For Posterity's Sake...

As I'm sitting here on Labor Day, having done a lot of nothing, watching Bourdain embark on his last season of No Reservations, I realize this is quick becoming a monthly blog at best, and much has been left unchronicled.

On June 27th, Google released a Google+ First Anniversary video highlighting a handful of users whom they thought were using the medium to do unique and/or interesting things, and I was featured second to last, right before the Richard Branson closer, and I thought that was pretty fucking groovy. I began focusing my home cooking evangelizing efforts over there in July of 2011, and it was really nice to see those efforts rewarded after a year of posting what I think is pretty solid food content at least a couple times a day, every day.

As a recovering impatient Type A personality, I'm proud of my dedication to the task without regard for recognition or compensation. It's not a thing of which I would have been capable a few years ago, and I'm grateful for the swift ass-kickings dealt me by life that taught me to acknowledge and accept my limitations, and to be satisfied to devote myself to doing one thing to the best of my ability.

What a trip to have someone clap that clappy thingy
in front of your face and say,
"Shinae - Take..." 

A couple of weeks later, I was written up in the local paper for the Cookalongs I host on G+ where I select a dish with the input of my fellow G+ers, provide recipes and other helpful information about how to make the dish, share some how-to videos, and then host the Cookalong on a set day and time when people share their experiences cooking the particular dish, and I field questions during the process. 

The Cookalongs really have become an organic progression from my original plan to provide low cost cooking classes to as many people as possible. At the moment, it's hard to think of a better way for me to accomplish that goal while garnering the right audience for what I want to do and fulfilling my desire to have a real connection with the people I'm reaching.

The very delicious, lightly sweet, and perfectly smooth buttercream icing on that cake was finding myself on the front page of the Food Section of the hard copy edition with none other than Julia Child on her 100th birthday. I have always loved her fearless and wonderfully irreverent approach to teaching people how to cook, and I think her integrity and dedication to the food over celebrity are nothing short of admirable. I can only dream of touching people the same way, but it's a good dream to dream...

And the biggest news of course is that on the 4th of July, the Pod decided a national holiday would be as good a day as any to make her grand entrance, and we named her Isabella Choi Robinson. Isabella because the Man and I fairly immediately agreed that we liked the name a lot when we were contemplating girl names early in the pregnancy, Choi because that's my maiden name and it seemed the fairest way to honor both my parents, and the Robinson part requires no explanation.

Call it intuition or perhaps a self fulfilling prophecy, but we were at a complete loss to come up with boy names throughout the pregnancy and didn't sweat it much because we both had a strong feeling Pod would be a girl. Dean perhaps because a drunken psychic once told him that he would have one child, and that it would be a girl - this before puking and falling down a short flight of stairs. Me because of a combination of women's intuition and this theory I have that boy babies markedly change their mommies' faces by way of the testosterone they carry in a way that girl babies don't. Sounds silly, but I have a pretty good predictive track record with it.

Izzy will be two months old tomorrow, and in these two months, she's taught me to slow down and be even more present for those little moments in life you'll never get back - her first smile and laugh in her sleep, her first smile and laugh while awake, her first attempts to tell me something with a contented coo or frustrated yelp - all things I missed when the bigger Monsters were little because I was too busy working, providing, planning, achieving, reaching, and generally always thinking I needed to be somewhere other than where I was.

And through their acceptance, love and very real tenderness and affection for their little sister, Joey and Maddi are teaching me to forgive myself for not having been the kind of mother for them then that I'm able to be for Izzy now.

It's been such an amazing year for me so far, and in many ways, it feels like a hard-earned reward for the payment of some very steep karma debts. It's hard to imagine being so blessed and wanting for more, so I think I'll just put my head down, keep on keeping on, keep being grateful, and see where next this path will lead.

shinae