In honor of the end of one of my favorite shows, this Sunday's quote comes from Pam's last talking head during The Office finale:
"I
didn’t watch the whole documentary. After a few episodes it was too
painful. I kept wanting to scream at Pam. It took me so long to do so
many important things. It’s just hard to accept that I spent so many
years being less happy than I could have been. Jim was five feet from my
desk and it took me four years to get to him. It would be great if
people saw this documentary and learned from my mistakes. Not that I’m a
tragic person, I’m really happy now; but it would just make my heart
soar if someone out there saw this and she said to herself ‘Be strong,
trust yourself, love yourself, conquer your fears, just go after what
you want and act fast because life just isn’t that long.’"
Yes? Yes.
rebuild sundays: thoughts to stir into your coffee or tea. previous sundays here.
Because it wouldn't be honest to say I have just one tooth, really. I have sweet teeth aplenty. (And several savory molars.)
But... Can I start out by saying sorry I've checked in so sporadically? Part of it is good-- just in time for June, Chicago weather has taken a turn toward spring (we will take what we can get), I'm feeling like a normal human again after surgery, and in general it feels like some of those dark clouds seemingly tethered to me by a string for the last several months have dissipated. In other words, I've been slightly more active, and slightly less couch (and tear) prone.
Part of it is not as good-- we've had irritating technology issues with our various Apple devices as of late, but besides all that, really I've just been procrastinating. I have things to write, I just haven't written them. I have pictures to show, but then I talk myself out of it because my computer basically has a panic attack when I try to transfer any pictures over from my camera, and then I get frustrated and have one of my own.
I want to write more.
I've been thinking a lot lately, about what I want, and the life I live, and what exactly is "good enough" for me once I take away all of those deeply engrained ideas of how it all was supposed to look by now. Or what girls like me are have supposed to have achieved by now. I don't even know really who I'm referring to when I say "girls like me," because I oscillate between wildly disparate ideas of who and what I should be right now. Part of me wanted to grow up and marry young and breed young, and bask in the glory of a (hopefully) non-dysfunctional family of one's own. If I think about things that way, I've failed. An old maid of twenty-eight who is merely engaged and has nary a baby in sight, human or canine. Who lives in an apartment for God's sake. Where is my house and garden? Where is my Mormon craft blog? It's like a terribly banal rewrite of Once in a Lifetime. And now is a good time for us to enjoy a Talking Heads musical break:
The other part thought that because I went to good schools and then paid obscene amounts of money to go to more good schools, and just for kicks, another two years of good graduate school after that-- let's retroactively go back and put quotation marks around all of those "good"s-- that I should now somehow be a person of distinction. Distinguished by the obscene amounts of money that I have spent and now make from doing distinguished work of distinction. Got that?
Only I have no desire to do that. There's no career that leaps out to me, begging to be conquered. I taught because I love children. Kids. I just want kids. And that kind of seems like a blasphemous thing for a woman with a higher education in this day and age to say out loud. But here I am, four months out from officially resigning from my job-- a housefiancé for all intents and purposes. A housefiancé with a master's degree who has absolutely no desire to re-enter the traditional professional workforce for the moment (...if ever). Who would be completely happy to spend her life managing a household as long as she still had her creative pursuits. Can we say that out loud and not have the gods of academia and broken glass ceilings throw thunderbolts upon us?
A housefiancé with a master's degree who recently decided she was going to nanny part-time because she missed kids so desperately. I started last week. Just a handful of hours each week. It's not "work" in the sense of cashmoney and W2s, but it feels good to be doing what I love again. And about two hours in, I'd already fallen in love with this sweet babygirl. We read and sing and take walks. Well, I do those things. She is three months old and is just along for the ride.
Also, I've been (re)submerged in wedding planning. And redecorating. I go through phases. My bridesmaids have received 864 emails about dresses in the last two weeks. And I may or may not have semi-accidentally won 9 ebay auctions for things to redecorate the apartment. And accidentally-on-purpose purchased six vintage chairs from two different thrift stores in the last two days. I thought Kevin might kill me. He still may.
But this post was supposed to be about pancakes. Had I not made that clear so far?
In the midst of all of the aforementioned, I've stayed away from writing and have been taking the decidedly easier route of pressing "pin it" on pretty pictures of dresses and food, because I'm still just a few weeks in and my Pinterest obsession hasn't died down. That, coupled with the dishwasher that has made life worth living again, has brought me back into the kitchen for the first time in years. I've made soups and Thai salads, coconut date bars and chocolate chip oatmeal pancakes. It's the latter that I really want to talk about.
When I want frozen waffles doused in maple syrup, or Pop Tarts, or Milano cookies, these pancakes are there for me. They are good. Mine come out misshapen and lumpy, but if you click over to the original recipe by the Minimalist Baker, you can see her visual documentation of pancake perfection. The ingredients she lists are simple:
¼ cup whole wheat or unbleached flour (or sub other flour)
3 Tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips (non-dairy for vegan)
And they're delicious. I didn't know what to expect the first time I tried these, especially since I made some minor changes based on our current kitchen stock: peanut butter for almond butter, no vanilla, and some coconut flakes for kicks. They're dense and chewy, kind of the antithesis of the fluffy buttermilk variety of pancake, but they're amazing.
And they're just what I need when those cravings come rushing in--these pancakes are simple. And this simplicity means I can throw out all of my preconceived notions about what a pancake should look like and what a pancake should be and what a "good" pancake should have achieved by this point in its life... and just enjoy myself pancake for a goddamned minute.
So indulge that sweet tooth. Indulge several of them. Make some simplified pancakes. Be a housewife if you want to be a housewife. Climb the career ladder if you want to climb the career ladder. Do none of it, or all of it. Just enjoy it, okay?
P.S. If you haven't seen it already, Radical Possibility's Meg Zandi--a fellow Chicagoan and pigeon-battler-- has her house tour up on Apartment Therapy!
Tried to find the original source; this was the closest I got.
I'm actually starting to be able to hear "things will be okay" and not immediately come up with fifty reasons to counter that sentiment (global warming, gun violence in Chicago, North Korea doing whatever the hell it is that North Korea's doing, me having a headache so maybe it means I'm dying, and so forth).
I'm actually starting to be able to hear "things will be okay" and kind of believe it. I won't believe it all the way. But I've let a little part of me believe.
And that right there's some progress.
rebuild sundays: thoughts to stir into your coffee or tea. previous sundays here.
The Machine, you guys. The Machine. The Machine has made a new woman out of me.
The way I'm leading into this is sounding all sorts of creepy, so let me backtrack and set this up differently.
I really don't like doing the dishes. Really don't like is a total understatement. I despise handwashing dishes. I get all crazy and convince myself that I'm not getting them clean enough, and then it takes me forever, and I get myself all worked up. Plus, the heat of the water (even with gloves!) has led to weird outbreaks of eczema on my fingers in the last few years.
Do not like. Loathe. Abhor. Detest. Thesaurus.
I once kept a relationship going a bit longer than it should have because he would come over and do my dishes. That's how much I hate doing them. None of my vintage Chicago apartments have ever had a dishwasher. Not a one.
So when Kevin moved in and offered to be on permanent dish duty--I graciously countered by volunteering to take care of all the crying--I thought I'd be set. But within the last few months, as he became busier with projects at work, the dishes weren't getting done. And I was going insane. We needed a dishwasher.
We're renters, so we didn't have the option of buying and installing a unit. So I started doing research on portable dishwashers, those mythical beasts I'd heard of once or twice. Once I learned some more, I became convinced. And after a nice presentation extolling the virtues of such an appliance (and some begging), an order was placed. An order for the Machine.
It arrived about three, maybe four weeks ago, and it has changed my life. My dishes are clean, I don't have to worry about whether the water was hot enough to actually sanitize them, and I've been COOKING. With pots and pans! All because I know that the Machine will take care of the mess when I finish.
Glorious is too weak a word. I am Humbert Humbert and the Machine is my Lolita.
If you are a dishwasher-less small space dweller, I cannot recommend a countertop dishwasher enough. I'm willing to wager it will make you a happier, better person. Or maybe you are a normal human who is capable of handwashing her dishes without having a meltdown. But even then, I bet you will still like it when a machine does your dishes for you.
It is a big hulking appliance that takes up counterspace, but it's worth it. Especially since we brought in an old dresser to repurpose as a kitchen sideboard last year, which gives us a little more surface to work with.
Two things will dictate where you place your dishwasher: it needs to be plugged in, and it has two hoses that need to be close enough to your sink that they can be connected to your faucet. And that is it. The only caveat is when the hoses are connected to your faucet to run water through the washer, you cannot use your tap. But who would need to? A MACHINE is doing your DISHES! And when the cycle is over, you remove the hose hook-up and turn off the faucet and that is it.
I love you, Machine. Machine, light of my life,
fire of my loi-- aaaaand we're back to creepy. Anyways.
If you're interested in knowing more about countertop and portable dishwashers, I gathered information here and here. We ultimately bought on Amazon. The purchase was a bit of a splurge, but it has made such a difference in the way that I function in/ use my kitchen that it has been well worth the price.
Now I'm wondering where else a bit of smart spending would make a huge difference in the way I do things in and feel about our place... Have you ever bought something for your home that was a game changer?
Well, holy cow. I write to you today wearing one of Kevin's shirts that's misbuttoned so the tail on the left is a good six inches lower than the right, with a travel pillow propping up my head, and a gigantic 32 oz. sippy cup of water at my side. It is a good look.
I got walloped by surgery.
Have you ever had surgery? I have not. I've never been under general anethesia before, but I've gotten stitches twice and I survived so I figured I'd be fine.
Not the same thing.
I'm fine and I scheduled this and there's nothing wrong with me, but for whatever reason (read: naivete), I didn't expect surgery on one small localized part of my body would lay me up for so many days. It has. I've felt just a smidge off my game, what with the crying and the endless hours of Netflix and the incessant swabs of hydrogen peroxide, and that combined with heavy prescription narcotics has (thankfully) kept me from publishing any ill-advised screeds on the worldwide web for all to read. (But oh, not even Vicodin can keep me from mindlessly clicking things on Pinterest, because look at this stupid dog in his stupid gingham bowtie! Who does he think he is? Al Roker?)
In other words, hello, I miss you, I'm well, just coming down from an extended period of batty-ness, is all. Expecting to be up and at 'em this week, provided I can get some sleep. Looking forward to catching up.
P.S. Did you read this? It is good. It also convinced me that I'm going to fall short as a mother and be institutionalized, because I have an uncanny way of taking other people's misfortunes and twisting them into gnarled, bleak visions of my own future. Happy Monday!
