Am presently working on replacing my bloodstream with pure Keurig. Related: Traveling is exhausting.
There were some things that happened over the course of the past week that were not especially fun. My Egg Salad Sandwich Panic Attack, as an example: not fun. Dropping my phone onto a MetroNorth train track: also not fun. (Except for the climax of this particular incident, which involved my dad and me getting into his car in the middle of the night, driving up to the Ossining train station, and then dangling over the edge of the track and using a fruit picker that we’d borrowed from a bodega to get my phone back. That part was perhaps not especially smart, per se, but oh yes, it was fun.)
Losing various personal possessions, including a pair of shoes that I was actually wearing at the time they went missing? Weird. And super not fun.
Did I mention that my toenail fell off?
My toenail fell off.
So on a scale from “A Weekend In Bali With Tom Hardy” to “Dinner With Any Member Of Mar-A-Lago,” I’d give the New York trip…I don’t know, like “A Coffee With Anna Kendrick In The Warner Brothers Parking Lot” grade.
A solid B, in other words.
The part of the trip that was completely fun from top to bottom, with no caveats at all: the clothing part. See, getting dressed for situations in which I have to look respectable isn’t something I typically enjoy doing. It starts out being sort of exciting (“I’m going OUT! With people other than my immediate family!! Wooooooooooo!!!!!”), but then I realize that my hair looks terrible and so I try to style it twelve different ways, then end up with half my head flat-ironed and the rest of it corkscrew curled, and where the hell are my bobby pins. And then I decide that I want to wear something “interesting” and so I try on everything in my closet before realizing that everything I own except for the two or three things that I always wear makes me look like I fell off a bus in 2005 and hit my head and then forgot that calling Lindsay Lohan your style icon isn’t necessarily advisable.
The end result of all this preparation is basically me looking like I do on an ordinary day, but with worse hair.
On this trip, however, my adrenaline apparently hit crisis level, which meant that when I woke up in the morning I wanted to put on things that I had not slept in, which is CLEARLY a miracle of epic proportions.
So: I present to you A Few Things I Wore While Hyped Up On Panic And Joy.
For posterity’s sake.
Here’s me at Rent The Runway, about to commence the trying-on session that resulted in the discovery of this perfection. I bought the cashmere skull poncho pictured above in a weak moment wherein I hallucinated that I make more money than I do.
I cannot afford a cashmere skull poncho. But oh man, do I ever love it.
At our Calypso St. Barth’s event in the Hamptons, I decided to spend a minute in between signings hanging out in the dressing room trying on all-white outfits (like the sweater and shorts pictured above) and obsessing over chokers.
I almost bought this suede scarf-style choker, then put this insane/amazing collar-style one all over my IG stories, and then finally decided on a slim, simple style that I might actually wear in my real life, and bought that instead.
(Ooooh those shorts though.)
These are the shoes that inexplicably disappeared. I really liked them. But even so, they weren’t my favorite part of this outfit.
You know what my favorite part is? It’s the bag. Do you see how teeny-tiny it is?! That is the kind of bag you carry when your youngest child has finally decided to become potty-trained.
(Also I stole that sweater from Francesca and I am so happy I did.)
This isn’t an amazing look; I’m just posting it to say how fun it is to borrow my mom’s lovely sweaters when I’m staying with her, and also to tell you that I took my daughter to the spot in Midtown Manhattan where my dad used to take me when I was a little girl. It’s a sort of waterfall-tunnel connecting 48th street to 49th street, and it’s cool-looking, but not quite cool-looking enough to be a real tourist attraction, especially not that close to Times Square, so it’s not as crowded as you’d think. I remember – like, powerful sense-memory-style – what it felt like to take that first step under the waterfall; how exciting and scary it was.
Getting to see my dad and my daughter stand under that waterfall together was up there in my life’s best moments.
And finally – on a less emotional note – here is what I wore out to dinner at 44 1/2 with my parents and daughter: $7 glasses + a pair of red silk pants I discovered in the recesses of my mom’s closet + a bonus wearing of the Rent The Runway earrings I borrowed for our launch event + a cropped blouse I bought at Zara two years ago and never wore until now because apparently I needed to be in an emotional Defcon 1 state in order to wear it. Why? These are the mysteries of life.
There is, as it turns out, a plus side to everything. Even Egg Salad Panic Attacks.
