2009 year in review
December 30, 2009 at 1:41 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts | 4 CommentsBorrowed from the delightful kvknowsherfun. Feel free to answer some in the comments or reblog.
1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Got married and househunted. Tweeted. Turned thirty.
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I think last year’s resolutions were kind of vague, so I’m not sure and I probably didn’t keep them. Will I make more for next year: YES. More to come.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! Several of my friends had babies this year. And a couple more people close to me are about to. New niece or nephew in 2010!
4. Did anyone close to you die? Thankfully no.
5. What places did you visit?
Maine and Maui. Those are really the only places I visited in 2009, and they were more than enough. I still think about Maui sometimes when I can’t fall asleep. I was very very happy there.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? A home of our own. Maybe a dog? More time set aside to read and more visits with friends.
7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? May 2. I’m not that wonderful with dates, but I think I’ll remember that one.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Paying off my car. Getting in great shape before our wedding.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Getting out of great shape after our wedding. I KNOW. For someone with a distaste for unoriginality, I can be such a cliche.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
This was actually a very healthy year for me in terms of being sick. But I did take Excedrin every single day this year for my jaw pain issues and I know that’s probably not good.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
My wedding band, our tickets to Hawaii, and the Hot Tools professional curling iron which is a magical curling iron. Also lots of fun makeup.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? That of my working mom friends and sister-in-law who just…I don’t even know dude, I don’t know how they do it. I know it’s hard though and they are wonderful moms.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The kids responsible for the murder in Mont Vernon, NH. I cried every time I read anything about it and finally had to stop. Makes me so sad in a multitude of ways.
14. Where did most of your money go?
To feed my current cosmetics obsession.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My victory in the American Idol pool. The season finale of Lost. My wedding. Allcosmeticswholesale.com.
16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Anything off of Lady Gaga’s The Fame.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? I think my happiness level is pretty much the same. I have my bad/sad moods from time to time but in general I am a happy and grateful girl.
b) thinner or fatter? Same.
c) richer or poorer? At the moment I’m richer, though I’m certainly not rich, but once we purchase our new house I will quickly be poorer.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sleeping, writing, taking advantage of the summer months to get out and do more stuff.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Lying awake at night, overthinking things, giving into little frustrations and annoyances.
20. How did you spend Christmas in 2009?
With M.’s family and mine; exactly as I wanted to spend Christmas.
21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
I continued to love M. in 2009.
22. What was your favorite TV program?
Easily Mad Men. But I was also thrilled by Lost this year and still watch Gilmore Girls on DVR constantly. Oh and The Office and 30 Rock. Is that too much? I have such affection for them all.
23. What did you do for your birthday in 2009?
This, followed by dinner with friends.
24. What was the best book you read?
The book I’m reading right now (Special Topics in Calamity Physics) is phenomenal but I’m not even halfway through so I don’t feel qualified yet to say it’s the best. I’ll report back soon. Don’t be put off by the title though. It is a sparkling special book. My favorite book of the year would have to be a book by Elizabeth Berg. I’ll go with The Pull of the Moon.
25. What did you want and get?
Makeup. A fun honeymoon. An iphone, which I didn’t know I wanted until I got it.
26. What did you want and not get?
More sleep. A little more excitement. Post-wedding, it was a quiet year.
27. What was your favorite film of this year?
Up in the Air.
28. Did you make some new friends this year?
Honestly? I mostly made new blog friends this year. That counts.
29.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? The fact that I’m having trouble thinking of something makes me think I had a pretty satisfying year. I felt very, very fortunate this year and experienced a lot of generosity and support and little indulgences and major life milestones.
30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Scarfy.
31. What kept you sane?
The same things that always keep me sane: emails to Casey and finding some quiet pockets of time to myself.
32. Who did you miss?
Faraway friends like Meghan. Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. I miss YellowTop.
33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009. I don’t know if I’ve really learned this lesson but it’s one that I’m working out right now. I’ve come to realize that it’s very easy for an entire year to fly past with me keeping my head down, working hard and trying to keep everything in order, and I can sometimes neglect the fun of my life and then I miss it and it makes me feel dissatisfied. So, I need to be more conscious of that. Not very wise words but maybe you know what I mean.
serendipitous
October 8, 2009 at 11:00 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts, we all like music | 2 CommentsLast week I finally got around to putting music on my iphone. My ipod only holds about 200 songs, so it tends to be full of gym motivation music (not that I’ve been to the gym much lately, and let’s end that topic) and my newest songs with some favorites mixed in. But the iphone can hold infinity songs or something close to it, so I really went through my music instead of just skimming like I usually do. And you know what happened? One of the best things. I bumped into a song that I love that I had entirely forgotten about. It’s very much as if you once had some earrings that you used to wear every day, that at a certain time were a special and familiar little part of your days, that you misplaced and eventually forgot about, and one day you use an old purse that you don’t usually use, and there in some little pocket of that purse you dig around for chap stick and there are the earrings, and you think, “Oh! Hello!” Except a bit more special even, because it’s music and chances are it occupies some little emotional space in your life. So, waaaaay back in graduate school my friend Jessica gave me some new music and introduced me to Cat Power. First she gave me the song “Good Woman” which is one of my very favorites. So then she just gave me the whole cd. And there was a song on the cd that I listened to over and over and over during a time when I lived in a studio apartment by myself, in the upstairs of a house I lived in with a young married couple. Though they didn’t seem that young to me at the time because they were about thirty. It was a small living space but it was the first time I had lived alone, and it felt like a tremendous amount of space. I had no money at all, but I didn’t buy anything at all and it worked out. I was single and didn’t have many friends living in town, I was in school and spent most of my time reading and writing, I didn’t have cable, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with my life, I was lonely sometimes and worried but happy most of the time in my quiet apartment enjoying what I knew would be a relatively short period of having no money but living luxuriously, reading and thinking and having my own one big room all to myself, and I listened a lot to this song. Maybe you understand by now my happiness in remembering it. Listen sometime when you have five quiet minutes.
thoughts on the summer
October 7, 2009 at 2:17 pm | Posted in daily ramblings, medium deep thoughts | 1 CommentLast year I wrote a post commemorating the end of the summer, so I thought I would do the same for this summer.
Summer of 2009 was fleeting. It rained during the month of June. It was nice in the middle and very hot for about two weeks at the end of August. Now it’s October, the scarves and layers kind of days.
I don’t think I made many memories this summer, I am sorry to say. I didn’t do enough. Maybe our one week trip to Hawaii made me feel I had used up my quota of summery fun for the year. Somehow the weekends felt pretty busy as they always do, but I wish we had been more proactive about enjoying the summer and all of the opportunities that come with it. Pretty soon I’ll be outside only to run to my car, with a scarf over my face and my toes stinging in my shoes. I only took two days off, both for our annual excursion to Maine with M.’s family…now my family, too, though it still doesn’t roll off the tongue. That trip was a highlight. Nice weather, people I like, good news, Cranium, going to the movies, walking on the beach, dark-chocolate covered Oreos, playing on the floor with a three year old. Stuff I like.
Our friends Dan and Casey moved back to Boston after living out of state for a few years. We went to some barbeques. Some friends bought houses and had babies.
We spent the fourth of July weekend in NJ where I went to my first parade. I loved it. It was the kind of thing I like in general, paired with the singular pleasure of experiencing anything for the very first time.
I spent a week dogsitting and enjoyed the quietness and fullness of being in a house with just a dog, in this case a dog who tries to hug you and kiss you and burrow into you to express her overwhelming happiness in your existence. In other words, the best kind of dog to spend a week with.
I turned thirty. I got an iphone. Mad Men came back. I read books by Elizabeth Berg. I picked peaches. Large pleasures in my little life. Next year promises more houses, more babies, more sunny weather eventually, and maybe now is a good time to resolve to use next summer a little better. Actually I should just start keeping track of my New Year’s resolutions now because it’s looking like there’ll be a lot of them.
where i’ll lay my head
September 16, 2009 at 11:19 am | Posted in medium deep thoughts, miscellaneous | 4 CommentsLast Saturday we went out with a realtor and looked at eight houses. And I’ll tell you, nothing deflates your homeowner fantasies faster than seeing what your money will actually get you! Yes prices are low right now, but frankly in your lovely Massachusetts towns, even low is high. And even though I have spent the last couple years finally feeling like a financially secure adult, it is a very quick backslide into This is all because I majored in English, like an word-loving IDIOT, and that is just one of my many life choices that were ALL WRONG.
It’s not really that dire–we saw a couple decent places and have a few more decent ones lined up for this weekend. It’s just…ugh, you know? Because it is a little comical when I go onto my little house searching websites, and I select a lovely town, and I type in our price range and some of my criteria, including my #1 dealbreaker drop dead requirement: MORE THAN ONE BATHROOM. Anyway, I then hit “search” and the results are kind of hilarious. For example, this is the number of homes that fit our desired (really pretty basic) criteria in one of the towns on our list, Holliston, MA:
Hmm, only three houses, and none which we are interested in looking at. Keep in mind that our price range is perfectly reasonable. Let us see what happens when I increase the price range to houses up to $750,000:
Gee look at that! Now there are 36 houses available! And so on. And these are the recession prices. Doing this exercise is really delightful as a validation of my success in life. This is even more hilarious when I looked (just for fun) at Weston, MA, which I think is probably the most affluent town in the state. Here is what is available in Weston in our price range:
Shocking, there are NO houses there that we could possibly afford! Let’s see what happens when I up the range to $750,000:
Twelve listings. That’s still not very many. What if I increase the range to houses up to $2.5 million?
Oh look, now there are NINETY houses available!
So anyway, we’re trying to look at houses in the “nice but not deluxely nice” towns that are in “unpleasantly long but not depression-inducing long” commute regions. It’s a bit of a challenge, but I sense that our home is out there waiting for us. And the dog that we will purchase shortly thereafter is out there waiting as well.
words of wisdom
September 10, 2009 at 9:45 am | Posted in medium deep thoughts | 2 CommentsI made dinner two nights in a row and M. seemed shocked and delighted. Once again proving my theory that it’s best to keep people’s expectations low. It makes them appreciate things more.
daily ramblings
August 26, 2009 at 4:51 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts, miscellaneous | 9 CommentsI didn’t really cook much for a couple weeks because, well, it was the Hot Weeks–those couple weeks of a New England summer that are oppressively humid, yet brief enough that most of us don’t have central air, so for those two weeks we just stay the hell out of the kitchen. Our kitchen was uncomfortably hot without the oven on, so with it on we most likely would have just died. This doesn’t really matter, because during the Hot Weeks I generally prefer a dinner of watermelon with a side of ice water.
So, this week it’s still hot but a more reasonable kind of hot, and I’ve been in the mood to cook. Partly because I had some recipes I wanted to try, and partly because I felt guilty for not cooking much lately. So I made chickpea patties with a yogurt-lemon dressing and pasta with sun-dried tomato dressing, both thanks to my beloved food processor, and I made my mother’s scrumptious peach cobbler with all our fresh-picked peaches. I would post pictures, but I don’t have a working camera at the moment, which is driving me crazy. And yes I know the iphone has a camera, but it’s not the same. (Though I will also take this moment to say that I am loving the iphone, passionately so.)
M. plays in a soccer league on Tuesday nights, which means Tuesday nights have been my “Steph nights”–the nights when I put on Gilmore Girls, clean the apartment, eat snacks for dinner, catch up on emails and just generally do my thing. However, since last night was his last game, I headed over to watch him play like a good fan. And it was pretty fun to watch actually, since M. is very good at soccer and looks good in the shorts. I got to see some of his fancy footwork–yet also check my email when he was not on the field, thanks iphone! M. will actually be out tonight, and I rented Sabrina (the Audrey Hepburn one) a couple months ago and haven’t gotten around to it, so I think this will be Sabrina night. Plus then I can return it and start True Blood.
And I’m just looking at the calendar and thinking how in tarnation is it the last week of August? I feel like I just dragged all my summer clothes up from the basement and ironed them all and hung them up and dragged all my sweaters down. MAN seasonal clothing changes are a lot of work. Granted it rained here for the first two-thirds of this alleged “summer,” but really this whole year has been like a blur. I blame the wedding. I also blame getting older. (I’m THIRTY if you did not know.) I realize this is not an original thought and is really just a part of the human experience, but GOD remember how long a summer used to seem? Particularly now that I have one of those jobs where you don’t get the summers off, because work weeks are busy and full and they move very quickly. It’s leisure time that can feel slow, and that’s the difference between being a young person and being where I am now. The leisure time is a free evening or a free Sunday, but it’s never weeks at a time, and I do miss those chunks of free time because it feels as though we have more control over that kind of time.
Yet, I do manage to find time to read a lot of blogs.
things to do when you can’t get up.
August 18, 2009 at 12:50 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts, miscellaneous | 6 CommentsMy friend is on bed rest right now before the big day when she gives birth to the human being she created, LIKE A GOD. She isn’t the type who likes to sit around and do nothing, so I figured she might be bored and I thought I would brainstorm about some of the things you could do if you were in a situation wherein you could not move.
- Give yourself a hand massage. Your own hands are easy to reach, and I’m pretty sure there are some spots that are supposed to be soothing or something.
- Talk to yourself, and then you can just say you were talking to the baby and no one will think you’re odd. Also, that baby can probably hear you pretty well at this point, so he might be listening.
- Try to remember the songs you learned in music class when you were in elementary school and feel free to sing them (you can say you’re singing to the baby, see above). Music class songs come to me at the most random times. CMS, remember “Oh, there once was a yodeler on a mountain so high…?”
- Watch the Young and the Restless. I don’t watch it anymore, but I have this weird soap opera loyalty to it. Plus Victor Newman and Katherine Chancellor are STILL ON THE SHOW.
- Play Typing Maniac on facebook, as long as your increased heart rate won’t mess with the baby.
- Read people’s twitter feeds. Really, it’s endless and kind of actually fun. I’m on board now.
- Read food blogs. There is a really serious world of food blogs out there that are entertaining and give you some good inspiration for future meals.
- Paint your fingernails. Why not have pretty nails when you’re in labor? Or are the nail polish fumes bad? I guess I should assume that everything is bad.
- Write down all the things you want to remember about what life was like when you had only one child so you’ll remember it well once you have two.
- Clean out your email inbox. If you’re like me, it’s a scary mess in there.
- Meditate. It’s supposed to be good for you and of course you never have time to do something so QUIET and unproductive. But this seems like a good opportunity! I don’t know how to actually do it though, you’ll have to find that out elsewhere.
- Comment on your friends’ blogs. Like this one, for example.
- Send your husband a text saying the baby is coming. Then a couple minutes later, text him “just kidding.”
- Put ice cream and chocolate chips in a cup and blend with a hand blender so it’s like a chunky ice cream shake and eat that while you relax. We tried it last night and can recommend it.
quote of the day
July 14, 2009 at 7:09 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts | Leave a commentApparently this quote is coming from someone’s fake Twitter, but I like it because it perfectly expresses something that I was unsuccessfully trying to articulate to M. the other day when we were discussing a specific type of pop cultural snobbery that I could only describe as ”you know, the people who hate Juno.”
teenagers, poems, etc.
July 11, 2009 at 2:31 am | Posted in medium deep thoughts | 1 CommentWhen I was a teenager I was ALL about the poetry. Especially writing it, seeing as I was all full of the dramatic feelings of teenagerdom. I wrote poems all the time, which I would have a really hard time even bringing myself to read now. If they weren’t exactly bad, let’s say they were of a certain age and state of mind, to put it nicely. Because being a teenager is all about the LOVE and the PAIN and the what is going on inside your crazy crazy head. Anyway, when I started college I was your stereotypical eighteen year old English major. Like, exactly. Earnest as hell. So I was still very into the writing of the poems, but also the studying of them. And pretty much by the end of the year after taking a couple of intense poetry classes, I was not feeling the poetry so much anymore. Because even though I’m a somewhat creative person, at least in relation to writing, I’m also an ISTJ who LIKES THINGS THAT MAKE SENSE. And by the time we got through the Wallace Stevens, I was pretty much just frustrated. Because I was like, ok, I’m pretty sure I do know how to read, so what is going on here??
Anyway, I think my love of poetry mostly had to do with my need to write it to express some things when I was young and it faded as I got older and it’s not much a part of my life anymore. In fact, more and more I feel like poems tend to sound forced and false to me when I hear them, especially when spoken aloud, especially in any kind of poetry slammy environment. This is partly my fault because I don’t really seek out good poetry, but I just don’t seem to have the interest that I used to. Which is not to say that I don’t think poetry is important or valuable because I do. It just doesn’t feel very relevant in our day and age. In fact, even the word “poetry” feels awkward to use in mixed company, since no one seems to read it and the word itself has begun to feel so highbrow and awkward, like when someone says they went to Harvard and everyone’s like “Oh, Harvard.” The word poetry is like the word Harvard.
But anyway, in some quiet time recently I was looking around at some old files on my computer and came across some poems I had written that were sort of interesting to me, which is why I’m thinking about this. There were a lot of poems that were me attempting to be something of a serious writer, and also quite a few about guys I had crushes on, and my own insecurities, and all those sorts of 18 year oldish things. Oh by the way, these had all been written on my horrible old Mac, and my computer can’t really read the files so they’re filled with all those awesome gibberish symbols.
I almost never write poems anymore. But I looked at this one I wrote in (and about) 2005 and even though it’s simple, as is everything I write (I’m no intellectual), I feel something when I read it because it so reminds me of a particular moment in my life, which is the whole point of why we should write things down.
Hurricanes and earthquakes—two-thousand and five—
If it were the Middle Ages
we would all be praying—confessing—repenting—looking to the sky.
Even now it’s hard, a bit, to believe
that this is all arbitrary
just things in the atmosphere that collide
not rage—not punishment—and I
am as selfish as ever and always
as is most everyone
and complain of Christmas shopping and my thighs
and think of old boyfriends and dreams I let lie.
An earthquake should hit me
and shake me up and make me stop it
if not entirely die.
Hurricanes and earthquakes and war—two-thousand and five—
me twenty-six—
time does go by—
parents do age and the dog will die—
not by wind, or water, or falling debris,
just the slow and quiet indoors kind.
scary things i actually like
June 11, 2009 at 7:46 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts | 7 CommentsSo…I’m reading this book by Stephen King about his experiences as a writer. I never read Stephen King at all (except for The Stand a couple years ago) so I don’t have any particular loyalty to him, but he’s an interesting figure just by virtue of being one of the most famous and successful writers alive. And his story is incredibly compelling. He grew up poor and was always trying to sell stories on the side, and then he gets married and has two kids and they’re really very poor, like, they can’t afford a phone and aren’t sure how they’re going to pay for their sick daughter’s medicine, the day that he gets a letter saying his novel Carrie sold. And about a year after that, he gets a call saying that the paperback rights to Carrie sold for $400,000. It’s such a genuinely triumphant and really moving moment that I got a little emotional reading about it.
Anyway, my real point is that thinking about Stephen King got me thinking about how when I was 13 or 14, I did actually go through a phase with reading horror novels, except that I read Dean Koontz. I think I had an idea that Stephen King was a little too mature for my 13 year old self and my parents might not appreciate me reading him. So the thing to graduate to after Christopher Pike was Dean Koontz. And I remember those novels being awesome, though I have no idea what I would think of them if I read them now.
But the other thing I got into for a while was scary short stories. I have a particularly vivid memory of reading “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson after my 9th grade teacher assigned it to us. I read the story, and after finishing it, I sat there, horrified, thinking “Did I just read what I think I read? Did that really happen? Did a teacher really do this to me?” The story was so horrifying and innocence-destroying and creepy that I didn’t want to sleep with it in my room that night. So, naturally, years later when I taught high school freshman English, I made them read the same story. Circle of life.
But my main man for creepy stories was Ray Bradbury. Oh man. For example, did you ever read “The Veldt,” in which bratty children facilitate the death of their parents via lion? The one I remember most, and will never forget because it scarred my innocent psyche, was called “The Small Assassin.” I read it years ago and haven’t read it since, so I don’t remember all the details, but oh, I remember it. It was about a woman who has a baby, and she is afraid of her baby son. She thinks he’s trying to kill her. Everyone thinks she’s nuts and it seems like maybe she has post-partum depression or something. But the thing is, her baby actually is trying to kill her. Yes, it was about a scary baby, and it will creep me out eternally. I should really find that story.
indulge me.
June 2, 2009 at 6:36 pm | Posted in medium deep thoughts | 7 Commentsabout my bridesmaids
April 16, 2009 at 3:05 pm | Posted in favorite things, medium deep thoughts, wedding | 4 CommentsMuch of my relationship with my sister C is spent reading each others’ blogs and sending each other links to things we find online that we think the other one will find interesting. I enjoy looking through her bookcase to see which books she’s stolen from me. She’s always been the smarter one, though I sometimes got the better grades because I cared more about them. She is a “do-er” and a creative, critical thinker–something I’ve come to realize is pretty rare. She doesn’t do regurgitated opinions and generic points of view. She’s an artist and a very competent Jeopardy viewer. We’re extraordinarily different but yet got each other the same book as a Christmas present…make of that what you will. And she has been a very patient and supportive bridesmaid.
Cara is my oldest friend by far. I met her when we moved to NH when I was 5 and she was 6, and we were inevitable playmates living across the street from each other. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times in my life I ran from my house to hers. My relationship with her is one of the most reliable in my life, just comforting in the way that permanent, lifelong things are. She has the most adorable, angel-faced 2 year old boy and a TBD* baby on the way. In the midst of these accomplishments she managed to earn a PhD in genetics which sounds really smart because IT IS. She also fulfilled bridesmaid duties during morning sickness and is the greatest combination of being a beautiful classy lady while also having an awesome sense of humor and being able to make an incredibly loud and realistic monkey noise. Find me another woman who meets these criteria and I will give you twenty bucks.
Mark’s sister Lisa is the cool, funny older sister who knows more than you and you know she would be good for giving advice or dropping some older sister knowledge on you. And now I’m inheriting her as a “sister,” how lucky am I? She introduced me to the American Idol pool which has increased my enjoyment of life more than I will disclose, she threw me an amazing surprise bridal shower when she totally didn’t have to and gave me a really good hug when I walked in, she passed on all her wedding stuff to us, she’s singing a song for us at our reception, she welcomed me back after M. and I had a long relationship hiatus, she doesn’t mind sharing her birthday with me, and she made the best fettuccine alfredo I have tasted. Need I say more? She’s one of those super compentent, good-at-everything-she-does people and is just fun to have around.
Casey is my daily checkpoint, my sounding board for my frustrations and anxieties, my friend who knows the little details of my life, who knows what I made for dinner last night and what my manager said to me at work this morning. Writing her an email at the end of my day and reading what is going on in her day is truly one of the little things in my life that keeps me healthy and happy. She cracks me up, impresses me, and loves me unconditionally. She is a fiercely loyal and loving friend/wife/mother, and I thought motherhood would impact our daily check-ins, but…not really. I think we just need each other in that way. She has done such a beautiful job with Ella and she’s about to get a third degree (from Harvard). She has been so supportive, excited, and happy for me throughout my engagement, and even though that is partly because she just wants me to hurry up and make babies, it is also partly because she is genuinely happy for me and THANK GOD I have these women in my life.
Thanks guys for being in my wedding.
*UPDATE: BOY!!! boy boy boy boy boy boy boy boy
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