About them: Here at Spilled Milk headquarters, we combine food and comedy in a bowl and stir it up until it explodes. Join your jovial (possibly too jovial) hosts, Molly and Matthew, for recipes, cooking tips, winning lotto numbers, and catfights. Spilled Milk has not been evaluated by theFDA and is not intended to treat any disease, but just between you and me, it probably cures chlamydia.

Chlamydia, people. This is comedy gold.

Lubec, Maine

As you can see from the sign, Lubec is as far east as you can get in the United States. Of course, Canada is just across the Quoddy Narrows.

I’m pretty sure this is the kind of place that rejects you if you aren’t 17th generation or if you accidentally say ‘Quoddy’ wrong.

I kind of want to move there and make friends with some old men and eat a lot of lobster rolls.

Hunting Arrows

Who knew that arrows following your mouse around a screen could be so purdy?

Emma’s unite:

I couldn’t find this image on his website, but according to alphadesigner.com, Emma and Maria are the names to beat. He’s got a bunch of other maps too.

I’m a little late on this whole ‘makeup free week’ thing that’s sweeping our Internets. (Huffpo and Jezebel didn’t pick it up in time to start with her either, and they have vaginapower the likes of which I’ve never seen, so I don’t feel too badly about my tardiness.)

However, it’s an interesting idea, and I’m considering joining in. I’m sure she won’t begrudge me an offset start date, right?

Rachel of Rabbit Write, the mind behind the idea, says:

The philosophy is this. Make-up is great. It is a powerful tool, a way to express yourself, your mood and interior life. But, when you can’t go without something, it loses it’s spark.

To me it sounds like her point is that she wants to be using makeup to accessorize, and instead it’s been moved into the category of ‘defining’. As in, I can put on a scarf when it’s handy and appropriate, but I am certainly capable of leaving the house without one – and for her, makeup is no longer like that.

To discover if participation is worthwhile, I’m trying to establish what category makeup falls into for me.

My approach towards makeup changed when I quit working as a pastry chef. When I was in the kitchen, high temperatures and 5 am commutes and flour and sweat would have destroyed anything I put together, so I never bothered. When I started working at an office, I realized that makeup was something that some women did before they came in for the day. They put together an outfit, they blow-dried their hair, they did their makeup, and then they came to work. Never one to stand out, I started copying them – sometimes, when I remembered, and almost entirely with makeup that had been floating around my various bathrooms for enough years to make a mysophobe cringe.

I thought it looked fun! It wasn’t so much that I felt a responsibility to wear it (ask Queen B – my personal style when I rejoined corporate America was … experimental). It was more that I wanted to play. For me, then, makeup was art.

Now? Now I’m the grad student who, today, spent $100 at Sephora. Sure, it was mostly on moisturizer – but how on earth did I get from there to here?

I have two gorgeous girlfriends who are usually makeup free, and I asked them to weigh in on why that was, to see if they could help me sort this whole thing out.

Laura (this was on the phone, so I’m paraphrasing):

Usually I forget or don’t have time. I have a five minute face I can do, but it’s clear mascara, clear lip gloss, and blush. Since the blush is the only thing you can really see, I don’t feel like it makes that much of a difference.

Star, my dinbff (derby-IM-new-best-friend-forever):

It’s a fact of life that we judge things based on appearance. I have never been “into” makeup. My mom has never been “into” makeup. I try every couple of years to get into makeup but I always try to dive in head first and get all glam all the time. I have realized that is not the point. That is also not me. I am trying again, but I forget about it. When I do remember, I noteice that I still look and feel like me but just a more polished version.

I realized, talking to them, that I never forget makeup. Sometimes I don’t wear it – if I’m home alone and my only plans are the grocery store? I leave it off. I don’t keep any at Crockett’s house, so nights I spend there are inevitably followed by makeup free days. I’m always aware that I’m not wearing makeup, though.

I’m still torn, you guys. I see her point, and part of the reason I’m reluctant is that I don’t want to not wear it. Am I even sure people would notice? No. I’m love my skin tone and have never successfully matched it thank-you-italian-father, somehow lipstick and I have never bonded, and my cheeks are plenty rosy on their own thank-you-irish-mother. I wear eye makeup, period.

Maybe I’ll hop in the shower after posting this and forget to put makeup on afterwards?

Probably not.

What are your thoughts? Would you go a week without makeup? Is that a normal week for you?

It may be because my love for Joseph Gordon Levitt and my love for Cillian Murphy, when combined, is virtually unstoppable. (What? I like my men pretty – sue me.)

Really. I was saying dirty things in the movie theater, and I went to see it with Crockett and my mom – NOT, as you might imagine, the ideal audience for a running commentary of the things I want to do to those pretty, pretty men.

Of course, my  mom had similar feelings for Tom Hardy, so really it was only Crockett who was left out.

Although now that I think about it, when we got home, Crockett said, ‘Who was that woman who played DiCaprio’s wife? Marion Cotillard? Yeah, she’s all right.’

You don’t know Crockett, so let me explain. ‘She’s all right’ would translate into ‘dammmmnnnn that girl is fine’ in the mouth of a man who said things like that. Crockett is dignified and full of the deep thoughts and therefore says no such thing. Except sometimes about me. Because otherwise I cry a little, noisily and with lots of snot.

I bet Marion Cotillard gets snotty and weepy too sometimes. Probably.

Do you need more of a reason than lots of pretty, pretty people? If you’re that guy, that I don’t care about looks* guy, there are reasons for you too.

1. There is fabulous (verging on magical) sciencey stuff. Even better, the verging on magical stuff isn’t over-explained or under-explained (I’m looking at you, Primer), and is instead slowly revealed piece by piece, right when you care.
   

   Gordon Levitt will Drink. Your. Shifting-gravity. Milkshake.

2. There are takeaways. I double dog dare you to leave the theater without wishing you had a totem.
3. Finally, the characters would be worth rooting for even if they weren’t so damn adorable. They have hopes and fears and goals, just like real people. Cept, you know, real people with the power to climb into your head and fuck with your dreams.

There are reviews galore, so I’m not going to bother with more. Instead, I might just go see it again – it’d be a better and more entertaining use of my time than answering programing questions like ’3. IS THIS LINE A MEMORY LEAK OR DANGLING POINTER?’

*Liar. No one is impressed, dude.

I don’t know where you came from, but I love you more than you can possibly know. If you need anything, call me. Liver? (Wait… which one do I have two of? Kidney?) Whichever organ I have two of, you can have one.

That’s how much I love you.

Just so you know EXACTLY what you get from emma-nation, though, I’ve made you some pictures. Print them out small and stick them in your wallet, print them out huge and hang them on your wall, get them tattooed on your ass, whatever. I don’t judge. (That’s a lie, I judge all the time. I judge like I’m being paid for it. But I won’t judge YOU, obviously.)

For when you’re feeling blue:

For ANYTIME. EVER:

For when you’re feeling intellectual:

Also, don’t forget The Road More Travelled, a new collaborative quarter-life-crisis we’re-doing-good-just-by-making-it-through-the-day blog. It’s so new there aren’t any posts yet, but we’ll be up and running daily starting Monday. It’s less about shit-that-happens-to-Emma and more about growing up, having thoughts, stuff like that. Thoughts: everyone has them. Well, mostly.

For when you’re feeling snarky:

For when you want to know you’re not alone in thinking that regular everyday things are kind of cool:

For when you really just want another cocktail:

And finally, if you feel like looking at pictures of food (and who doesn’t, amirite?), you can always head over to my sad little love child of a blog Mangled Baby Duck.

No, my sexy foot doesn’t have anything to do with it being a food blog. Neither does the title, for that matter. What do you people expect from me?? God, you’re so demanding sometimes.

That’s it, I’m taking my kidney back.

I moved out of my parents house when I was 17 to go to college. Yes, at 17. Yes, I’m a genius*.

98/99 – Dorms.
99/00 – An apartment in Henderson Kentucky. I followed a boy. Because at 19, that’s the kind of girl I was. I’m not that kind of girl anymore. Unless the boy is Crockett.
Mines Park (apartment style college housing). Actually, they’re technically just apartments but you have to be a student to live in them. It’s the kind of thing you usually see for family housing, cept it’s for rowdy undergrads.
00/01 - A house in Golden, CO. I lived in the garage part and I saw my first ghost there.
01/04 – A big townhouse in Golden with three years worth of rotating roommates. In this case, instead of remembering the house I just remember if the tiniest sprinter lived there at the time, or perhaps that insanely irritating kid who lived in the basement and insisted that since he had Irish in him he wasn’t able to get drunk oh and also he felt no pain, or perhaps TAYLOR!

TAYLOR! He's all class, all the time.

04/05 – A townhouse across the street from the above mentioned townhouse, because Jumpsuit and I had broken up and I had about 3o seconds to decide where to go. Moving across the street was damn stupid, btw, but we were sharing custody of Cloey. (Who was and is MINE. Just sayin’.)
A townhouse in Boulder with a couple, a girl who turned out to be one of my besties, her boyfriend, and someone’s little brother (not mine). A three bedroom, two and a half bathroom townhouse. With six people and three dogs.
05/06 – A huge (500 sq ft maybe?) studio apartment in downtown Boulder with a kitchen that actually rolled around on wheels and an actual linoleum floor. It was built in the sixties-ish and hadn’t been updated since. I loved that place, and weirdly, the first time my mom ever got drunk was in the same building.
Back to my parents house, briefly, after one of my dogs got me evicted.
A friend’s house in Boulder. I loved the house, wasn’t nuts about the friend but was essentially couch surfing, so I was the beggar in the beggar/chooser relationship at that point.
06/07 – My red apartment. It wasn’t actually red, but it was a 325 sq foot studio with no natural light and with lots of installed mirrors to make it appear larger. My primary piece of furniture was a red daybed/couch, and all I remember is the red being reflected off all the walls. I ended up breaking my lease because it was driving me insane, and I’m sort of surprised I didn’t start wandering around Boulder in my nightgown muttering ‘redroom, redroom’ before I got out of there.
07-now – My townhouse.

I feel rooted in my townhouse, and you can probably see why. It’s the only place other than my parents house (which has now been sold and has some other family living in it, which is weirdweirdweird) in which I’ve had any kind of consistency. I haven’t had to pack up every 8 – 12 months. I don’t have to ask permission to put holes in the walls.

As I’ve grown up, so has my place. Crockett and I still call it the dollhouse, of course, but that has more to do with the diminutive size of the girl, dogs, and house than the decor (at least I think it does!)

About a month after I moved in.

From a couple of days ago. Note the pictures on walls, the big tv, the ACTUAL BLINDS on the windows, plants everywhere - it's like I'm an adult.

I know things will change again. I’m not going to live here until I die. Honestly, I probably won’t still be here on my 30th birthday. But I love it here, and my ‘dollhouse years’ are some of the best I’ve had so far.

P.S. If you’d told me when I moved in that the three carloads of stuff I had would multiply into a houseful, I would have scoffed. Literally, scoffed. (That’s when you make a noise in your throat that sounds like you’re coughing and laughing, right? Or is that just what it sounds like it should be?) And yet, I now have a houseful of… well, stuff. Clothes, shoes, kitchen accoutrements - I’m pretty sure they are humping like rabbits when I’m not looking. If not, there is no physical explanation for where it all came from.

*I’m not actually a genius. I skipped third grade. I was a second grade genius.

Doesn’t that sound like a book?

I Was a Second Grade Genius
(Damnit)

By
Emma

I love this place.

How jealous are you? This is the view from our balcony.

Bread baking and purse making.

Why yes, I did make this. From scratch.

And also this. From scratch. WITHOUT A PATTERN AHEM.

Crockett’s mom took me sewing machine shopping on Saturday, and I feel like a regular old pioneer woman. No (fairly simple) pattern is unsewable for these deft (and aided with the finest electronic sewing machine my meager funds could afford) hands.

Now that I have my beach bags, I’m ready for the British Virgin Islands. I leave on the red-eye tonight*.

If you’re considering breaking into my house while I’m gone, I see two obstacles for you. 1) You don’t know where my house is. 2) My wonderful dog sitting mother will be there. So blllphtttt.

Several weeks ago I intended to start writing an extra post every other day in order to keep emmanation updated while I was gone. Then, when that didn’t happen, two weeks ago I was going to write an extra post every day. Then, several days ago, I thought ‘well, I can pump out eight posts in a few hours, how hard can it be’.

Ha.

So, for the next ten days (eight weekdays), emmanation will be dark. Unless there’s wifi somewhere. Which, how can there not be? This is AMERICA! (Except, the British part. Shit. Right. Well, you know what I mean.)

I love you and I will miss you and I will be back with photos galore.

MWAH.

*Why call it the red eye? You’re already flying at 1 am, why must they remind you that you’re going to look like hell when you land? I’m going to call it the last call flight instead. I think that makes it sound romantic and adventurous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvdU2xpgvdk

If you object to commercials with semi-naked women period, fine. Object away.  I’m sure you’ll hate this, for example:

However, if you (like the advertising decision makers at ABC) object to the Lane Bryant ad but not the Vicky’s Secret ad, I’m a little confused. Are plus size women somehow more naked than skinny women? I’ll admit there’s more of the Lane Bryant model (in places that I sometimes wish I had more), but there are like four women in the VS ad, so on a skin for skin ratio VS is definitely the worse offender. Plus, those women sort of look like they’re orgasming in waterfalls, and the LB woman is getting ready for a date (albeit a risque one). Are there other guidelines they’re using that I’m missing?

One of Lane Bryant’s supporters (not the company themselves, as far as I can tell) created this rebuttal ad:

I don’t necessarily think this is the right response. Body acceptance means all bodies, y’all – yes, sometimes skinny woman go to unhealthy lengths to be thin, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes curvy women are sedentary and big eaters, and sometimes they aren’t. The whole book-cover-judger thing goes both ways, right?

I love to be labelled. I love to know that I am an ENTP, a high DIS, and that my number one strength is empathy. I love to be able to tell people that I am an ex-engineer, a blogger, and a pastry chef. I embrace the fact that I’m a type b personality and a shopoholic, an iPad owner and a girl geek.

Most of all, though, I love my style statement.

Organic Whimsy.

Doesn’t that just make you want to go run through a field, throwing daisies behind yourself?

Style Statements are the brainchild of two women in CA (although one seems to have moved on from the business).

What is a Style Statement?

• An opportunity … to take a breath, look at where you are, reassess your priorities, and go forward confidently and distinctively into the life you really want to live
• An articulation of who you are … two words that serve as a compass for your choices every day and that keep you grounded in the authentic you
• A decision … to embrace yourself and nurture your unique style and creative edge

What is the 80/20 Style Statement principle?

This is the magic formula that makes your Style Statement a truly useful tool. The first word of your style statement reflects your inner foundation, your 80%. The second word is your creative edge, your 20%—and it’s often this 20% that people don’t nurture. The 80/20 principle’s combination of energy, ideals, and aesthetics is a powerful equation for creating ease and results in your life.

Your Style Statement consultant will help you understand how this magic formula makes your Style Statement a truly useful tool.

You have a two options for finding your style statement – paying $275 to spend 90 minutes on the phone with Carrie, one of the founders, or paying $25 for the book. Obviously, I chose the book – why spend $250 on a conversation when I could spend it on clothes?

The thing is, when I remember this one, it is useful. I rarely have a project where it behooves me to remember that I’m an ENTP. My empathy is a skill I can’t leave behind if I try. But my style statement, particularly in my personal life, leads me to the right choices if I let it.

For example, I am always buying clothes that I feel are appropriate and that look good on me, only to never wear them. After telling the girls about my style statement at brunch, I went through my closet and pulled those clothes out.

They’re definitely not Organic Whimsy clothes. Sometimes, when I’m shopping, I apparently think I’m this girl:

Or possibly this girl:

I’m not those girls, though. I’m the girl who wears this:

Blazers are an excellent go to item for the modern professional woman, which is probably why I continue to buy them. However, blazers are neither organic nor whimsical, and I don’t wear a single one of the six that I own.

It applies to my house, too. It applies to my ability to plan things in advance. It applies to pretty much everything, if I let it.

Gosh I love labels.

Just call me Organic Whimsy.

1. Emma-nation.com was down this morning. That may actually sound cruddy to you, but in reality it’s awesome because it was due to a server overload. Apparently lots of people want to know what kind of shoe I am. That’s right, people – I broke the internet. Or at least my very small corner of it. Does the internet have corners? I digress.
2. I’m using my new slow cooker for the very first time. I’m making a delicious (hopefully) split pea mango dal. I technically have time to cook, but since I almost never do, an entire bowlful of something delicious smelling awaiting me when I get home from work sounds pretty fucking fantastic. It will be like it’s 1950 and the slow cooker is my obedient housewife except without the bummer social implications – and probably without the martini. I mean, I’d take it for sure, but I’m pretty sure that none of the buttons on the front said ‘martini’. I think I would have noticed.
   

   There's totally dal in there, you just can't tell. Also, can you see if any of those buttons say 'martini'?

3. I signed the release for the boat that Crocket and I are renting with another couple this June. I don’t understand why some of the Virgin Islands are British and some are American when they clearly all belong to Richard Branson. Does he have a wife? I’m asking for a friend.
   

   This is going to be so badass that I'm jealous of my future self. Richard Branson doesn't know what is about to hit him.

   

   Me in this freaking adorable swimsuit is gonna hit him, that's what.

4. Queen B knows someone who is related to HIT GIRL. Ok fine, Chloe Grace Moretz, but the fact that I know someone who knows someone who shares blood with the admittedly fictional Hit Girl makes me smile (unknown affects on feminist politics and all).

Obviously.

Tuesday, I love you.

Thursday, you can still go fuck yourself.