I never thought a shelf could make me so happy.

Since moving back to Jackson, where we live in a house and not a tiny shoebox, I have gotten really into decorating our home. I loved researching and dreaming and doing what little I could in Boston, but having walls that I can actually nail into and more than one bookshelf to squeeze our book collection onto ... it's great. And since we moved rental homes over the summer, we have even more room than at our previous house. We also have two bookshelves in the big main room. The first thing I really decorated in this house is one of these bookshelves.

I love this bookshelf. I lurve it. I flurve it.

Which is a good thing, because it directly faces our main sofa, it is next to our TV stand and it's the first thing most people see when they come through our front door. So it's a pretty visible shelf.

Everything on it makes me happy, but I picked a few things to point out.

1. I'm trying to tone down my obsession with having frames photos all over the place—Brian prefers a more toned-down look, so I'm trying to be more thoughtful about which photos I display and how. We only have two photos from our wedding up in the house, and this is one of them. It's of Brian's fraternity lifting him up and chanting at the reception. It's a perfect shot.

2. I'm working on a collection of globes for our house. This one, the first of three, has been in my family for at long as I can remember—it still says Soviet Union instead of Russia and things like that. My mom brought it all the way from Salt Lake City the last time she visited.

3. Another theme in our house: ampersands. I am veritably obsessed. This one is a bit hard to see in the photo. You can see it fine in real life. The yarn-wrapped bottles behind it are DIY table decorations from my wedding.

4. This shelf is mostly open. We stick laptops, Brian's med school books, phones, etc. on it. If I've learned one thing about myself, its that I need space to just put things sometimes. It looks (a little) less cluttered if I leave a specific space for that. The floral tray next to the laptop is a place to drop mail.

5. Seven matching baskets to hold DVDs might seem excessive, and it is. But damn do they look nice.

6. ZOMG YOU GUYS LET'S TALK ABOUT THESE BOOKS. I have wanted to make a book spectrum (a reading rainbow if you will? kudos to one of Brian's fraternity brothers for that one) for a while, and this shelf gave me the perfect opportunity. It's big enough but not crazy huge. I pull out boxes and boxes of books and picked the ones with nearly solid-colored spines, then just tweaked until I loved it. All the credit in the world to my husband for watching me painstakingly put this up without saying a word.

I'd like to share more of our home in the coming weeks, but I should probably clean a wee bit first. Maybe wash some dishes. Maybe.

finding my way

Life lately has been hard. Although there certainly have been bright spots, overall I have really been struggling to find my footing as an adult—to juggle work, home, marriage, friends, responsibilities, health, pets... It's been hard and I often feel like I'm drowning in it. Of course, then I feel silly (and even worse) because I know, objectively, that I am a lucky person. But difficult emotions don't care about rational thought. They'll drag you under no matter what.

I need to get back to what makes me happy. Creating things. Being with my friends. Good food and wine. Joking with my husband.

So I am returning to this space once more. Sometimes it will just be so I can spill out all the things swirling in my head, in the hopes I can make sense of them. Sometimes it will be to share something creative that I'm excited about. Sometimes it will be to remind myself to be grateful for what I have. It's mostly for me, but if any readers out there get something out of my ramblings, all the better.

hey remember when I did this? and #mileaday, too

Whoa, a blog post! I've been feeling the itch lately to write. Or rather, to write in my blog voice rather than my fancy newspaper writer voice—because I do write. I write constantly. I write articles for the JFP and I write emails and I write notes and plans and some days I write until I never want to type another word—but other days I want to keep writing, only via an outlet that allows me to write with more of my own personality.

Eventually I'd like to write about the utter whirlwind that has been the past 10 months (Jackson! job! marriage! puppy! med school! grown-up life! so! many! things!), but for now I'm just going to jump in and write about the things on my brain.

I've never been very good at resolutions. Last year I set really vague "resolutions" in the hope that a general movement towards being a better person would be easier than trying for (and probably failing at) something very specific. Which, okay, was a fine thought. I did a lot, maybe even all the things on my list. But to what degree? Did I do them fully? What would fully even be?

This year I was inspired by one of my current favorite blogger, Elise Blaha, to do something different. Elise made it a goal to run (at least) a mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and kept up with it by instagramming photos each day. So I decided to take her idea and run with it on a slightly larger/adjusted scale.

For each month of 2013, I plan to focus on something different, and spend time EVERY DAY doing that thing. Run, clean, make, read, write, cook, stretch, think... I've got ideas but I think I'll decide at the beginning of each month what the new goal will be. In January I went with the most obvious: run at least a mile a day, just like Elise did. I wanted to take that on for a few reasons. One, oh my god I ate a bajillion things and drank at least a few barrels of wine while at my parents for the holidays, and getting into a running habit—even a simple one—couldn't hurt. Two, we now have a really, really large dog (more on that later) and we had gotten a bit out of the habit of taking him on adequate walks and runs once the weather turned bad. I wanted to get back in the habit of taking him out every day.

So how did I do?

I ran 29 times in the 31 days of January. I actually only logged 28 days (the last day I ran in the morning and again at night, to sneak another one in), and I actually only really, literally ran 27 days (one day it was wayyyyy too rainy and cold and miserable, so I did p90x). But I made an effort to be active 29 times and that's what I'm counting. I also use the term "ran" pretty loosely here. Since I took Teddy puppy along most of the time, my actually running was somewhat fragmented. As a large dog is wont to do, Teddy would often run a couple blocks and then stop to pee/sniff everything/look at other dogs/watch squirrels/whatever else dogs do. So we didn't exactly log a swift pace. 

But part of the point of my new resolutions is that its about the effort. I'm not going to beat myself up over the three days I didn't go for a run (and I didn't at the time either) and I'm not going to worry that I didn't log any great times. I wanted to make running with Teddy a part of my daily habit, and I did. I've continued to go for runs and walks nearly every day after January ended.

I also really enjoyed taking and instagramming photos of the project. It became a creative outlet within the resolution, trying to make each photo a little bit different. It might make my instagram feed boring as hell, but I'll probably continue that aspect throughout the year. I'll take the motivation wherever I can find it. 

My February project is #conquerclutter, which I am finding more difficult for  several reasons. 1) I am so not a cleaner. 2) It's vaguer, as far as timeframe and goal (I'm trying to fix that by choosing specific areas to focus on going forward). and 3) The photos are less uniform, so its not as much fun to instagram—yes, this shouldn't be a factor, but it is. The creative miniproject aspect isn't quite as present on this one. 

We'll see how the rest of 2013 goes. I'm proud of January's progress. No matter what happens going forward, this has been one of my most successful resolutions in years and years. 

life lately

...has been INSANE. Here's what has happened since my last posting:

a) I had my bachelorette party (it was indeed the week I posted about it) and it was fabulous.

b) David came to Boston for St. Patrick's Day and it was ridiculous.

c) I flew to Jackson for a job interview, house hunting, Molly's birthday party and Founder's Day and it was chaotic but oh-so-wonderful.

The rest has been a flurry of emails, research, packing, cleaning, planning, worrying, sleeping, discussing, calligraphy-ing, crafting, exercising, organizing, addressing and hoping. Lots of hoping that in one month we will be in a new home that we both love and can afford. And hoping that in two months we will have a (housebroken!) puppy, celebrated a wonderful and beautiful wedding, I will be starting at a great new job and Brian will be enjoying his last bit of free time before med school. And hoping that in four months I love my job and Brian loves med school and we love Jackson... That part, at least, I know will be true. We will love Jackson. Visiting reminded me all over again how excited I am to be around our friends and back in that community again.

anticipatin'

I read an article a couple weeks ago about appreciating things more and one of the writer's suggestions was to build anticipation by talking up an event before hand, preparing in advance, etc. If this theory proves true, I am going to have the BEST bachelorette party evah. But the funny thing is that the anticipation had been building more by not talking about it.

See, my maid of honor Tait (of Ode to a Taiter fame) and Brian and a myriad of other bridesmaids and friendys have been scheming to keep my bachelorette a secret from me for some months now. At first I didn't know where or when it would be or any details of what we might be doing. Then someone accidentally let it slip that it would be in New York City, which gave me just enough tantalizing detail to get even more excited. But I still don't know when it is, exactly who will be there and what is planned. Every conversation with Tait or Brian has become a tease of half-hints and false trails and the suspense is killing me, but it an awesome way.

Eventually I got another little tidbit - Brian booked me a 9 a.m. bus to NYC on a Friday. Which Friday remains unknown. At first he threatened to wake me up at four in the morning with a bullhorn. But since I don't exactly fancy having scramble to pack and rush out the door to make my bus (and because I threatened to kill him), he sweetly relented and promised to tell me Thursday night.

And then today I got my first official clue-slash-packing aid. Cue excitement ramping up even more (as well as the wondering - would they have planned to give me clues for a week? Two weeks?!?). I will have to wait until Thursday to find out for sure, but if the mystery bachelorette is finally upon us, I am reaaaaddyyyyyy to parrrtyyyyyyyyyyyy.

hello, I am a slut

And so are all my friends, apparently. After all, since almost every female I know is on some kind of birth control – whether it be for health issues that give them extremely painful and miserable periods, irregular and unpredictable periods, or yes, to be able to have sex without getting pregnant – we must all be sluts.

What decade are we in? The last time I checked it was 2012. The TWENTY-FIRST century, y'all.

So can somebody tell me WHY THE HELL women are suddenly being attacked for taking a stand for themselves, their sexuality and their HEALTH?

Here's the thing. I get that birth control is (generally) not a life-saving drug that women absolutely must take to survive. So if you want to argue that one institution or another (be it the government or employers or health care or whoever) shouldn't have to pay to make it affordable for women, that's fine. But then you better be prepared to accept my argument that they shouldn't pay for any other - not ONE single other - medication that isn't 100% lifesaving. I'm betting that is an argument you won't like.

I can't with this thing too much or it will just turn into a rant. But if you want to read more about this issue, I sincerely encourage you to check out the links below, particularly the first by Donna Ladd, editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press in Mississippi.

Living in Hell

Birth control as election issue? Why?

Rush Limbaugh calls woman on birth control 'slut,' but she shows class

Rush Limbaugh Doubles Down on Sandra Fluke, Offering 'As Much Aspirin to Put Between Her Knees As She Wants'

And of course, Jon Stewart's take on the whole thing, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Gross

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

He makes several good points, as always, but the best is, "To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to something they don't like... Welcome to the f***ing club. Everyone pays for sh** they don't want to all the time. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies and diaphragms are on me!"

It is the 19th Amendment that gives women the right to vote. Which means that 18 other amendments were put forth and ratified before the government seriously considered, "Hey, maybe we should extend this basic right to the other fully HALF of our population - to the ones that give us half of our genes, who carry us for nine months inside their bodies, who nurture and raise and teach us. Maybe we should let all people whom these laws affect have a voice in approving or denying them." YOU THINK?!

But, however late to the party it may have been, it is also the 19th Amendment that gives us the power to keep this shit out of the White House. All the ladies out there - all the sluts out there - let's stand up and show what we think of this issue.

February's 29

So far I am loving my photo a day project. I'm already excited to compare the first month to the last and see the differences. New home, new city, new state, new pet (hopefully), new job (SERIOUSLY hopefully), new lifestyle... Plus we have a tentative plan to visit my parents over Brian's Christmas break, so it will be fun to compare that as well (the first six photos of January were taken in Utah visiting them). Their kittens will be so much bigger by that point!

Full confession time, two of these photos are NOT in the correct spot for their day. In January I managed to take a photo every day, but this month I forgot twice, so I pulled photos from days where I took several. The OCD part of me is twitching but I'm determined to not get crazy about this project.

It's also interesting to see the month (or two months) as a whole. I can immediately pick out trends and things I like or dislike. For one thing, there are hardly any people. Brian makes an appearance or two (which is just about all he will put up with anyway), and there are bits of me but nothing of my face. I'm kind of okay with that, because I feel like these photos are really taken from my point of view and show the things I notice and look at throughout the month. I do wish there was more variety. Part of this is because of the whole unemployment thing – I spend a ton of time in the apartment, and when I do leave I tend to do the same things (errands, jogging, groceries)... but even when we were in New York City for Brian's birthday spending time with some of our best friends, I didn't really remember to take more than still life-esque photos. Imma work on that for the next couple months.

There's also hardly any green, both because the instagram filters tend to play up every color except green and because I live in a concrete jungle where it is still (technically) winter so there's no grass or leaves on the trees. Guess I'll just have to wear my favorite coat every day until it gets too warm!