harvest home

we had a simply lovely thanksgiving here, and i hope you did as well.

EH and i (mostly EH though, lets be honest) managed to pull of an honest-to-goodness thanksgiving feast. we even cooked a turkey all by our little selves. and there was stuffing and pies and macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts with bacon and grilled apples and homemade ice cream. plus a gorgeous table and a house filled with people i love. which was most definitely the very best part.

when we were done eating ourselves silly, we went around the table and each said something we were thankful for. and i don't think it's fair that you should miss out, just because you weren't here, so i am going to tell you what i am thankful for, too.

it is this.

right now, at this very moment, there is not one thing about my life that i would change.

and for a person who worries, oh, let's say all the time, this is no small thing. for the first time in a long time i am not consumed with wondering what is going to happen next and how i am going to get myself there. i don't wake up in the morning feeling panicked about whether i am in the right place, doing the right things to move myself to the next right phase.

instead i wake up every morning in a house i love, and drive to a job i enjoy and feel good at, and then come home and spend time doing things i like with people i adore. i don't feel complacent, but i feel content and at peace with the choices i have made and the place they have brought me.

and that is something to be thankful for, indeed.

(i am also thankful for days' and days' worth of delicious leftovers, which you are welcome to come and share with me any time. seriously. please?)

three strikes, that's a turkey

last night EH and i went to the grocery to get everything we need for thanksgiving dinner. this was a lot of things, but we pretty much found them all, so you just rest your pretty little heads about that.

when we went to check out, we decided to just sort of divide the goods up so what she payed and what i payed were roughly even. and get this. we got it within $2.

two dollars!

(i want my two dollars!)

if that is not a thanksgiving miracle, then i guess i don't believe in thanksgiving miracles at all.

add to that the fact that i saved $16 (sixteen dollars!) using my "very important customer" card, which represents more than half of my savings using said card for this whole year (the WHOLE year), and i think we can all agree that it was a highly productive trip to the grocery.

then today i went to the library and checked out every "friends" DVD they had so we can watch all the thanksgiving episodes. it is going to be epic. and hilarious. but don't be jeal. i bet your thanksgiving is going to be awesome, too.

working for the weekend

my weekend started at approximately 12:01 on thursday night/friday morning, as i nestled into my movie theater seat for the midnight screening of harry potter. thanks to a very strict nap and caffeine dosage schedule, AWD and i stayed awake the whole time. i consider this a major accomplishment.

friday was empanadas and cupcakes for dinner with a side of surprise visitors (my favorite!) and saturday was a whirlwind of brunch for kellee's birthday, a capitol tour with uncle bob, dinner and a movie. sunday was an even bigger whirlwind of 16 favorite cousins in town.

i sort of feel like i need a nap.

i would tell you the heart-stopping details of how uncle bob almost didn't make it to the capitol tour (my heart, at least, felt like it might stop), but i think he might be a little embarassed about that, so instead i will tell you the origin of the phrase "red tape." as in bureacratic red tape. or cutting through the red tape. which is probably a more interesting story anyway.

in the basement of the capitol there is a room called the folding room. this is the room where, in the olden days, legislation that was about to be introduced on the floor was printed, folded according to some apparently highly complicated procedure, and then wrapped in a piece of... wait for it... red tape. the carefully printed, folded and taped legislation would be taken by the legislator to the floor, where he (or she) would cut the red tape to open it up and read it. legislation that was never introduced never made it through the red tape.

neato, right?

and now, seriously. i think i am going to take a nap.

happy is the heart

{image via jake's new blog}


i have, for several weeks now, been wanting to write a recap post about my 28th birthday goal to fall in love. i've started and stopped a dozen drafts and imagined a dozen more and none of them have felt or sounded right to me. they are either too much or too little or don't ring true enough or tell just a little too much truth and i guess ultimately this is what i get for a) making a goal like "fall in love" in the first place and b) putting that goal on the internet.

i know i want to say something, though, because i think falling in love is good and important and i think that being able to fall in love makes us better, stronger, happier people in the end. so i decided to take it back to the basics and leave it at that.

one. i believe in love. i believe that it happens.

two. i know that we survive when, for whetever reason, love doesn't happen the way we wished and hoped it would have.

three. love is a choice. i choose to open my heart to experiences and people and relationships that will lead me to love, or i don't. the end.

four. i want to always choose love. even when it burns me. even when it hurts. even when i put it out and it doesn't come back to me. because i would rather love and lose bravely than be scared and never try.

five.the more i try, the better i get at love. it seems like the opposite should be true, and sometimes it feels like the opposite is true for a minute, but in the end loving some just makes me want to love more. which is good news because i like being a person who loves.

reunion sweet

some time last week i got an e-mail from ABK that said, "a proposal: dinner. my house. 11/15. special guests will be in attendance. you won't want to miss it."

i e-mailed back and asked if i should wear a prom dress. he said casual dress was fine.

then that night i had a dream that when i showed up at ABK's house on the appointed day, the cast of "glee" was there to serenade us while we dined. it was delightful.

i e-mailed ABK about my dream and asked if i was on the right track. he said i should have gone into intelligence.

and then the appointed day arrived and the surprise was so much better than anything i could ever have imagined. because there at dinner were kathryn and matt, two friends from the fellowship ABK and i did together who i had not seen in seven years. seven years! and wouldn't you know but they both live here in d.c. as well. and so we were reunited over catfish with pecan muniere and oyster baked stuffing and i loved every minute.

the longer i live my life the more amazed i become at the fact that there are so few things that are ever just over and done never to be seen or heard from again. i used to think that each chapter of our life had a firm beginning and a definitive end and then that was over and on we went to the next adventure. which is true in some sense, i suppose, but i feel like my life and my experiences and my relationships keep overlapping each other in a way that is so comforting and familiar and makes me want to be a good and kind person all the time, because most things don't just get tied off and forgotten.

and thank goodness for that.

eleventh hour

my veterans day started off with a donut for breakfast, so it was pretty much destined to be great from the start. not like a thursday with no work can really be bad, but if it could be bad i have every confidence that a donut for breakfast could make it better.

we have been having the most gorgeous fall weather here lately: warm and colorful with blue skies and the sun up early in the morning (to all you daylight savings haters, i say hush. i am loving it) and yesterday was basically perfect in all four of those departments. after some errand-running in the morning, AWD and i spent the afternoon holding hands and strolling around arlington cemetery. which was even better than a donut. we saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknowns, and just missed joe biden leaving after the wreath-laying ceremony, but we felt OK about that. if it had been george clooney laying the wreath and we had missed it, that would have been a different story.



arlington cemetery is a 100 percent lovely place, and i don't know why i hadn't been since i moved here. most of my pictures are still being held captive on film inside the holga, but here are a few digitals. though they don't really do anything in them justice.





dana and i rounded out the day with the weepies at the state theater.




let's talk about the weepies. i really like them. they sounded super different live, though not in a bad way and they told cute stories and kissed each other at the end (cus husband and wife) and i pretty much loved all of it. remember when i never used to go to concerts? what was i thinking?

plus we parked the car in a sort of sketchy spot and didn't get towed, plus i didn't run out of gas even though my light had been on for a while, plus dana made the last train back to the city. veterans day miracles all around.

this evening i am fleeing south to watch heather and nathan's kids while they run the richmond half-marathon (they are amazing) and then i think i'll curl up in a sunny spot and read and sleep for the rest of the weekend.

i hope you get to do the same.

p.s. i'm back

to quote my dear old dad, the blog is a little "stale." so, let's freshen things up, shall we?

first i guess i should mention that halloween happened. as a well-documented halloween hater, it should come as no surprise that i did not dress up or attend any halloween-related parties. i did put some spiders on my front door, eat my mom's homemade halloween sugar cookies and hand out candy to adorable children who came knocking on my door. after ensuring that none of them had a peanut allergy, naturally.



lest you think that i didn't have any fun on halloween weekend, let me put your minds to rest and tell you that i did attend a little rally here in d.c., hosted by one jon stewart and one stephen colbert. though honestly it could have been hosted by the muppets for all i could see and hear. it was basically a perfect day to be outside, though, so any excuse to take advantage of it was a good one. plus i got to see lots of funny signs (my favorite: is this the line for justin bieber tickets?) and hang out with these kids, who came down from new york to see the show.

speaking of new york, remember how EH and i went there over columbus day weekend? that was a good time. really, i think my trips to new york are only getting better and better and this was definitely one of the best. we saw a taping of "wait, wait, don't tell me!" at carnegie hall, had the most delicious late night waffles from the waffle truck in the west village, ate delicious brunch, walked across the brooklyn bridge, hit up the brooklyn flea market, ate delicious pie and exotic fresh and hand-made popsicles, watched some "felicity" (so apropos) and ate cupcakes, went to the top of rockefeller center (it's called top of the rock. so catchy!) and spent the morning in the cooper hewitt design museum. plus, dinner with my favorite woolleys, a stroll on the upper east side with the always hilarious ryan ham(ilton) and a chance meeting with my girl miaken, who happened to be in town as well.





































whew. we really crammed in a lot. it was fun for me to relive that. how about you?



back on the homefront, it is pretty much business as usual. the usual being home improvement projects and pumpkin waffles and spricket assassination. i also finally started using the holga. i am not sure if i loaded the film properly, so it may or may not be taking actual pictures every time i click the button, but the mystery is part of the fun, right? i'll let you know how it goes.

and i think that's it from me. unless there's something you'd like to talk about?