Ellen Guthrie 4/7/23 Ellen Guthrie 4/7/23

That Big Kid Ellen #72: Skip stones

Today, I’m writing all about negative thoughts. Doubts. Nitpicking. Downward spirals. A house of cards that implodes the second you touch it.

With that in mind, the activity for this blog post — skipping stones — was something that I never actually did as a kid, but it’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do and I associate it with memorable childhood experiences. It took some convincing (with my inner dialogue) that it even deserved a place on the list.

I did spend a lot of time near water as a kiddo, growing up next to Lake Michigan and frequently camping near Wisconsin lakes in the summers. But skipping stones on the water was never really something I did. I swam a lot. I jumped off rope swings. Canoed. But skipping stones was either never on my mind or it was something I was intimidated by.

Baby Ellen near a Loch in Scotland.

I made sure it ended up on the list because it still intimidates me! I’ve tried to skip stones over the years and have failed, mostly just throwing rocks into the water and watching them sink immediately, usually accompanied with a dramatic and insulting splash. But part of this blog and the experiences associated with it are about facing the fear of failure and pushing through.

Back in January of this year, I was chosen to attend a writer’s workshop in Hawaii, on the big island. I submitted two chapters of my WIP novel and was selected, along with a small group of other fiction writers, to spend 5-days honing my craft, receiving and giving feedback on my work, and learning about the writing and publishing business.

My immediate reaction — I don’t deserve this.

The negative thoughts rushed in at warp speed. I’m not a good enough writer. I don’t have anything to offer other writers. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe this is a pity choice. Maybe I should say no.

Imposter syndrome is so real for me when it comes to my writing, especially my creative writing since it stems from my own reality (or my dream reality). It’s pretty easy for me to write these blog posts — it’s more or less a stream of consciousness activity, minimal edits or rewrites. And people continually tell me that they like reading my posts, even get something out of them sometimes for themselves (that’s the dream).

Literally the best feedback I could ever receive.

But when it comes to my fiction — I still am unconvinced that I’m any good.

I know that I have a wild imagination. My dreams alone could create multiple series of hit books, I’m sure of it.

But I have so little “formal” training when it comes to writing. For someone who grew up in an education-is-god household, it’s hard to believe that you can be good at anything without learning from a professional. Even if you do it all the time, have people telling you that you are actually good at it, and if you really enjoy doing it. There’s little space for logic when it comes to imposter syndrome.

But, there I was, with an acceptance letter, saying that I am good enough to work with published and prolific authors. Little kid Ellen, always searching for accomplishments and validation, was so pleased.

Derek and I made a mini-vacation out of the opportunity, spending a couple days in Volcanoes National Park ahead of time. We were excited to walk on dormant volcanoes, see active volcanoes, and spend time outside in a new environment.

The first bit of negativity arrived when we had to interact with other humans.

Yay, humanity! 🙌

I will one day write a short story about the existential irony of witnessing hundreds of tourists watching a live volcano spew lava right in front of their eyes, creating new land literally right in front of them… and they choose to *loudly* tell each other about how their AirBnB didn’t have coffee packets included. Pisces Ellen stared and cried and had big feelings because WE ARE INSIGNIFICANT ON THIS PLANET DON’T YOU GET IT?! But most people aren’t ready to feel those feelings so instead they debate whether or not they should wear normal shoes or hiking boots for their excursion the next day.

Le sigh.

WE ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO THE UNIVERSE, said the human with big emotions.

I should also mention that my big emotions were even more monstrous than normal because my dog, Zeb, was suffering from seizures for the first time in his life. Leaving my mom alone with him to watch him and figure out what to do about that hurt my soul and made me ache to be home and take care of him. (My mom is literally the hero of this story though. Zeb hasn’t had a seizures in over three months because she took him to the vet multiple times to accurately diagnose him. ❤️)

Before the retreat even began, the trip was shrouded with negativity.

When it was time to head across the island to the remote location of the retreat, Derek and I tried to vow to each other to make the best of it, even though we were kind of over the whole place.

Here’s my critique of the retreat so you can get the full picture:

Pro: gained 1000% more confidence in my writing abilities via feedback from fellow writers and the group leader (a published author) 💪
Pro: made a few very strong and meaningful connections with inspiring writers that I continue to keep in touch with to this day 🔗
Pro: was able to pitch my novel to one of the best literary agents in the country, and he said to send him the manuscript once it’s done! 🏆
Pro: we saw whales breeching in the ocean from the hotel grounds every day 🐳
Con: the retreat focused a lot on the business of publishing and writing (which was insightful), but had next to nothing of improving our craft as writers (what I really need/want) ✍️
Con: the hotel was old, not well-taken- care-of, and extremely dirty 🏚
Con: we didn’t have a rental car and were very secluded 🚗
Con: Derek didn’t have anything to do while I wrote for half the day 🥸
Con: California is better than Hawaii (imho), and we were both really, really homesick from the get go 🦦

Because the location of the retreat was so terrible, Derek and I seriously considered calling it quits and going home to be with our sick dog and sleep in our own (clean) bed. I cried the first night we were there because I was so overwhelmed.

However, we stuck it for just one day and things started to feel better. It helped when we formed an inside joke that whenever something was so awful about the hotel (water-damaged walls in our room, sub-par food, a hot tub that didn’t work), we would look at each other and say, “Four stars!” …because somehow this hotel was listed as a “4-star resort” on Google. (It is NOT.)

The general schedule-of-event for the week was: time to work with other writers during the mornings, planned excursions for everyone in the afternoons.

Impossibly, we made it to the third day of the retreat. The day when my work was being critiqued by the group, and the day when we were promised a black sand beach excursion.

Yes, please!

After reconsidering the trip a hundred times a day, Wednesday felt better. We kept our eyes on the prize — we wanted time at a beach and away from being trapped in a dingy resort.

The hike to actually get to the beach was decently challenging (super steep), but man oh man, the views were incredible and the beach was idyllic.

Views from the top.

Views from the bottom.

We were thankful that our two favorite other people on the trip, Eric and Marcia, were there with us. Eric was in my fiction writers group, and his wife Marcia joined him, similar to how Derek tagged along with me.

We all enjoyed the dramatic change of scenery from our busted hotel, and without any prompting, Derek and Eric both began skipping stones in a river that fed into the ocean.

My heart. 🥰

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This is everything.

Watching my husband, who just hours ago was miserably trying to watch videos on YouTube with the hotel’s ancient internet connection, pick up stones and effortlessly skip them across the water made all of my frustration with the trip melt away. Then, seeing Eric, a grown-ass man in his 60s follow suit! Ugh. They were so freaking adorable! And they giggled! The two of them let their inner stone-skipping child free, putting aside any of the misery they had just been experiencing.

It honestly made me the happiest I had been in a while.

And c’mon, what a perfect moral of the story.

As adults, we get caught up in the details and nuances that make us upset. Yes, the hotel sucked, and yes, we wanted to go home. But we had been focusing so much on those negatives that we could have missed the positives.

I remember hearing at some point that during any given day, your brain processes over 50,000 thoughts, which.. whoa. But more interestingly, of those 50k thoughts, 70–80% are negative!

Ouch.

Why are we so harsh on ourselves and those around us? What do we miss out on when we focus on the cons and not the pros?

Derek and I survived the rest of the trip thanks to that excursion. We didn’t spend as much time wallowing in our room. We connected more deeply with the other participants. We reminded ourselves that we are absolutely in love with our home and community in California. We remembered what a good team we make when we stick together and make life into a big game.

And yes, I skipped stones with Derek and Eric.

Once.

And it didn’t work.

But I wasn’t embarrassed.

I also wasn’t going to force something that probably should never have been on my list on the first place. 😜✌️

Ellen Guthrie 4/4/23 Ellen Guthrie 4/4/23

That Big Kid Ellen #101: BONUS! Paint a ceramic sculpture

It’s a bonus post!!

A lot of Little Kid Ellen activities didn’t make it on the original list, but I really think that this one deserves its very own spot.

This past week, I painted a ceramic sculpture. We have a paint-your-own-pottery place in town called Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge, and it follows a business structure that I’m sure you’re familiar with:

Tons of unpainted ceramic objects on display on shelves around the edges of the shop (vases, bowls, mugs, decor, boxes, literally anything and everything)
Paint and paint brushes abound
You paint your object…
…They fire it in a kiln
You pick it up a week later and hope that it comes out like you had planned because the unfired colors are very different than the fired colors.

Traveling back to Little Kid Ellen times, the ceramic shop of choice in my town was called the Snoop Shop.

The Snoop Shop, as I remember it, was on the outskirts of town, within a forested area, which was rare because I lived in the suburbs of Chicago and there aren’t really a lot of forests there. The floors were uneven, and there wasn’t a lot of sunlight that filtered through the tree cover and grimy windows. It was basically in a shack. A house that had seen better days.

But every time I went there, that shack was full of magic... for an 8-year-old. The items that you could choose from were mostly useless. Ceramic bunnies the size of an actual rabbit. A Tweety bird decorative plate. A peacock mask. A puppy dog paperweight with giant, sad eyes. Kid stuff. Fun stuff. Blank canvases with a little bit of guidance.

I was probably at the Snoop Shop 2–3 times a year for 3–4 years, attending different birthday parties or Girl Scout troop outings. In the beginning, I would go buck wild with my color choices, not giving a damn if chickens aren’t lime green or tennis shoes usually don’t have smiley faces all over them. It was fun to paint whatever popped into my head, and whatever popped into my head usually made me smile.

Glittery, goofy Ellen in the era of the Snoop Shop.

But at some point, my approach to painting ceramics changed. I would choose an object that called for precision and detail, usually something on the smaller side and not cartoon-based. A mug or a key/mail dish (even though I didn’t carry keys or receive any mail). I would tell myself that how it turned out mattered, that everyone cared if I could produce something truly spectacular, that my worth as a friend depended on me creating something that others found incredible, that only if it looked perfect would my family want to display it in our house.

🚩 Red flag 🚩

I started to spend 20–30 minutes just trying to figure out which piece I wanted to paint and then another 20–30 minutes planning out exactly how to paint it. With time slots at the shop usually just lasting 2 hours, I would waste up to half my time planning, setting myself up for failure when it came to the actual painting part.

I would be nowhere near done when time was up, everyone else having already finished their ugly (in my mind) pieces, and I would beg my mom to let me stay a little bit longer so that I could finish mine. She would give in for another 10 or 20 minutes, but it was never enough. I could never get the darn thing to look like how I had envisioned. I felt worthless because I couldn’t be perfect.

In other news: I recently read that perfectionism is a trauma response that stems from being humiliated for making mistakes.

Huh.

While it’s hard for me to pinpoint exact moments in my childhood where my mistakes were put on display, I do remember a few, generally. A parent making a big deal (maybe ironically) about getting an A- instead of and A+ on an assignment. A teacher saying, “no, that’s definitely not right,” in front of the whole class after you raised your hand, so confident in your answer. A boy breaking up with you in front of the entire class during recess (okay, that’s an exact moment I remember and you can read about it in my rollerskating post).

All these little moments add up. And they were being poured into a cauldron that was already bubbling with other perfectionism-in-the-making potion ingredients:

Only receiving love, validation, or celebration when I accomplished something
Being given unrealistic, high expectations for academic achievement
Black and white thinking on good vs. bad moral issues (read: Catholicism)
The need to be in control of everything because of past trauma when something hurt you that was out of your control
Dismissed feelings and emotions combined with praise for stoicism (“big girls don’t cry”)

I’ve been on quite a ride in the last couple of years, first identifying my perfectionist tendencies and people-pleasing habits. Once I could flag these moments in my life (apologizing for things I had nothing to do, not trying new things for fear of failure, not knowing when to say NO), I could then work on breaking those habits and becoming more selfish.

Yes, you heard that right. My goal was to become more selfish.

That might trigger something for you. And maybe you should sit with that for a minute and think about why being selfish grates on you.

Because it shouldn’t.

We are the main characters in our lives. We should put our needs before others. Many men do this naturally, but us women have a harder time with this.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t also care about other people, love other people, help other people. We don’t need to be mean or rude or bring people down to push ourselves up.

But yes, we should be making decisions with our own needs at the center. We should not be draining our tanks for the sakes of being helpful or kind or high-achieving. We should be prioritizing our own growth, evolution, happiness, joy, creativity, and TIME.

Ask me some time about the DISASTER that was trying to make a family crest. Do you see how un-centered that name is at the bottom?! Complete failure. (sarcasm)

So, I bet you’re thinking that this time around, when I went to a paint-your-own pottery shop, I went with my gut, had fun, and painted something totally off the cuff, not caring what anyone else thought about the finished project, right?

Oh, how I love you for believing that I could reverse decades of programming in just a couple years 😘

It didn’t quite happen that way.

I arrived a bit before my friend who had agreed to paint with me. I did spend about 20 minutes perusing all of the options for pieces to paint, and I did think to myself that I should pick something that I could make into something beautiful, something perfect.

A planting pot was my first choice. I have a ton of indoor plants, and I could make my own, customized pot for my home decor aesthetic. But instead of thinking about what that was, I immediately logged into Pinterest and searched for “planter pot diy designs.”

🚨EEEH!🚨

Not what we were supposed to be going for.

My friend arrived as I was trying to figure out if I could make a chevron pattern that looked hand-drawn but also delicate (the answer is — who cares). I wandered around the store as she decided what piece piqued her interest.

She landed on an angel statue.

It didn’t have a purpose. It didn’t hold anything. It was detailed and intricate, and there was no way she was going to be able to make it beautiful.

🚨EEEH!🚨

There I go again, placing my own expectations onto someone else, exactly like what had happened to me my entire life.

⏪ REWIND ⏪

Let’s start over.

My eyes were now looking for something that pre-perfectionism Ellen would have chosen. Something totally magical, not at all useful, and that could really show off my creativity and joy.

That’s right, folks. I chose an ice cream cone.

And I made it pink and blue BECAUSE I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT.

I added a pink-on-pink lattice, bright blue ice cream, multi-colored sprinkles, AND I finished it in under an hour. No need to overthink or overanalyze how it was going to turn out. I just painted.

And I. had. a. blast. My friend and I talked the whole time about our lives, reminiscing about being creative as kids and scheming about ways to be creative as adults, and we even had a doggo friend hang out with us the whole time and admire our painting skills. (He wasn’t actually that impressed.)

I didn’t care too much about what the colors would look like after they were fired, but I did 5 to 6 layers of paint to make sure they were as bright as possible. And I wanted as many colors as possible.

And, honestly, it turned out perfectly 😭

My perfectly pink and blue ice cream cone that now houses an orchid that I can’t seem to keep alive. Toss your expectations of perfection in the garbage! Learn to live for fun of it rather than the end of it!

So here’s the moral of the story: Who cares? The answer is no one, so just have fun and let go of expectations. 💙🍦

Ellen Guthrie 3/19/23 Ellen Guthrie 3/19/23

That Big Kid Ellen #27: Rollerblade

I am so thankful that rollerblading made a come-back during the COVID era. Because, ice cold hot take, rollerblading is super effing cool.

I mean, if you didn’t have a crush on one of these two guys, can you even call yourself a real straight, White, Millennial woman?

Teenage dreamboats Erik von Detten and Sam Horrigan from the Disney Channel Original Movie “Brink.”

At some point in my young childhood, I owned a pair of purple and pink, overly-plasticized inline rollerblades. Rollerblading came pretty naturally to me (odd for a tall kid) since I took ice-skating lessons on the regular (#midwesterner), and I remember loving to skate around my neighborhood or on our local bike path. Getting there was usually a bit of a challenge since the road I grew up on is cobblestone (NOT ideal for shredding blades), but I still loved the feeling of picking up speed and feeling the strength of my own length propel me forward.

My most engrained memory with rollerblading comes from my 13th birthday party: My first official boy-girl party in 7th grade. I had a thing for skaterbois back then (thank you Avril Lavigne), and ended up dating the class bad boy. Let’s call him Frank (his name was not Frank). Frank was mean to everyone, except me. So, naturally, I dated him.

Note: The term “red flag” didn’t really exist in 2001.

My relationship with Frank was complicated, not just because he wasn’t well-liked — or because the extent of our relationship was just telling other people we were dating but never actually going on any dates — but because I had a long-standing crush one of his best friends. Let’s call him Ernie. (His name was most definitely not Ernie.) I had liked Ernie for years.

I had already shot my shot with Ernie previously, and while we had exchanged a couple highly-personalized Valentine’s Day cards in the past, he had politely let me know that he was not ready to have a girlfriend… and then almost immediately started dating another friend of mine. Oh to be a pre-teen.

Dating Frank was a bit of a revenge move on my part, but I was also flattered, in a very tragic romance sort of way, that I was the only girl that Frank was nice to. He wore black t-shirts with obscure emo band album covers on them, spiked his hair with Elmer’s glue, and probably liked to etch his name onto the wooden desks with a switchblade (speculation). I was taller than him by a couple inches, awkward, and extremely nerdy, which makes for a great opposites-attract-rom-com moment, but this was the real world, and we were doomed from the start.

It just so happened that my 13th birthday fell during the two or three weeks that Frank and I were “officially dating.” I invited all of my friends, girls and boys, to a roller rink in the next town over. It was my first experience with roller skates instead of blades, and I was a bit wobbly but could still hold my own. Frank and Ernie both showed up. Drama!

Everything was going well until the DJ decided that it was time for a couples skate. Every teen girl’s fantasy!

I made eyes at Frank — the kind that said, “please ask me to skate with you in front of everyone but also don’t because how embarrassing but also do because I already wrote about it in my diary but also don’t because my mom is watching but also do ask because then my life will be complete but also don’t because…”

He asked me to skate.

We held hands and made slow circles around the rink. I don’t remember the song that was playing, but it was cheesy and romantic and I’m sure quintessentially late 90s/early 2000s. Frank and I didn’t say a word to each other the whole time, our palm sweat co-mingling, legs a little unsteady.

The end of the song was nearing and Frank turned to face me, saying something quietly. I couldn’t hear him over the music, so I obnoxiously screamed, “what?!” back at him. I’m sure my voice cracked. He said again, “Can I kiss you?” and before I had time to respond, he leaned towards me and tried to kiss me on the mouth.

Which, like, how romantic?!

But no. Because I’m Ellen.

I didn’t have time to process his question at all and ended up turning my face away from him at the last second. His lips skimmed the side of my face, which in turn surprised me and I let go of his hand. Because I was taller than him, he had been using my hand to support himself as he reached upwards to kiss me. With his balancing pillar removed, Frank started to sway, lost his balance, and fell flat on his ass.

I tried to help him up, but in trying to save face in front of all of his buddies, he swatted my hand away and got up by himself. He zoomed off to our group’s table, leaving me to finish the lap pathetically by myself. By the time I got back, he had already told everyone there that he had tried to kiss me… and that I had pushed him down. All of the boys consoled him and I’m sure said some equivalent to “bros over hoes” before chest bumping each other (again, speculation).

I decided that somehow that story was less humiliating than what actually happened, or I just panicked, and decided to tell my girlfriends that he was a terrible kisser and I pushed him because he tried to use tongue. Embellishment was the name of the game, it seemed.

Both of us somehow became heroes among of the peers of our same gender.

I remember eyeing Ernie to see what his thoughts were on the whole fiasco, maybe he saw me in a different light after I supposedly stood up for my womanly independence, but he was intently staring at a friend of mine. Somehow that hurt more than Frank’s betrayal.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the kind of girl that that made a scene and ran into the bathroom crying. I let the party come to its natural conclusion, and then cried later when I was in my room alone like a dignified teenager. There are multiple angsty diary entries from that day in various colors of jelly pens.

The boy-girl party people, and my very exciting gift for turning 13 — highlights!

The Monday afterwards, back at school, I could feel that things had shifted during our lunch period. I remember wandering outside after eating to play basketball with a couple of friends during recess. Someone gasped, and I turned to see a giant circle of a dozen or so 13-year-old boys moving towards me in unison on the blacktop like some smelly, pube-y murmuration with shared consciousness.

When the circle reached me, a couple of the boys stepped aside to allow Frank to ungracefully emerge from the center of the mass of bodies.

“I think we should break up, Ellen,” he said, and then was quickly re-digested by the throng of boys, running back to the middle of the circle and letting the boys that had let him out swallow him back up. It was highly choreographed and just so freaking bizarre that I just stood there slack-jawed and let it happened.

I eventually shrugged my shoulders, not really caring about the absurd and public breakup with Frank (because I was still actually crushing on Ernie), and kept playing basketball. WhatEVER [fingers making a W in the air].

Fast forward 20ish years, and I haven’t put on a rollerskate or rollerblade since!

I asked for a pair of rollerskates for Christmas in 2021, wanting to hop on the wave of Millennials learning how to rollerskate on TikTok, but I ended being too terrified to put them on.

My body was bigger, weaker, and not as agile as it used to be, even compared to just a couple years earlier, and I chickened out every time I went to try them out. I had gotten knee, elbow, and hand pads to make sure that I wouldn’t break my body too badly if I fell, but it was still utterly intimidating.

Once we decided that we were leaving Austin for good, I knew that a goodbye party at a roller rink would be the perfect send off, and I could force myself to try out my skates with friends around to support me.

The invitation of our goodbye party (that’s me in rollerskates with a dog in a backpack!), and my beautiful blue roller skates in size 12.

I invited folks that I had met throughout the 9 years that I lived in Austin, and honestly, the turnout was way better than I expected. One of my favorite things to do is to bring together people that I love and watch them interact with each other. There’s nothing better than creating connections for others — literally one of my reasons for living.

This party was no exception. I had old co-workers 5+ years ago meeting up with folks that I hadn’t seen since the beginning of COVID. I even met one of my current co-workers for the first time ever even though I had been at my job for a full year! My heart was so very full that I started to second-guess leaving Austin and leaving my community behind.

I just really love my people 🥰

Rollerskating wasn’t quite as self-affirming, but I did end up having a pretty great time. I laced up my skates as tight as they could go in order to support my weak ankles. I could feel my nervous system panicking before I even stood up in them. I was sweating profusely, and it knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.

I death-gripped every object on the path from my seat to the rink, trying to figure out how to skate on the sticky carpet. I finally got the hang of it right before I transitioned onto the smooth surface of the rink itself. Why do they make them so smooth?!

My confidence grew as I slowly propelled myself around the first lap without any incidents. I could feel my legs figuring out which muscles needed to work to move forward, and I could feel my core figuring out which angle I needed to be bent over at in order not to tip over backwards. Falling backwards on my booty became my fear. I’d convinced myself falling forward would be better (not sure if that’s true).

I had multiple friends join me for slow laps around the rink. I had others that went off and did their own thing. I even skated around with my husband, and he didn’t make up some lame story for his friends when we wobbled and bobbled together. Success!

All in all, I’m glad I conquered adult rollerskating, and it’s kind of become a thing that I’m determined to get really good at. I went skating at the Santa Cruz roller palladium within the first month of moving here, and it was equally as fun albeit a little smellier (lots of high schoolers). I’ve even tried them out in my driveway, seeing if I can gain up some confidence in smaller movements. I would love to be able to skate on the ocean-side pathway near my house, but I have a feeling it’s going to take a while to get to that point!

Ellen Guthrie 2/27/23 Ellen Guthrie 2/27/23

That Big Kid Ellen #8: Create a magazine collage memory box

Hi! I’m back! 👋 Did you miss me?!

It’s been more than 7 months since I have written a big kid post, and I can’t wait to tell you what has been going on in this big kid’s life!

First off, we moved! We did it! 🎊

If you remember, in my puppy post, I had three epiphanies during the hike I did with my mom through Portugal and Spain:

There is no shame in rest; there is strength in recovery 💪
Puppies make everything better 🐶
I need to sell my house and move 🏡

Texas just wasn’t doing it anymore. Austin isn’t the same town that it used to be, and I’m not the same person that I used to be. I’ve attended a hundred funerals of my past selves in the last couple years, and this current, evolved version of me needs to live by the sea. I am a Pisces after all.

Thank goodness the husband agreed. Derek was getting sick of the oppressive heat and oppressive politics as well, and after a visit to Santa Cruz, CA, he was in love. Redwood forests just 10 minutes from the ocean? Mountain bike trail galore? Stunning ocean cliff hikes? Perfect weather? Progressive politics? Sign. Us. Up.

We called up the most amazing realtor in Austin, and set to work getting our house ready to sell. We had really transformed this house since we purchased it barely two years prior, so I was a bit nervous that prospective buyers wouldn’t understand my style. But we got a good offer (not great, the market was doing some weird stuff, per usual) the first weekend it was on the market, we jumped on it. We were motivated to leave.

Before and after photos of the “formal dining room.”

The first thing people saw when they walked into the house.

ugly guest bedroom into epic home library/office.

There were virtually no snags in the selling process (halleloo!), and before we knew it, we were flying to coastal California to look at houses with another excellent realtor there. The market was infinitely different in Santa Cruz than in Austin, and finding a house that wasn’t going for tens of thousands over asking in cash was impossible. Every time we would tour a house, we’d find out that it had an offer accepted 30 minutes later. It felt like we were never going to catch a break! We put an offer in on a tiny two bedroom house in Capitola, but it ended up selling for $200k over asking price. 😖

We went back to Texas feeling a bit defeated; however, the short time we spent in Santa Cruz solidified our love for the area and desire to move there. Our determination to make it happen multiplied. Back in Texas, we finished up packing and selling off about half of our belongings (the downsize was real!). We prayed that something would fall into place back in California.

About a week before we were going to start panicking because we didn’t have a place to move to, our CA realtor called us and said that a house that we had toured and liked that had gone under contract had fallen out of contract. Usually that means that something scary was found during the inspection, but he assured us that it was only because the buyer had gotten cold feet. The house was back on the market and no one wanted it.

We jumped again.

We put in an offer below asking (because we’re ballsy), AND WE GOT IT.

And I’m not really sure how it happened, but this house is perfect. It’s the perfect size (3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 1500 sq ft), in the perfect neighborhood (Pleasure Point), and it’s only a 10 minute walk to the ocean. 10 minute walk to all kinds of restaurants, 20 minute walk to Target/Trader Joe’s, 5 minute drive to literally anything else you could need to spend money on, and about a 20 minute drive to some of the most beautiful redwood forests in the area.

We’re not sure how we got this lucky. I still wake up and can’t believe that I’m living here, in this house, in this neighborhood, and that if I leave my bedroom windows open at night I can hear the ocean waves.

If you believe in karma, I’m hoping this means that I’m a good person 😭

Once the offer had officially gone under contract, we sold Derek’s truck back in Texas, packed all of our remaining things into a 20 foot Penske truck, towed our Subaru behind us, and drove to California.

We drove all the way up to Santa Cruz, deposited our belongings in a storage unit, returned the truck, and then drove the Subaru back down to San Diego to stay with my dad and step-mom for two weeks until our new house closed. (Note to self: it’s sensory overload to work from home in a small condo in a loud city with two Boomers who also both work from home and who both talk with commanding (loud) voices. Will not do again, even though we are so thankful for their hospitality and support 😉.)

When everything was appropriately dotted and crossed (huge shout out to my rockstar step-mom who put our sneaky lender in his place), we drove back up to NorCal, got in a massive fender bender accident in LA (typical), and then moved into our dream home.

So many other things have happened since then (September), and I promise to update you throughout the next couple posts (sneak peek: we adopted another dog!), but I wanted to get back to the big kid topic at hand — magazine collage memory boxes!

When I was a preteen, cutting out letters, words, phrases, and images from teen magazines and then haphazardly taping them to an old shoe box could occupy me for hours on end. I made a sports-themed one and kept all of my various hair ribbons and scrunchies in it. I made a boy-themed one and kept all of my boy memorabilia in it (letters from boys — cute; things I would collect from my crushes that they didn’t know I had — creepy, stalker vibes).

It was such a good way for me to express a piece of my identity, to spend time alone figuring out what I liked and what caught my attention, and I thought (mistakenly) that they were super cool for storing all of the random crap that I accumulated over the years instead of just throwing it all out.

This time around, I wanted to create a memory box that would remind me of the person who I want to be. The person who I am becoming. That big kid Ellen, if you will!

I made a box right before I left Texas, hoping to cover it in images and words that I would emulate by new life in California. Obtaining magazines was… expensive! I went to Barnes and Noble and was outraged at how expensive magazines were these days. I could be buying books!

A friend of mine and I sat down at my kitchen table and tore those pricey magazines apart and created brand new memory boxes. The act of flipping through the pages, letting something catch my eye, and then carefully cutting it out is surprisingly calming and zen. I saw a trend start to form as I looked at the pieces of paper that I had collected in front of me. They all screamed I AM BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT AND SO IS MY LIFE.

I ended up with a vibrant, maximalist box that makes me smile every time I see it. It’s currently being used to prop up my laptop on my desk, but it’s filled with fun, silly things that bring me joy — a deck of tarot cards, untouched notebooks that I hope to fill with character descriptions and story outlines, colorful pens that I can’t live without, hand lotion (self-care, baby), sequined scrunchies, and blue-light glasses that make me feel smarter.

I’m using this box as a metaphor for my “new” life in California. I want this life to be full of bright, colorful things. New friends, new places, new experiences. Adventure, curiosity, courage, heart. Getting to create a “fresh start” is a bit of a hoax (I’m still the same me), but I like the perspective that a different community has to offer, and I plan to use every day building a life that brings me joy 💚

I hope you’ll stick with me this year and I continue down the list of 100 things that I used to do as a kid! I plan to post every week, and I’m currently updating my own website where I will eventually house all of my blog posts. Stay tuned!

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

Ellen Guthrie 7/14/22 Ellen Guthrie 7/14/22

That Big Kid Ellen #33: Buy a pack of basketball cards

I’m a hair under 6'1".

That’s a tall lady, folks.

And I’ve been tall my entire life to the point where it would shock people to hear that I was much younger than they assumed I was (see the story about my very-normal-yet-very-confusing coloring abilities as a 2-year-old here).

My mom had to carry my birth certificate with her when we traveled to prove that I was under 24 months and could fly for free. I was always given the adult menu at restaurants and would watch in disbelief as my very small step-sister was given the kids menu until she was well into her teens (20s?). (Note: I always wanted the kids menu!) I was asked “how’s the weather up there?” more times than I was asked “how are you?” as a teenager. TALL has always been my identity. More than any other adjective.

I even wrote a poem about being tall when I was in middle school.

I can really feel the sad desperation oozing out from between the lines.

And yes, you might have guessed it, I played the tall people sports — basketball and volleyball.

(I like to reminisce about the time that I had a short stint as a goalie for an international soccer team only because my friends thought that my long limbs could block any attempts on goal. They did not factor in that with long limbs comes inherent awkwardness and minimal hand-eye coordination. We did win 2nd place in our final tournament, which means that I did a pretty good job in goal, but I also walked away with a broken thumb, so I wouldn’t call it an overwhelming success.)

I started playing basketball pretty young — it was one of my dad’s favorite things to do with me (he’s 6'6"), and I was put on my first recreation league team in 4th grade.

Rec leagues were usually coached by the dads of the community… well, the ones that could hold it together. I’ll never forget one of the dads in the stands getting kicked out of a 4th grade basketball game for swearing at a ref because his kid had a ball stolen very cleanly from her. Yeesh.

I was sought after by the dad-coaches of our town because of my height and coach-ability. There was always a “try out” for these teams, but really the rec center leadership was just trying to make sure that one team wasn’t super stacked compared to another team. I loved the tryouts because I was always the tallest and knew that I’d get along with anyone on any team I was assigned to.

I was a nice kid. Sometimes too nice. I always shook hands and introduced myself to the girl I would be guarding each game. It felt weird hip-checking and boxing out a stranger, but sometimes it was weirder trying to be friendly with someone that was clearly terrified of me because they were a full foot shorter than me.

My basketball career reached it’s peak in about 8th and 9th grade. I was on an undefeated rec league team, I had made my school team, and I was on a traveling team. If you can believe it, I didn’t make my 7th grade school team. I’m still not sure why the coaches at my junior high didn’t like me, but I ended up making the B team in 8th grade and then rocketing onto the A team as a freshman in high school with coaches who were very confused as to why I didn’t make the 7th grade team. I used to tell myself that Michael Jordan didn’t make his school team once — I loved proving those coaches wrong.

I was always the one to perform the tip off at the beginning, and I played the majority of minutes every game. I was never a top scorer because I was too much of a team player, and instead I won awards for my rebounding and assists. I felt like Scottie Pippen and had a poster of Michael Jordan in my room (next to my Justin Timberlake poster, who do you think I am?). Basketball was my jam.

Yes, that was a Space Jam reference 😉

Gotta love cheesy sport certificates from the 90s.

One of my favorite things about basketball was the trading cards. I had connections to a sports card shop in Chicago during the prime years of the Chicago Bulls, and there was nothing that I wanted to spend my money on more than crisp decks of basketball cards.

I bought a giant 4" binder with pages and pages of card protector sheets where I would house every single card I bought, regardless of the player or the cards’ perceived worth. I would get duplicate cards all the time and slide them into the same sheet so that my collection wouldn’t get too out of control. I was obsessed with keeping them in pristine condition, but I almost always ended up bending their corners because I took them in and out of the sleeves to admire them too many times.

It got a little bit out of control. I had accumulated over 2,000 cards in my collection within a matter of a year or so.

Some highlights of my gigantic card collection.

Chicago Bulls cards always had the prime real estate

and I tried to price some of the cards that looked pricey.

But there was just nothing more satisfying than cracking open a new deck of cards and then feeling the excitement build as you carefully peeled them off of each other to see if you had a rare or expensive card. (I rarely did.)

Over the years, I’ve held onto my collection, but it’s mainly been collecting dusts in basements or closets. It was time to offload the collection onto someone who would cherish them a bit more. I decided that I would bring my collection to a card trading store here in Austin to see if any of the cards were worth anything, and I found a store nearby that gave me that same familiar excitement as I walked through the front door.

It was exactly like the card stores of my youth.

I met with the owner of the shop and he flipped through my binder, pulling out any cards that he thought might be worth something. Then he gathered up about a dozen or so cards and plopped down at his laptop where he proceeded to search eBay for recent sales to see how much they might be worth. The amounts ranged from $1 to $50, but nothing too crazy. There was a Shawn Kemp card that he told me to hold onto — when Shawn Kemp dies, it’s price could skyrocket into the low 4-digit range.

But other than that, nothing that piqued his interest. I asked what the best way was to get rid of the cards, and he recommended selling the entire lot on eBay to someone or donating to an elementary school. Before I left the store, I bought three packs of cards — unopened but from the 90s — and watched as nothing of any value came out of the purchase. Felt just like being a kid again 😂

I ended up putting my collection up for sale for $50 on OfferUp and found someone in town that wanted to buy them for his son. Perfect. I met him at a tamale restaurant in northwest Austin and talked shop with the dad for a while (most important question when gauging someone’s character: who were your favorite Bulls players from the 90s?) before saying goodbye to the collection.

It felt good.

My basketball career didn’t last forever. Something shifted during my sophomore year. I felt the game veer towards prioritizing competition and winning instead of growth, development, and the pure love of the game. My coaches demanded more — more training in the weight room, more practices before and after school, more, more, more. But I didn’t want to give more. I wanted to be a good student. I wanted to be a part of other clubs. I wanted to get into a good college based on my GPA. I wasn’t one of the popular jock girls because I was odd and quirky. Being tall was my identity, but basketball wasn’t.

So I did the bare minimum for a while to see how it felt. I still played my heart out in games, had a lot of playing time, but didn’t put in the extra effort outside of games. I lived for the games, didn’t care about practice. And I’m sure my coaches could tell.

The breaking point happened during my sophomore year. Early in the season, I broke my nose during a scuffle under the basket while trying to nab a loose ball. A girl’s elbow came down hard on the bridge of my nose, and I had to wear one of those embarrassing nose/face guards for a couple weeks afterwards. It might have been intimidating to the other teams, but I just felt like an idiot.

When our schedule matched us up against that team again later that season, one of my coaches took me aside and said, “Alright, Ellen. Now’s your chance to get even and break her nose.” I admit that it might have been a joke, but their tone of voice did not really make me think that was the case. It left me feeling icky.

I didn’t make the varsity team my junior year and instead put all of my energy into a program called Amigos de las Americas — commonly referred to as “Peace Corps for high schoolers.” My new identity was firmly placed on my ability to speak Spanish and my desire to help those in poverty in developing countries. I held onto that identity for while, but just like basketball, it didn’t end up being completely me.

Recently my husband and I had a conversation about how sports helped us deal with the ups and downs that life throws at us. We are much more flexible and adaptable because of the skills we learned through teams sports, and we have a much higher threshold for failure because we constantly failed in sports (you literally can’t win them all).

And that’s the part of basketball that I appreciate — my identity as a tall woman who is adaptable, flexible, and willing to take risks. It’s served me very well.

Ellen Guthrie 6/21/22 Ellen Guthrie 6/21/22

Big Kid Ellen #23: Braid a friendship bracelet

I’m realizing more and more that some of my favorite TV shows from my youth really screwed with my head when it came to setting healthy expectations of what friendships should look like.

TV shows like Dawson’s Creek and Saved by the Bell (and … well … Friends) all portrayed groups of tight-knit friends that did everything together. Every day. All the time.

These friend groups were always made up of boys and girls (the gender binary was strong in mainstream TV back then), and the friends would date each other round-robin style, break up with each other, get jealous of each other, and make everything generally messy… yet still be best of friends in the end.

Also, these TV friendships usually started young, junior high for most, and then lasted into their adult lives. The same set of friends forever and ever. No matter what.

I wanted in.

Nothing to see here, just some mid-20-year-olds playing high schoolers that all had sex with each other.

When I was very young — elementary and middle school age — I always had multiple groups of friends that I was a part of. I was a part of the Girl Scouts friend group. I was a part of the rec league basketball friend group. I was a part of the Sunday School friend group. I was a part of the accelerated math kids friend group.

I actually had a lot of friends. I got along with just about everyone at every school I attended, even the enigmatic popular kids. I was a friendly little girl, albeit a bit nerdy and quirky, and I thought for sure that one of my friend groups would last forever and we would all be each others’ bridesmaids and get pregnant at the same time.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

I never ended up having a group of friends that always hung out every Friday and Saturday night together How I Met Your Mother style. I didn’t even have that one best friend who I could always count on to talk to when I needed someone Clarissa Explains It All style (what wouldn’t I have done to have a cute boy climb a ladder to my window to the sound of his own theme music, #swoon). I usually spent the weekends watching TV by myself or playing with whichever neighborhood friends were around (shoutout to the Elmwood crew).

And any friends I did have, I didn’t know how to hold on to them for very long. The friends I had in 2nd grade were drastically different from the friends I had in 5th grade, which were drastically different from the friends I had in 8th grade, which — you guessed it — were drastically different from the friends I had in high school.

And, no surprise here, there are very few friends that I had in elementary school, middle school, and high school that I keep in contact with today as an adult. (If you’re one of them — hiii! Please don’t hate me. 🙏)

In high school, I remember the crushing realization that some of my friends would hang out with each other without me — chatting in homeroom on Monday morning about how the DQ was so crowded on Friday night or reminiscing during basketball practice about how there was a fire at Old Orchard mall on Saturday night when they were at the Cheesecake Factory together. I wasn’t ever sure if it was because I gave off goody-two-shoes/narc vibes (totally possible), or if it was because I wasn’t actually lovable. 💔

Because of all of this — specifically the lack of one, solid, long-lasting friend group — I thought something was wrong with me. I began to believe that I wasn’t meant to have real friends. That I wasn’t really friend material. That I wasn’t likable, too weird, too quirky, too desperate perhaps.

Some of my friends groups — the neighborhood kids friend group (included my siblings) …

and the Girl Scout friend group (also known as the Ultimate Hanson Brothers Fan Club friend group).

Thankfully, college was different, in the sense, as I have many college-era friends still in my life. I care a lot about them, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’re super close (with the exception of a few, you know who you are 💜). I don’t go on girls trips with my college girlfriends like I see in the movies. Our husbands aren’t bffs or golf buddies (barf). We are in each other’s lives for big moments — weddings, babies, the occasional birthdays. And maybe sometimes we visit each other in person. But not often.

So that pesky thought creeps back in — am I bad at friendships?

As a post-grad school adult, this fear was solidified. I was a part of an extensive friend group when I first moved to Texas thanks to a very extroverted roommate who I love ever so dearly for pushing me to be more social. The group was made up of men and women (check ✔️) who hung out all the time (check ✔️) and also occasionally slept with each other (check! ✔️). Just like TV! I had hit the jackpot!

However, I quickly realized that social life in Austin in your 20s is centered around drinking. Wanna hike? Grab some beer. Wanna go tubing or hang out at the lake? Fill your water bottle up with vodka and Gatorade. Wanna stay in and watch movies? You better have some wine. I was able to keep up for a while, drinking multiple days a week, day-drinking to push pass hangovers, swearing off drinking every Sunday evening and then getting right back into the very next weekend.

I loved my friend group, but eventually I couldn’t maintain the lifestyle. I was interested in so many other things that I couldn’t do drunk or hungover, and I started dating my now-husband who doesn’t really drink at all. So I started to drift away from my friends. I moved out of the apartment I had with my super-social roommate, and I started RSVPing “no” to events and parties because I didn’t want to be the only one not drinking. Soon, the group got the hint and stopped inviting me altogether.

And that’s when I told myself I was officially a bad friend. I had had the quintessential tight-knit friend group of glorified 90s TV dramas, and I lost it. I had ruined it. I was the common thread in all my friendship failures.

Many years have passed since I lost my spot in the only TV-show friend group I’ve ever been a part of, and I’ve spent those years desperately trying to find a new one. Maybe a group from work? No, that can get complicated. Maybe a group based on a hobby I like? No, people that read are too introverted to hang out all the time, bless their hearts. Maybe a group from the neighborhood? No, they’ve already been friends for years and I’d have to put in too much effort to catch up.

I’ve made some great friends along the way, truly exceptional human beings who I would die for, but I usually hang out with them 1x1. Maybe a double date if they have a significant other. I love spending time with them, swapping secrets and fears and dreams, caring for them as best as I can. But there’s always been that little voice in the back of my head telling me I’m not worthy of friendships because I’m not part of a group of friends. That somehow having one-off friends doesn’t count.

I was making a detailed audit of the friendships that I currently have in my life as I crossed making friendship bracelets off of the list. Sitting on my couch, with a bunch of embroidery floss tied around my leg, making knots into colorful patterns… as if I were right back on my front porch as a 8-year-old, making friendship bracelets for myself because I didn’t have anyone else to give them to. 😭

And I realized something. A lot of things, in fact!

(Self-reflection epiphanies really are my jam, y’all.)

▶ TV show friend groups are change-averse.

I don’t want a 90s TV dramedy friend group. They are highly overrated. They are stuck in the past, have a hard time branching out because they’ve become too comfortable and complacent, and rarely leave their home towns for risky yet exciting adventures. They don’t really change all that much as time passes. In fact, they fear change. Change could break up the group.

But I *love* change. I love moving across the country for a new job (or to chase a dream lifestyle). I love trying new hobbies and dumping old ones in the bin. I love trying on different versions of myself to see which ones stick. I love evolving as an emotional human being with hopes of self-actualization.

All of those things are scary, no doubt about that, but I’d rather take risks and adapt instead of staying in the same place and feel stuck and stagnant.

▶ I am super gifted at connecting with people 1x1.

And then I realized something else. I have friends *all over the world.* I am a master at connecting with people 1x1— finding a common thread that binds us to each other, no matter how dainty or faint the connection might be. I’ve been worrying about leaving my friends behind in Texas, but then realized that I have an awesome community in California already waiting for me. (Hi California people! Can’t wait to hang out again! ☀️)

I am able to connect with people so easy because I value vulnerability and authenticity. I’m always my real self with people, and fess up when I’m not. Yes, sometimes I overshare or say something pervy (because I’m still an 8-year-old girl who really likes butts) and want to put my foot in my mouth. But I’d like to think I’m pretty endearing and honest and open and genuine, and people seem to really like that about me.

▶ Introverts and giant friend groups don’t mix.

Just like tequila and good decisions, I’m realizing that introverts and big friend groups just might not go well together. The inherent extroversion that comes with spending time with other people all the time… ughh, no thank you! I get overwhelmed after 2 hours at dinner with 1 other person. The idea of spending every day with other people actually makes my soul cower in the corner. My introversion runs deep, and I need ample me-time before I can interact with other for prolonged periods of time (I’m talking like a 10:1 ratio minimum, maybe even 100:1 after Covid).

I’ve been trying to be something that I’m not in search for an ideal, but that’s not very authentic of me, now is it? I need to lean into my 1x1 relationships, the friendships that can be had on someone’s home couch instead a sticky night club couch. I thrive on quality, not quantity.

▶ There’s nothing wrong with me.

It’s okay to be a homebody. It’s okay that my husband is my best friend. It’s okay that my inner circle of friends includes one other person (lookin’ at you, Patty G). It’s okay to be me. And it’s okay to change if I want to change.

When it comes down to it, I know that if anyone in my life, even a fringe acquaintance, asked me for help, I would be at their side in a heartbeat. I might not reach out proactively every weekend, or even every month. I might not have house parties or dinner parties or even parties for 2. But I would hop on a plane to anywhere in the world if they said they needed me. And honestly, I think a lot of my friends would probably do the same for me.

So yes, I made friendship bracelets for myself. Yes, they say “hotty” and “ham” on them because I’m a goofball and there weren’t enough beads to spell “better alone.” But, I also taught a friend of mine how to braid and make her own bracelet. I even got my husband to wear one that’s pink and purple. And I’ve gotten tons of compliments on my bracelets from my current hot-yoga friend group, and that makes me feel pretty good.

If you’d like me to make you a friendship bracelet, please let me know. Otherwise, I’m just going to keep making them for myself because honestly, if you can’t be your own best friend, then what’s the point?

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

Ellen Guthrie 6/7/22 Ellen Guthrie 6/7/22

That Big Kid Ellen #20: Play with a puppy

I recently returned from a 16-day trip (won’t call it a vacation) to Portugal and Spain. My mom and I walked 150+ miles of the Portuguese Camino de Santiago — starting in Porto, Portugal, and ending in the famous city of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. And we walked that distance in 10 days (read: ouch).

If you aren’t familiar with this traditional Catholic pilgrimage, here’s the TLDR from Wikipedia:

The Camino de Santiago, known in English as the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrims’ ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.

There’s much more to the story, but for the sake of this story, in order to officially complete the pilgrimage, you must walk the last 100 km (or bike 200 km, or horseback ride??) to the cathedral in Santiago, and you have to collect stamps in your Pilgrim Passport at least twice a day from restaurants, hotels, cafes, etc. to prove your distance covered. We went a bit further and ended up walking about 250 km total (livin’ that overachiever life).

On the final day — we made it to Santiago and got our official Compostela. Look at all those passport stamps!

Once you arrive at the Santiago cathedral, not only are you overcome with emotions, exhaustion, and a deep desire for ice cream and a full-body massage, you then take your pilgrim passport to the pilgrimage office and get the official Certificate that says that you completed the pilgrimage. Then, you are a good Catholic. Sins washed away.

At least I think that’s how it works. 😉

I haven’t been a Catholic since childhood, but I completed this trip to spend time with my mom, who is a practicing Catholic and whom I haven’t seen a lot of in the last couple of years because of COVID. I suppose I also wanted to find some spiritual clarity within my own life, not really knowing what specifically I would find.

Lo and behold, three main epiphanies came to me during this trip ✨

1. There is no shame in rest; there is strength in recovery.

Not only did this big, beautiful body carry me across 150 miles of remote Europe by foot, she also decided to test me in how I much I actually support and love her.

Our hike was scheduled to take place over 12 days, with daily distances ranging from 12 to 18 miles, according to the guide books. We walked on the “litoral” and coastal routes of the Portuguese Way, which led us through quaint beach towns, always with the ocean on our left and the sun on our backs (we saw a lot of sunburnt calves, lemme tell ya).

The first day was superb. Great weather, if not just a hint too warm, with immaculate views of the ocean. We started on a Sunday and ended up running into the annual Matosinhos Marathon that happened to be that same day. Everyone looked energized to be moving their bodies outside in such a glorious place. We were happy to revel in the feeling with them.

At the end of Day 1, we had ended up walking about 15.3 miles (according to Strava), which was pretty close to what we had estimated for the day. It had been a flat path, boardwalk for the majority of the time, but we hadn’t done a great job fueling ourselves or stopping for breaks. We said we’d do better the next day.

Day 2 was supposed to be a bit shorter, estimated at 13 miles, but we ended up clocking 15.5 miles to arrive at our hotel. Let me tell you, on a long, sunny day of walking, an extra 2.5 miles seemed cruel. We did end up eating a large pilgrim lunch (a fixed menu option available only to pilgrims with pilgrim passports), and I was thankful to have that energy coursing through me to finish the day.

Day 3… well, Day 3 was a doozy. Again, our distance estimate had been wrong (thought it would be 16 miles and it ended up being 17.6 miles), and this time we were walking through the small towns on cobblestone roads. Cobblestone in Portugal is rough on your feet, especially for that long of a walk. We had some spots of path that took us through the woods, but the trail was still littered with small stones that fatigued our feet and caused painful blisters.

It was also on Day 3 that something strange started to happen with my body. I noticed that my calves and hips were very sore and tired, as is typical with walking long distances. But near mid-day, I began to experience discomfort and pain whenever I would drink or eat anything. It felt like I was swallowing glass, and it would come in strong waves. It was terrible, and I didn’t understand what was causing it.

Thankfully, it only happened when I was actively eating and drinking, so I didn’t experience it too much after we ate lunch. I did notice myself not wanting to drink water so as not to feel the sensation, but I somehow kept myself from dehydrating. I told myself I was strong. I pushed through it.

I was exhausted and angry by the time we reached our destination, and complained until I got some pizza in my body. My body was desperately craving salt like it never had before (I usually crave sweets). Something was up.

Little did I know, but my mom had been pushing through her own flavor of pain as well. She had a possible infection on her toe, and on the morning of Day 4, she decided to venture to a Portuguese hospital to get it checked out while I made the very hard-headed decision to walk alone on the day scheduled to be our longest (16.7 miles).

While my mom had an adventure of her own at the hospital (only one nurse spoke a bit of English), I found some fellow Americans to walk with for a bit. They were extremely kind to me and welcomed me graciously into their group. (We later saw the same group many times on the trail and even met up with them in Madrid at the end of our trip.)

However, they walked fast. And we were walking on that uneven, rough Portuguese cobblestone almost the entire time. They were not carrying large packs with them like I was (many people hired couriers to send their suitcases ahead to their next hotel and then just carried day packs with them), and they were very experienced mountain hikers. I tried to keep pace with them, and did, for a while. However, I sneakily let them go on without me after we stopped at a cafe for a drink and a passport stamp.

But the damage had been done.

I started walking alone again, feeling like feet were going to split open and my calves were going to seize. The esophageal spasms were back with a vengeance, lasting well after I was done eating or drinking. I felt myself developing Planter’s fasciitis in my right foot due to extensive blisters on my pinky toe. My fingers were so swollen that I could barely make a fist. And my period was days late due to all of the bodily stress. I was breaking my body.

That day, I pushed my body too far. I walked a total of 12 miles alone without my mom, and by the time I met her for lunch, my body felt ripped to shreds. I barely finished my sandwich without crying, the pain in my throat and chest was so extreme.

Thankfully, my mom’s toe issue turned out not to be an infection, but she was still glad that she had rested and gotten it checked on. I questioned my decision to walk alone and not rest with her. But I kept telling myself that it’s just walking. How hard could walking be? I’m a strong woman in a strong body. Surely this shouldn’t be that hard. I can push through the pain.

Day 4 ended up being an 18.8 mile day for me — the longest of the trip. I think the only thing that got me through that day was the knowledge that the next day should be a “short” 13-mile day and the fact that the ocean was staring at me the entire rest of the day once my mom met up with me. I can’t resist the ocean. I’m a true Pisces baby.

We walked to the edge of Portugal at the end of Day 4 and rejoiced when we arrived to our hostel. We were staying at the same place as my walking buddies were, but they had arrived significantly earlier. I was not interested in socializing, only in the bed waiting for me on the third floor.

Frustrating beauty on Day 4 that was hard to appreciate given the status of my body.

After a shower and some rest, we went to find some Italian food for dinner. Now here’s the crazy part. I was rested up a bit after a long day of walking — calmer, not as anxious about my body or what lied ahead on the journey. And I was able to eat dinner without any of the painful spasms. It was as if they hadn’t been happening all day. My body had gotten some of the rest it needed and so it was able to mend itself a bit. My feet were still on fire and my tight calves turned me into a straight-legged soldier walking down the road. But I noticed that just a little rest went a long way.

I called my husband and told him about what was going on. He’s a massage therapist and is intimate with our muscles and how they all work together. He made a passing comment about how our calf, psoas (hips), and esophagus muscles are all on the same muscle plane, and what affects one can affect them all.

This really stuck with me. I know that the body is an amazing thing — I took biochemistry in college, and, not only was it the single hardest course I completed (and aced), it taught me all about how incredibly perfect our bodies have to be in order to function (like wth Kreb’s cycle?!). But somehow this link, between muscles on opposite ends of my body with no obvious connection, realizing they were all in cahoots with each other, blew my mind. My hips and calves were all shot to bits, hence the spasms in my esophagus.

I stretched a little bit more that night (which means I stretched for, like, 10 minutes 😬), and was determined to get through the next day.

Day 5 was not it, y’all.

This “short” day was yet again longer than predicted. We had crossed into Spain at this point, so there was no more rough cobblestone to speak of, but my body had not recovered after the 5 minutes (I lied before 😬) of stretching and 8 hours of sleep I had given it.

She needed more time to rest and recover.

Day 5 was easily the most spectacular day as far as vistas go. The ocean stayed close to us the entire day. We didn’t come across many towns or homes, so the landscapes were sweeping. But it also meant that we didn’t eat a lot and didn’t rest and just kept moving.

I was miserable.

And it was liberating when I finally said, “I need to stop.”

Yes, it was after we walked more than 14 miles that day. Yes, it was after all of the blisters on my feet exploded. Yes, it was after I cried at lunch because I couldn’t swallow my food without the glass shard feeling accompanying each gulp.

But I said it.

And so we rested. For two days. With no shame. And there arose the first epiphany.

Our bodies are strong, but they are not invincible. They need rest and recovery. In fact, only with proper recovery days can our bodies grow stronger. Without recovery, they continue to deteriorate and grow weak. I have preached this exact fact to my husband many times, who wants to ride his bike every single day, but now it was time to take my own advice.

My body is so very strong, and sometimes I can’t believe I got through those first five days without more damage to her, but she needs a champion. She needs someone who loves her enough to say ENOUGH. She needs someone to look out for her and to give her rest when she needs it.

There is no shame in rest. There is strength in recovery.

2. Puppies make everything better.

I bet you’re wondering what made me change my mind. What allowed the first epiphany to even occur.

It wasn’t a broken bone, or a popped blood blister, or uncontrollable bowel movements (although all of those were highly probable on this hike).

No, the thing that got me to say enough is enough… was a puppy.

This puppy:

100% surprised myself by not smuggling her home in my backpack.

Her name was Kira. And she was so very smol (3 pounds!).

I met her on Day 5, at my worst, when I desperately needed food but couldn’t swallow anything.

There’s a running joke in my family that I can’t survive without the following five things: husband, books, ice creams, plants, and puppies. They are my five favorite things that make life so much more vibrant and exciting.

It’s why petting a puppy ended up on my Big Kid Ellen list. There’s nothing more grounding and giddy and giggly than playing with a puppy.

Their little, sharp teeth that playfully nip at you. Their gangly limbs that they are still trying to figure out how to control. Their laser focus on you one minute and their total lack of interest in you the next.

They are intoxicating.

And this little pup came into my life at the exact right time. I had just lost our own dog, Chopper, a couple weeks earlier, and I needed to be reminded of a dog’s innocence and loyalty.

I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, and was given a monster sub that made me sob just thinking about how painful yet satisfying it would be to eat. I took it to my table outside the small building we had found for lunch, looking out at the ocean. And I was followed by this little fuzzy baby, curious about me and my sandwich.

She was a little skittish at first, her so small and me so new. But I won her over with bits of ham and cheese, and soon she was in my lap getting kisses on the top of her head and beaucoup compliments in my patented doggy voice that is a full four octaves higher than my speaking voice. I tickled her tummy. She nibbled on my fingers. I forgot about my misery for a moment.

And something clicked.

She was what I needed to be present in the moment. To be able to listen to my body and speak up for myself. She reminded me what it was to be happy and playful and carefree. She wasn’t putting herself through a painful journey. She just wanted ham.

Puppies make everything better.

3. I need to sell my house and move.

Now, I will admit that while Kira was the catalyst that got me to speak up for my body, the moment when I said the words “I need to rest” out loud actually came at the end of Day 5.

And it was because of a snake.

Snakes are not a foreign thing to me, living in Texas. But I’m still not a fan of them. Like fish (a huge fear of mine), the way that they move freaks me the heck out. They always startle me, sending adrenaline to the tips of my body.

I’m not sure how my mom and I made it to the end of Day 5. Our hotel was further out than we thought it would be, the sun was beaming down, and our bodies were done with it all. We were walking on a path that was lined with low, rock walls that delineated old farming fields. No homes or roads anywhere near us. Totally oblivious that snakes even existed in this part of the world.

And then I saw a snake slither on top of one of the walls just a couple feet from my hand.

NOPE.

I jumped, screamed, launched my body towards my mom, felt every atom of energy sap from my body. And that’s when I said, “I’m taking some rest days.” In that moment, my mom and I schemed and we both planned to take two consecutive rest days and taxi to the towns that were on our itinerary instead of walking.

And boy oh boy, did things change.

When we got to our hotel that night, I slept forever. When I woke up the next morning, my period arrived. She had waited, bless her heart, until I was able to handle it. My body was on the mend.

We taxied over to the next town where we had serendipitously booked a room at a literal fortress (ask me about that story another time). The castle was strategically placed on a peninsula jutting out into the ocean, and the scenery was breathtaking. There were islands just off the coast, bright blues of sky and sea, and an idyllic beach town just inland. The perfect place for some R&R.

My mom required another trip to the hospital that day, her toe having swelled with a surprisingly large blood blister, but other than that, we stayed put. We ordered hot chocolate and tea on the veranda, I read and journaled, and we laid in our tiny twin beds and watched Eurovision (the movie) on my iPad (we had watched Eurovision, the competition, for the first time in our lives the night before). Resting felt luxurious.

It was also on this day, Day 6, that something bigger clicked for me. My body needed rest and recovery, but it also needed a change of scenery. I felt like my soul had been filled with the landscape of ocean and mountains in front of me. The ability to walk anywhere in the small town appealed to my ecological heart. And the plants and trees were blossoming and flowering everywhere you looked.

I had already been considering a move to a costal California town before this trip, but it was solidified that day, in a majestic castle.

I need to sell my house and move.

Life feels stagnant in Texas. The heat and politics are oppressive. The geography of the city makes owning and driving a car a necessity. The closest thing that isn’t another house is more than a mile away.

I also feel so far away from some of the biggest loves of my life. Gardening is almost impossible in Texas without huge water bills. The ocean in the gulf is far away and filled with oil and half-dead sea life. And I literally can’t be outside, let alone exercise outside, for more than 30 minutes without getting heat stroke.

And so, the final epiphany brought all of the epiphanies together. If I wanted to honor my body, bring her to a place where she can move freely outdoors, take puppies on long hikes, and be by the ocean, it wasn’t going to happen in Texas.

We rested for Days 6 and 7 of the trip and then finished walking Days 8–12. The back half was so much more enjoyable, with shorter days, more breaks, rain (!!), and conversations with people from all over the world.

And when I got home, I told Derek about my epiphanies, and he agreed that he feels the same way. So we’re going to make it happen. We’re going to live our dream and move west.

It’s time for a new adventure.

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

Ellen Guthrie 5/29/22 Ellen Guthrie 5/29/22

That Big Kid Ellen #37 & #38: Read a Goosebumps book + Go to a book fair

It’s a two-fer!

It wasn’t necessarily my plan to knock these two list items off back-to-back, but it just so happened that when you buy a Goosebumps book as a 30-something-year-old Millennial, there is an immediate Pavlovian response that occurs and urges you to attend a Scholastic Book Fair.

Especially when you were an “Amazing Library Kid” in 1995.

I really liked books. I still really like books.

A quick summary for those of you who might now know what I’m talking about:

Goosebumps = a series of children’s horror fiction novels by American author R. L. Stine, published by Scholastic Publishing.
Scholastic Book Fair = when elementary school libraries are transformed into mini bookstores and kids can choose what they want to buy from a catalog of books, toys, and other goodies. A much anticipated event for the youngest of bookworms and nerds alike.

Because my generation loves a good meme, I first wanted to share some of my favorite Scholastic book fair + Goosebumps memes.

Clearly, the inner child in all of us wants to be transported back to the “magical and unforgettable experience where all kids can become readers.”

Back in the ’90s, the Goosebumps series was a staple at all book fairs. So too were Lamborghini posters, I guess (must’ve been a boy thing?).

I received a gift certificate to one of my favorite local book stores, Book People, for my birthday from a friend that really understands my deep love of books. I figured that it would be the perfect time to choose a Goosebumps book to read! They had many of the original series as well as some of the spin-off series’ editions. (There have also been TV series and 2 movies made based on this series; it’s quite prolific, so it’s weird that I even feel the need to explain this to you.)

I have always been a sucker for anything to do with ancient Egypt (did anyone watch Moon Knight?!), so I chose the 2nd book in the series — The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

As a kid, I would *eat up* those bonus features at the end of these books as well, learning all about Egyptian gods and goddesses and the process of mummification. Give me all the tidbits of knowledge!

I read through the book in about 45 minutes 😅 which makes sense given that I can barrel through a 400+ page novel in a weekend when I’m really into it. I forgot how well-mastered R.L. Stine is in the cliff-hanger. Every chapter end is perfectly crafted to lure you in to turning the page and reading just one more chapter, just one chapter, just one more chapter.

If you read my previous post about having nightmares, you can probably already guess that my parents highly discouraged me from reading Goosebumps books after dark. Yet, when else would I have time to scare myself silly and read about ancient Egyptian curses and mummifying little kids alive?!

I don’t want to give away the plot of twists of the book (just in case you decide to pick it up 😄), but like I said, it really got me in the mood to go to a book fair and see what they had evolved into in the last 20ish years.

Scholastic has a website dedicated to the book fairs where you can search for fairs by zip code. Lo and behold, a book fair was happening down the road from my house the exact day that I searched for one! At three different schools! I decided that it would probably be best to reach out to the parent volunteers ahead of time so as not to come across as creepy — an adult with no children just “checking out the book fair” could be construed negatively by some.

As I was drafting up an email, a thought popped into my head that might make this situation a bit less awkward. This would be a great opportunity for me to give a little, to give the joy of reading to some kiddos in my neighborhood. I chose a small, private school that focuses on educating children with dyslexia, Bridges Academy Austin, and decided that I wanted to attend their book fair and donate some books to their library.

The book fair parent volunteer was stoked to receive my email, and she connected me to the director of the school who was equally as thrilled. We set up a time when I could come in and tour the school as well as attend the fair without the students present the very next day.

When I arrived, the director welcomed us (brought husband along), gave us a tour of their four-classroom school, and then showed us the book fair that was set up against the wall of the largest classroom. For such a small school, they really had a lot of options! It wasn’t quite as overwhelming as I had remembered, but the director told me that the kids had been so excited to shop for books that a lot of the inventory was already gone.

Oh how I love those red boxes! It looked like Clifford the Big Red Dog had been ousted as the mascot, but they still had some rad bookmark options!

The director led me to a table where she had a bunch of books laid out. She said that these were the ones that the teachers had picked out as some that they wanted for their classrooms. The titles were diverse and they were hoping that they could use just a couple of them next year as a part of their curriculum and add the rest to their small (but mighty) library.

And y’all — have you ever been in a crowded bar and yelled, “this round’s on me!” or decided to pick up the tab after a big meal out with a bunch of friends? That feeling you get when you can just take care of a lot of people and feel like a badass boss bitch at the same time?

That’s what I did.

I said, “I want to buy them all.”

Totally stunned the director — she was not expecting that — and I felt that do-good high all day afterwards. This might have been one of my most successful list items to mark off yet! Not because of having the same feelings that I had as a kid, but knowing that some other kid might get to experience those feelings now, too.

In honor of book fairs and Goosebumps and all of the reading that I loved to do as a kid, I thought I would write a short-story in the style of the beloved Goosebumps books… but for adults. Don’t worry, it’s definitely safe for work! 😉

Enjoy!

The Curse of the Uncleansed Tarot Cards

Chapter 1

Tina was about to start her dream job.

Well, almost. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to be a published author, to write sci-fi books for young adults. Somewhere along the way, the dream started to seem too big and scary and unattainable, so her goals had shifted. Now she was getting ready for a job as an editor at a major publishing company, specifically working with new writers hoping to publish their first book. It was a bit bittersweet, but she thought it was still a great fit for her.

From a young age, she had always loved helping people — as a kid she would sneak out of her house on Sunday mornings to walk a block over to a neighborhood church that hosted a weekly soup kitchen. She would find an adult volunteer who looked like a mom and quietly work next to them, ladling and scooping food onto people’s plates. While her own mother didn’t love waking up to an empty bed where her daughter was supposed to be, it was almost impossible for her to be angry with Tina.

Tina also loved to write, with all of her soul. She was a member of every poetry club at each school she attended. She had written a novel by the age of 10 (about her Barbie dolls and their relationships with each other, but still, it was twelve chapters long), and she became the go-to person in her friend group in college to edit all of their thesis papers. When she started writing science fiction short stories during senior year, she knew that she had found her passion.

There had once been a lot of potential for Tina to become a real writer, but she suffered from severe social anxiety. Just the idea of going on a book tour, reading short excerpts in front of total strangers, gave her gas (the stinky kind) and made her sweat profusely. She had once played a tree in a school play and had fainted on show day — her stage fright was overpowering.

But being an editor? That seemed more doable. She would be behind-the-scenes, supporting up-and-coming authors in their endeavors to go on book tours and do all of the things that Tina had recurring nightmares about. She would be safe in the shadows.

That being said, Tina was still feeling anxious about her first day at this new job. Her best friend, Patricia, had come over the night before and gifted her a set of tarot cards. Tina replayed the conversation she had had with Patricia, discussing some of the specific cards in the deck — it had unfortunately left a bad taste in her mouth.

“So will these cards tell me if I’m going to, like, die in a terrible accident?” Tina asked Patricia, aware that the question was a little naive. Tina didn’t really believe in tarot, but it was fun to pretend.

“No,” Patricia responded with a laugh. “There is a Death card, but it doesn’t mean a literal death. It usually means that there is a new beginning happening, that something else has passed away to allow for something novel to arrive. It’s probably the most misunderstood card, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it appeared in your reading since you’re starting a new job.”

Tina nervous giggled. “I get it, but I still hope it doesn’t show up. It feels very serious.” Death was one of Tina’s biggest fears.

“I would say that there are other cards that are a lot more serious and that could point to terrible things coming down the road,” Patricia said, grimly.

“Which cards are those?” Tina asked, feeling a chill go down her spine.

“Well, the Ten of Swords would be one. The card depicts someone with ten swords piercing them in the back, and it represents an unwelcome surprise or literally someone backstabbing you,” Patricia explained. “It could also point to a great failure at work.”

“Yikes! Failure at work is not the omen I’m hoping for at this moment,” Tina replied. “Hopefully I don’t see that card for a while either. Which others ones could be bad?” She was just curious. She knew that they weren’t really going to predict her future.

“The Five of Pentacles usually isn’t great either,” Patricia continued. “That card typically points to a time of financial strife, poverty, or adversity and indicates a significant financial loss or failure.”

“Holy moly! I didn’t think it could get any worse, but that sounds like an awful combination,” Tina said. Could this job lead her into financial turmoil? She made a mental note to double-check her budget once Patricia left.

“It’s definitely not great, but the card still holds the hope that others are suffering the same fate. There can be a sense of camaraderie in shared suffering,” Patricia clarified. She had a knack for seeing the positive in every situation.

“Well that makes me feel slightly better,” Tina lied.

“I’d say the one card that I’m the most afraid of is The Tower, one of the major arcana cards,” Patricia said, lowering her voice.

Tina shivered. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, first of all, the artwork is usually pretty disturbing. There’s a picture of a tower, usually being struck by lightning or on fire or both, and there are people jumping out of its windows and headed towards spiky rocks below. It can be really gruesome depending on the deck.” Patricia looked uncomfortable.

“Sheesh, that sounds terrifying. What’s the significance of the card?” Tina asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“The Tower represents sudden chaos and destruction. It may be a divorce, death of a loved one, financial failure, health problems, natural disaster, job loss, or any event that shakes you to your core, affecting you spiritually, mentally and physically. There’s no escaping it. It means that change is here to tear things up, create chaos, and destroy everything in its path,” Patricia said, citing one of her favorite tarot websites.

Tina stared at Patricia, slack-jawed.

“But don’t worry,” Patricia said, quickly. “It’s all for your Higher Good. It will make you better in the long-term. It could even lead to a huge revelation in your life.”

Tina didn’t feel reassured by Patricia’s forced attempt at optimism. “I guess that’s good then, but that doesn’t mean that I hope I pick it!”

“Yeah,” Patricia agreed. “I wouldn’t want to see that card picked in one of my readings ever.”

Before Patricia left, she told Tina to set the deck of tarot cards outside before she went to bed because the full moon that night would cleanse them. This was an absolute necessity, according to Patricia, before using them for the first time. Tina thought it was a bit superstitious, but went along with it anyway.

Patricia had also left instructions on how prepare the deck before picking a single card each morning for instant clarity, and she had even left a little book behind that explained each of the cards. Even though Patricia’s explanation of some of the worst cards had made Tina nervous, she really wasn’t too worried. What could pieces of paper truly know about her life? She just wanted to have some fun with them.

Tina decided to do a reading first thing in the morning in hopes of feeling better about starting her new job. She went to her back patio to grab the cards, but realized that they had fallen off of the table where she had placed them and had slipped underneath her deck. She wondered how long they had been like that and if the moon had been able to reach them at all. Had they been properly cleansed? She shook away the thought, reminding herself that she didn’t even believe in tarot cards in the first place. Surely they would still be okay to use.

Tina went back inside and sat at her kitchen table after flipping on her coffee maker. She pulled out Patricia’s instructions on how to pull a single card. The first thing on the list was to take a couple deep, meditative, relaxing breaths to get in touch with her intuition.

Tina wasn’t sure what this looked like, especially the “relaxing” part, so she breathed in and out ten times while thinking about all of the different ways her first day could be a complete disaster. It probably wasn’t a great sign that her intuition led her to stressful thoughts.

The second thing on the list was to ask a very clear, specific, and heartfelt question. This was pretty easy, and Tina decided on the question: “How will my first day at this new job go?” Short, straight-forward, a perfect question to ask the cards.

Next she shuffled the cards, split them into three piles, and then put them back together. She laid her hands on top of the deck and asked her question out loud. “How will my first day at this new job go?” She tried to just have this one question in her head, but she could feel herself asking other questions, too.

How will I make a fool of myself today?
Will my new co-workers like me?
What if I am actually a terrible editor?
Did I make a mistake giving up my dreams as an author?

Her head was spinning with worst-case scenarios when she picked up the top card of the deck and turned it over in front of her.

Tina screamed.

Chapter 2

Staring up at her was a burning building. She had picked the Tower card.

She leapt up from the table and put some distance between herself and the card. She tried to remember that she didn’t actually believe in tarot and that Patricia had said that even this card didn’t necessarily mean something bad was going to happen. Just that there was going to be chaos. It could be good chaos.

Who was she kidding? She was scared.

She paced back and forth, keeping her eyes on the card. A million thoughts rushing through her head.

“Well, this is just my luck!” Tina exclaimed, trying to break the tense silence in the room. Her voice echoed in her ears.

She sat back down at the table and studied the card. The artwork was truly disturbing. The people that were jumping out of the building were screaming, and the rocks below them ensured a bloody and gory demise. What could this possibly mean for her new job? She shuddered.

She was focusing on the card so intensely that the sudden sound of her coffee maker made her jump in her seat and simultaneously stub her toe on the leg of the table. She silently cursed. Maybe this was the first sign of chaos?

She left the card on the table and went to prepare a cup of coffee — 1 scoop of sugar and a splash of milk. But when she tore off the seal on the new carton of milk, a putrid odor met her nose.

“What the heck?! I just bought this yesterday!” Tina looked at the carton and searched for an expiration date. How had this milk gone bad overnight?!

She found the date printed on the bottom. It said it expired 6 months ago! No wonder it smelled so awful. She was going to leave a scalding review on Yelp for her grocery store. She pushed down thoughts of chaos and destruction that were rising to the top of her mind.

After she poured the milk down the drain, she went to her room to change her clothes and get ready for the day. She already knew exactly what she wanted to wear and had laid out the outfit on her bed the night before — her favorite pair of wide-leg, navy blue trousers, a white blouse with an understated frilly neckline, and a magenta blazer made out of jersey-knit cotton. She was even going to wear a pair of zebra-patterned flats as a bit of a statement piece. Professional yet creative, and something that she was totally comfortable in.

But as she looked at her bed, all of the clothes were missing. She bent over and looked under the bed, thinking that she must have kicked them off in the middle of the night during a nightmare. But they weren’t there. Tina panicked.

She raced around her room, checking every drawer in her dresser, every inch of her closet, but she could not find her perfect first-day-of-a-new-job outfit anywhere.

“What the heck?! Where are my clothes?” Tina screamed, again trying to break the silence, but this time also out of pure frustration. She could feel herself begin to sweat. She did another sweep of room for good measure, but still came up empty.

This had to be The Tower card in action.

She went into her closet and tried to put together another outfit that would portray her personality the same way as the original outfit would have, but she couldn’t seem to find anything that came close. Since when was her closet so full of boring and dark clothes?

She landed on a pair of black, skinny trousers, a light grey blouse with pearl buttons, and a black cardigan with cropped sleeves. She put on some bright blue heels in an attempt to add some color even though she knew that she wasn’t used to wearing heels and could be a bit shaky in them. She still felt like a haunted version of herself, not the feeling she was going for.

Tina walked into the bathroom to put on some makeup, and glanced at the time on her phone. She had spent so much time looking for her clothes that she was already running late! She decided to skip the full makeup routine, throw on some mascara and powder foundation, and hoped that the bags under her eyes wouldn’t be too obvious.

She ran back into the kitchen, tossed her phone and keys into her purse, and headed to the garage. She opened the door to her Subaru, the most trustworthy of cars, and sat down in the driver’s seat. She took a deep breath to try to calm her nerves. She was leaving the house only five minutes after she had planned and had built in plenty of time for bad traffic. She could still make it with plenty of time.

She stuck the key into the ignition and turned it… but nothing happened. The car didn’t start. She tried again, twisting the key harder, but again, the car wouldn’t start. She couldn’t believe it. First the milk, then the outfit, and now her car? This couldn’t be a coincidence.

She must have left her lights on and drained the battery overnight, that seemed like the only plausible reason for the car not starting today. But when she went to turn the lights off, she found that the dial was already in the off position. It’s like the battery had died on its own.

She could feel herself losing control, but quickly decided to call a ride-share car to take her to the office instead. It wasn’t the end of the world. She could still make it in time.

Thankfully, there was a car just three minutes from her house that accepted her request. She sat on the front porch so that she wouldn’t miss the ride. It felt like everything was working against her, and she began to second-guess accepting this editor position. Maybe she should still try to make it as an author? Was this the universe telling her something?

Tina didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought before her ride arrived. Luckily, it was a totally uneventful drive to the new office, almost no traffic to speak of, and she walked up to the building with one minute to spare before orientation started. She couldn’t believe that after everything that had gone wrong that morning, she still made it on time.

Just as this thought crossed her mind, she felt raindrops on her face. She looked up and saw darkening skies. She felt like she was never going to catch a break.

Hoping to get inside before the rain got any heavier, she quickly reached for the handle to open the front door… but it wouldn’t budge. She looked around and thought that maybe that door wasn’t working, so she tried the other side of the double door. But that didn’t open either. Was this some kind of sick joke?

She took a step back and looked at the building. The rain was coming down in bigger drops now and she could hear thunder in the distance. This was definitely the right building — it had the company’s name on the front of it. She looked at her phone for the time again — it was now one minute past 9 am. Surely the office should be open by now.

Tina briskly walked around the building, trying to find another entrance, but every door she came across was locked. She went back to the main door and tried to peek inside, but it was too dark to see anything.

“What the crud?!” Tina yelled. Now she was spiraling. Everything was going wrong, and she couldn’t help but think that this was a big sign from the universe that she had made the wrong career decision.

She ran to the end of the block, perched under an awning of another store front to stay dry, pulled out her phone, and decided to figure out what was going on. She opened the email application and found the orientation email that the HR department had sent her. She checked the office address for the bazillionith time, thinking maybe there were two offices — but no, she was at the right place. The time listed for orientation was 9:00 am on Monday, June 6th. She looked at her phone. It read 9:04 am on… Sunday, June 5th.

It was Sunday.

Tina couldn’t believe it. She had totally mixed up her days and had come into work a day early. She felt like an absolute idiot.

But then she started to rethink her morning and view everything from a different perspective. Maybe all the bad things that happened to her weren’t the Tower card trying to ruin her day and create chaos. Maybe they were huge hints that she was getting ready for a job that wasn’t meant to start for another 24 hours. That made her feel so much better, knowing that the universe was looking out for her and not that she was under the curse of a tarot card.

She sighed a breath of relief and opened the ride-share application on her phone again. This time she had to wait 7 minutes for her ride to show up, but she was able to stay dry (it was pouring now) and reflect on the morning. Yes, perhaps everything had turned out alright, but she couldn’t shake this feeling that it had happened for a reason. That it was still a hint from the world that this job wasn’t for her. She would really have to think this through.

As she saw her ride approaching, she put her phone away and prepared to get wet. The driver stopped right in front of her and looked in her direction. Tina held her breath and ran into the rain.

But as she took a step off of the stoop that she was standing on, she felt one of the heels from her blue shoes break underneath her foot. Suddenly, she was tripping, falling, heading straight for the concrete sidewalk below her. She tried to balance herself, to break her fall, anything, but the ground was slippery with rain, and Tina felt her head hit the cement.

Everything went black.

Chapter 3

When Tina woke up, she was in a hotel room. And an alarm was going off somewhere. Her alarm.

She slowly sat up, expecting to feel pain from hitting her hand. But she didn’t feel anything. She was sweating a bit, a little cold perhaps, but absolutely no pain. She lifted her hand and felt the spot on her skull that had hit the ground… and there was nothing there. No blood, no bandage. It was like it hadn’t happened at all.

Still in a daze, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and turned off the alarm. The time and date flashed on the screen for a second. Tina gasped and almost dropped her phone.

9:00 am — Sunday, June 5th.

This didn’t make any sense. Hadn’t it been after 9 am on Sunday when she hit her head? How had she ended up in this hotel room? What was going on?

Suddenly, Tina’s phone began to ring in her hands. She saw Patricia’s name on the screen so she quickly answered the call.

“Hey Tina! How are you feeling? Are you ready for today?” Patricia asked, sounding as cheerful and optimistic as ever.

“Patricia? Where are you? What’s going on?!” Tina pled. She still felt a bit out of it.

“Tina? What do you mean? What’s wrong with you? I’m in the room right next to yours. It’s the day of your book launch!” Patricia replied, sounding thoroughly confused. “I can’t believe the day has actually come!”

Tina felt her breath leave her body. Then it all came rushing back to her.

She hadn’t given up her dream to become an author. She had finally written a sci-fi book that was picked up by a major publisher. She had worked tirelessly to overcome her fear of public speaking. She had flown to California to launch her book in person at a huge bookstore, and Patricia had come with her for moral support.

It had all been a nightmare. The editing job, the Tower card, all of the bad things that had happened. It had all been an unbelievably realistic nightmare.

“Tina? Are you still there? I’m coming over,” Patricia said, promptly hanging up. Less than a minute later there was a knock on the door.

Tina got up out of bed, noticing her favorite outfit laying perfectly unwrinkled on the bed. She opened the door and saw Patricia standing there, already ready for the day.

“C’mon lazy head, let’s get you ready. You look a little out of it. But don’t worry, you’re going to do great today. I’m just so proud of you!” Patricia exclaimed, pushing Tina back into the room, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

“Thanks, Patricia. I’m glad you’re here. I had a nightmare that felt so real. Everything was going wrong. I think I’m still a little bit traumatized from it,” Tina explained.

“Well, get that out of your head, it wasn’t real. There’s nothing to stress out about today. You’ve practiced reading aloud so many times, and everyone loves your book,” Patricia said.

Tina nodded and gave Patricia a thin-lipped smile, still a little thrown off by the rough start to her morning. She grabbed her clothes off the bed and headed into the bathroom. As she put on her favorite outfit and did her makeup routine, she began to feel more herself. She still couldn’t believe that the nightmare had felt so real. But it had definitely just been a dream. This was her real life. She was a published author.

As she was about done, she heard Patricia say something to her. She went back into the bedroom.

“What did you say?” Tina asked.

“I said that I wanted to get you a little something for the big day. Help you feel better about everything,” Patricia responded, holding a small present out in front of her.

“Oh, Patricia, you didn’t have to do that. I feel better already.” Tina reached for the present and began to open it.

“I know, but sometimes it helps to have a little extra reassurance. I think these could really help bring you clarity about the future. We’ll need to cleanse them before you use them, otherwise weird things can happen, but I hope you like them!” Patricia grinned, clearly excited for Tina to open the gift.

Tina looked down in her hands.

It was a deck of tarot cards.

The End.

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Ellen Guthrie 4/20/22 Ellen Guthrie 4/20/22

That Big Kid Ellen #97: Create melted crayon art

A quick, but COLORFUL post today! 🌈

(As I went back to edit this post, I realized how much it felt like a DIY blog or a recipe blog with a totally superfluous story about *why these are the best chocolate chips cookies I’ve ever made* and then super detailed step-by-step directions on how to properly mix flour and baking soda with a fine-toothed comb or something stupid like that before you even get to the recipe itself. And…I’m not apologizing for it! I’m aware of it, but I’m still publishing this post. So if you’re in it just for the metaphorical recipe, scroll to the bottom. But just in case you’re not…)

Here’s the backstory on this post: Girl Scouts were an essential part of my social life for a couple years when I was younger (so was Indian Princesses — the daddy-daughter equivalent with the most offensive name ever, so we’re just not going to talk about that experience for now).

My mom had been a Girl Scout and a Girl Scout Leader before I was born, and she hoped that I would enjoy it as much as she did. Which I did for a while, but quit once I graduated from elementary school to middle school.

I’m not really sure if these photos are from my Girl Scout days,

but I’m just really digging the color palette of my clothes as a kid. This post is all about colors!

That being said, many of the activities that I did as a Girl Scout show up on my list because they were creative and memorable and just so darn fun! Some of the ones that I remember most were making homemade paper, putting together a troop cook book, making root beer from scratch, and creating melted crayon art.

If you’re not familiar with that last one, you literally just melt crayons to create art! Back then, we did it using an electric griddle, one of those big flat ones that my grandma would make pumpkin pancakes on the day after Thanksgiving.

My grandma’s griddle was glass and somehow always made the pancakes taste better than any other pancakes.

You would heat the griddle up, put a piece of paper or tin foil on the top of it, and then sprinkle crayon shavings or larger chunks of crayon on top. The crayons would melt, spread out, and create unique and beautiful art. Simple as that!

I remember being mesmerized by the patterns that would appear as the crayons fused together, swirling and mixing them with a toothpick as they melted. It was always a challenge to let them cool completely before admiring my work, and it was sometimes equally fun to destroy them than it was to make them by slowly picking away at the edges, using the art as a crayon once again to draw something else. The ultimate piece of reusable artwork.

This time around, I went with a more “adult” approach to crayon art. The approach that DIY art folks take. It involved gluing crayons to canvas and melting them with a hairdryer. The colors that would spill downwards would mix and mingle to create a totally unique (and somehow more adult) work of art.

I got together the materials and started to remove the paper wrappers from the crayons. I chose a color palette of mainly pinks and oranges with some blue and yellow highlights. In case you were wondering 😇

During this process I learned a couple completely useless things that I am going to share with you — “Carnation Pink” is the most waxy of colors and therefore was the most difficult crayon to remove the wrapper. Alternatively, good old “Yellow” was the easiest to remove. Honestly, it was orgasmically rewarding when a wrapper came off in one piece (only happened 5 times with 62 crayons 😓).

…in case you don’t remember what crayons look like.

Then came the fun part.

I super-glued the naked crayons onto a canvas. Using my $15 hairdryer from CVS that lives in my guest room bathroom closet (I don’t ever dry my hair), I got to work melting those little bad boys. The results were pretty much amazing.

I had seen some of these online that had left white space from the canvas peeking through, but as I was melting the crayons more and more, I decided that I wanted the whole thing covered.

I think it turned out phenomenally 👩‍🎨

The final work of art! Currently hanging on a yellow wall in my bedroom, but probably could be featured at MOMA, imho.

The final piece as a whole is stunning (if I do say so myself), but there are certain sections of it that bring me infinite joy.

and the contrasting colors, specifically the yellows,

Y’all, I consider myself to be creative because I’m a writer, not because I’m a visual artist. I have made other attempts at painting on canvas, drawing, and watercoloring. All pretty epic failures, in my opinion.

But this legit felt like a creative accomplishment. I created something colorful and bold and vibrant — all of the words that I want to be described as. I am proud to showcase this canvas on one of my walls instead of hiding it in the laundry room like I did with my self-portrait (😭). And that’s a big deal.

The colors from this canvas inspired me to include more colors into my life: I’m currently emptying out my closet and filling it with more colorful items (I’ll write about this soon). I’m updating my living room — getting rid of our old, basic, gray couches from IKEA and moving in a beautiful cobalt blue sofa with pink and yellow pillows and an equally vibrant rug. And I’m getting my hair re-dyed that beautiful raspberry color that you see in my profile photo that I haven’t had for about 6 months.

BRING ON THE COLOR.

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Ellen Guthrie 4/13/22 Ellen Guthrie 4/13/22

That Big Kid Ellen #89: Design a treasure hunt

Growing up, my family’s favorite holiday was always Thanksgiving. It was the one time every year where we saw aunts and uncles and cousins all together celebrating family and what we were thankful for. I could write a whole post about Thanksgiving traditions, but for this post, we’re going to focus on Christmas.

We always celebrated Christmas, but it took a bit of a backseat to Thanksgiving. However, our Christmases were also chock full of traditions, and it was those traditions that made the season meaningful. Here are some of my favorites:

→ Throughout the month of December, we would take out our trusty advent calendar and use a little yellow wand to open each door and hang tiny ornaments on a wooden Christmas tree. There were no chocolates or toys, but it was always fun to guess which ornament you would pull since we had all of them memorized.

→ Christmas Eve afternoon was spent at our church, watching the newest batch of little kids act out the nativity scene, complete with wise (wo)men, angels, and a fake baby Jesus. It was fun when we were young and knew some of the kids, but sitting through an extended mass became more and more difficult the older we got.

My sister and I the year that our class acted out the Christmas Eve play. She was clearly stoked that she got to be an angel, and I was clearly displeased at the insistence that I had to be a wise MAN. One of the Catholic church’s many flaws. (Yes, in case you were wondering, my mom did make those costumes!)

→ For Christmas Eve, we would order Chinese food for dinner since no one wanted to cook and there were very few restaurants open in our small town. My favorite dish was beef and broccoli.

→ For just a few years on Christmas Eve night, we were able to open one present, but it had to be a book. I don’t think this tradition lasted very long, despite my desperate efforts to get everyone on board (sad day for book worms).

→ On Christmas morning, us siblings would all gather at the top of our staircase in our pajamas while my step-dad video-recorded us (with a camcorder) walking down the stairs together (fun time capsule of pajama fashion) and then walking into the den where our stockings were waiting for us. We all always got new underwear in our stockings, which became a slightly mortifying experience the older we got until my mom decided to just give my sister and me Victoria’s Secret gift cards.

→ After the stockings were done, we would run to the tree and separate out the presents into piles based on their intended recipients. The kids could only open one present at a time — we had to alternate so that we could savor each present (we weren’t a huge present family compared to most).

Our Christmas haul one year. Yes, I was very much into beanie babies, and yes that is a “BeadMagic” box in my sister’s hands. Because what says cultural appropriation more than little White girls putting beads in their hair? (CRINGE.)

→ My grandma would make a cherry stollen, a traditional Swedish treat that I always looked forward to eating on Christmas morning.

→ After opening presents and eating breakfast, the whole family would bundle up in our warmest winter gear and head to Lake Michigan in our minivan, about a mile from our house. We would walk on the beach, regardless of the weather conditions, until we couldn’t feel our faces. When we had our dog, Tito, with us, we’d head to the dog beach so that he could run free (he was so fast for such a little guy!).

→ My step-dad would make his beef stew on Christmas day for dinner, the only day out of the entire year that he would make it. It’s one of my favorite meals to date, and there was always a bit of mystery as to who would find the laurel leaves in their bowl.

→ Christmas evening, we would all usually watch a movie together, with a holiday theme. I remember someone trying to make the case for watching the same movie every year, but that never stuck. Although I’m pretty sure we voted to watch “Elf” for multiple years in a row when it first came out.

As an adult, I appreciate that these traditions were created because I have such strong emotional memories from Christmases past. But the strongest memory I have, and probably my favorite tradition of them all, was the treasure hunt that my parents put together every year.

After all the presents were opened, my sister and I (and later brother when he was old enough) would search behind or under the Christmas tree for the first clue of the game. My parents would put together clever limericks or rhymes that would lead us around the house, clue by clue. They hid the clues in our washing machine, in our bathtub, sometimes we’d even have to venture outside into the cold to find one hiding under the lid of our barbecue.

My sister and I would race around the house the second that we put together each answer. Every year, there would be just one or two clues that would trip us up, but usually our parents were considerate about writing clues that two young girls could solve. They also tried to make the clues topical if possible, with references to our favorite TV shows, current events, or the boybands that we loved.

Then, at the end of the hunt, we would find our treasure. Like I mentioned before, our family wasn’t huge on presents, but we were big on making memories. So our “treasure” was always tickets — tickets to a Broadway musical, tickets to the American Girl Doll Place for high tea, tickets to Disney World, tickets to Australia, etc.

This store had every imaginable outfit and accessory for our dolls, as well as an entire theater where little girl child actors would tell us the backstories of our dolls, AND a high tea experience for just $16 per person (yes, my mom put the tea menu in my scrapbook.)

Some years I was thrilled (Disney World, hello), others felt like a letdown (I was not a theater kid, but my sister and mom were). But the emotions that I felt during the treasure hunt itself usually made up for a slightly disappointing ending if that happened to be the case. To this day, I describe myself as a non-competitive person (it’s why high school sports were really not for me); however, I was SO competitive when it came to these hunts. I wanted to be the one to solve the clue, to one to find the little piece of paper taped the inside of the laundry shoot.

I am convinced that these hunts and my competitive nature during them evolved into a love for escape rooms as a 30-something-year-old. My family will warn you to WATCH OUT if you get locked into a pirate-themed room with me because if you slow me down in solving the clues, I’ve been known to physically push people aside so that I can figure them out faster. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’ve also never lost at an escape room, so you tell me if it’s really that bad 😬

In order to knock this task off of the list as an adult, I had planned to create a treasure hunt for my husband for his birthday in May. I had never put together one myself, so I thought that it would be fun to be the one to create the clues.

However, my husband beat me to it! Although my birthday was back in February, the birthday present that he bought for me was backordered until now (mid-April). He asked me if I wanted him to put together a treasure hunt so that I could relive my Christmas day memories.

Uh, doi. Yes, please!

My husband spent a while, giddy with excitement, putting together the clues that would lead me around our house in search of my belated birthday present. He exiled me to a guest room when he was ready to start placing them in their spots, and then eagerly led me to my first clue.

When I read the first one (“This clue slides to hide prying eyes”), I realized that this probably wasn’t going to be the same experience as when I was a kid. My husband’s brain doesn’t work in limericks and rhymes. He’s more akin to The Riddler’s style of “I’m so clever that these clues are going to be impossible for anyone else to understand. One reason I love him.

But also, this was going to be a challenge. After finding the next clue on the back of our sliding barn door, the clues became more and more difficult. On top of that, we had just walked outside for an hour and spent time at the pool, so I was low on energy. I could tell he wanted me to run around the house like I had as a kid, but my competitive nature in clue-based games was dwindling (yes, I can admit I’m a sore loser). For one clue, he talked about “climbing a ladder to win the game” and I could not for the life of me put together that he was talking about the ladderball set that we had purchased for my birthday party. Brain no work-y.

There were some extremely funny clues (one that I can’t share, but it really was *chef’s kiss*), but I think the most impressive thing that he put together was the final clue. On the back each individual clue, he had created even more clues that spelled out the combination to his safe, the answer to the final clue and the location where my present was hiding. (I realize that I should probably have memorized that combination already, but he was smart to assume that I had not.)

There were 12 clues in total plus the extra clue on the back of each one.

I’m glad I remember how combination locks work (you have to go past the second number in order to get it right), because it was very satisfying to turn to the giant knob and open the door to see a present sitting besides our valuables.

Y’all, my husband knows me well!

Sitting on the top shelf was a galaxy light machine. Swoon! This fancy machine projects colorful galaxies and stars onto ceilings and walls and can be piloted by an app on my cell phone. You can set up “moods” with it (ie. calming, romantic), and have it rotate through different scenes and color palettes.

If you remember my trip to the planetarium, I purchased a super lame star light for $20 that didn’t move and had just one pattern (boring), so this was a big upgrade.

I feel like I let my husband down with my lack of excitement for his clues (and just not freaking understanding some of them), but I really was impressed with how into it he got putting it all together for me and being so creative in the process. He’s not a big romantic gesture kind of guy, so reflecting on the experience now, 12+ hours later, this will always be a super special moment for me.

I still might put together something for his birthday, show him what our family treasure hunts looked like and maybe even start a new tradition of our own. But for now, I’m going to bask in the light of my galaxy machine and give thanks to having such an incredible husband.

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Ellen Guthrie 3/23/22 Ellen Guthrie 3/23/22

That Big Kid Ellen #87: Interpret my dreams

I’ve always had a weird relationship with dreams.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had pretty disturbing nightmares and very vivid, complex dreams. Most mornings, I wake up in the middle of a dream. As a really young kid, I would wake up from nightmares in the middle of the night, sweating or screaming, run out into the hallway, and yell for my mom until she would wake up. She would come back with me into my room and try to calm me down, rubbing my back or telling me a happier story until I fell back asleep. This probably continued until I was a young teenager, it was that bad.

I remember having some recurring dreams as well. One of the earliest ones started when I was about 4 years old. The dream was: I would walk into an old-fashioned theater, with thick, red curtains covering the stage. I would always take a seat, totally alone in the theater, and wait for the curtains to open, knowing that something terrible was going to appear.

The curtains would finally pull back and a giant T. rex would be standing on the stage, roaring and baring its teeth at me. It would start to walk slowly towards where I was sitting, and most nights, thankfully, I would wake up before anything else would happen. But some nights I wouldn’t wake up right away, and the T. rex would chase me as I ran around the theater. Although I was never really able to *run* from it — it was more of a trudging through mud. It was infuriating and made the nightmare worse.

At some point in elementary school, when the recurring nightmares were still pretty bad, I read somewhere that sometimes it was possible to change a dream as you were having it. The theory went that if you were able to remind yourself, in the dream, that it was all just a dream, even for a second, then the dream would change. I was young enough to not be intimidated by or suspicious of this suggestion, so I tried it out one night. I had the T. rex dream, but somehow, right when the curtains were opening, I was able to remind myself that it was just a dream and nothing more. When curtains pulled back, the T. rex was a cartoon character and he was juggling and laughing and totally un-terrifying. It was game-changing. I started lucid dreaming to get out many nightmares.

Probably after a not-so-good night sleep, looking not very enthusiastic.

In middle school, I started to track and (loosely) interpret my dreams. I had a dream diary where I would quickly write down everything I could remember the minute that I woke up from a dream. Most had to do with the boys that I had crushes on (specifically the Hanson brothers, mmm bop 😉) or my extreme fear of failing at school. My interpretations were a bit of a stretch, but I later found a dream interpretation book that I would use to pick up on themes or hidden meanings. It became a hobby to mine my dreams for hidden gems and deeper meaning.

I kept up the practice for years, spotting hidden messages and trying to figure out what was really bothering me after having a dream about failing to dance with a mermaid or scaring a ghost while it was cooking (yes, both real dreams). One consistent theme that came up a lot was public restrooms. I had an exorbitant amount of dreams where I would try to go to the bathroom in a public restroom only to have the stall door missing. Or the toilet was in the middle of a busy room. Or the lid would be glued to the seat. All sorts of issues that would botch my attempts to pee.

Finally, in one dream, I found a stall with a door, a functioning lid, and total privacy. I remember starting to pee in the dream, overcome with joy and luck, and then immediately stopping mid-flow when something felt debilitatingly off. I woke up, in real life, and realized that I had peed myself. A lightbulb went off as I realized that all of those dreams of broken toilets had been saving myself from peeing my bed in real life. I started to see more connections to my dreams and to real life, and the dream interpretation became even more exciting, almost predictive.

My hypnotic dream diary from when I was 13 years old.

I really wanted to find meaning in mundane dreams with some of these interpretations.

Then, as a young adult, things went wild in a different way. I spent the summer when I was 17 in a remote village in Nicaragua, partaking in a service program informally deemed the “Peace Corps for high schoolers.” Back then, the recommended vaccination for malaria was a weekly pill of chloroquine for the entirety of the trip, so I was dosed the entire time I was there. There are some pretty bad side effects connected to the medication, two of which are nightmares and hallucinations. My nightmares were out of control and didn’t connect back to real life in any way, ranging from volcanoes exploding and burning me alive to men on motorcycles trying to run me over. I also remember sitting in a hammock, wide awake in the middle of a mountainous region, swearing up and down that I was someone on a lake in a canoe with a rabbit in my lap. My mind seemed to be slowly breaking.

When I went off to college, the intense dreams continued, and I had to try to figure out ways to self-soothe in the middle of the night when I would wake up from my increasingly twisted nightmares (lots of murders, rapes, kidnappings, etc.). I would lie awake and replay the terrifying dreams in my head until I became too afraid to ever fall back asleep. As embarrassing as this might be to admit, I discovered that there were two things I could do in the middle of the night that would calm my brain and get me back to sleep: I could turn on an episode of So You Think You Can Dance or I could stream soft-core porn. Both options could lull me back to a dreamless sleep. 😅

Fast forward to being a married adult. Before I took the plunge and got LASIK eye surgery, I was very, very blind and would often hallucinate spiders crawling down the wall while I was falling asleep, thoroughly freaking out my husband who had to jostle me awake and remind me that there was nothing there. However, if I had a bad dream in the middle of the night, I was thankful that I could just roll over, snuggle with my husband, and talk myself down from whatever had just been playing on the inside of my skull.

It’s been an odd ride, to say the least, when it comes to dreams. I went through a phase where I only had dreams about missing flights because I couldn’t remember how to pack a suitcase (usually before a big trip). Another phase of life had me dreaming about not knowing my class schedule and showing up late to everything (basically had these throughout all of grad school and even a little after graduation).

I used to think that my dreams were my subconscious telling me something important or even predicting the future, and that still might be the case with certain dreams or parts of dreams. But now I believe that my dreams are probably just an amalgamation of all of the things that my brain processes throughout the day, all folded up together into a Frankenstein’s monster-like mash-up. My dreams these days are primarily an eclectic mix of the TV shows that I watch and the books that I read. To give you an idea — I watch a lot of trashy reality TV and read a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, and romance novels. The combination creates so many hilariously, screwed up ideas for spin-off series!

So, what I thought I would do for this post was to capture one of my most recent dreams as best I can and then use a generic dream interpretation book to guess at the deeper meaning. Then, as I go through the book’s interpretation, I’ll give my own feedback and see if it matches up!

The absolutely gorgeous dream interpretation book that I’ve been using recently.

I woke up from an intricate dream a couple days ago, which I thought would be perfect for this post, and quickly transcribed as much of it as I could into the Notes app on my phone. Let’s start with that:

The Dream

I went to visit a friend of mine at their grad school campus. Something about the tour that they gave me left me with the impression that I was at UC Santa Cruz (which was once my dream school for PhD programs and was clearly on my mind as I read through the dream book that I had purchased in the same town).

We walked through a huge hallway that led to a large open space with classrooms on either side of us. They were enclosed with floor-to-ceiling panels of glass, and each room was equipped with a giant code box that you had to unlock to enter. Somehow I knew that only professors had the code to their classroom.

Even though the rooms were locked, because the walls were pure glass, I was able to look into each one. The classrooms had been built to resemble a redwood forest. Each classroom had a dense forest landscape against the back “wall,” and the tables and chairs were made of crudely whittled logs and wooden boards. The floors were covered in a dense layer of moss and native wildflowers. Each room appeared to be experiencing dusk-time lighting even though it was daylight in the hallway where I was standing. There were, however, twinkle light strung across all of the branches in each room to give them a very forest fairy vibe.

(This sounds nice so far, right?)

As the tour of the classrooms was finishing up, we came across the last room, and saw that it was full of people. I instinctually felt like something was amiss and I could tell that the people in the room were in danger. We frantically tried to guess the door code to unlock the door, but we were unable to do so.

I peered through the glass and saw that there was an older woman with white-blond hair in the middle of the room, casting spells that were turning people into animals. Suddenly, I found myself holding two eyeballs, one in each hand, and I knew that in order to vanquish the witch, I had to destroy the correct eyeball.

(This seems more on-brand for my dreams.)

The eyeballs looked almost identical, but I found a small indentation on one of them and knew that that was the correct eyeball to destroy, the one with a weakness. I crushed the eyeball as hard as I could in the palm of my hand, and watched as the witch withered away, reversing all of the spells that she had cast. The students looked back at me with huge, thankful eyes that quickly turned back into looks of terror as I turned around.

Killing the witch had unleashed all kinds of other creatures in each of the other classrooms, and they were all fighting against the students that had been inside each forest-scape. One room was full of futuristic, Samurai-like warriors with glowing swords that were fighting against a group of girls led by a female professor. I know there were other fights going on in the other classrooms, but for the life of me I can’t remember what else I saw.

One by one, the creatures were destroyed by students and professors, but I had a feeling that the biggest threat was yet to come. From the vantage point of the floor in the hallway, I looked up towards the ceiling and saw two giant creatures falling to the ground. One appeared to be robotic and the other almost cartoonish but furry. They were both, somehow, Bigfoots — one futuristic Bigfoot, one classic Bigfoot. And here’s the kicker — the traditional Bigfoot was also somehow my husband, Derek. It seemed to be his alter-ego.

(Oh boy!)

The two Bigfoots showed up for a battle royale in the middle of the hallway with all of the students and myself watching. I realized that I had a microphone in my ear and that my brother was at the other end of it, talking to me and telling me that the only way for Bigfoot Derek to win was if I put myself up as bait for Futuristic Bigfoot.

My brother had the ability to see one minute into the future, so he was giving me instructions on what to do and where to move so that I could distract Futuristic Bigfoot. It was as if he were playing a video game and I was the character that he was manipulating. I remember having a flower pot in my hand at one point, another instant I was wearing a yellow dress.

My brother was able to figure out the correct combination of moves that I needed to make in order to distract Futuristic Bigfoot (who at this point was just a giant robot with no resemblance to Bigfoot at all). When he was coming for me, Bigfoot Derek was able to attack him from behind and kill him. Doing so lifted whatever curse Derek was under and he appeared as his human self again.

The end.

So, yeah, that was literally all living in my head. And y’all, I have no idea where so much of it came from. I have some ideas about parts of it, but overall, Bigfoot really isn’t a part of my every day life. 🤷‍♀

Digging into the dream interpretation book, I pulled out a couple key themes that were present in the dream and what their supposed meanings are.

Epic dreams

The first part of this book describes different categories of dreams. The one that felt the closest for this dream was “epic.” The book explains, “When you have this kind of expansive dream, your dreaming mind is simply showcasing your potential or what is possible for you, because for some reason you aren’t yet experiencing it fully in your daily life.”

I do love this explanation of the grandeur and randomness of the dream. I’ve been doing a lot in my life to expand my creativity (this blog included), and I feel like I’m just scraping the surface on all of the fun, creative things that this life has to offer. It’s exciting that there are some epic stories living in my head as I explore my creative writing abilities.

Nature

Nature, specifically forests and trees, played a huge part in this dream. The books details, “Whenever nature or natural scenes appear in your dreams, this refers to instinctive or natural aspects of your character. In other words, it shines a light on your true essence or nature. Such dreams can also represent how down-to-earth or grounded you are, or simply be encouraging you to take time out to relax and focus on what is real and truly matters in your life.”

“Forests or woods in your dreams represent new possibilities and insights. Grass, green shoots, and leaves are all images of new ideas, renewal, and hope. Trees are universal symbols of spiritual growth and wisdom, so pay close attention to the condition of any trees in your dream.”

Whenever I have dreams about nature, it’s usually when I’m most out-of-touch with nature in my real life. I’ve felt a longing to be outside every day, but haven’t been able to fulfill that need recently because of a sprained ankle that I actually got during a hike. I feel a sense of impending doom (dramatic, but true) as the weather in Austin turns from acceptable into face-meltingly hot. It’s impossible for me to enjoy nature when it’s 100+ degrees outside.

The interpretation that there are new possibilities and new ideas in my life does give me hope. I have been trying out so many new things, creatively and otherwise, in the last couple of months. I have an exciting pilgrimage coming up in May that will take me through parts of Europe. Who else knows what lies ahead?!

Transformation

The transformation of my husband into this Bigfoot character was very intriguing to me. The book explains, “Change is a constant in our lives, so unsurprisingly our dreams often feature this theme. Dreams about transformation stress the importance of leaving the past behind so that the future can be let in.”

“Shape-shifter dreams are a sign of radical change happening in your waking life, and your dreaming mind is trying to help you deal with anxiety about these changes. Disguises or masks also suggest transformation, in that they have to be removed if you are to find out who you really are. Notice how natural or unnatural the transformation feel. Every change in our lives will involve both loss and gain, but it’s up to us whether it ultimately leads to positive or negative transformation.”

Since Derek was the one to transform in the dream, I’m going to assume this was all about him. And it fits, to be honest! My husband is going through huge life changes as he starts a brand new career in massage therapy. He has a new group of friends and will gain new co-workers. I think this dream dropped a pretty huge hint in my lap that I need to continue to support him in his journey and be aware of anxiety he might be feeling with all of the changes happening in his life. I don’t want him losing to that Futuristic Bigfoot!

Fantasy

Clearly this dream had fantasy written all over it. I will admit that I enjoy reading novels right before falling asleep and some of the most recent ones have been fantasy themed (highly recommend “The River Enchanted” and “The Cartographers”). Perhaps that’s where this all came from?

The book says, “Fantasy themes in dreams typically reveal your deepest desires, wishes, and fears. Their purpose is always to help you understand yourself and highlight both your strengths and your weaknesses so that you can heal, learn, and grow. If monsters or demons appear, these are uncomfortable aspects of yourself that you are struggling to deal with. This kind of dream tends to happen when you are considering a major life change or are about to do something you may regret.”

“Above all, fantasy dreams remind you that the true magic is hidden within you, and can be discovered in your waking life if you believe in your own potential and your ability to face your fears and learn from them.”

Aha! Now this is making more sense. Derek and I have been seriously looking into moving to California (Santa Cruz, specifically, duh). We are both pretty scared about what that could mean for our day-to-day life as the cost of living is very different from Texas. We know that the location / weather / style of living are all way more appealing to us (and we are very much over living in Austin), but it’s still daunting to leave a place where we’ve lived for about a decade. We have community here that we love, and uprooting our lives seems like a big risk.

But! The idea that the magic is hidden within me gives me hope that we can create the life that we truly want. I can garden year-round and grow the delicate and unique plants that would be murdered by the Texas heat. Derek could ride his bike to work and ride his bike in the redwood forests and ride his bike literally everywhere. I could spend my days outside, staring at the ocean, soaking in the sun that won’t leave me sweaty and miserable. This might be a romanticized version of the life we could have, but isn’t that the point? To create the magic in our waking lives?

How are you creating magic in your life?

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Ellen Guthrie 3/19/22 Ellen Guthrie 3/19/22

That Big Kid Ellen #100: Keep a tamagotchi alive

One of the gifts that I received at my dinosaur-themed birthday party this year was an old-school, Generation 1 tamagotchi. My friend/former co-worker, Alex, had read the Big Kid Ellen list and gifted me a bunch of things that I would need in order to complete a bunch of things on the list. A tamagotchi being one of them.

I was stoked! 🤗

If you are unfamiliar with the Tamagotchi craze of the 1990s, they were super simple, hand-held video games that looked like little eggs (tamago is egg in Japanese) and would “hatch” baby aliens that would grow up to evolve into different characters. But, in order for them to grow up and die not a tragic death, you had to take care of them. Care for tamagotchis had to happen regularly and included feeding (but not overfeeding it), playing a game, cleaning up poop, administering medicine, and disciplining it when it beeps at you for no reason.

That last one might be my favorite 😈. There’s something wrong with me.

The first tamagotchis came out right at the time when my brother was born, when I was 8-years old. My sister and I had been begging our parents for a dog for years at that point. We were sick of pet fish and wanted something more loving and complex than a rabbit (RIP Layla). I had seen some of my friends and neighbors grow up with dogs, how they would have so much fun teaching them tricks or taking naps on their bellies. I had such a deep, primal desire to have a dog and love it and take care of it forever. I wanted a furry best friend.

Our parents, however, didn’t want to inevitably take care of the dog, no matter how much we tried to plead our case that we really would walk it every morning. So they went the less-stressful route and had another kid.

Makes sense.

My sister and I put together a list of baby names that we thought our parents would like (they did not). Looking back, they were probably better names for a dog, but that’s clearly where our heads were at.

Once our brother was born, he was more or less like a tamagotchi for a while. Simple to take care of (feed, clean, don’t let it die) and kind of boring. I still had a growing urge to take care of something that was flashier and less risky that a real-life squishy baby. Enter: the tamagotchi.

Kids at my school sometimes had 4 or 5 of these little egg keychains on their backpacks, and I remember a teacher yelling at one of my friends for cleaning up his tamagotchi’s poop in the middle of reading time. Tamagotchis are the most needy at the beginning of their life, right after hatching, but eventually become less needy as they grew up. That is, unless you neglected them early in their life. They were they needy and sickly and beeped at you all the time. A true precursor to the notification fatigue that most of us feel nowadays.

I desperately wanted one. It was the same year that I had asked for an RC car for Christmas, the tech gadget boom of the mid-90s being well underway. I think I got one later that year for my birthday, but I can’t remember exactly when it happened. I do remember that I was obsessed. I would check on its hunger and happiness gauges every five minutes even when it wasn’t beeping for attention. I wanted so badly for it to grow into a well-cared for character. But most of the time I couldn’t keep up with it (school being the main reason), and I usually ended up with a sickly adult character that died after a couple days.

I can’t explain the desire to take care of something, dog or tamagotchi, at that age. But it ran deep. I chastised myself for not keeping up with its beeps, and I remember manually resetting it if the teenage character turned out to be one of the bad ones. I needed a redo. I couldn’t fail as an alien parent.

Fast forward a couple decades. Cracking open the egg this time around has been a bit of a jarring experience, if I’m being honest. When the egg hatched, I was right back to being addicted to caring for it. I would check on it every 30 minutes, making sure that it was happy and full, but it always seemed like I was one step behind its needs. It was exciting when it turned from a baby to a teenager into an adult, but I knew from looking at the evolution charts that I had raised a neglected child that would grow up to be a needy adult.

After the final evolution into an adult character, I totally lost interest. I had failed to raise it well in its younger years (1 human day is about the equivalent to 1 tamagotchi year), and now I wasn’t as connected to its further development. I checked in on it just a couple times each day or would let it sit there until it started beeping at me. It died at age 6 — not a very impressive lifespan — and never thanked me for any of the care that I gave it.

made to look like the original 1996 version…

Still simple, still stupid, still mildly addictive.

The twisted relationship that I had quickly created with this little video game made me think about a similar relationship that I have right now with my dog, Chopper. If you know anything about me, you already know that I have two senior Chihuahuas, Zeb and Chopper. You might not have known that Chopper is a bit of a handful to care for.

He was born a total masterpiece of birth defects. His right front leg is missing and in its place is a chicken wing that ends in one scraggly toenail. He has an extra toe on the front left foot as well as a single toe that ends in two nails. One of his ears isn’t connected to any internal ear canal, and I’m pretty sure he’s super cross-eyed. And he’s not really that smart. All of these things make him completely and utterly lovable.

When we adopted him and Zeb (Zeb is Chopper’s biological father — Zeb was about 10 when we adopted him and Chopper was about 6), they were in bad shape. They had been found wandering the streets of San Antonio, were highly underweight, had rotten teeth, and had a clear mistrust of humans. Well, Zeb did. Chopper was a sweetheart right from the beginning and quickly became my bestest little buddy. Once Zeb got his rotten teeth out and a little bit of training, he followed suit and is now one cuddly buddy.

They thrived in the cushy life we offered them, until we noticed that Chopper was eating and drinking ravenously and had begun to develop a potbelly. He was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease after many tests, and began lifelong treatment to balance out his high cortisol levels. In addition to some other freak accidents due to his awkwardness as a tripod, it seemed like this little guy couldn’t catch a break.

As his Cushing’s disease progressed, he began to decline in health. His skin thinned out on his belly leaving him totally bald, his ears were constantly infected and flaking off, he lost the fur on the tip of his tail, and then one day we noticed that his front leg wasn’t bending properly. We took him to multiple specialists and finally the veterinary teaching hospital at Texas A&M where they pronounced him a true medical phenomenon. He was showing signs of something called psuedomyotonia — a symptom that causes all of his muscles to contract all the time, even when resting. Less than 1% of Cushing’s dogs have this symptom. His muscles began to grow and grow up like a body-builder, and before too long, his legs were completely seized up and useless.

Now, Chopper is still being medicated for his underlying Cushing’s disease. He takes a muscle relaxer to help calm down his bulky muscles. He’s on a low-dose of a pain medication to help with how uncomfortable it must be to be immobile. And he takes a sedative at night to help him sleep. The sedative doesn’t really seem to make any dent.

This dog whines for food all the time. We’ve tried moving around his feeding schedule so that he whines less, but he learns each new schedule and starts crying two hours before each feeding. We’ve trying feeding him more, feeding him less, every combination we can think of. But this little guy’s brain is wired to want food and he lets us know that he wants it. He also cries when he is thirsty or when he has to go to the bathroom, but those are requests that we are happy to oblige even if they do seem frequent and annoying.

Since he can’t walk by himself anymore, we carry him around the house, placing him in little memory-foam beds that we have in every room. He is usually pretty content to sleep next to wherever we are during the day, but even then I can tell it takes a while for him to get comfortable. He worms around on the bed until he finds a nice spot.

It’s become easier for him to eat his meals while sitting in one of his beds. In order for him to drink water or go to the bathroom, we have to prop his little back legs apart so that he can balance just for a moment. He usually falls over before we can scoop him back up, sometimes landing in his own excrement or on a fire ant mound (that really sucked that one time).

He has totally messed up with our sleeping schedule, waking up between 3:30 and 5:30 am every morning either needing water, a potty break, or an early breakfast. My husband and I alternate mornings for who has to take care of him so that neither one of us loses too much sleep two nights in a row. But it’s left us both tired for almost a solid year now since his leg seized up. Chronic exhaustion means that I am quick to anger, and sometimes I find myself yelling at Chopper at the top of my lungs when he starts to whine for dinner while I’m in the middle of working.

Oh, have I mentioned that since we had to pull all of his rotten teeth, his little tongue now sticks out of his mouth and crusts over because it gets too dry?

I feel like a terrible dog mom 99% of the time. A total failure.

Favorite nicknames: King Snausage, Chopper the Hopper, Pork Chop, Chops McGee, Gummy Bear.

I know, logically, that I have given this pup an incredible life. He was considered a senior dog when we adopted him in 2016, and he’s had so many fun adventures and warm beds over the years. He’s now a super senior dog who gets tons of love, good food, and snuggles all the time. Most of the day, he peacefully sleeps somewhere within a ten-foot radius of wherever I am. And I try my best to translate his whines and cries as fast as I can to make sure that he gets what he needs.

But then there are days when I consider stopping giving him his medication to speed up his decline. I panic about his inevitable passing, but find myself wishing for it equally as much. My frustration and exhaustion can easily overpower my sympathy and understanding. He might be in a relatively stable condition right now, but he’s still a very sick little pup, and there’s nothing I can do to make him better.

You know what I realized? He’s kind of like a fucking tamagotchi.

He was raised in terrible conditions, and he didn’t get the proper care that he needed as an adolescent. Now he’s a needy adult that requires constant care.

The heart-breaking thing about this metaphor is that I wasn’t the one to neglect him when he was young. I’m just having to deal with the consequences of a bad upbringing (and bad genetics) in his adult life. And I’m losing interest in taking care of him.

Sometimes I think that I’m not the right person to take care of him anymore. That someone could dedicate more time and love and calmness to him and his illness. Sometimes I think about the fact that he probably wouldn’t be alive right now if he were an 80-dog that couldn’t walk and needed constant care. I worry that his quality of life has diminished past what it should be but I’m unable to see it without bias.

But, then I think about all the times he wakes up and starts to wag his little tail in circles when I go to pet his ears. How much he loves getting pets and sitting on my lap when I’m watching TV at night. How sweet he is when he meets new people and demands love from them. He’s still such a happy, goofy buddy.

And adopting him has been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. Even though my husband might disagree, I never regret bringing him home and caring for him as best as I can. When I first got him, he brought me out of a deep loneliness slump that I had been experiencing. He would sit with my in the closet when I had panic attacks. He would like my hand when I would cry.

Taking care of him in his time of need is the least I can do for this dog. It’s hard, it’s not fun, I want to give up all the time, but the amount of love I have for this dog is never-ending.

So what I actually realized is that he’s not really a tamagotchi. What I realized is that I don’t have time to take care of a stupid tamagotchi because I’ve got my hands and my heart full with taking care of a living, breathing pup that loves me back. I found what I was looking for when I was an 8-year-old. I found my furry best friend.

A sad update: Chopper passed away peacefully on April 26, 2022. You can read his obituary here: Chopper Guthrie Obituary. We miss him every day.

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Ellen Guthrie 3/11/22 Ellen Guthrie 3/11/22

That Big Kid Ellen #81: Do kitchen experiments

This is the first list item that I have actually done with a tiny human being, and I’ve gotta say, I think I struck gold on methodology.

I had a two-year-old visitor at my house last night (along with her mom). She was extremely curious about my little dogs and tried to pet them without making them growl (they’re grumpy old men, not her fault). I gifted her a dinosaur balloon that was left over from my dino-themed birthday party that she carried around the house with her like a best friend. And I watched her eat broccoli “trees” just like I used to — biting off the “leaves” and putting the “trunk” back on her plate. I could tell that she found the newness of my house to be exciting and different and probably a bit confusing, but I couldn’t wait to blow her little mind even more with some of the fun things I had planned to do with her.

When I was a little kid, the kitchen was such an exciting place to be. Growing up, my mom was a food scientist, the kind that invented new foods and worked for cool companies like Gatorade and Quaker Oats. (I later got a degree in Food Science because I wanted to be her!) She was a great cook, and made homemade meals for us, but surprisingly she never really taught me how to cook! (I think this is one of her biggest regrets, but I eventually figured it out.)

However, she did let me help her bake. And let’s be honest — baking is kitchen science. We kept the baking ingredients in plastic containers with mustard yellow lids that had deep grooves on the top. Each one had a little scoop inside, and she would show me how to level off a cup of flour or how to pack brown sugar in the measuring cup. My favorite thing to make was “peanut butter blossom cookies” — traditional peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss pressed into the top while the cookie was still warm. I was so proud of the cookies that I shared the recipe with my Girl Scout troop, even though I’m sure that the recipe was one of the ones that comes on the side of a bag of kisses.

Throughout my younger years, I would throw things together in the kitchen, bake them, spit them out, and try again. Experimenting came naturally, even when what I made was a disaster. I also had an entire birthday party where my mom hired someone to perform edible science experiments with me and a group of my friends, my favorite activity being making sour gummy worms from scratch. The kitchen was my first laboratory.

Mad Scientist Ellen! Always the science nerd.

As a young adult, I babysat for a family for years. The little girl and I would watch “Nailed It” together and then venture into her kitchen and try to throw together something that was in the ballpark of being tasty. This was a true test for me because her family did not stock the kitchen with the normal baking essentials. Instead we made confections out of oat milk and flax seeds and coconut flour and 100% dark chocolate. Many did not turn out well, but I was impressed with her parents for still eating all of the things that we made with a smile on their faces. All of our experiments had quite an effect on her as she is now thinking of a career as a pastry chef (she’s still in high school, but I just think that it’s so cool).

Then, as “real” adult, I continued to bake and develop my skills, but had a love-hate relationship with it. I refused to bake without the key ingredients of sugar, butter, and eggs (it just wasn’t the same), but this left me unable to fully enjoy my creations because of my fear of gaining weight and strongly programmed fatphobia. I figured out a loophole though — I could bake for coworkers and not have to eat 2 dozen cookies by myself. I built up quite a reputation at a couple companies with my banana bread recipe as well as my diverse cookie offerings. I even made a coconut watermelon sorbet sans recipe that was the talk of the office for months.

Some of my all-time favorites: chocolate chip banana bread

a medley of citrusy pie fillings and jams

I still bake, although not as much as I used to since I don’t go into an office where I can share my creations, and it’s been a while since I’ve tried something without a recipe. If I’m being honest, it’s been a while since I’ve had fun in the kitchen at all.

But then in walked Olive, and things changed. Oh boy, did I have fun again.

Once I found out that Olive was coming over, I scoured the internet for kitchen experiments to do with a 2-year-old. Most recommended starting at age 3, but I knew that she could handle them. I landed on a page from the KiwiCo website with a long list of Kitchen Science Experiments. (If you haven’t heard of KiwiCo, I’m not going to do an official ad, but I do send a subscription box to my favorite pseudo-nephew every other month and they have been quite spectacular so far. I so desperately want to be that cool, science nerd aunt 🤓.)

During dinner, I was antsy to get started. I had assembled all of the ingredients that we would need (they had been on-hand in my pantry), and I remembered what it felt like to be excited about baking / creating / experimenting again. Curious, anxious, excited, hopeful. The inner kid in me gobbled down my food to make the evening move along faster. Olive’s mom told her that we were going to make “potions” together, and felt my inner witch beam with joy. Witches were OG scientists.

Once we all finished eating dinner (for Olive this meant biting a lot of food but not actually swallowing it, the little stinker 😂), I grabbed a baking sheet and placed it in front of Olive. I figured we would start with a simple experiment to get the ball rolling. I filled a bowl with whole milk and grabbed the food coloring. I put a little bit of dish soap in another bowl and gathered together a handful of q-tips. Olive’s eyes followed me as I moved things into place.

She watched, very patiently, as I squeezed one drop of each color of dye into the middle of the bowl of milk. I dipped a q-tip in the dish soap, handed it to her, and told her to gently tap the food coloring. She seemed unconvinced. Until she lightly touched the surface of the milk and the colors exploded to the edges of the bowl. She jerked her head up and stared at me, with that “holy shit, look what I did” kind of look. My heart melted.

We’re just getting started, little one!

The little scientist exploring the hydrophobic properties of dish soap.

We emptied out the bowl of milk and refilled it with some more in order to repeat the experiment (like the good scientists we are), and the second time was even more fantastic. Olive and Big Kid Ellen were hooked and wanted more.

We moved on to oobleck, the classic non-Newtonian fluid made out of cornstarch and water. I used to make tubs of this stuff as a kid, letting my hand slowly sink all the way down to the bottom of the slime and then quickly trying to raise my hand up as the substance magically hardened. It defied logic and made my little brain want figure out its secrets.

Olive showed a similar confusion with it. She would try to pick it up or stir it with a spoon, but each time was met with a hard surface. When I showed her how to slowly let her fingers sink in, her amusement returned and she let it drip off of her fingers. She was equal parts grossed out and totally enthralled. The voice inside of me was screaming, “more, More, MORE!”

Y’all know what comes next — baking soda and vinegar. The quintessential partnership in kitchen experimentation. I hadn’t had time to construct a papier-mâché volcano and really blow little Olive’s mind, so instead we opted for a pie tin with more food coloring. I filled the bottom of the tin with baking soda, and Olive helped spread out little drops of dye around the whole thing. The fizzing noise that the vinegar made when it reacted with the baking soda brought me right back to elementary school. I saw Olive’s nose crumple as the vinegar odor hit her nose, her eyes go wide as the concoction grow rapidly in size. So many senses getting attention!

The pan quickly turned into a smelly, cola-colored mess, so we cleaned it out and moved on to the final experiment — unpoppable bubbles. I got all the ingredients mixed in the pan with Olive’s help (water, dish soap, corn syrup, a little blue food dye) and stuck a straw in it to blow some bubbles. Massive bubbles grew up from the tip of the straw, and Olive, being a normal 2-year-old, wanted to pop them immediately. Before I could talk about how they couldn’t be popped, she slapped both of her hands into the bubbles, causing all of them to not only pop, but for the entire mixture to be thrown across the table, down the front of our clothes, and all over the floor.

She looked at me and her mom with apologetic eyes, but then we all busted out laughing.

It was at that moment, when the adult fear of messes abruptly interrupted the spontaneity of exploration, that I realized I had still been approaching all of these experiments from an adult’s point of view. I wanted to show Olive what each thing did. I wanted to explain the science behind everything. I wanted to control the situation. No! This was supposed to be all about being a kid again and sometimes kids don’t need explanations. They just need time to explore and be in awe of the world around them.

In an attempt to get back on track, I blew even more bubbles and waited for her to slap the living daylights out of them again. That went on for multiple rounds of bubbles until her clothes were entirely soaked through all the way to her little diaper. Her giggles were infectious, and it was hard to tell her that it was time to clean up. She kept sticking her chubby fingers into the bubble mixture with glee.

Her little tongue sticking out and her hand gently holding my arm 😍 I can’t.

Clean-up was a bit stickier than anticipated. Yes the bubble mixture had soap in it, but it also had copious amounts of sweet corn syrup that stuck to everything. And Olive still wanted to play! The three adults all grabbed wet paper towels and began to clean up as best we could. The dye didn’t ruin anything, thankfully, but the stickiness had permeated everything. Olive stripped down so that we could get her into a clean outfit. She was still grinning.

The night ended with fresh PJs and some Netflix. Olive ended up chilling in Derek’s gamer beanbag, sharing a blanket with Chopper. When we put on a cupcake cat show (I can’t explain more, sorry), Olive’s face lit up. She had her dinosaur balloon nearby as well. All the things a kid could ever want.

Princess Olive on her comfy, cozy throne, with dinosaur friend, Sally, and court jester, Chopper, at her sides.

I pronounce potion-making / kitchen experimentation a complete success! So many of these posts have been about letting go of control and allowing spontaneity and play back into my life. Having a kid to do this activity with made it a million times better because I don’t have confidence that I would have found these activities as fun without her involvement. I’m going to try to get more kids involved moving forward, and I hope Olive makes another guest appearance. Let me know if any of your kids want to be a part of this, too!

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

Ellen Guthrie 3/2/22 Ellen Guthrie 3/2/22

That Big Kid Ellen #11: Pick out a bag of geology rocks

I consider myself a very logical person.
I consider myself a very emotional person.

This is what we call a paradox.

Because both of these statements are 100% true about me, I sometimes struggle to accept paradoxes in my life. I think most people do. To have two seemingly-opposite truths live side-by-side in your body and brain is not a comfortable thing.

Here are some examples from my life:

Grief and relief.

My grandfather’s life ended due to Alzheimers and its complications in 2019. His quality of life was minimal at the end — he couldn’t really get out of bed, speak, eat, smile, drink. I knew that he was not the grandfather that I had grown up with (I called him “grandpa 2.0” when he went to live in a memory care facility). There was a deep relief that I felt when he died because I knew that his body couldn’t sustain him anymore.

At the same time, his death annihilated my mental health. No one teaches us how to grieve. Especially not in a typical Midwestern culture. We are taught to be stoic, show no kinks in our emotional armor. To externally show emotion could make others uncomfortable, and we don’t want to do that, now do we?

But… “I consider myself a very emotional person.”

For the first month after his death, I hardly cried at all. Every time I felt the hot presence of tears in my eyes, I would angrily shake my head back and forth and will myself to not let the tears fully appear. My therapist pointed this out early on, since I’m usually quick to tears in our sessions, and I told her that I had a fear that if I were to start crying I would never stop. I imagined myself crying for an entire week, debilitating myself in the process, and also not being able to bring him back.

It was hard not to have anyone in my family to talk to about it. They seemed to do their grieving privately or, in some cases, not at all. I learned that in order to grieve alone, I had to cry. I had to scream. I had to tense all of my muscles until my body hurt and then release them at the same time. It was an intense experience. (Note: I’m still grieving his death, but it looks very different now.)

My logical self knows that people die. Sick, old people die. And my grandpa was sick and old. His death brought me some peace because I didn’t want him to suffer anymore. I wanted him to be free of his pain and physical burden. I knew that this had to happen. Logically.

My emotional self did not want him to die. I am greedy and never want death to affect me. I was upset because I didn’t feel like I had ever said goodbye to him properly (logical brain says: that’s almost impossible with folks with Alzheimers). I remember being so angry about him dying when I first found out that I screamed and yelled and shook my fist at the sunset because I didn’t understand how such beauty could exist in the light when I felt like my life had just become so dark.

Paradox: I am devastated that my grandfather died, and I am relieved that he found peace.

Acceptance and change.

Another paradox that I struggle with daily is holding acceptance and the desire to change together in regards to my body. Anti-diet culture and body positivity culture speak of loving your body at every size, shape, age, color, gender. My body has changed during quarantine, and will continue to change throughout my life. After years of hating and shaming my body, I started to love her this year.

I was given homework by my coach to sit in front of a mirror and scan my body, starting at the top of my head. The second a negative thought popped into my brain (“ugh, look at that pimple on my nose”), I had to start over again at the top. It took me dozens of tries before I started to look at my body with no negative thoughts. But I eventually did it. And I know that I could do it today if I tried.

At the same time, my body is bigger than it’s ever been before, and there’s a certain level of discomfort that comes with that. I’m not as flexible or strong as I once was. I can’t do some of the activities that I used to be able to do. And so I want my body to change. I want to her to change so that she can move freely through life and experience all the fun things that it has to offer.

Notice how I didn’t say that “I want to lose weight.” Previously, I would have cranked up a restrictive diet, exercised until I melted into the floor, and hated myself because I didn’t actually enjoy anything that I was doing. That is not the change that is sustainable, healthy, or kind to my body.

The kind of change that I now seek I will find in treating my body with care. I started taking yoga classes (which, for me, is so freaking weird) so that my body can move with more confidence. I started walking more instead of feeling like I have to run all the time because, newsflash, I really like walking! I want to nourish my body better and give her so many yummy foods that don’t upset her stomach or make her tired. It’s about additive, not subtractive, changes. And with all these things, change is inevitable. But the outcome isn’t a number on a scale. It’s a feeling.

Paradox: I accept and love my body right now in this moment, and I want my body to change so that she can experience more things in life.

Science and woo.

I’ve discussed this paradox a bit when I wrote about my beliefs about déjà vu. Scientifically, it’s impossible to prove the existence of souls or the afterlife or reincarnation. But it feels good to believe in them! There is safety and comfort in believing that there is more than this one, physical life.

Similarly, I know that rocks are dead. They’re just pieces of earth that don’t have a life force. But there are also a lot of people that believe that our planet is alive, that she can breath, and that rocks and gemstones are imbued with energy. I think I might also be one of those people!

The feeling that I get when I am surrounded by nature, even “dead” nature, is overwhelming. I obviously feel something powerful when I stick my hand into fertile soil and connect with plant roots and bugs and microbes. It’s why I was a professional gardener for so long.

Yet, some of the most magnificent places on earth are simply sand or rock or lava and have no living things. And yet I still feel a deep connection to those places, similar to how I feel when I am connected to people or to living nature. My throat catches when I look out over the Grand Canyon. I feel giddy when I watch lava spew out of a volcano. And I swear that my emotions and body drastically change when I rub a smooth piece of amethyst between my fingers when I’m nervous.

Could literally stare at rock formations for hours.

When I was young, we took a lot of trips around the US. So many, in fact, that I have been to 49 of the 50 states (who wants to go to North Dakota with me?!). A common thing to find when you are a tourist in this country and you visit natural sites or science museums are tubs of colorful rocks that are sold by the bagful.

When I was little, I used to be obsessed with these rocks and gems to the point where I had to purchase multiple plastic tackle boxes from The Container Store to store my growing collection. I was drawn to the bright colors of some, the speckled patterns of others, or the iridescent shimmer that stones like Tiger’s eye boasted. I felt a connection to certain ones and would place them at the top of my boxes when I would go through and rank-order them every once in a while.

Now, in my mid-30s, I’m leaning more into my Pisces tendencies and picking up on energies and psychic tendencies that the world (and rocks) have to offer. It’s still an exploration at this point, but I dug deep for this task. And I found something that I really like.

I thought that I could complete this list item by simply checking out the gift store at a museum like I would when I was a kid. When I visited the planetarium at the Cal Academy in San Francisco, I found a bin of rocks and went wild. I wanted to find the perfect collection based on color and texture, just like I had when I was younger, and spent about 5 minutes digging around until I had filled a small, black velvet bag.

It felt a little anti-climatic. I had this bag of rocks, but I didn’t know what they were or where they came from or even if they were really natural. It was a disappointing experience, and I wanted to do more before I officially checked this task off of the list.

When we got back to Austin, I decided to take a trip to a place where my husband and I had oddly had one of our earlier dates at: Nature’s Treasures — “The Biggest Metaphysical Crystal Store In The US.” This store is huge and sells a little bit of everything, from 350 million-year-old sea life fossils to minerals, crystals, home decor, salt lamps, and jewelry. There’s also a giant dragon at the front entrance that is a great for a photo opp.

When we arrived, we wandered around the giant showroom to see all of the different gemstones and crystals that they had for sale. Similar to the gift shops of yore, they had a loose rock section with stones that you could pick out individually. They also had a wall full of jewelry with explanations of what each stone offered.

Logical brain — they’re just rocks. They can’t bring you love, peace, protection, or money.

Emotional brain — But what if they could?

At the back of the store, there is a space for a psychic practitioner to do readings and consultations. I have only ever had my tarot cards read over a Zoom call or by friends, so I decided that an in-person session might be fun. I introduced myself to the psychic, Deborah, and we began the reading.

She first asked me to get into touch with my higher self by taking a few deep breaths. She told me to think about breathing in light and breathing out negative energy as if they were dust particles. I did this a couple times and closed my eyes. Then she said to ask my higher self a question, that my higher self will feel when I was ready to truly look inwards. Something immediately floated to the front of my brain (so cool).

“How can I gain confidence and feel more secure being my authentic self?”

Deborah nodded and said that was excellent (I was afraid it was too vague). She wanted to pull a single tarot card to ground her reading and so that we could get more specific on what to discuss. She took out an iPad and pulled up a virtual tarot card app (a little non-personal, but it didn’t take the fun out of it). She touched the screen and flipped over a card. I almost audibly gasped.

The “hostilities” card had appeared. I understand that most of us feel hostilities on any given day, whether it be at work or with one of our many relationships, so this card could have been true for just about anyone that walked in the door (says the logical brain). However, this card was especially timely for me because my husband and I had just had a pretty big argument and it was weighing on me very heavily. So yeah, it felt pretty darn spot-on. I tried to hide my enthusiasm.

Deborah talked about how I have been told over and over that I am “too sensitive” and that I need to set better boundaries with my emotions as well as not take on the emotional burden of others. Yes, yes, go on.

She asked my gods (guides? I might have misheard her) if I was a natural-born empath, and they told her no. But she emphasized that I am empathetic and I need to be careful with that. She went into depth about how to protect myself and build confidence and set boundaries. She mentioned pink yarrow, which is a flower essence, and how to drink it. Then she also gave me this psychic protection affirmation.

I call upon the legions of Archangel Michael, Destroyer Angels, and Circle Society to place a triple grid with mirror shield around me now and ask them to escort any misqualified energies and entities to their right and perfect place. I now fill my aura with the violet flames of divine love.

Intense, amirite?

The rest of the time we spent together was a bit therapy-esque. She went on to tell me that in order to have more confidence in myself I need to focus on redirecting energy that is not meant for me. She said that energy isn’t actually positive or negative, just misplaced, and certain energies can hurt us if they are not ours to take on. It really hit home the point that any judgements made about me by someone else were not my problem to solve.

After she was done, I felt a sense of giddiness. There was direct action I could take from this conversation, even if the woo factor was off the charts. I needed to protect my energy and set better boundaries. I went back over to the wall with all of the stones and jewelry and chose two bracelets based on her reading (and what I was naturally drawn to).

Little kid Ellen was having a field day.

Tourmalinated quartz — Grounding. Grounding stone. Effective problem solver. Turns negative thoughts and energies into positive.
Amazonite — Creativity. Confidence, practical think and creativity. Brings hope and increases self-esteem.

I also wanted some loose stones so I found a mini energy set that focused on Joy & Bliss.

Citrine — Joy. Sunshine and positivity in crystal form! Encouragement to feel strong in your power, brilliance, and creativity while tapping into the abundance of the universe.
Labradorite — Bliss. Place on the third eye chakra to access your intuition and inner magic! Connects you to the present moment with clarity and releases attachments to old habits.

Here’s the paradox: I know that rocks don’t have a life force or energy inside of them, and I know that when you believe that rocks have energy, that type of energy arises.

Little kid Ellen believing in the power of fairy dust.

It’s fun to believe that wearing a bracelet will bring me more self-esteem. It might be from the rock itself or it might be because I feel better about myself because I tapped into my creative side and am wearing something pretty. It doesn’t mean that science can’t be true or that I’ve gone full hippy lady. I’m drawn to healing crystals and tarot card readings because when I am thinking about those things, I am reflecting on how I am feeling, I am more connected to my emotions and my body, and I am having fun. And that is what’s truly important to me.

To finish this post, I’ll end with a final thought on paradoxes. I recently listened to a podcast where Brené Brown interviewed president Barack Obama where they discussed the importance of paradoxes.

Barack Obama: It is both possible and necessary to see the paradoxes, the ambiguities, the gray areas, the absurdities sometimes, of life, but not be paralyzed by them… The danger in being able to see paradox is paralysis of analysis.
Brené Brown: This skill about the transformative power of holding opposites, knowing that two things that feel competing and conflicting can both be true, and how the ability to straddle these kind of paradoxes, really leads to transformation… That rare skill of holding the tension of opposites makes us better leaders, partners, and parents.

I am going to hold the paradoxes of life gently and firmly (see what I did there?) and allow them to co-exist so that I can experience their transformational powers. What kind of paradoxes will you accept in your life?

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Ellen Guthrie 2/24/22 Ellen Guthrie 2/24/22

That Big Kid Ellen #21: Host a themed birthday party

The tagline for my 4th birthday was “Ellenosaur is four” — a dinosaur-themed party for a little girl who claimed to love dinosaurs because her favorite movie at that age was “The Land Before Time.”

However, it turns out that I didn’t really love dinosaurs at all.

I actually had two birthday parties that year, lucky duck. One with friends that was Disney-themed (specifically The Little Mermaid from the looks of the cake and party cups) that was held on the weekend at one of the first Disney stores in Illinois. The other one was with just my mom and my godparents that was all about dinosaurs on my actual birthday (a Thursday).

The Disney party was a total hit. I was happy. I wore Mickey Mouse ears the whole time and some sweet pink overalls. There were no people dressed up as Disney characters to ruin the moment (I hated those people). It was an all-smiles event as far as I’m concerned.

That’s a happy little 4-year-old Ellen. Little did she know…

I only mention the other party because it’s the only birthday photo I have from that year. The dinosaur party seems to have been only captured on my mom’s camcorder and has become infamous home footage in our family.

My mom started by filming an unassuming yet on-theme cake. Vanilla frosting covered with little dinosaur sprinkles and “Ellenosaur is 4” written in my mom’s handwriting with pink icing. Four candles stuck out of the top of the cake. Classic.

There’s footage of me, with my flawless bowl cut hairstyle, trying to decide on a flavor of ice cream with my godmother and godfather. I don’t remember what flavor we landed on, but we were giggling and having a grand time.

Then comes the traditional Happy Birthday song — my eyes have grinning shadows under them from the way the candlelight hits my big cheeks in the dark. I have a toothy grin similar to the one from the Disney party photo, and I dramatically blew out the candles after taking a pause to think of a wish.

Pretty typical birthday party so far.

Then the footage changes and we are suddenly inside the Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale, IL, about 15 minutes from my childhood home in Schaumburg, IL. It’s darker than usual for a mall, the steam of dry ice or a vapor machine hanging heavily in the air, and there are a lot of people in the shot just slowly milling around. My godfather is seen carrying me when the camera pans over to us, my little face buried in his shoulder.

I am sobbing.

You can hear my mom trying to cheer me up as she brings the camera around to zoom in on the scene that is disturbing me. Set up in the middle of the mall are giant “Dinamation” dinosaurs — rubbery, animatronic versions of lifelike dinosaurs. There are multiple tableaus of the dinosaurs in their habitats, with barely perceptible movements of their heads or limbs, totally unimpressive special effects for 2022 standards.

But for 1992 standards, these things looked alive and real and ideal fodder for childhood nightmares. I can only imagine that they were the inspiration for the terrifying dinosaur scenes in the 1994 movie “Clifford” with Martin Short.

There were photos of these monstrosities on very niche dinosaur websites.

I found some info about the exhibit thanks to the endless archive that is the interwebz. The Chicago Academy of Sciences used to host an annual touring dinosaur exhibit called “Dinosaurs Alive!” and this mall near my hometown was one of its stops. I found an article in the Chicago Tribune from a couple years later that makes me feel pretty validated in my fear of these dinosaurs (four-year-old Mark was pretty terrified of them according to the reporting).

There’s also an article entitled “The Decline of the Dinamation Dinos: How One Man’s Robots Became Passe” (possible paywall) that talks about the extinction of the man who started Dinamation International Corp. and was behind the creation these robots. Really feeling like Netflix needs to buy the rights to this story…

Unfortunately for my 4-year-old self, my mom continued to meander around the exhibits in an attempt cheer me up, but only ended up capturing my crying hysterics with an occasional look of terrified awe. I wanted so desperately to like them and look at them, but they were too much for me. For almost 6 years after that day, I had a recurring nightmare about being trapped in a theater with a T-rex, and it took me learning how to lucid dream in order to stop having that dream.

So, naturally, after the creation of such a traumatic core memory early on in my life, I decided that I wanted to recreate this failed birthday theme and host a dinosaur-themed birthday party for my 34th birthday. What could go wrong?

It’s not a legit party without an invite! Zazzle hooked me up with a great design.

I wanted to right the wrong and create a fun and goofy dinosaur party. I sent out invites and requested that my friends come in their best dinosaur garb, and I went to work on finding decorations. I went a little crazy with the dino-themed goodies, racking up a bill of $75 from some online store in China with cheap yet plentiful options of inflatable dinosaur balloons and dinosaur keychains in every species I could find.

When the package from China arrived, half of the balloons had irreparable holes in them, making it impossible to inflate them. The rest of the balloons were about the quarter of the size than what had been advertised, and some of the keychains were just plain creepy. I started having mild flashbacks of the animatronic robots.

Because of the underwhelming decoration haul, I felt like I needed to take a trip to Party City to find some cupcake decorations or themed napkins or anything.

Quick question: have you been to a Party City recently?

One of my favorite parts of throwing a party as a kid was going to the party store and finding trinkets and silly straws and candies to stuff into goody bags and decorate the main party table with. Maybe even some fun candles or a piñata. But man, let me tell you, Party City is not the epic party destination it once was.

It was soul-crushingly depressing. Entire aisles were empty, triggering early pandemic day emotions when empty grocery store shelves were the norm. People were wandering around looking totally confused and retracing their steps to make sure that what they needed really wasn’t there. All of the dinosaur-themed things were sold out (or had never existed).

My husband made a joke about how we needed to immediately sell any stock we had in the company if we had any. A woman overheard us and tried to make some joke about not finding anything 1920s-themed that fell flat because of her obvious frustration in the lack of inventory.

Here’s what I equated the experience of going to Party City as an adult to: think about your favorite childhood clown that would show up to all of your friends’ birthday parties. He was probably named Bozo or Chuckles, and he had bright red hair and a colorful outfit with big shoes and lots of polka dots. He would have all kinds of funny tricks in his routine, make you giggle and slap your legs with amusement, and then make balloon animals for everyone at the end. He was the hero of the party.

Now imagine that you, as an adult, decide to hire the same clown for your kid’s birthday party in an attempt to relive the glory days. But this time Chuckles shows up in an unmarked white van, one of the windows covered over with duct tape and cardboard, and he’s smoking from a hole in his throat. His hair has pieces of drywall or dirt in it, and his eyes are glassy and red. Unable to stand for very long, he sits down in front of your confused kid, takes off his beat-up shoe, and asks the wide-eyed crowd of preschoolers, “You kids want to see a foot with three toes?”

Emotional damage.

I doused my hands in hand sanitizer after walking out of Party City with the pathetic haul of dinosaur cupcake toppers and solid-colored Solo cups and plates. (I’m so sorry to flame you Party City, but do better.) This was not exactly shaping up to be the exciting re-do I had in mind.

It was time to bring out my secret dinosaur weapon.

My husband, Derek.

Y’all, I’m married to a certified dinosaur nerd, and it’s the best thing ever. 🦖

When we got back home, I told him that I was disappointed with the lack of decorations, and he immediately headed upstairs to our guest room closet. There, he pulled out about two dozen dinosaur figurines in varying sizes and started to place them around the house. He even asked for permission to include Godzilla because “he’s not technically a dinosaur, but he’s still pretty cool.” He also went into our office/library and grabbed a couple of his dinosaur books for good measure. He did all of this with such positive gusto, I couldn’t help but smile.

His attempt to salvage the situation boosted my spirits tremendously, and I spent the entire day before the party making cupcakes and Rice Krispie treats and researching recipes for “Lava Punch.” I found a great dinosaur shirt to wear and got some cute dangly dinosaur earrings. We even picked up a cheap ladder ball set so that we could have some games to offer our guests. Things were starting to feel back on track.

The day of the party came, and I was overwhelmed with its success. Way more people showed up than I had predicted. The weather was absolutely perfect so we were able to all hang out safely on the back porch and in our big backyard. I had friends from every corner of my life show up, ages 14 to 60, all wearing some sort of dinosaur clothing or accessories. We read tarot cards and lit sparklers when it got dark. Everyone got along like they had known each other forever.

Perhaps my favorite part of the day, however, was watching Derek get to talk about all of his dinosaur toys. There were also people pitting the different Godzillas against each other, using the toys with claws that gripped to pick up keychains, and reading up on their childhood favorite dinos. His childhood dinosaur successes had made up for my childhood dinosaur failures.

Here’s Derek, probably discussing his favorite dinosaur (the Deinonychus) to an enraptured crowd in front of the coffee table covered with his childhood dinosaur toys and books.

I’d call that a total success.

Checking this one off the list felt like a real improvement of a childhood moment, not just a reenactment. I was able to capture some of the joy and playfulness that I used to feel as a kid at a birthday party without any of the horror of early 90s rubber dinosaur robots. I was surrounded by good friends who all got along and had a great time together. And the bestest best part?!

I got presents!

Not only were some of the presents dinosaur-themed, but a bunch of people got me items that will help me check off more things from the the list of 100 things that Big Kid Ellen is going to do this year 😍 Included in the pile of presents were an original Tamagotchi (#100), sidewalk chalk for hop-scotching (#65), a foursquare ball (#6), and two jump ropes for double-dutch jumping (#4). What a lucky duck I am to have friends that are so supportive of this project and that want to see me succeed in bringing joy back into my life.

Which brings me to my final thought for this post — if you, dear reader, want to do one of the things on the list with me, let me know! Or if you have your own little list going and check something off the list, let me know. I want to support as many big kids out there that I can.

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That Big Kid Ellen #43: Go whale watching

It’s Pisces season (and therefore my birthday season!), and what’s a more Pisces thing to do than to get on a boat, sit in the middle of the ocean, and cry about the beauty and majesty of whales?

Nothing. The answer is nothing. 😂 🐋

Admittedly, I don’t know a ton about astrology, but I do know that whenever I read a description about the Pisces sign, I feel seen but also slightly attacked.

My favorite place to learn about astrological signs has been Co-Star Astrology. They are so good at pinpointing the nuances of each sign in clever and witty ways. I recently downloaded their app and have loved seeing my daily horoscopes and how my sign interacts with my husband’s sign (he’s a Gemini, but a very atypical one from what I can gather).

I want to do a bit of an “Ode to Pisces” to start off this post, so let’s begin with this list of Pisces’ traits that Co-Star published, all of which hit the nail on the head for me:

Somehow both 5 and 50 years old at once ✔️
Thinks everything is a sign ✔️
Can’t remember if they dreamt it or it actually happened ✔️
Excessively romantic ✔️
Prone to fantasy ✔️
No boundaries ✔️

I love the first one — I literally have a blog about how I want to be a kid again while at the same time using that blog to ponder my own existence. I love watching a particularly vibrant sunset and thinking that it’s my grandfather telling me that he loves me (it’s most likely pollution). I am constantly confusing dreams with real life, and on especially gnarly days I confuse daydreams with nighttime dreams with real life. (There’s just so much going on in my head!) And it is so difficult and sometimes painful for me to set boundaries with others and equally challenging to understand when people attempt to set boundaries with me. All so accurate, yet all slightly maddening.

The excessively romantic bit made me giggle — below is an excerpt from a college-era journal that I recently came across. Looks like textbook romantic-Pisces musings to me 😬

The list of “best careers” that Co-Star put together for Pisces might be the most pathetic yet truthful thing ever:

Volunteer therapist (the fact that it explicitly says “volunteer” 😭)
Curbside fortune teller
Amateur poet
Sad clown
Orb of light
Vapor (?)

Amateur poet doesn’t sound so far off 🤷‍♀

Getting back to whale-watching… Pisces is a water sign, and I find the connection to and metaphors about the ocean so fascinating because I have a pretty major fear of the ocean. I used to think this was odd for a Pisces baby, but then I found this description of the Pisces sign that points to the fact that we are one with the ocean, even in the scary ways.

Pisces is ruled by Neptune, the celestial body that governs creativity and dreams, and these ethereal fish adore exploring their boundless imaginations. In its more nefarious form, however, Neptune also oversees illusion and escapism. Neptunian energy is like the energy of the ocean: magical, mysterious, and often scary. When the fog is thick on the water, the horizon is obstructed and there is no differentiation between the sea and the sky.

<Magical, mysterious, and often scary>

It seems like as a Pisces, I’m basically doomed to emotional overload and existential dread. What fun. /s

Now, whale-watching is not really what would come to mind as a “typical favorite kid activity,” but for little Pisces Ellen, it was one of the most memorable outings from my childhood. I went whale-watching during a trip to Oregon and Washington when I was 10, and I remember straining my eyes to find a fin break through the surface while at the same time feeling overwhelmed by the concept of “being alive.” Oof.

(Less serious side note: This trip was also memorable because my sister and I watched the Spice Girls movie no fewer than 5 times on the little TV in our vacation rental. What a time to be alive.)

Little Pisces Ellen about to check out the tide pools of the Pacific Northwest.

My family was visiting my uncle (mom’s brother), aunt, and cousin in their home in Seattle, and we all hopped on a boat out of Port Townsend, Washington, in hopes of seeing orcas. (Fun fact: If you Google “Port Townsend” one of the first auto-created questions is “Why does Port Townsend stink?” A little unfortunate for their tourism industry if I had to guess, but I honestly don’t remember it smelling that bad.)

We all got aboard a small boat named “Red Head” and found some seats on the inside benches. I’m almost positive someone in our group had a set of binoculars. I’m also pretty positive that we were the only group with any kids on the boat.

Now, I really don’t remember what exactly happened on this excursion if I’m being truthful. But I do remember the emotions: the overwhelming sense of insignificance that being in the middle of the ocean gave me, as well as the pulse of magic that I felt in my blood cells when I first saw a whale take a steamy breath through its blowhole.

I didn’t capture much on my little yellow disposable camera that day, but I do remember a moment where one of the whales that we had been tracking surfaced a few feet from the edge of our boat. It was otherworldly and caught me in the chest with a tight feeling of surprise and panic. The enormity of these creatures made me question my life and fear for my life all at the same time.

The most interesting photos I could capture as a child.

As adult Ellen, my whale-watching tour started from Monterey, California, and it so happened to be Valentine’s Day.

(Yes, I purposefully scheduled a whale-watching tour for my husband and I on Valentine’s Day because what is more romantic that better understanding your place on this planet than being in the middle of the ocean watching animals 100 times bigger and more majestic than humans? Read: I’m a Pisces.)

Fisherman’s Wharf was just waking up as we made our way to the dock, but the businesses had decorated for the day with flags and window decals. It felt like a celebration of joy and life and love, and I was there for it.

A festive Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

I had chosen a tour company that employed biologists on staff so that the trip would be a bit educational for us. While we waited for our departure time, the resident biologist began telling us about humpback and grey whales — the types of whales we’d most likely be seeing at that time of year. Most of the humpback whales in the area were headed south to Baja California, but he mentioned that we might start to see some northward-bound whales as well.

It was a pretty cold day, not getting about 60 degrees the entire time we were out on the water (4 hours total), so I was thankful that we packed extra pants and layers and had bought a blanket to sit on right before leaving when we hit the open water. The wind and sea spray left us cold, but as an “excessively romantic” Pisces, I didn’t mind that much— it just meant more cuddles and hugs to keep me warm.

Husband and I attempting to stay warm on the boat.

The (female!) captain took us straight out towards open water for about an hour before another boat in the area signaled a sighting not far from where we were. We made a hard turn to meet the other boat, and soon we found ourselves face-to-face with a young female humpback’s enthusiastically breaching the top of the water.

Everyone on the boat immediately started oohing and ahhing and making the boat lean precariously to one side under all of the shifting weight. We started to circle her, and right away she put on a show for us. For about 2 straight minutes, she slapped her tale on the top of the water, communicating something to her probably-not-so-far-away pod members. The sound she made was singular.

Imagine this immense beauty slapping the top of the ocean for 2 minutes straight! 💀

She breached every so often to show us her whole body. She waved her fin at us to let us know that she knew that we were watching her. She even stuck her head up out of the water to spy on us for a moment. She stole my heart on Valentine’s Day, and it took everything in me not to cry from her beauty and save myself from the added chill of tears on my cheeks.

She started to calm down after 30 minutes or so, and our captain decided to head out in search of different activity. It wasn’t quite as cold as we were searching since we were at a slower speed, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the horizon. White caps were beginning to form form the wind that had blown in, and they tricked my eyes into thinking that it was another whale letting out an enormous breath.

We finally saw one more whale, a gray whale, but it was on its way down to dive for food so we only saw it surface twice for breath. It was a pretty uneventful trip back to shore, other than seeing a ton of sea otter buddies and some seals and sea lions back close to the wharf.

The tour left me with an overpowering sense of belonging and love, which was a bit unexpected. I had thought I would have another existential crisis like I had when I was a kid, but instead I felt extremely close to my husband and connected to nature in a totally new and beautiful way.

The sense of awe and wonder was the same as when I was a kid, but in my adult experience with whales, I felt more at peace with my life. Being witness to real life magic somehow made me question things less as I surrendered to the beauty and significance of nature and its creatures. Even as I write these words, I’m realizing how much of a Pisces I truly am. And how much I’m okay with that. Feeling emotions deeply makes us human, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Ellen Guthrie 2/13/22 Ellen Guthrie 2/13/22

That Big Kid Ellen #42: Go to a planetarium

I’m going to be honest about something that’s sometimes taboo to talk about… I wish that I was religious.

I know this post is about planetariums, but stick with me for a moment.

I often imagine the comfort that believing in a religion brings to most of the people on this planet, and I just feel so envious. To have faith that things truly happen for a reason. To have faith that we have souls that persist after this physical life. To have rhythm in a weekly routine, to have a community, to have customs and traditions. To know that everything will be exactly as it’s supposed to be.

To truly be a part of something bigger.

I want that. I want that desperately.

I was raised Catholic, and while I do believe that going to church and Sunday school for the entirety of my childhood molded me into a more-than decent human being, I always had a reasonably-sized nugget of doubt in the back of my head and never really believed that the stories that I was being told were real.

Like, it would be cool if some guy turned water into wine, what an incredible thing for someone to do. But I always viewed it as a beautiful metaphor about the power of love and sharing with those in need. Same with the arc — we’d have some seriously inbred species on Earth if every animal came from just one pair. Also… physics and math aren’t on the side of the arc story. It’s a metaphor about resilience and faith.

The teachings were always consistent — help and care for others, do not commit crimes, etc — and that was comforting. But I was also aware of the shortcomings of religion — guilt, shame, damnation. I often think that these things are the reason why Catholicism never stuck with me. I’ve already been topped off with enough guilt throughout my life, and I’m not sure I could handle much more.

Little kid Ellen on the day of her First Communion (#hairgoals)

The anxiety-skewing side of my brain seeks the safety that religion can bring, the relief that comes with all of this certainty. However, my intellectual, philosophical, and scientific side always seems to cut in and take over whenever I get too “woo-woo” about certain thoughts that I have (me: “I’d love to see my grandfather again.” Brain: “He stopped existing years ago.”).

But a large part of me tries to ignore that second voice and hold onto a belief, any belief, so that I can chase that feeling of having something explained by faith.

An example: déjà vu. The eerie feeling that you’ve already lived an exact scene of your life and that you are currently living it right now again. I have déjà vu all the time. Or rather, when I have it, I have it frequently, and then I sometimes go months or years without experiencing that sensation.

I love déjà vu. I freaking love that feeling. I always yell out “I’m having déjà vu!” when I’m in the middle of it. And it’s mainly because of the story that I’ve told myself about it. (I think my step-mom once told me a version of it, and it just stuck.) It’s one of those things that “I’d like to believe in” even though I don’t fully believe in it. But I so want to believe it!

The story I tell myself is this: Before your soul joined with your physical body, it created a plan for your life. Your soul laid out every decision that you would make, all the people that you would meet, all of the tiny moments that would make up a lifetime. Maybe your soul had done this many times, maybe this was only the second or third time your soul had planned out a life. Regardless, a map exists of how you are supposed to live your life.

And every time that you make a decision that lands you squarely on a point on that map, the feeling of déjà vu is your soul deep-down remembering that planning session it had. It’s a moment of clarity that allows you to say, “I’m on the right path.”

So reassuring 😭 I love it.

But then, when I’m having this great, feel-good moment of belief in my soul planning everything out on an infinite metaphysical whiteboard, Mr. Left Brain shows up and starts shaking his head and making that belittling “tsk tsk” sound.

Seriously? A soul brainstorming session? That’s what’s going to make you feel better about deciding on cookie dough ice cream instead of brownie batter ice cream on a Tuesday night in the grocery store? That wasn’t your soul, that was your stomach. He’s dubious, and his doubt takes all the fun out of it.

I imagine having faith in a religion is similar to what I think about déjà vu, but without Mr. Left Brain crashing the party. Or maybe he still shows up occasionally, but he isn’t as convincing.

I yearn to find a religion that doesn’t send my Mr. Left Brain chasing after every inconsistency, every doubt, every fear. But it hasn’t happened yet. And honestly, I don’t think it every will.

But. ← And that’s a big but.

But I think I’m starting to be okay with all of this.

Because the feeling that I’m really chasing is the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself.

And something that my religious upbringing did create within me is a deep belief that I am connected to everything.

I believe that I am connected to every human on this planet through the shared experience of being human. I believe that I am connected to every plant, every air molecule, every granule of dirt and sand because we are all made of stardust. And I believe, somehow, that I am connected to every star and planet and galaxy and black hole that has ever existed.

I don’t know how we all exist, but the fact that we do is something really special, and that feels more important to me than finding a single religion to believe in.

That last belief of being connected to everything in the universe manifests itself in an obsession with space and astrophysics. For as long as I can remember, the cosmos has utterly fascinated both sides of my brain and helped me understand both my individual importance and insignificance. This obsession includes thing like:

How my favorite movie is Interstellar, and it moves me to tears every time I see it (that black hole/tesseract scene is brutally emotional).
I started writing a fake gradate thesis on string theory during my junior year in college thinking I would go on to study it in grad school (oh how far I have strayed).
I paid cold, hard cash to name a star after a word that my husband and I made up (unicorndog) so that I felt like I owned a part of the infinite and intangible universe.
I know exactly where I was when I found out that the Higgs boson particle had finally been discovered.
My dream job is working at NASA (I’d be stoked to be a janitor there). Also, one the gifts on my wedding registry was a behind-the-scenes trip to NASA. Lastly, I got “way too mad” at my husband when he got to see mission control in Houston without me.

One of the strongest pulls to space? An overwhelming sense of calmness and peace that overcomes me when I’m sitting in a planetarium, looking into the depths of our universe.

We’re back at planetariums! Thanks for trusting me to get here.

The first time I went to a planetarium was sometime in elementary school. I was one lucky space baby because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, which means that my first planetarium experience was at the Adler Planetarium — the first planetarium in the Western hemisphere. I always thought it was a totally rad place.

I’m aware that this photo is at the Seattle Space Needle, but I felt like this story needed a photo here and I didn’t have any photos of little kid Ellen at a planetarium. I also thought there was some lame space humor in using this photo.

I hate how planetariums are portrayed in the movies because my experience was always magical. At some point, Hollywood decided that all planetariums were make-out spots for handsy high schoolers or a place to unrealistically smoke pots without the knowledge of any adult. Not really the case when you’re nine — my whole class was captivated, and I didn’t want to leave. I’m pretty sure I convinced my chaperone to let our group watch the galactic presentation twice instead of walking around the rest of the exhibits.

The technology that it takes to project a universe on a dome-shaped ceiling is almost as mind-blowing as the universe itself. I remember watching the projectors in the middle of the room as they someone seamlessly connected together to illustrate different constellations.

But the feeling that you get while watching the stars shift into entire colorful galaxies is a blissful mixture of giddiness and sea sickness. I loved how my neck would hurt after watching the show, and I always regretted where I sat because I thought another row would have a better view. (It was impossible to see every corner of the projected universe just as it is to see every corner of the actual universe — so meta.)

I’m grateful that I’ve been back to the Adler Planetarium a couple times in my life, and I’ve also been to the Albert Einstein planetarium inside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, as well as a couple smaller, local planetariums. But it seems like planetariums are a rare bird these days, so that’s why going to one had to be included on the list. And I knew that I wanted to visit a new this time around.

I chose the Morrison Planetarium in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It is the biggest all-digital planetarium in the world and boasts a 75-foot dome. I also invited some equally nerdy and awesome friends along to truly get the whole experience.

This photo doesn’t do this place justice.

The Cal Academy is first of all such a cool (if not overpriced) museum. The planetarium is a huge sphere on one side of the building with a clear dome mirroring it on the other side filled with a recreated rainforest ecosystem. Truly great design for a museum — I was thoroughly impressed.

When it was our time to entire the planetarium, we walked all the way around the base of it to get a feel for its grandeur. When we entered it, I realized that it looked a bit like an IMAX theater. All of the seats were on one side facing the screen that reached up above us and only a little bit behind us. Not really the image of what I had built up in my head from my younger memories. But, I was still excited to see what this place had in store.

When the presentation started… it was a literal IMAX theater. The “movie” was about life on Earth! There were dizzying sequences of flying over prehistoric landscapes and lots of mentions of “teasing the color spectrum” by the guy who voices Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton (which I have never seen before — please don’t hurt me).

But there wasn’t any space.

Hmm.

I gave it a couple more minutes, but the most “spacey” it got was some shots of Earth from space. At this point, I was a little upset. And, being a typical Millennial in the time of COVID, I was also very tired. I felt myself nodding off about 5 minutes in and stubbornly allowed myself the luxury of sleep. If this wasn’t going to show me space then I didn’t want to be awake!

I went in and out of light sleep and deep sleep, only hearing a little bit of the presentation on how there had once been life on Mars and how there might be other planets that could sustain life as well. I woke up near the end when the narrator was bringing it all back together, about just how special Earth is to house the diversity of life.

And I had a moment of clarity.

Perhaps the feeling of smallness that I feel when I think about the enormity of space makes me think that I’m a part of something bigger. But the connections that I have made with the people on this special planet give me the clarity in my existence that I deeply desire.

My family gave me my existence and a strong blueprint for living this precious life. My friendships teach me how to balance putting myself first while also listening and loving with empathy and a full heart. My relationship with my husband is a unique rollercoaster of ups and downs that accompany the incomparable vulnerability of sharing the depths of your soul with someone else.

I feel most alive when I am connected to people, not to some theoretical ideal or single religion.

Huh. I guess planetariums really are super rad.

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

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That Big Kid Ellen #29: Paint a self portrait

I’m currently two weeks into a 12-week creative program. The program isn’t focused on a specific creative expression (we have writers, print-makers, designers, small business owners, and everything in between), but rather its focus is on uncovering the parts of ourselves that are blocking us from freely and confidently creating.

As our creative excavator/leader says:

“You’re not here to dream of a make-believe future when you ‘have enough time,’ throw wistful side-eye at creative people, and die nobly with your gifts trapped inside.”

Just in these first days, I’ve dug into a heavily-internalized belief structure around not being a creative person (as I lay out in this piece) and how this belief holds me hostage. The techniques I’ve used in the past to keep my creative side at bay were perfectionism and procrastination, a darling yet deadly couple. I tamped down my own creative intuition, not allowing anything to escape the twists and turns of my highly doubtful thoughts.

But, as I have come to learn, being creative and being seen as a creative person is so much more important to me than being seen as perfect or put-together or organized. I even felt inspired to make a little doodle about it!

Who wants to be a boring perfectionist when you can be a messy and vibrant creative?!

I fully subscribe to the belief that creative ideas are fleeting, and all they want to do is find a human partner to make them a reality (concept by Elizabeth Gilbert in “Big Magic”). I’ve had so many ideas of concepts I’ve wanted to create, but I’ve rarely allowed myself to try them out, thinking that they had to be “successful” (what does success even look like?!). I want to start creating more of my ideas, irregardless of outcome.

Some examples of things that I’ve allowed myself to create without any expectations of success were a “fake” travel agency website called Y’all Be Tripping (really proud of that one 😂), a set of bodily functions poems that I wrote to my husband, and an entire business plan for a dating app called The Wallflower Hub (sorry, I already bought the domain). These were all ideas that popped into my head and gave me such electric creative energy, I didn’t want it to fade. Instead of overthinking how they could fail, I dove into each project and gave it my best shot at making them real.

It’s along this train of thought that I knew my next post had to be this one, a self-portrait. As I was completing other things on the list, I kept thinking about the self-portrait one. How I really wanted to do it, how I had so many ideas for it, how it would be challenging but rewarding, how it could fail.

A common topic of conversation in my therapy and coaching sessions in the back half of 2021 was self-image, specifically how my body has changed so much in the last 2 years that I literally don’t recognize myself in the mirror sometimes. After spending 10+ years in toxic restrictive-eating and binge-eating cycles (with some over-exercising sprinkled in for extra suffering), I’ve finally found myself in a healthy relationship with food. Which was *not* an easy thing to do, given my own history and my family’s history with food. But, this means that my body is now different, and I’m much more aware of her as well.

When I would restrict my calories or do multiple workouts in a day, I was turning an extremely cold shoulder to my body, effectively drowning out what she needed and wanted. I ignored her pleas for rest and recovery and instead went on long runs or did back-to-back Peloton rides (I once did 4 hours in one sitting). I ignored her urges to eat peanut M&Ms and drink orange juice and instead made protein smoothies with chia seeds and kale.

I’ve already discussed how I got out of these unhealthy habits — I didn’t move for about 18 months. I had traumatized myself so much through exercise that every time I would go on a run, I would immediately start crying and have to turn around. In those 18 months, I took the time to actually listen to my body. At first, all she wanted was rest. She wanted to do nothing except be held and be loved.

Then, she became sad. Really sad. And that was hard, but it was also okay. She was still strong and she had some great people to support her.

And most recently, she’s become a little restless. When this happened, I thought I could start up again with running or some workouts from “before,” but I quickly learned that she was done with endurance sports (at least for now). All she wanted to do was move and breathe. So I ended up in yoga classes. Hot yoga classes, actually.

I could write a whole freaking blog post on why I hate that yoga is the thing that got my body moving again, but let’s just say that while I’m bitter about it, yoga has truly done some magical healing, both of my body and mind.

Because I’ve been spending so much time listening to my body, I’ve also had so many ideas on how to depict her in a self-portrait. It’s actually a thought I had well before I even started this blog. And I’m really excited to share what I have created.

But first, some inspiration from little kid Ellen!

The first self-portrait is a classic and a true family favorite. It has been hanging in the upstairs hallway of my childhood house for over 20 years. I painted it in second grade and it’s just too good. Also, it’s the main inspiration for my new self-portrait.

2nd grade portrait of little kid Ellen playing in the snow. The accuracy is uncanny!

I seriously (and sarcastically) love everything about it. The hair: lacking any depth but somehow still full of texture. The nose: how did I even know how to make a nose look so good?! The eyes: green, yes, but not exactly the right shade. The outfit: an exaggeration of my purple snowsuit and pink gloves that I wore all the time. The hat: placed lightly on top of my head instead of being burrowed down around my skull like it was in reality. The purple paint stain on top of the snowball: a reminder that I was not worried about perfection back then and mistakes are a part of the process.

Shortly after I painted that masterpiece, my family took a trip to Six Flags Great America, as was our tradition every summer. My mom’s company usually rented a pavilion for a company party, so we were there a lot. And that same year, I had someone else draw a portrait of me.

Well, more like a caricature.

2nd grade little kid Ellen drawn NOT by herself became very contentious.

Honestly, this is literally what I looked like at that age. The artist was spot on. But for a young girl, this broke me. I was embarrassed by my huge teeth, my glasses, my abnormally long fingers (“but I didn’t even do that when I posed, mom!”). I hated this drawing so much that I hid it in my room for years, not letting anyone see it other than my family.

I absolutely love it now. It embodies what I was all about at that age, and I look at it with unadulterated admiration. That girl is cute!! She’s got big, hazel eyes that peek through some trendy (for the time) glasses. She’s got on her sassy Tweety Bird sweatshirt (the artist did a loose interpretation on this one), letting everyone know that she ain’t got time for their drama. And she’s throwing up that peace sign — how absolutely cool for the 90s.

I know that I drew a lot more self-portraits throughout the years, but the most recent one, and another favorite, came in the 9th grade. It was created in the last art class that I ever signed up for, before choosing math and science and sports over drawing and painting and writing (why couldn’t I have it all?!). The assignment was simple but fun — take a picture of yourself, divide it into twelve squares, and then draw the photo using the grid to guide you as you reproduce each square as a drawing. It appealed to both my creative and logical minds. And it’s a freaking masterpiece.

High school Ellen was clearly into basketball, but also a really good artist!

I loved this drawing back then, and I love it even more now. It legit looks exactly like how I looked back then, down to the little mini basketball that I used to carry around and use as a stress reliever when needed.

I captured the swoop of hair on my neck from my heavy ponytail perfectly (I always had so much hair!), the piece of a pair of black tights that I cut up and used as a choker around my neck, and the outline of a Scotty dog that would appear on my cheek when I was flushed after a basketball game. The words around the edges a bit unnecessary, but I clearly wanted to add more creativity to this piece, almost like I predicted it would be the end of an era.

I started to carry around a belief around this same time that I couldn’t create “new” things — that I could only reproduce something that I was looking at. I think that’s why this assignment of drawing a photograph appealed to me. It felt creative but also logical. This belief grew inside of me so much that every time I’ve tried to create something since, I’ve had to have a guide photo or some sort of inspiration photo to base it on.

Now we come to the adult Ellen, big kid Ellen, and how she wants to represent herself in a self-portrait. My first thought was to reproduce a photograph of myself because I thought that I could do that best. But something else, another idea, kept appearing in my mind. It had bold colors — “vibrant” is my word for 2022 and I’m really trying to lean into it. I also kept seeing something a bit abstract — I am more than just how I look. I also thought about how I wanted it to be representative of the work I’ve done to take care of my body, listening to her and loving her. This couldn’t all be captured in a photo, so I created something totally new.

Big kid Ellen’s first attempt at a self-portrait: “Calm amidst chaos”

I know art is up for interpretation, but I’d love to share a bit more about this piece with you and how it came together. I took inspiration from my 2nd-grade self-portrait and chose to depict myself in the same position, but doing something that I love doing now — yoga. I really can’t stress enough how weird it is that I love doing yoga, but it’s true so I’m not going to deny it. This specific pose is the last one of the 26 postures that I go through in the Bikram yoga series — Kapalbhati in Vajrasana. It’s a breathing pose, and it’s my favorite.

I also knew that I wanted to pay tribute to the stretch marks that have appeared on my belly this last year. So often women are told that stretch marks are flaws, and we are bombarded with airbrushed ideals of what our stomachs and thighs should look like. I had a handful of them crop up, angry red, across my lower stomach. I would stare at them in the mirror, raging at myself for letting them appear, begging for them to disappear.

But then I realized that they kind of make a cool pattern, and wouldn’t it be even cooler to copy that pattern and make them into art? I wanted to reclaim my stretch marks! They are the pattern that you see around my body, and they are the chaos around the calm middle. The chaos remains, but I have accepted it more so than I ever have before.

I see this portrait as imperfect, with so many things that I want to change about it. But there it is, published on the internet. What a triumph! To share something that is imperfect is such a feat for me, and such a win for my creative side. (I will note that at some point the color of my torso in this painting looked a lot like a pickle, and I am glad that I changed it to its current color 😅).

I am making a promise to myself to create more imperfect things, to love my body as an imperfect thing, and to share these things more throughout this year on this blog. Imperfection for the win!

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

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That Big Kid Ellen #2: Complete a coloring book

One of my dad’s favorite humble-brag stories to tell about his “wunderkind” (me) is about when he took me to an open house at a fire station. I was two years old and gravitated away from the fire engines (didn’t like strangers) and towards the coloring table. They had laid out a variety of crayons and circular pieces of paper with different fire-station-themed drawings on them that could be slid into a plastic cover with a pin on the back. Knowing me, I’m pretty sure I chose the one with the fire station dog on it.

There I was, coloring wildly and freely, as a two-year-old would. Mismatched colors (dogs can be green!), totally outside the lines, a complete mishmash of baby creativity. I was having a blast.

Next to me was a young boy, about the same size as me, and he was daintily coloring in his drawing perfectly. PERFECTLY. His mom winced a bit, watching me go buckwild with the crayons, looked at my dad, and not-so-kindly asked, “What’s wrong with your daughter?”

My dad probably crumpled his nose when he responded, “She’s two. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

Her face quickly evolved from passive-aggressive pity to absolute awe.

“Oh! My son is five! Your daughter is very tall for her age.”

I can just see the smirk on my dad’s face when he patted me on the back, proud of bestowing his ungodly height onto his toddler. He still wears that smirk when he tells people that story now, even as his daughter is well into her thirties and very obviously tall.

From my dad’s perspective, this is all about a child excelling at something from a very young age. From my perspective, this is where my love for coloring was truly birthed. I didn’t care about posturing adults — I just wanted to color. I loved coloring. I loved crayons. I loved colored pencils (especially the mini ones). I loved making black and white outlines come to life.

Most of my vivid memories of coloring books come from when I was around 3 or 4 years old. Most specifically, I was into Barbie coloring books. Ooh baby, was I into coloring in Barbie’s fashion choices and various professional uniforms with bold polka dots and plaid and animal-shaped patterns.

Back then, I spent most of my days at my nanny’s house. My nanny, Nancy, and her husband, Ray, were a kind, older couple who cared for me while my mom (a single mother at the time) worked during the day. They watched me in their two-story house in Chicago Suburbia, which had a living area and bathroom on the ground floor next to the garage and all of the bedrooms, kitchen, and the off-limits doll room on the second floor.

I’ll get to the doll room, don’t worry.

They also had two dogs, Max and Frosty — this is where my love affair for dogs turned into reality. Frosty was a big ol’ fluffy sweetheart and Max was a Cocker Spaniel disaster. Both of these dogs were so interesting to me that I would follow them around the house, hoping to catch them in a good mood when I could pet them or rest my head on their belly when they were sleeping.

They were definitely not allowed in the doll room.

The things that I remember most about my time with Nancy was how her homemade chicken soup was heavy on the celery, how she used to tell me that one of my legs was hollow because I would eat so much of said celery-chicken soup, how she taught me how to whistle, how she loved watching QVC and other shopping channels, and that one time that a tornado touched down close to her home and we huddled together in the ground floor bathroom while it passed.

Little Ellen wearing a favorite Minnie Mouse outfit with Nancy

And her doll room. Did I mention that yet?

Ray usually spent his time in the garage working on fixing up his cars, always smoking a cigarette. I didn’t really like hanging out in the garage with him, but I did it almost every day for an hour so that I could watch The Price is Right. He had a 50’s era soda-bar-style swivel stool (complete with a torn up red leather seat) set up at his work bench. It was aimed right at a tiny TV that was no more than 10 inches in width, complete with a giant antennae held together by tape awkwardly sticking up from the back.

I used to balance my little body on that stool, stick my little fingers in my nose to keep the smoke out, and watch Bob Barker every day. I might have only been 4, but I knew how much milk, cereal, shampoo, tomato paste, and dish detergent cost. My favorite game was Plinko, and I would try to guess where the disc would land by tracing my sticky finger along the screen, never able to predict its path. I would jump up and down when someone won the Showcase Showdown by getting exactly $1.00, and would act super judgmental when someone chose the final Showdown package that I thought was worthless (why would you choose the car when you could go to Hawaii?!).

For the rest of the hours in the day when I wasn’t with Ray, I was in the downstairs living room in front of another TV, coloring. There was a very thin layer of green carpet on top of a cement floor that I would uncomfortably lay on, stomach-side down, chin scraping against the bristly fabric underneath me, amidst a spread of chunky crayons. Like I mentioned before, my coloring books were full of Barbie dresses and shoes and other fashion items.

And my inspiration for how I colored in Barbie’s clothes came from the doll room.

I told you I’d come back to the doll room!

Nancy had filled an entire living room (and most of the other empty spaces around the house, much to Ray’s dismay) with her collection of porcelain dolls. They were lined up on the floor, secure in stands that clipped around their tiny backs, on top of cabinets, tables, couches — they were *everywhere.* Each doll was about a foot and half tall, smooth skin, glossy eyes, and extravagant outfits. She couldn’t wait to for a new model to pop up on her TV-shopping-channels; I was mesmerized by their clothes.

Most were dressed in Victorian outfits — frilly, multi-layer dresses, big hats with bows and ribbons, and quaffed curls cascading down their shoulders and back. There were dresses in every color of the rainbow, every pattern you could think of, some even in specialty costumes in slightly-offensive cultural themes like Native American headsets or geisha robes. I tried to lift the fabric of their dresses to see their tiny shoes, but I was mostly too afraid to touch them — Nancy had done a good job instilling the fear of God into me if I were to break one of them.

Now, to most adults, this room probably seemed like the set to some horror movie, the dolls vacant eyes hinting at Chucky-like possession. But, for me, they were my inspiration for my coloring books (as well as some Halloween costumes that you can read about here). I would sit down, cross-legged, at the edge of the doll room and try to remember every detail I could before heading back downstairs to the piles of coloring books that were waiting for me. It was truly a little girl’s dream.

I went in a different direction for Big Kid Ellen 😈.

I went back to Etsy to try to find a unique adult coloring book. I know that adult coloring books have become extremely popular in the last couple years, but I was searching for a truly *adult* option. Something a little NSFW.

I was not disappointed.

Yes, this is an accurate representation of my humor and interests as a thirtysomething-year-old.

I considered buying some chunky crayons, but instead grabbed my bag of felt-tipped pens that I use everyday for note-taking at work. I quickly realized that I had too few colors available to make some of these designs truly pop. So I bought a 48-piece set of colored pencils. I finished one page with the pencils and realized I didn’t have a pencil sharpener… and I still wasn’t feeling like I couldn’t make the drawing really stand out. I wanted them to POP, gosh darn it!

So I bought a 60-piece set of dual brush pens and started coloring with those. Yes, you might have picked up on the fact that I was procrastinating by trying to make these boobs and penises perfect. Boobs and penises are not meant to be perfect. Coloring books are not meant to be perfect. Eventually I found an imperfect groove, using every color of pen available to me, and started to have a lot of fun.

Deep appreciation for fart and semen art

One important thing to note that was different from this kid experience as an adult was my body. At first, I set up a little box to color on top of on the floor in our living room and hunched my body over it for an hour while I colored.

This was not sustainable.

When I went to stand up, my entire body was stiff and in pain. My neck had a deep knot in it, and it took a couple yoga classes to feel back to normal again. I tried setting it up with me on the couch while watching TV, but that was still challenging for my neck. I realized that I tend to go all out when coloring, getting into a flow state and not moving for a really long time. But listening to my body is more important — this is something I am actively working on. The lesson I learned is that coloring has to happen in small does for adult Ellen. Little kid could lay on her belly for hours on top of thinly-veiled concrete. Adult Ellen needs a full massage after bending over for 30 minutes.

Good thing I live with a massage therapist!

One last thing to note before wrapping up this post. The items on the list that I am drawn to have clearly been the creative ones. At first I told myself that I should try to alternate the type of activity that I write about, thinking I needed to keep it diverse for my audience (hi to my mom and mother-in-law!). But then I remembered that this project is about me. It’s always been about me. So while I *very much* appreciate you reading this, dear reader, I’m going to keep choosing the things that interest me the most, and it seems like the ones that pique my creativity are going to be where this journey starts.

I have a whole year to check everything off the list. So glad you’re along for the ride.

Click to see all blog posts: That Big Kid Ellen

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That Big Kid Ellen #57: Make an embroidery project

Admittedly, I might have only ever completed approximately 0.79 embroidery projects as a kid so it’s a little bit of a stretch for this task to end up on the list. However, I remember having had a decently enjoyable time doing it, and I wanted to see if completing one as an adult would spark a further interest in sewing/knitting/etc. in a greater capacity.

It did not.

But, it was fun to complete this time around for various reasons, and it brought up some serious nostalgia since some of my favorite memories from childhood were made at a JoAnn Fabrics (#NotAnAd) with my mom at the beginning of every October.

My mom is an incredible seamstress — out of necessity. She grew up very tall, just like me, and was unable to find clothing that fit her (sounds familiar). She had to make her own clothes from patterns that she would buy from fabric stores and her skill developed into something that her friends and family were always in awe of. When she became a mom, she started the tradition of hand-making all of my Halloween costumes. And woweeee, was she good at it.

Little Ellen in a Jolly Green Giant costume — very impressed with mom’s creativity and commitment to food-themed costumes in my early years.

When I became old enough to choose what I wanted to dress up as, we would go to JoAnn’s together and make our way to the back of the store where they had plastic tables set up with that year’s giant pattern books from McCall’s and Simplicity. We’d quickly flip to the Halloween costume section, usually somewhere in the second half of the book. I would point out costumes that I liked, trying to pick between multiple options every year, but usually choosing something extravagant and frilly and timely to whatever my interests were that year.

Once we had a costume in mind, my mom would walk over to the enormous filing cabinets where the pattern packets were kept. Once she found the one that I wanted (don’t get me started on what happened if they were out of my chosen pattern *crocodile tears*), we’d open it up and figure out which fabrics we needed and how much of each. This is where the fun really began for me.

The fabric section beckoned, full of endless possibilities. Sure, the patterns usually suggested colors and fabric types, but I knew that my mom would give me some creative freedom to choose the palettes and textures that were exciting to me. Although, I went through a long orange-is-my-favorite-color phase, and I’m really thankful that didn’t show up in my costume choices…

I would walk up and down the aisles with my arms out, parallel to the floor, and would allow my fingers to drag across each ream of fabric, stopping abruptly when I came across something soft. My eyes scanned simultaneously with my fingers in search of patterns and designs that I thought would make the costume pop. I could search for hours before finding the perfect fabric to make my costumes dreams into reality.

(Quick Adult Ellen note: I like that this method of choosing fabrics is now how I choose my clothes. I’m such a sucker for soft fabrics, and I now primarily shop for clothes based on creamy textures — I even have a favorite pair of leggings that I call “butter pants.” I also do not shy away from bold patterns, florals being my favorite. I have a current goal of adding even more color to my wardrobe.)

Once I had landed on the winning fabrics, we’d take them over to the cutting tables and my mom would measure out what we needed using a yardstick glued to the counter, and an employee would hand us the little receipt saying how much of each fabric we had cut. I would leave the store so eager to see the final product that I would try to convince my mom to start sewing right away.

When we got home, she’d measure me and lay out the patterns on top of the fabric, pinning them into place using sewing pins sticking out of a tomato red (and tomato-shaped) pin cushion that she would wear on her wrist. This was my least favorite part of the process — I would show up at the end when she was doing final measurements.

Yes — she made that Genevieve (Snoopy’s girlfriend) head from scratch! And yes — posing in front of a house under construction takes some of the magic away from my flamenco dancer costume.

Every single year, she created something magical. She made costumes for my sister and brother as well, regardless of their requests, and I could tell it broke her heart the year that I became “too cool” to wear her homemade costume (it was in 7th grade and I chose a giant button costume for some reason). She now has an entire scrapbook dedicated solely to Halloween costumes over the years (read more about here scrapbook obsession here).

Embroidery projects are a smidge different than sewing an entire costume, but I will say something about the process of finding a pattern — shopping around on Etsy (#NotAnAd) was probably just as fun as going to JoAnn’s. Etsy is pretty incredible for all things creative, and I hadn’t really spent a lot of time on there before this project. But it literally has anything you could imagine and it really excited little kid Ellen to see that she could relive some of those fabric store moments, feeling endless possibilities opening up in front of her.

Want to stitch some flowers? Thousands of options. Want to stitch some swear words in cursive? Bam — hundreds of options. Want to stitch some flowers and swear words together? Now we’re talking.

I chose an all-in-one kit and was pleasantly surprised when it even came with a little booklet on how to complete all the different stitches. The process was pretty straight forward, and I saw myself improving rapidly over the course of just a couple hours. I loved that I could work on this little project while binge-watching my garbage TV at night (oscillating between the Real Housewives of Potomac and Below Deck, iykyk). I felt accomplished when I went to bed instead of a trash human who enjoys judging people on TV while simultaneously doom-scrolling on Instagram.

Really proud of the outcome of this project — not proud of my dusty faucet.

And the end product was truly great. A little messy, but pretty adorable. I know I mentioned in the beginning that I hoped this would stem an interest in sewing or knitting or something similar, which it didn’t, but I would definitely love to get a couple more of these embroidery projects in the future to keep my hands busy in the evenings. After so much TV during quarantine, it’s nice to feel like you can create and rot your brain at the same time.

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