Day 14: Life Keeps getting in the way

Life keeps getting in the way in more ways than I thought. I refuse to give up this project even when it looks like I already have.

This super long weekend I had to work and even though I am very disorganized in my personal life my work related events run like clockwork. I am very anal about the pre cooking process and how timed my mise en place should be. Due to this obsession I spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning shopping for everything I would need for an event I had scheduled for all day Monday.

Sunday night all hell broke loose.

My client calls me up and lets me know that everything we had planned will need to be rearranged. The first coffee break will just be cheese, muffins, a variety of breads, coffee, tea and Juice. I didn’t have muffins or a variety of breads, so I had to run out Monday morning, an off day, to get it. The lunch was changed twice before finally settling on what I had first offered minus one dish. The last dish was to be used for dinner and we would need to add two salads and an upgrade to the dessert.

The entire day was chaos. I ran late all day and to top it all off at the last minute I had to add an extra item because of the guest couldn’t eat eggplant!! It was not a good day for me. I am grateful I’m a fair enough cook to pull it off without anyone puking or hating everything, but I still did not have fun.

This has officially turned into a rant and I don’t like the fact that is my second one in less than two weeks. I guess I whine a lot more than thought. I shouldn’t be complaining at all. I understand how blessed I am, specially lately.

My brother left for Haiti last Saturday. He is working at a campsite providing food and health care to anyone that goes there. Yesterday he finally wrote an email and even though he didn’t go into much detail he let us know that the people of Haiti are going through so much and that every little thing helps. So if anyone is able to get off work for a week please contact 

CAMPAMENTO COMISIÓN DE SALUD DE LA PLATAFORMA DE AYUDA A HAITÍ DE LA SOCIEDAD CIVIL DOMINICANA

La Comisión de Salud ha establecido un campamento médico en Puerto Príncipe que está necesitando personal:

SE NECESITA VOLUNTARIADO!!:

-Personal Médico: Médicos generales, psicólogos, pediatras, ortopedas y  ginecólogas.

-Traductores y Apoyo logístico (que sean proactivos, con capacidad para coordinar, ofrecer todo tipo de soporte, que busquen soluciones a situaciones de búsqueda de alternativas).

INTERESADOS:

Por favor enviar su nombre, cédula y pasaporte (dominicanos, si tienen  y extranjeros obligatorio), e-mail, teléfono formación y área de apoyo en el que puedan ser útiles) a los siguientes correos electrónicos:

n.camino@codetel.net.do
estibalizladron@yahoo.es
Chelsea.mcguire@gmail.com

I will follow my brother later this week and even though I won’t have internet access, I’ll take my notebook and lots of pens so that I can try and write my five hundred words every day I’m there. As soon as I’m back ill try to type everything and post it.

Tomorrow I have to get everything ready but I’ll try to post again before I leave. If not, be well, laugh hard, love without strings and enjoy every moment of your life.

                                                                                                                                                                      Word Count: 576

Day 13: When Life gets in the way

So life happened and I missed two days. The world didn’t end and today I have a desperate urge to write, plus the guilt of not posting two days in a row is eating me up, but the delay was unavoidable.

First I had a wedding to attend. I love weddings especially when I like the people that are getting married. The trouble with weddings for me is that I just hate getting ready to go to one. The part I detest the most is finding the right dress. I hate shopping. I know it’s unnatural for a girl to hate this practice but I do,  what can I say? I was traumatized when I was younger and now I can’t find any pleasure in the task. I can window shop as much as the next girl but trying on clothes makes me break out in hives. I love the process of looking at dresses and checking out the latest trends just so I can mock the ones I don’t like, but every time I try something on the joy disappears dress by dress. In this particular case I was lucky, I found my dress on the third store I visited and then everything else easily fell in to place. I had a great pair of shoes at home and the earrings and bracelet where easy to find.

The wedding was beautiful, the bride and groom radiant but the star of the night was the food. I have never eaten so well at a wedding party. We got there late, so we missed the ceremony but we didn’t miss the canapés. This first round my favorites where the dates stuffed with blue cheese and walnuts wrapped in bacon, the lobster ceviche and the chistorras wrapped in puff pastry. In the second round, the cold table, the   shrimp where so perfectly cooked I couldn’t stop eating them, the lamb & mushroom voulavent was such perfection I could’ve eaten just that all night, and the lobster & corn empanadas where so good I only had the chance to eat one. After that came the hot buffet,  between the Cochinillo and the Red Snapper I don’t know which one was better. The dessert table was so pretty and tasty that I didn’t even have room for the cake. I hear it was good.  For a person that loves to eat as much as I do this night was a great one. I wish everyone has the chance to have a dinner like this, where the food is so amazing you’ll remember it for years to come. I feel sorry for my friends though because even though they looked beautiful and in love in this wedding the food was the most memorable part about it.

The  next day I was ready to get back to writing but I slept in.  I woke up late and had lunch with a friend at her recent obsession. Later I went to her house for some chatting and bonding with friends and their dogs. I of course I’m  not a big dog fan, and that’s why every one of my friends has one and they all feel the need to rub up against my leg or cuddle next to me while I take a nap.

After surviving some Tiki love, I went to dinner at an amazing French restaurant called “ Louis Phillipe” (c/ Casimiro de Moya #50 809.682.95551) with some great friends I hadn’t seen in awhile and laughed and ate and drank to my heart’s content. It was a perfect weekend of good food, lots to drink and great friends, therefore I can’t regret missing these past two days.

I have realized that my project might not be as regular as I hope it could be, because sometimes the rest of the world gets in the way, so I will make some adjustments to the concept and give myself some leeway to make this work. In this country we have about thirteen holidays, so that means I have thirteen times where I can take a break. I guess now I only have eleven times but that’s ok,  I'll try to use them wisely

Word Count: 697

P.S If anyone knows the exact number of off days please let me know

Day 12: The Wait is Over...

It arrived at ten seventeen am. I know that for a fact because I was setting the kitchen timer for a soufflé I was making for lunch and I looked at the radio clock sitting on top of the unplugged microwave. The doorbell rang as soon as I pressed start and for a second I though the noise was from the timer, but when it kept ringing I realized it was the door. I took of my apron as I walked towards the main entrance and tossed it on the sofa before I opened the door. The mailman greeted me with his usual cheeriness and asked about my family as he handed me all the mail that had been sent to us that day. I said my goodbyes distractedly as I browsed through the packages , searching for the one thing I’d been waiting for. The Wait was over. I can’t remember how many times I imagined myself in this same place, holding this same piece of paper waiting for the information inside it; but dreaming it and living it are two different things.

 I stood there for about forty minutes, dazed, staring at it, holding it as if at any moment it would vanish. I only know it was about forty minutes because the timer beeped and that’s how long I had it for. I shook my head as I put the closed enveloped down and walked back to the kitchen while retying my apron. I opened the oven and found that my soufflé, for once, had risen. It was a tempting golden color, fluffy and smelling like melted sugar and chocolate. I transferred the hot plate to the stove top where it could sit and cool, then went back out to face a past I longed to understand.

I finally ripped the envelop open and took out the papers inside and read. “The information requested is unavailable” was all it said. I was numb, for a second I thought it was a joke.  I couldn’t believe that after all the stress and worry I would just get a rejection. Or is it an omission? I didn’t understand what it meant. I'd been searching for this information for so long, going through the right channels, filling out all the required forms, spending hours on hold how can this be? What do I do now?

This little moment in time was just a small exercise in fiction that might turn into something bigger or it might turn into nothing at all. Overall I’m happy that is longer than my last attempt at writing something that had nothing to do with the world outside my head. This project is sometimes easier and sometimes harder than I thought it would be. There are days when the words flow and there are days where getting each word out is harder than pulling teeth, but each day helps me get back a passion I thought id lost.  My writing juices are finally waking up and with any luck soon all my entries will deal with fiction instead of reality

Word Count: 515

Day 1 : Testing, testing 1 2

OK so today is Friday January 8, 2010. I will start a little project inspired by the movie Julie & Julia. My project is a lot easier than hers, I will write a blog entry of 500 words or more every day for a year. I can write more if I want to, but i cant write any less than 500. No matter the topic, the grammar might be iffy but that can fixed later on, its not the point. The point is that i force myself to write every day. I always said I wanted to be a writer, but I've never sat down and wrote. I read a lot, i have that part down, no problem, but writing consistently, day in, day out, I cant seem to do it. Until now.

So this year instead of vague resolutions, I'm setting concrete goals and going for them right away. I'm not sure I want to be the famous writer i dreamed of ten, fifteen years ago, but i want to write. I want to create the habit of writing and I think this is a good way, even if is not an original one. I might write in English or in Spanish, about movies or music or TV or books. Ill be writing about anything and everything, most will probably make no sense but i have to keep doing it.

500 words is a lot more than I thought it would be. I'm about ready to quit. I wont.

I just got home from watching Avatar. I hated it. I honestly enjoyed nothing about that movie. I don't care that I'm the only person in the world who didn't like it, James Cameron can send me my money back. First of all, the world he created, the images are beautiful ill give him that but did it really need to be that long? The plot line wouldn't have lost anything if he took out an extra fifty minutes, maybe i would've liked it more, it wouldn't have seem so slow. Second could the dialogue be any cheesier?? Really I was almost expecting Jake Sully to scream “I'm the King of the World” when he rode the red dragon thingy (insert eye roll).

I can list more stuff, but I'm just not in the mood to talk about it, I'm already mad is going to win every Oscar known to man and I haven't even seen the competition!! And to top it all off they are planning a Sequel (AVATWO? Cameron says a sequel is coming!) really? is it going to take 12 years to make this one too? I hope so, really, that's how long i´ll need before i pay money to see another James Cameron movie, ever!!!!

Man this is is going to be hard. I still have like forty words to go. I think I'm going to allow myself a twenty four hour window. I need to write 500 a day, not in one try so as long as i have five hundred words within the time frame I'm good.

Yay : 524 down, 181,976 to go