The One with My xoJane Post

Those of you who have known me for a long time know that my legit career aspiration was to work for the now-defunct Jane magazine.  I can actually credit my mom for how I discovered Jane magazine. . .she'd read an article in the newspaper about different types of girls, and how the more traditional girls read Cosmopolitan, but the more off-beat, quirky girls read Jane.  "Have you ever read Jane?" Mom asked.  I hadn't, but I immediately got a subscription, sight unseen.  Us quirky girls, you know, have got to stick together.

And then I fell in love.

The first thing I ever had published in a magazine was a little blurb in the beginning of the magazine.  They'd asked a question. . .something about money going toward sports in schools.  I can't even remember.  But I'd e-mailed in my response and they published it.

They also had these columns called It Happened To Me that paid somewhere between $50 and $100 to people to just tell stories about. . .crazy or weird or strange things that had happened to them.  My plan was, I was going to write one of those, Editor-In-Chief Jane Pratt was going to fall madly in love with my writing style and offer me a job as soon as I graduated college.  It was my plan.

Then Jane Pratt left Jane magazine and Brandon Holley took her place.  At some point, and I can't even remember why, I'd e-mailed the magazine, and Brandon Holley herself e-mailed me back.  Brandon was no Jane Pratt, but oh my God, the editor of the magazine of my dream job had e-mailed me back.

Then, in the summer of 2007, I was a newly-minted college graduate, working a temp job at a pharmaceutical company, waiting for my Big Break, when my friend Ashley e-mailed me with the news.  She was a graphics major in the journalism school at UNC, so she was on these journalism-related listservs. 

"Just saw that Jane magazine is folding," she said.  ":("

And just like that, Ashley ruined all my hopes and dreams and aspirations.

(Just kidding.  I'm just shooting the messanger.)

So I did some Yahoo!ing (you know, before Google was a way of life), and although it was very cloak-and-dagger and very mysterious, it was true: My beloved Jane, the goal of my life, was going under.

Admittedly, the quality had taken a drastic, drastic downturn in the previous few years.  I'd even let my subscription lapse for a while after Jane Pratt left.  But. . .it was Jane.

Fast forward some years, and Jane Pratt has started a new online venture, xoJane.com.  It had a rough start, I think, but then it caught on.  There are lots of different voices on the site (Personally, I'm madly in love with Emily and Daisy, even though the latter has caused some. . .uproars.)  There are some really bitchy voices within the commentors, but there are also some very lovely people.

And they still have It Happened To Me.

I think you know where this is going.

I wrote this.

It was terrifying and exciting and awesome.  So far, the comments have been supportive.

And I like to think it's my one step closer to having Jane Pratt discover me*.






*It should be noted that I applied for a job with xoJane, but I never heard anything from them.  It's just as well:  I'm not sure how D would have felt about moving to Manhattan.

The One With the Yearbooks

K brought her Nintendo Wii along with her for her two-week visit, and I am quite pleased and satisfied to say that it's still tucked away in the bag she brought it in. She's been playing, basically non-stop, my old circa 1993 Super Nintendo. It makes me proud.

One of the games she especially loves is Mario Paint. You can't play it with the controllers -- you have to use the mouse that came with the game. It also has a mousepad that goes with it, but I've misplaced that somewhere back at my dad's house. I still have it, but I haven't made the effort to track it down. As such, when you play the game, you have to have some kind of flat surface to put the mouse on. A couple of nights ago, I noticed that K had pulled one of my old yearbooks off the shelf to use as the mousepad.

When she'd finished playing, I picked up the yearbook and told her that it was my 2nd grade yearbook. She's going into 2nd grade this year, so that piqued her interest. She looked up my picture and told me how cute I was.

Then she proceeded to through all my yearbooks, looking for my picture, and making commentary on and asking things about stuff I'd written in the books.

"Why does this girl have her face colored in?"
"Because she was mean to me."
"I have a friend that's mean to me."
"If she's mean to you, why is she your friend?"
"Well, she used to do this every time I looked at her." (Rolls her eyes and puts on bitchface.)
"Does she still do it?"
"No. We're friends now."

The politics of 1st graders.

"Why did you put checkmarks beside these people?"
"Those were my friends."
"I have lots of friends."

Then I showed her my elementary school boyfriend (my longest-term relationship to date, lasting from kindergarten until 4th grade, when I left to go to a different school). He just got married, incidentally.

"Cute," K said.

She shuffled through the yearbooks for a while longer until she got to high school.

"Why do three of these say 'high school' on them?"
"Because I was at that high school for three years. I was at a different school for 9th grade."
"Four years?"
"Yeah. High school lasts four years."
"No it doesn't."
"Yeah it does."
"I won't be in high school for four years."
"I bet you will."

She told me I was pretty in all of my high school pictures. (Why can't EVERYONE look at people like kids do?)

Then I said, "Hey, I'll show you my boyfriend from 11th grade." I paged through the Junior class until I came to his picture. I pointed it out to her.

She didn't say anything. She just laughed. I'm not sure why, but she just laughed.

And that's why we get along.

The One Where I Don't Have to Compromise

Yes, it's been months. Yes, I'm sorry. No, I don't have a long, substantial entry. Just an observation.

K has been here for the last 8 days, and will be here for the next 6. She has been. . .7 a lot of the time. That is to say, wholly disagreeable.

"Do you want to go to the store with me?"
"No, I don't want to."

"Do you want to have pizza for dinner?"
"No, I don't want to."

"Do you want to check out some library books?"
"No, I don't want to."

Besides that, it's been fine.

The thing that I discovered last night, though, is the little-known secret of parenting, step- or otherwise. With kids, you don't have to compromise, and it's glorious.

Say you're riding along in a car with an adult, whether your partner or otherwise, and they say, "I don't like this song." You would most likely feel compelled to compromise, to find something different that you can both agree on.

With kids, though, you're in charge. Unless you're doing something patently offensive, you can pretty much do whatever you feel like.

I worked the night shift at the library last night, and didn't get off until 9. D decided to go out and work, and so I had to bring K home with me from work. I'd been looking forward to getting back to my audio book on the way home (since it's about a half hour drive, I have plenty of time to listen to audio books) and didn't think I needed to deviate from that plan just because I suddenly had K in the car.

We're riding along for about 10 minutes, and she pipes up from the back, "I don't like this."

"Well," I said, "it's the book I'm listening to right now."

I didn't need to explain. I didn't need to compromise. That was the book I was listening to. Period.

There were no further complaints.

It was awesome.

The One With a French Friday: Cocktail Nuts

I'll go ahead and make it known that every joke, pun, and bad innuendo that could possibly be made about "nuts" has already been made, either by D or by myself, so anything I say within this entry that could possibly have "That's what she said!" after it, consider it already there.

When I made the last update I made, I commented about how I needed to get back into the swing of French Fridays with Dorie. After I finished that entry, I was going about my merry way when I thought, "Um, Sarah? TODAY is Friday." So I went through the list of Things to be Made and pulled out the easiest one: Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts.

Here are the ingredients:

Sugar, salt, chili powder, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, egg white, and nuts. Dorie suggests using perhaps a mix of nuts, but seeing as to how I'm very particular about which ones I'll eat, I went with a combination of peanuts (because who doesn't love peanuts?) (besides those people who are allergic to them) and walnuts, which I had in the freezer, waiting for just such an occasion.

First, you mix together the dry ingredients.

Then you beat the egg white and mix it with the nuts.

Then you add the spice mix. . .

And mix all THAT together.

I should mention here that I was having a tough time with some of these pictures, because I wanted an over-the-bowl shot, but while I'm already tall, I'm not QUITE tall enough to pull that off. It was at this point D built me a little step stool out of two 12-packs of Diet Coke and a large wooden cutting board.

Awesome.

I have to admit here that I didn't follow Dorie's directions exactly. She was all talking about how you needed to take each nut piece out of the bowl individually, "let the excess egg white drip back into the bowl," and separate everything "as best you can."

I saw no excess egg white. Everything seemed to be pretty well mixed, and I didn't have the patience of take each individual one out of the bowl and place it on the pan.

So I just kind of dumped everything onto the cookie sheet and spread it out.

Into the oven they went.

When I pulled them out of the oven, I saw why Dorie had indicated that they needed to be separated. What I had was kind of like a peanut brittle textured creation.

But you know what?

I kind of preferred it that way.

It was DELICIOUS.

I feel like you could break it into chunks and sell it as some kind of holiday gift basket item.

So, so good.

Chalk up another FFwD win for Sarah!

The One Where I Win Again

So, y'all remember when I won candles, right? I won them from Say Anything and was all kinds of excited, because I usually don't win things?

I have a new story for you.

I was sitting at work yesterday when my cell phone rang with the local area code. Usually, I don't pick it up if I don't recognize the number, but I decided, for whatever reason, to answer it.

"Hello?" I say, wittily.

"Hi," says a guy. "Is this Sarah?"

(What I should have said, in retrospect, is, "No! THIS is!" and laughed maniacally. Sadly, I didn't think of that until later. Also, he may or may not have hung up if I did that.)

"It is," I say.

"This is Brody from G105. Do you have plans for tomorrow night?"

(This is. . .surreal, to say the least. I don't know what Brody looks like (I linked to the site, but can not see it from this computer because it's in Category: Music.), but I have listened to him for years, and he has the most awesome radio voice. I may or may not have a Voice Crush on the guy. But you know how radio goes. He probably looks like this.)

"Why?" I ask. "Are you asking me out?"

(Um, yes. I actually said this.)

Brody laughs. "No, no," he says, "But do you have plans for tomorrow night?"

It's at this point that a little thought in the back of my mind begins to form, but I'm thinking, surely not.

I DO actually have plans, as I'm supposed to go see my shrink, but I say, "No. No, I don't."

Brody says, "Well, then, you and three friends are going to see the Maroon 5 show, and meeting the band backstage!"

SON. OF. A. BITCH.

I'd entered a contest for these tickets a couple of weeks ago, and I'd said to D. . .Friday, I think? That "oh, yeah, we'll be going to that concert."

And we are.

What makes it. . .kind of awesome is that I was a last-minute entry. The contest ended a day or two after I'd entered.

Also, when I entered, I didn't realize it was also for backstage passes. I thought it was just for tickets. But now, since there ARE backstage passes involved, there will probably be freaking SWEET seats.

So once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I told Brody I loved him* and that he'd just made my life.**

As such, tonight, I will be taking D, Katie, and Katie's college roommate, Katherine, to see Maroon 5. And to meet the band. Who, by the way? I effing love. They are in my Top 3, and their first album, Songs About Jane, was the soundtrack to my college experience, expecially freshman year.

I am a little sad that the venue won't let us being "professional" cameras, as D IS a professional, but whatever. I'm MEETING THE BAND.

It's still a little surreal. Of course, there will be full updates later.

*Not true.

**True.