Tis the season! To be jolly?

Here we are, days from Christmas and how do we all feel? Overwhelmed? Busy? A little sad? Annoyed? Anxious? Or happy? How many of us actually feel genuine happiness right now, like other than kids?!

I personally feel like I've been drinking too much wine, too much heavy beer. I feel very busy at work. I feel like everyday that I don't buy a gift for someone that I'm saving money - but actually I'm just procrastinating and have yet to do any shopping. TONIGHT!!! I swear. I feel sad because I miss my brother, but I'm not going to talk about that. And I feel like I have so much obligation, so many places to be.

Don't I say every year - I'm just going to hop on an airplane and get outta dodge for the holidays - ? That's never happened. And ya know every year on Christmas night when I'm laying in bed, a little tipsy, with a touch of a headache, I think about how much fun those past 2 days have been and how much I love seeing my family and spending time with them.

So to all who are feeling the same ways that I am feeling now, anxious, overwhelmed, and busy, I wish you that same feeling on Christmas evening - may you all feel happy and loved.

Merry Christmas.

Bed

The only way I feel as if I've had a proper day off is if I've spent lots of time in bed, under the blankets, warm, in my pajamas.

My grandmother had a giant bed - my sister and I used to dress up in her silk nightgowns and lay in bed with her. I loved that as a kid. It's one of my very favorite childhood memories. I really loved my grandmother, she was a little nuts, but funny as hell and she really loved us kids, always made us feel really special. I always felt that out of all the grandchildren, she had 19, she liked my moms kids the most - there's probably a lot of truth to that!

My mom has a big bed - LOTS of pillows, and that smell - fresh, clean linens, like she's just changed the sheets. I love my moms bed. I love tucking under her covers and laying there with her, watching t.v., taking naps, talking, reading magazines. I've always felt bad for my brother - boys don't seem as comfortable laying around in bed with their moms, and for me it's the best place to hang out with her.

And of course, when I purchased a bed, my first real purchase as an adult, I bought a California King bed - the largest you can get. I love it so much. I love going to bed, I love waking up in bed, I love making my bed in the morning, and I love messing it up at night. Lately I've been sleeping a lot. 9 hours or more at night. It's insane. I can't seem to get enough rest. It must be because I'm always so busy from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep - bed is the only place where I can be quiet - alone, and not work.

Special ingredient/s

A homage to ingredients that get me! To all the fun extras on dishes that make the dish just that better.
This is my list...

1- Candied walnuts in an apple blue cheese salad.
2- Avocado and sprouts on a roasted turkey sandwich.
3- Drizzled olive oil and fresh crouton on tomato gazpacho.
4- A pickle on the side of any sandwich, hamburger, lunch entree at a restaurant.
5- Bananas on rice krispies.
6- Sauteed mushrooms on a cheeseburger.
7- Green peas in smoked salmon fettuccine.

I'm sure there's more - I'll add as they come to me.

Happy eating.

I miss you

There are many different ways in which to miss.

My sister for example, I miss her most of all. And of course she's the person I spend the most time with, outside of my live-in boyfriend. If I don't talk to Mandy for 3 days it feels that a lifetime has passed, even if our conversations have nothing to do with anything at all. I just miss her - I miss her voice, I miss her energy, I miss her 'yeah, what's up?' And nothing is ever up. I simply can't live without her, I can never miss her more than a few days, that's the limit. I give up, I have to hear her.

Now with Ron, my live-in boyfriend, different. I also miss him, and in silly, WAY silly ways. I miss him when I'm at work, I miss him sometimes in the mornings if he goes on long runs, and sometimes I miss him just if he's in the other room. I think it's because I really love him. I think it's because I really enjoy his company.

Mom - I miss her too, just like I miss Mandy. But different. Mom is with me all the time. I can't really explain it, other than I know we are connected in a very spiritual way. Not to say I'm not connected to Mandy and Ron in that way, because yes, I am - but with Mom it's different, more intense, more emotional. So I guess I can go longer without talking to her - longer without seeing her, because I feel her with me all the time - yet still, I see and talk to her often.

TV shows - ok, fine - maybe way different, but still I miss them. Like it's Friday night and I have to wait an entire week before I can watch another Top Chef - yeah, I miss that show.

And everything else is just guilt. It seems that I mix my missing with my conscience on all other accords. So I guess in a lot of ways my life is simple. I think to miss too much and too many would simply be too hard.

Giving thanks

This year I have a lot to be thankful for and this year I really feel thankful, something maybe I've been half-hearted about in the past, to have genuine gratitude. I feel blessed.

Not to say that I have a perfect life, not at all. I have a bunch of things in my life that need sorting out.  I feel unhappy at times, I yell at my boyfriend for bullshit reasons, I want to drop 10 pounds, I'm 35 and never been married, I want kids but don't want kids, I have issues with my past that feel incredibly unresolved (I should probably go to a shrink and sort some of that crap out.) But whatever, I'm human.

I have my health, a place to live, I own a business, I live close to family and friends. Those things are sacred and meaningful. So to what do I feel the most grateful for? It's probably being able to recognize who it is that I really am - and to accept that person. I suppose I'm thankful to me, to where I've been and where I've come to. Am I allowed to give myself thanks?

Well, I'm going to. Thanks Natalie.

Rainy daze

It's cold, it's raining.

I have too many bad memories connected to the rain. The time my brother tried to kill himself it was pouring out, rain was dripping down the windshield. And the time that my other brother actually did kill himself it felt that the rain never stopped.

It's raining now and I try to keep my chin up. It's always hard though, especially in California where rain feels like a special occasion, a day off in some ways. I'm not quite ready for winter. It's a hard time of year for me.

I just spent $400 on sweaters and jackets to get prepared for the winter. I already have so many. If I can wrap myself up with pretty, new, warm items every year during this time then I can feel ok, right? It's fucked up. But somehow it works. You should see my sweater closet.

Five a.m.

I've never liked waking up before my body tells me to. Who does?

In my business - flowers - waking up at 5a.m. has been a regular part of my life. I do it about two times a week, sometimes on big event weeks I'll do it five days in a row which is completely exhausting and just about kills me, but it's how it goes and I'm not complaining.

Since my little boutique opened I've added a new dimension of early rising to my life, antique fairs! This lifestyle can wake you up as early as 4a.m., especially if you're a Bay Area girl going to Sacramento. So now, waking up early happens, or so it seems, all the time. Still I'm not complaining. We find beautiful things at antique fairs because we get there so early and we beat the big nasty crowds.

So together with the flower market and the antique fairs I've created an early to rise, early to bed sorta life. But I think it's the life I was meant to have. As a kid my mom told me that I would tug on her pants and tell her it was my bedtime. As a young adult I could never make it to midnight to bring in the new year. And now, here in my thirties I can't seem to make it past 10pm.

I like my alone time at night - it's the one part of my day that I feel I truly get to be with myself. I don't even let the stress of setting my alarm to 5a.m. get to me. Because really, the only part of waking up early that I don't like is the transformation from warm blankets to hard wood floors. Because really, being a part of those magic morning hours always feels like I'm getting a little bit more out of life - living more - . When I come back home to discover the house is still quiet and not a soul is yet awake after I've been up for three hours, I feel I've just had the whole world to myself.

Curly

My dad has curly hair, my mom has curly hair, and I have the curliest hair of them all.

When I was a kid I received a lot of complements from adults about my thick curly hair.  I definitely thought there was something special about my hair - something unique. But then I grew self-conscious, noticing that all the other girls at my elementary school seemed to have straight thinner hair and I wasn't interested in standing out. I took scissors and locked myself in the bathroom one night and chopped off my hair. Total mess.

As hair does, it grew back. Then in junior high, when I was 13, I shaved the sides of my hair so it wouldn't be as thick. I straightened it every night before bed and slept on it so it would remain flat. It was terrible. I started dying it, coloring it with markers, doing crazy things with my hair. I figured that if I couldn't have hair like the other girls I may as well make it totally stand out. My crazy shaved rainbow hair sorta took over me - shaped my personality a bit. I wasn't a punk rocker by soul, but definitely by vision, so that's who I sorta became, a punk, a smoker, a troublemaker. I hated junior high.

My shaved hair grew back, I remained a pain in the ass kid, but I was growing up a bit, ready to pull myself together and  ready for a more conventional hairstyle, a bob. I found a photo in a magazine of a model that had just the hair I wanted. I took the photo to the hair salon and asked the woman to transform me. Yeah, well, she transformed me alright - it was terrible - she didn't mention once that my curly hair wouldn't quite style as easily (OR AT ALL) like it did for the straight haired model. I was mortified, embarrassed and didn't want to show myself until my hair grew back. I felt really ugly. I started cutting school on a regular basis. I didn't want to be around other kids. It started looking like I might not graduate. I had a really difficult time.

My hair slowly grew back, looked cute even, and I graduated. In my 20's I really embraced my curls. I had boyfriends and I felt cute probably for the first time in my life. And I enjoyed having a special feature that not many others seemed to have. I grew my hair long, really long and then I really started to fill my artistic soul. I painted. I had a muralist boyfriend. I went to galleries. I worked at an art store. I realized at that point in my life that I never wanted to have a corporate job, and that quite frankly a corporate job would never want me. When I think of big companies and imagine the men and woman behind the desks, I never imagine them having curls - they have straight hair. With my curls I was destined to be an artist.

And here I am - in my mid-30's. I've recently cut my hair again, but I don't care this time. I have my own business now, I have a loving relationship, I live in a great community, and I feel inner peace. I no longer define myself by the state of my hair. It may have taken me 35 years to come to this conclusion, but come to it I have.

Coffee

As a child I always loved the smell of coffee, every morning our home was filled with the aroma. My mom sweetened her coffee with cream and sugar. Every so often I would sneak in a sip and when I did the sweetness of her coffee,  in a home clear of sweets, was heaven to me. 

In my early twenties I would frequent the Edible Complex in Oakland ( closed up years ago, such a shame, it was a gem). I would sit in the corner, on nice days outside, and drink cup after cup after cup of coffee while friends would pop by to meet up, on other days I'd sit quietly and read a book, and on many days I would sip my coffee while writing in my journal. It became a big part of my life, my coffee. It accompanied me during an incredible time while I learned and grew as a young woman on her own.

Now as I am in my mid-30's - coffee is the beginning of every day. Yes, it gives me that extra boost. But it's more than that, it's warm, it's sweet, it's the fuel that has guided me throughout. At night when it's getting close to bedtime there's an inner part of me that can't wait to wake up the next morning and sit with my cup of coffee. It's simply the best part of every day.