we like to boogie

Hello again!

I wanted to thank you all for your input and comments on the last post. I really wish there were (was?) a way to contact each of you directly to respond via blogger but I can only do that if I have your email address and I would love to do so, so shoot me an email (jekinthebox) anytime, really (on the google system)!

That said I was thinking again how perception is so weird and wonky even when you think you are being clear. See, everytime I write a post like the previous one, I get lovely, wonderful, song-singy messages and then I feel awful-awful. Not that YOU make me feel awful, goodness no! I tend to lean towards extreme self-doubt and panic that those posts sound like I NEED a pat on the back, like I am pleading for one or two or three when that isn't my intention AT ALL! I just like to think out loud, to wonder and to make connections. I know I tend to trap myself into a comparison game when I'm feeling poorly in the noggin and I thought maybe other people do as well. There was a lot more I wanted to "correct" regarding that post but I let too much time pass as I usually do when I am in a tizzy and now there are other bits of anxiousness clouding my thoughts (like a new part-time job). All kinds of yay and yikes in there!

So when I ramble on and on about insecurities and collectiveness I am really rambling in an out loud voice about the assumed singularity of a person versus the community that is out there. With this new social media age thing going on, we find ourselves tied more and more to gadgetry which may lead some of us (ahem...me) to isolate themselves yet feel connected. Does that make sense? I'm not very good in physical social situations. At least I don't FEEL like I do very well in those situations. I get nervous and extremely chatty and begin telling stories and anecdotes that are all me, me, ME. While at the same time berating myself internally for NOT just shutting up already. It's a nervous thing and I know I do it and I don't mean to sound like it is all about me, the nervousness packs a wallop while the tongue-tied-i-ness strikes and BAM! Story-mode. SO, rather than put myself into such a situation, I happily type away and read the blogs of those I feel connected to while safely tucked away at home in my happy bubble. It is comforting and comfortable and no one cares that I may or may not be in the same jeans and t-shirt from yesterday. No one sees me tear up when  I read something completely moving or has to hear me wheeze away with asthma when my allergies get the best of me. I can read and interact at my comfort level and I feel safe until I feel overwhelmed which may sound like it is often but only because that is when I feel compelled to write more. I mean really, can you imagine if every post I wrote was about how awesome I felt or how content and happy I was? Most of the time I simply feel okay. Things aren't fantastic but they aren't deviating either. I drink my coffee or my tea, talk to the cat, watch the birds, bake or maybe make something. The sky might be gorgeous or the mister and I went on a hike or...or...or? Good stuff. Solid stuff. Stuff I should write about and do but just not every day.

I am rambling again but want to thank you, all of you for your input and your lurking and your emails and such. You make me smile or laugh or nod my head and want to hug you. I want to make you a smoothie or bake you a poundcake and play you a new favorite song and just sit and talk the day away. I wasn't kidding about emailing me, please do. I like this bubble and I like my other bubbles, I think there is time and room for them to mix and mingle and most of all, I like that we all have our own bubbles (or two, or three) and that when it comes down to it, we  all probably make for a pretty great dance party.

p-p-perception

I had a bad attack of dysmorphic perception last night. It was epic. It usually is.

Back in the days before internet, we (well, I) culled and pulled our self-ideals from the small world around us. In school it was our friends and peers. What they had that you didn't. How they looked and how you didn't. Whether or not you were one of the popular elite, I am certain you wished for different or perceived betterness based on those who passed you by in their up-to-date fashions and convertible Rabbits. Or in my case, those few who could really knock an individual style clear out of the ballpark AND simply oozed creativity.

If you went to college, your perception(s) opened a smidge. Your bubble expanded and you were exposed to new ideas and persons of interest. If you did not go to college and immediately jumped into a work-place your bubble expanded even more due to the collected exposure of people outside your immediate social circle. People of different social-economic backgrounds, education, cultures, ages...the bigger your bubble got the more you (or at least I) compared yourself to others.

I don't know about you but as I aged and ahem...matured I grew more concerned with status of a sorts. I wanted a nice place to live in and call my own, a car that didn't break down ALL THE TIME, money to pay my bills and hopefully have some left over for fun stuff. For the most part, I was content. But...

Change happened. As it happened, the feeling of being content would shift and change. Thank goodness for BUST magazine. In my late 20s and early 30s I would swear there was something wrong with me as I didn't find the ideals of those around me appealing. I had never been a follower of the mainstream and felt more and more an outcast as Cosmo and the like were so ready to inform me. BUST saved me from myself and reassured me that I wasn't alone that there were other women like me out there. Once the internet began clicking around I immediately found a core group of fantastic women on the BUST boards. I have lost touch with most of them but that community and sense of belonging still sings in my heart. They were smart, witty and funny as hell and gosh I adored them all.

Now that the internet is what it is and our bubbles are virtually, universally ENORMOUS, I find that my small world of non-mainstreamers has become mainstream in a sense. I no longer feel alone in my wonky-dorkiness but now I feel lacking even in my comfort zone. Not anyone else's fault but my own. My perceptions of who I thought I would be by now just have not become concrete and with so many talented, creative folk out there taking the blogging/crafting world by storm, the once small fishbowl I felt kinda big in has become a full blown aquarium with tunnels and rooms and I feel lost and unnoticeable. So now not only am I dancing with a dysmorphic dance partner of perception, my wallflower ego is clinging to the sidelines toes-tapping to the rhythm hope, hope, hoping someone asks me dance.

I don't really know where I am going with this but the developmental side of me, the part that thoroughly enjoys studying human nature cannot help wonder how we all fit in. I've been blogging since 2003 and I think so much has changed since I began. The tools out there, the platforms, the business side of it all. It is amazing what one can do and I still feel that it is out of my grasp. Not in a woe-is-me sense more like a huh? I'm baffled by how it works and feel like my brain is too old or I'm too old fashioned or who knows what but how do you do it? And do I want to do it? Should I do it and if not, what then?

This may seem all over the place but I think I just want to say that I think even the most productive or accomplished of us slips and plays the comparison game and wonders where they failed or what they NEED to be valid. Validity, yes, that's it. I need a bit of validation that I AM someone. That I matter. That I am a part of something wonderful. My reality knows this but my perception is so skewed I'm feeling anything but. I know what it is (the reason), but that's a book I'm not ready to open just yet or at least read in public. So I hope that you know that YOU are valid and important and that you do indeed matter, more than you know and if we all took the time to let someone know they inspired us (not via a blogging award or huge public announcement, not that those are bad but make it more personal) I think that our hearts could sing a little louder.

So...wanna dance?

and then came the cookies

A while back, I entered a cookie recipe in the great Pillsbury Bake-Off. I had an idea and worked on about five variations of the ideas before settling on a cookie to enter. It was chosen because of its overall appeal to my taste testers. There were others we liked a little more but I needed something that could come out tasty consistently all the while looking happy. One of the cookies that didn't make it was inspired by my favorite chocolate crackles. I love the texture of those cookies and was trying to figure out a way to replicate it without making a chocolate treat. 

After much internet searching I found a cake-mix cookie hack (at Tidy Mom) and tried it. Delicious if not a tad too much. I tucked that idea back into my brain and carried on like I usually do. After baking the cake batter blondies I wanted to make a cake batter cookie, so out came the cake mix and the sprinkles and soon, happiness was served.

 

 I used a yellow box mix for these and they held the texture nicely. I would compare them to a thinner, flatter, cake-mixier snickerdoodle. They are super easy to make and your kiddos can play as well.

Enjoy!

what's for dinner

I haven't been nearly as good at planning a week's worth of dinners lately so you get pics from the first week of the month...

Open faced chicken sandwiches on gorgonzola garlic bread with a quinoa, roasted beet salad.

Soba noodle salad with homemade dressing and chive blossoms with Thai Peanut Butter toasts on the side. 

We were going to be in L.A. this weekend but things didn't work out but we'll be there in a few weekends (June 3...Stacey? Natalie?) Instead we're hitting up a BBQ. Mister is chopping onion and cucumbers for me right now. We're gonna turn it into a salad for the BBQ. Happy weekend!

crafting for craft: Doctor Who Doormat

Inspired by the fifth doctor. check it out here!

my never fail pick me up...