Style Section: What she ate

I was craving homecooking today, so I thought I would re-create an old childhood favorite. Chips and cheese! This is a more modern version, because it uses hint-o-lime tostitos, which haven’t always been around, if you can believe it. It’s also a fancier version because I used real cheddar cheese. The recipe is so versatile because if you are feeling fancy and motivated, you can shred the cheese yourself. If you are feeling fancy but not motivated, you can just slice the cheese. If you are feeling trashy, you can use american cheese. If you are feeling forlorn, you can just gnaw on the block of cheese and forgo the chips.

Style Section: What she wore

This post is inspired by this article in the New York Times style section.

Do you really think she did all that in one week? No way. Rather, she racked her brain for the most brag-worthy things she had done or wanted to do in the past seven years and mashed it all into one week.

Anyway, here is what I wore today:

I started the morning in a nightshirt. I had gone to bed in a nightshirt and flannel pants, but I don’t know what happened to the pants. C’est la vie.

I knew I had a big day ahead of me and so I picked out my dressiest sweat pants and my best hoodie. Then I fucked around on the internet for like three hours. Then I decided to go for a run.

I wore my black champs sports running tights, a blue beanie stolen from my brother, black cotton gloves from target and a blue long sleeve running top from a second hand sporting goods store. The tights for some reason have started to sag this winter. Could it be because I have had them for ten years and my mother had them for two or three years before that?

Then I jumped in the shower in my favorite outfit and then I returned to the sweat pants hoodie combo that I was so comfortable in earlier in the day. And then, surprise surprise, I fucked around on the internet for a few more hours.

One of most challenging things about striking the balance between skank and prude is determining the proper amount of skin to show in a given situation.

How to get the keyhole look: find a hoodie like this one that I got at a goodwill in lincoln, nebraska. Snap the top snap, unzip the zipper a smidge.

Thanks, Internet!

This is my life right now:



It's a disaster. But aren't those bookshelves nice? Don't you want to come over and have a drink and talk about John Updike?

It was looking to be another humdrum saturday of camping out at the dining room table with the bar review books, but then I started tending to my garden of sad little wandering jew clippings, which are just waiting for me to go out and buy them some potting soil.



The little guy in the shot glass was begging for water.

So I reached for my bottle of water on the dining room table, and in doing so, I discovered a water stain worse than any I'd ever created.



On my very nice landlady's dining room table! When this has happened before, I've noticed the water before it has had time to sink in and I dash to the kitchen and grab a towel to dry it off and olive oil to make it go away and it has always worked. On this occasion, unfortunately, the water sat all night. The olive oil wasn't doing anything. I thought about calling my mom for her advice, but I was feeling like such a neanderthal for putting a wet water bottle on someone else's dining room table, and I knew she would be distressed by the situation. And so I turned to my good old friend the internet and was instructed to put non-gel toothpaste on the crime scene.



It worked! (Sort of -- it looks better than before, but not quite how it used to.)



Well, now that that's resolved, this calls for a study break.

Oh, use the coat check! It’ll be just like old times.

I said this to my friend David last night at the 9:30 club. We went to see Yo La Tengo. I had been excited for the show since I first found out about it a few weeks ago. This was going to be one of my few recreational engagements during this time of bar preparation.

When I walked to work yesterday morning, I was visualizing the evening ahead. I thought about what I would wear. I thought maybe I would dress it up a bit, but I knew that if I didn’t feel like it when the time came, I certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. I thought about outerwear and decided to wear a thin but warm enough jacket that I could easily stuff into my bag during the show rather than having to hold a bulkier coat. I wondered what time the show would actually get started. Doors were at 8, so of course we wouldn’t go until 10.

I started thinking about the 1950s and early 1960s, or at least the version of that time that I have in my head, which is largely informed by Mad Men and Back to the Future, Part 1. If we were going an evening performance in the 50s, we would be dressed to the nines, we would check our fine coats, we would be seated during the show, and it would start and end at a reasonable time. There would definitely be toilet paper in the bathroom stalls. And all of it would cost us less.

Do I sound like a curmudgeon? Or maybe like a tea partier, mourning the passage of days gone by without acknowledging that those days weren’t so great for large chunks of the population?

If the show had actually been good, I might be content to have been born in these times. (Those are some high stakes for a show, eh? If they had only known, I’m sure they would have tried harder.) The show started out great. They had great stage presence and were very engaging and entertaining. For this tour, they start every show by having an audience member spin a wheel which determines what they play for the first set. As David said, “This is some good schtick.” Problem was the wheel landed on The Sounds of Science, “78 minutes of instrumental music...contain[ing] the entire score written and performed by the band to accompany eight legendary but rarely-seen undersea documentary shorts by influential French avant-garde filmmaker Jean Painleve.” The audience groaned. This was not what any of us came here for, with the exception of the tall guy in the rugby shirt in front of me. His mind was blown.

They need to take The Sounds of Science off their wheel. It was torture. The whole audience was chatting. I was wishing I would have brought my flashcards so I could have at least studied. I considered buying a pack of cigarettes just so I could go outside. I went to the bathroom and looked at my zits. When I came back, I asked my friends if they would like to get a drink and come back for the second set. Their eyes lit up. It’s never a good sign if the bar in the basement is full during the headliner. But it wasn’t too crowded and we could talk and sit. The music by Queen that they were playing in the basement was better than what was going on upstairs.

The show made me feel old. Would a younger version of me have been interested in the first set? Or at least feigned interest? Or at least tolerated it?

When we went back up to check out the second set, they played “Periodically Double or Triple” and “Sugarcube” and instantly redeemed themselves and the night was briefly salvaged and for a moment I was ok with existing in 2011, but then they ended with a really long jam session which revived the bad taste in my mouth and the yearning for an era that probably never existed.

During the show I wondered whether I would be able to listen to Yo La Tengo again. This morning, I concluded that I can indeed still enjoy their music and I decided to think of this band like a friend. Sure, some of my friends do some weird shit that has no appeal to me, but since they are so fun to hang out with most of the time, I won’t write them off. Also, I’ve always liked the female vocalist, but I had no idea that while she’s singing she is also playing the drums. Just like Karen Carpenter without the eating disorder!

Liberation proclamation

Getting off facebook has been so liberating. It's been less than 24 hours and already I have achieved higher levels of consciousness. Now, what do I do about the nagging desire to publicize my consciousness via a status update? Ah, yes, my secret little blog. More later (if I feel like it).

Weekend Highlights

Saturday
I saw a deer in this old cemetery at sunset. It was quite a neat moment, especially after a day of sitting at my dining room table alone with my bar review books. Woe is me.

Sunday
Homemade peanut butter and attempted julienned vegetables. I finally opened up my new food processor, “purchased” with the westlaw points I accumulated during law school. I was skeptical of food processors...so big, so many parts, so 70s...but after tasting my homemade peanut butter, I will gladly reserve the necessary cabinet space for my new machine. Roasted unsalted peanuts, honey, a bit of olive oil (probably unnecessary), and a little bit of water. Amazing! The water gives it a more whipped effect.

Then I followed the instructions for julienned carrots, which didn’t work so well. I wonder if I didn’t follow the instructions correctly or if this is the difference between a Hamilton Beach food processor and a Cuisinart one. (I’ll have to file this away as a potential conversation topic for the next cocktail party.)

Studying is so much more pleasant with a bowl of carrot discs of uniform width. How and why did I go so long without this appliance?

Life Bird

My friend's mom is a bona fide birder. She taught us that when you see a bird for the first time in your life, it is called a "life bird." Today I saw a Broad-winged Hawk. In the middle of Dupont Circle! Just hanging with the pigeons and then it flew up into the trees to take in the scene and potential food offerings.



http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Broad-winged_Hawk/id

I wasn't gonna have a resolution, but then I thought of a really good one.

Some say it is silly to go to sleep on new years eve and think anything will be different when you wake up on new years day.

That’s what I was thinking when I fell asleep last night watching a movie, knowing that there were dishes from 2010 in the sink and a suitcase from holidays 2010 that still needed to be unpacked.

And yet, I woke up this morning feeling peace within. Peace within! Outta nowhere. I like 2011 so far. Peace within is not new to me, although it has been so long since I’ve felt it. I welcome it back, but I know it can be fleeting. Although peace within sounds so passive, it takes so much vigilance to maintain it. After feeling it come and go many many times, I know that it is not something that comes with age, or with x number of yoga classes. Once you attain it, it is not necessarily there forever. It requires practice and attention and vigilance because there are too many forces out there that can so quickly whisk it away from you and too many forces within one’s own mind that can push it out.

My resolution for 2011 is to remember that contentment, gratitude, and hope are just as accessible and available to me as self-criticism and cynicism. It really is a matter of choice. For some reason, negativity is the default for me, but if I choose and practice peace within, perhaps that will become the default and maybe one day it will all be so much less work. Maybe not. Either way, it’s worth the effort.

To my gentle reader who recently told me about her newfound peace within: You attributed it to reaching a certain age or turning a certain page, but I beg you to guard that shit vigilantly for it can easily slip away.

You dropped your confidence.

“Excuse me, you look good.” he said with the same urgency and lack of self-interest that one would use to tell someone they dropped a mitten. I had just attempted a run but was walking home because of back pain. I was fretting over the weight that I am sure that I have gained recently and wondering whether my blocked chakras are manifesting themselves in physical deformities yet.

I said thank you with the same kind of gratitude I would have if he had just pointed out a dropped mitten on the sidewalk. When someone shows you your mitten, you don’t tell them that it doesn’t actually fit or that you don’t really like the mitten. You certainly don’t act like you don’t need the mitten. You simply thank them. And so I thanked him without asking if he noticed how big my legs are or how terrible my haircut is. I did not ask him if he says this to all the American women in workout clothes and serious faces. I didn’t ask him if someone once told him about how American women have no idea how beautiful they are and so all that you have to do is tell them they look good. I did not act like I don’t need the approval of others, especially not male others. Nope, I just said thank you and continued walking home, reminded of my beauty. And he walked on with his friends, probably feeling like he did a good deed. Or maybe he walked on thinking something indecent and then quickly forgetting it all. Doesn’t matter.