My New Favorite Thing

1)  Take a fruit popsicle - whatever flavor floats your boat.

2)  Squeeze juice from one lemon or lime.

3)  Cut top off popsicle wrapper on stick end.

4)  Pour lemon/lime juice into the wrapper until the juice comes to the top of the popsicle.

5)  Put it back in freezer propped up so the juice doesn't spill.

6)  Wait one hour.

7) Enjoy a delicious frozen sweet and sour treat.

I would like to eat eight, please. 

It's Amazing How Quickly I Am Rendered Completely Helpless

Joe is in New York this week and he took Lily with him.  I'm at work all day and when I'm home I'm busy studying, so we figured she'd have more fun staying with Joe's dad (Grandpa Phil!) and playing with his cat than being home alone all day and ignored.  Also, I haven't been the one to empty the litter box since we got her and I prefer to keep it that way.

I felt a little guilty the day before they left though, like maybe I should let her stay in her home and just make time for her.  But then I woke up Saturday morning to her chewing on my hair and I was all, um, hi, yeah, take her.  Mommy loves you very much but you have to go now.  I am a terrible person. 

The timing of this trip was sort of strategic.  My stress levels mean I'm unpleasant to live with and we've been picking at each other more than normal.  Plus, I'm a bit behind on my bar prep and a week of quiet and no one in the house means I can hopefully refocus.

He was gone for a few hours and I was very much enjoying the complete quiet.  Then I got hungry.  And I realized that for the first time in weeks I was going to have to do the grocery shopping, cook, and clean for myself.  Isn't that some bullshit?  He could have at least prepared a week's worth of meals in advance and left them in the fridge.  Not cool, Joe, not cool.

I had scrambled eggs and a popsicle for dinner last night following 8 hours of straight bar prep lectures.  It's going to be a long week.

Oh, This Brings Me Back

Now Would Not Be The Time To Remind Me That I Brought This On Myself

Lately, whenever someone dear to me asks me how I am, I tell them.  And then I start to cry.  Tears come often with complete disregard for the fact that they have not been invited to the party.  They are very sneaky.  Sometimes I start a conversation fully intending for it to be a completely normal conversation and by the end of it?  Tears.  Streaming down my face.  But all this anxiety and stress and frustration and effort means that I've lost 3 pounds this week. So that's lose/win.  BRIGHT SIDE.  Found it.

Anyway, I have come to a realization that probably seemed obvious to everyone else ages ago, which is that I can't do everything all at once.  I don't have the time in a day, or the ability to be rational, or the ability to be emotionally stable for long periods of time without sleep.  All of which are required to work full-time, study for the bar, and make wedding decisions.  The only one of those I can cut is the wedding thing.  So it's gotta go.

I am putting a moratorium on all decisions until March.  And if that means that the perfect venue gets booked through 2015 or that my target date gets taken by some other couple or that the photographer I love becomes unavailable, then so be it.  It just will not have been meant to be.  I have apologized to too many people for my current utter inability to make decisions, or think things through, or reach logical conclusions.  Right now, I cannot deal. 

Do you know what else I'm going to do in March?  Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.  Forever and ever and ever and ever.  I am going to sleep so hard.  Come April, don't even ask me what happened in March.  I missed it.  I was asleep. 

March 1, people.  Mark your calendars.  The day you can ask me how I am and not be washed away. 

It Goes Both Ways

me:  So how long do you think before George Clooney and Stacy Keibler break up?

Joe:  I don't know.  How long have they been together now?  Four years?

me:  Uh, no.

Joe:  Five years?

me:  More like 4 or 5 months.

Joe:  No!  Are you sure?

me:  Of course.

Joe:  No!  For real?

me:  We're done with this conversation.

*******

me:  Do you think a truck could actually snowboard?

Joe:  No, of course not.

me:  What if you put sled things for the wheels?

Joe:  How would you stop?

me:  The brakes?

Joe:  No.

me:  Throw an anchor out the back?

Joe: Stop talking.



Lily's First Snow!

We let her out on the balcony.  She walked through it.  Did two sort of jump-y leap-y maneuvers.  Then she tried to crawl under the railing and hurl herself off the balcony.  I guess snow isn't for everybody.  She's too big to fit under the railing now, so no real harm done. 

We've also begun to realize that she either has no idea what her name is or she could give two shits that we're trying to call her.  So we've started trying other names to see if she likes them better.  So far, Steve, Raymond, Georgette, Beverly, Brumhilda, and Anne all elicit no response whatsoever. 

There was one horrifying moment when she lifted her head and looked at us when Joe called her Reginald, but I'm hopeful it was just a fluke.

Two Completely Random Unrelated Things of No Importance Whatsoever

1)  Do anyone else's toes/feet fall asleep or go numb on the elliptical?  I had a trainer once (yep, that one) who told me it's because your feet are stationary when you're on the elliptical machine so your body prioritizes pumping blood to the body parts that are moving and working and seem to need it the most.  This makes plausible sense to me, but I just wanted to check because it also totally seems like something that happens right before you have a stroke, so, you know, just checking.  I have a deep-rooted and very real fear of humiliating myself at the gym.  Which is also why I don't use half the stuff in there.  Every second I spend standing there trying to decipher what the hell those stick figures are doing in that little picture, and in what order, I can feel more and more eyes on me and you know they're all thinking that I don't know what I'm doing.  Then I get so anxious about the people, the people looking and thinking, that my brain panics and the pictures make no sense and I don't feel the burn where I'm supposed to feel the burn and I'm 99.99% sure I'm doing it wrong, so now all the people looking and thinking know that they're right and I am mortified.  So if you could get back to me about the stroke thing, that would be one less thing to worry about.

2)  The weather report for the next three days calls for "partly sunny," "times of clouds and sun,"  and my favorite, "some sun, then clouds."  So there will be clouds.  There will be sun.  They will happen at roughly the same time during the daylight hours.  This has been communicated to you now three different ways.  What don't you f-ing get?  Does anyone else think the weather report is kind of being a passive aggressive asshole here?  No?  Just me?

I might just need sleep.

Congratulations, My Friend

The thing about monumental moments is that the world keeps on spinning in inexplicable fashion while you're having one.  It's just a Tuesday, but somewhere someone is becoming a Mama for the first time.  It's just a Saturday, but somewhere a soldier is stepping off a plane into her family's arms.  It's just a Wednesday, but you got that long-awaited phone call and everything is going to be okay. 

Today is just a Thursday, but my friend Lauren and her Bill are getting married today at Manhattan's City Hall.  People will be at work, the city will be a blur, and the world will still be spinning, but Lauren is going to stand still, hold her love's hands in the middle of this day, say her vows, hear them said to her.  There's something so beautiful, romantic, and perfect about that.

Bill's job is sending him to London very soon and they need to make it legal for visa purposes.  They'll be coming back and doing the "real" wedding in the Fall.

But today, this day, begins their marriage, their lives and adventures together.  Today is not just a Thursday. 

I'm so over the moon for you, Whits. 

Happy Thursday. 

It's About My Cat Again




I didn't have the heart to tell her she wasn't going.  She's probably still in there.

Joe tried to go get her but I stopped him.  "No.  She has to learn."*  We're raising her Montessori.

By the time you realize the toilet paper is gone, it's usually too late.  

*No cats were harmed in the making of this post.

We Need To Talk

Let's see, what to talk about?  Studying for the bar exam?  Wedding planning?  Bar exam?  My wedding?  Or the bar exam?  Or my wedding?  We could mix it up.  How about Joe?  Or our cat? 

Yesterday, Joe and I had a fight.  A pretty big fight, that led to me storming out of the house.  I'm a bit tightly wound these days, you see.  Because of studying for the bar exam.  And planning my wedding.  (Have I mentioned...?)  So I stormed out, slammed the door, and went to the gym.  I'm taking full credit for such healthy channeling of my anger, though it's mostly just because all the bakeries and ice cream shops are closed after 9 pm. 

The main point of this fight, and all you really need to know, is that I was right.  And also that a person who is working this hard can only live with someone who gets to come home, put on sweatpants, and watch TV while eating a bowl of cereal on the couch for so long before that person wants to make the other as equally miserable and stressed as she is.  Because we're a team. 

I came home, did not make eye contact in order to communicate that I was still mad, put my things away, walked into the living room to get something I did not need so as to pointedly not make eye contact in order to communicate that, no really, I'm still mad, and then I took a shower.  Afterwards, I sat down next to him on the couch and I said I was sorry.  Even though I was right.  Because that's the kind of rising above it person that I am, you guys. 

We had a nice long talk about what we need from each other right now, how we can communicate better so the other one hears the important things, and how we could both work on not pissing me off.  Then:

Joe:  Let's be friends again.

me [my voice muffled from burying my face in his shoulder]:  Okay.  So while you're all sharing and caring and vulnerable and feeling-y, can I ask you a question and you try your best to really, really think about it and give me an honest, thoughtful answer?

Joe:  Sure.

me:  You seriously have no preference about which wedding venue we book?

Joe:  Awww, hon.  No.  No, I don't.

Now here's a picture of our cat sleeping adorably: 

Are You Crafty? Wanna Be My Friend? The Offer Stands For the Next 11 Months.

If you read wedding blogs long enough, you'll begin to believe that every bride makes every element of her wedding herself, with the help of her entire family and all her friends who stop everything else going on in their lives to dedicate themselves to making her wedding live up to her vision.  You will begin to believe that there's no way for you to have an inexpensive, beautiful wedding because your friends have lives and your parents are optometrists.

It's not your fault.  It's the blogs.  They all sound like this:

When Oliver proposed to Cassidy, they could only imagine getting married in one place: on the bride's aunt's 18 acre lavender farm in the woods.  The bride's father, a master carpenter, built the reception hall from the ground up using reclaimed wood found on the Montana ranch where the groom grew up.

The bride, a graphic designer, designed the invitation suite herself, while the groom, a musician, composed all the music for the couple's big day.  The groom's step-sister, a classical harpist, played while the bride walked down the aisle in her grandmother's gown, which the groom's mother altered to fit. 

The bride and her bridesmaids spent a year scouring flea markets every weekend to collect the vintage crystalware which adorned every table, and together, they designed, made from clay, and kiln-fired the dessert plates, which were inscribed with the initials of each guest and doubled as favors! 

The bride's second cousin, a world-class caterer provided the food and wedding cake as a wedding gift to the couple.   The guests showed up early and hand picked wild lavender to make up the bridal parties' bouquets.  The groom's brother's band provided the music and guests danced until the wee hours on the dance floor hand-hewn by the groom's fraternity brothers. 

"Our wedding was magical," says the bride.  Her advice to brides planning their weddings?  "You absolutely can have a beautiful wedding for $42.50.  Don't be afraid to ask your friends and family to help!"

Good for Cassidy.  She can suck it.

Weekend before last, I went to a make your own wedding invitation workshop at a local stationery store.  Halfway through learning to heat emboss at home and using paper punches and tying bows, I realized something: I am not crafty.  I am so, so not crafty. 

And I don't know any crafty people.  If you save cardboard coffee sleeves so you can make something with them later, we are probably not friends.  Which I am now realizing is my loss and not yours, because I bet you could have used those to make me a gazebo.

To Sara

Today is my friend Sara's birthday.  Sara and I met in college and she is one of my favorite people in the whole world.  She's the only person I know who agrees with me that Steel Magnolias is one of the best movies of all time, and we are both so right about that.  She also gets all my Southern-isms when no one else up here does, including what it means when I say "bless his heart" and knowing the fundamental difference between a barbecue and a cook-out. 

We found each other while surrounded by yankees, and it has been clear from the beginning that we were meant to be kindred spirits.  Which is reinforced every time we are out and about and catch each other's eye and know exactly what the other one is thinking.  And who it's about. 

Whenever something significant happens, good or bad, or even if she just senses I need a smile, I get a hand-written card in the mail that always says exactly what I need to hear.  She's the only person I know with whom I truly have to keep up my correspondence.  I love it. 

She could live on Diet Coke and McDonald's for the rest of her days, she never lets us leave a bar without playing AC/DC on the jukebox, she has a signature giggle, she's crazy smart and wickedly funny, and has the biggest heart, and yet if you cross one of her friends she will cut a bitch. 

She deserves a birthday and a year filled with light and magic and happy and love.  That's my wish for you, my lovey, today and always.

Happy birthday.

This Is All I Got

Healthy versions of two very unhealthy things, which I can highly recommend:

Sweet and Sour Chicken and Chicken Zucchini Alfredo.

I don't have pictures because I don't do the cooking anymore. 

These dishes are brought to me, set down next to the computer screen, and I eat while continuing to type lecture notes between bites.  Then the empty plates are whisked away.

It's like magic.

New Normal

I changed my hours at work from 9-5 to 8-4 as a sneaky way to squeeze an extra hour out of my over-packed days.  Thorough bar prep requires 5-8 hours of study per day (hahaha), which entails watching 3-4 hours worth of lectures and then doing 4-5 hours of study/homework.  Outside of bar prep, I work 8 hour days.  So basically, I'm supposed to do 16 hours of work a day. 

So far, I've just been pretty proud of myself that I'm completely up-to-date on the daily lectures, with some finished homework scattered here and there.  The way these things go, you stay behind the whole time, but somehow, some way, it all comes together in the end.  In my experience, no matter how much you prepare, panic at the end is inevitable anyway.

This time around, I'm reminding myself the pressure is off.  I'm doing this one for me.  I've already done this once successfully and I can do it again.  I am starting to realize why New York is notoriously one of the hardest bars to pass, though.  Holy New York distinctions is all I'm saying.

To help, Joe has taken over all the cooking.  I make the menus for the week, provide recipes, write out the shopping list and hand it over.  He does the weekly shopping, makes my lunches every day, cooks dinner every night, and cleans up after.  You guys, I'm totally going to marry him.

My goals this week: get in some gym time and go to bed earlier.  Easy peasy.  Right?

In other news, Lily has learned to fetch, which, when a cat does it, is fricken hilarious.  She gets her favorite toy, brings it to us and drops it.  We pick it up, throw it, and she brings it back.  I just explained to you how fetch works.  I apologize.  I'm sort of tired. 

Odds & Ends

I just found an instrumental string quartet version of Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me.  Honestly, it's like this wedding is planning itself. 

Also?  A string quartet tribute to AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long (for you, Sara).  You know, for the processional. (Just kidding.  As if I'd walk down the aisle to anything other than Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy.  Obvi.)

My dear friend Kathryn (of beautiful kitchen and New Orleans fame) gifted me the Burberry fragrance set from my wish list for Christmas and in the box from Sephora were various other perfume samples, including Justin Bieber's Someday.  I wore it yesterday out of curiosity, and because I had no plans to leave the house.  It smells like 14 year old girl tears.  I'm not so sure the people ordering the Burberry fragrance set and the Justin Bieber Someday buyers are in the same demographic, Sephora.  I do want JTT to know though that it's not too late.  I would still buy, JTT, I would still buy. 

The high temperatures over the weekend were in the 50s/60s.  I saw people wearing short sleeves.  I am very upset.  If I wanted mild winters I would move.  I want snow, dammit!  You call this a winter!?  Also, I heckle weather now.  So that's new. 

And lastly, sweet Jesus, did I need to hear this.  I'm bookmarking it in favorites so I can come back to it as need be.  Maybe once a month.  Maybe every day.

As If I Have Time for Distractions

My latest obsession?  CelebrityNetWorth.com.  Type in a name, any name, scroll down, click the link, and reveal his/her net worth.  Trivial, a serious waste of time, probably inaccurate, and seriously addictive.  I don't care so much about the big time celebs.  I know they're rich. 

It's learning that Melissa Joan Hart is worth $14 million (explain that, Clarissa), or that Dustin Diamond has $500,000 to his name (sort of surprised it's that much), or that Bob Vila is worth $25 million (hammering all the way to the bank, Bob), or that NeNe Leakes is worth $3.5 million (she's rich, bitch) that I find endlessly fascinating. 

And also depressing: Sherri Shepherd is worth $10 million.  Let's all exclaim a collective WTF on that one. 

I am so in the wrong field. 

This Photo = My Life



via Brooklyn Bride

This Save the Date = genius.

As a quick wedding update, I have a very serious wedding venue contender.  I've already negotiated terms I'm comfortable with and all that is waiting is my pull the trigger courage.  We will likely be making a final decision by next weekend. 

We're planning to look at two more first though.  I just feel I would be remiss if I didn't check out at least a couple places in NYC proper (home of my alma mater and where several beloveds currently live).  Once we see them and I've fallen in love, and once I've recovered from clutching my pearls over the prices, and once I've walked out loudly whispering to Joe that they can go fuck themselves, and once my mind races with oh what could have been, we will likely call Serious Contender and announce ourselves ready to sign.  Unless I waver.  I could very well waver.  My sanity is not my strongest trait at the moment. 

I received this book in the mail today as a gift from Kelsey.  A gift that is at once ever so kind, incredibly thoughtful, and entirely necessary.  Thanks, Kelsey!  I can't wait to feel better.  (The book is based on the A Practical Wedding blog.  Kelsey's own wedding was featured on the site here.  So cool.)

TRUE STORY:  Joe just walked into the room, found me writing this blog post instead of listening to my bar prep lecture and before he said a word, I shrieked "I'm being pulled in a lot of different directions!  I have a lot of obligations!" 

To which he silently walked to the computer, took the mouse, maximized the lecture on the screen, and silently walked out. 

This is only Day 3.

I have to go. 

Y'all? Shit Just Got Real.

As has been established, taking one Bar and passing it was not enough.  I thought I was done, but apparently not.  I just haven't suffered quite enough.

Submitting your application to the New York Bar is one thing.  Actually paying for another round of bar prep is yet another.

But expecting Christmas packages in the mail and instead opening said packages to find these instead?  Vomit.  In my mouth.  Hi, reality. 

Over the next 8 weeks, I will work full-time, plan a wedding, attempt to whip myself into wedding-dress-trying-on shape, and prepare for the NY bar exam.  Because it seemed sane at the time. 

This should be fun.

Strangely, There Was No Mention of Hot Dogs or Prince Charming in the Book

One of my birthday presents from my cousin Kim was this book on weddings and I love it.  Super practical and helpful.  I couldn't wait to devour all the information.  I wasn't the only one.

This is Sophia, Kim's daughter and my 4-year-old wedding consultant.

Her taste level is impeccable.  She knows exactly what she wants.  So far we agree on all the major points.  Though we do disagree about a few details.  For instance, when asked what kind of food we should have at the wedding, she said red food.  I find that a bit limiting.  I'm also not sure if balloons everywhere is the way to go.

She also identified the ballgown as her favorite wedding dress silhouette, except, unlike the drawings shown in the book, mine should be blue.  Like Cinderella's. 

Hello, 2012.

You are so pretty and delightful.  Gracious and charming.  Witty and demure.  There are a lot of people with some very high expectations for you.  Mainly because your older brother, 2011, had some slightly dickish tendencies.

But not you.  You are sweet.  Loving.  Gentle.  So kind are you, that despite the predictions of a certain Mesoamerican civilization who shall remain nameless, you surely will not mark the end of the world on December 21, 2012.  Among other very good reasons, it is a mere two days before my birthday.  That would just be cruel.  That's not your style. 

In 2012, I shall marry.  I shall pass the New York bar.  We might even move to New York, should all go well, and start putting down some permanent roots.  I shall embark on a fabulous honeymoon.  Perhaps there will be talk of starting a family.  Just talk, mind you.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

I will start volunteering.  I will try to be a better friend.  I will strive to be in the moment and try to stop waiting for my real life to start.  I will realize that it already has.  I will try to give up the idea that things are supposed to look or feel a certain way in order to be fully enjoyed and just bask in monumental moments for what they are, as they come. 

I will start my career.  You hear that, 2012?  I will start my career. 

Help me out, won't you?