Blog or no Blog?

No, no cousin Margi, in regards to your comment on my last post, I was not smitten with anything else as of late. Almost, but not quite. It turned out to be a jinx, and I flinched. Relationships, it seems, are a fickle beast, and this one bit the dust sooner than it could get a leg to stand on. Let’s just say that’s a story for off the blog. It’s a good story, I learned a lot, but it’s not for the public’s eyes.

My lack of updates lately stem from a variety of different things. Chiefly because of an internal debate over whether I even want to do it anymore—blog, that is. Before I tell you what I decided, let me say that it’s definitely been a process.

On the one hand, I associate blogging with a certain period of my life, a version of myself that I don’t identify with as much. I read old posts and two things come to mind: that I was incredibly naïve, and incredibly transparent. Many things I wrote about then I would not write about now, those posts of the “heart on my sleeve” variety.

I’m happy to think that God has done a lot of work in my life in the last few years, I know I’ve seen the fruits of that growth, but I’ve simply become less enthusiastic about plastering it all up on the web. Indeed, I’ve begun to hold my cards closer to my chest, you could say.

Along those lines, I’ve felt a strong desire lately to live more intentionally offline. I think even my schoolwork suffered last semester due to a near-compulsive need to check the Internet for … what, exactly? I don’t know.

I’m not one of those people who thinks always being online is bad or unhealthy, but I’ve been asking myself lately what it is I truly want out of life, and while I could wile away my days in front of my laptop, I don’t want to.

So that’s how I’m feeling about blogging right now—ambivalent, which thanks to Girl, Interrupted, we now know means having two strong yet conflicting opinions. And that’s true.

Since intentionality seems like as good a theme as any for 2009, that’s what I’ll start doing with this blog, too. My aim is to write a weekly post, perhaps a bit more substantial than what I’ve been writing lately. This is my goal, and I have no doubt that you all will help keep me accountable.

Sandra bakes Smitten Kitchen

I may be stating the obvious, but I enjoy baking. I like it because besides the occasional slip-up, I know the results will turn out well. I know I will see the faces of my friends swoon in sugary ecstacy. It is predictable, and predictably good. It has been a relief, especially lately, as this semester’s final projects have left my professors scratching their collective heads. My writing may need work, but I know my baking is good, and that is why I do it.

I’ve been taking a lot of recipes lately from Smitten Kitchen. It hasn’t been intentional, but understandable, especially when her combination of simple recipes and gorgeous photographs appeared in my Google reader day after day during the month of November. How could I resist?

Basically, I couldn’t, and not one, not two, not three—but five of her recipes landed in my baking queue, all in a row. They go as follows …

These are pumpkin swirl brownies. I baked them for a recent SCR meeting. SCR stands for Southern California Review, the student-edited and run literary journal of the MPW. I am taking over as editor-in-chief next semester, and I am stoked at the new position. It’s an appointment that has an air of possibility to it—something that could lead to something else—and this unknown aspect excites me. These brownies were well-received, even though one Facebooker commented that they looked a little gross, which I guess is true. The orange and brown color combo looks a bit, well, 1970s, doesn’t it?

I can’t remember why exactly I made these crispy salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies. The name is a mouthful, I know, but so are the cookies. They reminded me of a recipe that my grandma, the one who looked like Yoda in her older years, made—Special K cookies. Leave it up to an Estonian to take a supposed diet food and turn it into something unhealthy. My memory of those cookies—the crispness of the cereal against the smooth sweetness of the butterscotch morsels—is still incredibly vivid. My only complaint was that there were never enough of the chips in the batter, and would eat them in a way that my final bite would be a mouthful of butterscotch. That was not a problem with these updated cookies, as chunks of white chocolate occasionally dominated the rest of the dough. The play of salty and sweet, crunchy and smooth is very successful in this recipe.

As it is in these as well—chocolate toffee cookies! You’ll have to excuse my exuberance over these little brown gems, but just look at them! Decadent chocolate and lovely melted toffee chips, all offset with the crunch of walnuts and sea salt on top. What’s not to love? Nothing—these are drop-dead awesome cookies. An interesting trend to point out here: a remarkable amount of cookie recipes that I’ve come across lately have included the step to  sprinkle sea salt atop the unbaked dough before their turn in the oven. Odd, you might think, but the concept is the same as sprinkling salt on watermelon or mango—it brings the sweetness out even more, and it is a welcome addition.

What would Thanksgiving be without at least one cranberry recipe? Not much of one, and since our Thanksgiving “dinner” started at eleven in the morning this year, I thought these meyer lemon and fresh cranberry scones would tide our hungry guests over before the main event. And boy did they. I made these in two batches, one in the morning and one in the evening, so that people could eat them for breakfast the next day. Okay well one person in particular. Yeah, I guess now would be a good time to mention that that silly online dating website finally spat out a good one. That’s all I’m gonna say about that here and now, you know, for brevity’s sake. It’s still casual; no definition has been placed on the relationship beyond that of “dating.” But yes, it’s nice to have someone to bake things for, and also yes, there is a reason why the phrase “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” is a cliché—’cause clichés are generally true … but ahem, anyway, look at this awesome picture!

This is a dark chocolate tart with gingersnap crust! Incidentally, do you know how hard it is to find a tart pan? I should have gone directly to the kitchen supply store, but instead I schlepped to three other places beforehand. On the weekend after Thanksgiving, of all times, for crying out loud. But I finally found one, and was able to make this delectable near-flourless chocolate concoction. December is the month of holiday merriment, including Christmas tree decorating parties like the one Clee and Steve threw. I love my old roommate and her husband and the baby they’re expecting in April. This was the last piece of tart saved from the party. What else can one say about pure chocolate? Not much. The only thing I could have wished for was that the ginger of the gingersnap crust was more prominent, and also that I’d had a food processor to more finally grind the cookies up into a proper crust, but alas, I cannot have it all.

If I bake six more recipes in the next two-and-a-half weeks, I will reach 52—an average of one recipe per week for 2008. It’s an unintentioned goal, but since I’m so close now, I may as well at least try. Will I be able to do it? I hope so. I’ve already got several things in the docket, like this and this and probably that. Oh, and most definitely this, even though technically it doesn’t require baking. I think I’ll go ahead and count it, though.

On Marriage …

And other topics I don’t know anything about.

1. I think I have the wrong idea about marriage. Maybe it’s the way evangelicals talk about marriage; that before one decides to get married, they have to make absolutely sure that their potential future spouse embodies any number of essential character traits and that those character traits be checked off a list and checked twice, naturally. In turn, I carry around this opinion that marriage is rewarded only to people who are good. Only for people who have all of their addictions under control, who have crossed all their “tees” and dotted all their “eyes,” or those who of upstanding moral character and are spiritually mature. Those with the eloquence of Abe Lincoln and the compassion of Mother Theresa and the physique of Angelia Jolie.  Those who have their sh*t together, in other words. Naturally then, I see myself as none of those things: too sinful, too selfish, definitely not thin enough; I suffer from too much road rage and I lack anything more than a modicum of discipline; I rarely listen to voice messages. I don’t like conflict. I can be passive-aggressive. Essentially, there’s no way that brass ring will be mine, or so I am led to believe. But then, I realize that’s not true. None of that’s true. Certainly, some of these traits are good to have, ne, essential—for mature, respectable, caring people are found to be generally more attractive. But I don’t think that necessarily means that every duck has to be in a row before a ring can be slipped on one’s finger. After all, I think of friends who are married, and to be honest, I wonder how a few of them got their spouses to marry them in the first place. Money? Coercion? Extortion? Yeah, I’m just kidding, but you get my drift: I don’t think the learning stops once marriage happens, and yes very burdened and imperfect people get married, and stay married, happily.

Which leads to:

On writing …

2. I heard a quote of a quote the other day, which is like the literary equivilant of second-hand news, and it was about writing. Actually I reheard it, which might mean it’s like third-hand, but whatever. I’ve become a fierce procrastinator lately and the other day, as I tried to find anything to do besides write, I remembered a podcast that I’d heard by Don Miller, and in it I remembered him talking about how when he first felt called to be a writer, he wasted months, maybe even years avoiding writing. I wanted to find that quote again. Find it and prove to myself that yes, I too could become a brilliant, successful writer one day and that it’s okay that I don’t like doing it because someone like Don did the exact same thing at one time—probably when he was young and foolish. I wanted validation. I wanted commiseration. So I shuttled through the four or five podcasts I have saved from Don, all to no avail. For the life of me, I could not find the quote I was looking for, but I did hear another one, the aforementioned one, one that ultimately served the same purpose. He quoted another writer who at one time said that a writer loves to have written, but hates to write. Or something like that, you get the gist. As the semester winds down and a flurry of assigments are due, I find myself in that position. What exquisit torture it is, to sit down, free myself of all distraction, “colonize [my] interior wildernesses,” as Brighde Mullins would say, and write; and create. I cannot tell you how important, how essential, it has become to check the Facebook status updates of my friends, or to watch the latest movie trailers on Apple’s website, or to read the headlines of every major news site I can think of: New York Times, New York Magazine, Slate, the Boston Globe, the BBC, LAist, Salon.com, Internet Movie Database, the list goes on. It has gotten so bad that I need to remove the wireless card from my laptop in order to keep myself from checking the contents of the Internet with near-obsessive frequency. Yet, despite the lack of discipline, I no longer believe that it somehow means I’m not meant to be a writer. Writing is difficult and arduous and meant to be that way. The fact that I don’t like doing it does not mean I should find another line of creative expression, it simply means that I will live with an unhealthy lack of sun exposure, that the letters will rub off the keys of my laptop keyboard more quickly that others’ computers, that I will torture myself with my willing yet unwanted procrastination. But afterall, this struggle is not for my benefit but for yours, the reader. I must think of it that way, I must, otherwise I’d be prone to think that I should give it up—’cause who’d want to marry someone who lacked such discipline and posessed such raging neurosis?

I’m roasting beets as we speak

They’re done in forty minutes, and so this blog post will be as well.

I wish I could tell you about everything that’s going on in life right now. But I’m not sure if I should, everything being in flux, and all. I will tell you a few things that are for sure, though: my hair smells like smoke from the fires that are burning in Santa Barbara from the north and Palos Verdes from the south. My clothes smell like garlic from an afternoon of eating Cuban food and drinking mojitos. And the house is filling up with the earthy scent of those aforementioned beets, made on a night of staying home, awaiting the end of Michelle’s seven-month absence from Los Angeles.

What else? Everything’s a big “I don’t know!” as I wait and wait and wait, and I hate waiting for things. Graduation, an over-due paycheck, a hiring freeze, roommate shuffles, a potential relationship status change, an issue with the unemployment office. To all these things I must throw my hands up and say “I don’t know!” I think God’s wanting to show me that I’m not in control of life, and I’m okay with that, except that I’d much rather he at least let me feel as if I’m in control, even a little bit. But no, so instead I wait, and roast beets; and make cookies; and buy shoes; and eat Cuban food; and write. Huzzah.

“Democracy Day”

That’s what Amber and I think election day should be referred to in America. We think they should make it a national holiday, too, with the day off and everything. We determined this as we waited in line to vote this morning, in the “green table” line at Culver City City Hall, where we spent over an hour amidst other civic-minded area residents. The recent rains abated and the sun came out; the line wrapped around the building.

And now it’s two hours later. I took advantage of the the free coffee at Starbucks, ballot stub in hand and “I Voted” sticker proudly afixed to my sweater. I’m home now, typing this; the rain has returned. And we wait, just like we waited four years ago and just like we waited eight years ago. It’s a nervous wait, an anticapatory wait, a “sit on the hands” kind of wait, a “kid on Christmas morning” kind of wait. I’ve surprised myself with the depth of emotion I’ve felt about this election for the past couple of weeks, feeling the weight of the last two years and the opportunity to participate in history. It’s extremely exciting, and I have been caught up.

And yet, I’m reminded that there is still something bigger than elections and presidents and government, than the United States, even. Something that’s survived crumbled empires, slavery, persecutions, political upheaval, death, destruction, holocausts, imprisonments, oppressive regimes, communism, and yes will persist despite whoever is elected into office by the end of today.

So it is with these words that I wait:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.