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.” my mom is just another perfect piece to the crooked, weird puzzle that is somehow depicting the 100 piece set of chubby pugs in a red wheelbarrow that all puzzle companies seem to have, that i call my family. i think she’d be the crafty, chubby pug, giving personal advice to the pope about her new patented glow-in-the-dark toilet seats in the back.

but that’s just me.

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. it doesn’t get any less disgusting from here.

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. just…watch it, guys.

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.

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 stories by robert walser

{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

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. 

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.

{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. anger is what your bully wants to see. sadness is what these people feed on.
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. that’s why i can’t be angry or sad.
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

this is edie. her original name was princess, but we thought that name was lame.
so around these parts we call her “princess edie dalek caan cybermen“.

actually only two of us call her that, but my best friend lately has been a plump cat, so we’ll forget that for now.

she is my new kitten friend. she is ten years old, which technically makes her a dame.

{ guys, i’m so excited to be able to exploit my cat on the internet. i finally feel like i belong in the blogging world.}

she enjoys the following:
-farting.
-showing you her butt.
-clamping on to your shoulder when you hold her.
-having her belly fat rubbed.
-wheezing heavily
{she has cat herpes, which is sort of like the common cold to felines, so she has an adorable case of nasal congestion that i secretly hope never goes away. she sounds like stinky from “hey arnold!”}
-when her cat food is microwaved for 14 seconds.
-she also likes holding hands. and sitting on hands. oh, she loves sitting on hands. that’s babygirl’s favorite.

she does not enjoy the following:

-the bikes in my hallway {she’s been confronting her demons a lot this week}.
-the music of prince.

she’s kind of the best.

obviously we need to get the cat formerly named “princess” to like the artist formerly known as prince,

that’s just necessary for survival in my apartment, but for now she’s all good.

{yeah, i spent all night on that last one. hey-oh.}

many people think you can have only one dream in your brain, can only hold one close enough in your heart. and i just think that’s a load of baloney. for as long as i can remember one of those dreams was to have a bakery. it’s gotten more elaborate over the years. it now has a name (“eclair de lune”, and if you steal it  i will fight you, and i am pretty scrappy.)

i also have a growing desktop note on my laptop labeled “kenzie dream bakery” where i have all of the lard-filled creations i plan to fatten up cops and schoolchildren with. i would be known city-wide for my baklava and deep attachment to my crisco container, and my tendency to speak to said crisco container. my dream is not of a bakery with cutesy aprons and banners and polka dots and other things i pin mindlessly on pinterest. i wanna be the old lady who you can’t tell her grays from the flour smattered in her hair.

one of the desserts i dreamt up for my “kenzie dream bakery”, during a super boring 2 hour class on the history of paper, (no joke, this is where all of the donut-flavor combos are born for me),were these little bad boys.

speculoos donuts.

yes, speculoos donuts. yes, that means ground up cookies and butter….inside more sugary flour and more butter. i believe this is what drake has been talking about all along when he first uttered “yolo”. that’s just my bet.

these little guys are pretty simple.{i tend to have whole wheat flour on hand at all times, so like these are basically a superfood. or something.}

donuts:
1 3/4 c. flour
2/3 c. sugar {seems like on the low side, but the cookie butter really sweetens them a ton.}
1/2-3/4c. speculoos {dutch cookie butter. sold at trader joe’s, dangerously enough} i did this to taste, which is to say i smothered myself in it.
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
3/4- 1 cups milk, use more if the cookie butter dries the batter out.
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. white vinegar
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled.

glaze:
1 1/4 c. powdered sugar
remaining giblets of your cookie butter jar {if there’s any left} ~1/4 cup
2-3 tbsp milk
1 tsp. vanilla

1. mix all ingredients together into a medium sized bowl {save milk for last, to see how the texture of batter develops. should be thick but you should be able to mix it without too much effort}
2. transfer batter into a ziplock bag to pipe into donut pan.
3. bake for roughly 12-14 minutes, depending on what size/ shape pan you use. less for minis, more for larger donuts obviously.
4. while donuts bake, mix glaze ingredients in separate bowl, set aside for dipping the little morsels into face down once they are properly cooled.

….then, debate how you will slyly “motorboat” your face on to the glazed donuts incognito.
this will involve yelling that there is a mouse in the kitchen and your roommates should leave the apartment immediately because you, a baseball bat, and the mouse in question have some talking to do.

or simply put, bake things between 12- 2am, which i sometimes tend to do {re: the 3am guinness-chocolate valentine’s day cake of 2013}.

donuts motorboat’d. problem solved.

{my “eff you, winter” shoes.}

i’ll be honest. i’m not one to do the cutesy blog q&a tagging rituals on this space.

i think it’s mostly because i’ve had a blog since i was 12 {thank god blurty is defunct and livejournal mercifully deleted my 13 year old blog, to the betterment of the world. i think i wrote an entire entry on weaves when i was 13, and i wish that was a joke} and did those deliriously long surveys that only slightly chubby middle schoolers do when their “the sims” characters are sleeping or peeing in a corner. meaning 12 year old chubby me, of course.

you know the ones. the ones that are 96 items long and ask you what deodorant you use and the last thing you ate, which was always what your middle school self thought the outside world was dying to hear. which was most likely some sort of strawberry “teen spirit” deodorant and a bag of cheetos. 22 year old me hasn’t changed too much. i just ate a cheese stick and i use whatever deodorant manfriend and my male roommate have in the bathroom. all the growth, ya’ll.

regardless, i got done-tagged, ya’ll. and since i’ve already told you what deodorant i use, we’ve knocked that one off the list. we’re ahead of schedule. here are five more. don’t get too excited.

1. i’m obsessssssssed with cvs extracare bucks. like actually obsessed. i keep all of them. one time manfriend snuck out of nowhere and scanned his extracare card when i was scanning my stuff, and he took my points, and that is essentially on par with kicking a small dog in front of a schoolbus full of small children.  i strategically plan when i’m going to use my “$2 off two $9 packs of cvs brand tampons!!!” and am visibly sad when i don’t get any more bucks when i go to cvs. i once went to three cvs stores in a day and bought a delusional level of stuff in order to use my extracare bucks up (rimmel eyeshadow! 1 dozen eggs! 1 tub of coolwhip! earwax-clearing drops!)

2.i pretty much have to announce to whomever i’m with whenever i see a dog, have to pet said dog, that there is a dog currently within 40 feet of me. i usually say “wubby alert. wubby alert. sound the alarm it’s a wubby.” {taken from the always-relevant andy milonakis}  when spotting a pretty pooch, and if i’m by myself i will usually speedily greet the dog. times i’ve  been sniped at?  just once. i count this as a win. times i’ve almost untied a dog that was curbed to a tree or lamp post and brought it home to be my own personal wubby? zero, but it’s only a matter of time.

3. i loooooove numbers. number games, get at me. one of my pet peeves is people assuming that because i am a writing major that i hate math, but i lurve it. i find it comforting and predictable, like a syndicated episode of “friends” at 10pm. for as long as i can remember, i’ve played a stupid number game i made up in my head. i basically take a phone number, mailbox, or birthday and add,multiply, divide, or subtract until i can get the other numbers in the series. for instance, when i got my phone number, i had to let out a little schoolgirl giggle. it was perfect. without area code (ya creeps), it’s 8081535. so the possible equations are 8×0=0, 1×5=5, 5+3=8, 5-5=0, 5/5=1, 8/8=1 (uses two numbers in series, to get another number in series is the main gist).  i once zoned out on a car ride with my old roommates and yelled, “that’s a good mailbox!” out of nowhere, overwhelmed by the mathematical perfection of a mailbox. they were not amused. still with me? in short, i’m gross.

4. speaking of pet peeves, i have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to jokes about being a girl. i seriously will turn off a show, resolve not to follow a comedienne, or disregard entirely if someone even jokes about “becoming a cat lady”, “hanging out with my best friends, ben & jerry”, or “dying alone, being eaten by all my cats, my remains never to be found.” {actually, i like the last one. but anyways, you get the jist.} i’m a gigantic comedy nerd, and was force-fed comedy central stand-up shows ever since i realized at age six that i would never win the remote control from my 13 year old brother. i may not be the funniest lady in all the land, but i know these are cheap jokes and they make me wanna vomit a little bit. i’ll still love you, but i also might twitch a little. a love twitch.

5. if hip hop is not secretly playing in my headphones, no work is getting done. or r&b. or motown.  that’s just a fact.basically i wish i was a bouffant-haired buxom lady with major pipes and cat-eye make-up. and that’s the reason i’ll give for why i still haven’t folded any of the clothes in the reusable grocery bags spewing all over my room. yes, that’s it.

{pretty sure everyone in the world has already been tagged, but let me know if you all decide to fill one of these badboys out. i’ll just be over here looking at “good” mailboxes.”

this semester has been naps at 5:00….until 8pm.
emails and emails and emails and cover letters and emails.
eating whole avocados. stress cheese stick-eating. spending a two hour class writing 20+ donut flavor combinations for later dates.
biggest loser re-runs and putting “watch more dr.who” as a valid item on the to-do list.

kitten kisses. kitten howls. kitten head-butts. crusty butts in my face. wheezes. and paw-holding.
leaving class because, well, i need a nap. a 5pm nap. and a toasted bagel. and a hug.
devising plans on how to get myself out of this icy siberian tundra i call boston.
convincing the little girl i babysit that she doesn’t have a penis on her head, as much as she might like one.

no one prepared me for how “meh” senior year is. it’s not even sad, it’s more of a very bland hospital waiting room.
that smells like old egg salad and windex.
i’m totally okay with having things not figured out. i don’t even want them all figured out.
that’s boring as shizz, anyways.
i want to be nervous. i want be scared.

…and in the wise words of stevie nicks in an early demo of “sara”, “i wanna be a star, i don’t wanna be a cleaning lady!” 
{which has essentially become my post-grad motto}
i’ve been feeling like a cleaning lady in undergrad.
skipping classes to get $1 hot dogs and lobster tails at mike’s and still pulling b.s. a-minuses is putting me at cleaning lady status.

in some ways i’m shocked i’m about to finish my degree. lots of people were when i initally dropped out.  {god, that post is OLD}
i never went back because i was ashamed, ashamed of what not going to college was like.
if anything, it was to get the experience i wanted to have. i felt like my stories would be richer, my jokes more truthful, and it has done that, i think.

but ya’ll, i’m ready to bust out of this popsicle stand.
this is not to say i’m going to go spend my summer or first post-grad year in europe backpacking to gain “life experience” {i think that’s baloney. go to chicago. go to guam. go to freakin’ omaha. experience isn’t in a swede-filled european hostel, ya derps.}

i’m ready for something more challenging than $3 coffees and handing in lackluster pages.i’m ready to feel the itch. to feel these mustard-colored boots leave the comfort of scratchy cobblestones. to feel uncomfortable.

{this playlist is very much about busting out.
but it’s also good for those moments where you feel like torso-dancing in your car,
or had some turd be passive-aggressive to you at work, at starbucks, at your podiatrist’s office.
it will make you smile. and remember that eddie murphy once had a musical career.}