I had my morning class canceled today. Hallelujah.

In return for the universe's kindness I have used my day to have a wonderful breakfast of swedish pancakes (no cold cereal today, I'm celebrating) while letting my inner high school drama nerd bask in the the cheesy fest that is Glee!.

Way better than learning that you can not search some ones home without a warrant or consent. Never, ever, ever. Bright line people, bright line.

1 Year Down

So Zach and I got married a year ago (plus one month*). At least that's what the calendar claims, and I suppose it's accurate. Really, I'm having a hard time deciding if it feels like everything just happened yesterday, or if we've been cohabitating in the shoebox since the dawn of time. Being with Zach is just such a big part of what my life is now that sometimes its hard to remember that it wasn't always this way, and yet its still such a big thing that its almost hard to fathom that yes, we are actually married.

At this point, I feel like I should go off on some syrupy sweet ode to the utter perfection and sunshine that is married life and how I'm so grateful that my white night rode in and saved me from the treachery of singledom (at the horrifically spinster age of 21). Maybe even go all out and profess my love in a sonnet or a haiku. But really, that's not what its all about, and I feel like pretending our marriage is something it isn't would do it a disservice.

Because really, being married is pretty much the same as being single. Life is always just life. Sometimes it really, really sucks. Other times are filled with rainbows and unicorns. Most of the time it's just ok. Marriage is still just life, but with another person in it. All the time.

And if I'm going to be sharing all the goop that life can throw at you with someone, I want to do it with Zach. I want to come home from a crappy day and whine about it with him, and watch his forehead get all crinkly as he tries to think of how to make it better. I want to stay up way too late and be exhausted and useless the next day because we just couldn't stop talking at bedtime. I want to laugh so hard it hurts with him. If I'm going to be crying and screaming at someone because I'm just so mad, I want it to be with him, because I know that we always care enough about each other to (eventually) put aside our hurt and selfishness and make things right again. When I have yet another seizure, I want his arms around me. He's the first person I want to share things with, good news and bad. All the ups and downs, the dreams and plans, its all better together. I just want to live life with him, every bit of it.

And with that being said, here are some pretty pictures. I know its more than a little cliche, but so is doing an anniversary post. And I'm ok with that.


*Uhm, I kindo of started writing this on our actual anniversary and got distracted by having lots and lots of hot, passionate sex having a sweet anniversary dinner with Zach. But I like what I managed to write, and figured it was still worth posting, even if it is late.

The Saucy Temptress

Do you remember when you first went to high school and learned that you could have pizza every day if you so choose? Maybe not at all high schools, but for me high school was pizza heaven and it seemed like the coolest thing. Really, the only thing that kept me from subsisting entirely on pizza was that I got my lunch money in cash, and pizza could be a little spendy. It seemed like a much better idea to hoard the money for various teenage frivolities. I kind of wonder if my parents knew I was skipping lunch in favor of having fun money. It doesn't really matter, I'm just curious if I was really "getting away with it." Latter when my brother became a teen and I saw how much money he could mooch off of my parents I started to realize that maybe I could have fulfilled my pizza fantasy without giving up the finer things in life, but by then I had moved on to mooching of off my parents through child support, groceries and other goods and services.

Anyways, teenage me would have loved law school. Well, not the work, but she would have dug the never ending pizza. Not only is pizza readily available, but its free. You may have to sit through some sort of a lecture or meeting to get it, but it doesn't come out of my student loan money and that's as good as free. While someday we law students will be making $100+ an hour (please oh please), for now an hour of our time can be bought by 2 pieces of pizza. Not even good pizza. After a year of law school pizza from various local places I've learned that Boli's crust really does taste like cardboard, and that any event geared towards public interest law is probably not only going to have no pizza with meat, but also at least a couple boxes without any cheese. I really respect people that commit to eating vegan, but unexpectedly cheeseless pizza is so very disappointing.

I know that eating pizza that often is really, really bad for me. Trust me, every morning I get up and sigh as I reach past my skinny jeans in favor of something that can button up I am reminded. But despite that knowledge, every day I am faced with that saucy cheap temptress waiting in the wings to draw me into her cheesy clutches. And I can always lie and say that I'm just going for the networking, or to expand my legal education, or some other less than true explanation. But really its just because that morning I was too lazy to pack something remotely healthy for lunch, and now its noon and I'm hungry and prowling the halls for a free lunch.

With all that being said, yesterday was a bit of a victory for me. I started the day right with a healthy lunch stowed away in my backpack. I didn't actually make it, as I am a righteous woman who supports my husband in developing his divine nurturing, lunch making skills, but I still had it and that's all that really matters. I was all ready and set for the day, and was only going to go to a lunch seminar because I was actually interested. Just go and learn and network and eat my healthy lunch. Even if the pizza everyone else is eating smells really good and actually came from one of the non cardboard places. But I held strong! Really, kind of sort anyways. Well, I only had one piece. You have to start somewhere, right?

I dress like a Mom

I'm not sure when or how it happened, but somehow I have begun to dress like a Mom. Not a young hip Mom, or even an older classically chic Mom. Nope, I'm talking full on frumpster. Not that there's anything wrong with that, anyone wrestling small child(ren) that can manage an occasional shower is just fine by me. But I'm a twenty something, very childless person going to a professional school.

Which is most of the cause of my frumpy feeling. I heard once that all the pretty, smart women become lawyers. It's so very true. I am surrounded by teeny tiny women with perfect hair, and perfect bodies clothed in perfect little skinny jeans, with little banana republic tops and j crew cardigans, mincing by in their perfect little sensibly stylish heels. I don't know how they manage to have that perfect mix of stylish but not too trendy, young but still classic and professional. On the other hand today I am waltzing around in not terribly flattering light blue jeans, a navy blue cap sleeve shirt and a really fuzzy and comfortable grey cardigan that as a result of being fuzzy and comfortable is also entirely shapeless and hangs kind of wierd. Oh, and of course trusty, beat up flip flops. It's not a horrible look if you're loading 3 kids into a minivan. Less so for the casually chic halls of law school.

I don't remember feeling quite this out of place, but I may have lost what little style I had during my summer of nothingness. Every day at about noon I would go through teh excruciating effort of getting ready for the day by swapping out yesterdays yoga pants for a new pair and choosing whatever t-shirt clashed the least and smelled the best. Occasionally I would venture out of my cozy apartment into the real world and begrudgingly put on a pair of jeans. Once every couple weeks I might feel a little flirty (or out of clean yoga pants) and dare to put on a simple skirt (and a t-shirt, I didn't want to get too crazy). After a summer of such wonderful laziness, making a cute outfit just seems so hard. Add that to my natural lack of fashion talent and a lack of funds to quickly remedy that and well, you get my Mom uniform of blah jeans, plain cotton shirt and a cardigan.

I used to kind of look forward to the simplicity that awaited me when I would get taken on by some soulless law firm. Just day after day of nice, simple suits. Of course, then I rememebered that I'm a woman and there is no such thing as simple womens clothing. Which cut of suit would I wear? Which fabric? what kind or color of shirt. Not to mention shoes, accesories and a pretty but still serious hairstyle. And if i fail at that, well that just means that I'm not professional or trustworthy. Oh boy.

Maybe we'll actually get to some scifi future soon, and I can just wear jumpsuits? I like clothes, I think they can be fun, but if I can't wear what I really want without feeling awkward, it would be nice if what I'm supposed to wear was easy to figure out.

Church Bells

Today we went for a lovely walk over to the National Cathedral - mostly just so we could get out of the apartment, but largely because we live only a few blocks away and have never taken the time to go look around, and I felt kind of pathetic about that. And so we went and enjoyed the pretty architecture (for a wannabe Notre Dame it really is quite nice), flowers and occasional butterflies. On the way home we were serenaded by the strains of church bells from the Catholic Church across the street. All in all a wonderful way to spend a not-entirely lazy Sunday afternoon.

Lessons learned

So my in-laws are in town for a couple of days, and Zach and I are busy trying to be good hosts. So far I have learned a few important things...

1. We do not know DC nearly as well as we think we do. Several interesting turns will be made to find a giant museum. We will drive past our turns and then realize that oh of course that was the street we really meant. That cute little sandwich store that I know exactly where it is... uhm apparently my memory may be a little fizy.
2. Wandering around looking for the cute little sandwich shop that is just a block away...hmm, maybe in the other direction...no wait, over there...uhm...lets go ask someone... Yah. That isn't all that fun when people are hungry and hot.
3. Tourists ruin everything. They make long lines, crowded museums and probably somehow make the weather hotter and muggier. (We and any and all relations that come to visit us do not count as tourists of course)
4. Offering use of a car for a "couple of errands" to carless city dwellers who live at the mercy of their feet and public transportation will result in several hours at IKEA and a giant Costco run. I'm sure they enjoyed it?
   
5. We spent most of last week making our apartment absolutely spotless. I drove Zach crazy rearranging things over and over again, and freaking out over teeny tiny details. Only 10 minutes will actually be spent inside said apartment.
6. All in all, I really have good in-laws. Even with things going less than perfect and Zach and I being less than perfectly organized, its still just good to spend time with them. So far we have zero judgmental comments or looks, or subtle criticism or any of the other things that tend to bug people about their in-laws. Just fun stories and conversation and otherwise enjoying each others company. And really, based on all my past interactions with them I expect all those good trends to keep right on going. We still haven't spent a huge amount of time with each other, still definitely in the get to know you stage. But I'm still surprised how overall comfortable I am with them, how much I enjoy spending time with them, how much I care about them. It's like their family.
   

Somewhat belated semi obligatory 4th of July Post

Living in DC it really felt obligatory to go out and do something all celebratory for Independence day. There's really no excuse not to. And I had an all too clear vision of inevitable conversations:

"So what did you do for Independence Day?"

"Oh nothing special, just stayed home and watched a movie. It's not like we live close to various monuments, a big fireworks show, free concert or anything cool like that. Besides, everyone knows that liberals secretly hate America."

Well I'd rather not deal with that and the ensuing feelings of loserdom that would result from such an exchange. Besides, at the last liberal conspiracy meeting in between plotting the downfall of the family and creating a government run dystopia, we promised to do a better job of keeping the Anti-Americanism under wraps. (Of course I kidd, liberals aren't anywhere near organized enough for any meaningful conspiracy. Oh, organized liberals, I crack myself up). Anyways, we had sufficient motivation to escape from our hermitage and hit the town for one day. After a few minutes of google searching we found that there was a concert at the south lawn of the Capital building right before the fireworks began, and as two things are better than one we decided that was the destination for us.

But, before undertaking such a great journey we had to be all prepared with a giant duffel bag of very important things we could not survive a few hours without. It all seemed very essential. Of course knowing that Zach would have to haul the giant bag from our shoebox apartment to the metro (about a mile and a half) and then from Union station to the Capital building may have influenced my decision making. And uh, I may possibly have added to his burden a little bit as I felt inclined to take the "scenic route" up to the metro. But even with the heavy load and the heat and the humidity we managed to make it up to the metro in decent time. Enough time to stop off at Whole Foods and gather a lovely picnic. I had visions of lovely baguettes with bits of cheese, fresh grapes and strawberries and other elements for a picture perfect picnic. Of course, other people must have had the same idea as whole foods was very much picked over. So Subway was substituted. Much less picturesque, but still quite tasty.

A quick metro ride and we were downtown. I don't think we've been downtown since Zach's birthday in the beginning of June, and up in our pretentious, suburbanesque corner of DC we tend to forget how cool this city really is. Seriously, everything is covered in marble and trying so hard to masquerade as a classic 500+ year old building. Not to mention the seemingly endless statues of men on horseback or dramatically holding an iron piece of paper. Also, as an added bonus, finding our way to the Capital building was rather easy. Being the biggest thing around all we really had to do was look up, and walk in the direction of the giant dome.

Finding the Capital was easy, but actually getting inside was a little more challenging. Zach and I thought we had left plenty early. The fireworks were set to start at 9:15pm, with the concert beginning at 8pm, and gates opened at 3pm. We arrived a little after 4pm, and were greeted with a long line which we shuffled forward in for about an hour. Once we arrived the end of the line the slow movement made a little more sense as every person was being scanned by mettle detectors and each bad was being hand searched. Not that the bag check was particularly thorough, I'm sure I could have hid some C4 or something in a hidden pocket if I was so inclined. But hey, the appearance of safety is all that really matters, and we were just happy to be out of that line and ready to lounge about for a few hours until the show started.

After the long wait in line I was less that thrilled to find that the lawn was already quite stuffed, especially any area that had a view of the stage. I didn't quite believe that the prime seating could really and truly be all full, and so I dragged the tired Zach and the giant bag around for a while, before ultimately ending up in the very same place we had first tried. It was still a decent spot and wasn't too crowded (yet). So we proceeded to settle in for the next 3 hours. Reading material and people watching more than provided enough entertainment.

Of course, as entertaining as books and people can be, we were quite happy when the concert started. Especially since they had raised up a big old jumbo tron on a crane, so we could actually kind of sort of see what was going on. And oh we were so glad we got to see what was going on. You see, like most free community concerts, and especially for ones in our nations capital, the concert had to be absolutely unoffensive to just about everyone. And so the headliners of the night were the great Barry Manilow and the Sesame Street Muppets. And as slightly ashamed as I am to admit it, I really enjoyed both of them. Manilow is just so infectious and happy to be there, that you kind of get swept up with him. And he is especially awesome when he's trying to be sexy, and you see this old, white guy shaking his hips with a touch of bedroom eyes. Oh Manilow, you try so hard.

But as awesome as the Manilow was, the best part of his performance was this little kid a few feet away from us who was seriously rocking out. He was shaking and grooving with everything he had and even threw in some classic disco moves. As a close second was an adorable Hispanic couple next to up who got all snuggly and cute during the slow songs. They also apparently own a hotel in Mexico. I know this because before they left early the husband introduced himself, pitched the hotel (which apparently makes really good fish?) and gave us his business card. It was loud and he had a bit of an accent so I only understood about half of what he said, and mostly just smiled and nodded. I really hope I didn't promise or agree to anything crazy. A little random, but still fun. And hey, a Caribbean Mexican vacation could always be fun. And the hotel really does look gorgeous. However, cute as they were, the award for best PDA of the night goes to the middle aged couple who totally started making out, complete with a sitting dip and the accompaniment of their preteens moans and complaints. Ah, old people love/lust.

Much fun as people had rocking out to Manilow (well, as much as you can rock out to Manilow) the Muppets were the real stars of the night. I mean they even got introduced by the President. And everyone loves Sesame Street and will happily cheer and sing along. Sesame Street really should be involved in more parts of life, it just makes everyone smile and teaches valuable lessons about how C is for cookies, and we should all love trash (reduce, reuse and recycle anyone?). Some other people sang and did a very nice job (well not so much Aretha Franklin, but shes so old and iconic that it doesn't really matter), but really Manilow and Sesame Street were the highlights.

With the genuine and somewhat unexpected fun of the show, I was rather excited to just lay back and watch the fireworks explode in blaze of beautifulness all over the sky. Yah, not so much. Not only is the Capital lawn at a funky angle from the fireworks, there were also many trees that worked wonderfully at providing some much appreciated shade earlier in the day but were less appreciated for their fireworks blocking. We tried to join the crowd struggling for a decent view between the trees, but we only got a few colorful glimpes. Very pretty glimpses, but not quite what I had hoped for.

I suppose all's well that ends well. Since we couldn't really see the fireworks Zach and I wormed our way through the crowd and headed back towards Union Station in the hopes of beating the crowds. It actually worked fairly well. The station filled up quickly, but as it was one of the first stops in DC that woudl be used by the fireworks viewers the train was mostly empty when we boarded so we actually managed to get a seat. a seat for which we were very grateful for everytime we pulled into a station packed to the gills and saw people struggling to fit into a car that I wouldn't have beleived could possibly hold anyone else. Even from the relative comfort of our seat cocoon, we were quite glad to get out of there, go home and collapse into a happy pile of goo. All in all it was a good day. And now for the obligatory pictures!