Good Decisions Binge!

After a weekend of shopping for beautiful clothes we didn’t need and eating desserts with the word Xanga! in them, Jenius and I decided we needed to start making better decisions.

Not that there’s anything wrong with buying beautiful things or eating the occasional deep-fried cheesecake (hence the Xanga!), but we figured we should try to stagger them… and maybe balance them with a banana or something.

So we made a pact to make better decisions.

And that sounded boring and grown-up and awful, so I decided to add the word Binge! to it and make it more exciting!

Here are some things we’re doing to act more like adults for our Good Decisions Binge!

Get in shape! I don’t believe in diets, but I do subscribe to the “eat less, move more” philosophy every once in a while, so yesterday we joined the YMCA. Also we bought Just Dance 2 for the Wii and hilarity ensued—though we did get a pretty good sweat going.

Spend less money! Mainly because, you know, we’re broke-ass college grads who don’t have very much in the first place.

Go to bed! Without 30-page papers to write and a house full of prone-to-party college women, getting to bed at a reasonable hour is much more doable, but we’ve still got plenty of party in us, so we’re having to push a little to get our butts to bed.

Be more informed about what’s going on in the world! We are now officially a household that subscribes to the newspaper. How adult is that? Also, we listen to NPR sometimes. It’s a step.

Stop eating crap! Or at least less crap. 

Covered in sticky, metaphorical afterbirth

When I looked at the calendar this morning, a thought occurred to me. If I’d gotten knocked up the day I graduated from college, I’d be having a baby today. Assuming a perfect gestation period, of course.

 

With that in mind, I did what my generation does best—I sent out a mass text and now I’m blogging about it. I think my friends’ responses bespeak much of their respective post-grad situations and the type of delivery process they’re having with the screaming newborn that is adult life.

 

To: Christine, Sarah E., Sarah B., Rachele, Jenni, Corey

We graduated exactly 9 months ago.

Sent: Tue Feb 22, 11:45am

 

From: Christine

And I see [our alma mater] from the window next to my desk. How fitting is that?

Received: Tue Feb 22, 12:02pm

 

From: Sarah E.

What what?

Received: Tue Feb 22, 11:46am

 

From: Sarah B.

That’s right…I miss being an undergrad!

Received: Tue Feb 22, 11:45am

 

From: Rachele

Bull Shit. It was like 5 years ago and yesterday.

Received: Tue Feb 22, 12:13pm

 

From: Jenni

Shut your mouth.

Received: Tue Feb 22, 1:45pm

 

From: Corey

You shut your whore mouth!

Received: Tue Feb 22, 11:46am

 

I’d have to say… I agree with them.

 

Aldi

There are few places that exist as saving graces to the broke-ass college grad. Ikea for home goods, Target and Wal-Mart (if you believe in that sort of thing) for everything else, the Dollar Store, maybe. I’d like to add another store to the canon of cheap.

Aldi.

In fact, I’m so enamored of this perpetrator of honest to goodness savings I’m going to write an impromptu love poem.

The clink of a quarter in a metal cart

Begins the brisk beating of my hungry heart

The automatic doors open with a swish

And I see the answer to my wish

In the maze of little cardboard boxes

With off-brand names and cartoon foxes

Prices I can actually afford!

Alert the Federal Reserve board!

Surely it must be some sort of crime

To sell a pack of noodles for under a dime!

At other stores I may get VIC cards

Be called an MVP or earn Fresh Rewards

But here at Aldi it will suffice

To get all my groceries at half the price

Trying New Things

Try a new thing every day! Live each moment as if it’s your last! Make the most of life! Blah, blah, blah. But seriously, there’s a whole lot of world and not a lot of time to take it all in. With seven whole continents and almost as many billion people, there’s no excuse to spend every day doing the same things with the same people.

That said, Branflakes and I embarked on a journey this weekend to try new things. Here’s a list of those things.

1.      Homemade chicken salad. Sometimes, when you’re an adult, the only food you have in the house is a frozen chicken breast, two jars of mayonnaise and half an onion. But don’t fret, because, as it turns out, this is all you really need to make delicious homemade chicken salad! However, it is crucial that you don’t leave it unattended, especially if you have a dog or a roommate with boundary issues.

2.      Homemade white Russians. It’s like chocolate milk for grown-ups! And surprisingly easy to make. We didn’t have bread, but we had all the ingredients for this sweet and tasty alcoholic beverage. Though, to be fair, the vodka was a Christmas present, the Kahlua was inherited from our college apartment and the milk… well, all responsible adults have milk.

3.      Homemade entire bottle of Chardonnay.  This generally requires much less effort than either of the previous recipes. Unless you break the cork in half and have to spend the next ten minutes carefully prying it out piece by piece with whatever sharp, skinny implements you can find.

4.      Walking to the bar. Now that we’re out of college, it’s much easier to make good decisions that benefit our own health and the health of those around us.

5.      Club Platinum. Most nights it’s a hip-hop club, so it wasn’t exactly our scene to begin with, but Friday night, Club Platinum hosted…

6.      Battle of the (Metal) Bands. When you’re seeing someone, the adult thing to do is to support their endeavors. And sometimes that means stepping outside your comfort zone and listening to bands called Whiskey Hell Child rock ten minute scream solos.

7.      Stealing from the bar. Now before you freak out, it was just water cups. You know, for the bottle of wine we smuggled in.

8.      Drinking smuggled wine on the bathroom floor. I’m not sure exactly what it was that prompted us to stay on the bathroom floor for so long, when it was clearly our intention to drink from the stolen water cups. My guess, though, would be the other bottle of wine, the white Russians and the mix drinks at the first bar.

9.      Making friends with metal-heads. This one falls under the category of things we tried. Turns out, two drunk white girls in shorts and colored tights don’t appeal to serious metal fans.

10.  Taking a nap on the concrete. One might argue that this list (and thus, this night) has a clear progression into college-level drunkenness. And one would be right. 

Cheap, Swedish Furniture: A Progression

Ikea. It shines a warm, moderately priced beacon of hope to recently uprooted broke-ass college grads everywhere. Or at least in or around their 38 U.S. locations. Conspicuous consumers can find themselves lost for hours in the well-designed maze chocked full of cheap, shiny goods sure to spruce up their one bedrooms in the city or the old houses downtown that they share with three other roommates. 

This past week I helped a friend move into her new place and I experienced firsthand the catch. Three words, people: some assembly required. Let’s explore a real life progression of two adults with college degrees assembling a bed, a dresser with mirror attachment and a nightstand.

6:49 I arrive at Sarah’s new house. It’s light blue and full of rooms. I am given a whirlwind tour and get out a few basic details about my life before she thrusts a screwdriver in my hand and starts opening boxes.

7:00 Sarah is prepared 2011-style, having spent countless hours reading message boards and watching internet videos with tips on building Ikea furniture at home. The best singular piece of advice out there: tiny paper cups. For some reason, the Swedes don’t find it necessary to use gratuitous numbers of plastic baggies for each separate nut and bolt like us ‘Mericans.

7:20 We’ve decided to start with the bed, since after assembling A BED, we’ll feel insanely accomplished and ready to tackle the less complex furniture.

7:35 We discover that assembling a bed is more complex than we bargained for. We’re still feeling good about it, but are discouraged by the number of factors working against us.

            Factor #1: Call it the “universal language” all you want, but instructions without words are goshdarn confusing! Plus, it leads me down a dark and paranoid mental path where I imagine that in order to attain their low-low costs, they eliminate anything they deem unnecessary—words, extra baggies, tools of any kind, screws, THAT METAL BAR THAT HOLDS THE BED TOGETHER!

            Factor #2: Turns out, the pieces needed to make a bed are fairly large. Like, the size of a bed. And between the two of us, our arms are only so long!

            Factor #3: In order to fit the giant bed pieces into the other giant bed pieces, all giant bed pieces have to be perfectly level. PERFECTLY level.

            Factor #4: We’re not far in and my hands are already cramping.

8:15 The bed is definitely starting to look like a bed. Unfortunately, we’ve hit a standstill. Without getting into the confusing and boring specifics, there simply aren’t enough pictures to explain how we’re supposed to get from step 9 to step 10.

8:25 We call in reinforcements from Sarah’s new roommate and friends downstairs. Between the six of us there are upwards of ten degrees in the room. We’re stuck.

8:30 New roommate’s friend suggests we skip step 10 and go straight to 11. We pass around the instructions one more time in a last ditch effort to come up with solutions. New roommate and friends return to their music and food downstairs. Sarah and I sit on the ground.

8:45 We skip step 10 and go straight to 11. Despite our fears that the bed will fall to pieces in the middle of the night, this appears to be the right thing to do.

9:30 The bed is complete! We reward ourselves with pizza and beer!

10:30 Next step, dresser. The pieces are laid out, the screws are in their respective tiny paper cups, the iPod is on shuffle and we’re feeling good.

10:45 Step 2 of the dresser indicates that we should be using a hammer. After a thorough sweep of the new house, we discover a distinct lack of hammers. New roommate finds a tomahawk (pictured above) in the shed out back, but we find it’s easier to bang the crap out of the tiny nails with a wrench.

12:30 We’re only about halfway through the dresser and morale is low. We decide to crack open a few more beers, despite Sarah’s dad’s only warning.

12:35 We’ve put the top of the dresser on backwards. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like crying, but it’s the closest I’ve actually come to breaking down.

1:15 The dresser is complete, but for a few scratches on the top, a number of bruises and a significantly lowered sense of potential.

1:16 The instruction booklet for the nightstand is about a tenth the size of the section of the dresser instructions dedicated to the drawers. We realize it might have actually made more sense to slowly build our confidence with an easier project in the beginning.

2:01 Bed, dresser and nightstand complete. Knees destroyed, hands callused, minds heavy with line drawings and a newfound appreciation for the written word. 

Winter Blows

This may or may not be a revelation, but winter is way more fun before you grow up. As a child, it’s a time of bright lights, looking forward to vacation and presents, depending on your family’s religious inclination. But as the glow of naiveté fades and our dreams of Santa are replaced by the reality of growing obesity and the declining economy, winter becomes a time of cynicism, guilt and stomachache. As this January leaves 2010 in the dust, here is a list of all the things I now hate about winter. Cheers!

Snow. Once a glittering carpet host to winter wonderlands and friendly neighborhood snowball fights, this frozen precipitate now serves to remind us mainly of how dirty our cities are. It’s inconvenient, disgusting and freezing. Plus, now you’re expected to do the shoveling yourself.

The Power Bill. Not that the two of us were exactly besties before now, but dayum! It’s like, when you keep the heat on all the time, they want you to pay for it. Go figure. And while we’re at it,

Power Outages. I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I always used these as an opportunity to scare my younger siblings and act like I lived in Frontier Times. Turns out, Frontier Times also blew.

Winter Clothes. Sure, they can be stylish and fun, but no matter how cute the scarf/sweater combo, it’s still a pain in the ass to have to disrobe every time you enter a building.

Christmas. Or whatever it is you’re obligated to celebrate, if anything. I know this was a while ago, but I’m only just getting over the joy of it all. In fact, it’s a joy so specific and palpable, I’m going to give it its own subset.

            Christmas Decorations. The lights get tangled and burnt out in the box, they’re mostly an eyesore if they’re not your own and they take for-e-ver to take down.

Relatives. Unless of course you’re a sucker for guilt trips, drunk uncles, unnecessary drama and the inevitable and incessant line of questioning about your future and current love life.

            Presents. Cliché rants about materialism aside, they’re an expensive and annoying tradition. There will always be people who are impossible to shop for and you will always get things that you can neither use nor return.

            Christmas Food. Impossible not to over-do. That third helping of deep-fried Philly cheesesteaks (a personal family tradition) may be delicious now, but after the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, various cheese products and entire plate of Christmas cookies, you’ll most assuredly hate yourself.

            Santa. There is just no way to romanticize a fat, balding, out of work actor sitting in a sweaty red polyester suit at the mall, purporting to spy on your every action and doling out justice in the form of overpriced toys.

So yeah, let me know when the ice melts and I can wear flip flops again. I’m gonna go put another blanket on my bed so I can keep the heat down tonight. 

If you could reblog this,

waitaminutewhat:

Phylicia Barnes went missing two days ago.

I don’t know all of the details because I don’t personally know her but one of my friends is really upset over it and any kind of help would be really appreciated.

She lives around the Monroe/Charlotte NC area, but she has family in Atlanta, Georgia so she could really be anywhere.

Things adults do: reblog.

(via palahniukandchocolate)