What a day!

HOORAY!!!! We have a new president! I am so, so happy today!


It would have been great to be there...though where did all those people use the bathroom? (If you have ever read Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary...do you remember the part when the kindergarten kids wonder where and when the characters in a picture book go to the bathroom? Funny stuff, but very real!)I just have to add this pic of little Barack. Such a cutie, and such a great symbol of promise for all of us.

A wonderful feeling of hope and happiness is in the air...I feel so lucky be a witness to this great day!

YIPPEE!

Hello again.

My goodness, it has been a long time. One of my new year's resolutions (I still make them, still don't really keep them) is to blog more. I think of lots of things to write about, but somehow taking the ideas and adding the photos and getting it all onto the blog seems like a lot at times.

So, today is Martin Luther King Jr. day, and tomorrow is the inauguration, and all that makes me happy, and thinking of MLK and Barack Obama makes me want to do good things...so I'll start with writing on my blog. I'll take care of purging junk from my house and writing more letters on real paper and eating fewer sweets (all my other resolutions) on Wednesday. When we'll have a NEW PRESIDENT!!!

Here is a short list of things I like:

1. Chocolate covered mint Oreos...in the photo above. That and a to-go cup of hot chocolate helped me get through IKEA the other day. Obviously, I wasn't worried about that crazy "Eat fewer sweets" resolution.

2. My new label maker. It is small and makes lots of cool labels. I can even choose languages on it, so if I want to label things in French, that is an option. I don't know French, but I like that if I did learn French I could label things in...French. Merci, label maker.



3. Bookstores. Big ones, small ones, Amazon.com...they are all good and just looking at the outside of a bookstore makes me feel happy. Full of possibilities. That is also how I feel about stationary stores and art supply stores...like if I get stuff there, fun things will happen.

4. Dreyer's Limited Edition Peppermint ice cream. I ate gallons of this stuff during my winter break, and consumed an entire bottle of chocolate sauce with said gallons. Geez golly, it was good.

5. My students. They are lovable, honest, annoying, cute, aggravating, smart, not-so-smart, goofy little kids and I love them for all that.


6. Puppies.


7. This creepy-ish picture is one I took of my Christmas tree. I used no flash, so that is why it is creepy. But I love Christmas, and holidays, and trees and presents. It was a great winter break and I am ready for a wonderful new year.

Next time...beauty products!! And books!! And perhaps I will eat more chocolate and share that with you, too.

Happy new year.

Sweet Stuff

Remember the bag of candy you accumulated on Halloween...and then counted, sorted, and hoarded? This bowl of loot belongs to Julia's sweet daughter, and man, it was hard to not grab it from her and run out of their house screaming "Mine, it's mine now, muahahahah!". But I controlled myself.

I have a problem with sweets. Some people can eat one small piece of candy a day and feel satisfied. Some people can eat sweets every now and then and they are all good. I want something sweet after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I want sweets after I have had sweets. No meal is really complete for me unless there is ice cream after it. Sigh. It isn't good.


Here is the cake we ate at Nina's wedding shower. I didn't make it, but I frosted it. Doesn't it look like it has about two inches of frosting on the side? Because, really, what good is cake without A LOT of frosting? And a side of ice cream?

This posting isn't about a lot...just how good candy and cake and cookies and brownies and chocolate mousse and cheesecake and fudge are...and how I want them.

I want them bad.

I had hair yesterday...it's gone today...

Something I REALLY, REALLY don't like...my haircut I got yesterday. My hair was about 2 inches below my ears. There were long ringlets and little ringlets. There was volume. I liked to make it big.

And now it is about as long as the middle of my ears. The long ringlets are all gone...and the short ringlets are all gone. I can't make it big, because there isn't enough of it. When I try to style it curly, it curls up and up so that I have weird wispy curls all around the crown of my head, like a thirties flapper with a really bad hair-do.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A THIRTIES STYLE FLAPPER WITH A REALLY BAD HAIR-DO!!!!!!!

So now I am back to drying it straight, and that will have to do while I grow it back for the next three months. But that curly hair was making me feel good, and now my confidence, happiness, and peace of mind have taken a bad blow.

Wow, hair is powerful. My power is gone...I blame Delilah at the hair salon (Not her real name, but I am not going to out her online. But I am going to call the salon and complain. Already got the manager's name.) Damn you Delilah!

It's been a long time! How are you?

So, the healing process...it's a killer. Times when you think you are all alone, times when you feel great and like you're all better, times when you couldn't be lower. And really, if you're lucky like me, you're not alone, because you have awesome friends that love you and care about you. And the great times and the crappy times both come and go, and slowly, hopefully, the crappy times get fewer and the great times get more frequent.

It's a cycle. I am in the crappy part again.

BUT, I am skinnier, and my hair is longer and curlier, and I have a new tattoo. I love my third graders and I am doing a lot of cleaning and purging in my flat. My cats are very happy, because that guy that didn't like them isn't around anymore, and I am available more often to give them warm places to sit. So there are some good parts.



I am posting pictures of my trip to the Alameda Antiques Fair. Nothing related to beauty products happened, except I should have worn more sunscreen and I had to obsessively keep my scarf on my neck because the tattoo was less than a day old. But it was fun and part of the healing process. Yea.

That's all for now...I hope you're doing well!

I Heart New York

I took my depressed, grumpy, crying, cranky, sensitive self to New York (actually, New York via New Jersey) for a few days. Thank you to Hannah, for setting up the futon in the basement for me...and driving me around...and listening to me moan about my crapped out love life! Also, thank you to Tracey, who walked around SoHo and shared train rides with me and, yes, listened to me moan about my crapped out love life. Thank goodness for friends!

I went to several fun places on the trip. Even though I was feeling pretty miserable, New York City got into me and was a good distraction. I love that place! My dream is to have a little one-bedroom on the West Side that I can go to whenever the urge strikes. A girl can wish....

I ate lunch at Little Owl Restaurant with Tracey. There was an unusual amount of people gathering across the street and taking pictures...over and over again...it turns out the building was the exterior shot of Monica, Rachel, Joey, and Chandler's building on "Friends". So funny...people really wanted to see it!I ate a salad and french fries...I was still in my "not-eating-I-am-too-sad" phase then.

We also went to Purl and Purl Patchwork, where I ogled lots of awesome fabrics and Tracey signed up for a sewing class. The shops were soooooooo tiny, but totally neat and cute and, if you are into fabric and yarn, very yummy.
And I got to go to ABC Carpet, a home goods store I have been dying to see for a long time. It is like the mom of Anthropologie. It is huge, taking up an incredible chunk of NYC real estate, with multiple floors and another store across the street. Full of jewelry, clothes, bedding, rugs, housewares, lighting...ooooo, me likey.
Hannah and I got caught in a big thunderstorm one night, where in the space of five minutes all the thousands of people walking, eating, drinking, chatting and skateboarding on the streets disappeared into the thousands of cabs that magically materialized...we couldn't get one to save our lives, so we walked back to the car and got nice and soaked. It was fun, though.

More to come...nothing here is about beauty products. Hmmm. I'll work on that.

And if anyone can tell me how to make the photos next to each other here, I'd love to hear it!

I must like something, right?

It is hard right now to think of things, people, places, or anything I like. But I am going to force myself to list some now, because I could easily start slipping into a very dark, bad place from where I wouldn't be able to get out. How the heck to people recover from this break-up/betrayal shit?!?! I have a whole new respect for a big group of people out there.

Anyway, I like...

*tea
*soft tissues like Puffs Plus
*school supplies
*my bed
*not having to take off my make-up because I cry it off--handy!
*my iPod Nano
*books by Susan Isaacs
*my cats, who love this whole situation because I am around all the time, and that means a warm lap is around all the time

Hope everyone is good and not looking for a lot of beauty advice on this site right now! Try BellaSugar is you want some stuff about make-up...that is a fun site, part of the PopSugar.com group.

Happy day.