This is a little rambly and personal so if you’re just here for the outfit, scroll right on down to the next picture, no hard feelings!

So I had a bad(ish) dream about the potential new apartment and woke up feeling like it was just TOO big. Uncomfortably big. Cavernous. My place right now is cozy and perfect. I was starting to visualize me sitting on a sofa with all the walls So Far Away and sounds echoing in the space and it was just feeling creepy. I had to sit down with Janey this morning and go through the pictures with her and talk myself down, “it is NOT “cavernous.” It will be FINE. But anyway, the walls of the apartment are sheet paneled with like those wooden “seams”? And there’s a little hallway with two big closets, and at the end of the hallway is a door and the man said (this is real, this is not the dream) “there’s nothing on the other side of that door (sort of a creepy sentence all by itself), there’s a big workbench pushed up against it on the other side.” That was real. In the DREAM, I had taken the apartment but hadn’t actually moved in yet so it was still empty, and I was there with just Janey looking around. She was following me around as she does. When I got to Closet Hallway I noticed the door at the end was OPEN, so, of COURSE, I poked my head in just to see. It was just some broken up storage space with a shelf mounted on one wall. Janey jumped up on the shelf…and right there the “seam” between two wall panels was missing, and she pushed herself through the little crack and was now inside the wall! I tried to pull them apart enough that I could grab her but she was already trotting away from me, her meows getting more and more faint as she got further away. I was like NO!!! A) My cat was in the walls of a giant rambling house, an UNFAMILIAR house, was she ever going to find her way out?!? Panic. And B) I hadn’t even MOVED IN YET and I was going to have to tell my new landlords that my “no drama” kitty was roaming around the innards of their house…and we were going to have to take the wall down in the storage area to get her out. The End. No resolution. Just…shudder.

What’s sort of interesting, and I just realized later this morning, was that when I was moving from Apartment #2 in Bay Ridge (a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn) to Apartment #3 (in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which, at the time, was like a ghetto – NOW it is a Highly Desirable Hip Neighborhood which I can no longer afford), I also had bad dreams, lots of them. And they were all about Caleb! Mostly that he would get dog-napped by experimental laboratories and I would be searching and searching for him before they hurt him with chemicals or prods or probes or something. There were several versions of this dream and they were so disturbing. I was very concerned I was putting my dog in harm’s way by moving to an area like that. In the end, the move did happen, the dreams stopped, everything was fine, I loved living in Bushwick and Caleb lived to tell the tale.

I hope Katie’s not reading this (ha) but I can’t say I ever remember dreaming about being worried for HER. Maybe that just means I didn’t NEED to worry as I was doing my job and keeping her safe. What’s to worry?

I think leaving your home for a new one is one of the most stressful things you can do. When I first sold my sweet little house 10 years ago and was moving to Apartment #1 in Bay Ridge, I had such panic! I was leaving the longtime familiarity of Long Island for the wilds of Brooklyn, a place where I had barely spent any time, knew no one, was far away from any of my people if I needed help and was going to be living alone for the first time in my life. But I was still excited for the big change.

About two weeks out from the move I started getting Really Panicked, specifically centered around the realtor who had found the apartment. What if he took all my money (and there were SO many fees to get into that place! It was like $9,000 to get in there, between first and last month’s rent, security deposit, broker fee, management fee, move-in fee, pet fee, fee fee, etc) and the key he gave me was FAKE and I couldn’t get in and the building management would be like “Farraj who? We don’t know any Farraj! What are you talking about? Get out of our building!) and I would be broke and homeless.

Again, in the end, THAT didn’t happen, my key DID work, I DID move in, but due to other technicalities (which is for another blog post, ha ha) I had to move out IN A WEEK. But so yeah, lots of stress around moving to a new place. I think especially as a renter because you’re not in control. And as much as I’d hoped to not go through a broker and have to pay a broker fee, at least with a real estate professional there’s going to be a contract/lease and legal things. This place I’m hoping for is just through the homeowners, and they seem nice, but you never really know. Jeffrey Dahmer might have seemed nice to the people he didn’t kill! And I’m sure they’re feeling the same things about ME! But hopefully it will all be resolved tomorrow night at our second meeting and I’ll have a decision and can move forward with no more bad dreams.

Onto the outfit!

I did this photoshoot early New Year’s morning at a little beach near town. I was feeling very positive and hopeful, like 2019 IS GOING TO BE MY YEAR! I think this is my best tripod selfie shoot so far – the combination of a different lens (my favorite Canon 50mm 1.8) with the wireless shutter release is a winner!

Goodness, look at all those positive sentences in a row! Who AM I in 2019?!?

Can you see what’s up in the tree behind my head??

Ha ha! How’d he get up there? For those of you not near the ocean, that’s a horseshoe crab.

I love love love this floral plus size top from Seven 7 Jeans via Gwynnie Bee. It goes with SO many things in my closet – this olive cardi (which, after seeing these pictures, I may never wear again, ha), a wine duster, black cardigan, it would look cute under a denim jacket AND it’s good on its own in warmer weather. It would be great over white jeans, black, dark and light wash denim, PINK, olive! This is why I’ve been looking so hard for some more floral blouses to add to my wardrobe – all those colors add such diversity! But, alas, it was a little $$ for me at this time, and it went back to Gwynnie Bee so I could get something else. And since it’s still available online I’ve got it in my Shoptagr in case it goes on sale!

I’m wearing it here with my light wash Gloria Vanderbilt Amanda jeans, olive green fleece duster and pink suede Vans. And dollar store New Year’s hat 🙂 It was perfect for a mild (but windy!) day. After this I picked up a breakfast sandwich from the deli and went back home to enjoy the last day of vacation in peace.

And now, onto packing!!!