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GTI

Finally here, trip home from the dealer took almost as long as it sat at the port. All is well and we won't be driving around the city at 6pm anytime soon. We will report back once we have combed over the car and stretched it's legs a bit.

Carbon Steel Grey with Plaid seats...

Enough

October 4 is going to be a big day for us, clearly, but November 4 will be bigger—for everyone. Wedding plans have taken a backseat lately as we have been consumed with nightly politics and, honestly, I've had enough. Enough of the crap, enough of the lies, enough of the ridiculous state of American government and media. Enough of the "reality" that these people think we're that stupid. How does it make you feel to know that the possible future President and VP think they can lie, flat out, to your face, repeatedly, on a daily basis, just make things up, fabricate their own "facts" and honestly BELIEVE you'll never know the difference. Or, even worse, if you do know the difference, that you won't care.

Wow. How did we get here?

As someone who just lost her job due to a horrific economy, I watch, mouth agape, head shaking, embarrassed and enraged. Aren't there actual issues to discuss? Real problems to solve? Tough realities to face? Oh yeah, that's what that other guy is talking about, has been talking about and will continue to talk about. This isn't a reality show or a soap opera or fodder for trash Hollywood tabloids. This is my country. And I deserve a president who recognizes that my country does not belong to him, to play with as he pleases. I deserve a president who knows it belongs to me and you and our families and our friends and that we care what he does with it. Enough is enough.

On November 4, one month after *boy and I say "I do," we will vote for the guy who's had enough and plans to make things better.

Conservative but still concerned? Read this. Then read this: Christians for Obama

A Year of Haberdashery

One year ago—well, one year and 8 days ago—I started this blog as a late afternoon pick-me-up surprise for *boy while at work. Since our trip to Spain where we serendipitously stumbled upon the word haberdashery on a store sign, we had joked about starting a blog, a blog to encompass all the random bits of life that we love, hate, or just observe. Around the same time we made a life wish list of sorts and stuck it on *boy's refrigerator door. Quite simply it included the following:

1. Get job that allows for Bacon
2. Get apartment that allows for Bacon
3. Make living from our blog

Shortly after I posted our first article, I began looking for a new job—hopefully one that would either allow me to bring (then unborn) Bacon to work OR would be close enough to home for me to visit him during the day. By year's end I not only had a new job, I had a new nephew, too. I was also teaching my first class and looking forward to the next semester. Bacon was still in the distance but I felt us getting closer, felt life moving along, swimmingly.

By the beginning of February, in addition to my new job, new nephew, and new teaching gig, I had a new fiancé and a wedding in the works. By May, a new apartment, a roommate and, at last, a tiny, white puppy promised to be ours. June saw us into a new part-time job over at another (much more profitable) blog. And by July 5, Bacon was in my lap and the little hole in our hearts was filled with puppy breath and pink, freckled paws.

The summer has been a blur of puppy training and wedding planning, AT posting and 9 to 5 work, frustration and stress but also laughter and silliness. Most of all it has been full of anticipation and realization. Anticipating our our wedding day and realizing how great we have it and how much we have to look forward to, still.

By last week we were ready to kick wedding prep into high gear but by Friday I was leaving work early with bad news. Just shy of a year after my last job search began, I was informed that I would need to find yet another job by the end of the year.

After a very downtrodden weekend of doing pretty much nothing, and against my own vow to not even think about the job situation until after the wedding, I've already come up with a plan and begun its execution. Well, at least a plan to get us through next May. Ironically enough, the plan includes me being able to spend ample time in our wonderful apartment, with Bacon. It also allows me to make at least a partial living from a blog, just not this one.

Apparently this is the upside of making a very short, very broad life wish list: not only are there many ways to achieve the same goals but, when you're not busy making lists, other fantastic life wishes come true without you even trying.

I'm writing this anniversary post late in the afternoon at work—at a job that I won't have for much longer, a job that I wasn't ready to leave yet—for *boy to know that I wouldn't have wanted to spend the last year doing anything else, with anyone else. Good or bad, I can't wait to see what the next year brings us.

Style Me Flattered

To say that life is busy these days would be a laughable understatement. Our little Bacon takes up nearly every waking moment at home and while he sleeps we manage to squeeze in our daily AT Boston posts (which launches officially on September 1) and plan our wedding, now less than 2 months away.

I'm trying hard to stay practical about the planning but, turns out, even a small, intimate affair comes with stress and minor chaos. So, to boost our spirits and remember out initial care-free vision for the big day, I made this little collection of images and sent it over to the *boy at work. I think its a refreshing visual reminder that all of this planning and scheduling will pay off soon and, on that October afternoon, these pictures, these ideas will come to life and we'll be able to enjoy all those decisions-made, relax and indulge in a lovely evening with friends and family.

After making it, I figured I might as well send it to the wedding blog that inspired me to do it and today she put it up on her site, Style Me Pretty. Thanks Abby!

Now everyone pray it doesn't rain...

Why Am I Marrying Him?

Photographer Kate Hutchinson is doing a beautiful series of portraits of her fiance called "Why Am I Marrying Him?" that I find extremely compelling in their universal, everyday nature.







So compelled am I that I took a break from my silly wedding blog hopping to put together my own little series. After all, the real reason behind this shindig we're throwing is in these pictures below...

Bacon Outdoors

Ok, back to the dog. The first non-posed Bacon pictures. Three weeks in counting...

Freckled Bacon

Words cannot even describe how much I already love this little guy. His ears are half-way up (she's assisting them in this first picture) and little black spots are appearing on his head. Four weeks in counting...

Baby Bacon

More not-so-blurry pictures of Bacon. Isn't he handsome?





(from Tuesday)
Its blurry but official. World, meet our Bacon.





We'll be going to pick him up on July 5 and couldn't be more excited!

Thinking Inside the Box

Life revolves around boxes this week - finding them, packing them, labeling them, taping them, piling them and, come Thursday, moving them. Our favorite source for free moving boxes? Liquor stores. My future in-laws are helping us move later this week and I can't wait to see their faces when they glimpse my wall-o-beer boxes. Budweiser to Blue Moon - you name it, we got 'em. You can't ask for better moving boxes, though: they're sturdy enough for the heavy stuff but small enough so you can't overpack them and, best of all, they're free (you just have to be willing to go into the back room and bust them up yourself).

Less than 48 hours to go and my mind drifts to our little would-be puppy... the litters were born last week but we wait patiently to hear which pups will be saved as show dogs and which imperfects will be pets.

Thinking imperfect thoughts...

Irony & Life

*girl has been learning to cross stitch over the last week. Her first foray into the world of cross stitching is a little sign, complete with pink bunnies, that reads "IRONY IS NOT DEAD" -for the past week it read "IS" then "IS NOT" and finally last night the completed phrase.

How appropriate that we, after expressing our disdain and disgust for the act of legally binding oneself to another person and doing so in a pageant of bad taste and excess, have come to the conclusion that we're never going to find anyone else who shares those same feelings, so let's do it. What may be even more ironic is that it took our office "prom" and a few dirty martinis for either of us to admit to the other that we wanted to make it official. We will do our best to avoid the pageantry and excess, beginning with a more modest version of the rock.

We're pretty sure we are crazy, and that everyone else will agree, but I haven't been this sure about anything in a long time and I know *girl is who I want to spend my life with doing ironic and ridiculous things.

Bacon Cravings

A year from now these should be *girl and my pictures of Bacon but for now they come from here

Dirty Spicy-Dill Pickle Martini

2 parts Kettle One Vodka
A Dash Extra Dry Vermouth
1/2 part Home-grown Spicy-Dill Pickle Juice (imported from Alabama)

Pour ingredients over ice and shake vigorously until frost forms on the shaker. Pour into double-walled Bodum glasses and garnish with spicy dill spear. Repeat until lips are burning.

(Notice the cutting mat place mats, sometimes I have good ideas)

Bacon Cravings

I remember my sister talking about the urge to have a child about 6 years ago, just before she started trying to get pregnant. She spoke of an all-consuming, unwavering, irrestible longing to be a mother and, I must admit, at the time, I thought she was crazy. The way she went on and on about wanting to nurture and love and raise this thing that didn't even exist yet - I simply did not get it. She was 24, I was 18.

I am now about a month away from turning 24, myself, and now I finally get it; I feel it. The urge - to love and cherish, to nurture and protect, to care for and adore - is borderline unbearable. It grabs me on my way to work, it tugs at my heart as I shop for my groceries and it almost brings tears to my eyes when I walk through my front door at night.

I want a dog.

His name is Bacon, and while he probably doesn't even exist yet, there is a longing in my heart that only he can fill. He is a French Bulldog, he is brindle-coated and he has those irresitable pointy ears. He'll have my attitude but *boy's laid-back temperment; he'll love my soft, shady apartment for napping but *boy's sunny bay windows for people watching. He'll walk with me and lick me and love me and I (and *boy) will be his world.

While Bacon currently holds the key to my happiness, he is more a metaphor for the life I cannot wait to live. I feel like when my sister was busy waxing glassy-eyed about her desire to procreate, she was really daydreaming about the greater life changes that the pregnancy would embody (literally). She must have been thinking about the day he would take his first step, the day he would learn to swim and the day he would proudly tell his Auntie that he was going to be a big brother. I'm not focusing so much on the cold walks in the snow at 7am or the inevitable accidents on my nice furniture - I'm thinking about years from now when Bacon and I embark together to a new city or a new apartment or a fantastic vacation.

Even though a child and a Bacon aren't techincally the same thing, they both herald the desire for change, the desire for something new that will take me into the next decade of my life, to places and circumstances that I can't even imagine. Actually getting a Bacon would mean one serious life change, in particular: I need a job that either happily accepts dogs in the workplace or I need to work from home. And this is where the fantasy ends, where the reality of my current life takes hold and I remind myself that I can't have Bacon, yet. I know the life I want for him and I can't give that to him, yet. But one day...