space case

background: katie is sitting on couch, wearing pajama pants and tank top. william and katie are watching the hills.

william: [pointing at katie's pj pants] are those astronaut pants?

katie: [stares blankly, crickets chirp]

william: [undeterred] because your ass looks outta this world in them!

katie: [resumes watching the hills] ha.

william: this is what you learn when you take a vacation day—bad pickup lines!

home again, home again.

wow, what a whirlwind weekend, again. friday i had one of my very last half-day fridays (sad!), but it allowed me to have some time to get ready for a big fundraiser/fashion show here in minneapolis, which my company helped sponsor, so that was good. i had the BEST hair. when i get a picture i'll post. it was crazy! i told my hairdresser to do whatever to make me look fabulous. i ended up with BIG hair, with sort of this pinned-to-the-side updo, with big loops of hair pinned down....sort of a modern take on a beehive (right up my alley). i was thrilled. she's the best. as for the fashion, i loved the collections from calvin klein (as always), alberta ferretti, temperley. . . it was fun.
then the next morning, up early to drive to see a good friend marry his high school sweetheart. it was a heartfelt, sweet, hippie-influenced wedding. i was so happy for both of them and wish them the best. they live in montana now, and i miss them!
i got home today to my darling almost-husband and sweet fluffcake of a dog. it felt good coming home to them, as it always does. seriously. i feel so lucky to be part of a household like this. it was rainy and dark and gloomy all weekend--more like november than august--and we laid around and read the paper and quasi napped and read our fall issues of magazines that have come in the mail and ate some cheese that i bought on the way home (i drove through wisconsin, after all).
one hot shower later, i'm feeling sleepy and needing more rest. but i only work monday and tuesday this week, and then i have the rest of the week off!!! how exciting. i think we're heading to my parents' cabin. it will be good to get away for a few days. pray for sun. . .
can i say also that i am thrilled and excited but terrified to go see the new halloween movie? they are the only horror movies that really scare me. the commerical just came on and i had to pick my feet up off the ground.
i thought i had all these thoughst about marriage to write about when i sat down but i'm really just spent.
so this craptacular entry will have to do for now, so sorry. will write more later. yawwwwwnnnnnnn.....

crazy life

hi kids.
this has been a crazy week again. working a lot, and running around a lot at night too. it's the fast-track to exhaustion. really. it gets to the end of the night and i'm tired and braindead.
this weekend there's more stuff, a big event for work and an out-of-town wedding, so excuse the lack of post-age. i will try the next couple days though. although i'm not that interesting right now.
we put half the money down on our ceremony and photgraphy in maui though. i can't believe we're really going to do it. maui! i'm getting married in maui! weird. it's a big thing to look forward to when things are so stressful in other areas of my life. if i have a really bad day, i look up images on google of hawaii and i'm transported to the happy place. :) otherwise i call friends, talk to william, or just go to bed. i have been having trouble fallnig asleep before midnight lately. that's bad. i need a lot of sleep.
ok, enough with the boringness of my daily asinine thoughts. here's a post i was working on, and wanted to work on more, but if i continue to work on it, it will never get posted.

Things I Am Afraid Of (not ranked):
1. bugs
2. spiders
3. centipedes
4. bugs
5. snakes
6. Actually, I have a saying “no fur, no feathers, no good”
7. The ghost activities at my parents’ house
8. people I know dying or being sick
9. failure
10. loneliness
11. change
12. sometimes I’m afraid of getting over my anxieties because then what do I do? I know that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But fears are not rational.
13. feeling helpless
14. when I open my trunk, something scary/bad will be in there. This is only sometimes.
15. When it’s dark and you turn off the tv and it glows. Hate that. Something is coming out of that screen.
16. Car accidents
17. One particular scene from the exorcist, but not the whole movie
18. I get claustrophobic when shirts get stuck on, especially in dressing rooms. It induces this stupid panic that I know is ridiculous but happens nonetheless.
19. Childrens’ loss of innocence.
20. Mediocrity
21. Presidential hijacking of power
22. Global warming
23. Not doing things because I’m too scared/intimidated—usually I find I love those things if I can open myself up to them enough.
24. Clowns
25. flying

Things I am not afraid of (also not ranked):
1. public speaking
2. loving people
3. heights (as long as I am on a stable surface, which I consider rollercoasters a stable surface)
4. I can put myself in my “journalist mode” and approach people at bars, on sidewalks, or cold calls and talk away—people I’d maybe even never approach personally. If I am not in journalist mode, I sometimes have to work to get myself there to do it.
5. Bats (as long as they’re outside)
6. Getting married
7. Writing personal things that people read
8. Most scary movies (except Halloween films and that one scene mentioned above)


I spend a lot of time with my neuroses. I nurse them, enable them, fret about them. I fret about fretting.

I have been a worrier since day one. I don’t know why. I’ve gotten much better over the years—and have gotten over some fears—but still many anxieties linger, and I’ve developed some new, healthy-sized ones. I’ve always wished I could worry less. I’ve always wished I could confront change without fear—even with welcoming arms. I have wished on occasions that I could get over it so that I could try something or do something, and I’ve let it hold me back. I am not one of these people that believes if you are afraid of spiders, you have to let them crawl on you to get over it. That would just induce a complete and total meltdown. I have suffered panic attacks. I have allowed small things to get me really down. I am a very sensitive person.

As time has worn on, though, I’ve given myself permission to be that way. We’re all hardwired, in a sense, to be our personalities. And that permission has allowed me to get over certain anxieties without even realizing it… they’ve just vanished into the ether. Still, it sometimes invokes a melancholy, a frustration, too much thought. And regret.

After I finished school, which was the one thing I thought I was really good at, I wondered what was next. What else can I overachieve at? (I don’t care that there’s a dangling preposition there.) I still haven’t figured it out. What are my next steps?

I would like to:

Take ballroom dance classes
Take cooking classes
Plant a garden
Write a book
Get published in a national magazine
Play guitar well
Do more crafty things
Learn to knit
Travel the world (Iceland, China, Thailand, somewhere in Africa, Poland, Ireland, Belize, Russia, Spain, and yes, Jennie, Paraguay)
Be a good money manager
Live joyfully and in the moment
Take more time to appreciate what I have than think about the what-ifs and should-haves
Enjoy my accomplishments (I must have some, right?) and help people enjoy theirs
Feel helpful
Make people feel good
Be a good dog-mom
Make more killer CD mixes ( I love doing this but haven’t had a lot of time lately)
Have more energy
Never regret
Like exercise

Sorry for the list form. I just don’t have the energy/creativity to actually write a story that shows, rather than tells. Forgive me.

flower power

ok, here are the flowers i want to carry at my wedding. they don't have to be exactly like this, but along this order of things.



more updates later! must run.

the tough go shopping

so i've been on a budget diet since i moved in with william, and even more so now that we're saving for a wedding. i can't say it's all been bad. i'm not great with numbers, everyone knows that, but my favorite form of therapy is shopping. which compounds the problem. i can say that since meeting william my credit score has gone from dismal to very respectable (even surprising to me) though. and that's been no easy feat.
but.... you can't take the shop out of the girl. it's been what feels like AGES since i've been shopping and it's starting to hurt. :) i have the shakes, people! i need to shop!
well the other thing is that i haven't had TIME to shop. so the other day when i had a break, i took a lovely stroll through the virtual anthropologie and found the following items:
these are the oh-my-god-i-want-them-so-bads:


these are more like damn-these-could-work-with-a-lots:


these are the hmmmm-yes-i'll-take-a-pair-they're-so-retros:


and last, the i-know-they're-too-tall-but-i'll-try-them-on-anyways:


well, that helped a little bit. the tough need to make more money. . .

some wedding details

i'm going to attempt to upload some details about the wedding now that they are starting to appear. we'll see how this goes . . .

first, my sister's dress:

adorable, no? its the perfect color, i think, and will look so great on her fab shoulders and upper arms (she is nice and toned and has great shoulders).

i bought approximately forty boxes of these candles at ikea for the backyard reception for all over the place:

and these too:


and then i got some of these for the guests on the beach to stay cool:


then i'm going to make eleventy million of these to hang from the trees and also to hang in the tent we're going to rent so that it doesn't look like a tent. the colors should be a magenta, a tangerine, and a lime green. i think.


so here's an approimxation of the flowers that i want, although i don't want it to be this big or springy all over the place. the one i want was in the winter 2007 instyle weddings, but isn't online anywhere that i can find, including the florists' website. weird. the one i like has way more lime green leaves arond the outside, is more tightly bound, and has some yellow macara orchids and yellow ranunculus in it. but you get the idea.


i also have a photo of my wedding dress, but i don't want william to see it. i'd be glad to email it to people who are interested enough to ask.

we also bought a bunch (thirty) tiki torches for the backyard and up the driveway, so that's awesome. we got them on clearance for $2 apiece! summer clearance is great, because then we can get stuff for next year for super cheap. yay for that!

we're really starting to come along now. 294 days to go!

bridge under troubled water

today should be a perfect summer minnesota night by most standards. clear, the air finally dehumidified after the sauna of the daylight, even kind of quiet and breezy. but tonight is a sad night, the breeze punctuated with sounds of sirens in all directions—the disaster noise.
tonight, as many of you have already heard, a freeway bridge collapsed into the mighty mississip, loaded down with cars during our ridiculous otherwise-completely-normal rush hour. at 6:05, from what i understand, those on the 35W bridge, bumper to bumper, likely cursing their standstill and the crap DJs play on the radio, felt a rumble not unlike an earthquake, and then suddenly the world as they knew it fell away, plunging them into the river like so many matchbox cars.
my first thought wasn't terrorists although i'm seeing that bandied about on cable channels. my first thought was that it was simply a mistake. i was at target with william, picking up groceries before we headed over to my parents' house to pick up molly. suddenly i got several voicemails at once. my phone kept dying as i tried to check them. i figured it was the reception at the target. finally i heard my mom's message, which had that trademark eileen concern--the voice that i can't bear hearing after my dad's sickness, because it means something really bad happened. i called her back immediately, and luckily got through. she of course was checking my location--panicked taht i hadn't answered the phone. we're all ok--my whole family.
in a way, this feels like the earthquake in california where the infamous bridge collapsed (i think during the world series?). it feels like any other natural disaster, calling into mind 9/11 (but not the terrorist thing, nor the far-reaching effects). just wanting to keep friends and family close, making sure everyone's all right, amid sirens and terrible cell phone reception (the emergency vehicles and everyone's frantic calling tied the system up).
my cousin in ohio (hey lyn!) actually called my mom to tell her--she saw it on CNN before my mom realized that something had happened.
at least six are dead. many more are hurt. some seriously. there are at least fifty cars in the river. a schoolbus full of children are OK. they walked away. not everyone was so lucky. my coworker called me to make sure i was ok. she had heard from others (who all use that bridge every day of their lives). i don't. but i'll think twice when i cross another one.
it will be a long time before we return to normal--when we find out who we've lost, who we've hurt, and how we're going to get to work.
i was standing in line at target when the bridge in minneapolis collapsed. like any other day. but like another disastrous day in our too-near history, i won't soon forget where i was when it happened.