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.

"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.

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.  

In pursuit of my favorite cookie, the truth must be told.

Five years ago, I was living in New York. I had a birthday a month and change after September 11th. It was then that I got calls from relatives who otherwise don't know my phone number, cards, and emails. It was because I was having a "tough time" and needed encouragement. And I received this INSANE cookie jar filled with (mind you really good) chocolate cookies. In pursuit of my favorite cookie, this story needs telling.

The package came a couple of days before my birthday. It was gigantic and cumbersome and I felt oh-so-cool having to sign for it at the dorm (the dorm lovingly labeled the G-spot. I have the stickers to prove it.). Naturally, I had a small crowd opening the package due to its size and not much else going on at the time. It's amazing how my popularity is based on the boredom of others. I unwrapped enough to see the 1-800 Flowers brochure. This was it. This was my dozen roses from a secret admirer, I just knew it. I unwrapped more and I saw red and white stripes, and my heart sank. I knew then that not only was it not from a secret crush, it was from my mother. And my mother forgot that I wasn't six.

Standing in the crowd, I realized that I wasn't alone: none of us understood it. We knew it was a cookie jar, but anyone in the world knew that a nineteen year old college student doesn't want Cat in the Hat paraphenalia. It proved to be the most embarrasing gift on the eastern seabord that fall. It stood about 2 feet tall, and it just did not have a place in my dorm. I tried on my desk, but there were too many books. Then I tried the dresser, but it got in the way of the tv. It was either the windowsill or in the closet. It was eat or be eaten by guilt.

I was torn between two worlds that year. One world was a conceptual one inside that Cat in the Hat cookie jar, containing the love of a mother, the knowledge that she was just trying to make my world better, and the concept of those delicious chewy chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar. The other was real. It was outside that cookie jar. It was loveless and heartless and filled with guilt. It was a collective New York shopping for size 0. It was family members who claim they love me enough to call on my birthday, but not any other day. It was a sister who swore she believed in me but didn't take the time to find out in what she was believing. It was a building that was still burning and a horizon changed forever.

Those cookies may very well have been the best cookies I ever had in my life, but they went for the most part uneaten. I spent years feeling guilty about not finishing those cookies. Because in not finishing those cookies, I was also not loving my mother enough; my blessings just weren't being counted. In not eating those cookies, I was acknoweding the change in horizon that had happened inside of me. No longer could someone fix my problems with sweets and a smile and a simple gesture. This was real and it hurt.

I threw out those cookies one short day before Thanksgiving. I felt sick. So sick and so guilty that I ended putting that cookie jar on the windowsill, and hoping that the plants would hide it just enough. When I looked at the window that year, if I squinted my eyes enough, the horizon still looked the same.

Going to shows solo. Robert Pollard. Mothballs. Second Life. Cookie update.

I wrote this one today, also on my myspace blog:
I am the type of person who goes places by herself if she really wants to. I don't need someone there with me, especially at shows. Last night I went to see Robert Pollard at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia. First of all, I love the fact that it took me fifteen minutes to get there and back (less than going to New Brunswick from my parents' house). The sound system in that place is wonderful. And I can't believe how old I feel.

Yes, the crowd was just as old and many were older than me, but a lot of people were drunk and acting really stupid. Robert Pollard had this gigantic tub of beer on ice in the middle of the stage, and he had a full bottle of Jose Cuervo, which he proceeded to share with the crowd. I have never seen so many people fall all over themselves just for a taste of alcohol. Is it because it is Robert Pollard's? I really hope so because seeing that kind of behavior made me sick. I just feel so old because I am just not a part of this culture of getting drunk anymore. I don't miss it, and the point of reporting this is that when it comes down to it, I wish that shows were less about booze and more about the music and performance. It makes me realize that when I used to drink, it was 90% about alcohol and about 10% about the music. What I have now is so much better. I don't need the crutch of the glass in my hand, and it's really liberating.

The crowd last night smelled like a mix of mothballs, tobacco, old lady skin, and of course beer. It was really weird. There were these really nerdy guys that were right next to me and I guess they were the ones that smelled. They even brought the liner notes to Robert Pollard's new album to sing along. They all looked like they were really into Lord of the Rings and played LARP.

This was the first show that I went to in a while where I didn't know someone playing. It was an odd feeling watching people I don't know at all. The whole experience was so much less personal. I have my own personal experiences attached to the music played last night, but I can't attach it to the people playing. I have to say I like it a lot better when I know X person playing on stage, even if they didn't write the music. I love knowing the backstory.

The opening band was SO not my thing at all. I can't stand it when people perform and they don't connect with the audience. They could have been practicing in their basement for all we knew. I mean, yeah it's really hard to be an opening band when not many people are there, but it's also not that hard to come out of your shell a little bit and make an impression on someone. And the music was just so long and drawn out and didn't really go anywhere. Ugh!

I just saw this thing on Good Morning America about something called Second Life. It sounds like an internet version of the Sims. The crazy part is that you can make money or spend money on this thing. I don't understand it. People are predicting that we're going to spend our lives on it, it's the new email. Like you can go to "shows", buy houses (with real money!!) and all sorts of crap. I can't wrap my brain around this. It's like video games for boring people.

I still don't know what kind of cookie is my favorite. I got a really awesome mixer for my birthday (From my boyfriend's parents who said "now you can make our son cakes". So funny!). Hopefully with the new mixer will come a new sense of self.

Reflections on the Ivy League and Cookies

I posted this on my myspace blog a couple weeks ago, I figure this is a good place to start:

I have been associated with the ivies for a little more than three weeks now, and here are some scattered observations:
1. Professors in the ivies really do have Austrian accents, and wear cardigans with patches on the elbows.
2. I keep forgetting my audience. Upper crust ivy people just don't laugh as much as us NYU folk.
3. Academia creates celebrities just as much as any other form of art. Only it's worse. I have a problem with art that isn't accessible, and the ivies are the epitome of that. These academic celebrites probably get just as much ass (and just as many people to kiss theirs) as any rock star I've heard of. Not that I know a lot of rock stars, but you get the point.
4. Those annoying kids in your classes in college who sat in front and asked questions not to ask questions but to sound smart, they turn into professors who either attend or hold lectures for colleagues, and they do the same thing. They're the same people, just older and have gotten laid more (see number 3).
5. Even if men are colorblind and still dress themselves, it's accepted in this culture. Women still have to look hot, even when you're really well-respected. Hot women get further in life. I'm not trying to go against my gender, that's just a fact.
6. This doesn't have to do with ivies, but I'm alarmed to admit that I don't think I have a favorite kind of cookie. Holy shit! I'm like that really bad Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie where she doesn't have a favorite way of preparing eggs. I don't have a favorite cookie and I should really have one. My least favorite is Snickerdoodles because they remind me of cycle class in the 7th grade when I got made fun of for eating too many (I was LARGE). Dammit!
7. If I had gone to an ivy-league as an undergrad (I didn't even apply, I knew it wasn't for me then. And not because I couldn't get in), I would have been really miserable. Except maybe at Barnard, that place seems cool. But NYU was way more hip. I can play the game 6 degrees of Matador, and stop at 2.
8. One of my bosses looks JUST like Peter from the Guess Who game in the 90's (not the new version). Please tell me someone knows who this is.
9. It rocks that I have off the week between Christmas and New Year's, and I'm getting paid for it.
10. There are now a gaggle of medical students that are younger than me. If it were some other world, I would be a 3rd year med student right now. That means that if you were sick in a university hospital, I might have gone to your bed. Me. One of the first-years at Penn hit on me the other day. He looked like he was 19, and was just so damn congenial. I didn't have the heart to be the one to break his spirit and tell him about the real world.
11. There is a reason why I moved out of my parents' house. There are lots of them. One of which is that now I am a feather in my father's cap over at IVY LEAGUE. Before I was dust swept under the rug. Neither felt good, because neither is really me.
12. People sure are nice where I work. Maybe it's the free tuition? "Only the educated are free?"