Pretty is as pretty does

Can you say score?

I don't have a problem. I can stop any time I want. Any time! And I'll have you know that I made two separate trips to the antique mall to look at this desk, so that, friend, makes me a savvy shopper.

I like antique malls (and thrift stores) better than regular Old Furniture Places because things tend to be cheaper, often discounted pretty nice because the vendor needs more room in their booth. And things often haven't been refinished, so the history of the piece hasn't been sanded and varnished into oblivion. Oh yeah, and the staff tend not to be snooty Junior League wanna-bes on crack. They cool. They're fine with you being in their store in your workout clothes. Hell do they care?

Though this is technically a desk, it will actually function as my little girlie vanity table thingy. You know. Now all I gotta do is let go of my Rubbermaid "dresser" that I keep in the closet and I can start making fun of college students full time.

Don't fuck

This made me laugh out loud, and as I'm too brain cell-deprived to come up with my own material this week, I'm lazily recycling someone else's creativity. Except that this is an eerie echo of my own You're A Woman Now talk. And my mother does actually say brassiere. You think I'm kidding?

Ah, sex talks.

marriedtothesea.com

Feeling up Emily Dickinson (and the death of Ben Jonson)

This weekend I got together with some of the Converse girls, and much silliness happened. I think we are starting to realize though that we are not 22 anymore and can't stay up drinking till 3am and expect to go on with life as usual. Ugh. We're old. But it was nice to spend time with them and take a stroll around the Converse campus...We always have to do that when we're in town together. When I'm off living my life, I forget how much fun it was to live there and what a generally happy time my college years were. The older I get, the more I realize how lucky I was to go to a small women's college where your professors care about you and have you over to their houses to get drunk and read Othello aloud.

Stephanie, not at all drunk but looking like it. She actually needs no alcohol to be silly and inappropriate.

Kim, not liking the turn that the UNO drinking game has taken. You will notice she has no drink in front of her, so this may be the problem.

The whole "which base is which" question finally gets settled:

 

On Sunday, freshman year roomie Emily's husband Robert drove our hung-over asses over to Converse so I could take pictures of the new "girl power statues" on campus. Yes, this is Emily with her hand on Emily Dickinson's breast. It seemed appropriate.  This is an extremely cool statue, actually. I love her face.

Things took a decidedly creepy turn when we walked down to the art building to look at the Mary Cassatt statue. She has no eyeballs. Now that I think about it, she kind of looks the way I pictured "Bloody Mary" from the urban legend, the one that scared me shitless as a child.

(OMG! You said her name in the mirror! She's gonna rip your soul from your mutilated body!!)

Emily "slides down" a metal sculpture very coolly titled "Magneto."

Converse has been doing this thing for a while where you pay a bunch of money and they put your name on a brick on the walkway outside one of the new buildings. Then you get all excited and go there and find your brick and get all pissed because it's next to the brick of a prissy girl you hated  or something. Sometimes people pay to have random things put on bricks, like this one:

And possibly the best brick anybody ever paid money for anywhere ever...

 

Of course there are several male professors I would gladly shell out to buy a brick for, but damn.

PS: Today is the anniversary of the death of Ben Jonson, who according to my dorky little calendar is buried in a vertical grave in Westminster Abbey. 

How California am I?

You Are 20% California

You are a bogus Californian. Go back to the East Coast.

How California Are You?

Visiting the people

This past weekend I went down to South Carolina to pick up some crap I'd been storing at my parents' since Christmas. It was a productive weekend--not in the sense of anything I accomplished, but of things I SCORED. Whilst rooting around in the attic (only your mom will root around in a hot, dusty, spidery attic looking for your She-Ra castle because you're too weirded out to go up there),  Mom discovered part of my Nancy Drew collection, lost for some time. I brought some of them home with me but left a few for her to read, because she was into them as a kid too. Nancy Drew is getting UP there.

On Saturday we went to Darlington, S.C. to see Auntie Harriet and Uncle Lynn's  Victorian farmhouse they bought. They have a lot of work to do on it, but it is still tres cool and fun to walk through. I hope it has a (friendly) ghost.    

                                              

Even if there's not friendly ghost, there's definitely a friendly water pump. It's maybe my favorite thing in the whole house.

 

More pics of the house and the rest of the weekend on Flickr. Thanks for letting us traipse through it, ya'll! Hope you have lots of fun fixing it up! I forgot to ask if you've thought about getting on one of those HGTV shows about rehabbing old houses. How funny would that be...

Undoubtedly the highlight of the drive was getting to see the house where my grandmother grew up (other side of the family, the one who passed away in April). It's also in Darlington. I'm sure I went there once or twice when I was little and it was in better shape, but I can't remember. Dad has showed us a whole bunch of old houses where people lived over the years, so it's hard to sort through it all. Try to picture it without the  buttugly rickety old-person ramp my great-uncle had installed for his wife (he lived in the house until just recently). And please, try and work the phrase "buttugly rickety old-person ramp" into conversation this week...

Cows in the field next door. They were all, "Dude, what?"

Clerical matters

I went antique malling on Saturday and scored, maybe the best antique mall score I've made. The mall was one of those ginormous ones that are 30% crap, 30% stuff you can't afford, 35% vintage Pepsi bottles, and 5% actual stuff you'd want. It took me two whole hours to go through the entire place. Right away I found this little precious. She's a nun salt shaker from Occupied Japan. She did not have a mate. :(  Lonely nun lady.

A few minutes later I came across the real score, a set of monk bookends. I passed on them at first, but when I'd made it to the end of the mall I was still thinking about them, so I re-searched the whole place for them. And got them for 40% off! Now that I've got them, I can't stop looking at/talking about them.

And here's one of them on the shelf. I put him next to a book about monks so he'd feel at home.

Oh snap, it's Flag Day

I keep meaning to put this up here...It's the desk I got at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore the other week. $35, man. $35. It was weird. I went in there on my lunch hour because it's right around the corner from my house, and ended up buying a desk. I had to call in to work that I'd have to stay home and wait for the delivery guy to bring it. Check out the cool mail slotty things in the middle (yes, "mail slotty" is a word. I declare it a word because I am a word professional).

It's a little scratched up in the front, but I don't know if I care. If I do decide to care, I'm sure it is fixable. That's Weasel Cat there, being judgmental. (Actually click on the photo to experience the utter derision...) The desk is her new favorite place to Be At All Times.

Here's a pic of my feet sporting my jingly anklets. I haven't worn them in a while because the subject of belly dance has been a sensitive subject for me lately. I ended up switching to a new class recently, after trying for a couple of sessions to get over whatever my problem with with my old instructor was. I thought for the longest time that it was me being oversensitive about certain things, but when I realized that I was leaving class in a bad mood every week but still wanting to learn, I decided it might not be just me. My new instructor is a much more Zen kind of lady, and I find her very easy to talk to and learn from. Plus she has a much more killer studio (no poles!!). So last night I put my jinglies on in celebration of leaving dance class in a good mood for two straight weeks.

So Happy Flag Day--here's a picture of my feet.

Oh, before I forget: Here's how you know you're a loser...

The "M" is for shut the f*ck up

Found this on CafePress, and I NEED it (I've really got to have fewer shopping fantasies, I know). I showed it to my boss, who is from Massachussetts, and he said, "If you buy that, I totally give you permission to wear it at work!"

In other news, something rare happened this weekend: I saw a movie in a theater and actually liked it. Waitress was a little long, and Keri Russell's Southern accent is iffy, but I really liked it. It has one of those endings that annoy you when you're still sitting there watching the credits, but then later you think, "No, that totally worked." Plus it was about pie. Can't argue with that. Right after seeing it I went to the store and got pie fixings and made a pie. And it turned out halfway well...in spite of this being a really crappy peach season.

How much...

...do I need me a bunch of THESE? They are called kokeshi dolls, from Japan, and they tend not to have arms and legs. Some of them look like salt and pepper shakers, but they are not.

This one is my favorite. I may have to have her.

 

I'm less drawn to this one, but I do like her attitude. She's all, "Hellooooooooo!"

Other news:

Don't you wish this was your mom

Flummoxed

I've had the sniffles for a few days now...This weekend all the pollen in the state aimed itself at my head, so I spent most of Saturday and Sunday sitting around swearing and medicating and watching movies. Come Sunday afternoon, I thought I was feeling well enough to get out and do something, so I drove up to Hanging Rock with the intent of doing an easy trail or something. Didn't think about how going into the woods really means going into the pollen factory, so I pretty much turned around as soon as I got there. That was ok--the place was overrun with minivans and little screaming kids.

While I was on the couch, I had plenty of time to contemplate my Target curtains and realize how style-free they actually are. I bought them because they matched the brown slipcover I bought for my couch (to disguise pet hair, which it's doing...though keeping that mother tucked in is proving to be a beeyotch.)

So I bought me some-a these here:
















UrbanOutfitters.com, yo. Now my window has pretty flowers. Or will have when the curtains arrive.

Now to tackle the great white space that is my living room walls. While I was lying there in a DayQuil-induced stupor, it started seeming like a good idea to make my own art for it...maybe paint something. Maybe a couple of somethings that relate somehow. See? I've got a plan.

Decorating makes me crazy.

Other News:

Ridiculous (but necessary)

Highlarious