I’m not the biggest fan of St. Patrick’s Day, but I do love stout floats and the Muppets. Hope your weekend is wrapping up nicely. Let’s pretend Monday doesn’t exist.
I think I’m fully behind the trend of great things coming from vending machines and ATMs: Cupcakes, books, and now, nail polish. Garance Dore’s assistant Alex spotted this Nailmatic vending machine in the Tuileries in Paris. Oh, stop it, France. (Not really.)
photo via garance dore
If there were any questions about what type of girl I am, just know that I’m the type of girl that dreams about doughnut shops and restaurants she’s never visited. Last night, in my dream, on vacation, a friend and I wandered into a doughnut shop. I watched as he set down his tray with two gorgeous doughnuts and lamented the fact that I couldn’t have any—surely they weren’t vegan. And then I saw the pretty yellow wrapping: DUN-WELL. You guys, I dreamed about a vegan doughnut shop in Brooklyn that is barely (before now) on my radar. I went to the counter and just about died when I saw all of the tasty treats. Somehow the counter staff sold me on a $200 monthly fee: All you can eat doughnuts.
I was in town for three days.
I ate three doughnuts that first afternoon, but I could have had more if I didn’t feel so ashamed. (Fuck anyone who says they can’t eat more than half a doughnut. That’s a blatant and pathetic lie.) I took a few to go, and then came back the next day, and the next. Anyway, someone get me a doughnut. I’m starving.
photo by dun-well doughnuts
I’m going in for my annual haircut tonight. (I know, I know.) I’m not given to spontaneity and I’ve been growing my hair out since 2009, but just so that I don’t get any funny ideas in the chair, I’m searching photos of pretty long hair to strengthen my resolve. I hope mine goes from kinda sorta long to full on infinite, gorgeous locks super soon. This girl’s hair is so pretty. (And I totally wish I was this chick—her hair/sunglass combo kills. )
photo via brugo
I think trying to be more like this dog skateboarding with a broken arm is a pretty good life goal.
photo via cute overload
Books stocked by the Monkey’s Paw, a neat Toronto bookstore that I posted about a while back. (Not trying to brag, but I totally scooped the New York Times.) This is the same shop that has the Bibliomat! I think it’s time for a Canadian field trip.
photos by andrew rowat
I guess my one redeeming quality is that, yes, I will be a crying mess in bed, on the floor, in the movie theater, in the car (Oh! In the car! My favorite place, perhaps, to cry.) But I’ll also need to step out of the room to dry my teary eyes when things are good, when my heart is full to bursting and I am overjoyed. Last night, I sat around a cozy fire with a peculiar mix of strangers and friends, older and younger. A woman in her eighties told us about her partner, and how they were together since she was fifteen. They married at eighteen, she said, and after he died two years ago, she is learning how to be an adult, alone. He was the greatest man, a special one, she said, and her daughter-in-law nodded in agreement and I hoped no one saw my eyes go all misty. Later, we went down to the basement where the boys played guitar and young voices and older ones joined in, singing classic folk songs and Radiohead and the Talking Heads, and of course I didn’t sing because I’m too shy, but I set aside the worrying and the stress and the uncertainty of it all and I was happy. Everyone had these beatific, easy smiles and our bellies were full of beet hummus and roasted asparagus and pasta salad and the weird, ugly cookies I made (of course!). I felt all right.
A woman I had just met touched my shoulder and she said how pretty my long hair was. I didn’t apologize for myself or say that it was only just okay; I said thank you, and I tried to feel like I had qualities of merit. That I was an okay person in a room full of okay people.
I’ve been clutching certain books around like precious tomes, touting them to anyone who will listen. They are evidence for my newest theory, one I so hope is true, that maybe everyone’s mid-twenties are sort of a disaster. I’ve spent all my life waiting for things to get better, but instead I’ve been just a sad, weird, lonely person in high school and in college and in law school and now as an almost adult (oh, please).
You should read Anagrams, I tell my girlfriends who are a few years younger, and I paraphrase the quote that meant so much to me when I read it a few months earlier. I hope that I am wise and sage, that in a few years they will realize that things at twenty-three weren’t as final as they think. That the relationships they tout as very serious might end and that they won’t necessarily be engaged or with child or in escrow. That they will be as lost and confused as I am. That things won’t be what they expected. One friend looked at me conspiratorially and said that even the friends whose Facebook statuses change from In a Relationship to Engaged to Married, or the ones with perfect jobs and smooth, glossy hair are just as aimless, if only in different ways. Maybe the big secret is that I’m not alone in this.
In Houston, a classic movie theater was turned into a bookstore. Sadly, it has since closed, but isn’t this neat? What about if they had a smaller theater/reading room where customers could read and sip coffee or tea?
photo via web ecoist
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road and Zoya, Wednesday.
Truly mediocre accompanying outfit post here.
I’m not usually a fangirl, but holy shit, Shoshanna’s hair(/neuroses/everything) is basically the greatest part of Girls. I’m so sad that the second season is almost over.
By the way, just so we get things straight, obviously: Shosh>Ray>Adam>Hannah>Charlie>Jessa>Marnie.
