my girlish ways

I've always known I wasn't a typical girl. That is to say, I can't remember a time when I didn't feel like I was different than most of the girls in the world. And it's not like I was comparing myself solely to magazine covers or soap operas—I mean in comparison to almost every girl I'd ever met, come in contact with, heard about, read about, etc. Over the years, I've been given the grace of being exposed to more and more people, and have found more than a handful of girls that I have a wide variety of things in common with.

Thankfully.

Most of my life my buds have been boys. Even in first grade my best friend was Eddie, in second grade it was Mikey, and so on until twelfth when it was Jeff. In middle school I became friends with some girls, but all but a few turned out mean, and looking back now I realize that middle school isn't the time to expect girls to be nice to you, no matter how valiant your efforts.

Self-discovery is a funny thing. If done correctly, it will make you laugh with joy, and that's been the way of it in my journey.

I used to think something was wrong with me because I was different. When I was a little kid I never thought anything of the fact that I never liked playing at Christy's house because she always had Barbie dolls strewn about, with clothes and whatever else one does with a Barbie doll, and I grew bored with it all in three minutes flat. But I loved playing at Jason's house because together we had the most extensive collection of Matchbox cars, and his parents' house had this huge playroom where we could lay out all the tracks and ramps that my grandfather had built for me (and even let me think I was helping him build) in his woodshop.

But then I got a little older and that's when I started to wonder what was broken in me. I found it really difficult to relate to girls, and boys were great except that eventually I'd get a crush on one, and while he thought I was the greatest bud in the world, he had no interest in being my boyfriend. It was a lonely place to be. I liked guitars and cameras and baseball. All the girls I knew liked clothes and makeup and drama. All the boys I knew liked those girls. I couldn't figure out where I fit.

Then the television series Northern Exposure came to life. I was in tenth grade or so, and one of the main characters was a bush pilot named Maggie O'Connell. Finally, a girl who liked machines more than fashion and the hot doctor in town (Joel Fleischman) was in love with her. I knew she was a fictional character, but fictional characters are always based on factual characters at least in part, so I started to think that maybe I could find a place in this world.

Over the years I've grown more comfortable in my atypical skin. I still have the same issues with feeling lonely sometimes. I have a few special girls that are my comrades in this life, but things like baby showers and bachelorette parties give me anxiety. Boys love me as a bud, but one hasn't taken me yet to be his wife. But I like myself, and I like the things I like, anomalies that they are.

I got to thinking about all this earlier today because I was watching a show on Netflix and I cried at the end. Wept like a baby. It was a documentary on the history of aviation, walking through Boeing's creation of the 787 Dreamliner while Airbus was introducing the A380. Boeing's 787, like the 777 before it and the 767 before that, was a slow process of creation, and when it took its first flight—soaring with those beautiful carbon fiber wings that turn up gently at their ends, looking more like an albatross gliding than a passenger jet—I wept. I wept like the little girl that I am over the beauty of a machine. It made me laugh with joy that such a thing would move me to tears.

I am a girl.

I do not know how to walk in high heels.

I love to wear dresses, especially lacy ones.

I don't really know how to fix my hair.

I love computers, and cameras, and airplanes, and jet engines, and printing presses, and woodworking, and metalworking.

I also love cooking, and designing, and crafting, and decorating, and kittens, and the color pink.

I'll always pick Die Hard over a romantic comedy. Field of Dreams is my favorite movie. I was bored silly during Pride and Prejudice.

I love beauty, and will search for it everywhere—especially in people, in nature, or in language.

And if you ask me what is the most romantic scene in any movie, or television series, or play, or opera, or book; I will tell you it's that scene at the very end of an episode of Firefly (a western in space) entitled "Out of Gas." Ex-Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds is at a used spaceship lot, dealing with a typical salesman. The salesman is going on and on about a big, bright ship and Mal tunes him out as she catches his eye. From across the shipyard he sees her, that broken-down Firefly-class transport ship that would eventually become Serenity, of which he would eventually become Captain. He looks at her as if he's seen a beautiful woman across a dance floor. Nothing in her countenance made her lovely, but he loved her for no good reason. His love made her lovely. It is the most romantic, most beautiful scene, and I cry every time I see it. Over a spaceship. Because I'm a girl, just me-style.

chocolate chip cookies, hippie style

In the last year or so, I've discovered that if I steer clear of refined sugars and flours, my seasonal (and cat, ha) allergies lessen in severity, and my joints don't ache as much as they used to. I wondered why I often had low-grade fevers and headaches, and since eliminating refined sugars and flours, those symptoms have disappeared—unless, of course, I decide that a piece of cake is in order and I spend the following day remembering why I gave it up.

I'm constantly on the lookout for treats that I can indulge in (in moderation) that are mostly whole and natural. Recently I found a winner. It's a recipe that I concocted and modified from a few others and tested a few times until perfection.

I give you ... my chocolate chip cookies: no refined flours and all natural sugars. Personally, I love them. (And unless they're all just being nice, my friends and family do too.)

Step one. Make your chocolate chips.

4 tbsp (a half stick) real butter, salted
1 tbsp organic, raw honey
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Measure 3/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder into a bowl and pour in the melted butter. Add in the honey and stir up quickly. (If you prefer semi-sweet chocolate over dark chocolate, I'd suggest using 2 tbsp honey.) Spoon out mixture onto a sheet of aluminum foil and spread until about 1/4 inch thick. Set your aluminum foil in the refrigerator or freezer so the chocolate can harden for a few minutes.



Step 2. Make your batter.

1 1/2 cups almond flour (also known as almond meal), you can make this by grinding raw almonds or buy it as flour
1 egg (I use eggs from a local farm)
1/4 cup pure, organic maple syrup (make sure it's pure—straight from the tree)
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt, I use 2%
1 tsp organic vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt

Combine these in a bowl and mix well with a spoon. Set the bowl in the fridge and grab your chocolate. With a large butcher knife or a pizza cutter, cut your chocolate into small 1/4 inch squares. I find that the chocolate is an easy consistency to cut with a butcher knife, just pressing gently long ways all the way across and then again in the other direction.



Step 3. Cook.

Get your batter out of the fridge and give it a quick stir. Take your aluminum foil and turn it upside down over the bowl, bending it so that the chocolate falls into your batter in individual squares. Stir. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or spray it with olive oil, and drop batter in one inch blobs onto your cookie sheet. Bake at 350º for 12 minutes. Makes 24 cookies.



Step 4. Enjoy.

They're just perfect with a tall glass of cold Shatto whole milk. Nutritional information below.



Serving Size: 1 cookie
Calories: 88
Total Fat: 6.38g

Saturated Fat: 1.77g

Cholesterol: 14.31mg
Sodium: 52mg
Total Carbohydrate: 5.26g

Dietary Fiber: 1.25g
Sugars: 2.89g

Protein: 2.75g

while sitting in the dunes

It does perplex me at times that I've chosen to make my home about the farthest inland a person can go in these United States, considering my undying fascination with and love for the sea.

I come here once or twice a year, to the shore, and I just stare. Sometimes in silence, sometimes with music I love loud in my ears. Sometimes I come here at night and it's the darkest dark I've ever seen—no lights and you can barely see your hand in front of your face. The stars are magnificent, as if pinholes in our planet's wrapper to God himself, and sometimes the moon will shine his face, causing the foam of the breakers to nearly glow.

More often I sit here in the day. Sunshine isn't hot on the shoreline because the ocean makes a wind. But my favorite days are days like today: cloudy, with a storm in the distance. It's quiet and the waves are loud.

I wonder what it is that I love so much about her, The Sea. The songline says in your belly you hold treasures that few have ever seen, most of them dreams. I think that may be it. She's vast, she's mysterious, she's magical.

I wonder if her majesty would be lost on me if I lived where I could see her every day. Sometimes you see a thing enough and it becomes ordinary. Then I think of Sam. He is an ordinary pet, yes, I've seen him nearly every day of his nine years of life. But the wonder of him is never lost on me. I don't think a day goes by when I don't wake to his warm little body next to mine, his sleepy fur disheveled, and not say prayers of thanks. Every day my gratitude for the gift that is him is brand-new.

I kind of think that would be the way I would see the sea, even if I made my home on her shores. It's not fear of losing the wonder of her by way of familiarity that keeps me from moving my life here.

It's not fear; it's love. Love for that Kansas City of mine, who—while far from the sea—holds her own treasures. I'm glad it's ok to be in-love with them both.

canine jealousy

My two friends have two great dogs. As with any family members, the dogs have their quirks and faults that cause some family grumbling, but all in all they're still loved and those quirks and faults are endearing for the most part. A little over nine months ago, these friends of mine decided to expand their little family of four to include another human. Just a couple weeks ago, they welcomed this little guy into the world.

The canines have been irked to no end by the attention my friends are (rightfully) giving this little guy. But to watch Mo and Lucy deal with it is absolutely hilarious-slash-heartbreaking.

This is perhaps my favorite pair of shots. Mo trying to upstage the baby human, and as soon as Dad lifted kiddo from the cushion, Mo took over as if to ask, "Can I still be this important? Aren't I just as cute??"

finally: blueberry bran muffins

As someone who tries to steer clear of refined things (flours and sugars) yet still enjoys the occasional baked good, I have been trying for awhile to get a good muffin together. I've ended up with countless piles of gross-tasting, uncooked goo, but I think I've finally landed on a great-tasting recipe with good texture and minimal flour and sugar.

I hope you enjoy.

Pre-heat oven to 375º

combine in a bowl, mix with a spoon:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tbsp raw honey (or real maple syrup)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 cup frozen blueberries

Spoon into paper muffin cups (they'll stick like the dickens if you don't use the paper liners—there's no oil in these babies), and cook at 375º for 18 minutes, give or take. Makes a dozen muffins.

For those of you who care, here's their nutritional breakdown:
serving size: 1 muffin
133 calories
5.6g fat
17.3g carbohydrate
3.2g fiber
4g protein
7g sugar

lightning strikes

I love how a song can come up on a shuffle and I'm immediately transported through consciousness to a different time and place. A couple years ago, almost two years exactly, Jordan and Ryan and Shannon and I drove to Nashville for a week to visit Nathan. Everyone was on vacation except for Nathan and me. I was on study leave, so each morning I'd drop Nathan off at work at Cummings Station and drive his Durango over to Crema, then at lunch time I'd come back and sit at an empty desk at his office and do my things and drink coffee from a machine that daily I would break and Katie would fix.

It was March, and it was starting to be warm outside, and I was happy. Nathan had John Mayer's Battle Studies in his CD player in his car, and I having never had anything but a tape deck and an iPod, was lost on how to operate it. So it would just always start over again on Track 1 every time I started the car. Heartbreak Warfare. I love that song because every time I hear it, it's early morning Nashville in the springtime, and I'm driving the old Durango on my way to Crema to get a Cuban, delighted that there is a punch ball rolling around in the floorboards.

languages

Sunday night, Andrew and I hadn't eaten all day, so we and his girlfriend Grace went to get Mexican food. I ordered a burrito bigger than my face, and as I took my first bite I said, "Oh my GOSH. This is so good. It's like a grilled stuft burrito but with real food inside."

Grace looked at me quizzically, and as if to offer an answer to us both, Andrew looked at me and said, "Oh. Yeah. Grace doesn't speak Taco Bell."