30/30: A Poetic Evening

October 13th 

After some light house projects and a couple rounds of bowling for Tommie with his guy friends, we spent the evening at a free poetry reading by Richard Blanco (Obama's inaugural poet) at The Carolina Theatre.  

I always enjoy poetry readings because you get to learn about the backstory of the poet and it givers greater depth to their poems.  Blanco's poems (and stories) were very entertaining and funny, and explored concepts of culture, identity, and family, which are universal themes, therefore, easy to relate to.  It's great to see a poet like him gaining traction and interest.

After the reading, I had my book signed and told him that he ironically lives in the same small town in Maine as my parents (I did tell him, Dad, that you two have yet to meet.  He said that eventually it seems everyone there does end up meeting, so don't worry there's still time.)

30/30: Past, Present, Future

October 12th

We did a few 30 for 30 activities today.  First, we checked out the opening of Durham's History Hub.  It makes great use of a central spot downtown and showcases Durham's past in a contemporary way.

Next, we made a stop in Cary to get some authentic Turkish food at Bosphorus Restaurant.  Sometimes we really miss the food we enjoyed on our honeymoon in Turkey, so when we read the positive reviews for Bosphorus, which is about 25 minutes away, we couldn't wait to try it...especially Tommie--he has a serious love affair with Lahmacun (a kind of pizza with ground beef and spices/herbs on it).  

Here he is enjoying it in Turkey...

And here in North Carolina; reunited at last...

I had chicken pide which is a kind of pizza made with authentic Turkish pide--the kind of bread we loved to eat during Ramadan in Istanbul.  It was delicious.

We ended the evening in my weird world of writing by listening to a panel discussion about memoir writing at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh.  I love memoirs and would like to write one someday so I find it interesting/fun to listen to different writers' stories and how they came to publish them.  Tommie is good sport to go with me though I'm pretty sure he'd rather be stuffing his face with another Lahmacun.

30/30: Birthday Books

October 5th 

The day started off with a trip to the Durham Farmer's Market followed by a stop by Durham County Library's fall book sale.  

I bought a book of poems by writer's dogs, which reminds me of the time my mom wrote me a postcard in college from our cat.  I also got a book with ideas for day trip ideas from the Raleigh-Durham area.  We're still learning the area so it might help give us some good ideas for exploring.

Meeting a Foster Family

As a woman of childbearing age who does not want to bear her own children, I often find myself doing a tricky dance around the subject. Explaining to people that fostering and/or adopting is my first choice for creating a family is like telling people I'd rather walk across the country than take a plane or a car. It's a much harder route. Why would I do that?

Last week, I went to the doctor and listened to the "make sure you take those folic acid pills for the future baby" lecture I have heard a million times before. In the past, I would launch into a counter speech, but at some point I realized that my doctors didn't believe me; didn't understand me, and they definitely didn't care to listen to my anti-childbirth diatribe. This time, I just nodded my head, while thinking about how ironic it was that later that night Tommie and I were headed over to a couple's house to learn about the foster care system.

This couple, still in their 30's, has four children of their own and has fostered five children over the past few years. It was a welcome change to be able to discuss our plans openly with people and get their firsthand account. Even though the process is as emotional as one would expect, and the system is as frustrating as most systems are, talking to this couple made me more excited about the idea. 

People ask why put in the effort when the kids assigned to you are likely to leave after a such short time? 

After discussing one of their most difficult good-byes with a pair of siblings they thought they were going to get to adopt, the husband we were talking to looked at his wife and said, "Don't you feel like the kids were in a much better position after being with us than when they arrived?" And she answered, "They were." And if that's all I do, it's worth it.

The woman left me with a list of books to check out. I'll share them here for anyone who might be interested.

* "One Small Boat" and "Another Place at the Table," by Kathy Harrison
* "Three Little Words," by Ashely Rhodes-Courter
* "Damaged" and "Happy Kids," by Cathy Glass

Guest Room

We had our first long-term house guests for Thanksgiving.  Tommie's parents drove down from Boston and arrived in Durham in time for dinner.  (They drive like typical commuters, while my parents don't believe in using the passing lane and would have taken double the time.)

The guest room has been a work in progress since we moved, but it's finally sanctioned as a decent place to stay.

It has our old wicker double bed that we draped with a new large blue quilt we got for sale at the outlets for $50.  Updated thrift store lamps provide lighting, and a sage green refurbished dresser from Craigslist gives some drawer and surface space.  I'm sticking to natural tones like tan, blue, green, and white in here.

I also put one of our bookshelves in the room because I like the idea of people being able to thumb through books before bed or if they get bored.  I used to like snooping through other people's libraries.

Having a house with an extra room is nice so that we can host visitors.  It's also scary having a house with an extra room so that we can host visitors.  I love my family and encourage friends to visit...in small increments  :)

Photo Books To The Test

Between our wedding and honeymoon last year, I had compiled with a lot of digital pictures to organize into memories for us and our families.


Never having made an online photo book before, I decided to test out a few different places: Lulu, Picaboo, and AdoramaPix. It helped that I got a deal from all three places using promotions, coupon codes, and Groupons.


First, I created a book for my grandparents with Lulu. I found the system to be simple and straightforward. In a way, it was a little too simple. Customizing pages was either not a real option or it wasn't very easy. It also yelled about sizing a lot--even for photos with high resolution.

The end result was nice. Photos were clear, yet the overall look was somewhat muted. Whether from the paper or ink, nothing really "popped." A 9x7 hardcover with 21 pages costs $25.45 plus shipping.


I next made several customized books for family members using Picaboo. This system allowed for more individual customization per page. There was a vast library of layouts and backgrounds from which to choose.

Picaboo's finished photo books have a reddish tone to them, making people like Tommie look rather flushed. The paper is also on the thin side. Two of the four books I ordered were printed with the wrong covers, but Picaboo was good about sending replacements. A 8.5x11 classic custom hardcover with 20 pages costs $39.99 plus shipping. It is $1 per additional page.

Lastly, I decided to go with AdoramaPix for our more artistic pictures from our honeymoon to Turkey. This system was also very customizable, though I was not impressed with any of the rather cheesy backgrounds. Sticking with black, white, and gray gave pages a classic look.

The quality of the finished photo book illustrates Adorama's place as a leader in the photo business. The book looks like a professional book of art with lay-flat pages, real photographic paper, and a lustre finish that gives images just the right amount of shine. It's also archival.

I don't know what it is about my bad luck with photo books, but my first book arrived with an upside-down cover. AdoramaPix was also good about sending a quick replacement. An 8x10 custom hardcover with 38 pages costs $68.95 plus shipping. One thing to note is that you can only order in page increments of 14, 26, 38, 40 and 76.

Though the most expensive of the three, AdoramaPix definitely offers the best quality, particularly for high resolution photos that you want to showcase.

I Prefer Books Over PreNatal Vitamins

I'm a planner, which is why I have started to read books on foster care and adoption so I have a better understanding of the road Tommie and I plan to head down when it comes to "having kids." Some of the books are memoirs, some are more informative, and they're all interesting. 

As I got my stitches ripped out of my foot yesterday and the doctor attempted to seal up the wound that had been torn open again, all I could think about (and talk about because when I'm nervous and in pain I ramble) was how incredibely thankful I am that I planned all along NOT to have my own children. Honestly, I don't care if it makes me a giant sissy, or crazy, or hard to understand. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the right decision for me and if I am going to have kids, it is the way I was destined to have them. 


I know I'm lucky to have a husband who supports and even encourages this decision. Not only is Tommie glad he gets to keep the use of his hands (I think I tried to break one yesterday based on my foot pain alone), he is also very socially conscious and believes in helping others. 

Instead of reading "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (which is like a horror novel to me), here's a list of books I'm checking out that relate to the alternative:

- Adopting the Older Child, by Jewett

- Scars That Can Heal, by Louis

- Another Place at the Table, by Harrison

- The Stork Market, by Riben

- Nobody's Children, by Bartholet

- Like Family, McLain

- Growing Up in the Care of Strangers, by Brown/Seita

- Memoirs of a Baby Stealer, by Callahan

- Three Little Words, by Rhodes-Courter


Leave a comment if you come across or know of any others!

Gloucester Poetry

Gloucester poets are being recognized in an anthology put together by the city's poet laureate, John Ronan. I'm especially looking forward to it because one of my poems, which was a finalist in Gloucester's Quarterdeck Poetry Contest, will be featured.

The collection of poems titled, Salt and Light: An Anthology of Gloucester Poetry will be available for free (thanks to sponsors) at the Sawyer Free Library, Rose Baker Senior Center, and Mayor Kirk's office. If you live on the North Shore, be sure to pick up a copy and celebrate National Poetry Month by reading some local poetry.You can read more about it here:
My View: Time for poets to shine - GloucesterTimes.com, Gloucester, MA

What We Have In Common With Thoreau

We've all heard of Henry David Thoreau: he's that old guy who's really into nature, lived out in the woods and wrote about it. That's what I knew when I read Walden, but within the first part of the book something struck me as odd. Thoreau only spent two years of his life on the pond. For a guy who has a reputation close to that of a hermit, I found it strange that in reality he lived there for a short time.

That is what peaked my interest in a recently published book called "The Thoreau You Don't Know," by Robert Sullivan. I knew the book would help answer some of my questions about the often overlooked aspects of Thoreau's life, but it surprised me to learn how much Thoreau's world (1830's-1840's) parallels the current state of our own. To get a better understanding of Thoreau, Sullivan points out the social/economic state of Concord (and America) at the time Thoreau chose to pursue his little experiment in the Walden woods...times which are eerily similar to our own:

"To get an idea of what Thoreau was thinking about work and about making a living when he wrote Walden, you have to stop and look at the work situation in Concord and the towns in the area, to imagine the economic landscape around the pond the way you might try and imagine the trees and the birds and the water...

"The Concord that existed when he went to college, in 1834, was different form the Concord in which he is about to build a cabin, in 1845, at twenty-seven; like the rest of America, it is in the midst of a transformation. It bears repeating that from 1837 through 1843, the country was caught in a severe financial depression. In general, New England's economy was changing, colonial agriculture being replaced by the early stages of modern industrial capitalism, all the economic and political power that had been dispersed among farmers now being concentrated in a smaller number of people, primarily landowners and business owners." (Sullivan 125)
Just as in Thoreau's time, the America that existed when I went to college, in 2002, is vastly different from the America in which I am now building the foundation for my future in 2010. When I went off to school, 9/11 had just happened, we were going to war, but on the flip side, the housing market was booming and jobs were readily available. Fast-forward eight years...I am twenty-six (Thoreau's age when he built his house on Walden), America is in the midst of a similar transformation. Our country is once again caught in a severe financial recession. The ongoing war has not been cheap, the housing market has crashed and jobs have dried up. I don't know if it's comforting or disturbing to know that Thoreau (an aspiring writer himself at the time), was faced with very similar issues over 100 years ago...makes me wonder if we've learned anything from the past.

Even after reading this book, I won't really know Thoreau, but if his thought process about going off to be more self-sustaining, getting back to nature, not being owned by a job, was in any part due to his frustration with the way things were headed in Concord and America in general (industrialization, a failing economy, and class separation), then I know a lot of people my age can relate. We're frustrated, confused and distrusting. We graduated, like Thoreau, into a world full of broken systems and because of this we don't want to be a part of them. All this is enough to push even the most practical of us to want to get all "Thoreauvian" and desire to build a modest home with a garden on a little pond outside town.

Thoreau struggled with these things over 100 years ago and perhaps another generation will struggle with them 100 years after me in a world that is even more advanced and industrial. I wonder if this moment in time will spark modern Walden-like experiements...there is something about seeing the modern world in turmoil that causes a lot of frustrated souls to go running back to nature for the answers.

What Do You Mean Not Everyone Gets a Trophy?

While browsing the "new book" section in the library a while ago, I came across a book titled, "Not Everyone Gets a Trophy," by Bruce Tulgan and I immediately knew what it was about: Me. Less specifically, it is about managing Generation Y. I have read articles about my generation (born between the mid 70's and 1990's), and how we were brought up to think that we are all "special." The title of the book made me laugh out loud because (and this is probably a typical Gen Y thing to say), it seemed like it was titled just for me!

See, when I was a kid, I tried all kinds of sports before my parents realized I didn't have a competitive bone in my body. I used to hide behind the tall girls during little kid track races so I wouldn't have to race against the fast kids; instead of hitting the tennis balls my instructor lobed at me, I ran away from them; and when I tried gymnastics, I stood on the springboard before the vault and cried. Then I cried even more when I found out I didn't qualify to get a trophy with one of those little gold eagles on it. I didn't think it was fair that just because I made (in my mind) a very smart decision not to launch myself over something 10x the size of myself at the time, I wasn't getting a trophy!

The next day, my dad came home with a present. I opened it and there was the little gold eagle and a female figure poised in a running stance on top of a platform reading, "Champion Daughter." At the time it could have read, "Champion Cry Baby" and I would have been just as thrilled to have gotten it. It was a very nice thing for my parents to do, even if it did perpetuate my Gen Y attitude that I was special even when I wasn't. But what the author of "Not Everyone Gets a Trophy," might not know is that while it's true not everyone get's a trophy in this world, everyone deserves a trophy for even the seemingly little things they do/are (like being a "champion daughter"). Spoken like a true Generation Y-er.

McCourt's Memoirs

Frank McCourt, a very talented memoir writer, passed away on July 19th. He was best known for his novel "Angela's Ashes"—a memoir about growing up in poverty in Ireland and the troubles of his family. Maybe because I tend to like things that don't get as much hype and because I like writing, I actually liked his other, lesser known book most: "Teacher Man"—about McCourt's teaching career in New York where he taught English and writing for 30 years. McCourt's stories about his sassy students and what he learned during his time there is written with the kind of self-deprecating humor I appreciate. So, if you enjoyed "Angela's Ashes," I suggest you check out McCourt's other works...and if you haven't checked out anything by him, I of course, would encourage that too.

Follow Thoreau With Your Dreams

A lot of people lost sight or had to give up their dreams over the past few years because of a failing economy and a weakened government. Perhaps, though, the real tragedy was our own attitude before the collapse: We expected, even relied on outside sources to attain our dreams...we relied on high paying jobs at careless corporations, relied on investors looking to make money, banks looking to take money, and we relied on our government (which was already in debt), but all these people and institutions had agendas of their own; they didn't/don't care about our pipe dreams and we can't expect them to. If we are talking about my personal dreams than I am the only one who truly cares about them and therefore the only one who can attain them, and if my dreams are so luxurious that it is impossible for me to reach them at least mostly "on my own" than that's my own fault for desiring so much. Greed is a tricky bugger. Now is the time to take back our dreams, take ownership of them, pare them down to the simple root of what we need to live happy, comfortable and peaceful lives and to take thoughtful steps to get there.

At the conclusion of "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, he had the following to say about man following his dreams. I think it's interesting that after spending two years in the woods (leaving in 1847) he picked this as a key lesson he learned from his experience and that over 100 years later, the almost "Buddhist-like" advice he offers still holds true:

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Press Release

Our cross-country moving plans have officially been announced to all important parties...our families, friends back home, the grandparents we'll be staying with when we first get there, my boss and our landlord. There's no turning back. A lot is still undetermined and that scares me, but I know that's what happens when we set a part of our lives into motion with change. In one month we'll hop in that Penske truck, car in tow, and drive (at a painfully slow pace) back to where we came from. Maya will think one of those big trucks she's so scared of finally swallowed her whole, just as she feared.

Naturally, I have been plotting and planning the move for months now, and I am making sure we take care of all the details asap. We've pre-ordered a couple books on tape (since Tommie refuses to listen to 18-hours of "Great Expectations"—I can't imagine why—we settled on "Beloved" read by the author Toni Morrison and "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury); I bought a spanking new "Tush Cush" for my sensitive derrière; I'm starting to sell so many things on Craigslist they are going to start calling it Amberslist, and I've been yelling at Tommie on an hourly basis to organize his stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of this month he and Maya drive the truck home without me.

Mean Girls

When I read fiction I want to encounter characters. Of course every fiction novel has characters in it, but what I’m looking for are characters who are characters. I don’t know what this says about my own character, but my favorite books of all time have one thing in common—mean girls.

When I took a 19th century literature class in college my favorite book was “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Bronte. My friend who took the class with me thought I was crazy...she swooned over Jane Austen and couldn’t understand how I could like a book with such mean characters in it, and I realized that was exactly why I liked it. Catherine was mean; she was real; she was torn, and multi-dimensional (Heathcliff was no walk in the park either).

In that same class we read Dickens’s “David Copperfield.” My friend loved this one, so you can probably guess where I stood on it...it bored me to tears. I almost swore off Dickens’s entirely...until I met Miss Havisham and Estella in “Great Expectations.” A crazy old woman dressed in her tattered wedding gown living in a rundown mansion training her young daughter to become a heartbreaker...now that's a character. If you ask me, Pip, (the main character) had everything little David Copperfield did not...he had mean girls in his life. They asked Pip to come visit and ordered him to dance around a rotting wedding cake; pretty young Estella kissed him then made him cry within the same breath...(I know what you’re thinking...and I have never made someone dance around a rotting wedding cake.)

I know this will come as a shock, but girls can be caddy; I have always respected girls who were just outright mean because then, at least, everyone was being honest. The truth is, I grew up with friends full of wit and sassiness who I think these novel characters could have been based on (indeed, at times, I've thought they could be based on me). These girls were smart, sarcastic, funny and, yes, slightly sinister. I can’t help emitting a little smirk while I’m reading these books and thinking of the characters who entered my own life. Call me crazy, but I miss these mean girls.

Thoughts From Thoreau

It's so easy to get caught up in the daily hustle and bustle, which is, I think, why we often forget about the world around us—that there even is a world around us. This passage from Thoreau's "Walden Pond" reminds me of that:

"Sometimes, in a summer morning...I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance....As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock..."
Thoreau's little house in Concord, Mass., or his "nest" as he refers to it, was a place that allowed him to live by nature's standards which aren't confined to days, weeks and years, but rather go on in one continuous moment. I can see myself getting lost in this too if it were possible to forget about all the burdens of the "civilized" world. I'm pretty sure Thoreau would be spinning in his grave at the way we live today. He thought his world was fast-paced and disconnected...I wish I could send him a text message saying it has only gotten worse.

Tales As Old As Time

"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books." —Albert Camus

I've been into reading "the classics" lately. Even as an English major I've found there are still a lot of books I have yet to read to earn the right to call myself a true English major dork (then all I need are 25 cats and I can become the crazy old bat English major).

I love being able to read these books at my leisure and not feel the pressure of thinking about what essay topic I need to write about as I read them now for fun instead of for school. I do, however, miss the class discussions. I miss learning. I feel like I miss out on a lot of the little nuances (or sometimes miss the book's message entirely) without a professor to fill me in.

It took me a while to get back into reading after graduation, I was so sick of it. Now, a few years later, I'm back in my element...perusing used bookstores, reading during lunch break or before I go to bed. My problem now is space. I dream of built-in bookshelves, separate sections for my poetry books and Tommie's over-sized history/sociology books (that's what he gets for always reading non-fiction). I'm like Belle in Beauty and the Beast...I would be thrilled if a hairy, grizzly man set up a library for me in his rundown mansion.

Tommie and I sometimes spend hours creating virtual color pallets for our dream library (and the whole house) we don't have. It's sick really, but I've always been a fan of fiction...a girl can dream. Someday I'll have the house, the library, the 25 cats, and I wouldn't mind dancing in a ballroom with a charming grizzly man either.

Bookend: A Separate Peace

One side effect of my incompetence with numbers is an aversion to the subject of history. Did Columbus sail the ocean blue in 1692…1492…1842? It could be 1992 for all I know. My mother, a self-proclaimed history buff (and fan), is ashamed. I just never took much interest in a subject that relied so heavily on numbers. Even in elementary school, before memorizing dates became the standard theme of history tests, I thought my history classes were classes about war. World War I, World War II…here we go with numbers again.

But, every once in a while, a story (sometimes real, sometimes fictional) surfaces from one of those “meaningless dates” and I’m grateful that someone put that moment in history into a story I could enjoy. If history had been taught through stories I would have tolerated it much more.


I just finished reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles and although his novel is fictional, it is set in a very real time: 1943, a couple years before the end of World War II (yes, I looked that up). For me, the best thing about this novel was that while WWII loomed over the characters like a gray cloud, the story itself wasn’t about the war. Set in a boy’s boarding school in New Hampshire, the novel tells a story about a personal war between a 17-year-old adolescent, Gene (the narrator) and his “best friend” Phineas (aka “Finny”). And in a way, it is a story about Gene's internal war/struggle to find his place in the school.

Like any good book, I was invested in the characters. I cared about them in their little microcosm. I attended an old, New England college and I could relate to that sense that while you are there, you are in a “bubble.” You are isolated from the larger issues facing the world. You are in a peaceful place, but even in the most sheltered places, there are conflicts. Gene is most certainly a flawed character, but what 17-year-old boy isn't? This is a good read for boys particularly because it deals with the competitive nature between males, which is so often used to mask their real emotions like jealousy, affection or shame.

I also enjoyed the book because it was spot-on with its descriptions of place. Anyone who has spent time in New England will understand the way the seasons take on certain personas; the way the scenery actually becomes part of your mood. Knowles has a way of describing the seasons to metaphorically represent the events and changes happening through the school year. Just as the seasons change, so do the friendships and feelings of the young men who go there…and so does the war, which by the end of the story, has taken over a building on campus and overtaken some of their classmates.

Considered a "minor classic," A Separate Peace was a cleverly disguised history lesson and well worth the read.