Emi Makes Stuff

Someday I am going to live in a home that has themed rooms – some subtle, some not too subtle. For example, I want a desert-themed bathroom (not subtle).

I like this idea because there are so many possibilities in terms of interesting decorating items – ranging from scorpion paperweights and rain sticks to succulents and wild west type stuff to animal-skull-shaped soaps. And, I don’t know about you, but even if I’m just spending a minute or two there, I’m always grabbing random product bottles so I can read the back of them, and occupy that otherwise wasted time – so I’m definitely of the “bathrooms should be more interesting” school of thought. I’m so excited.

Our living area even now has a vaguely Mexican folk art theme (key word: vaguely) – but I would love to take that and run with it a little more, make it more overt and more colorful. Remember in Fools Rush In when Alex comes home to find his house has been repainted in garish colors and there are crosses everywhere? Like that, kind of, but I don’t want people walking into my living room to think they’ve somehow wandered into a Chevy’s Fresh Mex either.

I want my kitchen to be mid-century-ish. I already buy all the vintage-stylized appliances, and the dishware my grandma got us for the wedding totally fits the bill. I just need to get some more metal signs, a sparkly formica table and chairs, and some of those retro aluminum tumblers (they’ll totally go with my colorful living room!)

The other option for the kitchen is to do a kind of subtle country theme – mason jars, stalks of lavender, bits of gingham, maybe some pretty lace curtains. Potentially I could combine elements of the mid-century and country kitchen – hmm, not sure how that would work.

I want to take all the advice you ever read anywhere about bedrooms and banish all tvs and computers from our bedroom, and also really just concentrate on making the room a total retreat – simple, clean, clutter-free, with some awesome wall art and an enormous and insanely comfortable bed. The only thing I might consider introducing into the room that isn’t strictly bed-y would be a library of sorts. I would love to be able to reach 80% of my books without having to leave the bedroom, so a series of bookcases along one wall or along all the walls would be great. Bookcases, bed, nightstands, a forest like this on one wall – done.

Lastly, I want to curate my imaginary house with beautiful and interesting art – with a special emphasis on art by friends. I’m lucky to know a handful of amazing artists (I actually know a SHIT TON of amazing artists – but most of them work with hair or words, not anything I can hang on a wall) – and I’ll start there, but then also just add in pieces that feel right. I, of course, will continue to build up my collection of folk-art crosses and religious iconography, and hopefully some day those will take up an entire wall or entryway all on their own.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I’m just envisioning that each room is either separated enough from the next room or flows so well into the next room that it doesn’t feel haphazard or jarring. We’ll see (somedayIhope)!

I am feeling very nostalgic about our wedding today. I just got done doing some of my patented blog-hopping, which is when I keep clicking on interesting links on various blogs until 2 hours later I’ve realized that I just spent two hours online and I have no idea how I went from Star Wars-themed living rooms to some stranger’s D.I.Y. wedding, and this is where I just found myself: Sherry & John’s wedding.

Their wedding is like the WASPier, more polished older stepsister of our wedding – they even shared the same color theme as us! I loved that they pulled off such a beautiful D.I.Y. wedding, and I also love that Sherry is as details-oriented as I am. It’s heartening to see that they have a successful blog that leans toward some of the same over-sharey, too-many-details, huge word count tendencies that my own always does, too. That being said, they’re a little more adept at knowing when to share a lot and when not to – I feel like their blog is sort of what my blog wants to be when it grows up, except of course that theirs is mostly focused on home renovation and redesign. I’ve also never tried to or even intended on making this a full-time gig – I just want to grow my audience as a writer and see what happens from there.

ANYWAY

Reading about their wedding has made me misty-eyed remembering ours, so I thought I’d force you all to get misty-eyed right along with me. First I looked back at our wedding as it was featured on Offbeatbride.com. Then I went to my Flickr page to peruse the photos from that day, and looked at all our makeshift photobooth pictures, which always make me smile.

I think it’s funny because it’s such a stereotype for a married woman to dwell fondly on her wedding day forevermore and, while I certainly wanted to have a lovely wedding, I just never thought I’d think much about it afterward. Directly afterward, I was honestly just glad it was over. The thing about a D.I.Y. wedding, even when you have so many amazing helpers, is that it’s still pretty much D.I.Y. – do it yourself. I had no greater goal for the actual day of the wedding than to have everything in place so that I could do as little as possible the day-of and just enjoy my wedding. I think I totally succeeded in this, but the whole weekend was so exhausting and exhilarating that by the time it was over and all the friends and relatives had left town I was so relieved.

For the longest time after the wedding, I would say to anyone who asked, “we should have eloped”. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that as recently as a month ago, in fact – and this is almost two years later. I think most of the reason I say this is because I’m still anxiously looking forward to our honeymoon (we’ve indefinitely put it off so it can be really awesome when we finally get to it), and I often think that, while it’s impressive that we only spent less than $2000 on our wedding, that’s also $2000 we could have put toward an elopement in Hawaii or a trip to Europe or something.

But then when I’m in this reminiscing mood and I look back at our wedding pictures, I am really happy we did have an actual wedding, with our friends and family in tow. I don’t think I would trade it even if I could. I don’t think I looked my most beautiful, it wasn’t the most amazing day of my life, and the world did not stop just for us – it was just another day, albeit a day that took months of preparation. I don’t buy into the idea that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life because I just hope my life holds more interesting things than a wedding, but it certainly is one of the most well-documented days of my life so far, and that does make it easy to be happy about it over and over again.

Our wedding day passed by in a blur, and I don’t remember what Trevor said to me during his vows, and we don’t have any copies of my original invitation artwork or his vows left because the hard drive they were on died, but I remember little things very clearly – like crying during the vows, and how Trevor made me stop crying by making me laugh. But I think I cherish most the day we got legally married, which was the week before our wedding, at a judge’s office in Gladstone, with only Trevor’s mom and her boyfriend, my mom, my brother and his girlfriend there. It was short and sweet and we both teared up a little, but neither of us cried, although his mother did – the judge was kind and friendly, and gave us meaningful advice about maintaining a happy marriage, and afterward we went to Claim Jumper for a late lunch, which just added to the surreality of it.

Our 2 year wedding anniversary is in July and part of me can’t believe it’s already been two years, and another part of me can’t believe it’s only been two years – I feel like I both just got married and have always been married to Trevor, all at the same time. It’s weird how someone who was not even known to you 4, 5 years ago is now almost your whole world. Weird and amazing.

I wish you guys could see me right now, but mostly I don’t actually wish that at all.

I don’t wish it because I am in one of my no-one-is-here, no-one-is-looking poses. I am in bed, slouching up against all the pillows we own, with the laptop on my lap (!), my shirt pulled up to just above my stomach, on top of which I rest my hand(s) as needed.

I do my fake-pregnant-lady pose a lot nowadays. It’s not really a conscious thing, but when I am struck by it in moments such as this, I don’t really feel too bad about it – if I’m gonna have this gut, it might as well have some kind of use, such as that of an armrest.

But it’s still a no-one-is-here, no-one-is-looking pose because I’m half naked, but I still have my socks on, and the slouching causes a nice double chin action, and my face looks like I’m pissed about something even when I’m not – so that just reinforces the fake-pregnancy thing. But I’m gonna show you guys anyway, because I’ve said so much about it now, and also because I have no shame.

The nipples make it worse I think. Oh well.

What with the recent launch of OffbeatHome, and the state of my own apartment, and my dad’s impending visit, AND the inexplicable arrival of both a Crate&Barrel and Rejuvenation Hardware catalogue – I am super into home-stuff lately. So far that hasn’t translated into any action toward actually changing the way my home is now – but I still had my (fake) Christmas tree up until just this afternoon, so let’s be reasonable.

My dad is coming to visit next weekend, which means I at least have to get the place clean. While I would like to get it totally redecorated, this is an ambition I always briefly cherish when I have to clean for guests that never comes to fruition for obvious reasons (*cough* Christmas tree *cough*).

Like most people, Trevor and I both have amassed a bunch of stuff (me more than he, I admit). Some of it – like my beloved velvet matador, an awesome wooden screen on loan from my mom, Trevor’s models and (some) of his posters, our favorite wall art, the Dia De Los Muertos cake topper from our wedding, and fancy kitchenware/appliances – would definitely have a place in any conceptualization of home I could create for us:

But other things – my giant “Emily” poster, for instance, or his particle-board dresser with punk-wannabe stickers on it, or the cow piggybank on our bookshelves – these are things that I can’t imagine actually having any place in the future home of my dreams (much as I love my cowbank).

Then there are things that I think could have a place, just a place somewhere other than where they are now – like the stone buddah and the ceramic orange dragon that currently grace our entryway hallway, but might be better in a garden.

Paint would make a huge difference in this space – and had I known we would be in this apartment going on 3 years I would’ve probably been able to talk Trevor into it way back when – but now, knowing we are planning to move into a house in the next year or so if possible, it just doesn’t seem worth it, even to me.  Still, I’m trying not to let the prospect of a new home in the semi-near-future derail my scheming to make this space more pleasant to live in while we’re here.

Less clutter would go a long way, as would keeping it cleaner. To me, sparsely-decorated spaces generally look cleaner, whether or not they actually are – so it’s a goal of mine to really pare down our possessions, and make things a lot more simple. This is doubly-useful because if I can get rid of a bunch of stuff, that will make moving easier once it becomes time for that. But at the same time, I don’t like spaces that are too sparse because often they feel void of any personality to me. I’m attracted to modern, clean lines and bright colors on the one hand, but on the other I have a love affair with reclaimed wood, and dark, rich colors. I also really love when I see a home that is a mishmash of all kinds of random stuff that all works together – if everything is too uniform and same-y I think that’s boring.

Bright and modern tends to be cheaper and easier to find (hello, Ikea!), while the best of the other stuff I like tend to be handmade, locally-crafted, artisan goods – often prohibitively expensive. Going the Ikea route means you have the same stuff everybody of a certain age and income level has, and that can also contribute to a that same-y feeling for me unless the stuff is used in the space in interesting, creative ways.

My strategy so far has been the slow collection of things I really like, which I then try to intersperse with the all the necessary Ikea-type stuff in appealing ways. But it is a kind of unsatisfying strategy because it’s much easier to get my hands on the smaller stuff, and harder to get really beautiful bigger pieces, like furniture or paintings. And knowing that I will have a beautiful home after 40 years of careful collecting doesn’t help make it prettier now.

I think I need to be more savvy about how to make incremental changes in ways that still feel impactful, and I need to be savvier in my investments – sure drawer-pulls from Anthropologie are expensive, but they transform a kitchen; likewise, there are plenty of cheap, great pieces to be found if you’re only willing to look (so far, I haven’t been too keen on that, being the one person living in Portland who hates the Goodwill Bins outlets).

Anyway, since there’s not much I can do right this moment to change my space, I’ve just been having fun thinking about what I will do differently once we move, and what I might do differently even before that. I’ve been playing with one of my favorite tools: the multicolr search lab, by idee. You create a color palette, and it generates a collage of Flickr images that reflect that palette. It’s a great way to test out different color combinations.

Sometimes I forget that the whole dwelling does not have to look the same – I’ll get really excited about one color combination or one decorative theme but then get equally excited about something completely and irreconcilably different and think I have to choose between them. But another thing I really like experiencing in other people’s homes is every room you walk into being different. There generally has to be some unifying element to tie it all together though, except in the case of super theme-y rooms. For example, one of the best bathrooms I have ever seen was absolutely plastered with vintage pinups and pulp book covers. Obviously, this was restricted to the one room, the bathroom, but both because of the type of room it was and because it was such a fun theme, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t in line with the rest of the house.

I prize comfort and the look of comfort, but I also value fun, a sense of humor, personality, spunk, and verve – figuring out how to reconcile those somewhat clashing ideals is going to be my next big challenge in decorating this or any future home of mine.

Where’s the outrage? You can find it here, here, here, and here. (And you can sign Planned Parenthood’s open letter to congress here.) But I haven’t seen it splashed across any front pages yet and most of my Facebook friends are suspiciously (mysteriously?) silent on the matter, although many of them have plenty to say about the fall of the regime in Egypt or the protests in Madison, Wisconsin. How does an attack like this fly so low below the national/societal radar? It feels very much to me like the only ones registering it are those who’ve already been in the fight for so long – but this is such an outright, blatant attack on women that EVERYONE should be up in arms.

Maybe part of it is that people are counting on the bill’s swift defeat in the Senate. I certainly am hoping for that, too. And I can’t believe that, should this bill by some strange twist of fate cross the President’s desk with the Pence amendment intact, he would actually sign it. So all is not lost, yet.

But what bothers me most is not actually the direct repercussions of THIS amendment at THIS moment, but rather what the passage of this amendment in the House says about how quickly and how easily our access to basic preventative medical care can be compromised, redefined or cut off entirely. In turn, this speaks volumes about women’s consequence in the eyes of our politicians. Our health, our very lives, are just budget line items in the eyes of many House Representatives.

Just 3% of the health services Planned Parenthood provides are abortion services, and because of the Hyde Amendment, none of the federal money Planned Parenthood receives goes to providing those abortions. The Pence amendment is redundant where it relates to abortion – and if there is redundancy there, in the purported reason Mike Pence (R-Indiana) has put forward for introducing the amendment, than what is the true motivation for it?

It can be nothing other than shutting down Planned Parenthood, for no other reason than that, in addition to the other vital health services they provide to women and men, they also happen to provide abortions, which are legal medical procedures. The fact that many private citizens object to these procedures being performed doesn’t change the legality of the procedures, or the need for access to this procedure as well as the whole host of other services Planned Parenthood provides for many whom, otherwise, could not afford them and/or have nowhere else to go.

If a large, vocal segment of the population opposed life-saving heart bypass surgeries, would a congressman or congresswoman for one second, even then, dare to introduce a bill or amendment that cut off funding for all medical centers that performed this procedure? Surely not.

For one, it would be ridiculous to oppose a life-saving legal medical procedure.

If you could get past that ridiculousness though, surely still the better option would be simply to cut off direct federal funding of said procedure, not to close down medical centers that perform not only that procedure but many, other, unobjectionable and incredibly important procedures.

And then if you found that, after all, there already is a law barring federal funding of that particular procedure, why would you not drop the issue then?

Lastly, if you truly wanted to stop that procedure from happening, wouldn’t it be only logical that you be fully committed to making preventative care available that would help keep the procedure from being necessary?

This is why I’m pissed: this amendment flies in the face of logic and reason, and it’s passage flies in the face of any concept of respect or concern for the healthcare needs of the women of this nation – especially the young women, and the poor women, and the LGBTQ women, and the black and Hispanic women, who disproportionately need access to the vital medical care that Planned Parenthood provides.

I’m also pissed because it’s a bunch of dudes making decisions about MY health. What if a bunch of women got up in arms about prostate exams or ED treatment? What if I decided what was best for men’s health? I’m not saying that men have no place in this debate at all, just that their place must necessarily come behind ours. It is OUR health, after all.

This rando guy fucking pisses me off:

Almost, but not quite as much as this guy (Mike Pence):

today I

made enchiladas for school

burned myself taking the enchiladas out of the oven

decided I would rather keep the enchiladas at home

then made cookies for school instead

I was tagged by Kate over at The Chic Chickadee to list the 5 things I can’t leave the house without.

1. Cell phone

I actually don’t make or receive that many calls in a given day, but ready access to my email is important for work, and ready access to Facebook, etc. is important for me, therefore having my iphone with me at all times is also pretty damn important in general. Plus I feel like the one day I don’t have my cell phone will inevitably be the day I blow a flat or get lost or who knows what. Speaking of which, the google maps feature might be the most frequently used app on my phone, now that I think about it.

2. Keys

Obvious, but doubly important because this not only includes my house key and car key, but also the keys for work.

3. Pen(s)

My mother trained me never to be without a pen. When I was younger she always had one in her purse, ready to be used for random doodles, important note-making, and lending to everyone else around you who never has a pen on their person. There are, however, currently 4 pens in my purse, which isn’t strictly necessary.

4. My hair design kit

My kit with all my tools for school, along with the various folders and books I use, take up permanent residence in my car. I don’t know if I’ve even ever brought them inside my apartment, aside from the very first time I got them. The nice thing about this is that if you’re ever with me and you’re thinking, “damn, my hair looks like crap, I wish I had a flat iron, or even just a brush”, wish no more because I’ve got it all.

5. My wedding ring

I’m not one of these namby-pamby take-off-my-ring-so-it-doesn’t-get-lost-or-get-in-my-way types. My simple expedient for both concerns was just to pick a very delicate ring that fits perfectly, such that a.) it’s so light, I barely feel it and it’s never in my way, and b.) it will never slide off. The day that Trevor presents me with a 5-carat diamond ring, I might change my tune, but somehow I don’t think this will be an issue.

This resolution (to write at least one blog post per week) is really not very resolve-y, it turns out.

I’m too tired or I’m too lazy or I just forget about it. For someone who has, at times, claimed to be a writer, I’m not very good at writing with any consistency. But this has been a problem throughout my writing lifetime, and separate from blogging, too. I love to write, but it’s hard to make it a habit. And without it being a habit, I can’t really say I’m a writer, I don’t think.

To me the legitimacy of someone calling themselves a writer has always rested less on whether or not they’re published or famous or even good at writing, and more on the mere fact of their writing – that they do it with regularity, and that they derive some sense of pleasure or accomplishment from it. I’ve got all the pleasure and none of the regularity, but I guess I’m working on it.

Writing poetry was so much easier for me, easier even than blogging I think, because it can be so short, and so quick, and so spontaneous or impetuous. I tend to have more of a steady flow from brain to paper when it comes to poetry – I edit myself along the way much less, mostly saving that for afterwards. Or, at least, when I do edit-as-I-go it just goes more quickly when it comes to poetry. For some reason when I work on my fiction or screenplays or even my personal essays, I lose that ability to just flow – I am constantly pausing, backtracking, writing, editing, rewriting, editing again, even before the words have hit the page. But poetry as a form has lost its allure for me – the shine has been off that apple for awhile now. I can’t dissociate it from my awkward youth, and so I can’t, ultimately, dissociate it from awkwardness in general.

Today I looked at some books about the publishing industry and then laughed at myself – it turns out you have to write a book before you can get one published. If I could sell someone my unfinished scripts, my high school poetry, my personal essay work, and all the beginnings of all the chapters of all the books I never finished – I would be in a good place right now.

…so my new year’s resolution of writing one post per week is already out the door. My week-since-the-last-one was up, like, 5 days ago. Sigh.

I went to school every single night this week, and stayed the whole of each night, and I’m going to try desperately to do this for the rest of the YEAR, too, in addition to making up the hours I’ve already missed. Double sigh.

I was doing really well with the whole cooking thing earlier this week, but it’s pretty much been downhill since Wednesday. Tonight I brought home Little Ceasar’s. Triple Sigh.

But there’s some good news:

I got a raise backdated to the first day of our most recent pay period so my paycheck this week was consequently a little nicer than I had previously expected it to be.

I finished reading Pride & Prejudice (again), and now I just found an free app on my phone that has another 5 Austen novels, which I can now read without keeping my husband awake (we hope).

Tonight I watched Jane Austen Book Club (the movie), which I was highly skeptical of and then LOVED. And now I also have a little bit of a crush on Hugh Dancy.

But who wouldn’t?