update: common side effects include...

common side effect of wearing sunscreen every day: i look like a ghostperson. the sad thing is, i am TECHNICALLY tan. compared to my stomach (which probably hasn't seen daylight since i was like... three), my arms and chest and face are tan. it's just that my natural skin color is so lily-white that even with a slight tan i look like i should be pacing the hallways of an old victorian hotel mourning my lost love. when i was a baby, i was so brown that everyone in the hospital thought i was navajo. true story. and then during my childhood, tan skin turned to freckles and i somehow transitioned to looking like a mole-person who has never seen daylight. i feel like i should get SOME sort of color in my face before winter comes, or by march i'm going to be the same color as a frog belly.

why am i writing about this, you ask? because i am wearing red lipstick today and i bear a rather shocking resemblance to this person, only less... you know. fairest-of-them-all-ish.

(note: in my head, she's clapping like stevie wonder in this picture.)

dear sun: do you think we could cut some kind of deal?  like maybe i spend some quality time with you and stop talking smack about your UV rays and you maybe promise not to cause any sun damage and turn me into splotchy mcleatherface in my golden years? let's talk.

update: happiness

do you remember that post from a while back? this one about happy moments, and how someday i hoped to be able to share my happy energy with the world?  well, i hope you all felt a little buzz saturday afternoon, because i was driving along, minding my own business, and i suddenly found myself in the middle of a happiest moment.

it kind of came out of nowhere.  i'd had an awesome morning, hanging out with a good friend. we'd gone to brunch at a wonderful place in salt lake and ate our waffles and frites at a table on the sidewalk, across from the farmer's market.  the weather was absolutely perfect-- blue skies and sunshine.  i've been aching for fall like crazy, but that morning, i was glad it was summer.  it was perfect.  after brunch, we perused the italian market next door, then went to another market that sells food one can usually only find in the UK.  an excellent brunch, a little oogling at foods i can't afford yet, and wonderful conversation. ah, happiness. <3

after i dropped my friend off at her house, i decided to keep driving.  i went for one of the new favorite drives i've discovered, heading up a canyon.  i was looking around at the trees and the mountains and i just kept thinking "i live here.  oh my gosh, i live here."  it seemed amazing, so incredibly lucky.  i was still riding on the high of my wonderful morning.  the perfect song was playing on my radio and i was surrounded by perfect scenery, and suddenly, as i rounded a corner, pop!  there i was, in the middle of a happiest moment.  all by myself, in a car, for no particular reason.  it was brief-- the sort of thing that once you realize it's happening, it starts to go away.  but it was wonderful, and i'm glad to have recognized it for what it was.

recipe: raspberry cordial from anne of green gables

at long last, i've finally gotten around to posting a recipe for raspberry cordial a la anne of green gables.  it's insanely delicious, and really quite easy.  go check it out!

wild card: fifty days and counting

i am so ready for october.  i appreciate the summer with its green trees and blue skies and pretty little hummingbird that likes to hang out outside my office window, but i am just not a summer person.  i am an autumn person.  specifically, i am an october person.  i love the chill in the air in the evenings, i love the spicy, clean smell of the leaves and the beginning hints of woodsmoke from crackling fireplaces.  i love that awkward in-between time where it's not quite cold enough for the winter coat, not quite warm enough without it, so i end up going out in a sweatshirt and scarf.  i love the rusty-gold splotches of trees on the mountains.

if you know me or you've been reading this blog, this is probably pretty obvious, but i'm going to say it anyway: halloween is my favorite holiday. everyone else in my family seems to hate it or be ambivalent toward it, but i love halloween. i don't care about the candy, and i'm not super-interested in the costumes (though i will be dressing up this year and it will be a resurrection of an obscure character i dressed up as two years ago and literally no one knew who i was, so get excited about that). my favorite part of halloween is just the atmosphere. through the month of october, i read horrible books by r.l. stein and christopher pike mixed in with genuinely good ghost stories by other authors. last year it was world war z, the works of edgar allen poe, and twentieth century ghosts by joe hill.  i only watch spooky, witchy, or ghost-related movies from october first through november first.  i go to haunted houses and haunted forests and eat molasses cookies and drink warm apple cider.

a few years ago, i was a storyteller at a "haunted village" event in salt lake.  my friend chelsey was in a production of sleepy hollow that was held in the same village and my friend callie and i told ghost stories. i had a great costume-- a ruffled shirt, long skirt, and a red velvet cloak with a hood to cover my anachronistically-short hair.  we were stationed in buildings throughout the village.  some nights i was at the mill, other nights i was at a little cottage down the road.  groups of visitors traveled through the village and would come into the buildings. sometimes there were long gaps between the groups, so i'd just sit there by myself and poke around a bit.  the mill was a little boring (except for that time the mill wheel that reportedly hadn't moved in at least five years decided to start turning and i basically had a heart attack and refused to be there by myself anymore), but the cottage had all sorts of interesting historical bits and knicknacks.  because we were trying to create a historically spooky atmosphere, there were no lights turned on in the buildings-- only candles and lanterns.  there was one night, right before halloween, that it started snowing.  i went to the back of the cottage and opened the back door that faced away from the main road.  there weren't any people walking past-- just a field and more buildings lit by lanterns.  i was holding a candle in one hand and holding my cloak closed with the other, watching the snow flurries fall like little downy feathers.  i got chills.  not because it was cold or because i was really frightened-- just because it was so deliciously... haunting.

i have nothing against summer.  really.  and i really like the spring, except for all the pollen.  winter has its moments, even.  but all of those seasons are just preludes to the main event for me-- that time of year i crave for the other eleven months.

fifty days.  but who's counting?

wild card: tilapia is the devil's fish

i hate tilapia.  i realize hate is a strong word, but i'm fairly certain it's not strong enough for the emotion i feel toward this fish.  i know what you're probably thinking.  "what?  i love tilapia!  it doesn't even taste like anything!"

this is a lie.

a few years ago, i made tilapia for the first time.  i baked it with an orangey basily sauce, and my sister loved it.  as she was singing the praises of this delectable piece of nomness, i was staring at my fish trying to figure out what happened between the plate and my tongue that turned every bite into a mouthful of potting soil.

i have avoided tilapia like the plague since then, even though it is the sweetheart of every seafood section on every menu everywhere, it seems.  and i am a huge seafood fan.  in fact, i am such a seafood fan that this past week i developed a very serious craving for fish tacos.  so i found a recipe and went to the local market where i buy my meat.  (yes, i have a local market where i specifically buy meat and cheese.  i have a separate one where i buy produce and a third where i buy shelf-stable things. because i'm a weirdo. this is why grocery shopping takes me so long.)  i went up to the fish counter and the only fish i saw was salmon and... you guessed it.  tilapia.  i asked the man behind the counter if he had any halibut hidden somewhere, but he didn't.  i asked him if i could make fish tacos out of salmon, and he said i could but a firm-fleshed fish like tilapia would be much better.  i stared at the tilapia.  it stared back.  somehow, i convinced myself to give it another chance.

oh, what a fool i was.

let's talk about the texture of this fish for a moment, shall we?  it's... wrong.  it's just wrong.  it feels like fake krab that they have to spell with a k.  i love fake krab, but it fully acknowledges that it's not natural.  tilapia, however, flaunts its weird texture like it's totally normal.  but it's not.  it's not.  still, i bit the bullet and cut up the tilapia into pieces while i was waiting for my oil to heat, trying to touch the fish as little as possible.  i dredged it and dropped it in the oil, at which point the tilapia released its full-force fishy funk.  i'm sure that would have happened with any fish, though.  cooked fish smells like fish.  that's just how it goes.  i assembled the rest of my taco and begrudgingly added the chunks of fish, telling myself that it was going to be alright.  the fish was going to be fine and the taco was going to be awesome.

i actually succeeded in chewing and swallowing the first bite, then threw everything in the garbage.

i read descriptions of tilapia as being "mild and slightly sweet," and i want to ask the people who taste anything pleasant in that fish if they are aliens.  tilapia is not mild, nor is it slightly sweet.  it tastes like a mouthful of basement.  and i think i gave it a fair shot, too-- two chances to prove itself tasty to me.  never again, devil fish.  never again.

update: five-and-a-half-hour drives to nowhere

okay, first of all, i don't know how, exactly, one sustains a thumb injury while sleeping, but my thumb is MESSED UP today.  what was i doing in my sleep last night?  playing nintendo?  thumb-wrestling a viking?

ouch.

anyway, last week was rough.  there wasn't a specific reason for it being so rough, really.  it was just one of those weeks where my general surliness attracted all sorts of bad stuff and by the end of the week i was pretty much surrounded by a ball of angry crap. so saturday, i took the day off.  i know saturday is technically the weekend and is already a day off, but for me, saturdays are always filled with cleaning, laundry, mopping, grocery shopping, planning menus, and all that stuff.  so instead of doing those things, i hopped in my car and went for a drive.  for five and a half hours. 

i went to my favorite, prettiest, middle-of-nowhere places where i had room to breathe and relax and scrape off some of the collected crap of my week.  at first i was a little zoned out, just taking deep breaths and looking at nature and barely thinking at all.  then i was cranky.  then, i finally started to reflect on why i was so dang cranky and what i could do about it.  turns out, i was mostly cranky because things weren't going exactly how i wanted them to.  i would plan one thing and something completely different would happen.

if there's one thing i've learned in the past year and a half, it's that everything happens for a reason.  everything.  i've started seeing my life as a big puzzle in which every incident is an important, interlocking part of the whole.  like if that girl hadn't said that hurtful thing in the sixth grade, then i wouldn't have felt this way, and then this and this and this wouldn't have happened, and then that wouldn't have led up to this wonderful thing that happened in my life. (actually, once i started seeing all of the connections, i actually got a little freaked out for a while because it was like i had just opened a door and gotten a rather sublime peek at the intricate workings of the universe without meaning to.)  with that in mind, i started picking apart all of these things that were happening that weren't going the way i wanted them to.  instead of dwelling on what had or hadn't happened as planned, i started thinking about what good things might (or already had) come from the change of plans.

goodness, i felt so much better after that. it really helps to be able to identify what i'm feeling and why i'm feeling it, honestly recognize my feelings as being valid, and then pick them apart and resolve them. after i started resolving things, i kept going, driving fast with the windows down, down roads hardly anyone else even seems to know about.  i could feel all the bad feelings just sloughing off and getting left on the road behind me like little dirt clods.  by the time i got back to my apartment (minus half a tank of gas, plus a sunburnt left arm) i was feeling oh so much better-- like when you step out of the shower all nice and clean after a very grungy day.  it was lovely.

today, i feel grateful for the changes of plans in my life, for the puzzle pieces that are fitting together to create something that i can't see quite yet.  i'm grateful for this state i live in, with all of its beautiful places to disappear to.  i'm grateful for my little black car and my freedom to make my own choices, and i'm grateful for all of the people who have taught me the important lessons i didn't really want to learn.  i'm even grateful for my messed-up thumb.  and i'm sure someday, i'll figure out why.

wild card: zombie apocalypse

yesterday morning, my alarm went off as usual. i got up and staggered across the room to turn it off, then flopped back down on my bed and curled up. i had every intention of getting up, but it didn't quite happen.  i woke up an hour and a half later feeling rather disoriented and out of sorts.  i looked at the clock and grumbled, then curled back up again.  as i slowly started to come to my senses, i noticed something.  i could hear screaming outside-- shrill, distant screams mixed with lower ones.  it sounded like muted, muffled bedlam.  i opened my eyes and stared at the glass doors that lead out onto my balcony.  and for a moment i was absolutely positively certain that there was a zombie apocalypse going on outside.  i expected at any moment to hear a bang on my door or hear the front windows break.

it was the wind, of course.  just the wind, doing something strange as it whipped between the buildings in my apartment complex.  but for a moment, just a second or two, i had this genuine sinking feeling of "oh... crap.*"

clearly i have watched too many movies and read too many books.  (incidentally, if you are interested in zombie apocalypses and the like, allow me to suggest the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by max brooks. it's a history of a fictional zombie apocalypse and goes from the first signs of the outbreak through the main conflict and into the aftermath and world recovery, and it is wonderfully, alarmingly believable.)














*Note: the "oh crap" feeling was quickly followed by a series of thoughts that included "i bet it started at the school" (meaning the university on the hill above my neighborhood) and "i'm on the third floor, so it will take them a while to get up here."  at least i keep my head in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

newsday: HOLY AMAZING.

works of art small enough to fit into the eye of a needle. "I was moving her (an Alice in Wonderland sculpture) to the eye of the needle and I looked in the microscope and she was gone. I think I inhaled her."

update: just a phase

i've probably said it before, but i am remarkably set in my ways for only being twenty-six years old.  i'm practically fossilized.  recently, though, i've been watching a lot of people move into different phases of their lives. my sister got married and moved across the country to start a new phase of her life with her husband. another friend is preparing to get married in about two weeks.  another friend just moved to california and yet another just found out that she's going to be moving to houston, where her husband just got a new job.  my parents are trying to decide whether they're ready to move into a new phase as well and move to a different area.  at first, i was struggling with all of these changes.  it frustrated me, angered me.  then, honestly, it depressed me.  i had picked my niche that i wanted to stay in for the rest of my life.  i had my plans.  but then, everything started changing around me and disrupting all of those plans.  a few weeks ago, though, a little thought started forming in my head.

this is just a phase.

this spot that i've settled myself into is only temporary.  i'm twenty-six years old, and while that seems incredibly old and mature sometimes, i'm sure twenty-six years from now i'll realize that i'm still a baby at this age.  i still have so much ahead of me.  and how boring would it be if i stayed in exactly the same spot i'm in now for all those years?  what a waste.

there's a book that i read tidbits from now and then.  it talks about how to achieve one's dreams.  near the beginning of the book, it lists some questions to ask ourselves to determine what, exactly, that dream goal is.  what would you do if you only had one year to live?  what would you do if you had a hundred years to live? what would you do if you didn't have to worry about money?  there were more, by my answer was the same to every single one: i would write.

technically, i already write.  i'm a sales writer, and i create documents to fill needs in our company or to bring in revenue.  it's a good job, but it's not the job i would do forever.  i like it, but i don't have a passion for it.  when i dream about writing, i dream about writing for myself, writing what i want to write and creating something beautiful and powerful, not revenue-generating.

when i was talking a friend about this recently, she asked me what my ideal job would be, and i said "well, ideally, i want to get paid for writing what i want to write.  but doesn't everyone?"  then i started coming up with other things i could do that might be satisfying, because every writer wants to write their stuff and get paid for it, and no one really does.  except the ones that do.  people do get paid for writing. every day.  so, why, exactly, would i decide now that i'm not one of those people?  why on earth would i have any less right to that than any of the others?

so i've decided that i've had enough of settling.  i'm not going to settle into this spot that i'm in now because i can't get anything better.  enough of that.  i'm twenty-six and i'm young and i have every right to do what i want to do with my life, and dang it, i want to write.  so that's what i'm going to do.

i have my eye on a low-residency creative writing MFA program in oregon.  there's no way on earth i'm good enough to get in yet, but i can be.  i'm going to start out by actually working on my own writing and exercising my weak little creative writing muscles.  then, i'm going to enroll in some classes at a local university so i can get some more practice and input and direction and also get some practice with literary criticism.  then, i'm going to apply to one of the program's yearly ten-day residencies-- just the residency to start out with so i can get a feel for things.  then, if all goes well, i'll apply for the full program.

it's a little terrifying to think about, actually.  but it's roller-coaster terror-- equal parts fear and excitement.

gosh, i can't wait to see what happens next.

update kinda sorta: new plan for the snoop bloggy blog

okay, so here's the thing:  this whole expectation i've placed on myself to post every day thing just isn't working.  if i miss a day, it tends to snowball because i don't want to write the next day because i'd have to make up for the day before that i missed, and then i get all "NOOO BLOOOOG RUN AWAAAAAY!"  so new plan!  i will post three times a week.  i promise.  and i will probably mostly stick to the plan that i set up earlier this year as to what will be posted on what day, but  i will occasionally stray.  and i'm okay with that.  right?  right.  fistbump.

photos: wonderful wedding in the wild west of wyoming!

finally, the photos from the wedding my sister and i attended in wyoming! this was our friend carrie's wedding. it was absolutely beautiful. and thanks to a smudge on my camera lens, i got to capture carrie's happy wedding glow. : )

photos: bruce and fred's excellent adventure (part 2)

first, an explanation of the title of these posts.  yes, it is a play off of bill and ted's excellent adventure, as paige cleverly noted in her comment on the last post.  (come back soon, paige, i miss you!)  a few years back, callie and i started calling each other bruce and fred.  i am bruce, callie is fred.  why?  i don't know.  because we are awesome, clearly, and transcend reason.

anyway, more pictures! we started the day with a hike along the river. it was lovely, and nice and shady. we went down by the river, but i didn't want to go in due to the threat of the domestic river kraken. then a squirrel got all up in callie's business and was like "food? you has? i wants!!" after the hike, we went back to the hotel and relaxed a little, then headed back toward the park for our stupid-awesome dinner. so amazing. and the view from the table was beautiful.  we were very sad when it was over.  tears were shed.

the next day, we had ice cream and rain, and then sat on the porch in rocking chairs, not wanting to move. then we headed home! yay adventure!