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“Attention, passengers…the next Red Line train to Alewife is now approaching.”

Have sweeter words ever been spoken? I mean, sure, my husband’s vows on our wedding day were nice, all that jazz about how he falls in love with me a little more every day and yada, yada, yada. But those words weren’t followed by a giant, magical transportation machine that zips you all over town for a whopping two bucks (although his were followed an expensive dinner I couldn’t eat because of a sadistic corset hellbent on my ribs’ destruction).

I’m talking, of course, about the Boston subway system, known locally as the T (which, in an effort to save some face, I won’t tell you how long it took me to figure out that that stood for “train”…I swear I have a college degree…two, in fact…*hangs head in shame*).

Update: Wrong again…just found out “T” stands for transportation. I swear, I graduated top of my class! *crawls into hole in the ground*

Anyhoo, being the country bumpkin that I am, I had never ridden on the subway before moving here. OK, granted, when I told my best friend Misty that, she insisted we rode the subway in 8^th grade during our class field trip to Washington D.C., but I have absolutely no memory of that (and you can’t even blame it on being drunk…I didn’t start drinking until 9^th grade).

 I’ll never forget that frickin’ freezing Saturday right after my husband and I got here and we hopped on the T for the first time (Look at me! Saying cool city slicker things like “hopped on the T!”). So fast. So loud. So exciting. So confusing. So much deliberating about whether we needed tickets for the inbound train or for the commuter rail.

Embarrassing public displays of tourist-y mistakes aside, I fell in love instantly. Since the age of 16, my driving skills have only improved marginally (just to give you an idea of those skills, within the first year of getting my license, I lost three tires, ran out of gas four times and got into a fender destroyer with the world’s largest Ford truck). So driving in a city ain’t what you would call my bag. Not to mention, as much as I love conversing with random cabbies, they generally get cranky when you offer to pay them with your actual arm and leg.

So the fact there is a mode of transportation that gets me where I want to go that is convenient, cheap and bypasses traffic jams? Utterly amazing. In fact, I love the subway so much, I’d kiss it if I wasn’t so worried about the mysterious disgusting fungus popping up somewhere on my body that would inevitably follow.

Oh, and the people watching! The people watching, people! Hours of non-stop entertainment.

There was the older gentleman sitting in the corner who took his shoe off and rubbed his foot back and forth on a tennis ball for nine straight stops (Was it some kind of foot therapy? Did he bring the tennis ball from home? Or find it randomly on the subway and thought to himself “Hmm…I bet this would feel good?”).

There was the delightful woman in the tasteful purple track suit who used her outside voice to talk on her cellphone about that “rat bastard” and his less than desirable bedroom skills.

The woman who kept pulling out and munching on an increasingly exotic array of fruit and vegetables from a convenience store bag (including some pink doo-hickey that I couldn’t even identify).

The young toddler who had absolutely no sense of stranger danger and kept running up to every other passenger, arms stretched out in the international baby sign of “pick me up,” followed by his weary mother.

The drunk girl who kept hiccupping and then giggled after every time she hiccupped (which, according to my husband, was me last Wednesday…God, how I love all the Irish pubs around here!).

And perhaps my favorite, the Boston cast of 90210 who, like, totally did everything in their 16-year-old power to get the attention of the total hottie college dudes sitting a few seats down (including perfecting their mating call of high-pitched squeals).

To most people, these kinds of things would be annoying. But I find them fascinating. I even find joy in the 5 p.m. crush rush, where 600 people try to cram into a 40-capacity train car and chances are high you’ll become very intimate with someone’s armpit or buttocks region, depending on where you end up in the fray.

 Now, I’m sure after living here for awhile, I’ll find all these things less than charming. But I hope not.

I, as well as the fellow residents of Boston, sure as hell don’t want me attempting to drive around here.

Get a root canal. Get punched in the face. Pass a gallstone the size of Wisconsin. Watch a “Jersey Shore” marathon (and/or read Snooki’s “book”). Drink watermelon-flavored Four Loco. Spend 24 hours locked in a small cage with all my ex-boyfriends…sober. Listen to a Yoko Ono album on repeat. Go on a date with Charlie Sheen. Work as Charlie Sheen’s press agent. Hell, work as Charlie Sheen’s liver.

All things I’d rather do than go apartment hunting in Boston ever again.

For the past month, my husband and I have been attempting to navigate the jungle that is the Boston real estate market while staying in temporary housing. However, there’s been much less real, and much more surreal.

There was the sweet apartment in a cute neighborhood that was amazingly within our price range. The photos online showed a cozy two-story complete with an adorable spiral staircase. What the photos didn’t show was that the entire place was approximately the size of my college dorm room, the kitchen was quite literally in the hallway and the spiral staircase was so small, anyone above a size six ran a good chance of getting permanently wedged between the two floors.

There was the completely renovated apartment that was drop dead gorgeous with its hardwood floors, big kitchen and complete lack of any semblance of a closet.

There was the landlord who didn’t like the looks of my husband’s credit report so asked for a co-signer. When we got a co-signer, he wanted a statement from the bank saying we had paid off our cars. When we got him that, he wanted us to pay a huge pet fee, in addition to first month’s rent, security deposit and the agent fee. When we said we could get him that, he asked for our first-born.

(OK, perhaps I’m exaggerating slightly…but only slightly).

There was the nice college-esque pad that wasn’t available until June.

The affordable apartment that didn’t take dogs.

The slightly less affordable but still manageable apartment that did take dogs, just not ones over 20 pounds.

The totally awesome apartment that took dogs that we could afford if maybe we sold off three-fourths of our major organs (and some minor ones for the security deposit).

And then, finally, FINALLY, we hooked up with a great real estate agent who found us the mythical “perfect” apartment. Spacious, newly renovated, nice neighborhood, reasonable rent, great porch, dog-friendly, storage space, washer and dryer, tons of closets, small yard, even a freakin’ drive-way. We immediately filled out an application and wrote a check on the spot.

Of course, since the check was from out-of-state, they needed a cashier’s check. Which I couldn’t get from a local bank without opening an account which I couldn’t do without having a permanent local address. Luckily, the landlord said he would accept a money order, which I got after hitting up four different Western Unions (three of which said they don’t do money orders and/or their machine was broken) and making a frantic phone call to my bank in Texas to temporarily raise the daily limit on my debit card.

But all of it, the craziness, the frustrations, the pure lunacy of it is worth it for this apartment. Which should be ours tomorrow pending the signing of the lease.

Or at least that’s what our real estate agent said when she talked to the landlord’s real estate agent who was informed by the landlord that tomorrow we could probably sign the lease.

(Just have to finalize that whole “give away our second-born” clause in the fourth paragraph).

I remember it as though it were yesterday. It was my first day of work at my first newspaper. I passed him on my way to the time card machine and remember thinking to myself…

“Man, that guy is cute. Too bad he’s gay.”

Years later, he would tell me he remembered that moment as well, thinking to himself…

“Man, what a hottie. Too bad she looks like a bitch.”

Ah, yes, it’s the kind of stuff that fairytales are made of. Or at least the stuff that a meet-cute in a crappy Katherine Heigl movie are made of.

 From co-workers to friends to roommates to  whirlwind romance to marriage to, come tomorrow, our one-year anniversary, Ryan and I have steadily evolved and, as he so eloquently puts it, kept moving forward, ass backwards.

It hasn’t always been easy. After only a month or so of dating (which, considering we were roommates, got a bit awkward during those “first thing in the morning have to pee” encounters in the hallway) he got a job in Texas and asked me to move with him and leave my Ohio hometown behind. Naturally, I said no. What, do I look crazy? I hardly knew the guy.

A week later, I said yes.

Five years later, he got a job in Boston. This time I said yes immediately (You know how many Irish pubs they have here? What, do I look crazy?).

As for what the future holds? Who knows? But the one thing I do know is that I’ll follow him again if need be. As I said in my vows, he is my home (although lets hope Boston sticks for awhile…I mean, it’s going to take awhile to hit up all those pubs).

But for now, I’m just going to celebrate what is and look back at was. Below I’ve posted our actual wedding announcement, which ran last year in the Victoria Advocate, the Texas paper we both worked at (which is the ONLY reason I was allowed to get away with it). 

Miss Aprill “Danger” Brandon and Mr. Ryan “Schnookum Bear” Huddle, both of Victoria, were married on Feb. 28, 2010 at Vintage Villas in Austin. The Rev. John Connor (sadly, not the same guy from the “Terminator” movies) officiated the double-ring ceremony.

The bride is the spawn of Mr. and Mrs. Albert and Maria Wray, originally of Ohio but who currently reside in Christchurch, New Zealand (it should be noted they did not ask their daughter to move with them… the jerks). She is the granddaughter of Mrs. Mary Ahlers of Coldwater, Ohio.

The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Garry and Kathy Huddle, of Hutchinson, Kansas.

Misty “M-Woww” Weidner and Michelle “Broccoli” Gockley attended as maids of dishonor. Bridesmaids were Andrea “I ate bugs as a kid” Myers, Traci “Baroness Von Awesome” Robb, and Adriana “The Mexican Snooki” Zavala. Sydney Robb and Kiera Robb, nieces of the groom, attended as flower girls.

Bob “Bob” Zavala served as best man. Groomsmen were Brandon “Blu” Wray, Billy “Willy Foo Foo” Robb, Benjamin “Bruce” Kies and Dan “He’s my boss so I won’t give him a funny nickname” Easton. Jackson Garman, second cousin, or possibly a cousin once removed (who can really keep all the family connections straight, eh?) of the bride, served as ring bearer.

A wicked awesome party was held following the ceremony at the same location, where the beer flowed like wine. The couple then left for their six-day honeymoon in New Orleans, where they learned a valuable lesson about imbibing on too many hurricane drinks.

The bride is a 2004 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She currently works for this very newspaper, which made the horrible mistake of letting her write her own wedding announcement. Her future plans involve eating bon-bons all day, starting a muumuu collection and possibly adopting a monkey, which she will name Winston.

The groom is a graduate of Arizona State University and Collins College in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also currently employed at this very newspaper but was not previously aware of this wedding announcement nor its content (Ha! He is now). His future plans include buying his new wife a bunch of new shoes and shiny things and futilely trying to prevent her from adopting said monkey.

To read my anniversary column to Ryan (in which I ruthlessly make fun of him), click here.

So the “Chick Writes Stuff” title…too cutesy? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been a writer and columnist by trade for about seven years now, but this is my first foray into my own website/blog (I also just got on the Tweeter and the MyFace!). And after scouring mountains of ridiculous website pages for tips on what to name your blog (Make it unique! Make it you! Make it something everyone in the world can totally relate to so you can totally score a book deal and movie rights!) I grew frustrated and just typed in the first thing I could think of.

Plus, it’s a pretty accurate name. I am indeed a chick who writes stuff.

And so this blog is dedicated to documenting all my new adventures (and shamelessly promoting my newspaper humor column, the archives of which you can check out HERE!… and yes, yes I do feel dirty now) and my attempts, at the age of 29, to figure out how to survive adulthood in general (I mean, beyond my current solution of perpetual happy hour).