insomnia haiku

The more other directors change, the more Wes Anderson stays the same

This trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie "Moonrise Kingdom," due out on May 25, was released online a couple weeks ago. Upon seeing it, I immediately remembered how much I like Wes Anderson movies.

There are some directors who try to do something different with every movie, or at least, they try to progress and change every once in a while. You wouldn't know without someone telling you that "Schindler's List" and "E.T." were directed by the same person. Martin Scorsese's made a lot of films with similar themes, but "Hugo" will never be confused with "Goodfellas," not even if someone re-scored it with a Rolling Stones song.

With a lot of directors, their movies are different, but there's a theme that threads their films together. David Fincher's films are dark. Quentin Tarantino movies are violent. The characters in Coen brothers movies like to talk.

Wes Anderson movies, however -- aside from "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," which I still haven't seen, and I know I need to, so shut up -- all look kind of the same. And that's the beauty of them. Sometimes, variety is overrated. Wes Anderson knows what he's good at, and with "Moonrise Kingdom" he's going to do it again, and God bless him for that.

This movie appears to be about a couple of kids who escape from camp to be together, upon which a search party is assembled to rescue them. And, um, that's about it. But then again, what was "The Royal Tenenbaums" about anyway? The trailer has all the marks of a Wes Anderson movie: the dreamy, evocative music (it's Francois Hardy's "Le Temps de L'Amour"), the deadpan looks, the old-timey font, the Jason Schwartzman and the Bill Murray. The Bill Murray shirtless, at that. I suppose that's something different.

So here's a director who knows his style, and isn't going to change, and I love him for that. Personally, I can't wait to see "Moonrise Kingdom." Bring on the quirk.

Barry sings Al

I know Barack Obama has taken some lumps recently, so much so that I can't just be all, "I love Obama!" without expecting some backlash in response. But still. He's made mistakes, but I still love the guy. Not just because of his politics -- and let's face it, I don't agree with everything he's been doing -- but because he seems like a decent guy with whom I'd like to have a beer. (Plus he's a hell of a lot easier on the eyes than, say, Gingrich. Think about it, voters.)

My favorite Obama moment was the time he killed a fly during an interview. My second favorite -- currently making a run at passing the fly, and at least tied with the time he appeared on Monday Night Football -- is now this one, in which he busted out with some Al Green at the Apollo Theater. It's not just endearing. That man can SING.

I'd like to propose that in place of some of these ridiculous debates, we instead have an "American Idol"-style sing-off as part of the campaign. Obama's got to be a better singer than Romney or Gingrich, right? (Though come to think of it, with that baby face, Gingrich could have some secret a cappella past.) Who's a better/worse singer, Santorum or Ron Paul?

Esquire magazine already dug up a clip of Romney "singing" for comparison. I think the president should start singing during all his speeches. May I suggest that Barry attempt some Barry White next?

The Roast Chicken Project: Ina Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken

In my last post, I forgot to mention the turducken -- a critical omission on my part. Yes, in future years, my family and friends may refer to 2011 as "the year we made turducken," as we did indeed accomplish this feat of cooking a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey. Here it is:

And now, onto Roast Chicken #2.

As a reminder, I'm trying to teach Lydia to master the roast chicken by cooking several different variations, one a week. Last week was Thomas Keller's Simple Roast Chicken. This week's was Ina Garten's, aka the Barefoot Contessa (is she really ever barefoot?) on the Food Network.

The assignment I gave Lydia was to cook Ina Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken. It's oh so different than Thomas Keller's -- rub things on the skin! stuff things inside! put vegetables underneath! Thomas Keller and his minimalist bird would faint dead away. My only instructions were to cook the recipe, and also to make potatoes, whether separately via my brother Brian's parboiling method or in the pan itself. (Note to Brian: I tried this and the bacon-wrapped James Beard roast chicken, and neither turned out great. Remind me to tell you later.)

Lydia was excited about doing an Ina Garten recipe. So she purchased the chicken Ina called for -- 5 to 6 pounds, which shocked me; what does she think she's going to put in there? -- and away she went.

Editor's note: At this I was confused. Didn't Lydia realize she was texting me? Why did she just address me in the third person? Then I realized, aaaahh, she's not writing to me, she's writing to THE BLOG. Carry on.

Well done, Lydia and Ina! Looking forward to the next one, I am contemplating recipes that call for turning, or for stuffing herbs under the skin, or lowering the temperature at a certain point, or butterflying. Or I could just give Lydia the original super-simple roast chicken recipe my mom gave me. Thoughts? Please let me have 'em!

Thoughts on 2011

To paraphrase Stuart Smalley, 2011 was not my best year.

A year ago today, I had a full-time job, employees, responsibilities and a salary. I had just been promoted. I got up and went to work every morning and came home and worked some more. I lived in a spacious apartment comprising the entire top floor of a brownstone, into which I'd moved only three months previously, that came with a mouse and a brusque landlady who lived downstairs and seemed to hate me. (I have since learned that she did not. Sometimes old people just come off mean, I guess.)

Today, I have no job, having lost it -- well, not "lost" it, since I'm pretty sure I know where it is -- in abrupt and traumatic fashion, bringing me into the public eye in a way that I never wanted to be. I live in a different apartment, having "lost" (see above) the other one nine months after I moved in. I spent three months taking a chance and applying for an out-of-town job I didn't get. I was voluntarily homeless for a month and a half. In my new, smaller apartment, I do not, as far as I know, have a mouse ... yet. Knock on wood. (I did find a dead one in my storage unit; does that count?) I have a different brusque landlady.

But though it's been a difficult year, I'm not about to say it's the worst year I've ever had. To put it pessimistically, things can always get worse; to put it optimistically, this was a year that, like any other year, had its bright spots. (At least I didn't drop a knife into my foot.) I'll never forget it, one way or the other. And isn't that more than you can say about most years?

My friend Abby and I used to play a game where we would ask each other, at the end of the day, "What was the best thing that happened to you today?" The point was, no matter how bad a day you'd had, there was always going to a "best." Always. Even if "best" meant "least bad," it was there if you looked for it.

And therefore, I present to you, in no particular order or weight, the best things that happened to me in 2011:

- I visited Portland for the first time, and can see why people fall in love with the Pacific Northwest.

- I learned how to surf, sort of, in my first-ever (but it won't be the last) visit to Barbados.

- After my birthday party last December was canceled owing to the big snowstorm, I hosted my birthday pig-dinner anyway, in January. And we ate a whole pig.

- I was able to keep busy -- and earn money -- freelancing, which is not something everyone is able to do.

- I got to spend time with my adorable 3-year-old nephew on three separate occasions this year, and not only did we have a grand time but he also loved the green Land Rover I gave him for Christmas (auntie present FTW!), and made me play at driving the Land Rover and his new monster truck over to the "restaurant" (aka the piano bench) to eat calamari. I love being an aunt.

- I spent lots of quality time being an aunt to Annah's two kids when I stayed with her for two weeks. Did I mention I love being an aunt?

- I got to see my family a bunch this year. Time with my family is precious. I don't take it for granted.

- I went to Cabo with my parents and brother and sister-in-law and read a bunch of books and ate some amazing crudo and Pescado Zarandeado and otherwise did a lot of nothing, which I needed.

- I tore through all the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books in less than two months and they were so good, reading them reminded me of being consumed by books as a child, reading under the covers with a flashlight because I didn't want to stop.

- I organized our Thanksgiving dinner and was perhaps a little too proud of myself for doing it. I also made deviled eggs and chocolate pecan pie for Thanksgiving, and tuna poke for Christmas, and did not embarrass myself with any of those dishes.

- Parks and Recreation was outstanding this season. Just brilliant, my favorite comedy in years. It had me at "Meat Tornado."

- Louie was even more brilliant. I've never seen a TV show do some of the things Louis C.K. got away with this season.

- Breaking Bad wasn't too shabby, either.

- And I came to adore Happy Endings. The show! The show!

- I learned the value of downsizing, and that if I had to, I could live out of a medium-sized suitcase for a month and a half.

- I moved twice in one month (once into storage, once out), and endured a hurricane in the middle of it. The next move's gonna be cake.

- I ate at Locanda Verde three times. 

- I ate at Maialino twice. And had the suckling pig, twice.

- I ate at Peter Luger twice.

- I ate at Ink and had incredible brussels sprouts and lamb neck and stared at the chef, Michael Voltaggio, throughout the whole dinner, and yes that is so him.

- I had a wonderful visit with my cousin and her husband, in which we had a typically superlative meal at Momofuku Ssam and then dessert at Milk Bar and went back to their hotel afterward for drinks and more great conversation.

- I had the ultimate star sighting of Ryan Gosling at The Dutch, and one second after I realized it was him, I locked eyes with the woman accompanying him and saw that she was giving me what seemed like a dirty look. As soon as I caught up to my friend, she said, "Can you believe, Emma Stone?" I love Emma Stone, but hadn't recognized her because she was blonde (for the Spider-Man movie, presumably). All of this came just before I fell into deep crush with Ryan Gosling -- thanks to Drive, The Ides of March, "Hey Girl" and this interview -- which is fortunate, because if I'd seen him whilst in the throes of Gosling-love, I would have gone into shock and passed out and hit my head and had to go to the hospital, which would have made this the worst year ever. Except maybe he would have gone to the hospital to make sure I was OK, in which case, best year ever.

- I had both the shrimp toast at Son of a Gun and the crab toast at ABC Kitchen. Shrimp toast was great, but the crab toast won. 

- My parents came out in the spring and they liked every restaurant I took them to: Momofuku Ssam, Aldea, Mile End, Shake Shack ... also the pancakes at Cafe Luluc and casual dinner at Lunetta.

- I'm on an album cover.

- I learned how to network. Or that is to say, I'm learning. It isn't easy for me, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to push myself. Every time I have a meeting that doesn't go horribly, it feels like a win inside.

- I don't get to see movies for free anymore, but I was still able to see several. My favorites: Bridesmaids, Warrior, Drive, Hugo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Muppets, Midnight in Paris. Still need to see: Attack the Block, The Artist, The Interrupters, The Descendants, Moneyball, Page One, Margin Call, Jane Eyre, Beginners, Weekend, Take Shelter, A Separation, We Were Here, Melancholia, The Tree of Life. (Clearly I didn't get to see as many movies as I wanted to.)

- It's been the toughest year of my life, yet I'm still here. And I feel pretty good. In some ways, I consider that a miracle. Or, that's life. Either way, I'm glad not to be lying in a ditch somewhere, sobbing and clutching a can of paint thinner. We're pretty resilient, humans beings.

- My family and friends are healthy and safe. I am grateful.

- I was bowled over this year by the kindness and generosity of friends and colleagues, who offered sympathy, comfort, outrage, advice, meals, drinks, job leads, work, places to crash and more moral support than I ever knew existed. To all of you who are reading this, thank you; I am forever grateful. When I remember 2011, that is what I will remember: that life is hard, but that the people in my life -- from close friends and family to passing acquaintances -- reached out to help and bolster me when I needed it, and from now on I will always do the same.

Happy New Year, and may your 2012 be full of joy, good health, success and prosperity. And more importantly, great food and time with your family and friends.

Peace out, 2011.

The Roast Chicken Project: Thomas Keller's Simple Roast Chicken

It's no secret that I don't think of myself as a great cook -- or at least, I'm not as good a cook as I am an eater. My mother and my brothers inherited the "inventive chef" gene, but I'm not nearly confident enough to whip up dishes the way they do.

I suppose it doesn't help that when you're single, cooking for yourself can get kind of boring. It also didn't help that when I was younger and my mom was in the kitchen, I'd be in my room with my nose stuffed in a book, and would only come upstairs at the last minute, in time to make salad. (I was always disappointed that there wasn't anything left to saute, which I considered far more exciting; but for some reason I didn't quite work out that offering to help earlier might someday work to my benefit. Plus, no doubt my mother didn't trust her clueless bookworm anywhere near the stove. I wouldn't have.)

The fact that I have to follow recipes, and often have to keep consulting them even after I've made a dish multiple times, always struck me as an essential cooking failure. Still, I know the basics -- "how to boil water," etc. -- and it wasn't until recently that I understood that knowing even that much sets me apart from people who don't cook at all.

Years ago, when I met my friend Lydia, she professed that she didn't cook. Since then, she's taken numerous cooking classes, and in fact I've eaten one of the gourmet meals she learned how to make -- it was delicious. But when we shared a vacation rental in Barbados, I noticed that there were certain fundamentals that weren't part of her cooking vocabulary, like how some vegetables might cook at different speeds. It occurred to me that when it comes to learning how to cook, there's nothing quite like doing the boring basics repeatedly, not to mention trying things a lot, and failing a lot (and oh, I fail a lot).

Lydia was in search of a project, so I suggested she learn how to make one of the simplest, most wonderful dishes there is to make: roast chicken. It's not the easiest thing to master. I've made a lot of roast chicken in my day, and I can do it off-book, but I'm always looking for new ways to do it, and I still fail at it one out of every three times. I remembered that my younger brother (a great cook) once told me he was making a roast chicken every week, just to perfect the technique.

Lydia and I have agreed on this: Every week, she'll have to make a roast chicken from a recipe I will send her. She has to make whatever sides I dictate, too. Supplying her with any number of recipes won't be a problem, as I've got loads of them clipped and bookmarked. The problem for me will be narrowing it down to just four. (I already know what the last one is going to be -- and if you know me, then you know what it's going to be, too.) After she's made those four roast chicken recipes, she'll have to roast a chicken by herself, with no recipe at all.

We started with the basic recipe that I use as my go-to, Thomas Keller's "Favorite Simple Roast Chicken." There's really nothing to it, the only quirk being that he uses high heat to roast, whereas not all such recipes do. I also love that he waxes rhapsodic about eating a wing and the chicken butt immediately, which I totally do standing up at the cutting board, and now no longer have to feel guilty about (Thomas Keller does it, too! and he's a master!).

I gave Lydia her assignment, which was to make the chicken along with two sides, in this case roasted potatoes and green beans. And she had to document the process with pictures and descriptions, which she did, texting me photos and commentary at every step. Will she learn, not just during this first step of the cooking project, but over the next four installments? We'll see. And if you have any roast chicken recipes you think she absolutely has to try, let me know in the comments. Note: I'm giving her a pass this next week, since it's Christmas.

So now I'll turn the blog over to guest blogger Lydia and her pictures and texts. Take it away, Lydia! (I cut out most of what I texted back, but my occasional commentary is in green.)

[Ed. note: Next time, she doesn't get to use a thermometer.]

[Ed. note: I forgot to take a screengrab of this text, but here Lydia informed me that she'd decided to make "spicy blackened green beans."]

So how do you think Lydia did? For a first try, I think she did pretty well, myself.

Maybe I'll write down some random thoughts instead of talking to myself some more

Just now I cracked an egg imperfectly, getting some eggshell in the pan, and yelped out loud, "I'm sorry!" to ... the egg? Myself? Sometimes I worry I'm spending too much time with myself.

Movies I want to see: The Artist, Hugo, Young Adult, Shame, Like Crazy, Martha Marcy May Marlene (whose title I can never remember, and therefore mention to people as "Mary Martha Whatever," and they always understand what I mean), Margin Call, and I'll admit I'm intrigued by Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- I trust David Fincher -- even though I've never read the books. (Should I?)

Also this summer's documentary The Interrupters, which is coming out on PBS in early 2012, and I can't wait because it sounds brilliant. Directed by Steve James, guy who did Hoop Dreams. Highly acclaimed but left off the Oscars shortlist (Hoop Dreams was never nominated, either) because for some reason the Academy hates him.

Movies I sort of want to see but which sound super depressing: The Descendants, Melancholia, Take Shelter

Currently listening (on Spotify) to: The Wedding Present, a British band I'd never heard of before but which someone mentioned on Facebook. Kind of digging it.

Man cannot live on sodium-free bread alone

The next time I'm looking for an apartment, number one of my list of criteria is going to be "bedroom can't have a streetlight directly outside the window."

Blergarrrrgh.

A quick note about the Great Sodium Cleanse of 2011. I've cut way back on prepared and processed foods (Trader Joe's, sob -- I even gave away my unopened jar of curry simmer sauce, so that it wouldn't tempt me) and takeout (I miss you, Seamless!), and though that's something I probably should have done anyway, it also means I've been forced to use my kitchen a lot more, which has been an interesting challenge. Story for another day. And I've been using less salt in cooking, sometimes even -- gasp! -- none, though mostly what I'll do is cook without adding salt, then add a teeny bit of finishing salt at the table. I'm using low-sodium soy sauce, and only half of what I would normally use. I've tried not to add salt to side dishes at all, when bearable. Look, I'm trying.

But despite my efforts, and despite the fact that I've cut back and my taste buds haven't shriveled up and died, there is still quite a lot of pain involved. 

Exhibit A: sodium-free bread. I bought this at Trader Joe's, and have been trying it for the past couple days. It's weird. It tastes like tin. Me no like it. Apparently, bread really needs salt. Now you know.

Exhibit B: sardines, which I love, have sodium. Not a lot, but they are preserved and canned, so it's not like they make sodium-free sardines. I had some the other day but felt guilty about it.

Exhibit C: It is really, really hard for me not to have soy sauce. Even though it's the low-sodium kind, using it in cooking -- which I've been doing -- is probably wrecking all my hard sodium-reducing work. But I can't help it! I love soy sauce, OK? I'm Asian.

Exhibit D, E, et al.: I walked down the frozen-foods aisle of the grocery store the other day and started pulling out frozen dinners just to see what the sodium content was. EGADS. It shouldn't have come as a shock to me that these things were loaded with sodium, but it still kind of did. Not that I ever eat frozen dinners, but I am inordinately fond of Swanson's turkey pot pies for lunch, and it turns out that each one contains 750 mg of sodium. Considering you're only supposed to have a maximum of 2,300 mg per day, that's a lot.

So no more Swanson's turkey pot pies for me. Other things I can't have: hot dogs, cold cuts, Popeyes fried chicken (990 mg for the leg + thigh, 500 mg for the biscuit), cheese... sigh. I have to stop. This is depressing me.

But don't worry, I'm still going to reward myself for all this sacrifice by going out to dinner once in a while. If I have to choose between treating myself to a fab dinner at Zabb Elee (awesome and authentic Thai food) and eating a Swanson's turkey pot pie, I'll take Zabb Elee in a New York minute.

And incidentally, since I started all this, my blood pressure has gone down -- though I'm still not sure if it's the sodium reduction, the diuretic my dad gave me in L.A., the herbal pills my sister-in-law gave me, or my new rule that requires me to get out of the damn apartment (and/or exercise) once a day. Maybe all of the above?

The price of salt

 A little over a week ago, I went to my doctor's office to get a prescription refilled. She looked at my chart and told me she was going to take my blood pressure, since the last time I'd been in, it had been on the high side.

I had no memory of that, but sure. The doctor's office is such foreign territory for me. I generally do what I'm told.

She soon informed me, with slightly furrowed brow, that my blood pressure was even higher now, and that this was a cause for concern. She told me that before putting me on medication, she would have to "prove" that my blood pressure was high, and therefore I would have to buy a blood pressure monitor and take my blood pressure twice a day for two weeks.

What was all this? Medication? Twice a day what now?

Buried in confusion, I asked her what causes high blood pressure. It can be any number of things, she said. Sometimes it's genetics, she said, sometimes alcohol, sometimes stress.

Well, I've been incredibly stressed for the past seven months, I said. No reaction. Instead she handed me a sheet instructing me how to monitor my blood pressure, and then another one about adopting a low-sodium diet, saying that I needed to cut down on salt.

I still seemed to be in some kind of denial. "Oh, I don't eat that much salt," I said. 

"Well, everyone can do better. And you're the type of person who has just a little and it affects you a lot." (How would she know that?) "Now, it's going to be painful at first, but eventually you won't even miss the salt and in fact everything else will taste salty."

I sort of went, "mm-hmm," but barely registered what she said, as I was thinking, "This cannot apply to me; I don't eat that much salt." After all, I'm not one of those people who adds salt to everything the minute it's served, or even particularly likes salty foods. I looked at the sheet. The first thing I read was, "When cooking: Put away the salt shaker and reduce or eliminate salt in cooking." 

Um, what?

I'm going to admit something I hadn't realized about myself before: I am not all that good with doctors. I haven't had many health problems in my life, and I don't tend to go to the doctor's office when I get sick -- probably because my dad is a doctor, and as a child of a physician you're used to being told, "It's nothing." (Which it usually is. People who insist on getting antibiotics when they have a stuffy nose and a cough are ridiculous.) (Side note: I worry I'm going to die like Jim Henson someday.)

Therefore, when confronted with an actual health concern, I didn't react well. I got defensive. I was, in fact, downright rude.

"Don't cook with salt? At all?" I said. "I can't do that."

"Like I said, it'll be painful at first," she said, "but after a while you won't even notice the difference."

OK, hold it right there. I'm sorry, but I love food, and even though I don't use salt liberally, it still brings out the flavor in food, and don't tell me I wouldn't notice. I WOULD NOTICE. Could I stand to cut down? Sure. Is it important to be aware of the salt content in food? Absolutely. But "put away the salt shaker"? (Note: I don't actually use a salt shaker. I keep kosher salt in a tiny dish, and sprinkle it with my fingers.) 

Cooking without salt was something I simply could not fathom. I tried envisioning making steak without salt. Roast chicken. Stews. How am I supposed to make Chinese food if I can't use soy sauce? I imagined "Top Chef" judge Tom Coliccho looking at me with scorn. No salt? It's not an exaggeration to say I saw everything I stood for slowly slipping away. 

In the doctor's office, I was sputtering. "Do you cook?" I asked her. (This is the "I was rude" part.)

"I ... sure, I cook," she said. (My silent reaction: She probably doesn't cook. See, I was even rude on the inside.)

Mouth agape, I turned back to the sheet. The second thing I read: "When eating out at a restaurant: Request the food be prepared without salt...."

Whoa. I recoiled as if I'd touched something nasty. I would never sit down at Momofuku Ssam or Maialino and ask, "And could you please prepare my food without salt?" Oh, the humiliation. It wasn't going to happen. Therefore, I guess I ... gasp ... can't eat out.

Somewhere in all of this I pointed out to her that I was out of shape and knew it. I said it more than once. Let me see if I can break this down for you: I, who hates to work out, was eagerly, almost desperately offering to exercise rather than eliminate salt from my diet. (Her response: I wasn't overweight, so it didn't matter.) This surprised me. I would have thought that I'd have a harder time cutting fat from my diet than salt, but when faced with what cutting salt from my diet would entail -- becoming an old lady overnight, essentially -- I melted down.

Since then, I have not only been monitoring my blood pressure twice a day (with varying results), but I've also been thinking a lot about salt. It's true, I'd been ordering more takeout and buying more Trader Joe's prepared foods lately, since I haven't fully set up my Incredibly Shrinking Kitchen yet. Obviously that's a huge source of sodium. Bye-bye, Trader Joe's, I barely knew ye. 

But after my initial defensive reaction, now I see salt everywhere. I went out for lunch, and though I prudently requested salad dressing on the side, we also got a burger, fries and onion rings. Blood pressure FAIL. That same night, I had dinner out, and there was not a single thing on the menu that I could have ordered without a lot of salt in it. I asked the bartender several questions about the salt content of menu items, and he seemed unconcerned about my dilemma. In fact, I could tell he was now looking at me as a problem diner. That's what I am now. I'm Sally, from "When Harry Met Sally," except instead of asking for everything on the side, I'm yammering on about salt.

Yesterday I went to see "Breaking Dawn," and my sister-in-law ordered a big bag of popcorn, with the requisite butter and salt on it. I love movie popcorn. Mo' butter, mo' better. She asked me to hold the bag for a second, and I cradled it, staring at the kernels as I forced myself to resist. Meanwhile, on-screen, Rosalie was gazing hungrily at Bella covered in blood, and she had to be forcibly dragged away. I sympathized.

"You need to stop obsessing," my mother told me. Well, this is what I do. I obsess. And that, I guess, is what my doctor doesn't know about me: Tell me matter-of-factly that something's wrong with me, and that my only recourse is to cut down on salt, then by God, I'm going to start obsessing about being the best salt-cutter-outer in the world. It's the A student in me. Of course now I'm also obsessing, and stressing, about how high my blood pressure is, and about wanting to improve on the results, which -- of course -- has only been driving my blood pressure steadily upward.

In the end I'll have to learn to balance my health concerns with an obsession that's driving me batty and probably decreasing my quality of life. If I eliminate salt from my diet, then maybe I'll be less likely to have a stroke, but how happy will I be eating nothing but bland foods? I tried cooking zucchini the other day with no salt and plenty of thyme. I took a bite. It tasted like baby food.

It looks like even my obsession may have an expiration date, though. Last night, after a week of asking "Is there salt in this?" about every dish mentioned or placed in front of me, I was at my brother's house (re)watching "Bridesmaids." My brother handed me a bowl of freshly popped popcorn. "Is there salt in this?" I asked. Yes, he said, there's some salt. I paused and stared down at the bowl, then popped a kernel in my mouth. It was delicious.

Granted, the bar was set kind of low

The super just came over, finally, to replace the lock on my door and look at some of the other things wrong with my apartment. (He was tall enough to change the light bulbs for me -- hallelujah, I have light!) He looked around at the apartment, filled with half-unpacked boxes and random, strewn-about crap, and said, "Well, you already have this place looking better than the last guy did."

SUCCESS.

Next up: installing shelves in my kitchen. In which I will attempt to learn about stud-finding, though alas, not the human kind.

My college notebooks are not the treasure trove of brilliance I thought they might be

I've never tried to hide that I'm a pack rat. The summer after high school when I went to Europe, the chaperones presented me, at the end-of-summer awards dinner, with a squashed bun, meant to represent all the stuff I'd saved to put in my scrapbooks. I even saved sugar packets, emptying out the contents and placing the empty packets carefully on a page next to ticket stubs, postcards and theater programs.

It's a habit I've carried around with me most of my life. But when you move into a place half the size of your old one, you have to make some hard choices. Some of them turn out not to be as hard as you thought. For example, I had two yolk separators. When was the last time I used a yolk separator? (I kept one. I figured maybe it was a sign. Hey, baby steps.)

Today, I pulled a pile of notebooks out of a box, and they turned out to be some of the notes I'd saved from college, along with some papers I'd written. I don't exactly know why I'd saved these notes. Did I think I'd need the knowledge I'd gleaned from those classes someday? I'd think, what did Daniel Defoe mean in that one section of Robinson Crusoe? Oh, I know! I can just look it up!

Maybe I thought that one day they'd have historical value. I'd become famous, and my college notebooks would sell at auction for big bucks to one of my adoring acolytes. Well, I don't see that happening anytime soon, and I haven't touched these notebooks in more than a decade, so it's trash they will become. (Or recycling, that is. I am taking a break from tearing all the pages, a few at a time, out of the wire rings. And now the couch, the floor and my legs are covered in little bits of paper. Being environmentally responsible is a real drag sometimse.)

I did take one last look through the notebooks before I have to consign them to the curb, and just as I suspected -- or should have suspected when I saved them in the first place -- I found them boring and incomprehensible. Couldn't get through a few words without my eyes glazing over. Did Nabokov's notes provoke such disinterest? Surely not. Ergo, I am no Nabokov. I'm glad I could finally clear that up.

Perhaps another reason I could barely read my notes is that they were written in cursive. Yes, when I was in college, I took notes in cursive. I insisted I could write in cursive faster than I could print, which in fact was true; at some point shortly after college, I switched to print as my default writing out of embarrassment. (There are many ways in which I was uncool. Writing in cursive was the easiest of these to fix.) Seeing as how I now only use cursive -- or "cursive," I should say -- to sign my name, I'm fascinated to picture myself in my jeans and flannel (it was the '90s), casually and quickly scribbling away in such a neat, proper and, dare I say it, classy manner.

A sample:

I also found little messages written to other people who would have been sitting next to me. If college students today don't take notes with pen and paper (do they?), then this is an art of communication that has sadly been lost. They probably just text each other.

Also, doodles. I seem to have drawn a lot of flowers.

One day, I had bacon on my mind. It's nice that some things never change. 

And so, the last perusal complete, out these notebooks go. What daring insights am I tossing away, never to be plumbed again? Sorry, history.

As an aside, I am, however, keeping the papers I wrote that were in that same pile. I was a much better -- though not as disciplined -- writer when I was 21 than I am now. I blame the Internet. Though it did make me tear up a little to read my Mass Communications 10 TA's enthusiastic comments saying, "You have a lot to offer the world; I hope you find your calling -- the world needs it!" All this time later, I still haven't found my calling. But it's heartwarming to know that he so wanted me to find it.

Apartment Before & After: The Bathroom

As I've mentioned, my new apartment is much smaller than my last one. I've got a lot to do in order to make it work for me. I've decided to pretend I'm on an episode of "Extreme Home Makeover: Small Apartments Edition." With a budget of, like $200.

But at the very, very least, my personal challenge is to make it look better than it did when the previous tenants lived here. It's one of those places that, as the realtors say, has "potential" -- and you had to squint to see that potential when the broker's listing showed a bathroom with a moldy shower curtain. But really, I looked at the sad photos in the listing and felt something like relief. I'm no decorator, but it can't be that hard to make this place nicer when the old tenants didn't even bother making their bed for the pictures.

I spent the first week living here cleaning out the previous tenants' detritus, and last week sick. And this week I'm inundated with freelance work (which is good, but doesn't leave me with much free time.) So I'm still surrounded by half-unpacked boxes -- I feel like I'm living in the warehouse at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Except messier.

Still, one thing at a time, right? The kitchen desperately needs shelves, the bedroom could use some pictures, and the living room is a horror show. But I think I've finally finished making one room look nice. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the first part in my Before & After series: The Bathroom. Better, right?

Bathroom: before (top) and after (bottom)

The things that happen after the other things

I used to tell people, "Everything happens for a reason." But I don't know if I believe that anymore. 

I'm not saying that to be cynical. Lots of times, things do seem to happen for a reason: a bad thing happens, and then something better comes along in its wake. You get your heart broken, you meet the love of your life. You miss out on a sale, you find cuter shoes (cheaper!) the next day. Your car breaks down, and while you're waiting for the tow truck you encounter a little lost girl whom you return to her teacher who invites you to a lecture that convinces you to go back to school and become a doctor ... and then one day you cure cancer.

Whenever a friend had an obstacle thrown up in their life, I would tell them, "Things happen for a reason," and they would tend to agree. And things would always turn around. See? The universe was telling them something, and that was that life wasn't random, and that events in their life had a purpose.

But this year's been a rough year, and not just for me. And at some point I wondered, do things happen for a reason? What reason was that supposed to be, anyway? And did I mean it when I used to say it, or was it just a way to provide comfort at times when there was nothing else to say?

Things happen for a reason if you believe that there's a deity or a force making sense of our lives, guiding us on a path toward our better selves. It's nice to think that that exists. Some people believe it, and I envy them that -- I wanted to believe, every time I said the phrase. It was, perhaps, my last hopeful grab at agnosticism. But if your faith in a universal power is less certain, then you start to wonder ... a bad outcome isn't always followed by a good one. Death isn't always followed by birth. That winning lottery ticket you accidentally destroyed in the washing machine isn't always replaced by one for an even bigger jackpot. (Man, how I wish that were true.) (Note: I have never put a winning lottery ticket in the washing machine. I just wish I would win the lottery.)

Each bad thing that's happened this year hasn't then been followed by something better that's corrected the course of my life and explained everything. And in one of my darker moments, I thought with startling clarity, everything doesn't happen for a reason. It just happens.

But -- and you knew there was a "but," didn't you? C'mon, I'm not that depressing -- even if things don't happen for a Reason, they still lead you to places you wouldn't otherwise have gone. If I hadn't lost my job, I might still be stuck in a bad situation. I wouldn't have taken an extended West Coast trip and traveled to Portland for the first time. (And I wouldn't have found nirvana at Powell's, or bought Geek Love there, and dug it for all its twisted glory.) I flirted with upending my life and moving to Chicago, which is an impulse I never would have had normally.

If I hadn't been temporarily homeless, I wouldn't have spent quality time being an aunt to Annah's two kids. Moving to a smaller place is forcing me to downsize, which is ... well, if not a good thing, then an intriguing challenge. I now have a funny story to tell about a dead mouse and a fistful of hair and a refrigerator full of McDonald's McNuggets sauce. I'm learning how to hustle, how to network, how to ask people for help. I'm learning how to cope. And I've received an extraordinary amount of support this year, which continues to touch and amaze me.

Do all those things counterbalance the bad in a way that makes sense of my life? Not exactly. But they're still interesting things, different things that shape my world in some way, large or small. And someday when I look back on this year, they will count, too.

So do things happen for a reason? Somewhere along the line I may have lost my shaky faith that the universe is looking out for us, that A follows B on a soothing, course-correcting path. Maybe it's all random after all. But that doesn't make it pointless. Everything happens, and it leads to something else, and then something else. It turns and turns again, and you'll look back and you'll say, that was my life, that was all of it: the high and the middle and the low, the thing that happened after the other thing, the time I was down and the time I got back up again. Things happen for a reason, and that reason is life.