tales from the closet

These days, it seems like almost all of my best/favorite clothes are ones only appropriate to wear in the winter.

I suspect that this is partly due to a longstanding body image problem that has always flared up particularly badly in the summertime (like Regina Spektor says – summer in the city, it's “cleavage, cleavage, cleavage,” and heaven help you if you don't want strangers on the bus staring down/rating yours), and partly due to my love of wearing tights instead of pants, which I can generally only justify under sweater dresses.

...Well, I say generally. I am becoming steadily more shameless as I get older. At this point in time, for example, I have been seen publicly in sweatpants at least once. I like to think of it as half of the special secret shame shared between myself and the guy working the late shift at the 24-hour pharmacy. (The other half, of course, was the quart of Ben & Jerry's that I purchased and took home to consume by myself. You're welcome.)

Street Harassment Ain’t No Thang (and other lies that I tell myself, in order to avoid having, like, emotions)

“Hey, hey girl. Sit down. I’m givin’ you my seat.”

This from a skinny man on the train who was, apparently, determined to get my attention. I was wearing my biggest shades and my headphones and toting my usual twenty-pound Show Bag*, just like any other day on the red line. Let the record show that I was also looking pretty good, although it might have just been the new dress and unexpectedly good hair day going to my head.

For whatever reason – possibly because I was only four stops from my destination, possibly because I didn’t feel like giving this guy an excuse to keep talking to me – I just didn’t feel like sitting. So I smiled, shook my head, and went back to looking away and out the window.

It would seem that, for some people, this is a huge insult.

Or so you would think, as I spent the rest of my train ride being loudly and insistently asked to take my headphones out, whether I was ‘looking for a man’, whether I was a ‘good and decent woman’ who knew how to treat one, and, finally, loudest of all, whether I was ‘one of those dykes.’

So Apparently Being An Adult Means You Can’t Ride in the Grocery Cart OR The Laundry Basket, aka This Sucks, and To Top It All Off, the Laundromat Doesn’t Have WiFi

Happy Thor’s Day, people of the internet!

META-THOR.

Full disclosure - I am actually writing this ahead of time, on Wednesday. Also, in case you hadn’t guessed, I am sitting at the laundromat down the street from our apartment, waiting for my clothes to dry and being slowly and gently fleeced in the meantime. (It costs at least five dollars for us to do two weeks of laundry down here. Can you imagine? Five whole dollars. That’s almost as much as I paid in library fines yesterday.)

and today's earworm is...

Some of you may not be aware that I work in a clothing store.

Well, I do. It's a fairly pricey clothing store. Like, $48 t-shirts pricey. To be fair, 100% of our profits go to a Chicago charity, and the pieces are, on the whole, good quality. But STILL. When I spend my workday ringing people up for hundreds of dollars worth of jackets and sundresses and yoga pants and scarves and aviator sunglasses and vegan leather handbags (I promise they're real), the class-consciousness can start itching something fierce.

I listened to this song before I went to work this morning, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. You should listen to it too. And then, for good measure, everything else he's done, because it's all awesome. 

The video's a lot of fun, too...

a tribute.

Sometimes I get horribly lonely here. Mostly it hits in the mornings - I'll think, if I never even get out of bed today, who will notice or care?, and What's the point if moving away from home if everywhere I go, no matter how cool, my loneliness comes with me?

But then I realize that I'm not really alone, not ever - and it's not because I live in a warm fuzzy awareness of the Divine presence or something, because let's be honest, I'm not that spiritual. It is because I am deeply, humblingly aware of how much help I have had to get even this far in life, how much support and unconditional love it takes to get me through every singe day, up to and including this one. Even though they aren't with me, I walk all day with my family.

things are looking up!

Happy Saturday, everyone!

This blog post brought to you by: I GOT A JOB.

Source: mizozo.com via Paige on Pinterest

Starting sometime next week (or whenever Human Resources contacts me about training), my days will be spent selling eco-friendly clothes to hipsters in Lincoln Square. I'm excited to start; my new boss seems like a pretty great person, one of the few that didn't look confused when I said "Yes, and I'm also a stage manager," in the job interview. Plus, the store is about 15 minutes (ten minutes walking, five on the bus) from my apartment, and it is surrounded by: a coffee shop next door, two bookstores across the street, a frozen-yogurt place down the block, and a Payless around the corner. And if you walk down far enough, there is also a movie theater. Across from the Starbucks. Because there's always a Starbucks.

(Sure is a good thing they aren't paying me in cash.)

and now, the hard part. (or, GAH YETIS ARE EVERYWHERE)

Hello, my lovely readers.
While I have not actually been ambushed and devoured by yetis cleverly disguised as snowdrifts (or rather, it being 86 degrees in Chicago today, city buses), it is certainly beginning to feel like it.

We all know that moving to a new place - and following your dreams, and being a grownup, and blah blah blah all those associated things - is hard. People who have done so tell you this all the time. It is a widely accepted fact in most of the circles I move in, including but not limited to theatre people, middle-class folk, recent college grads, and In-Denial Twelve-Year-Olds Anonymous.
What most of us don't realize until it is much, much too late, is that simply being told this is not doing diddly to prepare us for the reality. We think, "Okay, it's gonna be hard. That's okay! I will be strong! I will believe in myself! I am a Strong, Independent, More-Or-Less-Grown-Up Professional, and I can totally do this!"

Hold up there, tiger. Here are five real for real things that you had better be ready for.
You're welcome.

onward and upward. please, God, don't let the yetis eat me.

Source: fun-gallery.com via Larissa on Pinterest

HOLA, COMERADES.

That is not usually how I begin my blog posts, you are probably aware. Honestly, I stole that just now from Amanda F. Palmer, who writes the rawest most exciting Kickstarter Project Updates ever. (Other Kickstarter-ers: take note!)
I am sitting at someone else's kitchen table, in South Chicago, at 7:30 in the evening (which for me, since I have hardly slept since for the last two days, feels like 2 in the morning), and I thought I was tired until I read her post about what she's been up to.

(Oh, and that link is, if you scroll down far enough, quite NSFW.)

I stand corrected. I am far from really, truly tired. I am merely fortitudinally inconvenienced, that's all.

just keep on truckin'...

Happy Tuesday After Easter! Which, if you're in school, is a lot like Happy Monday!, because we all got Monday off but probably didn't do anything sensible with it, e.g. the homework that is due this week, or in the next three weeks (feels like: eight seconds) before the end of the semester, and graduation. Time to get a move on, I guess.

Here are a few interesting tidbits from my before-breakfast internet woolgathering research:

Why it sometimes really sucks to be a female on the internet (unless, of course, you are as unfailingly sweet and nice as A Cactus Named Valentine): Promixa Thule points out some internet masochism that doesn't have anything to do with porn.

Kris Rusch on being in the arts (she writes primarily towards writers, but I think the advice works for all of us liberal arts kids) and how not to give up on yourself. Or if you have, how to get back on track.

A video about Snow White and the Huntsman costumes, which I would have loved to be a part of making, because they are gorgeous!

The most adorable thing in the world:

Source: urlybits.com via Joshua on Pinterest

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, happy Tuesday, and may the odds (for graduation, at least) be ever in  your favor...

SO META

Last post of the day, guys ... promise ...

Okay, so I just have to share some of the blogs I have been reading with you guys. I blame them entirely for how long it has been (before today, I mean) since I blogged last - I have been trawling through these guys and thinking, "Oh my goodness, how can I become this awesome?!"

(This issue probably has a lot to do with the fact that the majority of the blogs I read have a clear central topic, and here in cactus-town, we definitely don't. But that's a prickly problem for another time.)

Anyway, here's my internet reading list. Enjoy! Click on stuff! And let me know what you think.

ambition

So, I just started another knitting project (the last one, a nine-foot scarf, made an altogether satisfying birthday present for Josh - "Look! Now you will be warm forever!"), and having reached the monumental accomplishment of figuring out how to "cast on" (that's 'start the darn thing' for you non-knitters out there) without someone here to hold my hand, I've started roaming the internet for inspiration on what I should make this time.

Okay, so full disclosure - with no more than two types of stitch and one enormous scarf to my knitting name, I will probably not be attempting any of these Any Time Soon.
But wouldn't it be awesome if I could???

Pixie hat ... oh, Etsy, why do you torment me? 

friday brain

So I sat down today to write a straightforward blog post, but honestly, between eating, sleeping and being at work, I have nothing of particular interest to report just now. Instead, I'm going to try the "roundup" concept I've seen on some of the other blogs I like to read - or, as I like to put it, "the better pickings of what's been floating around my brain this week."