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122 days and some boot cut jeans

It has been 122 days since my last blog post and 1 day since I last wore boot cut jeans. This is a startling fact, I know. The boot cut jeans were so startling though that they did manage to bring me out of a four month blogging hiatus.

I am so scarred by my apparel choices yesterday that I felt the need to blog about it. Maybe that’s the trick, whenever there is nothing to write about, just put on one of my uglier pieces of clothing that I inexplicably still own and see how I feel after wearing it around all day in shame. 

It does sound semi-fashion snob of me to be so dramatic about wearing a certain cut of pant, but I just shouldn’t be wearing pants from American Eagle from high school. End of story. (I almost lied and told you middle school. Boot cut jeans are not as far in my past as I would really hope.) For the sake of the story about my boot cut jeans we are all just going to accept that this is basically the faux pas of the century. Not to be dramatic or anything.

Time really flies when you are trying on the oldest and ugliest clothes from your closet. I know for a fact this is something that we all do and so I feel no shame in it. Every once in a while you just get these crazy thoughts like “why don’t I ever wear that crochet poncho anymore? I loved it in 8^th grade!” or if you are me “man, I really did think boot cuts jeans were the way to go, why did I ever stop wearing them?” Because they don’t look good, self. That’s why you stopped. And why you persist in owning them is beyond me.

So anyways, here I was just taking a leisurely stroll down my greatest hall of fame fashion looks when suddenly it is TIME TO GO. Like I have to be at a required resume design workshop at the art school at 9am on a Saturday in 3 MINUTES. Do you know how long it takes me to walk to the art school? 13 minutes if I am walking at a speed that induces shin splints. Do you know who is leading this resume workshop? MY PROFESSOR, WHO IS THE BIGGEST STICKLER ON TARDINESS. Do you know who will be at this workshop? DESIGNERS FROM ALL OVER ST. LOUIS.

After two minutes of scrambling around my room, just panicking about how I was going to be late and thus making me even later, I hustled from the dorm dressed in a pair of pants that is the social equivalent of wearing bellbottoms when acid-wash taper-leg was really the way to go. It was an outfit straight out of my 11^th grade closet (like I said, not as far in my past as I would prefer). Stupid faded American Eagle jeans (I’m pretty sure the cut was called “The Artist”, I remember that being a huge influence in my purchase) with a dumb, ugly gray sweatshirt and my freaking Vans sneakers. Did I just walk out of a Pac-Sun in 2009? Basically. 

Another awful thing you forget when you don’t don legwear with flare anymore is the noise they make. When the leg openings of your pants are wide enough to brush against each other (a note to my future self that I SHOULD NOT BE WEARING THEM), they make an awful swishing sound with each step. So, It was just me and the sound of my pants reminding me at every stride that I had made a very pivotal error in time management that morning and I was paying for it. With boot cut jeans.

That’s how it happened. That’s how I wore boot cut jeans for a whole entire day in front of a panel of St. Louis creatives who were critiquing my resume based on my sense of design. At least my future hire-ability is based on a single, critically designed sheet of paper and not a photograph of me on that day. 

Now, did anyone really even notice? Probably not.* But it makes a good story, doesn’t it? Where would we be if I didn’t have an extraordinarily well-developed internal conflict about the cut of my pants? Probably on Day 123 of no blogging.

*Except for Julie. Julie definitely noticed because I texted her on my way saying “I am wearing boot cut jeans. It feels like the apocalypse.” (Yes, I am incredibly level-headed and calm at all times). When she saw me, she said “Wow, are you sure those are just boot cut? They look like they could be flare!” I almost passed out on the ground. 

I don’t even know what I have been doing.

I couldn’t even tell you how long it’s been since I posted without looking back on the blog which is shameful in and of itself, let alone the number of times that I start a post with some sort of acknowledgement about how long its been since I’ve posted. 

What have I been doing while away? A lot of homework. Everything that is the anathema of excitement. For example, just now I finished a 3-page summary of a critical essay on the history of landscape photography. If you think reading that sentence was boring, try reading the whole article.

In more breaking news, I already know where I will be living a year from now. Is that weird to you? It’s weird to me. What’s even weirder is that one week ago I drove to downtown St. Louis with seven other girls and $1,100 dollars in cash on my person to sign a lease at the apartment of my future landlord at 9pm. That is actually true. I mean, I’m a pretty good liar, but that is pure unadulterated fact. And if that sounds incredibly sketchy to you it’s because IT WAS. However, please take solace in the fact that I am writing this blog post meaning I have not been robbed or kidnapped. 

Some advice would be: if you were ever thinking about trying to get housing off campus for your senior year at WashU, don’t. Don’t try, don’t think about it, and avoid it at all costs because it is the most competitive, least transparent process you will ever take part in. Basically, you call a million landlords who force you to make snap decisions about agreeing to rent which you obviously acquiesce to because it seems like everyone else on campus secretly found apartments overnight and you already feel like a future homeless person so you skip class to run to banks and lease-signings like you are a crazy woman. And this all happens in 24 hours.

I can say this with certainty because it’s exactly what happened when me and a group of my friends found an apartment building, hounded a landlord, and then spent an entire day freaking out until the fateful call when he told us we each had to get our hands on a grand and sign a lease in 5 hours. I’m sorry, what? You do know I go to college, right? And the bank closes in 15 minutes? And there is no way we can just do this tomorrow? No? OKAY, GREAT, YEAH I’LL SIGN THAT LEASE.

But we did it. By some huge stroke of luck me and 11 of my friends found a building and signed a leased for every apartment in the place in less than 24 hours later. The stress and terror of potentially losing the apartment to some other group of ruthless apartment-seeking college girls probably took 3 years off my life. 

That’s whats up. I do homework and when that isn’t enough fun, I find new and improved aways methods of self-inflicted stress, like apartment hunting and thinking about how long my walk to art studio will be from off-campus and potentially moving from Tumblr to WordPress. HOORAY FOR SENIOR YEAR. 

back in action

First, let’s all collectively bid ado to my old laptop, Harold. He is dead. Fortunately, the brand-spanking new MacBook that I have been lusting for since I was in the womb is warming my lap as I type. 

It was almost as if Harold could sense that our time together was coming to a close because he stopped functioning entirely a full week before my new computer was delivered. Awesome, thank you for that Harold. Even in your absence you are the absolute worst piece of machinery I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. GOOD RIDDANCE. 

Here are my most recent life highlights:

My internship is done. I did it. I designed a fifty-page handbook for university fundraising volunteers and I do not need to do another one for a while…or forever? 

I go to school again now. I am a junior. As part of my major, you get a bunch of shiny new computer things to distract you from the fact that in the near future you will be doing SO MUCH WORK. I remember now that school doesn’t follow the strict 9-to-5 policy of my internship. WHY NOT?

I now live in a suite of 8 people. It has a giant kitchen, and a giant living room, and I sleep in a giant single bedroom, on a bed that is so giant I have to use a step stool. All of this is contrasted by the tiniest and worst shower in the world. If you can imagine a space pod that would take you to Mars in the 1960’s you can imagine our shower. 

On Friday, I start my new internship at Cheree Berry Paper as a production intern. ULTIMATE SCORE! What better way to practice dressing as an ultra-hip design student and flex my public transportation skills?! Except those don’t actually need to be tested because I have a sneaking suspicion I was born on a Portland MAX train and have been learning how to use mass transit since day one.

Is it sad that I only have four new life updates for you? Maybe. Or it’s just a sign that I’m learning how to not eat too many cookies and blog about puke. 

I am 20

Though I like to think that I am the most alluringly eccentric 20-year-old ever, I am not. 20 is just a weird age. It is a bizarre in between year where I occasionally act like an ultra-mature adult but most of the time it seems like I should still be living under my mom’s supervision. Here is me being 20 today:

Being 20 means you are still young enough to get care packages of the most delicious goods you can imagine from your sister. The contents of this box deserve their own blog post, that’s how phenomenal they were. I refuse to stop talking about my sister because I am her biggest fan.

20 is also still young enough to eat too many care-package-cookies too fast. However, at this age you do have the awareness you are eating too many. It doesn’t matter. Nothing stops you. You eat TOO TOO TOO MANY.

20 does mean you are old enough to have your own gym membership. No more YMCA family passes for this girl (unfortunately you are also too old to qualify for the YMCA teen price, alas a double-edged sword!).

It also means you have the Nike Training Club app on your iPhone, because everyone knows that’s the trendy thing to do. So when you are 20 and have your own gym membership you can conveniently not go to the gym and exercise in your own ugly apartment.

And when you are 20 and all of these things happen within a half hour of each other YOU COME SO CLOSE TO PUKING YOU ARE AFRAID.

Now I am fully aware that this would be a better story if I actually did toss my cookies (literally, pun intended, everything) and I even considered lying to you because all Lundquists love a good story. But Lundquists are not liars, usually.

Regardless, the fact that I had to stop my Nike Training Club workout at 14:38 minutes during my Russian twists because I ate too many cookies and worked out immediately afterward because I have no understanding of digestion and thought I was going to throw up is absurd. I had a lot of time laying next to the vent absorbing the air-conditioning in my bathroom near the toilet to contemplate this. Because I thought I was going to puke. Honest to god. The being afraid of barfing was probably worse than the actual act would have been.

As I was languishing on the bathroom tiles, sweating so much in full work-out gear, breathing very heavily, mentally preparing myself to ralph, I was mainly thinking “is this what happens when you are 20? You wear fancy blazers and pencil skirts to work at an office and then come home and immediately eat so many cookies you think you are going to be sick?” And then the meaner version of myself rolled my eyes and said something scathing, like “I cannot believe this is all you have learned in two full decades of life.”

At this time I would like to apologize to my grandma if she is reading this because I know she will not think it is appropriate to talk about vomit so much to other people. Except you do have to admit I used just about every synonym for puke, which rocks. Except up-chuck. I hate that one.

So I am 20. And when you are 20 it sounds old but you don’t feel like it at all. You do things that make you seem like a fully capable adult, like paying electricity bills (hot damn, those are the worst!) and being an intern at an office for 40 hours a week and cooking your own dinner EVERY NIGHT. But then you do things like eat so many cookies you haven’t been so close to vomiting since you got food poisoning at the ice cream shop freshman year.

You can all take solace in the fact that my is lesson learned. Sort of. I will definitely eat the cookies, maybe lay off the exercise? Plan.

lobsterfest the aftermath: onion

Current sunburn status: peeling. Hence the onion title. My skin is peeling off like papery onion flakes. You think this is gross? TRY HAVING IT ON YOUR BODY. This striking imagery is to make up for the fact that there haven’t been any pictures lately. Disappointing, I know. It’s hard to get through a whole blog post with out something pretty to look at.

In other news I have finally resigned myself to the fact that my perfect purple sketchbook is lost. Forever. I have been denying it for a month saying that it would just turn up somewhere but now I must come to grips with the fact that someone out in the world is really benefiting from my bad drawings of chairs and personal lists on topics like “things I didn’t learn because I am not Jewish” and an illustrated guide to “things I will consume immediately upon arriving in the states”. It’s a sad, sad day indeed. Except for the lucky idiot who has my sketchbook, because I’m positive they are having the time of their life. YOU ARE THE WORST. Fortunately, I wrote my name right in the front of the damn thing so there wouldn’t be any sort of confusion about who the person was behind all of the really bizarre personal lists and bad typographic drawings.

Other things I have lost and lament this summer:

My perfectly sized water bottle

My (perfect?) keys

My gym pass (GOD NO!)

My perfect headband that doesn’t hurt my ears or give me a headache

My phone charger

I hope this gets all my bad karma out for a while. Seriously. No more lost stuff. I’m still reeling from the purple sketchbook.

And as a final note: everyone needs to stop acting like summer is over (yes, I know you already went home, Ali and I know you are leaving this weekend, Leslie). I HAVE ONE MORE MONTH OF WORK. Yes, that is 30 days. Aka one-third of my summer is left. And yes, I will spend it whiling the hours away in a small office with an oscillating fan designing a university handbook without any sort of creative control. But it is still 100 degrees, still acceptable to eat froyo everyday, still no homework, SO IT IS STILL SUMMER. Everyone back off.

You thought that was the last thing I had to say but this is actually it: I BECAME THE MAYOR OF CHILL FROYO ON FOURSQUARE. Now I know this won’t mean a lot to my less tech-saavy readers (dad) but basically it means that I have been to Chill Frozen Yogurt more than anyone in all of St. Louis lately. It has been proven by my iPhone app and thus it is true. In case you guys were thinking I was exaggerating just how often I get frozen yogurt, I was serious. I have frequented Chill more than anyone and I reign supreme. I have never been more proud of myself. All in a summer’s work.

lobsterfest

And so I have entitled my sunburn healing process. Lobsterfest. How many days will it take for my skin to return to a normal tone? No one knows. It’s current shade is somewhere between ripened tomato and firetruck. All over my body. My whole entire surface area is red, thanks to six and a half hours spent floating down an unknown Missouri river. I will say that the six hours were definitely worth it. No one has had as much fun floating down a river (okay, maybe Huck Finn since he basically has a whole book about it) than this girl (okay, maybe also Jordan. He wins the float trip constant enthusiasm award, which is on an entirely different level). It was also worth it because I now have a gnarly Chaco sandal tan to validate myself as a proud Chaco-wearing, outdoorsy, Idahoan. Also I would like the record to show that I applied AND reapplied sunscreen. And not in the way I normally do that attempts to strike a balance between appearing concerned about skin cancer while actually trying to become a golden-brown goddess (I have yet to find the balance). These methods include applying only the smallest dollop of sunscreen, or putting a lot on and then immediately jumping into the pool before it can soak in.

Highlights of the float trip include:

1. Actually managing to organize a float trip for 14 people. 20-year-olds are generally awful at coordination. All kudos go to our friend Annie for making this happen. No one could have done it but her. Seriously. Everyone made it to the raft and it was a complete act of god.

2. Being repeatedly attacked with water guns by a roving family (gang?) of Missourians (hicks?) in canoes. This was varying levels of amusing depending on how much time we had already spent on the river. The first time was kind of like a thrilling river pirate show-down. The third time was more like a lot of annoyed 20-year-olds wondering why they were being tormented by middle-aged adults with water guns.

3. Ending the float and discovering that a single, miraculous bag of pretzels remained dry. Everything else was entirely soaked and had a mildewy river stench.

4. Getting out of the raft and seeing the glory of my new Chacos tan.

5. Having an excuse to eat an extreme amount of snacks. You need energy when you are out in the sun all day doing nothing but sitting on a raft!

6. Peeing in the river. There are no bathroom stops along the way! No one can fault you for this and everyone does it! I’m not saying peeing in places that are not bathrooms is something I really look forward to, it’s just a lot more socially acceptable in the river than at the pool.

7. Being so so so tired from paddling because there was no current at all that you definitely need some froyo from Chill once you get back. And when you get to Chill you realize they have toasted almond flavor AND lime tart (not as good as salted caramel or coconut, but it will do). SCORE.

8. Everyone made it out alive.

Less awesome things that happen two hours later when you realize that no amount of sunscreen could ever have prevented the kind of burn you are currently suffering from:

1. Not being able to sleep, sit, or wear clothes because they all feel like sandpaper on your sunburn. I have never been so aware of my lower back in my whole life. Undeniably the most sunburned portion of my body, I feel it when I try to fall asleep, it touches against my office chair at work, I cannot wear a pencil skirt because it is literally bound to the small of my back and is the most abrasive thing ever.

2. Feeling about three degrees hotter constantly. As if it was not hot enough here already (IT IS).

3. Putting on a lot of lotion to heal the sunburn and then walking to work only to sweat it all off. If you haven’t experienced the lotion-sweats, I envy you. I would say it is three stages worse on the Sweat Severity Scale than when you go for a run at four in the afternoon. Not only does lotion seem to make you sweat a lot more, it generates a really appealing and not-at-all-obvious greasy/sweaty film all over your skin. I arrived at work today looking like a swamp monster.

4. Looking weird. Sunburns aren’t attractive.

Fortunately the list of pros outweigh the cons so we can all rest easy that the float trip was worth it! My hot tips for the coming week: sunscreening liberally, lotioning with moderation, sitting in air-conditioning as much as possible.

water sports for all

So I took a one month hiatus. I mean, who wouldn’t deserve an extended blogging break after studying (gallivanting) in Europe and working hard (hanging out) back in St. Louis? Blogging is so taxing, let me tell you.

Before I get to the point, here are the highlights of what I’ve been doing for this month:

1. Sweating. It’s very hot here. Sometimes the air is so humid it’s almost like drowning while you breath.

2. Working. I’m an intern. “Cool,” you think to yourself, “you and every other college student on summer break.”

3. Eating. I eat frozen yogurt on the regular (no thanks to my roommates Rita and Danielle for trying to curb this addiction). Just tonight I received my ninth punch in my frequent purchaser punch card. You’ll be pleased to know that not only is my next froyo is free, but it also means I have been averaging about 2 froyos a week since my arrival. Thank you universe, I really did need a gelato substitute. WRONG.

4. Eating not a lot of things that aren’t froyo. Like I mentioned, it’s hot here. I break a sweat chopping vegetables. If it requires the oven or more than ten minutes on the stove, it’s not going to be made. I eat a lot of black beans and fake meat. I’ve regressed since Italy.

5. Watching tv. I LOVE TV. I FORGOT HOW GREAT TV IS AND I AM NOT ASHAMED TO SAY IT. Shout out to the best sister in the world who hooked me up with online HBO. Sometimes it feels like nothing better has ever happened to me.

6. Hanging out. This generally is me doing things with my friends that allow us to stay as cool as possible. Sometimes it’s going to Target, sometimes it’s going to the botanical gardens to hear free music, sometimes we go to the pool, which is the perfect segue for the point of this story. Me and bodies of water.

We went to Wisconsin this weekend to visit our sweet friend Katie and her awesome parents at their beautiful house on Lake Kegonsa. Despite what could be taken as a sarcastic overuse of positive adjectives, I had such a good time! We road tripped and ate cheese and shopped at the Saturday market and had meals cooked by a mom, all things I really really love!

But we also did some water sports. Because we were on a lake. And everyone excels at water sports because they are so fun and carefree! NOT FOR THIS GIRL. To say I am unnatural in the water is an understatement. When I jumped into the lake with the water skis on, they came off immediately. I WASN’T EVEN GOING, I WAS JUST GETTING INTO THE WATER. I should have taken this as a sign. I then spent a lot of time rolling a round in the water buoyed on both ends by the life jacket and the skis. It was awkward. It was really awkward. Everyone else of course had a fine time. There was no tangling up in the tow rope, no floundering around losing skis for no reason.

Whatever. I’m not even embarrassed because I found my true calling as a leisurely sun bather. These are the only things you need to do as a leisurely sun bather and literally everyone can be good at it: you sit at the front of the boat (the prow if you are as knowledgeable in boat vocab as I am) and bask in the sun, with an amount of sunscreen on that suggests you are skin cancer savvy, but interested in not being pasty white. Whenever you get too hot/need to pee you hop out of the boat and swim around for a couple of minutes and get right back on to be driven around the lake some more. Take in the views, nap a little, it’s all possible when you are a leisurely sun bather. When I am filthy rich, I will consider buying a boat and a driver just so I can ride around, its delightful. My friends can bring their water skis whenever they want, but you will find me basking upon the prow in a sunhat. Doesn’t that sound refined? I’ll tell you, a semester in Florence and this girl is one classy broad.

Check you guys later. And not in one month, I swear.