Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

If you sung that as you read it, congratulations, it worked.

You can probably tell there's some changes coming up. A few weeks ago I was formally offered another position within my company - one that's a step or two up from where I'm currently at - and I accepted. I have to go get certified for the things I've been doing for the past two years, and then once I come back from Pennsylvania, I'll be out in my new position for the start of the season.

Out in meaning out in Buffalo.

By the end of March/beginning of April, I have to move from Central New York to Western New York. Which, considering my original time frame - as discussed back in December - was end of May/beginning of June...well, I think I'm probably a little overwhelmed.

And trying to find an apartment to move into in little over a month.

So. That's where I'm at. And I'll hopefully do better at keeping an update and just the whole blogging thing in general. Like the trip to Savannah, GA, I took with my parents last week.

-Molly Louise

Hello 2016

Hello Lovelies,

Welcome to 2016!

I hope everyone's end of 2015 was fantastic and fabulous - I spent New Year's Eve with M (my boyfriend - we'll just go with his first initial, and yes, we could refer to ourselves as M&M because of our first initials, which makes me giggle like an idiot) and we finished the 1000 piece puzzle my friend H (who lives out west in the desert) sent me for Christmas. She - and M - knows I like to do puzzles, and while I usually stick to 750 pieces, a few days before Christmas, M suggested the 1000 piece.

We had some wine, watched some hockey (Buffalo Sabres unfortunately lost), and then worked on the puzzle. We turned on the NYE's countdown at about 20 minutes to midnight, and watched the ball drop. Finished the puzzle, and then went to bed.

We are clearly party animals.

As always, this is where I mention I'm going to try to do better at blogging. Hopefully, I can actually make this happen. Baby steps, here. Baby steps.

So, Happy Tuesday, Happy New Year, and let's wander into 2016 with the aim to smell the sunflowers, get hopelessly lost, and find adventure wherever it comes.

-Molly Louise

Erm...Hello?

Somebody give me a minute so I can wipe the dust off this place, and make it look like it still functions.

It does still function. I just do a damn bad job of making it actually function like it should.

Anyway.

Hi.

This is either a revival or a resuscitation or a bit of both. But we'll give it a go again, because I kind of don't know how to quit or give up. It's great.

Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop, wandering through the Manuscript Wishlist and sending out queries for both FROST and TWO FOR THE RENT. Fingers crossed on that front. I've currently just run out of coffee, I'm craving a pastry, at some point I need to get bread, and later on today I'll go to work because second shift. Second shift is a bit brutal, at times, and this might be one of those days when I don't get home until 3:30 in the morning. Happy Weekend!

So. Let's try again. Because everybody needs a revival now and then, and maybe I'll put some CCR on. Or I'll just stick with country music.

Starting Over, Starting Out

My phone rang way too early on a Tuesday morning mid-March, but the news was good: I'd gotten the job I'd interviewed for the previous Friday, was required to be at company orientation on April 3, and start April 7. Between that time, and a trip to NYC we'd had planned since mid-January, I had to pack what worldly possessions were going to come the 55 miles from my parents' house to a new apartment I hadn't started looking for yet.

It was a lot to squeeze into two and a half weeks.

First apartments aren't supposed to be glamorous. We'd like them to be, but the truth is, a lot of the time they aren't. My first one on Tompkins Street in Cortland, NY, while being only two blocks from downtown, wasn't anything to really write home about. But it was mine. Mine to come back to each night. Mine to pay the bills on, stock with groceries, and just be a place to call my own.

 

And it worked, for a while. It worked until it didn't anymore. Until living between a frat house, a sorority (with another one across the street), and generally just being in the middle of college housing (while not in college) wasn't where I wanted to be working the kind of hours I was working. There was also the small matter of no parking, and bottom line, it didn't feel like home anymore.

It took me about a month to find a new place. This was after multiple daily looks at CraigsList, scouring the newspaper, calling various phone numbers, and trucking out to Homer, McGraw, Tully, and on one occasion, Cincinnatus. All with nothing really promising, nothing that screamed home to me until one day. Until this place. 

There were a few must-haves for me when I was looking. One of them was full-size appliances in the kitchen. Saying I like to bake is an understatement. There's still the thought in the back of my head about going to pastry school, so I spend a bit of free time with my oven. (My current kitchen, pictured above, has brand new EZClose cupboards. It was a huge tipping point.) Also on the list of my requirements was a bathroom I didn't have to back into in order to use the toilet, and that actually had a tub instead of a tiny shower stall. 

This is my apartment. All of my furniture is secondhand and most of it certainly doesn't match (not that I care, I was just happy to have furniture in general), but it's here. So is my houseplant who's been with me since my first year of college, my framed photo of lower Manhattan pre-2001, and the photo board hanging on the wall features the most important people in my life, proudly on display. But more importantly, I can say that shortly into September, a few days after I moved in, this went from being a bigger apartment in a different location with new cupboards to being my home. A place to come to recharge, to have quiet nights in, and to host out-of-town friends who stop by for a visit. A home that gives me a sense of contentment I didn't feel in that first place.

It was a struggle to find such a place. I'm pretty sure, when I was looking to move in August, there were tears of frustration at one point. Thankfully, there's sites like Urban Compass that help people do just what I did - find that first apartment, get settled, and have that feeling of starting over, starting out.

Ear Worms

Hey.

I'm going to wander in and wander back out and pretend like I haven't been missing since the end of September. (I'm trying to be better. My writing has really taken a hit, for some reason, I just...I'd call it writer's block but it doesn't really feel like it. The ideas are there, I just can't seem to get them out.)

Anyway. Hello. Welcome.

If you didn't know, I absolutely adore The Piano Guys. I also happen to like Dave Matthews Band. This is kind of, for me, the best of both worlds. Have a listen.

#smallcourage

Hello!

I swear I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Seriously.

But what I have started doing is #100HappyDays over on Instagram. (I can be found here, and really, let's not talk about how unimaginative I am about creating screen names, though there is something to be said for being able to found across multiple platforms with relative ease.)

One of my favorite hashtags on Instagram is #smallcourage. And it's something I figured out last summer, after having surgery.

Being told you have to be cracked open like a walnut and patched up like a popped tire is terrifying no matter what age, but it's a special kind of horror when you're only twenty-three and feel like either the road will go ever on or you won't see another step of it. Signing all the papers and giving the doctors free reign to do what they need to is big courage. It's bravery on a whole new level (I'll write you a dissertation on the subject if you disagree with me, trust me, I can).

Small courage is different. It's the idea that, despite how much it hurts or how much you don't think it's going to be okay, you get out of bed each new day. It's how you say today will be different. It's how your sternum feels like it's healing together again and you have a few odd beats more in one day than you usually do, and yet you keep going. Small courage is the courage it takes to just keep on keeping on, day after day, even when it seems like the last thing you absolutely want to do. It's sending out one more query letter after five rejections. It's finding a way to go to NYC for a weekend even after your boss tells you no, you don't have any time off to use to take a Friday.

It's stepping onto an indoor soccer field 2.5 years after your last college intramural game, little over a year out of major traumatic surgery, and trying to find your footing again. It's knowing that it might not go like you want it to go, but damn it, you're going to try anyway.

Big courage decisions come every so often. Small courage comes on a daily basis, and it reminds us all that we are very brave, very courageous people deep inside. And that is something none of us should ever forget.

Have a lovely Tuesday.

Society Woman

Last weekend was, for many, the second weekend in August. For anyone in the Twin Tiers region of New York, specifically the southern portion of Seneca Lake, last weekend was also NASCAR.

I'm not normally a NASCAR fan. I just don't see the point of driving in a circle turning only one way. But when they come to WGI? That takes true driving. The wheel goes both directions - it's a road course - and I will happily sit down and spend three hours of my life watching about 40 high horsepowered vehicles burn off copious amounts of fossil fuel. However, I rarely actually get to watch it.

My family has been part of the Grange organization for years. As a way to "make money" in which to pay the bills for the building, they've also been volunteering at WGI since, I believe, the early '80s. I spent many a NASCAR weekend up there in a food stand, pulling sodas with my cousins before the track transitioned to selling bottles instead of cups. Though we got out of the food stand a couple years ago, we still volunteer. This time we sell souvenirs.

I like to volunteer. I happily spent nearly two full winters volunteering at my local library during Saturday mornings and weekday evenings, and I did many hours of service in high school and college. I went on a week-long service trip to Virginia for two Spring Breaks, and I genuinely just enjoy helping others. So when Mom asked me if I would come back that weekend and help them out, of course I said yes.

Many of you know I had open heart surgery last summer (we're coming up on a year!) and that I have a fairly substantial scar smack dab in the middle of my upper chest. Really the only time it's not visible is if I'm wearing a t-shirt and sweatshirt. Other types of clothing usually mean the very top portion is showing. This doesn't bother me; I'm rather fond of my scar. It's a part of me.

Which is why it kind of caught me off guard when an older gentlemen, who was looking at some stickers last weekend, noticed it and, rather quietly said, "You've had open heart surgery, haven't you?"

To which I replied yes. Mom added we were coming up on a year. Turns out, he had had open heart surgery, too. He'd recognized the size, placement, and shape of the scar for what it was.

That's the moment that I kind of realized I was in a sort of club with everyone else who had ever had such a procedure done. Much like I am as a writer, I'm now part of a larger community that's been through something monumental and traumatic. It's a really awesome thing to know someone else has been through exactly what you have, and they, like you, have come out on the other side, too.

All in all, it was one of my favorite experiences from last weekend, and certainly a conversation that will stick with me for a while.