Wee Feast

My weekend in New York was exhilarating if extremely cold! It was everything expected: endless cups of coffee, hours of walking through neighborhoods, and long chats with friends. Highlights include Chilean hospitality (complete with free glasses of port) and keeping a running commentary on all the subcultures. The pace of the city is a little much for me at times, but a visit is always great fun. Thanks, Allison and Laura, for letting us stay with you!

Speaking of being a little much for me, I am looking forward to some needed alone-time in the near future. The social whirlwind is grand for a time, but I always come out of it searching for a break. So tonight I hope to curl up and unwind. On the agenda is a nap and a pizza, which should suit the rainy forecast perfectly. Maybe even a few household chores if I feel particularly ambitious; I love the accomplishment of checking things off.

I’ll turn it over to you: when you need to get away from it all, how do you relax?

I don’t like to stress about travel, but I do like to be prepared. That being my natural tendency, however, can be a slippery slope to over-packing. Bringing too much stuff along can dampen your enjoyment of your trips. It’s cumbersome to carry, lots to keep track of, and makes the return packing a stress before you’ve even left!

Here are some ways I keep myself from over-packing:

• Choose a small container. Better yet, plan to share your suitcase space with someone else. Set limits and an appeal to courtesy can often lower the amount you bring.
• Lay out everything you want to bring on a flat surface, distributed into categories. Your piles might be: travel, shoes, going out, outerwear, pajamas, tops, bottoms, or dresses. Once you’ve set it all out, remove one item from each category.
• Now talk yourself through your plans for the trip, and justify what you have time to wear. If it’s a weekend away, do you really need two sets of jeans?
• If you’re worried about feeling like you don’t have many options, allow yourself to over-pack one type of item that doesn’t take up much space. Bring two bikinis or six pairs of earrings.
• Don’t forget your cell phone charger!

In the end, I rarely find I’ve ever traveled, needed something desperately, and been unable to obtain it. I like to remind myself that I can borrow or buy almost anything at my destination. Light travels are the way to go, in my opinion.

What are your best packing tips?

It’s easy to dwell on your weaknesses. I’m terrible at softball, can’t parallel park in small spaces, and don’t really think before I speak. Maybe you find yourself repeating similar things in your head: I’ll never be a good dancer, I can’t pay attention in meetings, and I’m terrible at accounting.

But why do we invest so much time focusing on so-called flaws?

I think it’s more important to look at the flip side of these statements. I strongly encourage you to think of the things you aren’t so great at, and then find something related at which you are truly excellent. I’m terrible at softball, but I’m a great walking buddy. I can’t parallel park, but I can handle multi-day road trips with ease. I don’t think before I speak, but you can count on me for an honest answer.

Maybe your dancing skills are below-average. What can you do instead? Make interesting music mixes? Always meet the most fun people when you go out? Have the ability to get into any club through your sneaky ways?

When you start thinking like this, you begin to leverage your unique strengths. It’s a waste of your talent and potential to lament the things you think make you lacking. Instead, invest in your self-confidence and self-awareness to really “work what your momma gave you!” It shouldn’t matter if your office team mates, boyfriend, great-aunt Mildred, or Finnish-language tutor all have some seemingly perfect skill set. What they don’t have is your unique natural strengths. When you start to take pride in what you can do rather than worry about what you can’t do, all sorts of opportunities can open up.

I know it’s not always easy to start looking at yourself like this, but positive thinking is a habit you can practice. And the more you believe in your unique strengths, the more you can find ways to shine.

So start small. What’s something you’re not so good at, and what’s a strength unique to your fabulous self?

I’ve been solidly keeping up with cooking a few “real” meals each week for dinners, which is an informal goal of mine. In between that, I tend to stick to the basics. It’s generally relaxing, and far more cost-effective than a restaurant meal. I also find it satisfying to make something from scratch.

The first dinner I’ll share with you is zucchini pasta with goat cheese and lemon peel. I also added some parmesan cheese and fresh basil. It’s a Real Simple recipie. Don’t feel like you can only eat “light” meals in summer and “heavy” meals in winter; this one was delighfully refreshing.

It was served with a mixed mesclun salad and some garlic bread.

Read more…?

My weekend was fabulous, but too short for my taste. My sister’s in town, and it’s been great to spend time with her. Highlights thus far include heated communication theory debates, eating lots of toast, enjoying delightfully strange music playlists, small bouts of tech support, and long walks through wet streets piled high with orange leaves. On the agenda for this week is a bit more cooking, perhaps finally making it to the movies, and planning our weekend in New York around where we’ll eat brunch. A show and some Chilean food might also be in the cards, but we’ll have to see where the days take us.

Today is one of those beautiful fall days, brisk but sunny. Walking outside this morning woke me up better than either my shower or my coffee. I’ve lately wondered if a vat of coffee rather than my small to-go cup would be more appropriate in the mornings these days. Maybe I’m still thrown off by daylight savings time; surely it’s not natural for the sun to set before I even leave the office. I’m doing my best to make it a habit to venture outdoors during the day if at all possible.

Enjoy your day, whatever the weather!

My first month of blogging has been great fun. This has wound up being a fabulous side project on which to focus my energies. Here’s a brief rundown of month one:

• I moved from a free Blogspot.com setup to my own (paid) web space.
• I connected with some new and old friends (hello, tiny friends!).
• I started learning about CSS and databases.
• I was able to describe myself as a writer.
• I read a lot of other blogs.

It’s been extremely empowering to self-publish. I’ve always had a lot to say (you can gather I’m the chatty sort), and I realize I’ve spent too long waiting for some variety of “official” opportunity to arise. I knew starting out I wanted to get back in the writing habit, but I had no idea how fulfilling it would be. It’s become less practice and more product, even in the span of a month.

I’m already dreaming up goals for the future. I’d like to know a bit more about coding and database management. I’m hoping to personalize my design (or consult with someone who’s more skilled in that particular area). And I’d like to write more how to articles. Already flexing those writing muscles again!

Since you’re along for the ride, let me know what you think in the comments section.

Today is a day for smiling; I’ve been pronounced “a good healer” by my dentist-type specialist, I had a chocolate-iced donut for breakfast, and the lovely Veteran’s Day holiday yesterday shook up my weekly routine in a good way.

I think it’s an appropriate time to bring up one of my favorite topics: Things I don’t, actually, feel at all guilty about enjoying this week.

Donuts

Donuts are near and dear to my heart again after years of estrangement. I had a terrible donut experience (one of those typically southern doughy donuts, fried and left to soak up the grease, tasting only of oil and chewiness to me) and soon after swore off donuts for the next 11 years. And as with one of those long-lost love stories, donuts and I were sweetly reunited about a year ago. I started with one of those tiny chocolate-covered yellow cake donuts, and moved on soon after to chocolate cake donuts and chocolate iced donuts. Add a cup of coffee and you’ve reached perfection.

Keeping up with old friends

In preparation for my trip to New York later this month, I’m eagerly anticipating catching up with some friends from my prep school days. Knowing where you’ve been always helps you to see how far you’ve come. And I haven’t had a bout of re-telling our best stories about eight times over brunch in some years.

TV on DVD

I finished season one of Gossip Girl on my laptop yesterday. Oh my goodness, what a terribly entertaining show. I hate the idea of being in a place at a time just to watch TV, so I prefer to buy and watch whole seasons at my convenience. I must say that the show was an exercise in marketing for me. The sheer proliferation of product placement impressed me, but the fact that it was so seamlessly integrated (uh, hi, a show about people who are obsessed with purchasing power) was nothing short of advertising genius. In case you’re curious, Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf are by far my favorite characters. I’m looking forward to purchasing season two in the near future.

Being warm

For a walk outside in about 38-degree (F) weather last night, I not only donned my fuzzy boots but also a puffy down jacket. Not being a winter person, I decided that this year I will not suffer the cold, even if it means shameless overdressing.

So friends, what are you indulging in this week?

There’s a good chance that if you have friends, you will have one that has gone through, will go through, or is going through a breakup. Based on my infinite expertise and a general polling of my social circle, I wanted to share a few tips for you. Here are some simple things to avoid and actions to take to help your friend, should they ever need it.

Please don’t / I wish you wouldn’t:

• Write them long, weepy condolence cards.
• Set them up on a surprise blind date.
• Tell them you hated their significant other the whole time.
• Encourage them to have that third martini.
• Interrogate them in social settings as to why the relationship ended.
• Make them the third wheel.
• Talk about or to their ex. If you must stay friends, keep your stories to yourself.
• Mention how you thought their ex was “the one,” and how you miss the presence they used to bring to holidays and family gatherings.
• Let them mourn so much that they become a hermit who only listens to sad music and composes gothic poetry in between bouts of weeping.
• Allow them to subside on a diet of mini bottles of wine and rice cakes for weeks at a time.
• Resist the post-breakup haircut. Just don’t get it the day of.
• Hug and pity them if you get the sense they are trying not to cry in front of you.
• Argue with them. For today, they are correct: all men are scum or all women are crazy.
• Call them at work to let them know their ex is seeing someone new.

Please do / Try to:

• Ask them if they want to talk about it. And be prepared to listen a lot.
• Come armed with distractions, such as movies and outings. It’s a good way to get them to shower, at least.
• Work out with them, because endorphins are awesome.
• Help remind them that there are other awesome things going on in their life, even if they are small at first.
• Let them mourn a bit, keeping in mind that you shouldn’t force someone to go out all the time. Try to strike a balance.
• Give them time. It can take a while to heal, even after the “crisis stage” has passed.
• Tell them they look fabulous/have never looked better. Encourage them to dress up and look nice. Repeat compliments.
• Make them laugh. Pull out your eighth grade class pictures if necessary.
• Include them in your weekend plans.
• As they continue the healing process, remind them that love still does exist out there (insist on forced viewings of Disney movies, the BBC Pride and Prejudice, or Pretty Woman as necessary).
• Agree with some of their ridiculous plans. Your show of support—even if, for example, they are convinced they must move to Iceland— will affirm that they have people who care about them.
• Plot juvenile revenge. Even if you never do anything, I guarantee you will have an awesome time.
• Take them to a pet store to play with puppies and kittens.
• Craftily point out things that they missed while they were in the relationship: seeing the ballet, having someone to talk politics with, a travel companion. It might surprise them enough to get them off “the my ex was perfect/my life was better” mental loop of despair.
• Offer to punch their ex in the face if you ever see them again. Simple yet effective.
• Bring them flowers. It will light up the squalor their apartment has fallen into.

I found there was one overarching contradiction that kept coming up: that nothing replaces the time it takes to heal, but that sometimes people forget how to feel good again and need help. You’ll have to make decisions about this on case-by-case basis, depending on your friend and where they are in the healing process. In general, however, my winning poker hand usually involves being available to listen, offering distractions, and getting them to laugh.

From others:

Tracey Cox’s “The Week-by-Week Breakup Survival Guide” for iVillage.com

It’s one of my most favorite week days: Friday! For the record, my favorite day of the week is definitely Saturday. Saturdays represent the blank slate of the whole weekend stretching ahead. If you’ve hopped on a plane Friday night, you get to wake up in a new city. If you’ve stayed up too late, you can make it up with a lazy sleep-in. Probably one of the best parts of Friday is the glorious anticipation of Saturday.

I’m feeling fortified today from my attempts to turn around yesterday into a more positive day. I think I struck the perfect balance of hanging in there and giving up. I blasted through my work day the best I could, left a bit early, and took a restorative nap once at home. I also managed to find time for about 4 episodes of Gossip Girl on my laptop and a quick jaunt to Origins for some delicious shower and post-shower treats.

So now, feeling in a bit of a creative lull, I’m going to open myself up for some suggestions. What, lovely readers, would you like to see me write about?

This morning is brought to you by the chipmunk-cheeks resulting from yesterday’s delightful bout of oral surgery.  The case being that I had to go to work today, I’m busy finding ways to cheer myself up.

Re-framing

The first technique is re-framing any negative thoughts so that I can get through my day. Re-framing, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is basically tricking your brain into seeing things in a more positive light.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Identify negative thought. An example would be, “My mouth hurts, and therefore my life is hard.”
2. Craftily find another angle from which to approach your negative thought. For example, “My mouth hurts, but it will be really good for my general health that I had this procedure done.”
3. Now that you’ve found the angle from which to re-frame, pour on the positivity thick. Don’t worry if you don’t really believe it yet. For example, I’d say, “Mental high-five to you, self! You did a crappy, grown-up thing, but it will be so worth it in the end. Not to mention, people at work will probably cut you some slack since they can see you’re in pain. And you get to eat soup for lunch. You love soup!”
4. The beauty of this process is that by the end, you will have planted at least the seed of positive thought. Re-framing works well for me because I think my own thoughts are easier to buy into than someone else’s. I feel a tiny bit better already, in fact.

Gratitude

My second technique to having a more positive day is to be grateful. A mindset of gratitude serves as an effective reality check for me most of the time. This is an easy technique, which involves keeping a running list of things that I am glad are in my life.

I’m grateful today for:

• Homemade potato-onion-leek soup from my friend Lauren
• Not-too-cold weather
• Wearing my favorite sweater (nothing like a hot pink outfit to cheer me up!)
• My sister moving back to the USA
• Planning a trip to New York this month
• Painkillers and the insurance to pay for them (a surgery essential)
• President-Elect Obama (history in the making)
• Hot tea

Bad TV and Blankets

Just in case I’m not totally convinced that today does not, in fact, have to suck, I like to keep my fall-back plan around: rewarding myself. I’m very deadline and reward-oriented, so that tends to work well for me. The current deal I have going on is that if I can make it though a productive day even though I feel a bit crappy, I can purchase some terrible TV on ITunes (Gossip Girl, anyone?) and curl up under my blankets in bed.

Now it’s your turn: How do you make yourself feel better when you’re feeling under the weather?