In celebration of my blog's 20th anniversary, I'm having guest posters every week leading up to the big day.
Today we have The Birchwood Pie Project as our guest!
Birchie blogs over at The Birchwood Pie Project, where she writes about local travel, particularly in her quest to see Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, what's she reading, eating, and how things are going with her puppy, Doggo. She's a reformed runner, is making her way through AFI's Top 100 movies, and you can count on her to tell you all the nitty gritty details about if the book is better than the movie (yes, yes, it is).
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Happy 20th Engie! It is an honor to join you for your 20-year blogging anniversary, especially considering that I’ve only been blogging for 13 years.
In the words of Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In that spirit, I don’t remember exactly how I found Engie’s blog – maybe someone linked to her or maybe it was through a comment – but I do remember vividly how I felt when I clicked the link and started reading. At the time I’d stopped reading a lot of blogs because they had gone the SEO route and had become a mess of nothing, but here was A Real Person! Writing about Real Things! I squealed with delight and clicked through post after post. I still feel that way when I see a new post from her pop up in Feedly, and if you think her blog is great, you should meet her in person! I had the pleasure of doing that this summer.
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NGS and Birchie! Together! At House on the Rock! |
Here’s the thing, the longer that you blog, the more you’ve already written about so the more that you assume that everyone just knows all of your stuff. The other thing is that blogging is one huge party where you know some people very well, but you’re always meeting new folks and you have to get their story and catch them up on yours. So I thought that I would introduce myself to my soon-to-be-new-friends, and reintroduce myself to the people that I already know.
Here are 20 things about me and about the things that I blog about.
1. I love it when people ask my husband and me how we met. The answer is: OK Cupid! It’s my favorite website that I haven’t visited since January 2013. I was so scared to try online dating and of course I met him on the first day. According to OKC, Hubs and I are 80% compatible, and as far as I can tell the 20% is that he doesn’t like spicy food and he counts our anniversary as the day that we “met” online and I count it as the day that we met IRL a few weeks later.
2. I knew from a very early age that I did not want to have kids, and I also thought that it would be kind of neat to be a stepmom. And then it all came true. I am a stepmom to two teenage boys, who are heading into their sophomore year of college and senior year of high school. Kind of neat? It is AWESOME beyond my wildest dreams.
3. I am both a cat and a dog person. I grew up with cats, and was always afraid of/disgusted by dogs until I was in my 30s and one night a friend’s German Shepherd growled at me and then curled up next to me on the couch and put her head in my lap. I used to dog sit for my friend when she was on vacation and I loved that dog dearly. The next special dog that came into my life was Stepdog, who was technically my husband’s ex-wife’s dog, but lived at our house. She and I were “the girls” in a house full of boys.
Stepdog passed last year, leaving a void that we knew could only be filled by another dog. We had just gotten to the point where we knew we were ready to let another dog love us when Hubs saw a shelter posting for a seven month old German Shepherd mix, and that’s how Doggo came into our lives.
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Note from NGS: This photo was titled "pretty feet" and LOOK AT DOGGO'S ADORABLE PAWS. |
Adjusting to puppyhoood has been incredibly difficult but incredibly rewarding. We can’t imagine life without her, but she does make it hard to blog sometimes...most of my nights look like this and there’s no way I’m getting a laptop on my lap.
4. My husband is a software developer and I am an accountant, so you know we get invited to all of the lit parties. All signs indicate that the little apples have not fallen far from the tree – my oldest stepson is majoring in computer science with a focus on cybersecurity, and the youngest is looking at engineering. My husband and I have worked at home since 2020 and have no plans to ever work “outside of the home” again.
5. I have a masters in accounting, but my undergrad degree is in Nutrition and Dietetics. I’ve forgotten all of the chemistry and biology that I had to learn, but I will never forget day one of my first nutrition class where I learned the one absolute rule of nutrition: “there is no such thing as a good food and no such thing as a bad food."
6. Work has become much less rewarding to me in recent years. Luckily when I was 22 my parents gave me a book called
Your Money or Your Life, where I learned about financial independence and that it was possible to start things in motion back then on a small income. My only motivation was to make sure that I would always have my needs taken care of, and later to make sure that my family would have their needs taken care of, without focusing on a specific number. During an unhappy time at work last year, I realized that I was at the finish line. I’m taking this year to get more comfortable with the idea of not working, and I plan to quit next year. I won’t be retiring “to” anything, I’ll just be doing all of the non-work things that I do now and that should make for a full life. My husband is happy in his job and can’t imagine ever retiring...but I say stick around until he sees me not working and let’s see if maybe he doesn’t change his mind.
7. Enough about work! My hobbies are blogging and the things that I blog about – cooking, fitness, watching TV and movies, reading, and most recently, travel. Let’s do a deep dive on all of those things!
8. I started out as a recipe blogger, and later on when I had a family and needed inspiration for family meals, I started writing about our meals.
9. It’s all very fine and well for me to tell you that I’ve been writing about meals for years...but how about I give you a few favorite recipes just in case you’re looking for something to make for dinner tonight? Here are four recipes that everyone in my family loved, plus one that only I loved.
(PS I do not like chicken but my family does, so I can verify that the two chicken recipes work for both chicken lovers and chicken haters)
10.
Chicken and Basil Fettucine Pasta – this is a Blue Apron recipe and please be assured that I have never ordered from Blue Apron. I found out about this recipe from another blogger’s sponsored post. My time/money/sanity saving tips are that you can use plain old dried pasta of your choice instead of “fresh basil fettucine pasta” and cream cheese is a perfect substitute for mascarpone.
14.
Rainbow Plant Life's Braised Tofu – this thing is not like the other things, so guess which of the five recipes is that one that my family wouldn’t touch but I adore? This one is just exquisite.
15. My fitness life has evolved quite a bit during my blogging days. I went from someone who casually ran to someone who was obsessed with running. Later on running and I had a falling out, and I realized that fitness needed to be moved down on my priority list. After two years of blissfully not running, I started doing short runs a few weeks ago...what is the meaning of all of this? Who knows? I’ll let you know when I know but for now the moral of the story is that it’s OK to be passionately into something and then move on to other things.
16. I love good TV and good movies...and yes I know that what I think is good is not everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve loved classic movies since junior high, and sometimes my friends tease me and ask if I’m aware that movies have sound and color nowadays. Hey I like what I like!
17. Books! Right now reading has to have the lowest priority in my life, but it’s still something that I adore and great pleasure out of. I only read for 10-20 minutes right before bed, and if a book isn’t holding my attention I will mercilessly DNF that sucker. Probably the biggest difference between my IRL life and my blogging life is that I can’t remember the last time I talked about books with someone IRL. In the blogging world, I do nothing but talk about books! I get so many great reading ideas from the Cool Bloggers’ Community. In particular I often use Engie’s reviews to decide if I want to read something or not.
18. Is the book always better than the movie? Usually! The only exceptions that I can think of offhand are The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity.
19. Travel went from being something that I didn’t care about to something that I am obsessed with. The rest of my family is in Boy Scouts, and that’s where my husband’s limited PTO has to go right now. A few years ago I realized that all of his vacation going toward Boy Scouts meant no vacation for me and I couldn’t remember the last time that I had taken a day off work. At the same time I was very negative about where I lived. Ohio...Rust Belt...bad economy...what a sorry place to live. And then one day I came across an article about Lighthouses on Lake Erie...yeah I know about Lake Erie, I see all of those stories about toxic algae that hit the news every year. Wait there are lighthouses? Ugh but I’d have to drive so far to see them...I can go to the park in my town and sit by the lake anytime that I want...but wait did someone say that we have lighthouses here?????
One day I finally got off my butt and drove out to see a lighthouse. It wasn’t as far as I imagined but it was in a whole new world. The next week I went out to see another lighthouse and had another magical transport to this magic new world that was somehow in Ohio. Once I’d seen the lighthouses I found myself with a list of other places to go...like who knew that we have islands in Ohio? And that there is an island hopping day cruise. From my interest in old movies I knew that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall got married on a farm in Ohio and oh hey it turns out that this farm was the place where everyone who was anyone in Old Hollywood came to hang out and it had been preserved and was open for tours. People were always telling me to go to a place called Fallingwater which is how the Frank Lloyd Wright thing started...every time that I went somewhere I came away with 10 other places to visit. From there things escalated to “Boy Scout Widow Camp” where I started going on short little trips away from home on the weekends when the rest of my family was at Boy Scout camp.
Every once in a while the stars align and my family comes with me on these trips, but for the next few years Boy Scouts will continue to have first dibs on family time. That’s fine, because I’m not going to run out of places to go anytime soon.
20. One of the biggest roadblocks that I had when I started my blog is that I couldn’t figure out what to call it. I lived on Birchwood Street and my first post was an apple pie, so that’s how I came up with The Birchwood Pie Project. I don’t live on Birchwood Street anymore, and I hardly ever make pie, and also I still haven’t figured out what to call my blog. My oldest stepson suggested “Cooking the Books”, which has merit, but I’m not that kind of an accountant so…
Alrighty that’s my 20 things! Thanks for reading my ramblings!
Nice to meet you, Birchie! I'm from Ohio, too--I grew up in Lorain, home of a lovely lighthouse. I don't live in Lorain now, but just a short way away with family still residing there. Our state is very disappointing politically, but it does have some great history and beautiful places.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful how your life became what you dreamed it could be in so many ways. I think if many of us took the time to look at where we are, we'd see that we're living a dream or two of our own. I know I am.
Your dog is so sweet and happy looking. It's clear that she loves her life, too. I hope she remains a little bit of a puppy in all the best ways.
Nance, your hometown lighthouse is lovely! Er yes, Ohio does have some issues and hopefully we will not be the home state of the next VP, but we've got a lot of other things going for us.
DeleteSo many cool people live in Ohio. I sort of wish I lived in Ohio to be part of the club!
DeleteYAY! Birchie! Woot woot! I loved getting this list of About Yous. I don't think I knew that you didn't want kids but DID think being a stepmom would be cool. How awesome that life worked out the way it did!
ReplyDeleteYessssss beef and snow peas. I haven't made that dish in far too long. So good.
Love your travel origin story. So fun.
Things work out! Now that you mention it, it's been too long since I made the beef stir fry!
DeleteI think it's fun to think that Birchie was just sitting at home all by herself and then she decided to go on adventures solo! I don't know why, but that seems so brave to me.
DeleteLove this! I started following Birchie a little later I think then some other blogs- I believe I found her through NaBloPoMo. So this was a great overview of some of the basics that I had kind of pieced together but didn't actually know everything about!
ReplyDeleteKae, I think you're right that we haven't "known" each other for very long, though it feels like a long time. To think that we both became puppy moms this year!
DeleteBlogging is so weird, isn't it? When you find a new blogger, you're just sort of dropped into their lives and have to figure it out. This is such a nice intro for newbies! We should all do something like this for our new readers.
DeleteHi Birchie (and hi Engie!!)
ReplyDeleteIt speaks for your blog that none of your 20 points were new to me!
Although I wasn't too sure what your FIRE plans were with the new job... it seems that you made up your mind.
Go ahead with it! You will never look back and will definitely never regret it.
Hey Catrina! For those who don't know, the new job just fell into my lap and it was more $ and seemed like it has the potential to be more interesting than my old job. If for some reason it turns out that I adore the new job by this time next year then I will stay but...what you said Catrina...it's fine but I keep thinking more and more about all that I am missing out on by staying in the workforce. So I am pretty sure that I will be out next year! If not sooner lol...
DeleteHi Catrina! I'm not sure if I have ever read your blog, so I'm off to do some exploration!
DeleteWell if everything else hadn't made you immediately lovable, the 'no good food, no bad food' thing would have done it. I LOVE Doggo! I found Engie through Nicole, and it was sort of the same time I found a lot of other personal bloggers were still blogging, and blogging became a lot less lonely than it had been for a few years.
ReplyDeleteI was a baseball widow for a few years, but I had my daughter to solo day-trip with - one coach actually thought my husband and I were divorced for a while, and at the year-end party said "I hope you guys reconcile, because you're good together", which I think was a joke?
I AM going to try one of those recipes tonight, thank-you!
Sometimes I think that I'm imagining how dry the blogging well was just a few years ago but no, it was really bad there for a while. The thing about "real people bloggers" or "cool bloggers" is that we're not exactly breaking the internet so we have to find each other through our blogs.
DeleteThat's funny about your Baseball Widow years!
Blogging was terrible for a while there, but a lot of Cool Bloggers were blogging. Thank goodness for San or none of us would have found one another!!
DeleteHa ha... Cooking the Books... that's good! I love these posts! I always feel like there are things I've missed with the bloggers I follow. It turns out I did know most (but not all) of these things. And you've reminded me that I want to make that braised tofu dish!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing guest posts from old and soon-to-be-new friends as well! Enjoy the tofu!
DeleteI'm so glad people are enjoying these guest posts. I'm enjoying them so much and love hearing from voices that are so different from my own.
DeleteThe braised tofu and beef and snowpea recipes look wonderful. I wonder if I could use Swerve artificial brown sugar, my husband really has to watch his sugar. I think I'm going to try these.
ReplyDeleteBlogging was indeed pretty lonely for awhile there. Thank goodness for Nance and Ally, who have been blog friends for a LONG time, and for Engie, who brought me to San and everyone in the Cool Bloggers group. <3
Smooches to your Doggo.
I'm sure that you could sub the sugar for something else or omit it. All of the ingredients are things that taste good without sugar so I don't see why it wouldn't work.
DeleteDoggo loves to kiss, so if you were here she'd give you the smooches right back <3
I want to get smooches from Doggo!!!!
DeleteWell, you know I am HERE FOR BIRCHIE. And a lighthouse pic. Could this post be more perfect?
ReplyDeleteI love "get to know you" posts like this and of course any pictures of Doggo are adorable.
I'm so glad you two were able to spend some time together. The House on the Rock sure sounds...interesting :)
I don't think I would have survived the House on the Rock without Anne and Engie by my side...it's a place to take a squad for sure.
DeleteI want everyone to go to House on the Rock to experience the insanity of it all, but I'm not sure I do recommend it for everyone. It's...something else.
DeleteBut WHAT ELSE is the question? (What is the point of it all? Aieee....)
DeleteYay! Birchie! I love that I got to learn a lot about your IRL while walking around a lake and eating delicious Vietnamese food! Your boy scout widow vacations sound very fun! I did a lot of solo travel before meeting Phil and found that I really enjoyed solo travel because you can be completely selfish. Of course I enjoy traveling with my family, too, but those solo trips hold a special place in my heart, especially my trips to Paris!
ReplyDeleteAdd me to the camp of people whose blog titles really don't work anymore. I picked Lisa's Yarns because Spinning Yarns was already taken and I did quite a bit of knitting at the time. Now I feel like people see the title and think of an octogenarian knitter... But I don't know what I would change my blog title to. I dream about moving over to Wordpress but that sounds overwhelming so changes are that my blog title and host will not change because I'm just too dang tired! Ha.
NO!! Lisa, your blog name is PERFECT. Yarns = stories. I'm so jealous of your blog name!!!
DeleteThis was a fun read. I grew up in Ohio, not far from Malabar Farm. We used to go there on field trips. I enjoyed getting to know you, Birchie. (Hi, Engie 🖤)
ReplyDeleteSo many Ohio connections. Who knew?!
DeleteI love these 20 things! I've been so inspired by your solo trips; I have to go to Maine alone (about 3-4 hours from me) for a service in a couple of weeks and I wildly (for me) decided to book a hotel and explore that afternoon and meander my way home the next day as I no-doubtedly get caught in summer traffic. I am sure there will be a lighthouse moment in there haha! Thanks for sharing and helping to celebrate Engie's milestone!
ReplyDeleteI've also been inspired by Birchie to do some more venturing out on my own. I can't wait to find out what your lighthouse moment is!
DeleteHi Birchie! I really love how you find local travel adventures. I feel like so many people think "travel" has to involve an plane and a passport - like it's a prestige sport or something. And then they never really explore their own backyard. Thanks for showing us that solo travels within driving distance can be a great adventure too.
ReplyDeleteLike it's a prestige sport! I just read an article about why so many younger folks are traveling even when they have to go into debt to do it and that was an interesting read.
DeleteThis was fun! Some of it I knew and some of it was new to me (lol, the grammar nerd in me likes that I used "knew/new" in a sentence). Cooking the Books is a GREAT blog name, hahaha. You have definitely inspired me in the "solo traveling by car" department. I hope to do some of that in the next year!
ReplyDeleteHow fun to know all these things and backstory about Birchie! Thank you for this great guest post!!
ReplyDeleteYay Birchie. I do not remember how I came across your blog but I do remember that I kinda had the same reaction that you had to Engie's blog "here's a real person writing about real things" and it's been so great to get to know you over the years.
ReplyDeleteI say 'years', but I do not know exactly how long I've been reading your blog, but long enough that I knew most of the tidbits you shared here about yourself and that makes me happy :)
Cooking The Books could be a funny one, but I think you are pretty well established as Birchy, so it would be hard to get used to the change at first if you did change it! I love that you have discovered local travel and have really gotten on board with it fully! I really enjoyed some of the places that I could drive to from my house for a weekend, but I probably did not get out and see them enough! We have a few local lighthouses too, but I have yet to visit all of them!
ReplyDeleteLove seeing Birchie here! And, I think that first photo needs to say "Photo taken by Anne, who refuses to have her face on the interwebs", LOL. What a day... Love reading all these guest posts and can't wait for the epic 20th anniversary post from YOU!
ReplyDeleteHey Birchie... thanks for sharing so many fun things about yourself and why you blog. I came to your blog only a couple of years ago and while I try to catch up its really not manageble. So this post was much appreciated.
ReplyDelete