The Thirty-Third: TWO MONTHS

I have only two months left in China! This has put so much pressure on me.

1) I have so much to cover with my classes, so now I have all this prep work I need to do IMMEDIATELY. And though I had a free day today...nada.

Gonna wake up really early tomorrow to get some stuff done. Gotta work all weekend now.

2) I NEED TO GET OFF MY DUFF AND STUDY CHINESE SERIOUSLY BEFORE I GO HOME. 'TWILL BE TOTALLY PATHETIC IF I NEVER DID IT EVER.

3) I promised A that I would quit biting my nails here, and while I've been better about it, I've not quit.

But what I am the most concerned about (sadly) is now really want to come home hot. This swelling (expanding, exploding) desire has derailed all my recent mental health progress where I was happy at my weight and just wanted to be in shape.

Maybe I didn't actually make that progress.

So:

4) My skin. I have been so mean to it, and I hope serious Retin-A applications can fade the scarring lickety-split.

I've become super-disciplined about keeping up my skin care routine and not touching my skin EVER. (With the no nail-biting either, I am CONSTANTLY yanking my hands away from myself.)

5) My weight! According to the Spaniard's hotel scale and my clothing/eyes, I have not lost ANY weight since I came here, and I am no longer okay with that.

I just finally started pilates today. Will start running again tomorrow. (I'm nervous about finally confronting all the conditioning I've lost.)

Being very serious about diet. Been waking up to eat a large cafeteria breakfast, then a small lunch, then whatever fruit I want for the rest of the day. No chips, no junk. Lots of hunger. Motivation wavers hourly, because dieting totally sucks, and I'm really tired.

I wish I'd put more thought into it/could calculate the calories, but there's no time and not a lot of options in China. I can't imagine it's much less than 1200 calories, if that, so I'm sure it's fine. Two months won't kill me. Even if I am really, really tired.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.


P.S. I like this for my wedding dress:

































P.P.S. And I might like this purse:

































P.P.P.S. And, in an insane twist, I can actually afford them!

The Twenty-Sixth

I don't think that I've mentioned yet on this blog that I like baking. I've been doing it on beautiful sunny days in my mother's gorgeous kitchen when everyone was out since grade school. But you have no idea.

I had a roommate in Italy who was allergic to most things, including wheat and dairy, but she didn't miss them and happily ate raw cabbage and carrots with soy sauce at most meals. Yet when we went on day trips to various picturesque Italian cities, she'd expend at least half her memory card taking photos of the rows and rows and rows of gorgeous baked goods at the pasticcerie. I'm just like that, except I also loooooooooooooooooooooove to eat them. (Nevermind that I don't anymore.)

Baking is my meditation and Martha Stewart is my porn. Discovering this fancy cupcake paper thing absolutely made my day awhile back.


















Just how crazy beautiful is that? It was my desktop background for weeks, and it inspired a flurry of wedding dessert buffet brainstorming, largely centered around the use of said fancy cupcake paper things. I also just lost a lot of time poring over new cake recipes and designs on my way to finding that picture again just now. I am definitely going to have to try this


















and this:














But the POINT of this whole post is that you can only imagine my explosion of ecstasy when today I saw this:















































Sorry A, but I am going to marry this cake and, as E used to say in high school, have like a million of its babies.

The Twenty-Fifth

I wish this were a how-to for her makeup, because I really like it.









This is certainly the prettiest I've ever seen her look. And oddly, though the makeup is quite evident, my overwhelming impression is of how natural it is.

Maybe if I take this to a makeup artist, he can recreate it? I forgot that I still have to figure that out for the wedding too.

You know it's crazy that the stereotype is that women let themselves go after they get married. It seems as if weddings inspire us to finally figure out how to make ourselves look good, so why would we just pitch that newfound knowledge out the window?

Don't blame the marriage, blame the kids!

The Twenty-Third

First there was this:















Which I thought would be so cheerful-yet-clean-and-simple-yet-not-killable on my future beautiful desk in my future beautiful condo with A.

Then there was this:


















Which is making me contemplate wedding centerpieces again.

It appears that I really like succulents.

The Twenty-Second

I have ADD. Having ADD means you will lose every coat you ever own until college. As well as a lot of other things.

But before you weep for my sorry fate, it is not all tragic. I learned a great lesson from all those long years of loss: do not carry things in your hands.

In accordance with this rule, I have been shoving absolutely everything into my pockets and strapping everything that is larger than a pocket to my body. This has served me very well; I've not lost anything, and my hands are always free.

However, now I am a grown-up (of sorts), and grossly distorted pockets displaying key/cell/pencil/nailclippers/tissue wad-shaped bulges are not as sleek and professional-looking as they could be. Nor are messenger bags.

No, I'm afraid it is time for me to foray into the world of purses, even though that means constantly carrying something very important in my hands. I will just have to adapt again. Like those Galapagos birds.

Now, until yesterday, besides feeling very sure that L should stop buying $500 purses if she intends to keep complaining about how broke she is, I knew nothing about purses. I've just never, ever considered them. Though I've been trying to bring up the quality of my wardrobe overall, purses hadn't even occurred to me until I ran across this bag while looking at outfits on polyvore:












I generally see bags and think, "My, there's a lot of fringe and buckles on that." But this one was pretty cute! Serviceable-yet-sleek, and vaguely reminiscent of farm life. But of course it turned about it be a wildly expensive Coach bag.

And I would prefer it with old-and-warm-yet-shiny-and-sleek leather like this anyway:









And then I found this:












I don't actually like it. The clasp clashes horribly with the rest of it, and it's all a bit...rough. But I really like the generally tough vibe coming from overlapping thick strips of worn leather with hardware. It's so the opposite of what a purse usually is.

I just want the hardware to be as fitting as the Coach bag's, the leather to look like the football's, and the overall design to be more effortless (like the Coach bag's).

You can see how I've wasted hours at this.

There is a silver lining, though: if my epic searches ever do result in such a bag, carried in my hands or not, there is no WAY I'll lose it.