Inspirational bit

A friend reminded me of this brilliant Middlemarch quote the other day, and it just resonated with me for so many reasons. And so, I share it with you. (That George Eliot was one smart chick!)

On books and tree rings.

I’ve spent the past few days puttering around my condo during staycation. Staycation during the winter means you don’t really LEAVE the house. (Have I mentioned I love staycation? You can stay in jammies for days, people. DAYS.)

The pragmatic side of me knew I had to use this time to organize, which is how I found myself spending a good solid hour tidying my book shelves. Before you fall over the fact that I spent a full-on 60 minutes playing with books floor-to-ceiling shelves, you need to know that at my core I’m a word nerd who’s never once been without a library card or a list of books to read. (Sidebar of a true story: I was such a delinquent book returner in my youth that in kindergarten my mother gave me a lecture about my overdue books, telling me that one day, if I continued my wayward habits, they’d destroy my credit rating. Take this time to imagine the blank stare a pig-tailed six-year-old gives to someone after this lecture.)

But I digress.

While I was moving shelves, sorting books, dusting and declutterring, I realized that in a way my bookshelves tell the story of my life. From photography to progressive theology, bookshelves are like tree rings that tell a story of a tree and its environment. There’s my entire collection of Paulo Coelho’s works translated in English, which I managed to accumulate after a friend gave me The Alchemist as a college graduation gift. There’s my father’s old photography books, that he gave me to me when I got my hands of my first SLR. There’s some of my favorite children's books, both from when I was kid (hello, Misty of Chincoteague) and some I’ve picked up along the way because I wanted to have them on my shelves. (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.) There’s vintage sewing books, feminist theory, Irish literature and some American poetry anthologies. There’s the Jodi Picoult I love to read on vacation along with books on yoga, journalism, politics, public health and tons of fiction that I just haven’t been able to part with over the years. (I have a rule that book collection cannot expand beyond the confines of the shelves that hold them, so I always prune a few times a year.)

There was a New York Times essay a few years ago that talked about how bookshelves can be used to judge a perspective date. It was snarky and sometimes snotty, but at its core is this pretty important truth that we are what we read. Or, maybe it’s that we read what we are.

I guess for me, the books I hold on to after sending off a pile to Goodwill are the books that sort of mark the stages of my life.

What do you think?

Intolerance.

Because I can't stop hitting "publish post" tonight... (It may be the wine.)

And because I can't get certain news stories out of my head ... (It may be the job.)

And because I think this is worthy of some good debate... (It may be the Presbyterian polity wonk in me.)

I'll pose this question that I'm currently wrestling with. (And yes, I know I ended my sentence with a preposition. Shut up.)

Am I allowed to be intolerant of intolerance? Because I am, but then I feel hypocritical.

Discuss.

Logging off? Confessions of a...

Confession: I'm an Internet addict. I tweet. I Facebook. I check email within 30 seconds of its arrival. I use AIM. Gchat. The office internal IM system. Hell, I don't even think about going to the store without my phone and its ability to offer insta-Google. Why would I? You never know when there could be a produce crisis and I may suddenly really need to know the difference between kale and Italian kale.

I've been thinking a lot about how wired I am and how it fuels distraction in my life, in part because I just finished reading A.J. Jacobs' latest book, "The Guinea Pig Diaries." In one chapter he spends a month doing nothing but "unitasking" because he says we've multitasked ourselves away from our ability to focus.

In the 18th century, there were things like "attention athletes" who spent hours and days focusing on ONE THING and one thing only.

"Oh, to be born in the golden age of attention," he writes. "When Lincoln and Douglas could have three-hour debates, or the faithful could pray without ceasing for four hours. When people would look at a painting for an afternoon. Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move."

Today, though, the average U.S. student gives up working on a complicated math problem after only 9.5 minutes. (Because he writes it better than I ever will, I'll keep quoting.) Jacobs says the "culture of distraction changes the way we think." It, literally, reroutes our brain, which makes us anything but the brightest, happiest, conscious people we wish we were.

So, what the hell happened to us? Turns out we basically started screwing ourselves out of the ability to focus sometime around the Industrial Revolution. That's when, as Jacobs says, "we began to fetishize speed and equate quickness with intelligence."

Personally, I can barely sit in silence without my mind suddenly doing the mental equivalent of crunking. Prayer? OMG. Try to find time to sit and quietly reflect? Pashaw. Ride the bus and just focus singularly on the beauty of Lake Michigan? Such effing effort. That's when my brain suddenly decides it MUST comes up with an 8-point plan on how to clean my floorboards. Floorboards, people! Right! This! Very! Second! (This is hysterical because, well, a solid 80 percent of the time you can't even SEE my floorboards, what with the giant mountain of clothes everywhere. But that's beside the point. Or maybe it IS the point.) Hell, I can't even talk on the phone without doing something else: emailing, typing, cleaning, lounging in a bubble bath, walking the dog, cooking dinner, driving my car. I do, however, draw the line at toilet talking. Because, I'm sure you REALLY wanted to know that.

My point... my point... where was I? Oh, right. Yes. Focus. Technology.

In essence, we've (and me, specifically here) somehow acquired this cultural ADD and then proceeded to magnify it with our increasingly wired lifestyle.

I know I do.

Once a few years ago when I was felled by a particularly violent stomach flu, I spent the night crouched on the floor of the bathroom holding on to my Blackberry so I could tweet and text my woe. In between heaving.

Sure, I was never a Focus McFocuserson. Hell, Currer Bell once nearly kicked me out of a Zen meditation group because I couldn't stop fidgeting. But I swear, with each passing day it feels like it's harder and harder to do one thing -- and do it well from start to finish without interruptions

Do you feel that way, too?

All of this is swirling around in my brain today while I was a) at work; b) at lunch; c) riding the L; d) trying on my FABULOUS new prescription sunglasses; e) did I mention they were fabulous; f) basking in the sun on the ride home; g) walking the mutt dog; h) watching 2 episodes of NCIS while eating dinner and sorting fabric scraps and mocking SATC2 for simply existing.

Yet somehow, in the midst of all the noise of my mind, I came across this: 8 reporters at The Washington Post tried to unplug for a week. They nearly lost their minds. Then they wrote about it.

Think about it: no e-mail. No iPhone. No quick Googling. No YouTube to see the latest Greyson Chance video. I don't think I could it. A full-on wired hiatus. A technological Sabbath.

It makes my busy brain hurt to think about.

I wonder if I could even go a day. Could you? I wonder how I could become better at quieting my my monkey mind that bounces all around like a 3-year-old riding the wave of a raging sugar high.

I guess what I'm saying is this. My name is Noodles. I'm wired. And I'm an addict. And I bet you are too.

Image found here.

An ode to Tylenol PM. Ish.

Happiness is a full, uninterrupted, don't-move-a-single-muscle night's sleep.

Even it's medically enhanced to be that way.

And even if said drugs render me so unconscious that you could rob my house or detonate some kind of incendiary device next to my head, producing eardrum-splitting noise that still wouldn't wake me up. Or wake me up enough to care.

Even if I drool on myself in an inappropriate manner sorta like that girl in Ferris Bueller's history class. ("Something doo economics... Anyone? Anyone? Voodoo economics.")

Even if I allegedly snore. (Which, P.S., I do not. That's just a nefarious, malicious, lie-filled plot hatched to kill my healthy self esteem by every boy I've ever dated. Ever. Whatever. Boys lie.) (Addendum: The Modern Gal claims I do snore. Even though I find her claim factually dubious, I bet that if it IS true, my snores are nothing short of ADORABLE.)

Even if I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night convinced that there's someone inside the house that's going to attack me, which makes me wake up, swat the air, then roll over instead of fending off a TOTALLY menacing shadow that was really just my dresser.

And even if said medication makes me talk in my sleep. And honest to God, dream that my friends are Amish, but not Amish and more like The Duggars. But with helicopters. And PDAs.

And OMG. Sleep. Have I mentioned I LOVE sleep. Sleep is better than... wait. My mom reads this. I can't say. But you can probably guess. (Hiiii, Mom!)

Crazy sleepy time shenanigans? Whatever. Totally worth it for a good night's sleep. Which is why I must say: I heart you Tylenol PM.

The end.

P.S. This Pulitzer-winning screed was written after three hours of sleep last night, a 4:15 a.m. wakeup, a long day at work, an almost migraine, 5 extra-strength Tylenols taking during an 18-hour day, and one night cap Tylenol PM which was downed at 6:45 p.m. Yes. 6:45. Don't judge. You SO wish you were me.

Screw the snuggie. SPLANTS.

That's right, you blanket with sleeves you. I've got my sleeping bag. Specifically, my LL Bean sleeping bag that was purchased sometime around 1989 for a Girl Scouts camping trip.

Since I live in Chicago...
And since it was -1 this morning...
And I have paper thin walls that I swear lack insulation...
And since I have somehow become coldblooded....
And because I'm dying, DYING to start a new fashion craze...

I've taken to zipping myself into my sleeping bag and going about my life in my condo. I watch TV zipped into my sleeping bag. I work on the computer. I play with the mutt dog. I have napped in it too. The only thing I have yet to do while my lower half is ensconced is laundry and cooking. (Mainly because walking in it is kind of like waddling. But with the equivalent of socks on a recently Pledge-covered wood floor.)

While I'm basically waiting to bite it any time now, I think I've come up with a COMPLETELY BRILLIANT IDEA!! There could be a market for Sleeping Bag Pants. SPLANTS!!!!!!

Basically, I'd add suspenders to hold it up, and sorta feet thingies to give me traction. And arm holes. Maybe a few pockets. How effing awesome with that be? (Sidebar, I'm working on a picture of me wearing my splants. Lacking my suspenders and arm holes, photographing it by my self has proven to be a wee bit difficult.

Anyway, I wanted to share my genius with you. Which also might explain why I am, and continue to be, single.

The end.

ADDENDUM: Promptly after writing this, I waddled my splants-wearing self from my desk to the sofa and promptly fell asleep for 2+ hours. Moral of the story: Splants are only for the trained professional.

The end. (Really, this time.)

An existential crisis.

A couple of years ago, my friend Lido went on date with a graphic designer. A photographer and all-around Fabulous Renaissance Man, Lido asked her a question: "What's your favorite font?"

I love this question. (And, incidentally, I love Lido for asking it. Also, I love the girl he's currently dating who I'm sure has a much better font preference than this other girl ever did!) I think people who can answer the font question right away are my people. They're artsy, but care about presentation. They see themselves in their work. They love text and words and conveying messages. They know a font is more than a font. It's about what giving the world a little tiny glimpse of you.

I used to say my favorite font was Garamond, because it perfectly conveyed who I was. Classic and sophisticated, with just enough flair to show that it was anything but average.

I used to say this.

These days, I don't have a font any more. There's probably a ton of fodder for someone who bills at $120/hr about why that might be. But I don't think Garamond works for me these days, at least as a description of the person I am today.

I think it's boring. Dowdy. Too average. Too bland. And a serif font? Ugh. Gag. Of course, that shouldn't be interpreted to mean that I think I'm un-boring, un-dowdy, un-average, or un-bland. I don't really know what I am. Back then, I was always wearing pearls and downing Chardonnay. These days, I'm more likely to be found in yoga pants than pearls. There's other changes too, changes I probably don't need to _ and probably shouldn't _ get into here. But suffice it to say, the older I get the more I realize that I'm a work in perpetual progress.

But what matters is that I'm stuck with this existential typographical crisis, which probably has a lot more to do with myself and my place in the world than what my words look like when I'm banging away on the computer.

I've been killing time on DaFont, a great collection of something close to 10,000 different fonts. Of course, I'm not tech literate enough to figure out how to import these fonts into Word. (I think that maybe they're more for Illustrator/Photoshop type things.)

So, I'm stuck. I feel like one day it will hit me. I'll get out of the fog and I'll find my font. It will fit me again and I'll feel like we belong. And then I'll feel better about the person I am today, instead of the person that I was. Am I crazy? I mean, more than usual.

So tell me, peeps, do you have a favorite font? And most importantly, why did you pick it? And what do you think it says about you?

Five Things.

I'm typing this from my cluttered desk, which sits in my cluttered bedroom, which is part of my cluttered condo. As the recession marches on, I can't shake this gnawing feeling of guilt when I look at all the stuff I've amassed. It's stuff I shouldn't have an emotional attachment to, but for a series of weird reasons, I do. It's stuff I wanted, but mostly, didn't need (let's not even discuss how many pairs of black shoes I own, or Timbuk2 bags.) It's stuff that weighs me down, but stuff I just can't seem to ditch.

I bet you've got it too, in your closets, junk drawers, storage bins, and basements.

Many moons ago when I was packing my over-stuffed home preparing to move from Tennessee with whatever I could shove in my car and a rented SUV, I remember sorting through what would charitably be called a small mountain of clothing, books, and assorted crap that I couldn't take with me.

"What a waste," I thought as I shoved it into two-ply garbage bags and hauled it off to Goodwill. "What a waste of money. What a waste of energy."

Apparently, I don't have much of a learning curve.

I spent part of Saturday in a salon getting my hair dyed back to its natural brown. While I was sitting there thumbing through US Weekly, I began to pay attention to the woman sitting next to me.

"I started giving away five things every day," she said.

"Really?" asked her stylist.

By her math, this lady figured that if she gave away five things every day, she'd have gotten rid of some 500 items by the end of the year.

That's a lot of junk. That's a lot of physical and emotional cleansing.

"Wow, so do you watch Clean Sweep for inspiration?" asked another stylist, referencing the TLC show.

"I don't have a TV. I gave it away."

I sat there for a while and thought about what a radical idea this woman had. Sure, we're told charity is good and clutter can lead to chaos. But our culture doesn't really reinforce that. Stuff is status. Retail is therapy. We acquire things and that makes us, however briefly, happy.

Look around you. How much could you give away and not even notice? An item a day? Ten? It's a pretty phenomenal exercise when you think about it.

I think I might try it. You?

On silence, laps, and why I'm insane.

Forty-five minutes. That's the time between when my alarm when off at 5:23 a.m. this morning and when I actually got around to dragging myself myself out of bed.

It's a quarter of the time between when I sat down at my desk and when I finally got a chance to pop my head up and hunt down my second cup of coffee.

It's also the amount of time I spent swimming laps in the pool this afternoon.

Guess which one flew by?
Now, put on your thinking caps and think about which one was absolutely interminable.

Really, 3/4 of an hour isn't that long of a time _ whether you're sleeping or pounding out laps in the pool.

The problem?

The problem is that 45 minutes sucks if you're me and you're in a swimming pool bored out of your skull, hoping that the time alone in your head combined with the sensory deprivation and the rhythm of the strokes and the breathing and the flip turns will give you time for deep, existential contemplation.


This was how my deep existential contemplation went:

"1, 2, 3, 4 ... I should really stop counting my strokes. 5, 6... DAMMIT. Hum. Deep thoughts. Deeeeep thoughts. Right. Thoughts. Does anything rhyme with 'thoughts?' Maybe 'Mott's.' Like the juice. Oh jeez, I'm thirsty. Why is it when I'm thirsty and shopping nothing makes me feel more refreshed than chugging some apple juice? Or cider? And, God, cider. Cider Jack. A six pack of that was my college standby. No. No. These are not deep thoughts. Deep thoughts need to be about my career, my friendships, my relationships, my body image, my faith in God, my future, my ... OMG! That dude in the lane next to me should NOT be wearing that Speedo. Banana hammock. Banana hammock. HAMMOCK. MAKE IT GO AWAY."

And so it goes.

Walking on sunshine

Also known as: my weekend of summer fun. Because, sometimes, you just need to chill with your friends, recuperating from a Chinese food coma by laying on the grass along the Chicago River with your feet sticking straight up in the air, toes a-wiggling toward the sunshine. For absolutely no particular reason whatsoever.

You know?

Laundry can bite me.

Do you ever procrastinate on things like, er, dusting, cleaning, vacuuming, dish-washing and laundry?

Do you ever watch the pile of dirty clothes expand like, uh (thinks of funny analogy), procreating rabbits? Fungus? A dude on 'roids?

Do your outfits get less and less coordinated, eventually to the point where your coworkers are convinced you have a job interview because you're wearing something so abnormally nice and professional since it's all that's left in your closet?

Do you ever get down to the dregs of the underwear drawer, only to realize all that you have left to put on is either a) too small; b) a member of the granny pantie variety; or c) one of those thongs you bought on a whim only to realize that you'd never actually wear a thong because butt floss isn't your thing?

And then ...

Do you ever suck it up one night, scrape up all the dirty (and now fur-covered clothes) from your floor, diligently separating them into lights and darks, and throw them into super-sized loads? And then, actually fold some of them, instead of letting them sit _ cleanly _ in a pile on the laundry room floor, ready for you to pick through them in the morning as you're bleary-eyed and just out of bed?

And then ...

Do ever wake up the next morning, and realize you have a ZILLION different clothing/underwear options? And do you think that nirvana smells like Tide?

Because, if you do, there's an above-average chance we were separated at birth.

A rose by any other name ...

Since I was taking pictures of my kick-ass baby herbs, I thought I'd also take some shots of one one of the lovely bouquets I got for my birthday!

These gorgeous roses are courtesy of a super fabulous girl friend!








Roses are never wrong.