January 26, 2012

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem.

by Katie

Lately, I’ve been playing a crapload of mental tug-of-war.

Seriously.  Both sides of my brain must be like… amazingly buff right now.  In fact, if I could figure out a way to box and market this game, I’d probably be a bajillionaire.  And if I were a bajillionaire, I wouldn’t be playing mental tug-of-war.  At least not this particular game.

The thing is, I’m sure I’m not unique when it comes to what, exactly, is gnawing on both sides of my mind.  It’s money.

There, I said it.

Do you feel dirty now?

For some reason it seems like talking about money (without offering up a this-is-the-plan-that-will-get-you-out-of-debt-for-GOOD solution) is a huge faux pas.  It makes people uncomfortable.  They feel inadequate if they have little and guilty if they have a lot.

There is no doubt in my mind that you need money to be happy.  Tiny Tim was a perfectly delightful, high-spirited little boy, but he would have died if it weren’t for Scrooge’s money, and then he definitely wouldn’t have been happy.  Not one little bit.

I’m not saying you need a lot of money — just enough to provide your basic needs, a sense of security, and possibly for indulging in a passion.  And it’s that passion in particular that brings the happiness.

And please.  Don’t confuse “passion” for “stuff.”

So this tug-of-war game I’ve been playing goes like this:  I know I’ve been wanting to make travel — regular travel — a major part of my life.  The problem is, even though nearly every dream and drive I’ve had since childhood has pointed me in that direction with everything short of flashing neon arrows, it didn’t even really occur to me to try to do something about it until 2 years ago.

So I did what any rational, level-headed, Type A person would do:  I quit my job and did a work exchange in Costa Rica for 2 months.

(Needless to say, I am not level-headed or Type A.  And rational?  Try rash.)

Okay, in retrospect I see the problem.  This type of highly emotional quarter-life crisis decision-making was not sustainable in the least.  And worse, it whet my wanderlust with a fierceness.  While I wouldn’t trade the experience or the friends I made for anything, it’s fair to say that I now wish I’d thought beyond the trip.  That I’d made a plan.  And, most important, that I’d taken the time to save a significant amount of cash from my previous job before kissing that paycheck goodbye.

The thing is, when you hear those amazing stories about people who make a dramatic life change and their lives suddenly turn out all joyous and magical and completely figured out, they don’t tell you how much planning and preparation were involved before the deed was done.  Or, how much money.  All I heard was, “Go for it!  Live your dream!  Everything will fall into place!”

Well.  Those people probably weren’t making $800 per month student loan payments.

And now my mind’s at it again.

There’s the dreamer side that says spread your wings and FLY.  OPTIMISM will carry you through.  Who needs food when you have NAIVETY on your side?

And of course, the practical side that says I should do boring things like plan and calculate and save money.

Hence, the tug-of-war.  Not to mention the fact that the quickest way for me to save money right now would be to get a second job, likely as a waitress once again, which would take me away from Justin and the pups.  Just so I can… travel away from Justin and the pups?  No, thank you.  I will have my cake and eat it too, if you please.

So.  Which do you think is right?

a) Hard work and discipline is the best and most effective way to get what you want in this world.  Stay strong, make a plan, have patience, and eventually you will reach your goals!

b) There are no guarantees when it comes to Tomorrow, and nothing can stop you when it comes to the Power of Positive Thinking. Send good vibes into the Universe and keep plowing ahead, and roadblocks will tumble as you go!

I know which one I want to believe.

But, in reality, I’m guessing we need a whole lot of both.

Lucias Art on Etsy (first saw on CentsationalGirl.com)

 

Posted in Just Sayin, This 'n That | 3 Comments »

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January 23, 2012

Top O’ The Muffin to You!

by Katie

This weekend was dreary.  The kind of dreary that makes daily personal hygiene tasks like flossing my hair, combing my teeth, showering, and getting dressed seem entirely optional.  The kind of weekend where the sun doesn’t shine, not one little bit, and a certain amount of comfort food is required to get you through.

After all, would winter be winter without muffin tops?

Wait, not that kind.

I’m talking about the kind of muffin top you get in a bakery — the kind that inspired Elaine and her boss on Seinfeld to open a bakery that sells only the tops.  The kind with the glorious dome that spills out of the cups and spreads out across the surface of the pan, rising up with puffy, cake-like perfection, and comes fully adorned with a sugary dusting of streusel crumbles.

Okay, so maybe the first kind of muffin top still applies.

Damn.

But we can’t be good all of the time — that would be inhuman.  And if we have the secret to creating muffins with proper tops right at home, we can’t very well let that go to waste on a sunless weekend.

The secret, it turns out, is an extra thick batter.

I know.  That’s probably been keeping you up at nights.  I feel your pain.

But there’s no denying that there’s something about those tops.  Something delicious.  Decadent.  An added pouf of awesomeness that the muffin stump just can’t provide.

I know it.  Elaine knew it.  And now you’ll know it, too.

This recipe provides the key.  I did make some suggested changes based on the comments, particularly with the streusel topping, but I love how mine turned out.

To make them like I did, you will need:

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2/3 cups vegetable oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2/3 cups milk
  • 2 cups fresh blueberries
For the topping, you will need:
  • 2/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 2 Tablespoons butter
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon

*This makes 12 BIG muffins.  Seriously.  These muffins are BIG.  Cut this recipe in half if you know what’s good for you.  Of course, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t be making these at all.  So I’ll just stop talking now.

**Okay, I lied.  I’m still talking.  Because I also need to tell you to IGNORE the crappy photographs.  I haven’t been posting many recipes as of late because it’s too dark to get any decent pictures.  I thought, by making muffins in the morning, that I’d actually  have some light, but like I said.  Dreary weekend.  Total bummer.

Now.  This is a bit difficult, so pay attention.  (It’s really not difficult at all.)

1)  Preheat your oven to 400-degrees F and spray your muffin tin liberally with cooking spray.  Actually, go ahead and grease that puppy the old-fashioned way, because mine still stuck somewhat.  Even if you use those paper muffin cup thingies, still grease the top of the pan.

2)  Mix your dry ingredients — the flour, white sugar, salt, and baking powder, together in a bowl.

3)  Pour 1/3 cup of vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup.  Add the egg to that same measuring cup (I beat mine slightly with a fork first), and then fill the cup to the top with milk.

4)  Pour the wet ingredients into your bowl of dry ingredients, and — this is EXTREMELY important — DO NOT OVER-MIX.

Yep.  Just mix it gently until the batter is barely moist. You might even have a few chunks of flour left, and that is okay.

Everything will be okay.

As long as you don’t over mix.

Then gently fold in your blueberries.

5)  Mix the streusel topping ingredients together with a fork.

You should get a crumbly topping.

6)  Fill each muffin cup to the brim with your batter.  There should be just enough.  Then, sprinkle with streusel topping (I had extra) and bake for 20-25 minutes until you can insert a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean.

I was going to take another photo of the finished product this morning, when it was hopefully going to be light, and bright, and sunny, but no.  It’s like yesterday.  Only… danker.

Because that’s a word, right?

Good thing I have bad photos of muffin tops to cheer me up.

Oh, and the actual muffin tops don’t hurt.

Posted in Down the Hatch, Living and Learning | 6 Comments »

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January 21, 2012

Yep. I Did That. And I’m Pretty Sure You Should Do It Too.

by Katie

When I was a kid, my favorite thing in the world to do was to build forts.

Of course, “the world” consisted of my house, my neighborhood, and some woods behind my best friend’s house, so I didn’t know how many other non-fort related fun things there were to do in the world, the bigger world, the one beyond the realm of my own imagination.

So, forts it was.

Outside, the forts were limited to the selection of supplies the woods could provide and the ones my friend and I were brave enough to snake from our homes and stockpile among the branches and leaves and dirt.  We had no hammers or nails, so our structures often consisted of precariously leaning logs and bent branches held to the ground with rocks and sometimes, just a maze of pathways and rooms raked through the leaves with nothing but imaginary doorways and walls.  But it was enough.

Inside, we ran rampant.  Huge blankets and sheets draped across furniture and lamps, tied to curtain rods and doorknobs, pinched tight inside closed drawers, and weighed down with books — massive behemoths that would fill entire rooms and sometimes stairwells, completely filled with pillows and stuffed animals and toy dishes and secret passages and all of the things necessary for a play house or a restaurant or a barber shop.

My friends always liked to get the fort built and get on with the game, because the set-up was just set-up, after all –not the fun part.

But for me, the creation was the fun part.  I loved discovering that rubber bands could hold blankets to door knobs just fine and that curtains can actually be pulled away from the walls to create more coverage and that couch cushions made the sturdiest doorways.  I loved convincing parents who thought they couldn’t get up the stairs that they could, in fact, crawl through the fort and experience for themselves the sheer awesomeness that can come with self-imposed confined spaces.  I loved knowing which rooms were best for creating the most extensive structures, and I loved discovering new places to build and new ways to build them.

And sometimes now, as an adult, and even though I have an entire house to play with, I just want to grab a big blanket, drape it across my computer desk and office chair, and crawl inside.

Grown-up Fort

I’m pretty sure it would make a fantastic fort.  I could bring in a lamp and maybe some christmas lights, a glass of wine and a good book.

Inside Grown-up Fort

Then, when Justin comes into the room to tell me it’s time to do grown-up things like submit queries or pay bills, I’ll pretend he can’t find me because I’m inside my fort, and forts pretty much make you invisible.

fort for adults

Maybe a fort would stir my imagination again, like it did as a kid, and all of the stagnant bits that have drifted and settled at the base of my skull would float to the surface in a jostled frenzy of inspiration and creativity.

The pressure of time wouldn’t exist.

Just like when we were kids.

Posted in Around the House, Crafts and Decor | 2 Comments »

January 18, 2012

Is Life Not A Thousand Times Too Short For Us To Bore Ourselves (By Going On Strike)?

by Katie

Nietzsche said that.  The fist part, about life and boring ourselves.  Not the second part, about going on strike.  I added that to make a point.

So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I guess the internet is joining up in protest today to go on strike.

You heard me.

The internet is going on strike.

This would’ve been a great thing to know… I don’t know… yesterday, like before I got up at 6:30 this morning so I could write a blog post before heading off to my job that actually pays.  I mean, the sponsors aren’t exactly banging down my door over here.  I don’t know why companies wouldn’t want to attach their names to my drinkin’, swearin’, sex-obsessed self.  It’s mind-boggling, to say the least.

So.  I’m up.  I’m here.  And I won’t get paid for several hours.  In light of that fact and in the spirit of adventure capitalism, I think I’ll take advantage of all of the downed sites and hopefully benefit from the fact that apparently I’m the only site online right now.

That’s right.

You’re stuck with me.

It’s not that I don’t back the cause, ’cause I do.  It’s just that if I only have but a short time left to express my uncensored thoughts and opinions to the world, I kind of want to take advantage of them, you know?  Plus, I didn’t buy gas on that one day they said we shouldn’t buy gas a couple of years ago, and we all know how that turned out.  Oil companies still turned record profits, and I never bought that Prius.

Moving on.

Lately I’ve been distracted.  Like, crazy distracted, soaking up someone’s blog like it’s a Harry Potter novel, only even better because the adventures are real.  Her name is Brenna, and I’ve been working my way back from the very beginning of her blog, This Battered Suitcase, like some crazy internet stalker obsessed with setting up shop in someone else’s life.  Vicariously, of course.

For someone like me, it’s hard to not envy the nomadic life she’s made for herself, and she’s only in her mid-20′s.  Of course, on the flip-side, true wanderers occasionally get lonely and ache for the type of companionship and comfort that only comes with homesteading for a while, but if this is one of those “grass is always greener” situations, the other grass is the seasonal stuff that turns brown in winter climates, while her grass is like a golf course in southern California — that bitch (the golf course, not Brenna) ain’t ever gettin’ brown.  She’s alluded to as much in one of her short, photo-filled, thought-provoking posts — she wouldn’t trade the life she sometimes thinks she might envy a little on occasion for the world she knows she loves to experience.

I have to be careful here, because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I love my husband.  I love my pups.  I love my friends, and my house, and the little niche we’ve created for ourselves in this place I’m far from calling home.

But.

Do any of you ever get the feeling that you’re still not doing what you’re supposed to be doing?  That, somehow, there’s more to be done, and you just need to figure out what it is and how to get there?  I’ve talked before about trying to live life in the moment and not wasting time looking for the next thing on the horizon that’s going to “complete” you, but this is different.  I’m talking about a sense of purpose.  Of making a difference.  At least to yourself, if no one else.

I read a quote by Mark Twain, who supposedly said,

Mark Twain Quote

Photo by Blunt Delivery.  I think.  At least, I found it on her Pinterest and it said it was uploaded by her, so it’s hers until I hear otherwise.

I don’t know how to make this travel bug blend with the life I’ve already created for myself.  But I also know that it’s not going away.  Once infected, the symptoms are life-long, my friends, and it’s a little bit torturous if you don’t give it the drug that it needs to subside.  Unfortunately, that drug can be expensive — not just monetarily, but also when it comes to time and relationships.  Current jobs and responsibilities.  This grind of debt and home ownership and 9-5′s we call The American Dream.  Some of those things I care about deeply.  But others, not so much.

If I’m going to be honest, and you know I’m never anything but, I have a current lack of stimulation that’s not filled from showing people houses or watching How I Met Your Mother.  And I know, if I have time to think on my bed of death, that I won’t be wondering who the mother really is or whether the writers of that show ever plan on telling us.  I will be wondering if I experienced enough — if I met enough people, heard enough stories, tasted enough food, read enough books, loved enough worlds.

Am I the only one who feels like this?

They tell us, as writers, to write what we know.  And all I know is, I need to know more.  What the food tastes like in Myanmar.  How the locals dress in Laos.  How difficult it is to buy camera batteries in Croatia.

I’m pretty sure I can make this happen, and that I can make it blend with what I already have.

Now.

Does anyone want to send me some money?

 

 

Posted in Bon Voyage, Just Sayin, Living and Learning, This 'n That | 5 Comments »

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January 16, 2012

Why Baby Mamas Should Love Me and How I Came This Close To My Million Dollar Idea.

by Katie

The interesting thing about my house, I’ve realized, is that while no children actually live here (except those of the crazy, mangy mutt and the 29-to-30-something-I-don’t-wanna-grow-up varieties), it’s shockingly child-friendly.

I mean, okay.  Kids have to stay out of my office.  Period.  There are dangerous things like books on shelves and a fancy new computer and god forbid anyone but me spills red wine on my spankin’ white desks, and yes, there’s a good chance if you bring your kid here, he might accidentally find himself with a sippy cupful of wine or I mean grape juice with a splash of wine, and that’s only if he’s being a pain in the ass.

And that’s what we’d call a Sippy-cup ‘Tini.

Not that I would ever do that.

Ever.

But sometimes when I see a screaming kid at the grocery store, I’d think of how much easier Mom’s life would be if she carried a flask.  For many reasons.

Don’t look at me like that.

In the early 1900′s, we used to give kids cocaine for toothaches.  And really, I’m not sure why we don’t anymore, because they’d all probably be a lot more fun and grow up to epitomize groundbreaking music genres and write thought-invoking lyrics and die before their time.

Wait, maybe that was heroine.  Which actually used to be sold as a cough suppressant.

And probably not such a good thing.

Except the music.  You can’t really argue that Come As You Are wasn’t a good thing.  A very good thing.

Right, Martha?

Anyway.  As I was saying, as long as the mangy mutts are locked in one bedroom and the office door remains closed and the so-called “grown-up” inhabitants of the casa refrain from giving alcohol to minors, what’s left is approximately 1,300 square feet of veritable playground for the age-impaired.  Well, maybe 1,200 square feet.  Because I’m pretty sure kids shouldn’t play in bathrooms.  Or the fireplace hearth.  So let’s make it an even 1,197 square feet of pure fun.  Which, I think, would more than suffice.

Most of the flooring in that remaining square footage is laminate, which, despite its solid-state appearance, is actually quite kid-friendly cushy as well.  Many a child has stumbled across its slick surface, been told to “brush it off,” and survived to play another day.

Also, it’s quite easy to clean.  Which was exceptionally put to the test this past weekend when my friend’s crazy adorable baby went all Exorcist on us and projectile-vomited everywhere.  Which was awesome and scary all at the same time.  And it made me really, really happy we chose laminate as our primary walking/vomiting surface.  (**Update: I spoke with my friend. She knows I love her. AND her baby. Like… I would throw myself in front of a biscuit-tube throwing Sponge Bob for that baby. So no, she knows I was not speaking ill of her baby while writing those last sentences. Her baby was ill, but I was not speaking ill. Got it? Thank you.)

So.  While situations in which friends with babies are hanging out with friends without babies usually leads to apologies from the friends with babies and feelings of inadequacy from the friends without babies, I want all of my friends with babies to know that it’s okay to take them to my house.  And that, while I’m not positive I want any of my own, I don’t want you to feel weird about exposing yours to me and my childless home.  Because I have laminate.  And microfiber.  And sippy-cup ‘tinis if you’re feeling especially distraught.

For you, not your kid.

Which is why I should be your favorite childless person.

But you’ll have to provide the sippy cups, because I don’t have those, for obvious reasons.  Although maybe I should, because I’ve been known to spill a lovely glass of red all over my new rug, and — oh, wow.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Sippy-cup wine glasses.  For grown-ups who aren’t quite grown up.  They’re sippy-cups with stems, people.  Don’t steal that.  It’s MINE.

Anyway.  I think what I’ve been trying to say is that I’d like to bridge this gap that inevitably forms when some friends from a group choose to have kids and others stubbornly remain child-free.  Just because kids don’t get me doesn’t mean we can’t hang.  And while I might try to talk to them about politics or religion or why Desperate Housewives is so insanely idiotic yet I still watch it, I think this is a good thing when it comes to expanding young minds.  I might ask them about the books they’re reading and then tell them about the books I’m reading, and then after I’ve bored them into a zombie-like stupor, all of us “grown-ups” can pour ourselves some sippy-tinis and call this a parenting job well-done.

It’s like I was made for this sort of thing.

Plus, I know the human head weighs 8 pounds.  Yep.  I’ve watched Jerry Maguire.  I know how this works.

P.S. I’m too late.

P.P.S. If anyone wants to buy me one of these if I ever find myself on the “with-child” side of the family spectrum, I can’t say I wouldn’t love it:

Posted in Just Sayin, This 'n That | 4 Comments »

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