Last night, after our trip to the Salvation Army, Mom and I headed over to 44 & X for pre-dinner cocktails. I had just taken the first sip of my very delicious blue cheese olive-infused dirty martini when I noticed something unwanted floating about on the surface.
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Love and Kids’ Rooms
Our old (old, old) living room, 2009.
Several lifetimes ago (by my count), I wrote my first of what turned out to be hundreds of posts that loosely fall into the "Diary" category - the missives about parenting, about anxiety, about divorce that I've posted here over the years. This first one, though, was about something a little different. A little more...tactile.
It was about my living room. The living room that I shared with Kendrick (and Lucy, and then later on Virgil and our infant son) when we lived on the Upper East Side. It was a wild, messy mix of hand-me-downs from my parents, pieces we'd found discarded on the street and fixed up with varying degrees of success, and the occasional element of inexplicable drama (chalkboard fridge! graffiti-covered chest of drawers! insane bird wallpaper!).
Just Some Little Goodwill Miracles
When I was a teenager, I more or less lived at the Salvation Army on West 46th Street. (As an aside, if you've never been, you MUST go if you ever find yourself in the city; it's four entire floors of some of the best thrifting anywhere on the planet - furniture included). In more recent years, I've pretty much put my love of thrift stores on ice, largely because one thing thrifting does require is time...and that just so happens to be a thing that small children aren't hugely interested in letting you have when you are doing something like shopping for things that aren't toys.
But here's a fun little factoid about thrift stores: If you find one in a fancy area, you GO. Because fancy people do things like give their old Gucci purses to Goodwill, because they can't be bothered to list them on TheRealReal (even though they should). So when a friend told me how spectacular the thrifting is over in Thousand Oaks - about twenty minutes away from me in the direction of the water, a.k.a. in the direction of much, much more expensive housing prices per square foot - I suddenly found myself Marie Kondo-ing my kids' rooms.
You know, because once I had all my bags filled with stuff to donate, I'd have to make my way over to the Thousand Oaks Goodwill. It's really the only responsible thing to do. And once I was there, I had to just pop in, just for a minute. (And just saying: Goodwill is a great organization that does tons and tons to support local communities; they're worth both your donations and your shopping dollars.)
Call Me Rose
When I was a teenager, thrift stores (specifically the Salvation Army on West 46th Street) were where I bought virtually all of my clothing. I went through a phase where my school wardrobe alternated between vintage ball gowns (really) and pajamas (like, actual old man pajamas). Which was convenient, because vintage ball gowns and old man pajamas are two things that thrift stores do really, really well.
While I still haunt Goodwills and charity shops for furniture, I don't really go thrift-store shopping for clothing all that often, because it takes wayyyyy too much focus and time, and focus and time are not things my children like me to have. When I was in LA the other week, though, I took myself on a little date - first to Body Electric Tattoo for some new piercings, then to the Village Idiot for rosé and cheese, and finally to Wasteland. You know, just to see.
Wear It Wherever
Potato chips: the accessory that never goes out of style.
Vintage Dress (similar) All Saints Sandals Sunglasses
One of my most constant refrains, when it comes to clothing: "It's super cute. I have nowhere to wear it." And it's true: jeans and t-shirts just make more sense for a job that mostly involves sitting in front of a computer, and a life that involves children who run really, really fast, mostly in the direction of things that they shouldn't run towards, like the edges of cliffs and such.
The Real Real
Me + Purple Pants + Rooftop | December 2011
A few weeks ago, I decided that what I wanted to wear to Kendrick's company holiday party was a pair of loose-fitting purple velvet pants - the ones pictured above, specifically - and a silky white button-down, plus lots of big jewelry. Sort of an aging 1980s socialite look, because that's always fun.
Except I couldn't find the pants; it appears that they were either sacrificed to the moving gods or donated in a moment of terribly poor decision-making that I have since forgotten. Which makes me sad because I like those pants so much, but mostly because they belonged to my Nanny Ruth. But no use crying over spilled milk, et cetera.
Power Outfit
{ Scenic Overlook, Route 17 }
Zara Sweater (similar) | Old Express Leggings (similar)
Spratters & Jayne Leg Warmers | Ugg Clogs (similar) | Zac Posen Bag c/o
The Spot
Oh, that's such a good spot.
One interesting thing (among many) about moving into a house that you've only ever seen on a computer screen: you don't really know what to bring. Will that lamp fit in the new place? How about that sofa? Where's that desk going to go?
You don't know, and so you guess. And in my case, I guessed wrong in the chair department. See, I happen to have really a lot of...I guess you'd call them "statement" chairs, if you were being fancy - just sort of one-of-a-kind, not-part-of-a-set chairs that I found, and loved, and went home with.
Teenage Dream
I think you always have a special little fondness for the styles that were cool when you were in high school. My formative years, for example, were spent developing extreme (and unrequited) crushes on two boys named Borden and Jordan (yes, ha ha, I know), both of whom dressed in that half-grunge half-skater hybrid so particular to the mid-'90s, and to this day I have quite the thing for a man in a button-down flannel.
Likewise, whenever I put on something that could arguably have been worn by Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, Kendrick gets all "Oh well HELLO there." (I get it; I think our entire generation had a collective crush on Winona Ryder in pretty much every movie she did around that time.) Which is what he said when he put on this dress...which is what made me realize that it's totally '90s, hence the accessorizing with hat and round sunglasses, plus a bag and pair of boots that were actually purchased during that era (the bag from a Barney's Warehouse sale; the boots from a Salvation Army in Colorado - they've been re-soled maybe five times, have a big hole in the side made by a switchblade during my Hogs 'n' Heifers bartending days, and are still kicking).
Nothing wrong with dressing up like your partner's Teenage Dream every once in awhile...especially if it happens to coincide with your own.
At The End Of The Ride
Six years ago, when my life changed, it started with a chair.
I've written here many times about the struggle that life in my late twenties was; how crushed I felt by the weight of just how much I had turned out to not be what I'd hoped to become. I was stuck in a job that I hated, in a life that felt millions of miles away from the life I'd dreamed of as a little girl, and there was a time - a long time, actually - when I couldn't see how any moment in the future could possibly bring with it something better. Or even something different.
And then, at a party late one night, I met a girl who did something called "blogging." I'd heard of blogging, sort of - I mean, I had a rough idea of what a blog was, had even started a hidden Blogger account documenting my worst dates (oh my god), and read Perez Hilton like it was my part-time job - but I certainly didn't know it was something that one could even consider doing for a living. And yet this girl seemed to, somehow...and at that moment I was so desperate for something to change that when she asked me to do an "audition" of sorts to become a contributor for her site, I said yes without a moment's hesitation.