This is not one of the times.
Well, technically speaking, I got dressed seven times yesterday. (I KNOW. And only one of them involved pajamas!) But the pictures here commemorate my favorite times.
I spent eight hours yesterday shooting a video for Tiny Tags that focuses on...divorce, actually. It was an emotional day, and I definitely cried, and the video will speak for itself when it comes out - so instead of talking about feelings this morning, I'm going to talk about clothing.
Couch | Pillows | Throw | Nude Beach Print
I remember when I bought my first Grownup Couch™; for all the fuss I made about the thing, you probably do, too. That couch lives with Kendrick now - I kept the consignment-store set that used to be in our old living room, and that is now dying a slow death thanks to the fact that it is white (rrrg, also totally my fault).
Our division of assets was eminently fair - way beyond fair to me, honestly; I kept the vast majority of our furniture after our split. But I did still have a moment of mourning for our old Couch Boat when I moved into my new place and discovered that the new family room is an absolute behemoth of a space, and would have been the perfect spot for the thing. And the amount of money I had available to spend on couches after, you know, lawyer's fees and mover's fees and such was something like $2.
Point Dume, Malibu | Last sunset of 2018
Last night, I dreamed that the insurance claim I put in following my accident back in November resulted in an 8.9 million dollar payout. To me.
And when I learned this - in my dream - you know what the first thing that occurred to me was?
This post from October sums up 2018 pretty neatly, I'd say.
I was going to post a 2018 retrospective today, because that's what bloggers do at the end of the year (right?), but I got five minutes in and realized it was too fucking depressing. Divorce! Crippling loneliness! Job panic! Almost dying!
And that's just the stuff I've written about. There's been so much more.
I continue to have never in my life watched an episode of Fixer Upper (except for during my post-surgery recuperation saga...I think...but I was in a bit of a fugue state and cannot be expected be held accountable for - or remember - any choices made during that time period). And yet I am so in love with virtually the entire Hearth & Hand collection at Target that I'm kind of embarrassed by the level of my affection.
I am afeared it makes me a bit basic.
But whatever. Call me basic. It's so good.
Soma Pajamas | Pineapple Lamp | Mirror Trio
At 5:45AM on Wednesday, Kendrick and the kids left for a week in Ohio. I helped pour them into warm jackets and pack up the new toys that absolutely had to come with them on the flight. I waved good-bye from the front porch, got a little teary watching the car lights disappear down the block, and went back in to drink a glass of grapefruit juice.
And then? I went back to bed and slept until ten o'clock in the morning. I had an appointment at 9AM, actually - a fact that I remembered only around noon - so guess who's getting a missed-appointment penalty fee? And guess who cares exactly zero about that fact?
Here is a nice thing about having moved from Northern California to Southern: When you live in San Jose and roll into preschool drop-off looking like you just stepped straight out of Grey Gardens, people tend to look at you a little funny. In San Jose, I was definitely “the mom who wore pajamas and sunglasses the size of her head even in the rain.”
Us (and a panda) at Universal Studios yesterday.
Over the past few months, plenty of people have asked me what I'm going to do about the "K" on my foot. I'm sure plenty more have asked Kendrick what he's going to do about the massive heart on his forearm that has the word "JORDAN" sitting smack in the middle of it.
We used to have a joke that if we ever split up, I'd make my K into a flower, and he'd just throw a 23 onto his (Michael Jordan, hahaha) and call it a day. But it would never cross my mind that he'd actually do that - first, because it's not that funny, really, and also because he just...wouldn't cover that up. For the same reason I'd never cover up mine.
Epic shot by Kim Butan for Freezy Freakies
For the entirety of my adult life, the holiday season has more or less been spent in a weird dance of trying to recapture some tiny fragment of the magic I felt as a child, and mostly failing. I've come up with various traditions that I always think will help me get back some of that loopy joy - watching Elf with a Chinese food picnic on the living room floor; going full Christmas Explosion on our house; drinking hot chocolate whenever possible, et cetera - but...it's different. Of course it is.
When I was a kid, my parents always unplugged the tree at night to keep the place from burning down, but were apparently willing to risk an apartment fire on Christmas Eve, because every year I woke up before sunrise and ran out to the living room to find the tree aglow. Even when I was tiny, I always resisted the (overwhelming) desire to sprint into my parents' room and get them with the program for a few minutes, just so I could stand there in that perfect, sparkling quiet and feel...
When I was in elementary school, I was always setting up little stands in our building's lobby to sell homemade lip balms, customized friendship bracelets and such - and I was one of only maybe six kids in the entire building, so I actually made out like quite the bandit during these entrepreneurial ventures. (My "lip balms" were made by mixing Fuzzy Peach-scented Body Shop bath oil capsules into my mom's leftover Vaseline and throwing in some food coloring, so mayyyyybe not...oh, I don't know, especially safe to put on your mouth. But I was seven, so I assume liability was less of an issue than it might be nowadays.)
Apparently the desire to make giftable crafts stuck around, because I had wayyy too much fun making these solid perfumes - and they're a really cute last-minute gift idea for kids to make for friends and relatives (so long as you help them with the stove-inclusive part; let's please not burn any tiny fingers in the process of giftable craft-making). They're also 100% free of Fuzzy Peach-smelling chemical pods, hooray!
Note: You can choose whatever essential oils you want, and can combine them as you will to customize your scent - just make sure that the number of drops you use ends up totaling 30. (I was thinking about Tocca Bianca when I made this, so I went for a combo of lavender and lemon, leaning more heavily on the lavender.)
