* Pebbles & Sunshine *

I repent! The About Me section has been “Coming soon!” for no less than a YEAR!!

What can I say? It slipped my mind … all year … ummm …

Anyway, you might be wondering what Olympian force has motivated me to finally put it together. Well, today I was in a phone interview for a job (Yeah, I applied for a job! Anyway …) when my interviewer casually mentioned that he was looking at my website. That’s about when I smacked my head into the wall thinking, Here is a REAL LIVE PERSON looking at my blog, and I STILL don’t have an About Me page. At least he didn’t know it’d been like that for a YEAR! I’m sure there’s a special place in purgatory for bloggers like me.

But better late than never, right? (*embarrassed grin*)

Speaking of improvements to my blog, the (very) perceptive among you will perhaps have noticed that I’ve added a little word to my self-description on the sidebar. … That’s right! Musician. Betcha didn’t know that about me, eh?

Actually, I was musical long before I was crafty. I started piano lessons at age four, joined the band in seventh grade, the choir in eighth grade, and the marching band in ninth grade. You could say I was a bit of a music nut growing up.

Anyway, by the end of high school, I was pretty exhausted from the endless rounds of performances and decided to take a break to focus on other parts of my life. And I’m glad I did. (Hey, getting an MRS degree takes effort! :D) But lately, my love for music has been pulling at my heartstrings again, and I’ve decided to add that back into the mix, little by little.

So I got the keyboard set up near the kitchen and I’m playing again. My major work in progress is still Liszt’s Liebestraum (as it has been for the last few years, and is likely to be for the next few as well), but I’m also branching out and reading a few new things. Hopefully I’ll get back into some of my favorite Beethoven sonatas and maybe learn to improvise! It’ll be great fun!

As some of you may know, Lenka is probably my favorite music artist ever. There’s something about her that is so very me. My husband always smiles whenever I bop around to The Show.

And now that Wordpress has made it so easy to embed YouTube videos (all you have to do is put the url onto its own line), I can’t help but share some of my favorites. (You guys might be flooded with videos for a little bit. :D)

The Show is probably the theme song to my life. :)

Here’s her latest, Trouble Is A Friend. Cute video; kind of Pink Panther-ish. :D

And my favorite off of her album, the wistful and (alas) oh-so-accurate We Will Not Grow Old.

Afterthought: Sometimes I wonder what I’d tag myself. How would I describe myself? Quirky flower-child? I’d say that’s about right. :D

Oh. My. Gosh. Where to start?

Three weeks ago, my husband took a new job in Boulder, CO. It all happened so fast. Within a week, he had signed on with the new company, visited Boulder, and turned in his resignation to his old place. We were set to move in another week.

If you’re thinking this is crazy, oh just wait, it gets so much better!

Very, very long story short, our car’s transmission dies mid-move, and we find ourselves in Boulder carless, homeless, and creditless. Meaning we can’t rent a car, we can’t get a loan for a new one, we’re living in hotels and trying to find an apartment, all while having to walk everywhere in the freezing cold. It’s probably been the longest two weeks of my life — I feel like I’ve grown up two years!

Anyway, you can bet that this experience is going to spawn blog posts galore. I plan to write up everything in full gory detail, plus maybe a post on how to live life on the go (read: moving every six months).

I keep googling “married to a software contractor” thinking that some other woman must have gone through this before and written about it. No luck so far. Maybe a call to my pioneering spirit … ? :D

Even considering the rough introduction, I’ve grown very fond of Boulder. It’s the best of Los Angeles (big city) and Los Alamos (small town) all in one. I can’t wait to explore!

I found these pictures on Carol Hannah’s blog, which is a really lovely website — go check it out! Ever since seeing her on an offhand episode of Project Runway, I’ve been a fan (which is saying something for a media-apathetic girl like me). I love her feminine style and I really admire her character and personality. She’s also self-taught. That’s really inspiring for a homegrown latecomer like me, especially during those times when I’m holding a wad of fabric thinking, a baboon could have muddled through this better than I just did. :)

If my father has one big thing about health, it’s to always keep warm. (My grandmother was the same way — I guess it’s a Chinese thing.) So imagine his dismay when our car heater broke. Spencer and I discovered this driving to Missouri (from Los Alamos, NM) to visit them, in the middle of November no less. We figured we would get it fixed before we came back, but through a comedy of errors, it didn’t get done.

Fast forward two weeks. We’re on our way home, driving west on I-40, and at about 9:00 pm passing Amarillo, Spencer exclaims, “Hey, if we just keep going, we can make it home about 3 in the morning.” It’s maybe 65 degrees in the car, I’m wapped up a fleece throw, Spencer has an extra jacket over his knees, and we’re both feeling great. “Sure,” I say. “I’m game.”

A couple hours later, we’re in west Texas, and I notice that the temperature is dropping in the car. I begin to have my doubts about the drive-all-night plan. Spencer looks uncertain too, but the thought of waking up in our own bed the next morning is still awfully compelling. So we whiz by Tucumcari and keep going.

Another hour later, we’re going through Santa Rosa and we’re both pretty miserable. I’m having trouble keeping my arms warm and Spencer can’t feel his toes. Now, if we had been smart, we would have stopped there, but we were both pretty cranky, and what was three more hours anyway? So on we go.

About midnight, Spencer starts wrapping his scarf creatively around his head. First he looks a bit like a sushi. Then he rewraps it to look like a middle eastern headscarf. I can’t stop laughing.

“You know,” I shiver, “if my parents ever find out about this, they’ll have your head on a stick!”

“I know,” he says ruefully. “Don’t tell them.”

By the time we’re on Highway 285 to Santa Fe, it feels like it’s close to freezing in our car. (Outside, it must have been 20 degrees.) Spencer is bouncing up and down trying to stay warm, and the windshield is frosted over except for about three inches at the bottom. Every time I reach for the defrost, Spencer shouts “No!!! It’s COLD!” We manage to make it home only running the defrost for maybe two minutes.

At some point during the night, the following exchange was made: “Could be worse.” “HOW?” “Could be raining!” (Young Frankenstein.) Spencer reassures me that soldiers in the Navy routinely swim through 50 degree water and survive. Meanwhile, I console myself by thinking about how many calories I’m probably burning. I wonder whether we’ll both catch terrible fevers and die. Spencer’s just grateful that we changed the oil and got new tires, seeing as the road we’re on is completely dark for fifty miles.

After the longest three hours of my life, we pull into our parking lot at 2:38 AM. Upstairs, our apartment feels only marginally warmer than it is outside. I’m straight into the shower while my dear husband sets up our electric blankets and cranks them up on high. The next morning, to my great surprise, we’re not too much worse for wear — apart from a few chills, we’re both fine.

Ah, the stories we’ll have to tell our kids someday!

As I was sewing a button back onto my skirt today, I recalled that back in the 1950’s, boys would often peek into a girl’s sewing basket to decide whether she was marriage material. I’m glad that’s not the case anymore because not only do I not own a sewing basket, my skills pretty much dead-end at buttons.

Come to think of it, that’s most of the women I know. I grew up in a culture where money, career, and status were all that mattered. Housework, schmousework. If a woman earned enough, the theory went, she could pay drudges to do everything for her. So lawyer, doctor, or scientist it was for us. No wonder I didn’t learn to do the laundry until I was sixteen.

But having discovered the joy of fiber arts in the last few years, I’ve come to rue my upbringing quite a bit. It’s ironic. I’m sure that half a century ago, feminists were dreaming of the day when we women could command 50K a year as professionals. But I have to wonder whether they realized that the price was an entire population of women who can’t even sew buttons.

Back to my skirt: It’s not pretty, but the button is on and it’s not going anywhere. Besides, I’m already married. :D

After a lifelong hatred of country music, I have suddenly and inexplicably become fond of the stuff. It’s really quite alarming. At first it was just Randy Travis. Then I started listening to Big I 107.9 in the car. By now, I like almost all the songs they play on that station. Not just the pop-like Taylor Swift, but even the more hardcore stuff. I even looked up Gretchen Wilson’s Redneck Woman on Youtube out of curiosity. (It turns out I have a nontrivial amount in common with redneck women; at least the part about loving Wal-Mart and Christmas lights. Who-da thunk? Of course, I grew up in Missouri. It would be pretty weird if I wasn’t redneck at all. :D)

(Or, Joyce Becomes A Bookselling Monster!)

It all started last week, when I finally got around to listing some books for sale on Amazon. These were good books, beautiful books, that I bought in a a fit of passion, only to eventually succumb to buyer’s remorse. For many months, I kept them on my shelf, admiring the shiny cover, smiling over glossy pages, knowing I should recoup my losses, yet unwilling to let go. But finally the guilt of watching my husband lug 150 pounds of books up to our third floor apartment overcame my bibliophile defenses. I love my husband very much (more than my books, really); I love his back too. And so I determined to get the dirty job done.

After a few weeks of procrastination, I set up my seller’s account and started putting up books. After agonizing over beloved (but rarely-used) volumes and discarding the titles that were selling so low it wasn’t worth the effort (my threshold was $5), I ended up with nine respectable listings. Then I sat back for what I expected would be a long wait. I figured I would sell one every two weeks or so — every week when things were going fast, perhaps only one a month when things were slow — and my eventual hope was to be rid of half by the end of our six month lease. The leftovers would undergo judgment at that time and either be kept or somehow discarded.

Well, I woke up the next day and found that no fewer than SIX bulky volumes had sold in the night. SIX! Shocked would hardly begin to describe it. With only a tenuous grasp of where I could print out packing slips (we don’t have a printer) and a vague idea where the post office was, I set out, a large bag of books under each arm. My first stop was the library, where I’d noticed a “First 10 pages free” sign on the printer. Well just my luck, it was Thursday, the Farmer’s Market in Los Alamos. That meant all the parking lots were packed with cars, forcing me to improvise. Not thinking, I parked in a narrow lane and upon returning found myself squarely blocked by an SUV and a big red truck. Now, since low-carbing, my constitution has been stronger (if not exactly iron), so instead of panicking, I gulped, got into the car, and proceeded for several minutes to drive fruitlessly forwards two feet, backwards two feet, forwards two feet, backwards two feet, to the grave stares of many passersby. I thought about calling my husband, or perhaps even my Mommy in Missouri, but alas I didn’t have my phone. (Sigh.) Finally, I summoned my courage, revved the car over the curb, and made my escape (missing the SUV on my right by about two inches and the large decorative rock on my left by maybe a bit less). After that, I merely needed to execute a hair-raising 20-point U-turn in another tiny alleyway and I was free. I drove home shaking, called my husband hysterically, pulled myself together, and headed to the post office.

After half an hour of frantic sorting and letting people pass me in line, I finally had my six books shipped. I arrived home, exhausted … to find another one had sold. (!@%*$!) Five days later, I shipped my ninth book. Wow. I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically for joy or laugh hysterically in agony. (Both maybe.) Why, I could almost quit my day job.

Speaking of which, I have one now! More on that later …

I’ve heard the new fad in pop psychology is to interpret everything in terms of hardwired gender differences. No doubt this is a lashback to the era when people were supposed to be born completely malleable, and like any lashback, it will be carried too far and inspire yet other lashbacks. So I realize it’s not the complete answer.

Nevertheless, I’m a big believer. And after having great success with our diet, my husband and I are always putting on our Paleo Paradigm Glasses to see whether they shed light on anything else. I had them on one fine morning when it finally hit me why women are pathologically addicted to shopping: It’s our gathering instinct way back from our hunter-gatherer days! It suddenly seemed so obvious. We’d done it every day for millions of years. Of course it’d be ingrained in our nature!

To test my hypothesis, I grabbed a bowl and headed out to forage some berries … and did I have a blast! I came back with a delicious snack, a feeling of peace, and (most importantly) an antidote to my perpetual itch to shop. Not bad for one morning’s work!

I followed my nose a little further and found that the same line of reasoning explains a lot about men too. Haven’t you ever wondered how men can walk straight into a store, buy what they came for, and leave without so much as a sidelong glance at anything else? (All those beautiful rows of merchandise, waiting to be foraged …) Men also like first-person shoot-em-ups, chasing women (but not necessarily keeping them), and anything that can be used as a weapon (chain saws, firearms, power tools, paintball guns). Men are hunters. No wonder we don’t get each other. :)

All this further ties in with something I read in Why Gender Matters: Men’s eyes are hardwired to see motion, while women are better with color and texture. This makes complete sense: Hunters must chase running prey, while gatherers have to accurately identify edible and poisonous foodstuffs. Naturally, we would have developed these respective qualities during our three-million-year evolution.

Anyway, I’m sure many smarter people have already “discovered” this, but I’m still proud for coming up with it all by myself. :)

I’ve FINALLY figured it out!

Six months ago, I woke up with severe abdominal cramps that I assumed was food poisoning, maybe from eating out the night before. I thought “It happens” and shrugged it off. But after that, every few weeks my stomach would cramp up after a meal and leave me groaning for hours. It seemed completely arbitrary. Sometimes it was chicken, sometimes beef, sometimes well-cooked, sometimes nearly raw; but the crazy thing was, I could eat the exact same stuff other days and be fine. I was totally mystified, especially since my stomach has always been pretty hardy.

But I caught it in the act last night. This time, when my phantom came, all I’d had to eat was a few bites of a mushroom and shrimp stir-fry, made with pre-cooked shrimp no less. I knew it couldn’t be the shrimp because I’d eaten out of that very bag many times before without ill consequence. So I got suspicious: Was it the mushrooms?

Spencer and I put our heads together and sure enough, here’s a list of Major Incidents and what we could remember about the meal that caused them:

1. Steak salad, can’t remember the contents. Can’t even remember the name of the restaurant. It was somewhere in Burbank.
2. The Iron Skillet: Chopped sirloin steak, rare, topped with swiss cheese, mushrooms, and onions.
3. A supermarket meal: Rotisserie chicken, a peach, a tomato, two raw mushrooms, proscuitto, and Muenster cheese.
4. The next day. Lunch at the Loteria: Scrambled eggs and shredded beef. I also ate intermittently from our grocery bag, which still contained many mushrooms. My stomach hurt all day with a major showdown in the evening.
5. Fuddrucker’s: Ground beef burger with guacamole, mushrooms, and bacon.
6. Shrimp and mushroom stir-fry in olive oil, seasoned with coriander, garlic, and salt.

You can see why for the longest time, I thought it was the meat — the mushrooms usually accompany a steak or burger.

Now to be fair, I’ve had many minor stomachaches in addition to the big nasty ones, and I can also remember several other times when I ate mushrooms, but I can’t say for sure whether the mushroom-eating and stomachaches line up. So it’s still just a hypothesis. But until something solidly refutes it, I’m going to stay well away from the little buggers!

Anyway, I looked it up and the term is mushroom intolerance. It’s not an allergy because it doesn’t involve the immune system — if it did, I’d be vomiting, my throat would be swelling shut, and I’d be in a real pickle. But it’s just an awful stomachache (mild by comparison, eh?). Of course, I still haven’t the faintest why this is all happening. I’ve been eating mushrooms all my life. It’s not like I took a long break or anything; I ate them regularly right up to the point when all this started. Maybe that first incident really was food poisoning and it messed something up in my stomach. That would make more sense than my body suddenly boycotting mushrooms. But I’ve not had trouble with anything else, including very rare meat. From all the hubbub about cooking your meat lately, you’d think that raw meat would be the first thing to trigger stomach issues. But nope. Just mushrooms. Weird huh?

So now I feel like my gastrointestinal tract is conspiring against me. First carbs, then mushrooms. Pretty soon, I’ll have to subsist on a diet of ribeye steak and butter. (Actually, that sounds really good. Mmm.)