Thursday, April 28, 2011

Mocha Cioccolata Yaya

Oh, Augustus Gloop, ruiner of childhood's peaceful sleep. Your movie demise has kept so many of the world's therapists gainfully employed since 1971.



 But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I too crave the dark stuff.

This week especially. I'm detoxing from last week's See's and Cadbury binge, and last month's run-in with the Girl Scouts and their tasty baked goods. Newly back to my paleo ways, I find myself missing sugar a lot today. I'm all out of coconut milk so there will be no nice cup of chocolat chaud. Instead I'm mixing up a little body scrub that I use with skincare clients and rarely think to make for myself. It's a perfect treat for my intention to care for myself as thoughtfully as I try to care for others; to take the long view and do what is best for my body, not just what seems tastiest at the moment. As nice as a piece of something sweet would be, there is something more satisfying about trimming down and having beautiful skin. So tonight it's a mini spa night for me.


This scrub is so delicious and it does such gorgeous things for the skin. It should only be used for the body, not the face. I shared it on my business blog last winter and I'll share it here now with my wishes for a very delightful evening.

Rich organic oils soften while the chocolate's high antioxidant content nourishes tired, rough skin. Espresso temporarily lessens the look and feel of cellulite. And the scent? Pure heaven.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/8 cup half and half
1/8 cup coarsely-ground espresso
2 tablespoons macadamia nut oil
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder (tonight I am substituting ground raw cacao nibs for higher antioxidant content, because I happen to have them on hand.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (alcohol-free)
10 drops sweet orange oil

Feel free to play around with ratios. If you like a scubbier scrub, decrease your liquids and add more espresso. If you prefer something less invigorating, add less espresso and more oil. Additional macadamia nut oil is excellent for aging skin in need of rejuvenating. Less scrub and additional half and half is great for sensitive skin, or substitute with heavy cream.

Obtain all organic ingredients whenever possible. Coconut butter will be solid at room temperature, so begin by melting this, still in the bottle or jar, in a container of hot water. When softened, mix all ingredients and use right away. Cap leftovers tightly and refrigerate, using the remainder within four days.









Second Thoughts, Serge and (Last) Fin de Siècle French Rap

I may have been a touch harsh on myself and my lack of style yesterday; I am lately more of a cardigans-and-jeans type than a scrungey 15-year-old boy type, but either way it's getting old and the urge to learn how to dress myself before I am aged is getting stronger. I appreciate your feedback a lot.

Today I wrote a bit about food and drinks on my other blog. Tonight I'll prioritize sleep and leave you with a cool little video from an artist I like a lot. This is Senegal-born French rapper MC Solaar sampling the classic Serge Gainsbourg/Brigitte Bardot song Bonnie & Clyde. Youtube won't let me post that video but it is well well worth watching by clicking here. (I may be biased toward the original; my husband and I recessed to it during our wedding ceremony.)








Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I don't know how to dress myself

It's true. I really don't. I commented recently on the amazing Aesthetic Alterations blog that I can't rock a biker jacket because my style is too androgynous. AA rightly replied that a biker jacket should be perfect for an androgynous look. Too true, but my comment was ill thought-out: it isn't that I try to be androgynous in my dress. It's that I literally don't know how to dress myself. I have no idea what looks good on me and what doesn't. So my resulting outfits are usually a variation on v-neck, jeans and big boots theme. If I dressed in a more stylish or feminine way then a biker jacket would add an edge. As it is, I frequently feel like I walk around dressed like a lazy 15-year-old boy.

I recently commented on a French style Yahoo group I am part of that most of the usual must-have clothing lists are lost on me. I wrote, "I like a little black dress as much as anyone, but I look ridiculous in avaiator glasses, old in pearls and terrible in 'classic white shirts.' And don't get me started on trench coats. They're mad sexy on everyone else but I've never met one that didn't make me look like a double-breasted caramel puff." I should add that I am trying to understand why scarves are de rigueur for those who want to pass as stylish. I have experimented lately but I can't help but feel that scarves just nudge me closer and closer into sartorial middle age.

I's not that I don't know what suits me. It's more that I don't yet know how to dress my age. Lifestyle is a factor too. I love vintage (1940's suits my curvy frame) and I've mentioned before that I'm an aging alterna-whatsit, but dressing for the day is difficult when kid-schlepping sans auto means something I can walk in and get muddy, and something movable like upmarket yoga wear is what's appropriate for my work with skincare and massage clients. I'm also terrified of color so I wear a lot of black and grey and denim.

That all said, I did buy these fab shoes today. $15, not made of plastic, and decidedly impractical. But they aren't (too) mumsy and they aren't black and they made me as happy as a pair of shoes is likely to.




I read a lot of blogs on the subject and I am always interested in hearing how others hone their personal style. How do you know what works for you? How do you make it work for you?

Monday, April 25, 2011

La musique - AIR

A foggy, rainy Monday with breakthrough sun by day's end. It's the perfect day for a moody, atmospheric soundtrack. Do you know the amazingly talented French duo, Air?



Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin play an intoxicating psychedlic retro-tinged "chillout" electronica that is some of my favorite and some of my most precious music of all time.

I've had the great pleasure of seeing them live a few times. The best was a few years ago at Oakland, CA's historic Paramount Theater. This is a classic deco building where I'd previously only seen Miles Davis (in high school; the kind of event for which I believe the phrase pearls before swine was invented).



Air are a surprisingly upbeat live act. They're funkier that you'd think by listening to their recordings and they play all kinds of interesting analog musical equipment like Wurlitzers and Moog synths to geek out on, if you swing that way. Aside from that the band has been the soundtrack to so many important things in my life. In 2001 I met the man who would become my husband. Air's 1998 album Moon Safari was the soundtrack to our courting and falling in love in taxi cabs and clubs all over a city that was riding a dot.com fairytale high about to come crashing down. In 2004 they were still playing tracks from that album in the smoky little bars of Paris when my husband proposed to me there atop la Tour Eiffel on a windy January night. In 2008 I gave birth to my son listening to that same album. (I remember being vaguely embarassed that a song called Sexy Boy played during one conversation with my midwife. But ultimately the music soothed me to a place outside of time, outside my head.) This profoundly gorgeous, otherworldly music has truly been some of the most important in my life.

I am 10 years older than when I first heard this song. I'm a mother; I've moved to the suburbs. And it's been many years since I have consistently been as optimistic and carefree as this music still reminds me, occasionally, to feel. As it begins sprinkling again I want to offer two sweet Youtube finds: the first is an odd studio video of Moon Safari's hypnotic opening track La Femme d'Argent.





The second is the same song with scenes from Antonioni's classic 1960 film Eclipse.





A lovely drink of something warm and a very lovely week to you.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Paris at Night, Patti Smith on "Love on the Left Bank"

There is some delicious stuff on Vanity Fair online this week. First, someone pointed an online group I am part of in the direction of these marvelous nighttime Paris photographs, mostly from the 1920's and '30's.



Brassaï, La Casque de Cuir, 1932. From vanityfair.com
 
Robert Doisneau, The Stairway, 1952. From vanityfair.com
 



















The full set is available here.




As lovely as the nighttime photos are, it was this feature that really got my attention. A 1954 photo-novel called Love on the Left Bank by photographer Ed van der Elsken’s has just been reissued. There are some amazing photos from the book on the web site, with this intro from the tremendous Patti Smith:

 I opened it and was greeted by a dark and intriguing café scene on the grittier side of the City of Light. It was Jack Kerouac, Parisian-style. I was especially captivated by the image of a girl, the likes of whom I had never seen before. She was Vali Myers, the Beatnik gypsy mystical witch who reigned over the rain-soaked streets. With her wild hair, kohl-rimmed eyes, loose raincoat, and cigarette, she offered herself with abandon and self-containment. She mirrored what I aspired to aesthetically—to be unconscious of style, yet style itself.

Below, some shots from this book that I must get my hands on this very instant.




all images from vanityfair.com


(Seriously, where has this perfect-for-me book been all my life, and why am I just hearing about it now?) The full set is here, with more information about Patti Smith here, and more about Vali Myers here. 

Sunday, April 10, 2011

More from Inès and a Beauty Tip from Me

I may have underestimated this book. I've picked it up again this afternoon and I'm enjoying the sound advice.

I have many, many skincare clients who come in to tell my how hideous their skin is when they look at it in the magnifying mirror. That's when I give them

Argentée's Number One Rule for Beauty:
Take your magnifying mirror and give it to someone you don't like.

Similarly, Inès de la Fressange has this to say about Botox: "I pay no attention to wrinkles. I just stand back from the mirror."

Refreshing and delightful! Yes, beauty is fun and socially useful, but shouldn't we have better things to do than obsess in the mirror if all we are doing is looking for reasons to not adore what we see?




Inès writes, "My absolute role model is singer Julio Iglesias. Asked if he was afraid of getting old, he replied, 'But I'm already old.'" The Parisian is more worried about wrinkles at 20 than at 50."

I always tell my skincare clients (many of whom are gorgeous 20-somethings who are terrified of age) that I have no desire for "anti-aging." I mean, not when you consider the alternative! I'm pro-aging. I hope to age a very long time. But we can fight it and dread it and Botox it, or we can maintain our passions and our hobbies and age beautifully, with grace and health. Isn't that what we're striving for? My hope is that with age comes with the wisdom to not fear it.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Pas Laide

I'm not as in love with Johnny Depp as seemingly everyone else of my gender but I think he's a better actor than he should be. Conversely, I'm hardly a fan of Angelina Jolie but I admit to being simply awed by her beauty. And I'm not one to turn down breathtaking scenes shot in Venice and Paris. So my plans for tonight after kiddo's bedtime involve hanging out in my pjs with The Tourist.

Below, some images that send my costume and styling envy into overdrive.





And here, a little makeup tutorial that looks like a lot of fun for later tonight. (Right now I am rereading Mikhail Bulgokov's The Master and Margarita. It is an incredible piece of literature but when the opportunity to act single for a night appears, sometimes I just want to girl out.)

Balance in Everything



The husband is out of town for a bachelor party weekend that would depress me and annoy me if I thought too much about it. Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon with two gorgeous girlfriends; one is a teacher on spring break and the other is a lucky lady of leisure. We had lunch and spent hours laughing and talking. There were cocktails and tarot cards, and if either of those things are to be believed the future looks excellent for all of us.

After school was out, my son and I came home to some relaxing and household tasks before heading out for a special evening together. I wrote last week about saying no to ice cream. Tonight was a break from my usual paleoh-la-la. I had a sweet dinner with my kid, followed by yes to ice cream, followed by a trip to the book store.

When we arrived there was a reading in progress by a journalist who has documented the history of Burning Man and its current transitioning from for-profit company to non-profit entity. The reading itself was fascinating enough but what struck me about the evening was the odd convergence of parts of my life: me in the children's section, reading Curious George on the one hand and, on the other, half listening to this journalist relay the story of the politics affecting this sometimes cooler-than-thou scene I've not been a part of in a long time. We ran into our neighbors there. They are also parents (as is everyone on this island, it seems) and also former burners. And while I won't likely go back to the Gerlach desert for large-scale art and dancing all night (at least not for a very long time), it was nice to be there and to feel a small part of the intersection between family and culture, just by virtue of participating in discussion at the reading.


As I was falling asleep I was thinking that I don't feel a conflict between being a woman and a mother. But I do believe that negotiating that balance takes work. Salad and ice cream, Curious George and Burning Man. Balance, balance in everything.

On Jolie Laide


While looking for the lyrics to the Serge Gainsbourg song whose lyric lent the title of this blog, I came across an exceptional NYT piece by Daphne Merkin. It was published in 2005 and you can read the full text here.

. . .there have always been those who question the dictates of conventional beauty, whose views of what constitutes a ravishing face range further than either the classical ideal or the ordained images of the cultural moment and who see our reverence for certain types over others as a form of aesthetic provincialism. . . (One) was my Belgian-born grandmother, who looked irritated whenever I, an insecure girl loitering on the edges of adolescence, asked her whether she thought I was pretty. "Pretty?" she'd ask. "Who wants to be pretty?" Her blazing blue eyes lit up her wrinkled face with the preposterousness of the wish. "Pretty is silly." I later discovered that no less an authority than F. Scott Fitzgerald, who studied the laws of female comeliness the way others study the laws of physics, agreed with my grandmother regarding the inherent banality of the merely pretty: "After a certain degree of prettiness," he wrote, "one pretty girl is as pretty as another."

I think Proust put it well too. He wrote, "Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination."

Friday, April 8, 2011

Parisian Chic: A Style Guide by Inès de la Fressange


The blogosphere is abuzz with talk about this cute little new style guide from professional gorgeous person Inès de la Fressange. I picked it up at my local bookstore (for nearly double the price it would have been on Amazon, aye-yee.) I'm not completely wowed by the book but it is entertaining enough. Parisian Chic is full of odd little illustrations and some surprising style advice. I've yet to work my way all the way through but following are some random bits and first impressions:




  •  General style rules include a Magnificent Seven list of wardrobe must-haves that is a bit different from most. Included are a man's blazer, navy cashmere sweater, perfect jeans.
  • Fun advice about what to wear for such events as an art opening, a black tie event, a country weekend and a first date.
  • "For me, a loss of interest in dressing well and wearing make-up is a form of depression."
  • The tuxedo jacket gets a lot of mention in this book. So do leather jackets.  I like to wear my tuxedo jacket for the odd informal-formal occasion, but I doubt Inès had tails in mind when she wrote her rules.
  •  Inès recommends dressing your kid all in black. Accessorize with a bright scarf or coat. Cute!
  • I wish there were photos of Inès herself in the book! She is lovely, and while the book features her beautiful daughter as model, it would have been inspiring to see this gorgeous femme d'un certain age gracing its pages.

The second half of the book is filled with Inès' Paris address book, with recommendations of where to shop, sleep, eat. Being the kind of woman whose Y chromosome somehow missed the shopping imprint, much of the content of these pages was a bit lost on me. But the photography is lovely and the overall impression is creatively inspiring and lush.

The best piece of advice in the book begins this way: "The Parisian never worships fashion idols. She is a fashion icon in her own right. . ."

Read more about Inès de la Fressange on Parisian Chic in this article, in which she says:

'French women don't want to be trendy. They know what suits them. It's more about style than trends. Women should dress up for themselves, not for showing off but to feel better - and if you feel better, you look better.'

Hear, hear.



Thursday, April 7, 2011

Conflict: The Woman and the Mother

This summer will come the English translation of Elisabeth Badlinter's Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, a bestseller in France since its publication last year. The book is described this way:


Elisabeth Badinter has for decades been in the vanguard of the European fight for women's equality. Now, in an explosive new book, she points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding—these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs—and anything that distracts a mother's attention from her offspring—have turned childrearing into a singularly regressive force.

A bestseller in Europe, The Conflict is a scathing indictment of a stealthy zealotry that cheats women of their full potential. 

I will agree that having a baby tethered me to my family. That's kind of what having a baby does, no? It's true I can no longer comfortably work 11-hour days six days a week. Nor can I jet to New York, meet friends for frequent cocktails, or take all the night classes I want to take without hiring someone to see my kid more than I do. And that was my choice. I chose to give birth and restructure my life and my priorities to care for the offspring I chose to create. Is that regressive? I don't think so. Did it rob me of my full potential? No - I offered that willingly. Life is about choices and compromise. And while I'd be lying if I said I always like it, I can at least acknowledge that it happened of my own volition and that the benefits, for me, outweigh the frustrations. Should that change, I might change how I choose to parent. For now it works. For me.

I support any woman's right to choose whatever works for her and I'm not at all keen to jump into the fray. But as for "taboos" surrounding epidurals, Ms. Badinter ought to check out the excellent, evidence-based work of Michel Odent (on whom I admit I have a bit of a crush).

Incidentally, a NYT review of Badinter's book quoted one one mother who says much more succinctly what I tried to about feminism and capitalism in my last post:


Amandine Panhard, 29. . . thinks the Badinter thesis is a false one. “It’s not about disposable diapers or plastic baby bottles but each woman’s personal development, financial independence and the relations between husband and wife,” she said. “The real conflict is not between the woman and the mother, but between the woman and the company.”

Late to the Party: Erica Jong vs. Dr. Sears

This past November Erica Jong wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the philosophies of Attachment Parenting and its advocates William and Martha Sears. She questioned whether attachment parenting is a prison for mothers. How I missed it when it first came out I do not know; the argument between attachment- and other styles of parents always means an amount of back-and-forth commentary on the Internet that is prolific to say the least.

In her essay, Jong writes, As long as women remain the gender most responsible for children, we are the ones who have the most to lose by accepting the "noble savage" view of parenting, with its ideals of attachment and naturalness. We need to be released from guilt about our children, not further bound by it.

First off, what is so "savage" about raising our own children in a style that children have evolved being raised? Yes of course we should lose the guilt, to which mothers are too often subject no matter what we do. But should we lose the ideal of strong attachment with our children?

Jong writes that our media display "an orgy of motherphilia" that romanticizes parenthood." Nannies are rarely photographed, giving the impression that motherhood is easy and cheap. What she fails to account for is that childcare is expensive. For me to go to work, I must pay someone to look after my child. For me to stay home, I forgo the paycheck to which I as one half of a dynamic DINK duo took wholly for granted. Either way, there is a high price to be paid. Considering that reality I would prefer to raise my own child. And I did, for many months, before I finally missed the work I love so much that I returned to a short week. We hired my brother to manny for us three short days a week and he made money (because childcare is expensive) but my son was in the care of family. It worked for us and I realize we were lucky that family was around and available. But for the amount of money I make doing the work I love, it would have been cheaper for me to stay home.

Jong writes,

Indeed, although attachment parenting comes with an exquisite progressive pedigree, it is a perfect tool for the political right. It certainly serves to keep mothers and fathers out of the political process. If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don't have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit. What exhausted, overworked parent has time to protest under such conditions?

This is a faulty argument. It is true that most people are working too hard to look up and participate in politics. But that isn't the fault of choosing an attached style of parenting. It is because we set our lives up within a capitalist framework, all nuclear family, atomized, isolated, and most importantly, overly materialistic. 

Besides, working outside the home means paying for childcare so we can work outside the home. Most women have to work a lot to make that financially worth doing. Why Jong assumes the "working" mother has more energy and inclination to participate in politics after the outside workday than she would as a stay-at-home mom, I have no idea. Nor does she account for the great many women and men who become actively engaged in local politics after becoming parents.

Jong continues, Attachment parenting, especially when combined with environmental correctness, has encouraged female victimization. Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement. . .Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach.

But the "environmental correctness"  Jong disparages is in itself an active a form of political  progressiveness. In our political climate, environmental concerns are of paramount importance. To enact practices at home that support environmental sustainability and social justice is far from an avoidance strategy: it is one way of actively engaging with the world as a responsible citizen. I have no desire to be a "perfect parent." I want to live as a responsible world citizen. My choices in what I buy, what I boycott, how I use natural resources in my parenting are only one manifestation of my personal politics.

At the end of the day, attachment parenting is only anti-feminist if you define feminism as a woman's ability to participate in the work force in exactly the same ways that men do. I would say I expect more from Erica Jong but that isn't true. As a second-wave feminist in the United States she is only saying what I would expect her to say. American feminism has forgotten that equality in the workplace isn't the only right worth having. American feminism has done wonderful work with regard to reproductive rights, but it has forgotten that mothers are women too.

We forget to work for decent maternity leave, perinatal health care, support for families - particularly for single mothers, but for all families. Instead, we denigrate those who choose to work, or who choose to stay home.  We forget that for many people there simply isn't a choice, and that for others the choice is made from a place of blind immersion in a capitalist construct. We don't acknowledge (or we fail to realize) that our problem isn't how we choose to balance home and work, but that by equating freedom and success with paid work we allow work to take precedence over nearly every other concern. Family, children, and planet included. We forget there may be other, more sustainable (and dare I say, more fun) ways to live.

This is why, as crunchy granola Lefty as I tend to be, I always hesitate to call myself a feminist. It seems to me that feminism aims too low; it seeks only to have equal access to everything that men have. I'm not satisfied with what men have, and I don't think men should be either. We need to stop infighting (men vs. women; "working" vs. stay-at-home-moms; attachment- vs. other parents) and turn our attention to places where we can affect change that benefits everyone. "Environmental correctness," far from an imprisonment for mothers, is good for everyone and seems as good a place as any to start.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

'Life's too short to be living with regrets'

Last week my son was in his first school play. The three of us walked across our small town to the high school's "Little Theater" and watched a good half of the environmentalism-meets-Frankenstein-themed parade of cute. My son, part of the youngest class, was one of about 20 little ones (aged 2 to 3) who opened the play with a little dance number set to a song about "raining like magic." They wore their raincoats and boots on a sweltering early evening and set the scene for the older kids' story about a green misfit Frank N. Stein. Pastiche for days, the play follows Stein's journey to the Emerald City, an enviro Shangri-La, with his three little multicultural human friends. Flying monkeys and Tesla coils! Musical numbers were lifted from other, major musicals. You don't know surreal until you've seen a mess of 4-year-olds perform kid-washed selections from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let's do the Earth Warp again!

Anyway, during intermission I wandered the high school's halls and took this:





The week before, we took the kiddo to the local science museum in San Francisco. Well worth visiting; I've been a few times for corporate holiday parties but I hadn't been there during open hours since I was a child. My favorite exhibit was a little room full of postcards written by museum visitors asked to answer,



This was by far my favorite:



I agree with these writings on the wall.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Quiet Tea

For me morning is most definitely made for coffee. I like mine large and strong, with raw heavy cream or (lately, since my transition to Paleoh-la-la) with coconut milk. just a splash: lightish but not sweet.

I'm nursing; my kid needs no coffee and neither do I, past noon. So in the afternoons I drink tea. I picked this one up today at the little family market in town.

I will admit it was the tin and not the flavor that caught my eye. In general, I try to drink tisanes or more nutritive herbal infusions. (I'm trained as an herbalist; I well know the value of a sludgy, thick herbal brew.)

But I bought this, because: wouldn't you? I was delighted to open the tin and find sweet little organza sachets of sweetly-scented goodness.


Lovely vanilla, bergamot, and. . .something else. I can't pinpoint it, but the result is delightful. 

Last spring I took a trip to Yosemite with my little family and my belle-famille. We stayed in cabins on the Ahwahnee Hotel grounds and had access to all those lovely trails and libraries and afternoon gimlets by the pool. One of the things I brought home with me was an afternoon tea habit that lasted well into that summer. I would make a nice snack (often crackers and sardines) and use an antique cup and saucer from my collection. I'd generally serve this tea as my husband was arriving home from work at 6 and this small meal would tide us over until the baby was sleeping and we ate our late dinner at 9:30 or 10.

Now we are in the suburbs and husband arrives later than 6. The baby is a toddler who requires a daily rhythm, so we aim for a respectable 7pm dinner time together. I still have a tea habit, but it's a slapdash mug at whenever happens to be convenient.

A more conscious moment of quiet (served in a lovely little china cup) will be a nice addition to this sweet life I am creating. It seems to me that rituals are key to an elegant life. What are some of yours?


Jardiniere

I am spending a quiet day with my son. Out in the garden, soaking up sun (through the filter of mineral sunblock and a straw hat). We have chard and spinach, broccoli and strawberries and arugula, all in varying states of readiness.

Our garden is so "California hippie," as I guess I am. Right down to the kitchy Mexican ceramic sun and moon, the stone Quan Yin, the duck decoy (not unlike the one my duck-hunting dad gave me for bathtime when I was a child).

It is lovely spending time with him, out there, out here in our suburban place. Transplants, we are. Like the calla lilies I shook from their pots and planted in their new place, in dirt that is likely a bit too silty. Just trying to bloom where we are planted, as fridge magnet wisdom says.

If we stay here we'll grow more. If not our little garden is a good size to take with us wherever we go.



Sunday, April 3, 2011

Pas Chic

Here's what is not chic: being broke, owing money, living in clutter, being afraid to open the mail.

I am dedicating this weekend to finishing up my taxes, geting my practice promoted and thriving again, paying employees, finding a renter. In short: GETTING IT DONE.

Closet reorganization is screaming my name and the new garment rack I bought is calling to me, "Argentée, set me up and transform la boudoir into a lovely boutique of only your prettiest things." Alas, I am ignoring the garment rack in favor of this less exciting paperwork. Today is about deferred gratification.

And strong coffee.
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