“You’ll see the nightmare eyes outside your window.” (Night in the Woods game review)

This post contains very small spoilery details.
I waited three years for Night in the Woods, a side scrolling adventure game released this past week by Finji (Panaramical, Feist, Overland). It was the product of a successful 2013 kickstarter, a team of overtly talented and wistful designers and developers including Infinite Fall founders Alec Holowka and Scott Benson, and of the inexplicable nostalgia that comes with being a college aged person somewhere between the terror that is adolescence and the uncertainty that is adulthood.

Night in the Woods does not, however, explore college life.  In fact, none of it takes place in a college setting.  Most of the characters, save for the playable main – a twenty year old black cat named Mae and recent college dropout- , opted out of going away to school in the name of exploring a non-academic lifestyle.  Sometimes, it appears that this is by choice while other characters have been forced to remain in their hometown (a failed mining community called Possum Springs) out of pure necessity.  This returning-to-hometown vs. having never left reveals what Night in the Woods really seeks to explore: how friendships mature and change when life paths diverge and then converge again later in life and how as we age mental health does not become easier or clearer or something more comfortable to live with.  Night in the Woods explores queerness and the disillusionment of youth versus the disillusionment of adulthood. It explores how it feels to be young in an aging town where nothing appears to be moving in any direction at all.

Much of Night in the Woods is mundane.  Mae wakes up every morning and goes to sleep every night.  She IMs her friends via her laptop after spending an entire game-day getting a porn pop-up virus removed from its hardware.  Mae talks to her mother over coffee whilst sitting on the kitchen counter. They discuss the small changes that have taken place in Possum Springs, money problems, and the mysterious reason for Mae’s dropping out.  At night, she watches television with her father, a recovering alcoholic who appears to spend every evening in the same place doing the same thing.  Mae’s neighbors all know who she is.  They remind her at every corner what a difficult child she was, what trouble she found herself in as a high schooler. She laments on what is the same.  She also laments on what is new or changed.

While so much in Possum Springs is familiar to Mae, the world has gone on while she’s been away.  This is sometimes difficult for her to accept.  The local grocery store has closed forcing the residents to leave town to run errands, a new quick-e-mart type establishment has erected, and a beloved pasta restaurant closes down and is replaced in the course of the game.  There is an in-game moment when Pastabilities places a sign on their door thanking the community for their patronage. Mae stands alone and says goodbye to the establishment.  She thanks it for the pizzas she ate and the parties that were had there.  When it is replaced by a Taco Shop later in the game, Mae is elated by this change.  It is small changes like these that lead to larger ones in life.  Night in the Woods is the story of accepting change and allowing oneself to grow from it.

Mae’s days are filled with walks into the center of town.  She visits her old friends at their menial jobs and rekindles friendships that inexplicably fell apart in adolescence. Sometimes, Mae has a difficult time connecting.  While she was away at school, her friends have begun taking a different path into adulthood.  She doesn’t have a job nor does she seek one out in the course of the game.  She holds on tightly to stories from childhood and to places that have changed or are falling apart.  While she is at the beginning of accepting that life is not always what it once was nor is it predictable, her friends (Gregg, Angus, and Bea) are all actively trying to find their places in said acceptance of what is new and old and gone for good.  We see Mae try and fail to level with her friends but we also see her succeed in trying to understand.  Sometimes, they go on small but emotionally charged adventures. They discuss themselves in the way we can only do so with those we are closest to.  Often, the characters in Night in the Woods ramble.  They apologize when they worry they are being unclear or dramatic.  They tell one another secrets in order to better understand why they are the way they are.  In short : they talk it all out and they sound real doing it.

Each day is different.  Each relationship based activity unique to the timeline and the character with whom you choose to spend that specific day with.  Mae can go to the mall, explore the cemetery, or have a totally mild-mannered knife fight after falling off a bike. Much of this game is familiar.  Rather than throw our narrator into a new setting where new friendships must be grown and harvested, Mae’s goal is to better understand the relationships that she has already forged. Though this game’s story eventually becomes somewhat grand and supernatural, it is the small, recognizable elements that engulf the player.

The visual art in this game and the wonderfully composed and still unopposing soundtrack by developer Alec Holowka makes every moment of Night in the Woods feel like a nod to the menial experiences that we treat as holy when we are young.  Small things make us feel.  The colors are soft and beautiful.  The characters, though living recognizably human lives, are animals.  There is a magic to the town of Possum Springs and it is in the humanity of its residents and the fear of growing up. The storytelling is slow in a way moving back home can often feel, the character writing is concise and believable, and every character living in Possum Springs seems like someone you know.

I recommend this game to anyone who struggled to accept change when they were young.  I recommend this game to players who remember parts of their adolescence and the few years after as being difficult, but magic or for those who need to be reminded of what it felt like to light a cigarette under a set of train tracks or to treat each small moment with your friends as a gift.  I also recommend this game to anyone who has struggled or is struggling with mental health, being queer, or feeling completely disconnected.  Night in the Woods sees you and you are valid.  Life is mundane but it is magic.

There is so much more to this game – strange dreams, journal entries, bad bass playing, but what is wonderful about Night in the Woods is the discovery so I’m not going to get into any of that.
Night in the Woods is available for Steam and PS4.  Find a preview of the soundtrack here.

On Mental Health and Bullet Journalling

Happy 2017!  I’ve got some goals.  I’ve got a lot of goals.  Last year I wanted to move (hey there, New York), I wanted to find a job that felt fulfilling (hey, I found three!), and I wanted to grow my hair (I broke and shaved my head again in October but we are on our way back).
This year I have the following goals: make more art, grow my hair, adopt a form of minimalism in order to feel more in control of my surroundings, accept my anxiety and work within its confines, read twelve books (I only read three last year), eat new food, bullet journal every day **** , quit biting my nails, quit purchasing clothes, take classes that have to do directly with my craft, my interests, and my spirituality, be more mindful, etcetera ,etcetera , etcetera.

That’s a lot of goals.  Enough goals that I could suffocate beneath them: my chest deflating, all of the air out of my lungs.  Me: blue faced.  Me: riddled with quakes and tears.  This has been my life forever.
Sometimes the idea of leaving the house is too much for me.  Sometimes it’s the idea of leaving the neighborhood.  Sometimes I can’t answer text messages.  Sometimes I wake up and need out.  I walk to the grocery store and through the isles and pray that no one will talk to me or look at me.  I always keep my hands in my pockets or crossed over my chest like I am freezing.  New York City specifically has thrown me into a number of situations that I wish I could avoid.  I like the train but I hate the people.  I can’t stand the voices, the inevitable elbow rubbing or the glances which always feel directed at me (though intellectually I know that they’re not).  Place goals on top of how difficult it is for me to function while out and about and I might as well just flatten. For god’s sake, sometimes I panic in the shower as I imagine that the floor beneath the tub is old and crumbling.  What if I fall through?  What if I fall over and hit my head?  WHAT IF?

ENTER: bullet journaling. Ya’ll have heard of it by now. On the official bullet journal website it is described as  “a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.”

I heard about it through social media (the way that we hear about everything, I guess) and I liked the way that the pages looked.  Black and white, symbol after symbol, hand-lettering, lists and lists and lists. It seemed so visual.  It looked so organized in the way that the inside of my head is not.  I joined a few bullet-journalling facebook pages and researched notebooks obsessively.  Eventually I settled on a cheap, dot-page book that could be destroyed as it inevitably would be.  It is often pushed that we should use expensive, nice notebooks but I found this idea contrary to the way that I wished to use the system.

This is a brief guide to the way that I used my journal followed by an exploration of the effect that it has had on my mental health. There are a lot of great guides out there when it comes to starting a bullet journal.  I’ll link them at the end of this post.  In the mean time there are only a few bullet-journal based “rules” that I follow in my own.

1: I keep collections. Collections are the types of pages that you use to organize, journal, or store.  (I use weekly collections, grocery and meal plan collections, a mind-map, collections of habit trackers, 30-day challenge collections, and list collections)

2. I use symbols.  I list them in a “key” on the front page. I’ve seen keys that take an entire sheet but I only use four symbols: a filled in box for a completed task, a “>” in a box when I need to move a task to another day or place, an “X” in a box to cancel a task, and an empty box to symbolize something that must be done.

3. I also keep a calendex (just because my calendar app crashes every time I try to open it), a monthly log where I list monthly tasks, monthly to-do’s, and gratitude,  and a future log where I write out anything that I need to do in a year (any events, classes, birthdays, etc.)

That’s literally it.  Anything else that I have read about on the internet has been null when it comes to the way that I keep track of my projects, my thoughts, and my to-dos.  Tha’ts not to say they’re not great ideas.  They’re just not relevant to me.

I like the idea of bullet journals in place of daily planners because I can apply any function to any page.  I can cut a week in half with a thirty-day social media detox or a list of books to read.  I’ve used my bujo in order to take notes in class:

and this year I’m using it to log my monthly intentions (which is where mental health really comes into play) :

I’ll be posting more about monthly intentions as I dive further into mindfulness this year but basically, my BUJO allows me to look back as well as foreword.  I fill out my intentions at the end of the month and explore what I’ve done in the past 30 days, what I’ve noticed and experienced and felt.  The same goes for my habit tracker.  At the end of the day I think on what I’ve done, what I’ve drank, if I’ve showered or worked on art.  There is a moment of peace in thinking back over the day that I don’t feel when I am thinking on the day ahead. I’m not planning.  I’m reflecting.

Much of my stress comes directly from my inability to organize future tasks, events, past feelings and experiences in my head.  The bullet journal allows me to plan and reflect on separate pages.  I can visualize what I have done and what I will or can do.

I’m not trying to say that bullet journalling is an end all when it comes to struggling with emotional health.  I still think the shower is going to fall through the floor and when someone looks at me in the grocery store I often become personally offended.  However, when I can visualize the tasks ahead I can do them one at a time.  I can fill out the boxes and move on.  It feels amazing to take on my day one box at a time rather than all at once.  Each to-do is a small blow instead of a rock sitting on my chest and when it’s over… it’s over.  All that’s left to do is look back at it all.
As promised, here are some truly awesome guides to starting a bullet journal:
The Lazy Genius Collective
An Illustrated Guide
The Complete Guide to Bullet Journaling for Writers
A Student’s Guide to Bullet Journaling

 

 

on measuring worth through work

A lot has happened since the last time I visited this blog.

My grump and I fostered a sweet kitty cat and cried when we found her a perfectly lovely home.  I’ve watched six and a half seasons of Supernatural (four or five episodes at a time), opened an etsy, beat Life is Strange, learned the chain stitch, discovered that I can combine mac and cheese and alfredo into one amazing dish, finished an entire bottle of sriracha, begun working mostly with bristol paper and markers, gotten a new car, my parents moved back onto the grid and into a new house, i’ve begun learning fish tank lingo, gotten a new tattoo, let my hair grow longer than it’s been in years, painted a plastic deer, won my second ever game of Talisman, discovered my love for oreo thins, and I’ve begun to enjoy being outside in the snow (this is a BIG step).  The biggest change in my life however, has been that in mid-january of 2015, I stopped working in childcare.

The decision was huge for me.  Since graduating high school four years ago and becoming a bonafide adult, not only has working with children been an extremely important and time-consuming element of my life, but so has working long hours.  When I first began working with kids, I was also working eight hour shifts almost daily at a marketplace near my home and I would often days go straight from one job to the next — literally pulling on new work clothes in the car on the drive to a fro.  On the weekends and free weeknights, I babysat or ran errands for families who needed an extra hand here and there.

I began living like a zombie.  Waking up so that I could to work early in the morning and then switching jobs midday and getting home at nine o’clock at night.  I got a terrible sinus infection and was unable to find cover at work for three months, landing me in big trouble and with a lot of antibiotics.  When I made the choice to quit the marketplace job to focus solely on childcare, I was distraught and filled with this strange feeling of guilt.  I began to feel less tired all the time.  And I felt badly about it.  I made less money a week and though I had little to no bills to pay, I felt badly about it.

My lifestyle so starkly contrasted my easy-going art-focused years in high school that I suffered emotionally and mentally.  I felt like I was undeserving of the title of adult or even human being if I couldn’t pull forty hours (or more!) a week.  Any time that I spent outside of work felt like a cheat, like I was taking advantage of everyone around me who was out at that very moment at their own places of business.  If I was not constantly giving myself to society, physically and emotionally, then how could I deserve to live with everyone else on this planet?  How was I worth anything at all?

So I began working full-time again.  And for two years, my life passed between my fingers like sand.  I enjoyed my work and the people that I worked alongside, but I stopped making art, treating social functions like anything other than a way to cool off (i.e. void of much meaning beyond a small break from work).  I loved the kids.  I loved the pace and the environment.  But I also became tired and grumpy and worried that what I was doing still wasn’t enough. I began to have a difficult time defining myself beyond “oh yes, I work five days a week and when I get home at the end of the day I am too tired to cook or clean or create but on the weekends I am free when I am not catching up on sleep or energy”.  I lost sight of myself and forgot that I’d had hobbies to begin with.  And.  I called it.

While I miss dearly all of the runny noses and the baby giggles and all of the tears to wipe, I am basking in the freedom that I’ve found outside of my 9 to 5.  I’ve been babysitting on the side, working with a client on a really neat website, and I’ve begun creating artwork again.  While it is a little bit scarier to have such a minuscule amount of structure, it is also weird to think that I’d completely forgotten that a world happened between the hours that I spent at work.  My grump loves regularity and I respect and adore that about him and anyone else who functions so positively into sameness, but I am very much the opposite.  I have always struggled with my sense of self and am still searching for the easy medium between this self relying strictly on my job and strictly on my heart.  I’m definitely not there yet. But I feel as though I’m taking a few steps closer and I think that’s pretty great.

Here are a few photos of me being happy or photos of things that have made me happy in the past few months:

keep your eye out for a post next week about my etsy, a giveaway contest, and a really easy recipe for congee!

Life is Strange || How to Make Bomb Lemonade

Currently, I am playing a video game called Life is Strange by Dont Nod Entertainment.  The aesthetic fits my high school experience so closely that obviously I have been dreaming about it since I finished the very first episode.  Mostly though, it’s the actual concept of the gameplay that has got me thinking.  The game is unique in that the main character you play as *Max Caulfield* (AND YEAH I GOT THAT REFERENCE DONT NOD, I SAW THAT POSTER IN HER DORM ROOM THAT MORE THAN VAGUELY LOOKED LIKE THE COVER OF CATCHER) discovers that she has the ability to reverse time.  Every action the player decides on affects game play.  This is really similar to most Telltale Games (i.e. The Walking Dead / Game of Thrones) but in the case of Life is Strange, the player as the ability to rewind, to decide on a different action in order to change the entire river that the game’s reality exists on. It’s almost like a visually beautiful choose-your-own adventure book and boy did I love those.  I especially loved keeping my fingers between previous pages like bookmarks just in case I didn’t like the outcome of my choices.

Top: Image from Life is Strange by Dont Nod Entertainment | Bottom: A picture from a mischievous walk at boarding school

Here are some lovely pictures from this very busy summer so far:

The Grump and I recently finished finishing the basement, which we have also claimed as our apartment.  The living room / dining area / bedroom bits are nearly done but I’m going to wait until we’ve finished redecorating the kitchen to post any pictures.  It’s all been a lot of work — hence the lack of updates.  Just this weekend we spent two days scouring flea markets, hardware stores, and painting cabinets without so much as an hour long break.  The Grump bought me a sofa for my birthday as well as a field guide on Moths and a book about the stars.  Our cats love the space : they run and run and run at night!  All is fitting in to place and I cannot wait to soon have time to work on crafts again.

An update on what we’ve been consuming :
I have discovered a specialty beyond making hella good mac and that specialty is making hella good lemonades!  How do I do this you ask?  EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY.

1. Boil together a simple syrup — one cup of sugar to one cup of water and then
whatever you plan to flavor the lemonade with.  So far my favorites have been peach
and fresh lavendar.
2. Drain whatever the flavoring is (lavendar flowers get stuck between teeth way
too easily).
3. Add lemon juice and water until everything tastes bomb and then turn off the
burner and stick it in the fridge to cool.
* For added fancy : throw some lemon into a food processor and then you’ve got some pulp!  MAKE IT FOR A PARTY / BOTTLE IT AND BRING IT TO WORK TO HAVE WITH A FANCY SALAD

The Food That’s Been Keepin’ Me Goin’ :
Mini Cream Cheese Green Onion Biscuits With Spicy Sausage Gravy
Honey Chipotle Chicken Bowls
These Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

I accelerate down a road I have not yet traversed. I travel beyond the red blocks of a home I cannot again call my home. In search of the father of my holy child. The man who sings on the cassette tape.

Sometimes I am so swept away by the small things that people are capable of.  There is beauty in people humming while they do the dishes, fingers running over railings, and sitting cross legged on a disheveled bed with a mug of thick, black coffee.  There is beauty all that is a person’s body and wonder in the way their lungs inflate and deflate or their eyes swivel back and forth when they are reading a book.  I fall in love with the human race on the quietest days when I am alone with a book and a crowd around me.  I love eavesdropping and catching all of the “I love you”‘s and “Excuse me”‘s between strangers.  I also find beauty in a lot of the ugly.  The raw gives me goosebumps.  I can’t say I like much of Modest Mouse’s new album but I probably watched the above music video three or four times after I stumbled upon it.  If I was ever to really focus on visual art I would want it to make others FEEL the way that this video absolutely does.  (That is to say, I would want something in their chest to swell and then explode from behind their lips.  I would want them to need to take a shower after they were done and cry loudly against the sink because sometimes one must see the beauty in the ugly to understand the delicacy that is often hidden behind something monstrous.)

There are two flash fictions that I think most express what I’m trying to say.  I’ve linked to them below:
“A Story About The Body”
“Pet Milk”

This week marked one year with Grump and I surprised him with a feast of feasts.  A MEAL OF MEALS.  That is to say I made a huge deal out of a couple of grilled cheeses, a bottle of white wine, and a blanket fort to define a generation.

The idea came to me in a dream.  I am a mac and cheese person (as I’ll state over and over again) so for special occasions, I often revert back to my mac sauce, seasonings, pasta mmmmmmm casserole to celebrate.  I have a difficult time letting go of cheese.  But I was short on cash and deli cheese in small quantities has proven cheap and fresh. I had a lot of fun mixing and matching all of the ingredients.

1. Spinach, muenster, and garlic grilled cheese
2. California grilled cheese
3. Apples and asiago grilled cheese
4. Roasted red peppers and mozzarella grilled cheese

Here’s the finished product. Note the very sad burnt spinach and muenster grilled cheese in the top right.

Some Notes
– Use mayo instead of butter or oil.  This is an old restaurant trick and allows for the bread to stay crispy AND moist.   I used olive oil to cook the spinach muenster sandwich and it burnt almost immediately.  (It was still tasty but definitely a little blackened)
– Use sour dough bread!  Again, the texture is just right.
– For the more savory grilled cheeses (i.e. the roasted red pepper and the spinach sandwich) rub some garlic on the outside of the bread.  Mmmmm.
– I put mayo on the inside of the California Grilled Cheese as well in order to give it a more light sandwichy mouth-feel.

I served the grilled cheeses buffet style with white wine and waffle fries on the side.

The month of March came with some new art supplies, some writing, a whole lot of good food, and a new film camera that I’m really anxious to try out.  Here’s a list of the movies I managed to digest even though my schedule was kind of crazy.
Even though most of the movies were Oscar Nominees, I actually enjoyed the cheesy cult classics a lot more.  Tank Girl is a bad ass and my parents had a ton of her comic books growing up.  She’s definitely a style icon of mine and a really interestingly sex-positive role model.  I remember seeing her with her little cartoon shaved head when I was little and falling in love with the general vibe surrounding her.  Teen Witch was fruity and fun and I rewatched Electrick Children (I’ve seen it six or seven times at this point).
It’s a really beautiful, tiny film that makes my heart hurt every single time I watch it. The premise is that a a young mormon girl finds herself pregnant and, convinced that she’s been impregnated by the singing on a cassette tape, runs away to find the father.  It’s on netflix and I definitely recommend it. The title of the blog post comes from the film and I’ve also decided to close the post with the song from the cassette tape that she finds in the beginning of the film.

On keepin’ it fresh and eating good mac.

About a month and a half ago, I started subscribing to a monthly box curated by different crafty ladies on Darbysmart.com.  I did this in part because it feels great to get packages in the mail (especially when you SUCK at sending letters back) but mostly because I figured that having a box of art supplies with open ended possibilities arrive on my doorstep would allow me to really explore my own creativity. It’s like a birch box but so much better! The boxes come with everything you need and a code to enter online for directions on that month’s project ranging from decorative plants to household items to unique jewelry. Last month I opened the box to the following :
– Two white tea towels
– One block of carvable linoleum
– One speedball linoleum carver
– One tube of linoleum ink

I combined these elements to make a stamp and also decided to add a few lines of embroidery in order to fill out the face and other elements that were difficult for me to carve into the linoleum.  Now, I was a tad lazy with how I was embroidering and my work ended up being anything but two tea towels BUT I really love how they’ve come out.  This month’s box had a couple of little ceramic coasters with enamel ink and I’m still sitting on what to do with them.

The words on the cloth are from a poem by Dean Young that a dear friend of mine found years ago looking through copies of Poetry magazine at Interlochen late at night.  The entire poem goes like this:

Dear Friend | Dean Young
What will be served for our reception

in the devastation? Finger food, of course

and white wine, something printed on the napkins.

We were not children together
but we are now. Every bird knows
only two notes constantly rearranged.

That’s called forever so we wear pajamas
to the practice funeral, buckeroos
to the end. We make paper hats
of headlines and float them away.

My home made of smoke,
tiny spider made of punctuation,
my favorite poem is cinder
scratched into a sidewalk.

My friend’s becoming the simplest man,
he sees a lesson in everything,
in missing his train,
in his son hollering from the first branch,
Dad, guess where I am.

I was with him for my first magpies,
governmental and acting like hell.
And the new nickel
with Washington hard to recognize.

We’d driven by a Rabbit flattened
by an upset truck, jars of Miracle Whip
broken over the toll road in heavy snow.

We watched an old lady
eat a hot dog in a bun
with a knife and fork.

A few emeralds winged off
a fruit leaf.

What happens when your head splits open
and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?
You got better, I got better,
wildflowers rimmed the crater,
glitter glitter glitter.

We knew someone whose father died
then we knew ourselves.
Astronomer, gladiator,
thief, a tombstone salesman.

All our vacations went to the sea
that breathed two times a day
without a machine.
We got in trouble with a raft
doing what we promised not to.

Further out to be brought further back.

There’s my friend in his squashed hat
trying to determine if a dot
is a living thing and do no harm.

He’s having trouble remembering street names
but there’s still plenty of Thoreau.

All that a human is made of is gold,
very very little gold.

Anyone who knows me very well knows that for the past year and a half, I have been on a mission to make the absolute best baked mac and cheese recipe.  Since my Grump and I are prone to making large batches of food to last the lunches and dinners of an entire week, I make mac and cheese at least once a month.  I’ve been through it all: applewood smoked crockpot mac, asiago and cauliflower mac, spicy mustard and cheddar mac.  This month’s mac and cheese was on the simpler side but it was still delicious.  I bring to you …….

One of the reasons that I love making mac and cheese so often is that I can put anything in with the cheese sauce and it doesn’t take away from any of the ooey, cheddary goodness.  I’ve replaced half the pasta with cauliflower, added broccoli, carrots, or spinach to the mix.  Once I used the turkey from thanksgiving leftovers to spice it up.

This mac is spicy and simple, using just three cheeses and gluten free breadcrumbs.  It was a quick, delicious lunch for three consecutive days!

The Recipe:

The Mac Sauce
– 1/4 stick of butter
– Some flour
– 1 cup of milk
– 1 cup of EXTRA sharp cheddar cheese
– 1 cup of Colby Jack cheese
– 1 slice of american cheese
– 1 teaspoon of mustard powder
– 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper powder
– salt and pepper to taste (I like mine really peppery!!!)

The Other Stuff
– 1 pound of pasta (I like shells because they get stuck inside of one another)
– 1 3/4 cup of kale
– 1/2 cup of chives (chopped)
– bread crumbs (I used gluten free because they’re crunchier but panko works just as well)

The How:

The Mac Sauce
(Please note: this part can be skipped but it is easier to do the cheese sauce separate from the pasta in order to control consistency)
Put a pot of water on to boil before starting the process as the pasta can be cooked and put to the side whenever.

1. On medium heat, melt the butter in a pan and rapidly stir in flour.  (My measurements are never exact so do this until the constituency is just a bit softer than your average chocolate chip cookie dough.)
2. A splash at a time, add the milk.  Stir constantly or it will definitely curdle and though you can eat this it’s rather chewy and CREEPY.  (Food should never be described as CREEPY)
3. Half a cup at a time add the cheeses.  Stir until completely melted.
4. This is where I added the kale because I like it to be chewy like canned spinach by the time all is said and done.  If you don’t want to overcook it just add it when you add the pasta.

Next
(Preheat the oven to 350)

1. Mix the pasta in with the mac sauce until it is completely saturated.
2. If you haven’t already, add the kale.
3. Pour the mixture into a glass pan of any size.
4. Top it with a layer of whatever cheese you have left in the fridge, a sprinkling of the chives, and breadcrumbs.
5. Stick it in the oven and wait until the top is bubbly and browned!

And that’s about it.  The spiciness of this recipe definitely makes it a grown up mac and cheese.  Grump and I ate it fresh while watching Sherlock and it was glorious. Happy mac making!

xoxxxxxxxxxo
qurl

I do carry my home on my back.

Lately, I have been having dreams about the places I’ve lived. There have been numerous: rented homes, owned homes, rooms in other people’s homes. The dreams are bizarre, with various versions of my family from various points in time inside.  They move like cardboard cut outs through the rooms which are filled with spider eggs and also void of anything that I could — in my waking hours — relate to in these spaces.  In my dreams these versions of my family live like squatters.  Sometimes my sister and my brother are infants.  Sometimes my parents are my age and I’m not yet born.  In those dreams I am watching them walk about and I am a ghost.
When I wake from these dreams I have this melancholy nostalgia swelling deep in my belly and I walk all day with this inside of myself.  It’s made me wonder about the strange relationship I have with the very idea of “home”.  I went back to two of them, got myself inside of one, and realized that these places are honestly filled with nothingness and spider eggs.  These places that I spent important moments of my childhood writhing inside of felt alien and unfamiliar years later.  There is something satisfying in this fact — solidifying the rightness of the constant fight to prove to myself that a place cannot hold you captive because it watched you grow and learn and stretch and fuck up.  Moving on means moving out and moving on is good.

                       

“Home”is defined by merriam-webster as “the place (such as a house or apartment) where a person lives”.  This is a plain and simple idea.  Lyn Hejinian says in one of her poems that “Home whose names are produced by motion/ is where people go (one following/ the next as she hums to herself or he hums to himself/ at some risk to all) to stay in a family plot/ the tales of which are spinning like blades/ on a pinwheel wafted by my desire to talk to you.”
The front door of the red house (where I lived for four and a half years) had a sign that said “Do not enter. Floors rotting.” so I flicked a picture through the window.  This is where I learned to use a paddle boat and where my first friend, who only came to town in the summer, and I used to play.  I slid through the front door of the other house easily.

When I found out my parents were moving (and that I would have no chance of seeing our house empty as I was away at school) in 2011, I painted this on the wall of my bedroom.  I had recently found out that a fox could not only symbolize slyness and mischief but also the ability to adapt to its surroundings and to make reality a livable thing.  I had drawn and painted a lot of things on those walls but this painting held up the best.

I am nineteen and have already lived away from my family for four years.  This is by choice and by circumstance headed mostly by my going away to high school in Michigan and wanting to remain independent after graduation.  I am notorious for putting too much pressure on myself and bursting at the seams, for placating every one else’s worries with an air of independence and adult attitudes.  I held four jobs for nine months, bought my own furniture and put on my grown up pants the first time I walked into the kitchen to make a dinner — a complete dinner (protein, carbs, veggies, and presentation).  I thought — this is it, I have it, I am the only queen of packing away and moving home and growing up.  I am also the queen of jumping ship.

Top: 2011 | Bottom: 2015

Anyone who knows me knows how great I am at being uncomfortable in one place for two long. I am currently in the process of figuring out where I will live next , what I will do there, and how it will affect my artistic and emotional independence.  My parents and siblings, who moved to live off the grid while I was away at school, are currently looking to move yet again. Growing up, we walked through settings a substantial number of times, eleven or twelve alone before I’d even moved out.  My parents are doers and each house they left behind also left me with the strange early childhood memories that everyone has — the ones that you rewrite each time you conjure them: the images, the tone of voice in the room, the colors of the walls that sometimes look like they’ve been painted in cityscapes or the night sky.  Each move meant the end of one endeavor — business wise, baby wise, financially — and the beginning of something familiar but also reinvented like a polished sugar spoon.

Top: 2009 | Bottom 2015 (I am wearing a dress in cold, cold weather)

A home for me is a space in which you grow.  It seems to me that for many, they grow slowly, mature comfortably, and adapt to that space permanently.  I had neighbors whose older sisters had also grown up in their house, whose parents had lived there for nearly thirty years already.  The way that things are working out, I suppose I may grow too quickly or become too anxious, but as a result am becoming more and more adaptive each time I am repotted and re sewn. With each change whose edges I pick at, I become more excited and even more scared.

Top: 2010 | Bottom: 2015

I think that all of my moves and the inconsistencies of my childhood have made me ready for anything.  I’m often not a doer but I would like to be and would like to find the place where this is driving factor in all that I do.  I want experiences and settings that are so new that they bleed into my writing and take on new life over and over again.  There are many places that will nurture me in their own right with people and places and foods and little bits of beauty.  My devotion to my own well being and my art will push me — hard — into all of them.  I carry my home not in my heart but on my back like a snail.  I place it on the floor in each new space and there it spreads until I am ready to gather it up again and bring it somewhere else.

Here are some disconnected photos from the past couple of weeks:

My french press is my livelihood.

Creative standstills and Rocko’s Modern Life.

Best selfie of the week!
I graduated high school in 2013 and until maybe a week or two ago, my creative life had been at both a physical and emotional standstill. I say physical because I couldn’t get myself — no matter how much effort and time I put aside — to put a pen or pencil to paper to write.  Emotionally, though, my art’s being stunted stopped my own personal growth as well.  Art is my livelyhood and the expression of my personhood and for a long while, I’ve found myself without either of these things.  Being unable to create is in the same realm as being unable to express myself in a meaningful and progressive way.
I think that in part, this lack of art making comes down to my laziness and my lack of willingness to commit.  I have one project that I have been working on and off on for three years and I think that by allowing my extent of interest in this work to fluctuate, I am denying myself some sort of easily achievable pleasure.  If I would just allow myself to sit down and stew in my ideas, something would eventually come from this.  And for that to happen, I need to force structure upon myself.  The anxiety this idea brings me is actually indescribable.

Recently though, I’ve been working hard to surround myself with things that free me of anxiety.  I’ve found that when I’m pleased with and stimulated by the things around me visually, artistically, and energetically, I am also more energetic when it comes to sitting down and actually doing or experiencing something creative.  I’ve been drinking good coffees, watching good films, and reading good books.  Just a month into the year already I have finished three books (the whole of which I finished in the ENTIRE year of 2014, I am ashamed to admit).  I’ve begun subscribing to a monthly DIY box (which I’ll post more on when i’ve finished January’s project) and it’s really gotten my creative juices flowing.  I’ve decided to approach these projects first from the angle at which the directions in the box instruct me to and then from a completely different direction.  This allows me to create interesting work and also to combine mediums and art forms.

In high school I didn’t appreciate the three hour block of time that we had devoted purely to free writing.  Now, with work and a boyfriend and family time and emotional upkeep, I’ve come to realize that if I don’t put that block of time away for myself — no one will.  If I don’t focus my energy on what I feel should be pouring out like sand between my fingers then nothing is created or written or thought of at all.  What a waste.

I woke up just the other night and found that I had five lines of poetry to jot down — the first lines of poetry I’ve written in at least six months.  There are so many things to feel incredibly inspired by — my students, my family and coworkers, the moon (which just the other night was so big and low that I got butterflies in my stomach on my drive home), baking, and creating experiences for myself that cannot be created on their own.  In general, putting thoughtful work into my very being.  Mindfulness is key.

I’ve compiled a list of things that inspired me in the month of January and that drove me to finish an embroidery project, two novels, and a lot of small crafts:

1. Choffy fresh from a french press.  Seriously drinking this stuff as I’m writing this blog post.  It’s all I’ve ever wanted in life.
2.Karen O’s “Rapt”. I don’t care much for the rest of the album but this music video is lovely.

3. I’m a big movie person.  I watched a few that threw my heart for a loop this month but mostly it was Short Term 12.  It’s about a woman who works in a short term stay foster home and the cinematography was absolutely beautiful. 
It’s also on Netflix which for some reason doesn’t allow me to take screenshots without the bar on the bottom anymore.

4. “What I Had Before I Had You” by Sarah Cornwell

I was on an errands role the other day (i.e. way ahead of schedule) so I decided to hang out at the local bookstore, which usually has nothing that I’m interested in.  After barely four minutes of browsing the impossibly small fiction section, I came upon this gem front and center.  Sarah was a writer and residence at my high school and reading this book had reminded me what great guidance her class was for me.

Truly, having her as a teacher marked a turning point in my writing where I learned to step away from plot in order to tackle natural characterization of characters and their relationships with those around them.  This book was rich in elegant detail and such a lucky find in my teeny, tiny good-for nuttin’ bookstore.  I remember hearing the first ten or fifteen pages read out loud at Sarah’s writer-in-residence reading when it was still free of a publishing company.  When the publishers were bidding for the work, I was sitting in her class.  The story takes place at the Jersey Shore, a place that I am ultimately familiar with on a nostalgic and ethereal level — the waves that crash, the sweet smells in the air, and mischief that lays over the shoreline like a thick smog.  It was such a strange experience for me to read something that I felt inside of me to be so deeply personal.  I dog-eared the pages all over the place but here’s one passage that really shows Sarah’s attention to detail and confidence in language :

“I stand as close as I can to the wall that is gone and look out at the Atlantic.  The tide is going out.  Foolish boys are trying to surf in the twilight.  The sky is a velvety bluish gray now, fading to ink, and the lights of the boardwalk look superstitious, candles burning against the dark.  The Ferris wheel turns slowly.  Time is passing, and Daniel is not found.  I strain my eyes to make out a shape that could be the salmon man’s boat, which I imagine as a small green rowboat, but all I get is a headache and a sense of the wide night flowing together with the dark of my mind.”

xoxoxoxoxoxox qossip gurl

p.s. here are some pictures from the wine and cheese night that Grump and I hosted the night of last week’s snowstorm…

it slowly deteriorated:

and here is my good patient grump shaving the side of my head and putting up with my ridiculous bouts of spontaneity

Lemon-glazed cookies and the worst season.

My name is Liah, this a picture where I look pretty unhappy and my nose is big.  I am unhappy because it’s snowing and the snow is my worst enemy BUT my nose is pretty averagely sized.  I’ve been doing quite a bit lately, creatively and otherwise.  I’ve finished sets of avocado patches that are up for sale on my etsy.  My hours at work have been cut but I’ve been –especially considering the snowmageddon blizzards that we’re experiencing here on the East Coast — been forcing myself to maintain an ample amount of attention when it comes to my creative products.

The sets are available here as brooches or patches!  I put them on the elbows of a cheap sweater from Target and the look is pretty kitschy (which also means fabulous).  I haven’t worn it around much but my sister who’s in high school steals the garment fairly often.  It’s been pretty exciting because after posting about the product on facebook, I’ve received an order for a felt banana patch as well.

Last night, my grump and I went to our GM’s (fortieth!) birthday.  We watched the WWE (Jumble Jacks?) match and ate a really cleverly designed wrestling cake that his wife baked.  The snow started just a bit after midnight and in the morning, since neither of us had work, my grump and I devised a plan to do nothing but clean, bake, and eat good food all day.  We accomplished all of that and more.

Here is Grump begrudgingly letting me take a picture of him wearing his new specs from eyebuydirect which is where I get all of my own glasses.  And here is Grump in his natural habitat (the unforgiving chills of a New Jersey blizzard):


After our torturous walk in the snow, I baked these glazed lemon cookies.  I burnt the first batch but I think that the glaze counteracted the burn.

I found the recipe here. I found that they baked best if I put them in for just three or four minutes and then flipped them (like a delicious lemon cookie pancake) for another two.

xoxo gossip gurl
Here are some other gems from the wrestling party (featuring Bella the dog who is perfect in every way) :