Operation Pink Herring

Make it work

Welcome, viewers, to this week's special installment of Project Runway Mission: Put Together: The New Job OMG Edition, sponsored by our friends at Ann Taylor Loft*!

(*By "sponsored," we mean don't I wish.)

Dress: Ann Taylor Loft; Sweater: Target; Necklace: Gift from Joel

Not pictured: Black Nine West Flats

For this first  look, our designers were inspired by the fact that the model's Serious Business Suit no longer fits.  I mean, it would fit if it were still its original size but someone had it taken in a few years ago when they attained their goal weight for all of five minutes.  A risky move!  Our designers scrambled and selected this simple gray dress from the closet as a business-like substitute.  It has pockets and is our model's favorite work dress ever.

Our model's limp hair and grim facial expression are courtesy of a nasty stomach bug and for the actual runway show she wore a different necklace and ditched the sweater.  The photo above was provided from the outfit's practice run the day before, and if you don't wear important outfits for test runs to ensure that belts dragged out of the back of the closet won't start cutting off circulation after ten minutes, well, then you're a brave lot of souls.  Shut up. 

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Serious Business Suit: surprisingly NOT Ann Taylor Loft; Long-sleeved tee and necklace: you guessed it

Not pictured because there's not a full-length mirror to be found in this town: Nicole Miller gray flats

Our companion look, inspired by the dry cleaner designer's  ability to restore the Serious Business Suit to its original proportions, was ready just in time for the highly anticipated Bryant Park Show Second Interview!

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Corduroy Jacket, long-sleeved tee: Ann Taylor Loft; Bootcut Jeans: Gap

Not pictured: brown boots that I don't have a photo of anywhere

And lastly, our third look represents a combination Casual Day at the office and our firm belief that you should always look put-together when you're giving notice at your job.

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And the winner of this challenge (me, since I GOT THE JOB!) gets to break her spending freeze and buy this necklace as a New Job Prize: 

The lovely Mrs. Squirrel is going to claim that I totally stole this idea from her, but WHATEVER.  It was in my original sketch.

 

This

I’d read that the first few years of marriage can be an incredibly difficult adjustment, but my experience has been exactly the opposite. Much of the anxiety (not all, but most) that use to plague me has evaporated and dissolved. The unspoken question of where things are going has been answered, and answered in the best possible way. The wedding to-do lists have been burned in a mental bonfire and the few tiny disappointments of the wedding process and the actual day are all but forgotten (except for the rain that drove our lovely terrace cocktail hour indoors, I’m still a teensy bit sad about that). All that remains of the hours spent planning and organizing are memories and photos, enhanced by the rose-colored glow of nostalgia.

Aside from the additional pieces of jewelry on our left hands, our lives together didn’t change all that much. We merged our car insurances and our cell phone plans. I visited the social security office and got a card with a new last name on it. Other than that, things stayed the same.

And yet, everything shifted. I used to suffer immensely from a feeling of having no footing and no direction. I felt like a waste of potential for having a job instead of a career, for not being interested in law school or business school or anything, really, that didn’t occur on the weekends. I drifted, unable to make myself choose a direction. And while I still work at the same job, still live in the same house, still have the same life, essentially, I don’t feel like I’m drifting and searching anymore.

It used to drive me crazy when people would ask when we were going to get married already, as if it were any of their business. People mean well, I know, but these questions are obnoxious. It made me almost as angry when near-strangers would ask how the wedding plans were coming only to voice disapproval at whatever response I gave.  What do you mean you don't have a florist booked?  What do you mean you haven't had a bridal shower?  There is always an undercurrent of impatience in those queries, and I always felt like the last thing I needed was to have some outside party insinuate that I was doing things wrong. I expected to feel the same way about the meaningless “how’s married life” question. But I don’t! I don’t mind it at all. Married life is awesome, I happily reply.

I don’t know exactly what it is. The sense of permanence, of groundedness. I still worry about lots of things. I worry about the economy, I worry about money. I worry about asteroids hitting the moon and I worry about how writers of Lost are possibly going to wrap up all those crazy parallel universes. But I find immense comfort knowing that whatever happens, we’ll still have this.

And this, this life together, is exactly what I've been drifting towards all these years.

Social cycling anxiety

We went down to Richmond on Saturday morning so that Joel could drool over expensive custom bikes at this thing, while I got to partake in ABC Family’s Phony Matrimony Weekend with my friend Jenny, who convenient lives in Richmond and shares my love of made-for-TV movies. That name is not a joke, by the way. “Phony Matrimony Weekend” was dreamed up by someone at ABC Family’s corporate office and then approved by whoever lords over this sort of branding. I don’t think I could love the channel any more, and having someone to watch these ridiculous amazing cinematic pieces with me makes them even sweeter.

This a perfect example of the phenomenon Janssen talked about her in her post about People Who Do … there are people who enjoy watching movies called My Fake Fiance, and there are people who just cannot understand it. The movie was ridiculous, completely unbelievable and terribly acted. I loved every second of it. I loved The Perfect Man, which was on Oxygen later that night, just as much. Hilary Duff! Heather Locklear! Horrific New York accents and a ridiculous premise, around which the entire plot revolves! Honestly, what’s NOT to love?

I like good movies, too, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a completely different kind of enjoyment. I can appreciate a movie for being really good, and I can also appreciate a movie for being really, really bad… in a good way. It’s when bad movies take themselves too seriously that we get into trouble and end up with horrors like Post Grad. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Rory Gilmore for that monstrosity.

Anyway, after our day of wine-soaked chick flicks and bike-oogling, we headed home just in time for me to make it to a Ladies Biking Event at new-ish bike shop in our neighborhood. I got a flier for this event when I stopped in to pick up a bike part Joel had ordered last weekend, and I treated it like every social invitation that comes my way. I thought, hey, that sounds like fun, and then immediately began compiling a list of reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t go. We’d be out of town most of the weekend so I’d be too tired. I wouldn’t know anyone. I’d be mauled by hipsters when they realized I’m a complete cycling fraud. I don’t know anything about bikes. No, seriously, when I called to see if my bike was done with its complimentary 6-month tune up, the bike shop dude asked me which bike was mine and I stammered that it was the black one. The small, black one. Filed under my name?

I always do this, and luckily Joel is there to force me to go and do things that I’m uncomfortable with (he refused to dress in drag and attend as my lady biking BFF, though). So I went, ALONE, to a social event, ALONE -- an event about bikes, ALONE -- and… I had fun. I wasn’t even the least knowledgeable person there; some people didn’t even have bikes yet. (I laughed their asses right out of town, of course, right after I got done accidentally dropping the brochure for Joel’s fancy schmancy bike show on the ground. I mean, no bike! What a loser! I have a very trendy, important bike. It’s, uh, black. And small.)

I am so glad I went. I learned a lot, had a good time and met some new people. I won’t be joining their mountain bike club any time soon, mostly because mountain biking is terrifying and my small, black bike is not a mountain bike, but who knows! Maybe I’ll go on a road ride some day. Like, for fun, not just to get to work. Or, at the very least, maybe I’ll stop panicking when someone makes eye contact with me at the office bike rack. Either way, yay for, you know, doing stuff.

Just to top off our weekend of atypical activity, we went out for dinner and a movie afterwards. On a Sunday night! We didn’t get home until midnight! Again, my gut reaction was to say no, I just want to come home, watch TV, maybe cry a little if the hipsters were mean to me, and go to sleep. But why, self? Why don’t you like fun? There’s a ton of housework and laundry and backlogged Tivo to catch up on tonight, but so what?

I tend to get very anxious when we have things planned for the weekend, which I realize is kind of ridiculous, but I just really, really enjoy decompressing. I need time to clean, to watch TV, and to just be at home. Again, going back to Janssen’s post, I think there are people who get this and people who’d be perfectly fine traveling and going out every single weekend. I’m not one of them, but I’m trying to remind myself that everything is a good idea in moderation.

And that, internet, is what I did this weekend. Did you do anything fun?