Tag: postaday2011

what i look like

This went the rounds of Facebook recently and it made me laugh and laugh. There’s something about the ridiculous juxtaposition of doing something so personal so publicly that, if one does not laugh, one will cry.

I often run at a popular beach park and usually can just go to another mental space when I’m running and dodging all the many people. However, every once in a while, I get unnerved at the occasional appraising stare. And wonder what my ass really looks like as I’m running away. And if they can see how very slowly I’m going. And if I look cute at all, at ALL? Et fracking cetera.

I was pleased at these new and absolutely useless signs I spied there today, until I realized that’s not a runner, that’s a roller skater/blader. What happened to those wheeled people, anyway? And let me tell you, these signs will not remind anybody to move to their right, rein in their dogs, contain their baby carriages nor their babies. I try not to get to snotty with my “EXCUSE me” as I try to squeak by.

So yeah, this is what I look like after I run. Eeps.

There’s a gallery somewhere on the internet that has photos of people before and after they exercise, but I can’t find it. I remember it was compelling, and made me feel better about the way I look, or at least make me mind a little less if I do look like a lurching toddler, holding a bottle of bubble soap.

November 20, 2011
tough girl

Vintage tough girls make me nervous, even though they are no direct threat to me.

The Shangri-Las evolved, image-wise, to be these street-wise 60s girls. I love everything about them, but I always feared them a little, too.

Tough girls in a 60s, smoking, big-hair style — it would have been so much better (for my blog at least) to be victimized by them then the horrid, garden variety sadists who victimized me in middle school. Those girls? Not a beehive to be found.

The sad saga of Amy Winehouse, I won’t comment upon, but I will say her style was fierce; lookit how this chick above rocks it. This is from Amy Winehouse Up Do Tutorial instructions. Some choice nuggets from the tutorial:

Secure it with gazillion bobby pins. Move your head around like you’re trippin’. Add extra extra more hairspray if needed.

Oh yeah, she likes to wear hoops earrings, black cat-eye makeup, and short, tight, cleavage-flaunting dresses.
And tips when your wearing eyeliner – Amy style, always remember: the thicker, the blacker – the better.

So yeah, tough girls. I was never ever one of you, even though I tried, I tried!

November 19, 2011
a post about leather jackets

Yes, a post about leather jackets. This is my 322th consecutive post. OKAY?

Leather jacket #1

In my 20s, I saved up my measly pennies and bought a real live leather jacket at one of those SoMa shops in San Francisco for the enormous fortune of $100. It was very much of the early-90s times, kind of big and triangle shaped. But I loved it, it worked, I wore it all the time. A few years later, in in a surprisingly crafty move (before I got reaquainted with my inner craftiness) I took it to a tailor. I had a zipper inserted and got it altered so that was a little more motorcycley (since I was a Motorcycle Girlfriend for two long-term relationships in a row). I finally gave it to the thrift sometime in the late 90s. I remember later seeing it hanging in the store, feeling melancholy, and almost buying it back.

Leather jacket #2

Actually a fake leather jacket, but a fun swingy cut, bought in SF in the early 2000s. I wore it on a trip to Ventura and it got stolen from a bar, a bar I happened to be at last night.

Leather jacket #3

My current jacket. This was a hard-won find; I don’t have the gumption to save up for a three-digit anything anymore (except for grownup things), so I trawled the thrifts over the spring and summer, waiting until the perfect piece appeared. It did (it was not my long-lost jacket #1). With $10 worth of tailoring, it’s been one of the best things I own.

I lost it yesterday, it just disappeared somewhere between my car and my office. I retraced my steps, asked around at nearby businesses, turned my car and office inside out. All evening I talked myself into believing that I was mistaken; that I had never brought my jacket to work, that it was waiting for me at home.

I got home late last night and NO DICE. I had a hissy fit, that’s what I had. Not only was the Best Jacket gone, but I had a bunch of annoying emails waiting for me, and it’s just been a long and painful week.

Well but then. Today I went to my coffee shop around the corner of my office and they had it after all, and hooray and huzzah.

And that is the end of my story. Good lord, is it 2012 yet?

November 18, 2011
the 1970s: five ladies, three years

1970

This is the first shot of the first episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (aired September 19, 1970). We’ve got a hat trick of the very best of that cusp year of 60s-to-70s fashion. Phyllis is modern 70s women (purple tie, yellow patent leather heels!), Mary is still go-go-groovy with the boots and the fall. And Bess? Bess looked like me and every other little American girl in the universe at that moment in time.

1976

Jodie Foster, 14 here and host of Saturday Night Live (aired November 27, 1976). If this set were recreated today, it would almost be fake looking for its complete mid-70s-ness. The headphones, shirt, bedspread, ahhh! Phone, wall art, teddy bear, bed!!

1979

Laraine Newman as Z Jones, rock reviewer, on Saturday Night Live (aired April 14, 1979). A vinyl motorcycle jacket with huge disco lapels! And purple hair! I recently watched the first five seasons of SNL, and I got to really appreciate her incredible character work. She was the real star of the show.

I hug to my breast the fashion of the 70s, and the fact that what I present here today is only a fraction of the creative, bizarre, outrageous volcano that was that decade.

November 16, 2011
kool aid sky

This was a nice run. The air felt like I was wearing a gossamer wrap, very lightly heated. I didn’t happen to have music with me so all I heard was my inhale (lasting one footfall) and exhale (lasting two):

huh huh ahh .. huh huh ahh .. huh huh ahh

I stopped just long enough to take in this sunset, then finished my run.

I smiled as I tipped sand out of my sneakers when I got home. I am extremely lucky.

November 15, 2011
beer and baloney pie

Carol took me to task a tiny bit regarding yesterday’s post:

Carol: The obvious comment here is “you had dough laying around”????

Ah, yes, it looks like I threw that in there, in a classic move of disingenuousness — “oh, gracious, I’m such a modest (but perfect) housekeeper, I have nothing in my fridge but dough and creme fraiche and fresh truffles — just the bare minimum!”

Let me assure you, I did not intend this. I did indeed have some dough lying around, but it was some gross scraps of croissant dough-in-a-tube gunk that I had leftover from the Halloweenie mummies I made two weeks ago.

I can cook fairly well (if pressed), but am extremely inconsistent, lazy, and almost never do anything construed as “fancy.” Having to put breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks on the table for the Elderly Relative every dingdong day has zapped whatever desire for creativity that might be living deep within me. He is on an extreme budget, and I don’t have a lot of time (or interest), and he really really doesn’t care about what he eats, just as long as there are bananas, milk, and baloney sandwiches perpetually on the menu (done!)

I’m always encountering situations in which my lack of interest is underestimated. One:

Becky: I am going to a dinner party and am bringing dessert. I am going to try, for once, to make something. What is a really really easy recipe? And by easy, I mean EASY easy?

Jeanie: Here’s a chocolate pie recipe. Couldn’t be simpler.

Becky: Yay.

Jeanie: But of course you have to make the pie dough from scratch.

Becky: What part of “easy” did not you understand?

Jeanie: But it’s so easy!

Becky: Are we both speaking English?

(I made the recipe and not only used a store-bought crust, but a no-bake store-bought crust. And it was delicious.)

Two:

This actually doesn’t personally apply to me, but I get mad at the stupidity of any show, article, recipe, or whatever that infers the concept of whipping something up just from “ingredients from your kitchen you happen to have in your pantry.” These mythical pantries always have fantastic and fresh ingredients, oh yeah, just like every pantry I know. Until I see a recipe that uses baloney, cheap beer, canned spaghetti, bananas, milk, or ingredients from the 99 Cents Store, I call FAKE.

Let’s revisit 2010 and the best pies I’ve ever baked, shall we? And let me tell you, that is pre-made dough, frozen fruit, and equal parts indifference and luck.

November 14, 2011
being pomme-led to death

The house where the Boyfriend lives has a backyard with a garden and trees and such. The recent (incredibly annoying) winds suddenly made all the apples fall from one of his trees. Yesterday he brought over a huge amount of these apples, a psychotic amount, at least to this city girl’s eyes. I knew what to do with a lot of them, however — even an out-of-touch-with-nature human like me can’t live in an agricultural county without knowing The Trick: foist off your bounty on all friends, family and (if you’re lucky to have access) audience members.

But even with The Trick, there are ever so many apples left. I asked Lamar what kind they were and he said “Yellow? Apple shaped?” I think they are Golden Delicious, sure why not. Just don’t ask me to tell which one’s a goat and which one’s a sheep.

I made a small apple tart with some dough I had lying around. Not bad. Now I am commencing on a dismaying large batch of applesauce; somehow I thought that quadrupling the recipe wouldn’t yield a buttload of sauce, but there appears indeed to be a buttload of sauce simmering away. Fortunately I still live with the Elderly Relative, and if there’s one thing I know about my old folk is that they love the applesauce.

I suppose I’ll embark on the pie thing if I still have this ridiculous homey streak left in me this afternoon. Another task? Washing all the good crystal in preparation for Thanksgiving. If my mom were here she’d be calling me Harriet Housewife right about now.

Apples apples apples. Can I talk more about apples? Is this getting to you? Perhaps you have a glimmer of how I’m feeling when I look and see that the pile of apples in the garage is still high, high, high.

November 13, 2011
the man in the newspaper suit

I asked you to remind me to tell you about the man in the newspaper suit. I still have so many east coast trip stories to tell.

I was walking down the street towards the apartment in which I was staying in New York. It’s a very lovely street in Chelsea.

Sitting on a stool facing the street was a man in a newspaper suit. I’m not sure of how the infrastructure of this suit was built, but the newspapers were cut or torn into strips (a couple inches wide and several inches long) and tied, much like a rag rug.

He was a sight to behold, not only because he was wearing a carefully crafted, newspaper strip suit, but also because his face was painted dark green. The newspaper strips surrounded his face and much of his body, so he looked like some kind of urban Maurice Sendak character come to life. He was completely at ease, sitting next to a friend selling newspapers, and just, well, hanging out.

I could not help but give him a second, admiring look as I passed. He saw me looking.

Man in the newspaper suit: Hey! I like your boots!

Me: I like your whole outfit!

Man in the newspaper suit: I like everything about you!

We laughed and I moved on.

November 12, 2011
it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it

A delightful tableau found in my parking lot this morning. So tempted to make this my Christmas card.

Oh, holidays. Now begins my tiresome yearly struggle with November/December. I’m working hard, this time, to get on board with a certain amount of good will as we hurtle towards the ho-ho-HOOOO.

Violet said something about this recently (though I can’t find it on her blog, maybe it was in person or in a beautiful dream); something like “you decide what to make of the holidays.” Of course, she said it with a lot more panache, and it did make me think about controlling my December Destiny a little more.

My friend The Professor is credited with getting me to reconsider the idea of Holiday Spirit in 2007. He is a goofy and infectious ball of Christmas glee, and that was the year I actually had a tree, and a gathering, and everything. I tentatively lifted my Christmas embargo, which had been in place since 2004.

I don’t see the Professor much anymore but I have at least two people in my life that are quite fond of the jingle-jingle of the holidays: the aforementioned Violet and my boyfriend, Lamar. These are good people to have around me these days (for a variety of reasons); they can be my guides (my Stars in the East, as it were) to lead me to pipecleaner snowmen, paper snowflakes, and nog. That’s what it’s all about, right?

November 11, 2011
call of doody

Oh, yes, it’s a poop post. I really do try to refrain from discussing poop here. Most of the time. But not now!

So I got into my car right after a run a couple days ago and it was pretty evident right away, from the smell, that I had stepped in dog poo.

My heart sank to the ground and, to my dismay, tears stung in my eyes. The overreaction was the sudden flood of memory from the Poo Shoe Incident of Third Grade.

One of the weird trends when I was 7 or 8 was the wearing of saddle shoes, but not in black and white leather. What the gals of Hopi Elementary School were sporting were saddle shoes made with constrasting suede in the most excruciatingly awesome 70s color palette — mustards, purples, browns. I wore my mom down and she finally got me the shoes I coveted. Mine were extra supercool because there were suede smiley faces on the sides.

The first day that I was going to wear them, I was in an exalted mood. I even went to the garden and picked a couple roses to give to my teacher.

It wasn’t until late morning music class that my best friend sniffed the air and asked “do you smell poo?” I did, and at the time, I had no idea it was coming from my feet.

It wasn’t until about lunchtime that I noticed it. Somehow, when out in the garden, I had managed not only to step in our dog’s poo, but actually got it smeared on the side and even top of one of my shoes.

I was completely, totally destroyed. All I could do was to pretend that it wasn’t me when the smell was noticed throughout the day.

When I got home, my mother (bless her) did her best to get the shoe cleaned up and back to normal.

But it was too late. It was tainted and I never wore the suede, smiley face saddle shoes again.

November 10, 2011