TiVo Detox

My hairdresser once told me a story of him watching television on the couch with his boyfriend and he got annoyed when his man stopped flipping through channels at Oxygen’s “Bad Girls Club.” He responded with something like, “You wouldn’t let these women into our house if they knocked on our door, so why are you letting these women into our house?” Touché.

It’s been said that what you do in the privacy of your own home—when no one is looking and you cannot be found out—that’s the guts of who you are.

I’ve called watching totally dumb television my guilty pleasure. And I have something to confess: I’ve watched marathons of this substance-less crap. Hours of grown women arguing about $50,000 sets of veneers and calling themselves “classy” to valley-girl sounding stylists acting as if they have the cure for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and talentless hacks profiting from a sham marriage sponsored by Living Social. Bleh.

I’m now comparing this television drivel to fast food. The equivalent notion of being fully aware that you’re eating garbage, yet continuing to gorge, french fry after french fry. No more. I’ve purged my TiVo. I’m not buying into it any more. Not consuming it. I’m not saying it’s going to be replaced with documentaries on bird migration flight patterns on PBS or anything, but I might curl up with a good book (is anyone else STRUGGLING with Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs?), my addictive “The Wire” discs from Netflix and call it a day.

Up next in the proverbial tasteless pop-culture detox? My RSS reader loaded with salacious celebrity gossip, which has become beyond dull and uninspiring. Though, it’ll be tough to part with surisburnbook.tumblr.com.

It’s interesting that once you start the cleaning out process how much of it filters into other areas you might want to give an ol’ scrub to.

Turkey Tension 4.0

Can you believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow? I don’t know about you, but I sort of feel like I could just as easily be back in March at St. Patrick’s Day–this year’s been such a blur, though the vibrant-colored Atlanta trees and stocked shelves of canned pumpkin tell me otherwise.

Which means it’s time for the annual turkey tension playlist and as we near the close of 2011, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, so making the cut is a mix of young and old. #grateful

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Smiling’s My Favorite

So, I was supposed to read this title for book club in October. Last month, I read the book (Bossypants), but couldn’t make the meet up. This month, I can make the discussion, but didn’t so much as read one page, go figure.

But, the book selection (and interesting conversation surrounding it) got me thinking about those moments of respite when it’s hectic, those sweet spots along the way. I’ve had several lately, here are the things giving me particular joy—my own happiness project for the week.

I’m officially stepping outside my comfort zone. That’s right, after countless InStyle magazine articles about classic prints and raves about the closet staple up there with a LBD, I purchased an animal print top. And wore it. Plus, I recently went to a hip-hop festival for three days. I don’t even recognize myself.

We’re approaching the time when it’s Facebook wall overload of cute kids and animals in costume, and quite frankly, I find nothing funnier. I stumbled across this gem image of my nephew’s first Halloween. He’s the hot dog with mustard. I’m certain today my sister couldn’t bribe him with anything to sit still long enough to sausage him into this thing (he looks so angry), but it’s nice to remember when she could. Also, the smile on my niece’s face is so precious; she already looks hopped up on candy like she’s thisclose to losing it.

Surprise! We surprised my mother-in-law for her 70th birthday and my brother-in-law for his 40th. Each of them thought they were surprising the other and well, it was so fun to see the reaction and have a somewhat impromptu (scratch that, when there are approximately 40 emails to coordinate, it’s not spontaneous) trip to Cincinnati. And there’s just something about the Midwest in the fall that I’ll never tire of, especially when driving through the Smoky Mountains.

Not to get a Buddha, but I’m feeling very Zen right now with work. After a rough patch over the summer, I do feel like the act of closing one door is opening tremendous new ones. I’m rounding out my year with two writing projects I’m particularly proud of, one of which includes an article to be published March 2012 in a national magazine.

I know it’s a little happiness moment, the teeniest around, but here it is, my counter to all the folks going ape doo-doo about pumpkin spice lattes back at Starbucks; I just discovered hazelnut half and half at Whole Foods and if this doesn’t sum up the season in a mug, I don’t know what does. It gives me a little bounce in my step while walking the dog in the morning since I basically go bonkers for anything involving hazelnut.

Where does your happiness live this week?

Reality TV Fever Pitch

In the wake of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” cast member Taylor Armstrong’s estranged husband Russell’s suicide last month, I’ve been thinking a lot about reality TV. In particular, the Bravo network’s programming schedule and not just the season premiere of the series that aired on Monday night that included a thrown together opening segment semi-addressing the elephant in the room.

Reality TV had me back when I was a sophomore in high school with “The Real World” as a sociology experiment about what would happen when Julie from Alabama mixed with openly gay housemate Norman and insanely hot (but not so bright) Eric. I’ve always been fascinated with questions in life like this. Who people actually become in situations outside their comfort level in their everyday world. But, we are now at a point where what we watch on television in 2011 seems beyond a voyeuristic notion of watching what people generally do behind closed doors playing out in front of a camera.

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Sunshine Playlist

It’s hot in Atlanta. Feels-like-August-although-it’s only-June hot (and humid). But, this is always the time of year I want to listen to some good music, drink in hand, playing with the dog, outside. Or it’s the time we load up the car and head to the beach. Either way, you need a good playlist—here’s mine.

The Sound of Sunshine by Michael Franti & Spearhead (My yoga instructor plays this in class and there’s something fantastic and powerful about doing a bird of paradise pose against a reggae beat).

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Summer Reads

We aren’t headed to the beach until July, but already I’ve got my warm weather literary list. I’d like to alternate between classic (Gatsby … so excited for this movie remake in 2012!) something that requires a bit more work (Jacob de Zoet), then countered with light (Fey, Handler, and Childress, respectively), a dose of travel envy (The Paris Wife), followed by a page-turner that brings out the feeling of the season (Midnight’s descriptions of a hot, sticky summer in Savannah do the trick), and finally end with a book I should’ve read in college, but skimmed (Papa Hemingway).

Yoga Jumps the Shark

I took my first yoga class in June 2000 at the corporate gym inside CNN Center, just after I moved to Atlanta. Yoga seemed like a cosmopolitan sort of thing to do and very foreign to me, but at first I didn’t quite get what the fuss was about. It was just so-so and even though I didn’t feel terribly challenged, for some reason, I stuck with it. About eight months later, I signed up for a special lunchtime class on Valentine’s Day dealing with heart chakras. I was single, and that sounded like just the thing to avoiding downing a bottle of wine later that night solo while wearing a chocolate mustache, candy wrappers piled around me, not that I cared too much about occasions like that in the first place, but it could happen. At any rate, I knew my heart needed to be taken care of, and I couldn’t think of a more fitting place for it.

The best I can describe it is that I had some sort of spiritual experience during the class. I started to understand what yoga was about and why people are such devotees. Then, two weeks later, my dad died. I channeled my healing into yoga, and that is when I truly became hooked. Throughout the poses I moved through my grief—depression in the rabbit, anger in the breath of fire, denial in downward dog, bargaining during bird of paradise, and acceptance in eagle. Each day was different in what I felt and how I moved, but yoga, to be blunt, saved my life. It gave me the life I never thought I could have, one that strives for balance both on and off the mat.

So imagine my surprise when my private Prozac, my own special pill, becomes dare I say it, trendy. I’ve seen a rise in articles on the therapeutic theory—with everything from The New York Times running a great piece in February on fertility and the link with yoga as a stress reliever (you can read it here) to  Town & Country last year publishing an article titled “Prescription Yoga” (What? I read it while I was at the eye doctor.) about yoga as the cure all for whatever ails you. Yoga for anxiety, yoga for anger, yoga for anorexia (seriously), yoga for depression–why can’t it just be what it is? I realized more than a decade before Town & Country told me so that yoga is in fact my prescription; I need it like I need other things in my life to feel whole, and I can certainly tell when I haven’t had enough (my family will also vouch for that). But it’s frustrating to see this ancient practice broken down in a way that strips it of its original meaning. Are we so far gone in our fitness and quick-fix pill state to take something so basic, pure, and wonderful and turn it into a dumbed-down version that’s hardly recognizable? It just worries me that once the buzz factor of the practice dies down and the pendulum stops swinging which part of yoga will remain, the old or the new?

Dragons, Fire, and Hornets

I started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last fall. I was traveling a ton and read a lot then and honestly needed an escape. It came in the form of Lisbeth Salander, the brutally flawed protagonist in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling series. Slow out of the gate (the first 100 pages or so I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about) but stick with it, it’s worth it, and you’ll be clamoring for the next. I’m not alone, take a look around the terminal on your next flight and I’d bet at least a few people are buried in any one of his three books.

The writing itself, well it isn’t anything made of Jane Austen or even Emily Giffin prose. Not to be all hoity-toity about it, but I find it a bit basic (it could be the English translation), but no one can question Larsson’s ability to develop a thick and page-turning plot.

This isn’t a new story, but what I find even more fascinating than the series is the story behind the writer. Great article in The Times on it here. In short, Larsson died of a heart attack while climbing seven flights of stairs to his office before the books would become wildly successful (actually all three published posthumously). Side note: it’s also incredibly interesting that he apparently insisted on completing all three drafts before attempting to get published. His death occurred within months of the manuscripts being delivered to the publisher. Fascinating, conspiracy theory, you-can’t-make-this-up stuff. It gets deeper, you see, Larson was a Swedish political journalist who received threats often from neo-Nazi’s and far-right extremists because of his work, and he lived his life relatively in hiding. Allegedly not wanting to put her at risk, he never married his partner of more than three decades, architect Eva Gabrielsson.

Gabrielsson supposedly hasn’t received a dime off her late spouse’s estate since common law marriage is not recognized in Sweden. The drama ensues when an allegedly estranged brother and father claimed his computer, and to this day they are fighting over the intellectual property on it (supposedly his fourth book in the series). The computer, however, was left to his partner, but the royalties to his family since a will was never drawn up. Phew, and I thought my family had issues. But, seriously, these books are amazing. The backstory, just as much.

Ho-Ho Holiday Films

This time of year my husband goes Clark Griswold crazy for about five weeks. From roughly Thanksgiving to the first of January-ish the exterior of our house looks like it’s on fire, and the interior has more greenery than a vegetarian’s dinner plate. In other words, decorating for Christmas is on like Donkey Kong. Normally this fuss stresses me out, but through the years we’ve managed to compromise a bit—he’ll curb the excitement and I’ll wean myself from my freak out level regarding the Santa and snowflake knickknacks taking over every room.

One thing I do enjoy this time of year is holiday films. There is something about cozying up on the couch and watching movies with someone else’s dysfunction. Here’s my list of holiday movies that always make the rounds. Side note–refer back to my Turkey Tension Playlist circa 2008 if you think watching “Love Actually” in front of the in-laws is a good idea.

 

Turkey Tension Playlist III

It’s time for the annual Thanksgiving playlist that’s often served with sides of tension and drama. This year, I’m bucking tradition and pairing it only with gratefulness–that’s the point of Thanksgiving, yes? I’m grateful for the hardest year I’ve had in about a decade, yet the most rewarding, by far.

The biggies–my mom’s through chemo and a stem cell transplant; my husband is happily employed. Last fall, I felt like I had a brick tied to my ankles and I was drowning in a gigantic ocean, scared of the unknown horizon ahead. I’m thankful for the support of dear friends and family who stood by us through the poorer and sickness parts. Some years aren’t exactly bottles of bubbly-worthy, but here’s a toast to the days that actually are. These tunes remind me of that and I’m publishing with ample time to get the iPod all loaded with turkey dinner party mood music.

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