bird by bird

Here are some pictures of food that I plan on making for Easter Sunday. Since we all know that they won't turn out even remotely similar to these perfected images, let's all just bow our heads and pretend. On the menu: Balls-a-Spinach! Source: firstlookthencook.wordpress.com via Amanda on Pinterest Bunch-A-Veggies! Source: lindawagner.net via Amanda on Pinterest Hunk-a-Ham! Source: parentscanada.com via Amanda on Pinterest Cake-o-Lemon! Source: Amanda on Pinterest Me, in the end. Source: foodlve.com via Natasha on Pinterest

One year ago: SS celebrated her birthday (and today too!) I met WA and LJK for the very first time! RC moved to NYC! One year ago: I quit my job as a nanny to live the wild life of a temp. I lived in Harlem in a living situation that was literally evil. I applied for jobs in South Dakota. One year ago: I wasn't sad, but I wasn't happy. I didn't know where I should be, what I should be doing. I wasn't alone, but I felt like I was. And now, one year later: I'm celebrating SS's birthday with my whole slew of a crew. I have a full-time job that makes me feel like a whole person at the end of the day. I'm happy, really happy, and exactly where I need to  be. Source: habitualbliss.tumblr.com via Amanda on Pinterest

The other day I met up with my gal pal BC her darling girl BI at the Buttermilk Channel to catch up on our crazy lives. I dished about my Spring Break weekend in D.C. and BC gave me the inside scoop on some obscure halftime performance that she was a part of last month. We talked politics, mainly our love for the Obamas, and while we talked, baby BI waved her left hand in the air like someone should have put a ring on it. So sweet. The thing I love most about getting lunch with my homegirl is that we are just so on the same page! We ordered the exact same thing (roasted sunchoke and walnut soup to start, then pan-roasted winter flounder). It was like déjà vu! And we shared a bottle of Pinot Noir, 2009 because it was a girls day, afterall. BI had chocolate milk and was such an angel that you'd think she would have an actual halo! We did not get dessert, and it was the best thing I never had. After so much eating and drinking and laughing and gossiping (...

Happy Birthday, Robert Frost! Thanks for your blessed rhymes and for letting me teach them to apathetic 18-year-olds for a couple of years. You rule.   Source: Uploaded by user via Tammy on Pinterest

I hate running. I hate how my body feels as it's pounding on the pavement all hurried and spastic and coarse. When I was little, my mom thought that I "ran funny" and took me to the doctor where he had me run down the hallway watching me "run funny," and then he said, "I don't think anything is wrong with her. She just 'runs funny." That may or may not have been the be all end all when it came to my future as a runner, and for the next 20 years, I completely avoided the activity. Also, the development of boobs did not make running any more enjoyable (just. trust. me.) The only exception to my refusal to run was the few times every summer when I would be enjoying blue skies and green grass and suddenly see a garter snake darting toward at my ankles. Then, and only then, I ran like the mother effing wind. I'm no good at running, but I'm hella good at running away. All of this brings me to a highly peer pressured work environment last we...

Source: followgram.me via Amanda on Pinterest

Umm.... the weather situation outside is GROSS. It's too wet for snow boots, too cold for rain boots, and too windy for an umbrella. It's slippery and mushy and when cars drive past (as cars are want to do in New York City), frozen slush splashes up on innocent bystanders just like in the cartoons, only this is NOT funny. The most miserable part of all of this is that it's MARCH. The first day of Spring is TOMORROW. The groundhog said that this would NOT HAPPEN. I feel cheated by Mother Nature and overall disgusted with the sky and what it has been dropping on me lately. And then this morning, I read this poem and even though I'm still angry enough to use all CAPS when writing about this hellish weather, I feel a little calmer, at least, knowing that this is a transition. This is the "time between." "Here in the Time Between" by Jack Ridl Here in the time between snow and the bud of the rhododendron, we watch the robins, look into ...

I love my friends, this quote, and that on a Sunday night amidst a snotty nosed cat and looming Monday morning, it all came together at my kitchen table with some of my favorite blonde Brooklyn babes.  “I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines, and sing out loud in the car with the windows open, and stay up all night laughing, and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets, and throw parties, and eat ripe tomatoes, and read books so good they make me jump up and down.” -Shauna Niequis But about those dirty dishes..

I told my KC friend KS this story this week, and now I'm telling you: "Last night I went to this Brooklyn Museum event thing and there was a band called ZOZO Afrobeat playing tribal jazzy music, and the place was packed, and I was standing in the back with a clear plastic cup of red wine (obvi). I looked around and people were swaying their hips and moving their shoulders to the music, and then I noticed this little old black lady in the 4th row pick up her cane (the wooden, old school kind like you would draw if you were playing Pictionary) and raise it in the air to the beat of the music. In a sea of people, you could just see this old cane raising and falling in the crowd in unison with the sounds. I don't know if I'm explaining this very well, but it  was one of the sweetest, most beautiful things I've seen in a long time, and it made me feel like, "It's OK. EVERYTHING is going to be OK." KS is now out of surgery, and safely recover...

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Amanda on Pinterest

woke up early. was late for work. worked from 9-5. donated a pint of blood. went to a gallery opening in the Bowery. ate four vegetable Dumplings in Chinatown. spent an hour standing on the trains getting home crawled into bed thinking that all those little things make a grand life.