Embrace the Burn

I never really thought I would be a “gym” person. Growing up I was always playing one sport or another—horseback riding, fencing, softball, rugby—but exercising outside the confines of an organized sport pretty much constituted a hideous torture. I hated running. I mean really hated it. The mile run that was part of the fitness test in middle school was the worst day of the year—I would angst and stress about it for days in advance, inevitably be one of the slower runners, and end up red-faced and sweaty for the rest of the day. I liked riding my bike a little better, but only if it was a horse and I was racing in the Kentucky Derby or running over sewer grates that were part of my “jumping” course. My parents got me some exercise tapes at one point—“Mousercise” videos produced by Disney that featured kids in hideous 80s unitards and feathered hairstyles. These got some halfhearted use, but I resented the implication that I needed it and never really committed myself to the program.

I was not a grossly obese kid by any stretch of the imagination, but I was never a skinny kid either. I was always just above average in the weight department. Compared to my uber-thin sister, I was a little fat—chubby, you might say. Enough so that it kind of sunk into my psyche—I was just always going to be a little bigger than most of the other girls. Size large.

Playing rugby helped keep me at the status quo when I got to college—no freshman 15 for me, thank you very much. But after I tore my ACL and had to go through a painful and lengthy rehab—not to mention the end of my days of organized sports—things started to creep. And creep some more. Then came the end of college and the beginning of the 9-5 working life, when you’re so tired at the end of the day that the prospect of working out on top of it all is a joke. And the creep continued. I had joined a gym after school ended, but weeks would sometimes go by between workout sessions. Then I sprained an ankle when I tripped over a pillow—damn you, Flopsy—and it was months before I really recovered from that.

All this to say, by the end of 2009, I was definitely at the heaviest I had ever been in my life. It wasn’t an extreme level compared to the national average, I’m sure, but it was enough. I was working on a biology book at my old job, and in the nutrition chapter there was a section where you could calculate your BMI—body mass index—and find out if you were at a healthy weight or not. I plugged in my numbers on a whim and was shocked by the result. Not only was I overweight, but I was getting close to the line between overweight and obese. I needed to lose 20 pounds to even get into the high end of the healthy zone.

There are plenty of excuses and justifications you can make when you look in the mirror, but there’s not a lot you can do when faced with cold hard facts. I needed to lose weight. Black and white.

I gave myself a goal. By May, I was going to be rid of those 20 pounds, through a combination of going to the gym and watching what I ate. I started taking classes at the gym all the time—spin, weight lifting, cardio kickboxing. When I wasn’t taking class, to spare my bad ankle and knee, I would walk on the treadmill for 40 minutes at the highest incline. I even started to work some running back into my routine, first on the treadmill and then outside.

A funny thing started to happen. I found out that I liked going to the gym. I looked forward to pushing myself to the very edge of where I could go and then pushing farther—that feeling in spin class when I was gasping, openmouthed, lungs and legs burning, and still going faster. I liked being able to increase the amount of weight I was lifting in class each week. When the boxing instructor told me to punch harder, I did so gladly. I started to understand what that whole exercise high was all about.

I learned to embrace the burn. Guess I’m a gym person after all.

This week’s synchroblog topic was burn. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

Fork It

A bit of housekeeping, first. Despite the somewhat dire tone of my last entry, I did not, in fact, die of food poisoning. Or glass consumption. Huzzah.

Now, I have already discussed my obsession with Chantilly potatoes in this space. An entire blog post was dedicated to every cheesy, creamy bit of potato-y goodness that comes from Chantilly potatoes. I may have also mentioned the time that my mom ruined Christmas by a Chantilly potato fail. Maybe. Because of all this, I was paralyzed with nerves this past Sunday when, for the first time ever, I decided to deploy Chantilly potatoes on my own.

When the news came out that my friends were hosting a friends Thanksgiving this year—Friendsgiving 2012, if you will—I knew immediately that I wanted to try my hand at Chantilly potatoes. It’s my family’s signature dish, so it was pretty much a given. But also given the amount of raving and Chantilly smack talk that’s gone down, I was anxious. I knew that if I jacked it up, it would go down in infamy. Like the capslock, and the diesel, and the wasabi, and all the rest. My dad was in town Tuesday night, and I mentioned that I was making the Chantilly potatoes for the first time. “It’s idiot proof,” he said. Oh great, was my immediate thought. The kiss of death.

Sunday came around, and I was hovering in the kitchen like a spastic hen, poking and prodding at the potatoes as they boiled, reading and rereading the somewhat-lacking-in-specifics recipe that had been supplied [Mom: actual amounts next time, please! “Some” is a little vague.]

“Do you think the potatoes are done?” I kept asking Sarah, 2 minutes and 4 minutes and 6 minutes after I had dumped them in the pot.

“Just stick a fork in it and find out,” was her response. “You know that’s where that saying comes from, right?”

I had never given much thought to the saying one way or another, but it’s apt enough advice. It can also mean that something is completely destroyed or defeated, according to the Urban Dictionary.

Thankfully, my potatoes were neither destroyed nor defeated, they were just done. Some amount of mashing and whipping and layering and baking later, I had a perfectly serviceable batch of Chantilly potatoes to share with my friends. Perhaps not adequately seasoned for true perfection—I blame the “some” description in the recipe—perhaps it could have been baked longer to attain the perfect brown crust on top—what can I say, we were hungry and Gilbert the turkey was ready to be consumed—but overall it was a successful venture.

Huzzah, indeed!

This week’s synchroblog topic was maxims. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

Sigh.

1. 12-4 loss to tie the series up 1-1 was a mess. 8-0 loss in the first postseason home game in the history of the franchise was a bigger mess. As was the overenthusiastic teen sitting next to me in the stadium who kept snapping his towel in my eye. But losing the deciding game in the series after taking a 6-0 lead early? YOU ARE A HOT MESS, NATIONALS. To add insult to injury, in the closing minutes of the game, I tried to zip up the hoodie I had purchased at the game on Wednesday…and the zipper completely snapped off. It was a rather appropriate culmination of the season. Sigh.

2. Speaking of hot messes…I have been deliriously happy the past week or so, running around in sweatshirts, sweatpants, and slippers, curling up in my armchair with a blanket, and shivering for the first few minutes after getting into bed until the sheets warmed up. This is how fall and winter are supposed to be. I came home after the disgraceful Nats game on Friday, shut the front door, and paused. Looked around. Despite the fact that all my windows were cracked, my apartment felt downright balmy. I raced over to the radiator in my living room and nearly wept. The heat was on. And it will be on until April. Here commences an entire season of wearing a t-shirt and shorts to bed every night, barely needing a sheet, having a debate every night over whether or not to turn on my air conditioning unit just so I can get some peaceful sleep—inevitably, stubbornly deciding not to turn it on—and waking up caked in a layer of sweat in the morning. Yesterday it was 70 degrees and sunny, the kind of weather that begs for open windows and playful breezes to sweep the delicious smell of fall into your house. I kept my windows open all day to try—and fail—to combat the radiators. Sigh.

3. My apartment is also a mess because I didn’t have time to clean this weekend, and I’m very uncomfortable about that fact. Growing up, I never really understood my mom’s obsessive need to keep the house clean. Basically I thought she was weird. What does it matter if beds are made, or clothes are picked up from the floor, or the carpets are vacuumed, or the furniture is dusted? Seriously, we have to clean the house so the cleaners can get in and clean it some more? This in particular drove me nuts. But now that I have my own place…I get twitchy if I go more than a week between cleanings. Things have a place they are supposed to be, and when they’re not there, I don’t like it. The fact that my cat takes joy in going around the house and knocking stuff off shelves, throwing litter out of his box, and diving into the recycling bag to toss paper all over the house makes me crazy. Basically, my apartment is a mess right now, and because it turns out that I am my mother’s daughter, I am not pleased. Sigh.

4. There are probably any number of Lori stories that I might have chosen to write about for this topic. Some have gotten mentions in this space before—diesel, fish food in Hawaii, Grand Canyon spaz attack. Others I will probably save for another time—wasabi, work computer porn, capslock. For this entry, I thought I might write about how I tried to murder myself twice in one week. It takes a certain kind of talent. My first suicidal encounter was with a jar of jam. Here’s the thing. Anyone who has ever been to a Harris Teeter on a Sunday night surely understands why, when I got home from the store and dropped the one bag that had the one breakable item I had purchased that just happened to be my jar of jam for making PB&J sandwiches all week, I refused to return to the grocery store. I had barely escaped with my sanity and loot the first time around. No, instead I decided to be crafty. I would race home, pull out all the pieces of glass from the bottom of the jar, then carefully put the jam in a Tupperware container after thoroughly de-glassing the contents. Week of sandwiches saved, no extra trip to HT needed. Well, as it turns out, it is kind of hard to de-glass jam, as I discovered halfway through my first sandwich of the week. That particular crunch of glass between molars is burned into my mind forever. I’m sure anyone who happened to see this incident go down in the courtyard at work—the freeze, the dawning look of horror, the spastic upheaval of half-chewed sandwich onto my napkin—had their day made. Also bad was the fact that I had made a sandwich for my friend—after disclosing the glass situation, mind you—and might have been hauled in for second degree murder or something. Sigh.

5. The second suicidal incident involved ham, which is all the more tragic because I really, really like ham. It may not be all the way up there with my love of potatoes—which has been thoroughly documented—but it’s close. So I was making this black bean and pumpkin soup, part of my effort to become the queen of fall, and the recipe called for cooked ham to be added to the soup near the end of the cooking process. I got any old ham at the store, mostly just looking for the cheapest option. I had everything simmering happily on my stove, and I started chopping up the ham. It looked like normal ham. It had the consistency of normal ham. It mostly tasted like normal ham as I popped a piece in my mouth. But it was only after eating that piece, and dumping a handful into my soup pot, that I saw the label. Ready to cook ham. What do you mean, ready to cook?! my brain cried frantically. Isn’t all ham cooked?! OH GOD I’M GOING TO DIE. As it turns out, from the USDA’s food safety page:

Hams that are not ready-to-eat, but have the appearance of ready-to-eat products, will bear a prominent statement on the principal display panel (label) indicating the product needs cooking, e.g., “cook thoroughly.”

My stomach gave an ominous sort of churn, an indicator of things to come I was sure. I was supposed to be going to a DJ dance party that night, and I had vivid premonitions of being out on the dance floor, rocking out, and then projectile vomiting all over the place. I did the normal thing in this kind of situation and started googling food poisoning. It could hit anywhere from 2-4 hours or 7-10 days later. I am now 8 days into my 7-10 day window, and thus far I have not been afflicted with the food poisoning, but you never know. Sigh.

This week’s synchroblog topic was a mess. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

Worship at the Altar of Fall

I’m not sure when my preference for fall became a full-blown autumnal obsession. Maybe it was by default.

I like sweatpants and hot chocolate and sledding and ice skating and playing in the snow like any true child of the north. But now that I live farther south, I have discovered that the horrors of wintertime driving often outweigh the other pleasures of the season. Plus, now that I ride at a stable without an indoor ring, I have to pay homage to the gods of winter every Sunday in hopes that the weather will not spoil my riding lesson.

Spring is a beautiful season, and I glory in the first green buds on the trees and the rainbow of flowers and the blooming trees and the lambs staggering weak-kneed and unsure in their first days of life, just like any sane human. I also suffer from allergies. I never had allergies growing up, but as soon as I moved south for school, I was treated to the misery of waking up every day for weeks convinced I was sick—stuffed up, hacking cough, raging headache, day in and day out—only to belatedly realize that, no I do not have the plague, I just have the dreaded allergies. This puts somewhat of a damper on spring.

Summer and I have a problematic relationship. There is much that is optimal about summer. Not being in school—yes yes, I realize that I have been out of school for years now, but there’s still something about summer that feels like you’ve been set free. The long, slow descent into darkness as sunsets last for years, grills and pools and sprinklers and Fourth of July fireworks, the beach. But it is also hot, and I do not do well in the heat. I tend to droop, wither, and otherwise internally and externally convulse when faced with temperatures any higher than, say, 85 to 90 degrees. Look, I’ll just be frank about this: I sweat a lot. I turn red. I have zero capability of appearing glamorous on a blazing summer day. I also have a history of blacking out when exercising in extreme heat, which can be problematic when horseback riding is your favorite outdoor activity.

Thus we come to fall. Perhaps the deck is stacked in fall’s favor—after all, I am a child of the fall. The changing of the leaves and crisping of the air means that my birthday is coming. It also happily coincides with Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. Do I love Halloween so much for its own sake, or because I always had Halloween-themed birthday parties, with Halloween-inspired party favors and trips to Sonnenberg Haunted Gardens, where we milled the pitch-black garden paths in a preteen pack of hysteria and shrieking? That helps, but I also like being scared silly just because I think it’s fun. This is why sometimes my favorite activity on a weekend night when I don’t have any other plans is to order a scary movie on demand and curl up under a blanket in the fetal position, screaming bloody murder and covering my eyes half the time. [Note: Paranormal Activity is great for this kind of night.]

But really, my love of fall is not birthday and Halloween-related only. No, the adoration of fall goes deeper than that. It is a time of apples and pumpkin—cider and pumpkin spice lattes, apple-cheddar scones and pumpkin bread, caramel apples and pumpkin muffins, apple picking and pumpkin carving. It is a time of cooking warm, hearty meals and curling up in my armchair wrapped in a blanket. It is the way the air smells on a fall evening, cold and clear and with the distant smell of a wood grill for seasoning. It is the blazing glory of fall leaves as I drive to my weekend riding lesson. It is hiking as a child with my family in upstate New York, the true kingdom of fall, trying to catch the most number of falling leaves as we go.

It is happiness.

This year’s fall schedule is kind of epic. Witness:

Ongoing through the month: my friend Sarah and I (and by this, I mean mostly Sarah) are making our own Halloween costumes. We have purchased pattern and fabric. We are going as Disney princesses. (I will be Snow White. The hair just works, you know?) So very exciting.

October 13^th: a day of apple- and pumpkin- and gourd-picking out in the wilds of Virginia, followed by a trip to a winery, following by a coworker’s entirely fall-themed party.

October 14^th: Shaun of the Dead viewing party at Eatbar.

Week of October 14^th: I will be using the aforementioned picked apples to make apple-cheddar scones. It is part of my mission to become a Scone-Maker Extraordinaire, and I think it’s going to be pretty badass.

October 19^th: Trip to Markoff’s Haunted Woods, where I will get my fill of being scared silly. I have heard that this is the scariest fall event in the area. Bring it. There is also a bonfire, live music, food, hay rides, etc. while you wait your turn.

October 20^th: A jaunt to King’s Dominion Halloween Haunt. Because what could be better than Halloween and roller coasters?

October 23^rd: Birthday dinner, at which there will be pumpkin ravioli. Yes, please.

October 27^th: Pumpkin carving, mad dash scramble to finish Halloween costumes, and then out on the town for the official Halloween celebration.

October 31^st: Watch Hocus Pocus (nonoptional Halloween activity), eat mass quantities of mini Snickers bars.

November 1^st: Collapse in a heap.

This week’s synchroblog topic was seasons. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

Cue Montage

Due to my extreme lack of a clear thesis or subject line to tie this post together, I present: a montage of hair [Cue typical 21^st century American TV ad spot of faux sun-burnished women tossing their long, shiny hair and giggling. Or something.]

1. I think I’m going to grow my hair out. No, really. I mean it this time. I think. This is a typical reaction when I’ve had it short for a while—dear God I just want to put it up in a ponytail, why is it so damn shoooooort—but I’ve also had a number of people tell me lately that they think it would look nice longer, and I’m nothing if not suggestible. The nice thing about growing it out is that at any point in time, if I decide it looks terrible, out comes the ax and—like magic—it’s short again.
2. Speaking of hair, which is also a musical called Hair, I’m hoping to get tickets for the musical My Fair Lady this winter at Arena. I’ve done a pretty good job of seeing shows—both theatrical and musical—since moving to the big city. Just in the past month or so, I spontaneously went to Wolf Trap to picnic and watch The King and I, saw the Shakespeare Theater’s free-for-all production of All’s Well That Ends Well, and just last weekend hit up the DC9 Friday night dance party to see Ghost Beach play, who pretty much blew my mind. Tomorrow night I’m seeing Dry the River at Black Cat, Thursday is Grizzly Bear at 9:30 Club, and early next month, Mutemath and Civil Twilight at Ram’s Head in Baltimore. I kind of love living in this area.
3. I shed a lot. It’s an unavoidable side effect of being a girl, but I think I tend to shed more than the average lady. It’s amazing how much hair I lose in a given day, and yet there is still so much of it on my head, no bald patches in sight. As my mother constantly harped when my sister and I were living at home, you can’t just let the detritus go down the drain of the sink or shower, otherwise you have major clogs. So when you’re showering and you get hair all over your hands, you put it on the wall of the shower and continue on with your business. This is standard procedure among womenkind. And yet, I have a male friend who thought that the hair on the wall was some kind of strange territory marking procedure. Not really sure where he got that idea, but in case any other gentlemen are reading this, this behavior is not the female equivalent of peeing on a fire hydrant. We just really don’t want to spend all our disposable income on Drano.
4. I could always tell when spring was coming at home in upstate NY not by the little sprigs of crocuses peaking their hopeful heads up from the ground, and not by the chittering of birds on a rare sunny weekend morning. No, I could tell because I would go out to the barn to brush my horse, and within 15 seconds my right arm would resemble a brown bear pelt. It could still be 25 degrees outside, but Laurel would be losing hair in massive quantities—wheel barrows of hair. That’s when you know spring is really coming.
5. Speaking of animals and hair, my mother would probably disagree, but I think happiness is sitting on the couch at home in NY in sweatpants, wrapped in a blanket, with a warm Black Jack in my lap, watching the drifts of black and white cat hair pile up as I pet him. Ironically enough, my little Puck monster hardly sheds at all. But right now he’s also standing on the top of the fridge staring down at me, preparing to pounce, so I deal with my own share of trouble.

This week’s synchroblog topic was Hair. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

The Tale of El Diablo

Once there was a car named El Diablo. It was a 2002 Toyota Rav4. It was red. It was my first car, and this is our story.

The day we signed the papers to bring our new car home, my dad brought me with him to the dealer so I could drive the new car home and he could take the old. It was an enthralling proposition. I was fresh off my first year of college, and not only was I off for the entire summer—with only a part-time job slinging bagels at Bruegger’s to cramp my style—but now I would have wheels. The world opened before me, as it only can for an 18-year-old. Dad stayed to finish up signing the paperwork, and they handed me the keys. “Go ahead home,” they told me. I got into the car, took a breath, cranked the engine, started moving. The car felt a bit odd, a bit jerky. I didn’t remember it feeling like that when we did the test drive. Ah well, thought I, must just not be used to the way it drives.

I was halfway home before I saw the red brake sign lit up and realized that I’d been choking along with the emergency brake on the whole time. I turned it off at a stoplight, but by the time I pulled up to the house, there was a distinct odor wreathing the air. The smell had not dissipated by the time my dad arrived home, thunderclouds already massed on his face as he asked the question: “Lori, why do I smell burning rubber?”

The brakes were fine, by the way.

The next night, I invited all my friends to go to a movie in the next town over and immediately offered to drive. I had recovered from the trauma of the brakes and was ready to show off my shiny new ride. We arrived at the theater without incident, thoroughly enjoyed what I believe was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and crossed the parking lot at 11:30 PM to go back to my car. At 11:30 PM in the suburbs of Rochester on a week night, before the high schools have let out for the summer, the parking lot was deserted. I brandished my key fob with a flourish and hit the unlock button.

Honks exploded in the night air.

“Did you hit the panic?” my friends shrieked at me.

“NO,” I screamed right back, “I hit the unlock button!”

20 minutes. 20 minutes before we could get the panic to shut off. The engine locked down, refusing to let us turn the car on. It didn’t matter how many times we hit the unlock button, the lock button, the panic button. Nothing worked. The honks tore through the sedate night air and panic bloomed in me. My friends, once they got past the initial shock, tried very hard not to laugh at me. I’m told I was making quite the face. I’m glad camera phones were not ubiquitous in 2005.

I can’t even tell you how we got the panic shut off—I really don’t remember—but we did eventually figure out how to shut it down and drive home. It was then that I decided on a name for my car: El Diablo.

The next morning, when I told my dad what had happened, he scoffed. “You must have hit the panic button.”

“No, I really didn’t.”

“It was dark, you must have thought you were hitting the unlock button.”

“NO, I DIDN’T. I SWEAR TO GOD. WILL YOU PLEASE GO CHECK?”

“Fine.”

I sat at the breakfast table and calmly counted down. 10, 9, 8…

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Many minutes later, my dad came in and put the keys down on the table. “I’m going to call the dealer,” he muttered.

Turns out, the dealer forgot to mention the car had an after-market alarm system put in it. I never pushed the unlock button on my key fob again, and we toddled along for years without a problem, until my battery died a few months ago and AAA came to put in a new one and it tripped the long-slumbering alarm system with a vengeance and it could not be turned off and I had to be jumped by the AAA guy so I could drive to the dealer and have them tell me that it would cost $400 to disable the rogue alarm system so the panic wouldn’t go off anymore. That was cute.

In November of my senior year at UNC, my sister and a friend of hers from DC and I were driving back south after a lovely Thanksgiving at home. It was Sunday, and all of us had class on Monday so we were anxious to make good time. Diablo was running low on gas, so we pulled off route 15 in rural Blossburg, Pennsylvania. We exited the highway, pulled up to the gas station. I unleashed the nozzle, put it in my car, began filling up. I’d put in about 4 gallons when I saw arms franticly waving from inside the gas station and one of the workers bolted out of the station. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” he yelled. “DO YOU REALIZE YOU’RE PUTTING DIESEL IN YOUR CAR?”

In my defense:

1. There were no prominent signs claiming that the station was diesel-only.
2. In fact, the gas station was divided—one side of the highway had diesel, one side had regular—but the exit I took from 15 South spit me right into the diesel station, not the regular.
3. The nozzle slid in perfectly. It did not have to be jammed, twisted, or rammed in. Easy as butter. I’m told this is not supposed to be possible.
4. AT LEAST THREE OTHER PEOPLE ALSO PULLED INTO THE DIESEL-ONLY STATION IN THE HOUR THAT WE WERE THERE TRYING TO RESOLVE THE SITUATION AND HAD TO BE SHOOED AWAY BY THE GAS STATION WORKERS. So there.

As it turns out, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is not a good day to be stuck in Blossburg, Pennsylvania, with a suspect vehicle. After a powwow of local gas station attendants, all wearing flannel, it became quickly apparent that (a) no repair shops were open and (b) the only available hose with which to syphon off my tank was not going to be long enough and (c) if we wanted to wait to empty the diesel before we drove, we were going to have to stay overnight and miss class on Monday. As this was not an option, the powwow concluded that if we put in an entire bottle of engine cleaner and filled the rest of the tank with premium, the engine might smoke, it might not have much go, but it would probably not die if we continued the drive.

It didn’t die. It was not a fun drive, but it didn’t die. And I may still have PTSD every time I see that gas station from 15 on my way to and from Rochester.

I could also talk about the drives back and forth from Emerald Isle on 40, the scent of sunscreen and sand and sea still lingering in the car. I could talk about the many trips to stables in New York and North Carolina and Virginia, how the faint smell of horse in the car always made it feel like home. The legendary cans and boxes of diet Sunkist strewn through the back of the car like an addict’s vehicle. Friends old and new who have ridden in Diablo with me. The many, many books on tape I’ve listened to, laughing and crying on my way to and from work, and especially that time I was listening to Atonement and it was the library scene—yes, that scene—and I turned bright red, convinced every single person on the road knew exactly what I was listening to.

Mostly, I would like to say: Diablo, we’re finally there. It’s been a good ride.

This week’s synchroblog topic was Are we there yet? You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.

I Strenuously Disagree

This week’s synchroblog topic is: Happiness is not a potato.

To this, I say: That is a bald-faced lie.

Let me set a scene, if I may. You are home for Christmas. There is at least a foot of snow on the ground. It glitters and dazzles in the morning light and crunches under foot with every step, a chorus of tiny creaks and cracks to punctuate your every step. Global warming is very far away. It is a welcome relief from the barren, brown, North Carolina—or I suppose now it would be DC—winter. You are going out to the barn to visit your horse on Christmas morning, armed with candy canes and gourmet horse treats and all the spoiling you have saved up for the past 6 or 8 or 12 months, however long it has been. You have already opened presents and consumed your dad’s homemade chocolate rolls and gulped down mugs of sinfully rich hot chocolate. When you get home from the barn, there will be a long day ahead of trying on new clothes, reading books, calling friends, and watching A Christmas Story on TBS.

And there will be potatoes.

You can’t help it. You think about these potatoes all day. The anticipation begins as a slow simmer, but by late afternoon when the potatoes are burbling in the pot on the kitchen stove, the earthy scent wafting through the house, it begins to be unbearable. You might even hover around the kitchen as your mom mashes the potatoes, adding milk and butter and salt and pepper into the perfect medley of flavor, hoping for a lick of the spoon or to run your finger around the rim of the pot. But that’s not even the best of it. The magic happens when your mom adds cheese and cream to the potatoes, elevating them from mere mashed potatoes to heavenly Chantilly potatoes. They go in the oven, where they slowly bubble and brown in the heat, a tantalizing crust forming over the whipped potatoes below.  They are the crowning achievement of every Christmas and Thanksgiving meal. They are required.

I defy anyone to tell me that this is not happiness.

In fact, one year Christmas was utterly ruined when there was a mishap with the Chantilly potatoes, some error in the addition of cheese or cream or maybe both. The result was botched, and Christmas was over. [Note: my mother is going to be very annoyed with this anecdote, but it really helps prove my point, so I’m leaving it in. After all, she has made dozens upon dozens of batches of pure happiness, so it hardly tarnishes her record.]

I could go on about the Chantilly potatoes—possibly I could even write a sonnet—but that would be to leave out other bringers of potato-y happiness! That would be to neglect the best pasta of my life, a gigantic bowl of gnocchi in a spicy tomato sauce at Pasta Mia in Adams Morgan. Whoever came up with the idea of turning potatoes into pillowy, hearty, delicious pasta was a genius. They were so light! So fluffy, and yet entirely filling! Each bite exploded in a flavor bomb in my mouth. There are very few things that I like more than a good bowl of gnocchi, and this left every previous bowl of gnocchi in the dust.

And then there are French Fries. Sometimes, a good French Fry is the only thing that can make a bad day better. Not to mention all of the assorted cousins—tater tots, waffle fries from Chick-fil-A, sweet potato fries.

In fact, on more than one occasion, I have declared that were I to have to pick one food item to eat on a deserted island for the rest of my life, it would be potatoes. Clearly I would like to have potato variety, but if I had to get really specific about it, I’d take my mom’s Chantilly potatoes any day. And I would be fat as a barrel, despite the whole deserted island business, because those things are deadly.

And I wouldn’t even care, because I would be happy.

This week’s synchroblog topic, as you might have picked up on, was Happiness is not a potato. You can read the other entries at The Creative Collective.