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How to Start a Book Club in 10 Easy Steps

Awesome Things, Instructions for Life, , , , , , , , ,

My husband (well, at the time boyfriend and eventually fiance) used to travel a lot for work while I was in grad school.  Sometimes I was super lucky and gto to go with him so that I could hang out with his boss’s wife, and my bff, Melissa (Boston! Miami! Seattle!  We’ve had pedicures all over this great country of ours!), but most of the time, I had mice and I had to stay home to tend to them.

Doing a mouse experiment is seriously exhausting.  They are tedious, they are long, and they are non-stop until the bitter end.  (Bitter for the mice, not so much for me…)  So, to unwind, I binged on movies.  And my drug of choice?  Romantic comedies, of course!

During one of those Seth-less rom-com marathons, I watched The Jane Austen Book Club… and my life was changed forever.  I absolutely loved the movie, but more than that, it sparked in me a brilliant idea.  You’ll never guess what it was!

I kid, of course, because it’s ridiculously obvious:

I was going to start my own book club!

While I love, adore, worship, and consume anything and everything Jane Austen wrote with a very happy heart, I realize that Pride and Prejudice isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea.  So I decided we’d read something else… and anything else!  I quickly sent out an email to some of my local girlfriends that I thought might be interested, asking them to join my book club.  And some of them did!

We met once a month-ish, took turns picking books, and read and chatted and ate and drank until I left the state.

I hear things may have continued even without me, but you can imagine that it’s hard for me to believe that a solar system could function without its sun…

(Seriously hoping The Big Bang Theory picks that line up for Sheldon to use… what a jerky, but hilarious, thing to say! ha!)

Anyway, that book club was such a saving grace for me.  Getting together with my friends, bonding over our shared experiences with the books we were reading as well as life in general and grad school in particular was awesome.  Jess, Stephanie, Ellen, Christine, and Alyssa were my lifelines and it was such a good way to de-stress and have fun in the midst of all of the things that were so stressful and un-fun (see description of mouse experiments above).

Since moving to Marshfield, I have really missed that book club.  I love having a group of good girlfriends and while I work (and play!) with a bunch of really amazing women (seriously, they are incredible— everyone deserves to have coworkers like this), I was really missing that piece of the puzzle that book club had become for me while I lived in Maryland.

So, in the midst of much hemming and hawing (not to mention all the whining about it being so hard to make friends in Marshfield) I decided to start a book club.

In a town where you don’t really have many friends, however, deciding to do something and actually doing something are two very different things.  So again with the hemming and the hawing, toying around with ideas, and dragging my awkward and nervous feet…

I thought about putting up flyers at the library, but not a ton of people my age use the library… I thought about posting an ad in the Pulse classifieds, but that’s internal to the Marshfield Clinic and I didn’t want to limit the book club to only people that work in the same place I do… I thought about advertising on Craigslit or MeetUp, but neither are as big in central Wisconsin as you might think for such a bustling metropolis and I was doubtful that I’d get much of a response…  So I procrastinated.  Until I figured it out.

And now, without further ado (because that was a lot of ado), I will share with you how I did it, in 10 simple steps.

How to Start a Book Club in 10 Easy Steps

1. Drop hints to gauge interest.  The best people to invite to a book club are, obviously, book enthusiasts… people who like to read.  And people you think you could be friends with.  So drop some hints in places you frequent, see if anyone expresses and interest, and start building a mental guest list.

Gauging Interest in Book Club

2. Choose a book.  Stop stressing about which book… just pick a book!  Pick something you’ve been interested in reading, or ask someone you’re planning to invite to pick something they are interested in reading.  There are a million and one different book club reading lists out there, and you could totally try one of those, but why not let everyone take a turn to pick– yourself included!  You’ll end up reading things you may not have otherwise picked up and that’s kind of fun!  Plus, everyone gets to feel like they’ve had input and like they can share their interests with the group.

3. Set a date.  True, it’s going to be hard to find a day that works for everyone, but it’s not going to happen for anyone unless you pick a date and time and get the ball rolling.  I ended up picking the second Thursday of the month for reasons described below in step number 5… it worked brilliantly!  The majority of the people I invited were able to come and the couple that couldn’t know that they have an absolutely commitment-free standing invitation, whether they’ve read the book or not!

4. Send an invitation.  Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!  So easy to capture someone in your Facebook web when you tempt them with a book club… and once you do you can send big, weird, group messages all the time.  Yes!  Seriously though, the event thing worked great.  I sent a message with the date, time, and location and included a link to the book on Amazon.  However you do it– send that invite with plenty of time for people to read the book.  No stress, low commitment is the best way to get people engaged and to have fun without feeling like it’s something else they have to do.

5. Engage spouses, significant others, and man friends who may not like to read.  Books aren’t for everyone, and as such, book clubs aren’t for everyone.  Personally, I like love stories… a lot.  So when I pick a book, it’s likely going to have an element of that going on and men, in particular, are often averse to such things.  So I was planning to invite a bunch of girls over and Seth was wondering what he was going to do.  Solution: Thursday night football!  Husbands, significant others, and man friends were sent invitations to what I like to call “Super Man Time Football Club” to coincide with our book club.  They were banished (with snacks) to the big tv in the basement and we stayed upstairs to chat about the book.  It worked brilliantly and it was super fun having everyone over with no one feeling left behind.  Rumor has it that Seth is thinking a foosball table in the man cave would really complete the experience 😉

6. Read the book. The second best part!  (Second only to talking about the book with other people that read it!)  Leave yourself lots of time so you don’t have to rush or stress as the date approaches and enjoy the heck out of it– because that’s the whole point!

7. Tame house beasts.  For me, this meant cleaning like a mad woman, hiding visible messes in closets and Seth’s office, and feeding my crazy dog two benadryl.  The cleaning and the hiding seemed pretty effective, the benadryl did not.  She may have cost us a member or two, but hopefully most everyone will see past the crazy into the cuteness that is my Curly girl and be willing to come back.

8. Prepare snacks.  Snacks and drinks for book club are super fun for me.  I especially love when I can make something that fits with the theme of the book.  (I’m a nerd.)  For example, we read a book by a local Marshfield, Wisconsin author, so I made Wisconsin-shaped cookies and marked the city of Marshfield with a cow sprinkle.  I also bought lots of Wisconsin made wine.  (Please remember that Wisconsin is not exactly known for it’s wine.  I now regret this purchase.  You live, you learn.)  But regardless of whether they are somehow based on the theme of the book or not, wine and snacks are always an excellent way to start and finish a book club.

9. Eat, drink, chat, and discuss the book.  The meat of the party!  The whole point, if you will.  Sit around in the comfiest positions possible, bring your book, and chat about what you liked, what you didn’t, take the tangents that lead you elsewhere and come back, and (some cheese to go with my Wisconsin theme) enjoy the friendships that develop!

10. Gather, rinse, repeat.  (Do you see what I did there?)  Keep it up!  Make sure you have the next book picked out and a date in advance.  Having a rule like “second Thursday of the month” makes it easy to shift the date slightly as necessary during different times of the year, but it’s kind of nice to have an idea of when it’s coming up– always another month, another book, and another meeting of the minds to look forward to!

Book Club

Last night was my first book club in this new town… and it was a smashing success!  And not only was book club a success, but so was Super Man Time Football Club!  I had a blast, and I have it on good authority that at least two of the other attendees did as well.  (Because they told me.)  But I’m pretty sure that everyone had a good time.  Everyone at least had good food.  (And someone else brought good wine, so we were saved from the Wisconsin atrocity I had over-purchased.)

The thing that was most striking to me was first, that no one else had ever been in a book club (that movie really made it seem like it was a thing everybody just does) and second, that everyone was kind of in the same boat as me, friend-wise.  What a revelation!  Guess what fixed both of those things: BOOK CLUB.

So whether you’ve ever done it before and whether or not you’ve already got a lot of established friends in your town, if you like to read and you’re looking for new ways to connect, a book club could be a great thing to do.

If you don’t like to read, or even if you like to read but want to supplement your book clubs with other such meetings of friends, here are some excellent ideas we brainstormed in our excitement last night (plus something we’ve already done once):

  • Game Night (Get everyone together to play board games– boys against girls?  So much fun!  Yes, this is the one we’ve done before.)
  • Romantic Comedy Watching Club (A chance to watch a romantic comedy with girlfriends once a month?  yes, please!  You know we’ll be starting with Love Actually.)
  • Pinterest Party (Each person brings enough materials for everyone to make one or two Pinterest crafts and then you all get together to make them– everyone leaves with one of each thing but only had to purchase supplies for one!  Genius!)
  • Cookie Exchange (Like the Pinterest party, but you bring cookies to share… and recipes!  Come with a boat load of chocolate chip, leave with a little bit of chocolate chip, sugar, molasses, gingerbread, pinwheels, spritzes, whatever…)
  • Shopping trip to Appleton (works best if you live in small-town Wisconsin, of course)

No matter what you decide might work for you, I hope you find a way to engage in your community.  This truly was this missing piece for me in Marshfield… I think I’m finally home.

Shed Light in a Dark Place

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Melissa-- light

 

I’ve probably done more than my fair share of over-sharing with this blog as my platform, but I must say, your responses– the laughter, the encouragement, the kinds words– are amazing.  My beautiful friend Melissa left the above as a comment when I fessed up about binge eating on Thursday.  How true?  And my friend Dawn mentioned a similar idea when I showed you my shroom cut a while ago.  Neither of those things feel quite so embarrassing or shameful to me anymore– power?  Poof!  Be gone!

If you’ll excuse me please, I’ve got a book club list to generate, I made some promises that I’ve been bad about keeping!

Here’s hoping you have a lovely weekend!

Gratitude for a Gentle Reminder

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While it is true that people in the Midwest tend to be exceptionally friendly, it’s also true that they are quite reserved and that it can be hard to build a relationship with people you only interact with peripherally.  As such, it’s taken me quite a long time to get to know the people I work near, but not directly with.  But two-and-a-half years later, I’m finally on friendly terms with lots of the people at the clinic and it is good.

After several friendly chats in the bathroom and hallway, I’ve found a lovely friend in one of the well-established and brilliant research scientists in the National Farm Medicine Center named Barbara.  Barbara loves to walk (seriously, like 8 miles a day), but recently fractured her foot and is slowly working toward recovery.  Likewise, I loved to run, but had tummy troubles that pretty much put a halt to that in recent months.  We really bonded over that… our shared loss of beloved physical activities.  (And yes, I did tell her all the gory details of my intestinal troubles— this is a good example of that overly quick intimacy I talked about yesterday.  Barbara is someone I really like!)

Hmmm… I like where this is going, but I’m going to have to back up just a touch to give you some context.  Get ready… I am about to spill my guts.

…

I am a binge eater.  I have a binge eating disorder.

You’re probably thinking, right, I know– I was pretty sure you said you were a woman.  But no, not just over-eating, not just an inability to resist something delicious.  We are talking about a truly life disrupting disorder of ongoing and epic proportions.  It’s not a pretty thing and something I have taken great pains to hide for most of my life.  (Literally, most of my life… like since I was 8 or 9.  This is a kind of big deal to me.)

One of the biggest triggers of my binge eating is, paradoxically, restriction.  And when I spend a lot of time restricting what I eat, either in the amount of food or the type of food, I tend to make a wild swing the other way and binge, binge, binge.  Sometimes for a day… sometimes for a month.

My second biggest trigger is, kind of pathetically, self-pity.  And sometimes I really spiral out of control when it comes to feeling sorry for myself.  Boo hoo, poor me, life is rough, and all that.

Unfortunately, all of my gastrointestinal issues and the lengthy process toward diagnosis has led to something of a perfect storm with respect to binge eating.

Following a series of rather unpleasant tests (see that poor me thing?  clearly I have a flair for the over-dramatic), I was diagnosed with EXTREME (!) lactose intolerance.  (Literally, the diagnosing doc used capital letters and exclamation points in my chart, Dr. Roy showed me… I’ve always been good at taking tests.  I blew this one out of the water!)  I’ve always known that milk and ice cream were off limits without lots of lactaid, but nothing wrong with a sprinkle of cheese, a pat of butter, a cup of yogurt, right?  Wrong.  In fact, even my allergy medication contained lactose!  What the what?!  (Yeah, I’m definitely the one that taught that age-inappropriate phrase to Emily… sorry!)

So, for an entire 1.5 weeks I was crazy careful about lactose– either none whatsoever or precautionary lactaid anytime there was so much of a chance.  And my stomach was awesome.  AWESOME!  For the first time in MONTHS.  I went for a couple of runs, my stomach felt great, no emergency trips to the bathroom, no awkwardness.

BUT– I felt super sorry for myself.  And I felt like I was being super restrictive.

So.  I came back from Mexico and went completely off the rails.  The result has not been pretty.  Lactose is definitely the culprit.

…

So, back to the story at hand.

I spent the better part of today binging.  On lactose-containing things, naturally.  Because that’s just how I roll.  My stomach hurt, my confidence in my ability to get past this binge was waning, and I was ready to head home and continue the vicious cycle with more food and more self-pity.  But, on my way out the door, I bumped in to no other than Barbara and we walked to the parking lot together– chit chatting the whole way.

Barbara was so thrilled that I had a diagnosis and that a simple avoidance of lactose was enough to allow me to run again.  She reminded me that running is something I love to do.  And she pointed out the gorgeousness of the season and the perfectness of the temperature for running.  And she was so right.

So.  Right.

So instead of going home and sitting on the couch with a big bowl of lactose-laced anything, I came home, laced up my running shoes, and headed out to pound the pavement for 20 minutes.

It was a brief run, but it was a good start.  The temperature was in the upper 40s and perfect and the skies were a bubbly, cloudy gray.  I ran past bright red leaves and a sweet puppy that wanted to play.  I ran past pumpkins on porches and jammed to Seth’s Road Trip Mix.

20131016-202720.jpg

Yep, I do love running.

Thank goodness for Barbara and her gentle reminder.  For her kind words and genuine interest in my life.  She gave me exactly what I need today in such a subtle way.  And for that, I am incredibly grateful.

 

PS: I make jokes… even about serious things.  It’s just what I do.  But binge eating disorder and any other eating disorder is a serious thing and professional help is required.  Don’t worry, I’m getting some.  And if you ever feel like you might need help, you should absolutely reach out.  For realsies.

15 Things Mindy Kaling Should Probably Know About Me

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Subtitle: Why We Would Probably Be Besties if We Lived Closer and/or I Were More Famous

When I read the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg I was struck repeatedly with how important the words were in a professional sense.  I had more moments than I count of YES—how does she know what’s in my head?!  And yet, I don’t think Sandberg would love me in any kind of personal way.  I’m not really her type.

But Mindy Kaling?  I am definitely her type.

As I read Mindy’s book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) I felt over and over again a similar YES feeling, but this time, it was about the things that I feel in my gut.   And that was cool.  (No, not the physiological things I feel in my gut.  Sicko.) 

Even though Mindy Kaling is a petite Indian woman (who considers herself “chubby”—what?!) and I am a tall, un-petite, white girl with an extraordinarily square jaw, I think we would get along incredibly well.  And here are 15 reasons why.

1.  Because I get what it’s like to be bullied.  Especially because of your weight.  And especially when you think you’re doing it right. 

Take for example the LHS Homecoming dance my freshman year.  I was dressed to the threes (in retrospect, it only felt like the nines) in a forest green, high collared, shapeless dress and I had painstakingly “straightened” my hair.  (Yeah, my hair doesn’t really do straight…)  I had been nursing a crush on a track star for quite a while and was thrilled when he asked me to dance!

Sadly, the highest highs are often followed by the lowest lows and the phone calls started coming in the next day.  Several fat jokes to mutual friends later, word reached me.  But then he apologized (by note, because notes were all the rage in the late 90s…) and somehow became the hero.  A-hole.

I could go on, but it’s all kind of the same and you get the idea.  You know who else gets the idea?  Mindy.

Mindy related similar stories in her book.  She said, “How I continually found myself in situations where I felt I had to say thank you to mean guys, I’m not sure… bullies have no code of conduct.”

Truer words have never been spoken, future friend.

But more importantly, she also said, “Being called fat is not like being called stupid or unfunny, which is the worst thing you could ever say to me.”

Do you hear that US Customs Agent in Houston?!  By failing to laugh at a single one of my jokes (e.g., “What are you bringing back with you?” “Just a little bit of sun burn!”) you did call me unfunny, and that was not cool.

2.  Because I sweat.  A lot.  So other people that sweat a lot are not gross to me—they are kindred sweat spirits.

Pretty people always terrify me.  Mostly because I’m sure they are going to hate me.  But pretty people who sweat?!  We will get along just fine.  I have bonded with plenty of girls over pit stains or comparing notes on antiperspirants.

Sweat.  The great equalizer.

I know Mindy gets this, and I know she would want to be my friend, because she said, “How can you not make a best friend out of a girl who has seen the sweat-soaked pelvis area of your gym pants, daily, and who still chooses to spend time with you?”  Right, Stephanie?!

3.  Because high school was absolutely not the highlight of my life.  And it just keeps getting better.

Throughout her book, Mindy dispenses very little advice, but she does say this: “Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete.  Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually make you look kind of pitiful.”  Word.

In high school, I was an academic nerd, a band geek, an art weirdo, and the worst girl on the team (yes, every team).  But I was all in… and that’s the important thing to remember.  (Did you catch the New Girl reference?  Kayla?)

I do allow myself one bragging point from high school, though.  I was good at dissecting things.  Jealous?

4. Because when it comes to friendship, I value quality over quantity.

And so does Mindy.

“One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.  We never needed best friend gear because I guess with real friends you don’t have to make it official.  It just is.”

Every friend I’ve ever had to try really hard for hasn’t been real.  The friends that just were… they just were.

Mindy is clearly going to be the exception.  This post is taking a considerable amount of work…

Also, Melissa and I totally just got best friend gear, so… perhaps I’m a big old hypocrite, but that’s ok.

5.  Because I can relate Harry Potter to pretty much anything.

Look at this paragraph:

“We clung to each other with blind loyalty, like Lord Voldemort and his snake Nagini.  I, of course, was Nagini. If you messed with one of us, you knew you messed with both of us, and Voldemort was going to cast a murder spell on you, or Nagini was going to chomp on your jugular.  It was such a good, dramatic time.”

Yeah, I get that relationship.  Excellent reference.

How better to make a point than with a Harry Potter reference?!  Did you read my post yesterday?  Harry Potter is where it’s at!

6.  Because I do not believe that being from the east coast legitimizes a-hole-ish-ness.

In my opinion, and please feel free to hate me for saying so, it’s true that people on the east coast are less friendly than those living elsewhere in the country.  (Granted, I’ve never been to Georgia, Alabama, or Arkansas… maybe people there are jerks?  I doubt it.  How can you be a jerk when you drink nothing but sweet tea all day?)  But how seriously obnoxious is it when people use that as an excuse for being a jerk to you?  Right, seriously obnoxious.

Mindy’s description?  “You know those people who legitimize their sarcastic, negative personalities by saying proudly they are ‘lifelong New Yorkers’?  She was one of those.”  This is my new favorite phrase.

7.  Because if I could eat anything I wanted, it would be 100% kid-friendly garbage.

I try really hard (no, really!) to eat as healthy as possible as much of the time as possible.  I enjoy eating things fresh out of the garden (and by “the garden” I mean other people’s gardens) and I like cooking from scratch.  But let’s be honest: if I could eat anything without consequence, it would be crap.  100% reeee-fiiiiined crap.  And it would be delicious.  I hate pretending all the time like, “Ewww Oreos…” and “Fruit Roll-Ups are soooo unnatural….”  Whatevs, give me a bag of Oreos and a box of Fruit Roll-Ups and I’ll have them polished off in 15 minutes.  Seriously.  Mindy agrees: “Kid-friendly food is the best, because kid-friendly simply means ‘total garbage.'”

Delicious, kid-friendly garbage.

8.  Because if I like you, I love you and I will get intimate real quick.  If you do not reciprocate, I will assume you hate me.

When I was younger, I hated it when people called me “Rach.”  Now, I love it!  LOVE IT!  But it can’t be forced, and I would never ask someone to call me that.  But when it organically makes it’s way out of a good friend’s mouth (Abby, Melissa, Ellen, Jess, I’m talking to you here!) it just feels so right!  (Was that the creepiest thing I’ve ever written?   Maybe.)

But seriously, when you’ve got that kind of natural intimacy with a friend right away, it’s going to be awesome.

I was totally comfortable asking Melissa to teach me how to cut up an avocado the first time I ever met her.

I made pancakes in Jess’s kitchen when she wasn’t even there the day after I met her.  And then emailed her to ask her about school supplies… for grad school.  (See?  NERD.)

Like me, Minday says, “I respond very well to people being overly familiar with me a little too soon.  It shows effort and kindness.  I try to do this all the time.  It makes me feel part of a big, familial, Olive Garden-y community.”

This post is overly familiar, Mindy is going to love it.  (Or get a restraining order.  Can you get one of those for the internet?  I hope not… it would be a bummer if I couldn’t follow her on Twitter anymore.)

9.  Because I’m ok with weird, non-mainstream kinds of things so long as they don’t hurt anybody.

Reiki?  Tried it.  Loved it.  Would totally do it again.

Acupuncture?  Tried it.  Hated it.  But I totally get why some people swear by it and that’s cool with me.

Mindy once worked for a tv psychic and I loved what she had to say about him: “If I had to testify under oath, I would admit, no, I don’t believe Mac Teegarden in psychic…  I am certain, though, that Mac Teegarden provided an enormous amount of comfort to people who had unexpectedly lost loved ones.  I don’t know if it was psychic, but it was cathartic, and therapeutic, and it helped people.”

An important point I feel I need to make here is this: I believe in ghosts.  100%.  And Ghost Hunters (NOT the International version– very important distinction here) is one of my favorite shows ever.

10.  Because I LOVE romantic comedies.  LOVE THEM…

Rom-com is definitely my favorite genre of movie.  Oh yes, I have taken a lot of crap for it and I spent some time being seriously ashamed (like after the night I made a big group of girls watch The Holiday and was made fun of mercilessly for it– I get it, Cameron Diaz is a terrible actress, but the Kate Winslet/Jack Black/older guy storyline just slays me and I can’t help it!).  In fact, the only thing that gets me through workouts on the elliptical (because running out of doors causes bathroom incidents, as we’ve discussed) are movies recorded off of Lifetime or the Hallmark channel.

Imagine my joy when I read this from dear Mindy: “I love romantic comedies.  I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.  But that has not stopped me from watching them.”

Stupid or not, I love love!  And those movies make me feel happy!

11. … especially British romantic comedies…

Bridget Jones and Love Actually.  End of story.

Ok, not really end of story because Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Eyre are also favorites of mine.  Granted, they are more British romances rather than romantic comedies.  But I have to believe that Mindy probably likes movie adaptations of Jane Austen too.

12. … and in British romantic comedies, Colin Firth is the best.  BEST!

Seriously, Mindy Kaling spent basically an entire paragraph on Colin Firth.  And that was when I knew knew that we would be best friends.

“All women love Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy, George VI – at this point he could play the Craigslist Killer and people would be like ‘Oh my God, the Craigslist Killer has the most boyish smile!’  I love Colin Firth in everything… But the role that makes me cry is Mark Darcy, from Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

OMG– I know!  “I like you very much.  Just as you are.”  I DIE at that line!  I just adore it so much!

But, Mindy, ponder this for a moment: the Colin Firth story line in Love Actually.  He learns Portugeuse for bonita Aurelia!  I think Jamie may just edge past Mark Darcy in terms of all time most romantic things ever.  EVER.  We should really get together to discuss.  Perhaps watch both movies back-to-back… just to be sure.

13. Because I hate “because you’re a woman questions” that wouldn’t even be questions if you were a man.

This is actually an important point that I think Sheryl Sandberg, Mindy Kaling, and I can all agree on.  We don’t ask male CEOs how they balance their home and work life, we assume that their wife is at home taking care of the kids along with whatever hired help they’ve got to work alongside them.  When a woman has a husband and hired help at home do the same thing, she is somehow neglectful and has mixed up priorities or whatever other insults get thrown around.

Similarly, Mindy laments being asked about women being funny:

“Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not?”  I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t.  It would be the same as addressing the issue of “Should dogs and cats be able to care for our children?  They’re in the house anyway.”  I try not to make it a habit to seriously discuss nonsensical hot-button issues.”

I feel like she should maybe write that in a letter to Sheryl Sandberg so that Sheryl can pull it out of her pocket and read it word-for-word the next time a reporter asks her a dumb question like that.

Women are people, too, after all.  Some people are funny, some people are not.  Some people are good at business, some people are not.  I’m pretty sure in both situations “people” can be either women or men.

14. Because I get what it’s like to be a writer, and my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio is very, very low.

I had never really thought about this ratio before, but Mindy describes it well:

“I’ve found my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven.  So, for every eight hours day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done.”

YES!

I write all day and then come home and write some more at night.  And I’d say that my ratio is probably about that at work.  (I try!  Seriously!  But things never seem to really come together except for in brief manic spurts!)  And blogging, well, some come easy and some, like this one, take DAYS.  Seriously, it’s disturbing how much time I’ve spent on this post.  This creepy, creepy post.  And yet my rapidly rising word count down below suggests that I’ve at least made some progress.

15. Because I hate arbitrary beauty standarsd, but sometimes I adhere to them and I reserve the right to choose which ones and to ferociously defend my right not to observe others.

Once upon a time, I refused to pluck my eyebrows and I was quite vocal about it– if a guy doesn’t like me because of my eyebrows then forget him!

These days, I have literally gone out to purchase new tweezers on a week long vacation because my eyebrows just couldn’t be trusted anymore.

Mindy talks about men waxing their chests and says, “… it just shows so much icky effort to conform to some arbitrary beauty standard.  And the standard in this instance is particularly inane.”

HA!  It’s true… even about my eyebrows.  But I do it anyway.  And men continue to wax their chests anyway.  (And thank goodness they do because seriously, that made for true comedic gold in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.)

So, I guess this post is actually kind of a book review.

Surprise!

I didn’t actually intend to write a book review, but as I approach the end, it seems that that’s exactly what I’ve done.  Mindy Kaling is F-U-N-N-Y funny.  And interesting.  And I feel like we have kind of similar writing styles, so obviously I found that charming.  And if you’ve been reading along with me here for a while, you might just find her charming too.

There are lots of comparisons out there to Tina Fey’s book Bossypants, which is also an excellent read, but they are both autobiographical and this may come as a surprise to you, but Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling are not, in fact, the same person, so naturally, the stories they tell are 100% different and 100% excellent.  I would highly recommend them both.

AND, since your DVR has an open slot now that 30 Rock is over, you may want to consider filling it up with The Mindy Project.

So, in conclusion, I think Mindy Kaling and I could be good friends.  Fingers crossed she reads this and we can plan a romantic-comedy-watching-junk-food-eating sleepover sometime soon.  (Or that she just doesn’t file for that restraining order… I’m good either way.)

 

Profile in Awesome: Aimee Rathbun

Profiles in Awesome, ,

Here we are, friends! It’s finally Wednesday and today is the day I promised you Under the Tapestry’s first Profile in Awesome!  YAY!

Today, I would like to introduce you to my friend and yours: Aimee Rathbun.  Aimee was my next door neighbor in the dorms at Michigan Tech and I loved her instantly.  She is basically the definition of awesome and I want to scream it from the roof tops…

This blog is my roof top!

When I asked Aimee if she would be my first profile, her response was, and I quote, “Oh my fish, I’m so flattered!”  The fish was an autocorrect, but I like it so much better than gosh.  Let’s go with that.

So, here she is, Aimee in her own words– oh my fish!

***

Hi, Aimee!  Thanks so incredibly much for agreeing to be my awesome guinea pig.  I’m really excited about this little segment and you have been on my mind for a profile in awesome since the idea first started taking shape in the back of my mind.  To start, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself… how do you typically describe YOU?

Well, I usually describe myself as slightly nerdy, I like to read and swim and ride bikes.  I like photography and quilting and working on my house.  I live in Alaska and I love it, but I miss the Great Lakes.  I miss my family and friends too, of course.  I bought a house, got a dog, joined a church, a swim club and a polo club– feels good to put down some roots!

One of the things that I find most awesome about you is your incredibly bravery.  A few years back, you embarked on a huge journey when you packed up and moved to Alaska.  Where did that kind of bravery come from and what was it like when you got there?  Tell us about the adventure!

I know you’re going to tell me I’m eating too much “humble pie”, but I don’t feel like the move up here took as much bravery as people think.  Part of the story of me ending up in Alaska has to do with moving to Flint, MI after I graduated from Tech.  I don’t think I need to go into the exact reasons I hated living in Flint, but I hated it.  I felt so trapped there.  I disliked it immediately and was looking for a new job (in West Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota) for an entire year.  Looking back, I was depressed.  I think I was down enough that Alaska didn’t seem that scary, at least not compared to staying in a city I disliked, at a job I disliked and without any friends.  I had to make a big change.

I had ended up in Flint because I was looking for a job in Michigan and Flint’s in Michigan.  I was able to spend more time with my parents than I did while I was in Houghton and I was even close enough to watch some of my youngest brother’s swim meets during his senior year of high school.  A few months after I started I met another new engineer, Katie, who happened to have moved in across the parking lot from me!  Eventually she introduced me to one of her friends, who lived in Alaska and ended up sending me a job posting for a job up there.  I went “ha ha, yeah right” and then immediately thought “wait… I guess… maybe… why not?”

Anyway, it turned into the most amazing 6 months of my life– interviewing and visiting Alaska for the first time (in the winter!), quitting my job and leaving Flint, taking a few months off to travel, driving to Alaska with all my worldly possessions in the back of my Jetta and starting a new life up in Fairbanks.  There are so many things I could say about that time.  It was just such a blessing to be able to spend time with family and friends– I spent a week in Mexico with Adriane, a week in Houghton for Winter Carnival with my brothers and friends and a week in Florida visiting my grandma and aunt.  And everything fell into place so marvelously.  I ended up in Fairbanks with neither a map nor a place to stay (my first stop was a Wendy’s with wi-fi) and a week later I had an apartment and a bike.  One day I even thought “I wish I had a pull chain for the ceiling fan, I wonder where you even find those in stores.”  Thirty seconds later I parked the car, opened the door, and sitting in the packed snow of the parking lot, between my door and the car, was a pull chain.  Whether it was coincidences, gut feelings or God, I’ve never felt more blessed or more like someone was looking over me than I did those 6 months.

When you moved to Alaska, you didn’t know very many people.  You are super lovable and I’m sure people took to you right away, but how did you go about putting yourself out there to make friends and develop a social network in your new home?

So I knew one person in the state when I moved up here, and I ended up dating him.  And then we broke up… and I was sad and lonely and quickly realized I was at least 4000 miles from my friends and family.  Earlier I said I didn’t feel that brave moving to Alaska… well, this is what took some serious bravery.  I let myself mope for a week or two and spent some time at open swim (when the going gets tough, I swim).  I started trying out churches.  I found a masters swimming group, tried it and loved it.  During the announcements I heard about the water polo club.  So I went.  I visited a church I loved.  After church I drove to a quilt shop in town and signed up for a beginning quilting class.  I was totally uncomfortable in these new social situations but I’m a firm believer in “fake it till you make it*.”  (*I don’t generally think people should be “fake”, but I mean smile and be friendly even if you’re nervous and feeling awkward…  soon enough you’re not even faking it.)  Even though I didn’t make any lasting friendships in quilting class, I’ve amassed an amazing support network of friends through swimming, water polo and church.

Tell me about adopting your sweet pup, Bentley.  What does she mean to you?

Bentley brings so much joy and love into my life!  I met a few dogs at the Anchorage shelter but Bentley was so soft and calm and quiet.  All she wanted was a belly rub!  I think she sleeps in my bed most of the day and I’ve heard “I’ve never seen a dog sleep so much” so I think she’s the right fit for my quiet life and small house.  She’s covered in big and small scars.  Her vets and I don’t know where they came from, but I have a feeling it was a run-in with a car or other dogs (or both!).  She cracks me up and makes me smile all the time.  When I have a bad day and am feeling road-ragey or crabby, I walk into the house, hang up the keys and look at this sweet dog wagging her tail so hard that it’s whipping her eyes and she’s squinting up at me… and my heart just melts.  When I feel like the worst person, she looks at me like I’m the best.  She’s taught me about unconditional love and how to take care of someone other than myself… all very important things.

Bentley
Bentley (gorgeous girl!  AND Aimee took that beautiful photo!)

I know you love to read and I always enjoy your recommendations (I’ve read Peace Like a River twice now and adored The Snow Child).  How do you choose what you’re going to read next and what do you like most about reading?  What are some of your favorite books ever?  Do you ever re-read books?

I’ve always loved to read– my mom used to panic when it’d take me 30 minutes to walk 3 blocks home from elementary school because I was reading the whole way!  My parents read to us a lot when we were little, and I think Mom recommended Peace Like a River to me in high school.  I loved the story when I read it back then and really valued the relationships between the siblings and their dad.  When I re-read it again a year or 2 ago, I was able to focus on the religious part of it.  Another favorite is Life of Pi, just because there’s so much to think about in that one too.  I generally don’t re-read books (though I’ve read Peace Like a River and Life of Pi twice each) unless it’s an accident.  There are just too many I haven’t read yet!  Now I’m in a book club, so that helps a ton with finding things to read.  Often they pick books I’d never choose for myself, and I love that.  I think my favorite books are ones where I can totally picture the setting or the characters…  I’m an engineer so I’m not good at describing literary things but at the beginning of the Time Traveler’s Wife, the author describes a meadow in southern West Michigan.  I was reading it in an airport and I swear I could SMELL that meadow!  Most of the books I like are more uplifting and magical.  I feel depressed when I read too many sad books in a row.

One of my favorite things about you is your family– you Rathbuns are so fascinating and super fun!  I’ve never met a happier family!  Tell me about your mom and dad (best love story ever!) and those brothers of yours!  What was it like growing up a Rathbun and how did your family impact the person you are today?

Well, my parents met when they were both student janitors in McNair Hall at Michigan Tech.  We grew up visiting the UP, wearing Tech clothes and talking nerdy around the dinner table.  I have 2 younger brothers and despite my parents’ best efforts to un-brainwash us, we all ended up going to Michigan Tech too!  My middle brother is an amazing geological engineer with people skills I’ve always been envious of.  He lives in Vancouver, BC with his lovely wife (my new sister!).  My youngest brother is a computer whiz who used to count binary with my mom at the dinner table.  He’s living on the east side of Michigan with his boyfriend.  Our family has always been full of love and laughter.  In the past few years we’ve gone through lots of transitions– kids growing up and moving away, my youngest brother surprising us when he came out, adding a spouse into the mix, my parents moving out of my childhood home, etc.– but through it all nothing’s changed.  OK, so we travel a lot more to see each other and we need a few extra chairs at family dinners, but wherever we are still feels like home when we’re together and we love each other unconditionally.

Pretty please brag a little bit about your quilting… (and photo evidence would be awesome, if you wouldn’t mind me sharing some!)  How did you get into quilting and how did you learn?  From your mom?  What is your favorite quilt?  And what do you enjoy about it?

My mom had taught me how to sew and she learned from her mom (my dad’s mom sewed a lot too!).  My Grandma J is a prolific quilter– she made a quilt for each of her 30-some grandkids and then many, many other ones.  Mom made all of our halloween costumes and used to hem my pants for me but wasn’t ever really a big quilter.  In Fairbanks, I found a Singer sewing machine at a garage sale (“I’ll give it to you for $15 if you take it before my wife gets back.”) and actually put it in a pannier on my bike and rode it home!  About a year later I took a quilting class and found my current machine at an estate sale and I’ve been unstoppable since then!  I even taught my mom a few tricks (rotary cutting and lots of starch!) and she’s enjoying quilting a lot more.  Every time I am making a quilt, I’m thinking about my Mom and Grandma and the recipient of the quilt.  I think it’s a lot like praying!

My favorite quilt is a quilt my mom, grandma and I made for Walt and Leanne’s wedding.  We asked all their friends and family to send us a scrap of fabric and Mom, Grandma and I sketched out ideas on the back of a Big Boy placemat.  We ended up making a patchwork background of 6″ squares with 5 or 6 bigger applique blocks of flowers.  Finally, we appliqued vines, leaves and flowers over the patchwork.  The white flowers on the vines are apple blossom (For Walt, Michigan’s state flower) and pacific dogwood (for Leanne, British Columbia’s provincial flower).  The flower blocks have meanings too!  Grandma and Mom did most of the applique (I have no patience for hand sewing!) and Mom came to AK to help me put together the top.  So many people sent such sweet notes with the fabric that I actually scanned and cataloged the notes and fabric from each person, and starched, ironed and cut each square (and there are a lot of squares!).  I even made a book– it has pictures of us making the quilt and then the back is the fabric and notes.  I love knowing where each fabric in a quilt came from so I wanted them to be able to have a reference.

Look at the gorgeous quilt!!
Look at that gorgeous quilt!!

Tell me about your love of nature and passion for photography… I definitely remember Copper Country Cruising with you, my hands on your steering wheel as you leaned out the driver’s side window to snap pictures.  And even now, my office features eight of the gorgeous pictures you took of the UP.  Is that part of the draw in Alaska– the great outdoors?

Ha!  I don’t remember that but I don’t doubt it either!  Probably better than what I do on the Mackinaw Bridge though (stick my head out the window to look down the grate WITHOUT anyone grabbing the wheel!). I don’t know what my draw to photography is but I do know Sunday I drove to church wearing hot pink sunglasses (with rosy, polarized lenses) and I thought “I wish I could capture this and share it!”  Bright sun and fall colors against dark clouds and everything was extra intense with those sunglasses!  Sometimes I wonder if I should just enjoy it, instead of working so hard to try and capture it to keep it forever…  who knows.  I love capturing patterns and colors and things most people don’t stop to look at.  I can also totally tell my state of mental health based on the pictures I take.  I took very few pictures in Flint and the ones I did seem brown and gloomy to me.  In good times the colors are vibrant and bold (I’ve taken some awesome ones this year!).

And, of course, as a woman in STEM I can’t help but talk up your career a bit.  Civil engineering is clearly your professional calling.  I’ve never met a person more excited about sewer systems than you!  What attracted you to civil engineering?  What do you enjoy about your day job?  Do you ever feel like it matters that you are a woman on the job?

I benefited greatly from “Take Your Daughter to Work Day!”  I spent the morning watching my mom working on a computer and playing with a label maker.  I spent the afternoon traipsing through a construction site with my dad.  My Dad’s a civil engineer too, so I think I was just kinda always around it.  Now that I think about it, my first sentence was “why man put dat dirt dere?” so maybe it was always meant to be.  And the last time I was home I got a tour of my dad’s latest project– basically they’re building a building INSIDE a building I remember visiting when it was built!

I guess I’ve gotten used to being in the minority as a woman.  I have 2 brothers and no sisters, I was the only girl in my section in band, I was one of 3-5 women in my civil classes (of about 50) in college… so it doesn’t feel weird or unusual to me and I’ve learned to hold my own.  Also, I was raised to believe I could do anything I set my mind to, so I’ve never really felt limited by being a woman.  I’ve come across supervisors who believe women can’t be engineers (you know, because our brains are different) but I’ve been fortunate that they’ve never been my direct supervisors (or I didn’t know it!).  Actually, half of the civil department here is female.

This year I had someone (not at my company) say to me “yeah, you’re a woman, I know how you are, I’ve married 4 of ’em.”  I couldn’t even take it personally– in fact, it makes me laugh.  He has no idea what I’m like!  (Also, maybe he doesn’t know women as much as he thinks considering his track record!)

Finally, tell me about five things that you love, excluding Under the Tapestry, of course 😉

  1. My loving and supportive family and friends
  2. My dog
  3. Chocolate
  4. Good beer
  5. Wool socks

***

Seriously.  Do you see how awesome Aimee is?!

In addition to the brilliant responses she provided, Aimee also added this quote:

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.

In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.

In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.

I realized, through it all, that…In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger, something better, pushing right back. (Albert Camus)

Beautiful, right?

Aimee was recently in Madison for a special course in super secret sewer stuff.  (Ok, maybe not super secret, but it was sewer-related.)  Since a trip to Madison is much more manageable than a trip to Alaska, a third friend from Minneapolis (our RA, Adriane!) swung through Marshfield to pick me up and we headed down to Madison for a weekend of fun.  But not just fun…

On Saturday morning, Aimee, Adriane, and I went to a super cute little diner (Daisy’s, maybe?) and had breakfast followed by homemade cupcakes… because even breakfast should come with dessert when you’re with girlfriends.  We had a blast catching up and I think even our waitress was excited about us getting the chance to catch up because our cupcakes were on the house!  Icing on the (cup)cake, as they say!

In the 12 years that I’ve known her (whaaat?!  12 years?!), Aimee has reminded me time and time again of how important it is to follow your heart.  She reminds me of the beauty in this world, even in the dead of winter, and that fun that can be found even in the mundane (it was Aimee’s pink plastic bunny, after all).  So, Aimee, thank you for being a friend (a la the Golden Girls theme song) and thank you even more for sharing your awesomeness with my blog friends!!!

This is one of the oldest pictures on my Facebook timeline-- good stuff!
This is one of the oldest pictures on my Facebook timeline– good stuff!

The little girl I adore and my inadvertent attempts to destroy her.

Story Telling, , ,

Ahhh, another beautiful Mexican morning.  After a gorgeous breakfast overlooking the Sea of Cortez, my husband and I came back to the villa (I really can’t call it a “room,” because that’s just not what it is…) with those niños I told you about yesterday.  Emily invited me out onto the balcony to journal with her.  How could I resist?

She’s currently sitting across the table from me with paper and pen writing a poem about a strong merman named Draco who played with the mermaid clan (seriously, can’t make this stuff up!), complete with illustrations, while I type this little diddy out for you.

The poem about Draco the merman is probably better, but sorry, you’re stuck with me until Emily gets her own blog.

Anyway, as I look across the table at this sweet girl this morning, I’m reminded 1) of how much I love her and 2) how since I first met her, it seems I’ve made every effort to destroy her.

Yes, I said destroy…

I am ashamed.  But I am going to tell you anyway.

I first met Emily when she was a mere 18 months old.  Communicative, yes.  But 18 months, nevertheless.  That’s ONE.  She was one year old.  (Remember that, it’s important.)

I met Emily the same time I first met her parents and I was suuuuper nervous.  This was my boyfriend’s boss (we weren’t married, or even engaged, at the time– yes, we were living in sin.  You would too if you lived in a place with rents like DC…) and his wife, flying all the way to DC from California.

Boss man.  His wife.  From California, like where people in movies live.  Terrifying.  I was sure they were going to be amazing… and that they were going to realize that I was not.

Turns out, Chris and Melissa were just as awesome.com as I had expected, but in a totally accessible kind of way.  They were just so nice and their little girl was just so sweet that I let my guard down.  I forgot to be nervous for a minute and disaster struck.

Chris and Melissa related to me how much Emily liked things like rocks and sea shells and I got super excited because I also love things like rocks and sea shells.  I love them so much, in fact, that I had several big mason jars full of them in our spare bedroom.  Because I wanted Emily to think I was cool and I wanted to show Chris and Melissa how much they should love me, I decided to go get those jars to play with Emily.

So, in my infinite wisdom and desperation to be liked, I gave a ONE YEAR OLD a GLASS jar full of ROCKS.  Which promptly broke, leaving said ONE YEAR old in the middle of a pile of BROKEN GLASS.

Child endangerment on the first friend date.  Sigh.

And yet, nearly 7 years later, we found ourselves invited to a beach house in Huntington Beach, CA for a week, where Chris and Melissa now let me spend time around BOTH of their children.  Clearly, I had them convinced that my tendency for child endangerment was a fluke.

Except this time, they gave me a fighter kite.  A FIGHTER KITE on a WINDY DAY with two child TARGETS running around the beach below. The good news is, my aim was excellent and I hit one of the targets.  The bad news is, I seriously damaged a child when I hit one of the targets.

The kite went up in the air for all of about 17.6 second before it came straight back to earth like a heat seeking missile locked onto Emily’s eyeball.  Fortunately, Emily is a Trooper with a capital T and she promptly stood up, said, “I’m ok!” and then explained that she was only crying because she was using it as a natural defense mechanism to get the sand out of her eye.  (LOVE HER!)

So the kite attack resulted in a lovely shiner and big old scrape from the outside of Emily’s right eye, across her cheek, and ending at her nose.  On the day before her last day of school.  And now, Emily has this Harry Potter style scar to remind me how I’ve marked her like Voldemort.

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Who needs enemies with a friend like me?

And yet, I must be doing something right because the Lemas continue to trust me with their children.  And I must say, I am quite grateful for that because they are incredible!  And while I may be a bit nervous about damaging one or both of these awesome kids again, Chris and Melissa don’t seem terribly worried about it, and their faith in me feels pretty dang good…

Especially in Mexico 😉

 

I get by with a little help from my friends.

Recurring Themes, , ,

What would you do if I sang out of tune?  Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ear and I’ll sing you a song, and I’ll try not to sing out of key.

Good song, better message:

I get by with a little help from my friends.

(Are you thinking of The Wonder Years right now?)

Because don’t we all get by with a little help from our friends?  That support system?  I posit that the answer is yes.

I tend to think of my life in terms of distinct phases, defined primarily by where I was in school… because until recently, I was always enrolled in one kind of school or another.  So the way I think of my life is a lot like the way we (you know, we, like me and all the real paleontologists) classify dinosaurs based on when they existed.

Everything through the end of high school was essentially precambrian… early, unformed, and frizzy.  I wasn’t really sure how to have curly hair yet and many pictures exist to remind me of that.  (Many… frizzy… photos…  Want to see one?  Too bad!  It’s far too awful and I’m not that secure.)

College was my jurassic period, and I think that’s fitting considering that hearing the word jurassic tends to conjure dinosaurs.  I learned a lot, but when I think back on it, I feel like a lot of the time I was more or less stomping through the jungle trying to learn how to open door handles.  (And if anyone points out that velociraptors actually lived during the cretaceous period, not the jurassic period, I’m going to tell you to get over it– it’s my metaphor and the visual of a stegosaurus trying to use a door knob is just absurd.)

Grad school was the start of my cretaceous period, mammals were just starting to evolve, but they were angry and confused… certainly not human yet.

Fast forward just a couple years to life as I know it now and it’s amazing how quickly this person has evolved.  Fully Homo sapiens at this point.  Good deal.

In each of those time periods, there was one constant– amazing friends.  Friends that were there for me in the toughest of times (remember, what feels like a tough time is relative to the toughness of the times you have experienced to date, so no judgement for what someone else considers “tough”).  Now that I’m living what I finally consider real life, I can truly appreciate how important the support of those friends was then and is now.

When I skipped a grade and life was kind of hard (because things feel tough when you’re 8!), Emily was such a constant.

Emily, the precambrian princess…

When I was dumped and heartbroken my freshman year of college, Aimee lived next door and held me up through all of that (and 17– that’s another time in your life when things feel really big).

Aimee, the jurassic giant…

When slogging through grad school took it’s ugly toll, Jess ran mile after mile after mile with me (and she didn’t even like running then! ha! now she’s about to run a marathon! hard core!) and talked me through the tough stuff.

Jess, the triassic talent…

In my current job, my co-workers are like that– more than just people I work with, but friends who offer support and encouragement on a daily basis.  (Also gems like this video of poo pourri… too awesome).

My coworkers, queens of the quaternary…

Now, every single time I need to get away, Melissa is waiting for me in a safe, supportive, and happy place (seriously, I can’t even tell you how many different cities we’ve had pedicures in).

Melissa, the angel of all ages…

And finally, the friends that I thought may be friends of the past, but have surfaced since I began this blog to add so much more to my life than I could ever have hoped.

Dawn, Lara, Nicole, Laura, and on and on, to you, dear reader, the not-as-extinct-as-I-thought coelacanths…

For a long time, I’ve been ok with being an introvert, a person who needs some alone-time, some quiet-time, and who has trouble with new social situations.  But when I really think back on my life– starting with that precambrian period– I can see how insanely important a social network and meaningful friendships have been.  With few exceptions (the exceptions being those impressive homesteaders living “off the grid” that you see on tv… dang, good for them, but I’d be pretty darn lonely with nothing but trees for friends), none of us can go it alone.

And someone out there can’t do it without you or me.  Kind of a neat thought.  And I hope I can be… that I am… the friend for someone else that so many people have been to me.

 

(How’s that for dinosaur references?  Not all Jurassic Park this time– had to consult Wiki for this one!)

Love, actually.

Awesome Things, , ,

I am super lactose-intolerant… my diagnosis was empirical until recently, but I now have legit medical evidence to suggest a “strong” intolerance to lactose.  Validation!  Yes!

So, that’s lactose-intolerant in the medical sense.  If you are lactose-intolerant in the metaphorical sense, you may want to stop reading because this is about to get chee-sy!!

This weekend, my world was bursting at the seams with love.  Our house was full of friends and family, a baby and two dogs, and it was won-der-ful.  Our friends from Green Bay spent the weekend with us and brought their beautiful little girl and their sweet dog.  On Saturday, my sister-in-law and her friends came into town for a mud run and my mother- and father-in-law came over to watch.  I made a big breakfast and we all went out to cheer the runners on.  We cheered and laughed, we ate breakfast and homemade apple pie, we watched a movie with (in-ceiling, in-wall– good job, babe) surround sound and watched our dogs play and play and play…

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Have you ever seen the movie Love Actually?  It’s absolutely, hands down, my favorite movie of all time.  To me, that movie is about love in every form– family, friendship, romantic.  (And it’s funny– British-style funny– too!)  I love that movie, primarily because I love love!  And sometimes, like this weekend, I feel all that love coalescing in my own life, from my friends, my family, my husband, my pup, and it’s a beautiful thing.

If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.

Friends, family, pets, co-workers… the kindness of strangers.  So much love, and in completely unlimited supply.  Why not share a little of your own this week?

How to Win Friends and Influence People– with a pink, plastic, inflatable bunny.

Awesome Things, , , , , ,

I made some pretty stellar friends in college. Three ladies in particular stand out because the are brilliant, hilarious, kind, thoughtful, and brave… and because they picked me to be their friend too. I love them. And I loved our days living in Good Intentions. (West Wads!)

But being an introvert at a school full of other introverts (I’m looking at you, MTU!) can be tough, especially when it comes to making social connections. Fortunately, my next door neighbor in the dorms was the most hilarious of all…

… and she had a pink, plastic, inflatable bunny.

I don’t know why she had the bunny, but I’m so glad she did. And if you’re an introvert living in a dorm full of introverts looking for a good way to make some connections, you may need one too.

There is nothing funnier than bunnying someone. Nothing.

Step 1: Acquire and inflate your pink, plastic bunny. Something about 3 ft tall does well.

Step 2: Find a dorm room with a door closed (not always easy) and set up your bunny in front of the door.

Step 3: Knock…

Step 4: RUN!

Step 5: Observe from a distance as hilarity ensues.

We bunnied lots and lots of people (true story: my husband got bunnied while he was in a mutual friend’s room before I even knew him!) and except for the times when our bunny was stolen (it’s cool– my friend acquired other bunnies in blue and yellow) everyone always laughed and laughed. And even when they did get stolen, we got a pretty great ransom note from the “Protectores del Conejo…”

We had so much fun in those halls, bunnying people, laughing, making new friends, and cementing our own friendships. And I think it was good for everyone– all of us engineers and introverts, scientists and responsible RAs. Who doesn’t love a good laugh, after all?

I’m still really into pink bunnies. I have glass one in my office and I bought a soft plush one for my niece before she was even born. I also just found a little bunny cookie cutter and used it to make these awesome little ladies:

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As much as I just love the memories, pink bunnies also serve as a good reminder of the weird ways in which we can make lasting connections with the people around us. That pink bunny let us relax and let go, to have fun and make friends without the worry, laughter drowning out the second track.

Maybe you need a pink bunny, too?

Words With Friends

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If you went to a typical American high school, you’re probably familiar with Homecoming.  (If not, please see the movie Grease for a pretty accurate description– you know, the Rydell High pep rally.)  At my high school we also had something called Coming Home and it wasn’t until I moved on and sounded like a confused weirdo talking about Coming Home that I realized that wasn’t exactly normal.  Coming Home is essentially the basketball equivalent of Homecoming… except instead of a parade with floats for each class, we decorated halls in the school (on account of I grew up in Michigan and it was cold and snowy during basketball season).  Every year there was a different themes for hall decorating and each class chose a theme within the theme to decorate their hall.  Tons of fun, in my opinion, way to go LHS!  (Although, despite the hours I remember spending drawing, cutting, painting, taping, etc, etc, etc, I literally cannot remember a single one of the themes… all I remember is a large, cut out Spiderman.  I wonder if that memory is real…)

Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about high school, homecoming, coming home, or pretty much anything I’ve mentioned so far.  What I do want to talk about is recurring themes.  And the fact that sometimes I feel like my life in general becomes suddenly inundated with one.  I come here to share words with you, friends (see what I did there?).  Therefore, the theme du jour: WORDS.

Words are obviously a big part of my life.  I’m a science writer by day and I spend the majority of my time at work reading or writing… putting words together to make other people understand science.  And more recently, with the beginning of this blog, words became even more important to me.  Writing, sharing these words with you, has become so incredibly cathartic.  A powerful dream come true.  A release every night as I put my thoughts down on the page.

Of course, two things don’t make a theme.  A theme is something so much more.  And I’m getting to that.

We talked before about how I like to follow a lot of blogs.  Most blogs consist of words, so again, I take in a lot of words.  But just this week, I read two great posts about the power of words.  My friend Dawn at Cups Running Over was discussing the negativity she was encountering on social media and she said,

“…all these negative words are bad for us!” Then she committed to “using the power of words for good.”

Love, love, LOVE!  Dawn is so right, I highly recommend reading her post.  She says some really thought-provoking things about the way we use social media.  And I love the idea of using our words to spread good.

Next up in this theme of words was a blog post by Bridget at Stumbling Towards Perfect where she describes her knee-jerk reaction to some extremely negative words and the beautiful way in which her daughter responded.  Again, it was a negative post on social media and her daughter chose to respond calmly, to explain to the person who tried to use words to hurt the power of those words, and in the process, taught a lot of people an important lesson.

And still, two more things to go to complete my theme…

I just finished (tonight, actually) reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  It was a beautiful book.  And so much of it is about the power of words, for both good and evil.  There were several passages throughout the book that described the power of words that I thought were just so interesting.

“‘Don’t punish yourself,’ she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too.  That was writing.”

Wow.  Yes.

In my experience, writing is cathartic.  Sometimes it is hard, it can be painful.  But it is so rewarding, and sometimes I even make myself laugh out loud.  (Because, as you already know, I am so funny.  And humble, too.  Hmmm… humility.  I have a LOT to say about that.  But one thing at a time.)

And then the last line of the Book Thief’s book.  She writes:

“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”

Dang.  Yes again.

Words can be so personal.  They can be so personified.  Seriously, I find myself falling in love with the words I put on the page.  And when I find that magical turn of phrase, I simply can’t imagine it any other way.  But then sometimes the words don’t come out right and they don’t sound like I want them to sound and I hate them for not being just so.  Writing.  It’s complex.

And in the midst of all this, because of all these words, I reconnected with an old friend who is now an English teacher.  (Oh, I am going to say some things about what I consider the vocation of teaching someday.  So important.)  She told me she like reading along (so nice!  she made me feel so good!) and we talked for a while about the power of words and she told me that people don’t think of English as a powerful subject and write it off as “touchy-feely.”

Ugh.  No.

Words are crazy important.  And the people that teach us to use those words are the people who give us power… yes, they give us the power to express our feelings to one another, but they also give us the power to inspire, to persuade, to share, to reason, to communicate.  There is immense power in all of that.  Think of just a few extreme examples: of Hitler persuading his countrymen to kill millions with words, of Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy persuading thousands and thousands of parents not to vaccinate their children against deadly and debilitating diseases with words… but on the other hand, Martin Luther King, Jr. used words to inspire thousands to take to the streets and march for equality and John Stewart uses funny words to make serious points about systems that are very broken.  Do you see how powerful words can be?  (Do you also see how italics and heavy use of parenthetical statements and elipses (that’s the dot-dot-dot) make you read my words in the same way I would speak them to you?  Cool, huh?)

So that, friends, is my thing with words.  (See, I did it again… yes! title for the win!)  It’s a recurrent theme, these words, and I hope you like the way I’m using them.  I also hope that someday my teacher friend will take me up on my offer to share her words, too.  Because I know she’s got some good ones inside of her dying for an audience!

Update 9/9/13:  SoMeOne, who shall reMain nameless (seriously, how clever am I?), pointed out that there are several typos in the post above– ironic considering it’s all about words.  Dang!  I was going to read it again, find them, and correct it, but… when I actually got here that all seemed like an awful lot of work.  So, the typos remain.  Please accept my apologies!