Hey friends, I just wanted to pop in really quickly and give an update on Hurricane Sandy. Late last week it became apparent that this was going to be a real storm and it was coming, and my friends and I began to take precautions. Saturday evening I went to a Halloween party with a bunch of friends that was within walking distance of my apartment, but basically since Sunday mid-day it’s been a lot of weather.

For Halloween, I went as the velocipedestrienne from one of Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant comic strips. Yes, I know it was way too obscure of a reference, so I’ve gone ahead and included one here for you. I haven’t taken up smoking, but everything else was perfect! I had a blazer on for a while, too, but it got hot inside so I took that off.

So the Halloween party was really fun, but on Sunday I worked for a few hours and then started to build an apartment shelter with my friends in Bushwick. We all live near each other and we weren’t listed in the evacuation zones, so we decided to pool our resources and stay together for a few days. Basically, we’ve stayed inside for a few days and we’re all fine. We’ve checked on all of our apartments today and they’re all fine, complete with power and no damages or broken windows or leaks.

But for as lucky as we are, there are so many people who lost so much. Much of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn are flooded completely, the airports are shut down, and many of the subway tunnels and stations are flooded completely and indefinitely. Basically, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get back into Manhattan, which is obviously not ideal for work.

If you can, please donate to any number of organizations that are helping with the relief efforts. I know that Disney seems to have overshadowed us a bit today with their Lucasfilms news, but please remember that we had one of the worst storms this weekend that New York and the coast has ever seen, and we’re not going to be able to just bounce back. This is going to be a major process, and it’s not going to be easy for anyone. Just look at this video and pictures below to see what happened just in the last 24 hours.

To keep up with live updates from those here, keep an eye on InstaCane, a site that aggregates photos from Instagram with Hurricane Sandy tags. Lots of silly pictures, but lots of really good ones, too.

In the meantime, since I’m worried about just getting around within the city for the next week or two, I’ve shut down my Etsy for now. Any unshipped orders will be refunded and I’m not accepting orders for now, but I hope to be back up in time for holiday orders. We’ll see–I’ll try to keep posted.

I just wanted to let everyone here know that things are okay here, for me. They’re not great and they’re not ideal, but I’m safe and we’ll see what happens next.

You’ve probably seen this before, haven’t you? If you haven’t, the idea is that the first three words are, as it says, what you want in life, or something like that. I see it pop up every few months or so, and it’s funny because it’s always different. I’m not sure that the “science” behind it is totally accurate, but it’s still a fun thing to do when you have a minute.

Today, my three words were

LOVE

HAPPINESS

TIME

It made me smile because I’ve been thinking about those three things exactly a lot in the last week or two. Not for any particular reason (no special someones here, kids), but just because I’ve been reflecting a lot on how much I’ve grown in the last couple of years as a single lady and how what I want now is so different from what I wanted a few years ago. I spent so many years thinking that I needed to get married by the time I graduated college or I was going to wind up miserable and alone. However, I’m 24 and halfway to 25, and single as ever, and could not be happier. Would I like to date someone? Sure, I guess, if it seemed right. But it’s not a dire situation. Not even something I feel like I need, really. Love and happiness take time. They’re not mutually inclusive, but when they are, they require patience and work and understanding. Even though I’ve been single for a couple of years, I now feel like I understand so much more about relationships and people and just life in general.

Also, I saw Celeste & Jesse Forever this morning, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, and one thing I really took away from that movie was that there is no rush on finding love. And even if something seems right at one time, it doesn’t always stay that way. Great movie, by the way. I highly recommend it because it was fantastic. Funny and sad all at once, just the way I like ‘em.

It seems like I’ve just been doing a lot of introspective thinking lately, which is a favorite pastime of mine. There are few things I love more than thinking about my past and learning from it and moving forward.

What were your three words? What do you think they mean?

Follow me on Instagram at baileythomas48 if you want to see these pictures when I take them!

New York City and reading, two of my absolute favorite things in the entire world, have finally been brought together in a blog project called Underground New York Public Library. This blog consists of generally candid pictures of people reading on the NYC subway and platforms, and lists the book being read.

Because of the licensing, I can’t share any of the photos here, but please click through and check them out. It’s a really interesting project and worth checking out.

According to the site:

The Underground New York Public Library is a visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways. This library freely lends out a reminder that we’re capable of traveling to great depths within ourselves and as a whole.

And who knows? It’s rare that I don’t have a book out on the subway, so maybe someday you’ll see me on the blog.

Happy Sunday! I have a few posts queued up this week about my mom’s visit and having lived in NYC for seven months now, so stay tuned for those. I hope the weather is treating you well!