i surprise myself

portland is not the best place for someone who already had hipster tendencies. wait...i'm revolutionizing the term "hipster" so that it is seen as a good thing. the word itself is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.

i digress.

what i'm trying to say is that before portland, i was a music snob. and a food snob. now i'm also a coffee snob and a beer snob. i'm a HIPSTER.

part of my music snob-ness used to cause me to turn my nose up at solo artists. i was all about the harmonies and trading vocal duties of full bands. i blame eisley. beautiful eisley.

it's already the middle of april and there's only 3 albums that i've actually listened to on repeat this year. confession: and their all solo female acts. can you see my mind opening?? my horizons broadening?? i've decided these 3 girls sort of represent a "easy, medium, difficult" situation.

for "easy," we have the painfully eye-catching lana del rey. i've listened to her album on repeat, repeat, repeat since january. i like every song and love almost every song on Born to Die...particularly "off to the races," "lolita," and "summertime sadness." those were the first 3 that came to mind. i could've kept going. and look how pretty...i could land a helicopter on those lips.

for the slightly more adventurous, i offer the "medium" option of alex winston. quirky and happy and dark and a little angry. i could actually just listen to instrumental versions of her songs and be happy because it's just great melodies. but her voice is too precious for words. she wants so bad to be angry. obsessed with "sister wife," "the fold," and "host" off her album King Con...........someone give the girl some blush.


for the reeeally daring, we have anais mitchell. sleepy, folky, glassy, dreamy. HIPSTER. portland would most likely scoff at my mention of lana and alex and then let me redeem myself by including anais. listen to "wilderland," "young man in american," and "dyin day" off Young Man in America.

we've only been to one live show since we've lived here. PATHETIC.

closing time

did you start singing the semisonic song in your head? no? ok.

we finally get to close on our house on may 26, barring any terrible unforeseen circumstances.

if it looks like the house we put an offer on in december, it's because it's like 4 houses down. we liked the neighborhood, mmkay?

WELCOME! isn't it adorbs?



when you walk in the front door. they have these things in oregon called "coat closets." totally foreign concept but that's what the door is by the stairs. the open door leads to a half bath.


dining room to the right. obsessed with the cherry hardwoods.


dining room.



living room from the kitchen.


the kitch.

matt and i will graduate from eating dinner on the couch to eating dinner at the bar.


looking into the dining room...cooouunnttersppppacceeeeeee

master bedroom. we're gonna buy a bed to put in it.

view from master closet into master bath. SHELVES.

master bathroom. i think the last time i took a bath was march 19, 2010 so i really didn't care that it doesn't have a tub.


the guest bathroom has a tub, if i feel the need to stew in my own filth.


guest room. there's another bedroom and i guess it wasn't worthy of a photo.

garage and our very own "no parking" sign.

there's a pic of the downstairs half bath but i guess it got lost in the interwebz. we still have to wait 6 weeks until closing but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel. soon we will actually sleep in the same bed. and have a couch. and i can unpack my pyrex!!!!!!

i need to rant

i'm not really a ranter. i don't get upset or annoyed to the point of ranting very oft. poor ju-dat has borne the brunt of my ranting today. yet i find i need to rant more.

so i follow numerous blogs of people from high school/college. i'm not normally a jealous person. i had friends in junior high that i wanted to dress like, but usually i was ok with the way things were. our current living situation may have something to do with this...

i will follow my rant with an anti-rant so that you don't feel like you have to offer me any pity.

it bugs me that some of these "old friends" i follow would look down on me because we're living in a tiny, old apartment right now. i know they would because they looked down on me in high school for putting packaged lunch meat on my sandwiches instead of "deli meat." i'm serious.

if they still gave a rat's ass about me, they would be sitting on their plush, luxurious leather couch, reading this from their macbook. thinking "bless her little heart...where are her tori burch flats???? her prada bag????? omg is that from f21?!?!?!" trust me.

i'm annoyed that so many people i know have felt content to stay in their safe little arkansas/louisiana bubble (not you, t) and yet i know they would judge me for the decision we made to live in new orleans and now portland. we don't have a microwave right now. we live beside a shooting rage so we hear gunshots constantly. they wouldn't put up with this kind of living situation because they've never had to because they always had their plush, cushy nerf life.

i could have that life too, if i wanted to live in a craphole city with no culture and nothing to offer. that's the trade off. big, beautiful house...suck-face USA city.

i didn't want to make that trade.

i chose to cook with vintage pyrex instead of stainless all-clad. to wear a vintage robert david morton dress to lunch instead of diane von furstenberg. to live in a tiny apartment with no furniture because it's in an awesome city that i love. and i'm not the only one. your $250,000 house would easily cost half a million dollars here...because people WANT to live here. no one wants to live in poopville, arkansas. that's why you got 3500 sq ft for $280,000. not because you're an awesome person with an awesome life.

my life has always veered away from what everyone else was doing and i used to hate it. but the life i've gotten to live in 28+ years more than trumps your perfectly manicured lawn and overpriced car. sometimes i just have to remind myself of that.