Monday, April 30, 2012

my blogging promise to you




I was struck by a recent comment from one of my favorite bloggers. "Looks like a fabulous weekend!" she'd written. I glanced back at the post she had commented on and whole-heartedly agreed. It did look like a wonderful weekend. In fact, there was absolutely no trace of the pain and agony and heartbreak that I had actually been dealing with the last few days. That was intentional on my part. I didn't really want to reveal how hurt I'm feeling right now, how lonely I have been, how sad I am. So, of course, when my dear friend looked at it, she thought, "What a great weekend she must have had!" I did a really good job of covering up the stuff beneath the surface.

But it really convicted me. I'll confess I often find myself making judgements about people based on their blogs. I assume that everything in their life must be perfect because they're blogging about shoes or cupcakes or date nights. (What an unfair thing for me to assume!) But then I read posts like this amazing one that Jenni wrote and I remember that while our blogs should be honest, real representations of who we are, they are not the sum total of who we are. It's okay if we don't write about every personal dot and iota of our identities on our blogs. It's okay if we choose to talk about the happy, safe things even when less happy, less safe things are taking up space in our lives.

So here's my promise to each of you. I promise to think of you as a whole, entire human being with a life outside of your blog. I promise to value what you choose to share, be it cupcakes or personal confessions or anything in between. I promise to imagine the best of you when all I know is a little of you. I promise to be as real as I know how to be. You deserve that from me. Thanks for taking time to read and share the way you do. You mean a lot to me.

love, elizabeth

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Instagram-ish

It’s Sunday so I thought I’d share some pictures from the week in the style of Instagram. I don’t have an iPhone so these are all courtesy of my favorite new web tool Pixlr-o-matic.

1 and 2: Cupcakes. Yes.

Instagram1Instagram2

3: Books are the very best kind of mail. 4: My morning tea.

Instagram3Instagram4

5: On my walk to school. 6: A sweet potato vine in a jar. If it will ever sprout.

Instagram5Instagram9

7: Some Kind of Wonderful on DVD. “It’s 1987. Don’t you know a girl can be anything she wants?”

8: Re-organized closet.

Instagram6Instagram7

9 and 10: Madigan being Madigan and also generally awesome.

Instagram8Instagram10

love, elizabeth

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Girl Confessions

None of these things feel like they quite need their own post so here it is, a list of stuff I have been thinking.


1. This song is pretty much exactly what I’m feeling today.

2. This kid gives me hope. I think he’s a perfect example of a post-technological generation that is not so impressed with the powers of the internets and the Wii that they can’t imagine a world without it. The most creative thing I’ve seen in a long time. Seriously, this video will make you so happy.

3. Big shout-out to my peeps at Video Central on Bethel Road in Columbus (it’s basically like if High Fidelity was a video rental place instead of a record store). It’s a complete time-warp in there. And they always have time to make movie recommendations or just to talk to the sad girl who wandered in at 8:30 with no idea what she wanted to rent. Seriously, Red Box can eat it.

4. Don’t forget to come back for the May Day Followers Fest hosted by Baxtron {Life}, Imprintalish, BrockPaperScissors, and Love is the adventure this coming Tuesday! It’ll be an awesome and easy way to discover new blogs and gain exposure!

5. I really, really wish that a) people would make sure their blogger ids are linked to an actual email address so that I could reply to their wonderful comments and that b) their Google profiles included a direct link to their blogs. Make it easy on me to find and follow you! (Shelley over at The House of Smiths did a really great, easy tutorial on this.)

6. You can’t ever really anticipate how quickly your life will change. It’s a little mind-boggling. There’s some pretty major stuff changing here for me and Kyle so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! God is in control. God is good.

7. I’ve decided to devote my Saturday afternoon to completely re-organizing my closet. And, of course, I’ll be blogging about it.

8. If anyone out there is still iPhone-less but wishing they could get in on the Instagram photos…I’m currently crushing hard on the pixlr-o-matic. It’s a free photo-editing tool with tons and tons of awesome vintage filters, overlays, effects, and borders. So when you see my “Instagram-ish” photos tomorrow, you know where they came from.

9. Monday night we’re going to a Clippers’ game at Huntington Park with Danny and Janelle. I’ve really missed baseball so I’m especially happy about this.

10. This.


love, elizabeth

Friday, April 27, 2012

Sadness is a friend...

Sadness is an old friend you haven't seen in awhile. You have so many questions to ask him. Where has he been? Where is he headed next? What's his calendar look like these days? You'd forgotten the shape of him, that way he has about him. You'd grown accustomed to his empty chair.



Sadness is a friend you've been thinking of calling. But when you're finally there, face to face, you can't think of a single thing to say...and you kind of wish he'd stayed gone.

love, elizabeth

Hug a Tree Today

 

ArborDay

 

Want to find a unique way to celebrate Arbor Day? Go here and show the trees some love!

love, elizabeth

Thursday, April 26, 2012

I got bangs!

I finally got a haircut this week. As evidenced by this photo-shoot. I call it…”Narcissistic Goblin.”

BangBang1BangBang2BangBang3BangBang4BangBang6BangBang7BangBang9BangBang10

It’s taking time to get used to them but they’re growing on me. GET IT?

Also, I apologize for reviving the word verification on comments. I KNOW how annoying it is but I can't seem to stop the influx of pornographic spam-bots without it. Blah.

love, elizabeth

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Our Love Story (Chapter 4)

If you’ve missed part of the story, you can read Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3. Thanks so much for all the sweet and funny comments! You make writing this even more fun! Here’s the next installment…

In a Flash

This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been, feeling twenty-two and acting seventeen, now I know that there’s a link between the two, being close to craziness and being close to you.

- Katie Melua

When I was little, the woman who took care of me, Mrs. Oh (my adopted Korean grandmother) would tell my mother, “Agee on the outside, ajumma on the inside” which roughly translates to “Baby on the outside, grown woman on the inside.” I think it’s important to clarify that, at this point, I was a 17-year-old in college. Perpetually the baby and always trying to be the grown-up. Everyone was older than me and being old for your age doesn’t prepare you for everything. I was a kid in some pretty adult situations, trying so hard to be an adult, too. Not always succeeding. I think about that now and I think about how I could try to help my own daughter navigate being 17. I can’t imagine how.

Here’s where things start to feel more like snapshots than clear narrative. I can’t honestly remember which flirty moment happened first but they were there, these little moments between us. They come back like flashes…

The day the director finally demands that Kyle get his haircut (which he does…in a backstage corner). It’s before a dress rehearsal and my hair is in these plastic blue curlers. Someone says I look like a little blue alien. Kyle says I look pretty.

FLASH

Kyle squeezes my arm as we stand near one another in the dressing room. Every time I look at him, my face feels hot and I can’t think of anything to say.

FLASH

I stare at his sneakers during warm-ups. They’re black Chuck Taylor’s with permanent marker scrawled all over them.

FLASH

And then there was the cast party.

I guess, at this point, I need to talk a little bit more about Sir Cuckoo Pants, aka the chapter of my romantic history I find most embarrassing. I won’t dwell here longer than necessary because, honestly, it all makes my skin crawl and it’ll probably make yours crawl, too.

SCP, as we’ll dub him, was older. 21 or 22 maybe. I’ve tried to forget as much as I can about him. I think most of us have people like that in our pasts. Or maybe I’m just hoping I’m not the only 17 year-old girl who let an older boy manipulate and use her most unjustly. At this point, SCP had been leading me on for a good while with a line that sounded like, “Well…MAYBE I might like it if you were my girlfriend…it’s just…I’ve had my heart broken so badly and I don’t know if it can ever be put back together. But maybe if you’re patient…I’ll decide we can really be together, officially.” (Go ahead. Roll your eyes. Sometimes I fantasize about inventing the time machine I will use to go back and slap myself silly. You can come, too, if you want. It’s a two-seater.)

TimeMachine

But even really dumb 17-year-olds can eventually spot the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. Especially when someone like Kyle shows up and is completely sincere and gentlemanly without thought of personal gain. In fact, the more time I spent around Kyle, the more I felt that horrible, sick feeling in my stomach when SCP called. I was weary of him, even dreading the sound of his voice. SCP made me feel stupid and small and powerless.

But it was the cast party that was the clincher. There was a snowstorm that night, late even for a spring in Colorado, and Kyle and his roommate Richard had followed my car to the party. I remember climbing out of the mini-van I was driving at the time, into inches of freezing, wet powder, regretting my pink ballet flats and thin corduroy jacket. That jacket, a pale green color with puffed sleeves, had been purchased specifically for the party. The guys stood awkwardly in the road, waiting for me. There was a second of silence and daring myself to be brave, I looped an arm through Kyle’s and we started towards the house. We didn’t say anything. And once I’d done it, it felt like I had been holding on to Kyle’s arm always, like maybe I’d done it earlier that day or the day before or the year before or every day since I knew I had arms. I distinctly remember the sound of snow under our feet, under his old gray sneakers, under my pink ballet flats, flimsy and slippery now. There was a steady crunch-crunch-crunch as we went up the walk and into the house. As if we always did that. Walked up to houses together and rang doorbells and stamped the snow from our feet together.

The house was humming with people, actors and stage crew laughing and talking. Someone had started a fire in the living room and Kyle and I sat on the couch next to another cast member, a friend of Kyle’s, a guy who would later attend our wedding, G. Another actor, J, had worn an enormous gold dollar sign around his neck and now Kyle was trying it on and J was laughing at him. I remember sitting there, watching him, wanting to know about him. Someone got me a glass of water. And then something really, really embarrassing happened.

I still don’t remember why he said it, what prompted it, but Kyle was tending the fire with a long poker and he suddenly says, “Yeah, I was actually born with the disease that the Elephant Man had.”

Do not ask me why I found this so completely and suddenly hilarious but I proceeded to spit the water. that I was drinking. all over his face. And all over G. And the couch. It was like the most epic Looney Tunes style spit-take of all time. Kyle sat there, his face dripping with my spit-water, a little shocked. And G was laughing. And I was mortified. Mortified and still choking and hacking up the water that had entered my lungs. I prayed for the earth to open up and swallow me whole.

And, as if God had given Kyle the personal mission of proving how good a guy he was and how terrible a guy SCP was, he just laughed and took the hand towel someone offered him. He didn’t make me feel bad. In fact, he seemed hell-bent on making sure I stopped feeling embarrassed as quickly as possible. “Hey, I needed a shower, anyway,” he said. Questions raced through my mind. Deep, thought-provoking questions like, Where has this guy come from and why were his eyes so green and what had I ever seen in SCP and was the Elephant Man story true and what would it be like to kiss him right now, in the middle of the party, by the fireplace? And then my phone buzzed.

It was Sir Cuckoo Pants. I looked at Kyle and then back at my phone. A short private phone call later, I was back next to Kyle.

“Was that your boyfriend?” he asked.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “He’s a jerk.”

The rest of the party was spent exchanging shy glances, the ends of our fingers almost touching on the sofa, and round after round of karaoke with the rest of the cast. Kyle gave me his hoodie to wear over my impractically thin clothes and at the end of the night, he traded shoes with me so that my feet wouldn’t be cold walking through the snow. He wore my pink ballet flats all the way to the car where he left me with a smile and a hug like the gentleman he was. On the way home, the sweatshirt still wrapped around me, my small thumbs fitting through the holes along the sleeve edges, I buried my nose in the soft gray fabric and wondered why it had taken me so long to tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. At home, I dug my hand into the pocket of the jacket and texted one final message before drifting off to sleep:

SCP, I don’t think this is working out. I’ve met someone else who treats me well and I’d like to see where it goes. I’d just like to be friends, if that’s okay.

Cellphone

Oh, if only it were that simple.

To Be Continued.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Our Love Story (Chapter 3)

Have you read Chapter 1 and 2 yet? If not, you can catch up here and here. Here’s the third installment in the story of how Kyle and I met and fell into messy head-over-heels, leap-into-the-abyss, jump-in-front-of-a-train, live-in-a-garbage-can kind of love. Uh, just to clarify…we don’t ACTUALLY live in a garbage can. Okay.

Remember

Old School

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. 
-Edward de Bono

I had an interesting conversation with one of my professors about memory. There’s a theory that memory never stands still, that the process of remembering is a process of re-making our memories. Every time we retell a story, the details take on new significance and reorder the way that memory is stored in our brains. And the more important a story is, the more we tell it, and the more it becomes something other than “just the facts” because we can’t actually remember “the facts” exactly as they are. If that’s true, then memory can never be a duplicate of what exactly was but instead our impression of what was, colored and shaped and shaded by all the experiences and knowledge that has come after. Most of us don’t go through our day-to-day interactions thinking, I better remember this moment exactly because it might turn out to be the conversation that changes my life. But somehow, when I look back at these early conversations with Kyle, they take on a huge amount of significance.

I do remember the day Kyle came back to rehearsal. “We’re glad Kyle was able to come back and join us!” Courtney said at the cast meeting at the beginning of the night, gesturing to the back of the theatre where Kyle sat. And guys, I seriously do not know what possessed me but I suddenly, impulsively, without any real thought, jumped out of my seat and turned fully around to look back at him. “Hi, Kyle! We missed you!” I think people laughed. I don’t remember. Before he could say anything, before I could even feel the red flooding my cheeks, I whirled around and sat back down in my seat. Not before I caught him smiling a little. Good, I thought. I’m glad he smiled.

We circled up for warm-ups and I remember our eyes locking for a second. His face was tired, sad. He hadn’t slept for days but I didn’t know that yet.

Our first conversation was later. Maybe the next day.

I had brought my old walkman to review my lines before rehearsal and I had snuck into the back of the dark theatre to practice. Down on the stage, Kyle was mopping. He looked up and out into the audience to where I sat, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the bright stage lights. "That’s pretty old school,” he said, gesturing to the tape player in my hands.

Chapter Two Again

And I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally wish I remember what I said back. Since I don’t know, I’ve taken the liberty of coming up with several options. You can vote below.

Did I say...
a. “Well, that’s just how I roll, bro-seph.”
b. “Your MOM is pretty old-school!”
c. “Hee hee, what?”
d. Long pause. “…Yeah.”
I remember wanting so badly to impress him. Something about the way he’d talked to me, the way he’d made that comment, so over the shoulder, off the cuff. It felt so cool. He felt so cool. Mysterious. Deep. Like he didn’t care that much. According to Kyle, he already cared a lot and was trying desperately to think of an icebreaker, any icebreaker.

So there we were. Both thinking the other couldn’t be cooler. But all of this was before the cast party…because let's not forget...I was still kind of dating a psychopath at the time.

To Be Continued

What do YOU think I probably said? Vote below!

love, elizabeth

Monday, April 23, 2012

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare

William Shakespeare turns 448 today (at least, most scholars agree April 23rd is his birthday). He’s looking pretty good for his age, I’d say. So in honor of that, I’d thought I’d share one of my favorite things compiled by Bernard Levin. I often forget how much of my everyday speech I owe to Shakespeare! How many of these things do you say? Did you know all these sayings were from Shakespeare?

Shakespeare

“If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.”
-Bernard Levin
Also, Happy Wedding Anniversary to Mrs. Pancakes over at Adventures of Team Pancakes! Stop by and show her some love...

love, elizabeth

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Instagram-ish
































1 and 15: Girls’ night in. Did my nails. Drank some cabernet. Watched Grey’s Anatomy.

2 and 16: Kyle at work. I was a super embarrassing wife and kept taking pictures of him. He still made me a café misto so I call it a win.

3 and 8: The Broadway tour of West Side Story is in Columbus! It was fun to see the Jerome Robbins choreography re-staged.

4, 6, and 9: At Panera Bread with Marni and Emily and French onion soup.

5, 12, and 14: Thrifting at Plato’s Closet. I did not purchase any of the things purchased but I might have if those hot pink jeans had been something besides a size 3 (my thighs literally LOLed when they saw that).

7 and 10: In the theater before Titanic 3D. I kind of wanted to steal the 3D glasses. They were quite flattering.

11: I actually remembered to take a picture of what I wore…cardigan: Old Navy, ribbed tank: Target, skirt: thrifted, galoshes: Wal*Mart, necklace: vintage thrifted from the Outer Banks.

13: With Zoey at the end of the movie…we’re a little bleary-eyed from all the weeping we did. She’s so photogenic!


love, elizabeth

Saturday, April 21, 2012

How to Watch Titanic. No. Really.

Tonight is going to be an epic girl’s night. Tonight I’m not just going to see Titanic 3D. Oh, no. I’m talking Titanic. 3D. IMAX. I’m expecting to be able to do just about everything but taste the caviar. (Speaking of which, get on that, James Cameron.)

Here’s my Titanic kit (um it’s 3 hours and 14 minutes, yo):

Titanic

I leave you with this. Oh, and I’ll be tweeting about the movie throughout the day.



What about you? Have you gone to see it in 3D? Do you like the film?

love, elizabeth

Friday, April 20, 2012

Our Love Story (Chapter 2)

This took longer than I had planned to write! If you haven’t had a chance to read the first chapter of our love story, you can read it here. Thanks for letting me share this with you…it’s the first time I’ve ever written it all down.


Cuckoo-Pants

I never thought that you would be the one to hold my heart.

- Christina Perri


In my defense, I was 17 and an idiot. It’s completely like escargot. You have to try it to know you don’t like it (or love it). I had to date a cuckoo-pants to a) know he was a cuckoo-pants and b) know that I’m not really a cuckoo-pants kind of girl. Everyone gets one cuckoo-pants freebie. And so I was an idiot romantically involved with a bigger idiot when rehearsals for Our Town first began. Coupled with the inexplicably large amount of attention I was getting from the male population at the time (did I mention that I was 17 and an idiot and boy-crazy?), I hardly noticed Kyle.

Kyle has always been calm. If you ever meet him, you’ll know what I mean. Kyle just exudes like…an oasis of calm. This is what makes him so fantastic in a crisis. It’s what makes him an insanely good stage manager. He just has this way of making you feel like if the world is about to end, you might as well eat that last slice of pizza. He’s quiet and he thinks a lot and when he listens to you, he looks at you with these big sea-green eyes that somehow say, “I know what it’s like to be sad and I can be sad with you right now. And that’s okay.” (7 plus years later, I’ve learned that his eyes also say things like, “I don’t want to take out the garbage. You do it.” and “Me Kyle. Me want buffalo wings.” His eyes are very verbose.)

But I didn’t pay attention to any of this because I was busy being heavily stalked courted by a young man with an excessive amount of bling, a man living in his parents’ basement, a teenager I had to drive home after rehearsals, a dude that started bets about the state of my maidenly honor, and aforementioned Sir Cuckoo-Pants himself. And me (the idiot, you’ll recall), I’m like “lalala, I’m so popular and pretty and I’m the star of this show.”

Then a couple things happened that really altered the course of our lives. One, Sir Cuckoo-Pants was like, “I’m going cray-cray, ain’t nobody gonna stop me…” and started being more of a royal you-know-what than I had imagined possible. Secondly, Kyle’s older brother Orion, his hero, his mentor, passed away very suddenly.

It’s funny the things that stick in the memory. I remember our director, Courtney, making the announcement to the cast that Kyle’s brother had died, that Kyle had understandably left the show to go and be with his family, that he was welcome to return to the production but that we, of course, would understand if he did not. And then she passed around a sympathy card for us to sign. I remember this clearly. I remember holding in the card in my hand and suddenly feeling ashamed because I couldn’t exactly remember who Kyle was, couldn’t remember ever having spoken to him really, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I read the many comments: “You’re in our thoughts and prayers.” “You’ll get through this.” “Our hearts are with you.” “So sorry for your loss.” All well-meaning. And all utterly pointless. I was sorry for his loss. But that wouldn’t matter to him. I sat there with the pencil in my hand, staring at the card and thinking, I can’t even remember if we’ve had a conversation. What on earth could I possibly write that wouldn’t be completely irrelevant and arrogant? I signed my name in small letters and passed the card on as quickly as possible, strangely wishing I had known Kyle well enough to be allowed to care. What I didn’t know until much later was that Kyle had looked for my name on the card, that he had paused when he saw my signature, that he had been grateful for it. “Honesty. Nothing fake,” he would tell me, “That meant so much to me.”

Sorry

I consider this a pivotal moment in our love story because if Kyle had chosen not to come back, if he had decided to stay with his mom after the funeral, to help look after his family…it would have been completely understandable. And he and I would never have spoken.

To Be Continued

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Girl Confessions

1. Here’s my favorite picture of the week, taken by my friend Charlesanne.  If this picture doesn’t make you happy to be alive and grateful for sunshine, nothing will. So sweet.
 Puppy

2. I have TWO new features coming up on the blog…a brand new link-up called Reality Check (stay posted for more details!) and a new series on local thrift stores…I’m super excited. 

3. There are finally new shoots on my lucky bamboo. Maybe there’s no such thing as luck. But if you knew the survival rate of any plant in my apartment, you’d think it was a lucky bamboo, too.

lucky

4. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the May Day Follow Fest! It’s a great way to discover new blogs and build your readership.




5. I'm giving in to the James Cameron charm and going to see Titanic 3D IMAX this weekend. I expect it to be even more terrifying and kleenex-worthy than usual.

6. My mom just sent me this snapshot from her days in the Navy…isn’t she beautiful?

Mama

7. Sometimes it’s hard to stay in the present moment. Especially when I have things to look forward to like pay day or Green Day’s new album or a road trip with my dad this summer…To be at peace with today, this minute, this second…that takes concentration.

Stay posted…Chapter 2 of our love story will be up tomorrow!

Alright, lay it on me. Confessions this week?

love, elizabeth
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