We Can't Complain

The challenge is on.

I hadn’t ever thought about how much I complain until I started seeing Light Watkins’ posts around the idea, and then I was like, surely I can go a whole day without complaining. So the week before Thanksgiving, I gave it a try. It took me almost 72 hours to get 24 consecutive hours of no complaints! The whole exercise was was way more challenging than I thought it would be. At the same time, though, my awareness around my communication—in speech, text and email—grew exponentially. I started to notice a tiny, slightly unpleasant twinge every time a complaint formed in my mind, and the unpleasantness grew if I actually said it.

I didn’t tell anyone in my family about my personal attempt at not complaining until last Sunday. When I mentioned it to Wyatt and asked him if he’d be interested in a month-long challenge, he was like, “Yes, and can we do it for money?” Naturally, I responded, “Yes! Let’s figure out the rules.” And this is how we found ourselves late Sunday morning, post-swim, hashing out the particulars of our challenge on the Brisbane pool deck over vending machine snacks.

As Wyatt licked the orange Cheetos dust from his fingers, I tapped away into a google doc on my phone. We talked about examples of complaints, figured out what felt fair, and decided practice would be key, so we would start December 1. When we got home from the pool, we presented the plan to Marc and attempted to further clarify with him what qualifies as a complaint. This definition is challenging because we also want to maintain good communication even when difficult things happen or big feelings come up during the month-long challenge. We concluded that saying once that something happened, or how we feel about something, isn’t complaining. But repeating it, dwelling on it out loud, or turning it into “this always happens,” or “you never,” or “why don’t they ever,” and that kind of thing is definitely complaining.

A couple of friends have joined us in this challenge, with their own rules, modified to fit ages and budgets. It’s already fun to be checking in to see how it’s going.

Here are our particulars. The more the merrier, so please jump in and join us in this challenge with whatever terms and incentives suit your situation.

I Can’t Complain

Dates: 6am Dec. 1 - 9 pm Dec. 31

Goal: Highest number of days not complaining

Paying in: $30 each cash

Prizes: Highest number of days not complaining gets the pot plus penalties 

Rules: No complaining anywhere to anyone—email, text, school, teachers, friends, family.

• No baiting

What’s a Complaint: com·​plaint kəm-ˈplānt. : expression of grief, pain, or dissatisfaction. We have decided that reporting that something happened isn’t the same as complaining.

3x in the month you can save yourself from the complaint—“What I meant to say was …”

Penalty: After your 3 lives, every time you mess up you owe a dollar

Keeping Track: 4:30pm is fess-up time and sticker time. Keep track on the calendar in the kitchen: stickers for no complaining days; write down complaints. Stickers go up for the previous day at 4:30pm.

Hot tip: Keep criticism to a minimum

Let Her Sleep

I’ve spent the last year at home with my little family (which, as you know from the last two posts, now includes an adolescent dog) making almost nothing. It’s possible I’ve made less than nothing if you count the sweater I knit in 2019 but totally unraveled last week because I hate wearing it. My mind boggles that I, a yarn whisperer, beginning sewist, and generally pretty artistic person have made less than nothing in over a year. Even this blog has been blank until recently. I will say I have been cooking a lot. But much of what I cook is incredibly uninspired at this point. There is joy in feeding my people, and lately, I revel in that joy most when we order takeout.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I was sure I’d be making all kinds of things for however long it lasted. If none of us got sick, there’d be lots of creative time! And energy! But no, there wasn’t—not even in this wildly privileged household. This uninspired situation has felt a little unnerving and has made me wonder whether I actually am a person who thrives on creativity, like I thought I was. It has also made me worry that my creativity is gone forever.

She’s not gone, though! This morning, I noticed that my creativity is resting very comfortably somewhere inside me, with lots of pillows, a white noise machine, black-out window shades and a lavender-scented eye mask. Her phone is in airplane mode. The temperature is perfect and she is out. She will wake up when she’s ready, and if I do anything to her or for her right now, whether it be gentle poking or offering tea, she will sleep harder and longer.

She’s deeply tired. So I’m going to leave her alone and keep up with the things that have kept me going during the pandemic, including: Spanish, surfing, meditation, and exercise.

I love my weekly Spanish class. My Spanish teacher (who is in Costa Rica) kicks-off each of our remote learning sessions with a “rompe hielo,” or an “ice breaker.” I adore these games. I spend half the time asking her how to say most of what I want to convey and the other half of the time messing up my verb endings. Maybe my over-the-top facial expressions and hand gestures make up for my shortcomings? Even if they don’t, being able to actually have a conversation in Spanish (even if it’s simple) is pretty thrilling.

And speaking of thrilling, I started surfing in 2020. It’s hard, sometimes terrifying, and I love it. Time feels like it stops when I (finally) catch and ride a wave. I’ve never felt anything like it, and even as a beginner, I can’t get enough. I also love the feeling of being in another world, so close to nature. Last summer, on one unusually sunny, warm morning, Wyatt and I were sitting among a bunch of other surfers our boards. As the sun sparkled on the water, a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins came to play. We all watched them jump and swim, our faces split into wide grins. Only when they had passed did anyone get back to the business of catching waves. Another memorable moment was two weeks ago when I watched a harbor seal hunt and gobble up a fish as the gulls descended on the water, scrounging for leftovers. There’s something to watch every day if I’m paying attention. Take peilcans, for example. I’d happily watch pelicans every day. I don’t understand how they can look both hilarious and majestic at the same time, but they do.

I’ve also continued my meditation practice. I was initiated into the Vedic Meditation tradition in September, but I’ve been doing some kind of sitting practice every day for a few years (my Insight Timer app says today is my 1,184th consecutive day of meditation). I’ve added Yoga Nidra as a resting practice because what I’ve tasted of yogic sleep is amazing.

Finally, I would be nowhere without exercise. I am simply a better person when I exercise. When I don’t, I am super uncomfortable in my body, and I get really grumpy and unpleasant. Now that the Betty is better on the leash, I can take her on my big walks up and down the hills. It’s quite a look, me rucking in my weight vest, with the treat pouch, and waist leash around my middle, but nobody cares. Betty certainly doesn’t.

Glimmer of Magic

String and Twig turns one year old this week!

I started this blog without any specific goal in mind, other than to start writing again, and I achieved that goal. Eventually, I settled into a predictable weekly rhythm of a Monday night publication with Tuesday morning trumpeting on social media to herald my latest post. Committing to posting weekly forced me to sharpen my observation skills and taught me to get out of my own way. Looking back, I see that without fail, I posted something each week, and you kept reading! You even shared with your friends. Thank you.

So far, String and Twig has been about transforming. Whether we're making something (cheese, anyone?), exploring our city, learning something new, or connecting with people, there's a touch of alchemy. A glimmer of magic every week is good.

Speaking of magic, last week, Wyatt and I had a MORNING. It was the kind of morning that no matter how hard I tried, everything took at least twice as long as usual, and even though I tried mightily to claw my way back to on-time-ish, I slipped further behind schedule. I hadn't prepared for any of our activities the night before, I couldn't find the items we needed, and Wyatt was equally unfocused. As the minutes ticked by and we still hadn't left for the fitness trail (Mountain Lake this time), I started getting annoyed. By the fourth time I had asked Wyatt to put on his shoes, my voice was brimming with irritation. Wyatt gave a dramatic sigh, and said, "Mom. Are you unhappy? You sound UNHAPPY. And I DON'T think THIS is very FUN." He was right. It wasn't fun. I gave up looking for the lost 90 minutes. All we really had to do was be on time to our swimming-knitting lesson later that afternoon.

Once I gave up, magic happened. We had a fun workout, got our grocery shopping done, visited with our favorite checker, and we took advantage of being out past lunchtime by grabbing lunch at Chicks and Love Pizza Patio, which is right outside Rainbow Grocery, at 1701 Folsom Street.

We love Chicks and Love. The food is delicious (with lots of gluten-sensitive options, and dairy-free options, too), and Chef Kellie Joe and her staff are so welcoming. After Wyatt and I had finished our breakfast-sandwiches-for-lunch, we stopped up to the order window to ask some 5-year old questions about how electricity gets into the little restaurant kitchen. Kellie gave us her best answers, and then she offered us a tour. Did we have time? Of course we did.

Chicks and Love's restaurant kitchen is 102 square feet. There is enough room for two very spatially aware people to work at the same time. I noticed there is not an inch of wasted space. Kellie told us that many of the appliances and fixtures are the smallest available, because that's all that would fit. The pizza oven is amazing—it is programmable, and whooshes heat around at something like 60 mph while a conveyor simultaneously moves the food. Kellie had two circulators going to cook impeccable sous vide eggs, and an impressive array of ingredients in their mise en place.

The tour only solidified our admiration for Kellie and her restaurant.

If you're in the East Bay, you can find Chicks and Love on the weekend at the Walnut Creek farmer's market. During the week, if you're in San Francisco, it's worth stopping by for breakfast, lunch, or to pick up something to bake at home later.

After our tour, we made it home in plenty of time to prepare for swimming and knitting. And while it will take probably take more than just this experience to really teach me that sometimes, magic requires letting go, this particular lesson was a good one, reinforced with a tasty reward.

Let Your Curiosity Transform You

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I dedicated the month of February to drafting my first ever knitting patterns. Now that I'm on the other side of my first draft, I can say that the pattern writing and accompanying hand-cramping deadline-knitting were challenging. The whole affair actually reminded me a little bit of my first legal writing assignments. Once again, I was struggling to write a piece that made sense, on a deadline, while employing unfamiliar citation formats. I had forgotten how difficult it is to drop into an industry, grab an opinionated reader's attention, show them an irresistible point-of-view, and then take them through a logical process, step-by-step, using concise and perfectly clear directions. It's really hard. I stayed up way too late every night, cut corners on pretty much every other aspect of my life, and I began seriously to doubt myself. (Can you spot the hard-boiled perfectionist who has committed herself to trying something new?)

Halfway through writing my second pattern, it dawned on me that I had probably taken on too much. I recalled the time in high school French class when we were assigned to write a journal entry with the story of our day. I attempted to write the actual story of my real day, with all the things I had done, along with my thoughts and feelings. You know, like an actual journal entry. I used my English-French dictionary for so many words, and I thought I had done a remarkable and insightful job on the assignment. But I hadn't. My teacher returned the assignment to me full of red ink corrections, genuinely quizzical question marks, and a gentle suggestion that next time, I keep things simple and report what time I woke up, what I ate, and when I went to bed.

If I had actually absorbed that lesson from Madame (whose last name I have now forgotten), I would have first attempted to design an interminably boring scarf or a detestably predictable shawl (that I could neither pin, tie, nor drape without looking absolutely ridiculous). But I didn't. Apparently, I remain as over-confident as ever in certain of my abilities. On March 1, I gave my kind, generous, and ridiculously capable technical editor my patterns. I await her proverbial red ink and promised constructive criticism. Part of me wants the patterns to be perfect, and most of me knows that under the veneer of my fine organizational structure and carefully chosen font, they are a hot mess. Whatever. I cannot wait to learn from my next draft.

Let your curiosity transform you, I say! The magical looking photo collage at the top of this post is my first visual representation of the spirit behind String & Twig (you can see additional related photos, as well as the sources of the photos I selected, on my Pinterest board). It dawned on me just this past week that this process of learning and growing is what my blog is all about. My posts are about how we indulge our curiosity by trying new things, seeing what works, and what doesn't. And every time we try something, there's some kind of transformation, like milk into cheese, seeds into plants, or me into whatever comes next (unwanted ecologies and all). We're all changing in big or small ways every day, regardless of whether we want to or not. Why not evolve in ways that satisfy our intellectual curiosity?

And at the same time, how about working to cultivate curiosity in the more ho-hum aspects of life, like cooking for example? On a very basic level, if we're doing our best, we're transforming ingredients into a meal (or more) every day. And there is so much eating that happens every day. Three meals! Every day. It's hard to get or stay curious about cooking, especially, as I noticed this past month, when you have some shiny, new, more interesting thing going on. I found myself becoming keenly interested in staying out of the kitchen. But because fasting wasn't an option, I focused on decent food I could assemble and cook quickly, as well as food I could basically ignore once I had applied a heat source.

My solution to dinner in a pinch became Weirdly Addictive Tortilla Pizza. We have eaten it every Saturday evening since I learned about it. We use the fancier handmade corn tortillas, and they have been fabulous as pizza "crusts." Another ridiculously easy and shockingly popular dinner solution at our house is a Baked Potato Bar, and it now also appears almost weekly. Confession: I didn't know how to make a good, oven-baked potato until recently. But now I use this very easy recipe and the potatoes turn out beautifully every time. Top your crunchy, fluffy, perfect potatoes with sautéed leeks, butter or olive oil, sour cream, bacon, herbs, whatever other odd ends of previous dinners you have in your refrigerator, salt and pepper, and enjoy. Aside from scrambled eggs and kimchi atop rice from my 1990s rice cooker (which I also hauled out this month), the Baked Potato Bar is the most straightforward weeknight dinner I have ever encountered. Even better, everyone is always excited about it.

If you do have some extra time or oomph for the kitchen, though, I have to point out that blood orange season is coming to a close. I've been grabbing them while I can. If you have eaten more than your share and are looking for a new preparation (but aren't up for spending the small fortune required to make a batch of blood orange sorbet), try a blood orange curd sundae or this lovely riff on the Dominican Morir Soñado.

We made the blood orange curd for dessert with homemade vanilla ice cream and whipped cream when my cousin, my favorite author of books about pirates and teacher of fourth and fifth graders in Atlanta, visited a few weeks ago.

As for the Morir Soñados, Marc, Wyatt and I enjoyed our beautiful pink drinks in martini glasses during one recent kid-friendly Saturday evening cocktail hour. See the tortilla pizza? I wasn't kidding. Every Saturday. Make some yourself and be sure to be messy enough with the cheese at the edge so that you get some of those crunchy bits, too.