Tag Archives: family

23andme, Myself and I

July 28, 2014 Theresa Dee 2 Comments

I’m a really information-driven person. I commonly get lost on Wikipedia rabbit-holes, feel unhappy if I’m not learning something new every day, and was one of those kids that sometimes enjoyed school. So, of course, when I heard about a way to learn more about your own genes from the comfort of your laptop, I was so there.

In late November, I signed up for 23andme, a service that analyzes your DNA and gives you shiny, color-coded information on your ancestry and health. But if you were paying attention to the news last fall, you already know where this is going—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked that 23andme “stop returning health results to new customers until [they] completed the agency’s regulatory review process.” So, that spring, when I got an email from 23andme saying my results were ready, I had already come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be getting everything I supposedly paid for.

Side note: Yes, it took over 6 months for me to get my results. There was a huge influx of participants right as I signed up, so I’m hoping that’s what took so long. I signed up for 23andme a few days after they made their decision to comply with the FDA’s request but, obviously, before I had heard about the change. This problem might have been avoided if I had read through the website before handing them my money. Sad trombone.

I imagine the ancestry results—I am “18% United Kingdom” and “78% other European”—could be really useful. And getting to know how much Neanderthal genes you have in you might make for good conversation…? I guess…? But, as a chronically ill person, I was 99.99% interested in the health results 23andme supposedly offered. Ever since being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2007, I’ve read and re-read Wikipedia’s article and every news release I see. I should probably just set up a Google Alert for every diagnosis I have to automate the process. One thing I learned is that the highest risk factor for autoimmune disorders is, unfortunately, already having an autoimmune disorder. So I was hoping, among other things, that my 23andme results might shed light on what other disorders I might be at risk for, as well as cancers and medications to which I might be sensitive, etc. I was really open to whatever information they might offer!

If you order 23andme now, your health information will be delivered in the form of SNPs. These basically don’t mean anything unless you’re a certified genetic counselor. I discovered that I could import my 23andme results to a third party, Promethease, who then (for the low price of $5) gave me the information I thought I’d get through 23andme—and then some. What is really cool about Promethease is that, while your and everyone else’s information is up in their cloud, their SNPedia (a kind of Wikipedia for those SNPs) is constantly being updated, so your results should reflect whatever latest information is up on the SNPedia.

I say “should” because, as my genetic counselor was nice enough to point out, SNPedia is editable by anyone with a computer. Yes, after giving my 23andme results to Promethease, I then sent those results to someone else—a genetic counselor! My genetic counselor showed my Promethease interpretation of my 23andme results to someone with an M.D. in Genes (I don’t know, y’all, I haven’t taken a science class in like seven years). Because I looked at the Promethease results and realized I have no idea what I am doing. These genes literally just say the results of the one study to which they’re referring.

So, for example, I had one SNP that said, “Most people with this SNP have blue eyes” and one that said, “Most people with this SNP have brown eyes.” Well, both my eyes are the same color, and they’re not blue—but my mother’s are. So, this indicates (if my seventh grade biology is correct) that I have both genes, and that any children (LOL NOPE) I have might have blue eyes! And according to the genetic counselor I spoke with, it’s even more complicated than Punnett squares taught us: there are thousands of eye colors, because there are more than just two genes associated with eye color. So if you wanted to use genetic therapy to make sure your kids have a certain eye color, well, a) what science fiction novel are you in, and b) it may not work that well!

And that’s just eye color. I had four SNPs—that I saw—that related to rheumatoid arthritis. Two said I was less likely to get it, two said I was more likely to get it. Ha! I also had an SNP that said I may be less susceptible to caffeine, an SNP that said that alcohol is three times more toxic to my liver (but that something like 40% of the population may have this gene?), and another that said I’m sensitive to a blood-pressure medication my grandmother used to take. I always thought I had a low caffeine and alcohol tolerance, and I hopefully won’t have a chance to test my sensitivity to Wayferin anytime soon.

I think synthetic biologist Terry Johnson (quoted by Newitz at io9) encapsulated this problem well:

I worry most about the popularization of the idea that when a genetic variation is correlated with something, it is the “gene for” that something. The language suggests that “this gene causes heart disease”, when the reality is usually, “people that have this allele seem to have a slightly higher incidence of heart disease, but we don’t know why, and maybe there are compensating advantages to this allele that we didn’t notice because we weren’t looking for them”.

So basically: there are a lot of different genes doing a lot of different things, and so far we haven’t, mostly, isolated what does what enough for it to be terribly useful.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT BREAST CANCER GENE,” I perhaps shouted into the phone while speaking with my genetics counselor. Well, she said that, a) I don’t have the BRCA genes, and b) most of these SNPS involve increased risk. Increased from what? Well, you would have to figure out a couple major things to figure out your baseline risk: detailed family history and environmental factors. So, for example, I had a 30% increased risk of multiple sclerosis. If my baseline risk with no family history or environmental factors was 1, my new risk would be 1.3. Not that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, especially considering that we now that some lifestyle factors that decrease the risks of certain diseases. If anything, detailed family history—including what kind of medication family members used, the type of heart attack, when a disease originated, etc.—is just as, if not more, useful to your general practitioner when talking about your risk for health problems.

It was also pointed out to me that a) doctors can do these tests too, when you’re trying out new medications! and b) doctors can do these tests too, when you’re thinking of having a baby! It makes sense to me, logically, that family history would be super important—I saw a lot of health issues in my Promethease report that don’t appear in my family history, so I should probably be more worried about the things that do run in my family, like heart disease, strokes, and skin cancer.

In the end, I didn’t really get the answers I wanted—and according to every doctor I talked to, there aren’t really any answers to be had. I was hoping for a print-out of my genetic destiny, but instead a digital run-around and a barrage of uninformative scientific information happened instead. I did learn about the importance of family medical history, some stuff about genetics I’ll probably forget sooner or later, and that if I ever need blood thinners I should mention this to my doctor. For someone incredibly data driven, learning the real reason I began to love Brussels sprouts and that I might be genetically predisposed to be less socially empathetic than others (…okay, then), I still had a really good time.

So tell me, curious readers: Have you patronized something like 23andme? What did you learn about yourself? And how did you feel about the results?

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Food

Picky Eating and Overcoming the Fear of Fine Dining

July 23, 2014 Chuong Nguyen Leave a comment

I’ve been a picky eater ever since I can remember. I don’t like vegetables or most fruit. I generally don’t like green foods. I absolutely hate the fibrous crunch of lettuce, celery, broccoli—you name it. Going out to eat in my high school years with friends was basically me ordering a dish, picking off 50% of the contents, and eating what little remained, unless I was fortunate enough to find the one dish that wasn’t covered in a salad and coleslaw. So how did I fall in love with food? It seems unlikely, considering that I entirely hate a major food group.

My family went on vacation the summer after my sophomore year, and my mom desperately wanted to eat at this restaurant she’d seen reviews for. It was her birthday, and I was dragged along, slightly against my will. What was wrong with just going to the Outback for another Bloomin’ Onion and some of their ridiculously portioned cheesecake slices? What about their awesome dark brown bread they served with a huge knife running through it?

I didn’t know it, but I was about to lose my footing. Birthday dinners would never be the same for me.

I swooned after one bite of something utterly and impossibly amazing. One little piece of steak. It looked so sad on this large white plate, all by itself. I pitied it, put it on my fork, and put it in my mouth. What I tasted was this juicy, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth slice of heaven. Just barely crispy on the edges, but succulent all the way through, it teased every sense out of my feeble teenager mouth. It was heavenly, and suddenly Outback seemed boring, for peasants only. I was awestruck that something so small could pack such a punch, bring up so many wonderful food-related feelings. When the time came to order dessert, I decided to be adventurous and ordered something with fresh fruit. A raspberry “napoleon”: chantilly cream layered with fresh berries with crispy pastry tuilles in between. The order shocked my parents. I astounded them again when I ate bite after bite of my dessert (previously, I’d only been interested in artificial fruit flavors).

From then on, there was a small obsession with finding a perfect bite to meet that piece of meat. Now that my parents were not as worried about me finding something to eat on any given menu, we tried new restaurants. I was enjoying new flavors, but I kept running into all of these pesky vegetables. They were on every entrée, present as a garnish on every appetizer. Sometimes, they even made it to dessert, which disgusted and horrified me. About a year after the best piece of steak ever, my mom grew tired with me leaving half the plate behind. She told me, “Finish your plate or you can pay for your share of the food,”—and with those prices, I was horrified. When a dish was a solid week’s worth of earnings at my then-shitty-semi-retail job, avoiding the vegetables was clearly not worth it when I wanted to go to Disneyland over Spring Break.

So I put the piece of asparagus in my mouth, chewed briefly, and swallowed. And it wasn’t love. It was still mild disgust, but the idea of paying for something and not eating it (at least at a high price point) started to gall me. Bite after bite, frown after frown, the vegetables went away and the plate was empty. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it wasn’t something I’d choose to do on an everyday basis. My family found it entertaining, that I would break such a hard-and-fast eating rule for a fancy meal.

I’d like to say that day changed something in me, but it didn’t. I still don’t like greens, though I’ve compromised and started to enjoy some fresh fruit more often. The love of food, great food made with immense care, pushes me to keep trying new and exciting things. So I keep trying different restaurants with exotic menus and preparations. And I’ll have you know, I recently ate a large slice of cucumber with eggplant relish and didn’t throw a tantrum (or throw up).

Photo by Sara Slattery

Brainfood

We Don’t Know Social Media Etiquette

July 18, 2014 Michael Cox Leave a comment

When was the last time you saw one of those clickbait-y Facebook posts and thought “I NEED TO REPOST THIS RIGHT MEOW”? Did you immediately hit “Like” and “Share” it to your (dozens? hundreds?) of followers? Did you stop to think about the content of that post? Did you even read it all the way to the bottom?

Maybe you’re a conscientious user who always checks the facts before responding. Good for you! Maybe you’re like my fiancée, and you get around to Snopes-ing that Kony 2012 rage two hours after you already retweeted it. But think about all of the Friends on your list, all of the Tweeps that you follow, and all of your #Instagrammers (including that guy) and apply this logic to them. It’s no wonder that all grandma’s chain emails from the 90s are making a comeback…

One of the major problems with social media is that people don’t feel responsible for fact-checking what they see. They submit to the greater powers of The Internet and Share away. When it’s things like “Look at this cat in a shark costume riding a roomba while chasing a duck” or “You won’t believe how this army buddy changed his friend’s life,” Sharing because of the emotional response (either joy or awe) that a post gives you can be a great way to spread that joy even further. Hey, you might even spread a smile to a friend who is having an awful day at work and just needs some loveable fuzziness in his life right now.

I love the kitten reposts just as much as the next guy. But I want to shine a spotlight on the unending onslought of ignorance and rage that stems from people reposting “articles” without reading through them to the bottom and thinking critically about these issues. Critically engaging with an article on social media is perhaps a misappropriation of the platform, but bear with me for a moment. I suppose when you share an adorable image (for instance, this one), you’re engaging with it in such a way that Sharing is natural. It makes you happy, you don’t have to engage with it on a deep intellectual level, and you want other people to feel that. *click* Shared.

Articles, especially on Facebook, are treated the same way as images. You get a popout image in your News Feed, and you get a little blurb that goes with it. It gives you all these feels. *click* Shared. But there’s the problem. The article, which needs to be engaged with on a different level than memes was just given the same *feels* > *comment* > *click* > Shared brain process. But everyone loses when people read the thumbnail and share without thinking. The reason that lies and slander get reposted again and again isn’t because people are trying to make things worse. I propose an amendment to Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,” or in this case, laziness.

Oh, and just in case you don’t believe that people don’t read what they repost… I’ll just leave this here.

Author’s Note: A couple days after writing this article, this BuzzFeed post came across my News Feed. Case in point.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Relationships

Temporarily Losing my Engagement Ring

June 25, 2014 Lily Henderson Leave a comment

So here I am, sobbing in the airport. I hate this for many reasons. See, I’ve just realized that I am not wearing my engagement ring, and I must have run out the door of my hotel room without it. My perfect, vintage, sapphire ring was gone. The one that I picked out with my partner to mark the moment when we decided to throw caution to the wind and get hitched despite a murky and unpredictable future. The ring that followed us through three cross-country moves, two years of long distance, multiple new homes.

I’m trying as hard as I can to stop the flow of tears, because not only am I distraught that I could be so careless as to lose this unbelievably important symbol in my life, I am angry at how frantic I look to strangers. How they can see I’m falling apart, how they will judge this enormous character flaw, and how I am the dumb girl who lost something so important.

Sitting in the bathroom, holding my breath so that other people can’t hear my crying, I give myself a silent pep talk. “Come on, Lily. Get your shit together. There are things you need to do before you get on that plane to increase your chances of finding that ring.” I squeeze my fists tightly and take three deep breaths, using my anger to push down the sadness and regret and dizzying irresponsibility so I can call the hotel.

I was passed from staff member to staff member, as the hotel struggled to help me deal with the situation. My voice cracks and theirs soften. “Oh honey, where were you in the hotel? Where can we check for you?” I am so thankful for their kindness, and so embarrassed at my carelessness. I call my roommate from the conference, and ask her to check around the room, see if she sees the glint of metal. I am angry for inconveniencing her this morning. She comforts me, “We’ll find it.” I call the cab driver who took me to the airport—nothing. I call and call and call, no result after no result. I am shaking, my eyes are rimmed with tears, my voice is far from steady, and I feel like people are watching me. Watching me fall apart.

I call my mom and she gives me suggestions for where else to look and how to calm down. She is so zen in situations like this. She suggests sitting and breathing because, now that I’m past security, there isn’t much else for me to do but wait to see if any one of my taskforce will find it.

On the plane, I am thankfully seated in a row by myself, and now that I am not allowed to make any calls, the weight starts to really sink in and I totally lose control. Because it’s a short flight, I don’t have to interact with flight attendants or other passengers, so I completely lose my composure and just cry and cry and cry, wishing that I had been more careful, angry that I had to inconvenience so many people, upset because I am never this way.

I reach into my pocket for a tissue—and there it is. In my pocket! Who is this crazy person, who not only could lose it in the first place, but the usually cool-headed Lily Henderson could forget to check her own pocket?! We land and I call the hotel to let them know that I’ve found it, and am hit with a warm wave of relief and joy as it comes through the phone. I was completely unprepared for these strangers to react with such kindness—not only at the ring being lost, but to celebrate with me once it was found. Humanity is inspiring, folks. The same thing happens when I text my conference roommate—pure joy that the dilemma is solved. I don’t know what I was expecting—contempt, maybe? But it turns out that everyone I asked not only took time to help me, but continued to show compassion once my situation had been righted. Even though they all had better things to do.

For me, this was an exhausting but effective lesson in human kindness and in letting myself off the hook. I am a known perfectionist and have an extremely hard time asking for help because I don’t want to inconvenience people, and I don’t want to look like I don’t care. What an enlightening situation where I not only was forced to ask for help fixing my mistake, but I also found that even when I was totally inconveniencing others and making a fool out of myself, both my friends and strangers took care of me in ways that I didn’t even know I needed. And in the end, everything worked out.

This made me really reconsider how I structure my thinking around mistakes. When I do something utterly stupid (and everyone does, right? Right?), what if I have the opportunity to choose between digging myself into a shame spiral of regret and anger while furiously fixing the problem alone, or reaching out to a caring community? Why would I ever pick the first? Yes, I risk being seen as dumb, but isn’t it better to be seen as human and then able to see other people’s love?

So, thank you, universe, for the strange, painful, effective and ultimately low-risk opportunity to learn about letting yourself be seen. Because there are people who might surprise you with their kindness, and I don’t want to miss out on knowing them.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Relationships

The Impending 2nd Anniversary of my 10th Birthday (and Other Concerns)

June 20, 2014 Liz Kerin 3 Comments

My parents got married when they were twenty-two years young. Growing up, for whatever reason, I always knew this to be a fact and I was never informed that twenty-two is actually considered to be on the young side of marriageability. They spoke fondly and often about their blissful road trip out to California and the exciting early days of their careers, both of them riding the tech wave raging across the Silicon Valley to lucrative careers before they hit the big 3-0. To me, twenty-two was the age at which you officially became an adult and were expected to have it together. That’s the way it was for them, so that’s how it was supposed to be. So, when my twenty-second birthday rolled around a few years ago and I found myself newly graduated with absolutely zero job prospects, painfully single, and totally clueless as to how I could possibly ever have “it all”… well, needless to say, I got my quarter-life crisis out of the way early, like a kid who was forced to get chicken pox before starting Kindergarten. But then I got over it. Because I was twenty-two.

I got a dog. And a job. I moved to a new city. I met nice boys. Things have been a-okay. But just when I thought it was safe, just as I’m getting comfortable with where I’m at in life, another milestone on the horizon is ominously creeping into view: my 30th birthday.

Here’s what flips me out about thirty—similar to what flipped me out about twenty-two. It’s this idea that, as I approach that number, I’m supposed to feel differently. I’m supposed to, therefore, do things differently. I’m supposed to approach things with an empowered sense of maturity. But I expect, just like my twenty-second birthday, my thirtieth won’t really usher in any new revelations. But there is one difference between my impending thirtieth birthday and my twenty-second; by the time you’re thirty, you pretty much know whether or not you want to have kids. Right now, I have no idea. And I don’t know what’s going to change (if anything) over the next three years.

My mom was thirty when I was born. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances close to my age with children. I don’t know how I feel about the prospect of having my own kids, but I do know that I’m probably supposed to know by the time I’m thirty.

Sometimes I think that I can’t possibly be the only female in her mid-to-late twenties who has these conflicting emotions about motherhood. But lately I’ve been getting sidelong glances when I broach the subject with my family members and like-minded lady friends. “Oh, you still aren’t sure? If you don’t know by now that you for-sure want to have kids, you probably won’t ever know. I mean, we’re gonna be thirty soon.”

The worst, though, is this exchange:

“I don’t know—maybe I’ll decide in a couple years that I’m just not cut out for the baby-making thing.”

“Awww, I’m so sorry!”

As if I just lost my phone to a tragic back-pocket-toilet-plunkage incident.

Whatever that biological tick-tock is supposed to sound like… I just don’t hear it. And to be honest, it kind of thrills me just as much as it deeply concerns me. It concerns me because I often worry that I’m going to shoot myself in the foot and wait too long if I’m holding out for a very specific emotional impulse (that may or may not even exist—who knows). More than one aunt of mine on more than one occasion has not-so-jokingly suggested that I look into freezing my eggs. But on the flipside, it thrills me because I haven’t tethered my entire future to this impending event. Some recent psychological studies have shown that a lot of women spaz in their late-twenties / early-thirties over their dating prospects and career potential because they are racing against time—against their biological clocks. As in, “Okay, so I’m twenty-six now. I want to have my first child when I’m thirty-one. That means I only have three to five years to meet a solid partner, get the career I want off the ground, save enough cash, buy a house, have a wedding, and SAVE ME I’M DROWNING, BRING ME MY WINE.” But I haven’t enforced that type of expiration date for myself, and to say that that’s liberating would be the understatement of the century. But as my thirtieth looms, I’m terrified that one day I’m going to wake up in the morning and find my entire brain has been rewired, that I will become the kind of woman I fear becoming the most—a woman with a shelf life.

Recently, I voiced these concerns to a few close family members of mine to very unexpected results. The shifty eye-contact, that forcibly gentle tone of voice used to point out to me that children are “who we build our futures for” and the blatant “you’ll get over it in a couple years” were all heartbreaking to me. I wanted them to understand, especially my female family members, that this is a source of serious inner conflict for me. I wanted them to comfort me, to tell me that it would be 100% okay if I decided not to duplicate my DNA to create future generations of freckle-faced perpetually sunburned kids with two left feet and terrible sinuses. I wanted them to hug me and tell me how badass my career would be and how jealous they would be of all the insane traveling I would get to do. Instead, my words fell to the uneasy clink of forks against plates as I broached what I realize now was a painfully uncomfortable topic for them. They all had kids in their early thirties. They had those kids because they wanted them, of course—but twenty-five years (or more) ago, they might have wanted them because they were told that they were supposed to want them. I was questioning that. Apparently, you don’t do that.

But here I am. I’m questioning it and I’m writing about it and I’m putting it on the internet. I’m not an evil barren ice queen with a heart of steel (quite the opposite—I’ve been told I’m more of an Anna than an Elsa, generally speaking). It’s just that I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this subject when the clock strikes twelve on my thirtieth birthday. I don’t know if there’s a magical switch in my brain that some mysterious force will pull between now and then. I don’t know if I’m going to start reacting to babies in strollers the same way I react to Corgis wearing raincoats. I don’t know if my relationship with some yet-unknown potential family member is going to dictate all of my decision making for the next five to ten years of my life.

But even though everything I’ve said so far essentially contradicts this—right now, I’m actually pretty okay with not knowing. And I hope that that’s okay. I’ll get back to you in a couple years or so.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Travel

127 Hours (and then some)

May 19, 2014 Kyle Martirez-McIntosh Leave a comment

At some point, everyone takes a road trip. Sometimes, it’ll be something indulgent and last minute, like the time I got dragged to Vegas on two hours notice and had to sleep in the lobby once we got there, while my friend was in our hotel room with a hooker on Easter morning. Or it’ll be poorly planned, like last Valentine’s Day when a drive up the coast ended pulled over and huddled in a tent during a 40-degree rainstorm. But I think, to truly qualify as a “road trip story,” the story has to focus on what happens on the road rather than at the ultimate destination. In that case, there’s only one road trip story I know.

In the winter of 2009, I was preparing to move from New York to Los Angeles after landing my first job out of college. As with any entry-level job, the pay wasn’t very much, nor did it come with any relocation money. Seeing the predicament I was in, my dad came to me with an idea: road trip. He offered to rent an SUV and drive me across the country for some family bonding with him and my sister as I moved to LA for the then-foreseeable future.

The plan didn’t exactly thrill me. But, understanding my reaction requires a little background on where I come from: my parents have lived in different cities since I was five, making me very independent; I don’t like tight spaces, particularly with company; and I don’t talk to my family that much. Add in the fact that my dad scheduled enough stops to stretch the drive to nine days, and clearly this trip went against every survival instinct I have.

Going into the trip with a relatively fatalistic attitude, I figured my one chance at maintaining sanity would be to document the entire experience on video. What initially seemed like a fun way to kill time in the car and keep my friends abreast of my progress soon devolved into my dad nicknaming himself “YOM” (an acronym meaning “Your Old Man”) and my sister commandeering the camera to give shout-outs to my ex-girlfriends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzCqWX0qUho

Things degraded further when we passed through Columbia, Missouri, home to my father’s alma mater, where he serenaded greater Missouri with his college fight song. A jaunt through Frat Row brought the introduction of the term “wench’s lost and found” turning the trip into Norman Rockwell’s worst nightmare set against the plot structure of Heart of Darkness.

Another unforeseen complication of sharing the car with my dad and a girl seven years my junior, was music choice. My dad had settled into the typical middle-aged obsession with John Mellencamp, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel (because the minute you hit fifty, those artists somehow become palatable), while Rachel would routinely snap on a pair of headphones and belt out top 40 hits in the backseat.

Agreeing on what to listen to is one of those things that starts out as a minor quibble, but after five days of listening to the same CDs on repeat (our rental car didn’t have an iPod dock) I was not-so-secretly considering stabbing my own eardrums to avoid hearing “Jack and Diane” for the 753^rd time.

While much of the road trip was obviously spent, well, on the road, we interspersed a few visits to family across the country. An additional oddity of my family is how well everyone gets along. On the surface, that sounds like a banal statement, but when you consider that my parents have each been married three times, and literally everyone gets along, the strangeness comes to the fore. In Chicago, we stayed with the sister of my dad’s third wife; in St. Louis, with the parents of my mother (my dad’s first wife); in Kansas City, with my aunt; and closed the trip by having a guys’ weekend in Vegas with me, my dad, and my mom’s third husband. Throw in the fact that my dad gleefully recounted the story of my birth before an audience, and my seven years in therapy starts to make a lot more sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZPrJo0IhY

Even though we had planned out some of our pit stops ahead of time, the first night of the trip proved just how little forethought had gone into the rest of the drive. We pulled into State College, PA, home of Penn State, during a blizzard, the day before winter graduation and on the same weekend as the statewide high school wrestling finals. In short, we couldn’t find a hotel room to save our lives. Little did I know this would become a recurring theme for the rest of the drive.

Later, at the halfway point of the trip, we ran out of gas because my dad ignored the low fuel warning. And we had the same problem again in a particularly desolate stretch of Utah where there isn’t a gas station or cell service for over 100 miles… In both instances, we had to depend on our hitchhiking abilities to get us to and from the nearest town with a can of fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWgRUh8LmjA

After the Utah incident, the trip got a lot smoother, thanks to the milder winters out west. By January of 2010, I was settled into a new apartment in Los Angeles, downright blissful in the belief that I’d never have to take on such a daunting move again, not realizing realize that I’d bounce between coasts again in 2011, 2012 and 2013, taking on the drive by myself each time.

And while driving cross-country by myself didn’t produce as many stories, at least I got to pick the music.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

Let’s Ask: What Does it Mean to “Make It”?

February 27, 2014 Let's Ask 1 Comment

Three UE writers, Sally, Jessica, and Emma, sat down to discuss what it means to “make it.” They were joined by Sally’s mom, Anne, who shared her perspective. They have asked that their names be changed for honesty.

Anne: I chose to take time off to raise my kids because I figured you can always get a career, but you can’t get kids’ lives back.

Jessica: Yeah, totally.

Anne: So I chose to do that and everybody said it was a mistake. And when I tried to go back to work, everybody wanted me to start all over again. They think if you take the time off to raise your family, you sit at home and lie on the couch.

Jessica: Obviously.

Sally: And you’ll forget everything.

Anne: I don’t know anybody who’s ever raised kids that has laid on a couch.

Everybody laughs.

Emma: Do you think that’s changing?

Anne: I honestly don’t know. I have a different perspective about people and their families now. It’s not necessarily a positive one. But I said, “Well, if I’m gonna start all over again, it sure as hell isn’t gonna be for some corporate asshole.”

Everybody laughs.

Anne: It’s gonna be for me. So that’s what I did.

Jessica: That’ll be the tagline.

Anne: I think it’s probably easier to go back at the same level. But, in my day, most people didn’t come back—they just never came back. They had their kids and they didn’t come back. But if you had any kind of position or potential, it was like by choosing to stop you’re kind of shortcutting yourself. It was very hard to get ahead and I was at the point where people said, “Well, you know, you have a lot of opportunities—you’re gonna have a lot of opportunity, you’re gonna go really go far,” and I was “throwing it all away.”

Emma: But it’s just so fascinating that in the generation before you, every woman who was working was basically hearing, “You’re a terrible mom,” or “How dare you work and screw up your family.”

Anne: Well, my mom raised seven kids and she never worked. I mean, that’s what you did.

Jessica: But that’s how that perception has changed. Now: if you do work, you’re a bad mom; if you don’t work, you’re a bad mom. How do you make that choice?

Emma: You find the balance that works for you and your family. Turning perceptions into expectations makes for a lot more bad than good. Following your instincts is way better than societal pressures.

Jessica: I think it all comes down to “self-worth.” I know far too many twenty-somethings, myself included, that tied—or are still tying—all their self-worth to their jobs.

Sally: I remember one of my co-workers telling me that when I first walked into my last job, I was my “best self” that I had this confident “sass.” But the pressures of trying to be perfect took that all away, and he said, “It was just so sad to see how your confidence completely diminished and to watch you second guess every single thing you did.” Because, by the end, I was so unhappy and I needed validation and approval every step of the way. And even though that’s in the past now, I still feel like I’m trying to find my own self-motivation and self-confidence.

Jessica: And when it’s what you’re used to—when it’s where you’ve found your value—that’s a very hard thing to do.

Sally: Yeah, when I left, he told me again, “You cannot tie all of your self-worth to your success at your job.”

Jessica: I did that for a very long time, you watched me do it.

Sally: Everybody does it.

Jessica: Not everybody.

Sally: A lot of people do it. People who confuse drive and ambition and trying to play the game.

Jessica: People do it in different ways. Some people do it to their jobs, some people do it to their relationships, some people do it to their families: it depends.

Sally: Well it all goes back to perfectionism—trying to change yourself to fit that perfect ideal.

Jessica: You’ve got the craziest role model here though. (Nodding towards Anne.) She quit, walked away from her career and raised your family.

Sally: Yeah.

Emma: And then was like, “I’m gonna come back and start my own business.”

Jessica: My mom left her career because she hated it but she’s never been able to forgive herself for not finding a way to like it—or find another job that made her happy. So she’s always felt like she did something wrong because she never found a way to be happy and earn money. I remember, growing up, she didn’t want to be called a stay-at-home mom. But she was an awesome stay-at-home mom, and a writer, and it’s just that she saw that as a failing instead of seeing it as this really cool thing she got to do.

Emma: Yeah, like she needed to both work and be a mom. To be only one is—

Jessica: —To fail. I think that was because it wasn’t an active choice she made, like she didn’t actively choose to be a stay-at-home mom. Rather it was a reaction to being so miserable in her career.

Emma: But that reaction is still a choice.

Jessica: Exactly. “I’m miserable and I’m choosing to do this so I won’t be miserable anymore.” And let’s be honest, life is just as much about our successes as it is about our failures. And how we react to those failures is probably even more important than how we react to success.

Emma: Amen.

Jessica: “Bravery isn’t a lack of fear, it’s doing something despite your fear”… That’s a quote I stole from UE writer, Lily Henderson. But, the first and only time I ever quit a job, it was one of the most terrifying and painful things I’d ever done. And, from the outside, it looked really brave, but from my perspective, it was fucking terrible. But once I realized that the world didn’t end, it was like, oh…

Sally: It’s all about how you define success. I mean it’s interesting because you compare and contrast: I have a friend who’s getting promoted at age 23 and I have other friends who are like 30.

Emma: But what are you measuring?

Jessica: What is happiness? And is it defined by age? Because I feel like that marking system goes back to this idea that you are only “making it” if you have a successful career. I had a very successful career at 23 but I was really unhappy. I thought I had “made it” but all I had was my career. If you don’t have anything else, or the time to find anything else, it won’t ever fill that void.

Sally: That’s the thing I’ve had to learn, to try and really let go of this idea that it’s not a race. It doesn’t matter. And that I don’t really know what I want to do and it’s all about trying to learn.

Jessica: I look at my life, I used to be able to go into rooms and be like, “I do this,” and people would be like, “Oh shit, I want talk to you, I want you to help me get me a job like that.” Now, people are like, “Wait, what do you do?” And it’s not that it comes from a place of judgement, but it’s confusion, because I have an unconventional, “un-famous” job now. But it’s the perfect job for me right now. Because even though it’s only tangentially related to my “career,” I’m way happier as a person, way happier in all the elements. So it’s that balance, those choices. But the point that I was gonna go back and make right after you were talking about how miserable you were at your job, was that we all sat around and told you this, and people sat around and told me this when I was unhappy, but—

Sally: It doesn’t matter until you realize it yourself.

Jessica: Yeah, you can’t learn that lesson until you learn it yourself.

Sally: I would hear it and I would understand it logically, but I still couldn’t emotionally accept it. You have to get to that part. And that can be very hard.

Jessica: Absolutely.

Sally: I remember when I got coffee with a friend and he was like, “Hey how are you?” I was like, “Oh I’m really great.” And he’s like, “How’s the new job? Wait! No I didn’t want that to be my first question!” The whole point was we were gonna meet for coffee and be friends and not talk about work. You’re changing your identity and who you are—as you see you and as others see you. I’m trying not to be defined by my work anymore. And it’s hard.

Jessica: So hard. That’s a huge shift. I had to leave this city and come back to do that. But I’m so glad I did.

Photo by Michael Cox

Relationships

The Grand in Grandmother

February 14, 2014 Mak Akhtar 1 Comment

Photo by Mak Akhtar

All my grandparents have now come full circle; my beloved Nani Amma, the greatest love of my life, has been laid to rest next to my darling Daddy, just like my Dada and Dadi.

I haven’t even been able to process life without her yet—she was my mother always and my father when he was away for 11 years. Though I still can’t really wrap my head around it, not being able to see her the moment I walk into my uncle’s home sitting there reading a newspaper, I’ve been eulogizing her in my head all week, and need a place to spill my thoughts so please bear with me. I don’t have much to give back to her, but I know I can write, so here goes nothing.

My nani was a true inspiration. She got her Masters in Education from Claremont University on a Fulbright scholarship program after having four children in the 60s. She pulled a woman out of a vicious domestic violence cycle and opened up her home to her permanently. She feared nothing—Nani scared away a thief from her home once before he could harm anyone. She ran after countless lizards and cockroaches with a shoe in one hand and the hem of her saari in another, for my mother and I (respectively) because we are terrified of them (Lord knows I missed her when I encountered one this morning).

Nani spent an hour styling her sassy self up every day; never a hair out of place with that 50s scrunched up front look, her saari always tied perfectly and her fabulous gold bangles on her wrists, which she would always insist you take if you complimented them. She would’ve done the exact same thing—dolled herself up—had she woken from her afternoon nap last Wednesday.

Nothing was more important to her than her family and she served us all 100%—especially me, her littlest grandchild and her biggest pain in the ass. She slept in my room for years while my father was away, traveled to our house daily to protect and tend to all my needs. She picked and dropped me off at school, and all that other mundane stuff with utmost joy… but most importantly: she fed me. She bought me a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts every week for breakfast in hopes of making me gain weight (mind you, I’m 26 and under 100lbs)—something she tried to accomplish for a whopping 25 years of my life. She wouldn’t even let me fast during Ramadan because she thought I’d lose more weight (but then again she also claimed she prayed some prayer that makes her exempt from prayer for the rest of her life, oh Nani). She hand fed me my whole life (literally FOUGHT with me over my plate, insisting that I be fed), even earlier this year when I visited her and her hands were shaky—she fed me parathas for breakfast, which I can no longer eat without tearing up at the thought of it. I’m on a mission to learn to make best aalloo (potato) parathas of all time.

She was nearly my middle school principal because of her incredible dedication to education, plus she was my school’s owner’s neighbor. Thank God she rejected the offer, or I’d be getting called out about what the hell I ate for breakfast every morning in front of the whole school on the mic.

If you’ve met her, you must know of her deep love of dessert and Indian soap operas—my own favorite was Kyunke Saas Bhee Kabhi Bahu Thee (“Because once the mother-in-law was a daughter-in-law, too”). I’ll never forget our consistent bickering over her second ginormous bowl of ice cream (literally had to PULL it from her hands) and my lack thereof, hidden chocolate in her room (which her nurses would get yelled at for if we caught her in the act on both ends, by us for letting her eat them, by her for letting her get caught—she was diabetic) and whether she could watch her daily dramas or I could watch the Grammy’s. Nor will I never forget her utter bluntness and no tolerance for B.S. She once explained the literal meaning of the word ‘bastard’ to me in the context of an Indian soap opera. She would try to convince me to marry my second cousins because she believed ‘a known devil is better than an unknown devil.’ When she would see male friends of mine she thought were cute, she made it very clear she was checking them out for me (much like the grandmother in Mulan); with her eyes wide and excited she would greet them ‘Ohh hello, come in and sit with me and tell me what you’re doing with your life (so that I can see whether you’re worthy of my scrawny little runt!)’. And I would tell her, “If you like him, YOU marry him!” and she would laugh that silly cackle laugh of hers that still rings in my ears.

Her best catchprases:

Beta (child), work on your figure development. You need to be ROUNDER in some areas.

Potty ki hai aaj? (Did you poo today?) followed by JHOOT! (LIES!) if I said yes…

Allah ho ghunni! (Oh my God)

Astaghfirrullah! (God forgive me: said anytime anyone did anything disapproving)

Teri chopri torr doongi! (I’m going to break your skull: said lovingly, of course)

Feeeed the cooold!

*ONE single sneeze in any weather* Oh God, you’re sick aren’t you?!

And the all-time favorite…

MEETHAI main kya hai?! (WHAT’S FOR DESSERT?!)

We are so connected that I swear I woke up the second she passed (around 5 am my time) and wondered why I was awake. My meditation that morning was so deep, I have no idea what the hell went on and it went over by 20 mins… ten minutes later, I received the news. I know she was visiting me for the last time to tell me, ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET FAT! WORK ON YOUR “FIGURE DEVELOPMENT!” Ji, nani (Yes, grandma).

My last conversation with her was on Mother’s Day:

Her: ‘Find a boy!!!’

Me: (attempting to escape) ‘Byeee Nani Amma, I loooove youuuu!’

Her: *to the maid giving her a massage who busts up laughing* ‘Every time I mention marriage and men to her she wants to hang up the phone…’

Again, the funniest, wittiest lady I’ve ever known and most anyone who has met her will agree.

I don’t need to even explain how much she was loved by so many people… the ~5000 people that showed up during Friday prayers at the masjid (mosque) to commemorate her did just that.

The last time I was with her, I wanted to test her memory (which she was slowly losing) and showed her a picture of my grandfather. She thought it was Rhett Butler, her favorite actor. When I told her it was actually her husband, she responded, “Oh—I knew that… he’s way better looking than my husband.” Suuure, nani!

I will always regret not taking her to the beach, watching Gone with the Wind (her favorite movie) with her, not being able to discuss her all-time favorite book, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, with her, not calling her enough, and not fulfilling her three dying wishes of seeing me get my Masters, get married or getting fat… but I know she’s left us all in good hands, because she would never have left otherwise. She always finished the job, and finished it with class, wit and the greatest sense of humor an old wise dame could possibly possess. She was as strong, complex, and carefully written a character, if not more than her most favorite ever, Scarlett O’Hara.

I will never feel like this piece does any justice to her because I know I’ll recall something else I forgot to mention because she just left me with a plethora of phenomenal memories. The first song I heard after her passing made me realize why I’ve been starting all my mornings this past month with exactly that track, Colombia by the Local Natives.

[box]The day after I had counted down all of your breaths down until
There were none, were none, were none, were none;
A hummingbird crashed right in front of me and I understood all you did for us.
You gave, and gave, and gave, and gave.

Oh, every night I ask myself
Am I giving enough? [x3]
Am I?

If you never knew how much,
If you never felt all of my love.
I pray now you do, you do, you do, you do.

Oh, every night I ask myself
Am I loving enough? [x3]
Am I? [/box]

Please pray/send her vibes, whatever you believe in, that wherever she is, she is at peace. Hopefully somewhere with a nice view of the ocean. She loved the ocean. I’ve been desperately trying to recall all my memories of her, so if you have any—please do share them. If you were ever good to me, she loved you automatically.

Once she fed me parathas while I watched a Sharks game… now that is what heaven is like, I’m sure.

I recorded her leaving my brother and I words of wisdom every time I was leaving back for the U.S. Both of us are crying in the last one, and I haven’t had the heart to watch it yet.

Nani Amma, thank you for being the most wonderful person in my life. You truly put the grand in grandmother. Most people start their meals with grace or the name of God—having grown up a Muslim, we started ours with ‘Bismillah Irrahman Irrahim’, meaning ‘In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful’. But now, I start mine with your memory, Nani. Every meal of mine is a dedication to you.

In the name of Nani, the most hilarious, the most remarkable…

Adapted from a Facebook post written in June 2013 by Mak Akhtar.

Travel

Oh, the Places I’ve Been!

January 27, 2014 Emmy Yu Leave a comment

I have a severe case of unconsummated wanderlust. I spend a lot of time on travel blogs, clicking my way through photos of other people’s vacations, and seething with jealousy as I tally up all the magical foreign moments I am not experiencing. Like, I am not on this beach and I am not climbing this mountain and I am definitely not eating this amazing-looking cheese thing and I don’t know why. And, yeah, that cheese would go great with this whine right here, but really I’m just saying that I go through days when I feel like the world is so very small.

But the places I have been to also have a tendency to become staple locations in my life. There may be years between visits but, when I finally get there again, there are all sorts of old memories and emotions that come rushing back—shadows of the time I had spent on those streets and inside those buildings.

Vegas

…is a city that never changes. New hotels may get whipped up on top of the bones of the old, but it’s the barest flicker in a winding wall of lights. I would know—I’ve gone to Vegas with my family for every Christmas since I was four. Up and down the strip that many times and you’d think I’d be fully aware of these large shifts in the steel landscape, but it’s not like that at all. Only every once in a while do I even pause. “Wasn’t something else here?”

Every time I see those Vegas lights, it’s an eye roll and a rueful laugh. I remember coming to Vegas when we were still adjusting to life in America and Caesar’s Palace was the grandest thing we had ever seen. We would marvel at the shops and the statues, posing for photos and feeling quite luxurious. Looking back at photos, I can see it’s really just Vegas: tacky, tawdry, and covered in all sorts of razzle-dazzle that could vanish into a poof of smoke. But it was a magical escape for our little family—so far from home, trying to make the best of it despite how hard we had to struggle.

Christmas 2013 was much of the same for me, even though I’ve obviously grown old enough to understand the wink that the entire city represents. We’ve walked those casinos so many times at this point that I could rattle off the sights (and buffets) off the top of my head. And yet, it still feels like those early immigrant escapes. It can be as simple as getting my mom drunk on a colorful Fat Tuesday drink, or watching my dad scurry away when a pair of, uh… working ladies tried to approach him. (This actually happened during Christmas 2013. My mom watched the women go from a distance and very gleefully commented to me, “I think those were prostitutes!”)

The excitement reminds me of how lucky we’ve been, with each trip more luxurious than the last and light years away from our tight-budgeted first vacation. We’ve come so far and I’m so proud of my parents for getting us here. All the things that have changed since the early ‘90s—almost entirely inevitable developments like children growing up and parents aging in an empty nest—fall away in Vegas. It’s still our family.

Hangzhou

…is a city that is always changing. So much so that it basically disappears into its new identity every time I visit. China transforms explosively between each of my trips—even a two-year gap can render my homeland almost unrecognizable. Hangzhou isn’t as well-known to the Western world as, say, Shanghai or Beijing but it carries a certain amount of fame within China. It’s a beautiful city; the translation of its name is “Heaven’s land” and, if you’ve walked along the shore of its famed West Lake, you could see why. There’s a perpetual sense that the opposite bank is drifting away into the mist, an unknown world just a wooden boat ride away. The water’s surface hides an ancient heartbeat of romance and longing but, as you move away from it and wander back to the main streets, Hangzhou is working hard to become a cosmopolitan center of a voraciously developing nation.

Of our direct family, only my parents, myself, and my sister live abroad. Everyone else remains in China and they contribute acutely to my sense of how time just slips away. I’m Rip Van Winkle every time I get out of the cab in that city. Entire blocks have been rebuilt and family members—ones with whom I last remember running around the garden trying to dig up centipedes—definitely not something you should let your kids do, by the way—are shy strangers. I have an aunt whom I remembered as a strict matriarch when I was little but, in a flash of years, suddenly became a confidante with whom I can greedily gossip over afternoon tea and snacks. I have a cousin whom I remembered as the Batman to my Nightwing (I was never Batgirl) when it came to crime-fighting / pantsing the neighbor boy for being a twerp and, in the same flash of years, suddenly became sullen and unapproachable.

It is hard to leave Hangzhou because I know I will never see it again. Not this version, not in the same light, not with the same people. It will have swum ahead to the opposite shore and I can only wonder what the mist will change.

Manhattan

…changes everything. And for me, personally, that change will only happen once. I lived there for four glorious years and, besides the dear friends who remained in the city for whom I happily make travel allowances, I have little interest in going back. It’s an entity unlike any other and a place that will impose its personality on its residents, for better or worse.

I mostly remember the chaos. We were art students and we knew everything and simultaneously knew absolute fuck-all. High on our mostly worthless ideas, we feverishly dreamt those years away and blithely burned ourselves out on obsessive projects that any therapist could probably identify as some form of narcissism. And, in my opinion, this was the best thing we could’ve ever done. Those obsessions needed to be burnt and those stupid ideas needed to be blown out our asses so their true nature could be revealed.

Obviously, there are other people who thrive on Manhattan’s chaos and I think that’s great. The point is, though, that Manhattan always has to be experienced at least once. It lets you play for a while and you think you’re totally safe and anonymous in its teeming population, but really it’s pushing you toward an existential cliff. And you can’t really be anonymous when your toes are curling over the edge—you kinda gotta know what you wanna do about it.

I accept that I am incredibly biased and if I had any sense of propriety, I wouldn’t be saying this but whatever. When I woke up one day and realized I had no clue what I really wanted to do or how to actually do anything, I knew it was time to get out of Manhattan. It was a wonderful, beautiful chance to wander around my own head, and the city gave me the chaos I needed to be okay with that until it finally pushed me to a point where I was not. So I moved back to California, started working in LA, and feel confident that I have my shit together every single day.

Los Angeles

…is home—and the one place that I get to change. Los Angeles can be whatever I need it to be for me. It’s so very reassuringly mine. So, I guess a lot of the wanderlust comes from a sudden urge to get lost in a world that reflects someone else’s vision. And what’s wonderful about doing that is it always reminds me that I have my own.

Photo by Michelle White

DIY

It’s Not Too Late to Decorate!

December 19, 2013 Christina M. Tedesco Leave a comment

For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with Christmas. Not just the day, but the entire holiday season—there’s something so special about this time of year that puts me in a jolly mood. I love the giving and loving spirit of people during this time, I love driving through neighborhoods, seeing them all lit up. I love getting together with family and friends. If I were to continue, it would go on for pages! But aside from spending time with my loved ones, my favorite thing to do is decorate.

As we grow up and move away from our childhood homes, there may be holidays we have to spend away from family and friends—for me, this is my first Christmas away. And even though it will be difficult, I know I can still enjoy Christmas and Christmastime by surrounding myself with beautiful embellishments to lift my spirits. One thing that always brings me such joy during the holidays is sitting in a room lit with Christmas lights with the scent of a fresh Christmas tree. Add some hot cocoa and a Christmas movie, and I couldn’t be happier!

Since those of us in our 20s usually don’t have buckets of money to throw at things like Christmas decorations, especially during this time of year, this is how I plan to decorate and save money while doing so.

For me, one essential decoration is, of course, the Christmas Tree. I’ve found that real trees are far cheaper short-term than artificial trees if you shop for a good deal, even though they only last one season. You can go to a hardware store and find real trees as cheap as $25 for a 6’ tree. Now, if you’re planning on investing in a tree to continue using year after year, then artificial is the way to go, but expect to pay more upfront. I personally prefer to get a real tree. It’s so much fun going and picking one out, even though I just go to Home Depot and not the forest to chop one down, but hey, it’s still fun. And oh, how I love the scent of a real pine tree during Christmastime—why spend money on buying sprays and candles when you can get the natural pine smell for free from your tree!?

This time of year, practically every store you go into has aisles and aisles of Christmas decorations—I’ve seen stores selling Christmas decorations since September! But if you’re looking to decorate on a budget, be aware of where you are shopping. It may be easiest to go to Target and get everything there, but they do not always have the greatest deals: I also check out places such as IKEA and the dollar store… yes, the dollar store! You can find some great things like wrapping paper, bows, garlands, stockings, and great little stocking stuffers that other stores tend to mark up. Michael’s is always one to have great sales during this time of year for quality products. If you’re more of a DIY type, Michael’s is definitely the way to go.

If you enjoy decorations but aren’t much of a decorator, invite friends and make a night of it. Every year, my family would put our Christmas tree up together. We would make a big fun evening out of it, with snacks, eggnog, music and Christmas movies. Last year when I moved to LA, it was the first time I wasn’t home to decorate my family tree, so I decided to keep that idea going by inviting my friends over. I got a bunch of ornaments and paint pens, and we spent the night designing our own ornaments, stringing popcorn, and hanging them on the tree. Creating your own ornaments is not only inexpensive, it’s a perfect way to personalize your tree. Year after year you will hang the ornaments and think of the memories creating them. It’s really simple and fun—and for those of you who think you wouldn’t be good at it, it’s really a lot easier than you think. You can buy glass balls or plastic (plastic is cheaper, but I prefer glass). Grab some permanent markers, paint pens, glue, fake snow, glitter pens and really anything else you can think of! One of my favorite ways to decorate an ornament is to draw a design, like a snowflake, with glue and sprinkle artificial snow on it. It takes a plain decoration and makes it much more festive. I also love taking off the top of the ornament and pouring artificial snow or Epsom salt in it. Or simply use permanent markers, glitter pens, or paint pens to draw designs on it. Last year, my friends and I signed one of the glass ornaments and dated it. That one puts a smile on my face every time I see it.

I also love to hang garland around the house, but instead of plain bows of evergreen, I like to spruce up my spruce by twisting them with sets of lights. I also like to add extra Christmas color to my garland with berry garland. The little red berries pop, adding a nice festive touch.

If you don’t want to go all out, you can always add small accent pieces scattered around your place. Candles and hand towels add a little something extra that’ll get your holiday spirit up! They even make Christmas cookie candles, so you can make it smell like you just baked, even if you haven’t gone near your oven in months. (But, like with the smell of a fresh pine tree, you can always opt for the real things and bake some fresh cookies instead!)

Decorations can be subtle or extreme, but all are fun. It’s a chance to express yourself, so go out there and get creative with it!

Photo by Rob Adams