I Am Ungrateful. (and sooo not a vegan!)

So, in my continued quest for healthy and yummy food, today I paid a visit to the (in)famous Cafe Gratitude. I first learned of this place when a friend of mine wrote about it in her novel, and I swear I thought she had made it up, it was sooooo crazy. But no, it is quite real.

There are so many aspects of this place that are really laudable, but really it like some bizarro New Age raw food experiment gone completely, completely awry. Just click through their website if you think I am kidding. But I did that before going, and it was nothing like the real experience. Believe me, I did this today so that none of you ever, ever have to.

First, the hostess. “Find where you want to sit, and I’ll follow you around and give you your menu.” She can’t just HAND me the menu and let me find a table. So I wandered through the front room, the back room and almost out to the patio and she’s trailing me like a puppy dog. Finally after perusing the entire place I decide I want to go back to the front room, which is quieter, less crowded and has smaller tables. She gave me my menu with an annoyed look like, “It sure took you long enough, and why didn’t you sit here the first time you saw it?”

The menu. Not only do they give everything a faux-New Age cutesy name like “I Am Satisfied,” rather than “small green salad” or “I am Sensational” for a bogus “pizza” (with no crust and no cheese) made with hemp seed – not only that, but they FORCE YOU to SAY “I’d like “I am Sensational,” or they will not bring you your food. You can’t just mumble, “Hemp seed pizza, please.” I AM NOT KIDDING. I had already learned this from reading some Yelp reviews, and I did not want to get into a whole power struggle with my server, so I just sucked it up and said, trying to snort back my laughter, “I Am Satisfied, I am Thriving, I am Refreshed.” (translation: small salad, small mushroom soup, small lemonade with agave syrup)

I could tell they were getting their hemp panties in a twist because I was Twittering into my iPhone rather than doing seated yoga while I waited for my food, but I did not care.

Finally it arrived. The mushroom soup, while pretty tasty, was only lukewarm. I should add that 90% of the food at Cafe Gratitude is raw, ie. uncooked. Even the pizza. (whyyyyyyyyyy do they even bother to call it pizza? I suspect just to completely enrage people. A buckwheat “flatbread” (ie cracker) topped with “cashew parmesan” (It’s crumbled nuts!!!! It’s NOT CHEESE!) and cold tomato sauce is not, by any stretch of any imagination, pizza.

I think they really believe that to heat a food is to mortally harm it. Thus, my soup was borderline room temperature. I really like my hot food hot and my cold food cold, so this was annoying. Then my salad came. It was no more than a handful of greens with some shredded carrots, oil and vinegar, more nut “cheese” and two delicately placed “teriyaki almonds” on top, as decoration. Almonds are very key ingredients over at Cafe Gratitude. All dairy products, like milk shakes and ice cream, are made with almond milk. What, they think almonds don’t hurt when you milk them? They think almonds don’t have SOULS just because they don’t have eyeballs, or footprints? Please.  My lemonade was the favorite part- lemony, sparkly, sweetened with agave which I have been curious to taste (one of the very few natural sweeteners with a low glycemic index) with a nice sprig of mint. Mmm! It WAS refreshing!

I happened to be sitting nearby the barista, who would prepare a drink, and then bellow out, “MARISAAA! YOU ARE REJUVENATED! (wheatgrass cocktail)” or “AMY! YOU ARE ECSTATIC! (vanilla latte)” It was actually too surreal for words.

This place takes Mindful Eating and shoves it down your throat. After I ate, my server took my dishes and said, “Our question of the day (QUESTION OF THE DAY?!?) is, ‘What makes your heart open?’” My jaw almost dropped to the ground. But again, not wanting to get into a scuffle or accumulate too much bad karma, I said, with a straight face, “My daughter.” (which happens to be true) She said, “Awww!! Great answer!” and glided (glid?) away.

She returned with my bill. I glanced at it. Then I took another look and my eyeballs almost popped out of my head. Unfortunately, I had not paid close attention to the pricing on the menu, so distracted I was by all the “I am Blissful” menu items.

My bill for a “small cup” of lukewarm soup, a “small salad,” and a Very Small Lemonade, however refreshing, came to $23.

I was like, not amused. The 8-oz glass of lemon juice and mineral water was FIVE DOLLARS!!!!!!!!

Nor were the blue-haired grannies who were sitting near me. They had been escorted into CG by their two ratty-haired twenty something granddaughters. They looked absolutely bewildered, appalled and frightened by the place (and rightly so). After getting a long-winded orientation to the menu by the server, I heard one of the granddaughters say, “Grandma, it’s ALL VEGETABLES.” And no, they don’t really cook them either. It’s going to be a long luncheon, ladies.

What could I do? I paid. I left. I went home and looked up the menu for world-renowned Chez Panisse, which is just a block or two down the street. Guess what? Their salads and soups (for the DINNER menu!) was the exact same price as this vegan nuthouse.

Mindful: I “checked in” with my stomach about 45 minutes after lunch, and I was a ravenous, gaping cavern of hunger. I was So. Not. Satisfied.

Went home and had some nice Irish Cheddar with Guinness Stout. (the stout is cooked into the cheese; it’s awesome) Felt better immediately.

 

Hello My Name is Susan and I’m a…

Bookaholic. This really came home to me when today’s mail was delivered. FOUR big cardboard packages/padded envelopes that could only mean one thing: BOOKS. 

I really am incapable of dealing with libraries AT ALL (I neeevvvver return them) so if I hear of a book that intrigues me, I will go to Amazon Marketplace and see if I can get one for a dollar, or three. Plus postage, and it doesn’t feel like very much  - is it? Unless it’s a newly published book or one by a friend of mine, in which case I will buy it new. I try to balance my Amazon habit with my supporting-independent-bookstores habit.

Last night I had an hour to kill and just happened to be nearby one of my favorite indy bookstores. It was such an amazing pleasure to walk around, touch and pick up and browse dozens and dozens of books. Mmm! In the end I had to buy two: John Crowley’s newest, Endless Things, and Peter Carey’s His Illegal Self. 

Today, the mail brought me: two copies of the new Asian adoptee literary ‘zine Grinding Up Stones (looks great!), Joyce Carol Oates’ The Faith of A Writer: Life, Craft and Art (some writer buddies were raving about it and I got intrigued) and Shrink Yourself, a book about emotional eating (and which, curiously, was blurbed by Senator Ted Kennedy!). 

And that’s only in the last 24 hours.

 

Where I’ve Been

I feel like I’ve been unfaithful to this blog. In fact, I kind of have. I’ve mentioned that I was dealing with some health issues. In fact, I was diagnosed with prediabetes back in January. It was a major wakeup call. Like a blast of ice water to the face.  I immediately knew that I needed to step up my exercise level, and lose some weight. I began spending all of my spare time exercising, reading books about weight loss, checking out various weight-loss approaches, reading about diabetes and diabetes prevention.  I started reading a bunch of blogs on these various topics, and yes, I started a weight-loss blog.

I felt like I did not want to bring all that stuff over here. It just didn’t seem right, or appropriate. I have never really had the desire to write a single-topic blog, and suddenly I was writing a very narrowly focused single-topic blog. Also, it is very personal, and kind of vulnerable on a different level.

But I felt like I needed to make some sort of explanation for why many days and weeks were passing by with nary a blog post over here. I did not want to be writing (here) about every weigh-in, workout session, food choice and emotion associated with this journey.  I am trying to balance things, but honestly, I am preoccupied. The good news is that I have lost about 15 lbs since January, and after one month my blood levels improved considerably, although not to normal levels (yet). I’m feeling optimistic and healthier.

I would like to invite some interested readers of this blog over to that other blog, but I have some conditions. One, I am only opening the blog to people who have struggled with losing weight.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve struggled and not found a way to make it work (I didn’t want to write “failed” because I hate that thought) OR if you’ve struggled and succeeded. Just that you’ve struggled.

Right now I can’t really deal with sharing my weight-loss struggles with naturally skinny people, or people who have never tried to lose weight. And I also sort of have a bias against what I call “vanity dieters” – ie people who are AT NORMAL WEIGHT, but still want to lose weight and be skinny or underweight for the purposes of looking different or wearing a different clothes size. I am not really in that mode right now, and in fact I object strongly to such practices.  If you are or have been clinically overweight or obese, OR if you are trying to lose weight for medically dictated reasons, then you are welcome.  Other people, I really wish you would love yourselves at your weight, because you are making it tough on everyone else.

I’m really sorry if this seems restrictive, exclusive or harsh, but that’s just where I’m at right now. Maybe when I get into the normal-BMI range I’ll feel like I need or want to keep losing, but for right now, that’s all I am interested in: getting into normal range. 

So if you are interested (it’s possibly that you are not interested at all!), email me and I’ll send you the link.

Meanwhile, I will really try to check in here and write a non-diet related post at least once a week.

photo by Mikey Bee @ Flickr

 

Rowing Season: It Has Begun

Spent a long, wet weekend cheering on the novice womens’ team at their very first races of the season. It’s exhausting, it’s boring, it’s often uncomfortable depending on the weather, but I have to say I love it. It is just so beautiful and breathtaking to watch, for that one exciting minute when they come into view.

Ran into another crew mom this week, who encouraged me to come out for her women masters’ rowing team. I have to say, I am tempted. I have begun using the neglected rowing machine in our garage, ever since I saw them using ergs on The Biggest Loser a few weeks ago. I have been very intimidated by this piece of exercise equipment, especially since our girls have looked on the erg with great dread, but when I saw the Biggest Loser contestants go at it, I thought, OK, I can do this. I started up for a 20 minute session. Damn it was hard. They are not kidding when they say it is a full-body exercise.

The girls are always talking about their  average “splits” and I have gleaned, over the dinner table, that it is beastly and impressive to get a “sub-two,” meaning less than two minutes per 500K. This number shows up on the digital display thing on the machine.  Well, for my first session I could not even get a sub-three! Ha!! I averaged 3:05, ie three minutes and five seconds, for my twenty minutes, which is quite a geriatric pace, but I was pouring RIVERS of sweat and felt like I had very quickly rowed up Mount Everest. The second time, I split at 2:59 and I was like YAY!! and have been steadily bringing it down. Yesterday I was down to 2:45.  If I can bring a 1K split down to the 2:10 range, I might consider going out for that masters team.  They meet at 5:30 in the morning! O BOY!!!!!!!!

But I can truly see what an addictive and beautiful and crazily macho sport it is.

 

I Didn’t Disappear!

OK, so both my  daughter and my high school friend have remarked that I have not blogged here in an awfully long time. Busted! It’s true. I actually wrote two extreeeeeemely long blog posts while at AWP, which I will be putting up shortly. The issue is that they both had a lot of links in them so I kept putting them off because links are just a little time consuming. That’s just silly.

The other reason is that I have been rather preoccupied with some health stuff and have been doing a lot of personal writing on that topic. I’m hoping that things are getting on a good track now and I will be able to balance that and this. But you know, trying to be healthy is like a JOB, man. It takes a lot of time, thinking, preparation, and more time. Which is why busy people who don’t think about being healthy are often… unhealthy. I wasn’t keen on spending a whole lot of time thinking about it, until it came up and kicked me in the butt.

So unfortunately this happened after that big proclamation that I was going to write every day. Har dee har har. That did not happen. But I’m trying to not stress over it. It will happen when it happens. Like when I’m 65, or something.

Going to AWP did remind me how very much I do love writing though – and talking about it, thinking about it, debating, musing, doing it. I love everything about it. I love writers. I adored meeting my Literary Mama comrades very much. It was all good.

And for those of you who wondered, I chose to read “McMemories” at the Chicago reading. And sat down and thought, what a dumb choice. But then this couple approached me afterward (she commented on the poll blog) and told me their parents had just moved in and how much the column had resonated for them! So it was actually the right choice after all.

I think this blog post took me all of seven minutes to type out. I have to remember that when I think I “don’t have time to blog.”

 

AWP Chicago/Day Two

I think it is going to be tough to beat this day of AWP, ever. It was a pretty standout wonderful day.

 

I started out by going to the great fitness center in my little hotel. I am feeling more and more glad about not staying at the Hilton. Then had breakfast with my dear friend Masha. The tapas restaurant turns out to make awesome omelets.

 

It was good to have a leisurely morning – I skipped the first two morning sessions, thus missing out on about thirty panels – but it was important to pace myself because I had a long afternoon and evening ahead.

 

At noon I attended Masha’s panel, Writing Your Passions: Forbidden Topics. It included authors writing across racial lines, about sexuality and adultery, about writing as a scientist when one is not a scientist, and about the Other, in her case, getting into the mind and heart of a killer. I saw people wiping tears. Several parts of the panel were totally brilliant and all were provocative.

 

After that I hurried up to a reading by my literary heroine, Marilynne Robinson. I had not realized she was going to be here until I arrived this week and I was so excited. Let me explain: her novel Gilead is my favorite book EVER. My husband and I have one tattered copy that we have each read about four times. We pass it back and forth between each other. It has moved us to tears over and over. It’s one of those rare books whose sentences are new, and startling, and very moving, every single time, maybe even more so. So I was thrilled to hear she was going to read from Gilead. I had heard her speak in San Francisco this year, but it was a conversation/interview, not a reading. She skipped throughout the book, mainly focusing on passages that evoked a sense of the Midwest (the book is set in Iowa). I started tearing up a bit. Then I realized she was reading from the last two pages of the book, which never fail to just break me up. I can’t even describe how beautiful it was, the cadence of her voice, how it softened every few seconds, it was the perfect vehicle for those sentences. I had excitedly bought an audio version of the book a few years ago, and it was read by an actor, supposedly to evoke the elderly male narrator. It was SO WRONG. My husband and I listened for about three minutes and had to return it, it felt so not authentic, so NOT what we envisioned when reading. But Marilynne Robinson’s voice was It. I was reduced to a blubbering heap on the floor. I was madly texting my husband about this experience while gathering myself up and walking out the door. My face was completely wet. I looked to my right and who was standing right next to me, but Robinson herself. She kind of looked at me in that “Are you all right?” concern, and I just blurted out how Gilead was my favorite book of all time, how it had moved me so much, and to hear her read it had been just… incredible. She was so gracious and kind. We were the only two people standing there. She thanked me and then we both walked away.

 

It was hands down one of the best reading experiences I have ever had, and I have been to hundreds of readings. I don’t think it can get better than that, and it made this AWP unforgettable and so amazing.

 

I sat around and recovered for the next hour.  Then it was time to hop in a cab with nine other Literary Mama writers/columnists/editors for our reading at Women & Children First bookstore (totally awesome bookstore! I wish they would move to California!). We first ate dinner at a fantastic “Japanese country” restaurant, with no atmosphere – just a hole in the wall – but the best food and incredible service. I felt like I was being served by my grandmother.

 

The reading was wonderful – so moving and exciting to finally meet Literary Mamas I’ve known for years, but only online.  People came from California, Michigan, Alaska, Chicago, Oregon, and South Carolina. It was quite heady and emotional to all be in one room, to hear each others’ voices. I was floating. One of my dear friends who moved away years ago was there, and we got to catch up after the reading.

 

It was a good day. It was the BEST day, and I seriously don’t know how it can be topped. And I STILL haven’t made it to the Book Fair. Today, I hope…!

 

AWP Conference/Chicago, Day One

Yesterday and this morning involved so many travel snafus that I will not bore you with the details, but I have never had SO many things go wrong, travel wise, in such a short brief period. They included, but were not limited to: delayed flight, cancelled flight, emotional meltdown in a certain airport, hunger, having one’s luggage lost and missing pajamas at bedtime, having one’s hotel reservation cancelled under one’s nose and having to find a new hotel.

 

All that happened. And more. But now I am comfortably ensconced in the (in my opinion) nicer hotel across the street, and I have a comfy king bed on which to collapse, and all is more or less resolved on that end.

 

But I missed the first session because of having to tend to the pesky details above. I went down to Registration around 8:30am this morning, and about six thousand other people decided to do the same thing at the same time, so the line literally snaked around and around the floor about six times. It was worse than Disneyland at Spring Break week. Needless to say, I missed the 9am session.

 

But it did give me time to peruse the entire AWP catalog and to meticulously fill out my “Personal Planner” for the conference.  The AWP catalog, if you have never held one, weighs as much as a gold brick and contains 340 pages of literary goodness. It can inspire awe, excitement, overwhelm and exhaustion. My heart did go pitter-pat as I opened the pages and read excitedly through the offerings. Then my eyeballs began to melt and my vision blurred and by the time I reached “Saturday” I was officially numb.

 

The personal planner is a lovely tool for nerds. It’s a grid with seven blank spots for each day, and as you go through the calendar you fill in your choices of where to go when. There are sessions scheduled basically from 9am to 10pm every day, with only a short break from 6-8pm. There’s no lunch break, or pee breaks. You have to write those in for yourselves.

 

I think I remember from past AWP conferences that it’s a good idea to go to no more than three sessions a day, but do I learn? Not very quickly. I wrote seven sessions into my planner, but hunger and fatigue only allowed me to attend three. Which was just fine.

 

All of the sessions I went to today were excellent in their own ways. They all inspired me and stoked me up and made me think about my writing in ways I haven’t in a while.

 

My first session was “Writing As Parents: Our Children As Subjects.” This featured Literary Mama (www.literarymama.com) writers Shari McDonald Strong and Sonya Huber, as well as the wonderful Kate Hopper (http://www.motherswhowrite.blogspot.com/), Jennifer Niesslein of Brain, Child (www.brainchildmag) and Jill Christman. They pondered the ethical, moral and literary issues to consider when writing about one’s own children. They all spoke with great candor and humor, but I wished they had at least one panelist whose child was older than ten. I do think (and in my own experience) these things change a lot when you have teenagers and young adults.

 

After that I went to a session of “Memory of Wounds: Memoirists Tell Truth, Lies, and Memory.” The room was packed to the gills and overflowing. I couldn’t even get in. It was a little painful to think that there were so many wounded memoirists around. (including me, I guess?) I sat in the floor in the hallway outside and every once in a while caught a word that floated out. Usually words like, “truth,” “story,” “healing.” I really wanted to get into this because my dear friend Joy Castro (www.joycastro.com) was speaking. Thankfully, I was able to squeeze myself into a little patch of carpet in the floor right as she began her part. She is so calm, poetic, brilliant and kind. The last part of her talk really put a lump in my throat, where she said, it’s not enough to write about the pain and the loss, the damage, the horror, but that every life includes moments of joy, seeing the blue sky, and it is important to reflect life in its wholeness. I didn’t do justice to her actual words but her delivery of it was so evocative and beautiful.

 

I was going to go to a Loft Literary Center reading with Charles Baxter, whom I have always admired, and Sun-Yung Shin, whom I really wanted to meet (she’s one of the editors of the awesome anthology Outsiders Within), but I was starving and tired so I went to lunch with Joy and Rebecca Kaminsky, whom I’ve know for years through Literary Mama but with whom I’ve never had more than a five minute conversation. We’re always seeing each other at busy literary events and never one on one. So that was good, and also to catch up with Joy.

 

Then I went to ANOTHER memoir session called “Aftershock: What Happens When You Throw Off the Veil of Fiction in Rendering Long-Hidden Truths? Strategies, Advice, and Practical Tips from Four Writers of Memoir.” (whew, how’s THAT for a subtitle?) Only it turns out there were only three writers. They had pretty good things to say about the real consequences (familial, legal, emotional) of writing about people, and how you really can never predict who you will piss off and why. But it only strengthened my resolve to write my story.

 

After that, I was fried. I really wanted to go to another session, but I couldn’t do it. I had to gather up my luggage and drag it across the street. I was overjoyed to find free Wi-Fi in the new hotel , which in my opinion is far superior to the Hilton.

Tonight there is a big event with Art Spiegelman. It is allegedly about six blocks away. I have not had dinner yet, am waiting for my roommate to arrive from the airport, and I just don’t know. I think I might settle for the tapas restaurant downstairs.

 

The thing about AWP is that there are always wayyyy more things to go to than one has reasonable energy for. Unless one is a twenty something MFA student, which I am not.

 

That’s the end of Day One. More tomorrow…!

 

Poll: Help me Pick a Column to Read!

I’m going to Chicago with a bunch of other Literary Mama editors, columnists and writers (and I am SO EXCITED to meet many of them for the first time!) to do a panel. Here’s our entry:

Literary Mama: A Model of Grassroots Literary Community Building. (Caroline Grant, Amy Hudock, Susan Ito, Rebecca Kaminsky, Kristina Riggle, Shari MacDonald Strong) Literary Mama evolved from a mothers’ writing group into an online literary journal featuring a variety of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. One of Writers’ Digest’s 101 Best Web Sites for Writers and a Forbes Best of the Web pick, Literary Mama’s diverse editors work from four nations and reach 40,000 readers monthly, offering a model for building a vibrant grassroots literary community. Our panel offers readings from contributing editors, followed by discussion of literary community-building.

On Friday night, February 13th, we’re also doing a public reading at Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago, and I’m planning to read one of my Life in the Sandwich columns, or an excerpt of one. I can’t decide which one, though.

The one about my mother’s weekly breakfasts at McDonald’s?

The one where I nearly burst an aneurysm trying to buy bathing suits for all of us?

My daughter’s last birthday party at home?

Packing for college?

Or redefining home?

Please help me decide. Let me know which one you might enjoy hearing out loud. Please go back to the Archives and browse a little. What do you think??

 

Speed Blog

Things are getting a little crazy around here. Time for another “Quickie Blog.”

 

Read/Reading:

The Beck Diet Solution – the first “diet” book I’ve ever read that really goes to the heart of what I struggle with, which is All In My Head. They have a swift and pithy response for the hundreds of “sabotaging thoughts” that derail someone wanting to lose weight. If anybody out there is reading/has read or wants to read this book and would like to buddy-up, let me know!

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama – omg did this book make me cry. I can’t believe this person is our president. It resonated on so many levels I’m still all discombobulated.

Fieldwork: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski – my book group read this but I was a delinquent and did not read it. They loved it though.

Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips – I LOVE her work so much and was so excited to get this, but it has been a bit slow going. I hope I will be able to immerse better on my next plane trip.

Wrote/Writing:

brochure for Pact Camp, which has  just opened for registration. YAY!

new column in the works

my talk for the Literary Mama panel coming up at AWP next! week!!!

Viewed:

Annie Liebowitz: Life Through A Lens – I LOVED this documentary and actually watched it twice.  It was incredibly moving, inspiring and brought back so many familiar and new images. Two thumbs up. Rent it on Netflix!

On TV: Top Chef, Biggest Loser, the Office, and LOST. My five hours of TV per week.

Memorable eats:

Ate Out:

• lunch, and then dinner again the same night at Kaka’ aku Kitchen in Honolulu, Hawaii (yeah I was there). My great buddy Twice The Rice brought me there and introduced me to the most awesome spinach/fried calamari/bacon and sweet chili salad. Unbelievable! It was so good. I dragged the whole family back the same night.

Cooked:

• Moosewood Brazilian Black Bean soup - I’ve made this over and over and over again and we never get tired of it. It’s bean soup month at our house!

Happenings:

• Trip to our first timeshare condo in Hawaii. Not the most idyllic ever, but convenient and pretty fun. Did a really nice whale-dolphin-sea turtle-snorkeling trip. Also took kids to the very same waterfall pool where Kate and Sawyer found the submerged plane on LOST.
• Gave private blogging lessons to two good friends, and they have launched their blogs! It was so fun (and I realized I actually know some stuff about this) that I am considering teaching a Blogging 101 workshop sometime this spring.
• Preparing to go to AWP in Chicago and then driving up to visit my girl in Wisconsin! Yay!
• visited my cardiologist. Had an EKG and echocardiogram. He said my heart is “robust” and that “rumors of your imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated.” He’s a real peach. Next week, the endocrinologist. I’m on a merry go round of doctors lately. I also have the most irritating nighttime cough I have ever had. I have to sleep sitting up, or I end up coughing so hard that other bad and involuntary things happen. I really, really hope this goes away soon.

 

Overall, things are good but just a smidge too busy with all the traveling. I’ll settle down again after mid-February.

 

“Home” – A New Column

My January column has just gone up at Literary Mama. As always, your thoughts and comments are welcomed!

Our college daughter recently informed us that after much searching she had found the apartment of her dreams. “It’s got hardwood floors, and a fireplace, and . . . !” She and her two future roommates were beside themselves with excitement. I had to sit down to catch my breath.

Swelling violins and a rousing chorus of “Sunrise, Sunset” flooded my brain. “Is this the little girl . . . “

Continue reading here.