Tag Archives: no i really do love ohio

Ohio Historical Society Wedding: Dayna and Matt

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To give you a little backstory, my best friend Tracey was randomly paired with Dayna as a freshman in a dorm at THE Ohio State University, and they went on to be roommates for the remainder of college, through different dorms and apartments. I got to know Dayna through ringing her doorbell in the middle of the night when my car got towed while I was at a concert on campus and being a bridesmaid in Tracey’s wedding with her and going to the local pumpkin festival together for years and scrapbooking every year over Christmas break while I’m in Ohio and a million other girly things.

Dayna is quite the photographer herself and has a million artist friends, so I was beside myself when she asked me to photograph her marriage to Matt at the Ohio Historical Society’s Ohio Village. It’s an adorable old-timey town with barns and wagons and outhouses around every corner, so it was not only a beautiful but also a really fun setting. Dayna was stunning and somehow so relaxed, and Matt was sarcastic and quippy the entire time, and I really couldn’t have had a better day photographing their looooove.

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Ohio Historical Society Wedding, Ohio Village

Eye-Slashing Kittens, Ohio Sunsets, and the Fear of Winter

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Ohio has been on my mind lately what with my being unemployed and yet not having visited yet (obviously I’m waiting for the pumpkin festival next month), so here are a few photos I dug up from my last trips there:

This is Graham, who belongs to my BFF, Tracey. When I’m in town, she goes off to work as usual for most of the week, and I stay at her and her husband’s house with the cats. Usually the cats sleep in their bedroom (Tracey’s and Dan’s; the cats don’t have their own bedroom) all day, but sometimes they’ll wander downstairs to see who’s crying in front of yet another episode of “Enlightened” and find me. Rupert is generally happy to turn back around and ignore me, but Graham will stare me down, reminding me that he had the chance to kill me once and didn’t take it. I’m sure I’ve told you this, but before Tracey and Dan owned their own house with a separate office, craft room, and Katie’s Room™, I used to sleep on the living room couch when I’d visit. When Graham was just a kitten, I awoke in the middle of the night once to see him flying across the couch from one armrest to the other, his claws outstretched and coming for my eyes. He could’ve had me if he’d wanted to. And he won’t let me forget.

I get so used to my horizon being saturated with tall buildings that sometimes I’ll be leaving Olive Garden with Tracey and our friend Katie and will just be struck by the sight of the sky. Ohio sunsets are amazing, and this wasn’t even a remotely interesting one, but I just remember my heart swelling at this in the middle of some dumb parking lot.

As we were leaving for the airport after my Christmas visit, my dad took me to the barn behind our house to show me these icicles, which formed at an angle thanks to the crazy wind coming up the hill they live on. As much as I’m loving the cooler air and the opportunity to open my windows for the first time since March right now, I’m so, so anxious about winter this year.

OHIO!

Eight Years in NYC

Filed under i used to be so cool, living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio
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I was reading my old LiveJournal last night at 3 a.m. (narcissism!) and found this post from the end of my first year living here, when the boyfriend I had followed here from Ohio was moving back home and I was changing my mind daily about whether or not I would stay behind:


A year and a half ago, when my Best Friend 4 Eva™, Tracey, realized that her 1st year of teaching junior high was actually sucking pretty hardcore, she started talking to other teachers about how she was feeling. They tried to console her by saying things like, “It’ll take you about five years to get used to it, but after that, you’ll be fine.” And she kept thinking, “Why would I spend five years just trying to get used to something when I could be doing something I like right now?”

And so she quit. I’ve decided that’s how I feel about New York. Don’t get me wrong–I’m happy here. Some days, I’m happier here than I ever was back in Ohio. But for the most part, it seems like most of the people I’ve met here moved to NYC because they wanted to escape their old lives. They didn’t know anyone who thought like they did or all of their friends had grown up and gotten married or they’re introverts who want to be nameless and blend in. And that’s not me.

This year hasn’t been wasted for me at all. I got to experience a million things I wouldn’t have in Ohio, and some days I felt so alive that I thought I might burst. But it drives me crazy the things I’ve missed at home. Now that Tracey’s only working part-time, she has free time like she hasn’t had since we were in high school. And since she’s doing things that she loves, she’s a completely different person. She’s not dating her boyfriend-who-didn’t-like-me, so she’s going out and talking to boys, and I’m missing it. My friend-since-we-were-born Katie just got married to a boy I set her up with, and I missed her bridal shower and bachelorette party because I had to save my money to make it home for the wedding itself. My grandfather found out he has cancer last month and despite getting treatment in Mexico will probably die before I’m able to see him.

Sometimes I’m amazed at the number of people I’ve gotten to know here and will miss if I leave. On Friday, when I was 1000% percent sure I was moving back home, two of my co-workers came into the kitchen where I was making a warm beverage with the ridiculously awesome tea/coffee/hot chocolate machine and started talking to me about all of the reasons it’d suck to be blind when using the subway. I said, “Hey, guys, let’s agree not to become blind, okay?”, and one of the girls said faux-enthusiastically, “That’s a great idea!” And I loved her. And I thought, “If I leave, I’ll never have the chance to get to know this girl.” But it’s very obvious to me that I’ll never replace Tracey. And as much as I like my new job, its not like my old job at the library, and I don’t want to be a receptionist for the rest of my life. I know that eventually, all of my friends from home are going to be all settled in with real jobs and spouses and babies, and then they’ll be dead to me. That’s when I’ll make my escape to NYC. That’s when I’ll be ready to make new friends and sit in jazz clubs alone and spend two bazillion dollars on a one-room apartment.

People keep trying to console me by saying things like, “It’ll take you about five years to get used to it, but after that, you’ll be fine.” But I’m not sure that I’m willing to spend five years trying to build a life for myself here when I’ve already got a great one back home.


And now I’ve been here for more than eight years. And I have a hard time imagining living anywhere else.

Gettin’ Hitched in Ohio

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I’m leaving for Ohio tonight to visit friends and family, eat all of the fast food in the world, and photograph the wedding of Kim and Jack, two friends introduced to me by my BFF, Tracey. I don’t want to say that this is my first wedding, both because I want you to think I’m a professional and because I helped Jessica shoot Cassie‘s sister’s wedding in Pittsburgh last October. But this is my first time photographing one alone.

I’m totally unprepared for this wedding in that I have no idea what the venue looks like, where I’m allowed and not allowed to stand, and how the service is going to go, but I’m totally prepared for this wedding in that I’m confident Kim and Jack are going to look amazing in every shot. She’s one of the bubbliest people I’ve ever met, and he’s a total James-Dean type of cool guy who doesn’t have a bit of interest in being a model and then he kills it anyway. Here are the engagement photos I shot for them last fall to prove it:

Kim's Ohio Engagement Photo

Kim's Ohio Engagement Photo

Kim's Ohio Engagement Photo

Kim's Ohio Engagement Photo

Kim's Ohio Engagement Photo

So. Excited. (Slash so-nervous-I-may-faint-at-the-alter.)

Christmas in Ohio

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, no i really do love ohio
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My BFF, Tracey, picked me up from the airport on the Tuesday night before Christmas, and we touched boobs while modeling the new chevron necklaces she bought us:


This is us trying not to smile.

My parents were out of the state until Sunday, so I spent the rest of the week at Tracey’s, watching “Sex and the City” for the first time, finding out that it’s teeeeerrible both fashion-wise and supposedly-portraying-women-as-independent-but-actually-portraying-them-as-lonely-and-shallow-wise, cleansing my palate with the muuuuuch better “Girls”, crying over every episode of “Enlightened”, taking pictures of Tracey’s cats, eating all of the fast foods, reliving our childhoods with Return to Oz, The NeverEnding Story, and Labyrinth, wishing we had the RiffTrax version of Twilight, and making fudge. Cake batter fudge.


I got to do a photoshoot with Tracey’s brother, his wife, their toddler, and their brand new baby at the Franklin Park Conservatory. This is not a picture of them but of a piece from the Aurora Robson exhibit made, basically, of trash:


We tried the famous meatloaf at Cap City Diner and ate ice cream at Jeni’s partly because it’s splendid and partly because every food blogger on the Internet is obsessed with it, and I can make them jealous since Jeni’s only has physical locations in Ohio and Tennessee:


My first Christmas party began on Sunday afternoon with my cousin Bethany and me making chocolate peppermint rolls and ended with my cousin Keith and uncle Bob flashing me while I was innocently trying to take a family picture:


My dad’s side of the family gathered on Monday night, and chaos ensued when we moved the festivities to the basement, where the children were allowed to don their Iron Man masks and take boxes for hands. We used to hand out gifts one at a time, with the youngest person unwrapping a present first while the rest of us sat on our hands and so on until the oldest person had opened a gift and then back to the beginning, but it’s a free-for-all now, as the wrapping paper shreds on the floor would indicate:


Tuesday was lunch with my stepmom’s family, where all of the food used to seem so strange to me (corn pudding?) but that I now look forward to all year. I swear my stepbrother Josh and my stepsister’s twins, Hanna and Hope, were displaying this much familial love without me having to prod them:


Tracey and I and her husband, Dan, went to play cards with our friends Erin and Jenn as an excuse to see their new house, which is actually a very old house with tons of tiny, hidden doors leading to nowhere. They found the plans for the house in the basement which included a provision for only allowing white people to live there. Unapologetically racist!

We also saw our other-best-friend-from-high-school, Katie, and her kids, Maria and Evelyn:


We’d been trying to convince Katie to leave the girls with her husband so we could all get crunk and hit on boys at The Cheesecake Factory, but Katie somehow tricked us into coming to her house instead. I wanted to be mad at her, but dammit, I like those kids:



It snowed on Christmas Eve and was frosty enough that the snow stuck around the entire time I was there, creating some annoyingly picturesque views from our house:



Less annoying once my dad got out the Bobcat and found our driveway again:


My stepmom keeps the loveliest, most comfortable home full of antiques arranged in ways that would make magazine editors pee, and even her Christmas tree is always a sight to behold:


But it ain’t all classy:


My parents were about to have the floors redone in two of their rooms, so as I was saying goodbye, they were moving everything into other rooms. Not my dad’s hunting boots, though. They’ll construct the new floor around those. j/k. I’m just trying to lighten the mood light to keep myself from crying over the loss of the old floor.


CHRISTMAS!


And now I’m off to read every. single. blog post. you made while I was gone.