whining because I’m ornery

As a lady of leisure these days (and by leisure, I mean that I work retail part time and apply to grad schools) I have a lot of time for extracurriculars. And while my time would be much better spent at the gym or learning French or something, I bake. Pumpkin chocolate chip bread, banana nut muffins, chocolate orange loaf cake, and soon to be something ambitious involving a pomegranate that I could not resist at the market.

For research, I read a lot of food and recipe blogs, and I’m noticing a worrisome trend involving swiss chard. As far as leafy greens go, I’m a spinach girl, and I just can’t get behind collards and ramps and all those other etc roughages. But I figured out what bothers me so much about swiss chard. It doesn’t sound like a food. It sounds like a type of boat or something. “Oh yes, while vacationing in Geneva we took a Swiss chard out on the lake.” Or something like that.

my hair hurts

I have the flu. And I am a horrible patient. At this point, I’m feeling really grateful for that whole ‘unconditional love’ thing my mom and I have going, since I spent the day whining about how tired I was and how much I ache. And she spent the day making tea and checking my temperature and making soup. But really, nothing helps like a cool hand on a hot forehead.

Normally my overloaded DVR intimidates me, but today I was really glad I for all those episodes of Say Yes to the Dress and Private Practice.

PS – Currently reading This is Where I Leave You and loving it.

Daring to design

I’m all about trying new things, right? Well here’s something I’ve never tried: designing clothing.

Shabby Apple makes really wonderful dresses (and fitness clothing, and accessories, and kids clothing), and they’re holding a Dare to Design contest. So, I decided to take a shot.

Dress designs for Shabby Apple Dresses:

RSVP Dress

I’ve always loved a sweetheart neckline, but not the strapless dress that so often accompanies it. I wanted to do a dress with a sweetheart neckline with sleeves. Christian Lacroix did a dress with a sweetheart neck and long sleeves for Fall 2009, in gold and lace, so I thought why not try? The neck and sleeves would be laser cut as a nod to lace. For the body, I see a watercolor print fabric, with the top in a solid. The ruching at the bottom would reveal another peak at the solid color, tying the dress together. For color, I thought some color bright colors would be great for a party dress, but it could work in black, grey, and white as well. This could be done in cotton, or even a brocade for a little glitz.

Friendly Skies Dress

My inspiration for this was actually vintage uniforms, from the Girls Scouts to flight attendants. I think the collar is what makes this classic shirt dress interesting. I’d love to see this in an open plaid fabric, yellows, oranges, and tans to keep things light. Done in something breezy like a cotton poplin I think this would be a great every day dress. It makes the menswear and plaid trends easy to wear.

Petal Dress

I spent four years in DC for college, and even though the Cherry Blossom is the flower most people associate with that area, there are also tulips planted all over the city. This dress was inspired by those tulips. The body of the dress would be a deep lavender, with a lighter lavender at the tie and collar. Pale yellow would back the dress, peeking out when the dress moves. The sleeves repeat the petal overlap at the bottom, as well as the collar. For this dress, I think a cotton jersey with some stretch would work well.

Obviously I’m not a designer, but I really enjoyed taking on this challenge. All the dresses are simple, but they have a little something that makes them special and unique. I always love when a classic design has fun details, and that’s what I tried to do here.  Below, I’ve included some photos that acted as inspiration while I was drawing. None of the photos are mine, their original sources are listed.

From: http://belladia.typepad.com/bella_dia/2008/04/watercolors.html

From Style.com: Christian Lacroix F09 Ready to Wear

Peter Castleton's tulip photo on Flickr

Doing my own haunting

I get ‘memory lane’ now. I really do. Yesterday afternoon I literally drove down memory lane, back through the neighborhood I grew up in. I wish I’d had a camera with me, but I’m sure one of these days I’ll go back with one. It’s a strange thing to be only 25 (still getting used to that number) and so nostalgic, but when you move around as much as I did, you can’t help it. Driving around yesterday I realized that I always figured I’d be back there someday, in what capacity I’m not sure, just back.

It’s surprising what changes, and what doesn’t. The Wawa is gone, but the post office is still there. All my friends’ houses are still there, the swim club, too. The place where I cut my knee and had to get stitches, the streets I used to trick or treat on, ride my bike on, the streets I took to get to school. It’s all still there, and I was disappointed and pleased at the same time how much of it was still the same. After 10 years, you don’t expect things to be the way they were, but you’re happy when they are. I drove by the old house, slowly, which probably made the people who live there now a little suspicious. I just wanted to see it. I half expected the plastic skeleton to be hanging from the big tree in the front yard like we always had on Halloween, but that tree was gone long before we moved.

Cliche as it is, you can’t go home again.

Life Lessons, ugh

Ever convince yourself you wanted something really badly…only to realize that you’d only felt that way because it was your only option? Sometimes it works out well: you don’t get into your first choice college but suddenly the dorms at your safety school make you forget about everything else.

It’s a really neat way of settling, don’t you think? One mechanism in a sea of coping mechanisms that keep us emotionally safe. (PS – Don’t you just hate the work emotionally?) Another favorite of mine: if I don’t try I can’t fail. I’ve been having the same conversation with quite a few people lately, and it boils down to that point. It’s time to stop putting off life; time to stop waiting for the ideal circumstances, waiting for ‘when’.Why settle for what’s convenient or available?

I had a script writing professor who always said you can’t see a negative. You can’t write what doesn’t happen, only what does. People can’t see that I want to be a writer or I want to learn to bake just about everything or any number of other things I think about doing but don’t. So in this epic time of AFTER, I’m going to try to do those things.

Hold me to it, OK?

after the after

I won’t lie: I’ve been putting off life for the past two months.

The GRE was a big time-suck for the past eight weeks or so, and all the little (and not so little) tasks were put off until AFTER. “AFTER the GRE I’ll start playing piano again.” AFTER became this sort of mythical time period that I am now sort of living in, since I took the GRE last Wednesday. Only, AFTER sort of stretched out to include AFTER my birthday. Which it now is. Oy. Nothing like accountability to ruin your day.

Things I said I’d do AFTER:

-start grad school applications

-return to the gym

-finish unpacking  (most of my life is still in the horrible, spidery basement)

-laundry

-stop eating everything within arm’s length

-get back to writing

-whiten my teeth

-grocery shopping

-start any number of craft projects/hobbies that I think would be good for me

life goes on

What I did not expect about today was for the crank that lowers the coffin to be so noisy. It ticked occasionally and squeaked and my dad could not resist leaning over: “Needs some WD40.” I did not expect the coffin to be lowered at all while we were still there, but it was part of the ceremony and then people were asked to throw shovels of dirt in the grave.

Granted, I haven’t been to a funeral in several years, but I was sure I’d never seen this before, accept maybe in the movies, where I think they cut between starting to lower the coffin and the dirt part, as the lowering took quite a bit longer than expected as we all stood there silently watching. The cemetery workers were sweating, a little, when they finished, which for whatever reason was really awful to see. And the dirt sounded like it fell on metal when it hit the coffin and I thought, Oh no, is Aunt Minnie down there in an aluminum coffin? I figured they were all made of wood, but hers was silver so I guess I should have guessed?

I didn’t expect it to be so sunny, or to be so upset by the whole thing, or to be so hungry. My stomach was rumbling loud enough to wake the…you know. Bad joke.

“You’ve always had that wrong about me, I really am this shallow.”

Harvey just told me to break my week up, have a weekend. This in response to my remark that I’d been a waste all day. My whole life is a weekend. I fill it with errands that I really could put off for another day. It’s a surprisingly hard thing to live a life of leisure (not that I’m in that position, not really).

I keep thinking of Hugh Grant in About a Boy, filling his day with 2 unit long baths and 3 units of watching TV. It strikes me that now is one of those times that proves true the adage that you can’t have the highs without the lows. Without something distasteful to fill the majority of my life with, it’s hard to appreciate time off. Alas, I will try, and get back to Mad Men season 2 on demand.

*post title, if you’re interested, from About a Boy

so lazy

I just ate pie straight from the pie plate. I wish it could say it’s been “one of those weeks” but it hasn’t, clearly, because it’s only Monday. And the most taxing thing I’ve done today is shower between West Wing reruns and a  Joan of Arcadia marathon. Also the walk to the fridge for the pie was pretty tiring.

I think I need a hobby (have I said this before?). Maybe I’ll start making quilts.

Totally forgot about this great line

“Don’t be afraid of death, Winnie, be afraid of the unlived life.” – Tuck Everlasting