Fruit Universalad (or The One with the Bacon)

Ingredients

This week, we have a few guest chefs who were kind enough to share their favorite kickers:

• 82 degrees Fahrenheit, AKA the average monthly high for the month of September in Atlanta, AKA your first full month of classes in grad school, AKA torture (?)
• 24 hours of driving in 4 days + 8 hours in 2 days + 1 car tow to a remote location 10 miles away + 1 additional car tow by "those people"(the people who don't like their jobs)
• 24 hours spent on a bus between DC and NYC in 2 months
• 1 BLT: "Big Love Triangle" (I must say, never in my life have I ever heard this acronym, nor did I understand it the first 5 times I read it)-- actually, it is more of a tridecagon. A Big Love Tridecagon. Can't really get much worse than that, shape wise. 

  

  If you think I wouldn't put this result for "tridecagon" up,
  you're kidding yourself.

I don't think anything can beat a BLTrid., as far as deliciousness goes, but a Fruit Universalad does need at least a few more colorful ingredients to make it pop. 

• Generous tastings of goose, quince, and pure raw milk (not all at once)

  

  Quince: yellow apple-pear

• 1 day of babysitting spent comparing the Into the Woods and Into the Woods, Jr. soundtracks 

[Conversation during 'I Know Things Now':
Me: Wait, wait, wait-- why did they take out, like, 16 bars in the most interesting part of the song?   Child: Maybe there was something inappropriate in it.   Me: No. Well, maybe...   Child: Maybe it was--   Me: There can't be anything inappropriate in it. Let's check.   (watch on Youtube, with the child watching the lyrics on the screen)   Child: Nope. Thank goodness.]

• 30 min. of an after-school religious education session overheard, in which the young teacher attempted to calm the girls so deeply concerned with the idea that priests can't get married, followed by a great nod to young adult literature:
  
  Conversation explaining how there are 4 books in the Gospel, brought to you by the driest, sassiest Bible teacher ever:
  
  Teach: It's kind of like how there are 3 books in The Hunger Games. You guys have read The Hunger Games, right?
  Girl 1: YES! I LOVE THOSE BOOKS!
  Girl 2: (quietly) My mom won't let me read them.
  Girl 1: THEY ARE THE BEST! WHY WON'T SHE LET YOU?!
  Teach: It's OK. I can understand why your mom wouldn't want you reading them yet.
  Girl 1: BUT THEY'RE SO GOOD.
  Teach: It's not that good. Don't worry, it's not like they are the pinnacle of literature.
  Girl 1: What?! It so is really impressive literature!
  Teach: Compared to other classics? No.
  Girl 1: Yes it is!
  Teach: Well, one day you'll actually read a classic. And you'll see that it's not.
  
• 1 narcolepsy memoir attempted to be read by a person with narcolepsy, but only on a steadily moving quiet train
  
• 5,602 busses (give or take, most likely give) in New York City's MTA system. On one of which your wallet was left. Dropped. Stolen. Does it really matter? (yes.)
• #$*&@ minutes spent on phone with banks, DMVs, and credit report companies
• *&@!# hours spent fretting about your identity, and not in the cool way
• 9 months of extra valid time that Northwestern accidentally added to your student ID card that you were using to still get student discounts, now GONE!! 

Instructions

People everywhere have weird things happen to them. Everyone's life has the possibility for a memoir. Some may sell better than others, but... 

I got a new walk from my PT last week. So it makes my butt muscles hurt. Who cares! I'm standing tall, using unfamiliar muscles, and I feel like I'm walking in someone else's shoes. Since gaining my new posture, I got to spend 2 days on a farm in the Berkshires. I officially started hosting at a legit Upper West Side organic mom restaurant. I made some new, non-Northwestern friends. And I finally sat in the audience by myself at my first theatrical production at an NYC private school, which what small-town girl can say is not their #1 goal post-graduation.

As much as it's important to fully live in your city, your neighborhood, your skin, you should always continue to push the boundaries of your experience-- and a big way to do that is by taking a step outside of yourself. Perhaps in someone else's shoes. There might be a lot of things that you know, but... come on. I mean, do you really trust yourself that much? Maybe your life is naturally tridecagon-shaped and mutli-layered, many-sided, able to shine in whatever hemisphere's light you can imagine. If so, forgive me. However, most of us beings can't expect ourselves to know everything. Totes fine. That's what FRIENDS are for. And fellow employees. And kids you babysit. And people you visit on farms. And doctors you dislike, ridiculous MTA employees, friends' parents, kind bankers, bosses with beards, reservations for parties of 15, and people who steal your wallet. The world is out there for you to-- 

Wait. No. I'm sorry. I can't include the individual who stole my wallet. Whoever you are, out there with my precious license, CVS rewards card, and Forever 21 gift card? I hope you have made every attempt to mail that thing to me, and, in that case, I applaud you for your efforts. If instead you are a mean person whose actions are completely unbelievable to me and everyone I've mentioned this to, then SMITE. UPON. YOU. *Once again, though, if you have my wallet and are trying to get it to me, thank you more than all other things on this earth.*

[OK, karma really is a bit-- if you have my wallet and are the type that would normally be smited upon, it's still OK! Really! Just go ahead and forgive yourself-- I'll forgive you, too-- and package that baby up to send to the address on my ID. Google me. You'll easily find my email. I am sending positive thoughts your way in hopes that you'll have a change of heart. You can change. I believe in you. More than I believe in my ability to keep my purse shut, obviously.]

-- the world is out there for you to fill. Someone in my Playwriting Sequence last year once likened listening to the world around you as being a sponge: you soak up all the information, the overhead conversations, the visions of couples looking over their entire text message histories, & the snippets of Spanish caught from every passerby on your street, and you allow them to become a part of you. Be a sponge. Absorb as much of the weird stuff around you (and from your friends not around you) as possible, because hey. Wouldn't you rather be plush and spry than hard and shrivel-y? And even when you wring yourself out every now and then, using what you've learned to help your writing, social interactions, art, teaching, whatever, you'll still be a healthier sponge than if you had not gotten wet in the first place. 

As for the foreign ingredients up at the top: I understand that these may be hard to find if you're living in a city like New York or Chicago. First of all, it's primarily frickin' freezing up here, so good luck with that 83-degree weather. Second of all. Car? 

Thank you very much to my friends for submitting their ingredients, as well as my 4 best girlfriends from Ohio for having a 5-way Google Hangout to update each other on the different states (literally) of our current lives. It was interesting, eye-opening, and comforting all at once to hear about everything exploding and aligning with you all.  We may have all just graduated college, but there are so many factors that go into making your first year out what it is. New York, Chicago, Missouri, Atlanta, DC, Columbus. Service work, taking an extra year for another major, moving away from home for the first time, grad school, working for your dad, getting a salary & paid vacations, traveling the US, staying at home, having 3 jobs, living by yourself, living with nuns. Though my friends from high school, college, and now New York are all doing different things-- some vastly different, some just at different restaurants down the street-- we're all in the same place. Which is new. We're all babies. And we make up the Fruit Universalad that I hope is as delicious as a real BLT. (The one with the bacon.)

Next week, more on that narcolepsy memoir. If you're someone who likes homework/research/procrastinating on the interwideworldofwebs, check out the author's awesome webpage: Julie Flygare.

CHIC-OH-late Dreams

CHIC-OH-late Dreams,
aka Other Dessert Cities
(not and yes inspired by the Tony, Drama League, and Drama Desk Award-winning play)

Ingredients:

• At least 4 calls with a best friend in a different city to ask important life questions, provide a hearty listening ear, inform her you won't be flying in to stay with her that weekend, talk to on your walk home from work, speak the only words you've spoken to today, talk to on your walk from the train to work, recall your last five minutes since you woke up, breathe into the phone (WOW that sounded MUCH creepier than I intended it to be. I love when that happens.)
• 2 hostessing jobs that you signed up to train for-- on the same day-- on the day you were supposed to fly in to see your best friend (see above) and for your Homecoming (why, yes, your personal homecoming)
• 1 resume-- rather, 2 resumes, as the incredibly kind woman behind the front desk scanned more for you-- that you dropped off at an agency's office... without ANY contact info on it. [Holler, cover letter headers saving the day again, am I right?? World's #1 superhero!! I'm going to be a cover letter for Halloween.]
• 3 years, 2 Northwestern applications, & 22 seasons of Buckeye upbringing in the making: the long-awaited NU vs. Ohio State Homecoming ESPN College GameDay Big 10 blood battle. (Also known as the battle for your my heart.) Buckcat or Wildeye, an attractive mascot does not make. 

     In the years that I attended NU, all I wanted was for my school to play my Buckeyes. Naturally, they played them my absent freshman year and the year after I graduate. Regardless, I've been supremely pumped for 3 years & had even planned on flying in to the hallowed grounds of Ryan Field. Lo, I remained here in a city without a college football team-- but full of proud purple Wildcats, all centrally located in a few key places to watch the big game. And by big, I mean B1G-- College GameDay reporting on the Lakefill students drenched in purple waking up at 4am on a Saturday to be on TV big. This... was not what I expected. I don't know what I was thinking. This was going to be... hard. Let's just say that by Friday night, I was beginning to feel, for lack of milder terms... totally frickin' panicked. Or grotesquely shakin' anxious. Or, you know, probably just "confused" would suffice. What was I going to do? The Facebook statuses were getting increasingly intense and anti-Ohio flooded my Newsfeed, the public coverage of the game was growing rapidly, plans were being made. I was going to spend upwards of 3 hours with soundly and validly enthusiastic alumni of the fantastic university I just graduated from-- all bashing the (sorry, The) scarlet and grey I had supported since pre-birth. Again, I say: Buckcats. Wildeyes. Horrific possibilities. Like, the worst Neopets ever.       

The only OSU-fueled pressure I received came via a best friend and my immediate family, so, you know, casual. (I believe my father's words were "but this is where you were raised.") I obviously ended up screaming wild purple & gunning for the 'Cats. Can't say I wasn't tempted to locate the source of the approximately 3 OSU fans in the bar, though.      

Oh-- Northwestern lost, btw. As ESPN's Rece Davis put it, "I would never question Northwestern's academic credentials, but I do call into question its street smarts. Who schedules the Buckeyes for homecoming?" And as a fellow NU Ohioan confided in me, "We still won." 

Go 'Cats. Don't eat the chocolate. 

I SHOULD HAVE NEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCHED THIS: I dare you to click.

(Anyways, this inner allegiance turmoil must occur on the exact same day as: )

• 4,000+ Facebook photos of the Marr Family Lobsterfest 2013
  (It's exactly what you think it is. No. Wait. What on earth would anyone think that was.)

Instructions:
Where did I make decisions not to live? Oh, right, Ohio and Chicago. For whatever reasons, good or bad, those may be, that doesn't mean I don't still love those dang places (or, at least, parts of them/parts of Ohio/I love Chicago with all my heart). And this week provided a canvas for them them to pop up in every crevasse, for some reason. Whilst meeting my fellow hostess for the first time, we engaged in this quick conversation that anyone might steal for a prolific acting scene if they so choose:

She: Where did you graduate from?
Me: Northwestern.
She: No way! I'm from Naperville!    (city near NU)
Me: Oh my gosh! No way!
(chatter excited gobble chatter)
Me: Where did you graduate from?
She: Baldwin Wallace.
Me: NO WAY! I'm from Amherst!    (city near BW)
She: Oh my gosh! No way!

When you move from city to city, even only once, you're going to get homesick. What I haven't experienced until NYC was being homesick for two cities at once. You begin to think to yourself: Am I cheating on my home? Wait. Which is my home? Sing it, Luther Vandross and Kristen Chenoweth: we all know that a chair is not a house and a house is not a home when there's no one there to hold you tight. Well, you know what?! There are people I can hold tight and kiss goodnight in both places, gosh darn it! And now here, too! What were you thinking, Luther????

Here is my advice for those feeling tugged geologically: Be where you are. Exist as you want to exist where you are existing. You're not there. You're here. And you most likely have a lease and, unless you call your landlord again to threaten to not pay your rent because they're not providing you with hot water, then you have to stay on that lease. And you've probably met a precocious 11-year-old you've fallen in babysitting love with and gotten used to savoring the 1-2 times a week you see your friends in whatever weird way possible and thoroughly enjoy complaining and philosophizing about everything in the universe with your roommate. How could you leave now? A professor of mine always told us that you need to try a city out for 3 years before you make your verdict. Uhhhhmmm I might have to pass on sticking with this one in its entirety, but I do agree that a year is necessary.

IN THE MEANTIME. Call your best friend and Skype with your parents when you can. Download copies of Lobsterfest 2013 from Facebook, if only to share with your friends with the message "not fair". Visit your best friends in your city whenever you can-- because, there in your current city, they'll inform you that reading your blog makes them "sad". Apparently, it's not super fun for fellow 20-somethings working in the theatre world and living in NYC to read your potentially-leaning-overly-negative comments on struggles they're also going through... in which I took I away two things:

1. Do other people get hit by potatoes?!? Do they?!?! Seriously, this is an honest question and I want to know where else these culprits are hiding.

2. I need to get some other cities.

Thus, Other. Dessert. Cities. ATTENTION ALL FOLKS EITHER IN OR OUTSIDE OF NYC: A FANCY CALL TO ACTION!

I'm looking for ingredients from you. You are either one or more of the following:

- recently graduate

- living in a city

- recently re-located

- living in what you think is a city

- an actor

- in the entertainment business

- in a business you think is entertaining

- a chef

(wouldn't it be fun to have a real recipe?!)

Next week's recipe is all about YOU. I want your ingredients. You've read the blog, you know what I'm looking for: a numerical value/approximation of an amount of something that has happened to you (it doesn't have to have been from this week) that could potentiall lead to a recipe for disaster. You don't have to give me a whole list of ingredients that tie together-- that's my job! Feel free to give as many ingredients as you wish, though! And if it's easier for you to just write me a short little story, please do! I'll transfer it into an edible form.

Capiche? You can email your ingredients to annaleighmarr@gmail.com or message me on Facebook. Danke!

I'll leave you with the spread I got on Saturday of the spread my family consumed while watching Ohio State win.

Don't Be a CocoNUT!! Meringue

Ingredients

• 3 potatoes hurled at your head from an apartment window (I'm not kidding), which cause you to stop, look up, and stare at the faceless being standing in said window. You move to walk again. They hurl again. You stop, look, stare again. You actually shout the words "don't throw potatoes at me!", because that is SO EFFECTIVE. And definitely not potentially dangerous. You move on. 
• 1 hookah, connected to 1 man, sitting on one subway bench seat, located directly next to yours. You see smoke out of the corner of your eye. You pause. You think. No way. You turn. You see hookah. You move on. (Oh, but first you roll your wide eyes and  dramatically grab your belongings. Only then can you move away.)
• 6 seats on a subway bench (these need not be associated with hookah):
  
  
  
  Sit on the edge seat of an underground subway bench. Blow your nose, and stand up to throw away your tissue in a nearby trash can. Turn around-- no, that's silly-- only semi-turn around and back your bum backwards into your seat. Begin to sit down. Free fall through the air. Congratulations. You've now hit the pavement; specifically, your butt has hit the pavement and your head has bumped up against the metal bars of the gate behind you. You pause. You look up, of course, to see if anyone saw you. They did. They care-- so you quickly shrug it off! You're totally fine! They stop caring. You sit on the ground. You don't move on.
• 10+ years spanning an age range of which you somehow manage to ride in a single audition/callback session. You get called in for the role of a child. You get asked to read for the role of her step-mother. You read for both parts. Everyone else around you knows this, including the taller, older women more (reasonably) appropriate for the age of the step-mother. They don't seem too happy with you. You stand on your tiptoes. You move on.
• 3 hours and 3 minutes past midnight, when you must awake to the clear & heavy sounds of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" coming from the window? the bathroom window? the apartment hallway? the floor? every pore of the ethos not withholding the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy? You pause. You check the time. You realize what awful lyrics are protruding into your brain. You also realize it's the first time you've heard the streets blast a song in English... You don't care. You go to the bathroom. You search the bathroom for the noise. Shockingly unhelpful. You return to your room, open your curtains, and proceed to execute the only rational option: "turn your music down!" Again, SUCH EFFECTIVE verbiage you shout. You move on.... Wait. Actually, after the blurred lines of appropriateness in playable popular music ends, all the music ends... you... you did it! You won! You sleep! This is awesome! That's all it took? What a nice surprise. Good night! (No one should ever tell you that this was merely a freak coincidence, and that you should've realized that "Blurred Lines" is scientifically proven as the only appropriate way to end a late September evening. Ride that fantasy high as long as you can. It's presumable it won't last for long.)

Instructions

Here's... here's what I'm gonna say about all these... mishaps: No one likes the ER! Stop trying to go there!

Emergency rooms cost a lot of money, as I found out two years ago when I got hit by a car near Northwestern's campus and then didn't go to the ER until the next morning thus refusing the free granted ER visit directly post-accident... not bitter about that at all... Emergency rooms cost you an arm and a leg (?pun?), a lot of time, and usually the respect/trust of your common sense from at least one important person in your life. What happens when you get injured in New York City? I thought having a 4-month stress fracture (unrelated to bike incident) with an addition of crutches on Northwestern's campus was bad-- New York doesn't even have cars! You see them, driving around, sure. But do you actually know anybody who actually has a car? That's right, NYC hires people to drive cars and make your taxi ride slower. You didn't know that, but now you do. That's called learning.

If you injure yourself in New York City, I imagine that you will continue on with life as normal, except you'd have to check which subway stops are handicap accessible (because not all of them are!!?). You will be allowed to feel 80% less guilty about using the free delivery service of pretty much everything everywhere, even if it's only two feet away from your building: apples, wine, cleaning detergent, restaurant fare, laundry, electronics, yoga,  your mother, the Titanic. You want it? You name it. Someone somewhere will deliver it to you. But mostly the groceries-- they'll really deliver the groceries. Freely delivered groceries from one of the bodegas 30 seconds away from your apartment front door is the sole incentive for putting yourself in direct lines of danger via potatoes, secondhand smoke, subway cement, feisty actors, and yelling outside your window at people a lot larger and more confidently active at 3am than you. This city is dangerous, but that is because it has so much opportunity. Well, Dangerous Ones, let's go-- as long as you don't get any further ideas about talking back to airborne potatoes in an unfamiliar area or screaming at people loving music in front of your apartment! Know thy limits. Break them when you're attempting to over-achieve at your job or in an audition, but... outside? In association with other citizens? When it comes to, at least, your physical well-being, exist in an invisible film of bubble wrap-- because we can't all be lucky enough to run into Hugh Jackman. 

He was saving her from falling after she tripped.
If that wasn't abundantly clear.

Also, bring a supply of Band-Aids everywhere! Some of these corner stores can store some pretty shady excuses for adhesive bandages... from the 1970s... do I wish I was kidding?

Also also, what's the #1 rule of safety from ny.com? "Finding a Bathroom". That should tell you something. That isn't even a rule-- it's a statement of a problem you're going to encounter. Watch out for yourself, pack Band-Aids, and install Charmin's Sit or Squat app.