My old co-worker (“old” as in years since we’ve worked together – not years in her age), just started a blog: What She Has….
Kelcey has a fantastic sense of humor and she’s a little bit of a shopaholic. So I can’t wait to see what she comes up with. Her last post detailed the reincarnation of her wedding shoes. Just add a little black dye and voila! Instant makeover.
Chris is away until a week from Saturday night (a nine-day business trip to Las Vegas and a three-hour time difference). He has requested daily updates on The Big Piece of Cake. Probably because every conversation we have goes like this:
Kate: Hello?
Chris: Hi – how’s it going?
Kate: What?! I’m sorry – George is screaming.
Chris: I just wanted to say hi and check in.
Kate: Oh hi! Everything’s fine except for Oliver almost decapitating Eleanor with the cabinet door. But other than that, everything’s been great.
Chris: I miss you guys.
Kate: What?! I’m sorry – George is still screaming.
George: [screams like a baby girl]
Kate: Eleanor do you want to say hi to Daddy?
Eleanor: NO!
Kate: Say “no THANK YOU.”
Eleanor: [sullenly] No tank you.
Kate: Oliver, do you want to day hi to Daddy?
Oliver: HI DADDY!
Chris: Hi buddy! I miss you. What are you doing?
Kate: Yeah – it’s me again, he’s busy watching Blues Clues.
Chris: Okay – I just wanted to say hi and tell you I miss you.
Kate: George! Stop it! What? I’m sorry – George is still screaming because Eleanor took his Matchbox car.
Chris: I’ll let you go I just…
Kate: OLIVER! Get off the counter!
Chris: …wanted to check in.
Kate: Okaybye!
So. Here are some highlights for Chris:
I woke up at around 7 a.m. and heard the twins awake but talking to each other and playing. Then I was able to doze in bed for another 45 minutes (Dream. Come. True.) until I heard Eleanor calling, “Mommy! Where are you?” Oliver wandered in around 7:50 and I had to get up.
The rest of the day was a blur with the exception of the following:
We went to the At Play Cafe around the corner for the first time since it opened months ago.
Everyone loved it. And they played happily with only periodic visits to tell me that they bumped their head, wanted to say hi or just wondered where I was (our theme song is “Mommy! Where are you?”).
We will be there every day until they go back to daycare on Wednesday.
We came home for lunch and I made some “break and bake” Valentine cookies as a treat. Oliver still calls hearts “I wuv yous” (swoon).
George and Eleanor took crazy long (three hour) afternoon naps. Thank you At Play Cafe!
Oliver and I watched the Mary Poppins chimney sweeps scene twelve times.
Eleanor insists on dragging me to see everything she does, “C’mon Mommy – I show you!” And George clings to me like a baby koala bear, no matter what I’m doing (letting Eleanor “show me” things, washing dishes, going to the bathroom…)
All three kids played in the basement while I cleaned up the mess that grows weekly (as Chris continues to tell me that he’ll pick up while he’s watching TV…never happens).
Everyone refused to take a bath. I said, “fine.”
Everyone ate far too many snacks. I said, “fine.”
Everyone was content to play while I read Us Weekly. Unprecedented!
All in all – it was a long day, but a good day. That’s a red letter day when it comes to Hood family weekends.
Oh – and I watched I Am Legend after the kids went to bed, and it was kind of horrifying. I really hope that nothing like that actually happens. Because even if I was immune to the virus, I know nothing about artillery and have no idea how one goes about installing those iron shutters on windows. At the very least, I would hope that Chris wouldn’t be out of town when it happened. He has far better survival skills. And at the very least, he’d figure out how to shoot a deer for dinner before locking the zombies out for the night.
Chris left early this morning for a nine-day business trip. And I have the hubris to not be worried about this. That’s my Friday confession this week. I am incredibly arrogant about my ability to take care of a three year old and two year old twins all by myself for over a week.
Remember, I work full time and my children go to daycare five days a week. So I don’t have a set schedule for our days, like a stay at home mom* would. And most weekend days, Chris is there to help out. Being at home all day with them may not sound like anything out of the ordinary for a mother – but it’s not the norm for us.
The reason that I’m not all that concerned about it is because I do spend a lot of time alone with them. I get up with them every morning, and on the weekends, I may be alone with them for three hours before my husband gets up. I take them to daycare every weekday and bring them home without any help. Sometimes I have them in bed before Chris gets home from work. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that I could just handle everything by myself for nine days.
But.
This will be a long weekend. A four day weekend – and it will NOT be the same as dropping them off at daycare and picking them up by myself. I will be here at home alone with them for four full days. And they are young enough that I can’t take them out by myself unless the twins are trapped in the stroller. As two year olds, they can’t be trusted to stay with me and not run in two different directions. And I can’t count on them to be content to sit in the stroller. In fact, I know they will just shimmy out of their straps and escape (a new trick of theirs). And it’s freezing outside. Far colder than it usually is in DC this time of year. So I can’t let them play out back where they would be safely fenced in. We will spend four full days trying to stay entertained inside with very few activities outside the house.
And I’m not anxious about this. Because I have an incredible talent for dissociation, as well as a strong invincible streak that I never quite lost with age.
I have hubris of classical Greek tragedy proportions (as well as the classical flair for melodrama – at least late at night after a glass of wine or two). And I should be pitied for this because like any other fatal flaw, it will be my undoing.
But I am a survivor. And this will not be the worst challenge I have ever faced. Possibly the most tedious or the most likely to make me want to set my hair on fire and run through my suburban neighborhood begging for someone to put me out of my misery. But not the worst.
At the very least I will arrive at work on Wednesday with fully functioning eyeballs. I’ll just have to remember to hide all of the toga brooches in the house.
*To moms who are at home full time raising their children: Please take no offense to the SAHM label. I am aware that you are not at home all day with the kids. That in fact you spend most of your day racing around running errands and ferrying kids to and from activities. I feel exhausted just thinking about your average day. I’m only using the SAHM term for lack of a better one. Thank you for your understanding.
Many of you may remember the Nie Nie Auctions that were held to raise money for Stephanie Nielson and her family. These fundraisers have continued in the form of concerts, ski events and the like. Even books.
Sue from Navel Gazing at It’s Finest had the idea of putting together a book full of funny blog posts to raise money for the NieNie Recovery fund. She asked for bloggers to submit posts and I’m excited to report that one of mine made the cut!
Sue says:
“The Something Cleverish book features posts from forty-three funny bloggers – all for one great cause. We even managed to rope in a few celebrity submissions from Finslippy, Eric D. Snider, Rocks in My Dryer, Big Mama, Sweetney, Daring Young Mom, TAMN and more. (You can find a list of all of the bloggers included in the book here.)”
All proceeds go directly to the NieNie Recovery fund. Books can be purchased as either paperbacks or downloads. And if you’d like to add the button to your own site, you can pick up the html code from Sue’s post about the book.
Big thanks go to Sue for all of her work on this project. She’s one of the good ones.
When I started my blog in the summer, I had no idea what direction it would take. But I was pretty sure that the only people reading it would be my friends.
Then I got a comment from a blogger that I had just started reading on my SECOND post. Of course, she was like my only commenter… But it made me think that just maybe other people, people that I didn’t actually know might want to read what I have to say. How exciting! But then I had to think about what I had to say.
I started out just writing for myself and about whatever happened to be on my mind that day. And it wasn’t always about my family or my children. So I thought that I wasn’t a mommy blogger.
And I was fine with that. I read lots of mommy blogs, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I, personally could really represent. In fact I said as much in that second post. I often feel like I’m still the high school babysitter trying to decide if I can get away with letting my kids have as many cookies as they want because it’s easier than fighting with them (and because I probably want another cookie too). So who am I to wax poetic about my parenting experiences and the miracles that happen every day in my house? Because really – I find it miraculous that they are all dressed and fed (that is if Goldfish crackers count) in time for me to load them up in the car to go to daycare. And that doesn’t do much for my mommy street cred.
Then as I continued to write about this and that, I got a comment from another blogger who wasn’t actually a mom. I found that as I read her posts, I related to her more than some of the moms I was reading. So it was suddenly clear – I didn’t have to be a mommy blogger. It wasn’t necessary for me to chronicle every setback in potty training or to report every milestone. If I got bored writing about it, then people would probably get bored reading about it. Instead I just wrote about my kids when I felt like it and didn’t when I didn’t.
I found several other blogs written by women who aren’t mothers (most younger than me) and was beginning to feel very well rounded in my social networking (I was even learning blogger lingo). But here is the problem. While I could enjoy reading stories about their fabulous travel plans, wild nights out, commitment to fashion and personal style, and even their scandalous pasts – any relating that I did was in retrospect (except for the scandalous past part since I’ve always been pretty PG-13). Sadly, I was starting to feel like the once cool older sister, realizing that her younger sisters are the cool ones now (disclaimer: I have never actually been cool, and I don’t have little sisters – but you know what I mean). While I still continued to read, comment and relate – I had to admit that I only had a visitor’s pass to the club. Eventually, I’d have to go home and change some poopie diapers.
So I’ve emerged from this online identity crisis with the realization that in fact I am a mommy blogger. A rather inconsistent mommy blogger – but a mommy blogger nonetheless. And it’s time to commit. I’m signing up for a lifetime membership. I can continue to visit the other clubs. I mean they ARE online – no intimidating bouncers to make me want to slink away in my virtual mom jeans. But I do have those poopie diapers to get back to…
And really – who decides what a mommy blogger writes about anyway? Just because some women establish their blogs as virtual scrapbooks or journals that their children can read and cherish in years to come, that doesn’t mean that I can’t write about pseudo-celebrity stalking. And as time goes on, I’m starting to realize that there are more mommy bloggers like me anyway. Not everyone is writing reviews on the latest and greatest developmental toys (although I’m very appreciative of those that do since I hate doing my own research). I’m not sure where I got the idea that the mommy blogging genre was a internet sorority for perfect mothers. In fact, I suspect that the ones that seem perfect to me would beg to differ.
I spent so much time assuming that I didn’t fit into this group, that I completely missed the fact that no one is setting any rules. I’m a mom and I have a blog. So that automatically makes me a mommy blogger right? Although I suppose that if I wrote about monster truck rallies or swinging in the suburbs it would be a different story. But that’s neither here nor there since I don’t. Clubs are created for people who have something in common, not everything in common. So why should I be afraid of being blackballed?
I’m not. At least not anymore. “Hello, my name is Kate and I’m a mommy blogger.” [This is where the other mommy bloggers should respond “Hi Kate.”]
I’m also going to try to get more involved in my local mommy blogging community. My friend Nicole has informed me that DC Metro Moms is currently taking applications for new writers. So I sent the contact an e-mail. Now I just live in fear that she will somehow miss my touching family focused posts (like Is Nothing Sacred? and Insecurity Blankets) and instead read all of the weird random ones (like I Hate This Chair and Mormons are Funny). Either way – wish me luck.
Even if DC Metro Moms decides that I’m not DC metro mommy blogger material, I’ll still feel secure in my new identity. I love who I was and will continue to enjoy all of those wonderful writers who provide daily reminders with their hilarious anecdotes and musings. But I’m also proud of who I am now and all of things I AM doing right as a mother. And one of those things is keeping a sense of who I am aside from the responsibilities that come along with motherhood. Because I’m more than just a mom. And sometimes I write about that too.
You see, I ALWAYS had a pretty bedroom. From the time I was old enough to have my own big girl bed to my years as a twenty-something, too poor to afford more than a closet that accommodated a twin-size mattress – my room was girly. I grew up with a love of delicately patterned textiles and soft colors. And I like nothing better than to sink into a cloud of down pillows. In fact, if I had to pick the one room of a house in which decor is of the utmost importance, I would choose the bedroom. And of course, my current bedroom is the ONE room in my house that ISN’T painted, ISN’T decorated, and IS generally a big mess.
It isn’t painted because we ran out of time before the twins were born (we moved into this house just three weeks before they arrived). It isn’t decorated beyond a few paintings on the walls because I don’t see the point until we actually paint the walls. And it is generally a big mess due to my husband’s inability to put his things away or get out of bed in time for me to make it in the mornings. But I won’t go into a big story about what a slob my husband is. I’ve already done that.
And not having a girl bedroom really goes beyond the decor. It’s the overall atmosphere. Now that I share a room with my husband, guy stuff can be found on every surface area and piles of newspapers and sports magazines languish in corners (until I can’t take it anymore and throw them out). When I retire for the night, I slip into bed, carefully lifting the corner of the sheets. My roommate prefers to rip the sheets out of their neatly tucked corners and kick off the bedding because it’s “too hot.” When Chris is away for work, I wake up in a bed almost as tidy as it was when I fell asleep. When he’s home, I wake up in a nest. And let’s be honest. I miss waking up in a room that smells the same as it did when I turned in for the night.
So yes – I do yearn a bit for the pretty girl rooms of my past, and I do a little drooling when I page through catalogs and magazines featuring pretty bedrooms with pretty colors and pretty objets strategically placed on the pretty dressers and side tables. But mostly I lust after pretty bedding since it’s really the cornerstone of the girl bedroom. So this week’s Materialistic Monday is devoted to images of princess worthy beds. Here are some of my current favorites:
from Anthropologie
from Pincone Hill
from Serena & Lily
from Anthropologie
from Pincone Hill
from Serena & Lily
And here is a bonus picture of the crib that I would want if I was a baby:
Okay – so one more bed-related story. Once on a business trip to Beijing (this was rare so don’t be too impressed), I had the MOST disappointing bed experience of my life. I can honestly say that I LOVE hotel beds, and most of the hotels I patronized at that time, were competing with each other for status of “best bed.” I had become accustomed to Heavenly Beds, Suite Sleepers, and the like.
After 24 hours of travel time and an arrival at what felt like 6 a.m. EST, my colleague and I were pooped. We arrived at our fabulous luxury hotel (I know – dream trip) ready to fall into bed and sleep for as long as possible. And when I walked into my bedroom, I saw exactly what I was hoping for: a big white marshmallow of a duvet with about 87 fluffy white pillows. Like a little girl, I took a running leap into the cloud-like arrangement. Only to hit what felt like a park bench. What the hell?! It was the hardest bed I’ve ever encountered in my life. I emotionally deflate just thinking about it. What a let down. And to add insult to injury, I found a listing for BED BOARDS in the hotel services brochure. I don’t think a sidewalk could be firmer than that mattress from hell. It just goes to show that there are different cultural expectations for sleeping comfort everywhere you go… Here at Chez Hood, the beds may not be girly – but they’re definitely softer than concrete.
This week’s Friday Confession is a little anecdote from my single girl in the city days. I once stalked a Leonardo DiCaprio look alike. But in my own defense, I did it for a friend. And we were in our 20s.
This friend of mine had a Leo obsession that bordered on pathological. It manifested sometime after What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and before Titanic. One day when I was at her apartment, I found one of those Teen Beat-esque biographies that are published for twelve year olds. There are no words that adequately describe the mortification I felt on her behalf. I even asked her how she was able to purchase the ridiculous item without dissolving into a puddle of shame in the check out line (or at the very least announcing to anyone with a clear view of her that she was buying it for her tween-age cousin). But her love for Leo transcended such pedestrian concerns. So we just left it at that.
Knowing all of this, I was not surprised by her explosive reaction when we happened to see what looked like Leo himself making his way through the crowd at the Toledo Lounge one Friday night. Now, I love my hometown DC and I had just as many good times in Adams Morgan as I ever did in Manhattan – but seriously, the chances of Leonardo DiCaprio showing up there on a random Friday night with an equally random group of friends was beyond slim to none. In the midst of her Leo lust, my friend did not take this perspective and would have hit the floor if I hadn’t caught her mid-swoon.
It took me all of three seconds to conclude that it must be Leonardo DiCappuccino, the much talked about Leo look alike that worked at a DC-area Starbucks. But my friend refused to give up hope until we had gotten a better look and made sure that this wasn’t in fact destiny handing her the celebrity of her dreams on a silver platter. And by “we” I mean “me.” My friend was far too agitated to walk, let alone conduct stealth reconnaissance. And by “stealth reconnaissance” I mean “embarrassingly obvious stalking.”
I must say – as far as friends go, I’m a peach. I followed the most likely DiCappuccino version of Leo upstairs and walked the length of the aisle and back to make sure I got a good long look. I was rewarded with a self-satisfied smirk from DiCappuccino and enjoyed the sound of derisive male guffawing and rude remarks as I made my way back through the crowd as quickly as humanly possible.
“Yeah – it’s not him. It’s the Starbucks guy,” I told her. While disappointed, she expected as much having had some time to come to the same realistic conclusion during my absence. But seeing as DiCappuccino was the next best thing to DiCaprio (at least in DC), she toyed with the idea of getting a table upstairs. I told her that the only way that I could ever again make eye contact with that conceited a-hole would be if I was ordering a latte.
Truthfully – I didn’t really say that last part, I just thought it. What I actually said, probably ran along the lines of “let’s leave now and never come back.” The things I do for my friends…
In a word? No.
I have entered a phase of motherhood that can only be described as a complete breakdown in reason, order and sanity. I really do feel like I live with three asylum escapees sometimes. And I saw it coming the minute I found out that I was pregnant with twins. It was right about that time that my oldest son turned one. He became a toddler, and apparently a crazy person.
And that’s exactly what I said to Chris: “it’s like living with a crazy person.” The tantrums over nothing – the mood swings – the manic activity. It was exhausting. And then we found out I was pregnant again. And then we found out that I was having twins. And then I realized that within just a couple of years, there would be three crazy people in my house. Actually five since Chris and I would undoubtedly be insane by then.
But of course, like all mothers, I adapted fairly quickly and found much of this unhinged behavior adorable. I readily admit that I do tend to find bad behavior amusing, and I often have a hard time addressing it appropriately (i.e. not laughing and saying “do it again! do it again!”). This would explain a lot about my children.
I don’t want to give the impression that I have bad kids. Absolutely not. They are very sweet and considerate demon spawn. And not one of them has a mean bone in their little bodies. Their daycare provider is raising them right! Just kidding about that last part of course (sort of). But my point is that they are just being their ages (three and two). And that involves a level of chaos that not even a team of Navy SEALs could suppress. And this translates into losing time that was once spent on personal priorities like reading, exercising, showering, picking socks up off the floor…
If you have toddlers, I suspect that I am describing your current home life. If you had toddlers a long time ago, you are laughing at me and saying, “just wait until they are teenagers.” If you don’t have children, you are thinking that you may just want to get a dog instead. Either way, I’m too busy fishing poop out of the bathtub to be affected by your validation, condescension or horror.
The way I see it is like this. You have a baby. You bring that baby home. And after a few weeks or months of feeling like you have entered a never-ending twister in the tornado of new parent hell, you miraculously wake up in Munchkinland. You marvel at how the world suddenly became technicolor and can’t wait to see what lies ahead as you continue down this sparkling yellow brick road. Little did you know that it would be flying monkeys.
Once you get used to being a parent to a baby and really start to enjoy it, you see your baby like this:
Then your baby becomes a toddler – and they become this:
How many times have I left a neat and orderly room for five minutes, only to return to what looks like a war zone? Um – pretty much every time I leave the room. Chris thinks we should just give up and never put things away. But guess what? I’ve tried that, and they manage to make an even bigger mess out of the original one. How does one manage to take a room that is completely ripped apart and make it worse? I have no answer for this, you’ll have to ask a toddler.
A perfect example of a simple daily activity that they manage to turn into a circus is going somewhere in the car. The car was once a zen-like refuge for me. I would quietly sip a coffee from Starbucks and listen to music or a recorded book. Traffic never bothered me because I could just tune it out and enjoy a little time to myself. No work e-mails to answer, no laundry to be done. Just a little peace and quiet. This no longer exists. Now I have an entourage.
Every weekday, I commute with my children. I drop them off at daycare on my way to work. Just getting them to ENTER the car is the first challenge. Inevitably, I find myself chasing them in circles. Then once I finally get them in the car, I have to drag them out of the driver’s seat, the “way back” (we have an SUV) and the space under the seats. I have to rip unidentifiable scraps of old food (at least I hope it’s food) out of their hands before they manage to reach their mouths. I have to force rigid abs of steel back into car seats so that I can buckle harnesses. I have to yell, cajole, tickle and spank them into submission (consistency is my middle name). Then I spend the majority of the drive time answering all 500 of my daughter’s questions, climbing into the back seat to re-buckle my oldest son’s seat belt at stoplights and moving the passenger seat forward so that my youngest son can’t kick the pause button on the DVD player. Once we arrive at our destination I have to replace socks and shoes that have been flung off and retrieve sippy cups from wherever they have been launched. I arrived at work completely exhausted.
Another previously sacred time was my daily shower. I am perpetually cold and like nothing better than to lose that chill in a nice hot shower. It doesn’t even have to be a long one – just five minutes of total warmth. But now the bathroom door is open, and two or three sets of eyes observe me rush through my morning ablutions. A ritual that now involves keeping one foot ready to nudge someone out if they decide to climb in with me (an activity often followed by the task of re-dressing them in dry clothing). The one positive thing about my shower experience is that it’s possibly the only time that I do something without at least one child attached to my body. It is no longer “daily.”
Evenings used to offer some nice, relaxing me-time. I’d have a little dinner, do some reading, maybe even watch some prime time television. Now I’m lucky if I can change out of my work clothes before it’s time to go to turn in for the night. If I do run upstairs to change, I have to answer to a chorus of “Mommy! Where are you?” or keep an eye on them as they open every drawer in the room while I’m pulling on my sweat pants. If they don’t follow me upstairs and I don’t hear any concern for my whereabouts, then I know I’m in trouble. I’ve already related the incident of the black and orange Halloween clings stuck to the playroom ceiling. But there are unlimited others that involve “working together” to create some kind of mess or mayhem. Recently I came downstairs to see my three year old son hand a full, OPEN gallon milk jug to my two year old daughter. Eleanor, who is lucky if she weighs 25 lbs soaking wet, immediately began to fall backward, and I only just made it there in time to grab her before she was taken down by the jug of milk.
So no – none of that is sacred anymore. Not my personal time. Not my personal possessions. Not my personal space. But in spite of all of that, I can’t really complain. I have something far more sacred now: their time – this time. Someday I will have time to read and go to the movies and have leisurely dinners out with Chris. Someday I will go on vacations and actually sleep on the plane. Someday I’ll be able to just get in the car and go without any concerns about forgotten lunch bags or lost blankies. Someday I’ll have alone time again.
But I’ll never again have two little bodies cuddled in my lap as I smell their freshly washed hair and read them Go Dogs Go. I’ll never again have a little boy say, “I wuv you mommy,” as I tuck him in at night. I’ll never again watch three little people dance with wild abandon around the house pretending to be the chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. So if I have to put up with some mess and chaos and drastically lowered expectations for personal time and appearance? I’ll take it. Because this fleeting moment in my life as a mother is worth it. This time is more precious and sacred than any other I could imagine.
Last summer, I decided to ask everyone that I invited to a virtual dinner party to guest post on my blog. I thought I’d randomly ask the people from that “guest list” to guest post for me – probably once a month. Because I honestly think that everyone should love them as much as I do. So far, we’ve heard from Kacy, Anastasia, and Jozette. If you missed those posts I highly suggest reading them.
This month’s guest is Amy of doobleh-vay fame. I can’t tell you how much I LOVE Amy. She treats every day like a new adventure in her life. She writes a lot about her family and her quest to make each day a creative experience. But at the core of every post is a powerful sense of self. And I think that’s what I love most about her (that and the way that she always writes “yr” instead of “your”). I’m thrilled to introduce her to anyone that isn’t already a fan.
I was reading a blogger that I love yesterday and she was talking about how we should blog authentically. How we should blog for ourselves and stop worrying about what others may think. She wrote about being true and unabashed and unapologetic and I freaking loved it. I feel like I had a click last year where I really stopped thinking so hard about what I was doing with my blog and just did it. I wrote what I wanted and people stayed. Those people that I thought might leave when I talked about the underbelly of my life stayed and even others came by to hang out. It has been a great lesson. I don’t have to box myself in by just talking about art and creativity and short people. I can also talk about sex and binge drinking and my lust for Wellington boots. I can talk about my whole self and make this space what it was really meant to be: mine.
In this click I found my place, my room of my own. I do want readers and connections (I am writing a novel for heaven’s sake. It is one of the reasons I started a daily blog: for practice and networking). I just want the connections and blogosphere interaction to be real and true. I want to love my blog at the end of each year. I need to want to make out with all of my archives and not be upset with myself for writing for others. I need to not worry.
I like how one of my friends calls my blog “more pub than blog”. I am cool with this. I love going to the pub. I feel like it took me a bit, but my blog is really my own blog now. It is named doobleh-vay which is W in French.
That W stood for “whatever” to me and a friend in high school. We would use it like slang.
Someone was a bitch to us? We would shake our heads and say “doobleh-vay”.
We were late somewhere? “doobleh-vay.”
You get it? So anyhoo. I named my damn blog doobleh-vay.
It really was like a gift though right? I should never have boxed myself in because it was really meant to be about whatever.
Just like so long ago in high school the person I thought I was supposed to be was killed by the person I was meant to be anyway. I am just like I was. I am about everything and friends with the diverse. I am the everyman blogger and I am just fine with this (finally.)
Back to my soul sister (at least I think so) Maggie. I also saw in her about me section that she likes Gloria Steinem. She has a photo of her and the wise one.
Once in college Gloria came to speak and when it was time to have the Q & A portion of the lecture I stood up and raised my hand.
I walked to the microphone and said:
“Hello Gloria my name is Amy Turn and I just want some advice. I am graduating soon and I just need some advice. My mom says to ask for it from those you admire.”
I stepped away and she smiled at me and leaned down and said:
“Amy Turn, be a woman that takes no shit!”
That has been many years back but it is really starting to resonate in my adult life again.
So readers. Take no shit this year – not even from yrself.
Just write. Write yr life.
I found Wendy’s website when she commented on one of my posts (about my shoes of all things). I loved her designs and I was particularly taken with the Mia Scent Necklace (named after Mia Farrow for her role as Daisy in The Great Gatsby). I would have purchased it on the spot if it wasn’t for the fact that it is 18k gold with diamonds and not really in my impulse purchase price range.
I thought that it would be perfect for Materialistic Monday (it definitely falls into the category of “things I want but don’t actually need”), and planned to find other less expensive options to feature. But I was a bit disappointed in the search results. There just don’t seem to be all that many scent necklaces out there (unless of course you are into Avon or Wicca – then the selection becomes a bit more robust).
It took some digging, but I was able to find a few other designs that I liked:
The Morning Glory Antique Silver Locket Necklace with Turquoise Flowers from Heatherly Designs. Very ornate and well suited to girly girls (of which I am one).
The Heart Scent Locket from AFMetalsmith (red scent fabric was used for the picture). This locket is very modern and manages to make a heart look “edgy” – impressive.
This image came from Scent Scribbles. I don’t know anything about the site or this particular piece – but I really liked the shape and style.
The Sunflower Scent Locket from Equinox Gifts, has a very simple design that appeals to me. Great for silver devotees (and sunflower fans).
This museum piece found on dhub.org was designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, Paris, [c 1940]. I’m in love with the detail (see below):
The pink glass flower, a gold and dark blue, papau shell fly and a gold flower are too tiny to spot on the picture above. (Incidentally, I have no idea who Elsa Schiaparelli is and never knew that “papau” was the name of this kind of shell. That all comes directly from the description paragraph.)
A few of the lockets above are very affordable – but all in all, it’s not easy to find anything like a costume or knockoff version of the Wendy Brandes piece. And that is unfortunate for me because I think I could actually use a scent locket.
I’m one of those unfortunate people who doesn’t really retain smells (I mean, unfortunate when it comes to perfume and scented lotion – not when it comes to cigarette smoke and garlic). My perfume wears off in about three seconds, so I’m more likely to spray it on my sleeve than my wrist. A scent locket would solve that problem.
For now I’ll just have to continue to spritz my clothing and hope that Wendy adds a new “Recessionista” line to her current fine jewelry selection (with a knockoff Mia Scent Necklace of course).
