Posts Tagged ‘addictions’
Ode: to a Via Starbucks Packet
You sneaky little whippersnapper. There IS one of you left, hiding in my cabinet, swimming around in your giant cardboard envelope! Good morning!
I smile as I tear your aesthetically attractive foil tubing. I know that when I drink you my stomach will burn, just a little. And that, deep down, I actually prefer the instant Nescafe to your finely ground wares.
You are strong as a motherfucker, and not as yummy as the coffee my husband makes when he’s on a ‘coffee obsession tear,’ but you, my dear Via Starbucks Packet, yes, you!
You will do just fine.
Never mind that with you, I need to add twice the sweetener I use with Nescafe.
Never mind that with you, I need to add a dollop of extra half and half. Which makes you too cold. It’s cool. I have a microwave.
And never mind that you cost twice as much as my instant Nescafe.
Because YOU, little baby Via, you vixen, you… YOU!
…are sexy.
Starbucks. The brand of champions.
(Champions who love caffeine and over-roasted coffee beans.)
Today, I am a champion.
Thanks to you.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Come give mama a kiss. MWAH!
Flashback Friday! (Food For Thought, Part 1)
Every Friday, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Food For Thought Part ONE – the BLOG
There’s dieting, binge eating, picky eating, healthy eating and gorging… and now, gentle readers, I have coined a new phrase you may all feel free to use: Redemptive Eating.
I don’t mean eating to prove the worth of one’s soul, though that sounds good, too. I’m talking about eating something satisfying and delicious to REDEEM the nightmare piece of crap disguised as food that you ate prior, and now feel sick about.
Por ejemplo: last week, in a rush to “save money and eat healthy,” I sautéed some pre-packaged tuna steaks. Popped one in a Tupperware, and took it to work with me, with a red pepper. Perfect!
Except… it was disgusting.
Not bad fish or anything, thank GOD… but I over cooked it a little, and this fish already being of the non-fresh Trader Joe’s variety, was none too helped by my overcooking.
I ate almost half until finally giving up. For the next two hours, I was caught in a dilemma: do I now go out and spend money on a second lunch? I wasn’t even really hungry anymore. BUT that last food I ate, the tuna? We all know where the phrase “left a terrible taste in my mouth” comes from, right? And you, who read my last blog, you know I like happy endings, right? (If you didn’t read it, go take a sec, read it now. I’ll wait. Really, go ahead. Enjoy.)
So – I almost made the mistake of ordering an omelet, again. Had it the day prior AND the day before that. A girl can only eat so many eggs. What I really wanted to order was the Ahi tuna salad. (From Blu Jam, on Melrose, they are fantastic.) But it was so expensive! And… you know, I just ate half a tuna already!
In the end, I took a chance, and sprung for the Ahi salad.
Friends, you are reading the blog of one happy customer. Salad was divine. Tuna was perfect. The whole meal? Redemptive.
Redeemed my overcooked Trader Joe’s sorry excuse for a piece of tuna, that is.
Made me think about other times I’ve indulged in redemptive eating – like when a meal is so gross you just have to finish it with a huge latte, or thick piece of chocolate cake.
Anyone else get what I’m saying here?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
This salad probably wouldn't trigger a massive chocolate attack. Probably.
Flashback Friday! (Facebook Junky – a dramatic narration)
Every Friday, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Facebook Junky – the BLOG
LIGHTS UP
ON SHEVI (my new name, Christened by a well-intentioned friend who thinks BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) is way too complicated, never mind, when pronounced, my “new name” sounds like my parent’s old station wagon…)
SHEVI IS PALE-FACED AND POUNDING AWAY AT HER KEYBOARD.
It’s a little like cocaine.
You start. It feels a little dirty, a little exciting, a little like something everyone else except you has tried.
You go a little, then you stop, thinking ‘this isn’t for you, how do people get into this, the only people who like this must have no life, if anyone has time to really get into this for hours, they must REALLY have no life or else a pathetic one…’
Then-
It happens. You get hooked. (Or, you get outraged that your husband just started a week ago & already has more Friends than you do.) You start Friending everyone and their mother (literally) and you can’t stop and now it’s past 2 in the morning & your kids get up at 6am or whatever but you don’t care because now you’re looking at someone’s photos and you see MORE people you haven’t seen or thought about in decades and now you are Friending them too even though you never said one red word to them back in the day when you had a crush on them in high school and you realize you are Friending more guys than girls but you can’t help it and now HOLY FUCK is that a picture of that disgusting guitar-playing asshole who gave you a nasty disease when you were in college – TURN BACK! – but you can’t, and you realize how disgusting you are and how in the hell did this all get started and why can’t you stop and Jesus what will all these people think of you tomorrow when they see your ‘invitation’ for them to Friend you and how embarrassing that your best friend from high school has Friends you guys used to hang out with together, but she won’t accept your invitation what the FUCK did you ever do to her anyway, that bitch, and now you should be asleep but you’re wide awake and you’re going to get more Friends than these other people if you have to stay here all night and-
How in the world does my best friend from French Woods Camp when I was 14 years old, know my friend from Yale? And how weird is that that I knew that friend from Yale back when I was 10 years old, at a different camp, Camp Seafarer?
And how did that hot guy I used to crush on get so fat?
And do these people accepting my Friend requests even know who I am?
And who are these creepy random people asking me to be their Friends?
And – whoa – Tudor is DEAD? When did he die? I haven’t seen him since the last time I got drunk at Renees Bar in Santa Monica, back in the nineties… God, that’s right, that whole crew of us used to go there every Thursday night, let me see if they’re on Facebook too…
BLACKOUT
Good God this photo of Renee's Courtyard Cafe brings back memories (of blackouts, among other things). Used to go there every Thursday night...
Cocktail Club
When I was around 24 years old, my friends and I created an exclusive membership-only organization: Cocktail Club. My girlfriend Nicole was the President, Richard was either co-President or Vice President, and I was probably the Secretary or something like that.
Here were the rules (as I remember them, which means maybe this didn’t happen at all, but if it did, it went more or less like this):
- Once a month, a Cocktail Club member would host a cocktail party. I think it was always on a Thursday night.
- The host chose the venue, and supplied things like cups, napkins, food/hors d’oeuvres, juice and other mixers.
- The guests brought the alcohol. Entrance to a Cocktail Club party was only allowed under 2 strict conditions: 1. The invite, and 2. Each guest had to bring one unopened bottle of alcohol. Vodka, Rum, lots of wine, cases of beer… entry was denied to any guest who showed up – member or non-member – who didn’t bring their “entrance ticket.” Didn’t matter if you came as a couple – two people meant two bottles. (With this system, even though people drank a lot at each party, the host was always left with a bottles and bottles of leftover wine & alcohol.)
- Members attending the party were allowed to bring one, and only one, non-Cocktail Club member.
- The host, on the other hand, could invite anyone he/she wanted. So the parties always had completely different feels to them, depending on who was hosting, where they were hosting, and who their crowd of non-Cocktail Club member friends were.
I asked Nicole if she had the original copy of the RULES but sadly, she didn’t. She did, however, remember two rules I had forgotten:
- 1. Only clear or light-colored liquids allowed. This rule, I believe, went into effect following the party at our friend Katie Brown’s Hancock Park mansion (rented from the King of Malaysia, if memory serves) where I gracefully managed to spill my glass of red wine all over her white sofa. This was the same Katie Brown who went on to give Martha Stuart a run for her money with her cooking TV shows, workshops, etc… Whoops.
- 2. As soon as the party was over, people had to leave immediately. No stragglers. This way, the host would never have to worry about dealing with energy-suckers after hours.
My friend Caroline hosted her event at the Chateau Marmont, supposedly in the same bungalow where John Belushi died. One person hosted his at a comedy club. Another outside, in a lush garden. I hosted my event in my Spanish style, hardwood floor apartment. People like Margaret Cho showed up and got drunk with the rest of us.
What happened to cocktail club? In a word: Rehab.
Two of our core founding members went into AA and Al-Anon, others of us “cut down” or completely stopped partying, and the whole thing promptly fizzled.
And in another word: Love! (My friend Caroline met her future husband and the father of her 2 kids at cocktail club, too.)
Reunion, anyone?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
It all happened here... the drinking, the fun, the magic, the... um...drinking.
Give me a Break
I love The Week magazine. And by “love” I mean, it’s crack.
Pop SAT Quiz: choose the answer with the same relationship as the top example.
1. The Week: Magazines
a. Chocolate: Food
b. Baby Kittens: Spam Emails
c. The Daily Show: Television
d. Crack cocaine: Drugs
e. All of the Above
Where am I going with all of this? In short, arriving at conclusion: I am nothing short of a petulant, cranky jonesing addict when my Week Magazine doesn’t arrive for two weeks straight over the winter holiday (not to mention the 2 weeks they shut down during the summer). How dare they!! Don’t they know that their readers need their crack I MEAN THEIR MAGAZINE more than ever, during the dreary ‘lots of time to read’ holiday break?
I mean, COME ON!
But as my kvetchy Jewish great aunt probably never said but let’s pretend she would have (with a nasally New York accent), “who am I to complain?”
Because… I meant to keep up my GrownupGirl blog while I was on my “break”. I put the word ‘break’ in quotation marks because I was actually working the whole time during my one week out of the office (btwn Christmas & New Year’s), and actually, my job got busier than ever, PLUS I was home with my three kids full time for the week, but anyway, it was a “break” from routine, that’s for sure… (and by ‘break from routine’, yes, I mean I ate about three thousand cookies and hundreds of desserts and drank a good bit too).
[A break, by the way, which was also AMAZING and wonderful because it allowed me to spend so much time with my kids that it spawned an equal number of fantasies that I should ‘chuck it all’ and be a stay-at-home mom as wells as endless fertile opportunity for more fun blogs like this one I wrote (the week before my break, but the first week of their break).]
Anyhoo – bottom line: I’m sorry I left you guys hanging. And by “hanging” I mean devoid of new Grownup Girl Goodness. I meant to keep writing. I actually thought perhaps I’d write more than usual, since I wouldn’t be in the office all day like my usual routine. Turns out, life is MORE hectic, not LESS, when you stay at home with three little kids AND still have to work practically full time from home.
So…. welcome back, world! I’m sorry I left you for a while. And, while I won’t flatter myself to think that The Grownup Girl is as addictive to any of you as the above list is to me (the ‘crack’ bit just in theory, of course, you know – so I’ve heard…) – I imagine it is possible that a few of you stopped by while I was gone and were perhaps just a little disappointed not to see some new stuff.
Here’s to hoping this year will bring us all more joy, abundance, love, health, peace and creativity….
Here’s to a Grownup Girl World!!
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Racheli deciding that her new "Orbeez" WILL be the mani-pedi kind - even tho the kind "Santa" bought her was actually for making necklaces. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens when you're home for a week with the kids...
Yep. And this is what happens when you sleep in, and tell the kids they can "dress themselves" for a change.
Liquid Courage
Altering one’s consciousness. Loosening up. Drinking alcohol. Let’s call a spade a spade: It’s easier to be free, to ‘vibe’ with people, to show your funny/sexy/sassy/groovy side… when drunk.
On the other hand, drinking can be messy, throw up-y, dependency-forming, relationship-hurting, and hangover-inducing… and I see no room for any of these items in my current adult life.
No big deal, right?
And yet… I dare you to go try standup comedy without a little liquid courage.
I did it.
Twice.
Yes, gentle readers – readers, whom I sure would have laughed harder than the collection of corpses (to be specific: corpses who became animated for 3 minutes each, to grace the stage & tell horrifically misogynistic and unfunny jokes) did the other night at the Comedy Store (yup. I got up again) – I have now done a grand total of 6 minutes of what could loosely be defined as “standup comedy.”
In that I was standing up in front of a crowd and attempting to make them laugh.
Without alcohol.
It actually is as terrible as it sounds.
Terrible, and terrifying. And stupid. And not fun.
Why in the world do I want to keep trying this?
My jokes aren’t that funny (YET – I’m working on it, ya know?!) – but in front of THESE crowds – these Hollywood-y, comic-y-er than me, obsessed with sex and body parts and way raunchier-than me crowds – my poor little jokes don’t have a chance. The MC at the Comedy Store was harsh – he asked me if this was my first time ever doing standup, said he was going to “ream her, except I looked into her eyes and now I’m in love,” and then he announced the comic who went up after me as “The first comic of the night.”
Gee, thanks.
I’m not saying he was altogether wrong. After all, it WAS almost my first time ever (it was my second). I was nervous again, I hadn’t rehearsed my opening jokes and they were kind of long and not so funny.
On the other hand… NO ONE (with the possible exception of the MC) was remotely funny either. Not the seasoned comics, not the guy who worked at the Comedy Store and supposedly just got back from touring with Pauly Shore, not the guy who opened the night whose name was “Sperm Douglas” (talk about a sign; I should have walked out right then and there), and not the drunk kid who went on after Sperm & before me –a kid who was heckled so obnoxiously that the MC shouted at the drunk kid to stand up for himself, then kicked the heckler out.
So I guess you could say I was in good company. Or, to be more accurate, terrible company.
Which begs the question… why am I doing this again?
I think I’ll go have a chocolate cupcake. Which is as close as I get to alcohol sugar these days. Sigh…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Didn't drink before making a fool of myself in front of a hostile audience; DID have a drink here at our company's holiday shindig. Go figure..
The Chocolate Diet
Readers, brace yourselves.
There appears to be a connection – not just a connection, but a DIRECT CORRELATION – between my intake of desserts and… GASP! – my fat.
More specifically, the fat of my stomach.
How could it be???
Shit.
I admit, unlike 99% of girls in America, I never EVER had to worry about what I ate because I had the metabolism of a gazelle. (Let’s assume for the sake of this blog, since I’m too lazy to research it, that gazelles have excellent metabolism, k?) I would always eat about twice as much as everyone around me, twice as often, and I always stayed skinny as a string bean.
My stepmother, who is not Jewish and doesn’t understand why people would want to eat a lot ‘just because,” would complain often about how much we ate as kids. But, looking back, I can see her point. We weren’t just “big eaters” – My brother & I? – we literally would have eaten her & my father out of house & home if we had stayed there longer than every other weekend and Tuesday nights.
My eating habits only grew as I went to college and discovered that my ability & desire to eat was matched only by my inability to discriminate amongst all the college buffet extravaganza had to offer. Freakishly, my freshman year roommate was EXACTLY like me, in that she was naturally skinny, never had an eating disorder, and she could and often would eat more than three times her weight at any given sitting.
On a typical evening at Yale Freshman Commons (where the entire Yale freshman class ate), Bika & I would make sure to get there right as the doors opened. We’d jet over to the omelet line, take over the salad bar, sample all the vegetarian options, and THEN we’d get the rest of our food.
Later, around midnight, we’d generally order pizza. And that doesn’t even begin to include the copious amounts of beer and alcohol I consumed on a nightly basis.
Yes, I did ‘gain weight’ in college. But I didn’t really care – I was tall, naturally thin, and I wasn’t trying to be a model or anything. So – not only did it never occur to me to slow down or learn to eat less; I actually never even made the correlation between ‘eating a lot of crap and sugar and food in general,’ with ‘getting fatter.’
I mean, I “knew” that’s what happened, but I never really knew it – if you know what I mean.
Readers, I’m ashamed to say that before I went on my 40 day dessert fast? I was working on a blog about how a chocolate diet could actually WORK.
To help someone lose weight.
I even ran my brilliant idea past my co-workers and had already started dreaming about my runaway success as an author who finally introduced a diet into the market that included CHOCOLATE and WEIGHT LOSS in a single directive.
Then… something small shifted in me, out there in the ocean… and I acknowledged that I needed to stop eating so much chocolate. For emotional, addictive reasons.
And when I did…
I lost my belly fat.
It was amazing.
Until… lately. I’ve been eating desserts again. And while it’s not at the same obsessive clip as during pre-my 40 day dessert fast life… I’ve already noticed a pooch around my middle that was absent the prior month.
Wahhhh!!
Time to go surfing again.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Dang!! I could have sworn I was onto something big!
It’s a Gas (The Fart Blog)
Enough about Wedding Dresses, Bullies and Christmas.
Let’s talk about farts.
Oh yes, my friends, I’m going there. Because the other day – when one my five year old daughter let one fly – and then burst out laughing – it occurred to me, farts aren’t just funny to teenage boys.
They’re funny to everyone.
Except, arguably, to the people trapped in the same room with someone else’s fart.
If only I had such a good sense of humor as a young girl. Specifically, at age twelve. Because, it was at age twelve that- as I lay in the same bed as my best friend and her boyfriend (NO we were not NAKED – we were watching Strange Brew, and she didn’t have a couch) – when I let fly one of the loudest, most embarrassing farts of my life.
Embarrassing because, (well, duh, I was a twelve year old girl, but also), I was lying there in that bed, next to a girl I deeply admired and her boyfriend who I had a crush on (and who, I might add, I wound up losing my virginity to, years later, but that’s a different story), and… I farted.
Correction – I BLASTED.
Yes, gentle readers. It was bad.
But remember how, three paragraphs ago, I wrote it was “one” of the loudest farts I ever did? Implying, there was another…
Cut to: years later, in Madrid, Spain. I’m in a club with my friend Tatiana, high on horribly potent European hash and drunk on whiskey cokas. I’m sitting behind the DJ booth glass, because Tatiana and I are “in” with the DJ, whose name escapes me, but whose penis may have ended up on one of our rolls of film.
What do you think happened?
I farted. But not a regular fart, the kind that happened most days, because at that point in my young life I was suffering from a terrible bout of lactose intolerance.
Poor Tatiana (my roommate at the time).
No, this fart was not just a lactose intolerant fart. Nor was it a mere ‘club kid-high-on-hashish’ fart.
It was a magical fart.
Because, just moments prior, I was falling down the rabbit hole of being too high and too drunk; I was spinning, I was unable to talk or communicate, and I was very close to passing out/throwing up/needing to check into a hospital for alcohol and possible hashish blood poisoning.
Through my pounding head and with my blurred vision, I could see Tatiana’s face, worried, concerned; she tried to ask if I was okay but I could not respond….
Until…
I farted.
And then – everything was okay in the world. Seriously. The spinning was gone, the wooziness disappeared, my drunken high throwupiness vanished, and my teetering on the abyss of a blackout had evaporated. I was back in the game!
Tatiana was there – and she will attest to the fact that not only was this fart magical, but it also could have won the Guinness Book of World Records in fart volume – we heard it loud and clear, trumpeting above and beyond the distant chimes of the otherwise floor-shakingly loud discotheque music and thumping bass line.
So you see, dear readers, farts come in all shapes, sizes, and volumes.
And they’re magic.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Take off! No, you take off!! Dude. Who farted?
You Know You’re Stressed When…
Awww… I just found this list I banged out a few months ago, and I thought I’d better share it with all of you, since you probably have no clue when you’re stressed (vs. when you’re just happy go lucky).
You are welcome.
So here goes… YOU KNOW YOU ARE STRESSED WHEN:
- You have a flash-fantasy of leaving home and running away to Paris
- Your back spasms to the point of 4-Advil pain and three+ day immobility
- Your back thigh muscle Charlie-horses on you
- You dream of writing a “You Know You’re Stressed When” list and actually sneak to the computer to write it while your husband is putting the kids to bed & you are supposed to be doing the dishes
- You are crazy tired
- You think of all the things you need to get done and decide the most important thing is to watch Grey’s Anatomy episodes back to back (thanks to the wonders of Hulu)
- You eat too much chocolate
- You eat too much cake
- You go out and buy chocolate or cake so you can eat it
- You get in a giant ugly fight with your husband (his fault, natch, but why does he keep blaming me?)
- You can’t take a deep breath
- You’ve started to gain weight again
- The thought that ‘the worst possible outcome is death,’ actually has a reassuring and calming effect
- You start comparing yourself to other people, your husband/relationship to their husband/relationship, and your income/financial stability to theirs
- You inadvertently sigh with relief when you find out someone you thought had a perfect husband/relationship/job/financial life is actually experiencing chaos in that area of life
- The piles of papers and crap on your home office are rivaling the towers of papers and crap that still need to be sorted in your office-office
- You are exhausted so you stay up until 1am or later watching too many Law & Orders.
As it turns out, I’m presently traveling through a healthier (physically & mentally) phase of life right now – yippee! – but that doesn’t mean I can’t remember those recent stressier days.
P.S. you probably won’t hear from me again until Monday because I’m going to NYC tomorrow – without my husband & kids, WHOO-HOO! Um, I mean, uh… sniff, wipe tear, whoo hoo…
P.P.S. I told my husband that I don’t drink alcohol and I’m not even eating desserts right now so the main thing I’m looking forward to, going to the Big City on my own, free, no children to stop me, is…. SLEEPING.
Hey, a Grownup Girl’s gotta do what a Grownup Girl’s gotta do! (to get herself some beauty rest)
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
I don't know about you, but to me, this photo just SCREAMS New York City.
Getting Drunk at Yale
Thinking about that recent blog with the whole ‘crackle’ thing reminded me of about four or five thousand other funny things that happened while at Yale… while I was, you know… doing other things besides studying.
The best were the banana videos. My roommate Derek and I made a number of videos featuring a banana, including one where the banana was moving to the rhythm of the Ramones’ I wanna Be Sedated and then it winds up shooting me in the head. Someday, somehow, I hope to find those banana videos, and get them digitized just in time to bribe Derek who by that point will probably be just about poise to accept his first Academy Award for writing/directing.
Sweet.
But for every banana and crackle story I have for the 3.5 crazy years I was at Yale as an undergrad (not including the 6 months I lived in Spain), I also have stories from before I went to Yale. Like at one of my father’s reunions, where we gave my little two year old sister Daily beer in her bottle to “calm her.” (Social services, don’t worry – Daily turned out to be the most normal of all of us. Wait – maybe we’re on to something here!!??)
Or that time at the private Yale club Mory’s with my family and my uncle Steve and his kids (all Yale grads too), when my uncle was trying to explain to the Maitre D why it appeared that minors were drinking alcohol, and exactly at that moment I pulled up from a long brisk walk in the frozen air outside trying to sober up my three-sheets-to-the-wind ten year old brother (I was a very mature thirteen year old – but never could hold my liquor), and I dropped my glass exactly at that moment on the Maitre D’s shoes. After which my brother promptly threw up.
Good times.
I think it pretty much followed that with as much studying and writing and test-passing that I did while at Yale (I did graduate Magna Cum Laude, after all), I would have to balance it all with as much drinking, wildness and less-than-ladylike behavior. Like, when I had drank/smoked so much at one friend’s party that I actually fell asleep in the hallway standing up.
Oh, there were plenty more hilarious and hair-raising escapades I’d recount for you now, except I’d like to continue to a.) Stay out of Jail, and b.) Not give my kids way more ammunition than they already have against me.
Boola, boola!
c/xo
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
I think it means "liquor and very large quantities of beer."