in all things, moderation

i am going crazy with my free time (again) and keep wandering from one scheme or another to be rich and famous and artistic. not particularly therapuetic in all this was the maira kalman show at the ICA that iele and i went to recently. we had a lovely breakst at naked chocolate cafe, where i was amazed at the peanut butter icing, which tasted exactly like the former with the smooth texture of the latter. Also we had coffee in glass mug, which i always find weirdly enchanting. but i, as usual, digress. Maira Kalman makes the most beautiful things. she embroiders and paints and does pen and ink drawings of brooms and coffee cups. she reads kafka and goethe and proust and flaubert and weaves them seamlessly into her art, where intellects and authors and artists mingle with hat boxes and day coats by issac mizrahi ( a personal friend of hers).  she eats chocolate croissants and thinks things in beautiful cafes. i want to have a life like heres, but it is hard, you know, when you feel mired in work and life and laundry. i feel everyday should be made more special and inspirational, but i am so frequently tired and just want to watch the x files. i don't know how to tap into the specialness of my life. lately everything just seems like work. 

Crafters donate to help Haiti

Crafters donate their crafts to Etsy to be sold at the benefit of Haiti earthquake survivors.

Dedications

Is it okay to dedicate your very erotic werewolf romance to your young kids "who have more patience than I [she] deserves?"

Husband, yeah sure, okay.

Awkward moments: Mooommmmm why do you make weird animal noises when you are in your study writing your "stories?"

Since November? E-gads!

well since the GRE and grad school applying and Christmas, I realized i hadn't had a free day off in four and a half months. this was last saturday and i didn't know what to do with myself so I CLEANED THE HOUSE. Agent 99 said it was sickening that I'd forgotten how to relax. So the Sunday after I sat around in some obscenely wide legged jeans and ate all day. My aunt has given me a dangerously delicious oatmeal cookie recipe and I have it in the fridge so i can make em a pan at a time whenever the mister and i feel like havin a treat to go with a game of Bananagrams.

So that is where I've been. 

Here  is a list of everything I got for Christmas, feel free to respond with similiar:

Black knee length coat from Victoria's Secret

which goes strangely well with the mom-style fur-lined duck boots I got from L.L. Bean

A cookbook of recipes written on recipe cards from my auntie. 

Are you Being Served? on DVD

The Graveyard Book, which will merit a separate post on Gaiman's ability to get it up but not to finish it off

The Looking Glass Wars

Another book that looks right up my alley about vacationers, including little old ladies, riding camel-back somewhere exotic. The actual name of the book escapes me at the moment.

My surprise favorite gift of a set of adorable, bristly little wooden forrest creature ornaments from my dearheart. there is something so nice about getting ornaments for a shared tree from someone you love.

In my stocking(s) Betsey Johnson socks, a black skull candle, a wee garden gnome, magnetic mah jongg, a glittery bow for my hair, a batter spatula that gives the middle finger, some hair barettes meant for small children-mostly these are ducks and bows and the like, but there is one inexplicable bear playing a banjo and a  host of body lotions and sugar-free chocolate bars and etc.

The world's most cleverly crafted apron with matching cupcake tray and oven mitts sewn by the goddess Sarah who could be selling the dang thing at Anthropologie for $80.

The above hat in magenta and black, which keeps me warm but makes me look like a gay Scutt Farcus. 

A lovely card and heirloom Cameo ring

A mason jar of peppermint liquer

A subscription to Real Simple (yay!)

...and a few other things i have since forgotten. On the whole, a good haul, and an excellent Christmas. 

And yourselves?

Consumer alert

        Okay so for my birthday i bought myself these Aldo Hoppins cutie booties in cognac. I love them. they go well with my wide leg pants (though sometimes i worry i look like shaggy in these get-ups, of the scooby doo variety, not of the shawty your my angel persuasion). They are comfortable even though they have a heel. BUT ladies (and maybe some gents) do not buy them! They are $90 bucks and if you tack on the extra spray for keeping 'em safe in the rain you're looking at $100 bucks. The spray is fine, great even. Though they are leather they hold up well in the rain. What has not held up, however, is the cheapo laminate on the heel. It's the equivalent of wood panelng for a shoe. or poorly hung wall paper. it has peeled and scratched off and now my shoes have this weird inch of exposed white plastic on either heel. Also, the sole seems to be getting dangerously thin. I know I am hard on shoes, and the eight miles a day i'm clocking 'cause of the septa strike ain't helping, but these were pretty rocked before my morning march. Alli'm saying i, if they'd been $20? Totally worth it. As is, I'm pissed. But you don't have to be. There's an almost identical, though darker, style at payless. I know their shoes can be cheaply made, but at least they'll have the price tag to show for it. 

New Moon to wipe out the dusk of Twilight

Yesterday I got an email from iTunes. My preorder of the New Moon soundtrack was ready to download. Originally slated for a October 20th release, they bumped it up to the October 16th. I wish they would do the same with the movie, but the soundtrack is different from all the money they've spent on trailers and posters for the main feast.

My anticipation for the soundtrack did not come from the okayish Twilight soundtrack or the mystery surrounding the sequel. I will be glad that I will have not seen the full movie in segments by the time it is finished and in theaters, unlike its predecessor.

In terms of the soundtrack as I explained to Kathleen the songs were good threads that felt right during the movie but listening back to back in their entirety wasn't enjoyable. Reading the Bust Magazine's Blog review from Eliza really hit the nail of the head, "The last one was laughably terrible and full of your standard Hot Topic fare."

My anticipation came when I saw some of the names being thrown around as possibilities, as read on Twilight Lexicon (King of Kings for Bella and Edward lovers). When I preordered my digital copy I also got one single Satellite Heart by Anya Marina. Hello goosebumps. Now that I have all 19 gems? Its smooth, its dark, its the loss of your first love and me like! Just don't hold a gun to my head and ask me to choose between Whip It and New Moon for favorite soundtrack bought this month, or even this year.

i have returned..

..not necessarily triumphant. I took the GRE's and am coming out of the mourning my less than stellar score. how can a person spend so much time studying and still not break 700 on verbal...and let's leave math alone. 

BUT, as I said, I am done mourning. Today i am enjoign a study free saturday. I'm wearing the tuxedo t-shirt (complete with red carnation) that agent 99 bought from the five below and reading Dracula (illustrated by Edward Gorey)  in bed. Also listening to Van Helsing's Jukebox, an excellent song by Man Man, and feeling very black and white and red and grown up Halloween chic. I think black and red and white are in fact Halloween colors for grown ups. I know, I know, Halloween is in essence a children's holiday, but I can't help loving that creepy, lovely feeling that steals over me in October. Hence my attempts to celebrate in my own fashion. And le tme tell ou, this book is quite creepy. Dracula is scaling walls headfirst, climbing with his toes and fingers, he's running around as a wolf and feeding kidnapped children in burlap sacks to his succubi. He is also draining the lovely Lucy Westerna dry, though she has been hiding the evidence under a velvet ribbon and diamond buckle choker. 

The only thing I wish is that Edward hadn't drawn only the backside of the Count. I wand to see his Sam Eliott style moustache and I also wish he didn't resemble an outdoor park trench coat pervert quite so much. 

How can a piece of cardstock that is 2 x 1 inchs give me such a complex?

This past week some of us got business cards. I blurred the numbers since they are not for the public. Besides the fact I can now put them in a bowl for a free Chipotle Burrito drawing, I am a little freaked about having such an adult thing in my possession. It seems really surreal to me. If I was Alice in Wonderland this business card is the note on the corporate juice bottle: Drink Me.

My favorite short film so far of 2009.

Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre on Vimeo.

Jenny Slate in the new girl on SNL. Though after her first show, she'll probably be known as "That girl that dropped the F-Bomb." Bust Magazine's blog had a link to a short film that Jenny did pre-Saturday Night. This is a beautiful glimpse of a woman I can relate too. I can relate to her because her life is messy, she dances crazy, knows the value of a thrift store, pees in public and she can admit that heart hurts. I look forward to seeing more of Ms. F-ing Slate and the director Gillian Robespierre. P.S. Handle Bar mustaches distract me too.

RFT's Best of St. Louis> Body Piercing> Claire's Accessories.

River Front Times just came out with the best of the best for 2009. Well, even when I bring it up with strangers behind the cash register, they too are drawn to the same ridiculousness that is St. Louis's Best Body Piercing: Claire's Accessories. Lame. Reading the article you can agree with the author that getting your ears pierced is a rite of passage, especially as a girl.

My own experience? My mom told me it was illegal in Georgia to get your ears pierced before you turned double digits (aka 10 years old). Though with most of my 4th grade class decked out in none-other-than plastic dangles from Claire's I knew that was just my mom's own law.

However my mom did have me convinced on something else. That they used a gun to pierce your ears. A double barrel rifle. She would describe in detail lining up clients against a door, the piercer would stand back and use their best aim. BAM BAM BAM and pray they landed the stud in your ear. Forget if it was against the law or not, the image of the rifle made my palms sweat. Did I about walk out the door when the lady at Merle Norman said, "Just one moment and I'll go get the earring gun," yes, yes I almost did.

Rite of passage, yes, but do I want to slap the face of the awesome dudes at Enigma that pierced my eyebrow and my nose and compare them to the Disney/Cute Punk Jewelry pusher thats crammed between American Eagle and Wilson's Leather? Nope, I don't.