Sarah Wilson

I’ve noticed lately the frothing forth of a bunch of blogs that simply observe humanity going about its quirky, often banal thing. They generally make – or imply – gross generalisations. Which can make me balk.

But generalisations exist for us to better understand the world. They don’t have to come with judgment. In fact, when we strike with a generalisation, without hesitation or apology, without critical voice, we are celebrating beautiful patterns of humaness. Our need for patterns, to adhere to patterns, is so vulnerable. At this point we connect and like each other.

I like these ones:

1. Coverspy: This cute site (above) posts observations about New Yorkers on the subway. The site describes the person, where they’re heading (and presumably live) and what they’re reading. The picture painted (or implied) so often perfectly confirms a generalisation you might hold about people who read Dan Brown or wear Doc Martens or both. I like how the girl reading Flow is wearing a white skirt.

Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, the most successful memoir every published in the world. He’s in Australia this week and I’m meeting with him tomorrow to talk about, well, I’m hoping you might be able to help me out with what I ask him because I’m not in the most insightful mood today. Suggestions?

UPDATE: WIN!!!! I’ve secured 3 copies of Mitch’s new book, Have a Little Faith. I’d love to give them away to three readers who help me out with some great, tender questions. Nothing too complicated or fancy. Add your comments below. (thanks to Sassisam for organising the books!).

If you were in my shoes, what would you want to know about faith, forgiveness, death? Or the art of selling 28 million books in one’s lifetime!!!

His new book Have a Little Faith is about belief and religion. In it he looks at why we turn to faith more and more at the moment…Your thoughts?

I pulled this quote from p176. It has a lovely, melancholy, still, true ring to it:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.

This week I reclaim my Sunday

Sundays are sad. So says a Swedish study just out. It found the Sabbath the most depressing day of the week because (and I just love how big, important studies have an uncanny knack for pointing out the bleeding obvious) it’s the day before school and work starts. It also found the mood plunge is particularly profound among married couples and East Germans. (I could venture a theory on this, but I fear it’d only make things bleaker.)

Me, I’ve often found Sundays mood-sinky. When I was a kid, they were Dickensian-grim. As the sun set and the dam snap-froze over for the night, Dad would haul me and my brothers out to the back paddocks to chop wood for the week. Then Mum would line us up on the verandah to scrub knees and cut toenails. We’d catch the last bit of The Wonderful World of Disney before dinner. Then bed, the dread of first period clinging to us, prickly and restrictive like a Fair-Isle jumper in the rain.

As adults, you’d think we’d find a way to address this. To make Sundays sunnier. I know some people head to the pub on Sunday nights by way of a final hoorah to the weekend. This was a fad for a while and I hear it put off the inevitable quite effectively.

But I’ve noticed more recently that Sundays have taken on a panicky, catch-up quality. There’s not enough time in the week to get everything done. Certain tasks – wading through long emails, finishing that advisory report, filling out health insurance forms  – can’t get done in the Monday-Friday flurry. So we set aside “just a few hours” on Sunday afternoon to “get on top of things”.

…and creating things that involve so much spirit and give-a-fuck-ness. And that you don’t seem to be motivated by a desire to be proportionally rewarded for your grand efforts via T-shirt sales at sell-out mega-concerts.

From Sarah.

(Dear Reader, I’m referring to the above Youtube clip of This Too Shall Pass. I posted their previous clip to the same song because it struck chords. From Sarah.)

I’m not about to venture into the food bloggosphere, but I’ve been asked to share the recipe for the muffins I took to this morning’s brunch. I’ve kind of made it up.  Apologies to all home economists everywhere…I know this might horrify you.

So, five bodgy steps:

1. turn oven to 180 or so (my oven doesn’t have a dial)

2. beat 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup honey and some grapeseed or camelia or just plain olive oil (2 tbls?) with a stab-mixer

3. add this glug to a bowl containing a cup each of grated pumpkin and almond meal, 2 cups of gluten-free flour (I used buckwheat and some besan flour), a big shake of cinnamon, 1 tsp of baking powder, a handful of chopped basil leaves and a fistful of chia seeds.

Chia seeds are a superfood – the most nutritious on the planet, according to some. They contain 19 amino acids, stacks of omega 3 and, oh, the fibre…when added to liquid they get a glutinous coating that makes one’s bowels work somewhat smoothly.

4. then stir in enough water (I don’t really know how much) to get it to a thick consistency (I use the stab-mixer again) and stir in egg whites that you’ve whipped up a treat

5. finally, spoon into muffin trays that are lined with little squares (10cm x10cm?) of baking paper and POP into the oven. After about 5 minutes I sprinkle with some pepitas and then bake for another 10 minutes or so.

Trust me, these will work out. Don’t worry about exact measurements, so long as the consistency is cakey. Bear in mind the chia seeds soak up stacks of liqued. So if you end up with a runny batter-like stodge, add more chia seeds.

*Get fancy and sprinkle with fresh torn basil and some flowers flogged  from the neighbours garden when presenting to friends at brunch when you’re 25 minutes late.

Yum.

It’s the first Friday of Autumn. So let’s mix this up a bit.

a particularly autumnal image, no?

Starting from today, each Friday I’ll post a rundown of random things that make life sweeter as you roll into your weekend. This weekend I’m meeting up with two journos I met on Twitter – journo Caroline Overington and blogger Kerri Sackville. I liked their tweets and thought I’d like to meet them and so I DM’d and Caroline suggested morning tea at her place in Bondi.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do this. I contact like-minded people and suggest a catch-up. It scared me the first time I did it. But now I just plunge in and trust that like-minded people will dig the intention. We have 80-odd years on this planet. I’m not going to sit around wondering what it would be like to meet someone who seems like a lovely, big spirit.

I’m baking rice flour, grated pumpkin, almond meal and basil muffins tomorrow. With chia seeds. I made the recipe up and they worked when I made them last week. They will either impress or repel (I’ll report back).

I’m also off to check out The Corner House, a new bar on Bondi Rd run, in part, by the kids who set up the Wine Shop on Curlewis St. I love how Bondi has become a real neighbourhood with bars and cafes geared at community. Special mention of Bru (which lay out picnic blankets on the nature strip), Flying Squirrel (which opens in the early afternoon on weekends so parents with kids can enjoy an afternoon wine while the kids play on the grass), Luigi’s (where Andy knows everyone’s name) and Greens (where Nick will run up the road and buy gluten-free bread for customer’s like me).

Anyway, I hope your weekend is light and your Sunday devoid of commitments (see my Sunday Life column to get what I mean).

Enjoy x

1. An astute Alain de Botton quote: “To start writing means trying to quieten the thousand internal voices that argue why one is obviously not the right person for the job.” Follow Alain de Botton on Twittter here.

2. Nipple chats: The Times asks whether Carla Bruni should’ve worn a bra with this dress. No Way, is my answer. Nipples are great. They’re unique, often lopsided, and have little personalities of their own. Hannah Betts writes:

Our culture is obsessed with heaving, blancmangey cleavage, but the erect nipple is a far more potent yet insouciant sexual signifier. The pert pap winningly protrudes between the sluttish and the demure: contained arousal, clothed incitement; an invitation more beguiling for being a whisper rather than a shout.

I find it odd that the “younger generation” (God, I can’t believe I say such things…but sometimes it’s required) have such an issue with nipples. The whole padded bra cup thing – I don’t get it. And how hard is it to buy a bra that’s of a sheath-like fabric??? I don’t think it’s prudishness, per se. It’s more to do with denying individual, raw form. Anyhow, I liked that it’s up for discussion.

3. Free Jamie Oliver demo next Sunday afternoon in Sydney. The kid’s chatting about ethical eating. Bring a picnic. Come join me! Jamie in the Park deets here.

4. I’m all about Sprezzatura. Seth Godin chats about this – it’s an archaic Italian word for being able to do your craft without a lot of visible effort. Flow, being streamlined…but with a nicer ring.

5. Under-react to a problem. Nice advice from The Happiness Project.

Another week, another installment. A month or so ago I posted my musings on my not-so-amusing journey with hashimoto’s.

This week, I’ve invited Melbourne personal trainer, BioSignature practitioner and blogger Kat Eden to give her comic – or otherwise  – input.

thyroid disease can feel like you're hovering in a pool of sludge

I came across Kat on the site Dumb Little Men and loved her tips on living life better. I contacted her cold (it’s one of my favourite things to do – contact someone I find interesting and just start talking) and found her advice very sound, especially in regards to hormones and digestion.

Over to Kat:

What causes this whole caper?

From my way of thinking, and based on clinical experience I’d say stress has to be one of the biggest players in sparking auto-immune disease. In particular chronic stress. It doesn’t really matter where the stress comes from, or even if it’s a whole bunch of little stressors rather than one great big life-changing event. Your body doesn’t separate one type of stress from another in terms of the way your nervous system and hormones respond, so the accumulation of stress can be (often quite suddenly) very toxic.

A couple of new UK studies out today have boiled down relationship success to a few simple stats. Totally fascinating, albeit overly generalised, stuff! (Anyone love relationship generalisations as much as me?)

a woman to aspire to !

The spurious figures:

* Women should be 27 per cent more intelligent: Of the 1,074 couples looked at aged between 19 and 75, the report concluded that the wife should be 27 per cent more intelligent than her husband, hold a degree while he should not.

Hello, the “I just want to marry a plumber” call of just about every smart woman I know has backing! I’m not sure what the evolutionary rationale is to this factoid. And I don’t know whether 40 years ago it was the same. I suspect not.

Perhaps it’s a new quirk in adaptive relating – succesful relationships these days require a lot of smart juggling and emotional awareness. It’s more complex than 40 years ago to run a relationship. Women tend to steer relationships more than men. So smart, emotionally aware women make better relationship partners.

A few months back I tried out a juice detox. It worked lovely wonders.  So I decided to give Eat Fit Food’s detox a try. Theirs runs for 10 days, all the food is delivered to your door in the wee hours of the morning, it includes 3 meals plus 2 x snacks and juice and you really wouldn’t know that you’re detoxing because the food is exciting. Not drab. Every day is different. The cost? It works out as $56 a day. That’s for EVERYTHING you’ll eat in an entire day.

I love this anecdote about how when things are tough and resources are limited, you can focus better. Because you have to. I’ve written about this before in Sunday Life.

Ray Bradbury was a freelance writer who was trying to support his family. However, he was working at home with his cute little children. This proved to be incredibly distracting, so he had to find somewhere else to write. So, he headed over to UCLA’s Lawrence Clark Powell Library.

In the basement of the library there was a number of typewriters that gave 30 minutes of writing time for a dime.