SRSLY Happy

We've made a ritual of going to Lake Ella's Farmer's Market every Wednesday afternoon. We buy some locally-grown greens, eggs, maybe turnips. I bought myself a big jar of local Tupelo honey last week on my birthday, liquid gold, and it makes me feel rich like Richie Rich. Sometimes we grab pitas and hummus from the gorgeous Pita Queen of Thomasville, Georgia (I dream about her pillow-pitas, you can also get them at New Leaf Grocery.) Then we have a coffee at Black Dog and then take a walk around the lake. If we're lucky the swing dancers are mid-lesson when we pass the American Legion Hall windows and we can gawk for a few minutes, picking up a step for free on the lawn like jitterbug Peeping Toms. This week Bob from SRSLY Chocolate was there, helping Valentines be sweet to each other. SRSLY good, good, good. I like you this winter, Tallahassee.

Giveaway: It's Girl Scout Cookie Day!

It's Girl Scout Cookie Time!

I was a Girl Scout. I wish I still had my sash. Badges on the front AND back, oh yeah, I made it happen. I still remember getting my first guidebook and paging through it. I was going to be able to DO ALL OF THESE THINGS? Those were really good times.

Girl Scout Cookies are hands down the most delightful way to support an excellent cause. Because face it, you'd buy Thin Mints and Tagalongs if the money went to the Illuminati or The Pet Rock Preservation Foundation. Because there is magic is those tasty, tasty cookies. Trefoils Powers Activate!

The fact the money supports a fantastic organization is icing on the...cookies. Cookie sales make wonderful things happen for local girl scout troups, like camping trips and troop outings, with girls learning business management skills all throughout the sales program. So maybe that is part of the minty magic after all. Whatever it is, it works. 

I know you'll be buying some as soon as you can. If you are in New York City, you're lucky, because the Girl Scouts have partnered with Sweetery NYC Food Truck to have pop-up stores. The rest of us can find them in our neighborhoods or online. Just follow your nose (or app) to the that distinctive green Thin Mints package. 

• Download the new Girl Scout cookie iPhone or Android app to find cookie sales.
• Check the route of the Girl Scout Cookie Truck as it makes its way through New York City.
• Check out the one-day-only Facebook contest on February 8 with a Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram integration about why you'd recommend buying #onemorebox.

OR...maybe get lucky here. The GSUSA hooked me up with 5 boxes in celebration of Girl Scout Day to pass on to a lucky winner here. Want 5 boxes?  You will feel so rich! You'll have a party in a box to keep, hide, share or donate. Fill this out if you want in, and I'll pull a winning name on Monday.

Update: The Giveaway entry period is closed and the winner has been notified. Hope you all get your cookies! My Thin Mints are already gone, including the Freezer Boxes.

Giveaway: BlogHer Voices of the Year Anthology

Being included in the BlogHer '12 Voices of the Year anthology was an honor and a sweet, happy thing last year.

The book was published in partnership with Open Road Media, and I've discovered I love reading essays gathered in a wonderful ebook instead of reading them through disparate hyperlinks online. The book created focus and sanctuary, a little room where stories are held knitted together. It's fascinating to think about how different formats might change our relationships with texts, or with ourselves as readers. I found out that reading it made me want to read more offline, and something about it --maybe the diverse content from so many great bloggers, or maybe the format-- made me want to write more. 

If you'd like your own writing to be considered for the next BlogHer book, you're in luck. There's a call for submissions up for their second book which will be focused on writing about food: ROOTS: Where Food Comes From & Where It Takes Us. I love that topic. Food is memory, identity, politics, friend & and enemy, fuel & fortune. Rich fields for those roots. I can't wait to read it. Deadline for writers is February 11, so don't wait. Is that a madeleine in your pocket or are you already clicking over there to learn more about it?

But wait, don't leave before entering a giveaway for Book One! Open Road is letting me share a Voices of the Year book with a reader, so if you'd like an ebook copy of your own, simply throw your name into this Google Form hat, and I'll pick a name by random next Monday. If you win, you'll be notified by email. 

So give it a go, or just nab a copy for yourself at Open Road. 

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Update: The Giveaway has closed and a winner was selected at random. Open Roads will contact her to get her a copy of the book! Thank you all.  

Magnolias are the opposite of SAD

I'm obsessed with our Magnolias this week. This is the only snow we get in Tallahassee, their thick, waxy petals piling on the winter grass. I love the thickness of hearty bloomers; I'll take a grip of tulips any day. Do you know how long it takes for a Japanese Magnolia to first bloom from the day a prehistoric-looking seed pod is planted? It can take 15 years. 15 years of growth,  investment, reinvestment, winter after winter. Then finally huge grand impossible blooms shaped like chalices that show you spring is right here, even in winter, it's snow in the sky on a warm day, it's right here, both. Huge petals that make a sound when they drop. Children are like that. Mine are blooming so long after they started, so long, before they were growing and now they are blooming. It's wild, this warm winter day, how quiet, absolutely pin-drop quiet everything can be until suddenly it's not. 

Past Perfect

A few conceits can push forward the intimacy of a group of people. Elevator breakdowns, of course, just ask Hollywood. Discussions about huitlacoche, any other fungus and/or disgusting things to eat. And then there's the ink conversation, the three-hour tour of party conversations. Guaranteed to make all manner of people hike up their skirts a little more, hitch up the back of their shirt, outstretch a collar, or at the very least guide a field trip into the bathroom.

I don't have any tattoos. They last too much longer than most commitments to interest me more than a few minutes--I'm over the idea by the time I change my mind about the design three times. Don't most end up seeming old and fading soon enough anyway, indelible and a lost bet with permanence at the same time? I'm old, my friends are old, maybe this is why. But I think time is like "Yeah, right, Ink. Go on with your bad self." I'd be down with that, with the beauty of some tattoo art, if the end game was that mandala-creating monks would come along and blow them away. It would be okay if I don't know when they would take it away, too, just that at some point a circle of monks would lay down their sandbags, sneak up behind me, draw in air and poof. Just a promise that even your very favorite thing drawn on your body with ink needled below the skin is not forever, that would make tattoos honest.

My friend had a tattoo changed. It was faded, and the symbol didn't suit her any longer. The Wiccan goddess, altered and re-inked, is now a butterfly. Now she's two of my favorite Cracker Jack surprises in one. The blurry tattoo set was the best prize, of course. Then second best, remember those little plastic squares that showed two different scenes depending on the tilt? I loved those! If my brother got that prize I would trade anything to get it. Flicker cards, rough animation, with a textured surface you could run your nail across? Tilt to the left, the eye is open, tilt to the tight, shut. Left/right/left/right. Open/shut. Then/now.

That's what her tattoo redux is like. One angle you see her then. It's still in there, mostly camouflaged, but still there. And then it's gone, replaced by now. She said it's the best she can hope for, given the circumstances. I haven't seen my brother in a decade-and-a-half, almost two. I hope he's still alive. I miss him like a tattoo stolen by a monk.

I don't have one of those little flicker cards from my childhood, not even one Cracker Jack prize. I have a few artifacts from my childhood, but not many. It's crazy to think of how many things I've lost. Maybe a monk is carrying them around for me, a satchel of all of my prizes, and someday, boom, he'll leave them at my feet.