Charm Obsession

I boarded the Juicy Couture charm train late in the game. I don't even know how long Juicy Couture has been making these things, but it all started for me in May 2007. My friend M. and I had started hanging around the costume jewelry case at Bloomingdale's staring down at the vast array of Juicy charms. They're large, and many of them are very detailed, with little rhinestones, tiny writing, parts that move, and parts that open, revealing little details inside, like a heart box of "candy", only the "candies" are many multicolored rhinestones. There's a jewelry chest that open, revealing tiny gold chains and strands of pearls, and a mini snow globe that really works.

I bought her the starter charm bracelet and a charm for her birthday mostly because I was glad that she liked something yellow gold (the bracelet is gold plated). She's quite the little goth and the whole time I'd known her, which is about 5 years, she'd disliked yellow gold, preferring silver. I love yellow gold-- I love white gold, too, but yellow is most flattering on me. I always thought yellow gold would be most flattering on M, too, because as a child she had a lot of honey/gold tones in her hair (which is now a darker brown).

Some time later, our friend R. bought me a Juicy charm bracelet, too, and I began collecting charms. Recently I got R. a bracelet as well. Juicy makes several different bracelets, so ours are all different, and we each have different charms. M. and I love to discuss charms when we're bored, ranking the ones we like and dissing the ones we don't.

This one is actually my *second* Juicy charm bracelet! After I saw the movie Blood Tea and Red String, I started to love red, white and blue. Not in a patriotic, American flag way, but more in a French-y, nautical, classic way.

The blue swallow (sparrow?) was a Christmas gift from M. and the nautical heart was a recent "just beacause" gift from DD. The red heart came with the bracelet and is the only part that doesn't come off.

I'm on the hunt for a red, white and blue popsicle charm and a red and white life preserver charm. Both are discontinued and difficult to find.

Soup in a Can

When people think of "comfort food" a can of vegetable soup does not usually come to mind. However, for whatever combination of reasons, I have loved Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup for as long as I can remember. Once upon a time I was playing with some kids who belonged to a friend of my dad. Our dads were negotiating over some decrepit, non-running VW bug for what felt like hours, and the (evil) kids informed me during the course of our play that meat is a dead animal. I was quite sure this was a lie, so I asked my dad, "Is meat a dead animal?" He was caught off guard and unprepared to answer this question, but I have to hand it to him-- he didn't lie. The (evil) kids said, "HA HA, WE TOLD YOU SO!" I was furious at "not being given a choice" about what I ate and refused to speak to my dad for several hours.

My mother's solution to my vegetarianism was Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup.
Okay, not very creative, but she was young and we were poor. I could make the soup myself, being careful with the electric can opener and standing on my stool at the stove. I ate a friggin' lot of that soup. And because I prepared it for myself and ate it the few times a year my mom let me stay home from school (I feigned illness)
alone, it took on this very pleasant association for me.

Now, I know how to make homemade chicken soup and homemade vegetable soup and potato cheese soup, and I'm not a vegetarian, but I still eat this soup! You know, it has a meager amount of noodles in it and the vegetables are square and small and mushy but I still like it.

I've finally found an acceptable substitute. It's Amy's Alphabet soup, and like my beloved it's got alphabet pasta, a tomato base and some small pieces of vegetables in it. Unlike my beloved, it's organic, and that's really good! We will live happily ever after. And so, Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup has been added to the list of (beloved) conventional foods I no longer eat, along with Diet Coke, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and any number of Dorito-Cheeto type items.

Goodbye French Country... Hello Modern!

Today I sold my dining table and four chairs. This thing has been with me through three apartment moves, two cities, a lot of dinners. It's a nice little round, with two leaves you can put in to make a pretty huge table that seats 10. The problem is that even at its smallest, it's a little big for any dining area I've ever had and am likely to have here in San Francisco. It fit well into the first apartment's dining area, but in the second one it was just totally wrong (it was really a kitchen with a breakfast nook, not fit for a formal dining table at all) and in my dining area now, it's too big. If it were square it would be fine.

So, I've got my heart set on a sleek square, chocolate colored wood table with a glass top, which opens into a rectangle twice its size for guests. It stores its own leaf--the glass leaf slides under the top glass surface. I love that! I'm sick of wrestling with this table's leaves, which are heavy and which are stored in fabric leaf cover felt bags and take up practically a whole coat closet. I'm on a quest to maximize our small space! My goal is to have a place for everything and everything in its place, and that every item will pass the test-- either beautiful or functional, and hopefully both. This table, which no longer suits, is moving on to another family. I'm so excited!

Made in Italy, Made in... China?

We received a small end-of-year bonus at work, and when I say small, I do mean small.
It was half the amount of last year's, and to add insult to injury, it came with a letter from the company owners in which they used the word "duel" when they meant "dual".

Fighting my initial impulse to wipe my ass with the check and flush it away ("money is money...") I cashed it at their bank, that day, and spent it all in one place (not hard to do): Kate Spade. I don't love a lot of Kate Spade, but I liked this distressed gold and pink wallet, and I'd been using a thin case that only holds an ID, bills and two credit cards. Coins were always loose in my purse and the ID case is insubstantial.

For the price, you would think this little number would be made domestically or in a country where workers are paid a decent wage! Kate Spade is made in China, and a rather obtrusive white tag with MADE IN CHINA was firmly attached to the inside of the coin section of the wallet. Tacky. My friend Ruth carefully cut it out with a very sharp pair of scissors without leaving any white behind and without cutting the seam of the pouch (now there's a pal!). I don't know how I feel about that annoying detail of Kate Spade stuff. Of course, the wallet was, to me, free. Of course, someone with more money sense might say I should have added the small bonus to a Roth IRA or something; ha ha. (As we said in junior high: "Not!") Well, the wallet is super cute and very functional, and my ATM card and bus pass are both bright lime green, which looks pretty with the hot pink lining. So, I'm happy.

Cougars and Daddies

There's more interest in mainstream popular culture lately about sugar daddies and "cougars"-- the term "sugar daddy" has been around forever, but is "cougar" a relatively new term? It's new to me! Playing with age and power has been around in the leather community forever, too, but it seems fairly recent that websites devoted to sugar daddy dating and cougars hunting dating have sprung up.

I only semi-jokingly told DD that if we weren't together I'd definitely be a cougar in a few years-- a woman who prefers younger sexual partners, usually at least ten years younger. Getting older is weird... personally, I always liked to date people older than me when I was in my twenties, because when you're twenty-three, someone forty-two is just so much more interesting, together, well-traveled, has read more books and has more good stories to tell than someone your own age... can help you choose your wine, knows the difference between cashmere and camel hair, and thinks you're just the most adorable, soft-skinned, funny fresh young thing they've ever laid eyes (and hands) on. Then, I liked that age and power dynamic. Now that I'm ALMOST mid-thirties, I think it'd be fun to be that person to someone younger. I think that makes me a cougar kitten now.

My R2-D2 Mimobot

This is my new little flash drive. It has 1G of storage and it's just so cute!

It's made by Mimoco. They do limited editions in waves. So many of them are simply awesome!

The Coolest Thing About These Rocks

... is that they're chocolate!
from Sweet Dish candy store in San Francisco...