I would excell at this job.

One of the perks about graduating and having a real job is that I have more free time. Unfortunately, because I don’t really like having free time, this is also a downside. Nevertheless, with Andrew being here, I’ve started to use that time to cook. Andrew is an excellent cook; I am a train wreck. If I could eat cereal and Greek yogurt every day without his making a disgusted face at me, I would. I don’t have the patience for cooking entire meals, and I hate getting the kitchen messy. Still, I know that making even one meal every other day is good for me because it teaches me take care of myself and all that jazz, so I do it.

Andrew and I usually cook a bigger meal on Sunday night—something we can eat and still have leftovers for Monday because I get home from work at 10 on Monday nights. Tonight, we made stuffed shells with homemade red sauce. My knife skills are deplorable, but I sucked it up and cut the onion—that task makes Andrew weep like a little girl. AND I got to stir the spinach and ricotta together, which means I got to sneak bites. And that brings me to the topic of tonight’s blog post: DELICIOUS CHEESES.

Cheese. Damn, it’s so yummy. Like Liz Lemon, I work on that shit at night. I tried to give it up in the interest of not being enormous, but instead I just vowed to eat less bread. However, it’s expensive here in New York—which just makes me want it more. When I go to the grocery store, I seek out the clearanced cheese products, and usually, I can get some $3 muenster.

The cheese section of the grocery store also makes me a little homesick because there’s no Provel. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Provel is this incredible, weird cheese that people from St. Louis love and everyone else hates. If someone tells you it’s disgusting, you tell that person to fuck him- or herself. Provel is Cheddar, Swiss, and provolone melded together into one big, tasty, processed heart attack. How can that be bad? Those haters are liars. Take some Provel and spread it on a cracker that has been sauced. Wham-o! St. Louis pizza. Love it. Open the Woytus family refrigerator, and you’ll find a handful of the stuff in rope-form. It’s great on salads. Or just eat it straight from the container. Whatever.

So, yeah, we’re living in a Provel-free land, and it’s upsetting. Yet there are still many different types of cheeses to enjoy. Here’s a list of my top 5. Provel excluded.

5. It’s a tie between feta, Provolone, and plain ol’ goat cheese. Goats are super creepy, but thankfully, they make delicious cheeses, so they’re on my good-animal list.

4. Gruyère. It’s the best with which to make grilled cheese, which I cannot eat too frequently because of my promise to not eat so much damn bread.

3. Mozzarella. This is a no-brainer. Sometimes I try to pronounce it like the “housewives” on Real Housewives of New Jersey do, which is actually probably not how you pronounce it at all.

2. Muenster. Muenster is tricky because it tastes awesome with some foods and like ass with others. I love it for its complexities. It’s like that kid you raise, and he or she is a monster, but you somehow still love him or her, mostly because you can’t figure out what the hell he or she is going to do next.

1. ALL CHEESES. DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE. DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING, DID YOU?

Remember when I started this blog? It was summer 2009, and I was almost 21. I was interning in New York, living in Alphabet City, and enjoying the summer before I started my senior year of college.

Well, I’m back in the city.

I’m now 23 with a full-time job and an apartment. I have two degrees. I live with a dude. A lot of stuff happened in the in-between: I gave up meat. I cut off all my hair, and then I regretted it. I gave up sleeping for a while and stopped wearing makeup on Sundays. I started studying women’s issues. I decided I wanted to be an editor. I met some amazing people after I made that decision. My best friend got married. Another best friend had a baby. I finished my undergraduate career, and then I finished my graduate career. I spent one summer in Columbia, where I worked hard for next to nothing and then played harder to make myself feel better. (That was the best summer of my life.) I spent another summer in St. Louis, where I actually did work for nothing. And then I moved to New York City.

So why am I blogging again? I don’t know. I have free time now, and I guess I’m bored and kinda self-centered. But looking back at my old posts, I realize I want to chronicle New York City in my own way again. Except this time, my writing will be clean, and I’ll follow Chicago style.

More TK.

It could be so much worse.

“HeyDearIcouldNotGet2web2dayImissUveryMuchItIsSoColdHereIwillBonWeb2morro@afterMidNiteUrTime.

loveUDear&IThinkAboutYouAllTheTime.telleveryoneThatIAmColdButFine.love”

Just like that, without any spaces. I have no idea what the hell kind of a phone he’s using that it won’t let him space words, but it made me laugh, and then it made me incredibly sad. So, yeah, that has been the extent of my communication with him. It was -25 C there yesterday, and I am sick with worry that he’s going to freeze– and apparently from that text message, he’s very cold.

No, of course you haven’t, because you’re cooler than me, but if you had, you would share my frustration. Last night, I watched the finale, and two teenagers who gave their baby up for adoption got engaged with their parents’ blessing. The parents, btw, are married, so technically the two kids are step-siblings. The boy looks like he’s about 14, and the girl is still in braces (and as one of those people who had to wear braces until they were 17, I know that sometimes all that metal ruins what little maturity the rest of your appearance gives off, but she’s TOO YOUNG).

This kind of programming makes me sick. These two aren’t going to last five seconds on their own, and the fact that MTV glorifies it is detrimental to teenage viewers. Another enemy of feminism? Taylor Swift. Romeo isn’t going to save you. He just isn’t.

When I have a daughter, she’s going to read Jill Dolan and watch Maude.

Tonight, I sat on Skype for six hours. Andrew never called.

Get excited, gang.

So, the three people who have clicked on this blog today must be curious to find out what life has been like four months after leaving New York. Here goes.

Last semester was a bit difficult, mainly because I had to take the last of my non-journalism, upper-level classes while studying for the GRE.  A lot of writing, and if you add the freelance writing I do on the side, it was… a bit more than a lot. But I got through it. After four hours spent in one of the weirdest rooms I’ve yet to encounter at the university, I got the GRE score I wanted. And after a lot of late nights writing, the research papers magically got finished. This semester, I found out I am a decent copyeditor/proofreader. A lame talent, but I’ll take what I can get.

Andrew moving to Irkutsk, a town in Siberia to study Russian in a mere nine days. Here are some fun facts you might not know about Siberia, or Russia in general. First, it’s 14 hours ahead of Central Standard time. After daylight saving, it will only be 13. Still, that’s not ideal. Apparently the only people who live in Irkutsk are exiles, or descendants of exiles. That’s a happy crew. The homicide rate in Russia is 18%. It’s super cold in Siberia and natives try to trick foreigners into drinking poisonous vodka made from furniture stain and sawdust.

I’m sure I’m exaggerating, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t be concerned if your boyfriend were going to Siberia. Not to mention what that says about me. My boyfriend is leaving me for Siberia. But, I don’t blame him. In fact, our relationship may be better off with Andrew isolated. Because the world is about to see an Amanda E. Woytus that the world has never seen before. The Amanda Woytus who will not be privy to whether she is accepted to graduate school until mid-March, who until that time and possibly after, will be on a mad job hunt that will take her to God-knows-what city, or, when she finally realizes there are no jobs and she’s not even qualified if there were jobs, will take her to her mom and dad’s house, where she will cry over her failures and eat Ben and Jerry’s until her boyfriend decides to come home from Lithuania. Confused? Andrew is leaving from Irkutsk and going straight to Vilnius, Lithuania until late July.

So, yeah. It’s probably not going to be a happy semester. I apologize to those who actually read this, because I just read it over and it’s pretty boring. But stay tuned. It’s about to get real up in this blog. Drama! Ok, enough. Everything’s going to be okay. Just trying to punch it up.