to the next person who sleeps in my bed

I start the night with none of the covers, but will inevitably end up with all of them unless you put up one hell of a fight.

I still sleep with stuffed animals and it would behoove you to learn their names because they've been around longer and I love them lots.

We will cuddle, but within 20 minutes I will have moved as far away from you as the bed will allow. Do not take this personally.

I will probably fall in love with you when I see you in the morning with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes and stinky breath. I hope you'll fall in love with me, too.

open letters

Dear Boy,

I miss you like crazy, all the time, and am starting to wonder if I'm ever going to stop missing you. If I'll be turning 25 and still wanting to wake up next to you, wanting to kiss your neck. But yeah. I would really like you to be here.



Dear New Mexico,

You are too far away.



Dear Europe,

I'll make it to you, someday.



Dear mosquitos,

I don't know what I've done to deserve your hatred, but I apologize and will send you a bouquet of your favorite flowers if you'll agree to stop biting my legs.

pup appreciation

I'll admit it, I'm a bit prejudiced. You probably anticipated that: I'm from East Tennessee, we have a reputation for being biased and "backwards" and all things antiquated. My prejudice is a bit different though: I inherently distrust people who don't like dogs. We can be getting along perfectly well, and the instant I hear that about someone, I pull back. It's nothing personal – you're just wrong, and you're directing all of that wrongness towards the most loving, adorable creatures on our planet. You understand why we can't be friends, right?

I mean, look at this pup. Chloe is a person. She can tell when you're having a bad day, and she'll curl up right beside you and lick the back of your hand and let you hug her all you want. She is one of the most caring individuals with whom I've ever had the pleasure to interact, and I don't know what is wrong with you if you don't like her. Just look at that face.

^ brooding, intense, thinking about Foucault and Pup-Peroni

 ^ those eyebrows, that mustache & beard - she's the little old man of the puppy set

^ observing her kingdom

^ "I caught it!! Now I'm going to take a nap, OK?"

^ a "come hither" glance

black bean tacos with slaw and feta

So, it's time for me to reveal my not-so-secret love affair with The Smitten Kitchen. The website, written by Deb Perelman, was founded in 2006, but I found it in 2012 when I was faced with a brand new kitchen, a local Trader Joe's, and no clue what to buy or cook. Her cookbook, published in 2012, was part of my Christmas present last year. Deb's recipes have never led me wrong, and I feel so much more confident in the kitchen with her kind words and lovely anecdotes by my side. Go check her out, if you haven't already. Today's recipe? Black bean tacos (already right up my street) with homemade slaw and feta cheese. Yum, yum, yum.

On the night that I made these, I was out of ideas for dinner. Cooking chicken – or any meat, really – seemed too strenuous. I was too hungry for a salad, too broke to order takeout, and too proud to drive to my mom's house and mooch off of whatever she was having. That left me on my phone in a Wal-Mart parking lot looking at the "Weeknight Favorites" section of The Smitten Kitchen. This recipe was waiting for me. Ten ingredients, all under $5, and two of which were already sitting in my pantry. I ran inside, picked up a cart, and the rest was history. These could have been done in ten minutes, though I'm a "cooking in parts" kind of gal, so I made the slaw when I got home, heated the beans while watching TV, and did the assembly a bit later. They are so simple to make, and it would be easy to add meat if you wanted to – ground beef or ground turkey would be particularly good, I think – though the recipe doesn't feel like it lacks anything without it.

 Yields 4 tacos
slightly adapted from smittenkitchen.com

1 15-ounce can seasoned black beans, drained (I used Bush's Seasoned Black Beans)

cumin, to taste

1 teaspoon and 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 cups coleslaw mix

1 green onion, chopped

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

4 corn tortillas

1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese

hot sauce, salsa, & sour cream, to serve

Whisk together 2 teaspoons of olive oil and lime juice. Add coleslaw mix, green onions, and chopped cilantro. Mix until combined, and add salt and pepper to taste – I ended up using a lot of salt and not very much pepper.

Pour drained beans and cumin into a small saucepan over medium heat until the beans are heated through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mash beans partially once heated.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat, and pour off the excess oil. Add tortillas, as many as can fit into your pan without overlapping. Spoon approx. 1/4 of the bean mixture onto the middle of each tortilla and cook for 1 minute. Fold tacos in half (I found a spatula/wooden-spoon combo helpful here) and cook on each side until golden brown, about 2 minutes total. Fill tacos with feta and slaw, and serve quickly with hot sauce, salsa, & sour cream on the side.

Bonus: Guess who set off the smoke alarm! The produce bag from the cilantro earned its keep today.

happy birthday, america!

For the week of the 4th of July, my grandparents rented a house on Oak Island, about a hour north of Myrtle Beach in North Carolina. I hadn't been to the beach in 5 years, so my mother and I packed up our bags and drove the oh-goodness-how-much-longer distance to spend the week with them.

saltwater sandals, even better when you're actually in saltwater!

what a view!

my precious mother and myself, riding backwards on a golf cart & scared out of our minds

"take a picture of those trees!" -my grandmother

the grandparents, being adorable and checking out the walking sticks at the annual 4th of July craft fair. the fair, I noticed, is much less interesting when you're too old to make sand art and be really excited about wind chimes.

my mother, matching the greenery

matching sunhats & sunglasses, because we're unintentionally adorable like that

photo credit goes to my mother, who took approx. 900 of these pictures "trying to get one that looks right!"

my little cousin, amazed by sparklers

the beach, mid-hurricane

I hope you all had a great 4th of July! Can you believe we're more than halfway through 2014??

a one-pot wonder

Lately, my mother and I have been trying to cook dinners together more often. I looked at my bank account a few weeks ago and realized that I would have significantly more money if Sonic & Chick-Fil-A went out of business, and decided I needed to make a change. My mother then came to the same realization about her bank account & McDonalds.

One of the first recipes we've cooked together was this one-pot pasta, which Italian brothels supposedly used to make to serve to the ladies between clients. Whatever the roots of this recipe, it was quick and easy and oh my goodness, an apartment has never smelled more heavenly than while this was cooking. Added bonus: if you use non-dairy cheese, it's completely vegan!

One-Pot Pasta

adapted from soydivision.co.uk

12-16 oz spaghetti noodles (I used plain spaghetti, but think whole wheat would thicken the sauce more)

2 oz sliced black olives

1/2 cup cooked chickpeas

4 sundried tomatoes, sliced

1 small onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 (14 oz.) can diced tomatoes, drained

3 large handfuls of arugula

2 tbsp italian seasoning

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes*

salt & pepper, to taste

4 cups vegetable broth

shredded parmesan cheese, to serve

Add the uncooked pasta to a large pan (the wider the better!).

Top with the rest of the ingredients, less the parmesan, finishing by pouring the vegetable broth over the whole mess.

Cover the pan & bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to the lowest heat at which the broth still bubbles. Stir often, as it will stick to the bottom regardless of how much you stir, so you might as well run damage control.

It will be done in, no joke, about 10 minutes. Serve with a generous topping of parmesan.

*adjust based on your spice preference. the recipe i followed said 1/2 tsp, and our tongues were burning. the spice permeates the broth like crazy, so be cautious.

poetry

I took one of those little BuzzFeed quizzes that someone posted on Facebook, "Which poet are you?" I took it wholly expecting not to know the work of the poet it would give me – I'm not a poetry-lover, though my friends say it will come with time. 

I got Shel Silverstein, who I always forget is a proper poet because I just think of his poems as mine, mine, mine. What a brilliant man he was.

on growing up, being just-about-twenty, and fear

I turn twenty in less than a month, which isn't very old to a lot of people, but it will be the oldest that I have ever been. I think it's fair to be a little bit freaked out about it.

Turning 2. The next year, I cried on my birthday because I was going to miss being 2.

In my head, I am still solidly 12 – I still run to my mom the instant I have a problem of any size, dirty dishes form stacks in my sink and on the counter, and I'm (apparently) still incapable of putting shoes into a closet. The laundry piles up until my prom dress is the only thing left in my closet and I've run out of underwear and my mom says, "It sure has been a while since you've come over to wash your clothes..."

Turning 13, with some really great hair.

And then, as I was writing that list of ways that I am in-no-way-even-close to being twenty, I realized how many things have changed since I was younger. I have a vase for flowers (that I often leave on my table until they're shriveled and brown, but still). I have nice dresses that I picked out and paid for all by myself. I have my own apartment to keep clean and my own art to hang on the walls, though it always takes at least three nail holes in the drywall before the frame is centered and straight. I'm responsible for feeding myself and making sure I wake up on time, which doesn't always happen because sometimes 8 AM (or even 11 AM) feels way too early to put on clothes and act civil. I choose whether or not to do my work and whether or not to drive to class, which grad schools to visit and to which ones I should apply, if I want to change my major... Oh goodness, I am in charge of a lot of things!

All of that is very scary to me. My brain has not yet caught on to the fact that it's all on me, because when I look in the mirror, I see the least mature version of myself – that part of me is alive and well, more so than I'd like to admit. But when I start to realize the sheer weight of this responsibility I now have for myself and the direction of my life, I get this panicked feeling of, "Oh my gosh, people think that I'm ready to handle this and they have absolutely NO IDEA how wrong they are," when, really, I am already handling it and doing just fine.

My 17th birthday, hanging out in the children's section of Harrods with Thomas the Train. See what I mean about not feeling like an adult?

The floor always goes un-vacuumed until ten minutes before a friend comes over, and sometimes I run out of trash bags and use to-go boxes to hold my dirty paper towels. All of the pretty throw pillows that belong on the sofa are scattered on the floor and the rug is crooked, as are the table and the chairs. But I'm doing it, this big scary adult thing, and I have my suspicions that everyone still thinks it's kind of scary, even after they've been doing it for a long time.

I'm going to take a few really deep breaths in the next few weeks, maybe avoid the panic attack that always comes around midnight on July 22nd, and try to realize that the number attached to me doesn't change the fact that everything is going as it should.

a cute little list

I've just recently started reading BleuBirdBlog (what a precious little family, and they live in Nashville! Just a hop skip and jump away from here), and one of James' recent posts included this precious little list of things she's looking forward to this summer. I am stealing from her, egregiously.

I'm looking forward to:

Eating / A little bit healthier, day by day

Drinking / Sweet tea and lemon water with mint (sigh)

Practicing / Stretches, so maybe I can finally accomplish my silly dream to do the splits

Mastering / The art of being kinder to myself and to my family

Learning / To ride a bike

Trying / To water my succulent just enough, so its leaves stop turning yellow & shriveling away

Playing / With my hair, as I've got to get over this shove-it-in-a-bun phase

Finishing / Going through old boxes from the last time we moved (when I was a 4th grader...)

Reading / More, and everything (at the moment, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld)

Remembering / To exercise every other day, even though I kind of remember now, I just don't

Wearing / Dresses and sandals, all day long

Cooking / Grilled chicken and veggies (on a panini press... not that fancy around here)

Working / On my summer courses

Traveling / To North Carolina, to Canada (maybe?), to Nashville, to Atlanta

Wanting / To be a little bit happier, walk a little bit lighter

beginagain

I was out to dinner with a couple of lovely families on Sunday, and one of the women said that I ought to write a blog, that she would be interested in hearing my voice and thought others might be as well.

So, that is to say, maybe I'll be writing here a bit more often. Anything to play with my camera over the summer, I suppose.

baisers

An old friend of mine once made an offhand comment – it might have even been a tweet or a Facebook post, I can't remember – which spoke of a generalization among the last three people she'd kissed. Which was strange to me, because in the context of the comment, they had happened recently.

The last three people who I've kissed are... the three people I've kissed in my teen/adult life.

Now, different strokes for different folks, and I'm obviously not saying anything bad about this unnamed friend. Kiss all of the people. It was just weird for me to realize that her life was so different than mine in that way. That she was on the list of the last three people I'd kissed, and I assuredly was not in hers. 

realizations

The kindest boy in the world, I contend. My best friend.

 I pride myself on being giving and kind and empathetic, and yet when I look at our relationship I was greedy and selfish and all of the words you do not want to hear in reference to yourself. They are the words you want to yell in a fight, not think about yourself in quiet contemplation. But, here we are.

 I forced him to go to IKEA once and then got angry when he wanted to leave – not the sign of a good girlfriend, or even a good friend, in case you were wondering. I still remember, so vividly, him lying on his bed, eyes closed, and meekly saying something along the lines of, "Are you actually mad at me for being overwhelmed?"

What a punch to the gut, even months later. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I was deeply in love with him from the beginning of our relationship, but promised that I wasn't. I agreed to a relationship with terms I was uncomfortable with – there was a timer and I promised that I wouldn't fall in love. I cried every night for a month before he left for school and never told him. We kept getting together for months, intermittently, after our official "thing" had come to an end, which broke me for weeks afterwards every single time, but I kept letting it happen, and he kept thinking I was ok. There was a basic lack of communication on my part that led to me being upset constantly and him being clueless, which was so immature and unfair of me that I cannot even stand to think of it.

This is my repentance, I guess, until I can say all of this to him. I am scared to say it because I am afraid he will have more shitty things to add to the pile. That he will say, "Yeah, and also..." which I am not sure I can handle right now. But, I have been thinking about it so much I had to just write it down and get it out and edit it so that it sounded coherent.

I am so sorry for treating you poorly. I loved you so much, but I was an idiot. You deserved better.

I hope one day we'll have a second chance.

what i know now

(that I didn't know five days ago)

1. stir fry is very easy to cook and a wok is wholly unnecessary

2. sometimes, caring for yourself is difficult and you have to do things that you don't want to like block your favorite person from your Facebook feed and that is ok, pinky swear, because you need to do what it takes to feel better

3. making a loud whining noise when attempting a sit-up is NOT embarrassing and will only serve to make the neighbors think you're having weird sex, which is better than them knowing that you've not accomplished a sit-up since 2003

4. your abs and other muscles you've forgotten exist because you've not worked out since May remember that neglect and plan to make you pay for it, which is why you cannot stand up from your bed (or roll over... or carry a laundry basket... or bend in any direction...) without one of the aforementioned whining sounds*

5. even if you did not think you were straining your neck, you were probably straining your neck

6. that book moment where the weary protagonist "stepped into a hot shower and felt all of the muscles in her back slowly relax under the spray" is bullshit and you probably need to get a massage

*ouch... :(

rough time

I'm having a kind of hard time with my feelings tonight. I've been OK all day, all week in fact, but tonight has just been... awful. And I decided to write about it here before it gets more awful.

I just want to curl up into a ball, really. Do you ever have those moments? Where the outside world gets so insanely overwhelming, and you're missing people so much that you can feel it in your bones, and the thought of moving or speaking to people or forcing a smile onto your face seems pointless and painful, and there's absolutely nothing that you can think of doing that could make anything better at all?

I know that I'm very privileged to be able to feel this way, instead of worrying about my next meal or my rent or things like that. I also know that the fact that people are worse off than I am doesn't mean that I am disallowed the privilege to feel shitty sometimes.

But, I think it's a human thing, as well. Sometimes, everything just feels like a burden that you're too beaten down to bear. Even if you're doing perfectly fine one minute, the next day might start off on the wrong foot. Note: There aren't many feelings as bad as waking up and feeling OK, and then moments later remembering something heartbreaking that just happened. That was how tonight felt for me. I had a good day, and then it suddenly plummeted.

And I know I'm doing well. I know that to be true. But I don't feel like I'm doing well. I feel completely dependent, like the only thing that will make me feel better is the hug of someone who isn't mine anymore. I feel very lonely and isolated and like I really ought to have folded my laundry.

Ugh. Let's hope for a better tomorrow.

The picture is from the New York Botanical Gardens and is unrelated, but I like pictures with posts.

dreary

Just remembered a long-lost favorite from a couple of years ago. The perfect kind of song.

(Remembered because Meg Fee just posted Suitcase of Sparks by Gergory Alan Isakov. Beautiful.)

nice little things

Every year around New Year's, the same old internet people come out saying the same old internet things. Here are my resolutions (I already took care of that) and here are things to do in the new year. Make a soufflé each day, call someone you love each day of January to start the year off right, bake your way through a cookbook and incorporate the day of the year into each recipe, etc. Well, last year I actually liked one of those silly little ideas enough to do it.

The Happy Thoughts In A Jar Idea

Basically, you get a mason jar or a little jar or anything see-through. I used a little square glass situation. I bought two of them about 4 years ago to fill with little origami wishing stars for my then-girlfriend. Wasn't that a cute idea wasted on an already-failing relationship??

Anyway, I had a jar left over.

So, I filled it up. I only did it until May, and then I only did it sporadically over the summer, and then I stopped entirely when I moved into my apartment at the end of July because I left it at my mom's house. But, I've got about 7 months of happy. It was really a lot of fun to do, and I highly suggest it to all of you because I just looked through it and it made me so pleased and nostalgic and also a little bit sad, which I think is the feeling you're meant to have on January 1st.