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I am George McFly

How many times have you ever said the phrase to yourself: "I just don't think I can handle that kind of rejection"?  I didn't even realize I was George McFlying myself until just recently, and it took such a long time probably because I had been doing this subconsciously.  I've been way too much of a chameleon at work and otherwise, and frankly I'm getting sick of trying to be the person I think those in proximity want me to be.  It's tiring.  I can't pretend anymore I give a shit about American Idol, office newsletters, OR1-4, how people do my job function in other parts of the world, or pretty much anything else at my job.  In fact, if I was a little more honest with myself a year and a half ago, I would have NEVER even accepted the offer.  I only show this one side of me at work and I'm getting really tired of hiding.

When it gets down to it, there is more in my life like my job than I realize, whether I do things I don't care for to pay the rent, pass the time, or serve as a distraction.  I don't think I'm ready to embark on a life overhaul, and I don't think it's particularly necessary,  but I guess I can start by being a little less scared of what people will think.  I started another blog, Drive Straight Home, which is something I'm SOOO not ready to share with people, but I guess it's my way of trying to change the future, to say to Biff, "hey you, get your damn hands off her."  When I am ready to share, I hope it might help one or two people, even if it's just me.  

It's all well and good to write about cookies, and I think it's very important to do so, but it's equally important to share the burnt underside sometimes.  Plus, I like burnt cookies.

Merde....Il Peut

Before I continue describing the wonders of last night, I need to reflect on this afternoon.  I was just leaving my house to go to the folks' when I found this on my front stoop:  

It was a package from Cheri in France!!  I quickly opened it and discovered more than I could have ever wished for: awesome candy, a toothbrush, an umbrella from the umbrella capital of le monde (Aurillac), and my favorite: a handwritten letter!

 

 I wish I could have sent her more than just a handwritten list of the contents when I sent her package (sorry Cheri), but I had to get to the post office before it closed.  So anyway, I loved the letter, candy, and the toothbrush looks awesome.  But here's the thing.  This umbrella is the best umbrella EVER for the following reasons:

 

a.  It has a curse

b.  It has a curse in a foreign language

c.  It has a curse in a foreign language about the rain

d.  It hilariously states the obvious.

I LOVE my new umbrella!!!

Merci, Cheri!  Je t'aime!!  

Speaking of India

So here are some pics last night from Neha's Sangeet.  It was AMAZING!!  I had the best time, and I can't wait to have time to write ALL about the amazingness.

"Do they have Thanksgiving in India?"

Yesterday I overheard one of my co-workers actually ASK someone on the phone if they have Thanksgiving in India.  WTF?!  I also discovered my plant had been stolen; this makes two plants stolen from me in the 1.5 years I've been there.  WHO steals a plant!

Anyway, back to the world which actually matters to me:  I had a GREAT Thanksgiving.  It started yesterday the second I got home from work, because I got to experience the sheer joy of baking the delicious pie above: It's Pumpkin Praline Pie from "The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2008".  SO GOOD!!

It's funny: I started this blog to partly to find my favorite cookie, but what I really discovered is how I love finding new cookies, and new baked goods in general.  I mean, I really love baking.  I love how you just have random simple ingredients, and after some choice mixing and waiting, you have created something totally new and satisfying.  Maybe it's the chem major in me, but I just love the measuring and precision.  I love being on my feet and working with my hands.  I want to get to a point where I can create new recipes; I want to become a great baker.  

So the day was great.  I made green beans with pickled onions and this yummy cranberry punch.  We hung out, talked, laughed, and all in all it was a great day.  More pics and details later.

Clarity

I had signed up for the Pandora app when I got my iPhone back in March, and I installed it this weekend after a friend told me how awesome it is.  Well, she was right; Pandora is amazing.  I signed up for the "Clarity" Jimmy Eat World radio station this morning on a whim, which is an old favorite album (ten years old in fact).  They are playing the best stuff, culminated with a song from the Get Up Kids' "Something to Write Home about"!!!  Those two albums were instrumental in my youth, and going to see those bands 9 billion times in a row was my life.  Once again, I re-discovered a lost piece of myself this fall.  

Randomly, Mike informed me this evening of a Jimmy Eat World show taking place in February where they are JUST playing Clarity!!!  This is amazing!  Tickets go on sale this Saturday...wish me luck! 

Bubble Gum Ice Cream

I'm catching up on blogging about the last month and a half, and I'd say the above picture captures a favorite moment of this fall.  We went to the Poconos for a friend's wedding October 16-18, which incidentally was one of the best weekends of the entire year.  The weekend was filled with friends, laughter, great food, and a day of re-living my childhood in the Poconos.  It was incredible; we went to the pretzel factory where you can "take the tour" and watch fun-loving individuals make pretzels.  We went to American Candle and Holley Ross and every amazing place I remember from being a kid.  I realized on this day how much the Poconos feels like home to me.  I never really felt much connection with New Jersey.  Sure, it's a fine place with culture and proximity to beaches and cities and blah blah blah, but it's not where my heart is.  For the longest time, I thought NYC was my home, but the NYC I know only exists in memory.  I never realized it, but my time in the Poconos was when meaning was whispered into my soul; every falling leaf, ski slope, and walk to the lake pumped life into me.

The weekend more than satisfied my expectations.  In fact, I didn't even realize a piece of me was missing until I got it back sometime on our journey through the Poconos, and I think it was when I found the "Casino" Ice Cream Parlor and movie theater in Mt. Pocono.  My sister and I used to order bubble gum ice cream-the real kind with the actual pieces of bubble gum-and ride the little kiddie rides there.  Then, with our tongues bright red, we would go across the street to the weird gift shops full of Native American paraphernalia, wooden gifts with first names etched into them, and large clocks painted with scenes from hunting in the woods, all while chewing tasteless gum.  Finding the Casino Ice Cream parlor and seeing it again with Mike was the best.  It was Home.  

P.S. The ice cream parlor still had the real bubble gum ice cream.  It also had a new flavor which I HAD to get: Play-Doh flavored.  I mean, it really looked like play-doh.  It was bright bright yellow with chunks of bright bright red and blue "play-doh" mixed with it-really cookie dough.  I felt 9 years old-I had a scoop of play doh and a scoop of bubble gum-only this time I was actually allowed to have a cone.  For those of you who don't know, I may be the only person ever to have been kicked out of an ice cream parlor as a little kid for being TOO MESSY, so growing up I wasn't ever allowed to have a cone.  When I went to college, I found one of the many pleasures of being an adult was the ability to order myself an ice cream cone.  I still am thrilled to have my ice cream cones!

Sweet-smelling roses

I wrote this post over a month ago.  I promise I will post regularly, but until then I am just catching up.  

This evening (October 10) we went to this great hidden rose garden I had been trying to find since I moved here in June.  Exceeding expectations, the garden held hundreds of different hybrids of roses.  Despite being slightly past season, we found blooms from Redleaf to Cajun Sunrise to roses named after people to something simply called "Playboy."  I came across a rose which was a deep cream color and one of the best blooms in the whole garden.  It just begged for me to smell it, so I stepped up onto the mulch, carefully leaned in, and inhaled deeply.  It sounds so prosaic, but it was one of the most wonderful smells I have experienced in recent years, maybe ever.  I thought of all the American and French and any other attempts at recreating this joy, but to this day, my experience proves nothing can come close to the beauty of nature.  

The best part of beauty in nature is its ability to surprise.  After I moved in June, my commute went from 60 minutes all highway-straight across New Jersey-to 45-50 minutes through farms and small towns.  My commute now is much more aggravating, but much better on my car; I just have to get used to it.  About 5 minutes from my work, when my aggravation has reached its peak, pink roses line a cream-colored fence of a typical mansion in Old Money Town.  Miraculously (well, to me at least), they have been blooming to create an impeccable color scheme since before I moved in June.  Those pink roses have consistently and persistently lifted my spirits in a time where it hasn't always been easy to feel joyful. 

In addition to lifting my spirits, roses lately have managed to open my eyes.  I understand this post is one big cliche, but I'm just going to continue.  This week I realized when I get married, I won't be losing my identity by taking his name.  I'll still be me, but just Mrs. Me, and this week for the first time, Mrs. Me sounded pretty good.

What's in a name?

Well, it may not technically be wedding season for most, but it certainly is for me.  I will be attending three weddings in the next two months, and the first is this evening.  I can't help but go to weddings and imagine what mine would be like: who would attend, the flowers, etc., which is all rather new territory for me.  I and most of my girlfriends are of the breed of women who did not grow up fantasizing about our weddings; for us it was dreaming about future careers, whether it was doctor or meteorologist or fruit importer.  I'm left at these weddings with no definite idea of what I'd want and no history of my past desires now matter how silly or out of budget; I tend to feel a tad awkward and out of place.

The most awkward part of all of it is the name change.  Growing up, there were plenty of times I did not care for my name.  I've tried every version of a nickname and none of them really stuck, which is really ok for me right now.  I was much more neutral about the last name, but even if I hated it completely, it's still the definition of my identity.  To be honest, the real possibility of changing my name makes me frightened.  I will be a whole new person when I get married, and someone else's identity, no longer my own.  

The whole thing doesn't sit with me very well, not at all.  I can't imagine any of this, the wedding, the name change, new signature, passport, etc.  Why do the fundamentals of who I am have to change?  Do most women want this, or is this something they just feel expected to do?  Am I alone here?  

People have been asking me a lot lately if we're ready to get married, and I've been answering honestly: I don't know if I'm ready to get married.  Shouldn't a bride know these things about flowers and name changes?

My questioning aside, two of the three weddings this fall are my good friends (both brides) who are both very ready and very happy to be getting married.  They amaze me because they so calmly know these details and have this picture in their mind of Mr. and Mrs. which is still so fuzzy to me.   Congratulations to the Fall 2008 newlyweds!  Time to get ready for wedding number 1.

Oh Coffee, why have I forsaken thee?

There's nothing like a good cup of coffee.  It's one of my favorite things in life, and yesterday I attempted to give it up due to stress, heart rate, etc.  My attempt lasted all of 90 minutes, then Mike woke up and put on a pot and I just couldn't resist.  It was one of the most wonderful cups of coffee I've ever had.  Oh coffee, I might not ever leave you, and I don't know if I'd ever want to.  Oh coffee, please forgive me.  

I remember trying my mother's coffee when I was little, and thought it was good only when dipping a cookie into it.  A few years passed before I tried it again, and I started drinking it regularly when I was 17 and moving to New York.  My sister used to joke with me about how I would become some beatnik the second I moved to the city, wearing all black, drinking black coffee, being snooty, and talking about Baudrillard and Hobbes and Margaret Mead.   To be perfectly honest, she wasn't very far off.  When I moved to the city, I lived an amazing life, the life I thought I should be living, but it was missing something.

I thought what I was missing was life experience, travel, and romance, but I still fell short.  When I moved out of the city, I thought I was just missing the city.  After spending a lot of time in NYC recently, and even visiting my old stomping ground at NYU, I realized what I was missing the whole time: myself.  I wrote a blog two years ago about the cookies in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, and how I just tossed it aside and proclaimed it too juvenile.  I think about those cookies often and how I acted, and I always cringe.  I realize now my mother was trying to give me a part of myself, and at the time it was something I was desperate to toss aside.  

All of this clarity did not come all at once.  After all, there is a two year gap in this blog.  I started this blog as a quest to find myself, to return to the person I wasn't sure I knew anymore.  I decided then to concentrate on figuring out my favorite cookie; once you find your cookie, you find yourself and the richness in life.  

The thing is, I knew my favorite cookie all along.  I knew who I was, I was just plain terrified.  It's been a long two years, but really my favorite cookie was the kind in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, those extra-extra chocolate morsels with a confectioner's sugar coating, the ones I didn't even finish.  It feels so good knowing this about myself, knowing I am only a recipe (and a cup of coffee for dipping) away from who I really am.

I am truly thankful for this clarity, and know I wouldn't have gotten here without Cheri's visit.  I hadn't seen her in three years, and it was wonderful to have her around as a reminder of our NYU days, but also as just a good friend who isn't at all enamored with the culture or excitement of New York.  I'm not going to lie, I still love New York.  I still love people watching, the crazies, and the unexpected.  But life is different and much more difficult there as an adult, and I didn't truly realize it until this week.  I don't just want to live or work in the city just to do so, I want a good quality of life.  It's really good to know this about myself.  I may still drink my coffee and talk about Margaret Mead, but at least now I will do it because I love it, not because I'm trying to be someone I'm not.