Advanced Living (for Beginners)

Ish

2012-01-31T20:51:00.002-05:00

Ok guys, this self-reflection progress report thing is taking a little more time and effort than I anticipated.

While I go back to my notebook and mutlicolored pens, please accept this humble substitute:

Dude. She really digs sloths.

So What's it All About?

2012-01-25T00:05:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I'm not trying to answer some existential question with this post. I'm talking about this blog.

I’ve been thinking a lotthis month about the direction I’m headed. If this year is about being better,then what does that look like when I sit down at the end of 2012 to review myprogress. What does it mean for this blog? I haven’t had a totally clear focus

So if this is a blogabout what to deal with now that I’ve “mastered” the basics, then what do Iconsider the basics?

Feeding andcleaning myself
Maintaininga roof over my head
Paying thebills
Holding downa job

Yes, that's a picture of little jwhittz.

When I get discouraged about my lack of progress, at least I can remind myself that there was definitely
a time when I didn't even have any of the basics figured out.

I’m sure I’ll talk aboutsome of these things on here, but I want this to be more focused on the nextsteps.

What comes next?

Relationships—family,love, sex, friends, work
Taking goodcare of myself—feeding myself the right things, sleeping enough, gettingexercise
Making thehouse/apartment a home
The “adult”things—paying off student loans, living with no cc debt, getting married,having/not having kids, being able to afford vacations, saving for retirement,buying/not buying a house, sticking to a budget
Taking thenext step at my job—getting a promotion and/or taking on a different job
The big one:what makes me happy

Where am I on thesethings now? I’m taking the next two weeks to asses where I am on these frontsand post about what the next steps might be and what I find exciting and scaryabout them.

And how am I doing onthe little improvements I posted about?

Wake up at 7 instead of 7:30. (Better mornings if I'm notrushing.)—Not so great. I need to wean myself off of that snooze button.
Bring my lunch 3 days a week instead of buying. (Better for mybudget and my waistline.)—I’m brown bagging once a week, which is better than I hadbeen doing. I’m also choosing smaller, cheaper meals when I buy them.
Take a course in basic programming. (Better understanding ofwhat my options are.)—HTML and CSS class in progress! Javascript class plannedfor March!
Put myself in the position to connect with other people who arestruggling with their goals. (Better perspective.)—Hello out there? Anyone inthe same boat?
Practice with my camera a few times a week. (Better pictures.)—Umm,I guess my shiny new iPhone and Instagram account doesn’t count, huh?
Keep my nook charged. (Better chance I'll finish the 6 unreadbooks on it before I buy any more.)—Yes!
Wash my face every morning and night. (Better skin--and picturescome September.)—My skin is so clear!
Practice writing every day. (Better writing.)—Getting there. Islacked off last Saturday, for sure. Mondo Beyondo is helping.

Distracted

2012-01-22T10:36:00.003-05:00

It’s been the perfect weekend to curl up on the couch, order takeout and watch a marathon of whatever on the Netflix. We had our first snow since the freak October storm and it’sbeen bitterly cold (well, back home it’s 9 degrees below, so I guess you can take that assessment with a grain of road salt.) J had work to do and some Angry Birds levels to beat, but all I did was watch Gossip Girl, for reasons even I’m not sure of. And I didn't think about posting here all day long. Whoops.

Today J’s off working in Jersey, so I’m taking the opportunity to catch up on my Mondo Beyondo homework, print out some save the date mailing labels and finish reading Michelle Goodman’s “The Anti 9 to 5 Guide.” This may sound like a productive day, but really I’m just doing all this to avoid having to do the laundry…

It’s always something, isn’t it?

Learning

2012-01-17T23:02:00.001-05:00

Forgive the short post, I've joined the cult of iPhone.

So much fun!

Now I can work on posts wherever. And take completely random photos with wacky filters.

Planning a Hootenanny

2012-01-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

While home over theholidays, the J man and I were asked repeatedly how wedding plans were shapingup. Our response was pretty much an enthusiastic “meh”. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve crossed off a loton the list: kickass photographers booked, venue contract signed, dress bought,officiant selected, guest list generated, invitation suite picked out. But I thinkwe’ve kinda hit a wall with the planning momentum, which is a shame, since myMom really wants me to give her alist of wedding-related activities.

Perfect example: oursave the dates have been designed, printed and sitting by the television setfor, oh, three months now.

...you only get pieces of it.
Why call him J just to give away his damn name 20 posts in?

We’d planned ondesigning our own save the dates from the outset (after deciding that yes,sending save the dates were something we wanted to do.) J is a designer, he’sdown with photoshop. We lookedtogether at some inspiration, and J tried a few different designs, but nothingwas clicking. Finally, on a very slow day at work, I grabbed some paper andtried a few things. I am really not a designer, but I think we wound up withsomething cool.

And then they sat, whilewe waffled over the ten extra spots on the list and were generally apatheticabout doing anything wedding-y. Is this a common phase? There’s stuff we shoulddo, like figure out the floor plan and the schedule and write a ceremony and amenu and convince my parents that no, we do not actually need a band. We’re justbusy with work and lives and alternating between episodes of Friday NightLights and Parks and Recreation on Netflix. Eight months is such a long time,and we’re not exactly having a super-fancy detail oriented shindig or one whereeverything is DIY. We’ll get around to it. In fact, we sat down with the guest list and figured out how many mailing addresses we needed to verify and set a deadline for sending out the postcards.

But I can’t help butworry if I’m procrastinating on things that I really need to do NOW. Or is thatjust what the wedding industrial complex wants me to think?

Family Weddings

2012-01-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

This is the photo that's always been displayed
at my grandparents' home.

While home over theholidays, J and I spent some time looking at the family photos displayed at mygrandparents’ home, including the (fabulously 80s) wedding photographs of theirfour children--my Mom and Dad's wedding included--and the stately posed photographs of mygreat grandparents. When I asked my Nonie* where the photo from her and myGrandpa’s wedding was, she dragged out their wedding album.

Nonie and Grandpa have been married over 50 years. They had a New Year's Eve wedding in my hometown at one of the local churches. Nonie had a local dressmaker sew her dress based on something she had seen in Syracuse. After they were married, one of the first homes they lived in was a trailer with no running water and a hole in the floor (in upstate NY, in the middle of winter), but Grandpa talks about those times like they were some of the best days of their lives.

Exchanging rings. Grandpa looks all of 16!

I hadn’t seen mostof these photos before. I really appreciated the simplicity of their wedding album, the small number of shots and the emphasis on family photos. Nonie is the youngest of thirteen(!), and her eldest brother gave her away while the others served as ushers. Grandpa's best man was his younger brother and the children in the wedding party were nieces and nephews.

Nonie with her mother, two nieces and maid of honor.

Nonie, escorted by her brother.

I think my favorite photos is of my Grandpa kissing Nonie in theaisle while everyone else is making their way out of church, though a close second has to be the picture of Nonie with her mother, Imacculata, my great-grandmother. It's only the second photo I've ever seen of her. She and my great-grandfather immigrated to the States and even ran a noodle factory in Little Italy in the city before they settled upstate.

Sneaking a kiss.

*My grandmother, 100%Italian, wanted me, her firstborn grandchild, to call her Nona but I wasapparently incapable or unwilling to pronounce it correctly. Two and a halfdecades later, there are great-grandchildren calling her “Big Nonie” and myaunt (their grandmother) “Little Nonie”.
"Big Nonie" is a hilarious title, by the way, given that she's all of 4' 11".

Home (but not Healthy) for the Holidays

2012-01-07T23:49:00.001-05:00

The holidays were lovely.It was the first time in a few years that either J or I were able to make thetrip home, and the first time we celebrated them jointly—Christmas with myfamily and New Year’s with his. We had a great time making the rounds at all theholiday parties in the week leading up to Christmas and visiting with friends makingtheir pilgrimages to our fair city. We also drank a lot. So on top of the otherNew Year’s resolutions, I’m taking a break from alcohol this month, as well.

Not that I’ve been upfor drinking lately, anyhow. The J-man and I both came down with colds rightbefore 2011 ended, and are only now feeling better. Zicam usually works toshorten the duration of my colds, so maybe this was a particularly nasty one.On Wednesday I woke up dizzy and with an earache in addition to the congestionand called in sick. I felt immensely guilty from bailing after only one dayback from vacation. That is a pretty silly feeling to have, given that I wasactually sick and in the world or working adults, you’re expected (at somecompanies encouraged, even) to take a sick day when you’re actually sick. Butthat didn’t stop me from feeling guilty, watching my inbox like a hawk that dayand pushing myself to go to work the next even though I still felt like hell.

I wondered if there wasanything out there on the subject of sick day guilt, but my limited googlingdidn’t turn up anything on the subject, and I was too busy playing catch upThursday and Friday to poll anyone at work whether I’m alone in this anxiety orif they worried about taking time off when they felt like crap, too. Anyways,helluva way to start 2012. I’m off to gargle some warm salty water (haven’tkicked the sore throat yet) and watch Hook. Exciting times around these parts.Next week I start Mondo Beyondo and a Girl Develop It! Intro to HTML and CSSclass, because now that I’m feeling better, 2012 is all about being better.

Ambitions

2012-01-03T22:38:00.004-05:00

A lot of bloggers have been sharing theirword for 2012 that encapsulates the year ahead. Many chose aspirational words.Cecily of Uppercase Woman has chosen focus, and shares that sheis already struggling with it. “It’s hard to look down the long, blank page ofthe new year and not want a nap”, she writes.

Like Cecily, my word is a command: Better. This is the year Iwill be a better version of myself. It’s a huge undertaking, since it reachesinto every aspect of my life, but if ever there were a year for it, 2012 is theone. And like Cecily, as I sat at my desk today staring down the long list ofemails and to-dos, all I wanted was a nice long nap. Maybe it was because I gotup early this morning to do a little blog work before I left. Maybe it wasbecause that word, "better" can be such a pain in the ass. "Better"means better than. Inviting those sort of comparisons into my life, even nowwhen things are going well, can only lead to misery. I'll have to be carefulnot to get caught up in whether my better is as good as anyone else's. But"better" is a challenge, and though it's intimidating in the abstract, I have a hunch it mightactually be pretty easy to put into practice.

Things I Can Do to Be Better:

Wake up at 7 instead of 7:30. (Better mornings if I'm notrushing.)

Bring my lunch 3 days a week instead of buying. (Better for mybudget and my waistline.)

Take a course in basic programming. (Better understanding ofwhat my options are.)

Put myself in the position to connect with other people who arestruggling with their goals. (Better perspective.)

Practice with my camera a few times a week. (Better pictures.)

Keep my nook charged. (Better chance I'll finish the 6 unreadbooks on it before I buy any more.)

Wash my face every morning and night. (Better skin--and picturescome September.)

Practice writing every day. (Better writing.)

Most of the items on this list are pretty small changes, andplenty of them are things I enjoy doing. They're not big changes, they'relittle steps. Little steps towards being a better version of me.

Holiday Spirit

2011-12-21T22:32:00.001-05:00

I'm all about the holidays. Ok, I hate the crowds and the crazy store practices (Macy's in Herald Square is open 24/7. That's entirely too much time for shopping.) But that bittersweet nostalgia of watching holiday films and listening to holiday songs (Joni Mitchell's River, anyone?) while decorating the tree or wrapping gifts or baking 70 mini cupcakes for your office holiday party is exactly my bag, baby.

We're heading out to the hometowns for the holidays-- mine at Christmas and his for New Year's. I haven't been to my Nonie's on Christmas Day in a few years, so this one will be extra special. Even though we'll be away for Christmas, we couldn't resist decorating the tree. And I can never resist the opportunity to go all Martha Stewart on some brown paper packages.

The Beginner Apartment: DIY Ceiling Installation

2011-12-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

So, our ceiling collapsed. That was a fun Wednesday. J left me a message while I was at work, so all I knew was that the ceiling had fallen on him while he had been removing the stucco from the walls. There we were, the middle of January, a drop ceiling in pieces on the living room floor. It didn’t look like it had been installed very well in the first place, with nails driven into the plaster ceiling to hold the wires in pace. The recessed cans, all eight of them, had just been placed on the rails and not secured to the original ceiling. The building is old, so nothing in it is actually square anymore and the rails had borne the weight of the tiles and the cans for so long they’d twisted and eventually pulled some of the nails out.

Honestly, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. We’d covered the furniture with plastic, moved anything breakable into the other rooms, and the place was already a mess. Better than that, when we told our landlord what had happened, J offered to install a new ceiling in lieu of February rent, and our landlord happily accepted. He bought materials, and it only took the J-man an extra day to put it in, because he is awesome.

Then we got back to patching, priming and painting. And for good measure, J went to Home Depot with a gift card we’d received and got shelves to install on our walls to maximize vertical storage. Then the living room looked like this:

We're not finished yet (next up: new floors! Yay!), but we're getting there.

Bookwormin' (or All I Want for Christmas)

2011-12-13T22:33:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are:officially 12 days to Christmas and nary a partridge or pear in sight. What do I have instead? Culled from my Amazon wishlists, a list for 5 different personalities I apparently have:

Tunethusiast

I may be mild-manneredand unassuming (yeah, right) but under this cardigan is the heart of a punkrocker. Or at least, a girl who sometimes wishes she’d been born in the ‘60sand around for CBGB’s heyday.

ArtsAdministrator

Right now I workfor an advertising company. But I used to work in theater and Hallie Flanaganis a personal hero of mine. In fact, I went and studied arts admin in grad school. I don’t know when (if?) I’ll rejoin the nonprofitranks, but these books might help me keep my edge--or remind me why I loved it in the first place.

Feminista

Back in college, I had alot of friends minoring in Women’s Studies and being a feminist was pretty mucha given. Now I’ve fallen woefully behind on the feminist times, with theexception of the daily dose of Feministing in my Google Reader.

Poser…I mean, CreativeBeing

I know, I know. Ishouldn’t feel like my creative endeavors aren’t valid. I’m working on that.Keri Smith’s book will probably help. I already go through 2 Moleskines a year,and there’s something really pleasant about the feel of those thin Papermatemarkers on paper. Plus, fun colors!

4^thGrade Jwhittz

You’re lucky I limitedthat list to only 6. I tried to keep it to books I think I first read around 4^thgrade, but my “Books from Childhood” wishlist on Amazon is three pages long (sofar.) Growing up, reading was my favorite activity. I always had a book with meand to this day, discovering a new world in a new book (and revisiting oldfavorites) is one of the greatest pleasures for me. Roald Dahl, E.B.White, Karen Cushman, BruceCoville—all the authors represented here had a huge impact on me during myformative years. These books (and many more) are why my Christmas (and birthday and general wish) lists have so many books.

What's on your list this year?

The Beginner Apartment: The Odessey Continues

2011-12-10T23:45:00.000-05:00

After we painted the bedroom—which involved moving everything out and sleeping in the living room for 2 weeks while the J-man took the stucco off and Michele and I primed/painted it—we were not exactly ready to jump into the second half of the project.

My first time cooking a turkey

Tiny tree!

The holidays were approaching and work was picking up for both of us. Our first Christmas at the apartment looked like this:

In January, I started a new job, but J didn’t have much going on, so we moved all the little things and the tv out of the living room and shoved everything big into the center of the room, covered it all, and got to work scraping down the walls. He’d come up with a pretty good system after the bedroom, which involved wetting down the stucco, letting it soak for a few minutes, and then scraping it off with a paint scraper. In the bedroom, we’d started out with a power sander my grandpa had given us, but it created way too much dust and ate through sandpaper like it was toilet paper. The scraping method required more elbow grease, sure, but it was actually faster, cheaper and a tiny bit easier to clean up afterwards. Score!

Also, he grew his hair long. The dirty hippie.

It was good that we figured out a way to get rid of the stucco that didn’t cost us hundreds of dollars in sandpaper, because we were already sweating how to pay February’s rent. That is, until the drop ceiling in our living room collapsed.

Lists: Everybody's making 'em

2011-12-07T00:09:00.000-05:00

Icelandic horses*

As far as I know, Andrea Scher and Maggie Mason started it. Then there’s the concept of BHAGs. Becka over at Life as an Artistpreneur posted recently about her 101 in 1001 list.

And then Meg, who has become something of a personal hero, posted this Reclaiming Wife post about goals and growing up, which was exciting and inspiring and also in a lot of ways scary and also maybe a little depressing, because I was comparing myself and my own situation to the awesome things she talks about accomplishing. I posted a status on Facebook lamenting my lack of goals and got a lot of "but you're planning a wedding", as in "why are you thinking about anything else?", so that was kinda disheartening as a human being who is bound and determined not to let such an event define me.

That, of course, is silly and completely counterproductive. For a long time while thinking about this list activity, I was reluctant to write anything down, because I had (have) no clue where I’m going, what I’m doing, where I want to be or who I want to be. It took this post on APW, and the comments on it, for me to realize that the list isn’t set in stone. (Umm, duh—but I was feeling that whole fear of failure thing.)

I'm working on making one for my 27th year (beginning in February) of 27 things I will try to accomplish before I turn 28. First on that list is get married to J and have a kickass time. But here's the big list, at least for the moment. It'll have 100 on it eventually, and then I'll remove some things and maybe cross off some things and definitely add others.

1. Work for myself

2. Own a creative business

3. Write a blog

4. Buy and renovate a farmhouse

5. Own a home

6. Start a family

7. Marry J-man

8. Get paid for writing something

9. Swim in the Aegean

10. Work for a magazine

11. Be in a magazine

12. Cross country road trip

13. Buy a car

14. Learn graphic design

15. Plan an event for 10,000 people or more

16. Attend Comic Con in LA

17. Foster a child

18. Run a 5K (no walking)

19. Go camping in Yosemite

20. Take horseback riding lessons

21. Learn to drive stick

22. Hike in the jungle in South America

23. Drive a motorcycle

24. Take a kickboxing class

25. Be a social media expert

26. Go to Santorini

27. Go to Paris

28. Go to Indonesia

29. Go to Egypt

30. Go to Romania

31. Take a sociology class

32. Learn Photoshop

33. Move to Philadelphia?

34. Go wine tasting in California

35. Make 6 figures in a year

36. Design/sell a line of stationary

37. Get a promotion

38. Take a letterpress class

39. Complete a happiness project

40. Read all 100 books on The Guardian’s !00 Greatest Novels list

41. Meet & maintain my goal/ideal weight

42. Dance under the stars in Venice

43. Attend Mighty Summit

44. Attend SXSW

45. Participate in NaNoWriMo

46. Meet Oprah

47. Be someone’s mentor

48. Do fifty pushups

49. Annual vacation ritual with friends/family

50. Walk through the countryside in Ireland

51. Learn to play the guitar

52. Refinish/re-upholster a large piece of furniture

53. Plant a garden

54. Start composting

55. Bake a pie

56. Live with less toxins

57. Give up soft drinks

58. Write a book

59. Be published

60. Go paintballing

61. Skiing

62. Learn to whistle with my fingers

63. Keep a journal

64. Sketch regularly

65. Learn to use my camera

66. Learn to use my Mac efficiently

67. Pay off the student loan

68. Live with zero credit card debt

69. Vacation in Hawaii

70. Save enough money to live for 6 months without work

71. Speak at a conference

72. Attend BlogHer

73. Do a Pinterest project

74. Live with a view of the ocean

75. Write a script

76. Sew a dress

77. Upgrade J’s wardrobe

78. Cut off all my hair

79. Be an active participant in an online community

80. Build a tree house

81. Help a child have a fantastic adventure

82. Give a microloan

83. Host a holiday

84. Do 50 craft projects

85. Have 1,000 followers

86. Buy an expensive piece of jewelry

87. Give a life-changing gift

88. Learn conversational Spanish

89. Have fabulous photos taken of myself

90. Write an article about (analyzing?) BtVS

91. See U2 perform at an international venue

92. Take an international trip with Lauren

93. Swimming with J and dolphins

94. Learn to swing dance, re-enact Madonna's dancescene in A League of Their Own at the SudsBucket
95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

100.

*What does the photo of Icelandic horses have to do with this post? Not much, but I thought they were kind of pretty. I do list riding lessons at #20, so they kind of fit.

The Beginner Apartment: Beginning the Project

2011-12-03T18:03:00.000-05:00

So when we last visited Casa del J, I’d trekked out with my friend Michele (shameless plug) to see the place and meet the landlord (who is the father of the friend who told us about the place. And our downstairs neighbor. And the friend lives across the hall from our apartment. Got all that?) The J-man drove down in a U-haul stuffed with our stuff in early August. Since the skilled laborer in this relationship was out of town, we didn’t get to do any pre-move in fixing—the walls were still stucco-y and blue. But the dishwasher and fridge had been replaced. The floors were unchanged (that took two years to fix, but so far, it was worth the wait.)

We dragged our haul into the apartment and put everything into place. I was so disappointed that we couldn’t tackle the walls right away, but we were broke (brokedy-broke-broke) and spending all of our time hustlin’ to make rent. So for several months the place looked like this:

And then we got our act together enough to redo the walls of the bedroom and paint them a more sedate color (since electric blue isn’t really soothing to either of us—I know, blue is supposed to be soothing, but…it wasn’t.)

The Name Game

2011-11-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

Our kids are going to have an 18 letter surname if it’s the last thing I do.

Ok, let me back up a bit here: I read A Practical Wedding (yay Team Practical!), a blog for sassy ladies planning weddings and talking about marriage. One of the hot topics over there is changing your surname after marriage—Meg, the founder, has written several posts about it and others have posted on the topic, as well. What’s awesome about this community is that they don’t advocate one choice over another, and that goes for the name discussion. Some of the comments on these posts are from women who struggled with their choice, some are from women for whom it was a no-brainer. Really, go read everything that’s been written over there, because it’s amazing and in-depth and often funny and sometimes sad.

So for me, the name change has never really been an issue. In grade school, I swore I’d marry someone whose last name was higher in the alphabet than mine (last initial is ‘W’, if you couldn’t guess), because I was always in the back of the room when we had alphabetical seating. My nerdy kids were going to have a better chance to be nearer to the front.

That was before I realized there was any choice in the matter. Every woman I knew in my tiny town had taken the last name of the man they married. Certainly every woman in my family had. When I realized that this wasn’t an automatic thing, and that there was a choice, I couldn’t fathom a reason why I would want to change my own name. It’s mine. It’s who I am. (Ok, yes, it’s also still part of that last holdout of coverture since it’s my father’s last name, but when my parents gave me this name, it became mine. End of story.) At this point, I’d also kind of figured the whole marriage thing wasn’t a necessity for me—in high school I figured if I wanted a kid when I was an adult, I’d have a kid—but I didn’t need to get married for that to happen. My parents’ marriage didn’t really seem like a desirable state to be in (though today they’re still going strong after over 30 years.)

The J-man and I got together my freshman year of college, and as I’ve previously stated, we fell in luurve. He’d come from an even smaller town than I, and had had a fairly religious upbringing, so when we talked about the future and marriage and babies, he expressed discomfort with my refusal to take his name and was adamant that any kids have his last name (and his only.) Meanwhile, I spent the first 4 years of our relationship trying to reconcile the fact that I thought I didn’t really want to get married with my sudden (at times overwhelming) desire to marry this guy. What can I say? I’m complex.

These days, J is wholly supportive of me keeping my name. We’re still squabbling on what to name any hypothetical kids, though. I very strongly feel that they should have my last name, and I’m willing to compromise by hyphenating our two names for them. J thinks hyphenating is a bad idea—it’s mean to saddle the kids with an 18 letter last name that they have to learn to spell and write, people will inevitably drop one of the names (and HORROR! It could be his that they forget!), it’s messy, many forms don’t have room for such large names, etc. But since he’s not willing to just give them my last name, it seems to me like it’s our only option. I’m not changing my name, he’s not changing his name, we want our kids to have our names…really, this should be simple. Unfortunately, I still haven’t gotten him to give in. But I will.

Incidentally, there's a strong consensus among our friends that when we do reproduce, the kid's gonna turn out looking like that cutie pie from Love Actually. And that I'm ok with:

Click for source

The Beginner Apartment: The Blue Period

2011-11-27T19:15:00.000-05:00

Here's the story of how we came to live inside that Eiffel 65 video...

In June of 2009, I had recently finished an internship with a big theater company and was looking for a job while living on my friend Michele's couch. The J-man was moving out to the city after his first summer at a theater in Missouri, and we had yet to find a place (not particularly uncommon for NYC apartment hunting.) J got word from a friend of ours that there was a vacant unit in the building she was in-- were we still looking?

So Michele and I went out to see the apartment. And this is what we found:

You can see parts of the kitchen in these two photos: fire engine red paint (which I like) that's not been applied well, linoleum peeling up around the door, really gross rack for hanging pots situated too low over the stove to actually hang pots off of (unless the stovetop is merely decorative).

It's actually a pretty spacious kitchen, and the landlord promised a new fridge and dishwasher(!) before we moved in.

The living room is where it started to get scary. A previous resident, the landlord's son, had apparently decided that he wanted to live in a cave.

He installed drop ceilings throughout the apartment (covering up the decrepit but 1.5' taller plaster ceilings), gooped up the walls with a faux stucco treatment (2" thick in some places and painted everything a drab military-ish olive-kakhi color. Then it was too dark so he installed recessed lighting in the drop ceiling.

When he moved out, his sister moved in and painted everything in the living room (and bedroom, which had gotten the same treatment) one of two blue hues.

That was certainly scary, but then the landlord told me we could do whatever we wanted to the walls. J's a set designer with plenty of painting and construction experience (scenic construction), and his dad had even run his own drywall business. We could handle redoing the walls. It'd even be fun! (That's what I thought. J's reaction was more like "I could learn to live with it...")

Don't be fooled by the radiator's size. That puppy keeps us warm October-April.

The place has a separate bedroom, for pete's sake! Ok, the bedroom doesn't have a door, but do you know how hard it is to find a true one bedroom in this city for under $1k a month? (We're in the arts, people. We can't even afford cable.)

So while there were some aspects that weren't appealing about the space (no closets-- not uncommon around here; a tiny bathroom--about 3' wide at its widest part), I told the landlord we'd take it.

So that's how it started.

Too Much Joy?

2011-11-22T18:30:00.000-05:00

My Mom is pretty excited to help plan this wedding the J-man and I are having in about a year. Her enthusiasm was a surprise at first, since she’s been telling me since I was diapers “When you get married, just elope. I’ll give you money to elope.” Come to think of it, this may have been a pretty big influence on my pre-J stance on getting married (“Why bother?”). While my Mom is happily married to my Dad, when she talks about their wedding, which they planned in just a few months, it’s quite obvious she did not enjoy herself at all. She does not seem to have any good memories of it. So when Mom jumped into the wedding planning with both feet approximately 20 minutes after J and I got engaged, it was a lovely surprise.

She helped me select a venue after two weekends traipsing around upstate New York (J spent the whole summer out of town, making it difficult for him to participate in the venue search except via phone and email.) She found a great house for us to rent for the week before the wedding—something our friends did for their wedding last year that we loved. I mentioned to her last month that we might use mason jars as vases/candle holders since they’re cheap and easy decoration, and she went out and bought several different kinds to do trials with (more on that later.) Her help and enthusiasm is lovely, if not occasionally overwhelming, and so very appreciated.

So when J and I started looking at our invitation options on Printable Press, I sent her a mock up of some invitation text to get her feedback:

With great joy

Mom and Dad Whittz invite you to the wedding of

jwhittz and J-man

Please help celebrate their commitment

Date/time/place

We liked it that it was a pretty simple format and used ‘joy’ and ‘celebrate’ to set the expectation of a joyful celebration (see what we did there?). We wanted to keep it mostly traditional, since both our parents are pretty traditional (so no "Hooray! We’re Getting Hitched! Come join the hootenanny*!") and we included my parents as the hosts since that’s what they are**. All in all, it seemed like it was pretty tame and vanilla and would be palatable to my parents.

I was so mistaken. My Mom was really concerned that J’s Mom didn’t appear on the invite even though
1. she’s not paying for the party, so she’s technically hosting and
2. we’re not doing the whole “daughter of” and “son of” thing since it feels so formal and we’re pretty sure everyone coming to this thing can figure those bits out themselves.

Mom doesn’t want things to “start off on the wrong foot” and she wants everyone to understand that it’s “two families coming together”. Ok, that’s fine. We’ll check with J’s Mom to be sure she wants to be on the invite and find a way to get her on there. But my Mom’s biggest objection was this: starting the invite with “With great joy”. She’s uber worried that people will look at that and think she and my Dad are ecstatic to finally be marrying me off.

To which I say: what the what? I'm confused and a little concerned. If we're encountering objections to wording this bland, what is the reaction going to be to us doing a shot of tequila at the altar? (This is a possibility, since the minister has a special bible/flask combo thing.) Are we ever going to be able to please people with our choices? More importantly, are we doomed to hear how unhappy people are with our choices for the next ten months? Really?

*We use the Buffy method of party rating:
a gathering: brie, mellow song stylings
a shindig: dip, less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage
a hootenany: chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny

**According to Miss Manners, the hosts are the people who pay for the party

The Beginner Apartment: It's Where We Live

2011-11-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

I've been reading through the archives on Young House Love-- John and Sherry were 25 when they left Manhattan and bought their first home in Richmond. The J-man and I have both been feeling that urge to move on lately. The city's dirty, it's crowded, the crowds are comprised of idiots and whackos, it's expensive, it's cramped, the list goes on and on. We've always known that we're not looking to settle here permanently, anyways, but recently leaving NOW just sounds so awesome.

We won't be leaving for some time yet, that's for sure. We have a good deal on rent, we're both doing well work-wise, and J especially feels that his career is headed in the right direction because he is here right now (even if being based in the city means he regularly travels to Missouri and Utah and other far away states where you wouldn't think they'd have theater…). Many of our friends are in the area (though many aren't-- Atlanta and Houston pals, I'm looking at you!)

Anyways, back to the inspiration for this post. J&S over at YHL bought a 50+ year old home and renovated it over three years. Their blog, which is cute and funny and very well written, chronicles the whole shebang, starting with an ambitious kitchen overhaul the fall after they got hitched in their own backyard. These are my kind of peeps.

Well, when J-man and I moved in to our BK digs two years ago, we knew we'd be taking on some projects of our own. The living room and bedrooms had a faux stucco treatment on the walls and were painted (I kid you not) bright blue. Two shades of bright blue, actually. It looked like cake frosting. It looked like a Disney cave. It looked like petrified Muppet. Don't believe me? There's photographic evidence:

The bedroom

The living room

Michele does not find the wall comfy

So yeah.

That had to go. It's a pretty long and involved story, so I'm going to take a few posts to tell it. There were tears, heartache, laughter and collapsed ceilings. Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment.

Bloggity

2011-11-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

So lately I've been worried that I am an absurdly unmotivated person. I’ve been tossing this blog idea around for two years now, and only in the past three months have I committed myself to compiling a chunk of posts before I attempt to publish any of them. At this moment, writing this post (10/28/2011), I have seven compiled. Seven in three months. Except I’m aiming for seven per week, when I actually start hitting the ‘publish’ button.

I am also a rapacious consumer of information. I follow over 90 blogs, 50-some boards on Pinterest, read news websites (MSNBC, HuffPo, CNN) several times a day, subscribe to ten magazines, buy/borrow an average of four books per month, read an average of six (I like to revisit my favorites) per month, regularly follow fifteen or so television shows, and subscribe to eight daily or bi-weekly email threads devoted to subjects of interest. The J-man and I have stuffed around 200 books into our 200 square foot living room (along with our two desks, his dresser, a freestanding closet, the couch, tv and a coffee table.) We have four boxes of books sitting in our bedroom and on top of the closet that need to be sold or donated because we don’t have the room for them. For Christmas, he bought me a Nook from Barnes and Noble and I put fifteen books on it during the first month. Now my digital library has 65 titles in it.

Where is the disconnect happening? Why am I so aggressive in ingesting and compiling information, but so passive when it comes to creating my own content? I am a strong writer and I enjoy writing, but I am often overwhelmed by the feeling that I have nothing of value to add to the conversation. It’s why I don’t comment very often on the blogs I follow. Where did this attitude come from? I was always an active participant in class discussions in high school. Back then, I had OPINIONS, all caps, and I wasn’t afraid to share them. (If you can imagine, I wasn’t a particularly popular kid.)

I really don't know how to wrap this post up. Except to say that now it's 11/9 and I now have twelve posts in the hopper. So that's progress. I may not be ready to publish seven times a week, but I think I will publish this one. Two a week is do-able at this pace. I can work up to more. It's sort of like training for a 5K (or a marathon, but I don't think I'll ever train for a marathon.)--I can start small and get bigger. I have room to grow. I don't have to be perfect from the start. Oh boy, has this been a hard realization.

You know what will help me stop worrying about whether I'll ever do the things I want to do?

Doing them.

Living (and by that I Mean Eating) on a Budget...for Beginners

2011-09-05T16:21:00.001-04:00

One of our favorite budget meals: Quinoa with veggies

I've always lived on a budget-- by default. I was in college and grad school and not working full time during either period, so my funds were limited, and after moving to the city I had jobs that paid the bills and that was it. I have only recently begun earning a wage that allows me to save anything at all for retirement and for a rainy day/that whole wedding shindig we'll be having in 13 months.

The urge is there, especially in this city, to spendspendspend now that I have some extra money: go out for drinks and movies and drinks with friends, get takeout instead of walking ten blocks to the good grocery store, buy meals instead of components for a bunch of different meals when at the grocery store, etc. But! That's not exactly conducive to saving for said shindig.

So now that summer's coming to a close (not too hot to cook in my AC-less apartment) and the J-man has returned (therefore cooking a meal feels more worthwhile since we're doing it for two), we are looking to get into some better habits. One is to start exercising more (a whole 'nother blog post) and the other is to eat better and keep to a smaller food budget.

Right now, we probably spend $250 a month on food, not counting eating out. And I haven't been taking my lunch to work AT ALL, which is a big expense in midtown, where many of my lunches come from Pret or Pax or the falafel place on 40th that is cheap only if they give you the $5 off coupon on Mondays...but I digress. I really enjoy cooking-- I'll have to share my Kickass Carrot/Parsnip soup on here (adapted from Urban Pantry's Carrot Coconut Milk recipe), but this summer I just got lazy. (And a bit fatter, not gonna lie.)

Like all other things in my life, I'm looking to the blogs to provide inspiration and practical advice. A few that make me feel like this is possible:

Lauren of I'm Better in Real Life recently wrote about eating on $40 a week in San Francisco with her new hubby. I love reading her blog anyways, but her series on trying to eat more healthfully while keeping it affordable is particularly worth reading.

Beth M of Budget Bytes is all about the affordable meals-- her subheader is "On a mission to save money and eat well!" Preach it, sisterfriend. She breaks every recipe down by cost, like the roasted vegetable couscous that is $10.09 per recipe and only $1.26 per serving. I have a favorites folder that is just links to recipes that I want to make from this lady.

And then there's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution site. It may not be a blog, but have you seen this show? Every episode makes me want to plant a garden/eat organic/crusade for better school lunches/move to a farm and raise chickens. For serious. His whole Revolution is something I can get behind. I have the cookbook and am really looking forward to making the Chicken Tiki Masala recipe this Wednesday evening. I'll let you know how it goes.

Something Borrowed, something crappy...

2011-09-03T16:29:00.068-04:00

When I was a young'un, movies like Someone Like You and You've Got Mail were what I used to envision what my life might be like, living in the city as a twenty-something (ok, there may have been a brief Coyote Ugly fantasy, too.)

So I have a soft spot for romcoms set in New York. I rented Something Borrowed because of this, and because I'd read Emily Giffin's novel and liked it well enough. I really should have left well enough alone, though:

Source

Observations

1. Rachel, our (goody two-shoes, just urned thirty and ZOMG! still single) protagonist is dressed like a Hasidic Jew for half the movie. Elbows covered, demure clothes and colors, bad wig. Actually, the wig is on for the whole movie, which is a real shame since Ginnifer Goodwin's real life sassy short haircut is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

2. The screenwriters/producers got rid of Rachel's friend Hillary from work and her friend Annalise from back home, so now the only female friend she has is vile Darcy, who has a glamorous PR job, is a few months younger than Rachel, and has been her best friend since second grade. And vile Darcy is blonde even though much is made in the book of her being a brunette. So we're gifted with another awesome example of the blondes-have-more-fun, brunettes-are-sad-sacks cliche. How refreshing.

3. Ethan Ainsley, the ladies' friend from grade school, doesn't live in London like he does in the book (a pretty vital plot point, actually), and he becomes a replacement for Rachel's female friends. If they'd even kept ONE female friend (who isn't competitive, man-eating Darcy), the movie might have had a shot at passing the Bechdel test. But then John Krasinski wouldn't have gotten to deliver the line "The Hamptons are like a zombie movie directed by Ralph Lauren." Shall we call it even?

4. There's a horrible subplot in which Ethan tries to avoid Clare's (described as 'lumpy' and 'desperate' in the book) romantic attentions by telling her he's gay. Clare is played by Ashley Williams, who I recognized from her stint on How I Met Your Mother. She's actually showing off what might be some comedic chops here, if only her character weren't so utterly insipid.

5. They smushed in a scene in which Darcy makes Rachel write her vows for her. I should mention, for anyone not familiar with the book or the movie, that at this point Rachel has slept with Darcy's perfect fiance Dex, and has realized that she's in love with him. She's carrying on a secret affair with him. Even knowing this, Darcy is so vile and contemptible. I guess they didn't option Something Blue (the sequel, which features the adventures of Darcy after spoiler! she and Dex break up) to make into a movie?*

6. Dear god, Rachel has the prettiest studio apartment, supposedly somewhere near the Village. WANT.**

7. Ah. Ethan's moving to London has become a plot point. God this is both a stupid interpretation of the novel and a bad movie in its own right.

8. Vile Darcy's ring is so big you could skate on it. Why why why does everyone have to have these huuuuge rings? Every time I see them I think of the African diamond trade. Ugh.

9. Big confrontation/realization for Rachel and Dex in the rain. No one is surprised by this, least of all this cliche-weary viewer.

10. Why does watching a bad movie always make me wanna re-read the book? Especially since this movie just highlights all the stupid parts of the book.

11. Ugh. Rachel goes to visit Ethan in London, where Ethan tells Rachel he's in love with her. Well, actually, all he says is that he likes her. And the cliches keep on a comin'. Can't anyone have a platonic relationship in the universe of this movie? His declaration is not even romantic, he tells her he liked her more when another guy came into the picture and that she's like "home" to him.

12. The scene where vile Darcy finds Dexter in Rachel's apartment is nowhere near as hilarious as it was in the book. Even more depressing, Dex is fully clothed.

13. If you're anything like me, you might consider buying this on DVD anyways. Please wait til it's $5. You have better things to spend nearly twenty bucks on. Oy.

*surprise! Vile prego!Darcy shows up in London to visit Ethan during the credits. Guess they did option the second book. Ew.

**a. It cannot exist. b. I couldn't afford it even if it did.

And now I distract you with CUTE!

2011-07-17T20:29:00.000-04:00

I have things going on, but am incapable of writing it at the moment. So, zero readers, please enjoy a picture of my adorable ancient (14 years old in August!) puppy:

Next she'll tell me the whole dinner menu should be a reflection of our love...

2011-07-09T11:50:00.001-04:00

Photo Credit: You Are My Fave

I showed my mom a few pictures of bunting-as-wedding-decor the other day and she replied with "I guess I don't get it, what's it supposed to represent?"

Sigh.

Source Unknown. Please let me know if you know!

Anxiety Attack: Failure

2011-07-08T18:06:00.002-04:00

My newly appointed guru, Seth Godin, wrote a lovely how-to post on failure back in April that I copied into my notebook, I loved it so much. (I'm kind of like a squirrel that way, hoarding nuggets of wisdom and beauty in a notebook on my computer, in a notebook in my purse, in a notebook beside my bed, on my pinterest boards and my trusty external hard drive. I have lots of hiding places. Squirrel might not be as an appropriate label as, ahem, hoarder. But I digress.)

Seth provided a list of ways to fail better, because, although failure is a SCARY thing, it is necessary. You don't grow or learn near as much from success as you do from failure. And you don't learn anything at all from stagnancy (which is not the same as stillness, cause I don't want to incur the wrath of any Buddhists. Not that they're particularly wrathful.) Seth's 'random' list:

Whenever possible, take on specific projects.
Make detailed promises about what success looks like and when it will occur.
Engage others in your projects. If you fail, they should be involved and know that they will fail with you.
Be really clear about what the true risks are. Ignore the vivid, unlikely and ultimately non-fatal risks that take so much of our focus away.
Concentrate your energy and will on the elements of the project that you have influence on, ignore external events that you can't avoid or change.
When you fail (and you will) be clear about it, call it by name and outline specifically what you learned so you won't make the same mistake twice. People who blame others for failure will never be good at failing, because they've never done it.

Seth also says:

"If that list frightened you, you might be getting to the nub of the matter."

Why, hello there, nub.

In some cases, it is ok to hide under a blankie for a little while.
But then you have to face the fear and start failing.

First up: A little bit of Engagement Talk

2011-06-17T18:20:00.002-04:00

Allow me to talk about this whole getting engaged thing, because it was a pretty lengthy process.

I’m more type-A than not. I have a (deep and wide) lazy streak that keeps me from being, say, the perpetual motion machine that my mother is, but I’m still more type-A. I'd rather know the plan (ideally I'd be the one to make the plan), but I the J-man was adamant that the proposal and the ring be a surprise.

He and I met when we were 18. For the first 5 years of our relationship, I was not interested in getting married. Or rather, I was interested in marrying him, just at some distant point in the future. In terms of personal development, we were both babies. Not even babies, fetuses (feti?). Zygotes. One celled organisms on the brink of mitosis. That’s not as much of an exaggeration as you might think, in my case at least. I’m pretty sure I only very recently became a fully formed human being. Perhaps just within the last year. (That’s another series of blog entries. Or possibly, that’s what this whole blog is about.)

Not to be confused
with robot us-es

Zygote us-es

So there we are, the J-man and I, 18 and in lurve and talking about the future and it’s not scary at all because this wide expanse of college is stretched out before us and of course the future happens long after college is over. Duh. Once we had both graduated college, broken up for 6+months, gotten back together and gone on to grad school, though, it was a different story. Grad school was really difficult for me especially, and I think now that the idea of getting married at that point was so appealing because I wanted stability. After our recent breakup, the J-man was nowhere near ready, and I know now that I wasn't, either. I didn’t know that then, as we first moved in together and then I moved to the city without knowing if he would be following me at the end of his program. I struggled with my feelings on being engaged, of how far off script my life was going from what I’d planned out. I was hyper-aware of our pre-engaged state when other things in my life felt beyond my control and much more complacent about it when things were going well.

This past September, I lost a job I loved with a theater company and the health insurance that went with it and our 7th anniversary came and went without a proposal (though he did buy me two lovely rings. Oh, the irony.) "Engagement season", that magical time from late November to Valentine’s Day when everyone you know gets engaged (but not you!), came and went without a proposal. My birthday came and went without a proposal. All through this time, he’s dropping hints about how he’s already got the ring picked out, and it’s going to happen soon, blahblahblah. So on Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and my birthday and yes, even Valentine’s Day (though I would have hated to tell people we got engaged on Feb 14th) I was so tense I was practically vibrating. A few of my friends had heard my "why aren't we engaged yet!?!" rant a few more times than I'd like to admit. I’d cried a few times privately and in front of him. And guys, I am an ugly, snotty crier. Crying in front of him was not a good incentive for him to propose.

And then, sometime in March, even though I was still looking for a new job and neither of us had health insurance and we were both doing some really crappy work to scrape by and taxes were coming due, I realized that I was just really, stupidly happy with him. I still am. I let go of a lot of anxiety—I’m still not sure how that happened. And then he proposed in May. I can honestly say that he waited until the exactly right time for both of us.

If you build it...

2011-05-11T19:26:00.002-04:00

My concept for this blog is detailing the big and little things that make up life when you're just starting out. I'm in my mid-(to-late *ahem*) twenties, and when I was thinking about doing this, I had a crap job and was worried nonstop about all these school loans that I couldn't afford and how so very hard it is to find a job in this city when your network is teeny and how the guy and I were never going to be able to live the sort of life we want to live.

Three weeks ago, it truly seemed like life was this miserable, rainy state of perpetual debt and never being able to get started living a life that resembled anything like what I'd hoped for/planned on. The J-man was waiting on 4 (3 very late!) paychecks to come in, I'd had to pay his taxes, we were concerned about having money left over to eat with after paying May rent, I was still stuck in a dead-end job that used very few of my skills and made me feel sub-human most days, and I was convinced that, with all these money issues, J-man was never going to get around to proposing. Three weeks ago. And then I got my (substantial) tax return and J-man got one of the big paychecks (still waiting on 3!) and the weather turned and I had a decent interview and he proposed and there was all this love suddenly in the world and so this past weekend at the crap was at times frustrating, but I had something else going on to remind me that the crap job is not actually important, and then Monday morning I got a lovely phone call offering me a real job.

So now, not only do I get to start living my life, but I also feel like I have something to write about. This is a journey worth sharing.

It won't be all sunshine and rainbows, that's for sure. (And it won't be all "ooh, this is what I'm thinking for the wedding", either. Though there will be a bit of that.)

Welcome to my blog. I guess it's about the growing up you do after you've grown up.

Anxiety Attack: Contemplating the Extraordinary

2011-04-12T01:51:00.001-04:00

Sometimes (often, if I'm being completely honest here) I find myself hoping that someone--a manager, a particularly vivacious person at a party, the awesome best-selling author whose speaking event I'm attending--that this person will just look at me and be able to tell that I am extraordinary.

Here's the thing that I always (always!) forget, though: As far as other people (who don't know you) are concerned, you are what you do. So if they don't see you doing something extraordinary, then you're not extraordinary. No one will see you as extraordinary unless what you are doing is extraordinary. But how do you know if what you are doing is extraordinary?

Seth Godin states in his NYT Bestseller Linchpin that everyone is a genius. He tells the reader "You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must."

So, where to start? Well, you could read Linchpin (and I highly recommend you do), or for brevity's sake we could move on to the work of entrepreneur and world traveler Chris Guillebeau. Author of The Art of Nonconformity, Chris has written a great blog post about Being Remarkable, with six rules for breaking the mold. Read his full blog here, but the rules, in short, are:

Stop making excuses.
Take responsibility.
Start questioning rules and expectations.
Find work that you love and do it well.
Begin living your own life.
Take it up a level.

Simple, right? I mean, I'm totally doing the work I love and living my own life and constantly taking it up a level. At my holy-crap-will-this-recession-never-end restaurant gig. Oh no, that's just me making excuses for why I can't not follow the rules at the moment. Damn.

But Seth said: "You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must." So put it together, and what do I get? If everyone is a genius about something, then sooner or later they will hit upon their genius and do something extraordinary.

And oh, these are heady words for this recently failing, validation seeking Type-A first-born child of supportive upper middle class parents to hear. Yes! I am extraordinary! I have worthwhile things to contribute! These things have been told to me since I began watching Sesame Street!

Here's the catch, according to both Guillebeau and Godin: I have to set my own path.

Um, guys? You do know that I and all the other members of my generation grew up being told that we were all unique snowflakes capable of doing whatever our little snowflake hearts wanted to do, so long as we followed the IF good grades AND 4 year degree, THEN good job proof (ha! I remembered something from high school math). That doesn't follow the Guillebeau/Godin mandate of forging your own path. And if it doesn't fit the mold of what worked before (even if today's economy has irreversibly changed and it no longer works now), how will anyone know if what I'm doing is the RIGHT thing?

I really should be past this need for external validation by now, anyways. Problem is, sometimes it feels as though external validation is the only barometer of success. I grew up being pat on the head for every good job done (and most mediocre--cause you're still special!) so it can be a little difficult to suddenly shift my focus to my inner voice(s) and figure out where I'm supposed to go if I'm supposed to be going with my gut. How do I even know what my path is? How do I figure out, after years of following the plan, what to spend my extraordinary talents on? Without the gold star after every small effort, I'm left questioning each action I take. If no one notices the job I'm doing, am I still doing a good job? Am I failing? Does it matter? Seth and Chris have the same advice on this point, too. It doesn't matter. I just have to press forward, keep learning and keep living.

Coffee helps.