EXTREME LONG DISTANCE - Directions by Google

I have not, thus far, truly delved into the nitty gritty of a long-distance relationship.

Or, as Cosmo apparently terms it, an EXTREME LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP.

I'm not sure what qualifies an LDR as "extreme," but Imma go out on a limb here and guess that Baltimore to Abu Dhabi counts as one.

Bee-tee-dubs, I totally just Googled "Baltimore to Abu Dhabi" on maps, and this is what I found. The directions are quite accurate and take you around the Ohio turnpike, point out toll and partial toll roads, and then (at direction #37) indicate that you "sail across the Pacific Ocean", and make a left on Kuilima Drive. That should take you to Kamehameha Highway, which is actually closed until October 28 (mind that), but from there you can basically just sail the rest of the way across the Pacific Ocean to 県道275号線. It's not too bad from there, just make sure you don't  miss Take exit 廿日市ＪＣＴ on the right toward 山陽道・岩国・北九州 and then, after awhile, the signs will start appearing in Russian and that's how you know you're pretty much almost there. At direction #328, you finally hit Arabic: مربندی نیشابور‎ I don't know what it means, but I do notice that there are NO TOLL ROADS IN ARABIC. Another hundred or so directional turns later, and you're pulling into Abu Dhabi.

Google is such bullshit. This route has you taking I-90 W for 19,543 miles when everyone knows it is MUCH faster to take the Atlantic Ocean. 

But what Google and Cosmo both fail to tell you are a few things I've learned in the last 2.5 months.

First - any relationship-advice-giving source (be it Cosmo, Google, or your best friend after a magnum of wine) will tell you that communication is key. Duh. But what they don't tell you is that there is something incredibly rich and fascinating about how that communication pans out. I have found that our conversations now seem to just be nonstop. They flow from one day to the next, uninterrupted by sleep and time zones, picking up where they left off. And they flow just as easily between mediums. We might start a conversation over text, pick it up during Gchat, and later dissect it via Google video chat. A day or two later, there might be an email with a link to a news article about something we were discussing, or there might be a random mobile phone photo. Threads and themes just seem to flow over the miles and 8-hour time difference to the point where I never really feel that we're out of contact. 

Second - you will go through The Stages. They will look something like this:

1. SHOCK AND DENIAL
Oh yeah, no, I'm totally fine. Yeah, he moved last week. No, things are really good - I've had so much time to catch up on my writing, and I am totally going to write a book. I am doing SO SO well. It's really not all that far away, when you think about it, and we were both so busy during the week we practically only saw each other on weekends anyway, which is basically the same thing. I'm sleeping fine, yep. Oh, sorry, look out for the piles of wine bottles around my bed.

2. PAIN & GUILT
Bed fort for three weeks. Watched all of "Downton Abbey," two seasons of "Breaking Bad," one season of "Intervention," re-watched "The League," and read four novels back to back. Felt guilty and tried to start writing. Writing wretched and terrible. Tired all the time. Netflix is my only friend. I should probably go out and do something. Ugh. People. Can't deal. Oohh, "Felicity"....

3. ANGER & BARGAINING
GET OUT OF BED. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. Ok. If I go to the gym every day, and write for 40 minutes a day, and read all of the classics, and basically make myself into this totally amazing superhuman person with a color-coordinated closet and 8 hours of sleep per night and putting in extra time at work and saying yes to every social engagement IT WILL MAKE THE TIME GO FASTER and all of this will be MUCH, MUCH EASIER. YOGA TWICE A WEEK, ABS THREE TIMES A WEEK, RUN FOUR TIMES A WEEK, BLOG EVERYDAY, BE PERRRRFECT!

4. "DEPRESSION," REFLECTION, LONELINESS
I'm exhausted. I hate everyone. I don't want to clean anything anymore. I want to read trashy chick lit. I don't want to pick my clothes up off of the floor. I don't want to go a happy hour with someone I barely know, I want to stay home and be sad and drink a carton of wine (yes - a carton - they're more ecologically friendly than bottles and they don't clink in the bag when you buy seven of them). I want to gaze wistfully out the window and sigh and channel Angela from My So-Called Life. Mostly, I just miss my boyfriend 24/7 and it totally sucks and no amount of trying to be the world's perfect person is going to make any of this easier or better.

5. THE UPWARD TURN
My flight to Abu Dhabi is booked, and we are constructing plans for a New Year's Eve trip to Prague. The silver linings of this shitty situation - that we will get to travel and have adventures- are beginning to feel more real. I am finding a balance between allotting myself plenty of alone-time to mope, to be selfish and lazy if I want to be, and to get myself out and be productive and live my life. It can't be all one or the other. 

6. RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH
Not here yet.

7. ACCEPTANCE AND HOPE
Definitely not here yet.

Third - and most important - as if you couldn't possibly be any more appreciative of your significant other, you find a myriad of new ways to feel adoration and love. It is so very different from the day-to-day togetherness, and one is certainly not better than the other, but in difficult situations like these you not only find that the heart does, indeed, grow fonder but that you as a person grow stronger as well. 

It still blows, don't get me wrong. Abu Dhabi is 7,020 miles from Baltimore (AS THE CROW FLIES, GOOGLE) and that's 7,019.99999 too many. But it's temporary, and we are learning and growing, and I have no doubt that by the time I finally get to good old Stage 7 (ACCEPTANCE AND HOPE) it will probably be June 2014 and the two years will be up.

And, if worse comes to worst, you can always Google directions.

Watch out for those toll roads.

The First Twinges of #dirtythirty

So, Legs is getting married next month and this weekend we took her out and showed her a good time, bachelorette-party style.

THAT'S WHAT GIRLS DO.

It had been awhile since I'd slapped on a pair of four-inch heels and a strapless dress and curled my hair, so I was definitely down for a good time, especially after a tough week. 

We went out to dinner that lasted for three hours, and then tried to decide what to do with the rest of the night. We ended up choosing a new-ish club/pub/restaurant/whatever in Fells Point, reasoning that it would have some decent Top 40 dancing music and possibly some cute boys to manipulate into embarrassing the bride-to-be. 

THAT IS ALSO WHAT GIRLS DO.

And this is how I found out that I am old.

I have not, overall, noticed too much of a difference in my life since I turned 30. Maybe I expected something earth shattering, but the fact is, most days I kind of forget how old I am. It comes up in conversation, or someone cards me, and I realize I'm not 29 anymore. Eh, no biggie, doesn't really bother me to be honest. The twenties weren't all that spectacular. Oh, except that they were a spectacular shit show, but besides that.

But, apparently, I'm ready to hang up my party shoes and call it a day. And I am NOT alone in this.

We got to the club/pub/restaurant/whatever, and immediately realized that the majority of our crowd was about ten years senior to most of the people in the club. How did we realize this? Because the boys couldn't grow beards, and the girls all looked like this.  

I paid thirty bucks for three drinks (WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BULLSHIT I KNOW THESE TWEEN BITCHES CAN'T AFFORD THAT), distributed them among friends, and we headed out to the dance floor. 

Oh. Emm. Geeee.

We've all been the victim of a spastic-dance moment or two, as vodka tends to make you believe you are, in fact, Beyonce. When, really, you're...well...NOT.

But this was a frigging free-for-all. I mean, arms a'flailin', legs akimbo, skinny bitches tossing themselves all up over everywhere.

And my friends and I stood there like this. 

My feet hurt. I was tired. The music was loud. There were people EVERYWHERE, and the line for the bathroom was atrocious. I desperately wanted to be at home, in my bed, reading bad Chick lit. I looked at my phone and realized, with horror, that it was ELEVEN THIRTY PM.

WHAT THE HELL NONSENSE IS THAT.

Now, this might not have been so bad had it not come on the heels of LAST weekend when I attended the Charm City Music Festival. It was an absolutely gorgeous, sunny fall day, we rocked out to Eve 6 and Flogging Molly and had some pretty intense dancing in the dub step tent (I loooooooove me some dub step, furreal) but by the time Weezer came on it was 10pm, and I was cold and tired and feeling sick from all of the people smoking various things around me. By the time the twenty-millionth person crashed into me whilst head-banging (IT'S WEEZER, PEOPLE, NOT BLACK SABBATH) and spilled my precious $8 beer, I was done. I threw my hands up in the air and told my friends I was going to the nearest bar that had warmth and a place to sit, and that they were welcome to stay for the rest of Weezer's set. Not surprisingly, every  last one of them followed me out of the park claiming they didn't want me to walk by myself. Liars, you all were sick of the crowd, too!

So, two weekends in a row of me getting tired before midnight and wanting to go home and be comfy and warm and quiet. 

This might be a new trend.

I wasn't alone at the club on Saturday night either, everyone was more than happy to roll out shortly after one member of our party (who shall remain unnamed) pushed a bitch for Party Rockin' a little too close (and, to give the pushee credit, she stumbled and then danced her way back upright, scarcely missing a beat) and we all decided that perhaps this wasn't "our scene."

We are much happier these days with bottles of wine than shots and deafening party rocking,  I must say.

But note that I said "bottles." We can still hold our own, no lie.

Where I was alone, however, is that once we left the club/pub/restaurant/whatever, I was in Home Mode. Like "stick a fork in me, I'm done" Home Mode. I wanted to be at home, in bed, asleep.

Everyone else went out to another bar.

I did not.

I went home and watched Saturday Night Live reruns on Netflix with the cats.

#dirtythirty begins it's silent assault.

But the bride-to-be had an awesome time, and that's all that counts.

Small, Troubled Cat Goes to the Vet. Everybody Cries.

This is Fiona, aka "Small, Troubled Cat."

She is seven years old and weighs 6.8 pounds.

She has a massive overbite.

She got stuck in a dryer when she was a wee kitten and went through five minutes of a drying cycle before I found her.

She is not very smart. I'm not sure I can blame the dryer for this or any brain damage, because she got herself stuck in a dryer so she must not have been the brightest little cat bulb to begin with.

She is very sweet and snuggly, and her most favorite thing in the world is to sleep on my neck.

What you cannot tell from this picture, however, is that she is a complete and total bitch to take to the vet.

And last week was the once-every-three-years trip. I don't take her any more often than that, for both of our sanities.

To begin with, this teensy, tiny, snuggly little kitten of a cat screams like an f-ing banshee in the car. She wails at a decibel you can feel, as though she has some sort of crazy cat ecolocation sqwauk in her vocal cords that projects energy rays outwards that cut right through you.

This wail makes you feel like you have failed at life as a human being, that you are the cruelest person in the world, and it makes you want to die for doing such harm to such a small, helpless kitten. 

It has caused me to question my worth as a human life.

And this week, it made me cry.

I was stuck in traffic, with my little cat wailing in the back seat, and I just started crying uncontrollably.

Now, there were a few other factors at play here.

For one - I was having one of those weeks where you just start to think that life is too damn hard and that maybe you should give up and go live on an organic farm and not wear shoes or have earthly possessions and just drink wine and contemplate the universe.

Actually, you can do this in Baltimore City if you live in Hampden and don't mind bed bugs.

I digress.

I was having one of those weeks where everything was frustrating, I seemed to be running ten minutes behind everything all week long, I wasn't sleeping well, oh and the tires of my car had finally reached a point of baldness that even I couldn't ignore anymore. 

That's $700 I didn't expect to spend. (Because I was doing a damn fine job ignoring the fact that my tires had been a safety hazard for quite some time, and so therefore I just sort of ignored the fact that at some point I was gonna have to lay down some green.)

Car stuff stresses me out to no end. Everything else in life I feel as though I can approach and deal with and problem-solve my way out of. I don't usually feel helpless or stupid or at a loss, except when it comes to my car. Car problems make me feel vulnerable and useless, and forking over money for fixing something is still an issue that makes my stomach tighten into a knot and my entire body break out in a sweat.

So this was already a stressful (not to mention expensive) week.

I had forgotten about the Small, Troubled Cat's vet appointment until almost the day before and I started dreading it the second I looked at my calendar and remembered.

This was also one of those weeks where it just feels impossible to be so far away from The Gentleman. I am only a little more than a month away from my trip to Abu Dhabi, and it's been nearly three months that he's been gone. We have settled into our "new normal," finding a new flow in our relationship that just makes me even happier that I somehow lucked into finding him and tricking him into being my boyfriend. Life is busy, as always, and the time does seem to pass somehow. But there is not a day that I don't have a down moment, or a slow introspective thought where I just plain miss him, and then there are some days when I wake up and this whole thing just feels impossible.

Sometimes this lasts for longer than a day.

This was one of those weeks.

Car trouble - check. Missing The Gentleman - check. Taking the cat to the vet - check.

What else can we pile on?

Ohhhhh, let's take a stressful work week, sprinkle it with some sleeping issues, add in horrific traffic and stir.

And thus, the cat made me cry.

The cat is wailing, I am crying. We somehow make it to the vet.

Now - and this is important - I have to mention that once the cat gets to the vet, she is good as gold. She doesn't howl. She sits quietly in her carrier, she lets the vet poke and prod her, and she is docile and obedient and superstar #1 awesome cat. 

She gets weighed, she gets a thermometer poked in her butt, she gets squeezed and listened to and shot up with rabies and distemper vaccines. She is good as gold. She goes quietly back into her carrier, curls up, and settles in with her paws neatly tucked beneath her. She is silent as I pay (what I believe to be) an exorbitant bill, walk out the door, and even up until the moment we get into the car. I turn the car on. She's still quiet. I wonder if perhaps she wore herself out howling on the way there.

But then, I commit the horrible atrocity of pushing the gas pedal and starting up the car again. Here comes the banshee, angry, lung-piercing wail.

I managed to keep my own wails in check because I swung by Catalano's house to pick her up to go to a much-needed happy hour on the way home from the vet. I pleaded with Fiona to not destroy Catalano's soul with her wailing, but to no avail. I picked up my friend, and Fiona kept on wailing.

"Is she ok?" Catalano asked, reasonably, since it sounded as though the cat were being impaled in the back seat somehow in the safety of her carrier.

"SHE'S FINE." 

The wailing lasted through the cross-town traffic on the way home, it guided us through Little Italy to my house, and by the time I was circling to find a parking spot it had reached a pitch and level of urgency that made me wonder if the cat was, in fact, dying. 

Her little paws clawed at the top of the carrier, her little nose tried to push out. She was screaming and yelling, and I was trying to carry on a conversation with Catalano as though a cat wasn't committing hari kari in the back seat.

"So, how is everything going with work - " YEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOORRRRRRROOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!

And then....Catalano got a weird look on her face.

"Is that smell coming from outside?" she asked.

"Probably. It's fine. I'm sure it's nothing." I said, hoping it was true.

It wasn't.

"It smells like a diaper," Catalano said.

"Ha, ha, yeah - probably from outside!" I was desperately trying to cover up what I knew had happened, trying to save Fiona from humiliation. But I couldn't.

The Small, Troubled Cat had worked herself up into such a state of anxiety, that she had stress-pooped all over her carrier.

Somehow, we found a parking spot and got the mentally-challenged cat inside. I opened the carrier to find little pellets of stress-poop all over the inside, and thanked whatever luck I still had with me that it wasn't as bad as I'd thought.

Small, Troubled Cat was so excited to be freed from her carrier that she immediately ate a bowl of food, and flopped flirtatiously on the ground to be petted. She was purring and cleaning herself and essentially acting as though NOTHING HAD FRIGGING HAPPENED.

It would be great to have that kind of grace after throwing a fit and pooping yourself.

Long story short, we went to Happy Hour and I erased the whole experience with a 22-oz Kirin Light and some sake.

We don't have to repeat this again until 2015.

Unless she gets stuck in a dryer or something again.

Oh, and my new tires ride like a dream. I guess I didn't realize how bad the old ones were, or that my car had a pretty wicked pull to the left before I got it realigned. Oops.

Oh, and 38 days until I fly to Abu Dhabi to see my favorite person ever.

Problems While Traveling Abroad

Lee suggested that with all of my upcoming travels (and a new trip added to the books - I'll get into that later), I should become a travel writer.

This is an excellent idea, and I already have a slant.

You know blogs like White People Problems, White Whine, and First World Problems? Totes genius, right? Like seriouslyshutup.

Here's my idea: Problems While Traveling Abroad. Things like:

Ugh. Our Marriott points will only cover our stay if we go to the expensive hotel, not the artsy "local" hotel we wanted to stay in.

We can go to Palermo or Santorini. Which one has free wifi?

They only had chardonnay for the complimentary wine on board so I had to get Dewars.

There's still a $25 check bag fee for a $3,000 flight.

The five star buffet doesn't have skim milk, only 2%.

Room service is only available until 10pm.

The jacuzzi is under repair.

I need at least a day or two off after vacation to recover from the jet lag.

You know. Stuff like that.

I can't wait.







 

31 Before 31

In the midst of half-marathon training, planning for my trip to Abu Dhabi,  writing my book (supposedly), and all of my normal life activities (trivia, happy hours, Book Club, a Weezer concert, making curried chick pea and lentil stew, and drinking lots of pumpkin beers) I decided that I was bored and needed yet another challenge to occupy my time.

I come up with lots of Challenges for myself, don't I?

Whatever. It gives my life purpose and meaning where without it, all would be lost.

Or something like that.

My latest Challenge came out of reading Wild a couple of weeks ago. In the book, Cheryl Strayed takes on the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking from Mexico to Oregon, and her sole source of entertainment (beyond the great outdoors) is a series of books she mails to herself and reads along the trail. Books like Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and other tomes. And I realized that I've never read Faulkner.

Yes, I confess it, out loud, here in public - I, who call myself a writer and someone well-read and well-spoken, have never read Faulkner.

I wondered if perhaps I was alone in this phenomenon, and so I turned to Google to make me feel better about myself (which works only about 14% of the time, btw), and started generating lists like "50 Books Every Writer Should Read" and "10 Books Every College Graduate Should Have Read," and I started to feel worse and worse.

In my defense: I was never an English Lit major.

In my defense: Sophie Kinsella is very entertaining.

I thought about the very long flights I have coming up quite soon in my life, and I came up with a new challenge for myself: 31 Before 31 of Books I Feel I Should Have Read. The "31" aspect being that I have until my birthday to complete this challenge, which is just about 8.5 months.

My method for constructing this list was completely arbitrary, and mostly made up of works I've heard and seen referenced in art, culture, cocktail conversation, or on those lists of "Why The F%#* Haven't You Read This - Was Your College Library Bereft?"

(Answer: no. But I was too busy in college learning film theory and how to write a treatment and analyzing boys' AIM away messages.)

I tried to get Lee on board with this project, but since he has recently left the freelancing world and joined the ranks of the rest of us 9-5ers, he is disgruntled about life and feels he has no time for such silliness. Oh, and also, he's like renovating his house or something that sounded more important than reading books and stuff.

So, I have laid out what is a pretty daunting task for myself. Especially since my brain, after work all day and writing this stupid book I'm supposed to write so that I can have a stupid puppy, just really really wants to read some Louise Bagshawe. WHO, BY THE WAY, RAN FOR POLITICAL OFFICE. AND WON. I just thought I'd point that out, because I feel it lends a bit more street cred to delicious gems like The Devil You Know, which I bought from a Waterstone's in London.

Anyhoodle, here's the list. So far, I am crawling my way through Portrait of the Artist. I need to come up with some level of accepting when a book can be considered "read" because, let's be honest, between Dedalus's whining about his Catholic guilt and all of the "ideal woman" imagery it's just slow-going. I don't want to force myself to eat something I don't like, but I must taste everything and I must at least come up with a sound reason as to why I don't like the book. I think that's fair. The purpose here is enlightenment, not punishment.

Also, I only have 25 books listed here as I am open to suggestions.

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

3. The Grass is Singing, Doris Lessing

4. Lolita, Nabokov

5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

6. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway

7. The Rules of Attraction, Brett Easton Ellis

8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Dandicat

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

10. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

11. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown

12. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond

13. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

14. Cities of Salt, Abdul Rahman Munif

15. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

16. The Satanic Verses, Salmon Rushdie

17. Native Son, Richard Wright

18. The Savage Detectives, Bolano

19. Jesus' Son, Denis Hale Johnson

20. Notebook, Agota Christof (NOTE - not "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks. Come on.)

21. White Noise, Don DeLillo

22. Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

23. Fear of Flying, Erica Jong

24. The 19th Wife, David Evershoff

25. As I Lay Dying, Faulkner

Ready, set, read.

Infinity Loop

"We should totally blog about each other while we're sitting here blogging," says Kid. 

Ok.

I'm blogging about Kid blogging about me and we are bloggers blogging in a cafe. IT'S SO 2002! Except we're not at Starbucks.

Actually,, I'm sitting in one of my favorite venues in Baltimore City to write (and no, I'm not gonna give up it's super secret location because it serves a splendid tea AS WELL AS a badass champagne sangria, and I don't want it overrun - totes kidding, it's Teavolve), and here I am supposed to write things and stuff.

Ugh. Writing is hard.

So, the Writing Challenge I took on with Lee was a total bust. The first week was awesome - five days, 40 minutes a day. Done and done, no sweat, and I think I even maybe did more than 40 minutes some nights. 

But the second week...ugh. I came home from work late a couple'a times, and then one night I decided that all I needed to do to still be a human being was watch four Netflixed episodes of Mad Men. 

It was not my finest showing.

At least some things got done. I wrote some words and put some nice punctuation between the sentences.

The Gentleman says that if I'm going to continue to write my book piecemeal, he will continue with acquiring my puppy piecemeal. Which is really gross. And kind of a horrible thing to say to me. 

I digress.

Oh wait - did I fail to mention that The Gentleman promised me a puppy if I write a book? HE DID. IT IS SET IN STONE BECAUSE I POSTED IT AS A FACEBOOK STATUS.

In reality, the conversation went something like this:

ME: I want a puppy.

THE GENTLEMAN: No puppy. You already have two cats. It would be a zoo.

ME: I WANT A PUPPY.

THE GENTLEMAN: You can have a puppy if you write a book.

ME: Are you saying that if I write a book, you will get me a puppy.

THE GENTLEMAN: (totally not realizing that I was 100% serious and he was, like, 34% serious) Yes, sure. If you write a book, you can have a puppy.

DONE AND DONE, GOOD SIR.

Anyhoodle, so this whole book-writing thing is turning out to be hard. Writing takes so much time. And then there are my excellent powers of procrastination.

I was asking my friend over at I Think I'll Make It if she keeps a workout log, because she's a trainer and totally buff. And she said, "No, that's not my hobby. Writing is my hobby."

Ah, crap.

I have many hobbies.

Writing, running, reading, crocheting, cooking, drinking, book clubbing, among others.

But do we really have to choose just one?

After the wedding last weekend in San Fran and after attending a Happy Hour this week put together by co-workers of one of my roommates, I found myself answering this same question over and over and over again: What do you do? As in - professionally. This is the single most defining question people tend to ask, but I don't believe it's necessarily because we are so defined by our professions. I think that it's the most socially-acceptable question people feel they can ask upon first meeting someone.

But the truth is - we do a lot of things. Or, at least, I do.

Now, I totally get that I have a huge problem with discipline and focus. If I'm going to call myself a writer, I damn well need to get on that whole writing thing. But I'm reaching a point where I realize that I will never be just one thing.

What do I do? I work in administration for a nonprofit organization in Baltimore City that provides social services to some of the most marginalized popoulations. I run. I write. I read things. I love. I cook. I travel. I take pictures. I collage. I cuddle with my cats. I museum. I ride my bike.

And when I finally do finish writing my book, I will still do and be all of these things.

But, for now, I'm blogging in a cafe and sitting across from a friend who is blogging about me blogging about him. Times infinity.

Yay Area

Ah, crap.

So basically, I had a fan-freaking-tastic weekend out in San Fran. A little too good. In fact, I loved it so much that I miss it, right now. I somehow feel a little homesick for the city where I only spent about 72 hours.

The only thing I didn't love was the weather. It was cold. Like...jeans, long sleeves, fall jacket, scarf cold. Which was lovely after this sweltering Baltimore summer, but I could see how that would get old. A damp chill just sort of lingering over everything.

I guess I have to explore more of California. Right now, I think it's too soon to call. I mean, we just met. And I don't want to seem desperate. I'll give it some space and just see what happens. But seriously - if I don't hear from Cali within the year, I'll probably like...you know, maybe just stop by. Or linger somewhere nearby, like Oregon or the Pacific. Just close enough for it to notice me. Like, oh hey, California, I didn't know you'd be here too! Why yes, I definitely remember that fun weekend we had. Oh how funny, you were waiting for me to call you! This is going to be such a great story at our tenth anniversary.

Awkward.

So, the wedding was beautiful and fun, my bff's are beautiful and fun, and I even got lucky enough to snag an hour or two with Snap and Sweet-T and their awesome, awesome baby.

I am not, on the whole, a huge fan of babies in general.

I am, however, totally on board with babies that my friends have.

Also, I'm pretty sure I have never held a six-day-old human in my arms before. That was pretty rad. And yes, I totally did the whole - "LOOK AT THOSE TINY FINGERNAILS" bit. Because they are SO SMALL! I didn't know they made them that small.

Anyway, so, pictures to come soon as well as a creepy explanation of how I have been incorporating The Gentleman into all of my adventures as of late.

But I just wanna say that the older I get, the more I cry at weddings. I just do. I watch my best of best friends walk down aisles, looking the most beautiful (or handsome) they have ever looked. I remember the tears and heartaches they have been through, the awkward phases where we were all flat-broke with crappy jobs and not a clue. And then, I have the honor of standing next to them on the happiest most awesome day. It's every cliche, and it's true, and it's real.

OMG and then they have babies. And they are beautiful babies. Some of these babies are now walking, talking two-year-olds with your friend's eyes. It's so surreal and awesome.

And, in other news, it is SEPTEMBER! FINALLY! I am probably the only person on the East Coast who breathed a sigh of relief when Labor Day ended and it's finally no longer technically summer. That was a rough summer, no lie, and fall is one of my favorite times of the year. I have already begun buying pumpkin beer and stashing it away. Because the beer stores all start carrying it in late August, and then when October rolls around, they're out of it and putting out the winter ales. So I have to buy and stock up. PUMPKIN BEER FOR THE WIN.

Also, I need to write a blog about this conversation that Lee and I were having over email about litera-tooer vs. books. You know, like: Wuthering Heights in a cage match against Shopaholic. Who would win? I argue that it depends on the venue and the time of year. WH is totally going to win in the fall-winter seasons if backed by hot tea, and Shopaholic has the advantage if it's summer and at the beach.

That's gonna be a great blog entry, I think.

Yeah.

Stay tuned!


Also:

Things Trending In My World (which is the only world that counts)
The League on Netflix
Anxiously awaiting American Horror Story, Season 2
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Worldbeat Radio on Pandora
57 days until this