emlocke

Category: Girly

  • the magic’s in the earrings

    i have a lot of favorite jewelry. my tiffany’s, of course. my elephant cuff from thailand. my camp jewell bracelets inspired by the ‘good’ beads in a&c. my giant purple gemstone flower ring from china town (which i don’t wear b/c i think i have webbed fingers). i love it all, and i wear it when i remember to put it on. but i haven’t worn earrings on a non-special occasion in years. when the chandelier style came ‘in,’ i was tempted, but i couldn’t find the perfect pair, so i gave it up. which is why it was such a surprise when i purchased earrings at american eagle last week.


    the secret to my success: beautiful energy life force earrings
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    i am in love. they are delicate, romantic and graceful. they are the perfect shape and color. they have just the right amount of dangle. i think they are magical. yes, they are my lucky secret power energy life force earrings and when i put them on, my ear lobes glow and i can read minds!

    well, they make me feel pretty.

    quote of the day: “i’ve got the world on a string, i’m sittin’ on a rainbow, got the string around my finger, what a world, what a life, i’m in love” – sinatra

  • a penchant for taking lovers

    clandestine78: on an unrelated tangent, i apparently will have a lover this fall
    Em Locke 12: oh my goodness!
    clandestine78: i hope my horoscope agrees!
    Em Locke 12: no, say it more like you’re in a jane austen novel
    Em Locke 12: “i will take a lover”
    clandestine78: haha good call
    clandestine78: but i got an IM from *** today about how he has decided that we will be lovers.
    Em Locke 12: ahhh, did he say, “i have decided to take a lover. and that lover will be you!”
    clandestine78: those exact words.
    Em Locke 12: wow, he’s perhaps too well-read in girly victorian books

    hey, whatever, i’d take him.

    quote of the day: “we are flying high, above the carpet on feet, we are airplanes today, we can do anything, we can do anything” – garrison starr

  • Wax Me No More

    After one whole hairy month, I was about to jump out of my own skin. So, with three days until Chile, today was “waxing day.” I envisioned myself wearing a slim white terry cloth outfit, sitting in a pale pink tiled bathroom with creamy vanilla candles lit and a soothing bubble bath awaiting my hairless legs. I would spread warm wax in a neat, even, striped pattern, peel them back one by one, and – ta da! – soft, glowing, hairless skin.

    This fantasy was ill-fated from the “once upon a time.” I own zero articles of terry cloth clothing. Also, my bathroom is navy blue. The decomposing chemical stench of the wax overwhelmed the one pitiful candle I lit. After three and a half minutes in the microwave, the wax was not so much warm as it was scalding. The sporadic snapping and popping noises led me to believe that it was actually boiling. There was no pattern to the spreading of the wax – it was a goopy, orange colored, foul smelling mess. And actually pulling it off?  Painful like you would not imagine. I was prepared to hold my breath when it stung, but i did not expect the blood and tears!

    So, you would think that all the misery would be worth it. But no. my skin is still itchy, and paler than I remember. It’s the opposite of soft, and I don’t know how I’m going to rub off the clumpy patches and wax and hair that are still stuck all over me.

    And after all that, we’re out of bubble bath.

    Quote of the day: “What happens when the future has come and gone?” Robert Half

  • it heart it all

    valentine’s day is my favorite holiday. i love the romance, the charm, the indulgence, the cuteness and the love. it’s all about pink and red, chocolate, candles and flowers. especially chocolate. in high school, i wished that a boy would hand select all the white m&m’s with the light pink m’s for me (add that one to the great boy wish list). of course, the perfect boy would know instinctively that those are my favorites, and would be creative enough to think of such a saccharine demonstration all on his own. this year, my valentine was more on the practical side. my dad gave me a card. classic. perfect. it’s true love.

    i’m spending my valentine’s day just as any single, stuffy-nosed, sentimental girl should. not counting approximately twenty minutes of dejection and misery, which were remedied by rachel, my evening was ideal. i came home from a long workout, took a hot shower and put on my pink zebra print pj’s and my fluffy white bathrobe. i watched some felicity, worked on the everlasting knitting and ate mint chocolate chip ice cream, then lit a heart shaped candle and snuggled up in bed with isabellephant. we flipped through lonely planet’s chile guidebook and, appropriately, read toni morrison’s love.

    i’m not so in love with the fact that i’m so dried out from popping decongestants that my tongue makes a vacuum sound effect every time i swallow. but my biggest complaint is that, since i’m waiting for a pre-chile waxing, i am so hairy! even in this bathrobe, it’s hard to feel the luxury i deserve when my ankles itch!

    quote of the day: “like you’re trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists, that love is like falling and falling is like this” – ani difranco

  • I See London, I See France

    The next time I so much as hint at purchasing a new pair of underwear, whether they are pink or lavender, paisley print, or on sale for one-ninety-nine, stop me. Create a diversion, physically restrain me, steal my wallet, whatever it takes. I do not need one more pair. This evening, I stacked forty seven pairs, arranged by style and color, of course, in my top drawer, and that tally does not take into account the periwinkle hibiscus print pair I’m wearing or any that linger in the laundry cycle. I challenge anyone who thinks their collection could transcend mine. It’s extravagant. It’s superfluous. It’s wonderful.

    I love underwear. I think it’s the perfect accessory. It never goes out of style. It coordinates with everything. It’s appropriate on any occasion. It’s available in assorted varieties. It’s an easy pick-me-up. And even if you keep it a secret, it’s still always fun for you. For instance, I love it when my underwear matches my outfit. I smile about it all day. But really. Enough is enough. No matter how cute that next pair is, remind me to exercise control. Halt. Step away from the panties.

    quote of the day: “creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” – Cecil B. Demille

  • first night 2004

    new year’s eve was nothing that i expected. original plans were not meant to be. at first i just felt abandoned and heartbroken, but i’m so glad things turned out the way they did. i ended up going over to big ash’s and saw kristin, melissa and jenny k, and we chilled in the basement and watched tv for awhile. just before midnight i stopped at the dreyer’s house and ended up staying until four in the morning. i worked on a lovely buzz, thanks to my lovely lauren and her smirnoff twist. thanks, lek. i decided to wear those gorgeous shoes again b/c the heel is perfect for my shiny beaded pants, and let’s be honest, they’re hot. so all the stumbling probably made me look and feel a little tipsier than i really was!

    i’m so lucky to have these sweet, smart, generous, faithful friends who will always tell me i look beautiful and think i’m funny and just want me to be there, when i don’t even know or expect it. lauren the diplomat managed to wrangle all the girls and all the boys into the same house for the night, which was awesome b/c i adore em and jill and jess and lindsay, and jon, of course, but it’s so much fun to hang out with the boys, too, and it wouldn’t have been the same without everyone together. we played dream phone and watched new year’s rockin’ eve. scott and i raided the mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. i stumbled around in my shoes and spike mauled me and lauren a couple of times. it was an awesome night. here’s to the new 2004.

    new year’s resolution: to leave shorter messages on answering machines.

    quote of the day: “and the many stars that guide us, we have some of them inside us” – dar williams

  • cuddle up

    in an effort to entertain myself while procrastinating this afternoon (procrastination is hard work! it can get boring after awhile if you don’t know how to occupy your time), i ended up at the official care bears website. i didn’t actually have a lot of care bears as a kid. in fact, i don’t even remember if i actually saw any of the movies, and i know i wasn’t a frequent watcher of the show. but i did have a care bears towel which i loved. it had a rainbow that flowed from top to bottom and five of the care bears were sliding down it holding up their little paws with the heart prints.

    i never even knew the care bears well enough to have a favorite one, but today i wouldn’t know which one to pick! i appreciate bedtime bear for obvious reasons. even though he’s sleepy during the day, he encourages friend bear to overcome her fear of the dark and at night he helps everyone sleeps and gives them sweet dreams. but i also really like wish bear b/c she has a shooting star and she helps wishes come true and her fur is aqua. but i feel like i should be loyal to share bear b/c she’s lavender and apparently “gets distracted by the strangest things at the worst times.” i feel her on that!

    what i never noticed was the underlying romantic twist on the care bear social scene. share bear has a crush on funshine bear and love-a-lot bear has a crush on tenderheart. and on top of all that, there was some “relationship challenegs” around the love-a-lot round table (which was actually shaped like a heart) between bears playing tricks on each other and teasing each other and good luck bear’s powers don’t even work when he’s around cheer bear! what drama!

    i did have a lot of popples though. they rolled up inside out and had different color hair and ear and really big pom-pom tails. i had party, who was all kinds of pink and liked to, well, party. i had p.c., whose apparently was the big gun popple, but i always considered him party’s second in command. and i had potato chip, who was smaller and not as furry, but still cute and made me think it was okay to eat potato chips, but my mom never went for that one. i had a mini pocket popple model of pretty bit which was my favorite b/c it was purple and i could take it wherever i went, including church, although i brought a fair share of full-sized stuffed animals to sunday school in my day. according to the website, pretty bit also liked to write poetry. finally, when my brother was born, my parents gave me a baby popple named bibsy (although i remember calling her cribsy…but that may have been an oversight directly resulting from the emotional confusion of giving birth to a child.) wow, that was quite a big collection! popples were good for hugging.

    quote of the day: “if this is how life is supposed to be, i will have none of it.” – danny

    love always, em locke

  • the great boy list

    i’ve decided to resurrect the legendary, the coveted, “the boy list.” the list originated in the summer of 1999 when i was an lit at camp jewell, back in the day when lit’s lived in the boathouse. that’s right kids, “livin’ in the boathouse, let’s begin.” we had this huge notepad in the common room and i started a list of all the qualities i hoped to find in a potential boyfriend (at the time i was still looking forward to my first boyfriend…and my first kiss, actually) and hung it up above the fireplace. i wanted the other girls to add to the list and maybe even for the boys to start their own. but i think people just thought i was weird. or, other things i had said or done had already lead them to believe that i was weird, and this just proved their hypothesis. either way, nobody ever added to the list, so at the end of the session i took it home, diagrams and all, and hung it on the back of my closet door, where i forgot about it for years.

    that was really just a first draft and i don’t even know if i have it anymore. but recent experiences have inspired me to write down certain things i love and have loved about boys so i will always remember what details to look for next time. sure, there are plenty of things i could remind myself to avoid, but this is all about optimism.

    the list isn’t about mandatory prerequisites or a screening process. if a guy doesn’t meet one or ten or twenty-seven of the items he probably still has a pretty good chance with me. and i know every individual guy has his own qualities to offer, whether or not he intentionally designs and rehearses them in advance. probably a lot of qualities that could end up on the list eventually.

    now, i’m not going to publish the list, b/c obviously this is a blog, not a personal ad. let’s not go wild with the desperation here. but certain people might be able to gain password protected access to certain sections of the list, or maybe even the whole thing. e-mail me with subscription applications!

    quote of the day: “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” – edgar allan poe

    love always, em locke