Bad Day Solutions...

...According to me. You see, this Sunday I got a major case of Bad Day. PMS, stressful life situations, and my whole family being gone for the day just got me in a tizzy. The emotions bubbled over and I proceeded to sob for an embarrassingly long time in an empty house while my dogs looked at me like I was insane. It was pretty dramatic...a total "woman moment" (or "estrogen fest" as my boyfriend would lovingly call it), and it made me feel pretty pathetic and hopeless. However, I self-medicated with these things in this order and they did wonders:

1. Gilmore Girls. Lots of it.

If you know me, you know how I feel about "Gilmore." It is simply my bread and butter of life. Gilmore is just the perfect combination of wittiness, comedy, girliness, fantasy, reality...it just has everything. It entertains me, it comforts me, and I always emerge from a few episodes' viewing feeling a whole lot better about life. Besides for it just being a great show with amazing characters played by great actors, it also takes me back to simpler times, when I was in high school sending IMs to the boy I liked instead of stressing about how the IRS wants to makes our lives miserable. Gilmore is better than happy pills, I swear. Oh also, one of the episodes I watched was Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving, which made me think of one of my favorite holidays...Thanksgiving. I LOVE Thanksgiving. Which brings me to my next point...

2. Food. Lots of food.
So since I'm a wannabe actress, I've been trying to be "mindful" of what I'm eating (whatever that means). You know, keeping an eye on portion sizes, eating more fruits and vegetables, cutting back on sweets...blah blah blah. But on the Bad Day, I knew I needed to just eat whatever I wanted and not worry about it. I ate half of a thin-crust margarita pizza, a can of Progresso Beef Barley soup, lemonade, a couple of mini brownie bites things with milk. Basically I ate until I was stuffed. It was just necessary.

3. Dog walking.
I took my small pooch Molly for a walk while listening to some sweet tunes once my food had digested a bit:

Put on my sneakers, enjoyed the sunshine, listened to showtunes, made one doggie very happy. It was great.

4. Took a Shower

Because being clean and fluffy always puts me in a better mood.

5. Wine, Cooking, Feeding Others.

I poured myself a big fat glass of Chardonnay with ice and proceeded to cook...chopping up huge heads of broccoli and little grape tomatoes (chopping vegetables soothes me like nothing else...go figure), boiling up pasta, sauteeing some shrimp scampi. Then my parents came home, my best friend came over, and we all ate. I love eating, but I especially love cooking and feeding other people. Great feeling.

So these are my five steps. I encourage you to try any or all of these things next time you feel like the world is raining on your soul. While I wasn't completely cured until my hormones finally decided to get a grip the next day, I felt markedly better and confident in my ability to be alone and ok. Onward.

Oh September, I love thee...

First of all, I am loving September 2010 because it's when Sara Bareilles' new album Kaleidoscope Heart drops (Sept. 7th!), which I have impatiently been waiting for forever and I am just so excited!! She is my absolute favorite...that rare combination of incredible songwriter, instrumentalist and vocalist. Sure enough the songs that are available for preview are just amazing and I am eating them up! Her new songs will be the soundtrack of my fall in New York and will always remind me of the year I started my post-grad life. I love Sara so much my boyfriend should feel threatened.

Soooo September has always been a favorite month of mine because it means beautiful weather and back-to-school! Now I don't get to indulge in the back-to-school hoopla, and I am really sad about it. However I am venturing forth by getting excited about fall fashion and my new NYC style (which will hopefully be a big of an upgrade from my college style, which let's be honest, got a little lazy sometimes). I'm following in the footsteps of the girls over at Lucky magazine here (if you know me, you know I LOVE Lucky magazine and have an embarassing number of copies in my collection...some of which date back to 2003....yeah.). Every year one of the girls in the Editor's Picks sections proclaims something like "I just want to pretend that I'm going back to school and wear collegiate, studious-looking things!" So that's what I'm about right now. Here are some things I'm excited about for fall:

Shoes!

http://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=33940&vid=1&pid=779385&scid=779385012

The Reno High-Heel Oxford from Banana Republic
This was the first thing I saw (in the September issue of Lucky, no less) that made me go "Ah-Ha! I must have you for fall!" I think these shoes are just so cool; I love the unexpected combo of such a masculine style of shoe (my boyfriend has a pair of desert-boot/oxford shoes that remind me of these) with a feminine heel. Speaking of the heel - I love that it's a sturdy, stacked heel that won't make me feel as if I'm about to twist my ankle. I think these would just be so cute with my normal fall uniform of skinny jeans and a slouchy sweater. There are two problems with these shoes, however: one is the price ($140), which is a little steep for me, and the heel height, which is a little high at 3 1/4". I just don't know. But I love them.

Plaid Blouse

http://www.target.com/

Ok so I am pissed, because the original Steven Alan plaid blouse that caught my eye in People StyleWatch seems to ALREADY be unavailable on stevenalan.com because I can't find it! The top I liked was very similar to the Kayla top (http://www.stevenalan.com/catalog/KAYLA-TOP-p-18294-c-996-17415.html) but in this airy red-and-white plaid. It was SO cute; a fresh new version of the now ubiquitous plaid shirt. Now the only similar top I can find is this one from Target, which is also cute - I like that it has the whole collarless, slightly-drapey thing going on, but I really liked the original one from Steven Alan. Oh well, if I'm honest with myself I could never have afforded Steven Alan anyway...which is kind of the theme of my fall shopping...

Faux-fur Vest

http://piperlime.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=59637&vid=1&pid=796894&scid=796894002

So I know I'm being a total trendoid here, but this vest is just so cute. With the toggles?? Amazing. Like the BR shoes, I think this vest would make the fall staples I already have fabulous, like my collection of comfy but relatively boring long-sleeved tees flat boots.

J.Crew Toothpick Zippered Cord


I have been loving on these pants since I stumbled upon them while browsing the site randomly a few weeks ago. I must have these in Steel Green. They are just so cute....the collegiate, slightly nerdy cord material with trendy, slightly tough exposed zippers?? Yes, I say yes.

http://www.jcrew.com/womens_category/pants/corduroy/PRDOVR~28522/28522.jsp

That is all! I am going to go enjoy me some of this beautiful September-teaser weather and continue to obsess over Sara Bareilles. Tell me what you're doing today. 

I Want to Become a Runner.

I am so not a runner. I was one of those kids who tried every sport, following her mother's insistence that there had to be one athletic endeavor that I would enjoy and be good at. Nope. I thoroughly suck at all sports, and nothing is worse than running. My childhood memories of running are centered around the Presidential Physical Fitness test, a once-a-year test that they give elementary school students (at least here in New York), where you run "the mile." So instead of a normal gym class that would involve half-assed attempts at dodgeball or kickball, all of the students would suddenly be expected to go out and run a mile. I hated it. I would start out running and make a real effort, but eventually that small-elf-squeezing-your-lungs feeling would set in and I would stop and walk, feeling like crap and watching my elementary school crush zip by (not only was he a runner, but he set the record for speed every year). Not exactly the best way for me to gain confidence in my athletic ability. As a result of this athletic anxiety, I turned to dance and yoga as a way to work out that's actually fun (I may not be able to shoot a basketball, but I am damn good at learning choreography). I never even entered a gym until college when my girlfriends dragged me into the gorgeous gym at BU, taught me what an elliptical was, and encouraged me to broaden my fitness horizons.

Once I started to be able to recognize myself in workout clothes, I started to change my outlook on running. After avoiding any kind of fitness endeavor that I found too "badass" for my girly self, I challenged myself to become more comfortable with running. Now I know that running can be unhealthy if you overdo it, but I think it would be really great to be able to run one to three miles a few times a week. Being able to run at least a mile without stopping is my current goal, something that I think is doable and will really make me feel like I am on my way to being "in shape." By in shape, I mean I want to look like this:

Did Kristen Bell's physique in Forgetting Sarah Marshall just blow your mind or what? She just rocks, and I've decided that I want her jobs (another one of my goals: to become a rom-com queen), her bangs (more on this soon) and her bod. I think Kristen is a great fitness role model because she's honest about her diet (she's a vegetarian and admits to counting calories and being very careful about what she eats while also letting herself indulge here and there), has a varied fitness routine (outdoor activities as well as good ol' hitting of the gym) and hello - she's 30 and looks like she's 20! Part of this, I'm sure, is due to her petite cuteness, but still - the lady seems to have mastered the art of taking care of herself without doing ridiculous cleanses or diets. Awesome.

So yeah, I'm going to become a runner. It's going to happen. I am going to beat the elf in my chest and really be in shape, and also become a movie star and have perfect bangs that I don't get sick of...anything's possible right?

Things I Like

Hello! I'm finally back from my long family vacation in Northern California (including one of my favorite places on earth, Lake Tahoe!) and finally settling into my life. It's becoming real now that I'm actually not going back to school in a couple weeks and instead have the month of September (and every month after that!) at my own disposal, to do with as I wish. There will be work, there will be weddings, weekends, birthday celebrations with friends (I have SO many friends with September and October birthdays, it is nutty), and more importantly I will get to watch fall descend on New York for the first time in four years. I am very excited and just happy to be back with access to a computer! Here are some things I like:

Origins Ginger Souffle Body Moisturizer
Use this stuff if you want to smell fizzy, spicy and delicious like a Dark n Stormy (ginger beer and dark rum, aka a super delicious cocktail). I bought this for myself in the early spring of this year (along with the Origins GinZing eye cream, another thing I love) and it's just a yummy beauty indulgence that makes me happy. Ginger is a great all-season scent because when it's cooler the spice is nice and warming and in the warmer months its citrusy freshness is really refreshing. Love it.

L'Oreal Extra Volume Collagen Mascara

This stuff is serious mascara for when you need serious lash-thickening, eye-brightening power. I've been turning to this stuff more lately as I've been losing sleep over figuring out my life (long story) and it means business. It's a little messy, so I use either CoverGirl Volume Exact or LastBlast Fusion mascara first on top and bottom lashes and then use this stuff on my top lashes for some extra "pow." It is seriously darkening, seriously thickening, seriously lengthening...it is SERIOUS mascara. Not for the faint of heart. But very satisfying.

Saigon Grill, Downtown NYC

(Photo: www.eateryrow.com)
I just ate at the downtown location of this Vietnamese restaurant last night with my boyfriend and some friends (whee triple date!). Neil and I had been here once before and loved it but never made it back because we get lazy and tend to just hit up the great restaurants around his area in Chelsea, and this is kind of a long walk away at University and 12th. One of the great gals we were with is Vietnamese and helped us with ordering, and all of the food was just delicious. Such great combinations of flavors, spicy curry and ginger and cool mint and cucumber...yum. I had one of the best chicken curry dishes I've ever tasted, and was dreaming about it all the way home as I rubbed my food baby tummy.

Real Simple Magazine

(Photo: www.ba-reps.com)
Man, I love Real Simple. It's a lifestyle magazine that's practical while still being stylish. I love the combination of beauty, fashion, finances, food, organization...it's just great. Yes it's probably technically targeted to women in their thirties and beyond, but I feel that even their articles that don't pertain to me yet (like how to successfully get your family out of the house on time in the morning) will eventually come in handy. I love their simple recipes that focus on the pairings of great flavors (in the August issue above, they featured 3-ingredient dishes that all sound so delicious and easy). It's just a great guide on how to be a smart, classy, organized lady...which I (and therefore Go Austen) are all about.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Books I Am Reading But Should Have Already Read Because Everyone's Already Read them, Part I

I am finally reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I held off on this because a) it was such a damn phenomenon that I didn't feel like giving into the hype (I'm like this with a few things, and when I finally give in I usually kick myself, like in the case of my delayed discovering of The Office) and b) I felt like the whole post-divorce-life-overhaul thing wouldn't really be relatable for me. I was so, so wrong. Gilbert is a great writer. So good in fact (and herein lies her immense success, I believe) that I almost feel like I could have written this book, not in a self-flattering way but in a "damn this woman is so perfectly and eloquently describing almost identical thoughts to my own and I can't deal." She is so smart, so funny and so relatable and it all seems so...effortless. Like she just sat down and wrote this whole thing in one sitting, stream-of-consciousness, and it just came out perfect. Far from being the overwrought, overemotional, over-estrogenized tale that I expected it to be, it is honest and intentional, like she's confessing all and yet somehow being very selective of her words at the same time. It is remarkable and I am very glad to be reading this book at this time in my life.

I relate to Elizabeth Gilbert as a person; like her, I am also tall and blonde (and have also felt like an alien because of it at times, as she describes in one section of the book), also haven't been single essentially ever in my life, and also am searching for the way to balance to search for pleasure and the search for spirituality in life. I also, if you know me, derive more pleasure from food than from almost anything else, and I loved this passage : "For the longest time I couldn't even touch the food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch, a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing...happiness inhabited my every molecule" (64). I enjoy Gilbert's reverence for the simply beauty of life, and I am thankful for her honest account of her struggles after all of her personal turmoils...it is not so much entertainment for me so far as education. I really need this book right now.

As far as having never been single...yeah. I've really never been single. Had my first "official" boyfriend in 5th grade, but can remember being in love with somebody from preschool on. Preschool. And although I think I have been better than Gilbert at not completely losing myself in my relationships (as Gilbert says, "I disappear into the person I love" [65]), what the heck?? As Gilbert puts it, "That's almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week's breather in between. And I can't hep but to think that's been something of a liability on my path to maturity" (65). I mean, as healthy as my relationships have been, how healthy can it be to be in a relationship for your whole adolescence and young adulthood? And now that I've met The One, I will potentially be part of a couple for the rest of my life. While that thought delights me, as I know I have been built to love and be loved, it is a little unsettling. As I read Elizabeth Gilbert's chronicle of her experiencing of romantic loneliness for the first time in her life, I'm struck by how important that experience probably is, and it's one I've never had. While it may be important, however, is it worth risking the relationship with The One so I can go hang out with that dude called Loneliness for awhile? Probably not. But maybe it does mean I'm not ready to get married. But then again, is anyone ever really "ready" to join their life with someone else's? I don't know. Gotta finish this book so I can get to Committed. Oh Gilbert, you are rocking my world.

Space to Breathe

Since my opening posts, there have been some important developments; first, my beloved family friend Kitty Gannon passed away and I attended her beautiful and heartbreaking funeral. Kitty was one of those exceptional people that had genuine kind words and a smile and a witty joke for literally everyone that she met. She was someone who told everyone around her just how beautiful and important they were to her. She had had a long life and had raised eight children and was still just full of joy and purpose. I was genuinely heartbroken at her funeral, but also greatly inspired. She is exactly the kind of woman I want to be: strong and smart and funny, with a strong faith and zeal for life. As one of her daughters said, she literally lived right until she died. I might not be able to adopt her lovely Irish accent, but I think "Live like Kitty" might be my new motto anyway.

The second development is that I flew out to northern California to visit my family last night. We come out here every year, and sometimes it has been a bit of a chore, leaving friends and boyfriends behind to come out for two weeks of "family time" (which, if you have a family, you know can be somewhat exhausting). This year, however, I could not have been more ready to get away, from pre-engagement madness and post-graduation madness and my neverending shuttling back and forth to the city. It's like a breath of fresh air to be out at my grandparents' ranch, where my grandfather is a Western artist (he's a cowboy, like for real) and my grandmother has a garden full of vegetables that I get to eat. It's the place where I used to make flower crowns for myself and gallop around pretending I was some kind of cowgirl princess. I feed carrots to Dolly and Molly (pictured above), I help my little cousins hunt for frogs and I sit on the porch watching hawks circle above the hilly country. I was so relaxed just knowing that I was here that I slept for something like ten or eleven hours last night...I just feel like I'm decompressing from life.

I went on a jog today around my grandpa's studio, and I was listening to Lady Antebellum on my iPod shuffle (being in the NoCal country makes me feel like I can shamelessly listen to my country music, whereas on the New York subway I feel like somehow everyone is judging me as I sheepishly turn down my Carrie Underwood). They have a song called American Honey that's about getting in touch with your childhood self (There's a wild wild whisper blowing in the wind/calling out my named like a long lost friend/Oh I miss those days as the years go by/Nothing sweeter than summertime and American honey). There's a line towards the end of the song that goes "Gone for so long now, I gotta get back to her somehow." I feel like in order to figure out the rest of my life, I need to really get in order who I am and where I've been. Joining Lady Antebellum in helping me out with this goal is Elizabeth Gilbert. Cue next post...

Being an Emma in a Snooki World.

First thought: why is it so hard to find the good books out there? After reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger a couple of summers ago, I have been so frustrated by the search for a good book. Everything at the bookstore seems too silly or too sad or too written-for-a-middle-aged-empty-nester-looking-for-a-new-start-on-life. Or the book looks great, but it's a collection of short stories, and I want a novel dammit! After searching high and low, I bought the book In the Kitchen by Monica Ali, only to realize that the main character's affair with a Russian ex-prostitute hiding from her pimp (named, of course, Boris) was making me depressed and paranoid (what if my lovely boyfriend is actually hiding a wretched Russian in his apartment and making love to her every night even though he swears he isn't attracted to her?? yech). Once again, I abandoned a book while I was halfway through it, with no desire or energy to finish it. Once that was over, I bought Eat Pray Love and received The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo from a friend, both of which I am planning on reading over my two-week family vacation that's coming up. In the meantime, I've returned to an old favorite: my old copy of Pride and Prejudice (a 30 page hunk has completely detached from the spine, which is kind of a problem) that I was reading the first summer I was dating my boyfriend four years ago. I filled all of the empty space inside the novel with early declarations of love from him, which makes this book even more special. As romantic as our relationship still is, there's nothing like those first few times that you are told that you are the love of someone's life. All mushiness aside...nothing will ever compare to Austen for me. She is just the best, and her women are the kind of woman I want to be. Fallible, prideful, and prejudiced, yes, but smart and witty, full of class, and capable of great love. Austen's writing is so entertaining yet at the same time such a wonderful exploration of what it's like to be a woman. And with our latest cultural phenomenon involving women making out with each other on TV one minute and pulling each other's hair extensions out the next (I'm talking to you, Jersey Shore. GTL my ass), I am just so pleased that Jane Austen novels exist. That is all.

Ms. Alumna

This is my new blog, welcome! I am a woman of many interests: a recent college grad who majored in Psychology and minored in Art History, participated in a wonderful student theater group (Go BU StageTroupe!) and generally enjoyed tromping around Boston like there was no tomorrow. While I know that it was time to leave after four years to return home to my beloved New York to be with family, friends and boyfriend, I will always have an ache in my heart for Boston, the city where I became a woman. I never anticipated loving college so much, and I never anticipated how it would change me. Although I left home temporarily when I was sixteen to act in a TV show that shot in Vancouver, B.C., I was attached to my family and less independent than I thought I was. In theory I loved travel, but in reality I clung to the life that I was used to and had little interest in pursuing the "college experience." That being said, I had a moment when I came to BU for an accepted students' open house and I realized that my college experience would be about more than college experience; it was a city experience. While I loved BU itself and its sprawling campus and colorful student body, I think I would have gone a little nuts if it weren't for regular excursions through and around the city, experiencing the different neighborhoods and acquiring the memories that keep flashing through my mind as I try to prepare myself to let go of the place that was my home for four years. New York is my home and my first love, but Boston is my city that was uniquely my own, where separately from the family and friends of my childhood, I made a life for myself that was rich and challenging and glorious. In this blog I am hoping to explore what I've learned and what I'm still learning about the art of being a woman (a grown-up woman). As college comes to a close and you receive that big, fat degree (it really is huge, which I found very satisfying), you start to feel these moments of "shit, I'm a grown-up, but I don't know what that even means." Life (or in my case, my mother) hands you a huge plastic filing box where you are expected to actually file and organize your bank statements, your student loan payments, your tax information. One minute everyone's saying you're young and there's no rush, and the next they're asking when you're moving, when you're taking the GRE, what your "plans" are. You go from feeling super-accomplished with your big fat degree to feeling like you haven't really accomplished anything yet, and you better start accomplishing because your friends are already naming their salaries and setting up 401(k)s. I feel like Emma when she realizes that she really has nothing figured out at all. Here we go.