elephantine

that's pants!

Oh Leoluca makes me swoon forever and ever. There's a good reason I've repeatedly posted about it.

Recently I was walking up a wide outdoor stairway populated by scattered lunchers. Now, I wasn't trying to notice it, but it happened anyway: one guy had a split down the entire crotch of his pants. This wasn't some little inconspicuous hole; it was so large that ripping the pants the rest of the way apart seriously looked feasible. I don't understand how he couldn't have noticed. (He must have been wearing some thick undies.) Anyway, there he sat, chatting with his lunch-buddy without a care in the world, and at that moment I really wanted more than anything to see the expression on his face the moment he discovered his shortcoming. Would it be while he was still at work, in the middle of a critical meeting, a frozen terror instantly flashing across his face? Would it be that evening, at home, a much-delayed humiliation suddenly burning up his cheeks?

Today's advice: spot-check for horrific rips in outfit before dressing.

super supermarket

Sweetness from Supermarket: Egg Pants and randLCanvas Large Notebook.

smells like sweet spirits

Just discovered this lovely jewelry from Lauren Haupt.

As I'm waiting for the bus this morning, I'm thinking, "Something seems a little too familiar. I don't know what it is, but it feels like I'm somewhere else." Then I sniff my wrists and remember that I had put on a certain lotion that I hadn't used for several months. When I get on the bus, it is an entirely new wave of smells, unusually pleasant, a mix of plumeria flowers and after shave and incense.

Now, (skip this part if you don't want to hear about my novel-writing ramblings) today I also officially figured out a deadline for my book: 7 years from now (and in an ideal world, more like 5). Roughly 500 pages. Outline done by end of this August, before my birthday. Main reasons: that time frame seems comforting enough not to induce panic but a hard enough number to get me going; I have an unwarranted desire to write it before I'm 30; and Sylvia Plath had completed The Bell Jar by that age. The 500 page thing I'm not stuck on by any means, but that's the kind of weight and depth I'm going for. So, there, just wanted to get it on the record.

Hope your friday is most excellent.

feels like summer.

Muzina sandals from Revolve Clothing and Sateen dress from Free People (via Not Couture).

Post pasta making, I spent the rest of yesterday morning vacuuming the rufus-fur off the entire apartment, ran multiple loads of laundry and dishes, watched a dumpy Kevin Bacon movie, and sunk a little more into Middlesex. In the evening, beau and I wandered around Golden Gardens with Goji juice from the grocery store and soft serve ice cream from Little Coney. It was balmy and extra gusty out on the dock, the wind nudging my tower of ice cream to one side, drips of vanilla spilling across my knuckles, glazing my skin.

Oh yes, and my favorite quote from MTV that night (and it sums up why I resist watching it): standing amidst heinous prom dresses, one manicured teen says to another in a southern drawl, "Think about it. We've been best friends since ninth grade and never been to a prom together. Ever!" Wait, wait. How many proms, exactly, do these girls go to? Five, six? Is MTV-land so privileged that they get double of everything? Somehow, I wouldn't be surprised.

shiny and new

I likey: Sedum Necklace from Elsewares & Leather Contrast Heel from Asos.

Just back from the gym, almost every ounce of energy torn from me. 92:03 minutes remaining, the treadmill had insisted, but I only stayed on for another twelve. I didn't have my headphones and watched the suspended televisions via subtitles. Subtitle Guy must have fallen asleep on the keyboard during one commercial, the entire thirty seconds annotated, "opopopopopopopopo..."

This morning there's a slightly begrimed woman on the bus that is leading a terribly portly beagle. She's moved up from the back of the bus and sits down next to a snoozing man, tapping him gently, saying, "Sir, don't want to miss your stop, sir."

After two or three more attempts to free him from slumber, she succeeds.

"We're all the way downtown," she alerts him. He mumbles something about his destination, still groggy.

"Oh, you're going to have to take the 5 back uptown. You're way past your stop. You're going to have to take the 5 and then transfer and go over to Ballard." She slides to a different seat, still talking at him. "Sir, you were really sleeping. You're going to be late for whatever it was you were going to."

"Thank you," the man slurs, still slumping in the seat. Then: "How old's yer dog?"

"Nine," she answers, then with hardly another breath, "Boy, you were really sleeping. I could hardly wake you up. You'll have to take the 5, or maybe the 7, back out of downtown. This bus is almost to the end of the route. You're going to be late, now."

"Thank you," he repeats.

"The 5 or the 7. I'm not sure what else you can take. What a way to start the morning. You're going to be late for whatever it was you were going to, sir. Unless you had an appointment."

Wait – unless he had an appointment?

I feel sorry for the pooch. I helplessly imagine her feeding him five times a day and endlessly talking to him, telling him all the ways he can walk around their scattered house, warning him about missing his doggy appointments and falling asleep at inappropriate times.

cereal and pork

I'm very much wanting Andrew Neyer's new limited edition zine, Space Junk 2 (found via Book By Its Cover). Not only is it tucked inside a cereal box, but a handmade, silkscreened cereal box with real cereal, and is packed to the gunwales with the plumpest, most heart-swelling creatures to boot.

My funny bone was tickled today by this article about a piglet fitted with wellington boots due to her fear of mud. After my amusement wore off, though, the doubts started creeping in. Don't phobias entail a freak-out session of sorts, not simply "refusing to join her siblings as they splashed around in the mud"? Are you telling me that Boot Piggy got one eyeful of the mud, a look of horror flashed across her face, and she ran the other way, squealing with anxiety? Maybe she just DOESN'T LIKE THE OTHER PIGS – lookie here in this video and you won't see any boots on her hind legs, yet she seems as fine as pie.

Wait – the worst part is that she lives on a SAUSAGE FARM. The owners say she's "more" of a pet now, but is that only slaughter code for "let's wait another week"? Don't you think they're going to grow sick of continually finding new mini wellingtons as she ruins and outgrows pairs upon pairs? I SMELL A PUBLICITY STUNT.

warning, this contains splatter

Recent etsy faves: Banana Leaf Ring and Elsie Zig Zag Tote.

When we were approaching the panther exhibit at the zoo, a crowd was beginning to form, even though the animal wasn't even making himself visible. We weren't going to stick around, with nothing to gape at, but then I noticed that there were two zoo workers inside the cage, carving a large slab of meat.

They were prepping for feeding time.

"What kind of meat is that?" somebody yelled out.

"Lamb," the worker yelled back. I had a flashback to Jurassic Park. It looked like a thigh; it was the size of a violin and jagged and raw. The meat was then hooked onto a rope and hidden under a cardboard box. Another box, empty, was snuggled in the branches of a tree closer to the audience.

Then the workers exited the cage, and let the panther in. There was a collective gasp at how (large? gorgeous? hungry?) he was. It didn't take long for the panther to catch on where his lunch was hiding, not fooled by the decoy in the slightest. He was about to sink his teeth in when the meat flew away from him, toward the top of the cage. The zoo worker, not ten feet away but separated by fence, was controlling the food with the rope like a marionette. He yanked the rope, moving the food up, down, across the cage. And to everyone's delight, the panther followed suit, leaping, chasing, pouncing on the meat only to see it slip from his giant claws.

With such momentum going, the zoo worker swung the meat with so much oompf that it slammed against the fence, spraying bits of it – raw lamb, remember, which had been sufficiently gnawed by this point – onto the front rows of the audience. It was then that I was glad, no, grateful, that I had been standing in the back.

more leoluca and more

I know, I posted about Oh Leoluca a little bit ago, but I just can't get enough. I really just want the whole store... it feels so fun and effortless with that vintage kick. Detective Work Address Book (left) and Boho Dress (right, sold).

The three other paragraphs that I wrote for today were just eaten up greedily by the internet. I'm in no mood to rewrite it all, so to sum it up in fragments: 8 piece icing kit, Vogue subscription, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Sushiland, mysterious blue stain on my cream Nine West hobo and methinks it is from my new jeans.

molten flowers

Soothing pieces at Heath Ceramics.

(Written on 5/30)

I have been a flower girl once in my life, in the late 80's, at my aunt and soon-to-be uncle's wedding. The dress was adorable, tiny (so was I), frilly pink and silver, but was in actuality a tease: as soon as I put it on, the underside of the fabric scraped against my skin, sandpaper rough. I complained but also knew enough about what day it was to shut up after a while, resorting to acting extra wiggly, trying to escape the itchiness but probably simultaneously making it worse for myself.

Sue was the other flower girl, the daughter of one of my aunt's friends. She was slightly taller than me, and was more tan, but had similarly black-brown, slick straight hair like I did. We had met earlier that day, had painted with watercolors together at my grandparents' studio. I secretly wanted her to come along when my parents and I had to fly back north at the end of the week.

When the wedding rehearsal started, we stood side by side in identical, scratchy dresses, our fathers as tall as skyscrapers behind us. We each held a woven wooden basket that cradled handfuls of flower petals, soft and aromatic.

Sue, off cue, suddenly jolted forward and began hopping down the aisle.

"Wait, Sue, not yet," her father called out.

Now here I saw the opportunity to be a heroine. I broke from my own stance and began to run after her. In a blur, my thoughts were Don't worry, you guys, I'll tell her that she wasn't supposed to go yet, we'll start over, it's okay, it's okay, but then before I knew it, my dad's hand was resting on my shoulder and my heroic efforts were dashed. Sue's dad, footsteps far greater than mine, had already caught up with his daughter.

When it was time for the real show, when all the guests were seated and were twisted around in their white folding chairs, smiling at the two of us in our shiny, deceptive dresses, neither one of us jumped the gun. We both started on time, walking at the same pace, staying on our respective sides of the path. But I noticed that Sue was throwing her petals out at an alarming rate, twice as fast as I was. So I slowed down. Two steps, one petal. Two steps, another single petal.

Oh, so dainty.

I reached the front row with over half of the petals still in my basket. Someone asked me why I didn't toss more of them out. For which I'd had no good answer, because I didn't yet know the words "compensating," or "heroine," or "over-analytical."

kicking and screaming

Retro leather coin purse from Oh, Leoluca! and Bird with Mask print from Lauren Minco.

(Written on 5/30)

I have evidence on video that I was actually, at one point, only three feet tall. That I was able to find the beat to Raffi's music with great enthusiasm. That I would cry at the slightest collision. I also have proof on tape that as a child I could become enraged and unreasonably stubborn, which I now cannot recall from a first-person perspective.

There is a videotape, which at this moment is likely buried in a box with a yellowing label, of me playing with my friend Lara. We're surrounded by piles of plastic letters, expressing whatever kind of joy can be derived from sitting in the middle of a jumbled alphabet.

Wait: not joy.

Lara is holding up one of the letters – let's say it's a lowercase m.

I'm screaming, "NO, THAT'S A CAPITAL M."

She's saying, rationally, "Silly, no it's not."

And then she exchanges glances with my mom, who is behind the video camera. She smiles. The frame shakes a little.

"Rachel," my mom says, sweetly. Holding back a laugh.

But I only continue to grab the m (still convinced it is an M) away from Lara, insisting, yelling, "It's capital, IT'S CAPITAL!"

So even though I was wrong, I still think it's a good sign that I got so up in arms about something as inane as a letter. I'm taking it as foreshadowing, as a precursor to developing this love I have for writing. Yeah, I cared. I cared so much I'd scream right in my friend's face about it.