new stamps snapped with my iPhone

I’m pretty sure this has never been confessed on this blog before: you can add “stamp-collecting” to the frizzy hair, glasses, buck teeth, goofy personality and homeschooling that made me a social pariah as a kid.

I’ve stopped collecting, but getting a brand new sheet of postage is a still tiny thrill for me and I will never be the sort to buy a practical roll of boring flags. I try not to buy the same ones twice, and now that I own a business that involves mailing things on a regular basis, picking out a pretty combo of stamps for each package is my favorite part of paperwork.

On 22 January postage prices went up, and they released some particularly pretty designs this time around.

Did you know that rather than going to the post office, you can order stamps online and have any amount of them them sent directly to you for just $1 (in the mail, of course!) These above are my latest; I think the butterflies are really cool, and the clock reminds me of the cover of one of my favorite books, the Phantom Tollbooth.

I feel so dorky, but it’s genuinely exciting! Someone please tell me you like pretty stamps, too. I can’t be the only one.

I’ve had one of those weeks where personal blogging just didn’t happen. A few professional blog posts made it to print though, and you should to go look at them, because they make me especially proud.

Here and Here

There was a problem with my work professionally – the photos coming out of my camera were good but not measuring up to the photos in my head – and I didn’t know how to fix it until it came to me in a dream that the camera settings could be different. When I woke up, I reconfigured my camera and immediately noticed a huge difference. Huge to me, anyway; no one else probably notices, but I’m so excited! How cool is it that my brain solved a problem for me in my sleep?

These photos are from several weeks ago (it takes a while for a shoot to make it to the blog), and I think I’ve gotten even better since I started using my new technique.

I love making art!

Read many books.

Go to lots of museum exhibits, concerts, festivals, cool stores, events, indie films, literary readings, and other interesting things in NYC. (Who’s with me? I will need dates.)

Work really, really hard.

Spend loads of time with family and friends.

Live healthfully and happily.

***

I was so excited last night when our “handful of friends” turned into about 20 people showing up to sit around our living room. I had started the party pretty sick, due to an allergic reaction to some medication earlier in the day that had me puking my brains out. By the time people arrived I was better, but still very queasy and under a pile of blankets in the corner of our couch, feeling mentally festive but physically down for the count. Still, I felt lucky to have Dan and Kim here – they stayed with us for a few days before heading back to China – and as our friends piled in and swirled around me celebrating, I felt SO loved.

It was the best New Years Eve ever.

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Here were my resolutions for 2011:

Acquire less stuff and more stories.

Nailed it. I hardly bought anything in comparison to years past. Every bauble or extra pair of high heels I admired in a store started to look like nothing more than a few dollars I couldn’t spend on plane tickets to somewhere there was a party. I very much like my priorities.

Work more, get more money, and give more money away.

Check-check-check. I’m not exactly bankrolling fancy dinners for a dozen of my nearest and dearest (yet!), but I made a nice living with my own two hands this year, and it has felt so. Fucking. Good. Bonus: I was able to help out cool organizations that do work I believe in.

Travel more. Hibernate less. Spend lots of Sundays at brunch and late nights in bars.

Yes! I have always struggled with wanting to stay home in my sweats rather than go out. It’s in my introvert nature to be curled up on the couch often, but that is essentially wasting life. Nothing interesting ever happened while sitting on the couch.

This year I did my first major international trip in years and was able to bring my grandma, which will forever be a highlight of my life.

This was also the year was the year I made a concentrated effort to say “yes” to things, even when I was tired or cranky. To eliminate excuses, I bought some comfy dresses that are easy throw on over leggings or tights and curated a few essential cosmetics that make “putting my face on” a less-than-five-minute process. Now the time between “shlumpy” and “dressed for dinner” is about 15 minutes, and I never have to say “no” to a last-minute invite.

There were lots of Sunday brunches, late nights in bars telling hilarious stories and making friends, and lots of travel, too, to excellent places. It was a conscious lifestyle change, and I am so much happier. High five for me.

Wear sparkly tops and inappropriate skirts. Do yoga. Keep living awesomely. Have adventures.

No, yes, no, and heck yes! I never did buy a sparkly top or do one single yoga pose. (Maybe 2012 is my year?) But I have a few borderline inappropriate skirts that come out when I’m feeling daring and flirty, I’ve lived awesomely, and oh my gosh. The adventures. I can’t even. So good.

How was your 2011? Was this year a good one? What are you hoping for in 2012?

Happy New Year, friends! Be safe.

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I learned to let the heck go. Of clutter, of unnecessary clothes, of outdated attitudes… of real estate.

The realization hit this year that I’m no longer “the girl who likes to bake”. She is a nice thing to be but is no longer ME. Now, though, I get to be the lady that will pick out the awesome beer to bring to your party, and my kitchen gets to stay tidy.

Despite thinking I’d be too shy, I learned how to ladies naked! And not only naked, comfortably so. For photos, I mean. So many gals I’ve photographed in their skimpy underwear (or less!) have said, “I thought I’d feel weird, but you made it fun!”  I plan on doing more of that. (No, gentlemen, I do not need an assistant.) I’m also good at making little kids giggle and grumpy dads smile for the camera. I have the best job.

I learned to focus inward more instead of worrying about making sure other people are ok first. Heather tweeted this just as I was putting the finishing touches on this post, and it fit so well:

Similarly, I learned to gather myself up a little, to take my too-wide circle of confidants and pull it inward to include only the friends that I can really press into when I am in need. (Miss Brit has an amazing post about this that I have carried in my heart for weeks now.) This has made all the difference.

And highlights of the year:

Paris – taking my grandma, watching my cousins light up with their first glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, and seeing Emily standing under it. Bill Cunningham taking my photo (and then my hand, to help me off a boat). Buying and painting my first major piece of grownup furniture. Mighty Camp. Ordering Taco Bell out of the back of a stretch hummer for a dozen giggly women. Marriage equality passing in New York State (and what it did for my business). Watching Rob react to news that I was pregnant. Meeting Jen and Micah’s new baby boy. Shooting a celebrity wedding, which I absolutely can’t tell you about, a fact that is killing me, darlings. You don’t even know. That thing that happened. Launching AmberMarlow.com

Like, batshit level. And I kept sitting down to blog about it, but by the time got settled to write it all out – a process that has been reliably cathartic these past seven and a half years of blogging – all I wanted to do was drool into my keyboard and watch ridiculous YouTube videos instead. It started to feel like tendrils of worry were wrapping themselves around my lungs, keeping me from breathing properly, and I had to forcibly stop myself mid-flurry of anxiety, because, hey, I’m alive. Rob is alive. The dogs are ok. And Bob Hope said every day above ground is a good one.

Our car got broken into a few weeks ago. At 11:30 pm, Rob was coming home from an emergency dog food-and-milk run and spotted someone half-in our car through the smashed driver’s side window. Rob shouted, dropping the milk and the dog food and grabbed the guy by the shirt.

Wait. Can we just pause and agree this was enormously stupid? We’re all nodding, yes? Ok.

The guy did not shank him, or shoot him, or punch him once, in such a way that would have resulted in what I hear is called a “one punch homicide”, all of which could have TOTALLY HAPPENED, ROB. He squirmed away from Rob’s grasp, dropping the cheap and nearly-worthless cell phone chargers we had left in the center console. He also left his gigantic screw driver on the seat, which the police offered to take “into evidence”, but we shrugged it off. There was no way this guy was getting caught, and we could tell the officers didn’t want to bother.

Four days later, he came back.

We’re not sure, of course, if it’s the same dude, but he smashed a DIFFERENT window, and took the screw driver back. He also took the airbag. Yes, right out of the steering wheel, leaving a gaping hole and two severed yellow wires sticking out like sad, gangly, pathetic arms. Did you know air bags are valuable? I didn’t, until we found out how much it is to replace.

“Weren’t you just here?” the guy at the glass place asked.

“Son of a bitch came back!” I said.

“Son of a bitch, man.”

Silver lining: I found New York City’s cutest, sweetest glass guy.

After the glass was fixed, we had to get the airbag replaced somewhere else, and it’s a whole murk of insurance stuff that I just. Hate. Dealing with.

On top of that, we are in the final, massively-delayed-and-still-going-right-now process of selling a house. It’s been a flurry of signing papers and correcting documents and sending things off and having our dumb questions answered by the world’s kindest lawyer, and waiting for the buyers loan to come through and finger crossing that we aren’t going to loose them and… gah!

And, on top of THAT, I decided to rent a studio for my business. I need SPACE! to WORK! and this apartment is TINY! I was going to delay this process until everything else was done, but an opportunity opened up, and I had to seize it, which meant another round of paperwork and signing things.

It all felt scary, but fortune favors the bold, right?

Right.

So that’s been this week, and we kept pressing through figuring we’d relax on vacation. We did, too, but now we’re back, and since nothing has magically resolved itself while we were napping in the sun, we shall slog through.

Update: I found her Facebook page – she makes a habit of doing this to people, apparently. Now I’m bummed out that I let her stay.

This is an exchange between me and a total stranger responding to the automated email she got, alerting her to the fact that her RSVP to my party was canceled.

Her: “Did you cancel my RSVP because the event isn’t happening anymore?”

Me: “No. I cancelled your RSVP because this is a private house party, and you were not invited.”

No reply back, but she showed up the day of the party anyway. Rob answered the door and wasn’t quite sure how to handle it, so he just let her in!

Wait. I have to back up.

Rob and I have a large invitation list for our parties so for a few years, to make sure we don’t miss anyone, we’ve used Eventbrite to make the invitations. Eventbrite lets you password protect your event, something we’ve always done but, for a few reasons, we skipped this year.

What I didn’t realize is that if you don’t password protect your event, it gets publicly posted unless you specifically uncheck that option, and, as a result, it wound up listed as the place to be in Brooklyn on December 10. The New York Daily News then picked it up too, listing in the “fun things to do around town this weekend” section, with our home address front and center.

OH MY GOD!

It took a few angry phone calls and emails to get everything taken down, but that didn’t stop our party crasher from showing up. (There were a few strangers that RSVPed that were totally understanding when I explained to them what happened.)

So like I said, Rob answered the door and let her in, then came scampering over to me, eyes wide, stage-whispering “I didn’t know what to do!”

I sighed and walked to the front of the apartment, intercepting her as she was taking off her coat.

“Hi! I’m Amber. You know this is a private party? It was listed in the newspaper by accident. We emailed about this.”

“Yes, but… I am Jewish!” she said, heavily accented. “And I saw it said ‘Hanukkah party’. I came from a long way…” she trailed off.

“Um. Ok… It’s actually a Christmas and Hanukkah party… and it’s not really… I mean…”

Guys, I’m a sucker. And she looked so sad! And… she had come a long way! And was dressed up and everything!

“I guess you can stay… but this is not an EVENT event. It’s just my friends. Just… so you know.” I ended with a shrug, and then went to pour myself a drink, and she came in and told everyone who asked that she was “a friend of Rob”.

And, you know, if you’re cool, I will totally pretend you belong at my party and let you crash. But she was not cool. She was weird and gave everyone the creeps. Then she called a friend who showed up, and they both ate our snacks, and were weird together, and didn’t take the hint for a solid two hours.

It was Patrice who finally solved the problem. I’m not even sure what she said when she cornered them in the kitchen, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, either, but whatever it was had them scrambling for their coats, thanking me for the nice time, and stuffing candies in their pockets on the way out.

Thank you, girl. I owe you one.

Thanks to Damien for boldly snapping this photo, so I can have this quirky holiday memory forever.

Also courtesy of Damien is this hilarious poem, typed on the vintage typewriter I leave around loaded with paper in case the mood strikes anyone to write something.

blatt bash was in the news
eventbrite got screwed, told random dudes
2 broke girls showed up for free food and booze
they lied and said they knew rob and stayed too long
patrice put the smack down and said bitches be gone
with no more frizzy-headed hoes everyone got drunk
merry christmakkuah to all and all let’s get crunk

Ah, this week was a good one. I had two elopements at City Hall, both couples that were in New York to get married because they are not allowed to where they are from. The ladies from Nevada told me that the second they stepped off the plane at home, their marriage would be invalid, so they were going to walk around New York City enjoying legal wife-and-wife status while they could.

And my heart broke.

**

I had a moment this week, walking to my second wedding from the subway, where I wished I could photograph myself and send the shot back to me at seventeen. (Sadly, there is no app for that.)

I would like to show her that the inkling she’s recently gotten – that gay people are not wrong and sinful and in need of religious conversion like everyone around her is saying – has blossomed into a full-on conviction (and then mellowed into a matter of course of thought, so much so that when people make a stand against gay people, they are easily dismissed with a mere head shake). That she owns a business, and has business in Manhattan if you can believe it. That she is wearing designer boots, gotten on sale, but designer boots none the less! She would have liked to know all this.

Happy weekend.

At 2:30 I finally saw a doctor; not the one who had discussed surgery, another one; cute, bubbly, and, she noted while looking at my chart, the exact same age as me. I liked her immediately.

“So… surgery? What do you think?” I asked, heart pounding, feeling as brave as one can while naked and draped in a paper sheet, lying on an exam table.

“Surgery? No. You’re done! This is over.”

“I’m what?”

“This,” she said, snapping my chart closed and grinning, “is over. I don’t even need to examine you. You get to move on. And no more blood tests, either. I’m excited to be the one that gets to tell you!”

Say what? I had braced myself for nothing.

Needless to say, I’m on the hunt for a new OB practice, as much as I liked this current doctor that bounded into my exam room that day from nowhere, blond ponytail swishing, a beacon of light in an endless black sea of grumpy doctors, sour receptionists and horrible circumstance. It was good to end on a high note after so much awfulness.

But you guys! I’m done! It’s over. The zombie placenta is dead, dead fetus is gone, and I’m back. I’m OK. I survived.

I went about happy for a few weeks, then hit a really rough patch, and honestly, if you’re a dude, especially if you’re a dude and a personal friend of mine, you want to stop reading right about here if you ever want to grab an un-awkward beer with me ever again.

**

You know the feeling of finding out all of your friends are hanging out without you, and you know that other feeling of waiting for the boy you to call you, and he won’t, even though he totally said he would? It was that, times ten, for no good reason. Plus, my normally flawless skin broke out, and I bloated to the point that only sweatpants were comfy. It was like all the worst parts of being 15 all over again.

The only activity that sounded good was flopping on the couch eating brownies. And salt. Rob would want to have sex, and my response was something along the lines of “WHY DON’T YOU GO STICK YOUR DICK IN A LAWNMOWER INSTEAD?”

Super pleasant.

I walked around like a miserable rain cloud for a few days before it hit me that I had really horrible PMS, something I’ve never had before, even slightly. And, of course, you know what comes next. For the first time since… June? Shit. Yeah. June. Do you know how bad it is when it’s the first time since June? Really horrible. There had been occasional, mild, hormone-induced bleeding as a result of the miscarriage, but this was the real deal. I took twice the indicated amount of Advil and wished for death.

As bad as that was, I hadn’t been this relieved to get my period since the Broken Condom Incident of 2003. It was a benchmark I had drawn a line around in my head: once I got through that first period afterward, I’d be back to normal. It’s a line crossed, and now I feel officially done.

I’m looking forward to moving on, starting with an overdue Brazilian and I don’t mean on my head.

Oh yeah. I’m back.

First, though, I have to go apologize to Rob, who is hiding under the bed.

I did it! Record broken. Sixteen pies, all pumpkin, made and donated.

I texted my neighbor Wednesday morning to ask if I could use his oven in tandem with my own.

“My oven is your oven.” he texted back. His girlfriend was home and helped me out by pre-heating and lowering the temperature as necessary so I wasn’t running up and down the stairs constantly, and this act of kindness saved me about two hours of work, which I repaid in beer, as one does. Next year… I have no idea. I’m going to have to get a kitchen somewhere, I think.

I let them cool all over the kitchen and living room, spread out on the counters and tables and chairs, kept away from all three dogs that were eyeballing them longingly. When Rob got home that night he helped me plastic wrap them and package them up (pro tip: pumpkin pies stack four-high quite nicely.)

You can see the dogs here hoping that at least one would be for them.

We brought them to the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen and deposited them onto what was declared the “pie pew”, then got into the car where I burst into tears while Rob sat with the key in the ignition, slightly alarmed. He wrapped an arm around me and patted my back while I collected myself, another act of kindness that I was very thankful for that day.

I wasn’t sad, it was merely overwhelming; the hours of work, the good feeling, and the “holiday spirit” all hit me at once. I am so grateful to be able to do this for strangers.

It’s funny; I don’t feel like I did something so wonderful, because 1. it does a measure of good for my “soul” that goes way beyond providing pie, and 2. It’s really fun to have my record back. HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW, CANADIANS?!

As usual, I strongly encourage you to break my record, and you can totally gloat about it, too.

p.s. Matty and Leeloo say they wouldn’t mind if you sent them a pie, too, since they couldn’t have any.