BOTH!

Waaaaaa - it's been almost a week! I know, and that had made me sad...but like I said last Friday, my little brother had been in town and we have been running around like little puppies, which makes it hard to sit down and write.

And I wish I was better about that.

But apparently I can focus on just a few things at a time.

Which makes me wish that I could have had both. Both my brother in town, running around, oyster-bakes, and hiking, as well as funny gifs and lovely blogs.

But apparently both is hard to have.

And that makes me cry, because BOTH is my favorite thing.

BOTH was the reason that I knew I was going to marry Steve on our first date. It was creepy that I knew, and it really freaked me out that I had that thought, but it happened.

We were sitting in a pew in the private backroom of a little swanky Chinese restaurant in Hollywood, listening to a singer-song writer, and Steve leaned into me and said "Can I bring you something to drink? I said yes. He asked "what?" I said, "whatever you're having."

(Ladies, this was my way of finding out what kind of drinks he liked. Lol.)

He went to the bar, and was gone a little while.

He came back holding several beers.

He said, "Well I didn't know if you liked Guinness or Fat Tire....so I bought you both."

As he sat down in the pew next to me, and put his arm back around my shoulder, I heard this little sound in my brain. It wasn't like a firework, or some loud explosion, it was that sound when you pop your finger out of your mouth:




Yea.

It made that sound.

And then this thought, "I could do this. For a very long time."

And even though it took me several months to get over the idea that my brain had that thought....it was settling to know that no matter what happened, I was with a guy that understood the power of both.

Here are some other things that I totally LOVE, because I feel like you are getting BOTH:

1) MASHUPS.

I know this makes me the stereotypical white-girl in a club that goes crazy when you hear a mashup. I know lots of people think they are shitty. But you know what? I feel like they are the all-you-can-eat buffet of music. You get to have all the music you love, and you don't have to wait for it, or prioritize it or anything. It's like a magical explosion for your ears.

Don't believe me? Listen to this one, and tell me you're not in love:



Yea.

I can listen to this on repeat for like 12 hours and not even be a little bit bored.

2) Adult Root Beer Floats.

Can't decide between an after-dinner dessert or an after-dinner drink? Why pick just one? Have both!

1 part baileys +  2 parts root beer + tons of vanilla ice cream.

RIGHT?

3) Buffalo Chicken Pizza

This one has a special place in my heart. You know why? BECAUSE ITS A MASHUP OF MY FAVORITE FOODS IN ALL THE LAND!

If you haven't learned this by now, maybe we're not friends.

Buffalo wings are honest to god some of my favorite things. So is pizza. If I had to pick one of them and couldn't have the other for the rest of my life, I would think long and hard and then just do this:

So I gave a special place in my heart for whatever genius thought of this:

It makes me tinkle a little when I think about it.

4) Long Dresses

We all have mornings when we wake up and feel like this:

And really, thinking about going into the office makes you do this:

You know what really helps?

Maxi dresses.

I'm serious.

For some reason, rolling into the office in one of these tricks my mind into thinking that I'm about to leave on vacation to Hawaii or something, so I feel giddy all day instead of hating life. Maybe it's because THEY'RE LIKE WEARING PAJAMAS TO THE OFFICE:

This trick works so well, my friends seem to have caught on. Now when I wear a "vacation dress"  they know that I REALLY don't wanna be at work that day and make this face:

5) Gummi Vitamins

Gummi candy + strong nail beds?

6) Last and finally, my all time favorite.....UNICORNDOGS.

think about it.

think about it.

think about it.

Alright my little bunnies, those are my favorite both things. If you have some that you love and you're dying to share...drop me a comment.

Love and fairies,

J

Brother!

My brother's coming to town this weekend/next week! Which is kinda amazing because he has not yet come to see me in San Francisco!

Growing up, there were 4 of us. Matt, me, Jason and Michele. Matt always had a lot of energy and had the tendency to bully Jason and I. So when we were sitting in my mom's van, Michele (being like 2 years old) was the only one who could handle sitting next to Matt. Maybe he had something against hitting babies. I don't know.

So Matt and Michele sat in the very back row, leaving Jason and I to sit in the middle row of the van. These were our seats for all of childhood. Or forever....if we were to get in a van now, we just might instinctively choose the same seats.

This permanent seating arrangement meant Jason and I became super close growing up. We shared that little storage compartment on the left-hand side of the van, goldfish crackers, and used entertain each other with weird-kid-shit, like trying to make up our own language so that Matt and Michele couldn't understand us. Well, Michele was a baby...so we were mainly trying to keep Matt from pestering us. It didn't work out. We would turn to each other and say "Ester balloon tra la monkey" and the other person would be like:

And then whisper..."I forgot what that was supposed to mean."

We were weird. But also awesome.

This combination of weird-awesome has earned Jason a special spot in my heart. One might say that he is my "favorite brother" if one believed in favorites. I don't believe in favorites though. So I wouldn't say that.

We called each other "booney" for most of our childhood, which is some embarrassing derivation of the word book....which I can't believe Im actually telling the entire internet about this because I am realizing while I am typing that my brother and I used to call each other "book" as a nickname.  We were weird.

My brother had a ponytail as a little boy, that grew into a kinda-mullet as he got older...but it was badass. And now he doesn't have a ponytail or a mullet, but he's still badass. He's a stunt actor at Universal Studios and does cool tricks like jump from a 40 foot tower that's on fire and lands into a pool that also has boats and jet skis racing through it. It looks kinda like this:

Badass.

He's coming with his girlfriend Autum, who is also badass but in a sparkly, girly princess kind of way. She has actually been the princess in the Pirate's Dinner Adventure Show, and one time had her face on a billboard. She was cast as a dancer in a traveling show called Moster Rock in Singapore and wen't on tour for a while.  Her life looks kinda like this:

So I'm kinda stoked to have them here. I kinda feel like this:

Happy Weekend folks. The weather here is supposed to be amazing. So put on your bikini and go frolic.

-J

A Trip Down a Blogger's Past

These past few days I have been going through some of my old content from a blog that I posted on over five years ago. It's kinda been a trip.

I almost feel like I've been reading a diary from Jr. High or something (which doesn't say a lot about my blogging skills at that point...great blogs are not just public diaries...oopsies).

Some of the posts are borderline embarrassing - the things that used to perplex me, the things I grappled with, how hard I tried to figure out what my life was "supposed to look like" - at some point I almost wanted to grab my own shoulders and shout "JUST RELAX!"

I realize that I spent a lot of my time striving...for what, I'm not exactly sure...but I know that at the time it seemed to me that life had  script, and as long as I was responsible, and made good choices, and worked hard, this script would unfold itself, showing me where to go next and giving me cues as to what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Flash forward five years and maybe I'm just beginning to understand what people mean by "march to the beat of your own drum." I may have thought that I was doing that before, but now I see how internalized the metronome of life can be. I wasn't really making my own music, but instead just playing to the beat of what I thought it was supposed to sound like.

Now I just don't give a fuck.

I don't know what changed, or how I got here, but the vast difference between who I am now and who I was in those posts is that now I don't care what I "should be doing"  - I'm just goin' for it. I'm making it up as I go along, probably making a mess of everything, vastly aware that I am not perfect and should not be left to my own devices.

But there is a downside over here.

I discovered this after having lunch with a girlfriend earlier this week. She's in the publishing industry, and works for a company that produces cookbooks. She's been an awesome resource on my cookbook project - asking me great questions, helping me think through the viability of my book, and continuing to push me to make progress.

But after I walked away from lunch - I felt so overwhelmed. 

The downside of marching to the beat of your own drum is that it is TOTALLY EXPOSED. There's no band to hide behind, no one to take lead when you're faltering...it all you.

As I walked through the financial district, swimming with thoughts about my book, I had this one over arching thought.... "What if I fail?"

What if it sucks? Or worse what if I don't finish it? Or worst of all, What if it's not real and substantial, but just some cute little project that a bored little housewife put together to keep herself occupied?

fuuuuuuck.

Those thoughts came roaring through like a fire engine. And they've been hanging out in the background since Monday.

This morning, something else came charging back from 2007. But not from my old blog, or from my twenty-four year old brain.

Oddly, from Pandora.

I have a station that plays just normal music - it's for when I'm busy and I just need background noise. Nothing good ever plays on this station, and definitely nothing from five years ago.

This song shows up [play it, do it do it do it do it]:



Yes.

Rascall Flats.

When this song started playing, I literally came out of the bathroom with a sponge and cleaner in hand and did this:

This was a song that I listened to like 12o9235h,13729357837,98 times during a rough time in my mid twenties. It made me feel like I had a fighting chance of making it through all the crap of being twenty-four.

Listening to this song five years later, I remembered something.  I remembered I was tough, and I'm kinda rad sometimes, and that I can handle failure. So then there was these thoughts:

"Who cares if it's real? Get out there and do your thing - you know who you are, and you know what to do...it may be scary as hell to make your own way, but amazing things are never going to happen to you unless you're willing to be your weird-crazy-destructive-creative-I-do-what-I-want self. Good things will come from that girl. Let her out."

And then I made this face:

Ok sweet angle faces, thanks for indulging me in a reflective-emotional-country-music-playing Thursday. I hope reading this, and listening to my favorite song from 2007 makes you wanna stand up and scream:

Hug and Kiss,

-J

The Best Weekend in the Entire World.

Helllllo Party People!

I hope your weekend was at least half as fun as the weekend I just had. Because it was literally one of the most relaxing//hysterical//exciting//refreshing//FUN IN A MAJOR WAY weekends I have ever had.

What was I doing, you ask?

Well actually, it wasn't just your typical Vegas trip. You know what I'm talking about because we've all done them...the ones that go something along these lines:

And after a while, you realize that you haven't seen the sun in 3 days, your sinuses are killing you from all of the smoke and recycled air, and you really don't even know what day it is? 

Yea, no one really loves that. 

This trip had the added benefit of some glamping, so that really helps balance some of the Vegas. 

gamp-ing ¹  (glmp-ing)

v.

a. A time when one pretends to be camping, but actually is a little diva and stays in a hotel

b. Spending time in the wilderness during the day, but actually going back to a 5 star hotel and showering at the end of the day: climbed in Red Rocks National Park during the day; checked in at the Palms Resort that night

c. The people who are not as hardcore as true mountaineers: ain't no body got time for that.

So in-between the raging twenty-one year olds running around in their underwear, we got a little break to do some of this:

And then we also got to do some climbing. Even though I haven't been climbing outdoor in like 2 years, I felt like I was kicking ass:

Then, once we were sufficiently hot and tired and sweaty (because it was Vegas, and it was 97 degrees by like noon), we hit the Palms pool party, which is basically a sparkly land where all of your dreams come true:

Of course, it is still Vegas, so it was a total scene. There are girls everywhere that look like this:

Meanwhile, I'm a little more like this:

And basically everyone at the pool lives in a place that has actual sunshine, so they roll up to the pool and they're all:

Meanwhile the San Franciscans are just like:

And of course, because it's a total shit-show, there's always some good people watching:

But it was honestly some of the most fun I've had in a long time. Something about new friends + drinks + sunshine + vitmin D + pool party + being on vacation....it was just the happiest sparkly moment ever.

That night there was dinner and dancing, and the obligatory Vegas-stuff. There was also arriving at a bar and realizing you have been there before, but you might have been hammered, so it's all very "Matrix-y."

The only thing that could have topped Saturday's nature//climbing//pool party excellence was the Wicked Spoon Buffet at the Cosmo. I mean honestly.

And then afterward, this happens:

But the best part of all was getting the chance to hang out with some really fun new people. Nothing is better than going out with some new friends and then having this moment:

Looking forward to more climbing shenanigans. And more amazing weekends. And more time with new great people.

Hope your Monday is a happy one. 

Hugs and kisses,

J

We Signed a Lease.

For those of you who have been following my rental-apartment-crisis (AKA on going whining that apartments are hard to find)...this morning we signed a lease!!

Where you ask?

In our same building. For our same apartment.

I know...I know...

Yes, we looked at over 45 different apartments.

Yes, we put in applications on like 4 of them.

Yes, we were even offered 2 excellent places.

Yes, one landlord liked us so much they were willing to bring their rent down by nearly $400 a month.

And yes, we walked away from all of them.

I know it sounds crazy. Or that we did the wrong thing. But after looking at so many places we realized that to get something better than what we have now, we'd have to jump up our rent by $1500+ a month. 

And we looked at a few of those places. And we chatted with the landlords. And like I said, some of them were even willing to come down hundreds of dollars to get us into their places. 

But even though they had beautiful kitchens and front yards and backyards....they were still $500 - $1000 more than we'd pay if we re-signed.  Which is a lot of money to spend on renting. 

With the last house, we actually almost took it. This was the landlord that came down significantly because he really liked us, and really thought we'd be great tenants. 

It was a great house:

With an awesome kitchen:

And a great yard:

So we called Steve's parents. We both were totally conflicted. We really wanted the house, but really felt like it was a) a lot more money than we're spending now and b) had more upgrades than our current place, but not necessarily better. Just different.

Steve's parents have moved a lot so we spent some time on the phone with them asking questions, and letting us ask them questions. As a side note, it is amazing to have parents that can walk you through really complex issues, without telling you exactly what to do. I really love having them as in-laws.

It was Steve's mom that actually said something that jumped out at us:

"If you think about how much more you would spend in rent over the next year, and decide to stay where you are - you can take some of the money that you would have spent and use it to invest in your home. Get some nice art for the walls, or couches, or floor rugs that you thought were "too expensive" before...because if you choose to spend your money on those things, at the end of your lease, you can take those items with you to the next house. If you choose to take the place with the much higher rent, then at the end of the year that money is gone."

Bingo.

We decided to stay. 

And we felt good about it.

Until that night, while walking the dog, we noticed tons of police cars in the Housing Project next to our house. Against Steve's request, I marched over there to find out what was going on. It was another shooting. And this one was 1.5 blocks from our front door.

We both sank. 

No one said anything on the walk home. 

Because at some point, when things like that happen, you have to make a choice. Saying "this is too close for comfort" is a choice.  Not thinking about it and sticking your head in the sand is another choice. 

So that next morning, we did something that felt a little awkward. We walked across the street where there is a police station (yes we are surrounded by housing projects, but live across the street from a police station. It's funny).

But we stood in the parking lot.  And we stopped cops as they went in and out of the building. We asked them about the area, and how they felt the crime trends were moving on our block. We told them that we've lived here for 2 years, and there have been 3 shootings in the last year. And we just want to know if it's getting worse. We want to know if we should be concerned. We want to know if we should decide that saving money isn't worth it, and we need to find a new set of cross streets.

Their answers really surprised us.

They said no, it wasn't getting worse. It's actually getting much better. And fast. They said that when we moved in 2 years ago, this area was way worse than it is now. And 8 years ago, no one would have lived here because it was just dangerous. They told us that Nopa is becoming the "New Mission," (likened to Brooklyn in New York), and just in the last 6 months lots of high end stores have gone in on Divisadero, just near our house. They said if we had a good rent number and a nice apartment, we'd be crazy to leave now because this area is just starting to get hot. 

We left the police station feeling a lot better.

And then we went inside, and I turned on my laptop and I decided to check Craigslist just one more time. I found our exact unit in our building listed for $1700 more a month than we are paying.

It would be crazy to leave.

So it's been a total roller coaster, but I'm glad we're here. We signed the new lease this morning, and I just hit "purchase" on an entire shopping cart of stuff on WestElm.com that I had been holding onto to wait and see how this apartment craze was going to pan out.

And just a few days ago, I received a shipment of about 7 boxes of beautiful new goodies. Things that I probably never would have bought if we hadn't made the decision to stay and make this home.

Maybe once we get a few of these things completed, I'll do a house tour so you can see what we've done.

Ok, happy weekend everyone. Thanks for listening to me whine. I do appreciate it.

Also, we're headed to Red Rocks to go climbing with friends this weekend! Woot woot! Fun pictures on Monday.

Hearts,

-J