Fancy Shoes

Some days, when I know I'm going to be at home all day, I like to give myself a pedicure and wear fancy shoes.

Dewey brought me these ones all the way from Spain, and sometimes I wear them with my twirly skirt and pretend to be a lady in Spain. I think that would be fun.

New shoes.

I got some new shoes while I was home in Boston. They have an ankle strap that you can take off.
I like them.

Today I bought myself a ring. I like it.


Also, if my mom knew how to find my blog, she would be pleased if I said "Happy Mother's Day!" So, Happy Mother's Day, Mom! You are the best mother a girl could ask for, and I'm lucky I got you.

On Sexiness

My mom sent roomie|west and me red lace thongs for Valentine's Day. After playing witness to one too many boring bunny makeout sessions, we decided that they could use a little spice in the hutch:

They were not all that impressed by our efforts on behalf of their love life.

In fact, they both pooped in their new lingerie.

Yet another girl skill that I lack

I have been a girl for my whole entire life.
As such, I occasionally like to have pretty fingernails. Usually when such an urge hits, I get a mani pedi, but these days I'm on a budget, so I tried to do it myself.
I have not yet mastered the skill of painting one's own nails, though, even though most girls figure it out around the age of eleven.
I needed a lot of q-tips and nail polish remover.

Still, though, my fingers looked like crap.

I wanted to show my loyal reader a picture of my toes, but they were just kind of gross. Poorly-applied red nail polish kind of looks like blood on your toes, and I wouldn't want to traumatize the whole internet.

Homeward Bound

Here are some tidbits that I have learned in the past couple of days:
1. You can pay $2.99 for an hour of wireless at SFO, and, I presume, most airports. (I am aware that most people already knew this. I am not, however, most people.)
2. UCSF medical center has a walk-in urgent care clinic. You don't have to have a doctor at UCSF to use it.
3. The nurse practitioner at UCSF is not all that helpful when you have an attack of the MRSA. They do give you a prescription that, so far, has not caused your face to swell up.

Here are some things that I have observed so far while waiting for my overbooked flight:
1. Two sisters approximately 8 and 10, dressed in matching pajamas and bathrobes. The younger one's p.j.-bathrobe set is blue. The older one's is pink.
2. A 12-year-old girl staring at me strangely for wearing my neck pillow. Her sister is wearing headgear. Headgear is weirder.
3. The planewear of choice for children taking redeyes seems to be pj's, with the notable exception of one little boy who is wearing cutoff kahkis, an orange Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and a suit jacket.

I cannot imagine raising my children on the opposite side of the country from my family. This West Coast adventure is really great for now, but small children + redeye every holiday? I can't imagine that that's fun. Plus, I want my mom around to help me take care of my babies.

1960

I've been watching Mad Men.
As a result, I find myself wanting to be charming and have long red fingernails and wear pencil skirts and heals all the time.
Somehow, I don't think it's going to happen.

I could be live blogging the Oscars

except I don't know how to do that.
Instead, my thoughts on the "let's wear slippers outside IN THE SNOW and pretend they are real shoes" trend:

it looks dumb.

Oh, It's Bad

I am currently sitting on my bed, an open pizza box by my side, my abnormal psych textbook open to the substance abuse chapter, my computer blasting Holly Near. And I'm wearing sweatpants.
Oh, finals, what did you do to me?

Remember How I Liked My Hair? I Lied.

You know, as soon as she brought out the texturizing shears, I got wary. Very wary. See, my hair is two things: it is incredibly frizzy, and it's incredibly poufy. All on its own. Without someone cutting little pieces off at random to "open up the curl and give your hair some shape." So now it is poufy. Extra poufy. With a side of frizz.
I still have some sort of idiotic faith that if I find the right product, it will get better. I'm losing that faith, though.

Don't y'all love it when I talk about my hair? Doesn't it just fill your hearts with gladness and your minds with interest?

I am a Fashion Guru; All Hail My Magnificent Words

As I was reading the October issue of Vogue that I left in the sororitee bathroom well over a month ago, I was struck by a thought:
Ankle boots are ugly. All who where them look like they are trying to hard to be trendy and fashionable. No one should wear ankle boots.
Now go, my people, and spread the good word of your guru who, incidentally, has dirty hair and is wearing a sweatshirt she rescued from the trash-bound clutches of her cruel, unfeeling mother. Five years ago.

Ode to a Dress from the Gap

Oh black dress that cost forty dollars at the Gap.
How I love you so.
I can wear you to the beach or to class.
Even though you have a little hole in the back from when I snagged you on a door the first time I wore you,
You are still great.
I can wear you with a shirt.
I can wear you without a shirt.
I can wear you to take care of The Girl.
Although sometimes I worry that you are a bit revealing for that.
Oh, Dress, even though you make me look a little hippy in the picture that I took,
I love you anyway.

I Must Really Hate My Homework

Last night, instead of reading about traditional African theater, I did my laundry. So far, we're good. Nothing out of the ordinary. I do this all the time. This time, however, I needed to bring in EXTRA procrastination tools. That's right, I brought out the iron.
Ironing is great. Fantastic, especially if you're not the most dishevelled person in the world, rendering even the most perfectly ironed skirt or shirt a big ball of wrinkles within five seconds of putting it on your dishevelled body. Unfortunately, I am that person. Thus, I spent two hours yesterday preparing my clothes to be more perfectly wrinkled by me. I want to do the whole job. Let the washer and dryer take any credit for wrinkling my clothes? I THINK NOT. That is my job. And so I need to start with a clean, wrinkle-free canvas. Apparently. Or maybe I just didn't want to do my homework.

Also, aren't you all ridiculously jealous of my socks? You know what will make you even more jealous? The fact that I wore them to bed with boxers and a t-shirt from the farm where I used to work. That's right. I am just that fashionable.

Boston and Shopping and Oh, My!

Today I awoke at the unreasonably early hour of 8 o'clock to hop onto the Dartmouth Coach for the 9 o'clock bus down to Boston. The ride was uneventful, mostly because I slept the entire time. I was awake for the beginning and ending parts of the ride, however, which was exciting because it meant that I got to observe the woman next to me do her O.C.D. rituals. Now, my loyal readership of two knows that I have my own mental issues and I have no desire to mock other people, but when you count your bus tickets out loud 16 times (I know it was sixteen because she counted), and then count all the change in your wallet and then snap your fingers three times twice before the trip starts and before the trip ends, people notice. And it's kind of interesting to watch. Mostly 'cause I only ever really witness neuroses from the inside, so it's interesting to see someone else succumb to some mental health quirk and think "hey lady, calm down. you really don't need to do that."
Once we had all safely arrived in Boston, my mom picked me up at the bus stop, and drove me to this totally awesome store that she discovered in Roxbury. This store sells shirts that fit me and my ginormous boobs. It's kind of exciting.
Afterwards, my mom and I went to lunch at The Haley House Cafe. Their food is delicious, plus it led to an interesting conversation. Roxbury is a predominately black neighborhood. Haley House cafe was started in part by Didi Emmons, a local foodie who has a restaurant in Cambridge. As a result, a lot of people who wouldn't normally go to Roxbury go there to go to this cafe. A lot of those people were white. The clientele of the cafe is very diverse, but it doesn't really reflect the residents of the neighborhood, or the clientele of the other businesses in the area. Is that a good thing, or does it mean that we get a lot of white people in Roxbury feeling like they're being all hip and multicultural, but not really experiencing the cool things Roxbury has to offer that you couldn't find in other parts of Boston, like the Back Bay? Like Ashley Stewart, where I got my shirts, or the dollar store where we got clotheshangers and tupperware and 15 toothbrushes all for under ten dollars, or any of the variety of restaurants I discovered when I worked in Roxbury for a summer five years ago. Maybe it does help people discover Roxbury; we certainly wouldn't have found that store if we hadn't been going to the cafe. So maybe it does work. I don't know; it was just weird to see all those white people in the cafe after we had been the only white people in the stores, which were just across the street.
After that we went to see a production of The Cherry Orchard at the Huntington Theater. It was good, but only after the intermission, where I drank some coke. Before that, I was falling asleep.

Note: Sometimes I talk about race more frankly than is really appropriate. I don't think I did that in this post, but because this is the internet and you never know who reads these things, let me explain: when I was in high school, I spent a couple of summers working at The Food Project, an awesome organization that, among other things, raises issues of race awareness among teenagers. It got me thinking and talking, and I've been doing it ever since. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone or said something insensitive.

The Schlub

Last term I came back to Dartmouth after a year off, refreshed and excited about school. With a new major, I thought I might try to make some other changes, too. I thought I'd dress all nice. I'd wear cute shoes. Shoes like these:

Or maybe like these, with their fashionable stacked heel:
And I'd carry my books in a cute bag, one of the several (rather pricey) cute bags that I own:

I was successful, for a while. All last term, I carried my books in that pink Longchamp bag in the middle there, the quintessential Ivy-League Sorority-Girl bookbag. And it was lovely. Although my clothes usually weren't quite up to par, my bag, and often, my shoes, were. My bag was cute, and so I felt put together, even on days when I felt all icky. Today, however, I succumbed. I succumbed to The Schlub. The pink bag gave me back problems, and it's kind of cold and snowy outside today. So instead of my cute pink French bag with my dark blue straight-leg jeans (skinny jeans don't work when you're shaped like me) and my cute black boots, I put on comfy clothes. I loaded my books into this:

And because I had to rush to class in the snow, I loaded my feet into these:

And you know what? I was comfy. Really comfy.