Donuts for Dad's Day

The donuts that I started last night turned out okay. I was a little skeptical about the instructions to "use your finger to poke a hole in the middle of each of the mounds to give them a donut-like center," and rightfully so: once the dough had risen, the holes all but disappeared. Still, the consistency and flavor of the end product were pretty good. Not quite as light and delicate as I would have preferred but, still, pretty good. I think I've eaten about eight of them today. Baked donuts, though certainly a little less tasty than their fried counterparts, nevertheless successfully satisfy that donut craving, minus the yucky stomach-achey after affects.

The donuts came out of the oven just in time for a late Father's Day breakfast. My dad grabbed a few and took them out into the back yard with him, so he could munch and work in the garden at the same time.

I have a great dad. I don't think I demonstrate often enough just how grateful I am for all he does. He's such a hard worker, generous, thoughtful, and a good friend. Both my parents have been absolutely amazing these past months, while I've been forgoing searing for a job in order to travel the world or just sit around the house reading a book. They never pressured me or tried to make me feel guilty about taking some time off just for me. They never tutted or made me feel ridiculous after all the times I've changed my mind about what I want to do next with my life. They've given me space. They've let me live in their house. Whether I was thinking I wanted to go to seminary or start a second bachelor's degree, stay in San Diego or backpack around Europe, they've been nothing but supportive. And I appreciate it. Deeply.

Right now I can hear them in the living room, watching 30 Rock on Netflix. I'm also grateful that I'm able to share common tastes with my folks, like our tastes in sitcoms and in donuts. I think I'll close my laptop now and go join them in a little of both.

...Donuts...?

I took a nap instead of going for a hike this afternoon and I woke up craving donuts. Which is weird because I'm not a donut person. At all. I think I am drawn to the idea of a donut--the unique shape, the delicate glaze, the zazzy sprinkles--but the gross, greasy, bloated feeling that they invariably leave me with post-consumption has always been enough cause for me to take the unwavering stance that I don't like donuts. But, then again, maybe I still haven't given donuts a fair chance. For instance, I've never had fresh homemade donuts before.

I found this recipe on food gawker (a current obsession) and it appeals to me on account of its being vegan (yay!) and baked (rather than deep fried...does that mean it's still technically a donut?). I expected my parents to scoff at the idea of homemade donuts, as they occasionally do when they find me putting a lot of time and effort into making something that I could just drive down to a corner shop and buy for less than the cost of ingredients; but, to my pleasant surprise, they both commented nostalgically on how their respective mothers used to make donuts for breakfast on occasion and how those donuts were "so good!" Though I worry a bit about my first attempt at donuts being compared to the adept creations of my either of my culinarily masterful grandmothers, I am excited to feel just a little bit more connected to these two matriarchs.

But the process of getting the dough ready for tomorrow morning was a bit involved, and it's quite late. The dough balls are in the fridge now, resting until breakfast time, and I think I ought to follow suit (minus the fridge part; just some rest would be fine).

Inspiration/Motivation

Four years ago at this time, when I was smack-dab right in the middle of a mission to write an entire novel in just 30 days, I established a set of "rituals" to help guide me along and keep me focused. One of these rituals was a specific dress code: whenever it was time to write, I would change into a bright red whale-print sarong and a tank-top without a bra (for obvious reasons). It was an extremely practical costume, considering I lived on the second floor of a two-story apartment building and it was the middle of summer in east L.A. county. But it also helped to get me into the mindset that it was now writing time, a time set apart from all the other times of the day when I might be found wearing something a little more--um--fashionable?

A second ritual manifested itself in the form of the food I ate. Perhaps I have been too swayed by the marketing claim on the Old Spaghetti Factory's menu that Homer, while composing the Iliad, lived on Spaghetti with Mazithra Cheese and Browned Butter; but, I swear, it is the most inspirational/motivational dish I know. And I devoured it almost daily throughout my one-month journey to novelisthood.

I also sort of took up smoking. But that's a story for another day.

For lunch today I had a nice big bowl of pasta, topped with shredded myzithra cheese, melted butter, and a sprinkling of dried parsley flakes. Did it inspire me to sit down and write? I don't know. But I'm writing now, aren't I?

Rituals help us to keep our lives in check. They keep us organized. They give us direction and motivate us to complete tasks that we might otherwise have a difficult time finding the motivation to complete. When I started this blog, with the earnest intention to make updating it a daily practice, I didn't establish any rituals to help me toward my goal. That was a mistake. As I leaned in my eighth-grade Study class--a course that I and all the other Seminar Program kids with ADD were forced to take that year if we wanted to remain in GATE (Gifted And Talented Education)--I need rituals in order to accomplish my goals. Without rituals, I get distracted. And fail.

So, obviously, I haven't been updating my blog on a daily basis. While I was in France I had an awfully good excuse, because I didn't have my computer with me and I spent large chunks of time--especially toward the end--away from Internet access altogether. I wasn't going to pass up the chance to work on a goat farm in rural France or to stay in a monastery with monks and young people from all over the world just so that I could remain somewhat dedicated to my cyber-duties! But that still doesn't account for all the other times in the past nine-and-a-half months that I've gone for days or even weeks without so much as a photo or a recipe.

Concerning the mission I had for this blog when I started out, I've already failed. But that doesn't mean that I can't make the last eleven weeks of this little blog's life the best ones it's ever known!

So...a ritual. Here's what I've got in mind:

There are seventy-eight days left until my twenty-sixth birthday. Seventy-eight more days of twenty-five. Just now, right before I started this sentence, I took a very brief break and ran up to the attic to find a big glass jar. It is now sitting on my dresser, empty. Every day, after I have written something on my blog, I will drop a (can you tell I'm making this up as I go?) button...no!...a dollar! in the jar. If, on September 4th, I have at least $75 in the jar, I will use the money to buy something beautiful. If, however, I have less than $75 in the jar, I will write a check for $75 to Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee (do you see a slight Radio Lab influence creeping in here?). My parents would definitely disown me. I'm dead serious. It's on.

However, since this ritual is really more of a psychological device designed to deter me from laziness, I'm adding one extra piece of positive reinforcement: Whenever I'm writing something for my blog, I also get to have some ice cream. Starting now!

A Job

I suppose it would be appropriate for me to announce that I did, in fact, accomplish my goal for the week. Yesterday, I went for a second interview for a bookseller position at Barnes & Noble and was hired on the spot. My training begins next Tuesday.

Yes, it only pays minimum wage. No, I don't need a bachelor's degree in English to perform the necessary tasks of operating a cash register and helping customers locate the latest installment of the Twilight series or whatever (I'm not very up-to-date on current bestsellers; I guess I'll be forced to remedy that soon.). But it's a job. With books. And I'm grateful.

My Goal for the Week

Find a job.

Waiting for Wrinklebutt

On a Saturday afternoon, Laurent and I push our kayaks into the water next to the park at the National City marina. We climb somewhat clumsily into our boats--neither of us are professional kayakers--and, after a bit of trial and error, fit our spray skirts securely into place before paddling out into the San Diego bay. Laurent, a Couchsurfer from Bordeaux, France who is currently staying at our place, needs only a minute to get accustomed to the rhythm of paddling before he is speeding off in front of me; meanwhile, I suffer in silence with my old, defunct paddle, dousing myself unavoidably with sea water after each stroke. It doesn't really matter, though: the water in the bay is surprisingly warm, to the point that I'm genuinely tempted to tip my kayak over and go for a swim. But now Laurent seems to be stopping to let me catch up and so I power ahead.

To our left as we leave the marina and enter the bay proper are grassy saltwater marshes, bustling with bird life and excellent for exploring by kayak during high tide. I even spot a snowy egret taking flight: always a thrilling sight. But we're not here today for birdwatching. I must confess I've led Laurent to the bay today with somewhat exaggerated suggestions that we might encounter a sea turtle. And not just any sea turtle. The largest sea turtle in recorded history.

It isn't just I who feel the urge to swim in the warm waters of bay: the San Diego Bay is home to a group of about 60 green sea turtles (according to a 2007 report from the NOAA Fisheries Service), considered an endangered species throughout the East Pacific. Up until recent years, the water discharged by the South Bay Power Plant created a turtle jacuzzi on the south end of the bay, and the turtle population still seems most concentrated in this area. The conditions in the bay are so ideal as a turtle habitat, in fact, that they have succeeded in winning the long-term residency of an exceptionally enormous green sea turtle, Wrinklebutt, so monikered on account of an unusual deformity on her shell. When she was last netted by scientists in 2006, Wrinklebutt weighed in at an astonishing 550 pounds, making her quite possibly the largest of her species in the entire East Pacific. Since there have been no "official" Wrinklebutt sightings for a few years, however, it is not known for sure whether this colossus is still alive. Still, she remains a celebrity among local wildlife buffs and a legend among those who spend their weekends kayaking in the bay.

Laurent is beginning to tease me, "Where are all the sea turtles? I want my money back for this kayak tour." I reply with some clever crack about how they dislike French people. But turtles or no, neither of us really have anything to complain about. It is a beautiful day, and we have a clear view of Coronado Island and its bridge and Point Loma stretching out toward the sea in the background. There is a slight breeze, but the water is mostly calm. As we turn the boats around to head back to the dock, the tide pushes us in.

Though I doubt the likelihood of ever actually encountering the famous Wrinklebutt, it would be wonderful to someday spy a sea turtle while I'm kayaking on the bay (though, of course, going kayaking more than once every two years wouldn't hurt my chances). But if I never see one, that's okay, too. The point is not seeing the sea turtles, but simply being outdoors in the place where I might see them. On this day, I can't help but draw a parallel between Laurent and me and the two main characters in Waiting for Godot (I mean, besides the fact that we also seem to repeat the same jokes over and over and over again). Gogo and Didi spend the duration of the play standing on the stage, "passing the time" as they wait for an illusive personage who never appears. If we in the audience focus morosely on the fact that, in the end, Godot never shows up, I think we're missing out on so much of what the play has to say. It's not whether Godot comes but the act of waiting for him that matters. The journey is more important than the destination, an adage that holds especially true in the context of outdoor activities. In other words, life isn't about the turtles; it's about just getting out there on the water and having a lovely afternoon.

The one where she decides to go to France

"You must be brave," people kept saying to me. Brave? It might sound brave to some, I suppose, if not downright brazen, that I would suddenly decide to put the remainder of my English-teaching savings toward taking a two-month solo trip to France. I didn't know anyone in France. My mission, simply, was to learn a bit of French and spend some time on some French farms. I had a French school in Paris picked out for the first three weeks but, otherwise, I would be making plans as I went. "Brave." The choice of descriptor seemed logical and, yet, I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel anything. Not even scared. The fact that I was truly going to France--had paid for the non-refundable airline ticket and sent a deposit for the language school--didn't seem real to me. Empirically, yes, I knew I was going. But I didn't feel it.

This emotional numbness, this unshakable malaise, was one of the main motivations that led me to decide to go to France in the first place: I wanted to feel something. It seemed that I hadn't really felt anything for a considerable while. Which, in retrospect, was probably not entirely accurate. I was just depressed. And I think we've all experienced moments (I do almost daily) where we compare the present moment to a preceding one, and are filled with insufferable angst that things aren't as good now as they were when we were in that other town, other job, other relationship, other mindset. Of course, that earlier reality had its imperfections, too, we just don't consider them because we are depressed.

Such was my condition in February of this year. I was jobless, living with my parents, my savings from teaching in Japan trickling away slowly as I searched less-than-half-heartedly for a job. My sister, Lindsay, had just gotten married and, with no more wedding to plan and prepare for, I was left to face the void of my future, armed with nothing but a bachelor's degree in English and a vague intention to go back to school for something. I started to panic. It seemed that all of the career advice I had ever received--to follow my dreams, to do what I love--was rendered irrelevant by the growing realization that I had no dreams and, if in fact there was something I would love doing, I had no idea what it was because I had never done it before.

One day in late February I was hanging out with some friends. This is usually a good idea because being with friends helps me to feel better about my lack of direction in life because most of my friends are in a similar situation. However, since we share the same predicament, my friends are unable to give me any helpful advice and, as soon as I am no longer with them, I go back to being depressed. But on this particular day, one of my friends said something to me that changed everything. She asked me where I wanted to go on my next vacation. It was an innocent question, I'm sure, posed simply for the sake of interesting conversation. Without having to think about it much, I told her I wanted to go to France and spend some time learning French. It was an idea that I had toyed with for a while toward the end of my second year in Japan, and I had never completely discarded it, though the quizzical looks I got from people when I told them the idea and their unanswerable questions, "Why France? Why French?" had persuaded me, in my insecurity, to let it become obscured in the back of the closet of my brain. Now, with the permission of my friend's hypothetical question, I pulled the idea back into the light and, dusting it off, noted just how strongly it still appealed to me.

Yet, in answer to those questions as to my reasons for choosing France and it's language, "Because I want to," didn't seem like strong enough justification for spending several thousand dollars to go on vacation for two months. For the sake of explaining myself to others, I focused mainly on the reasons I shouldn't not go to France:

1. I may never have the time and money to do something like this again.
2. I'm 25 now and it's cheaper to do a lot of things in Europe if you're 25 or younger.
3. I don't have a family to look after.
4. I might regret it later if I don't.

Though it works unfailingly in arithmetic equations, in life, a double negative does not make a positive. Using a roundabout means to justify myself to others rather than simply having the confidence to be honest about my own hopes and passions provided me with a compelling enough argument to legitimize my trip to France and to motivate me to take the practical steps needed to get the trip in motion; but, it set the precedent that this trip was intertwined with my need to prove myself to others, a need that on several occasions threatened to destroy what otherwise turned out to be possibly the greatest two months of my life. It was not until the last week of my trip that I finally confronted this need of mine more seriously than I ever have before and, in a monastery not far from the border to Germany, glimpsed the road to freedom from self-deprecation. It is a road I continue now and will probably always continue to walk but, on the first of March, the day I officially decided to go to France, I was miles from the trail head.

In the three weeks leading up to my departure, I tried to mentally grasp the gravity of what was coming, but all my pondering failed to elicit the feelings of enthusiasm or nervousness that might be expected of someone in my situation. How can you be excited about something if you have no idea what to expect? And how can you know what to expect if you've never done anything remotely like it before? No, I wasn't scared. But one thing I certainly didn't feel--even as I packed all the belongings I would need for two months into a 65-liter backpack, as I sent emails to the absolute strangers who didn't speak English whom I would be staying with in Paris, as I hugged my dad goodbye in front of the San Diego airport on the morning of the 23rd of March--was brave.