Schooled

10 Things I've learned while my mother's had to lie on the couch in one position for the past four days and I've been (for all intents and purposes) babysitting for her....

1.  if you get a funny feeling the tree looks like it's going to fall over....it's going to fall over

2.  if you put Mario Lopez and Melissa Joan Hart in a Hallmark Christmas movie together....you get an instant classic

3.  if she hadn't heard a contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" say she had "a height thing" my mother may have been more worried that I was my own worst bachelorettenemy

4.  if Nanny Janny says she has the same jacket I complement her on in gray and she'll bring it to me tomorrow what she means is she's glad I like the one she was wearing:

which is warm and modern and plum colored and just my size, but she wouldn't mind giving me this one:

5.  it's official, 28 is synonymous with adulthood.

6.  if my mother was Melissa Joan Hart in "Holiday in Handcuffs," she'd kiss A.C. Slater

7.  Annie Camden on the TV show ruined my mother's life by having those damn twins because she'd already had her tubes tied

8.   i am notsogood at hiding the glass pickle

9.  i had my furry gray jacket from nanny hanging over the chair in the den my mother is supposed to sit in awkwardly when she needs a break from being horizontal over the course of these ten days and it scared the s*** out of her when she walked into the dark den just now

10.  my sorellina is destined to date this boy Johnny McSomethingIrishSounding she knows at BC right now

True Story

I am playing nurse this week for my mamadukes, who had emergency surgery on a detached retina Friday night, because my pops is off to Dallas tomorrow on a business trip with his new company (the cool wiz kids who brought this fancy speech recognition software to the aid of oldfolks everywhere who would much rather just talk to their newfangled computers, tablets and smartphones than they would single-finger type on their gadgets' tricky keyboards and keypads). 

Part of my mother's recovery plan apparently involves watching the endless stream of Christmas movies airing on ABC Family, Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel.  And part of my nurse duties involve me sitting by my mother and taking in all of the holly jolly the fine writers of these programs have to offer in the way of cookie cutter love stories and santaland sagas.

Here is the funny part.

I sit and watch predominantly wondering how many of the actors in these tv movies have mfa's vs espers' studio training, commercial vs print careers, broadway vs improv roots...and thinking I hope I can play an elf who comes down from the North Pole to find love someday!!!!!

Gotta run, my mom just rang the jingle bell we gave her to use when she needs something during the next 10 days of bed-rest she's been prescribed.

The Reason for the Season's

good will and good energy has never been so clear to me.

People start getting excited about the way they'll feel in a couple weeks when they're carrying out their New Year's Resolutions.  Even if they're being hot messes between now and the first of the year, they're just so hopeful and proud of the plans they've got.

....

In 2010 I stopped saying the word "should"

In 2011 I was on.the.ball. with a bunch of resolutions

In 2012 I ran the Boston Marathon but I knew that "crossing it off my list" was a copout since I'd been planning it for about 5 years

In 2013 I'm not sure what my M.O. will be, but I'm already jonesin' for that clean 1/1 slate

...

in the meantime, I moved my desk to be by my window and I'm regretting that decision (hopefully my last poor one of 2012) because the view I have is of my neighbors' fire escape and what appears to be honest to god a headless pigeon perched on an air conditioner.

gross.

12 - 12 - 12 - 14

Orange ya glad I'm not just writing about the date?

12/12/12's cool and all, but I'm writing this morning - before 8am - having gone to a 6:30 spin class already - bright eyed and bushy (pony)tailed - to set myself a little end-of-year-goal.

14 posts in 14 (to 20) days.

Totes doable and totes necessary that I at the very least write as many posts in this, my 3rd year in the blogosphere, as I did in 2010, my first.

How is this for a "How far we've come" moment: in December of 2010, I wrote my final younameitnaugs blog posts in the basement of my parents' home in Newton on the desktop HP computer I'd gotten back from the bosslady... this year I'll write the final goldilocksnyc chapters of 2012 on my Carrie Bradshaw-esque MacBook Pro from here:

Yup that's the Hudson yonder.

Moving right along, moving right along...

Um, and because this was too good to not pay forward:

Those are banana dogs.  Chiquita banana dogs.

This is going to be a gooood day.

Photo Book aka my most advanced use of multimedia to date / mama naugs' stocking stuffer

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.

Confessions of a Boston Girl in the Big City

"this feels right too."

it's also universal.

I first saw Sweet Home Alabama not much more than a month into my first year at college.

At the time I had not had a "serious" relationship last for more than 2.5 weeks (unless you count my platonic elementary school romance of 5+ years with the boy with the big droopy brown eyes).  Of course that hadn't stopped me from being convinced I might one day take back up with that high school sweetheart, marry him and settle down in the suburbs of Boston to coach our kids' little league teams and do hair & makeup for their middle school musicals and plays, but the point is, I could hardly be empathetic to Reese Witherspoon's character as she sat lamenting having to fully part with her past in order to properly move forward with her fiance, Dr. Patrick McDreamy Dempsey aka Andrew, who was waiting for her to clear up the little lingering issue of her divorce from her husband/stillborn's babydaddy (that's awful I know, but I'm attempting to stretch myself here), Jake, which she'd had to high tail it down to 'Bama to resolve....

Nevertheless, the tears poured down my fat Freshman face as I sat beside my roommate Fife, who was from Long Island and about as prone to crying as it's prone to rain in Arizona.  This was way before my dr. roomie would become my cousin and way before she'd come to learn that while her $40k/year tuition had gone to helping her understand anatomy and physiology, mine had gone to learning how to draw from my emotional well and cry on cue like a good theatre major.

My tears at Sweet Home then and to this day are entirely authentic though.  Since that night 10 years ago when I first watched the movie, I've pretty much cried from the time Melanie tells Jake as they sit on Bear's grave at the pet cemetary that "this feels right too" through the remaining 35 minutes of the film.

Whether I've had a Patrick Dempsey in my life at the time or not.  Niagra Falls.  Just the saddest tears.  Ask my roommates, ask my sisters, ask my bff, ask the parents of the kids I babysat during college summers who came home one night to see me all red eyed and had to try to not laugh/fire me on the spot as I explained that this movie just GETS to me every time.  Every time.  I can never not watch it if it happens to be on when I happen to be watching TV.

Anyway - tonight it hit me.

Because I came home to my swanky new apartment and my Texan roomie was listening to Country music as she unpacked her (amazing) wardrobe and I realized I bet that part of the movie gets her too.  I bet it gets anyone who's heart feels equally at home in their hometown as it does in the big world they're out trying to run.

A part of me always knew that even though I'd only gone 7 minutes away from home for college, one day I'd go far far away, and I'd have to, because my heart would be restless if I didn't let it go after its dreams, and because I had so much support from all of my family and friends it would be a shame to waste their belief in me and my confidence in myself, but a part of me must have also known that things like Christmastime would always tug at my heartstrings, because I'd know I was going home to the safety and comfort and "right feeling" of Boston a few times over the course of the holidays and I'd have to wrestle with myself.

And seriously ask myself, whether I'd given my whole heart away a long time ago...whether I was a Smueter or a Carmichael.

I've got many more Christmases to keep asking myself, and only time will tell of course.  But the real confession of this Boston Girl in the Big City, is that ideally I'd get the Best of Both Worlds.  That's right, Hannah Montana style.

Good thing there's no rules that say a 28-year-old girl can't dream.

just need porridge

Fab news from the UUWS.  This girl is moving DOWNTOWN.

Not too far down, read: 12 blocks.

But those 12 blocks (and these sweet amenities: hello laundry in unit, working dishwasher and WINE FRIDGE!!)

mean I am moving UP IN THE WORRRLLLLLDD.

which is all one can really ever ask for isn't it?!  To move onward and upwards... FORWARD, like my boy, B.

So here I am 13 days from turning 28 on the 27th and moving right along, moving right along (sorellina shout out as she is the only one reading this who will know the tune to which that phrase should be sung repeatedly).

So very excited.  So very optimistic about all that is to come in the new year in my new apt with my renewed focus on la comedia.  Book's done and now it's just a matter of handing it over to the right powers that be.  Nomad status is on a much needed hiatus post wedding season of 2012. 

Kinda feel like