I turned 32 this past Saturday! There was a party at our house and the weather cooperated: it was sunny and 72 degrees, perfect for sitting outside and drinking cocktails on the lawn with friends.

In addition to being my birthday, the party was a celebration with our Portland pals of Matthew’s and my nuptials. I was all set to make a wedding cake, and then I remembered that neither of us really likes cake. What we do like is cookies, so I made six dozen cookies, all of our favorite varieties, and stacked them in the shape of a 2-tiered wedding cake:

The wedding topper are statues that Matthew and I found in a “free” box outside of an apartment complex while on a walk last year. They made me laugh, so I pocketed them and they’ve been on my bedside table ever since. Five minutes after I took this photo, they fell off and the lady rabbit lost her ears and part of her hat!

For the food, there was a baked potato, tater tot, and tortilla chip bar, with all the fixins:

This was pretty much the party food of my dreams. (If you want me to cater your wedding, don’t just sit there being jealous, just say the word!)

But I know why you’re here. You want to know if I polished off any more items on my “32 Before 32” list.

After the last update, there were still 17 items left. In 20 days, I only managed to knock out two of them:

14. Donate dead car to charity

I can’t even take credit for this one, though, because Matthew did all the work! Thanks!

15. Make five year career goals with micro-goals to work on now

I did an awful lot of thinking on this topic. In the past ten years, I’ve been a: Montessori school assistant teacher, cubicle worker at a dot com, massage therapist, labor doula, after school childcare worker, telecommuting production specialist for the same dot com, cookbook author, and now nanny. Each has had its benefits; none were so rewarding that I thought of them as my career. I was just trying to find something that wasn’t too terrible and mind-numbing, that paid the bills, that would never require a 60 hour work week.

The fantasies that a lot of teenagers and college students have of making big money, living in a huge house, taking extravagant vacations; I never did that. As a college freshman, I watched the (pretty terrible) remake of Sabrina in the basement of my dorm with my RA one night, and Sabrina’s father says that he became a driver so that he could read all day, and I deeply related to that line.  I could (still can!) totally envision taking a job just so that I was essentially being paid to read all day.

So I drafted several five year career plans and came up with nothing. I will continue doing what I’m doing now because I love being able to spend so much time with Milo, I love the kids who are staying with me, and I am good at it. When Milo is old enough to start preschool, I may continue to watch children or I may switch gears. If Portland is still supporting a food cart culture, I think that I would really enjoy having my own food cart. I don’t know right now. But not for lack of thinking about it. If anything, I’m giving myself permission to stop thinking about it all the time.

Please let me know about your own experiences around deciding what you want to be when you grow up. I would love to hear them.

Only 20 days left until I turn 32, so I better make some more progress on that list, geez. Let’s see what was left after my last update:

4. Visit parents
5. Build vegetable boxes
9. Get patio set so that we can eat dinner outside on nice nights
10. Build sandbox for Milo and pals
11. Go down a dress size
12. Do yoga at least three times a week
13. Sign up for charity work
14. Donate dead car to charity
15. Make five year career goals with micro-goals to work on now
16. Don’t say anything negative about anyone for at least one full week: friend, family, acquaintance, celebrity, no one. Then try to increase that to a month.
18. Take Milo to the coast for the day
19. Have a family picnic at the Arboretum before magnolia season is over
20. Go on hikes at least twice a month before it gets too hot
21. Bake for friends
22. Host a dinner party
23. Try a vegetable, plant, or spice I’ve never tried before
24. Perfect a Thai drunken noodle recipe
25. Cook Matthew a meal of all his favorite foods
26. Paint the kitchen nook
27. Touch up the border of our bedroom
28. Paint and assemble our headboard
31. Put up up blackout blinds in Milo’s bedroom for naps
32. Edit and upload a few of our videos that are sitting on the hard drive

I’ve managed to knock out a few of these!

4. Visit parents

In mid-May, we took a long weekend and went to visit my family at my parents’ house in Texas. My mom and I threw a small party to celebrate the wedding, and Milo got to see his cousins, and I got to see friends from Austin who we hadn’t seen in over a year. It was wonderful!

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

5. Build vegetable boxes

Not going to happen! I reused the boxes I used in the fall, which I made out of salvaged untreated drawers from The Rebuilding Center. They’re not going to last past this fall, so I guess I’ll have to build new vegetable boxes next spring.

18. Take Milo to the coast for the day

Milo and I went to Cannon Beach last weekend. I woke him up that morning and said: “Do you want to see a really big rock?” and he spent the rest of the morning shouting: “ROCK! ROCK!” I did not oversell the rock, people. He was pretty much ecstatic about this huge rock. He ran toward it as soon as it came into sight. Do I know my son or what?

I love living so close to the coast. To hop in the car at 9 AM and have my feet in an ocean by 10:30 is just the greatest.

22. Host a dinner party

One of my oldest friends, Jesse, is strongly considering moving to Portland, so on recent visit, we had him over and sweetened the pot by making him cocktails, delicious food, and playing volleyball in my front yard while listening to the Top Gun soundtrack. That’s what you do when you want your friends to live nearby, right?

In case you were doubting how long I’ve known Jesse, here is photo documention: us before prom. I’m the one dressed like Stevie Nicks. You’re welcome.

That’s the next item on the list when trying to convince a friend to move nearby, right? Post awkward photos of them from when they were 15 on the internet? Oh good. Check!

24. Perfect a Thai drunken noodle recipe

I hesitate to post about this, because it has happened, but I haven’t written up the recipe yet, and I know that proclaiming: “I have perfected a vegan Thai drunken noodle recipe!” will only inevitably lead to 25 comments demanding said recipe. I will get around to it! I swear! Eventually! Maybe it will be on my “33 Before 33″ list.

There are some items which should really come off this list because I can tell you now that they just aren’t going happen in the next three weeks! But I will make some earnest effort on the more easily attainable items and check back in around my birthday.

On Sunday, I had the honor to be a judge at the first ever Portland Vegan Iron Chef competition, put on by Try Vegan PDX.

It was truly epic! Thanks to all of you who were watching the live stream and have contacted me to tell me how much you liked it, but I deserve none of the credit. I just showed up and ate mind-blowingly delicious gourmet vegan food, for free. Best gig ever! Next year, I hope to have the time in my schedule to volunteer and help put it together.

I just wanted to share a few memories of the event, accompanied by some photos courtesy of Lucas. The secret ingredient was chocolate (I might have let out an audible anticipatory gasp when it was announced), and the chefs outdid themselves incorporating the chocolate into their dishes.

Here I am at the judges’ table, trying to quickly devour coconut-chocolate-chickpea dal prepared by the fine chefs from Blossoming Lotus:

That dish was the dal of my dreams. I wish that I could eat it every day. It shouldn’t even be called dal, it should be called “silky flavor explosion heaven, put it in your mouth!” (Hey Blossoming Lotus, if you end up naming it that at your restaurant, you’re welcome.)

Another appetizer favorite of mine:

My favorite dessert of the night was Qausu’s chocolate-cashew pudding with fresh berries and peanut brittle:

It was no surprise to any of the judges that Chef Qausu AsaaseYaa won the tournament (although the votes were extremely close and both Wes Hannah and Aaron Adams made some outstanding dishes), but we were all a little surprised that we teared up when she accepted her trophy.

It was a good day to be a vegan! Can’t wait for next year.

Lately, Milo has been having trouble with groups: as soon as we enter a room with more than two adults, he freezes—no matter how well he knows them. He stands stock still, avoids eye contact, and refuses to acknowledge their existence. The more attention that they pay to him, the worse it gets, but he isn’t doing it to get attention, in fact, it’s the attention that is freaking him out, not the size of the crowd. When we are at a public place, like the farmers market or grocery store, he’s perfectly content and natural and chatting with me nonstop. That is, until a stranger talks to him, and then he freezes.

I know it’s a phase, but it’s a phase that is troublesome to me because his father has crippling social anxiety, which makes us both hyperaware of all signs of social anxiety in Milo.

So I bought him a little bear.

I got this little rubber panda bear for $.50 at a toy store in Nob Hill when I was shopping with Lauren. When I came home, I told Milo that it was his Brave Bear, and that he should keep it in his pocket and whenever he was scared, he could take out the bear and the bear would help him to be brave. I don’t know if this was the best approach, or if it will work at all, and I’m thinking I should probably go back to the toy store and get a dozen or so of these as backup, but Milo is really into the idea so far.

I might be biased, but I think that my dude is pretty awesome, and I just want other people to have the chance to get to know him. When I was his age, I was starting conversations with strangers in the grocery store. Come to think of it, I am still doing that. I don’t expect (or want) for him to be his loudmouth mother, because that came with its own set of problems, but if he evolves into a taciturn person, I hope that it’s not because he’s too afraid to be himself.

Let’s cross our fingers for Brave Bear.

Here is what was left from the original list, if you need a memory jog:

4. Visit parents
5. Build vegetable boxes
8. Plant flowers
9. Get patio set so that we can eat dinner outside on nice nights
10. Build sandbox for Milo and pals
11. Go down a dress size
12. Do yoga at least three times a week
13. Sign up for charity work
14. Donate dead car to charity
15. Make five year career goals with micro-goals to work on now
16. Don’t say anything negative about anyone for at least one full week: friend, family, acquaintance, celebrity, no one. Then try to increase that to a month.
17. Go to the hot baths with the ladies
18. Take Milo to the coast for the day
19. Have a family picnic at the Arboretum before magnolia season is over
20. Go on hikes at least twice a month before it gets too hot
21. Bake for friends
22. Host a dinner party
23. Try a vegetable, plant, or spice I’ve never tried before
24. Perfect a Thai drunken noodle recipe
25. Cook Matthew a meal of all his favorite foods
26. Paint the kitchen nook
27. Touch up the border of our bedroom
28. Paint and assemble our headboard
29. Sew bedroom curtains
30. Figure out clothing storage solution that will work
31. Put up up blackout blinds in Milo’s bedroom for naps
32. Edit and upload a few of our videos that are sitting on the hard drive

Since then, I have crossed off:

8. Plant flowers
29. Sew bedroom curtains
30. Figure out clothing storage solution that will work

And my personal favorite:

17. Go to the hot baths with the ladies

We’re going to Texas in two weeks to visit my family and have a small wedding celebration there, and I’m really looking forward to it. What I’m not looking forward to is plane travel with a 2-year-old. Twice. Milo is an easygoing and adaptable kid, but when I think of how grumpy airports make otherwise rational adults, I can only imagine what it will be like for him. If you have any tips, please feel free to send them my way.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, Matthew and I have decided that we’re going to get rid of the grass in our front yard, and if it goes well and we like the result, we might get rid of the grass in our backyard, too. A lot of the homes in our North Portland neighborhood have eschewed grass in favor of gravel, cedar mulch, flower beds, bushes, and evergreen perennials, and I love the look of it. Whenever I pass a lawn-free front yard as I’m walking to the park, I am compelled to stop and admire it, no matter how many times I’ve passed the home before. Cute rock gardens! Hardy perennials! Japanese maples! No mowing! No dandelions! Yes, please.

The previous owners of our home did absolutely zero in the way of landscaping, so we have a clean slate: 1700 square feet of potential. While I should find that kind of freedom exciting, I’ve just been intimidated by it, because the sheer work required just to have an organic, weed-free yard was daunting in and of itself. However, if I lay down a carpet of anti-weed material and then put gravel and mulch on top of it, I may never have to shovel out another dandelion in my life.

Let me know if you’ve done away with grass at your home, and if you have any advice or tips!

When I read Nicole’s 30 Before 30, I started thinking about what a list of my own might look like, so I drafted a post and have been updating it over the weeks as things occurred to me.

I turn 32 on July 17, so here is a list of things I’d like to accomplish before then. I went into this deciding that fewer than half of these could involve spending any money whatsoever, and keeping to that was surprisingly difficult!

I’ll repost the list every month between now and then with items removed once I accomplish them.

Original list:

1. Get married
2. Plan wedding parties
3. Finish wedding website
4. Visit parents
5. Build vegetable boxes
6. Re-pot and fertilize indoor plants
7. Plant herbs
8. Plant flowers
9. Get patio set so that we can eat dinner outside on nice nights
10. Build sandbox for Milo and pals
11. Go down a dress size
12. Do yoga at least three times a week
13. Sign up for charity work
14. Donate dead car to charity
15. Make five year career goals with micro-goals to work on now
16. Don’t say anything negative about anyone for at least one full week: friend, family, acquaintance, celebrity, no one. Then try to increase that to a month.
17. Go to the hot baths with the ladies
18. Take Milo to the coast for the day
19. Have a family picnic at the Arboretum before magnolia season is over
20. Go on hikes at least twice a month before it gets too hot
21. Bake for friends
22. Host a dinner party
23. Try a vegetable, plant, or spice I’ve never tried before
24. Perfect a Thai drunken noodle recipe
25. Cook Matthew a meal of all his favorite foods
26. Paint the kitchen nook
27. Touch up the border of our bedroom
28. Paint and assemble our headboard
29. Sew bedroom curtains
30. Figure out clothing storage solution that will work
31. Put up up blackout blinds in Milo’s bedroom for naps
32. Edit and upload a few of our videos that are sitting on the hard drive

So far, I’ve accomplished:

1. Get married

Yup!

2. Plan wedding parties
3. Finish wedding website
6. Re-pot and fertilize indoor plants
7. Plant herbs

Let me know if you’ve made similar lists!

I don’t handle transition well. I have friends and loved ones who really flourish in times of transition, whose capability to roll with the punches is honestly nothing short of extraordinary and who seem to have endless patience for adjusting variables.

I want to be that person, but transition and uncertainty make me physically ill. I like to know where I’m headed. I don’t even like to go on walks unless I have a destination in mind. I’d love to be the person who can just happily wander around my neighborhood or fly by the seat of my pants, but I’m so not. I’m trying to make peace with that.

Luckily for me, my life is starting to have a definite routine again. I began nannying on Monday and so far, it’s going even better than I had hoped for. I realized that all of things that I hated about my previous daycare jobs is nonexistent in this situation. I worked for several daycares where I was overworked, underpaid, utterly unappreciated—by my boss, that is, my kids always loved me and attacked me with affection, which is the best perk!

Worst of all, there were multiple times where a child with a behavioral problem was compromising the happiness of the rest of my kids, and I was powerless to do anything about it. When I was at the Montessori school, the director of the school didn’t want to have to deal with the parents at all, so she made it my responsibility to talk to the parents of problem children. I was 21 and there I was, having to tell a crying mother that other parents were threatening to pull their children out of the school unless her child could behave. I was having to tell her that while 14 other toddlers swarmed around me, tugging on me for attention. It was a nightmare.

Being a nanny, on the other hand, has been truly awesome. I am keeping the group small, and since all of the kids are only with me part-time, there is a nice rotation and variety and there are still some chunks of time where it’s just me and Milo. Matthew is currently in the application process for a few apprenticeships, so I’m really glad to have an extra hand when I need one, but the kids are sweet and easygoing, and when I wake up in the morning, there is no sense of dread. It’s funny how I didn’t really notice the dread until it was gone. How long had I been waking up, hating the idea of having to lock myself away at some point to get work done? I don’t even know. Possibly it had always been that way and I just didn’t notice, because I thought that was the default, it was what everyone felt on a weekday.

Anyway, here is what you came for, pictures of cute kids:

Holy crap, so much cuteness!

I’m thinking about starting a happy hour for nannies and caregivers in Portland. It will be a monthly opportunity to get together, compare notes, talk about experiences. I definitely do not want it to be a bitch-fest. If you know someone who might be interested, send ‘em my way.

Here’s my favorite thing about living with a toddler: watching him make decisions. It is the source of endless fascination and pleasure for me. That tired old cliche “seeing his gears turn”—this is really true with a young child. You can watch their expressions change as they process new information.

And since I’m human and thus every observation I make about someone just makes me think about myself, the thousands of decisions that Milo makes in a day leads me to ponder my own decision-making.

Most of the critical long-term decisions that I’ve made in my life were made in my late teens and early 20s: what college I attended, my major(s), where I lived after college, my first jobs. I even met Matthew when I was 20, although we didn’t start dating until I was 26—lucky for Matthew.

Here’s the thing about your early 20s: You’re an adult by every definition that counts. You can vote; you can drink; most of us have graduated college or trade school and have begun careers. Some of us are married or dating the person we will marry. Some of us even have kids.

But a 21-year-old isn’t even a fully-formed human being yet. The frontal lobe reaches full maturity during your mid-20s. Why is your frontal lobe so important?

The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions.

So that’s some pretty important stuff. The underdeveloped frontal lobe is why a lot of us did things in our teens and 20s that seems at best reckless and at worst criminal, or at least criminally stupid.

I was recently laid off from the company for whom I had been working since I was 21. It was the kind of foundation-shaking life occurence that makes you take stock, that makes you look back and wonder how things might have been different if you’d chosen another path.

As a parent, I am really saddened by how much pressure is on teenagers to figure out their entire futures before they’ve even figured out who they are yet. I don’t know yet how I’m going to help Milo through that time in his life, but I do want to make sure that none of that pressure is coming from me. I hope that he screws up, a lot, and learns from all of it. And that he can pick himself up after every setback and shoulder on. I hope that if he learns anything from us, it’s that failure isn’t the worst thing. Giving up is the worst thing.

This post contains spoilers about LOST through Season 5 after the image. Be warned!

I wish that I could tell you how much thought I’ve given to Season 6 of LOST without coming off as the craziest obsessed fan ever.

Here’s the thing about me: I’m not obsessive—and trust me on this point, because I’ve now lived with and loved two people with OCD, so I know it when I see it—but rather I am fond of obsessing. When I have something to obsess over, it organizes my brain very tidily. Without it, I am all over the place.

Zen Buddhism refers to it as “Western monkey mind,” this tendency for your brain to multi-task perpetually and never let you concentrate on one single thing. There are lots of different methods to tame your brain. Some people like drugs, either pharmaceutical or recreational. Some meditate. I like to just give my brain something to work on: “Here, brain, I really want to veganize this recipe from my childhood. I just bought this Will Oldham record. I got an Annie Dillard book from the library.” My brain takes my offering and scatters off in one direction and works on it, leaving the practical side of my brain free to pay bills and do my job and make my son lunch.

When LOST came into my life, it was not unlike falling in love. LOST has been the nicest little puzzle for my brain since I stopped playing video games. I will really miss it when it’s all over, but I will only miss watching the episodes a little bit. Mostly I will miss thinking about the show.

So after that long and protracted preamble, here is what I think will happen in Season 6. I’m putting it in writing, which is stupid, because now you have an entry to come back to in weeks to follow to laugh about how wrong I was. That’s fine. You have no better idea what’s going to happen than I do, which is why LOST is the greatest ever.

Do I think that setting off the bomb pressed a giant reset button and Episode 1 of Season 6 will show them all landing at LAX, safe and sound? Maybe. Originally I thought, “No way, they may lead us to believe that in Episode 1, they may show us Christian’s funeral and Kate being hauled off to prison and all of that, but then it will turn out to be just a dream or a fantasy.”

The writers of LOST spent all of Seasons 4 and 5 presenting us with their rules of time travel: This is not Back to the Future style time travel. In LOST time travel, any attempt to change history is futile and the course will correct itself: “Whatever happened, happened.” “You’re going to die, Charlie.” Elouise Hawking knew she would kill her son and let him go back to the island, anyway. It just doesn’t make sense to me that all of the sudden, Daniel Faraday would show up and be like, “Oh, psych, we were wrong, you can change the past, just do this!” and it would work.

What my good pal Susie made me realize is that what was presented in the Season 5 finale as being a matter of Jack vs. Sawyer is really a matter of Daniel Faraday vs. Elouise Hawking. Either way: rash impulse vs. calm and thoughtful decision-making. Historically on LOST, if a character makes a decision quickly and emotionally, it’s a bad one. Recall if you will the conversation between Jack and Sawyer in the Season 5 episode “Namaste”: “It’s how I like to run things. I think. I’m sure that doesn’t mean that much to you, ’cause back when you were calling the shots, you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn’t think, Jack, and as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead.”

So here is what I think: I think that minor events may change, and it will be really fun to see that all play out, and they might dedicate even 3 or 4 episodes to “alternate reality,” but I think that all the principal players will end up back on that island and I think that everyone who died will die again, including of course Boone, Charlie, Mr. Eko, Locke, and Jacob.

I also think that we will see most of the events from Seasons 1-5 from the perspective of the Others. I think that we’ll get at least one whole episode about Richard.

And—and here is where I diverge from 95% of LOST fans—I think we’ll find out that Jacob is bad and The Man In Black is good, and by the time that Season 6 is over, we’ll all be really happy that the Man in Black finally got to kill the bastard. Because it’s pretty much taken for granted at this point that The Man in Black is the Smoke Monster, right? And the Smoke Monster is the island. And the island is GOOD.

Ben vs. Widmore? I don’t care. They’re just puppets, anyway. There is something about being an Other which so thoroughly brainwashes you into thinking that you’re doing the right thing that you can become this kidnapping, murderous, deceptive automoton following orders in the name of “doing what Jacob/The Island wants,” and that interests me, but I’m not really into their petty little rivalry for who gets to be king of the mountain. At least, I’m not interested right now, but I’m sure the writers could make me interested!

I’m looking foward to seeing how this will all play out, and I’m already starting to grieve a little about this whole ride coming to an end.

Thank you, LOST!