Bulking

I have Tuesdays down pat. I have a set routine – I do the same thing every Tuesday – and to be honest, it’s my favourite day of the week. The only thing that could make my Tuesdays better is if they came with more snacks (ohh guess what’s gonna happen!).

Every Tuesday, I spend the day in West Perth, in the Oaktree office, where I volunteer. I finish my work at about 4pm and I walk to the Yoga Space, where I take their $5 community yoga class. After the class I go back to Oaktree to pick up my car and to chat to everyone about the fact that I went to yoga, and then I go home, feeling very pure and self-righteous.

Last Monday I made brownies. I took them to Oaktree because I knew if I kept them home (“for my family!”) I’d eat them all, because there weren’t ordinary brownies. These were brownies with peanut butter inside.

(Here are two facts about me. One, I hate it when people say, “do you know what I mean?” be more clear with what you’re saying if you’re already anticipating confusion. Two, peanut butter is my favourite food, ever).

Peanut butter. In brownies. +10 points, Tuesday.

I was kind of scared to make these – I was worried they’d either be so good I’d eat every single one, or that they’d fail to meet my skyscraper expectations of the brownie-PB combo (the Titanic of brownies, if you will).

But I made them anyway, and took them to Oaktree to make sure I wouldn’t eat all of them.

I ate four. But it was ok, because I had yoga later, right? Active and holistic and pure and whatever. I fuelled myself with anticipatory brownies, I walked to yoga, and I waited outside. I waited, and I waited, until it was 4:32 and the supervising teacher was shaking her head sadly and offering my free passes to make up for the fact that no one else had showed and the class was cancelled.

I left yoga. I walked back to Oaktree. I went inside and told everyone about how I didn’t go to yoga. Then, I ate another brownie.

They’re that good. I don’t even care.

I followed this recipe from The Heart of Food exactly for the peanut butter filling, the chocolate layer top, and the assembly method, but I subbed the brownie base with this one from Gluten Free Girl, because I’m practicing GF baking in anticipation of a coeliac friend’s birthday (and because see #1 on this list). The brownies were fantastic – dense and fudgey, not too sweet but still a perfect foil for the peanut butter filling. Simon mentioned in the recipe that the filling is quite sweet, so I used some homemade PB I made a while ago, that tasted just a bit too hippy-natural-maltodextrin-free for me to eat by itself, and it was delicious – creamy and smooth, with a nice nutty aftertaste. I’ll be making these again for sure – I just gotta make sure yoga isn’t cancelled.

 

“It’s Kenneth, from work – and friendship!”

My four closest friends are girls I’ve known since I was fourteen. I wish I could say that it’s due to the strength of our bond, that friendship longevity but really, it’s because beyond everything else we have in common, something rings through – we are not good at making friends.

None of us. It’s not a coincidence we’ve stuck with the group of pals we had in high school – for separate reasons, each of us is incapable of making friends. Have been forever, and it’s a problem that only compounds itself as we approach adulthood, and the act of forming friendships becomes exponentially more difficult.

How do you make friends as an adult?

Not a pseudo-thoughtful question. Seriously, who has a step-by-step?

This is what I’m going off.

Step 1. Be an interesting, well-rounded person with a range of hobbies and interests, collectively affording countless networking (mouth vom) and general meeting-people opportunities. Bonus: you have at least one common thing to talk about!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending if you look at the mouth-vom situation), I’ve never been in that position. Despite my fondness for formal education, I have for many years resisted learning that forces me to interact with other people, even going to far as to elect to do group assignments solo, lest that 50% less work not be worth the hour spent with a stranger.

Step 2. Be an outgoing, enthusiastic and (importantly) proactive person who seeks out every opportunity to make a new friend.

I can do this one. I’m chatty; I can laugh; I know how to talk a little bit about most things. I’d be fine with this, if it wasn’t for the critical point that by my own nature, I haven necessarily limited myself from the very vast majority of opportunities that would cause me to meet a new person to whom I could talk. I’m chatty, but only with those four friends of mine – see above re group assignment. See hobbies inc solo rapping in my car. See entire childhood re isolated imaginative play (Mum thought I was a genius. Lolol nup sorry just awkward right from the start).

Step 3. See your new friend.

What I think I say: “Coffee next week?”

What I actually say: “Oh um like so do you want to get coffee or like come to my house oh ok yep coffee that sounds cool … I don’t know any places so you pick oh yeah cool love that place it’s my fave! Oh yeah I mean see you there good right o friendy-bud.”

What I think: “How long will it go for? I can drink a coffee in like, five minutes. Do we just sit there after? What if I need to pee? When will I pee? How will I know when it’s time to leave? When I need to pee?”

But, of course, this has happened maybe once so no sweat, not an issue.

Step 4. Congratulate yourself on your maturity, your refined social skills, your poise, and revel in your new-found lasting friendship. Graduate at last from socially crippled teenager to sophisticated young lady, and commence adulthood.

Still waiting on this. But, you know, I’ve made my first tentative step towards adulthood. I have a lunch lined up for Monday – lunch with a girl I’m certain I could be friends with if I got over myself. I’ll figure out when to pee, I’ll have lunch, and perhaps, in time, I’ll finally make a new friend.

Snaps from last week

Last week was a good one, and that fact that I wasn’t expecting it to be made it even better. Last week was an assignment week – three due in two days, out of a total six due in three weeks. I thought it would be a grind of a week – sitting at home, hunched over my computer, mugging tea and rocking pyjamas like my own silent protest against the professional field those assignments were guiding me into (or, more realistically, my characteristic disregard of personal hygiene). But it wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong; there were still assignments. There was still the hunch and you bet it was brought on in part by the belly full of tea I sported constantly. But it wasn’t a grind.

I wrote those assignments. I researched and edited and painstakingly went back over my work. I drank that tea. But I also cooked great meals and went for study-break walks and looked at beautiful things on instagram and received mail. And I loved it. I didn’t have to grind it out – I worked hard, but I enjoyed it. I spent a long hard week working long and hard and I felt proud of the effort I put in. Proud of myself for not needing to grind.

Here are some photos of what I did this week. I went for an afternoon walk every day. I made myself great lunches (there’s homemade hummus, broccoli, spinach and brown rice in that wrap). I got my participant pack for Live Below the Line, a fundraising challenge I participate in every year. And I drank a whole lot of tea and smashed those assignments out.

Great week.

Not gonna lie, this week hasn’t quite hit the same heights as the last one did. I haven’t slept well and I haven’t exercised and I’ve ignored all my important emails and I’ve eaten too much peanut paste (I know, I know, it’s the best, but yeah sometimes wow Soph that jar is going to go from full to not full in five days with how we’re tracking). But looking at these photos again, remembering last week, remembering how I killed it, I’m feeling pretty good for next week.

Happy weekend!

Currently

Playing this song on repeat

Drinking ginger green tea like it’s my job

Watching broccoli seedlings grow

Researching trade practices law

Planning an eco fair visit for the weekend

Burning a coconut lime candle on my study desk

Wearing slippers again

Hosting friends for dinner tonight

Looking forward to peanut butter hot chocolate post-essay celebrations

Soaking in the last few sunny days

 

That photo is from The Little Concept, the cafe in Fremantle I will be visiting when I finish writing my essay. Waiting for Wednesday but not wishing away today.

Learning a new skill

Every time I think of something new I’d like to learn, my second step is to immediately look for a course that will teach me how to do it. Case in point: my list of things I’d like to do this year.

1. Practice regular yoga
2. Speak better French
3. Make this blog a priority
4. Travel to South-East Asia
5. Improve my sewing

Without exception, I’ve either completed, enrolled in, or browsed a course on how to accomplish each of these things. For some reason, I default to formal, structured education every time I identify something I’d like to learn. My sixth-year-uni-student brain stubbornly refuses to accept any form of education less structured than an Elaine Benes box blazer and panics, to boot, when no such course exits. (Perhaps out of fear that I’ll find out formal education is by no means the only valid form of education; sacre bleu!)

I can’t quite convince myself that I can learn these skills without enrolling in a course. That I can teach them to myself. Which is strange, because I’ve done it before.

With my garden. The first time around, all of my seedlings died. Every single one of them. The chilli plant that erupted manically from the ground in a single day grew to an impressive height of 4cm before crumpling under the weight of its single green leaf and folding in on itself. The climbing spinach seedlings I’d pictured growing romantically over a trellis, feeding my family with their richly nourishing leaves, sucked themselves back into the ground like someone had warned them. The broccoli, the pumpkin, the geraniums I’d optimistically bought to attract bees to the plants that would definitely be fruiting – all withered and died.

I was crushed. But the next time around, I was better.

I planted only pumpkin seeds, tended to them carefully, and watched them slowly bloom into thick vines, with spindly curled tendrils and prehistoric leaves. I watched the vine climb up that bare trellis, I watched flowers bloom, and I watched a single pumpkin form.

Then, I watched the vine crush itself supporting the pumpkin’s weight and I watched the whole thing die within two days.

I was crushed (like the vine, ooh). But the next time around, I’m better.

I’ve replanted – I have broccoli, spinach, basil and garlic seedlings and though it’s early days, they’re doing well. I’ve learned from the mistakes I’ve made with my previous two gardens, and I’ll learn more from whatever new mistakes I make with this one.

I’ve never read a gardening book. I’ve never taken a course.

I’m teaching myself how to garden just by doing it.

Why don’t I do that with the rest of my list?

Instead of enrolling in a yoga course, just practice in my bedroom. Instead of signing up for French classes, speak with my fluent mother. Instead of researching ‘how to write a blog’ courses, just sit down and write it.

Why not?

List-en up

There are a few important things you should know about me.

The first, obviously, is that I’m awful at puns (if you’re still here, thank you). The second (and more important) is that I’m a big fan of lists. Any wisdom that can be condensed into a few bullet-pointed lines is my kind of knowledge.

So for that reason, I’m going to use as an introductory tool a list, to tell you more about myself and to indulge my love of a few ordered facts.

Ten things about Sophie

1. I like making myself (with great expense and fuss) foods I can easily buy at the supermarket, like muesli, pickles and peanut butter
2. The radio in my car is broken so when I’m driving I pass the time by practicing Enimen rap verses out loud
3. I have three sisters; one older, one younger and one a lot younger
4. I could be described correctly as “a cat lover”; “a Babysitters Club fan” and “an enthusiastic dancer”
5. I could be described incorrectly as “a skilled driver”; “a moderate eater” and “a pants fan”
6. I have been dating my ruggedly handsome boyfriend Travis for three years; he is ever supportive of my cooking and eating habits (and less so my dancing skills)
7. I attend occasional yoga classes which makes me think I am a flexible goddess; unfortunately I am merely able to sit cross-legged anywhere and nothing more
8. At uni I study law and arts and I have one semester left before I graduate
9. In January I will be going to India for three weeks, a trip I’m both incredibly excited and incredibly vaccine-ed up for
10. I am growing beetroots and pumpkins in my backyard vegetable patch and remain optimistically convinced they will feed my family through the summer

Have more questions? Also a Babysitters Club fan? Want to talk about peanut butter? Let me know!

Help, I’m trapped in bed with Girls

Curled pathetically in bed, pillows piled up behind my head supporting what surely must be my final few breaths, I squint through gummed-up eyes at the computer screen flickering before me as I unearth first one, then two weakened hands from the mountain of blankets with which I covered myself upon my post-breakfast return to bed, and  haltingly begin to type this message. This message – surely my last earthly words; my manifesto – my final contribution before I slip from this world. With all the clarity of the deathbed confessor I see now what I didn’t before and I realise, profoundly, that you were right all along.

I see now that being sick is really shitty. 

I’m not talking about terminal cancer sick, or heart disease sick, or dialysis sick, or depression sick. I’m talking about your everyday, run-of-the-mill, head-blocking nose-wiping flu kind of sick, and all the macabre self-pity that accompanies it. Because that, in all its glory, is what has consigned me to bed today, and obviously, I’m dealing with it with the utmost of grace.

The run of good health that has seen me fortunately avoid the kind of illnesses that would legitimately require me to spend the day in bed extends to this kind of flu – even when I do catch something, I’ve always been able to soldier on, going about my day with manic resilience. Caught, no doubt, from my mother, who knocks back a handful of herbal garlic tablets every time she feels a hint of the sniffles and who consequently hasn’t been sick since Britney loved Justin (and then for reasons likely relating to that, rather than ill health), my eternal optimism in the face of illness has lead me to be somewhat intolerant of people who fall down with the flu.

But today, as I scrape another crumpled tissue over my red-raw nose, I understand. To those people I dismissed, to those doctors appointments I derived, to those $12 throat lozengers I railed against, to all sufferers of the common cold, great and small I say this – I’m sorry.

I see now that being sick is really shitty.

My inclination to dismiss sickness took a blow this time because my cold came around when all of my optimism was concentrated on making it through uni exams. Already rallying in the face of fire I took a blow on an uncovered flank; my first indication of man down a scratchy sore throat that didn’t yield, despite my late cavalry of hot tea and early nights. Sensing my vulnerability they hit harder – waves of headaches, tiredness and the atom bomb of illness, the stuffy, constantly dripping nose. I held out until the second beer post-final-exam then I was down – carried wounded by my comrades to the sickbed where I now lie.

Initially frustrated with myself, I tried to pretend I wasn’t sick. I made post-exam plans, I went swimming, I ate dinner, I drank those two damn beers. But last night, after I’d managed only a brief period of respite from watching Girls and clutching a tea mug beneath my blanket fort, a walk downstairs that unfortunately made me feel like I had run like Shoshanna from Ray (or very far very quickly, as if on crack, if you’re that way inclined), I had to realise that I was not ok. I had to realise I was sick; I had to let myself be sick, and that was ok.

I realised that I don’t have to fight against sickness, I don’t have to wear my health as a badge of honour. I don’t have to tell myself I’m not allowed to be sick, not allowed to take care of myself; particularly when this sickness has come about as a direct result of finishing a challenging, exhausting set of exams. I’m tired, I’m sick, and that’s ok.

I feel really shitty, and that’s ok.

So excuse me now, as I withdraw my shaking hands back into my fortress of blankets and self-pity, wish pathetically for someone to bring me more hot drinks, queue another Girls episode (and look online for quirky merchandise), draw my blinds and settle in for the first day I’ve ever allowed myself of medicinal bed rest. And if this is it, if this is the end, I thank you to be kind to each other and if bereavement gifts are appropriate, kindly gift my family this cross stitch from that same episode.

I was late to get Sarah because I had to learn how to blog

I set up this account over a week ago, and apart from a guilty look around this site prompted by a super encouraging email from WordPress (“Haven’t posted anything yet? lololol”) I haven’t really done anything to properly start up this blog. I’m totally nervous; I’m psyching myself out that I’m accidentally going to use up all my smart words on this damn little post no one will read and then by the time I actually think of intelligent things to write about I’ll have exhausted my wit.

In the meantime though, I’m going to pick up Sarah to go to dinner. I’m running late because I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time writing this post but hey, now I have a blog and fingers crossed it’ll only get better from here.