I can’t enough of yellow! I’m addicted to this yellow patent-leather belt, and my gigantic new bag makes me smile every day. How great is that pattern? It makes me think of something Elisabeth would create.

My haircut is fresh and short (picture soon), and it made me go and buy new t-shirts this morning (including a gray one to wear with my yellow belt!). Summertime should mostly be spent with short hair and soft-soft-soft t-shirts. I can’t wait for the weekend. I have a good feeling.

I drew a photo-realistic portrait of Evan on my thumb.

It was cold and windy outside today, but I wore my new coat anyway. I was freezing, but it was worth it. C’mon, springtime, you can do it!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

When we bought our house, we took off all of the doors inside to make it easier to refinish them and strip the paint off of the hardware. Two years later, we are still without 90% of our doors.

Yesterday I started in on the refurbishing process of the door pictured above, which belongs on the closet in the bedroom. Yes, the bottom two panels are missing, and were replaced with window screening. A couple of our other doors (one other closet, as well as the bedroom door leading to the hallway) have this same “feature”. I will, of course, be getting rid of the screening and repairing the doors with new panels of wood.

Can anyone explain this to me? WHY would someone put screening on an interior door? For ventilation? What on Earth would they be keeping in a closet that would need to breathe?!

As a side note, today is St. Patrick’s Day, which translates to a morning train full of drunken college students with shamrocks painted on their faces, and, because I work in midtown, the constant sound of the stupid parade going past my office building. I hate parades. I also loathe public drunkenness. And, you know, green bagels.

PHEW. Is it really March 9th already?! I don’t know what happened to the last two months, but I am totally exhausted. The past couple of weeks have been pretty ridiculously cruddy (family members in the hospital, jury duty, Evan away on a business trip, train outages, computer nightmares, work nightmares, conspicuously absent plumbers, etc.), and this weekend was just barely an improvement…and now it’s time to go back to work tomorrow. I need time off! I’m so tired and so behind on everything, which is the worst feeling.

In happy, non-whiny news, I have a new computer!!! YAYYYYY!!! We bought a 20″ iMac on Saturday, and then spent the next 24 hours struggling with wireless configurations. Ultimately, we’ve opted to return the problem-ridden Time Capsule we bought, and go back to our trusty AirPort Extreme. (Never, ever buy the first generation of anything Apple makes the first week it’s on the market. Never!)

It was well beyond time to replace the old Graphite iMac, which had been with me since 1999 (!!), and it’s extra super nice to have a second computer to accompany our MacBook, which is primarily sofa-bound. I do most of my heavy duty design stuff at work on a fancy Mac Pro machine, but an iMac suits my needs very well at home. I’m excited. The monitor feels so big!

I’m really, really tired, and it’s going to be another long week. Sleep-sleep-sleep-sleep-time.

p.s. Here’s Bruno on his birthday!

Our modem died.

We are likely going to be internet-less until the weekend. As in, FIVE DAYS FROM NOW.

Pray for me.

(If you’re waiting for an email from me, please be patient!)

This might sound kind of goofy (I’m pretty sure once you’ve used the word “goofy” to describe something, you’re really only describing yourself), but I actually deliberated over whether to shoot around my television set when I was taking photos for the AT tour.

Over the years that I’ve been reading interior decor/home magazines, I’ve noticed that television sets are conspicuously missing from the ones I am drawn to the most. There’s something a bit gauche about showing a TV, apparently, perhaps because the appearance of one is an automatic indicator that the owner of the house does not, in fact, spend all of their free time either reading the The New Yorker, listening to NPR, or teaching their kids about classical music. I suppose there’s a part of me that wishes I didn’t watch TV, and that I spent more of my time at home, say, reading. Or scraping paint off of the radiators.

Anything but watching Rock of Love and Celebrity Rehab (see, I’m not taking the easy road here and just name-checking Project Runway, even though I watch that, too—go, Christian!). I don’t know, maybe I’m still recovering from a non-TV-intensive childhood (We played outside with little animals out of pine cones and sticks!). Or maybe I just like crappy reality TV. Either way, watching television in the evenings is a reality for me, and I’m not going to pretend that I only own a small set that stays hidden in a closet somewhere unless we’re watching a rented movie (foreign, of course—with subtitles).

Honestly, it’s only a matter of time before Bret Michaels is a guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, right? High and low culture usually wind up crossing paths eventually, anyway.

So the TV stays, and I’m not going to hide it. Our Sharp LCD gets to sit right there in the living room (yes, directly opposite the sofa, imagine that!), next to the fireplace, and I’m not going to put it behind a door or a curtain. I’d still know it’s there, and I have a feeling it would be even worse having to come to terms with how often I’d be opening that door or pulling back the curtain. At least we only have one TV, and we rarely watch it on the weekends.

And I don’t watch Tyra, because she is crazy.

Just a few things…

→ I feel nice wearing magenta.

→ I’m feeling extra good about where I live lately, because we’ve finally started meeting more like-minded people nearby. It’s amazing how just meeting up with a new friend for coffee can make you feel a million times more positive about just about everything.

→ (Which makes me want to host dinner parties.) (And makes me miss Brooklyn a little bit less.)

→ The weather today is perfect. Sunny, cold, clear.

→ We have a new plumber coming this weekend to assess the bathroom situation (yes, it still looks like that) and see if maybe we can get going on the work that needs to be done. I didn’t mention it here before, but our previous plumber kind of just never showed up again after a certain point, and, well…it would be really nice to have a second bathroom.

→ That kind of work will take money, though, so it looks like we’re not going to be traveling to Sweden for Midsummer as I had been hoping. Another time!

How is it possible that today is only Monday? Friday (and the subsequent 3-day weekend) are still 4 whole days away. Sigh. I wish I didn’t think so much about schedules and days off and work hours and blah blah blah, but this is what happens when I go for a few nights without getting enough sleep. I am tired and fussy and not feeling very cute at all.

I’ve been “tagged” by a few people over the last couple of weeks to do this “7 random things about me” bit, and honestly, I don’t know if I can come up with that many! I’ll try. If you used to read Absolutely Vile (or if you know me), then you probably know all of these things already, sorry!

I have never driven a car. Nope, never. I don’t even have a learner’s permit. I used to say that I’d learn before I turned 30, but that age came (and went) a couple of years ago, and, well, let’s just say that I have a feeling my 13-year-old niece is going to be learning to drive before me.

I never leave the house without makeup. Frankly, I don’t even like to be alone inside the house with a bare face. I’ve always wished I could be one of those people who looks fresh and cute straight from the shower, but I look like a total hag unless I’m (at the very least!) wearing undereye concealer and mascara.

I was an English Literature major my first year at college. It’s true! For some reason (rebellion against my artist parents?!), I was very resistant to study art in college, and thought I wanted to be a writer or something crazy like that. It took me exactly two semesters of Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales (in Middle English!) for me to figure out that I needed to transfer to the fine arts program. WHAT A RELIEF! I stayed an extra year to make up for the lost time, and got my BFA.

My middle name is Ruth. It comes from my paternal grandmother.

My first name rhymes with the American pronunciation of piranha, NOT banana. A lifetime of hearing it mispronounced by teachers, coworkers, graduation speakers, and store clerks has made me kind of sensitive about this. It’s also made me assume that anyone else who spells their name A-N-N-A must be a banana-Anna, and not a piranha-Anna, so I wind up saying their names wrong sometimes, which is weird.

I have had 20 pet rats, most of them rescues. Rats are wonderful animals and great pets, like tiny dogs. I hope someday I’ll be able to have them again, but for now I’m happy to work as a facilitator for a rat rescue, placement, and fostering group. Of all the “pocket pets”, I think rats are by far the best for homes with children, by the way. On the whole, rats are very gentle animals that respond well to attention and affection. Their only downside is a short life span (typically around 2-3 years), but they pack a lot of enjoyment into that time period. Go rats!

I have had the same job for 10 years. I work at a publishing house as a book cover designer, and this is where I’ve been for the duration of my entire career. I came in with my portfolio a couple of weeks after I graduated from college, and was hired shortly thereafter. I don’t know many people my age who have only had one real job (I worked as a barista and bookstore clerk full time in college, but that was really just to pay the bills)—the exception being three of the other designers I work with every day, all of whom went to the same college I did! The turnover rate here is low. It’s a great place to work, and I truly enjoy coming in every day. (Okay, I like staying home, too. But not because I don’t like my job!)

I don’t want to “tag” anyone else because that makes me feel weird. I don’t like putting people on the spot, you know? If you feel like it, though, be my guest.

It was 1°F (-17°C) when we left the house this morning! We take a ferry across the Hudson to the train every morning, and as of today, the river is really beginning to ice over. It’s a combination of thrilling and terrifying to be on the boat as it crashes through the mini-icebergs!

On the Manhattan side of the commute, people are wrapped up in scarves and down and boots. I love this time of year—everyone becomes an anonymous, steamy-mouthed, red-nosed, hunchbacked blob, scurrying to the door of an office building to get out of the cold.

Back home on the sofa, wool socks and blankets can’t compete with the warmth given off by a 10-pound dog. We are totally taking advantage of our little Bruno’s furnace-like body, but somehow I don’t think he minds.

The sun is out and reflecting off of the fresh layer of snow we got in Newburgh last night—it’s winter, it’s beautiful, and it’s the last day of the year. My mice are enjoying their fresh pot of wheatgrass, and I’m preparing for a late-night feast with friends at our house tonight.

Be safe, be happy, be bright. In 2008, let’s spend less money, fix more things that are broken, and say hello to people we don’t know!

(The Swedes have the best New Year posts: Camilla, Elisabeth, and Sandra.)

This morning in our house—the decorations are subtle. No tree this year, just wee Jultomte and Julbok, with some floating silver glass balls in the fireplace. My grandmother’s Christmas plate from 1911 (it hangs in our kitchen all year long, but only today is it appropriate). It still feels like Christmas!

Christmas Eve at my mother’s house was more festive, as is always the case when children are around:

Today we’re off to see Sweeney Todd! Then it’s a much-needed week off for doing anything we want to. (Fingers crossed for lots of snow.) Merry Christmas!

Three loaves of Lena’s pumpkin cranberry bread are cooling in the kitchen (I already snuck a little piece; it’s amazing). The house smells like winter.

What a busy, short weekend it has been.

Snow is coming tonight!! I’m going to bed early and resting myself for a short short workweek…

Today is my birthday! I am 32 years old.

In the past year I have:

… lost 60 pounds.
… gotten to know my house really well.
… spent time with people I hadn’t seen for years.
… entered my 10th year of being a book cover designer.
… nearly ended my longtime struggle with insomnia.
… gone back to wearing eyeliner.

Five of those things are major, and one is less so—you can probably figure out which one—but this really sums up a good, long year for me. I’m glad to have gotten back to doing all of this, too. I’m having a hard time remembering exactly why I ever stopped doing it.

My skin is rebelling against the stress of the week, emails are piling up, I’m too tired to sleep, I’m thristy, I somehow have to design two book covers from scratch as well as make revisions to three more before tomorrow at noon, the cuticle on my left thumb is sore, I ate too much salt today, I look tired, the weather is weird and humid and warm and un-fall-like suddenly, the garden is feeling neglected, I’ve accomplished nothing tonight, and I want to go to bed and not get up until November.

By next week things will be much better, I’m sure. On Saturday we’re making a day trip to Philadelphia, and Sunday will be for buying winter clothes and doing a little more demolition in the bathroom. And then on Monday I’ll get up for work and try not to worry about everything so much. And then my skin will be happy, and so will I.

p.s. Watching the incredible progress they’re making over at Day at a Glance is both inspiring me (it’s only taken them a month to get that far!) and bringing me down (we bought this house a year and a half ago!) at the same time. I really need to take a week off and refocus.