Intern Wanted

What my personal assistant would do if I had one:

• Take clothes to the consignment shop that's a million miles away because all the ones around where I live only want Chanel and Louis Vuitton and I just want to sell my too-tiny RL polos and old Target dresses, okay?
• Scour all the neighborhoods within T ride distance for a new apartment because our lease is almost up and as awesome as our neighborhood is, the rent is too. damn. high!* Especially for a place with no AC, dishwasher or laundry and a tendency for the power to go out. 
• Open and organize my mail, print all my financial statements and generally get paperwork in a nice, neat system that I can peruse quickly and efficiently when I feel like it. 
• Turn in (on time) the various forms at school that I usually forget about until it's 10:00 on the day they are due and I have to scan and email them in so they aren't late. 
• Cut out coupons. Possibly also go get groceries using said coupons, although that might border on advantage-taking. (Also note that I would not require my personal assistant to clean the apartment, because then I would feel TOO lazy and guilty.)
• Schedule eye appointments, doctor appointments, eyebrow threading appointments, dentist appointments, car repair appointments, haircuts, vet appointments, Brian's doctor appointments and dentist appointments and haircuts... and all the other body/life/house/car/Penny maintenance things that I forget to do until it's 5:00 and every place is closed. 
• Make phone calls regarding a myriad of wedding-related queries, including but not limited to venue, food, flowers, cake, accommodations, transportation, music, booze – planning a wedding from ten states away involves a lot of on-the-phone time, y'all.

What I would do while my personal assistant did all those things:

• Freelance journalism.
• Read books.
• Make books.
• Photoshop.
• Blog.
• Make things for the wedding.
• Sell things on Etsy. 
• Buy things on Etsy.
• Make decorative things for our home. 
• Play with Penny.
• Nap with Penny.
• Clean and learn to cook really awesome things. 
• Generally look a lot more presentable every day. 

...You know, looking over these lists, I think I would be a lot more of a success as a human being if I didn't want to do silly "creative" and "artistic" things all the time instead. Note to self: become less imaginative. 

* I sincerely hope at least one person got this SNL reference. 

The Dress

Happy Memorial Day!
I have a wedding dress!

Okay, so this news is a little old. I actually decided on the dress almost a week ago. I've kind of been neglecting the ole blog lately the whole last month. Not that I haven't thought about blogging a ton. It's just that whenever I got around to actually writing my thoughts out... I didn't feel like it. I'M ON VACATION MAN... NOT ON THE RUG, MAN!!

I'm not going to put a picture of the dress (ahem, The Dress) up because Brian reads my blog and I don't want him to see it before The Big Day, but I will tell you that it has tulle:

and ribbon:

and flowers:

... DAMMIT!! Y'all totally know what it looks like now, don't you?!?!!

Well anyway, I've been engaged for several months now (over five, wow!) and have been perusing wedding blogs like it's my JOB (seriously, if someone wants to hire me for this, I am an E-X-P-E-R-T) but when it came to picking out my actual I'm-getting-married-in-a-wedding-dress wedding dress, I sort of freaked out.

Which was silly. I am so lucky. I got to go to NYC and stay with my mom and one of my best friends and have a whole whirlwind adventure of wedding dress-vaganza. It was like a cloud of organza and estrogen for three days straight.

But I still freaked out. I freaked out over spending that amount of money on any one piece of attire, especially one that I will only wear once. I freaked out over the fact that I'm getting married, y'all. I freaked out over the fact that Brian will choose to say, "I do" based on this dress.

Except that's totally absurd talk and only in my head. Brian has told me more than once that he will love whatever I come down the aisle in (yes, I've tried to pick his brain about wedding dress styles, to not much avail). But when it came to committing - to saying, "Yes" to The Dress (NO WE DIDN'T GO TO SNOBTOWN KLEINFELDS, STOP ASKING)... where was I? Oh yes, when it came to committing to this really expensive dress, I just really really wanted to talk to Brian. Which is also silly because I've always been one of those people who thinks that the groom shouldn't see The Dress until it is walking down The Aisle with The Bride inside it (It?). But I really needed to talk to him in this moment.

So it was unfortunate that he decided to take a nap right after I tried on this Very Important Dress. This meant I ran around like a crazy person, barking at my mom and Tait, making us waste a thousand hours in the Crate & Barrel around the corner while I stared at my phone and pretended the large knot in my stomach didn't exist.

Yes, it's not very glamorous.

But that's real life.

Brian eventually woke up, called me back and told me to chill out. So I did, and then my mom, Tait and I drank some wine and watched Harry Potter.

And the next day I committed to the dress!
In the end, it was exciting and glamorous and just right.

When I was newly engaged, I googled images of wedding dresses using very specific search criteria (which again, I'm not writing here to keep the dress a surprise) and I came up with one dress that I thought was beautiful. I had no idea who designed it or whether it was even in-season, but I printed the picture out and sent it to my mom and bridesmaids. A couple of months later, I saw the dress again in a magazine and discovered who made it. A few months after that, I was in New York, trying on dresses and on a whim I decided to call the salon and see if they had an opening.

Not only could they squeeze an appointment in for me, but they were having a trunk sale!! (For all you straight males out there, that means all the pretty things are discounted for one weekend only.)

And so I ended up with THAT exact dress which is kind of storybook perfect and the ladies in the salon gave us a champagne toast while I twirled around in my future wedding dress and it was great. Big thanks to dress expert Emily, who supported me while I paraded around the salon in my dress, touching pretty things. Even bigger thanks to my dearest momsy and Taiter for putting up with my slight(?) crazymaking and telling me how wonderful I looked in the dress.

I can't wait to marry mah man in it!

I'm on a bus, mother******

My chair is squeaking like crazy. At least, I think it's my seat. It might belong to the guy behind me, who keeps digging his knees into my seat. But I'm pretty sure it's mine. I keep trying to figure out how to distribute my weight so it will stop, to no avail. I am right behind the driver, but there's no way he hears me. He has headphones on that, judging by the little screen to his left, are blasting music in a language I don't know (Hebrew possibly?) and he has been tapping his hands and occasionally letting out soft and vaguely animalistic singing noises for the entirety of the three hours so far.

But I don't care. I'm not driving.

I am currently sitting on a bus somewhere between Boston and New York City and this seems as good a time as any to say, I LOVE public transportation. I would never drive if I didn't have to. If I ever have enough money, I'd like to not have to.

In Corinth, MS it seemed like everyone learned how to drive by 12 or 13. Sophomore year Drivers Ed was a mere formality. Not so for me. A couple weeks before The semester started, I freaked out when I realized this and so my dad gave me lessons in the high school's empty parking lot. After a few false starts (and stops), I figured out it wasn't quite as difficult as I'd imagined. I shouldn't really have worried. The test to get your driver's license in Corinth involves pulling out of the parking lot, turning right, going through a four-way stop, turning right again, going through a traffic light and finally taking one last right turn and parking the vehicle safely back in the DMV parking lot. I'm pretty sure it takes most people longer to figure out what weight to put on the form than to complete this driving test.

After that I was handed the keys to the forest green '98 Avalon that had been my dad's car, then my brother's first car, and was now to be my first car. (Actually it's still my first car and is entering teenhood with remarkable grace, despite being almost completely buried in snow a couple times this past winter).

I really enjoyed driving in high school and college. I loved the freedom of going wherever I felt like. Particularly in high school, gas prices were annoying but not the biting burden they are now. There was nothing better on a nice day than to crank up the music and go for a drive, and Mississippi has a lot of nice days. Beautiful weather and show tunes could make even the four hour drive from home to school feel leisurely.

Of course, there soon emerged the problem of alcohol. Or more specifically, who would forgo alcohol for the night to ensure the safety of a car-full of lives. It's pretty much a given that no one wants to be DD. Which brings me back to my original point, public transportation = heaven.

I also really dislike driving in traffic/metropolitan areas. Even in Jackson, Mississippi didn't have much in the way of crazy traffic or road-raged-out drivers. Boston, on the other hand, has them in spades. I've driven in the city plenty of times now, but I never really enjoy it. And I can't even imagine trying to drive in NYC. (Brian and I drove down from Dartmouth a couple years ago and I made him drive the entire time. He is a manly man for putting up with me.)

Personally, I'd rather just get sloshed, avoid angry drivers and not have to worry about speed limits. Public transportation FTW.

Now if we could just get high speed trains in this country, my travel needs would be met. And if someone could fix this seat, that'd be good too.

(Note to my mom, who inquired, and anyone else over the age of 35: the title of this post is a reference to an SNL sketch. I don't just curse willy-nilly. [At least, not on the blog. (At least, not in the titles. [Usually.])])

from my mind grapes: meeting Susan Orlean

Finals week nearly broke me. Last last Monday, after only two hours of sleep and about twenty hours of writing one of my courses met for the final class at the professor's favorite bar. I was already drunk with sleeplessness, so you can imagine how I was after a pint of Bud Light... And I still had 28 more hours until I finally turned my last story.

BUT. I'm done now. Actually I was done Wednesday, May 4th at midnight (or Thursday morning, I suppose that would be more accurate), but I've been far too busy napping and forcing Penny to snuggle with me and watching 51 episodes of 30 Rock on the iPad over the past week and a half to blog.

I really haven't known what to do with myself now that I have free time. Okay, that's not true. I know what I should be doing with myself (cleaning, dishes, applying for jobs, etc). But since I don't want to do those things, I haven't known what to do. Or at least what to do first (should I nap then watch mindless TV, or watch mindless TV then nap???). I am very, very excited to have free time and to do things that I want to do without feeling horribly guilty about whatever school thing I'm neglecting to do so. Notably reading. I have been amassing so many books over the past year that I have not had any time to read.

I even got three brand new books in the last week of school, all signed! Y'all. For a nerd like me, signed books are like crack. Especially when they are by SUSAN ORLEAN. Who is Susan Orlean, you may ask? Let me illuminate.

The weekend before all my finals were due, BU hosted their annual Narrative Nonfiction Conference. It was quite possibly the worst timing in the history of the universe, but I went anyway, because a) one of my professors helped organize it and strongly encouraged his students to go (by "encouraged," I mean in class one morning he told us all to stop what we were doing and go RSVP so we could snag the few free student tickets bring offered) and b) there was free food, but also because c) I'm a huge nerd and I love conferences.

It ended up being totally worth it despite losing a day and a half of work because I got to see, listen to and meet one of my writing idols, acclaimed nonfiction novelist and writer for The New Yorker Susan Orlean. (...Sort of meet, at least.)

If you don't know who Susan Orlean is, here are some reasons she is awesome and I want to grow up to be her or at least play her in the movie version of her life*:
1) she is an incredible writer
2) she's a ginger
3) she's smoking hot at 56
4) she tweets more than I do
5) she's incredibly enthusiastic, funny and smart
6) did I mention she's an incredible writer?

There were some other amazing speakers too, like Gay Talese (prolific writer as good now at 79 as he was at 24 - or perhaps vice versa), Isabel Wilkerson (author of the book that the nonfiction narrative world is collectively peeing their pants over, The Warmth of Other Suns) and Jill Abramson (managing editor of The New York Times, aka the holy text of our people).

But Susan was the one I was the most excited to see. And she did not disappoint, with the most honest and useful and entertaining keynote of the conference.

And then after all the panels and keynotes and readings of excerpts, there was a reception with awesome cheeses and wine (again, worst timing ever; all events with free alcohol should be held at least two weekends before finals, don't they KNOW that?!) and book signings.

Which brings me to meeting Susan Orlean. She signed my book!

I told her she inspired us students to persevere through our finals! Note: Figuring out what to say at a book signing is seriously the most awkward thing ever.

I (and two other students) took a picture with her!

The guy taking the photo told us we looked "really good" standing behind her like that. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know the difference between "really good" and "incredibly awkward."

We legitimately look like we are stalking Susan Orlean and we just jumped into the background of a solo photo she was taking at the signing table.

But whatever, this is what it looked like in my head anyway:

please note the BFF bracelets Suze made us

Dear Susan,
Please never stop being an awesome redhead. I can't wait to read the book you signed for me. Also please don't put me on some kind of security blacklist for this post, I promise I'm not dangerous.
Love,
Kathleen


* The movie version of her REAL life, not the fictionalized craziness of The Orchid Thief.