A few randoms, V

1. I stumbled upon this interesting article from which I've drawn two new time management strategies. 

a. I already use "Zombie schedules" but hadn't call it that, and I really like how the name of it is fun and thereby empowering. (So much more alluring than calling them Standard Operating Procedures.) 

b. I also like the concept of the 1-2-3-4 system to help with motivation, and while it didn't work for me to implement it as the author did (i.e., in a bullet journal using signifiers), I have simplified it further by calling it the easy-hard-fun system, and my kids are finding it helpful, too. (I removed "2" in the chain to further simplify the system, and either use post-it notes that I can move around, or just think it through in my head when I need to create a chain of accomplishment. Another way to think about it is cue-habit-reward, or, moving the needle on important-but-not-urgent stuff. I think this is helpful both for people who struggle to get started on the hard stuff, and also for people who get stuck doing the hard stuff and forget to do other things.) (The author demonstrates the technique, especially how to handle disambiguation, in this helpful little video.)

2. If you decide to try the easy-hard-fun system, may I recommend listening to David Sedaris read "Santaland Diaries" as your "fun" thing? I just did this while laying on my bed under a throw blanket, but it would go just as well with a glass of iced egg nog liquor from Trader Joe's. ;)

3. I'm playing around with a phrase that came up in morning pages for me recently and want to know what you think about it. "You don't have to be a celebrity or have a disorder to _________________." Fill in the blank with whatever it is you really need to accommodate who you really are.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned during covid from my brilliant SIL who is also a special education specialist is this: "best practices for people with disabilities are usually best practices for all people." 

This also leads me another random truth that emerged in a different day of morning pages. "The world may not encourage, celebrate, or reward you for being you. But it certainly needs you to be you."

How to swim and float

[Alternatively titled, A Few Ways To Reduce White Knuckling. (See also: “Instead”)]


* Put on a sweater and slippers AND turn on the heat

* Get my meal plan for the week organized AND plan to order take-out

* Schedule therapy AND increase my meds

* Get fresh air despite the cold and/or rain AND book flights to California for more sun

* Do my work AND light a candle and play my favorite music

* Fix that fancy autumnal salad that looks good but seems like it involves way too much chopping (or… not) AND enjoy a delightful non-water beverage if it sounds good to me

* Follow my routine AND recite the mantra, “I am allowing this moment to be easy.”

A letter to my winter self

Dear Winter Lisa,

There will be a time when you will feel debilitated, like a stone has been tied around your waist and is pulling you under water.

What can we do to protect you from sinking, love? For starters, when you begin to feel this way, I want you to read this letter and remember that I see you. You’re probably feeling sad and struggling with how hard everything feels especially because you are usually a happy, jubilant, initiating human and right now you feel dull and stuck.

Sure, diet and exercise will help. But you need more than these things. Tell Peggy. Tell Bethany. Tell David and Diana. Increase your meds to 50 mg even if they make you feel “funny.” Go on all the flights you booked to San Jose, even if you think you don’t need to go. There is no medal for getting through winter without extra support.

These trips you take in the dead of winter are not meant to fix your feelings or help you “make meaning” out of winter; they are simply to keep you alive for Summer Lisa.

I’m guessing that what is the hardest is not the acceptance of the rain or the gloom but acceptance of how low your mood is. There is nothing wrong with you, even though you don’t “feel like yourself.” Please know that I accept you as you are right now, and that I love you.

You are worthy even when you struggle. Happiness is not perfection and perfection isn’t even what is being asked of you.

Hang in there, and I’ll see you next summer at the lake.

Instead

this new book, system, or routine

    a bullet journal

    morning pages

    exercising

i take a risk

start a hobby

scribble with my left hand

all of these life rafts, buoys, and rings

tossed out at me

i cling to them for dear life

when i forget 

that i

                             already

know and love

how to swim

or that              i can

just

                                    float.

The books I read in 2020

I've been in a bit of a reading rut and have been asking friends to help me get unstuck. Christine responded by asking me what has worked for me lately to give her a launching point for her suggestions, so I plan on enumerating that below in this post.

(PSA: If you don't want to fall into a reading rut, do not read Cara Wall's The Dearly Beloved. I repeat, do not read this beautiful book by Cara Wall. Everything you read after will just not live up to the beautiful prose and striking descriptions of humans in relationship to others and their faiths. If, after this warning, you choose not to heed my advice, then maybe just follow it up with Vanishing Half, if you haven't read it already, but I'm sure you have, and so I'm sorry.)

(Thankfully, my friend Sharon is here to save us all from book rut despair. When I asked my personal Modern Mrs. Darcy what to call the genre I cannot get enough of, this is what she had to say: "I've been trying to figure this out for myself, and my working category is quiet literary fiction/character studies and family sagas (though there are some family sagas I dislike, like the super dysfunctional ones of which I have read far too many). By quiet I mean that there's very little action that happens, haha, and when I describe it to someone else I feel like a crazy person because there's so little plot progress." YES, YES EXACTLY! She then pointed me to Anne Bogel's recent post for more great books to enjoy. You're welcome.)

Okay, returning back from parathetical land.

Paradoxically, in the midst of this book desert I've been drowning in (sorry for the morbid mixed metaphor), Julia Cameron (of morning pages fame), whose course The Artist's Way I've started working through, instructs in the chapter I'm currently on to take a week of reading deprivation. (Yes, you read that right. No reading anything for a week. I think it's supposed to propel you to create your own work instead of consuming other people's work.) 

I'm not sure I can stand to not read for a whole week, but I have not read for the past 8 hours (big whoop, I know) since I read that assignment. The self-imposed inability to not turn to a book to pass time has already created a vacuum for other stuff, such as facing this blog. 

Today I will use my extra time to tell you about what I read in 2020. 

I've been tracking my reading for two years now. I made a fun bullet journal spread in 2019 and then used Goodreads more in 2020. (Goodreads = great tool, but geez they did not need to be so rude about me not meeting my reading goal last year. "Better luck in 2021" -- really?!)

Here's a pictograph (?) of my 2019 reading:

One thing I'm really proud of is reading more fiction in 2020, increasing my measly 6 in 2019 to 24 in 2020. 

Before I get to my a complete list of my 2020 reads at the end of the post, here are a few highlights.

Favorite fiction:

- The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Imma blame Tolstoy for me not meeting my Goodreads goal)

- The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Favorite narrative non-fiction:

- Educated by Tara Westover

Favorite non-fiction:

- Burnout by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski

- Untamed by Glennon Doyle

- The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary (helpful and challenging enough to me that I'm re-reading this again this year)

Favorite (albeit only) Illustrated Memoir

- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

I actually listened to an audiobook and enjoyed it:

- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

And here's the list in its entirety, in roughly chronological order as I read throughout the year:

Still Life by Louise Penny
Atomic Habits by James Clear

Educated by Tara Westover

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Shrill by Lindy West

A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua

Dear Girls by Ali Wong

Slammed by Colleen Hoover

Pride by Ibi Zoboi

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself in the World by Isabel Gillies

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Cider House Rules by John Irving

Little Gods by Meng Jin

Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

Re Jane by Patricia Park

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Anna K by Jenny Lee

There, There by Tommy Orange

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg

The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

The Rule of One by Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders

Please feel free to send me recommendations for my next read and/or wish me "better luck in 2021"!

Also, raise your hand if you, like me (and Stephie and Chris*), slow down when a book is so good, because you don't want it to end, ya weirdo.

_______________

*Maria, feel free to let Chris know his first blog shout-out happened today, although I suppose he doesn't really need to read the post since he already uses your Goodreads account to stalk your friends for book recs.

The meal your February needs

Mid-winter is such a struggle. My (cooking) life is the bare branches I will to develop buds by staring at it really hard. 

Tonight's dinner was one such bud that was a mercy. I decided it needing sharing right away, even with dark nighttime photos.

It's a meal that's got a high fanciness:effort ratio and I think it'll be just what you need. Apparently I'd been carrying around this recipe for 19 years without knowing it, because it's in the first cookbook I ever received, The Silver Palate. The gals at The Modern Proper updated the recipe and made it even easier and more accessible.

I'll keep this post short and just get to the recipe, which I highly recommend getting to this week, maybe for Valentine's?

No we don't usually have wine or light candles every night.

We served this with a delightful blush-colored Rosé (the kids loved their Mandarin orange seltzer water) and a steamed and buttered rutabaga. (Tip for the frequently-carded at the grocery store: toss some uncommon root veggies on the conveyor belt before your alcohol and see if they still think you're part of the under 21 crowd.)

Without further ado...

Sheet Pan Chicken Marbella
from The Modern Proper

4 lbs bone-in skin-on chicken thighs

Make a paste marinade by pulsing together:

1/2 cup pitted green (or black) olives
1/3 cup pitted prunes
1/4 olive oil
4 garlic cloves
2 T capers
1 t dried oregano
2 t salt
lots of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup white wine (I used sake)

Cover both sides of your chicken thighs with this marinade -- you can even do this directly on your sheet pan. Or you can do this ahead of time to let it marinate for longer (e.g., in a gallon-sized ziplock bag for an easy weeknight dinner).

When you're ready to bake it, preheat your oven to 400 F. Pour the following onto the pan:

1/3 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
1/3 cup olives, halved
1/3 chopped prunes (I omitted this because I only had enough for the puree, but I think it would be good)
1 T capers
1-2 T brown sugar (I was worried it would make it sweet, but it's the perfect balance for the wine; think Chicken Marsala)
salt + pepper

Bake for 30 minutes. (I checked it during the baking and needed to pour more stock.) Remove chicken onto your serving dish. Transfer the pan drippings to small saucepan and reduce if needed (I didn't). Whisk in 2 T cold butter. Pour sauce over the serving platter and garnish with 2 T minced parsley. Repeat the phrase "pan sauce" to your family over and over because you are so fancy.

Finally, finish this meal with a tiny dish of ice cream.