everything is most precious while sleeping

I wrote this meandering draft back in April before I was pregnant and just re-read it today. I'm 7 months pregnant now and still a bit apprehensive about losing a lot of personal freedom, but that's been overshadowed by concern that the baby will get here healthy (everything looks fine so far, so I have no reason to believe otherwise but I worry still), and we'll give him a good life. Sacrificial Mormon mom kicked in after all. I got the cute bookcase (it's this one) but haven't decided yet on the pricey blanket. Indecision! It's part of my brand.

Anyway, it's interesting to see the difference a few months make. Here's what was in my head a while ago.

---------------------------------------------------------------

This is Ruby. Ruby is my dog, my French bulldog puppy, currently almost 8 months old. She was kind of an impulse purchase, thanks to Aaron's local classifieds browsing. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. I cried on the floor alone at least three times while dealing with Ruby while Aaron was at work and I didn't know what I was doing. We were pretty sleep-deprived for the first couple of months when her bladder was so tiny she had to go to the bathroom every couple of hours and whined a lot at night. That was a dark time.

But it got better. She's house trained now and is pretty good about not chewing on things that aren't toys (except every rug in the house but it's better than shoes I guess). She loves people and other dogs and is very playful. She also costs a lot of personal freedom and also costs a lot of cold hard cash. Daycare, lots of vet visits, food, toys, more vet visits, and more daycare is eating up a lot of our discretionary spending.

Anyway, having Ruby is both like having a child and also not like having a child a lot. Aaron thought having a dog would make me less lonely but actually, I feel more lonely, maybe because Ruby is so obviously not a human that for some reason it just reminds me that I am alone a lot since Aaron works all the time, and we have no kids. So that's a little depressing. But at the same time, she makes me glad I don't have kids because then I'd have even less personal freedom, and I already resent the small dip in personal freedom getting Ruby already cost me. And THEN I feel sad that I feel apprehensive about losing personal freedom by having children because that's not very sacrificial Mormon mom of me, now is it?

I've been looking at baby quilts on Crate and Barrel and I already know which one I want to buy whenever it is I get pregnant. Which, who knows when that will be? I've got $40 left on a gift card that I'm saving for it. Now who's being selfish! I'm doing this for YOU future child!! A baby quilt that you probably won't even get to touch because it's over $100 and way too beautiful for all the bodily fluids that accompany babies.

The baby quilt browsing quickly spread to kids' bookcases, which, in case you weren't aware, are adorable. Like, really, really cute. There are at least four that I want to buy from Crate and Barrel alone. All I want for my future baby is a lot of freaking books.

Why is it that kids get all the cute bookcases? Regular bookcases are generally pretty ugly. I know because I've been looking for years to replace my mocha Target bookcases I've owned for 7 years, and all of the sleek minimalist ones are not practical for actually storing books. They have open sides so you better have some real sturdy bookends if want to fill the shelves with books and not your floor. The cutest book storage options I've seen on design-y blogs are always either built-ins (renting, so not an option) or straight up shelves attached to the wall (also, renting, not ideal, I am uncomfortable with holes in walls).

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Puppies -> babies -> bookcases. Never did get around to writing up an actual ending to the post, I suppose. But there you go.

2019: so far, so good

Some fun things I've been into lately:

Next time you need chocolate frosting, this is your recipe. It's rich and chocolatey without being overly sweet. It also pipes like a dream and makes enough to frost ~30 cupcakes.

16 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (this is not a health food)
3/4 cup (3 oz) powdered sugar
1/2 cup (1 1/2 oz) unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup light corn syrup
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (I ran out and didn't use any-still delicious!)
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled (I used semisweet since it's what I had on hand)

In a food processor, combine butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt until smooth, about 30 seconds, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the corn syrup and vanilla and process until combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Add chocolate and pulse until creamy, 10 to 15 seconds. Frost!! Can be stored in the fridge if you're making it in advance (just pull it out about an hour before you want to use it so it will spread easily).

These Neapolitan butter cookies are fun and delicious. They look pretty, and the striped effect is easy; all you have to do is smoosh the dough in a loaf pan in three layers. No rolling pin required.

Have you seen A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix? We just finished it, and it's great! I loved it. I'm also very into the song at the end of the season, which also made me miss Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (this song!!!! so powerful).

Worth being on Twitter for this Cats thread (the musical, not like the animal in general)

Also liking: Shallow by Lady Gaga and whats-his-name and this related article! Makes me want to respond with that howl to pretty much everything.

The first three books I've read in 2019 are GOOD. The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (sci-fi, almost a collection of short stories as tightly woven as the human hair used to make the titled carpets), Becoming by Michelle Obama (she's such an impressive woman, loved reading about her life), and Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (I decided you have to read this in winter curled up with a giant blanket, it's sort of a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in Russia/Eastern Europe with a similar vibe to The Bear and the Nightingale, which I also loved).

NEW MUSE ALBUM. ETA: this song from it is my current favorite. I love the guitar solo; I call it mournful Beach Boys in space, and it's so lovely. Next month I'm going to their concert for my birthday, and I can't wait!!!! Walk the Moon is opening for them, and I'm also excited about that!!!!

That's all I had to say! 2019, off to a great start.

books of 2018

I set a goal to read 37 books this year (one more than last year). I guess when you're out of academia and don't really have a social life and get off work at 5:00 pm you can read a lot more because this was not even hard. I ended up reading 41 books and didn't feel like I was really going out of my way to do it. So yay reading! Yay for Durham having a decent library!

Sci-Fi
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (This was my favorite book I read all year. Jesuit mission to newly-discovered planet goes terribly awry, and we explore how faith holds up when nothing goes according to plan. It was SO GOOD)
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Fantasy
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (This series is so much fun, like Ocean's 11 if there were fewer people in the crew and more medieval-ish settings.)
Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

Non-fiction
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (What a page turner!)
The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
L'appart by David Lebovitz (Hi, I never want to buy an apartment in Paris now, thanks David.)
The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Hard to get through, tbh, Emperor of All Maladies was better imo)
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (Horrifying depiction of what happened to girls in watch factories who painted the watch dials with radium-laced paint. ugghh man. Radioactive material does not belong in your body.)
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Memoir-y
Educated by Tara Westover
And Now We Have Everything by Meghan O'Connell (very funny reflections on motherhood)
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (This was LOVELY - recommended especially for women in science but probably equally enjoyable if you are not.)
Where the Past Begins by Amy Tan
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks
Shrill by Lindy West

Of Course I Couldn't Go a Year without Reading SOMETHING by Brandon Sanderson
Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

Sort of Historical
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (This was the historical part.)
Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross (This was the sort of part - Pope Joan's existence is still a matter of debate.)

The Movie Was Better (Because The Movies are Very Good)
To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (I probably would've liked this more if I had read it before seeing the excellent movie like 8 times.)

Re-reads
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (I went to go buy some of the HP books I'm missing from Barnes and Noble-I've slowly been stealing them from my parents for years-and I couldn't find them because I didn't realize they're in the CHILDREN'S SECTION! Like even though I first read this book in fifth grade I didn't put together that Harry Potter is a children's book series. I was looking through adult and YA fantasy sections and finally had to ask an employee where they were.)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (This is such a beautiful collection of short stories, you should read it, for the last paragraph of the last story alone.)

Odd Ones Out
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (HOW have I not read this book before this year? It was PHENOMENAL. I'm out of practice of reading classics, and I still blazed through it because it is so readable. Absolutely loved it.)
Mother's Milk by Rachel Hunt Steenblik

Holy cow, I did not realize I read so many memoirs this year. That was unintentional, but fun. The best books I read this year were The Sparrow, East of Eden, Educated, and Bad Blood, though so many of these books were great. A good reading year!

Looking forward to consuming ever more reading material in 2019, and already kicking things off with more memoirs (hi Michelle Obama and Julia Child). Anything else I should be reading?

see previous book lists here: 2016, 2017

radium

“Power"

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

-Adrienne Rich

****

Last week another woman won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, bringing the total number of female chemistry winners up to five. Five. Out of 180 total winners over a span of 117 years. 

We can do better, right? The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward women getting scientific accolades in equal numbers as men, right? Our pain and our hard work is equally recognized and valued, right? I used to think so, but then Donald Trump got elected president, and Brett Kavanaugh got confirmed as a supreme court justice, so who the heck knows. 

more unsolicited opinions, as usual

Hi! I live in North Carolina now, and so far am doing a good job of assimilating into suburban life if I do say so myself. Not that it's hard, because I'm defining this as I drive everywhere now and go to Target like twice a week and buy things from drive-throughs.

Some random thoughts, a strangely high proportion of which are about pants:

New Muse song! I can't decide if I love it or not, but I do keep listening to it, and it's catchy.

NO MORE ANKLE PANTS. Why are all the pants ankle length these days? I had to buy a bunch of new professional clothes for my new professional job, and they're all a little too cropped. I can't have any skin showing below my waist in lab, and I'm sick of wearing socks with ankle pants. I have not found a way to make this look cute. (You know your life is pretty great when this is a major problem.)

It is really hot and humid here, and I have given up on wearing skinny jeans. In fact, I don't wear any jeans at all these days except for one pair of "girlfriend" jeans from Gap. All I want to wear are wrinkle-prone linen pants from Uniqlo (let us all shed a tear that Uniqlo has no locations within 200 miles of here-I did not take nearly enough advantage of its proximity while living in Philly). 

"Crazy Rich Asians" was kind of a dumb book but a delightful and visually gorgeous movie, and I'm so glad that I went and saw it this weekend. I also watched "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" on Netflix, and it was a treat. Highly recommend them both.

Two not dumb books I read recently: Educated by Tara Westover and And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O'Connell. The former was both horrifying and inspiring and the latter both made me want to have a baby and never have a baby. I'm curious what people who have had kids thought of that one (it felt like a no-holds-barred peek behind the mysterious curtain of motherhood to my uninitiated self).

Summer vegetable soups are currently my jam. I really liked this one:
Instant Pot Summer Soup (which I made on the stovetop, replacing the chicken with a can of white beans)
and this one:
Vegetable Soup with Basil Pistou (I did not make the basil pistou, and it was still great)
Unfortunately, Aaron declared himself "not a fan of soup" today, so I guess you can take these recommendations with a grain of salt. (literally? ha.)

Welp, I think that's it. Can you tell I don't have a lot of friends to talk to in person about all these things? Yay moving!

something something b52s roam something

After Paris we went to Rome!

It was fun to see how different Rome felt compared to Paris: a little more gritty, colorful, and way hotter. Neither of us had been to Italy before, and neither of us spoke any Italian (I failed Duolingo), so it was a bit more of an adventure.

Beautiful streets! Totally different from Paris. I don't know why this surprised me so much, but I'm going to blame it on my American naivete. 

The Colosseum! Following Rick Steve's advice helped us avoid most of the line-waiting and his free audio guide was entertaining and informative. I LOVE RICK STEVES.

Roman Forum! It's incredible to me how intertwined ancient and modern Rome are. I loved seeing ancient ruins all over the city.

Like in Paris, we took a cooking class. This time, we made a full meal: two different types of pasta dough (semolina flour + water versus flour + egg), two different pasta sauces (tomato sauce, broccoli goat cheese-I don't even like goat cheese usually but this was SO good), fried zucchini blossoms, artichokes, and chocolate pear cake. This was awesome, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes to cook and will be in Rome.

We also did a food tour in Trastevere and I'm still thinking about this cacio e pepe and amatriciana pasta. 

Also, still thinking about this suppli (fried risotto ball). I would eat this every day if I could.

The Pantheon at night. I loved how walkable Rome was, which allowed us to see a lot of the major sites both intentionally during the day, and accidentally at night, while we were heading back to our Airbnb for the evening.

 Day trip to Tuscany! This was fun but also not, because a lot of it was geared toward wine tasting (which I didn't realize based on the tour description online). Worth experiencing the beautiful scenery and seeing the Italian countryside, though, even if we spent our lunch getting the elderly ladies seated across from us drunk by giving them all of our wine.

The Trevi Fountain was worth the hype. Rome has so many beautiful fountains but this was in a league of its own. 

 We also day tripped to Pompeii/Mount Vesuvius. The view from the end of the trail on Vesuvius was amazing, and this was definitely a highlight.

Pompeii was also incredible. I had no idea it was so large, and I wish we had had more time to explore it.

This mega cheese/meat/fruit/spread board was our dinner one night and now I'm asking myself why do we not eat this for dinner every night? It was fantastic.

We spent a day at the Vatican, seeing the museum/Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. These pictures don't do St. Peter's justice. We saw what felt like a hundred incredible ornate churches while in Rome (we'd pop in every one we saw while walking around) but this outdid them all. Absolutely amazing. Rick Steves also saved us hours of lines with a shortcut from the Sistine Chapel to the cathedral, so next time you're going to Italy, buy his dang book.

Pretty Piazza Navona, early in the morning before all the other tourists got there.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation, and I feel so lucky that we had the chance to do this before I started working full-time and Aaron started fellowship. It's something I've been wanting to do basically since the last time I got on a plane to fly back to the US from France, and this trip did not disappoint. Thanks for having us, Europe!

midnight in...

Before moving to North Carolina, Aaron and I heeded Leslie Knope's advice:

"In times of stress or moments of transition, sometimes it can feel like the whole world is closing in on you. When that happens, you should close your eyes, take a deep breath, listen to the people that love you when they give you advice, and remember what really matters. And if you have the ability to go to Paris, by all means, go to Paris."

So, we went to Paris:

Our teeny studio Airbnb was right by the Louvre, so we walked past it every day. And one of those days, we went inside it and saw beautiful Winged Victory. We also saw the original painting of a 9000 piece puzzle that Aaron had put together, which neither of us realized was actually a famous Renaissance painting. Surprise! Paris, you're a thrill!

I don't think I appreciated how beautiful Paris was when I first visited when I was in college. Philly helped adjust my expectations for beautiful cities and MAN Paris is beautiful. I couldn't stop taking pictures of ordinary streets and buildings.

One of my favorite things we did was take a food tour of Monmartre, which culminated in us eating a meal of bread, cheese, meats, chocolate, and pastries in this cute little room, overlooking the street in the picture below. It was educational and delicious, my two favorite things!!

The other cool thing we did was take a macaron cooking class at a little cooking school near city hall. Once again, educational and delicious. Macarons are notoriously tricky, so it was awesome to have a professional show us what to do and what to look for. We came away with a box of ~40 cookies, which we snacked on the rest of the trip.

It was fun to show Aaron all the places I loved the last time I was here. Sainte-Chapelle was high on the list. While we were there, a boys choir was visiting and performed just one angelic song. We were so lucky to be there at the same time and get to listen to that little piece of heaven.

Couldn't pass up going to Versailles, even if it was chilly and rainy.

The opulence of Versailles was a sharp contrast to the elegant simplicity of the Mormon temple we walked over to afterward (of course our trip was during the two weeks of the year it's closed for cleaning, so we couldn't actually go inside. But the grounds were lovely!)

On our last morning, I made Aaron go to one last art museum: Musee de l'Organerie. I'm happy to report walking into that rotunda ringed with Monet's water lilies was just as moving 8 years later.

This is us in front of the I Love You Wall loving Paris with all our freaking hearts. Hope we'll be back someday <3

i'm trying to distract myself from the collapse of our country with all of the below

In addition to those recently linked recipes, here are a few other things I'm loving lately:

Reading: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I finally read this (or should I say inhaled? I can't believe how quick of a read this was for me), and it was so good. Beautiful, moving, just the right amount of sad, I'm going to need to read this again.

Watching: Howl's Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki
I watched this on Mother's Day by myself, which sounds more depressing than it was. It was fun! This movie is magical and lovely and now my phone home and lock screen are pictures of Howl and Sophie so you know I'm a fan. It also reminded me that there are still so many Miyazaki movies I haven't seen (and aren't available on the holy trinity of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon), and I totally could've checked them out from the library, and I DIDN'T. Now my greatest regret from my time at Penn.

Listening: United States of Eurasia by Muse
I don't know why I love this song so much, but I've listened to it approximately 10,000 times and that Middle Eastern-y part never gets old.

More listening: The Bon Appetit Foodcast
I walk 25 min to/from lab every day, and this podcast makes it go a lot more quickly. The format is conversations among people from Bon Appetit (and often guests) about recipes, culinary techniques, the food world, etc. It's informative and funny and makes me really hungry for dinner when I get home.

MORE more listening: The Alison Show Podcast
I'm a big fan of this podcast, too. I initially thought it might be a little over the top for me (Alison is kind of out of control but in a good way!), but she actually gives a lot of practical, concrete self-improvement tips that put me in a better mood, even if I'm not intentionally focused on implementing all of them.

And finally, sidenote: I'm leaving for Paris and Rome in two weeks from yesterday. (Yay!!!) As a lover of spreadsheets and advanced planning I've already put together itineraries, but if you've been to either city, what was your favorite thing you did/place you ate? Don't want to miss something and have another thing to regret!