incredible india

countdowns:

22 days until my 27th birthday

85 days until the election

87ish days until the boy returns to texas

95 days until we go to india 

31 days is how long we'll be there

2 days is how long we plan to spend in nepal visiting the o'sullivans

can you even waittt?!

orchid chronicles

you can't fully appreciate this picture because you didn't know how many topless bottles of ranch dressing and moldy jars of jelly and random expired foods there were in here, but this fridge has been completely girlified. there's yogurt. there are vegetables. there's peach butter. i'm not really good at thoroughly cleaning anything, but i think i might take everything out and give it a good scrub one weekend.

tonight i made smitten kitchen's bacon corn hash. it wasn't super labor intensive except for all of the chopping, but it did take a while, and it heat up the whole house. it was delicious though, and it's going to make excellent quiche filling with a little swiss cheese added.

i think it would be perfect for the fall. it would also be yummy turned into chowder. what qualifies as chowder, i wonder?

and let's all take a moment to ooh and aah at the fact that the orchids two new buds are just growing happily along and looking more and more like possible flowers every day.

travel bug

did i tell you i was going to NM to visit the boy for a couple days? i'm back in austin now, but it was such a nice trip after not seeing him for a month. here are a few of the pictures. 

eat you up

if you've seen how to lose a guy in 10 days, you'll remember the 'love fern'. it's a plant a girl gives a guy to see if he can keep it alive, signifying their relationship. 

the boy and i went on our first date the first week in february (he says it wasn't a date, but it was), so valentines came really quickly. he gave me a beautiful orchid. i was thrilled and also freaked out because i had killed one once before. 

it lived on my desk happily for a couple of weeks until each flower fell off, one by one. but i read online that if you just let it do that, if you can manage to keep it alive for another year, it'll die back and then bloom again.

i had the 'dying back' part down. after the flowers fell off, the spikes started to turn brown on the edges and work their way down, drying out and shriveling up.

while that was happening, new leaves started to sprout.

we ran into a minor orchid emergency when i left it in my 100+ degree car for 6 hours the day i attempted to move it from one office to another and forgot to take it out of the car. at that point, all of the leaves wilted and almost died.

the other day, i noticed a new spike growing just below where the old one had stopped turning brown.

and wooooo, look at those new buds! honestly, this ranks among my top 5 life accomplishments. did not think it could be done.

so what did i learn?
-misting it every day with a spray bottle is way easier than remembering to water it once a week, and it seems to like it
-they don't like to acclimate to new environments. it only sprouted a new leaf once i brought it home and left it in front of a sunny window with the blinds shut all day
-can't hurt to praise it for its new growth every time i walk past it

minks mango

this is the boy's puppy. her name is elephant because she's gray. i went along with it because her nickname was going to be ellie, but she doesn't answer to that because no one ever calls her that. i tried for a few weeks. 

  this is elephant's paw print on my laptop case.

these are our feet.

this is us at a going away party before i got turned into malibu barbie

it has been a busy weekend! glad to have some quiet time to read before bed.

jolene

one of my new favorite friends, MP, is a 60something year old woman who walked in to my office in january. we immediately hit it off and spent an hour just cracking each other up. she reminds me of grandma joan and just lots of different women in my life. we have so much fun. 

every week, she wears these beautiful dresses from guatemala and mexico. for the last several months, we've been researching where i should get one. for a while, she was very stuck on the fact that her dress is not just any dress. it has a special design on the placket (is that the right use of that?) called a wipil (no idea on the spelling). 

she threatened to buy me one a few weeks ago, but i said nonono i'll go and get one. weeks went by. but then last night, i was driving by this mexican grocery store in town where i knew they had them, and i just pulled over and went in.

so voila. here i am in my new MP-inspired dress. we both wore them today. i should have gotten a picture. (did you notice my little-bit-too-blonde hair? that's a story for another day.)

that's only part 1 of the story though. there's a woman who walks by our office every single day wearing a blue version of my dress, and we always acknowledge when she goes by the window (the front of the office is made of very large windows, so you get to know all of the regular dog walkers, etc) because she's very noticeable in bright blue.

so today i'm there in the evening and the front desk women have gone home, so when i hear the door open, i get up and go see how i can help them.. and who is it! the blue dress lady. so i try to stay cool and pretend like she's just any normal person, but then i just couldn't help but tell her that we notice her go by every day.

her story is that she lives down the street from us.. and she walks to various restaurants every day. sometimes all the way to the highway (maybe a mile). she worked in advertising as a younger woman in chicago and houston and lots of cities.

i gave her my card if she ever needs anything. she was very sweet. i told her to look in our window when she passes by now and we can wave to her.

how to be alone

i got this from one of the other blogs i read and have watched it about three times since then. i really like the girl's voice. and the message.

i'm living alone now because the boy moved out of state for work, so i moved in to his house to keep it company until he comes back in november. my lease was up, so it seemed like the logical thing.

i've learned several things about living alone though. i've never lived without anyone else somewhere in the space. never had to take the trash cans to the curb or replace lightbulbs or singlehandedly handle paper jams that won't fix themselves. really trying hard to avoid scooping poop, but it won't scoop itself.

it isn't all bad though. episodes of the simpsons with the boy have been replaced with say yes to the dress and house hunters. there's always clean silverware, and no dishes in the sink. i never have to put the toilet seat down. no tiny black hair in the sink from beard trimming.

it's interesting to have two countdowns going though; one you want to go quickly and one you want to go slowly.