See? I told you my new footie pajamas were awesome. Don’t hate on my awesomeness. You can get your own pair at Target.
Month: November 2009
Footie Pajamas
Posted by – November 30, 2009
I’m pretty sure I had the most awesome weekend ever, but I can’t even really remember what happened. Not that I was passed out or anything, it just feels like the longest weekend I’ve had in awhile, and I’m trying to put together all the pieces. It’s kind of a blur. I’m literally flipping through my Twitter account trying to remember what I did on Friday, but clearly I was having too much fun to keep close records. On Saturday Leo and I ran Green Lake. It’s the first time I’ve run Green Lake in awhile, and Leo was delighted about it. He chased down every last duck who dared approach the shore, and he gave a few squirrels a run for their money, too. Green Lake is just such a gorgeous run in all seasons, but I especially love doing it while the weather is cool and crisp like this. It reminded me of last fall, the first time I ever attempted to run Green Lake, and then the first time I ran all the way around without stopping. I have come so tremendously far since then. Everything is different. I am so different. A year changes everything. Can you guys believe I ran a half-marathon almost a year ago? I’m like one of those people on The Biggest Loser, I swear.
Today I went to my happy place, Target, because I wanted a down comforter. I have an adorable Target shabby chic blanket that I’ve been using forever, but it’s just too cold in the mornings these days. I need something heavier. I also wanted a down mattress topper to replace my foam mattress topper, but it feels like no one carries thick down bedding anymore. I have this image from my childhood of these giant down comforters and mattress toppers, and all anyone carries these days are these crappy little one-inch “down alternative” pieces of crap. What the fuck? I WANT DEAD GEESE IN MY BED.
Also, Target has a better bedding selection than Bed Bath and Beyond. What is the point of having a specialty store if Target beats you on selection and price? Do you know what else they have at Target right now? PAJAMAS WITH FEET. FOR ADULTS. I got a pair in pink with bunnies on it and it is all I am going to wear for the rest of my life. The other thing I did while at Target was browse through the list of best-selling books, particularly of the chick-lit variety. What I realized is that they are, for the most part, not brilliantly written. I’m still plugging away at my novel, but I get sooo discouraged, because I feel like it’s crappy writing and no one will ever want to read it. But it’s not like the best-selling chick novels right now are fucking poetry — they’re all about connecting and entertaining readers. I just put such a great deal of pressure on myself that it becomes crippling and self-defeating. I have this image in my head of what a novel I write should be like, and I hold myself to that furiously, but the truth is that I’ve never been able to accurately predict how any creative endeavor in my life will turn out. Why should this be any different?
I texted my best friend tonight with a picture of me in my pink footie pajamas (Body text: “I hope you are prepared to die of jealousy”) and she texted back “I love it! Hope your novel is going well.” It made me feel happy that someone was thinking of me and rooting me on in this endeavor. I’m assuredly the luckiest girl in the world in the friends department, even if I can’t write a decent fucking book.
Peace
Posted by – November 27, 2009
Thanksgiving today was amazing. Uhhhhhhhhhmazing. We really hit it out of the ballpark with this one, kids. The food was completely amazing. Every. Single. Dish was out of this world. You can get a little glimpse into our day, and also into how cute my dog is, in the video above. Please note that my original song choice for this video was Jack’s Mannequin “Resolution,” but YouTube rejected it, so I went with Sophie B. Hawkins’ “Did We Not Choose Each Other,” which is OK, but you can watch the video as it was originally envisioned here.
I posted the video of me cooking on Evil Beet, but I’ll repost here for SIAM readers who don’t have secret celebrity gossip obsessions (all two of you):
The cream cheese corn casserole was a giant hit, as were the candied yams. Both worked very well making them last night and refrigerating them until today. The brie and cranberry sauce pastries were very, very good … the night I made them. They were still good the next day, but not amazing. Since they only take 10 minutes to bake, I should have just made them when I got to the party. Lesson learned (and passed along). But I was really, really proud of myself that I cooked all alone, with no adult supervision, and people really liked my dishes. I felt like a real grown-up.
Mostly, though, I just felt so blessed to be surrounded by people I love so much, people who emanate joy and love and tolerance and inclusiveness. I’m grateful that I seek out people like that to call my friends, and I’m grateful that people like that accept me into their lives. We all enjoyed an amazing dinner together, then the girls sat on the couch and laughed our asses of at Four Christmases (highly recommended) while the boys played shoot-em-up video games in the next room. Meanwhile, all our dogs were running around playing together. It made me think: In the future, it’s going to be our kids running around playing together.
When my mother and father moved to Arizona, they had no family there. They created a circle of close friends, and they all spent holidays together. Eventually, they all married and had children and we would all spend holidays together, a wonderful group of Arizona aunties and uncles and cousins. I look at this group of people from today, and I see them as being my Seattle family, just like how my parents created their Arizona family. I see them as being the people whose kids will fight with my kids over who gets the last slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. I am beginning to feel a part of something greater, to see a love-filled and beautiful life in my future, a life I have created for myself. It’s kind of a rush.
I am also in a full-blown love affair with the city of Seattle. This time of year, I cannot stop photographing it. I cannot stop looking at it. The grays and the lights and the angles and the heights. It’s like the city has its hand right in my soul. I watch the cityscape clips on Grey’s Anatomy and my heart skips a beat. I am hopelessly in love with Seattle. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I’m so grateful that God brought me here, so I could go through a very rough patch in my life surrounded by such beauty and such kindness, and so that I could come out the other end in a city that storms often and carries freedom in the wind.
IT’S ALMOST THANKSGIVING!
Posted by – November 25, 2009
Hooray!!! You guys, I have two favorite holidays: Halloween and Thanksgiving. Halloween this year was AMAZING, and I’m starting to get really excited about Thanksgiving, too. Like last year, I’ll be spending the holiday with Trisha and Jesse (who are MARRIED now!!!), but this year we’ll have a few other members of our “Seattle family” with us. It won’t be vegan like last year — the other folks demand a turkey! — but Trish and I are both doing all vegetarian dishes. It’s also my first time cooking for Thanksgiving by myself. I usually do it with my family, and last year Trish and I cooked together (with help from her amazing sister). But I am ready for the challenge! I did the grocery shopping today, and I am soooo super excited!! I am doing the candied yams (they will be so disgustingly packed with brown sugar and marshmallows!), and I’m also doing a cream cheese corn casserole and a dish a reader suggested on Facebook. I don’t even know what it’s called, but basically you put pie crust in a muffin tin, fill the “muffins” with brie and cranberry sauce, and pinch them closed and then throw the whole mess in the over. It sounds so delicious, and I hope I don’t fuck it up. :)
It will also be the first time in awhile that I’ve thrown calorie-counting to the wind. I have finally worked out my medication situation so I don’t have intense sugar cravings at 2 o’clock in the morning, and so I’m finally getting the opportunity to get in the shape I want to be in. I am busting ass at the gym almost every day and being really careful about what I eat. I’m losing weight on the scale — it’s amazing how fast it falls off when you eliminate the 1500 calories of sugar and carbs you were eating in the middle of the night — but, more importantly, I can feel my body changing. My muscles are becoming more pronounced, and I am finally getting those hot side-ab muscles — you know, the ones that line your pubic bone. I think those are so sexy, and they’re finally starting to show up on me. It’s really exciting, because I have been busting my ass working out for a long time now, but that can only help up to a certain point when you can’t get your eating under control. And now that I am finally able to control what I eat more specifically, it’s been really rewarding to see all that work pay off in cool little muscles I never believed I could have. Getting my body to where I want it has kind of turned into my latest project. I’m completely addicted to going to the gym and kicking my own ass and seeing progress. I really love it these days, and I look forward to going every day. My trainer Kristen keeps suggesting that I should start training to enter a fitness competition next year. I don’t think I’ll do it, but it’s in the back of my mind as a possible goal, if I run out of other useful goals. Kristen was like, “When you first stumbled in here, you smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, you told me you pretty much only ate Burger King and Taco Bell, and you could barely do a sit-up without having a coughing fit. Who are you?” Tee hee. I love being reminded of my progress. These days, Burger King sounds so gross.
I hung out tonight with Jaclyn, one of my best friends from LA who was in Seattle to visit her family for the holiday. She’s another one of those rare and precious friends that I completely respect, that I can be completely honest with and never feel judged or feel like there’s some sort of power struggle in place. We just totally connect, like we’re cut from the same cloth, and we talked forever, and it was amazing. I still have a lot of unresolved issues regarding how and why I left Los Angeles — I’m starting to realize it was probably much more traumatic, and affected me much more deeply, than I initially admitted to myself — but I’m getting closer to resolving them. It got a lot worse before it got better, but it’s getting better, finally, and spending time with Jaclyn helped speed along the healing process. You really can’t put a price on good friends. I am so, so blessed in that department.
Last item: Leo has a Santa costume. It fits him perfectly, unlike the banana debacle. He will be debuting it at Thanksgiving dinner. Please start getting excited for the pictures.
Down Vests
Posted by – November 21, 2009
Normally on Fridays I’m home on my couch, never to be moved until Monday, by 6:30 pm. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went out on a Friday night in Seattle. The answer may be never. But today was a completely awesome day.
It started out at the office, where we’ve been celebrating 100 million RealPlayer SP video downloads all week. It’s a big deal around these parts. Here’s my friend Lacy and I posing at one of quite a few celebrations from this week:
Do you guys see what I am wearing? Mismatched denim and plaid. I look just like Lacy, who has lived in Seattle forever. With the onset of winter, my fashion sense is rapidly taking its cues from Seattleites. More on that later.
Today Lacy released the video I told you about. I think she did such an amazing job with it. It’s uber-cute. Chelsia and her gangsta chin-jut are at 0:30 and my head-banging is at 0:37:
After work I did some grocery shopping and some tanning (I know, I know, it’s terrible for my skin, but I swear to you it keeps me sane in this weather) and then went to meet my friend Kat for restorative yoga. I’ve blogged about it before, although this class was only 75 minutes as opposed to the three-hour ones I love. I was so excited for restorative yoga — where you find comfortable, “delicious” poses and hold them for 10-15 minutes while you breathe deeply and meditate. It’s just pure relaxation. I was looking forward to it because my legs muscles and my shoulder muscles are ON FIRE from the gym workouts I’ve done this week and then from dodgeball. I just needed to re-center my body without adding stress to my muscles. Unfortunately, our usual teacher was sick and we had a sub, who was like, “Yes, I know this is a restorative yoga class, but I think some light hatha flow work is also restorative.” So instead of spending an hour and fifteen minutes on my back, breathing and meditating, I was doing squats and down-dogs and basically all the exercises that would be most excruciating to my already excruciating muscles.
While I was disappointed, it’s good that the situation forced me to take a class with another yoga instructor. Normally I will not take anything if Lisa’s not teaching it, because Lisa is amazing and a yoga goddess and probably also my guru, but it’s nice to hear about yoga from someone completely different. I learned a lot from our substitute teacher, who clearly knew his yoga shit, and I was able to approach the practice from a new angle.
Afterward, I had dinner with Kat, and she’s one of those amazing girlfriends with whom I always just feel at ease. I can tell her things honestly — I can be vulnerable. I can tell her thoughts and feelings I have that I’m ashamed of, because they’re so silly and yet they consume so much of my thought space, and she puts it all in perspective for me. It’s so important to have friends in your life where you can do that, where you can say “These are the things that are wrong with me, this is the totally stupid and unwarranted resentment I’ve been carrying around toward some person I haven’t seen in two years, and here is a list of my insecurities,” and then they respond and you don’t feel judged. You don’t feel like they’re trying to act superior or prove that they’re smarter. You don’t feel that they will use your trust to betray you later. You just feel like you have a friend, a confidante, someone who can help you carry these things so it’s not all your burden, someone who can help you see the irrationality in your thought process, and someone who can just keep listening until you’re through it. I guess I’ve always had those friends. I’ve just been unwilling to open up to them, to show weakness. I had so much ego around the whole thing. But it’s something I’ve learned how to do just in the past three or four years, and I wish I’d learned it earlier. It makes life so much easier when you allow yourself to trust your friends.
After dinner, I did something I never ever do on a Friday night — I went out in Belltown. I put on makeup and brushed my hair and decided I was going to be a scenester. Starting with some amazing peeps I met at the Twitter conference, I’ve kind of been introduced to a whole different crew out here in Seattle, and I’m really impressed with them. They’re social media superstars, and all of them have a third-standard-deviation mastery of writing and web technology and marketing and just generally being a freakin’ blast to hang out with. Hanging out with them is also a really good way to keep my ego in check, and to practice humility. Their accomplishments and their skill sets are remarkable. I ended up meeting so many impressive people tonight, and having so many fantastic conversations, and my ass stayed out until nearly 1 am. On a Friday! I never do that. Anyway, see how much fun:
And look what I’m wearing here: a down vest. Let me tell you, that shit works. It was freezing and I kept my ass warm in this thing. I’m officially a Seattleite. I love my down vest, and I love Seattle.
