Cirque du Malaise

Every once in a while — okay let’s just call it once a month — I resign myself to take a mental health day. A mental health day is when, despite the mountains of work and exercise obligations and “should’s” and “must’s” and “have to’s,” one instead collapses on the couch in a state of general malaise, maybe sobs a little bit, and then watches 8 straight hours of mindless television while eating cookies and soup for dinner (in that order).

Mental health days are absolutely essential for maintaining spiritual equilibrium, especially around the holiday season. And to be really worthwhile, they have to happen when it’s least convenient and there is the most amount of pressing things to get done STAT.

I had a mental health day yesterday. Mondays are good days for mental health days because they are a) high pressure days to begin with and b) a great way to set you up for a week of saying “fuck it.” On this particular Monday, I had just gotten back from spending the weekend with good friends up in Mendocino. I had already taken a half day to drive home, and was planning to buckle down the moment I arrived at my office in order to power through several hours of work before going to yoga at 6:30pm like a good Godfearin’ yogi.

But it was not to be.

It was too cold in my house to think (cursed damp 55 degree November day) and things were out of sorts. Because I was gone all weekend and have been busy lately, there was an ominous pile of laundry calling me. There were tumbleweeds on the floor and a sink full of dishes and, try as I might, I could not ignore them. But I couldn’t get myself to do them, either, because that would just be admitting defeat over my concentration issues. So instead, I did the logical thing: I flung myself on the couch, had a tantrum for just a sec, and then commenced to watched back-to-back episodes of Six Feet Under until midnight.

I didn’t go to yoga. You know how they say, “You never regret going to yoga”? You know how they say that? You know how they tell you that going to yoga will fix whatever ails you? That if you have a cold coming on, you should “sweat it out”? If you just got really bad news, you can “find gratitude” on your mat? If you are experiencing general malaise, you should “get out of your head”?

Sometimes they are right. I’ve had these yoga-saving experiences; I have. But I’ll tell you what. Nothing brings you back to a state of equanimity and peace like a good old fashioned mental health sesh on the couch.

The slow decline into winter’s dark days is a time when my bio-clock says “Slow down! Hibernate! Store up fat for winter!” and accordingly, my energy level plummets and I desire warm, high-calorie foods and less activity. This is the season when I am most inclined to blow things of a social or active nature off and geek out on the Internet instead.

I used to fight it. I used to self-judge. But I’ll tell you, I’ve really learned to abide by my need for a periodic mental health day. I’ve been taking them my entire life. They really do work. Better than yoga.

Today was threatening to be just another ho-hum pre-Christmas Saturday full of mild ennui and holiday despair. I was considering going tanning to lift my flagging spirits (for medical reasons, you see) when I happened to stumble across a creative Shangri La* right here in my little town of Mill Valley.

I needed some craft supplies and did a quick Google search for the closest art store. The search returned an address I drive by almost every day. Curious how an art supply store could exist—unbeknownst to me—under my very nose, I drove over there. Lo and behold, this is just a small corner of the wonderment I found:

Walking into this cornucopia of craft possibility was like stumbling across Mecca. I was practically drooling the moment I walked in the door. I got so excited that I spun around in circles several times before forcing myself to focus on one thing at a time: first, the awesome selection of scalloped note cards… then on to the exquisite display of sophisticated magic markers … a dizzying swing by the handmade paper gallery… and a gratuitous grab of some sparkly floral goodies. Twenty-five well-spent bucks later, I scribbled my email address on the mailing list on my way out the door, visions of future craft workshops parading giddily through my mind.

But no sooner did I discover this aesthetic mecca than I began to worry about its very existence. Mill Valley is a small town — albeit a small town that inexplicably keeps two Whole Foods markets quite busy — and I fear there isn’t enough imagination circulating among our local populace to support this amazing place. Apparently they’ve been open since February (I grilled the disaffected teenaged girls at the counter) and they’re obviously not doing great with their outreach. Granted, I live under a rock and I’m a confirmed shut-in, but I really should have heard about this place by now.

Oh, it’s called “Once Around.” Terrible name. But, exquisite place, truly. Their web site is quite lovely too: www.oncearound.com/

If you happen to be in Mill Valley, please go in and take a look around. Buy some craft supplies. Lord knows you can never have too many! I need this place to stay in business. It gives me hope.

* By the way, the worst restaurant I have ever been to in my entire life was actually called Shangri La, so I always think twice when I use this expression.

Although I profess that summer is my favorite season, I secretly love winter. In Northern California, where I live, winter is the season of relentless, romantical rain; it's thus also the season of more napping, less exercising, constant cashmere scarves, cozy down sleeping bags, gratuitous novels, hot toddies, and gloomy days spent in the sanctuary of the library. And it's my favorite season for food.

I know it's technically not winter yet, but the general malaise of Halloween makes winter seem right around the corner. So tonight, I made squasharoni. Mainly because I liked the sound of the word "squasharoni."

This is one of those recipes loosely interpreted from a veggie cookbook from an East Coast hippie retreat center, so there are a lot of obscure condiments involved. If you don't happen to have one of them, or two or three, I think you could safely improvise without doing any major culinary damage.

Winter Squasharoni

• First, cook a bunch of pasta. Like, a whole box of it. Even though this is a "roni" recipe, I cheated and used some tubular pasta that struck my fancy at The Hole.
• While that's happening, laboriously chop up a winter squash. Butternut is nice. I dig kabocha. The thing about kabocha is, you can actually eat the skin, but for this pasta, I took it off anyway. Peeling and dicing a kabocha squash is a sublime form of zen torture. If I wasn't such a picky freak about freshness, I would probably just buy pre-cubed butternut squash like a normal person.
• In a cast-iron skillet, saute red onion in EVOO for a few minutes.
• Add the squash, a half cup of water, some salt, and maybe a handful of garden herbs (oregano, sage, thyme).
• Reduce heat, cover, let simmer until the squash is tender.
• Meanwhile, mix together: 1/3 cup tahini, 1 T miso paste, 1 T vinegar (preferably umeboshi), 1 t tamari.
• Once the squash mixture is ready, add this sauce to it, along with a handful of chopped walnuts and a dollop of really pricey chevre cheese that you splurged on because your life seems hollow and meaningless and cheese always makes that better.
• Drain the pasta and mix it into the rest.
• Sprinkle on top: panko bread crumbs (I have no idea what these are, but they are always enthusiastically and somewhat snobbishly recommended to me by my  grocerial advisor, who I trust implicitly) and shredded parmesan.
• Cook (right in that same cast iron skillet) in the oven at 375 for 20 minutes.

Oh and incidentally, this is another reason I love winter:

It's a pretty lovely little pad for holing up in.

I am a smart girl. I always got good grades in school and can usually figure out moderately challenging mind puzzles (as long as they don’t involve numbers or require an attention span). However, there are some things I would have prefered to remain dumb about, thanks. For example:

That when you drink Diet Coke, it metabolizes into formaldehyde in your body, which, as a colleague pointed out, is good for halting the aging process, but maybe not so great for the liver. The acupuncturist who told me this horrible thing basically destroyed my number one guilty pleasure for the rest of my life. I tried to shrug it off and be all, “I know that” and “so what?” but the truth is, the Diet Coke I was drinking when she informed me of this monstrous terribleness did not taste so good. It tasted kind of like embalming fluid, actually.

That you can get ringworm from tanning beds. I’ll take my chances with skin cancer, but ringworm? No thanks. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to do about my S.A.D. now. Thanks a lot, V.

That Glee is actually a really cute and funny show. I wish I didn’t know this, and, more importantly, I wish I didn’t admit it so freely.

I don’t really miss childhood much, but I do miss that time in my life when I was blissfully ignorant of these sorts of things. I am pretty confident that dumber people are generally happier. And ordinarily I could come up with a lot more examples, but I have a blazing head cold of the sort that makes your brain disintegrate into mushy slop. (Speaking of dumbness.)

You know what I am stoked to know about? This t-shirt:

My friend Stirling promised to order me one so I can wear it to Whole Foods Mill Valley every day. Thank you Stirling!

No one will ever be able to convince me that there is a perfectly good reason to turn the clocks back an hour just at the bleakest time of year, thereby insuring that non-morning people like myself lose an hour of daylight and that "evening" seems to follow "morning" with nothing in between.

(Similarly, no one will ever be able to convince me that there is a perfectly good reason carpenters start work pre-9am. But let's not go down that road.)

I try to have a good attitude about daylight savings, and there are in fact a few things about it that I secretly like. One of them is that it suddenly becomes okay to eat more, sleep more and just generally laze about more, thereby eliminating the guilt of trying to be a better, more productive person all the time. I really appreciate those kind of excuses, not being a terribly driven person to begin with.

Also, fall (my least favorite season and the primary reason I moved West from New England) is a great time to spoil your parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is the one that takes over when you're asleep and allows your body to take care of itself. It's the regenerative vehicle driving your body's inherently resilient nature. And it's the one we don't generally give a lot of props to, given that it does most of its work silently and behind the scenes and while we are sleeping.

Aside from getting a lot of sleep this time of year (and that includes naps), here are some of my other favorite ways to nurture the ol' parasympathetic nervous system and make myself appreciate daylight savings:

1. Super lazy - yin, if possible - yoga, particularly Christy Brown's class in San Francisco on Monday nights
2. Splurging on bodywork (particular props to Andrew Castellanos at Stillpoint Wellness Center!)
3. Chillaxing at the spas in Japantown
4. Curling up in a chair at the Mill Valley Library and reading a novel
5. Watching back-to-back episodes of How I Met Your Mother: embarrassingly, my current favorite show to obsess over on Netflix (but I guess not that embarrassing or I wouldn't be admitting it)
6. Playing Bejeweled until the battery runs out on my friend's iPhone (I don't have an iPhone, so this is a particularly special treat for me)
7. Making soup, and then eating soup
8. Meditating... And my top two favorites....
9. Not meditating
10. Not going to yoga

(For those of you that aren't up on your latest DSM manual, S.A.D. stands for 'Seasonal Affective Disorder'. I have that, for sure. Most seasons.)

There is nothing as comforting as making soup on a gloomy Fall day. I think I'm the only person I've ever met whose least favorite season is Autumn. Days getting shorter and chillier, flip flop season over, and the looming threat of depressing holidays.... never quite got what there is to love about this time of year. I worship hot tea and cozy scarves as much as the next person, but living in San Francisco, they are a year-round thing.

Here's what's not depressing: walking to the farmers market, buying fresh, local, organic veggies and seasonal heirloom beans, and cooking up a big ol' vat of hot, nutritious soup.

My favorite things about soup:

1. You can eat it out of a bowl.
2. It lasts for days on the stovetop.
3. It's pretty hard to fuck up.
4. It reminds me of one of my favorite children's books, The Maggie B. (About a girl and her little brother who live on a boat and have their own garden, toucan and everything else they could possibly need. When I was growing up, I used to pretend that my trundle bed was the Maggie B. and refuse to get out of it.)

Today I went to the San Rafael farmers market with Bria, Joseph and Anna and got the ingredients for minestrone soup. Here's a really basic, pretty-much-made-up recipe that I want to share. You can, of course, substitute anything you want for these things.

Directions and Ingredients:

• Sauté fresh red onion bulbs, chopped really fine, in EVOO until they're clear.
• Add minced garlic and a jalapeno for about another 30 seconds.
• Add chopped carrots and potatoes.
• Add chopped plum tomatoes.
• Add some spices. I used salt, thyme and basil.
• A can of crushed tomatoes (or you can use whole tomatoes and crush them).
• A whole lotta stock. I used beef-flavored Better Than Bouillon dissolved in boiling water. You can also get fresh stock, make your own stock or just use regular bouillon.
• Fresh-shelled cranberry beans. These are in season (at least in California) right now and are a specialty heirloom bean. Much more nutritive value than canned beans. And you're supporting your local farmer!
• Boil it, then turn it down and let it simmer for a long time. Like, maybe an hour.
• At some point during this time, add chopped zucchini and small pieces of kale.
• At the very end, sauté some beef sausage and add it to the soup.

My mom is a chef, so she is probably cringing reading my hack directions. Judith, feel free to chime in here and correct me!

One of my favorite books when I was little - and one of the only ones I've hung onto all these years - is a little gem called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I hold a special place in my heart for this fictional little boy who always gets the short end of the stick and has a very bad attitude about it.


I had a day like this yesterday. Here's how it went:

1. Woke up at 10:30, groggy and out of it after 11 hours of sleep. Not being a morning person, I don't hop out of bed cheerfully. The very first thing that happened: I noticed that my beloved pea plant has been infested by nasty little spider mites. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
2. Unfortunately, I had a lunch date scheduled with my good friend Tom at 11:00. I grouchily threw on some clothes and ran downstairs to meet him.
3. While Tom and I were having lunch, someone smashed into his brand new BWM and ripped half the bumper off. We were sitting in plain sight of the car, but somehow didn't hear or see it.
4. While we were trying to sort this out, street cleaning hours kicked in, and the meter maid came along and argued with us for a while about how we "had to move the car PDQ" even though we couldn't, technically, drive it.
5. After I left Tom, I walked home up Divisadero and stopped to buy some spider mite spray at the plant store. While I was paying for it, another accident happened right outside. What is up with my juju?
6. Found out that Alex has to get a visa to travel to Europe. We're leaving in 21 days. It takes 21 days, at least, to get a visa. Grr.
7. Went to Tom's yoga class at Aha. That was actually great.
8. Was supposed to have a dinner party at our place. Laszlo cancelled last minute, and David fell off Alex's bike and hurt his knee. Instead, I got a glass of wine with Bria and Tom on Union Street. Come to think of it, that was pretty great too.
9. Met up with Alex, David and Pete at Elite Café. Ordered a salad. Everyone else's dinner was better than mine. Ate off all their plates.
10. Watched the second-to-last episode of Mad Men on Netflix. Already going into withdrawal panic.

I think I'll move to Australia New Orleans.