Jolie laide (or pretty-ugly)

I love the French-- they manage to make a back-handed compliment sound enchanting. I am trying to branch out from ballet flats, and lately I have become obsessed with slightly ugly shoes. I'm not talking extremely unattractive (i.e. high-heeled gladiator sandals or peep-toe ankle boots). Right now I'm attracted to shoes that are very low-key, almost dowdy, plain, and a bit clunky. Just this side of flattering:


Those ARE little star-shaped cut outs on the sides. I love the combination of girlish/mannish. Not sure I could pull these off with a skirt-- they might be too high-cut on the ankle.


These may be a bit too orthopedic-- I think the white heel saves them.

These are too pretty! Not sure how these ended up here. I just love them. I wish they didn't cost $300. Why?


Now here's a dowdy shoe. Unadorned. Clunky heel. Love it.


I may actually die without these. I have a pair of ankle boots with 4.5" heels. I can wear them for about 10 minutes. These look perfect.

Holiday

I have eight days off! Actually, it's seven full days, two half days (today and next Thursday) and eight nights. Bliss! I plan to:

• Post every day
• Rid my apartment of some excess baggage
• Possibly purchase some new baggage on an IKEA pilgrimage
  
• Get my save the dates sorted out and work on my wedding info blog
• Knit like CRAZY. Vickie's present is almost done, then there's Mother's day and Sarah's birthday right around the corner. I will trot off to the yarn store tomorrow like a good girl.
  
• Attend various cultural events. Tomorrow a poetry reading at T.A. and Friday some art openings.
  
• Drink lots of wine

It will be heaven on earth to sleep at night for a whole week-- though I have to admit taking a perverse pleasure in sleeping during the day. My bed is calling to me-- I'm going to resist it for another hour and get some exercise so I can be utterly lazy and pointless tonight.

Ok, ok

8 things I'm looking forward to

• My wedding in October
• My honeymoon in November (Vieques, PR)
• My trip to SF in August
• My trip to VT in two weeks!
  
• Baking more chocolate chip cookies this afternoon
• Mother's Day 5k (after working Saturday night!)
• My eight-day stretch of days off starting Wednesday
• Summer

8 things I did yesterday

• Fell out of my shoes on the way home from dinner (technically this happened Friday, but it's too priceless not to mention-- I have hideous painful scraped knees to show for it)
• Watched Minnie Cat bounce off the window screen
• Finished one of Vickie's extremely belated birthday gifts-- I promise I'll have them in the mail before the end of April!
• Ate a very bad veggie burger at Gritty's while sitting out on the patio-- spring is finally here!
• Bought a second pair of matchstick jeans and an adorable skirt at J.Crew in Freeport
• Read about the different moral underpinnings of liberals and conservatives
• Walked around Wolf's Neck Woods-- for about 15 minutes. It is not quite mini skirt weather, it turns out.
  
• Watched three episodes of MI5 on Netflix

8 things I wish I could do

• Apply mascara without smudging it into my eyelid every g-d time
  
• Sew
• Get rid of 50% of my material possessions
  
• Decide whether or not I want kids
• Be frugal consistently
• Stop complaining
• Spend a year travelling
• Write a novel

8 things I can do well

• Bake
• Cook
• Knit
• Form opinions
• Choose gifts
• Catheterize female patients
• Make scathing remarks
• Give directions

8 shows I watch (mostly on DVD/internets)

• The Biggest Loser-- don't judge me
• The Amazing Race
• MI5 (Matthew Macfadyen is dreamy)
• The Wire
• Six Feet Under
• Deadwood
• The Daily Show
• anything involving makeovers sucks me right in-- good thing I don't have cable

8 favorite places I've been

• Bay Area
• Rome
• Paris
• Montreal
  
• Portland, OR
  
• The old IA building at Thornton Academy
• Pratt House and Sewall House, Williams College
• Ok, Maine. Whatever.
  

8 things I covet

• A.P.C.
• J.Crew ballet flats
• NYRB Classics
• Cheez-its
• Dark chocolate
• Independent wealth
• Wine
• The European lifestyle
  

Cute overload

This is Hannah's Lucille baby set:

Back in the kitchen

Eric has been the chef in our house since late February, but I am still the domestic goddess. Behold:

Spring!

Enjoying it by:

• Having a very satisfying run on the Back Cove trail. I passed a man singing along with his iPod operatically, with arms flung wide. I think it was Nine Inch Nails, but it could have been Christian Rock of some nature. Not quite sure.
• Reading and knitting in the car with Eric at Fort Williams. We shared some bread and cheese (and hot pepper jelly).
• Opening the windows and turning off the heat. And then closing the windows again after 10 minutes. Turns out it's not that warm yet. And the cats can't handle the added stimuli.

I'm lazy, therefore I link

• Wish Hannaford had these
• Yuck
• I will be making this, minus the vinyl letters
• Mmmm, homemade yogurt
• Not sure J.A. would approve
• I want to be her
  

Hopelessly addicted to trashy TV

My Biggest Loser habit is not really a secret, but I have to confess feeling a bit embarrassed about switching my schedule two weeks in a row so I could have Tuesday night off. That said-- it's Makeover Night!

Waiting for laundry to be done post

Yeah, keep your expectations low. 

• Hannah's sweater is finished. If Eric had found me a digital camera of my very own, there would be a picture. If I ever get in touch with Karen, maybe there will be a picture of Hannah wearing it.
• My mom just dumped in front of me eight boxes of stuff I have been storing at her house since high school. Hello, Freecycle.
• We may be having our wedding dinner at Evangeline!!!
• I just watched Dateline-- like I said, I'm waiting for laundry to be done, don't judge me-- and they were profiling women who met a 300-pound, homeless, gambling-addicted scam artist on MillionaireMatch.com. Two of them gave him over $10,000 each, and now they're best friends. Can you imagine their conversations?
• Strangely enough, I also read about the website SeekingArrangement.com today. Thinking about this gives me profound spiritual depression. 

And now my laundry is done. 

Heading south?

Portland, ME just made #1 on Forbes magazine's list of most livable cities. This is pretty funny because Baltimore, MD, Des Moines, IA, and Harrisburg, PA also made the list. I'm guessing climate was not factored in to the rankings-- winter in New England is awful, especially for someone (me) whose wardrobe revolves around ballet flats. In summer, temperatures range from "wear two sweaters" to "my it's warm in here, let's put on the fan". When the weather is truly beautiful, there are 8 million tourists clogging all the best places to enjoy truly beautiful weather-- and you can't upset them, they finance the entire state. Eric and I frequently discuss moving elsewhere-- but where to start? The lovely and talented Sarah has presented her top ten reasons we should move south-- specifically to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. This deserves a point-by-point response!

10. I will bow to the superiority of a short winter. I'm a bit worried about "long, sultry summer nights"-- after your wedding in May 2006, I spent an hour straddling the air conditioner in my hotel room. Humidity and my hair do not get along. But who am I kidding, it was 38 degrees here today! That is just plain wrong.

9. I have been a cardiac nurse at the same hospital for almost three years, and before that I was in nursing school. I haven't really experienced the wide world of nursing. To be truthful, I'm a bit nervous about leaving the safe cocoon of my floor. I love the people I work with, we have a great manager, the work is generally pretty clean, and we have plentiful staff. People talk about the nursing shortage like it's just a matter of training more nurses, but there are some pretty scary places to work out there. I would have to do some thorough research of the available options.

8. To be honest, I don't get out much, though I frequently bemoan the lack of things to do around here and mock the idea of Portland as a cultural Mecca. But self-professed cultural Meccas and university towns tend to attract the thoughtful, book-reading people I enjoy spending time with (and mocking-- what can I say?). It makes me worry less about Southern-fried Bible-thumpers. And Eric's job is portable!

7. COL is a big topic around the kitchen table here. Not that we're poor. Just cheap. Cheap and curmudgeonly. Are you sure you want us moving near you?

6. Ok, so Portland is also (amusingly) referred to as "The San Francisco of the East Coast" because of the ridiculous number of restaurants per capita. The food scene is pretty much the only scene that deserves the name in these parts. Eating out is a year-round sport. In my opinion, the "New American Comfort Food" genre is WAY over-represented-- please do not charge $20 for meatloaf and expect me not to mock you! But if I must be separated from Green Elephant, Evangeline, Cinque Terre, Silly's, Flatbread, Hot Suppa and Local 188, there had better be some dining options-- game on.

5. Um, I live in Maine. AKA, natural beauty capital of the USA. Polar fleece capital of the USA. People move here so they can kayak more. If I cared a great deal about outdoor activities, I could not ask for a better place to live. And I would wear ballet flats less frequently. I do enjoy running outdoors. It would be funny to run on a tobacco trail with you. But let's be honest-- I'm more of an indoor person.

4. Farmer's markets kick ass. I would LOVE to live somewhere with a year-round farmer's market. You're winning me over!

3. Ok, now you're talking-- though A.P.C. is more my taste/fantasy. I could happily spend a lot of time in Anthropologie, even though I have never purchased anything there that I didn't return after having second thoughts.

2. I can't argue with 60-70 degree weather in April. Now you're just showing off. And biscuits? Below the belt, Sarah. I'm ashamed of you.

1. Do you promise?

So we'll see. If I go forward with my plans for grad school, I may need to look out of state for a job-- Maine has more NPs than jobs for them. In the meantime, would you like company?

Pizza and Fort Williams are totally ruined for me

The former I consumed just before succumbing to last month's GI virus. And the latter... let's just say that people (strange men) should LOCK the g-d door when they use the Porta Potty. 'Nuf said?

Let's hope my delicate sensibilities recover. I can probably live without pizza-- it's quite easy in a city of such mediocre pizza as Portland-- but I'm supposed to get MARRIED at Fort Williams. I'm not sure I can make sacred vows there after what I've seen.

Burgeoning knitting anxieties

• Is it okay that I didn't exactly follow the instructions for the Lucille baby bonnet?! Should I rip it and start over?!
  
• Will I make it to the yarn store before the weekend to get my Louet gems wound into balls?! Should I buy my own swift and ball winder?!
• Will Addi ever make a set of Turbo Lace interchangeables?! Should I give in and start buying the bigger sizes?!
  

Kicking my ass since January

I heart

I hab a code

Reading list

In a bid to find something good to read AND save money, I have pulled the following off my own bookshelves, where they sat neglected:

• A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
• The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich (and I'm still working my way through Deschooling Society)
• Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (who has possibly the greatest name ever)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (which I mostly finished a couple of months ago)

This all sounds terribly high-minded, given the intense desire to re-read Harry Potter that came upon me last night.

April fool

I'm going to get serious about updates this month. I'm talking daily. Let's begin with the past two weeks:

• The locally-endemic GI virus kicked my ass two weeks ago. Woke up at 5:45PM feeling awful and tried to go to work anyway. Eric had to practically carry me home two hours later. Fortunately, I get to keep my night bonus-- my boss is so lovely.
  
• Honeymoon is planned. Wedding, not so much.
• "Finished" Lucille sweater-- still have to weave in ends. Ugh.
• J. Crew outlet trip yielded a pair of perfectly-fitting matchstick jeans (thanks, GI virus!) and two fabulous short-sleeved cashmere cardigans of ridiculous softness.