Wednesday: What I'm Lovin' On

I just made that up. That title probably makes it sound like this will be a weekly feature. It won't be. I'm not that organised...yet. Just you wait. Once I figure out how to be one of those organised people...WORLD DOMINATION. Till then I just have a few things I've been loving lately and I'd like to share.

1. Cheese. I was all "giving you up cheese for the week leading up to my London trip. You're in my life too much, f*ing with my calorie count for the day. How dare you." That lasted an agonising 36 hours. Silly me. Cheese is the best thing ever. NEVER LEAVE ME CHEESE. Especially you Gouda. And you, Aged Cheddar.

2. Bloggers on Snapchat. That's right folks. Bloggers are getting naked for followers. The end is nigh. ... I am totally kidding about that. I really don't want to know so much about a blogger that I can tell you what their bits look like., though I'm sure they're lovely. Bloggers are, in fact, using Snapchat to connect on the daily with their followers and I am digging it. Currently my favs are (listed as their Snapchat handle to easily add): poppyloves (Poppy Loves London),  omghellogemma (Hello Gemma), tricia_rosas (Patricia Parisienne), and patriciabfrance (Patricia Baret in France). And I'm not going to lie to you, I only read Poppy and Patricia B's blogs. Gemma and Patricia Parisienne I follow on Instagram. Some people I enjoy on Instagram best because they have so much going on that I can't keep up and instead I like to get little bits from them. Thank you Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat for limiting people. Snapchat story is such a quick sneaky peak into someone else's life. And if other bloggers want to start, even though you can't prove to others who's following you, it's still fun because you can see who is viewing your Snap stories. I am addicted.

I use my Snapchat to make only one really good ace joke a year. That's it. AND YOU MISSED IT. Maybe you should come be friends with me on Snapchat and not feel the fool next time: lindsaydinsyday

3.I'm heading to London next Monday night and will land on English soil on Tuesday morning. I AM SO DAMN EXCITED.

Me, on a visit in 2012

Plans are being made to hang out with friends and I have a very, very long list of food I need to eat. PRIORITIES! Food, then friends....I mean....friends than food. Preferably friends with food. Yeah, that'd be good.

4. I got a bike for my birthday and she is absolutely wonderful! Yes she. And yes she has a name: Bella Blu. Because I am just that kind of girl. Experiencing my corner of DC on a bike is making things a little bit brighter these days. And I need all the bright happy things I can get.

5. My little sister sending me photos of my family dog hard at work at the family business.

"Hello, Charles speaking..." "Umm sir, that's a banana." "Well that attitude is going to get you NOWHERE in this company! You have to beeeeeeelieve!"

6. My parents came down to DC recently to help my brother and his wife move apartments. I love having family down here. I don't want to live in upstate New York and wish my whole family would just move where ever I lived. So come on guys, let's all figure out UK visa's! Let's go!

Moving is hard. Moving requires beer.

7. Before my parents left we all had breakfast at Ted's Bulletin and I got to enjoy being the only person there on time for once. It's an amazing feeling not being the one who's late. I would like to make that feeling happen more often. Also I rewarded myself with coffee and a Ted's salted caramel tart. So. Freaking. Good. Their pastry tarts (technically a pop tart but I don't think they're allowed to call them that officially) have two or three main flavours all the time and then they have seasonal ones rotating. Salted caramel is a seasonal one and it was divine. Also, a sugar bomb. But once in a while is okay right?

Anything you're lovin' on right now? Especially food things. Send me your food porn on Snapchat....cause that's what it was created for right? RIGHT?!

In innocence, yours,
Lindsay
xx

Working From Home Means..

Things I have learned about working from home:

1. My housemates think that I don't own real clothes, just many, many types of pajamas.

2. If I am within 10-10,000 feet of the kitchen I will constantly be thinking about what I can eat next. So that is approximately always. The house isn't that big.

My housemate left me alone for an hour with her home baked cookies. Bad decision, Raven.  I get all kinds of crazy ideas when I'm on my own. DON'T LEAVE ME TO FEND FOR MYSELF.

3. After being in a room the size of a prison cell for two years in London, I frequently run up to my new room that is the size of TWO prison cells put together so I can admire, spin around, and clap my hands in delight like a deranged toddler. Also, somebody let me paint my room unsupervised....I made some art:

4. It is fairly impossible for me to do any work in the morning. But that can be a positive thing as I then turn around at lunch time and guilt myself into working out and doing loads of real work in the afternoon.

5. I am the nosy neighbour. I know which ones are at home during the day, which ones have children, and which house has the cute pit bull. I have popcorn at the ready for the moments when the neighbours want to argue with the DC tow truck drivers attempting to haul their vehicles away for over due parking tickets. I SEE IT ALL.

6. Making cushion forts is not that fun anymore since you have to clean it up yourself when you're done, because you are an adult now. And if you don't, everyone assumes you've been day drinking.

Sometimes I play around with my very first phone I had from when I was 15.  ... Yeah I may need to get out more.

7. I get sick and I do not live with my mother who would take care of me. Day drinking does occur as a form of self-medication. I present to you: Hot Toddy Deconstructed. Bourbon and hot tea will help just about any cold. No really. I read that somewhere.

There's a chance that I would act more like a normal human being if I held a regular 9-5 day job.

But let's not risk it, just in case.

xxLindsay

Meatless Monday...I Guess. If I Must.

Forgive me Bloggers Who Bake, for I have sinned.

Last night I became one of those people.

I gave an honest-to-god go at making a cookie in a cup. You know, the throw a bunch of ingredients into a cup and microwave it in a sad attempt to make a single serving of a cookie. In a cup.

It turned out embarrassingly awful. Never again. I'm just going to pretend that glutinous sin of cooking never happened.

Lately I have been trying to put in the effort to cook at home. One of those gallant affairs is now going to be thrown into ..... Meatless Mondays (sigh).

I know, I know. Don't worry. I'm still hardcore omnivore. Never fear, breakfast bacon, I still love you. But I clearly need to eat healthier and make better life choices.

Nobody should ever be faced with the option of making a cookie in a cup.

I've done a few of my Monday's meatless here in America, trying out the veggie lifestyle again. I'm definitely not clueless in this area. At least not as clueless as someone thinking a cookie in a cup is a good idea. Without adult baker supervision.

The many years of struggling with my Crohn's means I've tried a lot of different diets: vegetarianism, veganism and even Macrobiotics. None of them ever stuck. Probably because my body really, really needs those sweet B12 vitamins. Or just bacon full stop.

But I really want to be a better cook and I do care about the environment. Which means trying to be a little more veggie, a little more often. So here's what I've thrown together, mostly without recipe, and has turned out much less embarrassingly then the aforementioned Cookie Debacle.

Jacket Potato with cheese, roasted broccoli with lemon. Simple and straight to the point.

Art provided via my sexy, sleek camera....I mean my iPhone

I call the next one Pasta a la Wha Da Fuuuuck.....Is In This, Cause It's Amazing. (Working title)

Herbed goat's cheese, roasted red onion, sun dried tomatoes, spinach wilted in the hot pasta, dressing: garlic and ginger pressed, olive oil, fresh lemon juice.

Clearly I am picky about what kind of veggie meals I eat. I veer on the side of Mediterranean style or straight up pub food. Recipe suggestions welcome. Nothing too crazy where I have to purchase all kind of strange things. I like simple. Though maybe something a little more complicated the flour, egg, butter, sugar in a cup.

Never again.

xxLindsay

Things As Of Late

Right this very moment I am eating Stilton cheese infused with candied lemon peel and it is fucking delicious. I am also considering going to get a donut and coffee because those are two things DC does very well. (HOW MUCH have you missed my blog updates, world? I bet you've been sitting there thinking...'Gee, I wonder what Lindsay has eaten today or is considering eating?' Maybe you should check out my Instagram account, mmm? Lots of really horrible food pictures there. Lots of opportunity to be the creepy, creepy life stalkers we all know we are but only admit to in therapy.)

I want to get back into the blogging game as I've always taken such delight in it and some of my funniest material comes out best in blog format. Also, Amanda is back at the British Bake Off Bake Along blog posts (say that twenty times fast) and those are always my favourites. Which means I must get back into a regular blog reading, if not blog posting.

I am back in America and let me tell you....repatriating is a bitch. Language necessary. I hate it. It's worse then the first time I did it after my year abroad in college. But then again, the first time I repatriated back, I just turned 21 that summer, so many of those months were spent in a slight G&T haze of delight. So it couldn't have been as bad as this.

Things I did not expect:
-Dealing with a mild case of depression since I've been back. It sucks. It's tiring. Apparently it can be pretty common when you have a big life change. But this depression also means my creativity seems to have been sucked from me, making everything I use to love doing extremely difficult. I have many things planned to help myself get over this blue period, fear not.

-I did not expect to have a hard time making friends in a city where I have friends. Sometimes it feels like I'm auditioning for a role that I originated, but no one is quite sure if I can pull it off again. Even though the role is Me. Me As Your Friend. It's a weird place to be in, but I'm sure I'll work it out by getting real aggressive with my social calender. Or maybe I'll just stay home in my pjs and have a binge rewatch session of Doctor Who while eating bacon. Wait and see what happens. If suddenly I just balloon up, send for help.

-The American food is not as good as some of the American-style foods in England. I have yet to find a really, really delicious burger and I miss Byron so bad. What's up with that? I fully understand and accept that my citizenship may be revoked as a result of that statement.

-I moved back to DC and now weed is legal. WHATTHEWHAT? 4/20 was a day where AdMo neighbourhood spent handing out free seeds to grow (as you can't sell them legally). Now what I'd really like to know is....where's the lifestyle blog that's modelled for the weed lifestyle? Something quite girly in pink and white, with instructional how-to's on properly baking pot brownies for your gluten free guests. Maybe a nice Pinterst board all about matching your pipe to your outfit of the day? Who's with me on this?

-America is struggling with a lot of harsh stuff. We could see it all going down from England. The police shootings, public shoot ups, the war on women and their reproductive rights... It's a different thing seeing it from the US. In comparison, seeing it from the UK was like seeing The USA Issues Lite. I was not prepared for the amount of racism I've seen, or the fact that so many people really, really hate my womb, or.......the worst thing of all, now I won't be able to sneak food into movie theatres because they're doing bag checks for guns. It's a scary place being in, without an ocean between you and the Republican party.


Clearly, adjusting to being back here is taking me some time. I've set up a few things in order to help me along my path to feeling more comfortable here. I just started working for a farm one day a week and I get paid in vegetables!

I haven't a clue what half of these things are. Luckily, this is America. Everything can be fried.

Now I just need to find a place that will give me free donuts and coffee.

I'm starting volunteer training for a DC animal shelter soon as well. Thank god. I need a puppy fix in my life. Who doesn't need a puppy fix?

The other two things that are currently providing a big distraction from my malaise is two fitness challenges I just jumped right into without thinking much about (ahh that's the ol' Lindsay I know and love). I'm running a half marathon on October 31st in Philly because of reasons like: my aunt and my brother are running it, I want to buy a new running outfit for it, this is just an excuse to run long enough to need one of those gels that taste like velvety chocolate,  and also cause I don't really want to participate in the usual American Halloween revelry of getting piss ass drunk and making bad outfit decisions. I think I've made enough memories from those Halloweens of Old to keep me shuddering in embarrassment well into my 80s.

The second challenge is signing up for a charity walk in NYC with two of my college friends. Turns out....you have to actually train for this kind of walk as it is 39 miles in two days. For some reason in my head I thought, 'nooooo problem'. Well guess what I learned? RUNNING IS SO MUCH EASIER. I am dead serious. I'd rather run 10 miles then walk 10. I'm hurting in all kinds of new ways. It's weird. My feet are not happy. Also FUCK this weather, DC you suck. Humidity is no way to die, but DC sure is trying to MURDER ME.

I feel you should all take pity on me and donate to my walk. I pledged to raise $1800 but haven't gotten very far due to much of summer spent running around going 'it's not depression, it's hormones!' and my doctor saying 'it ain't hormones. Now stop crying into that donut.'

I've done fundraising before, but right now it feels like people are less likely to donate money when you are not fundraising for something you currently suffering from. People were all about donating to my Crohn's fundraiser........though that might have been to stop me from talking so much about bowels. This time around I'm raising money for breast cancer research. I still can't believe it's something we do not have a handle on yet. This particular charity really won me over because they're not just about donating to the research, they're all about helping the people with breast cancer and their families get through a tough time. I can relate. Donate here: the link that leads to doing good things with your life.

Please consider donating. Don't make me hold a bake sale. Trust me, no body wants that.

Check back in on Friday's for a fitness update. I can do planks for, like, a whole minute now without swearing like a sailor. Have I impressed you with my physical feats yet?

xxLindsay