United by Bang Troubles.

Girls, I know you can relate.

I was bored. So I cut bangs. And now I hate them!!!! I thought they might add some pizazz to my growing out hairstyle, and instead they drag my face down and make me look old and tired. What's that about? Awful.

Now I have my scissors out and every time I go into my bathroom I cut a little more. Not necessarily shorter, but shaping them differently. "Never mind, I'll part them on the other side." Yuck. "Okay, how about no part, and I'll wear them straight down." Yuck. It's a process.

I think I finally chipped away at them long enough to make them cute. I even woke up this morning, looked in the mirror and bemoaned the curling clump I missed while flat ironing before I bemoaned my bangs. Progress.

I arrived in swampy humid Austin. Waited forever for the van. Made it to the hotel. Still liked the bangs. Sat in front of an air conditioner to cool off and now, aforementioned bangs are a hot frizzy mess. ARRH.

Peace Dude

Bike riding in California is a whole different ball game compared to East Boston. For one thing, Long Beach has a whole lot fewer hills, which my out of shape legs appreciate. In E. Boston I sweat or freeze as I cruise across old dirty neighborhoods with poorly directed traffic patterns and no shade. As I rode around, even the industrial area of Long Beach was landscaped with my much missed palm trees and the fences were lined with honeysuckle bushes that scented the perfect 70 degree air.

As I paused waiting to turn at the stop light a boy on his bike cruised by on his green light, turned and flashed me a peace sign. I think I could live seven life times before that would ever happen in Boston.

One year.

I've been in Boston for exactly one year now, and it's amazing how many things have happened in my life. I have a lovely wonderful fantastic great amazing boyfriend who lives all of 10 minutes from me, I live by myself in a really cute apartment, I own a little yellow bike that gets hit on every time I'm waiting at a stop light, and I've taken a serious turn in managing my finances. My foot that was injured when I moved my couch into my apartment has finally found a chiropractor who thinks that he can fix it, and with one visit I have noticed a difference. (No thanks to the podiatrist who apparently knows nothing.)

In the past year I have been to Peru, Haiti, England, British Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, India and Greece. I have good friends, some new and some old, and I have discovered a skill set that I hadn't yet realized. Sewing. My nephew visited this summer and I finally received his approval as an excellent aunty. I found a church that I like, and a group that I love. I have been challenged physically, mentally, and spiritually and have been happy with the outcomes. I put together a table and set of chairs without directions, I hiked for six hours in the Andies and I'm in a good place with God.

I am completely depressed with the weather. But that is a whole different subject.

A year in Boston has done far exceeded my expectations. I am blessed.

Lucky Girl Drives a Stick Shift.

Of all the crazy things I have done in a foreign country, driving has not been one of those things. In countries like England or Ireland, where I have spent more time, the driving has been on the opposite side of the road and I have flat refused. My limit on crazy appears to be jumping out of airplanes or riding a motercycle with the boyfriend on the back in the Dominican Republic. It does not include driving around a turnpike lost on the wrong side of the road.

In Santorini we are staying on the beach in a town called Perissa. It's a lovely relaxing beachy little area. With nothing to do. And the girls and I were feeling restless. Alright. Time to rent the car and drive to Oia. We rented a little Hyundai with no pretense of insurance or deposits and off we went. Christina drove first, relearning how to drive a stick shift. Tara took over once we reached a city and drove around a very winding road.

At dinner in Oia I said, "I get to drive home right?" Tara begged to bogart the driving home on the premise that she would feel sick on the windy road. I was dissapointed but not feeling well myself, so I hopped in the back. About a kilometer from the hotel Tara pulled over and let me drive (I know, right), so finally I could say I drove in a foreign country.

This morning I woke up first, and therefore was required to return the car. I had to put gas in it, so I excitedly left for the open road. I passed a grocery store and decided immediately I was going inside. It was a great store with a wall of yogurt and a wall of little toasty breads and a wall of chips. I was in heaven. Driving and a grocery store? I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Quotes

Santorini, Greece
Sept 24, 2009

Quotes:

"Oh my Gosh, I'm Kate Gosselin!"
"I'm a supermodel, shove a freaken' glutton free bagel down my throat!"


Analysis:

Girls night in Santorini is going well. Encouraged by sangria, greek food (houmous for Tara) and a molten lava cake, the gossip session covered a range of topics, from boys and our treatment of a particular boyfriend, "Sometimes I'm so mean when I'm stressed, it's like,'Oh my gosh, I'm Kate Gosselin!" to the dietary constrains and the state of a particular member of the group's current flu induced weightloss. "I mean, look at me! I'm a supermodel, shove a freaken' glutton free bagel down my throat!"

Hours later our waiter informed us "just because I likes to hear women talking, talking there is free internets in the back room."

We decided girls night was a success and headed to bed.

Athens is Great!

Dear Diary,
Athens is great! That is, if you enjoy boring buildings smacked in between old ruins. And, speaking of smack... The massive drug deal going on in the middle of the afternoon at the corner of our street ensured I would witness one of the most jarring and disturbing sights I have ever seen outside the movie theater. Crouched near the wall a man helped another inject himself with drugs. As I turned to walk past him the two men on the other side were doing the same.

We were concerned about returning late at night, but at 10 PM when we made it back from the absolutely delicious dinner, which yes, included olives, olive oil, feta and pita, the streets were empty and safer seeming then earlier in the afternoon. The only signs of earlier activity that remained were the needle wrappers littered everywhere across the ground.

And while we're on the subject of smack... The man on the ferry this morning snoring and lounging across three seats was "rudely" awaken by a ferry employee. The man, obviously drunk, reached out to smack the employee away and in doing so dropped part of his sesame covered pretzely pastry thing on the ground. As the employee walked away drunk guy settled back in for his nap.

Again the ferry employee came to wake him up. Again drunk guy reached out to smack the employee. This time the employee succeeded in getting him up and awake. The drunk guy spotted his pastry laying on the ground, grabbed it and wandered off munching on it.

Dear Diary, Greece is amazing.

Laura Rides the T

Although Zales stores are plentiful in New York, the city of Boston and most of the surrounding areas are sadly Zales free. I made the trek out to the Braintree Mall to drop off my ring and finally had a day off to pick it up. On the T, Boston's public transportation, I turned on my ipod to practice some french. I wanted off at State street so I could transfer at Downtown Crossing. I ended up at Government Center, only looking up because so many people were getting off the train. "Crap." I walked over to the Park Street T. It crossed back through Downtown Crossing putting me on the right track. Eventually I made it to the mall after waiting for the bus forever. The whole adventure getting there took all of two hours.

Coming home with my sparkly ring, I missed the bus by minutes. Half an hour later another bus showed up. Crossing from the Red line I decided to switch at Downtown Crossing and again at State. I was playing a rather intense game of solitaire when I realized I was at Haymarket. One stop past where I wanted to be. I took the train two stops back, again playing my solitaire game and realized I was at Downtown crossing again heading toward park. I jumped off the train and walked over to the Blue line's State street exit, not trusting myself to get off again at State if I stayed on the T.

My brother called me as I was getting on the T. We stopped at Aquarium and I, still on the phone went to jump off. "Crap, wrong stop." I muttered. "What?" My brother asked. Too annoyed I just remuttered a response. "Nothing. I'm just having a day."

God's Judgement and a Little Jet Lag.

What with Michelle Obama having the gall to wear shorts to the Grand Canyon and John Piper blaming tornadoes in the mid-west on the gays, blog readers have had enough to read about without me adding to the fray. This has freed me up to work a bunch of red eyes and then yesterday to head to LA at five in the morning. My body is not entirely sure which way is up or down, east or west, morning, noon or night.

I met up with my friend Rachel last night and while waiting for her to get out of work I decided to take a nap. I lay down and immediately fell asleep. I woke up drooling on my own hand from one of those sleeps were two hours felt like five minutes and my face was smushed up into a puffy red ball. Needless to say, it was delightful.

I head home today, and thanks to the wonder that is jet lag I woke up at a cool eight AM, really 11 AM east coast, ready to face the day. I'm off for the rest of the week and if you for one second think I'm going to be taking it easy, you are wrong. Thursday I head to Chicago for a long weekend with Christina and our Craigslist boys. That is, the boyfriend and I will be heading to Chicago on standby, if God doesn't send a tornado to the Cape judging the first lady for her continued usage of shorts.

Food and Friends

Although I am on an incredibly strict budget that has cut out everything but necessities and travel, I couldn't resist calling my old roommate Joe for dinner in Orlando. He brought along a mutual friend of ours, Evie, and we headed to a Mexican restaurant.

AMAZING! The food was delicious, particularly noted because Boston lacks my version of Mexican food and Orlando apparently doesn't. My tacos were the definition of perfection.

I digress on the subject of food (typical) and actually only wanted to say that the company I was in made every penny of the $20 dollars worth it. It is so good to have friends that, even after a months long hiatus, we can talk like we saw each other yesterday.

Now I am full and happy and not a bit sleepy. Shoot.

Children's Museum

On a list of some of the more ironic things that have happened to me, getting eyeballed by a lesbian in a children's museum is on the top of the middle.

This past week my nephew has been visiting. I planned all sorts of activities for him and in retrospect probably could have saved all my money by sticking him in one of the many fountains Boston has and leaving him there all day. Although he did spend plenty of time in fountains, we visited the Imax, Aquarium, beach and finally, the Boston Children's Museum.

On a list of most boring days ever, the visit to the children's museum definately beats working or sitting at the doctors office, but falls very short of say, a roller coaster or a hot air balloon ride or really even of reading a good book.

I followed my nephew around "Aiden wait your turn." "Aiden, there's a line." "Aiden, don't you dare." "Aiden! Don't push." He had a blast racing golf balls down tracks, dancing, throwing a basketball around and lifting a car up and down on a pulley.

While we were spending hours in the ball room (literally, hours), I noticed this girl kept looking at me. I had been ignoring all the parents, except the one's I was apologizing to because Aiden had excitedly pushed their children out of the way to throw his ball down the track first, but this girl kept trying to catch my eye. After the fourth or so time of awkward eye contact, I thought, "Is she hitting on me?" I scanned her outfit. Ugly shoes. Well that's typical of Boston. A skirt. Suprising. A tee shirt. Hmmm. OH! Short hair. Almost shaved short. A SIGN!

Once I had my theory I curiously looked at her one more time. She looked over at me and smiled. And I knew. I had just been checked out by a lezzie at a children's museum.

Chicken and the Egg

I completely forgot to mention this, but in a crowning cooking triumph, my spatula was covered in chocolate chips but my egg was about to over cook. In one swift motion I picked up the pan, gave it a shake and flipped my egg over. I've tried many a time to do this before, but I've either plopped it onto the stove or chickened out (chicken, ha ha) before I could make a mess. A TRIUMPH!

Loss of Things

For about a week or two my closet has been smelling a little weird. I have a lot of wool sweaters and it's been really warm, so I figured it was just musty sweater smell; since today was laundry day I thought I would check things out and make sure there wasn't any real issues with my closet (we did have a broken water heater recently) and in the mean time I could get my sweaters ready for cold weather wear.

Imagine my dismay when upon opening my closet I saw the wicker basket that holds everything from socks, underwear, and scarves to nylons, hats and gloves was growing mold. Lots of mold. All around the bottom and about two inches up on one side was green and white with fluffy mold.

I hurriedly removed the top dry layers from the basket. Most of my underwear, nylons and tights where fine. I dug to the side where I keep my old ballet shoes and point shoes. I came up with a soggy pair of spanks, but no shoes. I sighed in preemptive relief thinking they were in the middle, more dry area of the basket.

Not so much. I was devastated when I saw the blue cotton bag mushed up against the wettest side of the basket. I knew from the smell the shoes were going to be ruined. The black mold covered the whole of the point shoes and green mossy substance grew from the back of one of the shanks. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!" I cried in horror. Really. It's was pretty dramatic. I peeled my regular ballet shoes apart, not as moldy as the point shoes, but also ruined.

Disheartened I went back to the few remaining hats in the basket. My sister Zandra, who died when I was six, had a yellow jaunty beret that I inherited and loved. I tried it on periodically and usually took it off not having enough sass to pull it off comfortably. It was sandwiched between the hat that I loved from Kmart (That seven dollar hat has vetted me many a complement, including my favorite from an oil tycoon and his snooty Moroccan millionaire friend.), and a wool ear muff, head wrap that my friend made for me after we saw one at a craft fair. All three items, and the rest of my hats, but the three important ones, where unsalvagible. Zandra's hat, already at least 25 years old, was too fragile for the scrubbing and detergent that I attempted to use on it.

Reminding myself that it wasn't as if my house had just burnt down or I lost everything I possessed, I threw everything away, cleaned up and went to work. My supervisor greeted me excitedly when I walked in the crew room. She asked how I was and at my less then enthusiastic response gave me a sympathetic mom look. I started crying as I told her, "My ballet shoes and my sisters hat were ruined!" In retrospect, I realized I sounded like an idiot, but in the moment I only felt the huge loss of my sister's possession and was obviously unclear at articulating what I felt.

When my landlord asked my how he could compensate me I told him, "The things that I lost are irreplaceable. I didn't loose anything that had a tangible value except a couple pairs of white socks that I just didn't want to bother with. Everything else was sentimental. I don't need to be compensated." He "Rubbished." me, but the reality is when I go home I will be sorting through the one last pile of questionable objects. In that pile is a old scarf from my grandmother and a really great pair of funky gloves from my aunt. Across the room, mocking this questionable pile sits a replaceable one dollar scarf from the gap and a pair of gloves from Delia's sale catalogue that came with a whole in them.

I wish I wasn't crying over worldly possessions, but this loss of things has hurt me.

Bit the Dust. AKA: Budgets.

This is what happens when I am on a very strict budget. Instead of say, turning down a great chance to hang out with a friend on a nice Sunday, I decided that it would be great fun to go to SaWa, an art, antique, crafty affair and spend no more then $10 dollars.

I walked around for about an hour amusing myself by pretending I could make most of the stuff there for a fraction of the price and, of course, it would turn out even cooler. Soap? That's so easy to make. Candles? Any fool can make a candle. Screen printed scarfs? I should take a screen printing class. How hard could it be? Basically I'm one of those fake creative types that steal other peoples ideas and think that I should capitalize on them, only to later figure out that I'm too lazy to even Google how to make a soy candle that smells like (and I'm not kidding) beer.

The one purchase that I did make is sourdough bread. Try, the few times that I have, bread is not one of my top baking skills. As I was putting my wallet back into my purse the bread slipped out of the bag and landed on the dirty nasty asphalt. I could have cried. My friend cheerfully said, "Uh-oh! Guess you need to get another one." My wallet cringed at the thought of throwing away three dollars, but my mouth cringed even more at the thought of dusting it off and eating it.

I thought for a moment. I decided to take it home and cut off the outer crust leaving only the soft chewy wonderful middle part. My friend laughed at me, but I couldn't think of a better solution. I loved the middle part and more ate the crust out of obligation. Plus, I love bread and tend to eat a lot, so automatically I was saving calories. And, I saved my monies, by not having to buy another loaf.

My budget actually gave me the chance to do something I would never be able to afford to do under normal circumstances; buy a loaf of bread and only eat the middle.

Peek-A-Boo

I was the third wheel on a doggy play date the other day. I know that sounds a bit strange and, trust me, it was. But the guy who owned one of the dogs also owns a beautiful apartment with almost 360 views of Boston and amazing sunset watching windows, and so we've heard, if he invites, you say, "Yes."

So there I was in his house. He offered me some lemonade, then left the lemonade out on the counter while he socialized with the other dog's owners and my boyfriend. I sat there staring at it. Twitching to put it back. If there are two things one doesn't need to know about me, one is that I hate food just sitting on the counter and two, I love to look inside other people's fridges. It sounds a bit strange, and, trust me, I know it, to have an intense desire to see what lurks behind those magnetic doors, but I can't help it. I love to peek.

As the sun set, we gathered up our things to leave. I placed the empty cups in the sink and one of the dogs refused to be caught. With the commotion of chasing the dogs distracting the fridge's owner, I grabbed the lemonade and triumphantly placed it back into it's spot on the fridge's door. I glanced over the organized, yet surprisingly crowded contents and shut the door satisfied. I quickly glanced at the freezer door but refrained and headed to the stairs to leave.

Domestic Heroine

With the limited sewing skills that remained from her senior project in high school, the Martha Stewart like domestic heroine, fought back her disappointment of yet another rainy day, and pulled out her sewing machine.

Faced with the prospect of a incredibly see through skirt, she knew she must pull out all the stops and make a skirt with lining. Daunted, but not done in, she chopped away at the creamy material, pausing to consider how everything would be connected.

After changing the needle on the sewing machine, and for the first time in years, threading a bobbin, she was ready to begin. How does it turn on? What stitch did she want? Why were the pins in backwards? Are zippers supposed to be so bumpy? After just a few missteps, she actually created a wearable object.

The heavens opened and sunshine poured down upon her. Ha ha. Who are we kidding? This is Boston people. The sun doesn't shine. But our domestic, Martha Stewart like heroine does have a lovely new skirt.

And to celebrate she made brownies and raviolis and garlic bread. To quote her mother, "Let's hope the skirt still fits."