I read a lot of certain kinds of blogs: food, nail art, DIY lifestyle. (I read a lot of animal blogs, too, but the issue I’m about to describe comes up less frequently there for reasons that will soon become obvious.) There’s a certain amount of borrowing that happens in these communities and it’s generally considered above board so long as credit is given.
This, my friends, is where we encounter the scourge. Somehow, for reasons that are not immediately apparent to me, the English-speaking world has forgotten a critical hyphen. All day I encounter post after post touting “amazing recreations.” These aren’t articles about impressive outdoor adventures or extreme hobbyists, oh no. These are simply people trying to give credit and failing spectacularly.
It’s simple. If you want to add the prefix “re-” to a verb to indicate the action has taken place again, usually you should “close it up” (shove that prefix right up against the verb). The exception is when a closed-up word that starts with re- already exists! Example: to recollect is to remember something; to re-collect is to collect again. See? Simple!
The internet loves infographics, right? Well, internet, I made you one.
This was our apartment building. The day it changed from red to yellow was an exciting day.
I haven’t written here in a long time. Partly that’s because, in the immortal words of the Fresh Prince, our “life got flipped, turned upside down.” Starting in the middle of last October, I was selected to serve on my church‘s leadership table (and then had to step down before I was ever “sworn in”), we finished our PADI open-water scuba-diving certification, and then we weathered Hurricane Sandy. That involved late-game evacuation, a week without power and water, 16 days without hot water, and 20 days without heat. In the middle of all that, my magazine folded and I lost my job (RIP, Everyday Food). Then we celebrated Thanksgiving with our largest table of friends yet, my best pal Ivo came to visit from the Netherlands to celebrate the ordination of our friend and pastor Emily Scott, I turned 33 on 12/12/12 and we went to Medieval Times, we got Nitrox certified (more diving stuff), we celebrated Christmas in Hawaii with my parents, we moved across the friggin’ country, and now we’re firmly ensconced in a beautiful (rental) home in Seattle, establishing a very good life there. Yesterday was the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s arrival in New York City, so I spent the evening reading through my Facebook updates from a year back. It made me realize that they already tell the story better than I could rewrite it, so I collected them here, along with links to additional illustrative photos from the Flickr set I made after the fact.
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Two years ago today, Heather and Mike became Heather+Mike! Here’s to many wonderful moments together and many more anniversaries to come!
Grey Hair Grow-Out: 6.5 months after last dye job
I‘m not sure I remember the last time my hair was completely and totally lacking in artificial color. Bless my parents’ hearts, their general attitude was that I could do whatever I wanted with my appearance as long as it wasn’t permanently physically altering (crazy “permanent” hair color that would eventually grow out = fine, stupid fingernail polish = fine, glitter-ringed eyes = fine, facial piercings or tattoos = not okay). In junior high, I started adding chunky blonde streaks into my brunette hair, which I sometimes colored with food coloring for a temporary change-up. At my high-school graduation, I began my love affair with bright colors, showing up for commencement with fire-engine-red streaks instead of my typical ’do. Then I went purple. Then I went black with thin blue streaks, which I called “Superman Hair.” There was an enormously ill-fated attempt to go calico and also try a pixie cut—I wound up looking like a Presidential wife. I had jet-black hair for a while, and I’ve had some pink more often than anything else. My attitude has always been that hair is an accessory and it grows back, so I should have fun and not be scared to try new things. In the time that Mike and I have been together, I’ve worn at least eight different cuts/styles, and a few different colors.
Despite all this experimentation, there’s always been a fly in the ointment. I absolutely love playing around with my hair color, but I never, ever want to look like a person who is intentionally covering up her grey hair. My stylists roll their eyes when I say it, but if there were a way to color just my brown hairs but leave the grey ones alone, I’d do it in a heartbeat, damn the cost. I love my grey hair. I always have. And when I say “always,” I mean that I began going grey at age 16. Yes, you read that right: sixteen. I distinctly remember my old pal Nico standing above me at our lunch table, gleefully counting out the grey hairs he saw along my part. I always thought they made me look distinguished, and I wore my sporadic grey hairs as badges of an old soul.
You may have noticed that a little web ad now appears in our sidebar. This is a widget from the site Panthera.org, whose mission is “to ensure the future of wild cats through scientific leadership and global conservation action.” Heather and I care a lot about animals—endangered or otherwise—and big cats are a particular passion of mine, so we felt that giving a little web real estate to a good cause was appropriate. Please take a few minutes to read about Panthera’s work and, if you can, get involved in some way. If you can’t dedicate your time or money, at least spread the word. The big cats of the world will thank you (or at least they would if they weren’t so busy being awesome).
We now return you to our regularly scheduled deliciousness.
©Puja Parakh
Well, we finally did it. For more than a year, I have been promising to set up a “family” blog where Heather and I could write about Youngcentric things like cooking, craft projects, our various adventures and, of course, our cats. Anyone else would simply have installed WordPress, selected a stately prebuilt theme, and called it a day. However “anyone else” is not a prideful and persnickety graphic designer. So, for about a year, I tinkered and procrastinated, chasing other interests—video games, comics, freelance projects, my own website—like a puppy chasing butterflies through a meadow. When Heather was forced to publish an amazing how-to about menu planning to her old LiveJournal page a couple months ago, I decided it was finally time to knuckle down and get to work. Welcome to the fruits of our planning, design, and passive-aggressive fights with WordPress!
Heather+Mike is “the official Young family blog.” We’ll write about whatever tickles our fancy, but it will most likely most often take the form of a food and crafting blog with random asides. (Sharing about cooking and crafting might be the only thing Heather loves more than actually cooking and crafting.) There will almost certainly also be a significant number of cat pictures and videos. Because that’s how we roll.
Keep checking back and enjoy!
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