lay off me, i've been nesting.

So I've finally managed to lay off the lazy sauce long enough to upload some picturess. And by lazy sauce I mean I've been nonstop reading every chance I get. It's summer, what else should I be doing?

 I BOUGHT THE COUCH. After three visits it was just getting pathetic, so I finally made my move. We couldn't be happier together. Talk about a harmonious relationship. I know I've been hyping it up like crazy, but eat your heart out.

This is where the couch lives now. In my bedroom. Someday I'll have an impressive domicile in which I'll display this impressive-ass couch in a way that will do it justice. Mark my words.

I'm going to go ahead and apologize now for taking all of these pictures on my phone and also for thinking I was cool enough to use the Hipstamatic app. Everything looks better with angles and weird lenses, right? Whatever. That's how it is and I can't help it.

Antique luxury meets college dorm crate style. I'd prefer to be called a visionary.

Still in the store. A diamond in the rough.

This is a close-up of the fabric. I'm really psyched on having a patterned couch and I feel like it's not too loud to go out of style. Basic pattern. classic. Plus it's like sitting on a cloud.

Not a blemish or loose string to speak of. Perfect upholstery job. This is the stuff that sets my pulse racing. I'm one of a kind.

The other day we were in the car and Manfriend jokingly asked, "So are you going to let people eat or drink on the couch?"


This is seriously not a laughing matter for me.


My reply was simple and dead serious "Clear liquids only."


And no sticky-ass fingers either.

Bitch, I'm crazy. I'll cut you. Spill/smear/stain ANYTHING on my couch and I will end your motherfucking life. That's a promise.



All of my shit needed to get off the kitchen table and into the walls, we'll see if I still like the placement in a few days. This stuff is currently hanging over The Couch.  


Anyway, now that I have a couch to decorate my entire life around, I'm really antsy to get on with it. Which is why being anything less than obscenely rich is really annoying. I'm not kidding I almost had a meltdown in the car last week over the fact that I can't afford everything I have ideas for.  Which is why I've been thrifting like crazy and painting the shit out of stuff. Most of the stuff hanging I already had, though.

Some more of the stuff hanging over my beloved couch.

Okay here's where I just start throwing up pictures of some of the other stuff around the house.

Half-assed attempt at the window treatment.

Please don't judge the bedding. I'm working on it.

I'll probably start hiding my valuables up there.

knicky knacky.



Kitchen poster and freshly painted mirrors. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.



I'm kind of obsessed with birds.

Manfriend likes decorations too. Just not the same kind that I do.

THIS IS MANFRIEND'S CONTRIBUTION TO HOME DECORATING STYLE. He's into black frames with white mattes. This is something I can definitely work with. He's also into autographed pictures of sport's stars... which I guess I can deal with too, which is why he does have some prime real-estate wall space in the living room to display his man-art.  What can I say? The man plays into my soft-spot with nightly back-rubs and a Netflix account. Which can also partially account for why he won this battle:










I haven't named him yet, but trust me, I will.

 That's right. There's a carcass hanging from the wall of my own home. Wonders never cease. Remind me to tell you about my first hunting trip sometime. A gem among gems. 

I mean, it was his house first, after all. I just brought in all my crap and a really stubborn disposition and started bossing everyone around. Luckily, Manfriend lets me.  Plus when it comes down to it, I'm really no better at the whole home-decor  side of things than he is. I still end up occasionally with walls that look like this:

Not my most shining achievement.

A wall of total disarray that looks like a junk shop puked all over it.

And then I have to toss and turn in my sleep until I come up with some better idea that involves putting 2893748374 more holes in the wall. Trial and error. But in the end, having a place I feel comfortable living in and okay with showing off to my guests is the goal. Such as my smallest brother, below. Manfriend lets him play zombie killing games on the interactive media outlet, so he likes him the best, naturally.

They're killing zombies. Or something. Whatever, this picture is to illustrate the fact that we're AT HOME. You know, lounging in the lap of luxury and comfortable and stuff. WITH GUESTS EVEN.

Now you've had a jank-ass tour of my home, which is really more than I can say for the majority of my friends and family, so you're welcome. Portal to my soul and all that.  Oh yeah, I forgot one main thing. You may be wondering why my dream couch is being kept in the bedroom where it's unlikely to be used. Um, duh. Although comfortable, I'm trying to keep it BEAUTIFUL. Actual use by anyone other than me is basically unnecessary. Just kidding. Kind of. Seriously though, I'm trying to protect my lovely new (to me) piece of furniture from the jaws of death and destruction. AKA Hally. 140 pounds of raw destruction:

This is how she looks about 85%  of the time. The other time is spent looking guilty for chewing something up, slime-ing you for the sole reason that she can tell you don't have time to change clothes,  or looking sad because she can tell you're about to leave.

 Hally isn't allowed in Manfriend and my bedroom because it's the one place in our home that I'm safe from dog hair and whatever other airborne allergens she has to offer. I keep trying to tell her it's boring in there anyway, but she rarely buys it. Anyway, the couch is in there and safe and I can read on it without dying. Win-win.



For me and the couch, anyway.



And with that, I leave you with a charming picture of me getting heavy-handed with my cocktail:


I hope my weekend looks like a heavy-handed pour. It's been a bastard of a week.

Cheers to Saturday and Sunday!

 
XO Sare

the gym couple.

To be honest, I'm a little bored with the whole let's find me a new path in life because I don't like the one I'm on theme I've been going with the past couple of posts. Trust me, that little intenal tug-of-war isn't going anywhere, so rest assured I'll finish rating my new potential careers at some point this week.

Just not today.

Today, I'd like to talk about a little thing that's causing me a lot of anxiety.


A little thing I like to call, the 'gym couple.'


NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY likes that couple. You know the one I'm talking about. Matching outfits, annoying vernacular of encouraging phrases infused with pet names,  PECKING EACH OTHER ON THE MOUTH BETWEEN SETS OF REPS.

It's... just..... too.... much.


It's too much for any sane person, single or taken, who is genuinely trying to sweat five pounds through their pores in the next forty five minutes of intense self-inflicted pain and discomfort.

I hate the couple. Because how can they possibly be getting an actual, decent, worth-going-through-all-the-motions-leading-up-to-working-out, work-out session in with the other one hovering around, watching every single fucking move they make? How can they possibly be working off the aggresion that built up all day towards one another from the dishes that he left in the sink unwashed, or how she used all the hot water this morning?? I mean, it's healthy, right? To need to just blow off some steam sweating your ass off instead of getting into a screaming match over a used cereal bowl or a luke-warm shower? Do they have no conflicts?


Ludicrous.


I just don't see how it can really be healthy to have your significant other there with you during the daily workout. Sure, I enjoy a nice bike ride with Manfriend. We walk the dog together. We've gone canoeing together. (In hindsight, the canoeing example isn't actually a very good one, because I'm incredibly bossy and I have to be the one steering and when you're trapped on a boat with the other most stubborn person on the planet, copious amounts of gummi worms are sometimes necessary to mend things at the end of the ordeal. AKA, I don't think Manfriend had an awesome time canoeing with me, but whatever I'm probably the best canoeing partner I know. )


So anyway, I'm vehemently opposed to the idea that 'the couple that works out together, stays together.' GROSS. I love Manfriend and I'm not really all that timid about being sweaty and digusting when I'm around him, but I NEED my workout time to be mine.


 Which is why a really, really strange thing happened last night.


Recently, Manfriend joined a gym. A Martial Arts gym. Recently, I really really wanted to join a gym, but due to the fact that I run outside and would only use the gym every now and then to swim laps, do a class, or do upper body stuff a couple of times a week, it doesn't really fit into my budget. AKA, my credit card debt isn't going anywhere and my parents would probably skin me alive if I joined a gym right now. I realize it's sad that I just blamed my parents for not joining a gym, but trust me, they can take it.

Muay Thai. Not Manfriend, but this is what he's doing with his life these days.

Sooooooooo anyway, Manfriend is doing Muay Thai now. BUT ALSO they do a Strength and Conditioning class at his gym a few times a week for an hour. andifyoulivewithyoursignificantotherthentheycancomeforfreeanddothatclasstoo.

And goddamnit, it's FREE.

So, what I'm trying to say is that last night I went to the class. With Manfriend. I mean, not technically with him, with him, since he was already there for his specific class, which was right before the one I came for. So we drove seperately. But I mean, we both did the class.


Together.

But not like, together, together.


I promise we didn't even really speak to one another. I made sure to be on a different heavy bag when we did punching exersizes. It was basically like we weren't even there together.


Except we were. The last 15 minutes or so we did mat stuff and we were definitely right next to each other. And at the end, we got called out by the main dude that runs the academy.

"Look at theeees couple, they're gettin' fit togethaa."



Fuck me.



But you know what? Screw it. I really enjoyed the class. The owner's name is Mr. Bigby, and I get a shit-ton of pleasure out of repeating his name in every weird voice I can think up with regularity. I liked the girl-to-guy ratio, and how much sweat I expelled in the one-hour period, and I especially got a kick out of punching those bags as hard as I possibly could with absolutely zero reprecussions for being aggressive.

I figure, as long as we're not dressing alike, acknowledging each other during the time we're there, and he's not calling me 'sugar-tits,' while I'm mentally kicking the shit out of the lady that cut me off on the entrance ramp on my commute home, then I guess I can live with this little set-up. Come on, it's free. I've still got my daily run to pound out any residual neurotisism hanging around my psyche. I don't think we're in any danger of ever dressing in matching outfits to go work out, or lifting weights together. But, I guess this is probably how these things start. Meh.


Plus, I don't really think I can express in words how much enjoyment I found out that I get in punching things, otherwise I just carry all that shit around, because I'm really bad at just letting things go.


Hate me if you wanna, I'll be getting fit enough to kick your ass.




XO Sare.

I was a bossy-ass child, and now I'm a bossy-ass adult

This morning at approximately 6:25 am, in a terrifying turn of events, my vehicle ended up the wrong direction on an icy road that I shouldn't have even been taking, but I was determined to prove to myself that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, snow-be-damned.


Thankfully, I was unharmed. Even more thankfully, I didn't cause any monetary harm to my vehicle. The event didn't even really phase me at the time. I started to fishtail, I over-corrected, I didn't slam on my breaks, I merely ended up pulling a 180 before I finally stopped. I took a breath, pointed myself back in the correct, work-bound, direction and I started back out at 25 MPH.


The only thing that really bothers me about the situation is that two seconds of feeling that are never really as noticeable as when you're losing complete control of something tangible, like your car. Other kinds of control loss are gradual, even subconscious. Sure, sometimes it's hits you hard, but not in an "OMGz, this is my possible last moment on earth!!! FUCK!!! they're going to see what a mess my car is right now!" That, my friends, is the feeling I fear most in life. Yup, I'm scared to death a kind stranger will rush to my smoking vehicle and peer in the windows at my limp and lifeless body in disgust, thinking to themselves, "UGhhhhh, two McDonald's bags, a discarded sushi wrapper, two plastic containers with unidentifiable  food products in them and four empty cans of Dr. Pepper? Dr. fucking Pepper?! What a slob!"


Nearly constant, my attempts at control are often disastrous, but through some force beyond my own explanation, it only fuels my almost-primal hunger for that very thing- and it has been that way as long as I can remember. I like to think I've mellowed out some or whatever, but the truth is, I just keep scenarios that I can't control playing out in my mind how I would have had them, and ignore the real life results. Livin' in a dream worrrrrrrrld.


Let me take you back to 1997 for a moment. Eleven year old Sara had huge square glasses and a near crippling asthma wheeze.

Sooooooooooo, I was entering the phase that about 90 percent of children go through for a few years between age ten and age thirteen or so where they're just... ugly. I was not in the blessed ten percent of perpetually attractive children, I was awkward looking. I don't really know why this phase mercilessly hits so many of us, but it's kind of the little splice of life between still being an all-out kid and kind of starting to become self-aware of your own appearance and it's fucking weird. The results are often horrifying.


 I started doing my own hair before school around fourth grade and would often take twenty minutes standing in front of the mirror in my parent's bathroom, trying to wet and fine-tooth comb EVERY SINGLE BUMP out of my pony tail- sometimes I'd break into my mom's hair spray to get the desired result. I had slicked-back hair. It was bad. It was worse than bad, it was helmet hair.


AND THEN I GREW INTO THE LOVELY AND GRACEFULLY SELF-ASSURED ADULT I AM NOW AND I CAN LAUGH NOSTALGICALLY ABOUT IT. OH, ha ha ha haaaaaaaa, darling.


Right.


On the contrary, I just squirted Neosporin directly into my nostrils, at the office, in pain view, because shit is raw up in there and if they don't heal real soon I'm seriously going to go into a black-out fit of rage and literally rip my nose off of my face and feed it to Manfriend's dog, Hally. She looks like she enjoys a good nose now and then.

ANDDDDDDD we're transitioning.


It's 1997. I'm eleven. There are two 'Most Important Things' in my life and one of them is making sure I get back to summer camp come June so I can get my friendship bracelet construction and frog catching ON. NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING, trumps summer camp. The other most important thing in my life, and something that has become an underlying theme up to present day is the need to control.


I can't exactly pinopint where this incessant desire to have everything my way started, but I am certain it was very early on. Seven year old Sara would sit in the backyard, singing songs, making them up as I went along to the animals around me- in full belief that they would become my own personal friends and pets, nuzzle me, and basically just, you know, kick it.


Opinions are actually varied on the most disturbing part of that little narrative, but I think the fact that I fully believed that the "animals" in our suburban Chicago back-yard, which included the common sparrow, squirrels, and the occasional bunny, were going to be become tame from the sheer power of persuasion in my angelic little voice is nothing short of alarming. Sadly, the elitest little bastards didn't actually become my personal playthings, giving me my first taste of control-related defeat, and thus fueling my need to have power over every situation.

Fa fa fa fa fa fastttttt forward a few years.
 Ahhhhhh. 1997. Fifth grade. Teacher's pet. Painstakingly cleaning every last spot of ink from the projection machine, organzing and testing each of the pens on my teacher's projector cart, silently sobbing to the dramatic conclusion of Where the Red Fern Grows during individual Read & Relax period after lunch. Good Times.



After school, pre-adoloscent Sara had shit to do. (The following list of actual events may leave you convinced that I would grow up to become the leader of the fascist regime, but nope, no no no, just the emotionally wrought, financially unsound, run-of-the-mill control freak I am today. Whew, what a relief!)


1. Compose congregation of neighborhood creatins... I mean children, ages 6-11 at the neighborhood field/park.


 This park was badass because it was huge and had a creek running through it on one edge with some woods and basically connected like three different little neighborhoods, and if you went all the way through it, you were at my elementary school.


2. Give moving and motivational speech on the importance of building us, the neighborhood kids, a fort in the woods by the creek. With branches. And discarded wood. And any old nails/building materials we could get our little hands on. (Where none of us actually had clearance from our parents to go....forbidden territory, risky.)


3. Delegate tasks to each child for construction, in the mean time writing a screenplay for a feel-good musical presentation for the "company" upon completion of my fortress.


 These little productions were occasionaly taped via my parent's video-camera and there is one particular show, still in my familes' VHS library, where I forced my little sister, Beth, to play the part of "White Trash Wendi with Baby on Hip." She was eight at the time.


4. Resolve common squabbles and address concerns of the rank and file.


5. Cease construction upon fortress due to an underlying theme of discontent among the crew.


6. Shift focus to assigning roles for theatrical presentation!


7. Break for dinner. Assign each member of the cast the task of finding a costume for their individual roles and to find out how many of their family members would be buying (!!!) tickets to the show.


Did I mention that not only was I a child prodigy, but also an entreprener? NO? How silly of me; I was probably just being modest! I often ended up making around four dollars for these ordeals, which I promptly pocketed despite my promises to "Buy supplies for the fort," and probably spent on something like the Waterfalls single by TLC at Walgreens, because that was the only place close enough for me to walk from my house. So apparently, I'm bossy and an embezzler, GREAT.


8. Rehearse. Insist everyone memorize their lines, as written. Throw fits and make pithy comments that will cause half of the role-holding neighborhood children to decide they'd rather go home and play in the safety of their own backyards.


9. Assemble remaining crew to build stage/set.


10. Watch the sun sink below the horizon and realize the entire thing is falling apart in my hands. Hear my father's, I kid you not, whistle- that served as a notificaton that it was time to come home.  Stomp home in a fit of rage, claiming "artistic license," without actually knowing what it means.


11. Wait approximately one week, repeat.




You know what? I can't ::actually:: believe I've been marking 'No' on job applications where they ask if I've ever had supervisory experience. What THE HELL is wrong with me? It's pretty much evident that I was born to lead.




Happy weekending, and never stop wanting more.


XO Sara