This is it, the big 2-5

At 1:09 a.m. I entered my mid-twenties.

*Sigh* let’s do this, 25.

HAPPY NEW YEAR’S EVERYONE!!!  And remember, you can drink twice as much if you’re celebrating my birthday.

I’m regretting that I made fun of my brother when he turned 25

I remember it clearly.  I was a mere 20 myself.  I had just left my teen years behind.  My mid-twenties were barely in my sights.  So it was easy to remind him that he was leaving his early twenties behind.  That mid-twenties is just a year or two from late twenties and late twenties becomes thirties, which, to someone who just turned 20 might as well be dead.

I regret that decision now.

On December 31st I will turn 25.

UGH.

Did you read that?

25!

Oh my gosh, I’m sorry, I LOVE people who are older than 25.  Oh, come on!  You guys remember what it was like, don’t you?!  DON’T LEAVE ME!!!  If you leave, you are all ageist and that is just WRONG!  It’s the holidays, people, WHY ARE YOU DISCRIMINATING?!

Anyway, as I was saying, I am turning 25 this year.  I’m not the first of my friends to do it, sure, but I’m finally starting to feel old.  My maid of honor/best friend decided that on her birthday (it’s today!  Happy birthday Cait!!) rather than turn 25 she is going to turn  22 again.  22, she theorizes, was a good year; close enough to 21 that getting good and drunk in celebration is still okay but far enough away that she doesn’t get skeptical looks from the bartenders.

As I was reviewing my decade, I realized that I started high school 10 years ago.  Let me say that again. 10 years ago I was a freshman.  IN HIGH SCHOOL!  That is just crazy talk.  I can’t have been fresh out of middle school 10 years ago, can I?  10 years ago I was just a 14 year-old girl.  My cousin is 14.  That is freaky.  (Oh wow, I’m about to go into a “back in my day” rant…I’ll try and save that for later).  In 10  years I will be 34.  It’s highly likely that in 10 years I will have 2 kids and a dog.  I will be on the verge of turning 35 which will put me on the verge of being 40.

Whoa.

Oh, but wait.  10 years ago, 60 was the new 50.  And now, 50 is the new 40, so in 10 years 40 could be the new 30 which means that 35 would be the new 25 so I’d be right back where I started.

Be glad you aren’t in my head.

That’s what Christmas is all about

Linus says it best.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

A decade in review, part 2 (the part where I actually remembered what happened)

So like I said yesterday, Leah, over at Five Blondes, did this post a few days ago and now that I finally remembered what the heck happened over the last 10 years, I’m posting my own recap.

In 2000 I got braces and an expander and lost about 5lbs because my mouth hurt so badly! I had a pretty big part in my first school play, Be My Ghost. I went to my first N*SYNC concert and sat in box seats directly across the stadium from the stage.  The band was so tiny they looked like they could have driven MicroMachines.  But to a teenage girl in the midst of a boy band crash that didn’t matter.  That fall I went to another N*SYNC concert at Penn State (my first trip to the campus–this would also be my first time at THON’s Family Carnival).   I turned 16 on New Year’s Eve and my friends threw me a surprise party (the only one I’ve ever had).  They also got me the shoes that N*SYNC wore in their No Strings Attached tour (super cool slip on Nikes with these weirdo web laces).  I was  tad invested in the band.

In 2001 I was cast as soldier in the winter play, a non-speaking role that required me to attend ROTC gun training.  At the beginning of my junior year I got my braces off and a week later got invited to homecoming.  I was convinced it was connected but my mom told me I was acting crazy.  A few weeks later the guy I went to homecoming with asked me out.  He was my first high school boyfriend and the relationship lasted 4 weeks.

In 2002 I was a state and national qualifier in Humorous Interpretation for speech and debate during my junior year.  The summer before my senior year I got my first kiss (I know, 16–such a late bloomer!).  Unfortunately the guy tried to take the kiss back and basically just ended up being a horrible person.  I started my senior year of high school and I was in my first musical since the fifth grade.  I had a one-word solo and I botched the note.  It was something I’d been dreading since I was a freshman b/c I knew eventually I’d get stuck in a musical!  I took my first semester of high school TV (my second semester and my experience in editing were the reason I went to PSU and started out majoring in film).

In 2003 I graduated from high school, the same school I’d gone to since kindergarten.  2 weeks later I headed off to Penn State to start my first semester of college a semester early.  I had friends participating in summer session and decided that I would go up too.  It was the best decision I ever made.  I had an absolute blast and when fall rolled around, and the 40,000 kids who weren’t at summer session with me showed up, I already had a leg up on things.

In 2004 I pledged a co-ed service fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega.  It was…an interesting experience to say the least.  This is the year that I met my best friend Cait.  She lived in the dorm next to me and we’ve been friends ever since.  I started dating a senior from my fraternity.  He was the second boy to say he loved me and 6 weeks after we started dating he broke up with me.  Because he cheated on me.  Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.  I could not have been happier to be rid of him.

In 2005 I was a THON moraler for the first time. At the beginning of my junior year I moved off campus and into an apartment with 4 other girls.  The first night in the apartment our neighbor across the hall peed in my roommate’s bed.  I met a guy in poetry class and a few weeks later he became my boyfriend.  My roommates told me that, despite the fact that we’d planned to live together the following year they were getting a 3br so they could each have their own room when their boyfriends came to visit.  I scrambled and found a kickass apartment, directly above my favorite bar and across the street from campus.  Their apartment fell through and they ended up living 15 minutes away from campus.

In 2006 I broke up with the boy from my poetry class and pierced my tragus a week later.  That was the first, and only, pseudo-rebellious thing I’d ever done.  I took my first internship, an editorial position at Town & Gown magazine in State College.  I even got to model for one of the articles.  I met Boo at THON and we eventually went on our first date May 19 (but it would be another year before we finally started dating).

In 2007 I moved into the apartment above the bar.  I participated in a Beer Olympics.  I applied for a Dow Jones Newspaper fund internship.  I danced in Penn State’s Dance MaraTHON and the weekend changed my life.  It was completely amazing.  46 hours of no sleeping and no sitting and I’ve never felt so blessed.  I raised money for the best cause I can think of and I was happy to do my part to give the kids a weekend to forget and to just be kids.  I also started dating Boo that year, a year to the day after we’d met.  I heard back from DJNF and found out I’d been placed at a Pittsburgh paper and would be interning there all summer.  I graduated from Penn State with 2 degrees, moved to New York City and began my internship at Elle Magazine.  This was also the year I started my blog.

In 2008 I got a job at [redacted], my first “big kid’s” job.  It came with a good salary, good benefits and access to sample sales which made me pretty happy.  I also chopped about 8 inches off of my hair.  Looking back, this was a fairly dull year.

In 2009 I got engaged in March.  I was on The Today Show in a segment on how to dress your body type.   I resigned from my job in September and relocated from NYC to the Philly suburbs.  I married Boo in October.  Since then, I’ve learned what it’s like to see the man I love every single day instead of 2 days a week.  I’ve learned what it’s like to be a wife and I am loving it!!  I also started a fashion/style blog called street cake.

A decade in review, part 1

Leah, over at Five Blondes, did a “decade in review” a few days ago and I thought it was a great idea so I decided to do one as well.

And that was when I realized that I don’t have a damn clue what happened in the last 10 years.  Seriously, it’s painful how little about the past 10 years I actually remember.  I set up all of my years, ready to fill in the blanks with what happened.  And…well, it stayed blank for awhile.

There were certain years that I just had no recollection of.  Either nothing of note happened or I couldn’t remember it.  Mainly it was that I couldn’t remember what happened.  I actually had to list out where I was during the years in question.  That whole split school year thing was, for whatever reason, throwing me off completely so I had to map out just where I was during the last year.

Pathetic, isn’t it?

I tried to think of what had happened and when and it kind of just went like this:

Okay, so this year I got married and last year I got a job and the year before that I graduated and moved.  Then there was high school, and my birthday got shafted on Y2K.  Oh, wait, technically that was 1999.  Crap.  Okay, so well, I got my driver’s license, right, what year was that?  And…oh I went to like 3 N*SYNC concerts.  When were those?  Did I do nothing else in high school?  I also remember the year Penn State came up with its own holiday “State Patty’s Day” and we drank a lot, can I count that as stuff that happened?  Oh gosh, I’m so sad if I count stuff like that.  I must have done other stuff that year, right?

So I called my mother and asked for her help filling in some of the details.  That conversation went something like this:

Me: Mom, what year did I get my braces?

Mama B: Why?

Me: Because I’m trying to write a ‘decade in review’ for my blog.

Mama B: Um…so shouldn’t you actually know when this stuff happened?  How are you going to write a review if you don’t remember any of what happened?

Me: …

Mama B: I mean, unless you can download your brain….

Me: Okay, are you sure you don’t remember what year I got my braces?

And it pretty much progressed from there.

But eventually I managed to fill in the blanks.  Except for 2008.  For whatever reason, that was a remarkably slow year.

If only I were still so persuasive

This weekend’s snow was kind of awesome.

And then we had to shovel out the cars.

This is the type of thing that you just don’t think about as a little kid.  On Saturday, Boo and I went out to play in the snow and were kind of disappointed to find out that it wasn’t good packing snow.  That meant no snowmen and no snowballs.  To be honest, it was kind of a huge bummer.

And then we had to shovel out the cars.

Sunday morning was bright and sunny and the perfect time to dig out our cars.  Two cars, by the way, are a great idea until you have to dig them both out of their parking spots.  But thankfully the snow was still light, fluffy and non-packable.  As it turns out, that is the perfect type of snow to deal with when you’re shoveling your car.  I was using a neighbor’s push-broom style snow brush to get the snow off my roof and all I could think about was shoveling the driveway as a little kid.  My driveway is practically vertical which makes it a huuuuuge pain to shovel.  You get this great groove going, it’s all downhill, gravity is on your side and then OOOMPH!  You get the handle of the shovel straight in your gut because with all that downhill momentum you forgot that the driveway isn’t totally smooth and that the seams in the driveway are more like ENOURMOUS (1/4″ wide) divets when shoveling.

When I was younger, I usually had the honor of shoveling the driveway.  Since I’m 5 years younger than my brother he was usually struggling to wake up in time to catch the bus while I still had hours until I had to be at school.  It was a snowy morning during a year like this, when the timing was such that my brother was on a 6:40 bus (barely) and I wasn’t leaving the house for another 2 hours, that as soon as it was light out, my parents bundled me up, handed me the shovel and sent me outside.  By the time I got outside the neighborhood boys were out waiting for their middle school bus.

Now I’m not sure what I said or what I did, but the next time my parents checked on my progress they saw me standing at the top of the driveway, supervising, and the boys were pushing the shovels up and down the driveway.  A few minutes later I strolled into the house looking for a cup of hot chocolate for all my hard work.  And I got it.  Because as shocked as they were that I had conned the neighbors into shoveling, they were impressed.

If only I still had such powers of persuasion.

And now for something completely different

So I took a huge break from blogging recently.  In case you hadn’t noticed. To be fair, the “break” wasn’t so much an announced break for the last month as it was a paltry showing, posts dwindling, not noticeably at first and then VERY noticeably for the past many, many months.  I can pinpoint exactly where my blogging dropped off and I know why my blogging dropped off but I never wanted to admit that I wanted to take a break.  I knew that the second I hit “publish” on a post saying that I was taking a break from blogging, something ridiculous would happen and I would have no choice but to tell you all about it.  So I tried to trick myself by not typing that in the hopes that I would just keep blogging.

You can all see how well that worked out.

But now I’m finally starting to feel like I’m over the hump here and I have a lot to catch you up on.  But, in the meantime, I’ve been toying with idea of starting a style blog.  Lately I’ve been reading them like they are my job and I thought “I can do that.”  And so I did.

And street cake was born.

It’s launching today so if you are interested…or if you love me…take a gander at what’s going on over there.

I forgot that this is what driving is like

I am once again a driver.  After 2 years of city-living and 4 years in college I am driving regularly for the first time in 6 years.  Oh sure, I had a few months behind the wheel here and there.  A summer or 2 in college and that few months where I was living at home, but for the most part, I’ve been a non-driver since high school.

And I forgot what kind of crazies are out there.

Maybe you just don’t notice as a passenger, maybe people in Pittsburgh or Vernon aren’t quite as ruthless as they are in the Philadelphia suburbs, maybe it’s just because it’s close to Christmas.  Whatever the reason, driving has been, well, interesting lately.

What I’ve been noticing lately is that people behind you will cut you off on a turn.  As in, I’m sitting in my lane, with my turn signal blinking, waiting for the traffic to clear so I don’t get hit and then, out of nowhere, the car behind me, also turning, cuts me off.

HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN!?

The first time I experienced this was actually about a month ago.  I was turning left out of my neighborhood and the turn is, well it’s just that the road, well it sucks.  When you are turning into the ‘hood, there is this fake little half lane for you to get into but if you DO, you can forget actually executing said turn.  When you leave, you are stuck making a left hand turn.  Which, because of the little half lane means that your visual access to oncoming traffic is pretty much non-existent.  So you have to get way out into the road to turn.  So traffic is heavy and I’m waiting to turn and this guy in a little sports car comes flying out from behind me and tries to get into the turning lane before me.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  Dude.  I’m sitting in the road with my LEFT turn signal on.  And you tried to turn LEFT and cut  me off?!  Where, with my LEFT TURN SIGNAL ON, could you possibly have thought I was going?!

And then there was what happened today.  I was near the mall, so maybe I was asking for it.  I mean, you don’t leave your house and head anywhere near the mall during the Christmas shopping season without expecting some lunacy, right?  So I’ve been driving down the street, being tailed by this stupid chick in a mammoth gray SUV.  It was like Jaws sneaking up behind you and then stalking you.  Uncool.  So I’m listening to Nuvi and I have to turn right onto this road and then turn right again.  Unfortunately, the road I need to turn onto is at a standstill because of a red light and the lane I need to be in is completely blocked.  So I get into the only lane I can access, the middle lane, and I put my turn signal on.  The absolute second that traffic starts to move and the lane starts to open up, I start to edge out into the right lane and that freaking SUV comes charging up from nowhere and cuts me off from my turn.

AGAIN!

Again I’m sitting, TURN SIGNAL ON, and the car behind me thinks that they can just cut me off.  Listen, if I could have gotten into the lane, wouldn’t I have just done it?  I’m not sitting there for my health.  I’m not sitting there to kill time or to act as YOUR blocker, and yet?  CUT OFF!

Admittedly, it’s been about 8 years since I’ve taken driver’s ed so I don’t know, maybe this is acceptable behavior now.  Maybe this is the cool new thing, maybe people are reverting to elementary school tactics and line-cutting.  Or, maybe, Philly drivers are just kind of jerky.

A post about pee, inspired by the one and only QOFE

So now that I’m finally getting back on my game (I shouldn’t type this b/c you KNOW that means I won’t be back for another month…whoops!) I have something I’ve been meaning to say and Crissy’s poll yesterday gave me the push to write it.

Peeing in the shower.

I have to say this is the grossest thing I can think of.  Peeing in the ocean?  Cool with me, just stand far away from me.  But a shower?  Aw hellllll no.

My shower routine has always been as follows:

• Enter bathroom
• Take off clothes
• Pee
• Get into shower

That 3rd step there?  Pee?  That one only takes 30 seconds!  So why are you skipping it?  Is it a timing issue?  Is it for the environment?  Skip the TP then, fine with me.  And you can always follow the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” philosophy and save your pre-shower flush for later in the morning.  But please, for the love of all that is good and right and CLEAN in this world, don’t pee in the shower!!!

I’ve mentioned this before but I feel it bears repeating.  My junior year in college I lived with 4 other girls.  5 girs, 2 bathrooms.  And I was sharing a bathroom with the Monica Gellar of the apartment so I thought I was safe.  Then one day 2nd semester after one girl went off to her semester in Spain and I’d moved to the other bedroom/bathroom I found out that the clean freak had been peeing in the shower!!!  With NO warning to her fellow roommates!  How is that okay?!  Her “excuse” was that she did it while she was washing her hair and so the soap rinsed it out.

Oh, what, that’s not a problem for you?

Have you seen Ellen’s hair?

image via instyle.com

Or Sienna Miller’s?

image via instyle.com

Or perhaps Kate Gosselin’s ‘do?

image via instyle.com

Now do you see the issue?!  How much soap can hair like that use?!  There is no way shampooing a cut like that could produce enough suds to sufficiently rinse out pee!!  Especially from a college shower that never drains quite as quickly as it should.

I went through an entire semester getting into a pee-filled shower.  That was 4 months of pee-tainted showers.  And worse…baths.  *Shudders*  Are you kidding me?  You didn’t warn me that you were using my tub as a toilet?!  Oh noooo!  No no no no no!  That is sooooo not okay.

There are things I can see doing in the shower.  Brushing your teeth.  Combing your hair.  But answering nature’s call?  Noooo way.

You know–I’ll even give a pass to single people who aren’t sharing a bathroom.  If you can feel clean after your shower even though you just drained your tank in it, more power to you.  But the second you get a roommate, spouse, pet–cut it out!  Because seriously?

Ew.

Unemployment is a full time job

It’s been almost 3 months to the day that I left my job in the city.  I’ve spent most of that time fighting with the New York State Department of Labor.

Filing for unemployment is one of the biggest hassles on earth.  Oh not the actual question/answer filing part, it’s the aftermath that kills you.  After I filed for unemployment I was sitting pretty, waiting for the first day that I could call and claim my benefits.  During that waiting period I received a call from Albany asking me to clarify my address because they’d had mail returned to them.  They called to tell me this on October 23rd.  October 23rd. So for 20 minutes on my wedding day I sat on hold, waiting to correct my address so I could get my freaking unemployment, only to be cut off.  Juuuuust great.  I still called to claim my benefits (from my honeymoon in Key West no less) and figured I could sort everything out when I got home.

Back in my new apartment I had 3 letters from NY State.  2 questionnaires that needed to be returned w/in 7 days (despite the fact that one of the questionnaires actually said it needed to be returned w/in 21 days).  The return date?  October 23–the day Albany called to tell me they didn’t even have a correct address for me.  And the third letter?  Oh, that was the letter denying my benefits.  The determination: that I left my job “without good cause” even though I was now living over 100 miles from my previous place of employment.

So I spent a few weeks cussing out all things government related and sent in my request for a hearing.  So while I waited to hear about my hearing I kept calling each week to claim my benefits.  And then the letter came.  The letter that said that the Commissioner of Labor had withdrawn the determination in my case pending further fact finding and that should the contested determinations be reissued, a new hearing would be scheduled.

A new hearing?  I didn’t have an old hearing.  So what the hell?  Do I have benefits?  Do I have a hearing?  What the hell?

And then I was faced with the obnoxious task of calling the Dept. of Labor.  After typing in my social and my PIN, I spend minutes going round and round pressing 1 for English and 9 for the menu and 4 to ask a question and 3 to ask a question.  As I sit and listen and wait to press whatever number for whatever option I want I hear them say things like “if you have forgotten your PIN, please press 3″ and I wonder how in the hell those people managed to even get to that option.  And it doesn’t matter what the wait time is when you call.  Please hold, your wait time is approximately 20 minutes?  Great, you’ll sit for 20.  Please hold, your wait time is 5 minutes or less?  GREAT, you’ll still sit for 20.

So this morning, after going round and round and calling 3 different numbers this morning.  And I heard that the letter I had received wasn’t even on file.  And I heard that my claim AND hearing request were denied.  And then I heard that they can’t actually deny a hearing, simply delay it.  So I should be hearing about my hearing (and I apologize for the awkward phrasing there) in 4-5 weeks.  And in 4-5 weeks I could very well be employed.

But let me just say this.  There is no way that I’m missing out on the thousands of dollars I should have been getting from NY state.  Because seriously NY state?  You need to get your shit together.