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.

odds and ends: THE WEDDING

Hello world. It’s 2 a.m. and I am still awake because I swore to myself I wouldn’t go to sleep tonight until I had transcribed every last minute of my many interviews over the past week or two. And that takes a long ass time, y’all. And my fingers are cramped and I’m hyped up on 5-hour energy yet awkwardly tired in the way that only finals week can do to a body.

What I’m saying is, this might be the most cracktastic post I’ve ever done.

It’s odd and ends again time, friendys, and this time it’s all about the most important wedding ever. No, not my wedding. It’s THE ROYAL WEDDING, which is the most important wedding in anyone and everyone’s lives, if you listen to the media lately.

It seems like most of the people that are vocal about THE WEDDING are either super intensely excited (“OMGGGGGG Ican’twaitI’mwakingupat4a.m.justtoseewhatshe’swearingandherperfecthair IloveKateMiddletonholyshit Kate+Wills4ever&EVERRRRRRRRRR”) or super intensely bitter/disdainful (“I am SO over the royal wedding, just get married already, am I right? How could anybody care about something so superficial? Don’t you know there are so may other more IMPORTANT things going on in the world?!?”)

I, and I assume many of the silent masses, lie somewhere in between.

I am genuinely excited for the wedding – excuse me, THE WEDDING. I’ve followed the buzz, but not stalker-level closely. I am excited in the way that many females of my generation probably are, because this is a real life princess story. And it’s the first one that our generation has experienced. I hadn’t been born yet with Diana became a princess, but I remember when she was killed. The whole thing was so tragic, even to my young self. (On a sidenote, my fifth grade teacher looked just like Princess Diana. Exactly like her.)

And Kate and William’s relationship is so much more of a fairy-tale because a) They actually seem to be in love, and b) She’s an everyday girl! Well, except for being super rich and blessed with the best hair on the globe. She was born a “commoner” (and god FORBID the media ever let her forget it, she will be called a former commoner until the day she dies) but she is going to be a princess as of today.

So I was never planning to wake up at 4 a.m. to watch every single second (but since it looks like I may be pulling an all-nighter for finals week, I might check in), but I am excited to read/watch the coverage later to see what Kate wore and how good her shiny, shiny hair looked. And I’m even MORE excited to see all the incredible hats and fascinators the guests wore. I LOVE A GOOD HEADPIECE, Y’ALL. Especially if it's feathered.

sassmonster

Anyway, the most entertaining thing about THE WEDDING has been the runup to it, particularly the awesome/ridiculous swag and other hype centered around it.

I should have done this post last week so you would be able to go out and order all this vital paraphernalia to enjoy today… but I didn’t. Luckily, like Kate and William’s love, this stuff will be beautiful and useful FOREVER.

Like, for example, the Lifetime movie William & Kate. You could watch the extra-speedily written, cast, filmed and edited movie on your own, or you could read the Fug Girls review. It was truly cinematic… something (I mean, not that I watched it*).

And if you are watching the movie (or reading the review) on your laptop, why not snuggle under the William and Kate Royal Bed-ding? Wake up next to the future King, ladies!!

looking a little flat there, Kate

While watching the movie, you can work on your own Coat of Arms juuust in case you and Harry really are meant to be together. Apparently mere commoners must invent coats of arms when they marry princes.

If you finish the movie and immediately want to act it out again in your own home, consider creating your own Lego wedding or knitting the royals.

you'll use them again and again!

If you need something a little bigger, just snap up the $57 Princess Catherine doll.

oh honey, that fascinator needs more sass

Your lego/knit/doll reenactments will clearly gain you a ton of prestige and money, so why not spend a few of your new millions by bidding on a jellybean that looks like Kate Middleton? Or if you are hungrier than one lil jellybean, perhaps you’ll want to order a royal wedding-themed pizza?

nothing better than a mushroom veil

Which, obviously, you will serve on your William and Kate plateware set.

And since I'm sure your cat, like Penny, would hate to be left out, treat her to a special dinner of Royal Wedding Cat Food.

After eating, be sure to apply your William and Kate engagement photo nail decals so that when you practice your royal wave, your fingers are up to par. 

Of course, when your lover comes home to find you under your William & Kate covers, watching the William & Kate movie, eating William & Kate pizza and cat food, playing with your William & Kate Legos and dolls and flashing your William & Kate manicure, there’s only one thought that will go through his head: “I'm gonna tap that.”

Luckily, William and Kate can be with you even when you get intimate, in my personal favorite crazy swag item: Crown Jewels Condoms.

just perfect

Well, I’ll leave you crazy kids to it. I’m going to go put this on:

source

And get back to work.




UPDATE: So Time just tweeted about this. Holy shit, y'all. I love the English.

* I totally did. The second half at least.**
** I would have watched the whole thing if I had realized earlier it was on. ***
*** It was really bad. Like… Really. Bad.

All photos belong to the sites linked to. 

our song, option 2

So Russell has some competition. As beautiful and touching his lyrics are, this song by Natasha Bedingfield also has a special place in our hearts and our past. It crept onto the music scene the summer Brian and I started dating. The song seemed to go unnoticed by pretty much everyone, except someone in our friendy group found it and then we pretty much listened to it nonstop for three months.

So imagine it now: we've just been announced as Mr. and Mrs., we sweep onto the dance floor, surrounded by all our loved ones and we dance to this:

Me, the brand

I spent a significant portion of the weekend and almost all of today working on building a website and professional portfolio. It is the final project for my Multimedia Journalism class, and it's one of the most useful assignments ever. I need these things for future job applications and to get my name out there anyway, but having it be an assignment gives me a deadline and the motivation to make it really good. It will be published in about a week and then you can find it at www.kathleenmmorrison.com* (hire me!).

Next step after the website? My own cereal. 

Anyway, it's weird to write about myself so much in such a clinical, professional way. It's worse than a resume (which I have also re-done in the past week, in addition to LinkedIn). And it's been weird trying to figure out what is important to include, especially when it comes to linking to my other online ventures. I wrote some months ago about how new age journalists have to have a significant online and social media presence, which is great, except it also needs to be "clean" and professional, which is not.

I've back and forth for a long time about what to do about my Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as this blog. I still am not totally sure what to do. A classmate of mine solved the problem by making a "fan" page of himself – you know, the ones you 'like' instead of 'friend.' I don't think I'm quite at that level yet, especially when I only have four online clips to my name.

The thing is, I actually have something to show that I can produce a lot of content on a fairly regular basis -  including text, photos (many of them spruced up or changed entirely via Photoshop), links, opinions, dialogue, a custom layout and more.  It's right here. This blog.

Unfortunately, I don't know if my accounts of Penny's adventures or my inner feelings or the latest ridiculous thing on the internet is really up to par to put on my fancy schmancy, gonna-show-it-to-potential-employers website.

Which makes me sad because I like this blog. I like a lot of things I've written on it. And even the posts I think could have turned out better are an opportunity to figure things out about my writing. Which, as I keep having to remind myself, is why I started this thing in the first place.

So even though my Facebook and personal Twitter are going to stay private, I'm keeping this blog public. I like having my thoughts out there to be read. I like seeing what paths strangers take to stumble upon one post or another (a lot of people have been finding me lately by googling various things about Maine Coons – although one person searched for "Men Coon" which is pretty hilarious to imagine as a real thing). This is the writing I look forward to after the hard, intense struggle to find the right words for a professional feature or profile or news bit. If potential employers happen to find it and are offended, well, I probably don't want to work with someone that uptight anyway, right?

And for anyone keeping track, after my website goes live, my online presence will include:
a) Facebook
b) two Twitter accounts - my personal one and a newer, professional one
c) this blog
d) LinkedIn
e) a professional website
f) a professional portfolio - basically articles, etc. that I've written, compiled in a blog
g) YouTube
...plus, of course, all those random non-social media accounts like eBay and Beluga and StumbleUpon and various online shopping venues.

Jesus, that's a lot of me out there.

* Deciding on that domain name is actually the first time I've really struggled with the whole changing-your-name bit of marriage, but that's a story for another post.