since feeling is first

We got married in a courthouse.

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:10:09 -0500

At 1 p.m. On a Thursday. I was wearing a $50 dress from the Dress Barn. He was wearing clothes that were already in his closet. I drove us there. It took us thirty minutes (tops) and it didn’t cost anything. There were six other people there. My best friend at the time was my bridesmaid (which meant that she held a bouquet and cried next to me) and the guy who was living in her parent’s yard, Steve, was Mark’s improvised best man. It was everything it needed to be.

I look at some of the beautiful weddings and wedding photos that are posted on tumblr and I think that may be my only regret. We have maybe ten pictures. Taken on my old digital camera. It would be nice to have beautiful, professional photographs of us all dressed up to have in picture frames to show our future kids. But for the kind of photographs I would want, I would have had to have a big, decorated wedding to go along with it, and I wouldn’t have liked it. So instead I’m making it a personal challenge to get some really nice pictures of Mark and me this coming year, ones that we can frame and give to our kids. And I’ll just look at everyone else’s wedding pictures and live vicariously through them.

I feel like writing about my marriage.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:56:56 -0500

Mark never proposed.

We’ve been married a year and a half. Every few months I’ll just throw it out there, like when I’m watching wedding shows and they talk about their romance and the way the man proposed, and I’ll say, “Well, at least SOMEONE proposed.”

“I DID propose!”

“You didn’t!”

“I did! I said, ‘Do you want to get married?’”

“Yes. After I said, ‘Well, we could get married.’”

“I do believe my statement was a proposition and therefore I proposed.”

Regardless, we’re really not that kind of couple. And it wasn’t that kind of situation. And the being married – or, rather, the being together from then on – part is what counts. But he’ll be hearing about his less than romantic excuse for a proposal for the rest of his life.

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist."

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:09:56 -0500

“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”

- George Carlin (via alaskamiller) (via littlewhiskey) (via lovechristine) (via raptoravatar) (via gunstreetgirl) (via nerdgasms) (via libraryland)

Remember when you had to actually call a movie theatre to find out what was playing?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:26:25 -0500

Vocabulary Word: Albatross

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:25:00 -0500

Definition: “a seemingly inescapable moral or emotional burden, as of guilt or responsibility; something burdensome that impedes action or progress.”

—-

On the chilled cement bed I look up to that mind-movie on the ceiling, always stopping, zooming, precise in its verdict. So many times I have reached up to change it, but it slices my hands to pieces. That pain will always be mine; I have hoarded and protected it and it wounds me ceaselessly. That albatross has bound my hands, starved my gut, ravaged my mind… the bars on the doors, the windows, they serve only as a mimicry of the prison I have built for myself.

—-

In other news, it is also a song by Fleetwood Mac.

(If you’re wondering what this is…)

Mark and I need to work on domesticity.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:04:14 -0500

Mark and I need to work on domesticity.

I also want to learn and use more words.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:18:00 -0500

I get lazy when I don’t have things like vocabulary tests to teach me new words. I’ll find words I don’t know in books and I’ll do what teachers always told me to do — context clues! — and only get a brief understanding of the word, usually too little to remember or use it.

So I think I’m going to try to learn five new words a month (which sounds pathetic but it has to start somewhere) and then I’ll write something — probably no more than a paragraph — using or describing each word.

These won’t be ridiculously large or obscure words (unless I happen to really like a word like that), just ones that I can use in the future with creative writing or regular writing that I haven’t been able to use fluently.

52 Books a Year?

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:10:00 -0500

I really want to read more this year, but I think 52 is a little much… I think, instead, I want to go for 21+. That’s a book every two weeks, bare minimum. I think I can do it.

I used this today when I forgot to get gas before work.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:02:04 -0500

I used this today when I forgot to get gas before work.:

Pretty handy. My gas light wasn’t on yet but it made me feel less worried about the 30 mile round trip.

Reading weight loss blogs lessens my body confidence.

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:41:50 -0500

And I still read them anyway.

I think it has something to do with peer pressure (“They’re all actively losing weight, I should too!”) but regardless, they make me feel bad. I really want to focus on being healthy over being skinny, but sometimes I want to jump on the measure-thy-hips bandwagon.

Also, in 2010

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:59:58 -0500

I would like to become less of a fashion slob. Maybe it can be the year of not making excuses for why it’s okay to wear slippers to the grocery store.

The obligatory goodbye to 2009

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:53:56 -0500

In 2009, I…

Mark and I celebrated our first marriage anniversary… by me working instead of being with him. (And later by us going to dinner with my Mom and her friend to the restaurant I now work at.)
I got two new jobs — the first at a resort, the second at a restaurant — and left my well-paying, misery-inducing job behind.
We got our first dog… and learned that she is certainly not cheap, but entirely worth it.
Slowly started getting less irritable and began a process of trying to approach situations with less bitchiness.
Started my first semester of college, where I got all A’s (except for one B) and realized that college is no harder than high school (at least at this level.)
Joined a gym and started taking better care of my body.
Went through the process of making Mark a legal resident of the U.S. He now has his green card.

For 2010, I would like to…

Regain the urge to create (especially in writing, but also with music.)
Get A’s in all of my college classes.
Find a better paying job.
Go to Wales (Mark’s home) this summer.
Learn to be a more forgiving, less angry, happier person.
Find more quality friendships (and maintain the ones I already have.)
Find a way to stay healthy and active without the gym, and find a way to actually enjoy exercise.
Read more books.
Get Mark to let me take pictures of him & us more often so that in 40 years when we’re wrinkled and we have kids we can show them pictures of us and say, “You see? We used to be young, too!”

Mark got a Leonard Cohen DVD for Christmas. He seems quite...

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:23:00 -0500

Mark got a Leonard Cohen DVD for Christmas. He seems quite content to watch it for the rest of the day.

The Sweet Hereafter by Russel Banks took me about a day and a...

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:07:00 -0500

The Sweet Hereafter by Russel Banks took me about a day and a half to read. It certainly wasn’t bad, but I didn’t love it. The author was talented at making each narrator have a very distinct voice (there were four narrators) but many of their “secrets” felt false and took away from my ability to relate. It’s a quick read so if you decided to read it, it wouldn’t take much time… but I wouldn’t recommend it.

After reading Everything is Illuminated by the same author, I...

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:31:00 -0500

After reading Everything is Illuminated by the same author, I immediately added Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to my wish list. I started reading it on Christmas day and was finished by that night. The story is about a little boy named Oskar Schell with a vivid imagination and a knack for inventing things. He lost his father on 9/11 and found himself trying to reconcile with his mother’s life without his father and with his grandmother’s seeming delusions. The story is told from his perspective as well as the perspective of two other people, and each narrative comes together at the end.

More than anything, Foer writes with an endearing sense of innocence and honesty. There are times when the book feels a little gimmicky, but I found it easy to overlook because I was so in love with the characters that it didn’t matter. Definitely looking forward to more of Foer’s books, and I will probably pick up his non-fiction book entitled Eating Animals as well.

Best Wallpapers of 2009 -- National Geographic

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:22:36 -0500

Best Wallpapers of 2009 -- National Geographic

Lucky by Alice Sebold

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:42:00 -0500

I have read both of Sebold’s novels, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, but enjoyed this memoir more. Sebold really hits her stride with a sense of powerful honesty as she shares the truth of her rape, regardless of how little people seemed to understand some of her actions. She describes her internal transformation because of the rape, what she calls her “death and rebirth”, and the conflicts that arise within her family because of it. The book certainly could not be called an “enjoyable” read simply because of the content, but it was fascinating and informative.

Not trying to do any product placement for Starbucks, I’m...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:47:20 -0500

Not trying to do any product placement for Starbucks, I’m just a sucker for anything group oriented with a positive purpose. I may have cried a little.

The first of the post-Christmas reading. I finished Lucky by...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:29:50 -0500

The first of the post-Christmas reading. I finished Lucky by Alice Sebold last night (so I was without reading material for several hours, because I didn’t want to start a new book until I had my entire pre-and-post-Christmas pile to choose from) and I’ll probably post a review later. Until then, I’m enjoying Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Echo would like to wish all the other Tumblr pets out there a...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:27:56 -0500

Echo would like to wish all the other Tumblr pets out there a Merry Christmas.