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Lifestyle

The Bags That Lied

Zac by Zac Posen navy saddle bag

This bag is legitimately the only thing making me want to get dressed.

Bag c/o Shorts (similar) Lipstick Sandals

When I was in my early twenties, I did a lot of shopping on Canal Street, in New York City. Well, not on Canal Street itself; that's mostly fruit stands and storefronts selling plastic frogs and three-for-the-price-of-one Big Apple t-shirts, all of which I'm all stocked up on, thanks. Where I did my shopping was in the fluorescent-lit, cement walled rooms above and behind these storefronts; you got to them by following someone muttering "real bags gucci chanel gucci chanel" down an alleyway, and then through a locked door and down winding hallways until you got to the place where the bags were stacked ten-deep on white plastic tables.

Lifestyle

Links & Love & Stuff

Jordan Reid

The product I decided to leave out of my makeup routine for a bit, why late people are the best people (as explained via stick figures), and a Facebook phenomenon that I find deeply confusing. (And more, of course.)

Lifestyle

Wear It Wherever

Potato chips: the accessory that never goes out of style.

Vintage Dress (similar)  All Saints Sandals  Sunglasses

One of my most constant refrains, when it comes to clothing: "It's super cute. I have nowhere to wear it." And it's true: jeans and t-shirts just make more sense for a job that mostly involves sitting in front of a computer, and a life that involves children who run really, really fast, mostly in the direction of things that they shouldn't run towards, like the edges of cliffs and such.

Lifestyle

Five Things I Don’t Want Anyone on the Internet to Know About How I Parent My Child

Five things I don't want the internet to know about how I parent my child

Ah, the Internet, the mostly mythical village where mothers come seeking support, and mostly click off feeling mildly judged and crisply jealous of someone else’s postpartum abs. If you’re looking for another article about why you should’ve breastfed for three more years (too late now) or you’re fishing for a panic attack spawned by another global tragedy, the Internet would like you to take a seat in its wide lap.

The Internet is also a place where we can choose the parts of ourselves, our days, that we wish to present. We can be sure that all of our photos only show us from the waist up, share articles from the New Yorker that makes us seem impossibly intelligent, and #humblebrag about how we spent the day with our kids going on adventures because we are a Cool Mom. Despite what I share, I am usually wearing yoga pants, reading about some trashy political scandal, and contemplating why Legoland even exists.

Here are some of the things I don’t generally share on the internet about how this whole parenting thing is going:

Lifestyle

Buildup

coco rocha haute mess for vogue

Oh so that's where my Twix bars went.

It was the snowboarding glove that made me realize just how far I've come from this glorious day; the day when I got rid of a studio apartment's worth of possessions. I have not seen that glove's partner in a good five years, and yet - despite the fact that we have moved three times since I last laid eyes on it - I am absolutely positive it will turn up someday. It has been sitting either on or under that bench (which is located in my bedroom, in my direct line of vision) for six months, at least. It is dusty. I don't have any idea how or why it came to live on my bench, or why, but it has at this point become a part of my daily landscape; I regard it fondly, like a slobby little friend who I know I can call on in a pinch for all of my snowboarding-glove needs.

I have used it once, actually: as a makeshift gardening glove to help my neighbor weed her garden. After I was done I gave it a shake to get off the dirt, and plopped it right back down on the bench in my bedroom. Where it belongs.

Lifestyle

Beautifully Odd

Now this looks like a good wedding.  

Take a look at the photo below this paragraph. See anything missing? Like maybe on the far left side of my ring finger? Sigh. (This isn't actually a huge deal; diamonds that size tend to cost relatively little to replace so long as you're not a stickler for quality, which I'm not. And besides, Kendrick has weird radar for locating tiny, sparkling things like earring backs and wayward stones, so it'll probably turn up somewhere.)

Style

Just One Thing

Blogger wearing stuart weitzman highland boots

NYC | Fall 2013

Stuart Weitzman Thigh-High Boots

OK, so I'm started to get excited about fall shopping. This makes no sense at all, because I am right this very minute sitting at my dining room table sweating off all my makeup and wishing air conditioning wasn't so damn expensive. It also makes no sense because fall fashion is wayyyy less fun in California than it is on the East Coast, both because there's something about multicolored leaves that make things like peacoats and boots more exciting to put on, and because I would look not-so-mildly ridiculous swanning up to kindergarten dropoff in most of the items I've been drooling over online. (Like these. Very lovely; very nonsensical in my life at this particular moment in time.)

Anxiety

The Most Interesting Thing About Me

jordan reid berkow strauch headshot

My 2005 head shot, which was clearly very serious business.

I know I said yesterday that I wasn't going to publish the post I wrote over on Medium here because I figured many of you have already heard bits and pieces of my "I was fired from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" story, but last night I was laying in my bed, half-reading about the Taylor Swift and Katy Perry drama but mostly thinking about why I'd published an original piece on a site other than my own - which is not something that I typically do; I like to save the best stuff for you guys - and you know what I realized? The real reason I didn't originally want to publish this post here was because the people who read here every day know me. Really, really well. And sometimes it's easier to release the stories that make me feel the most vulnerable into a world populated by strangers rather than writing them on the walls of my home. 

It is humiliating, that some (many?) people think that the most interesting thing about me is the fact that I was once almost on a TV show, and then wasn't. It is embarrassing, explaining to people why the fact that I don't act anymore is a positive thing for me, why I truly, truly wouldn't have it any other way, and watching their foreheads wrinkle in pity anyway. If you are a person who was once an actor - or a musician, or an artist, or a writer, or anything "creative" - in some ways you will always be an ex-actor/musician/writer; that will always be the way you are introduced at a party (the subtext, of course, being that of course you wish you were something other than what you are right now). And so for years, I tried to bend and twist my past into a story that wouldn't make people whisper behind my back once I'd walked away: god, could you even imagine how much that sucks for her?! 

Eat

What’s In My Refrigerator?

what's in the refrigerator of a mom of two

Jello Pudding makes everything better.

I spent last night and the bulk of this morning writing a massive post exploring my getting-fired-from-It's-Always-Sunny-In-Philadelphia story through the lens of gender and sex in the workplace. It's essentially a retelling of the post I wrote on the subject many years ago, but it's only over the past couple of years that I've started to understand that what I went through, while devastating, wasn't especially unique - and I think that's an important part of the story to explore. (I also wanted to tell the story again because my first try was terribly written and I'm annoyed about that.) I didn't publish it here because you've already read parts of it if you've been reading RG for awhile, but if you'd like to check it out it's over on Medium.

Anyway. I'm exhausted and headache-y from the exercise of dredging up decade-old feelings, and so today? I am going to write about refrigerators.