5 hour bus +
7 hour bus +
9 hours of plane travel +
two 5-hour buses plus a 2 hour flight +
2 hour train… in one week.
the only way i’m getting through this is
by convincing myself i’m on amazing race…by myself…with a cat.
oh, and a mimosa. forgot that one.
be back soon, loves!
my mother is a well-loved lady. when i was little i was always so startled by how many people would stop her in the grocery store, and told myself if half as many people stopped me in the grocery store to talk to me, i’d be content. ’cause then i’d be technically half as cool as my mom. achievable goals, ya’ll.
she’s a sassy little lady. and the source of 80% of my brother and i’s jokes. recently the forces of my older brother and mother collided with boston. hilarity ensued mostly because we all can drink and my mom has a habit of thinking of the worst {but best} business ventures and ideas for projects ever. some include the following:
1. glow-in-the-dark toilet seats for pregnant women when they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
2. a party favor business called “do me a favor”
3. the new pope should’ve come out on the balcony and proclaimed, “what up, bitches”.
on our weekend of borderline infamy, my brother said the following to my mother:
1. “it’s like you want to get smacked, mom.”
2.”dont be a dummy.”
3. “if i wrote where the red fern grows, you would have been the gross bad guy that killed one of my dogs.”
{and five minutes later}
4.”…i just realized you killed my dog.”
5.”is {what you’re about to say} actually funny or is it ‘i laughed in swingblade’-funny?”
what this all translates to, is “i love you, mommy.”
but that’s just me.
last month was a pretty nutty one in boston. pressure cooker bombs? lockdown? manhunt? city is shut down?
it all sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. orson scott card called, and he wants his plot back.
in a way, it was terrifying and stressful. in other ways, completely fascinating to reload reddit until 5am watching all of the updates and marveling at all the lovely people across the country who were up for 27 hours, listening to a fuzzy police scanner to give us news.
as we all know now, a lot of that craziness has blown over. but that lockdown day was a day homegirl over here needed to de-stress.
enter….blue velvet tardis cake. a birthday cake for the whovian manfriend.
because….birthdays are cool.
exits are on the right if this is too much for you. this is almost as bad as the “meiosis + mitosis” cookies i made in high school for my bio teacher, using sprinkles as chromosomes.
once again, you may ‘X’ out of this post now.
if you’re not familiar with good ‘ol doctor who, its a british series that has been on for the last fifty years. it chronicles the doctor traveling through space and time with a companion {rose is my obvious favorite so far} in a magical space ship called the tardis. simply put, it’s aliens and cheekiness and all kinds of feels.
okay, i just now spent 35 minutes looking through rose tyler .gifs and now i am headed on a one-way train to sob city, so we will continue.
let us proceed.
this is the kind of cake that is excellent if you:
1. have ocd
2. are currently experiencing an all-day lockdown
3. you like making stencils.
blue velvet cake:
i used this recipe. follow it exactly.
don’t use food coloring like i did, unless you want a pond-scum colored cake {seen above}. use the gel. seriously, just do it; you won’t have to go through various stages of grief and sprinkles and instagram filters if you just use the gel.
icing:
manfriend’s favorite icing is this one i used before in a guinness chocolate cake for him.
tears will be shed, it is that absurd.
once i baked the cake, i made a handy stencil using an x-acto knife.
you can also print one out and cut it out, but it was 8pm and we still hadn’t heard any updates about the manhunt, so the x-acto knife was quite helpful in stress-relief.
9pm? still no updates. so putting individual sprinkles on the cake one-by-one. it happens. i regret nothing.
10 pm? manhunt is over, ya’ll. the result?
but a certain someone was not amused by the end of the manhunt/lockdown . can you guess who?
hey ya’ll.
if you couldn’t tell already, this blog has been needing some serious r&r.
it needs a face lift of sorts. maybe a tummy tuck. maybe a juice cleanse. who knows, but i’ve been thinking about doing it for months.
inspired by my dear friend jenna’s recent blog overhaul, i realized i can re-brand this space as much as i want. whenever i want. often i’d think i had something to “owe” to someone, but that’s a bunch of baloney. and uber self-righteous. and i’m not down with that.
—-
if anything, i feel like i’ve outgrown this little space like an old, dried out cocoon. or one of those shells that $5-side-of-the-road hermit crabs live in.
in a way, i feel like i’ve outgrown “personal” blogging. “lifestyle” blogging. whatever you call it, i can’t seem to get a handle of it.
in short, i’m not very good at lifestyle blogging, because i’m not very good at lying or fabricating perfection out of my normal days. which, in their own ways, are perfect to me, but odd or dysfunctional seeming to the outside world.
i’d rather tell stories about how i once made two dogs so excited they peed themselves at the same time. or how i dated a guy who ended up dumping me because he thought he was allergic to me. or how i made the most horrible cake ever. or how i dropped out of college once. or met swedes in san francisco hostels. that’s the stuff i thrive off of; those are the stories i want to tell.
—-
in short, my life doesn’t look like a j.crew catalogue, and it’s all too easy to make your blog life look like that, i know. and i’m feeling the need to step away from that sort of world. or at least back off for a bit.
i’m also too private for that. you know how people in the olden days say photographs steal your soul or something? i feel like blogging about various experiences that i treasure so much would make them less of my own memories and more of something that people could critique or strive to have happen in their own lives.
and guys, i don’t want any of you to strive to emulate any one else’s lives. whether it’s the stationery they use. or the pug they have. or the damn duvet cover they have. i feel like it’s very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of self-perfection. and i think i have the responsibility of presenting reality to you all.
with that said, i’m taking the next few weeks to create a new space that will not only be a good place for me to share things in, and i hope you all stick around for it.
Tagged: adventures, dreams, girl why you gotta be so deep, goals, happiness, lessons, ramblings, yay
{old orchard beach, maine}
basically, ya’ll, my wanderlust is going crazy enough to make me want to say “ya’ll”. luckily, a one bedroom in manhattan is my destiny this summer, so thankfully i have some place to walk my new mom-ish shoes around {baby girl loves sensible shoes, even if they age me ten years}. never have i been more excited to kiss my little floridian weiner dog, or buy mass amounts of mangoes in crates on a street corner in new york. these books are helping homegirl in the meanwhile.
{berlin}
{berlin + france + boston} my berlin kitchen by luisa weiss
{the happiest places} the geography of bliss by eric weiner
{britain + america} i’m a stranger here myself by bill bryson
{ireland} irish journal by heinrich boll
{europe} neither here nor there by bill bryson
{actually, just read all of the bill bryson: appalachia, britain, australia, small town america}
{paris} the dud avocado by elaine dundy
{italy} la bella figura by beppe severgnini
Tagged: adventures, bad jokes, book lists, books, confessions, dreams, happiness, inspiration, life, loveliness, ramblings, reading, silliness, travel, yay
signed a sublease for a charmingly large {that’s what she said, heeey ohhhhh. sorry, mom} one bedroom in upper {upper…upper} manhattan for the summer.
two favorite berries: pinkberry on newbury.
putting “or whatever” after heartfelt sayings has been my main jam, i.e. “i love you or whatever”, “you’re cute or whatever”, “no, i’ll miss you or whatever.”
edie has been developing a love of fine luggage. baby girl knows what she likes.
the $8.95 thai lunch special at dok bua is both the life and death of me. dumplings on dumplings on curry on dumplings.
fenway has never been more gross and sticky and yet so very much my favorite place, even if i did drop my favorite scarf right into a puddle of day old bud light.
i’m also trying to convince coolidge theater that i can sublet one of their recliner chairs forever, because that’s what success and happiness look like to me.
kate nash. jukebox the ghost. matt pond pa. all of the paper bags being hyperventilated into. all of them.
the discovery of the one direction store in boston= life has improved a million percent and rising.
my loyalty cards have extended from just cvs to include: panera, petco, dunkin’s, pavement, starbucks, and whatwaslifewithoutfreescones,guys
brother and mother filson and i pillaged the harpoon brewery of its pretzels and harpoon summer.
{and considered going by ferry to do the same at cisco brewery in nantucket. we don’t mess around}
tardis blue velvet cake for the whovian manfriend. disgust-o-meter went way off the charts this weekend.
slowly but surely the people of boston are getting back to their normal selves;
…which is to say the italian guys in the north end give me discounts on strawberries for my red hair, and i delight in the drunken conversations had by people on a saturday night on the train home.
Tagged: adventures, college life, lists, nerd, life, boston, loveliness, happiness, broston, boston i love you, favorite things, yay
{monday’s thai food fortune cookie.}
monday we overslept.
my brother was on a plane home at 9:30am. mom and i ate thai, until at 2:50 pm my mom looked over my shoulder to see what everyone in the restaurant was staring at on the television.
“ooh! the runners two blocks away from the finish line.”
somehow i knew this couldn’t be right. without my glasses on, i felt this was fishy.
i knew from half-wrecklessly running a half marathon a few years ago that the majority of runners would be finishing around 2:50 in the afternoon.
it seems that someone else knew that, too. curse my mom and i’s poor eye sight.
in a lot of ways, i’m still in shock. the blasts were around 2-3 blocks away from my school. seven students from my school were injured. it’s also the origin of where i first got smitten over boston.
first saw that library rotunda. bought my dried apricots from trader joe’s. get caught by pushy canvassers on my way home.
aimlessly wandered on tuesday afternoons when i had nothing else to do but gawk at buildings and residents of this little city.
in these situations, i can’t even be angry.
as a younger sister of an older brother with a penchant for wrestling and light-hearted sibling fighting, i know that you never show that person you’re upset. that’s what they’re looking for. the sooner you stop showing sadness and anger, the sooner the person in question leaves you alone. terrorism, while terrifying, is only successful if terror is sensed in the victims.
boston is better than that.
if you’ve ever gone to a sox game, or a farmer’s market in the italian end, you know these people won’t back down. they will insult your mother. they will be the first to drop their “r”s in conversation, but also the first to fight for you.
if there is anything i feel from yesterday’s events, it’s even more love for this city.
i’ve grown up here, these last few years. i became a fully functioning adult here. and i’m lucky to live here, if not for the people i’ve met, but for the people i haven’t met, who i got to see run yesterday.
not just running in the marathon, but for the running they did towards the destruction that tore up so many people’s lives, wrecked their dreams of finishing 26.2 miles in boston, rendered them a little less innocent to the things that a small fraction of a fraction of a percentage of the world decide to bring into this world.
because that’s the truth of it.
because these things can’t wreck my view of “humanity” because the people who do these things are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the population.
and the runners and helpers towards those people in the blasts outnumber them in the millions and billions.
if you need any more proof of this, click the links below:
the google person finder
runners run to mgh to give blood after marathon
cowboy hat hero saves lives at marathon
13 examples of people being awesome after the bombing
red cross: how to help (apparently, they’ve exceeded what they need. humanity wins again)
to boston, from kabul, with love
