The one that doesn't get a title (except this one)

I dropped my parents off at the airport about 25 minutes ago. It was the last goodbye of a month and a half of visitors and by far the hardest. Nothing feels like it is going right at this moment. For reasons that would take a long and frustrating explanation, I still have no job and no prospect of a job. I have no friends here. I have no family outside of Alma and Adam here. I feel like I have no ground under my feet.

This place is beautiful but it still feels like I am on vacation and I am desperate to go home. I will figure out how to move on from this feeling. I will.

How to lose one's self confidence in a matter of minutes.

Cover letters should be classified as a war crime. I have applied for 27 jobs in the last 8 days. At the present moment, I have received 3 calls, one interview, and am currently waiting for the phone to ring to complete a phone interview. I have received about 9 rejection emails, including one, which was sent to me 3 times, immediately following a very positive sounding phone interview where I was told by the interviewer that he was very impressed and would highly recommend that I be brought in for a face to face interview.  If this goes on much longer, I might lose my mind as well as my self confidence.

Birthday Wishes

Adam's parents are visiting this week, thus commencing a five week visitor season. In 37 days, there will be a total of 4 nights where we don't have visitors. Other people might consider this high level of traffic a little overwhelming. Those other people have likely had more than 4 in-person conversations with not-their-husband in the last 80 days.

I wonder what would happen if I ever decorated my house without a visitor/party/youareabouttohaveababy deadline. For the last 15 years, there has always been some event about a month or two after move in that has ended up dictating the decor of my house for the next 1-3 years. Or until the apartment catches on fire, whichever happens first. So, that has been what I have been up to lately.

In the meanwhile I had a birthday. We went to Yosemite for the weekend and it was perhaps the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. I had a grand plan of coming up with 32 wishes for this year, but instead I came up with five:

1.  Get a job that is mostly enjoyable
2.  Go a whole week without crying
3.  Make a new friend
4.  Hug my old friends until they beg me to stop
5.  Buy a leather jacket

We will see how that all goes.

My Armpit is More Beautiful than Yours

Adam and Alma and I visited a few vineyards in Napa on a lazy beautiful Sunday a few weeks ago. Yes, it weirds me out that I can do such things. At one of the vineyards, we ended up at a standing table next to two absurdly talkative middle-aged brothers. At first they started talking to us about wine but when that didn't get much intelligent response from us, they moved on to telling us about their girlfriends and ex-wives and how the one was considering getting his 25 year old girlfriend pregnant. One brother downloaded a random dinosaur puzzle app on his phone and handed it to Alma. They asked for our contact information, offered to take us out on their boat, and eventually paid our tab. It was a little strange. 

In the middle of all that, one of the brothers asked where we were from. When I explained that we had just moved from Philadelphia, they both loudly groaned. "PHILADELPHIA!!! What an armpit. Thank God you are here!" He then went on to explain that he was from San Antonio, TX, an even bigger armpit than Philadelphia, so he was allowed to say that. 

[Insert really long rant on how Philadelphia is overlooked and underrated and may be filled with more delicious food than San Francisco. Yes, I mean that.] Whatever dude, my armpit is pretty and I miss it.

Cascarones

I have a special attachment to Easter. As an end of March baby, my birthday always wound up being somewhere near the holiday. I have scores of egg themed birthday parties in my past. For instance, at my 7th birthday we had an easter egg hunt. It was all harmless fun until my brothers got involved. They hid several eggs that had not been hardboiled. And, because they were 9-13 year old boys, they preceded to throw those eggs at me. What girl doesn't want to be covered in egg yolk at her birthday party? I tell that story often, but it really is one of only a hand full of "it was SO hard growing up with 3 older brothers" stories. They really weren't that awful, but don't tell them that. 

My birthday last year was all about pretending I was a kid and wasn't in the middle of a very grownup BAD year. There was an old school sleep over and penny candy I got from the Amish store behind my grandparent's house in Lancaster.  And cascarones. Cascarones are hollowed out eggs which are filled with confetti and are meant to be broken over the heads of party-goers. It's the responsible version of the game my brothers played on my 7th birthday. We played the game in my all time favorite city park, Washington Square in Philadelphia. It was fantastic.

       

 

Sometimes I use the brillant blogs of others as inspiration and tweak ideas so much that they become my own. Sometimes, I take an idea just as it is. This was the latter.

Nothing says "Happy Birthday!!!" quite like owl puke

It is an obvious fact that I miss the people that are no longer within a two hour drive of me.  But this feeling is most poignant and novel when it relates to little people. There is now 3,000 miles between me and the best collection of imaginative, creative, brilliant, hysterical nieces and nephews a girl could ask for. There is even a little nephew whom I have not met yet (it hurts to write that sentence). It feels epically unfair to be so far away from them and miss their joys and feats. Enter the party in a box (I didn't send the cat but only because the last time I brought a cat into the same house as the recipient's  mom, the mom ended up in the hospital for a few days and I kind of like that girl and she has enough on her plate as it is). A simple party box for a five year old boy: Number Piñata, Slimy Experiment Kit, Candle, Hat, Poppers and Noise maker, and Owl Puke. My favorite part was the owl puke.

Pi Day

I don't have a strong attachment to Pi. But, I do have a strong attachment to pie and homophones. Swiss chard, pear, and sausage pie. My favorite absurdly buttery crust, this plus sausage and cheddar instead of gruyere, and presented like this.

I wish that I was good at change, but I (like a lot of humanity) am not even close to being good at it. I am decidedly bad at it. To say that I am in a rut is an understatement. Baking something new helps, for a minute.