chron·i·cles: Sally Forth!

Yup, I've gone and done it again. I disappeared on you. If we were dating, I wouldn't blame you if you asked to break up. Don't hate!



As usually, I have some very good reasons. I've been a very busy little bubble bee! How about I fill you in:

BOSTON: Still sucks here, but its getting better. We have a couple of friends that keep us smiling and in the last few weeks Matt and I have logged a good few cuddle sessions. I'm so sad for the people that were devastated by mega-storm Sandy (Wait. Was it actually called a mega storm? I think I want to call it Mega-Storm because of that episode of the office where Dwight puts his desk together with Jim's and calls it Mega Desk. I digress), but I'm so grateful that it gave me two days off with my sweetheart. We even found time to celebrate our anniversary and pick a....

See! Boston girls can be pretty awesome!

WEDDING DATE: We have one!! YAAAAY!! Praise all things that are holy that the search for a wedding venue is finally over! We finally decided on The Atlantica in Cohasset, MA. Check this picture out:

borrowed from http://www.deanandhamilton.com

and this one:

borrowed from Trip Advisor

Besides the beautiful view, the Atlantica made it onto our shortlist because it endeavors to break the timeless tradition of the draining the bank accounts of couples who simply want to celebrate their commitment to each other among some well fed friends and family members. I mean, seriously! Why is it so ridiculously expensive to get married??

Thank you, Atlantica, for having a venue site fee that is $200 and not $4000. Thank you for having a Food & Beverage Minimums that make sense instead of minimum head counts. Thank you for having all-inclusive drink packages that make sense and for being willing to entertain my silly obsession with....

THEMES: We are having a theme wedding! Oh, don't you roll your eyes at me. This is going to be great! We are going to do a (subtle, mind you) vintage boardwalk/carnival theme. Check out my new project. TheWoolWedding.com. I'm pretty proud of my RSVP form. :) Oh! and check out our colors:


I'm not going to let out too many of my secrets because... well... lets face it, many of my readers are on the guest list! But let's just say that it will be playful and lighthearted and if all goes according to plan, our people are going to smile so much their cheeks are going to ache. I'm so excited!! I can't wait for August 2013! There is SO much to do until then, especially since it looks like I'm going back to...

SCHOOL: Yup, this graduate may be matriculating one more time. Here's the kicker. Matt and I are both in the restaurant industry. He is already an Executive Chef and for those of you who have ever lived to love a chef before know that the hours they work are looooooooong. Now I'm a bartender, yes, and the hours for me are short and profitable, but do I want to be an old pregnant bartender with no hope of maternity leave or perhaps even a job when I come back? Yeeeah, that sounds sucky. Do I want to be a 50 year old tight black tank top wearing bartender who's kid just graduated high school? I don't know... maybe. I do love the job, but will I regret having never tried anything else in my life? What kind of example will that set for my babies? So I'm going to try and get a nursing degree. I think it will offer me a lot of the things that I dig about bartending = its physical... I get to work with people (and make them feel better)... there's lots of problem-solving and plenty of opportunities to approve upon your craft... and the hours can be as fantastic or as terrible as I want them to be. Only real problem is that I have NONE of the pre-requisites in place and just found out today that I don't even have the pre-req's to take the pre-req's! So I am starting from the waaaaay beginning expect this time I don't qualify for any real financial aid. Oh, and the Boston nursing market is pretty saturated so getting a job nursing is going to be just as hard as getting a job on the bar. Ooooh, maybe that means we'll have to move back to New York. ;)

But then again... home is pretty comfy these days.


That's really the bulk of what's been on my mind lately. Am just trying to piece it all together. Will do my best to check in more often. I miss you. :)

Everyone's favorite Auntie had a big birthday recently and to celebrate, us kidletts swooped her down to Foxwoods for some gambling and cheer!

But first... we got some sweet gaming done!

The Birthday Girl, Lil' T, and Marlow. That dope in the background is my brother, Kenny. :)

Everyone trying their hardest to out rank Kenny...

Though of course that never happens.

This baby tried to run wild... but ran smack dab into a relative every path she took.

Matt was just thrilled not to be at work! He even wore a Red Sox hat to celebrate.

Lil' T, looking just as sweet as her birthday dessert!

But not nearly as fashionable as Marlow.

Winning.

"Who approved these balloons??'

Like mother, like son. Both ready and waiting for that cake. And as usual, you've got my mom whipping around in the background.

Marlow naturally was jazzed to help.

Uncle G, looking pretty darn young himself, was on ice cream parole.

There are no words.

Happy campers.

Even Sito joined in on the festivities!

All in all, a fantastic day!

I am so behind on posts that all the folders of photos on my desktop are starting to take the shape of a world map. Perhaps I should throw a dart at it to decide which activity to talk about first. My computer kind of sucks (don't tell Matt), I doubt it would even notice.

So, my weekend included a trip to my spiritual motherland, New York City, and it seems that this simple visit with my lovely friends (and a gift from Matt of super strong and delicious pumpkin coffee!) is all I need this morning to kick start my motivation! With all the fun I barely took any photos of the trip (sorry about that!), but this Sunday afternoon did revealed the love and loyalty Miss Daisy Mae shows this blog every morning. She may just be my most loyal reader and I love her for it!  
  
This post is for you, girl!


Its also for the rest of you. :) Daisy visited Boston a little while back and in true Jillian/Daisy fashion, we hit the streets and Kalee and Marlow joined in. Strolling down Newbury Street is a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

It took maybe 17 seconds for Marlow to change the course of these giraffe's lives forever.

I love this picture in black & white! Its as though we pulled it straight out of a yellowing photo album from the 70's.

Someone loves duckies!

Snack time!

Marlow's first gourmet chocolate.

Now that's a good looking city!

And as a bonus... some fun in the sun :)

Ummmm... good morning!

I probably should have ended that Julia Roberts movie marathon allot earlier than I did, huh? How red in the face am I today?

Even this photo is a little hung over today.

I'm not drunk, but I'm close to it.

Matt was supposed to get out of work between 4-5 this afternoon. Its now 9:39pm and he isn't home yet. He has to run his restaurant with the bare minimum of employees in order to meet his labor budget so when one of his guys called to say that his car broke down and then shut off his phone, there went pretty much any chance I had of seeing my sweetheart today. I'm so sad for him. With great success comes such great responsibility.



I had today off. In fact, I have the next three days off. I wish I could work his days for him. What will I do with all this time? Well I'll tell you...

Today, I:

1. Washed all of our clothes, towels, sheets, blankets, dog beds, floors, table tops, windows, dishes, sinks and for good measure also our tub, toilet and refrigerator.

2. Scrubbed the dog smell out of the carpet.
3. Scrubbed the dog smell out of the dogs.
4. Grocery shopped.
5. Beer shopped.
6. Figured out the combination on our storage unit. Put a bunch of junk in there.
7. Prepped a dinner that Matt won't eat.
8. Paid all our bills.
9. Realized that if money doesn't pick up now that I've been begun bartending again, I'll be lucky to make 40k at my current job this year... before taxes.
10. Ate the dinner Matt won't eat.
11. And drank one beer shy of too many. 


I've also watched waaaaay too many Julia Roberts movies. On at the moment, Pretty Woman. This movie does two things to drunk Jillian. One: It makes me so excited that down-to-earth spunky girls like me get to be swept up off their feet by super rich handsome men who can see straight through our rough edges to our beautiful heart. Two: It makes me sad to realize that part of me really (really!) did believe that adult life would somehow end up playing out like it does in the movies. (It also makes me sad that Matt is probably going to read this and think that I want to be swept up off my feet by a rich Richard Gere, but sober Jillian will fix that bridge when she comes to it. I love him and everything that comes with him! I'm going to marry this shit out of my guy!)

So I'm being ridiculous and I'm probably going to be ridiculous for the rest of the night.

Tomorrow though, I'm going to wake up and start all over again because well, that's just what you do. I'm going to wake up, have my coffee and pretend that I didn't just drunk dial my own blog. Maybe I'll see my girl Kalee and her little girl Marlow. Maybe we'll go to a pumpkin patch, take a bunch of pictures and pretend for a minute that life isn't off track at the moment. Maybe Matt will actually get to work a simple 8 hour shift and can join us at some point. I'll hug him so hard if that happens! And if it doesn't, I'll hug him anyway and finish my day the way I am right now... hoping that this is a means to an end and that good times are sailing our way.

Ok! Its time to give this Boston thing a real try. No more nay-saying! (Well... maybe a little bit of Boston bashing is still in my future, but I'll try to save that for only my weakest moments.)

"You go towards that which you think about." These are some of my mum's favorite words.


Here is a good thing about my new city: Pumpkin Beer!

You apparently only get it two months out of the year and the whole city is rightfully obsessed with it. Its crazy delicious and up until a few weeks ago when I had my first beer (weird I know - I was a 31 year old bartender who had never had beer), I was totally unaware that pumpkin beer took over Boston every fall.

Shipyard seems to be the big winner around here, served in a chilled pint glass with a cinnamon/sugar rim and an optional floater of whipped vodka. Personally, I'm all over Sam Adam's version. Its a little hoppier and less sweet and I'm not much for the sugared rim or floater after the first drink. I think honestly I'm going to buy a million cases of it before the end of the pumpkin beer season and stock pile it in my spare bedroom. Oh! Maybe that's my second good thing about Boston - my apartment is huge! So huge that I can apparently stock pile beer at will.

Go me!  

Let's start with maybe the obvious : moving to Boston has kind of sucked.

Now, we knew it would... at first. We left Manhattan for goodness sake where we had an incredibly dramatic and fun-filled lifestyle that we enthusiastically shared with the most loyal and vivacious set of friends. Life was GREAT there, but expensive and all that fun was taking a toll on our bodies. We knew that we could not keep up our Manhattan existence forever and with our eye on the prize (getting married, buying a home, having stupidly adorable brunette babies...) we traded one city for another. Boston made a stellar candidate on paper. It's way cheaper; its smaller and more manageable once the baby-raising years begin; and its already chucked full of family. Plus, its one of the oldest cities in America and you know how this girl loves her some history. As with every knew adventure, we were all in!

We're now two months strong in this state and some damp realities have drifted in. One. Boston is mighty clique-y. As an outsider (even one that grew up here), its actually borderline impossible to... get an apartment... get a job... make some friends. You literally get the impression that you have to 'break in' to a closed off community that was raised to instinctively distrust. What happened to you, Boston, that was so bad you no longer trust resumes, credit checks... hell, your own instincts??! We're still trying to get all of our ducks in a row around here, but we're close to it and are now not just ready but desperate to just get back to living. This leads up to Number Two.

Two: Life is SO much more hectic here than... what?! Manhattan?!! Oh yes, I said. Life here is crazy busy except we are not having even half as much fun. Basic human needs take forever to satisfy here! Food delivery? Not during the hours we are home, so we have to actually grocery shop again (who knew eating was so time consuming?) You have to drive a decent distance to get anywhere and parking always blows so blah to that. I'm sure it doesn't help that we moved 10 miles outside Boston and have to fight the parking lot of doom and despair that is I-93, but whatever, we anticipated a commute but why does it take an hour to get into the city at 10pm on a Tuesday?? Don't even get me started about the liquor laws around here - no unlimited mimosa brunch?? These people are heathens! Ok, there is more to it than that. My partner in fun making, Matt, is no joke working 16 hours a day 6 days a week so I never see him. Having him around always makes everything better. When we're embarking on an adventure together nothing matters, not traffic, not an hour wait for a dinner table, not even having to pay for each bellini individually! We are never pleased with our lives when we don't see each other - that's our biggest reality. In Manhattan, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we had to work our faces off to afford to live there and we made up for it by spending all our surplus money on super duper awesome activities together on our days off. But we moved to Boston to change all that! We are supposed to see each other more often (or at the very least the same amount) - so far that's just not the case and we are disappointed. We're only been here two months and I miss my sweetheart.

And then there's Three: We moved here to be part of a family but it seems that we are no more part of it then when we lived three hours away. I don't want to complain. I get it. Everyone has busy lives and I know that life gets so full when you become an adult. And I've been away for so long that naturally their daily routines don't include me. Plus I still live an hour away so I get it, but I'm bummed. I promised Matt that moving here would bring him this huge sense of family and it will... someday, when he and I have enough free time to create it for ourselves. If you could purchase more hours in a day, we'd buy in bulk.

So here's the truth - moving back home has made me more home sick than I have ever been in my whole life. I miss my NYC family- the ones that always had time for me and who went out of their way to be my family every day and not just when we happened to be at the same place at the same time. I miss our lifestyle. I miss my sweetheart. I miss our stupid little apartment with our kick ass backyard. I miss walking to the train. Dude, I miss GrubHub!

I'm discouraged. I've stopped blogging. I no longer have a mile long list of local experiences I'm desperate to check out. I'm not me and that was my biggest fear about moving home. I need to find a way to stop the air in Boston from feeling so heavy. Matt's job needs to allow him to live a real life. I need to forget that I am home so that I can attack this city the same as all the others that have come before. So what if I have to explore Boston on my own for a while? That's the way my adventures always start! I do things on my own until people catch on to the awesomeness of activities and then boom, I'm swimming in friends.

I can do this. I'm a dirty little fun have-er! I want to love this city!! And hell, if I can't... something tells me New York will take me back. :)

Pop Quiz!

1. Where can Jillian be found every Sunday morning /slash/ afternoon?


          Answer - Boozing it up at Brunch!


This is one of my all time favorite activities because it is an incredible reason to spend time with some truly special people! You remember Erin, right?! I mean, how can you forget that smile?!


Enter Don Juan... I mean, Anthony. 


And Jay! Who is a whole lot cleaner here than last time we saw him.



The STK girls -Kat, Cara and Lauren- take good care of each other...


... while Jake shows me up with his Blue Steel impression. 


... and Alexis threatens to maybe Karate Chop someone?


 Good times and good people! I miss you, STK!