Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

There are points in your life when you wake up and find that your orchids have died, your yogurt is expired, your coffee is stale as you dug out the cast off bag of grounds in the back of the fridge you tossed aside for a "rainy day" (three or so years before) as you didn't care for their grunge, and your only pair of clean pants are a pair of jeans that even an alcoholic troll would find unattractive on you.    There are points . . . Now, now is one of those for me. I should probably be ashamed about the oddities of my expired yogurt, but--yeah-- here are the things.  It's bacteria anyway.  Also, with as much Pepto as I've been drinking these days can it make it any worse? The Lupus drugs are a bitch, the side effects are a nightmare, and  . . . What? I'm a glass half full kind of gal, so I'm thinking perhaps inside one of these expired yogurt cups we will find the secret to eternal salvation, a cure for these disgusting side effects, and maybe an end t...

I haven't really posted anything about sewing in a while, since--well--probably in earnest since before Oregon . . . in all fairness, I doubt anyone wants another run down of my sculpting scraps into a swanky, borderline hooker bra, the abuse I'm giving my serger with a well crafted raglan after another, or of the hilariously obscene things I add to the crotches of my jeans and say while making them (okay the fly details are just drop dead jovial, and I will not apologize for kisses on my fly, compasses, or xoxo labels). Yet . . . I've also found myself making more basics and eschewing the need to deviate from classics, tried and true, and what I know works.  Why? Part of that comes from the six or so weeks I spent out left last summer.  I left New York with a backpack, a carry on, and one well-crafted suitcase.  In two months--during insomnia hours--reading and pinning notes on the capsule wardrobe craze, and then I spent several days combing through my closet and dr...

In circa 1974, long before I was conceived  my Mom bought some mauve meets lavender crepe silk.  Well, we think it was '74, as it was before she met and married my Dad (in a whirlwind of 1975), and I came along a year later (so, yes, I was planned).  So, 1974 it is.   The silk, with the floral sidekick and two spools of matching thread, sat on my Momma's shelf for years.  As a kid I would see that white plastic bag, peek inside, hear her scream "Don't touch that!," and I'd always say "When you gonna make that?" In the summer of 2013 she asked me to help her organize a fraction of her sewing abyss.  In doing that, among the scraps of fabric that I use for muslins, the fabric neither of us know where it came from (or why someone would make or buy it) that is also muslin central for me, she relinquished and gave me her 30+ year old silk.   I greedily grinned and promptly ducked it in my suitcase, so she couldn't take it back.  I the...

Things I did this week: 1. On Friday I went and saw my long time friend debut in his first off-off Broadway play. Our paths have traversed since our college days involving copious amounts of beer and cheap vodka (okay, I was the connoisseur of pure rot gut cherry vodka and Pepsi (we were a Pepsi campus) and he was the consumer of Natty Light . . . and yes, Natty Light trumps the swill cherry vodka I poured down my throat for nastiest of the super-fly po man's brews.   Hands down.  Sorry.  Not Sorry.).  We realized after the show that for the first time in our decades plus evolution I got to watch him on stage and didn't have to do anything back stage. Yea, twisted not-so little secret . . . I was theater tech back in the day.  Haven't done anything with it since some point in my mid 20s I'd guess. Like a jackass, I forget to get a pic of our mugs but rest assured . . . The Actor's Theater held a great three-day run of Exodus's first play Murder...

Not long ago it seams I found myself having more than one conversation on the simplicity and relative ease of making little stash bags, as I call them.  I tend to make these up pretty regular, as there are always scraps lying around.  Of course I make them and people swipe them , so it all works out I guess. Also, I had a stash of zippers that worked perfect here, and  . . . it is nice to change your makeup bag in your purse.  How often do we change purses and not that bag? Or not even wash it? Washing it . . . that is also easier when you have a new bag to put your goods into while sudsing the other up. Also, someone I know has never made a bag.  She's made bras, jeans, etc. but not bag.  I won't throw her under the public bus (but I did just email her this link), but I do hope she makes a bag for her purse now.  ;) These bags, well . . . Yup, the contents of my bag.  The blue tin: my sewing kit.  The red...

Two weeks ago, my bestie Tanfer and I did our annual day in Port Jefferson/ Stony Brook Village.  Meandering, lunch at Tiger Lilly (our now stand by, as it never lets down), coffee, and lots of window shopping is always a nice way to spend a summer day.  She's pre-approved the photo of her modeling the Cosmo I made her, with a zipper.  Apparently it is making it's international debut in Canada next week, as we jaunt for another conference.  Yes, I know.  Woe, woe, woe.   A conference requiring a passport.  Aside from needing more funding, I do love a good write.   And, yea, her bag was filled with briars and other things.  On Monday, as we meet at an airport, I've got a hoodie for her . . . what? You can't go to Prince Edward Island and not have a sand colored hoodie to look like a capture from a movie scene.   In the course of writing galore, and never completing enough, one hell of a Lupus attack that--well, if you li...