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The contents of my freezer after Handsy moved out and I threw away anything really, really old:
I like to call this photo: "Having my priorities in order."
(Taken with the Hipstamatic app, with which I am utterly obsessed. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my kick-ass iPhone?)
I don't know of many things more frustrating than being in the "hurry up and wait" phase. Don't get me wrong, I'm wicked excited to move to PDX and start fresh, but the uncertainty surrounding it all is what kills me.
Here's what I do know: I interviewed for a job, wowed a potential employer, and am looking forward to hearing from her near the end of September about a full-time position.
Here's what I do not know: where I'll live, who (if anyone) I'll be living with, if I can afford to live on my own, if any other potential employers will call me for an interview, how I will find coverage for my clients so I can attend said potential interviews without tipping off coworkers/supervisors as to what I'm doing, how I'm going to tell my families that I'm leaving, how Ms. Antoinette is going to take the news of my resignation, who will take over working with my kiddos once I leave, and so on and so forth.
If I think about it too much, my head starts to spin. And then I eat a cupcake.
I don't often get the urge to bake. I love to do it, but I also know that I'm powerless to resist baked goods. Unless whatever I'm putting together has a place to go that is not my kitchen, I generally stay away from baking anything. There was something about today, though, that triggered a craving for carrot cake. Also, it gave me an excuse to wear the wicked cute apron that Handsy gave me for my birthday, so there you go.
I checked out a few recipes for carrot cake and decided that none of them were worth the calories (one was nearly 600 per slice; I DON'T EVEN THINK SO), so I figured I'd head on over to Food Network and see if anything healthier could be found. Lo and behold, my old friend Ellie Krieger has a recipe for carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting that was much more reasonable in the nutrition department. I debated just making the cupcakes and ditching the frosting, but what the hell? Go big or go home, right?
Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup natural applesauce
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups finely shredded carrots (about 2 medium carrots)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts
4 ounces 1/3 fat cream cheese (recommended: Neufchatel)
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
Sift together the first 6 ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk the oil, brown sugar and eggs until well combined. Whisk in the applesauce, vanilla and carrots. Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Stir in 1/4 cup of the chopped walnuts.
Divide the batter between the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
With an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and lemon zest until smooth and creamy. Frost the cooled cupcakes and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts. The cupcakes should be stored in the refrigerator.
*NOTE: These are so. Good. I could eat two or three more right now, but I think there's enough frosting on my trackpad for one afternoon. I might leave out the lemon zest in the frosting next time, and I ditched the walnuts sprinkled on top at the end (ditched, forgot about before horking one down, whatevs), but otherwise, as Shmoopy might say, they are faboosh.
Welcome to Adventures in Packing or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Appreciate My Compulsive Hoarding of Tissue Paper.
Portland is becoming real to me and I almost feel myself buzzing with anticipation; the nerves are definitely still there, but the excitement is starting to nose ahead in the race. I posted a note on Facebook today (carefully hidden from all but two current and two former coworkers) asking if any friends knew people in the PDX area who might be looking for a roommate, and within 30 minutes, a girl I went to high school with commented that she knew a Catholic youth minister down there who might be able to ask around for me. Ball, you may continue to roll.
In my cleaning/throwing away of things/pre-packing whirlwind, I discovered a large storage tote under my bed that I had forgotten I bought. This excited me way, way more than it should have any normal person. Welcome to my brain, where organizational tools get me all hot and bothered.
I can vividly remember hearing my first New Found Glory songs. Long before iTunes was the standard, I was one of the multitudes downloading music from Kazaa and other such services. I was introduced to the concept of emo (before it was equated with depressed kids and Myspace pictures with hair swept across the face) by a classmate who reviewed a Jimmy Eat World album for our school paper. I was immediately intrigued by the seemingly nonsensical combination of punk beats and lyrics charged with raw emotion. After a little bit of research, I stumbled upon "Ballad for the Lost Romantics" and was instantly hooked; this was unlike anything I had listened to before.
The Great Job Hunt 2010 culminated in the Great Job Interview yesterday. I flew to Portland Tuesday night for an interview with an agency similar to the one where I'm currently employed. It went really well and there should be a full-time position available for me at the beginning of October. I have mixed feelings about it, and there are several factors to consider before I accept, but hey! I have the Fear! And the sense of being Completely Overwhelmed! And did I mention the Fear!
Pray for me; I may lose my mind.
Rilo Kiley was never really on my radar much; I knew who they were, but they weren't my thing. While in college, I became friends with Stampinator, a girl who lived down the hall from me who turned out to have an eclectic and fascinating taste in music (as well as being perhaps the single most level-headed person I've ever met). When she ended up rooming with Schmoopy during my senior year, we were thrown together even more and before long, we were trading music and introducing each other to new and obscure artists.
We departed from campus for Christmas break, and a few days later I found an e-mail from Stampinator in my inbox with the subject line "Merry Musical Christmas". The e-mail contained four Rilo Kiley tracks, including "The Frug" (delightful to work out to, by the way) and "More Adventurous", which is the song that, nearly three years later, inspired this post. I added the tracks to my iTunes library and gave them a listen, but didn't give Rilo Kiley much thought beyond that. Occasionally, a song would come up on shuffle and I would fleetingly remember that I had wanted to look into buying an album, but nothing ever came of it.
Two months ago, a relationship that was very important to me came to an end, as they do from time to time. The day after I said goodbye to Buckeye for the last time, I got in my car, set my iPhone to shuffle and started the drive home from work. Of the nearly 3,000 songs loaded on my phone, Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous" was the first one to play, and for the first time, I really listened to Jenny Lewis' gorgeous voice proclaim the words, "I read with every broken heart we should become/more adventurous". I downloaded the entire album the moment I got home. Over the last two months, it's helped me both grieve and heal. Please to enjoy.
