Hand to God, the following conversation between me and my father is absolutely true.
Friday morning, we're loading last-minute things into my car, Mom's jeep and the moving truck for the big drive to PDX. As I passed through the kitchen, I asked him to bring up an old TV from the basement (apparently my family never buys new TVs; they just get gifted around from person to person).
"You know," he started. "I bet if you looked at your mom just right, she'd buy you a new TV down in Oregon."
Me: (confused silence)
Dad: (grin)
Me: "Okay. But before I take that up with HER, I'm asking YOU-is that what you want to do?"
Dad: "Sure!"
At this point, I figured he meant a little TV, maybe a 24" flat screen; just something that he wouldn't have to strain to haul up the stairs.
Such was not the case.
Pictures to come once I make sense of the mess that is my new apartment.
A (mostly) pictorial round-up of things that are making me happy this week:
*Finally getting the tattoo that I've wanted for a few months now (happy belated 25th birthday to ME). I e-mailed the shop that a few people recommended to me early Monday morning, the artist called around 10 am, and by 7:30 that evening I had been be-tatted (or something like that).
*The mug that Amazon gave me as a going-away gift.
*The sweet wall decorations I found for my new apartment at a home store in the Lake City. There may be an emerging trend in my life...
So apparently I'm the bacon girl now? Back in May, I flew to PDX to visit Mo, and before we drove south to her house, we spent some time downtown. We ate pad Thai at the Saturday Market, got Americanos at Stumptown Coffee and stood in line for 45 minutes to get bacon maple bars at VooDoo Donut. SO WORTH THE WAIT, let me tell you. It sounds incredibly disgusting, I know, but it's delicious. The bacon is extra crispy and the maple frosting is just gooey enough... Lordy, I can't even handle it. Anyhow, I texted a picture to pretty much everyone I knew and before I knew it, I had become the bacon girl. Chocolate-covered bacon at the coast over the 4th of July, a home attempt at recreating the bacon maple bar (not quite the same, but tasty nonetheless), and now these cookies that Starbuck shared on my Facebook wall a while back. I've been looking for an excuse to make them since I read about them, and "having most of the morning off" qualified as enough of an excuse for me!
I won't even bother reposting the recipe, because I didn't adapt it at all. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
*I briefly considered making some healthy substitutions when I was shopping for these this morning (pumpkin puree for butter, etc.) but quickly regained my sanity. Chocolate, peanut butter and bacon? If there was ever a go big or go home moment in my life, it was this one.
1. NPR. I honestly don't even know how this one happened, but suddenly I'm obsessed with listening to public radio. I have a feeling it may be a combination of wanting to be a little more informed and the fact that my commute is a bit longer now that I'm crashing at Amazon's house. Last Thursday, I listened to an interview with John Waters (perhaps the creepiest person I've ever heard of) on my drive home. Why? Because it was on! Why not?!
2. Podcasts. I know, I know, I'm so late to the game on this one, but bear with me. Since moving in with Amazon, I've been living without cable and have had to find other ways to entertain myself (which is so not the point of this; I'm a big girl). One of my favorite blogs puts out a weekly podcast called the Pop Culture Happy Hour, which, for a pop culture fiend such as myself, is equal parts intelligent, witty, incisive and sarcastic. I'm a big fan.
3. Moving to PDX. I spent this past weekend down in Oregon with my mom apartment hunting. It was exhausting and frustrating and overwhelming, but in the end I found a place that I'm really excited about. It's got a ton of light, vaulted ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace, and a solarium, for crying out loud! Very stoked for the move. Less stoked about having to leave Amazon and her bitchin' baking/cooking skills, but somehow I'll soldier through.
*Notice has been given at work and families have been notified. The parents I was most worried about both took the news of my leaving really well. Still, though, if I really stop and think about actually having to leave Fish-Man and Drama, I can feel myself starting to second-guess the whole decision.
*Successfully moved out of the apartment last weekend. The majority of my stuff (, books, furniture, etc.) went home with Mom and Dad, and the rest moved up to Amazon's house for the next month or so. It was all kinds of bizarre to see the apartment completely empty when I finally finished cleaning on Sunday. I won't lie, I almost took a picture to post on here. What a loser.
*Flying to PDX with Mom this weekend to apartment-hunt.
*I saw this video posted on at least three blogs in my RSS feed today. I'm a sucker for dance movies; I willingly admit to owning "Center Stage" and to watching the sequel, "Center Stage 2" on more than one occasion. I'm not coordinated enough to be called a good dancer; let's just leave it at that.
I'm under no illusion that I'm not an enormous pack-rat; it's been my reality for as long as I can remember. Throwing things away kills me. As I've been packing up the apartment in preparation for moving in with Amazon and, ultimately, my relocation to PDX, I've been forcing myself to really examine the crap that has wound up shoved into every nook and cranny of my life and deciding if it's really vital to the salvation of my soul to keep it, and I've found that, for the most part, it's not been as difficult as I anticipated. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and thus more mature (ha!), or maybe I just want to get it all in boxes and not have to stress about it anymore. Whatever.
But what do I do with my CD collection? Now, prior to last summer when, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought an old Jimmy Eat World album at Hastings, I can't remember the last time I physically bought and actual CD. Approximately 97% of my music is already stored on my computer. I have a sweet FM transmitter built into my sweet Bluetooth device so I can listen to whatever I might be in the mood for with a few taps of my finger. I got rid of any CD players that I had long, long ago. So why do I continue to hold onto my collection of albums?
As near as I can figure, to get rid of my album collection would be acknowledging the end of an era (so to speak). The advent of iTunes has coincided with my coming-of-age in such a way that I sometimes find myself becoming wistful about the days when I just had to stop in at Sam Goody whenever we made the trip to the mall. When I made up my Christmas list, it was always consisted of a couple of different CDs, and I always had to make a note for my mom as to what section of the music store she'd be able to find them, since I've never been one to commit to a genre. Now, iTunes gift cards are pretty much par for the course for any gift-giving occasion and Mom no longer has to stress about trying to find an album by an obscure band for my stocking.
I've gotten rid of old CDs before, of course, when I've outgrown or gotten bored with them (much to my chagrin, now, because I would love to have that Foo Fighters album back), but I'm not sure if I can clean house of the entire collection. I just don't know if I'm ready to close that chapter.
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller, excerpted a passage from "Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace and Learning the Hard Way" by Shauna Niequist on his blog. The passage he quoted dealt with reconciling the role of femininity in today's world. I recommend clicking over and reading the blog post, because it caught my eye enough that I promptly downloaded "Bittersweet" (I'm a little infatuated with iBooks).
Perhaps it's my emo kid sensibility or perhaps it's that I'm on the precipice of a major life change, but reading just the description of the book had me slack-jawed. I don't know that I'd describe myself as a bittersweet person, but I certainly have my moments of cynicism and I do tend toward a somewhat sardonic and rigid outlook on life and life changes in particular (I like to call those my autistic moments). I'm only a few chapters into the book, but I wanted to share a passage from the prologue that struck me by how beautifully written and moving it was. Also, I'm a sucker for symbolism.
Christians, generally, aren’t great at lament and mourning. Jews are really better at lament, maybe because they’ve had more practice. My favorite part of a Jewish wedding is the breaking of the glass. Like most Jewish traditions, there are a whole bunch of interpretations: some say that all the shards of broken glass suggest loads of future children and future happiness. Some say that the breaking of the glass references the irreversible nature of marriage: in the same way that the glass can never be put back together after it’s been broken, two people can never be separated once they’ve been connected by marriage. But my favorite interpretation is the one where the wine in the glass is a symbol for all of life, and when the bride and groom drink it, they accept both the bitter and the sweet aspects of life. They accept that sometimes they’ll celebrate and sometimes they’ll mourn, in the same way that sometimes they’ll drink wine and sometimes glasses will shatter.
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