The Expat Survival Kit III: One Year On

Hi Everybody!

Most of you are here, reading this, because you know me. Some of you are here because you've Googled "expat survival kit", or some variation thereof. This post is for all of you. (If you're here because you're looking for pictures of Egypt, that post is here.)

When last we met, I'd written two posts full of everything I've learned about moving to a new place, particularly a foreign country, without a job or any friends outside of your immediate family. Then I had a baby(!!!), moved from London to Dublin, and went into blog silence for... a year. Sorry about that. See above re: baby.

So. Now that I've been in Dublin for almost a year, how'm I doing? Am I taking my own advice? Is it working?

Well, I'll say this, I'm really glad I wrote that post in April last year. I still believe, intellectually, that it's much better in the long run to dig in and make yourself at home in the new place. But in my privileged position of having lived in the new place until it was no longer new, I'd forgotten what that first bit was really like, and how often it would be tempting to just put my head down and kill time until the next move. And I was unbelievably naive, in that I assumed having a baby would make feeling at home in a new place easier. (All you other parents can take a break to laugh hysterically now. I know, you're laughing with me, not at me.) I have needed my own pep talk from time to time.

Anyway.

Efforts aimed at feeling at home in Dublin:

I. The Irish Classes
The Irish accent differs from the American accent very differently than the British accent does. British English and American English are the same language, it's just they've evolved some differences in the last 300 years. Irish English, on the other hand, is English translated from Irish. So I figured the place to start in getting acclimated to Ireland, was to learn why people talk the way they do.

This was a ton of fun. I made sure Gino could come home by six every Wednesday night, and took myself off to the Conradh na Gaeilge in Dublin 2 for their Beginners Irish Class. I didn't learn much Irish, unfortunately: when I tried to speak it with a Dubliner, the response was invariably, "oh, gosh, I haven't thought about that since school, I've forgotten everything" (and when we went to the West, where Irish is still spoken as a first language, everyone I interacted with was from Poland). But I did learn enough to say "hello" and "thank you" and "it's raining" and "I have one daughter" and "a pint of Guinness, please" and about sixteen variations on "good-bye." And I gained at least glancing familiarity with the way language works around here, which means I'm less likely to need to do mental gymnastics to work out what the taxi driver has just said to me.

Of course, the best part was the tea and biscuit (tae agus briosca) break. The beginners were allowed to speak English in the otherwise Irish-only bar under the classroom building, so we actually got a chance to chat - a very important feature in the Class You Take as a New Expat. I even made a friend! We went out for a drink after class, and everything! Then she moved back to New York the week after the class ended. Oops.

I didn't sign up for the next term of classes, and I'm starting to think this was a mistake. It's not that I need to learn Irish in order to live here (and one two-hour class a week is not a good way to learn a language from scratch, anyway), but it was really the only thing I did that wasn't about being a mother. Completely aside from the tea and biscuits, it was really nice to have two or three hours a week when the thing I had in common with everybody was "we're all learning something new," and not "we all have babies at home."

II. The Gym
I finally found a gym with childcare! It's a half-hour walk away (I'll be honest, I call a taxi to get there about 2/3 of the time - I really need to learn how to drive on the left. And get a car), but I can sign my baby up in advance for up to two hours at a time, which is just exactly enough time to do both cardio and weights and take a shower after! The club has a cafe, as well - once when I'd pulled a muscle and knew working out would be counter-productive, I dropped my daughter in the creche, went to the cafe, and added 1000 words to the novel I'm (very slowly) writing.

III. The Expat Group
This... didn't happen. I know, I know, I said it was so important and then I didn't do it. I looked them up and the meetings were way out in a different part of the suburbs than I live in (and so very hard to get to without a car), and I didn't have childcare for the meeting times, so I just didn't join. However! In a fit of desperation I've joined meetup.com, and they have their own expat group there, and one of these days I will bite the bullet and join it. And maybe the "Dublin Writers" and "Dublin Book Club" groups, while I'm at it.

IV. The Playgroup
I'm still doing this, actually. My daughter, almost eleven months old, has moved from the "Babies" class to the "Wobblers" class, which is much smaller because most of the other moms from Babies have gone back to work by now. (Is "Wobblers" - the stage between "Babies" and "Toddlers" - a thing where you live? I'd never heard it before I moved to Ireland, but then, I'd never been a parent before I moved to Ireland, either.) It's not all that exciting - some singing songs, some playing with bubbles, some puppets. It's just really nice, not only to go play with other kids and moms, but to have an hour every week when someone else is in charge. And almost every time, at least a couple people will be up for going out to lunch after. It's almost like having a social life! Of course, it's a social life where all attempts at conversation have to be balanced with the need to keep our kids from hitting each other with their toy phones, but still. I've become close to a couple of women in particular from the class - those of us who didn't go back to work rather banded together - and I hope someday we'll get to go out, child-free, for that glass of wine we all admit to wanting when we're ordering coffees and Diet Cokes to go with our bagel sandwiches.

Which brings me to...

The Snag

There was one big thing I didn't account for when we moved to Dublin: that when you have a baby at the same time that you move to a new place, the only people anyone wants to set you up with are other new moms. There's no "oh, she sings too, she'll know which choirs you might be interested in" or "you're both teachers, you can talk shop." Anytime anyone gives you someone else's number, it's because "she has a baby your baby's age!"

At first, I thought this was just going to be boring, because we'd have to have the "baby pooping/sleeping/feeding" discussion over and over. And to an extent that's been true, though it turns out that (a) that conversation's a lot more interesting when it's about your baby's poop/sleep/food and (b) usually in the process of those conversations you actually learn a good bit about other things you have in common with another mum. But there's a much bigger issue I hadn't anticipated.

New mothers make terrible friends. I include myself in this. I cannot be counted on: if I say I'm going to be somewhere at a certain time, that guarantee comes with fine print saying "assuming my child doesn't get sick or decide to adopt a radically new nap schedule just for today or have a massive nappy blow-out as I'm walking out the door." I am more than happy to listen to what's going on with someone else, but it's hard to find a time when that conversation won't be interrupted by a baby needing me and/or I'm not so exhausted that I'll have trouble keeping track of the conversation. And if you have a problem, I have nothing to offer but sympathy. I can't promise to do any favors to make your life easier. I can't even reliably promise to show up in an appointed place at an appointed time to listen to you tell me about your life.

So to start with, I'm in a poor position to make new friendships: I'm a complete flake, have been for months, and can only hope that some bright future day will see the return of my brain and some measure of control over my day. And then it turns out that everyone with whom I might make friends is in exactly the same boat. To quote one of my mom friends, "I just looked at my text history for the last two months and realized that my entire social life these days consists of making plans and then cancelling them."

We all like each other. In a perfect world, we'd love to spend time together. We're just so damn tired, and so damn many things can go pear-shaped in between when we make our well-intentioned plans and when it's actually time to show up at the park. And that makes it almost impossible to get to know anyone well enough to count on her when you really need a close friend.

The Apology

To those of you who've been googling Expat Survival Kit: I'm sorry. I left out one big thing in my previous posts about successful expatriating, and it really matters.

All that stuff you have to do, to live in your new place rather than just get by: you have to keep doing it. Even when it's frustrating and discouraging and just plain old hard. You can't just do the one thing once and it'll all work out; you have to allow for false starts and dead ends and just the fact that it takes time to get to know people well. And that sucks.

But I still have to believe that it's worth it. If I found out we were leaving Dublin next week, I don't think I'd be happy. I think I'd feel like I missed out. Because I haven't really lived in Dublin the last ten months; I've just resided here. And I'd like to live here. I'd like to have lived here, after we move away. I'd like to have stories about more than just the weather and that one Irish class I took. I'd like to have people to visit when we came back. I'd like to have made an impact in the community where I've spent so much time.

Last month I took my daughter for a very short trip back to London, where she was born. We had a wonderful time and it was depressing as hell, because it drew my attention to everything I try to forget I miss. All the way back through Dublin in the taxi, I just kept wanting to turn around and go home. And then we pulled up in front of our house and my daughter's face absolutely lit up with relief - because of course, as she knows and I've been denying, our house in Dublin is home.

I've done it before, and I know I can make Dublin into a home for myself, as well as my daughter. And you, my dear googler: I know you can, too.

Slán agus beannacht.

So, that's that. Next up in blogging, Book Reviews! or: How I Learned to Read Despite Having a Baby. Next month, I hope? Sometime this summer, anyway.

Expat Survival Kit II: The Toolbox

In my last post I gave a lot of general principles about moving to a new place, especially abroad, and how important it is to build a life when you get there rather than just sticking it out until you move on--but I gave very little information about how to do that. So, for my Inner New Expat, who read that post and wept, "but how? How do I make friends, and find the grocery store that carries Grape Nuts at less-than-extortionate prices, and figure out how to spend the hours I used to be at work?", I present:

The Expat Toolbox

The following are the actual items you will find in your Expat Survival Kit. Some of them are actual, and you can find/buy them. Some of them are metaphorical, and that's the hard part--you'll have to figure out how to create those for yourself.

(Note: most of these are geared toward the person who's not moving for his/her own job. If you move with a job in your own place, several of these issues--how to meet people; where to get advice; how to spend your days--will take care of themselves. I assume. I've only ever been in the position of moving sans day job.)

Before You Go:

I.  Guidebooks

You might as well start with the fun stuff. Pretend you're going on vacation, only this time you don't have to worry about "Three Day Itineraries" or "Top Ten Must Do"s because you'll be able to go see/do whatever cool stuff, whenever you want. Bask in this idea for a while.

II. Novels/Memoirs
While you're picking up your guidebooks, spend some time in the bookstore or library collecting books set in your destination. Maybe it's just me, but I find reading narrative gets me into the spirit of a place better than even the best guidebook.

Of course, it helps that both places I've prepared to move to have been literary powerhouses. (Though the downside of Dublin is that, historically, her writers have written mostly about how miserable it is there and how much they or their characters want to leave. Thank heaven for Roddy Doyle--and if anyone knows any books that present Dublin as a grand place to live, please pass 'em on.)

IIa. Movies
See II. Same principle, but even better, because you get to see the place!

Once You've Arrived:

III. Comfort Food from Home
Food is important. Eating doesn't just fuel the body; it gives the soul a sense of security. You'll have a lot of fun trying out local foods in your new home, but when you're at the end of your rope--and you will get there--you'll want that familiar-from-childhood comfort food you used to take for granted at home.

This one's tough, because you probably won't know what you'll miss most until you get there, can't find it, and miss it. This is where the next item comes in handy:

IV. A Visit from Your Friend from Home
This has to be scheduled very carefully--far enough from the date of your move that you can accommodate a guest, but close enough that the two of you will have the fun of exploring together. Not only is it incredibly reassuring to move knowing that in just a few weeks you will see a familiar face, but having a friend coming also means you have someone to bring you whatever you've realized you can't live without, and can't get in your new place.

V. Comfort Food from Your New Home
Your grocery store can be your friend as well as your biggest source of frustration. Take a break from trying to find the foods you're used to, and find the foods you're really going to miss when you move away from this new place. For me, it's sharp cheddar and tomato chutney on whole wheat; and ready-meal curries; and Turkish delight; and bite-sized chocolate rolls.

I once overheard a bunch of American college students getting very depressed in Sainsbury's because they couldn't find Hershey Kisses. I took pity and told them where to get them (the gourmet store near their dorm, of all places), but I still wish I'd told them the much, much more important secret: forget Hershey's anything and grab a selection of 1/2kg Cadbury bars. What's the point of your year abroad if you don't go back telling people, "oh, I got spoiled by real chocolate in Europe--American chocolate just tastes so bland in comparison"? (Even though calling Cadbury "real chocolate" is stretching the truth--it's still better than anything you can get at a grocery store in the States.)

VI. Club Memberships: if you're on a really good expat package, your/your spouse's company might even pay for these!

VIa. The Gym
Because exercise is good for you, and you suddenly have time for it. Also because endorphins can be your new best friends, until you meet some human best friends. And, not least, because finding your new favorite foods and building your new social life is going to involve consuming a lot more calories than you're used to.

VIb. The Expat Club
The Expat Wife is such an institution that, in certain cities, a whole infrastructure has sprung up to support her. You can start googling before you leave: "American Women's Club" [city]; "International Women's Club" [city]; "expat support" [city]. This is what your first friends in your new home are doing.

Back-to-school kits assembled by volunteers--including me!
--for students at a local primary school

This was probably my least-favorite part of moving to London. I felt like I kept having the same conversation over and over, and it just got less and less interesting. But! Going to club meetings was an excuse to wear nice clothes every couple of weeks (otherwise I could've just lived in whatever I wore to the gym in the morning); club meetings and activities gave those early, endless days some structure; other members of those groups had some great advice on living in London (it's thanks to the Kensington and Chelsea Women's Club that I could tell the college students where to get Hershey Kisses); and--oh yeah--I met some of my closest friends. So while I'm not looking forward to renewing the round of "so, have you figured out how to work your washing machine?" chat in Dublin, I know this is an important step in figuring out how to feel at home in a place, including building real relationships with wonderful people.

VIc. The Interest/Hobby/Service Group/Class
While going to museums and having long lunches with your new friends can be fun for a while, every one of my American-in-London friends eventually discovered that we needed to find a way to invest our time, instead of just spending it. Especially if you move for someone else's job, without one of your own, you will probably discover that one of the aspects of your old life that you most need to replicate in your new one, is a sense of purpose.

In some ways, this can be the hardest part of integrating into your new community. Expat clubs are, by definition, very welcoming to newcomers; it can take longer to prove yourself in an established group of locals. I sang with my choir for almost two years before I started to feel like one of the gang, and during rehearsals for my second Messiah performance last winter, I found out my fellow sopranos refer to me as "the American lady" (and my Canadian friend as "the other American lady").

Being "the American lady" instead of one of a largely American group makes me feel more at home in London. This has been increasingly true as I've joined more and more non-expat-focused activities: my volunteer group is largely American, but through them I spend a few hours a week working with local kids and teachers; in SCBWI, the important thing is that I write for teens. I'll always be "the American," but it's important to keep putting myself in situations where what I'm good at--or, in the case of the yoga and cooking classes I've taken, what I'm learning--is vastly more important than where I came from.

VII. Slack
This is probably the most important tool in your Expat Survival Kit. Wherever you're moving, under whatever circumstances, you're going to need as much of this as you can muster. The various situations in which giving yourself slack will come in handy could be their own (very long) post, but here are what I think are the two most important:

You're not from here. No matter how much advance prep you do, how much you embrace local culture, you will never have grown up in this place. No matter how many similarities you can find between the place you've left and the place you've arrived, there are going to be big, important differences, and they're going to trip you up and make you feel like an idiot. All you can do is keep giving yourself permission to just be an idiot when necessary. It sucks to learn the rules by breaking them, but the important thing is that you're learning the rules. Every dumb mistake you make gets you closer to the day when things that seem so weird now, become second nature.

Your local support system is weak. You're under an enormous amount of stress and the people who usually help you through stressful times are several time zones away. Many of your usual coping mechanisms aren't available in the new place, and you haven't figured out what will replace them yet. This is going to break through in some strange and potentially embarrassing ways. Forgive yourself for the occasional breakdown--no one you know can see you sobbing in the grocery store, anyway.

As the most important weapon in your arsenal, slack comes with a pretty major caveat: if time passes and you find yourself stuck in a helpless, hopeless, negative rut, get help. Cities with expat communities have therapists who specialize in emotional issues related to relocation: call one (or two, or a few). If you're in a place without that kind of expat support, try out a few local therapists, or see if you can set up phone/Skype sessions with someone in a more cosmopolitan location. If you're truly in the middle of nowhere, talk to the organization who sent you there about ways others have dealt with the situation. Don't just resign yourself to hating your situation: the whole point of all this is building a happy life despite the challenges of living abroad, not just enduring the various ways living abroad can suck.

Of course, this advice is all based on me and my one (so far) experience with moving internationally. I'm sure I've left out some piece of advice that's been a lifesaver for someone else. So, expat friends and relatives (and friends and relatives of friends and relatives), what have I missed? What's the most important advice you'd give to someone on the brink of an inter-cultural move?

The Expat Survival Kit

London icons, a block and a half from our flat.

And then the day finally comes. ... Although there have been moments of wondering if it will ever happen, given enough time and a genuine willingness to adapt, we will once again become part of the permanent community. ... We have a sense of intimacy, a feeling that our presence matters to this group.  We feel secure.  Time again feels present and permanent as we focus on the here and now rather than hoping for the future or constantly reminiscing about the past."

Third Culture Kids

David C. Pollock

Ruth E. Van Reken 

When I first read the above paragraph last weekend, I immediately commented to Gino, "and then it'll be time to move again."

I speak from experience.  The book I quoted is right: it's taken a lot of effort (and a lot of thinking it would never happen), but the last eighteen months or so London has truly felt like home.  I have meaningful work I love, and Gino and I have built a circle of smart, interesting, caring people as friends.  We have our favorite restaurants and things to do on a free weekend afternoon, and we've worn the "touristy must-do in London" list down to a nub.  We know the relative advantages of Sainsbury vs Waitrose and that you can buy pretty much anything you can ever imagine needing at Peter Jones.  We have become, as the book puts it in another context, competent.  We're good at London, good at being Americans in London.

And next week we'll be moving into corporate housing for a stretch, pending a move to Ireland later on this summer.

I shouldn't have read Third Culture Kids so hard on the heels of Chris Pavone's The Expats, which I downloaded to read on a driving holiday around France.  I've read a lot of books about expat life over  my life, and especially the past four years, and The Expats was the first one that had me nodding along: yep, been there, done that.

The novel made me want to create a survival pack for new expats, especially the new expats brought overseas by a spouse's career.  (The term of art is "trailing spouse."  If you think that alone isn't a blow to the ego of a competent, independent, previously self-supporting adult, you would be wrong.)  It would include a copy of The Expats, because one of the amazing things about moving to a new country is the sheer amount of free time you have to get through when you get there, and Pavone's novel could kill some of that very enjoyably, while giving you a glimpse of what you're in for.  The survival pack would include a bulk package of your favorite treats from back home, a sampler of delicacies native to your new home, and a list of the instructions I wanted to give the book's protagonist:  find some kind of work, even if it doesn't pay.  Take a class in something, anything, you're remotely interested in, or pick a hobby and find a way to pursue it in a group setting.  (And don't worry about being a cliche.  Cliches are often based in truth.)   To the extent that this is in your control, make a few friends who are native to your new home, or have lived there long-term.  Get together with the other parents at your kids' school and form a baby-sitting co-op so you can have the occasional non-parental evening, even when your husband's traveling.  Don't just get through the days--invest them in building some kind of life.  

I started to feel downright cocky about the move to Ireland: I've done this before.  I've got this changing-countries thing down.  This'll be a lark.

And then Third Culture Kids knocked me off my high horse.  No Expat Survival Kit would be complete without a copy of this book.  Seriously, even if you have no kids and no plan to have them--that just means you can skip the "schooling options" bit.  You should still read most of the book, which has tons to say about the process of relocating into a new culture, and repatriating back.  It was one of those books that told me all kinds of things I didn't realize I knew.

Holy cow.  The book stressed me out in advance.  It reminded me of everything I'd forgotten about exactly how hard it is to switch cities, let alone countries.  How you have to prove yourself all over again to a whole new group of people.  How you have to figure out where to get American products, because someday you will find yourself insanely homesick and only Betty Crocker Devil's Food Cake will make you feel better.  How you have to figure out where to get everything and how many things you didn't realize you can't live without until you decided to leave them behind.  How you have to find some way of passing the time while you slowly accumulate replacements for all the bits of your life you took for granted in the old place: Your work.  Your hobbies.  Your gym.  Your favorite restaurant that actually delivers.  Your friends.

At the same time, it made me feel validated.  All the emotions I experienced in the move to London, even the really embarrassingly immature and provincial ones, are chronicled and catalogued and pronounced perfectly normal.  And who doesn't love to have their more shameful moments--that time you burst into tears in the grocery store because you didn't recognize a single brand of peanut butter, say, or the week you bought something new every single day just so that somehow, something would be different at the end of the day than it was at the beginning--pronounced perfectly normal?

Whisky tasting at the Jameson Distillery.
Dublin will have its compensations.

But it did remind me that those steps I recommended above are necessary and the rewards of going through them really are great--but oh, they're hard.  And there's no getting away from it: the reason you know you need all that stuff, the friends and the gym and the work, is that you already had it, back where you came from.  And no one is going to hand any of it to you in this new place--you have to go out and get it all again.

Everyone I've talked to about this has noted the wave of homesickness that hits around the one-year mark in a new place.  The new glow has worn off and you're just integrated enough into the new community to know how integrated you're not.  When I was about at that point, I had tea with a dear friend who was about a year ahead of me on the expat cycle, and I admitted that I was tempted to give up on making a life and just go into endurance mode until someone told me it was time to leave London.  Since someone was going to tell me to go away eventually, what was the point of making London into somewhere I wanted to live?

My friend listened patiently, and pointed out: "if you're as heartbroken to leave London as you were to leave New York, that's not necessarily a bad thing."  And surprise surprise, she was right.  The grief at leaving London, the conviction that Dublin can't possibly be as good... I wouldn't be feeling any of that if I hadn't done a pretty damn good job of making myself at home here.  And four years ago, I didn't think that was possible, either.

About halfway through The Expats, Pavone describes guests at a Christmas party in Luxembourg:

This party was dominated by the sizable contingent who'd circled around themselves as Americans, exclusionary, flag-pin wearing.  Behaving as if they hadn't chosen to live in Europe, but had been moved against their wills, and were putting up a brave resistance.  Freedom fighters.

I've definitely met those people, and as I said, I understand the temptation.  Third Culture Kids notes that one response to moving into a new culture, recognizing that you'll always be an outsider, is to broadcast your difference and cling even more closely to the culture you know and understand.  When I first moved to London, I met several women who played a lot of bridge and went on a lot of day trips and, from the way they talked about living here, generally just tried  to endure the time before they could go home and back to real life.

Having had periods of living that way, and periods of throwing myself at London until it let me in, I can tell you: in the long run it's a lot easier to make yourself at home in the new place, than to grit your teeth and endure being away from home for years at a time.

And it's so totally worth it.  It's not exactly easy to rebuild your life every few years, and it really sucks to say good-bye to what you've built.  But you have to keep reminding yourself: this is your life.  These two or three or ten or twenty years you're spending abroad, you don't ever get these back.  Home is a long way away, in both time and space. Since you have to be here, you might as well put in the effort through the initial rebuilding process (and deal with the eventual, inevitable grief).  Then you get at least a couple years where things are easy again, and you get to go home with years' worth of amazing memories and stories and friends from all over the world.

Some people just don't like to cook, okay?

Somehow, no-nonsense cooking and eating — roasting a chicken, making a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambling an egg, tossing a salad — must become popular again, and valued not just by hipsters in Brooklyn or locavores in Berkeley. --Mark Bittman, in today's NYTimes

Ugh.  Here we go again.


Don't get me wrong: I love to cook.  It is a matter of great pride with me that I can come up with a homemade, three-course dinner for six with three hours' notice, one trip to the grocery store, and not more than a cursory glance into one of my more well-worn cookbooks.  This photo is from a never-written post about my organic fruit & veg delivery service, and how pleasant it was to make a dinner of pasta and salad using only what I had available.  I consider sitting with a stack of cookbooks and planning a menu or several to be a very enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

But even I, someone who works part-time, enjoys cooking, and loves feeding people, do not want to cook every night.  Cooking turns into a chore very quickly when you're doing it out of necessity rather than joy.  And even when carefully planned to minimize mess, cooking leads to dirty pots and pans and knives and gadgets--none of which go in the dishwasher--and another 30-45 minutes in the kitchen, after the fun part's over.

Cooking also leads to leftover ingredients.  The blog post about the pasta never got written, because I cancelled the delivery service.  If there's one thing more guilt-inducing than feeling you don't cook enough, it's throwing away organic beets that rotted before you got around to reading the instructions for how to prepare them.  But even if you're buying for a meal you know you're going to make, you're pretty much guaranteed to end up, later, wondering what to do with those other four scallions or that last quarter-cup of coconut milk.  Every now and then I'll make a salad to keep in the fridge, but even buying one head of lettuce and one carrot and one pepper and so on, it usually goes bad before I can finish it.

If I only sometimes find myself able to rise above these obstacles to make a home-cooked dinner, what chance does someone have, who has more responsibilities than I do and doesn't like to cook in the first place?

The smart campaign is not to get McDonald’s to serve better food but to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden, or at least as part of a normal life.

Why, Mr. Bittman?  Why do we all have to cook (and, ahem, clean) every night?  Why can't we just have convenient, healthy, prepared food, so people don't have to chose between convenience and health?

I know this can be done, because it's my daily reality.  I haven't cooked unless I wanted to for three years, because I can pick up a healthy dinner from the grocery store on the way home from the Tube station.  Sometimes it's fish cakes and steamed vegetables; sometimes it's microwaveable Indian or Italian or Chinese food; sometimes it's vegetable soup and whole-wheat rolls.  (Every now and then it's pizza and a bottle of wine.)  There are low-sodium and low-saturated fat and low-calorie options available.  I've read the ingredient lists, and they're the same as the ingredient lists in my recipe books:  no preservatives, no fake food.  (You can tell, because they expire after 3 days in the fridge, or about a month in the freezer.)

Now, before you all yell at me: I know this means a lot more paper and plastic is coming out of my house than if I were cooking from fresh ingredients.  Most of it gets recycled.  In any case, waste is an engineering problem, not a physics problem.  Ditto cost, as I do suspect that eating this way is more expensive than cooking--though not if you believe that time is money.

If you read the op-ed, Mark Bittman says a lot of bad things about processed food, and they're all true.  But none of them have to be.  It's the current method of processing food in America that's at issue, not the definition of processing--which does, after all, include "cooking".

The 1998 tobacco settlement limited cigarette marketing and forced manufacturers to finance anti-smoking campaigns — a negotiated change that led to an environmental one that in turn led to a cultural one, after which kids said to their parents, “I wish you didn’t smoke.” Smoking had to be converted from a cool habit into one practiced by pariahs.

But that's the thing, Mr. Bittman: people had to be convinced to stop smoking, or better yet, not start.  They didn't have to be convinced to: spend time planning, drive 10-20 minutes out of their way, learn a new skill, spend 15-60 minutes a night performing that skill, and then clean up after it.  Not starting to do something is generally a lot easier than starting to do it.

Look, I spent a lot of time a few years ago kicking myself for not cooking.  I was pretty much living on take-out while I worked full time and went to graduate school.  On my few evenings home, I popped a WeightWatchers meal into the microwave rather than cook up something from the Moosewood book.  I spent weekends writing, doing housework, and--gasp--relaxing with my fiance, when I should have been making batches of the week ahead's meals.  I was sure this was a moral failing of the first order.

Finally, Christmastime came, and I re-read A Christmas Carol, as I do every year.  I came across the line, Scrooge took his usual melancholy meal in his usual melancholy tavern.  That sent me to thinking about other meals in other books: the bachelor in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter arranging to have his lunch and dinner with the diner nearest his boarding house; the many meals botched by Betsy Ray Willard while Joe is at work (and the fact that one reason Betsy can't cook is that her family's always had a housekeeper to do it); Jo's failure to make a nice lunch on Hannah's day off.  It dawned on me: expecting people to come home from work and cook dinner is a pretty short-lived phenomenon, historically.  For most of the history of western civilization, preparing daily meals has been accepted as a perfectly acceptable job to pay someone else to do.

I'm not sure why that has changed.  The world is full of personal tasks that are as perfectly okay to outsource as they are to perform.  I can't imagine anyone sane claiming that everyone, regardless of circumstances, must compost their own waste rather than leave it out for the garbage collectors to deal with for them.  I never worried, in the days when I sent out my sheets and towels rather than spend hours in the laundromat trying to get them dry, that I was somehow letting myself down by not doing every stitch of my own laundry.  Nobody writes op-eds about how important it is that busy people clean their own house instead of hiring cleaners (provided those cleaners are fairly paid).  I don't see any reason why cooking should be any different.

When it comes to food prep, why not give people a chance to do what they're already doing, but differently?  What is it about the chore of cooking that makes some people say, "you must do this for yourself"--against all available evidence?

There's no reason why eating healthfully shouldn't be as easy as eating unhealthfully.  People of America: you don't need to cook more, you just need better non-cooking options.

On deciding to just be this size

When I was thirteen or fourteen, Seventeen magazine ran a diet article. Half of the article was, "How to eat if you're too skinny" (you got to have milkshakes every day!); the other half, "How to eat if you're too fat" (oh, who remembers; it was the late 80s, so I'm sure it involved lots of celery). So I asked my mom, "am I too skinny or too fat?" I hoped she'd say I was too skinny, so I could have the milkshakes. But I suspected I was too fat, and doomed to celery.

Imagine my surprise--and incredulity--when she said, "I think you're just the right size." This was an option for which Seventeen had simply not prepared me. I was sure she was just being nice: it couldn't possibly be that I honestly didn't need to lose weight.

I have had maybe two years in my adult life where I was free from that feeling. In my late 20s, I did several months' worth of Weight Watchers, and reached the lowest weight I'd ever been as an adult. I could wear all kinds of clothes I'd never felt comfortable in before: miniskirts! sleeveless tops! shirts tucked in!! I got cold much more easily, and couldn't hold my whiskey nearly as well, but who cared? For the first time in my life, I was taking jeans I thought would fit into dressing rooms, and then having to ask for a smaller size! I was THIN! I had mastered life!

Of course, life went on. I got a boyfriend, and instead of living on Weight Watchers meals at home, I was going out for dinner a lot--and not always ordering a salad, and sometimes sharing a starter. I started going to grad school in addition to working full-time, which cut down on gym-going time as it upped whiskey-drinking time. I got married and started cooking more; I moved to a country with amazing, calorific treats like steak-and-ale pie and chicken tikka masala and sticky toffee pudding. I ate real ice cream again, and realized that Skinny Cow just didn't cut it.

So for the past few years, I've been back to that old feeling, that I should really lose ten pounds. Except now it's compounded with guilt that I gained them to begin with. I have failed in my responsibility--to my husband, to myself, to the legions of people who have to look at me every day as I go about my business--to be the thin person I've proven I can be.

Because that's what women are supposed to do, right? Because otherwise we're "letting ourselves go," and it's our own fault if our partner leaves or we lose out on a promotion or we get sick with something chronic.

I finally started to snap out of this a couple of months or so ago, when I pulled on a pair of old khakis that I wear around the house. I had the traditional self-flagellation moment as I buttoned them, because they fit around my waist, and not around my hips the way they did a few years ago. And then I had a laughing moment at the very mid-90s styling of this particular pair of trousers, which are designed to fit at, not below, the waist and which feature billowing pleats in the front and taper to an end just at the ankle. And then I thought, holy shit, I'm 35 and I can still wear trousers I bought when I was 21.

Maybe--just maybe--the smallest I've ever been isn't the size I'm meant to be, as an adult. Maybe I'm actually supposed to be the size I've been for most of my adult life.

It was the start of a serious think.

That think--fueled by lots of reading, to which I'll link down below, rather than try to cleverly fit it all in the body of the post--continued right into the belly-dancing class at my gym, and learning how to shimmy correctly (hint: it's not about the boobs), and a second sudden flash of insight:

The only thing my skinny body could do that my heavier body can't, is wear smaller clothes.

That body wasn't a better dancer.
It wasn't a better writer.
It wasn't a more creative teacher.
It didn't sing any more beautifully.
It couldn't walk any farther.
It wasn't a more effective leader.
It wasn't any better at picking up new skills (like belly-dancing, or golf).

Even if I were to someday put on those mid-90s khakis and find they wouldn't button, all that would mean was that I had outgrown a pair of pants. It wouldn't take anything away from who I am and what I can do.

So, now I have to learn a whole new way of thinking. I try not to step on the scale, because sometimes I do that and the number makes me feel bad, even though all my clothes still fit and I'm dripping with sweat and high on endorphins from my workout. I'm trying to start to think about my food and activity choices in terms of "what will help me stay healthy?" rather than "what will help me fit back into my smallest LBD?" And I have to make myself remember: I hadn't mastered life when I lost weight. I had just fixed one thing that had been bugging me.

Most of all, I've had to give up on what Kate Harding calls The Fantasy of Being Thin (oh, look, there's a link after all). I have to keep pounding the message into my own brain: there is nothing I want to do that requires being thin. After all (another link, coming up!), Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar and a Grammy before she lost weight.

And you know what? Losing weight was time and effort-consuming. I love my life, but I haven't exactly achieved everything I want to in it. Why would I want to distract myself from the goals that matter to me, by directing energy towards a goal that won't help me achieve them?

Further Reading:
More on the Jennifer Hudson Weight Watchers Ad
Shapely Prose FAQ
The problem with modern diet advice
More problems with modern diet advice
You Don't Have to be Pretty
Already Pretty Reality Check

More Kindled Thoughts

I started out to simply post this on facebook with a pithy comment. Then my pithy comment grew out of pithy-length and into blog-post-length, and I suddenly remembered: hey! I have a blog!

Hi, Gang. It's been a busy summer. Places to go, sisters to entertain (and be entertained by), old friends to rescue from airline cancellations. Junior League action plans to write. Novel drafts to finish. New books to read, for that matter. You understand.

Anyway, speaking of all the books I've read this summer: back to the NYTimes' panic over "E-books top hardcovers at Amazon", and why this is a non-story.

In the first place, is the NYTimes sure that this number represents people who typically read hardcover books switching over to read them on Kindle? Because I have a counter-data set of one: I have a longstanding policy--way predating the Kindle--of not buying hardcover books by authors I don't know personally. I just don't have any more room to store them.

The Kindle actually means I read a lot more new releases, because in the old days I would have waited for the paperback or for the book to show up at the library. I still do that with hardcovers that aren't available on Kindle, so there's no need to clutch your pearls over the fact that e-book sales overtook sales of "hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition."

In the second place, the data here is completely skewed, for a whole lot of reasons. Amazon is the only seller of Kindle books, but not the only seller of hardcovers. One of the huge advantages of the Kindle is instant gratification: I order, I read. Amazon can't offer that with paper books, but the Daunt where I kill time on the way to my volunteer gig can. Hardcover is not the only print book format, and I'd wager (I should be a good blogger and look this up, but I'm not going to) it's not even the most popular: the hardcover sections of most bookstores are dwarfed by paperbacks. So measuring e-book sales against hardcover sales, even if you could enlarge your vision from Amazon and look industry-wide (and why can't you, if you've got the resources of the New York Times behind you?), is a bit of a straw man argument.

Look, I love paper books as much as the next bookworm. Here's a picture of part of one wall in my flat--it goes on, there's another bookcase on the opposite wall, and the guest room/study is similarly lined. I love my paper books. I'm a great re-reader, as well, and I love the way the feel and smell of a particular book can conjure up my life at the time that I first read it. I do want to own paper copies of some books: I have a whole shelf of autographed copies of my friends' books, and that simply wouldn't work on Kindle.

But I don't get the "oh noes, electronics are coming to steal your paper!" panic. The invention of recording didn't doom live music performance. Theatre survives alongside film; I own three radios and only one television. Publishers are still turning out hardcover books, 80 years after the invention of cheaper, easier-to-carry paperbacks.

(Okay, so the internet is killing newspapers. Fair enough. But book publishers have been smart enough not to equate "digital" with "free" in readers' minds, and have dodged that bullet. And I'll admit: I miss cassette tapes, because I don't have a way to listen to my mix tapes from high school anymore.)

I would love someone better at research than I am do write an article about how e-books are changing reading habits. Are the numbers of people who tell Pew or the NEA that they've read a novel in the past year changing? Are sales of non-fiction going up or down among different formats? Are people paying for newspaper and magazine subscriptions again, to use on their e-readers? Are total sales of all reading material, in all formats, up or down?

I'm just annoyed at the idea that the New York Times will use front-page real estate on the staggering news that people are consuming books in the same format they consume everything else these days.