Have you ever heard of an apologetic chocolate cake?

"brunch" at work: Mile High 5 Layer Chocolate Cake

I apologize for myself quite often. Not verbally, but mentally.

Don't get me wrong - I'm just as obstinate, if not more, than the next person, especially when it comes to being right. Just ask, well, just about anyone who knows me :) On the flip side, I feel I am fairly apt at pinpointing situations where a heartfelt apology is due. But when it comes to expressing myself fully in the way I would be most "honestly" expressed, I often quell my inner urge to act how I truly feel.

Case in point: I attended an info session tonight for a TEFL course (If I know my audience, you all know EXACTLY what this acronym stands for, but just in case: Teaching English as a Foreign Language). As attendees tossed around stories of living abroad, teaching abroad, learning languages and cultures, sharing their own language and culture - my excitement grew and grew. People's hands were flying up to add their 2 cents, and others were interrupting each other in exuberant haste. But I calmly sat back and watched, taking in every perspective before carefully crafting the wording for my own, to be shared only in the instance of a lull in the conversation. My instict was to stand up and shout with enthusiasm or, in this arena, at least share some stories of my own (I feel like I have a few good nuggets), but instead I sat and watched.

Another example: singing in the car. I've been known to belt out a good tune here or there. In fact, all the way home from the aforementioned info session I dubbed my own version over every song I heard come on the radio, whether I knew the actual lyrics or not. However, at each stoplight and, for that matter, at each high note, I became very self aware and apologetic. It's as if I was telling myself, "Ok, that was fun. Now get a grip." But there is so much people like me can learn from people like the guy who pulls up next to me at the stoplight: head bobbing, finger tapping, vocal chords straining, dreadlocks flying...

I often find myself in an over the top, ecstatically delicious, multi-layered, sickeningly amazing mood. The Mile High 5 Layer Chocolate Cake doesn't apologize - why should I?

My way

S'mores, the real kind:
1/2 Hershey's chocolate bar, 2 marshmallows, 2 graham crackers
Instructions: create sandwich, wrap in foil, set near coals and turn frequently until squishy and melty, avoiding third degree burns if possible. Eat and enjoy, smearing as much chocolate on your face as possible.

On a recent camping trip with friends, I learned that the majority of people I know grew up making S'mores the wrong way. Instead of the above (read: correct) recipe, they have been cutting important corners and simply roasting the 'mallow and shoving it in the cold chocolate/cracker-wich, thus bypassing the all important warming of the cracker and chocolate. Of my fellow campers, my sister was the ONLY person who understood the importance of the foil-wrapped version: you know what they say about great minds...

This led me to think about how many things I know are "correct" that are so completely "incorrect" to anyone outside my household. Most of these practices are food-related: mayonnaise on grilled cheese sandwiches (I tried to make this for kids I was babysitting once, and it did NOT go over well), pickles in hash browns, couscous as a main dish. But other practices are equally intriguing: closing the shower curtain to it's fully extended position after use (my mom and I can't be the only people who believe this is an essential rule of human etiquette!), taking every opportunity to scramble up carpeted stairs on hands and knees, forcing the neighborhood parents to sign away our liability for their kids when jumping on our trampoline, sorting coupons in alphabetical order in the car before entering the grocery store. It's a real wake up call - a sign of growing up - when you realize that there are other ways to do things.

But still, about the S'mores - come on.

Reset

Breakfast while camping: partially burnt sesame bagel with lukewarm veggie cream cheese

What is it about sleeping on the ground and zoning out around a campfire for hours that makes camping such a relaxing experience?

I'm some version of a hippie, but living in Boulder County, CO, I can safely say that, by comparison, I'm in the lower 5th percentile as far as true hippies go. Still, though, there is something so calming about being in nature, where it's silent and starry and simple, that's just like hitting the reset button on the alarm clock of my life. I never feel so far away from traffic and schedules and tv and stress as when I am camping - no matter where or with whom.

Of course there is a flip side: this utter relaxation is sandwiched by stress and mayhem. In anticipation of the camping zen, I am always stressed in my preparations. And, the moment I leave the dirt road, the stress seeps back in again.

It takes a balanced soul to carry that calm through to everyday life. I aim to try, but I know that half burnt bagel wouldn't taste nearly as good at my dining room table.

Day 1 of the great fast: stop and taste the spinach

Lunch at work: Spinach, red onion and toasted walnut salad with apple cider vinegar and lemon cucumber spa water

When is the last time you truly tasted something? For me, it's been quite awhile. I get so wrapped up in writing a shopping list or watching the latest episode of Lost that I forget that I am even eating. Mind you, I eat pretty well: vegetarian, organic as much as possible, good mixture of colorful fruits and veggies, and whole grains when I can. But being a conscious buyer and preparer does not necessarily portend being a conscious eater.

After a Midwest vacation filled with Southern Creole, honey mead and greasy brewery fries, my accomplice and I have decided to try our hands (or stomachs) at a "cleanse". We both know that we could never do an all out, liquid only diet for any amount of time without strangling eachother and quite possibly ourselves, so we are instead choosing the path of slightly less resistance: the raw diet. For 7 days we will eat only fresh fruits and veggies (and legumes, etc) with no added sugars, fats or salts (that'll be the hard one).

Naturally, I woke up this morning of Day 1 with utter dread. I'm normally a bagels and cream cheese kinda gal, and I like my omelettes and quiches on the weekend, so the prospect of mere fresh-squeezed orange juice and fruit salad, however colorful, hit me as less than tempting. But, I made it through and was surprisingly full after what I expected to be a pretty meager meal.

For my one hour lunch break, having forgotten a book to read, I stared out the window over the airport near my building and tasted spinach for the first time. Of course I've eaten spinach before, but I'm not sure if I've ever tasted it and really let it's earthy green-ness engulf my senses. A lunch I had dreaded for lack of taste turned out to be quite a wake up for my taste buds.

It's somewhat natural to apply what I learn from food to my life since, for the most part, food IS life for me. Perhaps I'm hallucinating for lack of sustenance, or perhaps I'm just emotional easing back into the grind after 5 days of vacation, but I realized that I truly don't taste enough in my life.

Traveling, no matter how near or far, always makes me think of other travel experiences. And so it is that I find myself thinking of a few summers ago in Israel: I was sitting on a rooftop balcony at my hostel when a large group of Israeli female soldiers came out to join me on a break from lecture. They were young, just out of high school.

Two of them were curious about me: wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing there, how long I would stay. I will never forget the amazement in their eyes when I told them I had a degree in French and Business, and was just 23 years old. They thought I was so accomplished and so smart. They had just begun their 2+ years of IDF service, and many of them had plans to get married after their service was over, and perhaps bear children shortly thereafter. A college degree, for them, was at least as far away as their 25th birthday, if not further.

I dismissed their awe and chalked it up to our cultural differences, even our gap in age. How could I, 23 years old with no grad school plans or chosen career path, be inspiring to anyone?

It wasn't until after I returned home, to the high paced life of job applications and rush hour traffic, that I realized I needed to give myself more credit. I think we all do. It seems the IDF serves, for some, as a forced period of reflection between high school childhood and the adult beyond. With that in mind, I started to envy these girls in their military fatigues, given the time to pause and look around, decide what they want for their lives and celebrate where they've come from. What would I have done differently if I'd taken a hiatus after each accomplishment in my life?

A life without reflection, celebration and occasional indulgence is not worth much. It will sustain you, but it won't do you justice: just like a meal without taste.

The elusive Lodge

Afternoon tea: Meditative Mind by The Tea Spot (ingredients: white tea, green tea pearls with essence from jasmine flowers, rose buds)

Decision making can be tough, as can steeping jasmine tea to perfection. You have to let it bathe long enough to develop - full bodied and round - but just a tad too long and it develops an unforgiving bite. You have to be willing to enjoy the lightness, and indulge in the now. It's a delicate balance between securing the opportunities at hand and allowing yourself to let go of what might have been.

I tend towards over-steeping my decisions until they're bitter and unenjoyable. Not always, but most of the time. Take, for example, my choice to transfer my funds from a brick & mortar to an online bank. I got the inkling to do this in mid February when it hit me like a ton of (aformentioned) bricks that a .2% APY stinks, even by today's sad standards. I made it my March goal to meet with a financial planner, which I did - twice. I avidly researched several banking options and alternatives to those options and alternatives to my alternative options. By the time I chose a bank (FNBO Direct, in case you were wondering, because of rave customer service reviews) I was so jaded about interest rates, minimum account balances and monthly transfer terms that I wasn't even excited about more than quadrupling my APY.

Or another example, for those of you who turned off your brain at the first mention of money (you know who you are). Ellie's Eco Home Store recently had a gigantic "pre re-grand opening sale". The discounts started at 10% and went up by 10% each day until the final sale day when the entire store was a whopping 90% off.

Being the avid comparison shopper I am, I hit the store on 60% day (a Thursday) to do some scouting and information-gathering. There were acai berry necklaces here and paraben-free bath products there, but what really caught my eye was a Lodge cast iron 9x13 casserole dish, rust-colored, heavy so you know it's the real thing. There was a healthy supply, so after circling and re-circling the store several times and spending a solid 5 minutes groaning in front of the display, I decided it made the most logical sense to wait until "80% off Saturday" for the additional $16 I'd save. I left the store and basked in rust-colored dreams that night.

Along came Saturday. I sauntered in to Ellie's and not only had the Lodge beauties been completely looted, but there was a line at the register that could make even the most die hard shopper give up their quest. I walked in, swiveled on my heel, and immediately exited from whence I'd come.

I'm pretty resilient, like a good cast iron casserole dish. I got over my disappointment with the help of a chai latte and some serious, on beat fist pumping during the car ride home. But, I'm here to admit, that $16 would have been worth an unprecedented spur of the moment decision.

Springtime lunch on the balcony

Lunch: leftover Bengan Bartha from Tandoori Grill

Like with many things in life, being close to the edge is thrilling in its danger - leftover Indian food included. That near-heartburn rush forces you to slow down and enjoy the feeling in it's full monumental capacity, while also respecting that it owns you. You're not finished until it's finished with you, and only then will you be free to breathe and carry on with your life.

I have always had a tendency to want to disagree with age old wisdom, ignore metaphors and question popular knowledge (I didn't experience heartburn until recently, sitting at a restaurant eating onion salad with my parents. Up until that fateful point, I blatantly denied that heartburn actually existed, or at least that I was susceptible to it). It's a humbling experience to learn that sayings ring true, and that despite your infinite intelligence, you did not create them. For example, "the grass is always greener on the other side": I was going to be the one to prove that wrong, to always be content in my current state, never wanting or regretting. Not so.

I'm not sure how I duped my Gemini self into believing such a thing was possible. I'm constantly looking forward, planning for the next thing or looking back fondly, nostalgically on the past. I have an undesirable beef with the whole 'be present' philosophy. Even as I write this my frontal lobe is thinking of potential Mother's Day gifts and my left pinky toe is adding to my never ending grocery list.

I once heard of an article whose subject was essentially: "multi-tasking is bad for you". It was a whole article (was it Shambala Sun, or Tricycle maybe?) about how multi-tasking leaves us ever restless, constantly asking more of ourselves. We can never truly be present because the present is merely a means of preparing for the future while learning from the past. Once the present becomes the past, only then does it become valuable.

Writing seems to help me be present (besides my overactive left pinky toe). It allows me to listen to the birds and rave at the view from my balcony - spring is the perfect time to see the mountains from here: warm enough to sit outside half naked, but no view-sabotaging leaves to fence me in. It allows me to see the fallen mosaic tiles that were once a part of my "patty o'furniture" as life, and not ruin. It allows me to truly hear the live music sitting right in front of me instead of playing my life to its soundtrack. It allows me to sit back and create art projects in my head and, more importantly, acknowledge that they are not a waste of time. However cliche it is (and don't I know how scathingly accurate a cliche can be?), I start this journal off on the premise that writing is my outlet, my one true connection to the present. For whom isn't it?

Welcome to my headspace: the lime green underbelly of a chartreuse umbrella.