So, in addition to all the other stuff I do, I also write about food once a month on a little blog called DishKebab, which is run by the Rewards Network.
They pay me. It’s neat.
There’s an archive of them on my site, with links! It’s up there, under the Food heading. This month’s blog is about the Sunday dinner I had with my friends Gayle and Rachel at Nana’s in Bridgeport.
Valentine’s Day: Love and Deep Fryers.
BONUS: Here’s us at dinner! Yeah!
…that you’d visit I Wish Lessons‘ website and check out the first blog I wrote for them.
Yes, I do.
This is a fire hazard. Reading my new blog is not.
It’s going to be a weekly thing for me, like a column. (Why anyone sees me as an authoritative voice on anything is beyond me, but…I’ll take it. Well, I guess I’m an authority on wanting things, so…)
It will likely be less about cats and boys and more about…
Other things.
Wait, what else is there?
Oh, right. Food and culture and life in general.
If you read that blog, you’ll not only get an extra dose of Paige Worthy every week, but you’ll also learn about fun things to do in Chicago and have the opportunity to DO THEM WITH ME.
Wow.
Neat, right?
Pretty soon, I’m going to have you running all over the Internet to keep up with me. I am so loving this.
My once well-behaved kitten has, after two and a half weeks in her new home, become comfortable enough to begin terrorizing it.
She’s discovered windowsills and blinds and the throws I’ve painstakingly arranged against chair backs and sofa corners to look ever-so-effortlessly cast aside.
She reaches up, they come down. Magic.
She’s realized outside is a place she wants to go, and her movements when a door opens have left me convinced she was a ninja or spy in a past life. Emaline is an escape artist in training.
She’s also become quite fond of Apple products, specifically my MacBook’s trackpad — which she seems to love best when I’m sitting in front of it, using it, making typing a real adventure. She also seems to confuse my earbuds cord and USB sync cable for the excellent fishing rod toy I bought with the feather on the end.
She’s definitely no longer Miss Regis, the super-glam transvestite. She’s a techie with expensive taste.
And I’m realizing now that all these things are just all normal cat things.
For our first few days together, Emaline barely touched her food and gave an impressive show of intestinal pyrotechnics at about the same time every day. I worried I was killing her by my idiocy and ignorance alone.
I went to Whole Foods after my writing class the next week and stood wringing my hands in the pet aisle for 15 minutes — despite the fact that there was only one kitten food available — and bought a three-pound bag of some organic, all-natural business for $12. I was conflicted: For the sake of my sobbing bank account, I hoped food wasn’t the answer, but that’s…no way for a parent to think.
That afternoon, I mixed the new food with the old in her little silver bowl, and I waited. A couple of hours later, she had nosed around every round kibble of Science Diet and picked out all the new ones. And, lo and behold, no more kitten spew.
And I swear to God, that’s the last you will hear of it here.
She’s got good taste. Just like me.
In fact, I discovered recently that Emaline has a penchant for dairy products. Before my housewarming party started, I found that she’d not only decided to start jumping up on tables but that she’d also taken a shine to Philly cream cheese.
And Pleasant Ridge Reserve. (Grumble.)
Last week, I walked in to my kitchen one afternoon after a conference call to find a large indentation in the stick of butter I’d accidentally left sitting out.
I promised not mention kitten spew again, right?
I’ve heard kittens enjoy a nice saucer of milk from time to time, but seriously? Butter? $15-a-pound cheese?
Like I said. Good taste. Maybe I should have named her Julia Child.
Normal cat things. Really. Adorable. But normal.
And every day, I make one baby step toward being a normal cat owner. I understand that she’ll let me know if she actually is dying, that I’m probably not going to kill her with my everyday routine. She has now found her way underfoot enough times and not developed a feline brain hemorrhage that my only worry is a profound and potentially incurable stupidity.
This is my dance space. This is your dance space.
I’ll never be a full-on crazy cat lady and promise never to refer to her as my “furbaby,” but I will admit to grabbing my Nikon for an impromptu photo shoot at 1 a.m. one night this past weekend.
I’ll admit to looking her in the eye and serenading her with the Gilmore Girls theme song God only knows how many times in the past four days, as I’ve burned through the first season with her beside me on the sofa.
I’ll admit to enjoying her company in bed — whether she’s curled up next to me, walking on my head or just not understanding that it’s my legs she’s attacking, unseen beneath the blankets — more than any other companion’s in my adult life.
And don’t take that wrong, for God’s sake.
I’m not even sure how it happened, but I’m becoming a normal cat owner who’s completely obsessed and in love with her cat.
Well, hello, friends.
You sure have been lovely this week.
You may not know this, but I’ve really made it big. At the end of last year, I was accepted as a writer for the3six5. And I was going to try to explain it, but they do a far better job:
Every day for 365 days, a different person will write an entry about their experiences that day. The key is that each post somehow relates to what’s happening in the world that day and how it relates to them. By doing so from January 1 to December 31, we will have a snapshot of the entire year, told from the perspective of 365 individual voices.
Volunteers from across the country picked a date of their choice.
We believe everyone has a short story to tell that will help create the experience of living through a year in across the world.
Each author will write a 365-word reflection which will be posted to “lifestreaming” site Posterous. Posterous.com was selected over a typical blog or website because of its simplicity and its ability to syndicate content across major social networks. (You can access this page by simply going to www.the3six5.com.) If all goes well, our dream would be to publish the3six5 as a book. We suppose you could call it a crowdsourced journal of the year 2011.
So… Neat, right?
All the people in the world, I’m one of 365 who get to write a post in 2011.
Then, before I even knew what was happening, February was half over and my day had arrived. Today.
So I wrote about the only things worthy of such a day: Justin Bieber and Jeppson’s Malört.
Together.
And here’s the story behind the story, a story that can’t be told in 365 words because really, there are no words: A game of Dance Dance Revolution was also involved. (But I use the passive voice because I don’t want you to know it was me playing it.)
You could go read it if you wanted.
This is the one time I will ever be okay with you navigating away from my website.
So go.
Go now.
And enjoy your Friday.
Thanks to Crystal Light for sponsoring this post. To learn more about how Crystal Light can flavor your day with 30 refreshing flavors, visit http://www.facebook.com/crystallight.
I have a lot of friends who are very important.
They run their own companies and travel all over the place. They do speaking engagements and have high-profile clients they do brilliant work for.
Actually, I guess I’m just thinking of Gini Dietrich. She’s great. And probably the busiest person I know.
Since I left my full-time job about six months ago, some might say I own my own business, but really, I’m just trying to scrape together enough work to pay my bills. I spend the rest of my time just trying to prove I’m not a total waste of oxygen.
Oh, and get dates. (Which is another discussion for another time, but here’s a preview: No, it’s not going well.)
Even on my busiest days, I still find plenty of time to read people’s blogs, write idiotic tweets about the fact that I’m going to see Just Bieber: Never Say Never (tonight! […don't judge me]) and take pictures of my new kitten.
But trust me when I say that screwing around on the Internet is not the same as taking time out of the day to live. Relax.
Shrug off the feelings of creeping isolation and feel like I’m actually part of the world.
Why yes, those are socks with flowers on them.
When I was still working in the suburbs, hating my life, I would spiral into this soul-crippling rage as I steered the Shining Camry back to the city. Because I’d spent the whole day living out my slow, painful death in Arlington Heights.
And, inevitably, the traffic would jam up around Park Ridge. (Oh, how I do not miss that life.) Instead of pulling over and stabbing a pedestrian — not that there would have been many to choose from — I turned the radio to the classic station and just…breathed it in. Instead of sending irate texts at stoplights, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and remembered that there was more to life than my horrific commute.
Little things like that made all the difference. They always have.
Fast-forward to the present: I’ve had a REALLY awful past couple of days. Related in equal parts to the above statements about the creeping isolation of freelance life and date-getting.
And for a most of that time, I wallowed. Until I realized that’s not the kind of person I want to be: the kind who stays in bed until 11 a.m., the kind who eats her feelings in the form of four meals a day (plus snacks), the kind who writes hundreds of thinly veiled tweets a day about her problems.
Today, I got out of bed and took my life back in tiny increments.
I made a to-do list and attacked it.
I ate a nice lunch and played with my kitten — just to play with her, not to take pictures I could tweet later.
I rode my bike to the Gap and browsed the sale rack, tried on jeans and found a pair that actually fit. I bought socks covered in tiny flowers.
I called my mother as my laptop booted up. I had a few extra minutes, because my computer is a piece of crap.
Inside the café, one of three little girls who had been running around for half an hour marched right up to me, twirled her cup proudly in her hands said, “This has coffee in it!”
By the time I was halfway through my iced tea, I was in love with the world again.
Then again, it doesn’t take a lot for me. But it’s not so much the effort it takes as it is remembering how wonderful it feels when I make it.
February is half over, and spring is on its way. There’s always time to fall in love with the world.
Remember, visit http://www.facebook.com/crystallight to learn more about how Crystal Light can flavor your day with 30 refreshing flavors. I was selected and paid for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
Yes, Paige Worthy is my real name. And yes, I’m a writer.
A blend of East Coast sass and Midwest sweet, I was blogging before everyone was doing it, eating obsessively before “foodie” was a thing, and overanalyzing life and love long before Carrie Bradshaw made it sexy. (By the way, it’s not sexy when I do it.)
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