eunice ann

tales of a girl trying to make sense of it all.

beauty isn’t skin deep.

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Growing up, I can’t say that I ever felt beautiful. I was tall and scrawny with big, frizzy hair and a gap in my front teeth wider than the Grand Canyon. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from the girls at church, so they were often out of style and far too short for my gangling limbs (when capris came back in, I cringed, recalling all of the jokes about waiting for a flood that were banal in my childhood), or too big for my tiny waist—I actually went from ages 10-14 without a back belt loop.

My parents weren’t wealthy. We always had what we needed; anything more was a treat. I was never what one would consider “stylish,” since my clothes had generally been worn by three other girls before me. I recall longing for a Hypercolor t-shirt in seventh grade—I yearned for one of those shirts more than I did for my crush to notice me. My mom even humored me one day and took me to the mall, only to loudly proclaim how ridiculous it was that a t-shirt would cost $50. It was a repeat of the year prior, when I begged for a pair of LA Gear high tops, to no avail. No matter how I longed for just one token of socially acceptable fashion, it just wasn’t happening on my parent’s budget.

As the eldest child of a mixed-race couple at a time when such a thing was seemingly foreign to a vast part of society, it took a while for me to realize that it wasn’t my clothes that made me different, it was the fabric of my ancestry. Growing up not white enough to be white, but not black enough to be black, I wasn’t ever sure where I fit in. Add to that enough Portuguese blood that a regular wax is necessary to keep me from looking like a Mexican boy. By sixteen, it seemed that I was in the midst of a never-ending awkward phase.

In elementary school, I used to get questions from classmates that were so unbelievably ridiculous to me.

“Is that your real dad?” (Yes.)

“What are you, anyway?” (Um, American?)

As I got older, the questions were more random and bizarre.

“Do you know how to make chitlins?” (I didn’t even know at the time what that was.)

“Is it true that you can’t wash your hair?” (Um, why not?)

“Is that your boyfriend?” (No, that’s my dad. Gross)

“What nationality are you?” (American.) “No, I mean, where did you come from?” (Arizona.)

Struggling to identify with a race or culture left me with just as obscure a perspective on beauty. I poured over the pages of my teen magazines that showed my teen idols (Tiffani Amber Theissen, Candace Cameron, and Paula Abdul, to name a few) and their beauty routines and style choices and truly believed that those were the things that I needed to feel beautiful.

I used to lament to my mom as a teenager that none of the boys at school liked me because I was nerdy and wore unfashionable clothes and didn’t hang with the popular kids. She would tell me that they were just intimidated by my unbelievable beauty. I believed she was full of shit.

What I didn’t realize then is that the saying “beauty is skin deep,” isn’t actually true. Sure, my mom saw my olive complexion (“that so many women pay tons of money to have”), and my crooked smile, and even saw beauty in my straggly hair. But she also saw an incredibly gifted young lady with a big heart, who was willing to help someone out whenever the opportunity arose. She saw that no matter how many bigoted questions I got, I answered them honestly, but still made friends with anyone and everyone. I used to believe that she saw all that because she was my mom, but as I have gotten older, I have learned that beauty radiates from the inside out. I still have frizzy hair (when I don’t flat iron it). I still have a crooked smile. I almost never wear makeup. And I’m cool with that.

My most beautiful friends today don’t fit the picture-perfect standard of beauty. Some are carrying extra weight in all the wrong places. Some are tall and gangly. Some fight physical disabilities. It’s easy to see past all that because they have gorgeous hearts and souls and are out making this world a better place. That is a beautiful thing.

This post is part of the Beauty of a Woman BlogFest VI! To read more entries, and potentially win a fun prize, visit the fest page on August’s McLaughlin’s site between today and 11pm PST March 11th.

inclinations.

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Somewhere in the middle, false summit in sight.

The Manitou Incline has been on my Colorado bucket list for several years, after a few of my friends tackled it as part of a cross fit workout they were doing. I remember the first time I heard about it—a trail, less than a mile long, but with a 2,000 foot elevation gain—my response was, “That sounds absolutely insane. I wanna do it.”

And so, for whatever reason, seeing a friend post Instagram photos on Saturday evening triggered a reaction in me that told Alissa, “we are doing this tomorrow.”

And we did.

But even getting to accomplish that goal wasn’t so easy. What my spontaneous self didn’t realize was that the Pikes Peak Summit Marathon was that day and access to the incline was temporarily cut off (on a side note, while I do have a goal to summit a 14’er, I do not have any desire to literally run to the top and back down. Why anyone else would is beyond me). I also didn’t realize that was the same day that the incline would be closed for repairs for 4 months.

Not to be deterred, Alissa and I hung out in Manitou Springs for a few hours before heading back to the trailhead. I may or may not have completely lied to the “gatekeeper,” who still wasn’t letting anyone through to hike the incline, even after the designated period of time that we were told we had to wait.

Once we got on the trail, I took a look up the steep climb ahead. Naturally, it seemed easy enough, but I figured that with all the stories I’ve heard, the one about appearances being deceptive was likely true. I don’t think we made it but 40 or 50 steps before Alissa decided that we should give up and go back down. I baited her with the promise of ice cream and we kept going. We were passed at regular intervals by more ambitious climbers, we relayed back and forth with another couple who was taking their time like we were, and we stopped regularly to look back and enjoy the views. At one point, we started setting short 5-10 step goals to focus on the ascent, and I think that was what got us to the end. It was a grueling climb, and I was impressed that we both managed to summit without injury.

As we hiked back down (the much easier Barr Trail) and were passed by latent marathoners, I tried to talk to Alissa about the metaphor for life that the incline represented:

At the summit of the incline, looking down on Manitou Springs

We’ve all had challenges laid before us, without the end necessarily in sight. We knew it was out there, but even when we thought we were close, we realized we’d hit a false summit and still had an even more grueling path ahead of us. But sometimes, you just have to focus on what’s right in front of you and keep moving forward. Eventually, you’ll look back to see how far you’ve come and be motivated to keep going. And when you reach the top, the feeling of accomplishment is overwhelming.

Or you could always get what Alissa did out of it — “I don’t feel any different at all.”

lessons from the running trail.

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Tonight, after filming my intro video for The Break Changer Summer Reset, I was inspired to hit the trail for an evening run. Okay, the idea was more along the lines of a quick jog, but I’ve been trying to be more active and stop making excuses, so I put on my (super old and probably horrible for me) running shoes and headed out to the trail behind my house. 

Instead of a refreshing jog through the tree-lined hidden oasis in the city, I had a few little epiphanies that hit me. 

  1. 5 miles is a long freaking way on foot. Even when you cut it in half and you realize you’re two and a half miles from home, it can either be depressing or inspiring when you realize that you’re two and a half miles from home. 
  2. You can’t take 367 days off from running and expect to pick up where you left off. I think this lesson speaks for itself, but let’s just say that if they gave out merits for personal worst—#nailedit
  3. Don’t judge yourself by the guy keeping pace with someone on a bike. At least you’re going faster than the pregnant lady who looks like she’s going to pop any second. 
  4. Letting Spotify play music to your pace is the coolest thing ever. Until you realize that most of the music you’re hearing are slow jams and you can’t seem to pick up the pace enough to inspire some JT to save your life. 

All in all, it was a moderately nice break from my evening habit, but I have a feeling I’m going to be hurting tomorrow. 

in a fog.

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downloadIt’s been a rough week.

For those of you that don’t know, my dad struggles with Severe Mental Illness (SMI). The exact diagnosis still seems to be debatable at this point, but his SMI has been debilitating for the past 20 years and it destroyed our family on levels I never thought possible.

But something amazing also happened this week—for the first time ever, my dad asked for help. Actually, he begged for it. I just happened to be fortunate enough to have had a vacation scheduled for this week and the recent purchase of a car so I could head to Tucson to be here with him. What I didn’t expect was that it would result in him checking himself into an inpatient program for the next several days. As much as I know this is the best thing for him right now, it was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

And so I’m struggling.

Struggling with what this means for my dad, who has struggled through an 8 month incarceration and a handful of violent felonies that are going to follow him around for the remainder of his life.

Struggling with the realization that, at almost 60 years old, my dad has never lived on his own. And he doesn’t know how to do that. And I don’t quite know how to help him.

Struggling with the fact that I’m the only family member of his left that is really willing to support him through this. Everyone else has abandoned him because it’s too hard.

Struggling with the fear that this could be me in 20 years if I don’t continue to be treated for my own depression.

I know that struggle breeds strength, but right now, I feel broken and hopeless and unsure of what the future holds. I’m grateful for my tribe, who is providing me the strength I cannot muster on my own right now.

easily distracted.

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not all who wander are lostIt’s a good thing that they don’t have protective services for blogs. It’s almost unbelievable that I’ve gone almost three months without a new post. Although not surprising. I’ve been busy. Like, majorly super busy with life’s constant surprises.

Back when I kicked this blog back into gear, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted my life to look like both 1 year and 5 years into the future. Let’s just say that it looked something like Eat, Pray, Love with a junior sidekick. Don’t get me wrong. I still very much want to travel the world with Alissa. In fact, part of my distraction has been my travels of the past couple of months, some for fun and some for work. And I still intend on traveling as much as possible, although I very sadly had to cancel the dream vacation that I would be leaving on next week for lack of funds thanks to adult responsibilities (damn you, Uncle Sam!).

But something I learned while participating in The Break Changer this spring is that sometimes despite our well-laid plans, we get opportunities that we just can’t say no to. The founder of The Break Changer, Brit Stueven, has perhaps had as many AHAmazing moments as the rest of us as we struggle to find time for the things that matter, and then get sidelined with amazeballs surprises that we just make work because we want to. To that end, I’ve been chasing some dreams the past little bit and that’s kept me too tired to write. Although I want to make more time for writing and fewer excuses. Anyway. Onward.

I submitted an application to speak at TEDx Mile High this summer. I got declined. I knew I would, because I half-assed my application and very poorly represented my idea (which I still think is great, it just needs a little love). But that rejection was so freeing to me. It said to me, “not right now.” It’s still a goal of mine to accomplish, but not before I give my ideas some more time to percolate and really give them the attention they deserve.

I was also asked by the IBM Marketing Cloud product team to submit an abstract to speak at their annual conference again this year. To be honest, I really didn’t want to speak this year, simply because I didn’t want the pressure of having to come up with an idea and put the presentation together. But my darling co-presenter from last year more or less twisted my arm, and I submitted. I was chosen to speak on one of my favorite topics, Marketing Automation, and was paired with a woman who not only helped craft one of the most fun and entertaining presentations on Marketing Automation (yes, I have bias), she has become a friend of mine. Just as last year, the experience of speaking became less about the content and more about forging authentic relationships with my fellow human beings. I’ll write more about this another day, but I was so glad I made the time for this opportunity.

And when I returned from sunny Tampa, I was greeted with my dream opportunity: a chance to join my company’s strategic marketing team.

Most of you don’t know that when I arbitrarily decided (with my now ex-husband) to move to Seattle in the summer of 2000, I had this idea that one day, I would be this bad ass marketing maven, in an expensive suit, killer heels and carrying my black leather briefcase with my initials branded into the side, walking around downtown shouting things into my cell phone like, “I need that copy by 3 p.m.!” and “this campaign hinges on those art proofs coming back this afternoon!” A few years later, I proudly watched “The Apprentice,” and put together my own plans to execute their various marketing tasks, all of which I thought were better than the interns (humility has never been a strong suit of mine).

Now, mind you, while all this dreaming was happening, I was doing literally nothing to move myself into the marketing world. Apparently, my 21 year old self also thought that people plucked you off the street and said, “now you look like our next CMO! Come on in. We have a job for you.” It took me over 10 years to migrate in the general direction of this dream, so when I was presented this opportunity, all my “I will nevers…” quickly slipped out the window. (Except the, “I will never move to Iowa.” Despite the fact that both of our core offices are located there, that was my only deal breaker. I really need mountains in my life on a regular basis.). My 21 year old self is really proud of 37 year old me.

I’m excited for this next adventure and curious to see how it continues to enable me to “use my marketing powers for good and not evil,” as I like to say.

How about you? Have you ever abandoned one dream to chase another?

basil-arugula pesto.

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IMG_3043.JPG Last year, I started participating in the Whole Life Challenge, mostly to support a friend build a team, but also thinking it would help up my fitness game. I ended up getting so much more out of it—I learned a lot about food (and sugar addiction, which I’ll write about another day), exercise and simple life habits that make a huge impact.

The biggest thing that I learned was how to get creative in the kitchen. When you participate at the Lifestyle level, as I did, two of the major food restrictions are sugar (the only form that’s accepted is stevia and I have a major aversion to sugar replacements) and dairy. This means no cheese, people. At first, I thought that I would die without cheese, but I quickly learned to work around it. And the more I read labels, the more I realized that food manufacturers put sugar in everything. And when I say everything, I mean every.thing. Why is there sugar in my chicken broth? Seriously?

During that 8 weeks, I learned how to adapt a lot of my favorites by substituting or omitting non-compliant ingredients. I’ve always loved to cook, but let me tell you how challenging it was to come up with some of the substitutes.

One of my coworkers is in the process of doing a dietary cleanse to identify a food allergy and she brought in a homemade pesto that was to die for. When I asked her how she was able to make it compliant with her current diet, she said all she did was leave out the cheese. And I was inspired.

I love pesto. Love. Love. Love. It’s one of the main reasons that I grow basil in my garden every summer. I also love arugula, on abnormal levels. I think it’s one of my favorite greens because of its peppery flavor. I put it on sandwiches, mix it into quiche, and substitute it in lieu of spinach on the reg.

So with the nifty tip from my colleague and some WLC innovation, I adapted this recipe and made a tasty basil-arugula pesto to accompany my salmon and roasted veggies last night.

First, instead of pine nuts, I substituted walnuts. Walnuts have a similar consistency, and not only are they much cheaper than pine nuts (this one lb bag from Trader Joe’s was $1 less than the 8 oz bag of pine nuts), they are so much better for you.

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Second, while I have a food processor that I love and use regularly, I was feeling incredibly lazy, so I packed all the ingredients into my Nutribullet to get the job done in one shot. While the consistency was a little smoother than I personally care for, it still tasted delish.

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Basil-Arugula Pesto
A flavorful variation on an Italian classic.
Author:
Recipe type: sauce
Serves: 1 cup
Prep time: 
Total time: 
Ingredients
  • 1 cup packed arugula leaves
  • 1 cup packed basil leaves
  • ⅓ cup walnut pieces
  • 3-4 garlic cloves
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • salt & pepper, to taste
Instructions
  1. Combine the basil, arugula, garlic, and walnuts in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add ½ cup of the oil and process until fully incorporated and smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

One of the awesome ladies in my Break Changer – Femmepreneur group mentioned that she loves to make a one-packet meal with salmon, pesto and roasted veggies. I figured since this mention happened the same week as I learned about the cheese-less pesto recipe, the universe was trying to tell me something. So I dropped some of my freshly-made pesto on top of a salmon fillet, tossed in some green beans and mushrooms, wrapped it up in a foil packet and baked at 400­º for 20 minutes. (Actually, if I’m going to be totally honest, I didn’t thaw the salmon fillets completely and ended up cooking my dish for almost 45 minutes, but again with the lazy thing.)
IMG_3050.JPGOn one final note, I’m going to be putting together a team for the May edition of WLC. If you’re interested in joining my team, please leave a comment below and I’ll let you know when I have the team set up. Registration is open now.

 

go the eff to sleep.

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sleeping girlI have a major problem with insomnia. When it comes time to catch some ZZZ’s, no matter how heavy my eyelids are, once my head hits the pillow, I seem to feel wide awake. And then I start playing the battle with the clock: “if I fall asleep now, I’ll get 5 hours of sleep. And if I fall asleep now, it’ll be 4 and a half…” and so on, until daybreak.

I’m not sure if my insomnia is caused by my depression and anxiety, or if it’s because I’m a night owl and it’s hard for me to break those rhythms when I try to go to bed earlier. While I do have some prescribed sleep aids that (usually) do the trick, I prefer to avoid those on weeknights as I tend to wake feeling groggy and discombobulated. I also realized that the lack of quality sleep I was getting during the week was contributing to my all day naps on the weekends. Talk about unproductive. And let’s be honest, if I start counting sheep, I’ll start calculating how much yarn I can get out of all of them to knit something pretty.

Truth be told, I suck at managing my mid-night wakefulness. I will toss & turn for a little while, and then I’ll get up and do something. Sometimes, I’ll watch a show, or catch a few more pages in my latest read. On really desperate nights, I’ll take a hot shower, hoping that my wakefulness will wash down the drain.  I’ve even been known to work on logic puzzles (believe me, they are oddly relaxing). The grand irony was the night that, in my insomnia-induced web searching, I came across this fabulous TED Talks playlist, all dedicated to the power of sleep.

Realizing that I needed help, I started to do some research on how to get better sleep. I found all kinds of interesting tidbits about our sleep habits. I shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many articles dedicated to getting quality/more/regular sleep—as Americans, we report getting less than the recommended 8 hours’ a night. I can’t even recall the last time I got that much sleep in one shot that didn’t come on the heels of a late night on the town. Nor did I realize that our lack of sleep contributes to an increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Wow. I knew I had a problem, but now I see I need to take this insomnia thing a little more seriously.

Here are some of my favorite solutions to finding better sleep:

Go Dark. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a rural area, so light pollution was never a thing for me, but as an adult, living in the city I need to sleep in a dark room. I kicked the nightstand clock, partly because the display was distracting when I awoke in the middle of the night, but mostly because the illumination made it hard to sleep. I hung heavy drapes in my bedroom and also use a sleep mask. I never thought that these small changes would make such a huge difference.

Write On. Whether it’s journaling the day or writing your to-do list for tomorrow, writing your thoughts down makes you less likely to fret over things while you’re winding down. Even if you’re a digital list-maker, for this activity, pen and paper are still best. Spend 15 minutes expelling the most pressing

Power Down. This one is probably the hardest for me to do, especially when I acknowledge how hard it is for me to disconnect. But it’s probably the most important one of all. Our devices not only contribute to our insomnia, they make it harder for us to fall asleep. The illumination from TV and device displays interrupt our receptors, and actively working on something, whether a game or work, increases our stress hormones, keeping us awake longer.

Sleep in bed. It sounds pretty obvious, but a lot of people use their bedroom as a dining room, office or entertainment room. I am also notorious for sleeping on the couch in my living room. Being surrounded by all of these distractions detract from your ability to fall asleep. If you create a space that is dedicated to the comfort of sleeping, you create a mindset that sleep is the only activity that is expected of that space. And when you’re in it, you do just that.

Before you cut off your screen time, have Samuel L. Jackson read you a bedtime story. Sweet dreams.

quaker flats. 

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IMG_2993.JPGI haven’t always loved oats. There was a time when I was a kid that my mom made homemade oatmeal, but we didn’t have all the fixin’s to dress it up the way I liked. And they were overcooked and soggy. So I refused to eat them. And she refused to let me waste food, so I had to sit at the kitchen table for hours (it was probably 20 minutes, but when you’re a kid, time seems to be infinite), staring at that bowl of soggy oats until they became cold, rubbery oats. And I still had to eat them. To say I was scarred for life would be a bit of an overstatement, but since that day, I’ve always been weird about oat-related foods.

But when I got the opportunity to try Quaker Breakfast Flats, I thought about how much I suck at breakfast. Loaded with dietary fiber, oats are known to help lower the risk of heart disease and cholesterol, among other things. All that good fiber aids digestion and helps control blood sugars too. In other words, oats are super good for you. Why am I not eating oats every day? I’ll save my thoughts on that for another post.

These oatmeal bars aren’t what you’d expect. I was thinking it would be like some sort of a cross between a Nutri-Grain bar and a granola bar. But instead, the breakfast flats are more like an oatmeal cookie cracker. Which is to say that they are totally delish. Light and crispy, these are the perfect mid-morning snack or a good post-gym pick me up.

For other ways I’ve found to get more oats into my diet, check out my ode to oats board on Pinterest. While you’re in the cereal aisle grabbing your Breakfast Flats, grab some oatmeal and try overnight oats too.

As part of the Influenster Nation, I get all kinds of goodies sent to me to check out and tell you all about. While the items were provided to me free of charge, the opinions are my own.

cutting the cord.

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Mystery22I think we know each other well enough by now for me to confess something: I’m totally addicted to being connected. I am that person who wakes up in the morning and the first thing I do is reach for my phone and check to see what I missed while I was nocturnal. I run through the list: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Email, respond to comments, read interesting articles and post to my feeds, repeat. Usually two or three times before I get out of bed. Unless I have to pee. Then I just do all of that from the smaller room down the hallway. (And apparently, that’s really bad for your health.) I make coffee, I get ready, and once I hop on the bus for the morning commute, the cycle repeats.

And it repeats. All. Day. Long.

The moment that I realized I had a problem was one morning when 6-year-old Alissa said to me, “Sometimes I feel like your phone is more important to you than what I have to say.”

Ouch.

While it’s true that I have missed some major life events of my friends while taking a social hiatus, I have to be honest with myself—I’m really not missing anything by not being connected all the damn time. And if I only knew about the engagements, babies and new homes because they were on Facebook, well then we must not be close enough friends for it to matter.

So as part of the current challenge I am taking on with The Break Changer, I’ve been challenged not to connect first thing in the morning.

Oh geez. This is going to be a tough one. But not impossible. Mindfulness is a good thing.

I’ve already learned so much (like the fact that my phone could probably appear on its own episode of Dateline for all the germs it must be smuggling around town. Ick.). Not only is my morning habit far less productive, it’s cramping my creativity. You see, when you jump right into the mode of consuming first thing, you completely obliterate your own priorities for someone else. Not cool, folks. I’m a big believer that we should live our lives they way they tell us to operate the oxygen masks should the cabin lose pressure: take care of your own first.

We’re only on day one of this week’s challenge, but this morning, I was very conscious of not interacting with my phone before I left for work. In fact, I didn’t even mess with it for a full hour and a half after I woke. Instead, I got myself ready and walked a mile while I got lost in my thoughts. It felt great to let my mind wander and process a lot of the things that were on my mind this morning when I woke up. And the funny thing I noticed? I didn’t spend all day letting those thoughts distract me as usual. I’d already dealt with them and opened my mind to be ready for other things.

That’s got to be a step in the right direction, wouldn’t you agree?

i’d knit that—confessions of a knit whore.

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I’ve always been a super creative person, but I’ve never really felt crafty. Sure, I learned to sew when I was younger (with my mom aspiring to be a fashion designer in her younger days, it was bound to happen) and can do such things. It usually ends up as a total disaster (anything involving me and a sewing machine, for sure) or a phase that passes after I’ve invested hundreds of dollars in materials and supplies that I’ll never get rid of and never use again (I get that from my mom, too).

But my knitting obsession starts from a whole different story.

I dated a guy several years back who was much older than me. His mother had passed away not long before we met, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that the candle he was holding for a love lost was for her. He always talked about how much she would have loved me and was always trying to give me things that belonged to her—”she would have wanted you to have this, and I know you’ll cherish it.” So one day, he gave me a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles that were hers. “You’re crafty, I figured you’d appreciate this.”

I didn’t.

What he didn’t know was that all of my previous attempts at learning to knit fell into the aforementioned “disaster” category, alongside the fact that it fucking sucked. I hated it. I was an avid crocheter. Why would anyone try to make something with two needles when they could use one? Knitting seemed utterly stupid to me. I graciously accepted the gift and tucked it away with the collection of never-to-be-used-again supplies. And I forgot all about it.

Until we broke up.

We had broken up on my 30th birthday, in what was maybe a little overreaction on my part to the fact that he got mad that I didn’t invite him along to join in on the surprise visit my entire family paid me, and therefore pouted the whole weekend and then sent me a text wishing me happy birthday. A text, people. We had been dating for nearly two years! So I broke down crying in the shower and left with my family that afternoon when they departed.

Okay, so I totally overreacted. And maybe it was more than just the text I was upset about. Nothing about our relationship felt right at that point and I knew it had to end. Even so, that day kicked off the longest and most awkward breakup in the history of the world my life.

Eight months later, Christmas rolled around, and he sent a box full of presents for Alissa, my parents and their dog. He also knew that I was basically broke and sent me a check and asked me to do something nice for myself with it (I’m pretty sure I used it to buy everyone else Christmas gifts). I thought it was weird. Really weird. But I was gracious and thanked him.

A week or so after that, I got a call from him. He was upset. Not only was he upset, he was upset that I didn’t give him a Christmas gift. Now I had already thought it was weird that he gave us stuff, but I thought it was even weirder that he expected me to reciprocate. “You sent nothing. Not even so much as a card.” I was living with my parents without a pot to piss in and he wanted a Christmas card. “I swear, you are completely devoid of sentiment.”

Whoa. Clearly he hadn’t seen the boxes and boxes of stuff I can’t get rid of because each item within held just a smidgen of sentiment. Which ironic because at that point, said boxes were stored in his basement.

That comment hit a nerve. And I immediately went digging through the few boxes I had brought with me to my folks’ house and found what I was looking for: the yarn and knitting needles that had belonged to his mother. His birthday was coming up and I asked my mom to re-teach me how to knit so that I could make my ex-boyfriend a birthday gift with the yarn that belonged to his mother. That’ll show him some sentiment.

I may very well be the only person in the history of the world who has learned to knit out of spite.

But this, my third or fourth attempt at trying my hand at knitting, I discovered that I actually liked it. In fact, I loved it. As soon as I finished the scarf (which I sent to him with a note that said, “Happy birthday. Knitted for you from your mother’s yarn. How’s that for sentiment?” Never underestimate the power of a woman scorned), I started digging through books to find more stuff to knit. Sweaters. Socks. Coffee sleeves. Scarves. Alissa had me knitting accessories for her teddy bear, and I gladly obliged. Friends were having babies. They all had fresh hats and booties. My photographer friends all got custom knitted newborn props. When I ran out of yarn, I figured out how to deconstruct a sweater and knit it into a new one.

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Now I seem to be constantly knitting something. I may or may not spend more on knitting supplies than I do on groceries some months. I have projects I buy from Craftsy and work through them while I watch TV at night. I’ve taught friends to knit and have become a regular at all of my local yarn shops (and a few far and away too). I am constantly studying patterns of sweaters and scarves other people wear so I can make my own.

Turns out, knitting is good for your health. And here I thought it was just a hobby taken up out of spite.

If you’re interested in purchasing any of my knit creations, please visit my Etsy shop.