Anyways, this week on my Equals Record column, I discuss traveling with my mom, but really, how we redefine our parental relationships as we grow older.  Below, an excerpt:

Often referenced when talking about traveling with a significant other, being in a foreign country tends to magnify relationships, showing their boons and their flaws and mostly their shape, as a whole, crystalized and highlighted in a way that’s impossible for either party to ignore. This was the longest amount of time I’ve spent alone with my mother since I was thirteen years old.  It was the most time we had to talk, to work through decisions, to deal with things going awry, and simply, just to be.  I found out more about who I am, who my mother is, and who we are together.

Head over to the Equals Record for the whole post.

Also, I’ve included here some photos from our adventure, if you’d like to see.  As always, thanks for reading!!

We started in Naples, which was dark and seedy and chaotic in a completely entrancing way.  Graffiti covered much of the stone walls; the streets were cramped and hung with clothing of every color.  Every few minutes, scooters whizzed by, forcing us to jump to the side to avoid getting run over.

After Naples, we spent a day driving around the Amalfi Coast, which looks like it’s straight out of a postcard.  Tiny towns tumble down the cliffside into the sea, which is, of course, a type of turquoise not often seen outside of jewelery and Disney movies.

After hanging out on the (cold) beach in Positano, we stopped by a limoncello factory in Sorrento.  I bought way too many bottles and have been drinking it on ice with sparkling water on many a night since then.

We headed up to Tuscany after that, where we used Florence as our home base to explore the small towns of the surrounding hills.  The above view was the norm, so we spent a lot of time saying, “Oh my God, can you even believe how beautiful this is?” and wanting to simulate Maria running through the hills in the Sound of Music (although these hills were covered in wine grapes, so even better!)In San Gimigignano, we ate at the gelateria said to have the best gelato in the world.  We shared a cup with Raspberry Black Pepper and Saffron Pine Nut, both of which were fairly insane, even for a non-fan of ice cream.

Finally, we went to Rome, where my mom made new friends…

…and I got my fortune told by this guy.

He said life was good, but of course, I already knew it by then.

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This week’s Equals Record column is about the part of travel no one seems to talk about: the moments when you’re feeling lonely and tired and just wish one thing would be easy and simple and nice.  Here’s an excerpt:

I was no different in Paris than I was back in the United States:  the simple change of location didn’t render me suddenly high-heeled.  It didn’t make accented men want to flirt with me and it didn’t make me suddenly enjoy coffee, in tiny cups or otherwise.  It was the first time I realized a change of location wasn’t enough to warrant a change of self, and the first time that the reality of a place didn’t live up to my fantasy.

For the full post, please head over to The Equals Record.  And tell me: am I alone in this feeling, or have you felt it too?  What do you do to combat loneliness and expectation versus reality in travel?

As always, thanks so much for reading!

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1)  Brits call costumes “fancy dress outfits.”  How lovely is that?  Although now I don’t know what to call all of my real fancy dress outfits, aka the ball gowns I like to wear to brunch (it lends an air of festivity to greasy eggs and hangovers).  Help, anyone?

2)  It’s fast approaching (see opening sentence) and I have zero idea what fancy dress  outfit I might want to don.  This is generally the case, which is why last year Zack and I went as hipster mimes – aka wore all black and glasses, and painted our faces white.

 The year before, such grade A lack of planning resulted in us dressing as time travelers.  We accomplished this look by wearing all white and putting on strange blue glasses, then posing as if we’d just emerged from a time tunnel (you know, the device all the really cool people use to travel through time).  Less people got this one which was, ironically, even more hipster.  What up.

This year, I’d like to try and plan ahead, although upon browsing the results of Googling “Couple’s Costumes” I suddenly am reminded why I always leave it to the last minute.  The costumes are all incredibly disappointing.  Like, why does he get to be warm while I have to be all slutty?

I don’t like mustard, and hate how it’s always hanging around, trying to ruin ketchup, so to me, this costume is just a problem perpetuator.  Also, it seems like it’d be really hard to pee in.

And this just makes me hungry:

So, help me out.  What’s the best/worst couple’s costume you’ve seen?

Images via Couple’s Costumes Ideas Tumblr.

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But I digress.  Back to the bacon!

Click through to to the NYTimes to see all 25 ways and full recipes.

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The other night, Zack and I watched Happy, a movie about how to be, well, happy (check out the trailer above).  The film covered a number of interesting things (have you heard about Karoshi, the Japanese name for death by working too hard, an incident that’s on the rise in Japan?), but the most interesting, to me, was how much of our lives we seem to spend pursuing the wrong things.  According to the movie, if our goal is to be happy, we should be focused on intrinsic factors to become so.  The movie names the following three things:

1.  Spending time with friends and family members

2.  Exercising, or moving your body in dynamic ways (rather than just jogging on the treadmill every day)

3.  Feeling like you’re a part of something larger by participating in your community and the world at large

The things that don’t make us happy?  External factors:  image, wealth, and status.  The things, in essence, that most of us spend 8 – 10 hours a day pursuing.

While some of this range incredibly true, some felt harder to swallow.  If I wrote forever, for instance, and no one read my work, and there was no external sign that the work I was doing was even valuable, I’d have a hard time feeling good about it.

There’s an oft quoted statistic brought up in the movie that there’s a dramatic difference in happiness between those who are destitute and those making $70,000 a year, but after that, the happiness difference subsides greatly.  In essence, there’s little difference in happiness between a millionaire and an average working professional.  I remember my dad told me this when I was first job hunting and the message behind it, I think, is true: bigger cars and houses and fancy clothes don’t make us happy, because we adjust so quickly to the standard that we have and want more.  But what about the experiences that money affords you?  I spend almost all of my money on traveling the world; on going to concerts with friends; on being able to pick up and move to London to be with my boyfriend as he embarks on his (not cheap) graduate school experience.  When I hear that statistic, I always wonder whether the people studied are spending their money on material things or experiences, and if that would make a difference.

What do you think?  Do you know what makes you happy, and does it match up with how you actually live your life?

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This week on the Equals Record, I discuss the draw I’ve had towards big cities since childhood, contemplating the effect of a place on a person.  An excerpt:

I asked Zack why he thought New York was, well, New York.  If it simply was the same bars, the same restaurants, the same jobs and (much crappier) apartments, why did people from everywhere want to be there?

“I think,” he said, “it’s because everyone wants to be there. No one accidentally just ends up living in New York. Everyone is there by choice.  Everyone in New York, then, is there for a reason.  There aren’t many other places in the world you can say that about.”

“So the people create the place that creates the people,” I said.

He smiled and took a sip of his beer.  “Something like that.”

For the full post, please head over to The Equals Record.  As always, thanks so much for reading!

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If I had to narrow down a singular travel goal for my time in Europe, it would be seeing the Northern Lights.  Apparently, it’s the best time in over a decade to see them.  I can’t even fathom how magical it would be to stand in the snow, watching the greens and blues and purples swirl above.  In researching trip potentials, I stumbled across the Ice Hotel, where they offer midnight trips to see the Lights from a hotel made entirely of ice. It melts every summer, and every fall they invite artists from all over the world to create it anew.   It’s nestled away in Lapland, home of the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Anderson’s tales, which seems quite wonderfully appropriate.

A different artist designs every room, giving them all a completely unique feel.

The chandeliers are made of ice…

Even the cocktail glasses are made of ice! (Don’t worry, they provide plenty of furs and gloves so you don’t end up as frozen as your surroundings)

How magical would it be to fall asleep here?

With other amazing touches – they can pick you up at the airport with a sled pulled by icelandic horses or huskies, and they wake you up with a piping hot cup of lingonberry juice – it seems like such a once in a lifetime experience.  Hopefully, I’ll be coming to you within a year with pictures of my own :-)

Are you as smitten by this as I am? (I’ve already driven Zack crazy with my borderline obsessive research…he’ll be silently working and I’ll squeal.  ”What?”  he’ll sigh, and I’ll say:  ”Hot lingonberry juice!!”)

What are some of your travel fantasies?

All photos via TripAdvisor.

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What to do it in:  In an ideal world, you’d get a Vitamix, which is essentially the Rolls Royce of blenders (confession:  I don’t really know how good a Rolls Royce is compared to a normal car.  I hear they have umbrella holders though, which is pretty swank.  Anyways, Vitamix’s are the best).  You can get a refurbished model, like I did, on the website for about $350, or you can just use any old blender.  The only difference is, if you’re not using a Vitamix, stick to soft leafy greens like spinach, watercress and arugula.  Tougher greens like kale, celery, and collards will get you a fairly lumpy result.

Next step:  Add everything!  The most basic ingredients are:

- 1 apple

- 1 banana

- 3 – 4 cups of leafy greens (spinach, kale, romaine – anything will do.  The only rule on this – aside from the aforementioned blender specific greens – is that you vary your greens.  So if you do romaine for a week, do spinach for a week after.  Throw some watercress in after that.  Your body likes variety)

- a cup or so of filtered water

- a dash of salt

- a squeeze of lemon

If you have all of those, you’re going to get a fairly sweet, fresh tasting smoothie that you’ll love.  Once you have the base down, you can play around with other additions to change the flavor profile.  A few I like:

- Add a handful of frozen strawberries and a handful of basil

- Add a scoop of cacao powder and some orange wedges for chocolate covered orange (like the ones you crack open at Christmas! But healthy!  And less violent!)

- Add a handful of cilantro and a handful of frozen mango and frozen pineapple for a super refreshing tropical delight

There are also the “boosters”; essentially, powders and extra goodies you can throw in to make it healthier.  You can find most of them at Whole Foods, on Amazon, or at your local crunchy granola store.  A few I like:

- Coconut butter or oil makes your smoothie creamy and gives you some good fats to better absorb the nutrients in the produce

- Maca gives a malt like flavor (great with anyone adding cacao) and is great for balancing hormones and increasing sex drive

- Lucuma tastes like caramel and is an awesome sweetener.  It’s also a great source of B vitamins for any vegetarians out there.

- Amazing Grass powders come in all sorts of flavors and add a huge shot of chlorophyll (the good stuff in greens) to your smoothies.  I love using the chocolate powder with some maca and creating a chocolate malt.

- Spices!  The stuff you have in your spice cabinet can drastically change the taste of a smoothie in a delicious way.  I love using cinnamon, cardamon, cayenne, pepper, turmeric…play around!  Experiment!  Don’t experiment too hard with the cayenne though – I’ve learned this the hard way.

Next:  blend the shit out of it.

Do you drink green smoothies?  Are you afraid of how much they resemble swamp water? (I promise they taste good – just try one)!

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While I never think I’m going to achieve this level of practice – hell, I’m not sure I’d even want to – I love videos like this, that show how sexy and empowered the human body is.  It makes me want to break out my yoga mat, or even my sneakers and just move my body. Here’s the couple’s video:

And, in case you missed it, the original, solo video:

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“I force it, and by forcing it, I lose everything that’s interesting about my work. What’s interesting about my work, for me — not for anyone else; God knows, I can’t speak for that — what’s interesting in my work is the way that when I am playing full out, when I am just feeling relaxed and I’m playing, and all my faculties are firing, but only just to play. Not to get a date, not because I want someone to hug me, not because I want anyone to read it. Just to play.” - Junot Diaz, author

While he was plotting “Looper,” Johnson sat down and watched “Witness,” diagraming its structure on a piece of paper so he could dissect exactly how that screenplay worked. “It starts in the city, creates this noir-type tension and atmosphere, then transfers to the farm, but loses none of that momentum and keeps you in suspense until the end,” he says. “Which is like a magic trick to me. So I studied it.” - Rian Johnson, writer/director

“Inspiration is really about breathing in. I breathe in what I expose myself to. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and then you just try again with the next breath. But you never, ever settle. The great thing about theater is, if we don’t get it right one night, we get to come out the next night to try again.” - Debra Winger, actress

“Starks set the Knicks record for most career 3-pointers and most career 3-point attempts, andthe lesson I took from him is that if you shoot enough 3’s, some will eventually somehow go in. I’ve always been a quantity-over-quality kind of guy. I’ve thrown out a few terrible novels, I’ve thrown out two whole collections of short stories, I have hundreds of comedy pieces that are terrible that will never see the light of day. My feeling is I can’t really control how talented I am, but I can control how many hours I work and how many things I write.” - Simon Rich, comedy writer

The thing so many of these had in common was how much work it takes to have the “ping!” moment that is often portrayed as inspiration.  It’s comforting to think of Junot Diaz throwing out 50 pages of stories, or Rian Johnson rewinding and repeating the same scenes of a movie he was trying to emulate over and over again until he got the rhythm, the timing, the tone down.  I think great creative work often appears almost effortless, which can be disheartening to others trying to produce creative work, which is one of the reasons why I found this issue to be so fascinating.  How do you find inspiration?

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