All good things must ___.

At wits’ ___.

At the ___ of the day.

Short ___ of the stick.

___ of the earth.

Off the deep ___.

Rear ___.

Sometimes, you just have to use the word “end,” but this isn’t one of those times.

See you on the other side <3

love, esther

Well, my inbox has definitely been reminding me about the coming sunny seasons (well, with my pasty skin and the good eating I’ve been doing as of late, I call it ‘impending doom’) with s/s collections and swimwear. Mentally, I’m beyond ready for sun and beaches and al fresco dining. My body, however, is not on the same page. I am officially beginning my regimen for bikini season. In the meantime, I’m more than happy to shop around (and motivate myself with the insane bodies of VS supermodels). I’ve already found a few that I’m in love with, and I’m in the middle of justifying the purchase to myself. You know, besides the fact that it’s March, and I live in Chicago, and it won’t get warm until, like, June, and I already own like six bikinis. Actually, my favorite one broke…that’s a good enough reason, right?

Man, oh man, I can’t wait.

love, esther

{Rhea Durham in Naeem Khan} I gasped when I saw her.

{Hailee Steinfeld in Marchesa} Well, aren’t you adorable?

{Mandy Moore in Monique Lhullier} Is that you, Mandy?!

{Camila Alves in Kaufman Franco} Who does this girl think she is? Wearing black to the Oscars red carpet and blowing everyone out of the water. But really, I must be out of the loop — who is she?

{Mila Kunis in Elie Saab} Mila Kunis, you are a lavender goddess.

{Jennifer Lawrence in Calvin Klein} All of these ladies looked ah-maze-ing this past Sunday, but gawd, Jennifer Lawrence — the soft hair, the sexpot make-up, the jeweled clutch and bracelet, and that dress! You are my fave.

(Congrats to The King’s Speech! All of those awards were well deserved, and I was personally excited about Best Original Screenplay.)

love, esther

Have a happy Thursday.

love, esther

So yes! My good friend, Jennifer Chung, came to visit, well not me, but she had a performance at my school. I actually found out like a weekend before she came, and I just couldn’t contain myself. How long had it been? Like, a year and a half? Well, whatever it was, it was too long. And I remember telling another good friend of mine here at Northwestern that I was kind of nervous. It wasn’t that I was afraid it would be awkward, more that it’d be different. This was the longest we had gone without seeing each other, and neither of us are very good at keeping in touch. But I realized once she came and left, that’s what makes this friendship so special to me. We don’t always hear it from the other, how much we mean to each other and how much we love each other and how my life would never have been the same without her; we just have to trust that it is that way, that the love and missing and prayers are there even if we don’t say so. And as the kind of person that constantly needs to hear I’m loved, I think it’s good practice for me to remind myself of her.

Anyways, nothing changed. She came and it was too short and it was like no time had passed since our last time together. That’s the thing about friendships like that — a year, twenty, or a day, time is irrelevant.

Jen and my new old friend Ben Clement (both very talented):

post-performance jam session (listening to Jen sing is definitely nostalgic):

what a cutie.

serenading servicemen:

together again:

I won’t miss her too much because she’s coming back in April to perform at the University of Chicago! Check her out for sure if you didn’t get a chance to hear her at Celebrasia.

To friendships where time and distance aren’t anything. God is good.

love, esther

Here’s the quick recap:

+ I tried to bake this cake but didn’t want to go through the trouble of baking four different cakes from scratch and used boxed cake instead. Huge mistake. Apparently, boxed cake doesn’t carve well. Good thing I had chocolate covered strawberries as a back up (and surprisingly, I’m very good at those).

+ Norman asked me to pick up a package for him at the front desk in the middle of the day because he was at work (??), and it turned out he had flowers delivered to me! It was too sweet of him.

+ When he came home, we went out to Aria, an Asian fusion place south of the river. It was candlelit, sultry, couple tables, very Valentine’s. They were selling Moet Chandon by the glass for V-day, and once we ordered it, a waiter came carrying a GIANT bottle of it and all I was thinking was, “They’re not actually going to pour that into our tiny champagne glasses.” Oh yes, they did. It was literally half my height. I think it’s one of those things that’s cute in theory, but I just felt really bad for the red-faced waiter who had to carry that around all night.

+ After dinner, we went to Pops for some more bubbly. No giant bottles this time.

+ Norman got me this for Valentine’s Day:

which I love (I’ve been obsessing over everything Wildfox for a while but alas, no resources). And it’s so appropriate, no?

And me? Well, I wrote him something:

I believe he’s the one. I’ve never been the girl who believes in soul mates or love at first sight or needing a man, and sometimes, after a messy, threadbare breakup, I don’t even believe in love. (But that never lasts long – why else would I keep dragging myself through the debris of my failed relationships? No, la douleur is not exquise.) My mother tells me I’m still young, and my friends, instead of saying, “I’m so happy for you,” ask me, “Are you sure? But how can you be sure?”I can list off how kindhearted he is, how nurturing, how passionate, how good at everything, how too good to be true (but true) he is. I can tell them how he leads me, how I can follow him, how God-centered and Christ-following he is. I can tell them he’s confident and he knows who he is, and God knows I need that in a man; and he’s a man that can admit his mistakes, and God knows every girl needs that in a man. I can tell them we’re Myers-Briggs compatible; I’m an ENFP, he’s an INFJ. He’s the I to my E, the J to my P. No? That isn’t enough?

Well, what about how smart he is? He’s brilliant (and sometimes, I’m embarrassed to tell him exactly how brilliant I think he is), and despite all of his brilliance, he never makes me or my carelessness or any of my inane questions seem stupid. His brilliance is the kind that makes people aim higher, and when they can’t quite reach, he grabs them a stepstool. (“A little higher,” he’d relentlessly coax.) I don’t need to tell them about my mood swings, but I can tell them about how being around him makes me better and how even if I don’t comply, he’s a saint. I can tell them about how being around him makes me better always. What about the way he always grabs my phone when I forget it (which is more often than I care to admit)? And what about how he runs with me, even though he hates running, how he eats with me, travels with me, goes out and lives life with me? Did I mention he’s a musical genius?

“All of that will go away,” they’ll say. But do they know some of my favorite moments are when we sit in bed, side by side, him with his book and me with my Vogue, reading to each other things we think will make the other laugh, because his laughter fuels my soul, the two of us sitting there thinking, “I can do this with you until words don’t exist. Then I’ll have to tickle you for your laughter.”

And do they know we can still laugh? We don’t just laugh, we have absolute fits, and often. And for nine months? I can’t think of anyone else that’s made me laugh for that long. He makes me laugh and it’s an unending kind of laughter. I think I’ll be laughing for the rest of my life.

“What about when you cry? You won’t be laughing for the rest of your life,” they’ll say. Fine, I won’t, and that’s okay because I have him. He’s seen me cry. (I hated this, crying in front of him, but he beckoned to me, “It’s alright.”) I’ve seen him cry, we cry, and it gives us extra reasons to hold each other, more tightly every time. I’ll cry, and for the rest of my life, it will be okay.

And sometimes there’s silence. I can tell them about the silence between us and how for once, the silence doesn’t mean I’m alone or I’m wrong or I need to make it up to him; it’s the silence of 5 a.m., 2 p.m., and Winn-Dixie summers.

I can tell them how easy it is with him, and even when it’s not, it’s okay because he’ll never let me go. I can tell them how he saved me, just in time. (He found me when I couldn’t find myself after years of trying to be someone else for insignificant others.) But all of this doesn’t matter to them because they don’t know. Because for those that do know what it is to indisputably love someone, everything I’ve mentioned is futile; it can’t be articulated and it doesn’t need to be proven to anyone except him. This isn’t infatuation; I’ve been there, and I know where that will take me. He isn’t perfect (we already know I’m not), and I’m aware of that, but this, us, him – it’s different. I can’t quantify how it’s different. It’s something you can’t believe until it’s sitting next to you on a sweaty summer night, a little drunk off of the heat, sangria, dancing and happiness, and it holds you and sways you to the rhythm, and its sureness goes from the base of my gut to our touching foreheads, and intermingles with our sweat before we release it into the lake and beyond so the world will know that we found each other.

This essay was written for an assignment for which the prompt read, “Write about something you believe in, but you can’t prove.” The author wrote this essay on February 7, 2011. She knew he was the one as soon as he taught her how to love.

I actually found that picture soon after I wrote it. Kind of perfect.

To my Valentine: thanks for making life wonderful.

love, esther

Some inspiration for a day like this:

His and hers breakfasts:

a morning kiss

and another

it’s okay to be happy; it’s okay to show your love –

love is timeless:

and there are all kinds of love:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) - “I carry your heart with me” by e. e. cummings

In case you weren’t aware of the circumstances here in Chicago, this is what I’m living with.

love, esther

“It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped lightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but til that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working–bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and he and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world: and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone–one mind less, one world less.”

–George Orwell, “A Hanging”

Passivity is not an option in the presence of a master; true writing compels the soul.

love,  esther

Unfortunately, these are now gone, and I still need something to bring to the cookie swap tomorrow!

On a completely different note: I’m trying to do a redesign, but wordpress is a little annoying about that. So I’m either going to move to blogger UNLESS someone awesome and tech-savvier than I is willing to help me out. If you know anyone, send them my way!

Stay warm.

love, esther