27 Jul
Hey guys. I’m going to Massachusetts this weekend, just so you know.
And AND: I get to see the (potential, though at this point almost certain) house. Squee, ect.!
Maybe one of these days I’ll stop being swamped at work and with moving and such and actually starting writing in my blog again.
Fingers Crossed!
25 Jul
There is going to be more Harry Potter! From the mouth of the Woman herself!
24 Jul
This is the greatest movie intro in the history of the universe. It isn’t entirely safe for work, but it isn’t graphic or anything like that. Just very, very funny.
(Thanks Freakgirl!)
19 Jul
I know I haven’t updated, but right now I am using up every single ounce of energy I have to keep myself from getting too attached to the idea that this is what my backyard will look like very, very soon:
Because do you see what that is? About 100 yards from my (potential) back yard off of my (potential) deck? That would be a lake. A lake with fish and sandy beaches and nice old ladies who are in love with Pete (or so I hear). Do you know what I love? I love lakes. Especially lakes in New England that don’t have bottoms made out of red clay that get all squooshy and soooo yucky after sitting through a hot summer. Especially lakes that don’t have scary reedy/marshy banks that are chock full o’ snakes!
And I know I’m going to curse it! Because I can’t help but share and be ridiculously excited about this. But I won’t tell you about anything else. I won’t tell you about the fireplace (dammit!) or the cathedral ceilings (DAMMIT!) or the fact that it is blue on one side and covered with those fabulous adorable wooden shingles on the others which is, like, the house I have always imagined in my head (Goddammit!)
Seriously, I can’t talk to y’all anymore.
13 Jul
Do y’all get, like, 3 million pre-approved credit card offers like I do? I freaking hate these things. Not only are they dangerous (because do you know how easily someone can steal your identity with one of those?), but they are incredibly wasteful (all that un-recycled paper!), and seriously obnoxious.
Wise Bread (which is a really great day-to-day financial website) has a brilliant scheme up in which we can screw the credit card companies somethin’ fierce! It’s so vengeful and hilarious and very, very easy. And it will totally work!
Well, if everyone does it, and the average junk mail blast is 2 million households, you can see how that adds up. In fact if only 100,000 of you take the time to do it, you’ve just taken $41,000 out of their pockets! If a million people do it, that’s $410,000. And that’s a whole chunk of change. Here’s the “how-to” vid.
But you have to go click on the link to see what it is! Now go forth and destroy them!
And if you don’t want to be vengeful like me (for shame! Embrace the venge!), here are some less aggressive ways to deal with the junkmail and the telemarketers and all those people messing with you.
You’re welcome.
12 Jul
Dear Taylor,
You have much, much, MUCH more important things to be doing right now than thinking about Harry Potter. STOP IT.
Do you not realize that all of the sudden, you are moving 995 miles in about 2 months? Do you not realize what kind of heroic planning that is going to take? Shouldn’t you be calling moving companies and notifying banks and getting the utilities switched out of your name or whatever magical things need to happen before you pack up your crap and drive 17 hours?
And also, you need to get an oil change. I cannot believe you have forgotten this again. You are a disaster. Your car hates you and will probably blow itself up just to spite you in some horrid, scary backwoods town in the middle of South Carolina where people will leer at you.
And you know how you are going to North Carolina this weekend to see your fabulous Great Aunt and Uncle [Hey guys! I’m going to be out of town this weekend!] and you still don’t quite know how to get to Liberty, N.C.? Maybe you should get on that. Directions are a good thing.
But noooooo, you’re too busy watching the trailer for Order of the Phoenix 9,734 times. You’re too busy contemplating the fact that Harry might DIE. You’re too busy lamenting the fact that the series is almost over and you still don’t have some very, very important questions answered (like how did Hermione know how to get into Diagon Alley the first time? Did someone from the school go with her like Hagrid did with Harry?) (Ok, admittedly my Very Very Important Questions are somewhat…less important, now that I see them in writing.) And you are much MUCH too busy re-reading every single book AGAIN, for the eleventy billionth time now.
You’re priorities are out of place. Stop it.
Love,
The very smart, wise voice in your head.
__________________
Dear VSW voice in my head,
Suck it!
Loooooove,
Taylor
10 Jul
So have you ever had someone call you, and when you see that they called you think, “oh man. It’s so late right now. I’ll call her back tomorrow?” And then you forget about that the next day, and then the next, and then by the time you forgot that you’ve called, it’s 11:30 PM and you just really really want to go to sleep. And then the next day you are really busy and you never quite get around to it. Well then, you just start to feel awkward, because now you’ve passed into the “bad friend” territory. And then it just festers and gets worse and before you know it, it is a week and a half later and you still haven’t called back your awesome friend who stayed up until 4 AM to come pick you up at the airport that was an hour away from her house, and then about and hour later, woke up from her nap and walked you to the subway station and even gave you a subway card so you didn’t have to pay for the trip? That friend? That awesome friend?
That’s kinda how I’m feeling about my blog right now.
(And also: Liz, I am so sorry I haven’t called you back yet! I PROMISE I will do it. You are awesome and I adore you and Me: I suck!)
So, hey there guys! How ya been? I really do feel bad that it has been since June that I wrote anything, especially after I promised you tales of fun and adventure and lots of pictures! For the record, I did not come back with a sunburn, but I did come back with a really fierce head cold that has keep me in bed any moment that I wasn’t trying to slog through work for the past week. (So you see, I’ve been SICK! That’s why I didn’t post!)
And also, maybe I’ve been horribly, terribly depressed and just haven’t had the nerve to actually write anything.
Because, see, here’s the thing. Maybe last Saturday (wait…I think I mean last LAST Saturday, as in, the Saturday before this past Saturday), Pete and I got some really good news. The kind of news that was so good I actually cried a little bit and jumped up and down yelling and squealing and the kind of good news that made it feel like the world was the happiest, warmest, most fabulous place that I could possibly imagine.
The kind of good news that made Pete tell me to take this picture:
And what he is saying here, in this picture is:
“Look! This is where our house is!”
Yes. This is where our house is. This is where we are going to live. TOGETHER. In Massachusetts. And what you can’t see in this adorable little picture is that this place had an incredible ocean view that looked over Boston Light. And that it was on a little spit of land where all the energy came from windmills. And that I would get to ride a ferry into the city. In other words: It was pretty goddamn perfect.
And so this is where you insert me having conniptions of joy and doing the happy dance and all that.
And then I came home on Tuesday and I oh so wanted to tell you all about it. But I withheld the news, because we had an inspection on Friday and nothing was entirely official yet. But, we were assured that there was no problem and that it was 99% certain that this would be our place. And that we would live here. In fact, I was so sure and certain that I already started writing the post! I called my boss and asked her to come meet with me on Friday afternoon so that I could give her my notice. And HOLY SHIT, Y’ALL. I WAS MOVING TO MASSACHUSETTS.
I called Pete at about 11:45, 15 minutes before the inspection, to basically say: SQUEEEEE! and told him to call me as soon as it was over so that I could be all gushy and excited.
And then, naturally, because I cursed this from the very beginning, and built it up to the point that there was no other alternative than for something catastrophic to happen, it, of course, did.
At about 12:15 Pete called me and said, “I have bad news,” at which point I turned into mush on the floor and he proceeded to tell me that there was “very significant” structural issues, which the owners had assured him was “nothing but the retaining wall!” at first, then when pushed admitted that the entire building was actually slowly sliding into the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, I’d call that a pretty fucking significant structural issue. So, naturally, the deal collapsed right there.
Now, I should point out that we aren’t actually buying this place, his parents are. They wanted to get some investment property up that way while the market was in shambles, and when Pete told them that he asked me to move up there (back in April! How sneaky am I that I’ve managed to keep THAT quiet!?) they decided that it would be perfect for them to buy the place, then just rent it to us for the cost of the mortgage payment. That way it was staying in the family, you know, and we weren’t throwing our money into the unfillable pit of rent.
As soon as Pete told me, his mom got on the phone and said “Oh Taylor, I’m so so sorry about this!” At which point I promptly burst into tears and muttered something incoherent and get off the phone as quickly as I could. Because seriously? Crying on the phone? Hi, I’m so pathetic! Keep in mind, that I am at work through all of this. I work in tourism, so I need to be happy and fresh and peppy! Tourists don’t so much like dealing with weeping girls, especially girls who get all snotty and gross when they are weepy. And remember that head cold? In combination with the weepiness? Y’all, the snot? It was copious.
So, essentially I was a wreck all weekend. And then on Friday night when I was talking to my mom, she said something that was true, but not what I wanted to hear at the moment, which upset me further and made me even more of a disaster.
For some entirely inexplicable reason, the way that I dealt with all this was by cooking, which is not my typical way of de-stressing. I baked a chicken on Friday night, then made 6 cups of chicken stock out of the carcass (mmmm…carcasses….) (which, holy mother of god is delicious!) and then made chicken and dumplings for dinner on Sunday night. And when I wasn’t laying in bed crying or sleeping, I read a bunch of my cookbooks. So at least I was productive.
His mom emailed me on Friday evening to let me know that the search was still continuing and that they actually have appointments this weekend (today, in fact!) to look at two other possible places, so that I shouldn’t give up. Truthfully, I wasn’t so upset about place itself as I was about the fact that I finally was done with all this long distance nonsense. We actually planned a date for me moving up and everything! It was happening! No more airports and frantic weekends and stupid, awful goodbyes. No more phone calls and no more missing each other and all that terrible frustrating crap. All done! Except then, not. So you can see where I was having a hard time coping with this, right?
Pete was actually out of town this weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him again until yesterday. We sat down and had a very long, multi-hour conversation in which we decided that the place was unimportant. What really mattered to us was that we were together, wherever that was going to be, and if we needed to rent a place for a while or we needed to stay in his (teeny, tiny) little apartment for a while, we could do it. So after all that crying and teeth gnashing and everything else: I’m still moving to Massachusetts. We decided to stick to the same time-line, and hope that between now and then we would have the house all worked out. And if not, we’ll just stay somewhere else for a while.
So there you go blog readers: A very long story about why I abandoned you for two weeks and how I came to be moving to Massachusetts. It won’t be until September, because I need to give a lengthy notice to my boss, but by my birthday, September 26th, I’ll be living just outside of Boston, on the lovely South Shore of Massachusetts.
Tayloropolis 