emlocke

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  • Elephants in my bed and on the wall and in my purse and around my neck

    1. When I don’t have a whole trunk’s worth of stuff to carry, this little clutch will hold all my peanuts. Neon ‘Cleo’ bag by Jenny Yuen. $295 at the designer’s website or select NYC stores.

    2. White porcelain elephant teapot. 9 x 5 x 6″; holds 28 ounces. Dishwasher safe. $14.99 at Target.

    3. In the seventh grade, I wore a pewter elephant charm and a blue glass bead strung on black embroidery floss every day . . . until the thread frayed and finally broke. This model is bigger, kitschier, and a little more glamorous. $9 at the Etsy shop Spellkiss.

    4. A cute clutch for the little things I don’t want to forget. $28 at the Etsy shop Cotton & Cloud.

    5. Pico Elephant Pillow. Designed by Ross Meneuz for Fauna. 8″ x 9.5″ x 3″. Hand-printed on 100% cotton broadcloth using water-based ink. Made in Brooklyn. $28 at Design Public.  This is my favorite elephant.  It reminds me of a set of cat-shaped pillows my grandmother has had since I was a toddler, only hipper.

    6. Color Zoo Ellis the Elephant Stuffed Animal, Flower Power print. $24.99 at Target.

    7. Does it come in my size? Lil’ Elephant Elite Collection Infant/Toddler Costume. Sizes 6 months to 2T. $39.99 at BuyCostumes.com.

    8. Hanna’s award winning wallpaper comes in poster-form so there are no rolls to match up. She provides a formula for calculating how many posters will cover a specific wall. There are seven different patterns in the AnimalFlowers collection, including Elefantgräs. 150 Swedish kronor (about US$24) per poster; order by e-mail or shop in Europe.

    9. Yes! The Pink Elephant. Drink up. Cocktail drink markers. $6.99 per box at Perpetual Kid.

    10. Which came first; the piggy bank savings or the elephant bank from Jonathan Adler’s menagerie collection? In glossy slate blue or matte white. $78 at the designer’s website. (Let’s hope it was the savings.)

  • Runs on high-efficiency emotions

    If by multitask
    You mean: can’t I love and loathe
    You at the same time?

  • After which I roll over and commence with drooling

    These are some names I’ve been called this week:
    Sick Puppy
    Snotty McSnotterson
    Miss Sniffelupagus

    As in, “Need a tissue, Miss Sniffelupagus?”

    Hey now, didn’t your mothers teach you that it’s not polite to call people names?

    Mine did.

    My mother also taught me the words to a Contac cold medicine jingle from the 1960s, when “they were allowed to sell the really strong stuff over the counter.”

    “A summer cold is a different animal
    An ugly animal, oooh!
    It hits you in the summer,
    When you’ve got a lot to do!”

    This is what I’ve been listening to this week while I breathe noisily through my mouth:
    I Do by Jewel
    Feeling Good (which I do not) by Nina Simone
    Something Good This Way Comes by Jakob Dylan
    Casual Viewin’ by 54-4
    Forever by Chris Brown

  • This is a Manhattan-bound Vain Train. Next stop, Wednesday.

    I was applying Champagne to the crease above my left eye when Jonathan appeared beside me, a little pinched in my squinted sight line, on the F-train platform.

    “Hi.”

    “Heeey.”

    What was that; did I just hear a locker slam? Instant flashback to high school, when I would put on make-up in the unflattering fluorescent hallway lighting while we waited for the first bell to ring.

    Jon and I rode the train into the city together. Five or six stops in, I said, “We must be the most vain people on this train, because you’re too vain to take off your Ray-Bans and I can’t stop staring at myself in the lenses.”

    “So it’s working out for both of us, at least,” said The Only Living Hipster in Park Slope.

    Jonny, I’m really glad we’re neighbors again. I like rolling with you.

    So, here’s what I’m listening to this week:
    Lousy Lullaby by Marry Me Jane
    No Hay Igual by Nelly Furtado
    Red by Sara Bareilles
    Wait a Minute by the Pussy Cat Dolls
    Late Night, Early Town by Lloyd Cole

    “Just another bunch of would-be desperados . . . Strung out on semantics, Holiday-Inn vigilantes, late night, early town.”

  • Camp Jewell, back again . . .

    . . . Alumni Corn Roast, let’s begin . . .

    When the Universe
    asks, “Hey Em, where you wanna
    go?” I’ll say, “Right there.”


  • I eat chocolate for breakfast

    I realize that sounds like a threat to chocolate, but I don’t mean it as a threat to chocolate.  I mean it as a threat to you.  As in, “It’s time for breakfast.  Give me some chocolate, or I’m going to eat you.”

    This is what I’ve been listening to this week:
    Say by John Mayer
    Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) by Lostprophets
    Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money
    You’re The Voice by Heart
    Divorce Song by Liz Phair

  • I really want to get a puppy. Yes, still.

    A few nights ago I had a dream that I lived in a house with four stories and the top floor was a lofted nursery where I was caring for a baby bunny.  I adored my dream-bunny.  I loved him so much that the love formed a slippery bubble of emotion in the back of my throat that made it a little difficult to speak clearly or swallow.

    So I’m in the dream-nursery and I’m taking care of the dream-bunny, feeding it sips of milk from a spoon with a long handle, dabbing dribbles from its chin.  Friends visit and I’m nervous to let anybody else hold my dream-bunny.  I let them but I say “Be gentle, he’s very delicate,” and I pretend not to hover over their shoulders, where I can look down at his dream-bunny face, until I can’t stand it anymore and say, “Oooookay, that’s enough” and gather his warm, wriggling dream-bunny body out of their arms. 

    Next thing I know, my dream-bunny is a dream-flea.  He lives in a petri dish in the nursery.  I can’t hold him and it’s not easy to feed him with a spoon, though that doesn’t stop me from trying.  My dream-flea is not warm or wriggling but I love him so much that I stay up all night with him because he’s sick.  He needs his dream-flea medicine every few hours.  I try to administer it with the long-handled spoon. 

    My dream-flea is so small that I have to drop dye into his shiny little dish so I know where to look when I want to look at him.  He swallows the dye and it turns his little body bright green, but when I point my dream-flea out to visitors, nobody is interested.  “What am I looking at?  Oh, that?  Okay, well, let’s go see a movie.”

    I don’t want to go see a movie because my dream-flea will need another dose of medicine soon, but I agree to sit in the kitchen downstairs and drink coffee with one friend while another volunteers to sit with my cherished pet.  The nursery loft looks down over the rest of the house, so when my volunteer nurse leans over the railing and says, “Emily, you’d better come up here,” I look up three stories and I know I won’t make it upstairs in time to say goodbye to my little dream-flea. 

    Even though I knew that the situation was almost hopeless, my ailing dream-flea hardly stood a chance, I was fighting an uphill battle and wanting so badly to save his life just wasn’t enough to save his life, my dream-heart was broken. 

    When I woke up, I could still feel the slippery bubble of love and devotion and adoration that had formed in my throat.  I could still feel the desperate hope that I’d be able to save my dream-flea’s life like pulled muscles in my arms.  It never goes easy on you, love. 

  • Highly Notable Events in July 2008

    • posted almost every day
    • visited my brother at his house in DC
    • read three books in one week
    • watched seals watch me on the beach in Cape Cod
    • went on a coffee run and saw my all-time favorite America’s Next Top Model, Danielle Evans
    • spent $98 on running shoes designed for overpronators

  • Have all those unsorted loads of laundry finally caught up with me?


    From ffffound.

    My mind feels tired and sort of droopy, like it’s fallen slack. Has my brain atrophied from disuse? I’m in a list-and-label mood; maybe I’d benefit from a thorough cataloging project, like a tough workout for my head. I suffer this withdrawal the way some people suffer iron deficiencies.

    I’ve been milling around on the look-out for things to stick Post-its on. I wish I had a tape measure handy because I have this funny itch to measure my office and draw up its floorplan. What I should do is clear off the top of my desk, but it is so cluttered that I’d require a clean surface for the de-cluttering process.

    For now, here’s what I’m listening to this week:
    Moses by Patty Griffin
    Bleed for Me by Saliva
    Her Eyes by Pat Monahan
    When I Said I Would by Whitney Duncan
    Prince of Spades by Dispatch

  • What is it they say about location? Something . . . something . . . something?

    Back to Brooklyn tomorrow, but the quarters already seem close. As much as I look forward to coffee shops with three varieties of artificial sweeteners and clothing retailers that don’t sell neoprene waders, I’ll miss having a decent excuse to eat a non-non-fat muffin every morning and wear the same $2.00 tee shirt every afternoon.