megfowler.com

early morning, i
just do coffee alone but
sometimes want sushi

out for fancy meal
souffle confit julienne
need mcnuggets now

make lemonade? no.
i put salt on my lemons
go umami go

Hey. How are you?

Here we are together again, doing our usual things… and though you are RIGHT THERE, I wanted to write you a quick letter.

I’ve had a deeply connected relationship with you since I was a kid.

Even when I was just a miniature thing in a crib, I’d find myself oddly energized when dusk turned to dark, as though the combined twinkle of stars and city lights had suddenly found a home in my chest. When I was in my big girl bed, I’d crawl out to sit on the landing and eavesdrop on the Awake Life below. On long car trips, I’d stare out the window until 2 am, marveling at the blue-black expanse above the jagged edge of the mountains.

Bedtime was a tiny affront to my sensibilities every single evening. I didn’t want to miss a thing — who knows what would happen if I closed my eyes?

Then, when I was old enough to control my own hours, I became an official Night Owl, devoted to David Letterman and outlasting my own late-night parents.

I’ll sleep in on the weekends, I’d tell myself.

It did me well in university, this love of after-hours existence, when I had to write papers until the sun came up… or just go out with my friends to drive around nowhere in particular until 3.

I’ll sleep when I became a nine-to-fiver, I’d tell myself.

Then I was at camp, where nighttime is prank time and boys in the moonlight time and phosphorescence time. The BEST time.

I’ll sleep when the summer is over, I’d tell myself.

Then I lived on my very own, where I could yammer on the phone until all hours or watch movies at friends houses until 4 am or head out for hot wings at midnight — whatever occurred to me right then, even if I had a full day of work in the morning.

I’ll sleep when I get old, I’d tell myself.

Well, Nighttime, 34 isn’t old by any stretch of the imagination — unless you are a terrified 33 years and 364 days into your life and dreading the next click of the odometer. Once you get there, though, you realize it isn’t bad at all.

What is bad? Is how I sleep.

And it’s SO my own fault. I know it. I eat too late. I don’t have a routine. I don’t have a consistent sleep schedule. I overstimulate myself with all manner of media and conversations.

But.

Nighttime, it’s time we figured out how to make you less about the Party In My Head and more about Dudes I’m Tired Night Night Now.

It’s no longer quirky and fun to be an insomniac.

Now it shows in my eyes and my skin and my tendency to walk into walls. Now it chips at my patience and creativity and zombifies me around 4 in the afternoon. Now it makes me wonder if I will literally drive my life partner insane by tossing and turning — or worse, TYPING — while he is trying his damndest to stay That Guy Who Goes Out Like A Light When His Head Hits The Pillow.

Because you know that’s the guy I’ll have. That’s how life works!

So here it is: I’m breaking up with you.

I mean, I love you still, but it’s time we saw less of each other so I’m not such a sluggish harpy with Daytime. I still love your stars and your smells and your magic and mystery. I still love being at the beach with you or spending time with you on my deck. I do.

I just don’t think it’s going to work long-term.

But.

I think you will totally be okay without me. I know it. You’ve got plenty of company in college students and 7-11 managers and old people and paramedics and cat burglars and cops and programmers and 911 operators and new babies and moms.

They all need you to be there for them.

I just need to be elsewhere for my own sanity. And everyone else’s, too.

But promise to always stay dark and sexy… even if I’m not looking.

Your (former) true love,

Meg

I watch Antiques Roadshow. Not religiously, but I will pause when I flip past it.

I know, I know. I should put that on a profile somewhere… that is, when I’m not busy brewing a pot of Pekoe and knitting an afghan.

I certainly don’t BUY antiques. I’m really not interested in LOOKING at antiques. Not an antiques girl by any definition, frankly. But I’m fascinated by three moments that occur fairly often in the show:

1. When folks find out that thing in the attic that they were about to toss out is worth stupid amounts of cash.

2. When people come in with something horrendous, filled with absolute CERTAINTY and EXPERT KNOWLEDGE that it is worth stupid amounts of cash… and then it isn’t.

3. Watching the experts discover some flaw in something ALMOST great… and then suddenly it’s a dime sale castoff.

Victory!

Justice!

Pathos!

Drama!

Lineups!

It’s just like life.

Actually, a little too much like life.

Sometimes I feel like one of those objects that was supposed to be worth something good — giant goals, giant dreams, giant ideas — but then all these flaws came to light, and suddenly I was just something you could plant your marigolds in.

People are not like antiques, I tell myself (unless they are very old and very still). Our flaws are just a part of who we are — not the defining thing, as with a crack in a 300 year-old vase or a scratch on an armoire.

Even then, the people who really love those objects love the flaws as a part of what they are.

It’s only when they face outside evaluation that it matters.

I spent the majority of the years between 12 and 32 with one big plan in mind: to get married, have babies, and become a mom.

And yes, to be a lawyer, too… no, no… a writer.

Still, for me the whole family thing wasn’t a, “Oh, yes, this will happen eventually and in time. ” It was a genuine JOY to think of it. I couldn’t wait for the whole process — not because I was so traditional that I believed it was my only calling in life, but because it seemed like everything I liked about myself suited me to nurture little people and build a relationship with someone I loved.

This had to be what the big squishy heart was for.

Once I got to the age where these things started to happen to people around me, it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t going to have the easiest journey with the opposite sex. I didn’t have a great body or face, and that seemed to get in the way of relationships.

Guys told me I was the nicest girl… but just weren’t attracted to me. Some of them were less kind about it. Some of them were downright mean.

The rejections — and the defenses I built up as a result — were the first chip that emerged on my surface.

But when everyone around me was getting married, I had faith it would happen eventually. That someone would look at me and see something they wanted. I focused on working hard instead, and being the best person inside that I could be.

Someone told me at the time I was lucky that I could focus on building a career.

And I so did work hard — incredibly hard. Just not at the thing I ultimately wanted to do, and at a pace that left me exhausted and frustrated at the end of the day. I put tons of time and energy into it, and what I got back out — while wonderful at times — just wasn’t enough.

So I quit, and in the midst of actually following my dream, nearly lost everything.

Chip number two.

It wasn’t until I was 31 that I finally got myself on course, and while that’s not impossibly late, it felt a bit silly… as though I should have figured things out sooner.

But I could deal with my challenges because I still had my hope intact in the future and I LOVED what I was doing now. I still wanted big things in terms of a life and a family, and nothing had happened to show me it was truly impossible yet.

Then a year later, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that explained one thing about me and gave me some forewarning about another. My difficulty in losing weight (aka, being something other than the “nice” girl or the “funny” girl to some men) was due to a massive set of imbalances in my body… and those same imbalances had rendered me irrevocably infertile.

Chip number three.

As I began dealing with that amidst hormone treatments that made me stupidly sick — treatments that weren’t to restore fertility, but to cut down on a huge risk of diabetes and cancer and who knows what else — I finally felt like my value had gone south.

This was not a thing to keep my chin up about, and to smile through, and to work hard to overcome. This just sucked, and there wasn’t anything I could do except radically adjust my expectations, and live with it.

Of course I knew I would adopt, and of course I knew that it wouldn’t matter to every guy I’d meet that he couldn’t have his own kids. Plenty of men out there even like the idea of adopting better.

I just didn’t know any of them yet, and I’d have to find one that also didn’t mind that I was built more like a squash than an hourglass, and also didn’t mind that I was just launching my career.

I’ll admit — it rocked me harder than ever before that my idea of myself and my future had taken so many hits. I felt like the person standing in line for hours, only to find out that their painting was actually a knockoff.

But.

I’ve spend the time since then working all of this out — the things I have, the things I want, the changes in perspective, the ways to love myself in the midst of it all. And I haven’t done it perfectly, by any stroke of the imagination.

I’ve been angry, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been distracted, I’ve let myself get caught up in the disappointment of others, and I’ve definitely beaten myself up about the first 34 years of my life more than once. I have entire lists of the things I could and should have done differently.

But those lists aren’t getting me anywhere.

The things that ARE getting me somewhere are the hard work I put into what I do, the open heart I maintain at all costs, and taking joy in what I have now, not what I meant to have.

I don’t think I’m alone in having two parallel realities in my life, though: what I struggle with, and what I keep doing in spite of it. One doesn’t make the other go away… but I think it can in time. And I’m certainly not waiting to live; I wouldn’t even know how to actually stand still, or give up.

Even if it hurts sometimes, you get on with it.

But here’s the thing: in the last few months, I’ve realized that the only way I’ll ever truly get on with it is if I stop seeing myself as ANY of the scenarios above. Not just the chipped-and-now-worthless object, but ANYTHING that involves waiting for someone else or some arbitrary standard to ascribe (or deny) me value.

I am not some great thing waiting to be discovered and hauled out of the attic. People have seen me and loved me my whole life, and that makes me blessed. I was never set aside and forgotten. To say otherwise would be a lie.

I am also not some great thing full of self-inflated value waiting to be “found out” as useless. I believe in myself only for things that are true, and that can’t be taken away from me. It’s up to me to hold on to that reality, no matter what.

And finally, I am not damaged beyond value. Not even close.

So I am stepping out of the line to be assessed, and continuing on my own (not antique at all) road show — because I was always on it, anyway. And if there are bumps in the journey, so be it. And if I pick up more dents, so be it. And if anyone doesn’t like the path I take or the way I deal with it, so be it. And if I occasionally backtrack and focus on the wrong stuff and get a little lost, so be it.

I can live with it.

And I’m quite certain everyone else can, too.

Frightening things that begin with two C’s : clown cars, calculus camp entertainment (actually, that’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen), colon cleanses, coffee condoms, and coke cake.

I wonder if Jack LaLanne lies awake at night listening to the carrots scream.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give him a bunch of carp, and they’ll just nibble his toes.

Nerf Uber Alles:

I always get “Osmonds” and “almonds” confused.

A little something for your Tuesday:

Ahhh! How cooltowns is that?

And how cooltowns is it that I have coined a new term for good things: cooltowns!

For something to be cooltowns, it needn’t be cool OR a town, but just something you really, really like.

I, for one, cannot stop saying it. I am also a giant nerdface, but hey:

nataliedee.com

Ever been inspired by a wiener?

Don’t answer that.

Really.

Just make a list of things you love here, or at your own bloggity (but if you do it there, leave the link in the comments so we can all share in the love.)

THINGS I LOVE, YO.

Metromint water
Bill Murray
Coordinating baked goods with fashion
Baby bunnies
Air conditioning in stores
Ira Glass
Breaking things with a karate chop (like rice cakes, or RyKrisp, or styrofoam… but now I’m just being redundant)
Making your own salad dressing
Lite-Brite
Windex
Blue sky days:

Jasmine green tea
That my nails and hair have suddenly become like IRON!
Moving from crying to laughing
This shark, which someone should give me as a gift
Architectural photos
Twilight on my deck:

Tanned toes
A man in a well-cut suit
Eating babies:

(I did not actually consume him, I just held him.)

Seeing the mold in my water bottle just BEFORE I took a deep swig
“That summery glow”
Our new hanging baskets:

And finally, my sunglasses:

And you?

(Remember — no “it depends” or “both!” or “neither”… you must choose!)

Robert Redford or Paul Newman?

Bill Murray or Steve Martin?

Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?

Elvis Costello or Elvis Presley?

George Clooney or Brad Pitt?

Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday?

Garrison Keillor or David Sedaris?

Stevie Wonder or Al Green?

Sophia Loren or Marilyn Monroe?

Lawrence Welk or Percy Faith?

Miles Davis or John Coltrane?

Tina Fey or Sarah Silverman?

Denzel Washington or Russell Crowe?

Ron Popeil (of SET IT AND FORGET IT fame) or Billy Mays (OXY CLEAN!)

John Cusack or Matthew Broderick?

Benicio Del Toro or Javier Bardem?

Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino?

Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn?

Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant?

Bob or Doug?

Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon?

Roger Moore or Sean Connery?

Salma Hayek or Penelope Cruz?

Matt Damon or Ben Affleck?

Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett?

My lovely roommate and best friend Catherine “commutes” with me on Wednesday mornings, since she works the early shift that day and I… well, I work early every day.

Sigh.

I ride in her car until she’s almost at work, then I hop off and catch a bus the rest of the way.

Two things you need to know:

1. Catherine is not a morning person. At all. By any stretch of the imagination.
2. I am an all-day person.

What this means:

1. I can talk coherently from pretty much the first second I’m awake (nanny and camp counselor represent!)
2. Catherine is not yet ready to understand anything I’m saying.

Which is what led to our conversation this morning:

Meg: Apparently, Buzz and Jen and their baby got some bad fish yesterday. They were sick all day.

Cat (with notable disdain): What is a batfish?

Meg: BAD fish. You know, like tainted?

(At this point, laughter ensues for MILES. Stomach-pain-causing, mascara-ruining laughter. Finally, I get out the question.)

Meg: What did you think a batfish was?

Cat: You know… like you can have silverfish. You know silverfish? Isn’t that a thing you get?

Meg: In your house, yeah. Like bugs?

Cat: Oh… ?

(More laughter ensues for miles and miles…)

Meg: But a batfish? What would that even look like? What would that even BE?

Cat: Well, they have catfish, don’t they? That rhymes!

And now you know why I love her so.

Today, Apple’s iPhone launched in Canada, after weeks and weeks of kerfuffle over data plans and whatnot. In fact, there was so MUCH kerfuffle that Steve Jobs yanked iPhones from Canadian Apple stores, and left the sales to Rogers/Fido in their own branded stores.

As I write this, people are lined up to get their hands on 3GB of magicalsomethingorother.

But I’m not going to link to any of the drama because a) I’m not in line for one; b) I won’t be in line for one; c) IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE.

Because what else are Fridays for around here, if not LOVE?

I mean, you can love your iPhone… but can you *love* your iPhone?

And will it love you back?

They don’t have an app that will do that… yet.

As always, I encourage you to rock your own random love list in the comments here, or to whip one up at your own blog, and leave us the link in comments. The more love we can get going on, the better the weekend will be.

So use a little space in your day to celebrate the things that make you tingle… even just one or two. Really.

Because one of the things I love most is hearing about what other people love!

THINGS I LOVE

My iPod Touch… because IT WILL NEVER RING
Cafe au lait
Remembering dreams I had the night before
Waves
Humour so dry it makes your lips chap
Calling people by dorky pet names
Herb gardens
Sour keys
My deck
My mom and dad
Big, fat overbloomed peonies
Ironic Sans
Messy salt water hair
Freckles aplenty
Local strawberries
Sundresses
Cute words like omelette and apricot and bliss
Serious breath mints
Stuff White People Like
Beachy smells like coconut and jasmine and kukui nut
Gifts for no reason at all
My loyal Havaianas
Wishing for a mashup of “Somebody’s Watching Me” and “Moonshadow”
Denim skirts
Yawny stretches
Toast and peanut butter
Knowing when self-deprecation starts to be self-fulfilling
Good tippers
Lemon in marinades
Birkenstock Madrids in fun colours but mostly white (which I have not managed to find a single pair of in stock anywhere. Yes, I know it’s granola. But it’s SLEEK granola!)
The millions of jokes you can make about Koi ponds
Eating peppers straight from the jar
Chair dancing
White tank tops
Font Charades

And you?