I’ve been beyond thrilled about it, but right now, there are more pressing concerns. Like the coating of daddy longlegs that has formed around the backdoor. They never move when I watch them, and they’ve rarely penetrated the house, but they’re out there, all over the walls, and I know it. On more than one occasion I’ve opened the door to leave and the ones that were straddling the opening have FALLEN ON MY SHOULDERS. So my two options have been to either use a completely different door, even though my car is right there, or have another person hold it open while, after a pause, I sprint on through. That particular breed of arachnid wasn’t so familiar to me in the city, but really, I’d invite them in for choco tacos if it meant I never had to see another damn raccoon.

I’ve always hated raccoons, but recently formed a certain abhorrence of them when one meandered out of the woods on a sunny afternoon and circled my five-pound dog.

I learned real quick that something is very wrong when a raccoon is outside during the day, especially one that isn’t afraid of humans. Luckily my 125-pound dog heard my hysterics and, it seems, was exceedingly more intimidating than a 24-year-old girl shouting oh no!

Side note: The next day, as I sat on my couch, focused on the computer in my lap, my significant other walked by and said in a dire tone, “Keep the dogs inside.”

Apparently it didn’t immediately strike me as peculiar, because I muttered “ok” without looking up, and wasn’t aware that he was carrying a firearm and let me be clear that I’d never seen a gun in real life.

So I’m sitting there, probably immersed in some Leonardo DiCaprio tumblr fluff, and let’s just say that the sound was not unlike the time I watched the Pittsburgh 4th of July fireworks from a boat on the river directly beneath them. And now I know to look at my fiancé when he says something to me.

And I haven’t seen that raccoon since.

So…fiancé. Marriage. I’m engaged!

A couple weeks ago, I arrived home from an incredible trip. I’ll start flooding my tumblr with details from that soon, because I feel like I can do that there.

I saw some of the most beautiful places.

(My favorite part of this picture is the dad and daughter at the very bottom.)

I take my contacts out at night.
I like grosser cheeses.
Less concerned about quality of social skills.
Martha Stewart Living.

I’m still trying to figure out how I want to work my Tumblr into this equation. Keep doing what I’m doing and have the two? Get rid of the tumblr and post here without inhibition? Get rid of this place and keep the tumblr, where it’s less insane to publish every little Harry Potter quote and House screencap I find entertaining? I don’t know.

Having a stationary home has led me to subscribe to so many magazines. Like an addict. And I get offers for more every day. Nine dollars for 27 issues of Elle, why not? I’d spend more at Wendy’s.

I’m visiting a lot of places this week.

Intriguing Eminem lyric:

I solemnly swear to always treat this roof like my daughter and RAISE IT.

I’m not one to complain about having a job, but over the past year, I’ve done a lot of complaining. To myself. Because everyone was sleeping. And although there was that small, fleeting sense of accomplishment when the day was over, it was only after I finally exhaled for the first time in twelve hours.

Anyway, I’m on vacation. In the country! Where I live!

There’s corn growing in the backyard, tractors in the garage, another dog that is exactly 120 pounds heavier than the one I moved here with, and a pig that lives inside I’m not allowed to have a pig — though I’m certain I would have no problems in this world if there were a pig waddling around.

This is something I’ve sort of always dreamed of, and even with the frequent bitterness in the fact that I took a full-time job and got growed, I’ve had a perpetual thrill in knowing I live in a place with baby birds on the back porch and turtles wandering along the line where the yard meets the forest.

So late Sunday afternoon I got back from a work-related trip to Philadelphia and was pretty much exhausted from the drive, and it had been about 90 degrees that morning and the day’s heat and humidity made sitting in the living room feel a lot like breathing soup.

So I walk out on the back porch to find two NESTS OF BEES had formed under the awning. And they were hoppin’. No vacancy. And at that point I go back into the kitchen and lean on the counter, mumbling about THE BEES, when I hear a mouse-like rummaging behind the oven. And I take a deep breath. Of hot soup.

It was close to dark by then, but I’d lost my appetite because of THE SWARM. And I had to hide the uneaten pizza because of the creature. Long story short, as the sun is setting I’m back outside, and for the first time, I see the lightning bugs come out of the ground.

Hundreds of thousands of lightning bugs.

They completely saturate acres of land, float in and out of the woods, and it looks like fireworks are silently exploding all around me. And by the time it’s totally dark, they’re gone, and it was like watching a skyline slowly lose its power. Which, I guess, was sort of the perfect way to begin my life here.

I tend to always watch out for the small, creepy things and never hesitate to let them freak me the hell out. Therefore, they follow me. If you would like to know what it’s like for an electrical surge to cause your hallway light to spontaneously flash once or twice at 2AM, invite me to your slumber party. We could bake cupcakes and see Paranormal Activity.

I’ve been renting the same house for almost a year now, so I’ve worked out most of the little oddities, like how the panels in the ceiling shake when they get hit with a good gust of wind. Or how the back door likes to creep open once in a while, usually at night, so I can come downstairs in the morning all, great, the poltergeists are in cahoots with the serial killers again, and HOLY CRAP WHY ISN’T THAT A MOVIE YET? Ghosts and psychos working together? A spirit unlocking all the doors in the house so a lunatic doesn’t have to worry about keys? Perhaps stacking furniture so as to block the exits? It could be called…Terror…Team.

Terror Team ©

For the past couple years, since wrapping up college at my third and final university, I’ve lived in a little neighborhood called Squirrel Hill. It quickly became one of my favorite places in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t hold quite the same feelings of gritty nostalgia as the more southern points — Carrick and Brookline and the South Side — but, as a whole, it’s really a good representation of the city.

Sorry to the non-Pittsburghers who have no idea what I’m talking about, but among the things I love about this place are the distinctive layouts of the different communities, and how when you’re walking in one little neighborhood and step over to the next, you are well aware.

When I was little and living off of Carson with my mom and she would do something to agitate me, like making me dance to Bruce Springsteen or mispronouncing Snuffleupagus or one of the millions of other things that will piss off a 2-year-old, I would roll out of the apartment wearing nothing but a diaper and a bright red wig from The Little Mermaid and scream for my grandfather, who lived over the hill in Mt. Oliver. And by hill I mean Pittsburgh hill, and by Pittsburgh hill I mean take your entire town, stick a pole under it, and push upwards. Your houses will probably lean to compensate and your mile-long main road will become five miles because you have to wrap it around itself a few times. This is expected. Leave it be.

Of course he couldn’t hear me because there was a mountain in the way, but all those times he hiked down the crumbling cement stairs with the light blue railings that jutted from the hillside, it really was like he was making his way from another country.

I decided to redesign this website again. It’s funny — I’ve spent the last several years trying to overload this place with widgets and junk, and the only way I was able to bring myself to update was to start tearing crap down. I started using Tumblr again, and liked the simplicity of the design so much that I decided to change this layout and the photography section to match (both of which are still on WordPress).

The old lifecast section is now powered by Tumblr, which is much easier to update while away from my computer, which is more often than not anymore. The header font is Monbijoux, the chair is for resting, and my dog is a goddamn Yorkshire Terrier.

This website turned five last month, and has spanned three colleges, a dozen jobs, breakups and neuroses and OH THE ANGST. And I’m guessing it will continue to. Hopefully with less colleges. God, I hated college.

Thank you for checking back here, for not yet (YET!) deleting this place from your Readers, and for wearing that thing that you wear, because you look delightful.

Listen, I had no desire to try to make myself any thinner. It was around that time that I began falling headfirst into my obsession with certain time periods, and although I could probably stand around on the set of The Tudors and bark about historical details with the costume designer, I could not, for the life of me, tell you whether or not leggings are still in style. Are they? Do these muddy Nikes go with these lace tights? Because that’s what I wore on my date last night.

That was also the year that The Phantom of the Opera was in theaters, and Emmy Rossum’s waistline sashayed in and scared me half to death. You think Texas Chainsaw Massacre was frightening?

Even so, I was fascinated by them, and began writing a research paper for one of my classes about their history. And with all of that studying and searching, I convinced myself that I couldn’t get away with finishing the project unless I tried wearing one myself.

However, the thing about corsets is, if you want to wear one correctly, you need a professional corset-putter-onner. And so I beckoned for my lady-in-waiting to fetch my Mistress of the Robes so that I may be dressed, and my roommate gave me a dirty look and told me to effing quit it, psycho, it’s 2:00 in the morning, why are you topless, get the hell away from my bed.

But the next day, as I stood gripping the top of my dresser, and she ran the laces through the metal eyelets in the back, I braced myself for the suffocating. Which didn’t happen. Because every time she yanked backwards, she pulled me with her, so that she had to keep letting go of the strings to stop my half-naked self from thrusting into her, pausing each time to consider how, exactly, she ended up living with a prude masochist.

I didn’t give up, and when I went home for Christmas break, I brought the thing with me and asked my mom to try helping me into it. Because who better to inflict the optimal amount of pain on a girl than her mother? And so I stood against a door frame, having the wind pulled out of my insides, suddenly understanding the hidden metaphors of that scene in Titanic when Rose’s mother is forcing her daughter to submit via lingerie.

I lasted about fifteen minutes. I even thought it would be a good idea to attempt driving, except, do you know what those things do to your spine? I was so upright that my neck was convinced it couldn’t move independently from the rest of my body. I was like one of those little tools you use to draw perfect circles. My arms were really the only things that would work freely, and they did, as I flailed for someone to help me out of the car, I can’t move! AND IF I FALL ASLEEP YOU’LL JUST THINK IT’S A MANNEQUIN HELP!

And so, here is where I say, wow, ladies of the past. You and Keira Knightley have some balls.

I’ve had an issue with nightmares for as long as I can remember, and distinctly recall my mother mentioning it to my pediatrician when I was little after I’d been having trouble sleeping because I couldn’t stop hearing marching. And when the doctor asked me about it, I was about as descriptive as a no-more-than-6-year-old could be. I hear marching. It sounds like marching, and people marching. Like how people sound when they march.

I’ve mentioned before how I have trouble sleeping without the TV on, but really, any change in the atmosphere of my bedroom can trigger it. There have been nights when I’ve slept in the same room as other people, and for whatever reason, one of them has gotten up to move in the middle of the night, and no matter how deeply I’m sleeping — HEIGH-HO HORROR! This particular situation causes the most disturbing episodes, as I’m convinced that my eyes are fully open, that I can clearly see and comprehend the room around me, but I’m not awake and cannot make myself become awake and am completely trapped in that state for a good amount of time until, after several tries, I can pull my mind into consciousness.

…and I just killed my chances of anyone inviting me to a slumber party ever. Yeah, so, if you need to pee in the middle of the night, and you come back and I’m not moving but my eyes are wide-open and I look as if I’m pleading to be released from the terror that is my own subconscious, feel free to sleep with your back towards me. Or just hold it. Either one.

It did come in handy when I worked as a camp counselor one summer and had to stay in a cabin with ten 16-year-old girls. I could wake up in the morning and be all, listen ladies, I dreamt that a clown was hovering above my bunk last night and I almost vomited I was so disturbed and as soon as I find out which one of you left at 2AM to make out with one of the boys in Cabin 14 you’re bringing me breakfast for the next three weeks. And they’d be all, HOW DOES SHE DO IT?

I’m at the point now where I can wake up and say, “Well crap, the goes another one of those gruesome dreams,” rather than, “THERE ARE MIND-DEMONS MARRING MY WORLD HELP,” but I think it’s safe to assume that my future husband will eventually want his own bed.

Scott Blasey of The Clarks

The dog had his surgery today. He’s doing fine, although, from the looks he’s been giving me, I may wake up tomorrow morning with a clear plastic cone shoved down my throat.