Link love

School's been picking up lately and I fear I will become a stressed out mess momentarily. I apologize if I do. I only have about seven months to go before I graduate. Chin up!

These two articles about NYC made me think about visiting again soon: literary New York City and ten things to do in the city from a local.

You're a Skywalker not a streetwalker. Hehe.

You are far more than the products you buy. Want to be happy? Work on you, don't simply go and buy things.

As a lady who likes to both drink and read, this article about literary bars piqued my interest.

The connection between being a child of a hoarder and a love of travel

I love to travel. While I recognize that that is not exactly a unique interest, it is one that I feel passionately about and one that pulls me and pushes me in ways that I have a hard time understanding. Over the last couple of months, I have had some pretty intense wanderlust that has caused me to feel incredibly discontent with my surroundings on many occasions.

Even though traveling is a pretty common interest, it seems that there are even more people who have little desire to travel or to only travel sparingly, seeking few destinations. During these bouts of wanderlust, I've been asking myself why I am so strongly a member of the traveling camp and wondering if anything in my life has occurred to condition me for a love of travel. My parents aren't big travelers and we only took a few vacations while I was growing up, mostly to the Jersey shore and, after the divorce, to West Virginia to visit relatives.

My first thoughts on the subject involve the fact that I am a child of divorced parents. Every other Friday, I traveled the ten minutes to the next town over to spend the weekend with my dad and brother. This constant, though slight, shuffling might account for my comfort with changing locations.

Because my mother was a hoarder and I despised the squalor that I lived in, I almost felt like being able to go to a normal household twice a month was like going on a vacation. Running water, clean surfaces, no clutter, no decay. I could invite my friends over. I didn't have to live in fear of being found out. Making that trip between my mother's and my father's was transformative for me. A black cloud was lifted during those ten minutes. These feelings were often associated with any kind of trip that took me out my mother's house. The farther away I was from home, the better. The more ground I could physically put between me and that house (even better if my mother was also in that house instead of with me) meant that I was less and less defined by those surrounds and I could more and more disassociate myself from that hell hole and live in my own skin on my own terms.

Hating the actual town and area I grew up in probably only encouraged my love for travel. Small town Pennsylvania is devoid of culture and progress. It took at least 20 or 30 minutes to travel to a town that had a movie theater, museum, art scene, or college. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to move away from that town. As soon as I could understand what college was, I knew I had to go and I had to go far, far away. I am not saying that small towns and rural areas are bad. I love spending some time outside of the bustle of city life and, oftentimes, these towns have a quaint character and are comforting to me. But there was something about being forced to endure the drabness of that particular town, day in and day out, at such a pivotal point in my life that really got under my skin.

I have a feeling that a mixture of these elements have caused me to associate staying with negative feelings and leaving with positive feelings. I knew that practically anywhere was better than the home I grew up in and I wanted more than anything to not live where I did. My experiences traveling continually affirmed this and therefore created a tenacious root for my wanderlust.

How about you? If you are a child of a hoarder, do you also harbor a love for travel? Do you think it has anything to do with your home life? If you're not a child of a hoarder and love to travel, why do you think that is?

Gossiping men

Smithsonian's Archives of
American Art via Flickr

While my dad and I were driving up to Pennsylvania last week, he told me that he had an interesting conversation the night before. "Oh yeah? What about?" He told me that my uncle had called him. Now, this isn't his brother we're talking about. We're talking about my mother's sister's husband. Let me put it this way: my uncle on my mother's side called my mother's ex-husband.

This uncle and my dad had gotten along well when my parents were married. They used to grab beers together at the bar down the road from my grandma's when the family used to get together over the holidays. My mother has never really cared for him and I'm sure the fact that he was buddy buddy with my dad didn't help his case. After my parents got divorced though, my dad's connection with my mother's family ended. It wasn't until my brother and sister in law's wedding two years ago that my dad got to see or talk to my mom's family again. This uncle and my dad caught up and my dad got to hear about all the family dirt that I hadn't heard from the female family channels that worry too much about keeping face. They must have exchanged phone numbers at the wedding because my uncle decided to call my dad last week to talk about my mother.

Yes, that's right: my mother's sister's husband called my mother's ex-husband to find out what the hell is going on with my mother. My brother and I apparently aren't the only ones feeling my mother's arctic chill these days. My uncle wanted to know why she was being so distant lately and why she seemed so disconnected with and unconcerned about her family. Her lackluster attitude has some other members of my family turning their heads. And so, my father told him. Everything. Hoarding and all. And, of course, my uncle had no idea.

My mother's secret is starting to unravel despite her best efforts to keep it from those closest to her. All I can do is smile.

Disappointment after disappointment

After spending a few days visiting family and meeting my newborn nephew in Pennsylvania, I wish I could tell you that the trip was fantastic and everything went swimmingly, but unfortunately, I can't.

The day my dad and I left for PA was the day that my sister in law and my nephew were supposed to be discharged from the hospital. My brother and sister in law texted me that morning to tell me that my sister in law and the baby both had fevers and that they were not going to be discharged that day. My sister in law was discharged the next day, but my nephew is only now getting discharged today. It took a few days for his fever to subside and he needed a transfusion to get his blood platelet count back up. The poor little guy was in the NICU the whole time my dad and I were visiting and we weren't allowed to hold him because he had an IV in his umbilical cord. So, I didn't get any quality time with the baby, but I was still very happy to be able to see him. I was able to spend quality time with my sister in law, helping her around the house, and I did get to see my grandmother when my brother and I went and had lunch with her one afternoon.

You may have noticed the omission of one key player in my family: my mother. And this omission is for good reason: I didn't see or hear from her once while I was in town. As bad as that is, she did my brother even worse: after saying she might stop by the hospital the day his son was born, she did eventually show up and barely talked to my sister in law or her family, held the baby without looking at him, and hasn't bothered to talk to my brother since. She hasn't expressed any concern about the baby's health or made any indication that she wants to see him again. My mother has reached a new low.

While my brother and I were driving to my grandmother's the afternoon we visited her, my brother told me some more disturbing information. He has tried multiple times to talk to our mother about her hoarding and to help her. She has consistently turned him down, avoided him, shut down, and lied to him. He told me that he asked her if she was hoarding now and she answered no, even though she has brought her hoarding to the bedroom that she is staying in at my grandmother's and her car is in an awful cluttered state that is visible to anyone that walks past. He asked her if she ever hoarded and she answered no.

No?! No?! How dare she outright lie to my brother's face. I am a witness to the decade of complete filth that we lived in and she told him no! She can't even face the music and admit that she's a hoarder, not even to her own son who knows the truth about her. Her adamant denial trivializes all of the pain that I dealt with during that decade and all of the subsequent issues that I have had dealing with the reality of the situation. Her lying means that my struggle means nothing to her. Nothing. There is no way in hell I can have a relationship with someone that endangered me for a decade and cannot even admit that it happened. No, ma'am.

My brother warned her that if she doesn't clean up her act (literally), she will be losing the last person who knows about her problems and who cares about her. She lost her marriage and her only daughter because of her hoarding and now she's losing her only beloved son. She will become a sinking stone. He hoped that these threats would motivate her to reach out to her family and reconnect with us. All we've gotten is silence.

Aunthood

I am now the proud aunt of this 10 lb 10 oz (!) baby boy!

Baby LJ

Mother, baby, and father are all doing well. Grandma has been her usual distant self.

My dad and I are going up to visit on Sunday and I can't wait to hold the little guy :-).

Recent happenings and travels

Some downed trees and limbs only a block
away from my apartment.

Despite my efforts to update you all on recent occurrences, it seems I have failed to mention a few key things that have been happening to me and around me over the last couple of weeks.

First, earthquakes and hurricanes, oh my! I did indeed feel the earthquake that shook the entire east coast. The epicenter was about 40 miles away from Richmond and rattled my poor library building. There was no damage in the area, thankfully. Hurricane Irene, on the other hand, did inflict this poor city with some damage a few days later. There were downed trees and limbs everywhere and 75% of the Richmond area lost power. Somehow, my apartment did not lose power and neither my apartment nor car sustained any serious damage. A branch was threatening to break through my bedroom windows for a good half an hour, but thankfully we only got a nasty leak in the living room ceiling and nothing more. Suffice it to say, it was quite an eventful week here in Richmond!

This past weekend, I was able to enjoy a rare three day weekend on account of the library's generous observance of Labor Day. Originally, I thought that I would be visiting Pennsylvania that weekend to visit my family and new nephew, but that nephew of mine had other plans and was not born that weekend. Instead, the beau and I took a trip to Charlottesville to visit Monticello. I have never visited before (a fact very surprising to most of my Richmond friends), so I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. For some reason, whenever I previously heard about Thomas Jefferson and how he was skilled in X and Y and was a scholar of A, B, and C, I've always kind of just shrugged it off. I guess it's the skeptic in me. I figured it was an exaggeration. But being at Monticello, it's impossible to shrug these facts off and let your inner skeptic distort history. This guy was into everything. I also have to applaud the folks at Monticello for providing one of the best house tours I've been on. Being able to actually go into the rooms and not just poke your head into the doorways allowed for a more personal connection to be formed with the place and its inhabitants. My interest in Jefferson as been officially piqued and I hope to read a biography of him soon (and actually believe what they say about him ;-).

Before heading to my dad's for dinner on Labor Day, T and I did manage to get to Pony Pasture on the James River. I'm sad to say that it looks like I will not make it to the beach this year before it gets too cold (unless it heats up again during the end of September), but I am happy that I did make it to the river a number of times this year, something I haven't managed to do much since I've lived in Richmond. We enjoyed a short time sitting on a secluded, large rock with our feet in the water (trying to scare off the school of little fish that kept trying to nibble at our toes), reading our respective books (nothing like reading about knowledge management during a holiday weekend), and attempting to ignore the large, decomposing catfish that was stuck next to a rock about ten feet away from us (we didn't notice it until we had already settled down and it was a good enough spot for us to accept our unwelcome observer).

Last, I'll keep you updated on what I've been reading and watching lately. I finished up the Hobbit and barreled through the second book in the Cat Who series, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern. I know, I know, it's a guilty pleasure of mine. I am now reading Eat, Pray, Love to help/fuel my wanderlust. It's unusual for me to be reading so many books during the semester, but I've been finding the time, so I'm milking it. I'm sure once the work on my thesis really starts, I will have precious little time to be pleasure reading. I'm slowly making my way through Arrested Development and Mad Men. I finished watching all three Swedish movie versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series. I'm interested to see how the American versions are going to compare. I also watched Steel Magnolias for the first time this week and naturally cried like a baby despite my resistance to shed a tear. Damn you, Sally Fields, and your skilled motherly acting.

Link love

Hi, friends. Here are some links and quotes to keep you entertained and focused on the positive this week (both of which are proving to be hard for me due to the never ending rain Richmond's getting).

Want some travel porn? Check out National Geographic's Intelligent Travel blog.

“We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot

Hehe business cat enjoying a martini.

Two geeky kitchen items I would like: a plunger measuring cup (I'm pretty sure I've seen Alton Brown using one of these on Good Eats) and the OCD cutting board to keep my chopping up to snuff.

A great quote to help keep your relationships in perspective.

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” – Dale Carnegie

Insomnia and food memories

via vforvelociraptors on Flickr

Right after I got off of work last night, I started getting a migraine. I get aural migraines about every six months to a year (I used to get them more often when I was younger, but that's another story), so the warning signs afford me a small window of time to take some Excedrin and squash the migraine before the real pain starts. Thankfully, I was able to do just that and got the symptoms under control within half an hour or so. I had little pain and was able to make dinner for the beau and me as well as read and watch TV. I was feeling quite nauseous as the night wore on though, so T offered to get me a Coke Slurpee to calm my stomach. Our evening passed rather uneventfully and we turned out the light at midnight. I was incredibly tired and thought that falling asleep would be a snap until I realized I had been awake for half an hour and couldn't make my mind slow down and my body get comfortable. I took a melatonin pill around 2 out of desperation, but to no avail. It might as well have been a sugar pill for all the good it did. This tossing and turning lasted until 4 am when I finally managed to sleep for about 2 hours before having to get up for work.

As I laid there for hours, I thought of many, many things. Once I started feeling hungry, I naturally started to think about food. Last night, I had made boxed macaroni and cheese for the two of us because it was quick and that's what I had. T offered to help me, but I kind of laughed and said there really wasn't much to do, boxed mac and cheese is easy. He looked a little uncomfortable and said that it always took him forever to make because he wasn't a good cook. I smiled and said that I've been doing it for so long that it has just become easy for me. As I laid awake, I thought back on this conversation and it struck me that 3 years ago, I would never had shrugged off boxed mac and cheese as being easy. I would have stood anxiously by the stove, waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to soften.

Partially, it's any wonder that I started to cook at all since my mother didn't teach me anything, I had rare opportunities living in squalor to cook, and I was discouraged by my ex-fiance (yes, I said ex-fiance. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I brought him up in this blog, but that's a whole nother story that will have to wait). On the other hand though, it's not surprising at all that I started to cook as both my grandmothers are excellent cooks and I got to see them in action, especially my maternal grandmother. I feel like being able to cook is at least a little bit genetic (it must have skipped over my mother though) and I was lucky to get it from both sides of my family.

Despite my limitations, I remember a few times when I stayed home sick from school as a preteen and teenager that I wanted something to eat, but nothing that was available seemed appealing. I would unearth my mother's tattered red cookbook, I think it was a Good Housekeeping that she got as a bridal shower gift, and find recipes that I could make with what was on hand and that weren't too difficult. I remember I made chocolate chip cookies once and pasta in a cream sauce another time. Both times I had to fumble around the kitchen, taking the crusted pots and pans and garbage off the burners, using the ironing board as a counter, and scrambling to find utensils and dishes that were both clean and functional in order to even make a simple dish. I had to gather up all of the cups and bowls of water to come up with enough to boil pasta as my mother had the water line turned off during the day. Miraculously, I had the foresight to check the oven before I turned it on to make the cookies as it was stuffed full of more wrappers and garbage that would have caused the kitchen to have gone up like tinder if I had turned the oven on to preheat without looking. My mother always came home stunned when I made these ventures into culinary arts, a mingling of pleasant surprise and annoyance on her face.

My mother rarely cooked, especially when we acquired a microwave and it was just the two of us. We survived off of frozen dinners, fast food, and leftovers from my grandma. When I was lucky, she would either stop by on her way home from work or send me down the three blocks to the local Italian market to buy us a few slices of tomato pie.

Now, I have to back up and first explain the market and then pie (seriously, this was all stuff I was thinking about while I was suffering from insomnia. I was craving this tomato pie that I hadn't thought about in ages). I predominately grew up in a tiny, Italian town. My mother and I moved there, which was just the next town over from where my family was living, after my parents got divorced. Prior to moving there, my brother and I attended preschool at their Christian school (the one Christian school in the sea of Catholic ones). My brother is three years older than me, so my mom used to take me along when she dropped him off in the morning for preschool. Often, we would stop at this Italian market for deli meat, hoagies, or ground beef after depositing my brother. My mother always claimed that they were all the best in the area. I remember thinking how high and how steep the front cement stairs were and how scared I was of falling down them. Once inside, there was a constant, permeating smell of drying meat as they made their own sausages and other Italian meats on site. I could barely see over the meat counter, even on my tip toes, but the younger of the two men who worked behind it would always lean his head over so he could see me and talk to me. His name was Pete and he was tall and thin and sported a giant, bushy, black mustache and shaggy, black eyebrows (very Italian, think Luigi in real life). Funnily enough, a few years after my mother and I moved to this small town, Pete and his family moved into the house across the street from us. Like I said- small, small town. I was a very shy child, but Pete was incredibly nice and I knew that my mother really liked him, so I usually didn't hide behind my mom's legs from him.

The woman who ran the register was the matriarch of the family that owned the market. She was elderly even then and I was a little scared of her because, even though I couldn't articulate it at that age, she had been a bit hardened by business and lacked the complete grandma aura that I was used to from my own. Despite my unnecessary uneasiness about approaching the register, she always fished out two lollipops from one of the many candy jars that lined the counter and gave them to me, telling me to share the second one with my brother when he got out of school. They were the pastel, two toned, chalky suckers that always dried out your mouth and tasted, no matter which colors you got, of sugar and a vague fruit you couldn't quite put your finger on. I was too scared of her to contradict her and I always nodded, wide eyed at her and gave my brother that second lollipop as though she would know if I kept it for myself and punish me for being greedy.

It wasn't until my mother and I moved to this town, only a few blocks away from the market, that we started to eat their tomato pie on a regular basis. I honestly don't remember if the tomato pie was made in house, if a local Italian bakery made it, or if some Italian woman in the town made a couple of batches and sold it at the store. I do remember that it was originally only available a few days a week and in limited quantities. If you wanted some, you had to get there shortly after they put it out or you'd be out of luck or worse- get stuck with an edge or corner piece (I know some people who didn't mind the edges, but I'm all about the center pieces). They always had the tomato pie in an upturned rectangular cardboard box lid sitting on top of the glass sliding doors of the ice cream freezer, directly in front of you as you walked into the store. There were always piles of parchment paper and white, paper lunch bags sitting right beside it so you could help yourself to as many slices as you'd like.

The first couple of times I had tried tomato pie when I was younger, I didn't care for it. For those unaccustomed to the taste and texture, tomato pie can seem like room temperature or cold pizza without the mozzarella cheese- I know that's what I thought the first couple of times I ate it. I missed the delicious, melty cheese on top of a regular slice of pizza too much to appreciate tomato pie's unique contribution to the culinary world (if I remember correctly, some people do top off their tomato pie with a slice of cheese to make a cold, quasi-pizza slice). I remember the first couple of times I had tomato pie, when I took a bite of the pie, I would push the thick tomato sauce away from my mouth with my upper lip so that I wouldn't have to eat so much of it. Eventually I would have a substantial heap of tomato sauce that would fall off the edge of the slice and I was free to eat the rest without the offensive sauce. I have to say though, over time, the tomato pie really reels you in.

The look and shape of tomato pie is similar to Sicilian style pizza. It's not round, it's rectangular. The crust is thick, but not greasy. The difference is that the pie is not covered in mozzarella cheese before it bakes. It just has a thick coating of tomato sauce that winds up resembling, in look, texture, and taste, seasoned tomato paste after it's baked and the tomatoes' natural sugars are allowed to intensify and bring a sweetness to the dish. A slight sprinkling of Parmesan or Romano cheese tops off the pie when it's taken out of the oven and soaks up some of the tomatoes' liquid so that it appears orange when looked at closely, similar to the orange you see on a white napkin when you wipe your mouth after you've eaten tomato sauce. The pie is served room temperature or cold. I have not even seen tomato pie, let alone had a slice, since I moved away from Pennsylvania.

Somehow, in my sleep deprived state early this morning, I connected these strong memories of tomato pie and that little Italian town with the fact that, after I had broken off my marriage with the ex-fiance (I promise, I'll give details later) and moved into a one bedroom apartment, I took up cooking along with pesc-vegetarianism as a way to prove myself. I had a feeling that my problem wasn't that I couldn't cook, it was simply that I didn't know how to cook. So, I started small with boxed macaroni and cheese and the like and worked my way up to making full home cooked meals. Genetics worked in my favor and I made many successful attempts and was happy with the results. Cooking helped me build confidence, keep my mind and hands busy, and cure the depression that had bubbled up in the wake of the break up and subsequent major life change. I discovered that it was deeply satisfying for me to sit down to a meal that I had made by myself for myself and reap the rewards of the time and effort that I had put into creating something nourishing for my own body. This satisfaction is what calls me back to the kitchen, eggs me on while I search for new recipes, causes me to share my cooking with the people that I truly care about, and, apparently, keeps me up all night.

Existential inspiration post hurricane

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
-Albert Camus

Picnics and hidden parks

This afternoon, after much hemming and hawing about what to do with ourselves before he had to go to work, the boyfriend and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful late summer weather and have a nice little picnic outside. I packed a few odds and ends for me to eat and we headed to Strawberry St. Market for him to pick up something for himself. He settled on a tub of macaroni and cheese and a tub of mashed potatoes (both delicious choices). Right across the street, down an unassuming alleyway, is a hidden, little known park known as Scuffletown Park. Surrounded by parking spaces and backs of houses, this little rectangular oasis proves to be a breath of fresh air when city life becomes stifling. We sat at a circular wooden table that had a painted, circular, low cement wall that encompassed the whole table and was used as the bench. A small group of people showed up shortly after we did and sat at another table with three pizza boxes, no doubt pies from 8 1/2 which is also across the street, a few buildings down from the market.

We passed half an hour or so in the park, commenting on all the cute quirks we noticed (gnomes in trees and "No Rabbits" signs) before walking back to my apartment. It is easy to forget about Richmond's hidden alley parks because they are usually maintained by small organizations or the neighbors surrounding them and do not get a lot of publicity. They're not flashy- no jungle gyms, swing sets, or fountains. They're nice and simple, nice and quiet, and the closest thing to a secret getaway one can find in Richmond when the usual suspects for outdoor escape (Belle Isle, Maymont, Byrd Park) are all filled up or too far away.