The scene: A bunch of girls walking around downtown New Haven wearing skin tight mini dresses and heels.
Random guy on the street: Damn. That is a lot of butt. Mmhmm, a lot of butt.
Here’s a sweet quote from a book I’m reading, The Hotel On The Corner of Bitter & Sweet:
I have mixed feelings about this post. Part of me doesn’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions because I don’t believe that we need one more thing in our lives to beat ourselves up over for not “getting it right.” But, the over-riding part is all about goal setting (or “new moon wishing,” for those in the know 
). Last year’s resolution was inspired by Brene Brown and it was to “live with courage and whole-heartedly.” I went to therapy, started reading self-help books and practicing the techniques, developed a home practice, spent a lot of time talking and listening to the voices in my head (“archetypes”, for those who are into new moon wishing) and started to accept and love my whole imperfect self. Whole-hearted living isn’t exactly the sort of thing that you can “achieve;” it’s a practice, so I’m still working at it, but I do feel good about the changes I made in my life.
Speaking of changes – my dear teacher, Jean, told me over break that only 8% of the population keeps their New Year’s resolutions and that is because oftentimes people want something, but they’re not willing to change to get it. I took a look at my goals for 2012 and then took a step back to see what needed to change in my life in order to achieve those goals. I decided it all comes down to food. This is a big deal for me because I don’t cook and haven’t cooked, or gone to the grocery store in three years (and really, let’s be honest, I haven’t cooked in five years, but at least I went to the grocery store while living in Japan). According to my mother’s theory, I can read, therefore I can cook, but I know that in practice it doesn’t always work this way. So my New Year’s Resolution is all about food – learning to shop, learning to cook, learning to eat well and nourish myself in this way. I made a concept map of all this – food/herbs at the center, with lines drawn to the areas in my life that I think can be supported by food, with lines drawn to the goals I have for this year that are supported by the things that can be supported by food. It’s nuts. I know it, and Linds told me so when I showed her. But she also encouraged me to post in online so that people could see my crazy. I wasn’t really into this idea, because I don’t typically want anyone to see my crazy, but then again, that’s part of the practice of whole-hearted living, and, you know, accountability. Damn – two New Year’s resolutions in one.
Here’s my crazy. Be gentle! And Happy New Year and thanks for following!
I really should be studying for my last exam today, but let’s pretend that, by taking a break, I’m somehow consolidating and committing that information to memory.
One of the big changes for me this semester was learning how to feed myself. Typically, when left to my own devices, I will eat granola bars, yogurt, peanut butter out of the jar, apples/oranges and cereal. They’re quick, they’re easy, they transport well. On the rare days when E didn’t prepare all three of my meals, eating like this wasn’t so bad. But, I figured that a semester of that nonsense would result in some serious malnourishment, so I begged E for lessons before I left. I have to say that I haven’t put most of what he taught me to good use (around week four, I gave up and added “grain + frozen veggies” to my quick, easy, transports well diet), but I have been making some pretty simple/awesome soups.
The beginning is always the same: Sweat down an onion with salt. Then I add in whatever kind of soup it’s going to be and water (pipe stock, as they say in the industry). Then I ignore it on the stove for about an hour, season it (if it needs it – E was very good about teaching me to use salt. Hypertensive crisis you might say? Delicious, I say), let it cool, blend it to perfection (I used to mock E for his fancy food processor, but when my broccoli cheddar soup came out looking like broccoli nachos, I went out and bought a blender).
Here are the soups I made: Top left – broccoli cheddar, top right – butternut squash, bottom left – beet, bottom right – cauliflower. There was also a pretty awesome black bean chili, but I ate that before I took a picture of it (not for lack of opportunity – I literally ate that every day for two weeks straight).
If you’re interested in learning more about E’s views on soup, go here.
Just had to share this really sweet moment from this morning:
My clinical group and I went out to brunch at Bella’s today in celebration of finishing our Med-Surg rotation. Beth had to have her car jumped before brunch, and when we came out it had died again.
Sarah: Oh no! I don’t have cables!
Beth: It’s okay, I have cables.
Sarah: Oh great, why don’t you just drive your car over to the parking lot [where my car is parked]?
Beth: Um…
Me: She can’t.
So Erika drove her car around and pulled up alongside to jump Beth’s car, but couldn’t figure out how to pop her hood. Beth and I were trying to explain where the lever might be when a man came up to us and asked if we needed any help. Beth seemed like she had a handle on things, but the man was a mechanic and so she accepted. He got everything hooked up and the car started and we all thanked the man. My car needs an oil change so I asked the man where he worked.
Man: Oh, I don’t work as a mechanic anymore. I used to be one, but now I’m a nurse.
Me, Shelly, Sarah: OHHHHH! We’re nursing students!
It’s official: Nurses are awesome.
I went to an all-girls school. I think I made it to one Bellarmine-St. Francis game, during which I probably spent most of my time talking about other things with my girlfriends. In college we didn’t have much of a football team. No really, they actually had to discontinue it because there were too few players. Again, I think I made it to one LC game (the last one), where I think I probably spent most of my time wondering how/why the football and cross-country teams had managed to latch onto each other (they showed up to each other’s meets/games half naked in orange and black body paint). Suffice to say, school spirit and sports aren’t really my thing.
Now I’m in grad school and people are all abuzz about the Yale-Harvard game. I guess, more specifically, they’re abuzz about the tailgate before the game, but really it’s all the same. With the game just a little less than two weeks away, the really motivated people have been rallying support and selling Yale-wear. I just got an email about these shirts and they were too funny not to share. In case you can’t read the bar underneath “Step 1: Drop Out,” it says “Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Matt Damon and 69 others like this.”
Where's Waldo?
Happy Halloween! I used to view Halloween as an excuse to wear stuff that my mother would never have let me out of the house in (except for the couple of times I dressed up in my old uniform and did the Catholic school girl thing), but after freezing my nearly-exposed ass off in Portland my first Halloween, I decided that it just wasn’t worth it. I entered a new phase of costume-wearing: The cheap, practical, warm phase.
This year I went as Waldo. Not super original, I know. But I had the shirt, the scarf (thanks Steph for the wedding party favor!) and the glasses (yup, didn’t even wear my contacts out – doesn’t get much more comfortable than that) already, so I decided to knit myself a hat. I bought the cheapest yarn I could find at the LYS, Knit New Haven, and modified a pattern from my Stitch n’ Bitch book (modified = used fuzzy math). For the curious:
Supplies: One ball of red and white yarn (my guess is DK/sport – I misplaced the labels, but I did 24 st to 4-ish”), set of size 5 double pointed needles.
Pattern: CO 119 st; 1.5″ k2p2 (red); 4″ knit (alternating white and red every inch); place markers every 17 st; decrease every marker for one round, then knit one round; do this three more times; decrease every round until only 7 st left (cont. to alternate colors every 1″); loop yarn through remaining stitches and tie off.
My finished product was a bit big, but only by a smidge, so my genius idea was to wash it and then blow dry it, since supposedly wool shrinks when you wash/dry it. Somehow the hat expanded even more, but now it has this cute slouchy look that I’m kind of into. Stacey, the manager at Breathing Room, who also crochets amigurumi as her day job, said that I might have accidentally stretched the hat while washing/drying it and that I could sew some thin elastic into the band to help make sure it stays on my head. Great idea! Thanks Stacey!
After all this, I donned my costume and headed out for a night of fun at GPSCY, only to be evacuated 30 minutes later because of a fire alarm. With $8-$10 covers everywhere else, we ended up drinking $1 Mike’s Hard Lemonades (I stopped drinking these about the same time I stopped wearing slutty Halloween costumes) at a pizza shop and then called it a night. The good news? I was one of the warmer people waiting outside in the snow during the fire alarm.
