Chocobacon, sawed 12-packs, & cupcakes

Food and drink adventures lately:

Chocolate covered bacon lollipops.  I saw it on a menu and I just couldn't NOT try it. I mean, it's two of my favorite things to eat, so it couldn't be too bad.  BF was a little more disgusted by the idea, but he was also brave enough to take a bit.  The verdict for both of us was that it wasn't bad, but wasn't great.  Often when you combine two foods and flavors, something magical happens and it tastes like something new and fun and different.  In this case, however, it really just tasted like bacon dipped in chocolate.  Quite rich, as you can imagine.  But now I can say I've had it.  Many people can't.  Woop!

Drive-through liquor store?  This is a new concept to me, and seems a bit dangerous.  However not as bad as what I've heard exists in Texas, where they apparently have drive-through margarita venues.  Anyways, I did not have the guts to drive through myself, but what I found inside was just as strange.  Instead of a shopping store, as in you go and peruse the aisles and pick out what you want and then bring it up to a register, there was a counter blocked by huge plexiglass wall that spread from wall to wall.  The cashiers (who were all cute little Asian men, by the way) were also behind the plexiglass. They took my order, disappeared into the normal looking rows of liquor, got my beer, and put it in a lazy-susan kind of thing.  I put my cash on one side and twirled it around where he took it and put my bag on his side and twirled it over to me.  It was quite odd and felt like some kind of sketchy drug deal.  And the oddities continued when I opened the bag and discovered that my Yeungling six-pack was a 12-pack Yeungling case sawed in half.  Borderline illegal?  I think so.

DC Cupcakes!  I get so star struck, I was jumping for joy at just seeing the TLC sign in the window of Georgetown Cupcake.  Luckily we were there only a few minutes in the evening before close so we didn't stand in line for long at all.  I must say I was quite impressed with the speed and efficiency in which they took care of orders--a good system except for the immense pressure I felt to pick out six out of twenty-ish cupcakes in three minutes.  It's quite a task, but totally worth it.  Especially for the mint cookie one.  Oh. My.  Gosh.  Heaven in a cupcake.  (We also got red velvet, chocolate, pumpkin and vanilla birthday).  Before and after, perfect for a diptych:

Green tea flavored frozen yogurt.  Tangy, tea-like, refreshingly cold, and sweet considering the oreo crumb and strawberry topping.  Yummy!

And from my kitchen ...  I made tuna patties.  They were delicious and I was so proud of myself!

Raisinets for all!

I am MIA no more!  And the motivation for returning from my short hiatus?  This news that makes me so unbelievably happy I can't believe it ... Today, March 24th, is National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day.  Right?!  I am so excited (yet slightly confused) that my favorite candy has it's own holiday that I am telling everyone I know.  Oh, happy day!

(credit)

Unfortunately I had such a busy day that I did not get my hands on any Raisinets today BUT tomorrow I will have my very own pseudo-Chocolate-Covered-Raisin-Day and eat all the Raisinets I want and nobody is going to stop me.

And why yes, I am enjoying my brand new Twitter account, thanks for asking!  In fact, I have some random people's tweets to thank for informing me of such a notable holiday in the US.  Other things I learned from Twitter this week:

• Elizabeth Taylor died
• A man in North Carolina claimed to see Big Foot
• LOL, OMG, & <3 have been added to the Oxford Dictionary
• Class of 2015 acceptance letters went out at my alma mater.  I'm old.
• 20-Something Bloggers reached 17,000 bloggers (and I'm one of them)!  Congrats, 20SB!

I'm a Twit.

I am now on Twitter, folks.  Yes, I judged it at first, but two months of tweeting for my new job later, I am hooked.  I'm pretty much thinking in tweets now anyway.  Joys!  Now I can follow my few but favorite celebs, stalk Guster & other musicians with whom I'm obsessed, and creep even more on my friends than I do on Facebook.  I suspect my tweets will be something like my blog on crack, so maybe you should be afraid.  Or just find me so I can follow you and fill up my TweetDeck!

Find me at @abwalds!

Yes, I am.

Happy International Women's Day!  What a fantastic holiday to have, and one so conveniently shared with Mardi Gras. Now that's a excuse for a girls night out if I ever heard one! It's also a perfect opportunity share a fantastic article I found a while ago.  I give mad props to Sarah D. Bunting, who shatters misconceived notions in this article. While I needed some gender-related classes in college and wonky feminist theory texts to learn this lesson, all Bunting needed was a dictionary. Girl power!

---

Yes, You Are

from tomatonation.com

By Sarah D. Bunting

feminism n (1895) 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests — feminist n or adj — feministic adj

Above, the dictionary definition of feminism — the entire dictionary definition of feminism. It is quite straightforward and concise. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism does not ask for two forms of photo ID. It does not care what you look like. It does not care what color skin you have, or whether that skin is clear, or how much you weigh, or what you do with your hair. You can bite your nails, or you can get them done once a week. You can spend two hours on your makeup, or five minutes, or the time it takes to find a Chapstick without any lint sticking to it. You can rock a cord mini, or khakis, or a sari, and you can layer all three. The definition of feminism does not include a mandatory leg-hair check; wax on, wax off, whatever you want. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism does not mention a membership fee or a graduated tax or "…unless you got your phone turned off by mistake." Rockefellers, the homeless, bad credit, no credit, no problem. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism does not require a diploma or other proof of graduation. It is not reserved for those who teach women's studies classes, or to those who majored in women's studies, or to those who graduated from college, or to those who graduated from high school, or to those who graduated from Brownie to Girl Scout. It doesn't care if you went to Princeton or the school of hard knocks. You can have a PhD, or a GED, or a degree in mixology, or a library card, or all of the above, or none of the above. You don't have to write a twenty-page paper on Valerie Solanas's use of satire in The S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and if you do write it, you don't have to get better than a C-plus on it. You can really believe math is hard, or you can teach math. You don't have to take a test to get in. You don't have to speak English. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism is not an insurance policy; it doesn't exclude anyone based on age. It doesn't have a "you must be this tall to ride the ride" sign on it anywhere. It doesn't specify how you get from place to place, so whether you use or a walker or a stroller or a skateboard or a carpool, if you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism does not tell you how to vote or what to think. You can vote Republican or Libertarian or Socialist or "I like that guy's hair." You can bag voting entirely. You can believe whatever you like about child-care subsidies, drafting women, fiscal accountability, Anita Hill, environmental law, property taxes, Ann Coulter, interventionist politics, soft money, gay marriage, tort reform, decriminalization of marijuana, gun control, affirmative action, and why that pothole at the end of the street still isn't fixed. You can exist wherever on the choice continuum you feel comfortable. You can feel ambivalent about Hillary Clinton. You can like the ERA in theory, but dread getting drafted in practice. The definition does not stipulate any of that. The definition does not stipulate anything at all, except itself. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

The definition of feminism does not judge your lifestyle. You like girls, you like boys, doesn't matter. You eat meat, you don't eat meat, you don't eat meat or dairy, you don't eat fast food, doesn't matter. You can get married, and you can change your name or keep the one your parents gave you, doesn't matter. You can have kids, you can stay home with them or not, you can hate kids, doesn't matter. You can stay a virgin or you can boink everyone in sight, doesn't matter. It's not in the definition. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. 

Yes, you are. 

Yes. You are. You are a feminist. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist. Period. It's more complicated than that — of course it is. And yet…it's exactly that simple. It has nothing to do with your sexual preference or your sense of humor or your fashion sense or your charitable donations, or what pronouns you use in official correspondence, or whether you think Andrea Dworkin is full of crap, or how often you read Bust or Ms. — or, actually, whether you've got a vagina. In the end, it's not about that. It is about political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and it is about claiming that definition on its own terms, instead of qualifying it because you don't want anyone to think that you don't shave your pits. It is about saying that you are a feminist and just letting the statement sit there, instead of feeling a compulsion to modify it immediately with "but not, you know, that kind of feminist" because you don't want to come off all Angry Girl. It is about understanding that liking Oprah and Chanel doesn't make you a "bad" feminist — that only "liking" the wage gap makes you a "bad" feminist, because "bad" does not enter into the definition of feminism. It is about knowing that, if folks can't grab a dictionary and see for themselves that the entry for "feminism" doesn't say anything about hating men or chick flicks or any of that crap, it's their problem. 

It is about knowing that a woman is the equal of a man in art, at work, and under the law, whether you say it out loud or not — but for God's sake start saying it out loud already. You are a feminist. 

I am a feminist too. Look it up.

The Day After Opposite Day, Pt. 2

In The Day After Opposite Day, Pt. 1, I shared my revelation that I was in desperate need of a new lifestyle—one that was active and full of new stimulations. It was easy for me to fall into lazy habits when I moved to a new city. Honestly, I think I was just scared to get settled into a new place, because I did not consider my new one-bedroom--though cozy--my home.  But after the day of the death of my lovable lab Caffie (Opposite Day), I did a lot of reflection. Besides the obvious grief of loss of the family dog, I made some discoveries about my childhood, my life, and what the heck to do with myself.

Our childhoods define us. It's totally cliche, I know. But in these days for many of my friends and I--twenty-somethings-- physical and emotional elements of our childhood are disappearing, and I am realizing why the statement is so tiredly used. When I think about who I am, a lot of my thoughts go back to my mom, my dad, my sisters, my house, my school days. The lessons I learned as a child from my family and the childish mistakes and my first embarrassing moment are the foundations of my moral fiber. They are the basis of how I mentally approach life. A lot of things in my later life define who I am now, but my childhood is what defines who I will always be.

My childhood stays alive in memories, and it stays alive in physical embodiments.  Eventually, however, some memories will fade away. As I get older and my life moves out of transition this transitional phase and into full adulthood, I fear the that little, special details of my memories will be pushed farther and farther back until they are inaccessible.  


Thus, with the fear of my memories fading as I grow up, I cling onto the physical embodiments of my childhood, like my house and my old things. I think that is why I cherish old things.  They remind me of myself, of who I am. I love going back and reminiscing, holding things that belonged to another time and place. I love hugging and smelling my blankie, which accompanied me every single night in bed until college.  I loved just sitting in my childhood house, thinking about the memories that the walls held.  But when Caffie died yesterday, it hit me hard that representations of my past are dropping from my reach.  I realized that my attachment to Caffie, combined with unconditional love companionship, was related to the fact that when I looked at her, I saw my childhood in her glassy eyes and greying hair.  Most of her memories embodied my own, for she lived almost her entire life with me. 

I used to think that those physical embodiments of my youth were the ones I could really count on to hold those memories for me.  I guess I underestimated my memories and thus depended so much on the tangible things that held them for me.  But I am quickly learning how foolish that was.  The physical elements of my childhood are dropping away one by one like they are in line to walk the plank, falling away and lost forever. 

A box of my belongings that lived in my bedroom and soaked up the sights and smells and  smiles and tears of my childhood in a house that is now on the market now sits in a stuffy attic.  Once the house sells, that will pretty much be all that is left. And now that Caffie is gone, when I go home to visit, that is one less reminder of my childhood that will be there.  


It occured to me that perhaps this is why I had my 'revelation' of a desire for a new and improved lifestyle.  I need to grab onto something--onto my life today, which is moving forward at a pace that I sometimes can't keep up with--to fill my life as the things of my childhood, my old life, cued up on the rickety slab of wood.

Maybe my attachment to things and my obsessions with childhood memories is exorbitant or just plain crazy.  But as I sit here, writing about all this, I realize that my memories have impacted me in an even more devious way than I realized: they inspired me to be the artist I am today.  

I think my attachment to things and memories is why I picked up photography as a teenager. I absolutely loved getting my prints and putting them into photo albums, accompanied with ridiculously specific captions (date, place, name of every person in the photo, what was happening in the photo). Enter the digital age, and to this day I will not publish my Facebook photo album until it is in chronological order and properly tagged and captioned to my liking.  And when photographs cannot suffice, I write. I require myself to capture the feelings, the thoughts, the reflections of one moment or event in time and immortalize it in words. It started with my own personal diary, and then a journal I took with me to my travels to Italy. Knowing that I would cherish those moments forever, I was painstaking in my detail to description of my time there.  That journal turned into the blog to go with the times, and here I am. 

Clearly, my sentimentality can get the best of me.  But as I grow into my adult self and accept the fact that I will never be able to hold some of those things again, I will cherish the memories and objects that do stay on the boat.  


So, I can say with content, nostalgic thoughts, and infinite blank pages ahead, that all is not lost.

The Day After Opposite Day, Pt. 1

My mind was a blur when I woke up this morning.  I had slept for over 12 hours, which I hadn't done since high school--and a sure sign to me that I really needed to rest my head and my mind.  It took me a second to realize why I was so exhausted.  And then I remembered about Caffie.  I opened my email and read all the messages and collection of memories my family had sent around in memory of my dog who had been put to sleep earlier that day.  I went to this very blog, and couldn't even believe my own words about her passing.   I was confused, sad, and completely unmotivated to do anything besides stay in bed and let the world pass me by.  I had promised myself the night before that I would get up early, take a walk to breathe in some fresh air and life, and not mope.  But the rain was falling and was predicted to all day, so it was another day of bed and movies on the Lappy for me.

After unsatisfactory Facebook browsing and a couple of mediocre chick flicks, I realized how sore my neck was, how greasy my hair was, and how disgustingly lazy I had become.  Today I was mourning the loss of Caffie, but this wasn't close to the first time I had wasted a day in bed.  Living alone was a challenge for me--having been surrounded by sisters and roommates all my life, I had to adjust to having just myself around.  As I began life in my one-bedroom,  I struggled with the quiet and the calm.  But what I realized today is truly how much living with other people helped keep me active and motivated.  Here, I had nobody to judge me if I spent day after lazy day with my face glued to a screen, or inspire me to get up and out. I enjoyed that freedom for a while.  But today, it slapped me in the face.

I gotta get up, I told myself.  I need to do something.  Something new.  I couldn't spend my independent adult life--a new and scary concept in itself--in bed.  I had work, but what else do I have?  It hit me that I had been making excuses to get settled here.  It's been a month and time is up!  Instead of catching onto the excitement of a fast-paced new life that was in front of me, I was letting the train pass me by.  But no!  Today, I decided, I was going to start making a life for myself.  I shot up in bed, closed my Netflix, Hulu, and Facebook tabs, and replaced them with research of dance classes, theater performances, and places to buy bikes.  This is happening.  I am going to ride this train.  No, even better, I am going to drive it.
  
Declaring it here is the only way I can think if motivating myself, since self-motivation by talking to myself hasn't seemed to help in the past.  I realized that I had totally fallen out of the boat on my monthly resolutions.  Moving and starting a new job was my excuse for February.  But no more of that.  So, this month, I decided that I will:

Once a day: Meditate and stretch

At least once a week: Attend a dance class

Absolutely ASAP: Buy a bike (and use it)

Despite the toll some of these will take on my wallet, I am hopeful that they will make up for it in reason and happiness.  Determined to get started, I got out of bed, lit the deliciously scented vanilla candle in my living room, and took some deep breaths while stretching my legs, pathetically stiff--further reinforcement that I needed a lifestyle change.  As I felt my muscles uncomfortably extend, I took some deep breaths and remembered something I a dance teacher had said during the warm-up of a dance class once: "give your body some love."  As I sat there, rolling my head to loosen my neck, stiff from staring at a laptop while reclined, rotating my toes and ankles to recall my turn-out, and massaging my thighs, I remembered why that was so important.  My body really needed some love and attention--the kind that I had deprived it of a long time.

A couple downward dogs later, I settled into a cross-legged position and, with the help of an audio guide (thank you, YouTube!), did a 10-minute meditation.  Now, I am no master at meditation, but I had read and heard from others that making it a regular part of your daily routine can have a significant positive impact on mood and perspective.  And in this time of big life changes, I will take whatever I can get in terms of solace.  I'm also a hippie at heart.

Giving myself a slap in the face (literally) and some motivation to create new habits for myself came out of many things.  Besides my shame of my inability to touch my toes like I used to, I realized that having to say good-bye to my dog had a lot to do with it, and I came to some interesting conclusions about the strange transition into adulthood. In part two, I'll try to make sense of it all.

Opposite Day

When my twin sister and I were very young, we named March 5 Opposite Day.  Begun to commemorate the loss of a family friend, who had passed on March 5, we declared that all things that happen on March 5 should be the opposite.  As young girls, this was our way of dealing with loss.  As we got older, we would occasionally commemorate the holiday by convincing mom and dad to let us have ice cream for breakfast, and one year I recall us walking to school backwards.  We continued to mature and the concept of Opposite Day faded into a mere childhood memory.  

I woke up today without a thought to the date.  But the morning was soon not any other morning when I got the heart-wrenching and sudden news that my childhood black lab Caffie was experiencing a dramatic change in strength and personality, and my parents made the tough call to put her down peacefully. 

I panicked.  I called my mom and overwhelmed her with questions, because the last time I was home with Caffie she was just fine (besides her frequent and eventually expected "surprises" she would leave for us in the house ... ha).  I begged her to wait a few days. I wanted to drive the 7 hours up north and say goodbye.  But they could not wait.  She did not want her to suffer any more, and I hesitantly accepted the fact.

The vet appointment was at 11am.  In desperation, I looked down at my watch to see how much time Caffie had--and how much time I had before I had to say "I had a dog"--and my stomach dropped when I saw the date, shared conveniently in the box that replaced the 6.

5.  March 5.  Opposite Day. I was shaken by the eerie coincidence.  I called my sister to tell her the news and, after some time of tears and mourning, I asked her, "do you realize what today is?"
Long seconds passed.  "Opposite Day."

I could sense her stomach tightening at the realization, and a somber silence filled between us as we marveled at the irony in strange reflection.  A holiday we created to deal with death when we didn't understand it came back to us in this event of significant loss--one of the biggest for our family.  For a moment I reverted back to the days when we just made up our own naive ways of accepting the realities of life.  And in that moment, everything made a little bit more sense.  Maybe we weren't so foolish after all.

___

She's the sweetest dog in the world, many friends and visitors would tell us.  I have no doubts that she was.  She really was the best dog a family could ask for, and she certainly was a big part of mine.  A short commemoration, here are my favorite memories of the hairiest, happiest, hungriest member of the Waldman family:

I remember the day my parents told us that, after months of my begging, they agreed to get a family dog.  My sisters and I jumped for joy, our dreams of a cuddly puppy coming true.  I also remember the day we went to visit her at the breeder's.  She was 8 months old, timid, and a little scared, but she warmed up to us in just a few minutes.  And her tail didn't stop wagging for 14 years after that.

It was the last day of second grade when she came to us (already a very happy day--I had just opened my 3rd grade information packet to find out that I was assigned to Mrs. Atkinson, the best teacher in school, for next year).  As my sister and I started on our route home, I looked up and saw my mom waiting for us next to the school's sandbox.  She was holding a leash attached to a jet-black, floppy-eared pup sniffing out her scenery.  We squealed and ran up to our new dog and she immediately received us with millions of chin-kisses.  Sis and I fought over the red leash as we bounded up the hill, and we played with her for hours. 

'Caffie' was her name at the breeder's, and it stuck. It was short for Caffeine, we were told, since she was a hyper little puppy in her first few months.  However, after a run-in with a bigger dog, her leg was broken and she had since taken a much more laid-back personality (hence 'Decaf', a nickname we often teased her with).  Due to her laziness, fetch was a common failure in dog games with Caffie.  She would fetch a tennis ball or frisbee once or twice.  Then, on the third try, she would watch us throw the object, watch it land, look back at us, and plop down on the grass.  No more fetch for her.

Her calmness was a good match for our loud, crazy family.  Caffie soon adjusted to the constant motion of the house and, after a few minutes of interrupting our dance routines in the family room with demands for tummy rubs or walking right on top of our board games, she would settle herself in the corner and watch the action.

She learned quickly that I was the one who had offered myself to feed her dinner every day, and, to no avail, always found me at 4:30pm with eager kisses and that tail wagging, saying, "it's time!"

Appropriate for our geographical location, she also loved the wintertime.  When we would let her out into the back yard covered in 2 feet of snow, she would bound through the yard like an antelope, leaping over the tall snow.  She would stick her head down into the snow and zig-zag around the yard, then lifting head to sport a decently-sized pile of snow sitting on her snout.  Watching her play was really one of the only things I loved about winter.

As she got older, friends and visitors giggled at her "eyebrows", "beard", and "socks"--her greying gave her amusing humanistic facial hair and patterns.

Of course, all dogs are dog-dogs--she loved to play with her dog friends--but I think of all things, Caffie was a people-dog.  She just loved to be around her family.  Her tail constantly wagged and, though her sharp bark could fool a trespasser, as soon as someone got close enough for her to sniff, you knew she was a big softie.  Everyone was greeted with licks on the hand or wherever else she could access--she got me on the back molar once.  Impressive, right?  'Atta girl, Caff.  Thanks for the love.