All posts in: life maintenance

life maintenance
25 Sep 2012

this is why i don’t have nice things

Back in January, I had this moment of pure genius. The Boy and I had just returned from our Christmas break, loaded with gifts from our generous families. We had been generous with each other, too. We wanted for nothing. Unfortunately, between January and March, we have our anniversary, both birthdays, and Valentine’s.

We were cash poor. We were tired of shopping. We have been dating for just way too many gift-giving holidays and are running out of good ideas, and we’ve moved too many times to buy potentially not-useful knick-knacks.

My moment of genius? Let’s skip it all, take the money we would spend on each other, sign up for one of those no-interest financing plans, and buy an iPad!

It was exciting. It was fun. I really didn’t get to play with it too much because I was busy, busy and busier, and I was looking forward to sitting down once I graduated and really getting to know our new expensive toy.

Two days before I graduated, it disappeared. It was last seen on the kitchen counter, propped up with a recipe and an episode of Switched at Birth while I made dinner. Two mornings later, I couldn’t find it. We have all sorts of theories about its disappearance, but all evidence leads towards something so dumb I can’t even fathom it – in a fit of supreme cleaning madness before my family arrived, we accidentally threw it into the garbage.

Seriously. We are the dumbest humans alive.

Fast forward three+ months. We are faced with one ailing laptop (mine), one 10 year old desktop (his), a little extra cash, and that damn no-interest financing card.

Hello, iMac.

Our first family computer. How adorable. I use Firefox and he uses Chrome. Our music has been reunited.

The Boy’s comment:

“Well, at least we can’t throw it out.”

life maintenance
10 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-six

September 2 – September 8

I wish I could say I spent all week unpacking, rearranging furniture, making trips to IKEA, and otherwise settling in to this new home. However, my horrible paint job has yet to be taken care of, so my furniture must remain a few feet from the wall and my boxes full of pictures and other tchotckey-things must remain unpacked and in the way.

The good news? My subtle persuasion skills saved me from another year’s worth of printer-paper-white walls. Hello, “Navajo white.” The boy called it “vanilla ice cream,” which I think is a decent assessment. Not quite as subtle as I’d like, but definitely better than white-white-white.

The bad news? They are not done yet. I am in apartment purgatory. My picture frames remain unhung. My (free from the curb) dresser broke during the move and I am dressing myself out of cardboard boxes again.

The best news?

Peach has become brave enough to hang out in the living room, even with all the scary street noise outside the windows.

I cooked a handful of simple meals in my awkwardly arranged, full-of-boxes kitchen.

My walls are Vanilla Ice Cream.

I squirreled away a $100 giftcard to spend at IKEA next weekend.

On Friday, we sat together on the couch and had a conversation about ordering The Same Dish from The Same Restaurant for dinner, and the phrase, “Well, we can order it because we’ve never had it in THIS apartment.”

The cross-breeze can’t be beat.

I am almost ready to be Jessica again.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast.podcast.PODCAST.PodCAST. I have a PROBLEM!
  • Tom Waits – The Mule Variations

Watching:

  • HBO OnDemand = life is a Girls marathon. What a good little show.
life maintenance
07 Sep 2012

life as a normal human

I am looking back on the past months, six months, year, three years, and… I can’t figure out what happened. Yes, I did so many great, fun things, got so much experience, and I didn’t go broke, and took amazing classes and met amazing friends I hope to have all my life. I have a job now. I must have did it right.

But a big part of that was putting my head down, muscling through, and other metaphors that mean hard work. More specifically, I worked 40-50 hours a week on top of grad classes, worked seven days a week, skipped vacations and didn’t watch TV and took a lot of ibuprofen.

It wasn’t particularly fun. I wasn’t always sure of my choices, or even aware that I was making choices. Yes, I have a job, but for three years, I wasn’t quite human.

Now, however, I am. I have things like time and energy that I haven’t had for years. And what’s even stranger – when I last had these things, I was living in my parents’ house and making 10 dollars an hour and fretting over my long distance relationship. I have all sorts of adulthood and security, and time.

So what do I make of it?

Right now, it’s a struggle. Everything I’ve been wanting to do, everything I still want to do, everything that is fun and everything that is work, everything everything everything is here, on the table, but what do I do this weekend?

I’m still muddling through this transition, and I am sure to keep you updated.

 

 

boston
03 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-five

August 26 – September 1

I have landed.

Not feeling quite as shell-shocked, but still surprised about how terrible terrible TERRIBLE moving in is. There’s the exhaustion of packing, the guilt that you even own all of this shit, the disruption of your schedules and habits, followed by social awkwardness of having to convince friends to help you move and/or the endless small and large expenditures associated with moving, and then, if you are young and dumb, a day of hell when you move all your furniture and boxes down 3 flights of stairs and then up 3 flights of stairs. The next day, you wake up in a pile of garbage, every muscle in your body is screaming at you, and you must call Comcast 6 or 8 times in one day.

This is depression-causing mayhem. I hate everything about this place, other than the increased square footage. It is crazy old, not well kept up, lacking in simple comforts such as Machines That Wash Things and everyone I talk who has lived in the neighborhood their whole lives say things like “You guys are living WHERE? Text me when you get home, let me know if you made it,” even though we live .3 miles from our old apartment.

So I hate it, but really I just hate all that stuff in the first paragraph and I am taking it out on my poor, crappy apartment. And I will live here for at least a year, after which I will either have grown accustomed to my apartment’s quirks and become comfortable with the neighborhood, or I will leave for greener pastures.

After that point, I will either start the cycle again or hire someone to conduct said moving.

I think I will start saving my pennies either way, just in case.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast intake is spiraling completely out of control… I won’t even try to chronicle what I have been listening to, because both content and quantity might shock your system.
  • Whilst packing, I inflicted a number of Broadway musicals upon Lance, including Fiddler on the Roof!
  • Whilst assembling some sanity at my new favorite coffee shop (because it is so close by), I listened to the soothing tones of Honeyhoney and Skrillex.
boston
29 Aug 2012

here’s something

I am moving.

So, my apartment is full of so much crap and boxes I keep running into things and getting bruised.

So, I have to bring half of my library books back without being read.

So, I am crying and angry most of the time because moving sucks.

I have moved eight times. The first time, I was a small, small baby. My parents moved from a one bed to a two bed in the same apartment complex. The last time I moved, I was comatose for a week or so, but I recovered and have so many lovely memories of this place. Many, many hours playing Super Smash Brothers. Lots of nights with friends playing games. Futon sleepovers, making Mexican food, birthdays, hangovers, scrambled eggs, TV marathons, laying on the floor and listening to the neighbors fight.

I would stay, but they built a Whole Foods two blocks away, which both improved my daily life and raised my rent by 200 dollars a month.

If I’m a bad blogger in the near future, I am either packing, unpacking, or weeping.

life maintenance
27 Aug 2012

2012: week thirty-four

August 19 – August 25

These weeks have been a bit of limbo – settling into a new routine, schedule, job, but also getting ready to disrupt said schedule and routine with a Move and a New Address. Things just won’t be until after September 1.

In an absence of a permanent location and entirely settled routine, I am trying to focus on good habits. Getting up early. Consistent (mostly sugar/carb free) sustenance. Running for consecutive days. Writing. Etc. Good habits will follow you anywhere, and if habits are already in place, when you arrive you’ll say “Oh! I must set up my blah-di-blah so I can blah-di-blah immediately!” instead of being a lazy lout and never unpacking a single box.

Speaking of lazy louts, I slept in yesterday and today and my neck and head paid for my sins. There are days that I am tense and headachey to the point of misery, and those are the days I delay caffeine and sleep past 9 a.m. I think that means that I am old, old woman. Or I need a new pillow.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Thanks to Ashley, I discovered like 7 new podcasts this week. Favorites included Professor Blastoff and JV Club. And the Josh Radnor episode of Making It? A dream. Ted Mosby + Zen meditation + euchre. Lust.

Watching:

  • LOST. LOST. LOST.
  • That boy I live with finally went out for the night on Thursday and left me at home alone. “What are you going to do tonight?” he asked. “Pack,” I answered. And then I watched Twilight. World’s most awkward movie.

 

life maintenance
25 Aug 2012

all the things

My apartment is half empty, half wrecked. Boxes everywhere, full, half-full, empty. I don’t know what to do with all these library books – these library books! Who packs up books that belong to a library and puts them into a U-Haul?

Moving is a great excuse to start clean. New place, new mindset.

But first, you must confront everything in your head, your life, your apartment. Maybe I have been watching a few too many episodes of the last season of LOST, but this feels like a reckoning. Is this object going to have a place in my new life? Is it useful or beautiful? Do I have time to think this hard about every object I put into a cardboard box?

I’m hoping that moving won’t knock me out to the extent it did last time I moved. The 1st falls on a weekend, not a workday. I will have an entire 48 hours to move in, unpack, and recover.

However, I have the next six days to reckon with this: my emptying apartment and all the memories it holds, the fresh life I might find in my new place, and, oh yeah, all of my shit.

1
books
21 Aug 2012

books in the home

I almost didn’t pick up Deborah Needleman’s Perfectly Imperfect Home.

First of all, I couldn’t navigate my own library’s nonfiction section well enough to find the home decorating books. But that is neither here nor there.

I was also skeptical about a decorating book with no photographs. What is the point? Illustrations are lovely, but these rooms are not REAL, they are imaginary. Of course they look cute.

Then I remembered that… uh… illustrations are lovely. Especially Virginia Johnson’s.

And then I started to love the emphasis on form+function… not designers, not mid-century-modern-clean-lines-vintage-blah-di-blah. This book introduced the verb “cozify” into my life, as in “to make cozy,” which I like.

And then I stumbled across an entire section devoted to my favorite household decoration:

“Books are physical manifestations of our histories, our interests, and our passions. They are also beautiful creations of design and typography that evoke their era. There are plenty of anachronistic things that are essential for a comfortable home: we certainly don’t need candlelight or blazing fires or antique mirrors but we love them for how they make us feel. Our books allow us to be surrounded by things we love and admire, and allow others to share in our interests without even having to mention them. Books make a room feel like a room.”

And to that, I say, amen.

life maintenance
15 Aug 2012

my brain on the internet: workflowy

So I just discovered the best website a few weeks ago and I need to share it with you, post haste.

Y’all are list-makers, right? Organizers, note-takers, chart-makers… the whole lot of you. I can tell.

I am always trying to find the best place to corral my tasks, my goals, and my random thoughts. Actual paper notebooks are great, but they are easily tucked into the wrong purse, too quickly filled up, it’s difficult to keep multiple “sections” of a notebook without mass confusion, and writing out elaborate schedules and plans involves ripped out pages, scribbled out sections, and other atrocities that waste time.

I’ve been looking for a web tool to “take notes” with. I’ve tried emailing myself, but I never open the messages. I’ve tried Google Docs, but I accidentally had to shoot myself because I Just Can’t Stand Google Docs. I’ve tried Word docs in my Dropbox, but the formatting gets so wonky so fast that I can’t keep up any consistent habit.

Then I discovered WorkFlowy:

It’s just a document that you can add bullets to. You can make sections for whatever you like and then add things however you’d like. Huge, nested lists are easy as pie because the tabs function in a way that MS Word could only hope to ever achieve. You can expand any bullet point to a new document, so you can hone in on one category. You can jot down your ideas, your to-dos, your Next Actions throughout the day and then sort them out later. You can cross things off your lists. You can drag items around.

The best part is the website is just so slim – no ads, no bells and whistles, loads so very quickly.

Just go ahead and make it your new homepage, fellow Type A friends. Thank me later.

1
life maintenance
30 Jul 2012

2012: week thirty

July 22 – July 28

On Monday, we drove across the state of Michigan, got a haircut, met the Pastor who will officiate our wedding, had dinner & wine with my best friend/co-maid of honor and her rollicking family, and then came home and played The Hat Game with my own rollicking family.

On Tuesday, I pulled my angsty cat out from under someone’s bed, shoved her into a carrier, and then drove across the country, back to the state of Massachusetts.

On Wednesday, L signed his papers at his Brand! New! Job! We also looked at a steal of an apartment, and took the night to decide which one we wanted.

On Thursday, we got denied BOTH apartments. Other than that, I felt quite ill and didn’t really do much.

On Friday, I cavorted around Roslindale acquiring various forms of identification. Please do not ask me about my MA driver’s license. I look like a hag and my signature is clearly the signature of someone else entirely and not indicative at all of my penmanship.

On Saturday, we did errands and played Skyrim and went out to celebrate a small child’s 21st birthday.

On Sunday, I went to Sorella’s, and then my life was complete.

Reading:

Watching:

  • LOST
  • Say Yes to the Dress (studying)
  • Ally McBeal (which I watched 4 seasons of a year ago and just now decided to finish…)