Dinner, anyone?

So I waited too long to pull the trigger on the dinner party I was going to throw at the end of this list-fulfilling process. I had a plan, but it fell through, and I didn't have enough time to regroup and try again. Now I have a date...this Friday, Nov. 4th...and one willing guest with whom I've been dying to spend some time, but that does not a dinner party make.

So it occurred to me that maybe it would be worth throwing it out there to you. You, gentle reader, have been following this saga. At least in theory. Maybe you'd like to be a part of finishing it up.

One caveat: ideally I'm looking for people I've already met in actual, non-digital life. I'm not saying I wouldn't love to make your acquaintance if I don't already know you. I'm sure you're fabulous. But let's pick a more relaxed time and place for that.

Most of you reading this, though, are people whom I already know well. Anyone up for dinner on Friday? You can respond via email (I'll even check my gmail account for a while--it's jocelynruth@gmail.com) or just leave a comment below.

If it doesn't work out, that's ok. I'll shift gears and go hang out with my already-willing guest, who has enough inherent awesomeness to fill a whole evening. (Doesn't that make you want to come?)

Let's see what happens!

Sibling Revelry

I am the oldest of three girls.


Here we are last May, hanging out at my parents' house on a pretty Sunday afternoon. There's a more normal-looking version of this photo, but I like the silly one better.

Christina (Chrissy when we were growing up, now Crick, Cricka, or Kina) is on the left in the coral shirt. At about four years behind me, she's the baby. She's tall--nearly 5'11''--and beautiful and really smart. Chrissy and her husband Paul live with their two seriously cute children in a beautiful old farmhouse in southern New Hampshire. They grow pumpkins and beets and occasionally cow-sit for their neighbors.

Meredith (Meri when we were growing up, now Ditty), in the center, falls squarely between me and Chrissy in age. She has this shiny hair that I've always been a little jealous of: corn-silky like my daughter's but such a pretty shade of dark brown. Meredith and her husband Daniel live just ten minutes from my parents (an hour away from me) with their adorable progeny (three, girl-boy-boy, like ours). Meredith is generous and thoughtful and has impeccable taste. I routinely ask her about decorating decisions I have to make, often argue with her answers, and inevitably take her advice in the end. I always regret it when I don't.

And that's me on the right, sporting the green sweater and the myriad wrinkles that have appeared as my face has deflated.

We fought bitterly when we were little. That fact that brings me some comfort when my own kids are being dreadful to each other, because now my sisters are two of my most precious friends. I don't get to spend nearly enough time with them, and almost none alone with them. That's why an afternoon with each of them made it on the list.

I wish I had time to detail both outings for you, to recount the relaxed, easy conversations and the more intense moments where we dug into our lives in ways that you can't so much do when you're filling sippy cups and refereeing I-had-it-first conflicts. But here are the basics.

Chrissy and I got together mid-morning on a Saturday afternoon. She brought her family down here with her, and Mark and Paul stayed with the kids so we could have some time to ourselves. We went and checked out the farmer's market in nearby Metuchen, which I had never investigated. It was a fun little spot that yielded some mango-macadamia biscotti, some really nice artisan bread, and something else. Peaches, I think.

We then went into New Brunswick to an Ethiopian restaurant called Makeda. I'd never been there, and it knocked one more new variety of ethnic food off my list. (One more to go! Maybe this week...) I'd recommend it, if you're wondering. We sat and lingered over lunch in the mostly-empty restaurant and talked about some of the hard things of life. There was laughing and there was crying, so from a girl-talk perspective that's a pretty clear win. I like her so much.

Meredith and I went out last night. I brought Joy up her house for a sleepover with her cousins, and we left them in the care of Daniel and my mom and went to an upscale mall. We ate at Smashburger, which I'd never been to and my husband is going to love. We also did the lingering thing, and I ate way more than I intended of the sweet potato fries with rosemary, olive oil, and garlic that we were splitting. I will make my way through many green smoothies before I balance out that evening's indulgences.

Afterwards, we walked around the mall, poked around in H&M, looked in a little gift shop, got some free samples from Godiva, and finally landed in Barnes and Noble, where we picked up a stack of home decorating magazines and then did not read them. Instead, we sat on the floor in the most out-of-the-way spot we could find ("No one will come back here unless they're looking for the Harry Potter Knight Bus Lego Set," we said, but of course someone was) and talked about real life, and our own hearts, for a long time. Then we finished up by splitting a Dulce de Leche slice from Cheesecake Factory. Many, many smoothies.

One thing I loved about these outings was that the conversations went so naturally beyond the things we usually end up talking about: the hazards of parenting, the shifting and often amusing dynamics of our family and our families, and the cluttered details of our lives. Instead, we spent the bulk of our time talking about where our hearts are struggling, what God is doing, where He has been active, and where He has been silent.

I left both conversations...well, stuffed to the gills, for starters. But also feeling grateful for them both, and rejoicing with them, and hurting for them. Life is not easy, and walking with Jesus has some formidable challenges. But that is how it goes this side of eternity, and if we have to wade our way through the struggles, I'm genuinely glad to have these two women to wade through them with me.

If I do the list thing again next year, this is going on it again. Once a year is not enough, but it's a start :)

24 days and counting...

Teeny Greens

This one feels a little like cheating.

I'm supposed to "grow something...a plant." As opposed to, you know, mold in the refrigerator or an inner root of bitterness about the infuriating layout of Shop Rite.

This is on the list because, generally speaking, I cannot do it. Ever. I can't keep a plant alive, much less grow one from scratch, or seed, or whatever. I've come to consider small potted plants I get from the grocery store to be the disposable equivalent of cut flowers. They only last a tiny bit longer around here. I know nothing about horticulture, and I'm way too scattered to remember to do things like water vegetation regularly. My children have an advantage over the plants in that they get noisy if they're not fed. The plants just sit quietly and resignedly and starve to death.

So I set out to try. I had a mini-greenhouse thing from a clearance sale at Lowe's several years ago. I was pretty sure the seeds were too old to grow, but I figured since I had the kit, I'd give it a shot.

It included basil, parsley, and dill seeds. Basil I love. Parsley is fine. Dill I really can't stand. Neither can Mark. In college we took a missions trip to Eastern Europe in which we were dilled to death all summer. So I tossed the dill seeds, planted two mini-pots with parsley and four with basil, and waited.

The parsley apparently had despaired of ever seeing soil and given up the ghost. It never appeared. Much to my surprise, however, the basil actually came up!

Here's the thing. I took the above picture on August 31, and the basil still looks pretty much like this today. I'm sure I need to transplant it. I even have a pretty green pot left over from Joy's cabbage plant that I killed. In theory I will move it, soon, into new digs (ha!) where I'm sure it will grow and flourish and make me into one of those people who is always chasing their friends around with big bags of basil saying, "Here! Take this. Make pesto or something." I love those people.

Right now, though, all I have is tiny little stunted seedlings. Still, they weren't there, and then they were, so I'm checking this off.

25 days to go...

Green Smoothies and Caramelly Appleness

We're at T minus 26 days, people. It's going to be a close race to this finish line, let me tell you.

Doing double duty in the quest to complete the list: the green smoothie. It's one of my 40 new recipes (almost done there), and in theory it could help me to finish well in the approaching-a-healthy-weight vein of things.

The green smoothie (also "Shrek smoothie," "Monster smoothie," "Hulk smoothie," and "Eeew-Mommy-what-is-that?") looks a little freaky. I'll give you that. Here's the picture I saw on Pinterest that led me to the recipe:
I'm a sucker for a great photo. Also this shade of green, which you may remember is not far off the color of my living and dining room walls. I read up on the green smoothie phenomenon, and it's supposed to be an easy, filling solution for breakfast, lunch, or a snack...not to mention seriously good for you.

I had one yesterday for breakfast, another this morning, and a third a little while ago for a late lunch. Here's my less-than-gorgeous photo of the first one:
To make it I threw the following into a blender:

1 banana
about 1 cup frozen peach slices
about 1/2 cup frozen pineapple chunks
a little water...maybe 1/2 cup, but I always end up needing to add more
1 big handful baby spinach leaves

My ancient blender didn't enjoy this task. I ended up having to use the handle of a rubber spatula to sort of gingerly push the stuff down into the blades. While it was running. My mother would have been horrified. (Please note: obviously, you should try to avoid sticking things into the whirling blender. I'm sort of an idiot.)

It did eventually do the job, though, and I have to say that the website was right: it's delicious (I genuinely cannot detect a spinach taste), filling, and easy. I'm not sure how to gauge the amount of energy it's giving me, but I do know that I'm getting a WHOLE lot more vitamins and minerals than I otherwise would have.

I'm wondering what might happen if I had these for breakfast and lunch for a week. I don't know what the odds are that I'd be able to pull that off, but I wonder.

All of this uber-healthiness helps to counteract some of the other cooking I've been doing. I've been on an apple-caramel kick for a while, and that yielded caramel apple cheesecake bars, which: ohmygoodness. I didn't take any pictures, but here's a photo from the recipe page.
Yeah.

I brought these to an end-of-summer party at the home of my friend Kathy (who kept me running) and her husband, Piscataway Joe. They met with lots of enthusiasm. The bars, I mean. Though Joe and Kathy are fantastic, too.

Under the same apple-caramel compulsion, I also tried caramel apple cookies. Yum.


I left the nuts off the top. They were really soft--kind of like a cross between a cookie and a muffin--but really nice, especially with the frosting. My kids approved.

During this interval we also tried cinnamon swirl pancakes. Because I apparently cannot pass up an opportunity to cram my children full of sugar.

I put together a cinnamon-sugar-butter syrupy thing (full disclosure: I think I messed with that part of the recipe, but I don't remember how) that I was supposed to put in a squirt bottle. I had no squirt bottle, so I dug out an old baby bottle and snipped off the end. It looks a little disturbing filled with brown liquid...like seeing an infant drinking coffee or Dr. Pepper.
You can follow their pancake recipe or just use your favorite, then swirl the cinnamon syrup over the batter.

The pics I saw on the web had that same brown swirl in the finished pancakes, but when I flipped mine, the butter and sugar melted and crusted up over the whole surface, leaving a swirly pattern where they had been. I am not complaining.


As you may have guessed, these don't really need syrup, though the buttermilk syrup featured in the recipe looks intriguing.

We also tried a couple of snacks. One was an experiment for Rosh Hashanah (or was it Yom Kippur?), when the kids were out of school and it was miserable and rainy out. We tried chocolate chip mug cake:
...topped with ice cream.
These were sort of meh. They're a great idea--mix up a few ingredients in a mug and stick it in a microwave--but they brought me back to the 80's when we were all like, "Look! You can bake in the microwave!" until the novelty wore off and we realized that everything we baked in the microwave was kind of like a dense, sticky sponge.

The ice cream helped, but Joy declared that given the choice between this snack and plain vanilla ice cream, she'd take the plain ice cream. No one finished it. Still, it could scratch an itch for something warm and sweet in a pinch. I'm hanging on to the recipe.

There have been a couple more experiments of late (barbecued baby back ribs, au gratin potatoes, and maybe more), but the only other one for which I have a photo is the soft pretzels. It was an after-school snack and was a huge hit.

I followed the recipe faithfully (it happens once in a while), and these were fabulous and buttery and much like an Auntie Anne's or some such mall pretzel. My only difficulty was that while they were perfect on top and inside, the bottoms burned. My friend Kathy tells me I should bake them on something a little gentler (like a pizza stone or airbake pan, or maybe just some added layers of foil or parchment) to keep that from happening. But I sliced the burned parts off, and what was left was gone very quickly.

There's more to tell. I'm going to try to write less bulk and more often as we're in the home stretch here!

Fast. Ish.

I've been writing this post a sentence or two at a time for about three weeks. Sorry about the delay...I've been offline more than usual, but more about that below. :)

I recently heard an eyewitness account from a man who was near the World Trade Center on 9/11. He struggled to find the words to explain what the sound was like when the tower came down and the debris cloud overtook him, saying something to the effect of, "Did you ever hear something that was so loud that it was silent? Like, there's so much noise that you can't hear anything at all? That's what it was like."

My life feels like that sometimes. This head of mine is a noisy place to live. The barrage of input can feel overwhelming...the rising and falling chaos that is my children, the background buzz of living in a busy part of New Jersey, and the other physical noises provide a backdrop for the rest of the stimuli that come my way. I'm on the internet continually throughout the day, checking email, checking weather, checking Facebook, clicking on interesting news stories, finding the answers to random questions (I'm a curious person), and generally going down cyber bunny trails. I do a great percentage of my shopping online. My kids probably watch too much tv (not CRAZY much, but still...), and the soundtrack of my life often features Blue's Clues, the Fairly OddParents, or Dora "I-scream-everything-I-say" the Explorer. When I have down time, I play Jewel Quest on my non-smart-phone. That's on top of the managing of everyone's schedules and buses and activities and appointments and all the people and information involved in all of those.

Plus I sing, like, all day long. But that's not going to stop anytime soon.

There are times when the noise (literal and figurative) gets so loud and so constant that I stop hearing any of it. I start to shut down, intellectually speaking, and all of it becomes a sort of indistinct blur. It feels numb and sort of brain-sleepy, if that makes any sense.

And so I set out to try a week-long media fast. I wanted to see what would happen if I turned down the volume for a few days.

The goal was to stay away from the computer except for necessary work- or ministry-related tasks. I planned to ask Mark to check my email every couple of days to see if there was anything important in there. No TV, no Wii (which I'm rarely on anyway), no web-surfing, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blogging, no Pinterest, no games on my phone. I figured I'd allow myself to text, since that's mostly task-oriented in my life.

I set out with firm resolve and my customary optimism, and here's what I mainly learned:

I can't do it.

If a successful media fast is defined by seven days during which you make dishearteningly extensive use of media every single day, then my media fast was a raging success.

Here's an overview of what happened.

• Email. This took me about two hours to discover. I cannot disconnect from email. It's too much a part of the networking of my life, and I quickly realized that to detach from it would be pretty rude to those around me who depend on my receiving and sending information that way. I stink at the phone, so those who know me know email is the way to get me. To vanish from that medium would just be obnoxious. So, ok, I'd stay on email. But I'd try to keep it on task, and everything else was still game on.
• My kids. They have needs that involve the web. Joy needed to get on a keyboarding practice site, find the cyber version of her math text, and research artist trading cards. Both she and Will needed book club orders placed online. And I'm supposed to check their teachers' web pages frequently. All right...but just on-task stuff for the kids.
• Vital Information. What's the weather going to be like today? I don't know. Is the gym open on Jewish holidays? I don't know. How much flour goes into the batter? I don't know. When is that road supposed to be open again? I don't know. When is my package getting here? I don't know. Apparently I don't know anything that the internet doesn't tell me. Ok, but just what I really need to know.
• Family bonding. I didn't impose my ban on the rest of my family. I really believe I could easily go a week without tv, but it's hard when it's on anyway. Mark watched a movie one night, and when I went into the living room to ask him a question, I got sucked in and watched the last half. Over the weekend, Joy and Will went to a movie with Daddy, and Jack's consolation prize was to watch a movie at home with me. I think that was it, but that was enough to railroad my success in the TV realm.
• Moderation, or lack thereof. Here's the real kicker. I'm no good at moderation in any area of life, and media is no exception. Even with all of the above concessions, I could have really made a dent in the media madness in my life, but it's really, really hard for me to start doing something and then stop. I'm much better at either stopping cold turkey or...what's the opposite of that? Running rampant? Something. But once I was online looking at the weather, or placing a book order for Will, the odds that I was going to shut it off and walk away were pretty slim. I found myself on websites (Pinterest was a big culprit) that were totally unnecessary.

The experiment was saved from total failure by a couple of redeeming victories:

• Facebook. I did manage to stay off fb completely for the week, I think, except for going on there to retrieve a message Mark told me was waiting for me and needed my attention. And I've been on it almost not at all since, which is both a blessing and a challenge. I'm going to need to figure out how to stay up to date with people in some other way.
  
• Aftermath. I have to say...surprisingly, I have definitely been online less since I finished the fast. Maybe it had a little bit of lasting impact after all. Of course, that also means that I have been working on this post for about 3 weeks. Maybe it's time to end it.

I'm not sure how to sum the whole thing up. I didn't have any life-changing experiences engendered by the quietness of my heart. I don't feel like it was a total waste of time, though...I'm tucking away the knowledge that I am hopelessly attached to the digital world, and maybe Jesus and I will work on that at some point. For now, though, I'm in a race to my Nov. 16 finish line, so I have other things to think about. :)

Bright Lights

I apologize...this is sort of a self-indulgent post. It's long and detailed, and if you're not into music, this may not be your cup of tea. Don't feel obligated. But I wanted to write all of this out simply to preserve the sheer pleasure of the memory it recounts.

I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath to hear how my media fast went, since everyone must be as interested in my life's minutiae as I am. Rest assured, I will subject you to that. But I want to get this down on paper...er, screen...while it's fresh in my mind.

Have I mentioned on this blog that I'm in a band? In the last year or so some friends and I have cobbled together this little group of musicians, and we've gone (in various combinations) to a whole bunch of little venues, including the tea bar, the 4-H fair in Somerset County (twice), and an evening at an awesome little Italian restaurant. It has been a BLAST.

We do have a lousy name. Currently we're known as "Piscataway Joe." There's a story behind that name which is really not worth the retelling. Mostly we just need a new one, but we can't find one we're all excited about. Please feel free to offer ideas.

Last night Piscataway Joe played Nicholas Music Center at Rutgers University. The RCSSA (a group of Chinese international students) was throwing their annual Mid-Autumn Gala, and they invited us to join them again this year.

Nicholas Music Center is an elegant hall (by university standards, at least). The acoustics are fantastic, and there are about 800 plush seats soaring steeply away from the shallow but immaculate stage. The 4-H fair it is not. And the Mid-Autumn Gala is well-attended, so last night hundreds of faces, most of them Chinese students far from their homeland, filled those seats.

We were next to last on the program, so it was about 9:30 by the time we took our turn standing in the near-blackness, waiting for the stage lights to come up. My friends were using the moments of darkness to get their equipment settled. I was using them to try to settle myself in the wake of the adrenaline rush that threatened the steadiness of both my voice and my four-inch heels. I wasn't afraid, per se...just excited. But the adrenaline thing is inconvenient.

I hadn't yet been successful by the time the lights came on, and the next few moments were a blur. The emcee introduced us, I said a few words that I barely heard above the pounding of my heart, and we were ready.

The reason I'm writing this post, really, is that there were a few moments last night that typify moments that are precious to me, and I want to remember them. Forgive me for using this forum to etch them a little further into my memory. But here is moment number one: the endless half-second between when you're ready and when the first note of the introduction begins. It hangs there, brightly lit and full of promise, like the pause at the top of a diver's arc, and it's the moment when you sort of let go (if you can) and allow the experience to unfold in front of you.

Last night I was able to let go...largely, I think, because Rick was playing the intro. Rick is our pastor and our dear friend. If you've been following this blog for a while, you met him when he and his wonderful wife let me change their tire last fall. Besides being an excellent tire-change tutor, he is an extraordinary guitarist with a deep love for music and a deeper love for his Savior. Rick is one of the people in my life whose presence imparts calm and confidence to me. He started playing the lovely opening notes to James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind," and I felt my heart rate slow as I opened my mouth to sing.

And that's moment number two: the very first note. I am always...every time...surprised by it. Not because it's amazing. Often it's quavery and a little unsure; I am not a phenomenal singer. But that first note, amplified by the sound system and by the adrenaline, and absorbed by the audience in a physics kind of way and in a way less tangible, sounds literally and metaphorically huge. It startles me a little and rockets me into, "Oh. Okay. We're doing this now."

In my mind I'm gone to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine? Can't you just feel the moon shining?

I wound my way through the first chorus, trying to really see the sunshine and feel the moonlight, knowing that the Mid-Autumn festival (which is all about missing faraway loved ones) is meaningful to this group of expatriates. Rick's skillful accompaniment sort of floated behind me and around me, and the quaver started to smooth out of my voice. We came around the bend out of the first chorus. That's where Joe came in.

My friend Joe (Piscataway Joe himself) has been my partner in crime throughout this entire adventure. He's a tremendous musician, and although these days you'll often find him behind the piano, he seems equally at home holding a guitar, a bass, or drumsticks, among other things. Oh, and he sings. And writes music. Yeah. Joe has extremely high standards when it comes to musical excellence, and high praise from him is hard-earned, but he is easygoing, relaxed, and prone to laughter. He's fun to be with, and he makes me better at this. He came in at the pickup to the first verse with a few quiet notes, then started filling in the chords with the sweet, mellow tones of the beautiful Steinway grand piano. He seasoned the song with his favorite kinds of chords: the ones I don't really understand, with hidden sevenths and seconds and tricks of movement that sound like they're rooted in jazz, but quiet and reflective.

Karen, she's a silver sun; You'd best walk her away and watch it shine...

I will freely admit that I have no idea what that means. But that's the song, and it is gorgeous. Still, there was something tentative left in that first verse. It didn't settle until the second verse, when our other Joe came in.

This Joe is a relative newcomer to our little group. For that reason, I know him the least well, but I made some strides last night by peppering him with questions during our long wait for our rehearsal. What I learned served to confirm what I already thought: he's just a great guy. Joe is young, quiet, unassuming, and extremely modest about his musical ability. He has only been playing the bass for a little while, having volunteered to learn it when our worship team was hurting for bass players last year. When he gets a new piece of music, he looks at it like, "hmmm. Well, we'll see." And then proceeds to play it ably and reliably. Like, every time, as far as I can tell. And that's exactly what he did last night. He filled in the bottom of the sound and gave the song a place to rest and swell.

Ain't no doubt in no one's mind that love's the finest thing around--whisper something soft and kind...

As a side note, for those of you doing the math at home, that makes three remarkable musicians, all of them relaxed, good-natured, and ready and willing to surrender the spotlight to one another. When does that happen? Seriously. I love working with people who love Jesus.

The verses in "Carolina In My Mind" end decisively, reprising the final line of the chorus and sidling comfortably back into the tonic chord. Whatever comes next feels sort of like a new start, and what came next was the second chorus. During the turnaround I took a deep breath, pulled my mic from its stand, and started walking toward the piano as Piscataway Joe leaned in toward his microphone.

And here is moment number three: the moment when the harmony slips into place. When you have a pretty melody line that is suddenly augmented by a spot-on harmony, the beauty of the resulting music is far greater than the sum of its parts. And Joe's harmony was spot-on--clear, precise, and easy--as it generally is, leaving me with a sort of heady exhilaration. It feels sort of like a well-executed dance, with the voices mirroring and circling each other in perfect complement. The one danger is that it tends to make me grin like an idiot. I'm pretty sure that I managed to avoid that last night (though I can't guarantee it), but I'll tell you what...I could have gone on singing that chorus for a long time.

But the song went on, as songs do. We made our way through the third verse, with the tender, beautiful chord progression and bassline that all three of them followed, and through Joe's piano solo, about which he had been nervous but which turned out lovely--lilting and sweet, faithful yet unpredictable.

And that took us to the most poignant of the moments: the bridge, where the song swells and the melody line rises with it and I have to push a little to nail the note. The instruments were at their fullest, and Joe came back in with that spot-on harmony, and it felt just right.

It's with a holy host of others standing 'round me...

By that time I was relaxed and able to fully take in and enjoy the experience: standing there, under the bright lights, in four-inch patent heels and dangly earrings, closing my eyes and leaning in to pour myself out into a microphone in front of hundreds of people, surrounded and joined by dear friends and talented, talented musicians...what did I ever do to deserve this?

God is very good to me.

Someday I won't be able to sing like I do now. And when that day comes I want to have this sweet moment firmly planted in my mind's eye.

I was able to savor that bridge, the final chorus, and the long coda, where I cheated on the A that I was supposed to belt for a while. It was wobbly. I need to learn how to loosen my throat when I'm all worked up. Didn't matter, though, and soon I found myself at the very end, where Joe walked me through the ritard in the quietness of the tag, gently slowing me down where I have a tendency to rush it. He gave me the next-to-last chord and trailed off, leaving me to hold the place in silence for one last moment........until we resolved it and everyone broke into applause.

It wasn't a perfect performance. Certainly not on my end, anyway. And anyone who's actually made it to the end of this post would probably be justified in poking fun at the level of drama I assign to the whole thing. But I can't help it...it just feels full and beautiful and very right, and it fills me with gratitude.

I don't know how long this kind of opportunity will last. Surely I won't be surrounded by these amazing people forever. But for now I will so, so take it. And, I hope, take it with me.