fair's fair

last week i was talking to someone (i honestly can't remember who) about fairness and the way life doles out breaks and benefits and outcomes. the way that karma doesn't always seem to directly hit its mark, or benefit a do-gooder and that sometimes life's justice is meted out in uneven chucks. i can think of people on both ends of the spectrum. those who deserve more breaks than they get and those who haven't really had to suffer at all.

when i think about these scenarios, the name paris hilton comes to mind. i'm not really sure why. but i think, there is a girl who has had every privilege this world can offer. she was born into a family with money and power, she is thin and blonde and is not completely unattractive and has a trust fund, and despite her obvious need to receive attention from the media and the public to achieve some sort of perverted celebrity, her life is pretty charmed. she couldn't even handle sitting in a jail cell for what 30 days by herself, because she had probably never been asked to be alone with her thoughts for that long. or suffered the indignity of being grounded by her obviously indulgent parents. sure, sure i know what you are saying, who am i to judge anyone's circumstances or life experiences or know what they go through on a daily basis? fair enough. but i am guessing that hilton never worried about where her next meal was coming from, or her next soon-to-be-neglected pet for that matter. the harsh words the media throws her way are generally fair, deserved and she is the one that put herself in that position in the first place. she never worried about a roof over her head or a retirement fund. she never even had to think about an actual career. she can walk through this world with her head in the clouds and still end up, at the end of an 80 year run, on top. one could even say that her lower iq is a benefit, because she doesn't even have to recognize how useless and disposable she really is. ouch.

and so you don't think i am just hating on paris, i too have lived a fairly charmed life. besides a bout with lyme's disease that left me perpetually sick for several of my formative years and the curse of being a chubby adolescent in a society that worships the thin, i have had a pretty good run. i can pay my rent, put food in my mouth, clothe myself and once in a while go out to a nice restaurant or the movies. i have also had the benefit of both my parents as both an emotional and monetary safety net, underutilized yes, but ever present. my childhood experiences have made me resilient and sensitive, yes, aware of the physical and emotional pain inflicted on others by circumstance or trickery. either way is wicked and fate is a fickle mistress. but knowing that my parents are there when i make a misstep and fall off the tightrope we all walk, permits me to live the highwire lifestyle i have taken to in the past. i paid for graduate school myself, took on the loans, the crushing debt that i will be paying for until i am 65 and probably far beyond that (no exaggeration), but when my plane landed in the states, they were the ones who picked me up at the airport and it was their house that i lived in until i could get back into the workforce. others aren't afforded these benefits. i know that the fates have smiled on me thus far and i am thankful, i just wish others could get the same treatment.

my mother's life is a good example of the random assignment of pleasure and pain by the universe. when she was 5 my mother lost her mother to ovarian cancer. but that wasn't where the loss ended. my grandfather, who i suspect was always a selfish man tempered by a caring, giving and traditional woman, spent no time disrupting the lives of his children. my mother's siblings, much older, were out of the house by then, but my mother too young to even understand what had happened, was shuttled to her aunt's house, so that her father could return to italy. her aunt only spoke italian and i am sure that the transition was scary and frustrating and through it my mother learned to be accommodating and pliable and, in some ways, invisible. and although both of her parents were italian, my grandmother had only allowed english to be spoken in the house so their transformation to typical american family could be complete. when my grandfather returned to the states almost a year later, he had a new wife and she was with child. my mother returned to their home, but all traces of my grandmother were removed from the house. the rest of my mother's childhood and adolescence was marred by incidences of unfairness and bitter remarks and soul crushing cruelty at the hands of loved ones.

just thinking about it makes me want to scream and cry and throw things around and i turn beet red and want to write letters and make phones calls and change history. my mother, however, remains calm and accepting in the face of her own memories. she tries to recall the brighter moments of her formative years. don't get me wrong, she recognizes the emotional inequity between say her childhood and my father's. she knows that things didn't happen like that for other kids her age. perhaps it was the skills she acquired in that year that she lost her mother, where she learned to take things as they come and not ask why of someone or something  that can't answer back. i don't think it is a coincidence that she doesn't believe in god.

i think of my mother often in times of other's hardships. i compare their reactions to hers. she has never complained, she is not just a glass half-full person, she is a glass overflowing person. i used to wake up each morning to a knock on my bedroom door and the words "rise and shine!" she is the personification of positivity to the point of annoyance. but however she chooses to approach the world she has earned it, and even in my crabbiest of moments i have to remember that.

but the universe didn't throw all shit experiences at my mother. i feel that in some ways, there was an evening out of the karma imbalance for her in the form of my father. she met him at 16. they have been together for more than 40 years. they love each other like couples at the end of hollywood romances love each other. they spend all of their time together. sometimes my mother complains that my dad needs to get his own life, he is all up in her shit (my words not hers) and that his retirement is really cramping her social life. but this is their banter. this is the way it has been since she was a lovestruck teenager or should i say she still is a lovestruck teenager. and for my father's part, he gets it. he gets her and understands the quirks of her personality that were borne out of those childhood years. he admires her for her resilience and fortitude and all of these other attributes that helped her survive in tact and with a smile.

i have friends that have lived charmed lives, some recognize it and others not so much. i also have friends that just can't seem to catch a break, life keeps lobbing them grenades and as much as they try to avoid them, some shrapnel this way comes. i don't know how it works out there in the universe, i don't know how to turn the tables or alter the course of events, i don't even know if karma and fate or anything exists, although i feel like there is some sort of energy out there. and since i don't believe in god, or allah, or whatnot what do i have but my weirdo new age mumbo jumbo? i do have control of my own actions and through my words or advice, hope that i sometimes inspire the positive actions of others. but sometimes there is nothing you can do and bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and the only thing that gets you through is that one day you'll see the roles reverse. and the people who have wronged the ones you love get there's and the people you love find people to love them as much as you do. 

this is what popped up when i googled karma

the tenseness of future past imperfect

so i have mentioned briefly here and there that i have been attempting to date in this city. it has been a lackluster endeavor so far and not one that i really wish to chronicle. my hope is that one day i'll just start writing about fun things i'm doing with so and so and in that way it won't have to be a huge announcement. but my last two dates got me thinking about the evolution of my current dating life and the oft left out proper rules of dating that our parents benefited from, but seem to be alluding us in this fast-paced interneted world.

i remember when i moved back to my hometown. i landed there after dublin and felt stuck in every aspect of my life. i was back in my parent's house, working at a florist/hospital gift shop, dating my then boyfriend long distance from IRELAND and trying to figure out what the fuck i was doing with my life. one day as i was sitting in the relative calm of the hospital gift shop when an old high school classmate's mother walked in. now this woman was never very nice. not to me, my parents, my best friend, other classmates. she saw me as competition always. her child didn't always see me this way.

the girl seemed to discount me as any real sort of competition in school and for college placement not based on my intelligence but my relative disinterest in academics. she saw me, i think, as a comedic foil to my other friends. i tended not to pick up the required readings, kept papers to their stated minimum and never over prepared for anything. in my junior and senior years i carefully planned my schedule so that is was the perfect blend of ap classes, art classes and study halls (which i would also spend in the art room). while others learned the intricacies of physics i was unfurling rolls of film in a darkroom. i had long before given up the notion that i was going to be some great scientist, dressed in lab coat white and full of new discoveries. i pondered the idea of being a geneticist for a hot minute because that shit fascinates me, but i liked words better than formulas and calculations and dissecting poor, preserved animals.

i think i have digressed.

anyway this woman walked into the store and gave a surprised look and said something like, 'well what are you doing here?' and i was all 'duh, working. do you need a get well card or perhaps this large lollipop to shove in your obnoxious gob?' no i didn't say that. i smiled my sickly sweet 'if you know me, you know i fucking hate you right now' smile as she said something else like 'well what have you been doing then?' as if this couldn't possibly be it, this couldn't possibly be your JOB, but not in a flattering way, it was more in a way that said, 'well i always thought one wrong turn and you would be right here.'

so i very matter-of-factly let her know exactly where i had been, in just the right way, not bragging see, because that is gauche, but using key words in combination with the right delivery. if performed correctly it would puncture her bravado and be like a slow steady leak of her big balloon head. it landed just as i had wanted and upon learning of where i had been the previous year she pursed her lips and said 'oh well then isn't that nice.' after a beat she proceeded to walk backwards out of the shop. i think she knew if she turned her back on me i might just lob an ohenry bar at her head. you can't shame someone that doesn't have any bitch.

i knew that my position at the gift shop was only temporary and that made it easier to get past my own inner 'what are you doing here?' thoughts. it also helped me deal with the fact that i was still living with my parents and that my relationship was costing me both monetarily and emotionally. after our breakup, i made a move to be in a more career oriented job, i moved into a house with my friend and starting living my life back on one continent. but all of these decisions to be more permanent, more adult, more tied to my hometown just made me feel more stuck.

my first year after the breakup was a blur. the new friends i had made at my new job, blended with old friends who had returned home post-college and combined they tried to shake me out of my malaise. but everyday was like walking through thicket, a fog-filled field with no beginning and no end. i was easily turned around, easily broken down, easily separated into parts that hardly functioned and parts that didn't function. i wouldn't emerge from the rubble of my past unscathed. my inability to shake my feelings and my desire to continue speaking to my ex did me no favors and my friends found it difficult to stand by and watch. there were lines drawn, silent wars waged. and all the while, beyond the crying jags and the constant feeling that my heart might just rip right down the middle, with the friend complications and pressures of a busy job, the overwhelming feeling of never getting free, of being mired in the present by the choices of my past were unshakable. unbearable. my feet were locked in concrete shoes of my own design. i had chosen to move back, i had chosen to wait it out and give my relationship a chance. i played the odds and ended up with a middling result.

people encouraged me to date. my friends would take me out, get me drunk, introduce me to strangers and point me out to eligible men. it was ineffectual. i ended up in too many corners of too many bars to count. my parents also wanted me to move on. they wanted me to find a job and a home that they didn't own to live in, and happiness with some guy who would want to stay on the east end. i raged against this. i had never wanted to return and i saw the disappointment in the eyes of old friends when, upon seeing me around town, would say, but you were supposed to get out.

i half suspected that my parents thought i had an expiration date. my particular brand of uniqueness makes me, initially, what they call a hard sell. i am stubborn and opinionated. i don't really feel the need to people please and generally like to call bullshit on bullshit people. they both constantly mention that i will need a "flexible" guy. by this they mean someone that will bend to my will. although it is a running family joke, i generally do not find it funny. mainly because it is not in the least bit true. i never respect people that let others run roughshod over them. and i also think dating a pushover would get really boring super fast. for example i found my ex's desire to be difficult about the simplest things both the worst and the best thing about him. in return, he didn't let me get away with anything, ever. i do have plenty of positive attributes but when weighed with my age, looks, debt, gross income and gardening and housekeeping skills, i guess they thought i better get myself the hell out there and quick. but i was having none of it. i think i felt as if dating someone would make it all permanent and tangible in a way i never wanted it to be. i lingered in that state for most of my time on long island.

i dabbled with a slight crush here and there, but overall i stayed single and untethered. i wanted my next move to be on my terms, a location of my choosing at the time of my choosing, for reasons of reclaiming self-possession and purpose. my love life, i reasoned could wait out this period of my life with me. with both the emotional and forward looking parts of myself left unsatisfied for so many years, i would make moves more quickly towards what i wanted.

it still took four years.

when i was saying goodbye to co-workers and friends during my last weeks at home before moving here, i had a running joke. people would ask, 'you hoping to find love out there in the midwest, with those nice milkfed boys?' or some variation. and my response was always, while living here i was able to say it was the lack of decent eligible men that kept me single, but if i go out there and still can't get a date, then i am going to know it's me.' but i didn't ever consider that it really was me.

but for the first year and a half here my still dateless/boyfriendless existence was starting to prove my hypothesis. it could be me. i would return home or visit friends in other cities and they would ask expectantly if i was seeing anyone new. it got easier to let them all down as time went on, eventually i just learned to cut them off in the introductory paragraph to my life update.

i'm doing good, nothing too exciting happening, jobs good, still not dating anyone, bought a new bookcase, have a standing date with my friends every thursday, been reading at this show every few months or so. moved out on my own, thinking of bringing my cat to live with me here.

and in this way it cut off the possibility of the conversation.

but then a few months ago i realized it really was me. but not for the reasons i thought. all these years i believed that i was a hard sell. that it was going to take a really special someone to get me and love me and take me for who i am. and that may still be true, but the fact was that i wasn't even letting anyone know who that was. i was someone completely different with strangers and acquaintances than i was with closer friends. my representative was awkward and closed off, not open to newness and change, impatient with certain personalities and judgemental of others all in an attempt to keep the unknown at bay, my heart closed and my nights desperately free to ponder why, in fact, no one ever asked me on a date. i was stagnating in my belief that no one was going to love all of me ever again. not really recognizing that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. and then one day i cut off all my hair and everything changed.

i will admit to you internet ether, what i only told a few close friends at the time. i had kept my hair long for so many years on a promise to myself that i would not cut it short again until i was married. at first, it was just a silly thought, a whim that i was passively satisfying. but it soon began to weigh on me. each year, as inches grew, i felt more and more burdened by its very existence. it was always my most coveted asset, my hair. it was the thing, in my mind, that made me beautiful to others. people throughout my life, would remark on its texture and thickness, its ability to look great with minimal effort and the color oh my god the color! when i was younger i wasn't allowed to cut my hair, my father forbade it, subscribing to the traditional labels of femininity or some shit. by 16 i walked out of my bathroom, down the stairs and into the living room clutching a thick, long, reddish brown ponytail that not five minutes before had been attached to my head. my dad looked horrified, my mother seemed to brace herself on impact. one of them uttered why? i answered something like, i wanted to.

and just as i had felt that day, so too had i eventually reached the end of my proverbial hair entwined rope once again. last may i decided to shed my mane and forgive myself for not sticking with the silent pact i had made. and with the ponytail seemed to go a fair amount of self-censoring.

no longer able to hide my face from anyone, everything i thought or felt was now writ large upon it. i made moves, broke previously erected barricades and started, after several months of mental preparation, going on a series of blind and semi-blind dates. and it was awkward and painful and silent and sometimes not silent. but it was all new and that adrenaline high was the feeling i kept with me while recapping the evening with friends, especially when the date went just so-so. and this leads me to the original idea that started me on this long and winding road.

dating etiquette is a difficult thing to navigate, especially in this day in age when it is so easy to ignore those we deem unpleasant or not second date worthy. i myself fell prey to this after one first date. before we parted from the first, the boy, who my friends and i have dubbed swiss cheese, asked if i would want to do it again. i said sure, because i feel i never make a great first impression. afterwards, i emailed him to say thanks again for a good time (note: not great!) and he responded asking again if i would like to meet up. i replied asking what was he thinking for a second meet up. no response. i was heading out of town for a bit, so i thought maybe he would contact me when i returned, i even emailed him to let him know when i arrived back in chicago. nothing. and although i wasn't wholly devastated from the passive rejection like i would have been months before (this open dating policy has taught me to take things in stride) i was still aggravated by the person's obvious inability to be polite. i wasn't asking for an explanation, just an email back that said hey, i'm no longer interested. especially since he initiated talk of a second date!

in a desire to set an example or change dating karma or just be a decent person, i made a pact with myself that i would never do what swiss cheese did to me. i would be upfront and if at all possible, honest within the parameters of niceness. it is the harder thing to do, but don't we owe it to each other on some sort of basic human level?

so this weekend, after the second of two just so-so dates with this guy who had stated that he wanted to see me yet again, i decided i had to just bite the bullet and make a move to stop another date. i decided to email him and let him know that i thought he was very nice, but there was no chemistry between us. blah blah blah. it was difficult and awkward and it took me a full 20 minutes for wordy me to write two sentences just so, but it had to be done. it was the right thing to do. and i was happier knowing that he wasn't going to wonder forever why i didn't return the voicemail that was sure to come on monday.

just as that mother had made me feel less than for working at the gift shop, and swiss cheese had made me feel less than for whatever reason he gave himself, i never want to make someone feel less than. because sometimes things just work out or don't work out. sometimes life leads you in directions you never thought you would turn and sometimes you cut off all of your hair because you need to be free of something or everything that it stood for and discover that what you thought defined you, only held you back and that people may just like the new you better anyway.

yes i said yes i will yes

i haven't blogged since thursday and it was starting to feel weird. i was hoping that i would have some time on friday to lay down some words for the momentous occasion of my best friend stephanie being blown out of the windy city in order to take a bite out of the big apple (had to be done!). alas, i have been so busy giving her a proper send off on friday and most of saturday that i didn't even get to write her a card to go with the present i made her. and i know how much stephanie loves a well written and thoughtful card, mainly because i have received many from her throughout the 7 (!!!!) years that i have known and loved her...and sometimes yelled at her ;), but always with love. i was sorting through my cards and notes and photos the other day, for a new apartment project that i have thought up (stay tuned for that one!) and came across so many of steph's postcards, birthday cards, notes and life’s marginalia collected during the four years we lived apart, me in new york and she in chicago (ironic i know) that i wondered how we had anything at all left to say to each other.

i met steph seven years ago when she literally landed on my doorstep. we were part of a group of foreign students living in a four-story dorm style apartment complex called trinity hall. it housed a virtual united nations of 20-somethings from south africa, the states, canada, sweden, england, spain, wales, and even the odd student from the west of ireland. we lived a lot like a big family. my flatmates and i often hosted champagne and pancakes breakfasts, hosted spontaneous afternoon tea and more than once even a knitting circle, cramming 20 or 30 into our small kitchen/living area to eat, drink and bask in the relative ease of student life. and all the while we were able to learn about other cultures and areas of academic study without really trying. my flatmate sarah and i would spend weekend nights knitting hats and scarves while discussing boys, food and her dissertation on the historical impact of knitting on cultures. seamus taught me what fry-tex was and i learned from my friend shane that not all military men are cut from the same tunnel-vision cloth as their commander in chief. i don't have the right words to explain how my year in ireland, in dublin and at trinity (where steph and i earned our matching degrees) shaped me. it all sounds trite and overwritten and flakey when i try to express the way the people and experiences, even how living in that flat changed me.

steph rang the door bell and was all gussied, done up for a night in dublin, i opened the door to my future and it was a fair-skinned freckled redhead. she and one of her roommates came to ask if a few of us wanted to go out that night. i said when are you leaving? she said on the next bus, which is in 3 minutes. i was in my pjs and thought well what a bitch she obviously doesn't want me to go out at all because i get ready quick, but not that quick. we laugh about that night. she told me she did want me to come out but that she didn't realize that it had gotten so late. a trait that i would understand as i got to know her. i passed on going out that night and i think the next time she invited me out too, because sometimes i like to play hard to get. but steph was relentless. she wanted me to be her friend, she told me later. i was flattered, but didn't see what the big deal was. i was no great shakes. sure i was fun, but i can be moody and morose, bitter and my honesty can, at times, be less than flattering. these are all things that steph would come to find out later. as for why she wanted to be friends with me then, you would have to ask her what she saw in me exactly.

but i can tell you a million reasons why i became friends with her.

i'll use the past tense, even though she remains today all of these things and more.

she was whip smart and interesting. we had fun. she was open and emotional and loved chocolate. she liked my room. she liked my movies and was always finding cool shit for us to do. she was feisty, sometimes even when the situation didn't warrant it. she could drink with me and try to keep up. she would drink beer with me, but preferred milkshakes. she never once judged me for being scared to do things, especially when it came to boys. she always encouraged often with warm hot chocolate and a story or two from her past. we both liked to watch sad movies while under warm covers in dark rooms when it was cold outside. she became a matchmaker for one time only and it was for me. she liked to talk about books and poetry. she never apologized for being smart, bookish and academically inclined. she never let me apologize for it either. she tried for an entire year to get me to read and love james joyce, never relenting. she never teased me for wanting to shop. she opened herself up without pretense to a relationship that scared her. she went with it and made it beautiful. she never wavered in the face of criticism, although she always bit back. she was fearless, weightless, beautiful because of it. a fighter that goes down punching, if ever at all.

they were halcyon days. heady with the promise of discovery...see it never works to try to write about it like that. together, in combination with two other close friends laurel and erin, we broke barriers, mended fences, started fires and extinguished them. we walked miles literally and figuratively. we drove through green lands looking for hidden treasures in the irish landscape, found love and lost it and found it again. explored castles and ring forts and scary mountaintop hostels. we discussed poetry and fashion, listened to music and had madcap barefoot drunken adventures through the streets of dublin. together we sat in an irish pub at 3 a.m. and watched janet jackson's nipple slip. together we were taught the words of swift, beckett, joyce and edgeworth. visited martello tower. spoke the words of steph's literary hero, molly bloom. we wrote and read and listened to eccentric old professors who knew everything and sometimes nothing. we ate curry chips at 4 a.m. and cried about missing family and friends. we learned how to love more openly and love at all. together we learned how to speak up for what we want, fight for it. later we would learn that maybe it wasn't worth fighting for but never let the other apologize for the effort. we were young and free, unbound by the history we had built for years in a home thousands of miles away. friends would visit, people would write and see pictures but they didn't know. they weren't there. they couldn't possibly understand.

we didn't know then what would become of us. sure some of us painted pictures. i started to sketch mine early on, it featured dublin and books, babies, gardens and my now ex-boyfriend. steph wanted to go back to the states, to the career path she had started. she drew in broader strokes, but at the heart of it was her wish to live in new york. she chose love first. and love brought her to chicago, when i reminded her of her new york lifescape she said i know, but for now this is where i’ll be. but she always knew she would get there eventually. and so did i.

steph was my first real editor. she would go through my academic papers with the zealousness reserved for those who love the written word. that is how i know she is good at what she does, because she loves it wholeheartedly. and when i gave up on my aspirations to write and edit because it was too tough to find a good job here, she never judged. she has held on to the dream. and i admire her for that. i also know that she will be successful in new york. and although she worries sometimes that the city will swallow her whole i know she'll have it wrapped around her finger within a year.

in nyc

when she first realized that this move was real and she was getting the job and we were once again going to live apart as we had done for four years after leaving dublin, i noted the irony that we had, in effect switched places. and i know that she feels at home here, and in the last two years has brought chicago to its collective knees with her mix of persuasion and panache, but it was never a permanent stop. just as dublin was just a waystation, so too was chicago. but she brought me here and for that i will be forever grateful. just as she had done with our friendship, so too had she made it impossible for me to say no to this great city. with guided tours and delicious meals, fine friends and well-stocked museums she wooed me here. it took four years, but i made the leap and survived. she told me the other night during our last sushi dinner as co-chicago residents that she thought i had been so graceful about my move and she didn't think she could do the same. she obviously forgot the weeks on end of sweats and unkempt hair. but nevertheless, she could never be anything but graceful, after all it is built into her name.

i often feel like i forget to tell my friends how much they mean to me. especially those closest to me. steph and i have gone through a lot of highs and lows, love and loss some at the hands of others and some at the hands of each other. but these are the things that shape us, that create the forms that move forward to carve out new future selves. and whether those selves are in the same city or not we are always with one another, connected by a shared experience… and the phone, and text, and bb messaging and facebook and this blog.

so steph this is just to say that i love you and good luck and slainte. and whenever you call, i promise to pick up. just remember the words of ms. bloom when you walk down the streets of that sometimes daunting city. yes i said yes i will yes. and it will be so.

monday, monday

brief recap of weekend in short, concise words or phrases in a 20 point numbered list:

1. cousin kate visited

2. rachel happy cousin visited

3. drinks and dinner at local bar with friends

4. saturday trip downtown in 80 degree weather

5. crowded, cranky, tired

6. saturday afternoon drinks outside

7. saturday night drinks inside

8. find hanging ceramic duck

9. take pictures with ceramic duck

10. get happy, dancy and hungry around 2 a.m.

11. sunday brunch at feed (yum!)

12. late to drop kate at airport, side benefit: she gets 1st class seat

13. get sad on the drive home

14. realize steph is leaving in three weeks and have minor to middling break with reality

15. sad

16. sad

17. go to jessicas to be not sad/drive lauren to airport

18. spend time thinking about coming week

19. realize florence and the machine is today

20. go to bed dreaming of large reverberating speakers

this picture has nothing to do with this weekend
february trip to wisconsin dells

the abcs of 30...antlers, booze, and cupcakes (and couch)

mid-cupcake

i think i am possibly still hungover from saturdays festivities. i spent most of yesterday (easter no less) on my couch barfing into a trashcan and thinking never again and wow does 30 lessen your potential to metabolize alcohol. but let's rewind to friday where i was on same said couch. i was recovering from the latest installment of thursday night drinking club, which, since friday was good, we had off. a bunch of us stayed pretty late and veronica's delicious daquiri's produced the mild headache that jessica had promised they would.

friday morning jess and i headed to costco earlier than needed (thanks rodney!) and after running around doing errands i was pooped. but i managed to rally enough to go have lunch with steph, who sadly did not have off. we decided that it mattered less where we ate and more that it was outside. we decided the smokehouse on division looked like a good idea and my pulled pork sandwich (minus sandwich) did not dissappoint. washed down with a nice cold cider, that i tried to pretend was beer, and all was right with the world. thanks again steph for a lovely lunch that i hope happens again before you leave. in 1 month (wtf!) the nice weather also seemed to add to my lethargy and by 3 i was ready for a nap, by 4 i was on the couch and by the time veronica's text came in at 7:30 telling me to join her to watch her brother spin at a magazine opening party i was sadly in my pajamas and watching some mindless drivel that would help my brain go on autopilot and then switch to hibernate with little to no input from me.

saturday was a blur of dusting, cleaning, shining, hammering and general early spring cleaning. i also took advantage of the rain as an excuse to find a nest on my couch and watch 'the private lives of pippa lee'


sidebar review: great movie, very gently paced and on par with the book which was also written by the director, who also adapted the screenplay. rebecca miller, a terrific filmmaker and playwright, married to the amazing daniel day-lewis, knows how to capture the internal machinations of a woman's life. it felt particularly poignant as it is about a woman confronting her husband's mortality by revisiting her many 'lives'. i too have been spending a fair amount of time doing this lately. seeing as i was getting depressed by it however, i have stopped all thoughts that may lead to deeper thinking. the time to only look surface deep is now. i don't know when this phase will end. hopefully it will help reduce the furrowed brow thinking wrinkle i have developed over the years. in conclusion, read the book, see the movie. unless you don't like deep thoughts. in that case i hear hot tub time machine is pretty awesome.


saturday night was a blast and hopefully there will be some pictures to accompany this blog post at some point in the near future. thanks to everyone who came out to tuman's and big shout out to jessica and rodney who stomached several birthday celebrations and still pulled out an amazing cupcake and champagne party that reminded me how truly lucky i am to have found a place that feels so much like home after only two years (although i guess you two were technically imported from my previous home in ny). also, thanks for the gifts, the antler candle holders (devin!), the deer plaque pin (amanda!) and the bubble up drinking glasses (nichole!) and of course the antler necklace mentioned in the post previous (steph!). oh and the bourbon i am holding off on opening for fear i will drink it all in one night (marc and matt!) my liver thanks you too.


too many drinks and too much dancing and there i was on that couch again (perhaps the c in abcs should stand for couch) wishing i could just have a sip of water, but my stomach had other plans. i was trying to suck it up to make it to jessica and rodney's for easter and the platter of dry rub ribs i had been looking forward to for a week, but i was too late and they were all eaten by the time i had rallied. but the meal was spectacular!!!!!!!!! jessica outdid herself again and in the midst of feeling tired, overwhelmed and i am sure, sick of celebrations, she once again created a masterpiece that needed to be photographed and written into the food history books. someone give this girl a restaurant! or at least a cookbook deal.


easter ended as all holidays should, with a nice piece of cake some lovely conversation and rodney's overactive intestinal tract delivering one pungent punch after another. i walked home in a light rain shower and, after cleaning up a little, i plopped right back down to be with my old friend, the couch. we settled in together for the 1,000th viewing of pride & prejudice (kiera knightley version) and i was lulled to sleep by dreams of moors and vexed lovers, petticoats and darcy.