Category Archives: Emily A.

by Emily A.

Oh gosh, guys, I’ve missed you.  I’m full of feelings about it.  Gush gush gush.

It’s been several months since I’ve posted on beloved Life in Labels, and the more vigilant I’ve been about keeping up on my fellow blogesses, the more I’ve bemoaned the fact that I’ve stopped being one.  So I thought I’d pop on in and say hello, share a couple new labels with y’all.

A face that at once says “Monday’s almost over/I’ve missed you all/Look how long my hair’s grown!”

Funderemployed: The “you just graduated and now you’re making it on your own-good for you!” high is beginning to wane.  My love of travel and spa treatments (and Christmas!  CHRISTMAS!) is beginning to wax.  I’m still putting in 4 days a week plus brownie-point hours at my non-profit job.  But NOW, spurred by inspiration, a growing personal network of geniuses, an upcoming coaches’ retreat, and a deep, abiding love of money, I’m hustling myself harder as a Life Coach.  My website, bombshellcoaching.com, doesn’t quite exist yet, but it will as of January 1st.  I’m putting more charm in with coaching networks I’m a part of, and chipping away at a refresher of everything I learned from training last winter.  And I’m gazing at office spaces for lease in Portland, sighing longingly, and then adding chips of resolve to my Resolve Bucket as I pledge to work harder.

Living In Sin: I anecdotally mentioned my boyfriend a couple times in my regular blogging, majorly downplaying how cookoo-nutso-bonkers-crazy-in-love with him I am.  We’ve since shacked up, with my four-legged bundles of joy.  It is absolutely not what I always imagined it to be (essentially a very emotionally fulfilling roomates-with-benefits-plus-you’re-like-my-boyfriend type situation). It’s way frickin’ better.  People (read: my dad) made a wonderful game of telling horror stories about cohabiting before Boyfriend and I made the jump, and I’m happy to report that it is not, in fact, horrifying.  It is very cool to be a part of a household, that’s different from living at home, that’s different from sharing responsibilities with a roomate, that’s different even from living with my best friend – which was awesome.  It’s this whole other dynamic with the added benefits (wink) of having more time together without planning for it.  Plus we do the dishes together!  It’s adorable!!

Runner (sort of actually for real now!):  Someone once told me that the different between a jogger and a runner is a number bib.  If that’s true, then I’m a runner now!  I ran (okay, jogged…semantics…) a 5k this summer and then smugly and sorely made my way around the world like a smug bastard for the next week.  And I’m fine with it.  I felt really frickin’ proud and still feel proud thinking about it. Plus it was the Color Run, which was totally fun and which I absolutely recommend to anyone with any inkling.

This was extremely fun and extremely colorful.

Whatever the Label is for “Horrible at Keeping in Touch with People” I like to think that part of navigating the transition from College to The Afterlife involves accepting that communication with people you used to talk to every damn day is going to wane.  But it’s still strange.  On the minus side, I miss my friends on the opposite coast and I don’t talk to them as often.  Plus I feel sheepish about my lacking efforts in reaching out.  But on the plus side, I’m always sort of amazed at how un-weird it is to get in touch, even after months without any blips on our radars.  It’s a sad but ultimately very sweet testament to the friendships I have – I think – that we can duck out when we have to, and then duck back in with an understanding that is, I hope, mutual.

Spinner : I go to spin class now, pretty much weekly except when I’m feeling lazy.  Oh god.  I hate it so much for every minute of it except the last minute of class, and then I LOVE IT MORE THAN ANYTHING because I feel like Superwoman, Goddess of Cardio and Butt Strength.  But christ, that shit’s hard.

I have no elegant sign-off for this post,
Em A.

by Emily A.

Oh hey all.  Sorry for the no-post last week.  I got caught up in some sweet, sweet hospitalization.

Tuesday afternoon I had nasty stomach pains that I initially chalked up to a case of too much pizza.  Then they got nastier.  Then I couldn’t stand up, so I went to the nearest hospital’s ER, where I waited miserably (there is no word that describes the frustration of watching someone saunter into urgent care ahead of you while you writhe in pain on a chair, wailing like a wet cat at the moon and crying uncontrollably in front of complete strangers.  But I digress…) until some lovely beautiful man beckoned me back to a stretcher and shot pain meds into my arm.  Bliss.

A slew of scans revealed that one of a few marble-sized stones of hardened calcium and bile (mmmmm) in my gall bladder tried to cut and run, which caused the whole thing to become sick and inflamed and fold on itself, which essentially turned my previously functioning organ into a Powerhouse of Pain.  Fortunately, after a few hours and some more magical anti-pain juice, the major attack had subsided to a dull throb, and I was moved upstairs to a room where I’d wait for surgery to cut out my gall bladder.

It was not this cushy, but it did boast a lovely assortment of toiletries, and some pretty sweet complimentary socks (which I stole).

The whole ordeal was a little scary (I’d never been hospitalized, let alone cut up and glued back together), but the procedure is pretty run of the mill, and I had the nicest nurses in the world, who made me feel a lot better.  Which is good, because when someone is literally pulling your underwear up and down for you and putting you on and off the toilet seat to pee because you can’t by yourself, you kind of want them to be nice.  Which brings me to my next point…

Turns out that when your guts are all swollen and messed with and sliced up, and your body is full of drugs and carbon dioxide (They puffed me up like a balloon to operate! Which is cool!), and everything hurts, you have to ask for lots of help.  And once you’re out of the hospital and it’s hard to sit down or stand up, and you can’t really bend at the waist or move much, you have to ask for lots of help.

Turns out I don’t like asking for lots of help.

I’ll do it, and I am pretty good at recognizing when something is beyond the scope of what I can do on my own.  Generally I love asking for help because it usually means learning or accomplishing something I might not have on my own.  But the past week I’ve asked for a lot of help.  And I’ve found that actually straight up relying on others to get the basics done, sort of interferes with the sense of Independent Womanliness I’ve construed for myself.

It’s kinda tough to feel like Beyonce when you can’t pull up your own undies.

But the extraordinary thing about all this has been realizing that I’m actually surrounded by heroic superhumans.  People have crawled out of the woodwork to wish me well and offer help with something that isn’t even that serious, medically.  I keep a fairly sunny outlook on human nature on any given Anyday, but folks have seriously been exceeding my expectations.  **Special shout-outs to my mom, who’s hung in there from across the country ever patiently and level-headedly since the initial “omg i think i’m dying” texts, and my superhellarad boyfriend who, in addition to literally doing everything, stocked my fridge with my favorite jell-o’s for my return from the hospital.  Magical.**

So it’s been interesting.  And sort of painful and miserable but also sort of amazing and uplifting.  And stuff for the past couple of days seems to be returning to normal (I got honked at by a driver today while walking my dog, so I guess even when hunched over and traveling at the pace of a 107-year-old woman with a baseball bat up her ass, my swag has returned,) and I feel a kazillion times better and more self-sufficient.  Generally, with how rad everyone is being, it’s not hard to see my stint at the hospital and the ensuing convalescence as a win.

Plus it provided me with a bonus label for this week!  Score!

Happy Tuesday, all.

I was scrubbing around my brain trying to think of a good, juicy label for this week and drawing blanks (I’ll have stuff up my sleeve for next week, ‘fret not), but it did occur to me that I’ve amassed a little collection of labels since I joined up at this delightful cozy reading nook in the 4,262,745,723,657,205,254,872-room mansion that is the Internet.  Wander through time with me, oh fellow historian.

Cat Lady – ah yes, before I was even a true Life in Labler, I’d already shot myself in the foot announced myself one batshit crazy endearingly enthusiastic cat-fan.  Nothing here has changed really; Beatrice is sleeping across my knees as I type this, my Facebook wall is comprised of about 85% cat-related posts at any given time (upwards of 50% usually contributed by yours truly), and if I had a nickel for every time the word “meow” passed my lips, I’d have roughly fourteen kazillion nickels.

Nudist – Well, it’s February now, and I prefer not to spend my arms and legs on heat, so…figure that one out.

Plus-Size / Shrinking - admittedly two of my favorite posts; diets are still expressly forbidden in my life, but I have shed one pants size (alllllmost two), many inches, and something to the tune of 15 lbs since I moved here in June, and my body doesn’t seem ready to level out just yet.  Still, it’s so much nicer  to watch the change happen as a byproduct of a lifestyle that’s just flat out better than it was before.

Xanthochromic – this one’s flying out the window at the rate at which my hair grows.  I’ve not had highlights in nearly 8 months, which means some of my hair is purely virgin strands.  Great for my hair health/wallet/sanity, less so for the blonde.  Turns out my natural hair color is a very light brown.  It’s an almost-blonde, but it just ain’t the same.

Decidedly Sexified - Rawr.

Dog Lady - Someone once said that owning a dog was a great lesson in practicing unconditional love; something might try your patience time and time again but it’s still up to you to give it the attention and care it needs to survive.  Sometimes – like when I come home from an extremely long day to find my dog has chewed up my mattress pad or peed everywhere – this is hard to keep in mind.

And yet, and yet, and yet he is so mother arfing cute.

he knocked himself out eating all my lip gloss

Giddy / Home / Cranky – it seems like my baseline, 70%-of-the-time mindset just starts at pretty damn thrilled these days.  It’s pretty extraordinary; I’ve gotten to the point where I can wake up and feel deliriously happy before it even occurs to me what my reasoning is (sometimes it is nothing).  Obviously I have my days, but they are fewer and fewer and further and further in between.  Blame Portland.  Or everything.

I figure I’ve been such a lamebutt about posts for the past month or so, eschewing my label swap and, more often than not, just not writing a damn thing – that I might as well step up my game and put up a Friday Fav.  God bless returned internet access in the apartment.

My favorite thing this week (in addition to the Blessed Internet and Denise’s rockin’ label swap post that has me planning to hit this spot up for lunch later) is my new jacket from REI that is rain/wind/general Portland nastiness-proof.  It is also adorable.  My other favorite thing is that it’s nearly unnecessary for the next few days as it’s supposed to be hella sunny and (relatively) toasty.  My other other favorite thing is the delightful Beatrice the Cat, who turned two yesterday.

Because I was such a dismal failure at craftiness, and because there are just bigger things happening, I’m ditching my label swap this week.  Towel: thrown.

Last week was nuts.  I worked through the weekend and for too many extra hours and there was lots going on and I had no internet and then no phone and a dog I wanted dead and little sleep was had.  I was not my usual self.  Rarely do I choose to stress out over a situation, but I was not on top of my game and indulged in stress.  Stress and cookies.  But I digress…the cool thing that happened here was that, even overwhelmed and tapped out and frigging exhausted, I was so mother blipping grateful that I was stressed here.  I could’ve been stressed anyplace on the planet and I got to be stressed right the heck here. Here being Portland.

Hello, Pumpkin

Okay yes, a place (or anything, really) is only as good for/to you as you let it be, so maybe I’m giving Portland undue credit for my entire life (which is generally pretty kickass).  But I’ll let it fluff its feathers if that’s the case.  Since I’ve gotten here I’ve been so gosh darn content with the big picture and thrilled with the details, and the faith in it’s unshakable, which is delightful.  It’s one thing to think “omg everything’s going so well this is unbelievable” and another thing entirely to think “everything’s going so well because that’s just how it is.”  The former’s all about frantically seizing the moments because gosh only knows when you’ll get another one like it (lame), while the latter’s all about relaxing into them ’cause you know there’s more where they came from (delish).  And I am a latter sorta lady.

For some reason I’ve been pinning this all on beautiful wonderful lovely little Portland, Oregon.  Maybe because it’s so clean or so friendly, or because everyone’s fricking healthy as shit and gives a damn about something, or maybe it’s all the damn caffeine, but I see no shortage of inspiration to be a better version of a person.  Not a different person, just someone who has an better time of accessing the feeling of actualization.  Like Emily 2.0, or Steve Urkel when he becomes Stefan Urquelle, just minus all the douchiness.

this is *exactly* how I feel!

So yeah, it’s been fun.  Being here and whatnot.  And I don’t really have any intention of leaving, like, ever.  There are drawbacks, like living 3,000 miles away from 95% of my friends and 100% of my family, but it seems that here it’s so much easier to see that as less of a problem and more of a cause to celebrate (ex: seeing my friends for one day in nyc over the Holidays was even more freakin’ awesome because I felt like we’d essentially pulled off a magic trick the whole time).  I don’t recall ever feeling out of place somewhere, but I definitely feel more in place here, if that makes any sense/isn’t giving anyone cavities yet.

To sign this puppy out, here is a song that’s really great for listening to when walking across the Burnside bridge and bursting into tears because you’re so frigging obsessed with where you live and what you’re living.  Not that I have any idea what that’s like…