On the markers of adulthood:

This morning, G. looked out the window and noticed that the triplex across the street was for sale. As has become our ritual when we spot such a thing, we looked it up online, gawked at it, and daydreamed. Then we did some math, and had a conversation about how not only can we not afford it, but we are likely to never be able to afford it.

Ah, home ownership, the logical next step after marriage, right? One of the many (many!) objections my parents had when we announced our engagement was that we could not afford a home; to them, getting married meant starting a family in a very specific way, and it seemed totally nuts to them to get married and then…stay in our apartment.

We’d love to own a place. G. is handy and I’m creative, and we’d love to have a place that was our own, where we were not limited by what our landlords allowed. We’d love to have our own garden (although we acknowledge how lucky we are to even have a garden in a rental!), and we’d love to not feel like we were sinking money into a black hole every month. And I will admit that partially, we’d love to own a place because we feel like it is a marker of adulthood, and while we can totally intellectually acknowledge that it’s stupid to subscribe to these very rigid notions of what a successful life looks like, it still gets to us. We are hopelessly middle class that way.

The only people we know in Montreal (a city with among the most reasonable real estate prices for an urban area in Canada, but which has nevertheless gotten a lot more expensive in recent years) who own homes are people who were helped out, often through inheritances. Not only are we not close to owning a home anywhere in the near future, we can’t even see it happening in the distance. Neither of us are looking at making any more money than we are now for at least a little while–it will be at least two years before I can even daydream about an assistant professorship, and we all know those positions are longshots, and G.’s line of work has close to no room for upward mobility, unless he goes into business for himself, which we see as being about five years off. Add to that my impressive amount of student debt, and we will be living as we do, slightly above paycheck-to-paycheck, for the next little while. And therefore, not only are we not buying anytime soon, we won’t even be saving to buy anytime soon.

We’ve had a million conversations about this in the past couple of years, about home ownership as a marker of adulthood, about the pressure we put on ourselves and that is put on us by others, about the fact that our children won’t be psychologically damaged if they grow up in a rental–so why do we (and I mean “we” as signifying both G. and I, and the greater public) act as if they will? We currently live in a modest two bedroom that would be perfectly fine pretty much until a second kid came along. There is no logical reason for us to feel dissatisfied with where we are. Yet we still, occasionally, feel like we’re doing something wrong, by not prioritizing home ownership–something which is equal parts a choice and a necessity.

I loathe the moment that we’ll announce to my parents our intention to have kids in our little apartment. They already criticize my sister for raising her daughter in a house that she owns, but which is small. So we’re screwed. And the irony of this drives me nuts; when my parents had their first child, they lived above my dad’s step-mother, in a space not much bigger than our apartment, renting. My mom didn’t yet have permanent work, as she was going through the long process of becoming certified as a doctor in Canada. I was born in the first house they bought, which was a small bungalow, a far cry from the suburban sprawling homes which are now seen as a prerequisite to a family. G.’s parents, too, were flat broke when they had their first kid. But we are the stereotypical upwardly mobile immigrant family, wherein financial success, with its many accouterments, is the focus of how one is expected to live one’s life. It makes me feel crazy that we are held to a different standard than my parents held themselves to, particularly when you contrast what housing prices are today vs. what they were then.

I guess I’m railing against two things here: first, the notion that home ownership is essential to be a successful family, and second the notion that suburban sprawling home ownership is necessary. If and when we do finally manage to buy a place, it will likely still be modest, not only because we’ll never be rich, but also because we don’t buy into this idea that huge amounts of space are necessary or even particularly productive for families.

I want to get better at being happy with what I have, and at being confident in my convictions and resisting external pressure to live in a prescribed way. Has anyone else been struggling with this?

See? I really do over-analyze everything.

So, here’s the thing. I have been watching as this Formspring anonymous question thing has been really taking off, with interest. I really want to object to memes like this, but I actually really like all the bloggers I follow, so mostly I’ve just been enjoying learning more about some of them through this medium. I may have joked the other day that such tools are mostly just forums for gossip, but I will confess that I’ve been loving both the gossip and the really interesting insight into people’s lives that I’ve been getting from the few that I’ve been following. (For the uninitiated, Formspring is basically just a website where folks can ask you questions anonymously, that you then…answer. Ta da.)

So I thought about starting one myself. I got into the idea for two reasons: a) because I have really enjoyed learning about other people, so maybe they’d enjoy learning about me, and b) because as I’ve confessed recently, I love blogging, and more specifically, connecting with this awesome community of readers, but I’m not 100% sure what to write about these days, and I feel like this would be a good tool for hearing what y’all are interested in/how I can write stuff that further makes these connections that I seem to so crave.

But of course, I’m conflicted, for the obvious reason; as I’ve likely made very clear from my overuse of this word on this blog, one of my real pet peeves is the way in which the internet enables narcissism, particularly blogging culture, and I am terrified of falling into that trap. I like to believe, perhaps naively, that I don’t blog just because I like to hear myself speak; again, it’s about that amazing click when you feel like someone “gets you”. Connection. Obviously we’re all a little bit narcissistic always, but it’s a part of me that I try not to overly indulge, and I am not convinced that I can really justify the Formspring thing as being anything else (for me, at least! As again, I am really enjoying reading other ones).

So anyway, I made one, for the positive reasons listed above. I am curious to see what you guys might want to know! So let’s see how this works out? I of course won’t touch anything mean or which I feel asks me to reveal more than I am comfortable with publicly, and if I do find it’s just a tool for my latent narcissism, I’ll likely drop it. But in the meantime, I think it might be fun!

Gluttonous Mondays: On being slaves to our cravings

I have an amazing ability to go through intense periods of food cravings during which I obsess over whatever it is that I’ve set my sights on with great enthusiasm. It takes little to trigger a craving, but once it’s in my head, I can go weeks, even months desiring it, dreaming about it, plotting how to devour it. And there is no better feeling than a food craving finally, joyfully, fulfilled.

I know that a lot of folks believe that cravings are our bodies’ way of trying to tell us what nutrients we’re lacking. I think this is probably sometimes true, but definitely not always the source of my food lust–I am so easily triggered that it generally takes one glance at a beautiful photo in the latest issue of Bon Appetit or at a luscious dish on any food-related tv show for my brain to start its delicious obsessing. I’d say my cravings are maybe 1/3 actual cravings for nutrients and 2/3 my pea brain’s susceptibility to the powerful power of suggestion.

Here is what I’ve been craving lately:

TUNA STEAKS. Dear lord, I think I spent at least a month craving a fat, meaty, seared tuna steak. I had some tuna in Israel, but it was thinly sliced, and thus did not satisfy my craving because I wanted a big hunk of tuna meat. (Oh, that’s another thing about my cravings–in order to properly satiate them, I need to acquire the spitting image of what is in my head. Nothing else will do.) I finally stopped at my nearby fishmonger’s this past week, and bought two breathtaking red steaks that were practically the size of my head; they were absurdly over the top, and G. and I devoured them with roast potatoes and asparagus. Here is a photo of Susan carefully eying the remainder of G.’s food.

I know that this will out me as the worst cat parent ever, but Susan often spends dinnertime in a similar position, deep in observation and poised to pounce on any morsel possible should we look away for a moment. Sometimes she doesn’t wait for us to be distracted, and will put her paw directly onto our plate, and go for whatever she can quickly grab, which is usually nothing, but she doesn’t care anyway as long as her paw absorbs some tasty juice that she can joyfully lick off. We do not encourage her and we have no idea why she is so brazen, but I have to admit that as much as it drives me crazy, it is kind of funny. (It’s also funny that earlier during this particular meal, she was clearly going nuts from the smell of tuna, but I guess she couldn’t identify which item on the plate was the source of the smell, so she dove straight in for a piece of asparagus. That’s a total kitten FAIL there, buddy.)

Anyway. Back to the tuna. I think that this craving must have been one part nutrients and one part the lingering memory of some of the melt-in-your-mouth tuna sashimi that we ate when we were in Vancouver in December. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Well that’s not true–a month and a half and a 1 lb. tuna steak later, I think I’m finally good.

My other craving lately has been FETA CHEESE. I don’t know why or how I ended up with this one. Maybe because I ate some damn good feta in Israel. All I know is that when my mom invited us over for a belated birthday dinner on Saturday night, and I was browsing online for an idea of what to bring, every single recipe I chose contained feta. Without exception. I finally settled on this colourful citrus salad from Smitten Kitchen, and arrived at my mom’s house to discovered that she had prepared a Greek salad, thus creating a comical overabundance of feta dishes. I was in heaven. And that citrus salad is freaking delicious and I urge you to make it right now.

Now that I’ve satisfied those two, who knows what the future has in store for me? For the moment, I feel free. Yesterday I watched G. make two large batches of sausages that have now filled our freezer, and we feasted on an awesome dinner of fresh spicy Italian sausages and fresh pasta with this genius Smitten Kitchen tomato sauce (seriously, it has three ingredients, people! And it’s perfect!). It was hearty and simple and awesome.

By tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be chasing down chocolate pretzels or some other random foodstuff, but for the moment I will savour this rare period of craving quiet. Oh who am I kidding, I could really go for some gummy bears right about now…

What about you?

http://smittenkitchen.com/

How do you manage stress?

I always thought that I managed stress pretty well. I am not a workaholic. I am ruthless in my pursuit of a work/life balance and generally good at savouring my downtime. I have activities that I love that help me take my mind off things, such as cooking, running, and playing the accordion (it should be noted, perhaps quite importantly, that I’ve been kind of delinquent on the latter two as of late). I pour my heart out to my husband and best friends (and often you guys!), and rarely keep things bottled up. I am religious about my sleep. I bury my face in my kittens’ bellies several times a day.

But lately, it isn’t working for me. Remember back when I confessed to you that I’d been having some health trouble? Well, a slew of unpleasant tests later (oh dear lord, how disgusting are those barium drinks?) everything in my body appears to be in tip-top shape, and my doctor mother and I are pretty confident that I’m therefore dealing with a stress-related illness. (You should have heard my mom relaying my various test results to me: “It’s crazy how clean your intestines are! They’re perfect! I can’t believe how perfect they are! What’s wrong with you?”)

I was really bummed out the day that we came to this decision; again, I’ve always been quite proud of my ability to manage stress, and I don’t know how I let this happen to me. It’s painful and it’s humiliating to me that I have made myself such a stressed out mess. I’ve got some new medication that helps manage things a bit (nothing brain-related, it just helps keep my body from going into overdrive as its first response to anything scary), and that has made a significant difference, but it’s a bandaid, and it’s clear that long-term, I need a new plan. (Or as my mother put it bluntly, “go to yoga”.) Part of me is very pragmatic about this–I think the best way to feel “better” is to remove the causes of my stress. I am not convinced that anything less than this will solve anything. But that’s also a tall order, and I need to stop making myself sick in the meantime.

So what are your secrets? Have any of you dealt with stress-related illnesses before? Is there anything beyond the holy trinity of downtime/exercise/talking it out that works for any of you?

The H-Word

Yesterday was our six-month anniversary, which is kind of mind-blowing. Time passes fast, ladies. Reflecting on the past six months, I wondered if any of the “Holy crap! We’re married!” stuff has sunk in yet.

In some ways, it has. The idea of being married has filtered down to our day-to-day lives and it just is who we are now, what our home is. It is yet another feature of our fairly boring lives.

On the other hand, when it comes to the Big Stuff, being married blows my mind. I can’t get over the idea that despite how unstable the next few years look for us, our marriage is the one constant. It is just about the most comforting idea in the world. All of our mundane crap happens in this context, and that is very powerful.

My growing comfort (or lack thereof) with the word “husband” is a good example of this back and forth. I am still, and suspect that I will always be, partial to the word “partner”, like the good little academic that I am. I like that it is vague on marital status and sexual orientation, as only seems appropriate when revealing bits of my personal life in professional situations. I really like “partner” and how it affords me my privacy.

Nevertheless, I surprised myself at the conference I attended last week, wherein I found myself using the word “husband” more freely than I had yet since we married, especially among the small group of awesome conference ladies that became my buddies over the few days we spent together. On the one hand, I felt weird–like I was playing at being a grown-up. What me? With a Husband? Women with husbands own briefcases rather than backpacks and don’t let their gardens overgrow every summer. On the other hand, within the context of this small group of colleagues with whom I became very close very quickly, the word stopped feeling so scary. We are all a little bit playing at being grown-ups, after all. I have to remind myself, sometimes, that I am only one woman among a million that suffers from Imposter Syndrome.

What’s funny, though, is that I find myself freer with the H-word when G. isn’t around. In Israel, the word came freely; back in Montreal, it feels more fraught. “Husband” as an abstract being is easy. But when we’re together, we still giggle and/or make a face whenever one of us refers to the other as “husband” or “wife”. We feel silly, forced, a little bit contrived. It feels like we’re making a Big Deal. We’re not there yet, clearly. Who knew that one little word could feel so mundane and melodramatic at the same time?

Things I learned on my trip to Israel:

I got home yesterday afternoon, queasy from 19 hours of travel and almost no sleep. I was lucky to come home to a clean apartment with cuddly kittens (they weren’t even mad at me for having gone! They were all over me immediately, purring loudly, which ruled), beef stew and a chocolate belated birthday tart (I celebrated my birthday in Jerusalem on Saturday), my favourite fancy cheese in the fridge, and my husband so sweetly ready to listen to me alternately babble about my trip in between stints of my eyes rolling back in my head from exhaustion. I managed to stay up until the late hour of 9:30pm, at which point I passed out and slept for 10 straight, glorious hours. I am surprised at how decent I feel this morning.

I was hoping to start the week off with an awesome “Gluttonous Mondays” post about all the beautiful food that I ate in Israel, but my travel partner has all the photos and I think I will hold off until I’ve gotten them from her. So stay tuned for my ode to hummus.

In the meantime, here is a list (my brain is still a bit too foggy to write a post more complex or coherent than a list) of what I learned in Israel:

I hate turbulence.

In old Israeli cities, often when something is called a “street”, it is not a street, but rather a flight of very steep stairs. Just FYI.

Israel is so not as secular as everyone says it is. From chatting with my dad, this is a relatively recent development. I had been promised by friends and family that Israel is this secular Jewish haven, but while I understand that much of the population is fairly secular, public life was tinged with religious practice much more than I expected.

It is definitely a powerful experience to be in a place where, for the first time in my life, I am part of the majority culture. I can see why this is a big deal to people, beyond the problematic politics of how this is acheived.

I really travel best either alone or with the mister, who is like my travel brain twin. I did this trip with a very close friend who I usually get along with famously, but we were terrible travel partners, and it was a mistake for us to travel together. It made me think a lot about worldliness and how one’s travel experiences don’t determine one’s worldliness, but rather vice versa. If someone has a narrow view of the world, exotic locales will do nothing to change it; they will always see things through that lens.

I spent a surprising amount of time on this trip with Haredi/ultra-Orthodox Jews, a group of people who I often blame for Israel’s increasing fundamentalism. It was really interesting and useful to get to know some Haredi folks in person, and remember that people can be smart and thoughtful and decent people even if I find some of their views repugnant. In particular, I befriended two Haredi women who taught me that Haredi women are tough as nails–one had just finished her PhD, during which she had FOUR children. Also her husband was away in the military during much of this time. Yeah. I start to feel really tired just thinking about it. Whatever our differences, I can’t help but be amazed by the strength and drive of these women.

Kibbutzes rule.

Jerusalem is one of the most incredible, transcendent places I have ever been. The air there is electric, both in a good and bad way. Visiting the Kotel ranks as one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. Reflecting on it afterwards, surprised at my own sudden religiousness, I realised: as an agnostic Jew for whom prayer is about connecting to history/heritage/understanding myself through that lens, etc., as opposed to literal belief in the words I am uttering, spaces like the wall are unbelievable. To touch the world’s most powerful relic of my own heritage is a religious experience, whether or not it is religious in a straightforward way.

We randomly met a lot of Christian pilgrims on our travels, which was a really weird experience because some of them spoke about Jews as though we were some kind of fascinating historical artifact, some quaint anthropological context to their reading of the Bible, and not actual people who exist in the 21st century. It was strangely objectifying.

Fresh dates and olive oil and lemonade with mint and haloumi and terrible instant coffee and nuts and falafel and soft cheese and crunchy salads and chewy bagels and so much food, which I hope to illustrate to you all later.

All in all, interesting and educational trip, but it’s nice to be home. Now I’m off to tackle my monster of an inbox. Xo.

Intermission

Hello from Akko. It looks kind of like this here:

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I usually have a no-internet policy while travelling, but today I am indulging because we just got to Akko, and there is rain and wind happening outside my window that is nearly apocalyptic, fitting for such a biblical landscape. So we’re taking it easy, and I thought I’d pop in and say hello!

We arrived in Akko today after meandering through Tel Aviv, Haifa and Nazareth. It’s been an interesting trip, this business of seeing a country that I have been hearing about my whole life. I am consistently awestruck but the seemingly millions of heritages that have roots here, and I’ve spent so much time just wandering, taking it all in. Oh, and eating my weight in hummus. Why did no one tell me that we are eating shitty hummus in North America? The first bite of Israeli hummus that my travel buddy and I bit into was like a revelation.

I am, of course, missing the mister in a big way. It would be easier to process everything if I had him at my side. It has made me realise how intertwined my thinking is with his; I don’t feel like I quite get everything without his side of the conversation.

I hope you’re all doing well! I will tell you more about all of this soon.

Off.

Bags packed. Hoodies and grown-up clothes, Paul Auster novel and an mp3 player full of my standbys (Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen) and songs that remind me of home (Dinosaur Jr and Angels of Light). Equipped. Hotel reservations and conference papers printed up. Kittens cuddled and husband smooched. Butterflies in tummy and fresh dates on the brain.

I’m off. I’ll see you guys later. Have a good couple of weeks.

Gluttonous Mondays: Lonely v. Social Eating

Since the mister went back to work last week, he has been on evening shifts, meaning that he leaves the house around 2:15pm and gets home around midnight every work day. This leaves me alone for dinner 5 nights a week, which results in my being a pretty darn boring cook. Sometimes when G. is on this shift we aspire to making lunch the new dinner, but I just can’t seem to muster up the energy to cook big meals early in the day; it feels like it defeats the purpose, as cooking is generally my way to unwind after the stresses of the day.

(That said, thanks to my addiction to the egg chapter of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I have been getting increasingly awesome at breakfast. G. has always been the omelette master, but my scrambled and baked eggs are slowly edging in on his breakfast dominance.)

Cooking just for me does not particularly inspire me to do much (I like to make food for others!). I have a dozen or so cool-looking recipes dog-eared that I am desperate to try, but that I can’t bring myself to make for just one person. So my most successful strategy thus far has been to cook huge dinners that create enough leftovers for awesome lunches the next day. I made some nice dahl this past week that went a long way (and I am pleased to say that I think I am finally making it properly thanks to studying up on my Madhur Jaffrey wisdom), some olive oil muffins, and what was actually a really nice pasta bake making use of the plentiful leftovers mostly from our small dinner party last week (I threw in leftover roasted squash, roasted garlic, herbs, sausages, goat cheese, and other stuff we had sitting around). Everything was tasty, but circumstances have definitely made me a bit less adventurous. (And I’m not going to pretend that I’ve been consistent with this strategy–I ate popcorn for dinner more than once last week!)

This weekend, however, involved both my father’s and my husband’s birthdays, so this is where our gluttony came out in full force. Friday evening we found ourselves at my parents’ house and consumed my mom’s usual multi-course feast of fish, meats, vegetables, and sweets until we rolled our way home. She was kind enough to buy both G. and my dad a millefeuille birthday cake, as it happens to be both of their favourite desserts. Then she sent us home with the leftovers, so we have been eating more millefeuille than is really reasonable for the past few days.

The highlight of that dinner was my dad’s birthday wishes to G. He said, and I quote: “If I had known it was also your birthday, I would have gotten you a box of condoms with holes poked in all of them.” Oh, my dad. That line has become an instant classic.

Saturday night, we got together with a bunch of friends for a pilgrimage to our most beloved all-you-can-eat sushi joint. On the heels of some seriously good sushi in Vancouver, we always feel a bit blase about Montreal’s offerings, but quantity sure does make up for the quality. We stuffed our faces full of an almost ridiculous assortment of sushis and side dishes, and then headed to our favourite bar for drinks, and consumed some seriously tasty beer. I was so pleased with myself that we stayed out cavorting until 3am, until I woke up Sunday morning with a hangover and remembered that there are reasons that we rarely do so. It was worth it, nonetheless.

In any case, all the social eating and drinking was a lovely antidote to my lonely weeknight dinners (which will hopefully be over by the time I get back from Israel and the mister is on a new shift). Who you eat with makes such a huge difference to one’s eating habits!

Happy Birthday Muhammed Ali!

I doubt that I’ve mentioned this on here, but I love boxing. I love the balance of toughness and artfulness that we see in the great fighters. I love what boxing has taught me about politics, and specifically, the American civil rights movement. It is my great ambition to someday be a prof of enough importance to invent my own courses, and to teach a history class called something like, “Everything I ever needed to know about twentieth century politics I learned through boxing.” Sexy dream, I know.

All that to say, I of course love Muhammed Ali, the great strategist, the graceful fighter, the witty poet, the conscientious objector, the joker and the philosopher. Today is his 68th birthday, and Roger Ebert posted this great tribute to him with some really fantastic footage that I have just spent too much time sorting through. I could watch him fight forever; it is nothing short of beautiful. Enjoy!

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And Happy Birthday to The Greatest!