A BBQ With Friends

We talked about what you’re supposed to say on a day like this. You don’t want to say, Happy Memorial Day. That sounds….wrong. But saying something like, “I hope you spend the day thinking about all the people that have died for you to enjoy said day,” sounds like a bit too much.

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You know that many of your friends and family are getting to spend the day with their loved ones and that’s happy. You aren’t near your own family so you do the next best thing and spend it with good friends.

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You remember the brave service men and women that gave their lives so all of us have the opportunity to sit around an outside table in 80 degree weather, watching meat slowly cook while sipping the beverage of our choice. You appreciate the people currently in service and you worry a little about your own kids, partners, parents and other friends and family who are in the military and keep the hope of peace in your heart.

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You make your mom’s favorite potato salad recipe because you miss her and then you find out your sister in Seattle made it, too, and you feel just a little closer than 1,255 miles. You make the 7, no 8! Layer Dip that’s made you famous. In fact, I hear you’re “known for your 7 Layer Dip.”

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You make fresh croutons and BBQ sauce because anything less wouldn’t be right for today and you’re resourceful and creative and they’re delicious enough that a non-grain eater eats them.

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You feel lazy and unhurried in a way only an extra long weekend provides. You wander around the backyard, feet burning on the hot pavement until you borrow someone’s flipflops to get around.

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You take the time to inspect the seeds on unripe strawberries promises and the blossoms dropping off the cucumber vine.

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You’re charmed to find the tiniest globe hidden in a flowered archway and take the wee selfie.

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There’s a dog.

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There’s hopefully always a dog.

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A very cute dog.

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You drink beer and sweet tea out of mason jars because that’s how it’s done on a day like today, where you have the luxury of time and friends and family and love.

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You ask your friends to pose so you can practice a new camera setting and they oblige because that’s the kind of friends they are and we’ve all got nothing but time today, anyway, so why not. But, mostly they do it because they’re your friends.

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The sun keeps peeping through the green leaves and winking at you.

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You’re so glad you get to be lazy and drink out of mason jars and spend the day with good friends and pet adorable dogs and your heart feels bursty.

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And then it’s time to eat grilled chicken with homemade Alabama White BBQ Sauce and you don’t even like BBQ sauce but this is different and it’s the best you’ve ever had and you’re already looking forward to leftovers the next day.

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Thanks, Chad & Jen.

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And Bailey.

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Grain-Free Cooking: Oven Fries! (With an Option for Cajun Seasoning)

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Sometimes you like it a little spicy. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you want half and half in the same meal. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to accommodate your desires.

These oven fries are super simple, easy and fast. I usually make them with just olive oil, sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, but when I feel fancy I pull out my Hungarian Paprika and I think we all know what that means. Red dust on everything! Just kidding. It means delicious.

First, you need some healthy-sized and firm potatoes. I like to plan about one potato per person. Usually we have a few leftover for lunch the next day, but it’s hard to plan .75 potatoes per person, so maybe just make it easy on yourself and plan on a few leftovers.

I also like to mix the types of potatoes so we end up with some russet and some sweet.

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Peel those puppies! Unless you like fries with skins, then please leave them on because I’m not the boss of you and can’t just order you around like that.

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Rinse the peeled potatoes and cut them in finger-thick wedges.

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And now, this is the important part, soak them in some cold water for about 20-30 minutes.

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This is also an important part – rinse, then dry them off thoroughly with a towel. We use the fabric kind of towels around here because trees and the world’s future or whatever. You know.

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Now you have to make a decision. Spicy? Or no? Or both?

For non-spicy, or what I like to call simple, but in a good way, put the fries on a cookie sheet and drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over them.

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Use your hand to roll the fries around in the oil until they are all coated and then fan them out in a single layer. Top with the salt and pepper. Now you’ll probably want to wash your hand off if you haven’t already.

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Spicy option! Here’s what I throw in the bowl, mix together and then dump on the fries. Chipotle Chili Pepper, Hot Hungarian Paprika, Thyme, Rosemary, Garlic, Turmeric, Cayenne Pepper, Sea Salt and Fresh-Cracked Pepper.

You can make our own mix if you hate something I’ve got here. We’re all individuals with a different tolerance of heat levels! You won’t hurt my feelings.

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I find the Chipotle Chili Pepper and the Hot Hungarian Paprika really add a little fun. I do something in the neighborhood of 1/2-1 tsp of each except the Cayenne Red Pepper. That little treasure gets just a dash.

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Put the rinsed and well-dried fries in a plastic zippered bag, dump the spices in there and drizzle on the olive oil.

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Then pretend you’re a kitty that can’t stop massaging your arm. You know what I’m talking about. Rub those spices all over those potatoes.

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If the potatoes end up without any glisten, think about putting a little oil on the cookie sheet to prevent sticking. Otherwise, dump the fries out and fan them out in a single layer.

Put the fries in your preheated oven – wait. I forgot to tell you to preheat your oven. Go back in time and set it to 425F. Ok. Now, put the fries in the oven and in 10 minutes, grab them out and flip them over.

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Put them back in for 10-15 more minutes and then eat them, but not too fast and maybe let them cool down just a tad first. Fry sauce tastes really good with these fries. Oh, who am I kidding. Fry sauce tastes pretty good with any kind of fries.

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Storyteller: Maggie May aka Flux Capacitor

datenight21. I’ve been blogging since 2009. I had a dream that blogging would be my way into the world of writers and publishing that I perceived myself having been denied through college. After I began blogging I quickly saw that regardless of where my writing went, the experience, the world of blogging would be reason enough. I started telling the story of my family and reading many many blogs and quickly I was hooked. I don’t think I’ve not looked at blogs longer than a few weeks since then.

2. I tell stories on my blog for a few reasons- one, to free my writing. When I’m blogging, I don’t worry about the audience- which is partly why I never could keep one. There were a few times in the history of my blog where it started really taking off, in terms of page views and mentions on the web, but I found that when my blog tone or content changed, my audience grew uneasy and disconnected. The people who began reading me because I was telling funny pregnancy stories about my wacky kids and sweet husband weren’t hanging in there when my writing turned sad and introspective and full of poems, and vice versa. I have to say that even for myself, the blogs I stick with and read over the years have all stayed the same in their style and story-telling, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s awesome, dependable. I read Girls Gone Child, for instance, and her blog has stayed great and consistent in content over years and years. She writes about her kids and her marriage and being male and female and music and family in the same tone, so when I go to her blog, I know what I’m getting, and I like that. When people read one of my stories, it may be very strange and moody full of unformed sentences and unexpected metaphors (my personal favorite), or it may be pedestrian and have a (hopefully) hilarious toddler potty training story, or it may be political and I’m ranting about child abuse laws.

The second reason I tell stories on my blog is to connect. I’ve made many online friends blogging and connected with an entire group of smart, interesting, passionate, creative and loving women I would have never met. Some men- but mostly women. The connections are often silent though- it is the connection of reading someone else’s story and finding your own life there, in some small or large way, and you feel less alone in the world.

The third reason I blog is for my kids and future family– my great-grandkids.

And lastly, as I mentioned before, I blog to connect to the writing community and get published. And I have. I was able to carve out a part-time income freelance writing, have been published in all kinds of places online and off and have an Ebook coming out this month, May 28th, with Shebooks publications entitled ‘Scenes From A Marriage‘.

3. I fill my days primarily with my mother’s heart and hands. I have four children ages 19, 17, 12 and 3, and they take a shit-ton (can I say that?) of energy, research (I’m nerdy like that) restraint and time, not to mention love, love and more love. I basically do nothing but dump patience and love on my kids full time until they are four or five, and then I pull away a teensy bit and go ‘Hm, maybe you need a bath, too.

My husband works full time and I now work from home 32 hours a week. I write in the corners of my mind and in increments. Before my job, I wrote for hours a day, usually later at night, after dinner, when my husband would take over and then again after the kids were asleep. Now I’m lucky if I write at all each day. I have a novel, Agitate My Heart, and it’s about 80% done. I chip away. I have friends, family, two large stinky hairy dogs and a husband, and that’s enough for Erma Bombeck to make an entire career writing about, right there.

4. I love to think about this! If I had a million, I’d buy my mom a house. I’d set up small investments for my kids. I’d set up a friend of mine who I’ve known since she was 13 and who was in foster care most her life, and is now a young single mother. I’d buy a small house. I’d buy my husband the truck he wants. I’d donate some money to the local children’s shelter. I’d realize that now, I have no money and have to go back to work!

5. A secret… I believe that unconditional love can actually create miracles.

Read Maggie May at Flux Capacitor. Thanks, Maggie! Find all the Storytellers here.

Orange! Bang!

I cleaned my camera lens and then I took a photo of pretty flowers. Nothing not to like about today so far.

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Say One True Thing

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How many days did I sit in silence and say nothing about my sadness until it turned to desperation? How many nights did I lay awake, worrying and running through emergency evacuation plans that I’d never need before I spoke out loud to someone, anyone, that I thought there might be something wrong? I couldn’t tell you, the number is too high.

When your thoughts are lying to you about who you are and how the people around you feel about you, find one true thing. When you don’t know who you are anymore and it feels like it’s been years since you felt like yourself, look for it – just that one true thing about you. Find it. Hold on to it. Write it down. Tell it to someone else. Mutter it over and over to yourself. Who cares? You already feel crazy.

I remember the inside of my body felt like a numb wasteland, an eternity of nothing, because I knew if I felt anything, or just the tiny hint of something, I’d truly and fully lose it. “It” being any hold on any bit of sanity I still laid claim to. Feeling one tiny bit of a feeling, or heaven forfend one whole feeling, meant ALL the feelings would come rushing in on me like a tidal wave and I would die. It was too much. Safety was in the numb part, even if it meant misery for eternity. Misery I knew. Misery I understood. Misery and I had BFF necklaces and did each others hair on a Saturday night.

Days, weeks, months, years. All in varying shades of numb and feelings of depression, anxiety, fear and sadness. And then I found a tiny bit of magic that would get me through the toughest times – just one true thing about myself. It didn’t matter what it was or what else it related to as long as it was my true thing.

In that moment when a person who cares about you, who is saying to you how much they love you, and maybe they’re saying the right things and maybe everything they say is exactly wrong but they mean well, and you can’t find your way over to connect with them or their words because you’re lost in a sea of numbness, and sadness is hanging over you like a thick darkness waiting to descend if you look directly at it – right then you pull out your one true thing and use it like a shield and a lifeline and a light to get to them. It works because truth is truth, even if it’s something unrelated or silly, and it’s perfect.

In that moment where you’re all alone, truly and utterly, and you can’t imagine a world without so much pain and you know for sure you’ll never feel anything resembling something close to joy ever again (in fact, you can’t remember the last time you felt anything like joy in the first place) and your feelings are crushing in on you and it seems like there’s got to be a way out – then. Right exactly then is when you bring out your one true thing and tell it to yourself over and over again because it’s true and even though the rest of the stuff in your brain FEELS like it’s true, it isn’t. Replace it with your one true thing.

And when the time comes that you feel absolutely nothing, Zip, Nada, Zilch, when you feel swallowed up in the vacuous hole and it’s preferable, this feeling nothing, because the pain has stopped and you know you could stay there forever and ever if your kids or your partner didn’t keep bugging you and how sad for them that they have to put up with you, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if they didn’t – grab it. Grab your one true thing and write it down on paper and tape it to the mirror and the tv and the fridge and then tattoo it on your wrist if you need to because it’s true and the lies aren’t.

Here are some of the True Things I’ve collected over the years.

#1 My left foot is slightly larger than my right foot. That’s true. I have the data (and feet) to support that statement. That statement is not subjective to my feelings, my feelings that can lie straight to my face without blinking. Yep. No getting around it, my left foot is slightly bigger than my right one.

#4 I can waggle my nostrils. Rain or shine, you get a kid in front of me and I can waggle my nostrils to beat the band until they crack a smile and it feels like I won the lottery.

#7 I make the best grilled cheese in the world. I used to enjoy a grilled cheese made by someone else, but really, I make the best ones. Come over sometime and I’ll make you one and wistfully watch you eat it because gluten.

#8 I like the color purple-blue that happens in the sky right where the clouds hit the edge of the horizon and go deeper. That color is slashed somewhere deep in my soul and I feel it on an overcast day the most.

#22 I will never like eggplant. It’s ok. I admit it. Let’s just get it over with and out there – eggplant grosses me out. I’d rather eat okra, and well, okra…not my favorite. (But, at least it isn’t eggplant.)

#25 Blowing bubbles through a tiny wand yanked out of a neon-pink plastic bottle with a cartoon of a unicorn badly plastered on it makes me incredibly happy. Blowing bubbles makes me take steadier breaths and calms me down. Watching bubbles float soothes my mind chatter. Seeing them pop is fun.

It’s been a long time since I had to use one of my One True Things to save my sanity, but it doesn’t stop me from using them every now and again anyway. And I keep collecting new ones, because the more I am myself, the more room I have for all the things about me. (If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, you might not have a depression or anxiety problem.)

If you’re in a place right now where you’re being lied to by depression and crazy-thought-making and numbness, think of one true thing about yourself and remind yourself who you are. If you think you might hurt yourself, please call a hotline like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline toll-free at 800-273-8255. (Here are some other hotline numbers.) You are not alone. People do care. That’s the truth, and that’s coming from someone who collects beer caps and wine corks for a project that may or may not ever happen. (#17 on my list of True Things.)

If you have some true things about yourself you’d be willing to share, I’d love to read them.

Storyteller: Kizz Robinson aka 117 Hudson

Kazz11. Blogging since July 2004. I started out reading Dawson’s Recap by Sara Bunting and Tara Ariano. That led me to some blogging awards (before blog was a word!) which introduced me to blogs and finally in 2004 I couldn’t keep my voice quiet any longer. Also, people had come out with easy-to-use platforms that didn’t require use of html which I still don’t know. I still love it, 10 years on!

2. I tell stories on my blog for a lot of reasons. I love to write and I find writing therapeutic. I’ve been very busy recently training for a new career and producing a Listen To Your Mother show so I haven’t had much time at all to write and it shows in my mental equilibrium. I could write for my health anywhere, I do work on other writing projects, but my blog is a conversation, a regular practice, and an outlet I remain grateful for. I’ve been fortunate enough to make a group of friends around my blog, people I wouldn’t have met offline, and they’re still loyal and interesting readers and contributors. I would miss them if I stopped.

3. I have an office job 4 days a week. I have 2 cats and a small, smart, terrier. I am training to become a force free dog trainer. That means reading for class, taking class, practicing with people and dogs, and logging hours toward accreditation. I love stories so reading blogs and books and other social media and watching TV are a lot of fun for me. I’m also a singer working on my next solo show. My days could probably be filled with a little more singing but I’m doing the best I can right now.

Kazz24. In NYC there’s a scratch off lottery ticket you can buy for $2 that could ultimately win you $1000/week for life. Years ago I had a roommate and when we’d go out shopping for the house our first stop would be two of those tickets. We would leave them, unscratched, on the dashboard while we schlepped all over getting what we needed. To amuse ourselves while we shopped we talked about what we’d do if we won the grand prize. When we got home and put all the groceries away we could scratch our tickets. We don’t live together anymore but we’re still friends and, despite never having won the grand prize, we still buy each other scratch off tickets and go to dinner to talk about what we’d do if we did. Right now if I won $1000/week for life I would see about cutting my office job down to fewer days per week so that I can do more dog training work, more singing, and more writing. I would hire a cleaning person at least once a month. I would give more both to the charities that are important to me and to the people in my life who need it. I would plan a big trip! Oh, and shoes, I would buy shoes.

5. It’s not a secret exactly but it’s something I don’t talk about if I can help it. (And here I could help it but I’m talking about it!) My mother is a hoarder. It makes it hard to communicate with her. It makes it hard to allow myself to live my life without taking everything as a sign that I will grow into her disorder or suspecting that everyone else who knows us both thinks I will.

Read Kizz’s stories at 117 Hudson.

Life Textures

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It would be easy to say as things get older they automatically go towards entropy like moths to a flame in the witching hour.

But the truth is, the easy answer isn’t always the true answer and where entropy is falling a little closer towards chaos and disorder every moment, we actually keep following along the perfect arc towards the inevitable, sure, but it isn’t chaos. It’s exactly what’s supposed to happen next.

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If I had to narrow down and categorize all the things I’ve done in the past three years that have made a huge difference in my life and just pick one to share with you, one thing that literally shifted my life into healing, it would be this: Positive Energy.

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Part of that is accepting life as it comes, in all its myriad layers and textures and believing that on some level, this too is for my good, whatever it is. Embracing the next thing that comes, choosing to see it as an exciting challenge instead of an attack on the fabric of my soul.

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It can be scary at first and it’s still hard from time to time, but I take that opportunity to look at myself in the mirror, smile, and say, “I love you! You are doing so great!” even if it’s a smile through tears, because that weeping smile is no less real and valid than a smile done in pure joy. I really and truly am doing great, the very best I can do at any given moment. And so are you.

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I’m getting older, no question. New wrinkles. Thighs of cellulite. Gray hairs to beat the band. And along with that a whole new way of perceiving my life. Maybe a little bit of wisdom? Do I dare call it that? I tread lightly here because the past has shown me that on the occasion I think I know something, I might not really know that something and soon may fall flat on my face in a sea of faulty expectations.

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But on this particular day, yes, I am so bold. Living in a more positive light, choosing to see life as trying to provide me with the very best it has to offer me, looking for the good, allowing others in my life to make mistakes and knowing they are doing their very best as well – this has made my life sweeter and more satisfying than any other change.

Next time you’re in front of a mirror, pause and smile. Tell you that you love you. 15 seconds of fake smiling triggers the same endorphins of a real smile, and a real smile hits your pleasure center the same as thousands in cash or bars and bars of chocolate. Pretty valuable smiles.

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Marci and Delaney

I had the good fortune to spend the afternoon with Marci and her two lovely daughters plus a group of the nicest women you’ve ever met a few weeks back. (Fun fact – I actually realized I knew some of them from years ago and it was so nice to see them again!)

Marci’s friends threw her a Girl Shower, all about how great it is to be a girl. Everything was pink and floral and the weather was perfect. It was such a lovely day.

This is my favorite shot from all 600+ shots I took. (I know! So many! But little girls are pretty and fun and everything was, as I think I mentioned earlier, lovely. I couldn’t stop taking photos.)

Just look at that joy.

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You can hire me for a photo shoot here.

Storyteller: Charity Cole aka Giggles & Grimaces

Charity Cole I have been blogging since February 2010. I started my blog as a way to force me to capture life with, at the time, 2 little girls, and to give me an outlet to share who I was. It became a way to share about my third pregnancy, subsequent postpartum depression and now bipolar 2 depression. Then we added in homeschooling to make life even more interesting. I love telling about things my girls do, or we do as a family and in homeschooling, but the biggest message for me is letting others know the real ins and outs of parenting/living with mental illness.

I fill my days with kids. Kids, kids, kids. I stopped working outside the home about a year and a half ago. So, I thought, hey, let’s home-school. We decided the day before school started, at 10 pm, to home educate. It has been great. I love it, but it means I am ALWAYS with kids. I will admit, I wondered about homeschooling with bipolar. It does affect it some. When I am hypo-manic (heightened mood), learning is a lot more interactive, a lot more hands on. When things head south, depression, it’s a little quieter, more worksheets and book work, but it’s good. It forces me to have a rhythm to my day, to put one foot in front of the other no matter what my mind says.

If I had a million dollars…well the house would be bigger and have more than one bathroom and a school room, so my kitchen could be a kitchen! Then I would go a little crazy buying homeschooling curriculum and hands on learning materials. Finally, I would give money…to Postpartum Progress, an online foundation that helps families living with a postpartum mood disorder, to my friends getting ready to go on the mission field, and to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

Tell you a secret…I don’t really have any, I spill just about everything on my blog, but I guess, it would be to have my writing noticed, to have people say, “You know, her writing and her blog matter.Having a voice is my biggest wish. I want to be heard. I want others to acknowledge the words I string together.

Storytellers

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You guys. I’m just going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time because I’m going to be using phrases like, “I remember when,” and “Back in the old days,” and I’m very aware of how tedious and eye-rolly that can be. BUT.

Back in the old days (See? I wasn’t kidding.) when I first started online journaling in the late 90s, it was a brand new world where I could share a story on my computer with my family who lived miles and miles away. I’d post pictures and write what was essentially a monthly update about the kids and it was fun and it meant something personal.

And then in 2002 when Joe moved me to WordPress, my mind was blown with how easy it was to add posts and update more often and easily put in images and add headers and and and…

But it was the day he introduced me to Dooce.com and said, “Look. Here’s someone else writing about their life and sharing it with the others,” that I realized there was the possibility of a real community out there in the innernets.

Soon after that I started my sidebar blogroll and kept people listed there that I felt a connection to and I started my interview series to highlight interesting writers and photographers and “internet people.”

We had a smaller group then. It was 2004 by that time and more and more people were beginning to write their stories but it still felt like we could keep track of each other. It still felt small even as it was growing. I kept seeking out new bloggers so other people could find them and I loved it! And then at some point the world of blogging wasn’t about storytelling anymore. It was all about “Brands” and “Cultivating an Audience” and sidebar ads, which I tried out in various forms myself and have nothing against in the abstract.

But things changed over the next few years, didn’t they? We started having fewer and fewer storytellers and leaving comments on blogs became a way for people to make money. Traffic was king and everyone was being judged on their numbers. We could look up each others stats and decide if that person was worth knowing on or offline at a conference. If they were worth our time. If what they were saying mattered because other people said it mattered. Oh, popularity. Just like High School.

That was when I didn’t want to do interviews anymore and I shut my series with bloggers down. It wasn’t fun to get emails from people saying they should be interviewed by me because “they were getting 10,000 uniques a month and wasn’t that enough? Why wouldn’t I interview them? What was wrong with them?”

I stuck to Google Reader. I went in and read the websites I loved every single day and left comments when it struck me to do so based on their stories and not on their brands. I still felt a part of a community of friends.

When Google Reader went away, I really felt like I was being abandoned. (I’m still kinda upset about it.) The other options of feed readers were all lacking (for my needs) so I just dropped out. And I’ve missed out and I’ve missed you!

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I miss the real stories. They are still out there. I see some of my old friends are still blogging and talking like real humans without all the freshly pressed look of a fine magazine going on. Not that I’m dissing fine magazines. I like them. But I’m much less likely to leave a comment on a post that isn’t a personal story. That’s where the heart is.

I recently noticed that Angela has an old-fashioned sidebar blogroll (You don’t mind if I call it old-fashioned, do you Angela? Not you, it!) and it got me thinking. I should stop complaining about missing Google Reader and woe-is-me-ing and do something about it.

So here it is, finally, the request I have for you. If you know of a writer/blogger who is telling personal stories and not “crafting their brand for an audience,” would you let me know? I’d like to add them to my Storytellers page. I’d like to read them and connect with them. I’d like to cultivate a community again. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed you! I know there have to be thousands out there that I’ve missed out on while my head’s been in the sand.

Personal story telling and this community is what’s helped me through some really tough times. Really feeling other people’s stories is what it’s all about for me. Help me find you.

When the Water Calls

When my kids were young, when we first came back from Germany, when my marriage to the other guy was being held together with tape and googly eyes, when I couldn’t breathe, when I couldn’t think, when I wasn’t on meds and needed them badly, when I was dissociating, I took the kids to the beach.

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My feet, which had walked way too far and way too long to get there, were suddenly surrounded by rushing water and the Space of Nothing I needed. The water was cold and fast and then pulled at my soul before it receded, taking my fears, confusion, disappointments and grief with it on its way back out to sea.

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This was “Our Beach” and the kids knew how far they could walk and still yell into the surf and find me. There were huge boulders and small crabs and hot sand for miles. There was my daughter wearing her suit with the rainbow, ruffled rumba-butt, worried what might be lurking in the water that she couldn’t see. And my oldest refusing to have fun because he was just-that-much-too-cool and pulling a towel over his body, taking a nap nestled in the grains of sand while the sun kissed a slice over his leg when the make-due-blanket slid down.

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And there were my other two boys, unashamed to have hard, wild and loud fun, running into the waves, grabbing boogie boards and refusing to let me swipe sunscreen on them because they just can’t stop running right now, Mommy. Can’t stop right now, but soon.

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I sat. I watched. I stood at the edge of the world where the packed, wet sand meets eternity, with my feet sinking lower and lower with every pull of water and wondered who I was, where I went, and how I could find me.

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In the summer more people came. More and more each year. Parking got harder. Walking was further. The jugs of water, towels, sunbathers and canopies that dotted the sand got closer and closer together. The water began to burst with more and more surfers and swimmers but we didn’t stop going to Our Beach because, well, it was ours. No matter what else it was, it was ours.

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The world ended one spring, just as we had started going back to Our Beach that year, and I had a vacation in a mental hospital with strangers that knew me better than anyone else. Within minutes the kids had moved with their dad to what might as well have been another country and I had no passport. The gates closed on Our Beach and we never went back.

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I spent the next ten years or forever driving past Our Beach every other weekend and sometimes in the middle of the week on a Thursday to see them play sports or be in a play, using any excuse to get to watch their faces talk about everything, anything, please talk about something, to me.

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I looked out the window at that water and wondered what it did with all my secrets. But I never went back to Our Beach because it wasn’t ours anymore. It was just a regular beach now, like a hundred other beaches, one that belonged to everyone else in the world more than me or us.

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I’m finding new beaches now with my guy, the guy that stands by me when the tide is high or low. I don’t claim these wild beaches or try to make them my own. I understand better that the magic when the water races to the shore and dances around your feet, pulling out the grief and sadness, belongs to everyone. You can’t own a wild thing, anyway. It’s just pretending to think you can and I don’t need to pretend anymore.

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I sit. I breathe. I stand in the surf on the edge of the world and watch my guy swim out into the magic and feel so much joy it hurts in a delicious and comforting way, now that I’m healing, now that I’m happy in my soul where it’s quiet, now that I can breathe, now that I can think, now that I’ve found myself.

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Grain-Free Cooking: Brussels Chips Exclamation Point

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If you like Brussels Sprouts, and even if you don’t care for them so much because you’ve only had them water-soggy or over-cooked, this recipe is for you. For you!

When I stopped eating grains, vegetables became a bigger part of my intake and Brussels Sprouts is a weekly contender. I ate them before I even knew how to cook them correctly. And NOW. Well.

Here’s the thing – soggy Brussels sprouts are the pits. But if you roast them with some olive oil? Hoo-boy. And when you peel of a bunch of outer layers so they get crispy while you’re roasting the inner brain-looking nubbins? Delectable.

Here. Let me show you.

Roasted Brussels Chips

  • A Buncha Brussels Sprouts
  • Olive Oil
  • Sea Salt
  • Fresh Cracked Pepper

1. First things first: soak those sprouts for about 5 minutes, pushing them under the water a few times.

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2. Next, shake off the water and cut the ends off each sprout high enough up from the bottom that the damaged outer layers are discarded. Then (AND THIS IS THE BEST PART) keep peeling off a few more layers until the little brain part is too tight to keep peeling. When you get to the core, but it in half or thirds. Put all the layers plus the brain nuggets on a cookie sheet.

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3. Pour some olive oil over the whole messagoodness and mix well with your hands. Maybe 2-3 tablespoons? Well, fine. I guess you could put them in a bowl and then use a spoon and carefully do this part so you don’t get oily, but that just makes more dishes. Plus olive oil is good for your skin. But the choice is yours!

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4. Grind some real salt (check the ingredients of your sea salt for non-caking agents and trade up if you see it listed) and fresh cracked pepper on the leaves. Do it real good, friend.

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5. Bake at 425F for ten minutes, taking out every 3-4 minutes to mix with a wooden spoon or spatula. You know it’s done when the little brains are nicely browned on at least one side and soft when pierced with a fork. The chips should be crispy and brown (AND DELICIOUS).

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You’ll never go back to steamed or boiled sprouts again. (Fun addition! Add some super crispy real bacon bits to the top after baking and before inhaling.)

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This recipe is included in Heal Something Good.