A teaser, perhaps.
Anne flew in. We conquered some serious seafood. Crab bites, maki, ceviche... I'm getting a tear in my eye, thinking of it.
My $5 dress. I've since tweaked it with my favorite black belt. (Insert black belt joke here.)
Brioche french toast with macerated cherries (and something else, don't know what, menu didn't say), lime cream, pink peppercorns.
So photogenic. ;)
Gotta get in 80-100 pages by the 1st. I'll get there. It's just a marathon week of drafting and revising.
Am procrastinating. Am hungry. Am still kind of tired. Want to use my gift cards.
Must.
Stay.
The.
Course.
(Must find the course again, first. Holidays kind of threw me off, but in a good way.)
But, as I find the course and stay it, I will be wearing this deeply enjoyable item:
I finally splurged and bought it from this Etsy seller. I've wanted it for 4 years. I'm not kidding. I love candy - I love eating it, decorating with it, using it as sartorial inspiration. Now, I can actually wear it.
Resin nonpareil sprinkle ring, $13.
There are random sequins littering my floor. This is how it should be. All year, but especially now. Where do they come from? Well, boxes and bags of sequins, sometimes. But mostly, they shed from my clothes, shoes. I can't bring myself to sweep them up.
I think I need some confetti. I think I need some glitter. I will be extra-festive soon, once I hit some pretty heavy deadlines.
In the meantime, I keep finding a way to make my bright tree brighter.
(I know, I know, the green wires are so obvious - but not in real life. Please suspend awareness of them, for me?) I bought my favorite candy canes - cherry-flavored rainbow - and put them on the tree. I will be snacking on them come January, no doubt.
Love my tree. It's a lovely ritual to turn all the lights on (and light a candle) before I do anything else. It makes this deadline-tastic time easier to deal with. I'm not complaining - but I have a lot going on. (Don't we all?)
I did finish the teaching semester, though. *PHEW.* I tried to catch a picture of this amusing sign, on my drive home:
Small Dog, 59 cents. I keep thinking of lapdogs. I will take 1 pug, 1 "80's Dog" (Pomeranian), and a Pekingese. What a deal.
On a trip to the library, I saw this:
Buddy. Probably was 59 cents. I wonder how much a large dog costs. 99 cents?
I have been avoiding my library-room chair for various silly reasons (I go through cycles of wanting to sit in certain places, for one), but I finally sat in it yesterday, during the day, and enjoyed the view of this bank of houseplants, some new. (My fern is atrocious-looking but still clings to life.)
I would sit here more but then I can't see the tree.
Do you know what I CAN see? EVERYTHING. Because after a string of unpleasant experiences, I ended up demanding then having a string of extremely positive experiences at the aforementioned eyewear establishment - Lenscrafters.
I am not endorsing one thing over all others (I get my regular glasses from For Eyes, usually), but I have had positive experiences with Lenscrafters in the past, and was surprised that I kept finding myself dissatisfied. Longish (and boring) story short: they will make good. Of course they will. And now, I have what I want:
Brown Anne Klein sunglasses, plastic lenses, gradated tint, in a better prescription. And $20 than the best pair I found online. I am very, very pleased. Now I just have to get used to not having astigmatism anymore.
So anyways. This interlude is almost over, and I will make some food to last me through the next few marathon days, and I will write and read and write and read and possibly exercise and certainly shower and in all that, dream about these:
And maybe grab a box on my way up north to celebrate the holidays with my family. :) And celebrate meeting deadlines, of course.
Stay tuned: I will tell you about my upcoming production in Chicago....
I've been lax about writing about anything but clothes, because it's fast and EZ. I haven't been lax in other stuff. Stuff.
So I bring you a week in pics.
If you look closely, you will see my favorite street performer, with his trusty Casio. I prefer his instrumentals, though he has an enjoyable voice as well. I first encountered him playing The Washington Post March. This is on my drive home from RMU. (Also, note OSC.)
I don't have time to cook, but I read cookbooks sometimes, before I go to bed. This one is vintage. As if you couldn't tell. Please note the first sentence. Maybe instead of going back to cooking, I will take up jade-carving.
Pickled things at Schnuck's. Shnucks? Shucks. Can't remember how to spell it.
I wanted to get this at a book sale. I might get it, still. I love these kinds of books. I don't know who James Kirkwood is, and maybe I should. I can't resist insider tales of times gone by. Or mad playwrights.
Playwrights write plays with cast lists like this. I want to be these three roles. At once. Stat. (Dr. Faustus)
A choice mod wall-art panel at an antique store, too expensive. But what a dame.
Yes. (Creative Writing textbook)
In beauty news, Mary gave me this Barbie. I was and am very pleased, though I'm not a big Barbie person.
I read this and questioned my essential self: "do you have beauty action arms?"
She powdered her legs. This is from the 80's. ?!?! Did she pay special attention to her knees?!?!
Unrelated to anything, Pa Ingalls looks like my dad did about 20 years ago. Just sayin'. (On the Banks of Plum Creek)
My sunglasses broke. I glued them. They broke again. I glued them again, and stuck the Krazy Glue in my purse. However, I tried on my vintage frames again, in the daylight, to see if I could pull it off. I'm thinking not.
I love my sunglasses. And I love clothes. I just do. And I got dressed today. In this $8 beaded sweater I picked up at SalArmy the other day, on a quick trip to grab a prize for my friend Jen, because she is glitter-tastic and awesome. (I thought she should have a DC shout-out as well. :) I saw this sweater sticking out of the rack. I'm sort of not super-into sweaters. I didn't even try it on.
I don't always need to try it on.
Sometimes, a lot of times, I can just grab stuff off the rack and go. Take it and run with it.
Let this be my big, wise, metaphor for life.
But I did pay for it first. Whatever that means. ;)
Here. Some things that are happiness:
A chipper chap.
Being nice.
Bouncy ball clown.
Also try: Soggy Parallelograms.
Necessity for life.
Fruit Roll-Up without shapes or color gradations.
Extra-cheese pizza (all to myself).
Adult-sized PJ t-shirt.
Yarn witch at Mel-O-Cream.
Chair in SalArmy dressing room.
Amusing claims.
My dressing room.
Curls, fur, skeleton shirt, Diet Coke.
The End.
I'm not sure a day exists that can't be improved by getting dressed in a truly pleasing way.
Some days I hate doing anything that feels rote, or anything that is at base rote and then builds off with complexity/creativity. Like I want to think about what to put on. Those are the days that I just put on my black dress.
However, while the black dress is still in (ahem, unofficial) rotation, I knew I had to leave the house today, so I put something together.
What I ended up in is a kind of homage to Melaina from Shag. Though not entirely - this might surprise you, might not, but I rarely like to go entirely retro. I'm more into anachronisms. So, I paired my short black pants my 80's-ish (but contemporary) loose blue shirt and SILVER PUMPS. And clear jewels. And, don't call my short black pants capris. Why? Because they are low-waisted and don't stretch. The end. Also, I'm pleased with how slim this picture makes me look. It's the clothes, not the figure. Yay slimming clothes!
Though I am dressed, goldurned if I'm going to wear makeup. It's one of those days where I find it periodically best to cry, not because I am broken but because crying is extremely good therapy when I get overwhelmed, which is often enough. Go ahead. Cry whenever you want. I'm with you.
And, well, I caved in to a Diet Coke fast (well, a fast of buying a case of it) and GOLDURNED if anyone was going to stop me! Not even the man who exited the grocery store with a cart of pizza and vodka he didn't pay for! (I love my neighborhood.)
Wasn't cold. That's ok.
Now it is.
I have vanquished a bad mood. Score. :)
I've been home alone all week. I took up residence on the couch. I've gotten some good stuff done here. I've also failed to get stuff done. It's all good.
Yesterday I HAD to get out so I met up with my mom and her good buddies for her birthday weekend celebration, and we got our shop on. My mom, in general and particular, is awesome. She's been buying me things since... well duh. Since I was born. But. There's the stuff that she kind of has had to buy me, growing up (shoes, food, school supplies), and the stuff she still opts to buy me, now. Those are special things to me. (So is food. But you know.)
She handed me $20 yesterday and for that, and many other things, I say: GOD BLESS HER. I seriously needed retail therapy. Seriously.
Along with the pink hat (which she just bought me as a straight-up prize), there were these:
Love me some Cooks Illustrated, you know. ($1 each at the Goodwill.) And I went a little crazy at the candy store:
Even though I'm not eating much candy right now. But. It will last a looooong time. Then there is the most essential non-human thing in life:
The mug on the left was $5. I already had the mug on the right. Yes, I need two cups of coffee at one time, this morning. Some mornings are just like that. :) But I'm happy.
Been trying to attend to quite a few projects. When I say projects, I always mean writing. Unless, for instance, I say crafting project. But why would I say that?
I needed a break, though, from the writing/researching/life of the mind, and well, I felt the need to, uh, craft some... scratch-made confection. Confectionary. So I did just that.
Confection in-process. You see, I have this thing about crushed graham cracker. Not so much the whole crackers (too many associations with apple juice and preschool), but mixed with butter and more sugar and baked until brown at the edges, then topped with a bubbling caramel mixture made from dark corn syrup and dark brown sugar and then topped with chocolate chips mixed with evaporated milk - well. I am tweaking the recipe but I have tasted the results. Shoot me. It is not a cookie. It is a confection.
I was aided somewhat by this book:
ZaSu Pitts. I took note of this book at an antique store because I saw this woman in the movie Greed when I took Film Crit at ISU. I read her prefatory comments as I stood over the caramel, stirring. I started to nerd out on her, and this led me to think about another person I nerd out on - Helen Morgan.
This is how my brain works. I investigate what I am interested in, I pay attention, I follow trails of information and lore. The tidbits add up and connect. Things come together. I don't always know when or how. I end up with a project. But I got into Helen Morgan because of Showboat - the musical, the book, the entertainment institution. (Another gift from ISU.) Also, because of Polly Bergen, whose music I don't care for. What INTERESTS me about both Morgan and Pitts, fundamentally, is that they used to be a big deal and now aren't, but I still see their names pop up in the present. And Morgan, at least, has an interesting story. And Pitts had a round kitchen for making candy. So what, you say? Say it all you want. :) I know I'll do something with all of this information, at some point... but it really illustrates how even my late-night cooking adventures come back around to writing, even.
There is always writing. And well, there is always thrifting. I went to SalArmy yesterday. While waiting in front of the dressing room, my roving eye spied this Samsonite bag:
I put it on, and stood in front of the mirror between the dressing rooms, trying to look like I wasn't looking at myself.
Not like this. But I had to get a sense of the bag. There's something about it. It's not precisely my style, but it's so cool to me. And very travel-friendly. Reminds me of being a young teenager and being obsessed with rock-finding, and wishing I had a bag like this. I have some travel in my future. I think this will come with me.
Here, in all my dorkiness - demonstrating, well, how it could perhaps be comfortable to wear this bag and stand, annoyed, in a security line at the airport. ;)
These pictures also demonstrate how while I'd like to think I'm perpetually young, my face is slowly starting to tell a different story:
I totally dreamt last night that I had jowls. This is sort of my worst nightmare. My smile lines are making me have jowls, I swear. Whatever.
Anywho. So I thrifted. The above bag, and an 80's shirt (will show later). I was forced to. :) I bought a dress that I will most likely sell, but it is so lovely I had to hang it up in my closet-room. It reminded me of this picture I have on my vanity:
I want a fur dress. I will find/make one. But here is the dress I bought, with my fur collar I added:
Maybe I will keep it. Though I doubt it. It falls under the category of Garments I Love Aesthetically But Want Someone Else to Own Whom I Know Will Cherish and Wear Even More Than I Would.
It's too... cream. Not enough wackness. Here is another picture, recently in Vogue, that I HAD to tack on my wall:
I can do this. I have variations on this very outfit.
(My "rainforest wear" skirt)
But. I am not getting dressed today, except in the above tube dress. I am getting back to the writing projects. I have to go listen to Bo Diddley, Wilson Pickett, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and others... and write a screenplay.
I lit a candle to get going. Oh - I discovered, yesterday, that Dollar General has $5 candles. I don't know how well they saturate a space with scent, but man - the same size Yankee Candle is something like $25. And I don't think they have Orange Vanilla. :) (And I want to live truly...)
Alright. Back to work. And when I get some pages done, I'm going back to SalArmy, because something I put back on the rack is something I decided I could rock, after all. ;) Stay tuned.
I am ruined - ruined, I tell you. Cook's Illustrated has messed with my head a time too many. Reading about their interesting tricks and tips and food science. Making their recipes that turn out excellent. Buying the best brand and noting the difference.
I was hungry last night, and recuperating from my migraine, so I made two boxes of Tuna Helper so as to have more for later. (I love Tuna Helper. I'm not ashamed.) I had to drain 4 cans of tuna. Which made me think, why?? Why, when the box calls for 1.5 cups of hot water? So I drained the tuna in a glass measuring cup and heated it up. I, of course, forgot that this was a water substitute and added the hot water. It didn't matter.
Then, the box called for 3T of butter/margarine (frick margarine) and I was doubling it - and I didn't want just 2T of butter sitting in my fridge, absorbing odors and becoming nasty. So I just stuck the whole stick in.
Last time I made Tuna Helper, I didn't have regular milk but had some nonfat dry milk and it turned out okay. I normally have 1% around but I was too tired this week to go to two stores so I got 2% at Aldi. So I put that in.
And then, because I have a deep and profound addiction, I poured garlic powder in the whole mess.
I think it cured me.
Moral: everything really should taste good.
Anne O'Connor, goddess, has joined me for a whirlwind half-week of fun and festivities in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
I picked her up the airport. She was a little tired.
She had only slept an hour. I suggested a pick-me-up of buffalo nachos at R.J. Grunts. If I had known, I would've steered us elsewhere - first meal of the day. Hmm. (But delicious, as always.)
We found our home in the HoJo Downtown - a "recently remodeled" mod gem w/attached cafe and attached middle-aged desk attendant in Cosby sweater. (He was and is awesome.) Our room "wasn't ready" so we moved in our stuff just for convenience. Man, was it ever not ready. The made beds, the vacuumed floor, the full selection of travel-sized bathroom items... yep. Did they just need to fluff our pillows or something?
Next, I dragged Anne down Oak St. to both indulge in perfumery and take a pic of the disused and wonderful Deco-era Esquire Theater.
Then, because Anne has never been here before and I LOVE DOWNTOWN, we walked a bit of the (cold) Magnificent Mile. And went in stores. And didn't buy anything. But I caressed the Pucci scarves at Nordstrom.
I also caressed my Frederic Malle perfume when we stopped for a "snack" (shrimp cocktail, crab dip, and Happy Hour libations) at Shaw's Crab House. This stuff is $$$. But I have discovered a way to basically get it for free (with a little work on my end). Made me feel better, because we pass a lot of homeless people in Chicago and I feel like a jerk, buying pricey perfume...
Mmm. Snack.
Anne snacks on the offensive celery. She is contemplating our evening of trying delicious new places - on the cheap. We did a column in our undergrad newspaper ("Cougar Trax" - ha ha) called "Frugal Foodies" for a year. It was exactly the same format as now - I ordered too much, we enjoyed ourselves more than most any other adult human beings in the world, and somehow, Anne ended up paying.
Tomorrow, we might have to get omelets in the cafe.
Spring Break. Yessss.
P.S. Getting Dressed is handily embedded in today's post. Can you find it? (Hint: Mickey Mouse shirt - prize from Gizmo; Ol Faithful 80's belt, $3; Capezio red leather tasseled cowboy boots, $20.)
