to market, to market

it's farmers market season, and while i know we're all excited about fresh fruit & veggies, there's a few items of deliciousness that you might not be acquainted with. unless, of course, you've heard me rave about them previously, in which case you're already in the know.

--cinnamon pound cake from breadman baking company. i bought this on a whim last year and fell in love. it's pretty simple and i'm sure the bakers among us could come up with one that'd be equally delectable, but baking isn't my strong suit (aside from paula deen's symphony brownies, obviously) and sometimes i prefer to leave such things in the hands of experts.

(an aside: that brownie recipe gives a yield of 24 large or 48 brownies. i've made those brownies more times than i can remember and the most i've gotten out of a batch is 18. just sayin'.)

--5 cheese garlic spread from river valley mushrooms. i've put this on mashed potatoes. pasta. bread. steak. fish. quesadillas. burgers. and probably a few things i'm forgetting at the moment. you can buy this glorious spread at farmers markets (check river valley's site for a list) and at chicago's downtown farmstand.

--c & d family farms. they had me at bacon burgers, but then i tried the smoked pork chops. and a couple of steaks. and more bacon burgers. and did i mention bacon burgers? b/c, really, it's all about the bacon burgers. i might be in crystal's (the "c" of c & d) eternal debt for introducing bacon burgers into my life. if you've had them, then you know they're amazing. if you haven't had them and you're a bacon fan, then you need to try them at least once. they're magic. seriously. there's usually at least one pack of bacon burgers in my freezer all summer long...and then i buy 2-3 packs before the season's over to get me through the winter and spring. they're that good, imo.

now, of course, i've made myself hungry and i probably won't make it to a farmers market this week. mmm...fresh cherries. and strawberries. and corn. and broccoli. and...well, you get the point. bon appetit!

hail to alma mater

it's commencement weekend at northwestern, and all the tweets about graduation and purple gowns (seriously, purple gowns? in my day, we had blue gowns and we were thankful!) and colbert's address and webcasts of the ceremony have me feeling a bit nostalgic. yes, i know it's a bit weird to mention tweets and nostalgia in the same sentence.

i have so many purple-tinged memories that it's damn near impossible to pick my all-time absolute favorite one, the one i'm about to tell ranks pretty high for me.

flashback, if you will, to 13 (!) years ago, when i was working on my very last assignment as an undergraduate. i hadn't really thought about graduate school yet, so i was probably going on the assumption that it'd be my last assignment ever.

wanna know what that assignment was? it was an essay for a communications studies seminar. i don't remember the topic of the seminar and it's not listed on my transcript, but it's not really important right now. what's important is what i filled up a blue book writing about...ll cool j. i'm serious. i cited his autobiography and everything. please don't ask me about exact content b/c, well, it was 13 years ago. i got an a-minus in the class, though, so it couldn't have been too horrible.

i just looked at my loyola transcript and i have no idea what my last b-school assignment was. there could've been a group project involved. or a paper. i really don't know. given my decades-long infatuation with ll, though, it should come as little surprise that i'd remember writing about him for class.

the best part about that assignment at the time? i finished it during reading week, which meant i had 2 weeks (finals week and senior week) to do nothing but hang out and pack. good times. :-)

revisited: 25 things

[note: this was originally posted on urbantherapy. i've made a few edits and changed the order of a couple of things, but the bulk of the content is the same, so if you read this previously, feel free to skip it this time around.]

1. i’m a loner by nature. i put a v. high premium on having time to myself. it stems from having v. little time to myself while growing up and just wanting...no, needing time/space for me to do whatever i wanted. as extroverted as i am, there are definitely times when i just want to sit at home and read a book/watch tv/sleep/do nothing. having that kind of time is one of the very few bonuses of being out of work right now.

2. i made a declaration when i was 12 or 13 that i wasn’t going to have kids, and i plan on standing by that declaration. people find it slightly odd when they realize that yes, i really do love children and would probably make a decent mom. i just have no interest whatsoever in having children of my own.

3. i moved in with my brother and his family when i was 9 and didn’t move out until i graduated from high school. during those years, i stayed with my father on weekends and holidays, assuming that my behavior passed muster for the week. it sucked. imagine having to ask to spend a weekend with your father, knowing that the answer v. well could be no.

4. living with and having lots of responsibility for my niece and nephew during those years is the number one reason why i don’t want to have kids. i was the one getting them up and out the door in the mornings, making sure they did homework, making their lunches, getting their outfits together for school...and oh yeah, i still had my chores to do around the house and homework to get done. that sucked, too.

5. my career ambition from 2nd grade until freshman year of college was to become a lawyer. you can imagine how confused my family was when i switched to communication studies. given my current un(der)employment status, you might think i'd have regrets about not going to law school. i don't.

6. speaking of regrets...i have two of them about college: not continuing spanish classes after freshman year, and not finding a way to study abroad. i'd be fluent and i'd have at least one stamp on my passport.

7. i spent the evening of my 17th birthday being v. depressed, v. angry, and damn near suicidal. i wrote a poem/suicide note about missing my mom and wanting to be with her in heaven. obv. i didn’t go through with it. i vaguely remember not being able to find enough pills to pop.

8. i tried out for the pom-pom squad in 8th grade. i didn’t make the cut. i think it was b/c i couldn’t do splits.

9. still can’t do splits. i have a mental block against them. no, seriously.

10. after my mom died when i was 7, i lived with my mom’s best friend and her family for 2 years before moving in with my brother.

11. i was about 8 or so and was practicing splits (fuck if i know why) in the living room at my mom’s friend’s house. a male friend of my mom’s friend was over and decided to be my cheerleading coach. um, let’s just say that some improprieties occurred and then practice was over.

12. i managed to block that memory until i was about 15.

13. on a lighter note...i started reading when i was 2. i was about 2 and a half when my mom took me to the doctor b/c i wasn’t talking yet and she was worried. the doctor told her that i was too busy reading and that i’d talk when i was good and ready. growing up, my brothers liked to joke that i started talking and haven’t shut up since. somewhere there’s a picture of me reading the phone book. apparently everyone laughed until they realized i was holding it right side up and turning pages.

14. i can hold a grudge like nobody’s business. there are whole segments of “family” and at least one "friend" that i haven’t talked to in years b/c of past transgressions.

15. i can’t swim. it’s another mental block — my ex-stepmother decided it'd be a good idea to have one of my cousins throw me in the pool. it didn't work. that's one of the myriad reasons why i have an ex-stepmother in the first place.

16. i look like my mother (and james) but am a daddy’s girl at heart. yes, i'm a grown-ass woman and my father's been dead for 14 years, but i still think of myself as a daddy's girl. so be it.

17. one of my ex-stepbrothers used to be a bodyguard for michael jackson.

18. i once won a poetry contest sponsored by gwendolyn brooks. i think there were 20 winners total. my hair looks a hot mess in the photos. two words: crimping iron.

19. i auditioned for ‘rent’ in 1999. i made it through the first 2 prelim rounds and got cut in the final prelim. i was just proud of myself for making it that far, esp. since i was singing a cappella.

20. i never learned how to ride a bike. no mental block there — it just never happened.

21. i have permanent tan lines on my upper arms. i’ve had them for as long as i can remember.

22. i’m scared of having my genes tested b/c i already know how bad they are. at every checkup, my doctor offers to give me a referral and i pass every time b/c i don’t need to have concrete details on how screwed my health is now/will be in future.

23. i’ve never had a broken bone.

24. or a pet.

25. or allergies. bonus!

26. out of all the people i went to elementary, junior high, and high school with, i only keep in regular contact with one of them. frankly, it’s worked out better that way.

stop reading if you've heard these

james has been on my mind a lot lately. i don't necessarily think that he's trying to communicate with me from heaven or the great beyond or whatever afterlife you may or may not believe in, but there's definitely...something. i can't quite put my finger on it, and i'm not inclined to put forth that much effort into solving the puzzle.

some of the memories popped up late last week when #10confessions popped up as a trending topic on twitter. i started thinking about doing a post about 10 confessions, but then i remembered i'd done that whole "25 things you don't know about me" meme a while back, so i was just going to repost that. so then i started thinking about confessions/memories related to northwestern, b/c it's senior week and it seemed appropriate.

for instance...did you know that james paid for my northwestern class ring? he called me one day senior year, not long after i'd picked the ring out and charged it to my amex card. he asked how things were going, and i mentioned the ring to him. he sounded devastated when i told him i'd paid for it already (ok, not technically paid for, but, y'know) and he damn near demanded to know how much it was. next time i saw him, he gave me a check for the full amount of the ring. i tried to turn him down, but he was pretty adamant about it.

i know that doesn't sound like much, but considering that i almost didn't make it back to northwestern for my senior year, it meant (and still means) a lot to me.

yes, folks, that's another confession. i was *thisclose* to leaving northwestern. after daddy died during junior year, james was the one in charge of handling the estate and taking care of bills. daddy had set up a payment plan for the portion of tuition/room & board that wasn't covered by loans and grants, and luckily that had been taken care of for the year. senior year, though, was up in the air. daddy didn't have life insurance (note: my policy, coincidentially enough, is through northwestern's alumni association), and money was tighter than usual.

when my financial aid package came in, there was a sizable gap between what loans/grants/work-study covered and what i'd be responsible for. well, what james and i would be responsible for. even on the 9-month payment plan, there was no way that amount was feasible. at all. even if i moved back "home" and cut out room/board, there was no way we'd be able to make it work.

thus began my summer of "stalking" the financial aid office. i was working on campus, so it wasn't much of a stretch to walk over and plead my case on a monthly basis. or was it bi-weekly? i don't really remember. what i do remember was me pleading my case to the financial aid officer. i played every card i could think of. the "i'm an orphan" card. the "it'd mean so much to graduate on time" card. the "i've worked so hard and i don't wanna dropout" card. the "do you want me to be another minority statistic?" card. yeah, i went there. i didn't care. i begged for more work-study, more loans, more grants...whatever would lessen the out-of-pocket burden.

and it worked. the details are sketchy at this point, but my expected contribution came down to a slightly more tolerable level. it'd still be a stretch for me and james, but we'd make it work. and we did. and i graduated, and here i am. this story would have a much happier ending if i was employed right now, but oh well.

i have 1 or 2 more northwestern-related confessions, but i'll save those for another post. there's at least one more james-related memory that's been on my mind lately, but, again, another post. and yes, i'll post the 25 things here, probably before the week is out.

an introduction...or something

i just realized that i should start posting here sooner rather than later, since the blog known as urbantherapy is no more. a bit uncanny, actually, that urbantherapy is turned off a few days prior to the 1-year mark of the beginning of the end of the real-life urbantherapy. yeah, that's vague on purpose...i might come back to that in a later post. ask me offline if you have no idea what i'm talking about.

anyway... that description at the top of the page pretty much sums things up. i promise you nothing but whatever i feel like sharing at any given time. if you follow me on twitter, then you already know i'm prone to randomness. and lowercase. and sentence fragments. and run-on sentences. actually, if you read urbantherapy on anything resembling a quasi-regular basis, then you're accustomed to this. if you're new...o hai! :-)

i might copy over some previous urbantherapy posts here w/in the coming weeks. most likely recipes, b/c it'd be nice to have all of those links to refer to when i start doing recipe roundups here. maybe some other stuff. we'll see.

so, yeah. welcome to my blog. more later...