"My Little Teenager"

Yes that is what my BFF calls me, only problem is i am going to be 40 soon! She says this with the most love, and tells me never to change, i am perfect the way I am. She tells me this on the days when I question my path in life. Why does she call me that you wonder? Well if you know me, you already know, I move fast and carelessly without a worry in the world. Or so it seems, but that's another story. This is about the girl who plays video games, yes the kind where you shoot and kill people and wait year after year in anticipation of the next one and stay up til midnight when it comes out just to be one of the first to have it. I drink beer and whiskey and often, i dress like a teenager and buy make up in all kinds of shades and still play dress up, i am an app addict and a text addict and a facebook addict, ok you get the picture oh that reminds me instagram addict, there's nothing like posting a photo and having instant gratification from a bunch of strangers who "like" your photos just so you can go check out their library of endless puckered faces in skinny jeans, yeah i wear those too!
I have been in a series of dead end relationships and marriage every time convinced, or convincing myself that "he's the one" ignoring all those voices in my head telling me otherwise, because at my age i still feel like i'm 12 and have a lifetime to find the one, i have sabotaged my love life the way a butcher dives into a fresh pig.
Here is the thing, i come from what i like to call the lost generation or the world is your oyster generation. I was a teenager when it started to be ok to get divorced because as a woman you "wanted more" and you deserved it, it was after the feminist movement, women had a voice, had options, we weren't going to put up with it. However, we hadn't quite created a place for ourselves yet so we were left free to roam the world with no where to go but strong and independent as ever with a world of options. Well being the opportunist aquarius that i am I took that to heart and wanted to experience everything this world had to offer and, well, experience i have. My other good friend always says i should write a book about my life, it's always such an adventure. The thing is, with all that said my friends all still managed to get married and have kids and remain in loving successful relationship, so what gives?
The real answer is simply that i just don't know how to be a grown up, there are so many "shoulds" at my age, or expectations of how a grown woman must behave and what she should have accomplished, that I feel a bit lost. I don't have those things, the big career, the husband, the kid on his way to college a new hobby to keep me busy after the next is emptied. I'm not really sure of where I should be at this point in my life. I am now in a new relationship, he's 24 and more mature than any grown man i have ever been with, since i never dreamed he liked me "that way" I shared a lot with him as we were starting a friendship which inevitably means i exposed myself to someone in a very vulnerable way not knowing what would come of it. Maybe he'll teach me to be a grown up, who knows? Maybe he's the one ;-)
I have developed some amazing friendships over the years with the best women that could have crossed my path and they love me unconditionally and i know they are just waiting to see what i will be up to next, maybe i'll figure out how to be a grown up but i doubt it!

Christmas Letter

Phfew deep breathe everyone! What a year!
I am not one to make new years resolutions but I do like to reflect on the year past and see what I learned and how I can make the next year even better! Plus it is so easy to focus on the negatives so this makes me see the positive too!
This year started out pretty low, I broke someone's heart pretty badly, I lived in a state I didn't want to be in, I hated my job and I was far away from all my friends and family!

So this past year has been about change, not just for me but for some of my friends and most of my family. I am hoping this up coming year is about setting new roots and enjoying the fruits of all those changes and staying settled.

I left my job and the state and even country I lived in to come back home, most people said that when you get to a certain age you always want to come back to your roots!
Normally there is something bitter and sour tasting that comes along with those words, "certain age:, it sounds old it sounds like you're now starting to go downhill after going up hill for so long. It's like to think I’ll stay flat a bit and enjoy all the wisdom and knowledge and relationships I have built over the past year before I start going down hill.
This past year was about change but also about learning; maybe it wasn't just learning but actually paying attention to my needs and how to make things I want happen.
So knowing I wasn't happy and was making bad decision I came home so I could reset, figure out where I was headed and what I wanted and it was the best decision I made in a long time.
It is good to be home with family, as crazy as they all are I am blessed to be back.

The good thing is it seems like a lot of my family members were also going through similar transitions my sister for example has made some very brave decisions this year up to the last month of the year and I am so proud of her. I used to be worried about what it would be like to turn 40 and thinking life is over it's all down hill, but seeing how beautiful and smart and confident my sister is, I am proud to be following right behind her.
My brother found a new love, they are so beautiful together and I can only hope to have the same thing.
My younger brother welcomed a beautiful strong smart little girl, I am so excited for him, and I never thought the day would happen when he became a father, he is so proud and doing a great job, and I cannot wait to meet her.
My mother bought herself a cabin on the lake, she is living the perfect city dweller dream lol, an apartment in the city and a home away from the city for long lazy week ends. So for Christmas we all were able to gather at the cabin and be together as a family, I have always wanted to be one of those people who get to say "This week end I’m going to my parent's cabin" yeah snotty but hey she worked hard for it and deserves every square inch ;-)

Making this move meant leaving some of my best girlfriends behind, I do miss them a ton. I do, however, get to be closer to Meryeme and even though we don't spend as much time together knowing she is just one hour away from me brings me a lot of comfort!!

Moving also meant starting a new job, which was hard after being at the same place for 10 years, I miss having the camaraderie with my old co workers and friends, and knowing so much and being involved in so many projects, it's difficult to find myself at the bottom again but some days I marvel at just coming in and going home without all the responsibilities :-) but knowing me that comfort will only last so long, I need to feel useful and have already started thinking about getting my Black Belt in six sigma and I am very excited about the thought of working in process improvement.

With all these changes I also met a wonderful sweet man, I guess I had to step back and really figure out what I wanted out of life to get there. I finally get what it means to find your friend, your partner and lover. We can talk for hours about everything and nothing and he always makes me laugh but he also is a great listener, he doesn't try to fix everything but always has great advice. He gets and appreciates who I am faults, quirks and my odd sense of humor I am really looking forward to this year and seeing where our relationship takes us.

So the New Year is about enjoying and making the most of all the decisions and changes I have made in 2011, enjoying my city, my love, my family and my friends. Becoming strong again and growing in my new career and believing in myself more knowing how much I am capable of, oh and adjusting to winters, yes it's dark and cold but I must fight the desire to hibernate! One of the best thing my mother said to me this year, aside from being thankful I am back home was that no matter how hard things get for me or how much is going on in my life I always keep a big smile through it all and she admires that about me, so I will keep smiling more!!!!

In your dreams baby!!!

When I was little I used to have this recurring dream that I came home from school and the clothes line was filled with brand new clothes for me. Being the youngest of 4 kids I didn't always get new stuff I used to think that if I only had a thousand dollars I could get all the clothes I wanted. Remembering this dream is pretty funny to me considering that I really hate shopping. However, I look back at those years and the innocence I used to have and now at my age I wonder what my dreams are and what I want to do with the rest of my life. From my previous post where I discussed my anxiety, I can say things are getting better for me; however I still have some anxiety about my future. You spend a great portion of your life wondering what you will do when you grow up and then you are grown up and wonder what happened to all those years past. For some of us it comes easy but for others it is not so simple, we don’t all get to live the traditional life path, for some of us our path is a bit rockier with hills and dips, while others have a perfectly paved road, lighted with beautiful street lamps to guide them. A year ago at this time I really thought I had it all figured out, I had an awesome boyfriend, I really thought we'd be getting married until I brought it up and found out he felt differently. I had a great career, I was moving up, I was a star at work, winning awards and taking on new challenges and really pushing myself and in charge of my destiny, until my new boss decided to take charge of my destiny for me which threw me into these anxiety attacks and so my career path was halted quite abruptly. I had a great son, who is so smart and independent and so different in his own way, until I found out he was slowly ruining his little life and had to quickly change gears in the way I deal with him, which was really hard. All in all I really thought I was set, romantically, financially, career wise and as a parent when all that got thrown to the wind in such a short period. The anxiety is really making me look at the rest of my life in a whole new light.

I made some very drastic changes to my life. I made the decision to quit my job after 10 years, I had to do it for my health. I made the decision to leave my boyfriend, knowing after all we weren't right for each other. I left Florida for Colorado, just when I started to learn to love Florida for the state that it is. Next you would think I would add that I left my son, but on the contrary, he and I left on an adventure together. When I started making all these changes I really thought my friends would tell me I was crazy, my friends being the aforementioned rhubarb pie, blueberry pie, lemon meringue and apple pie, but being the friends that they are they surprised me with an immense amount of support and love that I did not expect and it was so wonderful yet again to realize how important these girls are in my life. Some people said I was so brave and they wished they had the guts to do what I was doing, meanwhile I was terrified and yet excited of what lay ahead.

On New Year’s Eve I told the new love in my life "Happy new year, here is to a brand new fresh year just for the two of us". But what does that mean? What am I to do now? I have this new career, new boyfriend, new state to discover and learn to love in the same way I learned to love Florida with its excessive humidity; I have to learn to love Colorado with its excessive dryness! I have a brand new life ahead of me and I am excited to see what these dreams bring me! I now know it will take more then a clothes line full of brand new clothes to bring me immense happiness, I also know that I am strong and adventurous and I have a whole new canvas and appropriately enough a new camera to experience and capture it all. I am not looking for a perfectly paved road, I am not suited for that, but I am looking for maybe a pretty scenery on my rocky path. Maybe it can be lined with pretty flowers for the next part of my life.

While this post is not as funny or about food as my previous posts it is completely from the heart and this is me learning to open up and expose the rawness of feelings and emotions we all go through.

Here's to a new year and I am really going to try and resume my monthly posts!

I've been attacked by a beast

This is just a repeat of a post i had before but removed, this needs to be here as i recover:

When I started this blog I had every intention of posting something new once a month, I realize it's been 3 months since my last post. The point for this blog was for me to have a creative outlet outside of my day to day work life; never did I imagine I would end up in a cube farm at my age, in my mind, by now I should have been in People magazine at least once, I was going to be a movie star or at least popular I would have done something "cool" that would have warranted me a page in this magazine I've been buying every week for the last 10 years or so if not more. But alas, it didn't work that way, I find myself in a call center like millions of other Americans across the country.

Which brings me to my beast, it's a very large one and not a pretty one, it’s not exactly a pet, it definitely is a beast and showed up absolutely uninvited and I wasn't ready for it. It kind of crept up on me, at first I thought it was just poking me a little to jolt me out of my boredom, and it may have been, but I didn't really listen I figured it would go away, kind of like an annoying little brother or sister that if you keep pushing back enough will eventually go away, so I assume anyway, my sister would know the answer to that better then me.

This beast does have a name and the name alone will give you the eeby jeebies, its name is Anxiety, yep! It took over my body, my mind and now my soul, I am at its mercy, but unlike when I was little and my brother would twist my arm and ask me to beg for mercy this is just not giving in, and god knows I have begged for mercy. I have fought it over and over but it seems to be winning and I have to now surrender to it and accept it is visiting for a while, now I just need to find a way to live with it, which is hard because it doesn't like anything I like. For example I love going outside and hanging out with friends, but the beast really doesn't and it sure lets me know of it. It also doesn't like going to baseball games, but it waited until I was all the way inside and in my seat to really let me know of that, to which I had to leave and walk all the way back to my car by myself against hundreds of fans.

I found out the hard way that it wasn't going to leave when I called in an exterminator and took some little white pills for it, it really didn't like that, it felt like I was trying to kick the devil out of me in some voodoo-like ritual! So I stopped that, but now not only do I have the beast residing in me I also have the remnants of the chemicals, not a very good combination.

So this is where I’ve been and I now need to make room for this thing, find out what it likes and befriend it and then maybe it will leave because I really don't think it wants to be my friend!

I will be back soon hopefully with a lighter funnier post!

Take care!

The proof is in the pie

A couple weeks ago I decided to make Lemon Meringue pie! Now most of you would probably think "big deal", as much as I talk about food chances are I probably bake a pie every now and then. The truth is, I had not baked a Lemon Meringue Pie in 13 years! That’s right! I love pie, it's my favorite dessert I prefer fruit pies, none of those Bostoncream pies or Oreo cookie pies but fresh, home made berry and fruit pies!

They are reminiscent of my childhood, growing up my mom made everything from scratch and in the summer it was all about berries and pies growing up in Quebec. We even picked our own berries, we would make it a big family outing, and we didn’t go to those farms on the site of the road with signed “Pick your Own”, no, we’d go to the woods and find berry patches, do you realize how dreadful it is to pick blueberries in the heat of August when you're 5??? Pretty darn dreadful, but the rewards are so sweet! There's nothing like a fresh warm piece of blueberry pie eaten after a good swim on a warm summer night and even more satisfying when you picked your own berries. My siblings and I swore at times we recognized the berries we had picked and would have fights over the very big ones, we just "knew" we picked the biggest raspberry or blueberry! Sometimes people try to feed me store bought crust and call it home made, but I always know the first bite I take. People have tried to fool me before and then they'd say something like "oh well I rolled it myself and dropped in the filling!!! THAT's not home made my friend, sorry!

Back to the Lemon Meringue pie, I used to make pies with my mom, I didn't even have to look at recipes anymore, I could just make dough, roll dough, drop whatever in the middle throw it in the oven and I’d have a pie so it was quite surprising one day when I made my Lemon Meringue pie and the meringue wouldn't work, so I tried and tried, I am not a quitter normally but after trying several times I just gave up and never made it again, so what I’m a tad bit stubborn! But with summer coming around the corner and I had these large lemons and it was just calling my name, I had to make it! And it was a success, well the meringue was, I was so focused on my meringue that I didn't quite perfect the filling, but that's something I can easily fix and definitely won’t wait 13 years!

That same week end I was talking with my son about my friends, how each one of them is so different, I have about 4 girlfriends that I am very close to and have known for some time now and each one of them is completely different from the other. I was out and about with one of them later that day and it struck me how she can be kind of like a lemon meringue pie, a little finicky and needy and everything has to be just so for it to be just right, yet so sweet and giving and fresh. You have to treat the lemon pie differently then the other ones because it's a bit more fragile but then so rewarding when you get to enjoy it!!! So all this comparison with this friend made me think about how each friend is just like a different pie, for example I have this life long friend, she can be best described as an apple pie, reliable and always exactly what you need when you reach for it. Warm and inviting, you just can't say no to a piece of apple pie. Then there's strawberry rhubarb pie, rhubarb makes no excuses for what it is, it just is, it knows where it stands and what it wants, but then you mix it up with a little strawberry, which is what happened to one of my friends a few years ago when she got a child and it softened some of those hard characteristic, but you can always count on the rhubarb to come through and tell you just how it is! Can't argue with that, rhubarb will get you to settle down and not be so aloof. And last but not least there's the blueberry pie, sweet and a little emotional, I mean blueberry pie is very nostalgic, but there's something about it that's so comforting and when you eat it it's like coming home, it knows your secrets and you know they’re safe right where they are. Blueberry pie is a bit darker and juicier then the others, a good mix of the good and the bad together, where you can just be yourself and surrender to it a little!

So maybe you know just what kind of pie you are or maybe you are still working on perfecting yourself, that’s the beauty of pie, it’s a little different every time!

Love you friends!

I should have taken a picture of my own pie but i ate it too quickly so here is an image from The Spill blog

Gasp!!!

This morning I woke up to both a very startling thought and a quite surprising one!

Even I was a bit shock at the audacity of my food obsessed mind to have gone where it did! Everyone can control their thoughts right? It's really not about the thoughts that come through your mind but what you do about them, is what they say! Some thoughts will shock you, others will just sort of pass by and wish to be caught and other ones just kind of jump in and make themselves right at home. This thought was one of those latter ones. It's just that I am one of those people whose lives revolve around the food I eat, not just "I need to have my three meals a day" or "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" kind of food obsession but the kind where my facebook status always involves food! What I ate how I ate it, when and with whom (or is it with whome?) and how it smelled, yes I am also one of those people who smell my food before I eat it.

The other day I actually found myself having a conversation with a co-worker about why it was so wrong that why the night before my burger had come with a whole wheat bun. No, no, I wasn't eating a cheeseburger and yet being health conscientious and having it with a wheat roll, it was a complete mistake where my friend ordered hers with the wheat bun and so mine came that way too. The thing is that wheat flour doesn't have as much gluten and therefore the bread comes apart more and doesn't hold the juices (read blood) as well as a good ol'white roll! As I was explaining this is when it really hit me how insane I am about my food, to go as far as understanding the chemistry of gluten in the bread and why you need white bread with a cheeseburger is a little insane isn't it? I just shrugged it off to low blood sugar talking!

Anyway, back to that thought I had this morning, I decided I would try out a raw food diet, this goes completely against all my food principals! This is coming from someone who once said, after finding a post on chowhound.com about vegetarian food in Italy "what is the point of going to Italy if you're vegetarian???" and having absolutely no shame to the words that had just come out of my mouth! I mean this was almost as bad as saying boys shouldn't be allowed to play with Barbies! I've always considered myself fairly open minded but quickly realized that day that in fact, I am not as liberal as I thought I was! I had to double check and make sure my registration card still showed that I was a democrat!

The whole idea is that I feel like I was very lazy over the winter and need to shed those 5 pesky pounds that have found their ways in all of my pants! How did they get there? Seriously? Although I think I might know the culprit, Darn Call of Duty: Modern warfare! I've played about 3 hours a day for the past 4 months. We have had a harsh winter in Florida, ok ok so it is Florida, harsh is a matter of perception, I mean we got stuck at 55 degrees for 4 months, no way I was going out there in the cold running. I was very thankful for my heated seats in my little Volvo, which I thought were absolutely ridiculous at the time of purchase but was so grateful for on those cold mornings. Anyway, so the 5 pounds have to go and I thought, what better way to expand my food horizons, experience new recipes and loose weight! Plus I can still have wine right? The grapes are raw? It's just stomped and fermented! I think cured meats are ok right? We are talking about raw not vegetarian right! ok I think I am sensing panic set in....I’ll get back with my experiences with the raw world, I may just have to come up with my own rules!

Santé everyone! Goodbye vodka sauce with sausage!

From a Source

I think it was the day when I posted on Facebook; where I post everything little possible detail of my life to the point that people in the cafeteria line at work know that my boyfriend is picking up rolls to go with his roast beef, that just "smelled so good around the house" the day before; that I was just relaxing reading magazines, to which my brother commented, "things don't change, my little sister surrounded with her magazine", that I realized that I may have a magazine obsession my whole life. While my brother's statement might be a little strong, he isn't too far off.

There were signs all along, like the time about 10 years ago when a boyfriend of mine moved in and he thought we should move my bed to a different corner of the room. We moved the bed only to find out, with complete embarrassment on my part that the floor under my bed was covered with about 50 magazines, anything from Maxim to Food & Wine.

There was also the time when I was moving from a small house and it was time to clear out the shed and I had about 5 pods filled with magazines and I was asked if it was really necessary to move these pods and I practically had a heart attack! What kind of question was that? I mean they all had little sticky notes and folded corners for future reference and I just wasn’t ready to give that up, even though they had been in there for months.

And then there is me trying to budget and/or justify a subscription to Architectural Digest, I mean it is $70 a year, that's pretty steep, so it is going to be a treat one day! Well at least that's what I vowed to myself after asking my dentist if I could have their copy of a 3 month old Architectural digest and he said no, no one ever turned me down before for a magazine and I decided I would show him and get my own someday.

My boyfriend keeps telling me that I really should subscribe to all these magazines but he just doesn't get it, the thing about magazines is not just about reading them and getting them in the mail as a matter of fact, I much prefer purchasing them at the counter, there is something about walking up to the register and seeing all your options, all the pictures, the most shocking stories. I'm like a little kid in a candy store, wondering who is going to be on the cover of people magazine (and even wishing a little that someday I could be on the cover of people, a secret wish of mine). I couldn't tell you what draws me to a particular magazine,

I remember when I was little and my step dad had boxes and boxes of National Geographic, I could sit there for hours reading those magazines and then recording "news reports" based on the stories I would read, I wish I still had those tapes, but I think my brother probably tapes some Sunday top 20 or maybe some Iron Maiden over them.

I am sure all of you have seen Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase, one of my favorite scene is the one of him in bed reading his magazine and then comes across a sticky page and fights with it for about 3 minutes, this brings me to tears every time!

Of course there are some things I don't like about magazines, the biggest one is probably when you read a story and then you need to go to the back to finish the story, why do they do that? I am going to have to research this, for some reason it just really chaps my hide, I wish I would just read the whole story and not have to worry about going back to that page and reading the next story.

And why is it that whenever you read an article and people are quoted it's always "a source" don't movie stars have friends and family members? Even when talking about something as mundane as nursery decoration or a meal that was served at a birthday party it will always be listed as "There was a chocolate cake with blue ribbon" stated a source of the family, I mean why couldn't it be "stated a cousin" or some other family member. Wouldn't be strange to have source speaking for you? Maybe when I’m in the people magazine I will be so lucky!

Happy reading!

Since everyone enjoys a photo, here is a photo from the National Geographic site;