"Life seems so much slower with your toothbrush by the mirror"

Boy, talk about a lull! Settling in after all the wedding and honeymoon craziness has been interesting. Thankfully I've not felt any of that post-wedding blues. It's more like... aimlessness? Weird not thinking of wedding things at every moment and preparing for travel. Our next trip won't be until later in October: one to Yosemite for Ed's birthday with Dad and Debbie and then a trip back to the east coast for Oktoberfest at Mountain Lake Hotel (the Dirty Dancing hotel).

We're still waiting on wedding pictures so I don't wanna post anything about the wedding yet. I consider it an exercise in delayed gratification.

To fill the time I've been doing three things.

1. Cooking

I've been feeling so very uninspired with my cooking lately but all of our lovely wedding gifts have really lit a fire under my butt. It's a conflicted passion because I really don't want to gain weight and I struggle so with just maintaining... but I've also always asserted that I value eating well and eating real foods. Not fast food, junk food, soft drinks, and candy. That means I have to cook and I have to take time to make tea instead of just going out and buying drinks. I just have to. And in line with that I just have to learn to deal with food. Maybe by embracing my enjoyment of cooking and food, I'll learn to have a more controlled relationship with it? Here's hoping. Some of the things I've been enjoying most from our kitchen goods:

• My fancy mesh nesting colanders. I adore these. They are beautiful and if you knew how much produce we go through you would think these were the cat's pajamas as well.
• Hyper absorbent dish rags. I feel like we use much fewer paper towels and I could not be happier about that. Having a seeming endless supply of rags to wipe up with is a dream. Yes, it's more laundry, but let's get real. When I have kids it's gonna be laundry non-stop anyways so hey, it's just practice. For now I'm feeling pretty good with some of my green-guilt alleviated!
• My Bamboo Utensils! I'm a sucker for wooden tools and a little on the paranoid side these days when it comes to plastic anything... half for my health, half for future baby health... so getting a ton of wooden tools is like heaven for me. You can see it in action in the fricassee picture below.
• Cast Iron Dutch Oven. I used this to make chicken fricassee on Friday and it was fan-freakin-tastic. I love cast iron for a variety of reasons. One, they remind me of Omi and Mom who use cast-iron for pretty much everything. Two, did anyone ever read Thomas Harris' books? Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal? This passage from Hannibal.... I think I read it over and over and over and it just sticks to my soul:

“Do you have a black iron skillet? You are a southern mountain girl, I can’t imagine you would not. Put it on the kitchen table. Turn on the overhead lights.

Look into the skillet, Clarice. Lean over it and look down. If this were your mother’s skillet, and it well may be, it would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations ever held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the grunts and poetry of love.

Sit down at the table, Clarice. Look into the skillet. If it is well cured, it’s a black pool, isn’t it? It’s like looking down a well. Your detailed reflection is not at the bottom, but you loom there, don’t you? The light behind you, there you are in a blackface, with a corona like your hair on fire.

We are elaborations of carbon, Clarice. You and the skillet and Daddy, dead in the ground, cold as the skillet. It’s all still there. Listen.”

-Hannibal Lector in a letter to Clarice Starling, “Hannibal” by Thomas Harris

For those of you who actually have or have seen a truly well seasoned, well-loved skillet, it is exactly like a "black pool... a well," and it is mesmerizing. 

Mmmm mirepoix for fricassee!

The other tools we received as gifts are in line to be used and we can't wait to get to it all. Think happy thoughts for our waistlines and willpower....

2. Running

Yes, I'm finally running again. About time right? We've got a 5k in two weeks that should be humbling. I've not managed to break the 2.5 mark in my runs since I started up this past week or so, but I know it'll get back to where it was. 3 miles was my 'comfortable' run distance before at the height of my real training. I'm not distance training anymore despite the 10k in Dec. It's a 'mountain run' so being able the run the whole time isn't a goal for me, or for the race organizers who encourage us to walk up the hills and run down. It feels good to be moving more and running again, even if it's sluggish and hard. I miss feeling strong. I miss being active instead of wrapped around a pole of worry over my weight. Which just leads me to eating another cookie. Hopefully I can really push myself to stick with this again. 

3. Reading

Ok so in reality, three should actually say, "Applying for Jobs." But since I've had little to no luck with hearing from people or reaching people or sealing the deal, I'm going to write about reading! I have been on a ROLL. I even signed up for The New York Times again like in college so I can read it daily. Turns out, when you are waiting for people to call you back, or waiting for laundry to finish, or waiting to fall asleep as you worry about your purpose in life, you can sure get a lot of reading done! Over the honeymoon and up til today I have read:

• Falling for Me by Anna David - An autobiography on her search to become more... dateable? Loveable? I do not recommend this book. Unless you like Julie from Julie & Julia (I'm referencing the character in the movie and the woman Julie Powell behind the book and blog. Also behind the book Cleaving which was eh). I find both Anna and Julie similarly a little on the insufferable side. Full of complaints, very few lessons learned, unpleasant to people around them and generally just irritating. They both have some interesting tips on bettering oneself and improving your lot in life in general, but somehow that results in them still not being very nice to the people closest to them. Sorry ladies!
• The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini - I'm sure a bunch of you have already read this. I struggle with books where the narrator has a huge flaw so I had to push myself into this. I started to enjoy it more about 100 pages in, but... I don't know, I'm still digesting this book and what I think about it. My initial response is still: I'm not sure if I liked reading this (not that every book is supposed to be 'enjoyable')
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - This was nothing like what I thought it would be... just another sappy genre piece about a couple who no longer got along trying to muscle through an anniversary, but then the wife disappears! But I was so surprised by the writing and the weird dark thoughts that would pass by almost unnoticed until I reread a page. I actually had nightmares after reading it, but I can't exactly say why. Not particularly gory, but sure spooked me.
• Dark Places by Gillian Flynn - This on the other hand was very gory. And also gave me nightmares. It concerns a girl who survived her family's very violent mass murder as a child and the question of her older brother's innocence, despite being convicted of the murders years ago. Mrs. Flynn is one creepy lady and I love it. I have Sharp Objects on my hold list at the library and I cannot wait to get my hands on another of her spooky stories.
• When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman - Good grief did this book make me weep. It follows a young girl through her awkward, unique youth and then jumps to her young adult years. It focuses on her childhood friend and her sudden removal from her life and her experiences with her brother and parents. A lot of the most fun passages come after her parents purchase a bed and breakfast and have the chance to meet characters of all kinds. It's beautifully and interestingly written. Her childhood years have that perspective of abstraction that children have, seeing so much more in the mundane. It was just so different. It moves quickly, and feels like you're reading straight out of life - everything passing by before you can get a grip on it all. There's a section of the book that like I said, really kills you to read, but I promise there's a great ending. Just a really refreshing touchingly human read.
• Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin - Look I could talk about this series all day but I'm not gonna bore the people that haven't devoted days of their life to make it through these tomes. I love the series... this book was 50% awesome, 50% 'is it over yet?' and it was, unfortunately, not split down the middle of the book. It does not 'pick up' after a couple pages, or even a couple hundred. More like, every 150 pages something amazing happens. But you gotta make it through those dividing 145 pages in between... Onto the next book - A Dance With Dragons
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - I laughed out loud over this book and it's about cancer. It is fresh and light and at the same time it has so much heart and soul. It's about a handful of terminally or temporarily seriously ill teenagers, namely two that develop a relationship named Augustus and Hazel Grace. I loved the characters. I want to be friends with them and hear their voices. I loved the thoughtful contemplation of life and the meaning of suffering, but written in the context of teenagers trying to cope and not get bogged down in the dour, 'adult' discussions of dying. I pretty much plowed through this book - even reading some of it aloud to Ed.
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss - This book was like dessert for my brain. Much like When God Was A Rabbit, reading this was so touching. It's hard to explain, but it follows three story lines  an old man, a book, and a young girl. There are other people drawn in, but it all revolves around a book titled The History of Love and how it has this web of influence. A really great contemporary piece, using the layout of pages, blank pages, and repetition...exciting to read. Some really beautiful passages that to me, made the descriptions of the inanimate and feelings actually tangible. As if she gave these objects breath.
• Happier At Home by Gretchen Rubin - I read The Happiness Project and really enjoyed that. Then I won this book to read and turns out, I think I like this book better. It's a bit more focused and it just has a better feel for me. More family oriented. She continues her struggles from the first book, trying to follow her resolutions, and I appreciate her openness with her struggles.

Hopefully I'll continue this big push for reading... I'm quite a few books behind on my plan to read... what was it, 50? 60? books by the end of the year? I'm sure it'll be a struggle now that all my tv shows are coming back on... It's a little sad how much tv I watch. Just in case you watch any of the shows I do and want to talk about them here they are (including ones not currently on):

Game of Thrones, True Blood, How I Met Your Mother, X-Factor, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, Top Chef, Raising Hope, Guys With Kids, Modern Family, Go On, Smash, Whitney, Rules of Engagement, Ben and Kate, The Mindy Project, 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Grimm, SNL, Glee, Revenge, True Blood, Dexter, Amazing Race and most importantly Homeland!!! 

Clearly I'm most excited for Homeland. The writing and acting on that show is nothing short of (despite the over use these days) epic. And also it is clear that I watch way too much tv. I should probably hook up with a place that does reviews or something.... Or get someone to freakin' hire me. That would probably be the best solution. Take note universe! :)