Long Distance

A few weeks ago I realized that Tom and I have been dating for more than two years! He was actually Corban's friend first. But after he came to my family's annual Christmas party and told an awful joke about proposing to a girl with an engagement ring made out of a cremated family member, I claimed him as my own. (Actually it took him about a month to ask me on a real-live date, but that joke was the clincher. Not even kidding. Well, that and his ambition of becoming an astronaut, and his pretty blue eyes, and his mad Chinese skills. *Swoon* - but I digress...)

When we first started dating I was at school in Denver and he was at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, so we saw each other at least every weekend. But, after that semester finished, things got more complicated. I was transferring to Yale, and he was headed to Rice for grad school. That summer my mom invited him to join us on a family vacation in Europe. Tom thought it was a great idea, but I was less thrilled. I was convinced that after spending 2+ weeks with my family he would break up with me. I consoled myself by reasoning that the breakup would make our school plans less difficult.....Well, he didn't break up with me (still not exactly sure why - we were all crazy on that trip). And because we didn't breakup in Croatia, we had to decide if we were going to try the whole long-distance dating deal. I was really hesitant. We had been dating for 7 months - and he was my first real boyfriend. But we didn't break up. Instead we decided to date other people, just to see what would happen. It didn't really work. I think I went on four "dates" and he went on one....In December I admitted that I didn't want to date other people anymore. He agreed.

So we've been doing the whole long-distance thing ever since. And it's worked pretty well. We visit every four weeks or so, and talk every day. At one level I'm grateful for the space; it allows me to focus on school in a way that I probably wouldn't if Tom was here. At another level it kind of stinks.  And it makes me a little anxious. For the majority of our relationship, we've lived in different states - which definitely creates a different dynamic. We don't argue very much - and never about little things. When we are together, neither of us wants to do anything that would sully our time together - which is great, but maybe a little unrealistic. Sometimes it makes me wonder if we're experiencing an authentic relationship.

Last summer I decided to apply for internships in Houston (where Tom is in school) so we could see what being in the same place for an extended period of time was like. It was wonderful. We actually spent time together every day. And we got into fights about inconsequential nothings! And I could hardly believe that after 11 weeks I still wasn't sick of him! But since then we've had to go back to long-distance. And it's harder than it was before.

Sometimes I still wonder....And I get annoyed that he isn't here to go to things with me - to fight about things with me, to sit around and do nothing with me...Humph.

Have any of you ever been in long-distance relationships? What were the pros and cons? What advice do you have? Does it seem totally crazy?!

Honeymooners 3: Going on

Here's the last batch of photos from our trip to Costa Rica. Our final days were spent on the Caribbean coast in the town of Puerto Viejo. It was the perfect way to close an amazing vacation. As someone who has never been to the Caribbean before, I was really struck by the way everything seemed to slloooooooooooww doooooooooowwwnnn. Including us. Beach cruisers--or bare feet--were the primary mode of transportation, which was totally fine because no one had anywhere they had to be. The days and dreads were long, and none of the residents could remember how it was they came to live there.  

our porch-mate

In some ways, these days couldn't be more different. My company's big annual conference is taking place next week, and days zip by almost before they've started. Meanwhile my mind is engaged in an epic battle with itself, as it tries to decide whether I'm headed for certain disaster or enduring glory, with the odds changing ever couple of minutes. It's exhausting, but it's also exhilarating. And every time I think I've reached my limit, I'm proven wrong, and so I keep going.

Our days in the Caribbean were relaxing, restorative and incredibly chill. But oddly enough, times like these reinforce the fact that "dreamy" can be a subjective term, and if I had to choose, I'd take "big city hubbub" over "desert island bliss" any day.  

recycling at a random truck-stop FTW!

The primary mode of transportation in Puerto Viejo

A walk on the beach to watch the sun rise

I share this video ALL. THE. TIME. But...

'Twas Some Months After Christmas

'Twas some months after Christmas and all through the hood

The company was fantastic'ly good.

The food, it was vegan and more than enough

The tree was a tinsled and stockings were stuffed

The hospital seemed left behind long ago

And Christmas was back for a fine cameo

Momo had hauled all her presents from Denver

Nephew Tomkins had Hay Fever badly, remember?

While Dennis got meds from the closest drug store

Elizabeth tended to babies galore.

When all of a sudden arose a sweet chorus
of  off-Broadway show tunes of humor and tsorus.
On Mia, on Shiloh, on Libby and Noni
On Chari and Levi, on Corbi and Yoni,
On Premal and Babies, the kids just kept coming
And before we all knew it, the children were humming.

The melodies rose, while a few little puppets
Did their darndest impression of your favorite muppets.
The musical Godspell seemed quite apropos
For a spring celebration of Jesus Christ, yo.

Now this poem I see, it is getting quite long.
But needless to say that the gifts and the songs
Were just a small part of what made these libations
a perfectly perfect Christmas Celebration.

Life happens. You'll miss some darn cool things, it's true.
But you just remember whatever you do,
February or May or December in life
With love we can all have a very good night!

According to What?

Last week I ignored about a hundred things I really needed to do, and trundled the kiddies of to the Hirshhorn Museum to catch the Ai Weiwei exhibit before it closed. I'm so glad we did.

Ai Weiwei fills such an interesting space. He collaborated to design the famous(ly expensive) Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics, and was heavily courted by the local government in Shanghai before deciding to build his studio in their blossoming arts district. But then officials razed his new studio and threw the artist into prison.  Ai Weiwei was unable to attend this landmark retrospective, because they still haven't returned his passport.

Thousands of porcelain river crabs in a not-at-all thinly veiled protest of Chinese government censorship

Hettie was obsessed with this giant representation of the Chinese Zodiac -- for some reason she thought they were made out of chocolate, not bronze....

This marble construction helmet was Phinny's favorite -- maybe because he's grown up around so much home renovation!

Of his work, the artist has said, "I make the useful become not useful." These days, I feel that's a pretty spot-on commentary on my own life. Sometimes I look around at the chaos that all-too-often encompasses my little world, and am tempted to sink into despair. 

Some days, I would give almost anything for five peaceful minutes in a comfortable chair.

His art also put those thoughts pretty powerfully into perspective. 

This piece is made of rebar salvaged from collapsed schools in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake.

These giant rice bowls really touched me. Mundane simplicity, overflowing with beauty and abundance.

I'm trying to be a little more aware of the pearls littering my own quotidian life.
It's lovely.

Good People are Good to Everybody

I saw this over the weekend. I was, quite simply, touched.

And by touched, I definitely mean that I sobbed for 15 minutes after watching it.

A Revelation in Caramel

Since Mercina and Glorianna are busy with TEDxYale, I am going to fill the void with something way sweeter: Caramel sauce.  Not just any caramel sauce. The best caramel sauce you have or will ever taste. No joke. Bar none. End of story.

I'm a sucker for caramel. I always have been and I fear I always will. Something about the nutty, rich, sweetness of almost carbonized butter fat and sugar makes that diabetes inducing, artery clogging, euphoria crazed trip to the ICU seem almost worth it ... actually, it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it at all...  hum ...

But this caramel sauce is particularly amazing, largely due to a secret ingredient that will help you get that toasty, roasty yumminess every time. Now sometimes my sisters think my secret ingredients are crazy (though I must note  -- actually, I don't have to note it, I just want to note it in order to make a point and because I'm feeling the teensie weensiest bit snotty -- the last time this happened, a recipe just like mine turned up in Martha Stewart Living a few weeks later), but don't judge until you try this.

{via}

Charity's Unexpected Caramel Sauce

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup cream

4 tablespoons butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp soy sauce

Place brown sugar, cream and butter in sauce pan on medium heat. Stir frequently for about 7-10 minutes -- until sauce begins to thicken or til it reaches 170 on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and soy sauce. Mix vigorously. Serve immediately or allow to cool.

Eat with ice cream, bread pudding, cream puffs, cake, a spoon, cereal, you name it. It will taste better. Mine is still good after sitting in the fridge for 3 weeks. I'll let you know how much longer it lasts.

Vagabond

Recently my gut has been very much here in DC and my mind has been extremely occupied with thoughts in Denver, so it complicates matters a bit that my body has been roaming like a vagabond. Premal and I were just in Florida, then we spent a long weekend in Puerto Rico (where these pictures were taken), I’m off to Texas for a long week at the beginning of March, and then we’re going to India this April.  But I hope that’s it. I’m already beginning to miss DC, and our move is still four months away. So while gallivanting is fun, I’m going to make sure I have time to reach closure in my long-term relationship with this capital city.  

A Foodventure For A Cold Day: Hazlenut Speculoos Cookies

Flu season rages on and coupled with the current cold snap, I've been spending a lot of time in my house. We've been moving (which looks a lot more like Yoni moving both of us) and after Yoni's moved, he loves to sit down to some cookies and milk. The problem is while I love to cook, I'm not much of a baker. Maybe I don't like to follow directions. Maybe it's just not my gift. Either way, Yoni has been a cookie-less spouse since we were wed.

But last time we were in Cleveland, I had a cookie that changed they way I thought about baking. It was from Zoss Bakery in Cleveland Heights. It tasted like roasted hazelnuts in cookie form. I HAD to recreate it. When we got home, we had a bag of hazelnuts from trader joe's in the cupboard, eggs in the fridge and ... well ... the results blew my mind.   

You'll need ... 6 eggs whites, 2 cups hazelnuts, 1 cup confectioners sugar, 4 tablespoons sugar, one tsp. vanilla extract, one half teaspoon salt (optional), and a ziplock or pastry bag.

1 Place 2 cups of hazelnuts or filberts in your food processor or blender with 1 cup confectioners sugar (this can be made by putting 1/2 cup sugar in blender for about 30 seconds). Pulse until it's a flour-like consistency. 

2 Beat 6 egg whites with a half teaspoon salt (optional) and a half cup sugar til you have stiff peaks.

3 Gently fold vanilla extract and hazelnut mixture into the egg whites. 4 When it's mixed, put batter into a pastry bag or a zip lock bag. If using the ziplock, snip about 1/3 of an inch of the bottom left corner. 5 Pipe onto a cookie tray lined with parchement paper. Cookies should be about 2 inches apart. 6 Let sit for 30 minutes and preheat oven to 325. After 30 minutes, place cookies in oven. 

7 Cook for 18-20 minutes or until slightly golden around the edges 8 When done, Cool for another 20 minutes.

9 This step is TOTALLY optional, but there is a fantastical spread popularly known as Cookie Butter originally called speculoos. Imagine if the best little cookies you ever ate were the consistency of peanut butter. It is amazing. It will change your world and your dress size. I get mine at Trader Joe's but I first had it from the Wafels&Dinges guy in NYC. Once the cookies are cool, spread them with about a little less than a tablespoon of the stuff and top with another cookie. You can also use chocolate, custard, caramel, whatever suits your fancy.

10 EAT! These are wonderful for tea or dessert in front of your post-Valentine's day flowers or painting. You could also eat one while reading Piper's new post on her blog A Matter of Life and Breath. We're both Colorado girls and share a lot of friends (fun) and medical challenges (not so fun) and she's great.

11. Stay healthy, eat cookies and wash your hands!

Egg, Cream Cheese, and Orange Marmalade -- Lifetime Original Story

Cast

Soundtrack by

The moment Egg was laid, he was abandoned. His dad, if he even existed, left long before Egg was born, and his mother didn't want a kid -- she thought it would mess up the "free-range" lifestyle she'd gotten so used to over the years. He was accustomed to not having anyone looking out for him. For awhile, Egg stayed in a communal home with eleven other kids in situations much like his own; they called it the "carton". It wasn't much, but at least he had his own room and a bit of company. Until he didn't. One moment he'd been checking his neighbor for spots, the next he was spread wide on a hot pan -- totally exposed and covered in butter. At that moment, Egg stopped being tough. At that moment, he was just a kid, alone and scared.

***

Cream Cheese was a guy trying to figure stuff out. His mom and her boyfriend had given him 3 hours to move out of the foil wrapper he shared with them, and he was a man without a plan. Orange Marmalade was a pampered princess prone to rash decisions and longing to experience life outside the jar. She heard about Cream Cheese's situation through their mutual friend Table-Knife; she teasingly begged him to invite Cream Cheese to split rent with her on a chic tortilla she had found in the Counter District. Table-Knife relayed the message.

Much to everybody's surprise, Cream Cheese accepted.

They met on move-in day. Once T-Kn dropped them off at the tortilla and offered his goodbyes, they were left to the mandatory familiarity with which they now found themselves confronted. They sat in silence for several minutes, with nothing but the faint sizzling of butter in a distant frying pan to relieve them from their aloneness together. In an attempt to escape the wordless void into which he and Marmalade had stumbled, Cream Cheese started to stutter- "Th-thanks so much for offering to let me split. . . I mean share---"

"Oh come on," Marmalade interrupted him, "you're laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?"

"Sorry."

Thus began their life on the new tortilla. They lived together as strangers live together, because that's just what they were to each other -- strange. He was dairy, she was fruit; she liked a night out with her 'sugar and spice' types, while he hung with a gang of savory characters; he listened to Two Chains, she preferred Taylor Swift. They never spoke to each other about anything personal, each keeping closely to their respective halves, both physical and emotional, of the tortilla they shared.

***

The kitchen timer had just struck 5 minutes when Marmalade heard noises above the tortilla. She looked up to see the slatted green underside of a non-stick spatula. "Cream Cheese! Did you order something? It's here!" -- she bellowed towards the other side of the tortilla. "No, what is it?" he asked as he, too, looked up towards the spatula. As it neared, the frayed and glistening gold-white edges of a freshly fried egg -- steam still rising off it, became visible around the corners of the spatula. "Then where did it com---" she couldn't finish her sentence before the egg plopped onto the middle of the tortilla.  As they looked at the shining, scared yolk staring around its new surroundings, both Cream Cheese and Marmalade saw in it the meanest parts of themselves laid bare. Cream Cheese saw days of fear and uncertainty and abandonment; Marmalade saw the unrelenting, excruciating desire to be sincerely loved. And in that moment, a beautiful thing happened. Marmalade and Cream Cheese rose to embrace the egg and each other. They forgot awkwardness and haughtiness and instead focused wholly on comforting another edible thing, and Egg felt really safe for the first time in his life. The tortilla folded together in an embrace filled with tenderness and butter and warmth and Cream Cheese and Marmalade and Egg. That day, they had discovered the sweet savor of true friendship.

Too Long; Didn't Read: Sandwich butter-fried egg in tortilla spread with half cream cheese, half marmalade. Fry in more butter. Eat.

Great minds think alike

The contents of the Valentine's Day package I sent to Tom -

The contents of the Valentine's Day package Tom sent to me - 

I guess we have similar tastes :-) 

(Or maybe we just like chocolate...)

To Love

Mimo, Didi and Momo

To hold. To honor.

To annoy. To exasperate. 

(To occasionally despise.) 

To commiserate. To alleviate.  To infatuate. 

To GROW. To be. 

LOVE isn't just a noun, it's a verb. 

To do oh so many things! 

It's not something to capture; 

It's something to lead us 

into the arms and 

up to the vistas that await 

and to wait when waiting seems futile. 

To help when help's not wanted.

To admit you're wrong.

To Sing. To hope.

to love in small ways and 
WRIT LARGE
to live. TO LEARN. 
to love. 

S is for Ssssssssssssnake

Last night we rang in the Lunar New Year at our brother's house. We welcomed the Year of the Snake with dumplings, sweet melon tea and lots of good company. 

According to legend, Snakes are introspective, refined and rational -- which made me laugh, because we certainly don't have any of them at our house! I'm a Monkey, which means I'm talkative, eccentric and like new things. Which, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, is pretty accurate....

Keep reading for a rundown on the other signs of the Chinese Zodiac. Does yours ring true?

Five Reads!

If you hadn't already guessed, we can be a little prudish here at FIVE.

And by prudish, I mean none of us are super into bondage.

Or masochism.

Or Twilight.

(At least, not that I know of.)

If those aren't really your thing either, we have some book suggestions for you.

If those are really your thing,  we have some book suggestions for you, too.

You can read them after your done with . . .

whatever.

Everybody

I know it's a few days early, but this made me think of you:

Happy birthday, Dad.

Flower map

 Supposedly, 

Hydrangeas symbolize heartfelt emotions; they can be used to express gratitude for being understood, or - on a less lovely note - heartlessness.

Rose meanings vary according to color. On the whole, they symbolize deep love, concentration, intelligence, balance, and passion. They can also send a message of healing, rejuvenation and courage.

Tulips signify fame or a declaration of love. 

Poppies symbolize beauty, ::magic::, consolation, fertility and eternal life. They can also denote sleep and repose.  

Ranunculus symbolize radiant charm.

Thistles symbolize nobility

Peonies symbolize bashfulness, compassion, a happy life, happy marriage, good health and prosperity, indignation, or shame  (mixed messages much?).

Anemones can either indicate fading hope and a feeling of having been forsaken, or anticipation.

These are some of my very favorites flowers.

What are yours (and have you ever looked up their supposed symbolism)? :-)

P.S. A few pretty guides to inspire your flower arranging 

Let's do lunch

There’s something so deliciously naughty about a lunch date.

For me, it beats the pants off a fancy dinner any day. If you doubt me, just try it. Sneak off for an hour or so with your someone special. The food doesn’t matter as much as you might think, the company will be fantastic, and the knowledge that your colleagues are stuck shackled to spreadsheets and scenarios is…quite satisfying.

That said, I think the culture surrounding the midday meal needs reform. Lunch is underappreciated. Often swallowed down at one’s desk, with little attention paid to flavor let alone freshness or quality. Sharing a meal with pleasant company provides a real respite from the hubbub of corporate America. I know when I've had a happy meal, I'm a happier worker. Staying late at work isn't as taxing, and I'm more patient with those around me. A (reasonably) leisurely lunch provides a chance to recharge so you can charge ahead.

It's restaurant week in DC, and Premal whisked me off to our very favorite Indian restaurant this afternoon for three-courses of crazy deliciousness. It was so good that he took an order to go for his folks who are getting back from two weeks in India this afternoon!