Indy + Me | Carmel, CA
I'm in the mood for a road trip. If you're feeling equally get-me-out-of-here, check out National Geographic's itinerary for doing the Pacific Coast Highway right.
My favorite J.Crew t-shirt (the Painter's Tee) is available in a short sleeve.
Wearing these wishbone earrings pretty much every day lately.
Lunch.
This is the best summer cocktail in the universe. Hyperbole, you say? 'Tis not. Frosé is essentially a tarted-up slushie for grownups, except instead of Berry Berry Buzz or whatever, it tastes like...wine. Except better.
Scenic Overlook | Berkeley, CA
So this was the post I was originally planning to put up on Monday before we arrived back at my house and life became extremely dramatic. Its alternate title is "Too Old For Coachella...But Not Too Old To Throw Out Peace Signs In A Photograph!" (That little slice of genius was a collaborative effort.) All is back to normal now - with the exception of some water damage, but I think we got off pretty easily there considering the amount of flooding we're talking about - and Lucy is A-OK, so let's talk bags.
Lulu & Georgia Kelim Rug + Legs + Matching Pasta
Our house is pretty tiny - we've been over this - but it feels bigger than it is because we use our patio area so much that it's essentially a second living room. A couple of months ago, I decided to expand the patio by laying deck over a long, narrow spot that wasn't much more than a ditch running alongside our dining area...but the guys who I hired to do the work insisted that they couldn't match the flooring that was already installed; that color, they said, was no longer in production. (It is. I was in Home Depot the other day and hello, it is right there. I am annoyed, but it's also my fault for not looking into it myself, and whatever, it's just flooring.)
Here are the things that happened on Saturday: Francesca, Brie and I (plus kids) got in the car with the intention of driving to Marin County to meet Francesca's brother Mookie for a lovely, semi-glamorous lunch before "hiking" (strolling) through the Ewok Forest. Then, an hour into the drive, traffic and carsickness happened, and we thought it best to just take the nearest exit, which happened to be Berkeley. And so the lovely semi-glamorous lunch was replaced by grilled cheese sandwiches and a pitcher of Bud, which was obviously fine by us. We wandered around in vintage shops (I picked up a gold lame maxi dress that is wildly inappropriate for my present lifestyle of Safeway runs and baby-corralling, but whatever it's amazing) and made a string necklace for Kendrick to match the ones that Indy and Goldie wear, and then drove up to a scenic overpass and took photographs of the fact that we have all simultaneously decided that we are excited about miniature bags like the ones we last wore in 1996.
Those bags were what I was originally planning to write about today. But then we drove home to make dinner, and my plans changed. Because around 7PM, Francesca asked where Lucy was, and in the same instant all five of us realized that we hadn't seen her in hours.
Lucy is getting old; very old for a purebred dog. She sometimes spends hours sitting in the bathroom underneath the toilet, staring at the wall that she can no longer see thanks to the cataract that has developed over her single eye. She sleeps most of the day. She gets stuck on the couch or on a chair or on the edge of the bathtub (how she gets up there, I have no idea), and barks and barks until someone comes to help her down.
Hell's Kitchen | NYC
I have been DYING to show you this sweatshirt.
This photo was actually taken in NYC when I was there last month, but I'm only posting it now because of a very valuable lesson in retail that I recently learned: please, oh please do not promote a product that you do not have in sufficient quantities to accommodate demand.
Way back in 2003, I shot a commercial for Capital One in which I aged from a 1950s teenager to an eighty-year-old woman and then pushed my boyfriend into a lake, all set to the song (Now I've) Had the Time Of My Life. I can’t remember what, exactly, this had to do with credit cards, but I’m sure it was something.
The whole experience was very weird, half because it amounted to a little social experiment in how differently people treat you when you visually age 65 years overnight, and half because it involved making a plaster cast of my face. Trust me: if you're not claustrophobic before having twenty pounds of plaster poured onto your head to the point where you cannot see or move, and can breathe only through two tiny straws inserted into your nostrils, this experience would do the trick. (I for-real almost lost it, but the cute guy auditioning to play opposite me held my hand while I spent half an hour frozen in cement, so that was a plus.)
Even given the overall oddity of this experience, one of the things I recall most clearly from the shoot was the makeup artist breaking out a little machine that blew out a fine spray of makeup, and that she used to cover up my tattoo. At the time, what she was doing seemed super-fancy and complicated, but in the years since airbrushing has made the leap from something used only by pros to something that people like you and me can keep in our bags of tricks for whenever we feel like looking not just “good,” but spectacular.
My son would like to know if he can sleep in his new bunk bed tonight.
I am guessing the answer is no. #sendhelp #andsnacks
You want to hear something super annoying? Yesterday I was about an hour and a half into assembling my son's new lofted bed (the solution that most of you suggested when I asked what I should do about getting a twin bed into his tiny bedroom), and I was completely ready to give up. I was pouring sweat (I hadn't realized that furniture assembly constitutes cardio, but apparently: ayup), I could not for the life of me figure out what the random black plastic thing in my hand was supposed to do, and I had managed to somehow lose a seven-foot-long piece of wood that was a tiny bit essential to the construction process.
Monterey Bay | California
Because this morning's post was so light and fluffy, I thought I'd bring it back down and talk about something really, really important:
...
Whale-watching | Monterey Bay
It's a beautiful summer day. The sky is blue; the birds are chirping; all seems right with the world. So let's talk about death, shall we?
Here is why I want to talk about this (or, more specifically, feel like I need to): because until very, very recently, death was not a topic I could even begin to unbox in my mind without sparking an emotion that was some singularly crushing combination of despair and utter panic. The feeling that I got when I allowed my mind to wander to the death of anyone from my dogs to my husband to my parents to myself was so intense it felt like a living thing that I had to keep under lock and key, because if it got out it would consume everything it touched. I felt it - still feel it - physically, like a fireball in my chest. If I let it take even the smallest breath, it instantly expands beyond the borders of my body.
