Blogger Recharge

Today I was lucky enough to attend Lookbooks and FashionIndie's Blogger Break Room, which was a perfect way to start the week.  Spray tans by Be Bronze*, manicures, facials and massages from Spa Merge, complete with charging stations, computers and everything a blogger needs to make it through Fashion Week.

Any place that puts one of these in my hands within two seconds of me walking in the door is A+ to me

It was great. As I left to head to the Sachi + Babi show at the tents I was waxed, bronzed, painted and preened to near perfection. And as I looked around the room at the ridiculously stylish people filling the room, I had the feeling that I had snuck in somehow and would be discovered at any moment.


"Quick! That girl spends her evenings in old man slippers and can't not laugh when someone says the word 'fart'! Get her out of here!"

But somehow I slipped under the radar and got to pilfer all the goodies.

Girl got her nails did.

They even took my picture and entered it in a contest, which you can help me win by clicking here and 'liking' said picture.

What an odd world, where all you have to do is write about your daily doings and people will give you free champagne and make you look pretty.

This is the part of Fashion Week where I always get a little Debbie Downer and Erin Existential, so maybe I should just be quiet and drink my free champagne.

Besides, I think someone just said 'fart'.

*All the products and brands present were great, but this stuff was really awesome. I am tanning inept but their clear formula is fool proof. Five minutes to put on and it doesn't smudge or smear afterwards at all.

Enough is enough.

The other day, I went to a very fancy gym. The type of gym that has a 6-month waiting list, classes you've never heard of and Keihl's in the bathroom next to designer sinks*.

And I found myself standing for quite a while near the entrance watching people come in for their morning workout. I quickly noticed a pattern amongst the members. It was a simple pattern, really. They all looked exactly the freaking same.

This website is a joke, right? RIGHT?!

 Slim-hipped women with Botoxed foreheads, perfect hair and neurotic children marched in, one after another, like a stream of specially designed robots.

We are not dudes. We are hot chicks.

Their uniform was a loose but clingy T-shirt over black leggings atop Minnetonka boots, accessorized with subtle but obviously expensive jewelry. Even the children all looked the same: scared looking, red-headed boys who could use a cupcake, a roll in the dirt and an adventure.

My hair is not perfect. My hips are not particularly slim. And my workout outfit made me laugh when I put it on that morning. For a brief moment, I felt less than these women somehow. Then I simply felt alone.

For your viewing pleasure, an irrelevant picture of ducklings.

I searched in vain for a friendly face but indifferent gazes slid over me. I told myself that these were, in all likelihood, kind, intelligent and lovely women. That their children were probably happy, funny kids with lovely lives.

And while that is probably true, I still felt somehow desolate in a sea of bored, desperate people.

Now, I should have prefaced this little story by stating the following:

Most of my teenage rules of fashion have long since been discarded (ie never wear pink with red, never mix metals or leather) but a few remain.

-Never wear more than 3 items of the same color, unless a 3-piece suit is involved**.

-Never wear anything with a cutesy saying or image embroidered on it, especially not holiday related kitschery.

-Never wear sweatpants that bunch at the ankle (at least not in public).

-Never ask me what I think about your outfit if you don't want my honest opinion.

Simply a few rules that I dress by. And on that day, in that gym, amonst all those women, I saw an older woman wearing bright red sneakers, bright red bunchy sweatpants and matching sweatshirt complete with embroidered snowmen on it, bright red sunglasses and, to top it off, bright red lipstick.

She was laughing her head off. And had she taken the time to ask me what I thought of her outfit, I would have honestly said, "it's bloody brilliant."

But of course, she was too busy guffawing at whatever the person on the other end of her cell phone call was saying to give a shit about what I thought.

Image courtesy of Advanced Style. Note: this is not the woman I saw.

Now, I had planned to have here a long conclusion paragraph about why she was such a welcome sight and how important it is that we treasure the people like her in our lives. But, really, what it comes down to is this: people like her exist. And that is enough. It may even be wonderful.


*I find it very odd that such a thing exists.
**And even then exercise caution.

Love, love, and warm places

Have been devouring the Sartorialist's posts from Brazil lately with growing envy. I, like the writer himself, have fallen in love with this Brazilian girl and her style.

From her bags, to the colours, everything is picture perfect. All images courtesy of The Sartorialist.



And my favorite:

I want it all. The bag, the shoes, the skirt. Lord.

Home is.

Home is:

roadside farm stands, woodsmoke, Tibetan peace flags, colonial houses, abandoned tobacco barns, too much patchouli, and good people living in beautiful little towns. I was there for a sad occasion, but there was a lot of joy.

The Boy's family has a farm. Yum.

I went for a run in a thunderstorm and came across this field of sunflowers.

At the time it seemed very meaningful, although it's a little lost on me now.

I didn't know this kind of thing was unique until I left.

Please excuse the pictures, as they were taken from a U-Haul I was schlepping around. Also, it was raining most of the weekend. It was one of my favorite kinds of weather: warm, rainy and prone to storms.

My namesake

I was named after two strong, wonderful women: Sarah Bernhardt and my grandmother, Sarah D. Hartshorne. Although they were very different, they both held true to their values in the face of incredible obstacles, played it close to the chest, and did wonderful things for the world.

My grandmother was beautiful, although I think she didn't know it. Her mother was a renowned beauty, and Sarah felt like an ugly duckling growing up. She raised four sons and welcomed her home to them and their families at any time, at a moment's notice. At the same time, she taught, got her PhD, and was an intellectual giant.

She was not, like Bernhardt, a traditional mother or grandmother. She was always honest with me, even when I was very young. She spoke to me like a person, not a little girl. My father always credits her for making him bookish, as do I.

Here is a video of her making cookies with my cousin and I. This video shows, among other things, how giant and gangly my hands and feet are, and how beautiful my grandmother was.


She will be greatly missed.

Purple doorknob, meet shiny dishwasher.

Big news!

Next week, The Boy, Rue and I are packing up all of our worldly possessions and moving! To a big, new, beautiful apartment. It took awhile to find a place that The Boy and I both liked. He likes new and shiny places with fancy appliances, and I like older places with things like purple glass doorknobs:

Hello, lover.

But we found a place right down the road with fancy new appliances and beautiful old embellishments and way more space than we even know what to do with.


We're excited for Rue to run up and down stairs for the first time. I think he'll take to it nicely.

I love him.

We're packing now and I think The Boy is a little cranky about it. Moving can be stressful and boring and stupid, but I kind of love it. Maybe it's the nomadic kid in me, but moving means going through everything you own and getting rid of what you don't need. It's streamlining your life to fit into a new, exciting place. It's figuring out where to hang your memories and art. It's big empty rooms that wait for your living and loving.

Also it means that late at night when we're sick and tired of packing we get to go to Friendly's for ice cream.
I tried frozen yogurt. It was delicious, but I think maybe we should go back tonight so I can get something more like this:

Maybe.

I like boys that don't make fun of girls who get ice cream two nights in a row.

Dear NYC,

image via NYTimes Magazine

I love you. It's been weeks since I saw you, and I rather missed you.
When I saw the boy stop the subway doors from closing so a girl would make her train I remembered how lovely you are.

Your roofs in Brooklyn are also wonderful places for cookouts with old friends. Your churches are quirky and beautiful and I should have taken more pictures. Your streets make me happy.



That is all.

Mother's Day: a beautiful day of gratitude or a misogynist ploy to keep the masses from appreciating mothers all year round?

To be honest: I don't really care.

I think my mother is beautiful.

She has tattoos, loves leather, has a red and yellow kitchen,
collects Virgin Mary statues and is fierce, loving, and rather erratic.
She also wrote a book

And I'm very glad to have her. Her pushing and nagging may very well be the best things that have ever happened to me.

Sometimes

Sometimes Picasa is just a little bit intimidating.

Sometimes when I wake up from a nap it seems like going to bed for good is the only thing to do.

Sometimes vegetable soup, lean pockets, British TV shows and snuggling with The Boy provide a compelling alternative.


Waking up from a nap at 10:25pm left me a little disoriented and woogly. So, instead of doing things I should I looked at pictures from Louisiana and thought of places to go next.

Sunset in Baton Rouge

Purple Vespas, fried clams and Dame Julie Andrews

It's raining outside, and hopefully turning my little seedlings into big, strong plants.

Look how big they've gotten!

I'm inside, bundled up at my desk drinking green tea, snuggling with Rue and thinking about the past few weeks. I thought I hadn't written about all the things that had been happening because so very. many. things had been happening but when I sat down to write I didn't know what to say.
Writer's block of a sort, I suppose. But really, I just have so much to say that I don't even know where to start.
So, in the immortal words of Dame Julie E. Andrews, we'll start at the very beginning. It's a very, very good place to start.

Boston!

I love Boston maybe best of all in the spring, so I always try to go up around my birthday. Spring in Boston means the marathon, it means the Commons are in bloom, and it means Sullivan's at Castle Island (aka Sully's) is open for business.

Yum.

Sitting in the fresh, spring air looking out at Southie's beaches eating piping hot fried clams and crinkle fries (is that actually what they're called or do I just call them that?) is one of the more delightful things in this world. Totally worth the long wait in line. Besides, what fried food shack worth its salt doesn't have people overflowing out the door?

Boston has tons of beaches but the ones in Southie (the South End, for those that don't know) are my new favorites. They have great old beachhouses, and the restaurants in that area are a mix of old Irish pubs and newer, hipper places. The houses are beautiful, too.

Sometimes I like cold, windy Northeast beaches even better than tropical ones. Sometimes.

If fried clams didn't smell quite so good I would have gone and found out what this cool building was. A museum, I think.

One of the things I love most about Boston is that some place sprawling and green like this is only a two minute drive away from the heart of the city.

South Station.

The biggest draw, for me, of course, is my lovely friends.

This is the only picture I got of my Lovely Boston Host.

My Boston friends are the same kind of weird as me- and I think it's very important to find and hold on to people like that in this world.

For example, my friend who grew up in Jersey (which I think gives him a greater appreciation for Boston) and I are more than happy to take the two long T rides, bus ride and 10 minute walk just to go to the zoo and hang out with our friend the gorilla, whom we have named Joan. I miss Jersey Friend a lot. That kind of dedication to non-traditional friendships is hard to find.

There's also my beautiful business major friend who doesn't mind if we're the only people on the dance floor at a club. I miss her a lot, but I can't wait to visit her when she moves to Dallas this summer. Her apartment building has a pool.

And my Lovely Host for the weekend and I bought a purple Vespa our second year in college and named her V. Any time we didn't have to be in class (and sometimes when we did) we'd go on Boston adventures- check out new neighbourhoods, bakeries, coffee shops and parks. Late night adventures were the best- people spilled out of bars and shouted hello to the two funny girls driving a purple Vespa, in heels, in the middle of the night. I miss my Lovely Boston Host and V a lot.

Boston may be freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer, and it can sometimes seem hostile to non-locals but it's a great place to be young and fearless. There are nooks and crannies that you can call all your own, even if you just go for a weekend. I miss Boston a lot.

P.S. I found out what that building was- it's the Castle Island Historical Site. Here's a little bit about it.

P.P.S. I was going to write about Louisiana today but there's just too much. Soon, though. With online photo galleries and everything.

To each, then, his own fate.

In light of my new not-embarrassing-myself-policy, I've given up trying to achieve this look:



Ethereal blonde, pale skin, and nearly matching makeup and clothes. I've got one hell of a girl-crush on Cate Blanchett.

But no matter how much peroxide or orange eyeshadow I use, that will never be me. And that's all right.

The most commonly used definition of the word 'to embarrass' is this: "to cause confusion and shame to; make uncomfortably self-conscious; disconcert; abash: His bad table manners embarrassed her."

Now, I cannot speak for Jesse Ball, but I know that the definition I've been using in my new philosophy is this: "to put obstacles or difficulties in the way of; impede."

By acting or dressing in a way that is not comfortable to me (which is to say, feels unique to me), I put obstacles in the way of my self. I impede the self- that elusive object that expresses my desires, isolates me from the herd and allows me to believe that despite the din that surrounds me, my small voice is important.

We all act in ways that impede our selves- whether it's by agreeing to something we don't want to do simply because we're afraid of saying no, quelling an inspiration because we're afraid of the reaction or letting someone influence us without inspiring us.

Of course, it would be unrealistic to try and stop cold turkey, but it's something I hope to be more and more mindful of as time goes on.


So. If you are most comfortable as an ethereal blonde, either through peroxide or nature, all the more power to you. I am a Garnier Nutrisse brunette. To each, then, his own fate.