Vida Vegan Con: The Joy Begins

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Hannah

When this post goes live, I’ll be on my way to Portland for Vida Vegan Con. My heart is so full of whirling excitement right now that I almost can’t breathe.

As I wrote on Twitter the other day:

I keep forgetting that VVC is about presentations/learning. My mind is all: ZOMG EXTENDED SLEEPOVER PARTY WITH SUMMA MAH BEST FRIENDS!!

I can’t wait to hug my Lisa, Gena, Amber, Hannah, Nicole and Ricki again. I’m thrilling for already-booked-fancy-dinners and spontaneous-dessert-expeditions and epic-vegan-conference-breakfasts. I’ve cautioned my roomie Angela to be prepared for (and thereby not scared by) my Medusa-hair in the mornings, and though Lisa has warned me to come up with an escape plan or else she’s taking me back to Toronto next week, she doesn’t know that I equally plan to kidnap her for my June U.S. travels.

Oh yes, my June travels! People, I’m pretty much having an extended slumber party with different friends across the U.S. all throughout June, and… pinch me. Just pinch me. What is this life? How did I get to be so lucky?

I’m so scared of using up my happiness quota. (I’m also nervous that the curse of my birthday will strike on Sunday.)

But I’m not going to let defensive fear prevent me from running towards these upcoming and unknown adventures with giddiness in my heart and dancing in my toes. After all, I’ve been knocked down before. If the universe sends me spiraling I shall simply, in the Shakespearean (ahem) words of Chumbawumba, get up again.

That’s enough thought-meandering from me. My excitement and nervousness and giddiness are rendering me incapable of staying on track, and if I keep typing much longer we’ll end up talking compass donkey backwards shimmer Lindy Hop eyebrow possum.

Plus, I’ve got some serious work to do before I leave tomorrow. All the So Delicious Mint Chip Coconut Milk Ice Cream, dark chocolate my brother sent me for my birthday, blueberry muffins, red velvet apricots, roasted seaweed snacks, Trader Joe’s sausageless sausage, and two different types of pie that won’t fit in my suitcase aren’t going to eat themselves.

Hannah out.

Change, and Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus II: XII

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Hannah

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’m looking down the barrel of more transition and change right now, more unknowns, more mists cloaking the future.

Hopes and dreams and longings and anxiety and wishes are all swirling around inside me. While parts of my core wish everything could stay exactly. as. it. is. right. now, when all is magic and smiles and growth and possibilities and flutterings and giggles, I also know that I can’t reach grander and greater and sweeter things unless I keep walking forward into the mist. Ups and downs, successes and failures, hugs and heartbreaks, triumphs and collapses. It’s all there, waiting, ahead.

I choose to believe that it will be wonderful, all of it, over and over again, no matter where I go, or stay, or come from, or return back to, or find myself.

Immediately after typing the above words, I found a poem by the incredible Rainer Maria Rilke that perfectly embodies the concept of not only embracing change, but running towards it with courage.

Change can be sweet.

Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII

By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

News Update: Concussion Fun, Work Joy, and Sneak Peeks

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Hannah

Sneak peek #1!

Thank you all for your lovely (and horrified) comments following my post about The Great Big Valentine’s Day Concussion of 2013.

On the one hand, I’m doing better.

On the other hand, I severely underestimated how long it takes to fully recover from a concussion.

Particularly when you add the fact that, four days after the first fall, faint, and memory lapse, I kind of maybe slightly let’s-not-dwell-on-this-for-too-long-eh? fell down part of the stairs again and, um, kind of maybe let’s-not-dwell-on-this-for-too-long-eh? fainted again. But this time, the fainting was purely the result of my absolute terror and frustration at myself, and one of my housemates was there to catch me so that I didn’t smack my head again.

It’s quite funny, really, if you think about it.

Sneak peek #2!

All is well, but I do need to keep making myself take it easy. Except for, you know, going to work, because I love it there and wild concussion horses couldn’t keep me away.

If you’d like to see a bit of what I’ve been up to at work this past week (when I haven’t been resting wrapped up in blankets like a sad baby llama on the couch, that is), then feel free to take a gander at the following:

9 creative indoor forts - Words cannot express the glee I felt while creating and writing this gallery of nine different indoor forts. Best. Job. Ever.

9 gluten-free (but not taste-free) desserts - A whole gallery of gluten-free (and also nut-free, dairy-free, and vegan) desserts from this very blog! The joy! The joy!

Will we ever stop needing our parents to tell us everything’s OK? – My very first piece for the Today’s Parent On Our Minds blog. Best. Job. Ever. Still.

Sneak peak #3!

Until next time, magical ones!

An Interlude of Departure, Memory, and Hope

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Hannah

By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to Canada. Or, more likely, I’ll already be in Canada. After all, you surely have better things to do than wait by your computer for my next post to rattle down upon you like candy from a broken piñata.

I feel a bit like a broken piñata myself right now. Well, not broken exactly; it’s more like there are dozens of tiny invisible rips, little weaknesses felt only by me, that have suddenly emerged on the inside of my multicoloured-shiny-gaudy-layered-stickitdown-lacquered papier-mâché lining.

I don’t want to leave. Of course, I’m thrilling with anticipation for Canada, but at the same time I don’t want to leave this glorious America-land where my heart and soul and mind have been soaring, swirling, flying in delight and happiness.

I close my eyes, and I see the Milky Way, I see darkness gilded by shooting stars from my place on an air mattress up in the mountains of Utah, and I laugh.

I close my eyes, and I can’t breathe for thinking of the kindred spirits, the soulsisters, the otherme/wetogether women with whom I’ve met and been hosted by after years of emails and messages, emails and messages that we’ve learned only scratched the surface of the silver-diamond bonds we share.

I close my eyes, and I catch the vanilla perfume of a Ponderosa Pine, I hear a lizard pause in its rustling dash across the sand, and I wonder how it is that I came to be here, talking so openly as I quicken my steps to catch up with my guide.

I close my eyes, and I’m finishing a pint of coconut milk mint chocolate chip ice cream with a spoon as I think of those I wish I could bring back, if even for a day, a week, a year, a lifetime.

I close my eyes, and the sting of smoke, the crashing heat of the sun on my neck, the scent of cities and deserts and mountains and cookies and rain and laughter and solitude and pressing/crowding bodies and music and the taste of bitter coffee on my lips,

it’s dazzling and it’s mine and it’s fragments and it’s forever

and maybe, just maybe,

these next steps into Canada

will also shimmer, dazzling fragments forever mine.

Eleven Questions and a Nudie

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Hannah

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who’s tagged me for blog awards and memes over the past two years; I truly appreciate the kindness. I must admit, though, I’m pretty terrible at completing the tasks involved in being tagged. That said, when the hilarious, wonderful, and brilliant writer Kath wrote eleven unique questions for me to answer, I somehow found myself type-typing away. Here goes (with random photos to keep things lively)!

Blurry Food Blogger in action!

1. When and why did you start blogging?

I started blogging because my mother told me to. Mum has an amazing ability to know exactly what I should do to make my life jazzier. Except, of course, when she says: “Hannah, during the time you’re house-sitting for us next week, you should clean out your childhood bedroom”. That’s not helpful advice at all. The poor confused dear.

The other reason I started blogging was that I went overseas for four months, and the blog proved to my friends and family that I was alive. This was particularly useful when I did things like accept offers from strange men to join them in hotel rooms.

2. What is your middle name and why did your parents select it?

Gwendoline; it’s been passed down through my mum’s family for generations.

Decaf Soy Cappuccino at Sydney Airport. Oh the froth. All the froth.

3. Toilet paper folder or scruncher?

I don’t understand the premise of this question. I am A Lady, and ergo don’t have to use the toilet. Did Lizzie Bennet ever go to the bathroom? I think not! Exactly. I win.

4. What do you do at home when everyone else is out?

The usual. Dance frenetically to music, do cartwheels in the living room, imagine future conversations with people in my head whilst pulling all the relevant facial expressions, eat pickled onions straight from the jar with my favourite teaspoon, and pride myself on learning tricky song lyrics by heart (Sondheim, I’m looking at you).

This photo is to prove to my parents that I do occasionally tidy up my room so that it’s not an obstacle course of scattered cookbooks, recipe print outs, and shoes.

5. You’ve been given five hundred bucks to spend on nothing useful and just yourself. What do you do with the cash?

An intense massage session; the kind where the pain almost makes you cry but it’s utterly worth it. A pair of heels covered in sequins, so that I can sparkle with every step. A toilet-trained puppy to cuddle for a day. (But not a golden retriever, because, well, really.)

My work colleagues gave me two individual frosted birthday banana cakes, hurrah!

6. It’s finally come true. One of your ‘five celebrities you’re allowed to sleep with’ has walked into your kitchen and is up for it. Who is it?

The entire main cast of The West Wing (not all at once, mind you).

This is the only kind of nudie I’m allowing in my life at present.

7. Name one famous person you think ‘has their shit together’. Explain why.

Amy Poehler, because I want Leslie Knope to be real.

8. What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

I get out of bed in the morning because even on the days where I feel broken, there are always a myriad small moments that set my soul on fire and my heart to dancing.

Green Tea Frozen Yoghurt is also a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.

9. Who would you like to smack in the face, publicly disprove all of their stupid opinions and freeze their bank accounts?

I just wrote a long ranting paragraph about the current state of Australian politics (and politicians), but deleted it on account of its not being in the spirit of jazziness and sparkles.

10. Low slung jeans on boys – how do we eradicate this disease?

In truth, I’m more concerned with skinny jeans these days. And leggings-as-pants. And the return of rat’s tail haircuts. Won’t anyone save us from the rat’s tails?

Double rainbow, just because.

Question Time For You: Answer one (or more) of the above questions?

Wayfaring Chocolate

adventures in chocolate, travel, cooking, and living

Tag Archives: musings