The English Geek

Somebody's Great Aunt Maggie's Sweet & Sour Chicken

You know how you're just cruising around the Internet, reading blogs or clicking through Pinterest or whatever, and you come across, here and there, recipes you want to try?

This one came to me like that.

Except for, I can't recreate my clicking to find the original source. So! If this came from your blog, let me know and I'll give you credit for it! I do remember that the blog post said it was the writer's great aunt somebody (or maybe just her grandma) and that it was a family recipe. I adjusted it a little bit, so maybe one day this will be Great Grandma Amy's sweet & sour chicken recipe. I imagine I'll make it again!

Sweet & Sour Chicken

1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
4-6 chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper
olive oil
1 can Campbell's beef broth
2 cups brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup ketchup
1 1/3 cup vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp ginger
red pepper flakes

Trim the chicken breasts of fat and skin and then cut into diagonal slices, 5-6 per breast. Mix the orange juice and the first 1/4 cup of soy sauce; marinate chicken for 3-4 hours.

Stir together the flour, ginger, salt, and as much freshly-ground pepper as you'd like. Dredge the chicken in the flour mixture. Heat a swirl of olive oil in a frying pan and brown the chicken slices. (Discard the marinade.)

While browning the chicken, make the sauce by combining the remaining ingredients in a sauce pan and heating until bubbly, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Spray a 9x13 or larger baking pan with Pam. Pour some of the sauce in, then start adding the browned chicken pieces. If you have to layer, pour some of the sauce over the first layer before adding the second one. Pour the remaining sauce into the pan.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Serve with coconut rice. (Coconut rice = your favorite type of rice (except not Minute Rice because, ummm, EWWWW! little pieces of white cardboard!) made by replacing about half the water with coconut milk.)

I'm always hesitant to cook meals with vinegar because the potential for high acidity (and, later, heartburn!) is great. But this one had the perfect proportion to me. The only change I will make in the future is to use fresh ginger instead of powdered and, if I had it, stir some ginger ale into the marinade.

Let me know if you try it!

It's Hip to be Square, Baby: A Simple Quilt Tutorial

I think I've established already my love for making baby quilts for friends, family, neighbors, and/or coworkers. Making a baby quilt for a new baby is the best of about 1,237 worlds: I get to pick out and coordinate colors and patterns! I get to work with flannel! I get to feel involved with a new baby! (I'm not going to have to get up in the middle of the night with said new baby!) I get to let someone I love know that I love them and am so happy for their new arrival!

But sometimes, no matter how much I love making time-consuming quilts, sometimes I need to make something quick and simple. Not, of course, out of lack of love for the baby who will be wrapped in said quick-and-simple quilt. But just for lack of time.

(Dare I confess that I have twice made a quilt like this on the day of the baby shower? And once even brought it to the shower still warm from the dryer? Sometimes procrastination gets the best of me.)

Today I'm sharing a tutorial for a quick and simple baby quilt that has just enough detail to make it feel not quite so quick. I think of it as my Hip to be Square quilt (and then I curse myself for getting that stupid Huey Lewis and the News song stuck in my head). Here's what it looks like all finished:

And an alternate, less visually appealling shot (quilts are hard to photograph well I've decided!)

And folded (there is something in me that loves a folded baby quilt)

And an attempt at a detail shot of the quilting, this one of the back:


I made this for Kaleb's teacher, who just adopted a baby. Kaleb picked out all the fabric, which I thought was sweet (although I confess: I tried my hardest to dissuade him from the red quilt back, but alas, he would not be dissuaded). From starting the quilt to throwing it in the washer it took me two hours and 15 minutes to complete; that also included hunting down my iron which "someone" had moved, cleaning my machine, and finding my box of new needles to replace the one that was on there, which was so dull from sewing chipboard onto a scrapbook layout that it was useless. In other words: it's really a fast quilt!

To make your own Hip to be Square quilt you need:

• 1 1-1/4 yard square of flannel for the quilt TOP (a chance to indulge yourself in whatever sweet baby print appeals to you)
• 1 1-1/4 yard square of flannel for the quilt BATTING (this should be a color flannel in a color that both adds contrast and also goes with the pattern or print of the quilt top; white or cream are almost always good choices for the batting, but don't be afraid to use a color, either!)
• 1 1-1/4 yard square of flannel for the quilt BACK (this can either be a solid or a print that goes with, somehow, the quilt top)
• thread that matches both the front and the back (meaning: you might need two colors of thread)
• a marking pen or pencil
• a tape measure or quilting ruler
• a sewing machine with a regular (NOT 1/4") foot or a walking foot (walking foot is best)

Once you've brought your happy new purchase home from the fabric store, follow these steps to make your own Hip to be Square quilt:

1. Iron the fabric. I confess: I HATE this step. The iron and I are not friends. But ironing is absolutely necessary. Try to get the main creases out. Don't put your iron away yet!
2. Make the quilt sandwich*. Spread the quilt BACK on a smooth surface with the right side of the fabric facing down; smooth out any wrinkles. Spread the batting piece on top of the quilt back, smoothing the wrinkles out again. Now spread the quilt TOP right on top of the batting piece, again smoothing out the wrinkles. When you smooth wrinkles, work from the middle out. Make sure none of the pieces have any puckers.
3. Square it up. This is the trickiest part for me because I don't own a cutting mat or ruler that is 45" long. And because I am challenged in the cutting-of-straight-lines department. This is one reason I love working with flannel: it's forgiving. And because you're going to be ragging the edge, if your quilt isn't perfectly square it won't be obvious. OK then, to square it up: fold the quilt sandwich in half. Align the folded edge with a straight line on your cutting mat, then trim the short edge; repeat for the other short edge. Unfold, smooth, and fold in half the other direction; trim each short edge.
4. Iron again. This is an important ironing because it's your last chance to get out any potential puckers. Work from the middle of the quilt outward.
5. Frame square A. I start with a 4" template. (Please note: in this case, my "template" is a 4" square cut from a drawing my son made of a catapult. In other words, it's just a square scrap of paper.) Using your tape measure and/or quilting ruler, center this square so it's as close to the middle of your quilt as you can manage. Pin the square right in the middle.
   (this quilt really is square. I just can't get far enough away from the entire thing to show its squareness in a photograph.)
6. Quilt the first square of square A. Line up the left edge of your machine's foot against the paper square. Now, quilt an entire square around the paper square, using that left edge of your foot as a guide.
   When you get to the corner, leave your needle in the down position (so that it's poked into your fabric). Lift the foot and pivot the fabric 1/4 turn. Put the foot back down, then start sewing again. When you meet back up at the spot where you started, take a couple of back stitches to secure the thread, but don't cut the thread! Remove the paper template if its presence is making you crazy.
7. Quilt the second square of square A. (This will eventually make sense I promise!)  Raise your needle and lift up the foot. Scoot the quilt forward and back a little bit so that the (still-attached) threads aren't too tight. Now, position the quilt so that the left edge of the foot is lined up with the row of stitching you just completed. Using the first square as a guide, sew the second square.
   (This is called echo quilting.)
8. Quilt the third square of square A. Repeat exactly what you did in step 7, except this time you'll be sewing a third square using the second square as a guide.
    When you are finished, trim all of the threads—you'll have three on the front and three on the back to cut. Take the quilt out from the machine and spread it out on the floor or table, smoothing any wrinkles from the middle out.
9. Frame square B. For this step, you'll be making a second, larger square that you'll alsoecho quilt. Find something square that is 12"-15". (A 12x12 piece of cardstock will work perfectly!) I'm using the 15" square cutting ruler I happen to own just because I happen to own it. Again, using your ruler and/or measuring tape, center the square in the middle of your quilt. If you're using paper, pin it down. If you're using a cutting ruler or a piece of thick cardboard or something else you can't pin, use a marking pen or pencil to outline the square.
   Here I used a marking pencil and the line is pretty light. That's why I usually use a marking pen, but mine had wandered off. If you marked your square, make sure to also smooth and pin before moving on. (If you used paper you've already, obviously, pinned!)
10. Quilt square B. Do the same thing you did for steps 6-8, except when you quilt the first square of square B, stitch along the line you drew in step nine or right next to the edge of the paper.
11. Frame square C.This is the largest square you'll echo quilt. Use whatever you used to frame square B, except instead of centering it on your quilt, you're going to put one corner of the template in the quilt's center. Mark the top and left lines, then flip the template down to the bottom left quadrant.
     Mark the left and bottom line; repeat until you've drawn a square. I found my marking pen (it was with my scrapbooking markers instead of my sewing supplies! ooops!), which makes a much clearer line that the marking pencil, so I used it here.
12. Quilt square C. Do exactly what you did in step 10, except (obviously!) use the large square as the first guideline.
13. Bind the edge. Smooth your quilt out on the floor or table one more time. You might have to trim the edge a little bit, especially if the quilt back is smaller than the quilt front. Pin. Take the (almost finished!) quilt back to your machine and quilt along the outermost edge using a 5/8" seam allowance.
14. Snip the edge. This is how you create the ragged edge. Use a pair of sharp fabric scissors with a short blade if you have one. (I use these for snipping the edges of all my rag quilts.) Cut a fringe all the way around the edge of the quilt, making sure to not actually cut into the row of stitching. I cut my strips about 1/4" wide, but they don't have to be exact.
15. Rag the quilt. (Make sure to remove any last pins before this step! Just take my word for it, a pin or two in your washing machine is so totally not good for your washing machine's tubes. Long story...) Once the four edges are snipped, toss the quilt into the washing machine. I don't usually run an entire wash cycle, just a rinse and spin; the purpose is to get the quilt wet and to rinse out the markings. Very Important Note #1!!!!! If your quilt has any red fabric, use a Shout color catcher. Trust me...even really expensive red flannels will bleed. The color catcher does a great job at catching the extra red dye so it can't redeposit itself somewhere you don't want it to. Then put it in the dryer. Very Important Note #2!!!!! Since the dryer is sort-of shredding the edges of your quilt, a long of thready bits are going to work their way into your lint screen. Along with a lot of lint because, well, it's flannel. There are urban legends of dryers catching fire from drying rag quilts, and while this has never happened to me or to anyone I know or to anyone anyone I know knows, to prevent your own possible urban-legend dryer fire, clean your lint screen two or three times while the quilt is drying. Very Important Note #3!!!!! Most moms of new babies are going to wash this quilt again before they let their baby use it, but I still don't use any fabric softeners. I do use a dryer sheet, but the kind without any fragrance. Just in case!

That's it! Once it's dry shake off the loose bits of ragged edges, fold it, and toss it in a gift bag, and voila: the fastest baby quilt that's still totally cute is now the gift you're giving to that totally cute new baby.

Make sure to link me up if you make one of these!

*My husband heard me use the term "quilt sandwich" once and has teased me about it ever since. Husbandly teasing aside, however, it is a real quilting term. It just means all of the quilt's layers...sandwiched together!

I Love

• When the wind catches the blossoms from the flowering plums and it looks like we are having a pink snow storm.
• My grass is finally getting green again
• The tiny buds on my apple tree
  (could there be a more perfect shade of pink?)
• Having a little cash in my wallet
• That when my back pain flares up, I know how to make it stop flaring
• My revived hair color
  (not loving the crows feet, however)
• Reading in bed at night after Kendell's fallen asleep
• Blue toenails
• The fact that right now, I actually have ten toenails to paint blue
• Feeling just a little bit sore from my previous day's workout
• My Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, even though it's pretty nerdy to be in love with a thesaurus
• Blog comments
• Running skirts, even with the weird looks I sometimes get
• The way right now our valley is full of color: that perfect spring green, and flowering plums and pears and almonds, and the last of the forsythia bushes before they fade to green, and the spatterings of tulips and daffodils and even dandelions
• SDBBE
• A big pile of new library books
• Fast Sunday
• How good dinner tastes on Fast Sunday (I'm making sweet & sour chicken, sticky rice with coconut milk, and an Asian chicken salad, even though it might be weird to have two different chicken forms in one meal)
• My agreement with myself that this week I'm going to enjoy everything, starting by making myself my own it's-my-birthday-week cake tonight, a buttery pound cake in my mary ann cake pan, with strawberries and whipped cream on top.
  (a really bad photo of a cake that is really gorgeous in real life. Must take good photos of cake to share!)
• Whipped cream
• Green alphabet stickers
• Handwritten notes from friends
• Matthew 4:16: The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

What do you love on this beautiful April morning?

on Other People's Bad Luck

I'm not a highly superstitious person. If a black cat passes my way, I just want to pet it for a minute. I've walked under hundreds of ladders in my life and even broken a few mirrors. In fact, I am so non-superstitious that I actually got married on a 13th. Granted, it was a Tuesday, but it guaranteed me a few Friday-the-13th anniversaries.

I'm totally OK with that.

Because really, we've assigned the bad luck atmosphere to Friday the 13th in a fairly arbitrary way. I'm certain that unlucky things happen on every day of the year. In fact, since I am decidedly not a lucky person, unlucky is one of my constant companions every day of the year.

I forgot yesterday was the dreaded Friday the 13th until someone else's bad luck reversed my own misfortunes. See, my husband and I were having a tiff (shocking!), and we were both grumpy and barely putting up with each other's presence. But we had to run a few errands together anyway. We found ourselves on our crowded and construction-filled freeway, just passing a freeway entrance and right next to a highway patrol car, when suddenly a dude in an old muscle car squealed onto the freeway and raced right past us—and the highway patrolman.

And while I am not one to gloat on someone else's misfortune—as I am something of a lead foot myself, I had nothing but empathy for the speeding dude—I confess: watching the cop hesitate for a second (maybe checking the license plate first?) and then punch it to catch up with the speeding dude, and then turn his lights on and pull him over? Well, it was thrilling. And it lifted us right out of our grumpiness. As we drove past the pulled-over dude, it hit me: that guy is totally blaming this on Friday the 13th bad luck.

But my day was actually a pretty good one. Not lucky, really. I didn't win a single thing. But I did get a lot done and I had a few minutes all to myself which I used for reading. I remembered to get the gum out of Jake's jeans before I washed them. The weird sound my computer started making was just something with the fan, and how lucky am I to have a husband who can fix such things? Plus, I had the most fabulous thing: I went to dinner with my friend Chris, and it was just what I needed. We laughed, we talked about the past and the future, we cried a little, she helped me find some non-lame hair bands. It was sort of unlucky that I forgot to snap a photo of us, but still. That's tiny compared to how I felt driving home.

It was a good night with a person I am so lucky to have in my life!

I was only five minutes on the freeway when I came to a dead stop, unluckily about 20 feet past a freeway exit. But lucky enough I had my cellphone with me, and it was charged, so I called Becky. Someone else's misfortune—there were several cars in the crash that closed down all but one freeway lane—gave me 25 minutes to talk to my sister. We shared some good news and some really bad news on her part. I feel awful for Becky, whose husband lost his job yesterday. (Yes! On Friday the 13th. Seriously, seriously bad luck. The worst, in fact.)

But all in all? My Friday the 13th was fairly lucky. And as it is the last Friday I have before I turn 40, perhaps that bodes well for my next decade?

 

on being a Working Mother

There has been much political uproar lately about a comment made by someone named Hilary Rosen about Ann Romney. (You can read more about it HERE if you want.) As I am thoroughly sick of politics and find, frankly, that both sides (Democrat and  Republican) come across hollow, the fact that I am blogging about this at all speaks volumes to how it impacted me.

Ms. Rosen stated that Ms. Romney (who has been a stay-at-home mom) has "never actually worked a day in her life," and that as such she is unable to offer her husband advice about women's economic issues.

This idea both offended me and, I confess, made me nod my head just a little bit in agreement. But first I have to explain why.

While I always yearned to be a stay-at-home mom, I never actually managed to do so for very long. I went back to work eight weeks after Haley was born because at that point we still needed my income to cover our bills. But a few months later, Kendell switched departments and got a raise, and I was laid off and got a severance package, both of which combined to mean that I could choose, finally, to stay at home with my sweet baby girl.

Which I did until May, just after she turned one. You see, being laid off meant I could qualify for a job-retraining grant. I could go back to school and it would be paid for. And as much as I longed to be a stay-at-home mom, I also still wanted to accomplish my long-held goal of graduating from college. Did being a student and not working at a job mean I was a stay-at-home mom? Only sort of. I found an in-home daycare where Haley was happy while I went to my classes during the day. I scheduled them as tightly as possible so that I could be at home as much as possible. Nearly all my homework I did in the late evenings after she went to bed.

During the 2 1/2 years it took me to finish my degree, I got pregnant with Jake, had him, took a semester off, went back for my last year, and got pregnant with Nathan during my last semester (you know...the one I took 21 credits so I could finish before my grant ended). I tried not to ask anyone for help, not my husband or my mom or my sisters or my friends. After all, I had chosen to work on my degree. I had a gut-deep certainty that we would all be glad I was doing it and blessed by my efforts, but I also did it because *I* wanted to learn. By the time I was done, I was proud—but tired. Tired of juggling. Tired of late nights. Tired of having to say "maybe tomorrow" because I had to balance taking care of the house and the laundry and the meals with my children's needs and my homework.

I was so, so happy to be a stay-at-home mom! I loved everything about it, even the six-week stretch of chicken pox just before Christmas.

Except, my happiness only lasted for about 18 months, because just before Nathan turned one our world got dumped upside down when Kendell was laid off. During the next 15 months, I was still a stay-at-home mom. But those were dark, dark days and finally, when I was simply too desperate to keep going along like we were, I decided to go back to school so I could get my teaching certificate.

I think I bawled on the drive to school every day for an entire month.

And it was even worse for me when I started teaching. In my heart of hearts, what I wanted the most was to stay at home with my little ones. What my life was forcing me to do was to leave them in order to provide for them. It made me bitter and sad and confused. All of my other friends, whose husbands had never been laid off, got to continue being stay-at-home moms. They also did things like go shopping together for new boots, or get their hair colored, or buy new purses.

It didn't seem fair.

One night during the first year I was teaching, I was riding back home with three of these friends after we had all played Bunco together. Somehow the talk turned to the fact that schools in places with higher incomes are much better equipped than schools in places with lower incomes. To me, this seemed patently wrong. Why should a person's income affect his or her education? Shouldn't everyone be given the same educational opportunities when we have a publically funded education system?

No! one of my friends emphatically said. People with large incomes have lots of money because of the choices they made. They chose to get educations and careers in high-paying industries, but those with lower incomes? Well, that was their fault based, also, on the choices they made. The lower-income kids didn't deserve as high-quality of schools as the high-income kids because of the choices their parents made. And, of course, because the higher-income adults paid more taxes, their children deserved a better education and seriously: if the poor people would just stop having so many kids, they'd be better off anyway.

As you can imagine, this discussion sent me for a tailspin. There I was, working as hard as I could to provide for my kids and to educate some of those high-income kids. Choosing to do so. But what I wanted to chose was something completely different. I still wanted to choose to be a stay-at-home mom, but I couldn't.

(I dropped out of that Bunco group a couple of weeks later. It was just too hard to continue feeling like the group's token white trash member.)

I continue to think a lot about choice since that night, and how it influenced who I became. If Kendell had chosen a different career, we would have different financial opportunities. If I had chosen a different degree, I could make much more money than I do as a teacher or a librarian. If I had chosen to just have one or two kids, they would have different options as well.

But that is assuming that everything in my life was a choice, and while I think I have been fairly blessed with opportunities, I know other people are not. What if my parents hadn't prized education and good grades? What if I hadn't had that talk one random Saturday afternoon with my dad, who was a steel worker with a high school diploma, about how badly he hoped I'd go to college? What if I hadn't made the choices I did to turn my messed-up life around?

And this is why I am taking the sides of both Hilary and Ann. On the one hand, Hilary is an idiot if she thinks that being a stay-at-home mom isn't work. It is. It is hard to have small children as your constant companions. As much as I loved it, I also can't sugar-coat its difficulties. It is, I believe, a selfless choice, if  you have the financial means to make it. And to say that a woman who is a stay-at-home mom is unable to learn about financial and economic issues is just downright condescending. Just because a woman doesn't have a career doesn't automatically mean that she isn't able to study, learn, and devise solutions.

On the other hand, Hilary is sort-of right about Ann. Not in the working department, but in the real-life department. She's been blessed with a husband who, through his choices and his opportunities, has always been wealthy. She hasn't felt how it feels to drive away leaving your tiny baby in someone else's care. She hasn't cried out to God asking him why he wouldn't give her that one righteous desire of her heart. She hasn't stood by in bitterness while it seemed everyone else was given the one thing she most desperately wanted. Well, that and expensive boots and fancy haircuts and more purses than one woman could logically ever need.

She might be able to have knowledge about the economic plights of women. She might sympathize with them. But Ann Romney will never be able to have empathy for them and that is, I think, what Hilary Rosen is getting at.

Of course, the more basic problem is this: when we spend time Twitter-bashing each other over our life choices and situations, we are wasting time at finding a real solution. It is also in the assumption that one side or the other (how old is the stay-at-home mom vs. work-outside-the-home mom battle anyway?) has all the answers. We all have to figure it out together, if it really even is possible to figure it out at all. We don't live in a perfect world and nothing is ever going to be completely fair. But drawing lines and taking sides and being rude to each other simply fails every single one of us women. And the generations that will coome after us.

I curled up in bed and thought about death

A good friend told me recently that she has cancer. She and I aren't best friends, but we are constant ones, and she is one of those people I am grateful to have influence me. Her cancer figured prominently in my dreams last night (when the girls from Make It or Break It  weren't trying to steal my birth control pills).

When I woke this morning, still half-caught in dreams about sickness and funerals, I curled up in bed and thought about death. I thought about my dad's passing, and my father-in-law's, and how their illnesses were so different and yet their last moments were nearly identical: they left this earth with someone they loved holding their hands. I thought about my friend Jenie's daughter, who was killed in a car accident when she was 11, and how Jenie has managed to not be broken by her loss. About Avera's death. I even thought about the deaths of my grandparents, which all happened so long ago, but I still miss them and grieve the loss of experiences my kids might have had with them.

How strange is it? We arrive and then we live our lives with all their individualities. Loving what we love, pursuing what we hope, making what we need. My dad and his interest in art and Native Americans and books; my grandpa and his roses, my grandma and her kindness. All of what made their lives theirs  now belongs to someone else. My friend with cancer is still here, telling it without any doubt, being straightforward in her knowing way, sharing her knowledge, being unafraid. And one day, even without the cancer, she won't be. One day I won't be, either.

So I thought about me. How I hope to die: sometime in my 80's, peacefully, without a lot of fuss or illness, and, wildly improbable I know, outside under trees. What I hope to leave behind: indelible memories with people I love. How I hope to live: passionately, with kindness and gentleness and with enough integrity to be true to who I really am.

In that time of thinking, I wanted a Revelation. Some sort of truth that would let me know something, anything: that my friend would be OK, that those I've lost know I am thinking about them, that my own death is still many decades away. I didn't get that. Only the remembrance that, of course, death is a carriage coming for all of us, and all that I can really hope for is that when it stops for me, I will be ready, somehow, and that someone I love will be holding my hand.

12 Current Running Truths

1. While I'm still a little bit freaked out about my first Ragnar leg (7.2 miles, 1743 feet of elevation gain) my training is helping me to de-freak. Running 7 uphill miles is just like running anything else: training for it = I can do this, right?
2. I should have listened to my gut and returned both pair of Gap running capris I bought. The mediums, while they fit my waist perfectly, were just too dang tight on my thighs. So I went with the large pair, which fit my legs perfectly but were just too dang big on my waist. I kept having to hoist them during my run today. Is it just me (well, yes, probably it is just me. And my enormous thighs) but is the Gap's newest demographic anyone with toothpick legs?
3. My Bondi headbands make me happy, especially the bright yellow one when I'm running around in the mountains.
4. I need to buy a new pair of running shoes. The maddening thing about this: the only part that's worn out is the spot right above my littlest toes, whose crooked joint rubs a hole right through my shoe.
5. My bunions are starting to bug me and I will probably have to have them fixed soon. But not until the fall; I don't want to miss an entire summer of running.
6. I was afraid that my winter running hiatus would strip me of the speed I gained while training for my marathon last summer. So far, it hasn't! (Remember, though: "speed" is relative. I'm still not very fast.)
7. I managed to squeeze in my first 2-a-day this week! As I've been trying to do this since February I'm not very impressed with myself. But I did feel awesome and, having done it once, know I can manage it again.
8. Part of conquering my first Ragnar leg is running lots of uphills. I decided that before the race I'm going to be able to run the entire paved length of Squaw Peak Road---uphill and down. (My last Ragnar leg? 7.0 downhill miles, with a net elevation loss of 1702 feet.) It's only 4.5 miles, but the elevation gain/loss is nearly identical (17-hundred-something).
9. Today I ran up Squaw Peak Road for roughly two miles. It took me nearly 24 minutes. I thought I would feel like dying but honesty I felt OK and could have kept going. I didn't because A---I didn't have time and B---I want to build up slowly.
10. Then I turned around and ran down in 13 1/2 minutes. Apparently I'm much faster on a downhill.
11. It will never stop making me happy to hear someone call me a bad ass runner. That happened today when I passed two dudes who were just getting out of their car at the spot where the road was closed (the sign on the gate said "road open on April 1." I guess the forest rangers missed that one.) One dude said "holy sh*#$*#!&, that girl is running up the road. She's insane!" and the other dude said "no, she's not insane, she's bad ass." Sweet!
12. It made me equally happy to be called a girl instead of a lady. Because the ultimate running fact is: what I'm trying to run away from is letting my body settle down and get old. That's right, I said it, I'm running away from old age. Think it will work?

Two of the World's Saddest Words:

"Store Closing."

(OK, of course there are plenty of words that are sadder than those. But when the store you're talking about is one of your favorites, it's still pretty sad.)

Lately it seems like all of my familiar ways of shopping are being forced to change because of the economy. Take scrapbooking. Since my favorite crafty store, Roberts, closed down, I'm sort of despondent. I don't like shopping online for scrapping supplies since I can't really know what an item's real feel is by seeing it online. (Plus: shipping.) Plus it just feels wrong, somehow, to pay full price. I've done it a couple of times at Archiver's and then I feel guilty and get a stomach ache. So most of the new stuff that's out right now? Totally not ending up in my stash or on my layouts. Mostly that is OK because really, I have a lot of stuff.

But I still miss shopping at Roberts. I feel awkward about my shopping options. Awkward and unnatural, somehow. My normal MO has been interrupted.

And call me a snob (you won't be the first), but when I read that one of my other favorite (non-scrapping-supply) stores was leaving my local mall? Cue awkward, unnatural shopping feelings. Yes: I have been called a snob because Nordstrom was one of my favorite places to shop. Mostly this accusation doesn't bother me because A---I know I'm really not a snob and B---I didn't shop in the super-expensive sections. Just the Brass Plum and Point of View, and always during sales.

It's my mother's fault, really. She took me there for back-to-school shopping for as long as I can remember. Every July, we'd go to the Nordstrom at Crossroads Plaza in downtown Salt Lake because that was the only Nordstrom in Utah. We'd pick out our school clothes during the anniversary sale, and then put them all on lay-away, and then we'd go to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory. A few months later, we'd come back up and get everything out of lay-away and start wearing it the next day. It was one of my favorite childhood and teenage experiences. And! Who can forget how it felt to see a few of those iconic Nordstrom boxes, the silver kind with a wide band slipped around its width, under the Christmas tree? Wondering if you were the lucky recipient of the Nordstrom box (even though it didn't always hold something from Nordstrom) was some of the best Christmas anticipation ever!

When, in 2002-ish, Nordstrom came to my local mall, I was so happy. I could just, you know, stop by. Just stop by Nordstrom! Squee! And really: I don't love Nordstrom because I'm snobby. I love it for the things it makes me remember and because I can always find something there that works for me. Haley fell in love with the store, too. So we'd go together whenever we could. Sometimes I could even shop in the same department as her. There was my infamous Nordstrom Meltdown . I bought Christmas gifts and birthday gifts and random I-need-a-new-shirt shirts there. I got friendly with some of the staff and Haley made the Fashion Board. We bought her homecoming dress there (for a smokin' deal, I might add!) and I shopped there this Christmas without melting down once. And then they dropped the bomb: because our county is not full of "high end retail shoppers," Nordstrom left.

Sadness.

And again, I'm full of that awkward feeling. Right now, for example, I need some new spring shirts. I don't know what I wore last year, but this spring I just don't have anything. But can I find any tops I like? No. Everything's flouncy and flowery and has great big sleeves which I feel uncomfortable in. And I just wish I could shop at my Nordstrom. And yes: I could drive to Salt Lake. It's not that big of a deal. But I sort of feel...abandoned, I suppose, by my favorite store. All that criticism I took for being a Nordstrom snob but the store itself doesn't think I'm high-end-retail enough to stick around.

So now I'm just discouraged. Discouraged and hot because I'm still wearing my winter clothes. To cheer myself up, today on my lunch break I decided to run into my only remaining local scrapbook store, Pebbles in my Pocket. I've shopped there since Chris told me about it back in 1995. And I discovered that Pebbles had moved. The store is still in the same building (a small white old house), but now they are just in the basement. The selection is much smaller. It's a little bit depressing to shop in the basement. And it smacks of The End. Is Pebbles going to close down, too?

I don't know. I just know I'm all sorts of bewildered over my recent shopping options. And I'm hoping nothing else goes away. Like...what if my Target closed? Or my local Costco? Or the place I get my photos printed? What about Runner's Corner where I buy my running shoes or the Cotton Shop where I get flannel for baby quilts? It almost seems like all that will be left is a landscape of Walmarts, and at that point? At that point you can just check me into the mental institution because a world of Walmarts is not one I'll ever want to live in.

Yep, I'm sticking to it: "Store Closing" is a sad, sad statement. Even if it's followed by the word "clearance." (Nordstrom, big snobby snobs that they are, didn't even have a store-closing sale.) I'd rather have the store than the going-out-of-business sale, wouldn't you?

Gratitude Gallery

April's Write. Click. Scrapbook. theme was gratitude. I made this layout for the gallery:

It's about Kaleb's friendship with our across-the-street neighbor. I love this family so much! (Does that sound weird to say about your neighbor?) They all do different things that make our lives easier, and they get our sense of humor!

And, dare I confess: I love the way this layout turned out. I usually start working on a layout with some sort of idea in my head, but most of the time the vision and the reality don't coincide. That's because I usually underestimate the space the different elements will take up, or I write more than I thought so I have to switch things around. (Usually, of course, it's that I wrote more than I expected!) This one, however, came out nearly exactly the way I had imagined it. I love it when that happens!

If you're of the scrappy persuasion, click HERE to see the rest of the gallery, and then check back on Saturday for my write. post.

The Hunger Games: a movie/book/my-opinion-on-violence Mashup

Back in the fall of 2008, when I was still a new librarian, I'd get a little bit anxious about recommending books to the collection developers. I didn't quite understand the process of how they found or chose the books for the library shelves, and I didn't want to seem pushy or step on anyone's toes. But when I read Janssen's review of this new book called The Hunger Games, I knew immediately: my library needed this book because I needed to read it and because of my gut's insistence that this one would be huge. So I stepped out of my comfort zone and told the collection developer (who has since become a favorite work friend) about the book. 

Then I bought my own copy because I didn't want to wait to read the library's, and because I knew Haley and Jake would want to read it, too. I gulped down the story in two days, handed the book to Haley who did the same, and then started recommending it to friends. "I know it sounds crazy-violent," I'd always start my recommendation with, "because it's a story about teenagers trying to survive being killed by other teenagers. But it is so good, and the violence isn't even the point, and it isn't described in detail, either."

That I always wanted to preface my recommendation with a warning perhaps speaks to my reticence at recommending books I love in the first place (having been criticized quite often for my reading tastes). But there is also this knowledge: parents of teenagers are still protective. We don't want our teens being exposed to too much, be it violence or sex or video gaming or swearing or strange ideas that might make them think for themselves. We have this fear because we simultaneously know that the amount of time we have to influence them is dwindling and we aren't 100% certain we've influenced them enough. We want them to have good stuff in their lives. We want them not to experience the extreme harshness of the world. We also know that is unavoidable.

Despite the violence, however, I still found The Hunger Games recommendable. I knew that teenagers would love it for its fiesty, strong main character, for its adventure and its story ingeniuty and even for its love triangle (a plot device I confess to absolutely hating because really: even in future dystopias how many teens actually get caught between two love interests? or maybe it was just me who could hardly handle her one love interest?) And I hoped that maybe they would see the eventual point of the story, which to me seems so obvious I can't believe I'm writing the next sentence: violence only begets more violence.

When the movie came out last month, I was, strangely enough, not excited to go. I didn't entertain the idea of a midnight showing; in fact, we didn't see it until Saturday morning. (I'm cheap like that: I try to go to the first matinee showing of movies, since the tickets cost a buck less.) I kept thinking wait a second! I was an early Hunger Games adapter. Why am I not excited? and Haley finally put it into words for me: because so many people were hopping on the bandwagon so late. Some of them, as proved by the outrage over Rue being a black girl, hadn't even read the book. And since I tend to not like to do what the trends say I should...my enthusiasm for the movie wasn't extreme. 

I still enjoyed it, once I finally made it there. I think they did a decent job of including important points, with a few notable exceptions: the actual desperate hunger that most of the people of Panem experience (if you hadn't read the book would you know why Gale's name was in the reaping 42 times?) and the threatening menace of The Capitol. Katniss's affection for the stew. Her father's illustrated book of edible plants. What about the story behind the Avoxes? I think they should have developed the story of Peeta and Katniss in the cave much better, and included the still-warm bread that District 11 sends to Katniss when Rue dies. Plus, in the book Prim's cat Buttercup is orange, but it's black and white in the movie. Is there a shortage of orange cats in the movie world?

When I left the theater, in addition to thinking about what I liked and what I was disappointed by, I had a certainty: the violence in the story was going to be an issue. Especially since, in the movie, you cannot enter the characters' minds like you do in the book so you don't understand as well their motivations. Why is Peeta hanging out with the Careers? How does he end up wounded and in the river? What happened to the girl who built the fire? Why was Katniss so devastated when Rue was killed? None of that translated in the movie. But we also can't see as clearly the fact that Katniss was doing her best to avoid the violence. You can sort of see it, a little. She doesn't actually kill anyone who didn't threaten her first. But you are only outside of her head, watching.

When I got home, I checked in on Facebook, and one of the updates I read was my niece's husband's:

"Human beings are better than that. Decency and morality are much more prevalent in kids than the movie gives credit for and parents wouldn't simply stand by and watch their children get taken."

While allowing Jeff (would he be my nephew-in-law? I suppose so!) (whom, by the way, I am not ridiculing but simply using to make my point) his opinion, I had to personally disagree. The districts in the society created in The Hunger Games are controlled by the violence of the games. Like any dystopia worth its weight, The Hunger Games is ruled by a tyrannical government. The people in the Capitol might disagree, but the rest of the society wouldn't. The parents stand by and allow their children to be taken because they are being ruled by tyranny. They don't have a choice. Just as, say, the Native Americans didn't have much choice when they were relocated or murdered or murdered while being relocated. Or the Japanese people in the 1940's didn't have any say over being moved from their homes to internment camps. (And this by a non-tyrannical government!) Katniss's small rebellions are a start of parents being able to stand up for their children—but only a start. And the problem isn't the decency and morality in the teenagers (who are forced to compete; perhaps the lack of menace from the Capitol means this doesn't translate in the movie) but the lack of decency and morality in the government and the privileged few who live in the Capitol and wealthier districts.

Another friend insisted to me that The Hunger Games is likely to create a rash of school shootings because it promotes children killing children. (Just as Star Wars caused us all to take up killing each other with light sabers and channeling the Force.) To my mind, this friend is missing the point of the storyline, which really isn't much more simple than the ancient "man's inhumanity to man." Look down through history: has there ever been a time when people weren't brutal to each other? I'm not a historian but I don't think there have been many. Aside from the Careers, the kids in the arena are doing what they've been forced to do, which is fight for their lives. (And really, in a sense the Careers choose, either, considering that they've been trained to see it as an honor; they're just better prepared.) They don't have a choice, unlike the people involved in school shootings.

Still, I keep questioning myself: why doesn't the violence in this story dissuade me from being affected by it? I would like to say it is that the entire story arc provides the counterbalance for the violence: the Capitol uses violence as a weapon until the people rise up and roust out the government. But that isn't entirely the truth because I've been recommending the books since they first one was just a blip on the popularity scale and I didn't know the entire story arc. Perhaps it is because the story doesn't glorify violence; violent things happen but they aren't made glamorous or intriguing. (THIS article gives a good summary of all the violent points.) This lack of glamorizing violence in a violent story allows for the point to shift elsewhere: how much tyranny will one person accept before pushing back? Or one entire society? How does a person put into a violent situation maintain control of her humanity? How do small kindnesses translate into a greater good? What does it mean to be brave?

Or maybe it's because really: none of this is new. You've read all about the Reaping if you've read Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery." You've read about publicly-viewed execution games if you've read (or watched) The Running Man. Or even Survivor. There is something of the Roman colosseum in the story, isn't there? And The Lord of the Flies, of course. The Olympics, even, in a round-about way. It's a different face to the same story of a sharply-pitched contrast between wealthy and poor, or the story of a government doing deplorable things, or the one about people rising above, despite. 

But ultimately I am not dissuaded by the story's violence because of my reading philosophy. (Which I wrote about HERE.) "I believe that there is a morality to be found in good novels that cannot be undone by their inclusion of questionables," I wrote then. "Bad books encourage the practice of evil; good ones describe the practice of evil, the implications of it, the way it spreads, the way it is everywhere. But they also offer up some small little spark of hope—a piece, even if only the tiniest, of the light of truth that is scattered everywhere."

I'm not offended by the inclusion of violence because, ultimately, the violence isn't the story's truth. It is one of the ways it tells its truth, yes. But it isn't the point. And I stand by my original response: this qualifies as a good, recommendable series, even though it is the crazy-violent story of teenagers killing teenagers. 

Tell me: what is your opinion on the violence in The Hunger Games?