back in the game

I've been gradually getting my groove back over the past couple of days :) I went for a run after work yesterday, which was actually rather pleasant and not too cold and it felt fabulous to finally move again. I've officially adjusted to K's beardless face and he looks more handsome than ever. I got paid today (enough said), and I'm taking this new thing called "positive thinking" for a little spin--we'll see how it works out for me! I just feel like I go through these periods of intense dissatisfaction with everything in my life, and instead of doing anything about it or attempting to approach the situation from a new angle, I just wallow. And sometimes wallowing can be therapeutic (for me it usually involves lots of chocolate and bad television and woe-is-me), but there is so much more that I could be doing with my life, and I am actively limiting myself for some pretty ridiculous reasons. So I'm going to work on that.

(tunic dress: F21; fur collar: H&M; blouse: Bargain Boutique; socks: Goodwill; shoes: Seychelles)

And, in the spirit of positivity, I'm really excited about this weekend! On Saturday K is whisking me away on a day trip (sort of an early birthday celebration), and on Sunday we will be fulfilling our need for fall festiveness by pumpkin picking and jack-o-lantern carving and hot cider-swilling and maybe some hay-riding (if I can find a farm that is still doing those!). K's been watching the baseball playoffs (he's a SF fan), which forces me to be a little more creative with my time. Sometimes we get in the habit of just vegging out in front of the television all night, which really cramps my style and makes me anxious after a while (and yet I can't tear myself away--especially when Jersey Shore is involved!), and although I actually do enjoy watching baseball, I would be bored out of my gourd if I had to watch it for five straight hours (two games/night). Anyway, that's the update on my life :) Happy Thursday, everyone!

fourth festivities

I love long weekends, especially when they are packed full of summer fun :) Even though K and I sort of celebrated the 4th of July on Saturday, we went all-out on the actual Holiday.

When we woke up in the morning, all we had to do was step outside. The town parade went right down the street in front of our apartment!

After sweltering in the sun for the hour-long event (only in Vermont will you see a tractor pulling a band in a hay cart, a hippie-dippie "solar bus," and a couple of girls in a jeep dressed as sweet corn. The only thing missing from the Richmond parade was Bread & Puppet... the dancing puppet troupe has always been my favorite part of parades in the past, but I guess Richmond is a little too small & far away to make the trip worthwhile.


K and I retired to our comparably cool apartment (which isn't saying much--it's still crazy hot in there at all hours of the day and night) for a brief interlude and then headed back out into the sun to partake in the field-day festivities at the nearby park.

I was primarily interested in the flea market...

...where I managed to find a dangly, neck-wobbling bird carved from coconut, a beaded necklace, and a matching bracelet all for $15. We hung the bird from one of our living room windows:

We then promptly fell asleep (the combination of two late nights in a row + hot hot heat = siesta time) and woke in time to eat lots and lots of watermelon, watch some Northern Exposure, and headed back to the park for the evening's fireworks display.

We watched the sun set...

...played with sparklers...

...saw an extremely loud and incredibly close display of explosively brilliant fireworks (may have been the best fireworks I've ever seen, mainly because they were right above us)...

...and put on a little light show of our own before heading home.

After spending all day yesterday doing our darnedest to keep cool, K and I decided that it was a perfect day for a baseball game & we went to Burlington to see the Lake Monsters play the Williamsport Crosscutters at Centennial Field. It was a lovely night (still hot...) and we stayed for all nine innings, even though the Monsters lost in the end :( I love baseball games, and definitely intend to catch a few more before the season is through!

I hope you all had an amazing Independence Day! I'll be back with regular outfit posts tomorrow (K and I are finally doing laundry tonight...).

take me out to the ball game

When I was a kid, I was pretty hot stuff on the softball field. The summer after sixth grade was my last year on the team, but I was a superstar pitcher with a mean underhand. There will always be a softspot in my heart for America's Favorite Pasttime, and if the opportunity arises for me to play in a cheesy adult league at some point in my life, I will probably jump at the chance. In the meantime, I'll have to content myself with attending Mountaineers games and flouncing around the bases of little league fields in the off-hours of the early AM.

Because I was so awesome, I rarely sat in the dugout during softball games. My dugout activities were limited to reading contraband Seventeen magazines at recess and dreaming up exclusive clubs with other catty kindergarteners. The trouble with exclusive clubs in elementary school is that your membership can be revoked without notice at any time--this happened to me twice in my young life.

First, I was elected vice-president of the Babysitter's Club in third grade, but then I started hanging around with the "bad girls" (shooting dice during silent reading, flipping the bird at teachers when their backs were turned, throwing icicles at obnoxious boys) and when I tried to hang out in the sandbox with the rest of the club they informed me that my position had been passed to the next-in-line. I was crushed. And my time on the dark side was short-lived.

The second club I joined was the Pet-Sitter's Club (notice a theme?). My friends R, S & I were hanging out after school one day (the one thing I remember especially about R's house was that we got to play the Carmen Sandiego video game, which was awesome) and, for financial reasons, we decided to create the club. I was elected vice-president (again) by R (the president), which basically just meant she and I were best friends and S was etc. It all came tumbling down about an hour later, when I took a bathroom break and returned to our HQ (R's room) to discover that R & S had been plotting against me--I was booted from my position as VP, and my friendship with R never recovered.

Incidentally, R was the only other person from my elementary school who played on my softball team (it was regional).

I feel kind of like a forties-style pinup in these high-waisted shorts, stripes and hair bow... perhaps I could star in an advertisement for the ladies league that started up when all of the men went off to war?

Also, if our outfits had been this cute, I might have played the game beyond sixth grade:

(Yeah! Everybody loves Madonna and A League of Their Own!)

And, while I'm running the bases, a list of the best baseball movies of all time!

1. A League of Their Own

2. Field of Dreams

3. The Sandlot

4. Bull Durham

5. Fever Pitch

6. For the Love of the Game

7. The Rookie

8. The Fan (creepy!)

And the worst baseball movie ever made:

Summer Catch

Seriously, this movie is so bad. Maybe even the worst movie that Freddie Prinze Jr. ever made--and it's hard to trump that movie about the models and the murder mystery. She's All That should have been that for him, and the only reason that movie was even tolerable was that it was part of the late-nineties teen movie phenomenon that took place right when I hit my teen peak.