not a creature was stirring

...except an anthropomorphized nutcracker. this image brought a flood of nostalgia for my family's once-annual tradition of attending the nutcracker ballet at christmas. we haven't been in some time now, and i miss it. i know christmas is over, but i'm still in the holidaze.

rumpled

so i'm down to one set of bedsheets. i'm not sure what kind of respectable woman who resides in the land of thirty-something only has one set of bedsheets. i guess this kind, assuming i am respectable. but as mr. cordy, our peeping tom (he was prosecuted) shop teacher in middle school always said, "assuming makes an ass out of u and me." what's worse, my sheets are hand-me-downs from gracie the amazing AND they are torn and tattered. they were so darn soft and lovely that i believe they were particularly delicate and after a few years of washings (and such, i'll say no more) they are literally tearing to pieces. and yet for the life of me it's one of those to-dos that continues to fall through the i can't be bothered cracks. i can't count the number of times i've gone onto overstock, found a set of respectable thread count that seems too good to pass up, put it in my cart, but couldn't seem to click "checkout." so i put it upon my family to get me some new sheets for christmas, and my sister came through. but not so fast! when i went to wash the sheets this morning, much to my wondering eyes did NOT appear a fitted sheet. the package was clearly supposed to include a flat sheet, a fitted sheet and 2 pillowcases, but the blasted fitted sheet (the one most in need of replacement), was nowhere to be found!! it seems the cosmos does not want me to have new bedsheets. i can't imagine why the cosmos would care, but i do believe i will respect its wishes. for at least another couple weeks anyway.

party like it's 1929

“She flirted because it was fun to flirt and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends - it needs only crowds…"

— Zelda Fitzgerald, Eulogy on the Flapper via

Tonight I'm headed back to SF for my 6th trip in as many months. First up is tonight's flapper holiday party, which I'm actually quite excited about. Mostly because the style of the 20s/30s is easily my most favorite, and because it is I had plenty of items on hand at home to make my outfit happen without spending a dime. perfect indeed. 23 skiddooo!!

the little fir tree

do you hear that? no? maybe because it's muffled by the surrounding insulation, but i'm quite sure i hear the distant sounds of my own heart breaking. i sobbed (in secret) the first time i read The Little Fir Tree. the little tree was so happy it was picked to be part of the family's Christmas... so adored, so much attention received. only to be thrown in the backyard to die at season's end. i can still remember the last sketch with its barren twigs covered in snow. ouch. it honestly hurts me to this day. yes, i'm overly sensitive about strange things (like anthropomorphized plants), i admit it, but seriously... it's tragic. these photos by Todd Sanchioni bring me right back to that moment of closing the book with a furrowed brow, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. and never feeling quite right about Christmas trees ever again. thanks, Hans.

true

i really do. it's shameful. the contents of my fridge can be stated in a line or two: half lemon, onion, american cheese, string cheese, parmesan cheese (what?), condiments, coconut water, v8, olives. i kid you not. i just made that list by memory, that's how much i need some fucking groceries. but if you think for a second i plan on stepping foot inside a grocery store anywhere near thanksgiving, you must be out of your ever-loving mind.

bag via

Mamika, You Made My Day

no small task on this monday morning, mamika. moments after heading out the door i was greeted by a torrential downpour. remembering my 9am meeting and knowing there was no time to go back and change into a skirt and wellies (my torrential downpour bottom-half of choice), i plodded onward. flash forward 25 minutes, and i could be seen scolding myself out loud as i unsuccessfully navigated puddle after puddle after puddle. flash forward another hour or so and here i sit, my pants still soaked from the knees down. so soaked that the bottom hem of my pant came undone and dragged in the puddles. i feel pretty.

another life

my retired parents just returned from a trip to paris and london. i've been swooning over their photographs (this isn't one of them) with a combination of awe and nostalgia and a lump of wanderlust and wonderlust in my throat. now i deeply long to be there again. my parents had never been overseas before this trip IN THEIR LIVES, so i'm so very proud of and happy for them for making this voyage. now that's what i call retirement.

i second that

after a rough few days with my delicate flower foo (high fever, lethargy, back spasms, chills) i found great peace, nay, elation yesterday afternoon in an answer. turns out he had a severe contact allergic reaction to something, and it was enough to send his body off the deep end. oddly enough, i suspect the culprit is the shampoo, or more likely conditioner, i used to wash him only the day before. see, i knew dogs weren't meant to use conditioner. we only figured out what was going on after the allergy came to the surface and was literally oozing out his back. poor sweet foo. we thought it might be a spinal injury, so this was a huge relief (to the heart, head, and last and yes least... pocket book). now he's on the 'roids and the anti-b's and sporting his accessory of choice (the lampshade, the cone, the elizabethan collar), so he should be back in full foo bidness soon. let's just hope i won't get sacked for not exactly showing up and leaving on time the last few days on account. cause i really need it to pay the bills. oh life....

marshmallows are the new cupcake

on the rare occasion i got my childhood paws on some Lucky Charms, i was the kid who forced down all the cereal bits as fast as i could to be left with a glorious pastel pool of floating marshmallows. and those hot chocolate pouches... i'd open 2 (maybe 3), pour 1 (maybe 2) through a sifter til only the mallows remained, and greedily add all the marshamallows to my one mug of hot choco. i still remember the day my grandmother introduced me to marshmallow fluff and peanut butter sandwiches.... cue the Hallelujah Chorus. and the day i watched my first homemade gourmet marshamallow melt into a mug of homemade mexican hot choco...the thing was shaped like a cube for the love of god! cue the heavenly rays of light.

i've always been and still am obsessed with marhsmallows. pull them apart with my fingers til they feel like taffy, toast them over a burner on the stove and pretend it's a crackling fire... you name it, i'll eat it. the obsession has hit a real fevor pitch the last few months as i've rediscovered the underrated rice krispy treat (Starbucks actually has a right good one) and s'mores... i'm confident one or both will soon become the new cupcake. you can only imagine my excitement when i came across this site selling cereal marshmallows all by their lonesome!! brilliant, m'dear watson, brilliant.

set as desktop background

i've gotten into oysters lately. first i ate several at a house dinner party where the host had bought them from her "fish guy." they were raw and totally fresh and sans fishy flavors. it was probably the first time i really gave oysters a go (without covering it up w/ so much hot sauce and lemon that there was nary an oyster left to taste). and i dug them. last night i went to naha on a groupon. we tried the oyster appetizer, and though they were briny (as i've learned to describe them), i still LOVED them. it was an instantaneous transport to the seashore. i can see how some might hate that flavor, and how in a certain mood i might not like it so much either, but boy did they ever hit the spot last night. not to mention the softshell crab to follow (f'amazing!) and p's wood-grilled ribeye. i have not had a steak that delicious in a very very long time. in short, if you're in chicago and have some money to spare or something to celebrate, try naha. the ambiance is a bit stuffy for my taste (we were by far the most casually dressed folks there), but the food... to DIE for.

the core

feeling a bit like this around the middle these days. i suppose there is such a thing as too much of a good thing... go figure. which is why i finally rejoined the gym (boo), which i just spelled like "jim" and didn't notice for a minute or two. i am so out of shape i call it a jim. thankfully this jim has a pool (yay) and some cardio dance classes that sound almost fun, so i'm actually the teeniest bit excited about it. now that's something to hang my bathing cap on.

b/c i do have a black thumb...

i need to throw in the towel and get myself some of these. no really, me thumb's as black as the night sky. case in point... my money tree went from this lovely lass:

to dead.

it was flourishing flourishing flourishing, and then.... dead. it belonged to me, it never had a chance. its passing upset me more than i can really say. i'm not kidding. it also made me paranoid in a superstitious sort of way. it is a money tree, afterall. it was anyway.

warning

any beverage once sold with such a label should be sipped with care... this explains a bit about some of my behavior after failing to use said care whilst sipping on absinthe frappes at violet hour... what a badass advertisement. i'm working on my own collection at the moment... i have a gorgeous absinthe fountain from new orleans, thanks to p, sugar cubes and a filtering spoon c/o gta and her recent n'orleans obsession, and absinthe itself c/o binny's... the only thing left to get are the purty glasses... wonder if one night w/ my collection will leave me resembling this lovely lass....? nah, i could never achieve that tiny waist.

Look Out, My Mom's Using Technology

Last night at 11:55 pm I was awakened by the ding of a new text. It was from an unknown number and read:

"hi"

Me: "Who's this?"

Answer: "That was from me. MY new# 336.555.5555"

Me: "Who's me?"

Answer: "Sorry-mom"

Me: "Yeah right"

It was 12:55 mum's time, and I thought pigs would get wings and hell would get all cold before my mom would start texting, let alone past midnight. Well, I was wrong. It was my mom.

This morning I received an email confirming the text was from her and describing texting as "feeling like I'm traveling in a country where I don't speak the language." Oh boy, this is gonna be interesting.

This Weekend I Was A Banana

and that's all i have to say about that.

Dreaming of a Dressing Room

Why yes I do. And if you saw my hallway-come-closet-thanks-to-a-suspension-rod-and-some fabric, well... you'd know why. Did I mention the clothing rod itself falls down every month or so, bringing down half my clothes with it? It's loads of fun trying to finagle that thing back up. It involves lots of elbow grease and giant screws. And the last time it happened (last week), I broke out the superglue.

image via apartment therapy

Women of Unwavering Indecision

I'm not sure yet what I want to say about this, but something... yes, something...

Pluck Pluck Pluck

I kinda dislike myself when I find these words tumbling out of my mouth. I rarely (if ever) use them to console another person about their downtrodden state, no I wouldn't be that insensitive, but I do find its annoying cadence flowing out of my mouth right after I've finished complaining about something in my own life. A half-assed attempt to remind the poor person listening to me that, well, I know it could be worse. And, see, that makes it ok that I'm complaining about the mind-mushing state of network television while blood curdling atrocities go down, probably not so far down the street from me. Alas, it is what it is. Bah! There's another one... Yes, competing for the most nerve-plucking and overused response in our lexicon of late is definitely "it is what it is." I'm not sure which is worse, though we know damn well it could be worse.

Hmm... someone seems a little irritated today (looks around). I'm back on the pill and so I will surely start to blame every mood nuance on that little patty of hormones I stick down my throat every night. My doctor convinced me to go back on. By convinced I mean she said "hey, maybe you should go back on the pill," and I said... "ok." I'm a real hard sell.

Just a Bowl of Cherries

I recently mentioned the abysmal eating habits I’ve developed over the summer, consisting of nothing more than dine-in and takeout galore. I’d consumed every last edible item in my kitchen a couple weeks back, which is no small feat for a girl who’s been known to concoct and enjoy some very odd flavor combinations. What, I’ve still got some walnuts, pickles, a few grains of rice and cottage cheese? Feast!

It’d been so long since I’d gone to the grocery store that this weekend I decided to splurge and head to Whole Foods. There’s a new one in Lincoln Park, and I was curious. I hear they moved because the old one had a little “river rat problem.” Ew. This one’s still quite close to the river, so I’m hoping it’s hermetically sealed. The sensation of being entirely overwhelmed kicked in well before I even set foot in the store… just circling the parking deck I began to glaze over. I made it inside, spotted folks drinking at the full bar that neighbors the produce (Whole Foods barflies), got blocked at the bottom of the escalator by inconsiderate couples chit chatting, and found myself wondering how I was going to get my buggy back up the escalator… I was about to put in my headphones, but thought better… I needed all my faculties about me… otherwise I’d be dead in the water.

Somewhere between produce and diary I got lost and slipped on avocado pulp…. which simply reminded me to grab a few of those at an unknown price per pop. I spent about 45 minutes dazed and confused by the floor plan, recklessly throwing anything and everything organic and/or appealing into my cart without so much as a glance at price. A worker man asked if I needed help choosing olives, said I looked “in awe.” In shock was probably more like it. Five minutes later I walked away from the olive cart with about a hundred olives of 20 different varieties handpicked by Mr. Helpful. I forgot to mention that it would just be me eating those olives. The checkout guy who rang me up had to perform cardio pulmonary resuscitation on me within seconds of announcing my total. I’ve done unexpected damage at the grocery before, but this was seriously criminal, like I was tempting the fates to have someone rob me on the way home… or get fired this week. I’m still waiting. I wanted to put it all back, but it was too late… with tail between legs I sent my cart, clinking bottles and all, up its own escalator, eyeing the mofo all the way up with great resentment. For what it was worth, my cart clearly deserved its own form of transportation, but I was thinking more along the lines of private jet.

Flashforward a few hours… gg came over, and when we peered in my newly stocked fridge for a snack we couldn’t find one. Not one snack worthy item in the lot! I had jalapeno hummus (yum), smoked salmon (yummier), and cheeses (yummiest)… but not a cracker to put them on. I forgot crackers! I’d managed to spend a bloody fortune in Whole Foods and yet didn’t have a damn thing to offer my famished friend other than a string cheese. It wasn’t until the next day that I was mentally ready to take a gander at the receipt to determine how the devil I’d done what I’d done. Yeah there was a bottle of wine, some beer, and the salmon was Charlie Trotter, but mostly… I blame the cherries. The evil cherries. Yes, whilst scrolling down my receipt I discovered that I spent FIFTEEN FUCKING DOLLARS on a pre-packaged 2.8 pound bag of red cherries. A bag of cherries I would normally never be able to finish on my own, mind you. I say “normally” because you better believe this girl is going to finish that bag of cherries no matter what it takes. It’s cherries morning noon and night until I’ve consumed every last one of those suckers. Digestive tract, beware.

Old School

These pics really bring back memories. The many libraries of my youth make up a pretty sizeable wedge in the pie chart of my subconscious.... so many research papers written, tests studied for, people eyed through spaces between the stacks, books smelled. My name is Jenny, and I love to stick my face in a book. The older the better. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of want to go back to school. gg tells me that to go to med school we wouldn't have to go back to get any bio-me credits.... ALL we'd have to do is ace the mcat (yeah, that's all) and *ta da* we're med school bound. Piece o' cake. It would be nice to work in a profession that was inherently satisfying.... a place where you'd have no reservations about what you do.... and if nothing else (though there are other elses) you know for a fact you're helping some folks out. There's only so much one can bemoan their chosen profession before they become completely insufferable to themselves and others, so I'm not bemoaning... I'm just saying it would be nice.

pics by Alex Leme c/o lenscratch