I got married on Saturday, and it was wonderful. Sean and I leave today for our honeymoon in Spain. I feel so lucky and loved and happy.

Photo by our incredible photographer Brandon Lata. He is the real deal.

This is what happened one morning when I went outside to take pictures on the beach. Way down a man was running towards me…

He was singing Michael Jackson, loudly. He looks familiar…

It’s my Flip!

One of the things I like most about Sean, and why I’m excited to live life and (hopefully) raise kids with him is that he loves to play. He goes for runs and sings Michael Jackson, he plays basketball twice a week, and lately he’s been on a Sunday snow football kick with his buddies. Thank you for inspiring, Sean, especially when I’m in the middle of a lazy spell (like right now).

This was so not the big announcement I alluded to a couple weeks ago but it is hard to top: Sean and I are engaged! YAY!

On Sunday we went to Niagara Falls and walked around its beautiful New York State Park. Our tradition is to walk across the Rainbow Bridge and play tourist in Niagara Falls, Ontario. There’s a story about my broken foot and our attempt to get there, which included Sean running back to the car to get my crutches. As you can see from the above photo, we never made it on the bridge. Instead, we decided my foot was still too broken and walked down to the railing to “say goodbye to the water.” We had the following conversation:

Me: Oh, I can see in your eyes you want to go on the bridge. Let’s just do it, I’ll be really slow.
Him: You don’t know everything about me, Whit.
Me: Um, I didn’t say I knew everything about you…
Him: [nervous fumbling in his coat pocket for the ring box] You don’t know about this!

At that point I saw the ring and started saying, “Are you serious?! Are you serious?!” Sean and I have been talking about getting married for a long time, and while we knew we both wanted to get hitched eventually, I became comfortable with the idea of actually getting engaged sooner than him. Agreeing to his run for office was a giant deal for me. I did a lot of soul searching and thinking and talking with friends and family. I emerged from that ready to campaign, and pretty much ready to get married. Sean needed some more time, which I understood, and so we’ve spent the past year or so talking a lot about it.

I didn’t know that he’d been designing an engagement ring for the past couple months. If I had, I probably would’ve been a little easier on him during our most recent discussion of marriage. When I saw the ring box and started chanting, “Are you serious?” it was because I really wanted to make sure he was serious. He laughed and said he was.

The surprise was amazing, and the ring is more meaningful to me than I ever thought it would be. The rest of the day (and week so far) was happy and joyful, as we called family and friends to tell them the news. This is a really special time, and I’m thrilled.

The article led me to Tammy Strobel’s website, Rowdy Kittens, which led me to a whole bunch of online resources about living simply and simply having less stuff.  If you want to explore more, I would start at the aptly named “Start Here” tab on Rowdy Kittens.

Recently, Sean and I have both come around to an inspired revelation: we’re sick of living in a cluttered, cramped, messy apartment. I’ve been organizing cupboards and discarding the contents of junk drawers, and he’s been cleaning out the basement and organizing our “getting ready” room (the room that’s too small to be a bedroom so it’s a glorified closet).  I’ve given away a fair amount and I still find myself with so much junk. I have considered bringing my mother in, and telling her to be ruthless. I’ve also tried to channel my friends Brynn and Natalie, both of whom have given me excellent advice about getting rid of clutter.

The simple truth is that we just have too much stuff. And most of it is mine.

The good news is that I’m inspired, and that there are a number of resources  pushing me towards the purge. One of them is Buffalo’s Really Really Free Market, which next meets on Saturday, September 11th at Bidwell Parkway from 2:00-7:00PM. The idea is that you bring whatever stuff you want to give away for free and take as much or as little as you want from other people. No bartering, no selling–just giving away free stuff. I loved the “free culture” I encountered in Portland, Oregon, and hope to see the idea grow in Buffalo.

Another inspiration: this essay on getting rid of books. I have a lot of books, and I’m terrible about getting rid of them. I find this amusing because during my MLS program I’ve learned about the importance of “weeding” collections, and I agree with the practice. I visited some school libraries that haven’t been significantly weeded in years, and it’s scary: kids can’t find their way through the packed shelves. About her school library, Brynn is fond of saying, “We are not an archive, we are a library.” I realize that I’ve been treating my home collection as an archive, and I know I’m not the only one.

Finally, the other source of my inspiration (or perhaps more accurately, alarm) is The Story of Stuff. If you have 20 minutes and are open to making some life changes, I recommend watching the original film. It has inspired and shamed me into making a conscious decision to buy less stuff and, as Sean pointed out, that’s really the key to my purge and meeting our goal of a simpler, cleaner, clutter-less life.

The Sweetness/Cuteness edition. (I) The beautiful and empty Sweet_ness 7 Cafe before David’s second annual “Coffee & Cake” fundraiser on April 30. Once again, owner Prish Moran outdid herself. This might be my favorite place to photograph.  (II) My mom and one of the Cooney 2010 campaign mascots at Sean’s announcement. (III) The dessert table with the cafe’s bar in the background. We had chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate covered popcorn, cheesecake, brownies, cookies. It was delicious. I felt hungover on sugar the next morning. (IV) Sean at his announcement. I’m so proud. (V) Cream puffs! Cream puffs! Cream puffs!

I didn’t realize until I started writing these captions that all the photos I chose for this week’s FPF were from the same night. I took them all before, during, or after Sean’s fundraiser at Griffin’s Irish Pub in South Buffalo.

(I) Buffalo to the max: Sabres, Bills, Democratic primaries. (II) Josh Mumm’s arm and Sara’s coke at the bar at Casa di Pizza after the fundraiser. We went to watch the Yankees beat the Red Sox. (III) Harrison in front of Griffin’s as I pulled up, probably making some last minute arrangements on his phone. (IV) Sean and Mike LoCurto, after the Councilmember’s introduction of the candidate. (V) At this point everyone was sick of me taking photos, something Erin Heaney expressed quite nicely.

Library School
I started grad school earlier this month; I am officially a Masters of Library Science candidate at the University at Buffalo. For the time being, I’ll take classes on a part-time basis and remain at my full time job. This semester I’m taking an “Introduction to Library and Information Sciences” course and a “School Media Center Experience” course. I’m going to be a busy lady and one day, I hope to be a school librarian.

The decision to go back to school for Library Science was several years in the making. I was actually going back and forth between getting an MFA or becoming a teacher. I researched programs, considered timelines, and remained in a holding pattern. Throughout this time, I watched my friend Brynn go through a Library Science masters program and complete her first two years as a school librarian. I’ve always been super interested in her work and the profession librarian community.

When I realized that I could do what she did, it was like someone hit me over the head: duh. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

So far I’m thrilled with the material, my professors, and being back in school. I’m glad I took time off between undergrad and this Master’s program. I am a totally different student, one much better suited to graduate work.

Sean’s running for office
Yes, that’s right. Sean is running for the New York State Senate’s 58th District seat. I’ll post more information about his campaign in the future, including how you can be helpful, but for now here’s some reads:

Meet Sean Cooney, Candidate for State Senate (video)
Sean Cooney for State Senate
Challengers Line up for Stachowski
Race for 58th State Senate seat shapes up
Council aide seeks Stachowski’s seat; more expected

I’m proud of Sean for taking this challenge on and am excited to get to work on the campaign this summer. I know he will be a progressive leader and advocate for sincere, meaningful reform in the Senate.

Etsy shop opened
And finally, I opened an Etsy Shop: whitney arlene photography.The shop was one of my Mondo Beyondo dreams and I’m really proud that it’s open for operation.

If you’re interested in purchasing any photos you see here on the blog, please feel free to send me a message through Etsy and I can make arrangements.

Before we left on Friday, we agreed that Sunday would be a “get shit done around the house” day and I have to say, planning these sort of things in advance is the way to go. I often get swept up in a mood when it comes to projects around the house and expect, unfairly, Sean to match my mood. Today it worked out well and since about 5:30 or so we’ve been able to relax and enjoy ourselves.

One of the projects was rearranging the apartment. For about five months now, we’ve been planning on moving our bedroom from the tiny, closet-sized room it was in to a slightly bigger room. We debated moving into what is now the living room and either constructing a new wall or installing some kind of door (french doors, curtains, etc.), or moving into one of the actual other bedrooms. I’ll spare you the boring details of our decision and just say that I’m now sitting on my bed in one of the actual other bedrooms. Oh, and we have a bed frame now. Which means our bed and boxspring is not on the floor. Which makes us adults. Which is awesome, I guess.

I realized fairly recently that I was having this “fight or flight” argument with myself in relation to my house, both inside and out. I found myself unsatisfied with my living space and our backyard and porch situations. At the farthest point of the “flight” instinct, I thought about what it would mean for me to move out. Kind of ridiculous, no? I mean, I own this house.

At some point I convinced myself that I needed to wait to do things like put in a garden, buy an outdoor table for my porch, and otherwise invest in the more aesthetic improvements to my house. I guess I was thinking that all the major, practical things needed to get done before I could focus on frivolous things like a garden, despite the fact that I didn’t think anyone else’s gardens were frivolous. And because of this false choice, I wasn’t enjoying my house. At all. I would go to other people’s places and think, “Wow, I wish I could sit out in the backyard like this at my house.”

Again, kind of ridiculous. I wasn’t doing any of the improvments to my house that would make me enjoy it more and as a result I wasn’t feeling motivated to do anything, neither the beautifying projects nor the necessary ones. And like a lot of the revelations I have, the solution to this internal argument wasn’t complex: I needed to get to work.

So I cleaned up the porch, bought inexpensive but attractive outdoor furniture, and started maintaining a small but rewarding garden. Inside the house, I finally hung up pictures I’d framed months ago, decided on where we’d put the bedroom, and planned a work day with Sean. It snowballed, this getting to work thing, and now I feel excited about

When I bought this house at 23 I expected that the corresponding responsibilities would challenge and change me, and they have. What I didn’t appreciate then however, and what I love now, is that the opportunities to be challenged and changed are both loud and quiet but will always, in the end, be heard.

Sometimes I think I live for weekend mornings.