Panic Mode

Josh's parents are coming to visit in two weeks. And they're staying for four days.

I have never met these people. And naturally I'm scared stiff. 

It's my boyfriend's parents, guys. And he's constantly telling me they're super excited to meet me and they're going to love me and it's just terrifying. Because anyone who raised Josh to be as fantastic as he is is going to expect a lot. And what if they don't love me as much as Josh thinks they will?

Me and Josh at a Diamondbacks game. He's such a Phillies fan that he
refused to take his gear off, even for a different team.

Josh has already met my parents via video chat. In fact, he's met my whole crazy family. While Rachel was home in August we had a very complicated three-way Google hangout that included Mama, Daddy, Rachel and Molly in Livermore, Emma in Reno, and me and Josh in Phoenix. Mama was sure we'd scare him away, but the guy grew up with three brothers and a sister and a million cousins. My three sisters aren't going to scare him off. 

We've only been dating for four months or so. But already it feels pretty serious. He has this way of looking at me that's not like other boyfriends have done. I tried to explain it to my friend the other day and wasn't doing a very good job, so he said, "You mean like you're the best thing that ever happened to him?" And that's exactly it. 

Which is part of why I'm so terrified of meeting his parents. Because I do not want to mess this up. 

Midterm Assessment

Dear readers,

By now perhaps you are wondering where I disappeared to. Don't worry; I'm still here. But it has been a super busy couple of months. Allow me to explain. 

First, there's school. As academics go, this semester is much easier than others have been. I'm only taking 14 credits, and that includes my internship two days per week. But the internship lasted only until last week. Almost all of my classes are journalism classes — a Borderlands of the Southwest seminar (formerly called Latino and Transnational issues), Graphic Design for Print and Web, and Advanced Online Media. There's also a Small Business Operations and Planning course online that started last week. 

Fourteen credits doesn't sound like a lot. But the internship with Virgo Publishing required 15 hours per week. There was also a lot of stress involved. It was a lot more busy work than I expected and up until the last week, I had nothing with my name as a byline. Thankfully I came away with two clips for my portfolio. You can read one of them, a story about Starbucks and Evolution Fresh opening a new production plant, here. The other, a profile of a gastroenterologist who uses humor to ease her patients' fears, has yet to be published. Highlights of the internship were a giant orange coffee mug and using a cassette recorder to tape interviews ... except for the part where I ran out of tape in the middle of an interview and spent five minutes awkwardly apologizing for having to rewind.

Me with the giant orange coffee mug. And that polka-dot shirt? Yeah, that's from NY&Co.

But school isn't the only reason I've been busy. Up until last week I was working about 23 hours each week at New York and Company. At the end of this month I'll have been there for 90 days, which means I'm eligible for a promotion from sales associate to keyholder ... which is just a step down from assistant manager. My store manager has already talked to me a few times about the new position and has encouraged me to leave room in my schedule next semester for the job. That would require 30 hours a week minimum, but would come with a pay raise as well. Apparently I've been doing well in the position I'm in. Last week I had the highest average dollars per sale (ADS) and units per transaction (UPT), all of which employees are tracked on individually. And the previous week I scored the third most credit applications. 

I've also been shopping there a lot. Too much, actually. I have so many new outfits to show you. But more on that later. Right now my bedroom is in no shape to take mirror selfies, although my full-length mirror is finally hung!

How have your semesters been? Let me know in the comments section below!

The long and short of it

Everyone has that one haircut they look back on and regret. Maybe you rocked a mullet too far into the Nineties or maybe you went for the side-swept, overly straightened layers in the mid-00s. No judgement here if either of those is the case. I have an embarrassing hair story as well.

No trims for a year and this is the result...this, and an embarrassing amount
of split ends. I'm reluctant to snip yet because I've missed my long hair!

I've had super long hair for most of my life. My dad always preferred it, so that is how I wore it until the end of last summer. But last summer was a trying time for my family. In July my mom was suddenly and quite unexpectedly diagnosed with a type of colon cancer and underwent an emergency surgery to remove part of her large intestine and spleen. She spent the next three weeks in the hospital recovering.

We were told she would nave to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments for good measure. Hair loss was a possibility.

I'd had my hair long for years and I was bored. It was a hot summer in NorCal, and I was about to head back to school in an even hotter Phoenix. And the guy I was seeing at the time had been urging me to try a pixie cut (partly because he liked pixie cuts, and partly because he couldn't stand my hair touching him). So when the doctors said it might be a good idea to look into wigs for my other, that was it. I chopped. I donated a ponytail of snipped hair to my mother's hairdresser—who just so happened to specialize in treating cancer patients and had a thriving wig business!

Thankfully, my mother didn't lose her hair. The heartbreaker is that I got rid of this:

Sure, it had split ends a foot deep,
but was the chop really necessary?

Now my hair finally hits a good six inches below my collar bone. And now that it's safely back into the "long" range, I think I've learned my lesson. It's still kind of annoying when my hair catches on earrings or sunglasses or my boyfriend's stubble, but it's worth it to finally feel like I look like myself again.

Which do you prefer, long or short? Have you ever regretted a haircut? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Confessions of a cheapskate

Let me share a secret with you: Thirty dollars does not go far when it comes to buying furniture. Shocking, I know. But such is the lesson I rather unpleasantly learned today.

I'm a cheapskate. I freely admit it. I think a sandwich should cost no more than three dollars, and you should be able to buy a decent couch for twenty. I switch browsers when I reach my monthly online reading limit for The New York Times just so I don't have to buy a subscription, and my favorite coffee place is my favorite mostly because their regular coffee is fifty cents all day. I'm not a picky eater and I frequently buy clothing from Goodwill. But when it comes to furniture, I have fairly expensive tastes. And because I'm a cheapskate, I don't want to pay for what expensive tastes demand.

I blame Pinterest in part for my tastes. Populated in large part by successful interior designers, my Pinterest feed is constantly piping West Elm and Joss and Main into my inbox. The products are beautiful: glossy white parsons desks that seem to show up in every. home. office. photo; slim, taut, sofas that are a complete 180 from the slouchy, overstuffed microsuede affairs of man caves and frat houses; and cool, ropy "poufs" that would be perfect as an ottoman, seat or side table.

Is it too much to ask that my office look like this?
Image via Live Creating Yourself.

My problem is that I want SixThreeNine to look like a page out of The Everygirl, and the best I can do right now is one worn Target futon and two Walmart bookshelves. No yellow chevron area rug, no burlap throw pillows, and no industrial pipe and reclaimed wood dining table. 

Even my beloved thrift stores can't help me with this one. Today I spent two hours at Ultimate Consignment only to discover that the only thing I could afford there today was this beautiful carved purple armchair — which I WILL own eventually — and that even the cheapest desks were going to be about twenty dollars more than I could afford. Forget finding a dresser or a kitchen table for under one-fifty, and don't even think about bargaining for anything with the word "vintage" on its label. College students furnishing their first house don't buy vintage.

O, beautiful square white sofa, I pine for thee.
Image via The Everygirl.

So for now it's back to daily scouring of Craigslist for anything with even the slightest of DIY potential. Ikea desks, dressers from the Seventies and mattresses still in their original plastic are all fair game at this point.

New House Tour

Behold, the much-anticipated photos of the inside of the new house! This week starts the whole packing and moving process for me. So far the only major furniture I have to move are a couple bookshelves and my college futon ... which will be my bed until I can buy a mattress set! The poor bare living room has no sofa and the dining room has no table or chairs. But things will start to come together here and there, little pieces at a time. It's going to be so exciting to watch this home take shape!

Home Sweet Home

As you all know, I'm a junior at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. My major is based on the smaller, more professional Downtown Phoenix campus — NOT the rowdy, fratty main campus in Tempe! — and for the past two years, that's where I've lived: In the two-towered, fourteen-storied building that is ASU's single downtown dormitory.

But that changes next week. You see, Thursday I was given the keys to my very first apartment!

My friend Annika and I started looking for a place a few months ago, but most of the larger apartment complexes nearby were either too expensive or were too far away — though still along the light rail, they were decidedly midtown, not downtown. So we started looking for small houses to rent instead of focusing on apartment complexes.

And then we found this place. It's a cute little bungalow built in the 1920s. It was originally a duplex, but the upper floor has been sealed off and turned into a third unit. So now Annika and I have 900 glorious square feet to call our own.

I told Annika after touring it the first time that I don't believe in love at first sight except for this house (I refuse to call it an apartment). I've dubbed it SixThreeNine, and it's my baby.

Excited to see the inside? Check back later this week for more photos!

Outfit of the Day - July 31

Day two on the job! New York & Company has a dress code of black and/or white. As you may know — and as you'll soon figure out — my closet already consists mainly of blacks, grays, whites, tans, creams and navies (neutrals go with everything, including each other!), so in theory, dressing for work shouldn't be a problem for me. I have my entire closet to choose from.

But some rules are easier to follow when you don't know they exist. I had the hardest time choosing my outfit today because I really really really wanted to pair a yellow blouse with a red skirt, and I couldn't. 

In NY&Co's defense, the main thing stopping me was the lack of a yellow blouse.

Sweater: New York & Company. Jeans: American Eagle (via Goodwill).

Gold chain necklace: Charming Charlie. Gemstone bead necklace: unknown.
Brown basket-weave flats: Target. Leather and bronze-studded watch: Charming Charlie.

Renewing the Mind

A few months ago I was walking down the street with one of my friends when he made a disparaging remark about God. "Hey!" I protested, slightly offended. "What?" He returned in apparent surprise. "You're an atheist too."

"No, I'm not!" I replied, shocked that he would think so. 

But he too seemed shocked. "What?! But like all of your friends are and you never talk about it or anything."

He had me there. And I felt terrible.

I was raised in church. My father is a pastor of a Missionary Baptist church and has been for as long as I can remember. And for 18 and a half years, I went to church three times per week — Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night — unless I was severely feverish or actively vomiting. I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was nine, and I believed the Bible because I had always been taught that it was God's divine Word. 

But like so many other young "christians" — by name, if not by action — when I want away to college, church fell by the wayside. I would attend worship services on occasional visits back home, but in Phoenix, it wasn't part of my routine. None of the churches in the immediate vicinity were conservative enough to fit with what I believed, and I made only a minimal effort to look for a congregation beyond walking distance and accessible by public transportation. And because church was no longer a priority, neither was independent study. You know the drill: Kid moves away, Kid stops going to church, classes and extracurriculars pile up and the last thing Kid wants to do after reading 250 pages of text for an upper-division history class is read more text.

Until, of course, Kid is accused of being an atheist.

My friend was right: I usually don't talk about my religious beliefs very often. I'm a journalism major attending classes on a campus that consists mainly of journalism majors, all of whom are taught to keep their personal views and beliefs tucked away so as not to alienate any potential audience or negatively color the public's opinion of otherwise solid reporting. But Jesus told his disciples during his Sermon on the Mount, 

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)

Let's just go ahead and say that city on a hill is my daily life, and the light the city gives off is the image I project as I go about my affairs. The city's light cannot be hid, because every decision I make and action I perform leaves an impression on somebody. The key is to leave an impression — or let my city's light shine in such a way — that people look and say, "Wow. That must be God at work."

I know this, in theory. But there's something missing between that theoretical knowledge and actually putting it into action when my friend assumes I believe there is no God. Until now, that missing piece has been a desire to make God a real, honest priority. 

Paul wrote in Romans 12:1-2,

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

If I am to truly emit a "light" that glorifies God, I must first set aside regular time to "renew my mind" through studying His Word ... something I have never actually done. Like all relationships, a relationship with God takes effort. You don't get results if you're not really trying. And my friend's assumption was a wake-up call that I haven't been trying at all.

How about you? Have you let yourself veer away from regular study? How did you get back on track? I'd love to hear your stories. Comment below or feel free to shoot me a message.

Outfit of the Day - July 30

I suppose now is as good a time as any to announce that I have a new job! Starting today, I am a sales associate at New York & Company. My mother has shopped there for years, and I started shopping there a couple years ago when I moved to Phoenix and realized I needed some professional clothing for reporting and internships and such.

A note to fellow retail newbies: Never wear heels on your first day working retail. These shoes are usually super comfortable, but after a day of climbing ladders and carrying armloads of clothing, it may be a week or so before I can stand to wear these shoes again. 

Also note that mid-afternoon in late July in Phoenix is the wrong time to take off your heels and walk home barefoot.

Black t-shirt: Tilly's. Khaki pencil skirt: Target.

Gold chain necklace: Charming Charlie. Black patent pumps: Payless Shoe Source.
Watch: Charming Charlie. Large CZ stud earrings: Gift. Small CZ studs: HTC Piercing.

Outfit of the Day - July 27

This is how I look on weekends, guys! Or at least it's how I looked this weekend when I packed up my laptop and sociology textbook and went to the city library for a few hours for some peace and quiet.

I'd like to pretend that I'm always running around in a pencil skirt and heels and makeup doing important adult jobs that require lots of meetings and such, but the truth is I'm still a college student first and foremost. And college students have homework. And sometimes you just have to throw on the cutoffs in order to think properly. Come on...it's Phoenix in July. Everyone is entitled to cutoffs now and again.

Also to no makeup. Even if you're like me and normally only wear mascara and eyeliner, an afternoon walk to the library half a mile away is enough to make you sweat it all off.

Racerback camouflage tank: BBB Fashion. Jeans: Aeropostale (DIY cutoffs).
Canvas boat shoes: Old Navy. Leather handbag: The Sak (via Amazon.com). 

Hmm...these babies could use a wash.
It's a no-makeup day.