abirdandbear

Deflating

2011-03-16T17:31:00.000-04:00

I've been losing momentum. I was feeling super productive and motivated and ambitious and over the last week or so I feel like I'm crashing. Last night, for no particular reason, I started to feel a little piece of panic creeping up in my stomach as I was trying to go to bed. I hope that it will get better when I find work. I know part of the sneaking worry I'm feeling is about being unemployed and really unsure of what the next year or so will hold for us. Will I find work? Will I go back to school again? Where will we go when Bear graduates? I like to have plans and for now we can't plan much further than a few days ahead.
This is the part that I haven't figured out yet. I take medication, which so far has kept me on a much more even keel and made me feel worlds better. (No more wanting to veer into oncoming traffic!) And now that I'm coming down a bit I don't know how much is the drug and how much is me; which gives me a whole new set of things to turn over and over in my brain. Most of all, I still don't know how to cope with this feeling of general sluggishness and malaise combined with the worry. It's one of the things that scared me off of medication for a long time; the idea of using a drug to replace learning how to cope and the fear that maybe I just can't.

*photo from Jennifer Morris Photo on etsy

Spring Break!

2011-03-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

We just spent a few days in the mountains while Bear is on spring break from school and I am still waiting for the state to cough up my license. Toward the end of last week I just started feeling off and getting out of the house and out of our routine was good. Friday afternoon we took an aimless drive south and ended up on the most wonderful beach in the mist. We weren't really dressed for walking but it was beautiful and definitely helped to start shaking me out of my funk. Saturday we had a nice drive up north and a leisurely few days, Bear skied, I watched some bad tv, we went out to dinner with his mother, ate junk food; in short, everything a vacation should be.
He still has the rest of the week off so we're planning a few more minor excursions, provided we adjust to the time change and start getting out of bed at a more reasonable hour.

*vintage postcard image via wikipedia

I Know I'm Not Alone

2011-03-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Oh man. This was me the other day. And I felt so responsible...and accomplished...and I showed off to Bear...and I clutched my trophy...
*from "This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult" on Hyperbole and a Half via an awesome ladyfriend of mine.

A Girl Can't Help It

2011-03-09T16:01:00.000-05:00

I am obsessed with yellow and gray right now. I've been a sucker for all things yellow for a while, hence, the yellow cashmere cardigan I have to convince myself not to wear every single day. Today I was seriously tempted to buy two yellow and gray ikat printed linen upholstered chairs at TJ Maxx. They were dreamy. And cheap. But you know how I said I was trying to pare down the amount of stuff we own? Yeah. That. Damn you interior design blogs.

*print Lemonde Storm from MichelleDigital on etsy via Casasugar via googling "yellow and gray"

The Bug

2011-03-08T08:00:00.018-05:00

I’ve hit a major spring cleaning bug. Well, major for me who avoids cleaning until we realize it’s sort of embarrassing. Luckily I’m married to someone who is the same way so it’s not like it pisses off one of us that the other is a mess. I felt so accomplished after putting in several hours’ work cleaning. I even mopped! And made the bed! I used to be super-neat when I was in school and cleaned my dorm room once a week. I think living and working in the same space has that effect on me. Now that I’m not trying to read Jane Austen while a pile of laundry and last night’s shot glasses stare at me the motivation is a little harder to find. I wish that I could get it into my head that if I did this more often it really wouldn’t take so damn long. (And yes, Bear cleans too. It was my turn to do the bathroom and I just got carried away from there.)
Since school ended I’ve been doing a bit of an overhaul of our stuff. I’ve torn through my closet and drawers and the office. I think the kitchen may be coming next. Since we hit that realization that Bear is on track to graduate in a year we’ve had moving on the brain and well, we have a lot of things. So we’re trying to pare it down. We have an epic pile of stuff living in the basement that awaits our planned yard sale in the spring. Bear and I both have pack rat tendencies but we're trying to pare things down in life.
*photo "Alexandra and Her Pink Things" 2006 by Jeong Mee Yoon via Real Simple Photo is a part of the artist's Pink and Blue Project, which is pretty damn cool, and a little culturally unnerving.

In Praise of Vegan Cupcakes

2011-03-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

Last night I made vegan lemon cupcakes from here and they turned out killer. I skipped the frosting after a sad attempt at milling granulated sugar into confectioner’s sugar in my spice grinder. Fail. They look cute with just a sprinkle of lemon zest on top. I used Meyer Lemons, because our grocery store had them on sale and I was having one of those “ooh! exotic (sort of) fruits on sale!” kind of days. Seriously. I came home with mangoes and a pineapple too.
So let me say this, I love vegan baking, though I do tend to skip any recipe that calls for anything more out of the ordinary than some vegan margarine. Doing so tends to make it cheap, easy, and I usually have everything I need on hand so I can bake on a whim. These cupcakes took all of about twenty minutes to whip together and they are so, so delicious and moist and dreamy. I’ve even been thinking that they could be made savory like this orange, rosemary, olive oil cake I had for dessert a few weeks ago. And we’ve eaten the better part of the dozen since last night. But I still have a few of those lemons...Or clementines...Well now I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

wife-ish-ness

2011-03-06T08:00:00.013-05:00

One of the marks of married-ness that we laugh about it my developing interest in interior design. Living in apartments and houses with hand-me-downs and furniture that isn't your own or your choice can inspire a lot of dreaming about how we would do it. Plus, now that we're married we get lots of home furnishing catalogs in the mail. Maybe it's a secret revenue source for the state, selling the addresses of people who apply for marriage licenses...
All I know is my feed reader is expanding. Don't tell Bear.
*photo by me, Portsmouth 2008

Want

2011-03-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

Bear showed me this post about Brian Dettmer last night and I am lost for words. Go look at the rest of the images, they're totally amazing. And based on his website, he somehow manages to have the patience to make multiple sculptures like this every year. Patience I will never have.

*image Brian Dettmer, "Kingdom" 2008 via mymodernmet

This Is Interesting...

2011-03-04T08:00:00.006-05:00

*Future Nerd, 1985?

Another piece of the self-esteem puzzle to digest and put together; this article has been making the rounds, putting a new spin on research from the 1980s about how the smartest fifth graders of both sexes tackle new and difficult learning material.

"[Carole Dweck] found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up."

By contrast

"at the 5th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science. So there were no differences between these boys and girls in ability, nor in past history of success. The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty -- what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result."

Researchers believe that girls' lack of confidence stems from a belief that their abilities are "innate and unchangeable;" while boys believe that they develop an ability or an aptitude. Those differences, they posit, stem from the different ways in which we praise and encourage boys and girls.

"When [girls] do well in school, we are told that we are "so smart," "so clever, " or "such a good student." This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't."

Boys receive feedback about their level of effort when they learn new material. The difference in these kinds of praise and feedback results in girls' learning that they have it or they don't, while boys learn that buckling down and trying harder is the way to garner positive feedback. And this sets up girls and women to downplay their abilities, or deny an aptitude for a task or a discipline that doesn't come easily for life.
It's an interesting theory. I don't think that it's the only piece of the puzzle. In my own experience it rings true but there are also other social aspects at play. Smart girls aren't socially and culturally valued the same way as their less-bright peers--why else would there be a bevy of examples of famous women who play dumb for pay? I definitely have a plethora of personal examples of giving up on a subject or activity(hi team sports!) that didn't come easily. I do it now when Bear tries to explain his coursework to me. I know I could understand it if I tried but somewhere in my head is that Barbie voice saying "math is hard. There's a reason I never took calculus or physics(even though I got an A in precal...)." I don't particularly remember how I was praised as a child, or if it differed from how my brother was praised, with the exception that I was "the brainy kid" and he was "the athletic one." There is something to be said for giving something an extra chance or bit of effort when it doesn't come readily, but there is also something in knowing your own limitations and abilities. That doesn't mean that we can't derive joy from things we're not particularly good at, but I probably shouldn't hitch my star to playing in the WNBA either.
It does make me think about how careful we have to be when we talk to young children. Another tab on the list of things that we should and shouldn't say if we're going to be a part of raising sane, self-assured, well-loved kids. No bad body-image talk, no bad food talk, praise both effort and innate abilities...It's kind of head-spinning.
*All quotations from "The Trouble with Bright Girls" by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D at the Huffington Post

On My Tenuous Relationship with Food

2011-03-03T08:00:00.030-05:00

One of the things that I have long struggled with as part of the way my issues with anxiety and depression manifest themselves is that classic two-pronged rusty poker of my self-image and food. It also has happened to be something that has been popping up all over the media I consume of late. Yesterday morning it was this post, which is part of series that C. Jane has been running once a month this year. For those of us who have struggled through these things, a lot of Janna's points are well-trod territory; but sometimes I (we?) need the reminder. It's not about the food itself, it's about the way it gets pathologized, the way moral values get assigned to food and thus, to ourselves that is just so damn destructive.
It started with binge eating in my early teens. Eating my feelings was a lot easier than dealing with them. By late high school I went the other way. I never was a calorie counter. I never consciously acknowledged the way I restricted my food intake or took on too much exercise. The people around me noticed that I would get painfully thin, but could easily chalk it up to stress or illness. People who do this to themselves are marvelously adept at hiding it, much like a lot of self-destructive behavior. And even when I thought I was "over it;" I was finding new and useful ways to not allow myself to eat. First I was convinced I had a gluten sensitivity. I dropped a lot of weight really quickly and continuing to stand by my claims even when I was still sick all the time was a way of keeping it off and villainizing myself for wanting certain foods. When I would cave and eat something "forbidden" I would feel sick with guilt and occasionally try to purge. Never did it cross my mind that this was not normal. Definitely still sick. That got me through college. I will be forever grateful to the city of Paris for bringing me back out of that particular deep end.
Then I stopped eating meat for several years. Of course there are perfectly legitimate moral and social arguments against eating meat. I don't disagree with most of those arguments, I really don't. And for a while, that was really why I was doing it. I think. But the wanting food I "couldn't" have and then berating myself for my weakness for days on end, well that just isn't a legitimate moral or social reason. That's an addiction to a certain level of self-loathing and self-harm.
I honestly never realized that this behavior was such a common thread for over half of my life until I sat down with the psychiatrist. I knew that my flirtation with anorexia in high school happened. But the rest...it just didn't actually hit me until someone came right out and asked me if my relationship with food had normalized since then.
I am trying so hard to exorcise those demons and just be happy in my skin. Therapy and medication is helping, for sure. I don't remember feeling this comfortable with my body since before puberty. About a week or so ago, Ms. Loaf linked to this article and I sort of wanted to print it out and have it tattooed on my forehead. Just yes. Yes. And yes. If I'm happy with what I eat and what I eat makes me happy and doesn't render me seriously ill or at risk for serious illness then why oh why should I care?
It's hard. I am lucky to have badass lady friends who tend not to treat hating on their bodies as a social activity. My husband is understanding, patient, and snuggly toward me at any size. I have a lot to be grateful for.
I swear I'm not always going to be a debbie downer on this blog. Promise. Pinky swear.
*photo by me, Marion MA 2006

Printed

2011-03-02T14:54:00.000-05:00

I just had my fingerprints scanned for an FBI background check. It was deeply weird. The woman who did it was really nice though. Still. Strange indeed. And now I have "Smooth Criminal" stuck in my head. Awesome.
*photo by me, spring 2006. It was legal for me to be that drunk. Promise.

Home

2011-03-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to have a lot more to show for the last few days than a load of hankies to wash. I seem to have the sort of constitution where my immune system holds out just long enough to make it through some important event and then I will get sick within days. I also don’t seem to be able to get the sniffles without it turning into a sinus infection. Though this isn’t nearly as obnoxious as when I got strep throat as soon as I handed in my finals senior year of college. And then my boyfriend broke up with me while I was sick and throwing up from the antibiotics.
Friday Bear declared a snow day. Usually this is fun and involves a whole lot of movies and junk food but we were both coming down with whatever this is, so we did our taxes instead. I tinkered around with Illustrator for a while and then face-planted into our bed and stayed there for the better part of the last seventy-two hours. I’m only up today because I was starting to smell offensive even to myself after three days of sweating out a low-grade fever. We both curled up and played games on the ipad/phone. And we talked a lot about where we want to move when Bear graduates next year.
That event used to feel so impossibly, frustratingly, tear my hair out with impatience far away. Now a year seems...soon. We both would like to travel some and maybe try living in a few different places. The pull of home is also really strong and gets stronger every time we talk about our hypothetical children. I had actually never really felt terribly at home in the town where we met, I didn’t grow up there and my parents moved there the same year I went away to school, so my time there has been limited. Then I spent the long, quiet winter there with Bear the first year we were together and now every time we go back it feels like home. We have roots now. It is wonderful and secure but also limiting at the same time.
Do you feel this way too? Do you feel the pull of home? Do you reflexively want to reject it? Or are you fine with that? We’re still working on figuring that part out.
*photo by me. our hometown, winter 2007

The Hardest Part

2011-02-28T08:00:00.005-05:00

I’m putting this up front: this was not easy for me to write. This has been something that I have been intensely private about for a long, long time. A part of what I’m trying to work on is the dissonance between my self-presentation and the way I really feel. Of course it’s often not appropriate to be a blubbering mess in public, but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend that I’m never a blubbering mess.
A huge, huge piece of the puzzle in my recent history is that I have been seeking help for chronic anxiety and depression in a serious way for the first time in my life. This has involved both therapy and now, medication. Believe me, I dragged my feet on this for years. And I wish that I hadn’t; but there is still so much stigma attached to mental illness socially, and especially to mental illness at a level that requires medicating. On a smaller social scale, many friends and acquaintances, particularly women, have largely negative things to say about being medicated. That is a piece of information I find interesting on a whole other level, but as far as the personal goes, it made my heels dig in that much harder. I finally gave in after several months of scaring the pants off my husband feeling like I wanted to cease existing and contemplating driving my car into oncoming traffic. Those are not good feelings. I had reservations; I was nervous, defensive and frustrated that I wasn’t able to fix myself. But I can’t even begin to describe what it feels like to crawl out of that hole and look back down. It is unbelievable to me how different I feel and how quickly. I don’t feel like a whole new person but I do feel like a happier, easier, more confident version of myself. I could fall flat on my face at any moment. Obviously it’s not just the pharmaceutical help, but leaving a soul-sucking job and pursuing work that feels genuinely meaningful to me that has helped create this paradigm shift in me.
It’s important for me to be able to talk about it. Even just by putting it out into the ether like this. I’ve been so secretive about how this has manifested itself in my life, I’ve downplayed or pretended it didn’t exist, and none of it helps. Talking about it isn’t about sympathy or getting a break, but just that I need to be able to admit it. I have a chronic illness that requires treatment. And that is nothing to be ashamed of.
*Photo by me, Brighton UK 2006

And then

2011-02-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

In December, I quit a job that was emotionally and physically draining and that forced me to achieve levels of cognitive dissonance that I don’t believe are at all advisable just to get through the day. It was one of the harder and best decisions I have ever made. And I won’t say anything else about it here. Stepping out into nothing, and in our economic climate, is not for the faint of heart. But we had a plan.
I returned to school to do a Licensed Nursing Assistant training course. This is the first step in a series that puts me on an actual career path. During the course I rediscovered a knack for being a total sponge when it comes to absorbing this kind of information and that I really, really like hanging out with elderly folks. LNAs most often do their clinical training and find jobs in long term care centers, and during my clinical I had the privilege (really) of spending my day with some of the funniest, most lovely, most endearing people. Basically, if you’re a 90-odd year old woman and you hold my hand and tell me I’m pretty, let’s be best friends. We all may have been a little teary to say goodbye. I have passed both the course and the state licensing exam, and now just have to go through the process to get my official license and I will be applying for jobs.
In the meantime I am reopening my etsy shop to (hopefully) sell a few things that have been on my shelf for a while. If I can continue to motivate myself I am going to work through my fabric pile and make some new things. Also more notecards.
I am determined not to spend the next few weeks waiting for my license doing nothing but surfing the internet and watching the Wire. Wish me luck.
*photo by me. Tanglewood, 2009

Firstly

2011-02-26T08:00:00.004-05:00

I got married in June. It was awesome. I think. Truthfully, I don’t remember much about that day. This is a fact that breaks my husband’s heart sometimes. It is an unfortunate side effect of some chronic issues of mine that I have a hard time hanging on the good stuff. But we have some seriously awesome photos (thanks, Katie!) It’s awesome being married though. It didn’t change a whole lot on the surface of things, we’ve been living together for almost the entirety of our relationship, but mentally it has made more of a difference that I thought it would. He’s my husband now. The prospect of dismantling our shared life for any reason seems even harder now. And we have contemplated it. Life is not, as it turns out, all sunshine and farts. Some of this stuff is hard. Some of that hard stuff is a whole other post. But the thought of ending it and walking away fills me with a kind of existential dread that can’t be strictly chalked up to codependency. Though we do have our share of that; there is a reason that the phrase “baby koala death grip” has entered the lexicon of our relationship. He is my bear. I am his bird.
Photo © Katie Malone Photography

Back.

2011-02-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

This blog and I have been warily circling one another for a while now. Every so often I think that I should get around to deleting it but then don’t. I suppose I had some hope that eventually I might come back around and want to make contact with the outside world again. And having made some large and serious changes in my life and how I handle it; well, here I am.

I’ve been having this on and off again relationship to semi-anonymously expressing myself online for nearly ten years. I had diaryland and livejournal largely replace the paper journals I obsessively kept as a teenager (and long ago sent on their way to a safe distance away from me and their incriminating adolescent musings). Those relationships devolved into fits and starts, and a lot of finding myself thoroughly embarrassing and deleting the whole thing and starting over. The digital version of burning them in the dustbin. I may actually still have that livejournal account...The problem with this blog has been that I never really figured out why I had it. Was it for linking to my etsy site and talking about creative work? Was it more personal than that? Then I got engaged and I had a few posts about wedding planning but I ultimately grew extraordinarily bored and/or anxious talking about the wedding. And so it never became anything and I gave it up.

But now I am back. I’ll be reintroducing myself over the next few posts.

*Photo by me, Newport RI 2010

updating? crazy!

2009-09-24T13:56:00.004-04:00

There are things I love about not having the internet at home. I read more books (what books those are, let's not discuss), I waste far less time reading coffee and googling, I have pretty much ceased obsessing about our wedding or weddings in general, I have to leave the house in order to check my email, I only check my email twice a week, tops. These are all good things for me. Bad for this blog, though.
I almost gave in to the temptation to delegate the wedding planning to my mother, who loves planning parties, that's how frantically bored I get thinking about floral arrangements. But as we seriously and much to our chagrin compromised on the venue, the things left to us to make our stamp are the things we cared about least in the beginning. The delightful exception to this is the ceremony. We asked Loaf to be our officiant and she's already giving us homework, that's how much "teacher" is ingrained in her. And I love it. It feels like premarital counseling from afar, which is an idea I like in theory, but finding a solid counselor who would be ready and able to address our particular somewhat queer of center marriage issues would take as long as planning the wedding. Or at least that's what I fear. But our homework is for each of us to write Loaf a letter about why we love the other and why we want to get married. Part of me is happy to take for granted the alchemical wonder of being in love but I think that checking in on our relationship and why we're still here is something that we need to do periodically. I started writing down the whole story of how we started dating and it's really kind of laughable in retrospect. I'm actually thankful that I was so cripplingly depressed when I met him, otherwise I would have realized I had a crush on him and been impossibly awkward around him. As it was, I didn't realize I liked him until I couldn't keep my hands off of him and we were making snuggle dates that turned into wandering around Boston in the middle of the night making out. Ah, romance. How we've never seen you since because I am still impossibly awkward. This is all really to say that I'm so excited Loaf is our officiant and I love her homework assignment.
*photo by bear.

avert your eyes, bear

2009-07-29T15:49:00.007-04:00

don't get me wrong, i love my mom and all, but apparently i should have set my camera to autofocus. so we're a little blurry here. ignore that it's about two sizes too big and hopefully you'll get the impression that this dress, it's awesome. and i feel like a sexy, grown woman in it and not like a little kid playing princess. and do you see the back in the second picture? it's maybe my favorite part. that and the pleating where the train starts that makes ass look fabulous, if i do say so myself. as for sizing, wic: 1 bird: 0. the size charts? they liiiiiiiieeeeeee. because they want you to need all of those costly alterations to make it fit. i should have trusted my instincts and ordered it sized down, knowing that even in regular retail stores, i almost always wear two sizes smaller than what the size chart indicates i should. and no, i don't wear everything skin-tight and muffin-topped. but what's done is done and i would have needed some alterations no matter what for the hem and the shoulders, and to put cups into it so i don't flash our entire family. so you know, ta-da:

other than this, i haven't really been thinking about wedding stuff lately. bear and i have been focusing more on our marriage, and what that means to us and how we want to make our lives together from here on out. things are changing and growing between us and it can be stressful, but i feel like we've turned this corner where it's almost like our relationship is brand new again. and we go out into the world and it's like when we were first together and we had this giddy secret of how much in love we were. it's happening all over again and it feels wonderful. my heart? it does the snoopy dance all day for him and the life and the family and the community that we're dreaming up. and that is so much more important to me than flowers and table runners and one day could ever be.

where i've been hiding

2009-06-23T14:08:00.003-04:00

we're still settling into our new house. the non-stop rain has not helped with our outdoor projects, which mostly involved tearing out all of the many-feet-tall saplings growing in the planters because the house has been utterly neglected for far too long. and then turning over the soil, resetting the retaining wall, and planting new things. i wish we had taken "before" pictures so i could show you what i mean. it was like a jungle. the backyard actually has reverted to a forest glen, replete with ferns and wild irises. it's pretty, even if i'm scared of what might be living in it, like ticks.
it is also officially less than a year to our wedding. i'm still not feeling like it's all that stressful, until i get into a room full of bear's family and they start pestering me about hotel blocks and "why aren't you registered yet? and why aren't you registering for china and silver? and why isn't your sister the maid of honor?" it's that line of questioning that makes me think the next year can't go by fast enough, i kind of hate talking about my wedding, especially when questions ask me to defend my values/relationships with my family. i know they're just excited, but i sort of just want everyone to back off. of course, i have been working on wedding stuff, like finding a really awesome feather fascinator. i tried on an amazing one at the bridal shop where i bought my dress, but um, it was FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS. which is INSANE. for some feathers wired to a hair comb. so i'm looking on esty for something like this:
from here (this one's called Bryn, LoBoheme's stuff is pretty rad), which has already been sold. my mother may attempt to make one, which would be an awesome touch i think. plus, it wouldn't cost four hundred freaking dollars.

and yesterday, i had my very first mole removed for biopsy. it showed up a few weeks ago on my back, oddly shaped and very dark in color, and i luckily had an appointment with the dermatologist anyway. she agreed with me that it was funny looking and five minutes later it was detached from my body and being dunked in solution before going to the path lab. i will say this, the only part that hurt was the shot of local anesthetic, and then the local wearing off felt mighty strange, indeed. it's probably nothing, but i'm really glad i trusted my instincts and kept that appointment. i've never tried to trick myself into believing that i could get a tan (i just burn and turn white again) but i have been prone to episodes of carelessness with sunblock and had a few really severe burns as a child. i'm refusing to freak out about it, but i'm still hoping i get a postcard in the mail instead of a phone call, which would mean it was something. but seriously, skin cancer, it kills a lot of people. get your moles checked out. and wear sunblock. we're thinking of putting it in our vows.

a photo and some asides

2009-05-12T16:08:00.006-04:00

i am at the library avoiding thinking about the total strangers who are about to see my apartment. aside from the weirdness of strangers being in my home is the horrible pang i feel thinking about how it will no longer be our home after sometime next week.
last night i made pan-fried gnocchi with morels and fiddleheads and really, so should you if you live in a place where you can get fiddleheads. i substituted shiitakes for the morels because the morels available to me were a. imported from turkey and thus probably not very fresh as evidenced by b. the mold growing all over them and c. they were $32 per pound. And shiitakes taste like perfect greasy chinese food fried chicken. so now i'm craving mushrooms instead of meat products. everybody wins! there are no pictures because we were too focused on scarfing our meal along with a nice bottle of riesling. so you should just check out the photos on veganyumyum instead. seriously, she takes food magazine quality photos in her kitchen with foam core and sunlight. and she writes really amazing recipes. i'm really into food, more so than i already was, lately. can you tell?
while we were a little tipsy last night bear confessed how he'd been wasting time on campus instead of studying. with babynamewizard.com. because he is that kind of guy. he found it through a wired.com article and then apparently had way too much fun plugging in our names and then the names we've picked out for our future children. and we've been talking an awful lot about those little fellas lately. the thing that makes the website so readily addictive is that it not only gives you a brief history and meanings of the name you're looking for, but lots of fun statistical data about its popularity; they'll even break it down by region if it's a popular enough name and tell you when it peaked in popularity. i was pleased to find out that a name we really like peaked in the 1860s, having grown up with a name that is consistently in the top ranks for the country. as if that wasn't enough for people like us who are determined to make it so their kids won't have to choose nicknames every year in school with the other four or more children of the same name; users can also enter the names of siblings of children they know with that name and you get a resulting cloud of sibling names. and then you can look up those names, and the sibling names for them, and so on and on. so we see why this is dangerous for study habits and my ovaries, right? because we weren't already dorking out enough about our future family. seriously, if we had the means to support them, we'd have kids yesterday. and that is part of why i love my partner so very much. now go, look at so many names you forget they're names and they become just silly words.

dressing my bff

2009-05-11T09:39:00.008-04:00

given the geographical distance between me and my bff, we're pretty into buying a bridesmaid's dress off the rack. much as i would like to keep as much of my wedding-related business and business in general local, when she's on the opposite coast it makes it a bit more logistically difficult. and i really want to find a dress she'll wear again for real and not just say that she will. i also want to purchase it for her since she'll be flying out here and not adding one more expense seems like the least i can do, and these are pretty affordable as opposed to the similar dresses i saw at the shop where i ordered my dress that were twice as expensive.

personally, i really like the following:

i actually quite like the pink and think that i could work. but chocolate brown would be just as good. the fabric is a light, slightly crinkled chiffon, which you can't really see in the photo.

i wouldn't go for the canteloupe and i'm not sure about the green. they generally keep a lot of the dresses from season to season and just change the colors, so it's possible they'd have a better match for the green come fall. but this dress also comes in the pink or brown above.

i like the idea of chiffon because it sort of matches the feel of the lace dress i'll be wearing. heavier silk would seem a little wrong next to it, i think. and neither of these is so formal looking as to be unwearable to anything but a wedding. right? or am i the only one who throws a cardigan over a chiffon dress and cowboy boots and calls it an outfit?

so, thoughts?

*all images: j.crew.com

come on now

2009-04-29T14:27:00.004-04:00

because i wasn't already dorking out about her, now i find her wedding on offbeat bride.
can you say, awesome? and now i totally want a rubber chicken, though the prize would be tofu nuggets not hot wings. follow the link if you have no idea what i'm talking about. i promise you, it's worth it. and she managed the location/event staff from hell with grace and good humor. i am so flipping excited to work with her.

the thing about having a job...

2009-04-29T11:03:00.004-04:00

...it totally cuts into my time to sit around fiddling with illustrator and look at blogs. but the having money thing will be good. i also packed up my fabric bag and sent it over to our new place, so less crafty business. have i mentioned we're moving? i kept holding out hope that i'd find a better-paying job and we'd be able to stay here but no such luck. so we're moving into bear's dad's house, which has been uninhabited since he got married last year. it's really a pretty sweet deal but i'm really going to miss living downtown in our sweet, sweet apartment.

i did take that job. it isn't nearly as bad as i was afraid that it could be. and that's all i'm going to say about it because i don't want to get dooced. it does provide a nice excuse to continue my wardrobe makeover because i have to actually look nice to go to work. no more t-shirts and shredded jeans and believe me, this is a welcome thing.

i am currently most excited about being in contact with a photographer whom i totally want to be bffs with.

image from katiemalone.com

seriously, go check out her website. it's delightful. and she's willing to come up here to shoot our wedding! i'm really excited by the idea of having photographs from our wedding that i actually would want to hang on our walls. and an album that looks more like an art book. obviously, this has everything to do with my taste and the fact that her photographs are a lot like what and how i like to shoot portraits and landscapes. i'm really excited that we can book a photographer i'd like to photo-dork out with.

new goodies and a dilemma

2009-04-16T11:57:00.004-04:00

firstly, the cuteness. this is definitely one of those things that if no one buys it on etsy, i won't exactly cry about having it for myself. but i hope someone buys it anyway. i mean, i can always knit another one if i really need yet another purse/bag/wallet. so seriously, tell your friends.

and then the dilemma of the unemployed. i was offered a job yesterday. this job however, is only part-time and would thus actually currently pay less than what i'm collecting from the state. and it would require me to drive, which means i would be making even less money. but i am so scared that nothing else will come through and then unemployment will run out and i'll still be jobless that i'm thinking of just taking it and hoping that maybe i'd be able to pick up extra shifts. or hell, maybe the damn card stock swatch book will come back into stock so i can start printing paper goods to sell and maybe this cottage industry i've been working on will actually be more than just me sitting on the couch knitting and staring at illustrator for my own amusement.
we've also had news of other potential financial hiccups that make our situation a shade more tenuous. i intend to ask this employer for more money before accepting the job and i have the experience to back up asking for more. should i just take it and then quit if something better comes along? i should add that i tend to overly feel a sense of obligation to employers and have a hard time leaving, even if it's making me miserable, hence why it took me way longer than it should have to quit my job as a bank teller a few years ago. but what would you do?

now i'm obsessed with my own wedding again

2009-04-15T12:23:00.004-04:00

these are the results of last week's toying around in photoshop. the pattern and colors for the first are based on a jason wu dress i saw pictured in vogue.

i started vaguely working on the themes over at snippet and ink, but i wasn't feeling all too inspired by the regional themes. they're lovely, yes, but i think i work better with the suggestion of colors and moods than a specific theme. hence, the conversation i had with bear about our wedding. our venue is a country club, but we're still determined to steer clear of any and all preppy connotations. i showed him this wedding, which has deservedly been making the wedding blog rounds, and we both agreed that its general feel--a little whimsical, sort of vintage--was kind of what we wanted. I also showed him this inspiration board, which made him ask if we could have horses at our wedding. add all of that to my fairly intense craving for french macarons and you have our settling on a general vibe of relaxed, vaguely parisian, somewhat vintage, courtyard party. and the following version of the above invitation. we like it. it's been printed on cream card stock. and it still matches our original envelope and liner color choices (moss and chocolate with gold liners). basically we want our wedding to be like the video for mushaboom (go watch it and die a little.) and again, i have no idea why the colors go all muted when i upload to blogger. some web-saving glitch i have to figure out in illustrator i suppose.

i like the idea of more geometric shapes or patterns on the paper goods, just because i don't then feel tied to a specific floral theme. my orginal designs were all based around echeveria, which i love, but i don't think that desert plants are going to make much sense in a new hampshire country club.
now i seriously need to go find some almond flour so that i can make macarons.

and! today i was offered a job, on the spot when i dropped off my application. now i just have to weedle more money out of them. i'm also still waiting to hear back from this other interview that would be such a sweet, sweet gig. either way, having a job would be awesome.

the results of a challenge

2009-04-03T12:10:00.008-04:00

this week i challenged myself to take the daily inspiration boards posted at snippet & ink and use the color schemes and suggested moods/themes to come up with some sort of paper good. it didn't have to be wedding-related, but most of what i came up with was.

monday's board: daisy theme. sky blue, yellow, and white. i wanted to make something really graphic and pop-ish and this notecard fits the bill. it also became my april masthead.

tuesday's board: "sweet and preppy." pale pink, mint green, white. i think preppy i see hydrangeas, what can i say?

this was also from tuesday, a pink and green plaid note card. good for thank you notes or if you're still into writing letters, like i am.

wednesday's board: "easy-going elegance." berry red and bramble green. this was a harder one for me. finding the right red and greens to mix so it says "summer berries" and not "merry christmas" is tricky. bear and i watched "to wong foo..." last weekend, so maybe that's where the banner came from.

and finally, thursday's board: "simple and sweet" in violet, gray, and white. i was thinking of pussy willows and crocuses and the little bird friends who are back to nesting in the bushes below my windows.

overall, i think the challenge was successful. i'm learning more and more in illustrator and now that we have a few solid ideas we're kicking around for ourselves, thinking about what might appeal to others keeps me going. in fact, i'm so pleased with myself that i'm going to continue the assignment.

*comments are definitely welcome, but they are moderated, so play nice.

i can snuggle? yes?

2009-04-01T14:35:00.007-04:00

as promised, photos of our friends' adorable new puppy who came to console me when we got home from the er. obviously there is now a standing dog-sitting invitation. they're actually thinking he might make a good therapy dog because he is fairly calm, people friendly, and seriously lovable. i want him in my lap now.

all photos by bear with my spanking new, fancy flash.

my busted foot!

2009-03-24T19:48:00.011-04:00

last wednesday i sprained my right ankle as i was puppy-proofing the car for a trip with our friends' new dog (adorable pictures coming). no spectacular or funny story to tell, i stepped in a hole at the bottom of our basement stairs and rolled my ankle. our basement is accessed from the outside of the house, so i then crawled up the stairs and back to the car to get my phone to call bear to come help me. we debated going to the hospital (this is not the first sprained ankle; i have really weak joints) but then the pain got worse so we said f* it let's just go. to our surprise they whisked us right in, where bear took the following pictures:
this is what i imagine a shaved hobbit foot might look like.

this just makes me think of that episode of weeds after the towns merge and doug starts calling the majestic councilwoman "cankle bitch."

we managed to get in and out of the er in about and hour and a half. the nurse practitioner told me she'd never seen an ankle so bad; but even by the time they were making the splint the pain had already started to subside enormously.
my lovely fiberglass splint. molded just for me because nothing ready-made would fit around the golf-ball like protrusion seen above.
the top of my foot has become much black/yellow-er in the last couple of days. and no i don't have sweaty feet, that's the arnica gel that i swear to you really does help clear up a bruise.
is it sick that i look at this and think that chartreuse and plum isn't such a bad color combination?

the bruise photos are from a couple of days ago; it's even uglier now that it's all turning yellow. i have to go see an orthopedist next week because my ankle was so swollen when they took the x-ray that they couldn't tell anything. but i'm walking about now so it's definitely not as bad as they thought it was.

dress!

2009-03-23T12:03:00.003-04:00

this photo was taken on the sly with our family friend's camera phone. chantilly lace over a pinkish-cream "cafe" silk slip with antique gold beading. it matches the shoes i bought perfectly. plus it makes me look tall and skinny. and it will be mine in four to six months. no photos in the dress because when i went back to get measured and would have been allowed to take photos i didn't feel like hobbling out of my clothes again.

and yes, hobbled; i sprained my ankle for the third time in about ten years. hospital trip and ugly bruise photos later. plus pictures of our friends' ridiculously cute new puppy, who was brought to me as consolation for my busted foot.

we also picked a location and as of today should have a hold on a date. it's crazy.

paper goodies

2009-03-13T15:23:00.005-04:00

a few things i've been toying with. not bad for teaching myself illustrator if i do say so myself. we're a little obsessed with green and brown around here, can you tell? the colors aren't looking quite right now that i've web-saved them but you get the picture. also any of these could be done in almost whatever colors a person would like. i also really like the script font that i've been using, fancy but still very legible. and most of these, except maybe the simpler tree one up top, i would print on cream stock rather than white. i'm trying to come up with designs that suit not just me but would be something others would like as well. the individual elements of each of these also make cool motifs in and of themselves. comments always appreciated.

shoes! and dress-up! and site visits!

2009-03-10T15:28:00.004-04:00

shoes are something about which i have always been a bit of a girly girl. these came yesterday. having not yet officially decided on a dress it may have been an unwise purchase but they were on sale (they've since sold out of my size), i'll wear them anyway, and i'm pretty sure that they will, in fact, go with whatever dress i choose. because i will make it so. also they're almost four inches tall and don't kill my feet. i wore them around the apartment all day yesterday to make sure they were actually comfortable and wouldn't give me blisters anywhere. they are a very well-made pair of shoes, i'm happy to say.
i've always had better dress-up clothes than day-to-day clothes. this is particularly true in the post-college world in which i have worked at jobs that require practical shoes and clothes that can get covered in coffee/muffin batter/packing peanuts. and right now i'm pretty much living in my old torn-up jeans and leggings with t-shirts and various sweatshirts or sweaters. i sometimes miss dressing up, given that where i went to school it was as appropriate to dress way up for class and social events or even wear a unitard as it was to wear jeans and a t-shirt. all of my old heels have mud and grass embedded in them from slogging across the water-logged campus in them. bear and i both clean up well; i'm loving the prospect of picking out a suit for him for our wedding because he looks so damn cute in them. and he'll have one more year of college left so a good suit should come in handily for interviews and such. i'm fully on board with the idea of spending a little bit extra on wedding-related things that we will definitely use again instead of renting or buying cheap things that will end up in yard sales.
did you catch how just made another excuse for buying those shoes? i was also totally vindicated when bear decided that they were very, very sexy, even with my torn-up jeans and leggings.
we are also going to be making two site visits when my mom comes up to visit next week. right now, after finally getting pricing information from a couple of other sites, these two look to be the places from which we will almost definitely be choosing. the other venues we were considering turned out to be crazy expensive (so much for the use your local state park idea. $5500 for just the site use, nothing included except access and all of your guests have to pay the admission fee, and hiring a police detail if you want to serve alcohol) or just plain impractical. i wasn't planning on doing it this early, but my parents dropped into one of them with their friends last weekend and the event coordinator told them she's already booked one of the weekends in june 2010. so off we go.
the biggest thing that i am learning about myself in the process is that i am not one of those people who can insist on getting my way, dammit. fine, if that's you; for me, playing host to our families and friends and making sure that they get to have a great time is as important as every last little detail being just about me and bear. so i'm willing to compromise and to do things differently than i thought we would. it seems that indie-ish diy couples tend to fall into either totally insisting that it's their day and it has to be done their way and eff anyone else, which to me is similar to the "it's your most special day ever and it's all about YOU" wic ideal; and then those that are mostly concerned with everyone just having a good time and choosing what's important and who cares about whether or not the table runners were an expression of who we are as a couple, but still hoping that it won't be cookie-cutter. as long as we're married at the end of the day, everyone eats and dances, and we don't spend more than i made last year, then i'll think we did pretty well.

john and amanda, valentine's day 2009

2009-03-06T12:30:00.020-05:00

told you i'd get around to it. these are a few of my favorites. most of these have some sort of photoshop action applied and i may not print them this way for portfolio but i'm playing around for the moment. feedback always always welcome.

this would be where john tells everyone he left the rings in the car.

it's extra-special nice to get to work with a couple who are so clearly crazy about each other and with a group of people who never seemed to mind being photographed. except for this shot when everyone just wanted to get the hell back inside.

geekdom

2009-03-06T11:29:00.003-05:00

the new printer is AWESOME. so completely and totally worth the expense. the new flash is pretty damn cool too, but that's going to take a lot more work for me to get it so i'm not as excited. the printed though, oh the printer. i made a few test prints of the invitation design we've been tossing around and they came out so well i almost wanted to lick them. i had a little trouble getting it to print with as minimal a border as possible but the colors are perfect. photos also printed fabulously; i used the sample 4x6 glossy that came in the box to make a few prints to hang above bear's desk. and it can print directly onto discs too, which is a really nifty thing to be able to do when getting discs of images to clients.
the flash should prove its badass-ness to me eventually. right now it just has so many options and menus to sort through and i need to figure out how to make it work wirelessly because ttl flash cables are hella expensive. it makes me pine a little for analog but then i look at the photos i took just goofing around with it last night and it totally kicks my old analog flash's ass.
i'm going to post wedding pictures today. really. and look for new stuff on etsy! knit goodies, new page design and pretty soon wedding packages for those of you in the seacoast area or those of you who want to pay me to travel.

coming soon

2009-03-04T21:19:00.004-05:00

if blogger and my internet connection will ever cooperate, i've picked out my favorites from the wedding i did on valentine's day and will be working to post some of them here in the coming days. i'm trying out a whole batch of photoshop actions that i downloaded and i'm finding that a lot of the effects i love just don't translate as well on photos taken indoors as they do for outdoor shots. but it's fun to play and some of them are really useful all-around. i am so glad i found out about actions.
i am also going to (finally) get to work on a damn business card. i've been obsessing about paper goods and i really should be obsessing about this most important one if i'm actually ever going to get a business or at least some freelance work off the ground. new printer coming tomorrow too! and new flash for my camera! yay expensive toys! (er, necessary business expenses!)
i'm trying to leave behind the old work for now. i think i've spent so much time thinking about these photos that are three and four years old and what they mean in this new context where i don't know those people anymore and i don't get drunk and carry around a camera to house parties and this HUGE backlog of photos that i just have to put it all away. i need to create new things. i'm too young to think so much about my past.
i also have three more budgies to knit so that i can get this order out. and to list a new owl stuffie/pillow and a blanket i've knit. so i should be a busy little bird while i'm waiting for ups to show up tomorrow.

voting, job-hunting

2009-03-02T16:06:00.006-05:00

so thanks for the votes, ladies. of course as soon as he had back-up bear stated a definitive preference. and the more that i look at the pictures the more i'm inclined to agree with all of you. the lace dress is almost exactly like all of the dresses i fell in love with in magazines and for oh-so-much less money and hassle. i will say this about the mass-market shop: lace is a lot easier to fake it in terms of feel and quality than a heavier fabric like satin. if i were hell-bent on a satin gown, i'd probably be shelling out for it because polyester faux satin just never feels or looks the same (to me, and i admit i'm a snob about fabric). so i completely understand why so many people out there are disappointed with the mass-market bridal shop experience. mama and i figured start with low expectations and go from there and were thus pleasantly surprised.
and can i take a moment to say that ever since bear and i changed the relationship status on a large "social networking site" (yes, we both use it, neither of us particularly often or with any real liking of the site) to "engaged" every time i've logged in all of the sidebar ads are about "wedding weight loss!" because of course i want to starve myself for my perfect day! the most perfect and wonderful day of my whole life must also be my skinniest! i hate that my relationship status is a marketing tool for wedding-related crap at all, and wedding-related self-esteem killers in particular.
back on planet jobless, i'm still unemployed. i am starting to like it a little too much. i keep sending out resumes, mind you, it's just pretty fruitless at this point. i did make a possibly ill-advised purchase of a new printer that is supposed to be super-spiffy for printing things like stationery. and a new flash for my camera, which is required for the second shooter gig this summer and i need plenty of time to play with it first. i'm also knitting a bunch of animals; an owl, a squid (it's almost done, john) and four more budgies for a customer whose dog ate one of the two i made for her already. poor budgie.

mini break with dress hunting

2009-02-27T09:00:00.018-05:00

i've just come back from spending a few days at my parents'. it was really nice to get out of town for a couple of days and spend some time with them and my aging, lovable dog who makes me sneeze now that i don't live with animals.

my mother and i started dress hunting and things went pretty much the opposite of what we expected. we started at the large, mass-market store where i thought i would hate everything and actually found two dresses that i totally love. at the fancier-pants store i had wanted to go to because they carry several lines of dresses that seemed promising, the woman was totally rude and dismissive (i think she didn't believe i was actually old enough to get married) and they didn't have any of the dresses i wanted to try on. all of them were several seasons old and majorly poufy/beaded. total bust. we tried another place that my mother remembered being nice but which has become a total mess (samples falling apart and dirty, stuffed all over the place, no one cleaning up after earlier appointments). and also with the pouf. i am a short lady; the pouf does not suit me. but i'm pretty in love with the dresses i tried on at the major mass-market place and can you say bargain? bad news is that one of them is not getting carried forward for this season, so i'd have to snap it up sooner rather than later if i wanted it. so here goes, give me your opinions interwebs (and forgive the crappy camera phone pictures, i had no idea that they would let you take them in the first place):

dress #1: strapless, slight a-line. beaded bodice (which of course you can't see) and a chantilly lace overlay on the skirt and a chapel train. a little crinoline so there is slight pouf, but it is on the whole still very light and comfortable. i could also add cap sleeves to it since i'm not totally into strapless and they could put a little gather on the bodice to make it a sweetheart as well. it fits perfectly and would only have to be hemmed, the other stuff is just something i would consider doing.

dress #2: ivory lace sheath with a champagne lining, deep v in front and back, chapel train. there is some beading all over the dress, which makes it vaguely sparkly. it would need minimal alterations, just taking up the shoulders and putting in cups because one can't wear bra with it and no one wants a nip-slip in front of nana.

so?? i love them both. so now i'm asking the internet for help since both my mother and bear (we're not doing the whole "hide the bride" thing) have proved as indecisive as i am. i'm also going to continue looking a little bit more, but it's hard to pass up the idea of a dress i love that is also a sweet, sweet deal in favor of a dress that could cost three times what either of these would. so you know, if you have feelings, tell me. and forgive the weird formatting, it looked fine when i previewed it and i don't know html and have no idea how to fix it.

new family trend: engagements

2009-02-13T10:45:00.003-05:00

bear's younger brother proposed to his girlfriend yesterday. on a hilltop on austria while snowshoeing with a custom-designed ring on their sixth anniversary. seriously. and now everyone is mock-mad at each other for the stealing of thunder. we still say we get first dibs on dates.

ring-a-ling

2009-02-12T14:48:00.004-05:00

so my mother gave me (us) this ring and i'm using it for an engagement ring. we were thinking about ordering a handmade ring but money is tight and besides that i like having something that is "in the family." the funny thing is, neither of my parents remembers when or why my father gave this to my mother. my father didn't even remember it existed. so it's getting new life, too. i'm having some trouble getting used to it, which isn't helped by its being too large. so i need to get it sized and probably appraised, just in case. but of course now i don't want to give it up.

and so the bargain hunting begins

2009-02-11T11:36:00.005-05:00

as i'm starting (who am i kidding? this has been going on for way longer than i like to admit) to do things like look at flowers, dresses, venues, blah blah blah i've realized that i apparently have a preternatural liking of expensive things. not because they are expensive, mind you, but just that thing i am attracted to tend to come with $$$ following their descriptions. lace dress? $$$ peonies? holy crap $$$. tented reception with vegetarian catering and nice wine? $$$
thanks to the interwebs, and loaf in particular for her excellent blogroll, i know that many, many resalers, discounters, etc exist. but i'm still butting heads with the insane cost of a ceremony and reception in this area. who in this economy can pay upwards of $70.00 per person for hotel ballroom chicken? or would want to do so? plus i'm a good old new englander and discussing money makes me a little uncomfortable. i think i almost gave my mother a heart attack when i told her i wanted to go try on dresses at a very upscale salon, the important part of the equation being so that i could find them being resold for a fraction of the cost later. i don't think she heard that part.

good news, i am getting way better at illustrator and yesterday designed three possible options for paper good related to this shindig, which is one way we're planning to save some money. it helps that we think we've decided on a color scheme. i'm going to get some sample cardstock to try printing a few. i'll possibly sell them on etsy if i like the way they print.

the biggest news of the week? i am actually working this weekend. i'm shooting a wedding for a couple whose photographer backed out on them last minute. hopefully i will have some great pictures to show off next week.

if i keep saying this it might sink in by next summer

2009-02-07T14:32:00.002-05:00

you know what's funny? bear asked me to marry him. officially. like parents and friends telling for real. we're thinking either next june or next august, as in 2010.
telling my mom was one thing. talking to my dad made me feel a little bit like i was six and came home from school and told them i was going to marry a boy in my class. it's weird accepting their congratulations. don't get me wrong, it's absolutely what i want and we all knew we were going to get around to it one of these days anyway but now it's official and it feels sort of strange. also bear's parents don't know yet because he wants to tell them in person.
what's not funny is how obsessed i already am about finding a dress. where did this girly-girl come from?

hey internet!

2009-02-02T14:26:00.002-05:00

poke. poke. i'm bored. tell me about a really good book or ten i could be reading. i'm fresh out of ideas and i can't just keep rereading things. and don't tell about classic lit because my brain isn't in the mood for that.
so you know, all two of you who read this leave me some brain candy in the comments?

i think i'm an old lady

2009-02-01T15:22:00.002-05:00

i'm starting to think that i am a bitter old spinster librarian, either that or i just somehow picked the rude corner when i sat down today. there has been a guy loudly snoring in the next cubicle since i've been here, except for the twenty minutes he woke up to eat a can of peaches. in the library. seriously. there has been cell-phone guy, who left his ringer on and then proceeded to text message and though he sends texts, has not figured out how to silent his buttons, so that while he's typing messages, we all here all of the beeps and bloops. and okay, i know that some people come to the library all day because they have nowhere else to go. but the library even has a little cafe space where you can eat with your book or magazine. not in the work areas amongst the stacks. there is just something so wrong about eating something as messy as a can of peaches in a library. i feel like i'm cheating if i take out my water bottle.

so in between trying not to give the whole world the stink eye, i've been downloading a whole bunch of photoshop actions to play with and looking for (non-existant) jobs. before i left the house today i made muffins for knitting night and a big pot of stew, because cooking and baking are excellent time-wasters for the unemployed. i've also been trying to teach myself how to use illustrator so that i can design my own paper goods. basically i want to have a nice little cottage industry in my living room.

wheeeeee!

2009-01-22T12:07:00.003-05:00

the absence of anything resembling a post can mostly be blamed on how boring it is looking for a job. i check craigslist, my local paper, and the unemployment department job listings about twelve times a day. each time: donut. i can see how this gets only slightly enormously depressing for most people.
non-depressing things:
we took a mini-vacation to the mountains last week. we contributed to the local economy up there by outfitting me with snow gear. bear is enormously amused that i haven't owned these sort of things since i was a little kid. if we ever get a decent picture of me being faux-sporty, i'll post it. it's pretty funny. we went snowshoeing as well and holy shin splints. i felt pretty lame because we went snowshoeing with bear's mother and her girlfriend and i wussed out so quickly and bear's mom is the kind of person who went hiking in peru for christmas break.
bear is officially readmitted and on a degree track. it's a long saga and not mine to tell, but it was a pain in the ass and now he can hopefully kick some ass and get the hell graduated. in two and half more years, but who's counting?
this summer i am on back-up to be second photographer at weddings. hopefully this will mean getting to do at least a handful of weddings and also a bunch of post-production work. the owner of the studio also said she would probably be interested in hiring me to to be the actual second photographer next summer when i have a little more experience. so a little extra money and a bunch of experience, i hope. plus, i really like her.

i haven't really been thinking about photos for the last couple of weeks. but i have been knitting more stuffed animals. until boredom begets the kind of boredom that makes it impossible to do anything. damn vicious circles.

cuteness overload

2009-01-13T14:48:00.004-05:00

this song has beens stuck in my head for daaaaaaays now, and i'm not even sick of it.

i feel like this meeting must have gone like this:
"hi i'm leslie (bats eyelashes) i'd like some money for a video."
executives say "will it make you look cute and whimsical? we hear that's selling records now."
"i'm going to ride a pony through paris."
"okay. let me us get our checkbooks."

i also highly recommend checking out the video for her appearance on sesame street. if you like adorable canadians and muppets, of course.

"you're going to blog about this aren't you?"

2009-01-05T20:29:00.002-05:00

sunday morning in the parking lot at the pick n' pay bear says the following:
"it's nice that the bulge in my pocket is getting bigger instead of smal..my wallet! the bulge in my wallet!"
i love him.

things i do when i'm home in my pajamas all week

2009-01-05T12:08:00.003-05:00

I'd like to think he's impressive. Bear thinks he's snuggly. My first real foray into color knitting, because stockinette is way too boring when you have this much time on your hands. Wheeee!

does unemployment feel queasy?

2008-12-30T13:46:00.002-05:00

so the prospect of being mostly jobless has gone from seeming like a super-awesome vacation to being totally totally scary. i'm still on the schedule for a very limited number of hours a week, enough to keep paying the insurance premiums but very little else. and the thing is, i support us because bear is a student. my paychecks are our rent. and now my paychecks will be very, very tiny. and looking for jobs that are not the job i'm totally praying works out is making me sick because there are none. unemployment may be below the national average in this state, but apparently everyone is holding on to those jobs for dear life.
interwebs, i don't ask you for much, but please, please, please cross your sticky fingers for me that this interview goes well.

oh december

2008-12-16T16:58:00.005-05:00

so the prospect of a new job (they got back to me! they want to meet me!) has thrown me into 'i want a makeover' overdrive. also the fact that none of my pants fit. this is mostly stuffing-related and therefor fixable, but there are also the changes in shape that a year's worth of yoga will bring to my formerly squishy bits. so all i want to wear right now are yoga pants because bamboo pants are awfully comfy and it doesn't help me from feeling really pretty frumpy. and my hair just won't grow out fast enough from its cute but also ill-advised holmes impersonation. but the prospect of also being basically jobless for some unnamed period of time means that i won't spend money.
i know that i'm not the only one who has this relationship with clothes, and to a lesser extent makeup; the industry wouldn't exist if a new pair of pants wouldn't temporarily make me feel better. and i know i'm not the only person stuck between being sort of anti-consumption and fashion-whore girly girl. i wish it didn't make me feel so accutely uncomfortable and self-conscious all at the same time.
i want to not be so whiny. also i need to not spend my day off on the interwebs and watching flight of the conchords because i have a portfolio to scramble together.

oh economy

2008-12-08T15:35:00.004-05:00

thank you, economy. no, seriously, thanks. if it weren't for the dismal news keeping shoppers at home, i wouldn't be facing potential unemployment/hours so far reduced i have to eat up my savings to pay my rent. without you, i wouldn't have the kick in the ass, or frankly, the guiltlessness i now feel in looking for a new job. when my boss wasn't afraid of being unable to pay me, i would have felt badly sending out resumes, but now i don't. i have been feeling pretty much done with the world o' retail for a while and now i have a completely worthy excuse to get out. and lo and behold, there are wedding photographers in the area looking to hire after new year's, which is precisely when a new job will come in handy. man, i hope they call me.
i know that unemployment exists for situations precisely like the one i and so many others are and will be facing, but i don't want to use it if i don't have to, like really really have to. and even if i was collecting unemployment, i would still have to use my savings in order to make rent, because new hampshire only pays out about half of what you would normally make in a week. and the vast majority of my income goes right back out the door to rent. but there is something in my ridiculous puritan work ethic that would almost rather eat my savings than file for unemployment, or is it just pride? i'm not too proud to take a crappy job because i have to (see my brief stint in banking) but there is something about actually registering for unemployment that feels wrong to me. is that screwed up? i just hate feeling beholden to anyone, even the government.
so you know, here's hoping that those photographer people call me.

(photo from my sister's wedding. at least we know i can do the stills?)

more old photo

2008-12-04T22:08:00.004-05:00

i've been thinking a lot about a comment an owner of a local hipster-ish contemporary gallery made to bear the other day. he was at work and the guy came in to talk to someone else and he was talking to bear and asked "are you an artist?" and bear said, "no, my girlfriend is." and apparently he looked vaguely interested and bear continued "she's a photographer" and the guy's face fell and he said "oh. that doesn't sell." which, okay, i'll give him.
the funny thing is that if i were to pin the downfall of my life as anything resembling a working artist it would be when i started to think of work in terms of what would possibly sell. i went back through the "no" piles and started working on photos i didn't give a shit about. when i was in school i was making work that was personally meaningful and it motivated me on a daily basis. and none of it is something that you would buy for your house. outside of a tiny tiny fraction of the population, art is something you buy to decorate your house. it matches your couch. sure, you can buy a thomas kincaid at the mall that matches your couch or you can buy from a local artist but ultimately, it's gotta match the carpet for most people. and no one buys portraits of people they don't know. unless they're paintings.
i think that's why i'm ultimately disappointed in the etsy experience. it's an awesome idea, but it's a flooded market. and all of the photographers are doing kind of the same thing. how many different ideas about close-ups of plant life or wide angle landscapes can you really make a market for? and it doesn't come all that naturally to me. that photo up there? i took that without even thinking in my first semester of photo. and i still love it. those landscapes on my etsy site? those i've been struggling with for months. and i still don't really feel anything for them. which explains why apparently no one else does. i've spent way more money buying listings and showcase spots than i've made. and at some point i have to stop and think about it. what are my options? that local gallery might be worth making some postcard paintings for. one of our friends has had some luck selling screenprinted patches there. and maybe i go back to my original idea of the book. seriously. i've always been a big fan of letting my photographs get all snuggly together in one place. and then i don't have to cut out all those portraits without which pictures of stuffed cows make no emotional sense. and maybe etsy could be for silly paintings (the only kind i make) and sewing projects. when i posted a bag it got more hits than anything else i've ever posted, go figure. or maybe it doesn't have to be there at all.
but seriously, there are dry spells and then there's the artistic bed death that's been going on in my head for what scarily amounts to more than two years now. and it's the making it buyable thing. but now that i'm getting okay with taking photo-related jobs, i feel like i don't give a shit if you buy my "art." just hire me to take pictures of your dog. or your cat, just make sure i take allegra first. or you! i'll take pictures of you!

seriously old photo time

2008-12-01T16:00:00.003-05:00

freshman year old. and one of the last times i worked in black and white voluntarily. they made some pretty nice palladium prints when i made 8x10 copy negs and then printed them in my alternative processes class the next year.
more to come, blogger is being super slow with the picture uploading and i just don't have the patience.

distracted by food porn

2008-11-24T22:49:00.005-05:00

this was today's project. soon-ish, i think, this photo or one like it will be appearing on wines that jewell towne vineyards is labeling for the store. i'll be getting the photo credit, which is cool. i love that my boss is totally on board with my making it possible for myself to leave the store one of these days.
other than that i'm getting really excited about stuffing myself rotten on thursday with both bear's and my family. and coming home and making the stuffed seitan on vegan yum yum with leftovers from my mom's. and i almost want to buy tofurkey slices (i don't really like the stuff) just to have leftover sandwiches (stuffing, turkey, cranberry, mayo, white bread). it's the one thing i miss at the holidays since going vegetarian. also, last night, i dreamed of pumpkin trees. i think that says it all about my mindset.

don't you wish you had such cute fatty pictures?

2008-11-18T13:04:00.004-05:00

this is the wet nose that would be in my face at 6am when we used to babysit for fatty. fatty is not his real name, nor is he all that fat these days, but he answers to it.

bear has a really hard time resisting this face. so do i. which is why at our house he got to sleep on the couch and in our bedroom. so not allowed at home.

i can't wait to see his fat, fuzzy face next week. and watch while he drools next to everyone's lap but mine. because he knows i won't give him anything and i won't have any turkey anyway.

want cute pictures of your dog? i'm available. seriously.

2008-11-17T12:30:00.004-05:00

because one's bowling score is often negatively affected by double-fisting wine coolers. just saying.

i scanned a bunch of negatives last week and i'm trying to motivate myself to deal with photoshop. seriously, i kind of hate digital. i know that's some sort of sacrilege now. but holy jebus i miss the darkroom. i hate sitting in front of my computer for hours as opposed to tinkering with an enlarger and the way the color processor smells. and i just haven't found a paper stock that has the same feel as the paper i used to use. i think another batch of hot chocolate may be in order.
i'm also still wracking my brains to figure out something i can make (or buy handmade from someone else) for my parents, brother, and brother-in-law for xmas. and then there's bear's family. we were talking about THE FUTURE the other night and realized that in the future that involves our getting married, his side of the family is 50 or so people. mine is like, 12? and then there are friends. and then we got stressed out just thinking about affording to feed that many people, so we stopped talking about it and snuggled instead.

oddly satisfying tidbit

2008-11-16T20:49:00.002-05:00

though i don't normally admit, especially publicly, to knowing anything about these things, don't ask me why, but i'm terribly amused that linsday lohan got antiqued by peta protesters in paris. i kind of wish there were pictures. it's not as traditional as a fur protester throwing paint, and it makes the antique-ee look pretty hilarious. maybe it's just that it brings me back to the grand plan for revenge rachel and i concocted for my review committee way back when. i still wish we had antiqued sue rees.

another old one

2008-11-14T10:09:00.002-05:00

october? 2005. if you squint really hard you can see jens lekman in the background. imagine my swooning. jens is my get out jail free card. sweet, awkward swedish man.

my work schedule is changing, so expect etsy updates on monday/tuesday rather than later in the week. same goes here. photo friday may be photo monday.

a monday photo

2008-11-10T13:13:00.003-05:00

if you can't actually stumble upon a giant stuffed bear moldering in the woods, at least you can see photos of it. i have never made bear stop so that i can jump out of the car with my camera faster than i did on this day.

gray, gray november

2008-11-07T10:29:00.004-05:00

it may not be raining anymore, but the sun could show its face any time now.

i need to stop hitting refresh on the ballot measures page

2008-11-05T08:08:00.003-05:00

i don't live in california or florida or arizona or arkansas, but i have people i love dearly who do. and my measured celebration of a change in our federal government is dampened even more so by the heartache that in those states, civil rights are stepping backwards. i know, as of right now, california is still counting, but the pessimist in me says it doesn't look good. i hope i'm wrong. i hope that the last 9% of precincts voted for civil rights and love and against intolerance and legislating hate and fear and religious politics. i looked at the county by county votes, in the county my family lives in, prop 8 passed with 75% of the vote. it kills me to think that my cousins are growing up hearing "adam and eve, not adam and steve" when they go to their mega-church on sundays, just like it killed me to hear my then 8-year-old cousin call something he didn't like gay the last time i saw him. it kills me to think that by the next time a national election rolls around, i, by the dumb luck that i ended up with bear and not a girl, will be married. legally, with full protection and tax breaks of the law. and one of my dearest friends will have crossed the border into canada to get married, only to have that piece of paper turn up meaningless when she comes back for her reception. it breaks my heart. because it's my friends, my family. because it could just as easily be me. or you.

so i keep hitting the refresh button, hoping that 300,00 vote gap will just close already.

it is bear's birthday today. happy birthday, bear.

the last time i did halloween...

2008-10-31T16:46:00.003-04:00

...rachel and i dressed up as girls from the house that hosts the halloween party every year. and then felt kind of bad about it when one of the girls we were sort of poking fun at (gentle fun, i swear, we were only being a little bitchy) ended the night crying in front of a houseful because she got into a drunken fight with her boyfriend. this is not a picture of that girl, by the way.

halloween doesn't seem to be much of a big deal around here this year. there are far fewer intensely decorated lawns in town. we might go to the parade tonight or to see shaun of the dead in the big old-fashioned theater in town. it's pretty much the only horror-esque movie anyone could ever get me to watch on a large screen. and only because i've seen it before and i know when to turn my head to bear's shoulder.

i've been channelling my creative energy into my DIY xmas projects; i'm determined that everyone is getting something homemade from me. and if i'm knitting and sewing i have to start early. so photos have taken a seasonal backseat, but the truth is i'm practically done, so expect to see new things on etsy and here soon. seriously. i haven't finished knitting projects with this kind of speed in years.

telling stories

2008-10-24T09:34:00.003-04:00

there is always a story about these photographs to tell and i am particularly prone to nostalgia given that i haven't seen any of the people in this photo in almost three years. most of the time it feels like that's a disservice to you, the viewer. which is why i have such a hard time with the description box on etsy listings. i don't want to retype a whole thesis about how and why i work for each photo, and you're not seeing a complete series anyway because i edit out portraits. i had a professor who once told me that your artist's statement should pretty much be beside the point, if you've done your job, you shouldn't need to explain it. and that makes sense to me, if only the rest of the art department had agreed with him. sigh.

what good does it do for me to tell you that this was from a particularly good weekend three years ago that involved a gallon jug of old granddad's and a pile of people in my room? not much, i think. but i still like the photograph and i think it could tell you something on its own. so forget i said that. okay?

home alone

2008-10-17T16:16:00.004-04:00

sacrificing any feminist street cred i can claim, god i miss his busted face. i'm not so good at being home alone for many days at a stretch. it's nice to get away from one's partner for a little while but can he come home already please? being sick makes me a little extra needy and a little more likely to blow through all of our netflix with two more nights solo to go.
i did, however, clean the house. and finish my very first pair of mittens, a project i've been studiously avoiding for years because i hate double pointed needles so much. but now i get to have plushy purple alpaca mitten/glove things. and can start working on gifty-knitting. while i watch all of our netflix.

bear vs pavement, guess who won

2008-10-10T10:34:00.005-04:00

bear crashed his bike on tuesday night. we stayed up late putting him back together. apparently right before the crash he had been thinking to himself "you know, i have some really nice things that i enjoy, like this bike (front wheel squished, probably needing replacement) and i really like my glasses (also squished, hopefully the nice folks at the local glasses shop will work some magic since he just had new lenses put in them two weeks ago)." he's now also down a pair of pants, since the pavement and his chain ate them. and finding pants to fit a 6'3" man with a 29" waist is really not that easy. so last night i couldn't resist taking photos of his oozing, crusty face to remind him not to go so damn fast around corners. having those photos on the interwebs might help me keep him honest.

worst part for me? no smoochies. i can't kiss that fat, crusty lip. and that life flashing before my eyes feeling when he walked in the door streaming blood from his face. at least he crashed right in front of the house?

old work, new ideas

2008-10-03T12:30:00.003-04:00

things are afoot here. i've been doing a lot of thinking, big surprise for a bird-turtle (side note: sometimes i think my spirit animal is probably like on of those turtles with wings from mario brothers, except not evil.) i think the conclusion that i've drawn from all this navel-gazing is that in fact, the best way to keep myself happy and sane is to just be a damn photographer. this would be self-evident to some. some are not me. i have been telling myself that i'm off to get my teaching certificate because that is the smart, practical thing to do. but the more i think about it, the less i can picture it for myself. so how else to bust out of the world o' retail, use my undergraduate education and not go broke or crazy? i'm throwing my hat into the ring of photographers for hire. i'll do weddings, parties, graduation portraits, pet portraits, anything. except maybe those weirdly popular half-naked bride photos. i do, in fact, have the training. i don't have the fanciest equipment, but i'm pretty good with a roll of tinfoil (really good for making homemade lighting.) so i've been going through my old negatives looking to put together a portrait portfolio. i have a bunch of images to scan and i'll be posting some of them here. some of them are really old, which is a good kick in the pants reminder that i'm much better at this when i don't think so damn much.

special thanks to loaf for asking me to do her wedding, without which i wouldn't have discovered the huge number of people who want photos that are less traditional, more personal, quirky and creative.

so you know, if you're from around the seacoast (or not, and willing to pay for my travel) i'm for hire!

silvershell beach, new year's day 2007

2008-09-26T13:38:00.003-04:00

what with the driving rain and all, today feels a lot like the day i took this photograph. there's no end in sight, which means probably no going to critical mass for me, with my zero articles of water repellent clothing. unless you count rubber boots, and i've tried cycling in them, it's not good.

i am going to try try try to get around to posting photos here and actually updating the etsy store. this one is in keeping with my mood today.