Cupcakes that Change Lives

Kiva is a lending organization that partners with microfinance institutions around the world to provide loans to entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken areas. (The longer explanation is here.) You can go to their website and browse hundreds of individuals and groups from around the globe who need just a handful of dollars to help greatly change their way of life. It costs you a whopping $25 bucks.

This is Otara. She lives in Samoa. (I had to look it up...its down near New Zealand!) I had the privilege of funding a piece of her loan.



She is 39 years of age and married with six children. She owns and operates a business planting and harvesting fruits and vegetables for sale. Otara has 2 years of experience in this business. She needs a loan to purchase harvesting equipment such as wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, baskets, and knives. She plans to use the profit from her business to improve/expand the business. (info from Kiva.org)

Frankly, I am so very grateful that I do not have to farm for a living. Or have six children! I am so impressed for these people, especially the women, who have taken the initiative to try and better their lives and the lives of their families. We have so much...and when we think we are broke-it means no new shoes this month, not no food to put on the table.

The neatest part of using my 'shoe money' to invest in this woman's life is that when she repays the loan, the credit goes back into my Kiva account...to either be liquidated or to be re-invested to help someone else. What a wonderful cycle of giving.

A Cupcake Goes Running

THE LIONESS

Be they giants or be they runts,
Males go out and do their stunts.
They think they're kings.
They do their things,
But it's the lioness that hunts.

John Jerome Runner's Logbook, 2003:
"It's the lioness that hunts."
Slogan of a British women's running club


Last year when we first moved to the wilds of North Carolina, I hauled myself up to the base and joined a lovely group of running mommies called the Stroller Warriors. These young women were pushing strollers, chasing bikes and scooters and armed with snacks, juice boxes and toys; the embodiement of my favorite running slogan in a world where it is the wife who remains behind and holds the home together.

There were only two problems with this situation: 1)it took me an hour to meet up with them; 2)I had no stroller, or kids to put in one...; and 3)I'm slow, like at the back of the pack. (Okay, that was three problems.)

SO...despite the fact that these ladies were lovely, I quit going north to meet them. Hence no post on this running business last year.

SKIP AHEAD TO MARCH 2011~


Over the next months I started a new and interesting relationship with my treadmill instead...and with a chiropractor....and with a massage therapist...and that brings us up to the present. Body all tuned up and a run/walk plan in place to get back to a 5k.

Then in August of this year, after months and months of building a monogamous relationship with my treadmill, the last piece fell into place to get my running back to where I want it to be. The lovely and animated Jamie Bentfield signed on as my running buddy. And now, three times a week, we meet and work on increasing our distance. And suddenly, running is fun again!(or as fun as it can be.)

Jamie has no running agenda, other than just wanting to finish a 5k without any walking breaks...and she really doesn't care about the time-frame, she just wants to enjoy the process in a way that doesn't make it feel like an obligation. This whole mind-set was foreign to me (Hello! a blog about goal-setting!).

But as I considered this idea a bit I had an epiphany:

Goals are important...but sometimes it is just as important (if not more important) to simply relax and enjoy the journey.

And then I don't have to give myself such hell when I skip a day---or when I take a day to rest my uncooperative legs & feet. Because I know I'll be back on the road tomorrow. And because even though I DO want to complete a 10k, and a running club would be fun to join...really it is about running becoming and remaining a part of my life on a regular basis.

Sometimes the REAL goal is just perserverance.

Cupcake Hero #2: Julia Child

"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."
– Julia Child

Julia Child made the short list for heroes not because I ever want to conquer Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which I assuredly do not. It was her ceaseless determination to learn something new in mid-life, while in a completely new environment, and to do so with such zest and enthusiasm that American cooking was changed forever by her accomplishment.

I have no interest in cooking at the level that she did, or cooking anything French, for that matter. You aren't going to get me near an aspic. But Child spent a decade dedicated to translating the art of French cuisine, the second love of her life, into a format that an American publisher would accept. This tenacity, and the enthusiasm with which she went about this project, brought her a new career and a place as an American icon. THAT is Amazing. Impressive. Inconceivable. (I can hardly keep a project going for a few months, much less 10 years.)

And what a zest for living! You only have to look at this postcard of her and her dear husband, Paul, to see that she loved life and was not shy about embracing it.

Reading My Life in France, which is her own biography which she co-authored, sealed the deal for me. (Lovely and interesting book, by the way. I highly recommend.) This woman wasn't out to impress anyone, she was just following her passion wherever it led. What a great example, especially as 40 is the next big thing for me!

There are loads of interesting websites that provide more information about Julia's life and cooking career (coolest one is the Smithsonian's), but really you can just watch this YouTube video of her teaching how to cook an omelet to see, not only How To Cook an Omelet (!), but what an interesting personality she was. Bon Appetit!

Cupcake Hero #1: Helen Keller

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart. "
~Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Alabama. Before she was two years old she had lost her sight and her hearing to scarlett fever. With this barrier to all communication and learning, Keller became a wild little creature who terrorized her home until 1887, when Anne Sullivan, a teacher from the Perkins School for the Blind, arrived on the scene and changed Keller's life.

Most of us hear the story in elementary school of how Anne Sullivan finally broke through to Helen by writing on her hand while holding it under running well water. It is ironic to me is that those first years that Helen was so wild, she was just a child with an incredible capacity for learning who was frustrated by her limitations! Once she learned to communicate, she learned not only words and sentences, but to read and to write braille, even to write with a ruler and pencil.

What I find the most amazing about this woman was not only her incredible curiosity about life and her thirst for knowledge, but her constant desire and determination to take it to the next level. She learned to speak, went to college (Radcliffe, of all places-the women's version of Harvard), rode horseback, could communicate in French, German & Latin, and played chess. (I can't do most of these...LOL) And although braille books were not terribly prevelant at the time, she didn't let that stop her, Anne Sullivan just "spoke" them into Helen's hand.

She also knew Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain, met Henry Ford and the Rockefellers. She was a Suffragist in the early 1900s. Among many other writings, Helen wrote her very own autobiography at the age of 21, The Story of My Life, which was the first book I read on my Cupcake Reading List.

Helen was certainly blessed to have been born into a family that could afford to provide her with all of these opportunites to improve her life -- but even with those privileges, how many of us would consider our lives 'a daring adventure' if we could not see or hear?

This is a pretty impressive list for someone who has no disabilities...it is an inspiration knowing that the woman who accomplished all these things was deaf and blind, living in a world of darkness that I cannot even imagine. In those moments when I think my life is too hard or my dreams are too difficult to attempt I will try to remember this beautiful soul who never lost her enthusiasm for living and for learning:

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. " ~Helen Keller

[Biographical information obtained from the American Foundation for the Blind]

4. Watch all of Audrey Hepburn's films

"My career is a complete mystery to me. It's been a total surprise since the first day. I never thought I was going to be an actress, I thought I was going to be in movies, I never thought it would all happen the way it did." ~Audrey Hepburn

Here's the thing...

The internet connection at our house has been slow & unsteady for the last few months. And doing anything...and I do mean ANYthing (checking email, doing a Google search, looking up movie times, etc.) takes about 5x as long as it should. And that is IF you can keep the signal long enough to make things go thru.

We finally found out that our internet speed was only working at 6 mega-whatzits, instead of the 12-18 we have been paying for (yay!) and supposedly this is being fixed by the internet/cable people....you probably know about how fast that happens. In the meantime, it takes me so very long to blog any post that I am about out of patience for the entire week (if not more) by the time it is done. IF i can get it put together. (Big IF.) Therefore, not too many blog posts will be forthcoming until this is repaired...boo!

How to Steal a Million Cupcakes

Of all the Hepburn films I have watched so far, this is definitely one of my favorites! How to Steal a Million came along 13 years after her big success in Roman Holiday-and she has evolved into a stylish, accomplished actress. Audrey & Peter O'Toole are great together and the plot couldn't be funnier. Audrey herself is hysterical as the daughter of an accomplished art forger trying to keep her father out of prison: she shoots an intruder with an ancient pistol, drives her cute convertible like a NASCAR professional, and recruits O'Toole's help in a 'big time caper' in the best looking black lace dress & mask I've ever seen a thief wear. (Givenchy designed her wardrobe for this movie, and for all her movies from the time of their first meeting in 1953 on the set of Sabrina" onward. He & Hepburn were great friends.)

The film did not win any awards for director William Wyler, who also directed Hepburn in several other of her projects, but it wins big with me! I loved it!