that time
that time
that time
that time
that time
that time
#classicbrooklyn outfit rounded out by a manfriend shirt. where’s my owl-embroidered tote bag? my straight bangs? feather extensions? it’s like i thought it was halloween or something.
seeing things clearly and un-blobby is underrated.
…especially bridges at night like this beaut.
1. relationships and friendships should never be kept alive based solely on how you both really love paul simon’s album graceland. i know, it’s a great album. and it’s hard.
2. most things can be resolved with watermelon.
3. the only way to walk your dogs is by imagining you are in homeward bound.
4. navy and bright orange totally go together.
5. putting every little, tiny milestone in your life on facebook is reeeeeally annoying to most people around you
6. just because you have four “$4 off your next $20 purchase at cvs!!!!!” coupons does not mean you should spend all of them on orange coconut waters and expired 50% off easter candy.
7. princess diaries was meant to be watched twice in one day.
8.you really only need one to three good friends.
9. science museums are much, much, much more fun than ragers. 10. you’re twenty-two and you still don’t know how to make a bread bowl?
if you’re reading this, i finished up my trek to my new apartment in manhattan.
i’ve got a small litter box clumsily stuffed into my suit case. my lucky mustard yellow flats. men’s evergreen-scented deodorant.
which is to say, i’m ready to rumble.
i’m a huge fan of to-do lists. buuuuuuut they sound so dreadful.
ergo, the birth of the “ta da! list” which i think just sounds a lot nicer.
{and subconsciously i like to think it makes me more productive.}
…let’s get started, ya’ll.
*eat all the big gay ice cream.
*take a class at upright citizens brigade
*henna-dye my hair.
*swing dance allllll over
{the most fun exercise because you can talk while you do it.}
*eat lots of german food.
{boston only has one german restaurant, so this maedchen needs to get her schnitzel on.}
*doughnut plant!
*learn how to read crochet patterns.
*grow my hair to stevie nicks a la rumours status.
*find a yoga place under $35 a class.
*coney island (!!!!)
*go to momofuku milk bar, please. i daydream often of cereal-milk flavored goodies.
*read lots of german children’s books. yay!
{did i miss anything?}
{while i was at home last week i got to go to my beloved disney… dear disney,
which also means i dropped at least $30 on necessary nonsense}
just take all of my money.
you deserve it.
from your meatloaf and 50′s diners.
to your mickey-shaped ice creams.
and your phineas and ferb pillow pets.
and your steven tyler yowling at me while i flip on roller coasters.
{i’ll forgive the elderly people of cruise ships.
the toddlers with wet pants.
and the people that belt at the american idol experience! “ride” for now}
consider it my “i was born in orlando and must pay my bi-yearly disney tax by buying $30 stuffed platypus” payment.
just take it. all of it.
sincerely, me.
{click image for spotify playlist. click here for youtube playlist}
i think summer playlists are a wonderful thing. the most special of all playlists.
as a former theme park employee who worked in a section of the park where it was always july 4th, 1976 year-round {i.e. working the carnival games outside of the “jaws” ride. no lie.} i know what a typical summer playlist looks like. i did over 18 times a day.
after 9 months of working whac-a-mole i lost the ability to stop myself from twitching when “jeremiah was a bullfrog” blasted over the theme park speakers. i danced with too many scooby-doo toys to pass the time to that songs in a crusty old ring toss game.
i have to physically leave trader joe’s if “good vibrations” is playing. that shit starts up my theme-park-induced ptsd.
that was my 9 months of talking to stuffed animal toys, telling grown men that no, they could not have that stuffed animal patrick the starfish toy because it cost more than their tommy bahama shorts, and having brazilian tour groups accidentally hit me with tennis balls, wiffle balls, and guns with yes, more balls attached to them.
i got hit with balls a lot, ya’ll.
and yes, i know how to say “balls” in more languages than i really expected to.
now that i am out of the theme park trenches, i know how a playlist of summer jams can either get you pumped up to get rid of your translucent white legs {like mine look when i put sunscreen on in the beginning of may. whoops.}
or how it can make your left eye twitch or cause people to think you just had a stroke.
we’re gonna go with the former route. sound good? i thought so.
{this summer i’m actually going to tackle all of those things i’ve been meaning to edit, hash out, create, whatever.
i work best with sputtering espresso machines and listening in on conversations between people that met via craigslist.
and my collection of offices in boston is pretty varied and i’ve loved pretending to type things in them these last two years.
this is a new feature that is part-productivity, part-portrait of these places i call my city offices.}
location:
imbibed and consumed:
{all of the multigrain seeds ended up in my keyboard and i regret nothing.}
conversations heard:
{that was saved for mother-daughter text messages. }
things worked on:
1. mega bus return ticket to boston….for 1.5 hours {internet was as slow as was my brain after ~24 hours of travel}.
2. at least twenty sassy text messages to my mother commenting on how a girl i grew up with stole my mom’s co-worker’s boyfriend.
{follow that?}
topics also covered:
hooters tank tops,
$1200 trips to the dentist {more on this later}
and my dachshund considering doggy suicide. the usual.
3. things blocked on all browsers? facebook. twitter. pinterest. also known as the bermuda triangle of lost time. i used to block these on google chrome, but found i would sneak onto safari to do my surfing thinking it “didn’t count”. now it all counts.
i am productivity, hear me roar &etc.
4. finishing up one of the books in a long string of bus-ride reading this week.
things not worked on:
editing 200+ pages of short stories. editing is scary, ya’ll. today’s excuse? “i work better when things are printed out!!!!” you win again, subconscious. printing out 200 pages of awkward non-fiction stories, it is.
i also spent too much time giggling over the cute wifi log-in name ”you’re grounded.”
i am too easily distracted. and amused. it happens.
{what helps you stay productive? i’m sort of a nerd for being a nerd, if you couldn’t already tell}
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.
