Florida Vacation Lookbook

Taking a page out of one of my new favorite blogs, Paper and Glam, I'm going to instate an occasional "Lookbook"--not a lookbook of fashion, but more like a mini online scrapbook highlighting some of the various shenanigans in my life.

Edition the First: My 2014 Thanksgiving Trip to Florida

 

For quite a few of the past several years, I've returned home to Florida for Thanksgiving to visit family. Usually this leads to a lot of fun times, but starting in 2011, things started to get rough. My aunt passed away that year, a week before Thanksgiving. And then last year, my mother passed away about 10 days before Christmas. So this was our first Thanksgiving without our mother, and for my grandparents, now 93 and 96, it was their first Thanksgiving without any of their children. 

Still, there were many memorable moments...

countless fits of helpless giggles with me and my sisters...

Possibly the most delicious crawfish etoufee I've ever had, courtesy of Tibby's in Winter Park, Florida...

Quirky, doofy Florida humor...

A blissful day of perusing various stores at the Mall of Millenia (pre-Black Friday, of course!)...

A Thanksgiving morning mosey through Sugar Mill Plantation and Gardens...

A walk down down the beach at Ponce Inlet...

 

A day spent in Cassadaga, talking with a medium who knew a lot about our mother, and who offered some life advice that was maybe a little too close for comfort...

And speaking of the Momster, we transferred her ashes to the urn and got her all set up in the shrine in the Fairy Wonderland Bedroom.

Lest my Supportive Therapist (TM) accuses me of glossing over things too much, I'll just say that it wasn't all just yummy food and peaceful nature walks and drunken games of Cards Against Humanity.  For all these pretty pictures, for all the laughter, for all the wine consumed--it was still a rough trip. We're all getting older (duh) and each year it gets harder and harder to leave. I spent a good part of the last two days of my trip crying, conflicted, and tormented by life decisions that have kept me so very far from my sisters, from my grandparents...and yet, at the same time, I don't want to return to Florida to live. I don't know what the answer is, and it's been scalding my heart for the past ten days. 

And there's no picture that can capture what that looks like. 

Weekend Awesomeness, Recapped

Somehow...and I'm not entirely sure how this happened...the end of the year has sneaked up upon me. Summer, which seems to go on as eternally as hellfire here in the desert, has officially fucked the fuck off for another few months. The days can still get warm, but not uncomfortable, and the nights and mornings have been downright cool.

If I were completely honest, I'd say that this has been the most lovely October and autumn out here in the desert since I moved here six years ago.

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The last few days have been a whirlwind, filled with an abundance of happy circumstances and things, all of which have given me extraordinary pleasure:

• We actually had a wee bit of WEATHER this weekend, with grumpy, deep lavender-grey clouds fighting with the sun in the desert sky. I love the extra-stormy feel of those contrasting natural elements, don't you?
• An absolutely kick-ass concert on Saturday night--along with my superhero girls, NavaJo and MILF, I attended the Def Leppard concert at the casino. It was a high-energy, fun, sold-out event, and one of the best nights of my life.
  
• Daylight savings time! I CANNOT, SIMPLY CANNOT be the only person that loves "falling back," can I? I mean, we gain a whole hour's sleep, AND it gets dark earlier! I love the dark, and the winter months, and oh, how I miss how it would be pitch-black by 5 PM, back in Southern Indiana. Sigh. 
• My Erin Condren planner has shipped! I intend to stalk the tracking number on this every day until this bundle of life-planning awesomeness is in my hands and I can have this physical representation of all the planned awesomeness of the year ahead. 
• Lots of other wonderful things: seeing the Christmas decor come up in Michaels and Target; purchasing a lovely haul of cosmetics from Ulta and Sephora; greasy hangover food and a Hair of the Dog (which does, surprisingly, do the trick), and just lazing around in bed on a Saturday morning with YouTube...all of these, just damned lovely ways to make life grand.

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This Day and Me: A Love Story

The day and I got off together on the best of terms, the best of intentions. We were ready for each other. We knew what each expected of the other. We met each other, prepared for each others' needs and hopes. Me? I wanted productivity and maybe a few high points of "Wow, I rocked in that particular situation." The day? it would just be happy if I didn't part ways with it in tears and recriminations and thoughts of "I should have done this better."

Did we meet eachothers' needs and expectations? More or less, we did. I had a phone interview with a panel of folks charged with seeing if I'm a good fit for a leadership program. I had tried to prepare for it (with, it turns out, no particular success; this institute feels more secretive than the Bilderberg Group) but really, the only way to be prepared was physically: having my application notes in front of me, filling up my cup of water, putting out a do-not-disturb sign, donning my tiara.

Yes, of course you read that correctly. My tiara. I wore it. To a phone interview. Why the fuck not? The only people that saw me were the colleagues and bosses that are well-attuned to my quirks.

(Damn, how did my face end up looking so long and crooked?)

Fortunately, secretive leadership institute interview was at the beginning of the day, so I got that out of the way first thing. Did I do well? I think it's hard to say. My colleague Dr. Bob, with his annoyingly sharp hearing, heard pieces of it, and said I did well, but then, who wants a red-headed feminist librarian having a nervous breakdown on your watch? If I were Bob, I would have told Emily Wilding Davison she did a great job right after she flung herself underneath the horses. 

Anyway, the rest of the day was fairly unremarkable. I didn't fuck up, I didn't piss people off, I made people laugh, I followed orders. But there were upheavals throughout the day, which I quietly (and sometimes, not so quietly) witnessed,  and by the end of it. the thought of going to the gym or doing anything even remotely good for me sounded pretty fucking repugnant.

So? The day and I, we met each other's basic expectations, but it took a lot out of both of us. Which is why, at the end of this day,  I ended up at home, haranguing my housemates, drinking shitty white wine, wearing a tiara, and putting together a fake-shopping cart on Sephora. No one is in tears, or threatening to hang themselves from the rafters, or dying of alcohol poisoning (yet.) So this day and I, we will subside into a peaceful, wearied detente, and hope to arise again, refreshed, tomorrow.

Magic Mondays

My space (MySpace! ha!), my special space, is rarely in any kind of order. It's a small space, filled with books on crafting and Wicca and DC and Marvel comics and Victorian History and self help, and also filled with about two dozen craft projects and the supplies for twelve dozen more. It's got a lot of stuffed animals and other paraphernalia from my childhood, too. And amidst all this chaos is a certain recurring motif of paisley and peacocks, stemming back from the days when I actually dreamt this could be a decorated and functioning craft room. 

Turns out I could only choose one. Guess which I went with?

Anyway, so it's cluttered and chaotic and a shrine to consumerism, but it's my happy place. 

Unfortunately, it's on the west end of the house, and every summer, from about May through September, I am exiled from that room because it simply gets too motherfucking hot in there. But October obligingly brought in some abating temperatures, and so I have roosted in here once more. I'm surrounded by my books and my clutter and my history and my half-realized dreams and brainstorms. It's still messy and poorly organized, but it's my lovely, lovely happy place.  

And tonight, I caught a tiny corner of orderly magic in my happy place.

It's a Magical Place

Mine is not a life filled with a lot of externally-inspired magic. Certainly, there is magic in the books and words and ideas that surround me in my job, and there is magic in the laughter that I try to find in my daily life, and there is magic in the beauty that I manage to find if I look hard enough. But let’s face it—I’m a white-collar working woman living in a working class city of Southern California, in a decently-sized but modestly-furnished house filled with people and cats and a very, very pronounced slob of a husband. I’m not exactly living in beautiful surroundings, worthy of being repined a jillion times on Pinterest.

But this weekend, I am able to pretend that mine is a life filled with those kind of surroundings. This weekend, I am in Point Reyes Station, in Northern California, in a house straight out of my dreams. 

We descended on the Blackthorne on Thursday afternoon, a group of ten of us--Mr. Melissa and his mother and myself, along with seven friends. We rented this dream of a house, nestled up in the wooded hills of Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, and in this four-level structure, which is something of a treehouse, we can gaze out into the trees and hills and listen to the gulls and jays screech and cry.

It's a deceptively big house, with doors and stairs and decks and balconies leading all over the place. There are 6 bedrooms, and I had first dibs, and at first I thought I'd go for the fascinatingly octagonal room, glassed in on seven sides. I was enchanted by its view, its exotic furnishings, its appealing Romantic remoteness.

Of course this room was lovely--but a little too sunny, a little too warm. A little too far away from the nearest bathroom. A little too difficult to reach after one has indulged in a few glasses of local wine. A little too much precarious tottering about on the precarious staircase:

So, ultimately, practicality outweighed Romantic notions, and I took a more sensible, comfortable, and appealing room:

This house's charms, they seem to have no end. I'm almost loathe to go wine-tasting and exploring, because it seems a shame to not stick around the house as much as possible, enjoying the nooks and crannies. I've claimed my throne in one of the corners of the living room, settling deep into an enormous and enormously comfortable armchair that groans each time I shift in position:

And here, I sit quietly. I read from time to time, or work on my budget, or blog, or simply just gaze and think and ponder. At night, the fire crackles in the fireplace. All the new age stuff I've ever put on my iPhone plays over the speakers.Some of us play cards, others paint with the supplies I brought along, my mother-in-law does Angel Card readings, and we all talk and share our stories and engage in armchair politics and philosophies. Russia may terrorize Ukraine, ISIS may continue to be the bane of the President's existence, Missouri may be rioting, but here in our corner of Northern California, we have retreated for one long, magical weekend. 

The weekend passes. The line of "dead soldiers", as I have learned to call empty wine bottles, grows.

I sleep on the couch in the middle of the day, lulled by the breeze that borders on chilly--so strange to think that what would be Christmas weather in Florida is just another summer day here. I wake up in the late afternoon, and more than one person remarks that I look "pretty...well-rested."

I take a soft throw and retire to the deck and watch the late-afternoon sun sink behind the trees. 

I read and drink my wine and call my sisters and hear them tell how much they miss me, and I try not to wonder if I would be any happier if I left behind the desert forever--not to return east of the Mississippi, but to move to this magical place.

But maybe--in fact, I have to hope that it's likely--that this time and place are so magical because they are so rare.

Gratitude Attitude: Inspired by (Iron and) Wine

My "angerball" and negative disposition continues into Week 2, so I'm not going to spend any time at all dwelling on all the things that did or didn't happen this week, but rather recap some of the pleasantness that stood out:

• Mr. Melissa has been cleaning out our garage, and miraculously came across one of my family heirlooms that had been tucked away out there during the move, and never retrieved until now. This book was published in 1935...I have no idea about its provenance, only that it's been in our family for a long-ass time. This charming little book, which now holds pride of place on my coffee table, tells the tale about the kittens Suzz, Buzz, Fuzz, and Agamemnon, and is filled with "unusual photographs of real kittens...made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times. "....(One can only assume that this was the prescursor to the PETA-inspired disclaimers in modern films...)

• I don't really think too much about this holiday, but it's nice when friends think of you, no matter the day. Friends (and colleagues) who think of me on Valentines Day...I love 'em. The pic on the left is a package of Marvel goodies one of my Midwestern Internet friends sent me; the pic on the right is a book that one of my colleagues left on my desk. In case you can't see the title: it's What the Librarian Did.

• The Music of Iron and Wine: Completely aside from the fact that the name of this band is impossibly romantic, the band itself has charmed me with its sleepy, melancholic music. I'm sure once I start reading the lyrics I'm gonna be as far gone as I was all those years ago when my eldest sister got me into Grey Eye Glances. 

And speaking of wine...

• Quite possibly the best wine I have ever tasted. With no small amount of trepidation, I picked this up at Fresh and Easy on clearance for $3.98. And I was utterly blown away...it's a red blend, and while it's not terribly dry, it's also not sweet at all. It's surprisingly light and mild, but full of flavor. It is, simply, my favorite wine.

And finally...

• Absurdly bright pink lip butter from Ulta. The color is all wrong for me (with lips like mine, I've never been very comfortable with wearing vivid colors), but sometimes a little bit of color is exactly what's needed to jazz up a quiet, restorative day of puttering around the house. 

As I go into this next week, I am quietly and desperately hoping that I change my disposition for the better. I always lecture people: "You can't control what people do to you, you can only control how you react..." So, time to put my money where my mouth is...and hope that I don't smear bright pink lip butter every where.

Manic Monday: October 28 Edition

Back when I was a wee one, I used to do my homework every night before dinner. It was one of Crazy Elaine's rules that I followed so readily. So I'd haul home my math book and reading book and spelling book and try my hardest to figure out what all  the numbers meant, and tear my way through the stories, and carefully, methodically work on my spelling. For some reason, spelling was my favorite--another memory: Crazy Elaine spelling the words with me before I left for the bus stop in the  morning--especially putting the words in alphabetical order. Something about the logical order of it all (and yes, there may have been that in math, too, but it was lost on me) appealed to me.

So late this afternoon, when the Cap'n mentioned that we needed to merge 4 spreadsheets of donor names and get them into alphabetical order by tomorrow morning, Dorkface here was all over that shit. In fact, Dorkface had to do a little bit of battle over it with the Great Dustini, who apparently wanted the diversion of setting up all the names in an Access Database.

(Maybe I'm not the biggest Dorkface in the Library.)

Anyway, I promised Cap'n I'd have it done by 7 ("I'll just take a long lunch one day this week!"), and so I won out, and by 6:10 p.m. I was happily cutting and pasting and muttering over mistakes and duplications. And true to my word, I was done by 7.

Between that, and some of the librarians unable to work their shifts, and urgent press releases, by the end of the day, my desk looked like Hurricane Monday had torn through.

In my world, a day in which I am too busy to clean my desk is defined as a very very good day.

Driving home this evening, I indulged in what feels like a daily ritual of finding some beauty in my desert and life. It wasn't hard; the weather has turned positively autumnal by our desert standards. It's been blustery all day, with a few obligingly grey clouds skittering across our usually-empty desert skies, and once the sun set, it got downright chilly. And I was driving home to Mr. Melissa, who had made dinner, and I had a little work project to tool about with. (In my world, the concept of taking home work projects that I enjoy is the height of awesomeness). What wasn't beautiful about this Monday?

Other than my desk, that is.