Apparently I'm not the only one trying to use cute as a solution. I've been etsystalking Queen Frostine the last few weeks, and she just announced that she'll be giving 100% of the profit from this freakin ADORBZ Icing Ring will be going to the Japanese Red Cross. I couldn't not blog it. Plus I'll be buying one of these after payday, convenient since she's doing this indefinitely. Or you could buy it for me.
Did I mention that it's only $15?
(I also love the Pink Frosting Ring that she's doing the same thing with for Planned Parenthood.)
Other things that have been calling out cute to me lately:
Yellow. Everything yellow! Supercute. How did I not know of this band before? Thanks Jenn!
Mismatching patterns and prints and colors and tying it all together with ostentatious jewelry. My mom would be horrified if she went out with me.
Tokidoki.
Tokidoki.
Tokidoki.
I can't emphasize enough the sheer pleasure of putting on pink lip stain that tastes like watermelon and has cute shit on the tube.
I have these great cute plans for my house that include maybe learning to weld so I can make 6 and 7 foot metal flowers and stick them out in my pasture so when I look out back I'll always have a field of wildflowers. Colorful flags, wall decals, and unnecessary things like toaster cozies. A lot of Nikki McClure prints.
I'm at a crossroads and I can go bland and boring and depressing or I can cute the heck up and make it a better day. Yeah, duh.
Driving to pick my kids up at 4:45 this morning I had tears streaming down my face, and they're still coming. Sometimes life, love can be extrememly fucking brutal.
So I was driving and feeling like the world is collapsing while trying to make it alive in the misty rain to see my babies. Then BAM Beach Boys All Summer Long.
It's like macaroni and cheese or clothes straight from the dryer, I was still bawling but I was singing at the top of my lungs "T-Shirts, cut offs and a pair of thongs...." through every stupid heartbreaky sob and I knew that just like all the times my dad has given me a hug and played Lovers Cross for me or my friends have responded instantly to any sign of distress, I'd make it through.
The universe is my support system, working in ways to uplift and keep me well, and little reminders like a favorite song on the radio (which rarely works, this is the real miracle in all of this) let me know it's okay. Everything I need will come to me if I let it.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.
Right now I'm just putting a few things out there. This was from my status update on facebook:
Confirmed: Burlesque lessons on May 18th and June 1st with Hells Belles.
Confirmed: One month of unlimited yoga classes at Perfect Balance Yoga.
Confirmed: I am officially in a relationship with myself. Let the James Franco-esque-self-smooching begin!
Somehow in the muddled up reality that I've been inhabiting lately I totally missed celebrating my First Vegetarianniversary.
Uh... that's kinda big.
Warning, this is gonna get vegetarian-high-horse-y. I try not to do this, but dammit, its my big day.
A year and 4 days ago I was totally freaked out by meat thanks to bottle feeding a dying baby goat and making the connection that every time I had Indian food I ordered goat curry.
I was done, that was it.
The goat died, it really had no chance. Doug brought it home from the Cherry Auction, a flea market swap meet kind of place where it's easy to wanna impulse buy the heck outta some livestock. Problem is the animals there aren't healthy. At all. As soon as I'd washed my hands and put flowers out in the pasture under the tree where we buried him I tried to eat a hamburger and couldn't make it happen. I smelled goat shit. I heart the pitiful bleating. I pictured the limp neck and legs that would no longer hold him.
Done.
I was the girl who blogged about cheeseburgers with such love and devotion that (with the help of an article run about my blog in the local paper) my favorite place to grab one sold out of buns. That's right. Sold the fuck out based on my voracious appetite for meat.
But I think that once my mind made the association it flipped a switch that couldn't be turned off and adopting a mostly vegetarian diet was pretty straightforward. I decided to base my eating habits on my sister's because she's been at this whole no-meat business since she graduated high school- I could go to her for troubleshooting. She follows a Pesca-Lacto-Ova-Vegetarian diet, and so have I for the last year.
I've only had meat once or twice in trace amounts since making the switch. I enjoyed an egg roll made by Cho- you can't turn those down because they're so amazing- despite some ground pork and bacon in with the veggies. And of course, I had corned beef for St. Patrick's Day... a slice almost as big as my pinky fingernail!
I've missed some things. The Cheddar Burger being one of them, I also miss beef stew and the way the meat melts in your mouth, but then I always remember the reason I'm abstaining. Flesh, dude. I'm willing to bet I'd cook up nice and tender too if I were in a crock-pot for 16 hours. Let that marinate for a few seconds.
Yeah. Gross.
I also like that I can still make terrible food choices and have crazy calorie days when I want to. I think my love for Chile Relleno Burritos (so important it gets proper noun designation) transcends the love I felt for cheeseburgers. And french fries, oh my god, don't get me started.
That said, I'm gonna be tweaking things a bit with my diet. I'd like to say I'm giving up fish, but the sushistarved side of me just isn't ready for that step yet. I am, however, going to have one day a week where I eat all vegan. Just to try it out, y'know. I'm looking at Fridays right now. I might increase it to two days, and who knows, I might naturally fall into a vegan eating pattern some day.
To prepare I've purchased The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone on my Kindle, as well as Veganomicon and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. Even if I do still enjoy my Chile Relleno Burritos and all of their eggy cheesy goodness and I am not ready for a full vegan lifestyle, at least I'll have an arsenal of delicious recipes that I can make regardless of what dietary path I take.
Side note: I never thought this would happen but I'm even creeped out by leather now.
I really LAVA being a picky eater now. I love that my diet is more environmentally conscientious than it was last year. Overall it's been a great switch and I look forward to trying out some tasty new things in the coming year. Happy Vegetarianniversary to me!
I've really wanted a great orange color for my eyes.
Something that will say "Yo, I have orange freakin' eyelids, jackass!"
I don't know if you've noticed, but orange is a hard color to come by. In the Sephora in our JCPenneys the only orange I've found is by Make Up Forever... and I'm pretty sure we only just got it in this week.
Anywho, Sugarpill has been getting a ton of good buzz all over the internet, and really gorgeous people with amazing makeup skillz have been just churning out tutorial after pretty tutorial using Sugarpill. I don't like to miss out on anything and I noticed that there was a pretty badass looking orange eyeshadow called "flamepoint" so I was sold. It officially was time to woman up, order some and see for myself what's so great about this stuff.
I ordered two other colors- to complete my "my eyes look like a sunset" trifecta- Dollipop and Buttercupcake. With names like those how could I go wrong? Answer is: I couldn't. Holy crap.
I'm a sucker for packaging and Sugarpill had me at "OH HELL YES!" with the whole free sticker, free sample, omg a-cat-cuddling-a-pill thing going on.
I figured I'd do a few different looks. I'm not a makeup expert, I'm just a really easily exciteable girl, so both of my looks look... similar. But the sentiment is there. The first run was all three. So was the second. Shut up. So here's what we have:
I used Urban Decay's Sin Primer Potion underneath and the colors popped beautifully and dramatically.
I swept Dollipop into the crease, brought some Flamepoint in at the middle because I love yellow and need it to stand out as much as possible, I did the inner corner with Buttercupcake. The colors blended really well, I didn't have any trouble getting it to feel like a cohesive work of art, and I lined the lower lid with Flamepoint and Buttercupcake layered one over the other with really delightful results. Overall I loved the application.
But then the day wore on.
We all know how completely unstable I am, this is no surprise. So when I fuh-lipped out on my poor roommate and quickly dissolved into tears (to his pleading voice saying "No! Don't cry, your pretty makeupppppppp!") I figured my first time around the block with Sugarpill was doomed to end up a neon river down my face, and if it was a really good tantrum, maybe cascading down onto my chest too.
When I looked in the mirror though post breakdown my mascara was gunky and gross, but holy cow- the Sugarpill survived.
/maiden voyage.
My second look I wanted was the one I initially needed orange for- baseball season. This is my first attempt at SF Giants' Rally Eyes!
Once again I used Urban Decay Sin Primer, and then I just started brushing copious amounts of orange onto my whole lid. I really love how Sugarpill layers and it got really intense where I wanted it to. I then threw Buttercupcake into the inside corners because I just really love that, and I swept a teensy bit of Dollipop in the creases just to make the orange pop a little more. The only non-sugarpill part of the look is the bit of Urban Decay Zero that I lightly lined the upper lid with (Gotta have orange AND black! Go Giants!) and Tokidoki Candycane that I used to highlight the brow. And you know, duh, the mascara (Cargo blu_ray).
In January, my vibrant friend Aurora issued a challenge to myself and another friend of ours, Jennifer Emerling to take this adorable Miss Alphabet dress and style it up in this friendly fashionblogwar.
I loved the way this dress made my boobs look. I don't have the most gigantic boobs, so the fact that it made me look like I did was a winner winner tofurkey dinner.
I also loved that the dress matched my BIEBSY clip. Fuck yeah, Bieber.
The night started at Iron Bird Cafe where I me up with Cho, Nicole and Michael and I scarfed down an Animal's Revolt wrap before Pecha Kucha started.
We then dodged raindrops across the street to Fulton 55, which has the best bathrooms. Ever.
And I took one last shot before Cho and I confused, and then rickrolled the Pecha Kuchagoers.
Michael and I went to Woodward Park and got progressively more and more winded as we walked directly up every hill we encountered. So we sat on shit. Like trees. And rocks. With plaques on them that have the Frenchs mustard logo emblazoned upon them. Yeah, we were confused too.
Finally gonna do Gala Darling's Radical Self Love Bible. It's gonna happen. I need to focus on the positive, move myself toward my goals and start shining again. And really, she's just amazing. I need to make this my mantra, especially this line: "May today be the day that you learn to love your reflection in the mirror. May it be the day that you fall truly in step with your own beauty, & the beauty of the world around you."
Because this daily breakdown crap is getting ridic. I'm better than all of this self hatred. I am better than whatever size pants I fit into on any given day. No one gives a shit if my muffin top is ruining my life, and I shouldn't let it ruin me. Better yet, I should stop wearing pants. Skirts make me really happy and I never feel ugly in them.
-Hide my scale. Thinking of handing it to my roommate and letting him hide it from me. Its gonna suck because I'm like, always on that sucker.
-Erase my daily chart of my weight. It has done no good to see how my weight has fluctuated up and down for the last month.
-Organize makeup. It's always good to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Wait, what?
-Stop negativity in its tracks. Use dry erase pen if needed since all negativity always starts in front of the mirror. Someday you'll walk into my bathroom (creep) and find the mirror is covered in nothing but love love love.
-Remember, I am beautiful for things beyond my body. Enhance those things.
-Glow.
New Orleans has always been on my list of places to visit, and admittedly for entirely literary reasons- I picked up a copy of The Awakening by Kate Chopin in the 11th grade and have been in love with NOLA ever since. A subsequent obsession with the Imagination Movers (yes, the children's show) has made my desire to visit their hometown much stronger. I am a stalker at heart. I work for a student exchange company and our conference was to be held in New Orleans, so I flipped out a bit when I realized I'd be wandering the French Quarter on the company dime in exchange for 8-10 hours of conference time every day. Uh yeah. Totes do-able!
However, it wasn't until Weird Fresno asked me to grab a voodoo doll and maybe hit up a few cemeteries that I realized that the bulk of my trip wouldn't be spent reading, stalking or even on business. It would be an all consuming immersion in the supernatural side of this bad-ass-old-ass city. Okay, so maybe I just walked (quicky) by a few haunted hotels. Shut up.
New Orleans is a beautiful city. I got there at night and fell in love with it at night. It may smell a bit like vomit, but sniff a little more and you'll discover that its vomit mixed with an amazing history. In Fresno we don't really have old, so I got a little reverent when it came to the sheer age of the buildings and businesses. One of my first stops was Lafittes Blacksmith Shop to have a beer in America's oldest continuously operating bar- rumored to have once belonged to the pirate Jean Lafitte as a fancy little legitimate business. While pirates aren't necessarily supernatural, I justified the excursion by saying booze=spirits and spirits=paranormal. Also, I ordered a Blackened Voodoo beer because I needed something to take the edge off of the reality of "built before 1772".
Of course, as I looked around the bar I realized I had actually dreamed about this place before. A year ago I'd dreamed I had won a trip to NOLA and here in this bar I met and ultimately wooed Imagination Mover Smitty. I'd even sent the movers a fan-e-mail about the dream last year. I knew there was a piano around the corner of the tiny bar because that's where I made my move on unsuspecting Smitty. 1 hour in New Orleans and I'm already discovering I'm slightly psychic. I know, blew my freakin' mind too.
That was just about it for my first night- I was wanting to wander further down Chartres to where a few haunted places were but my travel buddies seemed less than thrilled. Instead I stuffed beignets down my throat and ruminated on the weird connection I already had with NOLA.
The next day was full of conference meetings, but we did take a bus tour of the city and saw the 9th ward and among the devastation and rubble still prevalent, there was all kinds of hope and rebuilding. And Brad Pitt homes. They come with an escape hatch in the roof. It took a few minutes to take that in.
It is a completely humbling experience, especially to hear the way the locals talk about it- New Orleans seems to be full of optimists. Big disaster, but look what we're doing together to bring our community back. It was a good lesson in checking my own bitching, that's for sure.
The bus tour also included a stop at the St Louis Cemetery #3. Once again, I was dumbstruck while in the presence of a place so rich with history. Plus, New Orleans is know for their unique funerals and even more unique way of burying the dead. I'd type it all out, but I was smart and just left my camera rolling when my tour guide was doing her thing, so lucky reader, check out this video!
After the bus, I struck out on my own, determined to find something haunted and cool. And of course, as I was getting myself lost, I looked up and found the Hotel Provencial.
At one time a confederate hospital, this unassuming chateau is a quite, er, spirited. You're likely to open a door and see a bloody civil war soldier on a bed or according to some- blood stains that disappear and reappear on the floor.
Chilled to the bone, I kept on my way through the French Quarter and picked up the aforementioned voodoo doll- one for protection. Can't go wrong with that, right? The guy behind the counter at Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo commented on how red is a good color on me. I was hoping he meant my hair, and not a reappearing bloodstain.
As the night wore on I decided it was time to make use of one of the many tarot card readers set up along Jackson Square. I've never had cards read before, so I didn't really know what to look for in a clairvoyant. I chose Devlin. I liked his name. And his dreds. Shut up.
Devlin actually surprised the cafe au-lait right outta me. Everything was spot on as far as where I am right now- breaking out, having arguments I need to have, deleting people from my life and my facebook, etc. That set me up to believe anything he said. So it looks like in the next six months I'm going to need to be really commitment-phobic, buried in paperwork, and, heaven help us- I'll be really fertile in July. I may borrow back that voodoo doll for protection.
I also got some advice for a problem i've been having that shed major light on the situation. Now call them charlatans and fakes, whatever, but My Devlin totally helped me to get the resolve to make positive changes. So even if he was only giving me some generic "Are you getting back what you put in, if not walk" advice, it was pretty good. I'll take it.
Word on the street is that this place was used in filming Interview With The Vampire- and I do mean on the street, we overheard a Vampire tour guide say this. Anyone know what I'm talking about because I certainly don't. Anyone wanna confirm this for me?
The next day was even more inundated with meetings, so I didn't have much time at all for ghostly pursuits, but I did manage to find a cute, stylized voodoo doll for myself. It's a two headed giraffe. Yeah, I know. The city is filled with the authentic and then the over the top tourist stuff. But really. Button eyes? A bow? I couldn't say no!
I'd love to go back someday, actually spend some time exploring and learning about New Orleans, but for now I'm really grateful that my job managed to get me there for a 4 day weekend where I could get stoked during the day about working with kick-ass international kids and then indulge the side of me that likes a good spine-tingling thrill too. New Orleans, I Lava You!
That alone is enough to send me forth in a beignet-fueled fury of LAVAblogs, what a city.
And I'm sure this trip will just keep LAVAing up here and there, but for today I'll be keeping it simple.
I decided while in New Orleans against color. See, it's a colorful city- beautiful, neon, shimmering, painted and old. So I could never take a photo with my shitty camera and shitty skillz to match, say, a postcard, so why bother? But Sepia... well I've been on this pretentious kick lately, and I doubt than anything could ever be as pretentious as taking an entire vacation's worth of photos with the sepia setting on my camera. Keatonesque to the MAXXX.
So what did I wear? Well it was conservative- I was at a business conference all weekend after all.
Dress: This is why blogging from not-at-home doesn't work. Name a Target brand and it might be it. Maybe Merona? Shirtwaist. And its purple graybrown.
Tights: Duh. Worthington leggings, clearance uniform.
Cardigan: Black with sequins- Xhilaration
Shoes: TOMS, Gray oh wait, they really are.
Makeup- Well it doesn't fuckin matter if its in sepia, does it? You can bank on some serious Urban Decay all up on this mutha, though.
Elevators are really great places for photos. The Chateau Le Moyne didn't have the most amazing elevator, but it worked its magic anyway.
6 months of depression (wait its more like 9 months now) and feeling less than amazing has really affected my posture. Time for holding the head high and regaining confidence. Oh, that's a lake-thing back there.
I'll have more from my trip to New Orleans later, but that's a huge undertaking and coming back to Fresno was akin to a slap in the face. And her name was "What the hell kind of reality am I living in, anyway?"
I have spent my whole life actively avoiding television. In college I got a TV only to drown out my roomate's TV... and all I ever watched were a handful of DVD's (The Jerk, The Producers, Bill and Ted's, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pee Wee's Big Adventure) and that Talk Sex with Sue Johanson show.
Post college I've made a point of never getting attached to shows. And even when I liked something I'd never remember when it was on. Really, until I found Baseball (read with the same weight as "found religion") I had very little use for the TV other than a distraction for my kids when they're completely destructive.
But now I live with a major TV lover. Like, a 24 hours a day TV is on kind of person. He has opinions on shows most people have never even heard of.
I've been really resistive. I can't deal with TV noise, commercials or really, really dumb reality shows.
But... after a while...
Well, lets just say I've gotten really sucked in.
First came Shameless. What can I say? It's cleverly written, funny, surprising, and heartbreaking. William H. Macy is just great as Frank, the alcoholic dad who everyone just learns to live around, no matter what trouble he manages to get into. (Waking up in Canada, faking his own death...) You learn to appreciate the dysfunction of the Gallagher family.
Then I warmed up to Top Gear. I know nothing about cars and have very little interest in them. I do like watching a bunch of guys be guys and push cars to the limit- often the cars aren't just the fancy kinds that just look ridiculous to me, but they're pieces of shit. I never get bored with this show.
I watched Episodes before Shameless, but didn't get really excited about it right away, so it comes after Top Gear. It's predictable, but funny. Just not quite as clever. But it does have Matt LeBlanc as himself, which is pretty great- the huge dick jokes never get old.
And finally, this one takes a lot for me to admit but I've become not just merely interested in, but actively involved with a SciFi show. And its totally embarrassing, I don't do SciFi.
There, I said it. I went from making fun of my roommate for watching it to thinking he's a god among men for DVRing it for me. I did a "Which Torchwood Character are You?" test. (Gwen, thankyouverymuch)
It's just fucking great okay. Plus boy on boy kisses. Yeah, you'll never question me again.
So there you have it. I now have shows. Thanks a shit ton, Hashley. Another piece of my identity has disintegrated and I lava every mindless fucking moment of it.
