Change

Books to be curbed.

After a difficult winter last year, I did a massive spring cleaning. Though I try to keep the clutter level low, last year I realized there were many things that had escaped previous cleaning attempts.

I needed a real work space at home and since moving was out of the question at  the time, I attacked my apartment trying to get enough objects out of my life to be able to fit a real desk, one where I would enjoy working.

My old desk went on craigslist as did a few other things. A bookstore was very excited to get boks in Spanish that were not translations and a good amount of my closet ended up at my local thrift store.

I also found that I'd been keeping many things for the wrong reasons. There were many objects I'd kept because I thought they were either valuable or thought they could be useful in some way. But instead of being valuable to me, they just kept me from having room for a desk.

Sadness hiding in the back of my closet ambushed me. There was my cat's IV bag which when she passed in 2009 I'd kept thinking it might come in handy if anyone I knew had a cat having trouble keeping fluids. I couldn't throw that away! I could save a cat's life! It was also one of the last things of hers I had left.

Abby liked reading the New Yorker from under my shoulder.

Out it went. If a cat needed fluids I could administer them, but it would be better off with a bag that hadn't been sitting in a closet for years.

I started inspecting every single object, thinking what it meant to me and wondering whether I wanted it in my life. If the answer was no, then it had no value to me and it went out. I kept finding things to throw away until summer came and with it some welcome distractions. I never made it to the bathroom or the kitchen, but with some trips to Ikea and Benjamin Moore, by the time I'd stopped I was happy with the changes in my apartment.

Now I'm moving. Though I thought I'd gotten rid of all that I could, I'm finding out there's still plenty more where that came from. Though I'm excited about moving, I'm not looking forward to packing and unpacking. The fewer boxes, the better. With that in mind, I'm again throwing away all that is excess.

I spent the first three years of my life in an oil camp in Venezuela. My dad had a job in a rig there and we lived in a little house with a a dirt garage I used to crawl out of so I could go help myself to tomatoes from our local grocery store. When my mom got pregnant with my brother she decided she'd had enough of small-oil life in Venezuela and we moved back to Colombia. It was a hasty move and the new tenants were moving in on the same day we were moving out.

It was some time before my mom realized a box with our family's photo albums with its negatives (remember those?) had been left behind. She never got it back and she misses it to this day.

As I start organizing things in preparation for the move I'm finding many things I didn't even remember I had. Things that if I'd lost in the move I'd never notice. So I'm looking at things wondering if I want to pay to keep them. Three shelves of unread books? Gone. Books I know I don't want to re-read? Ditto. If I want any of them again, I can find them and the cost of getting them again will likely be less than the cost of keeping them. Because keeping them might be holding me back.

Looking forward to whatever is next.




My apartment is on the market. Check out the video the realtor made. Dramamine might be required.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses!

How many works do you recognize?

Turn me On by The Grates or Your Welcome to MAJOTV

Welcome to MAJOTV. Nothing original of mine here, just videos I like. Enjoy! Here's one by the best not-quite-flat-mates I could have ever had. One of these days I'll go visit them at Southside.

It's also a good running tune.

Knitty Gritty

For the past few days I've been wrestling with a new knitting project. It's one of those patterns that assumes you know things, which I don't.

My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was about seven. On one of those Barranquilla afternoons when then rain comes and turns streets into rivers forcing everyone to stay indoors until it's done dragging buses to the ocean, she helped me make a hot pink sweater with silver flecks for my favorite doll. That was all the knitting I'd done until a couple of years ago when I thought I'd give it another try.

With the help of a couple of friends and countless of patient youtube grandmas, I was able to learn how to make a wide range of things. This year I even made hand knit gifts for all of Colter's family (three cowls, four hats, one scarf) and got really good at subway surf knitting (the key is using a sturdy paper bag - will try to post a detailed how to soon).

One of the things I love best about knitting is that you start with a ball of yarn, an idea, and a set of instructions. Since I like challenging myself and learning new things, I often chose patterns that include techniques I've never tried before. The pattern as a whole tends to be overwhelming, but if I go row by row and consult with my youtube grandmas whenever I get stuck, slowly something comes out of it.

Modeling one of my creations. This is Jayne Cobb's Cunning Hat, which I made for Colter.

If things get confusing, I can always go back to the instructions and figure it out.  Which seems to be the case with pretty much anything. What seems impossible becomes manageable when it's broken down to pieces. If instructions are not available, you just make them up.

It works for running and it works for pretty much everything else. That's where I am. Making things up as I go.

Lost and Found

After last week's run and cheer, I found a music device near the Columbus Circle Central Park exit. It had the sad and lonely look of discarded sweaty socks so I picked it up.

There was no one nearby except for another runner who saw me pick it up. We both made poor thing noises, both for the music device and for the runner who'd lost it.

I tweeted about it a couple of times hoping to reunite it with it's owner. It got retweeted, but no dice. No one has come forward.

In the interest of learning more about its owner, I listened to what was on it. Based on knowledge from watching Law & Order, I've created a psychological profile to narrow down the suspects  try to find the owner.

The owner is a male runner in his late twenties. Maybe he's older, but he wishes he were in his twenties. He might wear bling. He likes to party and go to da clubs, or at least likes to think he does while he's running. I gathered this information after unscientific analysis of the lyrics.

There was a Lady Gaga song thrown in there, but the lyrics were mostly along the lines of "where the girls at", "what you got, boy, is what I want" and "baby girl, gonna fly you 'round the world." Also, there was no Justin Timberlake.

He's been hurt before, but he's hopeful and he mostly feels like the world is at his feet.

I got some fun song ideas and I've enjoyed downloading them and putting them on my shuffle. With Pandora's help, I added some more and now I have my own mostly hopeful with world at my feet playlist for 4-5 runs.

I'd post the playlist I found but I didn't write it down while I had the chance. The device is now out of batteries and I have no way to charge it. It's now sitting near my shuffle, wishing it could go for runs.

If you know someone who might have lost this, please let him know I have it and would be happy to return it. I won't judge him if he can't pick it up in his brand new limo.

 

Ombre Nails - The Pinterest Experiment

Ombre Nails

It's easy to see why Pinterest is growing wildly. Highly visual, it's a very practical bookmarking tool. And it's pretty. Oh, so pretty.

It has so many lovely things, so many beautiful crafts and small projects it inspires me to get adventurous and do more. 

Pinterest is directly responsible for my renewed interest in sewing, fancy up-dos, and nail polish (see picture).

So this is The Pinterest Experiment. Ideas from Pinterest, come to life. The inspiration for this nail treatment came from this pin, and I followed this tutorial. It was as easy as described. I've only done it once and the result is pretty good. Full disclosure - the four nails pictured above are the ones that came out best. The rest of them I didn't manage to get the tips as dark as I wanted them, but that was my left hand trying  a new technique on the right hand. I believe in my left hand's learning curve. It will get better and I still have some pretty fancy nails for today.

When I was a kid, my brother and I loved to play with a copy we had of the Animals volume of a children's encyclopedia. We'd flip pages and we had to quickly touch the image of the animal and scream "mío!"(mine). Whoever managed to touch it first claimed ownership of the pictured animal. If it was a cute one the winner had a right to be smug until we flipped to the next page and the loser would be jealous. If it was an ugly one, there would be "guácala!" (ew!) and mocking. We had the whole book memorized but we tried beating it by trying to flip pages at random. 

We used to spend what felt like hours doing this.

Pinterest is a non-competitive version of the same game but even better. There are almost no ugly pictures - maybe only not as pretty - and with a click of a pin you can claim ownership of anything. And you don't just claim it, you get to keep it on your board. It's surprising how satisfying that is.

And if you're feeling enterprising you can end up eating healthier meals, exercising more, and looking  better all the way to your nails.

The Hard Way

View from the Manhattan Bridge

Eight miles is eight miles. Except when it isn't. There's that sense of satisfaction from completing a task, and then there's that inner ikickass warmth that comes from going beyond that.

The goal: to run eight miles. The plan: to run to Central Park and get there on time to cheer for runners participating in the Scotland Run 10k.  

This required getting up early on a Saturday and packing myself like a cargo mule so I could have water for the road and something warm and dry to wear when I got there.

Loops of the park would've been simpler, but I wouldn't have had the view from the bridge or have gotten to see two different elephant statues.

I ran out of Brooklyn trying to convince myself I could do it, telling myself I could stop once I got to Manhattan. The one-more-bite mom trick worked well for me.

Stop and smell the waffles.

I ran up the bridge and down to Canal Street. I ran past the Chinatown bus passengers waiting with their crates. I ran through Union Square past cherry blossom branches. The Broadway pavement was mine as I made my way towards Times Square where the billboards let me know I was getting close; it made no sense to stop. By the time I hit the high 40's I could see the the Central Park canopy in the distance.

In Central Park I got to listen to bagpipe music and got to see men in kilts. Nacht! Runners in kilts - even better legs.

The increased sense of badassery from doing this run the hard way was worth it. Plus, there was a wafelini for me at the end.

Run details here.