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.
{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.
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?
{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
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.
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.}
{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.
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.
3. i loooooove numbers. number games, get at me.
4. speaking of pet peeves, i have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to jokes about being a girl.
5. if hip hop is not secretly playing in my headphones, no work is getting done.
{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 past valentines day weekend i got myself on a greyhound and traveled all the way to montreal. for other itineraries, click here.}
get to south station at 7am after a valentine’s date of romantic egg sandwiches eaten under the glow of subway lights and alfred hitchcock, which is to say i was under a pretty hefty bagel coma.
promptly down the largest mcdonald’s coffee and delight in all of the artificial sweetener, fake cream, and ambiance. then, take two melatonins.
but actually don’t, because that’s like a big LOL to your body. if you feel the need to shake your right leg in place and scratch your head, but also fall asleep, you’re doing it right.
allow seven hours of talking to patchouli-scented busmates and buying $9 maple syrup at a sunoco in white river junction, vermont to pass. this is very important. do not question me.
gallivant the city of montreal solo hell-bent on trying new things like poutine and maybe use some high school french (french club president 08-09, hollaaaaaa), but end up speaking english and ordering a fast food tofu green curry on styrofoam plates almost immediately. it happens.
extra points if you accidentally shout “I’D VOUDRAIS A VERT TOFU CARI S’IL VOUS PLAIT?” when you get nervous.
that also happens.
delight in the dreamboatiness of josh ritter and fantasize about him noticing your glance across the room, prompting him to say “you want to pull on my suspenders, don’t you? come on over. don’t be shy.”
what actually happens:
1. you forget to get cash out for coat check and the canadian bouncer is really not jiving with you holding your puffer coat the whole concert, but your card shuts down before you can because you’ve only just crossed the canadian border abruptly and are buying erratic things like ear plugs, sketchy hostel reservations, and $9 bottles of maple syrup. you are essentially a terrorist.
2. also, get a nose bleed in the middle of the concert.
3. get one of those delightful chronic uti’s is also a plus (tmi, but i need you all to really understand the gravitas of this comedic display of sad). go to the bathroom eight times, strategically placing the bathroom door cracked so you can still sing along to “bright smile”.
4. forget to pull your skirt down when you return from the bathroom for the sixth time. don’t notice that everyone can see the butt flap on your sweater tights until you go back for time #7.
even so, fun was had.
home girl doesn’t play around. she plays for keeps.
spend the next morning prancing around mont royal imagining how on earth montreal hospitals and public parks can be sexy. they’ve taken it to an art form, ya’ll.
eat a burrito-sized crepe filled with nutella and raspberries on a stoop near mcgill because you really don’t feel like tipping anyone.
pretend to your instagram followers that you went into museums, because you truly can’t afford it. but pretty pictures outsides and selfies in gift shops count for something.
realize that your southern accent is coming back the more you go north on this continent. it’s probably been at least 11 hours since you’ve spoken to someone, so you spend two hours laughing about “montre-ya’ll” as a pun. this will help in hiking up mont royal, somehow.
this is how you solo travel, ya’ll.
if you’re ever in the market for a porn version of “dude, where’s my car?” or some disney channel original movie (i’d be all for a “luck of the irish” version personally), fear not; montreal has already done it and it’s playing right around the corner.
meet up with lovely blog soul-sister, emily. and delight in all things kitschy and dairy-filled (foreshadowing*~).
suddenly your mind is filled with all kinds of exclamation points: accordion players! french things! kitschy thrift stops with clear coffins with a dead jesus inside of it (really, this happened. it was right below the cash register)!!
bike baskets outside of erotic movie theatres! erotic bookstores! erotic lingerie stores! i was significantly disappointed on not finding an erotic bakery, but you win some you lose some.
and then the inevitable happened. seeing as emily and were those types of girls: the kinds who ordered virtually ordered all the same things at all the restaurants we went to, we got lactose-sick off of a plateful of omelet du fromage, sadly enough.
we hobbled from shop to shop, through creepy jesus-sarcophagus-filled thrift stores to shop-dog-filled shops, but realized a nap in our hostel bunk bed was what the doctor ordered.
seeing as we had been calling out things as “so0oo0o instagrammable” (you know what i’m talking about: lattes, cats, flowers, clouds, anything fluffy/sparkly/alcohol-induced) all around the city, we decided to strike the most instagrammable poses; that of us crouching in pain inside a metro station. we tried to make a statement and i think it worked.
perform stand-up.
move somewhere new.
post-grad corgi????
pierce the schnozz/nose. make it sparkly.
watch the entirety of doctor who.
sing in public.
say nope.
graduate (!!!)
bike around a new city.
learn to read crochet patterns (achievable goals, ya’ll.)
read at least three children’s books auf deutsch.
go to a mormon church service.
go rock-climbing.
go see a show at ucb.
do at least three levels of improv class.
write more letters.
self-publish my collection of awk short stories.
go see the sea ponies at chinctoteague island (8 year old dream, gah!)
get a real, big girl job.
here goes nothing, ya’ll.
