.SOMETIMES RAW.

The other day I had an epiphany while eating a bag of potato chips. The bag was full of air, I had to burst it like a balloon to open it, and inside were only five or six crumbled chips. It got me thinking about how people fill conversations with trite expressions and phrases, creating the illusion they have said something significant, just like a deceptively puffed-up bag of chips.

Well, not really. What actually occurred to me was that snack food is a huge rip-off, but that is beside the point. My point is… and I do have one (which, by the way, is all explained in my last book – if you haven’t read it you really should, but please finish this article first) is that we no longer say what we mean or mean what we say. Do we honestly think interjecting “Every dog has its day” or replying with “Is that so?” contributes to the conversation? No, all it does is prolong the meeting, party, or intervention, cutting into time that could be better spent at home zoning out watching clouds passing by.

Than this overused phrase: “Honesty is the best policy.” Is it? Honesty is good, yes, but not always. Up to a certain point, you should be honest, but just imagine if we were all honest all the time. The world would be terrible. It would be a cold, cruel place.

“G-sus, Christine. Have you gained a lot of weight, or what? You are so puffy.” “Boy, that breath of yours is something else. I am about to pass out. Seriously, that has to be the worst breath ever.” “Has your ass always been that flat or am I just noticing it now for the first time?”

I will tell you what is really bad – going up to your friend whom you haven’t seen in a while and saying, “Oh my God, you are pregnant!” and they are not. I have done that, and I will tell you – the look on his face! He looked at me blankly and said, “As far as I know, men cannot have babies.” I tried to cover, but it was no use. “Oh, I thought I read somewhere these days they can.” How many people can honestly say they are completely honest? Not too many. That is why people in the U.S. have to put their hand on a Bible and take an oath to testify in court. Everyone just assumes that people lie. We have to say “I swear to God” or “I swear on my mother’s life, may God strike me dead!” if we really want to be believed. I really never lie. I don’t- I swear to God. (Like you have to – like God doesn’t know the truth!) Okay, I do lie at the Cardio machine at the gym. It says “Enter Program and Age” and I punch in “35” and I push Enter. I don’t want the machine to give me a workout for a forty-one-year-old.

When it comes to clear communication, these useless phrases, expressions, and cliches aren’t really up to snuff. Whatever that means. Let’s just say that people say a lot of things that are ridiculous.

For example, how about those:

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
2. Adversity builds character.
3. God doesn’t give you anything you cannot handle.

I have revised those saying to make them more accurate:

1. What doesn’t kill you puts you in a whole lot of pain and makes you cry a lot and want to crawl into a hole forever and live with rodents.
2. Adversity builds character. Translation: You become bitter and angry and then people hate you even more.
3. God doesn’t give you anything you cannot handle… unless God is on it and doesn’t like you either.

What’s even worse is the new trend of saying “You know what I mean?” Often, people say it after each and every sentence. “You know what I mean?” It is used so much it has become one word “YouknowwhatImean?” People who use it seem unsure if they are being understood correctly. I admire that. I always repeat back what they have said to ensure I have comprehended.

That would be me: “Now, what I think you are saying is that you are thirsty, but I am only saying that because you just said, you were thirsty, but I might have misinterpreted. You could have cryptically explained to me the genetic code of the common housefly, and if that is the case, no, Idon’tknowwhatyoumean.”

So for the good of all humankind, I suggest that we liberate ourselves from these empty expressions and wasted words. For your reference, here’s an incomplete list of phrases I kindly ask that nobody say around me anymore:

“Stop and smell the roses.” – Well, what if you are allergic to roses?

“Wake up and smell the coffee.” – What if you drink tea?

“Happy as a clam” – Okay, if clams are so happy, then why do people “clam up” when they get mad?

“For the love of Pete”, “Heaven’s to Betsy” – Who is Pete? Who is Betsy? Do they know each other?

“Take care.” – This is short for “Take care of yourself”. What does this even mean? Where’s the care? I will take it. Pretty soon it will be just “take”.

“Have a nice day.” – Cashiers and other service-industry people are forced by their supervisors to say this to every customer. The cashiers don’t mean it. What they are really saying is, “Please, I don’t want to get fired.”

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” – Everybody hurts flies. Someone realized the hatred of flies is so universal that they actually came up with a device to kill them. Who likes flies? Or wasps? What’s the purpose of those two anyway?

“The sun will come out tomorrow.” – Yes, but only if you are the one who wrote the lycics to the theme song for the musical Annie. In that case, the sun comes out for you every time you receive your big fat royalty check. Otherwise, rain.

“Nothing is forever.”- However, diamonds apparently are forever. They also happen to be a girl’s best friend. Hint.

“You win some, you lose some.” – Although, someone I know does have the habit of saying this one during sex.

Well, that’s “the long and short of it.” See what I have done here? I have wasted your time by using that phrase: “the long and the short of it.” If I have included it as a way to quickly wrap up this chapter I have defeated the purpose. Not to mention the words I am now using to explain this to you. On top of that, I haven’t made any sense. How can something be long and short? It can’t. It is physically impossible. You cannot be fat and skinny or hot and cold or ugly and pretty. In the eighties, my mom had this super orange wallpaper with cubes on it that was pretty ugly but is not considered retro, vintage, and cool, but that is another whole can of worms.

One thing that always makes me happy is being out in nature. I love nature. I love trees, flowers, and the feeling of walking barefoot in the grass. I spend a lot of time outside every day. I love doing yoga outside. I love to meditate outside. Sometimes I even shower outside. What I am trying to say is, that I lock myself out of the house a lot.

I love being outside. In the mornings, I take a cup of coffee out to my pond, plop myself down on the dock and do what one is supposed to do by a pond – I ponder.

I ponder all sorts of things. I ponder life and our infinite universe and how lucky we are to find ourselves surrounded by incredible forces of nature every day. And then I ponder other stuff like how do mermaids always seem to find seashells big enough to wear as bras? Whenever I go to the beach the biggest shell I can find in one piece is the size of an M&M. I will still make it into a bra, but it’s very, very tiny.

I ponder that expression “You are a big fish in a small pond”. Do fish in a pond know that expression? Do they swim around and try to make the smaller fish feel bad because they are so small? Or do the small fish know the expression “Good things come in small packages”? Maybe they swim around knowing that even though they are small they have a lot to offer, like being cute and shiny.

I can sit and stare into my pond for hours and hours admiring the stunning reflections of the sky and the clouds and the birds. We have so many different kinds of birds near the house. They are always chirping away, and I imagine them saying things like, “Oh, Daniela…. yup, she is so connected to nature. That is so rare to see in a human.” “Yeah, she seems so laid-back and cool. Look at her sitting on that dock drinking her coffee,” I imagine another bird saying. And then the first bird chirps back, ” I bet it would be so fun to hang out with her. She reminds me so much of me when I was younger. Such a nut, but so sweet.” And while they go back and forth saying the nicest things about me – I mean, it’s just so humbling – I start to think about what it would be like to fly around with them all day long, looking at our Earth from way up above, circling and gliding through the air with complete freedom. Sometimes I get so lost in the moment, that I start running around my yard, flapping my arms like a seagull at the beach. A lot of times I will even start to squawk. Usually right around the third or fourth squawk is when my neighbours start screaming at me to pipe down. They are always like, “Quiet down, lady! And put on some pants!” And I am always like, “YOU put on some pants!” because in the heat of the moment I panic and I cannot think of anything better to say. Of course, he is already wearing pants, so it doesn’t pack quite the punch I want it to, but the bottom line is he is clearly not as connected to nature as I am.

When I am not pondering by my pond, I am outside gardening in my garden. I love to garden. I find it very therapeutic. Actually, I treat it just like therapy. I talk to my plants about what is going on in my life, about my dreams and aspirations, my fears, my regrets, and how frustrated I get when someone suddenly stops at the bottom of an escalator without realising there is a whole line of people piling up behind them. I find it very to talk to my plants about pretty much everything. And the best part is, instead of having a therapist who wants two hundred and fifty euros an hour, my plants only charge me sixty.

I just read that gardening is the number one thing to do in Europe. Well, I just wrote it anyway. Who knows if it is true! What I do know is that gardening is awesome. I have a lot of hobbies, but there’s something about gardening that is different. I think it is because gardening is a hobby you can eat. You plant some seeds, you water some soil, and in just a few short months, you have got yourself enough tomatoes to make a tiny salad.

There aren’t a lot of hobbies you can eat. Like, let’s say you love to cook. That’s a bad example. Let’s say you love to travel, and everywhere you go, you try the food at the best local restaurant. Ok, this is getting weird now.

My point is, I love gardening as a hobby. Right now in my garden, I am growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, basil, and a whole assortment of herbs. It smells nice, it looks nice, and I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to be able to host a dinner party and offer my guests the literal fruits of my labour. As it turns out, these are very different from the fruits of one’s loins. At a dinner party, I asked someone how she was enjoying the fruits of my loins and she nearly choked on her food.

If you don’t have a garden, I encourage you to plant one. It is a fun thing to do and it is great for the planet. And you know what I always say, time and time again – if you want to add a little spice to your life, plant some dill. And learn to dance salsa.

*and yes, I own all of them.

These days I enjoy quality summer time in my garden, swimming, lounging, reading, and just relaxing. I rearranged all my bookshelves and feel so happy to be surrounded by all those sweet relics collected over the years. I found myself picking through my bookshelves, and realized that the most powerful childhood memories rested between the pages of books I hadn’t thought about in nearly a decade. Suddenly, I was hurtled back to elementary -school summers, eight-hour road trips to the North of Germany to spent the summer at the ocean, which flew by as I escaped on strange literary adventures through under-worlds and magical rhubarb farms. Now, I marvel at the clarity with which I can recall both the stories and my delight in them.

I found practically all of my reading material when I was 10, 11, and 12 by scouring the children’s section of the our local library. While I loved finding refuge from the summer heat in the silence of the stacks, I had to suffer through a lot of bad, corny kids’ books to find the gems that line my shelves today. Here is a list of the books that made the searching worth it. Whether you have a bored kid in the house who’s exhausted the classics (Pseudonymous Bosch, Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket) or you’re lucky enough to have some summer evenings ahead, there’s a sweet escape for you in each one.

JUNIPER BERRY BY M. P. KOZLOWSKY

In a nutshell: Juniper’s parents are beloved movie stars. But something’s not quite right—they’re not their usual selves. Juniper and her next door neighbor Giles discover their parents have been slowly selling their souls, bit by bit, to a demon under the tree in the backyard. Juniper and Giles explore the underground world to save her parents, encountering temptations and oddities along the way.

For people who like: Coraline or Narnia, stories about secret portals, tunnels, and bravery. Also for fans of Pseudonymous Bosch’s Secret Series.

MY NAME IS MINA BY DAVID ALMOND

Age range: 9-15

In a nutshell: The prequel to Almond’s book Skellig (see next pick; I recommend reading Mina before Skellig). The book is written in the form of a diary, from the mind of a young girl named Mina. She is the OG manic pixie dream girl: Mina is homeschooled and ruminates in the handwritten pages about poetry, myths, and math, dreaming of her dead father and wondering about birds. 

I felt such a deep connection to this book that I wrote a letter to David Almond when I was nine. “I LOVED My Name Is Mina.  Mina thinks just like me! I love to write, and My Name Is Mina made me want to write even more.” (And guess what? He wrote me the nicest email back – “It’s great that the book made you want to write – that’s exactly what I want to happen when people read it.”)

For people who like: Harriet the Spy, poetic and quirky books that aren’t plot based—sort of a character study. Excellent personality-inspiration for misunderstood tween girls who like to dream, write, and escape.

SKELLIG BY DAVID ALMOND

Age Range: 10-20

In a nutshell: Another mysterious and poetic book by Almond. Michael, a 10-year-old boy, is looking forward to moving into a new house when his baby sister becomes deeply ill. One day he steps into his crumbling garage and discovers a strange creature coated with spider webs, eating dead flies and Chinese take-out, and growing wings. With the help of next door neighbor Mina, Micheal brings Skellig out of the garage and into the light. Creepy but beautiful, entertaining, captivating— I couldn’t put it down.

For people who like: Neil Gaiman fairy-tales such as The Ocean at the End of the Lane, mysterious and eerie but moving.

DRIZZLE BY KATHLEEN VAN CLEVE

Age Range: 9-12

In a nutshell: Eleven year-old Polly Peabody lives on a magical, world-famous rhubarb farm. The plants taste like chocolate, jewels appear in the soil, bugs talk to her, and her best friend is a rhubarb plant named Harry. But one day, the miraculously-timed Monday rainstorms suddenly stop and the plants start to suffer. Could it have anything to do with her aunt’s sudden desire to sell the farm, and her brother’s mysterious illness? Polly has to restore the rain and save the farm and her family, before it’s too late.

For people who like: The charm and creativity of Roald Dahl books, specifically Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or James and the Giant Peach. Magic and childlike wonder combined with a family-centered plot.

BESWITCHED BY KATE SAUNDERS

Age Range: 10-15

In a nutshell: Flora is on the train, headed to her new private school in England, dressed in her bright red converse. But when Flora gets off the train, she finds herself in 1935, forced to live as an old-fashioned schoolgirl. In order to return to the 21^st century, she has to figure out why she time-travelled in the first place. Her new friendship with a Jewish girl, about to head home to Vienna, just might hold the answer.

For people who like: The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, Harry Potter – think dark academia and history with all the juicy tween-girl drama.

THE UNDROWNED CHILD SERIES BY MICHELLE LOVRIC

Age Range: 11-17

In a nutshell: Adopted girl Teodora is visiting Venice, the floating city of her dreams, and discovers that things are not as they seem. The sinking city also holds an entire secret world, visible only to her, including an underground printing press run by mermaids, speaking statues, strange translucent ghosts, and librarians which transform into cats. Teodora soon realizes the power rests in her hands to save Venice from the sinister forces that threaten it.

For people who like: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the Percy Jackson series, or Harry Potter – heavily inspired by mythology and magic, and impossible to put down.