Finger, meet string
You know how sometimes, you get that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something important, but you can’t remember what it is?
For several weeks now, I’ve been getting that feeling—almost every single day. At first, I patiently went through my planner, email, voicemail and facebook events looking for something I was forgetting. There was nothing. Thinking my body had made a mistake in sending me this ‘feeling’, I ignored it, waiting for my body to correct itself. But it didn’t. It hasn’t.
I’ve raked my brain several times since… deadlines? important dates? birthdays? special events? unreplied phone calls or emails?
Nothing. It is most irritating.
At this point, I am starting to doubt there is even something I have unknowingly forgotten. But the feeling of unease hasn’t gone away, and I am left with two options: either my body has gone crazy, or I have. Neither look good.
Has this ever happened to you? And if it has—how did you figure out what you were missing, and was it really that important after all?
Day 103: Grace In Small Things
- Getting housework done.
- The smell of freshly cut Jasmin when you walk into the freshly cleaned dining room.
- Burning myself with a steam mop; getting to track it with pictures.
- Finding old records in the basement, particularly: A DISNEYLAND RECORD!
- A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 102: Grace In Small Things
- The cute summery outfit (+ shoes) I wore to church.
- Frolicking in the grass with my dog under a pink flowery tree on a beautiful summery day.
- Perfecting my southern accent for singing along to country gospel songs.
- Grapefruit juice + sparkling water.
- Talks of a summer pilgrimage to my mecca… Disneyland! (!!!)
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 101: Grace In Small Things
- Cooking a mouth-watering zucchini, eggplant, cauliflower and red pepper stir fry over a base of buttery white & yellow sauteed onions and a bed of couscous. NOM NOM NOM.
- Vegetating on the couch for a couple hours because its so hot you can’t concentrate or do anything productive. (For the record, it was only a humid 29°C/84°F … but I need to be eased into summer slowly!)
- Dad’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. (The store bought kind.)
- Another beautiful sunny day!
- Looking at old photos of extinct Disneyland rides and attractions.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 100: Grace In Small Things
- Sending & replying to important emails I’ve procrastinated on sending. MOST SATISFYING FEELING EVER.
- Having so many emails to send and reply to that it takes up 80% of your working hours.
- Bringing a friend to hear Karen Huss, 100K Premier speak in Langely.
- Calling the other best friend for the first time in at least two months. Awful awful awful, but this is what happens when you’re both ridiculously busy. :(
- Vegetarian sushi with marinated tofu – BEST THING EVER. Nom nom nom.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 99: Grace In Small Things
- Doing laundry. (It makes me feel so accomplished!)
- Getting invited to things.
- Having enough interesting things happen to me in the span of a single day, news of which to give the best friends when they ask, “so whats new with you besides work and school?” … Sad, but true. This is what happens when you have priorities.
- Rediscovering my forgotten love for reruns of SATC.
- Standard technique class!
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
About the redesign: v.10
So some of you have already noticed that CHNL has been looking a wee bit different these last couple days. I figured I would officially talk about the redesign here, especially for all of you who follow this website via the rss feed.
some notable changes:
- background is back to white, to celebrate the seasonal transition between dark & dreary winter to light & airy summer.
- content width has changed from 600px to 500px, something you are unlikely to notice but took me several hours to implement. (think: resizing photos)
- now features two sidebars instead of one! (or none.)
- innermost sidebar includes a “best of chnl” selection of my favorite and/or the most popular articles and posts, grouped by category: for amusement, for usefulness, for inspiration, for pondering
- outermost siderbar features the main image + title from the latest article and the latest recipe. it also includes a square composed of the 9 latest photos I took (pulled from flickr.)
Day 98: Grace In Small Things
- A day that starts out raining but ends warm, clear and sunny.
- Singing in a car full of singing people. With the windows down.
- WhiteSpot’s Zoo Sticks. NOM NOM NOM.
- WhiteSpot’s chocolate shakes made with real ice cream. NOM NOM NOM.
- The ritual of exchanging looks.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 97: Grace In Small Things
- Taking public transit in Vancouver.
- Shopping sprees at the everything for a dollar store.
- Arts and crafts projects in the mall food court.
- A day in Vancouver appropriate for wearings (short) shorts.
- Great conversations I get to have as a result of the business I’m in.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 96: Grace In Small Things
- Tackling the post-weekend inbox.
- Showing off your daddy to people who have never met him.
- Starting the day right.
- Clear blue skies, warm air, soft wind, rough blue seas.
- English Bay culture.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 95: Grace In Small Things
- Surviving a little bout of public speaking.
- The indescribable feeling you get when you meet someone who knew and/or knows someone from your past. And then brings him/her up.
- Potluck food. Like pink cupcakes, mango pudding and vegan meatloaf! mmm.
- Hot afternoon naps.
- Asking tough questions.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 94: Grace In Small Things
- Being done with the redesign / overhaul.
- Meeting people who have heard of you before you met them. And heard good things, to boot!
- Discovering great little gems on the internets.
- Things that bring you right back to a certain place that existed 1, 2, even 3 years ago.
- Cooking for potlucks.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Links for 2009-05-22
Is it possible to love two people at the same time?
Ev’Yan (Apricot of Apricot Tea) launches her new advice column: Ask Apricot.
“So, I’m wearing my 1985 New England Patriots t-shirt. And here is my Ralph Nader tattoo. Basically, my body is a shrine to epic losers.”
Time for some hipster bashing. (via look at this f**king hipster)
Puffin hoax revealed!
There’s nothing more obnoxious than a fake animal that tries to pass itself off as an authentic member of the animal world. Puffins are maybe the biggest offenders when it comes to this, even going so far as to pretend to take pictures with humans and hang out in places like Iceland where no normal person can confirm that they were really there. Like Iceland is a real place, anyway… (via f**k you, Penguin)
It was then she learned that “horror” was spelled “speedo.”
Two out of three rabbits disapprove of you. One isn’t looking. Move over, LOLcats! (via disapproving rabbits)
Day 93: Grace In Small Things
- Putting together an outfit, without much thought, that The Best Friend actually approves of. (Trust me, we were both amazed.)
- The trendy feeling you get from going out for coffee with friends.
- One’s ability to be empathetic, sensitive, and respectful of others.
- People who come with high recommendations.
- The ability to make an impression on people.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Elimination day cupcakes
Yesterday I set time aside from my schedule to watch the finale of Dancing with the Stars—and to celebrate the final elimination of the season, I decided to make elimination day cupcakes.
The concept was simple: I would decorate three cupcakes with the names of the three remaining contestants, and as each one got eliminated, so too would their cupcake.
Day 92: Grace In Small Things
- Going through the last two years of my best writing. It made me realize I do have some talents.
- The ‘gliding on water’ foxtrot.
- Memories a certain place brings to you when you visit it under similar conditions at a similar time in the year.
- The beauty of natural female elegance.
- Getting to bed 2 hours earlier than the record trend this past week.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 91: Grace In Small Things
- Feeling inspired enough to work on a redesign.
- Baking + making elimination day cupcakes!
- Dealcoholized pear wine from Sweden.
- IKEA food. You think I’m joking but I’m not.
- Evening summer wind.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Chanel and a landed immigrant with an expired visa cross the US border, hilarity ensues
For someone who spends at least 2 months out of every year traveling on and off of American soil, crossing the border isn’t anything new—and although I have been known to create a purposeful ruckus with the TSA in airports just to “liven up” things (think “accidentally” leaving hand sanitizer and a nail file in your purse, or bringing a toaster oven as a carry on, and no I am not joking you), I haven’t yet dared to do anything quite as exciting with ground travel.
On Thursday of last week, we left Vancouver for a weekend in Auburn, WA. There were five of us. I had somehow assumed that since we’d all been in the country for many, many years we were all Canadian citizens, but that was not the case: one of us was a German landed immigrant. With an expired visa.
Internet, I would be hard pressed to find the right words to describe to you the expression on my face: supremely excited. Which is not usually the case with timid, reserved Canadians who know that one wrong look and three wrong words can land you a strip search and (possibly), a finger up your ass.
Day 90: Grace In Small Things
- The miraculous event of getting out of bed after a crazy weekend to face a Monday that held many a things I had to do that had been put off since the week before.
- Tackling the painful event of 104 new emails—personal and business—that mounted up in the four days I was without internet and (mostly) cell reception.
- Feeling inspired enough to write something.
- Marking up this week’s spread in my planner.
- Adjusting.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 89: Grace In Small Things
- Sleeping most of the day, and all of the night to catch up for the sleep desperately missed in the last couple days.
- Seeing my aunt again.
- McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes. With peanuts.
- The relaxing lull you fall into while you play soft classical music on the piano.
- Rhythm.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 88: Grace In Small Things
- Having strangers who happened to hear you play piano in the common room the night before come up to you and tell you they enjoyed your playing. Eeep! You have no idea how much that can make a non-musically-talented someone’s day!
- Having someone introduce you to someone else as a “sober-minded” young person and entrepreneur they fully endorse. What a compliment!
- Re-connecting with people you haven’t talked to/seen in ages.
- Letting my sarcastic, insulting “wit” run rampant with the right people, and having them perfectly “get” my special brand of humor / bonding.
- Making people laugh.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 87: Grace In Small Things
- Vocal audiences who respond to what a speaker is saying, while they are speaking: “watch it now!” “mercy!” “preach it brother!” “cmon now!” “I know that’s right!”
- Vegetarian lasagna.
- Playing a very old, very battered but very rich-sounding piano in the common room.
- Black gospel music.
- Perfect spins on my football throws.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 86: Grace In Small Things
- Planning to leave for Auburn, WA at 3pm and actually leaving at 8pm. I don’t believe we’ve ever left at our expected departure time.
- Having a terribly funny/outgoing German landed immigrant in your car who has to go into the US/Canada border office to sign papers before you all can cross into the States, leading to a little party of 10 bored American border officials watching your German friend joke around with the border official helping her with her papers.
- Asiago artichoke dip.
- Hershey’s kisses.
- Mini road trips.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 85: Grace In Small Things
- Having friends who can drive.
- Feeling secure in who you are and what you do.
- Time sacrifices.
- Bussing on a rainy evening listening to music that is perfectly suited to the weather.
- Liar Liar – Alexz Johnston
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Do you take risks?
Over the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about risk taking. It started out with a suggestion and ended up with a question I couldn’t answer. This is how it played out:
“Chanel, let’s go skydiving.”
“Hmm, let me think about this one .. [tick tock tick tock] .. Um, no?”
“What! C’mon! Why?”
“Oh I don’t know, I like living?”
“Psh, you’re so boring. You never take risks.”
“I do so take risks!”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
(Ten seconds go by)
“Damn.”
For days, I couldn’t get that conversation out of my head. It baffled me, because I couldn’t think of any legitimate examples of risk taking in my life. I have some theories which I will share on here when I can collect my thoughts and lay them out coherently, but in the meantime, I’m curious:
Do you think you take risks? If so, in what way?
Day 84: Grace In Small Things
- Lots and lots of free time.
- Planning for the weekend at the beginning of a week.
- The housewifeish feeling.
- Being assertive in written complaints.
- Having connections.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 83: Grace In Small Things
- Looking forward to dance practice again.
- Fresh whole fruit orange & strawberry bubble tea.
- “Now that’s thinkin’ with your noggin!”
- The way keeping busy makes me so happy.
- Scheduling phone calls.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 82: Grace In Small Things
- My mother, who is the most amazing person I know.
- Joking around with the family.
- Drawing and listening to Cat Power.
- Naam steak (vegetarian, of course) and almond chocolate chip cookies!
- Walking through the new development along False Creek where the 2010 Olympic Village will be!
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 81: Grace In Small Things
- Feeling missed.
- Feeling popular.
- Feeling influential.
- Feeling significant.
- Feeling the movement of time.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 80: Grace In Small Things
- The metaphoric feeling of “waking up”.
- Dancing in the evening sunshine.
- Listening to Randy Skeete speak.
- Having the brother home from his school trip!
- The feeling of socializing “naturally”.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Like botox, only better
The other day, I made my dad sit through an episode of Hannah Montana with me. My brother is probably going to kill me, drag my body out of the ground and then nail my guns on a steel post just for writing this—ON THE INTERNETS, no less—but he usually watches Hannah Montana with me.
Unfortunately for him (and believe me, after the kids at his school find out he watches Hannah Montana, it will be unfortunate for him), he has been 500 kilometers away from home all week and otherwise incapable of watching a tween show with his adult sister. So naturally, to replace the deep-seated loss of my Hannah Montana watching companion, I found another: my dad.
He sat through the entire thing without making even so much as a comment. And when it was over, the first thing he said was, wow. Followed by, how old are the kids watching this supposed to be again?
“It’s called recapturing your youth,” I told him smartly. “It’s like botox, only better!”
And really, if you think about it, Hannah Montana and botox have a couple things in common…
- They’re both super popular in show business.
- Some people love them, some people hate them.
- Once you start—providing you enjoy experience—you’ll keep going back for more.
- There is a certain stigma involved in admitting you indulge in either.
- They both leave your face frozen in a certain expression for a little while afterwards.
- Some people will tell you they’re harmful to your health.
- They both provide an element of temporary “youthfulness”.
Hannah Montana and botox! You heard it here first.
Day 79: Grace In Small Things
- Eliminating the options.
- Knowing what to do.
- Getting over with it.
- Things that make you laugh.
- Island farm yogurt (with the fruit on the bottom).
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 78: Grace In Small Things
- First RSS (Ballroom technique) class of the year!
- Seeing friends and “classmates” from the ballroom scene again.
- The nostalgia of classical music.
- Being able to see parts of my floor again.
- Making jokes about the swine flu.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
The Vegas wrap-up
things I did in vegas:
- sat by a gigantic fish tank in the forum shops at ceaser’s palace, almost had a heart attack and died when a gigantic (and really, I mean gigantic – like wider than I am gigantic) stingray came up behind me and started licking the glass. GEEZUS.
- ate at the cheesecake factory, said three words to the waiter and was immediately asked, “you’re from vancouver, aren’t you?” … i’m still not sure how he figured that out. there is no such thing as a vancouver accent? (a westcoast accent, maybe.)
- saw shows (cirque du solie, phantom of the opera)
- two words: valet parking. it makes you feel like royalty.
- ran through the venetian in 3.5 inch silver nine west heels, did not fall and spill my blood on the italian marble as one would assume would happen.
Day 77: Grace In Small Things
- Making dad sit through an episode of Hannah Montana with me because the brother is 800 kilometers away having an actual life and therefore otherwise occupied.
- Touching math for the first time in eons … and doing it for three hours straight!
- Late-night conversations with my aunt.
- Not freaking out when I saw her amputated toe for the first time. (I was seriously worried I wouldn’t be able to take it – I’m weird and sissy like that, but it wasn’t even close to as bad as I expected it to be!)
- The feeling of bed when you crave sleep.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 76: Grace In Small Things
- Conquering Chemistry
- (… And Socials, and the she-devil known as English)
- The satisfaction of marking assignments off
- Yam fries and miso gravy
- Bonding with dad over a 80’s movie from the 50’s era
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 75: Grace In Small Things
- Having such a close-knit family
- Lunch at IKEA with mom & dad
- The bittersweet feeling of being a temporary only child
- Did I mention, cheap and HOLYMOTHEROFCUPCAKESTHISFOODISSOGOOD delicious food at IKEA?
- Functional design
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 74: Grace In Small Things
- Nachos and Kids Time
- Reading in bed all afternoon
- Dainty sandals.
- Singing (I’ve grown rather fond of it)
- Telephone calls from friends.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.
Day 73: Grace In Small Things
- Appreciating the things you have.
- Appreciating the things you don’t have.
- Singing silly songs with my brother.
- Memory foam mattress tops.
- The allure of the weekend.
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.