partly cloudy, really drowsy

Word up party people.


I know it's been a hot minute, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.


No, I haven't been getting shit-house drunk and picking fights with carnies or anything. Bummer, right? That material would be gold.


Nope, nothing that exciting.


Remember when I went to the allergist last month and I was all, "Shock my body into submission with a million drugs for my allergies and feeble lungs!"

Well, consider my body fully shocked, my allergies have never been better. BOOYA. But it's only kinda awesome because I've also become a zombie since then. As in, I'm totally and completely zonked out by 9:30 every night. You can guess that my boyfriend is just thrilled.

One of my friends has mentioned on numerous occasions that if we lived in a different time, I would have been weeded out early by natural selection for my inability to evolve. I say I'm scrappy and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Blah blah blah WELCOME CHRONIC FATIGUE, I haven't had a good buzz going in weeks. FUCK OFF.


XO Sare

sorry about the window.

So, I've got some news on the couch front!


...Which we'll go into tomorrow because today is for TODAY THINGS. Today, let me give you a little glimpse of what it is like to live in my world of mortification and awkward moments.




On Saturday, my friend Mel drove into town so that myself and another of her bridesmaids, Hannah, could pinpoint and execute the whole purchasing of the bridesmaids dress portion of the wedding. 


Originally, we were all going to take a swatch and go crazy in our own favorite shops and boutiques so our dresses would reflect our own personal style and preference. Cute, I know. However, do you know how difficult it is to find a pewter-hued dress in the middle of summer? Nearly fucking impossible. This was the second attempt at this mission for that very reason.


David's Bridal it is!


Hannah and I stroll into the store with Mel in tow and the place is teeming with people. So naturally, I grab one of every dress and make for the dressing rooms, in attack mode. We snag rooms next to each other and start throwing on dresses left and right. out of pure fate Hannah and I select the same dress and BOOM we learn that Mel's sister is also wearing that dress. OMG NOW WE ALL MATCH, PSHAWWW.


 Hannah buys a size down from her normal size and I buy a size up, even though in some strange turn of events, I tried on a size down and it fit. David's Bridal, I think I love you. Anyway, let's face it, this is a winter wedding and that's when I pack on the excess lbs, no matter how hard I'll to try to the contrary. In fact, we're talking the dreaded danger zone- the time between Thanksgiving feasting and Christmas feasting = nonstop cookies and feasting.






TA DA.... Squats forever until December!


Yeah, I really played that one well.


Anyway, we buy our dresses and scamper off to the mall to look at shoes, jewelry, etc. Lots of looking and no finding. Worst game of hide-and-seek ever. EVER.


Anyway, we're driving back to Hannah's after the mall/much needed cocktail break and we hop into Mel's car and IT IS HOT. Devil producing baby devil spawn HOT. HEAT OF A THOUSAND SUNS HOT... okay just one sun, but seriously, hot. So I roll down my window.


Harmless move, really. Just rolling down the window for some air that hasn't been trapped in a stationery heat-box for four hours while we trolled the mall.


Really bad move.


The instant I roll down my window, only about six inches, Mel whips her head in my direction, completely panic stricken, and yells "Roll that up RIGHT NOW."


Melissa doesn't panic or get upset. She calls everyone 'Punkin,' uses excessive <3's, and can make even the most tense conversations feel light and breezy.

This was panic. AND I should have known better, I'd been cautioned months ago when I drove out to visit her and rested my hand a little too close to the window control button. Uh durrrrrrr...I forgot?


So I immediately try to roll up the window. To no avail, of course. I can hear the motor working as I press the button, but the window isn't fucking moving. So naturally I try to push it up as I press the button. Again, nothing. Damn you feeble arms! Maybe I'm not trying hard enough.  I get out of the car, straddle the door, and force the window up with all of my strength.


Finally, it goes up and stays. We all give tense half-laugh of relief.


"The driver's side cost us $500 dollars to fix, so that would have been awful. Plus with the wedding and me needing a new laptop... That just would have been really bad."


Tee hee hee. Fuck. Me. I'm sweaty, my feet hurt, and I just broke something expensive that isn't mine.


After a couple of minutes the frightening window debacle is mostly forgotten and "Say My Name" comes on the radio. Oh, hello eighth grade, I've missed you. Not really, but our rendition was truly moving. And all remnants of panic and awkward are forgotten.


Say my name, SAY MY NAME! If no one is around you, say 'Baby I love you!"


Goddamn it. I look over and the window has slipped almost an inch. I don't think anyone else has noticed, so I try to shield view of it with my body and start dancing really erratically. Destiny's Child goes off and I'm now the only one dancing to some random rap song, which actually makes erratic dancing pretty natural. So far, no more slippage and we're almost back to Hannah's, where I can pull the hands-on-either-side-of-the-window bit and force it up again. This time, with more UMPH so it won't fall back down.


And then everything starts moving in slow motion. We're rounding LITERALLY the final curve before Hannah's apartment. I'm dancing with the window behind me, hoping the girls haven't noticed. We're cheers-ing our rings together like Captain Planet. I'm thisclose to cocktail hour. Smiles all around.


All of the sudden there's a huge crashing sound and I look behind me, and there is no longer a window. It has fallen COMPLETELY into the door. All of it. Bye bye window.


Obviously I start hysterically laughing because that's what I do when I don't know what else to do.

SIDENOTE: I just spilled an entire unsipped cup of coffee all over my person and my cubicle. ENTIRE CUP. Everything is sticky. My life, a comedy of errors.

Back on track, I look over a Mel, and thank the heavens, she's CRACKING UP. Turns out we both panic laugh.

The bad thing is that her fiance, Adam, (Who consequently hosted my very first college party on my very first night in the dorms) is somewhere in the mountains of New York doing fieldwork for his PHD program all summer and she doesn't have a man around to help her. He'll be back in 18 days.

I know that's pretty sexist, but I'm not trying to fix a car window, are you?

Mel was pretty cool about it, despite the fact that I've ruined her dreams of a new laptop and possibly her wedding, which means probably her whole life.  We had the wind in our hair on the way back to my house.

The next day was the first time it rained in over a month.

Insult to injury? Sorry Mel.

Awkwardly yours,

XO Sare

squishy couch dreams.

After work on Friday I convinced my friend Erin that instead of our usual post-work-weekend-drink-scurry-for-bourbon we should first check out an antique store between our two houses.

We both live with our boyfriends at this point, and apparently nesting is NOT the typical reaction.

However, nesting is exactly what hit me like a ton of bricks about Tuesday of last week when we got back into town after living hard and fast for the weekend and home wasn't an immaculately cleaned house with a full fridge and a maid to do my laundry. Nope, my little 1.5 month stay-over at my parent's home was certainly cushy, but home now looks slightly less cushy.

So, since just thinking about painting walls colors that I actually like just to paint them white again in nine months sounds like a whole lot of wasted effort, I've been going decor crazy in other ways. Like, pinterest.com all day, errrrrday.

In other words, I'm trying to spruce shit up.

I'd say it's going pretty well. If I'm feeling techy I'll upload some pics of my masterful work at some point, but let's bring this full circle, shall we? 

Erin and I are dicking around in my favorite antique store, it's got booths partitioned off like many do, and each vendor is trying to sell a mix of vintage and junk. Plus for every thirty days something sits in the store, it goes down in price ten percent until it's half off. I get my fix, junk gets cheap, new junk comes in all the time. Perfect. 

Erin's kind of cruising through because she's more into the idea of drinks after antiquing, since I kind of had to entice her with them in order for her to allow me to drag her along. So we're making better time through there than I probably ever have before because usually I'm OCD and I HAVE to see every item and go in EVERY booth because heaven FORBID I miss a tiny treasure and then all of the sudden, There. It. Is.

My dream couch.


I spot this couch and I cannot make myself look away. It's like there is a magnet in my ass and the couch is metal and by god the next thing I know I'm standing over it. And then I'm sitting in it. I can easily say this is the favorite couch I have ever seen or had the pleasure of sitting on in my life. I could decorate an entire room home LIFE around this sitting device. It's that perfect. Antique. Oak framework. Flawless upholstery. And then I looked down at the price tag and it was about $300 less than I was expecting to see and I started rationalizing to myself why I needed it. Which is almost always disastrous.

I normally don't get emotional over furniture, but I swear to god I felt physically ill walking out of the store without that couch. It's really not a couch you can have with a giant dogcreature milling around and drooling all over everything and accidentally clawing onto it with her giant paws. Like, at all.

So thanks to Hally the English Mastiff, the part of my heart reserved for home furnishings is officially crushed.

I thought that would be it. The couch would never be mine and I would eventually learn to move on, just like when you get dumped out of the blue and you're still in love with the other person but they are clearly indifferent to your existence. It was like the couch took one look at me and my giant dog and lack of hardwood floors and was like, "Move along, you're wasting both of our time and some other customers just walked in, so shooooo." Plus Erin was doing that shift from one foot to the other thing and shaking the ice in her empty big gulp NOT GETTING THE APPEAL OF THE COUCH and I suddenly felt really thirsty for some Jim Beam.

And then I dreamed about that goddamn asshole of a beautiful couch on Friday AND Saturday night. And all weekend, I gushed to anyone that would lend me an ear about the couch. I'd arrange and rearrange existing furniture in my mind so that I could maneuver the couch into my bedroom, safe from giant dogcreatures. Hell, for all I care, the couch can BECOME MY BED. Manfriend is getting RULL tired of hearing about this goddamn couch.

On Sunday I'm lazing around my parents' house, talking to my mom about what else but THE COUCH, and I decide she needs to come with me to visit it. After all, she's the reason I'm antique-obsessed, this is the burden she is doomed to bear- taking her 25 year old daughter to musty antique shops to visit furniture they can't really afford or reasonably find a place for in their own homes.

This is my life.

So I walk in shakily, almost too afraid to hope to see the damn thing again, my mother trailing close behind,  and it's STILL THERE. Ready for purchase. And my own mother agrees that this is a badass couch and it's a crime that it's just sitting there. She totally fucking gets it. I bet SHE dreamed about my couch last night.

I've taken to calling it "my couch."

Sad.

Tonight I'm taking dragging Manfriend to visit the couch.

I honestly don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to restrain myself from whipping out my card, plopping it on the counter, and figuring the rest out after I can breathe easy again, knowing it's mine.

Wish me luck and happy couch dreams tonight.

XO Sare

in my defense.

I learned early on to stand up for myself. That I needed to defend myself, because no one else will.


I'm not saying that in a jaded or cynical way, I'm just saying that there comes a point when your mommy and daddy can't always swoop and and save you from that girl in the locker room telling anyone who will listen that you were flirting with her boyfriend in math class or even your teammates from alluding that you don't try hard enough at practice. Besides, I never really wanted that kind of help from my parents.


And in my family, everyone is constantly messing with one another in an attempt to get a rise out of them.


In a loving way?


Maybe sometimes. But honestly, most of the time it doesn't feel that way.


I wouldn't say I was raised by wolves, but I was certainly brought up in a way that encouraged thick skin and making your point louder than the other person.


I'm an incredibly defensive person.


It takes a precious little to put me on the defensive. And when I sense the other person pushing back, it's a full-on battle. I feel powerless to stop it once it starts. Once I'm taken from my easy-going world of quick laughter to explaining loudly every rational step in my own mind that lead me to this. exact. point. I can't go back and tell myself to just let it go.


I just can't.
I have done things in my life that have certainly merited explanation and being humbled. I've made choices that my parent's support can be described as begrudgingly at best. I've fallen on my face and been forced to learn hard lessons fast. Ideologically, I've gone against my ultra-conservative, proper, keeping-up-appearances, perfectly-manicured-lawn-in the-'burbs, Catholic upbringing by getting a Women's Studies degree, organizing labor unions, smoking and trying recreational drugs,  doing extensive liberal political campaign work, and getting a tattoo. But I've never really pushed the envelope past a certain point because I have my limits and I know who I am.


And all in all, I really, really like myself.


I'm not perfect, but I'm trying. I pay my bills, I eat vegetables, I water my flowers,  I read books, I blow-dry and curl my hair every morning. I'm not the beacon of responsibility, but I make it to work on time. I honor my commitments, I finish what I start.


The conversation that I had last night with my parents about moving in together with Manfriend didn't go over well, because from the start, they made jabs that put me on the defensive and made me feel like I was openly defying their best intentions for me. As if I don't know what works for me or what will make me happy. I'm still reeling from how disrespected I felt last night having this conversation, this argument that was more of a heads-up and less what I thought of as an opportunity for discussion, but turned into a roast session of my shortcomings in their eyes for the past ten years.


Today I feel tired.


And defensive.


And I'm still moving in with Manfriend.


As if that fact wasn't terrifying enough without their support.  


Xo Sara

c'mon doorman, be a sport

I'm now on day two slash three of leading a fully semi-functioning life sans cell phone or any sort of food product.

Not by choice.

And to be honest, I really hope we can call an end to both of these deprivations today because I'm getting a little shaky with hunger. And also, I haven't been in touch with virtually anyone. I FEEL SO DISCONNECTED.

But I guess it could be good in the long-run because I will be marginally thinner and look socially discerning as a result, or something. Neither of which I can honestly say have ever even registered a blip on my worry radar.

Blah, I'm hungry.

The short of it is that I got food poisoning and also I'm generally careless and left my cell phone on the eleventh floor of a building downtown that requires keycard access to the elevators. Assholes.

So, now that I'm able to scrape myself out of a horizontal position without bile spewing itself out of my body in one way or another, I'm going to mosey on downtown after work, slap on some lipstick, and hope that my still-pallid complexion makes the doorman pity me enough to buzz me up to my phone.

Wish me luck.

XO Sara