I Did a Crazy Thing

So we've established that I love to cook, right? Well, I saw this random competition for aspiring chefs and thought, why note? It's one of those popularity contest type of competitions where you ask people to vote for you, and the most votes win. Yes, I signed up at like three in the morning when I should have been asleep. Shut up.

I kind of want to win.

The prize is $25,000, and some other stuff that I can't remember, but this would be a great chunk of money to use for culinary school, traveling abroad to learn more international cuisine, or even to open a little food stall at a farmer's market. Possibilities abound. It's not a ton of money but it'll do; I'm not trying to open a restaurant, I just want to make good food that brings joy.

Voting opens March 31st. DO NOT LET ME DOWN. A vote for me is a vote for delicious meals when I invite you over to celebrate my win! Vote more than once and I'll come to your house to cook for you. Vote ten or more times and, I don't know, maybe I come a meal prep for you, enough to last you a month. Again, POSSIBILITIES ABOUND.

I'm not sure if I should be offering incentives, of if you can vote more than once, but seeing as only 10 of y'all are on my mailing list, and I know you in real life, what could it hurt?????

Tell all your friends! And if I've ever cooked for you, I encourage you to leave a comment and let the people know what I'm bringing to the table 😋

Love & (Meat)Balls,

Jaded

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a mí me gusta el chivo con vino

y el pescao con jugo de limón

con pimienta y orégano el lechón

y el arroz con jamón y tocino

para ponerle sabor a un buen fiestón

Meditation Experiment, Part Deux

I can't remember when I took my first vedic meditation course in the City—I'm sure it's documented on this blog somewhere—but shortly thereafter I gave up on it. I can't even pinpoint what it was that got me off track, but knowing me it probably went something like... I was following the method to a T, then one day I had to skip a session for some random reason, and it made it easier to skip it again the next time, and so on and so forth. Then I probably told myself, "Meh, how do we know it even works?" as a way to justify quitting. Also, I never bothered to regulate my god-awful sleeping habits, and that alone makes it so hard to maintain any type of real time management system or healthy livng practice. 

In fact, I'm typing these very words at 2:08 am knowing full well I promised to make breakfast for my niece and nephew (in about four hours) so now I have to pull an all-nighter or risk breaking a promise to my babies and to their parents (who will potentially get to sleep in for a little bit while I cover morning eats).

But let's make believe that this time I've learned my lesson, that I'm actually taking that Brain Damage warning seriously, and that I'm going to take my brain health more seriously moving forward. 

Let's watch me attempt to take up vedic meditation again for the umpteenth time.

I'm sure the good people at the New York Meditation Center, where I studied, are sick of my, "I want to come back to the fold," emails, because frankly I never follow through. Part of what keeps me away is that I have this narrative in my head that there are more important or pressing things I need to be focused on just to survive my day-to-day, instead of sitting quietly for twenty minutes, twice daily. 

Because, when we really get down to it, Quiet is my enemy. I don't do anything quietly. I play lo-fi beats to do any task that requires concentration. I listen to audiobooks while I do chores around the house, run errands, or make dinner. I keep the TV on as my emotional support white noise in the background, while I'm "falling asleep." I carry on conversations with my shampoo bottles in the shower. Quiet, to me, equals death.

In the Quiet is where my spiral lives, because that's where The Voices let me know about all the dumb shit I continue to do to ruin my own life and the lives of the people in my vicinity. And who wants to hear that day in and day out? I'd much rather listen to Karol G crush on another girl's man, or solve sex crimes with Ice-T. My LITERAL nightmare is having to exist in a QUIET PLACE scenario. Just kill me instead.

However, brain health, right? Right. So let's try again, again, thusly:

My main obstacle to this great plan being me, of course, because I have to be OK if every day doesn't look like this. I'm not in the army; I don't have to be so strict with myself and my time. I can wing it some days, maybe. I hope. Listen, this is an experiment, like this whole existence is an experiment, to see if my next 50-ish years can be better than the first, or if old bitches can actually learn new tricks, or if I can regulate my sleep, or if I can avoid The Brain Damage as I age.

What could possibly go wrong?

Love & Balls,
Jaded
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i played the powerless in too many dark scenes,
and I was blessed with a birth and a death,
and I guess I just wanted some say in between.

A St. Paddy's Day Treat: Circle of Friends

Only because I didn't plan ahead and I'm traveling at the moment, instead of a fully thought out blog post, please enjoy one of my absolute favorite films, which turns 30 this year, and introduced me to the wonderful Minnie Driver and the quirky Alan Cumming: Circle of Friends (dir. Pat O'Connor, 1995). It's free (with ads) on YouTube for now, so watch it while you can.

"May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow."

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit,
Jaded
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drinking all the day in old pubs
where fiddlers love to play
someone touched the bow
he played a reel
it seemed so fine and gay

I Need to Go Outside and Touch Grass

This is definitely something that's been building up, but I'm one more global health crisis away from never ever leaving my apartment again. Ever. Just me cosplaying as Howard Hughes wearing tissue boxes as shoes and hand sanitizer on a chain around my neck.

But bigger than my anxiety about what is happening outside my door, is my fear of losing my mind. It's the one thing I depend on for survival, and I cannot fathom a life worth living if I didn't have my wits about me.

Enter this doctor's YouTube channel, a small video I came across during my two-month stint as a person who is up from 6PM to 6AM. In a nutshell, she says that prolonged social isolation is a form of brain damage. BRAIN DAMAGE. Y'all. I've never been so scared straight in my whole miserable life.

So now I have to figure out how to reset my sleep schedule to follow a more traditional western society cycle. How do you peasant's do it? How do you get into bed at night, close your eyes, turn off The Voices? How do you get comfortable? Fall asleep? Stay asleep? Y'all don't drown in worries, like what if a fire breaks out in the building, or a bunch of military tanks roll down Flatbush Avenue and start killing us indiscriminately? Or if this is the Buffalo wing that will finally trigger that MI you've been trying to avoid your whole life?

Or, I don't know... maybe a sound mind is overrated...

Love & Balls,

Jaded

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anxiety, keep on tryin' me

i feel it quietly

tryin' to silence me

Domesticated. Kinda.

During the pandemic, when we were all scrambling to stay sane, I didn't jump on board the bread-making train but I did take a good look at my home life- the clutter we kept, the food we ate, the habits we had as a small family, and I didn't like what I saw. 

Fast forward to now, wherein I build towards becoming a prepper, and you can't tell me you haven't thought about it. I want control over the quality of the food my family eats and what it costs. I want to harness energy from the sun and the earth to heat and power my home. I want us living on a small compound where we can look after each other. And I know this is starting to sound cult-ish, but I've seen so much ugly behavior from people lately that it takes a whole lot to get me to leave the house. 

Since I'm indoors anyways, might as well be Suzy Homemaker, amiright? Well...

I try. But I don't live alone and my roommates 1) don't help with the home-keeping, and 2) make more of a mess than I can keep up with.

What I can do, I like to highlight sometimes online as Doña Ivelisse. 

I cook a lot; I do my own hair and nails; sometimes I do hair and nails for others; and I declutter and design cute spaces in my home. Most of it I document online for shits and giggles, not for any real clout or influencer dreams, because the thought of setting up a camera every time I decide to chop an onion or trim my own hait makes me want to lay down and never get back up. I do think I can use this space to speak on some of my favorite project more in the future, so there's that.

In the meantime if you haven't already, feel free to peruse my fun little IG. And when you're in town, give me a holler and maybe you'll get a dinner invite or a bag of complimentary bagels.

Love & Balls,

Jaded

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i let you live here for free

and I don't even charge you rent

i clean up all your messes

and I'm always there when you need to vent

and this is the thanks I get?