Reprocussions for the Things

Trever and I close escrow tomorrow.  I forgot how stressful it can be buying a house.  All the loan documents and paperwork is nightmarish for both Trever and my personalities.  Then of course the moving bit has its own unsettling effect.  I woke up in the middle of the night last night and did yoga in my kitchen, which is the only open space in my house, just to ease some tension of living in the aftermath of an explosion of things! We have too many things. I ended up waking up this morning and cleaning my house, which felt like wiping a bit of mud off a pig.  I pushed boxes into corners and made my kitchen and bedroom the safe zones.  I mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms, all of which had cycled out of control once the first frame came off the wall, and then I took a nap. 

I need naps recently.  I missed the tired portion of first trimester pregnancy and so I felt like I bypassed the fatigue and pregnancy wouldn’t get me down.  I know all the mothers are internally patronizing me for my adorable ignorance, because of course I now feel like I returned from another time zone only yesterday and just cannot beat this jet lag.  I’ll be in a meeting around 3:00 and could literally close my eyes mid sentence and likely fall quickly asleep.  I have to avoid people with calming and slow voices during that part of my day.

This fatigue however, could also be due to our current diet.  We went to Trader Joes this weekend and bought a bunch of frozen no cook meals for the week in anticipation of the chaos and a boxed up kitchen.  On Monday night I heard the beep of my microwave, peeled back the plastic cover from a plastic plate full of Veggie Korma and placed it in front of Trever.  My granola self looked upon what I had become that night and shamed me for my decisions.  Trever on the other hand was rather happy, like so happy that he told me I was going to have a hard time convincing him to go back to eating the way we normally do. He's noted that lucky for us these frozen sodium packets are low in calories which is an added benefit to death by preservatives.  You see, it might be important to know Trever is kind of ironic by nature.  I was talking to my friend Kayla about this, how right in the center of all his good taste, fashion industry work, fine art degree and general hipness, he’s still from Hemet and would honestly prefer Del Taco and PBR to a client meeting at Nobu. Truth is though, this is actually one of my favorite things about him, shitty towns make good people, sucks the life right out of any pretentiousness.

So, I ate my sodium rich indian food and was grateful in the middle of the craziest season of life we’ve had to date.  Houses are just houses and in the midst of chaos we kind of have to laugh at all that’s happening.  I clutch my round belly in gratitude for a tiny life that has already changed me in ways I could never have understood before.  I pray for her incessantly and can’t wait to make her a home that’s simply walls and a garden but really a place that she’ll feel loved.

I know she already is so loved.  My friends and family have been so kind and gracious and grieved and celebrated with us like she was their own. And to all of you who have been following along with me, I wanted to say thank you for your love.  The grace with which you have responded to me, my writing, and my family has overwhelmed me.  Your continual offerings of encouragement and prayer has been an honest source of support for Trever and I.  It’s been a difficult season and yet there has been comfort knowing the amount of people who have been crying over, praying for and celebrating Colette.  It’s humbling to be the recipient of your love.  So thank you, with all of my heart, thank you. 

And that's a wrap, off to the boxes again. 

Abnormal Nesting

Things feel good right now.  I know, aren't we all relieved not to find some 100 pound post again? We got that positive news about Colette's heart and I'm running with it.  Part of me wants to hold back on the relief knowing that more bad news could always be around the corner, since she still has a more minor heart condition and the omphalacele, the complications are endless.  But I'm doing my best not to live like that, I'll take the joy while it's here.  Someone recommended I read Ecclesiastes because it reminds us that life is hard, but it's also fleeting, and so we enjoy the times of joy and the simple bits of pleasure we get from life.  This was good advice so I'm loving what's in front of me.  

We're moving in a couple of weeks and we took some frames down this weekend and BAM we are unsettled.  We also made the bizarre decision to sell our couch and we likely won't be moved for close to two weeks. This means, as you might assume, that we don't have a couch only our super cozy wood floors and a few chairs. I don't know why we did this to ourselves.  Also they say I'm supposed to be nesting, but I can't.  Partially because we're moving and partially because we decided not to do a nursery or a shower before Colette is born.  I think there would be a part of me that would be tentative about celebration and constantly wondering what it would be like to have such a lovely nursery empty.  We don't need to send our minds there so we'll work out room details when she's coming home.  

So I cook.  A lot.  I have a nice kitchen in our place now, but our new home has a very old and tiny kitchen.  We'll be re-doing it but for a while my refrigerator will be in another room, as in I'll forget the milk and walk out of my kitchen into another room to get the milk. This is weird.  As for now I'll cook in my nice kitchen.  My friend Julie told me she makes her own almond milk, I was inspired, so I did the same.  I use the dried almond meal from the milk for my homemade granola, which Trever ate for three meals yesterday. Repetitive? Yes. But that's what happens when he's editing from home and I work late.  

Fun fact, I had a co-worker basically tell me I would lose my brains towards the end of my pregnancy. I didn't believe him. But then the other day I turned the oven on to dry out my almond meal, left for 5 hours, and realized while at a restaurant with friends that I probably burned my house down.  Suddenly gruesome images of my house melting and our cats slowing burning to death flooded my brain and I walked straight to my car without saying anything and drove home in a panic.  All was well, but I drove 15 minutes back at 10:30 at night because they had ordered pizza and I like pizza.  My friends were confused by me.  I was confused by my brain.

I also made granola bars.  They're really good and simply made from dried fruit and nuts and I make fresh bread a couple of times a week.  So at any given time in my kitchen you might find jars of floating almonds, a bowl of sourdough starter that looks like soupy bread dough, and some stacks of chewy bars for the taking.  Next up, kambucha.  I have friends that make this too and will give me some of their scoby.  Add jiggly pancake to my scary kitchen. Trever wishes I had different hobbies.  Recipes to come. 

Tiny but Fancy

I’m working on some crib research and Trever and I are on VERY different pages concerning the nursery.  Trever prefers wildly uncomfortable and very hip looking housing products. We recently switched out our metal wire chair for a wooden chair that is so deep it necessitates 3 pillows stacked against one another in order for one’s legs to make it to the ground.  Plus as an added bonus - the edge of the chair is a cornered piece of wood that is so sharp, if the chairs current resident doesn’t understand the need for said pillows they will have a very red and painful mark at the mid-point of their calf.  The cats don’t even like it and they like sleeping inside plastic bags. But daaamn if it doesn't look good in that space. It's like a piece of art, for looking not touching. 

I should have known this registry kerfuffle was coming.  When we got married we tried to register together and it was not cute. We weren’t that little engaged couple floating around West Elm squealing over our new home together. No, no, I was walking around trying to figure out what we needed (which was everything) while Trever gave a distracting background narrative the entire time, while constantly articulating the things he was convinced we did not need - not a big fan of clutter. 

It's all deja vu related to baby paraphernalia.  We apparently need 4 grey onesies, some diapers, and a crib (read: dresser drawer pulled out with some blankets). Trever does not feel ok with a chair that rocks, unless of course it’s Eames or some other painful hard material. He would also like to buy the IKEA crib, thus the debate.  I’m pretty sure it’s made from scrap wood and likely gives splinters to any unlucky passerby, one of whom will be our newborn baby.  As a note, I have put together enough IKEA products to know what they’re like when completed, many times they need to be propped against a wall for a source of support lest they collapse like a teetering jenga tower. Yes the ones I like range from $600-$1200, and yes she will not be in it THAT long, and yes that costs more than our bed, but the gold one is just so pretty.  No I don’t manage our budget, why do you ask?

Also I’m going to betray his trust and tell you about Trever's new inventions because I'm not overly concerned about you taking the idea.  You know the soundproof blankets made out of hazardous materials that they use on the walls in sounds studios? Well the world needs a baby version of these so parents can cover themselves and our crying babies on planes and it will silence the noise, potentially via suffocation but that will be left out of the marketing copy.  Also, a one day diaper.  When a child’s diaper needs changed parent need not remove soiled material, clean and replace, they just twist off the bottom of the diaper that contains waste and it will reseal the diaper (think diaper genie directly on baby bottom).

Who knows, maybe we’ll be millionaires off this one day. Ooooh, then maybe we can buy the fancy crib.

Also if you want to follow along on my shopping escapades, you can do so on MY CURATION LINK

Mashed Potatoes

My thoughts on waiting are as follows.  It feels awfully similar to the feelings of anxiety. Or maybe it’s more like depression.  But either way all I really want to do is lie prostrate in my bed all day and sleep the day away.   The only exception to the lovely escape of unconsciousness is binge watching a TV show, which is really just another form of sleeping anyways.  I am currently watching the OC for the first time and it’s all very emotional.  In the second episode Ryan comes up to Marissa’s front door and when she opens it she is of course dressed in her white catilion dress of which she cannot seem to get that last clasp closed. What’s a girl to do?  Cue the feel music and then cut to Ryan’s eyes which are droopy like a puppy, then cut back to Marissa’s exposed and well tanned back with tantalizingly loose straps so as to draw the eyes down, and then finally a cut to her innocent smile - this is original shit people!  The moment lasted far too long, I’m assuming to allow the viewer to fall instantly in love with their love.

I am one such viewer, and when I came out of my trance I celebrated one hour of not thinking about pregnancy.  This is my life.  I’ll take a fight scene ending with, “welcome to the oc, this is how we do it in newport” (that is an actual line), over my real life.  This is all because I am waiting.  My clock has been dipped in molasses and Saturday will never come, I will instead spend the rest of my existence wondering if that nausea I’m feeling is the little blue pill I love so much or a sign of pregnancy. No, I tell myself, it’s not pregnancy there’s no way it will work.  It could be, I definitely feel different, I say.  But really I’m not pregnant because the odds are so low and I should just accept this now, I say.  There is no way to know, unless of course I took a pregnancy test, I say. No I should wait, I say.  I AM WAITING UNTIL TOMORROW TO TEST, I SAY! I’m sorry about the all caps.

In a normal circumstance I might be able to land at the final statement, there is no way to know, and move on with my mental life but instead I begin the line of questioning from the top, “what’s that nausea for?” I ask myself.

While I’m ranting about life in a time warp I would also like to note that resting is only fun when you either, A. have a final to write that is due tomorrow, or B. are next to a pool with a margarita in hand and a good book.  It is not fun however, when you feel very normal and would in fact like time to pass much more quickly than it is.  This is the case in which the couch feels less like a beautiful place of sloth, and more like a prison of the soul. I have suddenly contracted restless leg syndrome (this is an actual diagnosis) and my legs hurt from not moving, they hurt.  I would like to go for a quick sprint or lunge around my house.  I am actually day dreaming about burpees, that terrible vomit inducing workout invented to punish football players, but I dream about them because my reality consists of lifting my leg up and down.  I might take a quick moment and order some ankle weights from amazon to add some spice to my life. I need spice, my life is currently unsalted mashed potatoes, without cream or butter. 

Am I being dramatic?

Maybe I should just run to the store to pick up the ankle weights so I can have them quicker.  What they sell pregnancy tests there? Oh I don’t know, I didn’t think of that.  

Ant Murderer

Well we have ants.  They like our cat's food and they enter our house through our front door in neatly organized single file lines until they access salty cat kibble.  We tried putting the food in a dish of water but we discovered that in fact, ants can walk on water...sort of.  Apparently what they're actually doing is taking tiny ferry's made of cat food particles across the mote to the mother load. Also, in case you're wondering, ants can support almost 100x times their own weight, they move an estimated 50 tons of soil per year in one square mile, they have two stomachs - one for themselves and one to hold food for others, and when an ant finds a food source they leave a trail of pheromones to inform their fellow soldiers to follow the lead.

So now that I've personalized them and discussed their strengths as any vegetarian might, I looked up ways to naturally deal with the ant catastrophe. Here's what worked:

A spray bottle with water and either fresh lemon juice or lemon essential oil, ground cinnamon or cinnamon oil, and peppermint oil.  As a bonus it smells fabulous so you can lift your spirits while murdering tiny four-legged families.  It's not going to be an Ant A-bomb like raid, it's more like a border than a killer, but at least it won't give you Parkinson's. Every day we spray the boundary of our door and it creates a blockade of lemony bliss. Try it. 

Wait Your Turn

I have some thoughts on travel so that as a human race we will survive our inevitable future of over-population.  I believe that airports specifically reveal our complete incapacity to evolve into an organized sensible species.  This hypothesis is revealed in the following erroneous travel tendencies:

First, the baggage claim and the chaos that ensues.  Why in the name of our holy mother mary do we need to cram up against the turn table until our knees are smashing into the metal? What does this accomplish? Are we afraid that we won’t have time to take the 6 steps forward necessary to grab our bags when we see it coming around the bend at a snails pace?  Are we nervous that we might not see it unless we are capable of laying on the belt in a moments notice? Are we concerned someone might steal our bags unless we hover our presence over the place of our bags future exit? Do we think our bags will come more quickly if the belt senses our anxiety and nearness?

I do not know! These things confuse me and I spend my bag-waiting moments staring with hatred at the backs of all those who just want their moment with no concern for the greater good (this bag waiting pattern, I believe, runs deep into greater themes of human depravity). My solution is as follows: step back. That is my entire solution.  Resist the urge to try and get ahead because you can’t, your bag will come when it comes.  In this utopian society of my making, we would all be able to see more clearly when our bags come and access it with ease rather than shoving belt hoverers out of the way.

Second, in a place that is generally used for a walkway, walk.  If you feel the need for a quick chat with your friends, or a scan at your map to find which way to turn, an over the shoulder glance and then a quick move to the edge of the walkway will save us all from chaos and destruction.  On this note, it should be said that if you are noticing that your pace is quite slower than the speed of traffic, do your best not to spread out across the entire span of the walkway so as to force all those behind you to forever remain behind you.  

Third, lines. In the states we really like stanchions and ropes to control lines, we need these because our narcissistic tendencies urge us to try and get ahead. This has trained Americans to stand in orderly lines and so I sometimes forget that our nature is not linear, until I go to countries where lines are a mass of humanity standing far too close to each other.  At the beginning of our trip I rolled my eyes at the chaos and waited patiently in order, but by the end of the trip I was straight out of Lord of the Flies. I had digressed to my uncivilized tendencies as I shoved my way to the front, sweat dripping and hair in my face ready to do what it takes to get mine.  I have returned home and regained my composure and orderliness, woah. 

Fourth, boarding a plane.  I just have one thought on this, if you are in boarding group C and they are boarding group A, and you are standing anywhere less than 30 feet from the gate I will hate you and I will do my best to let you know that with my face.

Is there something wrong with me that my first topic I wrote about after returning home was my anger towards people? You may be surprised to know I'm not even a type-A person, maybe I'm the one that needs to step back and calm down. But the people are ruining my zen!!!  I just want more for us as the human race, I do believe we can be better. If I run for president that will be my slogan, "we can be better".  Or maybe something about zen. 

Internet is Life

I have all these idyllic ideas about agricultural life pre the industrial revolution.  It was a time when things were simpler, and everyone picked their own wheat and made their own bread and read books together at night like the Bennet's.  It all seems so much better than the industrialization of our modern Western world complete with the chemical fest that is commercial farming and Pokemon Go, which I have to say, is destroying my hope for humanity.  As I dodge the crowd of adolescent zombies walking through our downtown streets staring at their screens and running into me, I become worried that we are all that Ray Bradbury predicted and Pokemon Go is exposing this tragic truth.

Then I made my own bread. For weeks I woke up in the morning and scooped from my starter some globs of what looks like pancake batter and placed it in a new bowl with fresh flour and water, this is feeding my starter. Then I wash the bowl, which inevitably takes twenty minutes due to the concrete hold the starter has on the glass, but it’s the price I pay to be granola.  A quick note, it should be said that the term granola needs a positive connotation I am not ok with all the hate. Then the day came where I used a bit of my little starter I’ve been growing and added flour, water and salt to make my dough!

At this point the idea of bread making was still very romanticized, I was just a little 1950’s housewife swept off her feet by sourdough.  So every thirty minutes for four hours I went into the kitchen to turn my dough, which is sort of like kneading it.  After the four hours of rising I got to shape my dough into a round loaf. This is where things took a turn. I’m not going to try and explain the catastrophe that was the dough shaping, I would rather let you imagine pouring a bowl of thick pancake batter on your counter and trying to get it into a ball without it sticking to your hands. Trever happened to be munching on some chips standing dangerously close to the counter while I was in the middle of this process and asked innocent questions that almost made my head explode, so I held up my sticky batter hands and yelled, “no it’s not supposed to look like this.” Woah, I lost my 1950's housewife cool for a second.

Another four hours I waited until I got to transfer my globby sticky mess into my dutch oven where I was meant to cut small slices in the dough so it would rise properly. It was at this point I was fairly certain I had failed. Imagine again with me cutting slices into weak, wet, batter…it’s like, what’s the point? So I aggressively jammed the knife into the sorry lump and huffed at the calamity of it all. Then it baked and came out like a very heavy and dense ball that resembled, in some distant way, bread.  I think Trever felt a bit of panic over the failure of my day-long baking saga that went south.  I know this because when I squeezed the bread it’s supposed to make a crunching sound and when it kind of did he got ecstatically happy and congratulated me on my feat of accomplishment.  “Ooh yum, it tastes just like sourdough. No the texture is fine.  Ya it’s a little dense but I LIKE IT. Ironic how I just started a diet huh? No bread for me, but good job babe!”  What a dear.

I realize now, that if I were to somehow travel in time to the days prior to the fabulous and brilliant industrial revolution, I would have spent all my days surviving.  You just spend the whole day making bread, and then you eat it, and that’s it, because all you have time to do is make bread because it is so damn hard. 

But I do not give up quite so easily, so I made bread a second time and it was much better. I brought it to my sister’s house and we all ate it with cheese and celebrated the bread, something I will never again take for granted.  The irony is my dramatic improvement on round two was thanks to You Tube bakers who showed me what to do, thank God for the internet.  Ray Bradbury had no idea what he was missing. 

Bread is Life

A large part of my life consists of trying to be domestic and failing.  Due to said failure I have done deep seeded and irreparable damage to my self-confidence related to wife-ing. This is why it took me five years to start cooking. 

I once made Chili for a party we were hosting and charred the bottom of it. In a salvaging effort I thought it would be helpful to scrape the char from the bottom of the pan, not sure why that made sense at the time, but as you can assume the burn taste then permeated the whole pot of soup which we all ate anyways and called it, smokey. I also cooked in the oven smoked salmon, like it was fresh salmon, which is sort of like baking turkey sandwich meat and serving it for thanksgiving. I somehow missed the al dente lesson concerning pasta and boiled some spaghetti noodles until they were so overdone that they died and returned to their original state of wet formless flour. I cooked them into oblivion, as my mother would say. Because of these failures I quit, and for five years our fridge usually had an egg in it that was wildly passed its expiration date and probably some jar items that never really expire, like Dijon mustard.

Then one day I roasted some potatoes and they turned out good.  Trever gained a baby bit of confidence in me and thus, so did I. Slowly I started buying food and making salads, lots and lots of salads because they are very hard to mess up.  I made Vietnamese salad with napa cabbage, and Greek salad with feta cheese and crumbled pita chips, and a mixed grain salad with tomatoes and cucumbers. The first step into the wonderland of salads is making homemade dressing, which I did. Dressing by the way is much easier than one might think and far superior to the bottled super market version, which is just a cover for putting preserved sugar on salads. Blerg. Now at the ripe age of 29 I cook at home several nights a week and only fail miserably a couple of times a year. 

I do my best to cook healthy, which essentially means we eat a lot of vegetables. This works out well for me as I don’t eat meat and fortunately my skinny husband obliges my first-world eating preferences. I have however, inadvertently developed a reputation for myself that I am some sort of health nut. I know this because my friends moms always like to come up to me and tell me they were health nuts before it was cool and proceed to recite their health related fanaticism. I'm really not that extreme, I like to watch everyone get on and off bandwagons for what is and isn’t killing us all.  Starting with fat, then all carbohydrates, then sugar, now gluten, and on it goes. I just think we generally would do good to stop cutting out entire food groups and just eat fresh food (except vegetarians because we’re different, we cut out a food group in a stance against animal murder – virtual eye roll).

Also I think we should balance quality of life with our eating habits.  Friends of mine have become such health enthusiasts that they complain constantly about their weak stomach's inability to process pizza anymore and they wear it like a badge of honor.  Happiness is also very good for your body, pizza makes the world happy, in conclusion we should never stop eating pizza.  On that note, if our bodies can no longer process pizza we have done something terribly wrong and must retrace our steps to return ourselves to pizza, even if that means we eat it until it stops hurting.  Plus, if we just ate pizza with natural ingredients and cut out the chemicals and preservatives all the way from the farming of grain, to the raising of cows for milk, to the fermenting of bread, we would all be just fine!

Ok so we got to my point -fermenting bread.  You’ve seen cooked on Netflix right? Did you see the one about air? If you didn’t you should, but for now *spoiler alert* I will tell you that they interview a baker who goes through the history of bread and emphasizes the need for whole flour and natural yeast.  He convinced me of the need for fermenting our bread with natural yeast via our own starters.  BTW, my friend and farmer Bill Spencer at Windrose Farm makes his own starter and bread and it is the best bread, it is heaven in a crunchy little loaf. Because I will NEVER give up gluten, I am trying this whole homemade bread domestic wife thing.  This whole ramble was to convince you and me, that I can do it! I have begun my starter and it is sitting on top of my fridge stinking up my kitchen.  I have to feed it every day which essentially means throwing out half of what looks like pancake batter and adding more flour and water to allow it to keep growing.  Grow baby yeast grow! I might fail but I won’t tell you until I succeed because I prefer to parade my excellence to the world wide web as often as I can.  If I find the perfect recipe I might share, we’ll see. 

The Bird

So the infertility saga lives on, blah blah, but we are taking this month off of treatment and I am finally free.  No one will be poking my arm with a needle for a whole month and hallelujah for that. Although, as a perky little aside, you’ll be glad to hear this treatment debacle has gotten me over my needle phobia. I once thought I had overcome my needle phobia and decided not to tell the phlebotomist that I needed to lay down so I sat up like a big girl in the stool chair.  Then I proceeded to throw up and then passed out and fell off the chair onto the tile floor of death and germs, and then I was carried by a large male nurse to the bed where I would lay down like the child that I am.

That was the Brooke of last year though, this years Brooke ran to her car in the middle of a concert so her husband could administer an IVF shot with no sweat. We videoed it and ran out of the parking structure where Trever yelled to the valet guys that I was diabetic so they wouldn’t think we were shooting up, but I don’t really think they believed us.  Typically the rule at this concert venue is you can’t re-enter, but lucky for us the bouncer who was probably 400 lbs. with a name placard stating that his name was, “The Big Worm” helped us out.  He was a tiny bit scary at first as we tried with doe eyes to explain that I needed to run to my car for a medical reason.  He stared at us blankly, so assuming he needed more information we just blurted out that we were doing IVF and he got a big smile and raised his hands and yelled, “aww yayyyy! Oh I hope this works!”  Thanks The Big Worm, me too…me too.

But, I digress. In my month of freedom I have been, and will be, doing all the things to celebrate the fabulous parts of my life that are fabulous because I am not pregnant.  

Here are the things:

First Trever and I will be heading to Greece and Italy in a couple of weeks and it takes all my self-control to keep me from packing right now.  Also I would like to buy a new sun hat but it’s a tragedy that they don’t travel well.  I use tragedy loosely.

You know I’ll be drinking that wine in Italy.  You know it!

Second, we met some friends at a trailhead in Laguna Beach and hiked to the top with backpacks full of coconut water and sandwiches so we could picnic at the top with a view.  Sometimes I downplay the difficulty of hikes to trick my friends into going with me.  It worked! They only yelled at me a couple of times, and Trever made a big stink about defining terms so that we both understood what I was saying when I said descriptive words like - little, easy, short, a teeny tiny bit steep, etc. I know they all think it was worth it though, the view was lovely and it always feels better eating dinner when you’ve worked for it.  I should have been a farmer, I always say it.

Third, a couple of weeks ago after we got some pretty bad fertility news, I texted some of our best friends and asked if they wanted to go to Vegas. They said, “(explicit word) yes!” They cancelled their plans and went to sin city with us so we could have fun and not be pregnant. We got upgraded to a suite, laid by the pool, went dancing, and did what Las Vegas has to offer. 

I typically hate Vegas.  It’s like this weird alternate universe where it’s suddenly normal for people to dress like absolute whores, and get drunk off their faces and no one thinks twice.  I don’t like that it doesn’t have its own culture, just a weird rip off of other cultures that’s re-formulated into this eccentric theme park of debauchery. I don’t like the smell, or the heat, or the desert.  Except of course, for this time! We went with friends who are always a good time and we laughed really hard, and chilled really hard, and I loved it.  I loved Vegas, who would of thought! Note: Trever thinks I’m going through a mid-life crisis…there is a strong possibility he is right. 

Lastly, we’ve been meeting friends for dinners at the beach after work.  It’s marvelous because the masses of humanity have all gone and the beach is relatively empty when we arrive. It's my favorite thing, walking onto the beach at the start of the golden hour while the sand is still warm, arms loaded with pizza boxes and canteens full cold white wine.  Last week after dinner I went boogie boarding with my friend Annette.  The waves were huge so I almost died but the water is so warm I didn’t care so I stayed in until my lunges had that weird feeling of being stretched out.  Then we played beach volleyball, we tried to get 20 volleys (is that the word?) and in fact succeeded at this goal just before sunset. 

A week later after another dinner on the beach I went in the water with my friend Jessie even though we didn’t have swimsuits because who cares, being dry is so boring and predictable. 

So this is all to say it's been a crazy couple of months - hard and good and confusing.  But sometimes when life flashes you the proverbial middle finger you flash it right back and go night swimming. 

Here are some of my picnic faves:

Wine Canteen // Apolis Bag // Table in a Bag // Turkish Towel // 

Snapchat

Snapchat is forcing me into a premature mid life crisis, at 28.  I don’t use facebook much, but I really like instagram. I like its simplicity, just some friend’s photos, likes, comments, that’s it.  I don’t feel pressure to keep up with it, it’s not time consuming, it’s what I want from social media.  But to my horror, everyone is leaving instagram and promoting their snapchat profiles because the cool kids (and the masses) have moved on to the other party across town, and all that’s left at the instagram affair are a few stragglers and a lot of disengaged onlookers slouched in a booth in the corner too lethargic for participation. 

I feel left out. I used to scoff at the snapchatters giggling over ‘snaps’ sent back and forth, ugh thank God that will never catch on.  But then instagram got complicated and riddled with ads, so as social media goes this is our cue – moving on. So I mustered up the energy to download the app and log in about 4 years late, using my left hand to hold the screen away from my aging eyes and using my right pointer digit to clumsily jab at my screen one letter at a time. After the centuries worth of login information I was in…I think. Swipe right, or left, hold it down, pick an animal, snap her individually, snap everyone, hold his name and see a photo representing each moment of his day. Each. Moment.  I was sucked iiiin - cool Chinese food, yeah that does look like a boring drive, haha your face is on fire, wow I almost feel like I’m at the concert and BONUS that snap just blew out my iphone speakers!

One needs to set a timer on their phone to check snapchat on a regular basis lest the masses of information build up, snappers snap, all the time. The only thing I really like is my friend Alli who direct snaps me (as they say) with all the weird dog faces and they make me laugh.  So I login once a month, watch Alli with puppy ears, swipe around a bit and log out, all my snapping desires satisfied. But it bothers me that I can’t get into it, I feel the pressure of society moving on and I’m still in the corner playing with my Tamagotchi and logging into my aol account. What is one to do? I’m already at risk of getting out of touch because of the nature of my personality and my hatred for time consuming pixelated tasks. I can’t even aggregate the energy to get venmo so I make Trever do it for me, or I write my friends checks they never cash because the gas to the bank costs more than the $4 payback for coffee. My phone overwhelms me, I leave text messages unopened for days because I can’t be bothered to send a one word reply about dinner plans.  I won’t even buy a kindle because I don’t believe in it since I like paper and don't care that books cost more.

Someone just put me in the grave, I was made for another time.  

You see what I mean, I'm out of touch and I'm trying to like snapchat so I feel young again and it's not working.  On the bright side, it's cheaper than a boob job.  

My snapchat is brookehoehne, Snap me bae! … no I can’t. 

Do you want to get rich from home?

I super hate pyramid schemes, ahem, multi-level marketing.  It’s all over my world, buy me, buy me.

"All you have to do is purchase this product that burns up all your fat and simultaneously makes your muscles spasm so that you’re toning up your body right there in your office chair without ever moving, you’ll look like Jillian Micheals but be richer and have no friends left in just three months! What a deal, and bonus, it’s all plant based made out of bronacancerite and naturochemaline."

We already have to deal with a lot of people digitally screaming into our consciousness to choose them.  My personal favorite are the ads that pop up over the content of an article and pretty much shut down your computer and the internet trying to do some weird moving graphic and take so long to close out that 0% of readers survive the debacle and remain on the site (that ad better be paying your mortgage). I pride myself in my skills of averting my gaze away from the clutter of ads, for example if I google something I’ll always scroll below the ads links even if it’s the link I’m looking for, just out of principle (yes I’m the youngest sibling why does that matter?).  Now though, it’s worse because my friends are marketing at me on social media.  I have brands I follow on social media because I like their product, plexi drink away your fat is not one of them.  I do not care about it and I am highly uninterested in a photo of an ugly line-up of the products and a quote about, omg it’s finally the one product that cures cancer and clears acne all at ooooonce.

Suddenly is has turned my social media friends into car sales men. They have this weird tone in their voice as they find awkward ways of bringing up the benefits of crazy pill healer and asking really invasive questions to find ways to apply its benefit to my life.  Are you afraid of getting cancer, ya I bet you are, just swallow this brown powder made from natural cave rock particles fermented into globs,which cannot be replicated and is only found in obscure mountain -boom – you’ve got all the vegetables you’ll ever need in that one drink. Plus it could be free if you get forty of your friends to take it too. 

Or worse, you get weekly 800 word emails from someone who you met 5 years ago at the gym, and they’re trying to friend you up and do a super sly mention of, oh ya this product cures the average headache and will most likely end global warming, and if you thought you couldn't sell this yourself, you're wrong! Just sit around and annoy the hell out of your friends all day and your numbers start doubling, it's just twenty times math math plus this and youuu've GOT that new car.

Now I'm so mad that even if it is a great product, the marketing of it makes me never want to buy it.  I like essential oils (message me if you’re interested) but I don’t buy the pyramid brands because it’s annoying to me.

The absolute worst part of it all, is multi level marketing is GENIUS! I never pay attention to the chaos around the border of my screen, but I just cannot get away from Rodantheyou’ll look twenty for life.  

Ugh

…was that a little dramatic?

A Round of Applause

I just finished having coffee with my mom and I was telling her how annoying it is to read people’s Christianese jargon on social media about how #blessed they are.  I couldn’t even completely articulate why it’s so annoying to me but sometimes I read posts about their “omg a free car” and “so blessed to be a part of this blah blah money babies happy”. My first thought was that it’s jealously, but I actually don’t think that’s the case.  Most of the time I’m not overly concerned with the actual topic, just the rhetoric surrounding it. 

Why should I care, if someone believes in giving God credit for every good thing that happens in their life, I concur and would be happy to celebrate that with them. Maybe it’s because I think that they have never experienced suffering, so all their simple-minded chatter about God blessing their charmed lives just makes me curious of what they might say if their situation were different. They’re just living the American dream and thank God for that…sorry Africa I’m sure He’s #blessing you too, just in a different way.  Ugh my arrogance. Who ever said I know everything about the pain in people’s lives? They’ve probably suffered a lot more than me and are just choosing gratitude and shouldn’t that be my goal too? Also, aren’t I #blessed beyond what I could ever deserve?

It is annoying though, don’t we all agree? Maybe it’s our problem, or social media’s for making us all look like dummies, or it’s just the flippancy of it all. Ya I think that’s it, it’s the nasty combination of all of those things.  We post these little curated tid-bits of our lives because most of us talk to friends about the pain and the truth and only celebrate the good things with the internet (most of us is apparently not me).  Then there is this thoughtless way in which we talk about God and faith, the little language that gets perpetuated by repetitive jargon and before we know it we’re not totally sure what we’re actually saying. Then there might be some truth to the fact that we might have very thin idea of suffering so our tiny narrative makes us think God arranged the whole galaxy so we could get the ‘desire of our hearts’.  

Add it all up = annoying…or, I need to get off social media for a bit. I really am so blessed, I should just shut up and applaud. 

#blessed #blessedlife #thankgod #godisgood #blessing #don’tstrikemewithlightening

The Yoga Life

I went to a yoga class with a friend the other day.  Most yoga classes are yoga for fitness where one holds warrior pose, which is code for a deep lunge, and stays there until their leg muscles are shaking but no one notices because we are all so distracted by our mind numbing boredom.  This class was not that.  I don’t think I flexed the whole time I was in this dark room that smelled of the essential oils we had rubbed on our chests and necks before the class began.  We probably stretched our wrists for the first 20 minutes of class and at first it felt like death to be doing so little, but sometime between the wrist and the foot stretch I found myself really into it. 

In her sing-song voice she kept telling us to bring our minds back to the peace of the room and the sensations in our muscles as they stretched.  I found myself thinking about what it is to truly relax which was technically breaking the relaxing rules, but I kept wondering about the commitment it takes to find peace in the noise that is our society.  We all know we live in a fast paced culture and we have to stop glorifying busyness, but I actually think that's true. I’m always worried about fending off any trace of apathy, there is a lot to do, so many people to see, and a sense of urgency that I feel about life, highlighted by phrases like, “you’ll sleep when you’re dead.” There is a common and well-marketed notion that we only live once, so never stop, live big and take advantage of every little thing you can and only then can you add something to the canvas of history. Part of that is true, but it's also unrealistic. 

Last year I spent a week in Paso Robles volunteering at an organic farm.  I spent my days picking and bundling thyme and my evenings reading, writing and watching the sunset.  It was difficult, particularly in the evenings because I felt the absence of my husband and the clamor of friends to see every night, but mostly I think I felt devoid of the haste.  The places to go and things to do that give me a sense of importance, and the satisfaction of doing and living life. 

A couple of months later the farmer Barbara was explaining to some of my friends how I came up all tense and productive and accelerated. She said, “you just needed to…” then she took a deep breath out and dropped her arms to her side, and that gesture said it.  Apparently she and her husband Bill had some coo going on and never told me, they were purposefully forcing me to slow down, they would tell me there was nothing to do so I would do nothing and once I got used to it, it felt like all the things.

I think our obsession with abundance is actually indicative of most elements in our culture. We’re doing our best to keep up with all of the high volume low depth relationships, items to purchase, uninterrupted entertainment, self marketing, experience collecting race to the good life, when the guy on the farm probably beat us there a long time ago.

I’m in a season of life where I’m feeling some anxiety, which is not a normal characteristic for me.  It has to do with more than just my pace of life, but I think what I really need is a breath.  I want to run away to some unsustainable reality and gulp for air, wheezing to let my heart catch up to my racing mind, when what I need is to figure out how to slow the whole thing down. I want to release the anxiety of watching runners pass me, to accept being less rapid and less productive, to pursue the real meaning of life, that takes longer but lasts longer and at least it’s real, and it matters.

Namaste.

Oysters and Disdain

On a street in Williamsburg that a gal from suburbia might call “seedy”, we showed up for our 10:00 reservation at an oyster bar.  We had ubered over from a rooftop bar ten blocks away and were relieved to take off our heavy coats in exchange for the warmth of a dimly lit room and the clatter of diners and their absinthe induced laughs. In a corner booth beneath an oil painting we were sat with a view of the room so perfectly tailored you might find yourself thinking you were transported to the 30’s, and that the noise of the clinking dishes and flirtatious banter around you was all that existed in the world. 

Then, we were judged, well I wasn’t…but.

We were there for my friend Annette’s birthday and this place came highly recommended.  We had looked at the menu the night before because our friends Sarah and Heather are the chicken and spaghetti types and they’ll be very upset with me for saying that.  While I had just a few nights previously been given a quick education on absinthe thanks to a bar tender in Fullerton, we were able to pick one from the menu so we didn’t look like the complete newbs that we were.  So Annette and I ordered absinthe and the chef’s choice of oysters ready to indulge in some of life’s most obscure delicacies. 

Then, our chicken spaghetti friends ordered, and thus began the judgment.  They had to ask for regular butter because the seaweed butter tasted like it was infused with essence of ocean.  They then preceded to order one absinthe to share as they weren’t big fans. The one non-fish dish at the restaurant was a big slab of pork for which they had to bring out the only steak knife in the restaurant, and like a scarlett letter it was placed on our table to be viewed and silently scoffed at throughout the evening.  The server brought the meat out with disdain and a pretentious smirk as he asked with half hearted enthusiasm, “who ordered the pork?…enjoy”. 

Annette and I were giddy with laughter over our fabulous oysters and the cloud of judgment that hung over our friends like an American in Paris.  We fell prey to the pompous environment as we slurped oysters like we were the real adventurers, the true experiencers and our friends watched with disgust over the air of our elevated joy and the gelatinous look of our dinner.

We finished our meal hysterical over our polarized experiences and walked out of the restaurant where the spell broke.  It was not 1930, we were all just tourists in New York, we'll always be Americans in Paris, sometimes we'll have to order the pity dish, and it’s really funny if you laugh about it. The moral of the story is that you should go eat oysters, and if you don't like them you should be like Sarah and Heather, who although they would never dream of eating such grotesque cuisine, would go to an oyster bar anyway and take delight in the snobbery of others. I now deserve to be taken to a steak house in Texas where vegetarian is not in their vocabulary and they throw some iceberg lettuce and ranch on a plate for their costumer who eats rabbit food…how embarrassing.  

Bats and Rats and the Power of Imagination

I went to the farm with some divas that need good coffee and don’t own hiking shoes.  They know I call them divas because I tell them to their faces, I tell them they’re drama. But I love them because they join me on adventures and are up for trying new things even though it might be a little rough. 

Well not that rough.  We decided to stay on the farm but instead of setting up a tent and rolling out a sleeping bag like most outdoorsy people might, we paid to have someone else do it for us and place beds with blankets and sheets inside, cover the floor with multi colored rugs and set up an outdoor table with pillows to sit on.  It was all very glamorous out there in nature, until…we saw the gap. There was a 4-inch gap between the bottom of the tent wall and the wood planked entrance (yes it had rolled out wood planks like a porch, stop it). The gap was just the right size for, I don’t know, SNAKES or RATS! As we began to ponder all the potential critters that might join us in the evening we began to squeal like little girls and lift up our feet onto our six-inch elevated beds where we would obviously be out of reach of the potential rattler. Nature suddenly went from charming and adventurous to terrifying and unknown and sure to take our lives by the end of the night.

I tried my best to be the strong one who could handle wild life, so I kept my mouth shut in an effort to deescalate the rapidly increasing emotional mania. I was keeping it cool.

Then we went to bed.  I lay there recollecting a snake story I once heard about the little reptile finding its way into someone’s bed and coiling up in between his legs.  I hate the person who told me that story; I will always have to live with its taunting potential.  I laid there listening for a rattler noise ready at any moment for it to raise its diamond shaped head up from next to my bed and hiss at me before it bites me in the face. I’ll probably need face reconstruction surgery if I survive, I probably won’t even look the same. My poor face, I’m so sad to have to have it ruined, good thing I live in Orange County they have lots of good plastic surgeons there.  We don’t have very good cell service, might be hard to get the ambulance out here. 

Then the tent rustles and with my blind eyes all I can see is formerly charming shadow of apple blossoms cast by the moon that is definitely a large animal not a shadow.  Glasses on, no it’s fine, still a tree. I’ll just sleep with my glasses on my face, that’s a totally normal thing to do. Not comfortable but it’s important for my survival that I do it.

Why are my legs itching, oh yes, it’s clearly a black widow biting me, definitely 10 maybe 20 spiders in my bed. A quick sweep with my hand around the bed to be sure nothing is inside ready to lay eggs and cozy up with me for the night. I guess I just need to wrap myself up in my sheets like a burrito - that will keep them out.  Do it real fast, tuck all the edges…ok it’s fine.

Good there’s a pack of coyotes howling, pretty far away though…nope they’re definitely right outside out tent probably picking up the scent of their next prey.  They will break through the thin canvas, they travel in packs right? We’ll probably all die.  Our poor families. Do I think they’ll be deterred by my pepper spray, potentially, it could save our lives.  Ok sleeping with pepper spray in my hand.  Dammit this is it, “God please forgive me and please let me into heaven, I’m headed there tonight.”  Maybe I should call Trever to tell him I love him.  

Bats! I hate bats.  They’re flying rats. Someone once told me they get caught up in girl’s hair when it’s long.  I’ll put my hood on; don’t want any bats in my hair giving me rabies.

Speaking of bats, RATS…

And there it is.  Moved momentarily out of my irrational fear I see myself - cocooned in my sheets tight up to my tense shoulder my hood tied around my face so that the only thing exposed is my nose and mouth, eyes wide with glasses on and smushed against my face, a hand tightly clutched to the pink pepper spray attached to my keys…I am not keeping it cool.

I talked myself down and begged for sleep to come and rescue me from myself, and it finally did right before the rooster so kindly informed us it was morning. We woke to a critter free tent and walked outside to the most beautiful view of orchards and golden hills.  The scary nature monster turned out to just be a shadow cast in the darkness by the exquisite beauty and diversity of the great outdoors.

“Brooke, how did you sleep last night?”

“Great!!! I love nature, I might need a nap later but it’s cool.  You guys are total divas.”

Latin America in Los Angeles

I live in Orange County, but we southerners often find ourselves crossing the Orange Curtain for a good night of food and entertainment in the big city, but we know LA people look down us, we can see it in their eyes. 

It's like we’re just not cool enough, we’re not quite at the leading edge of culture like they are, they’re like…'that was so last week'. Granted we are known for pleasantville neighborhoods with identical homes and way too much money(I'm looking at you Irvine)…but we’re not all that way, I swear it. I sort of get the obsession though, I think people in LA like the seedy characteristics of the city, they like living in a place that’s part terrifying, part totally awesome.  The grunge adds to the thrill, the intrigue of irony, as they pop from one hip restaurant to another. 

But there we were with fabulous friends, starting at a wine bar with shelves of wine from floor to ceiling and a mescal tasting in a back room.  Smoky Tequila is gross, except that I loved it. It might ruin a margarita but when sipped alone, the subtle details become extravagant. Then on a busy street in Beverly Hills we opted for valet the price of a bottle of wine to avoid the dreaded wondering around the street affair, afraid to hit the Maserati directly in front or the homeless guys directly behind while parallel parking.  The crowd outside the Mexican restaurant was huge, which we later came to find out was a night of prayer, music and gratitude for mother earth, complete with a rainbow display of votive candles to light in a vigil to the gods that be and a performance by Peter, Paul & Mary. Inside the restaurant the beautiful servers who undoubtedly doubled as working actors whirred about the room expertly weaving in between tables, trays full of cocktails and red wine.  While we ate I engaged my skills of peripheral people staring – no watching- and I wanted desperately to be a hippie.  Women were wandering barefoot with braids down their backs, one with a rainbow knit smock that could only have been handmade.  Babies were strapped to backs, which brought along friendly conversation and congratulations “you have a baby…in a bar”. Then there were the modern day hipster hippies, who weren’t quite sold enough.  They did a bad performance of hippie reenactment while they flirted at the bar with chiseled cheekbones and a hat I’m sure I had seen at Urban Outfitters last week. 

We left and ran across town and parked in such a precarious area I would have bet my cats that our car would get stolen.  Unknown streets can be very exaggerated at night, like a scene from some rapist movie that I can’t quite remember but has lodged itself somewhere in the back of my mind to torture me with its fear. Pass the graffiti, pass the overflowing trashcan, pass a man sleeping in a tent, pass a man in a tailored suit - wait, no that’s us.  He leads us upstairs and through a closet (insert Angelinos eye roll) and into a Rum bar with a live Cuban band and a dance floor full of beautiful people and perfectly timed hips and feet. If I’m not careful in a place like this, I might let the mojito tell me I can probably dance like that…I cannot dance like that, NEVER let me try!  

It was a evening of experiences stringed along like beads that made the night like something out of Latin America with a side of 70's, and I was in love with it.  I was grateful for a city close by that may not have it’s own distinct culture, but in a country of immigrants our culture is international and it is definitely alive. Who wants one thing, when you can have pieces of it all.  So LA I’ll give you an A+ for the night, don’t make me fall for you!