cooking up friendship

How do you solve the problem of lives that never seem to intersect? Dinner.

She still lives in Bethesda, but works Downtown at Children's Hospital. I work in Silver Spring but live downtown. She goes to Baltimore on the weekends to visit her boyfriend of three (almost four, right?) years who is still at UMBC. And I, well, I'm generally everywhere on the weekends.

We realized one afternoon in the summer before I moved that unless we came up with a standing date in the middle of the week, we'd never see each other.

Enter: Wednesday Night Dinner.

We meet at my place (it's on her way home) and cook ourselves a fabulous meal (sometimes, we've only had one disaster), complete with wine, beer or a stiffer drink if the work week's calling for it. And we talk as we cook. It's girl time. It's cheap. And it's wonderful.

About two months into it we instated the 1-new thing rule. We must cook one new thing every meal. It can be something we've had before, it can even be an old family recipe, but we cannot have ever made it ourselves. So now, about 7 months later, we're really becoming chefs. We even grilled for the first time last week. A huge accomplishment for someone who's only ever watched her dad grill (me) and someone who grew up a vegetarian (her). They say you should do one thing a day that scares you, well, we do one thing a week. And it's not scary because we have each other.

A quick list of successes:

• Shrimp curry
• Fattoush salad, kafta and tzatziki sauce with home-made pita chips
• Lettuce wraps P.F. Chang-style
• Pad Thai
• Roasted asparagus with creamy mustard chicken with grapes
• Chicken with balsamic glaze
• Shrimp scampi

Four hands, two brains and my tiny kitchen make for wonderful Wednesday nights. A welcome respite at the middle of the week to help us over the hump and into the downhill of the rest of the week. The best part is that it's become a routine, which has even started to include a jasmine tea "ceremony" as we watch last week's episode of "30 Rock" or "The Office."

I've realized as I get older that when you're not seeing your friends every day at school, maintaining friendships, particularly really close, meaningful friendships, becomes harder and harder. It takes effort and time, and in our case, it takes lots of olive oil.

She and I are thinking about starting a blog about our dinners ... complete with recipes and photos and stories ... so stay tuned!

snowy misery on foot

Warning: Mild-mannered rant to follow

Snowmagedden '10 has made it very obvious that there is very little respect for pedestrians in this city.

Taking to the streets to walk basically anywhere means taking your life into your hands. If the sidewalks are actually scraped clean, which about 50 percent are not, then they have random icy patches. Those that aren't scraped are landmines of ankle-rupturing pits and valleys. I understand that the roads are the first priority, but the roads are, at this point, at least passable by one lane of traffic. This isn't the case for the majority of sidewalks.

My usual commute to and from work takes me across a bridge on Connecticut Avenue. It's the "lion" bridge in Woodley Park for you Washingtonians. The bridge is incredibly high, and as a result is terribly blustery. There are sidewalks on either side of the bridge, as with most bridges. The roads have been clear since last Friday. The sidewalks are still dangerously covered in snow. As a result, pedestrians are forced to walk either in the street, being dodged mercilessly by ruthlessly fast traffic, or they must trudge laboriously through on the sidewalks, which are now slushy and incredibly hard to walk on. I nearly broke my ankle three times yesterday night. I'd forgotten about the mess and got off at the "wrong" stop. My alternative to falling and possibly pitching over the side of the bridge is walking an additional 1/4 mile up-hill from Dupont Circle. Not really that big of a deal, but at 9 p.m. when it's about 20 degrees out, that extra 1/4 mile sucks. A lot.

And let's not forget about the fear inspired by those in their 1-ton vehicles who are so pissed off that their commute is taking them 2 hours instead of 1 that they're ready to mow over any helpless pedestrian who happens to get in their way. Today, while walking up the hill in high heels carrying 1/6 of my body weight in groceries in 20 degree weather, I had to stare down a driver (who then gave me the finger) so he wouldn't hit me as I crossed with the light in a cross walk. I'm sorry, but you're sitting in your heated car. I'm walking up-hill in high heels carrying groceries and it's cold. You're honestly going to give me the finger? Seriously?

Now, I understand that no one is happy right now. Snowpocalypse has ruined our routines, and forced us all to languish over the possibility of high energy bills, broken ankles and thrown-out backs, 3-hour commutes from hell and any number of other snow-related stressers. And I know that DC has never been known as the kindest city, but come on!

The snow will melt. The road crews will scrape the sidewalks. Until then though, can we try not to kill each other? And can we maybe all band together to petition the city government to scrape the sidewalks a little faster so I can stop walking in the street and get out of your way?

The snow is ugly. It's like a brown slush-ee. Not so great. But why fight it? Yeah it sucks, but maybe if we all just tried to smile a little more, and understand that eventually it will be spring, and eventually we will see flowers and sun, and hell, grass, again someday, we can get through this.

And please watch out for pedestrians.

way too long.

Goodness it's been ages since I've done this ... and for that I truly apologize!

It's funny how when you actually have something to write about, when life is finally busy enough to be interesting -- you don't have any time to write about it.

Suffice it to say: My life at the moment is busy, but in a non-stressful way. Interesting, but in a non-dramatic way. And fun, exciting and all the other things people look for in moments of "good" in their lives.

I recognize that it's important that I keep up with my writing. The muscles will start to atrophy after a while, just like all other muscles. I can already feel the disintegration. Lately, my writing has been comprised of emails, the occasional memo and other random snippets at work. This just isn't going to cut it.

There will be more. I'm going to do it. It's time.

gratitude

In the vein of http://1000awesomethings.com/ and Mama Cass's Gushing with Gratitude, here are the 10 things I'm thankful for this week. I encourage everyone to participate in the practice of saying thank you (it doesn't really matter to whom you say it -- just projecting it is a good thing), because I've realized that even when you feel like you're living in a land of suck, there are always things, no matter how small (and some of mine are small), that make the world a better place.

Without further ado, my 10 good things of the week:

10. I just turned on the TV to my favorite part of Caddyshack. I changed the channel and landed on my favorite episode of Friends. Changed the channel again to find my favorite scene of Top Gun.

09. There is a beautiful tree outside the window of my cube at work. It's been steadily changing colors, from green to gold, to orange, and now it's a rich burgandy. Tomorrow I fully expect the leaves to begin to disappear -- but it's been absolutely gorgeous while it's lasted. Seeing it makes my day brighter, more colorful.

08. Because I haven't been to the grocery store in about two-three weeks, I've been forced to be really creative about what I cook in the past week. And the results have been generally tastey. I'm proud of my ingenuity and impressed by my cooking skills.

07. I'm finally, finally, going to send my friend a care package. I'm thankful for finally finding motivation to just send it!

06. I figured out an awesome Halloween costume that is the right blend of creative, funny, clever and scary (with a bit more modification).

05. I got one of those coupon inserts from the paper in my mailbox yesterday, upon looking through it, about 1/2 of the coupons were for things that I need to buy in the next few days/weeks. I've estimated that I'll probably save more than $15 simply because I got some junk mail that I took the time to look at before I tossed it in the recycle bin.

04. I made it safely to and from Elon this weekend. The car survived and so did I.

03. I had lunch with my 91-year-old Grandma.

02. My yoga instructor's topic of guided mediation made me recognize a need to refocus, realign and rebuild. Her message: Surrendering to what is, is not the same as giving up, rather it's a realization and acceptance of a situation with the intent to move forward toward the better; and finding the courage and strength to surrender is an incredible and powerful ability.

01. I'm convinced I have the best friends in the world.

be here now.

Lyrics are beautiful. Music is beautiful. The whole show was beautiful. Ray Lamontagne, you've stolen my heart.

practicing the art of an open palm

The image of the open palm is universal. It has different meanings across pretty much every culture: Buddhism has about six different mudras (hand positions) that use the gesture of the open hand, and each has a slightly different meaning. Catholics use the gesture when recieving the Euchrist to signify an openness to the glory of the body of Christ and a sense of wanting. The list could go on and on, but if we were to draw a common thread across the cultures, the open palm is a symbol of a sense of willingness to accept what is given.

My grandmother had a saying: "You can hold sand in the palm of your hand forever, but as soon as you close your fist and try to hold on tight, it will all fall through."

Lately, I've been attempting to practice the art of an open palm. In my yoga class, my instructor often asks us to focus on acceptance of the moment and things within our power to control. Does your leg hurt? Move it to the left. Are you cranky? Maybe you're hungry, eat something and drink some water. Are you tired? Take a nap.

If only all of life's questions were that easy, right? But I think, to some extent, maybe there is something to it. I think maybe when we get frustrated, we're not asking ourselves the right questions. We're frustrated because we're asking ourselves questions we cannot answer. What do I want to do with my life? Why am I here? What am I doing in this job that I hate? When is he going to marry me?

My friend Bridget says that the best way to talk to kids is by asking them questions they can answer. They'll never learn to behave if you start off by asking them why they did something wrong. They have no clue. You have to ask them things that they know: Are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you thirsty? Do you have to go to the bathroom? Now, I am, by no means and expert on parenting, but I feel like most of the time, the source of the problem is probably somewhere within reach after a few rounds of those sorts of questions.

I feel like we (adults) are probably about the same way. I think it's about asking the right questions of ourselves at the right magnitude. We cannot arrange world peace, end world hunger or make someone love us. But we can do things to change and affect the way that we participate in the world.

To me, acceptance, or allowing the sand to lay in our palms, does not mean complacency. It does not mean blindly ignoring the world and allowing it to trample us. Practicing an open palm, to me, means knowing when action is needed and when it isn't.

into the bin

I moved this past Saturday. Unlike all the moves I've done before, to and from college, this move was particularly special. I moved into my own place. A place that I pay for with my own money, without help from anyone else. This is a big deal for a number of reasons. For me, it means insurmountable increases in independence that had be lost since moving home after graduation. It means learning about unclogging toilets, hammering nails, painting walls and calling Pepco when our power is out. And it means that never again in my life is my parents' home "my home." I will, in all likelihood, never again live with my parents for longer than a week.

And that, in so many ways, is incredibly bittersweet.

I could go into all the sappiness about how I feel about being left to my own accord with rent payments and such, but that's not really what this post is about. What it's about is all the stuff that I found when I started packing up the bedroom I've occupied since I was 8 years old.

We moved to the house we live in now the summer after I was in fourth grade. I think this is significant because I feel like the age of 8 is sort of when, developmentally, you start to have things that are significant to you on a new level. Sure when you're little you have your pacifier, or your special blankie, or pilly if you're my cousin Melanie, but I think after about fourth grade, you start to have things that you collect that are significant because of things that happened to you.

Now, I'm not a scrap-booker. I never have been, and I sort of never want to be. But I do save things. Most of them end up on bulletin boards or in boxes. My anti-scrapbooking mentality has nothing to do with any lack of creativity, it has more to do with a lack of time and a desire to allow the objects and things that I save to speak for themselves. I've always felt like I was a photo/memory minimalist. Let it stand for itself. No frills, lace or goofy catch-phrases needed.

Now, let me clarify. I am, by no means, a hoarder, a pack-rat or anything else along those lines. Things that I save are things that would normally go into a scrapbook, like a Charlie card from a visit to Boston. A button from a march in DC. A drawing a friend gave me in seventh grade. Random things that hold value and importance to me.

So this past week, as I was packing up, I started uncovering the stuff. The bits and pieces of my life that I'd saved for who knows what reason. The cool thing is that most of the stuff, I could tell you right away where it came from.

But then came the hard part: I had to get rid of it. It couldn't come with me to my little apartment, and at some point, my mom would want "my room" back to use for something else. It'll all have to go eventually.

I had to physically throw away the odds and ends, trinkets and stubs, of my childhood and adolescence. And the weirdest part of it all was that for the most part, I was OK with it. There were some things I kept, just because they were very, very significant. But most things ended up in the trash bin with the old pair of flip flops, the broken picture frame and the other refuse that had been collecting dust in my room since the 1990s.

I'm sure there are somethings I'll never be OK with tossing, and I think that's normal.