I can be pretty in plaid!

I received a mysterious email today from Manic Mom. It said "Go. To. My. Blog...That is all :)" Being the obedient girl that I am, I hopped right over, to see that not only had I won a signed copy of Jen Lancaster's new book, PRETTY IN PLAID, but Manic (who is so BFF with Jen that she's listed on the book's acknowledgment page) filmed the drawing to post on YouTube:



Jen is EXCEEDINGLY gracious and displays a real knack for rolling with the punches in this video, especially in the place where Manic said, "You know Trish Ryan..." and Jen goes along and said, "Oh sure! I know Trish Ryan!"

Here's the truth: Manic introduced Jen and I last year at a book conference. I was one of approximately 1,000 adoring fans, but because I'm a friend of Manic (FOM) I went with her to the front of the line and got to meet Jen personally...for approximately 22 seconds...before we moved out of the way of her hoards of other adoring fans.

But if she ever comes to Ithaca for an event, I'll be her local Manic Mom :)

THANK YOU Jen, THANK YOU Manic...I can't wait until my book arrives! In the meantime, I'm heading to the mall to find a pink sweater to toss over my favorite yellow t-shirt...LOVE THAT!

Trish is in need of some dish(es)

If I eat one more plate of grilled chicken with a side of broccoli, I think I just might scream.

I'm in a total dinner rut. It's gotten so bad that I'm tempted to cook up the Tater Tot Casserole recipe I found in the book by the family with 18 kids (I'm oddly enamored with them, but I don't think I'd fit in my jeans next week if left alone with a pan of tater tots baked with cheese and cream of mushroom soup...)

Can you help? If you have a favorite recipe that doesn't involve eggplant or scallops (0r tater tots), could you PLEASE post it in the comments below?

Thanks in advance. Until then, I'm off to grill more chicken...

In the Spirit of Adventure...

For those of you who dig spiritual things, here's a link to a new post on this year's 40 Days of Faith blog. We'll be starting again on June 1st, so if you feel like giving it a try, leave a comment here or over there. The more the merrier :)

In other, equally exciting news, the new season of So You Think You Can Dance starts tomorrow night!!! Now admittedly, I'll watch almost any reality show on TV so long as the participants aren't eating vipers or dangling over the Grand Canyon in a thong. But SYTYCD is the one that makes DVR a vital part of my budget (because no matter where I live, I always have some sort of class or talk that night).

I can't wait!!! I'm moving the coffee table out of the way now, just to be ready!

Addendum: I just checked my DVR at lunch and realized that SYTYCD premiered last week! How did that happen? I'm mortified to have missed it. Sliding my coffee table back into place in shame...

THAT DOG v. Oprah

The only one in our little family more excited than me to see the latest edition of O Magazine land in our mailbox was THAT DOG. While I was ogling the adorable puppies on the cover and looking forward to wonderful tales of love and joy penned by fellow canine fanatics, THAT DOG was calculating how this nice thick issue would give her just enough height, when piled upon our several back issues of Mens' Journal, to reach the depths of the bathroom wastebasket and pull out all the used tissue goodness lurking therein.

But having a size advantage on the pup (not to mention opposible thumbs) I got the magazine first. I flipped it open, while THAT DOG stared at me impatiently. You can imagine my dismay when the first thing I read was a heartbreaking, dismal essay by a woman who moved to my same new city, with a dog approximately THAT DOG's age...immediately after which said dog died.

Aaaaaaaack!

It was horrid. Awful. And yes, I know all about the seasons of life and that sooner or later, all pets go off to meet at that great country farm in the sky...but I don't really want to read about it happening here, to a dog like mine.

So if anyone has a birdcage that needs fresh pages to line it, I have a magazine ready to go. (I'll make it up to THAT DOG by leaving the wastebasket out where she can reach it on her own, with an extra tissue or two thrown in for good measure...)

A little of this, some of that...

Last night was Girls' Night: Friends, ice cream, wine, and the American Idol finale. I haven't watched this season, so it was interesting to come in at the end and see the final two. Our crowd was resoundingly in favor of Chris (LOVED the guitar & drums number...Simon was SO wrong...) with one vocal Adam fan keeping my living room full of non-voters from being completely one-sided. Both guys are pretty amazing, but I have to ask (for those of you more familiar with the Idol scene) WHAT WAS that last song they made them sing??? It was kind of ridiculous, totally written for a female vocalist, and way too high for either of them. I know that the one judge (WHO is she???) wrote it, but still, it was kind of a mean thing to do to those guys. Your thoughts?

In other news, I just found out that my author pic for book #2 has to be in by June 8th. Which means that if things don't go well with the new hair stylist in my new town tomorrow morning, we'll be looking at me in that green sweater for two more years. (Please pray or send good thoughts as you're inclined...)

I just started THE LAST SUMMER (OF YOU AND ME). It's sunny outside, and I almost feel like I'm at the beach with the characters. Love that :)

Off to Edit. And...

(Okay, that title sounds more suggestive than I intended...)

I'm going into hiding this week, working on the revisions suggested by my editor for Book #2 and scanning every song lyric I can find for subtitle inspiration. And between chapters, I'll be watching this video. See the backup singer in the orange dress? My goal is to perfect her shimmy: arm waves, the occasional kick ball change, funky wiggle during the chorus...love it. Every girl needs a good disco shimmy, and this is the one I want!

Needed: bins & a labelmaker for inside my head

Do you compartmentalize? My head is swimming, and I could use some tips.

There are 101 things are swirling around in my mind vying for attention, and I'm having trouble pinning any one of them down for more than four minutes to make progress. My manuscript for book #2 is coming back for revisions, I'm working on a proposal for book #3, and in two hours I have a radio interview about book #1 (that I'm so terrified I'll forget to call in for that I've postponed all errands until this afternoon.) I have two fun talks to write, and five books to read that I think might give me wise and pithy things to say in those talks.... And yet here I sit in a heap of things that need to be done--things I'm actually excited about doing--not sure where to start. (I'd try the "eat the biggest frog first" approach, if I could size up the different frogs...)

In the middle of this, I'm staring at an amazing quote I copied into my journal back in November by Robert McKee:

"We stretch toward the bests and worsts because story--when it is art--is not about the middle ground of human experience."

So true! But how do we go after that when so much of real life is middle ground? Can I simply skip getting a NY driver's license or taking my dog for this year's round of shots? What about the towels that have been sitting in the dryer since Monday night? At some point, the middle ground needs some attention, too.

Maybe I need Julie Morganstern?

How do you manage the ups, downs, & middle ground of your human experience? How do you put the 100 other things on hold so you can focus on the one? How do you pick which one?

Destiny's Child?

When I dropped him off at work today, Steve said to me, half-joking, "GO TO YOUR DESTINY!" It's a running thing we have from the Olympic runners who were twin brothers and used to say that to each other every morning before they went out to train. Usually, it's inspiring.

Except today. Because right after Steve said, "GO TO YOUR DESTINY!" we both realized that my next stop was Target, to buy toilet bowl scrubbies.

So here I sit at 9:42 am, my destiny achieved.

There you have it.

An actual Big Thought

I'm reposting because what I wrote below is vague, shallow, and silly and really, who cares? Here's what really stopped me in my tracks in Texas:

We threw a giant outdoor festival for the survivors of Galveston. They've been through two storms that essentially wrecked the island, and we wanted to help and encourage them. Part of my job was to stand on a chair with a bullhorn and tell the incoming folks what they'd find inside. Three things made them look like they wanted to mow me down so they wouldn't miss out: Free haircuts (because who has money for that when you've lost everything?), free family portraits (these folks had lost all their pictures), and a small gold ticket for free groceries. I didn't know whether to cry or throw up, the need was so great, and what I could offer so small. All I could do was smile, try to convey some love and encouragement, and run through my mandatory shpiel as fast as possible.

A friend who was in the prayer tent told me about one woman he met who was hoping God might help her husband get off of drugs...but this was the THIRD thing on her list, after a safe place to live and a job.

I asked a fellow Vineyarder, the wife of our national director, "When does this stop breaking your heart?" "It doesn't," she said, hugging me. "That's the gift of compassion." Here's the thing, though: I don't have the gift of compassion. But what I saw there rammed through all my defenses and made me want to do whatever I could to help these folks. And sometimes the best you can do is run through your shpiel as fast as possible, and then pray for miracles as the crowds stream by.

Big thoughts from a big state

So sorry to have disappeared for a week. I know that violates the cardinal rule of blogging. And it was a week full of bloggable moments, so it broke my heart a little to have no internet connection in the conference center and an iPhone that didn't want to play nice with Blogger.

In a nutshell, the conference was awesome. It was a morning, noon & night kind of event (I'm not sure my blogs would have been coherent had I posted) and I'll likely spend the better part of this week processing it all.

There were great reminders about how easy it is to get off track from what we're called to do with our lives by the urge we all have to please the people around us. So today, I'm thinking about how to resist that without becoming one of those weird creative types who thinks the world is out to get them.

I saw an VERY gifted public speaker who challenged me to raise my game when I speak--when you're really prepared, I realize, you can connect with the audience at a whole different level.

And I met some folks who have been pursuing big dreams for years, and realized that pursuing big dreams is challenging. I tend to forget that. But if something is easy, it probably isn't worth dedicating a whole life to, right?

So that's what I'm mulling over today, now that I'm back in NY with the hawks, our neighbor's pony, and the chickens down the road.

More tomorrow :)

No snakes on the plane (or at the hotel, or in the conference center...)

We're flying to Galveston, Texas this morning for the Vineyard National Conference. I'm excited! I dig getting together with folks from all over the country who like to talk about God and the cool things that can happen when we pray instead of freaking out. As someone with a propensity to freak out, these kind of get-togethers are good for me.

(Especially since I just did a Google search for a picture of Texas to put with this post and found, in addition to the usual "don't mess with Texas" logo, a photo of a guy holding a terrifyingly gigantic Texas rattlesnake. NOT what I was looking for. Granted, it was on the Urban Legands website, but their version of "disproving" it was to say that the perspective of the photo might be off, and that the snake might be "only" seven feet long, rather than nine. LIKE THAT MATTERS!!! I'm already fighting off queasiness because the plane we're taking out of Ithaca is so tiny it has the word "Dash" in the title; I hadn't even thought about snakes. Esh. Note to self: Don't freak out. Pray....)

I'll be twittering from the conference. If you're curious about life down South (or this Northerner's take on it) you can follow along at www.twitter.com/trishryan.

All week, I've had the song "Deep in the Heart of Texas" going through my head, despite the fact that Galveston isn't in the heart of Texas at all. There must be another Texas song, right? Anybody have one? (It will give me something brave to hum on the plane...)

Mop Flop

Sorry for the radio silence this week--I was sick. The good news is that it had nothing to do with pigs or the flu. But suffice to say that the few thoughts I had yesterday were not of the bloggable variety.

Feeling better today, and have an admission to make and a question for you all. First, the admission: on Tuesday, I mopped a floor (several, actually) for the first time in my life. I'd done the whole sponge-on-the-end-of-a-long-stick kind of mopping before, but never the swingy-strings-that-could-substitute-for-a-pretend-horse-when-you're-five kind of mopping. You know, REAL mopping. Given the grungy state of the linoleum floors in our apartment, I went into the endeavor with high hopes and big expectations.

HUGE letdown.

I mopped with all my might, but the floors look essentially the same. No scum was scrubbed off. The dirt barely even budged. The only solace I take from all that effort is that our floors are now VERY disinfected (I wasn't sure how much Pine-Sol to use, so I opted for the "if some is good, more is better" approach.) So now I have dirty floors you could eat off of, and the whole place smells like one of those scented cardboard trees you buy at the gas station to make the inside of your car smell better. A strange result, and probably not enough to inspire me to mop again.

So tell me, helpful, domestically-able readers: Why do you mop? Did I miss something?

Up, Up, and Oy Vey!

If you've read my book, you know that I spent a large portion of my childhood secretly convinced that I was Jewish. I also aspired to be a superhero, meeting with Wonder Woman and Superman at the Hall of Justice every morning to get our assignments for saving the world. (There's really no stopping a little Irish girl from Maine with lots of time and a big imagination...) Until this morning, though, I never saw the connection between these two dreams.

Then I saw a random reference to a book which is now my favorite contender for best title ever: Up, Up, and Oy Vey: How Jewish History Shaped the Comic Book Superhero.

I mean, how funny (and fabulous) is that??? I'm going to email A.J. Jacobs right now and suggest he devote his next yearlong memoir project to superhero training. After all, it's in his genes!

Then I'm going to search my family tree for one little branch of Jewishness...

Is THIS what Elton John was singing about?

I'm sitting in my office watching a gigantic bird of prey circle over the field across the street. That, along with the HIGH mortality rate of roadside animals here on our the mountainside, is bringing me much closer to the whole Circle of Life thing than ever before. Not sure how I feel about that.

Like many people, when I'm not sure how I feel about something, I analyze it. For example: When I saw the circling bird, my first though was, "Yikes." My second thought was, "Wait...it's mid-afternoon, and almost 90 degrees outside. Wouldn't any lunch-like rodent lying in black dirt right now be broiled?" Then, after a few minutes, I thought, "Maybe the birds like that...perhaps it's a seasonal treat they look forward to all winter?" This, my friends, is why I barely passed biology.

In other circle of life news, Steve's laptop blanked out over the weekend...if you're a Mac user, best avoid Safari 4.0 until they work out the kinks.

Happy Monday :)

Lydia Fair 2009

If you're anywhere near Boston this weekend, you'll want to check out this amazing event at the Greater Boston Vineyard. It's a gathering of artists--musicians, poets, dancers, painters, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers (okay, I'm not sure the butcher has confirmed, but you get the picture)--who have created pieces around the theme of "RESCUE."

Before I moved, I was asked to film a few thoughts about how this theme plays into my writing. If you've read my book or my blog, you know that I'm a huge believer in rescue: happily ever after, princes on white horses, the hero arriving to save the day at the eleventh hour...so this was fun. Here's the video--my thoughts are at the beginning and the end, with some of the other awesome artists in between. (And if you hit the pause button to freeze-frame us at different times when we're talking, it's quite amusing).



One of the pieces in the show is an actress doing a comedic monologue from my book. When Christopher Greco--the director of the show who did the adaptation--asked me if I'd be okay with that, he said he'd be pulling material from a certain chapter. I looked it up and saw that it was the scene where my ex-husband threw a giant jug of change at me and called me a variety of expletives. I thought, "umm...comedic monologue???" Turns out it's a different scene. Which is probably a good thing :)

If you can get there, check it out.
Happy Weekend!

Profound revelations :)

The upside of a long cold is that it justifies daytime sleeping and long, steamy showers. The downside is that after a long, steamy shower, I'm so tired I transition immediately into daytime sleep. It's a vicious cycle.

In happier news, here's a link to the talk I gave Sunday on finding your purpose in life. An eternal question of human existence, SOLVED in a mere 30 minutes! :)

And in the midst of my hectic shower & nap schedule, I'm working on a bio for my new post here in NY, which requires me to divulge a weird fact about myself. Where to begin???

If you had to divulge a weird fact about yourself, what would it be?

Speedy Delivery

So the good news is that we ordered a washer & dryer yesterday, and the nice store people said, "Would you like that delivered tomorrow?" Why yes, we would! (This saved us from our next stop, which was buying new towels and undergarments to get us through the week...)

The not quite so delightful news is that the store called...at 6:30 this morning...to confirm delivery. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I mean, I like doing laundry as much as the next person (okay, I LOVE doing laundry). But I'll take an extra hour of sleep over that any day of the week.

Gotta go--it's 8:08am and they're here!

Live, from New York

Oh, where to begin?

We're here, in our new townhouse in the mountains of New York, listening to the wind blow and wondering where we packed our underwear. Good stuff :)

The move was amazing. I think I'd lost track of how good it feels to let other people help. Sounds ridiculous, right? But I'm rather independent, and that--combined with a strange worry I have about not wanting to bother or inconvenience anyone--led me to build a life where there aren't many situations in which I need to ask for help. But moving all of our stuff out of a third floor condo? There's no way I could pull that off on my own. (Ditto for moving stuff into a three floor townhouse).

So we asked. And I was simply flabbergasted by how generous our friends were with their time, effort and (let's be honest) muscle. Moving out felt a bit like one of those impossible challenges on The Biggest Loser, where teams go up and down stairs endlessly trying to complete the task. Turns out we have more stuff than we remembered, and our friend MacGyver Man stayed in the truck doing all manner of miracles to fit everything together, creating a puzzle that might have earned him a PhD in geometric problem solving had we thought to take pictures.

Then, the next day, after eight hours on the road--Steve in the giant truck, THAT DOG and I following in the car, the two of us communicating by walkie-talkies I picked up at Target (which, it turns out, are WAY more fun to use when you're a grown up), we arrived in Ithaca. And a team of people--some we'd met before, some who only heard we were coming and wanted to welcome us and help--pulled in one by one and moved us in. It was amazing, and humbling, and one of those experiences I'll remember for a long, long time. Sitting around afterwards, eating pizza and comparing notes on where to buy food, register a car, and get a great deal on a washing machine, I thought, "This feels like home..." And it does.

I'm a tired, but grateful girl :)

More tomorrow...

Today's story of stuff

As I'm packing our world into boxes and bins, I've realized something strange: As much as it's become an American pastime to complain about how much stuff we have--how we really should throw out more/buy less/get organized/simplify--that's not true for me at all. Maybe it's because I've moved a lot, or because we've always lived in tiny condos, or because there are whole swaths of my history I have no desire to commemorate...but my experience of packing has not been of the "I'm so overwhelmed/how did we accumulate all this?" variety. Rather, it's made me oddly grateful.

Is it totally uncool to say, "I like my stuff"???

Let me clarify: nothing in these boxes defines me. I'm not overly proud of it, or excited to show it off. There's a chance you could offer the entirety of my possessions at a yard sale and not make enough money to order pizza for friends and family (Unless of course THAT DOG set up a booth to sell autographed pics, in which case you'd clean up...) But for the first time in my life, I guess I feel like I have what I need to set up camp in a new place. Before, with each move, there was always so much I knew I'd need--like there were endless trips to box stores in my future trying to make my new digs a home. I don't feel that this time. I feel like it's the life that will be new for us in Ithaca, not the stuff. I'm excited about that :)

(Omigosh, I just re-read this and it's just a bunch of pseudo-philosophical babble. Readers, I apologize. You deserve better. But I'm on day four of heavy cold meds, and that really is what I'm thinking about. Pitiful (and worse, pedestrian...) but true. I'll be back, hopefully off the meds and with a new internet connection in the great state of NY, next week!)

But if you LIKE my delusional, fogged out musings, I'll be twittering (tweeting?) from my iPhone for the next few days here. Want to see how DayQuil affects my ability to navigate a moving truck down I-90? Come on along!

And now, a question: Do you secretly like your stuff, too?

Pass the Tissues!

I'm not so good with goodbyes. I'd forgotten this about myself. It's been a long time since I've relocated...not since I landed here in Cambridge nine years ago hoping life would somehow get better. It did! But now I'm leaving, which means goodbyes.

The reality of this hit me like a train yesterday. As most of you know, a few years back I wandered into a church where I saw my whole life turn around. Yesterday was my last Sunday as a member there, and let's just say I was unprepared.

Yikes, it was the full-on ugly cry. I have a cold which didn't help, but most of the liquid was the product of a sudden, slightly paralyzing awareness of how much this place and these people mean to me, and how much I'll miss them. I think I've watched one too many episodes of Friday Night Lights, as my mind did one of those montage flashbacks to every important and poignant moment from the past seven years, blinking them through my head one by one. By the end, it's a miracle I could breathe :)

And yet it was an amazingly happy day, in the midst of all those tears. (Maybe that's the difference when you leave to go to something, rather than just run away?) My friend Dave gave an inspiring talk about how Easter doesn't mark the end of Lent so much as the beginning of something new and altogether different, where miracles are really possible. My friends Christopher and Kristina sang songs about hope and possibility that had me up on my feet and clapping, even as I blew my nose (I'll never say I'm uncoordinated again, because this was an amazing feat of multitasking). And right in the middle, a surprise I never saw coming: My friends (and favorite band), Ryanhood climbed onstage to sing the title song from their new CD, The World Awaits.

I was dumbstruck, jaw on the floor, tears running down my face...It was like God sent Ryan and Cameron from Denver or Minneapolis or wherever their last tour stop was just to let me know that even though I'm sad to be leaving, this is absolutely the right thing to do; that Steve and I are going to something good and exciting, and we won't lose what we have here...we'll build on it.

I found this clip on YouTube that you should check out. Listen carefully to the first thing Cameron says as he introduces the song; it sums it up pretty well:

"You're in your house. You have a front door. And you have to go through it."

The World Awaits.

I just need to mop up my face first :)