Status: Approved

'I have to tell you, your Dad was nearly in tears last night. He said he hasn't seen you look so happy or healthy in years. And... Jim's soooo cute.'

This is an authentic representation of what he wore.

My stepmom whispered all this in my ear upon mine and Jim's arrival to my cousin's wedding over the weekend in Los Angeles, the day after Thanksgiving.
My dad then hugged me, and told me so himself. He told me I looked beautiful, which I don't remember him ever saying, but I'm sure he has.








Jim met (99% of) my family this past weekend.
You can guess how that went.

Smartest. Family. Ever.

White Elephant.

Kat Moss is totally invited.

I'm in the mood to throw a party.

A fete of sorts, ifyouwill.

Cozy, easy, post-Christmas yet pre New Years.

Every time I get the urge to throw a something-small I inevitably end up going back and forth back and forth about whether or not to actually throw it, because I get afraid that even if I did throw a party, no one would show up.

I imagine me, alone on the couch, metallic party hat on, curtains drawn, a single sad balloon hovering halfway between the ceiling and the floor. 

No one's coming to your sweet sixteen party, Louise.
Pathetic Party Kazooooooooooooooooo.

It's silly, really.

Then I go back and forth, trying to figure out who exactly I would invite, and I get overwhelmed at editing an invitee list (I always end up inviting some rando at the last minute anyway for fear that no one'll show) and then I end up deciding not to throw a party because it's too much of a headache (egoache), but the urge doesn't go away.

I'm in the mood to throw a party.
The internal fête battle rages on. 

I Just Google'd How to Spell 'Bored'. 'Happy' I Know By Heart.

They opened a Crossroads Exchange across from mine and Jim's house.
My life is complete now.
No, but seriously. I feel that way.

Also, is it just me, or if the dude in a picture (or life, or whatever) is too good looking, the whole thing comes off as contrived?

Your chiseled good looks are ruining the shot, man. 
Also, maybe this is why I love Jim's crooked bottom teeth.

I'm addicted to eBay.
I'm the highest bidder on a Galliano fan (as in, 'the vapors!') at the moment. 

I'm happy & bored & having a dinner guest tonight.
Which reminds me, Jim's parents saw the place for the first time last weekend, and it was so nice to see them so happy for their son. There was such a sense of pride in the way they looked at the place, and it was fun to watch them walk through and seeing it through their eyes. It also, and  this is weird to say, but I feel it, it made me feel like they knew that I am 'taking good care of their son'. Like somehow the outside reflects the inside; the happiness, the love, the care. I know the above is a bit of an antiquated concept, 'I'm taking good care of him, over here!' but it still made me feel good to sense that it was coming across. That and his parents think I have very good taste, so that was pretty awesome too.

Speaking of taste, what am I going to make for dinner?

Just a Friendly Reminder.

Never skip mascara.
Seriously. 

Say thank you.
Mean it.

Remember that other people's shoes will never be as comfortable as your own.
Which makes walking a mile in them really hard.
Try to imagine doing it anyway.

Learn how to politely decline.

Learn how to apologize when appropriate.

Learn how to not apologize when you don't need to.

Remember that we are all human; we're all doing the best we can.
Not one of us is always going to be perfect, or perfectly understanding; but, that doesn't take away from the fact that we're all trying our Goddamn best not to fuck up.
We're all trying to keep the yarns moving smoothly through the loom. 
Repetitiously.
And no matter how much you practice, you're never going to get it right one hundred percent of the time. There are going to be imperfections; there will be mistakes.

You can't take them back, but you can most certainly learn from them, and move forward with less of a chance of making the same mistakes again.

Learn how to forgive.
Yourself, most importantly.

But don't ever skip mascara.
Even if it might run.
Seriously.

Sunrise, Sunset.

Here I am, like I am most mornings - prework, or day off - I've made a point to wake up around the time that Jim leaves and enjoy my morning (or whole day, but not today) in Our Space.
Yesterday, I went to the market and bought what I usually buy - flowers and house knick knacks - nail polish, hand soap, a vintage looking edition of Pride & Prejudice that will inevitably never be read, but will look pretty on my dresser.
I arranged the flowers in my many many vases & blast Bon Iver on Pandora all day (or morning, as I am now.)
Then I peruse --- eBay, Pinterest, Facebook, you name it, I am in engrossed in it.
Yesterday, in particular I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at a photo story entitled, 'Rihanna's Sexiest Tweets' until I stopped, and thought, 'What the fuck am I looking at?'

And I feel whole.
I love finding a Rebecca Taylor dress for $15 as a surprise for my sister on eBay, helping my Malibu Bad Ass find a Minute Clinic in Denver, making plans for next Sunday with two of my old shop cohorts, responding 'Yes' to evites and generally just feeling helpful and happy, all while being surrounded by fresh flowers and feisty cats in a House with a Green Door.
On the couch or in the bath.
On our patio, with the furniture I picked.
I like my mornings.

But, I still have problems falling asleep.
I hate those moments of pre-sleep where my subconscious sneaks up on me, and I start thinking nonstop about the 
'What if's...'
Of memories I've willed myself not to remember.
Of things I could have done differently.
What if Jim dies... What will happen to me... How long would I be able to stay here in this house... It's not mine... Could I afford the mortgage... Could I get out of bed...
The moments in the interim of sleep and wake have been an Enemy of mine for a long time and I tend to stay awake as long as possible, doing anything possible to avoid the interim, until exhaustion hits - like a child with barely one eye open - and I just pass out without the actual falling part...
And the only moments of discord that Jim and I ever really have are when he's threatening to close his eyes before me, leaving me alone with my sleepy scary thoughts.
I get huffy, like a tired child up past her bedtime.
It's frustrating. For both of us, I imagine. Left alone, usually I wrestle with my fears for awhile and fall asleep, only to wake in the morning with only a vague memory of their existence  They're there, but only in those in-between moments, those moments I have trained myself to avoid with terrifying accuracy.

Last night was no different & and even though I had made the decision not to try & stay awake until the night just faded to nothing, I still lay there thinking the aforementioned what ifs -- and like many nights, I curled up in a panic to Jim, waking him from his new sleep, in tears. What if... How long...?
He's so sweet; when I am able to articulate the fears that have amassed cancerously in my tired brain,
he doesn't brush them off, he just holds me.
He asks if I want him to call his lawyer.

No, I just don't want you to die. 

He squeezes me and assures me that he doesn't want to either. He tells me of something he read about  in his own daily perusal of the interwebs, of a girl and her boyfriend falling asleep, where the girls tells the boyfriend she hates falling asleep because she gets so fixated on her next days' to-do list, and the boyfriend is confused because when he falls asleep, he thinks about things like rocket ships made of french fries. 

I envy that boy. 

Its so odd, being alone with my thoughts all morning, I am happy and whole and looking around at a warm space of my own creation, complete and happy.
But alone with my thoughts, on or around 10:30pm most weeknights, I am greeted by an old enemy - I am tired, and scared and sad.
The dichotomy of it - the two parts of Me - the day and the night, the happy and the sad - they are what make me my Whole-est, I guess. 
That I do not run, or attempt some other form of running away, that is a miracle in it of itself.
That I go to bed, or at least agree to try, on a regular basis, is new to me.
That I wake up as happy as I do is new as well.

It's an even trade, I guess.
Fears are fears, we're all going to have them.
Lucky for me, I get to wake up to a comfortable & blessed existence come the sunrise.

I'm always going to be afraid of what I cannot control. I'm always going to have memories that I wish were never made.
I'm always going to wrestle with my own propensity towards sadness and fight for my happiness.
I am always going to be working for a balance.
I am finding a balance.

I Like This Girl.

Eat The Damn Cake.  (Thats a link. Click it in a sec.)

I just fell into her Love Story.
I've read her work before, and she's articulate & she's deprecating & self aware. Its refreshing, and makes me feel like I have a friend in someone's words. (Imagine that.) I especially recommend following the hyperlinks to her first date with her now-husband.
I like her style.

Balloon.

I feel like... 

I finally have what I've always wanted; and have been asking the universe for - demanding from it, really... 

A couch, a bathtub & a Boy. 

A love that grows for that Boy; that has a ever expanding charge - like the universe is ever expanding. 

Sometimes, I feel as though maybe it's hit its stride; I have a moment of 'This is it. This is a Whole Love.' 

And then it grows more. 

And then, again. 

It matures. 

We've hit points of melancholy, or fits of giggles, and It grows yet again.

I wake up and tell him I love him, and I mean it more than I did yesterday.

Even though, yesterday I did not think I could love him more.

Leave/Change.

Leaves are changing. I finally noticed when Jim and I took a trip up to the Getty Villa, and outside of the preplanned Southern California tracked homes with their evergreen palm trees.

Or perhaps, it was the first time I'd had the time to notice.

After what feels like a long time coming.

And like the leaves, life changes. Life is fluid.

Though, I've been aching for 'the old days' a bit lately. Not sans Jim, but for the days where I had my little shop overlooking the ocean, for me to tear apart and put back together, for my boss and I to sit in the sun and talk shop on the bench by the door. For a time when my conversations with friends were not for about fifteen minutes before my workday, but instead spread out like melting butter over the course of a day or week or months.
I miss that little life by the beach; the one which had a place so perfect for me within it. 
Summers in the sand, boys falling at our feet, with flowers in our hair; we dressed, we danced, we sang, and though we were not entirely happy, we were - or, I was - contented with that.
It's a bit hard, feeling so disconnected from that old life. From that shop that defined me, from my friends who carried me. My life has changed in insurmountable ways in the past six months, from job to boy to many many things - and, within that life, I feel more contained, more centered and safe and loved. I feel Whole - and defined - for the first time in as long as I can remember.
Still, I can't help but feel a pang of hurt, of sadness, when I see pictures and think, 'I should have been there.'
I can't help but feel like a shunned third grader who wasn't invited to a birthday party when I realize that I wasn't even really asked somewhere where one hundred and eighty days ago it wouldn't have even have been a question.
And that's when I yearn for the days without question; the days of  fluid, half giggled conversations - the days of ocean views and misty PCH mornings.

I guess I have poor balance, I guess I can't - in light of all these changes - I haven't been unable to hold onto any semblance of my old life while creating a new one.
I feel like I've failed a little. Hell, I feel like I have failed a lot. 
But even then, when I think about failing my old life and feeling dismissed by it now, I can't help but remind myself that here - working a busy schedule and with a boy who loves me (in my wholeness, every bit of me, and not just in parts) - here, I am happy and here I am safe and here I am.

Here I am. 

My little life in Orange County; one which has a place so perfect for me within it.

I am here.
I am Home.

Ali McGraw Was All Wrong.

Oh, the arrogance that comes along 

with an apology that one is not expecting.

I once asked my Dad if it would be arrogant of me to find my first love and apologize for breaking his heart.

His simple answer - as Dad's are apt to give - was, 'Yes.'

Zelda.

I'm reading Zelda by Nancy Milford. Written in 1970 about The Zelda Fitzgerald, I'm totally sucked in - taking photos of passages and texting them to my Best Friend in San Francisco. I love a book (especially a biography about my favorite generation of artists, The Lost Generation) that speaks to me from page one. I''m already lost in a world of a girl from eighty or so years ago.
Read it with me.

Closet Contentment.

Sometimes, as shallow as it may seem, what really makes me happy is a peek inside my closet.
I have beautiful clothing*.

*Or, whats left of it after four months of 

unemployment & many trips to Buffalo Exchange.

The (now tattered) Dries Van Noten that my sister scored a consignment store in San Francisco and finally gave to me after years of pleading.
The pink Nightcap open weave cardigan that I bought with birthday money from my boss at my old shop, overpriced and ethereal, it was finally mine at twenty nine.
The Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent dress I wore to a wedding in TriBeCa years ago.
The Forever 21 dress I wore to my Flame Haired Favorite's wedding at the Viceroy in Palm Springs.
The never been worn Leyendecker mini dress that looks terrible on me, but divine hanging in my closet.
My Bad Luck/Good Luck Missoni skirt and my Jen's Pirate Booty french lace caftan.
The tangerine Joie dress Jim bought me.

I've collected costumes over the years; these are the pieces I cannot part with.
I love them like old friends.
They represent the good, the bad, and the phenomenal.

My most recent luxuries hang there too; near-rent priced Kate Spade dresses, a gold lame accordian pleated skirt - so au currant for fall. Cow-print haircalf loafers - a score at $32 this morning - they sit next to sweat stained Louboutins and vintage equestrian boots. I've walked miles in these shoes.

Jim and I spent a good month designing this closet - with stainless steel racks, wood hangers & wire baskets. We did it all ourselves; combining my Rachel Pally with his John Varvatos; taking into account the length of my maxi dresses and the need for storage of his Theory dress shirts.

My closet makes me happy; as my style has defined me in many ways.
Most pieces, I remember exactly when, and with whom, I bought them - as well as where, and with whom, I wore them.
They are tangible reminders of memories. My clothing allows me reminds me of who I am.
That I've grown from a girl whose favorite compliments had something to do the with shape of her body to a woman whose favorite compliment is when someone tells her she has 'amazing taste'.

Missing.

I've got about 75 lunch dates to catch up on. 

Down The Rabbit Hole.

I fell down a rabbit hole today.
Down down down to the depths of the well organized and nearly hidden old photo folders on my laptop.
Pictures from my 28th Birthday Party.
Pictures of people I don't know anymore, of a girl who doesn't exist anymore.
I wore my hair like that? 
It was odd, I don't even look like the same girl anymore; my face is thinner now, older.
My hair is shorter now. I look uncomfortable in the photos.
The people in the pictures are strangers, with the exception of Bjiou.
And my sisters, of course.

It felt as though I was looking at someone else's life.
It looked nothing like Now.

GOOP's Got Nothin' On Us.

Okay, okay... Perhaps I exaggerate a tad.
But! Jim & I have officially become Those People. 
No no, not People With More Than 2 Cats.
People who Do Things.
Or, conversely, total and complete dorks.
Don't laugh at us, laugh with us.

Here's why, exactly.
Introducing...
Well, just follow the link and you'll see: J&DDT.

Growing Pains.

When I was a child - as my mother tells it - I would, usually at dinnertime around our family dining room table, stand up on my chair, raise up my arms, and demand the attention of my parents,

Look! Look how Big I've gotten!!!

As if, over the course of our spaghetti entree, I had grown from a two foot tall child to a five foot tall adult.
As if to announce,

Look! I am growing up right in front of you! As we speak! As we eat!

Around the same time, 

I also used to cry, real tears, sobbing, at four years old that, 

'I don't want to go to college.' 

And, as children do, I have grown up. 

Trés Grow'd Up.

Look, look how big I've gotten. 

However, in this Growth Chart that is Life, in growing and changing, and regressing and growing some more,   with all of that, comes Change. Capital C. (No shirt, Shitlock.)

But what happens when you outgrow things you love? 

When an old t-shirt, that used to encapsulate your 'You-ness' so perfectly, now just seems illfitting, outdated and threadbare? 

When a friend who used to be the Second Pea in your Pod no longer fits alongside you so comfortably? 

When a 'Signature Scent' becomes an unpleasant olfactory reminder of a really bad year.*

*Michael Kors. 2003.

What do you do when you outgrow a best friend? 

When what used to be so comfortable is now not. 

When silence is now awkward and no longer filled with camaraderie.

Or worse, when silence is really just a filler for festering? 

I certainly don't have any answers, no matter how big I get. 

You want the what section?!?
It's like I don't even know you anymore.

But, I do believe that - like in relationships - we deserve standards and paper planes and friends that treat us well, with patience, and with love. And I have failed on this count many times, and am right now, as everyone has. As we grow, and as we change, and as we sometimes no longer see eye to eye with our best of friends, and as I realize that no one is perfect, especially not me, and as I get more and more at ease with my own imperfections, I realize that sometimes the outcome of Growth is that sometimes you grow out of your friends. 

That best friend you've had since Kindergarten, her actions no longer are forgivable, or easily disregarded, because you're 'just kids'.
I mean, sometimes you just realize that in all this growing up & getting big, you don't really like who your friends have grown up to be.  

Or that the best friend who got you through your darkest time cannot seem to see past your darkest time. Or when you simply realize you don't like to be around a friend anymore. Or when you start to realize that your friend feels the exact same way about you. That she doesn't particularly like you very much either.

Relationships change as we change, but how do we remedy a change so uncomfortable? 

How do you remedy the relationship when you also recognize that change = things with never be the same? Without blame, and without causing emotional unrest? 

Without feeling like shit, and beating yourself up about it? 

I don't know. 

It's all well and good to talk the about friends that you can just pick up the phone and not a beat is missed after weeks of busy busy. About friends who just seem to 'Get You', even from 500 miles away. 

I realized last night, that in the last five years, I have seen my Best Friend - in the flesh - four times. Three of them being in 2007 or 2008. We joke to each other that ' [my] Best Friend is really just a floating voice in [my] ear.' And it's true. But when it comes to 'First Best Friend', she's it. We do not skip a beat. We can be floating voices for eachother once a month or multiple times an hour. I cannot live without her.

But outgrowing a 'Second Best Friend' or a Third, or most painfully, your First, is almost worse than a break up. 

I mean, if you think about it, a 'break up' really just means, at the most elementary level:

'I don't want to pretend procreate with you anymore.'

(Or, I don't want to procreate with you in the future.)

Emotionally, that sits a bit more soundly with people (me) no matter how sucky it is to hear, or how painful the break up may be, than when you outgrow friendships, & you realize some combination of:

We have very little in common. 

We don't get each other anymore. 

 

We have nothing in common other than our hair.

You disappointed me. You've changed. I've disappointed you.  

I don't really like you anymore. We don't really like one another.

Or, the worst, 

You (or I) have not been a good friend.

They all suck. 

'I don't want to have sex with you anymore' versus 'I don't really like you anymore'. Both suck, but one's really fucking personal, and is wholly about you as a person, and can't be justified by Darwin, or male stupidity, or anything that feels out of your control. 

'We've outgrown what used to be awesomely super fun' sucks too.

And coming to peace with this outgrowing of certain relationships is really hard.

Especially, when you're unsure of whether or not its actually a reflection of Growth. 

I mean all I know is that I'm trying to be my best self, and even in doing so, I still fail.
A lot.

People change. And grow. Thank god for that, really. 

Makes me really grateful for those friends I can call after weeks and months and years and not a beat has skipped. 

xx : bijou bijou.

Dear Santa.

Smug Satisfaction.

In just six short months, since turning Thirty, I have become the type of woman who responds to the oft repeated question of, 'How are you? What's new?' with some variation on,

'Fantastic! We've finally finished most of the house/We're doing the closet next/We're thinking about hardwood floors...' 

Who the fuck am I and why am I so fucking happy?

Morning Rundown.

I haven't been able to sit down and write, but thankfully other people have too, and they're smart and funny and one even has a scanner, or something, and I'm jealous. But here are some links, some thoughts, and that's all she wrote.

Fuck! I'm In My 20s!
(Its better once you get to the second page, when she's not just yaadaaa yaadadaaing about her book tour. Like, yeah, we get it - you're smart and funny and you got a book. No, I kid, but the stuff is better once you actually get to the stuff.)
Update: It's brilliant! If you like me, you'll love her & want to to print out her doodles and fashion them into a coloring book and invest in the 64 color box of crayolas, cancel your brunch plans and just spend your Sunday coloring.

Eat The Damn Cake
Uplifting and inspiring and true.

CB2
Crate and Barrel's Ikea inspired sister site, but its like waaay better than Ikea and still reasonably priced.

OkCupid Inspired Art.
Hilarious & so so so true. Might I add, all I remember from Jim's is how under his 'About Me', he wrote, 'Man, strawberries are a great fruit.'

Also, I do want to mention that I have had one of the best weeks ever, and that my general mentality of 'Work Hard & Be Nice to People' has really paid off.
Because working hard and being nice should always pay off.
I got like a really really big promotion.

And! And! And!
Has everyone else noticed the wave of acrylic 'ghost chairs' out there lately?

Its like the new Letter Blocks of DIY/pinterest-dictated interior design.
Do I need one?
I like the idea...
Bijou always has good thoughts on interiors.

My Sunflower.

I'm a Grown Up Thirty Year Old. 

Thirty years on this planet, almost Thirtyandahalf, and I am finally a Grown Up. But, as you know, it took me a hellava time to get here. In fact, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be a Real Grown Up, but just a kid wobbling around in high heels playing the part.
(Not true, I walk really well in heels, but you get the point.)
But here I am, Thirty, up for a promotion I may not get, living in a home that actually has a mortgage (granted, its not mine) with furniture that is not a collection of hand me downs, Ikea krap & craigslist finds.
My bedside table if from... Crate and Barrel. Whatiszismadness?


Oh My Twenties.
More like Twenty Lifetimes.
My twenties felt like several lifes squished into a decade.
Twenty lifetimes, with acne and wrinkles, with roomates and with live in boyfriends and sometimes with both simultaneously.

All of these lifetimes, squished into the early part of a new century. Its funny, how when you live in a small town, with the same people roaming the streets with you over the same timeline how each and every change in your life is (however slight)  part of a greater whole.
At 21, I moved down to a new city sight unseen with my bed in the back of my dad's minivan.
Into a condo by school, where I hung my favorite Sunflower painting from back home up in the dining room. Off to college! I promptly met a stoner Frat boy who became my College Boyfriend (we all have one).

Hazy nights from party to party to Jack in Box to party to home, my roommate and his Frat Brothers in tow. This was not a good look for me. 
In the peripheral was always a pretty blonde girl, the girlfriend of a Brother. She I were not friends, but mere acquaintances  the kind that in college you inevitably end up introducing yourself to almost every weekend.
My roommate at the time went and rushed a sorority - to 'make us friends' and there too, in the peripheral, was another pretty blonde girl. I had a crush on this one's boyfriend.
After a move to my second apartment of my Twenties (this one I loved) with its interior French sliding doors, pool table and Craftsman built ins - including a diner style breakfast nook (booth seating!) into which my Sunflower painting fit perfectly - and the subsequent breakup with the Fratboy College Boyfriend, I met a bunch of girls through a pretty brunette in one of my summer school classes.
And in the peripheral was - yes - another pretty blonde girl, the roommate of one of my Best Friends from College.
Still now, I was barely 23, but felt old for my age.
In this home with the Breakfast Nook, I met the one-day-Ex of 5 Years.
Which catapulted me to the life I lived for most of my Twenties.
And my third Apartment of my Twenties: the one I shared with him.
Sunflower sitting perfectly in our kitchen, on a wall that was so perfectly suited for it, its like it had been waiting for that painting since the day it was built. Up winding stairs, and over hardwood floors, my Sunflower watched as I went from a College Wild Child, post-roaming the streets of Hollywood in glitter shoes and Wilco drenched adventures, to a Mild Mannered Twentysomething Townie Pseudo-Housewife. And in the peripheral, again, were those same three pretty blondes. At the time none of them my favorites, per se, as I knew very little of them, and saw them only when out and about in town. I was jealous of the First Pretty Blonde because I thought I could sense that the Ex of 5 was attracted to her. (I actually stormed out a dinner once because this insecurity got to me so much. Ahh, 25. Insecurity rules when you're 25.) Pretty Blonde #2, the sorority sister, and I formally met on a really bad night, and stayed aquaintances, but nothing more. Pretty Blonde #3, the roommate of my friend, I always resented because she always looked like she was having such fun, without a care in the world, while I was living a life of What Will the Neighbors Think? .

Our Roaring Twenties.

All of us in our twenties.
Living out our terrarium-like twenty lifetimes year by year, sometimes intersecting, though rarely.
Students to girlfriends to jobs to happy hour.

Within the span of a Decade, a Year, a Month or a Single Moment.
It seems as if... In your twenties, your life changes in the blink of an eye.

I believe this is true for life in general. (Um have you seen what Thirty has done to me?!?)
A pimple pops up over night, and so it seems wrinkles as well. And grays.
Your life is fluid in your twenties.
Those who were once only in the peripheral of what seems like the way life will always be, can so instantaneously move to the very forefront of Your Everything.
I always thought that the First Pretty Blonde would always be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College. Then she became The Girl Who My Boyfriend Flirts With.
So naturally, I assumed that she would always then be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Boyfriend Flirts With. 
(Whether or not this was actually true is still unconfirmed by the way.)

One 4th of July, I was caught blindsided by the overwhelming dislike that the now Ex of 5 Years had for me. Dislike that had, in fact, been building up for months and months and months.
Have you ever felt like your partner just doesn't Like You? 
I'm sure that that is not a feeling exclusive to your twenties. I'm sure none of this is.

And that Sunflower painting watched as that boy came home and told me he would never be my Husband, and we would never be Us again.
It did not see when, weeks later, he told me that he'd been greatly mistaken and he missed Us and he missed Our Sunflower, because he said it in the room where there was only a shadow of where the Sunflower painting used to be but wasn't anymore. 

Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower was never Ours. 
Because it was hanging perfectly in my new Kitchen Attached to a Room.
Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower is Mine. 


It was mine and it was in the Fourth & Last Home of my Twenties: My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. Where Kat & I fled after the disastrous break up with the Ex.
On August 1st, 2010, where my Ex's wonderful father hung it so perfectly in my new kitchen.

But even though I still had my Sunflower, I'd still lost the closest thing to a Home, a Husband, and Family in one slow moving swoop. In what felt like an instant. I was 28 by now, and I was broken.

But my Sunflower hung so perfectly in that kitchen, watching me navigate the lifetimes of twenty eight and twenty nine and thirty.
It watched Kat lounge in the sun, it watched me so poorly maneuver through the worst Autumn I can remember, of being alone and lost and sad. It watched me write the better part of over two hundred blog posts.
And it watched as the Pretty Blonde who was my College Best Friend's Roommate, the one I was so jealous of because she got to have all the fun, get dressed for a night out in our Tiny Town and it watched as she and I became fast friends.

I actually had this print too for a long time.

That Sunflower watched as we came up for the outline for The Story of Goldilocks, and it watched as that friendship helped me become who I am today.
Pretty Blonde Girl #3, that girl who was in the peripheral of so many of my mini-lifes of my Twenties is Goldi.
And that Sunflower watched me pluck out gray hairs with fervor that grew with even more fervor, and it watched as that tiny apartment went from Exile to Refuge to Cage.
And while that lifetime was happening, I was re-acquainted with the Second Pretty Blonde. She too, was at many of those college parties, often with that Boyfriend I had had a crush on so many years ago, and she too has made me who I am today.
Behind Pretty Blonde Door #2 is Beauty.

Now what ever became of The First Peripheral Pretty Blonde, Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With? 
To me, this is the most interesting example of how much life changes with time, and how fluid and wonderful life can be. It is weird, Pretty Blonde Girl Number One, is the prime example. Because, for many years she was just a memory of so-n-so's girlfriend from college. Then, at a drunken dinner somewhere around 25, when we still didn't know each other and probably had to be reintroduced, and I probably relayed the story of when her then-boyfriend passed out by my Volvo in '04, a story which I doubt she even remembered, and I was so certain that my then-boyfriend was, ya know, into her that I got up and left abruptly.
Well, she is close with Goldi and with Beauty, and has been since college. At my Lifetime 28, Pretty Blonde Girl #1 and I probably went to a brunch of bottomless mimosas or something, something I barely remember,  but however it happened, we became facebook friends.
Still, not even knowing much of each other other than hearsay & hair color, when I finally got up the gall to share this project with more of a mass audience, I blindly sent her the link.
That Sunflower watched the Dutchman arrive and leave and what seemed like a Lifetime wrapped up into a single summer and it watched me get ready for Goldi's 27th Birthday Party in San Diego, being hosted by both the Del Mar Races & the First Pretty Blonde Girl  and her New Boyfriend.
Pre-races, we popped a bottle of bubbly, and that Pretty Blonde came down the stairs, I remember it so clearly, and said, 'You're a really good writer.' 
And she went on to tell me and whole kitchen about this project. It was the first time someone I didn't really know very well, barely at all, gave me feedback about this. It felt good. This project somehow connected this Pretty Blonde and I in a way that I had never experienced at that point. (Actually this blog has allowed me a closeness with people that I've never experienced before, and in turn has allowed me to be more myself in 'Real Life' as well.) She and her Nearly Perfect Boyfriend also became a Litmus of sorts for me, for some reason, with my Paper Planes and all that, because I looked at the two of them, and thought, 

'Ya know, thats what I want. Thats what I deserve.' 

I watched as she went on mini breaks and full blown vacations. I watched as her relationship had many aspects that I wanted but had never had in my own.
I watched as she got outta town, met a Man and Grew Up.
I watched and it gave me my own aspirations*

*Now, I'm not advocating comparing yourself to other's, 

I'm just saying its okay to know 

a Good Thing when you see it and work from there.

Its funny, now, because, now when I am whining about living in what was My Not My House Home but paying rent for place at the beach, she texted me with, 'I'm so glad I'm not the only one doing that!'
Its an odd yet wonderful connection she and I have.
She's no longer Pretty Blonde Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With. 
In my Twenty Lifetimes of my Twenties, she has been an unlikely constant, like My Sunflower. She was one of the Must-Comes to my own Birthday. She is someone I am always happy to see, whether it has been a year or a month. She is someone who, though we don't speak often, when we do, its as though we've been friends for years and not a moment has passed. I am happy for her.

My last text from her reads,

We are so lucky!

Because we are.
She's the one who gave me the idea for this post; though, quite frankly, it sort of took on a Life(time) of its own.


And, at Thirty, I too, grew up, met a Man and got outta town.

October 1, 2012. Two years and two months in my studio. Time Flies.
My lease was up today on My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. 
Its not my exile. Its not my refuge. Its not my cage. 
Its just not mine anymore. 

I live here in Orange County, with Jim now. 
For Realsies ya'll.

My First Home of my Thirties.
I have a home.
And so does my Sunflower.
And again, it has a wall that has been awaiting its arrival, next to my side of the bed.

It got here yesterday, after we did the final gutting of an apartment I will never return to.
I will never go to that home again. Though parts of it live on - Beauty and Goldi both have remnants of it in their homes now, but for the majority of it - the furniture I had collected so slowly in my twenties - the shabby beachy blues and whites and seafoam green pieces that I so came to love - those are gone.

It still watches Kat nap in the sun.

But not my Sunflower. 
That's Home now.

A special thanks to Les. 

...

Toe to Toe, Heel to Heal.

My very Lady Like new shoes.
Kate Spade Leslie Heel.

I did something bad...

I said sheepishly, holding up the shopping bag that now carried my new pair of Italian crafted, gold heeled pumps. These are shoes I have no business buying, but did so anyway.

He laughed.

You know, I think that if you see a pair of shoes you want, you should have them. 

I mean that. 

This time I laughed.

I'm going to remind you of that later, when I fall madly in love with a pair of twelve hundred dollar Swarovski encrusted Louboutins.

The next day, we are stopped at a gas station and I am about to run in and get some essentials.
Jim hands me his Visa and tells me to 'Get him a soda and whatever it was I was going to grab...' 
I pop out of the car, and just as I'm shutting the door behind me I hear, in feigned panic,

'They don't sell Louboutins in there do they?!?'

Sometimes I admit, these days, I do feel a bit like Cinderella.

My Malibu Bad Ass.

A good friend can talk you off any ledge, 

even if its just a sidewalk's. 

Soooo... I accidentally stumbled across some ancient facebook fodder on an old picture, between my boyfriend and his ex. It was a surprise, to see this mystery woman's face for the first time, and to get tangible (or at least, sort of tangible) evidence of what I already knew was, at some point,real.

So a little shaken and a lot in need of someone to remind me that it is just an old (old old) post on the 'book, I rang my Malibu (by way of Long Beach and sometimes Denver) Bad Ass.

Hi. What are you doing?

Uuuuhhh... Watching Gossip Girl.

Oh... Well, I came across ---yaddayadda--- and need you to remind me that it's nothing, over a year old and that Jim loves me.

And without skipping a beat, she replied,

It's nothing. Its over a year old. And Jim loves you. Jeez. The man can't keep his eyes off you. If he wanted to be with her, he would. But he doesn't. He's with you. Stop looking at it.

And just like that, I felt better. 

And just like that, the conversation veered away from shaken, and towards scored Michael Kors booties and photo shoots. 

Not that I was worried or anything, I was just... Surprised.

Funny, what I took away from the entire half an hour, was less about running into uninvited words and more about how good it feels to have Good Friends. 

So, off the ledge of that sidewalk I walked, and instead hopped into the shower to restart my day.

Out With the Old & In With the New.

'I can think of ten different times, just on the drive home, that I thought... I should pinch myself. What we have... You and I...'  

He trailed off, once we were home from our (ammmahzing) retreat to Central California.

I spent yesterday reorganizing the minutiae of the house; the things that I hadn't dared touch because this was Jim's Place. I had gotten flustered a few days ago, because yes - I decorated this space & I have drawers in the dresser and a whole side of the closet, but still -  underneath the surface, it did still feel like His. 

So, I started with the bathroom cabinets - the medicine cabinet & the drawers - under the guise of 'Well he uses my face stuff as much, if not more, than I do, so I'm just going to organize.' 

I'll just be right here. I don't want to 'disturb' anything.

I had been (self)relegated to a single drawer while the rest of them where poorly dispersed with dermologica samples and random combs. So, once I was done, and my nail polishes were organized in the medicine cabinet right along next to his hair mud or whatever its called, and he came home, I gave him a tour. 

He loved the organization of it - I may or may not have made some labels - and when we got to the medicine cabinets, my Essies and my Sally Hansens standing proud next to his nose hair trimmer, he smiled and said,

I like that our stuff is together now. 

Later, on the patio, I explained to him exactly what I'm explaining to you - the realization that even though I've been living here for months essentially, I have been walking on eggshells regarding his stuff. His cabinets are his cabinets, his drawers are his, and I don't want to... I don't even know... Be nosy? Cross the Line?

But he stopped me, and said,

No more eggshells. I want this to be Ours. Rearrange and organize all you want, it's your home too. I want it to be that way. It's not even that things will really change all that much, I'm just happy it will be more, I dunno... Official. I'm just happy that its Ours.

So, the following day, I took to editing, well, everything.
The pantry, the pots and pans, the drawer arrangement, the linen closet, the fridge.
To just organize them in a way that makes sense to me, that creates order and simply improve upon them. And, in doing that, I got to know the nooks and crannies that I had been trying not to pry upon; the weird mismatched sheets, the expired and unopened Juice Plus bottles.
I threw things out, folded them better, hung them up.
And its nice, because it gives me a better understanding of what is here and what is ours. What spices we have, what we're running low on. I gives me a greater sense of home, and of control, and of shared space.
Yesterday started with me, cross legged on the kitchen floor, iPad in hand - googling the differences between the 16 sauce pans in his cupboard and ended with the two of us eating Snickerdoodles in bed while watching Downton Abbey.
In between that, after being given the okay to toss things without worry, THIS happened too.
I know it may not seem like a big deal, the idea that underneath the surface it was all still his and my having the go ahead to change it, but it is a big deal to me.
That I didn't have to stare at the eleven jars of jalapenos anymore, or the drawer filled with toiletries lifted from various hotel rooms (oh you know you do it too). Sometimes I am so afraid over overstepping boundaries, or the idea that I've meddled too far or I don't know...
But it felt really good to know that I have free rein in our home together.
Or to quote Downton Abbey, I'm the Lady of the House.

You see, I've always been a good Homemaker, I know this. 

In my past relationship, that was the only thing I felt like was valued. 

I can cook and mend, and clean and entertain. 

I made sure that the Ex's friends all had cold beers during the game.

But to be fully accepted within that home, to be wholly loved and appreciated, to be told I'm smart, to be told I'm funny, to be told I'm beautiful all wrapped together with a look of sheer Love, is not something I've had since I was child. 

I show him the cabinets and that is all well and good, he's glad that I switched where the forks are kept, because we both - for months - have gone for the wrong drawer, and he's thrilled. 

But to follow that up with a dinner where he laughs at all my jokes and listens when I interrupt him, and tells me that he hopes that I always steal food from his plates and looks at me as though he's about to burst into an explosion of pure happiness, rainbows and all, is a new feeling for me. 

We took my eighteen year old cousin to dinner after her first week of college (actually, she is the first of my family to meet Jim) and to have him be so present at dinner, so engaging with my little cousin; to be so honestly interested in her syllabus and her yoga class, that was new to me. 

To be on the phone with my dad, and have him say,

'Well, your boyfriend sounds like a good Man. I look forward to meeting him.'

This is all new to me.

How odd is it, that for me, being in a relationship with a man who educates himself daily, and has an open mind and a warm heart is a new thing? 

That we can go to dinner, and I can spend the meal making him laugh with funny voices and silly quips, and then we can come home and just be. That we can spend ten hours in the car - switching from the Pandora station from stand up comedy to the audio book we bought to NPR and back to comedy. 

Talking and not talking for hours.

To be loved by a man not for what he wants me to be, but for who I am. 

This is all a new to me.