Kendrick and I started keeping a running list of our favorite names for both boys and girls in my phone from the moment we found out that we were expecting. Now that I know we're having a girl, I thought I'd share my Boy List (in no particular order, although I left my absolute favorite for last).
Mostly because talking about baby names is, for some reason, the most fun thing in the entire world.
That was pretty much what our weekend was about.
I spent Saturday - which I hear was beautiful, but did not actually see for myself - sitting in this very spot in my pajamas while my son and husband adventured around at aquariums and grocery stores, working on a couple of hugely exciting writing projects I'll be able to announce in just a few weeks.
Sunday we decided to head into the city because Indy is pretty much obsessed with my parents' cats and was desperate to see them. Fine by me: you know what's in the city?
I have a lot of bags. I'm OK with that; they're kind of my thing. I love them.
But this bag? This is actually my favorite bag in the world. For real. I first saw it way back in 2012, when it was released as a limited-edition collaboration between Coach and Anna Sui, declared "That is my favorite bag in the world," and have held fast to that opinion in the many, many months that have transpired between then and now.
Ohio again!
We thought we'd spend the weekend between Christmas and New Year's with Kendrick's family. The drive was long but uneventful, other than the fact that I inhaled a stunning number of gummi worms, finished The Interestings - one of my favorite books I've read in ages - and started The Husband's Secret (another can't-put-it-down), and fed my son an A+ Parent dinner of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli, consumed with a plastic spoon while standing next to the half & half dispenser in a gas station.
For rest stops, we decided to forego Quaker Steak & Lube this time: our last trip was adventure enough to last us for awhile, and besides, we have a new Cracker Barrel convert over here.
In the summer after ninth grade, my friends and I started hanging around a certain block on the Upper West Side, right near the Burger King. It was a pretty well-known gathering place for a particular group of kids at that time: a casting director for the movie Kids - an extremely bleak but not entirely off-base portrayal of what teenage life was like in New York City in the mid-1990s - actually hung around there and ended up putting a few of our friends in the film. On Friday and Saturday nights, dozens of us would stream in as the sun set, calling out to each other to see what the plan was - because in the time before cell phones you actually had to stop into places to find out what was going on - then use the pay phone on the corner to page friends who hadn't shown up yet. There was a code for "meet at Burger King", but I can't remember what it was.
When we'd gathered a big enough group, we'd wander through Central Park, head over to the East Side to stop into the apartment of someone whose parents were out of town, and then usually end up sitting in the grass outside the Met after night fell, our backs leaned against the slanting glass wall of the Egyptian exhibit, doing our best to get into trouble but mostly only playing game after game of "I Never."
There was this one summer when a girl named Hannah seemed like the center of it all: she had long, dark bangs, wore glitter eye makeup and perfect bellbottoms and her hair in two high, twisted buns on top of her head, and was best friends with the boy I had decided that I was in love with for the moment. She seemed comfortable in a way that I wanted so badly; I never could figure out how to be at rest with myself with too many people around - especially people who I very much wanted to be just like. While we walked in large packs down the cobblestone streets bordering the park, yelling and laughing and shoving each other, I always had the sense that I was hovering somewhere outside of myself, looking in at my awkward way of holding my arms, my spotty skin, my not-quite-right sneakers, and seeing just how much I didn't fit.
Alright, remember these shots of Rihanna out clubbing last summer?
Putting aside for a moment the fact that I could never, ever in my life pull off something like this (stomach and back-baring, brrr and I am An Old and nothankyou)...I love it. Love her hair, love her makeup, love the contrast between the top and the jeans, love that she felt that one technicolor sparkle piece wasn't enough for an outfit and thought it'd be a good idea to add on a hologram purse and shoes...love it all.
Ever since, I've been sort of keeping one eye out for a really great hologram piece to add to my fall wardrobe...and I have found it.
When Kendrick and I got home from our Saturday adventures, it was that moment right before the sun sets when all you (or at least I) want to do is collapse into a hammock with an US Weekly. So that's what I did, and I was all relaxed and cozy...and then I turned the page and spotted a recipe for something called a Strawberry-Basil Rickey.
You know what makes those just-before-sunset-in-a-hammock moments even better?
A cocktail.
This particular recipe required things like fresh herbs and mortar and pestles and Cointreau, though, so as delicious as it looked, it wasn't going to happen. Not right then, anyway.
Every autumn (and I'm going to call this "autumn" even though it's eighty degrees outside because Labor Day is about thirty seconds away), it appears that I establish a uniform.
I think it's just that every time September rolls around there's some "thing" - whether that's a pair of jeans, a sweater, a leather jacket, whatever - that I've been wanting to wear for months, and now that the weather's turning I can.
And so I do. Every day.
In the fall of my junior year of college my roommate and I decided that we wanted to have an adventure.
We found a pair of cheap tickets to Grand Cayman Island, and asked a British scuba instructor whom I'd briefly dated if he wouldn't mind if we stayed with him and his roommates for a few days. Fun, right? Well, as it turned out, something had very majorly been lost in translation during our phone conversations to plan the trip, because when we arrived we discovered that British Scuba Instructor was very seriously not interested in me, in having two girls staying with him for a few days, or in speaking or smiling. Ever.
Now, that would ordinarily be the kind of situation where one goes and finds a hotel room, but the plane tickets had pretty much tapped us out, so we just figured we'd stay out of his way and hang out on the beach as much as possible. Except it then poured rain almost the entire time we were there, making that a little tricky. Oh yes, and it was freezing.
So it wasn't the best vacation I've ever had. Except for one night, when one of the scuba instructor's roommates took pity on the sad, damp American girls and took us with her to some kind of annual Pirate festival. I put a bandanna on my head and long striped socks with the feet cut out of them on my arms (because that seemed pirate-y), and we ignored the rain and ran around the streets laughing for a few hours, forgetting about the scuba guy and school and everything, really. We went back to reality a couple of days later...but for that one night, forgetting was nice.
I like snakeskin pants a whole lot - so much I even wore them while 7,825,934 months pregnant.
Photo credit: Travis Huggett
This is how I wore them for a JC Penney shoot a few months back (that's a Buffalo jeans pair pictured with my own t-shirt, Betsey Johnson heels, and Hannah Warner and Ippolita necklaces).
