some recapping

Enjoy (or be disgusted by) my most recent written recapitulation of the latest Gossip Girl trainwreck here.

tender mercies.

We all have those days.  The ones where we get to work, and see a bad situation turn to a worse situation turn to a hopeless situation.  The ones where nothing you do can help and all you actually can do is just count the hours until the torture ends, while pretending to keep some semblance of positivity.  That little sliver of hope leads to an idea: perhaps the quick fix to this awful, horrible, no good, very bad day is a half-pound bean and cheese burrito from Del Taco.  That idea takes a sliver into a flint.  A spark of happiness, even.

Until you get into your car at 9:40 p.m. and realize that you left your wallet at home and all you have are the random coins sitting in your middle console.

The despair of that terrible day returns.

But sometimes, by some miracle, you have exactly one dollar and twelve cents in change in that middle console.  Enough for such a blessed burrito, with seven cents to spare.

Now that is what I call a tender mercy.

gross.

My mom informed me that I'm named after 1. An Escort, and 2. A character from Saturday's Warrior.

Can I please re-name myself?

ww.

Yes, another lovely thing to add to the blog.  People always do these cutesy things with their blogs, like Free Friday, or Wordless Wednesday.  I'm going to do that, too.  Except instead of giving you something beneficial, I'm giving you Wasteful Wednesday, also known as the various ways in which I waste my time.  We all have them and they're basically the things that make the world go round, yes?

So what's made my world go round when I'm not standing on five inch heels at work?

Lest you think I'm starting from the beginning, I'm confessing that way back when I watched One Tree Hill religiously.  I loved it.  More than anything, I loved Brooke Davis.  A couple of years ago it started getting REALLY bad, so I stopped watching.  A couple of days ago I was bored.  Really bored.  REALLY bored.  So I decided to get back to it.

Oh it's so bad.  Not even remotely what it used to be (which is only marginally bad).  But I do find some sort of comfort in the reality that Brooke Davis has found a way to be happy, even if it's only in television.

I should never be allowed to stay up late listening to music or watching movies or reading something that reminds me of anything and everything.

Danger.

Calling All Pageant Girls

A few years back I competed at Miss Utah.  I did okay...nothing too special.  I didn't win or anything.  But I realized that my technique for a few things is a little bit different.  I walk a little differently than the other girls do.  I interview a little differently.  I formulate my paperwork a little differently.  Dare I say it has a little bit more individuality to it?  One time I did all of that, but I did it the way someone else told me to do it.  Miss Utah was not a good experience that year.  The next time around I had a group of individuals who wanted me to discover who I was.  Since that time I've continued progressing in that individuality, and I'm excited to help others find that, too.

It all started with helping girls with their pageant walk.  Then some mock interviews.  Then I judged a little bit.  And then I realized... wait a second.  Why am I judging, and giving critique that will probably be ignored, and doing basically nothing to help these girls in their journey?  My favorite part of pageant involvement was born.

One day I'll formulate an official name, and a title, and a website and all that jazz, but until then, just know that I'm sort of a pageant coach - if that's what you want to call it.  I've helped a few girls here and there, and sometimes it makes sitting through that pageant nearly impossible because I'm so stressed out of my mind, but it's been really rewarding to create bonds with some really remarkable young women.

Because I have a tendency to get a little emotionally attached, I can only take one girl per pageant.  I don't feel comfortable helping multiple girls while editing paperwork, honing interview skills, and making judgments on wardrobing and talent selections.  I want you as a contestant (and possibly even a parent) to know that the advice I am giving you is motivated purely by my untarnished perspective; your information is also safeguarded.

If you're interested in a little help here or there, please feel free to contact me at jen.gulbrandsen@gmail.com.  I'm happy to provide a resume and references.

Not winning Miss Utah was really hard for a while, and it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized how many wonderful things came of my experience in that often harsh world.  There's no question in my mind or heart that being a part of the Miss America Organization has provided me with multiple skill sets that enable my career path and personal growth.  You can take some frustrating and tough things away from pageantry, and I want you to know that my motivation for you will always be to bring out the remarkable talents and strengths you already possess.  In short - I'm not molding you to be me 2.0, but encouraging you to unearth and discover facets of who you are, but perhaps haven't quite found on your own.  Because in the end, a pageant is a pageant, and one person walks away with a metallic rhinestoned crown.  But if you take advantage of what it can offer, you will walk away a stronger and more prepared individual, ready to tackle your future.

light.

Today is announcement day.  It's what happens when you've been inside your mind too much at work and at home and while trying to avoid texting people you shouldn't be texting.

The text message is the ultimate weapon men have in proving that women can often be temporarily insane.

And sadly I've fallen victim ever so slightly.

So continue staying tuned.

Announcement coming soon.

boring?

Thought I'd give you a quick update on what is happening in this interesting life of mine (and by interesting, I mean almost entirely the same day in and day out).

1. My resolve to not spend money lasted two weeks.  And then I caved - aided by the pageant I hosted and was involved in.  "But I need to look good on stage!"  Yeah, big mistake.  Back to the no-spend rule.  Best purchase was easily the new Muse album, The 2nd Law.  RUN AND GET IT.

2. Speaking of the pageant, it was MUOT, the one that I actually did win way back when.  I was lucky enough to help a really pretty and awesome girl, and what do you know... she won!  It's going to be so fun to watch her continue to grow and progress.  She is easily the hardest worker I know, so I have no doubt that come August she will be a true contender.  Plus she's just really sweet.

{photo stolen shamelessly from the Missy Teen Utah facebook page, almost assuredly taken by Mr. Chad Braithwaite of Faces Photography}

3. That whole moving thing?  I've decided to postpone it.  Until at least next September.  I'm good with that decision.  Save money and such. 

4. Work is going well.  Sometimes I actually don't suck at my job, and those are nice times.  You can check out the Fashion Place facebook page once a week to see who I've styled and which trends I'm highlighting for the week. 

5. Last, but almost best of all, I leave for the big D-Land in 10 days!  Looooots of this going on!

Mazel Tov!

lullaby.

There's this really amazing girl that I know.  I haven't known her for very long, and there's a lot that I don't fully understand, but there's something about her that is inviting and unique and special.  And it makes me want to beam and protect her and brag and pray that only good things happen in her life.  She has this way of running through life, not running past it - away from the scary things - but running in between each crevice and around each square inch and through all of nature's appendages in order to feel all there is to offer, good and bad.

Don't ask me how I've realized this despite only knowing her for about six or seven weeks. Sometimes we just have senses about people, right?

In so many ways I look at her and I want to see a reflection of my past.  I want to see the immense similarities, and I want to revel in the joy of who I was and who she is and who I am and who she will be.  But instead I see someone so much stronger, and so much happier, and so much more put together in each and every way a young woman can be.  She is kind and intelligent, sweet and talented, funny and beautiful.  She is burdened as we all can be, but she handles it with grace and wit.  I wish I had been like her.  I wish I'd been as capable and able to get through the tough stuff, recognizing that there were greater things at work.  I gave in to the pain and the urges and I slept and slept and slept.  And I ran away from so many things.  She embraces it and sleeps for a few hours, but then wakes up and works and works and works.  And I'm pretty sure she'll always run at everything with all the faith she can muster.

She gets to run at something this weekend, and I have no doubt that she'll jump over each ledge and get up if she stumbles down a little and finish, maybe a little sweaty, but certainly successful.  What's so great about it is knowing that the success doesn't rest upon a win.  Because even though she's almost nine years younger than me, I feel stronger after working with her for the last six weeks.  Knowing that she's going to leave this weekend as a more altruistic and sincere being gives me great hope, not only in the power that the youth have, but in the realization that it's never too late to become a better person.

So thank you, Miss Piano Goddess Extraordinaire for teaching me far more than I've attempted to teach you.  If this is all you've accomplished in six weeks then I am excited to see who you will grow to be.  And even though you need none of it, good luck my dear.

inflect.

When I was 14 years old I started journaling, without any sort of lock or password, on LiveJournal.  I don't remember how I found it or why I even started doing it, but it's fun (and funny) for me to look back on who I was 14 and a half years ago, and what I thought of the world around me, and who I was trying and hoping to be.  My story at fourteen is sort of a strange one, because I turned fourteen in California with my mom in this little house with a garage that didn't really work and a life away from the one I had felt more comfortable with.  In fact, I even went to an Art's high school.  It doesn't always feel like that was me - the nerdy girl with blondish hair and bad teeth and really long, lurpy limbs.  Who went by Jenny (or was it Jennie at that time?  I could never make up my mind).  And glasses.  That was an important factor.  One of my best friends at that high school was ALSO named Jennie G.  So I was Jennie G. with glasses.

The next year I moved to Utah and became Jen and got contacts and quit it with the blonde highlights.

But at OCHSA (Orange County High School of the Arts) I was awkward and strange and was lucky enough to have Mrs. Todd as my English teacher who taught me how nice it was to have a notebook and a pen with which things could be resolved... or at least understood a little bit better.

Maybe it seems strange to you, but when I had that pen and that little hardcover journal that I think had pale green stripes, I felt like the pen gave me a way to connect to home.  There's a little piece of me that still wants to connect to that girl, the one who would run up the steps to her dance studio every day, and who would practice for hours (even if begrudgingly) at the piano, and who would live for the church activities on Tuesdays or Wednesdays (especially if it meant seeing a Mr. Alex Ohrn on whom I had a MAD crush forever).  Sometimes I see her living in a different dimension that's stuck in the year 2000 or 2001, happy and content with the humid summer changing into the fall leaves.  And I like to think that she's always happily doing developes and working on her turn out and learning more Bach and Chopin.

Because the girl who lived to see September 2001 lost a lot and never really got it back.

I don't like talking about that day because it makes me sick.  Literally.  It makes me feel things I don't like feeling.  Shame and depression and panic and anxiety.  It reminds me of my mom screaming and early morning seminary and family members who worked on Wall Street and being forced to go to school despite not speaking with those family members.  I also feel silly because it became this ridiculous cross I bore visibly every day at school: I wasn't willing to face the pain and agony of losing my identity back in Connecticut, and I certainly wasn't ready to look at what had just happened to my family, so I used a terrorist attack instead.  I looked at all of those tanned kids in California with what was certainly the same sort of fear I felt, and I hated them because of geographic location.  I despised the house in which I lived, and the school I attended, and that haughty anger became my coping mechanism.

Looking back, it was a dumb way to respond, but I've never been great when it comes to dealing with pain.  And yes, I have just managed to turn a national tragedy into something about me - sadly my narcissism knows few bounds.

These days I struggle with the openness with which everyone addresses it, not because I think I'm above anyone's form of grieving, but because I look at how much hatred still exists and how backwards we can be when it comes to other religions and ethnicities, and it sickens me almost as much as those smokey images do.  The way things were sensationalized are gross and even crude.  There have been movies made and politicizing and fear mongering and it makes me crazy.  There are literally millions of stories and perspectives with regard to that event, and to pretend that my life story is more important than someone else's, particularly one that lost a life, is selfish and unfair.

But then again, human suffering is kind of selfish and unfair, and regardless of how you were affected or where you were or how you remember it, it was a turning point.  For me it was a kind of cliched loss of innocence, as it made the numerous separations surrounding my situation more real and solid and tangible, and when the haze lifted, and I saw what the world was capable of, I began to really understand fear.

Luckily for me I had that pen and notebook.

to remind myself that life is neat.

1. I stepped on the scale for the first time in over a month and couldn't believe (and was entirely thrilled with) the number I saw.  I'm glad to know that my once-a-week pilates routine, combined with my steady diet of pizza and Dr. Pepper is working.

2. Blake Lively married Ryan Reynolds in a "secret" wedding (I don't think it's secret if 70+ people were there).  Paper, meet cardboard.  Bland boring blah.  NEXT.

3. Robsten is back on!111!!  Phew.  I was worried there that my look-a-like was going to have to resort to an ACTUAL dirty hobo to date.

4. God created Kate Spade, who created these shoes

5. It's rivalry week.  And I'm definitely not celebrating that an athlete's sport's career is done, but I'm not going to deny that it isn't wonderful timing for those on the blue end of things.  Also looking for a giant banner to hang on my house in my neighborhood full of Ute flags.  Because I LIKE getting toilet papered.

undead instead.

Yesterday morning I woke myself up because I audibly said, "hello" to the person calling me on the phone.  In my dream.  Because - don't worry - this person didn't actually call me.  And then I did it again last night - except the person was calling me, and in my dream I answered and had a full conversation... but in real life no phone answering actually occurred.

[did you follow all of that???]

No one ever believes me when I say I'm a weird sleeper with crazy dreams and sleeping habits.  

When in school I'd have zombie dreams at least once a month - and usually about once a week when I got really stressed.  Those involved running away from something constantly, never being able to quite make it to safety, and watching as the entire world crumbled around me.  I'd have my little hiding place that would be my safety zone for a short time, but then something would force me out of the safety and all happiness was lost.  But I never actually got caught or died in these, which is about as hopeful as a zombie dream can get.

Recently I've been rotating between two different dreams: thousands and thousands of dollars in returns at work or being back at Miss Utah, and I'm not sure which is worse.  The first is always surrounded by a massive sale, which means massive goals, and I'm massively stressed the entire time helping clients and balancing sales and putting things away.  And each time I sell something, that return number just gets higher and higher (in case you were unaware, I work off of commission).  The second dream began occurring about a year ago, just after I was officially finished with the pageanting.  It's always just before a different event at Miss Utah, either swimsuit or evening gown, and I am never ready.  My makeup isn't done, and it usually involves some lack of hair extensions and the scramble to find said hair extensions, and I've never actually ended up going on stage before waking up.  Basically I rotate between these two stressful situations consistently in my REM cycle, and I'm never good enough.

And if the last few days are any indication, it looks like I now have phantom phone calls to add to my dreams that are basically mocking my also not being good enough.

At least in the zombie dreams I managed to stay ahead of the suckers.  Can I have those back?

only the young.

It's becoming a bit of a habit for me to write up a little blurb for my birthday, and let's face it, I love routine and tradition and nostalgia, but while the years before have been a little more humorous, I'm a little more subdued this week.  I'd blame it on old age, but seeing as the only thing I wanted for my birthday was the Bloomsbury Harry Potter set, I don't think that's it.  If anything, on this day upon which I hit that quarter of a century, I feel really young.

Recent events have had me quieter than usual, pondering how everything has come about and what my involvement has been, or in some cases hasn't been.

Yesterday was an exhausting day as I left Provo early in the morning with college friends and roommates to go help our college roommate and friend say goodbye to her beautiful and sweet husband.  His death isn't one I feel comfortable writing about, but I will say that it was tragic and happened far too soon for this world.  I sat marveling at the remembrance of such an extraordinary human being, and then marveled further at my friend's remarkable courage and strength.

I felt a lot of shame, too.  I've not always been the best sort of friend.  I don't always keep in touch, and sometimes I let my selfish desires get in the way, and there are times I'd rather be alone than cultivate those relationships.

It was humbling.

My 25th year was relatively easy.  I found a job that I love, made new relationships that I cherish, and rebuilt the support system that has been so integral to my functioning as a normal human being.  The mistakes I made were a little bit different than those I'd made before - to the extent where I feel as though I actually am beginning to grow up and be an adult.  In a lot of ways I feel as though I've come full circle.  My hopes used to be along the lines of finding a husband and making money and improving my makeup collection and learning how to do new things, and in a lot of ways I still hope for those things (although I don't have any room left for more makeup), but my desires for the year during which I say I'm 25 are different.

I'd like to become the person you can count on.  I want to be someone you can reach out to when you're troubled, or when you need a listening ear.  It means I need to stop talking so much, and I need to stop being so selfish, and I need to be a more charitable human being.  I want you to feel confident in your trust of me - that you know I will always be genuine and real.  I want to be more aware of my surroundings and those within the vicinity, that I can be an emotional force for good in the lives of those who might need it.

Don't you worry.  I'm not entirely just solemn today.  I bought myself new Pilates reformer classes and I got to help a girl for a pageant (and people, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with) and I ate a cupcake and I'm tempted to go take a nap and I get to see my unique and wonderful version of family later tonight.

Because in short, life is good.

c-thru

I confess that it's kind of nice to have someone see through my layers of plastic wrap without any assistance at all.

Some stories to come.

Stay tuned.

bad bad gulbrandsen.

For the most part I'm a fairly agreeable person.  And I get along well with people.  I just tend to like people, and conversing with them, and getting to know what makes them tick.  Unfortunately there are a few that I'm not particularly fond of.  Truthfully, there are three.  Yes, I recognize this makes me a bad person to admit that I don't care for three individuals out there in this world, but after 25 years on earth, and only disliking three other human beings who I know personally, I feel like that's kind of a success.  If I end up leaving this world disliking around 9-12 people in total, then I think that's a total triumph.

But here's the kicker: I love being a writer and sometimes I really love it because when I have to name a character (or give a pseudonym to a real individual for privacy) who I mildly despise... guess which names I have to choose from!

Ha!

snippets.

It was just one of those days.  You know, the kind where you have to go take care of an arrest warrant in your name and watch all of the people go before you who can't afford to pay and so they're carted off to jail with kids watching.  Thankfully I wasn't that person... and thankfully my dad doesn't want to kill me.

I hate when this happens.  I was spending all of this time in my car today, and I had all of this inspiration of things I wanted to say, and now it's just crickets.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's Monday, and Monday is the day my ghost writing entries are due, and Monday is my day off of work, and Monday is a more stressful day for me than I'd like.  It was particularly so today because I knew what I needed to write and it was eating at me.  First I was sitting at church yesterday, and I couldn't pay attention because I kept running the scenario over in my head.  Then I was falling asleep last night after typing out ideas and I felt a little ill because of the gravity of it all.  Today I was driving to pilates and I wanted to kick myself for letting the arc get to this point.  And finally I went outside to write.

I'm not really sure why I don't spend more time outside in our yard.  It's quite pretty back there.  The trees are the right sort of overwhelming, and there are plenty of places to sit, and it's actually relatively peaceful for the neighborhood we are in.  It's the first I've spent writing back there, and it took me back to this little area we had in our massive yard in Connecticut.  There was this tiny little grove of trees - I mean TINY - and it was perfect and it felt like it was all mine.  I used to gather up a book, a notebook, a pen, a water bottle, and an Oat's 'N Honey granola bar (or sometimes a Peanut Butter one) and just go sit there on the ground.  I would sit on the needled grass, and I would feel like I was in some sort of magical spot from a C.S. Lewis novel, and maybe even half expected to see my life transformed every time I entered and exited that small area.

Why am I writing this?

There are so many parts of me that are so insanely sheltered.  I read all of these teen novels and I'm amazed at what these fourteen year olds are saying and doing.  I was eleven and twelve in that house, and I loved feeling like a child, and to think that children are growing up so much faster freaks me out.  And then I have to go write as if I'm one of them and I'm even more freaked out.

A character made a serious decision.  I say that as if I didn't write it.  But really - she's so real in my head now, and it was the right direction to go, and it freaked me out because it is so outside of my comfort zone.

Whatever happened to just sitting in pretty little nooks of trees (can I call it that?), reading Nancy Drew, and listening to the bugs and animals in the surrounding wood?

lit.

While I was at Lake Powell (also known as Heaven, or That Place Which Makes Me Whole Again), I had four different books packed into my bag.  I'm sure it would have been much lighter, and I obviously didn't get through all four books, but ever since I was young, I've carried a book with me everywhere.  When I saw the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls and saw Rory always needed a book with her, I felt validated.  When I was eight and nine years old it was Nancy Drew and when I was twelve and thirteen it was Harry Potter and when I was sixteen and seventeen it was Fitzgerald with a little bit of Agatha Christie thrown in there.

I love reading.  I love love love reading.  I'll never stop.  And I love to read multiple books at one time.  When I was a kid and had the time to finish a book every two or three days, I'd be able to satisfy my need for multiple genres and topics and plots as they moved through quickly.  But these days I am lucky if I get thirty minutes of reading a day.  So instead of running through book after book after book, I read them all at the same time.  I've found I will get sucked into certain stories faster than others, which means I'll then finish it as quickly as possible in order to eat it up.  But I'm usually balancing some nonfiction, some fiction, and some easy reading.

There were quite a few of teen pieces I read at the start of the summer, mostly so I could get into the mindset of how different authors handle the voice of the teenager, and particularly the teenage girl.  I'm still trying to figure it out, and I think I'm a little cleaner than some, but a lot of that may just be that my teenage years were so innocent I can't dream of writing a slightly scandalous 16-year-old girl.

Here are the titles I've read this summer.  Any recommendations?

Surprisingly I never read this as a teenager.  There were a couple of days there at the end of May that I had away from work, and I sat by my pool and read this one.  What I enjoyed was the narrator being a teenage boy.  What I didn't enjoy is the landscape.  Don't ask me why, because I don't have a concrete answer, but I have never liked the American Southwest in literature.

I highly recommend this.  It's not for everyone - language is harsh and intense, and the subject matter is dark and difficult.  The honesty and the pain of what are essentially kids fighting off disease that will define them for the rest of their lives is told beautifully through a format that is stark and short and thoughtful.  This author understands how to explain without needing explanation.

There's a lot of controversy surrounding this one, and I know the validity is in question, but it was interesting and provocative nonetheless. 

Painful and frightening, the novel of a girl fighting her inner demons while she reconciles her feelings over her friend's death is haunting.  Haunting, mostly, because you know it actually happens.

Whitney and I were wandering through Barnes & Noble, saw this title, and I picked it up out of curiosity.  It takes a while to get into, and it's not nearly as strong as anything else that I read this summer, but it's an easy one to get through.  It's the Bachelor meets the Hunger Games.  And it's got some really unlikeable characters.

Currently Reading...

Saw this one in the bookstore and it immediately caught my attention.  It's what I read down at LP, and I loved everything about it.  It's fiction, but fragmented fiction.  The book is comprised of stories of different women in different stages of life.  They struggle through challenges, and they're a little uncertain, and they're extremely relatable.  I still have a few chapters to go, but my favorite thus far has been the story of two women who meet up in a posh NYC park; former working women who are now mothers and who feel like they have to be someone they're not, simply for appearances.  It's the discussion that feminism has given us: we have the opportunity and the freedom to be working moms or moms or working women but we feel so much pressure from ourselves to appear as something important.  I can tell you that I feel that pressure every day - do I focus on being an intellectual or do I continue with a job that makes me happy?  Who is to say what makes us better?

NOTE: The content and the language are harsh.  Not for someone who is sensitive to that sort of thing.

Speaking of feminism... I studied excerpts of this all through college and now I'm finally reading it in its entirety.  It is the ultimate discussion of what we need to develop our minds.

I'm pretty sure I'll be reading this for the rest of my life, until I finally finish.  I guess I could read the abridged version, but I feel like that might be cheating.

NEXT UP:

Same author as Clean.  I'm excited to see how she handles teenage mental health.

Perfect prose.  Can't wait.

Whitney recommended this to me.  Leslie just finished it on the boat (she literally had it on the ski boat because she couldn't stop until she finished).  I'm interested to see how compelling it is.

And finally, I love reading and re-reading my favorite titles, like the Harry Potter series, or the Chronicles of Narnia, or anything from Azar Nafisi.  The above photos are a lot to get through for the rest of the summer though, so I think I'll save my re-reading for Fall.

I'm twelve and I don't even care.

Do you remember where you were when *spoiler alert* Sirius died?  I was in my bed, basically devouring that entire book because I was desperate to know (because J.K. Rowling had hinted at a huge death), and when it hit, I had to turn back a couple of pages and re-read because I couldn't believe what had happened.  That morning I had awoken crazy early, something I never did because - shockingly - I'm not a morning person, but I was waiting for the Amazon box with my book in it that would be delivered on my doorstep, and I couldn't wait.  Once it came, I just sat in my room the whole day, without music, and with fruit snacks and Root Beer alongside me, and I just read and read and read.

I didn't discover Harry Potter when all of you did.  I remember that it was becoming really popular, but my mom had this attitude of it being too easy, and too frivolous, and so I sort of adopted that attitude as well.  I finally started reading it because I was babysitting these two boys that lived across the street, and every night they liked to read a chapter as they were going to bed.  I was pretty enchanted from the start, as I think it's pretty clear everyone was, and I was lucky enough to get into it once the first four books in the series had been written.

After that it was the same waiting game: checking her website religiously, hoping for any clues or secrets.  I still remember her hint at a new teacher who was as sweet as a bee.  I remember deciphering the artwork that was released - what were all of the candles?  What did they mean?

And then it happened time, after time.  Waiting for Book Six.  And then the last one.  And I cried because it was ending.  How strange, right?

I'm reminded of all of this because my niece Hannah has begun reading the books.  She's on the fourth one now, and we've been watching the movies.  It's fun to see her imagination start moving with the characters, and it's exciting to relive the introductions of plotlines and revelations alongside her.  It makes me sad, too, that she'll never know the fun of living in that moment when the magic is happening.

I don't understand why I feel so much sorrow in that, but I do.  I wish I could take her back with me, and have her in my room with me so that we can cry together over our favorite character dying too soon.  How wonderful would it be to sit and discuss all of the intricate details together?  And then how fun would it be to move to other novels?  There's such a peace I find in literature, and I sincerely hope that I can always be surrounded by individuals who don't just appreciate, but who crave books in the way that I do.  I need to share that with someone else.

Meanwhile, I love being able to go back and feel like a little kid again when talking about this world that doesn't even exist.  I love that I can bond with her over it.  And I can't wait to introduce my own kids to it someday.

Besides, don't you sort of still wake up some mornings and hope your Hogwarts letter is coming?

the countdown is on.

In 55 hours, That Which Will Consume Me commences.  It will be 18 days of stress and chaos and aching feet and protein bars shoved down my throat in between appointments and lots and lots of jeans piled into my arms.

Pray for me.

The light at the end of the tunnel is filled with a hefty paycheck and 4 days in Lake Powell.

If I survive.

news.

Nordstrom announced a full-line for Manhattan.  Coming to you and Columbus Circle (PERFECT LOCATION) in the year 2018.

Ugh.

It's not soon enough.

I need something NEXT year.

Friendsies, I think I'm gonna have to bail from this state soon.  My bf is having a baby, and I hate the thought of leaving her and future Jennifer the Second, and I would miss this house and its inhabitants oh so much, and the 8 minute door-to-door commute is pretty blissful, and holy cow Tina Christensen is my favorite boss in the world, and what would I do without Amy.

But this state is suffocating me a little.  And I know this is the longest build-up to a move in history, but I need to be held accountable to it, and what creates more accountability than a blog that may or may not have editing/deleting features?

Really though.  DC OR BUST.

{and the only place that would take precedence over the District is the City.  of course.}