Simple Joys and Christmastime

Today I went to a second-hand clothing shop in Cambridge called The Garment District. I bought 11.6 pounds of clothing for $11.60. I bought three more shirts for around $9 bucks each (they were deemed too nice to go into the dollar-a-pound pile) and also, a hat. I love a good hat. And I love a good bargain. Some of the clothes are, well- understandably discarded by others. But I can make them into something cool, I think. I think almost anything can look cool. It's all about the confidence of the person wearing it.

It rained today: it should've snowed. But even without the snow, tomorrow is still Christmas Eve, and I'm glad. I've discovered something about being home that I never used to know. Since college is in New York and the only time I'm ever home is during school break, it's become a lot more enjoyable of a place. The only things I associate home with anymore are hanging out with people I love, sleeping late in my old bed, playing with my dog: just relaxing. It's really lovely. I like being home so much more now than I ever did in high school. I like it a lot.

I drank a lot of coffee today, far too much- I can't really have caffeine anymore since it does terrible things to my body, but I'm indulging because it's the holidays. Currently I'm in my favorite pajamas (my favorite pajamas always consist partially of worn, faded, over-sized t-shirts.) They're not sexy pajamas, my friend pointed out to me. She said she could picture me, married someday, writing, wearing my skirts all day and then getting home to my cold apartment and climbing in bed with my laptop and my oversized t-shirts and my glasses next to my husband...She can picture my whole life very well. Apartments and the city in the winter and simple joys, takeout meals and candlelight and cheap living all around. Book-reading and throw rugs and things that are broken and things that are recycled and creative and homemade and a lot of making do. I think it sounds like an okay picture.

I'm sitting in my bed, surrounded my my secondhand clothes, watching Bridget Jones' Diary, which is a fairly terrible movie, except I love Renee Zellweger and I love Hugh Grant and I love Colin Firth, and I love Jane Austen remakes too, even crappy ones. And anyway, BJD is one of those crappy movies that I love to indulge myself in once in a while. I'm watching it and eating homemade fudge: one of the perks of having a mother whose a 2nd grade teacher: at Christmastime she gets lots of presents from the kids, and one of those presents is always, inevitably, fudge.

I'm also listening, while I write this, to my winter playlist. Right now it consists of Feist's new album, "Metals", particularly the songs "Graveyard" and "How Come You Never Go There". It also consists of Greg Hansard and Marketa Irglova's song "Falling Slowly", The Civil Wars' song, "Poison and Wine", Lana Del Rey's song, "Video Games", Kate Nash's song, "Nicest Thing", Snow Patrol's song, "Set Fire to the Third Bar"...and well, a lot of other music I'm not going to list right now. But it's beautiful stuff, and it's perfect for the mood I'm in right now. (It's not all depressing, I only listed the sadder songs, because they're what I'm listening to now. They seemed fitting.)

I wrote a long post about tattoos and things, and I'm sorry I didn't post it last week like I said I would. It needs editing and such, but I'm off to watch the rest of the movie now, and eat more fudge, and enjoy my new clothes, and enjoy the rest of my evening. I'll post it in the near future, but until then, Merry Christmas to you all. Take baths while you're home, listen to "Metals", light candles, gaze at your Christmas tree, go into the city at night, try to ice skate if you get a chance, wear scarves and hats and mittens, see old friends, hold hands, sleep late, and drink coffee. Let your souls be brightened, because it is that time of year. I wish you all peace and happiness, if only for this holiday. Tis the season.

Meanwhile, if you're desperate for some good reading and this blog has once again let you down, maybe this will satisfy you till I get some better stuff posted up: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/one-sentence-love-story/. I certainly enjoyed it.

With Apologies to the People Who Expect Quality Posts on a Regular Basis

It's early Sunday morning, which means technically I missed updating this week. But you'll have to forgive me, it's been a terribly, terribly busy week. I've been doing lots of things and every possible moment of free time has been spent, well, napping. Deep, all-consuming, really restful kind of naps.

The kind of naps it takes a while to recover from. So that's my excuse, pure and simple. Also this weekend, a friend from Mass actually came and visited me, which is really insane, and cool. She goes to RIT, and she's friends with one of my friend's girlfriends. I think it's pretty crazy that I can go to school eight hours away from home, in the middle of nowhere, and meet up with a friend, who just happened to befriend the girlfriend of a guy I just happened to befriend. I love when life works that way.

Anyway she came and visited, for just about 24 hours, which was nice, just to see her and catch up, so far away from home.

Um um um, that's not what this post was supposed to be about though. I don't have a whole post's worth of thoughts regarding my friend's visit.

Let's compromise okay? This isn't a cop out, I promise, but it is the Christmas season, and it's also finals week, so you've got to cut me some slack and let me just post a list of my top ten Christmas movies ever. That way you can go out and watch them while I study my butt off (who am I kidding, I think I've studied my butt off maybe once in my whole life) and then we can reunite next week, when I've flown back home to good old Massachusetts, and I catch my breath, and I have something interesting and worthwhile to write about again.

...

Who am I kidding? I am the most indecisive person ever and as a result of that I don't that I've ever been able to successfully make a top ten list. So just go, go on, put in A Muppet Christmas Carol and drink egg nog while you set up your tree and think of me being hungry and wanting to put my head through a wall for the next five days.

Until we meet again my friends.