Mean reds and a little bit blue

I love the concept of long weekends...
I love them more when the boss closes the office a day early.

But this weekend it bums me out because:
It was too short notice to plan a proper 4-day weekend.
All my people have other people to share it with first.
Or are too far away to join.
California
Alabama
Arizona
New York
Or a state of otherness that can't be penetrated:
sorrow
love
depression

Looks like I'll spend it wool-gathering.

I guess that's ok.

Naps make it better

Friday was my 18th day straight of working (or 19th, but who's counting)...

We had 2 weekends of shows that I had to work.
Generally, the shows are broken up over the week, Wed'y/Fri/Sun
or something similar.
But not this run.

Plus our biggest, newest grant was turned in yesterday, the one from funds generated by a cigarette tax.
No one can say how much or how little we're potentially up for, so many unknowns make it scary.

To compensate for all the busy, I've been going out ALOT after work.

Feeling o so cosmopolitan, but its catching up with me today.
I've discovered a fondness for Hendrick's gin and flirting.
Both are utterly exausting if experienced in excess.

So naps and trolling the interweb.

New obsession, the NY Mag Look Book archives.
.
I know NYC would be too expensive and too hard given my present circumstances, but I see these people and their ability to simply BE in a city that encourages creativity and I wonder who I would become in an environment like that.

Not that Tremont isn't lovely, but I don't think you could get away with this or that.

Too bad.

wasted

yo
so its midnight and i'm tanked

its a school night - karaoke at prosperity

so many good - so many more AWFUL

so much hendricks... (with tonic, v. good)

night before...

Lolita and accordion music

Superbad and beer at Champppppppps

this a.m. - mimosas to celebrate a new hire

15th day at work - no days off til sat'y

thank god for the he-harem and bars aplenty in the 'hood

barking dog next door - fuck you - go to sleep

so i can too

Don't throw it out!

As much as they always tell you
"If you haven't worn it in a year,
(or 6 months, or 2 years, or a decade)
then get rid of it!"

Pish!

I bought a black sweater vest last month.
And only now am I getting to wearing a pair of
white suede buck shoes that I bought in...

1995.

These shoes are twelve year old, people.

Twelve.

If they were a person, they'd have public hair and heads full of self-doubting akwardness and algebra I.

So I say DO NOT THROW IT OUT if it's something you swear you'll wear.

Let it bide its time and promise you'll...
lose the 10 lbs
see the fashion come back
find a reason and a season to wear it again.

I can't imagine how disappointed I'd be if I had the vest but no bucks.

PLUS the black and white diag striped skinny tie purchased 5 years ago at the thrift...
it's a whole Patricia-Fields-does-country-club-causal-but-kind-of-mod thing.

v. cool.

Update: What are bucks?


Classic summer men's shoes of the early to mid twentieth century.

Rootbeer Floats at 1

Yup.

It's 1 o'clock.

There's Graeter's Ice Cream in the company fridge.

I bought root beer on Tuesday.

I love my job.

Unfortunate fortune

"It could be better,
but its good enough."

I mean...

I GUESS so...

but -

really?

how.... complacent.

Happy Inattentive Jackass Day, y'all!

4 people standing in front of my car chatting as I tried to leave the parking garage.
10+ cars coming at me in the middle or wrong lane - fast - as I tried to leave the parking garage.
Too many to count slow drivers milling around 15 minutes after the game started downtown.
1 pissed off aging hipster man-child who parked his bike about 3 feet into the drive that leads to my parking lot.
Pissed off because I honked to let him know I was there and didn't want to hit his aging hipster man-child bike.

Apparently being attentive is perceived as aggressive.
Not understanding how you relate to your surround environs is the new thing, man.

I was expecting a wave and a nod and him moving his bike closer to the building.
Not "What's your problem!" yelled at me across Professor.

Fine.
I hear you LOUD AND CLEAR.
Next time I'll hit it.

'cause that would be more rock & roll, right?

awwwwwwwwwwwww yeah

Gold flats from Target: $12.99
Feathers from JoAnn Fabric: $1.99
Arty-girl shoes with nary a skull & cross-bone or stag-head silhouette to be found: Priceless









One down, one to go....

Let's talk estrangement

Estrangement is a weird state of affairs, and something I never thought I'd experience, save the truly poorly behaved ex or two.
Yet here, I am, 31 and technically estranged from 2 female friends and a numbers of exs.

This comes up because I've been passing a friend's ex on the street alot lately, and he goes really far out of his way to ignore me - and it's weird.

Over the years we've had dinner, he's used my kayak and their relationship didn't end badly, it just... ended. So now I'm - I guess - estranged from this person who I will likely see weekly...

One of the things that seems so odd about the experience of estrangement is that it's not something I would choose, were it not either a) chosen for me b) the only way to keep myself in check.

If left to my own devices, I believe that you can pretty much work through anything, and if you can't, you can mutually agree to leave each other alone.

The first option - Chosen for Me - is a uniquely female experience.

I worked with someone who I became close to - I was moved into her department and technically answered to her. However, it was well known that her managerial skills were questionable, so I was urged to request that I answer directly to her supervisor. The whole thing put me in an odd position, because no one would ever explain why I didn't answer to her.

I stood up to her when it was appropriate, but the managment skills really needed work - sort of the dish-it-bit-can't-take-it kind... and all the time I was trying to balance our outside friendship: I picked her up from the airport, heeded her husband's desperate call for a last minute surprise birthday cake and painted her scary high walls - you know, friendship stuff... with a heaping side of work discord.

When I left that job, I was honest in an exit interview.
A CONFIDENTIAL exit interview.
That got turned into gossip.

And now she crosses the street when she sees me.
Why not confront me?
Why not accept the criticism as a learning experience?
Why not call me a bitch and get over it?

The other experience was a high maintance friend whom I forgot to maintain while I was back in school.

She stopped talking to me the day after my apartment burned.

Haven't run into her, which is for the best. But a shame that she couldn't get past whatever she couldn't get past.

Whatever the problem was - I ask again,
Why not confront me?
Why not yell at me that I wasn't paying her enough attention?
Why not call me a bitch a get over it?

The Ex Estrangement...

I will take the blame for instigating this behavior on a number of occasions.

Mostly, I do it because if I don't, I'll keep trying to fix things and keep kicking that dying, dead, moldly horse.

I'll put up with almost any behavior, as long as its not explicitly hurtful. I think that inattentiveness or general crazy-head is acceptable in short bursts, but not for the long-haul - because when those things go unheeded, they become explicitly harmful to another, if only as indicators of someone's inability to control their actions.

My own experience leading up to estrangement with men has always been the build-up of small injustices.
I mean, who wants to be the girl who won't accept a little off-the-chart odd behavior?
But there comes a time when even the most benign excuse, if used enough, grows to form a malignant problem that has to be attended to.

So I remove the problem - Just cut it off.

But I don't want to - I NEVER want to.

I want to believe the excuse and have it be true and keep the good and have the bad be a long-gone distant memory that we laugh about later.

A couple of years ago, I got back into communication with an ex who was always cancelling on me to volunteer with someone needier than you, me and everyone else you'll probably ever meet.

And that's a GREAT reason to cancel on someone - really.
I mean, even after 8 months of wringing my hand over it, I felt like such bitch by walking away.

And the depressed ones, dear god, what do you do?
Do you stand by your man? What if you've only been dating a few months?
And have you ever tried to stand by a depressed guy? They're frickin' brutal -
all self-deprecation and self-pitying selfish selfness selfity self self me me me.

So - estrangement...
Do I try to fix it with the girls?

Is there some other way to extricate yourself from that kind of boy?

How do you handleit when someone you know pretends not to know you though no fault of your own?

How do you learn to not care about these things?

I'll leave you with one final thought...

The advice columnist Dan Savage has suggested that the rule for getting involved with a much younger lover is the same as a rule for campsites: leave them better than you found them.

I would suggest that the same rule applies regardless of age - and manner of relationship.

Why not try to leave people better than you found them? Douse the fire, throw out your trash and take your baggage with you when you leave.

Impatience

So I had to wear them today.
Not tomorrow.
Not the day after the day before a week from today.
But NOW.

Had I intercepted a 9:30 phone call I missed because I was too deep in buttons and bows, I would have worn them out and about, one complete, one plain in a personal ode to Camper Twins.

Me wearing shoes.



Me wearing shoes with curious Tilda-beast.

why should kate spade have all the fun

Over the years I've collected a good deal of raw materials for sewing.
A textile-lover at heart, I've always been a sucker for antique ribbons and the odd 30s button.

Thanks in large part to the democratization of style, hipster hand-made and the rise of Anthropologie, Miu Miu and Kate Spade, it's perfectly normal to dress like you raided your eccentric aunt's clothespress and decked yourself out like Little Edie.

You've seen the feather shoes.
Now come the flats.

I purchased a pair of silver flats from Target a couple of weeks ago and they left me - pardon the pun - flat.
I dug around my suitcase of scraps and came up with silk ribbon and art deco buttons...

Before and after



Lounging in my bedroom



I think I need feather flats...

voyeurism

New York Magazine started a weekly column called the sex diaries.

The link leads to the first article from April and if you search for "sex diary" in the New York Mag website, you'll get a list of previous weekly columns.

I love knowing what others are doing... helps me feel that my own actions are in a respectable place along the continuum.

mish mash

a few things:
I changed out my iPod mini battery last night - v. proud because it required sharp tools and the removal of and dilly dallying with the motherboard.
I know less than nothing about electronics (it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out how to power up my first laptop... and other 5 years to learn that you say "power up" as opposed to "turn on")

Even though there is still one sad little responsibility for my last job, I am pretty much officially done with my previous job, I have a solid understanding of my current gig and I have no more outstanding obligations like, say, a wedding or something.

Today I actually left work at 5, went to the gym and got to listen to my iPod for longer than 2 songs (because somehow I managed to not completely fuck up the motherboard).

I cooked an awesome dinner with whole fresh raw food materials, with the exception of frozen fish.
I used herbs and lettuces and tomatoes from my garden (full disclosure, the only tomatoes that have successfully grown self-seeded from last years crop, and I only just noticed them last week... lame? Totally).

I've got healthy lunches planned and packed and I'm doing laundry at a reasonable rate instead of the once a month wash-a-thon of desparation.

and dishes done.

all i need is to change my sheets, take a lush bath (I'm thinking Avobath or maybe Youki-Hi...) and crack my book.

'night all!

success!

the wedding was smashing success
(I went with dottie 50s housewife shoes - btw)
the minister got a little heavy-handed in the homily about two being better than one.

by the time it was over, I was convinced that I was going to die in a freezing cold bed.
alone.
with no one to find my body.
or mourn my death.
and that singlehood is an indicator of being forsaken by a higher power.
and should be avoided at all costs.

and then I found out later that the minister recently experienced a divorce.

yeah...

it was a little intense.

but otherwise, the friends, company, food and wine were great.
everything necessary for a great party.

I have a problem

UPDATE: Behold! The feather shoe.
Created to distract me from writing a now long-forgotten final paper from some class that was vaguely important and that I am still paying for with student loans and will be for years to come.





Whadya think, appropriate for the rehearsal dinner?

These hold more than a little meaning for me, as days after completing them, my apartment caught fire.
And now it (and I) have dusted off the ashes and moved forward to better things.

Phoenix feather shoes? hmm... pretty hokey.
but I dig the concept.
and the shoes.

back to original post.

...speaking of consumerist mindsets...

I'm going away for 4 days.
f. o. u. r.

I have packed 6 pairs of shoes.
s. i. x.

3 JUST for the wedding.
Elle McPherson 2004-Met-Chanel-Gala-Rhinestone flat sandals?
Carrie Bradshaw Sex-and-the-City-you'll-put-an-eye-out-if-you're-not-careful lavendar-hued silver stilettos?
Amy Sedaris Dotty-Fifties-Housewife-reimagined-through-modern-ironic-sensibilities moss-green velvet heels with purple and black costume jewels and hot pink silk mini-bow mules?

crap.

i need to need less options.

p.s. ditching the stilettos, going with sandals... or dotty mules.

opera for the people

I mentioned my love of radio david byrne in an earlier post

anyway, this month's playlist is opera! wunderbar oper!

from his description about arias...
"They were the popular music of the day and the audiences were rowdy and noisy — you could eat, drink and probably fornicate in the theaters at that time. Farmers and fishermen sang these tunes in fields and bars — and so can we."

so tune in, turn on and enjoy stories about such things as affairs, murder, betrayal, passion, and sex.
lots and lots of sex.

and sometimes redemption...

but mostly sex.

check it out - streaming on itunes (under eclectic)
or at his website

did i mention the sex?

Smug domesticity

Slate had a great article about the inevitable shift of "chick lit" into "mommy lit."

I've been thinking for some time about some of the themes this critic touches on, mostly that of the smug domesticity.

Don't get me wrong, I have my Martha moments, and I love looking at the Restoration Hardward catalog and imaging a nice clean sage and silver life - but what get under my skin is the domesticity that invariably comes with marriage and the smug attitude that this is exactly what one's whole life has been leading up to.

...and the problems that come when slightly-harried-and-lovin'-it turns into oh-my-god-I-had-no-idea-this-is-what-it-would-be-like.

Because somehow it seems with all the lifestyle brands - Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, J Crew - we've taken the already romanticized notion of married life and turned it into a completely unattainable goal that leads many to disappointment and some into divorce.

I've been wondering if my generation may be completely unprepared for the realities of long-term, committed relationships.

It seem we're all about the narcissistic love, the its-about-me-being-me love; in other words, the conditional love. Which is fine, if you admit it's conditional. But we don't. We buy rings and take vows and stuff conditional into a box labeled "unconditional" and act suprised and defeated when it doesn't work out.

I think we need to find someway to let marriage be marriage, but in the context of the current consumer environment.

And yes, I said consumer.

Because choosing a mate is on some level like shopping.
What better indicator of who you are than who you choose to represent your other half.
And that's what lifestyle brands and consumer choices seem to be all about... identifying yourself as a member of some larger tribe.
Are you le creuset or cuisanart?
j crew or anthropologie?
starbucks or deweys?
hummer or prius?
east side or west side?
urban or suburban?

So you choose and get chosen, and things feel good and life sort of reflects the fantasy. But what about when the person you choose changes? Depression sets in? Or they find a commitment to a new diety? Or it's just not right? What then?

The tension between the conditional and the unconditional sets in.
(Buyer's remorse...?)
How long do you support them?
At what point is the change too much?
Is it selfish to leave or foolish to stay?

It's not like you can just... return them.
And you rarely have the power the change them (even if you can withhold sex - ladies, this DOES NOT WORK... sets a BAAAAAAD precedent and ruins things for those of us next in line...
seriously.)

And to add insult to injury, leaving seems to be this black hole of devastating personal failure since marriage and settling down have been pretty much accepted as the ultimate goal.

So obviously, it stands to reason that if you achieve it - and then lose it - you've somehow failed as a member of society.

I think we're setting ourselves up for failure.

Soul-sucking, depression-causing, people-breaking failure.

Are long-term relationships doomed as long as we have fickle consumer tendancies?

Would anyone get married if they knew its not all backyard barbeques and clutter-free living rooms?

I'm just curious to know since I'll be walking down an aisle as a bridesmaid for the SEVENTH TIME this weekend.
And a couple of friends have recently announced divorces/separations.

So there's a whole lotta stuff swirling around up there.