Here is me looking ridiculous while photographing a bag on top of a fire hydrant. #bloggerlife
A couple of weeks ago, I had a reader who's getting her own site up and running email me, asking this (very good, I think) question:
From post 1 to today, what are some of the steps you took to move your work forward?
(me & dad; photo by indy)
A long time ago - a lifetime ago, basically - I graduated from college, bought a little white convertible from my aunt, packed all my possessions into the trunk, and drove across the country with my dad, finally landing at the one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood where I'd kick off The Actress Years (yeeks). To this day, I consider those two weeks that we spent driving out two of the best of my life; the car is just where we get along. It hasn't always been easy for us to talk, but in the car we can.
This weekend Dad moved out of the little Pasadena apartment he stayed in part-time, so Indy and I drove down to help him pack everything up. The plan was for the three of us to drive back up to my place together, but instead of going the fast (boring) way, we decided to take our time and do a little wandering.
Wandering in some creepy mannequins.
If you're approximately my age and have ever read an US Weekly (or if you were in Los Angeles at any point in the mid-2000s), you definitely remember Kitson. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than "Paris Hilton." It was all Juicy Couture sweatpants and sparkly overpriced everything and paparazzi lurking outside and general moral decrepitude, and it was simultaneously SUPER obnoxious and kind of fun. You had to just dial down the old self-awareness for a second and go browse hot pink dog purses.
But now - like bedazzled tracksuits - Kitson is over. Gone.
on the road again.
Yesterday morning Indy and I got in the car and drove for six hours. We made our way past palm tree fields and green hills and cow pastures and endless Valero stations, all the way down to Pasadena, where we're going to spend the weekend helping my dad move out of his apartment.
So my friend's brother just started dating this girl. And he really likes her. The kind of "likes her" that makes him want to do special things for her: plan cool dates, take her cool places, et cetera. Except - according to him - he has a little problem, which is that in addition to being a romantic and sweet and thoughtful guy (did I mention he's handsome?), he's also a grad student, and thus dead broke.
My opinion about this problem? Not really a problem. Because I have always, always found that the amount of fun you have on a date correlates not at all with (or, if anything, is negatively correlated with) the amount of money that you spend. You know what's not especially fun? Getting all trussed up and sitting in a stuffy restaurant eating, like, French sauces and mousse. Or, okay, maybe that can be fun from time to time, but you know what's more fun?
A DRIVE-IN MOVIE.
Loft Sweater | Vintage Prada Necklace (similar) | DIY-ed Cutoffs (similar) | Frye Boots
I have a confession: I am more out of shape now - a year and a half after the arrival of my second child - than I was immediately after giving birth.
It's not about weight or how I look - both of which are fine, I suppose, or at least fine by me. It's about how I feel. And how I feel is like a slug.
Two of my favorite things: puzzles + cooking memoirs
I remember the first book of Ruth Reichl's I ever read - it was Tender at the Bone, in theory a memoir but really an expression of her passionate belief that your meals (and the making of them) shape who you are in a very tangible way, starting even in the earliest parts of childhood. I loved it so much that I read her other books as soon as they came out: first Comfort Me With Apples, then Garlic and Sapphires, about her stint as the New York Times' food critic and all the subterfuge and drama (really) that job entails. Now I'm on to her latest, My Kitchen Year, about the shuttering of Gourmet when she was the magazine's editor-in-chief and her subsequent depression.
I don't always love Ruth Reichl - she can get a little treacly - but I can't stop reading her. And the biggest reason why I go back to her, over and over again, is the recipes; she essentially pioneered the memoir-peppered-with-recipe format that's so popular today. Granted, the recipes I've made from these books haven't always been the best ones on the planet - the matzoh brei was, in a word, a disaster - but when I'm reading her descriptions of how a dish didn't just exist in her life, but explained it somehow, giving her something that she hadn't even known she needed, I'm always desperate to try it for myself.
[Contest is now closed and the winners have been notified via email. Thank you so much to everyone who entered!]
Carrying On has been out for a couple of weeks now, so I thought it was time to celebrate by putting together a little gift for you guys. The book is half-pregnancy-memoir, half-handbook for new mom style, beauty and decor, and contains some of my most personal essays ever (you can read an excerpt here).
Writing this book - much of which was typed out sitting at the little desk in our temporary apartment in the weeks before I gave birth to Goldie - was without a doubt one of the hardest and most rewarding things I've ever done in my life, and it means so much to me to see it out there in the world; thank you to those of you who have already picked up a copy.
A couple of days ago I shot a news segment about makeup apps and whether they're actually useful. As part of my research I played around with a whole bunch of them, and...I mean, maybe I'm just super late to the party and everyone already knew how amazing they've gotten nowadays, but WHOA. (The one I used to create the three looks pictured above is called Try It On.)
Every once in awhile I do a search to figure out what the most popular items out there are (meaning the things that the most people are clicking over to check out, not necessarily the ones with the highest sales), just so I can stay up to speed. And right now, this chunky cardigan is apparently the most clicked-on item on the search engine I use (ShopStyle). Huh. I'm mildly confused, but maybe it's been really well...advertised? I dunno.
I didn't watch the Golden Globes because I needed to prioritize my new obsession (Making A Murderer), but this roundup of celebrity reaction GIFs is making me really regret this decision.
What I'm about to describe to you is like this, except the shark is me and Rihanna is cheese.
I have this thing for Safeway's generic-brand string cheese. (Just stay with me here; I promise I have a point.) They're sort of like large, very mildly mozzarella-flavored plastic gummi worms, and I cannot stop eating them. I eat them for breakfast when I'm in a rush to get out of the house; I eat them for snacks; I eat them at in bed at 11PM (sneakily, though, so Kendrick doesn't hear me, because eating crappy string cheese in the dark is a sort of embarrassing thing to do). Mostly, though, I eat them when I'm watching my hour of bad TV that I watch every night (or, okay, sometimes I watch two hours, but in my defense The Bachelor is kind of a TV emergency. Also #Lace4Eva).
When I was pregnant, I decided to knit my daughter a blanket (still have a point, hold on). And then when I was finished with that, I decided to knit my friend's daughter a blanket. And then another friend's daughter. And I did this not because I especially love knitting (although I do), but rather because having something to keep your hands busy during the evening TV-watching session both makes you feel like you're being somewhat productive (as opposed to doing absolutely nothing save for slowly destroying your brain cells), and also makes you not eat twenty string cheeses in a row, because you can't when your hands have things that aren't cheese in them.
