Treat Yo Self

Unfortunate as this is, my weekends are rarely themed. This weekend, however, one theme triumphantly ruled my life, and that theme was:

I didn't make this, I found it on Google images, please don't take it from me, Internet gods.

Parks and Recreation holds a slightly smaller place in my heart than its Tina Fey sitcom counterpart, 30 Rock, but I have always connected with the Tom Haverford and Donna Meagle-inspired concept of Treating Yo' Self. Sometimes, you need to buy and do things for yourself just as a reminder that you're awesome enough to deserve them - and this weekend was one of those times. 

Tom and Donna (Tomma?) have their ways of treating they-selves, and I respect them. But clothes, massages, mimosas, and fine leather goods weren't gonna cut it for my weekend of treating me-self. Like Tom and Donna, I love four things in this world, and those things are food, cabs, Celtic Woman, and being a relentless basic. Let me tell you about them. 

On Friday, a series of events led my roommate and I to opt for a glorious girls' night. She caked several ounces of silver products onto my eyes, we drank several glasses of juice and frozen fruit mixed with...things, we obviously threw on a Say Yes to the Dress marathon, and by 11 PM, we realized there was no way on earth we were leaving our apartment that night. Instead of hitting Da Club as we had earnestly intended, we hit Da Web and ordered ourselves 20 euro worth of takeout junk food. I'm not going to lie: this was an appalling amount of food. We got a not-exactly-small pepperoni pizza, a side order of chicken dippers, and a fairly enormous order of cheese fries. And a Coke for her and a Fanta for me. I must say, it was actually pretty great value. Some people would say that eating all of this junk food is disgusting and really, really bad for you, and they would ordinarily be right. But I say, TREAT. YO. SELF. 

And then came Saturday. I woke up to a text from my boss asking if I knew anyone who would be interested in tickets to the Celtic Woman concert at the 3 Arena that night.

Um............yes?

Few of you reading this probably know this about me - though if you know me at all it shouldn't be a surprise - but I. Adore. Celtic Woman. This show was the first of their 10th Anniversary World Tour, so I would place the start of my Celtic Woman obsession somewhere in the spring of 2005. It feels like I have known them forever.

If you, for some insane reason, aren't familiar with Celtic Woman, allow me to explain. Celtic Woman is a magical group of 3-5 pretty Irish women who prance around in beautiful ball gowns singing angelic, lilting, head-voice-y classical music for audiences of generally elderly folk and/or at-home viewers of PBS. I have been told from far too young an age by my relatives that I have the perfect voice for Celtic Woman and could easily be a member of their group, a truth that I now firmly believe against all odds and reason. Celtic Woman are my everything.

I was over the moon at the prospect of these tickets. The problem, however, was that I had to be at a mass that started at 7 PM, and the concert began at 8. The church and the arena were a twenty minutes' drive apart. I would have to be horribly late, right?

WRONG. Our priest, knowing we had tickets, sped through the mass, and we clocked in at a cool 37 minutes. (A compelling motivation to join our parish if there ever were one.) We jumped into a cab and made unbelievable time getting to the arena, pulling up at precisely 7:59. We came in, were shown to our seats in the dead center of the ninth row, and got ourselves situated. As soon as we were settled, the show began. :-O

I'd talk about the show for you, but how can one even begin to describe the happiest night of one's life? It was incredible. When the lights came up on their famous fiddle-pixie Mairead, I almost fainted. You know that thing where brides and grooms see each other for the first time on their wedding day and they're all joy and hands-at-the-face and harps playing and dreams coming true? That is exactly what I looked and felt like for the duration of the evening. Early in the night, they performed "Si Do Mhaimeo I'." Most people wouldn't have any particular associations with this fact. But most people have not sung "Si Do Mhaimeo I'" on stage at this very arena. As it happens...

Hey. 

I have. I may have punched my roommate in the face during this song out of sheer excitement at my so few degrees of separation from Celtic Woman. I honestly couldn't tell you. Pure excitement was bottled and injected into my veins for this song. 

At intermission, we continued the weekend theme of treating ourselves with a trip to the concessions and merchandise booths. My roommate bought us drinks, I bought us an 8 euro box of popcorn, and, because it's Treat Yo Self weekend and I do what I want, I went ahead and bought myself a t-shirt, too. If I were capable of feeling embarrassment, this would be the most embarrassing clothing item that I own. Like. I. Even. Care. 

Oh, and what was my drink, you (didn't) ask? It was a rose-pink wine cooler that tasted like a Starburst. I loved every second of it. 

I continued living just on the edge of total hysterics for the rest of the evening, and screamed my lungs out like a complete maniac throughout the standing ovation that everyone gave. Celtic Woman are my everything, and I have now seen them live in their hometown. 

But don't you start thinking Treat Yo Self ended there. No, no, my friends. I woke up this morning rather chilly and tired, and I did not feel like walking to the bus stop to get to work. So I ordered myself a cab. 

I had plenty of food I could have made myself at home for lunch after work, but you know what I decided would be better? A fancy brunch date with my favorite person: me. 

AND IT WAS DELICIOUS.

On the way home from brunch, I walked by the cupcake shop I pass on my block every day, looked at the flourless chocolate cupcake sitting in the window, and what did I say? 

Readers, I do not have the money to keep buying myself cabs because I'm too lazy to get out of bed, or to spend 6 euro on a Vogue double edition ever again just to have some light reading to accompany my solo brunch. But it's not a new beach house. I can afford my modest little Treat Yo Self weekend now and again, and if you've got a few extra bucks lying around for a Donna Meagle mimosa or a Sarah Cahalan Celtic-Woman-merch impulse buy, go for it. Treat yo self. 

......Or treat me. Start here. Six weeks to my birthday, so with international shipping times, you'd better get to work. 

Down on the Farm

During my brief sojourn in Logansport over Christmas break, I trekked (as is tradition) to the Star Nail down by the BMV to have my lungs assaulted with chemical fumes and my nails turned into vicious plastic talons. I know that this is terrible for my nails and, after a few days of nail growth, slightly ratchet-looking, but I like to get acrylic nails put on once or twice a year to help curb my nail-biting habit. The plain white tips I get are fairly inoffensive and cute-looking as fake nails go, and, believe you me, they keep me from biting my nails. Have you ever tried biting through a fake nail? It is impossible. I imagine that the insides of bulletproof vests are actually just giant sheets of acrylic nails, because these things are bionic.

Acrylic nails serve an important purpose in my nail-biter's life, and I've rarely regretted having them on.

As I stood in a pile of ankle-deep mud in a barn in my first week back in Ireland, holding onto a metal fence with all four limbs and attempting to fight off a swarm of angry, pregnant sheep, I regretted my nails.

After my week at home, I spent my second week of Christmas break traveling Ireland, including a three-day stint on my relatives' farm in County Tipperary living out a real-life episode of The Simple Life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. 

The Logansport Cahalan family has long been in contact with the Cahalan family of Ballingarry, Ireland, and it has been tradition since the seventies that most of my family's visits to the Emerald Isle include a stop at the Ballingarry Cahalans' farm. This is a great, fun tradition. I learned a lot about my Irish ancestors, my (very) distant relatives still living here, and about the actual pronunciation of my last name.

But I also did a lot of work out on the farm. Me. Haha. Hahahahahaha.

As you read these tales of my work on the farm, remember that it is in fact me, your friend/loved one Sarah Cahalan, doing these things, and get in your quota for laughter for the better part of 2015.

The first task of my big day on the farm was helping the veterinarian in "scanning the ewes." (Word to the wise: "ewe" in this circumstance is pronounced "yo," as in "yo, dawg" or Yo! MTV Raps, so in other words, this whole ordeal is the most absurd thing I've ever been a part of.) All of my relatives' 270 ewes are supposed to be pregnant at the moment, and on this particular day, the vet had come by with a very fancy machine to determine how many lambs each ewe is carrying. Of the 270 ewes, only three were not with lamb, and this is a Very Good Thing.

To complete the scanning of the ewes (reminder: yoes), we had to create an enclosure using hay bale piles for two sides and cattle fences for the others, herd the ewes into the enclosure, and keep them there until they had gone through the sheep-gyno machine. If you think this sounds like an easy task, you are stupid and wrong.

In theory, it really isn't that hard, but in practice, the ewes want desperately to break free from the enclosure, and the amount of rope you have on hand is not enough to attach the final two fence segments to each other. To keep the enclosure closed, then, you have to throw your unsuspecting American relative on this fence vulnerability and have her guard it.

I don't understand animals.

I learned this as I stood in the corner, literally ankle-deep - I can't stress enough that this is not an exaggeration - in a mud substance that I'm certain was mostly fecal, and attempted to keep these 270 sheep from escaping through this clearly understaffed hole in the fence.

My relatives told me that throwing my arms in the air and shouting at the sheep would generally keep  the sheep at bay. "Generally," however, is not always, and in the instances where arm-waving doesn't work, they advocated gently hitting or kicking the sheep. This makes me nervous. I don't want to hit these sheep. Two of them, inexplicably, have horns! I've never met them before! This seems deeply inconsiderate! Instead, I attempted to reason with the sheep. "Please don't do that," I would say to them. "Why you gotta do me like this?", I pleaded. I wish I could say I was lying about this. I am not.

As the sheep kept closing in on me and my life flashed before my eyes, I thought about sheep and about children and realized that I don't do well with creatures that can't understand logical requests between adults. "Can you please not chew on my yoga pants? They are not made of food" is lost on sheep, and therefore, sheep are lost on me. I don't get them. But darn it all, I kept them in that enclosure.

Later that day - either right before or right after my relative pointed to the three non-pregnant, auction-bound sheep and said, "Have you ever had a doner kebab? There's three live ones"- we sent the ewes through a different set of contraptions to weigh and disinfect them. My task was largely the same as it had been in the morning, but somewhere in the middle of Gategate round two, the realization hit me that acrylic nails are a deeply stupid invention. Things one can do with fake nails: type, poke stuff, much more easily open pop cans. Things one cannot do with fake nails: everything else on earth.

On my last day on the farm, the relatives brought me along on a fox hunt. As most of you know or could guess, I don't particularly condone hunting. But a "hunt" in which a bunch of people don fancy equestrian gear and drink wine on horseback at a rich person's house for several hours before joyriding their horses through the countryside with the end goal of maybe finding a fox somewhere is a hunt that I can get behind. It also gave me a chance to make a lot of Taylor Swift references. It was a good day.

So, my friends, if you're ever looking to re-live the Paris and Nicole glory days of The Simple Life, just read back through this post and think of my time on the farm. You may call me Nicole.

Loves it.

The Domerberry's Year in Food

For the last few days of 2014 and the first days of 2015, I have wondered time and time again how I should construct my 2014 year in review post. I graduated from college and moved to a foreign country in 2014, so I couldn't just not write one - but how would I do it? I just made a list to describe my November, and a sentimental post obviously isn't happening, so what else could I do?

As I traded chocolates this afternoon with a teenager in O'Hare while we waited for our flights to Dublin and Addis Ababa (I will let you decide whether I am the first of those flights or, in a surprise turn of events, the second), I realized I must chronicle my year in terms of that which I love more than most/all things: food. Let us look back, then, friends, on the delicious and occasionally microwaveable things that Sarah ate and drank in 2014. It's still a list. But it's a much cooler, more specific list than normal.

1. Early January. An ice cream sundae the size of my head from an ice cream parlor on DisneyWorld's Main Street USA. I ate this instead of dinner one night, because I live on the edge. I also ate it outside at 7 PM in only a light sweater, despite there being a polar vortex raging in most parts of the country, because Florida.

2. January 27. A blackberry mojito from Rohr's on the eve of Notre Dame's famous double snow day. Snow-induced states of emergency call for but one thing, and that thing is nine-dollar cocktails.

3. February 16-22. My weight in Peach-O's and Smartfood white cheddar popcorn in the dressing rooms of Washington Hall during tech week of Legally Blonde. That's all I ate for that whole week, because it was free (thanks, secret buddy) and there is no such thing as lunch breaks during tech week.

4. Early March. Several slices of chocolate brownie ice cream pie from Logansport frozen-dessert legend Sycamore, because Sycamore expanded their ice cream pie range in 2014, and it was magical.

5. Forever. Many, many bowls of microwaveable soup, eaten in my dorm room and paired delectably with sweatpants and misery from the throes of Thesisland.

5B. April 4. Nothing. Because on the day your thesis is due, you are too busy for food.

5B. April 5. Roughly 25 mozzarella sticks, because thesis completers are officially licensed to eat as many mozzarella sticks as they darn well please.

6. May. My final bowl of the Southern Food Market's 4-Cheese Pasta as a Notre Dame student. Were tears shed? Maybe.

7. Also May. My final bowl of Au Bon Pain mac and cheese, which I didn't appreciate in the way I should have, I'm sorry I took you for granted, ABP, I didn't know what I had until I moved to Ireland and it was gone, I miss you, sweet, delicious mac and cheese, please take me back.

8. May 16. Steak and an entire cake to myself in the dining hall because Notre Dame goes a little overboard with graduation.

9. Early June. A surprisingly delicious steak dinner at the Old Style Inn in Logansport, including a delicious side helping of mac and cheese. A) Shop local. B) Do you think I like dishes involving pasta and cheese?

11. Mid-summer. Pizza and, more importantly, ricotta dumplings from Napolese in Indianapolis. Not tied to a life event. Just really good food. Would recommend. Would recommend driving to Indy just for this, actually. It was good stuff, y'all.

12. July. A lot of elephant ears, lemon shake-ups, and free popcorn of unknown origin in the show barn, because I was contractually obligated to be at the Cass County 4-H Fair every day to write pieces like the front-page hit, "A Pig Deal." I was a big-time journalist in 2014, and free popcorn of unknown origin is what big-time journalists eat.

13. August 24. My final plate of Bang Bang Shrimp for a long time. I love you, Bang Bang Shrimp.

14. August 28. Pretty excellent barbecue, pretty mediocre mac and cheese (SERIOUSLY GUYS I HAVE A PROBLEM), and ice cream from a DIY machine that I managed to accidentally destroy, all at Dublin's Pitt Bros.: my first meal in Ireland. The ice cream machine incident tells you a lot about how well I do with food that I have any role in preparing.

15. September 13. My first-ever helping of veal. In Sligo. I still feel morally iffy about this.

16. September. My first caprese ciabatta from the Black Apple Cafe in Harold's Cross, Dublin. This is my favorite meal. Someone gave me a gift card to the Black Apple Cafe for Christmas with enough money on it to buy, like, four caprese ciabattas, and I almost cried. My first meeting with this delicious sandwich needs to be chronicled.

17. October 10. My first-ever helping of lamb, in Clifden, thus continuing my fall-2014 theme of meats that I feel morally iffy about eating.

18. October 13. A gnocchi from Pichet in Dublin that changed my life.

19. October 18. Chocolate fondue delivered for free to my hotel room. Remember this? Yeah.

20. October 19. Scallops with hollandaise served in the half-shell on a bed of mashed potatoes (the potatoes for good measure because it's Ireland) at San Lorenzo's in Dublin, another dish that changed my life. October, my friends, was a very good month for food.

21. November 4. Sushi for the second time ever! Not my favorite. Also in this meal, though, a frozen mango mojito (mojitos are also a theme for 2014, apparently), which definitely was my favorite.

22. Mid-November. Another serving of ice cream from a pour-it-yourself machine, which this time managed to hit an air bubble and explode ice cream all over me. Do not make me control my own food. Just don't.

23. November 27. A pumpkin soup - course one of six at the world's fanciest Thanksgiving dinner, Merrion Hotel, Dublin - that (wait for it) changed my life.

24. November 29. A milkshake from an American diner in Oslo, Norway. #globalization

25. December 9. My first-ever helping of venison. How do we feel? Morally ambiguous!

26. December 24. A Senor Slim Delgado burrito from Pablo Picante, Baggot Street, Dublin. Because it was the tenth burrito on my punch card, it was free. Best. Christmas Eve. Dinner. Ever.

27. Late December. Home-cooked meals in the good ol' 46947. It was good to be home.

For my final meal in America before returning to Dublin for the next several months, I am about to forage in the international terminal of O'Hare. It was a good year, y'all. Here's to an even better one.