Hey-O

A few quick notes:

1) It is birthday week! So I bought and am savoring the following items... yum yum yum.

2) On the lower right side of my blog you will scroll and find new additions to my "favorite blogs" section. The Bloggess, Maddie the Coonhound, and 30-Nothings. All great and worth checking out, in my opinion.

3) I got an interview for a job I didn't really want or feel qualified for and I turned it down. Surprisingly empowering experience. I applied because I felt desperate, I said no later on because I realize I'm not that desperate. Whew.

4) One more week until yoga starts.

5) I'm a nail-biting fool. In a bad way. My anxiety is getting the best of me and I might finally do something about it. Maybe several things, even. And that feels good.

6) I am so grateful for SB. He is an incredible man. He works so hard all day, and then he comes home and, when I need it, he takes care of me. He does the dishes. He laughs at my jokes. He loves me just as I am, band-aids and all.

7) Yes, I have been reading 1Q84 for more than 6 months. I'm pretty slow when it comes to getting through a book, despite the fact that I love books and love to read. But anyway, it is such an amazing book. I actually don't want it to ever end. Fortunately for me, I'm only 520 pages in, which is about half-way. But I'm going to have to pick it up a notch, because all I've requested for my birthday are more books. Here is what is on my reading list this Winter:

- Cooked, Michael Pollan
- Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon
- Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson
- Travel books about France and Spain
- Moby Dick, because I'm determined to finally read it cover-to-cover

8) Have I posted this poem before? It was featured in the front cover of our homemade joint-family cookbook. I LOVE it. Enjoy!

Perhaps the World Ends Here

BY JOY HARJO

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Poached

I am a big fan of runny poached eggs. SB and I eat poached eggs on toast with fresh tomato and chipotle hot sauce just about every Saturday and Sunday morning. So delicious. And recently, after watching a few episodes of "Mind of a Chef" featuring the ridiculous and kind of awesome David Chang, I found a new platform for my favorite egg - ramen.

Normally when I think of ramen, I think of those brightly colored instant ramen packages filled with hard noodles and salty flavor packets. I think of my laziest days of college, eating instant ramen out of a styrofoam cup just by adding boiling hot water. Voila! Three minutes later you've got a meal. And although David Chang loves instant ramen, nearly every single episode of the show (regardless of the show theme) features freshly made ramen and the art of creating a beautiful meal with it.

And one way to make a beautiful ramen dish, is to top the ramen with a poached egg.

This winter I shall bring ramen back, but this time make it good and fresh and with a runny yolk on top. It'll also give me a reason to make chicken stock, which I've thought about making but never quite got over the hump of how long it takes.

Out of My Vulcan Mind

I'm not sure if it is anxiety manifesting itself, or if it is some need for structure in achieving goals, or if it is a result of wedding planning hysteria, but I have been obsessively planning one thing after another lately. I take so much pleasure in it, but also feel swept up and admittedly carried away with my plans. It is hard for me to stop once I start. And some of the things that I'm planning don't really need to be figured out at this point, and perhaps even shouldn't be... hence the conclusion that I'm out of my vulcan mind.

My fav Star Trek character, Mr. Spock, prizes logic above all else.

Fortunately for me, I'm self-aware enough to know that all of this planning isn't particularly healthy, and I signed myself up for 10 weeks of community ed yoga -- and not the tough yoga for getting fit - the kind for chilling out your body and mind and getting centered (well, that wasn't all in the class description, but it is what I'm hoping to get out of it).

In the meantime, here are some of my recent plans:

1. I have been working on figuring out our mid-term financial plans, in a general sense, and how much money we will need to save in the next 5 years to travel, buy a house, and start a family.

2. SB and I have decided, for better (for our sanity) and for worse (for our savings account), to actively search for a new apartment. We haven't put in our notice just yet, and will have to decide whether or not to do that at the end of this month. Big decision, since we've been where we are for so long and love it despite the fact that we've outgrown it. So many considerations in a new place. Overwhelmed.

3. Because it is more fun than #1 and #2, and was born out of #1, I have been particularly stuck on thinking about the Europe trip that we want to take in the next two years. As of right now we've got the money to take the trip this summer, and part of me wants to jump on it while we've got the savings - that way when we get back we can focus on savings for a house. Also I fear that if we wait on taking our trip we'll end up postponing it and never get there pre-babies. Probably irrational, but you never know. So far my thinking has been a delight, and is focused on France and Spain (well, at least Barcelona, but MAN do I want to go to the Prado in Madrid). Anyway, I became an expert on travel in France in about 4 days... so I need to take a break... but it is so fun to think about... oy vey.

4. I still need to find a new job. Have recently applied for several. No word back yet. Stressful in light of #1, #2, and #3. Ug.

Well, time to switch the laundry. Thank goodness for such immediate needs that keep me in the moment and out of my head. Perhaps this is why cooking and baking, canning, and needlework are my favorite activities - when I do them, my mind chatter ceases.

Lazy Sunday

Making the Most

Growing up is hard and rewarding.

These days I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around longer-term financial planning. I’ve always been fairly good at managing my money, but the thought of planning for investments as big as a house, let alone the cost of raising kids and paying for their college educations, especially in light of our student loan debt, is really intimidating. But, as is true in most things, you have control over the choices you make and there are always trade-offs.

So it feels like it is soul-searching time to determine the real role of money in our lives and our priorities for using the money we earn.

I’ve had some really interesting role models in life, who I’ve admired precisely for their values in relationship to money. First, a former teacher and mentor shared with me that she decided to work part-time, even though it would mean feeling broke, so that she could spend more time with her family (she had a young daughter). Another friend and mentor decided to move from working in a city to rural living – with her husband, raising children (and food) very self-sufficiently on one income. It is easy to envy having that kind of time to spend with your family, doing work that is seemingly so much more meaningful than an office job, but must also be very hard work to make ends meet and make any long-term financial plans for yourself or your children. I knew another woman who liked to say, “I work to travel” – and she made ends meet cheaply while saving as much money as she could to travel abroad as often as possible.

My parents seemed to be able to do it all – live in a nice house in a great neighborhood, help pay for my education, and travel fairly often to boot.

But most, if not all, of these role models are of a generation without staggering student loan debt. At this point, SB and I have a net worth of something like -$60K (let’s face it, more like -$70K). It makes planning for the future seem particularly daunting. And although financial planning can be discouraging because it feels like there will never be enough money for buying a home, starting a family, travel, etc., there exists the reality that people get by on a lot less money and make it work. If we can’t afford to buy a home in the city or travel abroad, we will live in the suburbs and go camping for vacation. Heck, if one of us loses our job we'll just live in an apartment, share a car, and skip vacations - we'd still be better off than plenty of people and still have each other and our friends and family for love, support and laughter. There are so many ways to live, but for me - family will always be the bottom line. And fortunately, in that department, SB and I share a great wealth.

Waking up in the Dark

Well, we are back to school. This morning SB was out of the house by 6am and our apartment was dark and cold when I got up. I guess it really IS September. In preparation for this change and SB's return to an endlessly busy schedule, we crammed in a LOT over this last long Labor Day weekend.  A few highlights:

- We went out for dinner, dessert and a movie on our one-month wedding anniversary. I think that Woody Allen movies will be part of many occasions to come - delightful, even when heavy content.

- 5 hours of MN State Fair fun including a sky ride, bonsai exhibit, crop art, K-9 unit demonstration, and FOOD: portobello tips, roasted corn, falafel, sweet martha's cookies and, of course, cheese curds.

- We made about 10 cups of fresh salsa and canned 5 pints of crushed tomatoes. Holy smokes, tomatoes are such a bear - between skin removal and seed removal. I thought that we were going to get more than 5 pints out of our huge bucket of romas, but c'est la vie. We also had friends over to bottle our next beer, which is a wheat beer.

- We went out for our annual end-of-summer fancy meal. This time we went to 112 Eatery in MPLS, because we got a gift card for our wedding. It was exquisite. Although the waiter was a bit snooty, in my opinion. We ate: cauliflower fritters, mussels, honeyed carrots, frog legs, pasta with foie gras meatballs (Let me just say that I wasn't going to eat a meatball because foie gras is morally objectionable, but they were all the hype at this restaurant so I tried one. We were both underwhelmed, particularly given the circumstances of how it arrived on our plate). We finished the meal with butterscotch budino, a delicious salted caramel custard/pudding. All in all, a meal of a lifetime.

- Time with each family was also part of our weekend. We saw each set of parents, siblings, and our niece. All pretty quick trips, but still nice to see each other before kicking off another busy school year.