb.  When I walked in to my walk-in closet in Woodland Hills - I had a walk in closet for the first time in my life for the first year I spent out west! - I wanted to see and feel lighter and brighter than I’d ever been able to donning my New York uniform of black on black on black.  

If over the holidays I received gifts that were reminiscent of my east coast attire, I simply added to the collection in that bin at my parents’.  They’d be staples of my “home visiting” wardrobe… hats, scarves, turtlenecks, fleece-lined cold weather running gear.

My Nanny Janny (my mother’s mother) is infamous for the Christmas bags she doles out as gifts each year.  They typically contain an assortment of soaps from Marshalls, flannel pajama pants from Building 19 1/2, fuzzy socks from the Hallmark store sale section, and bright colored zip up fleeces from Ocean State Job Lot.  The fleeces were new to the lineup the first Christmas after I’d moved to LA, and the one that graced my gift bag was a putrid pink.  Just shy of neon that could have been considered trendy, too dark to be soft and becoming, close to the shade of magenta you can imagine being a kindergartener’s favorite crayola color, and sort of like a step sister of Pepto Bismol’s it was the kind of thing no New Yorker or Angelino would dare to be caught dead in.  


And yet… it found its way back in to the suitcase I packed to go home to Los Angeles with that Christmas, and it’s come back with me to Boston since I moved east again last summer.  It’s warm and it’s relentless in its ugliness.  I’ve worn it around the house more often than I am keen to admit.  Whenever the temperature has dropped below 60.  Pretty much any and every day I don’t have somewhere to be - any morning I’m waiting for my hair to dry or only running out to the drive through Starbucks a town over.  And every once in a while when I’m dropping by my parents’ where the bin no longer resides but my grandparents have moved in to an in-law apartment.  Whenever Nanny sees me in it, she beams.  

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Check yourself...

Because I have some of the best friends in the world, I get birthday gifts from time to time even though all I really ever need to feel spoiled already is the gift of their presence in my life.

This year I got a book of story prompts and a couple years back I got two books with autobiographical prompts.  Prompts are my jam.  Prompts are all I need to be off and running my fingers over the keyboard or pen over paper.

And in honor of the new book I went back to look at one of the old ones... they were selling it at Paper Source's and stores like that in the fall of 2013 

Glorious, right?!  I had filled it cover to cover by mid January of 2014.  The other one I got



I have on my to-do list to complete when I'm approaching 35 (the age I'd be privy to becoming president if I were so inclined... ahhh how I love arbitrary rationalizations)!

Anyway, I thought I'd post two of the essays I wrote in late November/early December of 2013.  I thought maybe I wasn't posting much around then on here, but it looks like I did at least a handful of times.  Nevertheless, it's still pseudo noteworthy... here's my answer to the question "how would you describe yourself" as of this time of year three years ago...

"Is it a bad thing talking about myself comes so easily to me?  Self-aware - that's the way I'd start describing myself I guess.  Eternally if not relentlessly optimistic.  A glass half full kind of girl.  A type A person who wishes she could be a free spirit.  A "Yes" person with a high tolerance for bullshit.  Remarkably unobservant.  Pretty impressively patient in my personal opinion.  Loyal.  Loving.  Lovable I 'd like to think.  I love to laugh, love to learn, love to lean in when I feel like I have something worthwhile to bring to the table.  I'm a homebody who loves to travel and loves to make the world feel a little smaller with each new trip around it.  I'd say I'm a leader by nature most likely due to my eldest sibling role.  I'm a straight shooting sagittarius and a little slight of tact sometimes if I'm being honest.  I have high expectations of the people I love because I believe in them with every fiber of my being, but I'm pretty hard to disappoint because I'm pretty level-headed anreven keeled.  I'm not a very passionate person, but I love to do the things I say I'm going to, andI am great at committing for the long haul to projects that I either believe in or think are important.  I'm pretty maternal, but also self-serving.  Self motivated, easily excitable, always open to being newly inspired.  I'm open and accepting and always trying to stop my natural instincts to judge.  I'm Catholic with a little 'c.' The oldest of 5 kids. Irish/Catholic/Italian/French Canadian and a couple other things.  A boston girl at heart.  And way more of a city girl than country bumpkin."

This all still applies.

I'll add that I'm grateful.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Snarls

When I was little, my curls were unruly.  They had a mind of their own and a traffic pattern my mother, God love her, couldn't seem to navigate gracefully for the life of her.

She'd rake through my hair with a brush when I got out of the bath, and as my head was yanked backwards with each stroke, she'd relent, "you've got snarls in there..."

I haven't heard or even thought of that word in decades.  By the time my sisters were born there were detangling shampoos for kids and no-more-tangles sprays my mom would use on their manes to make the process more bearable.

These days I know how to work with my curls.  "People pay good money for curls like those," people used to say to me when I was little, and these days I pay good money to manicure mine.

I've been devoted to the devachan method for five years

The process is 100% worth the time it took to learn and master.

The point of this post though... I just realized, is that I will always have snarls, I have just acquired patience and tools necessary to smooth them.

There is so much to say about this mess of a week and the messy divide our country is raking through in the aftermath of the election.  For tonight I can rest resolved to be willing to figure out how to work through the snarls.




My first day as a Deva girl

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Falling back

My issue with falling back is the falling part.

I love getting back the hour.  I will always take and maximize free time, bonus hours, minutes that are up for grabs.

But I can't help falling a little when the days get short.

The SAD in the air is contagious if not oppressive.

And I will find rays of sun shine like it's my job.  I will, I can, I have.

It's a fight though, and I hate fights.  I don't fight, in fact.  I say it often, "I don't fight, I win," but winning is exhausting, it's draining.  I don't know how Hillary's doing it.  I am positive the toll it will take on her.  She fights to win.  I wonder if she knew all along 2008 wasn't hers, and just made the bid to get people ready for this run....

Anyway, election talk gets so dark.  Now I'm doing this to myself.  It's awful.

I think a cop out's in order.  Here let me fall back on this:  Oh, Autumn in New York :)

It's relative - I spent the second half of this last week pounding the pavement and checking out my bff's new digs

Sunday, October 30, 2016

ImWithHer I'm just not sure where from

isidewith.com reinforced what I was confident about already.  HRC is my candidate of choice in this year's wild and crazy election.






My "loft" portion of our place on Taylor is my abode of choice at this point in the crazy adventure called life.

And I'm confident about residing here.  I think I'm doing good work, saving money, being creative, filling up my love tank, taking advantage of being conveniently located close to the majority of my favorite people in the world and only 20 minutes from an airport.

But I certainly wouldn't hate if someone came up with the sort of questionnaire they have you fill out on isidewith.com to validate a vast range of my life decisions. 

A girl can dream, can't she?

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Year of Magical Manifesting...

Out of thin air two writing opportunities came in to my life earlier this week.

I'm applying to Grubstreet's Novel Generator (fingers crossed) and I'm signed up for a writing group with a gaggle of women I've deemed new-age-Newton-moms.  They may or may not actually be Newton moms.  I only assume as much because the instructor suggested we find time to write 10 minutes a day "even if it's while waiting to pick up a kid after soccer practice" or something to that effect.

I loved my essay writing workshop earlier this year, so I'm pretty stoked for this group and excited about the prompts the organizer is coming to the table with especially after getting an email from her last night that included some inspiration from Joan Didion.  She sent us Joan's essay "Why I Write," in which Joan admits she stole the title from George Orwell in part because she just liked the way the words sounded strung along the way they are and that "there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space."

I am 100% guilty of being a secret bully.  Case in point: my relentless emails to the men in my life.

More on that tactic later.  For now, it delights me that Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking (which I picked up on a Barnes & Noble detour one day three or four years ago between when I'd done the Artist's Way and when I'd moved to California) made it through my purge earlier this year.  It brings me joy - her writing about writing.

So does writing, so does identifying as a writer, so does associating with other writers, and so does trusting in the magic a year can possess. 

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

The World Clock

My uncle asked to talk to me a couple hours ago when he called my mom and I happened to be at my parents' house.

He was in LA for work last week, and his Iranian Uber driver told him to check out this site with The World Clock.  Checking it out reinforced the hunch my uncle's had for a while that it's time to invest in property... Maybe we'll go in to business together, start an LLC, get my other uncle to be the property manager for the multi family houses the first uncle, our godson, and I start buying and flipping and/or renting out.  We'll see...  The wheels are turning, and the point, my uncle said, is the population is ever growing.  His Iranian Uber driver was making the point that humans are most definitely going to devour the earth's resources at the rate we're operating.  Which is another concern altogether, but my uncle's conclusion is if there's one thing that's a given it's that people need places to live.  Investing in places people will want to live is the way to go.


My uncle's in sales, so naturally he had me hooked on the phone.  I was ready to buy in before even checking the site out.

And then I got home and had a minute or two to sit and watch the numbers tick, up in the births bubble, up in deaths bubble, up in the deforestation bubble.  As usual seeing the US National debt exposed to the dollar did the trick putting my own debt in perspective.

And as the icing on the cake of a day and week I'm having, I also felt a wave of relief wash up on the shore of anxiety I've had in recent weeks that I'm living in too small a corner of the world at the moment.  I'm not alone... I'm one of 7,456,193,445 and counting individuals occupying my own space in the world.  We're all mere sequins on the stage of this planet reflecting the spotlight of the sun.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Red Rover October

This is the second time in eight years I've spent two Octobers in a row with the same residence.

So not surprisingly, I was asked at a family function this afternoon if I'm "here to stay."

People have grown accustomed to hearing I'm here there and anywhere at any given point, and I've grown accustom to re-adjusting, recalibrating, relocating.

It's hard to say if I'm here to stay.  I'm here for now.  And I'm happy.  So there's that.  There's just still SO MUCH WORLD.

So it remains to be seen, where the wind will take me and whether my nomadic tendencies have truly subsided.

When I was little, I could never break through the linked arms of opposing red rover team members.  I was inevitably traded to the team who called me over.  Inevitably trapped until the next time I heard my name.

In a way, I guess I'm always still listening and ready to make a run for it.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

All about the green

Just stumbled upon this interview with 4 Millennial Men with 4 Very Different Salaries.

How absolutely mind boggling a time this is.

Election season - of course.

But this era too.  Wherein one millennial can be making $2,489,000 more or less than the next.

How can anyone in the various circles I run with complain?  We are all so beyond #blessed.  We joke about #basic-ness.  We are doing more than great.  We have so much to be grateful for.




Sunday, September 18, 2016

Training Runs

Three things have dramatically impacted my philosophy on life in the past ten years: proximity to untimely death, running the Boston Marathon, and jumping out of a plane.

The other night one of my girlfriends posited it's impossible to truly comprehend missing something like one's health or a loved one until you've lost it.

I think we all have our own ideas of what counts as a defining experience, our own framing constructs for how we can make sense of the parts of life that are too big and too beyond us to ever truly know inside and out.

Anyway, I'm writing... morning pages, a revision of "the book," these blog posts, emails for work, and I'm looking at the writing I'm doing as exercises.  An exercise in this or that... finding an arc, being concise, dialoguing in different voices.

It's a little bit aimless.

Less so when I sit down and type out a syllabus for myself - do this outline one week, edit that screenplay next month, write the book proposal by December, send out queries after the first of the year, and so on.

I just had this great aha moment though.  The impulse to add up the number of training runs I've done vs actual half marathon and marathon races...  The number of times I've run at least eight miles vs the number of times I've gotten medals for doing so.

10 halves, 1 Cherry Blossom 10 miler, 1 full.

12 medals, 5 times as many runs 8 miles or longer.

Gotta put the time in.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The Worst

I know... I've been missing my Sunday posts.

Wedding season will do that.

Speaking of wedding season (what else is there to touch upon at present?) I got this from one of my modmates earlier today:

http://the-toast.net/2013/08/01/bachelorette-party-emails/

Simply put, it's the WORST.   Mostly because it's not that funny.  I mean it's hilarious, but it's so on the nose.  It's not funny how accurate a representation of the process it is.

Surely people don't throw out unrealistic suggestions, disregard voiced opinions and concerns and, worst of all - JUST NOT RESPOND or else neglect to answer the questions an organizer has posed, right!?!

There must be an unspoken girl code in place about these things.

No!?!?

We must all have the bride's best interest at heart and one another's financial and social circumstances in mind when coming together to orchestrate shenanigans.

Mustn't we!?!?

I am eternally grateful to the point people who have organized my girlfriends' bachelorette parties of late.   They have gone above and beyond, and they have the patience of saints.

Bitches be crazy though.

Without fail.  We're all the worst in our own right.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Let's Talk About Trees For a Sec

My little cousin is visiting this week from Washington state.  We took her for lunch by the BC campus yesterday and she got such a kick out of the way people dress "on the east coast" / "in Boston" as she referred to it.  Way less hippy, way more preppy...  She's visiting her sister in DC for the weekend and going to a political event with her.  She's worried she doesn't have anything to wear, but I assured her after 5 years in our nation's capital, I'm sure her sis has prep and or conservative garb to spare.

I thought if we'd brought her to Cambridge she may see more of the aesthetic she's accustomed to, but I knew exactly the difference she meant between the way people dressed generally on one side of the country vs the other.

One of the main reasons I elected to go to BC was that on my tour there I noted there were countless kids going to class in University gear.  Hoodies, t-shirts, sweatpants...these kids wore their pride all across campus and not just when it was football season or spirit week.

One of the main reasons I told my dad I had no desire to attend UNH - despite having found its library utterly breathtaking - was that there were simply too many trees on the campus.

I've had time to ruminate on my aversion to forestry over the years, and I would like to say I've come to appreciate woodedness with age, but beyond the marveling I did at the tree tops I soared above while skydiving the other weekend, I've remained pretty impartial to everything from ferns to oaks and even apple trees.

I love them cause they give us life, but I simply don't need them near by.

I'll still take a jungle of pavement any day.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

When the sky's no longer the limit




You really start to believe in the power of manifestation.

5,000 feet above land, suspended in air, I giggled out of sheer euphoria and I teared up at the sheer beauty of New England with all its trees. And I'll write this coming Sunday about how much I hate trees.  But I swear the perspective I'd gained when I walked out of the air and stepped back on solid ground was like nothing I could have acquired before last Sunday.

Nothing seems impossible.  Everything seems relative.  "Life is not a matter of milestones but of moments."

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Goody bag



Sometimes I take away a renewed commitment to waiting for "the one." Sometimes I take away a feeling of relief I haven't "settled." Sometimes I take away ideas about flowers, readings, bridesmaid dresses, place cards, signature cocktails, and scheduling.  Sometimes I just take away the box of chocolates with the bride & groom's name on it, or the flip flops they had on the dance floor, or bag of sweets from the candy bar, the swarovski swan, or the strip of pictures from the photo booth.

But this past weekend I took away a sentiment similar to sweet Anne Frank's here.

The wonderful thought that I have a wonderful day or weekend I'll simultaneously "never want to end" and never get the chance to recreate yet to come.

How lucky, right?  Put that in your proverbial goody bag.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Love is what we celebrate

(c) song by my CFF.... I'll share a clip when he and my BFF have cut their EP and I've figured out how to do so on the blogosphere.

2/5 weddings in to the season, I'm going strong and learning a LOT.

I'm also working on a major book edit right now.  So I want credit (doled out by yours truly to yours truly) for posting regularly, but I need to be okay with not generating cool content.

Consistently inconsistent's going to have to do for a spell.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

This scene...

It's classic for so many lines in it... "it's not gonna be easy, it's gonna be really hard," and "well, that's what we do, we fight... You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass..."


But the one I think of on average once or twice a week (I wish I were joking) is "what do you want?  What do YOU want? WHAT - DO - YOU - WANT?"

The idea of asking for what you want is so simple.  The practice even, is so simple.  My middle/baby brother, the head of his own household and father of this unbelievable source of limitless joy, told me yesterday he's taking his career in to his own hands.... "All you have to do is ask for what you want," he said.

And I know he's right.  I've done that professionally.

I do that at restaurants.

I know what I want when I go to the hair salon.

I know what I want for breakfast on a morning after I've had too much wine the night before (bacon).

But to be able to ask for what you want, you need to first KNOW what you want.

And I'd be lying if I said there weren't corners of my life where I still don't know what I want.

So lest my sweeping generalizations fool folks, have no fear, my Goldilocks Complex is alive and well...

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Hey Bartender

When my heart got stepped on in September of 2013 and then further mangled around May/June of 2014 by a southerner who sold me for a country song, I made the mistake of thinking wine would help.

It didn't.

Then this Lady Antebellum song came out conveniently a week or so after a NOLA bartender named a drink after me and booked a trip to Boston to overlap with a week I was spending there with my family.



Throughout my late teens and in to my late twenties, I drank for a lot of reasons.  I copied pages of my diary to show my parents when I got caught drinking my senior year of high school.  I wanted them to see how I'd struggled to decide to deceive them, how I hadn't simply caved to peer pressure, and how I was actively attempting to lower my inhibitions.

Prude, first born, over achieving, daughter of squares that I was, I had A LOT of inhibitions blocking my access to what I believed to be the full teenage experience.  So quarters games led to funneling and I toasted to "the nights we'd never remember with the people we'd never forget" for about a decade before waking up with a resolution on my 28th birthday.  Never again did I want to have that "oh shit" moment upon opening my eyes for the first time after a night out....

I didn't want to regret or forget conversations, canoodling sessions, or any uncharacteristic behaviors that might have been benchmarks of the evening prior.  Ever again.

So far so good since then.

A big trick I've been using: drinking less... even not drinking at all, especially in circumstances where I'm prone to experiencing emotion.  Because emotion + alcohol = a lack of cognitive control.

It's actually like only now, at 31, I understand the value of inhibition.  Only now do I appreciate and honor my internal barometer for what I'm comfortable with.

I wasn't lying to my parents, I didn't follow others in their decision to drink.  I definitely made my own and had so much fun in the years I spent drinking recreationally.  Once in a blue moon, I love a few too many blue moons or vodka sodas or what have you.

But I'm actually really content with the decisions and lifestyle of Sober Naugs.  She's still super fun.  She just also never needs her parents to pick her up from the party because she's gotten too sloppy.  And she just doesn't chase that disco ball around till she can't remember.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Take me to New York, I'd love to see LA

Two weekends, two whirlwind trips...

Not everyone's game for redeyes and volunteering to take the first shower, but I do what it takes to get the most out of my time away.  So I packed meetings, a movie, a beach day, mass and a girls' dinner in Santa Monica into my 46 hour excursion to my home away from home away from home away from home.



Was technically there to drop this little one off in LaLa Land for a week of living la vida entertainment industry.  She's "a peach" who'll "do great there" according to a friend of mine who's been going for it for the past three years after first dipping his toe in the water with a move west eight years ago (right around when I Boltbussed out of Boston with my 3 bags, 2 bucks and pocket full of NYCity dreams).

And I couldn't agree more.


Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Wedding Season of Life

Monday was August 1st, and while Wedding Season 2016 kicked off for me at a bridal shower in Long Island back in early April


it being August now means shit's about to get REAL for the next four months.

So as I prepare to be my most fun and love-loving self, I have to sort of issue a fair warning to the people in my inner most circles.  Cause month after month revolving around the love and commitment and progress and joint filing status of my dear friends and family will simultaneously fill me with immeasurable joy in general and deplete me of just shy of every last ounce of my seemingly limitless joie de vivre.

This is the reality of the (going on 9 year long) wedding season of my life.


100% worth it for the picture, pride and preservation of my belief in fairytales.

A doozy nonetheless.

Wish me luck ;)

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Sleep Some More

Sometimes you need a throwback thirty-six hours, so you hit the road with your besties from forever and remind yourself why it's called the city that never sleeps.

Here's what so.much.glee - pure glee really - looks like:



Basically, pure glee looks like a helping hand pitching in so you can at least attempt to pucker up like a pro.

We went "so New York" and saw Sleep No More, so now I can say I've done that.  (I can't believe it was four years ago I caught wind of Emma Stone loving it).  And I wasn't the biggest fan, but I'm awfully glad to have gone when we did.  Because who's to say it'll be here another 5 years from now?    Time flies, after all.

Two 2 AM nights back to back are officially my limit this side of 30.  It's fun to know you've still got it though.




Thursday, July 28, 2016

Why I didn't vote for Hillary - a chauvenistic feminist's confession

*Note: this post is a day late and a dollar short and a combo of a post I started writing months ago and some thoughts I've had in light of this week's DNC.

You guys - WOMEN ARE CRAZY*

Humans in general are crazy.  Life is crazy.  Everyone I love and have ever loved is crazy**.  And so on, but I have concluded that even when Leaning In, even when running things like the bosses they are, even when winning at life, women are just cursed by being prone to behaving more crazily than men, and that's just unfortunate.

I have no idea how valid THIS ARTICLE is, but it's being presented here for all intents and purposes as EXHIBIT A.  And I'm using it to launch into my point.

Remember Hamlet slaying Ophelia and all women thereafter with a single line?  "Frailty, thy name is woman." I love a good conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna go ahead and hop on the Prince Tudor train, and say that line was inspired by "Shakespeare" believing his own mom to be whackadoo and helpless insomuch as she couldn't even own up to him being her son. 

And I'm not sure that helps or hurts or validates my argument here, but I work in a field that is predominantly women run and have seen the CRAZY come into play more times than I count.  And I was just informed by a friend that works in another field predominantly women run that she got smacked in the face with CRAZY this morning.

I'm talking irrational, unprofessional seeming, blind siding, the likes of which Michael Oher wouldn't have been able to protect someone from

And this friend of mine, called me in tears, because she had been hurt and confused by the outrageous antics of her female employers.

So to diminish her despair I turned ultimately to a "joke" I often tell: "this is why I didn't vote for Hillary."


*******okay that's where the initial post stopped, so picking up at present:

Make no bones about it, these days, I'm With Her.  This November, I will probably cry casting my vote for the first women with a real deal shot of setting up shop in the Oval Office.

Eight years ago, I had yet to start working remotely, so I was in a bubble of estrogen 40 - 60 hours per week and pretty sure that not liking having a woman boss meant I would not like having a woman be the boss of the country.

I was young, and I was inexperienced.  And in my defense, Obama had the zeitgeist in his corner.  How could I, as an aspirational millennial not look to his youth and optimism and think it was what we needed to bounce back from the banality of Bush being puppetted through his second term?

I wanted the sure thing.  Obama was the sure thing.  Hillary, what with all her hormones, didn't strike me as the sure thing, she struck me as a wild card.

The thing is: hormones shmormones.  Let's talk about putting in the time.  And being, as so many have acknowledged, over qualified for the job at this point.  Let's talk about a ceiling in need of crashing through and  let's talk about the type of people that crash through ceilings:

CRAZY PEOPLE.

I think I just brought this all back to home, no?  You'd have to be crazy to want to smash through a ceiling made of glass.  So bring on the crazy.  Bring on the first Gentleman.

This world is crazy, but I'd take Hills' crazy over TheDonald's any day.

Let's get to work, and let's see this lady's crazy love for these United States do its thing.

*Full disclosure, I am making sweeping generalizations here and exaggerating (to some extent) because it's helpful to do so when ranting "comically."

**Note: I like that crazy can be defined as both "mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way" and "extremely enthusiastic."  It's not necessarily a bad thing!!!

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Pink hatted, full hearted

I spent the afternoon at Fenway Park, in good company.

I gave fair warning though: I know nothing about the team right now, other than that I love them today as much as ever, which has been unconditionally for as long as I can remember.

My first trip to the park, I was all of three.  There with my Great Grandpy and Great Nana Dougherty, who loved all things Americana, especially the songs of John Philip Sousa, the Red Sox and the Camelot Kennedys.

If that doesn't lay the foundation for a lifetime of fandom, I don't know what does.

And I don't know that I ever have or ever will be a real fan of the team to the extent of knowing averages, jersey numbers, positions... but I am sure there will be series that familiarize me with most of the names on the roster, the way the 2003 and 2004 and 2008 post seasons did.

Because I'm a proud proverbial pink hat wearing full heartedly bandwagon fan.

You know what I like the most about baseball?  It's a long game.  You can't rush it.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Fears

I'm so anti-fear.  I don't like to say or admit I'm afraid of anything.  I'm not really afraid of anything.  I think getting out from under the fear of death we're basically all born with has helped me get to a perpetual place of "this too shall pass."  It's a perk of being catholist (a combo of Catholic and Buddhist).  This writer gets it.

But I have to confess.  I was scared shitless twice while away earlier this month.  Once when a riptide  made me reckon with how I've always said "I'm not a great swimmer, but I could swim to save my life," and that is true but by the grace of God.  My aunt sent me this article after the fact with a note: "we're glad you're still here."  It was that close a call.

And once when a bird of prey swooped down and nearly took my curly topped head off in his successful attempt to snag half my sandwich.  I have been sent articles pertaining to this horrifying incident as well.  Get this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop-feeding-seagulls_us_578cc60be4b0867123e1be2e?section= AND  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3175036/Now-seagulls-cunning-Packs-birds-target-women-develop-new-tactics-steal-lunch.html

Basically... the fear is justified.

Sunday

I was all. over. the. place.  Ask the people I barraged with a wider range of crazy than I like to admit to still being capable of.

I missed posting after a day spent going from mass to a wake to a gospel choir concert.

I sang - and I mean, I still sing - but I sang a lot growing up.  In a bunch of choirs.  In musicals.  In the car with my siblings.  At my dance recitals.  Because the owner of my dance school so loved my rendition of 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed and the fact that I looked like the second coming of Shirley Temple she decided to spotlight me for 15 of the first 18 years of my life.

And anyway, while I was hardly ever going to be the next Whitney Houston, or even Mariah Carey, or even Christina Aguilera, I wound up in a gospel choir in high school and a jazz choir in college.  I always love sharing the fun fact that I've twice been to Idaho for the sole purpose of competing heart & soul style at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival hosted at the University of Idaho each spring.  You want dissonance?  I can hold that soprano 2 harmony line like a boss-a nova.  What?

Speaking of soul though... man if gospel isn't so darn good for it.  Chicken soup.  It was HOT out Sunday, but given my crazy and the crazy we find ourselves faced with daily in this country, a warm dose of the chicken soup that was Kuumunity was just what the doctor ordered.

They didn't sing this song, but this is one of my faves from the conductor (and choir)'s repertoire.  Treat yourself to a listen.


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

I May Never Be Satisfied, but I Will Always Be Content

and this is the biggest secret to my joie de vivre.

I don't know if I came up with / upon it during my new age reading journey (so somewhere along the way from A New Earth, to The Big Leap, The War of Art, The Artist's Way, and You Are A Badass, or The Alchemist round 2, The Four Agreements, The Fifth Agreement, and The Mastery of Love) or if I've always had it in me.

But while content and satisfied are synonyms, they're so entirely far from each other at the same time.

In this big wide world we're all hardly going to have a chance to see more than a sliver of at best, how can ANYone ever be satisfied?  There will always be more people to meet, more money to make, more places to go, more mountains to climb, more bridges to cross, more magic to be mystified by, more revelry to be tempted by, more mayhem to feel the need to reign in, more loose ends to wish to tie up.  Life is gloriously unsatisfying, and it's also a gift.

So every day there's at least one ray of sunshine that peeks through the clouds, every day there's breath in my lungs, and strength in my legs, and agency in my being, voila, I can call myself content.

Wise words my dad used to tell us Naugler kids growing up (maybe I could have saved money on all those books I bought years later, but they've been good reads, so no regrets).... "you can have everything you want if you want only what you need."

Simple is sweet if not satisfying.  But life's best seasoned with both the sweet and the salty.

Is this making sense?  I may still be in an Island haze...

Sunday, July 10, 2016

I went to my happy place

Spent a week working, beaching, relaxing, hanging out with friends and family and generally loving life as I know it on my happy place - hence the vacation from my regularly scheduled Sunday and Wednesday posts.

I'm all about momentum, and I've definitely been building mine over the past month or so... Manifesting, making moves, and motivating myself even more than usual, so I was remiss to miss posting, especially in light of the new traffic from my first Thought Catalog piece.  Still,  I have to admit it felt good to be on Island time these last 7 days.

And keeping hold of the concept of time as so totally relative has helped immensely as I've attempted my own version of muddling through the muck America seems caught up in at the moment - reading article upon article, swallowing heartbreaking news update after heartbreaking news update, engaging in complicated and heavily charged conversations.

Thankfully, I have hope, faith, and utter belief this is a season we're struggling through.  (Have I mentioned this book before? Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way by Shauna Niequist)

   

We read it in my book club before my book club went on its now-going-on-eight-month hiatus (it happens).  And Shauna Niequist, the author, introduced me/us to the concept of seasons to be lived through.  Like a winter over staying its welcome well into April, a season of life can feel horribly hard, and terribly dark, and daunting, and cold, and even scary.

But spring always comes.  And summer too - in all its sunbaked, fact of the matter glory.



So we won't necessarily enjoy it, and we will likely be uncomfortable, but we are citizens of the world, and we will weather this.



Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Who am I anyway?*

*A Chorus Line reference, so, a musical theatre nerd for life, obviously, but also, according to a combination of the About Me section to the right on here and the about the author paragraph I include in my queries to lit agents and the what am I doing with my life essay on my dating profile:

Sister, friend, agent, writer, actress, baller-ina, I wear a gajillion hats on any given day and am actively avoiding acceptance of any one single label whether it be for my career, personality type, or agenda. One of these days I'll find a bed, a chair and a bowl of porridge that's juuuuuust right, in the meantime, I write about being any number of permutations and combinations of these roles as I work and play, dream and do, call things as I see them and love my life.  A Boston College grad and one of two artist representatives at a boutique agency based in Gloucester, MA representing stylists and hair & makeup artists in NY, LA and Boston, I'm always up for an adventure, never going to be in to kayaking, and really enjoying my days since deciding the rat race has been fun but it's not what I want to waste my thirties on.

All of this is to say, I am a work in progress, just via use of some flowery run-on sentences. 

Sunday, June 26, 2016

A note to my angsty teenage self, who was so set on being a big fish in a big pond and getting out of dodge

It takes you 10 times out of the country to realize there’s no place like home, to feel all right about going back, and to decide - at least for the time being - you've seen what you needed to see and experienced what you needed to experience.
  1. Your first time out of the country, you are not fully able to process just what’s different.  Yes the bathrooms, yes the food, yes the street signs.  Maybe the language and obviously the currency.  But you’ve taken other field trips with your classmates, and this trip is kind of just like those trips on a bigger scale.  You’re pretty far away, but you’re going home soon enough, so this is totally temporary. Your bed back at your parents’ house will be there for you to sleep in within the week, and so for this first time out of the country, you’re just along for the ride, and you’re honestly taking for granted the fact that you even crossed a border.
  2. Your second time out of the country you fall in love.  With freedom, with the boy you sat beside on the bus from the airport, with the coolness in the air coming off the water, with the accents of the people in the pubs, with the idea of being connected to those people thanks to ancestry dating back a few generations.  You drink the local beers, you dance your best jig, you stay up till all hours of the night not wanting to miss a minute of this epic excursion.  You cry when they put the news on at the bar one of the nights you’re out and you see that something awful has happened back home, and then your spirits are lifted by that boy from the bus and the locals at the bar who sing drinking songs and tell you not to worry, this too shall pass, we’re all in it together.  It is life.  It is this big wide world.
  3. Your third time out of the country you just chill.  You’re still so young, you have so few actual stresses, and yet you’re craving a cerveza on the beach, soo bad, mannn.  You just need to, like, unwind, and walk through a rain forest holding an umbrella ironically for the photo op.  You need to pair the cute new cover up you bartered for with a bandana over your messy hair.  You need to “forget” to put on sunscreen until it’s too late, and then drink fruity drinks out of yardlong plastic sippy cups so you don’t feel the burn and you can forget that you’re going back to school work and so much angst over boys and grades and your parents and siblings.  You forget to remember how lucky you are.
  4. Your fourth time out of the country, you get the picture, or rather you get the sense that you’re walking through a scene out of one of the fairy tale picture books you grew up reading.  There’s magic in the air and in the wine and in the food and in the history – this is what “they” mean by ancient.  You’re reverent as you enter a walled city, you’re wistful as you throw a penny in a fountain over your shoulder, you’re tickled pink as you try and succeed in speaking the language you spent years studying.  You realize you need this, and though you say as much, you can’t quite articulate what you mean in saying it.  You just feel it in your bones – the necessity to experience as much of this as possible, the fact that you’ll be back.
  5. Your fifth time out of the country, you’re all about filling up that passport book with as many new stamps as possible, so you hop from one incredible city to the next, and you know what questions to ask so you will end up seeing the coolest places each city has to offer.  When it’s cold you warm yourself up with big steins of beer.  When you have a down day you seek out museums of history or art.  When you master use of the public transportation you pat yourself on the back or on the backpack.  When it’s time to go home, you hardly look or feel American anymore.  You’re certain your worldliness will blow everyone back there away.  You’re ready to reconnect but you realize you really did not mind how thoroughly far away and out of touch you felt while you were gone.
  6. Your sixth time out of the country, you leave for love.  You put your credit score and your heart on the line, because it’s worth it.  You would and you do go around the world with and for someone you trust would do the same for you, and together you two venture into the vast unknown.  You consult guidebooks and you pack lunches, and you make days and weekends and weeks of it - soaking in every sunset and sunrise, opening up in the great wide open.  You pose with exotic animals, you swim in new oceans, you make friends with fellow free spirits, and you ring in the New Year a dozen or more hours before your friends and family back home.   You’re older going home.  
  7. Your seventh time out of the country is a mistake.  So much for lucky number seven… You think you should have saved the money, you realize you could have saved the time, you have no way of saving yourself from the inevitable heartbreak when, toward the end of the trip, that boy from the bus on your second time out of that country tells you this is when your time as travel buddies and partners-in-crime and lovers and best friends ends.  And you find yourself broken half a world away from the rest of the people you love, and you are reminded of just how tangible a distance can be and how long a flight back home can seem when its spent tired and teary eyed. 
  8. Your eighth time out of the country, you’re on a mission.  You’re in search of your self in whatever corner of the world you feel you’re most likely to find it.  So you only book a one-way ticket, because you don’t know when or if you’re going to want to come back.  You have a loose agenda and a plan to take in sights that range from the picture on the packaging of a box of hot chocolate to the inspiration for your grandmother’s kitchen.  You journal and read like mad as the countryside whizzes by you out the window of the train.  You hike in flip-flops because, in spite of the guidebooks in your bags, you are in the moment and swept up in the excitement of the open-endedness.   You meet long-lost cousins, you face your fears, you gain weight from all the cheese you eat, and on your twelve hour layover between the last minute flights you booked home, you pick up a book that will change your life.
  9. Your ninth time out of the country, you’ve come to reclaim some of the territory you first charted back when you were a freshly minted globe-trotter.  You take a whirlwind trip that packs a lot of punch.  You’ve got just three to five days to celebrate how cool it is to see a landscape again with new eyes having grown and changed since the first time you explored it.  You almost give your heart to a guy you meet just as you’re leaving, but then you remember you’ll need it still to set the course of your next adventure with. 
  10. Your tenth time out of the country, you walk past the people in first class on your flight and realize that in the grand scheme of things, you’re all the same.  You’re all little fish in this big pond, little kids on this big playground called Earth.  You all have potential to make a difference and be the world to one or any number of other people.  You’re all ships passing in the night, you’re all related somehow or other.  You’re all going home eventually.  And as you eat frites or you swim in the baths, or you find just the right filter for one last instagram post before you leave, you realize while we all share this enormous play ground, you’re one of the relatively few people to have been blessed with the chance to try out the swings, the jungle gym, and the monkey bars in corners all over the world.   And you’re sure you’ll have a hankering for more international travel in due time, but in the meantime, you’re looking forward, if not to settling down, to settling in back home.  

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

When your waxer notices

You know you're moving in the right direction toward your peak physical shape when your waxer won't stop talking about it.

Frankly she sees you from an angle few others do.  You're lying on that roll of paper like a straight up specimen under the bright overhead light that lets her work her magic.  You leave an imprint of your body on the table when you stand up before she discards said paper, and you walk in ready to be fully seen by her - friend, confidant, mentor that she is, that she's become in the past ten or eleven years.

So when she says you're looking good, you're well within your rights to take the compliment as one of the most genuine you'll get on any given day or week.

Plus she sees you every two months or so.  I swear my waxer (who's the best by the way and who I will happily recommend to anyone who's looking to book since bathing suit season's upon us) said I looked good a year ago when I saw her too, but then every 6 - 8 weeks since when I've gone back (more regularly since relocating closer to her neck of the woods) she's seemingly been more and more impressed by the shape I'm getting in.  She's had a front row seat to any and all progress I've made.

So... I'm just here to humblebrag basically.  Ha.  But also to give the reminder to not be so quick to heed your self criticism, worry about the voices of those closest to you, or pay any mind to unfavorable feedback you feel like you're getting on your insta posts or dating profiles.  There are constants in your life who you forget are keeping tabs, and who will let you know when you're on the right track.  You need simply to stay regular with your appointment booking.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Shiny, sparkly things or How I Met My Credit Score

Unlike many friends of mine in high school, I didn't get to carry one of these puppies around on our mall trips:



Some mom's had one of these, a Macy's and Bloomie's card to loan to their little girls, but circa 1998 - 2002, my folks were busy paying off credit card debt my mom had racked up dressing the five of us kiddos in matching holiday garb for a decade and a half, so there was no plastic to spare.

Perhaps that is why Capital One convinced me I needed to opt for the pink sparkly design option on my first credit card.  I think I got one or two thousand dollars right out of the gate.  Like the credit gods knew I would be willing to play ball.

And oh how I played.... played with balance transfers and played with paying just slightly more than the minimum each month, played with credit line increases and 0% APRs for the first six months. Played so well those first few years, I earned myself an American Express Gold Card at age 21.

Which was actually hugely helpful in getting me in the practice of paying a / the / my whole bill each month - if only there were a way to start every young credit spender on Amex....

But then.... the dreaded recession reared its ugly head and revoked some of the perks I'd come to rely on - with my Amex specifically, which had allowed me to sign & travel and pay those charges back over time, until it didn't and I was suddenly called upon to pay back the $3k I spent on ACK in 2009 immediately if not ASAP.

So....lo...  I had to do some drastic penny pinching and transferring and pleading and the result was a real bad credit score.  A real. bad. credit. score.

But then!!!  As luck would have it, my penchant for shiny sparkly things paid off... as the year I moved to California I needed a car to take me there, and there was a savior, an angel, a fairy godmother at a credit union in non other than Bedford, MA, who brought me back in to the big leagues wrapping this balance and that one into the car loan, paying cards off a full and raising my credit score by a whopping 225 points in the span of the year and a half I called the west coast home.

Would that I'd had this site as a reference back in the day: http://brokemillennial.com

Penned by my pal (/neighbor/roomie/sisterfriend)'s little cuz it breaks it down for today's 20somethings and teaches them how to plan for the ebbs and be proactive with the flows.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Citizens of the world

Since signing off for a full 40 days this past Lent, I make a point of only Facebooking on Tuesdays & Fridays now.  But Monday night, I signed on to post this:

"Couldn't wait till tomorrow to sign on and say I think we are not at war with terrorism so much as we are fighting what is at the root of terrorism: hate. 
And the Donald Trumps of the world are condoning hate, perpetuating fear, and fighting for the wrong side.
How dare any of us jump to politicize the conversation within hours of learning 50 lives were lost, but beyond that how dare that disgrace of a presidential candidate be so callous as to accept congratulations in the wake of what was a cold blooded massacre of citizens he claims to want to protect. Where is your compassion? Where is your humanity? Where is your self-control and humility?
The fact that Trump (and so many of his followers both ignorant and educated alike) cannot grasp the distinction Obama made in February, that our enemies are "not religious leaders - they're terrorists...and we are at war with people who have perverted Islam" speaks volumes to why and how the position of president would be a weapon of mass destruction in that man's hands. Not harping on or not using the term Islamic Radicalism is not about political correctness, it is about taking time to be thorough and careful. It is about not shrouding entire populations in hate and intolerance. It's about not making sweeping generalizations, not stereotyping, not labeling, and most importantly not breeding unnecessary and unhelpful and uncontrollable hate and contempt. 
Anyway, less about him and his lack of tact, lack of composure, lack of reverence for his fellow Americans. 
I am so grateful for and in awe of and inspired by the men and women from all walks of life, from both sides of the aisle and from any number of religious or non religious standpoints - celebrities, politicians, clergy, lay people, gay, lesbian, trans, bi and straight who have been brave enough to preach love since Sunday.
Love is truly the only weapon we have to combat the hate and the fear at the core of acts of terror. 
Love is the only ideology that will save the world with its subscribers 
Love creates and sustains life - it gives life meaning. It is all we have, and it is all we need 
💜"

Interestingly enough, days before he was set to host the TONYs, and before we all awoke to news about the utter senselessness of Sunday's early morning tragedy, James Corden was on Stephen Colbert and shared just about the loveliest thoughts on whether he'd started to feel less British since moving to America.  Watch around 3:20.  Charming, right?  "We're [definitely] all kind of in it together."

Sunday, June 12, 2016

I want it all



I have a sort of serious question:  Is it okay to do things just because you can?

Cause that's what I keep doing.  I obviously and staunchly believe no one should do evil, mean spirited, malicious or hateful things "just because they can."   But the things I have been doing aren't harmful to myself or to others, so, I don't feel bad for them and I don't regret them after doing them.  That said, they aren't for everyone, so I understand the reaction I get from people, who ask, "why would you do that?"

And I just hope my answer, "because I can," is sufficient.  I don't want it to seem trite, or flippant, or moronic.  I don't want to come off as selfish, irreverent, or impulsive.

"Because I can" is the best I can conjure up.  And maybe I should couple it with the disclaimer, "and because I never want to say or even feel 'I can't.'"

Because somewhere along the way to growing up, I developed an aversion to "I can'ts" coming from anyone who technically can or theoretically could.  Obama successfully clinching the presidency in 2008 on his "yes, we can," slogan must have reinforced the aversion.

The thing is, a year before I'd come to terms with the fact that there are people who really can't do one thing or another because of their station, because of the way cards were stacked against them, because of injustice in the world, because they run out of time or are crippled by fear, because they care too much about what other people think, or because they don't have the means or the mindset allowing them to see that they actually can.

I adopted a mantra when I was training for the marathon a few years ago.  I ran with a charity - the melanoma foundation.  And thinking on the reality of the circumstances brought about by melanoma, and cancer in general, and tragedies, and heartbreak, and disabilities, 8 or 9 miles in to a training run one Sunday afternoon, "we run for our cause, we run cause we can" came to me.

Pretty much ever since, I've done what I wanted when and if I could.  I've thought to myself, "do I want to do this? Can I do this?" And when the answers been yes, I've just gone and done it.

I'm watching the TONYs tonight (naturally) and Renée Elise Goldsberry took home the award for her role in Hamilton earlier in the evening.  She expressed immense gratitude for a multitude of blessings.  She got the gifts of her two children, and she got this win.  Can you want it all AND get it all?  Sometimes the answer is yes, you can.

So it's okay to want big.  It's okay to go big.

And it's a serious question I'm asking, but I'm also answering it for myself and making the argument that yes, it's okay to do things just because you can.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

On the flip side of things

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adi-zarsadias/dont-date-a-girl-who-travels_b_4704794.html

There's this.

And I think the author's warnings are fair if not spot on, a girl who travels "is hard to please...she goes with the flow and follows her heart...she will never need you...[and] she will forget to check in with you when she arrives at her destination...So never date a girl who travels unless you can keep up with her."

But I dissent from her urge to the reader that if they unintentionally fall in love with one, they daren't keep her.

Maybe she needs and wants to do whatever she fancies, but by no means does that have to mean she wants to be let go of completely.

Think:

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Date a boy...

who travels: http://jamesrussell.org/blog/blog/date-a-boy-who-travels

I had forgotten this one.

But it's good.

And it's got a point.

I have been feeling very Sagittarian recently.

Count down is on to my week in ACK next month.

It's been 5 years since the last time I spent more than a night on the island.

'Tis the season to

Doprah for Days



And pretend it was 6/1 when I wrote how every so often I spend three weeks with Deepak Choprah and Oprah Winfrey guiding me in morning meditation.  So do thousands of others who drink Deepak and Oprah’s brand of mindfulness cool-aid each time a new round of their twenty-one day series hits the Internet. 

To say the duo has changed my life with their 21-Day Meditation Experiences would be a bit of an overstatement, but to deny the fact I’ve come to rely on the seasonal appearance of their marketing materials in my inbox would be dishonest.  I actually feel my spirits lift when I find out I have a few weeks with the two of them on the horizon.  I genuinely appreciate the reminder from the two moguls to be mindful.

The current popularity of meditation as a stress reduction technique is well-documented. Major corporations have introduced the practice to their employees, doctors recommend it to patients at risk for heart attacks and celebrities have endorsed its ability to keep them grounded and connect them with their purpose and aspirations - the pressure of life in the public eye is kept at bay by their ability to tune everything out for twenty minutes or so.   Commercial a ploy as it is for high profile advocates like Oprah and Deepak, you can’t knock them for encouraging enlightenment, wellness, self-care and mental health.

I find time to be one of the most valuable things one can have in one’s possession.  How we allocate minutes and hours and days to the demands made on us to deliver at work, in relationships and in our communities can be complicated to decide.   I have been making a point of sectioning off time in my life for mindfulness for years now.  If I’ve reaped some ribbing from facetious friends and family for doing so, it’s been entirely worth it for the benefits I’ve reaped of mental and physical well being. 

My new dentist greeted me saying, “you have perfect blood pressure” just the other week.  I am still not entirely sure why it was necessary for him to take my blood pressure at a consultation about my teeth, but I wasn’t surprised in the least to learn this fact about myself.   Rarely does anyone or anything get a rise out of me. 

I’ve maintained an even-keeled base level and temperament since my first foray into the new-agey world of wellness eight years ago.  It was actually a bi-product of back pain I was having one spring.  My chiropractor shared an office space with a holistic healer who advertised his ability to cure people of smoking addictions and poor eating habits with hypnosis.  Tempted, I purchased a package of eight sessions with this Avinoam Lerner, and by summer, I was feeling more clear headed and self confident than I ever before, not to mention eating fruits and vegetables with the best of them.  Armed with the emotional freeing technique during which one taps on a series of endpoints of the body’s energy meridians to diminish distress and two mp3s with hypnoses Avinoam had recorded for his patients to listen to at home, I was open to expanding my arsenal of self help and mental health go-too tools.  In the years to come I took up yoga, long distance running, and IntenSati fitness, which combines aerobic moves and positive affirmations to improve your attitude and level of physical strength and endurance.

“What do the recordings say?” my friends used to ask, curious about my habit of tuning in to Avinoam’s mp3s for twenty minutes per day.  “They say, ‘ you are feeling good about your body,” I’d say in my best imitation of his Israeli accent.  The phrase became a running joke for a while, but the teasing subsided when those same friends saw the shift in my all around health and wellness. 

I have meditation and mindfulness to thank for the glass half full persona I present to the world. I imagine I’ll continue to be partial to practices suggested by different gurus at different points, but I maintain these “Doprah days” do wonders.




A Whole New Palette

Pretend I posted this on 5/29...on the topic of food and choices...


“Oh she won’t want it,” my aunt said passing the steaming hot casserole dish over my head, “this wouldn’t work with her beige diet.”

“Beige diet?” I asked, oblivious to the way the turkey sans gravy, heaping pile of mashed potatoes and butter-less dinner roll basically blended in to the dinner plate in front of me.

“Chicken, rice, potatoes, chips, Life Cereal,” she listed, “you’ve never noticed you have the beigest diet in the world?”

As I watched the peas, cranberry sauce, carrots, yams, and green bean casserole make their way around the Thanksgiving table, I realized my aunt was right.

For the fist twenty years of my life I subsisted on substantially flavor-less and undoubtedly uncolored fare.   It is not my mother’s fault.  She would ask me to make that clear.  My father too.  They swear up and down that I LOVED vegetables when I was little.  We all collectively remember the cooked carrots incident of 1990 as being a big turning point.  I couldn’t keep the carrots down, and from that point on my parents couldn’t make me finish my plate before leaving the table.  So I picked and chose around every dish offered and wound up with an assortment of white meats and starches without fail.

A firm believer that a well baked batch of chocolate chip cookies can put the world back in order whenever things are going awry, I would bake with M&Ms whenever I was feeling self-conscious about my eating habits.  The candy coated chocolates were the greens, oranges, reds and yellows I missed out on by refusing to try salads even when my friends started making a habit of going to Fresh City for lunch, turning my nose up at whatever peppers and onions were grilled on kebabs between chunks of chicken or shrimp at summer barbeques, and declining any passed app that didn’t come on a skewer at cocktail hours. 

Thyme – and time changed everything.  In my mid twenties, I bought The Biggest Loser cookbook for a boyfriend focused on getting fit, and we spent a season or two making homemade meals for things like Valentine’s Day and our mid-march anniversary.  Soon, we considered ourselves culinary wiz’s for our ability to make Chipotle Honey Lime Pork Tenderloins and Italian Flank Steak with Roma Tomatoes that would have made Jillian Michaels amused if not particularly proud.   Thyme, basil and balsamic vinegar became fixtures of his pantry where we did the bulk of our special occasion cooking.

My own spice cabinet still would only ever contain pepper, lemon pepper and garlic powder for several years to come.  My kitchens never seemed to call for cooking beyond a few staples I could make with just those, and frankly, I was afraid when I opened cabinets of foodie friends with rack upon rack of spices I wouldn’t risk entering into the mix.

By my late twenties I was attempting to be more adventurous, at least when out for fancy dinners.  “I’ll have the fire roasted garlic chicken with fennel and acorn squash,” “…the Label Rouge chicken on the tangle of greens,” “…the pollo pressato with mashed sweet potato.”  Sure I was prone to pulling the seasoned skin off the cut of poultry presented to me, but at least I was trying the side dishes that came with.   No longer averse to rounding out my eating habits, I had actually seen a holistic healer for a while who helped me use the emotional freeing tapping technique to squash my fear of consuming cooked carrots and to convince me I could enjoy eating broccoli.  With age comes an openness to bettering one’s self.  Also, a naturally slower metabolism.  

The month before I turned thirty, I was went ahead and let myself get swept up in the new wave of clean eating called WHOLE30.   Entering a new decade of life, I decided it was finally time to enter the world of eating well.  I faced my fears of spicing up my own spice rack, and I racked up a ridiculous bill having filled a basket at Whole Foods with everything from Dried Cilantro to Cloves, Mustard seed to Marjaram, and Paprika to Tarragon.  

Thirty days sans grains, dairy, legumes, sugar, and alcohol wiped away my predisposition to the bland, artificial and less exotic food out there. I spent weekends prepping meals more colorful than I ever could have dreamt of in my beige diet days, and then I spent weeks devouring them.  My palette expanded with every day I x’d off on my wall calendar.


I’ll still err on the side of cookie baking on a bad day and taking the easy way out by ordering chicken when I’m overwhelmed by a long or unfamiliar menu at dinner out, but there’s no longer a dish that goes over my head at Thanksgiving.  And the rich range of colors I’m met with when I open my fridge, pantry or cabinets has made this decade of dining my best yet by far.