Bye, suckers.

Dear internets, I am leaving you for two weeks. It's possible that I may blog at you from England or Italy, but I'm doing this thing where I try not to formulate a narrative version of events as I'm experiencing them. I know you English major types or longtime journalers or even letter-writers feel me.

The crazy thing is that I'm all packed and we have a good 20 minutes before my dad shows up to take us to the airport. This is not typical, as I am famous (at least in my own head) for dicking around until the last possible second and frittering away any time that would have given me a comfortable cushion for contingencies. And yet here we are, packed for not one but THREE trips, since we will be doing side trips from our home base, and I don't even think I've forgotten anything. Can you tell I'm a little bit impressed with us?

For my final act at home I am going to do some last-minute shopping on our bookshelves and snoogle the cat, poor little friend.

I'll be back on Bastille Day!

If you just read this post, you'd think I exercise all the time.

Last night I got home at about 9:30 and decided to take a quick ride around the lake. It was dusky, but there was still light on the horizon, and the heat index was finally manageable, meaning it was the best time to ride--so tranquil and beautiful, with hardly any air traffic noise. And since it was a low-key ride, I was just wearing my dress and flip-flops, and I still had all my jewelry on, including the bangles that entranced the 2 1/2 year old I'd just met at dinner. At the lake, three little girls sat on a bench near the shore, their little legs dangling, perfectly silhouetted against the smoky fading sunset and the downtown skyline. I pedaled slowly, liking the infrequent spooky headlights on other people's bikes and the bats overhead. The little clouds of bugs were less impressive, but it's summertime by the lake; what do you want? The bats have to eat.

There's a wetland on one side of the lake, all cattails and reeds and native plants, and as I rounded the curve to that side all the street noise went away and I heard frogs and red winged blackbirds calling. Weird pockets of cool, damp air blasted up from the shore. No one else was around, and the lightning bugs started flaring up out over the wetland. I hadn't seen any yet this summer, and it felt like a private show. I slowed to a crawl and just watched, one tenth of a mile away from a busy street that turns into a highway, and felt like I was alone in the middle of the countryside, which is an awesome feeling if you're in the right mood, and I was.

But of course someone else rode along, and I continued down the path, and the street noise came back, like someone had turned up the volume suddenly. The spell has to break sometime, but at least you're left suffused with well-being.

***

Now I'm going to recommend two movies you've probably already seen: Away from Her and I've Loved You So Long. I wanted to talk about them with someone, but naturally I watched them alone and at odd times of the day. I think we've had Away From Her out from Netflix before and never managed to watch it, but Sarah Polley sort of fascinates me and the performances in the movie are stellar. The same is true of I've Loved You So Long. And both movies have such a strong sense of place, and such a unique look because of how they're situated in their landscapes. Also, they both made me cry. The Brit has been mostly out of town for the last 10 days, so I also watched 13 Going on 30 for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed myself, primarily because of the Thriller dance scene. I don't know why I love group dance scenes/public unison dancing so much, but I have decided that I need to be part of a flash mob at some point in my life. I don't even care if it's for some cynical purpose like advertising cell phones. I want to be in a big group dance that coalesces in a public place and then dissipates like nothing ever happened, leaving a big old upsurge of fellow-feeling in its wake. If you're the organizing type, please organize this and I will get on board.

Finally, there are all kinds of other balance things I cannot do yet in yoga class, but I can headstand, which is the sole legacy of the gymnastics class I took at age 5. Have I mentioned that I argue with myself almost every week about whether or not I'm going to go to my yoga class? It is the dumbest thing ever, because yoga makes more time than it takes, if you want to get all Oprah about it. I always go, but I have to do this mental dance first. I've pretty much stopped doing that with biking to work, so maybe this will pass and then I'll magically get better at standing on one leg.

Quickly.

If you like the sparkly, you may enjoy my latest post over at ye tumblog. It's about stud earrings. Yes I started another blog. What? You think I can't blog regularly or something?

Anyway, I should have a whole other post about various jewel finds on Etsy--I have been stalking jewelry for months--but this at least gets things started.

Hairs etc.

There's no way I'm going to break this inadvertent blog silence with with something deep and incisive--too much pressure. So instead I'll give you an update on my hair.

I love this haircut. This is the only haircut I have ever had that looks better dirty than clean. I've always been one of those daily hair-washers, even though clueless ladymags like to tell you to wash less frequently. I do see their point, for everyone except those of us with very fine, straight hair and overachieving sebum. Letting that kind of hair go for more than a day does not impart a tousled, beachy, textured look. It is basically a commitment to looking like a stringy greaseball. While I have often been more than willing to make that commitment, it was never in the service of ladymag advice; it was more like "well, why would I shower if I'm just going to work at home and go to the gym later, so pass me that do-rag." But now I have hair that I can wet down and re-mold in the morning and just fluff up after taking off my bike helmet. A little sweat makes it look better. So I got that going for me.

Less exciting is the fact that this haircut revealed a sparse collection of hidden gray hairs. I've pulled out maybe 6 of them in the last year, so it's not a total shock, but I still have to admit that I'm not ready for them. I'm turning 35 in a few months and while I realize that 35 ain't shit, chronologically speaking, I have also got a few sunspots and like 15 pounds that I didn't have a few years ago. The pounds might just be office-job creeping weight gain, but still, you'd think that biking an average of 50 miles a week and staying otherwise active would keep that shit in check. I briefly contemplated counting calories and nutrition info to find out what was up and when I entered my food intake and activity for the day into the online counter, it kept telling me I could eat an additional 1000 calories that day. Huh.

I can't get too fussed about the chubb because even though I'm like damn, these pants don't really fit, I'm stronger than I was 15 pounds ago. (And no, it ain't muscle weight except maybe in The Thighs.) And I can't get too fussed about the grays because how kick ass would this haircut look in silver? But like maybe if I'm going to see signs of aging coming this far in advance of Aging, could I get some wisdom and less acne to go along with them? Thanks, Cosmos. You're okay by me.

It's not much of a post, but

I got my hair did.

When in Rome.

I don't suppose any of YOU know where we should stay in Rome in July. We booked our tickets for a summer England trip recently--have you noticed that high-season fares are the cheapest they've been in like a decade?--and decided that we should really try to get to some other Euro-destination while we're there all young and unencumbered. Poundpapi is coincidentally going to be in Italy at the same time and he is definitely one of the most fun people I can think of to hook up with in a foreign country, so Italy it is. It will definitely help to be with someone who speaks Italian. I can understand lots of Italian but am slow to formulate sentences, and then when I do they are totally archaic and cobbled together from bits of opera libretti.

This trip is already shaping up to be way more action-packed than usual. We're going to see Blur's reunion concert in London (this is for the Brit, since I was in college during Blur's heyday and was listening to a lot of classical singers at the time), and we're going to his dad's wee retreat in Norfolk, and then we're cooking up this sojourn in Italy. It's exciting. Figuring out what to pack is going to be hard. But figuring out where to lay our heads in Italia is sort of hard too. We had this notion that we'd go hike the Cinque Terre (at the highest of the high season, when all tourist destinations are crawling with humans), but I think maybe that's ambitious for a 4-5 day trip that includes Rome.

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about. Hook me up with some Roman accommodations if you know of any. Also can't-miss sights.

Whereabouts.

Oh goodness, where have I been? For a few ignominious seconds this morning I was flat on my face in the street, thanks to these cute, stupid shoes I decided to wear today. It seems intuitive that shoes shouldn't be an impediment to walking, doesn't it? But it's possible that my fall was just pre-ordained and I would have bit the dust even barefoot. So far I've gleaned no cosmic lesson from falling, nor was the fall even the kickoff to a relentlessly shitty day. It's been a pretty nice day, actually, so I think sometimes biting it is just biting it. It's definitely causing me to reevaluate my footwear though.

I have also been in the kitchen: we got a new fridge and stove yesterday. The old ones were actually fine, except that the fridge had started making a blatty fart noise at random intervals a few months ago, and the stove was equipped with like a first-generation microwave that made the rear burners all but inaccessible. Said microwave was also pretty bad at warming up food. Anyway, it's now like a magical fairyland in the kitchen, comparatively speaking, and we had the opportunity to remove the dust buffaloes from behind the fridge.

Another place I've been is the bike path. Unfortunately, the bike path recently had some sort of pointy invisible shard on it that flattened the crap out of my tire, right in the middle of my commute home. This turn of events forced me to put my bike on one of those front racks on the bus, something I've often contemplated but always avoided doing. First of all, there's almost never any real reason for me to put my bike on the bus and ride instead of pedaling (strong headwinds, I laugh at you!), but second of all, I am often prevented from attempting such maneuvers by my fear of looking like a douchey noob in public. There are actually a few places in town where there are practice racks so that you can figure out how to work them before ruining the bus schedule with your own feckless real-time efforts. I always meant to get to one of those practice racks. But I needn't have worried. The racks are easy to operate and noobness was avoided.

My tire is still flat, however.

Where else? I went to Henry's kid birthday party, which was like Lord of the Flies except with more pajama pants (all the kids got soaked in the rain; their clothes went to the dryer; they borrowed Henry and Jude's jammies). Several times, they all broke out in spontaneous chanting. One mystery kid had some bad gas. I wore actual earplugs and ate Indiana Jones cake.

I have been in the sewing room, which is actually just sort of the office and the place where all my craft crap ends up lately. I made these little frankenbooties:

In putting these together, I discovered that I have no idea how to sew a curved line without it looking like utter shite. I guess that's why I made this prototype before really getting fancy with my fabrics, but you know, I saw some forum where the person who reviewed the pattern was like "I made these in about a half hour; they're great!" and I thought I'd be able to manage. I need more practice, clearly.

Speaking of crafty, I have also been on Etsy, A LOT. Not only am I frequently looking for craftacular inspiration, I'm also trying to be more consistent with my shop maintenance, so as to make more sales, which is working so far. I realized I've been hoarding some of my inventory for two years, so I ruthlessly marked things down. And I'm actually going to start tweeting about the shop more than once every two weeks, even though Twitter is, for me personally, sort of a pointless exercise (I don't use any mobile devices). Another rad shop development: I need to get a different face and booty in some of my photos, so look for my sister Emily in future listings.

Another place we went is to the Chowgirls kitchen for a tasting. It was deeeelish, so they're going to cater the wedding. Woot woot!