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The world can't end today (because I said so).

So, as you might have heard, the world is supposed to end at some arbitrary 6:00 PM today. This will simply not do because right now my life is amazing. Of course, the likelihood that the world would come to a cataclysmic end once I finally reached an acceptable level of happy and good is high because if there's one thing I've learned from being alive the last 23.5 year it's that life LOVES to fuck with happiness. Anytime people on a TV show or in a movie are happy and enjoying their existence, you just know there's a creepster with a chainsaw lurking behind the sunshine and flowers ready to fuck their shit up. It's just how the universe balances out.

But, I figure that I should at least be allowed a few years' worth of this happy rainbow existence before it's all sucked away. Is that really too much to ask? So, to whatever being is looking down upon us ready to push the "end all" button, I present some reasons why that's a terrible idea that he/she/it should feel terrible about. 

  1. I just became an adult. Okay, so technically I've been an "adult" now for 5 years but up until the last month or so I was still more or less dependent on other people for things. As of Monday morning, I will be a permanent, full-time, salaried employee at the company I've been temping with for the past 9 months. I have a career, so to speak, a gorgeous apartment in a funky cool neighborhood, I pay all of my bills (even my phone now -- huzzah!) and I'm slated to get married in just a little over 2 years. I'm a friggin' grown up! I've spent most of my existence as a kid needing to depend on others, and it's about time I get to make life mine.
  2. Lady Gaga's new album isn't out yet. Sure, to some she might be all the evidence necessary to point to the world's imminent doom, but I am a proud Little Monster and refuse to go out without hearing every single second of Born This Way. Come on, can you get any more amazing? I'm guessing possibly yes, which is why the world can't end until after at least May 25 to give me time to rock out and memorize every single track (starting with Judas which is just incredible).

  3. My tomatoes aren't even purchased, let alone in the ground and growing. The best part about our new apartment/neighborhood is the community garden that sits literally next door to our lovely little carriage house. I am super pumped to grow things and eat the fruits of my labor which won't happen if the world ends. And how cute is Terrell standing in our new plot?

  4. Summer has finally reached Syracuse. Today started off slightly humid, but had brightened to sunny and gorgeous by late morning. We spend six-eight months out of the year enduring the cold, the snow, the wind and the rain (not to mention all the grey... so. much. grey!) so when summer/spring decides to show up we DESERVE our fair share with it. End the world during the second straight week of snow and bitter cold, sure, but now when things are beautiful? What a jerk.

    Look - green, everywhere! What a sight.

    OMG, a color that isn't white or grey.


So, what I'm basically saying is this: the world won't end because it's too wonderful right now and I'm sure we've all got far too many awesome things to look forward to.

What are you looking forward to doing after today ends?

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Nail Biters Anonymous

Hi, my name is Jocelyn and I am a nail biter. I don't remember when I started biting my nails, but it's possible I began around the time I learned how to chew. I've never known a me without ragged, too-short fingernails and learned to accept it as a fact of life. Here and there, I've attempted to paint my nails or grow them long or even give up on my natural nails altogether and cover them with acrylics. But for the past few years, I've been in a state of "I don't give a hoot" when it comes to my nails.

That is until I got engaged and realized I'd be taking pictures of my hands and showing my left hand to people on and off for the next couple of years. That kind of thing makes a girl self-conscious, especially when it's a problem you've recognized/ignored for a lifetime. I've long admired girls with nice, shapely long nails painted in a rainbow of chic colors. I'd love to accessorize my nails to my outfits and plain feel good about my hands. My hands have always made me a bit self-conscious, nails withstanding, because they're small yet pudgy and look a bit like a child's despite being the hands of a 23-year-old woman. I'm kinda freaked about how weird our hands will look next to each other when Terrell and I get the standard ring photos taken and that people will think he married a little person or something... silly, yes, but fears are fears.

I realized that the only thing stopping me from ending this habit was lack of initiative... like with so many other problem areas in my life. So as I browsed around the grocery store this afternoon, I turned down the cosmetics aisle and picked up a few new supplies:


A fellow forum member at Wedding Bee suggested Sally Hansen, so I did as I was told and picked up a bottle of Maximum Growth, which is intended to reinforce my nails and protect them against splitting and peeling. Another gal suggested I paint my nails something dark enough to cover up the white part so I'm not tempted to bite. Strange as it sounds, that is an extremely helpful piece of advice: it is almost irresistible not to chew off my nail when the white end grows out. I don't understand why, but it's true though I hadn't put much thought into it before today. I picked out a nice pink shade and added a bottle of Vitamin E-enriched polish remover then headed to check out.

After putting the groceries away, I took everything out to the porch and sat in the remaining daylight to attend to my poor, underloved nails. Seriously, this is what I have to work with:

Pathetic, I know.
I fixed my cuticles as best I could without a buffer or any of that other fancy stuff that several E-How articles have instructed me to buy, then applied a coat of the growth formula. Oooh, shiny. So far so good. Painting with the polish was a lesson in why I haven't painted my nails more than 5-6 times over the course of my life: I suck. True, I'm better than I probably would've been a few years ago thanks to the relative steadiness mascara application has given my right hand, but the results of today's efforts are still closer to what I'd imagine a kindergartener would produce than a girl my age.


But for a first effort, it's not so bad. I'm going to take the polish off tomorrow and stick to the clear growth formula for a couple of weeks until my nails grow out some more. As you can see, some of them are frighteningly short right now due to recent biting binges. Hopefully I'll be able to keep from gnawing... o_o

My goal is to eventually get them to a point where I can go get a nice professional manicure done, then keep up on them from there. I'll possibly get acrylics put on for our engagement photos in June, though it might be possible to simply get the professional mani done before that - if I'm good!

Are you a member (or alumnus) of Nail Biters Anonymous? What tips and tricks can you offer to stop biting and start growing?

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Perfection! (Engagement Ring: Found)

I've been engaged for over a month now, but didn't have a ring until this week - which has been a tad difficult to explain to some people. In all of my girlhood fantasies about getting married (you know you had them, too) I never put much thought--if any--on the ring. Perhaps it's because I'm not a big fan of rings to begin with, or maybe because in almost every TV show/movie with engaged/married characters the ring is usually a diamond solitaire or some other gigantic rock. And hey, plenty of women are just fine with that, and I really can't lambaste the choices of others too much when I rock my own set of traditions. Nothing is wrong with going for classic or traditional, but I think that too many women (and their men) get duped by the wedding industry and current societal norms into choosing a diamond when they could be happier with something else.

Diamonds are the classic, traditional choice and from my limited time spent on wedding planning message boards of late, most women damn near demand them -- but why exactly is that? Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has an interesting take on it:

Diamonds make excellent courtship gifts from this perspective because they are simultaneously very expensive and lack intrinsic value. No man (or woman) can be inherently interested in diamonds; you cannot drive them, you cannot live in them, you cannot do anything with them. Any man who would buy diamonds for a woman must be interested in making an investment in her. Flowers, another favored gift for women, are also relatively expensive and lack intrinsic value. Of course, diamonds and flowers are beautiful, but they are beautiful precisely because they are expensive and lack intrinsic value, which is why it is mostly women who think flowers and diamonds are beautiful. Their beauty lies in their inherent uselessness; this is why Volvos and potatoes are not beautiful. (source)

Whether or not this is entirely true (I'm guessing a bit heaping YES is in order), my relationship has never been about things. We haven't done a whole lot of gift exchanges and when we do, it's not a big emphasis. I put more into the cards I get or make Terrell every year than gifts, and he's just as low-key when picking things out for me. I don't need him to buy me things to show me he'd be a good provider because I already know this through his actions (and besides, I can provide very well for myself, thank you very much). I also object ethically to diamonds because they are a product of misery - hello, Blood Diamond?

For me, the idea of having a diamond ring goes beyond my personal and ethical objections. It just isn't me. Before I got engaged, I wanted a claddagh ring. I won't lie that the main inspiration for this comes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I also love the symbolism behind claddagh rings and thought that would be a really interesting and fun way to express what the ring meant. But after actually becoming engaged, I realized that the claddagh ring has no real significance for me when it comes to heritage. Terrell's last name is Irish, but he's not and neither am I, really (I may have a tiny bit of Irish in my DNA but not enough to matter - kinda like those people who claim they're 1/84th Native American and think it actually means something).

So I began to look for something to suit my tastes and preferences, and that's when I stumbled upon the beauty that is pearl rings. I love pearls and find they suit my skintone far better than most gemstones, so why not go for one as an engagement ring? If I'm gonna wear the thing for a few years/my entire life, it might as well be something that I really want to have on me. We started looking quite literally the day after we got engaged because we were at the mall and I'd been waiting for that moment when I could realistically look at the pretties for YEARS and gosh darnit, he was gonna let me. *ahem*

The diamonds that the over-zealous salesman at Kay's shoved onto my finger summed up my previous notions that it just wasn't my style. They were so pushy that we declined to return once we had decided to look for pearls, and instead we made visits to a whole slew of other stores. At first, it was about finding a ring that could serve as a placeholder for a "better" ring in the future, but I realized that was silly. I'd rather have the ring we choose not be The Ring because it's special and meaningful. And I really think better money could be spent on a vacation or a really awesome pasta maker in the future than yet another piece of symbolic jewelry.

So we shopped around and eventually settled on this little beauty from Zales:
The pearl is small but beautiful and the flanking stones are lab-created sapphires. This suited my ethical and personal tastes and the price was outstandingly cheap because the ring is a part of their birthstone collection vs. engagement rings. So, that was it and we were all ready to plunk the money down online and order it (because the one in the store was at least $40 more... damn commissions).

And then... I found it. I work in downtown Syracuse close to a nice little shopping and restaurant district called Armory Square (named so because of the super awesome armory-turned-science museum that sits in the heart of it all). Most of my lunch hours find me wandering down there for a cup of coffee or just a nice place to walk around and stretch my legs. Tucked into a space down a bricked alleyway between two buildings is a little shop I like to visit cleverly named Way Off The Beaten Path. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that I might find something there, but I remembered suddenly a couple of weeks ago and hastened myself there as soon as my break began. After browsing through one counter and trying on a few choices, I was led by the saleswoman to the counter at the shop's entrance and she introduced me to what I will now and forever affectionately call my Moon Ring:


The center stone is a pearl and the accent is a diamond. The silver band has been hand-etched and it's all cool and texturey. It's a lot bigger than anything I was originally looking for, but I love how it looks and would never trade. After talking it over for a week or so, Terrell met me downtown on Monday and we bought the ring. I gave it to him after the purchase was complete and told him he could give it back to me when and how he chose. We had a very wonderful, heartfelt moment together on Wednesday and that's when he slipped it onto my finger. Low-key, yes - but a moment to remember for the rest of my life.

Pearls are soft and very susceptible to damage, so I'm going to have to be really careful with this baby but so far things have gone well. If you're thinking of a pearl engagement/wedding ring yourself, go for it! But remember that they aren't meant for true day-to-day wear so you have to be prepared to either replace the pearl eventually or do what I plan on and retire the E-ring after the wedding.

We've decided that we would like to get custom wedding bands made that compliment one another to exchange during the ceremony. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not big on rings so wearing two at once really isn't my cup of tea. I will gladly wear just the one band continuously on my left hand and switch to wearing my moon ring on the right when it suits me. Until that time comes, I will be blinging around with my awesome ring and remembering what it symbolizes each time I look down. /mushiness

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I really need to stop being lazy when it comes to dinner

Cheez-its are delicious, but they aren't dinner. Even though I seem to think so. Neither is ice cream, half a chocolate Easter bunny (the head, natch) or trail mix. Snacks, Jocelyn, do not = dinner. Sure, my calories more or less equal out but it's obvs far better to have veggies and chicken over junk. (And no, for the record, I did not eat all of the above in one sitting - that I can at least be honest about haha.)

I must get over my anti-cooking attitude before it destroys me. As soon as this moving adventure is complete, I vow to make one new recipe a week and post about it in this blog.

Breakfast and lunch are easy. I love lunch, it's my best meal of the day and I plan it out so nicely. But dinner just doesn't happen unless Terrell is involved or I order out, which is bad for my wallet and my diet. Plarg.

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the girl

the girl

the blog

This blog is about me - my musical discoveries, my efforts to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle, my wedding plans, my adventures and mishaps as I navigate the world. Sometimes it'll be boring, sometimes it'll be sad, sometimes I hope it'll be hilarious. Stick around for recipes, photographs, lists, musings, music and ramblings a-plenty.

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