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It’s Not A Memo – It’s a Mission Statement.

Can you name the movie quoted in the title of this post?

As I sit here this morning with my thin toasted bagel, honey nut cream cheese, flavored coffee, glass of OJ, I realize.

I realize that I’m an almost-thirty-year-old assistant.

I’m an almost-thirty-year-old assistant with a college degree.

No responsibilities, no career driven passion, no zsa zsa zu for anything, save spewing my verbiage onto a screen and getting a slight thrill every time someone acknowledges that I do, in fact, exist.

The issue at hand is simple.

It’s hard to admit, and I choke as I write, because a character trait that would land me a role as a strong, unforgettable leading lady of my own damn story, this is not.

But regardless, it’s true.

 

I am addicted to the bottom of the ladder.

 

I’m not tied to it, wormlike umbilical cord still firmly attached at the navel, providing comfort and sustenance until I’m ready to climb.

Not that.

I’m addicted to it because I’m not attached.

And, if you want to know the truth, I have no desire to climb.

I test a rung, then jump back down.  It’s fun down here in the tall, tall grass.  Up there, I’d have a view of the whole, wide world.  But down here?  Down here I get to run all around, play in the dirt, leave when I want, answer to no one.  The playground is huge, and there’s no way I’d trade it for a tether to my cell phone and a plush, swivel office chair.

Source

But what am I doing? I ask myself as I drive, fists clenched around the molded plastic wheel, cutting through traffic in a town that hates me on my way to the place where I will spend the next 6 self-deprecating hours as an almost-thirty-year-old assistant.

I’m not ashamed of the job itself, but of the fact that I’m wasting my time.

Of the fact that I’m wasting everyone’s time.

Of the fact that I’m privileged enough to do as I please, yet here I sit, ass tucked firmly between Rung 1 and Rung 2, with no drive to climb yet no heart to run.  To run with writing, to declare to the world that this will be my career, even if it makes me a failure who has no choice but to sit at the bottom, staring up with envy at those who’ve made it — who’ve made a true impact — the Chuck Palahniuks and the J. K. Rowlings and the Stephen Kings and yes, the Jenny Lawsons and all the rest with their views from the top and room to run.

I’ve carried this metaphor too far, I think.

Which tells me I probably have a long way to go.

And many changes to make.

Are you ready?

Because I’m not sure I am, but it means a lot that you’re still here.  Still reading.  And you — yes, you — are my encouragement.

 

The Best Kind of Progress Isn’t Something You See. It’s Something You Feel.

Okay, so it might be because I ate approximately 80,000 calories worth of crusty, cheesy fried-then-baked eggplant parmesan, leftover spinach feta quiche, and German pancakes drizzled with a homemade sugary syrup yesterday.

Dutch Baby German Pancake

Check out that Dutch Baby, baby.  And please ignore my filthy oven.

Or it might be because I just ordered 26 galvanized malleable floor flanges from Amazon before having even one sip off coffee this morning.  Or it might be because I spent the entire day yesterday, aside from a 2-mile walk with the dogs and shoving approximately 80,000 calories worth of delicious, artery-jamming crap into my system, sketching out a design for a closet organizer made entirely out of plumbing fixtures and pine boards.

It might be one of those things.

But whatever it is, I’m feeling mighty accomplished this morning.

Fat, but accomplished.

On second thought, none of these things are the reason I feel accomplished.

They’re most certainly the reason I feel fat, but not the reason I feel accomplished.

I know exactly what it is.

But first, I need to take you back to Saturday.

Saturday, my friends, is the day I made an important and disturbing discovery about the person with whom I’ve chosen to live (aka. my husband).

This discovery wasn’t a complete surprise, mind you, since inklings of this issue’s existence have been cropping up, here and there, for the past 9 years.

But apparently I’ve been living in a protected shell of denial.  Apparently I haven’t wanted to make this discovery, because then I’d have to admit that the issue exists.

But on Saturday, I could ignore it no longer.

While Justin was busy doing this:

I ventured out to The Shed.

The Shed is a wonkily assembled, pseudo mini building attached to the back of our house, presumably added by the previous owners.  When we moved in 5 years ago, I quickly labeled the non-ventilated space as man territory, clearly, and have rarely ventured back since.

Until Saturday.

On Saturday, I walked into The Shed.

On Saturday, I saw this:

Messy Shed

Actually, I should clarify.  This is after I removed the lawn mower, a weed whacker, a small hand cart, and approximately 35 (or 6) large, assorted bags of garden soil.

That’s right.

My husband is a hoarder.

It turns out, every time I asked him to get rid of something — like the chicken wire we’d once used to line the inside of our fence to keep the pups from squeezing out — this is where he put it.  Not only that, but this is also where he put project supplies that he bought but didn’t want to immediately tackle.  So, it turns out, for years we’ve been storing oil-rubbed-bronze doorknobs (all of which we’ve since bought and replaced in the house), outdoor light fixtures (since bought and replaced), and giant bags of garden soil and mulch, all — you guessed it — re-bought and used multiple times over during the years that these things have sat, forlorn and neglected, in the bowls of The Shed.

I found bags of trash.

I found an unopened, unused seed starting kit.

I found a tupperware bowl I’d long – long – since given up finding.  Unfortunately, it was filled with oil-soaked newspapers, but still.  Finally discovering its fate brought me peace.

And so, my dears, did cleaning out that shed.

Clean Shed

If the difference doesn’t look drastic to you, keep in mind that this “after” photo, as opposed to the “before,” now contains a lawn mower, hand cart, weed whacker, large rake, cylinder of propane (where is the best place to keep this, by the way?), and several garden tools and flower pots.

I would have carted out the 7 bags of concrete mix, but I found that moving one from the bookshelf in the back to the rest of the pile may have caused me permanent back damage (just kidding — I think), so there they will stay.

This discovery was important because it made me admit — finally — that while Justin is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind type of person, I’m most definitely an it-might-be-out-of-sight-but-it’s-still-right-there-in-mind-so-it’s-still-giving-me-an-eye-twitch type of person.

And also, call me crazy, but I like to be able to access things without wading through a pile of garbage.

But — and pay attention because this is important — if I can just accept the above statements as fact and realize that Justin is about as likely to change his habits as I’m likely to sit in a cubicle for the rest of my life, then we’re one step closer to reaching a symbiosis that actually… I don’t know… might allow us to get things done.

A partnership, if you will.

If I can keep the shed looking like this, despite his rat-pack hoarding ways, then I’m giving him the tools he needs to do things like this:

Photo taken, unfortunately, on a much drearier day.

What happened on Saturday is that I made a mental leap.  One of acceptance, if not understanding.

And that, I think, is what we call accomplishment.

The Only Thing that Could’ve Made it Better is if The Fresh Prince Had Walked Up and Told Me He’d Buy Me Anything I Wanted from Anthropologie.

If I could only use one word to describe the city of Philadelphia. I know exactly what I’d choose:

 

Surprising.

 

Really, almost everything I’d heard about Philly — aside from endless word about the deliciousness of its cheese steaks — alluded to its roughness.

Its edge.

Its subtly induced reputation for hard knocks and downed luck and overbearing, relentless strife.

From the obvious overtones of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” to Will Smith’s epic fight on the basketball court during the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the city was advertised as lonely and dangerous. With its gritty undertones of dreary streets and gray skies serving as cinematic backdrops for the trials of Sylvester Stallone and Tom Hanks in Rocky and Philadelphia, the city was portrayed bleak and hopeless.

Because of these things, Philadelphia just sat, dusty and neglected in the back of my mind, as this place I’d probably never care to see.

But then?

But then I saw it.

I really saw it.

I saw its richness in history, art, museums, green space, food, and culture.

And suddenly, I felt very, very misinformed.

I only had one day to explore, but now I know this: Philadelphia, I will be back.

Just giving you a heads-up.

Insert Joke About Cutting the Cheese Here.

I was at the grocery store the other day, and I saw a hunk of cheese.

A hunk of cheese that, it appeared, had no earthly business sitting in a grocery store in Fayetteville, NC.

Sage Derby Cheese

I moved on.

Then I came back.  Then I picked it up.  I stared at its martian green marbles, tried sniffing through the plastic.

Then, instinctually, I set it back down.

No earthly business, I thought.

But I came back again.

It’s just so enticingly green, I thought.  I love green things.  Green is the color of nature.  And dragons.  And travel.  All of the things I love.

(Okay, so travel isn’t green per se, but green is the color of U.S. paper currency.  Which allows me to travel.  So there ya go.)

Green is also the color of mold, which, okay in most cases maybe isn’t a good thing, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that mold and cheese belong together.

Just like me and Scott Bairstow.

He just doesn’t know it yet.

So by that logic, this must be the BestCheeseInTheWorld.

So I bought it.  And there, in the store, through the miracle of modern technology, I found a recipe to use it with as well.

Since I had no idea what this cheese tasted like, I didn’t want to risk buying it and have it sit in my fridge for a decade while I, still rife with indecision, decided what flavors would go well with it.

While I was at it, I also did a little background research a la Wikipedia.  Apparently it’s sage — not mold — that creates the marbled effect (hence the name), and it’s pronounced daaahrby — not derby — with a proper English accent, as the British are wont to do.

When I got it home and ripped into the packaging with the ferocity of an 11-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert, (hey — I like my cheese), I actually found the flavor pretty mild.  Nothing to get worked up about.

But the open-faced sandwiches I ended up making with it?

Those are worth mentioning.  And I would venture to say that you don’t need to hunt down Sage Derby cheese to make these bad boys.  Any good melting cheese will do the trick.

They’re open-faced corned beef, cheese, and pickled onion sandwiches.  I found the original recipe here, on Food.com, and it’s everything you could look for in a summer weeknight meal:  it’s fast, and it uses the broiler so you don’t need to heat up the entire house with the oven.

To make them, you will need:

  • 1/2 onion, sliced paper-thin
  • 2 Tbsp. cider vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp. water
  • 2 Tbsp. sugar
  • Pinch red pepper flakes
  • 4 slices of Irish Soda Bread or French Bread or some kind of thick, crusty bread
  • Mayonnaise
  • Spicy Mustard (like Dijon)
  • Thin-sliced corned beef
  • Sage Derby cheese (or some kind of good melty cheese you know you like)

1.  Slice your 1/2 onion as thin as possible.  This would be much, much easier with a mandoline.  You know.  In case anyone wants to buy me one.

2.  Stick the onion in a bowl, and add 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar…

…2 tablespoons of water…

…2 tablespoons of sugar…

…and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

Toss to coat, cover the bowl, and stick it in the fridge.

3.  Preheat your oven’s broiler.

(Um.  I don’t have a photo of that.)

4.  Slice your bread as thick as you’d like.

5.  Spread a thin layer of mayo and spicy mustard.

6.  Remove your pickled onion from the fridge and drain the excess liquid, then add that to your bread slices and top with corned beef.

7.  Slice your cheese thin and add that as the final layer.

8.  Place your sandwiches on a baking sheet and stick ’em 6-8 inches under the broiler for 3-4 minutes.

Watch close — you don’t want to burn the cheese!

9.  Okay, so it looks like boring peasant food, but trust me.  Just take a bite.

Feel better?

Open faced corned beef cheese sandwich with pickled onions

I mean, if I’d slapped a French name on it, like Croque-Monsieur, you’d be all over these puppies.

I know we were.

Two nights in a row.

This Might Be Scarier than Sponge Bob with a Speculum.

I have something to tell you.

It might make you think I’m odd.

But you probably already think I’m odd and you’re still here, so really, that makes you kind of odd.

Which is probably why we get along so well.

Anyway.

It has to do with how much I dread a regular check-up like appointment I have to make with a certain specialist where I sit in an exam room so he/she can stare into certain orifices and pull skin to the side and poke around.  It’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world.  Like an invasion of my entire being.  I don’t know this person.  She doesn’t know me.  Yet here she is, looking inside, inwardly (if not outwardly) judging my hygienic practices and probably how I wear my makeup.

Yep.  I’m scared of the Eye Doctor.

What?

You thought I was going to say something you thought was uncomfortable like Gynecologist or Dentist, didn’t you?

Well.  I have news.  Those folks have nothing on Eye Doctors.

I’ve had the same Vag Guy for the past 5 years.  I’m comfortable with him.  My vag is comfortable with him.  We know what to expect and how long it will take.  There’s no guesswork involved — just some mild groping and a tissue sample.  The entire yearly appointment takes all of 5 minutes for him to get in and get out.  Wham, bam, ThankYouMa’am.

And the Dentist?  Them’s small potatoes.  You see the Dentist for all of 30 seconds at the end of an appointment, and he/she is always super nice in a desperate attempt to make up for the fact that everybody hates them.  It’s the hygienists you have to bond with.  Until recently, I had the same hygienist the entire time we lived here.  Every 6 months, Penny was my buddy.  She taught me how to floss properly, introduced me to Reach Gum Care woven floss, used water — not scrapers — to clean my teeth, and basically renewed my entire faith in the dental industry.

source

Nothing scary about that.

Then there’s the eye doctor.

I abhor going to the eye doctor.

I think I’d rather get a pap smear by Sponge Bob than go to the eye doctor.

Okay.  That’s not true at all.  We all know how I feel about him.

(Seriously, I was going to try to find a funny Sponge Bob photo to put here, and I couldn’t do it.  It was just too scary.  You’ll have to use your imagination.)

Not to belittle the undoubtedly interesting and challenging field that is optometry, but I have to say — it seems a lot less exact than the previous fields mentioned, which involve things like lab tests and visual verification to determine when something’s out of whack.

Unfortunately for them, Optometrists have to depend on the patient for much of their diagnosis.  And I’m sorry, but I’m just not a good patient.

When you shine a light in my eye and then 2 seconds later stick a steampunk machine in front of my face ask me to stare at a lit chart on the wall and ask me what I can read, I feel like laughing because it seems like you must be joking.

You just directed a light into my eyeball and now you want me to stare across the room and read?

I stare at a fuzzy ball, 2 or 3 lines down from the top of the chart, and make a guess.

You grunt, flip a switch, and ask me if the fuzzy ball is now better or worse.

Better or worse than what?

It’s still fuzzy.

You’re asking me to decipher the difference between fuzzy and fuzzy.

I get frustrated.

You get frustrated.

I feel like an idiot.

You probably feel like an idiot.

But hey — at least you’re getting paid for this.

And so it goes.  Four appointments, 3 trial lenses, and hundreds of dollars worth of prescription drops and cleaning fluids later, I have to miss a half day of work today to pay you a surprise visit because I was up all night with an intense headache behind one eye.  Because, I realize, my new prescription is much, much stronger than my old one.  And I can’t see.  And I want to cry.  And I don’t want to see you, and you most certainly don’t want to see me, yet still here we are.

A different doctor every year.

So I know the problem must be me, which makes it even worse.

Always an ordeal.

Always an embarrassment.

I think it might be time to consider Lasik.

What doctor do you fear the most?

 

 

Chicken & Waffles: Like Socks With Sandals, It Just Makes Sense.

Last weekend, a baby and her adorable parents took us to lunch.

See how cute those parents are?

In Durham, NC, there’s a place that, while the menu had grown over time, specializes in exactly 2 things:

Chicken ‘n Waffles.

Say, what?

Sounds strange, but Durham people know that Dame’s Chicken & Waffles is something special.  Which is why we weren’t too surprised to see the gigantic line outside.

Bummed, but not surprised.

How long is the wait?

So we waited.

And we watched people eat.

And we studied the menu.

And we became mildly concerned that we were going to starve to death, right there on the street, watching people devour heaping plates of fried chicken and waffles.

Jesus, my husband has to stop looking cute while holding babies.

We became delusional from the hunger, gnawing on mice and stray appendages.

Have I been reading too much Hunger Games?

They called us just in time.

And all was right with the world.

So I’ll get right down to it.

The place has a great atmosphere — tiny, crowded, and cramped enough to see what everyone else is ordering.

(Pssst – I’ll give you a hint:  Chicken.  And Waffles.)

Alaina and I got started with champagne and lemonade.  You know, to celebrate getting in.  We were going to go with mimosas, but our waitress killed us on the up sell.  The great thing is that they ended up being less than $7.00 each, and we were able to carry our mini wine cooler-tasting bottles of champagne through the Durham art show, taking nips to dull the pain of my poor choice in footwear.

I’m glad our drinks were light, because the meal was certainly not.

First came the sides.

A bowl of incredible fresh fruit — plump, ripe strawberries and sweet, juicy pineapple.  The cheese grits (left) were delicious — not gritty at all, which, in my non-southern humble little opinion, is the only way grits are tolerable.

The spicy greens, while not exactly aesthetically appealing, were divine, if you like that sort of thing.

spicy collard greens

Judge with your mouth — not with your eyes.

And the mac ‘n cheese.  Oh, my.  I could’ve had this as my meal.

mac 'n cheese

But we were just getting started.

On the back of Dame’s menu are several suggested chicken ‘n waffle combinations, including the “Orange Speckled Chabo,” served with a fried chicken cutlet, sweet potato waffle, honey-dijon mustard, and orange-honeycomb schmear, or the “Buff Brahmas,” served with your choice of wings or cutlets drizzled with whiskey cream sauce, a classic waffle, and peach apricot schmear.

The Buff Brahmas.

The verdict?

My fried chicken was cooked perfectly — nice and moist inside.  Unfortunately, it was a little soggy due to the whisky cream sauce, which, while mighty tasty, definitely took away from the texture of the chicken.  But everyone else loved theirs.

Now.

Let me tell you about the waffles.

And the schmear.

What’s schmear?  Well.  According to me, they’re little flavored dollops of mouth exploding gastrogasms.

To Dame’s, they’re flavored dollops of whipped sweet cream butter.

I schmeared my peach apricot schmear all over my beautiful waffle (and I’m not normally a waffle person), topped that with some maple syrup, and died.

Dame's Chicken and Waffles

Then I came back to life to eat some more.

Then I died again.

It. Was. Incredible.

Justin order the “Orange Speckled Chabo,” and we both felt that the sweet potato waffles were inferior to my classic ones.  Though his orange schmear was zesty and delicious.

But mine?  That combination of peach apricot schmear, whiskey cream sauce, and maple syrup was phenomenal.

A plate full of artery-clogging, diabetes-triggering deliciousness.

I wouldn’t take it back for a second.

In the end, we all felt like this.

But it was well — well worth the wait.

Have you had any excellent meals lately?

Dame's Chicken & Waffles on Urbanspoon

Dos and Don’ts of an NYC Day Trip.

DO ride the subway.

It’s not as confusing as it looks.

DON’T fall into the gap, regardless of what the clothing brand might tell you.

The NYC subway is full of helpful tidbits.

 

DO look up.

There’s life up there.

DON’T buy what you can’t afford.

I’m just looking. I swear.

DO reflect.

9/11 Memorial

Rebuilding.

DON’T try to use the Burger King restroom near the 9/11 memorial.

Unless you want to spend an hour of your one day in NYC in line at a Burger King restroom.

DO take the Staten Island Ferry.

Parking is cheap, the ferry is free, and it’s a great way to see the skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

DON’T stop to take photos in the middle of an intersection.

This could have been my last.

DO eat.  A lot.

Never full enough.

 

DON’T assume that all fashion is good fashion.

Camel toe.

DO be grateful for guides who keep you on track.

If it weren’t for them, I’d probably still be wandering around Little Italy trying to pick a place to eat.

DON’T blink.  You might miss something.

You Can Hardly Call It A Tease If It’s Completely Naked, Can You?

If I had a dollar for everything I’ve told you I would post about but have never actually posted about, I’d be able to buy… like… two Starbucks lattes.

Grandes.

But there’s one thing I’m particularly itching to share.

And of course, since it’s still not finished, I can only give you a peek.

A teaser, if you will.

DIY Chalk Paint Dresser

A hardwareless peek.

It might just be because she’s completely naked, but I think she’s pretty sexy.

You?

If Teachers Were Allowed to Carry Flasks, I Maybe Could Do that Job, Too.

The checkout lady at the grocery store thought I was a teacher.

She scanned the glue stick I’d purchased in order to assemble approximately 587 open house invitations for work (okay, maybe it was 120) later that evening, and then asked the question.

“Are you a teacher?”  Big smile.

I looked at the artichoke, thick hickory smoked bacon, 2 bars of salted chocolate, green onions, cauliflower, and four bottles of wine that followed the little orange stick down the moving assembly line counter, like good little students on their way to lunch.

My friend Katie (yes, another Katie), who actually is a teacher, suggested that it must have been the wine — not the glue stick — that tipped her off.

And I have to agree.

Sometimes I think maybe I’d like to be a teacher.  Only not the glue stick-wielding, double line-arranging, hand-holding kind because things like craft projects and untied shoe laces and stalactite boogers make me uncomfortable.

And I have very little patience.

And I wouldn’t have nearly a big enough wine budget.

But sometimes I think I’d like to be the Dr.-preceeding, university-working, wall-to-wall office bookshelf-having kind.

I’m not sure what I’d teach, but I would teach it well.  I’d find a way to reach into the minds of impressionable young people — people who actually want to learn — and mold their pliable little brains into whatever strong-yet-imperfect sculpture I think future generations should uphold.

Okay.

Like my friend Dennis would attest, though he’d somehow manage to avoid the cliché, that’s easier said than done.

Which is probably why I’m not a teacher.

But here’s the thing.

Each and every one of us has the opportunity to teach something every day — whether it’s part of our actual job or not.

From the way we speak to the lady behind the grocery store checkout counter who somehow mistakes us for someone who might choose to hang out with 30 children all day to the way we react when our spouses tell us they dropped and cracked the iPhones they refused to adorn with heavy-duty cases because they didn’t like the bulk, we always have the choice to handle encounters with grace and finesse over short tempers and rudeness.

With the exception of jackass drivers on the roads, I’m rarely rude to a stranger.  Where I could stand to improve is the way I am with the ones I love.

Because, whether we realize it or not, we’re always being watched.

Minds — both young and old — are always being affected by the choices we make every day.

We have the ability and choice to make someone’s day better, or to make it worse.  It’s as simple as that.

And I think, in my obviously thoughtful and optimistic state of mind this morning, that I’m going to focus on making days better.

And maybe the wall-to-wall office bookshelves will come with time.

How about you? What do you tend to choose?

P.S. I lied before when I told you that I imported all of my previous subscribers. I was wrong. This did not happen. And now I’m sad. So please re-subscribe by typing your email address into the “Subscribe to this blog via email” section in the top-right corner of the page, just below the header. I MISS you!

Public Service Announcement. Then I’ll Stop Bugging You Forever. Or Until Next Time.

I thought I should let you know that I actually managed to move all of you lovely email subscribers myself.  Apparently I was not very diligent with my research after 11 hours of headaches during yesterday’s transfer, but today I’ve managed to fix some issues with a clear head.  So, if you were actually nice enough to already re-subscribe, hopefully this won’t cause you to get double emails.  Let me know if you do, and I will fix it.

The people who will no longer get updates, apparently, are my lovely followers from WordPress.com.  (You know who you are.)  So, if you want to continue getting updates for my site, please subscribe via the email subscriber in the top right corner of my page.

That is all.

For now.

Thank you for your time.