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:

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. 

The Sweet Factory

Penny candy has to have been a thing since at least the turn of the century, right?

MaryJanes must be as old as butter at least.


I think it's fair to say The Goldilocks Complex starts at The Sweet Factory.  In my case, it really started at the Red Cross Pharmacy where my folks used to fill prescriptions when we were growing up.  That's the first place I remember being able to buy an assortment of candy for under a dollar.

Remember the simple joy of filling a bag with a few swedish fish, more than a few sour patch kids, some tootsie rolls, a mini reeces or two, a couple cry babies, a lemon head or fireball if you were feeling daring, and a licorice wheel to round out your lot?

But let's assume these days pharmacies other than CVS's and Walgreens, general stores and video stores (I also remember One Stop Video having penny candy for a while) have entirely gone by the wayside.  So kids' first exposure to all there is to consume in the world comes when they accompany first their moms and dads and aunts and uncles on trips to the mall and then when they're lucky enough to get to walk the mall with friends in middle school.

BOOM: ALL. THE. OPTIONS.  And now it's not just candy separated by brand and by genre, it's fun dip packs you fill yourself, and M&M's and Jelly Belly's broken out by color ahead of time.



How can a goldilocks complex not set in at the sight?  Who the heck knows which choice is juuuust right?

City living

Yesterday at my bambina sorella's college graduation dinner, my grandmother asked me if I miss Los Angeles or Manhattan.  I had an answer for her immediately because one of my ACK Roomies asked me the very same question very recently.

I miss living amidst a myriad of delusional dreamers in LaLa Land.  There's nothing more comforting than knowing your neighbors are as confident their big break is only an audition, a meeting, a networking night, a new connection, a chance encounter or recognition a long time coming away as you are yours is.

And I miss the palpable energy of the big apple.  Although, now that I live in a borough of it (essentially, in my opinion anyway), I feel lucky to be able to dip in and out of it on a whim/whenever I need new highlights, a therapy appointment, or to just recharge my batteries with a long walk up Broadway from Times Square to the Upper Upper West Side.

But here, I have access to pure joy, something I hadn't found a source of in either of the major metropolises I called home in the past seven years.  And there is literally nothing NYC or LA could have offered me that compares.

This little dude took 5 whole steps to me three days ago and I think I can honestly say I was more excited by that accomplishment than I've been about any of my own accomplishments in the past ten years.  

It's not fair of course, that nature's done this to me.  But who am I to challenge the she-beast that is biology?  

I also got a great response from a literary agent last week and happened to be at my parents' house when the email came.  My mother saw me do the little victory dance I do whenever someone requests chapters or my full manuscript for their perusal upon having received and read my query.  

So I'm very much still in it for the long haul.  And very sure the cities will harken to me whenever they have happy opportunities for me to be in them for.  I just don't miss them.  Because in the mean time, joy trumps glamour, fanfare, hustle bustle, excitement, temptation, indulgence and grit.  

The big 4-0 or how having 39 roommates has made me ready for a life partner

If you count my four siblings, who, with my parents, were my first official housemates, I have had 39 roommates in my 31 years of life.  I had to jot down a list before I sat to write this, because I had been pretty sure the tally was somewhere around 26, but I was wrong. I had forgotten a handful of the Walker St roommates in Cambridge, and I hadn’t counted the sub-letters who joined the mix at my places on 101^st and Broadway and in West New York, New Jersey.

Michelle would leave the TV on even when she was out for the day.  Jen would make macaroni and leave it on the stove for a week.  Lori would leave post-it notes on the fridge reminding us to fill the Britta before putting it back.

The way Katherine Heigl’s character in the romantic comedy, 27 Dresses accrued bridesmaid frocks, I’ve collected a football team worth of former roommates in the span of three decades.

I would always be spooked when I heard Matt head out for long distance runs at 4:30am.  I would always be offended when I heard how rudely Todd talked to the deliverymen who couldn’t find our street.  I would always blush when I heard Helen's boisterous sex with her newest boyfriend at the most bizarre hours of the day.  

My number from college is within normal range.  I went from having one direct roommate freshman year to eleven suitemates senior year.   Par for the course, and a pretty important part of the education I received as an undergrad.  Actually, I feel that way about having grown up in a house with five kids – and one bathroom – as well.  You learn a lot of social skills from sharing a space and forming interpersonal relationships with that many individuals during your developmental years.  You’re introduced to a broad range of communication styles.  You’re taught how to interpret cues, how to approach and resolve confrontation, how to simply co-exist when you can’t particularly stand someone at a given point.   You’re exposed to different comfort levels and different cleanliness levels.  You are just constantly reminded that the world does not in fact revolve around you.  Ego?  Who can have one of those when you’re spinning a chore wheel or stuck in a shower schedule?

Kim was the American personification of the Italian word chiacchierona, which means chatter-box.  Aaron blasted house music whenever he did laundry.  Taylor shamelessly consumed marathons of mindnumbing Kardashian themed television.

Of the 39, there are nineteen I affectionately call “Roomie” in cards, facebook posts, text messages and emails – only one of whom I physically live with today.  “Roomie” is a timeless title.  It’s like “Auntie” but less often authentic or “BFF” but less often elusive.  My roomies are some of my favorite people on the planet, forever friends, who I probably could have gone on living with far longer than I actually did.

My nomadic lifestyle feels less abnormal amongst my artist friends in NY and LA.  Gypsies of the theatrical nature, for example, take month or season long bookings out of state for jobs they auditioned for while burning through roommates back in Astoria or Brooklyn or on the Upper West Side.  Rent hikes in these cities make it nearly impossible to stay in a place for more than a year or two, max.  Roommate shuffling and recycling is rather commonplace.  Perhaps my habit of subletting my rooms out while I spent summers in cities like Nantucket and Cambridge contributed to my count rising as high as it has. 

I think David and I might have hooked up had I lived on Martel longer.  I’m glad my crush on Dan had subsided before we went in on the Nantucket house together.   I feel like I actually know what it would be like to be married to Marco.

39 roommates!  The big 4-0 I have big plans for.  High hopes.  Steep standards.  You see, before I agree to share my living space with one more person that person will have to have put a proverbial ring on it.   I’m tired of learning the ins and outs of living with others only to uproot before long.   At this point, I can live with anyone.  No quirk of theirs is too quirky, no peeve of mine easy enough to be pet.  But I want what Katherine Heigl’s character gets at the end of the romcom.  My happy ending will be the one who feels like home.