June 17, 2011 · 11:32 am

I’m a real girl

After Aunt Mary’s funeral, we got an early morning flight on Friday and when we landed in SFO, I went right into work for the day.  Then we had a weekend to get settled and packed.  Monday morning, we flew to Kaua’i!

I had been so excited for this vacation for so long.  Partially because it was VACATION.  Period.  And because it was going to Hawai’i and it would be green and pretty and perfect.  It’s with some shame that I admit that I was quite terrified that my aunt’s pending demise was going to interfere with my vacation plans.  But it all worked out well enough in that respect.

And it was incredible.  The view from our little cottage was just beautiful.
 We grilled fish at home some days.  We ate fish tacos from roadside stands.  We loafed around and read books (I completed 4!) while I ate lots and lots of macadamia nuts.  Shave ice was sampled.  We saw a sea turtle right off shore, pretty close up.  We took a helicopter tour of the island, we rode bicycles down the road alongside a canyon, David surfed, we went for runs, we kayaked, we hiked, we tried stand up paddling, we swam in the ocean, we swam in waterfall pools, we drank POG with rum, and tried fantastic poke from a hole in the wall.

I suppose I could go on and I could provide all sorts of details, but there are two bits in particular that feel as though they’re really worth remembering to me, beyond the fact that the trip as a whole was wonderful.

1.  I existed, in front of other people who were not David, in just bikini bottoms.  No shorts.  No sarong.  Just the white expanse of my wobbly white thighs and hips for all the world to see.  Generally, I try to keep these bits to myself, but here I was just feeling so happy and comfortable and ok with myself, that I just let it go.  After kayaking up a river with a tour group, I didn’t want to put shorts back on over my wet bikini bottom, so I just didn’t and I went on the hike with my ass out.  Lest you think things have gotten too crazy, never fear – I did have a shirt on.  So no wobbly tummy and wobbly legs at the same time.
There is no photographic evidence of this.  You will have to take my word for it.

2.  I completed a really challenging hike that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do.  All the guidebooks listed the hike to Hanakapi’ai Falls as strenuous.  Not for beginners.  But that if you were up for the 8 mile round trip challenge, it was well worth it.  This picture doesn’t do it justice, but here it is: 

It took us 7 hours to get there and back, with a bit of a break in the middle to eat lunch and try to swim in the pool, which was frigid.  The hike was, as promised, very hard.  A lot of up hill.  Loads of down hill, which I think may actually be worse than up.  Parts were muddy.  There was some climbing and scrambling and having to use my hands to get up or down on the path.  Once, I was hanging from a tree branch trying to get down, realizing that I wouldn’t be able to pull myself back up, but that I couldn’t get a good footing, and that I was possibly going to die.  David managed to hoist me onto the ground, though, so I didn’t.  It was definitely not just a walk in the woods.  But I DID it.  And that’s when I realized that I am a real girl.  I can do stuff.  I don’t have to be afraid to try things because I’m too out of shape.  I am not just a worthless, fat, blah of nothing.  I so rarely feel proud of my accomplishments… calling them “accomplishments” even feels a bit silly.  But I was very proud of this.

All told, we spent 8 days in Kaua’i.  It felt like so much time when we first got there, but it all passed quickly enough.  And regular old ordinary life sure was fast to come hunkering back down again, once we were home.  Even though the dreamy, blissful quality of being on vacation is now long gone, I think I’ve still got some of that amazed-at-my-own-self feeling lingering on.

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June 14, 2011 · 10:59 am

aunt mary

I’ve been really slacking on the blog front.  Shame!

I will never be a famous, awesome blogger if I can’t managed to squeeze out more than post a month, now will I?

But, there was something that I had to write and until I did that, I felt like I couldn’t write about any of the other trivial silly things that I might have, like giving myself a weekly speed test for running a mile or going on vacation to Kaua’i.

The thing is that my Aunt Mary, my mom’s twin sister, died on May 10.

She was sick for a long time.  Cancer of the appendix that kept turning into cancer of this and cancer of that.  They took little bits out of her one at a time until I’m not really sure what was left in there.

It went on for so long that I got used it.  And because I was on the other side of the country, I didn’t have to confront the reality; I only had to settle myself with the idea.

When she finally did die, I thought it was fine.  A relief more than anything else.  The horribleness of her story was finally over.  My mother did not have to make the trip out to see her every weekend to weep at her bedside.  It was good to be finished.

David and I went to the funeral, flying out on a red eye on Tuesday night, arriving in JFK on Wednesday morning.  We went to pick up Nana from her nursing home and then to the service.  I expected it to be hard, but fine.  Tolerable.  It was so much worse than I expected.  It’s normal to not see Aunt Mary most of the time.  She’s never come to visit me here in California.  But it is definitely not normal to see those cousins, to see her children and her step children, to be there in her scene and to not see her.  She seemed so horribly missing.

And then later, taking Nana back to the nursing home… she had appeared so stoic through it all, but then she started to cry.  She said “She was my little baby.  I held her in my arms.  How can I never see her again?”  It was possibly the most despairing moment of my life.

Aunt Mary was like a fairy godmother to me.  When I was a little girl, she didn’t have children of her own, me and my brothers were the only nieces and nephews, and she absolutely doted on me.  The boys were wild and unruly, but I was *the little girl.*  I was the outsider in my dirty, tumultuous, heathen family.  I wanted cabbage patch dolls and make-up and the clothes from Benetton that all the other popular girls wore and, much to my mother’s disgust, Aunt Mary would always oblige.

When I was 11, I flew from North Carolina to New York all by myself to visit her.  She bought me a red dress and took me to see a Broadway musical and to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.  It was amazing and fantastic and wonderful.  A fantasy.

But as much as she loved me, she always wanted to have her own children, of course.  I was too young to know all the details, but she had quite a few miscarriages before she and her husband (who she’d only just married when I was 8 or 9 or so) decided to adopt.  So in her early 40’s, she adopted two children – newborns each – about two years apart.  And just like she had spoiled me on birthdays and on various special occasions, she spoiled these two children.  But every day.  Until they grew up into something awful.  Maybe because of the over abundance of cloying love, maybe because of their genetic nature, maybe because of a thousand things combined.
After her marriage to a man ten years older and becoming a mother of two, I was no longer her favorite.  But I was getting older and didn’t really need an aunt for whom I was the favorite any more.  Later, I moved to California and I saw her very rarely.  Probably I didn’t even see her every time I went home to visit my family, which is usually only once or twice a year.

So by the time she got sick, I was already removed – emotionally and physically.  More than other feelings, I hurt for my mother going through the loss of a sister, a twin.  And it scared me that I could now be at an age in which my parent’s people, or my parents, could die.  And I thought that it would be fine.  It will be sad, but ok.  It is ok, but now that it’s over I see that there is still the grief of a little girl who lost a very special aunt.

Aunt Mary and me, 1 year old. 1978.

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April 12, 2011 · 3:15 pm

Maisie Dobbs

I’m going to blame Cloud Atlas, the novel of much buzz and fanfare by David Mitchell.  Once I got over the hump of struggling to get into it – to read more than a page or two at a time, I found that it was a really good book.  Really good. But the journey up and over that hump was a rough one.  I almost didn’t make it.  And I never give up on a book, no matter how bad, boring or bucolic.  Whatever.  Alliteration.  It’s where it’s at.

After finishing Cloud Atlas, which was around November of last year, I took a book reading vacation.  Which is weird.  Because I would usually devour a novel a week.  On this book reading vacation, I did read myself some YA, because let’s face it.  I couldn’t truly go cold turkey.  And reading material intended for someone half my age (or, erm…. crap.  A third of my age) totally counts as reading.

I finished that Sweet Valley Confidential piece of garbage in about a day.  It was bad.  And not bad like “oh come on, you knew it was going to be bad,” but bad like Francine Pascal had a conversation with herself that went like this:

– Why will these vapid little tween girls not desist in sending me their pitiful fan letters?
– What has become of me?  I know the word “tween.”
– After all these years, they still love Jessica and Elizabeth!
– The fools.
– Fools who have paid me millions for churning out saccharine trash.
– Perhaps if I were to wipe my ass and call it a novel, they would buy that.
– That is a brilliant idea!

But I read it.  No book left behind.

And today, I finished my first adult novel (at least I’m pretty sure it’s for grown-ups… kinda.  It is sort of Nancy Drew-esque.  Please don’t burst my bubble.) in months and months.

Yay!

Also, it was really good!

And!

It was the first in a series of eight, which means that I can just go chomping through these for a while.

So, Maisie Dodds.  She’s this World War I era British girl who goes to work as a maid.  Her employers pick up on her extra cleverness and sponsor her education.  Cambridge is interrupted by the war and Maisie goes off to France as a nurse.  Afterward, she starts her own business as a private investigator, and this book is the story of her first mystery solved.

Sometimes she wears a cloche.  And she has a pearl tipped hat pin.  And a nurse’s watch.  And from what I can tell, her nurse’s outfit was just like the one that one of my paper dolls had when I was five.

It is entirely possible that I fell enamored of the style and sentiment of the era more than the actual story telling, but I was engaged in the story and the character.  Although she is a little stuffy and not so quirky, but she’s awfully smart and sensible and always knows just what to say.

Even though it wasn’t a challenging read, I’m still feeling pretty chuffed* to have finished a whole grown-up book that perhaps I will do it again**!

*See what I did there?  I used a cute little British word, just like a Maisie Dobbs character would.

**For my next act, I will be reading the 2nd Maisie Dobbs book.

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Filed under Book crave

April 6, 2011 · 12:31 pm

tilt shift

Like the entire universe, I’m fascinated by tilt shift photography.

The first time I encountered it was in a friend’s photo stream on Flickr:

photo by kaiser pelagic

Neato, right?

And then I started seeing it everywhere!

Like this: 

and this:

So of course, I want to make cute miniature photos, too!  How can I get me on that bandwagon?!

I could buy myself a nice new lens.  For $1,400.00.

Or I could jerry rig a hand made lens.  But that smacks of effort.

But you knew that prohibitive cost and effort wouldn’t keep me down, right?  Right.

Because there’s an app for that.

Straight out of the iPhone

Edited with the Tilt Shift application

I had tried using this application a couple of times before, but always with the wrong sorts of pictures, and not very interesting results.  It just won’t work right when the images are of something relatively close.  Apparently, high up views looking down on a scene are good ones to work with.

And now wondering if there’s roof access to the building here…

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March 30, 2011 · 2:16 pm

“Jessica, who becomes engaged to Todd, is desperate for her twin’s forgiveness. But Elizabeth never wants to see her, or Todd, ever again.”

The interwebs told me something incredible today.

There is a new Sweet Valley book out.  With grown-up 28 year old Jessica and Elizabeth.

The reviews all say that it is terrible.  That we could forgive it for being insipid trash, but can’t excuse it for being poorly thought out and riddled with errors (both of grammar and of consistency in the story line).

But I don’t care.  I pledged an allegiance to those books that goes deep.

I half way imploded waiting to download this book onto my iphone and am now trying to snort a few words at time, like the crack cocaine that it is.

In the short bit that I’ve read, I learned that Elizabeth cried after every orgasm when she was sleeping with some dude.  And, ahh…  Now I feel a little weird.  The Elizabeth that I knew didn’t have…. um.  Orgasms.  She had the library.

I will proceed with caution.

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March 29, 2011 · 12:06 pm

the forces of good and evil collide

The official race photos came out.  I was super excited to see them.  Because zomg!
I ran a half marathon!

But then I saw them.  And then a lotta self-beat-uppery commenced.  I could rant and rave an ocean of vitriol about these pictures, but suffice it to say, I’m appalled by the fatness.

This is somewhere in between 9 and 10 miles, I think.

Look!  You smiled!  And you waved!  And seriously!  LOOK!  That is you.  Doing this crazy scary thing that you didn’t think you could.

But it’s like I can’t properly look.  I can only see the bad parts.

I think part of what appealed to me about all the running was that it’s like shirking this woe-is-me fat girl personae.  And I hate that lady.  She’s embarrassing.  I would rather either a) not be fat or b) pretend that I’m not.  So I don’t like talking about her.  I’m not even feeling so confident about writing this right now, because it feels like such a big admission.  I hate that fat lady.

I don’t want to dwell on her.  So let’s move on.  That’s enough looking at the pictures.  I’ll just use this to try and re-focus on efforts of not-fatness, and now that I’ve released this little snarl, just be nice to myself.

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Filed under Chubby girl

March 28, 2011 · 4:33 pm

Thirteen point one

Yesterday, I participated in the 2nd annual Oakland Running Festival by running a half marathon.

A half what?  A half.  MARATHON.  Like, one of those things that crazy people do.

For weeks leading up to it, it was pretty much all I could think about.  People would ask how I was and I’m all “Yeah.  I’m freaking out.  Half marathon.”  Meeting someone for the first time, it’s “Hi, I’m Maggie.  I’m running a half marathon for the first time.”

The day got closer and closer.  For perhaps the first time ever in my life, I was dreading the weekend.

I had dreams about runs that would never end.

We ate some pasta on Saturday night, went to bed, got up at 7 in the morning (although I woke up much earlier and then had restless, pseudo-snoozy time).  We ate whole wheat English muffins with almond butter and banana, drank some water.  I had to pee about 4 times before we left.  And then still had to pee some more when we got there.

We wore the long sleeve tech race shirts that we got at the expo/packet pick-up the day before.  It was cold waiting around, but it all started pretty promptly at 9 am and then I wasn’t cold for long.  In fact, I had to take the shirt off and tie it around my waste around mile 5 or so.  Which means that my bib number isn’t visible and I may miss out on some of the official photos, but David kept his on and we were together throughout, so that’s probably good enough for picture finding purposes. Which is really the whole reason I did it, you know.  For the official race photos.

There was a countdown from 10, which made me insanely nervous, even knowing that it would probably be another 3 to 5 minutes after the start time before we’d be crossing the line.  But the fanfare and hoopdy of the countdown and the exploding confetti all added to the surrealness of it all.

There were over 4,000 people running the half, so once the race got going, it felt like we were just being swept along in this current.  Don’t know where we’re going, where to turn, how fast we’re going, just going.  We were towards the back of the pack, so the current wasn’t super speedy, but probably faster than I would have gone on my own.

We went ALL over Oakland, zig-zagging this way and that.  I kinda liked not really knowing where I was going, since it meant I couldn’t anticipate and create ideas in my head about how much was left or what parts were good or easy parts.  There were all different kinds of bands along the way, including a taiko drum group.  There was a ring of fire to run through.  People from the A’s and the Raiders were there, including some sassy Raiderettes right at the finish line.

So, the event itself was really cool  There were a ton of people out to cheer the runners on and a lot of Oakland pride.

And the running?  Well…. it was definitely fine at first.  I still didn’t LIKE it, and it was pretty quick to start feeling like I was slogging through the hard work of it.  But it was being ok.  Doable.

After about 4 miles or so, I started to get some hot spots on my feet.  Those just got worse and worse.  I started to get a bit of a pain in my hip, but it was fine.  Just for “fun” or something like it, I decided to speed up and do a little sprint to the mile marker when i could see the 5 marker, the 7 and 9.  But I knew that that 9 mile marker was the last one.  That’s where it started to just be really rough.

The last 3 miles were dreadful.  I just really, really wanted to stop.  And just to be ridiculous, there was a stupid hill right at the end.  And then I couldn’t believe it was happening.  The end was coming.  The whole thing, that I’d been so incredulous of, so full of dread for, it was going to be over.  It was going to be finished.  Coming through the finish line, I started to get the choke of hysteria.  Relief?  Pride?  Exhaustion?  I’m not sure.  But I was feeling emotional and too tired to process anything.

And then it was over.  2 hours and 35 minutes.  Which was about what I had been expecting.

I learned that I really do not like Gu.  Seriously.  Grosso and a half.

Also, the advice that I’d gotten from people that it would all just be fine since I’d done a 10 and a 9 mile run?  Fart on you, I say.  Yes, I did finish those last 4 miles, but it was like zombie jogging.  Worse than I had imagined.

I didn’t start training soon enough to do as well as I might have been able to… in the weekends leading up to this, we did a 6 mile run, then a 7, then a 10 and a 9.  Then we bailed on the 8 mile run that was supposed to happen.  So in total, I’ve done 4 “long” runs in my whole life.  I think I should have gotten in more of them, and probably some that were a bit longer.  10 miles is NOT just like 13 miles.

So now what?

I’m not sure that I want to do one again.  Maybe?  Maybe if I train more?  But the training would still involve these hours and hours of running.  And that’s kind of a drag.

Maybe I want to work on improving my 5K time next.  I’d really like to break that 30 minute mark.

And, I have to admit, somewhere in the deep dark recesses, there’s a wee worm with a taste for 26.2.

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Filed under Running, the bitch goddess

March 18, 2011 · 9:40 am

That of which I have not spoken

The idea was cultivating well over a month ago.

I had a vague leaning towards a decision.

I coughed up the $93 to commit.

I will be running a half marathon in 9 days.  In fact, in exactly 9 days, I will still probably have about an hour to go before it will be over.

I fear saying much about it because I still can’t believe this is happening.

Who the heck am I?  And why did I ever think this was a good idea?  Even an idea worth considering?

Boys and girls, I do not like running.  I did not pick up my pace and find a true love of exercise.  I’m pretty sure that I still hate running.  I may feel glad to have completed the task at hand, but I also feel a little glum that it wasn’t as good or as fast as it could have been.  I don’t get that runner’s high thing that people talk about.  So there’s that question again?  Why am I running this half marathon?

I seriously don’t know.

But I am a stubborn crotchety biznatch if nothing else, so I know that I will do it, most likely “bah humbugging” to myself the entire time.

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Filed under Running, the bitch goddess

March 17, 2011 · 10:26 am

It’s an Irish thing?

Last weekend, the meat booth at our farmer’s market was selling corned beef.  They had a sign to tell us that it was Special! and everything.

The David thinks this is a good thing and stops to get one, but they’ve run out.

The next day, in the ferry building, we stop at the butcher there, but they’ve only got humongo slabs of corned beef and don’t want to cut them into smaller slabs.  So we skip it.

Later, we’re planning out our meals for the week and we’ve got everything we need for corned beef and cabbage on our shopping list.  At Whole Foods, we successfully acquire a 2 pound non-humongo slab of corned beef.  Hurrah!

So, later this week, I’m discussing with David how we’ll have to plan to have our corned beef on Thursday.  It needs 3 hours to cook and that takes a little foresight to incorporate into your week night, because the damn dinner-cooking fairies I ordered off of Amazon got waylaid in customs or something.

The conversation goes something like this:

Me:  “I think I’ll try to put the corned beef on to cook on Wednesday night and then start on regular dinner.”

David:  “Ok.  How come on Wednesday night?”

Me:  “Because then we can have it ready for Thursday.”

David:  “What’s on Thursday?”

Me:  “Saint Patrick’s Day?”

David:  “So?”

Me:  “Saint Patrick’s Day and corned beef and cabbage.”

David:  “Is that a thing?”

Me:  “Uh.  Yeah.”  Obviously.

David.  “It’s an Irish thing?”

Me:  “Yes!  That’s what you eat on Saint Patrick’s Day!”

I realize that David wasn’t wanting to get corned beef for any special occasion, but just because we’ve been seeing signs for it and mention of it everywhere.  And it’s becoming clear to me that David, as a British person, is woefully uneducated on what it means to be Irish*, a topic we Americans pursue with passion.

*Apparently, corned beef and cabbage is not Irish at all.  The Irish may have prepared something sort of similar combining back bacon (not streaky like the kind Americans eat) with cabbage.  But the “traditional” corned beef and cabbage dish is not Irish.

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Filed under Foodery, The David, these are the days of my lives

March 10, 2011 · 4:23 pm

Here’s what happened

I’m coming up on my 4 year anniversary at my current job, so I made a book that shows the progression of my photography from when I started.

It’s hard to be objective about my own photos, but I think you can see where I started trying things, where I did a little learning and then a little testing of my own.

I still mess up a lot.  I still kinda don’t know what I’m doing.  But I am amazed at how much I think my photography has changed.

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