Lately

Little Miss Transient

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On Friday morning, I put on my sunglasses, some old flip flops, and a bra and walked down the block for a coffee and a stack of amNYs left over after the morning commute.

I wonder what patrons finishing their breakfasts outside the diner thought when I pulled ten copies of the free tabloid daily out of the box on the corner. “Look at that hobo. Is she going to make a bed out of those newspapers? She’s hurtin’ for a new pair of shoes. Oh, but she’s had a pedicure! And a manicure! And is she drinking a large non-fat iced latte with a shot of cinnamon?”

She was, indeed.

I deserved that latte, too; I had to spend the rest of the day lining boxes with those newspapers and wrapping my more fragile belongings in them.  Packing is hard.  I chipped a nail!

What I’m wearing to . . .

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I’m going to a wedding in October, the first in my adult life for which I’ll have full creative control over my wardrobe.  So, even though everyone will be looking at the bride, as well they should, I’m putting a lot of thought into my ensemble.  This is what I’ve come up with.

wearing_octoberwedding

I bought this dress on the whimsiest of whims last winter. I found it on the wrong rack—a petite size far from the petite section—and it was marked down so far that I knew it was the last one of its kind.  But, it was a size up from what I normally wear and the petite size conversion rule turned out to be true!  At the three-way mirror in the fitting room, I had to use a clothes hanger to fend off a few admirers who would have stripped the garment from my body for themselves.  I escaped with the dress and I’m so excited to finally wear it!  Maggy London’s Fall 2009 collection is online here.

Can a girl go wrong with Tiffany?  Of course not.  I don’t think the silver beads get enough play.  They’re darling; the fine metal equivalent of pearls.  The bracelet was a gift in high school; the earrings were a little gift to myself after I got my second job.

I detest heels.  Really.  Partly on principle, but mostly because they hurt me.  But my Maid of Honor dress at Jill’s wedding in July was tea length, and I couldn’t get away with silver Birkenstocks in the church anyway, so I picked out this pair of sandals from Naturalizer’s N5 Comfort Elements collection.  These heels are amaaaaazing.  I made it down the aisle and back and through a night of dancing with the under-10 crowd at the wedding in these shoes, and in the morning, when I went back to the hotel to pick up Jill’s dress, I put them back on, just for kicks.  I think it was clear, when I walked into the hotel dining room that morning in a commemorative t-shirt from the 1984 Olympic games, madras shorts and silver heels, that my principles were out the window.

Thank you, Grandmom, for outfitting me with such an extensive dress-up collection when I was a little girl.  Thank you, too, for including items that could translate from pink plastic dress-up suitcase to special occasions in my adult life!  I’ve always loved the snap that this faux leather clutch makes when it’s snapped shut.  I’ll have to resist opening and closing it throughout the wedding ceremony.

I found this lovely violet silk flower among many effortlessly enchanting floral accessories in an Etsy shop called East End Home Arts.  I browsed the heck out of Etsy on a quest for silk flowers, and the selection in Suzy’s shop is unique, feminine, and affordable.  Her customer service is fantastic, too.  I my first order with her (for one of these peach cosmos) on the night before she gave birth to her first baby, and the new mom still managed to deliver within a week.  She told me that custom orders are her favorites to work on, so if you’re in the “flowers in your hair” mood, get in touch with her.  And if you’re not in the “flowers in your hair” mood, please take a good hard look at yourself and get back to me when you’ve sorted yourself out.

I’m ready to get dressed for this wedding now.  Where is my pink plastic dress-up suitcase?

“We stop existing and start living.”

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So, Michael Jackson died.

Say what?

I know, right?

That was my reaction, too, when I got home from work last night and flipped on NY1 to see crowds of people gathering not in Azadi Square in Tehran, but outside Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. I descended on to the futon and sat there staring at the TV and wearing my doubleyoo-tee-eff face—the one I use to bait instant assistance in hardware stores and auto service stations.  One eyebrow up, one eyebrow down, nose wrinkled a little bit, mouth quirked up on one side and mouth dropped open (the degree of openness depends on the extent of my confusion).

Like Michael himself, my grieving process was unconventional.  In lieu of anger, bargaining, and depression, my emotions hopped from yeah right to uhhh, for serious? to this is super freaking weird and then I had to call my dad and ask him why so many bad things are happening in the world.

My Cool Aunt gave me Dangerous on cassette tape for Christmas when I was eight years old and I lllllloved it. I just listened to iTunes’ 30 second preview of each song and I recognize only five: Heal The World, Black or White, Who Is It, Give In To Me (sort of?), and Will You Be There. Those are tracks 7-11, and from that I deduce that Black or White and Will You Be There were my favorite songs, and I learned to like the ones in between them (and the one right before Black or White because I had to hear some of it every time I rewound my tape to play through again—and again and again, for weeks straight).

It was the first mainstream album that ever captured me (previous fixations included the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid and the greatest hits of Sharon, Lois, and Bram). It’s hard to understand retrospectively exactly what it was, but there was something about the music—and to a lesser extent, the lyrics—that I really felt. It sounded beautiful and interesting and emphatic in a way that I hadn’t yet realized music could sound.

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What my mama gave me (besides the straight eyelashes)

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Earlier this month, my mom and I went to a bridal shower together. We were one of several pairs of Mother & Daughter, but it was the first time I’ve ever attended an event with my mother and not felt like she was only present because I was or the other way around. She wasn’t there to be my chaperone. I wasn’t there because she didn’t have time to drop me off at home first. We received two separate invitations at our two separate homes and brought two separate gifts accompanied by two separate poems (the poems were Mom’s idea).

I’ve heard my mother called by her own name by other adults my whole life, but it totally threw me off to hear us introduced as “Emily” and “Elizabeth” and not “Emily and Elizabeth” or “Elizabeth and Emily.” The other guests kept talking to us like we were two separate entities, two separate people. Was it not clear that we were together? Maybe I should have pointed out that we arrived in the same car.

It was a bridal shower game that outed us as “Emily and Elizabeth,” unmistakably Mother and Daughter. Each guest dumped out her purse and tallied up its contents according to a list that gave a score for each item. Stamps, pens, mints, pain killers, lipstick, sunglasses, the keys to someone else’s house, and the like were all worth 5-25 points to the person hauling them around.

After taking inventory, we started scoring with a show of hands: “Who has 10 points? Who has 20? 30?” Hands started to drop as the total climbed past 70 points. Only four or five women had 100 points-worth of stuff in their bags. The last three standing were the bride’s grandmother, my mom, and me.

“Who has 130?” Grandmother-of-the-Bride lowered her fingers. A knowing groan rolled through the room as my mom and I stared each other down.

“Anybody have more than 140 points?” Mom couldn’t hack it. She dropped her arm as I raised my other one in victory, waving my winning item like a trophy.

My eyelash curler was worth 50 points and it was the only one at the party.

“You carry that with you everywhere?” Not even my own mother could believe it.

When we got in the car to go home—together!—my mom said, “I don’t know why I bothered to dump out my whole purse. I knew exactly what was in there.” I think I could have guessed the contents of my mother’s bag, myself. That’s where I get all my stamps.

(I can’t get no)

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My theory is, the same way my body craves proteins and vitamins when they’re lacking, I get cravings when there is an emotional or intellectual deficiency of some kind. I go through phases of fixation on one particular element of my life.

Material cravings have me browsing online and mail order catalogs like it’s my job.  Next, I’ll spend every free moment working out or planning a workout, my refrigerator is stocked with fresh, lean organics, and I get my hair cut and revamp my skincare regime.  Then I’ll read three books in two weeks and entertain the notion of going back to school for an advanced degree.  And when that passes, I sprout social butterfly wings and make a point to catch up with everyone I know before retreating into a domestic phase.  That usually involves a comprehensive scrub-down of the entire apartment and the rearrangement of furniture and decorative accessories.

Sometimes it leads to attempts at creating decorative accessories myself.  That’s a warning sign for a creative spell.  The creativity cravings are the most difficult to satisfy.  It’s like craving something, but not knowing what it is.  Because what I want, what I crave, is somewhere within me, unseen, and if it gets stuck, simply wanting it to emerge isn’t enough to make it happen.  Sometimes I feel just desperate to conceive something of words or colors and when I can’t draw it out, it’s like I’m imploding and exploding at the same time.

What’s unsettling is, lately, I haven’t craved much of anything.  It’s like I’m caught in the trough of a wave, just riding it out.  It’s odd, though, this absence of want.  It’s like a deficiency of deficiencies, but that doesn’t mean I’m thoroughly satisfied.

{P.S. What are you non-gastronomical cravings? Material? Physical? Intellectual?  Social? Domestic? Creative? Or otherwise?}