Failure to Laugh

So, if you've seen my blog in the past week and a half, you've noticed I haven't posted anything. Unfortunately, when it came down to it, I picked the wrong year to try to participate in the 31 Days challenge. All week, I've had Kirsten Dunst's voice running through my head from "Elizabethtown" -- coincidentally another Cameron Crowe movie, the writer/director of "Almost Famous" from where the photo used in my 31 Days button comes from.

"You failed! You failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed ..."

BUT, in lieu of daily posts on laughter, may I offer you some excuses? No? Well, that's too bad because I already have them prepared.

• I had to get the house ready we're moving into.
• Then we had to move.
• And I was working six-day weeks after a coworker left.
• On top of that, my commute is now 20 minutes longer each way.

I know excuses are a sad way to justify not doing something I promised myself I would and, trust me, I'm very disappointed in myself. But, really, when I think about the stress I saved myself, I have to say it was worth it.

But, when it comes down to it, here's the lesson I learned: Sometimes 24 hours just isn't enough. Sometimes, you have to look at your life when you're stressed and see what you can cut from it. As much as I love writing, I needed to get my house painted. I needed to pack everything from our 900-square-foot apartment, then unpack everything in our 900-square-foot house (even though we have a basement to add to the square footage, it's in the process of being finished so we can't really use it.)

I only see L. two days a week before work and my one day off overnight and that's tough as hell. This schedule has been affecting her too. We're pretty sure it's a combination of not seeing me as often and also finally going into the Terrible 2s at full-speed.

I did, however, take my daily moments to enjoy the laughs I got, despite the stressful schedule. Here a few photos in my phone of moments I've laughed at throughout the past few days since last posting.

I kept procrastinating taking L. to Bishop's Orchard in Guilford to pick out a pumpkin (it's still undetermined whether said pumpkin will actually be carved ...). While there, I got some great photos of her enjoying a shed full of corn. Corn was coming out of every crevice of ours all day, which was embarrassing for me at work, of course.

One thing the fiance did the third day we had access to our house was build his firepit, which he had always wanted. A few days later, despite not having furniture in the house, we built a fire after a stressful day of work and gave ourselves the night off. It was awesome.

When we moved the cats to the house, they were scared at first. We had been merely visiting our old apartment to feed them and pack some more things and staying in the house for a few days prior. We were so happy to finally get them and bring them to our new home. Little Man, however, was a scaredy cat and could be found under our blankets for the first 24 hours.

In what I think can only be described as one of my rare moments of, "Well, what's the worst that could happen?", I took L. to the craft store with me sans stroller. She, surprisingly, was amazing! Even waiting in line, she did as well as I could have hoped for, despite the few floor tantrums. But the nice thing about the craft store were the older ladies who just adored her and could take those tantrums in stride. One even let me ahead of her in line because L. was getting restless. The only time we really were delayed was when she found a nutcracker dressed as a ballerina. About five minutes was spent with her making the nutcracker spin. It was pretty adorable, though.

I finally took a night off to go to a Franz Ferdinand concert with the fiance in New York. It was heavenly and the concert was amazing. We had so much fun, I couldn't help becoming one of those people who Instagrams everything. But because of the low light, most of the photos turned out pretty poorly. So the fiance said on this one, "Use the filter that makes us look the crappiest." It's one of my favorite photos, regardless.

Also that night, we had some time to kill before the train so we took some shameless tourist selfies on the balcony at Grand Central. The goofy faces in this one kills me, especially now that this is the fiance's profile photo on Facebook. There is a small-but-getting-bigger-by-the-day chance this will be the location where we get married. This from the girl who hated all things NYC until going with the fiance. Now, I go through withdrawal every few months.

In this crazy month, I also had to worry about Halloween and the costumes for me, the fiance and L. The fiance and I needed one set of costumes for a party we were attending, but I wanted a different one for me and L. to go out trick or treating Thursday. After getting an idea and breaking out the glue gun for the costumes, I did an experiment to see if L. would be able to incorporate lipstick into her look. Spoiler alert: No. Lipstick will NOT be a part of L.'s Halloween costume.

This is the text exchange between me and the fiance because I had to get a photo of L. before wiping it off. I didn't even need to rush since she thought she looked fabulous in her lipstick.


 
 Finally, it was moving day for the big furniture. We rented a U-Haul and, with the help of movers, were able to get all the big things down to the house in one trip. Including our basil plant we affectionately named Biff. The fiance was pretty pumped Biff fit in the cupholder of the truck.

Despite our crazy work schedules, which include nights and weekends, we were able to pull together costumes for our friends' Halloween party and we had a great time as Penny Lane and William Miller from "Almost Famous," which is our favorite movie, one of the reasons I incorporated it into my button for the failed attempt at my 31 Days Challenge.

(Special shout out to Cara from Here's Looking at Shoes, Kid for the helpful post and reply to my comment asking about her own Penny Lane costume!)