I’ve been awarded the Inspiring Blog Award by Niki at Meet Your Treat.
First, I’d like to thank Niki, of course, for sharing her lovely recipes and thoughts with us random Internet people, and giving me this award.
The rules are simple – the awardee (is that even a word? Let’s hope so…) must share 7 things about themselves that their gentle readership won’t already know and then pass the award on to some other inspiring bloggers…
So here goes -
1) As much as I like the ideas and principles – and even the act – of eating healthy, I am still a hard-core junk food lover. I know, I know, like you didn’t know that already.
2) I went to public school through 4th grade and then was homeschooled for the remainder of my education… did you know that? The revolutionaries will be homeschooled…
3) When I was a little kid we lived in this old Victorian mansion that was haunted. For real.
4) I think I might be allergic to shrimp.
5) I studied botany/herbal medicine for years and wanted to become a Clinical Herbalist before I got married and became a food writer…
6) Back home, my brothers and I were certified weather-spotters. Oh yeah, we were spotting that weather like crazy. The highlight of our short but terribly interesting career was a slight twister than snaked itself down in the field across from our house after a huge storm. We were able to call it in and save the day. Sort of.
7) My drink of choice nowadays is Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood tea. It comes in a glass bottle that’s smeared with red, green and yellow and has a big picture of Bob Marley laughing on the front. It’s wicked good, and very mellowing… very. And no, there is no pot involved. I’m so rad.
Alright – enough about me, let’s move on to these inspiring bloggers:
Does that make *me* cool? No. I was wishing a little of the hard-core-ness would wear off on me, but no such luck.
HOWEVER – I was able to abscond one of my dear one’s old Harley Ts and ‘refashion’ it into something at least semi-cool for the summer. I can try, can’t I?
Are you ready for a post with too many pictures of my chunky self? Focus on the T, people, focus… Sorry about the crappy quality – until I get the money to higher a professional photographer, you will be made to suffer through the products of my iPod camera.
It started out a man’s t-shirt. I changed that.
Talk about Biker Chic…
Aha. Ruching is something new to me. Thanks to thelittle boutique I’m working at (everybody snicker now…) I have gotten quite the eye for fashionable details on clothing. I’ve also got an eyeful of price tags as well, and I’ve determined that I have to just buck up and do the detailing myself. The End.
Anyway -ruching. Done in five minutes with two equal lengths of thin elastic, purchased for about $.07 at the sewing supply store. Wowsers – though you’d be hard pressed to prove it using pictures of me, the slight gathering at the sides of an otherwise straight garment really improves the look!
… now for the really complicated part. I cut out the neck band and hem…
sewed a smaller length of elastic to the shoulder to tighten it up a bit (and, I really like ruching…)
Cut the sleeves so that they are now ‘cap’ styled. I used another shirt as a pattern.
Why didn’t I ever hear about cap sleeves before? They’re a revelation to me and had to be included in this project.
Viola. Me looking as hip as I can manage, including my favorite fashion *detail* – bright red nails.
In the end, it was absurdly easy for me to do this and only took about half an hour. Total cost? Well, the shirt was free, the elastic was 7-10 cents and my time is just not that hot a commodity. Compare that, if you will, to the granola looking tops in the store, adorned with their $50 price tag.
There will be more of this sort of thing happening around here…
I hate it when that happens, but, inspired by my lovely blog-neighbor Castle of Blue (you can read her sweet post HERE) I thought I would make a list of the 11 creepiest things about me.
Because that’s how I roll.
Are you ready?
11. I’m not afraid of being creepy – which, isn’t that creepy in itself?
10. I name everything. Everything. It creeps people out.
9. When I was in fourth grade, I convinced the group of ‘cool guys’ in my class that I was actually a vampire and that my fruit punch was really blood… enough said. All the other girls in class were batting eyes at them and trying to get dates. Creepy.
8. I love Tim Burton, and he’s Super Creepy.
7. Sometimes, when I eat things that have little pieces like rice or ground beef, it goes up my nose from my throat and I have to do creepy things to get them out. I don’t know how it happens – but it does, you can ask Alex. Ok, so that was more *gross* than *creepy* but oh well.
6. When I am pleased with myself over something I have done, I make this uber creepy laughing sound that *sort of* resembles The Count’s laugh from Sesame Street, but not enough to make it *not* freak people out. For confirmation, you can ask my boss, who says, “What is THAT? Are you just being Creepy?” Yes, yes I am.
5. When I was a kid, I fell in love with all the wrong people in Disney movies, like, all the bad guys. My mom was wicked worried… it creeped her out.
4. I have one eye that squints really hard when I smile so that I look like a pirate – my mouth gets all cooked too – it’s creepy.
3. The toenails on my little toes don’t grow. At All. They haven’t for years.
2. One of my most famous parlor tricks is swallowing a piece of spaghetti that I’m holding and then pulling it back up out of my throat. Oh yeah. (Hang in there, it’s almost over)
1. Who knows “Sideways Stories from Wayside School“? Anybody? Anybody? I have read this series an inordinate amount of times. It is, by far, the creepiest children’s book series in the history of the Entire World, And I Adored It. Still do.
The End. You’re free. Go roam in the world among those who aren’t as creepy as I.
I had to choose between writing a traditional English sonnet, or three haiku poems. For me, this was like choosing between having one of my legs cut off, or getting a strawberry ice cream cone; Easy -peasy.
I love haiku in the same way I love Twitter- it causes you to be brief and succinct. There is a challenge to contain your words and force them into saying something BIG in a short way, or something LONG in a brief way, or something POWERFUL in a subtle way. I also appreciate that they are measured by syllables, meter and ideas rather than rhyme. I hate rhyming, not sure why, but there it is. I had a lot of fun coming up with these and have been counting my syllables all day…..
So unprepared for
How loving you was going
To make me lovely
Beautiful Spring Sun,
Like sweet kisses on my skin,
Reminds me of you.
I plan on wearing
Gaudy Costume Jewelry
To your funeral.
It is beautiful,
Is is not? Every time she
Lights up when he smiles?
Bullfrog songs at night,
Ever loud and lovely, yet
Chasing sleep away.
Keep making faces
Like that and the world just might
Let you be alone!
Why do we worry
When the sun still faces us
With a free, brave smile?
And There You Have It;
Homework Haiku Poetry.
The End.
i just looked at the stats for my site- never a very encouraging thing to do on a monday night when my hair is threatening to eat my head and my stomach is threatening to eat its way out of my body *and* my homework is threatening to eat its way through the paper its written on, just to escape being turned it. lots of threats. lots of eating going on. not a whole awful lot of anything else. i have determined never to mind the numbers; i write because i must, and if you read it- you read it and i am thrilled. never spend time writing for the person who doesn’t read- it sounds like something my class instructor would say. and no, she isn’t the one who prompted me to so blatantly break the laws of capitalization, i’m just feeling rather lowercase tonight. you know what i mean, don’t you? ever have a day, or time in the day, when everything is lowercase, all the words go together right but none of them is willing to stand out and be capitalized? it’s days like this when i find *one* song and play it over and over again until words appear right once again. tonight the song is the haunting and melancholic new tune by taylor swift and the civil wars, a lullaby i can’t get out of my head- just like the lowercases.
along with counting how many people click on the each of these blog pages, the stats processor also keeps track of how people find the blog, what they typed into their search bar that made google think my blog was the right answer. usually there are searches like, ‘washboard storms’, ‘washboards’, ‘julia child quote’ – all things that actually make sense, but tonight, listed among the searches, was this gem,
‘fat, artsy people’.
Really? (whoa, i came out of lowercase for a moment.)
someone really typed that into a search bar – and found me? interesting. very interesting.
tonight the lesson in the creative writing workshop was on ‘finding your voice’. the assignments included writing out a strong memory from your childhood that might have influenced your ‘writing voice’ (hence the homework doing its acidic work on the page just to the left of this computer), and creating an ‘i believe’ list that gives some clues as to your ‘writing personality and style’. ah so. perhaps my voice is that of a fat, artsy sort of person. maybe i have a fat, artsy writing style and google knows more about it that i do. maybe that’s what i am missing. i haven’t found my fat, artsy voice. maybe i am trying to sound too skinny…..
and now, just for you, my ‘i believe list’. you can decide for yourself what kind of voice i have, its weight and personality type.
i believe
i believe that words are beautiful and should be treated as such
i believe that A.A.Milne was a true literary genius and utterly perfect in style. utterly
i believe that sometimes, a run-on sentence is *exactly* what is needed
i believe that writing on oneself should be considered a legitimate literary form
i believe in writing things that might set paper – or brains – on fire
i believe that you shouldn’t beat people in the face with floral descriptions of everyday objects
i believe that, should i ever happen to run into Charles Dickens on the street, we will become fast, close friends
i believe that the first trick to writing well is simply seeing well. see what you write. write what you see.
i believe in detail – the single detail that could end up changing the world for someone
i believe in names – good ones
i believe fantasy will never, ever, ever, be able to compete with reality for interest, depth, perspective, inspiration, or wealth of material to work from
i believe that juxtaposition is most interesting
what do you believe? about writing, fat, art, voices – do you believe the voices you hear and what they say about fat artists?
please, do share with the class….
and i’ve included that sad song, just in case you have a day without capital letters in the near future….
No recipes, no witty stories about my past (“Wait,” I hear you say, “there were witty stories about your past?”)
No cute pictures (Ok, maybe one or two)
Just random thoughts from me in the middle of the night because after listening to me read four chapters in Luke and a good chunk of God’s discourse in Job, my husband has fallen dead asleep on the couch and I am left alone.
Alone with you, dear reader, for company. I’m sorry.
I dislike talking on the phone. Intensely. If you are reading this, and you are someone I talk to on the phone, don’t be downcast, I probably love talking to *you*, even on the phone. It isn’t *you*, it’s the phone. I don’t know why. Maybe because my phone interrupts me by making random phone calls to *other* people while I am in the middle of a conversation. Maybe because my phone thinks that I am Carl Miller (if you are reading this, Carl Miller- there is some home security company who wants to protect your home. They keep calling me but I feel I can’t set something up for you since I don’t know your address..) and lies to people’s caller id, sending them into mild panic, wondering about this ‘Carl Miller’ fellow and why he would be calling them. I am not Carl Miller, but let’s face it, I have always had a problem with phones, just like I have had problems with vacuum cleaners and blenders. I don’t know why- it has always been thus, it isn’t my new phone’s fault at all.
And maybe I am just not technically advanced enough to work the things. Maybe. Maybe I need a personal upgrade. Ann, version 2.0.
Retro is much more my style…. dig it?
My husband and I are threatening to take up running. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to write, I love the *idea* of being thin and in shape; I wish I loved to exercise as much. We *both* hate to run- so why did we pick this as a recreation? Because we’re too stinking happy, that’s why! Something had to change, and so we decided to take up- not knitting, not fishing, not polo or bridge, but running. I think we will learn to like it. After those first few thousand excruciating miles, I will probably even look forward to it and then we will have to find something else to hate. We’ll see.
I was in a semi-public place today when a semi-stranger walked up to me and said, “Aren’t you the gal that was in the paper yesterday?” I could have fallen over right there in front of him. Yes. Yes, I am the gal you saw in the paper. I am the newest columnist for our lovely local paper, writing every other week a column about- cooking. Are you surprised? I am.
I am A Writer. The semi-stranger said that he was looking forward to reading more from me in coming weeks. Did you get that? I had to go back and read it real slow- someone I don’t know liked something I wrote that was published in a newspaper. Oh. My. Word.
What does this have to do with the Manly Art of Knitting? Nothing. I just like the picture. A lot. Knitting is totally a manly art, especially if you knit while on a horse, dressed like a cowboy. Just sayin’.
That has been another episode of Random Things with Ann.
Today I snuck into a high-brow cafe at lunch time in my “just doing laundry” outfit, simply to sit in the far back corner and drink their strong, smokey coffee. I hid my mess of hair in a too-big, too-ugly, god-awful-acrylic knit hat (which I *did not* make) and kept my jacket zipped tight against my chest so no one would see my worn out t-shirt . The waitress, slim and dressed entirely in black, brought me a warm porcelain mug with its miniature pitcher of cream. Perfect. I inhaled and paused everything in order to fully appreciate the moment.
I associate coffee with the best moments I ever had with my father, when I was young enough to still think the staunch and steaming stuff was something only an adult could ever love. My dad would take a bitterly dark cup of coffee and sweeten it, cool it with ounces of cream, then remove the crusts from slices of cheap, white Wonder Bread, which he would then squeeze into tight rolls, dip into the coffee and feed to my brother and I. This was adult food- just like dark chocolate, mushrooms and red wine- transformed into something a child could adore; warm, milky and sugary as syrup. We loved it. I remember my coffee-colored father with his coffee-scented breath in the morning after he’d smoked his first cigarette, how his night-grown whiskers prickled against my cheek when he kissed me, murmuring endearments in his native Spanish. It didn’t happen very often, or for very long, but to this day I can’t sip a cup of coffee without feeling very young and very loved.
