Exhaustion: Better with Cookies!

Yet again, it's been one of THOSE weeks. You know, the kind that leave you completely, totally exhausted. And then you're too exhausted to even make yourself go to bed, so the next day you're even more exhausted and you're completely ineffective at work and you come home and all you can do is stare at the computer but then you still don't go to bed and it's a big swirling vortext of tired.

Or maybe that only happens to me? Maybe the rest of you are smart enough to just put down the computer and go to bed already? I hope so because I think it's probably a much happier way to live your life. I keep meaning to try it.

Fortunately, the weekend is coming soon. Oh, sweet weekend. I am trying to ignore the pile of dishes that we didn't wash tonight after dinner and therefore will still be around tomorrow when that weekend begins.

But because I love you, dear readers, instead of pictures of my exhausted life, I will leave you with lovely pictures of a recent baking escapade. I made snickerdoodles a couple weeks ago. Who'd have thought that a cookie scoop and the perfectly even cookies it produces could bring me such joy?

Before

After

Just to clarify, I am not so neurotic that I lined up the cookie balls intentionally like that. I didn't even realize they were all in a nice line until I looked at the pictures tonight.

Island Hopping

This weekend we went island hopping! We visited the exotic locales of Manhattan and Staten Island. Manhattan fed us, with a brunch at Good Enough to Eat and world famous cookies-as-big-as-your-head at Levain's Bakery. Staten Island entertained us.

Although Staten Island and its ferry have been on our to-do list since we moved here several years ago, we have never gotten around to it. The closest we've come was several years ago when our friend Kara and I made a date to ride the ferry, but at the last minute completely switched plans and ended up tubing on the Delaware River. But somehow, on Saturday, the time seemed right. So we made another date with our friend Kara and headed for South Ferry. The ferry terminal had scrolling ads that at first we thought were advertising liquor prices. We still aren't entirely sure what exactly they were advertising, but after our adventures we remain fairly certain that despite Manhattan's best efforts Staten Island is in fact not a separate country (and therefore there is no duty free shopping at the ferry terminal). I am happy to report that the ferry did not tip over from tourists crowded on one side to view the Statue of Liberty. And also happy to report that we did get a view of the statue, because it's always fun to see even if you've done it before. It is really very random that France decided to send us a statue of a giant green lady, and somehow she ended up on a tiny island of her own just off of Manhattan.

Once on Staten Island we boarded a city bus for an incredibly long bus ride. Whoever designed the bus route was apparently in a contest to see if s/he could design a route that drove on every single street on the entire island. At the end though, we were rewarded with a glorious view. We tried several times to take a decent hold-out picture of ourselves, but apparently I was in an unphotogenic mood. Plus I neglected to bring sunglasses like those smarties. This is the best we managed to produce. We wandered the boardwalk and admired the view. We also decided that we were not too sad that it was not swimming weather: It may be gorgeous, but it's still Staten Island after all. (Hey, I live in New Jersey...there has to be somebody left to make fun of.)

The internet informed us that a common Staten Island beach conversation involves the phrase "meet me at the Dolphin Statue." On our approach to the statue we split up and pretended to meet at the statue. Yes, this is what we do for fun on the weekends. And we wonder why we don't have more friends. :) Kara and Becky practiced meeting while I took their picture.After that we headed back towards the ferry terminal. We attempted to get a drink at a random Russian/Greek restaurant, but they didn't seem to want us. So eventually we ended up at a decent little pub and enjoyed a drink, then tried to get on the return ferry. Due to an issue with the ferry we had a little extra time to kill and wound up wandering in to a high school baseball game at the minor league stadium. The stadium is right on the water and has a really nice view behind the field; we're considering attempting a Staten Island Yankees game this summer.

We enjoyed another drink on the return ferry, because apparently drinking beer on the ferry is "a thing" and that's just the sort of thing we do. We waved to Lady Liberty and returned safely to the island from whence we came. And that concludes another chapter of Weekend Adventures!

Crafting for a Cause

I first started doing origami (the Japanese art of paper folding) when I was in fourth grade. I took a summer school class and quickly became obsessed. I'm sure that somewhere in my parents' house there's still a box of all the "treasures" I folded in late elementary school. When I was in sixth grade, my grandmother (who suffered from horrible allergies) was very ill, and I remember painstakingly folding a bouquet of yellow and orange paper lilies for her.

In high school, I earned my Girl Scout Gold Award. For those who don't know, this is a big. frickin. deal. It's the highest award in Girl Scouting, similar in many ways to the Boy Scout Eagle Award. It's pretty customary to hold a ceremony and reception when the award is presented, and for mine I decided I wanted to fold gold paper cranes as favors for each person who attended. In the week or two before the ceremony, I folded somewhere between 100-150 gold foil cranes.

Fast forward to 2011. I learned a couple weeks ago about an organization called Students Rebuild. They're collecting paper cranes as a fundraiser for rebuilding efforts in Japan.For every crane they receive, a foundation will donate $2 toward reconstruction. As of today they've received 21,000 cranes, but their goal is 100,000. If you're sending over 50 cranes, they'll even send you a pre-paid shipping label so that you just have to drop the box off with UPS! By sheer coincidence, my work has about 600 cranes (we were trying for 1,000 but quit early) sitting around that we've been trying to figure out what to do with, so tomorrow I'll be dropping off a rather large box at the UPS Store.

I wanted to get us to a round number (something about sending 604 cranes seemed a bit odd to me), so I figured I'd fold a few more at home tonight. And I'm still going to do that, but I also remembered that somewhere in my origami stuff, I still had a few leftover cranes from that Gold Award ceremony. Yes, I am a pack rat. And yes, that means that these cranes, stored safely in a box of origami paper, have moved from my hometown, to college, back to my hometown, to Massachusetts, and now to New Jersey. Now 15 of them (I saved two for myself out of pure nostalgia) will be packed in a box and sent to join thousands of others. I folded them 12 years ago and have kept them ever since, but now they're actually worth something to someone else.

Yeah, I laid out my cranes and took a picture for the blog. What, is that weird?

If you've got a few minutes to spare, find yourself a square piece of paper, fold a crane, and send it in.Or get a group of people together and make a party of it! It's not hard, I promise. Here's a video tutorial. If that doesn't work for you, we can set up an individual lesson on Skype or something. I've taught 8-year-olds to fold them. You can do it. Promise.

100 Posts! And a New Name!

Well, despite our silence for all of last week, we have reached a blogging milestone: this is officially our 100th post! So thank you, dear readers, for sticking around even when we fall off the face of the earth for a bit. We're hoping that last week's insanity in our lives will be an anomaly, and we'll be around more to give you a little somethin' to read.

In celebration of actually sticking with this blog thing, we have a super-duper exciting announcement: we're changing our name. No, not our real names--we already did that. We're changing the blog's name. We finally admitted to ourselves that "Adventures of Two Midwestern East Coast Liberals" was about the most ridiculously long-winded blog title on earth. It seemed cute to me when I first came up with it as "Adventures of a Midwestern East Coast Liberal", but somehow the pluralization of it when Carrie came on board just made it feel even longer. It's time for a change. Fear not, we will still regale you with tales of our adventures. There are still two of us. We are still from the Midwest and live on the East Coast. And despite the best efforts of one family member, we are still liberals. 

So what's the new name, you ask? (Okay, maybe you don't ask cuz it's staring at you from the top of the page, but humor me here.) Our blog is now called "And the Next Day". 

The new title is actually a reference to our wedding vows. We wrote our own vows for our ceremony; I read them first and then Carrie read them. At the end she said, "And when I wake up tomorrow, I will promise this all again." I replied, "So will I.  And the next day.  And the next, each day choosing us again." It was really important to us that these aren't promises we're making to each other once. They are promises that we make to each other constantly, choosing one another and our relationship every day. 

Now that the wedding is over (we're still contemplating a recap series though--despite it being several months ago. Any interest, dear readers?), I feel like it's a particularly appropriate title. The wedding is over, we're together for ever and ever and the next day after that. And also, let's be honest, some of our posts are a little "We did blah blah blah and the next day we did blah blah blah." So, all around appropriate!

What do you think? And more importantly, what do you think of this winter that just. won't. end? I got all excited when it got warm earlier, but that seems to have come and gone. Please come back, spring?! Please?!

We're back and a birthday

It's been way too long since either of us posted, I know. I don't even have a good excuse. Last week was one of those weeks where nothing you resolve to do gets done, where the exhaustion from one work day just drags into the next work day, and you just don't feel like blogging.


Last weekend though we did have a lovely time celebrating the 2nd birthday of our favoritest (okay, I admit it, only... but still totally awesome) nephews, Matthew and Thomas. I remember so clearly the weekend two years ago, when on Friday afternoon my brother-in-law called me and let me know that my sister was being prepared for a c-section. After getting through the initial shock, Becky and I threw ourselves together as quickly as we could and frantically drove to Rhode Island, all the while fretting about making it before visiting hours ended. We didn't make it, and had to beg our way into the hospital. Mean security guard made us promise "only 3 minutes!" By which we meant "we will spend the vast majority of the next 72 hours as visitors in this hospital." This is helpful Auntie Carrie a few weeks later after both little boos were home from the hospital (April 18th, 2009): Here's Auntie Becky with both of them from May 2nd, 2009: And this is Auntie Carrie and the little boos on March 20th, 2011 (please note their obsession with Elmo, despite the fact that they've never seen Sesame Street... Elmo is apparently like crack for babies... and for some reason the Elmo birthday balloon seems to be wishing happy birthday to drunk Elmo... odd.): The birthday party was tons of fun, with a bouncy castle: And two awesome custom cakes, not harmed in the least by Mr. Matthew sticky his bare little toes into the green frosting:

We also made our usual stop at the YMCA for swimming, went to toddler gymnastics class, and did all the usual hanging out with the family.

We've spent countless hours with Matthew and Thomas in their first two years of life, from weekends in NY/NJ to weekends in MA to trips to Vermont and Minnesota and Colorado and the Jersey Shore. I've babysat and otherwise worked with a lot of kids over the years, but these two little munchkins are our family. I come from a very small extended family, so maybe it means more to me because of that. But they're going to know us for the rest of our lives, they're going to be our children's cousins, and we love them so very much. Happy Birthday Matthew and Thomas! (And since we're a week late, fingers crossed for their mommy on the big test she had to take today!)

It's Different

After we booked our honeymoon tickets the other day, I tweeted something about needing to get a new passport. Someone tweeted back about the fact that she'd been married several years and hadn't bothered to get a new passport.

And my first thought was simply, "It's different."

She's married to a man, so even though they don't have the same last names in their passports (she did choose to take his name, but the same rules apply to the many women in hetero marriages who don't change their names when they get married), their marriage is likely to be recognized wherever they go. If they approach the immigration officer at the airport together and say they're married, that person is unlikely to declare that they're not a family and must go through immigration separately. And if some tragedy were to befall them, either in the U.S. or in another country, and one of them were to need medical attention, the hospital staff would likely take their word for it when they say they're married.

It's different.

In contrast, it's only in the past few months that the U.S. government declared that patients have the right to decide who has visitation rights, even if that person is a same-sex partner. That directive grew out of a Florida case in which a woman and her children were denied visitation rights to their wife/mother as she was dying, despite the partner having a health care power of attorney. And outside the U.S. the situation can be even scarier. We love traveling, and we're not about to abandon our desire to see the world just because we're a same-sex couple.

But it's different.

So not only will we both update our passports to contain our new shared last name, but we will travel with a certified copy of our marriage certificate. And we will travel with originals of our healthcare proxy and power of attorney documents. And I'm already working on scanning electronic copies of these documents, along with our wills, so that we could access them online anytime if needed. Yes, we have wills. We've been married 4 months, we have no substantial assets, and we don't have children yet, but we have wills. Our families are very supportive and would no doubt follow our wishes to the best of their abilities, but depending on where we are, our marriage has different levels of recognition. (The drive home from MA to NJ is always fun: now we're married, now we're not, now we're married, now we're sorta-married, now we're maybe civil-unioned?) I'm generally a pretty risk-averse person anyway, but on these matters, I'm taking as few risks as possible. So yes, we'll be spending that $220 to update our two passports as one more marker of the legitimacy of our relationship.

I don't mean to sound bitter; I don't begrudge the privileges of anyone who's in a hetero marriage. I just wish those privileges could be shared by all of us.

I wish it wasn't different.

So all of these thoughts were running through my head yesterday, when I got a bit of a reality check. I was about to leave work when my director asked if I knew of resources for someone claiming asylum. I didn't have much, but after hearing the story behind the question, I spent a good hour Googling my heart out for resources. Without giving out too much identifying information, she was asking on behalf of someone who had recently come out to his/her parents and been met with a very hostile reaction. This individual comes from a country where homosexuality is illegal and potentially punishable by death, and after successfully re-entering the U.S. following this traumatic coming out experience, this person is now trying to figure out how to apply for asylum in the U.S.

That's different. In a way that makes my passport concerns seem rather insignificant.

I did find several resources to pass on to that individual, but I'd also like to share one with all of you. Immigration Equality is an organization that is working to change immigration laws as they impact LGBT people and also help LGBT people who are struggling with the immigration system now. They do advocacy, they provide information, and they provide legal assistance for people who couldn't otherwise afford it. So I'd urge you to take a few minutes to at least read about their work, read the stories of people they've worked with, and get involved if you feel so inspired.

Help make it different.

Delicious Adventures

Last weekend was another relatively low-key weekend at home and/or enjoying the lovely city we happen to live quite near.

On Friday evening the weather was lovely, and thus (the quickly approaching expiration date had nothing to do with it...nope...nothing at all) Becky decided to talk a meandering walk to the Lower East Side to spend a Livingsocial coupon we had purchased nearly a year ago. For the unfamiliar, Livingsocial is a lot like Groupon, where they have one really good deal a day. You pay the coupon site, and I assume they pay the company that offered the product. And then eventually (if you remember, and have the energy to, say, walk to the Lower East Side) you take the coupon to the store and redeem it for your merchandise. So our coupon was for a dozen mini cannolis from Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Yum. Birthday cake was the most delicious to me, but Becky said it was too sweet. Cinnabun tasted like a giant stick of Big Red gum. Most predictable of all, Becky loved peanut butter cup.

Sunday we decided to play NYC tourists. We met up with our friend Stephanie and her adorable 2-year-old daughter for lunch at Ollie's Noodle Shop. Watching a little person slurp udon noodles is pretty freaking adorable. After Chinese food we strolled down 9th Avenue and ended up at Chelsea Market. It's an awesome urbany warehouse space that used to be a big industrial bakery and then some industrial railroad thing and has now been reborn as an upscale collection of bakeries, restaurants, and a few stores. A few delicious bakeries, including Sarabeth's and Amy's Bread, have both storefronts and giant glass-enclosed kitchens where pastry chefs are held captive like zoo animals.

After enjoying ice cream and the children's section of a book store (at which our 2-year-old friend "read" stories to us...aww...) we left our friends at a subway stop and continued the wander down 9th Ave. We picked up ground coffee from an awesome old-school coffee shop that is crazy expensive but we don't care because we buy so little coffee and it's just so damn cool, bought camera lens cleaner from Orthodox Jews, and ended up over at the High Line. Verdict for old elevated rail platform turned urban garden: pretty cool. I think we'll have to return when it's not so frigid out, as it was by this time of the evening.

Bad picture of me, and bad picture of us, but I wouldn't want you to forget our smiling faces. Or worse yet, disbelieve our adventures!

All in all it did not turn out to be as epic as we had hoped, but much fun was had. I would definitely still classify it as an adventure!

Greece-ward ho!

In less political news, the honeymoon is inching towards being a reality rather than a dream! Both of us have successfully acquired our work's approval for summer vacation. And both of us have once again been laughed at by our offices for putting in the earliest vacation requests.

We've spent the last several weeks stalking every travel website we'd ever heard of in search of a combination of flights that didn't make our eyeballs pop out of our heads. We've pretty much been operating under the assumption that if we just searched hard enough (and crossed our fingers, and chanted, and threw in a rain dance for good measure), then cheaper flights would appear by magic. 

Shocking news: that hasn't happened so far.

Normally under these circumstances, I'd be inclined to wait a bit longer in the hopes of summer sales appearing. But unsurprisingly, we also did a whole bunch of research on that and read from many "experts" that summer sales aren't all that likely this year, between airline consolidation, rising oil prices, yada yada yada. And the flights currently available are at perfect times and are in/out of the most convenient airport to our home. So tonight we finally bit the bullet and bought our plane tickets! We are officially going to Greece and London!

Inequality

Well, I'm not the Wisconsin girl, so I will leave any lengthy commentary on that to her. But suffice it to say that this was a sad week in cheesehead land. "Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." -Ronald Reagan

This is what class war looks like. It's all about priorities, but I especially don't see why children/education/the future should suffer to provide tax breaks to billionaires. Eat the Future, in the words of Paul Krugman. Helping children, even poor children (maybe even especially poor children), improves our country in the long run.

You all know by now that I love nifty county-by-county maps. Today Becky found a new one for me. I don't love this one as much as some of the others and I'm honestly not entirely clear on what message the creators of it were trying to send, but it does show some interesting national trends. I grew up in what The Atlantic defines as Industrial Metropolises; Becky grew up in an Emptying Nest. I can't see the map well enough to figure out if our current county is an Industrial Metropolis or a Monied Burb, though I'm quite certain that our town would be defined as a Monied Burb. We have strong interest in moving to a Campus and Careers (or y'know, more Monied Burbs) county. I'm particularly intrigued by their definition of large areas of the upper Midwest as Emptying Nests. We've always heard about the Midwestern brain drain, although Brookings tells me that according to 2000 census data, in fact the Midwest has large numbers of young educated workers while the Northeast has large numbers of aging educated workers in addition to young educated workers.

And that's probably enough demographic nerdiness for you for one Friday evening. Happy Weekend!

100 Years of Solidarity

Happy International Women's Day! This year marks the 100th anniversary of the holiday. I spent my day at work handing out roses, chocolates, and information about events happening in the NYC area in honor of the day. Despite washing my hands half a dozen times since I got home, my hands still smell like roses. But today gave me a chance to talk to lots of women about their experiences. I talked to young American women, who had either never heard of the holiday or were super-excited that our handout included information about their upcoming V-Day event. And I talked to young women from other countries, who were excited to see an American celebration of a holiday they know from home. And I talked to older American women, many of whom self-identified as second-wave feminists, who told me about their experiences fighting for women's rights. It was a good day, and an educational day, but also a long, exhausting day, so I'm left with few eloquent words for you about the significance of this holiday. But I'd invite you to stop by One Cat Per Person, one of my favorite blogs, and read some of the really thoughtful posts submitted for "In Her Own Words: In Celebration of International Women's Day 2011".

And then go find an important woman in your life, and tell her that you love and appreciate her.

And while I really don't want to entirely politicize the day, I was reminded by several women today of the hard-fought rights that Congress is threatening right now. If you support women's access to basic healthcare, as well as a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, please take 30 seconds to tell your Senators.