Today on Lonny: a fun article about my cross-country move, as illustrated via Instagram. Over the next few weeks, I'll be doing a series of several of the home renovations we have in the works with Thumbtack over on the site, so stay tuned for tiles and barn doors and much (much) more!
You know how sexy cutout suits are amazing-looking sitting there on the hanger, all full of sexiness and cutouts?
I decided to try one on once. It was not good. Basically, everything unfortunate that a swimsuit could possibly do to my body, that swimsuit did. Squishing and widening and flattening and smushing parts of my body out of places where no body parts should be smushed. Ever since then, I've been a little gun-shy about the things. I love looking at them on Pinterest and shopping sites and such, but wear one? Nothankyou.
Except just yesterday morning I saw this article on PopSugar, and they assured me that there is this one Mara Hoffman swimsuit that apparently looks good on everyone, and that statement was supported by none other than Mindy Kaling (who posted two shots of herself looking lovely in it). Apparently "the world went wild" over these shots, which seems a touch like overkill, but who knows, maybe it really is that great? ...Maybe?
In any case, Mindy Kaling seems like a trustworthy soul, so I had to see it.
The weather here is funny. It'll be all 90 degrees and clear blue skies in our back yard, and then we get in the car and drive twenty minutes away, and all of a sudden it's 50 and overcast. Last summer, I remember the first time we drove from the South Bay into San Francisco, our son looked out the window and said, "Mom, look! The clouds are falling down." Which is an incredibly creepy and Stephen King-story-ish thing to hear a three-year-old say, but it was true: the clouds were literally rolling down the sides of the hills. If you've never seen it, you wouldn't believe how dramatic the climate here is: you can actually see a wall of fog coming at you. Like, an actual wall. That you will hit.
Weird.
This weekend, we drove down to Pasadena (just outside of LA) to visit my parents, who were there for the weekend for my dad's work. At one point, my mom and I were standing in the hallway, waiting for Kendrick to come upstairs with the stroller, and she turned to me and said, "So. Do you like it here?"
Part of me wants to say I don't. Especially to my mom, because I miss her and my dad so much, every single day. And there's also a big part of me that feels like...you know, being a New Yorker is such a huge part of my identity, of my upbringing. I haven't technically lived in the city for a few years now, but I still felt like if I was raising my children just a few minutes outside its borders I'd...I don't know, I'd somehow be able to wrap my mind more easily around what their childhood would look like. I'd know what museums to take them to, what restaurants they'd like, be able to tell them stories about the things I did when I was their age when I walked down this street or that one.
At this point we've obviously committed to a life out here, but still:
| Carmel, California |
You know how there are certain things in your closet that you really love, but just never wear for whatever reason? For me, it was always hats: I would find one, and love it, and buy it, and then never wear it because every time I put it on I felt like I was wearing a big sign saying HELLO I AM THAT GIRL WEARING THE HAT.
And then one day I realized: I totally don't care if I'm that girl wearing the hat.
