Theo says

Theo is just at that age where some days are super aggravating but that interspersed are these transcendent moments in which I am bewildered that I birthed this person.

Sidebar: I am happy to report that I found a good counselor and that hopefully that will help me keep afloat of my own junk.

And I think she's in her 60s so that makes all this even more perfect.

Theo is not quite yet three but I've heard from other moms that three can be way harder than two (though two wasn't too bad for us), that 3.5 is the pits, that threenagers give you moments that are the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

One of his latest monster truck drawings.

I try to keep notes (on my phone, in random notebooks) of the super funny things that he says, and I think it will be important for me in the next few months to pay attention to these occurrences that make motherhood worth it.

We think he's pretty smart and a decently verbal kid (for a boy). He absolutely cracks me up with the things he makes connections between.

• Sometimes under his breath he'll say "I'm a big boy" when he's doing something he knows he is supposed to be doing, without being asked.
• "We need to get more money, lots more money, to get a tractor." (He wants a *real* John Deere tractor, not a toy one, and he keeps hoping Santa will bring him one. Any time we go out to the store - even the grocery store - he thinks we might consider buying one.)

• When we tuck him in at night, he usually says, "love you, mama" and "love you, appa." Recently he has begun to add, "I love my gray house. It's gray, and white, and there are windows, and wood, and a chimney. I love my gray house."
• This week his internal clock told him it was Tuesday and time to go to the library, even though nothing was mentioned, and David even worked on Sunday which totally throws off the schedule, at least for me. 
• Theo has been out of a toddler bed for more than six months now so it was funny when he randomly brought it up with David the other day. "Appa, do you remember my toddler bed? Where there was a short rail on one side and I could get in and out?"
• He can sing so many Christmas carols by himself and especially loves the Pentatonix version of Drummer Boy; he can even do some beatboxing, and his rhythm is spot on.
• The other day David was trying to get Theo to give him a wall charger he was holding onto, and Theo said, "No, Appa. I need that for my WiFis."

Literal guidelines

Okay, you guys might already be enlightened and all, but I did a very grown-up thing the other day which is this: I looked up a video of how to properly cut up a whole raw chicken and then I did it. And it made me giddy.

Now, while I love to cook, I can't say I love touching raw meat, but no joke, this makes me want to cut up ALL THE CHICKENS.

I had no idea that it was so simple (and fun! and satisfying!) when you follow the guidelines. Literally! Literally literally. As in, there is literally a fat line you cut along order to easily separate the drumstick from the thigh - no Asian cleaver needed, no juices flying errwhere.

Because I love y'all so much, here it is. Melissa Clark on how to cut up a whole chicken.

Multiple choice prompt for your comment submissions:
(a) I already knew how to do this; I love it; I am awesome forever and ever amen.
(b) I will have to try this out; Lisa, you are the most enlightening and generous person ever!
(c) That was pretty cool, but I'm still a little grossed out by touching raw meat.
(d) Huh.

You're welcome!

A hard week

This has been a hard week. Hence, why I'm dragging myself here on a Friday, to finally write this week's post.

I've been in a funk, and (because?) my kids are going crazy. It's probably partly due to the weather: the darkness, and the cold keeping us in.

To give you an idea of how bad this week was, let me just say that I spent one whole nap-time Googling therapists and preschools. (The former for me, the latter for a certain almost-three-year-old, if you weren't clear.)

I had one of those days when I dreamed of being older and getting momnesia, being one of Those Moms.

I think it's even harder after a year of growth and realizations. Like, aren't I supposed to be a better person now? I've learned a little about self-compassion! I've been enlightened! I can live in the moment! I can be my own best friend?! Or even my own boss! And, when all else fails, "Plot twist!"

Sigh. The spirals of despair.

Anyway, I'm just going to try to keep showing up. Each and every damn day.

---

Kendra Adachi, of The Lazy Genius Collective, my newest blog/podcast love, asks these three questions of her podcast listeners at the end of every interview. I'll answer them for you and ask for you to reply with yours.

Something I love: The Road Back to You podcast. The production has improved significantly since its inception. I particularly enjoyed Reclaiming Hope (Nov 16) and How Do You Manage the Unrest in Your Soul (Nov 10).
Something I hate: Feeling overwhelmed by the aforementioned almost-three-year-old.
Something I need: Besides therapy and/or preschool, a vacation in a warm place or at least a heated swimming pool!

---

Other randoms:

• If you have smelly kitchen towels, despite any and all past efforts of washing in borax/vinegar/baking soda/etc. in the laundry machine, try: boiling them in 1/4-1/2 cup baking soda on your stove for 20-30 minutes. In addition to smelling so clean (i.e., not smelling like anything), my flour sacks are more absorbent now, too! You're welcome.
• If you need to watch the stupidest stupid thing ever, check this out. If it's not funny to you, just watch it again.
• My friend Jason said, "for someone who's not on Facebook, you sure like a lot of dumb videos." This is for having also insisted that we watch Christopher Walken's Googly Eyes video before dinner. (Is Walken a 6, needing to know where he stands with something?)
• I've signed up for a sort of continuation of the workshop I took this summer, called The Year of Creativity. If you're interested, I have a referral link that will get you 10% off and then $10 for me. 
• Instead of doing a full elimination diet just yet, I've tried cutting out gluten for Emilyn and me. So far it's making a big difference for Emilyn, and a questionable difference for me. 

Love. Hate. Need. Go!

A pumpkin round-up: savory and sweet

Before November is over, let's talk about pumpkin for a little bit because YES PLEASE.

1. Pumpkin chili

This chili is decidedly savory and (big surprise) I love it. It is vegetarian as written but I think it'd go great with meat, which is how I'm going to make it today. Kayla - who brought us the tomato paste freezing tip in a previous post - blends the canned tomatoes before adding them, which definitely takes it to the next level.

I highly recommend doubling the recipe and making jalepeno cheese cornbread muffins to go alongside!

2a. Roasted kabocha salad

Trying out another recipe from Vegetarian that I have had bookmarked (literally, ha) for a while. I always steal the kabocha from the tempura pile; it's absolutely my favorite pumpkin (so starchy!).

2b. Oh wait, this is my favorite pumpkin:

Sweet, savory, and tangy.

4. Pumpkin bread

Kathy loves to reminisce about the pumpkin bread I made six years ago when Kenny helped me cut and roast sugar pumpkins and we made the bread from homemade puree.

(It also didn't hurt that I put chocolate chips in the batter.)

We love using this Orangette recipe, but we cut the sugar in half so we can enjoy putting the (optional?!) chocolate in it. I've written it as a doubled recipe (so you can use up a can of pumpkin, or if not you can make the pumpkin chili, see point number 1 above) so you can do one loaf plain (which a lot of our family loves) and the other with chocolate and/or walnuts. We decided we like chocolate best, no walnuts.

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips
adapted from Orangette

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
1 T cinnamon
1 t ginger
1 t nutmeg
1/2 t cloves

2/3 c water
1 t vanilla

12 T unsalted butter, at room temp
1 1/4 c sugar {this is halved from Orangette's recipe}

4 large eggs, room temp
2 cup pumpkin puree (if making homemade puree that is thinner in texture than canned pumpkin, you can reduce the water above)

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9x5 loaf pans.

Whisk dry ingredients together.

Beat butter until creamy, about 30 seconds, then add sugar and blend until lightened in color, abut 3 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time.

Add pumpkin puree, and beat on low speed until just blended.

Add flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the water-vanilla mixture in two parts, beating on low until smooth and just combined.

Fold in chocolate and pour into pans.

Bake for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a rack for five or ten minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.

Friendsgiving 2016

I gotta put together a slap-bang post before Thanksgiving because sometimes done is better than perfect.

Although, perfect is: this beautiful sign that Kayla made for our Friendsgiving last Sunday with all the young families from church.

Less than perfect is: the quality of my pictures. I really need to clean off my phone from grubby hands. (You think I'm talking about my children, but I'm not.) (Although! Emilyn has been doing the cutest thing which is to put her play phone to her ear whenever we say, "Hello?")

The party was a huge success and I wanted to share some of aspects I thought made it so.

It was a potluck, and the Evite "What To Bring" section enabled us to guide people towards covering all the necessary components to a complete spread. 

I divvied food up into smaller "bites," if you will, so that people could pick and choose a couple things together if that was easier than tackling a big item. 

Asking someone to bring cider and a bag of ice guaranteed that our drinks would be cold, even if they wouldn't be refrigerated during church. I also separately requested a 1/2 lb decaf beans to be brought.

I'm learning to delegate, because even when it's a potluck, there can end up being a lot of last minute purchases that add expenses for the host. This way you have margin to splurge on other fun (or necessary) ideas that come up later.

David and I provided the turkey, and since this was a casual gathering, I felt the freedom to not have to present a beautiful (some have called it "stunt") turkey at the table. This would have been really challenging anyway, seeing as the function immediately followed service on Sunday.

So, we roasted the turkey on Friday (since David was off then but had to work on Saturday). I have never before made a turkey in such a relaxed ("not agitated" to be Earnest) manner. It was marvelous.

At 4 o'clock on a relaxed afternoon without any company expected, we got to eat the crispy skin off (ha) and then when it cooled, we sliced and refrigerated the meat to be warmed up in gluten-free (i.e., just corn starch, no flour) gravy in a crock pot on Sunday morning. Crock pot FTW again.

Pro-tip: multi-purposing cups as name cards.

The only other elements of "structure" (I really had to restrain myself here) were a Mad Lib and a brief sharing of everyone's highlight of the year and a challenge of the year.

decorations? activity? "agenda"?

There were four babies in the group that had been born within the last year so the majority of the answers to highlights and challenges was babies. (We laughed when we discovered repeatedly that so many people's "favorite activity" on the Mad Lib was sleeping.)

Kayla was an awesome co-host and I personally had a blast doing this with her. When everyone left (which was late, another good sign), I noticed that I felt so filled up, both literally and figuratively.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. If you need more, check out our 2014 Thanksgiving or revisit the letter I wrote mysef aboout hosting parties.

If I posted on Instagram:

This dill-icious cauliflower salad first made for me by my friend Emily.

We are having two Thanksgivings this year but at neither one will there be classic trashy green bean casserole, so I made one the other day for just David and me.

Getting in two or three laps around our block at 5 a.m. for almost two weeks = surpassing my 10,000 steps.

After an appointment with a naturopath who strongly recommended an elimination diet for my eczema, I desperately needed some Costco pizza and a hot dog.

 

I didn't do the lemon, but the banana and prayer worked. Always good to know someone raised by avocado farmers. ;)

Falling for wintery foods

(First of all, what?! Okay, that said...

...) I'm often disappointed with traditional beef stews, finding them too acidic or even tinny tasting, and not beefy enough to boot.

But there is one version that never fails, and that is Ree Drummond's Sunday Night Stew.

Her pictures are way more gorgeous, her sauce more deeply mahogany, probably because I use chicken stock where she uses beef.

My favorite part of this recipe is the turnips - different, but oh so good, a wonderful contrast texturally to the beef.

It also doesn't hurt that Ree serves the stew on top of mashed potatoes that have been whipped with a stick of butter and a carton of cream cheese.

I highly recommend that you allow your rule-following (at least when it comes to recipes) spouse to make the mashed potatoes so that he can use the full amount of fat and you don't have to see how much goes into it to make it so luscious and heavenly.

(And this is why we all willingly fork over our hard-earned paychecks to cafes and bakeries, so we don't have to see all the good bad stuff that goes into everything that tastes amazing.)

Bonus: Pro tip from my friend Kayla is to freeze spoonfuls of tomato paste (because you NEVER need a whole can and it ALWAYS goes to waste) on a sheet pan, par-freeze it, then transfer to a ziplock in the freezer so you always have little dollops of paste when needed. You're welcome.

---

Another meal we tried this week was Winter Albondigas Soup:

And finally...

• Reading 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam. It's surprisingly provocative for me personally, enough so that I might need to do a book report (aka another post) on this. As a teaser, know that I have woken up at 5 a.m. (!) for the last two days and gone walking! (I took advantage of Daylights Savings Time to make this shift.)
• Enjoyed this post on 7 Steps to Internet Sanity
• Appreciated this follow-up article from Stephie to my question about cookbook club.
• Love this quote by Cyril Connolly: "Better to write for yourself and have no public than write for the public and have no self."

Get ready for a bunch of randoms.

Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes is seriously the bomb. No deep frying, no sub-recipes (i.e., recipes whose ingredient lists are themselves things you need to prepare). Irreverent, bold, nerdy, lazy, pan-Asian. Basically everything I am. I was already sold, and then it came out and used the word "subparenthetically" in the middle of a parenthetical! What the what?! I need.

David and I both finished Scary Close and loved it. (Eunice, I'm sorry I'm so late to the e-book game. For the life of me I could not figure it out two years ago when you gave me a free copy!)

I have also been bawling my eyes out over Lost and Found, the episode on the Liturgists where Science Mike and Michael Gungor tell their stories of their losing their faith. (It's taken me a week and I'm still in part 1 because of all the crying breaks.) This was the first time I've heard the term "deconversion." I resonated with almost everything they are talking about, and it's so validating to have intelligent people articulate some very complex and nuanced and vulnerable things. I also chortled when they talked about Donald Miller and Rob Bell being "dangerous" authors to a Southern Baptist.

Speaking of Bell, listening to Velvet Elvis and enjoying it so far. (The audiobook is actually read by the author, who is, in this case, a great reader. But David listened to Scary Close and the reader - not Don Miller - was not a good match for the book. Alas.)

Annoyed by The Couple Next Door. Shame on me, but I skipped the middle section and read the end. I never do that kind of thing. Oh well.

Also enjoyed The Power of Habit and the perhaps controversial Love Warrior.

Absolutely slayed by my Enneathought a couple of days ago:

Today, explore the issue of boundaries. As a Six, are your boundaries too rigid? Can you trust people to get close to you? Can you share more of your feelings and ideas?

(Yes, Kayla, that was what inspired my notebook entry. ;p)

Invented this dish of steamed tilapia over silken tofu cubes with black bean sauce. We loved the layered textures. (It felt analogous to the Asian carb-on-carb-ness of potatoes and rice as well as reminiscent of Fuschia Dunlop's avocado over silken tofu appetizer.)

Had a super eggplant week with Persian-style eggplant dip and miso-crusted eggplant (both from Liana Krisoff's Vegetarian*), and then yu-xiang eggplant with grass-fed ground beef (amazing!). *Kind of trying to do a cook/book club with this. Slai, can you please give me more details on how you guys did yours?

Finally, gearing up for Thanksgiving season. What are some creative ways you guys are thinking of celebrating Thanksgiving this year?

Without overthinking

Well, after simply identifying the problem last week, I was able to bite the bullet and meal plan without overthinking. It was really nice to have a fridge full of stuff to cook, and it was super therapeutic - as it almost always is - to actually do the cooking, once I had decided what to make and had the ingredients to do so.

Roasting a pan of vegetables is always a good idea, especially when you have kabocha from your CSA.

A bag of dried garbanzo beans prepared in the crock pot was turned into four different things: hummus, radish greens pesto chickpea salad, pumpkin soup with harissa, and saag with chickpeas.

Speaking of the crock pot, it worked wonders for us this weekend, allowing us to eat well but not be too weighed down by time in the kitchen when we had lots of housework to do, like cutting down our maple tree (sad day, but now there's more of a view of the other trees...and the freeway)...

... and picking up a quarter cow from a nearby farm.

The best meal was a pot roast made in the church-lady-potluck tradition: cream of mushroom soup and a packet of onion soup mix. Don't worry, I didn't do this with our grass-fed cow from the farm. But still, this is seriously the best way to make a roast if you're going to do it in the crock pot the ultra lazy way without even searing it. And the leftovers made awesome sandwiches with mayo and red onion.

(I am now writing a post in my head about my love for sandwiches, which I have recently discovered in my adult life, but which white people have always known about. So to really talk about it might be the Asian analog of whitesplaining (thank you, Slai) the beauty of drinking hot water.)

And then on Sunday morning, because lunch after church is pretty much the most chaotic/hangry point of the week, I tried out my friend Valinda's suggestion and we did chicken tacos in the crockpot. I just added salt, taco seasoning, and about one cup of chicken broth. On high for ~3 hours (when you're at church) and it was perfect. Easy peasy and delish.

Also, per Christine's awesome post on welcoming fall, we lit candles for dinner to start our Sabbath, which we experimented doing from 5pm-5pm Sat-Sun this past weekend.

Now I've got to plan for this week ahead. Do you guys have any no-fail favorite crockpot meals?

Ooh, also, I've completely forgotten about linking this awesome article my friend Kayla sent me about a month ago on crappy dinner parties, and which we've been participating in ever since. It's been the best thing ever.

P.S. Some follow-ups to last week's randoms:

1) Wearing shoes from the time I wake up until after dinner definitely made me more productive, and on the days I did it, I hit my 10,000 steps goal without even trying.
2) All things pickled FTW. We finished the watermelon radish, peppers, and red onions so fast. So good for anything that needs a little extra somethin'. Or just straight out of the jar because vinegar is my love language.
3) In the middle of the Liturgists episode on Spiral Dynamics. So confused.
4) David and I watched the first ep of This is Us through NBC.com and loved it!

P.P.S. Since drafting this post, I read and made this in the crockpot tonight. It was amazing! And, in the words of one vegetarian who took some home for her daughters, "I think I eat meat now."

In a pickle

Help! I'm in a writing rut and a cooking rut.

Please let me know what you're cooking and eating these days or if you have any tips on menu planning. I've talked about this before (twice!), but nothing seems to be sticking. Like I said before, I like routine, until I get bored.

I do think we are going to get on a little pickle train though. We'd been getting lots of peppers from the CSA and when I know I can't use them fast enough I just slice them and throw them in a jar and pour cold vinegar over them. Done and done. Here are some watermelon radish, ready for a sandwich (e.g., banh mi) or right out of the jar.

Next up, picked red onions.

Other randoms:

• The Liturgists podcast. "We create art and experiences for the spiritually homeless and frustrated." Yes, please! (HT: Marla)
• Today I was listening to Ep 3 on The Bible and the guest speaker was talking about how Jews look at the Bible as a mystery or problem to be solved whereas Christians see it as a message to proclaim, hence the intolerance for theological ambiguity or tension. THIS EXPLAINED MY LIFE. (Another connection to Heisenberg, if you try to get too precise you lose the accuracy.)
• Trying to get back into routines, ala FlyLady. I'm trying out the shoes thing even though it goes against everything in me as an Asian American.
• Really enjoyed another book about the process of writing, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. "The life of an artist isn't easy. You're never free unless you're doing art."
• The idea of being "all kite and no string." I think all my life I have been "all string and no kite."
• I found this assertion interesting: that it's easier to be demanding/critical than to be satisfied, and thus that enthusiasm is a form of social courage.
• Been loving the awkwardness that is Doc Martin.
• I keep hearing about how This is Us is filling the Parenthood-shaped hole in people's hearts. Any tips on the best way to watch it? (HT: Eunice, who told me about this way before now.)
• Made my first batch of harissa this week. It needed to be more garlicky but other than that I loved it!

Dear future self,

Here are some tips for parties you are going to host in the future because you love to host parties but hate how sometimes doing stuff you love stresses you out:

1. You are creative, so be creative. You don't have to follow all the rules to have a great event, and who wants to go to a party where the rules are the same as always?

2. Make lists of whatever is on your mind and don't be afraid to re-write those lists as the formulation and envisionment of your plans change, or as the days go by and the items are crossed out and it's closer to game time and you need your list to look very different.

3. Don't be afraid to start just because you have no idea how the heck these lists need to look for you to "feel" organized. Ignore the voice that tells you, "You've planned so many parties and you still don't know how to frame your plan?!"

4. Delegate as much as you can, especially the stuff you don't like to do. There are people out there who would love to do decorations, or plan a game.

5. Even better, cut out the stupid stuff. It's okay to have a party without favors. And it's okay for there not to be a gift-opening time at a baby shower where everyone has to sit and watch the mom-to-be seem surprised while opening everything she already saw was purchased on her registry, and which she put on there in the first place. Plus, she will really like the way you allocated time for the guests to give her their gifts and sneak in some one-on-one time.

6. Even though you dislike excess, plan one or two special touches that you are really excited about, like that blueberry lemon mint infused water. It's so beautiful!

7. If you're hosting at an off-site location, count on having to schlep all your stuff. There are tools that make your job (or the way you like to do your job) easier, and yes, it's annoying to have to bring them with you. But do it anyway. Empty out laundry baskets in advance for this cause. You'll be glad when you can use your stainless steel mini tongs for serving and your tent cards for labeling the dishes.

8. Do, do, do. As much as you love/hate the planning and the analyzing part, you also have to actually do stuff. Break things up into really small bite-sized pieces. Don't be embarrassed about writing down those baby steps on your aforementioned lists. You're a mom, and sometimes to get anything done you have to do it one teensy tiny bite at a time. Do as many of those baby steps as you can in advance. (But don't mix cut strawberries with sliced lemons for your other infused water ahead of time; the strawberries will bleed and you will be sad.)

9. Before/during the party, empower people to jump in and help; they don't need to ask questions of you. Give people enough information about the big pictures and let them know that they can do whatever they see needs to get done in order to have the event run smoothly. They can refill drinks when they see them getting low, refill serving platters, or clear plates. They don't need your permission. (And don't forget to send these people home with all the leftovers, so they can eat on them for a week.)

10, Finally, bring these napkins, but not to the baby shower, duh.

True uncertainties

In Ian Morgan Cron's deeply moving memoir about growing up as a child of an alcoholic, he relates a story about wrestling with his wife about letting their children jump off a 40-foot ledge into a spring-water filled quarry in Dorset, Vermont. When his wife finally realizes the nature of his anxiety, she tells him, "Ian, they're not falling; they're jumping." I completely identified with his sense of his life having felt like "spiritual and emotional free fall" - and to realize that taking a leap is a completely different thing from falling.

***

If I could adopt this super adorable quote as my life motto, I think I will have achieved success: "When something goes wrong in your life, just yell, 'Plot Twist!' and move on."

***

For my senior thesis in Asian American Literature, I managed to combine my degrees in Chemical Biology with English by claiming the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a lens for understanding translation of language and culture in literature.

I purported that in translation you can achieve accuracy or precision, but not both at the same time. You could literally translate a phrase from say, Chinese, to English, which might be a translation of precision (where you map one word in one language to its counterpart in the other language), but it may not be a translation of accuracy, whereby the meaning and intent is captured as well.

Being able to have either precision or accuracy (but not at the same time) might also be a useful framework for accessing truth in general. Henri Nouwen said it best in his book Reaching Out when he talks about grasping at "true uncertainties" rather than at false certainties.

For someone who loves categories and definitions so much, I struggle with the true ambiguities that are necessary when perceiving Truth.

***

The Enneagram (though I hated it at first) really enlightened me to my constant tug-of-war with paradoxes. Being a 6, I vacillate between needing support (societally, spiritually, personally, communally, etc.) and wanting to come at life on my own, out of my own courage and even vulnerability.

And with that, let's now end this post with a cartoon that pretty much sums up my life.

Of excess, of gratuity

Gah! I'm falling off the blogging bandwagon. It is SO hard to keep up when I'm not doing it every day. Anyway, I'm here to bring you a cookie recipe from another professed non-baker. That always makes me pay attention.

When it comes to design, I like things either super neutral or the complete opposite: super colorful, all in one piece. I guess you could say both styles match with everything. Same goes with food. I usually like recipes that have few ingredients, where each speaks for itself. I'm not a huge fan of excess, of gratuity. But because I love paradox, I love these cookies, which have what might seem like a lot of mix-ins. Lots of ingredients, lots of things talking at once. And I love it. I hope you will, too.

Gaia Cookies
from Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine

I made these with mostly dates for the dried fruit portion and loved it. I tried so hard to follow the recipe as-is the first time (so hard for a cook-not-baker), but next time I would increase both the chocolate and the nuts by maybe a 1/4 to 1/2 each. The amount of butter/sugar/flour in the recipe can handle it, I believe.

2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
2 T vanilla (I don't know if this is a typo, but I made it as is and it was not a problem)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup oats
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped dates, raisins, dried cherries, or cranberries, or any combination

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Mix together dry ingredients through salt, then add to creamed butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the mix-ins.

Briefly chill dough before rolling into balls (or roll the balls and chill the cookie sheet, if you have room in your fridge). Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until golden. I like to go on the longer side so it can be crispy despite already being chewy from the ingredients (especially if you use dates, as I did).

Be the boss of myself

The other day I received a thoughtful gift, but because of my new life philosophy of not keeping things unless I love them, even (or especially) if they were free or gifted.

It was a super thoughtful gift, something that's useful for a particular thing I actually really enjoy, but I didn't want to own this object; it only served a few purposes, and I didn't particularly care for the aesthetic.

The item was about $36 and Amazon was going to charge me $6 for the return shipping if I used the UPS label they provide. It sucked to see that deduction, so I dilly-dallied for a moment, considering the pay-my-own-shipping route, or figuring out another way to off-load this gift in an "economical" way. After letting myself analyze for about one to two minutes, I cut myself off and told myself that I needed to "be the boss of myself." 

As part of this new season of my life, I'm trying to act the way I want to feel. Sitting in front of the screen, I said to myself, "In this moment, I'm going to act like my time is worth $100/hr." I didn't want to spend any more of my precious time debating how to minimize the $6 loss of returning it. If I spent even two minutes on the thinking, and my time is worth $100/hr, that was $3.33 right there. If I spent even two more minutes debating, I would have exceeded the perceived $6 loss I was trying to avoid.

And this was for a gift that I didn't spend any money buying in the first place. I felt so grown up being able to:

1) Receive the gift with gratitude.

2) Decide quickly to return it because I didn't want/need it.

3) Let myself do my analyzing thing. I can't help myself.

4) Stop myself from doing my analyzing thing for too long. .

5) Move on with life.

Ultimately I chose to value my life more than money. 

One of the paradoxes of adulthood is the concept of being the boss of yourself, which necessarily means you are both the boss and the one being bossed around. 

Is this hard or is this easy?

When you're the boss of yourself you can do handstands at home. #leanagainst

Prompts for the Studious, or, A shameless call for comments:

1) What are your thoughts on the concept of waiting for permission?

2) What do you want right now in life that you are waiting for permission for?
3) What are some paradoxes you're pondering?
4) Anything else that stuck out to you?
5) Can you tell that I used to be a Bible study leader for a campus ministry?

More from me:

• Being your own best friend
• Being your own therapist

First-world hungry

first-world hungry = being hungry, but not for anything I have in my fridge

"Give me neither poverty nor riches. . .
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you,
and say, 'Who is the Lord?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God."
--Proverbs 30:8-9

David once mentioned to me that one of the signs of poverty in first-world countries is, perhaps unexpectedly, obesity.

While I don't want to get too much into social commentary here as I am not well studied on the topic, I do think it's a good launching point for the metaphor of the kind of stuff-obesity we fall prey to in our modern day first-world lives.

When we don't have enough quality in our lives, we may substitute quantity to make up for the feelings of poverty. It's easy to grab at every opportunity that comes our way when we're afraid of not getting opportunities in the future.

In an essay I wrote for my workshop group, I talked about how there was once a time not too long ago when, ironically, we couldn't afford to "declutter." 

I spent a lot of the first years of our marriage in a poverty mentality, even if it was just first-world poverty. (I'm careful here to say "I" because David is so much more above me.) I would ask David to cut the baby wipe packages in half and save pour-overs for the weekends because coffee filters cost $0.02 each.

Now that David's career is more stabilized I've felt free to let go of some things and in doing so I've had to confront a lot of my fears and the shame of having a scarcity mentality (c.f., once again, The Secret Sauce). 

***

I'm wrestling with the paradox that sometimes you need enough to get more. (This could probably be its own post one day.)

You need emotional resilience in order to grow. So when you're in a place of stuckness, how do you get momentum?

***

We once laughed at a pamphlet that came with some outdoor gear Kenny had purchased. In addition to instructions regarding the gear, the author of this little manual tried to provide the user with further instructions on survival, something I guess they thought might be relevant for the person who made the purchase. "Do not wait until you are without water to begin looking for water," it read. 

We guffawed*, but how often do we actually do this in life? And, to take this further, we could also say that the "opposite" of this is good advice, too: "Do not wait until you are drowning to begin asking for help." 

(*That was for you, Molly.)

I'm not drowning any more, though I have been there. Still, I'm realizing I need yet more margin. In particular, I'm seeing the value of having enough margin that I can make mistakes. If I want to live a brave and creative life, it will involve making mistakes.

(Molly {again}, fear not, I said "margin", not "margarine".)

***

On an unrelated train of thought...

Addenda, or Other Ramblings:

1. Wealth is the feeling of using or needing less than you are bringing in. I think we all know that living hand to mouth is no good, and that the "secret" to financial wealth is to spend less than you make (or, alternately, to make way more than you spend). But how often to we apply that to life? We want to fill our every moment with getting stuff done. What we if intentionally chose to spend less time than we have been granted? (Sabbath? We've been given seven days, and by choosing to not exhaust all seven days with work, we perhaps store up life-wealth.)

2. Another nugget I'm loving from Essentialism is the idea of shaping your life by design rather than be default. Marie Kondo also talks about this when she mentions how it's easy to hold on to things we've been given (either as gifts or hand-me-downs) but that there are ways to let go of even those things, too, if you so desire. Similarly, with life opportunities, just like we should prioritize our own lives instead of letting others prioritize them for us, we should - for our own sake, and for the sake of making our greatest contribution to the world - think hard about designing our lives with intention - proactively, rather than reactively.

Less, but better

"I'm going to donate these clothes I don't wear anymore to charity 

after I drive them around in the trunk of my car for eight months." 

--@amydillon

Sunk costs are one of the hardest things for me to let go of, and what made (and makes) KonMari so hard for me. 

Kenny, Whiz At Anything And Everything He Puts His Mind To, can often be found working on a computer that seems beyond repair, or trying to invent a solution to something that's never been done before. I love when, after many hours at something, he looks up from his project to tell us, "I've worked too hard for this not to work."

Kenny is perhaps the exception to the rule of sunk costs. But for the rest of us, while determination and contentment are good virtues, sometimes we just need to let it go.

Even now, if and when I find I'm not enjoying a book, I just stop. reading. it. (Gasp.) I'm not in school anymore (except for the School of Lisa), so who cares?

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown provides a way to assess sunk costs from a different angle by having us ask, "If I did not have [fill-in-the-blank] already, how much would I pay to have it?" If the answer is zero, then you should probably get rid of it.

I think we sorely underestimate the weight of the "trivial many" (McKeown's term) that we keep in our lives. We think that these little things aren't that big of a deal, but they can add up to a larger cumulative effect, one that could even drive you insane.

But you wouldn't know it until you removed them all, ruthlessly and entirely.

This is why and how KonMari actually worked for me. When I first read the book, I didn't buy it (literally or figuratively). But many months later I picked it up and for some reason it was different. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

I followed the prescription to start with clothes. I pulled out everything I had and asked myself if I loved the item (or if it "sparked joy"). Her method makes sense. When we get dressed in the morning, we don't dress "logically" - we don't wear the clothes we "think we ought to" wear, we wear the clothes that make us feel good. 

Because I'm a Questioner, I had to trick myself into the process. I didn't mentally commit to getting rid of the doesn't-spark-joy pile right away. But when I saw how happy I was with the remaining few, it was so much easier to clear away the "trivial many."

I applied this later to our silverware drawing by removing a few "blah" pieces. The simple joy of not having to dig past those anymore has increased my sanity by a seemingly disproportionate amount. 

Taking care of stuff is already hard. Taking care of stuff you dislike (or even feel neutral about) is tiresome.

Do you like your "darlings" enough to dilute that which you truly love? (I use the word "darlings" because the same thing applies to writing, which is why I've been loving how much writing is helping my brain flow. Combinatory play at work, once again.)

When I create margin in my life to have/do the things that are supremely important to me, I find that satisfaction and fulfillment so rich that I no longer care about the other things I once thought were important to me. In fact, I find how much I've actually medicated (!) with the "trivial many" because I've neglected the critical. 

I've been loving the journey I'm on because it's not decluttering for decluttering's sake, or because it's trendy to be a minimalist (that kind of thing does not appeal to a Questioner/Rebel) but because decluttering/curating my life has helped me celebrate my uniqueness, my quirks, and perhaps eventually, even my Purpose. 

Nothing to keep me in check

You'd think the pressure would be off, now that my project is officially over, but actually feels more intense on this first day "off." I have nothing to keep me in check, except faith in myself, if I am the secret sauce.

So can we just let Anne Lamott do the talking today?

I couldn't sleep last night so I made two slices of toast and picked up Bird by Bird, in which she has already said what I set out to say yesterday:

"Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do---the actual art of writing---turns out to be the best part. . . . The act of writing turns out to be its own reward." (xxvi)

***

I finally started Essentialism. Um, it's amazing. It's essentially Konmari for your life (pun unintended), if you didn't already make the leap yourself. The audiobook version arrived first from my list of library holds so I'm indulging in listening to the author read it in his British accent, as if the words themselves weren't convincing enough.

He puts so well the conundrum of today's society: that we have so many options it's hard to make the right choices. And when we choose not to choose we end up with more but not better. We can have anything, but probably not everything.

I can't recommend it enough.

20. Anti-climactic?

In Better Than Before, Rubin talks about tailoring your rewards for your habits to your habit. Rather than sabotaging your goals by saying things like, "when I lose 10 pounds, I'll reward myself with a piece of chocolate cake" she suggests that you come up with rewards that encourage you to continue your habits. For example, in this case the reward could be nice exercise clothes that you love, or a new set of knives that make cooking at home easier. One company she referenced did something that made me chuckle. They rewarded employees who used the employee gym 75 times in a year with a free membership the following year. Your reward is more exercise!

I mention this because when I told David last night that I'd be finishing my project today we talked about what my reward should be. Without missing a beat, he said, "Your reward is five more blog posts!" It's true though, the best habits are when the reward is the habit itself. I have loved getting to write more, having an outlet that has nothing to do with my kids or with anything, with no pressures except myself. I have learned more about myself and I have increased my hope and energy for life.

So my reward for writing is that I'm going to write more. Anti-climactic, right? Or is it? (Cue ominous music.) Anyhoo, I'm still completely on the fence about whether I will write on the same schedule or less frequently. I am slightly freaked out that going to not-everyday will make me lose the habit. There are still other creative things I want to do, so I'll have to figure that out. For example, you've noticed I haven't posted many recipes lately because I've been writing, not cooking, duh. And you can't see my family because they've grown so thin from the lack of food around here.

My friend Christine has been one of my inspirations and I might try her pattern of either MWF or TTh. The main thing is carving out time for pursuing creative passions (and/or vocation/vacation and non-conformity) every single day. However much or little I post here, I'll plan to check-in in a month about how I feel about my new rhythm.

Writing and posting here shall be a sort of accountability that I'm keeping up with any and all of these things. Either way, thank you to all of you for following along on my journey and being a wonderfully supportive audience! I'll keep up with some regularity as best as I can.

I don't think I mentioned this quote from the podcast I praised so highly at the beginning of my project. Brown and Gilbert (ooh going to last names now to shake things up) propose changing the question, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" to "What would you do, even if you knew you might fail?" In other words, "What's worth doing even if I fail?" I think for me the answer to the question at least today, is just to keep trying, exploring, and being curious. Super broad and vague but I'm embracing that.

I'm very intrigued by the concept raised in Rubin's book, being a "data point of one," but nonetheless "a very convincing data point." The project I created here was so random, almost ex nihilo, but I am stunned by everything I discovered in pursuing this thirty day (but twenty posts) project.

So now that I've reached my goal, can I have some fruit tart?

19. Joy vs. gratitude

Remember how I told you that I had set a goal to wake up earlier every morning? Well, ever since reading Better Than Before I changed that goal from waking up at a certain time to flossing and brushing my teeth at 9 pm, with hardly any regard to a set bedtime or waketime. However, we've incidentally gone to bed earlier as a result, closer to 10:10 p.m. rather than anywhere between 10:40 and 11:30, and I think I'm getting up earlier and happier as well too! I think for the Questioner/Rebel that I am, I need to feel like I'm not being forced to sleep or wake up at a certain time; however, starting the wind-down process earlier just helps everything move along better.

Anyway, that is not what I am going to talk about today, but it is the perfect transition to what I want to say. Like my friend Kayla, being told that the secret to success in life is waking up early makes me want to punch someone in the face. I feel similarly when I hear people talk about doing a "gratitude journal." Honestly, when someone tells me to feel grateful, that is the LAST thing I want to do.

HOWEVER, thinking about things that make me feel joyful? For me that's totally different. Gratitude feels like an obligation, something I owe to someone. Joy, on the other hand, seems to focus, if somewhat selfishly, on the nature of being the recipient of a gift.

While some have argued that practicing gratitude leads to feeling joyful (and I'm loathe to disagree with the amazing, perfect, blessed Brené who argues this point), I want to take a risk here in positing the opposite: that focusing on your feelings of joy could also make you grateful.

This, granted, is different that pursuing pleasure for pleasure's sake, which we all know will not lead to a fulfilling life. Rather, I'm challenging the notion that when we feel sucky, trying to make ourselves feel better by focusing on the good sometimes just makes us feel more crappy. For example, when I had postpartum depression after my first baby, I constantly felt guilted by the fact that I was not happy even though I had a *really* easy baby, and even that I had a baby at all! (It goes without saying that there are so many women who desperately want children but can't have them, for various reasons.) I felt guilty for not being grateful enough, and really just not being enough, period.

My friend Maria was able to be with me during some of the early days of this and I remember her just hanging out with me and binge-watching shows on Netflix when the baby was napping. When she went back to New York, she texted me to check on me and to make sure that I had finished watching my "assigned" episodes for the day. Never before had I ever have let myself watch that much TV, but it was the one thing I could do, and being able to check it off my list kept me afloat.

Paying attention to moments of joy - no matter how minuscule - is like tuning into the grace that despite all the crap in life, my heart can feel glimpses of light amidst despair, even if they are just gentle whispers of hope, of possibility.

Maybe it's just a semantics thing. Perhaps what the experts are saying is that joy is a gift and that gratitude is an exercise/discipline. You practice the discipline, you receive the gift. You put your sail up (practicing gratitude) and then wind (experiencing joy) blows and moves you. Which, I get. But still, when you're down, who has the energy to put up a sail? Nonetheless, the wind is there, dare I say, the Spirit, and maybe if I can get still enough, I can feel it.

I've never actually done a gratitude journal before so maybe I shouldn't hate on it so much. What I have done is The Prayer of Examen (which is simply asking yourself these two questions: What moment today made me feel most alive? and, When did I feel most drained?). I've found it to be a powerful way to tune into how God made me and usually it helps me get a better focus on my calling/vocation. (If you're interested, I recommend the extremely accessible and very sweet, illustrated book Sleeping with Bread.) I guess my bent is that it's easier for me to focus on what makes me feel alive vs. what I feel grateful for.

I'm having a hard time writing and ending this post because it makes me feel so ungrateful to share that I don't like the feeling of feeling indebted to someone/something. This is reminding me of how the other day my son randomly said, "Thank you to my life", and I jokingly corrected him and told him to say, "Umma, thank you for my life." This may be depressing to read, but there are some days it's hard to be grateful that I've been given a life. But maybe Theo's version of saying "thank you to my life" is like taking ownership of your life. I can look for the moments of joy I already experienced rather than tediously trying to figure out what it was I'm supposed to be grateful for.

Sigh. What say you?



P.S. This post included my first two Amazon affiliate links! I'm not sure what will come of this or how long it will last but I'm following last month's mantra of "Just Start!" Also, not fully sure how to handle disclosures. Molly?

P.P.S. A few other habit-related things I've done since reading BTB: (1) Turned off "badges" on my Mail app so I can't see when I have new e-mails on my phone, thus mostly relegating e-mail to a few designated times throughout the day, (2) Only scroll Instragram once a day, usually first thing in the morning before I get out of bed, another reason to wake up "early", (3) if I see something that needs to be put away, just do it (I'm improving from doing this 3% of the time to maybe 15% of the time; still needs a TON of work, but I'm trying).

18. The secret sauce

"Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again." 

--Ecclesiastes 11:1

As part of my Konmari spiritual awakening, I'd decided to not let myself have more than one back-up of everything we buy at Costco (e.g, napkins, Clorox wipes, Ziploc bags), even when they go on sale. I used to buy two or three of things when they were on coupon, in case I needed them before the next sale happened. (I'm sure it's all a part of their strategy to have sales at different rates/frequencies to increase your feeling of scarcity.)

My defense was that we'd need those things anyway, and since inflation possibly outpaces interest rates, toilet paper might - from a strictly financial point of view - be a better investment than cold, hard cash in our checking account...?!?!?

But when I started seriously considering the things that made me happy, having a calm and uncrowded house was more important to me than the $2-3 I might save each time I bought something on sale. Also, it was starting to get really packed in our garage (still is) and sometimes I honestly can't find stuff I know we have. Less frustration > saving money ==> sanity > money

I'm definitely grateful for the scrimp-and-save mentality I learned from my immigrant parents, but I'm now nonetheless enjoying experimenting with that in my life.

In a real emergency, being stocked up on things is not going to save me, right?

And if I can be more present and more alive by having less stuff and being less worried, I'll be free to create and generate more whether it be financial or otherwise.

A crazy (to me) example of how this played our recently was with this marinara sauce I discovered at Costco sometime last fall, called Victoria White Linen. We usually make our own sauce but this stuff was good: Old World style and with few ingredients. After trying and loving it, we stocked up and got eight 40 oz (!) jars. I freely cooked with my supply until I stopped seeing it at Costco. I thought it was so bizarre that it disappeared right after it had been promoted. I loved the sauce so much I almost wrote Costco.

For a while I stopped using my precious remaining jars. I was like a crazy Depression lady.

Then, after recently doing Konmari, I thought, This is stupid. (Not as stupid as Costco discontinuing the sauce, but still stupid.) I started using the sauce, even as an act of faith. Faith that there'd be enough. Faith that I could enjoy the sauce and faith that there was enough hope, peace, and resilience in me even if there would eventually be no more sauce.

We enjoyed and savored it, and slowly whittled down our stash to one last jar.

And then just yesterday we were wandering around Costco and to our astonishment we saw it! The people around me must have thought I was a little crazy when I reached out as though seeing an old friend, squealing "Victoria!"

My habits are changing and I'm so glad I didn't waste any of my own precious time mentally complaining about why Costco discontinued the sauce or fearing we'd run out of something good.

And now, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps I am the secret sauce.