Smalltalk

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I’m looking out the upstairs window. Across the street is the white-haired man who walks past my house every day, usually more than once, with his small, curly-haired grey dog. A little thing, maybe 8 pounds of dog in all. I have been trying to smile at this man for months but he won’t look at me. I can’t get him to look at me so that I can smile at him so I have assumed there’s something he’s inferred about me or my life choices from something about the exterior of my house (the toys littered across the lawn or disrepaired shutters, perhaps?) that puts me into some group of people he does not approve of. I have some vegetables (not very successfully) growing in a raised bed close to the street, so maybe he thinks I’m a dirty hippie.

This morning I see him out of my window with his little dog. At first I think about it being a good plan to get a little dog if you are getting older — we are thinking about getting a big dog and I recognize that it takes much less man (or woman) power to manage 8 pounds of dog versus 80.

Then I see my neighbor from across the street. She’s outside of her house with her dog, a yellow lab named Rosie. My neighbor is smiling, as she almost always does, and approaching the gentleman. And I see him stop, his dog approaching the lab, and the white-haired man leans towards Rosie and puts his hand on the top of her head. She’s wagging ferociously and looking up at him. He puts his hand under her chin, scratches. He’s looking straight at the dog’s face and rubbing, scratching, petting. My neighbor is smiling and I see her mouth moving and moving and he keeps petting the dog, contentedly.

He pauses and seems to listen to my neighbor. I don’t see his mouth move but he stands there. And then Rosie moves towards him again and they are back where they started, petting, wagging, scratching and my neighbor smiling and talking all the while.

And then I start to feel that I am just like this man. That I am looking at myself, as I feel underneath my skin, underneath my face and my clothes and deep inside even under my bones, most of the time.

There is a block party at the end of my street once each month, weather permitting. Neighbors come with booze and snacks and popsicles and kids ride their bikes dangerously close to 70-year-old women (my son in particular) and they always laugh it off but I am pretty sure one day I am going to turn around to see a sprawling neighbor knocked to the ground by one of the many 2-yr-olds zooming precariously on their scooters.

My kids love this party so we amble (or ride) down to the circle one Friday each month during the sociable and non-freezing months. People are standing around. Kids are shouting. People’s faces smile at each other and they are divided into little two-, three-, and foursomes laughing or deep in discussion, though for the most part we all steer well away from politics unless it is very clear on which end of the spectrum your conversation partner is encamped.

We have lived in this neighborhood for about three years. Maybe been to these parties about 12 times. Terror may be too strong a word, but each time I’m approaching the gathered throng I’m generating as many options as possible of what I can do once I get there. Head to the drink table, sort out my children in some way, put a bag somewhere — I need a plan for what to do until I find someone to talk to.

And then comes the hard part. I’m standing next to someone and they say something and I have to say things back, preferably pleasant or interesting things. And when the sound starts to die down and it looks like the line of conversation is about to finish, I panic. What next? How does this either keep going or how does it stop — I don’t know. There sometimes seems to be a very organic pattern to all of this. Other times it is like a ride at an amusement park, jolty and bumpy, sometimes sailing downhill and other times, on the way up to the next downhill, you feel a bit sick to your stomach and it’s jolting you around and you wonder if the ride is well constructed or if it is all about to tumble to the ground and you wonder what that would be like, hope you don’t find out, and then the other person starts to tell you a story about when she had surgery and couldn’t move for 6 weeks and that’s how she got a new dog, and you are safe for a while.

Usually, after an event such as this, I come home and think seriously about taking a vow of silence. I never feel good about myself or about the random conversation I was able to make, or rather the words that I heard come from my own mouth, mostly unbidden.

True story: At the end of this school year, I was responsible for organizing the teacher gift for my son’s class at school and also helped him make a card for each of his teachers. In the card, he had dictated some lovely things about his teachers and I had written them down for him so the words were his own. After the gifts and cards had been bestowed, his two teachers approached me during a farewell celebration and thanked me for the thoughtful gifts. One teacher remarked that she had particularly enjoyed my son’s remark “I hope you don’t get burned by lava” (they had been studying volcanoes, so this was relatively appropriate).

So, just for emphasis, let me restate: teachers approach me, smiling, say thank you for something nice, we liked the sweet cards. I panic. What do I say to these people? These nice ladies who have cared for my son all year?

I wanted the cards and the gifts to do the talking for me, truth be told. I put a lot of time into thinking about what would have meaning for the teachers, what would show that we appreciated and loved them. But now there are people, live people here next to me saying words through their faces and looking at me and I’m supposed to say words back.

“You should have heard the gruesome things he said that DIDN’T make the card.” Smile. (backtracking) “Not that gruesome, something about the ocean, but they, I’m so glad, you are teachers and you, my son. Thank you.” And they smile back, but what? what? How about “I’m so glad you liked them.” Something, you know, traditional like that.

I feel like a good 70% of the time when confronted by the need to make conversation with someone I just take a group of words from some panicked region of my brain and throw them all together and I’m hearing it come out of my mouth and I don’t even know what it means. I know that I can think clearly, I can write, I have vocabulary, and empathy, and I feel warmth for people. And one-on-one sitting with a friend, I’m usually pretty good with words. With hearing and responding in a caring and thoughtful way.

There was a block party last night. I went late and mostly listened. I asked some questions about gardening and the amount of water large trees need in the summer heat. It makes me feel lonely though, I wished I could feel comfortable, I wished I didn’t feel like I’m always thinking about different things from everybody else, or maybe I wished I had more people, or more time to spend with the people, in my life who wanted to talk about the things I’m thinking about.

So this morning I see the white-haired man with the little gray dog. I see his joy of connecting with Rosie – his pleasure in the wag of her tail. He doesn’t look at my neighbor’s face, though I do, twice, see his mouth move in response to something she has said, eyes still down. He says so little, but he doesn’t feel so little. He’s just not comfortable with small talk. And he doesn’t force himself to be. Maybe he’s just lived long enough to let himself be who he is.

Grains of rice challenge

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

About thirteen ounces of tahini, some possibly expired cottage cheese, a year-old (?) bag of frozen plantains, a jar of what I now believe is blackstrap molasses, some fruity bars my children refuse to eat, half a bagful of giant marshmallows, and, I imagine, a few boxes and cans that I can’t see or have stashed somewhere out of the ordinary (example, the tonic water that I am now remembering in the basement). Food that has languished, uneaten, in our kitchen.

When I was studying in India (over 20 short years ago), one morning our class was visited by an orange-robed sadhu (a Hindu monk). In early childhood, he told us, he was taught that each grain of rice is sacred. In his home, they would make sure to pick up spare grains that had strayed because to waste them would be to dishonor god (the Hindu religion is rather complex, but I thought it correct to use the lowercase ‘g’ in this case, but will stand corrected).

I remember writing a letter home from India — a letter my mom saved that is doubtlessly cuddled in my basement with hundreds of its friends, awaiting rediscovery. Suggesting to my family that when they give thanks for dinner each night that they consider thanking not just God, but the members of his orchestra:  the soil, the plants, the animals, the farmers, the bakers, the Earth, the sun, the rain, the universe. I think it was a lovely blessing. I know I said it for a while and I believe my family, without me, did for a time as well. Then life moved on. I got busy and food lost some of its sanctity.

I guess I’ve been busy for 20 years now. Too busy to be as thankful as I want to be. Too busy to be as mindful, or live as simply, as that, too easily ignored, still and quiet voice guides me to. Too busy to breathe before meals, to taste a large portion of my food, to say thanks, each time, for the bounty of life-giving, healthy food available to me and to my family.

And our approach to eating, while it has shifted significantly along the spectrum of healthiness over the past few years (towards the good end), has not made significant strides towards the mindfulness end. We don’t eat in the car (my old boss was French and alerted me to the savagery of such a practice) as a general rule, and we sit down to dinner as a family every night. At a table, without a screen in sight. Which seems normal to me as this is how I grew up but I understand this is no longer standard practice. We say a blessing when we remember. We talk about where food comes from, what each type of food is good for. Our categories are muscles (protein), energy (good carbs), tummy (veggies), vitamins/eyes/skin (fruit), brain (nuts, fats).

What hasn’t shifted much at all is how we purchase food. How we make decisions about what to cook, how much effort we put in to using the food we’ve bought, how much food we buy on impulse. Uneaten food is just another kind of garbage, something to be taken “away” – no biggie.

I remember the waffle fries my daughter was not hungry for on Saturday that are on their way to the landfill. The leftover chicken that we forgot to finish before it went bad. The moldy (not in the good way) cheese I found in the drawer.

According to ReFed.com “Every year, American consumers, businesses, and farms spends $218 billion a year, or 1.3% of GDP, growing, processing, transporting, and disposing food that is never eaten. That’s 52 million tons of food sent to landfill annually, plus another 10 million tons that is discarded or left unharvested on farms. Meanwhile, one in seven Americans is food insecure.”

image from Refed.com

If you took a look at the Happy Atmosphere Challenge, you’ll remember that food waste is also a not-insignificant contributor to climate change. Uneaten food contributes about 8 percent of global GHG emissions each year.

There are several drivers in our household food wastage. I’d like to say the children are the #1 (and 2) suspects, lunch boxes where half-finished juice pouches have soaked a bagel remnant and half of an uneaten apple, dinners where there is no room left in their “soup tummies” (etc).

Another of the biggest factors in our family, and I would guess in others in my demographic, is what I (from now on will) call over-diverse chefery. This is where you try some tasty ethic food somewhere and decide that, this Thursday, you’re going to try to make some yourself. So you buy all of the various ingredients, make the dish once, and are left with the various spices, sauces, etc until you go through your annual fridge check for expired food and, what do you know, that tahini is still there, all 13 ounces of it. A month from Thursday, when you have the time and are again feeling adventurous you will try a completely different cuisine with a whole new group of requisite spices and sauces, and so on and so forth.

Or you go to the grocery store and your kids sample some of the rice from the very nice lady and you feel like you need to buy a box, even though you never actually cook boxed rice and your kids not-secretly did not eat the rice and said it smelled funny.

Or something just looks tasty and you are tired, hungry, restless, upset, distracted and for whatever reason you think buying another box of tea or a different kind of cheese, even though you have three kinds already and you’ve been avoiding dairy for the past month, is going to make life feel somehow more complete.

I’ve been thinking about food waste for about a year (having read ReFed’s excellent report last summer, as well as Zero Waste Home around the same time) and have made shifts in our purchasing. I try to buy fewer impulse purchases. I’ve paid a lot more attention to portion sizes in lunch boxes and overall. I’ve gotten better about lovingly, yet firmly, reminding myself to eat the leftover Independence Day hamburger (I have been especially mindful of wasted meat which we treat as something of a sacrilege). But I still have more than a few stubborn holdovers. Old quinoa, and spelt purchased accidentally because I didn’t know it from sorghum.

So I thought it would be an interesting and informative (and, for me, fun) challenge to empty the refrigerator, freezer, and all cabinets and try not to discard anything in the process. I am packing up the whole kitchen in preparation for some work to be done on it in August and am hoping that a challenge like this will help me to pay attention to what we are buying and to be more mindful of using what we have.

Update (I started this post several days ago and progress has been made): I tried to use up the second-half of the bag of giant marshmallows by making microwave smores for the kids last night after dinner. One giant marshmallow each. My son was literally crazed. He did not know what to do with his body – I’ve never experienced speed, but I think I now know what it looks like. My kids eat some sugar, but mostly not so concentrated. The marshmallows had to go. I also had to throw away an entire shrink-wrapped baguette that we bought months ago to make garlic bread (why would bread be shrink wrapped for long shelf-life, but it was) and I stored it where I couldn’t see it and now it is trash. I am slowly trickling the remaining ‘junk food’ (animal crackers, cheese curls (Alabama cheetos)) into my kids in their lunch boxes and have mixed feelings about this.

I did, however, salvage some shrunken blueberries and mildly moldy nectarines/peaches/pineapple into my morning smoothie. I composted all traces of mold, in case you were wondering. Dinner last night was lima beans (previously frozen), almost over-ripe corn, an old box of black beans and brown rice (too spicy for the kids but i will finish today for lunch), and two hot dogs (also from the freezer).

It takes more work to not waste food. This morning I took the remnants of a roast chicken and am simmering in a gallon of water with that half-onion I mentioned last week, some just-past-the-date carrots, a wilting celery stalk, some garlic, salt, pepper, thyme and parsley (under 15 minutes prep, 4 hours on the stove). It will be delicious and bone broth is the new kale, apparently.

I want to make sure that the challenge doesn’t turn into another stress point, another to do, and a one-time flash in the pan (get it? flash in the…?). I would very much like to change my relationship with food, to eat once again with more reverence, more calm, more joy, more celebration, more presence, more breathing, more tasting, more laughing, more community, fewer threats, less negotiation, possibly less diversity, but more seasonality.

So that’s what I’m working on.

***

I also want to provide a quick update on past posts. The Happy Atmosphere Challenge is sort of on hold. I am planning to send a note to friends/readers who have expressed any interest and willingness and see about doing it together, but the timing for doing that is not great for me right now (husband gone for three weeks, amongst other semi-relevant excuses) so I’m in a holding pattern. I have been running the dishwasher at night without the heat dry cycle, I’ve been paying attention to eco-driving, and I signed up for some of our home’s energy to be renewable (I’ll share more about this but it is more than a quick update). I am hoping to maybe start that challenge in September – there never really seems to be a good time though because I have other things I’d like to start in September! Just wanted you to know I haven’t forgotten the challenge, I also haven’t started it, but I’ve made some small changes.

I guess there is just that one update for now. So many other things that I want to write about, in particular my recent thoughts on restlessness, recognizing the things I do to try to avoid restlessness and the things I might do instead. So that might be the next post. Meantime, I have to figure out what to do with all of this tahini.

Remembering to breathe

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Hungry this afternoon and browsing the refrigerator for options, I found a leftover Independence Day hamburger, some whipped cream (should I?), and a jar of pickles. And what have we here in the opaque silicone pot?  Half of a raw onion. Resigned to a few minutes of labor in exchange for sustenance, I took out a carton of eggs and a frying pan. I rinsed one day’s collected drawer dust out of the pan (longish story) and cracked an egg directly in. Remembering the pan was cold, and unlubricated, and that I was planning to scramble the eggs, I then poured the raw egg from pan into a bowl, rinsed, then dried, the pan again. Cracked two more eggs into the bowl, melted an unmeasured chunk of butter in the pan. Poured eggs in pan. Added salt. Fiddled with the gas on the stove – hotter, colder, hotter until the eggs were satisfactorily fluffy, salty, and warm. Peppered.

Reached blindly into the drawer and pulled a spoon from the bin allocated to forks. Returned wayward cutlery to quadrant assigned to teaspoons. Selected a salad fork (as shorter forks are both less menacing and more appropriate for non-dinner purposes). Sat down at the table, next to the open laptop. Put one warm bite into my mouth and began to read email. Didn’t taste the eggs. Shortly realized that plate was empty. Sat more quickly than is usual to attention. What is this sudden and quite unwelcome sensation running in a wave from my stomach through my throat? Am I about to vomit? No? Maybe?

Walked as fast as I could to the toilet. Crouched down. Burped. Spat. Waited. Three eggs remained on trajectory towards stomach, crisis averted.

Barring an intervention from the magical postman in the sky, I’m not pregnant. My son was sick with a virus last week, so that is the obvious explanation. Clearly, I have the same virus, a week later, and am feeling a bit sick to my stomach. That, or salmonella – though I’m guessing introduced bacteria would take longer to percolate and would result more likely in realized regurgitation rather than continued low-level nausea.

But I’m suspicious. I wonder. I’m having trouble sleeping again and this time it is not due to my ignorance of the caffeine in Kombucha. I’m caffeine-free and exhausted. My eyes are carefully guarded from all blue lights and screens during the twilight hours. And for the past few nights, I turn off the lamp and I’m lying there, mind traveling haphazardly down one path, jumping quickly to another, with no seeming theme or connection other than willing some divine intervention to give me answers, to guide me to a path.

How is all of this related to the phone call directly preceding my three-egg feast wherein two non-technical, creative types discussed the future of humanity considering advances in Artificial Intelligence?

Or to the essay I read last night by E.B. White, “Freedom,” from his (very highly recommended) book of essays One Man’s Meat? White writes, in 1940, in the midst of the Second World War:

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause.

I am not here to offer unsettling opinions or doom and gloom, but I am unsure how to arrange my life, what choices to make, how to be prepared for what is next in this world.

Reading good old E.B., I am not sure of his politics (a refreshing change from most of what one reads today which so very clearly promotes one dogmatic perspective or the other). He questions too much government interference, but is concerned about the wellbeing of other people. He fiercely loves and defends liberty and individual freedom, which in his case includes accepting and thoroughly enjoying diversity. When did the divorce of these things occur?

I feel this divide around me. I hear people — very close to me — saying that there will be two sides and I will have to choose one. Saying they can imagine a future when women have lost the rights we enjoy today, that strong forces exist with the intent of moving humanity in this direction.

And then there is AI (artificial intelligence, that is). Industries will be disrupted. Jobs will be lost. People will be desperate. There will be a revolution. The 1% versus everyone else.

I’m not sure it will go down like that. What I do know is that I will not be among those escaping to Mars. I’ll be here – on my beautiful planet. Living whatever life there is to live. With my last ounce of strength, or courage, or just a very strong will, loving my kids. Loving my friends.

In the face of all of this, and to keep from upchucking one’s eggs, so to speak, what can one do? Perhaps salvation, or at least moderate happiness, lies in defining a set of principles and devising an action plan. So towards those ends, a starting point:

Take care of my physical health.

Be a friend. Help people.

Learn new things. Read.

Stop accumulating.

Manage my chemicals.

Do more good.

Hug.

Breathe.

In a brave, new world I would feel better having a body that can get me where I need to go. I realize this won’t always be the case, but it can be the case now. The better a friend I am, the more likely there will be someone I can live with when the robots take my job, the more likely we can put our (non-mechanical) heads together to figure out how to solve whatever problems we face, the more likely I will have someone to laugh or cry with. If I figure out how to help people, I can probably scrape together a living in some way. Also, the world will just be nicer. As the world changes, I do not have to learn how to navigate Tumblr or read more on CNN or finish watching Game of Thrones. But if I keep learning how to be healthy, how to be a good friend, and how to help people, I’ll either be ok, or I won’t. But I will feel better. Reading (fiction, essays, poetry) helps me connect with human beings outside of this moment in time with other concerns, other fears. I can see which of their worries came true and which didn’t. I can feel how humanity has been good at heart for so very long, restoring my faith that goodness does seem to prevail, even if one is unfortunate enough to live through a dark period of history (of which there are many). Moreover, reading (and I’m not talking about news or Facebook) helps to remind me that people are people. They want things and they fear things and they do things but they are usually more like me than I expect, and even if they don’t see things my way, they aren’t as ignorant, or as selfish, as I might imagine. They are in their situation, doing their best with what they’ve been taught. Regarding material possessions, I have no need for a collection of My Precious Love-em’s Figurines, or of perfect shoes for any occasion (though I would be sad to part with my Paragon tea cups with matching saucers). These will all be lost or broken in the revolution. As it is said, you can’t take them with you.

Move my body. Eat vegetables. Be a good friend. Help. Learn. Read. Stuff is not life. Understand how marketers use my chemicals and stop giving my power away. Stop letting them buy my attention, my ability to focus, my precious time/life for so little! DO GOOD! Support people working towards my vision of a secure and healthy world. Hug as many people as will let me. Breathe.

Breathe. (I never remember to do this. I’m working on it.)

In.

Out.

Breathe. (Probably it is just a virus, but I will keep breathing, just in case.)

Why did I start a blog?

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I don’t know what I want.

I kind of know what I want – I have a 10-year vision written down and it sounds nice. I want to be healthy, for my kids to be healthy, for everyone I love to be healthy, for everyone on earth to be healthy. To walk outside and feel the sunshine and the breeze, to breathe clean air, to drink clean water. To sit by the ocean and hear the waves and smell the salt air. For there not to be tons of plastic microbeads in the ocean being eaten by fish being eaten by me.

I’d like to be more patient. I’d like to exercise – but not in a gym because I cannot stand the smell or the feel or the screens or the machines. I’d like to have a comfortable sofa to sit on with a friend.

So, in the broader sense I know what I want, or I have an idea of a life arrangement that I imagine would be very nice.

I have a pretty nice life arrangement as it is – maybe that is why it is hard to be clear about what I want. Because, in truth, I don’t really want for anything. I have a sofa. It is hideously uncomfortable. But I have friends who are very kind and will just use extra pillows and seem to like me enough to deal with the lack of seating and still want to come be with me. I think that’s pretty lucky.

I am lucky enough to have all of the essentials. I can afford healthy food, security, shelter. I have loving relationships and good physical health.

So what is this feeling in my chest? Why, this morning, when my kids were sitting at the breakfast table, bright, shining, bursting with life and happiness, did I command silence and that they quickly finish their food because we might be five minutes late for summer camp? Why didn’t I wrap them in my arms, hold their joyfulness close to me, let it fill all the cracks, kiss them, put on their backpacks, walk peacefully to the car and deliver them to camp – to camp – possibly a few minutes late.

My husband asked me why I wanted to start a (nother) blog. He wasn’t being unsupportive, just trying to help me think about what I should spend my time doing. In the past 15 months, I have taken a musical theatre class, worked on a novel, intermittently blogged on another blog, started songwriting lessons, written essays that I want to try to get published but have not submitted, written ‘children’s’ stories that are not age appropriate, read tons of non-fiction, been addicted to ipad games, played my guitar and piano sporadically, bought a (still unused) ukulele, quit and rejoined Facebook, read way more news than in the previous 10 years combined. (I have also taken on a reasonable amount of contract work, primarily copy editing technical documents related to ‘sustainable development,’ and started selling beauty products).

I told my husband I was starting the blog because I would enjoy it — for fun. (I think I am remembering correctly.) I like to write, I like to read what I wrote last week. I like to come up with “programs” for myself and try them out and report on the results. So I think that originally the way I convinced myself to get started with this blog was that it would be enjoyable.

But in addition to that, I will tell you this. After my first several posts on this blog were published I felt some relief. Because there is a need inside me to make sure, if I die tomorrow, that there is a letter somewhere telling my kids who I am, what I love, what I think matters, some advice that they probably won’t take now but might value later. There have been two days in my life when I’ve actually sat down and started writing this letter to them (both nights before setting out to do something I was scared of doing). But after I started writing this blog, I felt better. I felt like some of what was inside was now written down somewhere that they could find it. And that is a comfort to me.

But where does that need come from? Surely if I am living my values, living in a way that shows what I love, what matters, they can just read my life and know what I would tell them. Yes, precisely, which is why I need it written down somewhere, because I have not yet figured out how to arrange the clues of my lived life to truly demonstrate what matters most.

Another thing: When I started my last blog, I posted a video of myself singing a song I had written. A friend of mine, later that week, sent me a recording of herself that she had just made, singing a song she had written 15 years ago. She thanked me for inspiring her to just sit down, in her den, and record it. Another friend wrote that she had started working on a song of her own.

Google’s Larry Page has said that Alphabet is looking to work on ‘billion people problems’ – how to build solutions, like self-driving cars, that can help a billion people. I guess I work on one person problems.

I made a star chart for myself and my husband (I promise I will explain more on this). It was really good for me, and he was a good sport. It improved our life or our feelings about our life. I shared it with a few friends. Some of them really enjoyed it and it improved their lives (or their feelings about their life).

So, in addition to wanting to write things down so they exist somewhere, I also think that sometimes I have ideas that are interesting and helpful to other people. I don’t exactly know what I might share that is helpful, so I err on the side of sharing more than less. I don’t know if this is the right approach, I guess I’m experimenting.

So, my faithful readers, this is all to say that I’m working it out. Am I writing to eventually have a book of different “challenges”? I definitely have a lot of challenges for myself that I think it would be fun to take, and share. Am I writing to build a platform for my ideas? Am I writing so someday someone asks me to speak about something? Am I writing to help others? Am I writing to figure myself out? Am I writing to practice? Am I writing to have fun? Am I writing to laugh or to help others laugh?

I don’t know.

And so it gets tricky. I write. I share. I think of each of you who has subscribed. Am I going to offend anyone I love? Are you going to lose faith in me? Am I going to be able to be authentic, am I going to lapse into someone else’s voice?

My other blog was easier because I didn’t share on Facebook and I’m pretty sure I only had one ‘regular’ reader. So I didn’t have all of this conflict when thinking about what to write – I just wrote – but then I didn’t have the energy that comes from knowing that people are reading.

I love the Happy Atmosphere Challenge. I have, for the most part, not gotten started implementing. But I loved writing it, thinking about, and I learned a lot about myself which I had meant to share in my next post which instead has turned into this. But having written it I am afraid that you won’t like it, that it is depressing, that it is not perfect, that it is not what you care about, that it won’t help.

So I get stuck. I have to decide what I’m doing. I also have to have some time to think. I also need to get an ergonomically appropriate writing situation. I also need to exercise. But there will be quests and challenges soon to help with these things. I have not played ipad games since starting the blog, and that alone is a victory over my chemicals.

Have a beautiful day. I hope you feel some sun and some wind on your face today. I will.

The Happy Atmosphere Challenge

The Happy Atmosphere Challenge

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I have been hating climate change for over two decades. Willing it to be untrue. Sure that the scientists (one of whom I am married to) were missing something, that our beautiful, resilient planet would have some trick up its sleeve.

Reading about it, I shut down. I’m either hopelessly bored by all of the jargon or what I hear is all the things I do that are bad. Invisible gases will doom the earth and humanity and all I need to do is stop using electricity and driving. It is that simple.

It is not on one’s bucket list to be a “greedy American”. You don’t want to doom the planet or for little kids growing up on islands to be afraid they won’t have a home say, next year. But your house was built in 1940, your job is fifteen miles away, and you can’t afford a Tesla.

Plus, it seems like your feeble efforts to save 2% of your fuel by taking heavy items out of your trunk is a teardrop in the ocean of climate change and you know your neighbor doesn’t give a flip about the climate. You notice her sprinkler watering the street every morning, see her back door open all day in 95 degree heat, smell her grilling those juicy feedlot ribeyes.

Better hope that a widdly-wee machine is invented to fix the problem, if it actually turns out to be as bad as (more and more) people say it might be. It’s too big for one gal.

In the midst of this hopelessness, or denial, you might receive emails from well meaning NGOs about what you need to do. Call X to “demand” action (though I am not sure, in a democracy, that one ought to demand). Reject the big bad oil or coal companies that we oppose (yet depend on to get to work each day or to run hospital equipment). Divest — do not give your money to the bad guys. Telling stories designed to make you feel — thinking this feeling will prompt action.

But this fear and anger, guilt and sadness — these are paralyzing.

I say this because I have spent many more hours than I would have preferred reading the science, seeking to (mostly) understand it, and recognizing it is dangerous and unfair in its potential impacts. And in all this time (I wrote my first article about climate change in 1999) I have taken few steps in my personal life to decrease my ‘carbon footprint’.

I might go on Facebook and feel upset about Paris, or any other thing, might sign a petition or make a phone call. But hells teeth my house gets a slight bit less comfortable if I turn the thermostat up by two degrees. What we need is a global agreement, not my messing around with my thermostat or declining a trip to Mexico!

(The answer is too big for one gal. Of course. That is why all of the governments on the planet have been working for 24 years to come up with a solution that they could all work towards together. An approach recognizing that the wealthiest countries on Earth got to where they are in part from burning stuff and sticking gas in the air (unknowingly at first) and wanting to make sure countries who have burned less don’t remain impoverished but also don’t burn the same amount of stuff we did to get where we are.)

But back to my inaction: If I were to use one of the available “carbon calculators”, a tool to help me understand the volume of invisible gases that my family creates through different activities (driving, heating, etc.), I can come up with a number, say, 50 tons each year. Then I can take steps, large and small, to decrease this number. Maybe I work really hard and cut it in half – in half! That’s not an easy feat, but do-able. But after all that work, and expense, I am still generating 25 tons of emissions each year. After all that effort I am doing less bad. But still bad. Focusing on that number, and on decreasing it, in the end still draws my attention to what I don’t want to be doing.

It is difficult to summon the energy, the spirit, the will to act from hate, or from fear, or against something. There is a powerful surge of emotion but those emotions drive me straight into the arms of my beloved world-building, pastoral iPad games – a world of no feelings and cheap, endless serotonin and dopamine. But what I know about myself is this — that I miraculously somehow seem to find the energy to act from love, from optimism, and for something. I have not managed, in twenty years, to take substantial action to do less bad. But I have a hunch that I could take a lot of action to do more good.

So that’s the plan. And in this spirit, I have come up with a challenge for myself — and for anyone else who might also be motivated by doing more good. A moderately epic battle to support good guys everywhere. And when I finish the challenge, I will decrease my energy bills, improve my health, breathe cleaner air, have less road rage (this would be a pretty big win), support job growth, support local farmers, waste less food, educate girls (which is good for girls and boys), increase carbon in soil and forests (where we like it), drive innovation in energy, batteries, lighting, appliances, and transit, and incidentally send fewer invisible gases to the sky (details on challenge activities can be found here or downloaded below).

The challenge is meant to be played as a game – on your own, as a family, with a friend, a group, or a virtual community.

I take on this challenge accepting that doing something, taking some concrete action, may not fix the problem. Doesn’t change anyone’s mind, might not change the world, takes time to figure out, and can cost money (and save money, there is a bright side!). But doing something– in this spirit — is good for me. It directs my thought towards what is possible, what is feasible, what I can support. For me, it’s the only option.

The challenge is a work in progress that will be updated as I go. I’ll share further thoughts and resources under the Happy Atmosphere Challenge. If anyone else in this wide world decides to take the challenge, I would love to hear about it, either in the blog comments or through the contact form. Resources or tips shared via comments will improve the challenge and be added to the resource section. Corrections or different opinions are very welcome. You can subscribe to the blog to receive further details, resources, and updates for the challenge.

I am hopeful. Hopeful that there is something we don’t yet understand that will mean that all of the models run by all of the scientists don’t come to pass. Hopeful that the pace of innovation is breathtaking and people are working — this very minute — on solutions that, given our investment and support, could store carbon back in the earth by 2050 (more about the book Drawdown in future posts). And hopeful that – one month from today – I’ll (finally) be able to report on the multiple steps forward – towards the good – that have eluded me for too long.

Download the Happy Atmosphere Challenge Now!

First mission is coming soon!

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

First up, I am excited to report that in two weeks the Jenny Goodguts blog has already passed the total number of subscribers from the Jenaissance blog (in over two years) – hip hip hooray!! I will be sure to report back when we pass 100 and when the first person subscribes who I do not personally know ; )

I will be asking for your help in sharing posts with folks who might enjoy them, but still working on building the site a bit (of course, you are always invited to share anything you like at any time!).

The first mission will be out ANY DAY NOW. I’m struggling with it a bit because while I thrive on complexity and lists (that look like tax forms, as my editor/husband might have put it when reviewing the mission last night), I think many people are likely to take a look at the ‘game’ in its current format and be a bit overwhelmed. So I’m going to take another day or two before sharing.

I also want to let readers know that the  “healthy atmosphere/healthy wallet/support innovation/market-driven/creating jobs/longer life/personal responsibility/loving God’s creation/green earth” challenge (or something like that) is going to be super fun, but it is in some ways a more difficult mission than I had imagined beginning with. It just seemed like the time was right and I’ve been waiting to do some of these things for too long.

I hope you will consider playing the game along with me — I will provide as many resources as I can to help you on the journey! There are many ways to play. As a sort of preview and to get you thinking, there is a large menu of actions. Each action is worth a certain number of points. You can play on your own and set a target for the number of points you want to earn to get either a gold, silver or bronze badge. You can get a group together and set a target number of points and when the group as a whole reaches that number you do something (have a potluck, have a party, go on a picnic, donate to charity, group leaders posts something silly on Facebook — you can be creative). The other option is to divide into two teams to challenge each other and the team that scores the most points wins something (party provided by other team, etc) – this would work well in a workplace, that’s my vision ; )

Here’s a hint: the easiest way to get a big score is to find someone who probably hasn’t done a lot of the things on the list and see if they’d play with you. I will be providing resources and links to help and the team can support each other if people need help figuring anything out.

So that’s what I have in mind. Now I just have to take this tax form and make it look more like a game. Stay tuned and start thinking about who you could play with!

Paris and Pittsburgh

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

(sigh.)

This is not how it was supposed to go. There’s been no basic training and I’m not ready. But it looks like Jenny has a quest for me and she won’t take no for an answer. I was hoping my first nemesis could be Clutterista. I knew The Usurer was too big a fish to fry without some experience and better secret weapons. But there’s Loop-O, the lord of indecision, who I was excited to do battle with, and Glossy (that terrifying vixen who stares at me in her different forms when I’m at the check-out counter in the grocery store, whispering that I’m not quite enough).

But no, I am a part of this world and I live in real time and real time has its own momentum and its own needs. So here we go…

My first “real” job out of college was working as an intern at Yes! Magazine. They happened to be putting together an issue about climate change, a topic that I had no interest in – at all. Yuck. But ok, I took the job and did some research on carbon footprints and renewables and dusted my hands of the whole thing. This was in the era of Y2K — maybe this climate stuff was overblown and would just go away, right?

Over time, along with significant personal aversion, everywhere I went it seemed like things started revolving around climate. My Masters research was on climate. That’s all anyone seemed to be talking about. Bor-ing. Eventually I started working on UN climate negotiations during my time at Conservation International. I even married someone who studies climate change. Truth is, I can’t stand talking about climate change or even thinking about it because it is  a) boring and b)terrifying. TERRIFYING!!!

Can’t we just keep living like we are living here in America and everyone worldwide can eventually live this way and be happy and have more, more, more and God will fix the climate??

I have been looking – as hard as I can – for some (legitimate) reason to have hope that maybe climate change won’t be as bad as people say. I promise you, if there was any good evidence to discredit climate change I would tape it up to my mirror and look at it every morning. I want it to be untrue. But the truth is the reason I can’t get away from this dang climate change stuff is that none of us can and nothing we are working on can either until we do something about it (the Chinese did not pay me to say that).

But do I own a bike helmet? Is my house powered with renewable energy? Have I even invested in insulation? No. It costs money, it is never the priority, and it takes time to figure it out and change.

I need time to think. I feel like I understand why 22 senators wrote a letter urging Trump to get out of the Paris Agreement, there is a somewhat clear cause and effect in my mind to explain that. But what I want to understand is why my mom’s friend thinks climate change isn’t real, or doesn’t “believe” that if you take a terrarium and fill it with carbon dioxide the temperature inside the box will increase. That’s physics. You can do it yourself. And we know where carbon dioxide comes from. We can measure it, it has been measured.

Jenny Goodguts is a systems gal. She is not into politics or propaganda – on either side of the political spectrum. She knows there are people in every part of the world who are scared, disappointed, overwhelmed, angry, worried about their kids for lots of different reasons. And those same people love something and mostly work hard every day until they can’t anymore and then they play iPad games, watch more CSI, get drunk or [insert additional ways to escape].

Jenny likes to think about actions and reactions, about what an individual person can do to address root causes. Making people feel bad, or feel scared, is usually not so motivating and mostly divisive and helps us to build our defenses and further congeal into sides. Those of us who “believe” in climate change (do people “believe” in physics?) are circling around our despair, disappointment, pointing fingers and sharing statistics that we all already agree with. The “others” are not reading these articles. They don’t care what the MIT scientists said yesterday after the speech in the Rose Garden. 0.2 and 0.9 promise seriously different futures, but the only people paying attention to the difference in those numbers already care.

We care. But please see above. Bike helmet (uncheck). Renewable power in home (uncheck). Food miles. Food waste. Quarter-pounders. Investments. Old appliances. Driving son to school (less than half mile away). Not carpooling.

So the first quest is going to be a climate quest. Part of me wishes it were something else to take my mind off of the possible ramifications of what just happened. But this will be the crucible for beginning to forge my super powers – one of which has to be a method for not slipping into despair in the face of fear.

There is TONS of good news on the climate change front. There is so much happening in business, finance, government, communities, cities, research. It is  solvable (unless we’ve already passed a tipping point but lets not worry about that here) and there is money to be made, there are jobs to be created, songs to be sung, coral to be saved. There are things I can do this very minute (Like, I just turned my thermostat up, for example. Just now.)

I’m going to spend a bit of time this weekend mapping out the quest and will return first thing next week with a plan of action. Until then, just try to eat less beef, dust off your bike, and turn up your thermostat. We’ll get more creative next week.

Who is Jenny Goodguts?

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Jenny Goodguts saved my life.

Jenny Goodguts, a doctor’s appointment, and a lucky New Hampshire quarter (face up!). Saved my life may be a touch of overstatement, but I can tell you with full confidence that they brought me back to life.

There is nothing Jenny told me that I hadn’t been told before. Who can ever explain why we are finally able to do something that seemed impossible or hopelessly unappealing at one time?

Here’s what I can tell you. I was reading the book SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal (more about this in future posts). Jane, a game developer, has researched the psychology and neuroscience of games for over 15 years. She had a traumatic brain injury and created a game to help herself recover. Her game worked so well at boosting resilience (etc.) that she shared it with others recovering from similar injuries and then even more widely. Her TED talk on SuperBetter has been viewed millions of times.

One element in the SuperBetter approach is to adopt a secret identity. Choosing a heroic nickname can help bring out your challenge-facing attributes (such as determination), while also helping you to connect with your sense of humor and take things a bit less seriously.

But I couldn’t think of one. I know Vera Voce was a possibility at one point. I felt a bit stuck.

Please remember, at the time I was reading SuperBetter I was nursing an addiction to iPad games that I was desperate to stop playing. I would read a chapter. Feel excited. And then the next day I would play the game. Read a chapter. Know this time I was going to really stop playing. Massage my aching shoulder/hand. Next day play the game. Repeat.

Then I went to the doctor. She had results from some lab work that involved my toilet, a small collection dish, and some spatulas. The results were not excellent. Basically my insides are populated almost exclusively by E. coli bacteria and almost nothing else. I’ve been working to protect biodiversity in nature for 20 years and there’s none left in my own body. I didn’t like this. I also didn’t like a couple of things she said about markers for cancer and so I bought the pills she prescribed (all over-the-counter stuff) and came home.

I looked in my kitchen cabinet at the other supplements she had suggested five months prior. The ones that I had taken occasionally on a random morning if Mercury was in retrograde or the wind was right. I knew it was important, if I wanted my body to work, if I wanted to stop being tired and depressed, if I wanted to be able to do good work in the world, take care of my family, enjoy my life, stop playing those freaking games, I knew I needed to buckle down and take care of myself.

So of course I took one of every single supplement that she had recommended from November through March and then went on with my day. I went to the grocery store and bought kefir and sauerkraut. I went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning, and there she was. Sitting right next to my bed. Jenny Goodguts knew exactly what I should do. She told me to make an excel spreadsheet (I’m pretty good at that). The spreadsheet was divided into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There were checkboxes at the appropriate times for all of the actions required to rebuild my gut flora. I made the spreadsheet as directed, taped it to my kitchen wall, and within a week my skin felt different. My skin looked different. I was eating sauerkraut every freaking day.

But I was still playing the game. About a week after meeting Jenny, I found a 2000 New Hampshire quarter face up outside of a Trader Joe’s. Once again, Jenny to the rescue! She knew, as we all do, that one cent equals one lucky day, 25 cents equals 25 lucky days. Face up, of course. I’m not sure if face down is half the number of days or just nothing, that’s never been clear to me. But 25 days of luck! Well, you don’t just squander that. Jenny had me tape the quarter to a piece of paper, write 25 empty spaces underneath, and tape the paper on the kitchen wall, right next to the excel spreadsheet. Each morning I would check off one space and she challenged me: You cannot play the game during your 25 days of luck or else no luck!

I did not play the game for 25 days. Oh buddy was I tempted. I would walk to the former scene of the crime (the corner in the kitchen with the 3-second warning before detection) and I would crave that dopamine/seratonin hit. I would want something to distract me from myself, from the decisions I can’t make, the work I’m not doing, the work I am doing, some of the monotony of my current life situation (laundry and dishes, anyone?). But the quarter was staring right at me from that very corner. And it worked.

Were the 25 days lucky?

For me, a 25-day (and continuing) game-free streak was all the luck I needed. I also developed this blog, from scratch, and figured out how to send posts via email, something I had been wanting to learn for over two years. I got my first non-spam blog comment from a reader I don’t know. I found out that the caffeine in kombucha was responsible for my insomnia, rather than all of my good ideas keeping me awake all night. I learned about some great local places for adopting a dog. I talked to more people. I asked more questions. I reached out. I tried things. Other things happened and I might not even know yet if they are good luck.

The cool thing about the quarter experiment was living in a way that encouraged good luck to happen. When you think you are possibly in a lucky streak, and you want to make the most of it, you get off your butt and do stuff. And it turns out that is more satisfying than planting wheat on your farm to make into a loaf of bread because you need two loaves to make a hamburger.

Dear readers, please rest assured that Jenny’s primary mission is not balancing gut flora. Though she can definitely come up with some pretty convincing arguments for why this is important to saving the wider world. Jenny works for good and she’s got guts (and she, incidentally, does have a full complement of healthy microbes). As soon as I met her, I connected with the name and it gives me energy so there you have the full explanation of where she came from!

I have been wanting to make challenges and secret missions for myself and my friends for over a year (or maybe a decade, or four). I’m not a super hero. I often have trouble making decisions, I often have trouble following through with (all my ‘good’) ideas, I have trouble eating enough veggies even though I KNOW it makes my life so much better all around. I just ate chocolate for lunch.

But if I sit down and have a few minutes of quiet and ask Jenny what to do, she mostly knows. She is definitely a results, not reasons, gal (more on this later). She can make a list and say: if you do this, if you stick with it, if you have a spreadsheet, or some stickers, you will get to the other side, you will learn, your life will be more in line with your heart, and you will feel good. And if you get other people onboard, well, watch out! It’s still partially a serotonin/dopamine thing, but the good kind.

So this blog is the story of my (ongoing) adventures with Jenny Goodguts including multiple excel spreadsheets, quests, missions, banks, bicycle helmets, a songwriting teacher named Karl, resistance, and more than likely some stickers. Stay tuned for the first mission — basic training!

RESOURCES:
SuperBetter website
Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life (TED talk)
Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world (TED talk)
SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully

Not holding out for a hero

Not holding out for a hero

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I have an addiction and a theme song and only one can prevail.

Right now, it’s the addiction. I’ve been playing Farmville 2, or Tropic Escape, or now Hay Day, on my iPad since early October 2016. I can put it away for a few days and then somehow the iPad is in its sneaky little spot, hidden from all view except mine, and I’m checking my crops, making a mango daiquiri or chicken feed. When no one is looking, I’ll take a quick nip, make sure I’ve planted a new row of cotton, heartbeat racing as I hear feet coming down the stairs. Quickly close out the game, press the button so the screen goes blank, and move towards the sink so it will look like I was washing dishes the whole time (but I’m not sure anyone is really fooled).

My hand hurts. I have a repetitive strain injury from playing. Those crops can’t harvest themselves and how will I know what happens when I unlock the wharf unless I make it to level 35? Oh, all that happens is now I get a new kind of stars for making apple pie? Maybe level 40 will blow my mind, let’s wait and see. I steadfastly refuse to pay a cent to play, so all I invest is time. With time, you can achieve the same things as someone who is willing to spend $1.99 for 100 keys/gems. So, I put in the time and play “for free”.

I started playing in October 2016, at a time when life was a bit too much for me to manage and I was having trouble dealing with my thoughts. I didn’t intentionally start playing to ease myself through an overwhelming life episode, I just happened to be introduced to the game at a time when total escape from reality for periods of time was welcome and seemed helpful to my continued baseline functioning.

Then THE ELECTION happened and I didn’t know what to do with myself or which way was up. My addiction had fertile ground in which to build from one game, initially, to a new game, then to a third game, and then all three at once.

But what, you may be wondering, about the theme song?? Well, when I’m not addicted to repetitive world-building games with very little skill or thought required where I don’t even engage in the social aspects (though I did accept a friend request from Ferma Maria, so now I’m crossing linguistic borders to build agrarian allies, a stranger who sometimes purchases my extra carrots), I like to make up games to play in real life. Challenges for myself and my family. If we earn 20 stars we can get ice cream, here are the criteria, GO! I’m that kid whose parents used sticker charts to get me to brush my teeth and I just never stopped wanting those shiny gold stars.

Ah, but here’s the rub: for a large portion of my life, I was not in the driver’s seat with respect to the aforementioned stars. I have spent almost 40 years grasping for stars that others were willing to award me for doing whatever they deemed worthy. If there was a gold star to be had, I was IN. Just tell me the criteria.

Approaching 40, I had a revelation and decided that I am through getting my stars from other people. I am going to spend my days, months, years, decades (whatever I am granted) figuring out what I think has value and doggedly pursuing those stars.

Just prior to my descent into virtual pastoralism, I was starting to think about transforming myself into a superhero. That is, outlining missions for myself, accomplishing them, and giving myself a badge. A real, physical badge (not an icon) that I put somewhere and the wall of badges grows and grows.

Why a superhero? Well, when I think about Jennifer (that’s me) never ever giving another cent to those jerks at *insert Big Bank name here* (my mother has counseled me that there’s no need to single out one particular financial institution — so for now, to keep her blood pressure in check, I will omit particulars), well, I’m motivated but it never seems to take priority (forget about the game for the time being, I’m talking about my normal, non-addicted, just getting through life with all of the to-dos of a middle class, American self). But if I imagine that nefarious bandit “The Usurer” and think of myself in a battle of wits and skill with this ne’er-do-well, magically I get more energy. I feel possibility and excitement.

One morning, while thinking about becoming a superhero / finally summoning up the energy/time/focus/resources/guts/willpower to do the things that I want to do to live in the world as I imagine it can be, I was driving my kids somewhere and letting them choose songs to listen to. When it was my son’s turn he chose Come With Me Now by the Kongos and it immediately became my superhero theme song. I can’t help but believe that any morning where I get out of bed, put on my sweatpants and the shirt from the day before as long as it smells ok (my usual uniform as a stay-at-home/working mom), and listen to that song, I just think that would be a day for fighting crime, even if that crime is the amount of junk in my basement.

When I hear that song I want to DO SOMETHING. And by something I don’t mean write a report, tweet a hashtag, or redecorate a room in the house. Break some sh*t. For good. Or at least go on a binge and unsubscribe from a bunch of catalogs.

I want to stop mindlessly and passively supporting bad guys. I want to do more to find and help the good guys. I want to develop my super powers, have a super cool hideout (with appropriate super hero gear and secret weapons) where I go to make my plans.

While I sit (or usually stand, hidden in the corner of the kitchen where I have a three second warning before being caught in the act) building my farms, I often wish to myself that I was spending that time building something real. In my real life. In the real world. And here’s the thing: there are a billion things I could do today to take care of the world, my community, my family, and myself and also make life nicer all around. Some of the things are tiny and some are huge but even a huge thing is made up of lots and lots of tiny things. There are so many possibilities for taking action and making change. I love writing. I love trying new things. I love writing about trying new things. I love games. I love making up games for myself and for other people. I love thinking about how things could work and solving problems.

So here’s what I propose as a means of breaking my addiction and moving in the direction of superhero, an aspiration that is questionably ever reached by a mere mortal without a secret underground lair and lacking multiple, or even a single, millions of dollars or an advanced degree in physics: I will begin my quest and share it in this blog.

I will publish, at least once a week, and share my missions and their criteria and then report on my success, including sharing the badge that I have/have not earned. If anyone reading along is interested, he/she can earn the same badges along with me or at whatever speed he/she is capable/interested in. I’ll share quest-related essays, links to inspiring sites, songs I’m writing and other amateur artwork, info from books I’m reading, heck maybe I’ll even put in a podcast or two one day.

I retain the right to change any/all terminology as something catchy occurs to me. I retain the right to change the entire game at any point. I retain the right to disappear and never write again if I become overwhelmed. But I will try to come back if that happens.

We make the world and we make culture. And no matter who is in the White House, there is a lot an individual can do to not empower bad guys and to support good guys. There is so much possibility and so much to be hopeful about. And so much that is utterly terrifying. So today I’m going to walk away from my iPad and, like Princess Poppy in Trolls, I’m going to choose hope. But just like Princess Poppy, I can’t do it alone. You can help me by letting me know that you are reading this, that any of it makes sense to you, that you sometimes wish you could be a superhero too. If you’d like to follow along with me and my adventures, you can ask to be added to the email list to receive updates. Stay tuned, my next post will answer the question on everyone’s mind… Just who IS Jenny Goodguts?