Monthly Archives: May 2012

Recap: Antietam in Snapshots

30 Wednesday May 2012

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This is a recap post.  Things have been happening, we have been traveling, and I’ve just been too distracted and busy to keep up with the blog!  But, I’ve been taking photos and getting ideas so I’ll have a few posts here and there catching you up on all of the things we were doing before today.

Because, you see, today I became a single lady.  H left for Minnesota and I’ll be here in DC for three weeks before I can make it up for a visit.  Luckily, my granny, aunt, and cousin are here visiting a.k.a. keeping me super busy so I won’t have time to feel lonely!  It’s going to be a busy week with them here but I’m very excited about all of the fun things we will do together.

Leo is also doing a great job at entertaining me.  Today we played tag and he totally won (as indicated by the scratch on my hand).  He LOVES playing hide and seek attack.

This is a photo collage of our weekend trip to explore the Antietam battlegrounds.  It was a fun, hot day and we explored history a little and searched for an ice cream parlor a lot.  Because we enjoy canons and bullets and bridges and all but nothing says Civil War like homemade butter pecan.  And try as we might, we never found that ice cream shop.  So, if you are looking for new business ideas, perhaps try opening an ice cream parlor in Shepardstown, WV?  We would be regular customers, and trust me — we eat a lot of ice cream.

Thinking ahead

18 Friday May 2012

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I am absolutely loving my rotation. The work is different, but the right mix of challenging and comfortable. The community in the office is pretty positive, and I can see my future in my coworkers’ lives: nearly every attorney in my division is female (there is legit only one guy) and they are doing relevant, sometimes interesting work while raising their families.

I was talking with a young mom in the office yesterday — her son is only 16 months old — and she told me that she works at the agency part-time and it’s been wonderful to maintain the career she wanted for part of her week while also putting her family first.

And, I mean, I’m not saying that’s what I want to do. Not even close. I have no idea where H and I will be living a year from now, much less what I want to “be” or what kind of work I want to do long-term. Mostly I just want to wander from graduate program to graduate program, reading and talking to people smarter than me all day and night (hopefully in a hip coffee shop and in a cute outfit with an expensive leather satchel… Anyone else?) without worrying about things like money and the dmv and bills and deadlines.

But since that life is at least15 months away, I’m honestly pretty content entering my summer months with ten weeks of living alone for the first time ever, exploring minneapolis with the cutest husband ever (I mean, I’m totally open to moving there. Even though it sounds insane. I’d rather live in Minnesota than New Jersey) and spending some much-needed time with the people I miss during the rest of the year.

So, if you want to come visit and haven’t gotten on the “schedule,” don’t worry! I don’t actually have a schedule yet. But I’m about to make one, so don’t wait too long! ;)

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Tuesday’s Lunch Break: Mentos, DuPont, and Chili Paste

16 Wednesday May 2012

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So sometimes you just have to break out of the office and take a stroll.  Now that I’m working near the Farragut North metro stop, walking outside is way more entertaining.  Not that walking past a bunch of federal buildings that all look exactly the same isn’t entertaining, but the beautiful combination of shoppers + workers + tourists + homeless people + restaurants and embassies and happy hours is a good time.

Today I had a phone call with a troublesome client struggling with depression and really needed something happy.  So, I got lunch from my “favorite place” across the street, Suki Asia.  And I use those quotes because it is not honestly my favorite place, but it is my favorite place where you can get bibimbap and miso soup for $5.99 in Washington, D.C.  Legit.

Good looking, right? It’s rice, bean sprouts, unidentified green veggies, lettuce, carrots, egg, and marinated beef with chili paste. YUMM.

I wanted to eat outside, but Longfellow’s benches looked a little crowded.

So I headed up to Dupont Circle to eat there instead.  And while there was an ominous rain cloud hanging overhead for a while, no rain drops fell on my lunch and it was an all around fantastic choice.

Sorry these photos are so awkward, I was just using my blackberry like a total dork. I need to get an iPhone but I HATE TOUCH SCREENS. Oh, that was a tangent. Anyway…

DuPont Lunchtime was made even more fantastic by a Mentos freshmaker!  Okay, not going to lie, I just made that name up.  She was just a girl who wandered aimlessly like a bad drug dealer and tried to give people free candy.  People do not always take free candy from strangers.  It is the city, you know.  There’s still a chance the mentos roll she gave me is full of heroin or something. 

While I’m pretty sure she wasn’t technically a “freshmaker,” I am absolutely certain that pass-out-free-samples-in-the-city-minimum-wage-employees should be called freshmakers from this point forward.  Freshmakers are the-bomb-dot-com.  Yes, my husband actually uses that phrase a lot.  Side note.  

So I ended my lunch with two free rolls of mint mentos!

ha! freshmakers are awesome!

And I was totally stoked until I realized that she gave another guy FRUIT Mentos, which are SO much better.  And then I was bitter for about four-fifths of a second, until I remembered that these candies were free and that I shouldn’t be such a whiney baby.  So then I was happy again.

Thanks, freshmaker!  You rocked my lunch break. 

Creative Furniture Solutions

15 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Blogging, DC Life, Stress Reduction, Style

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We have an overcrowded apartment and need to get rid of some things.  But we also have some pretty special things, that we definitely want to have when we have a home one day (or at least a two-bedroom apartment!).  Since we love having company and focused on a cute living room/dining room area first, our bedroom ended up being the dumping ground for the things that didn’t fit elsewhere.

For example, there are two guitars, a Christmas tree, camping gear, a giant backpack for backpacking, and a lot of other surprises hidden in creative storage solutions around our room. For those of you who have been there, did you notice?  Probably not.  Plus, no one really spends a ton of time in our room anyway, except for Leo.  He loves it.  I think in his world, it is really his room.

We’d been brainstorming different ways to make the bedroom less cluttered and everything always came back to “the desk.”  It’s cute and sturdy and has been mine since I was ten years old and my parents bought it for me at the antique store.  Or maybe it was a flea market or something?  Or a pawn shop?  Memories are weird like that.  Mom, feel free to chime in.  I really think it was an antique shop but what ten-year-old knows the difference and remembers it sixteen years later?

Anyway, it’s always been mine and I like it.  Even though it’s kind of awkward since the chair hole isn’t big enough for a computer/desk chair and you have to use a kitchen chair.  It’s still awesome.  But it didn’t fit, and I didn’t want to get rid of it, but there was NO WHERE ELSE for it to go.

And then it hit us, just stick it somewhere random.  Get rid of something you don’t like and put this there instead.

So now it is our entertainment center.  It looks kind of hilarious, but I’m going to go with it.

Before:

Since we didn’t actually have an “entertainment center,” we used our second coffee table as one for the last two years. Classy, I know.

After:

Awkward?  On a scale of one to ten, like a six?  Or a four?  [Eleven???]

So, I know there’s no flashy red car on the screen in the second shot, but it’s not that terrible looking.  And it’s not finished.  We are considering (1) inserting shelves into the desk to make it look normal, (2) putting in a backing with a cute pattern/wallpaper to fill that giant white area and hide the cords, and (3) any suggestions that sound better.

This desk will be a cute little addition to a guest bedroom one day, and I’m glad we found a way to keep it while freeing up more space in the other rooms.   If you feel like judging it in person, just let me know and I’ll bake you some cupcakes.  :)

Rug Fever. And Pirates. And so on.

14 Monday May 2012

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This is a thought poem without rhyme, meter, or poetry.  So basically, a list.

1.  My dad went to the hospital twice today.  Ridiculous.  Apparently he is fine.  But bitter.

2.  I bought a rug.  It’s going to be awesome.  We are redecorating our bedroom because it totally sucks.

3.  We put the wedding bed spread back on the bed even though Leo may scratch it up.  Because we seriously can’t keep living with an ugly bedroom.  A small apartment is manageable but an ugly apartment is unacceptable. We also bought new sheets.  Ah-ma-zing.

4.  We are going to hang a shelf above the bed and put cute things on it.  And buy artwork for the walls.

5.  I ordered new photos for our photo frames because they need to get changed up!  Wedding photos are too boring.  I decided pirate ship photos from Aruba would be a nice change.  Very grown up and appropriate.

Farm Day at Mount Vernon

12 Saturday May 2012

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So we went to Mount Vernon and it was cool and all, but even better than the historic stuff and waiters wearing period clothing and wine everywhere were the FARM ANIMALS.  Seriously, they were awesome.  So, first I’ll show you a picture of George Washington’s home, so you know I was legit at Mount  Vernon when I saw all of these insane sheep baa-ing like crazy.  And then I’m going to show you about a million photos of tiny stupid sheep which are HI-LAR-I-OUS.

This is a straight shot of the main house — GW lived there for a very long time, but did a lot of remodeling to make the house worthy of the first president of United America.

These are legit the funniest sheep ever.  The small ones can fit through the holes in the fence, and then they get confused and start crying and crying, and then they just come right back inside.  And the big ones can’t get out, and they get so frustrated when the little ones leave. . . so basically there is just sheep-crying everywhere.

In case you are wondering, crying sheep sounds exactly like drunk fraternity guys imitating crying sheep.  Literally, I kept looking around thinking there was a guy right beside me making fun of how sheep baa.  Only it was actually the sheep.  They sound that ridiculous.

Also, we saw one little sheepy treating its sheepy-friend’s urination as a water fountain.  No lie.  These sheep are not very smart.

But, they like to eat all of GW’s vegetables.  So mostly the cabbage patch was cabbage stumps with all the cabbage chewed off.  After seeing this, I am quite skeptical of the Inn’s claim that its menu is made from vegetables grown on the farm.  Since most of the vegetables are stolen by renegade sheepies.

Here, piggy piggy pig.  We heard one mom tell her child that this was a wart-hog.  Clearly, this pig is for making bacon, not singing songs with Simba.  Parents these days.

We also saw this moo-cow take a poop.  And yes, I know this is really a bull — I’m from TENNESSEE remember — but cow sounds much more cute and less deadly.

So, now that you’ve seen my favorite places on GW’s farm, let’s go together.  Seriously.  I bought a year’s pass because I loved it so much.  They have wine tastings and hiking trails and Christmas cookie showings and it is awesome.  The waiter at the restaurant wears knickers and knee socks.  In the summer.  It is hilarious and awkward and the coffee is terrible.  So clearly, it’s my kind of place.

 

Identity

11 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Literature, Uncategorized

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Sometimes I feel very confused about who I am and how I fit into my community. Well honestly, most of the time.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who I want to be. I don’t particularly want a high-stress, fast-paced job. I’m too serious as it is, and I don’t want to be consumed by deadlines. But I am too capable and efficient to do something mundane — so what I need is something incredibly challenging but not unnecessarily busy. And I’ve learned that when I don’t feel like I’m making something (whether a difference or a creative product of some kind), I don’t feel motivated.

I want to be a self-employed, full-time student, lawyer, thinker, and writer. To be a renaissance woman. To do all things for all people but only what currently motivates me. And to be at home with myself and my thoughts.

[Weirdo recluse anyone?]

I read this blog written by a graduate student at Duke who lived in a van to study literature without accumulating student debt like Thoreau moved to Walden Pond to experience life away from excess, money, etc. (except, you know, living in a van is a lot less romantic than living by a lake. Just saying.) Only the thing is, by the end of his blog he was so focused on securing his book deal that he seemed to have forgotten about the debt crisis altogether.

Or maybe not — do we do weird insane stuff as writers so we have something to write our book proposals about? Or do writers also just “happen” to do unusual things about which regular people like to read?

Did Thoreau live at Walden Pond just because he needed something new to write about? Or was the insanity of that move somehow wrapped up in his identity as a writer? Are all of the claimed motivations simply our way of getting to a manuscript?

All of that to say, if I just do whatever I want to every day, will I ever have an interesting story to tell?

This has been my metro-ride-home blog on Identity, inspired by Sarah Bessey’s link to today’s Friday Five-Minute writing prompt.

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How not to write, by Joseph Conrad

10 Thursday May 2012

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I’m trying to be more literary by reading real books on the train in the morning (instead of my usual Cosmo, InStyle, Redbook, etc.) but this week’s selection is not working for me.

I grabbed a copy of Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, when I left the apartment Monday morning. I had this habit when I was living in Tennessee of buying second-hand books by the authors I enjoyed. So, since Heart of Darkness was a fond memory from AP English, I grabbed this Conrad special and then promptly forgot about it. I moved it from Nashville to DC, but never read it.

So let’s just get this out there: what the what was JC smoking when he wrote this? The sentences are so long that I can’t find the storyline! I have to re-read sentences to figure out which clauses are descriptive and which are plot. And yes, I know there’s all sorts of literary greats out there who think this novel is awesome, but what-ev-er. At least for the first 28 pages, I am annoyed at JC’s relentless verbosity.

Let’s sample a sentence:

“Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half-naked on the stone steps as you went up — by Jove!” (And it keeps going but we’ll stop here.)

And, while long sentences are hard enough, he also writes incredibly long paragraphs! It is uncommon to have more than two indentations on each page — paragraphs tend to be 2/3 of a page long.

I can’t find the focus to stay with JC while the train bobs and weaves and strangers push against me. But I’m going to try to get through page 50 without giving up. Because apparently this writing style is some kind of social commentary on the psychology of man. We’ll see about that.

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What are we leaving for others?

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Blogging, DC Life, Religion, Uncategorized

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So I made this cake for my coworkers today. It was a cake mix-overhaul lemon blueberry pound cake. And it was literally delicious. My approximately one dozen officemates ate 90% of two loaf cakes in 8 hours, so I know it was good.

I packed up the rest and walked out the door toward the metro. I was just debating whether there was enough left to wrap up for a friend finishing finals or if I should leave it for H when a homeless woman called out to me: can you give me some food?

I usually don’t give cash to street beggars because I’m on a budget, but I always offer my leftovers or packed lunch for hungry people. If someone is willing to take half a burrito, or your turkey sandwich, they need all the help they can get.

So, I walked over, opened up my tupperware, and told her I had lemon blueberry cake if she wanted it. She said thank you but then reached in and broke off half of what remained. I told her she could take it all, and she asked me the sweetest question: what will be left for you?

I told her it was just leftovers from work and I’d had my fill, but I’m so struck by how considerate she was. I obviously have everything I need and wouldn’t miss a bit of cake. (Honestly, I could stand to lose about eight pounds of cake!). I could replace anything I own with little worry or sacrifice. But still, she wouldn’t leave me without cake for later.

I convinced her to take it all, and then she reminded me to keep my tupperware and wash it out for another use.

I’m honestly pretty confused about how to respond to the homeless most of the time. Christians often say one of two things: “Get a job” (not entirely helpful), or “Did you walk past a homeless person today and forget to show them the love of Christ?” In a more guilt-creating but missional/pastoral way.

I think telling someone who lives in the street to get a job is like telling someone who is dead to get a life — clearly there are roadblocks there that can’t be overcome by harrowing rebuke.

But, I also don’t stop and talk. Mostly, I’m afraid that as a woman on the street alone, it is not safe to get too involved with anyone. Perhaps I’ve seen too many episodes of SVU where the stalker latches on because of eye contact on the subway. I really hate it when this one weird guy picks pansies and then tries to give them to me. It totally sketches me out. (I’m also completely uncomfortable with guys who hit on me, due to my Christian college bubble living.). So, I don’t engage.

Today, I did. And it felt good. I don’t really know if it is socially appropriate to give baked goods to people who may be homeless, but today I helped her, and she treated me with kindness. And maybe that’s all that matters.

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On hold

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Blogging, DC Life, Legal Stuff

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This blog, like several other pieces of my life, has been on hold the last week or so while I adjust to a new job, a new schedule, and new limits on my freedom of speech. :) Just kidding about that last part — I am so excited to be where I am and will continue to be until September 20.

The sensitive nature of some of my work, however, limits my partisan political speech a bit more than most federal employees. So while I can blog about issues, I can’t blog about the campaign. And I can’t like campaign-related things on Facebook. And so on.

I’m also on hold with my legal research/editing consulting projects until my ethics review ends, and it looks like I’ll be staying on but recusing myself from certain work issues to be doubly safe. If there’s one thing I’m certainly not doing for the sake of punctuation and proper citations, it’s going to jail. I’m not quite that hardcore about the English language. Other proof: I use the word “like” a lot. Intentionally, mind you, for emphasis and drama.

H is officially leaving on June 1st [Sidenote: can someone please go see snow white with me? The one where Charlize Theron eats people? Okay thanks.] but we are not preparing for that until he finishes a multitude of projects and exams and so on for school. He is WAY overcommitted in my book, not that my take on how to get an MBA is all that informed or wise. So he is all in a fluster and working himself to death. It’s kind of cute how dedicated he is, when I’m not annoyed that we aren’t going to happy hour every day.

I’m getting smarter every day at work and using parts of my brain that have been semi-dormant for a while. I think I’m really going to like this new gig.

And as for the blog, I will get back into the habit soon, but it will be a little different for a while. I’m going to censor myself a bit more and focus on life and writing and good things like mail and company. My most political posts have been set to private for the duration of my rotation. It will be like taking the summer off. Hopefully it will still be interesting. If not, I’ll meet you here when September’s over.

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