Friends, I’ve thought and struggled a lot over this the past year. The conclusion I came to was that I still don’t feel comfortable plastering ads all over the site (I’m a control freak over aesthetics, after all!), but I’m feeling ok making money off the blog if I’m able to. What’s ironic is that I used to make money off ads and sponsored links from a previous blog that I started 8 years ago when this was all sort of new territory, so what’s the difference now? It forced me to examine why I write here, what I want to get out of it, what the blog’s turned into, and what I need to do to make things happen for the future. The only thing left that was making me anxious over this decision was the reaction of some of you who’ve expressed that you would be disappointed if I started placing ads, but at the end of the day I decided that was my problem, not yours, for caring too much what other people think. Even the fact that I’m sitting here explaining to anybody why I’ve started using affiliate links in this ridiculously rambling post is unnecessary, really, but I’ve always tried to be honest and transparent.
 

So it came down like this:
Near the end of last year, we lost our only real stream of steady income when a very part time, long term consulting gig of Mark’s came to an end. It wasn’t as devastating a blow, obviously, as when he lost his new job way back in 2008 when this whole adventure – the business, the blog, everything – began, but this income paid for our bills and groceries every month. We didn’t feel the sting of the loss initially because the holidays were fast approaching, December sales were good and it gets so crazy during holiday time, but we have been feeling it ever since. So I think…how are we going to replace this income? We can sell more cookies! I can look for more freelance jobs! Um, OK! But it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when we’re both hustling and overworked already. And then I started looking at the blog again. It seemed so obvious. I have an audience. I spend literally hours writing every post. It costs money to host this blog. Why not get something in return from it? But…why the hesitation? I talked to some of my friends who are also coming to the same realization and I looked at other friends and bloggers who are making income off of their blogs. Why am I different from them? And then I realized that every time I answered the question “hey, where’d you get that”, it was FREE advertisement for the retailers. The internal struggle loosened its grip. And then came the deluge of medical issues this month and last and the impending bills (if you’ve been a long-time reader then you might know all about our health insurance woes). That was sort of the final straw.
 

I’m not asking anyone to help pay for our bills. I’m not forcing anyone to look or buy anything that I might link to in the future. I am not changing my content by littering every other post with affiliate links (honestly? I don’t even think I can do that!). I may once in a while link to products that is of interest to me or that I have personally purchased, but this is nothing new as I have done this in the past. The only difference is that maaaaybe it might happen once a month as opposed to only a few times a year. I am not expecting to make gobs of money from commissions and quitting my freelance career (oh man, I wish!) – I would have to have a lot more readers and link to a lot of products to do that. I am not even expecting to replace the income that we lost and I have no idea how much, if at all, any of this could generate, but I’ve come to the realization that I need to see everything that we do, including this blog, as part of our business and what we hope will be our future. This includes being better at promoting ourselves, our products, tweeting every new blog post on twitter – all of which I truly suck at because I don’t ever want to appear pushy and feel like I’m saying, “hey, look at me!”. But I need to get over that. Really. I am not serving our business well by being so sheepish and apologetic about it.
 
Having a health scare puts things in perspective. Mark and I are definitely not young and spry anymore. If these are our prime money making years then yikes! I don’t plan on compromising my beliefs or integrity to make money, but I also know that I have 2 girls to support who are quickly growing up. I would do anything for them. I am at a point where I’m willing to try new things and do everything I can to help support my family. I am at a point where I no longer want to look around and say, “wait, why can’t I do this too?”. I am that that special; I am not above this. And if you are still here and you have read through to the end of this very long, rambling and sometimes ridiculous post, then I thank you.

It looks like Alice plays here, doesn’t it? You may remember the first time we took the girls to Old Westbury Gardens. It was on my birthday last year, but it was still chilly and the leaves and flowers hadn’t bloomed yet. What a difference a month makes (although everything is at least 2 weeks earlier this year due to the warm winter and spring weather). We spent Mother’s Day morning here. It’s the perfect place to wander around and let the kids role play all their fantasy games. It’s like the Secret Garden. Magical.

Can we fast forward to next Friday?
 
I’ll be straight up and tell you that I’m scared and I want next week to be over with already. In the last few weeks, I don’t think I’ve seen as many doctors, specialists or had as many tests in the last 6 years (maybe ever? Aside from pregnancies?) put together for 3 unrelated health issues I’m dealing with right now. I’m getting probed and poked by lots of needles and other apparatuses and it hasn’t really been all that fun. It’s not even over. It’s like as soon as I turned 40, all sorts of things in my body started crapping out on me. I mean, I’m at an age where you have to do mandatory medical screenings for certain things and other than maybe getting a subscription to AARP in the mail (not yet!!), nothing makes me feel as old as this. Symptoms that might have been waved away by doctors as being “probably nothing” when you’re in your 20s or even 30s, are taken with precaution when you’re 40. And it was almost comical when it went down something like this the other day:
 
Doc: “Oh, you’re not old at all. You’re only 34″.
Me: “Uh, no I’m not. I just turned 42.”
Doc: “Oh! Hmmm, yes…I read the birth year wrong. Oh, well in that case, at 40 we start reading the symptoms a little bit differently. I need to send you in for this procedure to rule out more serious causes”.
Me: “Oh. Right…damn.”

 
I’m a terrible worrier. I always have been and it’s not really something I can change about my personality very easily. I don’t want to be a worrier. Believe me, I am trying. And despite the fact that I try to think otherwise, I also kind of suck at being an optimist. I don’t think I’m a pessimist by any means, but I’ve always been more of a realist. Can I tell you a story though? Someone in our immediate family was recently dealt with a medical blow that was completely unexpected. He’ll be in a hospital in Seattle for the next 3 or so months recovering and learning how to live without the use of his legs. This bit of news probably had a lot to do with the fact that I am finally dealing with some of my health issues. His positive outlook on all this is admirable. I can only hope to be half that positive if I were ever dealt that hand, but I suppose you’ll never really know how you would react to something until it happens to you. Until then, I know nothing. Nothing has happened. Just keep reminding myself that.

I know I don’t talk about my design work very often (ask my family; I think it drives them nuts that I don’t like to talk about the projects I’m working on). I often reference that I’m “busy with deadlines” or “I’m slammed with work”, but have never specifically talked about any of the client projects that keep me busy. The truth is, my freelance work takes up so much of my day – sometimes 15 hours a day if I’m double or triple booked on projects – that it’s the last thing I want to write or talk about, especially if it’s stressful, and often times it is. I’ve managed to keep it fairly separate from my personal life and I guess I decided long ago that I didn’t want my job to be the one thing that defines me. Being that design, however, really is how I spend most of my waking time, I wanted to introduce a new website that we launched recently for one of my oldest clients, Cabengo. In it’s 4th iteration, the site documents 11 years worth of our work.
 

I met my friend and colleague, Hillary a few months after I graduated from grad school in 2000. I had spent the summer working for another start up venture (what is it with me and all these start ups?), but I was also interviewing at big interactive advertising agencies, not as a designer interestingly enough, but for information architect positions. I sometimes think about the path my career would have taken, had I accepted any of those jobs. Maybe I would have worked up to a Creative Director position at one of the big agencies like so many of my friends and peers, but I guess even back then the lure of climbing some corporate ladder for a big job title was never that attractive to me. Instead, I decided to join up with Hillary when she started Cabengo.
 
Back then it was just the 3 of us in the office, a shared space that we rented from an architecture firm, with designy Herman Miller office furniture. It was the first office job that I had in 3 years and the last office job that I would hold to date (this is the place where my coffee addiction began, ironically enough. I could probably count on one hand the number of cups of coffee that I had the entire time I lived in the caffeine capital of the US, the Pacific Northwest, but it took a regular office job to get me addicted to the stuff). Even though the company was new, Hillary had a few high profile jobs lined up from her museum contacts from being an artist in a prior life. As it turns out, joining a small boutique startup would prove to be a good decision because the tech bubble would soon burst and so many of my friends lost their jobs the next year; I was able to employ many of them during a big, year long project that we had done for an early client.
 
After two and a half years, Hillary and I decided that it would be best if we move into a freelance relationship. We gave up the fancy office and started working from home. She had just given birth to her first child and I was sort of thinking about having babies too. It was during this time when I lost a steady paycheck and my health insurance, that I decided, well…why not? I might not have had any financial security, but I had the time and flexibility to start a family. This is when my freelance career started. I never looked back.
 
I think in a time when job longevity is not as common as in generations past and most people expect you to bop around from job to job every couple of years or so, long-time collaborations are maybe harder to find. But just as I keep saying about so many things in my life lately, “Has it really been 11 years?” (maybe that is just what old people say), sometimes I do marvel that we’ve been able to work together for so many years on so many projects. I’ve juggled many other clients and projects alongside my work with Cabengo during my 9 year freelance career, but none that have endured this long. During those years we’ve had 4 babies between us, first-time home purchases, marriages, illnesses and 40th birthday celebrations. We also share what might perhaps be the most unique bond of all – we were both stranded together during a business trip in Venezuela trying to get back home during 9/11 .
 
I think many of you can agree that it’s not the job that makes a job enjoyable; it’s who you work with. When you find a colleague that you mesh with so well, where you share similar aesthetic sensibilities and you can finish each other’s sentences, or sometimes not even need to say anything at all, it is a rare find and one worth holding onto.

I can’t imagine living some place that’s not by the ocean. Sure, Coney Island isn’t the prettiest of beaches by any means, but it has a gritty charm all its own (though I was sad to see that many of the old food stands with their wonderful, hand lettered signage on the boardwalk were being torn down). Coney Island is changing. Every year it loses a little more of its old school identity. It’s a little more shiny, a little more cleaned up, and it’s one of the kids’ favorite places to go. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the girls get more hyped up and giddy than when they’re in line for a ride at an amusement park. It’s funny, really. Kind of makes me wish we could still get that giddy with arms flailing, voices squealing, racing as fast as you can to the next ride, over such a simple pleasure.

There are really only a few bands that have stayed with me over the years starting way back from when I was a kid till now. There are bands or artists that I may have loved intensely for awhile that is representative of a certain era, but with the exception of maybe the Cure, the Beastie Boys have been the band that has continuously sustained the longest, going all the way back to 9th grade. I can look at each record and immediately place myself in time: cheesy high school dance parties bopping around to Licensed to Ill; art school college angst in the painting studio listening to Paul’s Boutique on headphones; some of the earliest memories of hanging out with Mark when I moved to WA during Check Your Head; watching the “Sabotage” video on repeat with my housemates in Portland during Ill Communication; driving across the country on our move back to NY to the soundtrack of The In Sound From Way Out! ; getting high on soldering fumes playing with breadboards and circuits in grad school at NYU to Hello Nasty blasting in the classroom; watching the premiere of “Alive” while nursing Mia on the couch during To the 5 Boroughs. I don’t know…now that I think about it, I’m not sure there is any other band that I can thread all these experiences together with. Just as I thought when I was watching Pearl Jam 20 a few months ago, watching “Make Some Noise” last year with millions of other people also buzzing about it made me think incredulously, has it really been 25 years? Are we all getting that old? And wow, they’re still together making music?

But that’s what happens when you literally grow up with a band. The Beastie Boys showed us that some local kids from Brooklyn and Manhattan could be musical pioneers, transcend boundaries and genres, make it big, recognize the gravity of some of the lyrics from their earlier work, and use their public image towards social and political causes. I respected MCA for his passion and commitment to mobilizing awareness towards the Tibetan Freedom Movement and admired him for diversifying his career as a talented film director. And if nothing else, we’re all long-time Knicks fans. That just made me like the Beastie Boys even more.
 
I’m sitting here with Claudine watching the Beasties Video Anthology DVDs as I type this and I can see that her world just got a little bit bigger. I saw it in her face when I sort of absentmindedly put on Hello Nasty earlier today and then noticed that she was really listening to the music and smiling every time she recognized some of the pop culture references in some of the lyrics. After every song, she wanted to hear more. While I’m devastated that he died so young at the hands of cancer – after all, Adam wasn’t really that much older than me – and that stirs all sorts of emotions about immortality as some of our childhood heroes fall, his legacy will live on as we pass the music on to the next generation.
 
Good night MCA.
 

Well, hello frozen treats on a stick.

Remember this experiment that didn’t really go over so well last year? But hey…we’re still not giving up! Kind of like our Coconut Five Spice Cookies that went through 2 iterations as a biscotti and a macaroon before settling on its current cookie form. We KNEW the chocolate curry ice cream tasted good, but the presentation in a cup was just a fail so we chucked the idea last summer and vowed – yes, VOWED shaking our fists in the air – that we would bring it back on a stick this summer. I don’t really know why, but it was really hard to find commercial grade molds. We didn’t need super heavy duty automated industrial, but we needed more than the home versions you stick in your freezer (if anyone has any other leads to popsicle molds, please pass along!), so that was a little bump in the road. But we did it! And we’re debuting them at the Brooklyn Flea Smorgasburg tomorrow.
 
Not only will we have the original (OG) Chocolate Curry flavor that has now been reworked as a fudge pop on a stick, but we will also have Thai Iced Tea Fudgesicle pops too. WHUT?! Yeah, ya heard!

 
I’m personally excited about this because we finally have a product in which to spread Mark’s ice cream flavors to the masses without actually making ice cream (too many logistics and expenses for ice cream right now) and we get to share the flavors that he’s been making for years, like Thai Iced Tea. Yes, there will be other flavor fudgesicles all summer so stay tuned. I know that it makes Mark happy too because I think he would still jump ship on cookies for ice cream if he could.

So help make Mark a happy, not sad panda tomorrow and give it a try if you’re at the Flea. Especially since it’s more production work on his weekly plate and he gets to wake up even earlier on Flea days to drive to Queens to get dry ice to make sure these pops stay frozen at the market. Oy! The things we (ok, just Mark) do to spread a little bit of frozen joy!

This post is part of an effort organized by Ez from Creature Comforts encouraging bloggers to open up today and write something about themselves that they might not normally share with their readers (head over to her site to see a list of participating blogs). It probably won’t come as any surprise that I wholeheartedly support more of this openness and it harks back to that post earlier this week about shutting out some of this internet chatter because it’s become so unrealistic to measure ourselves against everything and everyone out there. I remember talking once with a very talented designer whose work I really admired. You know, the kind of person who seemed like creative ideas just came easily and quickly to her, only to discover when she confided in me that she was really insecure and had debilitating anxiety before design projects. Man, I could totally relate to that. But I think back to that conversation often because it reminds me that there’s always more to any carefully crafted veneer than we think we might see.

So the thing that I want to share with you today is that sometimes I have doubts about whether or not I’m being a good mom. It’s not that I think I’m a bad mom by any means, but as the girls get older and their needs get more complex, I worry that I’m not capable of handling any sort of emotional crises, should they arise. I feel like I knew how to take care of babies; their needs were a little more basic, but with girls who will soon be entering into adolescence, then preteen, then teenage years and beyond, the responsibility of raising them to be confident little ladies while acting as their centered, supportive anchor seems overwhelming right now. Sometimes I feel like it’s just an illusion to think that I can raise them right when I battle all kinds of demons like insecurity and bouts of depression myself. To dispense any sort of advice on potential problems with their peers, with school, with relationships, or with their self esteem seems incongruous when I am still trying to figure all of this out myself. I know that we don’t have to have all the answers, that it’s impossible to have all the answers. I know that as a family unit we need to figure things out as life plays along. I just don’t want to look back and feel like I failed as a parent or to feel like I’m living some sort of contradiction where I can’t follow any of the advice myself that sometimes comes out of my mouth.

 
This never felt more true than last week when an issue arose with one of the girls. I felt like I was in over my head, that it wasn’t something I had any answers for. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough and that I hadn’t paid enough attention. In the end I think things will be ok, but I did find myself in a little panic wondering how I’d be able to handle anything big. It made me think back to when I was a kid and how my mother might have felt when she was faced with certain issues that were going on with me, all the while battling her own demons and life problems. As a kid, I wasn’t really aware of what was going on with her until much later because she was always just “mom” and not necessarily a “person”, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the duality of some of these shared childhood experiences, but from a mother’s point of view now that I’m on the other side. How would I emotionally handle, for example, if it was my daughter who was diagnosed with scoliosis and had to wear an uncomfortable, ugly plastic brace for all of her teenage years and deal with doctor appointments all the way in the Bronx to get x-rayed every month for 5+ years? I know how I felt going through that as a kid. I was angry and insecure and anxiety ridden, but I never really thought about how hard that must have been on my mother as well, and I am deathly afraid that since it is hereditary I will need to relive this all over again from the other side. My mom later told me that she cried a lot during those years, but at the time I never knew. In my eyes, she was just being my mom.
 
I’ve been thinking too about my short-lived, but very intense bout with an eating disorder I had when I was 18. I think for me it was a rather atypical case of anorexia as it had less to do with body dysmorphic disorder and everything to do with feeling like I was in control of something when life seemed out of control the summer I graduated from high school. From an outsider it may have seemed that I had everything going for me at that point in my life and I had attained pretty much every goal that I had set as a high school senior. But when school ended and I was faced with the daunting prospect of starting over at a new prestigious art school, I was lost and scared and all of those achievements felt empty when there were still issues I hadn’t dealt with. I was scared of failure before I even started. I needed something new to focus on. Unfortunately it channeled itself into a very unhealthy manifestation, but the challenge of seeing how far I could go without anyone noticing became far too tempting to stop. But of course my mom did eventually notice. I think back now to how desperate she must have felt, how alone and scared and in over her head. How could you not think that you failed as a parent on some level when you first realize that your kid is starving herself? I don’t think you can. My mom thinks that it was God who saved me, from all her prayers, but I don’t really believe that. It was the moment when she handed me the phone to talk to a doctor, who told me that I was at a dangerous weight (I had dropped to 89 pounds at that point. I am 5’6″ for reference) and that if I didn’t start eating I would have to be committed. It was again that threat of losing control that scared me back into eating and realizing for the first time the severity of what I was doing and that I was not only ruining my life, but also my mother’s. I gained back the 20 pounds that I lost that summer in 3 weeks.

I may experience moments of desperation like these with my daughters – or I may not. It remains to be seen. Sometimes I feel like my life with them has really just started, that we have a long road ahead that doesn’t just stop when they move out of the house. Although some days I may not feel it, I have to trust that I’ll know what to do when the time comes. I also hope that I have the courage like my mother to let go of my kids like she did when I left home freshman year. She hated those years I traveled around the country in a car and hung out with what she probably thought was the “wrong crowd” and was out of touch for months not knowing where or what I was doing. But she didn’t stop me, and while it was exasperating during those years when I thought she just “doesn’t understand”, I hope she understands now that those were the years that really did save me.
 
I’m thinking about all of this now, particularly that really hard summer because it has so much to do with preserving and keeping up that perfect veneer. I couldn’t sustain that in high school. I tried and I cracked, so I certainly make no attempts to depict any sort of perfect life now. While sharing your life so openly is not comfortable for everyone, I applaud all the bloggers who are participating in Things I’m Afraid To Tell You today. I think we could use a little more realness. Let me end by saying one more thing I’m afraid to tell you. It isn’t easy pressing that publish button on posts like these. I wouldn’t publish something that I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing by any means, but it still isn’t easy. As much as I don’t want to admit it to myself, I still care what other people think. Probably more than I should.

Do you ever think about the house you grew up in? Maybe some of you go back, to visit your parents who still live there. This is the house I grew up in, in a fairly suburban-like neighborhood in Queens, from the time my parents bought the house in 1979 when I was 9 years old (for $85,000, I still remember!) till I moved away to Manhattan for art school in late 1988. My parents moved out of this house around 1995.

We recently had dinner near the old neighborhood a few weeks ago so on a whim I decided to take a little detour and drive by the house, partly to show the girls where I had lived and partly because I hadn’t seen the house in about 14 or so years. We are rarely ever in the neighborhood. The house looks like this today:
 

I was surprised to see that aside from the skylights, the house from the outside hasn’t really changed at all. The scripty house numbers are still attached to the siding in front of the house too, which I found rather amusing.
 
Truth is, I have mixed emotions when I think about this house. I remember good times for sure, but there are enough bad memories associated with the years that our family lived there that it’s hard to look at it with anything but conflicting feelings. The house scared me too. I was completely freaked out, for example, by the textured geometric metallic wallpaper that lined the hallway to the bedrooms (this was the 80s after all). When the light hit the wall at certain angles, a big, evil jack-o-lantern grin stared back at me if I looked over at the wall from the living room. I tried to avoid walking past that part of the hallway at all times, choosing to go through the kitchen instead to get to my bedroom. The basement and attic scared me too, and at times I thought there were spirits lurking in some of those rooms. Ok, so most of this was deeply influenced by the Amityville Horror, a movie that terrified me and still does to this day (really, I feel scarred for life from watching that film as a kid, particularly since I have seen the actual house in person), but at times the house really did put me at unease.

Aside from having an active teenage imagination, I think that all 4 of us were ready to be done with the house by the time my parents sold it in the late 90s. It was a relief to be rid of it, really, and I have to say that I am very happy not to have to go back as an adult and revisit some of those bad memories. It’s strange enough to be back living in your hometown, the city that you grew up in. You walk amongst ghosts and reminders of your past all the time, but I’m grateful that when we go visit my parents in the suburbs for the weekend, it’s not the house that I grew up in. Different house. Different neighborhood. No history. A blank slate.
 
Still, this house has a place in our past and I’d like to think of all the fond memories instead. Stuff like days spent rollerskating up and down the driveway and around in the basement with my cousin, blasting Journey, MJ and Diana Ross on the radio while my brother rode his Big Wheel (you can see us holding hands on skates at the end of the driveway in the first photo). Playing kick the can in the street with all the neighborhood kids on the block. The little backyard garden plot where my dad once planted a bunch of Wax Begonias to spell out “love”. Watching MTV for the first time. Painting and sewing through all hours of the night in the basement, putting my portfolio together for art school applications. Raking Fall leaves. The young 6 foot tree in front of our house where I found my brother sitting on a branch one day as I came home from school, only to realize an hour and a half later that he was actually stuck up in the tree but was too embarrassed to tell me when he failed to come inside (that little tree is huge now, by the way). Beyond these little snippets of memories, the house is significant to our family because it housed all of our extended family members at one time or another as they immigrated to NY from Korea. My mom was the first in her family to come and she paved the way for 3 of her siblings, my grandmother and my dad’s sister to come to US. They all lived with us for awhile until they were able to find their footing and get a home of their own.

The girls weren’t really that impressed with the house when we drove by. Maybe they’re too young to fully appreciate it or understand. I remember about 13 years ago knocking on the door of the childhood house where Mark’s mom grew up in Hawaii. We were all there – his mom, Mark, his sister and I, and she really wanted to go back and show us where she grew up as this was the first time we were all in Hawaii together. The people who lived in the house were home and they were nice enough to indulge us and invite us in. It was real cool to experience that with her, to walk through the house 30+ years later and see her revisit some of her earliest childhood memories. I don’t have any desire to go back inside my childhood house again, but I think I’d like to drive by with the girls again when they get older. When we got home that evening from dinner, Mark and I wondered how they would remember this apartment. Maybe they’ll come back to this block 30 years from now, stand in front of the doorway and say, “I lived here way back when…”. Hopefully, their memories will be fond.

Does anyone really get excited about lentil soup? It’s a good old standby, hearty and filling, but I can’t really say I ever crave a bowl of lentil soup. But Mark made a huge pot the other day and it was SO good and flavorful, I was already looking forward to having another bowl the next day. Because we all know, soup is one of those foods that taste better the next day.
 

Lentil Soup (serves eight)

1/4 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium onion, diced

1 pound button mushrooms, roughly chopped

3 carrots, peeled and diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 Tablespoons finely chopped rosemary

1/3 cup tomato paste

8 cups vegetable broth

1 pound lentils

Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot, add the garlic and onion, and stir while cooking for about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. Add the carrots, celery and rosemary, cook for 3 more minutes. Stir in the tomato paste followed by the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Add the lentils, return to a boil, reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about 40 minutes with the pot covered or until the soup has thickened and the lentils are completely cooked. Season with salt and pepper. We also like to put a dash of Tabasco in our soup right before eating for an extra spicy kick.