back in the saddle again

Not home from vacation twenty four hours and already my jaw feels like I've been crushing walnuts with it.

So yeah, the vacation was fantastic. We camped at a hilarious campground with some old people in their campers, some of whom sat in screened tents and watched dvds. Hilarious! We had fires and ate s'mores and I learned how to use the camp stove. Which is, in fact, that easy, but how was I to know? My parents told me to stay away from the stove because it was very dangerous, and then they never told me otherwise. Ah, when in doubt, blame the parents. Very smart, very smart. And we went on some beautiful hikes and all the way to the top of Mt. Rogers (the highest point in VA), and got good and sore and saw wild ponies and hiked back down and slept in a tent about the size of a womb. Really the only downside (apart from our kind of silly campsite) was that my intestines decided to f everything up last week, so I wasn't exactly the happiest camper in the world. I guess something has to go wrong, and that was it.

Then off to the farm and saw the boyfriend's whole family, which was lovely as always. A couple hours of watching the cutest 5 year old in the world shoot arrows and then trick me into going and picking them up. Good times.

And now I'm back, to focus on fun things like moving and new health insurance and applying to school. Eeek!

rainy sunday

I had a dream this morning that we were in upstate new york looking for my sister and some very strange friends of hers, and we had to camp at a trailer park, and it was raining and we hadn't brought a tarp for the ground. ugh. we were going to get all muddy.

Meaningful? I doubt it. I slept late and woke up with only the sheet on and the fan blowing and it was raining outside. I love how physical sensations create whole plot arcs in dreams.

And now the constant decision, should I clean or should I sew. Or should I go shopping. Each of them helps me in their own ways, and each is frustrating too. Do I have the patience to work on a new dress pattern? If I start to clean the house will I want to strangle the boyfriend when he gets home? Do I have any money/will I feel totally guilty coming home with new clothes, books, etc.?

I think what I really want to do is cook. Plan a menu, go to the organic butcher and talk about cuts of meat, splurge on the expensive salami, work on a new recipe. At the end of the day have something beautiful and new and also deliciously rewarding.

So okay, maybe it will have to be a skirt instead.

The 24th of The Rest of My Life

Holy Moly it's been a long time since I've posted. It's interesting to me that the more that is going on in my life the less I feel like writing about it. Also worth noting and perhaps thinking about some day that I write so much less now that I'm sober. A coincidence? Probably, but not necessarily. Anyway, I'm really just getting around to saying that there has been a lot going on.

I had another birthday, and so did Andrew. We had a lovely party and delicious cupcakes and you're all jealous that you weren't there to eat them. No, seriously. If I have a wedding cake half as delicious as those cupcakes it'll be a miracle. From heaven. Or that I hired the same guy to make them.

VCU rejected me, for reasons that I may never fathom. For a couple days I thought the world was closing in on me, and I got all panicky and didn't get off the couch, and this was the same week that the Gilmore Girls went off the air, so there was a lot of crying to be done. But in my panic I reached out for every possibility of what to do with myself next year, and came up with some pretty good alternatives. A full time job at my current workplace, and maybe an apprenticeship working on costumes. So, it's not all lost.

Now I just need a new place to live and another dog and an mp3 player that works and for the world to invent a healthy cigarette and I'm back on top of the world!

april

so I guess I got through that week. I suppose. I am still living and breathing and sitting here drinking green tea. Hilarious, in fact, that I applied to college, got audited, stopped drinking coffee, paid my 2006 taxes, my boyfriend implied that I might grow up to be a bag lady, and my ipod died of corruption, all in the span of about a month, culimnating in one weekend we went on a rainy vacation. Horrifying. And all that without any extra money to throw around as shopping therapy. Goodness! I know, you're all sitting back and saying my my, how does she do it? If only you saw my medical bills! But seriously, folks, I'd like to give a shout out to my therapist for helping me not run right off the rails the last little while of my life. But now it's getting warmer, someday I will hear about my future as it pertains to fashion school, the boyfriend seems to want to have actual conversations, I'm realizing I can't just will him to say the things I want him to, the taxes are getting paid, I'm tightening my belt. And my birthday's right around the corner! It's looking up? Thank god that month is over.

i've got the crazies

Here's an apology to all the people who have to speak to me this week: Oh my, I'm so sorry. I'm a total loony bin. It won't go on for much longer.

The pressure! I want to know how other people deal with it. Yoga, really? Beer? Punching things? Deep breathing? Sex? Yeah, I could probably use more of all of that. But I don't have time! I'm too stressed out! Taxes, dresses, drawings, leaky roofs in the middle of the night (thank you for dealing with that, piece). I'm too wigged out to even appreciate the fact that a raccoon tried to break into our house last night. Which was, by the way, hilarious in retrospect.

And what's that coming around the bend? Oh, hey, period. Cool, you always make me feel so calm and rational. Everything's coming up roses.

Next Tuesday, man. Everything's going to be better.

a mandate to blog

So I'm thinking a lot about shopping recently. I hate my clothes. Not in an "i think i'm fat i can't stand it" way, or in an "everything i bought was cool when i rocked it at age 19 and now just looks sad" way, but in an "i don't have a cohesive look and when i tell people i'm a fashion designer i just feel ashamed" way. This need for clothes is intersecting with my complete inability to buy things that were made in china. (okay, not complete, i did just buy that jean skirt from american eagle, but i really needed it and it was on sale). So i see cute stuff and I want to buy it and then I see that made in china label and my stomach sinks and I just can't pay 95 dollars for a skirt that was made in a sweatshop.

But there is not a great directory of where to find clothing online or even in person that isn't made with the blood of little girls, and I'm beginning to think that I must be the one to create this blog. The blog to tell you all where to shop. Because really, is there anything I like to do more than tell people what to do? No, not really.

homestyle

All I want to do is move. It's spring, time to move! Or graduate, or at least plant things. So I'm sewing and trying to build flower boxes and cleaning and tossing out old clothes (or not so old clothes) in a vain attempt to corral the amount of stuff that had built up around me in the last few years. It's so much stuff! It's an ungodly amount of stuff! Papers and books and shoes and pots and pans and knick knacks and cds and pens and lamps and couches and god only knows what else. And we're thinking about moving. No, that's wrong: we live for moving day, and when we do move we will relocate to a place that is approximately 2/10s of the size of the place we live in now. So...where's all that stuff gonna go?