All posts in: life maintenance

boston
16 Nov 2013

bits and bobs

  • This autumn is my reward for surviving the rest of the year. The weather has been ridiculously mild – everywhere I go in this dang city, the trees are bright orange, the grass still green, and the sky blue blue blue. Since September, my parents have visited and my  sister visited TWICE. The Boy’s parents are coming after Thanksgiving. I’m in the groove of my new schedule and new neighborhood. I’m adjusting to our smaller space. Things feel good.
  • I probably owe some of this newly found equilibrium to those old fashioned mood-improving standbys – food and exercise. In September, we got ourselves a gym membership. It’s been over a year since we’ve had gym access. I was pretty persistent in running as much as I could last year, but the winter months – oh, the winter months. I have some warm-ish running clothes, but if it’s below freezing and there is 6 inches of packed snow and ice on all the sidewalks… yeah, I don’t run. I’ve been having some intermittent foot troubles while running so I decided to switch out my little New Balance minimal running slippers for something hardier. I got fitted at the running store across the street from my library, and you know what? If paying a monthly fee for a gym membership doesn’t motivate me to exercise more, then paying over 100 dollars for a pair of shoes will. I decided to kick it into gear – five workouts a week, bring my gym clothes to work, the whole mess. I’ve gone from run/walking 30 minutes on the treadmill to run/walking 60. I’m trying to up my pace from glacial to just-pretty-slow. I’ve put 50 miles on my new sneaks already. Word.
  • Hey, here’s a thing I learned recently – if I’m not cooking dinner most nights of the week, I’m probably grumpy. I’m not sure if this is a “home-cooked dinner improves mood” situation or a “lack of home-cooked dinner is a sign that you are in a bad mood,” but I’m arguing for the former. I checked out this new cookbook based entirely on the title – Keepers – and that delicious looking pot pie. I made three or four recipes from the book to good ends and added Ex-pat Fried Rice to the regular rotation. I don’t know. Life is just better when there’s warm food around.

  • One of the best things about library work is the variety of daily tasks and projects. When I worked part-time on the public library floor, Monday could be a storytime and a book list, Tuesday setting up a mobile laptop lab and weeding the YA fiction, Wednesday cutting out paper animals for hours followed by breaking up a fight between two 13-year-olds, and so on and so forth. Even though I am a Behind the Scenes librarian now, I am still regularly surprised by what I’m asked to do. We had a new branch opening recently, so we did a lot of stuff this summer to get ready – deciding which books to bring over from the old branch, ordering new books, unpacking the new books and shelving them, etc. One day, I was asked to select two picturebooks to offer as a give-away for the opening day festivities. I’m not sure many people can have the pleasure of buying 700 picturebooks at once. And then I got to SEE all 700 picturebooks, on a cart! Beautiful! Oh, my job. (I picked Emily Gravett’s Again! and Peter Brown’s Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, for the curious)
  • Have I mentioned that The Boy is in a band? I probably haven’t because I kind of hate his band. Not because I give two shits about whether or not The Boy is staying out in all hours of the night, hanging out with delinquent band types. No, I hate his band because the delinquent band-types he hangs out with are a bunch of 20-something male drama queens who regularly miss practice, storm out of rooms during arguments, and start Facebook flame wars. All of which The Boy wants my opinion on. And my opinion is “Your band sucks. You need a new band.” Anyway, despite the fact they are basically dysfunctional, the band persists. If they are playing on a weekend night somewhere that has easy access to public transportation, I try to go. This fall, I’ve watched them play to a nearly empty bar in Somerville, almost ruin a performance at an outdoor music festival in JP, and entertain the attendees of a snowboarding film festival in a swanky downtown hotel. Also, I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch him sit in with a Rolling Stones cover band.
  • Other than that? Reviewing is keeping me busy. Cybils books are keeping me busy. I started painting my nails this year, my back porch kittens found adoptive homes, I spend a lot of time sitting on my new couch playing Skyrim or reading or just hanging out with The Boy and The Peach. This is the life I made for myself. This is it. Hello.
kitty pics
21 Oct 2013

when life hands you kittens…

I am having trouble getting posts up here in a timely fashion. This has nothing to do with what I’ve been reading or what I’ve been feeling – my usual excuses for radio silence – and everything to do with time management troubles. Apartment-life-management troubles. Life management troubles. Trouble is the wrong word, perhaps. I don’t feel troubled, just distracted.

Top Five Distractions, end of October 2013 edition

1. Book Review Writing. Book Review Writing related procrastination.

2. Going to the gym, getting on a treadmill, and running one minute, then walking one minute – repeat until legs fall off. Subsequent gym-related exhaustion.

3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell; How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

4. Living in tighter quarters with The Boy. I like him too much. I want to talk to him too much. I talk to him instead of engaging on other, more productive and solitary pursuits.

5. The four kittens living on my back porch. I just… can’t. This is an awful time of month for me to discover adorable nascent lifeforms on my property. Can’t deal. Can not deal. Must go outside and check on kittens every few hours.

I should be back here soon. In a few day’s time. If I’m not too busy playing Skyrim. Did I mention Skyrim? Yes, well… Skyrim.

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adventures
15 Sep 2013

seven things about rome, before i forget them

 

International travel was about as stressful as I imagined it would be, although I admit the stress was entirely me-related and not travel-related. There was airport confusion, haggling with cabbies, disorderly airport shuttles, and a missed train, but the anxiety surrounding potential problems was far greater than the actual experience. We made it through airports, into and out of cabs, and boarded the next train. It was important to me that I, oh, enjoy my honeymoon, so I actively tamped down the worry-frenzy, with mostly good results. And there were surprising conveniences along the way. Tolerable jet lag. An car service that took online requests and showed up on time to drive us to the airport at 5 a.m. How all you have to do in European airports is hand over your passport and people wave you on to your next destination. Complimentary airport meals, with little bottles of wine! It wasn’t all horrible. And you will note that we both lived to tell the tale.

We spent our first two nights in the Hotel Campo de’ Fiori, a very nice place to stay with numerous amenities but oh, the roof. The roof! The best part was definitely the roof. Comfy chairs, a canopy to keep off the sun until evening, multiple levels and seating areas,  and the breeze and the noises from the piazza below and the view, the view! Nobody else who was staying at the hotel wanted to spend any time up there, so we had a private Roman rooftop. No big deal. We ordered pizzas and desserts to go, scouted out 3 euro bottles of wine, and dined and drank al fresco while the sun set over the Vatican.

No big deal.

A few weeks before our trip, I logged onto my favorite food blog in search of a recipe, and saw that Deb had just returned from Rome. More importantly, Deb had just returned from Rome and she had found a cold coffee drink that happened to be served at a coffee shop within a mile of where we stayed. Just around the corner from the Pantheon, Tazza d’Oro was our Roman caffeination location. Coffee wasn’t too hard to come by in Rome, if you want a shot of hot espresso standing up at the bar. If you are a spoiled American with an automatically reloading Starbucks card and the weather is in the high 80s, then you want a giant vat of heavily iced coffee. Tazza d’Oro did not have any vats of American coffee, but those little espresso granitas were a delicious substitute. I eventually figured out the secret of Italian cold coffee – if you’re lucky, your barista might shake up that hot espresso with some ice and serve it to you that way. On our last day in Rome, we went back to Tazza d’Oro and I ordered a shakerado… which was served to me in a martini glass.

No big deal.

I think I am starting to reveal my secret intentions for our honeymoon. An exciting journey across the ocean to spend priceless time with my new husband? Or ten days of Eating Like I Never Have to Fit into a Wedding Dress Again. Prosciutto and cheeses and wine and pasta and pizza and gelato every day. Unless, of course, it was a two gelato day.

For one of our rooftop dinners, I claimed exhaustion and sent the boy out to fetch sustenance – he came back with a seafood pizza, complete with octopus suction cups and clams still in their shells. To get from Piazza Navona to our second location – an adorable Air BnB apartment – you had to walk between two restaurants advertising something called a Tartufo: the restaurant on the left boasted the best gelato and desserts in the world, the one of the right had signs warning of dessert imitators, they were the home of the first and best Tartufo in the world. Don’t even get me started on the wine… so, so good. So, so cheap. Rome: a wonderland of sugars and carbohydrates.

On our second day in Rome we decided to take a long walk to the Termini train station, to see exactly how much fun we would have lugging our baggage across town to get on our train to Venice the next day. On the way home, I told The Boy to take us home whichever way he desired.

Rome was like Boston in that respect – the roads never parallel, always twisting off in strange directions, and often leading past beautiful architecture or something truly ancient.

I didn’t know this yet, on that second day. I was truly surprised when he led me off the street and up a strange flight of alley stairs, took a sharp right and there was the Colosseum.

We took off for Venice just a few days after arriving in Rome. Two notable events involving our return to the mainland.

1) We got into Rome late. We missed our train coming back to Venice and were late to meet our Air BnB host. Exhaustion. Frustration. After settling into our little studio just outside Piazza Navona, we wanted to veg out on the Internet and cool off with the AC, both of which were selling points for this particular abode. Oh, and drink a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, the AC was subpar, we never did figure out how to connect to the Italian wifi, and it’s impossible to buy a bottle of wine in Rome after 9 p.m. We settled for sickly sweet limoncello over ice, in bed, while we watched the one new episode of Game of Thrones we’d downloaded in Venice.

Which was The Red Wedding.

Romantic.

2) Venice has no cars. Rome has billions of cars and zillions of scooters, and they all love to drive down little twisting roads you thought were pedestrian alleyways.

What I’m trying to say is that we almost died seven or eight times.

 

We had never been to Europe. We had never taken a long vacation together alone. We had never spent so much money on leisure, entertainment, and vino della casa.

But I suppose we also had never been married, either. Roma was our first destination, our first challenge. The first place we spent time together as married people.

It will probably be difficult to separate my fond memories of Rome from my fondness for this boy.

 

life maintenance
06 Sep 2013

triumphant return

It wasn’t my intention to completely abandon my blog, guys. I’ve just been pretty busy getting into my new groove. It’s been slow-going, with fits and starts, like most grooves are I suppose. One day you wake up ready to feel “back to normal,” and by the time you make it home from work, you’re exhausted, a little sweaty, and hungry. And you don’t have anything for dinner, because you can’t figure out your grocery shopping schedule. So you get take out which makes you feel awful for the next three consecutive days. And then your friends come over for dinner and your sisters flies in from Michigan and you have to do your laundry and your book reviews are due and XXX and YYY and ZZZ.

Also, you can’t really read books.

But never fear, friends. The social gatherings are over, the sister has flown home. The book reviews are in and the grocery situation is improving.

This man of mine is back to school for the year; there is no longer a grown man lurking around my apartment insisting that I have “fun” and “enjoy myself” on school nights rather than loafing around and watching blog posts.

I’ve finally ingested enough Game of Thrones to sate myself.

And oh yeah, I’m actually reading some books.

Thanks for being patient, I’ll be back tomorrow.

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lance romance
11 Aug 2013

seven things about my wedding, before i forget them

Arriving in Michigan four days ahead of the wedding with four days worth of to-dos and be-here-thens, it becomes quickly evident that the priority is not finalizing a seating chart, not writing those vows, not taking deep consideration of the major life event ahead. No. All that can wait because first, we must fix my parents’ new television so we can use HBO Go to watch Game of Thrones. Priorities. My soon-to-be husband proves his manly worth to the household by locating a cord in the basement and applying it quickly and correctly to resolve the issue; he is awarded a Certificate of Excellence for his courageous efforts.

My sister/maid of honor had to take an actuarial exam three days before the wedding. In case you are an English major, I will tell you that an actuarial exam is a test filled with impossible mathematical questions that require the memorization of dozens and dozens of complex formulas made entirely of Greek letters. Everybody fails them. My sister had already failed this particular test once. We were all getting ready for a wedding, and also feeling nervous for our resident actuary. I was in the kitchen making cupcakes when my mother received the text message – she passed! Whooping and hollering was had by all.

These silly ceramic birds that were all over the house.

… and all that milk glass.

We wrote our own vows independently and without revealing them to each other ahead of time. It was quite shocking to read my vows and to then hear The Boy read the same vows back to me, almost point for point.

But then again, we have been hanging out together for a long ass time.

I loved my flowers. Love love loved them.

Beautiful weather, beautiful bridesmaids, the boys looked great in their outfits. My dress was pretty, my hair was great, I thought my table decorations came out well, my cake was just what I wanted. I got to eat all of the food and it was all tasty. I drank all the wine I wanted, but I wasn’t too drunk. My friends and family came from faraway places. My 18-year-old DJ rocked the house and 7-year-old flower girl danced. After the sun started going down and the cake was cut, everyone migrated out to the decks overlooking the vineyard and there was a nice cool breeze and I got to hang out with everyone and I was sorry that eventually the night had to end.

Everything I worried about for months and years and my life, it all came together.

The parts that didn’t, well, they are over and gone.

Everything was lovely. Everything was perfect.

And now we are married. Huzzah.

books
05 Aug 2013

to everything

I’ve only read three books since July 1.

This is unusual, unlike me, a signofthestressthatiamundergoingyouguysican’tevenreadabookomgomg.

I’m trying to trick myself back into the reading groove.

I checked out an easy-to-read-nonfiction book that is also a hot-buzz-everyone’s-reading-it title.

I reminded myself that, oh yes, sometimes I get paid to write reviews so I should you know, read those books I need to review.

I ignored my well-wishing and read some more of The Kingdom of Little Wounds because it reminds me a little of GoT.

Okay, fine. I even downloaded Clash of Kings onto my iPhone so I can listen to it before bed. What of it?

None of my self-trickery is working particularly well. The number of things I would rather do than read is unusually vast. Rearrange my bookshelves. Unload my dishwasher. Play Candy Crush (oof). Watch another episode of Orange is the New Black. Shower.

Trying to go easy on myself. My life did just go through a bit of a seismic shift. My attention span is untrained. My energy levels are uneven.

And I just moved. I moved when I was 6, 13, 18, 22, 24, 25, 27 and 28. I know moving. It’s a pain in the butt, it costs a lot of money, unexpected bad things happen. But the whole Packing Up The Physical Manifestation of Your Existence puts you face to face with parts of your life that you’d rather not face. Procrastinator Jessica who hoards crafting supplies for years without using them. Pretentious Jessica who keeps fancy books on the shelf she knows she’ll never read. Clutter-prone Jessica who can’t throw away useless, ugly little trinkets because she’s had them since she moved when she was 6.

Unpacking, I found the physical manifestation of two years of my reading. Two sheets of paper folded into fourths, marking what books I read in what month.

In August 2011, I read 4 books: one was a Sarah Dessen re-read, three were Harry Potter.

In July 2012, I read 6, including New Moon, a graphic novel, and Fifty Shades of Gray.

I’m a slow summer reader with a tendency toward fluff.

Go easy on me.

(… said me, to myself)

 

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life maintenance
03 Aug 2013

settle

Married. Traveled. Moved. Knocking back all these adult achievements, one by one.

My things are almost arranged and organized, my kitchen is almost stocked. Peach’s moving anxiety has almost abated, and so has mine. The move went smoothly enough and oh, you are going to hear about how much I love my new apartment, but there’s something about waking up in a different bedroom, man. It makes my mind messy. I wake up in a different bedroom and then I can’t remember what a person does in the morning. I made breakfast, but forgot the coffee. May I repeat: I forgot the coffee. The rest of the day moves on similarly. I can’t run, I can’t cook, I can’t read. I actually don’t even remember ever doing those things, or how other people do these things.

This is probably more than a new bedroom. This is probably what happens when you spend three weeks living life in the immediate. Three weeks of “Today is the day you [fill in the blank].”

Get your hair cut, go to the vineyard and make cupcakes.

Get married.

Take a plane to Boston.

Take a train to Venice.

Figure out where to buy cheapest and best pizza within walking distance of a certain piazza.

Pack the rest of your crap and vacuum the floor 75 times.

Move.

Unpack.

Now my blanks are back to blank. What do I do? What do I do with this one wild and precious life?

Small things feel big. Buying eggs. Making pasta. Reading thirty pages of a book that isn’t Game of Thrones.

And I used to write stuff down, right? On paper?

Some new notebooks for a new apartment.

 

boston
28 Jul 2013

on the move

It is true, I am back in the states. I have things to tell you of my journey, my first trip across any ocean, but first: I am moving. Whose great idea was it to Get Married on the 13th, travel to Europe until the 26th, then move on the 1st. Oh, wait, I’m Moving in Boston, which means it was no one’s great idea. It was just the way things had to be to get a halfway decent apartment. That will probably still be an overpriced, semi-crappy apartment. C’est la vie.

No worries. We are seasoned pros. I’ve moved my belongings halfway across the country in the back of a pick-up. I’ve moved an apartment in a U-Haul up the DAMN street and survived an overheating cat and This Guy I Married running into a parked car, on said street, with said U-Haul. I moved down the street and around the corner and dragged all of my furniture up three flights of stairs after midnight. This move doesn’t even feel particularly stressful. We did a very good job of packing a lot before we left to be wed. We know how and when to call Comcast/NStar/National Grid. That Guy I Married is a teacher, so he doesn’t have the burden of full-time work for the next few days. Also, we hired movers, so That Guy I Married won’t be driving any vehicles into any other objects.

Tomorrow, I go back to work. Vacation: rad, but um… I am excited to go back. To see everything as I left it on my desk and tackle a pile of work.

On Thursday, we will wake up in one apartment and go to sleep in another. No big deal. No big deal!!

Please remind me of this nonchalance when I am crying on Thursday night and must go to work on Friday morning.

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adventures
26 Jun 2013

conference, ahoy

Remember this conference I couldn’t decide about? I decided to go.

Have I ever written about Yes-Life here? No? Well, when I was in grad school I kept accidentally acquiring fabulous new ways to spend my time. Okay, fine, they weren’t all fabulous, but some of them were lucrative. Okay FINE 12 dollars an hour isn’t lucrative, but whatever. Opportunities for jobs and internships and classes came my way, and every semester or so I had a big freak-out about whether I should turn down said opportunity because I just Didn’t Have The Time.

Pro and con lists were made. Anxious discussions were foisted upon friends, family, and that poor, poor boy of mine. Tears were shed. Decisions were made, then backtracked, then made again. More tears. More lists.

One semester, I had another internship opportunity that I was too busy for. I started to make the lists and the spreadsheets and do my usually mucking around in indecision, but after a few days I got sick of myself. I decided to just say yes. Yes. That’s it. Yes. The rest will work itself out. And it did.

I won’t say I’ve taken this on as a life philosophy or anything, but anytime I find myself wallowing in a decision for more than a few days, I remind myself that it’s easier to say yes. The anxiety is in the deciding, not in the doing.

So I just-said-yes to ALA, and tomorrow I leave for Chicago. All things go, all things go. My strategy is to have fun, to make the trip feel professionally worthwhile, spend as much time as I can with my favorite people, and come home with zero free books. Because I’m moving. And I figure I’ll come home with at least four or five more books than I aim to, so if I aim for zero, I’ll minimize the damage.

Plane reading, you ask?

  • Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando (it’s good to have friends in high places. and by high places I mean, who went to BEA)