Light in Water

MAPP class #2

2012-01-27T18:44:00.008-05:00

People ask me who's in my class.* So far, by my count, we've got six straight couples, one gay couple, and, including me, three or four single women. Blacks, hispanics, and Asians are represented (in small numbers). There's one person there who looks to be about my age, but everyone else is mid-thirties to fifty.

EVERYONE in the class is an animal person. "I have three cats! I have two horses! I have a horse, too! And a goat! And a bunny!"**

They tell us it's a near-certainty that someone will get a call about a placement before we're even done with the nine weeks of class. That sort of boggles my mind. This is the county I live in. It's, well... It's just not the sort of place where I'd expect there to be a lot of need. I thought most of the need was in Durham and Raleigh. I almost didn't even bother to get licensed here, because I thought in order to really meet a need, I'd probably have to go through a private agency that places kids from the cities.

Half of me is afraid I'm going to get a call before I'm mentally prepared. The other half is still kind of skeptical that they would actually place a child with me (with me? really?).

* I'm not even going to bother to spell out MAPP, because you guys would forget what it stands for two minutes later. I've been reading the term for months, and I still don't recall it perfectly half the time. It's straight-up social-work speak.

** MAPP class is kind of confidential, so details are altered slightly.

How many households are like yours?

2012-01-25T16:09:00.000-05:00

In the multimedia class I'm taking this semester, we look at a lot of good videos, articles, slideshows, etc. My favorite this week was this infographic: How many households are like yours?. It's well-designed and covers pretty close to everything (how many households do you think there are in the United States that consist of a single woman and her grandchild?).

MAPP class #1

2012-01-21T19:36:00.006-05:00

These people aren't messing around. I came home Thursday night with several pounds of paperwork and reading, and someone will be calling me in three weeks about scheduling my first home visit (where they come and check out your house and ask you eight million questions about the deepest matters of your soul).

SURE. WHY NOT. Never mind that there is currently nothing about my apartment that suggests accommodation of an actual human child. Never mind that it's so unnaturally tidy that they'll think I just cleaned up a murder scene. Never mind the two crazy orange things with claws taking each other apart in the middle of the living room, they'll be great with kids, I swear.

2011, still in progress

2012-01-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

For 2011 I made a resolution to gradually change my eating habits to more healthful ones. I guess you could say I kept it, in the sense that my diet at the start of 2012 is better than it was then. I'm particularly happy that I finally figured out what to eat for breakfast that's quick and actually works (shredded wheat—sometimes classic solutions are best!). I'm also cooking much more than I was, and eating less junk food.

I still eat more junk than I should. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, I've taken fairly drastic steps to remind myself to choose the right foods, such as keeping paper lists of all the food in my house and putting them in places I'll see them. (For some people this would probably be a trigger to overeat, but for me it's a reminder that there's produce in the bins and beans in the pantry, and I need to take the time to prepare those foods instead of passing over them for easier calories.)

I'm more aware than ever that for me, passive screen time (television, movies) is tightly connected to emotional eating. This has increased my commitment to not having television at home, and to limiting how much access I have to DVDs and the internet.

I've stopped regularly reading fitness and nutrition advice that equates healthful eating with low-calorie eating. I avoid thinking too much about the calorie, fat, or carbohydrate content of food. I focus more on trying new foods and learning new cooking skills. In 2011, I gained weight—I'm a few pounds short of the highest weight I've ever been—and I'm confident that I'm also the healthiest, physically and mentally, that I have been since childhood.

2012 will, I hope, bring more of the same. I'm not doing a new resolution this year, both because I'm still working on the old one and because the beginning of 2012 doesn't happen to be the right time for me to make any major lifestyle changes.

WIW Christmas Day

2011-12-25T16:51:00.003-05:00

Top: Vera Wang for Kohl's
Belt: Eddie Bauer
Jeans: Paige Denim
I don't know what y'all think about "what I wore" posts. I'm guessing it's some combination of, Whoa, that's self-aggrandizing and superficial, and, Actually, it's kind of interesting to read Susan's take on how clothes work, but you won't catch me admitting it!

Luckily for you, I'm too camera-shy to do WIWs on anything like a regular basis. But today it was necessary to do one to celebrate a special occasion: someone had the guts to pick out clothes for me for Christmas! Let me tell you, it's been years since any of my friends or family have been brave enough to try this. But this year, Richard decided to give it a shot.

I usually wear knits, because it's easy for me to look boxy in stiffer wovens. This woven top came with a skinny ribbon belt that didn't do anything for me, but when I took it out and added a medium-width, soft leather belt, presto, I had the waist definition I crave. I wasn't sure at first about doing this gray-green color with my skin tone, but now that I'm looking at the photo I can see that this is actually a natural match for my coloring. Good job, bro!

Like many women, I'm often too quick to default to snug knitted tops. I'm so afraid of losing waist definition that I end up wearing something that's fitted all over. The truth is, a top that's less fitted but can be belted at the waist is feminine yet much more modest (and to my eye, more visually appealing than something that shows every line of the body).

Let me know if you want to see more WIWs! I will gladly do one in honor of anyone brave enough to buy clothing for me. :D

Merry Christmas!

Only one this year

2011-11-24T10:52:00.000-05:00

Usually I name three random things I'm grateful for, but this year I'm just going with the first one I thought of: the guy whose car I backed into in the summer of 2010*, who started a claim with my insurance agency and then never finished it.

Yup, that's right. I backed into some stranger's parked car, made him listen to me whine about how stupid I was for doing it, and he paid the bill to repair it himself. It still freaks me out when I think how much kinder and more generous a person that guy is than I will ever be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

* Public service announcement: Don't drive emotional, you guys. Sit down, have a cup of tea, and get your head together first.

I have a credit score.

2011-11-19T11:31:00.005-05:00

Pretty much the first thing I did when my credit reports came back empty was apply for another credit card. It came in the mail Friday, and with it came my score from Equifax (apparently the only service my credit union sends information to).

I'm aware of how incredibly tacky it is to be talking about my finances on my blog (and believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't felt seriously in need of advice from as many people as possible). So don't worry, I'm not going to announce my credit score on my blog.

But, in short, the score is okay, despite my lack of installment loan history. It's not top-of-the-line or anything, but it's fine. This is good news, but now I need to work on building up my credit on a card that will actually report to multiple places.

So one last fun fact about my credit history: apparently I'm penalized for the fact that I have "no recent revolving balances." Well, of course I don't. I pay off my damn credit card every month! Again, I realize how fortunate I am to be in this situation, but come on. What is up with a system that penalizes you for never having carried a balance on a credit card?

I've seen the horrible things that credit card debt does to people, and I hope I'll never be so hard up for money that I'll be tempted to carry a balance on a card. It makes me incredibly sad to think that our lending system rewards people for starting down a road that leads to such an awful place.

Credit part 2

2011-11-16T18:36:00.000-05:00

Advice I have gotten so far about building up my credit:

1. Go to my credit union and do what they tell me.

2. Get a loan from a predatory lender.

Seriously, the most helpful information I've gotten so far was from Emily, who pointed out that my credit union reports my credit card information to only one agency. Thanks Emily, boo credit union.

My bus driver is a nice guy. Really.

2011-11-16T18:28:00.002-05:00

Most of the time when I am eating in public, I think that other people are probably observing me eat and judging me for one of the following:

a) The fat content of what I'm eating
b) The sugar content of what I'm eating
c) The simple carbohydrate content of what I'm eating
d) Or, failing all that, the meatlessness of what I'm eating.

But, of course, I always sternly remind myself that no one cares what I'm eating, no one is even noticing what I'm eating, and I'm being crazy and taking offense where none is intended. As usual.

So I get on the bus this evening, say hey to the driver, and as I'm looking for a seat he says, "How was your ice cream?"

A less paranoid person than I am would have missed a beat, but I comprehended the situation immediately. My bus driver was driving this same route two or three hours ago and he noticed me a few yards from this very spot, walking back to my office from Yogurt Pump.

That's right, people. The bus driver saw me walking down the street eating what he thought was ice cream, filed it away in his head, and he's now querying me about it in front of a busful of passengers.

Me: Oh, haha. It was good. It was yogurt, actually.

(Because, you know. I wouldn't want anyone on this bus to think that I was eating ice cream. How lame is it that I corrected him? I'm still sort of irritated with myself for doing that.)

Him: Oh yeah. Yogurt Pump.

So, what are the morals of the story today?

1. People are gonna watch you eat. It's unavoidable.

2. It is dumb to worry about people watching you eat. Really, really dumb. I mean, your diet and your weight are what they are regardless of who is watching and what they're thinking about it.

To celebrate these principles, I plan to walk up and down Franklin Street eating Ben and Jerry's* at my earliest convenience. Who's with me?

* In keeping with Japanese etiquette, my original plan was to sit at a table outside the store and eat my ice cream, but honestly, I'd rather be mobile. At least I can make Leon Kass happy: this act will be performed with a spoon.

Oops, still thin file

2011-11-12T19:16:00.001-05:00

How do you get to be twenty-eight and still not have a credit score?

You luck out and have parents who pay for almost all of your college.

You decide to work rather than go to grad school.

You luck out again and never spend any significant length of time unemployed or underemployed.

You spend pretty wisely.

You eke every mile you can out of the 1994 car your parents got for you.

You get so freaked out about the idea of debt that you don't even start using a credit card until you're twenty-five.

You stick your head in the sand, telling yourself that all you have to do is pay off your card every month and you'll be fine.

So, folks: what should I do now? I'm getting another credit card. I don't need a house, a car, a computer, or anything else I can imagine needing a loan for, but should I try to apply for some kind of loan just so I'll have more than one type of credit in my history?

Three

2011-11-02T21:32:00.004-04:00

I had one goal this past summer: to run a 10K.

I didn't make it. I wasn't slacking off; I put in the workouts. For some reason, my body just wasn't ready.

It would have been easy to feel down about what a bad athlete I am, about how it always seems to take me twice as long as it takes everyone else to make any kind of progress.

But when I thought about it, I realized that something did change this summer. I stopped having to shame myself into exercising. I started doing more than my minimum weekly quota on a regular basis.

After three years, my body finally knows what my brain has all along: that exercise works. That it isn't something I'm doing for some abstract future of health and happiness. I need it in order to live well now. I need it as much as I need food and sleep.

Exercise is now how I'll choose to spend an hour, not just because I need to make my quota for the week, but because I want to do it. Because (finally, finally)... I love it.

Early voting

2011-10-24T15:47:00.000-04:00

Early voting started in North Carolina a few days ago. As usual, N.C. voters can check your registration here. Orange County early voting locations and times are here.

Mine was a short but tough ballot this year. Usually I don't struggle much to choose between candidates once I read their stated positions on the issues, but this year my intuition was lobbying hard against a candidate who looked great on paper. Still not sure whether I made the right choice there.

Playing in the corn

2011-10-22T20:19:00.000-04:00

I'll be in Urbana this coming Tuesday through Sunday. For those with a key to my apartment, feel free to break in, have a Honeycrisp, and play with the cats! I found my lost ring this morning, so I can provide fairly confident assurance that there are no foreign objects inside Ender.

Jan-No-Bramy

2011-10-19T21:07:00.002-04:00

Susie: Your dad still doesn't know my name. He called me Sar-Susie the other night.

Amy: My dad calls me four names. And one of them is usually a dead pet.

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

2011-10-08T18:55:00.005-04:00

Part of me would like to tell you that my experiment with ditching home internet access failed. That no matter how many tools you take away, there you are, or something. It wouldn't be true, of course, but part of me still feels as though it ought to be.

I don't know—maybe the experiment would have failed, if it weren't for my neighbor with the unsecured wireless network that lets me check my email (slowly), check the weather (five times a day instead of ten), and skim the headlines. Maybe I'd go crazy without that stuff. Probably I'd go crazy. But not half as crazy as I'd go if I had a stable internet connection that let me surf, shop, and watch streaming video.

It's been six months since I got rid of my home internet, but it didn't take nearly that long to prove to myself that it was the right decision. It didn't take six days. The day after I stopped having constant access to the internet, I started cleaning my house. Then I cooked, and read, and exercised more than my minimum weekly schedule. Then I made Ender's freakin' day just by lying on the floor for ten minutes doing nothing.

It's insane how happy that cat was, having my undivided attention. And it broke my heart, thinking how much more painful this could have been—how much worse I could have messed things up by letting the internet slowly come between me and a husband, or me and a child. I like to think I wouldn't have let it go that far if I were married or a mother, but who knows? You see it happen to families all the time.

It's a lot harder to accept that I thought it would be. Not because I miss the internet (I don't) or because I care what people think (I shouldn't), but because I've always had friends, real-life or internet-only, who live in other places. They're very nice about it—not one person I'm close to has given me grief about not being online as much—but there are certain things that just don't happen anymore. Is everything I've gained by giving up time on the internet worth missing one late-night IM conversation with a friend I love?

I'm not sure that it is. All I know was that I had to get a part of myself away from the internet. Maybe there was another way, a better way, to do it. But I picked the only way I could be sure would work.

Learning to live with home internet access is still on my to-do list, but it's been moved to the long-term to-do list. It won't happen this year or next. Probably not the year after that, either. Unless my neighbor wisens up, or moves away, or gets a geek boyfriend. Then we'll see how I handle it.

Gray Day

2011-09-24T19:13:00.000-04:00

I've been speculating for years about when it was going to happen. And today, all of a sudden, I looked in a mirror at the mall—there it was!

There's a tiny spot on the top of my head that's been producing three or four white hairs since I was in college, but that's just a fluke. Today was the first time I've ever found a white hair on any other part of my head. I'm starting to go gray!

Sorry, I know this is probably too much information. But Gray Day is an important event in a girl's life. And it means I can finally live up to my vow that I would never clip white hairs or try to dye them away. I can't wait to start fighting back against that particular cultural norm.

(Yes, Mom, your youngest is old enough to have white hairs. Let's wear navy and look fabulous together!)

Susie hibernation mode: canceled

2011-09-11T22:15:00.001-04:00

My plans for September have changed, and I won't be hiding out until October after all. (If I do disappear unexpectedly, check Cambridge: I probably ran off to write that biography of Elizabeth Anscombe.)

What were once called love affairs

2011-09-09T13:14:00.000-04:00

For most of my life, when someone would say "significant other," I'd think that it came with an implicit asterisk that went something like this:

* Isn't it awful how I'm using this term that saps all the life and romance out of the deepest and most loving connection you've ever had with a man or woman, this is really almost intolerable, so I'm doing it with a bit of irony here, would you please excuse me?

It was a dark day when I realized that most of that subtext is gone from the term, if it was ever there in the first place.

I also think that the verb "to have a relationship" is so soul-sucking that it ought to be outlawed (yup, I was doing it with irony). Probably the only person who agrees with me about this is Allan Bloom, but that's okay.

September: Susie hibernation mode

2011-08-28T20:43:00.008-04:00

There's a pretty good chance that you will not lay eyes on me during the month of September. I'll be in Madison September 3-10 visiting my lovely ex-roomie Sarah, and when I get back, I'll be going into hiding for a few weeks. (Well, figurative hiding. If I were actually trying to disappear, I wouldn't be telling you about it, obviously.)

I know that this makes it sound like I'm involved in something fascinating, covert, and probably illegal. Sorry, but it's not anywhere nearly that interesting. I don't really want to broadcast the reason why I'm doing this on my blog, but I promise it isn't anything sketchy (or even particularly good gossip).

Proper reentry into society will occur on October 3.

Gym

2011-08-15T21:08:00.001-04:00

This time last year, I was sweating it out in a poorly ventilated exercise room, complaining about treadmills that hurt my knees. Four months later I was standing out at the bus stop at ridiculously cold, dark hours so I could get to work by 7:15, get off at 4:15, and get my run in before sunset.

The heck was I thinking?!

This year, I'm going to the gym, where there's light and safety and climate control, where the treadmills are smooth, where there's variety, where I get so irritated with the division between men-trying-to-get-larger and women-trying-to-get-smaller that it makes me want to lift something heavy and throw it, REPEATEDLY, until my biceps get so huge and unattractive that no one, not even me, will believe for a moment that I buy into this ridiculous de facto sexism!

Ahem. I mean...

In short, the gym is great. It's true that you can't buy commitment there, but you can buy solutions to certain problems. I wish I'd done it three years sooner.

P.S. If you thought I was actually going to the gym with some guy named Eliot, you weren't the only one.

Phone troubles

2011-08-06T12:05:00.001-04:00

Something weird is going on with my phone. For the next couple of days, I'm email only. (Email will be checked, I promise!)

Update: Phone issues fixed, sooner than I thought.

For the dudes

2011-07-28T21:25:00.000-04:00

When other women ask me for style advice, I'm glad to help. When men ask, I'm sort of stumped. I have opinions about men's clothing, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of hem breaks and how to fit a dress shirt and what different styles of hat are called, I'm completely lost.

But I've finally found a blog that, if I were a man, I'd trust to give me good advice: Dappered. It references the brands I like, covers casual wear but encourages smart style, expresses skepticism about short-sleeve button-ups (always a good sign), and presents two sides on a lot of questions without asserting that one point of view is objectively right.

Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

2011-07-21T20:46:00.000-04:00

Eliot and I were having trouble making our relationship a priority, so we eventually decided to take the drastic step of going to the gym together. (For some reason I have to pay to go to the gym, while Eliot never does. Seems a little unfair, but I love him so much that I don't really mind.)

Bizarrely, this has worked perfectly to make sure that we get in some quality time every week. Especially right now, since the heat wave is driving me indoors for almost all of my workouts.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Sad but true

2011-07-19T08:31:00.000-04:00

The magazine I've been working on since 2008 will soon no longer exist in print form. Readers in North Carolina won't be too shocked, I imagine, since you know how bad the state budget situation is.

It's tempting to say, "It's okay, we'll still be awesome online!" And it's true, we will be awesome online. We're still committed to high-quality writing about great research, telling the stories we think people will be interested in reading. We're still committed to resisting anything remotely like PR-speak.

But the truth is, it isn't okay. We'll be doing more online, and we'll be reaching out to the public in ways we've never tried before. But there's nothing that can compensate entirely for the loss of a print magazine.

Endeavors is almost as old as I am. The current editor has been on the magazine staff for twelve years. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education has given Endeavors many awards for being one of the best magazines of its kind.

I'm grateful that I got to write for a print magazine for three years; that was far more than I ever expected to achieve with my writing in my twenties. I'm extremely lucky that I happened to land at a university where we can write the good stories we find, rather than the ones someone above us thinks we ought to write. That's the most important thing, and it's still true.

Clam diggers

2011-07-17T16:28:00.001-04:00

When I wear a certain pair of white denim pants, I sometimes catch people squinting at my legs. Then they start muttering. "Not shorts... Not rolled-up jeans... What are those things, exactly?"

They're clam diggers!

Clam diggers: Ender approves.
Clam diggers are defined by:

1) Their length: cuffed just below the knee.

2) Their fit: slim enough to follow the contour of the leg.

Clam diggers are for casual days when it's 94 degrees but you don't feel like wearing a skirt and you can't bear the thought of showing your thighs. They're less common in stores than shorts and capris, but well-worth looking for.

Head over to Angie's blog for more about clam diggers and why they're more flattering than longer-length, wider-hem capris:

Summary of my Thursday

2011-07-16T08:15:00.000-04:00

[Spoiler: Nobody gets blown up.]

Susie's landlord: Get your butt back home! Your car is leaking gas!

Susie: Yikes! Okay, sorry!

Susie (to AAA): Tow my car please?

AAA: Yes, if you get the fire department on the phone.

Susie: Sure, the—wait the what?

AAA: Car + Leaking Gas = Can't move it 'til the fire department says it's safe.

Susie: Oh man. Okay.

[Ever looked up the Carrboro fire department in the phone book? Not there. Every other fire station and substation is in there, but not Carrboro's. It's little things like this that make being without home internet access probably a bad idea.]

Susie: Hello, Not-Carrboro fire department? Could you give me the number for the Carrboro fire department please?

Not-Carrboro: Yes certainly. 555-9283.

Susie: 555-9283! 555-9283! 555-9283!

Phone: (Silence.)

Susie: What!

Phone: The number you have dialed...

Susie: Not helpful!

Susie: I could drive this car two miles. Two miles! I wouldn't blow up. I haven't blown up yet.

Susie: BAD IDEA.

Susie: What else am I gonna do? Call 911?

Susie: Are you gonna be the person who blew up because she didn't call 911?

Susie: 911!

Dispatcher: Orange County Emergency Services.

Susie: Yes, hello. Fire department. No fire. Car. Gasoline. Repeat NO FIRE. Please no flashing lights.

Dispatcher: You're going to need to give me your address.

Susie: Oh, yes, of course. ______ Avenue. Also please no sirens.

Dispatcher: We're gonna have to dispatch a truck for that.

Susie: Right. Okay. As long as there's no... I mean, yes thank you! Sorry.

Susie (to landlord): Fire truck. Don't freak!

Landlord: Fire truck what?

Susie: I know. So sorry.

[Fire truck: silence.]

Susie (to fire guys/girl): So sorry.

Fire Guy: Your car's leaking gas.

Susie: Yes.

Fire Guy: Well, there's no way for me to get up under there. I wish there were something we could do.

Susie: Oh but there is.

Fire Guy (to AAA): Car's leaking gas.

AAA: Cool. Tow truck.

Susie: Thank you!

Fire Guy: Sure. Stay with the car.

Susie: No matches.

Fire Guy: No cigarettes.

Tow Truck Guy: Car's leaking gas?

Susie: Car's leaking gas.

Tow Truck Guy: Okay, give me the keys. Passport Motors?

Susie: Yes but!

Tow Truck Guy: It's okay. Tell AAA I did a perfect job, all right?

Susie: I'll tell AAA anything, only don't get blown up!

Tow Truck Guy: I'm gonna start it up and drive it onto this thing. Don't worry, I won't get blown up. I've got kids.

Susie: That fails to ensure that you will not blow up!

Tow Truck Guy: Bye!

Susie: Bye, Tesla and Tow Truck Guy.

House sitting Thursday through Monday

2011-07-12T14:00:00.002-04:00

Don't come knocking while I'm gone. If the automatic pet feeder isn't doing its job, Ender might open the door and eat you.

Seriously my last post about scarves

2011-07-08T17:19:00.000-04:00

If you have any doubts left about how to tie your oblong scarf, watch this video. Lately I've been partial to the Men's Tie and Fake Knot.

HT: YouLookFab

Happy 32nd

2011-07-07T17:07:00.001-04:00

Slightly scandalous but true: my parents have been married twice. To each other, I mean. They were married civilly, then married in the Catholic Church a year or so later.

Okay, it's actually not scandalous at all, just kind of weird. Also mysterious: I have no idea what day wedding #2 happened, and I've still never seen photos of it, although I've been told that they exist.

Anyway, happy wedding #1, Mom and Dad!

Love,

S

I pull out my Beretta?

2011-07-05T20:37:00.000-04:00

The rumors are true: for now, at least, I have internet access at my new place... in my walk-in closet and part of my bedroom.

Do I feel kind of bad about it? Yeah. But this isn't any sweet deal I'm stealing—it's a very weak, irregular signal, just enough to check my email (slowly). Not nearly enough for regular web surfing.

Actually, for my purposes, I guess that is a pretty sweet deal. Perfect, actually. Sorry, non-tech-savvy neighbor, whoever you are.

I just felt like being a gigantic moving cliché.

2011-07-02T07:47:00.002-04:00

My cell phone charger is still missing in the move. I'm sure it'll turn up by the end of the weekend, but in the meantime, don't freak if I stop answering my phone. Email will be checked regularly.

Update: I had to unpack the entire living room and kitchen to find it, but I did.

Violence is better than sex?

2011-06-29T14:43:00.000-04:00

My reaction to the Supreme Court video game ruling is probably colored by the fact that I'm extremely sensitive to depictions of violence and gore. But part of the reason why I'm so sensitive to those images is that I was shielded from them when I was a child.

Sure, it's not good for kids to see pornography, but isn't it much worse for them to see graphic, gratuitous violence depicted as entertainment?

Paint

2011-06-26T15:59:00.000-04:00

The past week has taught me a lot about white balance and color. My boss went so far as to suggest that I continue my education by taking the office camcorder home and filming the painting process. I sort of wanted to, except that I was worried that seeing me standing around with a video camera might cause my painting volunteers to want to shoot me (not with a camera).

Now that I see these streaks on camera, I'm considering letting Amy go back over them like she wanted to the other day. Sorry, A.

I assumed that an unavoidable feature of painting would be that things never turn out looking exactly like you wanted them. I was wrong. These colors look exactly like what I had pictured for my apartment, before I even saw the place.

I chose this red partly for how amazing it looked behind the painting. And once the painting has its gears and chains? I may actually die.

I shot the kitchen, like, fourteen different ways, and I just could not get the color to come out right. This wall is actually a very intense, peachy yellow. (Yeah, the pink was a total fail, as everybody but me predicted.)

The bathroom wins the most-improved-room award. This color makes me smile every time I look at it. (I also replaced the outlet covers in here with white ones that look kind of like clouds and were probably intended to go in a nursery. They make me happy, but I'm sort of glad they're not visible in the photo.)

Thanks again to everyone who helped paint and taught me skills. I love, love, love my new place, and what's better, I can even brag about it, because I didn't make it happen—y'all did. Please come over many, many times for a beer and a wrestle with Ender.

Dad's first text

2011-06-21T20:34:00.000-04:00

Dad: How do I know it's working? Text me. I want to see how it lets me know I have one.

Susie: Just wait, Dad. Richard usually replies really fast.

Dad: No, no, text me.

Susie: Fine, okay.

Dad: "...Word-yo?"

Mom: What did you say?

Susie: Well, it was just a test...

Dad: "Word... yo...?"

Susie: At least say it right!

Dad: How am I supposed to say it?

Susie: You know, like, "Word, yo."

Mom: What does that mean?

Susie: Well, it... expresses approval. Like, "Word!"

Dad: I've never heard that before.

Susie: God, you are so old.

Dad: Look, Richard texted me! Twice! [pokes at phone]

Mom: We don't know the new slang. We don't really watch a lot of TV.

Susie: TV? Mom, I don't even have TV.

Mom: Well, where did you hear it, then?

Susie: Well, I don't know... I mean, I...

Dad: Argh! Stop texting me! He texted me again, and I lost the text I was working on!

Mom: Maybe I should learn how to do this, too.

Susie: [sigh]

Pre-paint

2011-06-18T21:07:00.007-04:00

I was going to say that I'm touched by the number of people who have volunteered to help me paint my new place. But, of course, that wouldn't be true. I am blown away by the number of people who have volunteered to help me paint. Then I was going to say that I don't know what I've done to deserve everyone being so nice to me—but that, too, would be disingenuous, because it implies that secretly I may have done something to deserve it, when actually I know that I have not.

Seriously, guys. I'm at a loss for words.

Okay, now that that's out of the way. Since I've been blathering on about "OMG what colors do I paint my apartment?!?!" to so many people for the past month and a half, I figure you probably want to see what this place looks like.

Note: that's the inside view of the front door. I've never had exposed brick indoors before, but, being a neutrals girl, I quickly decided that I like it. (Brick is definitely a neutral.)

What's that on the adjacent wall? It's the painting! The painting has been a fixture of my bedroom for the past couple of years, since I wouldn't have felt right about imposing my taste for brightly colored, anime-style art upon my roommates. But now that I'm living by myself, it's getting prime living room real estate. (Also, Amy has promised to steampunk it up by replacing the buttons and thread on the wings with gears and chains. How awesome will that be?!)

I'm thinking that the wall with the painting is going to be red.

I'm really annoyed by this awful white spray paint all over the edge of the brick. Time to find out if Goof Off actually works.

All the non-red walls in this space are probably going to be a light mushroomy color.

The wall opposite the door. On the left, my geeky history prints. The flowery thing on the right is a wall decal.

When assembled, it will look like this. I'm thinking it'll look good trailing above my white loveseat.

Continuation of the wall, into the dining room.

This wall above is another likely candidate for red.

The wall adjacent to the two red walls will break the color up a little.

The brick continues into the kitchen. Pretty cool.

We're going to paint the backsplash and the wall opposite the oven some odd pinkish color that Amy talked me into and surprisingly seems like it will work really well.

You can't tell from this photo, but all the outlet covers and switch plates in this place are nasty, nasty, nasty. Which is great, because it will give me an excuse to replace the prominent ones with something fun.

I've been saying I wasn't going to paint the bathroom, but I lied. These walls need to be blue, or I will go crazy looking at myself in this colorless sea of cream.

Where's the bedroom? Not shown, because it's not getting painted. It'll probably end up with a couple of silhouette cutouts and a big ol' plum tree.

Bloggin'

2011-06-13T08:57:00.000-04:00

If you've spent the past seven? eight? years wondering when I'm going to stop rambling on about nothing and start a REAL blog, well, that day has come. Here's the RSS.

And, because I know some of you guys don't use RSS and I can't expect you to check two different pages all the time, I'll go ahead and post a link here every time I have a new entry. Just to show the love.

(Also, feel free to title my blog for me. Because I can't.)

Okay, so here's the first one: What shape is the universe?

This is for everyone I've chided for putting their athletic socks on display.

2011-06-09T20:58:00.004-04:00

Last night, in between doing chores and going to lift weights, I suddenly realized that I was clean out of cat food. If I didn't run out and get some, the cats were going to go hungry at breakfast.

The idea of what they'd do to me if I didn't feed them was enough to make me dash out of the house without thinking about what I had on my feet. I didn't realize that I was wearing this frightening combination until I walked in the front door of the pet store:

(Yes, folks, my love of Carolina is the real deal: I own school spirit socks.)

I actually considered stripping off my socks and stuffing them in my bag, right there in front of everyone in PetSmart.

Then I remembered some of the slobbery, friendly dogs I've encountered there in the past. I think maybe I styled these shoes just right after all.

How it's done

2011-06-08T14:17:00.003-04:00

This philosopher and his wife got it right:

"She was getting ready to move into a retirement home," Laube recalled, "and she said she had 4,000 books to give away. She asked if we wanted some."

See, that's why a large library is better than a small one. No one wants to be the person with just a few books, easily disposed of after your death. You want to be the person with the huge, inconvenient, overwhelming library that has to be given away. Well done, Warren Nord!

Reverse packing

2011-06-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

Books seemed like an obvious thing to go ahead and pack now. I mean, unlike my cake pans, scarves, and handbag collection, I'm not going to need them before the end of the month, right?

...Yeah, I have no idea what I was thinking.

The books—in addition to the three I'm already reading—that I didn't dare pack for fear that I might want to crack them before the end of June.
It only takes me a few hours to pack my books, because I actually don't own a whole lot of them. That's right: for most of my adult life, I've taken the same approach to books that I take to clothes—I keep only the ones that I think I'll want to pull out over and over again. I've never counted my books, but I doubt I own more than three hundred or so.

I'm completely confident of the value of a small wardrobe, but I'm actually not sure that that approach has worked so well with my library. On one hand, my books are a true representation of my character, because I've actually read almost all of them—many of them multiple times—and considered them worth keeping. And I certainly bless the small size of my library when it comes time to move.

On the other hand, a home with only a few hundred books feels awfully bare to me. I feel too much in charge of my small collection. I'm accustomed to living in homes where humans are dwarfed by books—where the books, if they suddenly became animate, could stage a rebellion and crush us within seconds. No one's in danger of being killed by my library, unless it's a slow death by paperback battery.

Scarves with Imogen, again

2011-06-06T08:42:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite style bloggers shows us yet more ways to tie a big scarf:

So here I am, in the middle way

2011-06-04T14:55:00.002-04:00

For a while, I was memorizing poetry at a pretty steady clip. After I finished Ash-Wednesday, it took me just a few months to put away some Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a few dozen lines of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Henley's Invictus, and the second of the Four Quartets, East Coker.

Then I started on the first of the quartets, Burnt Norton, and promptly gave up. I tried a bunch of different things: making a poem my desktop wallpaper, pinning it up on my bulletin board at work, carrying pages of poetry around instead of a book. Nothing seemed to work. For some reason, every time I'd go and try to memorize, something inside me would shy away from it.

This week I picked up Eliot again for the first time in more than six months. And I realized right away why I've been avoiding poetry: because it hurts. Oh man, it hurts like crazy. The very qualities that poetry demands of us—emotion, earnestness, honesty—are the ones we fear to cultivate. Especially we young people. It's so much easier to aspire to be clever and current, ironic and detached.

Yet there are some poems that simply demand to be memorized. I can avoid them for a while, but they always come back around.

Time to get busy.

This weekend's project: turning my moto jacket into a weapon

2011-06-03T20:57:00.000-04:00

Just kidding. This weekend's project is installing more RAM in my netbook. (Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere.)

But seriously, one day I really want to do this.

HT: Pocketni

Rice, part 2

2011-06-02T21:39:00.000-04:00

I've said that brown rice is just as good as white. And it is, once it gets to your mouth. The one failing of brown rice is that it doesn't clump as well as many white varieties. This is no big deal when I'm eating a burrito with fork and knife, but it can be a real drag when I'm eating tofu and rice with chopsticks.

Solution? Two-thirds long-grain brown rice, one-third white jasmine rice. Cook it all together, using more water than you would for white rice, less than you would for brown. This rice mixture has great taste and texture, and just enough clump to make eating with chopsticks easy.

Udon

2011-05-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

I've always loved the thickness and chewiness of udon, but because it's usually served in a fish-based soup, I very rarely eat it. (The majority of the times I've had it were in Japan, where it was often the least-meaty thing on the menu.)

For some reason, it never occurred to me until a couple of weeks ago that I could have udon as vegetarian as I liked if I prepared it at home. There's nothing to it! It cooks in just a few minutes on the stove; toss in whatever bite-sized bits of vegetable you want near the end, then drain off enough water to get a souplike water-to-noodle ratio, and add soy sauce and spices.

I like mine with black and red pepper, lots of mushroom, and whatever vegetables I have on hand (usually celery, carrot, and green onion).

Also: hot udon pairs very well with cold Belgian witbier.

Bear!

2011-05-24T09:59:00.000-04:00

When my friends and I hike in the Mason Farm Biological Reserve, we always tease each other about what might be out there.

Well, sometimes there's bear, apparently.

Peace

2011-05-21T17:09:00.000-04:00

I don't like not being able to check the weather twenty times a day.

I don't like missing important games, live speeches, and shuttle launches.

I don't like not being there to get the startled, pleased IMs from friends at 10 p.m.: "What are you doing on this late?"

But I can't deny the feeling I get when I wake up in the morning, or when I get home in the evening, or on Saturday morning when I want to do housework.

It's pure relief. Having constant access to the internet and all the information it contains felt like mixed blessing and burden my whole adult life. But now that I'm living by myself, it wouldn't just be burdensome—it would be crushing. I am flat-out terrified to be alone in my home with the internet. At this point, I'd probably be willing to pay money not to have internet service.

I don't really want to confess that to you, because I don't think anyone will understand. I don't even really understand it myself. I know I can't avoid home internet access forever. It's a sentence of solitude; no roommate I've ever had would have stood for it. And by the time I'm middle-aged, I probably won't even be able to function in society without it.

But I just can't face it yet. I'll go back to having home internet later, when I've built up better habits, when I trust myself to be a better custodian of my own happiness.

Please be patient with me.

Test first

2011-05-17T12:18:00.000-04:00

Dominique Browning, "Hitting the Bottle":

The problem is that our regulatory system allows manufacturers to introduce or continue to use chemicals that have not been adequately tested for safety. A manufacturer can replace BPA with another untested compound and get a few years’ use out of it before it, too, becomes the subject of health alerts or news media attention. By the time we know what those new chemicals do to us, entire generations are affected. We are the guinea pigs.

The system is broken. We must reverse the process: test first. And we should allow only chemicals proven to be safe into the marketplace.

You can still get RSS feeds out of Twitter.

2011-05-13T16:44:00.001-04:00

I'm a bit of a Twitter-hater—I made a good faith effort to use it last year, and just didn't like it at all. That said, every once in a while I'll still run across a Twitter feed I want to follow, so I subscribe to the feeds via RSS.

Twitter has started sort of discouraging you from picking up people's tweets through RSS (understandable that they would do this). But the feeds still exist in this format:

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=endeavors_mag

HT: Elizabeth and Ask Metafilter

Skeleton man

2011-05-10T04:00:00.026-04:00

He had a skeleton in his closet. No, I mean literally: on our third date he showed me the complete human skeleton, from skull to distal phalanges, that he'd inherited from his father. They were both doctors (the man and his father, I mean, not the man and his skeleton), so this wasn't quite as bizarre as it may sound.

He probably thought he was shocking me. (Skeleton man had pegged me as a square a few hours into our first date, when I wasn't impressed by his story about bribing a state trooper who had pulled him over for speeding.) But in truth, I was sort of fascinated. Human bones! In the closet! I didn't start feeling shocked until he packed up the skeleton and we went to dinner—he and I, not we and the skeleton—and I noticed that at no point had he stopped to wash his hands.

I'm not generally a sanitation freak, but for some reason, I was so bothered by this that when we got to the restaurant I couldn't help suggesting to skeleton man that he might want to wash his skeletoned hands before dinner.

"Oh," he said. "You're probably right."

But, oddly enough, we're not calling him skeleton man because he possessed a skeleton other than his own, or because he had bribed a trooper to get out of a speeding ticket, or even because he was eight inches taller than I was but weighed about fifteen pounds more. No, he's skeleton man because he wore a totally awesome skeleton watch that he'd made by removing the face from a regular analog watch. When I admired and exclaimed over it, he hinted that he might make one for me in the future. Sweet!

Sadly, skeleton man stopped calling not too long after the date where he showed me his box of bones. (Let that be a lesson to you, girls.) Not sadly, really—there wasn't anything about him that I felt particularly drawn to, other than the fact that he was about a million times smarter than I was. Turns out I was a lot more interested in his skeleton watch than in skeleton man himself. I really wanted that watch!

So what did three of my girlfriends do? They got me a gorgeous, absolutely flawless skeleton watch for my twenty-eighth birthday:

(That's Brian Greene in the background, Sarah. Just for you.)

It's funny: I haven't worn a watch in years. I've certainly never worn a chunky watch. But this one felt like a part of my body the minute I put it on.

Thank you, dear ladies. There's no one in the world I'd rather receive a skeleton watch from than you.

New

2011-05-07T08:57:00.002-04:00

Battle Branch Trail was where I had my first run. And my tenth, and my hundredth. I ran that trail so many times that my feet knew it almost better than my eyes. So many times that it became something more than running: Battle Branch was where I learned the meanings of words like spiritual discipline and meditation.

After staying so long in one place, running on a new trail feels almost childish—questing after novelty. Do I think that the new place won't become as familiar as the old? But for now, it's exhilarating, like running off to the beach in the middle of the week just because life is tough and you need to get away.

On this trail, I never know exactly where I am. That's what I secretly hope for every time I go into the woods: to get lost, to lose control. There's no chance of getting truly lost here, but there is the not knowing where and how far the trail goes. Each time, I run a little farther, and the farther I go, the more beautiful it gets.

This is entirely new to me: running not from point A to point B, but running for exploration. The honeysuckle is in bloom. The extra hours of daylight tempt me on; there's plenty of time to make it back. I want to see what's over the next hill.

Oh, what the heck. I don't think anyone's actually trying to find me where I run and stalk me. This entry is about Bolin Forest.

Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

2011-05-03T21:03:00.008-04:00

I don't know, but these guys sum up pretty neatly why I dislike atheists. (And yes, I am one.)

On basic questions of morality and human decency—issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights—the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

Atheists give themselves a lot of credit for holding all the correct progressive beliefs. They haven't figured out yet that the ethical implications of their actions are a million times more important than what they believe.

As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy.

Yes, atheists are smarter than you. And they'll make damn sure you know it.

They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally...

Instead of with regard for human emotions...

...to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions...

It's funny how often "making up their own minds about existential questions" results in them believing exactly what they find it pleasant to believe. Or what they can believe without having to change the way they live their lives.

...and to obey the golden rule.

Atheists are so hell-bent on this rule that they will go on treating you how they want to be treated far past the point where you make it clear that how they want to be treated is exactly the opposite of how you want to be treated.

They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are...

They're also more likely, while they're having their "safe" sex, to feel absolutely no moral qualms about using another human being for temporary pleasure.

...and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric.

And boy, are they proud of the fact that they don't have any more human feeling for their next-door neighbor than for someone they've never met on the other side of the planet.

They value freedom of thought.

I actually don't have anything snarky to say about this. It's true that your average atheist won't try to stop you from speaking, reading, or thinking whatever you want. (But, come on. That's a pretty low standard.)

I don't say any of this to give theists reason to be smug. There's also a long list of nasty (and, frankly, worse) hyperbole I could come up with for theists. The difference is that among theists, I see people talking about those things. I could throw a rock and hit a theist who knows the ethical errors theists are prone to and is willing to call other theists out on them.

I wish I could say the same thing about atheists.

Gypping y'all out of this word

2011-04-20T13:58:00.001-04:00

It used to be that when I'd hear one of my friends say "gypped," I'd point out that it was an ethnic slur and therefore offensive. I stopped saying anything about it when I realized that pretty much everyone I knew used it and had no idea what its origin was.

Some people argue that since "no one" knows the origin of this word, there's no way it can be offensive. I don't know, maybe, but I'm not gonna bank on that if I'm talking to someone of Romani heritage...

Cooking

2011-04-15T07:17:00.000-04:00

It doesn't really make any sense, but ever since I took the pressure off myself to be domestic and good at cooking, I've been really enjoying... cooking!

Fun with cooking was pretty easy to achieve once I accepted the following:

1. The vast majority of recipes—even those by cooks who claim to be sympathetic to single people—are not for single people, unless you don't mind spending a ton of money on food and wasting food.

2. Therefore, in order to make cooking simple and frugal, I have permission to take risks: to experiment, adapt, and simply leave ingredients out.

3. Making a double batch of everything and freezing it sounds good in theory, but a lot of times the quality of the frozen stuff will be low enough that I won't want to eat it. This strategy is not the right one for me.

4. Some stuff, however, does freeze very well, and I should take full advantage of it. So far: fresh rosemary for soup and beans, blueberries for pie filling, and some cookie doughs.

5. I break some nutritional rules. I eat refined grains. I eat milk chocolate. I eat full-fat cheese. I always, always put butter on my popcorn. And I'm okay with that. Especially if I'm also chowing down on a lot of vegetables, nuts, and legumes, which is the way my diet is headed right now.

6. The utility I get from spending money on occasional meals at the co-op, and from going to restaurants with friends and having a good time, is high. The utility I get from spending a lot of money on food in other situations is low. (Much lower than the utility I'd get from spending that money on a handbag. I'm just sayin'.)

Priciest kitten ever

2011-04-10T21:29:00.005-04:00

The sad thing was that Ender had done this before.

I'm not talking about biting off more snake than he could chew, although he certainly did do that. I'm talking about doing a different dumb thing, twice: swallowing one of my foam earplugs. The first time, he had the sense to reverse the decision, and I had the sense to start storing my earplugs in my pillowcase instead of in the shallow pocket of my pajama pants. But last week, one of them must have slipped out, and Ender decided to have a snack.

He had surgery on Thursday. As usual, he's doing better than I am with the recovery; he's moving on with life, while I'm still reeling over When did I become a person who would spend this much money on a cat and When did I become a person who would spend this much emotion and worry on a cat?

Dietary changes fail

2011-04-05T21:16:00.022-04:00

"Your hemoglobin is low," the Red Cross volunteer told me.

"Low?" I asked, suddenly paying attention. I'd been idly wondering why they always ask me to state my birthdate three different times when I give blood. Do they think I don't know when I was born?

"Really low," he clarified, showing me the display on the monitor: LLL, meaning low, low, low. "Have you ever had a problem with your hemoglobin before?"

"No," I said. "It's never tested low."

"Let's go over the stuff you should eat," he said. "You can come back and we'll test you again in a couple of months."

How embarrassing. When you're vegetarian, meat-eaters are forever telling you how you're probably not getting enough iron. I've always brushed them off: Of course I get enough iron! People don't get anemia just because they're vegetarian.

Of course, it isn't just about being vegetarian. I've been vegetarian for fifteen years, and I've had blood work done from time to time for a good number of those years, and I've never tested low on hemoglobin.

So what changed?

First, I gave blood twice in the past nine months. Maybe my intuition from when I was younger that I'm just too little to give blood regularly was correct.

Second, I started drinking coffee or tea every day, sometimes with meals. These drinks, especially tea, have tannins, which interfere with iron absorption.

My diet is actually pretty good on sources of nonheme iron; it's not unusual for me to eat a cup and a half of beans at lunch, for example. I'm just not getting the benefit of that iron for some reason.

So what's the solution? Fruit juice! Yep, that's right: the main change I've made to my diet so far this year, I'm now going to reverse by drinking some orange juice with meals, since the extra shot of vitamin C will boost my iron absorption.

That's probably more than you wanted to know about the content of my blood—sorry. But when I'm holding stuff out on my blog as, "Here's what I'm doing to my diet that's going to make me healthier!" and it seems that it may be having the opposite effect, I feel like I should let people know. (Honestly, I'm starting to wonder whether my friends were right when they told me I shouldn't go messing around with my diet.)

Celery

2011-04-03T11:57:00.001-04:00

One of the worst offenses conventional grocery stores have committed against vegetables is the destruction of celery.

I mean, who the heck eats celery? If you're like me, you ate it with peanut butter and raisins when you were a kid, and after the novelty of that wore off, you ditched it entirely.

It's the world's most insipid vegetable, right? The classic diet food. I can't mention it without someone reminding me that it doesn't have has many calories in it as it takes to chew it.

That was my opinion of celery until I noticed that it was always popping up in Mark Bittman's recipes. He made a big deal about how you needed it in your soup stock, how it adds flavor. Adds flavor?? Having not eaten celery in years, except in little pieces in a salad, I dubiously bought a few stalks at the co-op.

To my astonishment, it was good! Crisp, dark-green, well-grown celery is so yummy and pleasantly crunchy that I eat it raw and unadorned. Whenever I'm chopping it up for soup or salad, I have to set an extra stalk aside to snack on right away.

Vegetables and fruits should be—and can be—like that: so tasty we can't stop ourselves from eating them when they're in front of us. If that isn't how you feel about your produce, stop buying whatever it is you're buying, and experiment with different foods at a farmer's market this summer, or at a co-op right now, until you come across something you really want to eat.

Cell phone only!

2011-03-29T13:34:00.000-04:00

I think I'm probably the only twenty-something in the United States who's been continuously available at the same home phone number since 2004. Well, no more! As of April 2, I'm going cell-phone-only. This means all the rules have changed:

I used to tell people to call my home phone, not my cell, to chat, because I have a pay-as-you-go phone. No longer applies! Please call my cell to chat.
If you don't have my cell phone number, just ask (unless, obviously, you're creepy).
I'm losing my DSL service along with my phone line, so until I decide how I want to deal with that, I'm without home internet access. Email will still be checked every day, but until further notice, I can't guarantee that I'll see things quickly outside of work hours.
I text now. Yeah, it's a little weird.

No one's business

2011-03-28T14:44:00.000-04:00

I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of going out to eat with someone, and having them look at my food and say, "I can't eat that; too many carbs."

Or the subtler digs, always delivered with a sweet smile, such as, "That looks really filling."

I'm sick of cashiers saying to me, when I'm buying junk food, "Eating healthy today, huh?"

What I choose to eat is no one's business. If someone close to me were genuinely concerned about my eating habits, I'd hope they would tell me so. (Thoughtfully, once.)

Everyone else can just shut up.

Feel free to leave a comment grousing about people who think they can comment on what you eat. (Richard will probably leave the first one, calling me out for teasing him about being a health nut. Sorry, bro.)

Calling it "rabid" seriously does not help.

2011-03-24T18:16:00.006-04:00

Wednesday night, I saw Kai pounce on something—then shoot about a foot into the air and start skittering backwards almost before he hit the ground.

I rushed over. Spider. Big freakin' spider. I hustled the cats away and found a glass to plunk down over the thing. As I studied it, Kai started licking his chest in an alarmingly intent way.

I sighed and looked at the clock. Ten p.m. I could stuff Kai in a cat carrier and try to remember the way to the emergency vet, or I could start giving myself a crash course in arachnids. I reached for my laptop.

Thirty minutes later, Kai was happily snuggled up and purring on my lap while I looked at pictures of the species our new friend probably belongs to: the rabid wolf spider. That's right! If you find one of these beauties in your house, you can send your friends and family a postcard to share the fun. (Mine would probably enjoy that, actually. I'm the only one in my circle of intimates who seems at all bothered by insects/arachnids/snakes/other creatures well-evolved humans are supposed to have a natural aversion to.)

Anyway, here's my completely novice summary of what you should know about spiders in the United States:

There are basically three to watch out for. Black widows (everywhere), brown recluses (not where I am), and hobo spiders (in the Pacific Northwest). Other spiders, including wolf spiders, may bite, but they're not likely to make humans or pets very ill.

I haven't found any marks on Kai. He seems happy and normal, and he doesn't object to being handled. But Ms. Not-Actually-Rabid Wolf is staying trapped under that glass until I'm sure he's okay. (Unless someone fonder of spiders than I am insists on coming over and rescuing her, in which case I probably will not stop you.)

Beans

2011-03-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

I've always cooked beans the long way (eight-hour/overnight soak), assuming that the most time-consuming method must be the best. Not necessarily! Lately I've been using the quick-soak method (Mark Bittman's version, described here), and getting great results every time. Including those perfect butter beans I was after.

You know you cooked your beans right when you thought you were making them to use cold later, but you find yourself spooning out some to eat right away with just a little salt and pepper.

Dear designers of flats, sandals, and wedges

2011-03-21T10:32:00.002-04:00

My toes are not a present. They are not the hair of a five-year-old girl. They do not need to be topped by a stupid little bow. Or, worse, by a big, floppy bow! Or a pom-pon! Or by any of this other crazy mess you want to stick on the toes of my shoes!

Love,

Susie

Chop it up

2011-03-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

It's weird but true—people are much more likely to eat just about anything you give them if it's chopped up small.

(I'm linking to Suzanne Havala Hobbs's column even though my goodness, I wish she'd stop repeating that anecdote about Jack Lalanne being a problem customer. It sends me into food service panic every time I read it.)

I realized this about myself several years ago: that I'd look askance at a whole piece of fruit, a long celery stick, a whole broccoli floret. But I'm perfectly happy to eat the exact same food if it's presented to me in bite-sized pieces.

Corn dog

2011-03-14T08:55:00.002-04:00

Yes, folks, the rumors are true: the Morningstar veggie corn dog is back. Even meat lovers go crazy for these things.

And yes, Dad, I definitely want the other half of that corn dog.

Spring

2011-03-12T20:51:00.008-05:00

The past couple times I've talked about atheism on this blog, I've made it sound like not so much fun.

It's true that I haven't had much fun with atheism in the past few years. Christians scream and cry at God, wrestle with him, rebel against him—all because, at heart, they know he's real. Atheism and I are the same way. I complain about it, contradict it, say terrible things about it, threaten to give it up. And then at the end of the day, when I'm done pitching my fit, atheism is still what I think is true.

But that's only half the story. Less than half, actually—when I think back over thirteen years of atheism, most of it hasn't been like that. Even the past seven years, ever since I started to wonder whether leaving Catholicism may have been the wrong choice, still haven't been like that most of the time.

This is the other half of the story. I've been sitting on this post for three or four years now, afraid to seem to contradict myself by putting it up. But the beginning of spring always makes me think of it again.

The usual disclaimer: This is a frank, emotional post about atheism.

*

I'm an atheist. I'm also a naturalist. I believe that the natural world is all there is—that there is no other layer of reality above or below or beyond it.

The idea is not flashy or even, on its face, very interesting. It's not a religion, or an ideology, or a set of ethical commitments. You can't pray to it. It can't tell you to whom or what (if anything) you owe your allegiance. It doesn't give you many clues about how you should spend the years of your life. All it tells you is: However you want to live, you'd better live that way now, because this is the only chance you're going to get.

Many people look at this naturalist viewpoint, and set it beside a God who watches sparrows and counts hairs, and for them there's just no contest. Who wouldn't prefer a world where there's a God, an afterlife, a sense of holy mission, and forgiveness for your sins?

When you become an atheist, you give up these things. You give up other things that may seem small at the time, but turn out to be surprisingly big: a structure for your Sundays, for example, or the aesthetic experiences that are unique to your religion. Sure, you can go on and learn about European art, you can appreciate the beauty of a cathedral, and you can still listen to Handel and Bach and love them, but it isn't the same thing at all. If you're tempted to think, for a moment, that maybe it can be the same, it only proves how far you are now from where you used to be. You've started to forget what it was like when you believed.

Formerly religious atheists tend to be open about these losses. We talk about them. We let religious people talk about them with us. We say, "Yep, I gave it all up. Sure, it was tough at first, but I got through it."

Sometimes I think that we talk more candidly about our losses than about our gains. We may try to explain about our belief in reason, and science, and human goodwill, but these explanations usually sound lukewarm. Maybe it's that we atheists, in our eagerness to show each other how rational and objective we are, hesitate to say what it actually feels like.

Or maybe we don't talk about what it was like, becoming atheists, because we just can't find the words.

*

You don't become an atheist in a day. No one shakes your hand and says, "Congratulations, you're one of us!" You don't recite a creed and swear to live by it. You don't get a baptism or a confirmation ceremony.

What you do get is a quiet, unexpected morning, when the sun is shining through your window and you wake up slowly. You lie there in the sunlight, and you realize that for the first time in your life, you feel like the world makes sense. There's no more guilt, no more pain. You're no longer walking around all day feeling like you should somehow be able to make yourself believe things that you just can't. Finally, your thoughts and your actions are lining up.

And the best part is that you get to have that morning again; you get to have it every day for the rest of your life. Sure, some mornings will be better than others. Pain will come back; some days, you'll wake up and the weight of something that happened the day before will hit you like a ton of bricks. But it's a different kind of pain—an honest pain, the kind that comes from real problems that might have real solutions. You get out of bed knowing that you're not going up against reality anymore. You feel young and strong and confident.

It isn't until later that it actually sinks in. Later, after you're done being angry about everything that's happened to you; after you've run out of witty, cynical comments to make about religion; after you've read everything Bertrand Russell wrote about theism; after you've gotten enough distance from it all that you're no longer even very invested in that little three-syllable word—a-the-ist—that's when it hits you. That's when it really starts getting good.

For me that time came when I was eighteen and it was spring in Chapel Hill. I got stuck one day after class, wandering around the suddenly blooming campus, sitting under the trees. I'd been looking up at the light through the leaves of a sweetgum tree for nearly an hour when it hit me: this was the world.

This was it—only this.

All of this.

I suspect, although I don't know it for a fact, that this sudden, unexpected joy in the world is something that all atheists have felt. I have to speak for myself when I say that, being explicitly atheist—I believe that the natural world is the only world—I have felt more real than I ever did when I was a Christian. Somehow, in my Christian days, the belief I had in another reality, a place that was pure and eternal and more important than this one, made the world I lived in a little smaller, a little less vivid and immediate.

It's as though I lived for years and years with a thin, invisible film encasing me. I could see colors, I could move about easily enough, but I was never fully experiencing reality. When I dropped that barrier, it was like peeling off a pair of gloves I'd worn since childhood and taking someone's hand—feeling for the first time the shock of naked flesh.

Of course, it's just a feeling, and feelings don't always point to what's true. My feelings aren't, by themselves, good reason to believe that there's no such thing as a deity.

But this part of the story isn't about good reasons and logic. It's about what we atheists give up, and what we gain.

When I left my religion and became an atheist, I gave up a lot—far more than I realized at the time. What I've gained is hard to put into words, but it's undeniably real. I live in a universe that, however large and complex and beyond my personal comprehension it may be, is still a place that basically makes sense. My loyalties are to real things, people, and ideas. And there is no longer anything between me and the turning of the seasons, or the comprehension of a sunset.

I've been an atheist now for almost half my life. But some days, I still wake up feeling like it's all brand new.

Rice

2011-03-09T19:03:00.003-05:00

I'm not big on owning a lot of kitchen gadgets—there's something about the idea of having a cabinetful of little-used kitchen stuff that's so suburban and middle-class it sort of terrifies me—so when my rice cooker kicked the bucket a few months ago, I figured I'd just get along without one. It couldn't be that hard to learn to make stovetop rice, right?

Wrong! It's true that it's pretty easy to make edible stovetop rice, but making great stovetop rice takes skill. I never managed it, and even my pretty-good stovetop rice was wet enough that it turned into a mess after a couple days in the fridge. What a relief it was to finally cave and get myself a new rice cooker!

One of the other great things about a rice cooker is that if you're trying to change over from white rice to brown, brown is much easier to get right in a cooker than it is on the stove. Perfect, fluffy long-grain brown rice out of the rice cooker is just as good as white as a base for a meal, in burritos, as fried rice, pretty much anything.

To me, anyway—I've heard people disagree. But those same people like whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta, of all things, so I suspect that their taste buds are just backwards somehow.

Dishes

2011-03-06T21:23:00.000-05:00

This exchange has occurred at 80 percent of family dinners at my parents' house over the past five years:

[Scene: Family is sitting around talking after dinner. Dad stands up.]

Susie: I see you eyeing my plate, Dad. Don't you do it! Don't you dare clear my plate for me!

Dad: But... but... [reaches for plate]

Susie: [growls like an angry cat]

Dad: But I want to start doing the dishes!

I say 80 percent because at the other 20 percent of dinners, this is what happens:

[Susie stands in front of the sink rinsing plates.]

Dad (patting Susie kindly on the arm): Why don't you just get out of the way, Susan, so I can do the dishes?

Susie: WARGH!

Potato

2011-03-03T07:20:00.000-05:00

It's sad to think of now, but up until a year ago I was cooking potatoes by nuking them for seven minutes in the microwave. This is an awful thing to do to a potato!

These days, the only thing I ever do with a russet potato is poke a hole in it, put it straight on the rack in a 425-degree oven, and bake it for an hour. It's all about texture, particularly the texture of the skin. If the skin of a potato isn't the yummiest part, you cooked your potato wrong.

Potatoes are on the dirty dozen list, so if you're going to eat the skin, organic is best.

Weeks 9-52: ...?

2011-02-28T07:09:00.009-05:00

It's not that I buy the idea that I need to shut up about my goals—I'll still tell the world anything I think I need to to get myself to follow through.

But as it turns out, I'm having to put a little more effort than I expected into maintaining my weight. I haven't been eating less, but my energy expenditure has been going up, so I've lost a little weight. The new number is fine, but I'm not interested in losing any more, and I do want to keep increasing my activity level. So I'm going to need to incorporate this into my plans to improve my diet.

But talking about keeping your weight up is obnoxious. I even find it obnoxious, and I'm the one in this situation. (For god's sake, Susie, just go have something to eat and get some real problems in your life!)

Don't worry, I do have real problems in my life. And I'm going to stop nattering on about every little subgoal under my big goal of eating better. I'll still post stuff from time to time about it, though, when I come across things I think other people might find useful.

P.S. If you're wondering how I lost body fat without even wanting to: I lifted weights twice a week, just about every week, for a year. When you're carrying around a lot more muscle than you were before, you burn up more calories. Aerobic exercise never made me lose weight. Only strength training did.

Do-nothing guy

2011-02-26T14:07:00.002-05:00

When I lived closer to downtown, I road a different bus. It was more or less the same crowd of us on it every morning, staff and a few students heading to campus. I must have ridden the bus with some of those people for nearly four years.

When you're on the bus with the same people all the time, you end up talking with some of them. Others you sort of feel like you know, because you see them more often even than you see many of your friends and family—yet you never speak.

One of these people I saw all the time was a guy who got on the bus before me every morning, and always got off downtown. I noticed this guy, out of all the people I saw on the bus, because he never did anything. Ever.

Month after month, year after year, I road the bus with this guy three or four days a week, every week. And I never once saw him do anything—chat with anyone, read a book, mess with a cell phone, listen to music. He just sat there. He didn't even really look out the window, other than a short glance every once in a while.

This guy fascinated me, because I just could not imagine being him. I almost always do something on the bus. Every once in a while, when my life feels totally crazy or hectic, I'll have a few days, even a week or two, when I'll sit on the bus and just think, let my brain try to catch up with reality. But this never goes on for very long—I can only sustain that when I'm truly agitated about something. Soon enough I go back to my old book-reading, music-listening ways.

Was this guy so very different from me? I wondered. Was his life so crazy, so full of responsibilities and noise and people, that his morning bus ride was the only time he had to be alone with his thoughts—year after year after year? Or was he just an uncommonly blank, dull person? Did he sit there and do nothing because there was nothing inside him that needed something to do?

I sort of wanted to talk to him and try to find out, but I never did. Maybe I would have if he'd been middle-aged or older, or if he were a woman. But he was an unmarried guy maybe ten or twelve years older than I was—young enough that I would have felt awkward just going up and talking to him.

Then I moved, and I switched buses. I never saw do-nothing guy again. My new busmates were park-and-riders from southwestern Orange County—mostly middle-aged women who work on the medical side of campus. Most of them know each other, and they talk. They talk and they talk and they talk.

Then, one day this past week, I decided to treat myself to a decent breakfast downtown before I started a long day at work. Afterwards I went out to Weaver Street to catch the bus to Chapel Hill.

Just as the bus pulled up to the stop, I saw someone approaching out of the corner of my eye. Same slim build, same shoes, same corduroy jacket. It was do-nothing guy, just the way I remembered him, except with a few more gray hairs on his head.

And a big, fat hardback book under his arm.

I smiled at do-nothing guy, who I'm sure had no idea who I was. I'm not sure he even saw me. But he sat two rows away from me on the bus—close enough that I could see him, engrossed in his book.

He didn't look up once all the way to campus.

Praise for the small wardrobe

2011-02-22T20:46:00.006-05:00

I don't own a whole lot of clothes.

No really, it's true! Anyone who's lived with me can confirm this.

It started back in 2007, when I suddenly realized that 90 percent of what I owned was unflattering or ill-fitting. I didn't have the money or the knowledge to replace everything right away, so for a while I was wearing the same clothes every single week. I didn't have a choice!

But pretty quickly I concluded that it didn't matter, because when you only wear stuff that really works, you don't get bored with it. Instead of thinking, "Man, I wear this skirt twice a week every week, what a drag this is," you think, "Ooo, I get to wear this pretty skirt again, I feel awesome every time I wear this!"

Americans tend to be big on wardrobe variation. They worry that people will look down on them if they wear the same clothes over and over again. But really, unless you work in a fashion-related industry and you hang with a very specialized crowd, probably no one will even notice.

The only time people pay attention to wardrobe repetition in a negative way is if you keep on wearing the same thing that looks awful. When what you're wearing looks good, the most anyone will think is, "Man, she always looks great in that dress," or, "Oh, if I were him I'd wear that shirt every day, it goes so well with his eyes."

Of course, the one drawback is that when you have a small wardrobe, you really do have to do laundry every week or two. Some people would hate this, but I prefer it—looking at a huge, month-sized pile of laundry would intimidate me so much that I'd never be able to work myself up to tackling it. And then folding or hanging it all up? Ugh!

If your wardrobe is getting crowded with a lot of clothes you don't particularly enjoy, try culling it down to just the stuff you really need or really like. And if your favorite sweater fits well and looks good, wear it every week. Trust me, no one's gonna care.

I will really miss Borders.

2011-02-19T09:40:00.001-05:00

And that's saying something. I didn't think I'd ever fall for a big chain bookstore. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near one.

But the Borders on 15-501 won me over. The space was welcoming and low-key. The staff were smart, friendly, and never pushy, and they all had that peaceful vibe employees give off when they're being treated well by management.

Amy with her pile of manga. Sarah mocking the bad designs in knitting magazines. Dad pretending he didn't want his favorite coffee cake so I could have the last one. I have so many great memories of Borders that I can't imagine happening anywhere else; I don't think any other hangout spot could have served us quite as well as that one did.

Thanks, Borders. You are owed some good karma phala.

Pedestrian envy

2011-02-16T08:19:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know a little about sidewalk rage. I have "denigrating thoughts" about other pedestrians. I know I must be a little scary on the sidewalk, because even when I'm trying to hold back, to moderate my pace and not draw attention to myself, sometimes when people see me they practically leap out of the way and fall all over themselves apologizing. (Then I feel awful.)

But more than pedestrian aggressiveness, I feel pedestrian envy. When I can't quite figure out how to dodge someone who's wandering all over the sidewalk, or when someone's planted smack in the middle of the floor in a small, crowded space like the co-op or the campus coffee place, my primary emotion is jealousy. What must it be like to be that unaware of other people? To feel entitled to so much space? To not be constantly, in the back of your head, worried that you might inconvenience another human being?

Weeks 7-8: Oh tasty lemons, why must you be so acidic?

2011-02-14T07:31:00.085-05:00

One hundred percent fruit juice: all sugar, no fiber. Fruit juice is something I really don't need in my diet. It's not giving me any nutrients I don't get plenty of from food; it's basically just liquid sugar. I've been drinking fruit juice for the taste, but it's really too sweet to be a good complement to most foods anyway. A couple ounces of tea does the job just fine, and without adding empty calories.

What I really like is ice water with lemon juice, but I worry about tooth decay if I use this as a long-term substitute for fruit juice. Maybe I'll start drinking it with a straw...

Goals

2011-02-10T19:38:00.002-05:00

This idea really startled me. I always tell my family and friends about my goals. Sometimes—like, uh, this whole year so far—I talk so much about my goals that I know I'm probably boring everyone to death. (Sorry, guys.)

The main reason I do this is because one of my deepest fears is of being seen by other people as a quitter, as someone who can't take the heat. So when I set a goal, I deliberately go out and tell people about it so I'll have the fear of shame as an ally.

But I also tell people about my goals because the act of telling someone, anyone, about something that's in my head is what seems to make it real. I guess that's the trouble—that talking about something doesn't actually bring it into reality. Maybe if I didn't have this fear of being thought of as flaky, the making-it-real-by-talking-about-it would be working against me.

HT: The Fattening of America

BPA roundup

2011-02-08T17:47:00.001-05:00

A few people have asked me questions about BPA, so I thought I'd pass on what I've learned about how to stop nom nom noming on this plastics compound.

So there's bad news and good news about BPA. The bad news is that no matter what you do, BPA is just there. It's in stuff. It's on stuff. Even if you went all crazy crunchy hippie and tried to stay completely away from it, you wouldn't be able to.

The good news is that taking steps to keep BPA from actually leaching into your food is pretty easy. Here's what you do:

Toss #7 plastic containers. The number 7 in the recycling symbol indicates any plastic that doesn't fit in plastics categories 1-6. Not all number 7s contain BPA, but it's easiest just to avoid all of them. Definitely toss them if they've ever been microwaved.

I found some number 7 plastic in my cupboard, but most of my reusable food containers were number 5, which is probably okay. Mine were pretty scratched up, though, and I figured that couldn't be good, so I got rid of them and bought a bunch of glass containers.

Find alternatives to canned food. Including canned drinks. This may seem like kind of a drag, but really, there are safe-plastic or glass alternatives to just about everything you want. (Unless you drink, like, Red Bull. Or if you feel your beer really has to come out of a can.) The alternatives are a little pricier, but that's how it goes.

Toothbrushes. I know, lovely, right? Let's get this stuff all up in our mouths! Anyway, Oral-B brushes are BPA-free. (Sorry, electric toothbrush users, I don't know about those.)

Dental sealants. I'm pretty sure every dentist I've ever had has put sealants on me just for fun. "Hm? Nothing interesting going on in this mouth today? Okay, let's seal something else up then!" Supposedly the BPA leaching effect is temporary, but I'm skeptical. If someone tries to do this to me again, I'm going to ask about alternative materials.

Blenders and food processors. Check out this guide. My blender has a glass jar, so I'm not too concerned about this one.

Be wary of clear, reusable plastics such as water bottles and water coolers. A lot of these contain BPA. Avoid or research the individual brand.

So, is this stuff worth doing? I don't know for sure; no one really does. Before I found out that I had a risk factor for unusually high exposure, I knew about BPA and I didn't do much of anything about it besides trashing my old, BPA-containing Nalgene bottle and cutting back a bit on canned tomato products.

Now that I've read more, I think the one thing everyone should definitely do is stop using microwaveable plastic or putting really hot food in plastic. And babies, young kids, and pregnant women should probably stay at least as far away from BPA as I am now.

Sources:

Who is?

2011-02-05T09:52:00.000-05:00

Susie (to self): She's not on Facebook?... that's kinda sketchy!

Susie: ...oh, wait.

I'm pretty sure there are no lemons involved.

2011-02-02T20:43:00.001-05:00

I'm supposed to just be working on getting BPA out of my kitchen (more on that later, because some people have asked questions), but the truth is, ever since I kept my food log I've been tweaking my diet a bit—mainly by cutting back on sugar in drinks. I've never been a soda drinker, but I'm not the kind of person who can just drink water with every meal, either. I have a weakness for 100 percent fruit juice, and I like some sugary coffee drinks too.

I've been doing pretty well with this so far. Until Tuesday, after my run, when WHAM—suddenly I wanted lemonade like nothing else in this world. And I'm not talking, like, freshly squeezed, tart, lightly sweetened, lots-of-pulp lemonade—I'm talking Country Time in a bottle from the gas station, like I used to drink as a kid.

My poor body! It thinks I'm trying to do away with sugar, so it's staging a rebellion. It's like my little-kid self, hiding the cute stuffed snowman in my room so it wouldn't get packed up with the rest of the Christmas decorations. It's okay, body! We're not getting rid of snowmen and lemonade.

Country Time tastes a lot better than I remembered.

Two

2011-02-02T20:04:00.003-05:00

I never knew Ender and Kai's real birthdate. Best I could figure, they were born in January or February 2009, so I made February 2 their birthday, because it was funny. (I also briefly considered naming them Oscar and Oswald, but then I realized that I didn't actually want anyone to get that that was a Rand reference.)

People often ask: how do you tell the cats apart? The answer is that unless you're me, you usually don't. Ender's on the left in this photo. You see that slightly crazed expression on his face? He always looks like that; Kai rarely does.

In the background, by the way, is something I got for my birthday last year, from my girls. Thanks again, ladies... seriously one of my favorite presents ever.

Cans

2011-01-24T21:02:00.002-05:00

Tonight I dug out all the canned food in my house and lined it up on the counter to say goodbye.

Tomato paste. I use this for pasta sauce and chili. Bionaturae sells paste and strained tomatoes in glass jars, and Weaver Street Market carries them.

Black olives. These come in glass jars. Easy.

Refried beans. I'm lazy and I don't want to make my own refried beans. I don't even know how. But I'll learn, and I'm sure before long I'll be wondering how I could ever have eaten that slop out of a can.

Baking powder. I've only ever seen this in a can, but I'm sure it exists in some other packaging. Need to check.

Crisco. I had a two-minute freakout about this, because there are shortening-pie-crust families and there are butter-pie-crust families, and mine has always been on the shortening side*. Then it occurred to me that Crisco comes in sticks. Phew.

*Undoubtedly, before we were on the shortening side we were on the lard side. But we won't discuss that.

Green beans. I have no idea why I had these; I prefer fresh or frozen anyway. They must have been on steep sale at the Weave or something.

Other stuff I don't have on hand at the moment but regularly buy in a can:

Fruit for pie fillings. I use half fresh fruit anyway. No reason why this has to come out of a can.

Kidney and pinto beans. I usually keep these on hand in case I have someone over unexpectedly and I want to make soup or chili and I don't have time to cook beans. Solution: stop making soup or chili my backup meal. Also, cook some beans every week. I mean, it's not like I'll be wasting a lot of money if they don't get eaten.

Butter beans. These are the basis for my favorite take-to-work lunch. I don't mind cooking the beans ahead of time, but for some reason I've never been able to get the texture right. I admit that this is weird, because usually the texture of home-cooked beans is a hundred times better than canned. I'm sure this is a problem I can crack.

And that's it! I really don't eat all that much canned food anymore because, hello, it isn't that great. (Especially canned soup, ugh. Even if it costs $3.89 and comes off the shelf of the co-op, it just isn't very good. Everyone deserves homemade soup.)

Enjoying food

2011-01-20T18:53:00.001-05:00

Of all the reasons why I put off cleaning up my diet for so long, this is probably the biggest: I don't want to give up enjoying food.

It seems like it's impossible these days to get through a meal with other people without someone commenting about how they shouldn't eat this or that, how they're going to feel guilty if they eat this or that, how they've "been good" or "been bad" lately. I mean, I'm not just ragging on other people—I've done this too, especially in the last few months, as I've started to get more serious about eating better. But, my god. Sometimes it feels like it's every meal, all the time.

Food is too omnipresent in my life, too personal and too connected to my emotions, for me to deny myself pleasure in it or turn it into just a means to the end of good health.

So I've given myself a tough assignment. I not only have to eat well—I have to eat tastily and satisfyingly. Because if all I do is eat artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, oatmeal instead of pastries, plain raw vegetables instead of chocolate, I'm going to fail. I'm going to go back to my old, fun, tasty habits, because I'm just not willing to set myself up for a lifetime of feeling deprived.

Lucky for me, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Healthful food that's made with quality ingredients and prepared with skill is wonderful—so wonderful that I don't miss the other stuff. My challenge this year is to invest the time and effort to learn how to feed myself that way most of the time (without breaking the bank).

Me? A runner?

2011-01-19T14:51:00.001-05:00

The answer is yes:

Everyone can be an athlete. I'm not saying you have to run the Boston Marathon. All you have to do is move to the next level, push yourself one step beyond the farthest you thought you could go. Whatever your limitations or struggles, it is the "push" that eventually changes you.

Feeling like you can't because you're too old, too fat, too busy?

Do it anyway.

You quickly find that working up a sweat and saying "I did it!" ... whether that's one mile or 26 miles ... generates a sense of accomplishment that has the potential to knock down self-inflicted limitations that have been holding you back your whole life. You'll find this new ability to work beyond the point where you feel like quitting is what now defines you.

It changes you. It changes everything.

Freeman Dyson anticipates Firefly (oh yeah, and transhumanism)

2011-01-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

September 1969 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The vision of comet-hopping emigrants, streaming onward like the covered wagons on the Santa Fe Trail, is perhaps absurdly romantic or fanciful. Maybe it will never happen the way I imagine it. But I am convinced that something more or less along these lines will ultimately happen. Space is huge enough, so that somewhere in its vastness there will always be a place for rebels and outlaws. Near to the sun, space will belong to big governments and computerized industries. Outside, the open frontier will beckon as it has beckoned before, to persecuted minorities escaping from oppression, to religious fanatics escaping from their neighbors, to recalcitrant teen-agers escaping from their parents, to lovers of solitude escaping from crowds. Perhaps most important of all for man's future, there will be groups of people setting out to find a place where they can be free from prying eyes, free to experiment with the creation of radically new types of human beings, surpassing us in mental capacities as we surpass the apes.

Weeks 3-6: Getting rid of BPA

2011-01-18T21:10:00.001-05:00

I had some tentative plans for my first steps in changing my diet—cutting back on fruit juice and other liquid sugar.

But unfortunately, then some research came out that suggests that I'm probably chock full of BPA. Well, lovely.

My first feeling was to want to break something. But that quickly changed to gratitude to the researchers for studying this, and relief that I know there are steps I can take to correct it. Also, feeling glad that I've never had a child—it would be ten times worse if I thought I might have infected another person with this stuff.

So I'm doing an emergency change of plans and devoting four weeks to getting myself away from BPA. I'm not done doing research yet, but from what I've read so far I think this is going to be pretty straightforward. Basically, I just have to toss my reusable plastic food containers and replace them with glass, figure out which nonreusable containers are more and less safe, and stop buying any canned food. So it's mostly going to be doing some shopping and thinking up alternatives to canned goods. (You know what's weird? My can opener wore out a month or two ago, and I hadn't bothered to replace it yet. I guess now I just won't.)

A note to my family and friends: please don't worry about your own kitchen for my sake. This is a problem I'm going to take care of at home and in my private eating habits, so I don't have to freak out about what's in the occasional meal at a restaurant or someone else's house.

Weeks 1-2 summary: Facing the food log

2011-01-16T22:11:00.007-05:00

What I learned from keeping my food log:

I eat too much nutritionally bankrupt food, but mostly it isn't tasty nutritionally bankrupt food—it's junk that happens to be on hand, like granola bars or bad American chocolate.

Weaver Street Market is even more my friend than I realized. Money spent on lunch or dinner at the Weave is money well spent.

I eat too many refined grains, such as semolina pasta, white rice, baked goods, snack foods, and tortillas made primarily with white flour.

As I suspected, I'm an emotional eater. I'm not an emotional overeater, thank goodness, but I do let my emotional state have way too much influence over which foods I choose.

And lastly... I am now a coffee drinker. I mean, that should have been obvious, but somehow it didn't fully sink in until I found myself recording coffee in my log every single day for two weeks. Yeah.

Guys like this exist.

2011-01-15T14:10:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking that this should be my new recurring feature on my blog: repeating things my brother and father say or do that American women think themselves unreasonable for wishing that men would say or do.

Here are our characters:

Dad: Seventy years old, happily married to my mother for the past thirty-one years. Holds doors, walks on the outside of the sidewalk. Gets irritated when people pay too much attention to him. Does not understand the purpose of fishing, hunting, golfing, drinking, or any other activity that might take him away from the company of his wife (who at sixty-nine is, according to him, the most beautiful woman in the world) for more than an hour at a time.

Richard: Twenty-nine years old, unattached, straight. Gets up for women on the bus. Has been heard to make such statements as, "I just don't understand guys who think smart women are intimidating." Interested in hearing about every single thing his sister (me) thinks, feels, or reads. Cares even less about televised sports than I do (and I've watched exactly one basketball game so far this season).

As you can imagine, these guys routinely come out with stuff that would make most women scream and pound on the table and protest, "That's impossible!"

Here's a historical example:

Susie: I'm thinking of going to see New Moon on Friday.

Richard: Oh, I'd be up for that.

[after the movie]

Richard: You know, I'm really starting to get why people like Twilight so much. I want to go back and watch the first one again!

Or, a quote of my father's as related by my mother:

Dad (to Mom): Hey, as long as we're here, did you want to go to Jo Ann Fabrics?

Yes, ladies, guys like this exist. Now, this not to imply that my father and my brother are perfect—as their daughter/sister of twenty-seven years, I could spend the next hour giving you a list of all the ways in which they are not perfect. However, in addition to being imperfect, these dudes routinely prove that being a heterosexual American male is compatible with all kinds of stuff American women have been led to believe is impossible.

Actually, this feature would be mainly about my brother, not because there aren't just as many things to repeat about my father, but because Dad's a lot less comfortable with being talked about on the internet. (Just be glad I'm not this guy, Dad.)

"Good enough" isn't.

2011-01-10T18:06:00.008-05:00

The biggest mistake I used to make with my wardrobe was buying things that were "good enough."

I settled for good enough because I'd put off shopping until I was desperate and felt I absolutely had to buy something. I settled because what I already had in my closet was awful, and this at least was a step better. I settled because there were certain things I believed a person had to wear—khaki pants, turtlenecks, button-up shirts tucked into belted trousers—so even though these styles were wrong for me, I'd buy them anyway. I settled because I felt bad about my appearance: I was never going to look as good as a thousand girls in Chapel Hill who were blond and tan and had long legs and perfect smiles, so why bother trying?

The truth is, unless you're traveling for work and you forgot to pack a decent shirt and you have an important meeting this afternoon, there's never a good reason to settle for a piece of clothing that isn't just right for you. It doesn't matter what size you are, what shape you are, what age you are, what your coloring is like—whoever you are, you can look great. I am one hundred percent serious about this. You can wear shapes and colors that look awesome on you, or you can wear ones that just aren't quite right. The choice is yours.

Next time you're in front of the fitting room mirror and you're thinking, Well, it's not perfect, but it's good enough, take whatever it is off and put it right back on the hanger. You deserve to look and feel great—anything less just isn't good enough.

HT to the bloggers who helped me understand this: Angie and Imogen

Nice!

2011-01-10T09:55:00.003-05:00

E.O. Wilson is going to be the commencement speaker at UNC this year. Lucky class of 2011 (and thanks, Chancellor Thorp).

Weeks 1-4: Reclaiming my kitchen

2011-01-06T22:10:00.003-05:00

The sad truth is that before I can change my diet, I need to change one major stumbling block in my behavior: I need to get back on track keeping a clean kitchen. This is hard to admit, even to myself, but over the past year I've turned into someone who lets dirty dishes pile up and lets food expire in the refrigerator.

I used to think that I had fairly good standards about kitchen cleanliness, but it turns out that it was all an act. As soon as I started living with roommates who didn't use the kitchen, my standards took a nosedive. I wasn't inconveniencing anyone besides myself if I didn't clean the counters or run the dishwasher, so why bother? (Well, that's not what I thought consciously, but in practice that's what happened.)

The truth is, I really do hate messiness and clutter, so when my kitchen is a wreck I avoid it, and I don't cook as often. When my fridge is a mess, I don't shop efficiently, because I don't know what I have.

So I'm spending four whole weeks forming a habit of kitchen cleanliness. All dishes clean or in the dishwasher by the end of the day. Regular cleaning of the counters, stove, kitchen floor, and the dining room table and chairs. Monthly cleanouts of the pantry and fridge.

Four weeks sounds like a lot, but it really isn't—because like everything else I'll be doing, this is a rest-of-my-life habit. If I take just one thing away from this year's resolution, I want it to be a commitment to maintaining a clean kitchen.

Weeks 1-2: Food log

2011-01-03T17:04:00.000-05:00

My task for the first two weeks of 2011 is simple: all I have to do is write down everything I eat. I don't have to change a thing—actually, I shouldn't change anything, because in order to set myself goals I'll have any hope of reaching, I need to make them relative to where I'm starting from.

Of course, I'm going to fail at not changing anything. If you've ever logged your food, you know that the simple act of seeing in print what you ate makes you automatically start changing things. Luckily, I'm already pretty conscious of what I eat, so I can probably account for most of the effects of my own observation.

Don't worry, I'm NOT going to be posting my food log. If y'all saw how much chocolate I eat in an average day, I'd never get a gift of Ferrero Rocher again...

Because

2010-12-31T16:38:00.001-05:00

Because it's long past time to do it.

Because it's a radical statement to myself of what I'm worth.

Because my body has always been kind to me, and it's time I started repaying the favor.

Because eating healthfully will help me support and encourage my family and friends who are trying to do the same.

Because real food prepared well is always tastier and more satisfying than packaged junk.

For these reasons and many others, in 2011 I'm going to develop the healthful eating habits that I'll keep up for the rest of my life.

More (only small portions, I promise) soon.

Twenty

2010-12-29T19:12:00.003-05:00

This January, my family will have lived in central North Carolina for twenty years. We moved in January 1991; it was during the first Gulf War, and my mother was worried about plane hijackers. I don't remember her being worried, of course. All I cared about was that I could now say that I'd been to Texas (at seven, I didn't know that airports don't count).

As for North Carolina—frankly, I thought it was a backwater. I don't know where I got that idea, since my father is actually from North Carolina. I suspect that to a kid who's lived her whole life in the Bay Area, most places seem a bit backwater.

But at seven you take everything in stride, so I started to love North Carolina right away—especially the trees. My mother had told me that in North Carolina there'd be more trees, but I hadn't believed her. How could there be more trees than there were where we lived? The dry brown hills of Marin County were such a constant backdrop to my life that I couldn't picture anything different.

Adjusting to the culture was harder—it took me a full decade to get used to pearls and southern accents and indirect communication. But today I love pearls, I wish I had at least a trace of an accent, and although I usually still fail at saying things without saying them, I at least respect the art.

To my family: Happy anniversary, pretty people!

They got it.

2010-12-21T07:57:00.000-05:00

I wasn't too cool to enjoy The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; I thought it was good and faithful. I was pretty impressed with Prince Caspian, too, because the novel had to be filled out some to make it into a movie, and I thought the writers did it well.

But I was kind of scared to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Even more so than the second book, Dawn Treader is a challenge to make into a movie. There's no White Witch to defeat. The plot is episodic as the ship sails from island to island. My biggest fear was that the script would leave too much out and add too much in to drive the plot forward.

What's more—for years, Dawn Treader was my favorite book. Not just my favorite of the Narnia series, but my favorite book, period. You know how, at some point when you're an adolescent, you run across a book you wish you could live in for the rest of your life? Dawn Treader was that book for me. If the movie got it wrong—if it the plot were changed too much, if the field of lilies or the wall of water at the end of the world didn't look right, if the tone were unserious or if it were serious in the wrong way, I would have been pretty disappointed.

"Don't worry," Amy reassured me as we sat down in the theater. "It's gonna be fantastic."

It was. Georgie Henley was impossible not to love, as always. Ben Barnes has improved as Caspian so much that we didn't realize he was the same actor. And Will Poulter, who played Eustace Scrubb, pulled off a difficult performance: the audience has to go from disdaining Eustace to feeling grudging respect to, by the end, liking him enough to let him take the place of the Pevensie kids in the next installment.

The ending of the movie was handled just right. I haven't heard anything definite about whether The Silver Chair will get made; it may be that there won't be any more Narnia movies. That would be sad, but if it has to end here, that will be okay. Dawn Treader gave Narnia its due.

In which I am described by an eighth-grader

2010-12-20T22:17:00.001-05:00

Eighth-grader: "You look like someone who needs coffee to wake up in the morning."

Hey, it's expensive.

2010-12-17T13:15:00.007-05:00

Vanilla extract ain't cheap.

Luckily, it's easy to make your own—all you need is a jar, a bottle of cheap vodka, and a few vanilla beans.

Vanilla extract keeps forever, so even if you use it only a few times a year, it's much cheaper to make a jarful at home than it is to buy it in a store.

Mom always finds a way to prop up my self-respect.

2010-12-11T19:07:00.009-05:00

Susie: I mix up homophones all the time now. "To" and "too," "there" and "their." It's disgusting.

Mom: No, it's a good sign.

Susie: How can it possibly be a good sign that I'm making mistakes I never would have made three years ago?

Mom: It means that you're focused on how your writing sounds. You're thinking more about the flow of the sentence.

Susie: ...my god, you're right.

Negative self-talk

2010-11-30T20:54:00.040-05:00

I just can't do this right now.

Why bother trying? It's just going to go badly, anyway.

Let's be real here: I don't really NEED to run. If I haven't put on weight by now, it's never going to happen. I can get away with not exercising.

It's not worth it.

I'M not worth it. Why should I take care of myself, anyway?

I WOULD run, but it's going to rain, and I just can't face the treadmill. I can't be alone with my thoughts right now.

I don't love running. I shouldn't be doing it unless I love it. What's wrong with me that it's been two years and I still don't really love it?

I struggle a lot with negative thoughts about exercise. Sometimes when things aren't going well, the thoughts get even worse than the ones above.

So how do we deal with negative self-talk? I've found that usually I can't counter bad thoughts with good ones right away. I can't outsmart my brain; in those bad moments, it knows exactly what to say to make me want to give up.

My best defense—my only real defense—against bad thinking about exercise is force of habit. My iPod is loaded up with Podrunner mixes. My workout clothes are waiting in their special drawer. I have no idea anymore what the code to the fitness room is, but my fingers still know it by feel.

My thinking may not really change, but eventually I put my feet in my running shoes again, because that's just what I do. And after a day or two, a week or two of trying, it seems worth doing again. I remember: I want this. I want to do this now, when I'm young, when I have time and health and energy. I don't want to wait until I start to gain weight. I don't want to wait until a doctor tells me I'm on the verge of diabetes or osteoporosis.

I remember that this isn't a crash course in physical fitness—to give up now would be like dropping out of school in fourth grade. I never would have considered putting off my academic education until adulthood, but I thought nothing of delaying my physical education until I was twenty-five. How is that any less shameful than it would have been to disdain book learning, to say, "My mind isn't really so important, I'll take care of it later if I need to?"

When I'm forty, I don't want to be a child, still learning how to write my name. I want to be an adult: someone who keeps up with the news, who knows history and philosophy and science, who can appreciate poetry... and who can run an 8K race.

Thankful for...

2010-11-25T07:22:00.004-05:00

Like last year, I'll list the first three things I think of:

So many people who give generously of their talents and knowledge on the internet. This year I'm especially thankful for Dan, Angie, and Steve.

Awesome women runners in Chapel Hill who are fifty or sixty but are in better shape than I am. I've been sitting here for ten minutes waiting for Richard's 8K to start, and already I've seen four or five of these ladies walk by. Knowing I want to be like them twenty years from now is what keeps me on track.

The barista at Open Eye who made my au lait this morning. "Oh, I work Thanksgiving every year. Then I go home and cook for ten people."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Never mind the caffeine...

2010-11-18T14:25:00.000-05:00

Why is Four Loko being sold in a 23.5-ounce pop-top can that fits easily in the hand? So people will drink it straight from the can, obviously. That's the alcoholic content of four beers being packaged like it's a single serving.

Wouldn't it make more sense to regulate alcoholic drinks so that one pop-top can contains no more than one drink?

Scarves

2010-11-10T21:59:00.000-05:00

I often get questions from other women about how I tie my scarves, and perplexed looks when I try to explain. I can sympathize, because I only started wearing scarves a couple years ago. Until I was twenty-five I don't think I even owned a scarf—I would have had no idea what to do with one!

Today, I wear scarves at least three or four days a week in all kinds of weather (scarves are often what save me from utter misery in North Carolina's overly exuberant air conditioning). Even if I didn't need scarves for warmth, my wardrobe wouldn't function without them; they add visual interest and color to my collection of pretty conservative, often neutral basics.

The first and most important thing I learned is that when it comes to scarves, bigger is generally better. Skinny scarves are difficult to wear well, and the shorter a scarf is, the fewer options you have for how to tie it. Almost all of my scarves are more than four feet long, and wide enough to wear like a shawl.

My favorite way to tie a scarf for a work outfit is the "Angie knot." It's a secure but easily adjustable knot that doesn't feel at all constricting. You can wear it at whatever height looks good on you: high up as shown in the photos if you're a crewneck type, or at chest height if, like me, you crave the effect of a V-neck. If your scarf is too long (the ends are dangling to some random point on your thighs), simply loop it once around your neck before you tie the knot.

I learned my next-favorite way to tie a scarf from this video by Imogen—it's the second style she shows, the variant on the hacking knot. This style is great for warmth and to fill in a V-neck top. (It's also the style I get the most compliments on and requests to teach.)

When I'm wearing a scarf casually, I often just loop it once loosely around my neck, and stick the end I did the looping with through the loop for security. Sometimes I tie a knot in each end, just two or three inches above the end. I've never seen anyone else do this, but I like it because it adds some structure to the look.

Something I do when I want a scarf to function more like a necklace is loop it once, then take the ends and stuff them through the loop—then stuff them through again. This makes the scarf lie flat against the chest. It looks particularly good with an ombre or two-tone scarf.

Once you've tried these different styles, set aside half an hour sometime and just stand in front of the mirror and experiment. You'll eventually come up with a unique style that works best for you and your particular scarf.

Lastly, for men: your scarves are generally shorter and less elaborate to tie. But for a long men's scarf, I like the "Perfect knot" shown in this video; it may take a few tries to master, but the result really is perfect.

Whatever I can do, WSM can do better.

2010-11-06T10:25:00.003-04:00

Eating out is a waste of money.

That's what I'd always heard, and I certainly believed it. (This didn't stop me from eating out; it just made me feel self-indulgent when I did.) And it's true that there's always a way to feed yourself more cheaply at home. As a vegetarian, I can—and regularly do—feed myself on very little: rice, oil, a little soy sauce, onion, frozen peas, a few peanuts. I haven't figured out what the cost per meal on my fried rice is, but it's pretty low.

But the fact is that buying groceries for one, and cooking for one, is terribly inefficient. In spite of my good intentions, produce goes bad in the refrigerator. I always manage to buy either too much milk or too little. Cheese molds past the point where I'm willing to cut the bad parts out. And cornbread that's been frozen and thawed falls apart the minute I touch it. My inability to buy some things in bulk, and my failure to fully use what I do buy, raises my cost per meal.

And even though I may be eating cheaply at home, I'm not necessarily eating well. The fried rice is tasty and not really bad for me, but it doesn't have a lot in it that's good for me, either. Things that are good for me—fresh vegetables, fresh fruit—I buy cautiously because I know that what I buy may not get eaten.

Eating in restaurants isn't the solution to this problem—restaurant food tends to be less healthful as well as more expensive. But when I compare eating at home to eating at the co-op, it's a lot less clear which is the better alternative. At Weaver Street I spend about five dollars on dinner, and I get better nutrition than I do at home. At home, I'll drink six or eight ounces of fruit juice; at the Weave I'll have a few bites of fresh fruit. At home I might have a salad (half the head of Romaine will never get used), or perhaps only green beans or peas. At the Weave, I almost always eat collard greens.

Do I actually save money when I eat at the co-op? No, but I'm not spending extravagently, I eat healthfully, and I eat a much greater variety of foods than I could make for that price at home.

Of course, saving money isn't the only reason to eat at home—in fact, it was never my primary reason. Ever since I got my first apartment, I've cooked because that's what you do as a single person: you learn to cook, so that someday you can cook for your family. And honestly, I can't claim that I've really accomplished that. I can get dinner on the table and not get complaints, but at my current level of knowledge if I had to cook six nights a week, every week, for a family of four, I'd be in trouble.

But that's not the task in front of me right now—the task is to feed myself well and for a reasonable price, and to get comfortable enough with the kitchen that if someday I need to feed other people regularly, it won't take me a year to get my act together.

And next time I do make dinner for other people? I'm totally getting that greens recipe from Weaver Street. It's almost wrong for collards to taste that good...