rambles

This one goes out to Bob

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Sunset in Central Wisconsin, May 2021

You know how sometimes you’ll say something like, “Thank you for making me this present! It’s perfect, and I love it” and the person who made it will respond by saying, “Oh, it was nothing” (even though they clearly put a lot of time and effort into it)?

Well, that’s how the Midwesterners I know respond to every compliment. The Midwesterners I know have elevated the art of deflecting compliments to an Olympic sport.


I’ve spent years trying to decipher whether giving compliments is good or bad because it seems like every time I do, the person being complimented feels obligated to put themselves down, and then I try to convince them to be proud of themselves, and they insist they’re not special, and on and on, until I think we both walk away from the interaction feeling a little dizzy.

When I realized that deflecting compliments is a SPORT, however, suddenly everything made sense. Here are the rules for winning: the quicker and more self-deprecating you can be in response to a compliment, the more points you get. To win, leave your opponent (the compliment-giver) speechless.

I know someone who will be a gold medalist as soon as this sport is ratified by the IOC. He is lightning fast and able to deflect any compliment, big or small, expected or unexpected, day or night.

Take this interaction for example…

Me: This lasagna is literally the best lasagna I’ve ever had.
Future Gold Medalist: Well, I packed up the leftovers for you, so you’ll be sick of it soon enough.

Now, what are you supposed to say to that?

There’s really nothing you can say, and that’s why he’s the undisputed world champ (but don’t tell him that!).

This one goes out to Bob

Ten Lessons in Ten Years

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ponytail + cotton blouse + comfy jeans = my favorite WFH outfit, Spring/Summer 2020

1) Life is happier when you love people as they are instead of trying to change them (that goes for everyone: friends, family, yourself).

2) You only fail when you try, and all your worst failures eventually become your best anecdotes, so really everything is a win-win.

3) Migration is a human right, and 100 years from now, people will be horrified that we ever thought otherwise, so we should work for open borders now.

4) If you compare yourself to people who have more, you’ll feel like you don’t have enough. If you compare yourself to people who have less, you’ll realize how much you have, and you can use that awareness to motivate you to give more and work harder to reduce inequalities.

5) Food tastes better when we share it (even if all we can do is drop it off at a neighbor’s door).

6) Dogs, sunrises, flowers, toilets that flush, elevators, buses, cats, music, funny tweets, tiktoks, homemade signs, chamoy, babies, abuelit@s, strangers doing nice things for each other, choirs, cookies, lipstick that matches the dress and the shoes! Everything is incredible if you really think about it. You just have to stop to think about it.

7) You’re the protagonist of your own life, so do the things that matter to you and don’t worry about what other people think (they’re mostly busy starring in their own lives!).

8) I don’t think anyone ever regrets saying please, thank you, I love you.

9) Ask for what you really want, and never expect anyone to read your mind.

10) Vote, join a union, work together, help take care of the people around you! Independence is a dangerous myth. Interdependence is powerful (and it’s the only choice we have, anyway).

(I wrote this last year as I reflected on the decade that was coming to a close, and re-reading it has helped me take comfort and make better decisions this year, so I decided to post it here. Also, wow, number 10! I thought I knew about interdependence, but this year has shown us how connected we really are. Our lives are in each other’s hands. I try to remember this every day, and I think it’s helped me keep things in perspective.)

Ten Lessons in Ten Years

Eslopi Yos

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When I am asked whether I want to drink chocolate milk or regular milk, I don’t understand the question. 

Where I’m from, plain milk is an ingredient, something to stir chocolate into or blend with fruit to make a licuado.

The question feels like a prank, but when I look around the cafeteria, half the kids are drinking from red and white cartons.

Soon I will learn that this cafeteria is technically called a “cafetorium.” I will savor this word for years, thinking it cosmopolitan––maybe the original Latin?––before learning that it is really just a portmanteau for cafeteria and auditorium, a way for public schools to cut costs. My school is full of franken-words like this––cafetorium, spork––and when I learn them I feel second-hand embarrassment, like maybe the U.S. is not the sophisticated place I had imagined it to be.

In Mexico, everything seemed fancier if it came from the U.S. Please, my cousins and I begged our mothers, please make eslopi yos. When my aunt finally did, I struggled to choke down the saccharine saucy meat that I’d so idealized when I saw it in a movie about summer camp where the kids ate at long wooden tables. It’s too sweet to be lunch but too meaty to be dessert, I thought, trying to categorize the flavor of my first sloppy joe.

Fast-forward and here I was, in a real American cafeteria, at my own long table, eating from a squeaky styrofoam tray and drinking chocolate milk from a thin square carton, trying to ignore the taste of paper that came with every sip.

Eslopi Yos

Meet Chloe, our pandemic support pet

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This week Devin and I drove my mom home to Texas and drove back to Wisconsin with one of her dogs, who is now our official pandemic support pet. Here’s a little blurb I wrote about her impact on our lives and her “storied” lineage.

Chloe is a rescue who is rumored to be a long-lost descendant of ’90s superstar Wishbone. Despite her uncanny resemblance to the PBS Kids storyteller, Chloe harbors ambitions that are decidedly less literary. Her biggest dream in life is to fight the big dogs—and win.

When she’s not preparing for battle, she enjoys curling up on someone’s lap or laying on little pillows. (Here she is, curled up like a donut on our friend Emma’s lap.)

I think dogs are the best pandemic role models because they love staying home, going on walks, stretching, and relaxing, which are all things I want to keep loving, too. I feel so lucky that we get to keep living with such a good role model.

Meet Chloe, our pandemic support pet

Every taco is a walking taco

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walkingtacofritopie

Last year, when I was volunteering in school cafeterias dressed as a vegetable, I encountered a Wisconsin dish called the “Walking Taco” consisting of Fritos chips, ground beef, and yellow cheese. I’d seen this combination in Texas, where the dish is known as a Frito Pie, but its Midwestern moniker gave me pause. “The taco is an inherently portable food! I will prove it by making real tacos for all the children!,” I shouted in my head. “Provided you buy the ingredients,” I added because I’m trying to be better about budgeting, all the time, and that includes daydreams.

I was talking to someone about tacos recently, and they asked, “Do you mean the ones with the hard or soft shell?,” and my heart shattered, so I’ll pause to explain what a taco is. A taco consists of a fresh tortilla, which you top with meat and/or vegetables and Mexican salsa and lime, like so:

 

tacos-mexicanos
Photo via chef.mx

You can just pick one up and walk with it if you want.

But then I started thinking, what if Wisconsin is the type of person who puts too much meat and salsa in her taco y se le rompe la tortilla y su mamá le dice, “Ay, m’ijita ¿por qué eres tan batida?”

Maybe Wisconsin decided she was too messy to eat tacos, and she decided to pretend that a bag of Fritos and some canned ground meat could be a suitable substitute.

Pobre Wisconsin. A mí no me molesta si te manchas la ropa.

 

 

Every taco is a walking taco

Gifts For My Dead

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Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset

I went to Portland last week, and when I got back to Madison, I noticed that everyone was talking about gifts for their dead.

Devin was at his parents’ house, so I made a mental note to ask him later in the week. And I kept overhearing the phrase: “Gift for my dead” … “Gift for my dead” … “Gift for my dead.”

Wisconsin has a large Catholic population so I started to wonder if it was a tradition similar to Día de los Muertos.

I imagined little altars topped with cheese curds and Green Bay Packers memorabilia, rhubarb-scented veladoras, a polka band instead of mariachis, and calaveritas made of maple syrup instead of sugar cane. I’ve passed a few cemeteries in Madison, and I wondered if I’d get to see some of the celebrations.

It wasn’t until I overheard someone say “I’ve really got to get a gift for my dead. Father’s Day is on Sunday!” that I realized they weren’t preparing to accept the reality of death by participating in a collective mourning ritual commemorating loved ones lost. They were buying gifts for their dads!

And that’s when I had my big epiphany: the Upper Midwest accent is really just a game of musical chairs for short vowels.

The “a” in “dad” sounds like the “e” in “dead.”

The “o” in “Wisconsin” sounds like the “a” in “apple.”

“About” sounds like “a boat,” and round and round.

Now I know to run through all the vowels before I imagine another elaborate scenario (though I’m not ready to give up my daydream of a Midwestern Día de Muertos quite yet).

 

 

* The ceramic skull pictured above was a souvenir from Puerto Peñasco, where I guess they also know about Wisconsin’s Day of the Dead. ; )

 

Gifts For My Dead

Enormous Eye

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A few weeks ago I was asked to chronicle my Saturday for Enormous Eye, “a website that watches writers watch their days.” It was one of the most surprising assignments I’ve ever done, not only because I’d never noticed my life in such detail before, but also because who knew my family was that cheesy? I only had one day to type up my notes and submit, but when I reread it I could hear an angry editor, played by Danny DeVito in a crumpled shirt, burgundy tie, and suspenders, smoking a cigar and yelling at me to “Tone down the cute! You think any reader’s gonna buy this? It’s just not believable!!!” I know the publishing industry isn’t run by sweaty, angry men anymore (especially on the ‘net), but I like this daydream a lot, especially the part where I sternly yet respectfully respond, “I’m sorry, Mr. Editor Man, but I refuse to edit the truth” and walk out clutching my manuscript while wearing big glasses with thin brown frames á la Ms. Geist in Clueless.

You can read the full post here, and here’s a photo of my beautiful Chihuahua taken that morning.

Enormous Eye

A comprehensive summary

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It’s best not to count your chickens before they hatch, but I’m confident that, unless the internet breaks irreparably, my blog will turn three years old on Monday; and I probably won’t have time to write anything then because Devin and I have a date with the great outdoors. Blogging in the woods is decidedly not romantic, so here we are!

I started this blog right after graduating from college, and it’s weird to think about how much has happened since then. It doesn’t feel like my life is that different, but the stats say otherwise. In three years, I have said goodbye to Portland, moved to New York, and gone to Texas and Chihuahua, Mexico a bunch of times (note to self: blog about that more!). I’ve become an aunt and a married person. I’ve also had a lot of jobs and meals and little adventures.

I’ve been thinking lately about what kind of writer I am and realized, to my dismay, that I am a chronicler of small moments. I have some blog posts up my sleeve about Carnegie Hall and Chicago and a perfect little farm in Wisconsin, but for some reason, it’s always harder for me to write about the exciting than the mundane. It’s a bummer because I would like to write about all the exciting things that I’ve been able to do by some lucky coincidence, but I usually end up writing about grocery shopping instead. Really. I could have blogged about having a sleepover at the Waldorf-Astoria, but instead I wrote about smiling. I could have blogged about going to a star-studded event, but instead I wrote about dropping something. My blog posts aren’t usually premeditated, and I’m not sure what it means that these are the things I focus on, but I guess I can feel better about it if I tell myself that I am writing about things that are relatable. After all, I bet most people like the thrill of eavesdropping, and even more of us have waited in line to go to the bathroom.

Another thing that’s true is that I like writing personally. Three years ago I started a blog because I wanted to write about my whole life–not everything that happens to me but every facet of myself from silly things like making food to things that are possibly more controversial like my views on borders, September 11th, and activism.  I wrote about these things because politics and ethics are just as integral to our selves as opinions and preferences. I didn’t want to shy away from that, and I’m proud that I haven’t. There’s an old feminist slogan that says “the personal is political” meaning that there are bigger issues affecting our everyday lives (how much we are paid or whether we are harassed on the street, for example). Conversely, I believe that it’s important to consider how the political is personal and to think about our role in making those things better. (For example, my little cousins almost didn’t make it to my wedding because their visas didn’t come in time, and you need a visa to come from Mexico to the U.S. but NOT vice versa. I don’t think that’s fair, and my first step in changing unjust border policies is simply sharing my story). I suppose if I had a blogging mantra, it would be “The personal is political. The political is personal. And the mundane is universal.”

Writing here is by far my favorite hobby, and I never cease to be surprised that my friends and family care enough to read my rambles, so thank you. It really means a lot.

A comprehensive summary

Four Years In

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Last week, when I was blogging about my new favorite hat, Devin read the title and asked if I was posting pictures of all my hats. ‘No’, I gasped, ‘but I will!’ because, as silly as it is, I think blogging about my love of hats would be an afternoon well-spent. And the fact that it occurred to Devin before me was a total ‘he gets me!’ moment.

Devin and I have been a couple for four years now, and I’ve been thinking about how to describe it–I mean, I am in Uncharted Territory here–I didn’t grow up around young couples and all the books and movies I consumed were about falling in love, not staying in it. In fact, most of the romantic comedies seemed to portray staying in love as unbearably boring if not impossible. Here’s what I learned about relationships from Hollywood: when you’re young, you’re beautiful and passionate and you have a beautiful wedding and lots of cool friends; fast-forward and you’re either divorced because you both cheated on each other or you’re this old couple wearing sweatpants who’s only in the movie to provide comedic relief by nagging each other and rolling your eyes. Um yeah, thanks but no thanks.

I thought love was this feeling that faded with time and that some people chose to stay together despite their diminished feelings, which is kind of…romantic in a way, but I thought probably not for me because I wanted my life to be fun, and I didn’t think wearing sweater sets and reminiscing about how much fun we used to have would do it for me.

These days I’m daydreaming of writing a screenplay for a new kind of romantic comedy. It would be called Four Years In and its cheesy tagline would be, ‘It gets AWESOME’.

unplanned matching

The movie would be about how much fun it is to make up songs while you ride bikes and cook dinner while you dance in the kitchen. It would be about going to weddings together and not feeling nervous when people ask you when it’ll be ‘your turn’ because you know you both want to spend the rest of your lives together. It would be about all the inside jokes you accumulate over the years and the traditions you get to create; about knowing each other’s families and making up games to play in the pool with your younger cousins; about having embarrassing moments; and helping each other get through hard times. It would be about supporting one another in all your dreams and how much more fun you can have when you know how to avoid annoying the crap out of each other!

I’d probably hire another screenwriter to help me infuse that with some plot points or something. ; ) But honestly, I think it would be really great to have a rom-com in sharp contrast to all the patriarchal, capitalist, Men-Are-From-Mars-Women-Are-From-Venus, Committed-Relationships-Are-Boring movies about love that already exist.

My movie would be totally feminist and progressive! Only could it still have product placement? I really, really love product placement.

Here’s to four more!
kristy

Four Years In

Every Day is Hat-urday, Pt. I

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It’s technically springtime, but New York is still COLD. And I’m afraid it might be all my fault.

What have I done???

See, when Devin gave me the wool hat of my dreams for my birthday, the first thing I did was wish for a long winter, so I’d get lots of chances to wear it this year.

Since my birthday, it’s been consistently near-freezing, and I have worn it every day. I still love love love it, but I’m thinking we could both use a break until about mid-October with the occasional September reunion. So this weekend, I sent Mother Nature another memo.

MEMO

TO: Ms. Mother Nature
DATE: 24 March 2013
SUBJECT: Springtime

Dear Mama Na’,

Thanks so much for doing me a solid and letting me break in my new favorite hat. It’s been really nice!

However, my neighbors and friends and all ten of my toes are ready to thaw. Mr. Softee is begging for business. Baby birds are shivering while they chirp.

Please feel free to resume regularly-scheduled programming.

Your friend,
kristy

Every Day is Hat-urday, Pt. I