What I'm Wearing Today

It's been a long time (shouldn't a left you, left you, without a dope beat to step to).


Chambray sundress!


Boyfriend cardigan! Except I'm not naked!


Infinity scarf! Except mine is not choking me!


And the shoes of course.

Jungle Cat

Look who caught a fish. Looks like my city boy might be a little more rough and tumble than I thought.

Oh wait, that's him sprawled out on our heated floors over there after drinking his ice water from a cup.

False alarm.

Fresh Pasta Round 3

Guess who's taking a cooking class this Friday...

It's a ravioli workshop and I'm so super excited about it. Like, ridiculously excited. I have forever wanted to spend an entire Saturday making different fillings and fresh pasta and putting together little pockets of pasta. I want to make gobs of delicious carbs to eat and freeze and gift to people. And now that I have a not broken mixer, a pasta attachment (because I am too weak to roll out dough thin enough), and am going to be learning all the tips and tricks I finally feel I am totally prepared to be awesome at this. Both the making and eating parts.

The class menu includes:
Fresh Pasta Dough
Acorn Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter-Sherry Sauce
Goat Cheese and Arugula Ravioli with Roasted Cherry Tomato, Almond and Olive Tapenade
Three-Cheese Ravioli with Tomato-Balsamic Sauce and Parmesan Curls

Amazing right?

A (not so) Secret Admirer

Sometimes people email me asking for some fashion advice and I love it. At one point I thought being a stylist would be awesome but that's easy. Given unlimited resources you're bound to find something worth wearing. The fun for me is when someone asks me to find them say, a dress for an event during the Summer at night. They like pinks and reds, love their legs, aren't a fan of their stomach, won't wear heels, aren't a necklace person, and want to spend $200. That's a challenge and that's where I have fun.

Recently someone asked me to help her find her wedding dress. I couldn't find exactly what she wanted and was a little worried she was going to be disappointed. Instead she was excited and extremely grateful. It was actually really lovely to hear and meant more than I'm sure she realized. And today I came home to a flower delivery from her. I don't think I have to tell anyone how happy it makes a girl to come home to flowers.

And her screaming cat (you'll notice he has both food and water already).





I'm not going to post a picture of the dress because it's hers to debut to the world but I will reveal, she's going to be one gorgeous bride.

Soul Food

My real life family sort of sucks. And by sort of I mean definitely. And a bunch. In fact 'sort of that means definitely' so much that after years and years of trying to repair things after a particularly ridiculous argument that involved me being kicked out of the house as a teen (for reals I was an awesome kid and did nothing wrong) and many years before that filled with an alcoholic and, quite likely, bi-polar mother I realized that as many times as I'd been convinced things could get better I'd also been disappointed. And once I made that realization I decided to move on from the emotional equivalent of watching the Twilight movies. I was putting a whole lot in and not getting anything out of it other than headaches and the distinct impression that none of this was ever going to make any sense.

And now I have a new family. We don't share DNA and I'll never have their nose or eyes but they are so the people who I was meant to spend holidays with and come to when I need guidance and nothing makes me happier than being home with them and helping the girls pack for a trip or helping the woman I think of as my mom and one of my closest friends clean the kitchen after dinner because that's what families do.

After a rough couple weeks and a draining day yesterday I text my "mom" (let's call her S) asking if I could see them soon. Within five minutes I had a call from the littlest munchkin asking me to come over for lunch this weekend. And I happily agreed.

What I thought would be an hour or so visit turned into a nearly five hour one. When I was leaving S said "I hope this felt good for your soul." and that's exactly what it did, fed my soul.

Can I just retire now? Please?

Seriously. I started the day oh so thankful it's Friday (Does anyone else have Rebecca Black come to mind every time the word Friday comes up now?) and now I'm pretty sure I need to retire. Today. Too bad my 401K is about a jillion dollars short of me being able to do so.

Maybe a vacation would do.

A Sprinkler...

I've decided that pretty much every piece of available wall in my apartment should have art on it. This is going in my kitchen where I will never stop being happy when I see it.

Rain, rain...

There are supposed to be thunderstorms tonight. Lana is back from London (man i missed that girl) and we plan to spend the evening being cozy, ordering in, and watching way too much Glee. There will likely be chocolate involved as well.

Art imitating life imitating art...

Thursday

I've been fairly open here about my seeing a therapist and the fact that I take medication. And I feel that I should be, that in some way I owe it to someone as thanks for the fact that those things have helped me. But I also sometimes forget that even with therapy and medicines that make me feel normal for the first time in...ever, I don't think I'll ever be "better." And that can be a really hard thing to come to terms with.

The technical thing I'm diagnosed with is PTSD, trust me, I thought it sounded stupid at first too. I mean, I've never been in a war or natural disaster or kidnapped or something but the more I read and learned the more things finally made sense for being the way they were. And the more my doctor and I worked on treating that, the better I felt. And I do feel good most of the time. I used to be so incredibly high strung and have such a need to be in control and make everyone happy that I was dooming us all to be unhappy. I was always anxious and felt such pressure to be exactly what I was supposed to be to everyone because if I didn't then they would leave. I was constantly in a panic over what to do in order to make people happy.

And now that things are better I feel stronger and more capable of being angry with someone if I feel angry or disagreeing and knowing that the whole relationship won't end because of it. But all the therapy and pills in the world won't change the things that have happened to me and that includes a lot of people who have left me. My parents, my closest friends, and the families I've created along the way to make up for the loss of my own. And when I'm doing well I am able to recognize that none of these people's choices had anything to do with me so much as with themselves. But when I'm not doing well, or when another person leaves, I'm blind to that. It leaves me feeling I won't ever have someone stay. It makes me feel like all I want to do is hide and protect myself from ever having a connection with someone again because my heart can't take that hurt anymore. And it again leaves me with the feeling that if I were just more fun or interesting or intelligent or whatever it is someone wants from me that they would stay.

It just keeps getting harder and harder to not feel broken by people.

There's a letter floating around from a girl to a boy, and while this has nothing to do with a boy it resonates with me. In the letter she writes "If ever I get that close to another, I fear they will know me only as I am now, and not as how I got here." I'm afraid of that too. I'm afraid that someday I will wake up and not be able to recognize myself as the girl who at one point could never understand why someone would be scared to love.