The Bloom

Everybody has one. Mine is a homemade survival kit—a small pouch stuffed with things I know someday some way I’m going to find myself desperately wishing I had when I’m stuck somewhere without a net. Slipped into my daypack, it’s my favorite won’t-leave-home-without-it road trip essential. I see things like this sold for crazy prices considering how little is actually inside. That’s what sold me on making my own—not very psyched to drop $30 on $10 worth of stuff. That’s good taco money. So handmade it is. Here’s what’s inside: A few safety pins A couple of feet of duct...

Ugh to winter’s extra pounds. And to my warm-season clothes, which I pulled out from under my bed the other day, pulled on in front of the mirror, and found bulging in, well… let’s just say all the wrong places. Not cool. But I’m going to own the weight because I sure owned the hand that held the fork that made it. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have had that slice of double-chocolate cake at our Super Bowl party (yaaaas!). Or those coconut macaroons in January (OMG!). Or all the rest of it (I’m looking at you, corner bakery maple pecan...

If spring is the season of new beginnings, I’m beginning to work on mine. That mostly means getting into shape for summer, and that mostly means losing the extra bits of me that winter left behind when I wasn’t looking. In my kitchen these days its hello kale and bye-bye Ben and Jerry. (Ours was a sweet affair, but our spooning days are done.) I know kale is almost a food cliché these days, but it’s still a freak-of-nature food that feeds our bodies all kinds of good without extending them in any new directions. They don’t call it a...

 You know that space between being awake and falling asleep? Those few minutes when you aren’t really in either place but somewhere in between? It’s a crazy time. We’re starting to dream but we’re still alert enough to know it, which makes strange things happen in our brains and lets our brains take advantage of those things in a way we can’t when we’re sleeping. Turns out there’s a name for this. They call this mental state “hypnagogia.” (No, I don’t know how to pronounce it!) And it’s a key to creativity. All kinds of people have used hypnagogia to...